The Prose Works of William Wordsworth Part 92

502. _Elegiac Verses_. [VIII.]

In memory of my Brother, John Wordsworth, Commander of the E.I.

Company's s.h.i.+p the Earl of Abergavenny, in which he perished by calamitous s.h.i.+pwreck, Feb. 6, 1805. Composed near the Mountain track that leads from Grasmere through Grisdale Hawes, where it descends towards Patterdale. 1805.

503. _Moss Campion_ (_Silene acaulis_). [_Ibid._ II. l. 5.]

This most beautiful plant is scarce in England, though it is found in great abundance upon the mountains of Scotland. The first specimen I ever saw of it, in its native bed, was singularly fine, the tuft or cus.h.i.+on being at least eight inches in diameter, and the root proportionably thick. I have only met with it in two places among our mountains, in both of which I have since sought for it in vain.

Botanists will not, I hope, take it ill, if I caution them against carrying off, inconsiderately, rare and beautiful plants. This has often been done, particularly from Ingleborough and other mountains in Yorks.h.i.+re, till the species have totally disappeared, to the great regret of lovers of Nature living near the places where they grew.

504. _Lines_.

Composed at Grasmere, during a walk one evening after a stormy day, the Author having just read in a newspaper that the dissolution of Mr. Fox was hourly expected, 'Loud is the Vale,' &c. [IX.]

505. *_Invocation to the Earth_. [x.]

Composed immediately after the Thanksgiving Ode, to which it may be considered as a second part.

506. *_Elegiac Stanzas. Addressed to Sir G.H.B_. [XII.]

On Mrs. Fermor. This lady had been a widow long before I knew her. Her husband was of the family of the lady celebrated in the 'Rape of the Lock,' and was, I believe, a Roman Catholic. The sorrow which his death caused her was fearful in its character, as described in this Poem, but was subdued in course of time by the strength of her religious faith. I have been for many weeks at a time an inmate with her at Coleorton Hall, as were also Mary and my sister. The truth in the sketch of her character here given was acknowledged with grat.i.tude by her nearest relatives. She was eloquent in conversation, energetic upon public matters, open in respect to these, but slow to communicate her personal feelings. Upon these she never touched in her intercourse with me, so that I could not regard myself as her confidential friend, and was accordingly surprised when I learnt she had left me a legacy of 100_l._ as a token of her esteem. See in further ill.u.s.tration, the second stanza inscribed upon her cenotaph in Coleorton Church.

507. *_Elegiac Musings in the Grounds of Coleorton Hall_.[XIII.]

These verses were in fact composed on horseback during a storm, whilst I was on my way from Coleorton to Cambridge. They are alluded to elsewhere. [Intercalated by Mrs. Quillinan--My father was on my pony, which he rode all the way from Rydal to Cambridge that I might have the comfort and pleasure of a horse at Cambridge. The storm of wind and rain on this day was so violent that the coach in which my mother and I travelled, the same coach, was all but blown over, and had the coachman drawn up as he attempted to do at one of his halting-places, we must have been upset. My father and his pony were several times actually blown out of the road. D.Q.]

508. _Charles Lamb_. [XIV.]

From the most gentle creature nursed in fields.

This way of indicating the _name_ of my lamented friend has been found fault with; perhaps rightly so; but I may say in justification of the double sense of the word, that similar allusions are not uncommon in epitaphs. One of the best in our language in verse I ever read, was upon a person who bore the name of Palmer; and the course of the thought, throughout, turned upon the Life of the Departed, considered as a pilgrimage. Nor can I think that the objection in the present case will have much force with any one who remembers Charles Lamb's beautiful sonnet addressed to his own name, and ending--

'No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle name!'

509. *_Ibid._

Light will be thrown upon the tragic circ.u.mstance alluded to in this Poem when, after the death of Charles Lamb's sister, his biographer, Mr.

Serjeant Talfourd, shall be at liberty to relate particulars which could not, at the time when his Memoir was written, be given to the public.

Mary Lamb was ten years older than her brother, and has survived him as long a time. Were I to give way to my own feelings, I should dwell not only on her genius and intellectual powers, but upon the delicacy and refinement of manner which she maintained inviolable under most trying circ.u.mstances. She was loved and honoured by all her brother's friends, and others, some of them strange characters whom his philanthropic peculiarities induced him to countenance. The death of C. Lamb himself was doubtless hastened by his sorrow for that of Coleridge, to whom he had been attached from the time of their being schoolfellows at Christ's Hospital. Lamb was a good Latin scholar, and probably would have gone to college upon one of the School foundations but for the impediment in his speech. Had such been his lot, he would have probably been preserved from the indulgences of social humours and fancies which were often injurious to himself and causes of severe regret to his friends, without really benefiting the object of his misapplied kindness.

510. *_Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg_. [XV.]

These verses were written extempore immediately after reading a notice of the Ettrick Shepherd's death in the Newcastle Paper, to the Editor of which I sent a copy for publication. The persons lamented in these Verses were all either of my friends or acquaintance. In Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott an account is given of my first meeting with him in 1803. How the Ettrick Shepherd and I became known to each other has already been mentioned in these Notes. He was undoubtedly a man of original genius, but of coa.r.s.e manners and low and offensive opinions.

Of Coleridge and Lamb I need not speak here. Crabbe I have met in London at Mr. Rogers', but more frequently and favourably at Mr. h.o.a.re's upon Hampstead Heath. Every Spring he used to pay that family a visit of some length, and was upon terms of intimate friends.h.i.+p with Mrs. h.o.a.re, and still more with her daughter-in-law, who has a large collection of his letters addressed to herself. After the Poet's decease application was made to her to give up these letters to his biographer, that they, or at least a part of them, might be given to the public. She hesitated to comply, and asked my opinion on the subject. 'By no means,' was my answer, grounded not upon any objection there might be to publis.h.i.+ng a selection from those letters, but from an aversion I have always felt to meet idle curiosity by calling back the recently departed to become the object of trivial and familiar gossip. Crabbe obviously for the most part preferred the company of women to that of men; for this among other reasons, that he did not like to be put upon the stretch in general conversation. Accordingly, in miscellaneous society his talk was so much below what might have been expected from a man so deservedly celebrated, that to me it seemed trifling. It must upon other occasions have been of a different character, as I found in our rambles together on Hampstead Heath; and not so much so from a readiness to communicate his knowledge of life and manners as of natural history in all its branches. His mind was inquisitive, and he seems to have taken refuge from a remembrance of the distresses he had gone through in these studies and the employments to which they led. Moreover such contemplations might tend profitably to counterbalance the painful truths which he had collected from his intercourse with mankind. Had I been more intimate with him I should have ventured to touch upon his office as a Minister of the Gospel, and how far his heart and soul were in it, so as to make him a zealous and diligent labourer. In poetry, tho' he wrote much, as we all know, he a.s.suredly was not so. I happened once to speak of pains as necessary to produce merit of a certain kind which I highly valued. His observation was, 'It is not worth while.' You are right, thought I, if the labour encroaches upon the time due to teach truth as a steward of the mysteries of G.o.d; but if poetry is to be produced at all, make what you do produce as good as you can. Mr. Rogers once told me that he expressed his regret to Crabbe that he wrote in his late works so much less correctly than in his earlier. 'Yes,' replied he, 'but then I had a reputation to make; now I can afford to relax.'

Whether it was from a modest estimate of his own qualifications or from causes less creditable, his motives for writing verse and his hopes and aims were not so high as is to be desired. After being silent for more than twenty years he again applied himself to poetry, upon the spur of applause he received from the periodical publications of the day, as he himself tells us in one of his Prefaces. Is it not to be lamented that a man who was so conversant with permanent truth, and whose writings are so valuable an acquisition to our country's literature, should have _required_ an impulse from such a quarter?[10]

[10] In pencil on opposite page, by Mrs. Quillinan--Daddy dear, I don't like this. Think how many reasons there were to depress his Muse--to say nothing of his duties as a Priest, and probably he found poetry interfere with them. He did not _require_ such praise to make him write, but it just put it into his heart to try again, and gave him the courage to do so. (See Notes and Ill.u.s.trations at close. G)

Mrs. Hemans was unfortunate as a Poetess in being obliged by circ.u.mstances to write for money, and that so frequently and so much, that she was compelled to look out for subjects wherever she could find them, and to write as expeditiously as possible. As a woman she was to a considerable degree a spoilt child of the world. She had been early in life distinguished for talents, and poems of hers were published whilst she was a girl. She had also been handsome in her youth, but her education had been most unfortunate. She was totally ignorant of housewifery, and could as easily have managed the spear of Minerva as her needle. It was from observing these deficiencies that one day, while she was under my roof, I purposely directed her attention to household economy, and told her I had purchased scales which I intended to present to a young lady as a wedding present; pointed out their utility (for her especial benefit), and said that no menage ought to be without them.

Mrs. Hemans, not in the least suspecting my drift, reported this saying in a letter to a friend at the time, as a proof of my simplicity. Being disposed to make large allowances for the faults of her education and the circ.u.mstances in which she was placed, I felt most kindly disposed towards her and took her part upon all occasions, and I was not a little affected by learning that after she withdrew to Ireland a long and severe illness raised her spirit as it depressed her body. This I heard from her most intimate friends, and there is striking evidence of it in a poem ent.i.tled [Blank; and in pencil on opposite page--Do you mean a Sonnet ent.i.tled 'Sabbath Sonnet,' composed by Mrs. Hemans, April 26th, 1835, a few days before her death? 'How many blessed groups this hour are wending!'] These notices of Mrs. Hemans would be very unsatisfactory to her intimate friends, as indeed they are to myself, not so much for what is said, but what for brevity's sake is left unsaid. Let it suffice to add there was much sympathy between us, and if opportunity had been allowed me to see more of her, I should have loved and valued her accordingly. As it is, I remember her with true affection for her amiable qualities, and above all for her delicate and irreproachable conduct during her long separation from an unfeeling husband, whom she had been led to marry from the romantic notions of inexperienced youth.

Upon this husband I never heard her cast the least reproach, nor did I ever hear her even name him, though she did not forbear wholly to touch upon her domestic position; but never so as that any fault could be found with her manner of adverting to it.

511. _Dead friends: 'Immortals.'_ [XV.]

Walter Scott died 21st Sept. 1832.

S.T. Coleridge " 25th July 1834.

Charles Lamb " 27th Dec. 1834.

Geo. Crabbe " 3rd Feb. 1832.

Felicia Hemans " 16th May 1835.

512. *_Ode: Intimations of Immortality, from Recollections of early Childhood_. [Headed in I.F. MSS. 'The Ode.']

This was composed during my residence at Town-End, Grasmere. Two years at least pa.s.sed between the writing of the four first stanzas and the remaining part. To the attentive and competent reader the whole sufficiently explains itself, but there may be no harm in adverting here to particular feelings or _experiences_ of my own mind on which the structure of the poem partly rests. Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being. I have said elsewhere

'A simple child That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?'[11]

[11] In pencil on opposite page--But this first stanza of 'We are Seven'

is Coleridge's Jem and all (Mr. Quillinan).

But it was not so much from the source of animal vivacity that _my_ difficulty came as from a sense of the indomitableness of the spirit within me. I used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and almost to persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I should be translated in something of the same way to heaven. With a feeling congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature.

Many times while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that time I was afraid of such processes. In later periods of life I have deplored, as we have all reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite character, and have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in the lines, 'Obstinate questionings,' &c. To that dreamlike vividness and splendour which invest objects of sight in childhood, every one, I believe, if he would look back, could bear testimony, and I need not dwell upon it here; but having in the Poem regarded it as presumptive evidence of a prior state of existence, I think it right to protest against a conclusion which has given pain to some good and pious persons, that I meant to inculcate such a belief. It is far too shadowy a notion to be recommended to faith as more than an element in our instincts of immortality. But let us bear in mind that, though the idea is not advanced in Revelation, there is nothing there to contradict it, and the fall of man presents an a.n.a.logy in its favour. Accordingly, a pre-existent state has entered into the popular creeds of many nations, and among all persons acquainted with cla.s.sic literature is known as an ingredient in Platonic philosophy. Archimedes said that he could move the world if he had a point whereon to rest his machine. Who has not felt the same aspirations as regards the world of his own mind? Having to wield some of its elements when I was impelled to write this poem on the 'Immortality of the Soul,' I took hold of the notion of pre-existence as having sufficient foundation in humanity for authorising me to make for my purpose the best use of it I could as a Poet.

XXV. 'THE EXCURSION.'

513. *_On the leading Characters and Scenes of the Poem_.

Something must now be said of this Poem, but chiefly, as has been done through the whole of these Notes, with reference to my personal friends, and especially to her [Miss Fenwick] who has perseveringly taken them down from my dictation. Towards the close of the 1st book, stand the lines that were first written, beginning 'Nine tedious years,' and ending 'last human tenant of these ruined walls.' These were composed in 1795, at Racedown; and for several pa.s.sages describing the employment and demeanour of Margaret during her affliction, I was indebted to observations made in Dorsets.h.i.+re, and afterwards at Alfoxden, in Somersets.h.i.+re, where I resided in 1797 and 1798. The lines towards the conclusion of the 4th book, 'Despondency corrected,' beginning 'For the man who in this spirit,' to the words 'intellectual soul,' were in order of time composed the next, either at Racedown or Alfoxden, I do not remember which. The rest of the poem was written in the vale of Grasmere, chiefly during our residence at Allan Bank. The long poem on my own education was, together with many minor poems, composed while we lived at the cottage at Town-End. Perhaps my purpose of giving an additional interest to these my poems, in the eyes of my nearest and dearest friends, may he promoted by saying a few words upon the character of the 'Wanderer,' the 'Solitary,' and the 'Pastor,' and some other of the persons introduced. And first of the princ.i.p.al one, the 'Wanderer.'

My lamented friend Southey (for this is written a month after his decease[12]) used to say that had he been a Papist, the course of life which would in all probability have been his, was the one for which he was most fitted and most to his mind, that of a Benedictine Monk, in a Convent, furnished, as many once were, and some still are, with an inexhaustible library. _Books_, as appears from many pa.s.sages in his writings, and was evident to those who had opportunities of observing his daily life, were, in fact, _his pa.s.sion_; and _wandering_, I can with truth affirm, was mine; but this propensity in me was happily counteracted by inability from want of fortune to fulfil my wishes.

[12] Which took place in March, 1843.