English Literature for Boys and Girls Part 69

*Prelude, book v.

When Wordsworth first published his poems they were received with scorn, and he was treated with neglect greater even than most great poets have had to endure. But in time the tide turned and people came at last to acknowledge that Wordsworth was not only a poet, but a great one. He showed men a new way of poetry; he proved to them that nightingale was as poetical a word as Philomel, that it was possible to speak of the sun and the moon as the sun and the moon, and not as Phoebus and Diana. Phoebus, Diana, and Philomel are, with the thoughts they convey, beautiful in their right places, but so are the sun, moon, and nightingale.

Wordsworth tried to make men see with new eyes the little everyday things that they had looked upon week by week and year by year until they had grown common. He tried to make them see these things again with "the glory and the freshness of a dream."*

*Ode, Intimations of Immortality.

Wordsworth fought the battle of the simple word, and phrase, and thought, and won it. And the poets who came after him, and not the poets only, but the prose writer too, whether they acknowledged it or not, whether they knew it or now, entered as by right into the possession of the kingdom which he had won for them.

And now let me tell you a little of the life of this nature poet.

William Wordsworth was born at c.o.c.kermouth in c.u.mberland in 1770.

He was the second son of John Wordsworth, a lawyer, and law agent for the Earl of Lonsdale. William's mother died when he was still a very small boy, and he remembered little about her. He remembered dimly that one day as he was going to church, she pinned some flowers into his coat. He remembered seeing her once lying in an easy chair when she was ill, and that was nearly all.

Before Wordsworth lost his mother he had a happy out-door childhood. He spent long days playing about in garden and orchard, or on the banks of the Derwent, with his friends and brothers and his sister Dorothy. In one of his long poems called The Prelude, which is a history of his own young life, he tells of these happy childish hours. In other of his poems he tells of the love and comrades.h.i.+p that there was between himself and his sister, though she was two years younger--

"Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days, The time, when, in our childish plays, My sister Emmeline and I Together chased the b.u.t.terfly!

A very hunter did I rush Upon the prey:--with leaps and springs I followed on from brake to bush; But she, G.o.d love her! feared to brush The dust from off its wings."*

*To a b.u.t.terfly.

Together they spied out the sparrows' nests and watched the tiny nestlings as they grew, the big rough boy learning much from his tender-hearted, gentle sister. In after years he said--

"She gave me eyes, she gave me ears; And humble cares, and delicate fears; A heart, the fountain of sweet tears; And love, and thought, and joy."*

*The Sparrow's Nest.

When the mother died these happy days for brother and sister together were done, for Willie went to school at Hawkshead with his brothers, and Dorothy was sent to live with her grandfather at Penrith.

But Wordsworth's school-time was happy too. Hawkshead was among the beautiful lake and mountain scenery that he loved. He had a great deal of freedom, and out of school hours could take long rambles, day and night too. When moon and stars were s.h.i.+ning he would wander among the hills until the spirit of the place laid hold of him, and he says--

"I heard among the solitary hills Low breathings coming after me, and sounds Of undistinguishable motion, steps Almost as silent as the turf they trod."*

*Prelude, book i.

Wordsworth fished and bird-nested, climbing perilous crags and slippery rocks to find rare eggs. In summer he and his companions rowed upon the lake, in winter they skated.

"And in the frosty season, when the sun Was set, and visible for many a mile The cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom, I heeded not their summons: happy time It was indeed for all of us--for me A time of rapture! Clear and loud The village clock tolled six,--I wheeled about, Proud and exulting like an untired horse That cares not for his home. All shod with steel, We hissed along the polished ice in games.

We were a noisy crew; the sun in heaven Beheld not vales more beautiful than ours; Nor saw a band in happiness and joy Richer, or worthier of the ground they trod."*

*Prelude, book i.

Yet among all this noisy boyish fun and laughter, Wordsworth's strange, keen love of nature took root and grew. At times he says--

"Even then I felt Gleams like the flas.h.i.+ng of a s.h.i.+eld:--the earth And common face of nature spake to me Rememberable things."*

*Prelude, book i.

He read, too, what he liked, spending many happy hours over Gulliver's Travels, and the Tale of a Tub, Don Quixote, and the Arabian Nights.

While Wordsworth was still at school his father died. His uncles then took charge of him, and after he left school sent him to Cambridge. Wordsworth did nothing great at college. He took his degree without honors, and left Cambridge still undecided what his career in life was to be. He did not feel himself good enough for the Church. He did not care for law, but rather liked the idea of being a soldier. That idea, however, he also gave up, and for a time he drifted.

In those days one of the world's great dramas was being enacted.

The French Revolution had begun. With the great struggle the poet's heart was stirred, his imagination fired. It seemed to him that a new dawn of freedom and joy and peace was breaking on the world, and "France lured him forth." He crossed the Channel, and for two years he lived through all the storm and stress of the Revolution. He might have ended his life in the fearful Reign of Terror which was coming on, had not his friends in England called him home. He left France full of pity, and sorrow, and disappointment, for no reign of peace had come, and the desire for Liberty had been swallowed up in the desire for Empire.

In spite of his years of travel, in spite of the fact that it was necessary for him to earn his living, Wordsworth was still unsettled as to what his work in life was to be, when a friend dying left him nine hundred pounds. With Wordworth's simple tastes this sum was enough to live upon for several years, so he asked his dearly loved sister Dorothy to make her home with him, and together they settled down to a simple cottage life in Dorsets.h.i.+re. It was a happy thing for Wordsworth that he found such a comrade in his sister. From first to last she was his friend and helper, cheering and soothing him when need be--

"Her voice was like a hidden bird that sang, The thought of her was like a flash of light, Or an unseen companions.h.i.+p, a breath Of fragrance independent of the wind."

Another poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whom William and Dorothy Wordsworth now met, calls her "Wordsworth's exquisite sister."

"She is a woman indeed, in mind I mean, and in heart. . . . In every motion her innocent soul out-beams so brightly that who saw her would say 'Guilt was a thing impossible with her.'"

Chapter LXXV WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE--THE LAKE POETS

AFTER Coleridge and Wordsworth once met they soon became fast friends, and in order to be near Coleridge the Wordsworths moved to another house near Nether Stowey in Somersets.h.i.+re.

Coleridge was two years or more younger than Wordsworth, having been born in 1772. He was the thirteenth child of his father, who was a clergyman. As a boy he was sensitive and lonely, liking better to day-dream by himself than to play with his fellows. While still a mere child he loved books. Before he was five he had read the Arabian Nights, and he peopled his day dreams with giants and genii, slaves and fair princesses. When he was ten he went to school at Christ's Hospital, the Bluecoat School. Here he met Charles Lamb, who also became a writer, and whose Essays and Tales from Shakespeare I hope you will soon read.

At school even his fellows saw how clever Coleridge was. He read greedily and talked with any one who would listen and answer. In his lonely wanderings about London on "leave days" he was delighted if he could induce any stray pa.s.ser-by to talk, especially, he says, if he was dressed in black. No subject came amiss to him, religion, philosophy, science, or poetry. From school Coleridge went to Cambridge, but after a time, getting into trouble and debt, he ran away and enlisted in a cavalry regiment under the name of Silas Tomkyn Comberback.

In a few months, however, he was discovered, and his brothers bought him out. He then went back to Cambridge, but left again at the end of the same year without taking a degree.

Meantime, while on a visit to Oxford, he had met Southey, another poet who was at this time a student there.

Robert Southey was born in 1774, and was the son of a Bristol Linen draper, but he was brought up chiefly by an aunt in Bath.

At fourteen he went to school at Westminster, and later to Balliol College, Oxford. When Coleridge met him he was just twenty, and Coleridge twenty-two. Like Wordsworth, they were both fired with enthusiasm for the French Revolution, and they soon became friends.

With some others of like mind they formed a little society, which they called the Pantisocracy, from Greek words meaning all-equal- rule. They decided that they should all marry and then emigrate to the banks of the Susquehanna (chosen, it has been said, because of its beautiful name), and there form a little Utopia.

Property was to be in common, each man laboring on the land two hours a day in order to provide food for the company. But the fine scheme came to nothing, for meanwhile none of the company had enough money to pay for his pa.s.sage to the banks of the beautiful-sounding river. Coleridge and Southey, however, carried out part of the program. They both married, their wives being sisters.

Coleridge, about the same time as he married, published a volume of poems. But as this did not bring him wealth he then tried various other ways of making a living. He began a weekly paper which ceased after a few numbers, he lectured on history, and preached in various Unitarian chapels. Then after a time he settled at Nether Stowey, where he was living when he met Wordsworth.

The two poets, as has been said, at once became friends, Coleridge having a deep and whole-hearted admiration for Wordworth's genius. "I speak with heartfelt sincerity," he says, "and I think unblinded judgment, when I tell you that I feel a little man by his side."

The two friends had many walks and talks together, shaping their ideas of what poetry should be. They at length decided to publish a book together to be called Lyrical Ballads.

In this book there was published the poem which of all that Coleridge write is the best known, The Ancient Mariner. It tells how this old old sailor stops a guest who is going to a wedding, and bids him hear a tale. The wedding guest does not wish to stay, but the old man holds him with his skinny hand--

"He holds him with his glittering eye-- The Wedding Guest stood still, And listens like three years' child: The Mariner hath his will."