The removal of the poet to Rydal was marked by an incident of considerable importance in his personal history. Through the influence of the Earl of Lonsdale, he was appointed distributor of stamps in the county of Westmoreland, which added greatly to his income, without engrossing all his time. He was now placed beyond the frowns of Fortune-if Fortune can ever be said to have frowned on one so independent of her smiles. The subsequent works of the poet were numerous -The White Doe of Rylstone, a romantic narrative poem, yet coloured with his peculiar genius; Sonnets on the River Duddon; The Waggoner; Peter Bell; Ecclesiastical Sketches; Yarrow Revisited; &c. Having made repeated tours in Scotland and on the continent, the poet diversified his subjects with descriptions of particular scenes, local manners, legends, and associations. The whole of his works were arranged by their author according to their respective subjects; as Poems referring to the Period of Childhood; Poems founded on the Affections; Poems of the Fancy; Poems of the Imagination, &c. This classification is often arbitrary and capricious; but it was one of the conceits of Wordsworth, that his poems should be read in a certain continuous order, to give full effect to his system. Thus classified and published, the poet's works formed six volumes. A seventh, consisting of poems written very early and very late in life-as is stated-and the tragedy which had long lain past the author, were added in 1842. The tragedy is not happy, for Wordsworth had less dramatic power than any other contemporary poet. In the drama, however, both Scott and Byron failed; and Coleridge, with his fine imagination and pictorial expression, was only a shade more successful. ciate, and who looked up to him with a sort of filial veneration and respect. He has drawn his poetical character at length in the Biographia Literaria, and if we consider it as applying to the higher characteristics of Wordsworth, without reference to the absurdity or puerility of some of his early fables, incidents, and language, it will be found equally just and felicitous. First, 'An austere purity of language, both grammatically and logically; in short, a perfect appropriateness of the words to the meaning. Secondly, A correspondent weight and sanity of the thoughts and sentiments won, not from books, but from the poet's own meditations. They are fresh, and have the dew upon them. Even throughout his smaller poems, there is not one which is not rendered valuable by some just and original reflection. Thirdly, The sinewy strength and originality of single lines and paragraphs, the frequent curiosa felicitas of his diction. Fourthly, The perfect truth of nature in his images and descriptions, as taken immediately from nature, and proving a long and genial intimacy with the very spirit which gives a physiognomic expression to all the works of nature. Fifthly, a meditative pathos, a union of deep and subtle thought with sensibility: a sympathy with man as man; the sympathy, indeed, of a contemplator rather than a fellow-sufferer and co-mate (spectator, haud particeps), but of a contemplator from whose view no difference of rank conceals the sameness of the nature; no injuries of wind or weather, or toil, or even of ignorance, wholly disguise the human face divine. Last, and pre-eminently, I challenge for this poet the gift of imagination in the highest and strictest sense of the word. In the play of fancy, Wordsworth, to my feelings, is always graceful, and sometimes recondite. The likeness is occasionally too strange, or demands too peculiar a point of view, or is such as appears the creature of predetermined research, rather than spontaneous presentation. Indeed, his fancy seldom displays itself as mere and unmodified fancy. But in imaginative power he stands nearest of all modern writers to Shakspeare and Milton, and yet in a mind perfectly unborrowed, and his own. To employ his own words, which are at once an instance and an illustration, he does indeed, to all thoughts and to all objects— Add the gleam, The latter years of Wordsworth's life were gladdened by his increasing fame, by academic honours conferred upon him by the universities of Durham and Oxford, by his appointment to the office of poet-laureate on the death of his friend Southey in 1843, and by a pension from the crown of £300 per annum. In 1847, he was shaken by a severe domestic calamity, the death of his only daughter, Dora, Mrs Quillinan. This lady was worthy of her sire. Shortly before her death she published anonymously a Journal of a Residence in Portugal, whither she had gone in pursuit of health. Having attained to the great age of eighty, in the enjoyment of generally robust health (most of his poems were composed in the open air), Wordsworth died on the 23d of April 1850the anniversary of St George, the patron saint of England-and was interred by the side of his daughter in the beautiful churchyard of Grasmere.lous or puerile passages which excited so much One of the most enthusiastic admirers of Wordsworth was Coleridge, so long his friend and asso * Mr Edward Quillinan, son-in-law of Wordsworth, was a native of Oporto, but was educated in England. He was one of Wordsworth's most constant admirers, and was himself a poet of considerable talent, and an accomplished scholar. He was first married to a daughter of Sir Egerton Brydges, and having quitted the army, he settled in the Lake country. There Mrs Quillinan died by an unfortunate accident-her dress having caught fire-and left two daughters, in whom the Wordsworth family took great interest. In 1841, the intimacy between Dora Wordsworth and Mr Quillinan, which first sprang out of the root of grief,' was crowned by their marriage. She lived only about six years afterwards, and Mr Quillinan himself died suddenly in 1851. A volume of his Poems was published in 1853, and part of a translation of the Lusiad, which no man in England could have done so well. He was also engaged on a translation of the History of Portugal by Senor Herculano. 62 The light that never was on sea or land, The fame of Wordsworth was daily extending, as sarcasm, parody, and derision, had been partly removed by himself, or were by his admirers either quietly overlooked, or considered as mere idiosyncrasies of the poet that provoked a smile, while his higher attributes commanded admiration, and he had secured a new generation of readers. A tribe of worshippers, in the young poets of the day, had arisen to do him homage, and in some instances they carried the feeling to a wild but pardonable excess. Many of his former deprecibecause in his late works the poet did himself ators also joined the ranks of his admirers-partly is too intellectual, and too little sensuous, to use more justice both in his style and subjects. He the phrase of Milton, ever to become generally Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; On King's College Chapel, Cambridge. Tax not the royal saint with vain expense, Of white-robed scholars only, this immense popular, unless in some of his smaller pieces. His peculiar sensibilities cannot be relished by all. His poetry, however, is of various kinds. Forgetting his own theory as to the proper subjects of poetry, he ventured on the loftiest themes, and in calm sustained elevation of thought, appropriate imagery, and intense feeling, he often reminds the reader of the sublime strains of Milton. His Laodamia, the Vernal Ode, the Ode to Lycoris and Dion, are pure and richly classic poems in conception and diction. Many of his sonnets have also a chaste and noble simplicity. In these short compositions, his elevation and power as a poet are perhaps more remarkably displayed than in any of his other productions. They possess a winning sweetness or simple grandeur, without the most distant approach to antithesis or straining for effect; while that tendency to prolixity and diffuseness which His Intimations of Immortality, and Lines on characterises his longer poems, is repressed by Tintern Abbey, are the finest examples of his rapt the necessity for brief and rapid thought and imaginative style, blending metaphysical truth concise expression, imposed by the nature of the with diffuse gorgeous description and metaphor. sonnet. It is no exaggeration to say that Milton His simpler effusions are pathetic and tender. alone has surpassed-if even he has surpassed-He has little strong passion; but in one piece, some of the noble sonnets of Wordsworth dedicated to liberty and inspired by patriotism. Sonnets. London, 1802. Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea; The World is Too Much with Us. The world is too much with us; late and soon, We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1803. All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense Vaudracour and Julia, he has painted the passion of love with more warmth than might be anticipated from his abstract idealism: His present mind Was under fascination; he beheld A man too happy for mortality! The lovers parted under circumstances of danger, but had a stolen interview at night: Through all her courts The vacant city slept; the busy winds, To their full hearts the universe seemed hung This is of the style of Ford or Massinger. Living It left him untouched by the artificial or mechanical tastes of his age; it gave an originality to his conceptions and to the whole colour of his thoughts; and it completely imbued him with that purer antique life and knowledge of the phenomena of nature-the sky, lakes, and mountains of his native district, in all their tints and forms-which he has depicted with such power and enthusiasm. A less complacent poet would have been chilled by the long neglect and ridicule he experienced. His spirit was self-supported, and his genius, at once observant and meditative, was left to shape out its own creations, and extend its sympathies to that world which lay beyond his happy mountain solitude. I met a little cottage girl; She was eight years old, she said; She had a rustic woodland air, 'Sisters and brothers, little maid, 'How many? Seven in all,' she said, And wondering looked at me. 'And where are they? I pray you tell' 'You say that two at Conway dwell, 'You run about, my little maid, 'Their graves are green, they may be seen,' The little maid replied, 'Twelve steps or more from my mother's door, And they are side by side. 'My stockings there I often knit, And there upon the ground I sit- And eat my supper there. 'The first that died was little Jane; 'So in the churchyard she was laid; Together round her grave we played- 'And when the ground was white with snow, And I could run and slide, My brother John was forced to go- 'How many are you then,' said I, The little maiden did reply, 'O master! we are seven.' 'But they are dead; those two are dead! A Portrait. She was a phantom of delight To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; I saw her upon nearer view, A spirit, yet a woman too! Her household motions light and free, A countenance in which did meet And now I see with eye serene Lines composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye, during a Tour, July 13, 1798. Five years have passed; five summers, with the length These waters, rolling from their mountain springs These beauteous forms, Is lightened; that serene and blessed mood Be but a vain belief, yet oh! how oft, O sylvan Wye !-thou wanderer through the woods- And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, 57 And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again: Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills; when, like a roe, And their glad animal movements all gone by- Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power All thinking things, all objects of all thought, Nor, perchance, For thou art with me here, upon the banks 65 65 And let the misty mountain winds be free For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance, Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence, wilt thou then forget Picture of Christmas-Eve. Addressed to the Rev. Dr Wordsworth, with Sonnets to the The minstrels played their Christmas tune Through hill and valley every breeze That scraped the chords with strenuous hand. And who but listened till was paid In our admiration of the external forms of nature, the mind is redeemed from a sense of the transitory, which so often mixes perturbation with pleasure; and there is perhaps no feeling of the human heart which, being so intense, is at the same time so composed. It is for this reason, amongst others, that it is peculiarly favourable to the contemplations of a poetical philosopher, and eminently so to one like Mr Wordsworth, in whose scheme of thought there is no feature more prominent than the doctrine that the intellect should be nourished by the feelings, and that the state of mind which bestows a gift of genuine insight is one of profound emotion as well as profound composure; or, as Coleridge has somewhere expressed himself Deep self-possession, an intense repose. The power which lies in the beauty of nature to induce this union of the tranquil and the vivid is described, and to every disciple of Wordsworth, has been, as much as is possible, imparted by the celebrated Lines written in 1798, a few Miles above Tintern Abbey, in which the poet, having attributed to his intermediate recollections of the landscape then revisited a benign influence over many acts of daily life, describes the particulars in which he is indebted to them. The impassioned love of nature is interfused through the whole of Mr Wordsworth's system of thought, filling up all interstices, penetrating all recesses, colouring all media, supporting, associating, and giving coherency and mutual relevancy to it in all its parts. Though man is his subject, yet is man never presented to us divested of his relations with external nature. Man is the text, but there is always a running commentary of natural phenomena.-Quarterly Review for 1834. In illustration of this remark, every episode in the Excursion might also be cited (particularly the affecting and beautiful tale of Margaret in the first book); and the poems of the Cumberland Beggar, Michael, and the Fountain-the last unquestionably one of the finest of the ballads-are also striking instances. Duly pronounced with lusty call, O brother! I revere the choice Yet, would that thou, with me and mine, A true revival of the light Which nature, and these rustic powers, For pleasure hath not ceased to wait How touching, when at midnight sweep The mutual nod-the grave disguise For names once heard, and heard no more; For infant in the cradle laid! Ah! not for emerald fields alone, With ambient streams more pure and bright Glittering before the Thunderer's sight, The ground where we were born and reared! Hail, ancient manners! sure defence, And ye that guard them, mountains old! Hence, while the imperial city's din That neither overwhelm nor cloy, To a Highland Girl. At Inversneyd, upon Loch Lomond. Sweet Highland girl, a very shower Of beauty is thy earthly dower! Twice seven consenting years have shed Their utmost bounty on thy head: |