CHAPTER XXIV. CORRESPONDENCE: THE ENGLISH LAKE DISTRICT AS COMPARATIVELY few poems were written by Wordsworth during his residence at Allan Bank. They were principally sonnets, and they referred chiefly to contemporary political events, and the struggle for liberty going on in the Continent of Europe. They were afterwards published in the second part of the series of" Sonnets dedicated to National Independence and Liberty;" and a very remarkable series of poems they are,—the outcome of the same mood of mind that produced the essay on the Convention of Cintra, and the letter to General Pasley. It is not too much to say, as Mr Myers has said, that these sonnets are "the most permanent record in our literature of the Napoleonic war," "worthy of comparison with the noblest passages of patriotic verse or prose which our history has inspired." During the years at Allan Bank, however, a good deal of admirable work was done in other directions. The help given to Coleridge in the management of The Friend has been already referred to. In the seventeenth number (December 14, 1809) a letter appeared addressed to the editor by one who signed himself "Mathetes." This was written by the John Wilson who had previously sent the letter to Wordsworth on his poems, printed in vol. i., p. 390, of this Life. The letter to The Friend is a curious one. He writes of his own experience, and of what he believes is the experience of many, in passing out into the world from the seclusion of youthful days; their speculative opinions being due to their early feelings, and their minds being at the mercy of fortune. He enlarges on the causes that concur to "enclose the mind on every side from the influence of natural feeling, and to degrade its inborn dignity." The shock, which one, full of enthusiasm and belief in goodness experiences, when he comes into contact with illusion, and when the natural admiration of excellence-innate in everyone-is given to inferior objects, is vividly depicted. Then, as most persons believe that human nature is progressing from age to age, the opinions of the present time are naturally supposed to be wiser than those of the past. From this follow self-confidence, and the disparagement of antiquity. What "Mathetes" hints as a remedy is the Voice of a contemporary Teacher, some one "conspicuous above the multitude as superior in power-to him all hearts would turn.... Of one such Teacher, given to our own age, you have described the power, when you say that in his enunciation of truths he seems to speak in thunders." Coleridge as was most natural handed over the task of replying to this letter to the person invoked by the writer, from whom indeed, and not from Coleridge, it is evident that Wilson wished it to come. A few paragraphs from Wordsworth's reply may be given. He began by saying that in every age there were "objects to which even the wisest attached undue importance." There were two errors into which we easily slip in thinking of past times. "One lies in forgetting, in the excellence of what remains, the large overbalance of worthlessness that has been swept away.... The second is, that in this comparison of ages we divide time merely into past and present, and place these in the balance to be weighed against each other; not considering that the present is in our estimation not more than a period of thirty years, or half a century at most, and that the past is a mighty accumulation of many such periods, perhaps the whole of recorded time, or at least the whole of that portion of it in which our own country has been distinguished. . Let us allow and believe that there is a progress in the species towards unattainable perfection; surely it does not follow that this progress should be constant in those virtues and intellectual qualities, and in those departments of knowledge which are of most value. . . . The progress of the species neither is, nor can be, like that of a Roman road, in a right line. It may be more justly compared to that of a river, which, both in its smaller reaches and larger turnings, is frequently forced back towards its fountains by objects which cannot otherwise be eluded or overcome; yet with an accompanying impulse that will insure its advancement hereafter, it is either gaining strength every hour, or conquering in secret some difficulty, by a labour that contributes as effectually to further it in its course, as when it moves forward uninterruptedly in a line, direct as that of the Roman road, with which I began the comparison. It suffices to content the mind, though there may be an apparent stagnation, or a retrograde movement in the species, that something is being done which is necessary to be done, the effects of which will in due time appear; that something is unremittingly being gained, either in secret preparation, or in open and triumphant progress. But in fact here, as everywhere, we are deceived by creations which the mind is compelled to make for itself; we speak of the species, not as an aggregate, but as endued with the form and separate life of an individual. But human kind,-what is it else than myriads of rational beings in various degrees obedient to their reason; some torpid, some aspiring; some in eager chase to the right hand, some to the left; these wasting down their moral nature, and those feeding it for im-. mortality? Granted that the sacred light of childhood is and must be for him no more than a remembrance. He may, notwithstanding, be remanded to Nature-and with trustworthy hopes, founded less upon his sentient than upon his intellectual being-to Nature, as leading on insensibly to the society of Reason, but to Reason and Will, as leading back to the wisdom of Nature. A re-union, in this order accomplished, will bring reformation and timely support; and the two powers of Reason and Nature, thus reciprocally teacher and taught, may advance together in a track to which there is no limit. We have been discoursing (by implication, at least) of infancy, childhood, boyhood, and youth, of pleasures lying upon the unfolding intellect plenteously as morning dewdrops, of knowledge inhaled insensibly like fragrance, -of dispositions stealing into the spirit like music from unknown quarters,-of images uncalled for and rising up like exhalations,-of hopes plucked like wild flowers from the ruined tombs that border the highways of antiquity, to make a garland for a living forehead;—in a word, we have been treating of Nature as a teacher of truth through joy and through gladness, and as a creatress of the faculties by a process of smoothness and delight. . . . We now apply for the succour which, we need to a faculty that works after a different course; that faculty is Reason; she gives more spontaneously, but she seeks for more; she works by thought through feeling; yet in thoughts she begins and ends. Let one go back, as occasion will permit, to nature and to solitude, thus admonished by reason, and relying upon this newly acquired support. A world of fresh sensations will gradually open upon him as his mind puts off its infirmities, and as instead of being propelled restlessly towards others, in admiration, or too hasty love, he makes it his prime business to understand himself. New sensations, I affirm, will be opened out,-pure, and sanctioned by that reason which is their original author; and precious feelings of disinterested, that is self-disregarding joy and love may be regenerated and restored; and, in this sense, he may be said to measure back the track of life he has trodden. In such disposition of mind let the youth return to the Visible Universe, and to conversation with Ancient Books, and to those, if such there be, which in the present day breathe the ancient spirit; and let him feed upon that beauty which unfolds itself, not to his eye as it sees carelessly the things which cannot possibly go unseen, and are remembered or not as accident shall decide, but to the thinking mind, which searches, discovers, and treasures up, infusing by meditation into the objects with which it converses an intellectual life, whereby they remain planted in the memory, now and for ever." In connection with this paper by "Mathetes," and Wordsworth's reply to it, a letter from his sister to Lady Beaumont is extremely interesting. It shows that Wilson was giving a genuine picture of himself in his epistle to The Friend. Dorothy wrote as follows on the 28th December 1809: ". . . Surely I have spoken to you (not by word of mouth, but by letter) of Mr Wilson, a young man of some fortune, who has built a house in a very fine situation not far from Bowness. Miss Hutchinson, Johnny, and I spent a few days there last summer, with his mother and sister, and I think I mentioned this to you. This same Mr Wilson |