Conclusion

I

DURING the latter part of his residence at Alfoxden Wordsworth arrived at a full consciousness of his moral and poetic mission. The part which he was to play was already taking definite shape before his eyes. The poet's actual lot forms a strange contrast to the lofty ambition he entertained.

At first sight nothing in his appearance gave promise of the wonderful future so eloquently predicted for him by Coleridge to every one he met. Wordsworth was not handsome, as even his sister was obliged to acknowledge; his long bony face was supported by a spare body, with narrow, sloping shoulders, and ill-shaped legs meant for use, says De Quincey, rather than for ornament. There was not a particle of elegance about him; the portrait taken in 1798, which represents him as dressed in a dark frock coat with thick lappels, his neck and even his chin stiffly confined in the ponderous white cravat of the period, has all the awkwardness and the gravity of a young farmer dressed out in his best clothes. His ordinary attire was more characteristic. Hazlitt found him "in a brown fustian jacket and striped pantaloons." Possibly he was wearing the famous pair of huge, heavy shoes which Lamb, one day when they happened to be in his possession, exhibited to his London friends as provincial curiosities.2 When he walked there was a lounging roll in his gait

1 A certain Richard Reynall, who, through the influence of Coleridge, was predisposed to admire Wordsworth, wrote in August, 1797: "[I visited] Alfoxden, a country seat occupied by a Mr Wordsworth, of living men one of the greatest-at least, Coleridge, who has seen most of the great men of this country, says he is; and I, who have seen Wordsworth again since, am inclined very highly to estimate him. He has certainly physiognomical traits of genius. He has a high manly forehead, a full and comprehensive eye, a strong nose to support the superstructure, and altogether a very pleasing and striking countenance." Illustrated London News, 22nd April 1893. (Unpublished Letters of S. T. Coleridge.)

2 Letter to Coleridge, 4th November 1802.

suggestive of his pedlar hero, Peter Bell. He spoke "with a mixture of clear gushing accents in his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tincture of the northern burr, like the crust in wine."1

But he requires to be seen in repose; his features should be long and carefully scrutinized. Even then the poet in him is not at once revealed. What impresses us is the appearance of animal health, indicated by the powerful jaw with its strong white teeth, and by the prominence and fulness of all the parts around the mouth. Tempered at present by a bronzed complexion set in a frame of auburn hair, this healthy look will become more and more marked when a ruddy and sanguine hue, destined gradually to replace the sunburnt tint, is thrown into relief as auburn turns to grey.

2

The next thing that strikes the observer is the strength of the will, discernible in the angular chin, and in the lips, firmly closed in spite of the heaviness of the jaw; whence something of a grin, "a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a good deal at variance with the solemn, stately expression of the rest of the face"; and a drawn appearance in the painfully furrowed cheeks. It resides in the powerful and sharply-outlined Roman nose, and in the high retreating forehead with its deep temples. Wordsworth's countenance early began to look old, and its lines, already careworn, are indicative of suppressed struggles, pains taken to bridle a violent and irritable disposition, the tension of solitary thought, and the workings of an inward fire which itself becomes visible only when the eye, raising its heavy lids, takes on at certain hours the strange expression described by Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and De Quincey.

And predominant over all other characteristics are those of solemn gravity, fixity of thought, honest and concentrated enthusiasm. Hazlitt's first sight of Wordsworth reminded him of Don Quixote, and odd, irreverent even as the comparison may seem, it is sufficiently expressive of that almost painful tension of a single thought which was madness in the one case and genius in the other. De

1 Hazlitt, My first acquaintance with poets.

2 Ibid.

Quincey detected a striking resemblance between Words-
worth at forty years of age and the stern-looking portrait of
Milton painted by Faithorne a few years before the death of
the great puritan and republican poet. We, too, cannot help
seeing in young Wordsworth's portrait one of the purest
types of that revolutionary epoch when faith in earthly happi-
ness was held by many with all the solemnity of a religion.
Yet how few at that time saw anything in Wordsworth
beyond the first outward appearance of awkwardness and
vulgarity! With the exception of his sister, Coleridge,
and Poole, there was perhaps not a soul about him who
had thorough confidence in his powers and in his destiny.
Only the closest intimacy could bring out the passionate
affection hidden in his heart, the profound thoughts con-
cealed within his mind. Fond of conversation and even
talkative as he afterwards became, he was at this time
scarcely beginning to acquire that readiness in connecting
ideas which conversation demands. "His genius," says
Coleridge, "rarely, except to me in tête-à-tête, breaks forth
in conversational eloquence." He possessed the gift, and
the love, of silence.2

He is retired as noontide dew,
Or fountain in a noon-day grove;
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.3

Poor, and as yet bound by neither tie nor expectation to the powerful and the fortunate, he had broken with his family, with every calling in life, with all political parties and religious creeds. No road to fame and happiness remained open to him but that of poetry.

1 Letter to the Rev. J. P. Estlin, May, 1798. edited by Ernest Coleridge, i. p. 246).

2 De Quincey, The Lake Ports, Wordsworth.

(Letters of S. T. Coleridge,

3A Poet's Epitaph (1799).

In the letter quoted above, Coleridge wrote to the Rev. J. P. Estlin, a unitarian minister, as follows: "On one subject we are habitually silent; we found our data dissimilar, and never renewed the subject. It is his practice and almost his nature to convey all the truth he knows without any attack on what he supposes falsehood, if that falsehood be interwoven with virtues or happiness. He loves and venerates Christ and Christianity. I wish he did more, but it were wrong indeed if an incoincidence with any one of our wishes altered our respect and affection to a man of whom we are, as it were, instructed by one great Master to say that not being against us he is for us."

II

But in the realm of poetry all his high hopes, all his ambition, whether for himself or for mankind, had taken refuge.

He possessed a consciousness of having been elected to a sacred office. Everything around him was suffused with a light which emanated from himself.

To me I feel

That an internal brightness is vouchsafed
That must not die, that must not pass away.
Why does this inward lustre fondly seek,
And gladly blend with outward fellowship?
Why do they shine around me whom I love?

Possessions have I that are solely mine,
Something within which yet is shared by none,
Not even the nearest to me and most dear,
Something which power and effort may impart,
I would impart it, I would spread it wide.1

"Divinely taught " himself, he had no right to remain silent. He had within him the genius which is "the introduction of a new element into the intellectual universe," of which "the only infallible sign is the widening the sphere of human sensibility for the delight, honour, and benefit of human nature." 2

It was his to accomplish the highest earthly mission, that which formerly belonged to the priest, and the philosopher and the scientist had since vainly endeavoured to fulfil in his place; namely, to tell to men the ultimate truths concerning life and the world. Or rather, it behoved him, emancipated alike from dogma and from reasoning, to make men see the beauty of the universe and the grandeur of the human heart-a real beauty, a true grandeur, requiring not to be invented but to be laid bare.

Never before had poetry conceived so high an opinion of itself. In the most ambitious poems of the eighteenth 1 The Recluse, 695-710.

2 Essay supplementary to the Preface of the Poems.

century it modestly represented itself as a clear and
attractive medium for popularizing philosophical ideas.1
It gloried, not in discovering truth, but in disseminating,
to the best of its power, truths discovered already. Even
the daring and spirited poets of the Renaissance had been
far from attaining the new conception. They had prided
themselves upon creating a marvellous world of beauty and
of virtue, but had never supposed that the universe they
had created was the same as that which their own feet had
trodden. In Bacon's phrase, they had "satisfied the soul,
which feels the emptiness and the vanity of the real, with
shadows." 2 Milton alone had been deeply conscious that
a revelation was entrusted to him. He was inspired by
"that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and
knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed
fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he
pleases." 3
He had been genuinely convinced that poetry,
as he conceived it, was truer than, and independent of,
science, though only upon condition that it went hand in
hand with religion, and devoted itself to interpreting the
sacred volumes to mankind.

Wordsworth was shaking himself free from all philo-
sophical or religious subjection. For him the poet, using
no bible but nature, was the Seer whose keener senses
and fresher and more integral imagination make him
the supreme teacher, whose office it is to render men
better and happier by revealing to them their own nature
and that of the universe in which they dwell. With the
stubborn faith of the unrecognised prophet, Wordsworth,
at a later time, described the nature of that moral revolu-
tion which he did not doubt of effecting by means of
his poetry, and it was with the tones and almost in the
words of Christ that he consoled one of his admirers for
the disparagement to which he was himself subjected.
Alluding to his poems he writes :-

"Trouble not yourself about their present reception; of
what moment is that compared with what I trust is their
1 See the Preface to Pope's Essay on Man.
2 De augmentis Scientiarum, lib. II., ch. xiii. p. 3.
The Reason of Church Government.