The Prose Works of William Wordsworth Part 127

153. _Hopefulness_.

Writing to a friend at a time of public excitement, he thus speaks: 'After all (as an excellent Bishop of the Scotch Church said to a friendly correspondent of mine), "Be of good heart; the affairs of the world will be conducted as heretofore,--by the foolishness of man and the wisdom of G.o.d."'[224]

[223] _Memoirs_, ii. 502-3.

[224] _Ibid._ ii. 503.

III. CONVERSATIONS AND PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF WORDSWORTH.

(_a_) FROM 'SATYRANE'S LETTERS:' KLOPSTOCK.

(_b_) PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF THE HON. MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.

(_c_) RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN ITALY, BY H.C. ROBINSON.

(_d_) REMINISCENCES OF LADY RICHARDSON AND MRS. DAVY.

(_e_) CONVERSATIONS AND REMINISCENCES RECORDED BY THE BISHOP OF LINCOLN.

(_f_) REMINISCENCES OF REV. R.P. GRAVES, M.A., DUBLIN.

(_g_) ON DEATH OF COLERIDGE.

(_h_) FURTHER REMINISCENCES AND MEMORABILIA, BY REV. R.P. GRAVES, M.A., DUBLIN, NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.

(_i_) AN AMERICAN'S REMINISCENCES.

(_j_) RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE, ESQ., NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.

(_k_) FROM 'RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LAST DAYS OF Sh.e.l.lEY AND BYRON,' BY E.J. TRELAWNY, ESQ.

(_l_) FROM LETTERS OF PROFESSOR TAYLER (1872).

(_m_) ANECDOTE OF CRABBE, FROM DIARY OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

(_n_) WORDSWORTH'S LATER OPINION OF LORD BROUGHAM.

NOTE.

On these 'Personal Reminiscences' see the Preface in Vol. I. G.

(_a_) KLOPSTOCK: NOTES OF HIS CONVERSATION.

From 'Satyrane's Letters' (_Biographia Literaria_, vol. ii. pp. 228-254, ed. 1847).

Ratzeburg.

No little fish thrown back again into the water, no fly unimprisoned from a child's hand, could more buoyantly enjoy its element, than I this clean and peaceful house, with this lovely view of the town, groves, and lake of Ratzeburg, from the window at which I am writing. My spirits certainly, and my health I fancied, were beginning to sink under the noise, dirt, and unwholesome air of our Hamburg hotel. I left it on Sunday, Sept. 23rd. with a letter of introduction from the poet Klopstock, to the _Amtmann_ of Ratzeburg. The _Amtmann_ received me with kindness, and introduced me to the worthy pastor, who agreed to board and lodge me for any length of time not less than a month. The vehicle, in which I took my place, was considerably larger than an English stage-coach, to which it bore much the same proportion and rude resemblance, that an elephant's ear does to the human. Its top was composed of naked boards of different colours, and seeming to have been parts of different wainscots. Instead of windows there were leathern curtains with a little eye of gla.s.s in each: they perfectly answered the purpose of keeping out the prospect and letting in the cold. I could observe little, therefore, but the inns and farm-houses at which we stopped. They were all alike, except in size: one great room, like a barn, with a hay-loft over it, the straw and hay dangling in tufts through the boards which formed the ceiling of the room, and the floor of the loft. From this room, which is paved like a street, sometimes one, sometimes two smaller ones, are enclosed at one end. These are commonly floored. In the large room the cattle, pigs, poultry, men, women, and children, live in amicable community: yet there was an appearance of cleanliness and rustic comfort. One of these houses I measured. It was an hundred feet in length. The apartments were taken off from one corner. Between these and the stalls there was a small inters.p.a.ce, and here the breadth was forty-eight feet, but thirty-two where the stalls were; of course, the stalls were on each side eight feet in depth. The faces of the cows &c. were turned towards the room; indeed they were in it, so that they had at least the comfort of seeing each other's faces. Stall-feeding is universal in this part of Germany, a practice concerning which the agriculturist and the poet are likely to entertain opposite opinions--or at least, to have very different feelings. The wood-work of these buildings on the outside is left unplastered, as in old houses among us, and, being painted red and green, it cuts and tesselates the buildings very gaily. From within three miles of Hamburg almost to Molln, which is thirty miles from it, the country, as far as I could see it was a dead flat, only varied by woods. At Molln it became more beautiful. I observed a small lake nearly surrounded with groves, and a palace in view belonging to the King of Great Britain, and inhabited by the Inspector of the Forests. We were nearly the same time in travelling the thirty-five miles from Hamburg to Ratzeburg, as we had been in going from London to Yarmouth, one hundred and twenty-six miles.

The lake of Ratzeburg runs from south to north, about nine miles in length, and varying in breadth from three miles to half a mile. About a mile from the southernmost point it is divided into two, of course very unequal, parts by an island, which, being connected by a bridge and a narrow slip of land with the one sh.o.r.e, and by another bridge of immense length with the other sh.o.r.e, forms a complete isthmus. On this island the town of Ratzeburg is built. The pastor's house or vicarage, together with the _Amtmann's, Amtsschreiber's_, and the church, stands near the summit of a hill, which slopes down to the slip of land and the little bridge, from which, through a superb military gate, you step into the island-town of Ratzeburg. This again is itself a little hill, by ascending and descending which, you arrive at the long bridge, and so to the other sh.o.r.e. The water to the south of the town is called the Little Lake, which however almost engrosses the beauties of the whole: the sh.o.r.es being just often enough green and bare to give the proper effect to the magnificent groves which occupy the greater part of their circ.u.mference. From the turnings, windings, and indentations of the sh.o.r.e, the views vary almost every ten steps, and the whole has a sort of majestic beauty, a feminine grandeur. At the north of the Great Lake, and peeping over it, I see the seven church towers of Lubec, at the distance of twelve or thirteen miles, yet as distinctly as if they were not three. The only defect in the view is, that Ratzeburg is built entirely of red bricks, and all the houses roofed with red tiles. To the eye, therefore, it presents a clump of brick-dust red. Yet this evening, Oct. 10th. twenty minutes past five, I saw the town perfectly beautiful, and the whole softened down into _complete keeping_, if I may borrow a term from the painters. The sky over Ratzeburg and all the east was a pure evening blue, while over the west it was covered with light sandy clouds. Hence a deep red light spread over the whole prospect, in undisturbed harmony with the red town, the brown-red woods, and the yellow-red reeds on the skirts of the lake. Two or three boats, with single persons paddling them, floated up and down in the rich light, which not only was itself in harmony with all, but brought all into harmony.

I should have told you that I went back to Hamburg on Thursday (Sept.

27th.) to take leave of my friend, who travels southward, and returned hither on the Monday following. From Empfelde, a village half way from Ratzeburg, I walked to Hamburg through deep sandy roads and a dreary flat: the soil everywhere white, hungry, and excessively pulverised; but the approach to the city is pleasing. Light cool country houses, which you can look through and see the gardens behind them, with arbours and trellis work, and thick vegetable walls, and trees in cloisters and piazzas, each house with neat rails before it, and green seats within the rails. Every object, whether the growth of Nature or the work of man, was neat and artificial. It pleased me far better, than if the houses and gardens, and pleasure fields, had been in a n.o.bler taste: for this n.o.bler taste would have been mere apery. The busy, anxious, money-loving merchant of Hamburg could only have adopted, he could not have enjoyed the simplicity of Nature. The mind begins to love Nature by imitating human conveniences in Nature; but this is a step in intellect, though a low one--and were it not so, yet all around me spoke of innocent enjoyment and sensitive comforts, and I entered with unscrupulous sympathy into the enjoyments and comforts even of the busy, anxious, money-loving merchants of Hamburg. In this charitable and _catholic_ mood I reached the vast ramparts of the city. These are huge green cushions, one rising above the other, with trees growing in the inters.p.a.ces, pledges and symbols of a long peace. Of my return I have nothing worth communicating, except that I took extra post, which answers to posting in England. These north German post chaises are uncovered wicker carts. An English dust-cart is a piece of finery, a _chef d'oeuvre_ of mechanism, compared with them: and the horses!--a savage might use their ribs instead of his fingers for a numeration table. Wherever we stopped, the postilion fed his cattle with the brown rye bread of which he eat himself, all breakfasting together; only the horses had no gin to their water, and the postilion no water to his gin.

Now and henceforward for subjects of more interest to you, and to the objects in search of which I loft you: namely, the _literati_ and literature of Germany.

Believe me, I walked with an impression of awe on my spirits, as W---- and myself accompanied Mr. Klopstock to the house of his brother, the poet, which stands about a quarter of a mile from the city gate. It is one of a row of little common-place summer-houses, (for so they looked,) with four or five rows of young meagre elm trees before the windows, beyond which is a green, and then a dead flat intersected with several roads. Whatever beauty, (thought I,) may be before the poet's eyes at present, it must certainly be purely of his own creation. We waited a few minutes in a neat little parlour, ornamented with the figures of two of the Muses and with prints, the subjects of which were from Klopstock's odes.[225]

[225] 'There is a rhetorical amplitude and brilliancy in the Messias,'

says Mr. Carlyle, 'which elicits in our critic (Mr. Taylor) an instinct truer than his philosophy is. Neither has the still purer spirit of Klopstock's odes escaped him. Perhaps there is no writing in our language that offers so correct an emblem of him as this a.n.a.lysis.' I remember thinking Taylor's 'clear outline' of the Messias the most satisfying account of a poem I ever read: it fills the mind with a vision of pomp and magnificence, which it is pleasanter to contemplate, as it were, from afar, ma.s.sed together in that general survey, than to examine part by part. Mr. Taylor and Mr. Carlyle agree in exalting that ode of Klopstock's, in which he represents the Muse of Britain and the Muse of Germany running a race. The piece seems to me more rhetorical than strictly poetical; and if the younger Muse's power of keeping up the race depends on productions of this sort, I would not give a penny for her chance, at least if the contest relates to pure poetry.

Klopstock's _Herman_ (mentioned afterwards,) consists of three chorus-dramas, as Mr. Taylor calls them: _The Battle of Herman_, _Herman and the Princes_, and _The Death of Herman_. Herman is the Arminius of the Roman historians. S.C.

The poet entered. I was much disappointed in his countenance, and recognised in it no likeness to the bust. There was no comprehension in the forehead, no weight over the eye-brows, no expression of peculiarity, moral or intellectual, on the eyes, no ma.s.siveness in the general countenance. He is, if anything, rather below the middle size.

He wore very large half-boots, which his legs filled, so fearfully were they swollen. However, though neither W---- nor myself could discover any indications of sublimity or enthusiasm in his physiognomy, we were both equally impressed with his liveliness, and his kind and ready courtesy. He talked in French with my friend, and with difficulty spoke a few sentences to me in English. His enunciation was not in the least affected by the entire want of his upper teeth. The conversation began on his part by the expression of his rapture at the surrender of the detachment of French troops under General Humbert. Their proceedings in Ireland with regard to the committee which they had appointed, with the rest of their organizing system, seemed to have given the poet great entertainment. He then declared his sanguine belief in Nelson's victory, and antic.i.p.ated its confirmation with a keen and triumphant pleasure.

His words, tones, looks, implied the most vehement Anti-Gallicanism. The subject changed to literature, and I inquired in Latin concerning the history of German poetry and the elder German poets. To my great astonishment he confessed, that he knew very little on the subject. He had indeed occasionally read one or two of their elder writers, but not so as to enable him to speak of their merits. Professor Ebeling, he said, would probably give me every information of this kind: the subject had not particularly excited his curiosity. He then talked of Milton and Glover, and thought Glover's blank verse superiour to Milton's.[226]

[226] _Leonidus_, an epic poem, by R. Glover, first appeared in May, 1737: in the fifth edition, published in 1770, it was corrected and extended from nine books to twelve. Glover was the author of Boadicea and Medea, tragedies, which had some success on the stage. I believe that _Leonidas_ has more merit in the conduct of the design, and in the delineation of character, than as poetry.

'He write an epic poem,' said Thomson, 'who never saw a mountain!'

Glover had seen the sun and moon, yet he seems to have looked for their poetical aspects in Homer and Milton, rather than in the sky. 'There is not a single simile in _Leonidas_,' says Lyttleton, 'that is borrowed from any of the ancients, and yet there is hardly any poem that has such a variety of beautiful comparisons.' The similes of Milton come so flat and dry out of Glover's mangle, that they are indeed quite _another thing_ from what they appear in the poems of that Immortal: _ex. gr._

Like wintry clouds, which, opening for a time, Tinge their black folds with gleams of scattered light:--

Is not this Milton's 'silver lining' stretched and mangled?

The Queen of Night Gleam'd from the centre of th' etherial vault, And o'er the raven plumes of darkness shed Her placid light.

This is flattened from the well-known pa.s.sage in Comus.

Soon will savage Mars Deform the lovely _ringlets of thy shrubs_.

A genteel improvement upon Milton's 'bush with frizzled hair implicit.'

Then we have

--delicious to the sight Soft dales meand'ring show their flowery laps Among rude piles of nature,

spoiled from

--the flowery lap Of some irriguous valley spread its store.

Thus does this poet shatter and dissolve the blooming sprays of another man's plantation, instead of pushing through them some new shoots of his own to crown them with fresh blossoms.

Milton himself borrowed as much as Glover. Aye, ten times more; yet every pa.s.sage in his poetry is Miltonic,--more than anything else. On the other hand, his imitators _Miltonize_, yet produce nothing worthy of Milton, the important characteristic of whose writings my father well expressed, when he said 'The reader of Milton must be always on his duty: _he is surrounded with sense_.' A man must have his sense to imitate him worthily. How we look through his words at the Deluge, as he floods it upon us in Book xi. l. 738-53!--The Attic bees produce honey so flavoured with the thyme of Hymettus that it is scarcely eatable, though to smell the herb itself in a breezy walk upon that celebrated Mount would be an exceeding pleasure; thus certain epic poems are overpoweringly flavoured with herbs of Milton, while yet the fragrant balm and fresh breeze of his poetry is not to be found in them. S.C.