Chapter LVIII: Book IX: , towards conclusion (10)

In the summer of 1836 I went on the Northern Circuit with Baron Parke. We took Bowness and Storrs, in our way from Appleby to Lancaster; and I visited Wordsworth, and my dear friend Arnold from Storrs. It was my fortune to have to try the great Hornby Castle cause, as it was called; this I did at the end of the circuit, returning from Liverpool to Lancaster for the purpose. Arnold was kind enough to lend me his house (Foxhow) for the vacation; and when the circuit ended, my wife and children accompanied me to it, and we remained there six weeks. During that time Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth were our only neighbours, and we scarcely saw any one besides; but we needed no other addition to the lovely and loveable country in which we were. He was extremely kind, both in telling us where to go, and very often going with us. He was engaged in correcting the press for a new edition of his poems. The London post, I think, went out at 2 P.M., and then, he would say, he was at our service. A walk with him in that country was a real treat: I never met with a man who seemed to know a country and the people so well, or to love them better, nor one who had such exquisite taste for rural scenery: he had evidently cultivated it with great care; he not only admired the beauties, but he could tell you what were the peculiar features in each scene, or what the incidents to which it owed its peculiar charm. He combined, beyond any man with whom I ever met, the unsophisticated poetic delight in the beauties of nature with a somewhat artistic skill in developing the sources and conditions of them. In examining the parts of a landscape he would be minute; and he dealt with shrubs, flower-beds, and lawns with the readiness of a practiced landscape-gardener. His own little grounds afforded a beautiful specimen of his skill in this latter respect; and it was curious to see how he had imparted the same faculty in some measure to his gardener--James Dixon, I think, was his name. I found them together one morning in the little lawn by the Mount. 'James and I,' said he, 'are in a puzzle here. The grass here has spots which offend the eye; and I told him we must cover them with soap-lees. "That," he says, "will make the green there darker than the rest." "Then," I said, "we must cover the whole." He objected: "That will not do with reference to the little lawn to which you pass from this." "Cover that," I said. To which he replies, "You will have an unpleasant contrast with the foliage surrounding it."'

Beside this warm feeling and exquisite taste, which made him so delightful a guide, his favourite spots had a human interest engrafted on them,--some tradition, some incident, some connection with his own poetry, or himself, or some dear friend. These he brought out in a striking way. Apart from these, he was well pleased to discourse on poetry or poets; and here appeared to me to be his principal scholarship. He was extremely well read in English poetry; and he would in his walk review a poem or a poet with admirable precision and fairness. He did not intrude his own poetry or himself, but he did not decline to talk about either; and he spoke of both simply, unboastingly, and yet with a manly consciousness of their worth. It was clear he thought he had achieved a high place among poets: it had been the aim of his life, humanly speaking; and he had taken worthy pains to accomplish and prepare himself for the enterprise. He never would sacrifice anything he thought right on reflection, merely to secure present popularity, or avert criticism which he thought unfounded; but he was a severe critic on himself, and would not leave a line or an expression with which he was dissatisfied until he had brought it to what he liked. He thought this due to the gift of poetry and the character of the poet. Carelessness in the finish of composition he seemed to look on almost as an offence. I remember well, that after speaking with love and delight of a very popular volume of poetry, he yet found great fault with the want of correctness and finish. Reciting one of the poems, and pointing out inaccuracies in it, he said, 'I like the volume so much, that, if I was the author, I think I should never rest till I had nearly rewritten it.' No doubt he carried this in his own case to excess, when he corrected so largely, in the decline of life, poems written in early manhood, under a state of feelings and powers which it was impossible to reproduce, and yet which was necessary, generally speaking, for successful alteration. I cannot but agree with many who think that on this account the earlier copies of his poems are more valuable than the later.

1836. _September_. Wednesday 21.--Wordsworth and I started in my carriage for Lowther, crossed Kirkstone to Paterdale, by Ulleswater, going through the Glenridding Walks,[236] and calling at Hallsteads. We reached the castle time enough before dinner for him to give me a walk.

[236] I remember well, asking him if we were not trespassing on private pleasure-grounds here. He said, no; the walks had, indeed, been inclosed, but he remembered them open to the public, and he always went through them when he chose. At Lowther, we found among the visitors, the late Lord W----; and describing our walk, _he_ made the same observation, that we had been trespassing; but Wordsworth maintained his point with somewhat more warmth than I either liked, or could well account for. But afterwards, when we were alone, he told me he had purposely answered Lord W---- stoutly and warmly, because he had done a similar thing with regard to some grounds in the neighbourhood of Penrith, and excluded the people of Penrith from walking where they had always enjoyed the right before. He had evidently a pleasure in vindicating these rights, and seemed to think it a duty. J.T.C.

After luncheon, on Thursday 22d, we had an open carriage, and proceeded to Haweswater. It is a fine lake, entirely unspoilt by bad taste. On one side the bank rises high and steep, and is well clothed with wood; on the other it is bare and more sloping. Wordsworth conveyed a personal interest in it to me, by telling me that it was the first lake which my uncle[237] had seen on his coming into this country: he was in company with Wordsworth and his brother John. Wordsworth pointed out to me somewhere about the spot on the hill-side, a little out of the track, from which they first saw the lake; and said, he well remembered how his face brightened, and how much delight he appeared to feel. Yesterday morning we returned to this place. We called on our way and took our luncheon at Hallsteads, and also called at Paterdale Hall. At both it was gratifying to see the cordial manner of W.'s reception: he seemed loved and honoured; and his manner was of easy, hearty, kindness to them.

[237] See _Memoirs_, vol. i. pp. 147-8.

My tour with him was very agreeable, and I wish I could preserve in my memory more of his conversation than I shall be able to do. I was anxious to get from him anecdotes of himself and my uncle, and of their works. He told me of himself, that his first verses were a Popian copy written at school on the 'Pleasure of Change;' then he wrote another on the 'Second Centenary of the School's Foundation;' that he had written these verses on the holidays, and on the return to school; that he was rather the poet of the school. The first verses from which he remembered to have received great pleasure, were Miss Carter's 'Poem on Spring,' a poem in the six-line stanza, which he was particularly fond of, and had composed much in, for example, 'Ruth.' He said there was some foundation in fact, however slight, for every poem he had written of a narrative kind; so slight indeed, sometimes, as hardly to deserve the name; for example, 'The Somnambulist' was wholly built on the fact of a girl at Lyulph's Tower being a sleep-walker; and 'The Water Lily,' on a ship bearing that name. 'Michael' was founded on the son of an old couple having become dissolute and run away from his parents; and on an old shepherd having been seven years in building up a sheepfold in a solitary valley: 'The Brothers,' on a young shepherd, in his sleep, having fallen down a crag, his staff remaining suspended midway. Many incidents he seemed to have drawn from the narration of Mrs. Wordsworth, or his sister, 'Ellen' for example, in 'The Excursion;' and they must have told their stories well, for he said his principle had been to give the oral part as nearly as he could in the very words of the speakers, where he narrated a real story, dropping, of course, all vulgarisms or provincialisms, and borrowing sometimes a Bible turn of expression: these former were mere accidents, not essential to the truth in representing how the human heart and passions worked; and to give these last faithfully was his object. If he was to have any name hereafter, his hope was on this, and he did think he had in some instances succeeded;[238] that the sale of his poems increased among the classes below the middle; and he had had, constantly, statements made to him of the effect produced in reading 'Michael' and other such of his poems. I added my testimony of being unable to read it aloud without interruption from my own feelings. 'She was a phantom of delight' he said was written on 'his dear wife,' of whom he spoke in the sweetest manner; a manner full of the warmest love and admiration, yet with delicacy and reserve. He very much and repeatedly regretted that my uncle had written so little verse; he thought him so eminently qualified, by his very nice ear, his great skill in metre, and his wonderful power and happiness of expression. He attributed, in part, his writing so little, to the extreme care and labour which he applied in elaborating his metres. He said, that when he was intent on a new experiment in metre, the time and labour he bestowed were inconceivable; that he was quite an epicure in sound. Latterly he thought he had so much acquired the habit of analysing his feelings, and making them matter for a theory or argument, that he had rather dimmed his delight in the beauties of nature and injured his poetical powers. He said he had no idea how 'Christabelle' was to have been finished, and he did not think my uncle had ever conceived, in his own mind, any definite plan for it; that the poem had been composed while they were in habits of daily intercourse, and almost in his presence, and when there was the most unreserved intercourse between them as to all their literary projects and productions, and he had never heard from him any plan for finishing it. Not that he doubted my uncle's _sincerity_ in his subsequent assertions to the contrary; because, he said, schemes of this sort passed rapidly and vividly through his mind, and so impressed him, that he often fancied he had arranged things, which really and upon trial proved to be mere embryos. I omitted to ask him, what seems obvious enough now, whether, in conversing about it, he had never asked my uncle how it would end. The answer would have settled the question. He regretted that the story had not been made to end the same night in which it begun. There was difficulty and danger in bringing such a personage as the witch to the daylight, and the breakfast-table; and unless the poem was to have been long enough to give time for creating a second interest, there was a great probability of the conclusion being flat after such a commencement.

[238] You could not walk with him a mile without seeing what a loving interest he took in the play and working of simple natures. As you ascend Kirkstone from Paterdale, you have a bright stream leaping down from rock to rock, on your right, with here and there silent pools. One of Wordsworth's poor neighbours worked all the week over Kirkstone, I think in some mines; and returning on Saturday evenings, used to fish up this little stream. We met him with a string of small trout. W. offered to buy them, and bid him take them to the Mount. 'Nay,' said the man, 'I cannot sell them, Sir; the little children at home look for them for supper, and I can't disappoint them.' It was quite pleasant to see how the man's answer delighted the Poet. J.T.C.

* * * * *

A great number of my uncle's sonnets, he said, were written from the 'Cat and Salutation,' or a public-house with some such name, in Smithfield, where my uncle imprisoned himself for some time; and they appeared in a newspaper, I think he said the _Morning Chronicle_.

He remembered his writing a great part of the translation of 'Wallenstein,' and he said there was nothing more astonishing than the ease and rapidity with which it was done.

_Sept. 29th, Foxhow_.--We are just setting out, in a promising day, for a second trip to Keswick, intending, if possible, to penetrate into Wastdale, over the Sty Head. Before I go, I wish to commemorate a walk with the Poet, on a drizzly muddy day, the turf sponging out water at every step, through which he stalked as regardless as if he were of iron, and with the same fearless, unchanged pace over rough and smooth, slippery and sound. We went up by the old road[239] from Ambleside to Keswick, and struck off from the table-land on the left, over the fell ground, till he brought me out on a crag, bounded, as it were, by two ascents, and showing me in front, as in a frame, Grasmere Lake, 'the one green island,' the church, village, &c., and the surrounding mountains. It is a lovely scene, strikingly described in his verses beginning,

'When to the attractions of the busy world,
Preferring studious leisure,' &c.[240]

_Oct. 7th_.--Yesterday Wordsworth drove me to Low-wovel; and then we ascended a great way towards Kirkstone by Troutbeck, passing by many interesting cots, barns, and farm-houses, where W. had constantly something to point out in the architecture, or the fringes of moss, fern, &c., on the roofs or walls. We crossed the valley, and descended on Troutbeck Church, whence we came down to the turnpike road, and I left the Poet, who was going on to assist Sir T. Pasley in laying out his grounds. I turned homeward, till I met my horse.

* * * * *

[239] This old road was very steep, after the fashion of former days, crossing the hill straight over its highest point. A new cut had been made, somewhat diminishing the steepness, but still leaving it a very inconvenient and difficult ascent. At length another alteration was made, and the road was carried on a level round the foot of the hill. My friend Arnold pointed these out to me, and, quizzing my politics, said, the first denoted the old Tory corruption, the second bit by bit, the third Radical Reform. J.T.C.

[240] See Poems on the naming of Places.

As we walked, I was admiring the never-ceasing sound of water, so remarkable in this country. 'I was walking,' he said, 'on the mountains, with ----, the Eastern traveller; it was after rain, and the torrents were full. I said, "I hope you like your companions--these bounding, joyous, foaming streams." "No," said the traveller, pompously, "I think they are not to be compared in delightful effect with the silent solitude of the Arabian Desert." My mountain blood was up. I quickly observed that he had boots and a stout great-coat on, and said, "I am sorry you don't like this; perhaps I can show you what will please you more." I strode away, and led him from crag to crag, hill to vale, and vale to hill, for about six hours; till I thought I should have had to bring him home, he was so tired.'

* * * * *

_October 10th_.--I have passed a great many hours to-day with Wordsworth, in his house. I stumbled on him with proof sheets before him. He read me nearly all the sweet stanzas written in his copy of the 'Castle of Indolence,'[241] describing himself and my uncle; and he and Mrs. W. both assured me the description of the latter at that time was perfectly accurate; that he was almost as a great boy in feelings, and had all the tricks and fancies there described. Mrs. W. seemed to look back on him, and those times, with the fondest affection. Then he read me some lines, which formed part of a suppressed portion of 'The Waggoner;' but which he is now printing 'on the Rock of Names,' so called because on it they had carved out their initials:

W.W. Wm. Wordsworth. M.H. Mary W. D.W. Dorothy Wordsworth. S.T.C. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. J.W. John Wordsworth. S.H. Sarah Hutchinson.

[241] Poems founded on the Affections.

This rock was about a mile beyond Wythburn Chapel, to which they used to accompany my uncle, in going to Keswick from Grasmere, and where they would meet him when he returned. This led him to read much of 'The Waggoner' to me. It seems a very favourite poem of his, and he read me splendid descriptions from it. He said his object in it had not been understood. It was a play of the fancy on a domestic incident and lowly character: he wished by the opening descriptive lines to put his reader into the state of mind in which he wished it to be read. If he failed in doing that, he wished him to lay it down. He pointed out, with the same view, the glowing lines on the state of exultation in which Ben and his companions are under the influence of liquor. Then he read the sickening languor of the morning walk, contrasted with the glorious uprising of Nature, and the songs of the birds. Here he has added about six most exquisite lines.

We walked out on the turf terrace, on the Loughrigg side of Rydal Water. Most exquisitely did the lake and opposite bank look. Thence he led me home under Loughrigg, through lovely spots I had never seen before. His conversation was on critical subjects, arising out of his attempts to alter his poems. He said he considered 'The White Doe' as, in conception, the highest work he had ever produced. The mere physical action was all unsuccessful; but the true action of the poem was spiritual--the subduing of the will, and all inferior passions, to the perfect purifying and spiritualising of the intellectual nature; while the Doe, by connection with Emily, is raised as it were from its mere animal nature into something mysterious and saint-like. He said he should devote much labour to perfecting the execution of it in the mere business parts, in which, from anxiety 'to get on' with the more important parts, he was sensible that imperfections had crept in, which gave the style a feebleness of character.

He talked of Milton, and observed how he sometimes indulged himself, in the 'Paradise Lost,' in lines which, if not in time, you could hardly call verse, instancing,

'And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old;'

and then noticed the sweet-flowing lines which followed, and with regard to which he had no doubt the unmusical line before had been inserted.

'Paradise Regained' he thought the most perfect in _execution_ of anything written by Milton; that and the 'Merchant of Venice,' in language, he thought were almost faultless: with the exception of some little straining in some of the speeches about the caskets, he said, they were perfect, the genuine English expressions of the ideas of their own great minds. Thomson he spoke of as a real poet, though it appeared less in his 'Seasons' than in his other poems. He had wanted some judicious adviser to correct his taste; but every person he had to deal with only served to injure it. He had, however, a true love and feeling for Nature, and a greater share of poetical imagination, as distinguished from dramatic, than any man between Milton and him. As he stood looking at Ambleside, seen across the valley, embosomed in wood, and separated from us at sufficient distance, he quoted from Thomson's 'Hymn on Solitude,' and suggested the addition, or rather insertion, of a line at the close, where he speaks of glancing at London from Norwood. The line, he said, should have given something of a more favourable impression:

'Ambition---- [242] and pleasure vain.'

_October 14th, Foxhow_.--We have had a delightful day to-day. The weather being fine, Wordsworth agreed to go with us into Easedale; so we got three ponies, for Mary and Madge, and Fred and Alley, alternately, and walked from Grasmere, he _trudging_[243] before, with his green gauze shade over his eyes, and in his plaid jacket and waistcoat. First, he turned aside at a little farm-house, and took us into a swelling field, to look down on the tumbling stream which bounded it, and which we saw precipitated at a distance, in a broad white sheet, from the mountain. A beautiful water-break of the same stream was before us at our feet, and he noticed the connection which it formed in the landscape with the distant waterfall. Then, as he mused for an instant, he said, 'I have often thought what a solemn thing it would be, if we could have brought to our mind, at once, all the scenes of distress and misery, which any spot, however beautiful and calm before us, has been witness to since the beginning. That water-break, with the glassy, quiet pool beneath it, that looks so lovely, and presents no images to the mind but of peace,--there, I remember, the only son of his father, a poor man, who lived yonder, was drowned. He missed him, came to search, and saw his body dead in the pool.' We pursued our way up the stream, not a very easy way for the horses, near to the waterfall before mentioned, and so gradually up to the Tarn. Oh, what a scene! The day one of the softest and brightest in autumn; the lights various; the mountains in the richest colouring, fern covering them with reddish gold in great part; here and there, trees in every variety of autumn foliage; and the rock itself of a kind of lilac tint; the outlines of the mountains very fine; the Tarn, which might almost be called a lake for size and abundance of water, with no culture, or trees, or habitation around it, here and there a great rock stretching into it like a promontory, and high mountains surrounding it on three sides, on two of them almost precipitate; on the fourth side, it is more open, and on this the stream, crossed by four great stepping-stones, runs out of it, and descends into Grasmere vale and lake. He pointed out the precipitous mountain at the head of the Tarn, and told us an incident of his sister and himself coming from Langdale, which lies on the other side. He having for some reason parted, she encountered a fog, and was bewildered. At last, she sat down and waited; in a short time it began to clear; she could see that a valley was before her. In time, she saw the backs of cattle feeding, which emerged from the darkness, and at last the Tarn; and then found she had stopped providentially, and was sitting nearly on the edge of the precipice. Our return was somewhat more perilous for the riders than the ascent; but we accomplished it safely, and, in our return, turned in Butterlip How, a circular, soft, green hill, surrounded with oak trees, at the head of Grasmere. It is about twenty acres, and belongs to a London banker, purchased, as I suppose, with a view to building on it. It is a lovely spot for a house, with delicious views of the lake and church, Easedale, Helm Crag, &c. I have seen no place, I think, on which I should so much like to build my retreat.

[242] I cannot fill the blank. J.T.C.

[243] I used the word _trudging_ at the time; it denoted to me his bold way of walking. J.T.C.

_October 16th_.--Since church, we have taken our last walk with Wordsworth. M. was mounted on Dora W.'s pony. He led us up on Loughrigg, round to the Tarn, by the back of Loughrigg to the foot of Grasmere Lake, and so home by this side of Rydal; the weather warm and fine, and a lovely walk it was. The views of the mountains, Langdale Way, the Tarn itself and its banks, and the views on Grasmere and Rydal Waters, are almost beyond anything I have seen, even in this country.

He and Mrs. W. came this evening to bid us farewell. We parted with great, I believe mutual, regret; certainly they have been kind to us in a way and degree which seemed unequivocally to testify good liking to us, and them it is impossible not to love. The more I have seen of Wordsworth, the more I admire him as a poet and as a man. He has the finest and most discriminating feeling for the beauties of Nature that I ever witnessed; he expresses himself in glowing and yet manly language about them. There is much simplicity in his character, much _naÔvetÈ_, but it is all generous and highly moral.[244]

[244] _Memoirs_, ii. 300-15.

* * * * *

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

Oct. 18. 1850.

MY DEAR SIR,

I feel quite ashamed, I assure you, of sending you the Itinerary of my journey with Mr. Wordsworth, so poorly accompanied as it must be, and the more, because Mr. Wordsworth seems to have thought that I might be able to make a contribution to your work worth your acceptance. At the same time, I am much relieved by recollecting that he himself cared nothing for the connection which a place might have with a great poet, unless an acquaintance with it served to illustrate his works. He made this remark in the Church of St. Onofrio at Rome, where Tasso lies buried. The place which, on this account, interested him more than any other on the journey was _Vaucluse_, while he cared nothing for Arezzo, which claims to be the place of Petrarch's birth. Indeed, a priest on the spot, on another visit, said it is not certain that he was born there, much less in the house marked with his name. Mr. W. was not without the _esprit de corps_, even before his official dignity, and took great interest in Savona, on account of Chiabrera, as appears in the 'Musings near Aquapendente,' perhaps the most beautiful of these Memorials of the Italian tour--'alas too few!' As he himself repeatedly said of the journey, 'It is too late.' 'I have matter for volumes,' he said once, 'had I but youth to work it up.' It is remarkable how in this admirable poem meditation predominates over observation. It often happened that objects of universal attraction served chiefly to bring back to his mind absent objects dear to him. When we were on that noble spot, the Amphitheatre at Nismes, I observed his eyes fixed in a direction where there was the least to be seen; and, looking that way, I beheld two very young children at play with flowers; and I overheard him say to himself, 'Oh! you darlings, I wish I could put you in my pocket and carry you to Rydal Mount.'

It was Mr. Theed, the sculptor, who informed us of the pine tree being the gift of Sir George Beaumont. This incident occurred within a few minutes after our walking up the Pincian Hill. And this was the very first observation Mr. W. made at Rome.

It was a remark justly made on the Memorials of the Swiss Journey in 1820, that Mr. W. left unnoticed the great objects which have given rise to innumerable common-place verses and huge piles of bad prose, and which every body talks about, while he dwelt on impressions peculiar to himself. As a reproach, nothing can be more idle and unmeaning. I expected it would be so with these latter poems, and so I found it. There are not more than two others which bring anything to my mind.

The most important of these is the 'Cuckoo at Laverna.' I recollect perfectly well that I heard the cuckoo at Laverna twice before he heard it; and that it absolutely fretted him that my ear was first favoured; and that he exclaimed with delight, 'I hear it! I hear it!' It was at Laverna, too, that he led me to expect that he had found a subject on which he would write; and that was the love which birds bore to St. Francis. He repeated to me a short time afterwards a few lines, which I do not recollect among those he has written on St. Francis in this poem. On the journey, one night only I heard him in bed composing verses, and on the following day I offered to be his amanuensis; but I was not patient enough, I fear, and he did not employ me a second time. He made inquiries for St. Francis's biography, as if he would dub him his Leib-heiliger (body-saint), as Goethe (saying that every one must have one) declared St. Philip Neri to be his.

The painter monk at Camaldoli also interested him, but he heard my account only in addition to a _very poor_ exhibition of professional talent; but he would not allow the pictures to be so very poor, as every nun ought to be beautiful when she takes the veil.

I recollect, too, the pleasure he expressed when I said to him, 'You are now sitting in Dante's chair.' It faces the south transept of the cathedral at Florence.

I have been often asked whether Mr. W. wrote anything on the journey, and my answer has always been, 'Little or nothing.' Seeds were cast into the earth, and they took root slowly. This reminds me that I once was privy to the conception of a sonnet, with a distinctness which did not once occur on the longer Italian journey. This was when I accompanied him into the Isle of Man. We had been drinking tea with Mr. and Mrs. Cookson, and left them when the weather was dull. Very soon after leaving them we passed the church tower of Bala Sala. The upper part of the tower had a sort of frieze of yellow lichens. Mr. W. pointed it out to me, and said, 'It's a perpetual sunshine.' I thought no more of it, till I read the beautiful sonnet,

'Broken in fortune, but in mind entire;'[245]

and then I exclaimed, I was present at the conception of this sonnet, at least of the combination of thought out of which it arose.

I beg to subscribe myself, with sincere esteem,

Faithfully yours,
H.C. ROBINSON.[246]

[245] See _Memoirs_, ii. 246.

[246] _Ibid._ ii. 329-32.

* * * * *

(_d_) REMINISCENCES OF WORDSWORTH.

BY LADY RICHARDSON, AND MRS. DAVY, OF THE OAKS, AMBLESIDE.

(1.) LADY RICHARDSON.

Lancrigg, Easedale, August 26. 1841.

Wordsworth made some striking remarks on Goethe in a walk on the terrace yesterday. He thinks that the German poet is greatly overrated, both in this country and his own. He said, 'He does not seem to me to be a great poet in either of the classes of poets. At the head of the first class I would place Homer and Shakspeare, whose universal minds are able to reach every variety of thought and feeling without bringing their own individuality before the reader. They infuse, they breathe life into every object they approach, but you never find _themselves_. At the head of the second class, those whom you can trace individually in all they write, I would place Spenser and Milton. In all that Spenser writes you can trace the gentle affectionate spirit of the man; in all that Milton writes you find the exalted sustained being that he was. Now in what Goethe writes, who aims to be of the first class, the _universal_, you find the man himself, the artificial man, where he should not be found; so consider him a very artificial writer, aiming to be universal, and yet constantly exposing his individuality, which his character was not of a kind to dignify. He had not sufficiently clear moral perceptions to make him anything but an artificial writer.

Tuesday, the 2d of May, Wordsworth and Miss F. came early to walk about and dine. He was in a very happy kindly mood. We took a walk on the terrace, and he went as usual to his favourite points. On our return he was struck with the berries on the holly tree, and said, 'Why should not you and I go and pull some berries from the other side of the tree, which is not seen from the window? and then we can go and plant them in the rocky ground behind the house.' We pulled the berries, and set forth with our tool. I made the holes, and the Poet put in the berries. He was as earnest and eager about it, as if it had been a matter of importance; and as he put the seeds in, he every now and then muttered, in his low solemn tone, that beautiful verse from Burns's 'Vision:'

'And wear thou this, she solemn said,
And bound the holly round my head.
The polished leaves and berries red
Did rustling play;
And like a passing thought she fled
In light away.'

He clambered to the highest rocks in the 'Tom Intake,' and put in the berries in such situations as Nature sometimes does with such true and beautiful effect. He said, 'I like to do this for posterity. Some people are selfish enough to say, What has posterity done for me? but the past does much for us.'

(II.) ADDITIONAL SENT TO THE PRESENT EDITOR BY LADY RICHARDSON.

_August 28th_, 1841.--Mr. Wordsworth, Miss Fenwick, and Mrs. Hill came to dine, and it rained on the whole day, but happily the Poet talked on from two to eight without being weary, as we certainly were not. After dinner, when we came to the drawing-room, the conversation turned on the treatment of Wordsworth by the reviews of the day. I had never heard him open out on it before, and was much struck with the manner in which he did it; from his present elevation looking calmly back on the past, and at the same time feeling that an irreparable injury had been done to him at the time when life and hope were young. As nearly as I can I shall record his words as they were spoken. He said:

'At the time I resolved to dedicate myself to poetry and separate myself from the ordinary lucrative professions, it would certainly have been a great object to me to have reaped the profits I should have done from my writings but for the stupidity of Mr. Gifford and the impertinence of Mr. Jeffrey. It would have enabled me to purchase many books which I could not obtain, and I should have gone to Italy earlier, which I never could afford to do until I was sixty-five, when Moxon gave me a thousand pounds for my writings. This was the only kind of injury Mr. Jeffrey did me, for I immediately perceived that his mind was of that kind that his individual opinion on poetry was of no consequence to me whatever, that it was only by the influence his periodical exercised at the time in preventing my poems being read and sold that he could injure me; for feeling that my writings were founded on what was true and spiritual in human nature, I knew the time would come when they must be known, and I never therefore felt his opinion of the slightest value, except in preventing the young of that generation from receiving impressions which might have been of use to them through life. I say this, I hope not in a boasting spirit, but I am now daily surprised by receiving letters from various places at home and abroad expressive of gratitude to me from persons I never saw or heard of. As this occurs now, I may fairly conclude that it might have been so when the poems appeared, but for the tyranny exercised over public opinion by the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_.'

_December_ 1841.--Wordsworth and Miss Fenwick spent the shortest day of the year with us; he brought with him his Epitaph on Southey, and as we sat round the fire after dinner, my mother asked him to read it to us, which he did in his usual impressive manner. He asked our impression of it. My mother ventured to tell him of one word, or rather two, which she thought might be altered with advantage. They were these:

'Wide was his range, but ne'er in human breast
Did private feeling find a holier nest.'

'Holier nest' were the words she objected to, as not being a correct union of ideas. He took the suggestion most kindly, and said it had been much discussed in his own mind and in his family circle, but that he saw the force of what she said, and that he was aware many others would see it also. He said there was yet time to change it, and that he should consult Judge Coleridge whether the line, as he once had it,

'Did private feeling meet in holier rest,'

would not be more appropriate to the simplicity of an epitaph where you con every word, and where every word is expected to bear an exact meaning. We all thought this was an improvement. During tea he talked with great animation of the separation of feeling between the rich and poor in this country; the reason of this he thinks is the greater freedom we enjoy; that the line of demarcation not being so clearly laid down in this country by the law as in others, people fancy they must make it for themselves. He considers Christianity the only cure for this state of things. He spoke of his own desire to carry out the feeling of brotherhood with regard to servants, which he all along endeavoured to do. He doubted whether he might not have had better servants on a different system; but he thought it right to endeavour to inspire your domestics with a feeling of common interest. My mother said she entirely agreed with him, but she had always found it most difficult.

(III.) LADY RICHARDSON (CONTINUED).

_November_ 1843.--Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, infinitely lower than the inventive; and he said to-day that if the quantity of time considered in writing critiques on the works of others were given to original composition, of whatever kind it might be, it would be much better employed; it would make a man find out sooner his own level, and it would do infinitely less mischief. A false or malicious criticism may do much injury to the minds of others; a stupid invention, either in prose or verse, is quite harmless.

_December_ 22_d_, 1843.--The shortest day is past, and it was a very pleasant one to us, for Wordsworth and Miss Fenwick offered to spend it with us. They came early, and, although it was misty and dingy, he proposed to walk up Easedale. We went by the terrace, and through the little gate on the Fell, round by Brimmer Head, having diverged a little up from Easedale, nearly as far as the ruined cottage. He said, when he and his sister wandered there so much, that cottage was inhabited by a man of the name of Benson, a waller, its last inhabitant. He said on the terrace, 'This is a striking anniversary to me; for this day forty-four years ago, my sister and I took up our abode at Grasmere, and three days after we found out this walk, which long remained our favourite haunt.' There is always something very touching in his way of speaking of his sister; the tones of his voice become more gentle and solemn, and he ceases to have that flow of expression which is so remarkable in him on all other subjects. It is as if the sadness connected with her present condition was too much for him to dwell upon in connection with the past, although habit and the 'omnipotence of circumstance' have made its daily presence less oppressive to his spirits. He said that his sister spoke constantly of their early days, but more of the years they spent together in other parts of England than those at Grasmere. As we proceeded on our walk he happened to speak of the frequent unhappiness of married persons, and the low and wretched principles on which the greater number of marriages were formed. He said that unless there was a strong foundation of love and respect, the 'unavoidable breaks and cataracts' of domestic life must soon end in mutual aversion, for that married life ought not to be in theory, and assuredly it never was in practice, a system of mere submission on either side, but it should be a system of mutual cooperation for the good of each. If the wife is always expected to conceal her difference of opinion from her husband, she ceases to be an equal, and the man loses the advantage which the marriage tie is intended to provide for him in a civilised and Christian country. He then went on to say, that, although he never saw an amiable single woman without wishing that she were married, from his strong feeling of the happiness of a well-assorted marriage, yet he was far from thinking that marriage always improved people. It certainly did not, unless it was a congenial marriage.[247]

(IV.) Mrs. DAVY.

'The Oaks, Ambleside, Monday, Jan. 22. 1844.

While Mrs. Quillinan was sitting with us to-day, Henry Fletcher ran in to say that he had reserved his summons for Oxford (he had been in suspense about rooms as an exhibitioner at Balliol), and must be off within an hour. His young cousins and I went down with him to wait for the mail in the marketplace. We found Mr. Wordsworth walking about before the post-office door in very charming mood. His spirits were excited by the bright morning sunshine, and he entered at once on a full flow of discourse. He looked very benevolently on Henry as he mounted on the top of the coach, and seemed quite disposed to give an old man's blessing to the young man entering on an untried field, and then (nowise interrupted by the hurrying to and fro of ostlers with their smoking horses, or passengers with their carpet bags) he launched into a dissertation, in which there was, I thought, a remarkable union of his powerful diction, and his practical, thoughtful good sense, on the subject of college habits, and of his utter distrust of all attempts to nurse virtue by an avoidance of temptation. He expressed also his entire want of confidence (from experience he said) of highly-wrought religious expression in youth. The safest training for the mind in religion he considered to be a contemplating of the character and personal history of Christ. 'Work it,' he said, 'into your thoughts, into your imagination, make it a real presence in the mind.' I was rejoiced to hear this plain, loving confession of a Christian faith from Wordsworth. I never heard one more earnest, more as if it came out of a devoutly believing heart.

[247] The close of Lady Richardson's 'Reminiscences' here in the _Memoirs_ is not given, as being more fully introduced under December 1841, p. 438. The repetition of the same sentiments in 1843, however, is noticeable. For a vivid and sweetly toned paper on Wordsworth by Lady Richardson--based on the _Memoirs_--see _Sharpe's London Magazine_ for March 1853, pp. 148-55. G.

The Oaks, March 5. 1844.

On our way to Lancrigg to-day, we called at Foxhow. We met Mr. Wordsworth there, and asked him to go with us. It was a beautiful day, one of his very own 'mild days' of this month. He kindly consented, and walked with us to meet the carriage at Pelter Bridge. On our drive, he mentioned, with marked pleasure, a dedication written by Mr. Keble, and sent to him for his approval, and for his permission to have it prefixed to Mr. Keble's new volumes of Latin Lectures on Poetry delivered at Oxford. Mr. Wordsworth said that he had never seen any estimate of his poetical powers, or more especially of his aims in poetry, that appeared to him so discriminating and so satisfactory. He considers praise a perilous and a difficult thing. On this subject he often quotes his lamented friend, Sir George Beaumont, whom, in his intercourse with men of genius, literary aspirants, he describes as admirable in the modesty which he inculcated and practised on this head.

The Oaks, Ambleside, July 11. 1844.

Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth at dinner, along with our family party. Mr. and Mrs. Price (from Rugby), two aunts of Mrs. P.'s, and her brother, Mr. Rose, a young clergyman (a devout admirer of Wordsworth), joined us at tea. A circle was made as large as our little parlour could hold. Mr. Price sat next to Mr. Wordsworth, and by design or fortunate accident, introduced some remark on the powers and the discourse of Coleridge. Mr. Wordsworth entered heartily and largely on the subject. He said that the liveliest and truest image he could give of Coleridge's talk was 'that of a majestic river, the sound or sight of whose course you caught at intervals, which was sometimes concealed by forests, sometimes lost in sand, then came flashing out broad and distinct, then again took a turn which your eye could not follow, yet you knew and felt that it was the same river: so,' he said, 'there was always a train, a stream, in Coleridge's discourse, always a connection between its parts in his own mind, though one not always perceptible to the minds of others.' Mr. Wordsworth went on to say, that in his opinion Coleridge had been spoilt as a poet by going to Germany. The bent of his mind, which was at all times very much to metaphysical theology, had there been fixed in that direction. 'If it had not been so,' said Wordsworth, 'he would have been the greatest, the most abiding poet of his age. His very faults would have made him popular (meaning his sententiousness and laboured strain), while he had enough of the essentials of a poet to make him deservedly popular in a higher sense.'

* * * * *

Mr. Price soon after mentioned a statement of Coleridge's respecting himself, recorded in his 'Table Talk,' namely, that a visit to the battle-field of Marathon would raise in him no kindling emotion, and asked Mr. Wordsworth whether this was true as a token of his mind. At first Mr. Wordsworth said, 'Oh! that was a mere bravado, for the sake of astonishing his hearers!' but then, correcting himself, he added, 'And yet it might in some sense be true, for Coleridge was not under the influence of external objects. He had extraordinary powers of summoning up an image or series of images in his own mind, and he might mean that his idea of Marathon was so vivid, that no visible observation could make it more so.' 'A remarkable instance of this,' added Mr. Wordsworth, 'is his poem, said to be "composed in the Vale of Chamouni." Now he never was at Chamouni, or near it, in his life.' Mr. Wordsworth next gave a somewhat humorous account of the rise and progress of the 'Ancient Mariner.' 'It arose,' he said, 'out of the want of five pounds which Coleridge and I needed to make a tour together in Devonshire. We agreed to write jointly a poem, the subject of which Coleridge took from a dream which a friend of his had once dreamt concerning a person suffering under a dire curse from the commission of some crime.' 'I,' said Wordsworth, 'supplied the crime, the shooting of the albatross, from an incident I had met with in one of Shelvocke's voyages. We tried the poem conjointly for a day or two, but we pulled different ways, and only a few lines of it are mine.' From Coleridge, the discourse then turned to Scotland. Mr. Wordsworth, in his best manner, with earnest thoughts given out in noble diction, gave his reasons for thinking that as a poet Scott would not live. 'I don't like,' he said, 'to say all this, or to take to pieces some of the best reputed passages of Scott's verse, especially in presence of my wife, because she thinks me too fastidious; but as a poet Scott _cannot_ live, for he has never in verse written anything addressed to the immortal part of man. In making amusing stories in verse, he will be superseded by some newer versifier; what he writes in the way of natural description is merely rhyming nonsense.' As a prose writer, Mr. Wordsworth admitted that Scott had touched a higher vein, because there he had really dealt with feeling and passion. As historical novels, professing to give the manners of a past time, he did not attach much value to those works of Scott's so called, because that he held to be an attempt in which success was impossible. This led to some remarks on historical writing, from which it appeared that Mr. Wordsworth has small value for anything but contemporary history. He laments that Dr. Arnold should have spent so much of his time and powers in gathering up and putting into imaginary shape the scattered fragments of the history of Rome.[248]

These scraps of Wordsworth's large, thoughtful, earnest discourse, seem very meagre as I note them down, and in themselves perhaps hardly worth preserving and yet this is an evening which those who spent it in his company will long remember. His venerable head; his simple, natural, and graceful attitude in his arm-chair; his respectful attention to the slightest remarks or suggestions of others in relation to what was spoken of; his kindly benevolence of expression as he looked round now and then on the circle in our little parlour, all bent to 'devour up his discourse,' filled up and enlarged the meaning which I fear is but ill conveyed in the words as they are now set down.

(V.) LADY RICHARDSON: WORDSWORTH'S BIRTH-DAY.