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LECTURE VIII.

I FINISHED in my last lecture our discussion of the early education which Nature had given Wordsworth, and traced its influence on his poetry of Nature. But Wordsworth was as much, if not more, the poet of Man as of Nature, and the poetry of Man took in his hands as great a development as the poetry of Nature. My task to-day will be to show,-always taking the "Prelude" as our guide,-how the love of Man grew up in his soul.

I begin by a quotation from an Essay of Wordsworth's, in "The Friend," which resumes a great part of that which we have been saying in the two last lectures with regard to the teaching of Nature.

"We have been discoursing of infancy, childhood, boyhood, and youth, of pleasures lying in the unfolding intellect plenteously as morning dewdrops, of knowledge inhaled insensibly like a fragrance, of dispositions stealing into the spirit like music from unknown quarters, of images uncalled for arising up like exhalations, of hopes plucked like beautiful 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 have made no mention of fear, shame, sorrow, nor of ungovernable and vexing thoughts; because, although these have been, and have done mighty service, they are overlooked in that stage of life when youth is passing into manhood, overlooked or forgotten. We now apply for succour which we need, to a faculty which works after a different course; that faculty is Reason; she gives much spontaneously, but she seeks for more; she works by thought, through feeling; yet in thoughts she begins and ends."

The way in which Nature works, then, is this: She makes an impression on the poet's mind, an impression of calm, for example. That after a time insensibly touches his sympathies, and the thought of his father's serene old age or his child's peaceful sleep is awakened in his heart; and led on in this process of soothing thought now quickened by human tenderness, he thinks of other things that belong to the sphere of calm-of the quiet balance of the powers of his own being, of the mighty rest of God; and these in turn create the resolve to attain calm of heart, to reach, through endeavour and watchfulness, the peace which passeth all understanding. "This is Nature," as Wordsworth says, for I have used a different illustration from that he uses, "teaching seriously and sweetly through the affections, melting the heart, and through that instinct of tenderness, developing the understanding."

"Let, then, the youth go back, as occasion will permit, to Nature and solitude, thus admonished by reason, and

relying on this newly acquired support. A world of past şensations will gradually open on him as his mind puts off its infirmities: and he makes it his prime business to understand himself. In such disposition let him return to the visible universe and to conversation with ancient books-and let him feed upon that beauty which unfolds itself, not to his eye as he sees carelessly the things which cannot possibly go unseen, 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."

This was the point which Wordsworth had reached when we left him. He had realized, through the affections which Nature had awakened, his own Reason in its relation to God and Nature, and he had felt the immense delight of redoubling the charm and sublimity of Nature by throwing upon it the force of his own mind. interest of more than half of his life

By this work the was concentrated

round the growth of his own being, and he studied himself with eagerness. But he did this in connection with the influences of Nature upon him, not in connection with the influences of Man. From these he was, at this time, nearly altogether free, or at least, not consciously influenced by them. Nature and God were first, Man second.

But the transition from the contemplation of his own being as a man to the contemplation of mankind itself was an easy one, and it now began to be made. His residence in London, in the midst of this great hive of workers, laid upon his soul the weight of humanity; the

residence in France which followed finished the work. Man became the first, and Nature the second.

This was the great change, and he was bound to explain it. It seemed sudden. Was it really so? And he looked back on his life in order to answer the question. To say that it was sudden would have contradicted his philosophy. For no one has seen more clearly than Wordsworth that the operations of the soul are gradual, that ideas do not spring to life at once, but grow, so that when they are recognised as conscious possessions, we find that they have been already for years developing themselves. We recognise them when they flower, we are not conscious of them in shoot, and stem, and leaves. But when they have flowered, we can go back and trace their origin and their growth. And Wordsworth now made it his business to ask how this idea of Man as the centre of the universe grew up in his mind; and to describe the religious aspect it finally took.

Looking back, he sees that it began in his childhood, and that just as interest in his own being was stirred in him by the love of Nature, so in this case also, it was the love of Nature which from the earliest times led him onwards to the love of Man. His childhood was passed among magnificent natural scenery, not so enchanting as the Eastern Paradises which he describes, but in this far lovelier that, unlike their gorgeous landscapes, its sun and sky and seasons found Man a worthy fellow-labourer among them; free, working for himself, led by all that surrounded him to individual and social ends of his own frank choosing, and educated through the simple gracious life of home. The men and mountains

were at one in noble character. For the beauty of a country is elevated by the freedom of its inhabitants. No one can walk through Switzerland without feeling that the long, almost unbroken liberty of soul which marked her people, that the grave republicanism which marks them now, add a new element of greatness to her scenery. It is something to stand in the churchyard of Altdorf, as I stood two years ago, and look up the lake glittering blue in the morning light, and say to oneself, "this land has never been otherwise than free." It made wretched to many the loveliness of Italy, and Arnold records the feeling in his letters, to think that man was daily degraded there by a vile oppression; it adds a new brightness now to her appealing Beauty to think that she is mistress of herself. So to Wordsworth the meadows beneath Helvellyn were lovelier far than the Paradise of Gehol, because, in one, the freedom of Nature's heart was in harmony with human freedom, in the other, her freedom was ceaselessly jarred by human slavery.

It was in this free pastoral life that the roots of Wordsworth's love for Man struck deep. Shepherds were the men who pleased him first, not the Arcadian shepherd, nor such as Spenser fabled, but men "intent on little. but substantial needs," whose life was yet full of beauty that the men had hearts to feel. In such a rude life imagination had much food from things connected with Man, for there was continually presented to the child (however unconscious of what he felt), the awful problem of the seeming helpless subjection of mankind to the wild powers of Nature. There was not a rock or stream or deep valley in the hills which was not vocal, in the traditions

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