HIS POETICAL MASTERS

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track. And he did not qualify himself for this selfimposed mission by mere indolent gazing and dreamy pursuit of the thick-coming fancies that crowded his mind, while his eye drank in what Nature presented to him. If the "Prelude" had been intended as a plain historical narrative of the growth of a poet's mind, it would have been strange that he does not mention in the description of his Cambridge life an incident that connects him with the poet Gray. He studied Italian then, and his teacher was Gray's friend. It was not, however, from the Italian poets that he caught the rhythm of his early style. You will have no difficulty in detecting his poetical masters if I read you a passage or two from the "Evening Walk" and the "Descriptive Sketches " :

"Sweet are the sounds that mingle from afar,

Heard by calm lakes, as peeps the folding star,
When the duck dabbles 'mid the rustling sedge,
And feeding pike starts from the water's edge,
Or the swan stirs the reeds, his neck and bill
Wetting, that drip upon the water still;
And heron, as resounds the trodden shore,
Shoots upward, darting his long neck before.
Now, with religious awe, the farewell light
Blends with the solemn colouring of night;

'Mid groves of clouds that crest the mountain's brow,
And round the west's proud lodge their shadows throw,
Like Una shining on her gloomy way,

The half-seen form of Twilight roams astray;

Shedding, through paly loopholes mild and small,
Gleams that upon the lake's still bosom fall;
Soft o'er the surface creep those lustres pale,
Tracking the motions of the fitful gale.
With restless interchange at once the bright
Wins on the shade, the shade upon the light.
No favoured eye was e'er allowed to gaze
On lovelier spectacle in faery days."

Or again :

"Once, Man entirely free, alone and wild,

Was blest as free-for he was Nature's child.

He, all superior but his God disdained,

Walked none restraining, and by none restrained,
Confessed no law but what his reason taught,

Did all he wished, and wished but what he ought.
As man in his primeval dower arrayed
The image of his glorious Sire displayed,
Even so, by faithful Nature guarded, here
The traces of primeval Man appear ;
The simple dignity no forms debase;
The eye sublime, and surly lion-grace :
The slave of none, of beasts alone the lord,
His book he prizes, nor neglects his sword;
Well taught by that to feel his rights, prepared
With this 'the blessings he enjoys to guard.""

The former of these passages reminds one of Goldsmith as forcibly as of Pope, but in the latter Pope alone is clearly the model. There is an evident effort after balance and condensed expression, but it is not executed with nearly the perfection and terseness of the Popian couplet. The imitation is, however, sufficiently apparent to be well worth noting as an interesting link between the two poets.

Wordsworth's next publication was the "Lyrical Ballads," in 1798. The volume was published in conjunction with Coleridge. Coleridge visited Wordsworth in the summer of 1797, when he had resided with his sister at Racedown in Dorsetshire. By this time Wordsworth had written his poem "Guilt and Sorrow" in the Spenserian stanza; his tragedy of "The Borderers"; and the description of the "Ruined Cottage." I mention these poems because it is a significant fact that every poem written by Wordsworth up to the time of Coleridge's visit, while they show considerable poetic power, gave little indication of distinctive individual genius. This visit seems to have had a wonderfully quickening and awakening effect on Wordsworth's nature. The two young men were charmed with one another, and Wordsworth removed to Alfoxden in

Somersetshire to enjoy his friend's companionship. During the year that followed he produced much, and what he produced bore a distinctive mark, as if the radiant, restless vitality of the more variously gifted man had stirred his more sluggish northern nature to its depths, stimulated him to put forth his full powers, and made him feel in the exercise of them a confident sense of mastery. It may truly be said that Wordsworth hardly knew what was in him till the companionship of Coleridge widened the horizon of his aims.

The volume published at Bristol in 1798 contained Coleridge's" Ancient Mariner"; the rest of the volume was by Wordsworth. In the authorized edition of his works no chronological order is followed; they are classified according to subjects; and it is important, if we would understand the controversy that has been raised round Wordsworth's name, that we should pick out and read together the poems that were published together in 1798. "We are Seven" is now included among the "Poems referring to the period of Childhood" (No. x); "The Complaint" (21), "The Last of the Flock" (22), "The Idiot Boy" (31), and "Her Eyes are Wild" (37), among the "Poems Founded on the Affections "; Reverie of Poor Susan" (13), "The Thorn" (23), "Lines above Tintern Abbey" (26), among "Poems of the Imagination"; "Expostulation and Reply" (1), "The Tables Turned" (2), "To my Sister" (5), and "Simon Lee" (6), among "Poems of Sentiment and Reflection"; "Goody Blake and Harry Gill," among "Miscellaneous Poems."

"The

When these poems are read together, we begin to understand why such a shout of derision was raised by the critics against the "Lyrical Ballads," and why they impressed so deeply those who were not repelled by their strangeness. The poet's personality was powerfully expressed in them, and he was a markedly different kind of person from any that had before presented

himself as a poet. His humor was a strange kind of humor, and his seriousness ran in an unusual vein, and humor and seriousness were strangely intermixed. The public found subjects that they were accustomed to consider too vulgar and common for poetry treated apparently with pathetic intention, but in so grotesque a way as only to make them laugh at the attempt on their tender feelings. There was, indeed, one poem in the volume, the "Lines written above Tintern Abbey," in which a fresh theme was handled with a power that nobody could be insensible to. If all had been like this, the acknowledgment of Wordsworth's greatness would not have been checked and held back by astonishment at the grotesque strangeness of the lyrical ballads, to which the title of the volume challenged special attention. This was the poem in which he first gave expression to his impassioned worship of Nature:

Five years have past; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain springs
With a soft inland murmur.-Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day has come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view

These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.

LINES WRITTEN ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye :
But oft in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration :-feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened :-that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things. If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft-
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart-
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,

O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,

How often has my spirit turned to thee !

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thoughts, With many recognitions dim and faint,

And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

The picture of the mind revives again :

While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts

That in this moment there is life and food

For future years. And so I dare to hope,