Gents Mag 1851 part 2 p.108
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Gentleman's Magazine 1851 part 2 p.108
disturbing forces in order that he might fully embody the statuesque pomp of the Hellenic legend, than Wordsworth abstracted himself from the rougher contacts of society in order that he might plenarily discharge his functions as the interpreter and priest of external nature. The principal documents employed in these memoirs are the poet's own autobiographical dictations to an intimate female friend; brief sketches of dates and facts for Dr. Wordsworth's instruction; a few of his uncle's letters - strangely few indeed they would seem for a veteran in literature, did we not learn from more than one of them that Wordsworth regarded his pen and desk as scarcely preferable to an oar and bench in the galleys; letters and memoranda contributed by his family and friends, among which those of Mr. Justice Coleridge are particularly graphic; and, finally, extracts from Miss Wordsworth's Journal, which for grace, expression, and veracity, are the prominent gem, as well as the principal nucleus, of these volumes. The poet's sister was indeed, in all respects, a most gifted and admirable lady - worthy of the affectionate mention of her in her brother's letters and conversation, worthy of the more permanent tribute of his verse, and worthy of being held by all to whom his verse is precious in reverent and grateful memory - a "clarum et venerabile nomen," wherever the English language ministers to the instruction, the consolation, or the imagination of mankind. She was the sister of his intellect, whose native fervour and occasional ruggedness were tempered and refined by her superior sensibility; she catered for his eye and ear at all seasons of travel or seclusion; she was a consellor well fitted to advise in either fortune; she was assured of his coming renown when the name of Wordsworth was almost bandied about by the public as a bye-word; and her earnest faith was at length rewarded by the increasing homage of his admirers and by the certainty of his present and posthumous triumph. We have so recently, in our notice of the "Prelude," surveyed the earlier portions of Wordsworth's life, that, on this occasion, we shall merely refer briefly to the favourable character of his education among mountains and a people of simple yet picturesque manners, to the slight restraints of his school-days, to his own active and hardy habits in boyhood, to the unfavourable aspect which Cambridge presented to him, to his residence in France, and to the absorbing interest he felt in the first French Revolution. All these circumstances, indeed, are so fully and graphically delineated in the "Prelude," that the reader, with that aurobiographical poem and the Memoirs before him, would scarcely thank us for anticipating or abridging so interesting a narrative of the life poetic. For emphatically "poetic," as regards its plan and details, Wordsworth's life deserves to be called. We doubt, if the ends and aims which he set before himself be kept in view, whether a more consistent life was ever led, or a happier or more honourable lot ever assigned to man. Chequered it doubtless was by the ordinary accidents of mortality, by narrow means, by hope deferreed, and by the visitations of death. But "against the ills which the flesh is heir to," Wordsworth opposed a sterne heroism of content which enabled him to mate and master poverty, disapppointment and bereavement. And in his devotion to poetry as his vocation, there was nothing emasculate; no merely selfish exaltation; no petty claims for exemption from ordinary duties and courtesies. Even a propensity to speak of himself and his writings was not in Wordsworth an appetite for praise or a habit of self-complacency, so much as an unconscious betrayal of his efforts to realise his superb ideal of the life-poetic. From the moment when his poetic vocation became clear to himself, Wordsworth's days were as uniform in their features as it is possible for periods of time to be when environed by the accidents of mortality. His naturally robust constitution was invigorated by rigid temperance: "strength from wine," he says in one of his letters, "is good, but strength from water is better." He lived much in the open air; and his daily feats as a pedestrian would probably surpass the endurance of most men in these days, when wheels would seem to have nearly supplanted the exercise of legs. For a complete |
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