Gents Mag 1851 part 2 p.111
|
|
|
|
|
introduction | ||
|
|
list, 3rd qtr 19th century | ||
|
|
previous page
next page |
||
|
Gentleman's Magazine 1851 part 2 p.111
age to his teaching. His triumph over adverse days and tongues is the very truth that his mission is authentic: as, on the contrary, the facility of his early progress is generally a token that he is fashioned for the hour and not for the ages. For has not the reverend author of "Satan" passed through more editions than the "Lyrical Ballads," and in one fourth of the time? And does not "The Christian Year," from causes independent of poetry, number impressions by ten, where "The Excursion" counts them by units? Like so many of his distinguished friends and contemporaries, Wordsworth's political opinions underwent in the course of years a considerable change. He entered manhood a republican, and in his senescence was a strenuous advocate of Church and State doctrines, greatly to the satisfaction of his nepotal biographer. We are however far from convinced that this revolution in sentiment was as complete as the latter represents it. Wordsworth, indeed, was opposed to the concession of the Catholic claims to the Reform Bill, to any large amount of popular education, and to the release of manufacturing interests from their peculiar burdens. But in what portions of his uncle's writings can Dr. Wordsworth discover any abstract reverence for mere antiquity in institutions, or any particular sympathy with the higher classes of society? The attempt indeed to prove the total conversion of the poet to the faith of Oxford and the Carlton Club is singularly lame and impotent, although to substantiate it the Doctor has burdened his volumes with long extracts from obsolete pamphlets by his uncle about Cintra, and the Westmoreland elections, and the Catholic claims. Neither these citations, however, nor all the biographer's sermonising, will persuade the public that Wordsworth's changes of opinion on politics, education, and Church discipline, were uniformly improvements; that, for example, his letter to Mr. Rose (in his second volume, p.190) is conceived in a healthier and nobler vein than his letter to Mr. Fox (in his first volume, p.166); or that his pamphelts will extract the sting of lofty and liberal hopes for mankind out of the "Prelude" and "Sonnets to Liberty." Such changes of sentiment are intelligible enough. Ardent minds begin "in joy and gladness" to speculate upon the improvement and elevation of their fellow-men. But when they set themselves earnestly to remove the "time's abuse," they are met, on the one hand, by apathy, or, on the other, by direct opposition. Some ruder plan of reform finds favour with the multitude, and the effect upon spirits of nobler mould is too often despondency, and enforced acquiescence in unamended institutions, or a growing distaste for remedies proposed. Political reformers too are mostly cut out of sterner stuff than that which goes to the composition of poets and philosophers. Even Mackintosh faltered before, while Burke recoiled from, the "rushing mighty wind" that winnowed the institutions of the last and the present century. In Wordswoth's circumstances there were other causes for indifference to progress and for acquiescence "in the things that be." He was drinking deeply of the calm with which external nature and contemplation brood upon the spirit of the student. Systematically, and in quest of high and holy thought, he had almost secluded himself from the world. Its ruder sounds alone pierced the loop-holes of his retreat: the compensations which political change brings with it were not presented to his eyes; and at the distance from which he surveyed the conflict between the past and the present, he may well have mistaken the steady breeze for a howling tempest. In matters appertaining to religion, again, Dr. Wordsworth is too much of the ritualist and the schoolman to enter very cordially into the poet's faith in the power of the human will and intellect - nay, he once goes very near to tax his relative with Pelagianism! In short, could their respective positions have been reversed, and the biographer have trained the poet in the way he would have had him go, we might have rejoiced in the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," but we must have lacked the "Lyrical Ballads," and in place of the large and lofty "Excursion" have been favoured with a Church and State poem, which Oxford would have commended, and the rest of the world would have shelved with |
|||
|
|
next page | ||
|
|
|||
Lakes Guides menu.