The Bridling of Pegasus Part 7

The Being, that is in the clouds and air, That is in the green leaves among the groves, Maintains a deep and reverential care For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.

The Pleasure-house is dust:--behind, before, This is no common waste, no common gloom; But Nature, in due course of time, once more Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.

She leaves these objects to a slow decay, That what we are, and have been, may be known; But, at the coming of the milder day, These monuments shall all be overgrown!

One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide, Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals; Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.

Of course, this is poetry, and very good poetry; and it is, justly, one of the favourite pa.s.sages of ardent admirers of Wordsworth. But we can scarcely refrain from saying that, good as it is, there exists something of precisely the same kind, and, as it happens, in precisely the same metre, which is considerably better. Surely, no one will have any difficulty in naming it. It is Gray's famous _Elegy_. Yet we remember how indignant the "Wordsworthians against whom we ought to be on our guard"

were with the _Quarterly Review_, because there appeared in it a paper in which Wordsworth and Gray were compared. To mention them in the same breath was sacrilege! We do not wish to affirm that the disinterested lover of poetry believes Gray ever to have scaled the heights where Wordsworth's wing sometimes floats almost without effort. But it cannot be uninteresting to mark that, in what we may call the middle notes, Wordsworth is distinctly inferior to Gray, though ever and anon his voice gets entirely beyond Gray's compa.s.s.

It would be impossible, with any regard for s.p.a.ce, to quote from, or even to name, every poem reproduced by Mr. Arnold, which in our opinion would have been better suppressed. But if we seem to have established our contention so far, we think the reader may rely upon it that he would more or less concur in what else might be said on this score. _The Force of Prayer_, _The Affliction of Margaret_, _The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman_, are little if any less trivial than the poems already condemned; while in _The Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_, we read six pages equally poor and unpoetical, suddenly to come upon such a quatrain as the following:

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

The last two lines it would be impossible to praise too highly. Only the silence of profound reverence can do them justice. They are touches like these, touches like "the harvest of a quiet eye," that give to Wordsworth his holy predominance, and whatever predominance, after fair examination, must be adjudged him. But how few they are! Perhaps it is in the nature of things that they should be so. But being so few and far between, they cannot fill up the blank that intervenes. They are indeed "Angels'

visits." But even poetry has to do mainly with human guests, and a poet must be judged, as Mr. Arnold truly affirms, by "the ample body of powerful work" he leaves behind. We cannot a.s.sume that much of Wordsworth's poetry is not unutterably bad, because some of it is unutterably beautiful. The utmost we can do is to grant, concerning him, what he himself said so finely of a young girl:

If thou appear'st untouched by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine: Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, G.o.d being with thee when we know it not.

It is possible that like the "dear child, dear girl," he lay in Abraham's bosom "all the year," but he communicates the fact, he impresses us with the fact, but seldom. As a rule, he seems to be outside the Temple altogether. Hence these magnificent bursts of poetical depth and sublimity, which, be it said, are peculiar to Wordsworth, are mere short pa.s.sages, and there are not many of them. But if they suffice, after a complete survey of the works of both poets, to place Wordsworth above Byron, we shall be obliged to conclude that they suffice to place him above every poet that ever lived. That such a theory of poetry, such a canon of criticism is untenable, unless we are to cast every hitherto accepted theory of poetry and every former canon of criticism to the winds, we trust, in due course, to be able to establish.

We are aware that _The Brothers_ is a favourite composition with thoroughgoing Wordsworthians. But as we have been told to be on our guard against them, we need not hesitate to say that it seems to us to consist of very ordinary verse, and the piece itself to be devoid of any real poetical temperament, though it fills sixteen pages in Mr. Arnold's collection. Sixteen more are occupied by _Margaret_, upon which we are unable to p.r.o.nounce a different or a modified verdict. Both abound in such pa.s.sages as the following:

He left his house: two wretched days had past, And on the third, as wistfully she raised Her head from off her pillow, to look forth, Like one in trouble, for returning light, Within her chamber-cas.e.m.e.nt she espied A folded paper, lying as if placed To meet her waking eyes. This tremblingly She opened--found no writing, but beheld Pieces of money carefully enclosed, Silver and gold. "I shuddered at the sight,"

Said Margaret, "for I knew it was his hand Which placed it there: and ere that day was ended, That long and anxious day! I learned from one Sent hither by my husband to impart The heavy news,--that he had joined a Troop Of soldiers, going to a distant land.

He left me thus--he could not gather heart To take a farewell of me; for he feared That I should follow with my Babes, and sink Beneath the misery of that wandering life."

If this be poetry, then poetry is very easily written, and what has. .h.i.therto been supposed to be the highest, the most difficult, and the rarest, of the arts, presents no more difficulty to the person who knows how to write at all than the simplest, baldest, and most unartistic prose.

What, for instance, is this?--

At length the expected letter from the kinsman came, with kind a.s.surances that he would do his utmost for the welfare of the boy; to which requests were added that forthwith he might be sent to him. Ten times or more the letter was read over. Isabel went forth to show it to the neighbours round; nor was there at that time on English land a prouder heart than Luke's. When Isabel had to her house returned, the old man said, "He shall depart to-morrow." To this word the housewife answered, talking much of things which, if at such short notice he should go, would surely be forgotten. But at length she gave consent, and Michael was at ease.

Is this prose or verse? We have printed it as prose. Wordsworth wrote it as verse, and Mr. Arnold has reproduced it as poetry. Had all Wordsworth's compositions been of this calibre, and a painfully large number of them are, well might John Stuart Mill affirm that any man of good abilities might become as good a poet as Wordsworth by giving his mind to it, and we will add that a man of good abilities could hardly employ them worse. Yet this pa.s.sage, and fourteen pages of verse not one whit better than it, are to be met with in _Michael_, one of the narrative poems Mr. Arnold, with special emphasis, begs us to admire. "The right sort of verse," he says, "to choose from Wordsworth, if we are to seize his true and most characteristic form of expression, is a line like this from _Michael_:

And never lifted up a single stone.

There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of poetic style, strictly so called; yet it is expressive of the highest and most expressive kind." Of course, in order to properly appreciate it, we must know the context, which fortunately is easily compressed. Michael and his son Luke were to build a sheepfold; but, as told in the pa.s.sage we have printed, Luke is sent to a kinsman, who will advance him in life. Before he goes, Michael takes him to lay the first stone of the sheepfold. The lad then leaves home, falls into dissolute courses, and at last hides himself beyond the seas. After that, it is narrated of Michael:

And to that hollow dell from time to time Did he repair, to build the Fold of which His flock had need. 'Tis not forgotten yet The pity which was then in every heart For the Old Man--and 'tis believed by all That many and many a day he thither went, And never lifted up a single stone.

We have asked several disinterested lovers of poetry, some of them ardent admirers of Wordsworth, what they think of this; and we are bound to say that most of them failed to see anything in it whatsoever. That is not our case. We feel the force of the situation, and the apt simplicity of the concluding line. Yet repeat it, dwell on it, and surrender ourselves to it as we will, we fail to persuade ourselves that it merits the lofty eulogy p.r.o.nounced on it by Mr. Arnold. It is with hesitation that we presume, on such a point, and where the issue is so direct, to place our opinion in seeming compet.i.tion with his; but we can only leave the decision to the _communis sensus_ of disinterested lovers of poetry. But nothing--not even Mr. Arnold's authority--could satisfy us that this line suffices to lend the wings of poetry to fourteen closely printed pages of such pedestrian verse as that of which _Michael_ for the most part consists.

The only other poem in the "Narrative" section of the volume is _The Leech-Gatherer_; and it, besides containing many lines of admirable poetry, is itself a coherently beautiful poem. But when, resuming our a.n.a.lysis, we enquire how much poetry there is in the 112 pages, or in more than the third portion of the volume we have as yet examined, what do we find? Exactly 20, and only 20, which we honestly believe the disinterested lover of poetry, the critic to whom Mr. Arnold makes appeal, would recognise as strictly deserving that description. We can seriously a.s.sert that this is the amount we should save from the wreck, if we were editing a selection from Wordsworth, were disengaging his good work from his bad, and were seeking to obtain for him readers who care nothing whatever about him personally, and who only wish ever and anon to steep themselves in the atmosphere of native and sterling poetry. We are well aware that, from another and a more extended point of view, Wordsworth never wrote a line, in verse or in prose, which is not worth preserving, and worth reading.

But that is not at present the question. We are dealing with the critical contention of a great and influential critic, that "what strikes me with admiration, what establishes in my opinion Wordsworth's superiority"--to Byron, be it understood, and to every English poet since Milton--"is the great and ample body of powerful work which remains to him, even after all his inferior work has been cleared away." This it is which renders it necessary to clear away the inferior work, in order that we may see if the body of "powerful" work that remains be really "ample" or not.

The "Lyrical Poems" contain the best, the most characteristic, and the most valuable of the compositions of Wordsworth. For our part, we should have excluded _To a Sky-Lark_, at page 126--not the beautiful one with the same t.i.tle at page 142--_Stray Pleasures_, the two poems _At the Grave of Burns_, _Yarrow Visited_, _Yarrow Revisited_, in spite of their vogue with Wordsworthians _quand mme_, _To May_, and _The Primrose of the Rock_.

There would then be left 33 pages containing the best poems _of their kind_ anywhere to be found, and of inestimable value to the disinterested lover of poetry. The fervid lover of poetry knows them by heart, and carries them with him through life. Is it necessary to give their names?

_She was a Phantom of Delight_, _The Solitary Reaper_, _Three Years She Grew_, _To the Cuckoo_, _I Wandered lonely as a Cloud_--these, and their companions, to be found about the middle of Mr. Arnold's volume, are among the most precious, and will remain among the enduring possessions of mankind. Nor is it only that they fill the mind with elevating thoughts and swell the heart with sacred sentiments. They make one regard, with a peculiar affection, the poet who wrote them. But we must not allow this literary love to warp literary judgment. No such feeling is awakened for their authors by _Childe Harold_ or _Hamlet_. But to conclude that Wordsworth is, therefore, a greater poet than Byron or Shakespeare, would be as illegitimate in the one instance as in the other. It would be to imitate the filial and uxorious fondness of the late Mr. Carlyle, who gravely tells us that his father had a larger intellect than Burns, and that his amiable, long-suffering wife wrote letters of greater value and insight than the works of George Sand and George Eliot, and "all the pack of scribbling women from the beginning of time." To love Wordsworth is pardonable; nay, it is inevitable to those who are intimate with his tenderest work. But the critic must disengage his judgment from his affections, if he is not to mislead the persons he aspires to instruct, and to injure the art of whose dignity he is bound to be jealous.

Briefly, then, and pursuing to the end the "disinterested-lover-of-poetry"

method recommended to us by Mr. Arnold, and of which we think we have already given ill.u.s.trations to enable any one to decide for himself whether we pursue it with equity and candour, we reach the conclusion that, of the 317 pages composing Mr. Arnold's collection, only 103, on a liberal estimate, contain what is worth preserving as poetry; or at least, if there be any dispute as to whether it is poetry, there can be none, outside the specially Wordsworthian circle, as to its being very inferior poetry indeed, and in no degree calculated to confer, extend, or uphold any man's reputation as a poet. That it is admirable in sentiment and laudable in moral purpose, may at once be granted. But the purest of sentiments and the loftiest of purposes do not const.i.tute poetry, even when apparelled in verse. Indeed we may say of them what Mr. Arnold himself says of those portions of Wordsworth's writings which he discards, that they are "doctrine such as we hear in church, religious and philosophical doctrine; and the attached Wordsworthian loves pa.s.sages of such doctrine, and brings them forward in proof of his poet's excellence.

But however true the doctrine may be, it has, as here presented, more of the characters of _poetic_ truth, the kind of truth we require from a poet."

It may possibly seem an ungracious part to dwell upon the inferior portions of Wordsworth work, and to play the _rle_ of Devil's Advocate in the case of one who is a.s.sured beforehand of the honours of canonisation.

But it should be remembered that this invidious task has been imposed upon us by Mr. Arnold, who has a.s.serted, and challenged contradiction to the a.s.sertion, that in Wordsworth is to be found "an ampler body of powerful work," which const.i.tutes his superiority over every English poet since Milton. It is he who has rendered it necessary, in justice to other poets, to enquire with accuracy, what _is_ the amount of powerful work to be found in Wordsworth; and this cannot be done without careful and judicial scrutiny. Our object is the same as Mr. Arnold's; not to decry Wordsworth, but to ascertain his proper place in relation to other poets. If we seem to have spoken of him harshly, then so must Mr. Arnold; the only difference between us being that he thinks a certain proportion of Wordsworth's verse poor stuff, while we view a yet larger portion of it in that light. Nor is it the example of Mr. Arnold alone that can be cited in exoneration of perfect outspokenness. M. Scherer is a distinguished French critic, whom Mr. Arnold quotes, and M. Scherer has in turn introduced Mr.

Arnold's _Selections_ from Wordsworth to the French public in the pages of the _Temps_. He is a warm admirer of Wordsworth, and, as Mr. Arnold tells us, an excessive depreciator of Byron. From him, therefore, we may, with all the less scruple, cite the following avowals:

The simplicity of Wordsworth's subjects and manner too often degenerates into triviality, the simplicity of his style into poverty. He abuses his love for puerile anecdotes, makes us a present of stories about dogs, and of recitals of what a little girl has said to her sheep. He not only parades enthusiasm for flowers and birds, but predilection for beggars, cripples, and idiots. The lower a person is in the scale of being, the more he strives to awaken our sympathy in his favour. There are no details so minute, so insignificant, that he does not take a special pleasure in remarking them. Is he narrating a walk he takes in summer, he will speak of "the host of insects gathering round his face, and which are ever with him as he paces along."

The habit of seeking and finding lessons in the smallest incidents of his walks becomes a didactic mania. He extracts moralities from every object, he preaches sermons at every turn. Often, too, this preaching vein is far from being poetical. One sometimes seems to be listening to the psalm-singing of a Conventicle. This, for example, resembles a hymn of Watts.

The poetry of Wordsworth, with the tendency it always had towards the prosaic, often lapses into it altogether.

This, we submit, is only another way of saying what we have ventured to say, and what Mr. Arnold himself has said. May we not reasonably conclude that M. Scherer would reject at least all that we have rejected? But, in any case, that there is substantial agreement between us and him, so far, is evident.

What, then, is the "ample body of powerful work" that is left of Wordsworth after the eliminating process has been applied to it by the disinterested lover of poetry? Between three and four thousand lines; rather more than the amount of matter in the third and fourth cantos of _Childe Harold_, rather less than the amount of matter in _Hamlet_. The quant.i.ty therefore, the "body" of work left, is not very large. Still we should not contest that it was "ample" enough to establish the superiority of Wordsworth over Byron, if it happened to be sufficiently "powerful" for the purpose. Though quant.i.ty must count for something, even in the comparison of poet with poet, since quant.i.ty implies copiousness, and usually implies versatility, quality counts for much more, if the difference in quality be marked, and suffices to abolish the consideration of quant.i.ty altogether, if the superiority in respect of quality be sufficiently great. If, for example, the four thousand lines, or thereabouts, of poetry Wordsworth has written, had been embodied, say, in a _Hamlet_, then work so powerful would have been ample to establish his superiority not only over every English poet since Milton, but over every poet since the one who has left us, so to speak, several _Hamlets_.

For what is it that renders _Hamlet_ so great and so powerful? Is it single lines of beautiful poetry? Is it detached pa.s.sages of profound and elevated thought presented in poetic guise? These go for much, more especially when we consider them in connection with that of which they are the drapery. But what would they be, and what should we think of them, detached from the conception of the drama itself, without the plot, action, and progress of the piece, without the invention and unfolding of its characters, without its varied and forcible situations, without its wit, its irony, its humour? What should we think of _Hamlet_ if divested of the panorama of moving human pa.s.sions, of its merciless tragedy, and, finally, of its utter absence of moral so complete, that moralists have been for a hundred years wrangling what the moral is? These are the qualities, and these alone, which make great poetry and great poets.

What has Wordsworth of all these? The answer, if candid and disinterested, must be, Absolutely nothing. He has written no epic, no drama, no poem of any kind in which so much as an attempt is made to deal with the clashing of the various pa.s.sions that "stir this mortal frame." Of Action he is utterly devoid. Of Invention, he seems absolutely unconscious. He has no wit; he has no humour. He has conceived no character, he has portrayed no character. If he can be said to deal with situations at all, they are of the simplest and most elementary kind, and he does not in any sense create them. He finds them at his door. No one blames him for making use of them, where he makes use of them well; but this is a very different thing from the invention shown in _Macbeth_ or _The Tempest_, or even in _Cain_, in _Manfred_, and in _The Siege of Corinth_. Sardanapalus is not a Lear, nor is Myrra a Cordelia. But, as exhibitions and portraitures of human character and human pa.s.sion in poetry they are as much beyond _Lucy Gray_, or _Michael_, or the little Child in _We are Seven_, as Lear and Cordelia are beyond them in turn.

Upon this point let us again hear M. Scherer:

We must expect from Wordsworth neither the knowledge of the human heart which worldly experience gives, nor that interior drama of the pa.s.sions which a man can describe well only on condition of having been their victim, nor those general views upon history and society which are formed partly by study, partly by the practice of public affairs. Our poet is as much a stranger to the disquietudes of thought as to those of ambition, to the sufferings of love and of hate as to that resignation at which one arrives when one has discerned how very small are the great affairs of this world. He has nothing of that sublime melancholy, of those fervid questionings, of those audacious revolts, in which poetry delighted fifty years ago.

Still less has he that mocking scepticism, that raillery now gay now bitter, which succeeded the songs of despair. He will never be of those who trouble souls as Byron does, who arm them with irony like Heine, or who calm them, like Goethe, by the virtue of true understanding. Wordsworth is simply a Solitary who has long gazed upon Nature and much a.n.a.lysed his own feelings. Scarcely should we dare to call him a philosopher, so wanting in him is the reasoning and speculative element. Even the t.i.tle of thinker only half becomes him. He is a contemplative.

It is true that, at the end of his review of Wordsworth, and without any previous admonition that he is going to do so, M. Scherer says, in one brief sentence, "Wordsworth seems to me to come after Milton, notably below him in my opinion, but withal the first after him"; thus endorsing the judgment of Mr. Arnold. But, unlike Mr. Arnold, he makes no attempt to establish or justify this view, but throws it out, as an _obiter dictum_, after writing a long essay, every argument and every phrase of which tend towards a diametrically opposite conclusion. So thoroughly is this the case, that we can honestly say we agree with every word in his essay, with the exception of the one brief sentence we have just cited.

But in the longer and more detailed pa.s.sage quoted above, is not everything conceded for which we are contending? According to M. Scherer, Wordsworth has knowledge neither of the human heart nor of the interior drama of the pa.s.sions. He has no broad views of history and society. He is a stranger to love, hatred, ambition, and the disquietudes they cause, as well as to the disquietudes caused by deep thought; and not having pa.s.sed through these, he has necessarily not "come out upon the other side," and is equally a stranger to the tranquillity of complete knowledge and complete experience. He is not a philosopher; he is hardly a thinker. He is a contemplative solitary, who has consorted much with woods, lakes, and mountains, and has dwelt much upon the sensations they excite in himself.

Verily, this is a sorry equipment for a great poet. Is it an exaggeration to say that, if all this be true, Wordsworth is dest.i.tute of most of the qualities which in a great poet have hitherto been deemed indispensable?

If, in spite of these remarkable deficiencies, he really be the greatest English poet since Milton, we shall be forced to conclude that English poets since Milton have been far less powerful, of far lower calibre, and of far less value, than has generally been supposed.

What then is the precise value, the real calibre, the particular kind of power, of that "ampler body of powerful work" which Wordsworth has given us? We have seen it is not an epic, nor a drama, nor one great comprehensive poem of any kind. It consists of lyrics, ballads, sonnets, and odes; of many of which it would not be just or critical to say more than that they are very sweet and charming, several of which must be p.r.o.nounced exquisite, and a few, very few, of which may be designated sublime. We own we share the general opinion that the greatest composition of Wordsworth is the _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_. We are surprised and disappointed to find Mr. Arnold speaking rather coldly of it; and M.

Scherer likewise refers to it in a depreciatory tone, though he gives different reasons for his conclusion. M. Scherer thinks it "sounds a little false," and adds that he "cannot help seeing in it a theme adopted with reference to the poetic developments of which Wordsworth was susceptible, rather than a very serious belief of the author." We confess we think the judgment harsh, and the reasons given for it insufficient, if not indeed irrelevant. The objection Mr. Arnold entertains for it is that "it has not the character of poetic truth of the best kind; it has no real solidity. The instinct of delight in Nature and her beauty had no doubt extraordinary strength in Wordsworth himself as a child. But to say that universally this instinct is mighty in childhood, and tends to die away afterwards, is to say what is extremely doubtful."

Now, with all deference to Mr. Arnold, which is due to him in a special manner when he is expounding Wordsworth, Wordsworth does not say this. In the first place, Wordsworth, after describing the comparative and temporary diminution of this instinct, describes its revival and transfiguration in another guise. But what is far more important to note is, Wordsworth does _not_ say the instinct is universal. He is writing as a poet, not as a psychologist; and though he treats of an objective infant for a time, and uses the p.r.o.noun "_our_ infancy," he in reality is describing his own experience, and letting it take its chance of being the experience of a certain number of other people. What, we may well ask, can a poet do more than this, when he gets into the higher range, the upper atmosphere of poetry? When Shakespeare talks of "the shade of melancholy boughs," he does not mean that everybody feels them to be melancholy. That is the privilege--the melancholy privilege, if any one wills it so--of the higher natures. That what Wordsworth describes in his splendid _Ode_ not only was true of himself, but is true likewise of all great poetic spirits, we entertain no doubt; and it will become true of an ever-increasing number of persons, if mankind is to make progress in the intimate and integral union of intellectual and poetic sentiment. In our opinion, the highest note of Wordsworth is struck in this Ode, and maintained through a composition of considerable length and of argumentative unity of purpose. It is struck by him elsewhere--indeed in the lines on Hartley Coleridge, we have a distinct overture, so to speak, to the Ode; but nowhere is it sustained for so long, or with such oneness, definiteness, and largeness of aim. There is, perhaps, no finer poem, of equal length, in any language. We could well understand any one maintaining that there exists no other so fine.

But, if this Ode be struck out of the account, what remains to represent an "ample body of powerful work"? For, after all, in criticism, if we criticise at all, we must use words with some definite meaning. Perhaps Mr. Arnold would tell us that it is not the business of true Culture to be too definite; and we should heartily agree with him. One of the things that makes prose so inferior to poetry is its inaccurate precision. But it is Mr. Arnold himself who, on this occasion, compels us to be precise. He has elected to compare Wordsworth with every poet since Milton, and, in doing so, he has been obliged to use language which, to be of any use, must be more or less definite. What is meant by "ample"? Still more, what is meant by "powerful"? Does he mean that Wordsworth's "Lyrical Poems,"

which we think to be the best of Wordsworth's compositions after the Ode, and which he thinks the best, before the Ode, are "powerful"? Let us quote perhaps the best of them, already quoted elsewhere, but that can never be read too often:

Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland La.s.s!

Reaping and singing by herself; Stop here, or gently pa.s.s!

Alone she cuts, and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain; O listen! for the Vale profound Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt So sweetly to reposing bands Of Travellers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands: A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day?