CHAPTER XLVII.

CONTEMPORARY JUDGMENTS.

As already explained, it is no necessary part of the biographer's work critically to appraise the writings of the man whose life he writes: and estimates of Wordsworth's work were made by some of his contemporaries in his lifetime that are probably of greater value to posterity than any that are likely to succeed them. It was at one time projected as a part of the work of "The Wordsworth Society" to collect a record of opinion in reference to the poet, from the date of the publication of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798 to the present day. This may yet be done. Meanwhile, it may be a fit conclusion to these volumes if the judgments of three of Wordsworth's most notable contemporaries are brought together, those of Thomas Carlyle, of John Stuart Mill, and of Henry Taylor.

At Mentone, in March 1867, Carlyle wrote down his Reminiscences both of Southey and of Wordsworth. Wordsworth he wrote:

Of

A man recognisably of strong intellectual powers, strong character; given to meditation, and much contemptuous of the unmeditative world and its noisy nothingnesses.

On a summer morning (let us call it 1840), I was apprised by Taylor that Wordsworth had come to Town; and would meet a small party of us at a certain Tavern in St. James's

Street, at breakfast,-to which I was invited for the given day and hour. We had a pretty little room; quiet, though looking street-ward (Tavern's name is quite lost to me); the morning sun was pleasantly tinting the opposite houses, a balmy, calm and bright morning. Wordsworth, I think, arrived just along with me; we had still five minutes of sauntering and miscellaneous talking before the whole were assembled. Wordsworth seemed in good tone, and, much to Taylor's satisfaction, talked a great deal, about 'poetic' correspondents of his own. Then finally about Literature, literary laws, practices, observances,-at considerable length, and turning wholly on the mechanical part, including even a good deal of shallow enough etymology, from me and others, which was well received: on all this Wordsworth enlarged with evident satisfaction, and was joyfully reverent of the 'wells of English undefiled,' though stone dumb as to the deeper rules, and wells of Eternal Truth and Harmony you were to try and set forth by said undefiled wells of English or what other Speech you had! To me a little disappointing, but not much;— though it would have given me pleasure had the robust veteran man emerged a little out of vocables into things, now and then, as he never once chanced to do. For the rest, he talked well in his way; with veracity, easy brevity and force; as a wise tradesman would of his tools and workshop-and as no unwise one could. His voice was good, frank, and sonorous, though practically clear, distinct, and forcible, rather than melodious; the tone of him business-like, sedately confident, no discourtesy, yet no anxiety about being courteous; a fine wholesome rusticity, fresh as his mountain breezes, sat well on the stalwart veteran, and on all he said and did. You would have said he was a usually taciturn man; glad to unlock himself, to audience sympathetic and intelligent, when such offered itself. His face bore marks of much, not always peaceful, meditation; the look of it not bland or benevolent,

VOL. III.

21

so much as close, impregnable and hard: a man multa tacere loquive paratus, in a world where he had experienced no lack of contradictions as he strode along! The eyes were not very brilliant, but they had a quiet clearness. . . . He was largeboned, lean, but still firm-knit, tall and strong-looking when he stood: a right good old steel-gray figure, with a fine rustic simplicity and dignity about him, and a veracious strength looking through him which might have suited one of those old steelgray Markgrafs whom Henry the Fowler set up to ward the 'marches,' and do battle with the intrusive Heathen, in a stalwart and judicious manner.

On this and other occasional visits of his, I saw Wordsworth a number of times, at dinners, in evening parties; and we grew a little more familiar, but without much increase of real intimacy or affection springing up between us. He was willing to talk with me in a corner, in noisy extensive circles, having weak eyes, and little loving the general babble current in such places. . . .

Another and better corner dialogue I afterwards had with him, possibly also about this time; which raised him intellectually some real degrees higher in my estimation than any of his deliverances written or oral had ever done; and which I may reckon as the best of all his discoursings or dialogues with me. He had withdrawn to a corner, out of the light and of the general babble, as usual with him. I joined him there, and knowing how little fruitful was the Literary topic between us, set him on giving me an account of the notable practicalities he had seen in life, especially of the notable men. He went into all this with a certain alacrity. . . . He had been in France in the earlier or secondary stage of the Revolution; had witnessed the struggle of Girondins and Mountain, in particular the execution of Gorsas, 'the first Deputy sent to the Scaffold'; and testified strongly to the ominous feeling which that event produced in everybody, and of which he himself still seemed

to retain something. 'Where will it end, when you have set an example in this kind?' I knew well about Gorsas; but had found, in my readings, no trace of the public emotion his death excited; and perceived now that Wordsworth might be taken as a true supplement to my Book on this small point. He did not otherwise add to or alter my ideas on the Revolution: nor did we dwell long there; but hastened over to England and to the noteworthy, or at least noted, men of that and the subsequent time. 'Noted' and named, I ought perhaps to say, rather than 'noteworthy'; for in general I forget what men they were; and now remember only the excellent sagacity, distinctness, and credibility of Wordsworth's little Biographic Portraitures of them. Never, or never but once, had I seen a stronger intellect, a more luminous and veracious power of insight, directed upon such a survey of fellow-men and their contemporary journey through the world. A great deal of Wordsworth lay in the mode and tone of drawing; but you perceived it to be faithful, accurate, and altogether lifelike, though Wordsworthian. One of the best remembered sketches (almost the only one now remembered at all) was that of Wilberforce. . . . I remember only the rustic Picture, sketched as with a burnt stick on the board of a pair of bellows, seemed to me completely good; and that the general effect was, one saw the great Wilberforce and his existence visible in all their main lineaments-but only as through the reversed telescope, and reduced to the size of a mouse and its nest, or little more! This was, in most or in all cases, the result brought out; one's-self and telescope of natural (or perhaps preternatural) size; but the object, so great to vulgar eyes, reduced amazingly, with all its lineaments recognisable. I found a very superior talent in these Wordsworth delineations.

During the last seven or ten years of his life, Wordsworth felt himself to be a recognised lion, in certain considerable

London Circles. . . . [He] took his bit of lionism very quietly, with a smile sardonic rather than triumphant; and certainly got no harm by it, if he got or expected little good. . . . 'If you think me dull, be it just so!' this seemed to a most respectable extent to be his inspiring humour. The light was always afflictive to his eyes; he carried in his pocket something like a skeleton brass candlestick, in which, setting it on the dinner-table, between him and the most afflictive or nearest of the chief lights, he touched a little spring, and there flirted out, at the top of his brass implement, a small vertical green circle, which prettily enough threw his eyes into shade, and screened him from that sorrow. The tone of his voice, when I did get him afloat on some Cumberland or other matter germane to him, had a braced rustic vivacity, willingness, and solid precision, which alone rings in my ear when all else is gone. In one of these Wordsworthian lion-dinners,

I sat a long way from Wordsworth; dessert, I think, had come in; and certainly there reigned in all quarters a cackle as of Babel (only politer, perhaps),-which far up in Wordsworth's quarter (who was leftward on my side of the table), seemed to have taken a sententious, rather louder, logical and quasiscientific turn,-heartily unimportant to gods and men, so far as I could judge of it and of the other babble reigning. I looked upwards, leftwards, the coast being luckily for a moment clear: there, far off, beautifully screened in the shadow of his vertical green circle, which was on the farther side of him, sat Wordsworth, silent, in rock-like indifference, slowly but steadily gnawing some portion of what I judged to be raisins, with his eye and attention placidly fixed on these and these alone. The sight of whom, and of his rock-like indifference to the babble, quasi-scientific and other, with attention turned on the small practical alone, was comfortable and amusing to me, who felt like him, but could not eat raisins. This little glimpse I could still