Part 10 (1/2)

--------A sihtly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?

Wordsworth, in coan his poem with the end; and when it was all but finished he recited it to Dorothy and Coleridge, and observed that a prefatory stanza anted, and that he should enjoy his tea better if he could add it first Coleridge at once threw off the stanza as we have it, except that the first line ran, 'A simple child, dear brother Ji the Jaainst the poeeto the words 'dear brother Ji way for the sake of the joke of introducing Tobin

Now the poeains in one way by this stanza, which has a felicity of style such as Wordsworth perhaps would not have achieved in expressing the idea And the idea was not only accepted by Wordsworth, but, according to his own account, he had mentioned in substance what he wished to be expressed It eous to hint a doubt whether the stanza truly represents the iinative experience from which the poem arose; and I can only say, in excuse, that this doubt does not spring froe's authorshi+p of the stanza, for I do not re it or without saying to myself at the end, 'This means more than the first stanza says' And, however improbable, it cannot be called iht misconstrue the ie, therefore, to confess the belief that what stirred his with sos of his own childhood which he described in the Immortality _Ode_, and once or twice in conversation, and which, in a less individual and peculiar foreneral But, rather than argue the point, I will refer to one or two passages 'At that tirave, and that my body would moulder into dust'

(remark recorded by Bishop Wordsworth, _Prose Works_, ed Grosart, iii

464) Is not this the condition of the child in _We are Seven_?

'Nothing,' he says to Miss Fenwick, 'was more difficult for me in childhood than to ad' (_ib_ iii 194) He then quotes the first stanza of _We are Seven_ It is true that thereupon he expressly distinguishes his own case fro the difficulty in her case to 'animal vivacity' But I have already fully adainst e in the Essay on Epitaphs In that essay Wordsworth begins by saying that the custo monuments to the dead 'proceeded obviously frouard the ree violation, and, secondly, to preserve their memory' But these desires, in his opinion, resolve themselves into one, and both proceed fro of immortality, also described as 'an intimation or assurance within us, that sooes on thus: 'If we look back upon the days of childhood, we shall find that the time is not in re, the mind ithout this assurance Forlorn, and cut off from communication with the best part of his nature, must that man be, who should derive the sense of immortality, as it exists in the aiety or liveliness of animal spirits hich the lamb in the meadow or any other irrational creature is endowed; to an inability arising from the imperfect state of his faculties to co, into contact with a notion of death; or to an unreflecting acquiescence in what had been instilled into hie's stanza, and Wordsworth's own distinction between the child and hi the child's inability to realise the fact of death to that very liveliness of aninantly repudiated According to the present passage, this inability ought to have been traced to that 'sense' or 'consciousness'

of immortality which is inherent in huhtly describes this sense) it was _this_, I suggest, that, unknown to hi of the fact of death The poem is thus allied to the Immortality _Ode_ The child is in possession of one of those 'truths that wake to perish never,' though the tyranny of the senses and the deadening influence of custom obscure them as childhood passes away When the conversation took place (in 1793), and even when the poeard the experiences of his own childhood as he saw theave to the poem a moral which is not adequate to it Or perhaps he accepted froe a formulation of his hts at that tinificant that the child in _We are Seven_ is not described as showing any particular 'anih determined, little person

These remarks, of course, can have no interest for those readers who feel nothe poem But many, I think, es reproduce the two concluding lectures of a short course on the Age of Wordsworth, given at Oxford in April, 1903, and intended specially for undergraduates in the School of English Language and Literature A few passages from the other lectures appear elsewhere in this volume On the subject of the course may I advise any reader who e of Wordsworth_, a little book which is falish Literature, and the more admired the more they use it?

[2] These statements, with the exception of the last, were chosen partly because they all say, with thethat is said, with a touch of playful exaggeration, in _The Tables Turned_, where occurs that outrageous stanza about 'one ih has well defended When all fitting allowance has been made for the fact that these stateht to rearet (_Excursion_, I), and that from the _Ode_, 1815--were es, by the Wordsworth of later days, who had forgotten what he felt, or yielded to the objections of others

[3] _Goody Blake_, to my ly e's _Three Graves_ The question as to the _Anecdote for Fathers_ is not precisely whether it h at the poet, and in such a way that the end fails to restore your sobriety The danger is in the lines,

And five times to the child I said, Why, Edward, tell le between the poet and his victihly Wordsworthian, and there are cases where it is ed with perfect success, as we shall see; but to htfully reproduced in _Through the Looking-glass_ ('I'll tell thee everything I can')

[4] Some remarks on _We are seven_ are added in a note at the end of the lecture

[5] The phrases quoted in this paragraph are taken chiefly from Hazlitt and De Quincey

[6] The publication of the _Excursion_ seems to have been postponed for financial reasons One edition of a thousand copies sufficed the world for thirteen years

[7] _Evening Voluntaries_, iv We know that he refers to Byron

[8] _Poe of Places_, iv Keats need not have been ashamed to write the last line

[9] ''Tis past, that melancholy dream,'--so he describes his sojourn in Germany

[10] Wordsworth's Letter to Major-General Pasley (_Prose Works_, i) contains an excellent statement both of his views on this duty and of his hostility toof the years of the Napoleonic War Later, he lost courage, as he himself said But it is not true that he ever ceased to sympathise with the cause of national independence in Europe

[12] [This great line, as I am reminded, refers to the Welsh (_Coe the quotation]

[13] In saying that what Wordsworth could not bear was torpor, of course I do not ratitude, cruelty, and the like He had no tolerance for such things, either in his poetry or in his life 'I could kick such a land with my naked foot,' the old poet burst forth when he heard of a base action This re, whose antinomian morality was not so very unlike Wordsworth's And neither poet would have found it difficult to include the worst vices under the head of torpor or 'the unlit lairt loin'

[14] The third quotation is from a speech by the Solitary (_Excursion_, vi)

[15] The second half of this sentence, true of the Wordsworth of the _Excursion_, is perhaps not quite true of his earlier mind