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English (search for this): chapter 3
heroic simplicity which is their concomitant, that he could do so calmly what was sure to seem ludicrous to the greater number of his readers. Fifty years have since demonstrated that the true judgment of one man outweighs any counterpoise of false judgment, and that the faith of mankind is guided to a man only by a well-founded faith in himself. To this Defensio Wordsworth afterward added a supplement, and the two form a treatise of permanent value for philosophic statement and decorous English. Their only ill effect has been, that they have encouraged many otherwise deserving young men to set a Sibylline value on their verses in proportion as they were unsalable. The strength of an argument for self-reliance drawn from the example of a great man depends wholly on the greatness of him who uses it; such arguments being like coats of mail, which, though they serve the strong against arrow-flights and lance-thrusts, may only suffocate the weak or sink him the sooner in the waters o
Dorothy (search for this): chapter 3
h him by his sailor brother John on setting out for his last voyage in 1805. but no reflection from them is visible in his earliest published poems. The greater part of his vacations was spent in his native Lakecoun-try, where his only sister, Dorothy, was the companion of his rambles. She was a woman of large natural endowments, chiefly of the receptive kind, and had much to do with the formation and tendency of the poet's mind. It was she who called forth the shyer sensibilities of his naond intimate experience of sorrow in the loss of two of his children, Catharine and Thomas, one of whom died 4th June, and the other 1st December, 1812. Wordsworth's children were,— John, born 18th June, 1803; still living; a clergyman. Dorothy, born 16th August, 1804; died 9th July, 1847. Thomas, born 16th June, 1806; died 1st December, 1812. Catharine, born 6th September, 1808; died 4th June, 1812. William, born 12th May, 1810; succeeded his father as Stamp-Distributor. Earl
Di Dante (search for this): chapter 3
e characteristic poems there is always a kernel of firm conclusion from far-reaching principles that stimulates thought and challenges meditation. Groping in the dark passages of life, we come upon some axiom of his, as it were a wall that gives us our bearings and enables us to find an outlet. Compared with Goethe we feel that he lacks that serene impartiality of mind which results from breadth of culture; nay, he seems narrow, insular, almost provincial. He reminds us of those saints of Dante who gather brightness by revolving on their own axis. But through this very limitation of range he gains perhaps in intensity and the impressiveness which results from eagerness of personal conviction. If we read Wordsworth through, as I have just done, we find ourselves changing our mind about him at every other page, so uneven is he. If we read our favorite poems or passages only, he will seem uniformly great. And even as regards The Excursion we should remember how few long poems will
Sol (search for this): chapter 3
n his Thanksgiving Ode which, if one met with it by itself, he would think the achievement of some later copyist of Pope:— While the tubed engine [the organ] feels the inspiring blast. And in The Italian Itinerant and The Swiss Goatherd we find a thermometer or barometer called The well-wrought scale Whose sentient tube instructs to time A purpose to a fickle clime. Still worse in the Eclipse of the Sun, 1821:— High on her speculative tower Stood Science, waiting for the hour When Sol was destined to endure That darkening. So in The Excursion, The cold March wind raised in her tender throat Viewless obstructions. but those theories undoubtedly had a great effect in retarding the growth of his fame. He had carefully constructed a pair of spectacles through which his earlier poems were to be studied, and the public insisted on looking through them at his mature works, and were consequently unable to see fairly what required a different focus. He forced his readers to
De Quincey (search for this): chapter 3
It would be instructive to know what were Wordsworth's studies during his winter in Goslar. De Quincey's statement is mere conjecture. It may be guessed fairly enough that he would seek an entrancl of producing any general effect, because the sentences are long and involved; and his friend De Quincey, who corrected the press, has rendered them more obscure by an unusual system of punctuation. whose business he was able to do by deputy, thus leaving him ample leisure for nobler duties. De Quincey speaks of this appointment as an instance of the remarkable good luck which waited upon Wordscharacteristics little is related. He was somewhat above the middle height, but, according to De Quincey, of indifferent figure, the shoulders being narrow and drooping. His finest feature was the et he had no sense of smell, and Haydon that he had none of form. The best likeness of him, in De Quincey's judgment, is the portrait of Milton prefixed to Richardson's notes on Paradise Lost. He was
Tintern Abbey (search for this): chapter 3
It would be instructive to know what were Wordsworth's studies during his winter in Goslar. De Quincey's statement is mere conjecture. It may be guessed fairly enough that he would seek an entrance to the German language by the easy path of the ballad, a course likely to confirm him in his theories as to the language of poetry. The Spinosism with which he has been not unjustly charged was certainly not due to any German influence, for it appears unmistakably in the Lines composed at Tintern Abbey in July, 1798. It is more likely to have been derived from his talks with Coleridge in 1797. A very improbable story of Coleridge's in the Biographia Literania represents the two friends as having incurred a suspicion of treasonable dealings with the French enemy by their constant references to a certain Spy Nosey. The story at least seems to show how they pronounced the name, which was exactly in accordance with the usage of the last generation in New England. When Emerson visited
Martineau (search for this): chapter 3
of simple things. The main difference between them is one of scenery rather than of sentiment, between the life-long familiar of the mountains and the dweller on the plain. It cannot be denied that in Wordsworth the very highest powers of the poetic mind were associated with a certain tendency to the diffuse and commonplace. It is in the understanding (always prosaic) that the great golden veins of his imagination are imbedded. This was instinctively felt, even by his admirers. Miss Martineau said to Crabb Robinson in 1839, speaking of Wordsworth's conversation: Sometimes he is annoying from the pertinacity with which he dwells on trifles; at other times he flows on in the utmost grandeur, leaving a strong impression of inspiration. Robinson tells us that he read Resolution and Independence to a lady who was affected by it even to tears, and then said, I have not heard anything for years that so much delighted me; but, after all, it is not poetry. He wrote too much to write
William Wordsworth (search for this): chapter 3
s, thirteen years after his master's death. Wordsworth was always considerate and kind with his sergives tone without lessening individuality. Wordsworth never quite saw the distinction between the om which he sprang,— vien ben da lui. William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth in Cumberland on the remarkable good luck which waited upon Wordsworth through his whole life. In our view it is os very nature incapable of prolongation, and Wordsworth, in endeavoring it, falls more below himselfple sincerity and for the fact that William Wordsworth, Esquire, of Rydal Mount, was one person, an the Voice of a higher and invisible power. Wordsworth's better utterances have the bare sincerity,of the singers. Leigh Hunt's Autobiography. Wordsworth writes to Crabb Robinson in 1837, My ear is his best afterwards to look like it. Many of Wordsworth's later poems seem like rather unsuccessfulmay not plead his privilege, what is left to Wordsworth is enough to justify his fame. Even where h[56 more...]
C. E. Norton (search for this): chapter 3
despot courts into tyranny. One of the alterations is interesting. In the Evening Walk he had originally written And bids her soldier come her wars to share Asleep on Minden's charnel hill afar. An erratum at the end directs us to correct the second verse, thus:-- Asleep on Bunker's charnel hill afar. The whole passage is omitted in the revised edition. The original, a quarto pamphlet, is now very rare, but fortunately Charles Lamb's copy of it is now owned by my friend Professor C. E. Norton. Wordsworth somewhere rebukes the poets for making the owl a bodeful bird. He had himself done so in the Evening Walk, and corrects his epithets to suit his later judgment, putting gladsome for boding, and replacing The tremulous sob of the complaining owl by The sportive outcry of the mocking owl. Indeed, the character of the two poems is so much changed in the revision as to make the dates appended to them a misleading anachronism. But there is one truly Wordsworthian pa
Emerson (search for this): chapter 3
onable dealings with the French enemy by their constant references to a certain Spy Nosey. The story at least seems to show how they pronounced the name, which was exactly in accordance with the usage of the last generation in New England. When Emerson visited him in 1833, he spoke with loathing of Wilhelm Meister, a part of which he had read in Carlyle's translation apparently. There was some affectation in this, it should seem, for he had read Smollett. On the whole, it may be fairly concveness of originality such as we feel in the presence of Nature herself. He seems to have been half conscious of this, and recited his own poems to all comers with an enthusiasm of wondering admiration that would have been profoundly comic Mr. Emerson tells us that he was at first tempted to smile, and Mr. Ellis Yarnall (who saw him in his eightieth year) says, These quotations [from his own works] he read in a way that much impressed me; it seemed almost as if he were awed by the greatness
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