CHAPTER XVI.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH-CONCLUDING SURVEY.

T is evident to the reader who has followed this imperfect study of Wordsworth with any degree of care that his merits and defects are alike great, and in concluding our survey it is well to recapitulate them. In few poets are the profound and trivial found in such close proximity, and this is his chief defect. Like Browning, for many years Wordsworth had few readers, and consequently wrote more for his own pleasure than with the artistic restraint and carefulness which the sense of public praise and criticism impose. Such criticism as he received was little better than insane or spiteful vituperation, and its only effect was to increase in a man of Wordsworth's temperament a stubborn dependence on himself. It is hard to say which acts with worse effect upon a poet, the adulation of an undiscerning or the apathy of an indifferent public. It seems likely, however, that if Wordsworth had received any public encouragement early in life, it would have acted beneficially, in leading him to perceive his own faults of style, and perhaps to correct them. There are various passages in Wordsworth's letters which prove that, while he braced himself to endure public hostility with uncomplaining stoicism, yet he would not the less have

valued public encouragement. But as years wore away, and his circle of readers still continued to be of the narrowest, he cared less and less to write with any definite attempt to gain the public ear. He wrote for his own delectation, and, as we have seen, often attached false values to his poems. He failed, as every solitary writer must fail, to discriminate between the perfect and imperfect work of his genius. The result is that to-day the perfect work of Wordsworth is hampered by its association with the imperfect. His readers often fail to take a just measurement of the noble qualities of his genius, because it is so easy for them to pass from his greatest poems to passages of verse-writing which are dull, trivial, bald, and in every way unworthy of him. This fact has been amply recognised by Matthew Arnold, and he has endeavoured to remedy the defect by his admirable selection from the works of Wordsworth. Few poets bear the process of selection so well, and certainly none have so much to gain by it.

There is something of pathos, indeed, in the recollection of the relation which Wordsworth bore to the literature of his day. He came in the wake of Byron, and uttered a note so different that it is scarcely surprising that the multitude who read Byron had no ear for Wordsworth. For every thousand who bought "Childe Harold," there was perhaps one who bought the "Lyrical Ballads." When contempt and hostility had slowly passed into grateful recognition his fame was menaced from another quarter. By that time Tennyson was making himself heard, and Tennyson soon passed Wordsworth in the race for fame. Wordsworth never knew the joy of unrivalled and indisputable pre-eminence. His star rose unperceived in the firmament where Byron reigned in splendour, and before

the fading afterglow of Byron had left a space for his modest light to spread, it was again eclipsed by the growing beams of Tennyson. The one poet had the vehement personality, and the other the rich and ornate style, which Wordsworth lacked. Each appealed to the popular ear as he did not; the one with a more masterful, the other with a more musical, note. It seemed part of the irony of fate that Wordsworth should nurture his heart in solitary endurance to the end, and should never know what it was to reap the full harvest of his toils. Perhaps also there is a law of compensation at work which has ensured to Wordsworth a more solid fame than Byron seems likely to enjoy, or Tennyson is likely to attain. The sureness which we usually associate with slowness has certainly marked the growth of Wordsworth's fame; and it may be confidently said that at no period since the appearance of the "Lyrical Ballads" has Wordsworth been so widely read as now. Can as much be said of Byron? Will as much be said in a hundred years of Tennyson? Of Byron at least it is true that he has decreased while Wordsworth has increased. While the star of Byron has gradually receded, the star of Wordsworth has risen into dominance, and burns with an enduring and immitigable flame. If the verdict of universal criticism goes for anything, it is clear that Wordsworth has come to stop.

There are, of course, some dissentients to this judgment, but one hardly pays much attention nowadays to the erratic criticisms of Mr. Swinburne, and still less to Mr. Oscar Wilde when he writes contemptuously of "Mr. Wordsworth," or Mr. Andrew Lang, when he is good enough to inform us that he does not care "very much for Mr. William Wordsworth." These are merely

the small impertinences of criticism, meant to excite laughter, but likelier to inspire contempt, and in no case worthy of any serious resentment. Nor can one quarrel seriously with so genial a humorist as Edward. Fitzgerald, when he is provoked by the almost irritating respectability of Wordsworth to write of him as "my daddy." It is more to the purpose to recollect that Coleridge placed Wordsworth "nearest of all modern writers to Shakespeare and Milton, yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and his own." If this be regarded as the unconsidered praise of enthusiastic friendship, we have also to recollect that Matthew Arnold, who was always frugal in his praise, and never guilty of untempered adulation, has practically endorsed this verdict. With Shakespeare and Milton he will not compare him, but next to these august names he ranks Wordsworth as the man who has contributed most to the permanent wealth of English poetry since the Elizabethan age. Nor does Mr. John Morley, the latest critic of Wordsworth, contest the justice of this criticism. He cannot grant him Shakespeare's vastness of compass, nor Milton's sublimity, nor Dante's "ardent force of vision," but he admits Wordsworth's right to comparison, and admirably states Wordsworth's peculiar gift when he says, "What Wordsworth does is to assuage, to reconcile, to fortify. Wordsworth, at any rate, by his secret of bringing the infinite into common life, as he invokes it out of common life, has the skill to lead us, so long as we yield ourselves to his influence, into inner moods of settled peace; to touch 'the depth. and not the tumult of the soul;' to give us quietness, strength, steadfastness, and purpose, whether to do or to endure." He would be a daring man who contested a verdict endorsed by the three most eminent names of

modern criticism, and it is pretty safe to assume that on all the main issues this verdict is decisive, and is not likely to be seriously impugned.

Any final survey of Wordsworth's work would be incomplete without mention of what may, after all, be taken as his noblest single poem, the "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." This poem was written when Wordsworth was at the prime of his powers (1803-6), and is rich in his peculiar excellences. It also sums up much that is most characteristic in his philosophy. The starting-point of his philosophy is that man has in himself all the elements of perfect life, if he will but learn how to adjust himself to the environment in which he finds himself:

The Child is father of the Man,

I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each in natural piety.

The evils of life spring from the perverse disregard of his true instincts, to which man is prone. The child loves Nature, and is happiest in contact with Nature, and it is for that reason Wordsworth urges the absolute need for communion with Nature in the perfect human life. In the natural instincts of the child's heart we have, if we only knew it, the true indications of the highest possible development of human nature. They are the pointer-stars by which we can measure the firmament of human life, and ascertain the true bearings and infinite courses of human destiny. But behind this assumption another question lies: we ask, What is there to prove to us that these instincts are right, and from whence do they spring? The answer to this question Wordsworth gives in this great ode.