The Prose Works of William Wordsworth Part 80

332. _Ecclesiastical Sonnets in Series_.

ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT.

During the month of December, 1820, I accompanied a much-beloved and honoured Friend in a walk through different parts of his estate, with a view to fix upon the site of a new Church which he intended to erect. It was one of the most beautiful mornings of a mild season,--our feelings were in harmony with the cheris.h.i.+ng influences of the scene; and such being our purpose, we were naturally led to look back upon past events with wonder and grat.i.tude, and on the future with hope. Not long afterwards, some of the Sonnets which will be found towards the close of this series were produced as a private memorial of that morning's occupation.

The Catholic Question, which was agitated in Parliament about that time, kept my thoughts in the same course; and it struck me that certain points in the Ecclesiastical History of our Country might advantageously be presented to view in verse. Accordingly, I took up the subject, and what I now offer to the reader was the result.

When this work was far advanced, I was agreeably surprised to find that my friend, Mr. Southey, had been engaged with similar views in writing a concise History of the Church _in_ England. If our Productions, thus unintentionally coinciding, shall be found to ill.u.s.trate each other, it will prove a high gratification to me, which I am sure my friend will partic.i.p.ate.

W. WORDSWORTH.

Rydal Mount, January 24, 1822.

For the convenience of pa.s.sing from one point of the subject to another without shocks of abruptness, this work has taken the shape of a series of Sonnets: but the Reader, it is to be hoped, will find that the pictures are often so closely connected as to have jointly the effect of pa.s.sages of a poem in a form of stanza to which there is no objection but one that bears upon the Poet only--its difficulty.

333. *_Introductory Remarks_.

My purpose in writing this Series was, as much as possible, to confine my view to the 'introduction, progress, and operation of the CHURCH in ENGLAND, both previous and subsequent to the Reformation. The Sonnets were written long before Ecclesiastical History and points of doctrine had excited the interest with which they have been recently enquired into and discussed. The former particular is mentioned as an excuse for my having fallen into error in respect to an incident which had been selected as setting forth the height to which the power of the Popedom over temporal sovereignty had attained, and the arrogance with which it was displayed. I allude to the last sonnet but one in the first series, where Pope Alexander the Third, at Venice, is described as setting his foot on the neck of the Emperor Barbarossa. Though this is related as a fact in history, I am told it is a mere legend of no authority.

Subst.i.tute for it an undeniable truth, not less fitted for my purpose, namely, the penance inflicted by Gregory the Seventh upon the Emperor Henry the Fourth, at [Canosa].[4]

[4] ('According to Baronius the humiliation of the Emperor was a voluntary act of prostration on his part. _Ann. Eccl. ad Ann_. 1177.'

_Memoirs_, ii. 111.)

Before I conclude my notice of these Sonnets, let me observe that the opinion I p.r.o.nounced in favour of Laud (long before the Oxford Tract movement), and which had brought censure upon me from several quarters, is not in the least changed. Omitting here to examine into his conduct in respect to the persecuting spirit with which he has been charged, I am persuaded that most of his aims to restore ritual practices which had been abandoned, were good and wise, whatever errors he might commit in the manner he sometimes attempted to enforce them. I further believe, that had not he, and others who shared his opinions and felt as he did, stood up in opposition to the Reformers of that period, it is questionable whether the Church would ever have recovered its lost ground, and become the blessing it now is, and will, I trust, become in a still greater degree, both to those of its communion, and those who unfortunately are separated from it:

'_ 1 saw the Figure of a lovely Maid_.' [Sonnet I. Part III.]

When I came to this part of the Series I had the dream described in this sonnet. The figure was that of my daughter, and the whole past exactly as here represented. The sonnet was composed on the middle road leading from Grasmere to Ambleside: it was begun as I left the last house in the vale, and finished, word for word, as it now stands, before I came in view of Rydal. I wish I could say the same of the five or six hundred I have written: most of them were frequently retouched in the course of composition, and not a few laboriously.

I have only further to observe that the intended church which prompted these Sonnets was erected on Coleorton Moor, towards the centre of a very populous parish, between three and four miles from Ashby-de-la-Zouch, on the road to Loughborough, and has proved, I believe, a great benefit to the neighbourhood.

[POSTSCRIPT.

As an addition to these general remarks on the 'Ecclesiastical Sonnets,'

it seems only right to give here from the _Memoirs_ (vol. ii. p. 113) the following on Sonnet XL. (Pt. II.):

'With what entire affection did they prize Their _new-born_ Church!'

The invidious inferences that would be drawn from this epithet by the enemies of the English Church and Reformation are too obvious to be dilated on. The author was aware of this, and in reply to a friend who called his attention to the misconstruction and perversion to which the pa.s.sage was liable, he replied as follows:

'Nov. 12. 1846.

MY DEAR C----,

'The pa.s.sage which you have been so kind as to comment upon in one of the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," was altered several years ago by my pen, in a copy of my poems which I possess, but the correction was not printed till a place was given it in the last edition, printed last year, in one volume. It there stands,

"Their church reformed."

Though for my own part, as I mentioned some time since in a letter I had occasion to write to the Bishop of ----, I do not like the term _reformed_; if taken in its literal sense, as a _transformation_, it is very objectionable.

'Yours affectionately, 'W. WORDSWORTH.'

Further, on the Sonnets on 'Aspects of Christianity in America,'

Wordsworth wrote to his valued friend, Professor Reed of Philadelphia, as follows:

'A few days ago, after a very long interval, I returned to poetical composition; and my first employment was to write a couple of sonnets upon subjects recommended by you to take place in the Ecclesiastical Series. They are upon the Marriage Ceremony and the Funeral Service. I have also, at the same time, added two others, one upon Visiting the Sick, and the other upon the Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth, both subjects taken from the Services of our Liturgy. To the second part of the same series, I have also added two, in order to do more justice to the Papal Church for the services which she did actually render to Christianity and humanity in the Middle Ages. By the by, the sonnet beginning, "Men of the Western World," &c. was slightly altered after I sent it to you, not in the hope of subst.i.tuting a better verse, but merely to avoid the repet.i.tion of the same word, "book," which occurs as a rhyme in "The Pilgrim Fathers." These three sonnets, I learn, from several quarters, have been well received by those of your countrymen whom they most concern.'] [5]

[5] Extract: September 4th, 1842: _Memoirs_, ii. 389-90.

PART I. FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO BRITAIN TO THE CONSUMMATION OF THE PAPAL DOMINION.

334. _St. Paul never in Britain_.

'Did holy Paul,' &c. [Sonnet II. l. 6.]

Stillingfleet adduces many arguments in support of this opinion, but they are unconvincing. The latter part of this Sonnet (II.

'Conjectures') refers to a favourite notion of Roman Catholic writers, that Joseph of Arimathea and his companions brought Christianity into Britain, and built a rude church at Glas...o...b..ry; alluded to hereafter in a pa.s.sage upon the dissolution of monasteries.

335. _Water-fowl_. [Sonnet III. l. 1.]

'Screams round the Arch-druid's brow the sea-mew.'

This water-fowl was among the Druids an emblem of those traditions connected with the deluge that made an important part of their mysteries. The cormorant was a bird of bad omen.

336. _Hill at St. Allan's: Bede_.

'That hill, whose flowery platform,' &c. [Sonnet VI. l. 13.]

This hill at St. Alban's must have been an object of great interest to the imagination of the venerable Bede, who thus describes it, with a delicate feeling delightful to meet with in that rude age, traces of which are frequent in his works:--'Variis herbarum floribus depictus imo usquequaque vest.i.tus, in quo nihil repente arduum, nihil praeceps, nihil abruptum, quem lateribus longe lateque deductum in modum aequoris natura complanat, dignum videlicet eum pro insita sibi specie venustatis jam olim reddens, qui beati martyris canore dicaretur.'

337. _Hallelujahs_.

'Nor wants the cause the panic-striking aid Of hallelujahs.'

[Sonnet XI. ll. 1-2.]

Alluding to the victory gained under Germa.n.u.s. See Bede.

338. _Samuel Daniel and Thomas Fuller _. [Ibid. ll. 9-10.]

'By men yet scarcely conscious of a care For other monuments than those of earth.'

The last six lines of this Sonnet are chiefly from the prose of Daniel; and here I will state (though to the Readers whom this Poem will chiefly interest it is unnecessary) that my obligations to other prose writers are frequent,--obligations which, even if I had not a pleasure in courting, it would have been presumptuous to shun, in treating an historical subject. I must, however, particularise Fuller, to whom I am indebted in the Sonnet upon Wycliffe and in other instances. And upon the acquittal of the Seven Bishops I have done little more than versify a lively description of that event in the MS. Memoirs of the first Lord Lonsdale.