ajoctteU mniucrattg Hibrarg 
 
 3tljata. Ncm ^ork 
 
 WORDSWORTH COLLECTION 
 
 MADE BY 
 
 CYNTHIA MORGAN ST. JOHN 
 ITHACA, N. Y. 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 VICTOR EMANUEL 
 
 CLASS OF 1919 
 1925 
 
 '/ 
 
ESSAYS 
 
HSSAYS 
 
 CHIEFLY ON POETRY 
 
 BY 
 
 AUBREY DE VERE, LL.D. 
 
 IN TWO VOLS. 
 
 VOL. I 
 
 CRITICISMS ON CERTAIN POETS 
 
 Hontion 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 
 1887 
 
 • ' 1 > 1 \ 1 
 
 All rights hserhed 
 
TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 CHAUCER, 
 
 THE FATHER OF ENGLISH POETRY, 
 
 THESE ESSAYS 
 
 ON THE WORKS OF A FEW AMONGST HIS SONS 
 
 ARE DEDICATED 
 
 IN THE BELIEF THAT 
 
 ' ' We live by admiration, hope, and love, 
 And even as these are well and wisely fixed 
 In dignity of being we ascend." ^ 
 
 1 Wordsworth. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 The following Essays were contributed by me to the 
 Edinburgh Review, the Quarterly Review, the Dtiblin 
 Review, the North British Review, the Christian 
 Remembrancer, the Nineteenth Century, the Month, 
 the Irish Monthly, and the Catholic World. They 
 are now collected, in a condensed form, with the kind 
 permission of the Editors of those Journals. The 
 " Characteristics of Spenser " appeared in the Rev. 
 Dr. Grosart's recent edition of that poet's works ; the 
 " Recollections of Wordsworth " in his collection of 
 Wordsworth's Prose Works. 
 
 A. DE VERE. 
 
 CuRRAGH Chase, 
 8i/i November 1887. 
 
CONTENTS OF VOL. I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Characteristics of Spenser's Poetry . . i 
 
 II. Spenser as a Philosophic Poet ... 48 
 
 III. The Genius and Passion of Wordsworth . loi 
 
 IV. The Wisdom and Truth of Wordsworth's 
 
 Poetry 174 
 
 Sir Henry Taylor's Poetry, viz. — 
 V. Philip van Artevelde — Part I ... 265 
 
 VI. Philip van Artevelde — Part II . . . 293 
 
I 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 
 
 It has been said that Spenser is a poet for poets ; and 
 there is truth in the remark, implying as it does that 
 his poetry addresses itself to something above the range 
 of merely human, as distinguished from imaginative 
 sympathies ; but it expresses only half the truth, and 
 the other half is commonly ignored, if not denied. 
 Many portions of his poetry on which he must have 
 set most value are doubtless beyond the appreciation 
 of readers who do not combine an unusual thought- 
 fulness with a large imagination. It is also true that 
 there is much in human character in which he took 
 httle of that special interest which a dramatist takes ; 
 and no less that much of that familiar incident which 
 delighted the ballad-maker of old, and constitutes the 
 chief ingredient in narrative poetry, was foreign to 
 Spenser's purpose. But so far from being true that 
 his poetry is deficient in human interest, there is a 
 sense in which he was especially a poet of the 
 humanities. More than any predecessor he was the 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
2 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 poet of beauty; but he sought that beauty in the 
 human relations even more than in that world of 
 ideal thought which was his native land. This truth 
 seems little recognised, and is yet momentous if we 
 would understand Spenser. Spenser was a great 
 thinker, but he seldom writes in a speculative vein; 
 and deep and sound as was his best philosophy, he 
 knew that poetry must express it in a strain " simple, 
 sensuous, and impassioned," or not at all. No one 
 was more familiar with forest scenery, or with the 
 charm of mead and meadow and river-bank ; but he 
 left it for poets of a later age to find in natural de- 
 scription the chief sphere for the exercise of their 
 faculties. He lived too near the chivalrous age of 
 action and passion to find in aught, save man, the 
 chief subject for the exercise of his genius. He stood 
 between those ages in which knightly deeds had 
 shared with spiritual contemplation the reverence of 
 mankind, and that later age in which activities yet 
 more intense, but less nobly balanced, addressed 
 themselves to political ambitions, to polemical con- 
 troversies, to the discovery and the ruthless subjuga- 
 tion of unfortunate races discovered, only to be 
 degraded. In its newly awakened energies he took 
 an interest. He had given instruction to statesmen, 
 and he had listened to Raleigh when the " shepherd 
 of the ocean" sat beside him at Kilcolman Castle, 
 and narrated his adventures in the Western Wonder- 
 land. But there were enterprises that interested him 
 more than these; and in them what he valued most 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 3 
 
 was the emblematic illustration of human nature. 
 That world which, as it receded, kissed hands to him 
 alone, had for him more charm than the world that 
 proffered her ungarnered spoils to the new settlers. 
 The clarion voice from fields where the knights of old 
 had sought honour only, was more to him than the 
 clamours of sectarian dispute, or the clash of swords 
 directed by,that Macchiavellian policy which in nearly 
 all countries had taken the place of mediseval states- 
 manship. And thus the first poet of the new era was 
 yet more emphatically the last poet of the old — at 
 once the morning star of England's later, and the 
 evening star of her earlier literature. The associate 
 of Leicester and Burleigh and Essex sang of Paladins 
 in whom they had no belief, and embodied Virtues 
 in which they had no part. He kept his higher genius 
 for the celebration of a wonder-world gone by. That 
 world, too, was a world of men and women ; but those 
 among them in whom the poet intended us to be 
 interested were by necessity beings over whom the 
 " Ages of Faith " had cast a spiritual gleam. It was 
 humanity that Spenser sang in the main, but it was an 
 ideal humanity. By some this will be regarded as 
 dispraise, and supposed to imply a charge of unreality. 
 Spenser might have retorted that charge. He saw 
 habitually in humanity, notwithstanding the Fall, the 
 remains of its " original brightness " ; and for him the 
 unreality would have consisted in hiding what he saw. 
 He saw, resting on the whole of God's creation, a 
 remnant of the Divine beauty, impressed upon it from 
 
4 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 the Face of Him who, when it came from His hand, 
 had pronounced it " very good " ; and what he saw as 
 a man, he confessed as a poet. He "was not dis- 
 obedient to the heavenly vision," though he sometimes 
 gazed on vulgar prosperities " with a dazzled eye." 
 
 There are — and we are bound not to conceal the 
 fact — serious blots upon Spenser's poetry, but these 
 are obviously unhappy inconsistencies when compared 
 with its immense merits, moral as well as imaginative 5 
 nor is there any poet in whom it is more easy to 
 discriminate between the evil which is accidental, and 
 the good which is essential. Where Spenser is himself, 
 the greatness of his ideal hangs around his poetry like 
 the halo round the head of a saint. His poetry has 
 that gift without which all others, including even that 
 of imagination itself, leaves it but a maimed and 
 truncated thing — a torso without a head. It has a 
 soul. In this respect Spenser was as like Tasso as he 
 was unlike Ariosto, whom he too often imitated, but 
 from whom he derived little save harm. It is note- 
 worthy that Shelley, who admired Spenser almost as 
 much as Wordsworth and Southey did, expressed 
 himself in disparaging terms of Ariosto ; while Byron, 
 who was a great reader of Ariosto, gave back the 
 volumes of Spenser which Leigh Hunt had urged him 
 to peruse, with no remark except, " I can make nothing 
 of him." 
 
 The magnificent ideal design on which Spenser 
 founded his Faery Queen was one which dedicated 
 itself pre-eminently to the exaltation of humanity. His 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 5 
 
 aim was "to strengthen man by his own mind"; 
 teaching him to submit that mind and its labours to 
 the regimen of those twelve great Virtues which, 
 according to the teaching of antiquity, preside like 
 tutelary guardians over all social polities. Thus to 
 vanquish all evil by simply making Virtue meet Wrong 
 face to face, and strike it down — the great idea at the 
 heart of chivalry — was a noble conception. 
 
 Such a poem could never have been conceived by 
 one who had been rendered indifferent to human 
 interests through an exclusive devotion to ideal 
 Beauty or abstract Truth. Embodied Vices are but 
 abstractions, and do not constitute human characters, 
 because the Vices are themselves but accidents of 
 human nature when disnatured. It is otherwise with 
 the Virtues : they belong to the essence of human 
 nature ; and in a large measure they create by the 
 predominance now of this virtue, now of that, the 
 different types of human character, each type drawing 
 to itself by a gradual accretion the subordinate 
 qualities most in harmony with that fundamental 
 virtue. A true poet's knowledge of human character 
 is thus in a large measure the result of a moral insight 
 which sees both its intellectual and practical develop- 
 ment enclosed within their moral germ, like the tree 
 within the seed : though it is by a very different 
 faculty — viz. observation — that he is enabled to 
 realise his knowledge and delineate that character. 
 Where the conception of character is a true one, that 
 truthfulness stands attested by its consistency, the 
 
6 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 different qualities which compose that character 
 coalescing into a perfect whole, alike when they 
 possess an obvious resemblance to each other, and 
 when, though unlike, they are supplemental to each 
 other. Let us illustrate this by three of Spenser's 
 favourite characters, Belphoebe is his great type of 
 Purity, as her twin sister Amoret is of Love. Britomart 
 is as eminently a type of Purity as Belphoebe, but not- 
 withstanding, she is an essentially different character ; 
 and while Belphoebe glides like a quivered Dian 
 through the forests, and sends shaft on shaft after the 
 flying deer, Britomart cannot be contented except 
 when she rides forth on heroic enterprise. Amoret, 
 Belphoebe's sister, is equally unlike both : she can 
 love only, love always, endure all things for love, and 
 love but one. The woodland sport and the war field 
 are alike alien to her. Britomart, who unites both 
 those sister types of character, loves as ardently as 
 Amoret, but she cannot, like her, love only ; her life 
 must be a life of arduous action and sustained 
 endeavour, and while these are with her she is 
 contented alike in the presence or absence of her 
 lover. The reason of this heart-freedom in the midst 
 of heart-thraldom is that Britomart is predominantly a 
 being of Imagination. She falls in love with Artegall 
 before she has ever met him, having but seen a vision 
 of him in Merhn's magic glass (Book IIL canto ii. 
 stanza 24). For a time she pines away, but streno-th 
 and gladness return to her in the midst of heroic 
 achievement. At last she meets Artegall joustinw 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 7 
 
 amid the other knights : she does not recognise him, 
 but engages with him in fight and wins the victory 
 (Book IV. canto iv.) Here there is a clear con- 
 ception of character, and if that conception is not 
 appreciated the fault is with the reader, not the poet. 
 He had himself interpreted Britomart, and her un- 
 intended victory — 
 
 Unlucky mayd to seek him far and wide, 
 Whom, when he was unto herself most nie, 
 She through his late disguisement could him not descrie ! 
 
 It is long before Belphoebe can be brought to return 
 her lover's affection. Neither her heart nor her 
 Imagination stands in need of love. The woodland 
 ways suffice for her ; and when she loves, her love is 
 chiefly compassion. This is true to human nature : such 
 boundless activities as Belphoebe rejoiced in are the 
 aptest type of that redundant vitality, both moral and 
 material, which suffices for itself, which can spend its 
 energies for ever without a return, and which needs 
 no other support than its own inherent strength and 
 wavelike elasticity. 
 
 This triple delineation of character is not the less 
 lifelike because it is intended to imply a philosophic 
 truth — viz. that the highest purity is capable of en- 
 gendering the most passionate devotion ; and that an 
 affection at once the most devoted and the most ideal 
 is one which intensifies, not weakens, the active 
 powers. 
 
 We need go no farther than the first book of the 
 Faery Queen for a proof that Spenser could illustrate 
 
8 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 human nature as well as allegorise the Passions ; for 
 its heroine, Una, is one of the noblest contributions 
 which poetry, whether of ancient or modern times, 
 has made to its great picture gallery of character. As 
 long as Homer's Andromache and Nausicaa, Chaucer's 
 Cecilia, Griselda, and Constance, the Imogen of 
 Shakespeare, or the Beatrice of Dante, are remem- 
 bered, so long will Una hold her place among them. 
 One of the most noteworthy things in this character is 
 the circumstance that so few elements suffice to invest 
 it with an entire completeness. AVhat are those 
 elements? Truth, Reverence, Tenderness, Humility. 
 It is that conception of character, at once Christian 
 and womanly, which belongs to the earlier Italian 
 poetry more than to that of other nations, or of those 
 later times in which the woman is so often lost in the 
 Goddess or the Syren. Una's life is spent in the 
 discharge of one great duty — the deliverance of her 
 parents from thrall. In her simplicity she reposes an 
 entire trust in the youthful knight who, at Queen 
 Gloriana's command, has undertaken the enterprise, 
 and with whom she travels alone through wood and 
 wild, gladly repaying his love with hers, but never 
 shaken in her devotion to her parents far away. He 
 forsakes her, persuaded through the spells of the 
 enchanter Archimago that she is false. She wonders, 
 and she mourns j but the wound of an insulted love 
 is not exasperated by self-love, and therefore it heals. 
 She is too humble to be humiliated ; and when she 
 learns that he has fallen under the thraldom of the 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 9 
 
 wicked witch Duessa, she roams over the world in the 
 hope of deUvering him who had vowed to be her 
 deUverer. The milk-white lamb which she " led in a 
 line " as she rode, and the lion which emerged from 
 the woods to become her protector, may have sug- 
 gested the lines in which Wordsworth illustrates the 
 chivalrous age — 
 
 The lamb is couchant at the lion's side ; 
 And near the flame-eyed eagle sits the dove. 
 
 The purity of Una, unlike that of Belphcebe or 
 Britomart, has culminated in sanctity, and is sym- 
 bolised by that veil, on the rare removal of which her 
 face sends forth a divine radiance. It is this sanctity 
 which overawes the merry wood-gods ; nor can it be 
 regarded as less than a serious blemish in the poem 
 that the same high spell should not have overawed all 
 besides. 
 
 They, in compassion of her tender youth, 
 And wonder of her beautie soverayne, 
 Are wonne with pitty and unwonted ruth ; 
 And all prostrate upon the lowly playne, 
 Doe kiss her feete, and fawne on her with countenance fayne. 
 
 Their harts she guesseth by their humble guise, 
 And yields her to extremity of time : 
 So from the ground she fearless doth arise. 
 And walketh forth without suspect of crime ; 
 They all as glad as birdes of joyous pryme. 
 Thence lead her forth, about her dancing round. 
 Shouting and singing all a shepherds ryme, 
 And with green branches strewing all the ground. 
 Do worship her as queen with olive garland crowned.^ 
 
 ^ Book I. canto vi. stanza 13. 
 
10 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 Una is as brave as she is meek ; and it is her timely 
 courage that delivers her knight after his restoration to 
 her. When he is on the point of yielding to the spells 
 of Despair, that most powerful of all Spenser's imper- 
 sonations, at the moment when 
 
 his hand did quake, 
 And tremble, like a leaf of aspen greene, 
 And troubled blood through his pale face was seen 
 To come and go with tidings from the heart, 
 As it a running messenger had been, 
 
 she snatches the dagger from his hand, and breaks the 
 enchantment. She leads him to the House of Holi- 
 ness, where, by goodly discipline, as well as a fuller 
 initiation into the Faith, the knight is rendered fit for 
 his great enterprise ; and she does not shrink from a 
 spiritual penance greater than his — 
 
 His own deere Una hearing evermore 
 His rueful shriekes and gronings, often tore 
 Her guiltless garments and her golden heare, 
 For pitty of his payne and anguish sore ; 
 Yet all with patience wisely did she beare, 
 For well she wist his cryme could els be never cleere. 
 
 He slays the dragon ; in the palace of Una's rescued 
 parents the wedding-feast is held ; and when she, the 
 emblem of Truth in its sacred unity, 
 
 had layd her mourneful stole aside. 
 And widow-like sad wimple throwne away, 
 Wherewith her heavenly beautie she did hide, 
 
 the radiance then revealed is such that even the Red- 
 Cross Knight 
 
 Did wonder much at her celestial sight ; 
 Oft had he seene her faire, but never so faire dight. 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY ii 
 
 If this be ideal poetry, it owes notwithstanding half 
 its pathos to its reality. To claim for the poet of Faery 
 Land the title of a poet of the humanities is not, of 
 course, to make that claim for him in the same sense 
 as it is to be made for Chaucer, who had a more vivid 
 knowledge of character as character is learned from life, 
 and a keener reUsh for all that gives animation to 
 life. Still less can such a comparison be made between 
 Spenser and Shakespeare, that " myriad-minded man " 
 to whom human character, with all its varieties, har- 
 monies, and contrasts, presented an ever-changing world 
 of impassioned interest, over and above its moral 
 significance, and one on which his mind rested as the 
 eye of a great painter rests on the passions of a sky 
 shaken by thunderstorm. But far more than any 
 of the Italian poets, the French, or the English, 
 he fixed his gaze steadily on the fair countenance 
 of humanity. No doubt that humanity was not, 
 like Homer's, humanity as it came from the hand 
 of Nature. It was one which, though not con- 
 ventionalised by the fashions of modern times, yet 
 was seen through the coloured mists of a chival- 
 ric imagination. Even the most poetic costume is 
 costume still; but the romances of chivalry which 
 Ariosto, the poet of a land in which chivalry never 
 flourished, had read in a spirit of mockery, were 
 realities to the great northern poet, and his sympathy 
 with them imparted reality to that poem which repro- 
 duced and transfigured them. 
 
 It may be well to advert to another opinion often 
 
12 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 put forward respecting Spenser, but which is more 
 specious on the surface than in the depths, and 
 requires for its correction the statement of a converse 
 truth, and one more important. Spenser has been 
 claimed by many as in England the firstfruits of the 
 " Renaissance." An important distinction is here to be 
 made. He was a man of the Renaissance, but he was 
 in the main a poet of the " olden time." He lived in 
 the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but his genius lived, even 
 more decisively than that of Chaucer, in the days of 
 Queen Philippa, and was familiar with many a lonelier 
 nook in the woodlands of Woodstock than the earlier 
 poet, the singer of its white -thorns and daisies, had 
 made himself familiar with. His heart was not with 
 Raleigh or Leicester when he sang thus — 
 
 O goodly usage of those antique tymes, 
 In which the sword was servaunt unto right ; 
 When not for malice and contentious crymes, 
 But all for prayse, and proofe of manly might, 
 The martiall brood accustomed to fight : 
 Then honour was the meed of victory, 
 And yet the vanquished had no despight.^ 
 
 It was not for its picturesque aspects only, but its 
 moral import, that Spenser loved chivalry — 
 
 O goodly golden chayne, wherewith yfere 
 The vertues linked are in lovely wise ; 
 And noble mindes of yore allyed were 
 In brave poursuit of chevalrous emprize, 
 That none did others' safety despize, 
 Nor aid envy to him in need that stands, 
 But friendly each did others praise devise. 2 
 
 1 Book III. canto i. stanza 13. 2 Book I. canto ix. stanza i. 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 13 
 
 The same tribute is paid in Book IV. canto viii. 
 stanza 30 et seq. — 
 
 But antique age yet in the infancy 
 Of tyme did live then hke an innocent, 
 In simple truth and blameless chastitie, 
 Ne then of guile had made experiment ; 
 But voide of \ile and treacherous intent, 
 Held vertue for herself in soveraine awe : 
 Then loyall love had royal regiment. 
 
 So again in Book V. canto xi. stanza 56 — 
 
 Knights ought be true ; and truth is one in all : 
 Of all things to dissemble fouly may befall. 
 
 Absolutely unlike that of the Renaissance was 
 Spenser's idea of Woman. In it Womanhood was not 
 condemned to have her portion either in the torrid zone 
 or the arctic zone of human character— amid the burn- 
 ing sands roamed over by ravening passions, or in the 
 flowerless region of a frigid scientific intelhgence. It 
 bloomed in the temperate region of serene affections, 
 hghted by the sun of Christian faith, and freshened by 
 the airs of human sympathy. 
 
 Such were the characters to which Spenser's genius 
 attached itself — that genius to which we owe all that 
 we love and remember in his works. He wrote com- 
 plimentary verses to the age, and its favourites, besides ; 
 but it is not by such that he is to be estimated. In 
 such he takes place with his neighbours. If, in com- 
 paring man with man, we measure their heights by 
 their ankles, not their heads, there is little to choose 
 between them. St. Bernard and the Crusaders lived 
 on in Spenser's true poetr}'. He himself lived much 
 
14 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY I 
 
 with men of a very different sort, till a fortunate exile 
 set him free ; and in some part he followed their ways. 
 In his political views he must have imbibed from a 
 ruthless time, and reckless associates, a spirit wholly 
 alien from his own benign and sympathetic nature, or 
 in his sagacious but pitiless state-paper on Ireland he 
 would not have recommended courses as unrelenting 
 as those which later drove him from his blazing home. 
 It was, doubtless, also from a time in which contro- 
 versial weapons were brandished in and out of place, 
 that he learned to sour his youthful pastorals by 
 declamations against the shepherds on the margin of 
 the Tyber, though at a maturer age he admitted that 
 the English monasteries, and many a roofless church, 
 had suffered wrong from the " Blatant Beast," 
 Calumny — 
 
 From thence into the sacred church he broke, 
 
 And robbed the chancell, and the deskes down threw, 
 
 And altars fouled, and blasphemy spoke. 
 
 And the images, for all their goodly hew. 
 
 Did cast to ground, whilest none was them to rew.^ 
 
 Neither did he wholly escape the lowering influences 
 of a political time when despotic princes and their 
 favourites were worshipped. That worship, which in 
 many proceeded from obsequious self-interest, was 
 probably in Spenser little more than an imaginative 
 prodigality of the loyal instinct bequeathed by past 
 ages, but attaching itself, for want of a better invest- 
 ment, to objects they would not have revered. Life, 
 political and civil, "in all its equipage," was to him a 
 
 ~ ^ Book V. canto x. stanza 25. 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 15 
 
 splendid pageant, and seeing behind all things the 
 goodly " idea " which they symbolised, a royal .court 
 must have appeared in his eyes "the great School- 
 maistresse of all Courtesy," and as such to be venerated. 
 He was not one to waste a life climbing official palace 
 stairs ; but he spent on such dreary pastimes time 
 sufficient to have produced several books of his im- 
 mortal poem ; and the memorial of that time remains 
 in the well-known lines — 
 
 Full little know'st thou that hast not tried, 
 What hell it is, etc. 
 
 In one respect, however, it must be admitted that 
 the Renaissance had assisted Spenser : it had imparted 
 to him an acquaintance with classical, and especially 
 \nth mythological lore, such as no mediaeval writer 
 possessed. His own profound sense of beauty made 
 him fully appreciate what was thus presented to him ; 
 and whereas mediseval writers had often dealt with 
 antiquity as mediseval painters had done, placing the 
 head of a saint upon the neck of a Hebe or a Mars, 
 he entered into its spirit in an ampler manner than 
 any of his predecessors, or any southern poet had 
 done. He had learned much from ancient philosophy, 
 especially that of the Academy, to which his poetry 
 was indebted for the great Platonic "ideas," a swan- 
 flight of which is always floating over his meads and 
 vales, and for those lofty aspirations which are the 
 sustaining spirit of his poetry. The degree in which 
 the sixteenth century was animated by new discoveries, 
 political changes, and intellectual controversies, must 
 
i6 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 also have had an awakening effect on his genius. But 
 they also, and in a lamentable degree, drew that genius 
 aside from what would have been its natural walk. In 
 the Divina Commedia the middle ages had bequeathed 
 to all time, not an epic, as it has sometimes been 
 called, but a mystical poem, incomparably the highest 
 flight of poetry since the volume of the Hebrew 
 prophets was closed. The great romantic poem of 
 the middle ages was never written, and the opportunity 
 is lost. Spenser was the man to have written it ; but 
 even if the Faery Queen had been finished, it would 
 not have wholly proved that work. It contains much 
 that belongs to such a theme : it includes much that is 
 alien to it : and — a matter yet more to be regretted — 
 it misses much that is essential to it. Spenser lived 
 near enough to the middle ages to have understood 
 them in a more profoundly sympathetic way than is 
 possible to us. His imagination and his affections 
 followed the mediseval type. All that he saw was to 
 him the emblem of things unseen ; the material world 
 thus became the sacrament of a spiritual world, and 
 the earthly life a betrothal to a life beyond the grave. 
 Spenser's moral being was also to a large extent 
 mediaeval in character, notwithstanding the sectarian 
 teaching he had imbibed in youth. Had he been a 
 mediaeval poet, he would have given us on a large 
 scale such illustrations of things spiritual, seen from 
 the poetic point of view, as Chaucer's enchanting 
 " Legend of St. Cecilia " has given us in a fragmentary 
 form. In the early chronicles he would also have 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 17 
 
 found large materials; for even the minuter events of 
 the middle ages must have then retained a significance 
 lost for us. Still more full of meaning must the 
 chivalrous romances have then been. He would have 
 selected and combined their treasures, and become 
 their great poetic representative, as Homer was the 
 representative of numberless bards whose minstrelsies 
 had delighted the youth of Greece. Spenser would 
 there, too, have found a far ampler field for that un- 
 conscious symbolism which belongs to high poetry, 
 and especially to his ; and he would not have been 
 driven upon those artificial allegories which chill 
 many a page of his verse. Symbols and allegories, 
 though often confounded, are things wholly different 
 in character. Symbols have a real, and allegories but 
 an arbitrary existence. All things beautiful and ex- 
 cellent are symbols of an excellence analogous to 
 them, but ranged higher in Nature's scale. Allegories 
 are abstractions of the understanding and fancy ; and 
 it is the especial function of imagination and passion, 
 not by any means to pass by deep thoughts, which are 
 their most strengthening nourishment, but to take 
 them out of the region of the abstract, which is that 
 of science, not of poetry, and present them to our 
 sympathies in the form of the concrete, investing them 
 with life — its breath, its blood, and its motion. 
 
 It was for the human side of a great mediaeval 
 theme that Spenser's characteristics would have pre- 
 eminently qualified him, as it was the supernatural 
 side that challenged most the genius of Dante. He 
 c 
 
i8 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 had a special gift for illustrating the offices and 
 relationships of social life. For such illustration his 
 age was unsuited. The world was passing through 
 one of those transitional periods, so irregular in their 
 nature, and made up of elements so imperfectly 
 combined, that a picture of national life and the 
 civilisation of an epoch, attempted while the confusion 
 lasts, must needs be deficient in harmony. The 
 world has other periods in which society has adjusted 
 itself, and blended its elements into a consistent whole ; 
 in which the kaleidoscope has been turned round 
 until it has reached that point at which its contents 
 emerge from disorder, and fling themselves into a 
 pattern ; and to such a period we may ourselves be 
 on our way. One of these periods was that sung by 
 Homer : in it the best characters, and the worst, had 
 a something in common ; and hence the admirable 
 consistency of that social picture presented by him. 
 Another such period was exemplified by the middle 
 ages, which, abundant as they were in extremes of 
 good and of evil, held notwithstanding certain common 
 characteristics admitted alike by those who designate 
 them the "Ages of Faith," and those who call them 
 "the dark ages." Spenser's poem would doubtless 
 have illustrated both the evil and the good in them, 
 but there would have been more light than gloom in 
 his picture. His Faery Queeris magnificent aim — 
 that of setting forth those great Virtues which are in 
 fact so many great Truths embodied in corresponding 
 affections — would have thus been harmoniously real- 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 19 
 
 ised. That beauty, which ever haunted Spenser's 
 mind, would in such a theme have shone forth as a 
 thing inherent in the conditions of all true social exist- 
 ence even here below. Whatever is majestic in age, 
 grave in authority, joyous and bright in boyhood or 
 maidenhood, devout and lovely in childhood, excellent 
 in the life wedded or unwedded, active or contem- 
 plative, would have been found by him amid the rich 
 variety of mediaeval society amply developed and 
 harmonised, though not without sad contrasts of 
 shortcoming and wrong. Such a picture would have 
 been to the world "a possession for ever." 
 
 The age in which Spenser lived was one full of 
 what may be called anachronisms, so inconsistently 
 did it bring together what it had inherited ; and what 
 it had produced and was producing. This luckless 
 incoherency could not but reflect itself in his poetry. 
 Let us take an example. In the " Legend of Artegall 
 or Justice " (Book V. canto ix.) we are brought to 
 the Palace of Mercilla. It is magnificently described 
 as the Temple of Justice : we make our way to the 
 throne on which Mercilla sits, described so nobly 
 that we cannot doubt that she is herself the goddess 
 who holds the scales of justice in this lower world. 
 Nothing can be subtler than the symbolism, more 
 splendid than the imagery, more skilful than the mode 
 in which the solemn process is carried on before that 
 high tribunal. It is no more than right that the warder 
 who sits at the gate of this palace should be "•' Awe "— 
 To keep out guyle, and malice, and despight ; 
 
20 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 that the great marshal in the central hall should be 
 "Order"; that the cloth of gold which hangs "like a 
 cloud " above the head of the goddess, and 
 
 Whose skirts were bordered with bright sunny beames, 
 Glistering like gold amongst the plights enrold, 
 And here and there shooting forth silver streames, 
 
 should be sustained in the hands of angels ; and that 
 at the foot of the throne should be placed 
 
 Just Dice, wise Eunomie, myld Eirene ; 
 And sacred Reverence yborne of heavenly strene. 
 
 The greater is our disappointment when it turns out 
 that though the days described are those of the 
 " Round Table," the Goddess of Justice is the 
 daughter of Anne Boleyn, and that the queenly lady 
 " of great countenance and place " who stands at her 
 bar for judgment, and is successively convicted of 
 immorality, of treason, of transgressing the law of 
 nations, and of murder, is Mary Queen of Scotland. 
 This confusion grievously detracts from the poetic 
 effect ; yet the detail is worked out with much skill, 
 and Elizabeth's reluctance to pronounce sentence on 
 Mary is subtly adumbrated — perhaps also England's 
 surviving reverence for the Holy See (stanza 46). 
 The next canto (x.) is also full of fine poetry ; but it 
 suffers when we have discovered that it is a covert 
 and exaggerated celebration of the recent wars in the 
 Low Countries, in which Prince Arthur, whom we 
 are more used to associate with Tintagel and Lyon- 
 nesse, has just achieved victories that leave Spain a 
 mere thing of the past. This sacrifice of poetry, 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 21 
 
 however, was one made, not to worldly interest, but 
 mainly to a perverted enthusiasm and the spirit of the 
 age. In many a man there are two men ; and in the 
 two there is not half the strength there would have 
 been in one only. Thus in that great and good man, 
 Walter Scott, we find both the Highlander and the 
 Lowlander, the one delighting in the clan-life, the 
 other toihng at Edinburgh ; the one passionate for the 
 Stuarts, the other more than content with the new 
 order of things. This explains Spenser to us. In 
 him we find at once the poet of the Middle Ages 
 and the man of the Renaissance. If Spenser and 
 the "Wizard of the North" had each intrenched 
 himself in what was greatest within him, and discarded 
 the rest, each would have left behind him a greater 
 and more homogeneous work. Especially I cannot 
 but believe that those stains on the surface of Spenser's 
 poetry which, though seldom snares to moral principle, 
 are serious insults to moral taste, and need to be 
 stepped over like bad spots on a road, came to him 
 from the coarseness of the age in which he lived, and 
 to which the great Elizabethan drama, excepting in 
 the main Shakespeare, bears so deplorable a witness. 
 It is true that in Chaucer, and far more in Boccaccio, 
 both of them men of the middle ages, there is also 
 much to be regretted; but there is nothing of the 
 same sort in Petrarch or Dante ; and in Spenser's noble 
 and refined nature it is with these that he is to be 
 classed, and not less his friend, Sir Philip Sidney, 
 who, if he had Hved earlier, might, not improbably, 
 
22 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 have escaped the few blemishes that rest on his 
 chivahous character, and from which his exquisite 
 poetry is not wholly exempt. Chaucer was the early 
 spring of English literature. But for the Wars of the 
 Roses, and the barbarism bequeathed by the usurpa- 
 tion of Henry IV., its later spring also must have had 
 its great poet. That poet would have been Spenser 
 if he had been born at half the interval, near two 
 centuries, between Chaucer and the summer glories 
 of Shakespeare, and if he had found an audience. 
 
 It is no detraction from the genius of Spenser to 
 say that it partook the evil as well as the good of his 
 age. Most great poets have done the same, and 
 sometimes the greatest the most ; for in the largest 
 degree they have learned their art, as children learn 
 to speak — viz. by sympathy and imitation, and thus 
 they do not easily escape the bad moral dialects and 
 depraved intellectual idioms of their time. If Milton 
 had not lived in the days 
 
 When pulpit, dram ecclesiastic, 
 Was beat by fist instead of a stick, 
 
 he would not have made the Almighty speak "like a 
 school divine," and he might have delineated a more 
 Christian and less Mahometan ideal of woman than 
 is suggested by the line 
 
 He for God only : she for God in him. 
 
 He might have bequeathed us a Paradise Regained 
 finer even than his immortal Paradise Lost ; his stern 
 prophet rod might have blossomed like Aaron's, and 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 23 
 
 diffused the fragrance of many a poem precious as his 
 Lycidas, and of heaUng breath Hke his Comus ; nor 
 would his record of the Fall have included a passage 
 the irreverence of which, considering that he records 
 the parents of the human race, is not to be excused 
 by the desire to point a moral. Chaucer also bears, 
 for good and evil, the marks of his time. The good 
 of that time is reflected in the " Christianised hu- 
 manity " of his best and least-known legends, one of 
 which, " The Prioress's Tale," has been modernised 
 by Wordsworth with a devout faithfulness in striking 
 contrast with Dryden's translations from the father- 
 bard. But Chaucer's age did not escape a moral 
 latitudinarianism, to which we must attribute the licence 
 of some of his poems, bewailed by him on his 
 deathbed. No doubt, in his inmost heart, he loved 
 best the narrow path that leads to the heights; but 
 the carelessness of a disposition less lofty than broad 
 made him indulgent to the " broad-school " in morals ; 
 and English poetry has had to pay the forfeit. We 
 can only guess how many a noble story " left untold " 
 might have been ennobled more by the manly genius 
 that left to us the Canterbury Tales, but left that work 
 unfinished. Few of the great poets, excluding those 
 of Spain, seem to have given to us more than frag- 
 ments of what they might have given. 
 
 Let us pass to the pleasanter part of our subject — 
 those transcendent merits of Spenser which admit no 
 dispute. His chief characteristic is perhaps his sense 
 of beauty; but with him the beautiful means the 
 
24 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 Platonic "Fair and Good." The one was not the 
 ornament merely of the other. As oxygen and 
 hydrogen not only blend in the composition of water, 
 but so unite as to become a single substance as simple 
 as either gas, so in his poetry the fair and the good 
 coexist as a single element. He is the converse of 
 ordinary poets. When his theme forces on him the 
 sensational in place of the beautiful, the poet gets 
 sleepy. Some of his battles admit of grand incidents, 
 and he always knows how to make the most of such ; 
 but where fight is nothing more than fight, it is to him 
 but a business that has to be transacted. Stanza 
 here follows stanza, each a single sentence, the fifth 
 line not seldom an echo of the fourth, the language 
 diffuse, and the metre monotonous, the chief pause 
 constantly recurring at the end of the line. But this 
 is not Spenser. When he has killed off his man, he 
 feels relieved. Something brings back the beautiful 
 to his theme, and the poet wakens : his language 
 becomes that of a man inspired ; every epithet has its 
 significance, every metrical change its meaning ; the 
 frost melts, the stream of melody flows again ; and 
 the bramble close by, or the forest-roof far off, 
 "glistens with a livelier ray." 
 
 Sometimes the beauty is minute, as — 
 
 Two goodly trees, that faire did spred 
 Their arms abroad, with grey moss overcast ; 
 And their greene leaves trembling with every blast 
 Made a calme shadowe far in compass round. 
 
 More often it is touched with a vague ideal, as — 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 25 
 
 And low, where dawning day doth never peepe 
 His dwelling is : there Tethys his wet bed 
 Doth ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steepe 
 In silver dew his ever-drooping head ; 
 While sad night over him her mantle black doth spred. 
 
 Sometimes the truth to nature seems a suggestion 
 to art such as Salvator's — 
 
 As an aged tree 
 High growing on the top of rocky clift, 
 Whose heart-strings with keene Steele nigh hewen be ; 
 The mighty trunck half rent with ragged rift 
 Doth roll adoune the rocks. 
 
 It is singular how the poet's character reflects itself 
 in his descriptions of scenery. Spenser's was gentle, 
 and the nature which he sings is that which is least 
 troubled with storms, and smiles on its admirer. He 
 likes mountains best when they keep their distance ; 
 but he can never be near enough to the reedy river's 
 brim, or familiar enough with the cowslips on the 
 mead. Professor Dowden, an admirable critic, re- 
 marks, "Spenser's landscape possesses a portion, as 
 it were, of feminine beauty " (" Heroines of Spenser ")} 
 It is noteworthy that the careless descriptions incident- 
 ally introduced into his narratives are far more true 
 to Nature than his more elaborate pictures of her, 
 such as " The Garden of Sensual Delight," Book II. 
 canto v., or "The Bower of Bliss," Book II. canto 
 xii. In the latter class Nature is generalised : we 
 have catalogues of trees, not the tree itself; and the 
 intellectual beauty of Nature is drowned in her 
 Epicurean appeal to the sense. The passage last 
 
 ^ The Cornhill Magazine, June 1879. 
 
26 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 referred to is largely taken from Tasso ; for in those 
 
 days poets were ready alike to borrow and to lend ; 
 
 and wholesale plagiarism was neither concealed nor 
 
 complained of. But Spenser was always best when 
 
 he depended most on his own genius. It was his 
 
 modesty, not his need, that made him borrow. He 
 
 seems to have regarded it as a tribute of respect. 
 
 Spenser's extraordinary sense of the beautiful at 
 
 once shows itself when he describes art in any of its 
 
 forms. Nothing in " The Bower of Bliss " surpasses 
 
 the description of its ivory gate with the story of Jason, 
 
 Medea, and the Argo graven upon it, and that of the 
 
 fountain carved all over with "curious imageree." 
 
 Another specimen of this excellence is his description 
 
 of the Temple of Isis, its emblematic sculpture, and 
 
 its stately ministrations (Book V, canto vii.) In this 
 
 canto occurs a passage which has been more than 
 
 once imitated in modern poetry. Britomart recounts 
 
 to an aged priest of the temple a vision which has left 
 
 her stunned and amazed. The priest listens long — 
 
 Like to a weake faint-hearted man he fared 
 Through great astonishment of that strange sight ; 
 And with long locks up-standing stifly, stared 
 Like one adawed with some dreadful spright ; 
 So filled with heavenly fury thus he her behight. 
 
 He prophesies her future greatness. The reader of 
 Scott's Lord of the Isles, and of Macaulay's Prophecy 
 of Capys, when they come to the finest passage in 
 each, may recognise its original here. Among the most 
 remarkable instances, perhaps, of the mode in which 
 Spenser's sense of beauty shows itself in the conception 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 27 
 
 of pictures and statues, are those in the "House 
 of Busyrane " (Book III. canto xi.), and the " Maske 
 of Cupid" (Book III. canto xii.) 
 
 The gift of delineating beauty finds perhaps its 
 most arduous triumph when exercised on the descrip- 
 tion of incident^ a thing that passes successively from 
 change to change, and not on permanent objects 
 which less elude the artist's eye and hand. As an 
 example may be cited the striving of the rival ladies 
 for Florimel's girdle, which will not allow itself to be 
 buckled around the waist of the fairest if upon her 
 life there rests even the slightest stain (Book IV. 
 canto V.) That poetic touch which suggested the 
 expression "nihil tetigit quod non ornavit," moves 
 over this episode with a light and bright felicity ; and 
 elsewhere leaves a gleam even upon that pathos in 
 which the Faery Queen so richly abounds. A charm- 
 ing example of this is the story of the gentle squire 
 who loves Belphoebe. He saves Amoret; and his 
 compassion for the victim he has rescued half-dead 
 from the " salvage man " makes him for a moment 
 seem to forget that love. Amoret lies on the forest- 
 floor in swoon, when Belphoebe arrives and finds him 
 
 From her faire eyes wiping the deawy wet 
 Which softly still'd, and kissing them atweene. 
 
 Belphoebe has not returned the gentle squire's devotion 
 to herself, but yet she regards his fidelity as her due, 
 and with no words except "Is this the Faith?" she 
 recoils into the woods. He sees her no more. He 
 throws his weapons away ; he will speak to none ; he 
 
2S CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 hides himself in the forests gloomiest nook ; his fair 
 
 locks 
 
 He let to grow and griesly to concrew 
 
 Uncompt, uncurled, and carelessly unsted : 
 
 That like a pined ghost he soon appears. 
 
 When his " deare lord " Prince Arthur finds him, he 
 
 knows him not ; and the abandoned one vrill answer 
 
 nothing. Prince Arthur notes that '■' Belphcebe '' is 
 
 graved upon every tree ; but knows only that the 
 
 forlorn wretch before him must have been one of 
 
 gentle birth. Help comes from a tenderer friend. A 
 
 turtle-dove that has lost her mate understands him 
 
 better, and laments close beside him in a strain 
 
 So sensibly compyled that in the same 
 Him seemed oft he /leerd his on'tte right name. 
 
 Each day he shares with her his woodland fare, and 
 at last binds around her neck a jewel 
 
 Shaped like a heart yet bleeding of the wound, 
 given to him by Belphcebe. The dove flies away, and 
 wafts it afar to the spot where Belphcebe sits. She 
 recognises and tries to recover it; but the dove, 
 swerving ever as she is about to be caught, insensibly 
 leads her through the forest till they reach the gentle 
 squire, and then flies into his hand. He speaks 
 nothing ; it is long before Belphcebe recognises him, 
 and then it is not by his features, but by his sorrow. 
 
 That her in-burning wrath she gan abate, 
 And him received againe to former favour's state. 
 
 Spenser's dove may have suggested to Southey the 
 " green bird "' which served as s;uide to Thalaba. 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 29 
 
 Not less subtly is beauty blended with sorrow of a 
 more tragic order in that wonderful scene (Book III. 
 canto xii.), in which Amoret endures the last great 
 trial of her constancy before her deliverance by the 
 hand of Britomart. Amoret is the bride of Scudamore, 
 torn from him on her wedding day by an enchanter. 
 
 No living wight she saw in all that roome, 
 Save that same woeful lady, both whose hands 
 Were bounden fast, that did her ill become, 
 And her small waste girt round with yron bands 
 Unto a brasen pillour, by the which she stands. 
 
 And her before the vile Enchaunter sate, 
 Figuring strange characters of his art ; 
 With living blood he those characters wrate. 
 Dreadfully dropping from her dying hart, 
 Seeming transfixed with a cruell dart, 
 And all perforce to make her him to love. 
 
 Many such passages might be referred to. In Spen- 
 ser's poetry, whether it be grief or. gladness which he 
 describes, the beauty mingled with each is stronger 
 than either. From him Keats might have taken the 
 line — 
 
 Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self; 
 
 and Shelley a kindred one — 
 
 The beauty of delight makes lovers glad. 
 
 The highest beauty in Spenser's poetry is that beauty 
 which might most easily have eluded the vision of 
 Lord Byron, vigorously as he delineated that which 
 was on his level; for, as Professor Dowden has re- 
 marked, " Beauty, Spenser maintained, is twofold. 
 There is a beauty which is a mere pasture to the eye ; 
 
30 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 it is a spoil for which we grow greedy, . . . and there 
 is the higher beauty of which the pecuhar quahty is a 
 penetrating radiance; it illuminates all that comes 
 into its presence ; it is a beam from the divine fount 
 of light." -^ Such beauty, while it is actual, is ideal 
 first ; and the Professor rightly adds, " For Spenser, 
 behind each woman made to worship or love rises a 
 sacred presence — Womanhood itself." This is such 
 criticism as Spenser would have welcomed. 
 
 Nowhere does Spenser's sense of beauty more finely 
 illustrate itself, in the form of incident, than in the 
 battle between Artegall and Britomart, when neither 
 recognises the other. Her helmet is cloven, and her 
 golden tresses falling down reveal the maiden warrior 
 — a maiden whose beauty converts severity itself into 
 beauty. He kneels^ " and of his wonder made religion." 
 She does not desire worship, but fair fight, and again 
 lifts her sword, but cannot strike. As she bends 
 above him she recognises in that countenance, 
 
 Tempred with sterness and stout maiestie, 
 the heroic image of Man she had seen in Merlin's 
 magic glass, and loved ever since with a love 
 which, while imparting strength, not weakness, had 
 made all meaner love an impossibihty to her. The 
 metamorphosis that takes place gradually in her, and 
 suddenly in the knight, is illustrated in stanzas of 
 which it is impossible to say whether the beauty 
 expressed, or the beauty implied, predominates. It 
 is not till she has heard that name whereon her 
 
 ^ The Cornhill Magazine, June 1879. 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 31 
 
 imagination has long fed that the metamorphosis is 
 
 complete. Artegall does not note it. He sees her 
 
 face still as he saw it first, " so goodly grave and full 
 
 of princely awe," that he cannot declare his love. If 
 
 she was swiftly won by the phantom image of the 
 
 warrior, she was slowly won by the warrior himself. 
 
 We are later told how, after no easy suit, at last 
 
 she yielded her consent 
 To be his love, and take him for her lord. 
 
 The imagination was one thing, and the heart another ; 
 and in the virgin the gallery leading from the palace 
 to the temple was a long one. 
 
 Not a few of the incidents in the Faery Queen are 
 of an order of beauty which teaches us that the sublime, 
 so commonly contrasted with the beautiful, is itself 
 but beauty in its highest manifestation, though some- 
 times beauty of a threatening kind. Such is the 
 catastrophe of the battle between Prince Arthur and 
 the Souldan (Book V. canto viii.) The Souldan, in 
 disdain of a foe whom he expects to trample under foot, 
 mounts, in complete armour, 
 
 a charret high 
 With yron wheeles and hookes armed dreadfully, 
 And drawn of cruel steedes which he had fed 
 With flesh of men. 
 
 Again and again he dashes at his foe. The Prince 
 evades the onset, but never can get near enough to 
 the enemy to strike him. He, too, wears mail; but 
 it is mail from the armoury of God, that armour 
 described by St. Paul as the pre-requisite of the Chris- 
 tian's warfare — the ^^whole armour of righteousness." 
 
32 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 Many have sunk beneath Arthur's sword ; but none 
 have seen his shield, which is covered by a veil. At 
 last, as the chariot makes its terrible way to him, 
 the Prince withdraws that veil, and there leaps from 
 the shield a lightning flash keen as his sword and 
 brighter than the sun. The horses turn and fly. In 
 their madness they rush over hill and dale, dashing 
 the chariot to pieces against the trees and rocks. 
 The Souldan at last is found beneath its iron wheels, 
 "torn all to rags, and rent with many a wound." On 
 another occasion the virtue of this Divine shield gains 
 him the victory in different fashion. The Prince fights 
 with a giant of more than mortal might. As he is 
 sinking beneath the Titan's club the veil is torn from 
 his shield. Once more the giant raises his weapon — 
 
 But all in vain ; for he has read his end 
 In that bright shield, and all his forces spend 
 Themselves in vain ; for since that glancing sight 
 He hath no powre to hurt, nor to defend. 
 
 This may have been unconsciously in Shelley's mind 
 
 when, promising to Freedom the victory over her 
 
 enemies, he sang — 
 
 Thy shield is as a mirror 
 To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam 
 Turn back his hungry sword against the wearer. ^ 
 
 Another characteristic of Spenser's poetry, and one 
 eminently ancillary to its sense of beauty, is its sug- 
 gestiveness. If he is often diffuse, his most significant 
 passages are yet marked by a brevity which imparts 
 to them a proportionate intensity. Here is an example. 
 
 1 Ode to Naples. 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 33 
 
 Guyon, the emblem -knight of Temperance {Faery 
 Queen, Book II. canto i.), is led through scenes meant 
 to teach him successively the baleful effects of ungov- 
 erned passion. He hears the wail of a woman, 
 Amavia, whose husband has deserted her, mastered 
 by his fatal love for the witch Acrasia. His faithful 
 wife had rescued him from thrall; but ere his departure 
 from her castle the witch had given him an enchanted 
 cup : he had drained it and died. Guyon finds that 
 wife beside a fountain bleeding from a self-inflicted 
 wound in her heart, and with a late-born babe in her 
 lap — a babe blood-stained. Beside her lies the mur- 
 dered husband, dead. She tells Guyon her story, and 
 dies, but not until she has thus adjured her babe — 
 
 Thy little hands embrewed in bleeding breast 
 Loe I for pledges leave. So give me leave to rest. 
 
 The good knight deems that 
 
 since this wretched vi'oman overcome 
 Of anguish rather than of crime hath been, 
 
 she merits the last offices of Christian charity. With 
 
 the aid of a hermit he digs a grave, strews it with 
 
 cypress branches, and inters the husband' and wife; 
 
 but first cuts off with the dead knight's sword a tress 
 
 from the head of each, flings it into the grave, and 
 
 vows to revenge them. Lastly — 
 
 The little babe up in his armes he hent, 
 
 Who with sweet pleasaunce and bold blandishment 
 
 Gan smyle on them, that rather ought to weep. 
 
 Guyon bends above the fountain to wash the mother's 
 blood from the hands of her babe. He labours in 
 
 D 
 
34 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 vain : the sanguine blots but deepen, and can never 
 be erased. The little hands must keep their blood- 
 stains, 
 
 That they his mother's innocence may tell, 
 As she bequeathed in her last testament ; 
 That as a sacred symbole it may dwell 
 In her Sonne's flesh, to mind revengement. 
 
 Here is a memorable symbol of the passion that can 
 never sleep, and the vengeance bequeathed from age 
 to age. The beauty of this tale is even greater than 
 its terror. It is a flower that wears blood-drops for 
 its ornament, yet is a flower still. But greatest of all 
 is its significance. The same lesson is taught by the 
 bleeding spray which Guyon breaks from one of the 
 two trees into which two lovers had been changed. 
 They stand side by side, summer after summer, and 
 murmur in the same breeze ; but their branches can 
 never meet. 
 
 Not less characteristic of Spenser's poetry is its 
 wonderful descriptive power. Everywhere this faculty 
 is illustrated, but nowhere more exquisitely than in 
 that passage where we meet Belphcebe out hunting 
 (Book II. canto iii.) The poet's picture, like Guido's 
 Aurora, has the freshness of the morning about it : 
 youth and gladness breathe in every line, beam in 
 every gesture, and wave with every movement of that 
 raiment made in this rich description almost as 
 beauteous as the slender limbs and buoyant form it 
 embraces, yet laughingly reveals. It is plain that so 
 long as this youthful Dian may but race with those 
 winds which add a richer glow to her cheek and more 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 35 
 
 vivid splendour to her eye, so long as she may but 
 chase the hart and hind through the dewy forest lawns, 
 so long must all love-ties be for her without a mean- 
 ing. Dryden has imitated this passage, after his fashion, 
 in his Cymon and Iphigenia, missing the poetry and 
 purity of the whole, and imparting a touch of coarse- 
 ness, not felt in the original, to what he retains — ^just 
 as in his version of Chaucer's poems he omits each 
 finer touch, and makes the rest vulgar. A sculptor 
 might perhaps remark that the line — 
 
 Upon her eyelids many graces sate 
 
 would be more in place if a Venus were described 
 rather than this handmaid of the " quivered Queen " 
 who, like Apollo, is ever represented in Greek art with 
 lifted lids and eyes wide open. Dian is a luminary, 
 like her brother, and even in the marble her eye flings 
 its glances far. 
 
 The allegory of " Despair " is too well known to 
 need comment ; but it can never be too much praised. 
 It proves that narrative poetry may, in the hand of a 
 great master, fully reach the intensity of the drama, 
 and carry to the same height those emotions of pity 
 and terror through which to purify the soul was, 
 according to Aristotle, the main function of tragedy. 
 Spenser could at will brace his idyllic strain till it 
 became palpably the prelude of that fierce and fair 
 EHzabethan drama destined so soon to follow it. 
 
 The most grateful admirer of Spenser will perhaps 
 be the most willing to admit that, with all its trans- 
 
36 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 cendent merits, the Faery Queen, like all long poems, 
 has great faults — and can afford to have them. It is 
 no irreverence to acknowledge them. If his more 
 important allegories are at once deep and graphic, 
 others are crude or trivial. To the nobler class be- 
 long the allegory of " Guile " ; of Talus, the iron man 
 with the iron flail, who represents Judgment only, and 
 is so happily distinguished from Artegall, who repre- 
 sents Justice ; and to it also the fantastic shapes that 
 threaten Guyon as he sails along the sea of mortal life. 
 To a more vulgar order must be remanded such 
 allegories as those of "Envy," "Detraction," "Scandal," 
 the Vices in the " House of Pride," and those which, 
 in the form of beasts, assail the castle of "Temper- 
 ance"; while "Furor," "Strife," "Diet," etc., are 
 frigid and unpoetic. The battle between Una's knight 
 and the winged dragon half a mile long, if serious, 
 admits of no defence, and if the contrary, only reminds 
 us that Spenser's genius was the genius of the north, 
 and could not afford to be insincere. Spenser is also 
 often prolix, and repeats himself Except in his highest 
 moods, he seldom braced himself up to do his best 
 as Milton constantly did with a proud conscientious- 
 ness, and Shakespeare more often than is consistent 
 with the fable that he "never blotted a line." Spenser 
 was probably himself an "easy" reader as well as 
 writer ; and when books were few a poet might expect 
 to find students docile and not soon tired. He was 
 large in the great gift of admiration, and too true a 
 poet to suspect in others a touch of that essentially 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 37 
 
 unpoetical quality, cynicism. Like the mathematician, 
 the poet of romance had a right to start with his 
 postulates, such as that the gods of mythology might 
 lawfully be mixed up with saints ; that a knight might 
 receive any number of wounds and be well again next 
 day ; that physical strength was commonly the expres- 
 sion of a corresponding moral greatness ; and that the 
 most delicate ladies suffered nothing from lack of 
 food, or exposure to the elements. It was less safe to 
 assume that battles would always have the inexhaust- 
 ible interest they had for those who gathered round 
 Homer when he sang. 
 
 But the most serious fault in the Faery Queen was 
 unquestionably a structural one. In Chaucer, whom 
 Spenser revered so loyally and acknowledged as his 
 master, the stories are complete, each in itself; the 
 narrative is thus easily followed, the interest undivided, 
 and the catastrophe conclusive. But in the Faery 
 Queen the tales are interwoven ; the same knights and 
 ladies reappear successively in many of them ; the 
 story breaks off where the interest is at its crisis ; and 
 the reader is invited to follow again the fortunes of 
 persons he has forgotten. This is to cheat us doubly. 
 A short poem may have the bright perfection of a 
 flower, an epic the stately mass of a tree that com- 
 bines the variety of its branches with the unity of the 
 stem ; but a romance of this intricate character is 
 neither the flower nor the tree, — it is a labyrinth of 
 underwood not easily pierced. Perseverance may 
 vanquish all difficulties; but when this has been 
 
38 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 effected the details of the poem are more than the 
 whole, and it thus loses that consummate effect pro- 
 duced by "il piu nell uno." Let us turn to the tale 
 of the sisters Belphoebe and Amoret. It is one of 
 the loveliest, deepest, and most original of legends ; 
 yet for most readers its beauty, and even its meaning, 
 are drowned in the interruptions that perplex it. 
 Tasso did not fall into this error ; neither did Walter 
 Scott, though he wrote poetic romances, not epics. 
 It was Ariosto who wished to show his ingenuity in 
 thus alternately tangling his skein and recovering his 
 thread; and his readers, who desired to be amused 
 and excited, not moved or raised, missed nothing. 
 But Spenser's poem was stored with matter more 
 precious ; and to it the loss produced by this con- 
 fusion is grievous. Here, again, an inferior model 
 was his evil genius. He was always greatest when he 
 leaned least on others ; but he had the modesty which 
 belongs to noble and refined natures ; and far from 
 fully asserting his own greatness, he did not know it. 
 The proem of his great work illustrates this defect. 
 Instinctively he had chosen the noblest of themes ; 
 but he was not conscious of its greatness, or he would 
 not have blended with his invocation to the Muse 
 another to Venus, Mars, Cupid, and Queen Elizabeth. 
 Let us return to the merits of this great poet. It 
 is not by an analysis of Spenser's special qualities, 
 taken separately, that we reach an adequate estimate 
 of his greatness. It was especially his gift, and one 
 proceeding from the proportionateness of a mind over 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 
 
 39 
 
 which the sense of beauty ever held a sceptre of 
 gentleness, that his faculties worked together harmoni- 
 ously, and that at his best no one could say which of 
 them predominated. The passages characterised in 
 the highest degree by descriptive power are character- 
 ised not less by loveliness, by suggestiveness, by moral 
 wisdom, and commonly by spiritual aspiration. These 
 qualities can, in such passages, no more be separated 
 than the colour of a flower can be separated from its 
 form and fragrance. His mind was a whole, and not 
 merely a collection of faculties or "parts," often, in 
 inferior minds, as disproportioned to that whole as the 
 restless limbs of an octopus are to the body in which 
 they inhere, but of which they seem no portion; 
 and it is this characteristic, more than other, which 
 places him among the world's poets of the first class. 
 To understand him requires a knowledge of him 
 habitual, not a got-up knowledge. The novice must 
 read him wisely ; and in our " fast " days he commonly 
 has not time to do so, even if he has the docility of 
 goodwill, and that gift of tentative faith through 
 which the young often reach unconsciously an under- 
 standing of great poetry. To appreciate the compass 
 of Spenser's genius we should bring together those 
 narratives which illustrate it when directed with equal 
 energy to the most different themes. Thus " The 
 House of Holiness " may be usefully read after " The 
 Cave of Mammon," and compared with it. These 
 two great descriptions of the best and the worst that 
 we know of here below may be regarded as the two 
 
40 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 opposite extremes at once of his descriptive and 
 emblematic art. In the first named we have, if not 
 Spenser's "Paradiso," at least the "terrestrial para- 
 dise " of his " Purgatorio " : in the latter we have his 
 " Inferno," and the poet is equally at his ease in the 
 delineation of both. Mammon means, not wealth 
 only, but the first of those "three enemies" against 
 which the Christian is militant — viz. the "World"; 
 and this "world," emblemed in gold, Spenser repre- 
 sents as a world under our world — a dreadful sub- 
 terranean world of greatness apostate and splendour 
 lost in gloom. Mammon wears a mail, though not a 
 knightly mail — 
 
 His iron cote, all overgrowTi with rust, 
 Was underneath enveloped with gold. 
 
 Descending with this grim earth -god, Guyon finds 
 
 himself in a vast plain leading to Pluto's "griesly 
 
 rayne." The way is bordered by dreadful shapes — 
 
 Pain, Strife, Revenge, Despight, Treason, Hate — 
 
 But gnawing Gealosy, out of their sight 
 Sitting alone, his bitter lips did bite ; 
 And trembling Feare still to and fro did fly. 
 And over them sad Horror with grim hew 
 Did always soar, beating his jTon wings. 
 
 They advance through the gate of the golden city; 
 but a spectre with uplifted hand treads ever in the 
 dusk behind the Christian knight, ready to close upon 
 him the first moment that he covets aught he sees. 
 Nothing can exceed the gloomy grandeur with which 
 is described the palace of Mammon — all sumptuous- 
 ness and all terror — roof, floors, and walls all of gold in 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 41 
 
 decay, and half hid in the dusk, while over the pave- 
 ments lie scattered dead men's bones. Guyon sees 
 the Stygian furnaces and the fiends that mould the 
 liquid metal into ingots, and pour the golden wave, 
 "the fountain of the worlde's good," into chalice and 
 urn. Next he enters a narrow passage guarded by a 
 giant, not made of flesh and bone, but " all of golden 
 mould," although he lives and moves and lifts his iron 
 club (stanza xl.) This winding way ends in a limit- 
 less temple supported by pillars innumerable of solid 
 gold— 
 
 And every pillour decked was full deare 
 With crownes and diadems and titles vaine 
 Which mortal princes wore whiles they on earth did rayne. 
 
 Plainly these princes were vassals of one suzerain — 
 the " prince of this world." That temple is thronged 
 not with men, but with nations ; and on a dais at the 
 upper end is enthroned a queen, whose countenance 
 casts the beam of its baleful beauty athwart the multi- 
 tudes that blindly press up towards her; — and yet 
 that beauty is but a counterfeit. In her right hand 
 she holds a golden chain, the upper part of which is 
 lost in heaven, while the lower descends to hell. 
 That chain is ambition, 
 
 And every linck thereof a step of dignity. 
 This queen is " Philotime," or Worldly Honour, the 
 daughter of Mammon. All round this subterraneous 
 palace lie the dusky gardens, the trees of which bend 
 low, but with the fruits of sadness, of madness, and of 
 death : and in the midst of this garden stands solitary 
 
42 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 the Tree of Death. It rises high above all the other 
 trees, and embraces the dolorous precinct with its 
 branches 
 
 Which overhanging, they themselves did steepe 
 In a blacke flood vi^hich flowed about it round ; 
 That is the river of Cocytus deepe 
 In which full many soules do endless wayle and weepe. 
 
 Among the denizens of that flood there is one whose 
 hands but blacken more the more he labours to wash 
 them clean. It is Pilate. Milton confessed that 
 " Spenser was his original " ; nor is it easy to see 
 how " the sublime " could be carried higher than it is 
 here carried by the "gentle bard." May not Shake- 
 speare have been indebted to him, when he conceived 
 his Lady Macbeth and her "Out, damned spot"? 
 
 The moment that Guyon breathes again the upper 
 air, his strength fails, and for days he lies in deadly 
 swoon. This is an instance of Spenser's suggestiveness. 
 It implies at once the " burthen " of that vision which 
 he had beheld, the divine support through which he 
 had sustained its weight, and the withdrawal of that 
 support when needed no longer. Spenser was one of 
 those who regarded the poet as a " Vates," or prophet; 
 and on this occasion no one could have said of the 
 prophet, "non obtinuit visionem a Domino." "The 
 Cave of Mammon " was a prophecy not inopportune. 
 The Renaissance, whatever its merits, was a time of 
 pride, wealth -worship, and imperial dreams. The 
 World had long shared the throne with ReHgion ; but 
 she was beginning to aspire after rule unparticipated. 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 43 
 
 Spain, then the first European Power, was planting 
 slavery in a new world, and burthening the seas with 
 fleets which brought her from the Indies that gold 
 destined not only to enfeeble but to impoverish her 
 by discountenancing honest industry. England had 
 substituted, for that mediaeval regimen in which Liberty 
 was maintained through the balanced powers of a king 
 "primus inter pares," of the nobility, of the Church, 
 and of the popular municipalities, a despotic monarchy 
 destined to vanish with the last Stuart. France was 
 on her way to an Absolutism, through which, she was 
 to pass to her Revolution. It was time that a warning 
 voice should be uttered by him who was certainly 
 " high priest for that year " in the realm of song ; but 
 that voice should have hymned a different "Gloriana." 
 The infinite variety of Spenser's genius is perhaps 
 most forcibly brought home to us when we compare a 
 canto in his sixth Book with " The Cave of Mammon " 
 and " The House of Holiness." It is as unlike each 
 of these as they are unlike each other; and it is 
 perhaps more representative of the poet's habitual 
 mind. It too has its mystical meaning. It is not 
 either the life unblest, or the saintly life, which is there 
 described ; it is the life of the Humanities, a picture 
 of humanity as it may be conceived of in some golden 
 age. I allude to the vision of Calidore on the summit 
 of Mount Acidale (Book VI. canto x.) The Knight 
 of Courtesy musing on his Pastorella, the original 
 perhaps of Shakespeare's Perdita, ascends from a river's 
 bank to the summit of a fair hill, and comes to an 
 
44 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 open space begirt by "trees of honour" which rise 
 
 higher than all trees besides, and "all winter as in 
 
 summer, bud." Within that precinct dance in radiant 
 
 circle a hundred nymphs, arrayed only in the light of 
 
 their own unblemished and unashamed beauty. In 
 
 the centre of the ring three of their number, and the 
 
 most beautiful, sing as well as dance round a maiden 
 
 of earth, who, as such, wears maiden attire, and who 
 
 is more beautiful even than those three. While the 
 
 others engird her, like Ariadne's tiar, and pelt her with 
 
 flowers, she alone stands in the midst unastonished, 
 
 and " crowned with a rosy girland." At last Calidore 
 
 ventures to approach from the skirt of the wood, and 
 
 the lovely pageant dissolves into air. There remains 
 
 but the shepherd, Colin Clout (the name by which 
 
 Spenser had designated himself in his early poems), 
 
 who sits on the hill still holding that pipe whose music 
 
 had evoked those nymphs, and to which they ever 
 
 danced. The human maiden is his " Elizabeth," that 
 
 maiden hard to be won, but who at last not only loved 
 
 the poet, but fostered his song, as we may infer from 
 
 the lines — 
 
 She to whom the shepherd pyped alone ; 
 That made him pype so merrily, as never none. 
 
 The shepherd explains the vision. That hilltop had 
 been preferred to her own Cytheron by Venus, in the 
 olden time when she was still pure as the sea-foam 
 whence she had sprung, and when between herself and 
 Dian there was friendship, not war; and there she 
 used to dance with the Graces. Venus loved that 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 45 
 
 spot no more ; but the three Graces and the hundred 
 
 lesser Graces native to that hill, still haunted it : the 
 
 shepherd's pipe had still power to draw them from 
 
 their ambush, and among them there was still that 
 
 one maiden of earth whom they had elected as their 
 
 sister, and on whom they showered their tribute. 
 
 These three on men all gracious gifts bestow 
 Which decke the body or adome the mynde, 
 To malie them lovely or well-favoured show ; 
 As comely carriage, entertainment kynde, 
 Sweet semblaunt, friendly offices that bynde, 
 And all the complements of curtesie, 
 That teach us how, to each degree and kynde 
 We should ourselves demeane, to low, to hie, 
 To friends, to foes ; which skill men call Civility. 
 
 Therefore they alwaies smoothly seem to smile, 
 That we likewise should mylde and gentle be ; 
 And also naked are, that without guile 
 Or false dissemblaunce all them plaine may see. 
 Simple and true from covert malice free. 
 
 Such was human life, as Spenser had dreamed it, 
 
 perhaps amid the groves of Penshurst, or on that walk 
 
 at Wilton, a region not less classic, on which Spenser's 
 
 early friend had paced with one like himself — "Sidney's 
 
 sister, Pembroke's mother." Such, too, is the one 
 
 glimpse we have of Spenser's life with his "beautifuUest 
 
 Bride," the best sung of women except Beatrice, though 
 
 but an Irish " country lasse of low degree " — 
 
 Ne, lesse in vertue that beseemes her well 
 Doth she exceed the rest of all her race ; 
 For which the Graces that here wont to dwell 
 Have for more honor brought her to this place. 
 And graced her so much to be another Grace. 
 
 This canto is the complement to Spenser's "Song 
 
46 CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY i 
 
 made in lieu of many ornaments," his far-famed 
 Epithalamion. I have heard Wordsworth remark, 
 more than once, that in its long and exquisitely 
 balanced stanzas there was a swanlike movement and 
 a subtle metrical sweetness, the secret of which he 
 could never wholly discover ; and the like of which 
 he found nowhere else except in Milton's Lycidas. 
 
 I am aware how inadequate these remarks are to 
 their great theme. I could not, without passing the 
 limits within which I must restrict myself, advert here 
 to several matters which properly belong to it, especially 
 the large and deep philosophy expressed in, or latent 
 under, Spenser's poetry. He was the philosophic 
 poet of his age, as Wordsworth is of ours ; and the 
 philosophy of those two great poets, though in no 
 sense at variance, was as different, the one from the 
 other, as the character of their genius. Spenser's 
 castle by the Mulla stood, and a fragment of it still 
 stands, about thirty miles to the south of the house in 
 which I write. That house, too, like Kilcolman, was 
 the house of a poet — one who from his boyhood had 
 loved Spenser well, and in whom a discerning critic 
 had noted a sympathetic spirit — the poet of Mary 
 Tudor. The eyes of both poets must have rested 
 often on the same exquisitely drawn mountain range, 
 that of the Galtees, though they saw it in a different 
 perspective. Mountains, while they separate neigh- 
 bours, create, notwithstanding a neighbourly tie between 
 those who dwell far apart ; and though the barriers of 
 
I CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY 47 
 
 time are more stubborn things than those of space, 
 when I look from our eastern windows at Galtymore, 
 I am sometimes reminded of the hues written by 
 Wordsworth at the grave of Burns, on whose verse 
 the later poet had fed in youth — 
 
 Huge Criffel's hoary top ascends 
 
 By Skiddaw seen, — 
 Neighbour's we were, and loving friends 
 
 We might have been. 
 
II 
 
 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 
 
 It often happens that some eminent characteristic of 
 a great poet has almost escaped observation owing to 
 the degree in which other characteristics, not higher 
 but more attractive to the many, have also belonged 
 to him. Spenser is an instance of this. If it were 
 asked what chiefly constitutes the merit of his poetry, 
 the answer would commonly be, its descriptive power, 
 or its chivalrous sentiment, or its exquisite sense of 
 beauty ; yet the quality which he himself desiderated 
 most for his chief work was one not often found in 
 union with these, viz. sound and true philosophic 
 thought. This characteristic is perhaps his highest. 
 It was the one which chiefly gained for him the praise 
 of Shakespeare — 
 
 Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such 
 As, passing all conceit, needs no defence ; 
 
 and it was doubtless the merit to which he owed the 
 influence which Milton acknowledged that Spenser's 
 poetry had exercised over his own. There is more of 
 
II SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 49 
 
 philosophy in one book of the Faery Queen than in 
 all the cantos of his Italian models. In Italy the 
 thinkers were generally astute politicians or recluse 
 theologians ; and her later poets, excepting of course 
 Tasso, cared more to amuse a brilliant court with song 
 and light tale than to follow the steps of Dante along 
 the summits of serious thought. England, on the other 
 hand, uniting both the practical and the meditative 
 mind with the imaginative instincts of southern 
 lands, had thereby strengthened that mind and those 
 instincts, and thus occupied a position neither above 
 nor beneath the region of thoughtful poetry. In the 
 latter part of the sixteenth and earlier part of the 
 seventeenth century, she possessed a considerable 
 number of poets who selected, apparently without 
 offence, very grave themes for their poetry. It will 
 suffice to name such writers as Samuel Daniel, John 
 Davies, George Herbert, Dr. Donne, Giles Fletcher, 
 Habington, and, not much later, Dr. Henry More, the 
 Platonist. 
 
 These poets, however, came later than Spenser, 
 and were not a little indebted to him, while yet they 
 were, in some respects, unlike him. Some of them 
 worked on themes so abstract and metaphysical as to 
 be almost beyond the limits of true poetic art. The 
 difficulty was itself an attraction to them, and their 
 ambition was more to instruct than to delight. Spen- 
 ser loved philosophy as well as they, but was too truly 
 a poet to allow of his following her when she strayed 
 into "a barren and dry land," or of his adopting the 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
50 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 didactic method when he illustrated philosophic 
 themes. Truth and beauty are things correlative; 
 and very profound truths can be elucidated in verse 
 without the aid of such technical reasoning processes 
 as those with which Dryden conducted his argument 
 in the " Hind and Panther," and Pope in his " Essays." 
 Spenser's imagination never forsook the region of the 
 sympathies ; but it had the special gift of drawing 
 within their charmed circle themes which for another 
 poet must have ever remained outside it, and of 
 suffusing them at once with the glow of passion and 
 with the white light of high intelligence. It is true 
 that he dealt much in allegory ; but though allegory 
 is commonly a cold thing — always, indeed, if it be 
 mere allegory — yet whenever Spenser's genius is true 
 to itself, his allegory catches fire and raises to the 
 heights of song themes which would otherwise have 
 descended to the level of ordinary prose. Had 
 Spenser's poetry not included this philosophic vein, it 
 would not have been in sympathy with a time which 
 produced a Bacon, whose prose is often the noblest 
 poetry, as well as a Sidney, whose life was a poem. 
 At the Merchant Taylors' Grammar School, Bishop 
 Andrews and, as is believed, Richard Hooker, were 
 among his companions ; and when he entered Cam- 
 bridge, Pembroke Hall was at least as much occupied 
 with theological and metaphysical discussion as with 
 classical literature. 
 
 We may go further. It was in a large measure the 
 strength of his human sympathies which at once 
 
n SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 51 
 
 forced Spenser to include philosophy among the 
 subjects of his poetry, and prevented that philosophy 
 from becoming unfit for poetry. As he was eminently 
 a poet of the humanities, so his philosophy was a 
 philosophy of the humanities ; he could no more have 
 taken up a physiological theme for a poem, like Phineas 
 Fletcher's " Purple Island," than a geographical one, 
 like Drayton's " Polyolbion." The philosophy which 
 interested him was that which " comes home to the 
 business and bosoms of men." It was philosophy 
 allied to life — philosophy moral, social, and political. 
 Such philosophy is latent in all great poetry, though 
 it is in some ages only that it becomes patent. 
 Let us turn first to his political and social phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 We know from Spenser's letter to Sir Walter Raleigh 
 that to embody a great scheme of philosophy was the 
 end which he proposed to himself in writing the Faery 
 Queen. That poem was to consist of twelve books ; 
 and the hero of each was to impersonate one of the 
 twelve moral virtues enumerated by Aristotle. This 
 poem he proposed to follow up by a second, the hero 
 of which was to have been King Arthur after he had 
 acceded to the throne, and which was to have illus- 
 trated the political virtues. We learn from Todd's 
 Life of Spenser that at a party of friends held near 
 Dublin, in the house of Ludowick Bryskett, the poet 
 gave the same account of his poem, then unpublished, 
 but of which a considerable part had been written. 
 Bryskett, on that occasion, spoke of him as "■ not only 
 
52 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 perfect in the Greek tongue, but also very well read 
 in philosophy, both moral and natural." 
 
 Unhappily, only half of the earlier romance was 
 written, or at least has reached us, and no part of the 
 second; but much which belongs to the subject of 
 the second poem may be found in fragments scattered 
 over the six books of the Faery Queen. One of 
 these political fragments vindicates the old claim of 
 poets to be prophets; for the great revolutionary 
 dogma expounded in it is one which, though its earlier 
 mutterings may have been heard at the time of the 
 German Anabaptists, did not " open its mouth " and 
 " speak great things " for two centuries after Spenser 
 had denounced the approaching imposture. That 
 imposture is the one, now but too well known, which, 
 in the name of justice, substitutes for it the fiction of 
 a universal equality in the interests of which all human 
 society hitherto known is to be levelled down and 
 remodelled. Artegal, Spenser's emblem of Justice, 
 rides forth on his mission accompanied by his squire 
 Talus, the iron man, with the iron flail. On the sea- 
 side they descry " many nations " gathered together — 
 
 There they beheld a mighty gyant stand 
 Upon a rocke, and holding forth on hie 
 An huge great paire of ballaunce in his hand, 
 With which he boasted in his surquedrie ^ 
 That all the world he would weigh equallie, 
 If aught he had the same to counterpoize ; 
 For want whereof he weighed vanity, 
 And filled his ballaunce full of idle toys ; 
 And was admired much of fools, women, and boys. 
 
n SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 53 
 
 He sayd that he would all the earth uptake 
 And all the sea, divided each from either ; 
 So would he of the fire one ballaunce make, 
 And of the ayre without or wind or weather : 
 Then would he ballaunce heaven and hell together. 
 And all that did within them all containe ; 
 Of all whose weight he would not misse a fether ; 
 And looke what surplus did of each remaine. 
 He would to his own part restore the same againe. 
 
 Therefore the \-ulgar did about him flocke, 
 And cluster thicke unto his leasings vaine, 
 Like foolish flies about a hony-crocke 
 In hope by him great benefit to gain.^ 
 
 The Knight of Justice here breaks in, and affirms that 
 
 the giant ought, before restoring everything to its 
 
 original condition, to ascertain exactly " What was the 
 
 poyse of every part of yore." The giant knows that 
 
 the best mode to meet an unanswerable reply is by 
 
 reiteration — 
 
 Therefore I will throw downe these mountains hie, 
 And make them levell with the lowly plaine. 
 These to^vring rocks which reach unto the skie, 
 I will thrust down into the deepest maine, 
 And as they were them equalize againe. 
 Tyrants, that make men subject to their law, 
 I will suppresse that they no more may raine. 
 And lordlings curbe that commons overaw, 
 And all the wealth of rich men to the poore will draw. 
 
 Artegal retorts that what the sea devours of the land 
 in one region it surrenders in another, and that if the 
 field did not augment its stores by drawing decayed 
 matter into its bosom, it could not send up the living 
 harvest the next year. In all this interchange Nature 
 but obeys the great Creator. 
 
 1 Faery Queen, Book V. canto ii. stanza 30. 
 
54 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 They live, they die, like as He doth ordaine, 
 Ne ever any asketh reason why ; 
 The hils doe not the lowly dales disdaine ; 
 The dales do not the lofty hils envy. 
 He maketh kings to sit in sovereinty ; 
 He maketh subjects to their powre obey ; 
 He puUeth downe ; He setteth up on hie ; 
 He gives to this ; from that He takes away : 
 For all we have is His : what He list doe He may. 
 
 He takes the giant at his word, and bids him test his 
 
 boasted power. 
 
 For take thy ballaunce, if thou be so wise, 
 And weigh the winde that under heaven doth blow ; 
 Or weigh the light that in the east doth rise ; 
 Or weigh the thought that from man's mind doth flow. 
 But if the weight of these thou canst not show. 
 Weight but one word which from thy lips doth fall ; 
 For how canst thou those greater secrets know. 
 That doest not know the least thing of them all ? 
 Ne can he rule the great that cannot reach the small. 
 
 We have all heard of the English socialist whose 
 triumphant appeal, " Tell me, is not one man as good 
 as another?" was unwittingly confuted by the answer 
 of his Irish boon-companion, "To be sure he is, and 
 better ! " So far as equality exists at all, it exists not 
 by nature, but through man's law, so bitterly inveighed 
 against by the advocates of equality ; for Nature, while 
 she is rich in compensations, makes no two things 
 equal. Notwithstanding, the giant accepts Artegal's 
 challenge. He places the True and the False in the 
 opposed scales of his balance, but can get no further — 
 For by no means the False will with the Truth be wayd. 
 
 He next puts Right and Wrong into his scales, but 
 fails once more — . 
 
n SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 55 
 
 Yet all the wrongs could not a litle right downe-way. 
 The prophet thus turning out an impostor, Talus 
 scales the rock, scourges him with his iron flail, flings 
 him into the sea, and disperses the multitude. 
 
 Spenser, however, does not take one-sided views of 
 things. He sees a connection between the madness 
 of revolutionary idealisms and that tyranny which 
 "maketh a wise man mad." Before we make ac- 
 quaintance with the giant Equality, we are brought to 
 the castle of a bandit chief, PoUente, who has grown 
 to wealth through extortion. 
 
 And daily he his wrongs encreaseth more ; 
 For never wight he lets to pass that way, 
 Over his bridge, albee he rich or poore, 
 But he him makes his passage-penny pay ; 
 Else he doth hold him backe, or beat away. 
 Thereto he hath a groome of evill guize, 
 Whose scalp is bare, that bondage doth bewray, 
 Which pols and pils the poore in piteous wize, 
 But he himself upon the rich doth tyrannize. ^ 
 
 Pollente has a daughter, Munera ; to her he brings 
 his ill-gotten spoils, and with them she has purchased 
 all the country round. Eventually Artegal slays the 
 giant, and Talus, rejecting the bribes of Munera, drags 
 her from under a heap of gold, her hiding-place, cuts 
 off her hands, which are made of gold, and her feet, 
 which are silver, and casts her into the flood. 
 
 Another ethical craze of our later time seems to 
 have been anticipated by Spenser — that which claims 
 for women all the civil and political privileges and 
 functions which belong to men, and denounces, as the 
 
 ^ Book V. canto ii. stanza 6. 
 
56 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 "subjection of woman," even that domestic obedience 
 of the wife to the husband which is the noblest 
 example of willing submission. That a wife's obedi- 
 ence is based neither on servile fear nor abject self- 
 interest, but on that principle of love which is the 
 characteristic crown of womanhood, is witnessed to in 
 the expression, " Thy desire shall be to thy husband, 
 and he shall have the rule over thee." The root of 
 that claim to domestic equality which would revolu- 
 tionise the whole domestic life is patent. Those who 
 sustain it assume that obedience is, even when 
 necessary, still essentially a degradation. This is a 
 "vulgar error." Obedience to a spurious authority, 
 and obedience extorted by mere force, in each of these 
 there exists degradation ; but where the obedience is 
 paid willingly, and paid where it is due, there obedi- 
 ence and authority are but two converse forms of 
 excellence, mutually supplemental. This principle of 
 correlative though contrasted forms of excellence was 
 appreciated by the ages of chivalry ; children knelt to 
 their parents, and the " faithful servant," who inscribed 
 that name alone on the title-page of his story of the 
 " knight without fear and without reproach," regarded 
 the title "servant" as an honourable one, not less 
 than the title master. 
 
 The " Amazon Republic " was a Greek conception, 
 and evinced that clearness which belonged to the 
 Greek intelligence alike in its serious and in its 
 sportive moods. The Greek insight perceived at 
 once that, while the equahty of the sexes may sub- 
 
11 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 57 
 
 stantiall)' exist in the way of compensatory advantages 
 and disadvantages, it could not exist in the material 
 form of identical rights and functions. In that form, 
 \voman must have either less than equality, or more. 
 The lady who remarked, " I do not want women to 
 take their stand with men on the great stage of life, 
 because unless we sat behind the scenes we could not 
 pull the wires," understood that women possess at 
 present a very real power of their own; and the 
 Athenians said of old, that if Pericles governed Athens, 
 so did his wife, since she governed him, and so did 
 their child, since he governed her. Here is the in- 
 direct equality produced by compensation. It is in 
 its complete Amazonian, not its incomplete, form that 
 Spenser deals with this quaint moral problem ; and 
 there is a deep sagacity in his mode of solving it. 
 The Knight of Justice hears that a certain Amazon 
 Queen, Radigund, by way of righting the -oTongs of 
 her sex, has established herself in a castle, and that 
 she defies all knights to combat, first binding them 
 to submit to her terms. The Amazon is not actuated 
 by zeal for her sex ; next to the inspiration of pride 
 comes that of spite; and an idle fancy has been 
 followed up by an envenomed grudge. Neither is 
 Artegal's resolve to do battle with the Amazon 
 grounded merely on his sympathy with the knights 
 thus degraded — 
 
 " Now sure," said he, " and by the faith that I 
 To maidenhead and noble knighthood owe, 
 I mil not rest till I her might do try ! " 
 
58 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 Her masculine claims he regards as an insult to all 
 that is best in maidenhood and womanhood — a virtual 
 denial alike of their true powers and dignities. 
 
 Artegal is victorious at first, and his enemy falls ; 
 admiring and compassionating, the knight throws 
 away his sword ; the Amazon revives and resumes the 
 fight ; he can only step backwards, protecting himself 
 with his shield ; she redoubles her blows ; and he, by 
 the terms of their battle, becomes her slave. , But the 
 battle has not really been fought with equal weapons ; 
 and it is owing to her beauty and his weakness that 
 he sits ere long ranged with her other vassals, distaff 
 in hand, and in woman's garb. 
 
 The conqueror is punished for her pride. She 
 loses her heart to her captive in spite of her self-scorn, 
 and she fails in her attempt to win his love. Her 
 charm is for him gone. She has lost the power of 
 woman by claiming that which belongs to man ; she 
 has snatched at the shadow, and dropped the substance. 
 It is woman that avenges the wrong done to woman- 
 hood. Britomart hears that her lover is in distress, 
 and flies to his aid, though she believes that he had 
 forgotten her. The virgin warrioress assails the castle 
 of the Amazon, vanquishes her in single fight, and 
 liberates the captives. Britomart is the loftiest of 
 Spenser's heroines. Another poet would have made 
 her turn in scorn from Artegal when she saw him 
 among the knights plying the distaff. She does not 
 do this. She is not woman unsexed, but woman 
 raised above woman, and therefore woman still. The 
 
n SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 59 
 
 sacred obedience of love binds her to the better part. 
 When she first saw him amid the servile crew, 
 
 She turned her head aside as nothing glad. 
 But she looks on him again, and sees, not what is 
 before her, but what she remembers. She makes him 
 lord of the conquered city; and to it she restores 
 peace and gladness. 
 
 Let us turn next to Spenser's philosophy considered 
 with reference to the joys and duties of life, personal 
 and domestic. That philosophy was a comprehen- 
 sive one, and regarded human life in at least three 
 aspects. The first is the ordinary life of men lived 
 wisely; the second is the life spiritual founded on 
 faith in worlds unseen ; the third is life lived unwisely, 
 and dominated either by sensual passion or by pride.. 
 
 To begin with his philosophy of ordinary life when 
 wisely led. It is set forth chiefly in the Second Book, 
 or the Legend of Temperance. The first canto tells 
 us of the husband under a witch's spell, of the self- 
 slain wife, and the deserted babe — all three the 
 victims of lawless passion in the form of corrupt 
 pleasure. In the second canto the destructive passion 
 is anger : two knights strive in fratricidal fury aggra- 
 vated by the arts of their two lady-loves. These 
 sirens allegorise the "Two Extremes," and are con- 
 trasted with a third sister, Medina, or the "Golden 
 Mean," who endeavours to bring the warring knights 
 to concord. It is not from war that she dissuades 
 them, but from unworthy war. According to Spenser's 
 philosophy, man's condition is by necessity " militant 
 
6o SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 here on earth " ; but the wars, like the loves of men, 
 should have in them little in common with those of 
 the inferior kinds. It was thus that Sidney wrote of 
 "that sweet enemy, France." Rancour in the form 
 of slander and detraction is here yet more severely 
 judged than the most relentless war. It is the first 
 offence punished in the temple of justice. 
 
 The secret of human happiness, according to 
 Spenser, is self-control, especially in the use of lawful 
 things. It is that dignity in which man was created, 
 and that belongs not to his spirit alone, but to its 
 earthly tabernacle also, which, far more than any 
 servile fear, binds him over to resist whatever that 
 dignity condemns. The mandates of conscience 
 constitute the true glory and beauty of the world we 
 inhabit. They are " exceedingly broad "; and only in 
 proportion as he rejoices in them while he obeys them, 
 does man possess the " freedom of the city " in which 
 he dwells. Lives ruled by these radiant and benignant 
 laws advance through boundless spaces in security as 
 well as swiftness, like the planets which move with- 
 out collision through the heavenly regions because 
 they are faithful to their prescribed orbits; while 
 lawless lives break themselves against unseen obstacles, 
 and fall helpless. This is the doctrine illustrated by 
 the ninth canto of the second legend which describes 
 the House of Temperance. When Guyon and Prince 
 Arthur reach its gates, they find them barred against 
 the attacks of a barbarous foe. Here we have one of 
 Spenser's Irish experiences — 
 
n SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 6i 
 
 As when a swamie of gnats at eventide 
 Out of the fennes of Allan doe arise, 
 Their murmuring small trompetts sownden wide, 
 ^"^"hiles in the aire their clustring army flies, 
 That as a cloud doth seeme to dim the skies, 
 Xe man, nor beast maj- rest or take repast 
 For their sharp wounds and noyous iniuries, 
 Till the fierce northern wind with blustring blast 
 Doth blow them quite away, and in the ocean cast.^ 
 
 The foes at last dispersed — the emblems of the 
 passions that besiege the soul — the gates of the castle 
 are thro^vn open, and admittance is given to the 
 knights by the princess who keeps state within. 
 
 Alma she called was, a \-irgin bright, 
 That had not yet felt Cupides wanton rage ; 
 Yet was she woo'd of many a gentle knight, 
 And many a lord of noble parentage, 
 That sought \\"ith her to lincke in marriage ; 
 For shee was faire, as faire mote ever bee, 
 And in the fio\^"Te now of her freshest age ; 
 Yet full of grace and goodly modestee, 
 That even heven rejoiced her sweete face to see. 
 
 In robe of lilly white she was arayd. 
 That from her shoulder to her heele downe raught, 
 The traine whereof loose far behind her strayd. 
 Branched \\'ith gold and perle, most richl}- \^TOught, 
 And bome of two fair damsels which were taught 
 That service well ; her yellow golden heare 
 ^Yas trimly woven and in tresses \STOught ; 
 No other tire she on head did weere. 
 But crowned with a garland of sweet rosiere. - 
 
 Alma entertains her deliverers " with gentle court and 
 gracious delight,'' and, after they have rested, leads 
 them all round her castle walls. Next she shows 
 
 1 Book II. canto ix. stanza i6. 
 - Book II. canto ix. stanzas iS, 19. 
 
62 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 them the stately hall set with " tables faire," where all 
 is bounty without excess, and the "goodly parlour" 
 in which sit many beautiful ladies and knights who 
 "them did in modest sort amate," and where even 
 the son of Venus behaves with an approach to dis- 
 cretion — 
 
 And eke amongst them little Cupid playd 
 His wanton sportes, being retourned late 
 From his fierce warres, and having from him layd 
 His cruel bow, wherewith he thousands hath dismayd. " 
 
 Not all of Alma's pupils are yet perfect in her lore. One 
 of these is called "Praise-desire"; she sits "in a long 
 purple pall " with a branch of tremulous poplar in her 
 hand, and to Prince Arthur's demand as to the cause 
 of her sadness she replies that it has come to her from 
 "her great desire of glory and of fame." Another 
 maiden has an opposite fault — an undue fear of human 
 dispraise. 
 
 The princess leads the warriors next to a tower 
 which commands a view of far realms. Therein three 
 stately chambers rise one above another, each the cell 
 of a sage. These three sages are emblems of the 
 Future, the Present, and the Past. The walls of one 
 chamber are painted with "infinite shapes of things 
 dispersed there," shadows that flit through idle fantasy 
 to charm or to scare it ; devices, visions, wild opinions, 
 and soothsayings. Here abides the sad prophet 
 whose kingdom is the Future — a sick imagination. 
 
 Amongst them all he sate which wonned there, 
 That hight Phantastes by his nature true ; 
 
n SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 63 
 
 A man of yeares, yet fresh as mote appere, 
 Of swarth complexion, and of crabbed hew, 
 That him full of melancholy did shew ; 
 Bent hollow beetle brows, sharp, staring eyes, 
 That mad or foolish seemed ; one by his vew 
 Might deeme him borne with ill-disposed skies, 
 When oblique Saturne sate in th' House of Agonies. 
 
 The second chamber is painted over with the types 
 
 of all that imparts dignity to state — magistracies, the 
 
 tribunals of justice, the triumphs of sciences and arts. 
 
 This is the kingdom of the Present; and the sage 
 
 who sits in it, a strong man of "ripe and perfect age," 
 
 though his wisdom has all come "through continual 
 
 practise and usage," represents practical judgment, 
 
 and has for his kingdom the Present. The third sage 
 
 symbolises memory, and the Past is his domain. 
 
 These three sages are, we are told, severally imper- 
 fect, because they dwell apart, each in a world of his 
 own. Each makes too much of what occupies his 
 special field of vision. The fault is that of dispro- 
 portion, one closely allied to defective self-control. 
 Neither imagination, judgment, nor memory, is fit 
 to rule. These are but Alma's counsellors, each 
 ministering a knowledge which becomes wisdom 
 only when blent with the knowledge of the other 
 two. 
 
 Next to a temperate will, the secret of a happy life, 
 according to Spenser's philosophy, is a contented 
 temper and that humiUty from which content springs. 
 Such is the lesson taught to Calidore, the Knight of 
 Courtesey, by the old shepherd Melibee. Happiness, 
 he maintains, is from within, not from without— 
 
64 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 It is the mind that maketh good or ill, 
 
 That maketh wretch or happie, rich or poore ; 
 
 and for this reason he affirms, that those who earn 
 their "daily bread" are the most fortunate. That 
 the lowly condition, when at its best, does not exclude 
 genuine refinement, is a lesson which Calidore learns 
 from Pastorell, the supposed daughter of old Melibee, 
 though in reality a maiden of high degree. 
 
 The quotations made above express Spenser's 
 estimate of human life when, with its twofold capacities, 
 it has neither risen above ordinary humanity nor fallen 
 below it. It is an estimate in some degree founded 
 on the ancient philosophy, with its "mens sana in 
 corpore sano," and yet more on that spiritual teaching 
 which regards man's estate as at once peaceful within 
 and militant without : peaceful, because protected 
 from the storms of passion and lawless ambition; 
 militant, because a ceaseless war with evil is an 
 essential part of our earthly probation. With those 
 two conditions of human wellbeing Spenser blended 
 another, viz. the constant presence of that high beauty 
 which haunted him wherever he went, alike amid the 
 splendour of courts and in lonely vales, and which he 
 regarded as one of God's chief gifts to man. The 
 spirit of beauty is ever accompanied in Spenser's 
 poetry with the kindred spirits of gladness and of love 
 — a gladness which has nothing in common with mere 
 pleasure, and a love which rises far above its counter- 
 feits. AVith him man's nobler affections are not mere 
 genial impulses ; they are themselves virtues girdling 
 
n SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 65 
 
 in an outer circle those Christian virtues that stand 
 around humanity, as, in CaHdore's vision, the mountain 
 nymphs encompassed those Three Graces who minis- 
 tered to the rose-crowned maiden. The mode in 
 which Spenser associated the virtues as well as the 
 graces with his special idea of womanhood — an idea 
 very remote from that common in our days — is no- 
 where more beautifully illustrated than in Book IV. 
 canto X., where Scudamour describes the temple of 
 Venus and the recovery of his lost Amoret. 
 
 Into the inmost temple thus I came, 
 Which fuming all with frankinsence I found. 
 And odours rising from the altars flame ; 
 Upon a hundred marble pillars round 
 The roof up high was reered from the ground, 
 All deck'd with crownes and chaynes and girlonds gay, 
 And thousand precious gifts worth many a pound. 
 The which sad lovers for their vows did pay ; 
 And all the ground was strewd with flowers as fresh as May. 
 
 In the midst stands on the chief altar the statue of 
 
 the goddess to whom they sing a hymn. Round the 
 
 steps of the altar sit many fair forms — 
 
 The first of them did seeme of riper yeares 
 And graver countenance than all the rest ; 
 Yet all the rest were eke her equall peares. 
 And unto her obayed all the best. 
 Her name was Womanhood ; that she exprest 
 By her sad semblant, and demeanure wyse ; 
 For stedfast still her eyes did fixed rest, 
 Ne roved at random after gazers guyse, 
 Whose luring baytes oftimes doe heedless harts entyse. 
 
 And next to her sate goodly Shamefastness, 
 Ne ever durst her eyes from ground upreare, 
 Ne ever once did looke from her dais, 
 As if some blame of evil she did feare, 
 VOL. I F 
 
66 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 That in her cheek made roses oft appeare ; 
 And her against sweet Cherefulnesse was placed, 
 WTiose eyes, like twinkling stars in evening cleare, 
 Were deckt with smyles that all sad humours chased, 
 And darted forth delights, the which her goodly graced. 
 
 And next to her sate sober Modestie, 
 Holding her hand upon her gentle hart ; 
 And her against sate comely Curtesie, 
 That unto every person knew her part ; 
 And her before was seated overthwart 
 Soft Silence, and submisse Obedience, - ~ 
 Both linckt together never to dispart ; 
 Both gifts of God not gotten but from thence. 
 Both girlonds of his saints against their foes offence. 
 
 Thus sate they all around in seemly rate ; 
 And in the midst of them a goodly mayd, 
 Even in the lap of ^Yomanhood there sate. 
 The which was all in lilly white arrayd. 
 With silver streames amongst the linnen strey'd ; 
 Like to the Mome when first her shining face 
 Hath to the gloomy world itself bewray'd. 
 That same was fairest Amoret in place, 
 Shyning with beauties light, and heavenly vertues gaace.^ 
 
 Scudamour stands in doubt — 
 
 For sacrilege me seemed the church to rob. 
 
 Observing, however, a smile on the countenance of 
 the goddess, he persists — 
 
 She often prayd, and often me besought 
 Sometimes with tender tears to let her goe, 
 Sometimes with witching smyles ; but yet for nought 
 That ever she to me could say or doe 
 Could she her wished freedom fro me move, 
 But forth I led her through the temple gate. 
 
 It is easy to trace the same benignant philosophy 
 in all these descriptions. The wisely led life is a life 
 
 ^ Book IV. canto x. stanza 52. 
 
n SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 67 
 
 of truth, of simplicity, of justice, of human sympathy 
 
 and mutual kindness, of reverence for humanity in all 
 
 its relations, and of reverence for God. The unwise 
 
 life is the opposite of these things. 
 
 But the ordinary human life, even when wisely led, 
 
 constitutes in part only Spenser's ideal of human life. 
 
 It includes an extraordinary' portion, a mountain land 
 
 ascending high above the limit of perpetual snow. 
 
 This is the Ufe which seriously aims at perfection, the 
 
 hfe lived "from above," and of which faith and truth 
 
 are not the regulative only, but the constitutive 
 
 principles. It is set forth in the first Book and tenth 
 
 canto of the Faery Qiicen. Una has discovered 
 
 that the Red -Cross Knight, though zealous for the 
 
 good, is as yet but scantly qualified by knowledge or 
 
 strength for that enterprise on which he was missioned 
 
 from the Faery Court That he may learn goodly 
 
 lore and goodly discipline, she brings him to '' The 
 
 House of Holiness." It is presided over by one 
 
 who represents heavenly wisdom. 
 
 Dame Ccelia men did her call, as thought 
 From heaven to come, or thither to arise ; 
 The mother of three daughters, well up-brought 
 In goodly thews and godly exercise ; 
 The eldest two most sober, chast, and wise, 
 Fidelia and Speranza, virgins were, 
 Though spoused, yet wanting wedlock's solemnize ; 
 But faire Clarissa to a lovely fere 
 ^Yas linked, and by him had many pledges dere.^ 
 
 At the gateway sits a porter. '•'Humilta."' Entering, 
 Una and her knight find themselves in a spacious 
 
 1 Book I. canto x. stanza 4. 
 
68 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 palace court, whence "a francklin faire and free," by 
 name Zeal, ushers them to a stately hall. There they 
 are welcomed by "a gentle squire, hight Reverence." 
 We are next introduced to Coelia's daughters, Faith 
 and Hope. Spenser describes them as Raphael 
 would have done, had he painted in words — 
 
 Thus as they gan of sondrie thinges devise, 
 Loe, two most goodly virgins came in place, 
 Ylinked arme in arme in lovely wise ; 
 With countenance demure, and modest grace, 
 They numbred even steps and equall pace ; 
 Of which the eldest, that Fidelia hight, 
 Like sunny beams threw from her christall face 
 That could have dazed the rash beholder's sight, 
 And round about her head did shine like heaven's light. 
 
 She was arayed all in lilly white. 
 And in her right hand bore a cup of gold, 
 With wine and water fild up to the hight, 
 In which a serpent did himselfe enfold. 
 That horrour made to all that did behold ; 
 But she no whitt did change her constant mood : 
 And in her other hand she fast did hold 
 A booke, that was both signd and seald vdth blood ; 
 Wherein darke things were writt, hard to be understood. 
 
 Her younger sister, that Speranza hight, 
 Was clad in blew that her beseemed well ; 
 Not all so chearful seemed she of sight. 
 As was her sister ; whether dread did dwell 
 Or anguish in her hart, is herd to tell : 
 Upon her arme a silver anchor lay. 
 Whereon she leaned ever as befell ; 
 And ever up to heven, as she did pray, 
 Her stedfast eyes were bent, ne swerved other way.^ 
 
 A groom. Obedience, leads the youthful knight to the 
 guest-house j and the next day Fidelia begins to 
 
 ^ Book I. canto x. stanza 12. 
 
11 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 69 
 
 instruct him in her sacred book "with blood 
 ywritt " — 
 
 For she was able with her wordes to kill, 
 And raize againe to life the hart that she did thrill. 
 
 And when she list poure out her larger spright 
 
 She would command the hasty sun to stay, 
 
 Or backward turne his course from heven's hight. 
 
 The knight waxes daily as in knowledge so pro- 
 portionately in repentance ; but Speranza teaches him 
 to take hold of her silver anchor; and Patience, a 
 kindly physician, pours balms into the wounds inflicted 
 on him by Penance. He is next consigned to a holy 
 matron, Mercy, that he may have a share in all her 
 holy works. Mercy leads him into her great hospital — 
 
 In which seven bead-men that had vowed all 
 Their life to service of high heaven's king 
 
 initiate him, each into the duties which belong to his 
 several function, the office of the first being to provide 
 a home for the homeless, of the second to feed the 
 hungry, of the third to provide raiment for "the 
 images of God in earthly clay," of the fourth to 
 release captives, of the fifth to tend the sick, of the 
 sixth to inter the dead, of the seventh to take charge 
 of the widow and the orphan. With all these sacred 
 ministrations the knight is successively made ac- 
 quainted, and thus fitted for a glimpse into the more 
 exalted region of contemplation and the interior life. 
 
 Thence forward by that painful way they pass 
 Forth to a. hill that was both steepe and hy, 
 On top whereof a sacred chapel was, 
 And eke a little hermitage thereby, 
 
70 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 Wherein an aged holy man did lie, 
 That day and night said his devotion, 
 Ne other worldly business did apply ; 
 His name was hevenly Contemplation ; 
 Of God and goodnes was his meditation. 
 
 Great grace that old man to him given had ; 
 For God he often saw from heven's hight ; 
 All were his earthly eyen both blunt and bad, 
 And through great age had lost their kindly sight, 
 Yet wondrous quick and persaunt was his spright. 
 As eagle's eye that can behold the sunne.^ 
 
 Hearing that the youth has been sent to him by Fidelia 
 
 to learn "what every living wight should make his 
 
 marke," the aged man shows him the Celestial City 
 
 descending from heaven. 
 
 As he thereon stood gazing, he might see 
 The blessed angels to and fro descend 
 From highest heaven in gladsome companee, 
 And with great joy into that citty wend, 
 As commonly as friend does with his friend. ^ 
 
 The knight exclaims in ecstasy, " What need of arms 
 since peace doth ay remain ?" He is answered that 
 his task must be accomplished before he is fit to enter 
 into his rest ; but that notwithstanding, whilst labour- 
 ing on earth, he is to be a citizen of the Heavenly 
 City as well as of God's city on earth. 
 
 Such is that supernatural life, at once active and 
 contemplative, which, according to Spenser's philo- 
 sophy, admits of being realised even upon earth by 
 its choicer spirits. Between the two lives there is 
 much in common as well as much diversity. In each 
 life man's course is a warfare : in the ordinary life 
 
 ■'- Book I. canto x. stanza 47, 
 ^ Book I. canto x. stanza 56. . 
 
11 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 71 
 
 man has to fight against his own passions, and against 
 all who would injure his fellow-man ; in the extraor- 
 dinary life the combat is chiefly one for the establish- 
 ment of a divine kingdom. In each the joy of life 
 comes largely from beauty and from love ; but in the 
 sublimer life both of these are spiritual things. In 
 both lives fame is won, but only in the higher is it 
 the direct voice of God. In both there is suffering, 
 but in the higher pain works a loftier purification. 
 Both lives have for their patrons Fidelia, - Speranza, 
 and Charissa, with whom are conjoined that other 
 triad, Humility, Patience, and Purity; but those twelve 
 virtues known of old are also ministering spirits to 
 both lives, and belong to a cognate race; while. that 
 great mother- Virtue, Reverence, the mystic Cybele of 
 the House of Virtues, is the connecting link between 
 the two classes of virtues. The higher life is as 
 superior to the lower as the statue is to the pedestal ; 
 but that pedestal is yet hewn out of the same Parian 
 marble. The ordinary human life, when wisely led, 
 is thus the memorial of a more heroic life, once man's 
 portion, and destined to be his again, and not the 
 mere culmination of the life which belongs to the 
 inferior kinds, as Epicurus esteemed it. Considered 
 as a brief compendium of Christian teaching, at once 
 doctrinal, practical, and contemplative, it would be 
 difficult to excel this canto of the Faery Queen. 
 
 The sage tells the Red-Cross Knight that, though 
 he knows it not, he is himself sprung from the race of 
 England's ancient kings — - 
 
72 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET li 
 
 From thence a faery thee unweeting reft, 
 There as thou slep'st in tender swadling band, 
 And her base elfin brood there for thee left : 
 Such men do chaungelings call, so chaunged by faeries' theft. 
 
 According to Spenser's estimate, humanity itself is 
 such a changeling, and perpetually betrays its lofty 
 origin. Spenser's philosophy, both of the humbler 
 and the more exalted human life, will be best under- 
 stood when contrasted with the two chief forms of life 
 depraved, as illustrated by him. A large part, perhaps 
 too large a part, of his poem is given to this subject ; 
 but it will suffice here briefly to sketch his general 
 scheme of thought. Moral evil he contemplates in 
 two aspects, that of the body insurgent against the 
 soul, and that of the soul insurgent against its Maker, 
 or passion on the one side and pride on the other. 
 The former vice is rebuked chiefly in Book II., the 
 Legend of Temperance, and the latter in the Legend 
 of Holiness, or Book I. In the Legend of Temper- 
 ance passion is exhibited in its two predominant forms 
 of sensuality and ambition. The perils and degrada- 
 tions of an animalised life are shown under the 
 allegory of Sir Guyon's sea voyage with its successive 
 storms and whirlpools, its " rock of Reproach " strewn 
 with wrecks and dead men's bones, its "wandering 
 islands," its "quicksands of Unthriftihead," its 
 " whirlepoole of Decay," its sea monsters, and lastly, 
 its " bower of Bliss," and the • doom which overtakes 
 it, together with the deliverance of Acrasia's victims, 
 transformed by that witch's spells into beasts. Still 
 more powerful is the allegory of worldly ambition, 
 
II SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 73 
 
 illustrated under the name of " the cave of Mammon." 
 The Legend of Holiness delineates with not less 
 insight those enemies which wage war upon the 
 spiritual life. >As the aims of that life are the highest 
 man proposes to himself, so its foes are the most 
 insidious. Una, the heroine of this legend, means 
 Truth; and the first enemy with whom her knight 
 has to contend is Error, a serpent woman, with her 
 monstrous brood. A craftier foe assails him soon, the 
 magician Archimago or Hypocrisy. Separated by 
 him from Truth, the knight becomes subjected to 
 Falsehood and Delusion, emblemed in Duessa, by 
 whom he is lured to the House of Pride, the great 
 metropolis of Sin in its most exasperated form, that of 
 a spiritual revolt. He next becomes the thrall of 
 Orgogho, the giant son of Earth, or Pride in its 
 vulgarer form of vain-glorious and animal strength. 
 
 In the latter legend the vices which make up the 
 life of Pride, in the former those which make up the 
 life of Lawless Sense, are illustrated with a keen insight 
 and deep moral logic. In those two forms of evil life 
 the three pagan champions, Sans-foy, Sans-loy, and 
 Sans-joy, have a part corresponding with that which 
 the Christian virtues, Fidelia, Speranza, and Charissa, 
 sustain in the spiritual life. A certain symmetry, 
 perhaps undesigned, always makes its way into 
 Spenser's poetry. The philosophic Poet's mind is, 
 indeed, by nothing more marked than by^ this unin- 
 tended and often unconscious congruity in its concep- 
 tions, and the entire coherency of part with part in its 
 
74 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 descriptions. Thence proceeds the harmony con- 
 stantly found in Spenser's poetry, as long as he resists 
 his unhappy tendency to allude covertly to the persons 
 and events of his day, and deals in simplicity with the 
 great ethical theme with which his genius had deliber- 
 ately measured itself. Such harmony is the most 
 conclusive proof that a poet does not write at random, 
 but has both "a vision of his own," and a vocation to 
 set it forth. 
 
 We have hitherto confined our attention to Spenser's 
 philosophy of human life, first in its social and political 
 relations, and secondly in. those of a domestic or 
 individual character. Occasionally, however, his philo- 
 sophy makes excursions into regions more remote, 
 and deals with subjects more recondite than these his 
 favourite themes. To do justice to his genius we 
 must note the two most remarkable of these excursions. 
 Ten years after Spenser's death the first six books of 
 the Faery Qiceen were republished with a fragment 
 of the lost second part, consisting of " two cantos of 
 Mutabilitie." In this fragment there is a simple 
 largeness of conception, and a stern grandeur of 
 expression, which suggests the thought that the later 
 half of his work would probably have surpassed the 
 earlier in mature greatness. It belongs essentially to 
 Spenser's philosophic vein, and embodies a train of 
 dark and minatory thoughts, though they issue gradu- 
 ally into light, on the instability of all things human — 
 thoughts such as might naturally have presented 
 themselves to a philosopher in an age when much 
 
II SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 75 
 
 which had lasted a thousand years was passing away. 
 In the remotest parts of Europe omens of change 
 were heard, hke those vague murmurs in the polar 
 regions which announce the breaking up of the ice ; 
 and in Ireland unfriendly echoes of those voices 
 muttered near and nearer around that ruined mansion, 
 one of old Desmond's hundred castles, within whose 
 halls some strange fortune had harboured the gendest 
 of England's singers. The "temple-haunting" bird 
 had indeed selected a " coigne of vantage," and hung 
 there his "pendent bed and procreant cradle"; but 
 he had been no "guest of summer," nor at any time 
 had "heaven's breath smelt wooingly by his loved 
 mansionry." It was from a securer abode, in the 
 heart of the Rydalian laurels, that musings as solemn, 
 though less sad, drew forth the dirge of the modern 
 poet as he looked upon England's ruined abbeys — 
 
 From low to high doth dissolution climb, 
 And sinks from high to low, along a scale 
 Of awful notes whose concord shall not fail.^ 
 
 The poet of Faery Land sees a prophet's vision 
 ascending out of the cloud that rests on the pagan 
 days. A Portent, not a god, but more powerful than 
 the gods, and boasting a lineage more ancient, a child 
 of Titan race, one more warlike than Bellona and 
 more terrible than Hecate, both of them her sisters, 
 claims a throne higher than that of those later Olym- 
 pians who had cast down an earlier hierarchy of gods. 
 Her name is Mutability. She had witnessed their 
 
 1 Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sketches, Part III. 
 
76 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 victory ; she had given it to them ; why should they 
 
 not acknowledge her as their suzeraine? On earth 
 
 she had established her reign in completeness, and 
 
 not over men alone. The seas had left dry their beds 
 
 at her command, continents had sunk beneath the 
 
 waves, mountains had fleeted like clouds, rivers had 
 
 filled their mouths with desert sands, kingdoms had 
 
 risen and fallen, and the languages which recorded 
 
 their triumphs had died — 
 
 That all which Nature had establisht first 
 In good estate, and in meet order ranged, 
 She did pervert, and all their statutes burst. 
 
 Nor she the laws of Nature onely brake, 
 But eke of justice and of policie. 
 And wrong of right, and bad of good did make, 
 And death for life. 
 
 It remains for her but to reign in heaven as on earth 
 — not in the majesty of a divine law, but in lawlessness 
 become omnipotent. This Portent scales the heavens, 
 making way at once to the most changeful of its lumin- 
 aries, Cynthia's sphere. 
 
 Her sitting on an ivory throne she found. 
 Drawn of two steeds, th' one black, the other white, 
 Environed with tenne thousand starres around, 
 That duly her attended day and night ; 
 And by her side there ran her page, that hight 
 Vesper, whom we the evening starre intend ; 
 That with his torche, still twinkling like twyhght, 
 Her lightened all the way where she would wend. 
 And joy to weary wandring travailers did lend. 
 
 Boldly she bid the goddesse down descend, 
 And let herself into that ivory throne ; 
 For she herself more worthy thereof weend. 
 And better able it to guide alone ; 
 
11 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 77 
 
 Whether to men, whose fall she did bemone, 
 Or unto gods, whose state she did maligne, 
 Or to the infernal powers. ^ 
 
 Cynthia scorns the intruder, and "bending her hornbd 
 brows did put her back." 
 
 The Titaness raises her hand to drag the radiant and 
 inviolate divinity from her seat. The result is narrated 
 in a passage of marvellous sublimity. Dimness falls 
 at once on that glittering throne and the " fire-breath- 
 ing stars " that surround it ; and, at the same moment, 
 the eclipse reaches the earth, perplexing its inhabitants 
 with fear of change, and ascends not less to the seat 
 of the gods. They rush simultaneously to the palace 
 of Jove, 
 
 Fearing least Chaos broken had his chaine. 
 The Father of the Gods reminds them that long since 
 the giant-brood of earth had piled mountain upon 
 mountain in vain hope to storm "heaven's eternal 
 towers," and tells them that this anarch is but the last 
 offspring of that evil blood. While the gods are still 
 in council, the strange Visitant is in among them. For 
 a moment she is awed by that great presence; the 
 next, she advances her claim, Jove had dethroned 
 his father, Saturn ; her own father. Titan, was Saturn's 
 elder brother. On earth she has hitherto abode an 
 exile, yet there she has conquered all things to herself 
 She demands at last her birthright — the throne of 
 heaven. An inferior poet would have made this 
 portent hideous as well as terrible. Spenser knew 
 better. He knew that revolution and destruction 
 
 1 Two cantos of Mutability, canto vi. stanzas 5, 6, and 9. 
 
78 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET il 
 
 wear often on their countenances a baleful loveliness 
 
 of their own, for which many a victim, disinterested 
 
 in madness, has willingly died. The following lines 
 
 are in Homer's grandest vein — 
 
 Whil'st she thus spake, the gods that gave good ear 
 To her bold words, and marked well her grace, 
 Beeing of stature tall as any there 
 Of all the gods, and beautiful of face 
 As any of the goddesses in place, 
 Stood all astonied j like a sort of steeres, 
 'Mongst whom some beast of strange and forraine race 
 Unwares is chaunced, far straying from his peeres ; 
 So did their ghastly gaze bewray their hidden feares. 
 
 For Jove alone the Portent has no terrors — 
 
 " Whom what should hinder but that we likewise 
 Should handle as the rest of her allies. 
 And thunder-drive to hell ? " With that he shooke 
 His nectar-deawed locks, with which the skyes 
 And all the world beneath for terror quooke 
 And eft his burning levin-brond in hand he tooke. 
 
 But when he looked on her lovely face, 
 In which fair beams of beauty did appeare. 
 That could the greatest wrath soon turn to grace 
 (Such sway doth beauty, even in heaven, beare). 
 He staide his hand ; and having changed his cheere, 
 He thus againe in milder wyse began : 
 " But ah ! if gods should strive with flesh yfere, 
 Then shortly should the progeny of man 
 Be rooted out ; if Jove should do still what he can." 
 
 He bids her submit. The Titaness summons Jove to 
 meet her before the tribunal of an impartial arbiter ; 
 and by nothing does the poet more subtly impress us 
 with the magic power of this strange claimant, than by 
 the Thunderer's consent to leave his Olympian throne, 
 and stand her co-suitor before an alien potentate. 
 
n SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 79 
 
 That potentate is one whom our age challenges more 
 often than Spenser's did. Her appeal is to the " God 
 of Nature." The place of judgment is 
 
 Upon the highest heights "■ 
 
 Of Arlo-Hill (who knows not Ai-lo-Hill ?) 
 That is the highest head in all men's sights 
 Of my old father, Mole, whom shepherd's quill 
 Renouned hath with hymnes fit for a rural skill. 
 
 "Old Mountain Mole," a name as familiar as that 
 of the river " Mulla," his daughter, to the readers of 
 Spenser, designates the Galtee range which rises to 
 nearly the height of 3000 feet at the north-east of 
 Kilcolman. Arlo Hill is Galtymore, and overhangs 
 the glen of Arlo, now spelt Aherlo. This mountain- 
 range is here constituted by him a Parnassus of the 
 north, and he tells us how that glen was long frequented 
 by the gods, and especially by Cynthia, and how it 
 was forsaken by the latter because she had there been 
 betrayed by one of her nymphs, Molanna, while bath- 
 ing in her favourite brook, to the gaze of "fooHsh god 
 Faunus " — 
 
 Since which, those woods and all that goodly chase 
 Doth to this day with wolves and thieves abound ; 
 Which too, too true that land's indwellers since have found. 
 
 Those "thieves" were the original dwellers on Des- 
 mond's confiscated lands, who had taken refuge in the 
 forests. There is a profound pathos in. the last line 
 quoted, one which may possibly have been written but 
 the day before those wild bands issued from the woods 
 of Arlo, and wrapped in flame the -castle of its poet. 
 
8o SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 thus grimly closing the four wedded and peaceful years 
 of his Irish life. 
 
 On the appointed day the gods assemble — the gods 
 of heaven, of the sea, and of the land, for the infernal 
 powers, we are told, might not appear in that sacred 
 precinct, and not the gods alone but all other 
 creatures. In the midst " great dame Nature " makes 
 herself manifest. She is invested with attributes so 
 mysterious, and tending so much towards the infinite, 
 as to suggest the thought that Spenser, in some of his 
 lonely musings, had occasionally advanced to the 
 borders of a philosophy little guessed of in his own 
 time. Some such philosophy has sometimes set up 
 a claim like that of Spenser's Titaness, and striven to 
 push religion from her throne. According to Spenser's 
 teaching, those pretensions derive no countenance from 
 Nature, though often put forward in her name. Nor 
 was the cause of Mutability that of political revolution 
 alone ; it was also that of unbelief, of lawlessness 
 against law, and of endless restlessness against endless 
 peace. 
 
 ' ' Then forth issewed (great goddess) great dame Nature, 
 
 With goodly port and gracious majesty, 
 
 Being far greater and more tall of stature 
 
 Than any of the gods or powers on hie ; 
 
 Yet certes by her face and physnomy, 
 
 "Whether she man or woman inly were, 
 
 That could not any creature well descry, 
 
 For with a veile that wimpled every where 
 Her head and face was hid, that mote to none appeare. ^ 
 
 Nature, we are told, is terrible, because she devours 
 
 ^ Canto vii. stanza 5. 
 
II SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 8i 
 
 whatever exists ; and yet beautiful, for she is ever 
 
 teeming with all things fair. So far she resembles the 
 
 Titaness, but only so far. The glory of her face is 
 
 such that the face itself is never seen by mortal eye. 
 
 To each man she is but as a semblance descried in a 
 
 mirror. The soul of each man is that mirror, and 
 
 according to what that soul is she seems. Her veil is 
 
 never withdrawn. 
 
 That, some doe say, was so by skill devised. 
 To hide the terror of her uncouth hew 
 From mortall eyes that should be sore agrized, 
 For that her face did like a lion shew, 
 That eye of wight could not indure to view ; 
 But others tell that it so beauteous was. 
 And round about such beams of splendour threw, 
 That it the sunne a thousand times did pass, 
 Ne could be seen but like an image in a glass. 
 
 She sits enthroned upon the level summit of the hill, 
 and the earth instantaneously sends up a pavilion of 
 mighty trees that wave above her in adoration, their 
 branches laden with bloom and blossom; while the 
 sod bursts into flower at her feet, and old Mole exults 
 As if the love of some new nymph late seene 
 Had in him kindled youthful fresh desire. 
 
 The Titaness draws near to this venerable being, 
 This great grandmother of all creatures bred. 
 Great Nature, ever young, yet full of eld. 
 Still moving, yet unmoved from her sted ; 
 Unseen of any, yet of all beheld ; 
 
 and appeals to her against the king of the gods, 
 Since heaven and earth are both alike to thee ; 
 And gods no more than men thou dost esteem : 
 For even the gods to thee as men to gods do seeme.''^ 
 
 1 Canto vii. stanza 6. 
 VOL. I. ^ 
 
82 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 The Titaness impeaches, not Jove only, but all the 
 gods, for having arrogated to themselves, as divinities 
 supernatural, what belongs to Nature only, and to 
 herself as Nature's vicegerent. She insists that she 
 has conquered to herself all the elements, not the 
 land and the sea only ; for the fire does not belong to 
 holy Vesta, nor the air to the queen of the gods, but 
 both alike to her. She summons witnesses, and at 
 the command of Nature her herald, Order, causes 
 them to circle in long procession around the throne. 
 First come the four Seasons, next the twelve Months. 
 Here is one of the pictures — 
 
 Next came fresh April, full of lustihead, 
 And wanton as a kid whose home new buds ; 
 Upon a bull he rode, the same which led 
 Europa floting through the Argolick fluds ; 
 His homes were gilden all with golden studs, 
 And garnished with girlonds goodly dight - ^ 
 
 Of all the fairest flowers and freshest buds 
 Which th' earth brings forth ; and wet he seemed in sight 
 With waves through which he waded for his love's delight.^ 
 
 The Hours follow, and the pageant is closed by Life 
 and Death. 
 
 The Titaness next turns to Nature, and makes, in 
 the name of all who have passed before her, their 
 common confession ; it is that all alike live but by 
 change, and are vassals of Mutability. The Father of 
 Gods and Men replies. His answer consists less in 
 the denial of aught that is affirmative in her statement 
 than in the supplying of what that statement had 
 ignored — 
 
 1 Canto vii. stanza 33. 
 
n SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 83 
 
 Then thus 'gan Jove : " Right true it is that these 
 And all things else that under heaven dwell 
 Are chaunged of Time, who them doth all disseize 
 Of being, but who is it (to me tell) 
 That Time himselfe doth move and still compell 
 To keepe his course ? Is not that namely Wee 
 Which pour that virtue from our heavenly cell, 
 That moves them all and makes them changed be ? 
 So then we gods do rule, and in them also thee." 
 
 The reply of Mutability is simply an appeal from 
 
 reason, interpreting objects of sense, to the mere 
 
 senses when they have discarded reason — 
 
 But what we see not, who shall us persuade ? 
 
 Again she enumerates her triumphs, and demands a 
 
 verdict in terms which surreptitiously remove the cause 
 
 from the higher courts of Nature's judicature, and 
 
 confine it to one created by herself. But Nature 
 
 takes counsel not with eye and ear only, but with 
 
 mind and spirit also — 
 
 So having ended, silence long ensued ; 
 Ne Nature to or fro spake for a space. 
 But with firm eyes affixed the ground still view'd. 
 Meanwhile all creatures looking in her face. 
 Expecting the end of this so doubtful case, 
 Did hang in long suspense what would ensue. 
 To whether side should fall the sovereign place ; 
 At length she, looking up with cheerful view. 
 The silence brake, and gave her doom in speeches few. 
 
 I well consider all that ye have sayd. 
 And find that all things stedfastness doe hate 
 And changed be : yet being rightly wayed, 
 They are not changed from their first estate ; 
 But by their change their being do dilate; 
 And turning to themselves at length againe 
 Doe worke their own perfection so by fate ; 
 Then over them Change doth not rule and raigne. 
 But they raigne over Change, and do their states maintaine. 
 
84 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 Cease therefore, daughter, further to aspire, 
 And thee content thus to be ruled by me ; 
 For thy decay t"hou seek'st by thy desire ; 
 But time shall come that all shall changed bee, 
 And from thenceforth none tio more change shall see. 
 So was the Titanesse put downe and whist, 
 And Jove confirmed in his imperial See. 
 Then was that whole assembly quite dismist, 
 And Nature's selfe did vanish, whither no man wist.i 
 
 According to the philosophy of Spenser it was im- 
 possible that Mutability should enjoy a final triumph, 
 because her true function is to minister through change 
 to that which knows no change. Revolution is but a 
 subordinate element in a system which includes a 
 recuperative principle, and tends ever to the stable. 
 To the undiscerning eye things seem to pass away ; 
 to the half-discerning they seem to revolve merely in 
 a circle ; but the motion is in reality upward as well 
 as circular ; as it advances, it ascends in a spiral line ; 
 and as it ascends it ever widens. When the creation 
 has reached the utmost amplitude of which it was 
 originally made capable, it must then stand face to 
 face with the Creator, and in that high solstice it must 
 enter into the sabbath of His endless rest. Thus 
 only could it reflect the Divine Perfection after which 
 it was created. To understand this teaching, we 
 must bear in mind its complement in another part of 
 Spenser's philosophy. He held with Plato that all 
 things great and abiding, whether in the material or 
 the moral world, were created after the pattern of 
 certain great ideas existing eternally in the mind of 
 
 ^ Canto vii. of Mutability, stanza 59. 
 
n SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 85 
 
 the Creator, inseparable from His essence, and in it 
 alone perfectly realised. Creation is thus a picture of 
 the uncreated; and the cyclical revolutions of time 
 present an image of eternity, notwithstanding that the 
 " opposition of matter" renders it impossible that that 
 picture should ever be wholly faithful to its great 
 original. Turning our eyes downward, we trace the 
 same law in the descending grades of being. It is 
 thus that man, himself the mirror of the Divine, is 
 mirrored, though with a corresponding inferiority, by 
 the inferior animals, which, not only in their chief 
 affections, but in their intellectual processes, and often 
 even in their social polities, rehearse, on a lower stage, 
 parts which man is permitted to enact more nobly on 
 a higher one. But between the creatures thus ranged 
 on the lower and the higher stages of creation there 
 exists one great difference : those only that occupy 
 the highest platform possess the gift of secure progress. 
 That progress is made through striving and pain : — 
 the whole life of man here below, whether his in- 
 dividual or his social life, was regarded by Spenser as 
 a noble warfare destined to end in victory and peace. 
 Through such probation it becomes from age to age a 
 vaster and a purer thing ; and its mutations, notwith- 
 standing the confusions and the sufferings they entail, 
 are but the means through which virtue ascends, and 
 knowledge grows wider. Spenser ends his legend 
 with this aspiration — 
 
 O that great Sabaoth God grant me that Sabbath's sight ! 
 This is the voice of a spirit wearied with the storms 
 
86 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 of our lower sphere, but not daunted or weakened by 
 them. No one can read the last verse without joining 
 in the poet's prayer. 
 
 These remarks on Spenser's philosophy would be 
 incomplete without a reference to a very remarkable 
 canto of his Faery Qtieen, in which he blends his 
 musings on humanity with others on nature, and on 
 what is higher than nature, and thus crosses the path 
 of the old-world philosophic poet Lucretius, who also 
 discoursed of nature and man's life — leaving in his 
 philosophy a very little corner for the " immortal 
 gods," who seem, indeed, to have had little business 
 there, and indeed to have been admitted but by 
 courtesy. Spenser's philosophic reverie will be found 
 in his Garden of Adonis (Book III. canto vi.) 
 Human life as there described has nothing in common 
 either with that higher, that ordinary, or that depraved 
 form of life illustrated by him elsewhere. It is not 
 an actual but a potential life, the conception of an 
 existence neither fallen nor restored, and of an earth 
 with neither benediction nor malediction resting upon 
 it ; an earth with one sorrow only — the transience of 
 all things.' The Garden is the domain of an endless 
 productiveness, decay, and renewal. In it abide per- 
 petually the archetypal forms of living things — 
 
 There is the first seminary 
 Of all things that are born to live and dye, 
 According to their kindg. 
 
 The ever-teeming soil is encircled by two walls, one 
 of iron and one of gold — 
 
II SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 87 
 
 Aild double gates it had which opened wide, 
 By which both in and out men moten pas ; 
 Th' one faire and fresh, th' other old and dried ; 
 Old Genius the porter of them was, 
 Old Genius the which a double nature has. 
 
 He letteth in, he letteth out to wend 
 Ail that to come into the world desire ; 
 A thousand thousand naked babes attend 
 About him daj' and night, which doe require 
 That he with fleshly weeds will them attire ; 
 Such as him list, such as eternal fate 
 Ordained hath, he clothes with sinful mire. 
 And sendeth forth to live in mortall state. 
 Till they agayn retume, back by the hinder gate.-^ 
 
 Their condition is an endless alternation of glad life 
 and painless decay. 
 
 After that they againe retourned beene 
 - They in that garden planted bee aga}Tie, 
 And grow afresh, as they had never scene - - 
 
 Fleshly corruption, nor mortall payne : 
 Some thousand yeeres so doen they there remajTie, 
 And then of him are clad with other hew, 
 Or sent into the chaungeful world agajme, 
 Till thether they return, where first they grew ; 
 So like a wheele aro^^Tied they ronne from old to new. 
 
 Countless swarms perish successively, yet the stock is 
 never lessened — 
 
 For in the ^^'ide wombe of the world there lyes 
 In hateful darkness, and in deepe horrore 
 An huge eternal Chaos, which suppHes 
 The substaunces of Nature's fruitful progenyes. . 
 
 The substance is immortal ; the successive forms " are 
 variable and decay," for though they have but one 
 foe, with him they cannot contend. That enemy is 
 
 ^ Garden of Adonis, Book III. canto vi. stanza 32. 
 
88 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 " wicked Time," who mows down all things with his 
 
 scythe. 
 
 Yet pitty often did the gods relent 
 To see so faire things mard and spoiled quight : 
 And their great; mother Venus did lament 
 The losse of her deere brood, her deere delight. 
 
 Her realm has this sorrow alone. It is unshaken by 
 
 jealousy or pain, doubt or shame. Over this central 
 
 seat of her rolling sphere there rests " the stillness of 
 
 the sleeping poles." Here the spring-tide and the 
 
 harvest-tide blend, and the autumnal vine overhangs 
 
 the vernal elm. Here grows 
 
 every sort of flowre 
 To which sad lovers were transform'd of yore. 
 
 Here Venus finds at will her lost Adonis where she 
 laid him dead — 
 
 And sooth it seems, they say ; for he may not 
 For ever dye, and ever buried bee 
 In baleful night, where all things are forgot ; 
 All be he subject to mortalitie. 
 Yet is eterne i7t mutabilitie. 
 And by succession made perpetual, 
 Transformed off, and chaunged diverslie ; 
 For him the father of all formes they call ; 
 Therefore needs mote he live that living gives to all. 
 
 There are passages in this poem which remind the 
 reader of Lucretius, but the contrast is greater than 
 the resemblance. What in the Latin poet is a cynical, 
 though imaginative, materialism becomes transfigured 
 in the verse of one whose touch changes matter itself 
 into spirit. The lower side of the philosophy receives 
 its interpretation from the higher, and becomes. 
 
11 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 89 
 
 though not the whole truth, yet a portion of it. If 
 the seeds of all bodies spring up spontaneously from 
 the fruitful soil, yet souls innumerable throng the air 
 above them, and it is their breath that imparts life to 
 their " fleshly weeds." If no gardener is needed there 
 "to sett or sow," yet Nature only thus exercises a 
 sacred might bestowed on her by one who is above 
 Nature, and has commanded her to increase. What- 
 ever she may be in Cythera or Paphos, the goddess 
 of love is here a true "Venus Genetrix," a Power, 
 compassionate and benign, the mighty mother bringing 
 forth, not in sorrow but in gladness. A healing influ- 
 ence works on through creation ; Nature is no more 
 suffered to prey on her own offspring ; the wild boar 
 of the forest which slew Adonis, and ever wars on 
 youth and strength, is " imprisoned in a strong rocky 
 cave." In this earlier "Island Valley of Avilion," 
 humanity heals its ancient wound, and awaits the 
 better day. The spirit of hope here triumphs over 
 the Lucretian spirit of despair. 
 
 The teaching of the pessimist philosopher of anti- 
 quity, whose ambition was to draw the most original 
 of poems out of the wildest system of physics — like 
 sunbeams extracted from cucumbers — was the opposite 
 of this, except in points of detail. Not our world 
 only but all worlds were fated to perish utterly, leaving 
 behind them nothing but a whirl of atoms to fill their 
 place ; that is, they were to end like his own poem, 
 which closes significantly with the plague at Athens. 
 A few remarks will not here be out of place comparing 
 
90 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 the great Latin philosophical poet, as he is commonly 
 regarded, with the English philosophic poet of the 
 Elizabethan period. Each of them found his country 
 passing through a momentous crisis ; each must have 
 largely affected its growing intelligence for good or for 
 evil ; each had great poetic gifts, and in some respects 
 similar gifts, for Lucretius, like Spenser, had an ardent 
 imagination, a descriptive power till his time unrivalled, 
 vivid imagery, impassioned eloquence, and remarkable 
 gifts of style, diction, and metre ; and each united 
 the courage with the perseverance needful for success 
 in a high enterprise of song. A poet is best under- 
 stood when compared with another, at once like him 
 and unlike. 
 
 The great difference between the two philosophic 
 poets lay in those moral and spiritual constituents of 
 man's being by which the action of his imagination as 
 well as of his understanding is secretly directed. In 
 Spenser there Hved an abiding spirit of reverence ; 
 and therefore for him all phenomena received their 
 interpretation from above : for Lucretius it came from 
 below; and his delight was to show how all great 
 things are but small things making the most of them- 
 selves. The intellect of Spenser was a far-reaching 
 one; it descried the remote analogy; it discerned 
 what is lost alike upon the sensual heart and the 
 merely logical intelligence ; it accepted high thoughts 
 as authentic if at once recommended by venerable 
 authorities and in harmony with universal aspirations, 
 whether or not their nature rendered them susceptible 
 
n SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 91 
 
 of dialectic proof. It could retain a serene faith when 
 shrewdness winked and grimaced; and it could no 
 less abstain from creduhty when challenged by philo- 
 sophic theories recommended chiefly by their strange- 
 ness and their confidence. Lucretius, on the other 
 hand, had a vigorous but an animal intellect. He 
 saw the wonderfulness of matter not more keenly than 
 Spenser, who understood its witcheries perhaps but 
 too well ; but he was so dazzled by it that he could 
 see nothing besides, and for him spirit did not exist. 
 To him Nature was all in all ; and for that reason he 
 did not realise her highest greatness, viz. her power 
 of leading to something higher than herself To the 
 Greek mythologists who had laid the basis of Greek 
 poetry, Nature had been a divinity ; to the Christian 
 poet and philosopher she reflected a divine radiance ; 
 to Lucretius she was a Titaness slinging firebrands 
 through the universe she had shaped, and shaping all 
 things with no final aim but that of slaying them, and 
 slaying herself on their pyre. For his guide he fol- 
 lowed exclusively a single teacher of his own selection, 
 and one even in the pagan world ill famed — Epicurus 
 — passing by with contempt all the heads of the Greek 
 schools during six centuries, and worshipping that one 
 with an idolatrous but not disinterested devotion. 
 
 Seeing all things from below, Lucretius never 
 grasps the nobler idea essentially included in each; 
 he sees but the accidents that obscure it. In religion 
 he sees nothing but fear ; in authority but imposture ; 
 in man but animal instincts intellectualised. In 
 
92 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 woman he sees no touch of womanhood. He advises 
 his disciples never to meddle with so noxious a toy as 
 love; but his mode of preaching self-restraint is 
 worthless, since it provides no substitute for trouble- 
 some pleasures, either in lofty duties or in nobler joys, 
 for which, on his principles, there remains no place. 
 It is not merely that the Lucretian philosophy does 
 not encourage moral or spiritual aspirations : — it is 
 militant against them. It commands us imperiously 
 to tread down the very desire of immortality; and 
 yet its denial of immortality is a wholly illogical 
 assumption, based on another assumption wholly 
 arbitrary : viz. that " mind " and " soul " are but 
 material things, not less than the body, and must 
 therefore share the body's doom. Such a philosophy, 
 in recommending "moderation," recommends but 
 apathy ; and men not dyspeptic or exhausted do not 
 become apathetic to please philosophers. 
 
 There is nothing positive in Lucretius's vivid 
 appreciation of matter which does not find place 
 equally in Spenser's philosophy. What the latter 
 abjures is the negative part of it. In Spenser's poetry 
 the creation is ever regarded as "the resplendent 
 miracle," and material joys as, in their degree, objects 
 well worthy of pursuit and gratitude; but in that 
 poetry under material enjoyment there ever lurk the 
 humanities, and under these something greater still. 
 It was but the narrowness of the Lucretian philosophy 
 which made it identify a belief in matter with a dis- 
 belief in spirit — that narrowness which so often 
 
11 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 93 
 
 explodes into fanaticism, with its combined character- 
 istics of audacity and of intolerance. The Lucretian 
 philosophy is an abject one, not because it failed to 
 anticipate Truth then unrevealed, but because it denied 
 and denounced truths which had been retained with 
 more or less clearness by most of the early rehgions 
 and by many philosophies, such as the spirituality of 
 man's being, a Divine sanction to conscience, and the 
 immortality and responsibility of the soul — beliefs 
 which had, during sequent ages, created civilised 
 societies with all that was best in their arts, poetry, 
 and literature. Pagan antiquity had also retained the 
 belief in a Providence that shaped man's life to 
 gracious ends; and its Prometheus, a Titan though 
 not a god, had endured as well as laboured for man. 
 The Lucretian gods are material beings made, like 
 the rest of the universe, by the "concurrence" of 
 material atoms; and, like all besides, they are des- 
 tined to perish. In the meantime they sit apart 
 in festal rest, seeing in man's life, its joys, its agonies, 
 its trials, nay, in all things external to themselves, 
 nothing worthy of their interest. This is to make 
 the gods not only after the image of men, but of the 
 meanest among men. Spenser insists on a God who 
 helps man, not because He is Himself man's image, but 
 for an opposite reason : — on a God for whom, since 
 He is infinite in all the dimensions of infinitude, it 
 follows that as nothing is too great, so nothing is too 
 small. There are those by whom that sublime idea is 
 stigmatised as "anthropomorphism," while the Lucre- 
 
94 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 tian conception is applauded as sublime. This is not 
 sincere thinking. It cannot be justified by the qualifi- 
 cation "subUme as poetry.'''' Low sentiment and inco- 
 herent thought are not changed into great poetry 
 because expressed in dignified language and good metre. 
 The materialistic philosophy on the exposition of 
 which the poetry of Lucretius was 'wrecked made a 
 large boast. In that aspect it has an important rela- 
 tion with our theme ; for true poetry does great things, 
 but does not make a great boast. It was to illuminate 
 mankind, to break down all moral and intellectual 
 thraldom, and to kill all religion, as the easiest way 
 of curing its corruptions — a design as philosophic as 
 though all government were to be destroyed because 
 it includes administrative abuses ; all art, because it 
 sometimes ministers to depraved tastes ; and all 
 science, because its professors often make mistakes. 
 How was this wonderful work to be effected? Not 
 by experimental demonstrations — they are seldom 
 appealed to by Lucretius, except in the way of de- 
 molishing counter theories — but by hardy scientific 
 dogma, and the pecca fortiter of fearless assumptions. 
 Atoms could neither be seen, felt, nor brought within 
 the ken of scientific analysis; but it was easy to 
 assume not only that they existed in incalculable 
 number, but that they are of various shapes, solid, 
 indestructible, possess weight, and even that their 
 " uncertain sideway movement " is " the only possible 
 origin of the free-will of living beings." So again of 
 Films. These are slender veils cast, as Lucretius 
 
II SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 95 
 
 affirms, from the surface of all objects incessantly 
 and into all the regions of space — a valiant assumption, 
 but one wholly fabulous. It is amusing to observe 
 how the same philosophic credulity which accepts all 
 assumptions condones all incoherences. The emanci- 
 pating discovery asserts that "nothing comes from 
 nothing " ; yet it affirms also that, without any creative 
 cause, there existed a perpetual downward rain of 
 atoms ; it believes that no Divine Mind gives law to 
 matter ; yet it maintains also that Nature's course is 
 uniform — nay, that a " concurrence of atoms " driven 
 against each other in perpetual storm, eventually 
 combined into all the wondrous forms on the earth— 
 the structure of hand and eye, and brain ! All that 
 this philosophy regards as needed to justify its im- 
 perious claim on our acceptance is that its dogmas, 
 however fantastic, should be conceivable, that they 
 should be capable of being expressed in association 
 with distinct images, or brain-pictures — things con- 
 founded by feeble thinkers with distinct thoughts — 
 and that they should derive some plausible support 
 from analogies. It asserts Hke one inspired : it 
 multiplies instances, takes for granted its inferences 
 from them — inferences which are but the preconcep- 
 tions of a confident fancy — and thus eludes those 
 troublesome questions on which the true issue of the 
 argument depends. Drawn aside as if by an " elective 
 affinity" towards the most materialistic views on all 
 subjects, this philosophy hardily rejected even the 
 material truths asserted, some five hundred years 
 
96 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 before, by Pythagoras, such as that the earth moves 
 round the sun, as well as its sphericity and gravitation 
 — truths probably maintained by many in the days of 
 Lucretius, though subsequently denied by the Ptolemaic 
 system. It affirmed, moreover, that the universe is 
 always dropping downward, and that the real size of 
 the heavenly bodies is little more than their apparent 
 size to the eye. Amidst these strange aberrations of 
 a false philosophy, the " purple patches " of real poetry 
 survive, to vex us with the thought of the poetry 
 Lucretius might have given to us had Plato, not 
 Epicurus, been his master, and to remind us that 
 high genius is seldom extinguished wholly by the 
 most wayward abuse of the gift. 
 
 It was fortunate for England that a philosophy in 
 essentials the opposite of Lucretius's, inspired the 
 poetry of that great man who opened the literature of 
 the Elizabethan age, and into whose grave the younger 
 poets of that age flung their pens, acknowledging him 
 as their master as he had acknowledged Chaucer to 
 be his. His genius might otherwise have exercised 
 that influence, stimulating indeed, but both sensualising 
 and narrowing, on English letters which Boccaccio 
 certainly exercised on Italy, and for which no compensa- 
 tion could have been adequate. Spenser's philosophy 
 was ideal at once and traditional. It made no small 
 points ; but great ideas brooded over it. He did not 
 boast himself as the great expositor of one self-chosen 
 master. His humble pride was that his long-laboured 
 work embodied the best moral teaching of the chief 
 
11 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 97 
 
 masters- both of antiquity and of Christian times. It 
 was not a weapon of war. It derived no stimulus 
 fram hatred. It included within itself an unpreten- 
 tious yet a coherent logic; but it passed far beyond 
 her narrow pale in its genial strength, extending itself 
 as widely as human sympathies, and soaring as high 
 as man's noblest aspirations. That a poet so manifold 
 in interest, and so profound in thought, should to so 
 many readers, though not to the best, appear simply 
 dull, and, again, that an ancient poet the greater part 
 of whose poetry was devoted, like that of Dr. Darwin 
 in the last century, to the versifying of Natural 
 Philosophy, and whose Natural Philosophy was a 
 chimera, should yet, with many readers, take the place 
 often claimed for Lucretius, are phenomena hard to 
 be explained. It is true that the adage " first come, 
 first served," applies to books, and that many an old 
 work retains a reputation which, if new, it could never 
 acquire. It is true also that a compliment to a classic 
 is often a compliment to one's own scholarship; and, 
 again, that with, not a few, the lesser qualities of 
 poetry, possessed in eminence, are more impressive 
 than its highest qualities less energetically exerted. 
 We may also, perhaps, in our attempt ; to solve the 
 problem, find help in one of Spenser's best known 
 allegories — best known because it -illustrates so many 
 a strange passage in human life— the allegory of 
 Illusion or the witch "Duessa." She represents an 
 idea constantly in the mind of Spenser. No poet 
 ever fixed a more reverent gaze on philosophic trtith, 
 
 VOL. I H 
 
98 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 or one more faithful to follow her " whithersoever she 
 goeth," through the tangled labyrinths of thought or 
 action. Yet no one felt so strongly how close beside 
 her there treads an opposite spirit — a spirit potent 
 alike to make the true seem false, and the false seem 
 true, the fair seem foul, and the foul seem fair. Such 
 is the magic power with which Duessa now reinvests 
 her faded form with the loveliness of a youth long 
 vanished, and now raises a mist and binds a mask of 
 decrepitude on some beautiful rival. 
 
 It was no doubt the profound sincerity of Spenser's 
 genius which made him muse with such a haunting 
 sadness on that spirit of Illusion. He had had per- 
 sonal experience of its power. He had his own 
 illusions, religious, political, and personal, several of 
 which he had detected and repudiated. He had 
 replaced the Puritanism of his early training with a 
 form of Christianity half- Patristic and half- Platonic ; 
 although in his politics it still stretched itself, like a 
 "bar sinister," across a shield glowing with loyaHst 
 "gules" and chivalrous devices. He had seen some 
 of his nearest friends changeful in principle, but ever 
 persistent in worshipping as divinities the idols of a 
 fancy at once proud and servile. He had doubtless 
 observed that there often exists a strange and cruel 
 resemblance between opposites, and that the illusion 
 is often the more complete the more absolutely they 
 stand opposed to each other. It is thus that hypocrisy 
 resembles virtue, and that, as a consequence, virtue 
 may be easily mistaken for hypocrisy ; that the vision- 
 
11 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET 99 
 
 ary is like the "man whose eyes are open," and vice 
 versa ; that bashfulness may be like guilt, and callous 
 insensibility like innocence ; that silence may betoken 
 alike the fulness of content or an absolute despair; 
 that, to the superficial, communism may seem the 
 political reaHsation of the early Christian ethics of 
 alms ; that indifference to truth may claim to be the 
 perfection of charity. The most fatal errors have ever 
 been those which include in them high truths, though 
 misapplied. Without that element they would not 
 have proved attractive to elevated minds ; and for an 
 analogous reason the most exalted truths may long 
 wear a form the most repulsive even to the good. 
 
 The dreadful power of illusion is a thought natur- 
 ally brought home the most to minds at once reflective 
 and imaginative. It was familiar to Shelley as well as 
 to Spenser, unlike as were those two poets, and it is 
 remarkably illustrated by him in the " Revolt of Islam," 
 canto i. stanzas 25-27. In the beginning of things, as 
 we are there told, " a blood-red comet and the morning 
 star" hung in fight on the verge of Chaos. These 
 two militant shapes are the rival powers of Evil and 
 Good. Evil triumphs, and changes the morning star 
 into a snake, which is sentenced to creep over the 
 earth in that false semblance, abhorred by all, so long 
 as the conqueror's reign endures. Transformations 
 not less startling, take place every day in the moral 
 world. What is despicable when contrasted with that 
 which is above it, may yet well appear admirable to 
 one who can measure it only with what is below it. 
 
100 SPENSER AS A PHILOSOPHIC POET ii 
 
 Shelley, who had in him much of Lucretius's poetic 
 audacity, was himself, for a short time, the prisoper of 
 a materialistic philosophy as wild. When he became 
 a translator of Plato, that grim skeleton, if it ever 
 revisited his dreams, may perhaps have reminded, him 
 of Spenser's Duessa, stripped of her glittering apparel. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE GENIUS AND PASSION OF > 
 WORDSWORTH 1 
 
 This volume of selections is a pious labour, as it must 
 have been a pleasant one, and it will prove a source 
 of elevating delight to numberless readers. The late 
 Dr. Arnold, to whom English education owes so much, 
 was a near neighbour of Wordsworth during his sum- 
 mer vacations, as well as an intimate friend ; and, in 
 discharging a debt due to old friendship, his son has 
 discharged another due to the youth of England. It 
 was among them especially that the patriot poet, for 
 such he justly claimed to be,^ trusted that his poetry 
 would serve that spiritual end for which he honoured 
 and practised his art. Nor could that poet, whom 
 Mr. Arnold recognises as the greatest belonging to 
 modern England, receive this tribute more fittingly 
 than from one who is himself a true poet. No ordinary 
 
 ^ Poems by William Wordsworth, Chosen and edited by 
 Matthew Arnold. Macmillan and Co. 
 
 2 See Wordsworth's Sonnet on being shown Dante's se^t at 
 Florence. 1837. - 
 
102 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH in 
 
 gifts are required in order to choose wisely among 
 productions like Wordsworth's. In the case of a 
 second class poet it is not difficult to make a selection 
 at once just and popular, for to find his best poems it 
 suffices to choose his most striking. It is otherwise 
 when dealing with a poet of the first order. In him 
 what we chiefly need is the characteristic. The poets 
 of the highest order are, each of them, the regent of a 
 distinct "Orb of Song," and in their respective king- 
 doms the poetic growths differ from each other as much 
 as the Fauna and the Flora of remote climates. Their 
 thoughts are crystallised on a different type, no matter 
 what exterior force may be used to press them to 
 the same shape ; their feelings move according to a 
 different law ; their association of ideas is alien. What 
 would be a fault in one may be a merit in another ; 
 what is essential in one is accidental in another ; what 
 in one is native, and full of significance, in another 
 may be borrowed, and ornamental merely. 
 
 Landor affirms that "centuries are the telescopes 
 which must be drawn out " before we can determine 
 the magnitude or relative position of those great 
 luminaries which shine upon us from the intellectual 
 heaven. Half a century, however, may suffice to 
 dispel many illusions.; When Wordsworth's poetry 
 first appeared, some careless readers fancied or 
 pretended that genuine exponents of it were to be 
 found in half a dozen short pieces, obviously little 
 more than paradoxical protests, flung out, with some 
 youthful exaggeration, against the literary convention- 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 103 
 
 alities of the time. Later a little patronising praise 
 was vouchsafed, many of the poems being admitted to 
 have a genial simplicity and a graceful pastoral vein, 
 while occasionally it was conceded that their descrip- 
 tions of scenery were good, and their moral tone 
 unexceptionable. Still, however, the most original of 
 our modern poets was looked on as one of a certain 
 imaginary body called the " Lake School," as though 
 he had no individuality of his own. The wonderful 
 change of opinion which took place about fifteen or 
 twenty years before his death was not caused by that 
 later poetry which he published from time to time up 
 to 1842. The great bulk of his writings, including all 
 the most characteristic, had appeared by 18 14. They 
 were forced upon public attention, partly by the 
 enthusiasm which they had created in a small but 
 zealous band, among whom Coleridge was their earliest 
 philosophic critic, and "Christopher North," their 
 most unwearied champion, and in part, doubtless, by 
 the vivacity with which they had been assailed ; and, 
 once attended to, time and their merits did the rest. 
 During the interval, a philosophy of a more elevated 
 order had superseded that of the last century ; and, as 
 a mountain is best descried from the slopes of an 
 opposite mountain, so poetry of a high order is best 
 discerned in its true proportions when contemplated 
 from the heights of a spiritual philosophy. This 
 change doubtless faciUtated the acceptance of Words- 
 worth's poetry ; but those who agreed in applauding it 
 differed widely as to its character. By some Words- 
 
104 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH in 
 
 worth was declared to be the great poet of Nature, and 
 his meditative habit was condoned, though not approved ; 
 while by others he was praised as the profoundest of 
 philosophic poets — a merit which atoned, they were 
 pleased to say, for his absence of passion. 
 
 The following remarks relate chiefly to that high 
 Passion which is one of the primary notes of his genius. 
 
 The chief characteristic of Wordsworth's poetry 
 undoubtedly consists in the profound insight, wide 
 sympathy, and vital force with which it presents to us 
 Human Nature, not as disciplined by civil laws, or the 
 accidents of life, but as elicited by the influences of 
 external nature. It was social and political man that 
 the great epic poets sang — men in nations and in 
 armies, men marching to the siege of Troy or the 
 recovery of Jerusalem. Wordsworth, too, had pon- 
 dered such themes in youth, but he wisely put them 
 aside ; they could not be for him — he had another 
 vocation. What he valued in man was the personal 
 being, especially as developed within the first and 
 inmost circle which girdles that personal being — the 
 circle of the domestic affections. Within that circle 
 there stood before his eye presences august and full 
 of power. Beyond that circle, what he noted as most 
 sacred and potent was the multitudinous, ever-varying 
 imagery of that visible creation which had issued forth 
 from under a Divine Hand not less than the spiritual 
 creation, and which stands in such inexplicable yet 
 subduing relations to the human soul. To him that 
 creation was a mysterious thing, not the awless Arcady 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 105 
 
 of pastoral song, nor yet the embodied Nature of 
 mythological bards. If in his earlier days there was, 
 as some have said, in Wordsworth's appreciation of 
 Nature a touch of what to a Greek would have become 
 Pantheism, the northern poet was protected by a 
 double talisman both from the artistic and the 
 scientific snaire. His imagination was of too spiritual 
 an order to shape to itself material divinities, and his 
 conscience bore witness to a Personal God, the Creator 
 of all things, and the Judge of man. To that Personal 
 God he paid dutiful reverence in life and song. Had 
 he lost his hold of Religion he would have lost Nature 
 also, for to him she would have been Nature no longer. 
 As it was, in all her manifestations, whether in shape 
 or in colour, in movement or at rest, from the most awe- 
 inspiring of her forms to the most fugitive of her smiles, 
 he recognised divinely -appointed ministers parleying 
 with man's spirit, the quickeners of its finest impulses. 
 How much the human mind conferred upon Nature, 
 and how much Nature conferred upon the human 
 mind, he did not affect to determine; but to each its 
 function came from God, and life below was one long 
 mystic colloquy between the twin-bom powers, whisper- 
 ing together of immortality. 
 
 Such was the high theme, never before attempted, 
 which Wordsworth saw daily widening more and more 
 before his genius as the years of youth went by. Of 
 himself he speaks as of 
 
 The transitory being who beheld 
 This vision, 
 
io6 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 and assuredly such a vision was a thing to make for 
 itself a solitude in the heart of him who habitually 
 gazed upon it. For him the chances and changes 
 of civil life could not but seem trivial things. Man — 
 at least so far as he is worthy of poetic illustration — 
 must remain for him, as in the patriarchal days, a 
 dweller in tents, one whose life was with God, with 
 Nature, and with those nearest ties in creating which 
 the mechanism of conventional society has no part. 
 For him not less Nature must be much more than a 
 mere gallery of landscapes. He must come to her as 
 to a prophetess,^ that he may incline his ear to her 
 monitions, not as to an artist that he may admire and 
 extol her skill. That such an enterprise of thought should 
 be undertaken and sustained in a cold and passionless 
 spirit is an allegation which, however often advanced, 
 is incredible. The most impassioned enthusiasm could 
 alone have suggested it, though one so habitual, and 
 so tempered by the " philosophic mind," as to remain 
 undisturbed by the sallies of shallow passion. Such 
 a theme must have proved too vast for the imagination 
 detached from the rest of man's faculties, and uttering 
 a poor falsetto note of its own. It could be grappled 
 with only by his whole being, in the union of all its 
 intellectual powers, moral energies, and imaginative 
 sympathies — a fusion and a blending which could itself 
 only be effected by passion in its clearest ardour. 
 
 ^ Principal Shairp, in his admirable essay on Wordsworth, has 
 well termed him the "Prophet of Nature." — See his Studies in 
 Poetry and Philosophy, 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 107 
 
 Passion was at the root of poetry in Wordsworth's 
 conception of it ; his definition of poetry is — " Poetry 
 is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge ; it is the 
 impassioned expression which is in the face of all science." 
 Coleridge also, in his noble and pathetic lines 
 addressed to Wordsworth, characterises his autobio- 
 graphical poem expressly as — , : 
 
 A song divine of high and passionate thoughts 
 To their own music chanted. 
 
 Scientific men assure us that there exists a latent 
 heat as well as a sensible heat. In all Wordsworth's 
 high poetry there lives passion, and it is often stronger 
 in its latent form than when most accumulated on the 
 surface. By the admirers of his poetry it is ever 
 felt at least, even if it be not consciously noted. Its 
 absence would be immediately perceived ; and its pre- 
 sence can, without much difficulty, be demonstrated. 
 The estimate of Wordsworth's poetry which I propose 
 to illustrate is this — viz. not only that its chief 
 characteristic is the power with which it simultaneously 
 exhibits human nature and material nature in their 
 mutual action and reaction, but also that in dealing 
 with this his favourite theme, Wordsworth's genius, so 
 far from being cold, an admission often made even by 
 his admirers, is habitually under the influence of 
 poetic passion in its rarest and highest forms. Words- 
 worth's poems are profound illustrations of the 
 " Humanities." We are introduced into no region of 
 moonlight fancies and dainty distresses. It is the 
 broad, rough life of man that confronts us, not the life 
 
io8 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 of the sentimentalist ; its trials are those which eome 
 through the universal affections, neither sensualised 
 on the oiie hand, nor sophisticated and volatilised on 
 the other; and their challenge reaches us through 
 no euphuistic dialect, but the volgare eloquenza of 
 natural speech. These are the trials which so many 
 poets pass by, sometimes because they have no 
 sympathy with such, but more often because they 
 lack those strong and various powers which can alone 
 delineate them. We have Ruth, the deserted bride — 
 
 Through dream and vision she did sink, 
 ., Delighted all the while to think 
 '^ ,. ^ - That on those lonesome floods 
 
 And green savannahs she should share 
 ..; .J His board'^ with lawful joy, and bear 
 
 His name in the wild woods. 
 
 The English maiden's forecastings were not exactly 
 
 those of a Juliet ; but only the very dull will conclude 
 
 them to have been less tender. We have the deserted 
 
 mother. 
 
 Ah! little doth the young one dream, 
 
 When full of play and childish cares, 
 What power is in his wildest scream 
 J Heard by his mother unawares ! 
 
 He knows it not, he cannot guess : 
 Years to a mother bring distress, 
 But do not make her love the less. 
 
 We have the "Complaint of a forsaken Indian 
 
 Woman"— 
 
 My child ! they gave thee to another, 
 A woman who was not thy mother. 
 
 ^ The italics are, with a few exceptions, my own throughout this 
 paper. 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION .OF WORDSWORTH 109 
 
 When from my arms my babe he took, 
 On me how strangely did he look ! 
 Through his whole body something ran ; 
 
 A most strange working did I see ; 
 As if he strove to be a man 
 
 That he might pull the sledge for me. 
 
 We have "The Brothers," the occult power of 
 which is searchingly detected by Sir Francis Doyle in 
 his Oxford Lectures on Poetry. He justly remarks 
 that this poem is "not only exquisite in itself, but 
 what is much rarer in Wordsworth, a masterpiece of 
 dramatic and tragic power," a statement which he 
 verifies by indicating the timid approximations by 
 which the sailor, on his return, after many years, to 
 the graves of his household, manages by slow degrees 
 to draw out from the friendly clergyman that informa- 
 tion about his brother which he fears to extort by a 
 direct question, and after receiving which he can face 
 his native vale no more. 
 
 To this class of Wordsworth's poems is to be re- 
 ferred the tale of Margaret, a poem never surpassed 
 for profound ruefulness, but told with a grave modera- 
 tion of language. A poor weaver and his wife have 
 lived together long in peace — 
 
 Oh sir, the good die first, 
 And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust 
 Bum to the socket. Many a passenger 
 Hath blessed poor Margaret for her gentle looks, 
 When she upheld the cool refreshment drawn 
 From that forsaken spring ; and no one came 
 But he was welcome ; no one went away 
 But that it seemed she loved him. ; ' : r. 
 
 Her character is thus described — --- :— - 
 
no GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTPI iii 
 
 She was a woman of a steady mind, 
 
 Tender and deep in her excess of love, 
 
 Not speaking much, pleased rather with the joy 
 
 Of her own thoughts ; by some especial care 
 
 Her temper had been framed as if to make 
 
 A being — who by adding love to peace 
 
 Might live on earth a life of happiness. 
 
 Bad seasons come ; and the strong man feels the 
 
 change more than his wife. 
 
 At his door he stood 
 And whistled many a snatch of merry tunes 
 That had no mirth in them ; or with his knife 
 Carved uncouth figures on the heads of sticks — ) 
 
 One while he would speak lightly of his babes, 
 
 And with a cruel tongue ; at other times 
 
 He tossed them with a false, unnatural joy ; 
 
 And 'twas a rueful thing to see the looks 
 
 Of the poor innocent children. " Every smile," 
 
 Said Margaret to me, here beneath these trees, 
 
 " Made my heart bleed." 
 
 The ruined man, without the knowledge of his wife, 
 
 enlists, and is sent to a remote land. She never sees 
 
 her husband again. Months go by — 
 
 But when I entered, Margaret looked at me 
 
 A little while ; then turned her head away 
 
 Speechless, — and sitting down upon a chair. 
 
 Wept bitterly. I wist not what to do. 
 
 Nor how to speak to her. Poor wretch ! At last 
 
 She rose from off her seat, and then, — O sir ! 
 
 I cannot tell how she pronounced my name : — 
 
 With fervent love, and with a face of grief 
 
 Unutterably helpless, and a look 
 
 That seemed to cling upon me, she enquired 
 
 If I had seen her husband. 
 
 Again months pass, and the narrator of the tale re- 
 visits the forsaken wife. She is not in her garden. 
 
in GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 From within 
 Her solitary infant cried aloud ; 
 Then, like a blast that dies away self-stilled, 
 The voice was silent. 
 
 At last she returns. 
 
 ' ' I have been travelling far and many days 
 About the fields I wander, knowing this 
 Only, that what I seek I cannot find ; 
 And so I waste my time : for I am changed ; 
 And to myself," said she, "have done much wrong, 
 And to this helpless infant. I have slept 
 Weeping, and weeping have I waked ; my tears 
 Have flowed as if my body were not such 
 As others are ; and I could never die. 
 But I am now in mind and in my heart 
 More easy ; and I hope," she said, "that God 
 Will give me patience to endure the things 
 Which I behold at home." . . . 
 
 It would have grieved 
 Your very soul to see her ; evermore 
 Her eyelids drooped, her eyes were downward cast ; 
 And when she at the table gave me food 
 She did not look at me. ... 
 
 Her infant babe 
 Had from its mother caught the trick of grief. 
 And sighed among its playthings. 
 
 The years go by 
 
 Until her house by frost and thaw and rain, 
 
 Was sapped ; and while she slept, the nightly damps 
 
 Did chill her breast ; and in the stormy day 
 
 Her tattered clothes were ruffled by the wind. 
 
 In sickness she remained ; and here she died 
 Last human tenant of these ruined walls. 
 
 "Wordsworth's poetry is great in thought, but 
 scant in passion," can surely not be said by persons 
 acquainted with such passages as these. Passion is 
 not appetite : it means profound and intense feel- 
 
112 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WOJR.DSWORTH in 
 
 ing, addressed, first to all that relates to the human 
 ties, and next to remoter objects, whether above or 
 around us, so far as they can be coloured by human 
 imagination and emotion. Genuine poetic passion, 
 when dealing with human themes, must show the 
 depth and preciousness, nay, it must imply the in- 
 finitude, which belong to all the divinely-created bonds 
 of earthly life, and should not exhaust itself, as is now 
 so disproportionately common, upon a single form of 
 love — that form the claims of which the readers of 
 verse require least to be reminded of " Love-Poetry " 
 has been said to be " poetry ready made." The great 
 classic poets were never thus absorbed by a single 
 theme. It is a sign rather of hard than of tender 
 natures if they can be touched by the most fiery 
 stimulants alone. That hardness may perhaps also 
 account for the "sensational" character of many 
 recent poems, written apparently in the belief that the 
 reader's heart, before it can feel, must have nails 
 driven into it. In Wordsworth's delineations of human 
 nature, and the trials which at once task it and purify 
 it, there is a pathos of a different kind. He never 
 goes out of his way to find some form of suffering 
 unheard of before ; but in his hands ordinary things 
 become extraordinary, because he sees in them, and 
 teaches his readers to see, depths and heights not 
 suspected. The affections he sings are not the mere 
 instincts of temperament brightened by a gleam of 
 fancy ; nor have they their root in caprice, self-will,^ or 
 self^loVe. They are those nobly-simple affections out 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 113 
 
 of which Nature has built up human society, and 
 which live in the light of duty. 
 
 In this poem there are no far-fetched thoughts, but 
 it is thoughtful throughout ; no emotional spasms, but 
 a profound pathos swelling in volume to the close. 
 The imagination which belongs to it is not that which 
 exhausts itself in glittering images, but that which 
 moulds the various elements of a poem into a unity, 
 and thus causes the impression which it leaves behind 
 to be a total and masterful impression. The diction 
 is in perfect accord with the poem. It never draws 
 our attention, as self-conscious and ostentatious art 
 does, from the matter to the manner. It is picturesque, 
 because the true poetic mind is observant as well as 
 reflective, not because it deems a thought worth 
 nothing unless when capped by a picture. Those who 
 delight exclusively in the more elaborate and luscious 
 diction of a later day may think it often inartistic ; 
 but its art consists in the skill with which the poet 
 enhances the refined and the elevated by making them 
 rise from the level of the simple. In his more important 
 poems Wordsworth's diction, like his metre, ever 
 advances in power and dignity proportionately to the 
 thought and emotion it has to sustain. He seems to 
 have included it in the judgment which he pronounced 
 upon poetry itself — 
 
 Which, if with truth it correspond, and sink 
 Or rise, as venerable Nature leads, 
 The high and tender Muses shall accept 
 With gracious smile deliberately pleased, 
 And listening Time reward with sacred praise. 
 VOL. I I 
 
114 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 In his first efforts Wordsworth was doubtless some- 
 what too much of a radical reformer as regards the 
 abuses which had long corrupted language. His 
 remarks on that subject seemed to assume that the 
 language of common life which he recommended for 
 poetical purposes differed little from that of good prose 
 writings, a statement to which there are many excep- 
 tions. He did not succeed in thus substituting the 
 language of common life for poetic diction; but he 
 did a much better thing. He dug deep into the ore 
 of manly thoughts, and finding there a corresponding 
 tongue, both new and true, he blew away the dry dust 
 of conventionalities and affectations, and replaced a 
 false poetic diction by a genuine one. 
 
 The " Solitary " is a husband deprived by death of 
 her who had been all to him; and, as might have 
 been expected, the earlier poem is the feminine, the 
 later is the masculine of distress. But in the earlier 
 the sufferer is blameless ; in the later, suifering is 
 aggravated by intellectual error and moral guilt ; and, 
 as a consequence, while the spirit of the former poem 
 is that of profound pathos, the latter is tragedy in its 
 most terrible form — that of remorse. 
 
 The " Solitary " has been in youth the chaplain 
 to a Highland regiment, but with little fitness for 
 the ministerial charge. Years of happiness have 
 been accorded to him ; but he has become the 
 widowed and childless tenant of a lonely hut beneath 
 the Langdale Pikes. His silent grief breaks out at 
 last in words — 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 115 
 
 Yoa never saw, your eyes did never look 
 
 On the bright form of her whom once I loved ; 
 
 Her silver voice was heard upon the earth, 
 
 A sound unknown to you ; else, honour'd friend, 
 
 Your heart had borne a pitiable share 
 
 Of what I suffer'd when I wept that loss, 
 
 And suffer now, not seldom from the thought 
 
 That I remember and can weep no more. 
 
 This fair bride, 
 In the devotedness of youthful love, 
 Preferring me to parents, and the choir 
 Of gay companions ; • • • 
 
 This bride, 
 Young, modest, meek, and beautiful, I led 
 To a low cottage in a sunny bay. 
 Where the salt sea innocuously breaks 
 And the sea-breeze as innocently breathes 
 On Devon's leafy shores. 
 
 Nothing seems wanting. Old revels and old 
 troubles have alike become to him as a dream. Two 
 children are added to the household hearth. 
 
 On these two pillars rested as in air 
 Our solitude. 
 
 But it is the calm before the storm — 
 
 O ! tremble ye to whom hath been assigned 
 
 A course of days composing happy months, 
 
 And they as happy years ; the piesent still 
 
 So like the past, and both so firm a pledge 
 
 Of a congenial future that the wheels 
 
 Of pleasure move without the aid of hope. 
 
 For mutability is Nature's bane ; 
 
 And slighted hope will be avenged ; and when 
 
 Ye need her favours ye shall find her not ; 
 
 But in her stead fear — doubt — and agony ! 
 
 In rapid succession the girl and the boy are 
 
ii6 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 snatched from them. The falling in of a roof-tree is 
 told as perhaps it was never told before. 
 
 Calm as a frozen lake when ruthless winds 
 
 Blow fiercely, agitating earth and sky, 
 
 The mother now remained ; as if in her 
 
 Who to the lowest region of the soul, 
 
 Had been erewhile unsettled and disturbed, 
 
 This second visitation had no power 
 
 To shake, but only to bind up and seal, 
 
 And to establish thankfulness of heart 
 
 In Heaven's determinations ever just. 
 
 The eminence on which her spirit stood 
 
 Mine was unable to attain. Immense 
 
 The space that severed us ! But as the sight 
 
 Communicates with heaven's etherial orbs 
 
 Incalculably distant, so I felt 
 
 That consolation may descend from far 
 
 (And that is intercourse and union too). 
 
 While, overcome with speechless gratitude. 
 
 And with a holier love inspired, I looked 
 
 On her — at once superior to my woes 
 
 And partner of my loss. O heavy change ! 
 
 Dimness o'er this clear luminary crept 
 
 Insensibly : th' immortal and divine 
 
 Yielded to mortal reflux ; her pure glory, 
 
 As from the pinnacle of worldly state 
 
 Wretched ambition drops astounded, fell 
 
 Into a gulf obscure of silent grief. 
 
 And keen heart-anguish — of itself ashamed. 
 
 Yet obstinately cherishing itself : 
 
 And, so consumed, she melted from my arms ; 
 
 And left me on the earth disconsolate. 
 
 The earlier season of bereavement inherits a past 
 which had only feigned to die. 
 
 I called on dreams and visions to disclose 
 
 That which is veiled from mortal thought ; conjured 
 
 Eternity, as men constrain a ghost 
 
 To appear and answer ; to the grave I spake 
 
 Imploringly ; looked up, and asked the heavens 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 117 
 
 If angels traversed their cerulean floors, 
 
 If fixed or wandering star could tidings yield 
 
 Of the departed spirit — what abode 
 
 It occupies — what consciousness retains 
 
 Of former loves and interests. Then my soul 
 
 Turn'd inward, to examine of what stuff 
 
 Time's fetters are composed ; and life was put 
 
 To inquisition long and profitless ! 
 
 By pain of heart now checked — a^id now inipeWd 
 
 The intellectual power, through words and things^ 
 
 Went sottfiding on a dim and perilous way ! 
 
 A worse bereavement follows. His religious faith, 
 
 never fixed, breaks away from him — no uncommon 
 
 consequence when the lessons of sorrow have been 
 
 spurned. The pageant of the French Revolution 
 
 bursts upon his night. He wakens out of the trance 
 
 of grief 
 
 As a shepherd by a flash 
 Of lightning startled in a gloomy cave. 
 
 In the destruction of creeds and of thrones he sees 
 the redemption of the world, and becomes a fanatical 
 propagandist of that insane hope which stands up alone 
 among the ruins of dead belief At the moment, the 
 loss of faith is felt not as a loss, but as a deliverance — 
 a circumstance easily explicable. His faith had in 
 reality been subverted at an earlier period. The mast 
 had long been trailing beside the ship ; and when it 
 was cut away the hulk righted. 
 
 Thus was I reconverted to the world ; 
 Society became my glittering bride, 
 And airy hopes my children. 
 
 The disenchantment followed soon : the predicted 
 " Triumph of Life " had changed into the old " Dance 
 
ii8 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 of Death " ; and despair but drives him to illustrate in 
 lawless life the wild principles he had preached in 
 reference to the political order — 
 
 And propagate by liberty of life 
 Those new persuasions. Not that I rejoiced 
 Or even found pleasure in such vagrant course 
 For its own sake ; but farthest from the walk 
 Which I had trod in happiness and peace, 
 Was most inviting to a troubled mind 
 That in a straggling and distemper'd world 
 Beheld a cherished image of itself 
 
 France having failed him, he flies to America. 
 
 But, ye powers 
 Of soul and sense — mysteriously allied, 
 O never let the wretched, if a choice 
 Be left him, trust the freight of his distress 
 To a long journey on the silent deep ! 
 For like a plague, will memory break out, 
 And, in the blank and solitude of things, 
 Upon his spirit, with a fever's strength, 
 Will conscience prey. Feebly must they have felt 
 Who, in old time, attired with snakes and whips 
 The vengeful furies. Beautiful regards 
 Were turned on me — the face of her I loved — 
 The wife and mother — pitifully fixing 
 Tender reproaches insupportable. 
 
 In the cabin of the ship there lay a Bible, but he 
 can now make nothing of it ; and in his hut among 
 the Cumberland mountains, the only book is a novel 
 of Voltaire's. In it he finds small help ; and in his 
 own meditations as little. 
 
 Ah ! what avails imagination high 
 
 Or question deep ? What profits all that earth, 
 
 Or heaven's blue vault, is suffer'd to put forth — 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 119 
 
 If neither in the one 
 Nor in the other region, nor in aught 
 That fancy, dreaming o'er the map of things, 
 Hath placed beyond these peneti-able bounds, 
 Words of assurance can be heard — if nowhere 
 A habitation for consummate good 
 Or for progressive virtue by the search 
 Can be attained, a better sanctuary 
 From doubt and sorrovir, than the senseless grave. 
 
 The issue of this spiritual strife the poet remanded 
 to the later portion of his great poem. It was never 
 written. Who, alas, shall 
 
 Call him up who left half-told 
 
 a story touching deeper interests than that of " Cam- 
 buscan old " ? What constitutes the profound interest 
 of this poem, and of " Margaret " ? It is the simple 
 power with which they sound the depth of the 
 humanities. The characters are absolutely true to 
 nature. The worst sorrows of the Solitary's life are 
 but his character itself externalised, that character 
 within which the incidents of his early life, when all 
 seemed bright and fair, were still working on un- 
 perceived. The characters that Wordsworth loves to 
 describe he knows with a Shakespearean insight, 
 though between his manner of illustrating them, and 
 Shakespeare's, there is that immeasurable diversity 
 which must ever exist between the dramatic method 
 and any other form of poetry. 
 
 My immediate theme is this — viz. that while many 
 of those who have praised Wordsworth, whether as a 
 philosophic or as a descriptive poet, have yet charged 
 him with an absence of passion, the truth is, that no 
 
I20 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH in 
 
 quality belongs to his poetry more eminently — if we 
 exclude from passion all that might more properly be 
 termed either sensuous instinct or sensational energy 
 of phrase, and if we regard passion rather as it exists 
 in its profounder form, and expresses itself with its 
 subtler strength, than as it is manifested in its coarser 
 and more ordinary appeals. In the poems quoted it 
 must be conceded that passion is found in a singularly 
 concentrated and manifold form — unless it can be 
 proved that moral passion is a thing impossible. 
 While analysing the Greek drama, which made the 
 delineation of passion its purpose to a degree which 
 the pleasure-loving Athenian would not have tolerated 
 outside the tragic theatre, Aristotle affirmed that the 
 end of Tragedy was to purify man's heart through 
 pity and terror. What has thus a moral end must be 
 itself moral in essence. It is remarkable that in many 
 of his poems Wordsworth is far more dramatic, and 
 therefore more impassioned, than in his youthful 
 drama The Borderers. It is in his " Margaret " that 
 our "pity" is most deeply moved, while in "The 
 Solitary" there is far more of the "terrible"; but in 
 both instances the passion delineated has the same 
 tendency — viz. to purify the heart while enlarging it, 
 not to cloud the understanding or to confuse the 
 moral principles. In both instances the trial carries 
 with it something soul-searching and divine. The 
 clowns of poetry delight to illustrate sorrow, of all 
 things the most sacred, after a fashion immoral and 
 seditious. Their aim is apparently to suggest that 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 121 
 
 the world is all wrong, and its Creator an evil Power 
 such as was imagined by the Manicheans. For the 
 sigh of sorrow they substitute an upbraiding wail, or a 
 shout of defiance which the Pagan Greek would have 
 regarded as profane. Even in his earlier poems 
 Wordsworth, on the contrary, illustrates a principle 
 affirmed in one of the latest among them, in which he 
 commends alone that poetry 
 
 Whose spirit, like the angel that went down 
 Into Bethesda's pool, with healing virtue 
 Informs the fountain in the human breast 
 That by the visitation was disturbed.^ 
 
 In his song, calamity, even when it does not advance 
 upon the tragic scene as a divine messenger, never 
 springs upon it like a wild beast or a demon. It 
 makes its approach in veiled majesty, bearing in one 
 hand the penance and in the other the peace. If the 
 modern mind associates passion chiefly with pleasure, 
 it is no wonder that it does not easily recognise that 
 passion which comes forward as a minister of virtue, 
 and does not shrink from pain. Wordsworth was the 
 more able thus to illustrate passion in its relations 
 with sorrow, because the general view which he takes 
 of human life is eminently a cheerful one — so cheerful, 
 indeed, that he can well afford to allow the shadow 
 to intermingle with the light. Throughout his poetry 
 man's heart, with its countless sympathies and 
 boundless capacities for pleasure and for pain is 
 represented (and this is one of the points of re- 
 
 ^ Lines suggested by a portrait by F. Stone. 
 
122 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 semblance between Wordsworth and Shakespeare) as 
 a thing so vast, and swelling with vital emotion so 
 strong, that whatever its trials, it can never be 
 crushed. It has nothing of that hard lightness which 
 belongs to the epicurean.^ Its sensibilities are, in- 
 deed, so fine that it must needs suffer much, but its 
 elasticity is greater, and therefore in its rebound it 
 must ever throw off suffering, and confess that all 
 things round us are " full of blessings." 
 
 Let us pass to passion in its milder form — pathos. 
 Pathos is a characteristic of nearly all Wordsworth's 
 memorable poems, but the tears which it brings to the 
 eyes are often tears of gladness strangely mingled 
 with regret — 
 
 The sighs which Matthew heaved were sighs 
 Of one tired out with fun and madness ; 
 
 The tears which came to Matthew's eyes 
 Were tears of light, the dew of gladness. 
 
 Yet ofttimes, when the secret cup 
 
 Of still and serious thought went round, 
 
 It seemed as if he drank it up — 
 He felt with spirit so profound. 
 
 The two poems on " Matthew " are admirable speci- 
 mens of Wordsworth's pathos in its most usual form — 
 
 ^ In his well-known essay on Wordsworth's Sonnets, Sir Henry 
 Taylor has pointed out the difference between that strength which 
 is included in the poetical temperament and that which is opposed 
 to it. "It is true that nothing can be more unpoetical than a 
 strong and vivacious spirit which is also hard and selfish ; and it 
 may be true that this is a common combination ; but it is the 
 a-^common combination of great susceptibility and tenderness, with 
 not less of strength and vivacity, which makes the truly poetical 
 temperament" (Sir Henry Taylor's Works, vol. v. C. Kegan 
 Paul, 1878). 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 123 
 
 In silence Matthew lay, and eyed 
 
 The spring beneath the tree ; 
 And thus the dear old man replied, 
 
 The grey-haired man of glee : 
 
 Down to the vale this water steers, 
 
 How merrily it goes ! 
 'Twill murmur on a thousand years, 
 
 And flow as now it flows. 
 
 And here, on this delightful day, 
 
 I cannot choose but think 
 How oft, a vigorous man, I lay 
 
 Beside this fountain's brink. 
 
 My eyes are dim with childish tears, 
 
 My heart is idly stirred, 
 For the same sound is in my ears 
 
 Which in those days I heard. 
 
 Thus fares it still in our decay : 
 
 And yet the wiser mind 
 Mourns less for what age takes away 
 
 Than what it leaves behind. 
 
 My days, my Friend, are almost gone. 
 
 My life has been approved, 
 And many love me ; but by none 
 
 Am I enough beloved. 
 
 To this category we may refer such poems as the 
 three on Yarrow, "The Solitary Reaper," "To the 
 Cuckoo," "Tintern Abbey," "Animal Tranquillity 
 and Decay," "A Farewell," "The Small Celandine," 
 the poems on the daisy, "A Poet's Epitaph," "Simon 
 Lee, etc." One of the most remarkable circumstances 
 connected with this class of poems is that so many of 
 them should have been written in youth. Genius is 
 said to retain youth in age ; but many of Wordsworth's 
 early poems make us think that his youth had often 
 
124 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 pleased itself by anticipating age, so frequently is the 
 strain characterised by retrospective thought and a 
 gentle pensiveness. A large proportion of these 
 poems were produced between his twenty-sixth and 
 thirtieth year. One of the most pathetic among 
 them, "The Old Cumberland Beggar," a very early 
 poem, is a striking specimen of this sympathy of 
 youth with age. 
 
 He sat, and ate his food in solitude : 
 And ever, scattered from his palsied hand, 
 That, still attempting to prevent the waste, 
 Was baffled still, the crumbs in little shovv^ers 
 Fell to the ground ; and the small mountain birds, 
 Not venturing yet to peck their destined meal, 
 Approached within the length of half his staff. 
 
 Then let him pass, a blessing on his head ! 
 And while in that vast solitude to which 
 The tide of things has borne him, he appears 
 To breathe and live but for himself alone, 
 Unblamed, uninjured, let him bear about 
 The good which the benignant law of Heaven 
 Has hung around him ; and, while life is his. 
 Still let him prompt the unlettered villagers 
 To tender offices, and pensive thought. 
 Then let him pass, a blessing on his head ! 
 
 Be his the natural silence of old age ! 
 Let him be free of mountain solitudes ; 
 And have around him, whether heard or not. 
 The pleasant melody of woodland birds. 
 Few are his pleasures ; if his eyes have now 
 Been doomed so long to settle on the earth 
 That not without some effort they behold 
 The countenance of the horizontal sun. 
 Rising or setting, let the light at least 
 Find a free entrance to their languid orbs. 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 125 
 
 And let him, ivhere and when he will, sit down 
 Beneath the trees, or by the grassy bank 
 Of highway side, and with the little birds 
 Share his chance -gathered meal, and, finally, 
 As in the eye of Nature he has lived. 
 So in the eye of Nature let him die ! 
 
 Before a poet can afford such sympathy as this 
 with all the lighter as well as heavier troubles of 
 humanity, he requires to possess not only a happy 
 temperament, but a strong one. The weak sympathise 
 but with the weak, and weaken them more by such 
 sympathy. There is, on the other hand, nothing that 
 more characterises Wordsworth's poetry than its venera- 
 tion for the manlier virtues. It bestows its sympathy 
 most upon those by whom self-pity is least known. 
 His favourite virtues are the severer ones ; and the 
 women as well as the men he delineates are not alone 
 remarkable for sincerity, justice, independence, and 
 endurance, but for such eminently English qualities as 
 industry and frugality. These are not showy qualities, 
 but they imply self-denial ; and Wordsworth's poetry 
 delights to graft the softer virtues on the hardier stock. 
 The Laureate tells us — 
 
 That bright, and fierce, and fickle is the south. 
 And dark, and true, and tender is the north. 
 
 Wordsworth's poetry is essentially that of the north, 
 with its clouded skies and tender atmospheric effects ; 
 and it reminds us that a softer leaf buds from the heart 
 of oaks than from the olive and the palm of lands which 
 "eternal summer gilds." What is it that makes the 
 pathos of " Michael," that rocky idyll of the northern 
 
126 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH in 
 
 hills ? Its robustness. We know nothing of the 
 shepherd till he is old — 
 
 An old man, stout of heart and strong of limb, 
 His bodily frame had been from youth to age 
 Of an unusual strength ; his mind was keen. 
 Intense, and frugal, apt for all affairs. 
 
 But that strong old heart has tenderness in it. For 
 many years that tenderness has been chiefly spent upon 
 the small patrimony which, during successive centuries 
 had descended to him from his brave and humble 
 forefathers, and which forty years of pious toil have at 
 last cleared from debt. Dearly has he loved those 
 hills and fields — 
 
 Which had impressed 
 So many incidents upon his mind. 
 Of hardship, skill or courage, joy or fear ; 
 Which, like a book, preserved the memory 
 Of the dumb animals whom he had saved. 
 Had fed or sheltered, linking to such acts 
 The certainty of honourable gain. 
 
 At last, and beyond hope, a child is born to him. 
 
 To Michael's heart 
 The son of his old age was yet more dear — 
 Less from instinctive tenderness, the same 
 Blind spirit which is in the blood of all — 
 Than that a child more than all other gifts, -7 
 Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts. 
 
 The old man and his son are inseparable companions 
 until the latter has reached his eighteenth year. Then 
 calamity falls upon the mountain home ; a kinsman 
 has failed in business, and Michael, who had gone 
 security for him, finds himself liable for the debt. 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 127 
 
 " Isabel," said he, 
 ' ' I have been toihng more than seventy years, 
 And in the open sunshine of God's love 
 Have we all lived ; yet if these fields of ours 
 Should pass into a stranger's hand, I think. 
 That I could not lie quiet in my grave." 
 
 The old man resolves, though not without misgivings 
 on his wife's part, to bind his son to a distant relative 
 engaged in business, hoping that, with the boy's earn- 
 ings added to his own, he may yet be able a second 
 time to free the farm from debt. First, however, he 
 takes his son to a spot where he had long since resolved 
 to build a sheepfold, and bids him before his departure 
 to lay a single stone of it — the corner-stone. The 
 youth does so, and departs. At first all goes well ; 
 but at last the town life leads to evil courses, and he 
 has to fly from his native land. 
 
 There is a comfort in the strength of love ; 
 'Twill make a thing endurable, which else 
 Would overset the brain, or break the heart : 
 
 Among the rocks 
 He went, and still looked up towards the sun, 
 And Kstened to the wind ; and, as before. 
 Performed all kinds of labour for his sheep, 
 And for the land, his small inheritance. 
 And to that hollow dell from time to time 
 Did he repair, to build the fold of which 
 His flock had need. 'Tis not forgotten yet 
 The pity which was then in every heart 
 For the old man ; and 'tis believed by all 
 That many and many a time he thither went, 5ia.y 
 And never lifted up a single stone. 
 
 No doubt there will always be readers to whom 
 poetry of this character means little ; and a statesman 
 
128 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 occupied with other matters may be excused if he is of 
 their number. In 1801 Wordsworth sent a presentation 
 copy of his Lyrical Ballads to Mr. Fox, stating that he 
 did so on account of two poems which they included — 
 viz. "The Brothers" and "Michael." His letter 
 expresses a deep regret for the " rapid decay of the 
 domestic affections among the lower orders of society, 
 even among the hardy mountaineers of the north," and 
 states various causes, social and political, which tended 
 to accelerate that decay. We count the eighteenth 
 century a cold and prosaic one ; notwithstanding, this 
 letter shows that many very sacred affections, of which 
 a memorial at least survives in Wordsworth's verse, 
 held their own during that period. In a short and 
 complimentary answer the statesman informs the poet 
 that he has read those two poems "with particular 
 attention," but does not find much in them, naming 
 at the same time four poems as his favourites, two of 
 which are " Harry Gill " and " The Idiot Boy." ^ 
 
 But of all Wordsworth's poems which illustrate the 
 union of the strong and the touching, the most 
 remarkable is, " The Leech-Gatherer," or "Resolution 
 and Independence." We meet in this poem a greater 
 and more plastic imagination than in any other belong- 
 ing to the same category ; while at the same time the 
 poet yet more strongly enforces the great truth that 
 there exists something higher than the highest imagina- 
 tion — viz. the heroic heart which perseveres in duty 
 to the last, no matter under what difficulties, and 
 
 1 Memoirs of William Wordsworth, by Dr. Wordsworth. 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 129 
 
 never suspects its own greatness. The moral comes 
 out with the greater power because it comes out 
 apparently without design. Two very different char- 
 acters are brought face to face in the most striking 
 contrast ; and the one of many gifts is not the one to 
 impart, but to receive, the lesson. The poem has 
 been conceived as a whole, and for that reason the 
 happiest harmony exists between its parts, and especi- 
 ally between the aspects of nature and the movements 
 of the human mind, as successively presented. It has 
 been a night of tempest ; but with the sunrise Nature 
 suddenly changes her mood ; the birds sing ; the air 
 is filled with the music of the flooded rivulets ; the 
 grass is bright with the last drops of the exhausted 
 tempest ; and the hare runs races on the wet moors, 
 pursued by the mist that rises from beneath her feet. 
 The poet catches the inspiration of the morning, and 
 soars into a kindred ecstasy ; but, inconstant as that 
 Nature of which he is the servant, his mood changes. 
 Exhausted by its own energies, his spirit drops from its 
 height into a gulf of blind perplexities. There falls 
 upon him a piercing thought — the contrast between 
 Nature's creatures, bird and beast, of whom she takes 
 care, and man, the being who "looks before and after"; 
 whose very greatness is an exacting power; who is 
 charged with the weight of his own destinies ; who has 
 duties as well as instincts, responsibilities no less than 
 thoughts ; who must sow if he would reap ; who must 
 discharge, not only high offices for others, but also the 
 humblest for himself; and who, until he has discharged 
 
 VOL. I K 
 
I30 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 them, has not earned the privilege of forgetting him- 
 self, because such forgetfulness must keep him in a posi- 
 tion of dependence on others, or of subjection to chance. 
 
 I thought of Chatterton ; the marvellous boy, 
 
 The sleepless soul that perished in his pride ; 
 
 Of him who walked in glory and in joy 
 
 Following his plough, along the mountain-side ; 
 
 By our own spirits we are deified ; — 
 
 We poets in our youth begin in gladness ; 
 
 But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness. 
 
 As the poet stands arrested in the cloud of heavy 
 thought, he sees, not far off, a man — 
 
 Beside a pool bare to the eye of Heaven 
 
 I saw a man before me unawares ; 
 
 The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs. 
 
 But he sees him as in a dream : his eye has long been 
 resting, first on visions of glory, and next on visions 
 of bale; and now, when an old man stands before 
 him — a living man — he seems to the poet as some- 
 thing seen "in Visions of the Lord." 
 
 As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie 
 Couched on the bald top of an eminence, 
 Wonder to all who do the same espy, 
 By what means it could thither come, and whence ; 
 So that it seems a thing endued with sense ; 
 Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf 
 Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself. 
 
 Such seemed this man, not all alive nor dead, 
 
 Nor all asleep in his extreme old age ; 
 
 His body was bent double, feet and head 
 
 Coming together in life's pilgrimage ; 
 
 As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage 
 
 Of sickness felt by him in times long past, 
 
 A more than human weight upon his frame had cast. 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 131 
 
 Himself he propped, his body, limbs, and face, 
 Upon a long grey staff of shaven wood ; 
 And, still as I drew near with gentle pace, 
 Upon the margin of that moorish flood 
 Motionless as a cloud the old man stood. 
 That heareth not the loud winds when they call. 
 And moveth all together if it move at all. 
 
 To the poet's question why in his extreme old age 
 he faces those lonely moors all alone, the old man 
 makes answer, " from a feeble chest," but courteously, 
 and with words each succeeding each "in solemn 
 order." His tale includes no demand for help. When 
 he became old and unfit for labour he had found 
 another way by which he could still provide "an 
 honest maintenance." He had become a gatherer of 
 leeches, and wandered on from pond to pond, from 
 moor to moor, to find them — housing where he might. 
 It was no chivalrous " Quest " — no martyr's sacrifice. 
 It was that humblest of manly duties which a man 
 owes to God after his life has long ceased to be of 
 value to himself or others; but it was discharged 
 without self-pity, and without fear. 
 
 The longer the poet listens the stranger seems to 
 him this mystery of power in the midst of decrepitude, 
 a power, so unlike his own ; and the more visionary 
 becomes the scene. 
 
 The old man still stood talking by my side, 
 
 But now his voice to me was like a stream 
 
 Scarce heard ; nor word from word could I divide ; 
 
 And the whole body of the man did seem 
 
 Like one whom I had met with in a dream ; 
 
 Or like a man from some far region sent 
 
 To give me human strength by apt admonishment. 
 
132 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH in 
 
 Yet strength it does not give him : he has long been 
 a dweller in the world of thought; and he has not 
 yet discerned that what stands before him is reahty. 
 
 My former thoughts returned ; the fear that kills ; 
 
 And hope that is unwilling to be fed ; 
 
 Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills ; 
 
 And mighty poets in their misery dead. 
 
 Perplexed, and longing to be comforted. 
 
 My question eagerly did I renew, 
 
 " How is it that you live, and what is it you do ?" 
 
 He with a smile did then his words repeat ; 
 
 And said that, gathering leeches, far and wide 
 
 He travelled ; stirring thus about his feet ■ 
 
 The waters of the pools where they abide, 
 
 " Once I could meet with them on every side ; 
 
 But they have dwindled long by slow decay ; 
 
 Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may." 
 
 While he was talking thus, the lonely place. 
 
 The old man's shape and speech, all troubled me ; 
 
 In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace 
 
 About the weary moors continually. 
 
 Wandering about alone and silently. 
 
 While I these thoughts within myself pursued, 
 
 He, having made a pause, the same discourse renewed. 
 
 And soon with this he other matter blended, 
 
 Cheerfully uttered, with demeanour kind. 
 
 But stately in the main ; and, when he ended, 
 
 I could have laughed myself to scorn to find 
 
 In that decrepit man so firm a mind. 
 
 " God," said I, " be my help and stay secure ; 
 
 I'll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor !" 
 
 It is only a very superficial reader who can see in 
 this poem nothing but natural description and a moral 
 purpose. The poem is passion also, and passion in 
 his highest form — the passion of the intellect and of 
 the spirit in their soarings and sinkings ; the passion 
 
in GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 133 
 
 of the imagination that moulds all the aspects of 
 nature, so as to be the mirror of its own varying 
 moods, now making to itself palpable monitors out 
 of her most casual aspects, now resolving her plainest 
 objects into dream that it may walk unembarrassed 
 through worlds as visionary as its own. It is the 
 fusing power of passion which imparts to this poem 
 its perfect harmony of colouring, and converts into a 
 spirit-moving reality that which, had its inner meanings 
 proceeded from the didactic intellect alone, must have 
 presented itself with all the coldness that belongs to 
 allegory. The language is throughout the language 
 of passion — not declamatory passion, but passion 
 steadied by its own weight; and in its Doric sim- 
 plicity, almost roughness, it suits the theme far better 
 than the polished diction of " Laodamia " or " Dion " 
 would have done. As these two poems represent 
 Wordsworth's poetry in its occasional classical vein, 
 and as his "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality" 
 exemplify it in its highest philosophical flights, so his 
 " Resolution and Independence " may be regarded as 
 the most powerful example of that earlier style char- 
 acterised by robustness, brooding meditation, and 
 truth at once to nature and to passion. Pre-eminently 
 also does it illustrate the fact which I began by 
 insisting on — viz. that the principal theme of Words- 
 worth's poetry is man, not so much social man as 
 personal man, and man as moulded by the great 
 influences of Nature, the foster-mother of his spirit. 
 Such was the character claimed for his poetry in the 
 
134 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 magnificent lines composed by Coleridge after his 
 
 brother-bard had finished the recitation of his poem 
 
 on the " Growth of an Individual Mind." 
 
 That prophetic lay, 
 Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright) 
 Of the foundations, and the building up 
 Of a Human Spirit, thou hast dared to tell 
 What may be told, to the understanding mind 
 Revealable. . . . 
 
 Of moments awful. 
 Now in thy inner life, and now abroad. 
 When power streamed from thee, and thy soul received 
 The light reflected, as a light bestowed. 
 
 It was the movements of nature in tempest and in 
 calm that had kindled alike the rapturous mood and 
 the despondent mood described in "Resolution and 
 Independence " ; and if the poet subsequently recog- 
 nised in the " decrepit " man before him, bent double 
 by age, a "stately" monitor "from some far region 
 sent," it was because he gazed on that feeble form 
 with that creative eye which he had ever bent upon 
 Nature, and because he had received from both alike 
 "the light reflected" of his own intelligence, as "a 
 light bestowed." 
 
 It is not without cause that I have insisted on the 
 passion of Wordsworth's poetry. It has been admired 
 for its wisdom, and doubtless it is wise ; for its purity, 
 and nothing can be more pure ; for its truthfulness to 
 Nature, and it is ever true to her ; but if it had pos- 
 sessed these merits alone and unmixed with passion, 
 it would have lacked what is essentially characteristic 
 of it. Remove from Wordsworth's meditative poetry 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 135 
 
 the element of passion — not the passion which ob- 
 scures and destroys, but that " unconsuming fire of 
 light" which kindles into a more radiant distinctness 
 all that it touches — and much of it would sink into 
 the merely didactic, that is to say, the prosaic. Doubt- 
 less, in the large mass of Wordsworth's meditative 
 poetry not a few passages are to be found which 
 scarcely claim to be poetical ; but these are palpably 
 distinct from the body of his philosophical poetry. 
 There is no great poet without his unpoetical passages. 
 Such passages in Wordsworth proceed from the cir- 
 cumstance that, though a great poet, he was not a 
 poet only ; he was a moral and political thinker also ; 
 and if a particular thought possessed in his estimate 
 a serious ethical value, he did not reject it merely 
 because it made little for his poetry. It was to him a 
 link in a chain of consecutive thought, or it held a 
 necessary, though not an exalted, place in some theme 
 which, while not unconnected with poetic truth, had 
 yet closer relations with the wellbeing of his country. 
 Nor is this all : Wordsworth more strongly than almost 
 any other poet insists upon the vital character of true 
 poetry ; but he knew also that no poetry can uniformly 
 maintain its highest level, and that to descend to a 
 lower is never so pardonable as when that descent is 
 made in order to bring forgotten truths into practical 
 apphcation. He wrote for the weal of man ; other- 
 wise he would not have written " as a true man who 
 long had served the Muse." 
 
 The essentially poetic character which belongs to 
 
136 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 Wordsworth's philosophical strain is by nothing more 
 shown than by the contrast in which it stands to his 
 exceptional passages of a merely didactic character. 
 In them he drops nearly to the level of writers such 
 as Cowper, who in their day did excellent service, both 
 literary and moral, but who were not great poets. It 
 is in reference to them only that one can accept the 
 allegation that Wordsworth has no " style." In them 
 the metre also becomes relaxed, or else becomes 
 monotonous from a singular reason — viz. because the 
 pauses are varied too frequently to produce the massive 
 effects of metrical variety. The ear is no more de- 
 lighted by the mere metrical contrast between line and 
 line than the eye is charmed by the alternations of 
 black and white squares on a chess-board. That 
 variety which carries with it a musical significance is 
 produced by the contrast between whole metrical 
 periods or paragraphs, each excellent, but different 
 one from another ; the stream of harmony now wind- 
 ing in long smooth curves, now circling in eddies, now 
 breaking in falls, but every portion wafting along it a 
 separate song. In Wordsworth's didactic passages, 
 and sometimes in others of a merely narrative character, 
 the diction suffers as much as the metre, now becoming 
 prosaic and now failing to be strong. Such passages 
 never substitute false attraction for real merit. They 
 at once indicate their lack of inspiration. The ad- 
 mission is one which truth requires ; but it is also one 
 which Wordsworth ,can afford. Aliquando dormitat. 
 It is in the case of the greatest poets that we most 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF]WORDSWORTH 137 
 
 vividly feel the difference between the inspired and 
 the uninspired portion of their work. In Wordsworth 
 we recognise the higher inspiration, no less in his 
 philosophical than in his most familiar verse. It is 
 marked by everything; by the more condensed and 
 weightier diction, never artificial, never pretentious, 
 but simple, expressive, and majestic; by the metre, 
 no longer vague or purposeless, but advancing with 
 "the certain step of man," or the musing step of the 
 great thinker ; and by that closer interpenetration of 
 thought, of emotion, and of imagination, which means 
 passion. 
 
 There are very various forms of poetic passion, and 
 its least obvious are sometimes its noblest. Of this 
 we find examples in such poems as "The Happy 
 Warrior," and " Lines left on a seat in a Yew Tree." 
 Thatpersonal -passion does not characterise these poems 
 is true; but that they rest upon an under-swelling 
 intellectual and imaginative passion, and thence derive 
 their power of exciting the reader's emotion, will be- 
 come apparent at once to every one who compares 
 them with those "moralising" passages of inferior 
 poets, which rather record convictions long since 
 attained, than embody thoughts quickened during the 
 ardour of composition. In this sense the " Ode to 
 Duty " is impassioned, and no less the " Ode against 
 Jacobinism," for such it might well be entitled, which 
 
 begins — 
 
 Who rises on the banks of Seine ? 
 
 These poems are doubtless chiefly characterised by 
 
138 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH in 
 
 their wisdom ; but they will seem unimpassioned only 
 to those for whom passion is a feeble thing with a small 
 range. When Milton defines poetry as that which 
 must be "simple, sensuous, and impassioned^^ it is 
 probably to this intellectual passion that he refers, as 
 contradistinguished from the self-possessed serenity 
 with which the intellect works in prose compositions, 
 rather than to passion as a vehement appeal to the 
 personal sympathies. Passion in the latter sense is 
 rarely to be found in his own poetry ; while passion in 
 the former sense eminently characterises the greater 
 part of Paradise Lost, and the nobler passages in 
 Paradise Regained. His sonnet on the " Piedmontese 
 Massacre " is the most impassioned of his minor poems, 
 far more so than either of those two personal poems, 
 the sonnet on his " Blindness," or that on his " De- 
 ceased Wife," yet its passion is wholly of a moral and 
 political order. Passion of the same order constitutes 
 the surpassing merit not only of many, but of most 
 of Wordsworth's "Sonnets dedicated to Liberty." To 
 have sustained such passion in its elevation through 
 a series of more than seventy sonnets — for to these 
 trumpet -peals we cannot apply his own line on 
 Milton's— 
 
 Soul-animating strains, alas too few — 
 
 required a genius ardent in an extraordinary degree. 
 In these poems its ardours derive their sustenance 
 exclusively from the aliment of ethical contemplation. 
 In the sonnet to Toussaint L'Ouverture, passion rises 
 into exultation — 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 139 
 
 Thou hast left behind 
 Powers that will work for thee ; air, earth, and skies : .;$, 
 There's not a breathing of the common wind 
 That will forget thee ; thou hast great allies ; 
 Thy friends are exultations, agonies, 
 And love, and man's unconquerable mind. 
 
 In " O friend, I know not which way I must look," 
 
 it sounds the depths of patriotic dejection — 
 
 Rapine, avarice, expense. 
 This is idolatry, and these we adore : 
 Plain living, and high thinking are no more : 
 The homely beauty of the good old cause 
 Is gone ; our peace, our fearful innocence, 
 And pure religion breathing household laws. 
 
 The same despondent note is breathed again in the 
 sonnet, " Milton ! thou shouldst be living at this 
 hour;" and in that deeply pathetic one, "When I 
 have borne in memory what hath tamed ;" while again 
 in those two sonnets, " It is not to be thought of that 
 the flood," and " Inland within a hollow vale I stood," 
 the soul of the patriot-poet, after its long vigil, is 
 again at peace — but a peace such as still makes report 
 of the passion which has bequeathed it. We can but 
 refer the reader to — " Is it a reed that's shaken by the 
 wind?" "Once she did hold the gorgeous East in 
 fee;" " Beloved vale, I said, when I shall con;" "I 
 grieved for Bonaparte;" "There is bondage worse, 
 far worse to bear;" "A Roman master stands on 
 Grecian ground," and the sequel to it; "Advance, 
 come forth from thy Tyrolean ground;" "Say, what 
 is honour?" "The power of armies is a visible thing." 
 All these poems belong to one single series of Words- 
 worth's sonnets, and each of them is weighty with 
 
140 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH in 
 
 passion in its diverse moods. Let two suffice as 
 specimens. In the first, passion is that wrath which 
 comes from a heart that bleeds to death. It was 
 suggested by one of Napoleon's proclamations, and is 
 called, "Indignation of a high-minded Spaniard." 
 
 We can endure that he should waste our lands, 
 
 Despoil our temples, — and by sword and flame 
 
 Return us to the dust from which we came ; 
 
 Such food a tyrant's appetite demands : 
 
 And we can brook the thought that by his hands 
 
 Spain may be overpowered, and be possess 
 
 For his delight, a solemn wilderness. 
 
 Where all the brave lie dead. But when of bands 
 
 Which he will break for us, he dares to speak, — 
 
 Of benefits, and of a future day 
 
 When our enlightened minds shall bless his sway, 
 
 Then the strained heart of fortitude proves weak : 
 
 Our groans, our blushes, our pale cheeks declare 
 
 That he has power to inflict what we lack strength to bear. 
 
 The second sonnet is passion suppressed; the 
 passion of a great thought taken up in stillness into a 
 great imagination. It is entitled, " Thought of a 
 Briton on the subjugation of Switzerland." 
 
 Two voices are there — one is of the sea. 
 
 One of the mountains — each a mighty voice ; 
 
 In both from age to age thou did'st rejoice. 
 
 They were thy chosen music, Liberty ! 
 
 There came a tyrant, and with holy glee 
 
 Thou fought'st against him ; but hast vainly striven ; 
 
 Thou from thine Alpine holds at length art driven, 
 
 Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee. 
 
 Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft : 
 
 Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left ; 
 
 For, high-soul'd maid, what sorrow would it be 
 
 That mountain floods should thunder as before, 
 
 And ocean bellow from his rocky shore, 
 
 And neither awful voice be heard by thee ! 
 
in GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 141 
 
 Passion must indeed burn strongly in the heart before 
 it can fling its glow thus high into the loftier regions 
 of the intelligence. That is the reason why such 
 poetry seems cold to readers whose narrower sym- 
 pathies can recognise passion only in its interjectional 
 form. Its ivhite heat is to them snow. Political 
 subjects have often suggested the most impassioned 
 poetry. Those who object to such themes, when 
 treated by great poets, are generally at the political 
 side opposed to that which the poet sustains. 
 
 In Wordsworth's " Miscellaneous Sonnets " passion 
 is less vehemently expressed than in this political 
 series ; but it is absent only in a few. Not many of 
 them are merely contemplative, or merely descriptive. 
 With elements drawn from meditation or observation, 
 they mingle another which rises from a source more 
 vital ; and this it is that brings them back unexpectedly 
 to the memory. Wordsworth's sonnets triumphed 
 early over that part of his theory of diction which, 
 though sound in the main, was incomplete. They 
 sprang from a more passionate impulse than the average 
 of his reflective poetry, and the condensation required 
 by their structural limits forced the passion that in- 
 spired them to mount more high. 
 
 "Why," it is asked, "if Wordsworth's poetry be 
 impassioned, does it so generally avoid those personal 
 subjects on which passionate writers chiefly enlarge?" 
 Before this question is answered, the allegation must 
 be reduced within the limits of accuracy. It is true 
 that the Wordsworthian passion, when most character- 
 
142 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 istic, deals with subjects on which other poets have 
 written ill because they have written coldly ; but it is 
 true also that not a few of his poems, while unquestion- 
 ably /^r^i?;^^/, are also amongst the most deeply, though 
 unostentatiously, passionate. One of these is called 
 'A Complaint"; but to whom it was addressed no 
 record has been left. 
 
 There is a change — and I am poor ; 
 Your love hath been, nor long ago, 
 A fountain at my fond heart's door, 
 Whose only business was to flow ; 
 And flow it did ; not taking heed 
 Of its own bounty, or my need. 
 
 What happy moments did I count ! 
 Bless'd was I then, all bliss above ! 
 Now, for this consecrated fount 
 Of murmuring, sparkling, living love. 
 What have I — shall I dare to tell ? 
 A comfortless and hidden well. 
 
 A well of love — it may be deep ; 
 
 I trust it is, — and never dry ; 
 
 What matter, if the water sleep 
 
 In silence and obscurity ? 
 
 Such change, and at the very door 
 
 Of my fond heart, hath made me poor. 
 
 This is a poem of friendship. It is sadder than a love 
 poem, written under similar circumstances, would 
 have been, and saddened the more by the absence of 
 exaggeration. 
 
 The "Elegiac Stanzas suggested by a picture of 
 Peele Castle" relate to Wordsworth's sailor brother, 
 who seems to have eminently possessed the true sailor 
 character — one that unites a heroic simplicity with 
 modesty, tenderness, and a refinement wholly without 
 
in GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 143 
 
 conventionality. For many years the poet's soul had 
 dwelt within a crystal sphere of imaginative thought ; 
 but at last the sword of reality had shattered it, and it 
 had fallen into fragments. 
 
 I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged pile ! 
 
 Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee : 
 I saw thee every day ; and all the while 
 
 Thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea. 
 
 So pure the sky, so quiet was the air ! 
 
 So like, so very like, was day to day ! 
 Whene'er I looked, thine image still was there ; 
 
 It trembled, but it never passed away. 
 
 He then records the shipwreck in which his brother 
 perished, and ends thus — 
 
 Farewell, farewell ; the heart that lives alone, 
 Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind ! 
 
 Such happiness, wherever it be known. 
 Is to be pitied ; for 'tis surely blind. 
 
 But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer, 
 And frequent sights of what is to be borne ! 
 
 Such sights, or worse, as are before me here — 
 Not without hope we suffer and we mourn. 
 
 The pathos of this poem is far deeper because the 
 sorrow is not that sorrow which, in its feebleness or 
 its spleen, rejects hope. 
 
 In the year 1803, during his Scotch tour, of which 
 so delightful a memorial survives in his sister's journal, 
 Wordsworth visited the grave of Burns. The great 
 poet of Scotland had been laid in that grave but seven 
 years before: the great poet of England, then but 
 thirty-three years of age, knew little of the fame that 
 awaited him also, but knew well how deep was the 
 
144 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 debt which his genius owed to the kindred genius of 
 the earlier, but less happy bard. Almost in sight of 
 that grave he composed two poems, and, in substance, 
 a third. Only the first, and far the least valuable of the 
 three, was published till forty years had gone by. All 
 three are, as if in homage, composed in one of Burns's 
 favourite metres. Few will read without emotion these 
 stanzas from the second — "At the Grave of Burns, 1803." 
 
 I shiver, spirit fierce and bold. 
 
 At thought of what I now behold : 
 
 As vapours breathed from dungeons cold 
 
 Strike pleasure dead, 
 So sadness comes from out the mould 
 
 Where Burns is laid. 
 
 And have I then thy bones so near, 
 And thou forbidden to appear ? 
 As if it were thyself that's here, 
 
 I shrink with pain ; 
 And both my wishes and my fear 
 
 Alike are vain. 
 
 Fresh as the flower whose modest worth 
 He sang, his genius "glinted" forth. 
 Rose like a star that touching earth, 
 
 For so it seems. 
 Doth glorify its humble birth 
 
 With matchless beams. 
 
 The piercing eye, the thoughtful brow. 
 
 The struggling heart, where be they now ? — 
 
 Full soon the aspirant of the plough. 
 
 The prompt, the brave, 
 Slept, with the obscurest, in the low 
 
 And silent grave. 
 
 Well might I mourn that he was gone 
 Whose light I hailed when first it shone, 
 When, breaking forth as nature's own. 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 145 
 
 It showed my youth 
 How verse may build a princely throne 
 
 On humble truth. 
 Alas ! where'er the current tends, 
 Regret pursues, and with it blends, — 
 Huge Criffel's hoary top ascends 
 
 By Skiddaw seen, — 
 Neighboicrs we were, mid loving friends 
 
 We might have been : 
 True friends though diversely inclined ; 
 But heart with heart and mind with mind, 
 Where the main fibres are entwined 
 
 Through nature's skill 
 May even by contraries be joined 
 
 More closely still. 
 
 The tear will start, and let it flow ; 
 Thou "poor inhabitant below," 
 At this dread moment — even so — 
 
 Might we together 
 Have sat and talked where gowans blow, 
 
 Or on wild heather. 
 
 What treasures would have then been placed 
 Within my reach ; of knowledge graced 
 By fancy what a rich repast ! 
 
 But why go on? — 
 O spare to sweep, thou mournful blast, 
 
 His grave grass -grown. 
 
 Sighing I turned away ; but ere 
 Night fell, I heard, or seemed to hear. 
 Music that sorrow comes not near, 
 
 A ritual hymn, 
 Chanted in love that casts out fear 
 
 By Seraphim. 
 
 Wordsworth read this poem to me when it was still 
 in manuscript. He continued : " If you peruse these 
 stanzas, you will find that whatever power is in them 
 proceeds largely from the circumstance that they 
 include few epithets. Several stanzas have none, as, 
 
 VOL. I L 
 
146 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 for instance, the last ; for the word ' ritual ' is rather a 
 
 substantive than an adjective." This condensation 
 
 was owing, no doubt, to "the seriousness of passion"; 
 
 for in his less impassioned poetry the epithets, though 
 
 always skilfully chosen, are sometimes redundant, the 
 
 contemplative character of the poet's genius disposing 
 
 him to regard the objects of his thought from all sides, 
 
 unlike that most concise of all writers, Dante, who 
 
 presents one side of them only — but the best. 
 
 But passion has its mellower as well as its sharper 
 
 strain. Those who have stood in that nook of the 
 
 Grasmere churchyard which is sanctified by the graves 
 
 of the Wordsworth household, will perhaps remember 
 
 that of Sarah Hutchinson, sister of Wordsworth's wife. 
 
 The inscription on it states that she rests beside the 
 
 graves of two children whom she had loved with a 
 
 great love. One of these was Wordsworth's daughter 
 
 Catharine, who died in 1812, when but three years 
 
 old. In memory of her was written many years later 
 
 the following sonnet — 
 
 Surprised by joy — impatient as the wind 
 
 I wished to share the transport — O with whom 
 
 But thee, long buried in the silent tomb ! 
 
 That spot which no vicissitude can find. 
 
 Love, faithful love, recall'd thee to my mind — 
 
 But how could I forget thee ? — Through what power, 
 
 Even for the least division of an hour, 
 
 Have I been so beguiled as to be blind 
 
 To my most grievous loss ? That thought's return 
 
 Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, 
 
 Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, 
 
 Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more ; 
 
 That neither present time, nor years unborn, 
 
 Could to my sight that heavenly face restore. 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 147 
 
 The sonnet which begins, 
 
 Even so foi- me a vision sanctified, 
 
 commemorates Sarah Hutchinson ; the " vision " being 
 the one recorded in another sonnet which had been a 
 favourite with her. It is as follows — 
 
 Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne 
 
 Which mists and vapours from mine eyes did shroud — 
 
 Nor view of who might sit thereon allowed ; 
 
 But all the steps and ground about were strewn 
 
 With sights the ruefullest that flesh and bone 
 
 Ever put on ; a miserable crowd, 
 
 Sick, hale, old, young, who cried before that cloud, 
 
 " Thou art our King, O Death ! to thee we groan." 
 
 I seemed to mount those steps ; the vapours gave 
 
 Smooth way ; and I beheld the face of one 
 
 Sleeping alone within a mossy cave, 
 
 With her face up to heaven ; that seemed to have 
 
 Pleasing remembrance of a thought foregone ; 
 
 A lovely beauty in a summer grave. 
 
 The same blending of sweetness with solemn pathos 
 characterises Wordsworth's last farewell to Sir Walter 
 Scott, on his departure from Abbotsford for Naples 
 in 1 83 1, a farewell written on the evening of the day 
 when to each of them the Yarrow had been " Yarrow 
 re-visited " — and to each for the last time. 
 
 A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain. 
 
 Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light 
 
 Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height ; 
 
 Spirits of Power, assembled there, complain 
 
 For kindred power departing from their sight : 
 
 While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain. 
 
 Saddens his voice again, and yet again. 
 
 Lift up your hearts, ye mourners ! for the might 
 
 Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes ; 
 
148 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue 
 
 Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows, 
 
 Follow this wondrous potentate. Be true, 
 
 Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea, 
 
 Wafting your charge to soft Parthenope ! 
 
 Many more sonnets of this character might be 
 
 indicated. One of these is that troubled, yet infinitely 
 
 tender one, belonging to the poet's Scotch tour in 
 
 1833, and beginning — 
 
 A point of life between my parents' dust. 
 And yours, my buried little ones, am I. 
 
 Another is the sonnet to the pine-tree on Monte 
 Mario, at Rome, which Wordsworth looked on with 
 such deep emotion from the Pincian Hill, on learning 
 that, when condemned to the axe, it had been pur- 
 chased by his friend. Sir George Beaumont, and thus 
 preserved. Still more touching are the two sonnets 
 addressed to the portrait of his wife painted by Miss 
 Gillies. They were written in 1838, when he was 
 sixty -eight years old, and may be regarded as his 
 farewell to poetry, so little did he write afterwards. 
 They witness that to the last his genius was not 
 separated from the love that had inspired it. In the 
 earlier sonnet he declared that the portrait had for 
 him no likeness, because the face he loved had for 
 him never lost its youth. The second is a deeper 
 strain. The tenderest illusion, it avers, is a wrong, 
 because the deepest love is that which has nothing to 
 fear from truth. 
 
 Though I beheld at first with blank surprise 
 This work, I now have gazed on it so long 
 I see its truth with unreluctant eyes ; 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 149 
 
 O my beloved ! I have done thee wrong, 
 Conscious of blessedness, but wrhence it sprung, 
 Ever too heedless, as I now perceive : 
 Morn into noon did pass, noon into eve, 
 And the old day was welcome as the young. 
 As welcome, and as beautiful — in sooth 
 More beautiful as being a thing more holy ; 
 Thanks to thy virtues, to the eternal youth 
 Of all thy goodness, never melancholy ; 
 To thy large heart, and humble mind, that cast 
 Into one vision, future, present, past. 
 
 Such was the evening tribute offered to one whose 
 morn he had celebrated in the Hnes "She was a 
 phantom of deUght," and to whose "all-golden after- 
 noon" he had addressed that homage of a solemn 
 experience, beginning — 
 
 O dearer far than life and light are dear ! 
 They are not love -poems, but they express notwith- 
 standing far more reality of emotion than is to be 
 found in half the sonnets of Petrarch, a remark 
 applicable no less to several love narratives in the 
 Excursion, and to the profoundly touching stanzas 
 beginning, " 'Tis said that some have died for love." 
 Still, however, the question is asked, "Why did not 
 Wordsworth write love-poems ? " The question should 
 rather be thus put, " Why did he who wrote such love- 
 poems write so few?" He has written love -poems. 
 The first is the one that begins — 
 
 Strange fits of passion I have known. 
 
 The second is — 
 
 I travelled among unknown men, 
 with its touching close, addressed to the land he had 
 left— 
 
150 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed 
 
 The bowers where Lucy played ; 
 And thine too is the last green field 
 
 That Lucy's eyes surveyed. 
 
 The third is that description of youthful maidenhood, 
 which can never be surpassed in its union of the 
 beautiful and the spiritual — 
 
 Three years she grew in sun and shower. 
 Then Nature said, "A- lovelier flower 
 
 On earth was never sown : 
 This child I to myself will take ; 
 She shall be mine, and I will make 
 
 A lady of my own, 
 
 " Myself will to my darling be 
 Both law and impulse ; and with me 
 
 The girl, in rock and plain, 
 In earth and Heaven, in glade and bower. 
 Shall feel an over-seeing power 
 
 To kindle or restrain. 
 
 " She shall be sportive as the fawn. 
 That, wild with glee, across the lawn 
 
 Or up the mountain springs ; 
 And hers shall be the breathing balm. 
 And hers the silence and the calm, 
 
 Of mute, insensate things. 
 
 " The floating clouds their state shall lend 
 To her ; for her the willow bend ; 
 
 Nor shall she fail to see 
 Even in the motions of the storm 
 Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 
 
 By silent sympathy. 
 
 ' ' The stars of midnight shall be dear 
 To her ; and she shall lean her ear 
 
 In many a secret place 
 Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 
 And beauty, born of murmuring sound, 
 
 Shall pass into her face. 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 151 
 
 " And vital feelings of delight 
 Shall rear her form to stately height, 
 
 Her virgin bosom swell ; 
 Such thoughts to Lucy I will give 
 While she and I together live 
 
 Here in this happy dell." 
 
 Thus Nature spake. The work was done — 
 How soon my Lucy's race was run ! 
 
 She died, and left to me 
 This heath, this calm and quiet scene ; 
 The memory of what has been 
 And never more will be. 
 
 The fourth is a retrospect — 
 
 She dwelt among the untrodden ways 
 
 Beside the springs of Dove, 
 A maid whom there were none to praise 
 
 And very few to love : 
 
 A violet by a mossy stone 
 
 Half-hidden from the eye ! 
 Fair as a star, when only one 
 
 Is shining in the sky. 
 
 She lived unknown, and few could know 
 
 When Lucy ceased to be ; 
 But she is in her grave, and O 
 
 The difference to me ! 
 
 The last is a dirge, which those who confound the 
 passionate with the exclamatory will do well to pass by, 
 but which to others will represent, in its stern brevity, 
 the tragic rising to the terrible — 
 
 A slumber did my spirit seal, 
 
 I had no human fears : 
 She seemed a thing that could not feel 
 
 The touch of earthly years. 
 
 No motion has she now, no force ; 
 
 She neither hears, nor sees, 
 Rolled round in earth's diurnal course 
 
 With rocks and stones and trees. 
 
152 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 That these poems are love -poems is certain : 
 whether they were founded on reality, the poet has 
 left unrecorded. 
 
 No one was less disposed than Wordsworth to 
 minister to that vulgar curiosity which in these days 
 respects no sanctuary. The egotism with which 
 his poetry has been charged was commonly of a 
 wholly different sort : the " Mind of Man " he speaks 
 of as 
 
 My haunt, and the main region of my song : 
 
 in studying human nature, his own breast was the 
 nearest mirror of humanity into which he could look ; 
 and it is a human,^ not an individual interest in himself 
 that is so frankly revealed in his philosophical verse. 
 He was confidential on subjects respecting which others 
 have nothing to confide ; but confidences such as those 
 in which some poets have been profuse would have 
 been against his instincts. 
 
 It may still, however, be asked why Wordsworth 
 left behind him so little love -poetry ; and to this 
 question the ordinary answer would be, Because his 
 genius was serene, not ardent. That reply is the 
 opposite of the truth. The question was once put 
 to him by myself, as it probably was by others ; and 
 
 ^ I am glad to find that in this remark I have been anticipated 
 by one of our most original critics. " There are two selfs in every 
 man — the private and the universal ; — the source of personal crotch- 
 ets, and the humanity that is our bond with our fellow-men and 
 gives us our influence over them. Half Wordsworth's weakness 
 springs from his egotistical self. . . . But all his power springs 
 from his universal self " (£ssajs, Theological and Literary, by 
 Richard Holt Hutton. Strahan and Co. ) 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 153 
 
 a part of his reply was this : " Had I been a writer 
 
 of love-poetry, it would have been natural to me to 
 
 write it with a degree of warmth which could hardly 
 
 have been approved by my principles, and which 
 
 might have been undesirable for the reader." To 
 
 the same question he makes an additional answer 
 
 in his stanzas, "The Poet and the caged Turtle 
 
 Dove"— 
 
 Love, blessed love, is everywhere 
 The spirit of my song. 
 
 These two replies taken together explain the mystery. 
 The whole of Wordsworth's nature was impassioned, 
 body and spirit, intellect and imagination; and for 
 that reason he could afford to spend its poetic passion 
 upon a vast range of themes. His genius was both 
 ardent and serene ; and he preferred those themes 
 which moved him without disquieting him. Those 
 who knew him well are aware that far beneath the 
 higher and serener firmament of his intelligence there 
 was a region of storm and cloud. In a moment the 
 clouds would disperse, and all was again a region of 
 brightness and serenity which seemed as if nothing 
 could ever trouble it. He would speak with passionate 
 grief of the death of a child, as if a bereavement forty 
 years past had befallen him the day before, detailing 
 the minutest circumstances of the illness ; and yet, if 
 the mood of poetic inspiration chanced to be strong 
 upon him, it might be impossible to draw his attention 
 to a matter of the most intimate concern. Occasion- 
 ally the same fervour would break out in the form of 
 
154 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 indignation or fiery scorn.^ These moods sometimes 
 lasted long, and were roused by subjects which move 
 others but for a moment. Thus, as we learn from the 
 "Prelude," before his youthful enthusiasm for the 
 French Revolution had suffered confutation from the 
 event, in the early part of the war he desired confusion 
 to the English arms and triumph to the French ; a 
 sentiment which he afterwards repented as a disloyalty 
 to his country. In some of these moods grief and 
 indignation were strangely blent, it may be because, 
 all the profounder instincts of his soul gravitating 
 towards peace, disturbance was a thing not only painful 
 to him, but a yoke which astonished him, and moved 
 his resentment. Under these circumstances, it is by 
 no means wonderful if his poetic mind preferred to 
 spend its energies upon themes not as the superficial 
 fancy remote from passion, but in connection with 
 which passion did not mean disquiet, and did not 
 bequeath distress. His range was large. Whether he 
 descended into the depths of man's heart, or gazed 
 around him upon the vast and ever-varying scenery of 
 the external world, every change of which carried with 
 it for him a separate physiognomic expression, or 
 mounted to the heights of philosophic meditation, he 
 moved through regions from which passion could never 
 be absent. It was that fire in his heart which gave 
 
 ^ I have before me a letter from Miss Fenwick, a most dear 
 friend of Wordsworth, describing him in his sixty -ninth year: 
 ' ' What strange worliings are there in his great mind ! How 
 fearfully strong are all his feelings and affections ! If his intellect 
 had been less powerful they must have destroyed him long ago." 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 155 
 
 light to his eyes, and made him discern in all things 
 that which the frigid could not see. But " the man 
 whose eyes were open" could see it. He regarded 
 the poet as the prophet and seer of nature, and deemed 
 it to be for man's advantage that, as such, he should 
 help men to discern a glory very near and yet sealed 
 to the many. Men of large natures instinctively 
 prefer to use their special faculties in the highest and 
 rarest region of it wherein they can move, rather than 
 in precincts more frequented. 
 
 Before leaving this subject it may be well to remark 
 that the charge so often brought against Wordsworth 
 is an ungrateful one. If he wrote few love-poems, 
 properly so called, he wrote many poems which give 
 the best praise to love by giving the most charming 
 pictures of the lovely and the lovable. He has left 
 us many descriptions which will prove the well-spring 
 of much love-poetry in future times. Thus, in his 
 " Three Cottage Girls," we have the Italian maid — 
 
 Such (but, O lavish Nature ! why 
 
 That dark, unfathomable eye, 
 
 Where lurks a spirit that repHes 
 
 To stillest mood of softest skies, 
 
 Yet hints at peace to be o'erthrown, 
 
 Another's first, and then her own ?) 
 
 Such, haply, yon Italian maid, 
 
 Our Lady's laggard votaress. 
 
 Halting beneath the chestnut's shade 
 
 To accomphsh there her loveliness : 
 
 Nice aid maternal fingers lend ; 
 
 A sister serves with slacker hand ; 
 
 Then, glittering like a star, she joins the festal band. 
 
 A very different picture is the next — that of 
 
IS6 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 The Helvetian girl — who daily braves 
 In her light skiff, the tossing waves, 
 And quits the bosom of the deep 
 Only to climb the rugged steep ! 
 
 Her beauty dazzles the thick wood ; 
 
 Her courage animates the flood : 
 
 Her step the elastic green-sward meets 
 
 Returning unreluctant sweets ; 
 
 The mountains (as ye heard) rejoice 
 
 Aloud, saluted by her voice ! 
 
 Blithe paragon of Alpine grace, 
 
 Be as thou art — for through thy veins 
 
 The blood of heroes runs its race ! 
 
 And nobly wilt thou brook the chains 
 
 That for the virtuous Life prepares ; 
 
 The fetters which the matron wears ; 
 
 The patriot mother's weight of anxious cares ! 
 
 If to such fair ideals of beauty, one with virtue, we 
 add those of the " Highland Girl," and her Enghsh 
 sister — 
 
 A being breathing thoughtful breath, 
 A traveller betwixt life and death ; 
 The reason firm, the temperate will 
 Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill ; 
 A perfect woman, nobly plann'd 
 To warn, to comfort, and command, 
 And yet a spirit still, and bright 
 With something of an angel light ; 
 
 and close with the three enchanting English maidens 
 of " The Triad," few will deny that Wordsworth did 
 his duty to love-poetry. He gave the premiss, and 
 trusted the human heart to draw the conclusion. 
 
 I began by the statement that Man, as acted on 
 by Nature, constituted Wordsworth's twofold theme. 
 In dealing with Nature, not less than in dealing with 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 157 
 
 Man, Wordsworth's higher poetry never leaves passion 
 behind it. In truth, it could not have done so. There 
 is no other poet who has so often asserted the dignity 
 of generous passion, and affirmed that the true inspira- 
 tion comes from the heart — 
 
 O 'tis the heay-t that magnifies this life, 
 Making a truth and beauty of her own. 
 
 No one has more zealously insisted that, when working 
 in isolation, the intellect does nothing of moral worth. 
 Especially he makes this assertion as regards poetry — 
 
 If thought and love desert us, from that day 
 Let us break off all commerce with the Muse, 
 
 and of no poetry more than that which deals with 
 external nature, as understood — 
 
 By the discerning intellect of man, 
 When wedded to this goodly universe, 
 In love and lioly passion. 
 
 According to him, the intellect is itself eminently cap- 
 able of passion, and without passion is incapable of 
 taking in the real significance of Nature, much more 
 of revealing it. Further, he affirms that one of the 
 primary functions of Nature is, through her thrilling 
 beauty and subtle power, to create or elicit that 
 passionateness, not of the body but of the soul, without 
 which we can never understand the grandeur of that 
 palace which is our dwelling-place. 
 
 Wisdom and spirit of the universe ! 
 Thou soul, that art the eternity of thought ; 
 And giv'st to forms and images a breath 
 And everlasting motion ! not in vain. 
 
158 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH ni 
 
 By day or starlight, thus from my first dawn 
 Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me 
 The passions that build up our human soul ; 
 Not with the mean and vulgar works of man, — 
 But with high objects, with enduring things, 
 With life and nature ; purifying thus 
 The elements of feeling and of thought. 
 And sanctifying by such discipline 
 Both pain and fear, — until we recognize 
 A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. ^ 
 
 According to the operation of the mind itself the 
 
 influence of Nature's beauty may be that of the Venus 
 
 Urania, or of her earthher namesake. By Ruth's false 
 
 lover Nature's charm had been early felt ; but it had 
 
 been that of the syren — 
 
 The wind, the tempest roaring high, 
 
 The tumult of the tropic sky 
 
 Might well be dangerous food 
 
 For him, a youth to whom was given 
 
 So much of earth — so much of Heaven, 
 
 And such impetuous blood. 
 
 Nor less to feed voluptuous thought 
 The beauteous forms of nature wrought. 
 Fair trees and lovely flowers ; 
 The breezes their own languor lent ; 
 The stars had feelings, which they sent 
 Into those gorgeous bowers. 
 
 How different are the influences of Nature on man's 
 spirit as set forth in the bulk of Wordsworth's, as 
 compared with Byron's descriptive poetry ! 
 
 In some instances those influences on the sensitive 
 being of man are represented as exerting themselves 
 almost without the aid of his reflective faculties. Thus 
 in " Tintern Abbey " we read — 
 
 1 The Prelude. 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 159 
 
 Like a roe 
 I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides 
 Of the deep rivers and the lonely streams, 
 Wherever nature led ; more like a man 
 Flying from something that he dreads, than one 
 Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then 
 (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, 
 And their glad, animal movements all gone by) 
 To me was all in all. I cannot paint 
 What then 1 was. The sounding cataract. 
 Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock, 
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood. 
 Their colours, and their forms, were then to me 
 An appetite, a feeling, and a love 
 That had no need of a remoter charm, 
 By thought supplied, or any interest 
 Unborrowed from the eye. 
 
 Far otherwise, though with not less of passion, does 
 Nature affect the more contemplative part of man's 
 
 being — 
 
 I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 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.^ 
 
 According to Wordsworth's doctrine, this marvel- 
 lous power of Nature over man is not a power inherent 
 in her alone, but comes also from the human mind 
 itself. Her aspects are things half perceived by man 
 and half created — 
 
 Or by the power of a peculiar eye 
 
 Or by predominence of thought oppressed. 
 
 1 The Prelude. 
 
i6o GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 The Intellect, he affirms, has been wonderfully fitted 
 to the external world, and that external world not less 
 wonderfully to the Intellect, in such sort that the 
 \'ision of beauty and glory which surrounds us is not 
 less than a creation perpetually called into existence 
 by their mysterious commerce. No wonder then that 
 it exists only to the impassioned imagination, without 
 which it could be no more to us than the lines of the 
 prism are to the colour-blind. Nature first evokes 
 the creative faculty, previously latent in the human 
 mind, and then becomes subject to it. To find an 
 example of this reciprocal action and reaction repeated 
 till of the merely material scene beheld little remains 
 except its essential characteristics, intensified by be- 
 coming abstracted from all accidental details, we need 
 seek no further than "Wordsworth's description of the 
 Borrowdale yew-trees — 
 
 But worthier still of note 
 Are those fraternal four of Borrowdale, 
 Joined in one solemn and capacious grove ; 
 Huge trunks ! and each particular trunk a growth 
 Of intertwisted fibres serpentine 
 Upcoiling and inveterately convolved, — 
 Not uninformed with phantasy, and looks 
 That threaten the profane ; a pillared shade, 
 Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue 
 By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged 
 Perennially — beneath whose sable roof 
 Of boughs, as \i for festal purpose decked 
 With tinrejoicing berries, ghostly shapes 
 May meet at noontide. Fear and trembling hope, 
 Silence and foresight — Death the skeleton 
 And Time the shadow, — there to celebrate. 
 As in a natural temple scattered o'er 
 With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, 
 
in GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH i6i 
 
 United worship ; or in mute repose 
 To lie, and listen to the mountain flood 
 Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves. 
 
 To see Nature thus, it may be said, is to see the 
 invisible. The remark would, however, apply in some 
 measure to Art as well as to Nature. " Look at the 
 ruins of that monastery ! " I have heard an ardent 
 lover of Gothic architecture exclaim. " Whence is its 
 strange and satisfying harmony ? Its pointed gables 
 stand in such happy proportion to each other, the 
 lower to the higher, and all to the tower that rises 
 above them, that the eye unconsciously runs along 
 them, and connects them by the lines of an invisible 
 masonry ! It is the fabric unseen that gives its grace 
 to the fabric your eye rests upon." In thus borrowing 
 from the unseen, as in all her strivings, Art but imi- 
 tates Nature. 
 
 Wordsworth's poetry includes no other descriptive 
 passage in which the ideal truth passes so far beyond 
 the mere literal truth of fact. The "sable roof" of 
 those yew-trees is not really sable ; but it is so dark 
 that to the imagination it becomes a funeral pall. 
 The red "unrejoicing berries" do not deck it, and are 
 not there for "festal purpose"; but they would be 
 festal elsewhere, as are the berries of the Christmas 
 hollies, though here by contrast their brightness but 
 enhances the gloom which it cannot dissipate. No 
 ghostly guests kneel among the mossy altar-stones or 
 lie and listen to the far-oif mountain floods ; but were 
 such dread visitants permitted to the earth they could 
 
 VOL. I M 
 
i62 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH in 
 
 not choose a more fitting precinct, or be shadowed 
 forth in outhnes more spectral yet more strong. The 
 reader, hke the poet, leaves behind him the actual 
 scene, to follow and grope after its meanings. He is 
 like one who among the images evoked by some 
 potent strain of music, forgets the music itself. 
 
 In dealing with Nature thus daringly Wordsworth 
 but obeyed the instincts which had moulded his being, 
 from its earliest development, now with delight, and 
 now with awe. Such moods are recorded in the first 
 book of the " Prelude." Before they had invested him 
 with power they had visited him with fear. Here is 
 a specimen of the darker visitation. One summer 
 evening in boyhood he had leaped into a boat, and, 
 with a light heart, rowed in a direct course away from 
 the cliff, on the summit of which his eye was fixed — 
 
 When from behind that craggy steep, till then 
 The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge. 
 As if with voluntary power instinct, 
 Upreared its head. I struck, and strack again, 
 And, growing still in stature, the grim shape 
 Towered up between me and the stars, and still, 
 For so it seemed, with purpose of its own, 
 And measured motion like a living thing, 
 Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned, 
 And through the silent water stole my way 
 Back to the covert. 
 
 Many days, my brain 
 Worked with a dim and undetermined sense 
 Of unknown modes of being ; o'er my thoughts 
 There hung a darkness, call it solitude. 
 Of blank desertion. No familiar shapes 
 Remained, no pleasant images of trees, 
 Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields ; 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 163 
 
 But huge and mighty forms, that do not live 
 Like living men, moved slowly through the mind 
 By day, and were a trouble to my dreams. 
 
 Yet he who felt this panic — a word derived, it will 
 be remembered, from Pan, that god of lonely places, 
 who to the Greek symbolised infinity — was a man of 
 peculiar robustness, physical and moral ! For the 
 northern races awe was "a pleasing fear," and the 
 infinite ever remained a background to the ceaseless 
 warfare between their mountainous " Frost-giants " 
 and the Valhalla gods who reigned in the higher skies. 
 That imaginative instinct which, when blended with 
 immemorial traditions, produced mythologies in the 
 olden day, produces in modern times that poetry 
 which has most about it of deep and sincere impulse 
 —the poetry of the Bard, not of the " man of letters." 
 The two passages extracted above would by themselves 
 suffice to show that Wordsworth was a true son of the 
 north, and that, had he lived a few thousand years 
 earlier, he would have sung his hymns among the 
 Scandinavian pine-woods, not under the pillars of the 
 Parthenon. 
 
 Wordsworth's mode of dealing with Nature was 
 special to himself. Our poetic literature abounds in 
 natural description, which may generally, as regards 
 the poetry of the last two centuries, be referred to two 
 types. The first of these sets before us beautiful 
 objects, trees, fields, or flowers, not in harmonised 
 combination, but each by itself. A succession of 
 images may thus be exhibited, admirable from their 
 
i64 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH in 
 
 resemblance to Nature, but with nothing that power- 
 fully affects either the imagination or the sympathies, 
 nothing that illustrates Nature in her largeness, nothing 
 that does more than note the broideries on the hem 
 of her garment. A nobler species of description is to 
 be found in several poets of a later date, who possessed 
 a wider imagination and a deeper sense of beauty, as 
 well as a knowledge of the mode in which Nature has 
 been treated by the great painters. Some of these 
 poets have learned to understand Nature at least as 
 much in the galleries as in the fields ; and several 
 have made an ample return, supplying admirable 
 subjects for the Poussins and the Claudes of a future 
 day. To neither of these classes is Wordsworth 
 referable. In some few instances he depicts separate 
 and minute objects with vividness, but this is because 
 in those cases, as in the poem called " The Thorn," 
 such objects, either through harmony or through 
 contrast, sound the keynote of something more than 
 themselves, or because, as in some of his " Poems of 
 the Fancy," a caprice makes him for the moment 
 throw himself upon his lower faculties. More often 
 he presents, not, indeed, a landscape picture — very 
 few such are to be found in his descriptive poetry— 
 but a fragment of one, as splendid as those fragments 
 of rainbow light snatched up by driving mist, which 
 never make us wish for the perfect arch. But, in the 
 main, his method is wholly different : he paints neither 
 the detached feature nor the graduated landscape with 
 its harmonised distances, receding each behind each. 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 165 
 
 The poetry which does these things descends from her 
 highest dignity, and becomes the handmaid of a sister 
 art. He paints the scene, and the soul of that scene. 
 He passes by, as irrelevant, multitudes of objects 
 with which other poets, as, for instance, Scott, would 
 most ably, and from real love for Nature, have enriched 
 their pages. Such objects may with a rightful appeal 
 solicit the eye of Nature's wandering guest. But it 
 was not as a guest but as a thoughtful inmate that 
 Wordsworth fixed his regard on such scenes ; and 
 their brightest embellishments might to him be but 
 accidents, and almost impertinences, if they did not 
 help to express the meaning of each scene. He came 
 to Nature for her oracles, not for her ohiter dicta or 
 her charming babblings. 
 
 Examples of this habit might be cited almost at a 
 random reference to his works. In the well-known 
 poem, " I wandered lonely as a cloud," the description 
 includes but the margin of a bay and the long galaxy 
 of daffodils that " outdid the sparkling waves in glee " ; 
 and anything more of detail would have proved fatal 
 to that singleness of effect with which the general 
 character of the scene is set forth. The poet saw the 
 daffodils because he saw little else, and he saw them 
 in such sort that both for him and for his readers 
 thenceforth 
 
 They flash upon that inward eye 
 
 Which is the bliss of solitude. 
 
 Again in the lines entitled, " Stepping Westward " — 
 Long after sunset the poet and his sister are walking 
 
i66 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 on the shore of Loch Katrine. They are "in a 
 
 strange land, and far from home " — 
 
 The dewy ground was dark and cold ; 
 Behind, all gloomy to behold ; 
 
 but right in face is a sky whose sunset splendours 
 seem to widen into an infinity, and the wanderers are 
 irresistibly impelled to advance. Two women meet 
 them, and one greets them with the friendly salutation, 
 "What, you are stepping westward." 
 
 The voice was soft, and she who spake 
 Was walking by her native lake ; 
 The salutation had to me 
 The very sound of courtesy ; 
 Its power was felt ; and while my eye 
 Was fixed upon the glowing sky, 
 The echo of the voice enwrought 
 A human sweetness with the thought 
 Of travelling through the world that lay 
 Before me in my endless way. 
 
 Is this a landscape ? No ; it is a scene, but a 
 scene transfigured, the soul of the scene shining 
 through its body. There is enough dimly to suggest 
 the features of that scene, but only to suggest them — 
 a glory in front, a dewy gloom behind ; at one side a 
 still and gleaming lake, and all around a measureless 
 peace. Another poet would have told us what rocks 
 bordered the lake, what trees overhung it, and how 
 many mountain-ranges rose in the distance. That is, 
 he would have painted a landscape ; but Wordsworth 
 was contented with a single passage from Nature's 
 Liber Veritatis. When he is uninspired Wordsworth 
 is often prolix ; but in this poem, and hundreds like 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 167 
 
 it, the power lies in the brevity. Few poets know how 
 to be brief. It is in this inspired selectness, not in 
 an ostentatious close-packing, whether of thoughts or 
 of images, that true conciseness consists. It gives us 
 multum, not multa. In Wordsworth such conciseness 
 did not come from art, it was a necessity inherent in 
 his inspiration when that inspiration was on him 
 in might. Such is the conciseness of the lines — 
 
 The silence that is in the starry sky, 
 The sleep that is among the lonely hills, 
 
 In Wordsworth's pecuhar interpretation of Nature 
 (a better expression than delineation) the secret of 
 power is often to be found in a touch or two. Thus 
 we have the sonnet composed on Westminster Bridge 
 with its 
 
 The river glideth at its own sweet will ; 
 
 the one beginning, "Mark the concentred hazels," 
 with the lines — 
 
 And thou, grey stone, the pensive likeness keep 
 Of a dark chamber where the mighty sleep : 
 
 the nobly-written sonnet to Lady Beaumont, which 
 
 ends — 
 
 And these perennial bowers and murmuring pines 
 Be gracious as the music and the bloom. 
 And all the mighty ravishment of spring. 
 
 The charm of language often adds wonderfully to 
 the power of his descriptive passages, especially in 
 some among his later sonnets, such as those in his 
 Scotch tours of 1831 and 1833, beginning, "Say, ye 
 
i68 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH iii 
 
 far-travelled clouds, far-seeing hills" — "Though joy 
 attend thee, orient at the birth" — "There's not a 
 nook within this solemn pass " — " Greta, what fearful 
 hstening !" — "Broken in fortune, but in mind entire" 
 — "Hope smiled when your nativity was cast." The 
 same charm greatly enhances also the descriptive 
 passages, so finely blended with human pathos, in the 
 beginning and at the close of "The White Doe of 
 Rylstone." Such language is indeed "a transparent 
 diction which holds, as in a crystal shrine, a subtle 
 train of thought and feeling, that seems so intimately 
 united with the peculiar words in which it is uttered 
 as to be almost one with them." ^ Nature is never 
 more entirely nature, in Wordsworth's poetry, than 
 when she is associated with the humanities. It is not 
 an accommodation of the one theme to the other. 
 They belong to each other like two children that play 
 on the same cottage floor. An admirable critic has 
 remarked : " Seldom are the great landscape painters 
 powerful in expressing human passions and affections 
 on canvas, or even successful in the introduction of 
 human figures into their foregrounds ; whereas in the 
 poetic paintings of Mr. Wordsworth the landscape is 
 always subordinate to a higher interest."^ For 
 exquisite touches of Nature thus subordinated, we 
 may refer the reader to the early poem beginning, 
 "'Tis said that some have died for love;" to the 
 beginning of " The Highland Girl," and to the three 
 
 1 Sara Coleridge, Biographia Liferaria (1847), vol. iii. p. 181. 
 2 Ibid. 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 169 
 
 famous poems on "Yarrow." In some of these 
 poems the emotional part seems to create the 
 meditative, and the fruition of Nature to come less 
 through the sight than through sensation half 
 spiritualised — a sensation which, in its exhaustion, 
 exchanges pleasure for sadness — as, for instance, in 
 the two poems beginning, " It is the first mild day of 
 March," and "I heard a thousand blended notes." 
 Of a different character are the eminently Words- 
 worthian lines, "Who fancied what a pretty sight," 
 etc. In them Nature for once is regarded as an artist 
 — and yet as a Spirit too ; a " Spirit of Paradise " 
 fashioning her wonderful works for the culture of 
 man's best faculties and the solace of all his genial 
 moods. This is an eminently typical poem, for it 
 involves the Wordsworthian philosophy of Nature ; 
 but it is not an impassioned one. 
 
 There are innumerable poems in which the descrip- 
 tive vein rises into intellectual and imaginative passion. 
 Such are, among the sonnets on the Duddon, the 
 second, "Child of the clouds, remote from every 
 taint;" the twenty-first, "Whence that low voice? 
 A whisper from the heart ; " and the thirty-fourth, " I 
 thought of thee, my partner and my guide." Such, 
 again, are several passages in that grand ode, the 
 "Pass of Kirkstone," in the "Ode composed on an 
 evening of extraordinary splendour," and the lines in 
 blank verse addressed "To Lycoris." Not all of 
 Wordsworth's descriptive pOems are characterised by 
 passion. Among those eminent rather for loveliness 
 
I70 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH in 
 
 of thought and melody of diction may be noted the 
 "Ode to Lycoris" — the two autumnal poems begin- 
 ning "The sylvan slopes with corn -clad fields," and 
 "Departing summer hath assumed" — the two "May 
 Odes " — and the " Evening Voluntaries." The 
 contrast between these two classes of descriptive 
 poems is most instructive. But the descriptive poems, 
 which are at once the greatest and the most charac- 
 teristic of Wordsworth, are often nearly as replete with 
 passion as the most pathetic parts of his narrative or 
 elegiac poetry. 
 
 One more quotation : it is a passage from the 
 Excursion^ one full indeed of passion, but the passion 
 of which is of a nature not illustrated elsewhere by 
 Wordsworth. It is not human passion : it might 
 rather be called "elemental passion," expressing, as it 
 does, sympathies hardly less closely bound up with the 
 elements that sweep around us in storm or calm, than 
 they would be if the human soul were knit to the total 
 sphere of earth by bonds as sensitive as those which 
 attach it to its frail earthly tabernacle. 
 
 O ! what a joy it were, in vigorous health, 
 To have a body (this our vital frame 
 With shrinking sensibility endued, 
 And all the nice regards of flesh and blood), 
 And to the elements surrender it 
 As if it were a spirit ! How divine 
 The liberty for frail, for mortal man. 
 To roam at large among unpeopled glens 
 And mountainous retirements, only trod 
 By devious footsteps ; regions consecrate 
 To oldest time ! and, reckless of the storm 
 That keeps the raven quiet in her nest, 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 171 
 
 Be as a presence or a motion — one 
 
 Among the many there ; and, while the mists 
 
 Flying, and rainy vapours, call out shapes 
 
 And phantoms from the crags and solid earth 
 
 As fast as a musician scatters sounds 
 
 Out of an instrument ; and, while the streams 
 
 (As at a first creation and in haste 
 
 To exercise their untried faculties), 
 
 Descending from the region of the clouds 
 
 And starting from the hollows of the earth 
 
 More multitudinous every moment, rend 
 
 Their way before them, what a joy to roam 
 
 An equal among mightiest energies ; 
 
 And haply sometimes with articulate voice, 
 
 Amid the deafening tumult, scarcely heard 
 
 By him that utters it, exclaim aloud. 
 
 Be this continued so from day to day. 
 
 Nor let the dire commotion find an end. 
 
 Ruinous though it be, from month to month. 
 
 This is a passage which proves not only that natural 
 description may be impassioned, but that passion is 
 compatible with the most careful composition. The 
 lines quoted, vehemently agitated as they are, and 
 often suspended in their course, flow forward, notwith- 
 standing, within the limits of a single " period," and 
 yet are as easily followed as one of those long but 
 artistic sentences in old Hooker, or in Milton's prose 
 works, which never fail, however voluminous their 
 course, to disentangle their windings and carry the 
 reader with them out into full light. 
 
 There were some important analogies between 
 Wordsworth and Turner as regards the delineation of 
 Nature. The painter was unlike other painters, as the 
 poet was unlike other poets. Each was devoted to 
 Nature with an ardently intellectual passion; each 
 
172 GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH in 
 
 associated her largely with human interests ; each 
 discarded the conventional treatment of her; each 
 regarded himself as invested with a mission — that of 
 interpreting her. To each she was something more 
 than a mere material thing : it was the mind of Nature 
 that each illustrated rather than the mere body ; her 
 meanings and influences, not her physical details. 
 Each recognised in Nature a mystery, and set forth 
 that mystery with all its infinitudes of vastness and of 
 power. In both instances the nature delineated was in 
 part the nature created by a sympathetic imagination ; 
 and it is by the mind of Wordsworth and the mind of 
 Turner, in no small degree, that the student of each 
 stands confronted when contemplating a passage of 
 Nature as interpreted by the one or the other. In the 
 delineations of both, accordingly, while there is an 
 extraordinary fidelity to Nature, there is also an absence 
 of mere portraiture, as in the characters of Shakespeare, 
 which are individual and actual, but generic at the 
 same time. Masterly as is the truth with which 
 Turner sets forth the profounder characteristics of 
 Nature, many of them absolutely ignored till his time, 
 it has been remarked that he seldom even aims at 
 minute accuracy in his representation of a particular 
 scene. If it does not please him in its details, he 
 modifies them without hesitation and without conceal- 
 ment. He could not have done otherwise. A painter 
 must cover every part of his canvas, and therefore it is 
 only by such modification of details irrelevant or 
 unworthy that he remains true to the ideal. The 
 
Ill GENIUS AND PASSION OF WORDSWORTH 173 
 
 poet who paints in words enjoys an ampler freedom ; 
 and Wordsworth simply left out whatever would have 
 marred the spirit of the scene, while with touches of 
 truth and of power he intensified the rest. It is thus 
 that Nature herself idealises, as he has pointed out in 
 that remarkable sonnet beginning, "Hail, Twilight, 
 sovereign of one peaceful hour ! " As the daylight 
 dies, " day's mutable distinctions " die with it, but 
 only to reveal more vividly those larger features of the 
 scene which are beyond the power alike of the hours 
 and of the centuries — 
 
 Those mighty barriers, and the gulf between ; 
 The floods — the stars — a spectacle as old 
 As the beginning of the heavens and earth. 
 
IV 
 
 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF 
 WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 
 
 In early ages the term " sage " was the title of the 
 poet. Something of a prophetic ofifice was attributed 
 to him ; he was regarded not seldom as a revealer of 
 mysteries, and commonly as a teacher of wisdom ; nor 
 was it till after the national instinct had developed 
 itself strongly that he was expected to clothe the half- 
 forgotten legend in Epic or Tragic form. In the 
 course of ages poetry has preferred variety to elevation. 
 Our modern poets have applied their gifts to ends the 
 most unlike. Thus Shelley has been called by his 
 admirers the poet of liberty, Keats of beauty, Scott of 
 chivalry, Byron of impassioned and eloquent energy. 
 A poet who had written much before three out of those 
 four writers had been heard of was little read until 
 after they had passed away ; and it was probably well 
 for him that early fame did not sophisticate the purity 
 or lessen the freedom of his genius. By many thought- 
 ful persons Wordsworth is now regarded as the greatest 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 175 
 
 modem poet; yet if his admirers were called on to 
 name his most characteristic merit, the answer would 
 be very various. Some would call him the Poet of 
 Nature, and others the Poet of the Human Ties ; but 
 recent times have had many descriptive poets, and 
 many poets of the affections, while yet between them 
 and Wordsworth there is little resemblance. Nature 
 and the Humanities have, indeed, a very special place 
 in Wordsworth's poetry, which, but for what it drew 
 from those sources, could never have existed ; but he 
 has himself told us that his paramount aim was to be 
 a philosophic poet ; and Coleridge said of him early 
 that if he persevered in that aim he would not only 
 succeed, but be the greatest poet who had ever worn 
 the crown of philosophic verse. He persevered, and 
 he succeeded, though he did not leave behind him, 
 except in a fragmentary form, the great Philosophical 
 Poem of his earlier aspirations. He had found it 
 " more animating," to use his own expression, to em- 
 body much of what had been intended for that work 
 in the form of those numerous minor poems which he 
 regarded as constituting a whole, but the unity of 
 which is lost on the superficial. He sang, indeed, of 
 Nature and of the Humanities ; but, unlike Burns, 
 who sang them also, and whom he loved so well, he 
 was a man of high philosophic thought and high moral 
 purpose. Had he, like the merely didactic poets of 
 the last century, sought his philosophy chiefly from 
 books, he would no more have been a great philo- 
 sophic poet than Young or Akenside. These ac- 
 
176 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 complished writers produced instructive, not philo- 
 sophic poetry ; and by so doing they made it, notwith- 
 standing their merits, more difficult for men to beheve 
 in the possibiUty of philosophic poetry, that is, of 
 poetry embodying the highest poetic inspiration in a 
 form wholly genial, and as such contradistinguished 
 from that philosophic verse which but translates prose 
 thoughts into metrical form. Had he taken for illus- 
 tration the materialistic philosophy of Hartley or 
 Hobbes, no gifts of metre or of diction, nor even that 
 imagination which beautifies the lowest theme, could 
 have expiated the offence of thought without truth and 
 of sentiment without elevation. Happily for him, the 
 love which he bore to Nature and to Humanity had 
 ever been, not instinctive love only, but a reverential 
 love. These are not, indeed, the only teachers ; but 
 they are great teachers, and they are authentic teachers; 
 and his ear was ever open to the lowest whispers of 
 these Egerian counsellors. They pointed ever towards 
 a teaching higher than their own. 
 
 The wheel had gone round, and poetry, which had 
 been everything in turn, reappeared among the 
 Cumberland Mountains in one of its earliest forms, 
 that of " Divine Philosophy." I do not affirm that 
 the whole of that philosophy which poetry can legiti- 
 mately include in her wide domain was grappled with 
 by Wordsworth's poetry; and I gladly admit that, wholly 
 apart from its philosophy, that poetry has other and 
 extraordinary merits ; but it is certain that among its 
 merits is pre-eminently that of its Wisdom and its 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 177 
 
 Truth. That Truth is sometimes Truth actual and 
 sometimes Truth ideal, but it is always Truth ; and 
 that Wisdom is the wisdom which stands in contrast 
 with mere knowledge — the seasoned wisdom of a 
 complete intellect and of a well-balanced being ; the 
 wisdom which has no pride, no littleness, and no 
 contentiousness, and which is derived at once from 
 experience and from something greater, without which 
 moral experience could never have been formed. Our 
 present theme, then, is that special characteristic of 
 Wordsworth's poetry which may be termed its Wisdom 
 and Truth ; and I shall endeavour to illustrate those 
 qualities successively in connection with (I.) the moral 
 relations of man ; (II.) with their political relations ; 
 (III.) with poetry, art, science, and human progress ; 
 (IV.) with the exterior universe ; and (V.) with a few 
 of those problems which concern the origin and end 
 of man as a spiritual and immortal being. Words- 
 worth is not understood while he is classed among the 
 pastoral or idyllic poets, even if among these the chief 
 place be conceded to him. He is England's great 
 philosophic, as Shakespeare is her great dramatic, and 
 Milton her great epic, poet. In the old days of Greece, 
 besides the inspiration of Apollo, of the Muses, and 
 of Mercury, there was that of Pan. He represented 
 that principle of life diffused throughout the universe. 
 The woodland reed-pipe, besides those notes which 
 charmed the shepherds and the nymphs, had its 
 mystic strain. 
 
 I. To begin with the Moral Relations. The basis 
 
 VOL. I N 
 
178 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 of the Wordsworthian wisdom was laid in a profound 
 moral faith^ — a faith that man has a higher nature as 
 well as a lower, a mens 7nelior as well as a " faculty 
 judging according to sense." These two sections of 
 our twofold being are not by necessity at variance ; 
 they have much apparently in common ; yet one is 
 from above, and the other lies below, and it is for 
 man to elect whether he will live a spiritual life or 
 content himself with its mere animal counterpart. 
 The following short poem strikes the keynote of that 
 philosophy — 
 
 Yes, full surely 'twas the echo, 
 
 Solitary, clear, profound, 
 Answering to thee, shouting cuckoo ! 
 
 Giving to thee sound for sound. 
 
 Unsolicited reply 
 
 To a babbling wanderer sent ; 
 Like her ordinary cry. 
 
 Like — but oh how different ! 
 
 Hears not also mortal life ? 
 
 Hear not we, unthinking creatures. 
 Slaves of folly, love, or strife, 
 
 Voices of two different natures ? 
 
 Have not we, too ? — Yes, we have 
 Answers, and we know not whence ; 
 
 Echoes from beyond the grave. 
 Recognised intelligence ! 
 
 Such within ourselves we hear 
 
 Ofttimes, ours though sent from far ; 
 
 Listen, ponder, hold them dear ; 
 For of God — of God they are ! 
 
 But Wordsworth's moral wisdom never hovers long 
 in the region of allegory. It plants its feet on the 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 179 
 
 solid earth. In his magnificent " Ode to Duty " there 
 is, united with the same elevation of thought, a far 
 more definite and imperative tone. The strain is of 
 a maturer order, and the wisdom which comes by 
 experience is wedded to that of spiritual insight. It 
 affirms that between the lower and higher sections of 
 man's nature there commonly exists an antagonism, 
 and that the condition of man's life is a militant con- 
 dition. A few happier spirits may stand outside the 
 battle, and, led on by an inner law of unconscious 
 goodness, may, at least for an indefinite period, ad- 
 vance along a flower-strewn path of virtue : but even 
 these are insecure ; the path of virtue is, for the most 
 part, a rough and thorny path, and the children of 
 men can only find peace while they tread it in obedi- 
 ence to a Law challenging them from above. To find 
 true freedom they must subject themselves to a noble 
 bondage — 
 
 Stern daughter of the Voice of God ! 
 
 O Duty ! if that name thou love 
 Who art a light to guide, a rod 
 
 To check the erring, and reprove ; 
 Thou who art victory and law 
 When empty terrors overawe ; 
 From vain temptations dost set free ; 
 And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity ! 
 
 There are who ask not if thine eye 
 
 Be on them ; who, in love and truth, 
 Where no misgiving is, rely 
 
 Upon the genial sense of youth : 
 Glad hearts ! without reproach or blot ; 
 Who do thy work, and know it not ; 
 Long may the kindly impulse last, 
 But thou, if they should totter, teach them to stand fast ! 
 
i8o THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF ] 
 
 Serene will be our days and bright, 
 
 And happy will our nature be, 
 When love is an unerring light, 
 
 And joy its own security. 
 And they a blissful course may hold 
 Even now who, not unwisely bold, 
 Live in the spirit of this creed, 
 Yet find that other strength, according to their need. 
 
 I, loving freedom, and untried. 
 
 No sport of every random gust, 
 Yet being to myself a guide. 
 
 Too blindly have reposed my trust. 
 And oft when in my heart was heard 
 Thy timely mandate, I deferred 
 The task imposed, from day to day ; 
 But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may. 
 
 Through no disturbance of my soul. 
 Or strong compunction in me wrought, 
 
 I supplicate for thy control ; 
 But in the quietness of thought 
 
 Me this unchartered freedom tires, 
 
 I feel the weight of chance desires. 
 
 My hopes no more must change their name, 
 
 I long for a repose which ever is the same. 
 
 Stern lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
 The Godhead's most benignant grace, 
 
 Nor know we anything so fair 
 As is the smile upon thy face. 
 
 Flowers laugh before thee on their beds ; 
 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
 
 And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh 
 and strong. 
 
 To humbler functions, awful Power ! 
 
 I call thee ; I myself commend 
 Unto thy guidance from this hour ; 
 
 Oh ! let my weakness have an end. 
 Give unto me, made lowly wise. 
 The spirit of self-sacrifice ; 
 The confidence of reason give ; 
 And, in the light of truth, thy bondsman let me live ! 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY i8i 
 
 "He sang of the Commandments great and good" 
 —thus speaks a thoughtful poet, Isaak Williams, of 
 the Psalmist King. No uninspired poet has offered a 
 nobler tribute than this ode to those Commandments 
 which that Psalmist proclaimed to be "exceeding 
 broad"; not even that Greek poet who made his 
 Antigone reply to the tyrant : " This edict never issued 
 forth from Jove, not yet from that sceptred Justice 
 that holds sway among the Shades below." It is not 
 against law but unjust law, and the law that proceeds 
 from no authentic authority, that the spirit of Liberty 
 exalts itself. " When Thou hast set my heart at liberty," 
 then, and not till then, are the highways of Virtue 
 made straight. They are then beset no longer by 
 those innumerable alternatives which are the plague 
 of men who mistake a febrile wilfulness for a strong 
 will. In subjection to a righteous law is found man's 
 only freedom from a bondage to passions and caprices. 
 It is a common error to assume that liberty can never 
 exist where an unlimited choice does not exist. -^ If 
 this assumption were true there could be no freedom 
 of will among the angels; nay, even the Infinite 
 Goodness might then be said not to be free, since no 
 such alternative as that between the Good and the 
 Evil can ever affront His divine choice. The highest 
 liberty does not essentially consist in choice between 
 alternatives (else it would decay in proportion as 
 virtuous habits had given to the spirit an indisputed 
 
 1 This subject is well illustrated in a work by Donoso Cortes, 
 Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism. 
 
i82 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 victory over the sense), but in our doing willingly that 
 
 which we do, and not doing it either from a servile 
 
 compulsion, or from a mechanical necessity. The 
 
 distinction is all-important. Man must ever venerate 
 
 Liberty and aspire after it ; if, therefore, he mistakes 
 
 its essential nature, relatively to Law, he will account 
 
 every demand upon his obedience a degradation, 
 
 however necessary he may acknowledge it to be in 
 
 order to avoid anarchy; and, as a consequence, the 
 
 ennobling principle of loyalty must be banished at 
 
 once from all human relations, domestic, civil, political, 
 
 and religious — a loss simply fatal to the higher virtue. 
 
 The chief excellence of this poem, in its moral 
 
 bearings, consists in the absolute spontaneousness of 
 
 its " good confession " that Duty is the one thing that 
 
 gives dignity to life. The poet does not speak of the 
 
 excesses into which human nature falls when apart 
 
 from such a guide, but of " omissions " — 
 
 I deferred 
 The task imposed, from day to day. 
 
 It is in the " quietness of thought " that he repudiates 
 the " unchartered freedom " which tires, and demands 
 instead the liberating yoke of that subjection which is 
 at once "victory and law." He looks around him, 
 and from every side the same lesson is borne in upon 
 him. It is because they obey law that the flowers 
 return in their seasons and the stars revolve in their 
 courses; the law of Nature is to inanimate things 
 what Duty is to man. The peasant who had only 
 half learned his lesson in science might imagine that 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 183 
 
 the law of gravitation was but a burden that binds 
 
 man to the earth. The philosopher knows that amid 
 
 the boundless fields of the creation it is that which gives 
 
 to everything its proper place, its motion and its rest. 
 
 Close akin to the " Ode to Duty " is the " Happy 
 
 "Warrior." It illustrates by an example the principle 
 
 which the earlier poem affirms. It regards human life 
 
 as a militant condition — 
 
 Who is the happy Warrior ? Who is he 
 Whom every man in arms should wish to be ? 
 — It is the generous spirit, who, when brought 
 Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought 
 Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought : 
 Whose high endeavors are an inward light 
 That make the path before him ever bright ; 
 Who, with a natural instinct to discern 
 What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn ; 
 Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, 
 But makes his moral being his prime care ; 
 Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, 
 And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train ! 
 Turns his necessity to glorious gain ; 
 In face of these doth exercise a power 
 Which is our human nature's highest dower ; 
 Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves 
 Of their bad influence, and their good receives ; 
 
 — Who, if he rise to station of command. 
 Rises by open means ; and there will stand 
 On honorable terms, or else retire. 
 And in himself possess his own desire ; 
 Who comprehends his trust, and to the same 
 Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim ; 
 And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait 
 For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state ; 
 Whom they must follow ; on whose head must fall, 
 Like showers of manna, if they come at all ; 
 Whose powers shed round him in the common strife, 
 Or mild concerns of ordinary life. 
 
1 84 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 A constant influence, a peculiar grace ; 
 
 But who, if he be called upon to face 
 
 Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined 
 
 Great issues, good or bad for human kind, 
 
 Is happy as a lover ; and attired 
 
 With sudden brightness, like a man inspired ; 
 
 And through the heat of conflict keeps the law 
 
 In calmness made, arid sees what he foresaw ; 
 
 'Tis, finally, the man who, lifted high, 
 Conspicuous object in a nation's eye, 
 Or left unthought of in obscurity — 
 Who, with a toward or untoward lot, 
 Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not, 
 Plays, in the many games of life, that one 
 Where what he most doth value must be won ; 
 Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, 
 Nor thought of tender happiness betray ; 
 Who, not content that former worth stand fast, 
 Looks forward, persevering to the last. 
 From well to better, daily self-surpassed ; 
 Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth 
 For ever, and to noble deeds give birth, 
 Or he must go to dust without his fame, 
 And leave a dead, unprofitable name. 
 Finds comfort in himself and in his cause ; 
 And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws 
 His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause : 
 This is the happy Warrior ; this is he 
 Whom every man in arms should wish to be. 
 
 It is almost impossible to rate too high poetry such 
 
 as this. It reminds us of Milton's assertion that the 
 
 drama might serve, "besides the office of a pulpit," 
 
 to breed up a commonwealth in virtue and wisdom. 
 
 The Imagination is so often a corrupting influence 
 
 that to change it thus into a power ministering to Virtue, 
 
 by the presentation of a virtuous ideal of Humanity, 
 
 without for a moment diverting it from its proper 
 
 avocations, is no mean enterprise. It is in vain to 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 185 
 
 preach sound principles to those whose moral being 
 has been undermined by an essentially false ideal of 
 character. From a heart thus corrupted a mist ascends 
 which colours all things, and through which the white 
 light of reason cannot enter. 
 
 Wordsworth's ideal warrior has, despite some super- 
 ficial resemblance, little in common with the meaque 
 me virtute involvo of the pagan poet. His is a char- 
 acter founded on self-sacrifice, not self-assertion, one 
 therefore that presupposes that "liberty of spirit" 
 which can exist alone where, the service of self having 
 been annulled, room is made for a larger service. 
 Though it makes no direct reference to Revelation, it 
 is founded in the main on the great Christian Tradi- 
 tion. The happy Warrior has a heart full of that 
 human hope and love which belong but to the restored 
 Humanity; and he evinces a habit of moral faith 
 which, even if it could have existed antecedently to a 
 Divine Revelation, could hardly have failed to accept 
 it upon its earliest understood challenge. In many 
 of Wordsworth's later poems the Christianity which 
 here exists implicitly is explicitly affirmed. There is 
 notwithstanding a significant contrast between the 
 concluding expression — 
 
 And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws 
 His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause, 
 
 (although the lines need not mean more than the 
 " Well done, good and faithful servant" of the Gospel), 
 and the touching humility with which a poem pub- 
 lished many years later ends — 
 
i86 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 The best of what we do and are, 
 Just God, forgive ! 
 
 The same high moral wisdom characterises Words- 
 worth's chief poems, even when in other respects 
 most dissimilar. None of his poems are less like 
 each other than " Resolution and Independence " and 
 " Laodamia." The former belongs to the earlier 
 period of his poetry, the latter to one comparatively 
 late. The former is to a large degree descriptive ; it 
 is also psychological in character ; the latter treats a 
 classic theme with a classic majesty. But in each 
 case the strongest effect left behind on the reader 
 results from the challenge addressed to his moral 
 being by a wisdom which belongs, in the first of these 
 poems, to the region of the imagination, and which 
 in the latter is blended with a stately passion, a passion 
 restrained. Both poems abound in vivid imagery and 
 intense human interest ; both address themselves not 
 merely to our understanding but yet more to our sym- 
 pathies ; the lesson taught by the earlier one being 
 that, so long as action is possible, the severest calami- 
 ties should but develop our energies more and more ; 
 while the second tells us that, when the time for action 
 is irrevocably past, a something greater than all action 
 remains to us in absolute submission to the Divine 
 Will. "Resolution and Independence" is Words- 
 worth's most signal example of rough and massive 
 strength steadied by the weight of a brooding mind. 
 " Laodamia " proves that his genius might, had he 
 pleased, have embodied itself in forms the opposite 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 187 
 
 of those which he habitually chose for them, while 
 
 their spirit would still have remained the same. He 
 
 gave to this poem all the satisfying perfection of shape 
 
 and all the marmorean stateliness which belongs to 
 
 antiquity; but he breathed into it a soul which no 
 
 bard of old Greece could have imparted to it. There 
 
 are two very different modes of dealing with the 
 
 antique. The first is that of imitation. The second is 
 
 that which, w^hile appropriating, recreates and elevates 
 
 the classical. To the second class "Laodamia" 
 
 belongs. Many a recent failure proves that antique 
 
 form cannot be made to coalesce with the modern 
 
 spirit ; but it willingly subordinates itself, at the call 
 
 of a great master, to that Moral Truth which is 
 
 restricted to no age, and to that Spiritual Beauty a 
 
 gleam from which has fallen upon all ages of song. 
 
 Protesilaus brings back with him from the abode of 
 
 the Departed a loftier spirit than any pagan poet 
 
 attributed to the " Strengthless Heads." He makes 
 
 no lament either for the lost pride or pleasures of 
 
 man's life — 
 
 Earth destroys 
 These raptures duly — Erebus disdains : 
 Calm pleasures there abide — majestic pains. 
 
 Laodamia cannot believe that the husband restored 
 to her through the force of her intercession is indeed 
 to tarry with her but three hours' space — 
 
 The gods to us are merciful, and they 
 Yet further may relent ; for mightier far 
 
 Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway 
 Of magic, potent over sun and star, 
 
i88 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 Is love, though oft to agony distress'd, 
 
 And though his favorite seat be feeble woman's breast. 
 
 With Protesilaus human love remains, but its weak- 
 ness belongs to it no more. He had died for his 
 country, and all is w^ell — 
 
 Love was given, 
 Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end ; 
 For this the passion to excess was driven — 
 That self might be annulled, her bondage prove 
 The fetters of a dream, opposed to love. 
 
 He tells her 
 
 Of worlds whose course is equable and pure ; 
 
 No fears to beat away, no strife to heal ; 
 The past unsighed for, and the future sure : 
 
 Of all that is most beauteous, imaged there 
 In happier beauty ; more pellucid streams. 
 
 An ampler ether, a diviner air. 
 
 And fields invested with purpureal gleams. 
 
 It is in vain ; she cannot bring herself to consent to 
 
 the Divine Will, and she dies. She has to wear out 
 
 her penance time — 
 
 Apart from happy ghosts who gather flowers 
 Of blissful quiet 'mid unfading bowers. 
 
 It is an abject thing to say that the high spiritual 
 reason of this poem may be philosophy or religion, 
 but is not poetry ; such a remark doubtless applies to 
 many a poem which boasts of a moral "tagged on" 
 at the close, and to many a dissertation in verse, no 
 part of which has an inspiration. It does not apply 
 to those thoughts which are born of high imagination 
 in union with the spiritual reason. The objector 
 should remember that, as love-poetry, or patriotic poetry 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 189 
 
 only exists for one who can form the idea of affection 
 or of country, so philosophical poetry seeks no 
 response except from those who have some habitual 
 interest in philosophic thought. 
 
 II. Let us now pass on to the second part of our 
 theme — the Wisdom of Wordsworth's poetry when it 
 treats of man's political relations. In his political 
 opinions a great change took place after early youth ; 
 in his aims and aspirations, none. From first to last 
 he was a lover of Liberty, though till taught by experi- 
 ence he did not know how necessary for the interests 
 of Liberty it is to distinguish between Liberty and 
 License. The hberty of the individual, the purity 
 and the peace of the family, and the freedom of faith 
 have never been more ruthlessly sacrificed, or with 
 effects more fatal to morals as well as to happiness, than 
 by enthusiasts whose dream was the brotherhood of 
 man. The true meaning of Liberty has been stated 
 in two memorable lines ^ — 
 
 What, then, is Freedom ? Rightly understood, 
 A universal license — to be good. 
 
 Wordsworth, like Coleridge and Southey in their youth, 
 was among those who were caught by the promise of 
 the French Revolution (to which Walter Scott is said 
 to have owed his Tory principles) — a period of his 
 life commemorated in his " Prelude." Before long he 
 was undeceived by the excesses of those whose best 
 excuse would have been that they had loved liberty 
 "not wisely but too well." With him the delusion 
 
 1 Sonnet by Hartley Coleridge. 
 
igo THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 could not have been permanent. For him liberty 
 meant the greatness of man's personal being and the 
 dignity of household life ; and for these he could 
 have found no substitute in the triumphs of national 
 vanity achieved by a nation which had changed itself 
 into a conscript army, every soldier of which was a 
 willing and a decorated slave. Wordsworth was born 
 a patriot as well as a poet ; but his patriotism was of 
 the solid, not the airy, order, and he cared too much 
 for his country's honour and happiness to wish that 
 she should make an idol of vainglory. In that mag- 
 nificent series, his " Sonnets to Liberty," the highest 
 merit consists in the power with which they bring 
 home the great truth that Freedom and all other 
 political wellbeing rest on the basis of the moral law. 
 The first-written of them was the following — 
 
 I grieved for Bonaparte, with a vain 
 And an unthinking grief ! for who aspires 
 To genuine greatness but from just desires, 
 And knowledge such as he could never gain ? 
 'Tis not in battles that from youth we train 
 The governor who must be wise and good, 
 And temper with the sternness of the brain 
 Thoughts motherly and meek as womanhood. 
 Wisdom doth live with children round her knees : 
 Books, leisure, perfect freedom, and the talk 
 Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk 
 Of the mind's business : these are the degrees 
 By which true sway doth mount ; this is the stalk 
 True power doth grow on ; and her rights are these. 
 
 If it is not through the soldier of fortune that 
 Freedom is to be won, as little is secured by the 
 happiest material conditions — 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 191 
 
 Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood ; 
 
 And saw, while sea was calm and air was clear, 
 
 The coast of France — the coast of France how near ! 
 
 Drawn almost into frightful neighborhood. 
 
 I shrunk, for verily the barrier flood 
 
 Was like a lake, or river bright and fair, 
 
 A span of waters ; yet what power is there ! 
 
 What mightiness for evil and for good ! 
 
 Even so doth God protect us if we be 
 
 Virtuous and wise. Winds blow, and waters roll, 
 
 Strength to the brave, and Power, and Deity, 
 
 Yet in themselves are nothing ! One decree 
 
 Spake laws to them, and said that by the soul 
 
 Only the nations shall be great and free. 
 
 Here is a sonnet which asserts the immovable faith 
 with which true Freedom is ever beheved in by those to 
 whom it has come, not through novel theories or 
 passionate outbreaks in favour of pagan revivals, but 
 as an inheritance from a heroic past, and as the natural 
 reward of Christian virtue, self-respect, and self- 
 restraint — 
 
 It is not to be thought of that the flood 
 
 Of British freedom, which, to the open sea 
 
 Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity 
 
 Hath flowed, "with pomp of waters un withstood "— 
 
 Roused tho' it be full often to a mood 
 
 Which spurns the check of salutary bands, 
 
 That this most famous stream in bogs and sands 
 
 Should perish, and to evil and to good 
 
 Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung 
 
 Armory of the invincible knights of old : 
 
 We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
 
 That Shakspere spake — the faith and morals hold 
 
 Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung 
 
 Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold. 
 
 Freedom is beset, however, by other dangers besides 
 those which proceed from exaggeration and self-con- 
 
192 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 fidence. Hearts sapped by worldliness are as unfit for 
 it as those of whom Coleridge sang in his Palinode 
 
 The sensual and the dark rebel in vain, 
 Slaves by their own compulsion. 
 
 In this series of sonnets not a few are protests 
 against that exaggerated industrialism, and undue 
 respect for money, so essentially different from the 
 manly industry and frugality honoured in Wordsworth's 
 poetry, and illustrated by it in a degree very rare. 
 
 When I have borne in memory what hath tamed 
 
 Great nations, how ennobling thoughts depart 
 
 When men change swords for ledgers, and desert 
 
 The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed 
 
 I had, my country ! — am I to be blamed ? 
 
 But when I think of thee, and what thou art. 
 
 Verily, in the bottom of my heart, 
 
 Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed. 
 
 But dearly must we prize thee ; we who find 
 
 In thee a bulwark of the cause of men ; 
 
 And I by my affection was beguiled. 
 
 What wonder if a poet now and then, 
 
 Among the many movements of his mind. 
 
 Felt for thee as a lover or a child ? 
 
 Compare this maturer estimate of Liberty with Words- 
 worth's youthful aspirations thus illustrated by the 
 lines on the " French Revolution as it appeared to 
 enthusiasts at its commencement " — 
 
 Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, 
 
 But to be young was very heaven ! O times 
 
 In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways 
 
 Of custom, law, and statute, took at once 
 
 The attraction of a country in romance ! 
 
 When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights, 
 
 When most intent on making of herself 
 
 A prime enchantress. 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 193 
 
 The cause of this memorable change in Words- 
 worth's political convictions is set forth in one of his 
 most nobly conceived and nobly written odes, though 
 one comparatively little known. It is a denunciation 
 of Jacobinism, and begins thus — 
 
 Who rises on the banks of Seine, 
 
 And binds her temples with the civic wreath ? 
 
 What joy to read the promise of her mien ! 
 
 How sweet to rest her widespread wings beneath ! 
 
 The golden promise of the Revolution is first illus- 
 trated, and next the sudden change, swift as that of 
 the open palm into the closed fist, from universal 
 philanthropy into remorseless ambition — 
 
 Melt, Principalities, before her melt ! 
 
 Her love ye hailed — her wrath have felt. 
 
 But she through many a change of form hath gone, 
 
 And stands amidst you now, an armed creature, 
 
 Whose panoply is not a thing put on. 
 
 But the live scales of a portentous nature. 
 
 That, having wrought its way from birth to birth, 
 
 Stalks round — abhorred by Heaven, a terror to the earth ! 
 
 The two chief modes of Jacobin warfare, now active 
 aggression and now passive resistance, are next em- 
 blemed — 
 
 I marked the breathings of her dragon crest ; 
 
 My soul, a sorrowful interpreter, 
 
 In many a midnight vision bowed 
 
 Before the ominous aspect of her spear ; 
 
 Whether the mighty beam, in scorn upheld, 
 
 Threatened her foes — or, pompously at rest. 
 
 Seemed to bisect her orbed shield. 
 
 As stretches a blue bar of solid cloud 
 
 Across the setting sun and through the fiery west. 
 
 After a description of the woes inflicted on the world 
 
 VOL. I 
 
 o 
 
194 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 by this Portent, the poet affirms that a nation can find 
 
 security from such only when it discards that interior 
 
 weakness upon which Tyranny invariably establishes 
 
 its throne — 
 
 Weak spirits are there, who would ask. 
 Upon the pressure of a painful thing, 
 The lion's sinews or the eagle's wing, 
 Or let their wishes loose, in forest glade. 
 
 Among the lurking powers 
 
 Of herbs and lowly flowers, 
 Or seek, from Saints above, miraculous aid ; 
 That Man may be accomplished for a task 
 Which his own nature hath enjoined — and why ? 
 If, when that interference hath relieved him. 
 
 He must sink down to languish 
 In worse than former helplessness — and lie 
 
 Till the caves roar — and, imbecility 
 
 Again engendering anguish. 
 The same weak wish returns that had before deceived him. 
 
 But Thou, Supreme Disposer ! may'st not speed 
 The course of things, and change the creed 
 Which hath been held aloft before men's sight 
 Since the first framing of societies. 
 Whether, as bards have told in ancient song, 
 Built up by soft, seducing harmonies. 
 Or pressed together by the appetite 
 And by the power of wrong. 
 
 Wordsworth has been accused of having passed, 
 when his youthful political aspirations were confuted 
 by the event, into a vulgar form of conservatism. 
 The charge derives no sanction from this ode. The 
 reverence it expresses for just authority is founded on 
 the same philosophy which reverences lawful Liberty, 
 the only liberty that is permanent. The Liberty 
 which it denounces is the Liberty founded on crude 
 imaginations, and an entire ignorance of human 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 195 
 
 nature, not upon the conviction — a most true one — 
 that genuine hberty is the strenuous air which the 
 manUer virtues breathe, the necessary condition for 
 the responsible discharge of ethical duties, and the 
 best cure, next to religion, for social frivolity, idleness, 
 and littleness. 
 
 The depth of Wordsworth's devotion to true liberty 
 is shown by the large number of his best sonnets 
 devoted to the illustration of events which record her 
 history or vindicate her claims.-^ In them alone there 
 are a breadth and variety of thought seldom to be 
 found in the whole compass of a poet's works ; and 
 yet they are but a few of those in which the genius of 
 Wordsworth offered in mature life its tribute to Liberty. 
 To have mastered but a small part of the lessons they 
 affirm or imply is to be raised for ever above two 
 converse forms of error — the error which assumes 
 that, where the social advantages secured by order 
 exist, there political Liberty may be dispensed with ; 
 and the worse error which imagines that Liberty can 
 dispense with judgment and virtue, or with the Spiritual 
 
 ^ A few may usefully be named here : ' ' On the extinction of 
 the Venetian Repubhc, " "To Toussaint L'Ouverture," "O friend, 
 I know not which way I must look," ' ' Milton," "There is a bond- 
 age worse, far worse to bear, " " These times touch moneyed 
 worldlings with dismay, " " England ! the time is come when thou 
 shouldst wean," "Another year; another deadly blow," " On a 
 celebrated Event in ancient History," "To Clarkson," "To the 
 King of Sweden," "To Hofer," "To the Men of Kent," "The 
 Land we from our Fathers have in trust," " O'er the wide earth, 
 on mountain and on plain," "Look now on that adventurer," 
 ' ' Say, what is honour ? " "Is there a power, " " Yet, yet Biscayans, " 
 ' ' The power of armies is a visible thing," ' ' O'erweening statesmen 
 have full long rehed." 
 
196 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 Faith on which these are based, and itself continue to 
 exist. The Hberty Wordsworth sings in a strain at 
 once impassioned and profound is a liberty which 
 cannot forget its responsibilities, and cannot but exult 
 yet more in its duties than in its privileges. When a 
 nation has learned but to conceive such a liberty as 
 this, to possess it becomes one of her duties. Till 
 she has conceived it adequately she cannot possess it 
 long. 
 
 The political wisdom of Wordsworth's poetry is 
 not less strikingly shown in his " Dion." This poem 
 may be regarded as a companion poem to " Laodamia," 
 and, like that work, combines an antique majesty with 
 a profound moral pathos. In a few stanzas the sub- 
 stance of Plutarch's narrative is told — the princely 
 nobleness of Dion's character and of his intellect, the 
 highest, as Plato averred, which he had conversed 
 with in any one so young; the deliverance of his 
 native Syracuse from tyranny ; the rapture with which 
 the delivered received him ; the purity of the con- 
 queror's ambition, which valued neither royal power 
 nor popular applause, and sought its reward only in 
 the happiness of a free people, and the dignity of a 
 state built up on the sage principles of the great 
 Platonic Ideal studied by Dion when the "lunar 
 beam " of the great master's teaching 
 
 Fell round him in the grove of Academe. 
 Yet more briefly is told the strange reverse when, at 
 one unhappy moment following the counsels of others, 
 Dion 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 197 
 
 Had stained the robes of civil power with blood 
 Unjustly shed, though for the public good. 
 
 His triumph is no triumph to him, and amidst the 
 shouts of an applauding city the only voice which he 
 can hear is that of a Conscience that had slept for an 
 hour to forbid him rest for ever. That Conscience 
 takes visible shape, as the old Greek chronicler 
 records — 
 
 He hears an uncouth sound — 
 
 Anon his lifted eyes 
 Saw at a long-drawn galleiy's dusky bound 
 A Shape of more than mortal size 
 And hideous aspect stalking round and round ! 
 
 A woman's garb the phantom wore, 
 
 And fiercely swept the marble floor — 
 
 Like Auster whirling to and fro. 
 
 His force on Caspian foam to try, 
 
 Or Boreas when he scours the snow 
 
 That skins the plains of Thessaly, 
 Or when aloft on Msenalus he stops 
 
 His flight, 'mid eddying pine-tree tops ! 
 
 So, but from toil less sign of profit reaping, 
 The sullen Spectre to her purpose bowed. 
 
 Sweeping — vehemently sweeping — 
 No pause admitted, no design avowed ! 
 
 Ye gods ! though he, that servile instrument, 
 Obeys a mystical intent ! 
 Your minister would brush away 
 The spots that to my soul adhere ; 
 But should she labor night and day, 
 They will not, cannot disappear : 
 Whence angry perturbations, and that look 
 Which no philosophy can brook. 
 
 The end is tragedy half lost in its own majesty — 
 
 Shudder the walls ; the marble city wept ; 
 And sylvan places heave a pensive sigh ; 
 
THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF 
 
 But in calm peace the appointed Victim slept 
 
 As he had fallen in magnanimity : 
 Of spirit too capacious to require 
 
 That Destiny her course should change ; too just 
 To his own native justice to require 
 
 That wretched boon, days lengthened by mistrust. 
 
 Released from life and cares of princely state, 
 He left this moral grafted on his fate : 
 " Him only pleasure leads, and peace attends, 
 Him, only him, the shield of Jove defends. 
 Whose means are fair and spotless as his ends." 
 
 III. Let US turn to the Wordsworthian philosophy 
 in some of its relations with Poetry, Art, and Science. 
 Sternly as that philosophy recoils from the Epicurean, 
 it is never weary of converse with that Loveliness which 
 it discerns on all sides of us. We move through 
 worlds of enchantment from childhood to age, and it 
 is only the dulness of a sensualised nature which hides 
 from us their glory. 
 
 Beauty — a living presence of the earth 
 Surpassing the most fair ideal forms 
 Which craft of delicate spirits hath composed 
 From earth's materials — waits upon my steps. 
 Pitches her tent before me as I move 
 An hourly neighbor. 
 
 To sharpen the edge of those finer imaginative 
 sensibilities through which alone that beauty can be 
 discerned, and to promote their enlarged development 
 through a discipline the more benignant for being 
 severe — this, in Wordsworth's estimate, is the true 
 mission of Art. He denounces all Cynicism, and he 
 inculcates no Stoicism except that which hardens us 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 199 
 
 against things unworthy, that we may have a tenderer 
 appreciation of that beauty which, latently or visibly, 
 abounds in all things good. 
 
 We live by admiration, hope and love, 
 
 as he affirms ; and his inference is that 
 
 Even as these are well and wisely fixed 
 In dignity of being we ascend. 
 
 What has been said of Virtue he affirms no less both 
 of the Artist's and the Poet's genius — viz. that it is 
 sapped more often by excess in attachment to things 
 lawful than by the direct quest of the unlawful. Here, 
 as elsewhere, there is an analogy between Nature and 
 the Supernatural. As the early Christian anchorets 
 sought the desert, not that they might be solitary, but 
 that they might live more closely united with the 
 memories of Redemption ; so Wordsworth's poetry but 
 flies from the vulgar world, that it may bask the more 
 in the presence of the eternal beauty of Creation. 
 Much has to be renounced if the noblest is to be 
 attained. The best is always within a hand's-breadth 
 of us ; but our hand is too coarse to recognise the good 
 even when clasped by it. There are, according to 
 Wordsworth's teaching, two worlds the renunciation of 
 which is as profane as Esau's selling of his birthright 
 — viz. the golden sun-saturated world of the humani- 
 ties, and the silver, moon -clad world of the spiritual 
 imagination. Each of these worlds is infinite ; but we 
 can make little way into the former unless we rise 
 superior to sensual instincts ; and we cannot pass 
 
200 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 beyond the threshold of the latter unless we turn from 
 the pride of life. Scores of his sonnets embody this 
 philosophy, such as " The world is too much with us ; " 
 " Weak is the will of man, his judgment blind ; " " Grief, 
 thou hast lost an ever-ready friend ; " "If the whole 
 weight of what we think and feel ; " "It is a beauteous 
 evening, calm and free." To raise a man to the level 
 of his higher capacities through the aid of an 
 imagination which too often surrenders itself a vassal 
 to the senses, is, he maintains, the poet's calling — a 
 truth illustrated in such sonnets as "A volant tribe 
 of bards on earth are found ; " " High is our 
 calling, friend ; " " From the dark chambers of 
 dejection freed." There are not a few passages in 
 Wordsworth's poetry which illustrate his philosophy 
 in connection with the sister art of painting, such as 
 " Praised be the Art whose subtle power could stay." 
 He has left us another, less known and of a later 
 date, which contrasts painting and sculpture, and 
 points out why the former was the delight of Christian 
 ages, while the classic time found a deeper satisfaction 
 in sculpture. Fortitude, Self- Sacrifice, Purity, high 
 Aspiration, and a Sympathy profound, these he re- 
 garded as the Angels of all the Arts, not less than of 
 Poetry. Art was bound to keep a faithful vigil, and 
 so to illustrate this world as to make it the prophecy 
 of a higher one. It is in this sense that he demands — 
 
 Is not then the Art 
 Godlike, a humble branch of the divine 
 In visible quest of immortality, 
 Stretched forth with trembling hope ? 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 201 
 
 It is in this sense that he reminds a despondent Painter 
 
 that his art, Hke the Poet's, demands a heart, though 
 
 sensitive, yet " heroically fashioned " ; and in this sense 
 
 he tells us that while TranquilHty was " the sovereign 
 
 aim " of antique Sculpture, a loftier as well as a 
 
 tenderer mission had been confided to her " Rainbow 
 
 Sister " since the day when 
 
 He who wore 
 The crown of thorns around His bleeding brow 
 Warmed our sad being with His glorious light. 
 
 But, much as Wordsworth honoured Art, it was yet 
 more to Nature that he considered the allegiance of 
 Poetry to be due. No one had a loftier ideal than 
 he ; yet no one loved more that actual world, which is 
 
 The world of all of us, that world wherein 
 We have our happiness, or not at all, 
 
 and the self-exiled from which he regards as " housed 
 in a dream." No one was lifted higher by his 
 admiration of what is high; yet no one bent with 
 more reverence before Nature's greatness in its lowliest 
 forms. His own song might have been described in 
 his lines on the "Skylark." This poem, though it 
 does not occupy in Wordsworth's poetry that rank 
 which is held in Shelley's by his " Ode to a Skylark," 
 may be usefully compared with the latter. The 
 contrast illustrates the difference between the genius 
 of the two men. Shelley's exquisite and characteristic 
 poem was greatly admired by the older poet, though 
 for the most part he considered that Shelley's works 
 were too remote from the humanities. He objected. 
 
202 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 on the same ground, to the theme of Coleridge's 
 " Ancient Mariner," while he asserted notwithstanding 
 that Coleridge's genius, aided by his unrivalled 
 metrical faculty, ought to have rendered him the 
 greatest poet of modern times. In poetic capability, 
 though not in performance, he ranked him with those 
 great ancient poets of Wisdom and Truth who 
 prophesied to their age and were unsubdued by 
 adversity or neglect ; — the poets whom he thus 
 addressed — 
 
 Hail, bards of mightier grasp ! On you 
 I chiefly call, the chosen Few, 
 Who cast not off the acknowledged guide, 
 Who faltered not, nor turned aside ; 
 Whose lofty genius could survive 
 Privation, under sorrow thrive ; 
 In whom the fiery Muse revered 
 The symbol of a snow-white beard 
 Bedewed with meditative tears 
 Dropped from the lenient cloud of years. 
 
 In Shelley's ode no stanza is more often remembered 
 
 than the one which begins — 
 
 We look before and after, 
 And pine for what is not. 
 
 The last of these two lines is in striking oppugnancy 
 to Wordsworth's poetry, in which there is never a 
 repining note ; while yet there is no poet who blends 
 so often with the present the thought of the future 
 and the past. The poem placed first among his 
 works strikes the keynote of them all — 
 
 My heart leaps up when I behold 
 A rainbow in the sky : 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 203 
 
 So was it when my life began ; , , 
 
 So is it now I am a man : 
 
 So be it when I shall grow old, 
 
 Or let me die. 
 The child is father of the man : 
 And I could wish my days to be 
 Bomid each to each by natural piety. 
 
 Two lines in his "Phantom of Dehgl)t," 
 
 A countenance in which did meet 
 Sweet records, promises as sweet, 
 
 describe the countenance of his own poetry. There 
 exists an opposite sort of beauty, the excellence of 
 which is that it seems to have no relations with time 
 — such is that of a child's face in which we note but 
 an untroubled, radiant, all -enjoying present; and 
 such, to a large extent, is the beauty of Greek poetry, 
 which represents the inspired childhood of man's race, 
 the "Juventas Mundi," the Wisdom of which is 
 instinctive or intuitive. It is the Wisdom of a world 
 mature that is represented in Wordsworth's strain, of 
 a world that has learned much from the things that it 
 has suffered, but not learned to despond ; the Wisdom 
 which has a touch of age in its youthful prime, but 
 which retains its youthfulness in age. Chaucer wrote 
 Hke a youth when his head was white, and Words- 
 worth like a sage when he was a youth. For the 
 former the hawthorn bloomed till November ; for the 
 latter the April groves were touched with October 
 gold. 
 
 The dates of Wordsworth's poems illustrate this 
 special characteristic of them. His " Tintern Abbey " 
 
204 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 is one of his finest poems, and its mood is a retro- 
 spective mood. He recalls that time when Nature 
 was all in all to him, and compares it with the present, 
 when 
 
 All its aching joys are now no more, 
 And all its dizzy raptures, 
 
 though in compensation for such loss he has learned 
 
 to hear at all times 
 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 
 Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
 
 To chasten and subdue. 
 
 Who would not have said, "This is a poem of 
 advanced life ? " It was written when he was twenty- 
 eight. To a period almost as early belong a large 
 proportion of Wordsworth's poems characterised by a 
 pensive thoughtfulness.-^ The solemn warning with 
 which " Lines left in a Yew-Tree " conclude might 
 well seem to be the voice of age. It too was com- 
 posed before the poet was twenty - eight. "The 
 Brothers" ranks in the first class of Wordsworth's 
 meditative poems. It is the most dramatic of his 
 works — far more so than his drama, " The Borderers " 
 —and it is from a long experience of life that one 
 
 1 To quote them would be impossible here, but the reader may 
 be referred to "Remembrance of Collins," set. nineteen; "The 
 Female Vagrant," ast. twenty-five to twenty-eight ; "The Sparrow's 
 Nest," set. thirty-two; "Yarrow Unvisited," set. thirty - three ; 
 " Stepping Westward," set. thirty-three; "The Tables Turned," 
 " Expostulation and Reply," and " Lines written in early Spring," 
 set. twenty-eight; "The Poet's Epitaph," "Ruth," " The Two 
 April Mornings," "The Fountain: a Conversation," set. twenty- 
 eight and twenty - nine ; "Michael," "The Old Cumberland 
 Beggar," about set. thirty. 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 205 
 
 would have supposed the poet must have derived that 
 knowledge of character shown in the long dialogue in 
 which Leonard at once seeks and shuns information 
 respecting one whom he had not seen since their youth. 
 Yet that is one of the poems which belong to his 
 thirtieth year. The " Lines written while sailing in a 
 Boat at Evening" and the " Remembrance of Colhns " 
 are especially marked by a pensive thoughtfulness ; but . 
 they were composed, originally as a single poem, on the 
 banks, not of the Thames, but of the Cam, at the age 
 of nineteen. In Wordsworth's genius there was from 
 the first a mature thoughtfulness as well as a youthful 
 freshness of emotion. He wrote, not as a youth nor 
 as an elder, but as a man. The seasons were blended 
 in his verse "like two mixed wines in one cup." 
 
 "The Female Vagrant," the meditative sadness of 
 which is so remarkable, was composed at the age of 
 twenty -four. The most pathetic of Wordsworth's 
 narratives, which records Margaret, the deserted wife, 
 might well have been the work of one whose eye had 
 long "kept watch o'er man's mortality"; yet its more 
 important parts were composed at intervals between 
 the poet's twenty-fifth and twenty-eighth year. " The 
 Sparrow's Nest," a singular instance of that retro- 
 spective observation so often to be found in Words- 
 worth's poetry, and so seldom elsewhere — 
 
 She looked at it as if she feared it, 
 Still wishing, dreading to be near it, 
 
 was written at the age of thirty-one. Three poems to 
 the Daisy belong to Wordsworth's thirty-second year ; 
 
2o6 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 " Yarrow Unvisited " belongs to his thirty-third year, 
 as do also " Stepping Westward," " To a Highland 
 Girl," and the poems written after visiting Burns's 
 grave. To his twenty- eighth year belongs "Simon 
 Lee " and the well-known lines — 
 
 I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds 
 
 With coldness still returning ; 
 Alas ! the gratitude of men 
 
 Has oft'ner left me mourning. 
 
 " Michael " was written when Wordsworth was thirty 
 years old, and "The Old Cumberland Beggar" about 
 the same time. The great ode on the " Intimations 
 of Immortality " was begun when he was thirty-two, 
 and the second part added when he was thirty-four. 
 The circumstance that Wordsworth's most charac- 
 teristic poems were produced early has given rise to 
 some very rash generalisations. Some critics have 
 erroneously inferred from this fact that his later 
 Poetry cannot include any of the greater specimens of 
 his art. They forget that the greatest Poets have ever 
 possessed both that which is especially characteristic 
 of each, and also that which is held in common by all 
 the first-class Poets. Several of Wordsworth's un- 
 questionably characteristic poems are not great 
 poems; and some of his great poems are but in a 
 lesser degree characteristic. 
 
 It is, however, only when they are taken collectively 
 that "the meditative might" which belongs to these 
 poems can be fitly measured and weighed. They are 
 very diverse, while they are also in admirable harmony 
 
IV ^VORDS^YORTH'S POETRY 207 
 
 with each other. Yet, large as is their scope, they 
 represent but a single section of that manifold Wisdom 
 which belongs to Wordsworth's poetry. They embody 
 only the "heart-wisdom" with which common life, 
 interpreted by the aid of sympathies as wide as 
 humanity itself, was ever enriching him. In a special 
 sense Memory was to him " The Mother of the 
 Muses." All incidents connected with human affec- 
 tions had for him a meaning, and the present was 
 ever interpreted by the past. " Memory," as he tells 
 us in the poem which bears that name, has not only 
 " a pen to register," but also a pencil, which, though 
 it often " smooths foregone distress," yet also 
 
 Like a tool of Fancy works 
 
 Those Spectres to dilate 
 That startle Conscience as she lurks 
 
 Within her lonely seat. 
 
 We have so to hve that that pencil's touch may never 
 affright us — 
 
 Retirement then might hourly look 
 
 Upon a soothing scene, 
 Age steal to his allotted nook 
 
 Contented and serene ; 
 
 With heart as calm as lakes that sleep 
 
 In frosty moonlight glistening, 
 Or mountain rivers, where they creep, 
 Along a channel smooth and deep, 
 
 To their own far-off mitnnurs listening. 
 
 Such a " mountain river " was Wordsworth's song, and 
 with it there was ever blended an echo of murmurs 
 from afar. That particular form of Wisdom, which 
 may be called the wisdom of experience, as distin- 
 
2o8 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 guished from the abstruse or the recondite, belongs 
 pre-eminently to that portion of Wordsworth's poetry 
 which is also most characterised by the emotional 
 element. In the case of other poets the works which 
 predominantly address the intellect have too commonly 
 the chill of age about them. In Wordsworth Wisdom 
 was an essential part of his genius, and therefore 
 carried with it that fervour which belongs to genius in 
 its most vital period. By shallow readers that fervour 
 is not noted, because it has no irregular movements. 
 It is not the flickering of the furnace-flame, but the 
 steady heat of a genial season. A great part of it is 
 lost on the careless reader. But even when its 
 presence is scarcely observed, its absence, could it be 
 withdrawn, would at once drain from the poem all that 
 we recognise as characteristic. The wisest thoughts 
 are often far from being the most striking. The start- 
 ling thought boasts its originality, and kindles in the 
 reader a transient excitement; but it is the proportioned 
 thought that is the wise thought ; and proportion tends 
 to diminish apparent size. A poem is wise from what 
 it assumes as well as from what it proves ; from what 
 it suggests as well as what it expresses ; from the 
 attractions it renounces as well as from the things it 
 attains ; from the degree in which its thoughts, when 
 least pretentious, plainly belong to the household of 
 wisdom and confess her lineage. The wisest poems 
 are often those which make no parade of wisdom, but 
 which carry with them a fragrance that belongs to a 
 climate on which she has left her searching yet healing 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 209 
 
 breath. She has passed that way, and you see the 
 majestic footsteps she has left behind. Such are the 
 great majority of Wordsworth's sonnets. On the 
 surface what predominates may be imagery, narrative, 
 or emotion, but beneath it there is ever Wisdom. 
 
 A poem may be " of reason all compact " when the 
 reader who confounds reason with discussion exclaims, 
 " I see no reasoning here ! " Reasoning is not Reason ; 
 at best it is a transient act of Reason, not her perma- 
 nent condition. Argument is the watch-dog that keeps 
 her gate ; it is not her household nor the sacred store 
 in its charge. The allegation of a distinguished French 
 critic that Wordsworth is not a thinker because he is 
 a contemplatist is the assertion that a man does not 
 think because he dwells habitually amid the most 
 arduous heights of thought. That high region was 
 the native land of Wordsworth's poetic genius, as a 
 large class of his poems demonstrate ; but his poetic 
 art was commonly exercised through a different though 
 a kindred power, by which, without compelling feebler 
 natures to breathe " the difficult air of the iced moun- 
 tain-top," he brought down the lofty to the lowly, and 
 showed men the light divine in the face of familiar 
 things. Had Wordsworth been the ascetic as well as 
 the contemplatist he would never have been the poet ; 
 he might have been something higher, but the world 
 would have lost by the change. Fortunately for 
 poetry, he loved as much to look on field-flowers as 
 on the stars. Whoever reads that beautiful philosophic 
 poem, one of some half-dozen pieces especially typical 
 
 VOL. I P 
 
2IO THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 of his genius although he classed it among his "Poems 
 of the Fancy " — " Who fancied what a pretty sight " — 
 will discover with what an unpremeditated grace he 
 could suggest his philosophy in connection with every- 
 day objects. Dryden, who was more given to reason- 
 ing than to reason, has been called by Landor "the 
 Bacon of the rhyming crew." But while we admire 
 the skill with which dialectics are wedged into verse in 
 his " Hind and Panther," we cannot resist the thought 
 that the polemical discussion might have been better 
 carried on in prose, and that poetry more truly 
 thoughtful has often found for itself a more tractable 
 theme. Bacon himself has left us many a passage, 
 such as the celebrated one beginning, "It is indeed a 
 heaven upon earth," or his triply-repeated " Sanctus, 
 Sanctus, Sanctus " of science, which, though not 
 clothed in metre, leaves as far behind in poetic 
 imagination as in sublime thought the highest flights 
 even of the author of " Alexander's Feast." The most 
 thoughtful poet does not labour to nail down reluctant 
 minds upon unwelcome convictions, but makes Per- 
 suasion do a happier work. He does not demonstrate 
 Truth denied, but indicates Truth never before sus- 
 pected, in such a fashion that it can never again be 
 ignored. His wisdom is this : that he walks through 
 the world God has made, with open eyes, and sees in 
 it heavenly meanings, authentic memorials of what 
 the Divine Maker saw in it when He pronounced His 
 work to be "very good." He may wander far afield, 
 but wherever he strays his eye, obedient to his heart, 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 211 
 
 turns instinctively to every object which Truth has 
 touched, and finds on it the seal of Beauty. Those 
 who follow his eye discern in their degree what it has 
 discerned. In all things they find Wisdom and Truth 
 conjoined with Beauty. 
 
 That wisdom is neither the wisdom of the schools 
 nor of the world, but of life — the life of the humanities. 
 It is not the Wisdom of a faculty, but of a man, and 
 its chief seat is the heart of man. It is drawn to the 
 objects around it by sympathy even more than by 
 intellectual appreciation. It could not see in them 
 the truth they reveal, if it did not profoundly feel their 
 pathos. The wise poet has open eyes ; that he sees 
 aright is proved when that emotion felt by him is 
 elicited in others by the truthfulness of his poetry. 
 Before this seer ever hang two fair visions, the world 
 of Humanity and the world of Nature ; and he inter- 
 prets the material by the moral. In both those worlds 
 he notes a common divine design, however clouded by 
 human imperfections ; and the resemblance which 
 both retain to their great Original makes each appear 
 to him as in some sort a reflection of the other. In 
 his poetry both those worlds are represented ; and in 
 proportion as that poetry is the result of a genuine 
 inspiration, they are in harmony with each other, and 
 adumbrate, if they do not venture to express, an 
 image of Him who is higher than each. The unwise 
 poet sees in the things around him, whether natural 
 or human, not the Truth that sustains them, but, 
 reflected in them, his own passions, his vanities, his 
 
212 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 prejudices, his false traditions, his fantastic aspirations 
 — that is, his own image. Those who share his 
 illusions find in his verse no less a mirror of themselves, 
 and applaud their False Prophet. But, as illusions 
 change with time, a later poet " prophesies " the 
 " deceits " which flatter the deceptions of a later day. 
 The permanent poets are those who have been in 
 vital sympathy, not with the illusions or exaggerations 
 of their day, but with the Truth of things, and who 
 have grown wise by reverent converse with that Truth. 
 They may have possessed little book-learning; they 
 may never have aimed at setting forth a doctrine or 
 enforcing a moral. But while they watched each 
 gesture of their teacher, Nature, "as the eyes of the 
 handmaiden watch the hand of her mistress," they 
 unconsciously indicated the Truth of which they were 
 vigilantly observant. But they could only indicate it 
 to those who, like themselves, though in a lesser 
 degree, were capable of discerning it. Those who 
 have learned from these Poets call them "masters," 
 but they had sought only to be the servants of Nature 
 — that is, of Truth. Their power excites admiration, 
 their pathos draws tears ; but each tribute belongs not 
 to them, but to Nature. It is their greatness, not that 
 they have stolen from Nature, much less that they 
 have superseded her, but that she has shared with 
 them her heritage ; not that they have substituted 
 their petty craft for Nature, or taught the frivolous to 
 pass her by, but that she has accepted them as her 
 " ministers and stewards " of her gifts. 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 213 
 
 IV. Let US consider the Wisdom and the Truth 
 of Wordsworth's poetry in its appreciation of Nature 
 more in detail. 
 
 Our theme is not alone its wisdom, but its wisdom 
 and truth. There is, perhaps, no poet in whose writ- 
 ings the relation between these two things is so strong; 
 and it is in their joint -dealings with Nature that it 
 becomes most apparent. That relation is one of 
 constantly reciprocal aid ; for it is an antecedent gift 
 of wisdom which opens our eyes to the truth, that is, 
 to the inner meaning of those things which surround 
 us whether in the moral or the material world ; while, 
 on the other hand, it is the habitual perception of that 
 truth which sustains wisdom, and by an insensible 
 accretion enlarges and develops it. Modern poetry 
 has abounded in description; but that description 
 has often been more striking than truthful ; while in 
 other cases it has been satisfied with a prosaic accuracy, 
 and not risen to the significance and beauty inherent 
 in Truth. The truthfulness of Wordsworth's observa- 
 tion came from a faculty higher than mere observation, 
 which ever taught him what he was to observe, and 
 what he was to pass by as unworthy of observation. 
 
 His lines — 
 
 With gentle hand 
 Touch — for there is a spirit in the woods, 
 
 are a type of his poetry, which touches all things 
 material with a spiritual hand, knowing that within 
 them there is a spiritual element. Sometimes the 
 faculty which directs the observation is a meditative 
 
214 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 imagination, as in the poem on the Butterfly and the 
 allusion to his sister in childhood- — 
 
 But she, God love her ! feared to brush 
 The dust from off its wings. 
 
 Sometimes it is philosophic thought, as in "We are 
 Seven," where a child's expressions confirm the poet's 
 conviction that Immortality is with man an innate 
 idea. In many a later poem the same interpretation 
 of the lower by the higher is as marked as in the 
 sonnet on the flowers on the summit of the pillars 
 before the cave of Stafla — 
 
 Calm as the Universe from specular towers 
 Of heaven contemplated by Spirits pure. 
 
 In his record of the world's early religions {Excursion^ 
 Book IV.) Wordsworth tells us that 
 
 The Imaginative Faculty was Lord 
 Of observations natural ; 
 
 and it was through the predominance of that faculty 
 in him that observation became something hardly 
 distinguishable from inspiration. This peculiarity of 
 his mind was illustrated in what it sometimes hid from 
 him as well as in what it revealed to him. In his 
 poem known as "Tintern Abbey" the only object 
 in the landscape, so minutely described, which he does 
 not see is the great monastic ruin itself When he 
 wrote it Nature was to him "a Passion"; and his 
 heart did not incline either to the ecclesiastical or to 
 the ancient merely as such. In his early days one of Na- 
 ture's most striking effects remained to him invisible — ' 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 215 
 
 Once I could hail (howe'er serene the sky) 
 The Moon re-entering her monthly round, 
 
 No faculty yet given me to espy 
 
 The dusky Shape within her arms imbound, 
 
 That thin memento of effulgence lost 
 
 Which some have named her predecessor's Ghost. 
 
 The experience of life taught him at last to see it and 
 more — 
 
 Now, dazzling Stranger ! when thou meet'st my glance 
 
 Thy dark Associate ever I discern ; 
 Emblem of thoughts too eager to advance 
 
 While I salute my joys, thoughts sad or stern ; 
 Shades of past bliss, or wishes that to gain 
 Their fill of promised lustre wait in vain. 
 
 Far more often Wordsworth's imagination made 
 him note what others failed to mark. In all that 
 deeply moves him he sees at once what exists and 
 what is to be, as in the lines to H. C. (Hartley 
 Coleridge), at six years old. The first stanza begins 
 with a vivid picture of childhood ; the second shows 
 us that childhood bent down beneath the sorrowful 
 weight of life. What the poet could not have foreseen 
 was that in the child then addressed the childhood 
 was still to live on under that yoke ; that in him " the 
 fancies from afar " would never be driven away by the 
 cares near at hand ; that gamesome words would 
 remain the " mock apparel " of " unutterable thought"; 
 and that "the breezelike motion and the self- born 
 carol " would be but the more striking when the locks 
 that they waved were of silver, not of gold. 
 
 But if Wordsworth's observation is ever coloured 
 or shadowed by wisdom, that wisdom was no less 
 
2i6 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 sustained by his observation. He found aid for it 
 
 everywhere — now in an effect of Nature, as described 
 
 in the sonnet, " One who was suffering tumult in his 
 
 soul " ; now in casual incident ; now in the landscape's 
 
 recurrent changes. But it was yet more from what is 
 
 permanent and universal in Nature that man, according 
 
 to Wordsworth's philosophy, was to build up his moral 
 
 being. To assist Nature thus to become man's 
 
 teacher he believed to be the poet's noblest task. 
 
 I, long before the blissful hour arrives, 
 Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse 
 Of this great consummation ; and, by words 
 Which speak of nothing more than what we are, 
 Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep 
 Of death, and win the vacant and the vain 
 To noble raptures ; while my voice proclaims 
 How exquisitely the Individual Mind 
 (And the progressive powers, perhaps, no less 
 Of the whole species) to the external World 
 Is fitted ; and how exquisitely, too 
 (Theme this but little heard of among men), 
 The external World is fitted to the Mind ; 
 And the creation (by no lower name 
 Can it be called) which they with blended might 
 Accomplish : this is our high argument. 
 
 Regarding Nature as a teacher ever pointing out to 
 him new lessons, Wordsworth recurred again and 
 again in memory to the scene that had touched him 
 once, and thus by necessity idealised it. Many of his 
 " Memorials of a Tour " are but the growth of seed 
 sown in his mind during the day's journey. Nor was 
 this an accident. Human incidents alike and Nature's 
 changeful aspects needed time to sink into his medi- 
 tative mind and blend with it. The slower the process 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 217 
 
 the more definite was the resultant shape. We learn 
 this from himself. The best comment on his poetry 
 is that derived from his own account of their origin 
 and aim, as in his letter to Charles James Fox. For 
 hints on these subjects his sister's diary is invaluable. 
 Her moral mind was a section of his. She had not 
 her brother's creative faculty, but she had that imagin- 
 ative sympathy and moral susceptibility which consti- 
 tute so large a part of female genius. She doubdess 
 often observed for him as well as with him ; and in 
 what she describes we have what he saw. 
 
 We must ever bear in mind Wordsworth's philosophy 
 respecting the external world, in connection with the 
 inner world of thought, if we would understand his 
 poetry in its relations with Nature. The most 
 habitual intimacy with her had in him never subdued 
 a reverence that sometimes amounted to awe. Near 
 him as Nature was, she also remained apart from him. 
 She had for him something of the supernatural. He 
 tells us that in boyhood he often clasped the trees to 
 convince himself that they had a substantial existence 
 external to his own mind. The closeness of our 
 intimacy with Nature is increased through our enjoy- 
 ment while inhaling her breath — not alone or chiefly 
 the fragrance of her flowers, but her winds and rains, 
 the smell of the leaves, the grass, and the earth itself. 
 By a strange fortune, or misfortune, the great Poet of 
 Nature was almost wholly without the sense of smell. 
 This strange " pain of loss " may have had for him its 
 compensations. What was denied to the sense in his 
 
2i8 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 fruition of Nature may possibly have been added to his 
 intellectual appreciation of her. Every one must 
 have observed, when gliding along the water-streets of 
 Venice, what a saliency is imparted to their beauty by 
 their silence. The ear remaining unchallenged, the 
 eye seems to have acquired a twofold power, and the 
 long line of palace-fronts arrests it like a vision. That 
 visionary power which Nature ever exercised on 
 Wordsworth may also have been thus enhanced by 
 privation. Renunciation of the lower, even when 
 involuntary, intensifies our enjoyment of the higher. 
 Thus much, at least, is certain : that in Wordsworth's 
 poetry, as in none beside, the beauty of Nature becomes 
 a moral beauty, and her power a human power. The 
 brightness of a human face is by it descried in the 
 grove, which, though just touched by autumn, has not 
 yet lost hold of its summer glories ; and the gaze that 
 dwells upon it is the gaze of one who watches the 
 physiognomic changes in a face well loved — 
 
 Departing summer hath assumed 
 An aspect tenderly illumed, 
 
 The gentlest look of Spring, 
 That calls from yonder leafy shade 
 Un faded, yet prepared to fade, 
 
 A timely carolling. 
 
 In his delineations Nature ever takes her place side 
 by side with man. Thus in " Animal Tranquillity and 
 Decay "— 
 
 The little hedge-row birds, 
 That peck along the road, regard him not. 
 He travels on, and in his face, his step, 
 His gait, is one expression ; every limb, 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 219 
 
 His look and bending figure, all bespeak 
 
 A man who does not move with pain, but moves 
 
 With thought. He is insensibly subdued 
 
 To settled quiet : he is one by whom 
 
 All effort seems forgotten. 
 
 So with " The Old Cumberland Beggar "— 
 
 The sauntering horseman-traveller does not throw 
 With careless hand his alms along the ground. 
 But stops, that he may safely lodge the coin 
 Within the old man's hat. 
 
 Who but must share the aspiration — 
 
 Then let him pass, a blessing on his head ! 
 And, long as he can wander, let him breathe 
 The freshness of the valleys ; let his blood 
 Struggle with frosty air and winter snows ; 
 And let the chartered wind that sweeps the heath 
 Beat his gray locks against his withered face. 
 
 As in the eye of Nature he has lived. 
 So in the eye of Nature let him die. 
 
 The "Solitary Reaper" is a poem which Words- 
 worth alone could have written, such is the sympa- 
 thetic softness with which Nature and human sentiment 
 are blended in it. To see the maiden aright you must 
 see " the field," and see that she is the latest to remain 
 in it, but not too wearied to be solaced by her song. 
 That field lies embosomed among mountains, and 
 
 The vale profound 
 Is overflowing with the sound. 
 
 The poet cannot hear it without remembering how 
 many a wanderer in solitudes deeper yet has been 
 cheered by Nature's songsters— the traveller who 
 
220 THE AVISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 listens beneath Arabian palms to the night-bird close 
 by ; the mariner who sees his native moorlands rise 
 around him when first greeted by the cuckoo's call 
 
 Breaking the silence of the seas 
 Among the farthest Hebrides. 
 
 He thinks now that the strain relates to " old, unhappy, 
 far-off things," clan-fights of days gone by, and now 
 that it may lament but 
 
 Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, 
 That has been, and may be again. 
 
 All that is certain is that this daughter of the hills 
 bends above her sickle and sings 
 
 As if her song could have no ending. 
 
 The clan has lost its independence, but a silver thread 
 of minstrelsy binds them still to the memory of heroic 
 days. The poem is not an Elegy — there is more of 
 sweetness than of sadness in the " melancholy strain "; 
 nor a Pastoral — there is nothing in it of changeful 
 incident; nor a descriptive poem — -we are not told 
 whether trees diversify the field or a river engirds it. 
 It is a poem of Nature and of man, a melody at once 
 and a picture, a record and a reverie. 
 
 Not less characteristic are the poems on Yarrow. 
 That legend-haunted river had, while yet unseen, been 
 so dear to the poet that he feared to see it, lest the 
 dream of years might be dispelled ; and the charm of 
 "Yarrow Unvisited" consists in the pretended in- 
 difference with which he evades the importunity of 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 221 
 
 his companion, who urges him to visit it. He sees it 
 ten years later, and only as he could have seen it — 
 
 Fair scenes for childhood's opening bloom, 
 
 For sportive youth to stray in ; 
 For manhood to enjoy his strength ; 
 
 Old age to wear away in ! 
 Yon cottage seems a bower of bliss, 
 
 A covert for protection 
 Of tender thoughts that nestle there, 
 
 The brood of chaste affection. 
 
 With the pathos of the present the tragedy of the past 
 mingles — 
 
 Where was it that the famous Flower 
 
 Of Yarrow Vale lay bleeding ? 
 His bed perchance was yon smooth mound 
 
 On which the herd is feeding. 
 
 But the sorrow was transient, the sweetness perennial — 
 
 Delicious is the lay that sings 
 
 The haunts of happy lovers ; 
 The path that leads them to the grove. 
 
 The leafy grove that covers : 
 And Pity sanctifies the verse 
 
 That paints, by strength of sorrow, 
 That unconquerable strength of love ; 
 
 Bear witness, rueful Yarrow ! 
 
 At first, when Yarrow as a reality had superseded 
 Yarrow as a dream, the poet felt defrauded ; but by 
 degrees dream and vision reclaim each its own divi- 
 sum imperhmi — , 
 
 I see — but not by sight alone. 
 Loved Yarrow, have I won thee ! 
 
 A ray of Fancy still survives — 
 Her sunshine plays upon thee ! 
 
222 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 Thy ever-youthful waters keep 
 
 A course of lively pleasure ; 
 And gladsome notes my lips can breathe, 
 
 Accordant to the measure. 
 
 It is this blending of the inward and the outward 
 worlds, and again the fusion of intellect with emotion, 
 which makes the poetry of Wordsworth, while any- 
 thing but sentimental, yet eminently the poetry of 
 elevated sentiment. It is never dry thought; it is 
 never irrational feeling. It comes from hidden depths 
 of the spirit, but it weds itself in delighted sympathy 
 with the purity and splendour of the visible universe ; 
 and its Philosophy, like the Socratic Wisdom of old, 
 walks familiarly amid the thoroughfares and tarries at 
 the doors of men. The genius of Wordsworth would 
 commonly be called " subjective," yet in its habit of 
 minute observation it deserves no less to be called 
 objective. The union in him of those two qualities, 
 each in its highest degree, is one of those characteristics 
 which Wordsworth shares with Shakespeare ; while, on 
 the other hand, his poetic method was in polar op- 
 position to Shakespeare's, of whose dramatic instinct 
 he was signally destitute. Each is a profound thinker 
 and a large-hearted humanist ; and they have, there- 
 fore, far more essential resemblance to each other 
 than Milton possesses to either. This was early 
 indicated by Landor, who, in his dialogue between 
 Southey and Porson, claimed for Wordsworth a breadth 
 of human sympathies, and power of illustrating human 
 character, not put forth in equal degree by any other 
 poet since our great dramatist. 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 223 
 
 Shakespeare learned his insight chiefly from the 
 stirring hfe of a metropohs; the philosophic bard 
 mainly from the woods, the fields, and the cottages 
 of humble men. In the world of convention Words- 
 worth had as little part as they had. To him, as to 
 them, Nature remained the mighty Mother ; and wis- 
 dom is near to those to whom Nature is dear. Such 
 wisdom does not come to those who can only declaim 
 about the picturesque, but to those in whom Nature 
 has a living part, whose yearnings are those that she 
 inspires, whose joys are those that she ministers, whose 
 sorrows are those which she consoles, whose daily 
 round of dutiful and neighbourly life she approves. 
 The poet who wrote "The Churchyard among the 
 Mountains" had considered the ways of those laborious 
 men, as he had "considered the lilies of the field, 
 which toil not, neither do they spin." He had marked 
 how Nature, with her rough sweetness, had prompted 
 their youthful vivacities ; how, with " the strong hand 
 of her purity," she had corrected their aberrations ; 
 how the wilds and the moors had fostered their in- 
 dustry and those hardier virtues which would have 
 starved in luxurious climes ; and how the adversities 
 of Hfe had generated, on the one hand, their softer 
 charities, and, on the other, an ascetic self-sacrifice 
 in the form of frugality. He had noted how that 
 mighty Mother had spoken to their souls of a mightier 
 Father in whose law there was peace, and in whose 
 promise there was hope. He had learned that, while 
 the rich live among their fancies, the poor live mainly 
 
224 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 among the great verities of Nature — health with its 
 triumphant strength, or depressing sickness — that rest 
 is a real joy to those who have laboured all day, and 
 the prayer for " daily bread " a real prayer for those 
 whose daily food is uncertain. The truthfulness of 
 his own heart made dear to him the society of 
 those who lived among great truths ; and though he 
 disclaimed the love of "personal talk," no one en- 
 joyed it more when it was free from frivoHty and 
 detraction, and no one drew from it wiser lessons. 
 He was interested by the wayfarer's tale, and the babble 
 of the child ; and when new forms of industry had 
 banished the spinning-wheel from the cottage floor 
 his ear missed, as we learn from a sonnet which ranks 
 among the tenderest of elegies, that soothing sound 
 every tone of which was in harmony with a virtue, 
 or with some condition of life proximate to a virtue. 
 When the cottage dame no longer put on "fresh 
 raiment," spun from the " daintiest fleece," in honour 
 of the Easter morn ; when at Christmas the village 
 church no longer drew to its chancel the shepherd 
 or labourer chilled by the winter snow, his verse 
 lamented the loss of ancient pieties which long 
 had won 
 
 Their pensive light from a departed sun ; 
 
 but he still found consolation in the pure morals and 
 in those ancient manners, their " viewless fence," 
 which had long lived on, protected by their rocky 
 ramparts — 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 225 
 
 Hail, usages of pristine mould, 
 
 And ye who guard them, mountains old ! 
 
 But for Wordsworth external Nature had offices 
 yet more holy. She was not intended, he believed, to 
 feed man's body only, but his soul also. She was an 
 hourly ministrant of peaceful gladness to many an 
 unconscious recipient who served God well by grate- 
 fully accepting His gifts. For him Matter was but the 
 shadow of Spirit, and all things fair and good on earth 
 were but types of things yet higher subsisting in the 
 Ideas of the Divine Creator. The Psalmist had said 
 that the ways of God are like the firmament, and His 
 counsels like the chambers of the deep. The converse 
 statement must, then, be equally true : the firmament 
 and the seas must be material symbols of things 
 spiritual and supernatural. We read that " as the 
 mountains stand around Jerusalem," so God protects 
 His people : if the higher is like the lower, then the 
 lower must have been so placed, in relation with the 
 human mind, as to elicit the idea of the higher, other- 
 wise doubtless as inconceivable to man as to the 
 inferior animals. That things visible actually represent 
 things invisible is the confession of language itself; 
 for such words as sweetness, brightness, greatness, 
 harmony, stability are applied to both classes alike. 
 A materialistic philosophy affirms, indeed, that material 
 things are the sole realities, and that the terms in 
 which we describe them are but metaphors when 
 applied to spiritual things; but it is easier to make 
 this confident assumption than to disprove the converse 
 
 VOL. I Q 
 
226 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 assertion made by a spiritual plilosophy — viz. that 
 things spiritual are the reahties, and that the material 
 world was created after their image, as man was created 
 after the Image of God. Our inferior faculties have 
 an earher development than our nobler. Our dealings 
 with things around us precede our dealings with the 
 things above us ; but what is the inference from this ? 
 Only that the lower is first in the field, that it may 
 minister to the higher. Language, which is largely 
 formed from material things, enables man to make 
 inquiry respecting spiritual things ; but it could never 
 have prompted the instinct to make such inquiry, if 
 it were not that in the mind of man the Ideas of things 
 spiritual are innate, or at least exist potentially. The 
 sea, though vast, is finite ; yet its vastness suffices to 
 elicit the idea of the Infinite- — not to elicit it in an 
 animal, but in man in whose mind that idea abides ; 
 and if we stand in delight looking down through its 
 translucent depths, this is 
 
 Because the unstained, the clear, the crystalline 
 Have ever in them something of benign ; 
 "SMiether in gem, in water, or in sky, 
 A sleeping infant's brow, or wakeful eye 
 Of some young maiden, only not divine.^ 
 
 It is obvious that this estimate of the visible 
 universe, if sound at all, must apply to the whole of 
 Nature, even to her minuter details, though her 
 significance will be best understood in proportion as 
 the scene she offers to our regard is characteristically 
 
 ^ Wordsworth, " Sonnet by the Sea-shore, Isle of Man." 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 227 
 
 beautiful, and as the beholder's imaginative sensibility 
 has been trained aright. If he be but a beginner he 
 will have to spell out Nature's language letter by letter ; 
 if he be her apt scholar he will be able to read 
 sentences ; and his delight will not be the less because 
 her meanings are expressed not distinctly, but vaguely. 
 Music has a meaning, if it be true music; and we 
 express that meaning vaguely when we apply to it such 
 terms as pathetic, mirthful, impassioned, warlike, or 
 religious; but if we are required to be definite we 
 reply that the ideas of Beethoven or Mozart are 
 already expressed in the language of sound ; that they 
 cannot be definitely expressed in words ; but that their 
 presence may not be doubted, since in their absence 
 we should have but that senseless music which 
 Coleridge compared to a schoolboy's nonsense-verses. 
 It is thus that the Wordsworthian Philosophy regards 
 the Beauty of Nature as a coherent whole. Every one 
 not blind is struck by a forcible passage, here and 
 there, in her open book ; but to one who is acquainted 
 with her language she pours forth a continuous strain ; 
 stanza after stanza of her Ode, her Elegy, or her 
 Pastoral coming out upon him in exquisite succession, 
 as he confronts her mountain ranges, or advances 
 along the glen, or tracks the stream in its windings 
 through woodlands, pasture, and flowery mead. 
 
 Now, among the high offices of poetry, as a 
 " virtuous art," and consequently as a truthful art, one 
 is this ; to bring out Nature's meanings in their fulness 
 to those who otherwise w^ould but have caught glimpses 
 
228 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 of them occasionally — persons who are without that 
 keener insight which is at once creation and percep- 
 tion, but who are not without a responsive sensibility. 
 She has to teach them first Nature's characteristics ; 
 and nothing is characteristic without being essential 
 Truth. A skilful Dutch picture gives to a poultry-yard 
 or the interior of a kitchen an interest which we do 
 not find in the original. There is no object which 
 does not admit of being idealised ; but the process of 
 idealisation consists not in an attempt to ornament, 
 but to represent what has significance. 
 
 Objects which we should pass without regard please 
 us in a picture from the truth of the representation, 
 the painter's eye having discerned that which belongs 
 to them essentially, while an ordinary eye would have 
 dwelt as much on the irrelevant and the accidental. 
 It is thus that genuine art is more true, not indeed 
 than the Nature which it imitates, but than that Nature 
 as seen by an un discriminating eye. The true artist 
 idealises by a process the opposite of the false artist. 
 The latter adds to what he copies something which he 
 fancies to be flattering, but which is commonly incon- 
 gruous and unmeaning; the true artist takes away 
 what is accidental, and what remains is the character- 
 istic and the true. The bad artist thus adds detail to 
 detail while he remains ever within the limits of the 
 merely individual, and thus makes his portrait a 
 caricature, even though it may be a "beautified" 
 caricature ; whereas the true artist brings out in his 
 portrait the great generic type of Humanity by sub- 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 229 
 
 tracting from it the accidents ever found in flesh and 
 blood, while at the same time he emphasises what is 
 specially characteristic in the countenance copied. 
 In other words, he creates while he copies, by seeing 
 the Truth and representing it stripped of disguise. 
 Such is the poet's function in his deHneations of 
 Nature. He has to see its Truth and express it. He 
 expresses it mainly by eliciting its Beauty ; for Truth 
 and Beauty are but different aspects of the same thing 
 as regarded by Reason or by Imagination. The eye 
 of a dog is more powerful than that of a man, and 
 not a bush or brake escapes his remark or fades from 
 his memory. But he has not the higher Reason of 
 man ; and therefore for him neither the Truth nor the 
 Beauty of Nature exists. He sees objects, but does 
 not see the landscape, as he hears the sounds but 
 does not hear the music. When the poet has fulfilled 
 his mission aright that Truth of Nature which he has 
 elicited flashes forth into Beauty ; that Beauty breaks 
 into life; and the voice which it utters is Nature's 
 hymn of praise to her Creator. That voice is always 
 ascending from Nature's Hps, but inaudibly to the 
 many : — when the true poet holds up his shell that 
 voice is heard. 
 
 It is heard by those who have a true ear. Though 
 Nature has ever a meaning in her landscape, she is 
 contented to adumbrate that meaning, and does not 
 always choose to speak it plainly. It is thus that she 
 speaks best ; for which reason her most striking scenes 
 are often not the most beautiful, nor those which we 
 
230 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 remember best and to which we would most gladly 
 return. She does not "cry aloud"; her voice is low 
 and persuasive: there are other voices — those of 
 Duty and of Faith — which address the soul with a 
 more imperative authority, and she is often contented 
 to sustain their loftier music with an accompaniment 
 in undertone. If the seer is forbidden to prophesy 
 " unless he interpret also," Nature has her interpreter 
 in the true poet of Nature. The " Wisdom and Truth " 
 of his poetry are ever proportioned to the degree in 
 which it interprets Nature aright. But he, too, speaks 
 to the few, not the many. His function is to make 
 her meanings intelligible to the willing apprehension, 
 not to the reluctant, the self-absorbed, or the dull. 
 He, too, has to remember that as there are depart- 
 ments of thought in which, as in science, our knowledge 
 cannot be too distinct, so there are others in which 
 knowledge comes to us both most safely and most 
 with power when it falls on us like mountain outlines 
 seen through mist. There are meanings which must 
 be felt before they are apprehended, and which are 
 seldom felt unless a certain degree of mystery clings 
 about them. A poet who professes to set forth Nature's 
 meanings as plainly as if he were translating her words 
 is apt to read his own meanings into Nature. He 
 makes her allegorise ; and this is not her way — even 
 though it is true that without parables she does not 
 open her mouth. 
 
 I have affirmed that Wordsworth is the poet of 
 Nature in a sense special to him. The assertion 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 231 
 
 admits of many tests. Here is one of them : Let the 
 thoughtful reader compare the really Wordsworthian 
 descriptive poems with those two early poems, " An 
 Evening Walk " and " Descriptive Sketches," written 
 with ability and witnessing to an ardent love of Nature, 
 but written also before his genius had risen to the 
 courage of its convictions, and thrown off the recollec- 
 tions of the eighteenth century. He will perceive 
 little resemblance between the authentic and the un- 
 authentic inspiration. Here is a second test : Let him 
 compare them next with "A Night-Piece," "Water- 
 fowl," "View from Black Comb," and "The Haunted 
 Tree"; these are poems of a purer taste, and, as 
 literal descriptions, they are effective. But one feels 
 that they were poetic exercises, or records noted in a 
 poet's diary. These, too, are not in the higher Words- 
 worthian spirit. Its power, its pathos, and its wisdom 
 are not in them. They were written sine numine, 
 though not without discernment, feeling, and skill. 
 A third test may be added : Take the best descriptive 
 passages in Thomson or Cowper, and compare them 
 with Wordsworth. The difference is that between 
 mere veracity and spiritual truth, or between eloquence 
 and pure poetry. Still more striking is the contrast 
 if we turn to such intensely Wordsworthian poems as 
 " Influence of Natural Objects " and " Yew-Trees." 
 
 The two last poems represent a peculiar variety of 
 Wordsworth's descriptive poetry, in which observa- 
 tion is neither detained by the beauty of the object 
 described, nor works as a servant of memory, but 
 
232 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 becomes mastered by the imagination, seeing Nature 
 with an eye that more than "half creates," and adding 
 to Nature's Truth 
 
 The light that never was on sea or land, 
 The consecration and the poet's dream. 
 
 Even in him, however, such description is exceptional. 
 That nature which he loves best to describe is nature 
 not when it reflects the rapt moods of an extraordinary 
 mind, but Nature as she is loved by the general heart 
 of man, as she brightens the dejected, consoles the 
 unhappy, yields its reward to industry, gives rest to 
 the weary — the brook that has taught the child his first 
 lesson of hardihood ; the river on which rival oarsmen 
 have measured their strength ; the thicket that heard 
 the youth's fiirst declaration of love ; the bridge 
 "crowned with the minster towers," and on which 
 the cripple asked for alms; the churchyard sombre 
 with the groves of death. The nature which has 
 ministered to God's creatures and mirrored human 
 life is Wordsworth's nature. And in the main it is a 
 nature as gladsome as it is serene, though it has nooks 
 which might well be called 
 
 Apt confessionals for one 
 Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone, 
 That Life is but a tale of morning grass 
 Withered at eve. 
 
 Carlyle's view of human life was a gloomy one ; to 
 him it presented an aspect full of Fortune's irony and 
 the implacability of Fate. It yielded, indeed, even if 
 with seeming reluctance, a reward to persevering virtue 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 233 
 
 and a field for the labours of valiant men ; but it was 
 filled with stains and shams, and deserved the tyran- 
 nous tread that stamped it down. Far other was the 
 aspect which the life of man bore in Wordsworth's 
 eyes. It had, indeed, its woes, deeper than those 
 which the selfish and the weak cannot face ; but its 
 sorrows were sanative, and the sword of God that 
 pierced the heart carried with it a healing virtue, from 
 the hour when childhood was sufficient to itself— 
 
 As a faggot sparkles on the hearth 
 Not less if unattended, and alone, 
 Than when both young and old sit gathered round, 
 
 to the years when age, full of hope because true to 
 faith. 
 
 Rejoices secretly 
 In the sublime attractions of the grave. 
 
 All things, he maintained, are "full of blessings." 
 While we are in health every breath we draw is a satis- 
 faction ; the humblest green field is a comfort to the 
 eye, every sound of Nature, almost, is pleasant to the 
 ear ; man's laws may be bad, but a divine law con- 
 tinues to fecundate the earth with all the charities of 
 house and home. The oppressor cannot hinder the 
 violet from reappearing, or restrain the hawthorn from 
 renewing its snowy bloom, or reprove hearts as spot- 
 less when they spring to meet it. A fair picture must 
 have its shadows as well as its lights, and the unguilty 
 sorrows of human life are but such shadows. This is 
 the estimate of man's lot taken by one whose poetry 
 never contented itself with being the idle pastime of 
 
234 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 a vacant day, never shunned the painful side of 
 things, and never railed against the appointed trials 
 of humanity. It was because he had faced those 
 trials that Wordsworth saw what a light of consolation 
 mingled with them and spread beyond them. He 
 had had personal experience of bereavement, poverty, 
 and a disappointment perhaps the deepest which he 
 could have known — that of his political hopes for man. 
 Wordsworth's genius was made strong by a moral 
 faith, in the absence of which imaginative soarings 
 bequeath but exhaustion and dejection. It was part 
 of his Credo that man's race advances 
 
 With an ascent and progress in the main. 
 
 He believed that the pessimist estimate of things pro- 
 ceeded but from the lack of a faculty accorded to 
 teach us truth, not fiction — the Imagination — 
 
 'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower 
 Of Faith, and round the Sufferer's temples bind 
 Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, 
 And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind. 
 
 He bade the poets and the artists be sure that 
 
 A cheerful life is what the Muses love, 
 A soaring spirit is their prime delight, 
 
 and that he who possesses 
 
 Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse 
 must also 
 
 Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness. 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 235 
 
 Hope, he asserts, is "the paramount duty" which 
 God lays on us ; He insists on it that 
 
 In all men sinful is it to be slow 
 To hope ; 
 
 and even in the churchyard he Hstens to the 
 Jubilate from the choirs of spring. 
 
 The cynical poet and the whining poet sing as if 
 Nature and man's hfe were nothing but the blundering 
 workmanship or bad jest of an Evil Power ; that is, 
 they see them unwisely and report them untruly. 
 What Wordsworth sees in them is predominantly 
 (though he does not fail to see also "what man has 
 made of man ") the essential splendour left behind by 
 the Face of the Creator when He looked on them and 
 beheld " that they were very good." To see thus is 
 to see the Truth ; and that Wordsworth thus sees and 
 thus witnesses is the "Wisdom and the Truth" of 
 his poetry. 
 
 V. I have reached the last of those topics which I 
 propose to discuss. 
 
 There is one class of Wordsworth's poems in which 
 that Wisdom which so eminently characterises them 
 takes a higher flight than in the rest, and discourses on 
 the origin of things in strains such as the olden time 
 called "Orphic." To write "Orphic" odes on the 
 marvels of Creation was among the aims of Coleridge's 
 youthful ambition ; and his Hexameter Hymn to the 
 Earth, as well as a fragment of a Hymn to the Sun, 
 
236 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 survive as the memorial of that intention. What he 
 had designed was in part accomphshed by the 
 brother -bard with whom his plans must often have 
 been the subject of discourse. Wordsworth's " Vernal 
 Ode " is one of his greatest poems. It is not among 
 the works of his youth. It belongs to his forty-seventh 
 year, and was briefly described by him as " composed 
 to place in view the immortality of succession where 
 immortality is denied, so far as we know, to the 
 individual creature." Transience is the law of all 
 things here ; an eternal and still glory is that of the 
 things above ; yet earthly transience is so exquisitely 
 modulated in the great creative scheme that it is itself 
 ever sustaining the creature with the thought of that 
 continuance which, in his present condition, is denied to 
 him. The forests die, but the fresh growths of each 
 new year spring from a soil enriched by the dead leaves 
 of its predecessor ; out of .the night issues the morning ; 
 and the nations are ever renewing their youth. Such 
 is the theme, and it is treated as it might have been 
 in those days when the bard was still reverenced as a 
 prophet and a revealer. The Ode begins with the song 
 of an Angel suddenly descended to earth. Its first 
 stanza celebrates his native realm, the radiant stability 
 of which is emblemed to man by the stars when they 
 shine forth night after night — • 
 
 Fresh as if evening brought their natal hour ; 
 Her darkness splendor gave, her silence power, 
 To testify of Love and Grace divine. 
 
 But neither in heaven nor on earth is more than an 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 237 
 
 emblem of stability vouchsafed to the material 
 creation — 
 
 What if those bright fires 
 Shine subject to decay, 
 
 Sons haply of extinguished sires, 
 Like them to pass away 
 
 Like clouds before the wind ! 
 And though to every draught of mortal breath 
 
 Renewed throughout the bounds of earth and ocean. 
 The melancholy gates of Death 
 
 Respond with sympathetic motion ; 
 Though all that feeds on nether air, 
 Howe'er magnificent or fair, 
 Grows but to perish, and entrust 
 Its ruins to their kindred dust ; 
 Yet, by the Almighty's ever-during care, 
 Her procreant vigils Nature keeps 
 Amid the unfathomable deeps, 
 And saves the peopled fields of earth 
 From dread of emptiness or dearth. 
 Thus in their stations, lifting t'ward the sky 
 The foliaged head in cloud-like majesty. 
 The shadow-casting race of Trees survive : 
 Thus in the train of Spring arrive 
 Sweet Flowers — what living eye hath viewed 
 Their myriads ! endlessly renewed 
 Wherever strikes the sun's glad ray ; 
 Where'er the subtle waters stray ; 
 Wherever sportive zephyrs bend 
 Their course, or genial showers descend ! 
 Mortals, rejoice ! the very Angels quit 
 
 Their mansions unsusceptible of change. 
 Amid your pleasant bowers to sit 
 
 And through your sweet vicissitudes to range. 
 
 A human being might well fear that even amid the 
 glories of heaven the new-born Spirit might sometimes 
 regret "vicissitudes" thus described — the changeful 
 twilights of earth, and the flash of the earliest snowdrop ; 
 and the last four lines quoted hint that with such a 
 
238 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 regret even heavenly Spirits are capable of sympathising. 
 
 The poet, as he listens, catches the import of the 
 
 Angel's song and returns to it a musical echo— 
 
 O nursed at happy distance from the cares 
 Of a too anxious world, mild, pastoral Muse ! 
 That to the sparkling crown Urania wears. 
 And to her sister Clio's laurel wreath, 
 Prefer'st a garland culled from purple heath, 
 Or blooming thicket moist with morning dews ; 
 Was such bright Spectacle vouchsafed to me ? 
 And was it granted to the simple ear 
 Of thy contented votary 
 
 Such harmony to hear ? 
 Him rather suits it, side by side with thee, 
 Wrapt in a fit of pleasing indolence. 
 While thy tired lute hangs on the hawthorn tree. 
 To lie and listen, till the o'er-drowsed sense 
 Sinks, hardly conscious of the influence. 
 To the soft murmur of the vagrant Bee. 
 — A slender sound ! yet hoary Time 
 Doth to the Soul exalt it with the chime 
 Of all his years ; a company 
 Of ages coming, ages gone ; 
 (Nations from before them sweeping, 
 Regions in destruction steeping,) 
 Yet every awful note in unison 
 With that faint utterance, which tells 
 Of treasure sucked from buds and bells, 
 For the pure keeping of those waxen cells. 
 
 The creature he sings of draws near him, and its very 
 
 feebleness reminds him that the most fragile shapes are 
 
 those which do battle most bravely against time — 
 
 Observe each wing — a tiny van ! — 
 The structure of her laden thigh, 
 How fragile ! yet of ancestry 
 Mysteriously remote and high : 
 High as the imperial front of man, 
 The roseate bloom on woman's cheek ; 
 The soaring eagle's curved beak ; 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 239 
 
 The white plumes of the floating swan ; 
 
 Old as the tiger's paw, the lion's mane, 
 
 Ere shaken by that mood of stern disdain 
 
 At which the desert trembles. Humming Bee ! 
 
 Thy sting was needless then, perchance unknown ; 
 
 The seeds of malice were not sown ; 
 
 All creatures met in peace, from fierceness free. 
 
 And no pride blended with their dignity. 
 
 — Tears had not broken from their source ; 
 
 Nor anguish strayed from her Tartarean den ; 
 
 The golden years maintained a course 
 
 Not undiversified, though smooth and even ; 
 
 We were not mocked with glimpse and shadow then ; 
 
 Bright Seraphs mixed familiarly with men ; 
 
 And earth and stars composed a universal heaven ! 
 
 There is in this poem a profound spiritual as well as 
 philosophical Truth. The sorrow of man's estate does 
 not come from the transience of external things, but 
 from a defect within himself which has " disnatured " 
 Nature's "sweet vicissitudes." The "Passing away" 
 is realised by Sense. If Faith were as strong as 
 Sense the restoration would be realised as vividly as 
 the transience, and severance would cease to be, or at 
 least would lose its sting. It would not then be in 
 " glimpse and shadow " that the cyclic renovations of 
 Time would present the Image of Eternity : nor would 
 that Image be Vision only ; it would be Fruition also. 
 It would be with the changes of human life as it is 
 with the changes of music, where each successive 
 cadence dissolves too sweetly to be regretted, and 
 dies but to prepare the way for another, sweeter still. 
 
 Another of Wordsworth's Orphic poems is the Ode 
 too humbly entitled " Stanzas on the Power of Sound." 
 It was intended to have had a place in that poem of 
 
240 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 which the Excursion is a part, a poem of which 
 some unpubHshed fragments exist, and which appar- 
 ently was not intended to consist exclusively of blank 
 verse. The Ode on the "Power of Sound" was 
 written in 1828, when the poet had reached his fifty- 
 eighth year. At least fifteen years previously, in the 
 seventh Book of the Excursion Wordsworth had 
 recorded the lives of two men, each of whom had 
 been deprived of one out of those two senses, the eye 
 and the ear, through which chiefly the human soul 
 holds communication with the outward world. To 
 each of these sufferers there was accorded a compen- 
 sation which proved how largely man's interior powers 
 can dispense with exterior aids. The man deaf from 
 his youth is thus described — 
 
 He grew up 
 From year to year in loneliness of soul ; 
 And this deep mountain valley was to him 
 Soundless, with all its streams. The bird of dawn 
 Did never rouse this cottager from sleep 
 With startling summons ; not for his delight 
 The vernal cuckoo shouted ; not for him 
 Murmured the labouring bee. When stormy winds 
 Were working the broad bosom of the lake 
 Into a thousand thousand sparkling waves, 
 Rocking the trees, or driving cloud on cloud 
 Along the sharp edge of yon lofty crags, 
 The agitated scene before his eye 
 Was silent as a picture.^ 
 
 In another passage of the Excursion ^ those two 
 great organs of intelligence are thus contrasted — 
 
 ^ ' ' The Churchyard among the Mountains." ' 
 - " The Pastor." 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 241 
 
 The soul sublime and pure, 
 With her two faculties of eye and ear — 
 The one by which a creature, whom his sins 
 Have rendered prone, can upward look to heaven ; 
 The other that empowers him to perceive 
 The voice of Deity, on height and plain, 
 Whispering those truths in stillness, which the Word 
 To the four quarters of the winds proclaims. 
 
 Three of man's five senses are senses only, and the 
 impressions which fall upon them terminate with 
 them. But the senses of sight and hearing are more 
 than mere material powers; the impressions that 
 reach them pass through them to the intellect, which 
 imparts to them in turn something of its own vivific 
 might, changing mere form and colour into beauty, 
 and mere sound into harmony. These two senses 
 are the gates between the worlds of matter and of 
 mind — Sacraments of Nature, feeding without inter- 
 mission man's intellect and imagination. The greater 
 part of Wordsworth's poetry celebrates the sublime 
 ministration of the eye. This particular Ode supplies 
 what was wanting : it celebrates the corresponding 
 ministration of the ear, which mediates no less between 
 man and another mighty world assigned to him as a 
 teacher. It is as "a spiritual functionary" that the 
 Ear is thus addressed — 
 
 Thy functions are ethereal. 
 As if within thee dwelt a glancing mind, 
 Organ of vision ! And a Spirit aerial 
 Informs the cell of hearing, dark and blind ; 
 Intricate labyrinth, more dread for thought 
 To enter than oracular cave ; 
 Strict passage, through which sighs are brought. 
 And whispers, for the heart, their slave ; 
 VOL. I R 
 
242 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 And shrieks that revel in abuse 
 
 Of shivering flesh ; and warbled air, 
 
 Whose piercing sweetness can unloose 
 
 The chains of frenzy, or entice a smile 
 
 Into the ambush of despair ; 
 
 Hosannas pealing down the long-drawn aisle, 
 
 And requiems answered by the pulse that beats 
 
 Devoutly, in life's last retreats ! 
 
 The second stanza — this poem consists of stanzas, 
 each of sixteen Unes— enumerates a few of the indi- 
 vidual as distinguished from combined or harmonised 
 sounds v^rhich challenge man's heart — 
 
 The headlong streams and fountains 
 
 Serve thee, invisible Spirit, with untired powers ; 
 
 Cheering the wakeful tent on Syrian mountains, 
 
 They lull perchance ten thousand thousand flowers. 
 
 That roar, the prowling Lion's Here I am. 
 
 How fearful to the desert wide ! 
 
 That bleat, how tender ! of the dam 
 
 Calling a straggler to her side. 
 
 Shout, Cuckoo ! let the vernal soul 
 
 Go with thee to the frozen zone ; 
 
 Toll from thy loftiest perch, lone bell-bird, toll ! 
 
 At the still hour to Mercy dear, 
 
 Mercy from her twilight throne 
 
 Listening to nun's faint sob of holy fear. 
 
 The sailor's prayer breathed from a darkening sea. 
 
 Or widow's cottage lullaby. 
 
 The next four stanzas refer to harmonised sounds 
 in their connection with the changes and chances of 
 human Hfe, rural, social, political, or religious. A 
 marvellous number of themes are here compressed 
 into narrow space — the Sabbath bells and the marriage 
 chime, the milkmaid's ditty, the song that brightens 
 the blind man's gloom, the veteran's mirth, the plough- 
 man's toil, the galley-slave's task, the pilgrim's march, 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 243 
 
 the prisoner's cell, and, lastly, the shout of a delivered 
 
 people when 
 
 Inspiration 
 Mounts with a tune that travels like a blast 
 Piping through cave and battlemented tower. 
 
 In the seventh stanza the theme changes : the power 
 of music over the soul is traced downward to a dim 
 moral region that underlies human intelligence ; while 
 the origin of that power is traced upward to a universal 
 Law of Order whose throne is in heaven. 
 
 As Conscience, to the centre 
 
 Of being, smites with irresistible pain, 
 
 So shall a solemn cadence, if it enter 
 
 The mouldy vaults of the dull idiot's brain. 
 
 Transmute him to a wretch from quiet hurled — 
 
 Convulsed as by a jarring din ; 
 
 And then aghast, as at the world 
 
 Of reason partially let in 
 
 By concords winding with a sway 
 
 Terrible for sense and soul ! 
 
 Or, awed he weeps, struggling to quell dismay. 
 
 Point not these mysteries to an Art 
 
 Lodged above the starry pole ; 
 
 Pure modulations flowing from the heart 
 
 Of divine Love, where Wisdom, Beauty, Truth 
 
 With Order dwell, in endless youth ? 
 
 In Stanzas eight and nine the "Orphean Insight, 
 Truth's undaunted Lover," is invoked to record the 
 fabled triumphs of Music in early Greece, when 
 Harmony put forth her subtler essence to kindle a 
 sensibility which had not yet broken its primal league 
 with Law, and when Art was " daring because souls 
 could feel." Amphion, "' that walled a city with his 
 melody," and Arion, who "could humanise the 
 
244 THE WISDOxM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 creatures of the sea," are appealed to; but in the 
 middle of the tenth stanza the classic legend yields place 
 to something more potent than the highest imaginations 
 of antique song — the dread realities of everyday life : 
 
 The pipe of Pan, to Shepherds 
 
 Couched in the shadow of Menalian pines, 
 
 Was passing sweet ; the eyeballs of the leopards 
 
 That in high triumph drew the lord of vines, 
 
 How did they sparkle to the cymbal's clang ! 
 
 While Fauns and Satyrs beat the ground 
 
 In cadence, and Silenus swang 
 
 This way and that, with wild flowers crowned ! 
 
 To life, to life give back thine ear ; 
 
 Ye who are longing to be rid 
 
 Of fable, though to truth subservient, hear 
 
 The little sprinkling of cold earth that fell 
 
 Echoed from the coffin-lid ; 
 
 The convict's summons in the steeple's knell, 
 
 The vain distress-gun from a leeward shore. 
 
 Repeated — heard, and heard no more ! 
 
 In Stanza eleven the poet breaks forth into the ex- 
 pression of an impassioned desire that as "laboured min- 
 strelsies " are competent to combine the several tones of 
 lute and harp in great concerted pieces for the delight 
 of sense and imagination, so Nature were but able to 
 combine in one, for the soul's behoof, all those separate 
 sounds by which, whether harmonious or rude, she is 
 able at once to pierce the heart and to heal its wound — 
 
 Ye wandering Utterances, has earth no scheme. 
 
 No scale of moral music — to unite 
 
 Powers that survive but in the faintest dream 
 
 Of memory ! O that they might stoop to bear 
 
 Chains, such precious chains of sight 
 
 As labored minstrelsies for ages wear ! 
 
 O for a balance fit the truth to tell 
 
 Of the Unsubstantial, pondered well ! 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 245 
 
 The twelfth stanza refers to the Pythagorean 
 philosophy, according to which the whole universe 
 rests on a basis of numbers, mathematical relations, 
 and harmonic tones. More than six centuries before 
 Ptolemy, Pythagoras, in anticipation to a great extent 
 of Copernicus, had taught that the sun, not the earth, 
 was the centre of our system, and that the planets 
 moved round it. He had taught also, as though 
 anticipating the law of gravitation and "the inverse 
 square of the distances," that the movements of all 
 the heavenly bodies were determined by geometrical 
 principles, and that their velocities, sizes, etc., are 
 mutually proportioned according to a certain graduated 
 scale exactly represented by the science of numbers. 
 Discovering that music rested on mathematical prin- 
 ciples, and that harmonic tones stood to each other in 
 numerical relations, he taught that the heavenly bodies 
 in their movements through space produce musical 
 sounds exactly proportioned to the speed and bulk of 
 those bodies — a conception the more natural as it was 
 then believed that a subtle ether pervaded all space (a 
 theory to which recent science seems disposed to 
 return), and that its agitations were excited by moving 
 bodies, as those of our atmosphere are by the vibra- 
 tions of musical strings. Such is the " Music of the 
 Spheres" taught later by Plato, a harmony that sustains 
 the whole creation, but which is heard by the great 
 Creator alone, remaining inaudible to man, both 
 because it is perfect and because it is unceasing, yet 
 the sudden cessation of which would notwithstanding 
 
246 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 be man's destruction. We know that the range of 
 sounds which the human ear can grasp are restricted 
 to about ten octaves; and consequently that if the 
 actual sounds all around us exceeded that narrow 
 range by a hundred or a thousand octaves, they must, 
 however loud, escape our consciousness not less than 
 the Pythagorean Music of the Spheres. To such 
 sounds the poet alludes at the close of the stanza — 
 
 By one pervading spirit 
 
 Of Tones and Numbers all things are controlled, 
 
 As sages taught, when faith was found to merit 
 
 Initiation in that mystery old. 
 
 The heavens, whose aspects make our minds as still 
 
 As they themselves appear to be, 
 
 Innumerable voices fill 
 
 With everlasting harmony ; 
 
 The towering headlands, crowned with mist. 
 
 Their feet among the billows, know 
 
 That Ocean is a mighty harmonist ; 
 
 Thy pinions, universal Air, 
 
 Ever waving to and fro, 
 
 Are delegates of harmony and bear 
 
 Strains that support the Seasons in their round ; 
 
 Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound. 
 
 The thirteenth stanza reverts to the aspiration of 
 an earlier one that the sounds by which Nature is ever 
 making her thrilling appeal to the human heart might 
 be combined into a single " scheme of moral music." 
 If such a palpable combination of them be impossible, 
 a compensation has been provided. They are com- 
 bined in the heart of the sage who meditates daily 
 "the still, sad music of Humanity"; they are com- 
 bined also in the Soul of the Race, and to it their true 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 247 
 
 meaning is revealed. They constitute the ceaseless 
 Hymn of Creation — 
 
 Break forth into thanksgiving. 
 
 Ye banded instruments of wind and chords ; 
 
 Unite, to magnify the Ever-living, 
 
 Your inarticulate notes with the voice of words 
 
 Nor hushed be service from the lowing mead, 
 
 Nor mute the forest hum of noon : 
 
 Thou too be heard, lone eagle ! freed 
 
 From snowy peak and cloud, attune 
 
 Thy hungry barkings to the hymn 
 
 Of joy that from her utmost walls 
 
 The six days' Work, by flaming Seraphim 
 
 Transmits to Heaven ! As Deep to Deep 
 
 Shouting through one valley calls, 
 
 All worlds, all natures, mood and measure keep 
 
 For praise and endless gratulation, poured 
 
 Into the ear of God, their Lord ! 
 
 The last stanza affirms that when we have put fables 
 away from us there remains a Truth loftier than 
 any philosopher of antiquity dreamed of. There was 
 a Voice before Creation existed, one which called it 
 into existence ; there is a Voice which shall summon 
 the sleepers from their graves ; and there is a Voice, 
 greater than these, which shall last for ever. As there 
 is not only a Material Seeing, but a Spiritual Seeing 
 also, so there is not only a Material Hearing but a 
 Spiritual Hearing ; and as that Spiritual Seeing is to 
 feast for ever on the Beatific Vision, so for that Spiritual 
 Hearing there remains, in the Beatific state, a Divine 
 Object imparting to man an eternal contentment. 
 Through a spiritual faculty of which the Eye is the 
 type, and no less through a spiritual faculty of which 
 the Ear is the type. Humanity, when it has " put on 
 
248 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 the Incorruptible," is destined to converse with God, 
 
 and thus find the end for which it was created. 
 
 A Voice to Light gave Being ; 
 
 To Time, and Man, his earth-born chronicler ; 
 
 A Voice shall finish doubt and dim foreseeing, 
 
 And sweep away life's visionary stir ; 
 
 The trumpet (we, intoxicate with pride, 
 
 Arm at its blast for deadly wars) 
 
 To archangelic lips applied 
 
 The grave shall open, quench the stars. 
 
 O Silence ! are man's noisy years 
 
 No more than moments of thy life ? 
 
 Is Harmony, blest Queen of smiles and tears, 
 
 With her smooth tones and discords just 
 
 Tempered into rapturous strife, 
 
 Thy destined Bond-slave ? No ! though Earth be dust 
 
 And vanish, though the Heavens dissolve, her stay 
 
 Is in the Word that shall not pass away. 
 
 It need hardly be remarked that the term Word is here 
 used in the most august of its various significations, 
 and denotes that Eternal Wisdom, Thought, and 
 Image of the Eternal Father, through whom He utters 
 Himself from all eternity, and " by whom He made 
 the worlds." That Divine Utterance is here said to 
 " have its support in the Divine Nature," and to hang 
 everlastingly on the Spiritual Ear of God's Intelligent 
 and Redeemed Creation, a Revelation inexhaustible, 
 the antetype of all the harmonies of earth, and of 
 every pleading or commanding tone with which Nature 
 makes appeal to the heart of man. 
 
 Such is Wordsworth's Ode "On the Power of 
 Sound." Its depth of thought is hardly less remark- 
 able than the finished grace of its diction, and the 
 mingled swiftness and smoothness of that metrical 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 249 
 
 current which winds on from period to period. The 
 theme is by necessity an arduous one, and in the 
 hands of one not an artist as well as a poet could 
 hardly have been rendered intelligible. Treated by a 
 master, it needs but serious attention — an attention it 
 has seldom received. That a poem so great in concep- 
 tion, and so perfect in execution, should have remained 
 so long but scantly appreciated even by Wordsworth's 
 admirers is a painful illustration of that narrowness 
 which too often limits the poetic sympathies. 
 
 The Ode entitled "Intimations of Immortality from 
 Recollections of early Childhood" is doubtless the 
 greatest of Wordsworth's poems, and has been well 
 designated as "the high-water mark of modern poetry." 
 Its subject, the origin and destiny of the Human Soul, 
 is the highest with which poetry can measure itself 
 without passing out of that region in which it finds 
 firm footing. In imagination and depth of thought 
 it can hardly soar higher than some passages of 
 the two Odes already referred to, but it supplements 
 these qualities with a richer variety, and with a 
 stronger flux and reflux of emotion. It has been 
 studied with more care than those others of Words- 
 worth's poems which most nearly approach its great- 
 ness, perhaps because it was published earlier; and 
 therefore a few remarks on it will suffice. 
 
 While the poem is essentially a philosophical one, 
 it keeps its philosophy largely under the surface, unlike 
 a certain inverted sort of metaphysical poetry which 
 seems ambitious to display its roots where its blossoms 
 
2SO THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 ought to be. It is not didactic poetry. It does not 
 begin by announcing a theme, but by a dirge over a 
 personal loss ; and by degrees only do we learn that 
 that loss is one which falls in part on all men, and 
 most heavily, it may be, on those who are least 
 conscious of it- 
 There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream. 
 The earth, and every common sight. 
 To me did seem 
 Apparelled in celestial light, 
 The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
 It is not now as it hath been of yore ; 
 Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
 By night or day. 
 The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 
 
 The Rainbow comes and goes, 
 
 And lovely is the Rose ; 
 
 The Moon doth with delight 
 Look round her when the heavens are bare ; 
 
 Waters on a starry night 
 
 Are beautiful and fair ; 
 The sunshine is a glorious birth ; 
 But yet I know, where'er I go. 
 That there hath passed away a glory from the earth. 
 
 Many passages in Wordsworth's poetry record that 
 talismanic power, wholly unconnected with human 
 associations, which Nature had for her chief singer in 
 his childhood. She seemed now near him, and now 
 remote, like a Divinity. He clung to some high rock, 
 noting little whether the vale beneath was lovely or 
 threatening; and the wind that whistled over the 
 craggy ledge seemed almost as much a part of him as 
 the hair it blew back. In Nature's most familiar 
 objects there is to children something of a miraculous 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 251 
 
 character ; and in the childhood of nations a similar 
 fineness of sensibility, combined with a similar ignor- 
 ance of Nature's laws, peopled the streams, the boughs, 
 and the clouds with divinities. What was the power 
 of the commonest green field or bush over Wordsworth 
 in his childhood we can guess, and how great the be- 
 reavement when its full force had passed away, like the 
 gleam from a pebble when the sea-spray refreshes it 
 no more. Wordsworth rests the theory set forth in 
 this Ode, not on abstract grounds of reason, but on 
 an experience specially, though not exclusively, his 
 own. But as a text is often not the demonstration, 
 but merely the " motto," of a doctrine thus forcibly 
 recalled to the memory of those who believe it on 
 independent grounds, so to the poet the loss he 
 lamented was to him in a peculiar sense the memento 
 of that Philosophy which was involved in all his 
 thoughts. If its philosophy had been based on 
 argument, not on personal recollections, the poem, in 
 losing its passion, would have lost its authenticity; 
 and its author would have seemed to expound a 
 system, not to bear a witness. It is his own faith 
 which enkindles that of his readers ; and his own 
 rests upon experiences gone by but precious still. 
 
 The poet has been wandering, not over lonely 
 moors such as those amid which the old man "motion- 
 less as a cloud " taught him the lore of " Resolution 
 and Independence," but among scenes at once the 
 grandest and the most festal. There 
 
 The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep, 
 
252 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 the echoes throng through the mountains, the birds 
 sing, the lambs bound, the shepherd-boy carols, and 
 
 The babe leaps up on his Mother's arm. 
 
 The heavens are glad above and the earth beneath ;j 
 but to him alone a piercing sadness has come like an 
 arrow, and while the children are pulling flowers allj 
 around him he alone stands, an excommunicate from 
 the universal feast. It is not that he is sullen : " The 
 fulness of your bliss I feel, I feel it all." It is not the 
 exhaustion described in Coleridge's " Dejection " — 
 
 I see, not feel, how beautiful they are. 
 
 Rather it is the converse of this state. He sees, and 
 he feels : had there been less loveliness to see, or less 
 sensibility with which to feel it, the immedicable 
 wound, the irrecoverable loss, would have been 
 less felt. 
 
 I hear, I hear, with joy I hear ! 
 But there's a Tree, of many one, 
 A single Field which I have looked upon, 
 Both of them speak of something that is gone : 
 The Pansy at my feet 
 Doth the same tale repeat : 
 Whither is fled the visionary gleam ? 
 Where is it now, the glory and the dream ? 
 
 Suddenly out of the gloom there arises a light. A 
 hundred bygone musings have rushed to a single 
 conclusion, and the problem is solved. Sharply, 
 definitely, and with nothing of preface, the Thought 
 which has wrought deliverance is enunciated. The 
 loss was even greater than it seemed to be ; but in its 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 253 
 
 very greatness there lives a secret Hope. It was not 
 the loss of that gleam v^^hich beautified this earth : it 
 was the loss of a whole world, but of one that cannot 
 be lost for ever. We have a higher birthplace than 
 we know ; and our sorrow is itself a prophecy that the 
 exile shall return to his country. 
 
 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. 
 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. 
 
 The next three stanzas illustrate that gradual decline 
 
 through which the soul is beguiled into a temporary 
 
 forgetfulness of its celestial origin. The Earth is not, 
 
 indeed, our Mother; but she is our Nurse, and she 
 
 does what she can — a cruel kindness — 
 
 To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man, 
 
 Forget the glories he hath known. 
 And that imperial palace whence he came. 
 
 Her nursling assists her work, and buries himself 
 daily deeper in the net of her enchantments. All the 
 
254 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 activities of childhood war on the contemplative 
 instinct ; each new acquisition of the inferior know- 
 ledge helps him to forget the higher cravings. He 
 observes all things in the moving pageant of life that 
 surrounds him; he is drawn towards them, he is 
 blended with them through sympathy and imitation : 
 the current sweeps him from the heights. Day by 
 day " the little actor cons another part," and each is 
 rehearsed on the stage of the lower, half-animal life — 
 
 Thou little child, yet glorious in the might 
 Of heaven-born freedom, on thy Being's height, 
 Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke 
 The years to bring the inevitable yoke 
 Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife ? 
 Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, 
 And custom lie upon thee with a weight 
 Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life ! 
 
 Yet Still he preserves a memory, however faint, of his 
 first estate ; and this is in part to retain it. As often 
 as we question the world of sense we assert that our 
 heritage is in the world of Spirit — 
 
 O joy ! that in our embers 
 
 Is something that doth live. 
 That Nature yet remembers 
 What was so fugitive ! 
 The thought of our past years in me doth breed 
 Perpetual benediction : not indeed 
 For that which is most worthy to be blest ; 
 Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
 Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, ' 
 
 With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast : 
 Not for these I raise 
 The song of thanks and praise, 
 
 But for those first affections, 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 255 
 
 Those shadowy recollections, 
 Which, be they what they may, 
 Are yet the fountain-light of all our day. 
 Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; 
 Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
 Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
 Of the Eternal Silence ; Truths that wake, 
 
 To perish never ; 
 Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor. 
 
 Nor man nor boy. 
 Nor all that is at enmity witla joy. 
 Can utterly abolish or destroy ! 
 
 Hence, in a season of calm weather. 
 Though inland far we be. 
 Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 Which brought us hither ; 
 Can in a moment travel thither. 
 And see the children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 
 
 The poem next, with an admirable skill, reverts to 
 that glorious and gladsome mountain scene described 
 in the earlier portion of it ; but no shadow now is cast 
 across the glory, and no bitter remembrance mingles 
 with the gladness. That which has been taken away 
 from man has been taken only for a time ; and com- 
 pensation has been made, not only 
 
 In the primal sympathy 
 
 Which having been, must ever be, 
 
 but yet more 
 
 In the faith that looks through death. 
 
 That which was ours by right divine must be ours 
 again and for ever. 
 
 The close of this subhme Ode restores to the 
 reader's mind that repose which is needful after the 
 
256 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 soarings and the sinkings of the strain. The Elegy 
 ends in a hymn of praise : the estrangement in recon- 
 ciHation ; for Nature, besides her diviner gleams, so 
 seldom revealed, has her human side, and that alone 
 might well suffice for " the brief parenthesis of mortal 
 life." Its tranquil gladness is intensified by the pathos 
 which loss alone can confer. To those who are still 
 inmates of " this valley of exile " it is not transport but 
 consolation that Nature brings and should bring — 
 
 And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, 
 
 Think not of any severing of our loves ! 
 
 Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might ; 
 
 I only have relinquished one delight, 
 
 To live beneath your more habitual sway ; 
 
 I love the brooks which down their channels fret 
 
 Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ; 
 
 The innocent brightness of a new-born day 
 
 Is lovely yet ; 
 The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
 Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
 That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality ; 
 Another race hath been, and other palms are won. 
 Thanks to the human heart by which we live ; 
 Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears ; 
 To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 
 
 And thus this poem, the one among Wordsworth's 
 works which ascends most freely above " this visible 
 diurnal round," returns to human things — a change 
 analogous to that which takes place in the concluding 
 stanzas of his " Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle." 
 Both these poems overflow with vehement passion, in 
 one case chivalrous, in the other spiritual; both of 
 them end in a tranquillity which retains but a ripple 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 257 
 
 of the storm beyond the harbour bar. In this Ode 
 there are many notes of that high though unostenta- 
 tious art with which the poet had sedulously perfected 
 his natural gifts. Thus, while the theme is mainly 
 philosophical, the first four stanzas, though they make 
 us understand that loss which has saddened a soul 
 once self-sufficing, are yet filled mainly with exuberant 
 and gladdening images of "boon nature's grace"; 
 and, in like manner, the three next stanzas, which 
 vindicate the daring doctrine of the poem, elude, not- 
 withstanding, the polemical. They affect not to argue ; 
 they affirm, and they persuade by setting forth, in a 
 manner accordant with that doctrine, a view of human 
 life illustrated by successive images which make all its 
 seasons and stages beautiful. In the metre of this 
 Ode there is also a singular appropriateness. Some 
 of Wordsworth's odes are written in regular stanzas, 
 and others in irregular paragraphs. The regular 
 structure has often an advantage in the expression of 
 definite thought ; but the irregular yields itself more 
 pliantly to imaginative passion. Nowhere else in 
 Wordsworth's poetry are the metrical changes so great 
 and so sudden as in this Ode ; and their effect is 
 enhanced by a corresponding change from long lines 
 to short — a change which faithfully echoes corre- 
 sponding changes in the sentiments of the poem. That 
 poem is in one sense a troubled poem, while in another 
 its yearnings are ever after rest, and remind one of 
 the description of the ocean in Shelley's " Prometheus 
 Unbound "— 
 
 VOL. I S 
 
258 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 I hear the mighty deep hungering for cahn. 
 How closely the sound and sense are united will 
 become apparent to us at once if we ask ourselves 
 what would be the result if the most skilful writer of 
 the " heroic couplet " were to translate this Ode into 
 that metre. Little or nothing of it would remain. Its 
 diction is as felicitous as its metre. Parts of it are 
 written in that " large utterance," at once majestic and 
 simple, which makes so much of Wordsworth's poetry, 
 when once read, haunt the ear for ever. Parts of it 
 are familiar even to roughness. That roughness was 
 intentional, and was not mitigated in the later editions. 
 It was needed. The perfection of a poem may be 
 gravely impaired by its uniform elaborateness ; as, in 
 architecture, ornament becomes offensive if it be not 
 relieved by contrasted masses of occasional plainness 
 or rudeness. Without such passages the sentiment 
 of this Ode would have lacked its passionate impulse, 
 and its doctrine would have been frozen into a 
 scholastic theory. In this poem many extremes are 
 reconciled. In no other has Wordsworth's genius, 
 contemplative at once and emotional, moved through 
 so wide an arc. 
 
 The philosophy of this Ode is substantially the 
 Pythagorean teaching respecting the pre-existence of 
 the human Soul, divested of its "Transmigration" 
 theory. Many will ask how far it was seriously believed 
 by Wordsworth. In his later life I once heard him 
 say that he had held it with a poetic, not a religious, 
 faith. When he wrote the poem he might perhaps 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 259 
 
 have expressed a more ardent adhesion to it. Whether 
 or not he held the doctrine hterally, he must have 
 maintained it substantially, so strongly did he hold 
 that of Innate Ideas. To the old saying, " Nihil est 
 in intellectu quod non prius in sensu," he would at 
 any time have opposed the old rejoinder, " Nisi ipse 
 intellectus ; " for his best poetry is the assertion that we 
 bring with us into the world all those great ideas, such 
 as the , " Beautiful," the " True," the " Infinite," the 
 " Holy," which change the physical into a moral world, 
 and contradistinguish man from the brutes. To the 
 same source he referred, of course, those mathematical 
 intuitions on which the world of science rests, and 
 of which the late Sir William Rowan Hamilton said : 
 " They are Ideas which seem to be so far born with us 
 that the possession of them, in any conceivable degree, 
 appears to be only the development of our original 
 powers, the unfolding of our proper humanity." ^ He 
 might, however, have held the doctrine of his Ode on 
 theological as well as on philosophical grounds, so 
 closely allied is it to an opinion entertained by some 
 theologians — viz. that each human Soul not only sees 
 its Judge immediately after death, but saw its Creator 
 also, for one brief moment, at the instant of its creation. 
 Time does not exist in the spiritual region ; and the 
 expression of the Ode, "God who is our Home," 
 implies that a single flash from the Divine Counte- 
 nance might have filled the Soul with all that haunting 
 
 ^ Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Astronomer Royal of 
 Ireland. By Robert Perceval Greves. Longmans. 
 
26o THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 yet undeveloped Wisdom which it could have learned 
 during a millennium spent 
 
 In that imperial Palace whence we came. 
 
 It is, however, in the Excursion that one might 
 expect chiefly to find Wordsworth's highest teaching 
 — that poem the introductory portion of which was 
 greeted by his greatest contemporary as 
 
 An Orphic song indeed, 
 A song divine of high and passionate thoughts 
 To their own music chanted ! 
 
 Its theme was nobler than that of the ancient Orphic 
 bards. Its aim was to celebrate the creation and the 
 marvels, not of a material, but of a spiritual universe — 
 
 Of Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, Love, and Hope, 
 
 And melancholy Fear subdued by Faith ; 
 
 Of blessed consolations in distress ; 
 
 Of moral strength, and intellectual Power ; 
 
 Of joy in widest commonalty spread ; 
 
 Of the Individual Mind that keeps her own 
 
 Inviolate retirement, subject there 
 
 To Conscience only, and the law supreme 
 
 Of that Intelligence which governs all, 
 
 I sing. . . . Not Chaos, not 
 
 The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, 
 
 Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out 
 
 By help of dreams, can breed such fear and awe 
 
 As fall upon us often when we look 
 
 Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man — 
 
 My haunt, and the main region of my song. 
 
 The highest of all aids is invoked, and a mission, the 
 loftiest at which poetry can aim, is claimed — 
 
 Descend, Prophetic Spirit ! that inspir'st 
 The human Soul of universal earth. 
 
WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 261 
 
 Dreaming on things to come, and dost possess 
 
 A metropolitan temple in the hearts 
 
 Of mighty Poets ; upon me bestow 
 
 A gift of genuine insight ; that my Song 
 
 With star-like virtue in its place may shine, 
 
 Shedding benignant influence. . . . 
 
 What are the tidings which a seer thus commis- 
 sioned has to deUver for the behoof of his fellow-men? 
 They are, first, that man's help does not come, as 
 pride suggests, from himself — 
 
 And if the Mind turn inward, 'tis perplexed, 
 
 Lost in a gloom of uninspired research ; 
 
 Meantime the Heart within the heart, the seat 
 
 Where Peace and happy Consciousness should dwell. 
 
 On its own axis restlessly revolves, 
 
 Yet nowhere finds the cheering light of Truth. 
 
 Wordsworth's Transcendentalism was not of that 
 sort which assures us that because man carries an inner 
 dial within his conscience that dial can be read by 
 the aid of any lantern our caprice may bring to it, and 
 needs no light from heaven. 
 
 Secondly, his tidings are that man's help does not 
 come, as Sense suggests, chiefly from the world around 
 us. The visible world is indeed a marvellous thing ; 
 but if it existed alone it would be but a fair shadow. 
 It is great alone because it tells us of things Invisible — 
 
 I have seen 
 A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract 
 Of inland ground, applying to his ear 
 The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell ; 
 To which, in silence hushed, his very soul 
 Listened intensely ; and his countenance soon 
 Brightened with joy, for murmurings from within 
 Were heard — sonorous cadences ! whereby. 
 
262 THE WISDOM AND TRUTH OF iv 
 
 To his belief, the Monitor expressed 
 
 Mysterious union with its native Sea. 
 
 Even such a shell the Universe itself 
 
 Is to the ear of Faith ; and there are times, 
 
 I doubt not, when to you it doth impart 
 
 Authentic tidings of invisible things ; 
 
 Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power ; 
 
 And central peace, subsisting at the heart 
 
 Of endless agitation. ^ 
 
 What are those " Invisible Things " of which Faith 
 thus makes report ? They are the things which belong 
 to that Universe which alone is true and eternal — the 
 Spiritual and Personal Universe of Deity — 
 
 And what are things Eternal ? Powers depart. 
 
 Possessions vanish, and opinions change, 
 
 And passions hold a fluctuating seat : 
 
 But, by the storms of circumstance unshaken. 
 
 And subject neither to eclipse nor wane, 
 
 Duty exists ; — immutably survive, 
 
 For our support, the measures and the forms 
 
 Which an abstract intelligence supplies. 
 
 Whose kingdom is where time and space are not. 
 
 Of other converse, which mind, soul, and heart 
 
 Do, with united urgency, require, 
 
 What more that may not perish? Thou, dread Source, 
 
 Prime, self-existing Cause and End of all 
 
 That in the scale of being fill their place. 
 
 Above our human region, or below, 
 
 Set and sustained ; thou, who didst wrap the cloud 
 
 Of infancy around us, that Thyself 
 
 Therein, with our simplicity awhile 
 
 Might'st hold, on earth, communion undisturbed ; 
 
 Who, from the anarchy of dreaming sleep, 
 
 Or from its death-like void, with punctual care. 
 
 And touch as gentle as the morning light, 
 
 Restorest us daily to the powers of sense, 
 
 1 Excursion , Book I\^. 
 
IV WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 263 
 
 And Reason's steadfast rule — Thou, Thou alone 
 Art everlasting, and the blessed Spirits 
 Whom thou includest, as the sea her waves : 
 For adoration thou endurest ; endure 
 For consciousness the motions of thy Will ; 
 For apprehension those transcendent truths 
 Of the pure intellect, that stand as laws 
 (Submission constituting strength and power) 
 Even to thy Being's infinite majesty ! 
 The Universe shall pass away — a work 
 Glorious, because the shadow of thy might, 
 A step or link for intercourse with thee. 
 
 The fourth Book of the Excursion — "Despond- 
 ency Corrected" — from which these passages are cited, 
 is the most magniiicent uninspired poetical confession 
 anj'where to be found of that Authentic Theism which, 
 including as it does a loyal devotion to all the Per- 
 sonal Attributes of God, whose providence governs 
 His world, by necessity finds its complement in 
 Christianity — that Christianity so zealously asserted in 
 Wordsworth's maturer poetry, and so obviously implied 
 in the whole of it. 
 
 In speaking of the Truthfulness which in a manner 
 so special, and a degree so remarkable, characterises 
 Wordsworth's poetry, I have not found room to en- 
 large on one important part of that subject — viz. the 
 mode in which that Truthfulness is guarded and 
 enforced by the perfect grammar and logic which 
 essentially belong to Wordsworth's style, and by its 
 contempt for false ornament. The extraordinary 
 incorrectness of much modern poetr)', and the degree 
 in which the true laws of composition are evaded 
 even where they are not \iolated palpably, the author 
 
264 WORDSWORTH'S POETRY iv 
 
 remaining, as far as possible, a contented outlaw from 
 the domain of accurate periodic construction, proceeds 
 in the main from want of intellectual Truthfulness. 
 An analysis of Wordsworth's style as compared with 
 that of most modern poets would be absolutely neces- 
 sary for a full illustration of that Truthfulness which 
 belongs to his poetry ; but it would require an essay 
 in itself. The general plainness of that style is a 
 common complaint with those whose taste has been 
 vitiated by the over-flavoured poetry common in recent 
 times ; but it was often with the poet a matter of de- 
 liberate choice, as is proved by the richness and majesty 
 of his language on suitable occasions, and by the fact 
 that hardly any poetry abounds so largely in memorable 
 lines. The plainness of Wordsworth's style results 
 from the greatness of his thoughts, and his contempt 
 for the tricks of literature. 
 
V 
 
 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY 
 
 PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 
 
 PART I 
 
 The present century has been a great age of English 
 poetry — greater unquestionably than any which pre- 
 ceded it, except the EHzabethan. But there is one 
 great difference between the Elizabethan poetry and 
 that of the nineteenth century. Our poets of the 
 sixteenth century in the main bore to each other a 
 considerable resemblance, — not in detail, but in spirit. 
 The English poetry of the nineteenth century, on the 
 other hand, has unconsciously divided itself into 
 different schools, as remote from each other as were 
 those of Italian painting. 
 
 One of the most remarkable circumstances con- 
 nected with Mr. Taylor'^s poetry is the small degree in 
 which it can be classed with any of those schools. 
 Like Wordsworth's poetry, it is thoughtful in an 
 unusual degree; but its thoughtfulness is never 
 abstract or metaphysical, still less mystical. In moral 
 gravity it has some afifinity with Southey's poetry ; in 
 
266 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY v 
 
 scholarly and periodic construction of sentences, with 
 Shelley's ; in precision of form and compactness of 
 diction, with Lander's. But in the case of these 
 poets the resemblance to Mr. Taylor is far less than 
 the dissimilitude ; while with most of the recent poets 
 he stands in striking contrast. There exists, it is true, 
 one characteristic in common between the authors of 
 Childe Harold and of Philip van Artevelde : in each 
 case there is a strongly-marked ideal of human char- 
 acter, with which the author is plainly in sympathy, 
 and with which he has a singular power of making men 
 sympathise. But in all else they are absolutely 
 opposed to each other. Lord Byron's ideal is largely 
 that of a man wielded by his passions, and inspired 
 but by his wrongs ; one whose strength, like that of a 
 projectile, is not a strength inherent in him, but one 
 to which he is subjected. The ideal exhibited in 
 Philip van Artez'elde, while equally of this world, is a 
 nobler conception. It is that of one whose passions 
 are under the control of the intellect and moral 
 will, however little these last are themselves ruled by 
 a divine principle. But here the analog}' ends. 
 Lord Byron constantly delineates the same ideal in 
 his various works ; a proof that, despite the great 
 ability of his dramas, his genius was not dramatic. 
 Mr. Taylor's ideal may be found adumbrated in Isaac 
 Comnemis, his earliest drama, while it is completely 
 delineated in Philip van Artrc'elde : but in the latter 
 work, and still more in his two later dramas, characters 
 cast in the most different moulds are illustrated ^vith 
 
V PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 267 
 
 almost equal power. His union of vigour with classic 
 grace is his chief characteristic. 
 
 Mr. Taylor's poetry is pre-eminently that of action, 
 as Lord Byron's is that of passion; or rather, it 
 includes action as well as passion, thus corresponding 
 with Milton's definition of tragic poetry as "high 
 actions and high passions best describing." It is this 
 peculiarity which has made him succeed in the drama 
 which most of our modern poets have attempted, but 
 almost all unsuccessfully. 
 
 Wordsworth wrote a play in his youth which he 
 published in his old age : Coleridge wrote two ; but, 
 though they bear the impress of genius, we feel in 
 reading them that the author was not in natural 
 sympathy with action, and that it was to him a 
 dramatic necessity, not a thing to be valued for its 
 own sake. He could analyse what lay still, not 
 exhibit the fleeting. His characters are metaphysical 
 conceptions, worked out with a conscious exercise of 
 the philosophic faculty, not with that spontaneous 
 energy and instinctive felicity which belongs to the 
 genius essentially dramatic. 
 
 We should have felt certain that Scott could have 
 excelled in the drama had he not made the attempt 
 and failed. He could both conceive character and 
 compose a story ; but he lacked apparently the fiery 
 intensity of the drama, and though a true poet, he is 
 dramatic chiefly in his novels while in his poems he 
 tends more to the Romantic Epic. Landor has 
 written dramas and numerous dramatic scenes. They 
 
268 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY v 
 
 abound in passages of high thought and refined 
 sentiment; and they are characterised, now by the 
 imperious eloquence, now by the antique majesty of 
 that great writer. Yet they are not dramatic; the 
 plot halts, as if the author had not thought it worth 
 his pains to elaborate it ; the fact being that where a 
 genuine sympathy with dramatic action exists, the 
 instinct of art forces the dramatist to take pains with 
 the plot — which a celebrated author once confessed 
 that " he always left a good deal to Providence." 
 
 As an exception to the undramatic character of 
 modern English genius, the Cenci of Shelley may be 
 named. An extraordinary vigour and skill are shown 
 in the treatment of a subject so forbidding as to be 
 unfit for our times, despite the precedents, which are 
 but partially such, of Pagan Greece. Shelley in this 
 work remarkably exhibits the faculty of self-control 
 that belongs to genius. On all other occasions his 
 imagination not merely dealt largely with metaphor 
 and image, but lived in a world of such. He piles 
 image upon image, and the object he describes is 
 sometimes reflected from so many different mirrors 
 that the dazzled reader walks in a sphere where it is 
 hard to distinguish between substance and semblance. 
 It was only by putting an absolute restraint upon 
 himself that he could even hope to write a drama; 
 and in the whole of the Cenci there is but one passage 
 that can be called figurative. The imagination self- 
 subjected to this restraint became strengthened for 
 severer toils than usual, and moulded the work into a 
 
V PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 269 
 
 fair shape, though hewn out of a dark material. But 
 he did not succeed in similar attempts at a later time. 
 One who had the best means of forming a correct 
 judgment, Leigh Hunt, believed that had Shelley lived 
 he would have made himself chiefly known as a tragic 
 poet ; but, as a matter of fact, he wrote his Witch of 
 Atlas in three days, while the labour of weeks got him 
 through but a few scenes of his projected drama on 
 Charles I. 
 
 Much of poetic and dramatic power has been shown 
 by other recent writers besides those to whom we have 
 referred; but the result has seldom corresponded 
 with the ability spent on them. Dean Milman, Leigh 
 Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Charles Lamb, George Darley, 
 Shiel, and others have written dramas ; but it is chiefly 
 in connection with other tasks that they are remem- 
 bered ; while many plays which have been singularly 
 successful on the stage — those of Sir Bulwer Lytton 
 and Sheridan Knowles — have not been those of the 
 highest literary merits. The undramatic character of 
 modern poetic genius is evinced by the fact that while 
 so many plays have been written, so few finely- 
 conceived and adequately -illustrated original char- 
 acters have been added to the stores of the British 
 drama. 
 
 Mr. Taylor has now published six dramas : Isaac 
 Comnenus, Philip van Artevelde (in two parts), Edwin 
 the Fair, A Sicilian Summer, and St. Clemenfs Eve. 
 The earUest of these, though at first less successful 
 than the works that succeeded it, gave no doubtful 
 
270 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY y 
 
 promise of a brilliant dramatic career. The earlier 
 works of men of genius, however inferior to their later, 
 have generally contained the germ of the excellence 
 developed by labour and time ; and in this instance 
 both the style of the work and the character of the 
 hero were an anticipation of that maturer drama 
 which at once established the poet's reputation. It is 
 not a little remarkable that a public which had so long 
 been accustomed to the vehement stimulants of Lord 
 Byron, and the bright but superficial imagery of 
 Moore, should have responded to so sudden a 
 summons. Had the challenge been a less bold one, 
 it would probably have been less successful. 
 
 The new aspirant was fortunate in his theme. It 
 was taken from a period of history when the life of the 
 Middle Ages was passing into that of modern political 
 society, and when those picturesque pomps of chivalry 
 with which Scott had made his countrymen familiar 
 were beginning to yield before the first blasts of a 
 storm by which the ecclesiastical as well as the political 
 institutions of Europe were visited before long. In 
 the fourteenth century the Flemish cities, though 
 subject to the Earl of Flanders, enjoyed an almost 
 republican independence with respect to their internal 
 affairs. If offended by one of the earl's bailiffs, they 
 rose in arms under their associated " guilds " or crafts ; 
 and could they have permanently united, it would 
 have been nearly impossible to have reduced them 
 again to obedience. But the interest of one city was 
 not that of another ; and in Ghent itself, as well as 
 
V PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 271 
 
 the towns that sided with it — such as Damne, Ypres, 
 Courtray, Grammont, etc. — there were generally two 
 parties, that of the rich, whose trade required peace, 
 and that of the poor, who regarded war as their trade. 
 It was apparently its nearness to actual life, not the 
 chivalrous pageantry mixed up with it, that recom- 
 mended this theme to a dramatist of robust and 
 practical genius. The war was one which "in its 
 progress extended to the whole of Flanders, and 
 excited a degree of interest in all the civilised countries 
 of Europe, for which the cause must be sought in the 
 State of European communities at the time. It was 
 believed that entire success on the part of Ghent 
 would bring on a general rising almost throughout 
 Christendom of the commonalty against the feudal 
 lords and men of substance. The incorporation of 
 the citizens of Paris, known by the name of 'the 
 Army with Mallets,' was, according to the well-known 
 chronicler of the period, ' all by the example of them 
 of Ghent.' Nicholas le Flamand deterred them 
 from pulling down the Louvre by urging the expedi- 
 ency of waiting to see what success might attend the 
 Flemish insurgents. At Rheims, Chalons-on-the-Marne, 
 at Orleans, Beauvoisin, the like designs were enter- 
 tained. ' The rebellion of the Jacquerie,' says Froissart, 
 'was never so terrible as this was likely to have been.' 
 Brabant, Burgundy, and the lower part of Germany 
 were in a dangerous condition ; and in England Wat 
 Tyler's rebellion was contemporaneous, and not uncon- 
 nected with what was going on in Flanders " (Preface). 
 
272 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY v 
 
 It was the first great upheaval of the popular element 
 in modern society. At the end of the last century the 
 " fountains of the great deep were broken open," and 
 the institutions which had survived many a lesser 
 shock went down beneath the great deluge. In our 
 own day the storm continues to rage throughout no 
 small part of the world ; nor is it likely to cease in 
 those of our sons ; but the first murmurs of the tempest 
 went forth from among the wealthy burghers of 
 Flanders in the fourteenth century. 
 
 The leader of the insurgent party had been Jacques 
 van Artevelde, who was murdered in a popular tumult. 
 Things had long gone ill : the men who had succes- 
 sively headed the revolt had pushed themselves into 
 eminence by courage and military skill, but had 
 subsequently failed from want of personal ascendency 
 and statesmanlike ability. With their failure the play 
 begins. Philip van Artevelde has lived the life of a 
 retired student; but Van den Bosch, a rough hard- 
 headed chief of the insurgents, has shrewdness enough 
 to know that the powers of grave reflection in which 
 he is himself deficient are as needful for the permanent 
 success of a leader as energy and fearlessness. He 
 offers Philip the supreme command in the people's 
 name, and the recluse becomes the man of action. 
 He desires to avenge his father's death ; he desires to 
 rescue his country from tyrants whose incompetency 
 he scorns as much as he hates their brutality; but 
 most of all he yields to that instinct which makes 
 ability and daring seek a sphere large enough for them. 
 
V PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 273 
 
 The character of Phihp constitutes the principal 
 interest of the drama. Habitually thoughtful he is, 
 yet never abstract ; and the metaphysical speculations 
 to which he refers at a late period of his career as 
 having once passed across his mind were evidently 
 but those guests of youth which abide only with the 
 few who have a special vocation for such inquiries. 
 Life and man had been the subject of his meditations ; 
 and Hving from his childhood amid the whirl of intense 
 action, when the time came to take a part, action was 
 as easy to him as thought unaccompanied by action to 
 Hamlet. He is not embarrassed by scruples. He 
 seldom shrinks from what is needful because it involves 
 suffering and danger, whether to others or to himself. 
 He is not selfish, or, at the earlier part of his career, 
 strongly ambitious; but neither is he generous or 
 self-sacrificing. He is grave-hearted. His aspirations 
 are not after an ideal excellence ; but to carry out a 
 fixed purpose is the law of his being. He knows 
 himself and the place that belongs to him; he has 
 calculated his powers and ascertained their limits, and 
 by a deliberate act resolved that he will try the venture 
 and abide the consequence. He has had no tempta- 
 tion to conceal from himself any of the difficulties 
 in his way, for his is that calm courage that sees things 
 as they are. He has small patriotic enthusiasm, and 
 aspires after no golden age. He looks on human 
 society as a stormy sea of passions, that need to be 
 ruled ; but he desires that they should be ruled by a 
 manly, at least, if not a disinterested, intelligence, 
 
 VOL. I T 
 
274 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY v 
 
 not by caprice in high place or by appetites more 
 brutal than those restrained. Sagacious in intellect 
 and fixed in purpose, his native dignity of character 
 retains for him that ascendency over his fellow-men 
 which his daring and stern justice had early acquired. 
 Without either breadth of sympathy or subtle refine- 
 ment of thought, he carries everything before him by 
 his strength, consistency, and efficiency. To trace 
 the changes made in such a character, first by a 
 successful career and then by adverse fortune, was a 
 great dramatic problem. 
 
 It is thus that he discusses the events of the day 
 with Father John of Heda, his counsellor and friend, 
 and formerly his preceptor — 
 
 A7'tevelde. I never look'd that he should live so long. 
 He was a man of that unsleeping spirit 
 He seem'd to live by miracle : his food 
 Was glory, vv^hich was poison to his mind 
 And peril to his body. He was one 
 Of many thousand such that die betimes, 
 Whose story is a fragment, known to few. 
 Then comes the man who has the luck to live, 
 And he's a prodigy. Compute the chances, 
 And deem there's ne'er a one in dangerous times 
 Who wins the race of gloiy, but than he 
 A thousand men more gloriously endow'd 
 Have fallen upon the course ; a thousand others 
 Have had their fortunes founder'd by a chance, 
 Whilst lighter barks push'd past them ; to whom add 
 A smaller tally of the singular few 
 Who, gifted with predominating powers, 
 Bear yet a temperate will and keep the peace. 
 The world knows nothing of its greatest men. 
 
 Father John. Had Launoy lived, he might have pass'd 
 for great. 
 But not by conquests in the Franc of Bruges. 
 
PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 
 
 275 
 
 The sphere, the scale of circumstance, is all 
 
 Winch makes the wonder of the many. Still 
 
 An ardent soul was Launoy's, and his deeds 
 
 Were such as dazzled many a Flemish dame. 
 
 There'll some bright eyes in Ghent be dimm'd for him. 
 
 Arteyelde. They will be dim and then be bright again. 
 All is in busy, stirring, stormy motion. 
 And many a cloud drifts by and none sojourns. 
 Lightly is life laid down amongst us now, 
 And lightly is death mom-n'd : a dusk star blinks 
 As fleets the rack, but look again, and lo ! 
 In a wide solitude of wintry sky 
 Twinkles the re-illuminated star, 
 And all is out of sight that smirch'd the ray. 
 We have not time to mourn. 
 
 Father John. The worse for us ! 
 
 He that lacks time to mourn lacks time to mend. 
 Eternity mourns that. 'Tis an ill cure 
 For life's worst ills to have no time to feel them. 
 Where sorrow's held intrusive and turn'd out, 
 There wisdom will not enter, nor true power. 
 Nor aught that dignifies humanity. 
 Yet such the barrenness of busy life ! 
 From shelf to shelf Ambition clambers up 
 To reach the naked'st pinnacle of all, 
 Whilst Magnanimity, absolved from toil, 
 Reposes self-included at the base. 
 But this thou know'st. 
 
 Philip has won, ahnost without seeking them, the 
 affections of a beautiful but unprotected young Flemish 
 heiress, the friend of his sister, Clara van Artevelde. 
 In an interview, in which the confiding grace, ingenu- 
 ousness, and devotedness of the Lady Adriana are 
 more striking than any chivalrous ardour on her lover's 
 part, he gains the promise of her hand. She has had 
 a less fortunate admirer in the Lord of Occo ; and the 
 rejected suitor is stimulated by jealousy, as well as by 
 his political interests, to conspire against his rival. 
 
276 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY v 
 
 The Earl of Flanders has sent two emissaries, Sir 
 Guisebert Grutt and Sir Simon Bette, to traffic with 
 traitors in the Flemish camp. To divide his enemies, 
 he has also offered an amnesty, on condition that three 
 hundred citizens are delivered up to his justice. A 
 meeting is convened at the Stadt-house ; and the Lord 
 of Occo promises to attend it, having first resolved on 
 the assassination of Philip. Fearing, however, that 
 his conspiracy has been discovered, he stays away at 
 the critical moment. For a time the two emissaries 
 are successful with the people; but the moment it 
 becomes Artevelde's turn to speak, their intrigue 
 begins to unravel. His harangue carries the people 
 with him as a storm carries dead leaves. He reminds 
 them of their past achievements, and of the remorse- 
 less cruelties practised on them by the earl. He 
 demands who can know that his own name is not 
 included among the three hundred to be delivered up 
 to torments and death ; and at the moment that he 
 finds himself the master of his audience he turns on the 
 delegates, denounces them as traitors, and stabs Grutt 
 to the heart, while Van den Bosch slays Bette. 
 
 The scabbard thrown away, the war-party is at 
 once in the ascendant ; and the wealthy burghers are 
 taught that their young chief has left his books, and 
 become such a man of action as may not be trifled 
 with. The Lord of Occo makes his escape, and suc- 
 ceeds also in carrying off Adriana, of whose broad 
 lands he proposes to become the master by a forced 
 marriage with the heiress. The scene changes to a 
 
V PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 277 
 
 banqueting-hall at Bruges, where the Earl of Flanders 
 is magnificently entertained by the mayor and citizens. 
 There is a song on the approaching fall of Ghent- 
 Flat stones and awry, grass, potsherd, and shard, 
 Thy place shall be like an old churchyard ! 
 
 The following brief conversation between D'Arlon 
 and Gilbert Matthew, one of the earl's counsellors, is 
 a graphic sketch of that stormy time — 
 
 Gilbert. No sooner had his highness reached the palace 
 Than he sends back for me. 
 
 D^Arlon. And me the same. 
 
 Gilbert. His highness is not happy. 
 
 D'Arlon. That is likely ; 
 
 But have you any private cause to think it ? 
 
 Gilbert. I have observed that when he is not happy 
 He sends for me. 
 
 D'Arlon. And do you mend his mood ? 
 
 GilbeH. Nay, what I can. His highness at such times 
 Is wishful to be counsell'd to shed blood. 
 
 D'Arlon. 'Tis said that he is counsell'd oft to that. 
 
 Gilbert. It is my duty to advise his highness 
 With neither fear nor favour. As I came. 
 The bodies of three citizens lay stretch'd 
 Upon the causeway. 
 
 DArlon. How had they been kill'd ? 
 
 Gilbert. By knocking on the head. 
 
 D^Arlon. And who had done it ? 
 
 Gilbert. The officers that walk'd before the Earl, 
 To make him room to pass. The streets were full. 
 And many of the mean-crafts roam'd about 
 Discoursing of the news they heard from Ghent ; 
 And as his highness pass'd they misbehaved, 
 And three were knock 'd upon the head with staves. 
 I knew by that his highness was not happy. 
 I knew I should be sent for. 
 
 In such brief and interstitial scenes as the one 
 
278 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY v 
 
 above quoted, the hand of a true master of dramatic 
 art is seen as much as in passages of the most high- 
 wrought pathos. Genius, even when not essentially 
 dramatic, will often in the most interesting portions of 
 a play produce what is so profound in sentiment or 
 eloquent in expression, that in our enjoyment of it as 
 poetry we forget to ask whether it be dramatic or not. 
 True dramatic genius includes, besides a philosophic 
 insight into character, a certain careless felicity in 
 dealing with externals. This tact is a thing which we 
 always find among our dramatists in the reigns of 
 Elizabeth and James the First, and which in our 
 modern drama — the tradition having been broken — 
 we almost always lack. The well may be deep and 
 the water pure, but it is commonly without hfe. The 
 soundest philosophic analysis will not serve as a 
 substitute for a shrewd sharp observation, and that 
 vividness of handling analogous to a hasty sketch by 
 a great painter. This is the great defect of the German 
 drama. Characters are sometimes ably conceived, 
 and a plot is laboriously devised capable of illustrating 
 them ; but the unconscious skill and imitative instinct 
 which ought to mediate between the world of abstract 
 conception and outward illustration is wanting. We 
 miss the electric vitality of true art. The distinction 
 is that between the drama taken from life and that 
 drawn from books. England has long been the 
 land of action, and Germany that of thought. In 
 England, moreover, the drama grew up at a time when 
 the passions expressed themselves freely, and when, 
 
V PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 279 
 
 as among children and races in an early stage of 
 development, the impulses were stronger from having 
 never known restraint or disguise. In Germany the 
 drama arose at a period of conventionalities and 
 respectabilities as well as of theories. It was a philo- 
 sophical imitation, not a living tradition ; and with all 
 its merits, it shares the defect of Germany's modern 
 school of religious painters, in which the highest 
 aesthetic science, directed by the noblest aims, cannot 
 make up for the want of inspiration and of popular 
 sympathy. 
 
 To proceed with our analysis oi Philip van Artevelde. 
 The Earl of Flanders is advised by Gilbert Matthew 
 to starve Ghent into surrender; and he succeeds in 
 cutting off all supplies from the place. Famine sets 
 in, and pestilence follows. But the desperate situation 
 suggests a desperate remedy. Artevelde proposes 
 that five thousand of the bravest and strongest citizens 
 should be supplied with what food still remains, and 
 accompany him on a march to Bruges, the earl's 
 capital. The small but resolute band arrive there a 
 little before sunset. It is a festival ; the inhabitants 
 of Bruges have been making merry ; and half of them 
 rush out in a state of intoxication to encounter an 
 enemy whom they despise. The setting sun shines in 
 their faces ; the archers of Ghent bewilder them with 
 their arrows ; the townspeople fall into an ambush ; a 
 total rout ensues. Artevelde enters Bruges with the 
 flying troops, and the earl with difficulty escapes. 
 Gilbert Matthew and the Lord of Occo are taken 
 
28o HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY v 
 
 prisoners, and immediately condemned to death • and 
 the First Part ends with the words, 
 
 Now, Adriana, I am wholly thine. 
 
 The Second Part has an interest graver and stronger 
 yet. For a long period Artevelde has enjoyed un- 
 questioned power ; but the storm breaks on him at 
 last. The counsellors of the youthful King of France, 
 alarmed by the outbreak of popular revolt in many 
 parts of Europe, resolve to deprive the movement-party 
 of the encouragement it derives from the success of 
 the revolt in Flanders. The boy-king rejoices in the 
 opportunity of proving his chivalry and aiding his 
 exiled cousin. Artevelde sends Father John of Heda 
 to England, in hopes of winning the alliance of 
 Richard II. For him there has been a change worse 
 than any political event can bring. His wife is dead, 
 and his hearth has long been desolate. A change has 
 taken place in his own character likewise ; and it is 
 with a consummate art that the dramatist indicates 
 the effect of time and success on such a character. 
 He has grown more imperious and less scrupulous. 
 Accustomed to see all men bow before him, his own 
 will, guided mainly by considerations of public expe- 
 diency, has been his main law of action. When 
 warned by Father John that since his elevation he 
 has not been unvisited by worldly pride and its attend- 
 ant passions, he replies — 
 
 Say they so ? 
 Well, if it be so, it is late to mend, 
 For self-amendment is a work of time, 
 
V PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 281 
 
 And business will not wait. Such as I am, 
 For better or for worse, the world must take me, 
 For I must hasten on. Perhaps the state 
 And royal splendour I affect is deem'd 
 A proof of pride ; yet they that these contemn 
 Know little of the springs that move mankind. 
 
 If (which I own not) 
 I have drunk deeper of ambition's cup, 
 Be it remember'd that the cup of love 
 Was wrested from my hand. Enough of this. 
 Ambition has its uses in the scheme 
 Of Providence, whose instrument I am 
 To work some changes in the world or die. 
 
 His thoughts are not as lofty nor his feehngs as pure 
 as they were, but he is as daring and as sagacious as 
 ever. The King of France has sent a herald to 
 require his immediate submission, the alternative 
 being war. The French message is cast in the 
 haughtiest language. Enthroned in his chair of state, 
 and surrounded by his council, Artevelde flings back 
 the defiance in a speech which, as an exponent of the 
 revolutionary cause, has probably never been surpassed. 
 There is in it nothing either of the daring speculation 
 with which the cause of revolt is advocated by Shelley 
 or of the declamatory cynicism of Byron. It is a 
 practical business speech, raging itself into a white- 
 heat, and still looking cold. In its domineering 
 vindictiveness it is ever logical. 
 
 Artevelde. Sir Herald, thou hast well discharged thyself 
 Of an ill function. Take these links of gold, 
 And with the company of words I give thee 
 Back to the braggart king from whom thou cam'st. 
 First, of my father : had he lived to know 
 His glories, deeds, and dignities postponed 
 
282 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY 
 
 To names of barons, earls, and counts (that here 
 
 Are to men's ears importunately common 
 
 As chimes to dwellers in the market-place) 
 
 He with a silent and a bitter mirth 
 
 Had listen'd to the boast ; may he his son 
 
 Pardon for in comparison setting forth 
 
 With his the name of this disconsolate earl ! 
 
 How stand they in the title-deeds of fame ? 
 
 What hold and heritage in distant times 
 
 Doth each enjoy — what posthumous possession ? 
 
 The dusty chronicler with painful search 
 
 Long fingering forgotten scrolls, indites 
 
 That Louis Male was sometime Earl of Flanders, 
 
 That Louis Male his sometime earldom lost, 
 
 Through wrongs by him committed, that he lived 
 
 An outcast long in dole not undeserved. 
 
 And died dependent : there the history ends ; 
 
 And who of them that hear it wastes a thought 
 
 On the unfriended fate of Louis Male ? 
 
 But turn the page and look we for the tale 
 
 Of Artevelde's renown. What man was this ? 
 
 He humbly born, he highly gifted, rose 
 
 By steps of various enterprise, by skill. 
 
 By native vigour, to wide sway, and took 
 
 What his vain rival having could not keep. 
 
 His glory shall not cease, though cloth-of-gold 
 
 Wrap him no more ; for not of golden cloth, 
 
 Nor fur, nor minever, his greatness came, 
 
 Whose fortunes were inborn : strip me the two, — 
 
 This were the humblest, that the noblest, beggar 
 
 That ever braved a storm. 
 
 What then remains 
 But in the cause of nature to stand forth. 
 And turn this frame of things the right side up ? 
 For this the hour is come, the sword is drawn. 
 And tell your masters vainly they resist. 
 Nature that slept beneath their poisonous drugs 
 Is up and stirring ; and from north and south, 
 From east and west, from England and from France, 
 From Germany and Flanders and Navarre, 
 Shall stand against them like a beast at bay. 
 The blood that they have shed will hide no longer 
 
V PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 283 
 
 In the blood-sloken soil, but cries to heaven. 
 Their cruelties and wrongs against the poor 
 Shall quicken into swarms of venomous snakes, 
 And hiss through all the earth, till o'er the earth, 
 That ceases then from hissings and from groans, 
 Rises the song : How are the mighty fallen ! 
 And by the peasant's hand ! Low lie the proud ! 
 And smitten with the weapons of the poor — 
 The blacksmith's hammer and the woodman's axe. 
 Their tale is told : and for that they were rich, 
 And robb'd the poor ; and for that they were strong, 
 And scourged the weak ; and for that they made laws 
 Which turn'd the sweat of labour's brow to blood — 
 For these their sins the nations cast them out ; 
 The dunghills are their deathbeds, and the stench 
 From their uncover'd carrion steaming wide 
 Turns in the nostrils of enfranchised man 
 To a sweet savour. These things come to pass ' 
 From small beginnings, because God is just. 
 
 The love-story of Part II. is wholly unlike that of 
 Part I. : and with it is closely connected the poetic 
 justice of the play. The love is a lawless love, and 
 conduces in a large degree to the fall of Artevelde and to 
 his death. Between the two parts of the play a lyrical 
 interlude is interposed, entitled the " Lay of Elena." 
 It is a modified specimen of that poetry abounding in 
 romantic sentiment, imagery, and figure, which, in the 
 body of his work, Mr. Taylor has discarded. It records 
 the fortunes of a beautiful Italian, who, after being 
 betrayed and deserted, has lived for some time with 
 the Duke de Bourbon, one of the French king's uncles, 
 the object of a silly and selfish but passionate love 
 on his part, which she has but scantly returned. 
 Mortified at finding that his devotion to his mistress 
 has made him an object of ridicule, the duke has 
 
284 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY v 
 
 vented on her his spleen in many a caprice, and spoken 
 of her in insulting terms. On the capture of a Flemish 
 city, Elena has fallen into the hands of the Regent. 
 He protects her, and places a safeguard at her disposal, 
 in case she should wish to return to France. She is 
 in no hurry to return. With all the energy of her 
 wild and wilful nature, the imaginative and melancholy 
 woman, who had looked on love but with self-reproach 
 and despair, fixes her affections on the Regent, still 
 with self-reproach, but no longer in despair. He can 
 hardly be said to return such love as hers ; but he has 
 wearied of unhappiness, and to love, as a social need, 
 he is still accessible. But for this disastrous tie peace 
 was still possible. The Duke of Bourbon has de- 
 spatched Sir Fleureant of Heurlee to the Regent's camp 
 with a request that he would send back Elena, and an 
 implied promise that in return the king shall be 
 prevented, through his influence, from going to war in 
 defence of the Earl of Flanders. 
 
 The following lines are an extract from a scene in 
 which the Regent describes his lost wife and his 
 desolation. It is an illustration of Mr. Taylor's poetry 
 in its more impassioned vein. The character of both 
 the speakers is painted with a lavish hand, and the long 
 and melancholy cadences of the metre echo the 
 sadness of a new love which has grown up among 
 omens of woe, and has too much self-reproach about 
 it to promise, almost to desire, happiness. The scene 
 displeases while it charms, and it instructs us while it 
 displeases. Thus to have spoken of his wife to her 
 
V PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 285 
 
 rival — a rival so unlike her in all save devotedness 
 — is what Artevelde would have shrunk from, as we 
 may imagine, in his youth. But his character is in 
 decline ; and neither love, nor the memory of love, 
 wears for him any purer light than that of common 
 day. He admires and he deplores the grace and 
 goodness lost; but the "beautiful regards" turned 
 back on him from the land of shadows do not trouble 
 his heart — • 
 
 Artevelde. She was a creature framed by love divine 
 For mortal love to muse a life away 
 In pondering her perfections ; so unmoved 
 Amidst the world's contentions, if they touch'd 
 No vital chord nor troubled what she loved, 
 Philosophy might look her in the face, 
 And like a hermit stooping to the well 
 That yields him sweet refreshment, might therein 
 See but his own serenity reflected 
 With a more heavenly tenderness of hue ! 
 Yet whilst the world's ambitious empty cares. 
 Its small disquietudes and insect-stings, 
 Disturb' d her never, she was one made up , 
 Of feminine affections, and her life 
 Was one full stream of love from fount to sea. 
 These are but words. 
 
 Elena. My lord, they're full of meaning. 
 
 Artevelde. No, they mean nothing — that which they 
 would speak 
 Sinks into silence ; 'tis what none can know 
 That knew not her — the silence of the grave — 
 Whence could I call her radiant beauty back, 
 It could not come more savouring of heaven 
 Than it went hence — the tomb received her charms 
 In their perfection, with nor trace of time 
 Nor stain of sin upon them ; only death 
 Had turn'd them pale. I would that you had seen her 
 Living or dead. 
 
 Elena. I wish I had, my lord ; 
 
286 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY 
 
 I should have loved to look upon her much ; 
 For I can gaze on beauty all day long, 
 And think the all-day long is but too short. 
 
 Artevelde. She was so fair that in the angelic choir 
 She will not need put on another shape 
 Than that she bore on earth. Well, well, — she's gone. 
 And I have tamed my sorrow. Pain and grief 
 Are transitory things no less than joy. 
 And though they leave us not the men we were, 
 Yet they do leave us. You behold me here 
 A man bereaved, with something of a blight 
 Upon the early blossoms of his life 
 And its first verdure, having not the less 
 A living I'oot, and drawing from the earth 
 Its vital juices, from the air its powers : 
 And surely as man's health and strength are whole 
 His appetites regerminate, his heart 
 Reopens, and his objects and desires 
 Shoot up renew'd. What blank I found before me 
 From what is said you partly may surmise ; 
 How I have hoped to fill it, may I tell ? 
 
 Elena. I fear, my lord, that cannot be. 
 
 Artevelde. Indeed ! 
 
 Then am I doubly hopeless. What is gone. 
 Nor plaints, nor prayers, nor yearnings of the soul, 
 Nor memory's tricks, nor fancy's invocations — 
 Though tears went with them frequent as the rain 
 In dusk November, sighs more sadly breathed 
 Than winter's o'er the vegetable dead — 
 Can bring again ; and should this living hope, 
 That like a violet from the other's grave 
 Grew sweetly, in the tear-besprinkled soil 
 Finding moist nourishment — this seedling sprung 
 Where recent grief had like a ploughshare pass'd 
 Through the soft soul, and loosen'd its affections — 
 Should this new-blossom'd hope be coldly nipp'd. 
 Then were I desolate indeed ! . . . 
 
 Elena. I said I fear'd another could not fill 
 The place of her you lost, being so fair 
 And perfect as you give her out. . . . 
 I cannot give you what you've had so long ; 
 Nor need I tell you what you know so well. 
 I must be gone. 
 
V PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 287 
 
 The Regent, on her departure, falls into the follow- 
 ing soliloquy, to explain the latter part of which, it is 
 necessary to premise that the criminals sentenced are 
 Flemings detected in carrying on, at the instigation of 
 Sir Fleureant, a correspondence between some of the 
 Flemish cities and France — 
 
 Artevelde \_after a pause]. The night is far advanced upon 
 the morrow, 
 And but for that conglomerated mass 
 Of cloud with ragged edges, like a mound. 
 Or black pine-forest on a mountain's top, 
 Wherein the light lies ambush' d, dawn were near — 
 Yes, I have wasted half a summer's night. 
 Was it well spent ? Successfully it was. 
 
 Ho, Nieuverkerchen ! — When we think upon it. 
 
 How little flattering is a woman's love ! 
 
 Given commonly to whosoe'er is nearest 
 
 And propp'd with most advantage ; outward grace 
 
 Nor inward light is needful ; day by day 
 
 Men wanting both are mated with the best 
 
 And loftiest of God's feminine creation. 
 
 Whose love takes no distinction but of gender. 
 
 And ridicules the very name of choice. 
 
 Ho, Nieuverkerchen ! What then, do we sleep ? 
 
 Are none of you awake ? — and as for me. 
 
 The world says Philip is a famous man. — 
 
 What is there women will not love, so taught ? — 
 
 Ho, Ellert ! by your leave, though, you must wake. 
 
 Enter an Officer. 
 
 Have me a gallows built upon the mount, 
 And let Van Kortz be hung at break of day. 
 No news of Bulsen or Van Muck ? 
 
 Officer. My lord, 
 
 Bulsen is taken ; but Van Muck, we fear, 
 Has got clean off. 
 
 Artevelde. Let Bulsen too be hung. 
 
 This is certainly an extraordinary termination for a 
 
288 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY v 
 
 love-scene; yet it is not more daring and original 
 than it is in character. It is not such love as 
 Artevelde's that expands the heart, nor such success 
 that satisfies even self-love. His aiTection proceeds 
 neither from the highest nor the lowest portion of 
 man's nature, but from that social instinct, in mature 
 life, perhaps the strongest of our impulses, which 
 makes men shrink from isolation, whether it be the 
 isolation of the waste, or of the crowd. Artevelde 
 has found no obstacle to contend with; and this 
 social instinct being already in some sort appeased by 
 the sympathy which has so readily met his advances, 
 it is not inconsistent with his character that he should 
 wreak upon others some portion of the dissatisfaction 
 which he feels with himself. 
 
 The poetic merit of the scene none can doubt. A 
 gray and vapoury atmosphere of suppressed sorrow 
 hangs over the whole; and there is a "whispering 
 sweetness " in the majestic and melancholy flow of its 
 rhythmic cadences as they sweep under the willows 
 of desponding thoughts. The poem is remarkable 
 throughout for its metre, which cannot be surpassed 
 in force, variety, harmony, and dramatic significance. 
 This scene may also be taken as an illustration of 
 Mr. Taylor's peculiar vein of deep and earnest pathos. 
 His is not the poetry which contents itself with raking 
 superficially the loose soil of the affections. He 
 ploughs deeply, and turns up a substratum of human 
 feeling not often revealed to light in the merely 
 descriptive drama so common in modern times. 
 
V PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 289 
 
 Depth and truthfulness of dramatic feehng can only 
 be found where the work is in reality, as well as in 
 arbitrary construction, dramatic ; that is, where char- 
 acter and action are alike evolved out of the depths 
 of humanity by the true dramatic genius, and embodied 
 in practical exhibition by that peculiar and instinctive 
 tact which constitutes the dramatic talent. Where, 
 instead of this process of evolution and embodying, 
 we find merely a process of philosophical or poetical 
 Description, the dramatic form of composition fails to 
 impart pathos, because it fails to convey an impression 
 of reality : a close affinity to life is professed, and the 
 pledge is not redeemed. 
 
 From this time nothing succeeds in the Flemish 
 camp. Everything appears to fulfil the threat of 
 Father John — 
 
 After strange women them that went astray 
 God never prosper'd in the olden time, 
 Nor will He bless them now. 
 
 Van den Bosch, the ablest of Artevelde's lieutenants, 
 is defeated, and receives a mortal wound. Many of 
 the Flemish towns transfer their allegiance to their 
 former lord; and even the name of Artevelde no 
 longer carries its old magic, — a rumour having gone 
 abroad that sorcery has subjected him to the spells of 
 a French spy. The English king sends no aid : no 
 hope remains but in a successful battle. Gathering 
 together all his forces, Artevelde marches to the 
 eastern bank of the lower Lis, to meet the French 
 army and prevent them from passing the river. At 
 
 VOL. I 
 
 u 
 
290 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY v 
 
 a very early hour in the morning he leaves his 
 
 tent— 
 
 Artevelde. The gibbous moon was in a wan decline, 
 And all was silent as a sick man's chamber. 
 Mixing its small beginnings with the dregs 
 Of the pale moonshine and a few faint stars, 
 The cold uncomfortable daylight dawn'd ; 
 And the white tents topping a low ground-fog 
 Show'd like a fleet becalm'd. I wander'd far, 
 Till reaching to the bridge I sate me down 
 Upon the parapet. Much mused I there. 
 Revolving many a passage of my life, 
 And the strange destiny that lifted me 
 To be the leader of a mighty host, 
 And terrible to kings. 
 
 There he has had a vision of his dead wife. He thus 
 
 describes it to Elena — 
 
 She appear'd 
 In white, as when I saw her last, laid out 
 After her death ; suspended in the air 
 She seem'd, and o'er her breast her arms were cross'd ; 
 Her feet were drawn together, pointing downwards, 
 And rigid was her form and motionless. 
 From near her heart, as if the source were there, 
 A stain of blood went wavering to her feet. 
 So she remain'd, inflexible as stone. 
 And I as fixedly regarding her. 
 Then suddenly, and in a line oblique. 
 Thy figure darted past her ; whereupon. 
 Though rigid still and straight, she downward moved ; 
 And as she pierced the river with her feet, 
 Descending steadily, the streak of blood 
 Peel'd off" upon the water, which, as she vanish 'd, 
 Appear'd all blood, and swell'd and welter'd sore ; 
 And midmost in the eddy and the whirl 
 My own face saw I, which was pale and calm 
 As death could make it : — Then the vision pass'd, 
 And I perceived the river and the bridge, 
 The mottled sky and horizontal moon, 
 The distant camp, and all things as they were. 
 
V PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 291 
 
 Before the battle begins Artevelde is informed that 
 a foreign knight, with his visor dosed, demands to see 
 him. It is Sir Fleureant of Heurlee. On his former 
 visit to the camp, when detected in a treasonable 
 correspondence, he had been condemned to death; 
 but his Hfe had been spared at Elena's fatal interces- 
 sion. He had broken his parole, escaped to the French 
 camp, and there — half in despair and half in ambition 
 — engaged himself to assassinate the Regent. While 
 Artevelde is passing the bridge of the vision he is 
 stabbed by the false knight. For a time he conceals 
 his wound, and the battle rages with various fortune. 
 His hosts are at last driven back in confusion ; and 
 Artevelde, making a desperate effort to rally them, is 
 swept back towards the fatal bridge, and suffocated in 
 the crowd, the bridge giving way. 
 
 In the last scene Elena kneels on the bloody battle- 
 field beside the body of Artevelde ; while Van Ryk, 
 an old Flemish captain, stands at the other side. He 
 urges her to flight ; but she refuses to depart without 
 the body. The Duke of Burgundy then appears, and 
 Sir Fleureant approaches the group as the young king 
 and his royal uncles gather around the body, and 
 clumsily endeavours to vindicate the fair fame of Elena. 
 She leaps to her feet, and snatching Artevelde's dagger, 
 strikes it through the heart of his murderer. The 
 guards rush in ; and in the attempt to take her and 
 Van Ryk prisoners, both are slain. The Duke of 
 Bourbon gives orders that Elena shall receive Chris- 
 tian burial, but that the body of Artevelde shall be 
 
292 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY v 
 
 hung upon a tree, in the sight of the army. The 
 Duke of Burgundy refuses to war with the dead — 
 
 Burgundy. Brother, no ; 
 
 It were not for our honour, nor the king's. 
 To use it so. Dire rebel though he was, 
 Yet with a noble nature and great gifts 
 Was he endow'd, — courage, discretion, wit ; 
 An equal temper, and an ample soul. 
 Rock-bound and fortified against assaults 
 Of transitory passion, but below 
 Built on a surging subterranean fire. 
 That stirr'd and lifted him to high attempts. 
 So prompt and capable, and yet so calm. 
 He nothing lack'd in sovereignty but the right. 
 Nothing in soldiership except good fortune. 
 Wherefore, with honour lay him in his grave. 
 And thereby shall increase of honour come 
 Unto their arms who vanquish'd one so wise. 
 So valiant, so renown'd. Sirs, pass we on. 
 And let the bodies follow us on biers. 
 Wolf of the weald and yellow-footed kite. 
 Enough is spread for you of meaner prey ; 
 Other interment than your maws afford 
 Is due to these. At Courtray we shall sleep. 
 And there I'll see them buried side by side. 
 
VI 
 PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 
 
 PART II 
 
 ^^^ERE a critic to describe Philip van Artevelde in 
 one word, he might say it was a solid work. In its 
 extreme thoughtfulness it preserves the better char- 
 acteristics of our age ; but those who have only been 
 in the habit of reading poetry as a trivial amusement, 
 or a relaxation from study, and who are only familiar 
 with works produced to gratify the taste of the moment, 
 to stimulate the jaded appetite, to flatter an abject 
 love of the mere ornaments of poetry, or an effeminate 
 dependence on its sensual part, — all those persons 
 must have at first felt surprised at finding themselves 
 confronted with a work so substantial in its materials, 
 so manly in its structure, so severe in its style, and 
 so gravely impressive in spirit and general tendency, 
 as this remarkable work. It is full of the philosophy 
 of practical life ; and in this respect it is analogous 
 to many productions of an age which has occupied 
 itself with the philosophy of all subjects. It is, 
 
294 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY vi 
 
 however, full also of practical life itself, not exhibited 
 merely with reference to its picturesque peculiarities, 
 or swathed in the folds of a costume which hides the 
 limbs beneath it, and renders motion next to impos- 
 sible, but life considered in relation to the business of 
 life, and illustrated by pictures taken from the broad 
 highways of life. It is full, too, of action. Properly 
 speaking, we have had but little of action, though 
 abundance of movement, in modern poetry. Con- 
 vulsion is not action. The mere resistance to violent 
 passion is more worthy of the name of action than 
 the paroxysms of unrestrained energies, stimulated 
 only from without. Genuine action proceeds from 
 the will, and therefore true active energy implies some- 
 thing of self-control and self-government, as well as of 
 impulse. Such is the action which we find in the 
 world among men qualified to effect anything great, 
 and such is the action in which this poem abounds. 
 
 Some have spoken of Artevelde's character as one 
 representing the balanced union of the contemplative 
 and practical powers. This is not a correct estimate 
 of it; and such a character would seem rather to 
 embody an abstract and arbitrary conception of excel- 
 lence than to have been taken from human nature. 
 Among the many different sorts of ideal to which 
 human characters, like human faces, may be referred, 
 no single one can be found in actual life which so 
 unites the opposite excellences of our nature, that it 
 can be considered paramount over all the others, and 
 itself the great central type of humanity. Human 
 
^^ PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 295 
 
 society is ministered to by men possessed of very 
 various gifts : each man, however superior he may be 
 to others in some respects, is inferior in others ; and 
 the whole body is bound together in harmony by this 
 very inequahty, which makes every man stand in need 
 of his neighbour, while each is himself needed in his 
 place. If particular persons were not more amply 
 endowed with the contemplative than the practical 
 powers, truth would grow to be valued merely in pro- 
 portion as the discovery of it ministered to action ; an 
 error, however specious, not less unphilosophical than 
 would be the converse one of valuing action only as it 
 seasons wisdom with experience. Human life, in fact, 
 is the meeting point of many and infinite necessities 
 and powers, by us imperfectly apprehended. To sub- 
 ordinate one of these to another, would be as fatal a 
 mistake as to subordinate one virtue to another, truth 
 to charity, or mercy to justice : — the excellency so 
 degraded would virtually be reduced from the infinite 
 to the finite. From this evil, society is preserved by 
 a diversity of gifts, which makes it natural to parti- 
 cular persons to appreciate particular objects more 
 than others, and to follow out to the utmost the 
 different pursuits of life. Great men, it is true, unite 
 faculties seldom found in conjunction ; but these are 
 seldom the faculties conversely opposed to each other, 
 and the union effected never amounts to anything like 
 an exact balance. Artevelde is, perhaps, in the main 
 a character of intellect, but his mental faculties are by 
 no means those which are the " harmonious opposites " 
 
296 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY vi 
 
 of the practical energies. He seldom touches on 
 abstract subjects. We find in him no tendency to 
 a priori views of things, and he is fonder of exercising 
 his understanding than his reason. He has no in- 
 clination to metaphysical philosophj-, though in an 
 unusual degree a deliberate, thoughtful, grave-hearted 
 man. He is a keen observer, and possesses in an 
 equal degree the faculty of reflection. He looks things 
 boldly in the face, sees them clearly and sedately, 
 judges of them with a prompt accuracy, and acts 
 vigorously. His temperament is calm, but not cold, 
 though abounding more with suppressed than ex- 
 pressed feeling. He is sohdly passionate to a degree 
 of which more tumultuous natures are incapable ; 
 natures which boil over so quickly, that they cannot 
 take in much heat. His moral being is deep, though 
 not wide; and though not ungenerous, he has that 
 abiding feeling of self which generally clings to strong 
 substantive characters who have not devoted them- 
 selves to some noble cause which lifts them above 
 themselves. On the whole, though with many grave 
 defects, his is a character built upon the heroic mould, 
 and eminently quaUfied by its strength to resist the 
 shocks that invest a character mth tragic interest, 
 while he is neither so loft)' or so pure as to prevent 
 our discerning in his adversities that poetic justice 
 which bears so important a part in tragedy. Above 
 all, Artevelde's is an efficient character. The sailing 
 of a vessel depends as much upon its trim as its build; 
 and there is a certain delicate equipoise of the human 
 
VI PHILIP VAN ARTJ2VELDE 297 
 
 powers which, in measuring the individual's chances 
 of success, require at least as much to be taken into 
 account as the magnitude of those powers. The 
 qualities of understanding and will, which form the 
 basis of Artevelde's character, harmonise so well with 
 his moral nature, and are so aptly supported by his 
 robust temperament, that their collective weight exceeds 
 immeasurably that which they would possess if less 
 perfectly united. 
 
 To estimate the work accurately we must bear 
 in mind that Philip van Artevelde is, properly 
 speaking, what it calls itself, a "dramatic romance," 
 not a drama; and it is not a little remarkable that 
 poetry so different in its substance from that to which 
 we have recently been accustomed, should have been 
 presented to us in a form which, though long used in 
 Germany, is original in our literature. It is interesting 
 to observe the attempts made in an undramatic age 
 to push out, in different directions, the old limits of 
 the tragic art, so as to suit the genius of modern times. 
 In Goethe's Faust we are presented with a mass of 
 metaphysical and psychological reveries embodied in 
 a dramatic form : the present work employs the same 
 form, on a scale scarcely less large, to embody a 
 philosophy more in harmony with the practical char- 
 acter of the English mind. If the abstruse and 
 speculative tragedy of Hamlet be regarded as in 
 some sort the type upon which the former work was 
 modelled, the scheme of the latter may be considered 
 an expansion of the chronicle drama of Shakespeare. 
 
298 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY vi 
 
 This Dramatic Romance differs from the Historical 
 Drama, much as the Historical Drama differs from 
 pure Tragedy : — on the one hand, it has less of com- 
 pactness; on the other, its scope is wider. There 
 are persons who regard the drama written for the 
 study as a literary monster. Scenic representation is 
 undoubtedly one end of the drama, but it is by no 
 means the sole end ; nay, it will be confessed, that 
 while the powers of a great actor give additional force 
 to the passionate parts of a play, the more purely 
 poetic portions lose much at the same time by the 
 vulgarising associations of the stage. 
 
 It is true that the greatest tragedies have ever been, 
 inclusively, acting plays ; but it is true, not less, that 
 if we would do justice to the highest tragedies of 
 Shakespeare, considered in their highest relations, 
 the stage on which they are performed must be 
 that of the meditative mind, and the imagination 
 alone must play all the parts. The acting drama 
 is in fact a compromise : it foregoes somewhat of 
 dignity, that it may gain in vividness. The drama 
 for the study is a compromise also ; it relinquishes 
 the animation produced by stage effect and popular 
 sympathy, in order to gain an ampler and serener 
 field for pure poetry. Something of loss seems a 
 necessary condition of development, in all the arts. 
 Painting possesses a wider scope than sculpture, but 
 this advantage it gains by a sacrifice of certain other 
 advantages connected with the uses of the solid 
 material. The art of drawing in chiaroscuro is 
 
VI PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 299 
 
 capable of embodying, though with less vividness, a 
 wider range of conceptions than the art of painting ; 
 and no one who has studied Flaxman's illustrations of 
 Dante can doubt that, the advantages derived from 
 colour being once resigned, the art of designing in 
 light and shade alone, on a large scale, might, to an 
 indefinite extent, enlarge its sphere and embrace a 
 more various detail of interest, supposing it first to 
 shake off those restricted laws of pictorial composition 
 necessary only for the balance of colours, and to work 
 on that wider law suited to itself, which hitherto it 
 has felt after but not found. Applying to the drama 
 this general law of compensation and compromise, it 
 seems by no means unreasonable in one who rejects 
 the advantages connected with stage-representation to 
 get rid also of such restrictions, connected with the 
 ordinary structure of a play, as limit or embarrass 
 him; so he forget not that a writer may have too 
 much room as well as too little, and that a certain 
 degree of mechanical restraint and opposition is 
 needful for the development of the powers. In 
 modifying the design of a work it will generally be 
 necessary to modify its structure also ; indeed, there 
 is no blunder more common than that of altering parts 
 of a system without altering other corresponding parts, 
 the result of which is ever the creation of a fabric 
 equivocal and heterogeneous. In many respects the 
 dramatic has advantages over all other kinds of 
 composition ; every species of poetic beauty is 
 capable of being introduced into it ; and the various 
 
300 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY vl 
 
 modifications of which it is susceptible, corresponding 
 with the time, the writer, or the matter he has to 
 work up, have possibly not even yet been exhausted. 
 
 The ample compass of Mr. Taylor's work will, of 
 course, not meet the approbation of those who censure 
 the ordinary romantic drama for its disregard of the 
 unities. Few blunders seem more singular than that 
 of those critics who, attaching themselves to names, 
 not things, have thus applied the rules of the ancient 
 tragedy to the modern romantic drama. That the 
 modern, as well as the ancient, drama requires a 
 certain unity of plot, is obvious, since without unity 
 no work of art whatever can possess completeness or 
 proportion. But the question is, as to the kind of 
 unity ; and if we investigate the question, by making 
 that induction from the best specimens of the modem 
 stage, which guided Aristotle in his principles with 
 regard to the ancient, we shall discover that the unity 
 of plot required by the romantic drama differs as 
 much from that required by the classical, as an 
 organic whole differs from a plastic whole ; as a tree 
 whose branches, however tortured by the storm, are 
 nourished by one root, and converge towards one 
 stem, differs from a statue. Observe the difference 
 between the character of Grecian and of Gothic 
 architecture. The finite character of the former is 
 essential to the definiteness of its proportions; 
 while its simple and regular features conduce to one 
 general effect, that of precision and completeness. 
 In Gothic architecture, on the other hand, the re- 
 
VI PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 301 
 
 lation of part to part, though not less real, is far more 
 remote. We gaze upon the aspiring lines, to look 
 beyond them : we connect gable with pinnacle, and 
 the high roof with tower and spire, by the imagination ; 
 and it may be said that half of the mysterious fabric 
 we contemplate is invisible to the eye of sense, 
 and embodied only to that of the mind. So it is in 
 the classical and romantic drama. The character of 
 the former is its definiteness; that of the latter its 
 suggestiveness : and while in the larger plot of the 
 latter all the various interests must indirectly be made 
 to converge upon one great central interest, they are, 
 notwithstanding, united by a far less visible bond than 
 that which cements the unity of the classical tragedy, 
 and the completeness resulting is of a far less obvious 
 character. Majesty was the chief excellency of the 
 Greek drama ; philosophic depth, of the romantic ; 
 and it is obvious that, for the former, simplicity of 
 plot was necessary ; for the latter, variety. The true 
 subject of every modern play is man, — man considered 
 not as a mere part of nature, but as a creature of soul 
 affections and of reason. The action of the play 
 must proceed from the characters, and is successful 
 so far as it illustrates them ; and the catastrophe 
 ought to set forth some problem of our many-sided 
 humanity. 
 
 The genius of the Greek play, on the contrary, was, 
 like all the Greek literature, eminently objective ; so 
 much so, that (every external object necessarily sup- 
 posing the coexistence of a being to contemplate it) 
 
302 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY vi 
 
 the chorus, which remained ever on the stage, repre- 
 sented the spectators, and embodied the principle of 
 pubhc opinion in the Odes and gnomic sentiments 
 that served as a commentary on the scene. A single 
 strongly marked character was sufficient to give interest 
 to the action : and all that was necessary for the plot 
 was, that it should describe an event splendid and 
 poetical in itself, and, if possible, closed by some 
 supernatural interposition. It followed, therefore, that 
 the merit of the plot not consisting in the connection 
 between events and their remoter moral causes, but in 
 the closeness with which event followed event, the 
 narrowest limits as to time and place must give the 
 strictest and most forcible sequence to the progress of 
 those events. The modern drama, on the other hand, 
 requires, on the very same principle, a very wide limit 
 as to time and place, because the passions mature 
 themselves by degrees ; character requires a consider- 
 able period for its development; and it is only by a 
 comprehensive survey that we are enabled to appreciate 
 the inward and philosophical relation of outward events 
 to their several ultimate sources in the heart of man. 
 Nor need we attach any importance to the objection 
 that change of place and the lapse of a long period 
 are inconsistent with dramatic illusion. The fact is 
 stronger than the theory; and, in this instance, the 
 fact can be easily accounted for. The only illusion 
 that takes place in any case is one of the imagination, 
 not the senses ; and that illusion is voluntary, not 
 involuntary. In witnessing a drama, or looking at a 
 
VI PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 303 
 
 picture, the mind of the spectator is not merely open 
 to the reception of passive impressions ; a large part 
 of the pleasure which he feels consists in the 
 sympathetic exertion of his own creative faculties 
 in the same direction as they have been exerted by 
 the dramatic writer or the artist. This may be one 
 reason why it gives us pleasure to read of events which 
 it would give us pain to witness in real life ; why we 
 are dissatisfied with a portrait, which, instead of having 
 a suggestive likeness to the original, possesses the literal 
 likeness of a caricature, allowing no room for the im- 
 agination of the beholder ; and generally why, in every 
 work of imitative art, a diversity from nature, as well as 
 a resemblance to nature, is necessary for our satisfaction. 
 In Part the Second, Philip van Artevelde is pre- 
 sented to us again, after the lapse of a long period. 
 He has become Regent of Flanders, and, as such, has 
 lived in something of royal state, though encompassed 
 with the toils of the warrior, as well as the cares of 
 the statesman. In Part the First, he ponders long 
 before accepting from the Lady Adriana a love which 
 might possibly involve her in the troubles of the time : 
 in Part the Second, he has no hesitation in seeking 
 that of Elena, though his fortunes are in a yet more 
 desperate state. In youth, his aspirations after an 
 excellence superior to his own are marked by his love 
 for one whose charm consisted in her exquisite 
 freshness, purity, tender and self- forgetting fidelity. 
 In mature age, his love is not higher than himself — a 
 sign of a character in decay. Elena is a character of 
 
304 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY vi 
 
 wayward impulses, fervent imagination, and melan- 
 choly passion. The better part of her nature has had 
 but little opportunity of development, for she has long 
 been a stranger to self-approval. She is reckless, and 
 has lived for years in that state of modified despair, 
 which, if to have neither peace nor hope be despair, 
 is no uncommon disease. Her sadness has become 
 part of her being; nor is it without a shadowy 
 voluptuousness, like the gloom of an overcast day in 
 a soft climate. Something of her character will be 
 conveyed to the reader by the following songs — 
 
 Down lay in a nook my lady's brach, 
 
 And said my feet are sore, 
 I cannot follow with the pack 
 
 A hunting of the boar. 
 
 And though the horn sounds never so clear 
 
 With the hounds in loud uproar, 
 Yet I must stop and lie down here, 
 
 Because my feet are sore. 
 
 The huntsman when he heard the same, 
 
 "What answer did he give ? 
 The dog that's lame is much to blame, 
 
 He is not fit to live.^ 
 
 On a later occasion it is thus she sings — 
 
 Quoth tongue of neither maid nor wife 
 
 To heart of neither wife nor maid, 
 Lead we not here a jolly life 
 / Betwixt the shine and shade ? 
 
 Quoth heart of neither maid nor wife 
 
 To tongue of neither wife nor maid, 
 Thou wag'st, but I am worn with strife, 
 
 And feel like flowers that fade. 
 
 1 Philip van Artevelde, p. 177. 
 
VI PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 
 
 305 
 
 Artevelde tells Elena that Time brings healing and 
 renovation to the bereft ; but neither of them has 
 found this to be true. In comparing the character of 
 Artevelde with Lord Byron's conception of a hero, we 
 noted first its better side : it had, however (as every 
 dramatic character must have), its worst side also; 
 and even Lord Byron's hero is scarcely more of the 
 earth earthly, than the solid and manly, yet wholly 
 pagan, character which imparts its philosophic interest 
 to the work before us. It is true that he nas occa- 
 sionally speculations concerning objects above this 
 visible diurnal sphere, but he quickly dismisses such 
 impertinent visitations as "conclusions inconclusive." 
 It is plain that he habitually associates the material 
 with the substantial, and connects his idea of reality 
 with those visible objects which are, in fact, unreal 
 when compared with the intuitions of pure reason, the 
 mandates of the moral sense, or the truths of revelation, 
 and which, but for the sensations of pleasure or pain 
 which give them a reality to the senses, could not be 
 regarded as less fantastic than the more fleeting visions 
 of a dream. The great difference between Mr. 
 Taylor's and Lord Byron's conceptions of the heroic 
 character is, that in Mr. Taylor's the regulative prin- 
 ciple is within, and there is a concentration of the vital 
 functions and purposes, qualities in which Lord 
 Byron's characters are deficient. Considered, then, 
 in relation to that which is within, and that which is 
 around, the one ideal differs from the other as the 
 animal structure differs from the vegetable, and the 
 
 VOL. I X 
 
3o6 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY vi 
 
 higher class of animals from the lower; but judged 
 
 by their relation to things above, they stand on the 
 
 same level. In both we find more of that earth out 
 
 of which man was made, and to which the man-animal 
 
 returns, than of that spirit which was breathed into 
 
 the mortal clay, and by that union constituted our 
 
 humanity. Both alike are defective when weighed in 
 
 the balance of one of the most thoughtful of our early 
 
 poets, Daniel — 
 
 Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how poor a thing is man ! 
 
 Self-inclusion and self-dependence constitute the 
 original and persistent error of Artevelde's nature, the 
 vulnerable point, without which no character can be 
 truly dramatic. Magnanimity, his wise preceptor tells 
 him, in a passage otherwise admirable, "reposes, self- 
 included,^'' at the mountain's base ; and something of 
 this erroneous ideal he seems to have laboured under 
 on his way to the mountain's top. " Men, in their 
 places, are the men that stand," is one of his maxims. 
 In another passage it is thus that he describes the 
 object of his veneration — 
 
 All my life long 
 I have beheld with most respect the man 
 Who knew himself, and knew the ways before him, 
 And, from amongst them, chose considerately, 
 With a clear foresight — not a blindfold courage — 
 And having chosen, with a steadfast mind 
 Pursued his purposes. 
 
 Vigour of will, deliberation, consistent action, these 
 he revered : but, as he shows but little thought of that 
 
VI PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 307 
 
 ultimate aim without which all action is worthless, so 
 he exhibits but little reverence for that moral law, 
 without which all human deliberation lacks its measure, 
 and that Will Supreme, in submission to which all 
 finite and relative wills find their only possible freedom. 
 To act efficiently is more his aim than to act rightly ; 
 and his justice is often rather judgment than justice. 
 The cause to which Artevelde allied himself, whether 
 just or not, seems to have been taken up with little 
 reference to its justice. At the declining period of 
 his fortunes, when, as he with characteristic dryness 
 remarks, he is "driven upon his friends," he is driven 
 upon his principles also ; but among his deliberations 
 when choosing his side, he gives no indication of 
 doing so in obedience to political justice or patriotic 
 enthusiasm. Self-respect — that clay foundation of 
 false virtue, which supports, and so often finally 
 engulfs, characters neither built on the rock, nor yet 
 on the sand — has been with Artevelde, not merely 
 a regulative principle, but the basis of his whole 
 being. In delineating the effect which time and 
 success produce on such a moral frame, Mr. Taylor 
 has read us a lesson as important as dramatist ever 
 yet conveyed. 
 
 There is one difficulty under which painters and 
 poets alike labour, that of uniting two qualities essen- 
 tially different, but each of which in its degree is 
 necessary for the sister arts. The qualities alluded 
 to are those of ideal beauty and characteristic 
 physiognomy. A great painter must be habitually 
 
3o8 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY vi 
 
 impressed with that abstract image of human beauty ; 
 but he must also possess a keen appreciation of all the 
 actual varieties of individual expression. These two 
 gifts are obviously antagonistic to each other, and the 
 difficulty thence arising, is one of the disadvantages 
 under which those painters labour who live among the 
 less beautiful races of mankind. By nothing else 
 were the different schools of art more distinguished 
 than by the mode in which these gifts were apportioned 
 among them. Raffaelle possessed them both to an 
 extraordinary degree, but in him the love of ideal 
 beauty prevailed ; and Lavater observes, that while in 
 gesture he exhibits an unrivalled command of physiog- 
 nomic expression, in his faces the abstract conception 
 of beauty reigns supreme. The poet is in the same 
 dilemma. According as the abstract faculty or that 
 of observation predominates, his portraitures will gain 
 in ideality or individuality. His task is to adjust the 
 balance. In the present instance, if somewhat more 
 of chivalrous elevation and nobleness had entered 
 into the characters delineated, the picture would have 
 been at once more deUghtful and more true to the 
 age delineated. 
 
 In distinctness of individuality Mr. Taylor's char- 
 acters are admirable. Nothing can be more different 
 than the staid, deliberate courage of Artevelde, and 
 the impetuous courage of Van den Bosch, the reckless 
 courage of Sir Fleureant, and the sanguine courage of 
 D'Arlon, Nothing can be more clearly discriminated 
 than the cloistral wisdom of Father John, as compared 
 
VI PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 309 
 
 with the worldly wisdom of Gilbert Matthew, which, 
 again, differs materially from the official craft of 
 Tristram of Lestovet. In real life, no quality, be it 
 virtue or vice, is ever the same in any two persons, 
 though it must bear the same name. In the clumsy 
 dehneations of character, so frequent in modern 
 literature, this truth seems often wholly lost sight of 
 The character of Van den Bosch is especially worthy 
 of attention ; it is a peculiar, though not a far-fetched 
 or ambitious conception, and through both parts of 
 the play it is maintained with admirable consistency. 
 Fierce, frank, and hardy, shrewd without wisdom, 
 faithful without principle, and roughly kind without 
 affection, he is an instructive example of the animal 
 man. His restless energies are compassed by a 
 narrow limit ; but within that limit he fulfils his 
 functions with an animal efficiency, undisturbed by 
 vanity, embarrassment, or infirmity. He is not 
 deficient in ability ; yet, though a man of keen-witted 
 passions, he has, properly speaking, no mind : as in 
 animals, his attribute of thought is a part of his 
 instincts, not a distinct faculty, capable of contem- 
 plating separately the inferior part of his nature, and, 
 if necessary, of withstanding it. He converses only 
 with things in the concrete ; a sensuous image hangs 
 about all his thoughts, and an abstract conception 
 would be to him as hard an achievement as a moral 
 sentiment. His intellect floats upon the current of his 
 blood; and in the last scene of his life, as his blood flows 
 away through his opening wounds, his passion and 
 
3IO HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY vi 
 
 his reason are drained off together; while, incensed 
 at death, not appalled by it, he submits to extinction 
 as a necessity more painful, but to him not less natural, 
 than sleep. 
 
 Its solidity, the especial merit of Philip van 
 Artevelde, may deprive it of the sympathy of those 
 who are attached to a certain "Art-Heresy" not 
 uncommon, that is of those ultra -artistic critics of 
 the German school, who regard the imagination as 
 the one great poetic faculty, disregarding the relations 
 between it and the moral and intellectual faculties at 
 large, at the same time that they ^scornfully deny its 
 dependence on that world of nature, the interpretation 
 of which is one of the Poet's chief functions. Accord- 
 ing to the views of these critics, the poet neither comes 
 forward as the representative of a moral faith nor as a 
 servant of Nature : the prophet that " cometh in his own 
 name " is the only prophet whom they will receive. 
 They regard Poetry simply as an art, and imagine that 
 if the artist have impressed upon his work a felicitous 
 form, it matters little what is the substance thus adroitly 
 moulded. Such persons regard versatility and address 
 as the chief poetic gifts after imagination, and it will 
 easily be granted that fixedness of principles or defini- 
 tiveness of views are little needed if the merit of the 
 poem be estimated merely by the superficial beauty of 
 its proportions. But poetry, though an art, is more 
 than an art, and forms of beauty, if indeed they could 
 be shaped out of a fluent material instead of the 
 everlasting marble, would be worthless as bubbles. 
 
VI PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 311 
 
 Poetry must have a vital principle. Shakespeare, not 
 only our greatest poet, but also, notwithstanding his 
 careless spontaneity, our deepest artist, tells us that 
 "There is no art, but nature makes that art." The 
 earth on which we dwell is a star also ; nor is a flower 
 less a work of art because it is a product of Nature — a 
 word which Nature has put forth, and which hangs 
 suspended on Nature's sustaining breath. Again, 
 poetry has its relations with moral science as well as 
 with life, and the highest beauty is connected, directly 
 or indirectly, with those deep immutable truths, which, 
 however wide the compass they describe, have their 
 anchorage in the lowly ground of veracity and fact. 
 Once more, poetry has its relations with the constitu- 
 tion and progress of the writer's individual being, and 
 therefore supposes reality of being. There are persons 
 who can only speak, nay, who can only think, by 
 fancying themselves to be somebody else, and convert- 
 ing their real position into an imaginary one, in order 
 that, by a reflex action of the mind, they may play the 
 actor's part, and convert their imaginary position back 
 into a real one. These persons may be artists, but 
 they are not poets. There are thoughts which, with- 
 out being truly born of the mind, pass through it 
 merely as bricks through the mould ; thoughts by 
 which, no matter how striking or how copious, a great 
 mind is no more built up than a bricklayer's mould 
 is converted into a house when it has turned out bricks 
 enough to build a house. Such are not the thoughts 
 which form the substance of a great poem. They may 
 
312 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY vi 
 
 be its ornaments, but the principle, niateriam 
 superabat opus, is a dangerous one to those who 
 have learned the graces and perfections of an art 
 before they have mastered its substance. Every true 
 poem must be a genuine growth from the poet's own 
 mind, partaking of its essence, nay, of its accidents : 
 it must possess a reality as well as a consistency ; the 
 sweet singer must be more than a musical ventriloquist; 
 and the poet (to reply to the question of the clown, 
 " Is poetry an honest thing ? ") must be a true man. 
 There must be a keynote for all his varieties, a focal 
 point to determine his most eccentric wanderings : he 
 must acknowledge a law, even in fluctuation, unchange- 
 able postulates, to which the most apparently opposite 
 dicta can be referred : in a word, the poet, with all 
 his pliability, must be able also to stand firm and hold 
 fast : he must maintain a faith of his own, and have 
 the courage to throw himself upon it as an element 
 which will support him. " I believed, and therefore 
 I spake," will ever form part of a poet's credentials, 
 whether his song be secular or sacred. Without 
 sincerity poetry can have no genuine passion ; without 
 objective truth its most advanced speculations will be 
 but progress in a wrong direction ; without something 
 of moral orthodoxy its merits, alike of an intellectual 
 and imaginative sort, will be "mere Fibulae without a 
 zone to clasp." 
 
 Such works as Philip van Artevelde are the best 
 corrective for the insidious error referred to above. It 
 is not one of those poems which bear witness to no 
 
v^ PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE 313 
 
 faculty except the imagination— a faculty which never 
 can grow to a goodly stature if it has nothing to feed 
 on but itself Those who have exclusively addicted 
 themselves to a poetry rather artificial than truly 
 artistic may be disposed to complain of the poem in 
 this respect, and assert that the vine has been allowed 
 to make too much wood. But a sound poetic imag- 
 ination, like a wise sovereign, contents itself with a 
 moderate " mensal demesne," provided that its sceptre 
 be acknowledged over its whole kingdom. It does 
 not rule alone and arbitrarily, but works with, and har- 
 monises the various powers of a comprehensive mind, 
 matured by the strongest mental aliments. What are 
 those aliments ? From art, from study, from the 
 outward face of Nature, the poet will gather much 
 with which to store his imagination ; but the main 
 part of a poet's training consists not in that which most 
 stimulates a single faculty, but that which most tends 
 to invigorate his whole mind ; in other words, the 
 acquired influenpes, of which we shall find the strongest 
 traces, will be those derived from sagacious reflection 
 and the experience of human life. There is a close 
 affinity between the two, for reality of thought is ever 
 connected with sympathy for the realities of life. 
 Brilliant descriptions of Nature may be thrown off by 
 a tour de force, but habitual observation is necessary 
 in order that descriptive poetry should be true. In 
 Hke manner, without a consistent method of thought, 
 the subtlest reflections will fail to impart that moral 
 ethos without which no poem can be of first-rate 
 
 VOL. I Y 
 
314 HENRY TAYLOR'S POETRY vi 
 
 excellence. It is possible, without plagiarism, to 
 produce poetry which is evidently rather distilled from 
 other poetry than drawn from the living fountains 
 either of mind or of Nature. Mr. Taylor's poetry is 
 plainly taken from life, not from books, least of all 
 from books of poetry : and to this circumstance is 
 doubtless owing at once its soundness and its freshness. 
 
 END OF VOL. I 
 
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