MR. WORDSWORTH'S SONNETS.* 6 In a previous essay we have ventured upon the task of considering Mr. Wordsworth's poetry at large; but such a subject cannot be treated as it ought to be within the limits to which we confined ourselves, and we will now take the Sonnets' into separate consideration, and endeavour to do more justice to a part than we have found it possible to do to the whole. Not that justice can be done to a part of Mr. Wordsworth's or of any great writer's works without having reference to the whole. Every portion of such a writer's works has a value beyond its intrinsic worth, as being part and lot of a great mind, and having correlations with every other part; and whether it be from the unity of spirit which is commonly found to pervade the works of a great * A Critical Essay, reprinted from No. 137 of the Quarterly Review, being that for the Month of December, 1841. writer whatever may be his variety of manner, or whether it be that there is nothing he has written but must tell us something of his mind (for even his commonplace remarks will tell us that upon occasion he was willing to be commonplace), it is certainly the attribute of such writers to give the coherency of one interest to everything that proceeds from them; and far be it from us to treat Mr. Wordsworth's Sonnets otherwise than as parcel of that great body of doctrine and moral sentiment which constitutes Mr. Wordsworth's mind extant in his works. But by considering the Sonnets principally and the other poems only in relation to them, we shall be enabled to keep our remarks within compass. 6 Of the many styles in which this poet has written, those of the Sonnets and of The Excursion' may be regarded as the farthest apart; The Excursion' being the most remarkable of his writings for breadth of style, the Sonnets for compactness. In a long philosophical poem which must necessarily tax the powers of attention, a current and almost 6 colloquial manner was best fitted to keep the reader at ease, and a continued terseness of diction and condensation of thought, though apparently abridging his labours, in reality would have cost him more than it saved him. That the whole should be flowingly connected, so as to be borne in upon the mind with the weight of one stream, was more for the interests of the subject than that pointed and striking passages should often occur. It was also perhaps expedient that the substance of what was to be said in The Excursion' should be supported by its own solidity and truth, and that it should be recommended by the natural eloquence of a fervid mind delivering itself of what is strongly felt, rather than by any frequency of fanciful embellishment, or, as regards the rhythm, by any marked and salient melodies. These things were not to be excluded, but they were to come as they might happen to present themselves to a mind somewhat pre-occupied-they were to be merely occasional and incidental. The Sonnets, on the contrary, address the reader, each claiming to be considered for itself and by itself; and though, as we have said, not altogether irrespectively of its kindred with other works the issue of the same mind, yet mainly as a substantive poem. And for this kind of poem the style required was the very opposite of that employed in 'The Excursion,' and perhaps also a good deal removed from what fell in with the natural fluency of the poet. Mr. Wordsworth's genius we imagine to have inclined naturally to an easy abundance both of thoughts and words; but art was to predominate over this inclination wheresoever it was not fit to be indulged, and the poetic mind which had been diffused widely with an easy fluctuation through The Excursion,' though not changing its nature and spirit, was to take a different structure-was to be inspissated as it were, and form itself into crystals in the Sonnets. The critic of these Sonnets meets on the threshold of his task two which, being on the subject of this form of poetry, he is naturally called upon to notice first. The former of them is that picture-gallery in fourteen lines, quoted in our previous article.* How much of literary history is called up in the mind by those few vivid touches, and how much of biography and criticism is contained in them! Yet the condensation occasions no obscurity-historical allusion, sentiment, imagery, exquisite music, distinctive portraiture-all find a place and yet nothing is crowded. And as a fit introduction to the other sonnet upon sonnets, which deals with some abstruser thoughts, we may beg those who complain of obscurity in Mr. Wordsworth's writings to bear in mind the clearness of his language when the subject is merely narrative or picturesque, and to ask themselves whether, when any difficulty occurs, it may not be owing to the subjectmatter rather than to the treatment. Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; * See ante, p. 76. |