r (J lli' 0^: ajorneU Hniueraity Sjtbrarg Jltjaca. New lurk WORDSWORTH COLLECTION MADE BY CYNTHIA MORGAN ST. JOHN ITHACA, N. Y. THE GIFT OF VICTOR EMANUEL CLASS OF 1919 1925 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924105500593 ~trjT THE LAKE SCHOOL, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. BY K. A. DOUGLAS LITHGOW, M.D., LL.D., F.S.A., ETC. In dealing particularly with any period of literary history it is, I think, in the first place, desirable to consider, at least in its broader outlines, that which preceded it ; as we are thus better enabled to estimate not only the developmental influences which have evolved its production, but also the causes of which such development is the result. In briefly con- sidering therefore the Lake Poets and their influence on English poetry, I shall glance backward for a moment to the so-called Classical School which the Lake Poets superseded, and against which the latter so vigorously protested. The germs of Classicism in our literature may be said to have been introduced durins^ the glorious Elizabethan era, during which the discovery of printing, and the consequent diffusion of the Greek and Eoman classics, and the works of Italian and French writers, by means of translations, not only excited a general taste for elegant reading, but exerted the genial influences of literature upon a class of readers who had never previously been subject to them. England, however, was late in A ^ THE LAKE SCHOOL, cultivating classical learning, as English literature was slower still in yielding to classical influences. The great stream of Elizabethan literature gushed forth from a native source, and with such power that it resisted the influence of the classics even after they had begun to be studied in England. The classical revolution, however, which ultimately gained sucli an ascendancy in English versification, having aimed at the simplicity, fitness, and per- spicuity which characterised the classical writers, certainly produced a general refinement and polish of thought and language, and was the means of neutralising the exaggerated and excessive con- densation of thoujxht, and of banishincf those far- fetched images and wild personifications of Nature which had distino-uished the immediatelv precedinor period. But the effort to acquire these benefits necessitated the declension of English literature in Nature and truth. As a writer says : — •' Attention was drawn away from the realities of life and Nature to the nice cono^ruities and harmonies of thougfht and expression. The language of the heart was lost in the roll of harmonious verse, and the real aspects of the world were disguised by the false colouring of merely conventional imagery."^ Edmund Waller may be said to have founded the Classical School, which Denham, Dry den, and Pope did so much to cultivate afterwards, but the polished and. eclectic elegance at which they aimed deo-ene- rated into time-serving sarcastic maxims, and a meek philosophic didacticism, confined within the bounds of couplets dreary in their regularity, unimaginative ' Anon. AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 6 precise, stilted, prosaic, and pedantic, until the period which they initiated, and which, as they thought, comprised all that deserved the name of English poetry, came to be excluded down to the time of Cowper as a great hiatus in the development of English verse. That part of the eighteenth century in England between 1727 and 1780 formed the period of the followers and imitators of Waller, Denham, Dryden, Pope, Swift, and Addison. It is generally the case in literature that an age of original writing is followed by one of mere repetition, which often, in untalented hands, sinks into servile imitation and exaggeration of, perhaps, the weaknesses of the masters, or of the outward expression without the spirit of their works. So, indeed, it was in the literature of England in the middle of the eighteenth century. It was altogether an artificial age ; nothing natural was allowed to appear. The gardens of those days are examples of the prevailing taste in their formality and preciseness. Even the great trees must not be allowed to grow as they would, but must be cut into formal and fantastic shapes. In architecture, in dress, and in poetry, the same fashion prevailed. The characters, either painted or written about, all wear the prescribed dress of the time, and even the ancients introduced into their literature seem to have the stiffness and unnatural- ness of the Court of the first two Georges. The poets devoted themselves to refining upon the style of Pope and his contemporaries ; the artificial man- ners of the people were their most fertile subjects, and the delicately-finished compositions, after the A 2 4 THE LAKE SCHOOL, pattern of those of Queen Anne, were the only styles that pleased the fastidious ears of their fashionable critics. In some cases it had reached^ to a pitch of absurdity, when it was considered a great merit to raise a low subject by overlaying it with poetical language, and to express the most commonplace things in words that would have suited a great heroic poem. Men's minds at length grew weary of this constant reproduction of the same style, and, after 1780, there arose a new race of poets who were animated with a spirit of reform similar to that which was actuating men in the social and political world. There is always a connection between stirring times in the history of a country and the literature then produced. It was natural, therefore, that the over- throw of all old forms in the revolution that was convulsing France in government and in society, should bring to pass a corresponding result in litera- ture. The reforms spread to our own country, and the old affectations could no longer be endured. The passions of men had been stirred to their depths, and poetry must be fired with some of their own spirit, for the outward artificial manners, and the descrip- tion of them, had now no charm. Poets had begun to see the grandeur and sublimity of Nature, and to feel the effects of it in their souls, and no elaborate descriptions of garden scenes whence everything natural was excluded could now employ their muse. A real poetic imagination was beginning to appear which must find expression in verse, and its truth was to stand in the stead of the old technical AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 5 system of versification, which had a beautiful form outwardly, but was wanting in any fervour or true poetry. Cowper and Burns began their great reform in Great Britain, and the three Lake poets, and among them especially Wordsworth, set themselves earnestly to carry it out further. What a curious study it is to compare a description of Nature in Pope and in Cowper — one of the first to really love her among modern poets — will be seen in contrasting the two following descriptions : — " As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night ! O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light ; When not a breath disturbs the deep serene. And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene ; Around her throne the vivid planets roll. And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole ; O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed And tip with silver every mountain's head ; Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, A flood of glory bursts from all the skies ; The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light." The foregoing quotation is from Pope's transla- tion of the eighth book of the Iliad^ and may be ac- cepted as a fair example of his melodious versification, and his false and contradictory imagery. Cowper's translation of the same scene, although by no means showing him at his best, is, at least, appropriate, and will serve, by way of contrast, to manifest his vividity, distinctness, and truth to Nature : — THE LAKE SCHOOL, " As when around the clear, bright moon, the stars Shine in full splendour, and the winds are hushed. The groves, the mountain-tops, the headland heights Stand all apparent ; not a vapour streaks The boundless blue, but ether opened wide All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheered." Cowper in England and Burns in Scotland were the two poets who, recognising the true mission of poetr}^, viz., to act as the high interpreter of Nature, made her forget the plaything she had been ia the days of the Eestoration and long afterwards, and upreared her as a priestess in Nature's innermost temple. Their gifted souls found nothing exalted, beneficent, or humanising in the jingling sweetness of their predecessors, no kinship with, no knowledge of, no appreciation for Nature in her every mood, and thus they determined to awake the world to the true power and purpose of poetry and her votaries. The lessons which they taught, the principles which they inculcated, took deep and abiding root in the hearts and minds of three gifted friends, viz., Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, who ultimately founded the so-called Lake School, and dedicated their lives to the promulgation and establishment of the principles initiated by Cowper and Burns. The tenets of the new school drew down upon their upholders all the ridicule and hostility that the critical world had at its command; but they struggled on bravely and unflinchingly through it, as true genius merely recognises opposition or diffi- culties in order to overcome them. On Words- worth's verse especially did the weight of unfair AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 7 criticism fall, but his friend Coleridge resisted every attack made upon his master, and the judgment of posterity is more likely to agree with his opinion and with the warmth of his praise, than with the censure of his opponents. That there was, however, some truth in these adverse criticisms cannot be denied, and they may be mainly attributed to the fact that the poet was at first misunderstood owing to his simplicity and total want of the sense of humour, or, still more broadly, because his art was so great that he concealed it with the utmost care. In their youth Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey had each been warm supporters of the French Ee volution, and exhibited such a love of humanity, French democracy, and expansion of mind and liberty, as enraged not only the old Tory school of politics, but outraged the susceptibilities of the English critics who, in return, exposed them to hatred and ridicule, and dubbed them as the "Cockney School," the '-Lakers," and the "Lake School." Li later years, however, their republicanism vanished, and they became disciples of the very opposite school in politics. Wordsworth had settled at Eydal Mount, happy in the solitude and in the beauty of the scenery which he loved so much. After a time Coleridge and Southey were attracted to the same neighbourhood, and hence the name of the " Lake Poets," originally applied to them in derision, became an appellation dear to all lovers of poetry and to all classes of their fellow-countrymen. Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth in April, 1770. In his ninth year he was sent to the grammar school at Hawkshead, where he remained until about 8 THE LAKE SCHOOL, his eighteenth year. In 1787 he was entered at St. John's College, Cambridge (and I am sure we are all proud to have the honoured Master of this illustrious College presiding over us to-day), but during the four sessions he was there he in no way distinguished himself, being more partial to the poets than the schoolmen. In 1790 he visited France with a fellow student, and in the following year took his degree. In 1793 he published An Evening Walk and Descrip- tive Sketches, and although these fell dead from the press, yet they elicited the admiration of the few men who recognised the genius of the author, amongst whom Samuel Taylor Coleridge remarked concerning these poems that " Seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetical genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced." In 1795 Wordsworth and his sister took a cottage near Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire, but in order to be near Coleridge, they removed to Alfoxden, in Somer- setshire, in 1797. At Crewkerne Wordsworth wrote his Salisbury Plain, and the tragedy of The Borderers, and at Alfoxden he and Coleridge composed the Lyrical Ballads, which were published by the cele- brated Joseph Cottle, of Bristol. This volume, how- ever, was very little, if any more successful than the first one, but the two friends were in no way dis- couraged or disheartened by the absence of public appreciation. In 1796 and 1799 they travelled to- gether in Germany, and in the latter year Words- worth took up his residence at Grasmere in the neighbourhood of which he spent the remainder of his life. A second and enlarged edition of Lyrical Ballads AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 9 appeared in 1800, in two volumes, and a third and fourth edition respectively in 1802 and 1805. In 1802 Wordsworth married his cousin, Mary Hutchinson, by whom he had five children. In 1808 he again changed his residence to Allan Bank, and finally, in 1813, he removed to Eydal Mount, in the same district. Between 1807 and 1818 he published most of his best known works, but to even enumerate these now would take more space than the exigencies of time will permit. He subsequently classified and pub- lished all his poems in six volumes, and after the death of his friend Southey, in 1843, the laureate's crown was made greener by adorning his noble brow. His honour and purity of character increasing with his years, he at length died at Eydal Mount in 1850, at the advanced age of eighty years. A writer^ has well said : " During the whole of a long life this poet devoted himself most sedulously to three things : the worship of God through Nature, the cultivation of that genius that God had given him, and the proper cultivation of self. Hence he is an author very healthy and wholesome to contemplate, He sets himself to one steady purpose, never looks away from it, bends not to Courts, nor to popularity, nor to power, nor to riches. He lives among the Cumberland lakes a poor man, thinking the mountain, the sky, or a common field flower a grander subject of contemplation than a bag of gold. He pubhshes his poems, and critics laugh at them. They call them childish, and the author silly ; and yet, unheeding them, he still lives under the habitual sway of Nature, 2 Essays on English Writers, 1869. 10 THE LAKE SCHOOL, and urges that the effect of Nature and her contem- plation exalt the soul to thoughts that live, while meaner worldly glories die away." Wordsworth had faith in his belief, and he con- tinued to worship Nature, worshipping the true and beautiful wherever found — on hill or mountain, in dale or valley, in earth, sky, or sea, by the murmur- ing brook, or in the flowery hedge-row — in the heart or mind of the merest hind, as in the heart or mind of the most illustrious. As he says himself, " Nature never did betray the heart that worshipped her " ; and so he lived and died in this pure and simple faiih, leaving the world far happier and better in that he had lived, and how much all who love our English literature are indebted to him we shall see presently, when we come to estimate the power and purpose of his life work. Of the three poets, Coleridge was the most imagina- tive. His intellect was seemingly capable of doing anything, from the wide range of subjects it embraced, and the magnificent fragments of work that he has left. His genius was, however, clouded by the effects of opium-eating, a habit into which he had fallen, and of which he was not able to cure himself till late in life. This and a restless way of living for many years, prevented his finishing some of his greatest works, and only from the beauties of the fragments can we surmise what the whole might have been. The great beauty of his mind was the simplicity of its religious earnest search after truth, even when he had been led into erroneous opinions. Its great defect was a want of energetic will. He had a lively, original, imaginative genius, and a great purity of AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETEY. 11 feeling in his style. He was admired and imitated by his contemporaries, and the phraseology and melody of his verses have often echoed in the strains of later poets. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born at Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire, in 1772. From his eighth to his fourteenth year he was a day-dreamer, finding no allurement in either the sports or games of his school- fellows, and when eighteen he had imbibed so much learning as to constitute him a veritable walking encyclopedia. Ha,d his determination of character been commensurate with his grasp of mind there is no position to which he might not have attained. In his youth he became a Deist — afterwards enlisted as a dragoon — became a Unitarian Minister, gave up Deism, and ultimately became, by a process of elaborate reasoning, a confirmed Trinitarian, and a pillar of the Church, opposed alike to Eomanism and Free -thought. Then he followed literature as a profession, gave lectures on the English dramatists and poets — wrote metaphysical essays — translated Schiller's Wallenstein, published The Statesman s Manual, Aids to Refieciion, Biographia Literaria, edited a newspaper, devised literary reviews, published his poems, yet withal met with little pecuniary return ; and finally resided with his friend Mr. Gillman, at Highgate Grove, where surrounded by those who appreciated his immense talents and genius, and his unrivalled powers as an inspired talker, he ultimately died in 1834. The remaining unit of the great Lake trio, Eobert South ev. was perhaps the most indefatigable worker in the whole range of literary history, having pub- 12 THE LAKE SCHOOL, lished over one hundred volumes of poems, history, travels, &c., in addition to one hundred and twenty- six important Papers upon politics, history, biography, and general literature. With regard to his poetry, he indubitably lacked, in some degree, the divine gift which so distinguished his friends Wordsworth and Coleridge, and thus his poems display not so much creative genius as the rewards of toil and thought ; not so much the golden fruit which has sprung from a rich native soil, as that which has resulted from artificial cultivation ; not so much the glow of originality as the less resplendent glimmer of laborious imitation. Southey was born at Bristol in 1774, and in 1792 was dismissed from Westminster School for writing a sarcastic attack upon corporal punishment as then practised at the school. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, with the intention of taking orders, but, like his friend Coleridge, he too became a sceptic in religious matters, so that the pursuit was aban- doned. A year after leaving Oxford he made the acquaint- ance of Coleridge, and subsequently the two poets were married to two sisters on the same day. He sold his poem of Joan of Arc for fifty guineas, and for a time supported himself by giving historical lectures in his native place. Then his uncle took him with him to Spain and Portugal, where he remained six months, the result of his visit being the publica- tion oi Letters from Spain and Portugal, in 1796. He afterwards became a law student, but ulti- mately abandoned all thought of the legal profession . published J/ac/oc— again visited Lisbon— became AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 13 private Secretary to tlie Irish Chancellor of the Ex- chequer, which he soon relinquished, and from 1 SOI he dates his entrance upon literature as a profession. In 1804 he took up his residence at Greta Hall, Keswick, where he spent the remainder of his life. In 1807 he was pensioned by the Government, became Poet- Laureate in 1813, received a further Government pension of £300 a year, and was offered a Baronetcy, which he, however, declined. His first wife died in 1837, and he afterwards married Miss Caroline Bowles, the poetess, in 1839. Unfortunately, for some years before his death, which happened in 1843? his overtaxed faculties gave way beneath the exces- sive mental strain to which they had been subjected ; and thus passed away a great and good man whose name will live in the literature of his country which he so much enriched. In estimating the genius of such a poet as Words- worth, and in making a critical analysis of his work, however brief, we should, in the first place, I think, regard the individuality of the man, and the aims and motives of his work. As he sa3^s himself, in one of his prefaces, " The principal object proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them through- out, as far as possible, in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, where- by ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect ; and further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracino- in them, truly, though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature. Humble and rustic life 14 THE LAKE SCHOOL, was generally chosen, because in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic lano-uawe, because in that condition of life our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity, and consequently may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated, because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable ; and, lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." Simplicity, earnestness, and truthfulness therefore characterise his aims, and these joined to a character- istic piety and nobleness of purpose, with a rapturous love for Nature in her every mood, and a beneficent interest in humanity constitute the gospel which he preaches. I very much question whether, in the whole range of literature, any other poet has more essentially possessed what I may term the poetic temperament than William Wordsworth. From his earliest youth poetry alone solaced the desires of his soul, and thrilled and permeated him through every hour of his long life. Self-consciously inspired by God to be a priest in the vast temple of Nature, he gave himself up to her service, and whilst worshipping God's goodness and power, as manifested through her, he none the less reveres the divinity of soul and inner worth of man- kind. He recognises no merit in rank or mere AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 15 position, no essential differences between men except in point of virtue or worthiness, and pays his homage to the beautiful and true in human nature, whether in king or subject, in peer or peasant. During his long life — so pure, and sweet, and child-like, the sole desire of his being is to teach his fellow-creatures the faith that is in him through the divine medium of poetry, to elevate and ennoble them by directing their hearts and minds to the worship of God through Nature, and to the power and purpose of existence itself. This is the object to which he devotes himself, without faltering or flattering, and plods on steadily and steadfastly, looking neither to one side nor the other, unmindful alike of Court or camp, of rank or riches, of power or popularity. The character of his poetry is as pure as was his own life — the life " of him that uttered nothing base," — and from first to last it appeals to everything that is high and holy in man, and is everywhere directed towards those surroundings of his which are pure and useful, elevating, and ennobling. Wordsworth was a voluminous and most indus- trious writer, and, during more than half of the eighty years of his life, he produced poetry of every class and variety. Although he took infinite pains with his work, and tried to make it as perfect as possible by processes of correction and polishing, yet I must own that much of what he has written is unworthy of his genius at its best, so simple as to be almost puerile, so prosaic as scarcely to merit the name of poetry at all. That he was always anxious, however, not to 16 THE LAKE SCHOOL, publish anything until he had made every effort to have it as flawless as could be will appear from a quotation from a dedicatory letter to his friend Southey, prefixed to his poem of Peter Bell. He says : " Pains have been taken to fit it for filling permanently a station, however humble, in the literature of our country. This has, indeed, been the aim of all my endeavours in poetry, which, you know, have been sufficiently laborious to prove that I deem the art not lightly to be approached." We can only account for the prosaic quality of much that he has written by recollecting that it was his aim to choose and describe incidents from common life, and to use only the common language instead of the ornamental diction previously used in verse, and that it was this desire which led him astray, sometimes into the exceeding homeliness of both subject and language which is found in some of his lyrical ballads. When a poet speaks of a subject that has touched his heart, however simple it may be, and expresses it in the natural language which his cultivated and refined taste sus^g-ests, it will find its way to the hearts of his readers ; but if the poet takes a subject which is too puerile to touch him, and invests it with poetic beauties foreign to it, it loses its truth of nature and fails in giving interest or pleasure. Thus, in The Tables Turned we find in one verse a kind of doggerel rhyme fit, perhaps, for the mouth it is put into, and in another one all the grace and poetry of a refined, accompUshed writer, and of a tender, thoughtful mind. It seems, indeed, strange that the same mind would write in one poem the verse that drew down Byron's sharp ridicule : AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 17 " Up ! Up ! my friend, and quit your books, Or surely you'll grow double ; Up ! Up ! my friend, and clear your looks. Why all this toil and trouble ? " And the followinfTf : — o " One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man. Of moral evil and of good Than all the sages can." The same simplicity of expression is also seen in the poem entitled Lucy, but surely in the following lines there is a gentle pathos which touches the heart, and when sympathetically appreciated leaves a sense of desolation : — " She lived unknown ; and few could know When Lucy ceased to be ; But she is in her grave ; and oh, The difference to me ! " On the other hand, perhaps, no other preceding poet had the same marvellous capacity for crystal- lising " thoughts that breathe, and words that burn," into a single line or couplet. Take the following examples selected almost at random : — " The child is father to the man." " To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," The following again from his sonnet to Milton : — " Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart ; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea. Pure as the naked heavens — majestic, free." What could be more full of pathos, simplicity, and B 18 THE LAKE SCHOOL, delicate fancy than some of his minor pieces — " the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses " of the great Gothic church that he was to rear in The Recluse ? In all these we may find, in Wordsworth's own words : — " The gleam, The light that never was on sea or land ; The consecration, and the poet's dream." One distinguishing feature of Wordsworth's poetry is the meditative calm that pervades it, a kind of reaction from the strife and tumult of the French Eevolution which had attracted his youth. What- ever was simple and permanent he valued and loved, whatever was noisy and clamorous he disliked and repudiated. Wordsworth's poetry at his best is equal to any in our language. No other poet has so nearly attained to the sublimity of Milton in his sonnets, and as has been well said : " His ode on the Intimations of lm7nortality is simply the very finest piece of its kind that ever was written or will be written. It is un- surpassed and unsurpassable," What can be finer, for example, than the fol- lowing verse from this exquisitely beautiful poem ? — " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, The soul that rises with us, our hfe's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And Cometh from afar ; Not in entire forgetfulness. And not in utter nakedness. But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home : AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 19 Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows ; He sees it in his joy ; The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's priest, And by the vision splendid, Is on his way attended ; At length the man perceives it die away. And fade into the light of common day." In his great poem, The Excursion, forming the back-bone of the grand work he proposed, under the title of The Recluse, the thought may sometimes be obscure and difficult to follow, but the beautiful pictures of Nature, of humble virtue, and the con- stant all-pervading religious fervour can never fail to give pleasure or to sway the heart of the ap- preciative reader with a feeling almost akin to divine- ness. I very much question whether a finer moral and meditative poem was ever written. How willingly I would linger amid " This feast of nectar'd sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns." But to do anything like justice to the heaven- hallowed poetry of Wordsworth is simply impossible within the limits of such a Paper as the present. I cannot, however, resist the temptation to quote the following lines, " Written near Tintern Abbey " : — " I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, B 2 20 THE LAKE SCHOOL, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air. And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : A motion and a spirit which impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods And mountains ; and of all that we behold From this green earth ; of all the mighty world Of eye and ear, both what they half create, And what perceive : well pleased to recognise In Nature, and the language of the sense The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being." I conclude this cursory and very brief analysis of Wordsworth's poetry by quoting the following esti- mate of his genius from the pen of Mr. Algernon Swinburne : — " The incommunicable, the immitigable might of Wordsworth, when the god has indeed fallen on him, cannot but be felt by all, and can but be felt by any ; none can partake and catch it up. There are many men greater than he ; there are men much greater ; but what he has of greatness is his only. His concentration, his majesty, his pathos, have no parallel : some have gone higher, many lower ; none have touched precisely the same point as he." The collected poems of Coleridge have been pub- lished in three volumes, which contain much that is dear to every lover of English poetry. His was, indeed, a many-sided genius, like a precious stone on which the hand of Nature had cut and poHshed many facets, but which earth and time had blurred in the AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 21 using and spoiled with accidental flaws. Whilst the range of his knowledge was cyclopedic, his intellect Titanic in its power, and capable of adding lustre to all realms of thought, alas ! he inherited with his humanity a want of concentration and steadiness of purpose, a mental bias which warped and made him in some sense unworthy of the intellectual riches with which he was dowered. Hence, while some of his work is of the highest order, whether meta- physical, critical, or imaginative, it is nearly all fragmentary and somewhat inconsecutive, indicative of innate power, rather than of the achievement of great results. His imaginative works, various in style and manner, consist of " ode, tragedy, and epigram — love-poems, and strains of patriotism and super- stition — a wild witchery of imagination, and, at other times, severe and stately thought and intellectual retrospection. His language is often rich and musical, highly figurative and ornate, and many of his minor poems are characterised by tenderness and beauty."^ The incompleteness of his great designs, owing to his constitutional infirmity of purpose (rendered all the more galling by his ambitious promptings to excel in some great work) — the feeling that instead of using his great talents profitably he had, to use his own expression, wasted " the prime and manhood of his intellect," brought to the poet often great sorrow and heart-rending remorse. This will be seen in the following beautiful and pathetic lines addressed to Wordsworth after hearing the latter 3 Cyclop, of Eng. Lit., Vol. II, p. 72 (1876). 22 THE LAKE SCHOOL, recite a poem " On the growth of an individual mind " : — " Ah ! as I hstened with a heart forlorn, The pulses of my being beat anew; And even as life returns upon the drowned, Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains, Keen pangs of love, awakening as a babe Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart ; And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope ; And hope that scarce would know itself from fear ; Sense of past youth and manhood come in vain ; And genius given, and knowledge won in vain ; And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild, And all which patient toil had reared, and all Commune with thee had opened out ; but flowers Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier, In the same cofhn, for the self-same grave." JSTotwithstanding tlie capacity and subtlety of his intellect, his morbidly transcendental and dreamy imagination, which delighted m the supernatural, and the vigour of his mental activity, yet the weaknesses of his Nature rendered his best efforts incomplete and intermittent. I have to deal only with his poetry, but he was more than a poet, for his meta- physical powers were of the highest order, and he was, perhaps, the most brilliant conversationalist of the century. Indeed, he had always a difficulty in expressing himself in writing, but he was entirely in his element when he could pour forth with lavish and inexhaustible flow^ the vast range of knowledge and learning which he had acquired. This marvellous conversational gift joined to a fine sense of humour, a sharp and ready wit, and critical acumen of sur- AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 23 passing excellence, made him one of the most remark- able men of his time. His poetry is chiefly celebrated for the exquisite melody of the versification, which enchains the ear by its music, for the tenderness and delicacy of its sentiment, for the spirituality of its imagination, and for the harmonious colouring of his descriptions and their truth to Nature. His Ode to France, The Rime of the Ancient Mari7ier, Christabel, Genevieve, Youth and Age, and the Ode to the Departing Year, are not only unsur- passed by any similar productions in our language, but are by far the most original, the most purely poetical pieces produced during this century. As a writer says : " Beyond the mere mechanical and musical beauty of the verse, there is a deep hidden meaning, a satisfying fancy, a pure and holy conception, that makes one at once acknowledge a true poet " with his singing robes about him," one not content to wait in the outer courts of fancy, or to ornament himself with the mere prettinesses of rhyme, like the fashionable writers of the eighteenth century, but who penetrated at once into the Adytum, and stood in the presence of God."^ I have neither the time nor inclination to mar the beauties of the poems which I have mentioned by any mere quotation, but as illustrating how his high art was informed by loftier genius, I quote the following lines from his Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni : — * Essays on English Writers (1869), p. 337. 24 THE LAKE SCHOOL, " Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star In his steep course ? So long he seems to pause On thy bald, awful head, sovran Blanc ! The Arve and Arveiron at thy base Have ceaselessly ! but thou, most awful form ! Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines How silently ! Around thee and above Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black. An ebon mass ; methinks thou piercest it As with a wedge ! But when I look again It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity ! dread and silent mount ! I gazed upon thee Till thou, still present to the bodily sense. Didst vanish from my thought : entranced in prayer, 1 worshipped the Invisible alone ! " Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale ! Oh ! struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars. Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink ! Companion of the morning star at dawn. Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn Co-herald ! Wake, wake, and utter praise ! Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth ? Who filled thy countenance with rosy light ? Who made thee parent of perpetual streams ? Thou too, hoar mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast, Thou too, again, stupendous mountain ! thou That, as I raise my head, awhile bowed low In adoration, upward from thy base Slow travelling with dim eyes, suffused with tears, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 2d Solemnly seemest like a vapoury cloud To rise before me. Rise, oh, ever rise ; Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth ! Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills, Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven, Great hierarch ! tell thou the silent sky. And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun. Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God ! " Southey, the third of this poetical triumvirate, dates his entrance upon literature as a profession in 1801, but he had published several works previous to this date, including his Joan of Arc, which he had sold to Cottle, the Bristol bookseller. In 1804 he settled down at Greta Hall, near Keswick, and from that time his library was the only world he lived in. As he says himself : — " My days among the dead are passed ; Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast. The mighty minds of old ; My never-failing friends are they. With whom I converse night and day." Here he devoted his time entirely to literature, and every day and hour had its appropriate and select task. " His dearly-prized books," says his son, " were a pleasure to him almost to the end, and he would walk slowly round his library looking at them and taking them down mechanically." It is melancholy to think of this great, gifted, and good man spending the last three years of his Hfe in utter and hopeless vacuity of intellect, yet loving to linger amongst, and to touch and handle his beloved friends — his books — almost until his death ! 26 THE LAKE SCHOOL, Both in prose and poetry Southey was tlie most fertile and voluminous writer of this century, but he never attained to great popularity, owing to the subjects which he chose and his manner of treating them, his subjects being too wild and supernatural, and his images and descriptions, although gorgeous and sublime, being " too remote, too fanciful, and often too learned." His best known poetical works are Thalaba, the Destroyer, Madoc, The Curse of Kehama^ and Roderick, the Last of the Goths; but some of his youthful ballads, such as Lord, William, Mary, the Maid of the Lnv, The Well of St. Keyne, The Battle of Blenheim, and the Holly-Tree, were extremely popular, and the delight of most young readers when they were written. In most of his poems he is alike original in his language and his style. He chooses his characters, as in Thalaba and The Curse of Kehama, from beings almost on the verge of the supernatural, and leads them through scenes of more than earthly terror or beauty. His language is sometimes wearisome from its very eloquence and grandeur ; it now and again obscures the thought it was meant to express, and inclines to the fault which, perhaps, characterises our modern poetry too much, viz., the " efflorescence of mere language." In Thalaba he uses a style of verse quite of his own invention, which consists of an un- rhymed lyrical stanza, possessing a peculiar charm and rhythmical harmony, which adds greatly to the effect of the descriptions. The Curse of Kehama is in rhyme, but otherwise resembles Thalaba in character and structure. The AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 27 Story is founded upon the Hindu mythology, and has for its hero a Hindu Eajah who acquires and exercises supernatural power like Dr. Faustus. The vividity of the scene portraiture in this splendid poem is only equalled by its marvellous originality, and the bril- liancy and richness of the imagination which it reveals. The pictures have all the florid colouring of the oriental scenes which they depict, and alike in habits and manners, modes of thought, costume, and descriptiveness, the poem is perfectly and consistently oriental. Roderick, the Last of the Goths, a truly magnificent poem overflowing with genuine pathos, almost palls upon the reader on account of its ornate and gorgeous diction, and the redundancy of its word-painting, but it contains also many beauties of style and expression — much truthfulness to Nature — a subtle delicacy of refined feeling, and many king-thoughts crystallised in imperishable poetry. Time alas ! will only permit me to quote two brief extracts — the first from the opening stanzas of Thalaha, descriptive of a widowed mother wandering over the eastern desert during the silence of night : — " How beautiful is Night ! A dewy freshness fills the silent air ; No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain, Breaks the serene of heaven : In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine Eolls through the dark blue depths. Beneath her steady way The desert circle spreads, Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. How beautiful is night ! " 28 THE LAKE SCHOOL, My second brief extract is from the The Curse of Kehama, and is an apostrophe to Love. " They sin who tell us Love can die, With life all other passions fly, All others are but vanity. In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell, Nor Avarice in the vaults of hell ; Earthly these passions of the earth, They perish where they had their birth, But Love is indestructible : Its holy flame for ever burneth, From heaven it came, to heaven returneth. Too oft on earth a troubled guest. At times deceived, at times oppressed, It here is tried and purified, Then hath in heaven its perfect rest : It soweth here with toil and care. But the harvest-time of Love is there. Oh ! when a mother meets on high The babe she lost in infancy, Hath she not then, for pains and fears, The day of woe, the watchful night. For all her sorrows, all her tears An over-payment of delight ? " Comparing Southey with Wordsworth and Cole- ridge it must be admitted that he was dowered with the divine gift of poesy in a less liberal measure than his two illustrious friends, but the admirable poetic diction, the fine descriptive power, and the rich, glowing imagery which characterise the majority of his poetic works fully entitle him to be included in that brilliant and exalted trio to which English poetry is so deeply indebted. Such were the poets of the so-called Lake School. AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 29 Let me now briefly seek to inquire as to the influence they exerted on English poetry. We have already seen that the so-called poets of the eighteenth cen- tury, although, for the most part, able and accom- plished men, possessed little if any creative imagina- tion, and thus regarded the essential attributes of poetry as consisting of metre, and " a certain peculiar I/If ^ and artificial phraseology called poetic diction."^ In- \^ deed, the principal authorities in literary history are almost unanimous in regarding the period from the time of Dryden to about the year 1800 as an era of poetic sterility in England, characterised by clever ■ ness, conceit, and poverty. Almost simultaneously with the promulgation of the Transcendental Philosophy in German)'-, and the action of those social and political forces that culminated in the French lie volution, as already stated, a new spirit arose in Britain — a sudden manifestation of long- repressed energy, in a word, a protest against — a reaction and an awakening from the previous period of poetical degeneracy. Cowper and Crabbe in England, and Burns in Scotland, first felt the influence of this m.ental quickening, and sympathis- ing with it, carried forward the process of reforma- tion until every hamlet in Britain had become instinct and pregnant with the newly-rekindled poetic fire. To these succeeded Wordsworth, and to him be- yond doubt is mainly due the renaissance of Enghsh poetical literature in the present century. In the grasp of illustrious men, associated with him, more or less, in this re-creation of Enghsh poetry, I may ' Professor Masson, Essays, c&c, p. 16. 30 THE LAKE SCHOOL, mention Coleridge, Scott, Bj^ron, Shelley, Keats, and Southey, but he was undoubtedly the leader, as he may also be regarded as the father of a new poetical era. He regarded poetry as something holy, and him- self as set apart as a ministering servant of God and Nature. Indeed, poetry with him was a service of devotion. " Never, perhaps, in the whole range of literary history, from Homer downwards, did any individual throughout the course of a long life, dedicate himself to poetry with a devotion so pure, so perfect, and so uninterrupted as he did. It was not his amusement, his recreation, his mere pleasure. It was the main, the serious, the solemn business of his being. It was his morning, noon, and evening thought, the object of his outdoor rambles, the subject of his indoor reflections ; and, as an art, he studied it as severely as ever Canova did sculpture, or Michael Angelo painting.^ As he said himself in a letter to Sir George Beaumont : " The poet is a teacher. I wish to be considered as a teacher, or as nothing " ; and in all literature no one approaches him in his sense of dignity as a poet. What then did he teach us ? How did his teaching influence our poetry ? In reply to the first question it may be broadly stated that he interpreted Nature, and Man in relation to Nature. He recosrnised the fact that Nature had a revelation to impart ; he strove with all the powers of his being to induce man to receive this revelation, and to this work he dedicated his life. In his interpretation of Nature he simply des- cribed what he saw as he saw it, but, in regardincy Dr. D. M. Moir, Poet. Lit. of Last Half Centura/, p. 65. AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 31 an object, he sought not only to see its meaning and significance, but also to find out the open secrets which lay at the heart of every common thing in Nature, by looking at them with a spiritual eye, which penetrated into their very core. In a word, every natural object revealed a soul to him, which was vitally related to the soul of every other natural object, and all formed part of the great soul of the universe. " The highest life of each separate object having thus an interior relation to the life of every other, there is reciprocity amongst them all, a never- ceasing inter-communion as the common element ebbs and flows throughout them."^ As Mr. Stopford Brooke says : " This idea is the loveliest of all which Wordsworth has introduced into English poetry, and it flowed from his conception of everything in Nature having its own peculiar life. . . . There was cease- less inter-communion founded on the unutterable love which flowed through all things, and with which everything acted on every other. The whole world was linked together ; every part, every element, gave and received, honoured and did service, to each other. . . . And they delight in social intercourse like friends who love each other ; there is no jar, no jealousy, no envy there ; their best joy is in being kind to one another."^ This is one of the lovely lessons which Wordsworth has taught us. Nature was much to him, and his intimate knowledge and love of her informs every line he wrote, but he cared still more for Nature in relation to man : not only, as he says himself, was 7 Professor Knight, English Lake District, p. 239. ^ 1^1' « Theology in English Poets, p. 107. 32 THE LAKE SCHOOL, " the mind of man The haunt and the main region of my song," but he cared little for Nature apart from man, and it was man chiefly in fellowship with his brother-man that he cared for most — humanity, in fact, in its relationship with Nature. "He not only desired to bring humanity into vital contact with the sunshine of the broad world, and to " Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities," but he saw that human life finds its deepest inter- pretation in direct relation to Nature, Thus Nature reveals man, while man mirrors Nature."^ I can only mention a few of the other lessons he teaches. His intellectual insight is intimately corre- lated with his moral fervour and exaltation, and the moral tone of his poetry is as elevated as it is un- impeachable, and it is, indeed, a question whether he ranked higher as a poet or as a moralist. Beyond all he teaches us simplicity and earnestness in life, character, and thought ; and that, in devout com- munion with Nature we find a never-failing source of joy and enlightenment, an invariable source of com- fort and solace amid the worries and perplexities of life. With regard to his influence on English poetry it may safely be said that of all the poets that have appeared in England since Wordsworth's poetic career began — Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, and others — there is not one that does not owe somethincr to his influence and example ; and he and Coleridge, perhaps equally, each in his own way, have had a wider effect upon the minds and thought of their suc- ' Professor Knight, opiis cit. AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 33 cessors than any men of the last century. " They were not so much the teachers of the people as the teachers of those men that taught the people. Their great thoughts have filtered down, gladdening, purifying, and rendering fertile the minds of many men. Without Wordsworth we should never have had Dr. Arnold as a teacher, nor Tennyson as a poet, at least their language and modes of thought must have been different. "^*^ Among the poets who have helped to cultivate delight in the observation of natural appearances there is none that deserves to be ranked before Wordsworth, his extreme sensibility to, and accurate knowledge of the ever-changing and protean pheno- mena of external nature being unsurpassed. More- over, he re-introduced into English poetry the descriptive power which had lain dormant for nearly two centuries. Apart from the intellectual vigour which he also re-introduced, he elevated the moral tone of poetry by the peculiarly placid, religious con- templativeness which characterised his writings, ancj this blending of robust intelligence with exalted moral fervour and meditative calm, has caused him to be known as the " English Philosophical Poet." His narratives of humble country life are full of pathos, and in these he has, perhaps, never been equalled, while the admirable appropriateness and purity of his style — his facile and faultless command over every element of language have not only en- riched our literature but left a splendid example to his successors for all time. In sonnet writing he very nearly approaches " Essciys on English Writers, p. 329. C 34 THE LAKE SCHOOL, Milton, and, indeed, his sonnets are among the choicest and best in our literature. By these alone his name will ever be indelibly engraved in the history of English poetry. It will thus be seen that while Wordsworth brought the vision of a seer to bear upon the mysterious soul which he recognised in even the lowliest and commonest objects in Nature, he also in- terpreted the power and purpose of their teaching as an inspired priest of humanity. His marvellous con- centration of intellect, the majesty of his spirit, and the pathos and purity of his life, thought, character, and language enabled him to interpret the myriad voices of Nature, and to give them expression as he alone could do ; and the influence which he thus exercised upon the poetical literature of England will be as enduring as the " everlasting hills " which surrounded his beautiful and peaceful dwelling- place. In exactly the same spirit Coleridge and Southey learnt from their master and taught the same en- nobling lessons. " Without Coleridge we should not have known that school of reverential philosophy which, while it has kept pace with science and dis- covery, has yet preserved the noblest and sweetest faith in the world, to which the world owes all its good, pure and intact. These are great gains, and the men who gave them to us are great men."^^ Well, indeed, might the "gentle Elia" apostrophise his illustrious friend as " Logician, Metaphysician, Bard," for he was assuredly all this. The subtle and far-seeing spirit of his philosophy was in no slight " Essays on English Writers (1869), p. 329, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. 35 degree infused into his poetry, and his metaphysical speculations thrill with the exquisiteness of sentiment, and are permeated with the iridescent hues of fancy and imagination. If for no other reason our country owes him a debt of gratitude, inasmuch as he has done more than any other English writer to make Shakespeare understood in a spirit of love and reverence. The vividness of imagination, the subtlety of thought, and the unrivalled soul of music which characterised Coleridge, breathed an ethereal vitality into English poetry, which every poet since his time has recognised and sought to make his own. The weird mysteriousness and glowing language of Southey have helped to sustain and perpetuate the vigour, the vividity, and the harmoniousness of English verse. " The magnificent creations of his poetry — piled up like clouds at sunset in the calm serenity of his capacious intellect — have always been duly appreciated by poetical students and critical readers " ; yet they were too scholarly ; the sub- limity of his natural descriptions was too gorgeous and florid for them to become popular ; but, as he was a co-worker and co-thinker with Wordsworth and Coleridge, our literature would be poorer without them, and would not willingly let them die. More- over, his youthful ballads were extremely popular and are still highly esteemed. Beyond all this his style as a prose writer is the best the age can pro- duce, and he has no rival. But I must reluctantly conclude. These three great men, residing in the same dis- trict, actuated by the same noble motives and high 36 THE LAKE SCHOOL. resolves, and each, in his own way, divinely inspired to benefit humanity by his teaching, have in no small measure contributed to place and secure our national poetry in its present high position. They found our English Muse, who erst had occupied an imperial throne, and the altar of a high priestess, wandering unrecognised, unprotected, unappreciated among the highways and byeways, her intellect weakened, her spirit subdued, her body languishing, her raiment besmirched, and her feet bleeding ; her crown and sceptre had long disappeared, and in their stead she wore upon her tattered robe the meretri- cious gew-gaws of a degenerate age. These great and good men so found her, and led her gently back beneath the star of Hope to the vast temple of Nature. Here they breathed into her new life and renewed energy ; they clothed her afresh with the majesty of genius, put a crown upon her head, and a sceptre in her hand, and placed her upon a throne beside the high altar, where she still reigns, and rules, and serves, the glory of our country, the envy of the world ! THE LAKE SCHOOL, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY. E. A. DOUGLAS LITHGOW, m.d., ll.d., f.s.a., etc. 1^ I 3tljaca, Ncm ^ork ^ WORDSWORTH COLLECTION MADE BY CYNTHIA MORGAN ST. JOHN ITHACA. N. Y. THE GIFT OF VICTOR EMANUEL CLASS OF 1919 1925