Part 2 (1/2)
On the other hand, in the poems which are pitched at a lower note, as the _Harry Gill_, _Idiot Boy_, the feelings are those of human nature in general; though the poet has judiciously laid the scene in the country, in order to place himself in the vicinity of interesting images, without the necessity of ascribing a sentimental perception of their beauty to the persons of his drama. In _The Idiot Boy_, indeed, the mother's character is not so much a real and native product of a 'situation where the essential pa.s.sions of the heart find a better soil, in which they can attain their maturity and speak a plainer and more emphatic language', as it is an impersonation of an instinct abandoned by judgement. Hence the two following charges seem to me not wholly groundless: at least, they are the only plausible objections, which I have heard to that fine poem. The one is, that the author has not, in the poem itself, taken sufficient care to preclude from the reader's fancy the disgusting images of ordinary morbid idiocy, which yet it was by no means his intention to represent. He has even by the 'burr, burr, burr', uncounteracted by any preceding description of the boy's beauty, a.s.sisted in recalling them. The other is, that the idiocy of the boy is so evenly balanced by the folly of the mother, as to present to the general reader rather a laughable burlesque on the blindness of anile dotage, than an a.n.a.lytic display of maternal affection in its ordinary workings.
In _The Thorn_, the poet himself acknowledges in a note the necessity of an introductory poem, in which he should have portrayed the character of the person from whom the words of the poem are supposed to proceed: a superst.i.tious man moderately imaginative, of slow faculties and deep feelings, 'a captain of a small trading vessel, for example, who, being past the middle age of life, had retired upon an annuity, or small independent income, to some village or country town of which he was not a native, or in which he had not been accustomed to live. Such men having nothing to do become credulous and talkative from indolence'. But in a poem, still more in a lyric poem--and the Nurse in Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_ alone prevents me from extending the remark even to dramatic poetry, if indeed even the Nurse itself can be deemed altogether a case in point--it is not possible to imitate truly a dull and garrulous discourser, without repeating the effects of dullness and garrulity. However this may be, I dare a.s.sert, that the parts--(and these form the far larger portion of the whole)--which might as well or still better have proceeded from the poet's own imagination, and have been spoken in his own character, are those which have given, and which will continue to give, universal delight; and that the pa.s.sages exclusively appropriate to the supposed narrator, such as the last couplet of the third stanza;[3] the seven last lines of the tenth;[4] and the five following stanzas, with the exception of the four admirable lines at the commencement of the fourteenth, are felt by many unprejudiced and unsophisticated hearts, as sudden and unpleasant sinkings from the height to which the poet had previously lifted them, and to which he again re-elevates both himself and his reader.
[3]
I've measured it from side to side; 'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.
[4]
Nay, rack your brain--'tis all in vain, I'll tell you every thing I know; But to the Thorn, and to the Pond Which is a little step beyond, I wish that you would go: Perhaps, when you are at the place, You something of her tale may trace.
I'll give you the best help I can: Before you up the mountain go, Up to the dreary mountain-top, I'll tell you all I know.
'Tis now some two-and-twenty years Since she (her name is Martha Ray) Gave, with a maiden's true good will, Her company to Stephen Hill; And she was blithe and gay, And she was happy, happy still Whene'er she thought of Stephen Hill.
And they had fix'd the wedding-day, The morning that must wed them both; But Stephen to another maid Had sworn another oath; And, with this other maid, to church Unthinking Stephen went-- Poor Martha! on that woeful day A pang of pitiless dismay Into her soul was sent; A fire was kindled in her breast, Which might not burn itself to rest.
They say, full six months after this, While yet the summer leaves were green, She to the mountain-top would go, And there was often seen.
'Tis said a child was in her womb, As now to any eye was plain; She was with child, and she was mad; Yet often she was sober sad From her exceeding pain.
Oh me! ten thousand times I'd rather That he had died, that cruel father!
Last Christmas when we talked of this, Old farmer Simpson did maintain, That in her womb the infant wrought About its mother's heart, and brought Her senses back again: And, when at last her time drew near, Her looks were calm, her senses clear.
No more I know, I wish I did, And I would tell it all to you: For what became of this poor child There's none that ever knew: And if a child was born or no, There's no one that could ever tell; And if 'twas born alive or dead, There's no one knows, as I have said: But some remember well, That Martha Ray about this time Would up the mountain often climb.
If then I am compelled to doubt the theory, by which the choice of characters was to be directed, not only _a priori_, from grounds of reason, but both from the few instances in which the poet himself need be supposed to have been governed by it, and from the comparative inferiority of those instances; still more must I hesitate in my a.s.sent to the sentence which immediately follows the former citation; and which I can neither admit as particular fact, nor as general rule.
'The language, too, of these men is adopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the action of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions.' To this I reply; that a rustic's language, purified from all provincialism and grossness, and so far reconstructed as to be made consistent with the rules of grammar--(which are in essence no other than the laws of universal logic, applied to psychological materials)--will not differ from the language of any other man of common sense, however learned or refined he may be, except as far as the notions, which the rustic has to convey, are fewer and more indiscriminate. This will become still clearer, if we add the consideration--(equally important though less obvious)--that the rustic, from the more imperfect development of his faculties, and from the lower state of their cultivation, aims almost solely to convey insulated facts, either those of his scanty experience or his traditional belief; while the educated man chiefly seeks to discover and express those connexions of things, or those relative bearings of fact to fact, from which some more or less general law is deducible. For facts are valuable to a wise man, chiefly as they lead to the discovery of the indwelling law, which is the true being of things, the sole solution of their modes of existence, and in the knowledge of which consists our dignity and our power.
As little can I agree with the a.s.sertion, that from the objects with which the rustic hourly communicates the best part of language is formed. For first, if to communicate with an object implies such an acquaintance with it, as renders it capable of being discriminately reflected on; the distinct knowledge of an uneducated rustic would furnish a very scanty vocabulary. The few things and modes of action requisite for his bodily conveniences would alone be individualized; while all the rest of nature would be expressed by a small number of confused general terms. Secondly, I deny that the words and combinations of words derived from the objects, with which the rustic is familiar, whether with distinct or confused knowledge, can be justly said to form the best part of language. It is more than probable, that many cla.s.ses of the brute creation possess discriminating sounds, by which they can convey to each other notices of such objects as concern their food, shelter, or safety. Yet we hesitate to call the aggregate of such sounds a language, otherwise than metaphorically. The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself. It is formed by a voluntary appropriation of fixed symbols to internal acts, to processes and results of imagination, the greater part of which have no place in the consciousness of uneducated man; though in civilized society, by imitation and pa.s.sive remembrance of what they hear from their religious instructors and other superiors, the most uneducated share in the harvest which they neither sowed nor reaped.
If the history of the phrases in hourly currency among our peasants were traced, a person not previously aware of the fact would be surprised at finding so large a number, which three or four centuries ago were the exclusive property of the universities and the schools; and, at the commencement of the Reformation, had been transferred from the school to the pulpit, and thus gradually pa.s.sed into common life.
The extreme difficulty, and often the impossibility, of finding words for the simplest moral and intellectual processes of the languages of uncivilized tribes has proved perhaps the weightiest obstacle to the progress of our most zealous and adroit missionaries. Yet these tribes are surrounded by the same nature as our peasants are; but in still more impressive forms; and they are, moreover, obliged to particularize many more of them. When, therefore, Mr. Wordsworth adds, 'accordingly, such a language'--(meaning, as before, the language of rustic life purified from provincialism)--'arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that which is frequently subst.i.tuted for it by poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art in proportion as they indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression;' it may be answered, that the language, which he has in view, can be attributed to rustics with no greater right, than the style of Hooker or Bacon to Tom Brown or Sir Roger L'Estrange. Doubtless, if what is peculiar to each were omitted in each, the result must needs be the same. Further, that the poet, who uses an illogical diction, or a style fitted to excite only the low and changeable pleasure of wonder by means of groundless novelty, subst.i.tutes a language of folly and vanity, not for that of the rustic, but for that of good sense and natural feeling.
Here let me be permitted to remind the reader, that the positions, which I controvert, are contained in the sentences--'_a selection of the_ REAL _language of men_';--'_the language of these men_' (i. e.
men in low and rustic life) '_I propose to myself to imitate, and, as far as is possible, to adopt the very language of men._' '_Between the language of prose and that of metrical composition, there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference._' It is against these exclusively that my opposition is directed.
I object, in the very first instance, to an equivocation in the use of the word 'real'. Every man's language varies, according to the extent of his knowledge, the activity of his faculties, and the depth or quickness of his feelings. Every man's language has, first, its individualities; secondly, the common properties of the cla.s.s to which he belongs; and thirdly, words and phrases of universal use. The language of Hooker, Bacon, Bishop Taylor, and Burke differs from the common language of the learned cla.s.s only by the superior number and novelty of the thoughts and relations which they had to convey. The language of Algernon Sidney differs not at all from that, which every well-educated gentleman would wish to write, and (with due allowance for the undeliberateness, and less connected train, of thinking natural and proper to conversation) such as he would wish to talk.
Neither one nor the other differ half so much from the general language of cultivated society, as the language of Mr. Wordsworth's homeliest composition differs from that of a common peasant. For 'real' therefore, we must subst.i.tute ordinary, or _lingua communis_.
And this, we have proved, is no more to be found in the phraseology of low and rustic life than in that of any other cla.s.s. Omit the peculiarities of each and the result of course must be common to all.
And a.s.suredly the omissions and changes to be made in the language of rustics, before it could be transferred to any species of poem, except the drama or other professed imitation, are at least as numerous and weighty, as would be required in adapting to the same purpose the ordinary language of tradesmen and manufacturers. Not to mention, that the language so highly extolled by Mr. Wordsworth varies in every county, nay in every village, according to the accidental character of the clergyman, the existence or non-existence of schools; or even, perhaps, as the exciseman, publican, and barber happen to be, or not to be, zealous politicians, and readers of the weekly newspaper _pro bono publico_. Anterior to cultivation the _lingua communis_ of every country, as Dante has well observed, exists everywhere in parts, and nowhere as a whole.
Neither is the case rendered at all more tenable by the addition of the words, _in a state of excitement_. For the nature of a man's words, where he is strongly affected by joy, grief, or anger, must necessarily depend on the number and quality of the general truths, conceptions and images, and of the words expressing them, with which his mind had been previously stored. For the property of pa.s.sion is not to create; but to set in increased activity. At least, whatever new connexions of thoughts or images, or (which is equally, if not more than equally, the appropriate effect of strong excitement) whatever generalizations of truth or experience the heat of pa.s.sion may produce; yet the terms of their conveyance must have pre-existed in his former conversations, and are only collected and crowded together by the unusual stimulation. It is indeed very possible to adopt in a poem the unmeaning repet.i.tions, habitual phrases, and other blank counters, which an unfurnished or confused understanding interposes at short intervals, in order to keep hold of his subject, which is still slipping from him, and to give him time for recollection; or, in mere aid of vacancy, as in the scanty companies of a country stage the same player pops backwards and forwards, in order to prevent the appearance of empty s.p.a.ces, in the procession of _Macbeth_, or _Henry VIII_. But what a.s.sistance to the poet, or ornament to the poem, these can supply, I am at a loss to conjecture.
Nothing a.s.suredly can differ either in origin or in mode more widely from the apparent tautologies of intense and turbulent feeling, in which the pa.s.sion is greater and of longer endurance than to be exhausted or satisfied by a single representation of the image or incident exciting it. Such repet.i.tions I admit to be a beauty of the highest kind; as ill.u.s.trated by Mr. Wordsworth himself from the song of Deborah. _At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead._
METRICAL COMPOSITION
[_Biographia Literaria_, chap. xviii, 1817]