From worlds not quickened by the sun
A portion of the gift is won;
An intermingling of Heaven’s pomp is spread
On ground which British shepherds tread.
In accordance with these views the poet entrusted to his nephew, the late Bishop of Lincoln, the task of composing memoirs of his life, in the just confidence that nothing would be given to the world which was inconsistent with the dignity of the living or of the dead.
I have endeavoured to write as though the Subject of this biography were himself its Auditor, listening, indeed, from some region where all of truth is discerned, and nothing but truth desired, but checking by his venerable presence, any such revelation as public advantage does not call for, and private delicacy would condemn.
As regards the critical remarks which these pages contain. I have only to say that I have carefully consulted such notices of the poet as his personal friends have left us. I find with pleasure that a considerable agreement of opinion exists, – though less among professed poets or critics, than among men of eminence in other departments of thought or action whose attention has been directed to Wordsworth’s poems. I have been able to feel that I am not obtruding on the reader any merely fanciful estimate in which better accredited judges would refuse to concur.
I now begin my story of Wordsworth’s life, in words which he himself dictated to his intended biographer.
Blest the infant Babe,
(For with my best conjecture I would trace
Our Being’s earthly progress,) blest the Babe,
Nursed in his Mother’s arms, who sinks to sleep
Rocked on his Mother’s breast; who with his soul
Drinks in the feelings of his Mother’s eye!
The time of my infancy and early boyhood was passed, partly at Cockermouth, and partly with my mother’s parents at Penrith, where my mother, in the year 1778, died of a decline, brought on by a cold, in consequence of being put, at a friend’s house in London, in what used to be called ‘a best bedroom.’ My father never recovered his usual cheerfulness of mind after this loss, and died when I was in my fourteenth year, a schoolboy, just returned from Hawkshead, whither I had been sent with my elder brother Richard, in my ninth year.”
“I remember my mother only in some few situations, one of which was her pinning a nosegay to my breast, when I was going to say the catechism in the church, as was customary before Easter. An intimate friend of hers told me that she once said to her, that the only one of her five children about whose future life she was anxious was William; and he, she said, would be remarkable, either for good or for evil.
The cause of this was, that I was of a stiff, moody, and violent temper; so much so that I remember going once into the attics of my grandfather’s house at Penrith, upon some indignity having been put upon me, with an intention of destroying myself with one of the foils, which I knew was kept there. I took the foil in hand, but my heart failed. Upon another occasion, while I was at my grandfather’s house at Penrith, along with my eldest brother, Richard, we were whipping tops together in the large drawing-room, on which the carpet was only laid down upon particular occasions. The walls were hung round with family pictures, and I said to my brother, ‘Dare you strike your whip through that old lady’s petticoat?’ He replied, ‘No, I won’t.’ ‘Then’, said I, ‘here goes!’ and I struck my lash through her hooped petticoat; for which, no doubt, though I have forgotten it, I was properly punished. But, possibly from some want of judgment in punishments inflicted, I had become perverse and obstinate in defying chastisement, and rather proud of it than otherwise.”
From my pillow looking forth, by light
Of moon or favouring stars I could behold
The antechapel, where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face.
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
To bless the place where, on their opening soul,
First the genuine ardour stole.
Ye brown o’er-arching groves,
That contemplation loves,
Where willowy Camus lingers with delight!
Oft at the blush of dawn
I trod your level lawn.
Oft wooed the gleam of Cynthia silver-bright
In cloisters dim, far from the haunts of Folly,
With Freedom by my side, and soft-eyed Melancholy.
Could have more tranquil visions in his youth,
Or could more bright appearances create
Of human forms with superhuman powers,
Than I beheld loitering on calm clear nights
Alone, beneath this fairy work of earth.
As if awakened, summoned, roused, constrained,
I looked for universal things; perused
The common countenance of earth and sky –
Earth, nowhere unembellished by some trace
Of that first Paradise whence man was driven;
And sky, whose beauty and bounty are expressed
By the proud name she bears – the name of Heaven.
Martyr, or King, or sainted Eremite,
Whoe’er ye be that thus, yourselves unseen,
Imbue your prison-bars with solemn sheen,
Shine on, until ye fade with coming Night.
That branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering, and wandering on as both to die –
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality. with coming Night.
Thus much, and more, there was of ennobling and unchangeable in the very aspect and structure of that ancient University, by which Wordsworth’s mind was bent towards a kindred greatness. But of active moral and intellectual life there was at that time little to be found within her walls. The floodtide of her new life had not yet set in: she was still slumbering, as she had slumbered long, content to add to her majesty by the mere lapse of generations, and increment of her ancestral calm. Even had the intellectual life of the place been more stirring, it is doubtful how far Wordsworth would have been welcomed, or deserved, to be welcomed, by authorities or students. He began residence at seventeen, and his northern nature was late to flower.
There seems, in fact, to have been even less of visible promise about him than we should have expected; but rather something untamed and insubordinate, something heady and self-confident; an independence that seemed only rusticity, and an indolent ignorance which assumed too readily the tones of scorn.
A rambling schoolboy, thus
I felt his presence in his own domain
As of a lord and master – or a power,
Or genius, under Nature, under God;
Presiding; and severest solitude
Had more commanding looks when he was there.
When up the lonely brooks on rainy days
Angling I went, or trod the trackless hills
By mists bewildered, suddenly mine eyes
Have glanced upon him distant a few steps,
In size a giant, stalking through thick fog,
His sheep like Greenland bears; or, as he stepped
Beyond the boundary line of some hill-shadow,
His form hath flashed upon me, glorified
By the deep radiance of the setting sun;
Or him have I descried in distant sky,
A solitary object and sublime,
Above all height! Like an a‘rial cross
Stationed alone upon a spiry rock
Of the Chartreuse, for worship. Thus was man
Ennobled outwardly before my sight;
And thus my heart was early introduced
To an unconscious love and reverence
Of human nature; hence the human form
To me became an index of delight,
Of grace and honour, power and worthiness.
“This sanctity of Nature given to man,” – this interfusion of human interest with the sublimity of moor and hill, – formed a typical introduction to the manner in which Wordsworth regarded mankind to the end, – depicting him as set, as it were, amid impersonal influences, which make his passion and struggle but a little thing; as when painters give but a strip of their canvas to the fields and cities of men, and overhang the narrowed landscape with the space and serenity of heaven.
To this distant perception of man – of man “purified, removed, and to a distance that was fit” – was added, in his first summer vacation, a somewhat closer interest in the small joys and sorrows of the villagers of Hawkshead, – a new sympathy for the old Dame in whose house the poet still lodged, for “the quiet woodman in the woods,” and even for the “frank-hearted maids of rocky Cumberland,” with whom he now delighted to spend an occasional evening in dancing and country mirth.
Ah! Need I say, dear Friend! That to the brim
My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
A dedicated Spirit
By her exulting outside look of youth
And placid under-countenance, first endeared;
The immeasurable height
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, –
The Brabant armies on the fret
For battle in the cause of liberty. –
A stripling, scarcely of the household then
Of social life, I looked upon these things
As from a distance; heard, and saw, and felt –
Was touched, but with no intimate concern.
I seemed to move along them as a bird
Moves through the air – or as a fish pursues
Its sport, or feeds in its proper element.
I wanted not that joy, I did not need
Such help. The ever-living universe,
Turn where I might, was opening out its glories;
And the independent spirit of pure youth
Called forth at every season new delights,
Spread round my steps like sunshine o’er green fields.
