he conjures up a vision of scholastic life—a vision of the future—which however, he says, “fell to ruin round him,” and was all in vain.
Notwithstanding the confusion of his outer circumstances, and the general aimless tenor of his life, Wordsworth did not entirely neglect his own culture—and in the silence of the academic groves, by the sweetly remembered Cam, or in his own rooms in the Gothic court of St. John’s, he brooded over the problems of life, death, and immortality. The ghosts of the mighty dead haunted him likewise, as he walked through the familiar places, where they were wont to walk whilst dwelling in their earthly tenements, and roused him, at times, to commence anew the race of learning and distinction.
“I could not always pass
Thro’ the same gateways, sleep where they had slept,
Wake where they waked, range that enclosure old,
That garden of great intellects, undisturbed.”
And yet, with the exception of “Lines written whilst sailing up the Cam,” Wordsworth does not seem to have composed a line at Cambridge. He was learning, however, the first lessons of worldly wisdom all this time; was initiated into the ways of life, and the characters of men; and such discipline could not have been spared the poet, without loss to him. He does not regret, he says, any experience in his college life, and thinks the gowned youth who only misses what he missed, and fell no lower than he fell, is not a very hopeless character.
SUMMER HOLIDAYS.
At length the long vacation, which the good Alma Mater allows for the refreshment of the minds and bodies of her dear children, came to set Wordsworth at liberty; and, in the summer of 1788, he revisited his native scenes at Esthwaite. The old cramp of University life, with its dissipations, and frivolous pleasures, fell from him like an evil enchantment, the first moment when he beheld the bed of Windermere,
“Like a vast river stretching in the sun.
With exultation at my feet I saw
Lake, islands, promontories, gleaming bays,
A universe of Nature’s finest forms,
Proudly revealed with instantaneous burst,
Magnificent, and beautiful, and gay.
I bounded down the hill, shouting amain
For the old ferryman; to the shout the rocks
Replied; and when the Charon of the flood
Had stay’d his oars, and touched the jutting pier,
I did not step into the well-known boat
Without a cordial greeting.”
There is something very delightful and refreshing in this burst of enthusiasm, and it shews clearly enough, which was the University Wordsworth loved best. At Cambridge he was a prisoner, with his dark heart yearning for the sunshine of his native hills; but here he was free, his heart no longer dark nor sad, but flooding with light and joy, and exulting in the delicious beauty of Nature.
And what strikes me as very touching and beautiful in the poet’s relation of this visit to his birthplace, is the fact that he did not forget his old dame,—although certain critics have of late declared that he had no heart,—but that on the contrary he went straight to her cottage, and so closed his journey from Cambridge. Hear how he speaks of her and her reception of him:
“Glad welcome had I, with some tears, perhaps,
From my old dame, so kind and motherly,
While she perused me with a parent’s pride.
The thoughts of gratitude shall fall like dew
Upon thy grave, good creature! While my heart
Can beat, never will I forget thy name.
Heaven’s blessings be upon thee where thou liest
After thy innocent and busy stir
In narrow cares, thy little daily growth
Of calm enjoyment, after eighty years,
And more than eighty of untroubled life,
Childless; yet, by the strangers to thy blood
Honoured with little less than filial love.”