conclusion of the "Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle," Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The sleep that is among the lonely hills. These were the agencies which had softened, soothed, and tamed the fiery heart of Clifford, and it was by the same simple ministration he himself had been led into settled peace. It may, indeed, be doubted whether it is possible to understand the full significance of Wordsworth's poetry in any other environment than that in which it was produced. So at least thought James Macdonell, when he wrote: "What blasts of heavenly sunshine, as if blown direct from the gates of some austerely Puritan Paradise! What gusts of air, touched with the cold rigour of the mountain peak! What depth of moralising, touched with the hues of a masculine gloom! What felicity of diction, clothing in immortal brevity of phrase the deepest aspirations of the brave! Never did I read Wordsworth with such full delight, because never had I so charged my mind with the spirit of the mountains which were the food of his soul." What Burns did for the Scotch peasant, Wordsworth has done for the shepherds and the husbandmen of England. But he has done more than illustrate the virtues of a class: from the study of peasant life, set amid the splendour, and vivified by the influence of Nature, he attained a profound faith in man himself, and a reverent understanding of the inherent grandeur of all human life. CHAPTER XIV. WORDSWORTHS PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL POEMS. AN N excellent and eloquent critic, Professor Dowden, has spoken of Wordsworth's "uncourageous elder years," and has founded the phrase upon this sentence of Wordsworth's: "Years have deprived me of courage, in the sense which the word bears when applied by Chaucer to the animation of birds in springtime." A little reflection will, I think, show that this confession of the poet hardly justifies the phrase of the critic. Nevertheless, it is a general impression that Wordsworth began life an ardent Radical, and ended it as a staunch Conservative. If this were all, the phrase might be allowed to pass, but the impression such a phrase creates is that Wordsworth not merely renounced his early hopes and creed, but grew apathetic toward the great human causes which stirred his blood in youth. Browning's fine poem of the "Lost Leader" has often been applied to Wordsworth, and it has been assumed in many quarters, with what degree of truth we do not know, that Browning had Wordsworth in his mind when he wrote that powerful and pathetic indictment. However this may be, nothing is commoner than the assumption that one result of Wordsworth's remote seclusion from the great stress of life was that he lost interest in public affairs, and cared little for the great movements of his day. Than this assumption nothing can be falser. To say nothing of the prose writings of Wordsworth, few poets have given us a larger body of patriotic poetry, and poetry impregnated with politics, than Wordsworth. Perhaps it is because the finest poems of Wordsworth are those that deal with the emotions of man in the presence of Nature, that comparatively little interest attaches to his patriotic poetry. Such poetry, however, Wordsworth wrote throughout his life, and if he was not altogether a political force, it is quite certain that he never ceased to take a keen interest in politics. He had national aims, and was full of the most ardent love of country. It may be well to recall to the minds of my readers this aspect of Wordsworth's life and influence. As regards the earlier part of his life, Wordsworth has left an abundant record of his thoughts in his prose writings. No poet, save Milton, has written with so large a touch upon national affairs, and has displayed so lofty a spirit. His prose does not indeed glow with so intense a passion, nor is it so gorgeous as Milton's, but it is animated and inspired by the same spirit. And in its more passionate passages something of Milton's pomp of style is discernible-something of his overwhelming force of language and cogency of thought. Wordsworth's tract on the "Convention of Cintra" belongs to the same class of writings as Milton's "Areopagitica," and while not its equal in sustained splendour of diction, it is distinguished by the same breadth of view and eager patriotism. Wordsworth has himself defined excellence of writing as the conjunction of reason and passion, and, judged by this test, Wordsworth's occasional utterances on politics attain a rare excellence. It would have been singular in such an age if any man who possessed emotion enough to be a poet had nothing to say upon the great events which were altering the map of Europe. Wordsworth from the first never concealed his opinions on these subjects. He went as far as he could in apologising for the errors of the French Revolution, when he said truly that "Revolution is not the season of true liberty." The austerity which characterised his whole life characterises the very temper of his apology for the excesses of the Revolution. He shed no tears over the execution of Louis. He laments a larger public calamity, "that any combination of circumstances should have rendered it necessary or advisable to veil for a moment the statutes of the laws, and that by such emergency the cause of twenty-five millions of people, I may say of the whole human race, should have been so materially injured. Any other sorrow for the death of Louis is irrational and weak." He is even ardent Republican enough to argue for equality, and to say that in the perfect state "no distinctions are to be admitted but such as have evidently for their object the general good." This last sentence strikes the keynote in much of the philosophy of Wordsworth. "Simplification was," as John Morley has observed, "the keynote of the revolutionary time." That lesson Wordsworth thoroughly learned, and never forgot. It is the very essence of the democratic spirit to pierce beneath the artificial distinctions of a time, and grasp the essential; to take man for what he is, not for what he seems to be; to reverence man wherever he is found, and to reverence not least the man who toils in the lowliest walks of life. If this be the spirit of democracy then Wordsworth kept the democratic faith whole and undefiled. So far from repudiating the political creed of his life, he spiritualised it, and lived in obedience to its essential elements all his life. That in later life he manifested an incapacity for the rapid assimilation of new ideas; that his notions stiffened, and his perceptions failed; that he opposed Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill, is merely to say, in other words, that Wordsworth grew old. It is a rare spectacle, perhaps the rarest, to see a great mind resist the stiffening of age, and retain its versatility and freshness of outlook in the last decades of life. Wordsworth was never a versatile man, and never had any marked capacity for the assimilation of new ideas. But how very far Wordsworth was from ever being a fossilised Tory we may judge by his own saying in later life: "I have no respect whatever for Whigs, but I have a good deal of the Chartist in me." However his political insight may have failed him in his apprehension of the party measures of his later life, it cannot be seriously questioned that Wordsworth always remained true at heart to the cause of the people, and never swerved in his real reverence for man as man. The urgency of the political passion in Wordsworth can be felt all through the days of the great war, and perhaps the noblest record of that period is in the long series of sonnets which Wordsworth wrote between the years 1803 and 1816. In the year 1809 he wrote scarcely anything that was not related to the life of nations. It was then that he apostrophised Saragossa, and lamented over the submission of the Tyrolese. And if few poets have written so largely on the current events of their day, it may certainly be added that no poet has showed a more cosmopolitan spirit. It was indeed a time when England was in closer touch with the struggling nationalities of the Continent than ever before. A common |