The Bridling of Pegasus: Prose Papers on Poetry

by Alfred Austin

Of course, this is poetry, and very good poetry; and it is, justly, one of the favourite passages of ardent admirers of Wordsworth. But we can scarcely refrain from saying that, good as it is, there exists something of precisely the same kind, and, as it happens, in precisely the same metre, which is considerably better. Surely, no one will have any difficulty in naming it. It is Gray’s famous Elegy. Yet we remember how indignant the “Wordsworthians against whom we ought to be on our guard” were with the Quarterly Review, because there appeared in it a paper in which Wordsworth and Gray were compared. To mention them in the same breath was sacrilege! We do not wish to affirm that the disinterested lover of poetry believes Gray ever to have scaled the heights where Wordsworth’s wing sometimes floats almost without effort. But it cannot be uninteresting to mark that, in what we may call the middle notes, Wordsworth is distinctly inferior to Gray, though ever and anon his voice gets entirely beyond Gray’s compass.

It would be impossible, with any regard for space, to quote from, or even to name, every poem reproduced by Mr. Arnold, which in our opinion would have been better suppressed. But if we seem to have established our contention so far, we think the reader may rely upon it that he would more or less concur in what else might be said on this score. The Force of Prayer, The Affliction of Margaret, The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman, are little if any less trivial than the poems already condemned; while in The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, we read six pages equally poor and unpoetical, suddenly to come upon such a quatrain as the following:

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

The last two lines it would be impossible to praise too highly. Only the silence of profound reverence can do them justice. They are touches like these, touches like “the harvest of a quiet eye,” that give to Wordsworth his holy predominance, and whatever predominance, after fair examination, must be adjudged him. But how few they are! Perhaps it is in the nature of things that they should be so. But being so few and far between, they cannot fill up the blank that intervenes. They are indeed “Angels’ visits.” But even poetry has to do mainly with human guests, and a poet must be judged, as Mr. Arnold truly affirms, by “the ample body of powerful work” he leaves behind. We cannot assume that much of Wordsworth’s poetry is not unutterably bad, because some of it is unutterably beautiful. The utmost we can do is to grant, concerning him, what he himself said so finely of a young girl:

If thou appear’st untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year,
And worshipp’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.

It is possible that like the “dear child, dear girl,” he lay in Abraham’s bosom “all the year,” but he communicates the fact, he impresses us with the fact, but seldom. As a rule, he seems to be outside the Temple altogether. Hence these magnificent bursts of poetical depth and sublimity, which, be it said, are peculiar to Wordsworth, are mere short passages, and there are not many of them. But if they suffice, after a complete survey of the works of both poets, to place Wordsworth above Byron, we shall be obliged to conclude that they suffice to place him above every poet that ever lived. That such a theory of poetry, such a canon of criticism is untenable, unless we are to cast every hitherto accepted theory of poetry and every former canon of criticism to the winds, we trust, in due course, to be able to establish.

We are aware that The Brothers is a favourite composition with thoroughgoing Wordsworthians. But as we have been told to be on our guard against them, we need not hesitate to say that it seems to us to consist of very ordinary verse, and the piece itself to be devoid of any real poetical temperament, though it fills sixteen pages in Mr. Arnold’s collection. Sixteen more are occupied by Margaret, upon which we are unable to pronounce a different or a modified verdict. Both abound in such passages as the following:

He left his house: two wretched days had past,
And on the third, as wistfully she raised
Her head from off her pillow, to look forth,
Like one in trouble, for returning light,
Within her chamber-casement she espied
A folded paper, lying as if placed
To meet her waking eyes. This tremblingly
She opened—found no writing, but beheld
Pieces of money carefully enclosed,
Silver and gold. “I shuddered at the sight,”
Said Margaret, “for I knew it was his hand
Which placed it there: and ere that day was ended,
That long and anxious day! I learned from one
Sent hither by my husband to impart
The heavy news,—that he had joined a Troop
Of soldiers, going to a distant land.
He left me thus—he could not gather heart
To take a farewell of me; for he feared
That I should follow with my Babes, and sink
Beneath the misery of that wandering life.”

If this be poetry, then poetry is very easily written, and what has hitherto been supposed to be the highest, the most difficult, and the rarest, of the arts, presents no more difficulty to the person who knows how to write at all than the simplest, baldest, and most unartistic prose. What, for instance, is this?—

At length the expected letter from the kinsman came, with kind assurances that he would do his utmost for the welfare of the boy; to which requests were added that forthwith he might be sent to him. Ten times or more the letter was read over. Isabel went forth to show it to the neighbours round; nor was there at that time on English land a prouder heart than Luke’s. When Isabel had to her house returned, the old man said, “He shall depart to-morrow.” To this word the housewife answered, talking much of things which, if at such short notice he should go, would surely be forgotten. But at length she gave consent, and Michael was at ease.