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!
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!
Coleridge - Biographia Literaria copy
Children at this age give us no such information of
themselves; and at what time were we dipped in the Lethe, which has
produced such utter oblivion of a state so godlike? There are many of us
that still possess some remembrances, more or less distinct, respecting
themselves at six years old; pity that the worthless straws only should
float, while treasures, compared with which all the mines of Golconda
and Mexico were but straws, should be absorbed by some unknown gulf into
some unknown abyss.
But if this be too wild and exorbitant to be suspected as having
been the poet's meaning; if these mysterious gifts, faculties, and
operations, are not accompanied with consciousness; who else is
conscious of them? or how can it be called the child, if it be no part
of the child's conscious being? For aught I know, the thinking Spirit
within me may be substantially one with the principle of life, and of
vital operation. For aught I know, it might be employed as a secondary
agent in the marvellous organization and organic movements of my body.
But, surely, it would be strange language to say, that I construct my
heart! or that I propel the finer influences through my nerves! or that
I compress my brain, and draw the curtains of sleep round my own eyes!
Spinoza and Behmen were, on different systems, both Pantheists; and
among the ancients there were philosophers, teachers of the EN KAI PAN,
who not only taught that God was All, but that this All constituted God.
Yet not even these would confound the part, as a part, with the
whole, as the whole. Nay, in no system is the distinction between
the individual and God, between the Modification, and the one only
Substance, more sharply drawn, than in that of Spinoza. Jacobi indeed
relates of Lessing, that, after a conversation with him at the house of
the Poet, Gleim, (the Tyrtaeus and Anacreon of the German Parnassus,) in
which conversation Lessing had avowed privately to Jacobi his reluctance
to admit any personal existence of the Supreme Being, or the possibility
of personality except in a finite Intellect, and while they were sitting
at table, a shower of rain came on unexpectedly. Gleim expressed his
regret at the circumstance, because they had meant to drink their
wine in the garden: upon which Lessing in one of his half-earnest,
half-joking moods, nodded to Jacobi, and said, "It is I, perhaps, that
am doing that," i. e. raining! --and Jacobi answered, "or perhaps I;"
Gleim contented himself with staring at them both, without asking for
any explanation.
So with regard to this passage. In what sense can the magnificent
attributes, above quoted, be appropriated to a child, which would not
make them equally suitable to a bee, or a dog, or afield of corn: or
even to a ship, or to the wind and waves that propel it? The omnipresent
Spirit works equally in them, as in the child; and the child is equally
unconscious of it as they. It cannot surely be, that the four lines,
immediately following, are to contain the explanation?
"To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;"--
Surely, it cannot be that this wonder-rousing apostrophe is but a
comment on the little poem, "We are Seven? "--that the whole meaning of
the passage is reducible to the assertion, that a child, who by the bye
at six years old would have been better instructed in most Christian
families, has no other notion of death than that of lying in a dark,
cold place? And still, I hope, not as in a place of thought! not the
frightful notion of lying awake in his grave! The analogy between death
and sleep is too simple, too natural, to render so horrid a belief
possible for children; even had they not been in the habit, as all
Christian children are, of hearing the latter term used to express the
former. But if the child's belief be only, that "he is not dead, but
sleepeth:" wherein does it differ from that of his father and mother,
or any other adult and instructed person? To form an idea of a thing's
becoming nothing; or of nothing becoming a thing; is impossible to
all finite beings alike, of whatever age, and however educated or
uneducated. Thus it is with splendid paradoxes in general. If the words
are taken in the common sense, they convey an absurdity; and if, in
contempt of dictionaries and custom, they are so interpreted as to avoid
the absurdity, the meaning dwindles into some bald truism. Thus you must
at once understand the words contrary to their common import, in order
to arrive at any sense; and according to their common import, if you are
to receive from them any feeling of sublimity or admiration.
Though the instances of this defect in Mr. Wordsworth's poems are so
few, that for themselves it would have been scarcely just to attract the
reader's attention toward them; yet I have dwelt on it, and perhaps the
more for this very reason. For being so very few, they cannot sensibly
detract from the reputation of an author, who is even characterized
by the number of profound truths in his writings, which will stand
the severest analysis; and yet few as they are, they are exactly those
passages which his blind admirers would be most likely, and best able,
to imitate. But Wordsworth, where he is indeed Wordsworth, may be
mimicked by copyists, he may be plundered by plagiarists; but he cannot
be imitated, except by those who are not born to be imitators. For
without his depth of feeling and his imaginative power his sense would
want its vital warmth and peculiarity; and without his strong sense, his
mysticism would become sickly--mere fog, and dimness!
To these defects which, as appears by the extracts, are only occasional,
I may oppose, with far less fear of encountering the dissent of
any candid and intelligent reader, the following (for the most part
correspondent) excellencies. First, an austere purity of language both
grammatically and logically; in short a perfect appropriateness of
the words to the meaning. Of how high value I deem this, and how
particularly estimable I hold the example at the present day, has been
already stated: and in part too the reasons on which I ground both the
moral and intellectual importance of habituating ourselves to a strict
accuracy of expression. It is noticeable, how limited an acquaintance
with the masterpieces of art will suffice to form a correct and even
a sensitive taste, where none but master-pieces have been seen and
admired: while on the other hand, the most correct notions, and the
widest acquaintance with the works of excellence of all ages and
countries, will not perfectly secure us against the contagious
familiarity with the far more numerous offspring of tastelessness or of
a perverted taste. If this be the case, as it notoriously is, with the
arts of music and painting, much more difficult will it be, to avoid the
infection of multiplied and daily examples in the practice of an art,
which uses words, and words only, as its instruments. In poetry, in
which every line, every phrase, may pass the ordeal of deliberation and
deliberate choice, it is possible, and barely possible, to attain that
ultimatum which I have ventured to propose as the infallible test of
a blameless style; namely: its untranslatableness in words of the same
language without injury to the meaning. Be it observed, however, that I
include in the meaning of a word not only its correspondent object, but
likewise all the associations which it recalls. For language is framed
to convey not the object alone but likewise the character, mood and
intentions of the person who is representing it. In poetry it is
practicable to preserve the diction uncorrupted by the affectations
and misappropriations, which promiscuous authorship, and reading not
promiscuous only because it is disproportionally most conversant with
the compositions of the day, have rendered general. Yet even to the
poet, composing in his own province, it is an arduous work: and as
the result and pledge of a watchful good sense of fine and luminous
distinction, and of complete self-possession, may justly claim all the
honour which belongs to an attainment equally difficult and valuable,
and the more valuable for being rare. It is at all times the proper food
of the understanding; but in an age of corrupt eloquence it is both food
and antidote.
In prose I doubt whether it be even possible to preserve our style
wholly unalloyed by the vicious phraseology which meets us everywhere,
from the sermon to the newspaper, from the harangue of the legislator
to the speech from the convivial chair, announcing a toast or sentiment.
Our chains rattle, even while we are complaining of them. The poems of
Boetius rise high in our estimation when we compare them with those of
his contemporaries, as Sidonius Apollinaris, and others. They might even
be referred to a purer age, but that the prose, in which they are
set, as jewels in a crown of lead or iron, betrays the true age of the
writer. Much however may be effected by education. I believe not only
from grounds of reason, but from having in great measure assured myself
of the fact by actual though limited experience, that, to a youth led
from his first boyhood to investigate the meaning of every word and
the reason of its choice and position, logic presents itself as an old
acquaintance under new names.
On some future occasion, more especially demanding such disquisition, I
shall attempt to prove the close connection between veracity and habits
of mental accuracy; the beneficial after-effects of verbal precision in
the preclusion of fanaticism, which masters the feelings more especially
by indistinct watch-words; and to display the advantages which language
alone, at least which language with incomparably greater ease and
certainty than any other means, presents to the instructor of impressing
modes of intellectual energy so constantly, so imperceptibly, and as it
were by such elements and atoms, as to secure in due time the formation
of a second nature. When we reflect, that the cultivation of the
judgment is a positive command of the moral law, since the reason can
give the principle alone, and the conscience bears witness only to the
motive, while the application and effects must depend on the judgment
when we consider, that the greater part of our success and comfort in
life depends on distinguishing the similar from the same, that which is
peculiar in each thing from that which it has in common with others, so
as still to select the most probable, instead of the merely possible or
positively unfit, we shall learn to value earnestly and with a practical
seriousness a mean, already prepared for us by nature and society,
of teaching the young mind to think well and wisely by the same
unremembered process and with the same never forgotten results, as those
by which it is taught to speak and converse. Now how much warmer
the interest is, how much more genial the feelings of reality and
practicability, and thence how much stronger the impulses to imitation
are, which a contemporary writer, and especially a contemporary poet,
excites in youth and commencing manhood, has been treated of in the
earlier pages of these sketches. I have only to add, that all the
praise which is due to the exertion of such influence for a purpose so
important, joined with that which must be claimed for the infrequency of
the same excellence in the same perfection, belongs in full right to
Mr. Wordsworth. I am far however from denying that we have poets whose
general style possesses the same excellence, as Mr. Moore, Lord
Byron, Mr. Bowles, and, in all his later and more important works, our
laurel-honouring Laureate. But there are none, in whose works I do not
appear to myself to find more exceptions, than in those of Wordsworth.
Quotations or specimens would here be wholly out of place, and must be
left for the critic who doubts and would invalidate the justice of this
eulogy so applied.
The second characteristic excellence of Mr. Wordsworth's work is: a
correspondent weight and sanity of the Thoughts and Sentiments,--won,
not from books; but--from the poet's own meditative observation. They
are fresh and have the dew upon them. His muse, at least when in her
strength of wing, and when she hovers aloft in her proper element,
Makes audible a linked lay of truth,
Of truth profound a sweet continuous lay,
Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes!
Even throughout his smaller poems there is scarcely one, which is not
rendered valuable by some just and original reflection.
See page 25, vol. II. : or the two following passages in one of his
humblest compositions.
"O Reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you would find
A tale in every thing;"
and
"I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Has oftener left me mourning;"
or in a still higher strain the six beautiful quatrains, page 134.
"Thus fares it still in our decay:
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.
The Blackbird in the summer trees,
The Lark upon the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will.
With Nature never do they wage
A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free!
But we are pressed by heavy laws;
And often glad no more,
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.
If there is one, who need bemoan
His kindred laid in earth,
The household hearts that were his own,
It is the man of mirth.
My days, my Friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,
And many love me; but by none
Am I enough beloved;"
or the sonnet on Buonaparte, page 202, vol. II. or finally (for a volume
would scarce suffice to exhaust the instances,) the last stanza of the
poem on the withered Celandine, vol. II. p. 312.
"To be a Prodigal's Favorite--then, worse truth,
A Miser's Pensioner--behold our lot!
O Man! That from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things Youth needed not. "
Both in respect of this and of the former excellence, Mr. Wordsworth
strikingly resembles Samuel Daniel, one of the golden writers of our
golden Elizabethan age, now most causelessly neglected: Samuel Daniel,
whose diction bears no mark of time, no distinction of age which
has been, and as long as our language shall last, will be so far the
language of the to-day and for ever, as that it is more intelligible to
us, than the transitory fashions of our own particular age. 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.
themselves; and at what time were we dipped in the Lethe, which has
produced such utter oblivion of a state so godlike? There are many of us
that still possess some remembrances, more or less distinct, respecting
themselves at six years old; pity that the worthless straws only should
float, while treasures, compared with which all the mines of Golconda
and Mexico were but straws, should be absorbed by some unknown gulf into
some unknown abyss.
But if this be too wild and exorbitant to be suspected as having
been the poet's meaning; if these mysterious gifts, faculties, and
operations, are not accompanied with consciousness; who else is
conscious of them? or how can it be called the child, if it be no part
of the child's conscious being? For aught I know, the thinking Spirit
within me may be substantially one with the principle of life, and of
vital operation. For aught I know, it might be employed as a secondary
agent in the marvellous organization and organic movements of my body.
But, surely, it would be strange language to say, that I construct my
heart! or that I propel the finer influences through my nerves! or that
I compress my brain, and draw the curtains of sleep round my own eyes!
Spinoza and Behmen were, on different systems, both Pantheists; and
among the ancients there were philosophers, teachers of the EN KAI PAN,
who not only taught that God was All, but that this All constituted God.
Yet not even these would confound the part, as a part, with the
whole, as the whole. Nay, in no system is the distinction between
the individual and God, between the Modification, and the one only
Substance, more sharply drawn, than in that of Spinoza. Jacobi indeed
relates of Lessing, that, after a conversation with him at the house of
the Poet, Gleim, (the Tyrtaeus and Anacreon of the German Parnassus,) in
which conversation Lessing had avowed privately to Jacobi his reluctance
to admit any personal existence of the Supreme Being, or the possibility
of personality except in a finite Intellect, and while they were sitting
at table, a shower of rain came on unexpectedly. Gleim expressed his
regret at the circumstance, because they had meant to drink their
wine in the garden: upon which Lessing in one of his half-earnest,
half-joking moods, nodded to Jacobi, and said, "It is I, perhaps, that
am doing that," i. e. raining! --and Jacobi answered, "or perhaps I;"
Gleim contented himself with staring at them both, without asking for
any explanation.
So with regard to this passage. In what sense can the magnificent
attributes, above quoted, be appropriated to a child, which would not
make them equally suitable to a bee, or a dog, or afield of corn: or
even to a ship, or to the wind and waves that propel it? The omnipresent
Spirit works equally in them, as in the child; and the child is equally
unconscious of it as they. It cannot surely be, that the four lines,
immediately following, are to contain the explanation?
"To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;"--
Surely, it cannot be that this wonder-rousing apostrophe is but a
comment on the little poem, "We are Seven? "--that the whole meaning of
the passage is reducible to the assertion, that a child, who by the bye
at six years old would have been better instructed in most Christian
families, has no other notion of death than that of lying in a dark,
cold place? And still, I hope, not as in a place of thought! not the
frightful notion of lying awake in his grave! The analogy between death
and sleep is too simple, too natural, to render so horrid a belief
possible for children; even had they not been in the habit, as all
Christian children are, of hearing the latter term used to express the
former. But if the child's belief be only, that "he is not dead, but
sleepeth:" wherein does it differ from that of his father and mother,
or any other adult and instructed person? To form an idea of a thing's
becoming nothing; or of nothing becoming a thing; is impossible to
all finite beings alike, of whatever age, and however educated or
uneducated. Thus it is with splendid paradoxes in general. If the words
are taken in the common sense, they convey an absurdity; and if, in
contempt of dictionaries and custom, they are so interpreted as to avoid
the absurdity, the meaning dwindles into some bald truism. Thus you must
at once understand the words contrary to their common import, in order
to arrive at any sense; and according to their common import, if you are
to receive from them any feeling of sublimity or admiration.
Though the instances of this defect in Mr. Wordsworth's poems are so
few, that for themselves it would have been scarcely just to attract the
reader's attention toward them; yet I have dwelt on it, and perhaps the
more for this very reason. For being so very few, they cannot sensibly
detract from the reputation of an author, who is even characterized
by the number of profound truths in his writings, which will stand
the severest analysis; and yet few as they are, they are exactly those
passages which his blind admirers would be most likely, and best able,
to imitate. But Wordsworth, where he is indeed Wordsworth, may be
mimicked by copyists, he may be plundered by plagiarists; but he cannot
be imitated, except by those who are not born to be imitators. For
without his depth of feeling and his imaginative power his sense would
want its vital warmth and peculiarity; and without his strong sense, his
mysticism would become sickly--mere fog, and dimness!
To these defects which, as appears by the extracts, are only occasional,
I may oppose, with far less fear of encountering the dissent of
any candid and intelligent reader, the following (for the most part
correspondent) excellencies. First, an austere purity of language both
grammatically and logically; in short a perfect appropriateness of
the words to the meaning. Of how high value I deem this, and how
particularly estimable I hold the example at the present day, has been
already stated: and in part too the reasons on which I ground both the
moral and intellectual importance of habituating ourselves to a strict
accuracy of expression. It is noticeable, how limited an acquaintance
with the masterpieces of art will suffice to form a correct and even
a sensitive taste, where none but master-pieces have been seen and
admired: while on the other hand, the most correct notions, and the
widest acquaintance with the works of excellence of all ages and
countries, will not perfectly secure us against the contagious
familiarity with the far more numerous offspring of tastelessness or of
a perverted taste. If this be the case, as it notoriously is, with the
arts of music and painting, much more difficult will it be, to avoid the
infection of multiplied and daily examples in the practice of an art,
which uses words, and words only, as its instruments. In poetry, in
which every line, every phrase, may pass the ordeal of deliberation and
deliberate choice, it is possible, and barely possible, to attain that
ultimatum which I have ventured to propose as the infallible test of
a blameless style; namely: its untranslatableness in words of the same
language without injury to the meaning. Be it observed, however, that I
include in the meaning of a word not only its correspondent object, but
likewise all the associations which it recalls. For language is framed
to convey not the object alone but likewise the character, mood and
intentions of the person who is representing it. In poetry it is
practicable to preserve the diction uncorrupted by the affectations
and misappropriations, which promiscuous authorship, and reading not
promiscuous only because it is disproportionally most conversant with
the compositions of the day, have rendered general. Yet even to the
poet, composing in his own province, it is an arduous work: and as
the result and pledge of a watchful good sense of fine and luminous
distinction, and of complete self-possession, may justly claim all the
honour which belongs to an attainment equally difficult and valuable,
and the more valuable for being rare. It is at all times the proper food
of the understanding; but in an age of corrupt eloquence it is both food
and antidote.
In prose I doubt whether it be even possible to preserve our style
wholly unalloyed by the vicious phraseology which meets us everywhere,
from the sermon to the newspaper, from the harangue of the legislator
to the speech from the convivial chair, announcing a toast or sentiment.
Our chains rattle, even while we are complaining of them. The poems of
Boetius rise high in our estimation when we compare them with those of
his contemporaries, as Sidonius Apollinaris, and others. They might even
be referred to a purer age, but that the prose, in which they are
set, as jewels in a crown of lead or iron, betrays the true age of the
writer. Much however may be effected by education. I believe not only
from grounds of reason, but from having in great measure assured myself
of the fact by actual though limited experience, that, to a youth led
from his first boyhood to investigate the meaning of every word and
the reason of its choice and position, logic presents itself as an old
acquaintance under new names.
On some future occasion, more especially demanding such disquisition, I
shall attempt to prove the close connection between veracity and habits
of mental accuracy; the beneficial after-effects of verbal precision in
the preclusion of fanaticism, which masters the feelings more especially
by indistinct watch-words; and to display the advantages which language
alone, at least which language with incomparably greater ease and
certainty than any other means, presents to the instructor of impressing
modes of intellectual energy so constantly, so imperceptibly, and as it
were by such elements and atoms, as to secure in due time the formation
of a second nature. When we reflect, that the cultivation of the
judgment is a positive command of the moral law, since the reason can
give the principle alone, and the conscience bears witness only to the
motive, while the application and effects must depend on the judgment
when we consider, that the greater part of our success and comfort in
life depends on distinguishing the similar from the same, that which is
peculiar in each thing from that which it has in common with others, so
as still to select the most probable, instead of the merely possible or
positively unfit, we shall learn to value earnestly and with a practical
seriousness a mean, already prepared for us by nature and society,
of teaching the young mind to think well and wisely by the same
unremembered process and with the same never forgotten results, as those
by which it is taught to speak and converse. Now how much warmer
the interest is, how much more genial the feelings of reality and
practicability, and thence how much stronger the impulses to imitation
are, which a contemporary writer, and especially a contemporary poet,
excites in youth and commencing manhood, has been treated of in the
earlier pages of these sketches. I have only to add, that all the
praise which is due to the exertion of such influence for a purpose so
important, joined with that which must be claimed for the infrequency of
the same excellence in the same perfection, belongs in full right to
Mr. Wordsworth. I am far however from denying that we have poets whose
general style possesses the same excellence, as Mr. Moore, Lord
Byron, Mr. Bowles, and, in all his later and more important works, our
laurel-honouring Laureate. But there are none, in whose works I do not
appear to myself to find more exceptions, than in those of Wordsworth.
Quotations or specimens would here be wholly out of place, and must be
left for the critic who doubts and would invalidate the justice of this
eulogy so applied.
The second characteristic excellence of Mr. Wordsworth's work is: a
correspondent weight and sanity of the Thoughts and Sentiments,--won,
not from books; but--from the poet's own meditative observation. They
are fresh and have the dew upon them. His muse, at least when in her
strength of wing, and when she hovers aloft in her proper element,
Makes audible a linked lay of truth,
Of truth profound a sweet continuous lay,
Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes!
Even throughout his smaller poems there is scarcely one, which is not
rendered valuable by some just and original reflection.
See page 25, vol. II. : or the two following passages in one of his
humblest compositions.
"O Reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you would find
A tale in every thing;"
and
"I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Has oftener left me mourning;"
or in a still higher strain the six beautiful quatrains, page 134.
"Thus fares it still in our decay:
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.
The Blackbird in the summer trees,
The Lark upon the hill,
Let loose their carols when they please,
Are quiet when they will.
With Nature never do they wage
A foolish strife; they see
A happy youth, and their old age
Is beautiful and free!
But we are pressed by heavy laws;
And often glad no more,
We wear a face of joy, because
We have been glad of yore.
If there is one, who need bemoan
His kindred laid in earth,
The household hearts that were his own,
It is the man of mirth.
My days, my Friend, are almost gone,
My life has been approved,
And many love me; but by none
Am I enough beloved;"
or the sonnet on Buonaparte, page 202, vol. II. or finally (for a volume
would scarce suffice to exhaust the instances,) the last stanza of the
poem on the withered Celandine, vol. II. p. 312.
"To be a Prodigal's Favorite--then, worse truth,
A Miser's Pensioner--behold our lot!
O Man! That from thy fair and shining youth
Age might but take the things Youth needed not. "
Both in respect of this and of the former excellence, Mr. Wordsworth
strikingly resembles Samuel Daniel, one of the golden writers of our
golden Elizabethan age, now most causelessly neglected: Samuel Daniel,
whose diction bears no mark of time, no distinction of age which
has been, and as long as our language shall last, will be so far the
language of the to-day and for ever, as that it is more intelligible to
us, than the transitory fashions of our own particular age. 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.
