Henceforth, then, the field of poetry is definitely allotted. To the share of Coleridge fell such subjects as were supernatural, or at any rate romantic, which he was to endeavour to infuse with a human interest, and with that "semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith."1 Wordsworth's share was to be the events of every-day life, by preference in its humblest form; the characters and incidents of his poems "were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when they present themselves." 2 Certain hints, dropped by Coleridge in an undertone, show indeed that Wordsworth's choice was to him a matter for some regret. To Hazlitt, who, when quite a young man, in the summer of 1798, came to pay him a visit, he lamented that Wordsworth was not prone enough to believe in the traditional superstitions of the place, and that there was a something corporeal, a matterof-factness, a clinging to the palpable, or often to the petty, in his poetry, in consequence. His genius was not a spirit that descended to him through the air; it sprung out of the ground like a flower, or unfolded itself from a green spray, on which the goldfinch sang." But neither Coleridge's regret, nor anything else, induced Wordsworth ever again to turn aside from the path he had elected to follow. II Nothing, to all appearance, can be more opposed to the ordinary conception of imagination and poetry than this refusal to leave the ground, to take flight and soar above the low-lying regions which are the scene of man's mean and sorry existence. Wordsworth was so fully conscious of this that he took great care to repudiate on behalf of 1 Biographia Literaria, ch. xiv. Hazlitt, My first acquaintance with poets. 2 Ibid. the word "imagination" the inaccurate and misleading senses, as he considered them, in which it is employed. Hence the famous distinction between imagination and fancy, which Coleridge, returning to it at a later time, took such pleasure in following up with the help of the German romantic school. The germ of the distinction, however, was already in existence. All that part of fiction which poetry embraces gradually came to be assigned to the term "fancy." That term denotes the caprice, or habit of wilful misrepresentation, which leads the poet to shed the light of his own feelings over beings and things quite independently of their real aspect, to people the quiet fields with signs of woe, to interpret the raven's blithe croaking as a harbinger of death, the hooting of the owl as a foreboding of evil, and the trills of the nightingale as the voice of mourning and sorrow.1 Fancy transforms the reality of things just as it pleases, guided by no law but its own pleasure. Its only aim is to divert the mind by means of ingenious comparisons. It is "the power by which pleasure and surprise are excited by sudden varieties of situation and by accumulated imagery." 2 It is, in short, to be regarded with suspicion and held in scant respect, and Wordsworth afterwards grouped by themselves, under the heading Poems of the Fancy, such of his compositions as seemed to him of an inferior order. Imagination, on the other hand, is, as nothing else is, the faculty of seeing nature. It does not seek to afford pleasure by an artificial accumulation of images, or by strange combinations of ideas. It "produces impressive effects out of simple elements." 3 The poetic art which can command such an instrument is no mere mental recreation. It has the weight and the importance of a science; the same prudence marks its advance, its progress is as steady and as certain, the same truth is alike its aim and its result. In method it resembles a science which proceeds by observation; it demands facts, and requires them to be certain, numerous, verified, and relative to the question at issue. Of all Wordsworth's 1A Morning Exercise. 3 lbid. 2 The Thorn (note to the edition of 1800). poems there is not one of which he cannot analyse the formation, not one which was not originally founded on strong evidence. Sometimes the foundation is an incident witnessed by himself, which has found its way quite unmodified into his poetry; sometimes it is an anecdote which was told or read to him, the authorities for which he is able to quote. Or again he has grouped together a number of distinct and individually true incidents, reducing the part played by invention to a minimum. After an interval. of forty years he still remembers where he met this or that character, where such an image originated, the precise spot in which he experienced a certain sensation. the very changes which he occasionally makes in his facts are so fully explained and justified by him that they are less characteristic of the poet's privilege to invent than of the scientific process of experiment. And Far from priding himself on his clever construction of a poem, he is more apt to apologize for such a concession to art, which consists at best in making a selection from among the facts provided by nature. It involves a sort of violation of the truth, and as such is to be regretted. The "fable" of a poem is of little consequence; a fact is a far better foundation. Yet the poet should concern himself not with the singularity of the fact, but with the impression it may produce. My gentle reader, I perceive O reader! had you in your mind A tale in every thing. What more I have to say is short, I hope you'll kindly take it: It is no tale; but, should you think, Perhaps a tale you'll make it.1 The art of keeping the reader breathless throughout a narrative in the hope of penetrating the secret of a compli 1 Simon Lee (Lyrical Ballads, 1798). cated and mysterious intrigue, though well enough for Anne Radcliffe, is quite inferior: The moving accident is not my trade; It was the same contempt for artifice, the same respect for nature, which led the poet to reform, or rather to sweep away, "poetic diction." Thus originated that famous revolution which Wordsworth achieved through his Lyrical Ballads, and of which he explained the theory in his prefaces. There is nothing to prevent those who look upon poetry as an intellectual amusement from admitting its right to a style of its own, an ornamental language independent of that spoken by men; but the poet, with whom truth is the first concern, will discard every adornment which has the effect of throwing a veil before nature. The ideal language at which he should aim is that of passion, though he may reasonably despair of ever attaining its full force and beauty, "for his employment is in some degree mechanical compared with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and suffering."2 Away, therefore, with those anomalies in grammar or vocabulary, and those traditional figures of speech which doubtless originated in a direct transcription of the language of passion, but having gradually acquired an independent existence, have become their own justification, and are now used by artificial poets as labels intended to distinguish their language from that of prose. It is absurd to pretend "to trick out or to elevate nature." In his youth Wordsworth had greatly sinned against simplicity of style, and now he pledged himself to employ for the future only simple words and expressions. And since he might make mistakes if he claimed to draw the line between the simple and the artificial on his own authority, he would acquire a vocabulary by means of observation. 1 Hart Leap Well (1800). 2 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1802. 3 Ibid. This was the aim of Erasmus Darwin, see above, p. 136. His style should be taken if possible from actual life, especially from the life of those with whom passion finds the most direct expression, and pays the least regard to conventional figures of speech. He turns, therefore, to humble and rustic life, as that in which these conditions seemed to be best realized, ... because in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately contemplated and more forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and, lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.1 The poet would interfere only in order to make a selection from among these materials of style, and to purify them of such dross as they naturally carry with them. And the result would be a truly "permanent and philosophical language." In this theory, so attractive from its excessive simplicity, so thoroughly democratic, all the revolutionary and levelling dreams of Wordsworth's youth had taken refuge after their expulsion from the region of politics. This violent reaction against the poetry of the eighteenth century is exactly what connects him most closely with that century, that which bears the clearest marks of it, and breathes most thoroughly its spirit of uncompromising simplification. The inflexibility of a theory so unfitted to adapt itself to the multiform requirements of art, the narrowness of its foundation, which, for all its apparent stability, failed to support the poet's work, the rigid principles which he infringed in half, and the best half, of the lines he wrote, are the very essence of all the hasty generalizations which he condemned so strongly everywhere else. And it was in an evil hour that he attempted to reduce his views to 1 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800. |