The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth Volume Iii Part 36

GRASMERE, May 1, 1805.

"Unable to proceed with this work, [B] I turned my thoughts again to the 'Poem on my own Life', and you will be glad to hear that I have added 300 lines to it in the course of last week. Two books more will conclude it. It will not be much less than 9000 lines,--not hundred but thousand lines long,--an alarming length! and a thing unprecedented in literary history that a man should talk so much about himself. It is not self-conceit, as you will know well, that has induced me to do this, but real humility. I began the work because I was _unprepared_ to treat _any more arduous subject_, and _diffident of my own powers_. Here, at least, I hoped that to a certain degree I should be sure of succeeding, as I had nothing to do but describe what I had felt and thought, and therefore could not easily be bewildered.

This might have been done in narrower compa.s.s by a man of more address; but I have done my best. If, when the work shall be finished, it appears to the judicious to have redundancies, they shall be lopped off, if possible; but this is very difficult to do, when a man has written with thought; and this defect, whenever I have suspected it or found it to exist in any writings of mine, I have always found it incurable. The fault lies too deep, and is in the first conception."

GRASMERE, June 3, 1805.

"I have the pleasure to say that I _finished my poem_ about a fortnight ago. I had looked forward to the day as a most happy one; ... But it was not a happy day for me; I was dejected on many accounts: when I looked back upon the performance, it seemed to have a dead weight about it,--the reality so far short of the expectation. It was the first long labour that I had finished; and the doubt whether I should ever live to write 'The Recluse', and the sense which I had of this poem being so far below what I seemed capable of executing, depressed me much; above all, many heavy thoughts of my poor departed brother hung upon me, the joy which I should have had in showing him the ma.n.u.script, and a thousand other vain fancies and dreams. I have spoken of this, because it was a state of feeling new to me, the occasion being new. This work may be considered as a sort of _portico_ to 'The Recluse', part of the same building, which I hope to be able, ere long, to begin with in earnest; and if I am permitted to bring it to a conclusion, and to write, further, a narrative poem of the epic kind, I shall consider the task of my life as over. I ought to add, that I have the satisfaction of finding the present poem not quite of so alarming a length as I apprehended."

These letters explain the delay in the publication of 'The Prelude'.

They show that what led Wordsworth to write so much about himself was not self-conceit, but self-diffidence. He felt unprepared as yet for the more arduous task he had set before himself. He saw its faults as clearly, or more clearly, than the critics who condemned him. He knew that its length was excessive. He tried to condense it; he kept it beside him unpublished, and occasionally revised it, with a view to condensation, in vain. The text received his final corrections in the year 1832.

Wordsworth's reluctance to publish these portions of his great poem, 'The Recluse', other than 'The Excursion', during his lifetime, was a matter of surprise to his friends; to whom he, or the ladies of his household, had read portions of it. In the year 1819, Charles Lamb wrote to him,

"If, as you say, 'The Waggoner', in some sort, came at my call, oh for a potent voice to call forth 'The Recluse' from his profound dormitory, where he sleeps forgetful of his foolish charge--the world!"

('The Letters of Charles Lamb', edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. ii. p.

26.)

The admission made in the letter of May 1st, 1805, is note-worthy:

"This defect" (of redundancy) "whenever I have suspected it or found it to exist in any writings of mine, _I have always found incurable.

The fault lies too deep, and is in the first conception_."

The actual result--in the Poem he had at length committed to writing--was so far inferior to the ideal he had tried to realise, that he could never be induced to publish it. He spoke of the MS. as forming a sort of _portico_ to his larger work--the poem on Man, Nature, and Society--which he meant to call 'The Recluse', and of which one portion only, _viz._ 'The Excursion', was finished. It is clear that throughout the composition of 'The Prelude', he felt that he was experimenting with his powers. He wished to find out whether he could construct "a literary work that might live," on a larger scale than his Lyrics; and it was on the writing of a "philosophical poem," dealing with Man and Nature, in their deepest aspects, that his thoughts had been fixed for many years.

From the letter to Sir George Beaumont, December 25, 1804, it is evident that he regarded the autobiographical poem as a mere prologue to this larger work, to which he hoped to turn "with all his might" after 'The Prelude' was finished, and of which he had already written about a fifth or a sixth (see 'Memoirs', vol. i. p. 304). This was the part known in the Grasmere household as "The Pedlar," a t.i.tle given to it from the character of the Wanderer, but afterwards happily set aside. He did not devote himself, however, to the completion of his wider purpose, immediately after 'The Prelude' was finished. He wrote one book of 'The Recluse' which he called "Home at Grasmere"; and, though detached from 'The Prelude', it is a continuation of the narrative of his own life at the point where it is left off in the latter poem. It consists of 733 lines. Two extracts from it were published in the 'Memoirs of Wordsworth' in 1851 (vol. i. pp. 151 and 155), beginning,

'On Nature's invitation do I come,'

and

'Bleak season was it, turbulent and bleak.'

These will be found in vol. ii. of this edition, pp. 118 and 121 respectively.

The autobiographical poem remained, as already stated, during Wordsworth's lifetime without a t.i.tle. The name finally adopted--'The Prelude'--was suggested by Mrs. Wordsworth, both to indicate its relation to the larger work, and the fact of its having been written comparatively early.

As the poem was addressed to Coleridge, it may be desirable to add in this place his critical verdict upon it; along with the poem which he wrote, on hearing Wordsworth read a portion of it to him, in the winter of 1806, at Coleorton.

In his 'Table Talk' (London, 1835, vol. ii. p. 70), Coleridge's opinion is recorded thus:

"I cannot help regretting that Wordsworth did not first publish his thirteen (fourteen) books on the growth of an individual mind--superior, as I used to think, upon the whole to 'The Excursion'.

You may judge how I felt about them by my own Poem upon the occasion.

Then the plan laid out, and, I believe, partly suggested by me, was, that Wordsworth should a.s.sume the station of a man in mental repose, one whose principles were made up, and so prepared to deliver upon authority a system of philosophy. He was to treat man as man,--a subject of eye, ear, touch, and taste in contact with external nature, and informing the senses from the mind, and not compounding a mind out of the senses; then he was to describe the pastoral and other states of society, a.s.suming something of the Juvenalian spirit as he approached the high civilisation of cities and towns, and opening a melancholy picture of the present state of degeneracy and vice; thence he was to infer and reveal the proof of, and necessity for, the whole state of man and society being subject to, and ill.u.s.trative of a redemptive process in operation, showing how this idea reconciled all the anomalies, and promised future glory and restoration. Something of this sort was, I think, agreed on. It is, in substance, what I have been all my life doing in my system of philosophy.

"I think Wordsworth possessed more of the genius of a great Philosopher than any man I ever knew, or, as I believe, has existed in England since Milton; but it seems to me that he ought never to have abandoned the contemplative position which is peculiarly--perhaps, I might say exclusively--fitted for him. His proper t.i.tle is 'Spectator ab extra'."

The following are Coleridge's Lines addressed to Wordsworth:

TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER HIS RECITATION OF A POEM ON THE GROWTH OF AN INDIVIDUAL MIND

Friend of the wise! and teacher of the good!

Into my heart have I received that lay More than historic, that prophetic lay Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright) Of the foundations and the building up Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell What may be told, to the understanding mind Revealable; and what within the mind By vital breathings secret as the soul Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart Thoughts all too deep for words!-- Theme hard as high, Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears (The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth), Of tides obedient to external force, And currents self-determined, as might seem, Or by some inner power; of moments awful, Now in thy inner life, and now abroad, When power streamed from thee, and thy soul received The Light reflected, as a light bestowed-- Of fancies fair, and milder hours of youth, Hyblean murmurs of poetic thought Industrious in its joy, in vales and glens, Native or outland, lakes and famous hills!

Or on the lonely high-road, when the stars Were rising; or by secret mountain-streams, The guides and the companions of thy way!

Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense Distending wide, and man beloved as man, Where France in all her towns lay vibrating Like some becalmed bark beneath the burst Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud Is visible, or shadow on the main.

For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded, Amid the tremor of a realm aglow, Amid a mighty nation jubilant, When from the general heart of humankind Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity!

--Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down, So summoned homeward, thenceforth calm and sure, From the dread watch-tower of man's absolute self, With light unwaning on her eyes, to look Far on--herself a glory to behold.

The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain) Of Duty, chosen laws controlling choice, Action and joy!--An Orphic song indeed, A song divine of high and pa.s.sionate thoughts To their own music chanted!

O great Bard!

Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air, With stedfast eye I viewed thee in the choir Of ever-enduring men. The truly great Have all one age, and from one visible s.p.a.ce Shed influence! They, both in power and act, Are permanent, and Time is not with them, Save as it worketh for them, they in it.

Nor less a sacred roll, than those of old, And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame Among the archives of mankind, thy work Makes audible a linked lay of Truth, Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay, Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes!

Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn, The pulses of my being beat anew: And even as life returns upon the drowned, Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains-- Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart; And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope; And hope that scarce would know itself from fear; Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, And genius given, and knowledge won in vain; And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild, And all which patient toil had reared, and all, Commune with thee had opened out--but flowers Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier, In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!

... Eve following eve, Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home Is sweetest! moments for their own sake hailed, And more desired, more precious for thy song, In silence listening, like a devout child, My soul lay pa.s.sive, by thy various strain Driven as in surges now beneath the stars, With momentary stars of my own birth, Fair constellated foam, [C] still darting off Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea, Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the moon.

And when--O Friend! my comforter and guide!

Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength!-- Thy long-sustained Song finally closed, And thy deep voice had ceased--yet thou thyself Wert still before my eyes, and round us both That happy vision of beloved faces-- Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close I sate, my being blended in one thought (Thought was it? or aspiration? or resolve?) Absorbed, yet hanging still upon the sound-- And when I rose I found myself in prayer.

It was at Coleorton, in Leicestershire,--where the Wordsworths lived during the winter of 1806-7, in a farm-house belonging to Sir George Beaumont, and where Coleridge visited them,--that 'The Prelude' was read aloud by its author, on the occasion which gave birth to these lines.--Ed.

[Footnote A: See the 'De Quincey Memorials,' vol. i. p. 125.--Ed.]

[Footnote B: A poem on his brother John.--Ed.]

[Footnote C: Compare

"A beautiful white cloud of foam at momentary intervals, coursed by the side of the vessel with a roar, and little stars of flame danced and sparkled and went out in it: and every now and then light detachments of this white cloud-like foam darted off from the vessel's side, each with its own small constellation, over the sea, and scoured out of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness."

S. T. C. in 'Biographia Literaria', Satyrane's Letters, letter i. p. 196 (edition 1817).--Ed.]