We are all familiar with the feelings that might lead to the attempt. Many of us, gazing on the boundless blue ocean, sparkling in the sunlight, have felt that to have this sight before our eyes every day would widen the soul and cleanse it of all its little meannesses; and we have turned away unwillingly and with the conscious desire to preserve the impression so as to be able to renew its effect. Or with beautiful landscapes before our eyes, especially those which we have seen in the course of travel, with the certainty of not being able to enjoy their beauty soon again, we have tried to be as passive as possible, so as to allow the picture to impress itself firmly on our memory. And we have often instinctively recalled the beautiful scene to mind; for the soul involuntarily calls up bright memories to draw strength and courage from them. But in us such impressions have been almost effaced by stronger ones. We have not been able to preserve them efficaciously for the future, or to ruminate over them again and again. The preoccupations of society and of our own passions have made it impossible for us to find our deepest and most inspiring joy in memories of sunlight falling upon flowers, or of entwisted giant trees. But the soul of the English poet, whose mission it was to re-awaken the feeling for all these elementary moods and impressions, was of a different stamp; unagitated by any practical activity, it vegetated in these day-dreams of natural beauty. And it is undeniable that this constant occupation of himself with the simplest natural impressions, kept his soul pure and free to perceive and to feel beauty in its simple, earthly manifestations, without fancifulness and without excitement.
How rare is this capacity! how often wanting in the very greatest and best minds! And how quickly was it lost again in English poetry! It displays itself most exquisitely and completely in the few lightly-sketched female figures of the short poems. The heroes and heroines of the narrative poems, some of them portrayed with the design of arousing sympathy with the rural population and the lowest classes, others with the intention of edifying, are of distinctly inferior quality. But these few delicately-drawn figures, seen with the same tranquil and yet loving eyes with which Wordsworth looked at trees and birds, are nature itself. They are the English feminine nature; and never have the essential qualities of this nature been more exactly expressed. Take as an example of what I mean, the following little poem:—
"She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight's too, her dusky hair:
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet a woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light."
This is a genuine, faithful portrait of the pattern English woman; and to compare this sober, truthful description with the ideal women whom the greatest English poets a few years later found satisfaction in depicting, is to prepare an easy victory for Wordsworth. Take Shelley's description, in The Sensitive Plant, of the ethereal protectress of flowers and insects. The picture of the fairy-like beauty is charming, as everything is that comes from Shelley's pen; her tenderness for the plants and her touching compassion for all the small, ugly, despised animals, "the poor banished insects, whose intent, although they did ill, was innocent," are genuine human traits; and yet she is not a real human being, any more than the Witch of Atlas is, or the dim heroine of Epipsychidion. Shelley, like the lark he sang of, was a "scorner of the ground." Or take the passionate Oriental heroines of Byron's earliest poetic narratives—Medora, Gulnare, Kaled. They never attain to the beautiful simplicity of this woman described by Wordsworth. Their passionateness is the principal quality impressed upon us; their love, their devotion, their determination know no bounds. They are heroines invented for readers in whom the numbing life of crowded London and the constant occupation with contemporary great historical events, have induced a kind of nervous craving for the strongest intellectual stimulants. But from the very beginning Wordsworth regarded it as a pleasant and profitable task to show how profoundly men's minds may be moved without the employment of coarse or violent stimulants. He knew that those who were accustomed to striking effects would be unlikely at first to appreciate works the distinguishing feature of which was their soft and natural colouring; but he resolved that he would turn the reader's expectations in the matter of the agencies of a poem back into the natural track.
[1] See Thomas Moore: Memoirs, iii. 161.
[VI]
RURAL LIFE AND ITS POETRY
It is impossible thoroughly to understand Wordsworth's poetic strength and limitations without a glance at his life. We discover it to have been an unusually idyllic and comfortable one. Belonging to the well-to-do middle class (his father was an attorney), he studied at Cambridge and then travelled. In 1795, not long after his return from abroad, he received a legacy of £900 from an admirer of his genius, which, added to his share of a debt of £8500 due to his father by an English nobleman, and paid to the family about this time, placed him in a position to live without taking up any profession. In 1802 he married; in 1813 he settled at Rydal Mount in the Lake district. He held the appointment of Distributor of Stamps, which was practically a sinecure, from 1813 to 1842, when he resigned in favour of one of his sons. The salary of this appointment was £500. In 1843 he succeeded Southey as Poet Laureate, and as such enjoyed a pension of £300 a year till his death, which occurred in 1850, when he had just completed his eightieth year. Sheltered on every side from the outward vicissitudes of life, he regarded them from a Protestant-philosophical point of view.