or speak of
A pupil in the many-chambered school,
Where superstition weaves her airy dreams.
The Excursion, although long, is unfinished, and is only a portion of what was meant to be his great poem—The Recluse. It contains poetry of the highest order, apart from its mannerism and its improbable narrative; but the author is to all intents a different man from that of the Ballads: as different as the conservative Wordsworth of later years was from the radical youth who praised the French Revolution of 1791. As a whole, The Excursion is accurate, philosophic, and very dull, so that few readers have the patience to complete its perusal, while many enjoy its beautiful passages.
To return to the events of his life. In 1802 he married; and, after several changes of residence, he finally purchased a place called Rydal-mount in 1813, where he spent the remainder of his long, learned, and pure life. Long-standing dues from the Earl of Lonsdale to his father were paid; and he received the appointment of collector at Whitehaven and stamp distributor for Cumberland. Thus he had an ample income, which was increased in 1842 by a pension of £300 per annum. In 1843 he was made poet-laureate. He died in 1850, a famous poet, his reputation being due much more to his own clever individuality than to the poetic principles he asserted.
His ecclesiastical sonnets compare favorably with any that have been written in English. Landor, no friend of the poet, says: "Wordsworth has written more fine sonnets than are to be met with in the language besides."
An Estimate.—The great amount of verse Wordsworth has written is due to his estimate of the proper uses of poetry. Where other men would have written letters, journals, or prose sketches, his ready metrical pen wrote in verse: an excursion to England or Scotland, Yarrow Visited and Revisited, journeys in Germany and Italy, are all in verse. He exhibits in them all great humanity and benevolence, and is emphatically and without cant the poet of religion and morality. Coleridge—a poet and an attached friend, perhaps a partisan—claims for him, in his Biographia Literaria, "purity of language, freshness, strength, curiosa felicitas of diction, truth to nature in his imagery, imagination in the highest degree, but faulty fancy." We have already ventured to deny him the possession of imagination: the rest of his friend's eulogium is not undeserved. He had and has many ardent admirers, but none more ardent than himself. He constantly praised his own verses, and declared that they would ultimately conquer all prejudices and become universally popular—an opinion that the literary world does not seem disposed to adopt.
Robert Southey.—Next to Wordsworth, and, with certain characteristic differences, of the same school, but far beneath him in poetical power, is Robert Southey, who was born at Bristol, August 12, 1774. He was the son of a linen-draper in that town. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1792, but left without taking his degree. In 1794 he published a radical poem on the subject of Wat Tyler, the sentiments of which he was afterwards very willing to repudiate. With the enthusiastic instinct of a poet, he joined with Wordsworth and Coleridge in a scheme called Pantisocrasy; that is, they were to go together to the banks of the Susquehanna, in a new country of which they knew nothing except by description; and there they were to realize a dream of nature in the golden age—a Platonic republic, where everything was to be in common, and from which vice and selfishness were to be forever excluded. But these young neo-platonists had no money, and so the scheme was given up.
In 1795 he married Miss Fricker, a milliner of Bristol, and made a voyage to Lisbon, where his uncle was chaplain to the British Factory. He led an unsettled life until 1804, when he established himself at Keswick in the Lake country, where he spent his life. He was a literary man and nothing else, and perhaps one of the most industrious writers that ever held a literary pen. Much of the time, indeed, he wrote for magazines and reviews, upon whatever subject was suggested to him, to win his daily bread.
His Writings.—After the publication of Wat Tyler he wrote an epic poem called Joan of Arc, in 1796, which was crude and severely criticized. After some other unimportant essays, he inaugurated his purpose of illustrating the various oriental mythologies, by the publication of Thalaba the Destroyer, which was received with great disfavor at the time, and which first coupled his name with that of Wordsworth as of the school of Lake poets. It is in irregular metre, which at first has the charm of variety, but which afterwards loses its effect, on account of its broken, disjointed versification. In 1805 appeared Madoc—a poem based upon the subject of early Welsh discoveries in America. It is a long poem in two parts: the one descriptive of Madoc in Wales and the other of Madoc in Aztlan. Besides many miscellaneous works in prose, we notice the issue, in 1810, of The Curse of Kehama—the second of the great mythological poems referred to.
Among his prose works must be mentioned The Chronicle of the Cid, The History of Brazil, The Life of Nelson, and The History of the Peninsular War. A little work called The Doctor has been greatly liked in America.