That is the teaching of earlier and serener years, of the time when the poet was still quietly embayed in youth, when jealous criticism, and envy, and disappointment were still trials of the future. Youth has its own passions; but it has also its peculiar serenity; and after Wordsworth had passed through the stormy years which gave him fame, we see the maturer man recalling the teaching of his calmer self. It was in obedience to this, as I believe, that he cancelled the passages that have just been mentioned; feeling their discord with the pure song of that early time.
Let us now look at some of the passages which Wordsworth has emended, not by taking away from the words of his book, but by adding to them. As he wrote to Mr. Dyce, he diligently revised the "Excursion," in the edition of 1827, and got the sense "in several instances, ... into less room"; and minor changes are to be counted by hundreds. But he made some additions to this poem, and for significant reasons.
Readers of Christopher North's essay, in the "Recreations," on "Sacred Poetry," will remember the long indictment which he there brings against the earlier poems of Wordsworth; he complains of them as being irreligious. It is interesting to find the earthly Christopher displaying the pious zeal of an inquisitor in the matter, declaring that in all of Wordsworth's writings, up to the "Excursion," "though we have much fine poetry, and some high philosophy, it would puzzle the most ingenious to detect much, if any, Christian religion"; and lamenting its absence even in the "Excursion," in the story of "Margaret," as told in the first book. This tale Christopher North calls "perhaps the most elaborate picture he [Wordsworth] ever painted of any conflict within any one human heart;" but he adds, with how much sincerity we will not now ask, that it "is, with all its pathos, repulsive to every religious mind—that being wanting without which the entire representation is vitiated.... This utter absence of Revealed Religion ... throws over the whole poem to which the tale of Margaret belongs an unhappy suspicion of hollowness and insincerity in that poetical religion which at the best is a sorry substitute indeed for the light that is from heaven."
That Wordsworth laid to heart this criticism, will appear on comparing the original passage, as reprobated by Christopher North, with the form which the poet gave it in the latter editions. Originally the peddler, finishing the story of "Margaret," moralizes thus:
My Friend! enough to sorrow you have given; The purposes of wisdom ask no more: Be wise and cheerful, and no longer read The forms of things with an unworthy eye; She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here. I well remember that those very plumes, Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall, By mist and silent raindrops silvered o'er, As once I passed, into my heart convey'd So still an image of tranquillity, So calm and still, and look'd so beautiful Amid the uneasy thoughts which fill'd my mind, That what we feel of sorrow and despair From ruin and from change, and all the griefs The passing shows of Being leave behind, Appear'd an idle dream, that could not live Where meditation was. I turn'd away, And walk'd along my road in happiness.
"What meditation?" cries out Christopher North. "Turn thou, O child of a day, to the New Testament, and therein thou mayest find comfort." And Wordsworth in his revision made the following additions to this fine pagan passage:
——Enough to sorrow you have given; The purposes of wisdom ask no more: Nor more would she have craved as due to one Who in her worst distress, had often felt The unbounded might of prayer; and learned, with soul Fixed on the cross, that consolation springs From sources deeper far than deepest pain For the meek sufferer. Why then should we read The forms of things with an unworthy eye? She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here.
Then follow the beautiful lines about the weeds, the spear-grass, the mist and rain-drops, as quoted above; but the close of the passage is extended as follows:
——All the griefs That passing shows of Being leave behind, Appeared an idle dream, that could maintain Nowhere dominion o'er the enlightened spirit Whose meditative sympathies repose Upon the breast of Faith. I turned away, And walked along my road in happiness.
It remains to be said that a certain number of Wordsworth's poems—and these were, as we might expect, among his best—have stood unchanged in all the editions from the first, running the gauntlet of their author's critical moods for half a century, and coming out untouched at last. I will not call them uncorrected poems, but rather poems in which all the needed corrections were made before their first publication, for they belong to that exquisite class of creations—too small a class, even in the works of the greatest masters—in which the poet has fused completely the refractory element of language before pouring it out into the mould of poetic form. Among these untouched poems are three from the "Lyrical Ballads"—"A slumber did my spirit seal," "Three years she grew in sun and shower," and "She dwelt among the untrodden ways"—all written at the age of twenty-nine; such are the "Yew Tree," written four years later, and "She was a phantom of delight." Several of the best sonnets, too, were unchanged; as that on "Westminster Bridge," and "Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour."