Halleck's New English Literature Part 48

"That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any one going; but the exquisite touch which renders commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me."

She died in 1817 at the age of forty-one and was buried in Winchester Cathedral, fourteen miles from her birthplace. The merit of her work was apparent to only a very few at the time of her death. Later years have slowly brought a just recognition of the important position that she holds in the history of the realistic novel of daily life. Of still greater significance to the majority is the fact that the subtle charm of her stories continues to win for her an enlarged circle of readers.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1770-1850

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. _After the portrait by B.R.

Haydon_.]

Early Life and Training.--William Wordsworth was born in c.o.c.kermouth, c.u.mberland, in 1770. He went to school in his ninth year at Hawkshead, a village on the banks of Esthwaite Water, in the heart of the Lake Country. The traveler who takes the pleasant journey on foot or coach from Windermere to Coniston, pa.s.ses through Hawkshead, where he may see Wordsworth's name cut in a desk of the school which he attended. Of greater interest is the scenery which contributed so much to his education and aided his development into England's greatest nature poet.

We learn from his autobiographical poem, _The Prelude_, what experiences molded him in boyhood. He says that the--

"...common face of Nature spake to me Rememberable things."

In this poem he relates how he absorbed into his inmost being the orange sky of evening, the curling mist, the last autumnal crocus, the "souls of lonely places," and the huge peak, which terrified him at nightfall by seeming to stride after him and which awoke in him a--

"...dim and undermined sense Of unknown modes of being."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOY OF WINANDER. _From mural painting by H.O. Walker, Congressional Library, Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C._]

In his famous lines on the "Boy of Winander," Wordsworth tells how--

"...the voice Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene Would enter unawares into his mind With all its solemn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received Into the bosom of the steady lake."

At the age of seventeen he entered Cambridge University, from which he was graduated after a four years' course. He speaks of himself there as a dreamer pa.s.sing through a dream. There came to him the strange feeling that he "was not for that hour nor for that place;" and yet he says that he was not unmoved by his daily a.s.sociation with the haunts of his ill.u.s.trious predecessors, or of--

"Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace,"

and of Milton whose soul seemed to Wordsworth "like a star."

Influence of the French Revolution.--His travels on the continent in his last vacation and after his graduation brought him in contact with the French Revolution, of which he felt the inspiring influence. He was fond of children, and the sight of a poor little French peasant girl seems to have been one of the main causes leading him to become an ardent revolutionist. _The Prelude_ tells in concrete fullness how he walked along the banks of the Loire with his friend, a French patriot:--

"...And when we chanced One day to meet a hunger-bitten girl, Who crept along fitting her languid gait Unto a heifer's motion, by a cord Tied to her arm, and picking thus from the lane Its sustenance, while the girl with pallid hands Was busy knitting in a heartless mood Of solitude, and at the sight my friend In agitation said, ''Tis against _that_ That we are fighting.'"

Just as Wordsworth was prepared to throw himself personally into the conflict, his relatives recalled him to England. When the Revolution pa.s.sed into a period of anarchy and bloodshed, his dejection was intense. As he slowly recovered from his disappointment, he became more and more conservative in politics and less in sympathy with violent agitation; but he never ceased to utter a hopeful though calm and tempered note for genuine liberty.

Maturity and Declining Years.--Although Wordsworth was early left an orphan, he never seemed to lack intelligent care and sympathy. His sister Dorothy, a rare soul, helped to fas.h.i.+on him into a poet. Their favorite pastime was walking and observing nature. De Quincey estimates that Wordsworth, during the course of his life, mast have walked as many as 175,000 miles. He acted on his belief that--

"All things that love the sun are out of doors,"

and he composed his best poetry during his walks, dictating it after his return.

He must have had the capacity of impressing himself favorably on his a.s.sociates or he might never have had the leisure to write poetry.

When he was twenty-five, a friend left him a legacy of 900 to enable him to follow his chosen calling of poet. Seven years later, friends saw that he was appointed distributor of stamps for Westmoreland, at the annual salary of 400. Years afterward, a friend gave him a regular allowance to be spent in traveling.

The summer of 1797 saw him and Dorothy begin a golden year at Alfoxden in Somersets.h.i.+re, in close a.s.sociation with Coleridge. The result of this companions.h.i.+p was _Lyrical Ballads_, an epoch-making volume of romantic verse, containing such gems as Wordsworth's _Lines composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, Lines written in Early Spring, We Are Seven_, and Coleridge's _The Ancient Mariner_. "All good poetry,"

wrote Wordsworth in the _Preface_ to the second edition of this volume, "is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." This is the opposite of the belief of the cla.s.sical school.

In 1797, after a trip to Germany, he and Dorothy settled at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, in the Lake Country. She remained a member of the household after he married his cousin, Mary Hutchinson, in 1802. The history of English authors shows no more ideal companions.h.i.+p than that of these three kindred souls. Dove Cottage where he wrote the best of his poetry, remains almost unchanged. It is one of the most interesting literary homes in England.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOVE COTTAGE.]

In 1813 he moved a short distance away, to Rydal Mount, where he lived the remainder of his life. In 1843 he was chosen poet laureate. He died in 1850 and was buried in Grasmere Churchyard.

A Poet of Nature.--Wordsworth is one of the world's most loving and thoughtful lyrical poets of Nature. For him she possessed a soul, a conscious existence, an ability to feel joy and love. In _Lines written in Early Spring_, he expresses this belief:--

"And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes."

All things seem to him to feel pure joy in existence:--

"The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare."

It was also his poetic creed that Nature could bring to human hearts a message of solace and companions.h.i.+p. His poem, _Lines composed a Short Distance above Tintern Abbey_, is a remarkable exposition of this faith.

He would have scorned to be considered merely a descriptive poet of nature. He satirizes those who could do nothing more than correctly apply the color "yellow" to the primrose:--

"A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him And it was nothing more."

He interprets the sympathetic soul of Nature, not merely her outward or her intellectual aspect. He says in _The Prelude_:--

"From Nature and her overflowing soul I had received so much, that all my thoughts Were steeped in feeling."

If we compare Wordsworth's line--

"This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,"[14]

with Tennyson's line from _The Princess_--

"A full sea glazed with m.u.f.fled moonlight,"

we may easily decide which shows more feeling and which, more art.

Many poets have produced beautiful paintings of the external features of nature. With rare genius, Wordsworth looked beyond the color of the flower, the outline of the hills, the beauty of the clouds, to the spirit that breathed through them, and he communed with "Nature's self, which is the breath of G.o.d." He introduced lovers of his poetry to a new world of nature, a new source of companions.h.i.+p and solace, a new idea of a Being in cloud and air and "the green leaves among the groves."

Poetry of Man: Narrative Poems.--Wordsworth is a poet of man as well as of nature. The love for nature came to him first; but out of it grew his regard for the people who lived near to nature. His poetry of man is found more in his longer narrative poems, although in them as well as in his shorter pieces, he shows the action of nature on man.

In _The Prelude_, the most remarkable autobiographical poem in English, not only reveals the power in nature to develop man, but he also tells how the French revolution made him feel the worth of each individual soul and a sense of the equality of all humanity at the bar of character and conscience. As his lyrics show the sympathetic soul of nature, so his narrative poems ill.u.s.trate the second dominant characteristic of the age, the strong sense of the worth of the humblest man.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRASMERE LAKE.]

_Michael_, one of the very greatest of his productions, displays a tender and living sympathy with the humble shepherd. The simple dignity of Michael's character, his frugal and honorable life, his affection for his son, for his sheep, and for his forefather's old home, appealed to the heart of the poet. He loved his subject and wrote the poem with that indescribable simplicity which makes the tale, the verse, and the tone of thought and feeling form together one perfect and indissoluble whole. _The Leech-Gatherer_ and the story of "Margaret" in _The Excursion_ also deal with lowly characters and exhibit Wordsworth's power of pathos and simple earnestness. He could not present complex personalities; but these characters, which belonged to the landscapes of the Lake District and partook of its calm and its simplicity, he drew with a sure hand.

His longest narrative poem is _The Excursion_ (1814), which is in nine books. It contains fine pa.s.sages of verse and some of his sanest and maturest philosophy; but the work is not the masterpiece that he hoped to make. It is tedious, prosy, and without action of any kind. The style, which is for the most part heavy, becomes pure and easy only in some description of a mountain peak or in the recital of a tale, like that of "Margaret."

An Interpreter of Child Life.--Perhaps the French Revolution and the unforgettable incident of the pitiable peasant child were not without influence in causing him to become a great poetic interpreter of childhood. No poem has surpa.s.sed his _Alice Fell, or Poverty_ in presenting the psychology of childish grief, or his _We Are Seven_ in voicing the faith of--

"...A simple child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb,"

or the loneliness of "the solitary child" in _Lucy Gray_:--