The Prose Works of William Wordsworth Part 1

The Prose Works of William Wordsworth.

by William Wordsworth.

TO THE QUEEN.

MADAM,

I have the honour to place in your Majesty's hands the hitherto uncollected and unpublished Prose Works of

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

--name sufficient in its simpleness to give l.u.s.tre to any page.

Having been requested thus to collect and edit his Prose Writings by those who hold his MSS. and are his nearest representatives, one little discovery or recovery among these MSS. suggested your Majesty as the one among all others to whom the ill.u.s.trious Author would have chosen to dedicate these Works, viz. a rough transcript of a Poem which he had inscribed on the fly-leaf of a gift-copy of the collective edition of his Poems sent to the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. This very tender, beautiful, and pathetic Poem will be found on the other side of this Dedication. It must 'for all time' take its place beside the living Laureate's imperishable verse-tribute to your Majesty.

I venture to thank your Majesty for the double permission so appreciatively given--of this Dedication itself and to print (for the first time) the Poem. The gracious permission so pleasantly and discriminatingly signified is only one of abundant proofs that your Majesty is aware that of the enduring names of the reign of Victoria, Wordsworth's is supreme as Poet and Thinker.

Gratefully and loyally, ALEXANDER B. GROSART.

Deign, Sovereign Mistress! to accept a lay, No Laureate offering of elaborate art; But salutation taking its glad way From deep recesses of a loyal heart.

Queen, Wife, and Mother! may All-judging Heaven Shower with a bounteous hand on Thee and Thine Felicity that only can be given On earth to goodness blest by grace divine.

Lady! devoutly honoured and beloved Through every realm confided to thy sway; Mayst Thou pursue thy course by G.o.d approved, And He will teach thy people to obey.

As Thou art wont, thy sovereignty adorn With woman's gentleness, yet firm and staid; So shall that earthly crown thy brows have worn Be changed for one whose glory cannot fade.

And now, by duty urged, I lay this Book Before thy Majesty, in humble trust That on its simplest pages Thou wilt look With a benign indulgence more than just.

Nor wilt Thou blame an aged Poet's prayer, That issuing hence may steal into thy mind Some solace under weight of royal care, Or grief--the inheritance of humankind.

For know we not that from celestial spheres, When Time was young, an inspiration came (Oh, were it mine!) to hallow saddest tears, And help life onward in its n.o.blest aim?

W.W.

9th January 1846.

PREFACE.

In response to a request put in the most gratifying way possible of the nearest representatives of WORDSWORTH, the Editor has prepared this collection of his _Prose Works_. That this should be done _for the first time_ herein seems somewhat remarkable, especially in the knowledge of the permanent value which the ill.u.s.trious Author attached to his Prose, and that he repeatedly expressed his wish and expectation that it would be thus brought together and published, _e.g._ in the 'Memoirs,'

speaking of his own prose writings, he said that but for COLERIDGE'S irregularity of purpose he should probably have left much more in that kind behind him. When COLERIDGE was proposing to publish his 'Friend,'

he (WORDSWORTH) had offered contributions. COLERIDGE had expressed himself pleased with the offer, but said, "I must arrange my principles for the work, and when that is done I shall be glad of your aid." But this "arrangement of principles" never took place. WORDSWORTH added: "_I think my nephew, Dr. Wordsworth, will, after my death, collect and publish all I have written in prose_...." "On another occasion, I believe, he intimated a desire that his _works in Prose should be edited by his son-in-law, Mr. Quillinan_."[1] Similarly he wrote to Professor REED in 1840: 'I am much pleased by what you say in your letter of the 18th May last, upon the Tract of the "Convention of Cintra," and _I think myself with some interest upon its being reprinted hereafter along with my other writings_ [in prose]. But the respect which, in common with all the rest of the rational part of the world, I bear for the DUKE OF WELLINGTON will prevent my reprinting the pamphlet during his lifetime. It has not been in my power to read the volumes of his Despatches, which I hear so highly spoken of; but I am convinced that nothing they contain could alter my opinion of the injurious tendency of that or any other Convention, conducted upon such principles. _It was, I repeat, gratifying to me that you should have spoken of that work as you do, and particularly that you should have considered it in relation to my Poems, somewhat in the same manner as you had done in respect to my little volume on the Lakes_.'[2]

[1] 'Memoirs,' vol. ii. p. 466.

[2] Ibid. vol. i. p. 420.

It is probable that the _amount_ of the Prose of WORDSWORTH will come as a surprise--surely a pleasant one--on even his admirers and students.

His own use of 'Tract' to describe a goodly octavo volume, and his calling his 'Guide' a 'little volume' while it is a somewhat considerable one, together with the hiding away of some of his most matterful and weightiest productions in local and fugitive publications, and in Prefaces and Appendices to Poems, go far to explain the prevailing unacquaintance with even the _extent_, not to speak of the importance, of his Prose, and the light contentment with which it has been permitted so long to remain (comparatively) out of sight. That the inter-relation of the Poems to the Prose, and of the Prose to the Poems--of which above he himself wrote--makes the collection and publication of the Prose a duty to all who regard WILLIAM WORDSWORTH as one of the supreme intellects of the century--as certainly the glory of the Georgian and Victorian age as ever SHAKESPEARE and RALEIGH were of the Elizabethan and Jacobean--will not be questioned to-day.

The present Editor can only express his satisfaction at being called to execute a task which, from a variety of circ.u.mstances, has been too long delayed; but only delayed, inasmuch as the members of the Poet's family have always held it as a sacred obligation laid upon them, with the additional sanction that WORDSWORTH'S old and valued friend, HENRY CRABB ROBINSON, Esq., had expressed a wish in his last Will (1868) that the Prose Works of his friend should one day be collected; and which wish alone, from one so discriminating and generous--were there no other grounds for doing so--the family of WORDSWORTH could not but regard as imperative. He rejoices that the delay--otherwise to be regretted--has enabled the Editor to furnish a much fuller and more complete collection than earlier had perhaps been possible. He would now briefly notice the successive portions of these Volumes:

VOL. I.

I. POLITICAL.

(a) _Apology for the French Revolution_, 1793.

This is from the Author's own MS., and is published _for the first time_. Every reader of 'The Recluse' and 'The Excursion' and the 'Lines on the French Revolution, as it appeared to Enthusiasts at its Commencement'--to specify only these--is aware that, in common with SOUTHEY and the greater COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH was in sympathy with the uprising of France against its tyrants. But it is only now that we are admitted to a full discovery of his youthful convictions and emotion by the publication of this Ma.n.u.script, carefully preserved by him, but never given to the world. The t.i.tle on the fly-leaf--'Apology,' &c., being ours--in the Author's own handwriting, is as follows:

A LETTER TO THE BISHOP OF LANDAFF ON THE EXTRAORDINARY AVOWAL OF HIS POLITICAL PRINCIPLES, CONTAINED IN THE APPENDIX TO HIS LATE SERMON: BY A REPUBLICAN.

It is nowhere dated, but inasmuch as Bishop WATSON'S Sermon, with the Appendix, appeared early in 1793, to that year certainly belongs the composition of the 'Letter.' The t.i.tle-page of the Sermon and Appendix may be here given;

A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE THE STEWARDS OF THE WESTMINSTER DISPENSARY, AT THEIR ANNIVERSARY MEETING, CHARLOTTE STREET CHAPEL, APRIL 1785.

WITH AN APPENDIX, BY R. WATSON, D.D. LORD BISHOP OF LANDAFF.

LONDON: PRINTED FOR T. CADELL IN THE STRAND; AND T. EVANS IN PATERNOSTER ROW.

1793 [8vo].

In the same year a 'second edition' was published, and also separately the Appendix, thus:

STRICTURES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE BRITISH CONSt.i.tUTION, AS WRITTEN IN 1793 IN AN APPENDIX TO A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE THE STEWARDS OF THE WESTMINSTER DISPENSARY, AT THEIR ANNIVERSARY MEETING, CHARLOTTE STREET CHAPEL, APRIL 1785,

BY R. WATSON, D.D. LORD BISHOP OF LANDAFF.

_Reprinted at Loughborough, (With his Lordship's permission) by Adams, Jun. and Recommended by the Loughborough a.s.sociation For the Support of the Const.i.tution to The Serious Attention of the Public_.

Price Twopence, being one third of the original price,

1793 [small 8vo],

The Sermon is a somewhat commonplace dissertation on 'The Wisdom and Goodness of G.o.d in having made both Rich and Poor,' from Proverbs xxii.

2: 'The rich and poor meet together, the Lord is the Maker of them all.'

It could not but be most irritating to one such as young WORDSWORTH--then in his twenty-third year--who pa.s.sionately felt as well with as for the poor of his native country, and that from an intimacy of knowledge and intercourse and sympathy in striking contrast with the serene optimism of the preacher,--all the more flagrant in that Bishop Watson himself sprang from the very humblest ranks. But it is on the Appendix this Letter expends its force, and, except from BURKE on the opposite side, nothing more forceful, or more effectively argumentative, or informed with a n.o.bler patriotism, is to be found in the English language. If it have not the kindling eloquence which is Demosthenic, and that axiomatic statement of principles which is Baconian, of the 'Convention,' every sentence and epithet pulsates--as its very life-blood--with a manly scorn of the false, the base, the sordid, the merely t.i.tularly eminent. It may not be a.s.sumed that even to old age WILLIAM WORDSWORTH would have disavowed a syllable of this 'Apology.'

Technically he might not have held to the name 'Republican,' but to the last his heart was with the oppressed, the suffering, the poor, the silent. Mr. H. CRABB ROBINSON tells us in his Diary (vol. ii. p. 290, 3d edition): 'I recollect once hearing Mr. WORDSWORTH say, half in joke, half in earnest, "I have no respect whatever for Whigs, but I have a great deal of the Chartist in me;"' and his friend adds: 'To be sure he has. His earlier poems are full of that intense love of the people, as such, which becomes Chartism when the attempt is formally made to make their interests the especial object of legislation, as of deeper importance than the positive rights. .h.i.therto accorded to the privileged orders.' Elsewhere the same Diarist speaks of 'the brains of the n.o.blest youths in England' being 'turned' (i. 31, 32), including WORDSWORTH.

There was no such 'turning' of brain with him. He was deliberate, judicial, while at a red heat of indignation. To measure the quality of difference, intellectually and morally, between WORDSWORTH and another noticeable man who entered into controversy with Bishop WATSON, it is only necessary to compare the present Letter with GILBERT WAKEFIELD'S 'Reply to some Parts of the Bishop of Landaff's Address to the People of Great Britain' (1798).

The ma.n.u.script is wholly in the handwriting of its author, and is done with uncharacteristic painstaking; for later, writing was painful and irksome to him, and even his letters are in great part illegible. One folio is lacking, but probably it contained only an additional sentence or two, as the examination of the Appendix is complete. Following on our ending are these words: 'Besides the names which I.'