Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 4. Naturalism in England

by Georg Brandes

Wordsworth's point of departure is purely topographical. There is more topography, taking the word in its widest sense, in his works than even in Scott's. His life-task was to describe English nature and English natures as he saw them, face to face. He would never describe anything with which he was not perfectly familiar, and he finally evolved the theory that it was necessary for every poet to associate himself closely with some one particular spot. He associated himself with the English Lake district, which provided him with backgrounds for most of his poems. He went so far as to assert that the birthplace of the individual is the place best suited to be the scene of the activity of his whole life.

Thus it was that he became the painter specially of English nature, and that his descriptions have an essentially local interest. Ruskin was right when he called Wordsworth the great poetical landscape painter of the period. Whilst Byron time after time escaped from his own country to paint the nature of Greece and the East in glowing foreign colours; whilst Shelley shrank from the climate of England as death to a man of his delicate constitution, and never wearied of extolling the coast and rivers of Italy; whilst Scott sang the praises of Scotland, and Moore tirelessly proclaimed the beauty of green Erin, Wordsworth stood alone as the pure-bred Englishman, deep-rooted in his native soil as some old spreading oak. His ambition was to be a true English descriptive poet. He had the most intimate, circumstantial acquaintance with the life of the lower classes, and the rural life generally, of the district in which he had his home, walked, sailed, went to church, and received visits from his admirers. He has the same eye for it as a worthy and benevolent parish priest of the type he describes in The Excursion. To his special province belong all the events and calamities of common occurrence in an English country parish—the return of a totally forgotten son of the place, to find his home gone and the names of those dear to him carved on gravestones (The Brothers); the fate of a deceived and deserted girl (Ruth); an idiot boy's night ride for the doctor, with its mischances (The Idiot Boy); the strange adventure of a blind Highland boy, with its fortunate ending (The Blind Highland Boy); the sorrow caused to an excellent father by the degeneracy of his son (Michael); the unfortunate carouse of a carrier beloved by the whole district, and his consequent dismissal from his post (described in four cantos under the title The Waggoner).

The only thing un-English about the manner in which these events, even the more cheerful and amusing ones, are communicated to us, is the complete absence of humour. In the place of humour Wordsworth has, as Masson aptly puts it, "a hard, benevolent smile." But the pathos with which he relates the tragic or serious among these simple local stories is pure and heartfelt. It has neither the Pythian tremor nor modern fervour, but its effect is all the more powerful in the case of the great majority of readers, who prefer that the poet should not rise too high above their level, and are conscious of the helpful, healing quality in the compassion which is the source of the pathos—a compassion which resembles that of the clergyman or the doctor, and which, though less spontaneous than professional, moves us by the perfection of its expression.

Nowhere more beautiful is this expression than in such poems as Simon Lee and The Old Cumberland Beggar. The former tells of an old huntsman who in his youth had surpassed all others in his skill with hounds and horn, his fleetness on foot and on horseback, but who has become so feeble that when the poet meets him one day he is struggling in vain to unearth the rotten root of an old tree.

"You're overtasked, good Simon Lee,
Give me your tool," to him I said;
And at the word right gladly he
Received my proffered aid.
I struck, and with a single blow
The tangled root I severed,
At which the poor old man so long
And vainly had endeavoured.
The tears into his eyes were brought,
And thanks and praises seemed to run
So fast out of his heart, I thought
They never would have done.
I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning."

Few poets have shown such beautiful reverence as Wordsworth for those humble ancients of the human race who, from no fault of their own, are helpless and useless. Of this The Old Cumberland Beggar is the best example. The poet tells how this man, whom every one knows, goes round the neighbourhood calling at every house.

"Him from my childhood have I known; and then
He was so old, he seems not older now:
He travels on, a solitary man,
So helpless in appearance, that for him
The sauntering horseman-traveller does not throw
With careless hand his alms upon the ground,
But stops,—that he may safely lodge the coin
Within the old man's hat; nor quits him so,
But still, when he has given his horse the rein,
Watches the aged beggar with a look
Sidelong—and half-reverted. She who tends
The toll-gate, when in summer at her door
She turns her wheel, if on the road she sees
The aged beggar coming, quits her work,
And lifts the latch for him that he may pass.
The post-boy, when his rattling wheels o'ertake
The aged beggar in the woody lane,
Shouts to him from behind; and, if thus warned
The old man does not change his course, the boy
Turns with less noisy wheels to the road-side,
And passes gently by—without a curse
Upon his lips or anger in his heart.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
But deem not this man useless.—Statesmen! Ye
Who are so restless in your wisdom, ye
Who have a broom still ready in your hands
To rid the world of nuisances; ye proud,
Heart-swoln, while in your pride ye contemplate
Your talents, power, and wisdom, deem him not
A burthen of the earth! Tis nature's law
That none, the meanest of created things,
Of forms created the most vile and brute,
The dullest or most noxious, should exist
Divorced from good—a spirit and pulse of good,
A life and soul; to every mode of being
Inseparably linked.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Where'er the aged beggar takes his rounds,
The mild necessity of use compels
To acts of love; and habit does the work
Of reason; yet prepares that after-joy
Which reason cherishes. And thus the soul,
By that sweet taste of pleasure unpursued,
Doth find itself insensibly disposed
To virtue and true goodness. . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . The easy man
Who sits at his own door,—and, like the pear
That overhangs his head from the green wall,
Feeds in the sunshine; the robust and young,
The prosperous and unthinking, they who live
Sheltered, and flourish in a little grove
Of their own kindred;—all behold in him
A silent monitor, which on their minds
Must needs impress a transitory thought
Of self-congratulation."

Though it must be confessed that this is a sermon, it is a sermon in the very best style. In that same Naturalism which in due time consistently developed into pure humanism and revolt against convention, there was at first an inclination to admonition and to evangelic piety. It sought out the simple-hearted, the poor, the mean in the eyes of the world—for this was Gospel morality. It rejected the highly cultured, and chose as its heroes fishermen and peasants—in this also following Gospel example. Hence it is that we have in Wordsworth perfectly consistent worship of nature along with the exhortatory and evangelically homiletic element which finds such favour in England. And even his purely didactic poems are not to be indiscriminately rejected. There is often a peculiar grandeur in the manner in which the simple lesson is enforced. There is, for instance, real sublimity in the passage in Laodamia in which it is impressed upon the sorrowing wife that, instead of craving for the return of her husband, she ought to renounce her desire, and purify herself through her love to enjoy another, nobler, more spiritual life:—

"Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend
Towards a higher object.—Love was given,
Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end:
For this the passion to excess was driven—
That self might be annulled."

Even the abstract Ode to Duty, which is inspired by an enthusiasm of the nature of Kant's, contains a couple of magnificent lines which are as contrary to reason as one of the sublime paradoxes of the Fathers of the Church. It is to Duty that the poet cries: