FOOTNOTES:
[1] Memoirs, ii. 97-8.
[2] Mr. Walker's charity being of that kind which 'seeketh not her own,' he would rather forego his rights than distrain for dues which the parties liable refused, as a point of conscience, to pay.
[3] Memoirs, ii. pp. 57-58.
[4] ('According to Baronius the humiliation of the Emperor was a voluntary act of prostration on his part. Ann. Eccl. ad Ann. 1177.' Memoirs, ii. 111.)
[5] Extract: September 4th, 1842: Memoirs, ii. 389-90.
[6] In pencil—This is a mistake, dear Father. It was the following evening, when the Liddells were gone, and only ourselves and Mr. Allan present.
[7] Memoirs, ii. p. 114.
[8] Memoirs, ii. pp. 386-7.
[9] Extract: January 13th, 1841 (Memoirs, ii. p. 374-5).
[10] In pencil on opposite page, by Mrs. Quillinan—Daddy dear, I don't like this. Think how many reasons there were to depress his Muse—to say nothing of his duties as a Priest, and probably he found poetry interfere with them. He did not require such praise to make him write, but it just put it into his heart to try again, and gave him the courage to do so. (See Notes and Illustrations at close. G)
[11] In pencil on opposite page—But this first stanza of 'We are Seven' is Coleridge's Jem and all (Mr. Quillinan).
[12] Which took place in March, 1843.
[13] In pencil on opposite page—Sarah went to Kendal on our mother's death, but Mr. P. died in the course of a year or two. M.W.
[14] Excursion; book the last, near the conclusion.
[15] Sir George Vandeput.
[16] The original is as follows, some of the abbreviations being expanded: 'HOC OPUS FIEBAT ANNO DOMINI MCCCXXV EX SUMPIU WLLLELMI WOBDESWORTH FILII W. FIL. JOH. FIL. W. FIL. NICH. VIRI ELIZABETH FILIAE ET HEREDIS W. PROCTOR DE PENYSTON QUORUM ANIMABUS PROPITIETUE DEUS.'
On the almery are carved the letters 'I.H.S.' and 'M.;' also the emblem of the Holy Trinity.
For further information concerning this oak press, see Mr. Hunter's paper in Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1850, p. 43.
[17] See Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Part III. Sonnet xxii. 'On Catechising.'
[18] He was succeeded by Dr. Craven in 1789.
[19] Prelude, book vi.
[20] Ibid, book xiv.
[21] This is not quite correct; the time of his absence did not exceed thirteen months.
[22] Memoirs, i. pp. 7-17.
[23] Letter to Rev. H.J. Rose (1828), Memoirs, i. 33.
[24] Letter to a nephew, Memoirs, i. 48-9.
[25] Memoirs, pp. 57-66.
[26] Letter to William Mathews, Memoirs, i. 70.
[27] Ibid. Memoirs, i. 71.
[28] Memoirs, i. 71.
[29] Extract of letter to Mathews, May 17, 1792, Memoirs, i. 75.
[30] Memoirs, i. 76.
[31] Extract of letter to Mathews, Memoirs, i. 79-80.
[32] Memoirs, i. 82.
[33] Ibid. i. 82-3.
[34] Memoirs, i. 85.
[35] Letter to Mathews, Nov. 9, 1794.
[36] Memoirs, i. 85-6.
[37] Captain John Wordsworth, who perished by shipwreck a short time before the date of this letter.
[38] Memoirs, i. 88-9.
[39] Ibid. i. 94.
[40] Memoirs, i. 95-6.
[41] Ibid. i. 104-5.
[42] Letter to Cottle, Memoirs, i. 116.
[43] Ibid. i. 116-17.
[44] 1799: Memoirs, i. 145.
[45] Ibid. i. 147.
[46] Memoirs, i. 148-9.
[47] Memoirs, i. 149-54.
[48] Note to Coleridge, Memoirs, i. 174-5.
[49] Life of Scott, by Lockhart, vol. ii. 165-7 (1856). The following from the same source, earlier, may fitly find a place here: 'It was in the September of this year [1803] that Scott first saw Wordsworth. Their common acquaintance, Stoddart, had so often talked of them to each other, that they met as if they had not been strangers; and they parted friends. Mr. and Miss Wordsworth had just completed that tour in the Highlands of which so many incidents have since been immortalised, both in the poet's sense and in the hardly less poetical prose of his sister's Diary. On the morning of the 17th of September, having left their carriage at Rosslyn, they walked down the valley to Lasswade, and arrived there before Mr. and Mrs. Scott had risen. "We were received," Mr. Wordsworth has told me, "with that frank cordiality which, under whatever circumstances I afterwards met him, always marked his manners; and, indeed, I found him then in every respect—except perhaps that his animal spirits were somewhat higher—precisely the same man that you knew him in later life; the same lively, entertaining conversation, full of anecdote, and averse from disquisition; the same unaffected modesty about himself; the same cheerful and benevolent and hopeful views of man and the world. He partly read and partly recited, sometimes in an enthusiastic style of chant, the first four cantos of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel;" and the novelty of the manners, the clear picturesque descriptions, and the easy glowing energy of much of the verse, greatly delighted me."' (pp. 160-1).
[50] Memoirs, i. 282.
[51] Memoirs, i. 287.
[52] Due to Wordsworth's father from James, Earl of Lonsdale, at whose death, in 1802, it was paid by his Lordship's successor, and divided among the five children.
[53] Vol. ix. p. 395, ed. Bekker. Oxon. 1837.
[54] Memoirs, i. 288-98.
[55] From Lockhart's Life of Scott, vol. ii. pp. 287-9 (edit. 1856).
[56] Lockhart's Life, iii. 45-6.
[57] Memoirs, i. 385-6.
[58] 'Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo.' Aen. vi. 664.
[59] Memoirs, i. 386-8.
[60] Memoirs, i. 388-90.
[61] Ibid, i. 390-1.
[62] Mr. Southey's opinions on the Convention of Cintra, at the time of its ratification, were in unison with those of his friend. See Southey's Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 177-180.
[63] Memoirs, i. 391-8.
[64] Letter to Lord Lonsdale, Jan. 8. 1813: Memoirs, ii. 2.
[65] Memoirs, i. 433, with important additions from the MS. G.
[66] Reasons for declining to become a Subscriber to the British and Foreign Bible Society, by Christopher Wordsworth, D.D., Dean of Bocking. Lond. 1810. See also his Letter to Lord Teignmouth in vindication of the above Letter. Lond. 1810.
[67] Memoirs, ii. 8-9.
[68] Memoirs, ii. 9-10.
[69] 'The Excursion,' published 1814.
[70] Memoirs, ii 10-11.
[71] As has been said by Demosthenes.
[72] Who died Feb. 7, 1827.
[73] Memoirs, ii. 20-1.
[74] Memoirs, ii. 22.
[75] Memoirs, ii. 23-27.
[76] Memoirs, ii. 52-4.
[77] See his 'Letter to a Friend of Burns.'
[78] Memoirs, ii. 60-1.
[79] Memoirs, ii. 62-3.
[80] Vol. i. p. 382.
[81] Philological Museum, edit. Camb. 1832, vol. i. p. 382.
[82] Memoirs, ii. 68-9.
[83] Memoirs, ii. 69.
[84] Memoirs, ii. 69-74.
[85] Memoirs, ii. 90-104.
[86] Memoirs, ii. 116.
[87] Memoirs, ii. 129-131.
[88] Extract of Letter to Professor Hamilton, 12th Feb. 1829, here first printed. G.
[89] This refers to Dr. Wordsworth's volume on the authorship of Icôn Basiliké. London, 1824.
[90] This alludes to Dr. Wordsworth's second publication, entitled 'King Charles the First the Author of Icôn Basiliké.' London, 1828.
[91] Memoirs, ii. 132-3.
[92] Memoirs, ii. 134.
[93] Memoirs, ii. 135.
[94] Memoirs, ii. 155-6.
[95] Memoirs, ii. 205-9.
[96] Ibid. ii. 211-12.
[97] Memoirs, ii. 212-14, with important additions from the original. G.
[98] i.e. convinced by what Wordsworth had remarked to me, that those portions of Collins's 'Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlanders,' which first appeared in Bell's edition of that Ode, were forgeries. A.D.
[99] Memoirs, ii. 214-16.
[100] Memoirs, ii. 216-17.
[101] An Annual, to which Wordsworth had been induced to become a contributor.
[102] Memoirs, ii. 217-18.
[103] Memoirs, ii. 219-220.
[104] It was on hearing these lines repeated by his friend, Mr. H.C. Robinson, that Wordsworth exclaimed, 'Well! I am not given to envy other people their good things; but I do wish I had written that.' He much admired Mrs. Barbauld's Essays, and sent a copy of them, with a laudatory letter upon them, to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
[105] Memoirs, ii. 220-22.
[106] Extract of letter to Professor Hamilton, Dublin, Dec. 23d, 1829.
[107] Memoirs, ii. 223.
[108] On a proposed tour.
[109] In the field to the S.W. below the garden at Rydal.
[110] Memoirs, ii. 224.
[111] Specimens of British Poetesses. A.D.
[112] In Mr. W.'s lines 'To Enterprise.' A.D.
[113] I had mentioned to Mr. W. that, when I had a curacy in Cornwall, I used frequently to carry 'The Excursion' down to the sea-shore, and read it there. A.D.
[114] Two volumes, 1755. A.D.
[115] Mr. W. means, that I have inserted that poem in my 'Specimens.' A.D.
[116] Memoirs, ii. 225-30.
[117] Memoirs, ii. 230-1.
[118] Here first printed. G.
[119] Memoirs, ii. 241-2. Given completely (instead of the brief extract) from the original. The autograph, &c. cut away. G.
[120] Memoirs, ii. 242-4.
[121] Memoirs, ii. 244.
[122] As revolutionary.
[123] Memoirs, ii. 252-4.
[124] Memoirs, ii. 255-7, with important additions from the original. G.
[125] Memoirs, ii. 257.
[126] Ibid. ii. 258-9.
[127] Memoirs, ii. 259-60.
[128] Memoirs, ii. 260, with important additions from the original. G.
[129] Memoirs, ii. 261-2.
[130] Memoirs, ii. 263-4.
[131] Ibid. ii. 267-8.
[132] Memoirs, ii. 274-5.
[133] Memoirs, ii. 275-6.
[134] Memoirs, ii. 276-7, with important additions from the original.
[135] Memoirs, ii. 277-8.
[136] I had requested permission to dedicate a little book, Specimens of English Sonnets, to Mr. W. A.D.
[137] Memoirs, ii. 278-81.
[138] i.e. To Mr. W.'s request that I would, if possible, furnish him with some particulars about her. A.D.
[139] Where I then was. A.D.
[140] Memoirs, ii. 281-3.
[141] Memoirs, ii. 283.
[142] Specimens of English Sonnets. A.D.
[143] This letter is in the handwriting of Miss D. Wordsworth, but signed by Mr. W. A.D.
[144] Memoirs, ii. 284-6.
[145] Memoirs, ii. 286-7.
[146] Excursion, book i.
[147] Memoirs, ii. 287-8.
[148] This hope, alas! was not realised. Mrs. Hemans died in the following year, May 16, 1835.
[149] Memoirs, ii. 291-2.
[150] Memoirs, ii. 292-4.
[151] Mr. Montgomery informed the (now) Bishop of Lincoln that 'this poem when forwarded to Wordsworth was not in the condition in which it is now, but that it had been almost rewritten, and was also his earliest poem—composed when he was nineteen.' G.
[152] Memoirs, ii. 294-6.
[153] Memoirs, ii. 296-7.
[154] Extract: Memoirs, ii. 298.
[155] Extract of letter to Sir W.R. Hamilton, Dublin, Jan. 11, 1836. Here first printed.
[156] Memoirs, ii. 344-6.
[157] Memoirs, ii. 347-8.
[158] Ibid. ii. 349.
[159] Memoirs, ii. 350-1.
[160] Here first printed. G.
[161] Here first printed. G.
[162] Memoirs, ii. 351-4.
[163] Extract: Memoirs, ii. 357-8.
[164] Memoirs, ii. 358.
[165] Ibid. ii. 360.
[166] Memoirs, ii. 360-1.
[167] Ellen Parry (daughter of Dr. Parry), who died April 28, 1840. Wordsworth saw her April 28, 1839. He was again at Summer Hill, Bath, in April 1840.
[168] Memoirs, ii. 362-3.
[169] Sic: qu. 'Misapprehensions.' H.A.
[170] Sic: 1. 'Poems.' II. A.
[171] Memoirs, ii. 364-6.
[172] Ibid. ii. 366.
[173] Memoirs, ii. 367-9.
[174] Memoirs, ii. 369-70.
[175] Ibid. ii. 370-1.
[176] Memoirs, ii. 371-3.
[177] Memoirs, ii. 373-4.
[178] Extract of letter to John Peace, Esq., Jan. 19, 1841: Memoirs, ii. 376.
[179] Extract of letter to John Peace, Esq., January 19, 1841: Memoirs, ii. 376.
[180] Memoirs, ii, 377.
[181] Ibid. ii. 378.
[182] Memoirs, ii. 382-3.
[183] Dr. Seabury was consecrated bishop (of Connecticut) by Scottish bishops at Aberdeen, on 14th November 1784. Dr. White and Dr. Provoost were consecrated bishops (of New York and Pennsylvania) at Lambeth, 4th February 1787.
[184] Memoirs, ii. 383-4.
[185] Memoirs, ii. 384-5.
[186] Ibid. ii. 387.
[187] Memoirs, ii. 385.
[188] Extract of letter to John Peace, Esq., Dec. 12, 1842: ibid. ii. 390-1.
[189] Extract of letter to Nephew, March 22, 1843: ibid. ii. 391.
[190] The venerable and illustrious soldier has only very recently died. Within ten days of his death he wrote the present Editor tenderly and reverentially of Wordsworth. G.
[191] Memoirs, ii. 392-4.
[192] Prelude, book v.
[193] Memoirs, ii. 394-6.
[194] Southey's account in his Life and Correspondence renders this statement questionable.
[195] Referring to a translation by Sir W.R.H. of Die Ideale of Schiller, to which a stanza was added by Sir W.—G.
[196] Memoirs, ii. 404-5.
[197] The title of Mr. J. Cottle's work is Essays on Socinianism, by Joseph Cottle. Lond.: Longmans.
[198] Memoirs, ii. 405-6.
[199] This was written in answer to an inquiry whether Wordsworth had by him any hymns calculated for a collection which I was making, and asking permission to insert his 'Noon-day Hymn.' H.A.
[200] Memoirs, ii. 406.
[201] Lord Lonsdale's death.
[202] The respected Rector of Lowther, and Chancellor of the Diocese.
[203] Memoirs, ii. 407-8.
[204] The fête was given by Miss Fenwick, then at Rydal.
[205] See Memoirs, c. xlv.
[206] Memoirs, ii. 411-12.
[207] Memoirs, ii. 412-13.
| Walter Scott | died | 21st Sept. | 1832. | |
| S.T. Coleridge | " | 25th July | 1834. | |
| Charles Lamb | " | 27th Dec. | 1834. | |
| Geo. Crabbe | " | 3rd Feb. | 1832. | |
| Felicia Hemans | " | 16th May | 1835. | |
| Robert Southey | " | 21st March | 1843. |
[209] The poem enclosed is 'The Westmoreland Girl,' dated June 6, 1845. The text corresponds with that in the one volume edition, with the exception of the two stanzas added in the next letter; and in the 1st stanza 'thoughtless' has been substituted for 'simple;' and in the 18th 'is laid' for 'must lie.' H.R.
[210] Memoirs, ii. 414-17.
[211] Memoirs, ii. 418-21.
[212] Memoirs, ii. 151-2.
[213] Memoirs, ii. 152-3.
[214] Memoirs, ii. 422-3.
[215] Memoirs, ii. 424-5.
[216] Memoirs, ii. 432-3.
[217] Memoirs, ii. 434.
[218] To Mr. Moxon, Aug. 9, 1847.
[219] 29th Dec. 1847.
[220] [Note by Mr. Peace.] At Rydal Mount in 1838. Ephesians v. 20. 'My favourite text,' said he.
[221] Memoirs, ii. 435-6.
[222] Ibid. ii. 501-2.
[223] Memoirs, ii. 502-3.
[224] Ibid. ii. 503.
[225] 'There is a rhetorical amplitude and brilliancy in the Messias,' says Mr. Carlyle, 'which elicits in our critic (Mr. Taylor) an instinct truer than his philosophy is. Neither has the still purer spirit of Klopstock's odes escaped him. Perhaps there is no writing in our language that offers so correct an emblem of him as this analysis.' I remember thinking Taylor's 'clear outline' of the Messias the most satisfying account of a poem I ever read: it fills the mind with a vision of pomp and magnificence, which it is pleasanter to contemplate, as it were, from afar, massed together in that general survey, than to examine part by part. Mr. Taylor and Mr. Carlyle agree in exalting that ode of Klopstock's, in which he represents the Muse of Britain and the Muse of Germany running a race. The piece seems to me more rhetorical than strictly poetical; and if the younger Muse's power of keeping up the race depends on productions of this sort, I would not give a penny for her chance, at least if the contest relates to pure poetry. Klopstock's Herman (mentioned afterwards,) consists of three chorus-dramas, as Mr. Taylor calls them: The Battle of Herman, Herman and the Princes, and The Death of Herman. Herman is the Arminius of the Roman historians. S.C.
[226] Leonidus, an epic poem, by R. Glover, first appeared in May, 1737: in the fifth edition, published in 1770, it was corrected and extended from nine books to twelve. Glover was the author of Boadicea and Medea, tragedies, which had some success on the stage. I believe that Leonidas has more merit in the conduct of the design, and in the delineation of character, than as poetry.
'He write an epic poem,' said Thomson, 'who never saw a mountain!' Glover had seen the sun and moon, yet he seems to have looked for their poetical aspects in Homer and Milton, rather than in the sky. 'There is not a single simile in Leonidas,' says Lyttleton, 'that is borrowed from any of the ancients, and yet there is hardly any poem that has such a variety of beautiful comparisons.' The similes of Milton come so flat and dry out of Glover's mangle, that they are indeed quite another thing from what they appear in the poems of that Immortal: ex. gr.
Like wintry clouds, which, opening for a time,
Tinge their black folds with gleams of scattered light:—
Is not this Milton's 'silver lining' stretched and mangled?
The Queen of Night
Gleam'd from the centre of th' etherial vault,
And o'er the raven plumes of darkness shed
Her placid light.
This is flattened from the well-known passage in Comus.
Soon will savage Mars
Deform the lovely ringlets of thy shrubs.
A genteel improvement upon Milton's 'bush with frizzled hair implicit.' Then we have
——delicious to the sight
Soft dales meand'ring show their flowery laps
Among rude piles of nature,
spoiled from
——the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread its store.
Thus does this poet shatter and dissolve the blooming sprays of another man's plantation, instead of pushing through them some new shoots of his own to crown them with fresh blossoms.
Milton himself borrowed as much as Glover. Aye, ten times more; yet every passage in his poetry is Miltonic,—more than anything else. On the other hand, his imitators Miltonize, yet produce nothing worthy of Milton, the important characteristic of whose writings my father well expressed, when he said 'The reader of Milton must be always on his duty: he is surrounded with sense.' A man must have his sense to imitate him worthily. How we look through his words at the Deluge, as he floods it upon us in Book xi. l. 738-53!—The Attic bees produce honey so flavoured with the thyme of Hymettus that it is scarcely eatable, though to smell the herb itself in a breezy walk upon that celebrated Mount would be an exceeding pleasure; thus certain epic poems are overpoweringly flavoured with herbs of Milton, while yet the fragrant balm and fresh breeze of his poetry is not to be found in them. S.C.
[227] The 'abrupt and laconic structure' of Glover's periods appears at the very commencement of Leonidas, which has something military in its movement, but rather the stiff gait of the drilled soldier than the proud march of the martial hero.
The virtuous Spartan who resign'd his life
To save his country at th' Oetaen straits,
Thermopylae, when all the peopled east
In arms with Xerxes filled the Grecian plains,
O Muse record! The Hellespont they passed
O'erpowering Thrace. The dreadful tidings swift
To Corinth flew. Her Isthmus was the seat
Of Grecian council. Orpheus thence returns
To Lacedaemon. In assembly full, &c.
Glover's best passages are of a soft character. This is a pleasing Homerism:
Lycis dies,
For boist'rous war ill-chosen. He was skill'd
To tune the lulling flute, and melt the heart;
Or with his pipe's awak'ning strains allure
The lovely dames of Lydia to the dance.
They on the verdant level graceful mov'd
In vary'd measures; while the cooling breeze
Beneath their swelling garments wanton'd o'er
Their snowy breasts, and smooth Cayster's streams
Soft-gliding murmur'd by. The hostile blade, &c. Bk. VIII.
And here is a pleasing expansion of Pindar, Olymp. II. 109:
Placid were his days,
Which flow'd through blessings. As a river pure,
Whose sides are flowery, and whose meadows fair,
Meets in his course a subterranean void;
There dips his silver head, again to rise,
And, rising, glide through flow'rs and meadows new;
So shall Oïleus in those happier fields,
Where never tempests roar, nor humid clouds
In mists dissolve, nor white descending flakes
Of winter violate th' eternal green;
Where never gloom of trouble shades the mind,
Nor gust of passion heaves the quiet breast,
Nor dews of grief are sprinkled. Bk. X. S.C.
[228] This was accidentally confirmed to me by an old German gentleman at Helmstadt, who had been Klopstock's school and bed-fellow. Among other boyish anecdotes, he related that the young poet set a particular value on a translation of the PARADISE LOST, and always slept with it under his pillow.
[229] Klopstock's observation was partly true and partly erroneous. In the literal sense of his words, and, if we confine the comparison to the average of space required for the expression of the same thought in the two languages, it is erroneous. I have translated some German hexameters into English hexameters, and find, that on the average three English lines will express four lines German. The reason is evident: our language abounds in monosyllables and dissyllables. The German, not less than the Greek, is a polysyllable language. But in another point of view the remark was not without foundation. For the German possessing the same unlimited privilege of forming compounds, both with prepositions and with epithets, as the Greek, it can express the richest single Greek word in a single German one, and is thus freed from the necessity of weak or ungraceful paraphrases. I will content myself with one example at present, viz. the use of the prefixed participles ver, zer, ent, and weg: thus reissen to rend, verreissen to rend away, zerreissen to rend to pieces, entreissen to rend off or out of a thing, in the active sense: or schmelzen to melt—ver, zer, ent, schmelzen—and in like manner through all the verbs neuter and active. If you consider only how much we should feel the loss of the prefix be, as in bedropt, besprinkle, besot, especially in our poetical language, and then think that this same mode of composition is carried through all their simple and compound prepositions, and many of their adverbs; and that with most of these the Germans have the same privilege as we have of dividing them from the verb and placing them at the end of the sentence; you will have no difficulty in comprehending the reality and the cause of this superior power in the German of condensing meaning, in which its great poet exulted. It is impossible to read half a dozen pages of Wieland without perceiving that in this respect the German has no rival but the Greek. And yet I feel, that concentration or condensation is not the happiest mode of expressing this excellence, which seems to consist not so much in the less time required for conveying an impression, as in the unity and simultaneousness with which the impression is conveyed. It tends to make their language more picturesque: it depictures images better. We have obtained this power in part by our compound verbs derived from the Latin: and the sense of its great effect no doubt induced our Milton both to the use and the abuse of Latin derivatives. But still these prefixed particles, conveying no separate or separable meaning to the mere English reader, cannot possibly act on the mind with the force or liveliness of an original and homogeneous language such as the German is, and besides are confined to certain words.
[230] (A la Fortune. Liv. II. Ode vi. Œuvres de Jean Baptiste Rousseau, p.121, edit. 1820. One of the latter strophes of this ode concludes with two lines, which, as the editor observes, have become a proverb, and of which the thought and expression are borrowed from Lucretius: cripitur persona, manet res: III. v. 58.
Montrez nous, guerriers magnanimes,
Votre vertu dans tout son jour:
Voyons comment vos coeurs sublimes
Du sort soutiendront le retour.
Tant que sa faveur vous seconde,
Vous étes les maîtres du monde,
Votre gloire nous éblouit:
Mais au moindre revers funeste,
Le masque tombe, l'homme reste,
Et le heros s'évanouit.
Horace, says the Editor, en traitant ce même sujet, liv. X. ode XXXV. et Pindare en l'esquissant à grands traits, au commencement de sa douzième Olympique, n'avoient laissé à leurs successeurs que son côté moral à envisager, et c'est le parti que prit Rousseau. The general sentiment of the ode is handled with great dignity in Paradise Regained. Bk. III. l. 43—157—a passage which, as Thyer says, contains the quintessence of the subject. Dante has some noble lines on Fortune in the viith canto of the Inferno,—lines worthy of a great mystic poet. After referring to the vain complaints and maledictions of men against this Power, he beautifully concludes:
Ma ella s'è beata e ciò non ode:
Con l'altre prime creature lieta
Volve sua spera, e beata si gode.
J.B. Rousseau was born in 1669, began his career at the close of the age of Louis Quatorze, died at Brussels, March 17, 1741. He had been banished from France, by an intrigue, on a false charge, as now seems clear, of having composed and distributed defamatory verses, in 1712; and it was engraved upon his tomb that he was 'thirty years an object of envy and thirty of compassion.' Belonging to the classical school of the 17th century, of which he was the last survivor, he came somewhat into conflict with the spirit of the 18th, which was preparing a new vintage, and would have none but new wine in new bottles. Rousseau, however, was a very finished writer in his way, and has been compared to Pindar, Horace, Anacreon and Malherbe. His ode to M. le Comte du Luc is as fine an example as I know of the modern classical style. This is quite different from that which is exemplified in Wordsworth's Laodamia and Serjeant Talfourd's Ion; for in them the subjects only are ancient, while both the form and spirit are modern; whereas in the odes of Rousseau a modern subject is treated, as far as difference of times and language will allow, in the manner and tone of the Ancients. Samson Agonistes and Goethe's Iphigenia in Tauris are conformed to ancient modes of thought, but in them the subject also is taken from antiquity. Rousseau's works consist of Odes, Epistles in verse, Cantatas, Epigrams, &c. &c. He wrote for the stage at the beginning of his literary life, but with no great success. S.C.)
[231] Voss, who lived from Feb. 20, 1751, to March, 1826, was author of the Luise, 'a rural epopaea of simple structure divided into three idyls, which relate the betrothment and marriage of the heroine.' This is a pleasing and very peculiar poem, composed in hexameter verse. 'The charm of the narrative,' says Mr. T., 'consists in the minute description of the local domestic manners of the personages.' The charm consists, I think, in the blending of these manners with the beauty of Nature, and the ease and suitability of the versification. Voss's translation of the Odyssey is praised for being so perfect an imitation of the original. The Greek has been rendered, 'with a fidelity and imitative harmony so admirable, that it suggests to the scholar the original wording, and reflects, as from a mirror, every beauty and every blemish of the ancient poem.' Hist. Survey, pp. 61-68. S. C.
[232] Act III. Sc. 2. The night scene, which is the 5th of Act iv, is fine too in a frantic way. The songs it contains are very spirited. That sung by the Robbers is worthy of a Thug; it goes beyond our notions of any European bandit, and transports us to the land of Jaggernat. S. C.
[233] The works of Bürger, who was born on the first day of 1748, died June 8, 1794, consist of Poems (2 vols.), Macbeth altered from Shakespeare, (pronounced by Taylor,—no good judge of Shakespeare,—in some respects superiour to the original,) Muuchaüsen's Travels; Translations; (of the six first books of the Iliad, and some others); Papers philological and political. His fame rests chiefly on three ballads, The Wild Hunter, The Parson's Daughter, and Lenore. The powerful diction and admirable harmony,—rhythm, sound, rhyme of these compositions Mr. Taylor describes as the result of laborious art; it strikes me, from the outline which he has given of Bürger's history, that the violent feelings, the life-like expression of which constitutes their power and value, may have been partly the reflex of the poet's own mind. His seems to have been a life of mismanagement from youth till middle age. Like Milton, he lost a beloved second wife by childbed in the first year of marriage: like him, he married a third time, but without his special necessity—blindness and unkind daughters. He wedded a lady who had fallen in love with his poetry, or perhaps his poetical reputation: an union founded, as it appears, in vanity, ended in vexation of spirit: and as Death, which had deprived him of two wives, did not release him from a third, he obtained his freedom, at the end of little more than three years, from a court of justice. Why did Klopstock undervalue, by preference of such a poet, the lofty-minded Schiller—the dearest to England of all German bards; perhaps because the author of Wallenstein was a philosopher, and had many things in his philosophy which the author of The Messiah could not find in his heaven and earth. S.C.
[234] Oberon, Canto viii. stanzas 69-80. The little touch about the new born babe's returning its mother's kiss is very romantic: though put modestly in the form of a query:
—Und scheint nicht jeden Kuss
Sein kleiner mund dem ihren zu entsaugen?
The word entsaugen (suck off) is expressive—it very naturally characterises the kiss of an infant five minutes of age. Wieland had great nursery experience. 'My sweetest hours,' says he, in a letter quoted in the Survey,' are those in which I see about me, in all their glee of childhood, my whole posse of little half-way things between apes and angels.'
Mr. Sotheby's translation of the Oberon made the poem popular in this country. The original first appeared in 1780. S. C.
[235] These disenchanters put one in mind of the ratcatchers, who are said and supposed to rid houses of rats, and yet the rats, somehow or other, continue to swarm. The Kantean rats were not aware, I believe, when Klopstock spoke thus, of the extermination that had befallen them: and even to this day those acute animals infest the old house, and steal away the daily bread of the children,—if the old notions of Space and Time, and the old proofs of religious verities by way of the understanding and speculative reason, must be called such. Whether or no these are their true spiritual sustenance, or the necessary guard and vehicle of it, is perhaps a question.
But who were Nicolai and Engel, and what did they against the famous enchanter? The former was born in 1733, at Berlin, where he carried on his father's business of book-selling, pursued literature with marked success, and attained to old age, full of literary honours. By means of three critical journals (the Literatur-Briefe, the Bibliothek der Schönen Wissenschaftern, and the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek,) which he conducted with the powerful cooperation of Lessing, and of his intimate friend Mendelssohn, and to which he contributed largely himself, he became very considerable in the German world of letters, and so continued for the space of twenty years. Jördens, in his Lexicon, speaks highly of the effect of Nicolai's writings in promoting freedom of thought, enlightened views in theology and philosophy, and a sound taste in fine literature—describes him as a brave battler with intolerance, hypocrisy, and confused conceptions in religion; with empty subtleties, obscurities, and terminologies, that can but issue in vain fantasies, in his controversial writings on the 'so-named critical philosophy.' He engaged with the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, on its appearance in 1781, in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek; first explained his objections to it in the 11th vol. of his Reisebeschreibung, (Description of a Journey through Germany and Switzerland in the year 1781,) and afterwards, in his romance entitled The Life and Opinions of Sempronius Gundibert, a German Philosopher, sought to set forth the childish crotchets and abuses imputable to many disciples of this philosophy in their native absurdity. The ratsbone alluded to by Klopstock, was doubtless contained in the above-named romance, which the old poet probably esteemed more than Nicolai's more serious polemics.
Gundibert has had its day, but in a fiction destined to a day of longer duration,—Goethe's Faust,—the Satirist is himself most effectively satirised. There he is, in that strange yet beautiful temple, pinned to the wall in a ridiculous attitude, to be laughed at as long as the temple itself is visited and admired. This doom came upon him, not so much for his campaign against the Kanteans, as for his Joys of Werter,—because he had dared to ridicule a book, which certainly offered no small temptations to the parodist. Indeed he seems to have been engaged in a series of hostilities with Fichte, Lavater, Wieland, Herder, and Goethe.
(See Mr. Hayward's excellent translation of Faust, of which I have heard a literary German say that it gave a better notion of the original than any other which he had seen.)
In the Walpurgisnacht of the Faust he thus addresses the goblin dancers:—
Ihr seyd noch immer da! Nein das ist unerhört!
Verschwindet doch! Wir haben ja aufgeklärt!
'Fly!
Vanish! Unheard of impudence! What, still there!
In this enlightened age too, when you have been
Proved not to exist?'—Shelley's Translation.
Do we not see the doughty reviewer before us magisterially waving his hand and commanding the apparitions to vanish?—then with despondent astonishment exclaiming:
Das Teufelspack es fragt nach keiner Regel.
Wir sind so klug und dennoch spukt's in Tegel.
So wise we are! yet what fantastic fooleries still stream forth from my contemporary's brains; how are we still haunted! The speech of Faust concerning him is mis-translated by Shelley, who understood the humour of the piece, as well as the poetry, but not the particular humours of it. Nothing can be more expressive of a conceited, narrow-minded reviewer. 'Oh he!—he is absolutely everywhere,—What others dance, he must decide upon. If he can't chatter about every step, 'tis as good as not made at all. Nothing provokes him so much as when we go forward. If you'd turn round and round in a circle, as he does in his old mill, he'd approve of that perhaps; especially if you'd consult him about it.'
'A man of such spirited habitudes,' says Mr. Carlyle, after affirming that Nicolai wrote against Kant's philosophy without comprehending it, and judged of poetry, as of Brunswick Mum, by its utility, 'is now by the Germans called a Philister. Nicolai earned for himself the painful pre-eminence of being Erz Philister, Arch Philistine.' 'He, an old enemy of Goethe's,' says Mr. Hill, in explanation of the title in which he appears in the Walpurgisnacht, 'had published an account of his phantasmal illusions, pointing them against Fichte's system of idealism, which he evidently confounded with what Coleridge would have called Subjective Idolism.'
Such was this wondrous disenchanter in the eyes of later critics than Klopstock: a man strong enough to maintain a long fight against genius, not wise enough to believe in it and befriend it. How many a controversialist seems a mighty giant to those who are predisposed to his opinions, while, in the eyes of others, he is but a blind floundering Polyphemus, who knows not how to direct his heavy blows; if not a menacing scarecrow, with a stake in his hand, which he has no power to drive home! I remember reading a thin volume in which all metaphysicians that had ever left their thoughts behind them were declared utterly in the wrong—all up to, but not including, the valiant author himself. The world had lain in darkness till he appeared, like a new Phoebus, on the scene. This great man despatched Kant's system—(never having read a syllable of any work of Kant's)—in a page and a quarter! and the exploit had its celebraters and admirers. Yet strange to say, the metaphysical world went on just as if nothing had happened!—after the sun was up, it went groping about, as if it had never been enlightened, and actually ever since has continued to talk as if Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and other metaphysicians understood the nature of the things they wrote about rather more than the mass of mankind, instead of less! Verschwindet doch! might this author say, as Nicolai said to the spectres of the Brocken and the phantoms of literature,
Verschwindet doch! Wir haben ja aufgeklärt.
Engel opposed Kant in philosophical treatises, one of which is entitled Zwei Gerpräche den Werth der Kritik betreffend. He too occupied a considerable space in Literature—his works fill twelve volumes, besides a few other pieces. 'To him,' says Jördens, 'the criticism of taste and of art, speculative, practical, and popular philosophy, owe many of their later advances in Germany.' Jördens pronounces his romance, entitled Lorenz Stark, a masterpiece in its way, and says of his plays, that they deserve a place beside the best of Lessing's. He was the author of a miscellaneous work, entitled The Philosopher for the World, and is praised by Cousin as a meritorious anthropologist. Engel was born September 11, 1741, at Parchim, of which his father was pastor, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin; died June 28, 1802. Neither Nicolai nor Engel is noticed by Cousin among the adversaries of Kant's doctrine: the intelligent adversaries,—who assailed it with skill and knowledge, rather proved its strength than discovered its weakness. Fortius acri ridiculum; but this applies only to transient triumphs, where the object of attack, though it furnishes occasion for ridicule, affords no just cause for it. S.C.
[236] I remember well, asking him if we were not trespassing on private pleasure-grounds here. He said, no; the walks had, indeed, been inclosed, but he remembered them open to the public, and he always went through them when he chose. At Lowther, we found among the visitors, the late Lord W——; and describing our walk, he made the same observation, that we had been trespassing; but Wordsworth maintained his point with somewhat more warmth than I either liked, or could well account for. But afterwards, when we were alone, he told me he had purposely answered Lord W—— stoutly and warmly, because he had done a similar thing with regard to some grounds in the neighbourhood of Penrith, and excluded the people of Penrith from walking where they had always enjoyed the right before. He had evidently a pleasure in vindicating these rights, and seemed to think it a duty. J.T.C.
[237] See Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 147-8.
[238] You could not walk with him a mile without seeing what a loving interest he took in the play and working of simple natures. As you ascend Kirkstone from Paterdale, you have a bright stream leaping down from rock to rock, on your right, with here and there silent pools. One of Wordsworth's poor neighbours worked all the week over Kirkstone, I think in some mines; and returning on Saturday evenings, used to fish up this little stream. We met him with a string of small trout. W. offered to buy them, and bid him take them to the Mount. 'Nay,' said the man, 'I cannot sell them, Sir; the little children at home look for them for supper, and I can't disappoint them.' It was quite pleasant to see how the man's answer delighted the Poet. J.T.C.
[239] This old road was very steep, after the fashion of former days, crossing the hill straight over its highest point. A new cut had been made, somewhat diminishing the steepness, but still leaving it a very inconvenient and difficult ascent. At length another alteration was made, and the road was carried on a level round the foot of the hill. My friend Arnold pointed these out to me, and, quizzing my politics, said, the first denoted the old Tory corruption, the second bit by bit, the third Radical Reform. J.T.C.
[240] See Poems on the naming of Places.
[241] Poems founded on the Affections.
[242] I cannot fill the blank. J.T.C.
[243] I used the word trudging at the time; it denoted to me his bold way of walking. J.T.C.
[244] Memoirs, ii. 300-15.
[245] See Memoirs, ii. 246.
[246] Ibid. ii. 329-32.
[247] The close of Lady Richardson's 'Reminiscences' here in the Memoirs is not given, as being more fully introduced under December 1841, p. 438. The repetition of the same sentiments in 1843, however, is noticeable. For a vivid and sweetly toned paper on Wordsworth by Lady Richardson—based on the Memoirs—see Sharpe's London Magazine for March 1853, pp. 148-55. G.
[248] But see Memorials of Italy, 'Sonnets on Roman Historians.'
[249] Mrs. Fletcher.
[250] See the Sonnet and Letters on the Furness Railway (vol. ii. p. 321). G.
[251] On another occasion, I believe, he intimated a desire that his works in Prose should be edited by his son-in-law, Mr. Quillinan. (Memoirs, ii. 466.)
[252] Memoirs, ii. 437-66.
[253] Iliad, i. 260.
[254] Ibid. iii. 156.
[255] Aen. viii. 352.
[256] Ibid. iv. 455.
[257] If I remember right, it is in the third line,
'Ludisque dicatae, jocisque;'
a strange blunder, for Buchanan must have read Horace's,
'Quid dedicatum poscit Apolliuem,'
a hundred times.
[258] This paragraph was communicated by Mr. H.C. Robinson.
[259] Page 174 (vol. i.), where Milton speaks of the evils suffered by a nation,' unless men more than vulgar, bred up in the knowledge of ancient and illustrious deeds, conduct its affairs.'
[260] Paradise Regained, iv. 431.
[261] 1. 37:
'The pilgrim oft,
At dead of night, 'mid his oraison, hears
Aghast the voice of TIME, disparting towers,' &c.
[262] Thomson's 'Summer,' 980:
'In Cairo's crowded streets,
The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,
And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'
[263] See vol. i. pp. 340-8. G.
[264] Memoirs, ii. pp. 467-80.
[265] Memoirs, ii. 467-83.
[266] Dr. Whewell. G.
[267] Extract of a letter to a friend, by Rev. R.P. Graves, M.A., formerly of Windermere, now of Dublin: Memoirs, pp. 288-90.
[268] Memoirs, ii. 483-500.
[269] Afterwards Father Faber of the Oratory. His 'Sir Launcelot' abounds in admirable descriptions.
[270] 'For us the stream of fiction ceased to flow' (Dedicatory Stanzas to 'The White Doe of Rylstone').
[271] See his Sonnet on the seat of Dante, close to the Duomo at Florence (Poems of Early and Late Years).
[272] 'Evening Voluntary.'
[273] A Song of Faith, Devout Exercises, and Sonnets (Pickering). The Dedication closed thus: 'I may at least hope to be named hereafter among the friends of Wordsworth.'
[274] See our Index, under Shelley, G.
[275] 'Diary of Sir Walter Scott,' Life, by Lockhart, as before, vol. ix. pp. 62-3.
[276] The Greville Memoirs. A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV. and King William IV. By the late Charles C.F. Greville, Esq., Clerk of the Council to those Sovereigns. Edited by Henry Reeve, Registrar of the Privy Council. 3 vols. 8vo, fourth edition, 1875. Vol. ii. p. 120.
[277] This first mention of Alfoxden in the 'Notes and Illustrations of the Poems' leads the Editor to record here the title-page of a truly delightful privately-printed volume, by the Rev. W.L. Nichols, M.A., Woodlands: The Quantocks and their Associations (1873), 41 pp. and Appendix, xxxii, pp. A photograph of 'Wordsworth's glen, Alfoxden' (p. 6) is exquisite. G.