Towns like the living rock from which they grew? Well might he dream of glory! Now, coiled up, In such an hour as this, the sun's broad disk Walls of some capital city first appeared, On a Tear. O that the chemist's magic art A secret source of pensive pleasure. The little brilliant, ere it fell, Its lustre caught from Chloe's eye; Then, trembling, left its coral cellThe spring of Sensibility! Sweet drop of pure and pearly light, In thee the rays of Virtue shine; More calmly clear, more mildly bright, Than any gem that gilds the mine. Benign restorer of the soul ! Who ever fliest to bring relief, When first we feel the rude control Of Love or Pity, Joy or Grief. The sage's and the poet's theme, In every clime, in every age: Thou charm'st in Fancy's idle dream, In Reason's philosophic page. The very law which moulds a tear, And bids it trickle from its source, That law preserves the earth a sphere, And guides the planets in their course. WILLIAM BLAKE. An artist-poet of rare but wild and wayward genius-touched with a 'fine poetic madness'-appeared in WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827), whose life has been written with admirable taste and feeling by Allan Cunningham (Lives of British Painters, 1830), and in a more copious form by Alexander Gilchrist (1863). Blake was a native of London, son of a hosier. He was apprenticed to an engraver, but devoted all his leisure to drawing (in which he had occasional instruction from Flaxman and Fuseli), and in composing verses. Between his twelfth and twentieth years he produced a variety of songs, ballads, and a dramatic poem. A collection of these was printed at the cost of Flaxman and a gentleman named Matthews, who presented the sheets to their author to dispose of for his own advantage. In 1789 Blake himself published a series of Songs of Innocence, with a great number of illustrations etched on copper by the poet and his wife-the affectionate, 'dark-eyed Kate.' His wife, we are told, worked off the plates in the press, and Blake tinted the impressions, designs, and letter-press with a variety of pleasing colours. His next work was a series of sixteen small designs, entitled The Gates of Paradise (1793); these were followed by Urizen, or twenty-seven designs representing hell and its mysteries; and shortly afterwards by a series of illustrations of Young's Night Thoughts-a congenial theme. Flaxman introduced Blake to Hayley the poet, and Hayley persuaded the artist to remove to Felpham in Sussex, to make engravings for the Life of Cowper. At Felpham Blake resided three years (1800-3), and in the comparative solitude of the country, in lonely musings by the seashore, indulged in those hallucinations which indicated a state of diseased imagination or chronic insanity. He conceived that he had lived in other days, and had formed friendships with Homer and Moses, with Pindar and Virgil, with Dante and Milton. These great men, he asserted, appeared to him in visions, and even entered into conversation. When asked about the looks of those visions, he answered: 'They are all majestic shadows, gray but luminous, and superior to the common height of men' (Cunningham). Blake laboured indefatigably, but with little worldly gain, at his strange fanciful illustrations. A work entitled Jerusalem comprised a hundred designs; he executed twelve designs for Blair's Grave, and a water-colour painting of the Canterbury Pilgrims, which was exhibited with other productions of the artist. These were explained in a Descriptive Catalogue as eccentric as the designs, but which had a criticism on Chaucer admired by Charles Lamb as displaying 'wonderful power and spirit.' Lamb also considered Blake's little poem on the tiger as 'glorious.' The remaining works of the artist were Twenty-one Illustrations to the Book of Job, and two works of Prophecies (1793-4), one on America in eighteen plates, and the other on Europe in seventeen; he also illustrated Dante, but only seven of his illustrations were engraved. Three days before his death he was working on one of his prophetic works, the 'Ancient of Days.' 'He sat bolstered up in bed, and tinted it with his choicest colours, They are said to have been discovered by accident about the and in his happiest style. He touched and re middle of the last century. touched it-held it at arm's length, and then threw it from him, exclaiming: "There! that will do! I cannot mend it." He saw his wife in tears-she felt this was to be the last of his works—“ Stay, Kate!" cried Blake ; "keep just as you are—I will draw your portrait-for you have ever been an angel to me." She obeyed, and the dying artist made it a fine likeness.' The poems of Blake have been frequently printed—at least in part— and his designs are now eagerly sought after. To the Muses.-From Poctical Sketches. Whether on Ida's shady brow, Or in the chambers of the East, The chambers of the Sun, that now From ancient melody have ceased; Whether in heaven ye wander fair, Or the green corners of the earth, Or the blue regions of the air, Where the melodious winds have birth; Whether on crystal rocks ye rove Beneath the bosom of the sea, Wandering in many a coral grove, Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry; How have you left the ancient love That bards of old enjoyed in you! The languid strings do scarcely move, The sound is forced, the notes are few! Song. From the same. I love the jocund dance, The softly breathing song, Where innocent eyes do glance And where lisps the maiden's tongue. I love the laughing vale, I love the echoing hill, Where mirth does never fail, And the jolly swain laughs his fill. I love the pleasant cot, I love the innocent bower, Where white and brown is our lot, Or fruit in the mid-day hour. I love the oaken seat, Beneath the oaken tree, Where all the old villagers meet, And laugh our sports to see. I love our neighbours all, But, Kitty, I better love thee; And love them I ever shall, But thou art all to me. Introduction to Songs of Innocence' (1789). Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me : 'Pipe a song about a lamb :' So I piped with merry cheer. 'Piper, pipe that song again :' So I piped; he wept to hear. 'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe, Sing thy songs of happy cheer: So I sang the same again, While he wept with joy to hear. 'Piper, sit thee down and write, In a book that all may read So he vanished from my sight; And I plucked a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear. The Lamb. From the same. Little lamb, who made thee? Little lamb, who made thee? Little lamb, I'll tell thee, Little lamb, God bless thee, The Tiger-From 'Songs of Experience' (1794). Tiger, tiger, burning bright In what distant deeps or skies And what shoulder and what art What the hammer? what the chain ? When the stars threw down their spears, Did He smile his work to see? Did He who made the lamb make thee? Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, the most original of modern poets, was a native of Cockermouth, in the county of Cumberland, where he was born on the 7th of April 1770. His father was law-agent to Sir James Lowther, afterwards Earl of Lonsdale, but died when the poet was in his seventh year. William and his brother-Dr Christopher Wordsworth, long master of Trinity College-after being some years at Hawkshead School, in Lancashire, were sent by their uncles to the university of Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, Cambridge. William was entered of St John's injected. In 1798, appeared the Lyrical Ballads, to 1787. Having finished his academical course, which Coleridge contributed his Ancient Mariner. and taken his degree, he travelled for a short time. A generous provincial bookseller, Joseph Cottle of In the autumn of 1790, he accomplished a tour on Bristol, gave thirty guineas for the copyright of this the continent in company with a fellow-student, volume; he ventured on an impression of five Mr Robert Jones. We went staff in hand,' he hundred copies, but was soon glad to dispose of said, 'without knapsacks, and carrying each his the largest proportion of the five hundred at a loss, needments tied up in a pocket handkerchief, with to a London bookseller. The ballads were deabout £20 a piece in our pockets.' With this signed by their author as an experiment how far a friend, Wordsworth made a tour in North Wales simpler kind of poetry than that in use would the following year, after taking his degree in afford permanent interest to readers. The humcollege. He was again in France towards the blest subjects, he contended, were fit for poetry, close of the year 1791, and remained in that and the language should be that 'really used by country about a twelvemonth. He had hailed the men.' The fine fabric of poetic diction which French Revolution with feelings of enthusiastic generations of the tuneful tribe had been laboriadmiration. ously rearing, he proposed to destroy altogether. The language of humble and rustic life, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, he considered to be a more permanent and far more quently substituted for it by poets. The attempt philosophical language than that which is freof Wordsworth was either totally neglected or assailed with ridicule. The transition from the refined and sentimental school of verse, with select and polished diction, to such themes as The Idiot Boy, and a style of composition disfigured of tenderness and pathos, was too violent to by colloquial plainness, and by the mixture of ludicrous images and associations with passages escape ridicule or insure general success. It was often impossible to tell whether the poet meant to be comic or tender, serious or ludicrous; while the choice of his subjects and illustrations, instead of being regarded as genuine simplicity, had an appearance of silliness or affectation. The faults of his worst ballads were so glaring, that they overpowered, at least for a time, the simple natural beauties, the spirit of gentleness and humanity, with which they were accompanied. It was a first experiment, and it was made without any regard for existing prejudices or feelings, or any wish to conciliate. But to be young was very heaven. O give, great God, to freedom's waves to ride In 1798, Wordsworth, his sister, and Coleridge went to Germany, the latter parting from them at Hamburg, and going to Ratzeburg, where he resided four months; while the Wordsworths proceeded to Goslar, and remained there about half a year. On their return to England, they settled at Grasmere, in Westmoreland, where they lived for eight years. In 1800 he reprinted his Lyrical Ballads, with the addition of many new pieces, the work now forming two volumes. In October 1802, the poet was married to Mary Hutchinson, a lady with whom he had been early intimate, and on whom he wrote, in the third year of his married life, the exquisite lines, 'She was a Phantom of Delight.' She came, no more a Phantom to adorn The Prelude. In the autumn of 1795, Wordsworth and his sister were settled at Racedown Lodge, near Crewkerne in Somersetshire, where they were visited in the summer of 1797 by Coleridge. The poets were charmed with each other's society, and became friends for life. Wordsworth and his sister next moved to a residence near Coleridge's, In 1803, accompanied by Coleridge and his sister, at Alfoxden, near Nether Stowey. At this place many of his smaller poems were written, and also a tragedy, the Borderers, which he attempted to get acted at Covent Garden Theatre, but it was re * This respected lady died at Rydal Mount, January 17. 1859. continued cheerful and bright,' and full of conversational power For some years her powers of sight had entirely failed her, but she as in former days. 59 Wordsworth made a tour in Scotland, which forms an epoch in his literary history, as it led to the production of some of his most popular minor poems. He had been for some years engaged on a poem in blank verse, The Prelude, or Growth of my own Mind, which he brought to a close in 1805, but it was not published till after his death. In 1805,also, he wrote his Waggoner, not published till 1819. Since Pope, no poet has been more careful of his fame than Wordsworth, and he was enabled to practise this abstinence in publication, because, like Pope, he was content with moderate means and limited desires. His circumstances, however, were at this time so favourable, that he purchased, for £1000, a small cottage and estate at the head of Ulleswater. Lord Lonsdale generously offered £800 to complete this purchase, but the poet accepted only of a fourth of the sum. In 1807 appeared two volumes of Poems from his pen. They were assailed with all the severity of criticism, but it was seen that, whatever might be the theory of the poet, he. possessed a vein of pure and exalted description and meditation which it was impossible not to feel and admire. The influence of nature upon man was his favourite theme; and though sometimes unintelligible from his idealism, he was also, on other occasions, just and profound. His worship of nature was ennobling and impressive. In 1809 the poet struck out into a new path. He came forward as a political writer, with an Essay on the Convention of Cintra, an event to which he was strongly opposed. His prose was as unsuccessful as his poetry, so far as sale was concerned; but there are fine vigorous passages in this pamphlet, and Canning is said to have pronounced it the most eloquent production since the days of Burke. Wordsworth had now abandoned his republican dreams, and was henceforward conservative of all time-honoured institutions in church and state. His views were never servile they were those of a recluse politician, honest but impracticable. In the spring of 1813 occurred Wordsworth's removal from Grasmere to Rydal Mount, one of the grand events of his life; and there he resided for the long period of thirtyseven years a period of cheerful and dignified poetical retirement Long have I loved what I behold, The night that calms, the day that cheers; The dragon's wing, the magic ring, Prologue to 'Peter Bell The circle of his admirers was gradually extending, and he continued to supply it with fresh materials of a higher order. In 1814 appeared The Excursion, a philosophical poem in blank verse, by far the noblest production of the author, and containing passages of sentiment, description, and pure eloquence, not excelled by any living poet, while its spirit of enlightened humanity and Christian benevolence-extending over all ranks of sentient and animated being-imparts to the poem a peculiarly sacred and elevated character. The influence of Wordsworth on the poetry of his age has thus been as beneficial as extensive. He turned the public taste from pompous inanity to the study of man and nature; he banished the false and exaggerated style of character and emotion which even the genius of Byron stooped to imitate; and he enlisted the sensibilities and sympathies of his intellectual brethren in favour of the most expansive and kindly philanthropy. The pleasures and graces of his muse are all simple, pure, and lasting. In working out the plan of his Excursion, the poet has not, however, escaped from the errors of his early poems. The incongruity or want of keeping in most of Wordsworth's productions is observable in this work. The principal character is a poor Scotch pedlar, who traverses the mountains in company with the poet, and is made to discourse, with clerk-like fluency, Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love, and hope. It is thus that the poet violates the conventional rules of poetry and the realities of life; for surely it is inconsistent with truth and probability that a profound moralist and dialectician should be found in such a situation. In his travels with the Wanderer,' the poet is introduced to a 'Solitary,' who lives secluded from the world, after a life of busy adventures and high hope, ending in disappointment and disgust. They all proceed to the house of the pastor, who-in the style of Crabbe's Parish Register-recounts some of the deaths and mutations that had taken place in his sequestered valley; and with a description of a visit made by the three to a neighbouring lake, the poem concludes. The Excursion is an unfinished work, part of a larger poem, The Recluse, having for its principal object the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement.' The narrative part of The Excursion is a mere framework, rude and unskilful, for a series of pictures of mountain scenery and philosophical dissertations, tending to shew how the external world is adapted to the mind of man, and good educed out of evil and suffering. Within the soul a faculty abides, That with interpositions, which would hide Book IV. Perish the roses and the flowers of kings, Did most resemble him. Degrees and ranks, Book VII. The picturesque parts of The Excursion are full of a quiet and tender beauty characteristic of the author. We subjoin two passages, the first descriptive of a peasant youth, the hero of his native vale : A Noble Peasant. The mountain ash No eye can overlook, when 'mid a grove How she her station doth adorn. The pool Yet, like the sweet-breathed violet of the shade, And so, not wholly hidden from men's sight, In him the spirit of a hero walked Our unpretending valley. How the quoit Whizzed from the stripling's arm! If touched by him, The inglorious football mounted to the pitch Book VII. The peasant youth, with others in the vale, roused by the cry to arms, studies the rudiments of war, but dies suddenly : To him, thus snatched away, his comrades paid A golden lustre slept upon the hills; And if by chance a stranger, wandering there, Was pallid-seldom hath that eye been moist Of instantaneous thunder which announced A description of deafness in a peasant would seem to be a subject hardly susceptible of poetical ornament; yet, by contrasting it with the surrounding objects-the pleasant sounds and stir of natureand by his vein of pensive and graceful reflection, Wordsworth has made this one of his finest pictures : The Deaf Dalesman. Almost at the root Of that tall pine, the shadow of whose bare And slender stem, while here I sit at eve, Oft stretches towards me, like a long straight path Traced faintly in the greensward; there, beneath A plain blue stone, a gentle dalesman lies, From whom in early childhood was withdrawn The precious gift of hearing. He grew up From year to year in loneliness of soul; And this deep mountain valley was to him Soundless, with all its streams. The bird of dawn Did never rouse this cottager from sleep With startling summons; not for his delight The vernal cuckoo shouted; not for him Murmured the labouring bee. When stormy winds Were working the broad bosom of the lake Into a thousand thousand sparkling waves, Rocking the trees, or driving cloud on cloud Along the sharp edge of yon lofty crags, The agitated scene before his eye Was silent as a picture: evermore Were all things silent, wheresoe'er he moved. Yet, by the solace of his own pure thoughts Upheld, he duteously pursued the round Of rural labours; the steep mountain side Ascended with his staff and faithful dog; The plough he guided, and the scythe he swayed; And the ripe corn before his sickle fell Among the jocund reapers. Book VII. external By viewing man in connection with To me the meanest flower that blows can give 61 |