Part 19 (1/2)
”Black his hair as the winter night, White his skin as the summer snow, Red his face as the morning light, Cold he lies in the grave below.
My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow-tree.”
20. WILLIAM BLAKE (+1757-1827+), one of the most original poets that ever lived, was born in London in the year 1757. He was brought up as an engraver; worked steadily at his business, and did a great deal of beautiful work in that capacity. He in fact ill.u.s.trated his own poems-- each page being set in a fantastic design of his own invention, which he himself engraved. He was also his own printer and publisher. The first volume of his poems was published in 1783; the +Songs of Innocence+, probably his best, appeared in 1787. He died in Fountain Court, Strand, London, in the year 1827.
21. His latest critic says of Blake: ”His detachment from the ordinary currents of practical thought left to his mind an unspoiled and delightful simplicity which has perhaps never been matched in English poetry.” Simplicity-- the perfect simplicity of a child-- beautiful simplicity-- simple and childlike beauty,-- such is the chief note of the poetry of Blake. ”Where he is successful, his work has the fresh perfume and perfect grace of a flower.” The most remarkable point about Blake is that, while living in an age when the poetry of Pope-- and that alone-- was everywhere paramount, his poems show not the smallest trace of Pope's influence, but are absolutely original. His work, in fact, seems to be the first bright streak of the golden dawn that heralded the approach of the full and splendid daylight of the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of Sh.e.l.ley and Byron. His best-known poems are those from the 'Songs of Innocence'-- such as +Piping down the valleys wild+; +The Lamb+; +The Tiger+, and others. Perhaps the most remarkable element in Blake's poetry is the sweetness and naturalness of the rhythm. It seems careless, but it is always beautiful; it grows, it is not made; it is like a wild field-flower thrown up by Nature in a pleasant green field.
Such are the rhythms in the poem ent.i.tled +Night+:--
”The sun descending in the west, The evening star does s.h.i.+ne; The birds are silent in their nest, And I must seek for mine.
The moon, like a flower In heaven's high bower, With silent delight Sits and smiles on the night.
”Farewell, green fields and happy grove, Where flocks have ta'en delight; Where lambs have nibbled, silent move The feet of angels bright: Unseen they pour blessing, And joy without ceasing, On each bud and blossom, On each sleeping bosom.”
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
1. +New Ideas.+-- The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century are alike remarkable for the new powers, new ideas, and new life thrown into society. The coming up of a high flood-tide of new forces seems to coincide with the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, when the overthrow of the Bastille marked the downfall of the old ways of thinking and acting, and announced to the world of Europe and America that the old _regime_-- the ancient mode of governing-- was over. Wordsworth, then a lad of nineteen, was excited by the event almost beyond the bounds of self-control. He says in his ”Excursion”--
”Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven!”
It was, indeed, the dawn of a new day for the peoples of Europe. The ideas of freedom and equality-- of respect for man as man-- were thrown into popular form by France; they became living powers in Europe; and in England they animated and inspired the best minds of the time-- Burns, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Sh.e.l.ley, and Byron. Along with this high tide of hope and emotion, there was such an outburst of talent and genius in every kind of human endeavour in England, as was never seen before except in the Elizabethan period. Great events produced great powers; and great powers in their turn brought about great events. The war with America, the long struggle with Napoleon, the new political ideas, great victories by sea and land,-- all these were to be found in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The English race produced great men in numbers-- almost, it might be said, in groups. We had great leaders, like Nelson and Wellington; brilliant generals, like Sir Charles Napier and Sir John Moore; great statesmen, like Fox and Pitt, like Was.h.i.+ngton and Franklin; great engineers, like Stephenson and Brunel; and great poets, like Wordsworth and Byron. And as regards literature, an able critic remarks: ”We have recovered in this century the Elizabethan magic and pa.s.sion, a more than Elizabethan sense of the beauty and complexity of nature, the Elizabethan music of language.”
2. +Great Poets.+-- The greatest poets of the first half of the nineteenth century may be best arranged in groups. There were +Wordsworth+, +Coleridge+, and +Southey+-- commonly, but unnecessarily, described as the Lake Poets. In their poetic thought and expression they had little in common; and the fact that two of them lived most of their lives in the Lake country, is not a sufficient justification for the use of the term. There were +Scott+ and +Campbell+-- both of them Scotchmen.
There were +Byron+ and +Sh.e.l.ley+-- both Englishmen, both brought up at the great public schools and the universities, but both carried away by the influence of the new revolutionary ideas. Lastly, there were +Moore+, an Irishman, and young +Keats+, the splendid promise of whose youth went out in an early death. Let us learn a little more about each, and in the order of the dates of their birth.
3. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (+1770-1850+) was born at c.o.c.kermouth, a town in c.u.mberland, which stands at the confluence of the c.o.c.ker and the Derwent. His father, John Wordsworth, was law agent to Sir James Lowther, who afterwards became Earl of Lonsdale. William was a boy of a stiff, moody, and violent temper; and as his mother died when he was a very little boy, and his father when he was fourteen, he grew up with very little care from his parents and guardians. He was sent to school at Hawkshead, in the Vale of Esthwaite, in Lancas.h.i.+re; and, at the age of seventeen, proceeded to St John's College, Cambridge. After taking his degree of B.A. in 1791, he resided for a year in France. He took sides with one of the parties in the Reign of Terror, and left the country only in time to save his head. He was designed by his uncles for the Church; but a friend, Raisley Calvert, dying, left him 900; and he now resolved to live a plain and frugal life, to join no profession, but to give himself wholly up to the writing of poetry. In 1798, he published, along with his friend, S. T. Coleridge, the +Lyrical Ballads+. The only work of Coleridge's in this volume was the ”Ancient Mariner.” In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, of whom he speaks in the well-known lines--
”Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair, Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn.”
He obtained the post of Distributor of Stamps for the county of Westmoreland; and, after the death of Southey, he was created +Poet-Laureate+ by the Queen. --He settled with his wife in the Lake country; and, in 1813, took up his abode at Rydal Mount, where he lived till his death in 1850. He died on the 23d of April-- the death-day of Shakespeare.
4. His longest works are the +Excursion+ and the +Prelude+-- both being parts of a longer and greater work which he intended to write on the growth of his own mind. His best poems are his shorter pieces, such as the poems on +Lucy+, +The Cuckoo+, the +Ode to Duty+, the +Intimations of Immortality+, and several of his +Sonnets+. He says of his own poetry that his purpose in writing it was ”to console the afflicted; to add suns.h.i.+ne to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous.” His poetical work is the n.o.ble landmark of a great transition-- both in thought and in style. He drew aside poetry from questions and interests of mere society and the town to the scenes of Nature and the deepest feelings of man as man. In style, he refused to employ the old artificial vocabulary which Pope and his followers revelled in; he used the simplest words he could find; and, when he hits the mark in his simplest form of expression, his style is as forcible as it is true. He says of his own verse--
”The moving accident is not my trade, To freeze the blood I have no ready arts; 'Tis my delight, alone, in summer shade, To pipe a simple song for _thinking hearts_.”
If one were asked what four lines of his poetry best convey the feeling of the whole, the reply must be that these are to be found in his ”Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,”-- lines written about ”the good Lord Clifford.”
”Love had he found in huts where poor men lie, His daily teachers had been woods and rills,-- The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.”
5. WALTER SCOTT (+1771-1832+), poet and novelist, the son of a Scotch attorney (called in Edinburgh a W.S. or Writer to H.M.'s Signet), was born there in the year 1771. He was educated at the High School, and then at the College-- now called the University-- of Edinburgh. In 1792 he was called to the Scottish Bar, or became an ”advocate.” During his boyhood, he had had several illnesses, one of which left him lame for life. Through those long periods of sickness and of convalescence, he read Percy's 'Reliques of Ancient Poetry,' and almost all the romances, old plays, and epic poems that have been published in the English language. This gave his mind and imagination a set which they never lost all through life.
6. His first publications were translations of German poems. In the year 1805, however, an original poem, the +Lay of the Last Minstrel+, appeared; and Scott became at one bound the foremost poet of the day.