CHAPTER I Optimism I WHEN We have laid bare the circumstances under which a man has reached a joyous or unhappy state of mind, nothing is more tempting than to regard them as sufficient to account for that state of gladness or unhappiness. The circumstances, in themselves commonly neutral, have assumed the hue of the feelings with which they have been suffused, so that the colour which they reflect appears actually to belong to them, or even to be created by them. The greater a mind's diffusive power, the more difficult it is to guard against this illusion. It is so easy to believe that the soul has had no darkness to penetrate when we can see no shadows around it. This is how it happens that so acute an observer as de Quincey is astonished at the good fortune which fell to the lot of Wordsworth, and does not stop to consider whether it was not propitious chiefly because Wordsworth's nature had made it so. This error is a very common one with regard to Wordsworth, and arises from an imperfect understanding of The Prelude, since it is there that the poet overflows with gratitude for the manner in which his youth had been spent and the education he had received. But if we examine it closely, we see that the real theme of The Prelude is the wonderful way in which the man contrived to profit by circumstances in themselves either indifferent or favourable and unfavourable by turns, so as to attain to a joyous harmony of all his faculties. To convince ourselves of this it will be sufficient to recapitulate the facts of Wordsworth's early life, confining our attention to those which would ordinarily be considered of import385 2 B ance, and regarding them, in a manner, from the outside. Is it not true that we could easily construct quite a melancholy picture from them? Can a man be reckoned a favourite of fortune when he has lost his mother during his eighth year, and his father at sixteen; when he has been arbitrarily deprived of his inheritance, has had to endure a humiliating existence under the roof of stern and narrow-minded grandparents, and for years has been coldly treated by his relations on account of his indolence, his obstinacy, and his refusal to embark upon any of the safe careers suggested to him; when he is kept apart from the sister whom he loves beyond everything else, apparently from fear that she may become contaminated by his disobedience and his subversive opinions; when he entrusts all his dreams of happiness to the French Revolution, only to see them borne under in the tempest, and loses not only his respect and love for his native country, but all hope of progress as well; when, meanwhile, his existence is so straitened, so penurious even, and so utterly without promise for the morrow, that he is compelled to postpone indefinitely his union with his sister's friend, that maiden, chosen long ago, and now beloved, whom he knows not whether he can ever make his wife? Again, though it has been shown how he made the events amidst which his optimism became confirmed and settled turn to his own deliverance, are not those very events such as with many others would, and with more than one of his contemporaries actually did, lead to a fresh access of despondency? How thoroughly characteristic is the fact that Wordsworth began The Recluse just at the time when the invasion of Switzerland was ruining the last hopes which he had staked on the behaviour of France! And yet, at that very time, what genuine causes for heart-sickness he was concealing from every eye! What a cup of bitterness he had to drain when he heard the sneers of the English Conservatives, the now triumphant enemies of the Revolution, at his own vain dreams! He was not ignorant of their sarcasm, nor did he despise it; he acknowledges that it caused him suffer ing. "He strove," he says, "to hide, what nought could heal, the wounds of mortified presumption." 1 Instead, therefore, of regarding his optimism as the result of the circumstances of his life, it would be more correct to see in it a vigorous reaction of his nature against them. And with these circumstances should be associated the external world itself, the aspects of that nature which, nevertheless, was to yield him so many lessons of happiness and peace of mind. It would be a mistake to regard these causes as more than secondary. The happiness which henceforth seems to him to clothe the world like a garment emanates from himself. And this is how Wordsworth's happiness was understood by Coleridge, the man who knew him better than anyone else. O William! we receive but what we give, And from the soul itself there must be sent pure of heart! Thou need'st not ask of me What this strong music in the soul may be ? What, and wherein it doth exist, This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, This beautiful and beauty-making power. Joy, virtuous William! joy that ne'er was given, Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, Joy, William! is the spirit and the pow'r, Which wedding Nature to us gives in dow'r, 1 The Prelude, xi. 215-216. 2 Thus "the tremulous sob of the complaining owl" (Evening Walk, v. 443) in the edition of 1793 becomes in 1836, " the sportive outcry of the mocking owl." Not the owl's hooting, but the feeling of the poet, has been altered in the interval. |