William Wordsworth

THE great poet who was born thirty years before the close of the eighteenth century, and who became the most honoured and the most venerable figure of the first half of the nineteenth, has been made the subject of more critical controversy than any of his contemporaries. His work has been exalted to the skies by men whose opinions carry great weight, and it has been decried as unsound in theory and prosaic in expression by other men whose opinions cannot be neglected. In all this clash of criticism, which has been prolonged into our own time, it is to be observed that the personal element has not appeared to any considerable extent. While it is true that Wordsworth suffered a reprobation that was perhaps deserved on account of his renunciation of the liberal principles of his earlier years, he did not set the conventions of society at defiance in the manner of Byron and Shelley, and was spared the violence of the attacks to which they were subjected. The discussion which was raised about him in his own time, and which has continued to be raised about him ever since, has been in the main a discussion of literary principles and æsthetical canons. It began

over one hundred years ago, when the second edition of the "Lyrical Ballads" was published, with the famous Preface which contained the profession of the poet's literary faith. To a public educated upon the traditions of the eighteenth century the propositions enunciated in that essay were indeed startling, and their practical applications, as illustrated by the poems which they accompanied, were of so uncompromising a nature as to arouse much active antagonism. "They who have been accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will, no doubt, frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness; they will look round for poetry, and will be induced to inquire by what species of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to assume that title." The writer's theory was expressed in such statements as these:

"The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect." "There will also be found in these pieces little of what is usually called poetic diction; as much pains has been taken to avoid it as is ordinarily taken to produce it." "The language of a very large portion of every good poem, even of the most elevated character, must necessarily, except with reference to the metre, in no respect differ from that of good prose." "It may be safely affirmed, that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition,"

Translated into practice, these theories resulted in such compositions as the ballad of "The Idiot Boy," the true story of "Goody Blake and Harry Gill," and such descriptions as this of Simon Lee, the old huntsman:

"But, oh the heavy change!-bereft

Of health, strength, friends, and kindred, see!
Old Simon to the world is left

In liveried poverty.

His Master's dead, and no one now

Dwells in the Hall of Ivor;

Men, dogs, and horses, all are dead;

He is the sole survivor.

"And he is lean and he is sick;
His body, dwindled and awry,

Rests upon ankles swoln and thick;

His legs are thin and dry.

One prop he has, and only one,

His wife, an aged woman,

Lives with him, near the waterfall,
Upon the village Common."

Such verses as these offered fair game to the critic, and such propositions as have just been quoted were so subversive of all literary traditions that it is easy to understand with what vehemence they were assailed and with what energy they were repudiated. Removed to the vantage point of a century's distance, we can see easily enough that Wordsworth went too far in his revolt against the artificial, and that he was altogether too uncompromising in the practical application of his theories. It has become, indeed, the veriest commonplace of criticism

to say that Wordsworth was a great poet in spite of his theories, and that he was greatest when he ignored them most completely. How fully this fact was also recognised by his contemporaries, even by the most intimate of his friends, we may read in the "Biographia Literaria" of Coleridge. But if we wish to do entire justice to the "Lyrical Ballads," and to the famous Preface which appeared with their second edition, we must do more than single out such points of attack as are obvious to the most casual observer. The Preface in question, taken as a whole, is one of the most important contributions ever made to literary criticism. It is important, not merely on account of its historical position, but on account of its insight and its fundamental sanity. Let us quote, as an offset to the passages which are popularly taken to sum up the writer's message, some of his sayings that have deep and lasting value. He tells us that he would not have undertaken his crusade against the prevailing literary tendencies of his age had it not been for "a deep impression of certain inherent and indestructible qualities of the human mind, and likewise of certain powers in the great and permanent objects that act upon it, which are equally inherent and indestructible." To the question, "What is a Poet?" this answer is given:

“He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among man

kind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them."

Contrasting poetry with science, he says:

"The man of science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude: the Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science. Emphatically may it be said of the Poet, as Shakespeare hath said of man, that he looks before and after. He is the rock of defense of human nature; and upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. . . . Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge-it is as immortal as the heart of man."

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Turning now to the "Lyrical Ballads" themselves and assuming an attitude of sympathy rather than of opposition, it is not difficult to find even in those early verses many passages of that rare and exquisite beauty which all lovers of English poetry associate with the name of Wordsworth. Even "The Thorn," in which we are told how Martha Ray

"Gave with a maiden's true good-will

Her company to Stephen Hill,”