Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans

To homefelt pleasures, and to gentler scenes.
This is the Happy Warrior, this is He

That every man in arms should wish to be.

When we read these words we are reminded of a passage in the "Recluse," in which Wordsworth tells us he could never read of two great war-ships grappling without a thrill of emulation, more ardent than wise men should know. It is a passage which throws a new light upon the nature of Wordsworth. If he was serene, it was not because he was lethargic; if he urged the blessedness of regulated passions, it was not because his own heart was cold: he, too, had a passionate nature and heroic fibre in him, and that courageous and soldierly temper is fitly vindicated and expressed in the lofty spirit of his patriotic poems.

CHAPTER XV.

WORDSWORTH'S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

W

HEN we put down the works of a poet, we are naturally inclined to ask what the poet himself was like in actual life, and to seek some authentic presentment of him as he moved among men. In the case of Wordsworth we have many partial portraits, but it can hardly be said that we have any true and finished picture. The seclusion of Wordsworth's life saved him from the scrutiny of that social world where every little trait of character is indelibly photographed on some retentive memory, and the trifles of unconsidered conversation are gathered up, and often reproduced after many days in diaries and reminiscences. Considering the literary force which Wordsworth was, few men have had such scanty dealings with the literary circles of their time. If Wordsworth had died at fifty, it is pretty certain that beyond the reminiscences of personal friends, like Coleridge and Southey, there would have been little to guide us to a true understanding of his person and character. Gradually, however, as the tide set in his favour, the quiet house at Rydal Mount became more and more a place of pilgrimage, and few visitors of eminence came away without noting down certain impressions, more or less instructive, of the great Lake Poet.

First of all there come naturally the testimonies of those men of letters who formed a little colony beside the English Lakes, and whose names are inseparably associated with Wordsworth's. Southey's sense of Wordsworth's powers may be measured by his enthusiastic verdict, that there never was and never would be a greater poet. Coleridge conveys his impression of Wordsworth's strength of character, not less than of his genius, in the pathetic lines written in the days of his own eclipse and sorrow, and already quoted:

O great Bard!

Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air,

With steadfast eye I viewed thee in the choir
Of ever-enduring men.

Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn,

The pulses of my being beat anew.

The quality in Wordsworth which struck Coleridge most was naturally the quality in which he himself was most deficient-the robustness and sufficiency of the poet's nature. De Quincey, in his sketch, observes the same characteristic, and probably this was the first and deepest impression which Wordsworth created. He struck all who knew him as a solid, indomitable man, somewhat taciturn, save when the theme inspired him and the company was fitting; a man who knew in what he had believed, and knew how to stand true to himself and his convictions, amid evil report and good report. That there should be something of childlike vanity and harmless egotism about him, was perhaps the natural consequence of his lack of humour and his secluded life. When Emerson visited him he was much amused to see Wordsworth solemnly prepare himself for action, and then declaim like a schoolboy his latest sonnet on Fingal's Cave. If Wordsworth

had had any of the elements of humour in him, he himself would have been too conscious of the ludicrous side of the proceeding to have indulged in it. But Wordsworth united in himself philosophic seriousness and childlike simplicity, and was singularly insensible to humour. His neighbours said they never heard him laugh, and remarked that you could tell from his face there was no laughter in his poetry. He took life seriously, and, to quote Mrs. Browning's fine phrase, poetry was to him "as serious as life." He once told Sir George Beaumont that in his opinion "a man of letters, and indeed all public men of every pursuit, should be severely frugal." The Puritan discipline which he applied to his life moulded his character, and a constant life of plain living and high thinking left little room for the casual graces of persiflage and Of mere cleverness, the airy agility of shallow brains and ready tongues, he was destitute. He was not suave, not fascinating, scarcely prepossessing. But if he was calm it was not with any natural coldness of temperament; his calm was the fruit of long discipline and fortitude. One acute observer speaks of the fearful intensity of his feelings and affections, and says that if his intellect had been less strong they would have destroyed him long ago. De Quincey in like manner noted his look of premature age,* "the furrowed and rugged countenance, the brooding intensity of the eye, the bursts of anger at the report of evil doings "— the signs of the passionate forces which worked within him. He himself in his many self-revelations conveys the same impression of a nature hard to govern, of

* De Quincey says that when Wordsworth was thirty-nine his age was guessed at over sixty.

violent passions disciplined with difficulty, of wild and tumultuous desires only conquered by incessant vigilance. He bore upon himself the marks of a difficult life and it was a touch of genuine insight which led Coleridge to describe him by the brief and pregnant phrase an "ever-enduring man."

The picture which Harriet Martineau gives of Wordsworth as she knew him in his old age does not err on the side of adulation, but it cannot conceal the essential nobleness of his character. Harriet Martineau thought little of his writings, and says so with caustic frankness. According to her view-the view be it remembered of an incessantly busy woman. -Wordsworth suffered from having nothing to do; and he suffered yet more in his old age from the adulation of the crowd of visitors who poured toward Rydal Mount during the tourist season. To each of these idle visitors, and they averaged five hundred a season, Wordsworth behaved much in the same way. He politely showed them round his grounds, explained at what particular spot certain poems were written, and then politely bowed them out. He had no reticence either in reciting his poems or talking of them; indeed, he often spoke of them in an impersonal sort of way, as though they had no relation to himself, and hecriticised them as freely as though some one else had written them. Thus, he told Harriet Martineau that the "Happy Warrior" did not "best fulfil the conditions of poetry, but it was a chain of extremely valooable thoughts," a criticism which Miss Martineau endorses as "eminently just." In these, and in many similar proceedings, we recognise the naïve simplicity of the man. He solemnly advised Miss Martineau to give nothing but tea to her visitors, and if they wanted