Or page 172, vol. I.a ""Tis gone forgotten, let me do My best. There was a smile or two- The smiles worth all the world to me. Dear Baby! I must lay thee down: I cannot keep thee in my arms; For they confound me: as it is, I have forgot those smiles of his !" Or page 269, vol. I.o vantage of the real incident they think, is that, as being more simple and seeming natural, and capable of being quickly told, it detains the mind but a little while from the main subject of interest: while the other is so peculiar that it claims a good deal of separate attention. The new stanzas are beautiful, but being more ornate than the rest of the poems, they look rather like a piece of decorated architecture introduced into a building in an earlier and simplier style. Such are the whims of certain crazy lovers of the Wordsworthian Muse, who are so loyal to her former self that they sometimes forget the deference due to her at present. S. C.] 8 [P. W., i., p. 186. Mr. Wordsworth has altered some lines in the fifth stanza of this deeply affecting poem, thus: 'Tis gone-like dreams that we forget: Smiles hast thou, bright ones of thy own; 9 [P., W. ii., p. 29. After "Joy and jollity be with us both! S. C.] the poem now ends thus: Alas! my journey, rugged and uneven, Through prickly moors or dusty ways must wind; As full of gladness and as free of heaven, I, with my fate contented, will plod on, And hope for higher raptures, when Life's day is done. S. C] "Thou hast a nest, for thy love and thy rest, Happy, happy liver! With a soul as strong as a mountain river I on the earth will go plodding on By myself cheerfully till the day is done." The incongruity, which I appear to find in this passage, is that of the two noble lines in italics with the preceding and following. So vol. ii., page 30.10 "Close by a Pond, upon the further side, He being all the while before me full in view."11 10 [P. W., i, p. 117. The poem is entitled Resolution and Independence, and is sometimes spoken of as The Leechgatherer. 11 [Mr. Wordsworth has now done away the original ix th stanza to which these five lines belonged, and concludes the viii th thus: instead of: Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven I saw a Man before me unawares: The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs. And I with these untoward thoughts had striven, Some regret the old conclusion of stanza xiv. "He answered me with pleasure and surprise; which now ends thus: "Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise Broke from the sable orbs of his yet vivid eyes." S. C.] Compare this with the repetition of the same image, in the next stanza but two. "And, still as I drew near with gentle pace, Beside the little pond or moorish flood That heareth not the loud winds when they call; And moveth altogether, if it move at all.” Or lastly, the second of the three following stanzas, compared both with the first and the third. "My former thoughts returned; the fear that kills; Cold, pain, and labor, and all fleshly ills; And mighty Poets in their misery dead. But now, perplex'd by what the Old Man had said, 'How is it that you live, and what is it you do?" He with a smile did then his words repeat; While he was talking thus, the lonely place, The Old Man's shape, and speech, all troubled me: About the weary moors continually, Wandering about alone and silently." Indeed this fine poem is especially characteristic of the author. There is scarce a defect or excellence in his writings of which it would not present a specimen. But it would be unjust not to repeat that this defect is only occasional. From a careful reperusal of the two volumes of poems, I doubt whether the objectionable passages would amount in the whole to one hundred lines; not the eighth part of the number of pages. In The Excursion the feeling of incongruity is seldom excited by the diction of any passage considered in itself, but by the sudden superiority of some other passage forming the context. The second defect I can generalize with tolerable accuracy, if the reader will pardon an uncouth and new coined word. There is, I should say, not seldom a matter-of-factness in certain poems. This may be divided into, first, a laborious minuteness and fidelity in the representation of objects, and their positions, as they appeared to the poet himself; secondly, the insertion of accidental circumstances, in order to the full explanation of his living characters, their dispositions and actions; which circumstances might be necessary to establish the probability of a statement in real life, where nothing is taken for granted by the hearer; but appear superfluous in poetry, where the reader is willing to believe for his own sake. To this accidentality I object, as contravening the essence of poetry, which Aristotle pronounces to be σπουδαιότατον καὶ φιλοσοφώτατον γένος, 12 the most intense, weighty, and philosophical product of human art; adding, as the reason, that it is the most catholic and abstract. The following passage from Davenant's prefatory letter to Hobbes well expresses this truth. "When I considered the actions which I meant to describe (those inferring the persons), I was again persuaded rather to choose those of a former age, than the present; and in a century so far removed, as might preserve me from their improper examinations, who know not the requisites of a poem, nor how much pleasure they lose (and even the pleasures of heroic poesy are not unprofitable), who take away the liberty of a poet, and fetter his feet in the shackles of an historian. For why should a poet doubt in story to mend the intrigues of fortune by more delightful conveyances of probable fictions, because austere historians have entered into bond to truth? An obligation, which were in poets as foolish and unnecessary, as is the bondage of false martyrs, who lie in chains for a mistaken opinion. But by this I would imply, that truth, narrative and past, is the idol of historians (who worship a dead thing), and truth operative, and by effects continually alive, is the mistress of poets, who hath not her existence in matter, but in reason. 9713 12 [Διὸ καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον καὶ σπουδαιότερον ποίησις ἱστορίας ἐστίν. ΠΕΡΙ ПOIнTIKнΣ. See the quotation, chap. iv., note 4. S. C.] 13 [From the Preface before Gondibert. To his much honored friend, Mr. Hobbes, dated Louvre in Paris, Jan. 2, 1650. S. C.] 14 For this minute accuracy in the painting of local imagery, the lines in THE EXCURSION, pp. 96, 97, and 98, may be taken, if not as a striking instance, yet as an illustration of my meaning. It must be some strong motive-(as, for instance, that the description was necessary to the intelligibility of the tale)— which could induce me to describe in a number of verses what a draughtsman could present to the eye with incomparably greater satisfaction by half a dozen strokes of his pencil, or the painter with as many touches of his brush. Such descriptions too often occasion in the mind of a reader, who is determined to understand his author, a feeling of labor, not very dissimilar to that, with which he would construct a diagram, line by line, for a long geometrical proposition. It seems to be like taking the pieces of a dissected map out of its box. We first look at one part, and then at another, then join and dove-tail them; and when the successive acts of attention have been completed, there is a retrogressive effort of mind to behold it as a whole. The poet should paint to the imagination, not to the fancy; and I know no happier case to exemplify the distinction between these two faculties. Master-pieces of the former mode of poetic painting abound in the writings of Milton, for example: "The fig-tree; not that kind for fruit renown'd, Branching so broad and long, that in the ground At loop-holes cut through thickest shade :”—15 This is creation rather than painting, or if painting, yet such, and with such co-presence of the whole picture flashed at once upon the eye, as the sun paints in a camera obscura. But the poet must likewise understand and command what Bacon calls the vestigia communia of the senses, the latency of all in each, 14 [Book iii., P. W., vi., pp. 78-9. S. C.] 15 [Par. Lost, Book ix., l. 1101.] |