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THE

LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. CXXXVII.

FOR DECEMBER, 1841.

ART. I.-The Sonnets of William Words-minute and verbal criticism, which is, more worth. Collected in One Volume. Lon- often than it is generally supposed to be, the don. 12mo. 1838.

only criticism that is of much value.

Of the many styles in which this poet has In our 104th Number we ventured upon the written, those of the Sonnets and of the Extask of considering Mr. Wordsworth's poetry cursion may be regarded as the farthest at large but such a subject cannot be treat- apart; the Excursion being the most remarked as it ought to be within such limits, and able of his writings for breadth of style, the we are glad of the opportunity afforded by Sonnets for compactness. In a long philosothe publication of the Sonnets" in a separate phical poem which must necessarily tax the volume to endeavour to do more justice to a powers of attention, a current and almost part than we found it possible to do to the colloquial manner was best fitted to keep the whole. Not that justice can be done to a reader at ease, and a continued terseness of part of Mr. Wordsworth's or of any great diction and condensation of thought, though writer's works without having reference to apparently abridging his labours, in reality the whole. Every portion of such a writer's would have cost him more than it saved him. works has a value beyond its intrinsic worth, That the whole should be flowingly connectas being part and lot of a great mind, and ed, so as to be borne in upon the mind with having correlations with every other part; the weight of one stream, was more for the and whether it be from the unity of spirit interests of the subject than that pointed and which is commonly found to pervade the striking passages should often occur. It was works of a great writer, whatever may be his also perhaps expedient that the substance of variety of manner, or whether it be that what was to be said in the Excursion should there is nothing he has written but must tell be supported by its own solidity and truth, us something of his mind (for even his com- and that it should be recommended by the monplace remarks will tell us that upon oc- natural eloquence of a fervid mind delivercasion he was willing to be commonplace), it |ing itself of what is strongly felt, rather than is certainly the attribute of such writers to by any frequency of fanciful embellishgive the coherency of one interest to every-ment, or, as regards the rhythm, by any thing that proceeds from them: and far be it marked and salient melodies. These things from us to treat Mr. Wordsworth's Sonnets were not to be excluded, but they were otherwise than as parcel of that great body to come as they might happen to present of doctrine and moral sentiment which con- themselves to a mind somewhat pre-occupied stitutes Mr. Wordsworth's mind extant in his-they were to be merely occasional and inworks. But, by considering the Sonnets cidental. The Sonnets, on the contrary, adprincipally, and the other poems only in re- dress the reader, each claiming to be consilation to them, we shall be enabled to keep dered for itself and by itself; and though, as our remarks within compass, and yet to allow we have said, not altogether irrespectively of ourselves in some instances to enter upon its kindred with other works the issue of the

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same mind, yet mainly as a substantive poem. And for this kind of poem the style required was the very opposite of that employed in the Excursion, and perhaps also a good deal removed from what fell in with the natural fluency of the poet. Mr. Wordsworth's genius we imagine to have inclined naturally to an easy abundance both of thoughts and words; but art was to predominate over this inclination wheresoever it was not fit to be indulged, and the poetic mind which had been diffused widely with an easy fluctuation through the Excursion, though not changing its nature and spirit, was to take a different structure-was to be inspissated, as it were, and form itself into crystals

in the Sonnets.

Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom.
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth, the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence to me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the sonnet's scanty plot of ground:
Pleased if some souls (for such there needs
must be)

Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.'

~p. 5.

This is one of those doctrinal poems, abounding in Mr. Wordsworth's works, which we have heard some persons complain that they cannot understand, having read them The critic of these Sonnets meets on the erotic effusion of any glowing gentleman who probably as rapidly as they would read any threshold of his task two which, being on the writes verses. Let us take more time than subject of this form of poetry, he is naturally such readers have to spare and more space called upon to notice first. The former of than is permitted to a sonnet, and it will not them is that picture-gallery in fourteen lines, be difficult to evolve the doctrine. We which, though probably familiar to our read- should say, then, that the leading doctrine ers, cannot but be quoted here :

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Mindless of its just honours: with this key
Shakspeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's
wound;

A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle-leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and when a
damp

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew
Soul-apihating strains-alas, too few!-p. 54.

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suggested by this sonnet is, that no enlargefrown-ment of a man's liberty of action can take place without a correspondingaggravation of his moral responsibility, and that there must needs be some souls which feel the weight of too much liberty,'-such, that is, whose liberty of action is disproportionate to their strength of judgment or of self-control, and must therefore either oppress their conscience, or vex them with the perplexities of an undetermined choice or the consequences of an ungoverned will. Many, indeed, are they who feel in one way or another this weight of too much liberty.' The youth who is free to choose a profession has a liberty disproportionate to his knowledge and experience, which is a burthen. The heiress who is free to choose amongst many suitors, finds the difficulty of selection insuperable, and though perhaps any one of them might have been better than no husband, she lives and dies unmarried. The child who knows that obedience will not be enforced upon him, finds no peace for his soul; and the man who is too absolutely his own master, will find that he has got a troublesome servant. Heaven bless thee from a tutor, and discipline come not near thee!' was a deep imprecation, though put into the mouth of the common railer Thersites.* would often speak his deepest truths in his lightest moods. And by another and a graver poetical moralist, Obedience has been personified in the groom of the chambers who puts the Red-Cross Knight to bed when he is tired:

How much of literary history is called up in the mind by these few vivid touches, and how much of biography and criticism is contained in them!. Yet in this sonnet condensation occasions na obscurity-historical allusion, sentiment, imagery, exquisite music, distinctive portraiture-all find a place and yet nothing is crowded. And as a fit introduction to the other sonnet upon sonnets, which deals with some abstruser thoughts, we may beg those who complain of obscurity in Mr. Wordsworth's writings to bear in mind the clearness of his language when the subject is merely narrative or picturesque, and to ask themselves whether, when any difficulty occurs, it may not be owing to the subjectmatter rather than to the treatment.

'Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; And students with their pensive citadels:

For Shakspeare

*Troilus and Cressida, Act ii. Scene 3.

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Assuming then that only so much liberty as
can be steadily guided and readily subjected
to the law of conscience will conduce to our
ease-no other liberty in truth than the 'ser-
vice which is perfect freedom'-the second
conclusion which we draw from the sonnet
is, that in parting with any excess of liberty.
beyond this quantum, our contentment is
best secured when this is done spontaneous-
ly, and we are ourselves the choosers of the
yoke to which we will submit:-

In truth, the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is'-

For to have felt the weight of too much liber-
ty is one assurance that we shall be content-
ed with restraint, and when the choice of the
species and quantum of restraint has been
our own, we should be accusing ourselves if
we should quarrel with it. This is the case
of the nun, the hermit, and the student.
But thirdly, there is noticed the case of those
who have never felt the weight of too much
liberty, and who have been spared the per-
plexities of choice by a necessity of circum-
stances born with them and rendering the re-
straint which it imposes easy because habi-
tual-

'Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom.'

And this restraint by habit and necessity comes nearest in contentment to-fourthly, restraint by instinct, that of the bees which

'Murmur by the hour in foxglove bells.'

Wordsworth's other works, which have a bearing upon the same doctrine.

In the ode entitled 'The Pass of Kirkstone'

(which we wish it were our business to quote
at length), the poet having by a toilsome as-
cent and somewhat against his inclination
reached that Pass, describes the scene which
presents itself, and addresses the road by which
he had gained the summit of the mountain :-

'Aspiring road! that lov'st to hide
Thy daring in a vapoury bourn,
Not seldom may the hour return
When thou shalt be my guide;
And I (as often we find cause,
When life is at a weary pause,
And we have panted up the hill
Of duty with reluctant will)

Be thankful, even tho' tired and faint,
For the rich bounties of constraint;
Whence oft invigorating transports flow,
That choice lack'd courage to bestow!'

have had in view the difficult question, wheth-
In other poems Mr. Wordsworth seems to
er there may not be some individuals, to
whom, by a rare purity of moral constitution,
Nature herself may afford a restraint adequate
for the government of a life led under the in-
fluence of natural objects and a natural pie-
ty :

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'Three years she grew in sun and shower;
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;

This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.

Myself will to my darling be

Both law and impulse and with me
The girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power,
To kindle or restrain."

In the ode to Duty again, he speaks in the same sense as in the sonnet

Such, then, are the views of moral restraint 'Me this unchartered freedom tires, indicated in this poem; and the drift of it is I feel the weight of chance desires.' to bring this species of restraint into a comparison mutually illustrative with the restraint But the spirit of a moral liberty as growing imposed by the laws of the sonnet upon an out of the spirit of duty or tempered by it, is exuberant and discursive imagination. As in truth, the subject of the whole of this ode, of the moral will, so of the intellect: as in and we request the reader to refresh his rememlife, so in art. The law to which the son- brance of it in connection with the Sonnet last netteer submits himself, substitutes the re- quoted. straint of a mechanical limitation for restraint by effort of the judgment; and the 'steed of the pen,' to borrow from a Prussian metaphor, is enclosed, and cannot 'get loose upon the plain of prolixity.' The fence is, to certain extent, a substitute for the bridle.

We must not quit the subject of this sonnet without adverting to some passages in Mr.

There are other passages in Mr. Wordsworth's works more or less bearing upon the subject; but we have quoted enough to exemplify the manner in which we would recomamend that the doctrinal class of Mr. Wordsworth's sonnets should be studied-by the light, that is, of his works at large and of the moral views which pervade them.

Young gentlemen would be as sad as night Only for wantonness.'

'Is Mr. Wordsworth, then,' it may be asked, | which worldly pursuits are set aside. But 'so prone to repeat himself?' We answer, we advert to it chiefly for the sake of plaundoubtedly he is; and we will venture to cing the view expressed in the last two lines, add that self-repetition is almost invariably in opposition to a belief almost universal in incident to men of genius, and constitutes a the zenith of Lord Byron's reputation, and great element of their power. The difference still somewhat prevalent, that a melancholy between such men and others is not only in the temperament is favourable to poetic genius; importance of the truths which occur to them, a belief from which the practical consequence but in the impression which a truth makes. followed that in our time, as in the days of A great truth coming into the mind of a great Prince Arthurman lives with him from that time forth, mixes itself with his thoughts in all moods of his mind, reproduces itself in many combinations, passes from him in sundry shapes, and, according as his own mind is multiform and cognizant of many varieties of mind and mood in others, this truth proceeding from it thus repeatedly and variously, finds access to one reader in the shape of a passage in an ethical poem, to another in that of a sonnet-to one in a form in which he can comprehend it in its entire scope and extent, to another, or to the same in another mood, in a form in which he can remember and quote it. The same truth may have entered a thousand minds before, but the ordinary mind grew tired of it and dismissed it, whilst to the other its value as a truth is more than its novelty as a thought, and gives it an eternal freshness. It has been our good fortune to have listened to the conversation of most of the great writers of the present age, and we have observed that they all repeated themselves more than other men, and that this did in no respect detract from the interest of their discourse, but rather enhanced it, as what recurred often was what we most wished to dwell upon.

We do not deny that a poetical mind will have its melancholy moods and seasons, and we would even admit that a pensive melancholy, as an occasional mood, may be more frequent with such a mind than with others. In these very sonnets of Mr. Wordsworth's, there is a strain of melancholy feeling to be met with in many a page: but Mr. Wordsworth's melancholy is not that of a languid self-occupied recluse; it is a melancholy which alternates with the spirit of enjoyment and carries with it the spirit of consolation, and is penetrating and rational,—‘a melancholy compounded of many simples and the sundry contemplation of his travels.' We speak of Mr. Wordsworth therefore, as well as with him, when we say that a mind which is strong and elastic in its general texture, is as propitious to the highest order of poetic genius as to any other agency which is to be powerful over mankind. The reveries of a fantastic sadness or of a gloomy seclusion can yield but a meagre product in poetry, as compared with the meditations of a mind which is not only contemplative but vigorous and buoyant, and above all, active in its social sympathies. For the highest poetry must be founded in knowledge and wisdom, and informed by a spirit which, though clear and pure, is conversant with the ways of men, observant of their passions and transactions, and interested in all that concerns them. It is true that nothing can be more unpoetical than a strong and vivacious spirit which is also hard and selfish; and true also drooption: but it is the un-common combination that this may be the more common combinaof great susceptibility and tenderness with not less of strength and vivacity, which makes the truly poetical temperament. And with regard to sympathy for suffering, though it is often supposed to belong more peculiarly to those who suffer in themselves, yet we are to distinguish between the occasional sufferings of a strong spirit bending, but not broken, and the absolute subjection of the mind to suffering as a permanent state. In the former case the recollection of past sufferings is keen

The sonnet at page 48 is an exhortation to temperance in grief, on the ground that the gifts of genius are impaired by excess in it:

'From the dark chambers of dejection freed,
Spurning the unprofitable yoke of care,
Rise, GILLIES, rise: the gales of youth shall bear
Thy genius forward like a winged steed.
Though bold Bellerophon (so Jove decreed
In wrath) fell headlong from the fields of air,
Yet a rich guerdon waits on minds that dare,
If aught be in them of immortal sced,
And reason govern that audacious flight
Which heavenward they direct.-Then
not thou,

Erroneously renewing a sad vow

In the low dell 'mid Roslin's faded grove:
A cheerful life is what the Muses love,
A soaring spirit is their prime delight.'--p. 48.

To a mind of high intellectual aspirations, there is perhaps no earthly motive for conquering a sorrow so likely to be effective as that which is here suggested; for though earthly, it is not worldly; on the contrary, it harmonizes with a state of the feelings in

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