CHAPTER IV

Moral Crisis

I

BUT these political feelings, however violent, were after all merely the superficial disorders of Wordsworth's mind at this period of his life. The Revolution did more than ruffle its surface with these waves; it convulsed the very depths of his thought, and almost destroyed the groundwork even of his moral being. The eleventh book of The Prelude gives a powerful description of the different phases of this profound disturbance. And since in that book Wordsworth has got beneath the exterior of the individual, and has succeeded in reaching the essential feelings which make up the common heart of all mankind, his biography becomes almost an inward history of his generation. To learn how, in his case, manhood was developed out of early youth, is to learn how the nineteenth century was born from the eighteenth, so different, yet with so manifest a family likeness.

At twenty years of age Wordsworth had been suddenly dazzled by the visions of approaching universal happiness which had flashed before men's eyes in 1789. When so many others, with more experience to warn them, were captivated, how should he have escaped their fascination? The aphorisms which had been repeated for half a century, and were now accepted as axiomatic : :- that nature is good, that man is born good, that liberty is a certain cure for every ill, that man is made to be happy, were no doubtful novelties for him; they provided a clear and simple summary of his youthful impressions, of which he had scarcely been conscious until now. Had not nature made its goodness manifest to him

at Hawkshead? Had he not a proof of the goodness of man in the innocence and spontaneous warmth of his own heart, in the unstudied generosity of school and college friendships, and in the lofty virtues which classical education, by making a specious selection from among ancient writings and the facts of ancient history, represents as of natural and universal growth?

I had approached, like other youths, the shield
Of human nature from the golden side,

And would have fought, even to the death, to attest
The quality of the metal which I saw.1

As to the possibility of attaining happiness through freedom, was it not inevitable that at the age when vigour of muscle and elasticity of hope are as it were a guarantee of unlimited power, it should seem beyond dispute?

Thus the religion of humanity had demanded no sacrifices of Wordsworth. It promised everything and asked for nothing in return. If his Christianity had been a living faith, it would doubtless have felt uneasy concerning a rival whose only goal was an earthly paradise and whose only court of appeal was reason. (But Wordsworth was then a Christian only in name, and his torpid Christianity slept in one of the lumber-rooms of his mind. The object of his active worship, on the other hand, was the new divinity of Reason, to whom, with singular felicity in its choice of a symbol, the Convention erected an altar. To Reason was due all that had been won, and by Reason all that remained to conquer must be overcome. An idol as well as a goddess, counting her fanatics as well as her faithful, she seemed to preside over the glorious metamorphosis of the world. But just as hypocrisy flourishes most of all in an era of true piety, so the dreams which disguise themselves under an appearance of reason impose most easily upon public credulity in an age which believes itself rational. Thus, during the latter years of the eighteenth century, more perhaps than at any other epoch, hasty generalizations, abstractions taken for realities, conclusions rigorously deduced from false or incomplete 1 The Prelude, xi. 79-82,

premises, along with genuine scientific discoveries and true moral principles ascertained at the cost of great labourall passed current together in a confusion which made it impossible to separate truth from error.

But error, even when it is not imposture, is no mere aimless straying in that unknown which all our judgments strive to penetrate. Our instincts and aspirations unconsciously give it a tendency. We suppose that our reasoning is directed to the discovery of truth, when, unknown to ourselves, it is following the bent of our dreams. Under the influence of this delusion man tastes the keenest joy he can ever know, since he believes in what he wishes and finds his duty in the satisfaction of his desires for happiness. This is how it was that Wordsworth had enjoyed the delightful illusion of obeying the strict rules of reason, when in truth he was merely converting his desires into realities; an illusion so pleasing, that twelve years later he was unable to recall it without a glow of enthusiasm at the recollection.

O pleasant exercise of hope and joy!

For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, us who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very Heaven!

O times,

In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways

Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!

When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights
When most intent on making of herself
A prime enchantress-to assist the work,
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole Earth,
The beauty wore of promise-that which sets
(As at some moments might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of Paradise itself)
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
The play-fellows of fancy, who had made

All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
Their ministers,-who in lordly wise had stirred
Among the grandest objects of the sense,
And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As if they had within some lurking right
To wield it; they, too, who of gentle mood
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild,
And in the region of their peaceful selves ;-
Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find, helpers to their hearts' desire,
And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish,-
Were called upon to exercise their skill,
Not in Utopia,-subterranean fields,—

Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us, the place where, in the end,
We find our happiness, or not at all!

Why should I not confess that Earth was then
To me, what an inheritance, new-fallen,
Seems, when the first time visited, to one
Who thither comes to find in it his home?
He walks about and looks upon the spot
With cordial transport, moulds it and remoulds,
And is half pleased with things that are amiss,
"Twill be such joy to see them disappear.1

These hours of fresh joyousness and unshaken confidence, when hope "laid her hand upon her object," 2 quickly passed away. The obstacles with which the path of reason is strewn soon forced themselves upon Wordsworth's notice. Unforeseen scourges arose on every hand, from earth's unhealthy soil and the corrupt heart of man. Yet his serene trust was at first scarcely overcast; he regarded them merely as passing clouds which the sun would shortly penetrate :

An active partisan, I thus convoked
From every object pleasant circumstance
To suit my ends; I moved among mankind
With genial feelings still predominant ;
When erring, erring on the better part,

1 The Prelude, xi. 105-152.

2 Ibid., xi. 202-203.

And in the kinder spirit; placable,
Indulgent, as not uninformed that men
See as they have been taught-Antiquity
Gives rights to error; and aware, no less,
That throwing off oppression must be work
As well of License as of Liberty;

And above all-for this was more than all-
Not caring if the wind did now and then
Blow keen upon an eminence that gave
Prospect so large into futurity;

In brief, a child of Nature, as at first,
Diffusing only those affections wider

That from the cradle had grown up with me,
And losing, in no other way than light

Is lost in light, the weak in the more strong.1

But the harmony which prevailed between his revolutionary ideas and his natural feelings became suddenly converted into discord. It ceased to exist on the day when "with open war Britain opposed the liberties of France." This attack not only caused him bitter grief, it upset the equilibrium of his whole nature. For the first

2

time he became aware that the elements which he had thought it possible to reconcile were radically opposed. On the day which witnessed the commencement of the struggle between England and France, his reason declared. war against his heart.

This threw me first out of the pale of love;
Soured and corrupted, upwards to the source,
My sentiments; was not, as hitherto,

A swallowing up of lesser things in great,
But change of them into their contraries.3

Wordsworth's patriotism, in short, which hitherto had willingly submitted to be merged in his humanitarian faith, was now superseded by a hatred or contempt for his country.

What had been a pride,

loves

Was now a shame; my likings and my
Ran in new channels, leaving old ones dry;

1 The Prelude, xi. 153-173.

8 Ibid., xi. 175-180.

2 Ibid., xi. 174-175.

R