" In our best
companies
we generally say I am, and not I is or I'se.
Coleridge - Biographia Literaria
A similar
praise is due to his sentiments. No frequency of perusal can deprive
them of their freshness. For though they are brought into the full
day-light of every reader's comprehension; yet are they drawn up from
depths which few in any age are privileged to visit, into which few in
any age have courage or inclination to descend. If Mr. Wordsworth is
not equally with Daniel alike intelligible to all readers of average
understanding in all passages of his works, the comparative difficulty
does not arise from the greater impurity of the ore, but from the nature
and uses of the metal. A poem is not necessarily obscure, because it
does not aim to be popular. It is enough, if a work be perspicuous to
those for whom it is written, and
"Fit audience find, though few. "
To the "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of
early Childhood" the poet might have prefixed the lines which Dante
addresses to one of his own Canzoni--
"Canzone, i' credo, che saranno radi
Color, che tua ragione intendan bene,
Tanto lor sei faticoso ed alto. "
"O lyric song, there will be few, I think,
Who may thy import understand aright:
Thou art for them so arduous and so high! "
But the ode was intended for such readers only as had been accustomed
to watch the flux and reflux of their inmost nature, to venture at times
into the twilight realms of consciousness, and to feel a deep interest
in modes of inmost being, to which they know that the attributes of time
and space are inapplicable and alien, but which yet can not be conveyed,
save in symbols of time and space. For such readers the sense is
sufficiently plain, and they will be as little disposed to charge Mr.
Wordsworth with believing the Platonic pre-existence in the ordinary
interpretation of the words, as I am to believe, that Plato himself ever
meant or taught it.
Polla oi ut' anko-
nos okea belae
endon enti pharetras
phonanta synetoisin; es
de to pan hermaeneon
chatizei; sophos o pol-
la eidos phua;
mathontes de labroi
panglossia, korakes os,
akranta garueton
Dios pros ornicha theion.
Third (and wherein he soars far above Daniel) the sinewy strength
and originality of single lines and paragraphs: the frequent curiosa
felicitas of his diction, of which I need not here give specimens,
having anticipated them in a preceding page. This beauty, and as
eminently characteristic of Wordsworth's poetry, his rudest assailants
have felt themselves compelled to acknowledge and admire.
Fourth; the perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions as
taken immediately from nature, and proving a long and genial intimacy
with the very spirit which gives the physiognomic expression to all the
works of nature. Like a green field reflected in a calm and perfectly
transparent lake, the image is distinguished from the reality only by
its greater softness and lustre. Like the moisture or the polish on a
pebble, genius neither distorts nor false-colours its objects; but on
the contrary brings out many a vein and many a tint, which escape the
eye of common observation, thus raising to the rank of gems what had
been often kicked away by the hurrying foot of the traveller on the
dusty high road of custom.
Let me refer to the whole description of skating, vol. I. page 42 to 47,
especially to the lines
"So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle. with the din
Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars,
Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away. "
Or to the poem on THE GREEN LINNET, vol. I. page 244. What can be more
accurate yet more lovely than the two concluding stanzas?
"Upon yon tuft of hazel trees,
That twinkle to the gusty breeze,
Behold him perched in ecstasies,
Yet seeming still to hover;
There! where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings
Shadows and sunny glimmerings,
That cover him all over.
While thus before my eyes he gleams,
A Brother of the Leaves he seems;
When in a moment forth he teems
His little song in gushes
As if it pleased him to disdain
And mock the Form which he did feign
While he was dancing with the train
Of Leaves among the bushes. "
Or the description of the blue-cap, and of the noontide silence, page
284; or the poem to the cuckoo, page 299; or, lastly, though I might
multiply the references to ten times the number, to the poem, so
completely Wordsworth's, commencing
"Three years she grew in sun and shower"--
Fifth: a meditative pathos, a union of deep and subtle thought with
sensibility; a sympathy with man as man; the sympathy indeed of a
contemplator, rather than a fellow-sufferer or co-mate, (spectator, haud
particeps) but of a contemplator, from whose view no difference of rank
conceals the sameness of the nature; no injuries of wind or weather, or
toil, or even of ignorance, wholly disguise the human face divine. The
superscription and the image of the Creator still remain legible to
him under the dark lines, with which guilt or calamity had cancelled or
cross-barred it. Here the Man and the Poet lose and find themselves in
each other, the one as glorified, the latter as substantiated. In this
mild and philosophic pathos, Wordsworth appears to me without a compeer.
Such as he is: so he writes. See vol. I. page 134 to 136, or that most
affecting composition, THE AFFLICTION OF MARGARET ---- OF ----, page 165
to 168, which no mother, and, if I may judge by my own experience, no
parent can read without a tear. Or turn to that genuine lyric, in the
former edition, entitled, THE MAD MOTHER, page 174 to 178, of which I
cannot refrain from quoting two of the stanzas, both of them for their
pathos, and the former for the fine transition in the two concluding
lines of the stanza, so expressive of that deranged state, in which,
from the increased sensibility, the sufferer's attention is abruptly
drawn off by every trifle, and in the same instant plucked back again by
the one despotic thought, bringing home with it, by the blending, fusing
power of Imagination and Passion, the alien object to which it had been
so abruptly diverted, no longer an alien but an ally and an inmate.
"Suck, little babe, oh suck again!
It cools my blood; it cools my brain;
Thy lips, I feel them, baby! They
Draw from my heart the pain away.
Oh! press me with thy little hand;
It loosens something at my chest
About that tight and deadly band
I feel thy little fingers prest.
The breeze I see is in the tree!
It comes to cool my babe and me. "
"Thy father cares not for my breast,
'Tis thine, sweet baby, there to rest;
'Tis all thine own! --and if its hue
Be changed, that was so fair to view,
'Tis fair enough for thee, my dove!
My beauty, little child, is flown,
But thou wilt live with me in love;
And what if my poor cheek be brown?
'Tis well for me, thou canst not see
How pale and wan it else would be. "
Last, and pre-eminently, I challenge for this poet the gift of
Imagination in the highest and strictest sense of the word. In the
play of fancy, Wordsworth, to my feelings, is not always graceful,
and sometimes recondite. The likeness is occasionally too strange, or
demands too peculiar a point of view, or is such as appears the creature
of predetermined research, rather than spontaneous presentation. Indeed
his fancy seldom displays itself, as mere and unmodified fancy. But
in imaginative power, he stands nearest of all modern writers to
Shakespeare and Milton; and yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and
his own. To employ his own words, which are at once an instance and an
illustration, he does indeed to all thoughts and to all objects--
"------add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet's dream. "
I shall select a few examples as most obviously manifesting this
faculty; but if I should ever be fortunate enough to render my analysis
of Imagination, its origin and characters, thoroughly intelligible to
the reader, he will scarcely open on a page of this poet's works without
recognising, more or less, the presence and the influences of this
faculty. From the poem on the YEW TREES, vol. I. page 303, 304.
"But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks! --and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;
Not uninformed with phantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane;--a pillared shade,
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pinal umbrage tinged
Perennially--beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked
With unrejoicing berries--ghostly shapes
May meet at noontide; FEAR and trembling HOPE,
SILENCE and FORESIGHT; DEATH, the Skeleton,
And TIME, the Shadow; there to celebrate,
As in a natural temple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
United worship; or in mute repose
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
Murmuring from Glazamara's inmost caves. "
The effect of the old man's figure in the poem of RESOLUTION AND
INDEPENDENCE, vol. II. page 33.
"While he was talking thus, the lonely place,
The Old Man's shape, and speech, all troubled me
In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,
Wandering about alone and silently. "
Or the 8th, 9th, 19th, 26th, 31st, and 33rd, in the collection of
miscellaneous sonnets--the sonnet on the subjugation of Switzerland,
page 210, or the last ode, from which I especially select the two
following stanzas or paragraphs, page 349 to 350.
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy;
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy!
The Youth who daily further from the East
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day. "
And page 352 to 354 of the same ode.
"O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benedictions: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:--
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts, before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised!
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us--cherish--and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence; truths that wake
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence, in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;
Can in a moment travel thither,--
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. "
And since it would be unfair to conclude with an extract, which, though
highly characteristic, must yet, from the nature of the thoughts and the
subject, be interesting or perhaps intelligible, to but a limited number
of readers; I will add, from the poet's last published work, a passage
equally Wordsworthian; of the beauty of which, and of the imaginative
power displayed therein, there can be but one opinion, and one feeling.
See White Doe, page 5.
"Fast the church-yard fills;--anon
Look again and they all are gone;
The cluster round the porch, and the folk
Who sate in the shade of the Prior's Oak!
And scarcely have they disappeared
Ere the prelusive hymn is heard;--
With one consent the people rejoice,
Filling the church with a lofty voice!
They sing a service which they feel:
For 'tis the sun-rise now of zeal;
And faith and hope are in their prime
In great Eliza's golden time. "
"A moment ends the fervent din,
And all is hushed, without and within;
For though the priest, more tranquilly,
Recites the holy liturgy,
The only voice which you can hear
Is the river murmuring near.
--When soft! --the dusky trees between,
And down the path through the open green,
Where is no living thing to be seen;
And through yon gateway, where is found,
Beneath the arch with ivy bound,
Free entrance to the church-yard ground--
And right across the verdant sod,
Towards the very house of God;
Comes gliding in with lovely gleam,
Comes gliding in serene and slow,
Soft and silent as a dream.
A solitary Doe!
White she is as lily of June,
And beauteous as the silver moon
When out of sight the clouds are driven
And she is left alone in heaven!
Or like a ship some gentle day
In sunshine sailing far away
A glittering ship that hath the plain
Of ocean for her own domain. "
* * * * * *
"What harmonious pensive changes
Wait upon her as she ranges
Round and through this Pile of state
Overthrown and desolate!
Now a step or two her way
Is through space of open day,
Where the enamoured sunny light
Brightens her that was so bright;
Now doth a delicate shadow fall,
Falls upon her like a breath,
From some lofty arch or wall,
As she passes underneath. "
The following analogy will, I am apprehensive, appear dim and fantastic,
but in reading Bartram's Travels I could not help transcribing the
following lines as a sort of allegory, or connected simile and metaphor
of Wordsworth's intellect and genius. --"The soil is a deep, rich, dark
mould, on a deep stratum of tenacious clay; and that on a foundation of
rocks, which often break through both strata, lifting their backs above
the surface. The trees which chiefly grow here are the gigantic, black
oak; magnolia grandi-flora; fraximus excelsior; platane; and a few
stately tulip trees. " What Mr. Wordsworth will produce, it is not for me
to prophesy but I could pronounce with the liveliest convictions what he
is capable of producing. It is the FIRST GENUINE PHILOSOPHIC POEM.
The preceding criticism will not, I am aware, avail to overcome the
prejudices of those, who have made it a business to attack and ridicule
Mr. Wordsworth's compositions.
Truth and prudence might be imaged as concentric circles. The poet may
perhaps have passed beyond the latter, but he has confined himself far
within the bounds of the former, in designating these critics, as "too
petulant to be passive to a genuine poet, and too feeble to grapple with
him;----men of palsied imaginations, in whose minds all healthy action
is languid;----who, therefore, feed as the many direct them, or with the
many are greedy after vicious provocatives. "
So much for the detractors from Wordsworth's merits. On the other hand,
much as I might wish for their fuller sympathy, I dare not flatter
myself, that the freedom with which I have declared my opinions
concerning both his theory and his defects, most of which are more
or less connected with his theory, either as cause or effect, will be
satisfactory or pleasing to all the poet's admirers and advocates.
More indiscriminate than mine their admiration may be: deeper and more
sincere it cannot be. But I have advanced no opinion either for praise
or censure, other than as texts introductory to the reasons which compel
me to form it. Above all, I was fully convinced that such a criticism
was not only wanted; but that, if executed with adequate ability, it
must conduce, in no mean degree, to Mr. Wordsworth's reputation.
His fame belongs to another age, and can neither be accelerated nor
retarded. How small the proportion of the defects are to the beauties,
I have repeatedly declared; and that no one of them originates in
deficiency of poetic genius. Had they been more and greater, I should
still, as a friend to his literary character in the present age,
consider an analytic display of them as pure gain; if only it removed,
as surely to all reflecting minds even the foregoing analysis must have
removed, the strange mistake, so slightly grounded, yet so widely and
industriously propagated, of Mr. Wordsworth's turn for simplicity! I
am not half as much irritated by hearing his enemies abuse him for
vulgarity of style, subject, and conception, as I am disgusted with the
gilded side of the same meaning, as displayed by some affected admirers,
with whom he is, forsooth, a "sweet, simple poet! " and so natural, that
little master Charles and his younger sister are so charmed with them,
that they play at "Goody Blake," or at "Johnny and Betty Foy! "
Were the collection of poems, published with these biographical
sketches, important enough, (which I am not vain enough to believe,)
to deserve such a distinction; even as I have done, so would I be done
unto.
For more than eighteen months have the volume of Poems, entitled
SIBYLLINE LEAVES, and the present volume, up to this page, been printed,
and ready for publication. But, ere I speak of myself in the tones,
which are alone natural to me under the circumstances of late years, I
would fain present myself to the Reader as I was in the first dawn of my
literary life:
When Hope grew round me, like the climbing vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seem'd mine!
For this purpose I have selected from the letters, which I wrote home
from Germany, those which appeared likely to be most interesting, and at
the same time most pertinent to the title of this work.
SATYRANE'S LETTERS
LETTER I
On Sunday morning, September 16, 1798, the Hamburg packet set sail from
Yarmouth; and I, for the first time in my life, beheld my native land
retiring from me. At the moment of its disappearance--in all the kirks,
churches, chapels, and meeting-houses, in which the greater number, I
hope, of my countrymen were at that time assembled, I will dare question
whether there was one more ardent prayer offered up to heaven, than
that which I then preferred for my country. "Now then," (said I to a
gentleman who was standing near me,) "we are out of our country. " "Not
yet, not yet! " he replied, and pointed to the sea; "This, too, is a
Briton's country. " This bon mot gave a fillip to my spirits, I rose and
looked round on my fellow-passengers, who were all on the deck. We
were eighteen in number, videlicet, five Englishmen, an English lady,
a French gentleman and his servant, an Hanoverian and his servant, a
Prussian, a Swede, two Danes, and a Mulatto boy, a German tailor and his
wife, (the smallest couple I ever beheld,) and a Jew. We were all on the
deck; but in a short time I observed marks of dismay. The lady retired
to the cabin in some confusion, and many of the faces round me assumed a
very doleful and frog-coloured appearance; and within an hour the number
of those on deck was lessened by one half. I was giddy, but not sick,
and the giddiness soon went away, but left a feverishness and want of
appetite, which I attributed, in great measure, to the saeva Mephitis of
the bilge-water; and it was certainly not decreased by the exportations
from the cabin. However, I was well enough to join the able-bodied
passengers, one of whom observed not inaptly, that Momus might have
discovered an easier way to see a man's inside, than by placing a
window in his breast. He needed only have taken a saltwater trip in a
packet-boat.
I am inclined to believe, that a packet is far superior to a stage-
coach, as a means of making men open out to each other. In the latter
the uniformity of posture disposes to dozing, and the definitiveness of
the period, at which the company will separate, makes each individual
think more of those to whom he is going, than of those with whom he is
going. But at sea, more curiosity is excited, if only on this account,
that the pleasant or unpleasant qualities of your companions are of
greater importance to you, from the uncertainty how long you may be
obliged to house with them. Besides, if you are countrymen, that now
begins to form a distinction and a bond of brotherhood; and if of
different countries, there are new incitements of conversation, more to
ask and more to communicate. I found that I had interested the Danes
in no common degree. I had crept into the boat on the deck and fallen
asleep; but was awakened by one of them, about three o'clock in the
afternoon, who told me that they had been seeking me in every hole and
corner, and insisted that I should join their party and drink with them.
He talked English with such fluency, as left me wholly unable to account
for the singular and even ludicrous incorrectness with which he spoke
it. I went, and found some excellent wines and a dessert of grapes with
a pine-apple. The Danes had christened me Doctor Teology, and dressed
as I was all in black, with large shoes and black worsted stockings,
I might certainly have passed very well for a Methodist missionary.
However I disclaimed my title. What then may you be? A man of fortune?
No! --A merchant? No! --A merchant's traveller? No! --A clerk? No! --Un
Philosophe, perhaps? It was at that time in my life, in which of all
possible names and characters I had the greatest disgust to that of "un
Philosophe. " But I was weary of being questioned, and rather than be
nothing, or at best only the abstract idea of a man, I submitted by a
bow, even to the aspersion implied in the word "un Philosophe. "--The
Dane then informed me, that all in the present party were Philosophers
likewise. Certes we were not of the Stoick school. For we drank and
talked and sung, till we talked and sung all together; and then we rose
and danced on the deck a set of dances, which in one sense of the word
at least, were very intelligibly and appropriately entitled reels.
The passengers, who lay in the cabin below in all the agonies of sea-
sickness, must have found our bacchanalian merriment
------a tune
Harsh and of dissonant mood from their complaint.
I thought so at the time; and, (by way, I suppose, of supporting my
newly assumed philosophical character,) I thought too, how closely the
greater number of our virtues are connected with the fear of death, and
how little sympathy we bestow on pain, where there is no danger.
The two Danes were brothers. The one was a man with a clear white
complexion, white hair, and white eyebrows; looked silly, and nothing
that he uttered gave the lie to his looks. The other, whom, by way of
eminence I have called the Dane, had likewise white hair, but was much
shorter than his brother, with slender limbs, and a very thin face
slightly pockfretten. This man convinced me of the justice of an old
remark, that many a faithful portrait in our novels and farces has been
rashly censured for an outrageous caricature, or perhaps nonentity. I
had retired to my station in the boat--he came and seated himself by my
side, and appeared not a little tipsy. He commenced the conversation in
the most magnific style, and, as a sort of pioneering to his own vanity,
he flattered me with such grossness! The parasites of the old comedy
were modest in the comparison. His language and accentuation were so
exceedingly singular, that I determined for once in my life to take
notes of a conversation. Here it follows, somewhat abridged, indeed, but
in all other respects as accurately as my memory permitted.
THE DANE. Vat imagination! vat language! vat vast science! and vat eyes!
vat a milk-vite forehead! O my heafen! vy, you're a Got!
ANSWER. You do me too much honour, Sir.
THE DANE. O me! if you should dink I is flattering you! --No, no, no! I
haf ten tousand a year--yes, ten tousand a year--yes, ten tousand pound
a year! Vel--and vat is dhat? a mere trifle! I 'ouldn't gif my sincere
heart for ten times dhe money. Yes, you're a Got! I a mere man! But, my
dear friend! dhink of me, as a man! Is, is--I mean to ask you now, my
dear friend--is I not very eloquent? Is I not speak English very fine?
ANSWER. Most admirably! Believe me, Sir! I have seldom heard even a
native talk so fluently.
THE DANE. (Squeezing my hand with great vehemence. ) My dear friend! vat
an affection and fidelity ve have for each odher! But tell me, do tell
me,--Is I not, now and den, speak some fault? Is I not in some wrong?
ANSWER. Why, Sir! perhaps it might be observed by nice critics in the
English language, that you occasionally use the word "is" instead of
"am.
" In our best companies we generally say I am, and not I is or I'se.
Excuse me, Sir! it is a mere trifle.
THE DANE. O! --is, is, am, am, am. Yes, yes--I know, I know.
ANSWER. I am, thou art, he is, we are, ye are, they are.
THE DANE. Yes, yes,--I know, I know--Am, am, am, is dhe praesens, and is
is dhe perfectum--yes, yes--and are is dhe plusquam perfectum.
ANSWER. And art, Sir! is--?
THE DANE. My dear friend! it is dhe plusquam perfectum, no, no--dhat
is a great lie; are is dhe plusquam perfectum--and art is dhe plasquam
plue-perfectum--(then swinging my hand to and fro, and cocking his
little bright hazel eyes at me, that danced with vanity and wine)--You
see, my dear friend that I too have some lehrning?
ANSWER. Learning, Sir? Who dares suspect it? Who can listen to you for a
minute, who can even look at you, without perceiving the extent of it?
THE DANE. My dear friend! --(then with a would-be humble look, and in a
tone of voice as if he was reasoning) I could not talk so of prawns and
imperfectum, and futurum and plusquamplue perfectum, and all dhat, my
dear friend! without some lehrning?
ANSWER. Sir! a man like you cannot talk on any subject without
discovering the depth of his information.
THE DANE. Dhe grammatic Greek, my friend; ha! ha! Ha! (laughing, and
swinging my hand to and fro--then with a sudden transition to great
solemnity) Now I will tell you, my dear friend! Dhere did happen about
me vat de whole historia of Denmark record no instance about nobody
else. Dhe bishop did ask me all dhe questions about all dhe religion in
dhe Latin grammar.
ANSWER. The grammar, Sir? The language, I presume--
THE DANE. (A little offended. ) Grammar is language, and language is
grammar--
ANSWER. Ten thousand pardons!
THE DANE. Vell, and I was only fourteen years--
ANSWER. Only fourteen years old?
THE DANE. No more. I vas fourteen years old--and he asked me all
questions, religion and philosophy, and all in dhe Latin language--and I
answered him all every one, my dear friend! all in dhe Latin language.
ANSWER. A prodigy! an absolute prodigy!
THE DANE. No, no, no! he was a bishop, a great superintendent.
ANSWER. Yes! a bishop.
THE DANE. A bishop--not a mere predicant, not a prediger.
ANSWER. My dear Sir! we have misunderstood each other. I said that your
answering in Latin at so early an age was a prodigy, that is, a thing
that is wonderful; that does not often happen.
THE DANE. Often! Dhere is not von instance recorded in dhe whole
historia of Denmark.
ANSWER. And since then, Sir--?
THE DANE. I was sent ofer to dhe Vest Indies--to our Island, and dhere I
had no more to do vid books. No! no! I put my genius anodher way--and
I haf made ten tousand pound a year. Is not dhat ghenius, my dear
friend? --But vat is money? --I dhink dhe poorest man alive my equal.
Yes, my dear friend; my little fortune is pleasant to my generous heart,
because I can do good--no man with so little a fortune ever did so much
generosity--no person--no man person, no woman person ever denies it.
But we are all Got's children.
Here the Hanoverian interrupted him, and the other Dane, the Swede, and
the Prussian, joined us, together with a young Englishman who spoke the
German fluently, and interpreted to me many of the Prussian's jokes. The
Prussian was a travelling merchant, turned of threescore, a hale
man, tall, strong, and stout, full of stories, gesticulations, and
buffoonery, with the soul as well as the look of a mountebank, who,
while he is making you laugh, picks your pocket. Amid all his droll
looks and droll gestures, there remained one look untouched by laughter;
and that one look was the true face, the others were but its mask. The
Hanoverian was a pale, fat, bloated young man, whose father had made a
large fortune in London, as an army-contractor. He seemed to emulate
the manners of young Englishmen of fortune. He was a good-natured
fellow, not without information or literature; but a most egregious
coxcomb. He had been in the habit of attending the House of Commons, and
had once spoken, as he informed me, with great applause in a debating
society. For this he appeared to have qualified himself with laudable
industry: for he was perfect in Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary, and
with an accent, which forcibly reminded me of the Scotchman in Roderic
Random, who professed to teach the English pronunciation, he was
constantly deferring to my superior judgment, whether or no I had
pronounced this or that word with propriety, or "the true delicacy. "
When he spoke, though it were only half a dozen sentences, he always
rose: for which I could detect no other motive, than his partiality
to that elegant phrase so liberally introduced in the orations of
our British legislators, "While I am on my legs. " The Swede, whom
for reasons that will soon appear, I shall distinguish by the name
of Nobility, was a strong-featured, scurvy-faced man, his complexion
resembling in colour, a red hot poker beginning to cool. He appeared
miserably dependent on the Dane; but was, however, incomparably the
best informed and most rational of the party. Indeed his manners
and conversation discovered him to be both a man of the world and a
gentleman. The Jew was in the hold: the French gentleman was lying on
the deck so ill, that I could observe nothing concerning him, except the
affectionate attentions of his servant to him. The poor fellow was very
sick himself, and every now and then ran to the side of the vessel,
still keeping his eye on his master, but returned in a moment and seated
himself again by him, now supporting his head, now wiping his forehead
and talking to him all the while in the most soothing tones. There
had been a matrimonial squabble of a very ludicrous kind in the cabin,
between the little German tailor and his little wife. He had secured two
beds, one for himself and one for her. This had struck the little woman
as a very cruel action; she insisted upon their having but one, and
assured the mate in the most piteous tones, that she was his lawful
wife. The mate and the cabin boy decided in her favour, abused the
little man for his want of tenderness with much humour, and hoisted
him into the same compartment with his sea-sick wife. This quarrel was
interesting to me, as it procured me a bed, which I otherwise should not
have had.
In the evening, at seven o'clock, the sea rolled higher, and the Dane,
by means of the greater agitation, eliminated enough of what he had been
swallowing to make room for a great deal more. His favourite potation
was sugar and brandy, i. e. a very little warm water with a large
quantity of brandy, sugar, and nutmeg His servant boy, a black-eyed
Mulatto, had a good-natured round face, exactly the colour of the skin
of the walnut-kernel. The Dane and I were again seated, tete-a-tete,
in the ship's boat. The conversation, which was now indeed rather an
oration than a dialogue, became extravagant beyond all that I ever
heard. He told me that he had made a large fortune in the island of
Santa Cruz, and was now returning to Denmark to enjoy it. He expatiated
on the style in which he meant to live, and the great undertakings which
he proposed to himself to commence, till, the brandy aiding his vanity,
and his vanity and garrulity aiding the brandy, he talked like a
madman--entreated me to accompany him to Denmark--there I should see his
influence with the government, and he would introduce me to the king,
etc. , etc. Thus he went on dreaming aloud, and then passing with a very
lyrical transition to the subject of general politics, he declaimed,
like a member of the Corresponding Society, about, (not concerning,)
the Rights of Man, and assured me that, notwithstanding his fortune, he
thought the poorest man alive his equal. "All are equal, my dear friend!
all are equal! Ve are all Got's children. The poorest man haf the same
rights with me. Jack! Jack! some more sugar and brandy. Dhere is dhat
fellow now! He is a Mulatto--but he is my equal. --That's right, Jack!
(taking the sugar and brandy. ) Here you Sir! shake hands with dhis
gentleman! Shake hands with me, you dog! Dhere, dhere! --We are all equal
my dear friend! Do I not speak like Socrates, and Plato, and Cato--they
were all philosophers, my dear philosophe! all very great men! --and so
was Homer and Virgil--but they were poets. Yes, yes! I know all about
it! --But what can anybody say more than this? We are all equal, all
Got's children. I haf ten tousand a year, but I am no more dhan de
meanest man alive. I haf no pride; and yet, my dear friend! I can
say, do! and it is done. Ha! ha! ha! my dear friend! Now dhere is dhat
gentleman (pointing to Nobility) he is a Swedish baron--you shall see.
Ho! (calling to the Swede) get me, will you, a bottle of wine from the
cabin. SWEDE. --Here, Jack! go and get your master a bottle of wine from
the cabin. DANE. No, no, no! do you go now--you go yourself you go now!
SWEDE. Pah! --DANE. Now go! Go, I pray you. " And the Swede went! !
After this the Dane commenced an harangue on religion, and mistaking
me for un philosophe in the continental sense of the word, he talked of
Deity in a declamatory style, very much resembling the devotional rants
of that rude blunderer, Mr. Thomas Paine, in his Age of Reason, and
whispered in my ear, what damned hypocrism all Jesus Christ's business
was. I dare aver, that few men have less reason to charge themselves
with indulging in persiflage than myself. I should hate it, if it were
only that it is a Frenchman's vice, and feel a pride in avoiding it,
because our own language is too honest to have a word to express it by.
But in this instance the temptation had been too powerful, and I have
placed it on the list of my offences. Pericles answered one of his
dearest friends, who had solicited him on a case of life and death, to
take an equivocal oath for his preservation: Debeo amicis opitulari, sed
usque ad Deos [75]. Friendship herself must place her last and boldest
step on this side the altar. What Pericles would not do to save a
friend's life, you may be assured, I would not hazard merely to mill the
chocolate-pot of a drunken fool's vanity till it frothed over. Assuming
a serious look, I professed myself a believer, and sunk at once an
hundred fathoms in his good graces. He retired to his cabin, and I
wrapped myself up in my great coat, and looked at the water. A beautiful
white cloud of foam at momently intervals coursed by the side of the
vessel with a roar, and little stars of flame danced and sparkled and
went out in it: and every now and then light detachments of this white
cloud-like foam darted off from the vessel's side, each with its own
small constellation, over the sea, and scoured out of sight like a
Tartar troop over a wilderness.
It was cold, the cabin was at open war with my olfactories, and I found
reason to rejoice in my great coat, a weighty high-caped, respectable
rug, the collar of which turned over, and played the part of a night-cap
very passably. In looking up at two or three bright stars, which
oscillated with the motion of the sails, I fell asleep, but was awakened
at one o'clock, Monday morning, by a shower of rain. I found myself
compelled to go down into the cabin, where I slept very soundly, and
awoke with a very good appetite at breakfast time, my nostrils, the most
placable of all the senses, reconciled to, or indeed insensible of the
mephitis.
Monday, September 17th, I had a long conversation with the Swede, who
spoke with the most poignant contempt of the Dane, whom he described as
a fool, purse-mad; but he confirmed the boasts of the Dane respecting
the largeness of his fortune, which he had acquired in the first
instance as an advocate, and afterwards as a planter. From the Dane and
from himself I collected that he was indeed a Swedish nobleman, who had
squandered a fortune, that was never very large, and had made over his
property to the Dane, on whom he was now utterly dependent. He seemed
to suffer very little pain from the Dane's insolence. He was in a high
degree humane and attentive to the English lady, who suffered most
fearfully, and for whom he performed many little offices with a
tenderness and delicacy which seemed to prove real goodness of heart.
Indeed his general manners and conversation were not only pleasing,
but even interesting; and I struggled to believe his insensibility
respecting the Dane philosophical fortitude. For though the Dane was
now quite sober, his character oozed out of him at every pore. And after
dinner, when he was again flushed with wine, every quarter of an hour or
perhaps oftener he would shout out to the Swede, "Ho! Nobility, go--do
such a thing! Mr. Nobility! --tell the gentlemen such a story, and
so forth;" with an insolence which must have excited disgust and
detestation, if his vulgar rants on the sacred rights of equality,
joined to his wild havoc of general grammar no less than of the English
language, had not rendered it so irresistibly laughable.
At four o'clock I observed a wild duck swimming on the waves, a single
solitary wild duck. It is not easy to conceive, how interesting a thing
it looked in that round objectless desert of waters. I had associated
such a feeling of immensity with the ocean, that I felt exceedingly
disappointed, when I was out of sight of all land, at the narrowness and
nearness, as it were, of the circle of the horizon. So little are images
capable of satisfying the obscure feelings connected with words. In the
evening the sails were lowered, lest we should run foul of the land,
which can be seen only at a small distance. And at four o'clock, on
Tuesday morning, I was awakened by the cry of "land! land! " It was an
ugly island rock at a distance on our left, called Heiligeland, well
known to many passengers from Yarmouth to Hamburg, who have been obliged
by stormy weather to pass weeks and weeks in weary captivity on it,
stripped of all their money by the exorbitant demands of the wretches
who inhabit it. So at least the sailors informed me. --About nine o'clock
we saw the main land, which seemed scarcely able to hold its head above
water, low, flat, and dreary, with lighthouses and land-marks which
seemed to give a character and language to the dreariness. We entered
the mouth of the Elbe, passing Neu-werk; though as yet the right bank
only of the river was visible to us. On this I saw a church, and thanked
God for my safe voyage, not without affectionate thoughts of those I
had left in England. At eleven o'clock on the same morning we arrived
at Cuxhaven, the ship dropped anchor, and the boat was hoisted out, to
carry the Hanoverian and a few others on shore. The captain agreed to
take us, who remained, to Hamburg for ten guineas, to which the Dane
contributed so largely, that the other passengers paid but half a guinea
each. Accordingly we hauled anchor, and passed gently up the river. At
Cuxhaven both sides of the river may be seen in clear weather; we could
now see the right bank only. We passed a multitude of English traders
that had been waiting many weeks for a wind. In a short time both banks
became visible, both flat and evidencing the labour of human hands by
their extreme neatness. On the left bank I saw a church or two in
the distance; on the right bank we passed by steeple and windmill and
cottage, and windmill and single house, windmill and windmill, and neat
single house, and steeple. These were the objects and in the succession.
The shores were very green and planted with trees not inelegantly.
Thirty-five miles from Cuxhaven the night came on us, and, as the
navigation of the Elbe is perilous, we dropped anchor.
praise is due to his sentiments. No frequency of perusal can deprive
them of their freshness. For though they are brought into the full
day-light of every reader's comprehension; yet are they drawn up from
depths which few in any age are privileged to visit, into which few in
any age have courage or inclination to descend. If Mr. Wordsworth is
not equally with Daniel alike intelligible to all readers of average
understanding in all passages of his works, the comparative difficulty
does not arise from the greater impurity of the ore, but from the nature
and uses of the metal. A poem is not necessarily obscure, because it
does not aim to be popular. It is enough, if a work be perspicuous to
those for whom it is written, and
"Fit audience find, though few. "
To the "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of
early Childhood" the poet might have prefixed the lines which Dante
addresses to one of his own Canzoni--
"Canzone, i' credo, che saranno radi
Color, che tua ragione intendan bene,
Tanto lor sei faticoso ed alto. "
"O lyric song, there will be few, I think,
Who may thy import understand aright:
Thou art for them so arduous and so high! "
But the ode was intended for such readers only as had been accustomed
to watch the flux and reflux of their inmost nature, to venture at times
into the twilight realms of consciousness, and to feel a deep interest
in modes of inmost being, to which they know that the attributes of time
and space are inapplicable and alien, but which yet can not be conveyed,
save in symbols of time and space. For such readers the sense is
sufficiently plain, and they will be as little disposed to charge Mr.
Wordsworth with believing the Platonic pre-existence in the ordinary
interpretation of the words, as I am to believe, that Plato himself ever
meant or taught it.
Polla oi ut' anko-
nos okea belae
endon enti pharetras
phonanta synetoisin; es
de to pan hermaeneon
chatizei; sophos o pol-
la eidos phua;
mathontes de labroi
panglossia, korakes os,
akranta garueton
Dios pros ornicha theion.
Third (and wherein he soars far above Daniel) the sinewy strength
and originality of single lines and paragraphs: the frequent curiosa
felicitas of his diction, of which I need not here give specimens,
having anticipated them in a preceding page. This beauty, and as
eminently characteristic of Wordsworth's poetry, his rudest assailants
have felt themselves compelled to acknowledge and admire.
Fourth; the perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions as
taken immediately from nature, and proving a long and genial intimacy
with the very spirit which gives the physiognomic expression to all the
works of nature. Like a green field reflected in a calm and perfectly
transparent lake, the image is distinguished from the reality only by
its greater softness and lustre. Like the moisture or the polish on a
pebble, genius neither distorts nor false-colours its objects; but on
the contrary brings out many a vein and many a tint, which escape the
eye of common observation, thus raising to the rank of gems what had
been often kicked away by the hurrying foot of the traveller on the
dusty high road of custom.
Let me refer to the whole description of skating, vol. I. page 42 to 47,
especially to the lines
"So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle. with the din
Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars,
Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away. "
Or to the poem on THE GREEN LINNET, vol. I. page 244. What can be more
accurate yet more lovely than the two concluding stanzas?
"Upon yon tuft of hazel trees,
That twinkle to the gusty breeze,
Behold him perched in ecstasies,
Yet seeming still to hover;
There! where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings
Shadows and sunny glimmerings,
That cover him all over.
While thus before my eyes he gleams,
A Brother of the Leaves he seems;
When in a moment forth he teems
His little song in gushes
As if it pleased him to disdain
And mock the Form which he did feign
While he was dancing with the train
Of Leaves among the bushes. "
Or the description of the blue-cap, and of the noontide silence, page
284; or the poem to the cuckoo, page 299; or, lastly, though I might
multiply the references to ten times the number, to the poem, so
completely Wordsworth's, commencing
"Three years she grew in sun and shower"--
Fifth: a meditative pathos, a union of deep and subtle thought with
sensibility; a sympathy with man as man; the sympathy indeed of a
contemplator, rather than a fellow-sufferer or co-mate, (spectator, haud
particeps) but of a contemplator, from whose view no difference of rank
conceals the sameness of the nature; no injuries of wind or weather, or
toil, or even of ignorance, wholly disguise the human face divine. The
superscription and the image of the Creator still remain legible to
him under the dark lines, with which guilt or calamity had cancelled or
cross-barred it. Here the Man and the Poet lose and find themselves in
each other, the one as glorified, the latter as substantiated. In this
mild and philosophic pathos, Wordsworth appears to me without a compeer.
Such as he is: so he writes. See vol. I. page 134 to 136, or that most
affecting composition, THE AFFLICTION OF MARGARET ---- OF ----, page 165
to 168, which no mother, and, if I may judge by my own experience, no
parent can read without a tear. Or turn to that genuine lyric, in the
former edition, entitled, THE MAD MOTHER, page 174 to 178, of which I
cannot refrain from quoting two of the stanzas, both of them for their
pathos, and the former for the fine transition in the two concluding
lines of the stanza, so expressive of that deranged state, in which,
from the increased sensibility, the sufferer's attention is abruptly
drawn off by every trifle, and in the same instant plucked back again by
the one despotic thought, bringing home with it, by the blending, fusing
power of Imagination and Passion, the alien object to which it had been
so abruptly diverted, no longer an alien but an ally and an inmate.
"Suck, little babe, oh suck again!
It cools my blood; it cools my brain;
Thy lips, I feel them, baby! They
Draw from my heart the pain away.
Oh! press me with thy little hand;
It loosens something at my chest
About that tight and deadly band
I feel thy little fingers prest.
The breeze I see is in the tree!
It comes to cool my babe and me. "
"Thy father cares not for my breast,
'Tis thine, sweet baby, there to rest;
'Tis all thine own! --and if its hue
Be changed, that was so fair to view,
'Tis fair enough for thee, my dove!
My beauty, little child, is flown,
But thou wilt live with me in love;
And what if my poor cheek be brown?
'Tis well for me, thou canst not see
How pale and wan it else would be. "
Last, and pre-eminently, I challenge for this poet the gift of
Imagination in the highest and strictest sense of the word. In the
play of fancy, Wordsworth, to my feelings, is not always graceful,
and sometimes recondite. The likeness is occasionally too strange, or
demands too peculiar a point of view, or is such as appears the creature
of predetermined research, rather than spontaneous presentation. Indeed
his fancy seldom displays itself, as mere and unmodified fancy. But
in imaginative power, he stands nearest of all modern writers to
Shakespeare and Milton; and yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and
his own. To employ his own words, which are at once an instance and an
illustration, he does indeed to all thoughts and to all objects--
"------add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet's dream. "
I shall select a few examples as most obviously manifesting this
faculty; but if I should ever be fortunate enough to render my analysis
of Imagination, its origin and characters, thoroughly intelligible to
the reader, he will scarcely open on a page of this poet's works without
recognising, more or less, the presence and the influences of this
faculty. From the poem on the YEW TREES, vol. I. page 303, 304.
"But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks! --and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;
Not uninformed with phantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane;--a pillared shade,
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pinal umbrage tinged
Perennially--beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked
With unrejoicing berries--ghostly shapes
May meet at noontide; FEAR and trembling HOPE,
SILENCE and FORESIGHT; DEATH, the Skeleton,
And TIME, the Shadow; there to celebrate,
As in a natural temple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
United worship; or in mute repose
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
Murmuring from Glazamara's inmost caves. "
The effect of the old man's figure in the poem of RESOLUTION AND
INDEPENDENCE, vol. II. page 33.
"While he was talking thus, the lonely place,
The Old Man's shape, and speech, all troubled me
In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,
Wandering about alone and silently. "
Or the 8th, 9th, 19th, 26th, 31st, and 33rd, in the collection of
miscellaneous sonnets--the sonnet on the subjugation of Switzerland,
page 210, or the last ode, from which I especially select the two
following stanzas or paragraphs, page 349 to 350.
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy;
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy!
The Youth who daily further from the East
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day. "
And page 352 to 354 of the same ode.
"O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benedictions: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest;
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:--
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts, before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised!
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us--cherish--and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence; truths that wake
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence, in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither;
Can in a moment travel thither,--
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. "
And since it would be unfair to conclude with an extract, which, though
highly characteristic, must yet, from the nature of the thoughts and the
subject, be interesting or perhaps intelligible, to but a limited number
of readers; I will add, from the poet's last published work, a passage
equally Wordsworthian; of the beauty of which, and of the imaginative
power displayed therein, there can be but one opinion, and one feeling.
See White Doe, page 5.
"Fast the church-yard fills;--anon
Look again and they all are gone;
The cluster round the porch, and the folk
Who sate in the shade of the Prior's Oak!
And scarcely have they disappeared
Ere the prelusive hymn is heard;--
With one consent the people rejoice,
Filling the church with a lofty voice!
They sing a service which they feel:
For 'tis the sun-rise now of zeal;
And faith and hope are in their prime
In great Eliza's golden time. "
"A moment ends the fervent din,
And all is hushed, without and within;
For though the priest, more tranquilly,
Recites the holy liturgy,
The only voice which you can hear
Is the river murmuring near.
--When soft! --the dusky trees between,
And down the path through the open green,
Where is no living thing to be seen;
And through yon gateway, where is found,
Beneath the arch with ivy bound,
Free entrance to the church-yard ground--
And right across the verdant sod,
Towards the very house of God;
Comes gliding in with lovely gleam,
Comes gliding in serene and slow,
Soft and silent as a dream.
A solitary Doe!
White she is as lily of June,
And beauteous as the silver moon
When out of sight the clouds are driven
And she is left alone in heaven!
Or like a ship some gentle day
In sunshine sailing far away
A glittering ship that hath the plain
Of ocean for her own domain. "
* * * * * *
"What harmonious pensive changes
Wait upon her as she ranges
Round and through this Pile of state
Overthrown and desolate!
Now a step or two her way
Is through space of open day,
Where the enamoured sunny light
Brightens her that was so bright;
Now doth a delicate shadow fall,
Falls upon her like a breath,
From some lofty arch or wall,
As she passes underneath. "
The following analogy will, I am apprehensive, appear dim and fantastic,
but in reading Bartram's Travels I could not help transcribing the
following lines as a sort of allegory, or connected simile and metaphor
of Wordsworth's intellect and genius. --"The soil is a deep, rich, dark
mould, on a deep stratum of tenacious clay; and that on a foundation of
rocks, which often break through both strata, lifting their backs above
the surface. The trees which chiefly grow here are the gigantic, black
oak; magnolia grandi-flora; fraximus excelsior; platane; and a few
stately tulip trees. " What Mr. Wordsworth will produce, it is not for me
to prophesy but I could pronounce with the liveliest convictions what he
is capable of producing. It is the FIRST GENUINE PHILOSOPHIC POEM.
The preceding criticism will not, I am aware, avail to overcome the
prejudices of those, who have made it a business to attack and ridicule
Mr. Wordsworth's compositions.
Truth and prudence might be imaged as concentric circles. The poet may
perhaps have passed beyond the latter, but he has confined himself far
within the bounds of the former, in designating these critics, as "too
petulant to be passive to a genuine poet, and too feeble to grapple with
him;----men of palsied imaginations, in whose minds all healthy action
is languid;----who, therefore, feed as the many direct them, or with the
many are greedy after vicious provocatives. "
So much for the detractors from Wordsworth's merits. On the other hand,
much as I might wish for their fuller sympathy, I dare not flatter
myself, that the freedom with which I have declared my opinions
concerning both his theory and his defects, most of which are more
or less connected with his theory, either as cause or effect, will be
satisfactory or pleasing to all the poet's admirers and advocates.
More indiscriminate than mine their admiration may be: deeper and more
sincere it cannot be. But I have advanced no opinion either for praise
or censure, other than as texts introductory to the reasons which compel
me to form it. Above all, I was fully convinced that such a criticism
was not only wanted; but that, if executed with adequate ability, it
must conduce, in no mean degree, to Mr. Wordsworth's reputation.
His fame belongs to another age, and can neither be accelerated nor
retarded. How small the proportion of the defects are to the beauties,
I have repeatedly declared; and that no one of them originates in
deficiency of poetic genius. Had they been more and greater, I should
still, as a friend to his literary character in the present age,
consider an analytic display of them as pure gain; if only it removed,
as surely to all reflecting minds even the foregoing analysis must have
removed, the strange mistake, so slightly grounded, yet so widely and
industriously propagated, of Mr. Wordsworth's turn for simplicity! I
am not half as much irritated by hearing his enemies abuse him for
vulgarity of style, subject, and conception, as I am disgusted with the
gilded side of the same meaning, as displayed by some affected admirers,
with whom he is, forsooth, a "sweet, simple poet! " and so natural, that
little master Charles and his younger sister are so charmed with them,
that they play at "Goody Blake," or at "Johnny and Betty Foy! "
Were the collection of poems, published with these biographical
sketches, important enough, (which I am not vain enough to believe,)
to deserve such a distinction; even as I have done, so would I be done
unto.
For more than eighteen months have the volume of Poems, entitled
SIBYLLINE LEAVES, and the present volume, up to this page, been printed,
and ready for publication. But, ere I speak of myself in the tones,
which are alone natural to me under the circumstances of late years, I
would fain present myself to the Reader as I was in the first dawn of my
literary life:
When Hope grew round me, like the climbing vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seem'd mine!
For this purpose I have selected from the letters, which I wrote home
from Germany, those which appeared likely to be most interesting, and at
the same time most pertinent to the title of this work.
SATYRANE'S LETTERS
LETTER I
On Sunday morning, September 16, 1798, the Hamburg packet set sail from
Yarmouth; and I, for the first time in my life, beheld my native land
retiring from me. At the moment of its disappearance--in all the kirks,
churches, chapels, and meeting-houses, in which the greater number, I
hope, of my countrymen were at that time assembled, I will dare question
whether there was one more ardent prayer offered up to heaven, than
that which I then preferred for my country. "Now then," (said I to a
gentleman who was standing near me,) "we are out of our country. " "Not
yet, not yet! " he replied, and pointed to the sea; "This, too, is a
Briton's country. " This bon mot gave a fillip to my spirits, I rose and
looked round on my fellow-passengers, who were all on the deck. We
were eighteen in number, videlicet, five Englishmen, an English lady,
a French gentleman and his servant, an Hanoverian and his servant, a
Prussian, a Swede, two Danes, and a Mulatto boy, a German tailor and his
wife, (the smallest couple I ever beheld,) and a Jew. We were all on the
deck; but in a short time I observed marks of dismay. The lady retired
to the cabin in some confusion, and many of the faces round me assumed a
very doleful and frog-coloured appearance; and within an hour the number
of those on deck was lessened by one half. I was giddy, but not sick,
and the giddiness soon went away, but left a feverishness and want of
appetite, which I attributed, in great measure, to the saeva Mephitis of
the bilge-water; and it was certainly not decreased by the exportations
from the cabin. However, I was well enough to join the able-bodied
passengers, one of whom observed not inaptly, that Momus might have
discovered an easier way to see a man's inside, than by placing a
window in his breast. He needed only have taken a saltwater trip in a
packet-boat.
I am inclined to believe, that a packet is far superior to a stage-
coach, as a means of making men open out to each other. In the latter
the uniformity of posture disposes to dozing, and the definitiveness of
the period, at which the company will separate, makes each individual
think more of those to whom he is going, than of those with whom he is
going. But at sea, more curiosity is excited, if only on this account,
that the pleasant or unpleasant qualities of your companions are of
greater importance to you, from the uncertainty how long you may be
obliged to house with them. Besides, if you are countrymen, that now
begins to form a distinction and a bond of brotherhood; and if of
different countries, there are new incitements of conversation, more to
ask and more to communicate. I found that I had interested the Danes
in no common degree. I had crept into the boat on the deck and fallen
asleep; but was awakened by one of them, about three o'clock in the
afternoon, who told me that they had been seeking me in every hole and
corner, and insisted that I should join their party and drink with them.
He talked English with such fluency, as left me wholly unable to account
for the singular and even ludicrous incorrectness with which he spoke
it. I went, and found some excellent wines and a dessert of grapes with
a pine-apple. The Danes had christened me Doctor Teology, and dressed
as I was all in black, with large shoes and black worsted stockings,
I might certainly have passed very well for a Methodist missionary.
However I disclaimed my title. What then may you be? A man of fortune?
No! --A merchant? No! --A merchant's traveller? No! --A clerk? No! --Un
Philosophe, perhaps? It was at that time in my life, in which of all
possible names and characters I had the greatest disgust to that of "un
Philosophe. " But I was weary of being questioned, and rather than be
nothing, or at best only the abstract idea of a man, I submitted by a
bow, even to the aspersion implied in the word "un Philosophe. "--The
Dane then informed me, that all in the present party were Philosophers
likewise. Certes we were not of the Stoick school. For we drank and
talked and sung, till we talked and sung all together; and then we rose
and danced on the deck a set of dances, which in one sense of the word
at least, were very intelligibly and appropriately entitled reels.
The passengers, who lay in the cabin below in all the agonies of sea-
sickness, must have found our bacchanalian merriment
------a tune
Harsh and of dissonant mood from their complaint.
I thought so at the time; and, (by way, I suppose, of supporting my
newly assumed philosophical character,) I thought too, how closely the
greater number of our virtues are connected with the fear of death, and
how little sympathy we bestow on pain, where there is no danger.
The two Danes were brothers. The one was a man with a clear white
complexion, white hair, and white eyebrows; looked silly, and nothing
that he uttered gave the lie to his looks. The other, whom, by way of
eminence I have called the Dane, had likewise white hair, but was much
shorter than his brother, with slender limbs, and a very thin face
slightly pockfretten. This man convinced me of the justice of an old
remark, that many a faithful portrait in our novels and farces has been
rashly censured for an outrageous caricature, or perhaps nonentity. I
had retired to my station in the boat--he came and seated himself by my
side, and appeared not a little tipsy. He commenced the conversation in
the most magnific style, and, as a sort of pioneering to his own vanity,
he flattered me with such grossness! The parasites of the old comedy
were modest in the comparison. His language and accentuation were so
exceedingly singular, that I determined for once in my life to take
notes of a conversation. Here it follows, somewhat abridged, indeed, but
in all other respects as accurately as my memory permitted.
THE DANE. Vat imagination! vat language! vat vast science! and vat eyes!
vat a milk-vite forehead! O my heafen! vy, you're a Got!
ANSWER. You do me too much honour, Sir.
THE DANE. O me! if you should dink I is flattering you! --No, no, no! I
haf ten tousand a year--yes, ten tousand a year--yes, ten tousand pound
a year! Vel--and vat is dhat? a mere trifle! I 'ouldn't gif my sincere
heart for ten times dhe money. Yes, you're a Got! I a mere man! But, my
dear friend! dhink of me, as a man! Is, is--I mean to ask you now, my
dear friend--is I not very eloquent? Is I not speak English very fine?
ANSWER. Most admirably! Believe me, Sir! I have seldom heard even a
native talk so fluently.
THE DANE. (Squeezing my hand with great vehemence. ) My dear friend! vat
an affection and fidelity ve have for each odher! But tell me, do tell
me,--Is I not, now and den, speak some fault? Is I not in some wrong?
ANSWER. Why, Sir! perhaps it might be observed by nice critics in the
English language, that you occasionally use the word "is" instead of
"am.
" In our best companies we generally say I am, and not I is or I'se.
Excuse me, Sir! it is a mere trifle.
THE DANE. O! --is, is, am, am, am. Yes, yes--I know, I know.
ANSWER. I am, thou art, he is, we are, ye are, they are.
THE DANE. Yes, yes,--I know, I know--Am, am, am, is dhe praesens, and is
is dhe perfectum--yes, yes--and are is dhe plusquam perfectum.
ANSWER. And art, Sir! is--?
THE DANE. My dear friend! it is dhe plusquam perfectum, no, no--dhat
is a great lie; are is dhe plusquam perfectum--and art is dhe plasquam
plue-perfectum--(then swinging my hand to and fro, and cocking his
little bright hazel eyes at me, that danced with vanity and wine)--You
see, my dear friend that I too have some lehrning?
ANSWER. Learning, Sir? Who dares suspect it? Who can listen to you for a
minute, who can even look at you, without perceiving the extent of it?
THE DANE. My dear friend! --(then with a would-be humble look, and in a
tone of voice as if he was reasoning) I could not talk so of prawns and
imperfectum, and futurum and plusquamplue perfectum, and all dhat, my
dear friend! without some lehrning?
ANSWER. Sir! a man like you cannot talk on any subject without
discovering the depth of his information.
THE DANE. Dhe grammatic Greek, my friend; ha! ha! Ha! (laughing, and
swinging my hand to and fro--then with a sudden transition to great
solemnity) Now I will tell you, my dear friend! Dhere did happen about
me vat de whole historia of Denmark record no instance about nobody
else. Dhe bishop did ask me all dhe questions about all dhe religion in
dhe Latin grammar.
ANSWER. The grammar, Sir? The language, I presume--
THE DANE. (A little offended. ) Grammar is language, and language is
grammar--
ANSWER. Ten thousand pardons!
THE DANE. Vell, and I was only fourteen years--
ANSWER. Only fourteen years old?
THE DANE. No more. I vas fourteen years old--and he asked me all
questions, religion and philosophy, and all in dhe Latin language--and I
answered him all every one, my dear friend! all in dhe Latin language.
ANSWER. A prodigy! an absolute prodigy!
THE DANE. No, no, no! he was a bishop, a great superintendent.
ANSWER. Yes! a bishop.
THE DANE. A bishop--not a mere predicant, not a prediger.
ANSWER. My dear Sir! we have misunderstood each other. I said that your
answering in Latin at so early an age was a prodigy, that is, a thing
that is wonderful; that does not often happen.
THE DANE. Often! Dhere is not von instance recorded in dhe whole
historia of Denmark.
ANSWER. And since then, Sir--?
THE DANE. I was sent ofer to dhe Vest Indies--to our Island, and dhere I
had no more to do vid books. No! no! I put my genius anodher way--and
I haf made ten tousand pound a year. Is not dhat ghenius, my dear
friend? --But vat is money? --I dhink dhe poorest man alive my equal.
Yes, my dear friend; my little fortune is pleasant to my generous heart,
because I can do good--no man with so little a fortune ever did so much
generosity--no person--no man person, no woman person ever denies it.
But we are all Got's children.
Here the Hanoverian interrupted him, and the other Dane, the Swede, and
the Prussian, joined us, together with a young Englishman who spoke the
German fluently, and interpreted to me many of the Prussian's jokes. The
Prussian was a travelling merchant, turned of threescore, a hale
man, tall, strong, and stout, full of stories, gesticulations, and
buffoonery, with the soul as well as the look of a mountebank, who,
while he is making you laugh, picks your pocket. Amid all his droll
looks and droll gestures, there remained one look untouched by laughter;
and that one look was the true face, the others were but its mask. The
Hanoverian was a pale, fat, bloated young man, whose father had made a
large fortune in London, as an army-contractor. He seemed to emulate
the manners of young Englishmen of fortune. He was a good-natured
fellow, not without information or literature; but a most egregious
coxcomb. He had been in the habit of attending the House of Commons, and
had once spoken, as he informed me, with great applause in a debating
society. For this he appeared to have qualified himself with laudable
industry: for he was perfect in Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary, and
with an accent, which forcibly reminded me of the Scotchman in Roderic
Random, who professed to teach the English pronunciation, he was
constantly deferring to my superior judgment, whether or no I had
pronounced this or that word with propriety, or "the true delicacy. "
When he spoke, though it were only half a dozen sentences, he always
rose: for which I could detect no other motive, than his partiality
to that elegant phrase so liberally introduced in the orations of
our British legislators, "While I am on my legs. " The Swede, whom
for reasons that will soon appear, I shall distinguish by the name
of Nobility, was a strong-featured, scurvy-faced man, his complexion
resembling in colour, a red hot poker beginning to cool. He appeared
miserably dependent on the Dane; but was, however, incomparably the
best informed and most rational of the party. Indeed his manners
and conversation discovered him to be both a man of the world and a
gentleman. The Jew was in the hold: the French gentleman was lying on
the deck so ill, that I could observe nothing concerning him, except the
affectionate attentions of his servant to him. The poor fellow was very
sick himself, and every now and then ran to the side of the vessel,
still keeping his eye on his master, but returned in a moment and seated
himself again by him, now supporting his head, now wiping his forehead
and talking to him all the while in the most soothing tones. There
had been a matrimonial squabble of a very ludicrous kind in the cabin,
between the little German tailor and his little wife. He had secured two
beds, one for himself and one for her. This had struck the little woman
as a very cruel action; she insisted upon their having but one, and
assured the mate in the most piteous tones, that she was his lawful
wife. The mate and the cabin boy decided in her favour, abused the
little man for his want of tenderness with much humour, and hoisted
him into the same compartment with his sea-sick wife. This quarrel was
interesting to me, as it procured me a bed, which I otherwise should not
have had.
In the evening, at seven o'clock, the sea rolled higher, and the Dane,
by means of the greater agitation, eliminated enough of what he had been
swallowing to make room for a great deal more. His favourite potation
was sugar and brandy, i. e. a very little warm water with a large
quantity of brandy, sugar, and nutmeg His servant boy, a black-eyed
Mulatto, had a good-natured round face, exactly the colour of the skin
of the walnut-kernel. The Dane and I were again seated, tete-a-tete,
in the ship's boat. The conversation, which was now indeed rather an
oration than a dialogue, became extravagant beyond all that I ever
heard. He told me that he had made a large fortune in the island of
Santa Cruz, and was now returning to Denmark to enjoy it. He expatiated
on the style in which he meant to live, and the great undertakings which
he proposed to himself to commence, till, the brandy aiding his vanity,
and his vanity and garrulity aiding the brandy, he talked like a
madman--entreated me to accompany him to Denmark--there I should see his
influence with the government, and he would introduce me to the king,
etc. , etc. Thus he went on dreaming aloud, and then passing with a very
lyrical transition to the subject of general politics, he declaimed,
like a member of the Corresponding Society, about, (not concerning,)
the Rights of Man, and assured me that, notwithstanding his fortune, he
thought the poorest man alive his equal. "All are equal, my dear friend!
all are equal! Ve are all Got's children. The poorest man haf the same
rights with me. Jack! Jack! some more sugar and brandy. Dhere is dhat
fellow now! He is a Mulatto--but he is my equal. --That's right, Jack!
(taking the sugar and brandy. ) Here you Sir! shake hands with dhis
gentleman! Shake hands with me, you dog! Dhere, dhere! --We are all equal
my dear friend! Do I not speak like Socrates, and Plato, and Cato--they
were all philosophers, my dear philosophe! all very great men! --and so
was Homer and Virgil--but they were poets. Yes, yes! I know all about
it! --But what can anybody say more than this? We are all equal, all
Got's children. I haf ten tousand a year, but I am no more dhan de
meanest man alive. I haf no pride; and yet, my dear friend! I can
say, do! and it is done. Ha! ha! ha! my dear friend! Now dhere is dhat
gentleman (pointing to Nobility) he is a Swedish baron--you shall see.
Ho! (calling to the Swede) get me, will you, a bottle of wine from the
cabin. SWEDE. --Here, Jack! go and get your master a bottle of wine from
the cabin. DANE. No, no, no! do you go now--you go yourself you go now!
SWEDE. Pah! --DANE. Now go! Go, I pray you. " And the Swede went! !
After this the Dane commenced an harangue on religion, and mistaking
me for un philosophe in the continental sense of the word, he talked of
Deity in a declamatory style, very much resembling the devotional rants
of that rude blunderer, Mr. Thomas Paine, in his Age of Reason, and
whispered in my ear, what damned hypocrism all Jesus Christ's business
was. I dare aver, that few men have less reason to charge themselves
with indulging in persiflage than myself. I should hate it, if it were
only that it is a Frenchman's vice, and feel a pride in avoiding it,
because our own language is too honest to have a word to express it by.
But in this instance the temptation had been too powerful, and I have
placed it on the list of my offences. Pericles answered one of his
dearest friends, who had solicited him on a case of life and death, to
take an equivocal oath for his preservation: Debeo amicis opitulari, sed
usque ad Deos [75]. Friendship herself must place her last and boldest
step on this side the altar. What Pericles would not do to save a
friend's life, you may be assured, I would not hazard merely to mill the
chocolate-pot of a drunken fool's vanity till it frothed over. Assuming
a serious look, I professed myself a believer, and sunk at once an
hundred fathoms in his good graces. He retired to his cabin, and I
wrapped myself up in my great coat, and looked at the water. A beautiful
white cloud of foam at momently intervals coursed by the side of the
vessel with a roar, and little stars of flame danced and sparkled and
went out in it: and every now and then light detachments of this white
cloud-like foam darted off from the vessel's side, each with its own
small constellation, over the sea, and scoured out of sight like a
Tartar troop over a wilderness.
It was cold, the cabin was at open war with my olfactories, and I found
reason to rejoice in my great coat, a weighty high-caped, respectable
rug, the collar of which turned over, and played the part of a night-cap
very passably. In looking up at two or three bright stars, which
oscillated with the motion of the sails, I fell asleep, but was awakened
at one o'clock, Monday morning, by a shower of rain. I found myself
compelled to go down into the cabin, where I slept very soundly, and
awoke with a very good appetite at breakfast time, my nostrils, the most
placable of all the senses, reconciled to, or indeed insensible of the
mephitis.
Monday, September 17th, I had a long conversation with the Swede, who
spoke with the most poignant contempt of the Dane, whom he described as
a fool, purse-mad; but he confirmed the boasts of the Dane respecting
the largeness of his fortune, which he had acquired in the first
instance as an advocate, and afterwards as a planter. From the Dane and
from himself I collected that he was indeed a Swedish nobleman, who had
squandered a fortune, that was never very large, and had made over his
property to the Dane, on whom he was now utterly dependent. He seemed
to suffer very little pain from the Dane's insolence. He was in a high
degree humane and attentive to the English lady, who suffered most
fearfully, and for whom he performed many little offices with a
tenderness and delicacy which seemed to prove real goodness of heart.
Indeed his general manners and conversation were not only pleasing,
but even interesting; and I struggled to believe his insensibility
respecting the Dane philosophical fortitude. For though the Dane was
now quite sober, his character oozed out of him at every pore. And after
dinner, when he was again flushed with wine, every quarter of an hour or
perhaps oftener he would shout out to the Swede, "Ho! Nobility, go--do
such a thing! Mr. Nobility! --tell the gentlemen such a story, and
so forth;" with an insolence which must have excited disgust and
detestation, if his vulgar rants on the sacred rights of equality,
joined to his wild havoc of general grammar no less than of the English
language, had not rendered it so irresistibly laughable.
At four o'clock I observed a wild duck swimming on the waves, a single
solitary wild duck. It is not easy to conceive, how interesting a thing
it looked in that round objectless desert of waters. I had associated
such a feeling of immensity with the ocean, that I felt exceedingly
disappointed, when I was out of sight of all land, at the narrowness and
nearness, as it were, of the circle of the horizon. So little are images
capable of satisfying the obscure feelings connected with words. In the
evening the sails were lowered, lest we should run foul of the land,
which can be seen only at a small distance. And at four o'clock, on
Tuesday morning, I was awakened by the cry of "land! land! " It was an
ugly island rock at a distance on our left, called Heiligeland, well
known to many passengers from Yarmouth to Hamburg, who have been obliged
by stormy weather to pass weeks and weeks in weary captivity on it,
stripped of all their money by the exorbitant demands of the wretches
who inhabit it. So at least the sailors informed me. --About nine o'clock
we saw the main land, which seemed scarcely able to hold its head above
water, low, flat, and dreary, with lighthouses and land-marks which
seemed to give a character and language to the dreariness. We entered
the mouth of the Elbe, passing Neu-werk; though as yet the right bank
only of the river was visible to us. On this I saw a church, and thanked
God for my safe voyage, not without affectionate thoughts of those I
had left in England. At eleven o'clock on the same morning we arrived
at Cuxhaven, the ship dropped anchor, and the boat was hoisted out, to
carry the Hanoverian and a few others on shore. The captain agreed to
take us, who remained, to Hamburg for ten guineas, to which the Dane
contributed so largely, that the other passengers paid but half a guinea
each. Accordingly we hauled anchor, and passed gently up the river. At
Cuxhaven both sides of the river may be seen in clear weather; we could
now see the right bank only. We passed a multitude of English traders
that had been waiting many weeks for a wind. In a short time both banks
became visible, both flat and evidencing the labour of human hands by
their extreme neatness. On the left bank I saw a church or two in
the distance; on the right bank we passed by steeple and windmill and
cottage, and windmill and single house, windmill and windmill, and neat
single house, and steeple. These were the objects and in the succession.
The shores were very green and planted with trees not inelegantly.
Thirty-five miles from Cuxhaven the night came on us, and, as the
navigation of the Elbe is perilous, we dropped anchor.
