It is to just one small part of Wordsworth's poetic practice that I wish to draw your attention. I mean certain studiously simple and realistic poems written in deliberate illustration of his theories. The first of them were published in the famous Lyrical Ballads of 1798, a work which burst like a bombshell upon an astonished literary world, and aroused more scorn, indignation, and controversy than perhaps any other volume of poetry ever published.
The Lyrical Ballads was in the nature of a challenge. It contained an announcement of Wordsworth's new theories, together with illustrations of them by himself and Coleridge. Many of the poems were admirable, but in many others Wordsworth is at his worst.
A generation brought up in the principles of Pope and nourished on such verse as The Pleasures of Hope could not away with poems like The Idiot Boy, or Alice Fell, or even We Are Seven.
There is no doubt that Wordsworth went much too far in his zeal for the new theories, and was unfortunately without a sense of humour which might have saved him from absurdities. As an illustration of Wordsworth at his worst, let us take The Idiot Boy, one of the poems in the Lyrical Ballads. The very outline of the plot would make the ghost of Pope rise in indignation from the grave. Old Susan Gale, a peasant woman, is very ill. Her neighbour, Betty Foy, comes to attend on her, accompanied by her only son, Johnny, an idiot. Susan gets worse, and the doctor must be sent for. Betty dare not leave her, and so the only alternative is to send the idiot boy to fetch him. I need not complete the story, but will quote a few stanzas from the poem:
But when the pony moved his legs,
Oh! then for the poor idiot boy!
For joy he cannot hold the bridle,
For joy his head and heels are idle,
He's idle all for very joy.
And Susan's growing worse and worse,
And Betty's in a sad quandary;
And then there's nobody to say
If she must go, or she must stay!
She's in a sad quandary.
"Oh Doctor! Doctor! where's my Johnny?"
"I'm here, what is't you want with me?"
"Oh sir! you know I'm Betty Foy
And I have lost my poor dear boy
You know him—him you often see;
"He's not so wise as some folks be."
"The Devil take his wisdom!" said
The Doctor looking somewhat grim,
"What, woman, should I know of him?"
And grumbling, he went back to bed.
This from a poet who could write The Solitary Reaper or Milton, thou should'st be living at this hour, or such magnificent philosophical poetry as we find in The Prelude, Tintern Abbey, and The Excursion, where Wordsworth treats of
the mind of man,
The haunt and the main region of my song;