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By WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. London. 4to. pp. 447

(1814)

The volume before us, as we learn from the Preface, is "a detached portion of an unfinished poem, containing views of man, nature, and society;" to be called the Recluse, as having for its principal subject the "sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement;" and to be preceded by a "record in verse of the origin and progress of the author's own powers, with reference to the fitness which they may be supposed to have conferred for the task." To the completion of this plan we look forward with a confidence which the execution of the finished part is well calculated to inspire.—Meanwhile, in what is before us there is ample matter for entertainment: for the "Excursion" is not a branch (as might have been suspected) prematurely plucked from the parent tree to gratify an overhasty appetite for applause; but is, in itself, a complete and legitimate production.

It opens with the meeting of the poet with an aged man whom he had known from his school days; in plain words, a Scottish pedlar; a man who, though of low origin, had received good learning and impressions of the strictest piety from his stepfather, a minister and village schoolmaster. Among the hills of Athol, the child is described to have become familiar with the appearances of nature in his occupation as a feeder of sheep; and from her silent influences to have derived a character, meditative, tender, and poetical. With an imagination and feelings thus nourished—his intellect not unaided by books, but those, few, and chiefly of a religious cast—the necessity of seeking a maintenance in riper years, had induced him to make choice of a profession, the appellation for which has been gradually declining into contempt, but which formerly designated a class of men, who, journeying in country places, when roads presented less facilities for travelling, and the intercourse between towns and villages was unfrequent and hazardous, became a sort of link of neighbourhood to distant habitations; resembling, in some small measure, in the effects of their periodical returns, the caravan which Thomson so feelingly describes as blessing the cheerless Siberian in its annual visitation, with "news of human kind."

In the solitude incident to this rambling life, power had been given him to keep alive that devotedness to nature which he had imbibed in his childhood, together with the opportunity of gaining such notices of persons and things from his intercourse with society, as qualified him to become a "teacher of moral wisdom." With this man, then, in a hale old age, released from the burthen of his occupation, yet retaining much of its active habits, the poet meets, and is by him introduced to a second character—a sceptic—one who had been partially roused from an overwhelming desolation, brought upon him by the loss of wife and children, by the powerful incitement of hope which the French Revolution in its commencement put forth, but who, disgusted with the failure of all its promises, had fallen back into a laxity of faith and conduct which induced at length a total despondence as to the dignity and final destination of his species. In the language of the poet, he

——broke faith with those whom he had laid

In earth's dark chambers,

Yet he describes himself as subject to compunctious visitations from that silent quarter.

——Feebly must They have felt,

Who, in old time, attired with snakes and whips

The vengeful Furies. Beautiful regards Were turned on me—the face of her I loved; The Wife and Mother; pitifully fixing Tender reproaches, insupportable!—p. 133.

The conversations with this person, in which the Wanderer asserts the consolatory side of the question against the darker views of human life maintained by his friend, and finally calls to his assistance the experience of a village priest, the third, or rather fourth interlocutor, (for the poet himself is one,) form the groundwork of the "Excursion."

It will be seen by this sketch that the poem is of a didactic nature, and not a fable or story; yet it is not wanting in stories of the most interesting kind—such as the lovers of Cowper and Goldsmith will recognise as something familiar and congenial to them. We might instance the Ruined Cottage, and the Solitary's own story, in the first half of the work; and the second half, as being almost a continued cluster of narration. But the prevailing charm of the poem is, perhaps, that, conversational as it is in its plan, the dialogue throughout is carried on in the very heart of the most romantic scenery which the poet's native hills could supply; and which, by the perpetual references made to it either in the way of illustration or for variety and pleasurable description's sake, is brought before us as we read. We breathe in the fresh air, as we do while reading Walton's Complete Angler; only the country about us is as much bolder than Walton's, as the thoughts and speculations, which form the matter of the poem, exceed the trifling pastime and low-pitched conversation of his humble fishermen. We give the description of the "two huge peaks," which from some other vale peered into that in which the Solitary is entertaining the poet and companion. "Those," says their host,

——if here you dwelt, would be

Your prized Companions.—Many are the notes

Which in his tuneful course the wind draws forth

From rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and dashing shores;

And well those lofty Brethren bear their part

In the wild concert—chiefly when the storm

Rides high; then all the upper air they fill

With roaring sound, that ceases not to flow,

Like smoke, along the level of the blast

In mighty current; theirs, too, is the song

Of stream and headlong flood that seldom fails;

And in the grim and breathless hour of noon,

Methinks that I have heard them echo back

The thunder's greeting:—nor have Nature's laws

Left them ungifted with a power to yield

Music of finer frame; a harmony,

So do I call it, though it be the hand

Of silence, though there be no voice;—the clouds,

The mist, the shadows, light of golden suns,

Motions of moonlight, all come thither—touch,

And have an answer—thither come, and shape

A language not unwelcome to sick hearts

And idle spirits:—there the sun himself

At the calm close of summer's longest day

Rests his substantial Orb;—between those heights

And on the top of either pinnacle,

More keenly than elsewhere in night's blue vault,

Sparkle the Stars as of their station proud.

Thoughts are not busier in the mind of man

Than the mute agent stirring there:—alone

Here do I sit and watch.—p. 84.

To a mind constituted like that of Mr. Wordsworth, the stream, the torrent, and the stirring leaf—seem not merely to suggest associations of deity, but to be a kind of speaking communication with it. He walks through every forest, as through some Dodona; and every bird that flits among the leaves, like that miraculous one[31] in Tasso, but in language more intelligent, reveals to him far higher lovelays. In his poetry nothing in Nature is dead. Motion is synonymous with life. "Beside yon spring," says the Wanderer, speaking of a deserted well, from which, in former times, a poor woman, who died heart-broken, had been used to dispense refreshment to the thirsty traveller,

——beside yon Spring I stood,

And eyed its waters till we seem'd to feel

One sadness, they and I. For them a bond

Of brotherhood is broken: time has been

When, every day, the touch of human hand

Dislodged the natural sleep that binds them up

In mortal stillness;—p. 27.

[31]

With partie coloured plumes and purple bill,

A woondrous bird among the rest there flew,

That in plaine speech sung love laies loud and shrill,

Her leden was like humaine language trew,

So much she talkt, and with such wit and skill,

That strange it seemed how much good she knew.

Fairefax's Translation [Book 16, Stanza 13].

To such a mind, we say—call it strength or weakness—if weakness, assuredly a fortunate one—the visible and audible things of creation present, not dim symbols, or curious emblems, which they have done at all times to those who have been gifted with the poetical faculty; but revelations and quick insights into the life within us, the pledge of immortality:—

——the whispering Air

Sends inspiration from the shadowy heights,

And blind recesses of the caverned rocks;

The little Rills, and Waters numberless,

Inaudible by day-light,

"I have seen," the poet says, and the illustration is an happy one:

——I have seen

A curious Child [who dwelt upon a tract

Of inland ground], applying to his ear

The convolutions of a smooth-lipp'd Shell;

To which, in silence hushed, his very soul

Listened intensely, and his countenance soon

Brightened with joy; for murmurings from within

Were heard—sonorous cadences! whereby,

To his belief, the Monitor expressed

Mysterious union with its native Sea.

Even such a Shell the Universe itself

Is to the ear of Faith; and [there are times,

I doubt not, when to you it] doth impart

Authentic tidings of invisible things;

Of ebb and flow, and ever during power;

And central peace subsisting at the heart

Of endless agitation.—p. 191.

Sometimes this harmony is imaged to us by an echo; and in one instance, it is with such transcendant beauty set forth by a shadow and its corresponding substance, that it would be a sin to cheat our readers at once of so happy an illustration of the poet's system, and so fair a proof of his descriptive powers.

Thus having reached a bridge, that overarched

The hasty rivulet where it lay becalmed

In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw

A two-fold Image; on a grassy bank

A snow-white Ram, and in the crystal flood

Another and the same! Most beautiful,

On the green turf, with his imperial front

Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb,

The breathing Creature stood; as beautiful,

Beneath him, shewed his shadowy Counterpart.

Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky,

And each seemed centre of his own fair world:

Antipodes unconscious of each other,

Yet, in partition, with their several spheres,

Blended in perfect stillness, to our sight!—p. 407.

Combinations, it is confessed, "like those reflected in that quiet pool," cannot be lasting: it is enough for the purpose of the poet, if they are felt.—They are at least his system; and his readers, if they reject them for their creed, may receive them merely as poetry. In him, faith, in friendly alliance and conjunction with the religion of his country, appears to have grown up, fostered by meditation and lonely communions with Nature—an internal principle of lofty consciousness, which stamps upon his opinions and sentiments (we were almost going to say) the character of an expanded and generous Quakerism.

From such a creed we should expect unusual results; and, when applied to the purposes of consolation, more touching considerations than from the mouth of common teachers. The finest speculation of this sort perhaps in the poem before us, is the notion of the thoughts which may sustain the spirit, while they crush the frame of the sufferer, who from loss of objects of love by death, is commonly supposed to pine away under a broken heart.

——If there be whose tender frames have drooped

Even to the dust; apparently, through weight

Of anguish unrelieved, and lack of power

An agonizing spirit to transmute,

Infer not hence a hope from those withheld

When wanted most; a confidence impaired

So pitiably, that, having ceased to see

With bodily eyes, they are borne down by love

Of what is lost, and perish through regret.

Oh! no, full oft the innocent Sufferer sees

Too clearly; feels too vividly; and longs

To realize the Vision with intense

And overconstant yearning—there—there lies

The excess, by which the balance is destroyed.

Too, too contracted are these walls of flesh,

This vital warmth too cold, these visual orbs,

Though inconceivably endowed, too dim

For any passion of the soul that leads

To extacy; and, all the crooked paths

Of time and change disdaining, takes its course

Along the line of limitless desires.—p. 148.

With the same modifying and incorporating power, he tells us—

Within the soul a Faculty abides,

That with interpositions, which would hide

And darken, so can deal, that they become

Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt

Her native brightness. As the ample Moon,

In the deep stillness of a summer even

Rising behind a thick and lofty Grove,

Burns like an unconsuming fire of light,

In the green tree; and, kindling on all sides

Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil

Into a substance glorious as her own,

Yea with her own incorporated, by power

Capacious and serene. Like power abides

In Man's celestial Spirit; Virtue thus

Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds

A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,

From the incumbrances of mortal life,

From error, disappointment—nay from guilt;

And sometimes, so relenting Justice wills,

From palpable oppressions of Despair.—p. 188.

This is high poetry; though (as we have ventured to lay the basis of the author's sentiments in a sort of liberal Quakerism) from some parts of it, others may, with more plausibility, object to the appearance of a kind of Natural Methodism: we could have wished therefore that the tale of Margaret had been postponed, till the reader had been strengthened by some previous acquaintance with the author's theory, and not placed in the front of the poem, with a kind of ominous aspect, beautifully tender as it is. It is a tale of a cottage, and its female tenant, gradually decaying together, while she expected the return of one whom poverty and not unkindness had driven from her arms. We trust ourselves only with the conclusion—

Nine tedious years;

From their first separation, nine long years,

She lingered in unquiet widowhood,

A Wife and Widow. [Needs must it have been

A sore heart-wasting!] I have heard, my Friend,

That in yon arbour oftentimes she sate

Alone, through half the vacant Sabbath-day;

And if a dog passed by she still would quit

The shade, and look abroad. On this old Bench

For hours she sate; and evermore her eye

Was busy in the distance, shaping things

That made her heart beat quick. You see that path,

[Now faint—the grass has crept o'er its grey line;]

There, to and fro, she paced through many a day

Of the warm summer, from a belt of hemp

That girt her waist, spinning the long drawn thread

With backward steps. Yet ever as there pass'd

A man whose garments shew'd the Soldier's[32] red, [Or crippled Mendicant in Sailor's garb], The little Child who sate to turn the wheel Ceas'd from his task; and she with faultering voice Made many a fond enquiry; and when they, Whose presence gave no comfort, were gone by, Her heart was still more sad. And by yon gate, That bars the Traveller's road, she often stood, And when a stranger Horseman came the latch Would lift, and in his face look wistfully; Most happy, if, from aught discovered there Of tender feeling, she might dare repeat The same sad question. Meanwhile her poor hut Sank to decay: for he was gone—whose hand, At the first nipping of October frost, Closed up each chink, and with fresh bands of straw Checquered the green-grown thatch. And so she lived Through the long winter, reckless and alone; Until her house by frost, and thaw, and rain, Was sapped; and while she slept the nightly damps Did chill her breast; and in the stormy day Her tattered clothes were ruffled by the wind; Even at the side of her own fire. Yet still She loved this wretched spot, nor would for worlds Have parted hence: and still that length of road, And this rude bench, one torturing hope endeared, Fast rooted at her heart: and here, my Friend, In sickness she remains; and here she died, Last human Tenant of these ruined Walls.—p. 44.

[32] Her husband had enlisted for a soldier.

The fourth book, entitled "Despondency Corrected," we consider as the most valuable portion of the poem. For moral grandeur; for wide scope of thought and a long train of lofty imagery; for tender personal appeals; and a versification which we feel we ought to notice, but feel it also so involved in the poetry, that we can hardly mention it as a distinct excellence; it stands without competition among our didactic and descriptive verse. The general tendency of the argument (which we might almost affirm to be the leading moral of the poem) is to abate the pride of the calculating understanding, and to reinstate the imagination and the affections in those seats from which modern philosophy has laboured but too successfully to expel them.

"Life's autumn past," says the grey-haired Wanderer,

——I stand on Winter's verge,

And daily lose what I desire to keep:

Yet rather would I instantly decline

To the traditionary sympathies

Of a most rustic ignorance, and take

A fearful apprehension from the owl

Or death-watch—and as readily rejoice,

If two auspicious magpies crossed my way;

This rather would I do than see and hear

The repetitions wearisome of sense,

Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place;—p. 168.

In the same spirit, those illusions of the imaginative faculty to which the peasantry in solitary districts are peculiarly subject, are represented as the kindly ministers of conscience:

——with whose service charged

They come and go, appear and disappear;

Diverting evil purposes, remorse

Awakening, chastening an intemperate grief,

Or pride of heart abating:

Reverting to more distant ages of the world, the operation of that same faculty in producing the several fictions of Chaldean, Persian, and Grecian idolatry, is described with such seductive power, that the Solitary, in good earnest, seems alarmed at the tendency of his own argument.—Notwithstanding his fears, however, there is one thought so uncommonly fine, relative to the spirituality which lay hid beneath the gross material forms of Greek worship, in metal or stone, that we cannot resist the allurement of transcribing it—

——triumphant o'er this pompous show

Of Art, this palpable array of Sense,

On every side encountered; in despite

Of the gross fictions, chaunted in the streets

By wandering Rhapsodists; and in contempt

Of doubt and bold denials hourly urged

Amid the wrangling Schools—a SPIRIT hung,

Beautiful Region! o'er thy Towns and Farms,

Statues and Temples, and memorial Tombs;

And emanations were perceived; and acts

Of immortality, in Nature's course,

Exemplified by mysteries, that were felt

As bonds, on grave Philosopher imposed

And armed Warrior; and in every grove

A gay or pensive tenderness prevailed

When piety more awful had relaxed.

"Take, running River, take these Locks of mine"—

Thus would the Votary say—"this severed hair,

My Vow fulfilling, do I here present,

Thankful for my beloved Child's return.

Thy banks, Cephissus, he again hath trod,

Thy murmurs heard; and drunk the chrystal lymph

With which thou dost refresh the thirsty lip,

And moisten all day long these flowery fields."

And doubtless, sometimes, when the hair was shed

Upon the flowing stream, a thought arose

Of Life continuous, Being unimpaired;

That hath been, is, and where it was and is

There shall be—seen, and heard, and felt, and known,

And recognized—existence unexposed

To the blind walk of mortal accident;

From diminution safe and weakening age;

While Man grows old, and dwindles, and decays;

And countless generations of Mankind

Depart; and leave no vestige where they trod.—p. 173.

In discourse like this the first day passes away.—The second (for this almost dramatic poem takes up the action of two summer days) is varied by the introduction of the village priest; to whom the Wanderer resigns the office of chief speaker, which had been yielded to his age and experience on the first. The conference is begun at the gate of the church-yard; and after some natural speculations concerning death and immortality—and the custom of funereal and sepulchral observances, as deduced from a feeling of immortality—certain doubts are proposed respecting the quantity of moral worth existing in the world, and in that mountainous district in particular. In the resolution of these doubts, the priest enters upon a most affecting and singular strain of narration, derived from the graves around him. Pointing to hillock after hillock, he gives short histories of their tenants, disclosing their humble virtues, and touching with tender hand upon their frailties.

Nothing can be conceived finer than the manner of introducing these tales. With heaven above his head, and the mouldering turf at his feet—standing betwixt life and death—he seems to maintain that spiritual relation which he bore to his living flock, in its undiminished strength, even with their ashes; and to be in his proper cure, or diocese, among the dead.

We might extract powerful instances of pathos from these tales—the story of Ellen in particular—but their force is in combination, and in the circumstances under which they are introduced. The traditionary anecdote of the Jacobite and Hanoverian, as less liable to suffer by transplanting, and as affording an instance of that finer species of humour, that thoughtful playfulness in which the author more nearly perhaps than in any other quality resembles Cowper, we shall lay (at least a part of it) before our readers. It is the story of a whig who, having wasted a large estate in election contests, retired "beneath a borrowed name" to a small town among these northern mountains, where a Caledonian laird, a follower of the house of Stuart, who had fled his country after the overthrow at Culloden, returning with the return of lenient times, had also fixed his residence.

——Here, then, they met,

Two doughty Champions; flaming Jacobite

And sullen Hanoverian! you might think

That losses and vexations, less severe

Than those which they had severally sustained,

Would have inclined each to abate his zeal

For his ungrateful cause; no—I have heard

My reverend Father tell that, mid the calm

Of that small Town encountering thus, they filled

Daily its Bowling-green with harmless strife;

Plagued with uncharitable thoughts the Church;

And vexed the Market-place. But in the breasts

Of these Opponents gradually was wrought,

With little change of general sentiment,

Such change towards each other, that their days

By choice were spent in constant fellowship;

And if, at times, they fretted with the yoke,

Those very bickerings made them love it more.

A favourite boundary to their lengthened walks

This Church-yard was. And, whether they had come

Treading their path in sympathy and linked

In social converse, or by some short space

Discreetly parted to preserve the peace,

One Spirit seldom failed to extend its sway

Over both minds, when they awhile had marked

The visible quiet of this holy ground

And breathed its soothing air;——

[Seven lines omitted].

—There live who yet remember to have seen

Their courtly Figures—seated on a stump

Of an old Yew, their favourite resting-place.

But, as the Remnant of the long-lived Tree

Was disappearing by a swift decay,

They, with joint care, determined to erect,

Upon its site, a Dial, which should stand

For public use; and also might survive

As their own private monument; for this

Was the particular spot, in which they wished

(And Heaven was pleased to accomplish their desire)

That, undivided their Remains should lie.

So, where the mouldered Tree had stood, was raised

Yon Structure, framing, with the ascent of steps

That to the decorated Pillar lead,

A work of art, more sumptuous, as might seem,

Than suits this Place; yet built in no proud scorn

Of rustic homeliness; they only aimed

To ensure for it respectful guardianship.

Around the margin of the Plate, whereon

The Shadow falls, to note the stealthy hours,

Winds an inscriptive Legend——At these words

Thither we turned; and gathered, as we read,

The appropriate sense, in Latin numbers couched.

"Time flies; it is his melancholy task

To bring, and bear away, delusive hopes,

And re-produce the troubles he destroys.

But, while his blindness thus is occupied.

Discerning Mortal! do thou serve the will

Of Time's eternal Master, and that peace,

Which the World wants, shall be for Thee confirmed."—pp. 270–3.

The causes which have prevented the poetry of Mr. Wordsworth from attaining its full share of popularity are to be found in the boldness and originality of his genius. The times are past when a poet could securely follow the direction of his own mind into whatever tracts it might lead. A writer, who would be popular, must timidly coast the shore of prescribed sentiment and sympathy. He must have just as much more of the imaginative faculty than his readers, as will serve to keep their apprehensions from stagnating, but not so much as to alarm their jealousy. He must not think or feel too deeply.

If he has had the fortune to be bred in the midst of the most magnificent objects of creation, he must not have given away his heart to them; or if he have, he must conceal his love, or not carry his expressions of it beyond that point of rapture, which the occasional tourist thinks it not overstepping decorum to betray, or the limit which that gentlemanly spy upon Nature, the picturesque traveller, has vouchsafed to countenance. He must do this, or be content to be thought an enthusiast.

If from living among simple mountaineers, from a daily intercourse with them, not upon the footing of a patron, but in the character of an equal, he has detected, or imagines that he has detected, through the cloudy medium of their unlettered discourse, thoughts and apprehensions not vulgar; traits of patience and constancy, love unwearied, and heroic endurance, not unfit (as he may judge) to be made the subject of verse, he will be deemed a man of perverted genius by the philanthropist who, conceiving of the peasantry of his country only as objects of a pecuniary sympathy, starts at finding them elevated to a level of humanity with himself, having their own loves, enmities, cravings, aspirations, &c., as much beyond his faculty to believe, as his beneficence to supply.

If from a familiar observation of the ways of children, and much more from a retrospect of his own mind when a child, he has gathered more reverential notions of that state than fall to the lot of ordinary observers, and, escaping from the dissonant wranglings of men, has tuned his lyre, though but for occasional harmonies, to the milder utterance of that soft age—his verses shall be censured as infantile by critics who confound poetry "having children for its subject" with poetry that is "childish," and who, having themselves perhaps never been children, never having possessed the tenderness and docility of that age, know not what the soul of a child is—how apprehensive! how imaginative! how religious!

We have touched upon some of the causes which we conceive to have been unfriendly to the author's former poems. We think they do not apply in the same force to the one before us. There is in it more of uniform elevation, a wider scope of subject, less of manner, and it contains none of those starts and imperfect shapings which in some of this author's smaller pieces offended the weak, and gave scandal to the perverse. It must indeed be approached with seriousness. It has in it much of that quality which "draws the devout, deterring the profane." Those who hate the Paradise Lost will not love this poem. The steps of the great master are discernible in it; not in direct imitation or injurious parody, but in the following of the spirit, in free homage and generous subjection.

One objection it is impossible not to foresee. It will be asked, why put such eloquent discourse in the mouth of a pedlar? It might be answered that Mr. Wordsworth's plan required a character in humble life to be the organ of his philosophy. It was in harmony with the system and scenery of his poem. We read Piers Plowman's Creed, and the lowness of the teacher seems to add a simple dignity to the doctrine. Besides, the poet has bestowed an unusual share of education upon him. Is it too much to suppose that the author, at some early period of his life, may himself have known such a person, a man endowed with sentiments above his situation, another Burns; and that the dignified strains which he has attributed to the Wanderer may be no more than recollections of his conversation, heightened only by the amplification natural to poetry, or the lustre which imagination flings back upon the objects and companions of our youth? After all, if there should be found readers willing to admire the poem, who yet feel scandalized at a name, we would advise them, wherever it occurs, to substitute silently the word Palmer, or Pilgrim, or any less offensive designation, which shall connect the notion of sobriety in heart and manners with the experience and privileges which a wayfaring life confers.