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Leader (1850-1860), 26th April 1851, Edition Town of 1, Page 394, Untitled Article

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      LIFK OF WORDSWORTH . Memoirs of William Wordtivorth , Poet Laureat , JD . C . L . By Christopher Wordsworth , D . D . In 2 vols . Moxon . All . things considered , this is perhaps the worst biographical attempt we ever waded through . Indeed , by a candour which is amusing as the preface to two thick volumes , Dr . Wordsworth confesses that no Life should be written . The Poems are the Life : — " His Works , therefore , are his Life . And it would be a superfluous and presumptuous enterprise to encroach upon this their province , and to invade the biographical eminence on which his poems stand . Let them retain their supremacy in this respect ; and let no other Life of Wordsworth Be composed beside what has thus been written with his own hand . "

      Then why these volumes ? Dr . Wordsworth tells us they have a humbler task , viz ., that of giving a biographical commentary on the Poet ' s works . This task they execute , but execute it clumsily and uninterestingly . Not only is Dr . Wordsworth a most indifferent book-maker , he is also a more than indifferent critic . The great aesthetic questions involved in Wordsworth ' s works and theories are left untouched ; while the depth and novelty of the occasional remarks may be estimated by the following : —

      " From this striking example the reflecting reader will learn to distrust contemporary opinions , and to take counsel with , himself and with Nature ; and he will feel satisfied , that if his judgments are based upon the enduring foundation of natural laws , then , although they may not be in unison with conventional usages and contemporary language , those judgments will utimately prevail , and be sanctioned by the verdict of posterity . Trained in such discipline as this , the intellect may escape the danger of a servile subjection to popular fallacies and fashionable idolatries , and may live and breathe , with satisfaction , in the air of liberty and truth . "

      If his judgments are based on natural laws , they will be correct : the proposition does not strike us as remarkably novel ! But will Dr . Wordsworth inform us how the critic is to ascertain the point , seeing that the " conventional usages " and " popular fallacies" are never known to be other than the truth by those who uphold them ? The book , therefore , neither possessing nor professing biographical interest , and assuredly possessing no critical value except that derived from the letters of Wordsworth himself , it behoves us to answer the question , What kind of interest these volumes really do possess , if any ? It is soon told :

      firstly , the history of almost every poem is given , and the places where it was written named . Without shedding much light upon the works , these notes may be considered as readable gossip about them . Secondly , the letters of Wordsworth to various persons . Of all published letters by remarkable men they are the least generally interesting that we remember . But , amidst the monotony of their self-reference , there appears every now and then a passage of fine thoughtful criticism , beautifully expressed . Wordsworth was a High Priest in Poetry . His vocation was sacred in his eyes ; and he always spoke of it in a dignified strain .

      We will waste no paragraphs in criticising this book ; but cater for the reader ' s pleasure by an extract or two : —

      ir . AMI . IiT . " I never saw Hamlet acted myself , nor do I know what kind of play they make of it . 1 think I have heard thai Home parts which I consider among the finest are omitted ; in particular , Hamlet ' s mh'W language after the Ghost has disappeared . " We emphasize the last sentence , glad to have Wordsworth ' s authority supporting our objection to this omission , which , in an article some time back on C . Kean ' s Hamlet , wo pointed out as a general error in the acted play . The passages omitted contain the key to Hamlet ' s madness .

      llKYDKM . " My dear Scott , —I was much pleased to liear of your engagement with Dryden ; not that he is , ana poet , any great , favourite of mine . I admire hiti talentH and geniiiH highly , but his is not a . poetical geniiiH . The only qualities I can lind in Dryden that are essentially poetical arc a certain ardour and imnetuoHity of mind , with an excellent our . It may BCtun Htrange that 1 do not add to thin great command of language ; that he certainly ha « , and of such language too , an it ia most desirable that a poet nhould poHKcHH , or , rather , that he should not be without .

      But . it is not language that is , in the highest neiibe of the word , poetical , b-ing neither of Iho imagination nor of the pangolin ; 1 mean the amiable , the ennobling , or the intennc piis . sionn . 1 do not mean to nay that then is nothing of Una in J ) rydcn , but as littlo , 1 think , an ia poHBiule , considering how much he haw written . You will easily understand my meaning when 1 refer to hio versification of 1 ' alaman and Ardto , as contrasted with the language of Chaucer . Dryden had neither a tender heart nor a lofty ueme of moral dignity . Whenever his luiiftungu is politically impassioned it ia mostly upon unpleatting uubjeotH , wuoh an the follies , vice * , and

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      crimes of classes of men , or of individuals . That his cannot be the language of imagination must have necessarily followed from this , that there is not a single image from nature in the whole body of his works ; and in his translation from Virgil , whenever Virgil can be fairly said to have his eye upon his object , Dryden always spoils the passage . " I . 0 G 1 C IN POETRY . " The logical faculty has infinitely more to do with poetry than the young and the inexperienced , whether writer or critic , ever dreams of . Indeed , as the materials upon which that faculty is exercised in poetry are so subtle , so plastio , so complex , the application of it requires an adroitness which can proceed from nothing but practice , a discernment which emotion is so far from bestowing , that at first it is ever in the way of it . "

      ARE THE ENGLISH UNPOETICAL ? " It has been said that the English , though their country has produced so many great poets , is now the most unpoetical nation in Europe . It is probably true , for they have more temptation to become bo than any other European people . Trade , commerce , and manufactures , physical science and mechanic arts , out of which so much wealth has arisen , have made our countrymen infinitely less sensible to movements of imagination and fancy than were our forefathers in their simple state of society . How touching and beautiful were , in most instances , the names they gave to our indigenous flowers , or any other they were familiarly acquainted

      with ! Every month , for many years , have we been importing plants and flowers from all quarters of the globe , many of which are spread through our gardens , and lome , perhaps , likely to be met with on the few commons which we have left . Will their botanical names ever be displaced by plain English appellations which will bring them home to our hearts by connection with our joys and sorrows ? It can never be , unless society treads back her steps towards those simplicities which have been vanished by the undue ^ influence of towns spreading and spreading in every

      direction , so that city life with every generation takes more and more the lead of rural . Among the ancients , villages were reckoned the seats of barbarism . Refinement , for the most part false , increases the desire to accumulate wealth ; and while theories of political economy are boastfully pleading for the practice , inhumanity pervades all our dealings in buying and selling . This selfishness wars against disinterested imagination in all directions , and , evils corning round in a circle , barbarism spreads in every quarter of our island . Oh , for the reign of justice ! and then the humblest man among us would have more peace and dignity . "

      YOUTH , MANHOOD , AGE . " I was struck by what seemed to me a beautiful analogy which I once heard him draw , and which was new to me—that the individual characters of mankind showed themselves distinctively in childhood and youth , as those of trees in spring ; that of both , of trees in summer and and of human kind in middle life , they were then alike to a great degree merged in a dull uniformity ; and that again , in autumn and in declining age , there appeared afresh all their original and inherent variety brought out into view with deeper marking of character , with more vivid contrast , and with great accession of interest and beauty . " There is little in Wordsworth's letters but what concerns himself . He did not live in others .

      Selfsufficing , self-centered , even as a young and obscure poet , he was not likely to grow diffusive as he grew older . This robs his correspondence of many pleasant lights . What would any one gather of Coleridge , Southey , Byron , tShelley , Keats , Moore , Scott , or Lamb from these pages ? Of Jeffrey , indeed , we learn something—if only that he" Has taken a perpetual retainer from his own incapacity to plead against my claim to public approbation . " A scarcasm bitter enough , but powerless , because untrue . On the whole , the work has been a lamentable disappointment to us .

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      YEAST . Yeast : a Protilmn . Reprinted , with correctione &nd additions , from Fntser ' s Magazine . J . W . 1 'u . rkt'r . Ii' —as we cannot help thinking—the ideal of an English country gentleman in a mixture of the Churchman and the Fox hunter , the beautiful blending of manly sport with intellectual seriousness—then is Yeast the book of books for a country house . It touches , indeed , and with no light , cureless band , mout of the questions brulantes—the insurgent theories which agitate English society at this moment , telling us what is the Hpecies of yeast which now * ' raises" th « dough of civilization ; it

      withdrawN the veil from the Carlylism , I ' useyism , Methodism , and Young lOnglandisrn , nnd exhibits them an moving currents of action with classes of men ; but it also sweepn out of the study into the open air , and after the dumps and fogs of speculation shows us the vigorous , bracing activities of life . The substance of the book is ead . Jt records social disorganization . It paints the agricultural disease ; it paints also the disease of Hcepticiam and formalism , which eats out the life of the cultivated classes . The condition of the poor is not more vividly painted than the condition of the rich . And yet with all this suducBH at th «

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      bottom , there is a bright genial sunshine on these pages which takes away from the subject its acerbity . If society is sick at heart the individuals are loveable , Argemone , Honoris , —how we doat upon them both , the stately and the gentle Lancelot , the type of a large class ; Bracebridge , the perfect gentleman ; Paul Tregarva , the noble Methodist , with his silent love and deep earnestness ; Lavington , the vinous-faced , hearty-cursing squire ; old Harry Verney , too , the gamekeeper , an admirable sketch , must not be forgotten . As a story it is not so improbable and absurd as Alton Locke , but it is a mere thread connecting the various passages for which the book itself was written ; novel readers will , perhaps , prefer it to Alton Locke on account of its passionate eloquence and exquisite love passages . There is undeniable genius in it , and the beauty of certain passages reveals a poet and a thinker . Nor is the book any the worse for the unpolished fierceness of some of its phrases ., which delicate critics might object to . We will dip into the volume for an extract or so ( and be ' pleased to understand us literally , as dipping and choosing nearly ad aperturam hbri ) . A MARCH DAT . " The weather that day , the first day Lancelot ever saw his beloved , was truly national . A silent , dim , distanceless , steaming , rotting day in March . The last brown oak-leaf , which had stood out the winter ' s frost , spun and quivered plump down , and then lay , as if ashamed to have broken for a moment the ghastly stillness , like an awkward guest at a great dumb dinner party . A cold suck of wind just proved its existence , by toothaches on the north side of all faces . The spiders , having been weather bewitched the night before , had unanimously agreed to cover every brake and brier

      with gossamer cradles , and never a fly to be caught in them ; like Manchester cotton-spinners madly glutting the markets in the teeth of ' no demand . ' The steam crawled out of the dank turf , and reeked off the flanks and nostrils of the shivering horses , and clung with clammy paws to frosted hats and dripping boughs . A soulless , skylesa , catarrhal day , as if that bustling dowager , old mother Earth—what with match-making in spring , and fetes champetres in summer , and dinnergiving in autumn—was fairly worn out , and put to bed with the influenza , under wet blankets and the cold water cure . "

      In a few minutes the scene becomes animated , and " Lancelot began to stalk slowly with a dozen horsemen up the wood-ride , to a fitful accompaniment of wandering hound-music , where the choristers were as invisible as nightingales among the thick cover . And hark ! just as the book was returned to his pocket , the sweet hubbub suddenly crashed out iDto one jubilant shriek , and then swept away fainter and fainter among the trees . The walk became a trot—the trot a canter .

      Then a faint melancholy shout at a distance , answered by a 'Stole away ! ' from the fields ; a doleful ' toot' of the horn ; the dull thunder of many horsehoofa rolling along the further wood-side . Then red coats , flashing like sparks of fire across the grey gap of mist at the ride ' s mouth ; then a whipper-in , bringing up a belated hound , burst into the pathway , smashing and plunging , with shut eyes , through ash-saplings and hassock-grass ; then a fat farmer , sedulously pounding through the mud , was overtaken and bespattered in spite of all his struggles , until the line streamed out into the wide rushy pasture , startling up pewits and curlews , as horsemen poured in from every side , and cunning old farmers rode off at inexplicable angles to some well-known haunts of pug ; and right ahead , chiming and jangling sweet madness , the dappled pack glanced and wavered through tha veil of soft grey mist .

      " ' What ' s the U 8 e of this hurry ? ' growled Lancelot . ' They will all be back again . I never have the luck to see a run . ' " But , no ; on and on—down the wind and down the vale ; and the canter became a gallop , and the gallop a long straining stride ; and a hundred horsehoofs crackled like flame among the stubbles , and thundered fetlock-deep along the heavy meadows ; and every fence thinned the cavalcade , till the madneHS began to stir all bloods , and , with grim earnest silent faces , the initiated few settled themselves to their work , and with the colonel and Lancelot at their head , ' took their pleasure sadly , ufter the manner of their nation , ' as old Froissart has it .

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      394 wj $ iteairet . [ Satouuy ,

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      Through bush , through brier , Through park , through pale ; till the rolling graBS-landa aprcad out into flat black open fallowH , croHned with grassy baulks , and here and there a long melancholy line of tall elms , while before them the high chulk ranges gleamed above the mint like a vast wall of emerald enamelled with auow , and the winding river glittering at their feet . " We will wind up with A I . OVK HOKNK . " Argemone took Lancelot ' s arm . The soft touch thrilled through and through him ; and Argemone frit , ¦ he knew not why , a new uenuatiou run through her frame . She shuddered not with pain . " ' You are cold , Miw Lavington ?' " ' Oh , not in the leaat . ' Cold I when every vein was hoUing no atrang « ly ! A soft IuhcIoub melauoholy crept over her . She ha < l alwaya had a tea or of daxknevi : but

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), April 26, 1851, page 394, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1880/page/14/