Part 8 (1/2)

4

After quoting the lines from _A Poet's Epitaph_, and Arnold's lines on Wordsworth, I asked how the man described in them ever came to write the _Ode_ on Immortality, or _Yew-trees_, or why he should say,

For I round, , breathe in worlds To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil

The aspect of Wordsworth's poetry which answers this question forms my last subject

We may recall this aspect in more than one way First, not a little of Wordsworth's poetry either approaches or actually enters the province of the subliest natural inclination tended there He himself speaks of his teoing out of youth [He] too exclusively esteeht _that_ beauty, which, as Milton says, Hath terror in it

This disposition is easily traced in the iinative impressions of his childhood as he describes the

with feelings of fraternal love Upon the unassus that hold A silent station in this beauteous world,

was only formed, it would seem, under his sister's influence, after his recovery fro hopes in the French Revolution It was a part of his endeavour to find so of the distant ideal in life's fah this attitude of sympathy and hurandeur, austerity, sublimity, retained its force It is evident in the political poems, and in all those pictures of life which depict the unconquerable power of affection, passion, resolution, patience, or faith It inspires es occasionally with a strange and thrilling effect in the serene, gracious, but sonant atmosphere of the later poenificent stanza of the _Exte_ (1835),

Like clouds that rake thehand, How fast has brother followed brother From sunshi+ne to the sunless land!

Wordsworth is indisputably the most sublime of our poets since Milton

We may put the matter, secondly, thus However s, and the poet who saw his ideal realised, not in Utopia, but here and now before his eyes, he was, quite asin the light of 'the visionary power' He was, for hi that beheld This Vision

He apprehended all things, natural or hu which, while manifested in the can be esfro of these statements on Wordsworth's inclination to sublilance

Noe may prefer the Wordsworth of the daffodils to the Wordsworth of the yew-trees, and we may even believe the poet's lect or throw into the shade this aspect of his poetry is neither to take Wordsworth as he really was nor to judge his poetry truly, since this aspect appears in much of it that we cannot deny to be first-rate Yet there is, I think, and has been for some time, a tendency to this mistake It is exemplified in Arnold's Introduction and has been increased by it, and it is visible in soree even in Pater's essay Arnold wished to make Wordsworth more popular; and so he was tempted to represent Wordsworth's poetry as much more simple and unambitious than it really was, and as much more easily apprehended than it ever can be He was also annoyed by attempts to formulate a systematic Wordsworthian philosophy; partly, doubtless, because he knew that, however great the philosophical value of a poet's ideas may be, it cannot by itself deter hiard it as illusory; and further because, even in the poetic sphere, he was soination which is allied to ht This is one reason of his curious failure to appreciate Shelley, and of the evident irritation which Shelley produced in him And it is also one reason why, both in his _Memorial Verses_ and in the introduction to his selection fronores or depreciates that aspect of the poetry hich we are just now concerned It is not true, we reatness of this poetry 'is simple and may be told quite simply' It is true, and it is adreat because of the extraordinary pohich Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in nature, the joy offered to us in the simple primary affections and duties' But this is only half the truth

Pater's essay is not thus one-sided It is, to my mind, an extremely fine piece of criticis does appear in it Pater says, for example, that Wordsworth is the poet of nature, 'and of nature, after all, in her randeurs But the peculiar function of Wordsworth's genius, as carrying in it a power to open out the soul of apparently little and fas, would have found its true test had he become the poet of Surrey, say! and the prophet of its life'

This last sentence is, in one sense, doubtless true The 'function'

referred to could have been exercised in Surrey, and was exercised in Dorset and Somerset, as well as in the Lake country And this function was a 'peculiar function of Wordsworth's genius' But that it was _the_ peculiar function of his genius, or more peculiar than that other function which forms our present subject, I venture to deny; and for the full exercise of this latter function, it is hardly hazardous to assert, Wordsworth's childhood in a mountain district, and his subsequent residence there, were indispensable This will be doubted for a moment, I believe, only by those readers (and they are not a feho ignore the _Prelude_ and the _Excursion_ But the _Prelude_ and the _Excursion_, though there are dull pages in both, contain much of Wordsworth's best and most characteristic poetry And even in a selection like Arnold's, which, perhaps wisely, makes hardly any use of them, many famous poems will be found which deal with nature but not with nature 'in her modesty'

My main object was to insist that the 'mystic,' 'visionary,' 'sublihted I wish to add a few remarks on it, but to consider it fully would carry us far beyond our bounds; and, even if I attempted the task, I should not formulate its results in a body of doctrines Such a formulation is useful, and I see no objection to it in principle, as oneWordsworth's mind with a view to the better apprehension of his poetry But the ers, and it is another matter to put forward the results as philosophically adequate, or to take the position that 'Wordsworth was first and foremost a philosophical thinker, a man whose intention and purpose it was to think out for hi man and nature and huiven himself to philosophy and not to poetry; and there is no reason to think that he would have been eminently successful nobody ever was so as not forced by a special natural power and an i out,' and who did not develope this power by years of arduous discipline Wordsworth does not show it in any h he reflected deeply and acutely, he ithout philosophical training His poetry is iinative expression of the sareat philosophies His poetic experience, his intuitions, his single thoughts, even his large views, correspond in a striking way, so ith ideas el, Schopenhauer They remain admirable material for philosophy; and a philosophy which found itself driven to treat them as moonshi+ne would probably be a very poor affair But they are like the experience and the utterances of reat truths are enshrined in theenerally the shrine would have to be broken to liberate these truths in a form which would satisfy the desire to understand To claim for them the power to satisfy that desire is an error, and it tempts those in whom that desire is predominant to treat the aside, then, any questions as to the ultimate import of the 'mystic' strain in Wordsworth's poetry, I intend only to call attention to certain traits in the kind of poetic experience which exhibits it most plainly And we may observe at once that in this there is always traceable a certain hostility to 'sense' I do not mean that hostility which is present in _all_ poetic experience, and of which Wordsworth was very distinctly aware The regular action of the senses on their customary material produces, in his view, a 'tyranny' over the soul It helps to construct that every-day picture of the world, of sensible objects and events 'in disconnection dead and spiritless,' which we take for reality In relation to this reality we becoht 'heavy as frost and deep alin alike of our torpor and our superficiality _All_ poetic experience frees us from it to some extent, or breaks into it, and so may be called hostile to sense But this experience is, broadly speaking, of two different kinds The perception of the daffodils as dancing in glee, and in sy, joyous, loving world, and so a 'spiritual' world, not a merely 'sensible' one But the hostility to sense is here no more than a hostility to _mere_ sense: this 'spiritual' world is itself the sensible world e or lose their colour in disclosing their glee On the other hand, in the kind of experience which for of definite contrast with the li feature or object is felt in soround, or even as in some way a denial of it So on a scene or on so that the scene or figure belongs to the world of dream

So or abolishi+ng the fixed limits of our habitual view So,' unlike the familiar modes

This kind of experience, further, comes often with a distinct shock, which may bewilder, confuse or trouble the h not invariably, associated with ain with solitude Soo on to illustrate, only reination is, naturally, lessin Wordsworth's poetry than innear this boundary, the famous verses _To the Cuckoo_, 'O blithe new-comer' It stands near the boundary because, like the poem on the Daffodils, it is entirely happy But it stands unmistakably on the further side of the boundary, and is, in truth, more nearly allied to the _Ode_ on Iht is baffled, and its tyranny broken