Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

the sun shone on hill and vale, the distant birch trees looked like large golden flowers. Nothing else in colour was distinct and separate, but all the beautiful colours seemed to be melted into one another, and joined together in one mass, so that there were no differences, though an endless variety, when one tried to find it out. The fields were of one sober yellow brown. . .

"Tuesday, 2nd November.-William returned from Keswick.

"Friday, 5th.-. . . I wrote to Montagu, . . . and sent off letters to Miss Lamb and Coleridge.

"Sunday, 7th.-Fine weather. Letters from Coleridge that he was gone to London. Sara at Penrith. I wrote to Mrs Clarkson. William began to translate Ariosto.

[ocr errors]

Monday, 8th.—A beautiful day. William got to work again at Ariosto, and so continued all the morning, though the day was so delightful that it made my very heart long to be out of doors, and see and feel the beauty of the autumn in freedom. The trees on the opposite side of the lake are of a yellow brown, but there are one or two trees opposite our windows (an ash tree, for instance) quite green, as in spring. The fields are of their winter colour, but the island is as green as ever it was. William is writing out his stanzas from Ariosto. . . . The evening is quiet. Poor Coleridge! Sara is at Keswick, I hope. . . . I have read one canto of Ariosto to-day.

"24th December.-Christmas Eve. William is now sitting by me, at half-past ten o'clock. I have been

repeating some of his sonnets to him, listening to his own repeating, reading some of Milton's, and the Allegro and Penseroso. It is a quick, keen frost. . . . Coleridge came this morning with Wedgwood. We all turned out one by one, to meet him. He looked well. We had to

tell him of the birth of his little girl, born yesterday morning at six o'clock. William went with them to Wytheburn in the chaise, and M. and I met W. on the Raise. It was not an unpleasant morning. . . The sun shone now and then, and there was no wind, but all things looked cheerless and distinct; no meltings of sky into mountains, the mountains like stone work wrought up with huge hammers. Last Sunday was as mild a day as I ever remember. Mary and I went round the lakes. There were flowers of various kinds—the topmost bell of a fox-glove, geraniums, daisies, a buttercup in the water (but this I saw two or three days before), small yellow flowers (I do not know their name) in the turf. A large bunch of strawberry blossoms. It is Christmas Day, Saturday, 25th December 1802. I am thirty-one years of age. It is a dull, frosty day.

On Thursday, 30th December, I went to Keswick. William rode before me to the foot of the hill nearest K. There we parted close to a little watercourse, which was then noisy with water, but on my return a dry channel. . . . We stopped our horse close to the ledge, opposite a tuft of primroses, three flowers in full blossom and a bud. They reared themselves up among the green moss. We debated long whether we should pluck them, and at last left them to live out their day, which I was right glad of at my return the Sunday following; for there they remained, uninjured either by cold or wet. I stayed at Keswick over New Year's Day, and returned on Sunday, the 2nd January. William was alarmed at my long delay, and came to Coleridge stayed with walked with

within three miles of Keswick.

us till Tuesday, January 4th. W. and I him to Ambleside. We parted with him at the turning of the lane, he going on horseback to the top of Kirkstone. On Thursday 6th, C. returned, and on Friday, the 7th, he

W. accompanied them to the

and Sara went to Keswick. foot of Wytheburn. . . . It was a gentle day, and when William and I returned home just before sunset, it was a heavenly evening. A soft sky was among the hills, and a summer sunshine above, and blending with this sky, for it was more like sky than clouds; the turf looked warm and soft.

"Monday, January 10th, 1803.-I lay in bed to have a drench of sleep till one o'clock.

Ominously cold.

Worked all day.

" Tuesday, January 11th.-A very cold day, but the blackness of the cold made us slow to put forward, and we did not walk at all. Mary read the Prologue to Chaucer's tales to me in the morning. William was working at his poem to C. Letter from Keswick and from Taylor on William's marriage. C. poorly, in bad spirits. . . . Read part of The Knight's Tale with exquisite delight. Since tea Mary has been down stairs copying out Italian poems for Stuart. William has been working beside me, and here ends this imperfect summary.

CHAPTER XVII.

TOUR IN SCOTLAND: JOHN WORDSWORTH.

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH'S Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, A.D. 1803, begins thus: "William and I parted from Mary on Sunday afternoon, August 16, 1803; and William, Coleridge, and I left Keswick on Monday morning." Mrs Wordsworth was unable to accompany them. Wordsworth in the Fenwick notes said, " Coleridge was at that time in bad spirits, and somewhat too much in love with his own dejection." They started on an Irish car, with a horse that sometimes backed them into ditches, that refused to go on, and had to be led by one of the party; their equipage suggesting some "pedlars astir," or a company of very primitive travellers indeed. It was a jolting uncomfortable car; but what cared they? They wished to get into a new country, into contact with Nature, in her free wild aspects, and to study her amongst solitudes sublimer than those of Cumberland.

A daily record of that delightful journey was kept by Dorothy Wordsworth, and was given to the world some fourteen years ago, under the editorial care of a kindred spirit, the most sympathetic student of Wordsworth that Scotland has known, the late Principal Shairp.* It is quite unnecessary to give any extracts from a book so well known, and so justly prized. Readers of it will see how much more

* See the Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, A.D. 1803, by Dorothy Wordsworth.

finished the daily jottings are than those in the Grasmere Journals of the two previous years. In point of form and style, and literary merit, it is a link between the Dove Cottage and the Continental Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth.

Wordsworth himself, however, memorialized his Scottish tour of 1803 in a series of poems (see vol. ii., pp. 326-379), several of which have a magical charm of their own; while this Journal of his sister has distinct "historic value," as Principal Shairp remarks in his admirable prefatory note. He calls attention to the "absolute sincerity" of the Journal, "the single-minded endeavour to set down precisely the things they saw and heard and felt, while moving on their quiet way." Again, as Principal Shairp says, "it marks the state of Scotland, and the feeling with which the most finelygifted Englishman came to it seventy years since, at a time before the flood of English interest and tourism' had set in across the border."* Coming after Burns' poetry, but before Scott's romances had been written, it has an additional interest. Other things in it, on which the editor very justly remarks, are these: the absence of all effort at fine writing, the perception of the deep interest and dignity that Man gives to Nature, and Nature gives to Man, and the appreciation of aspects of Nature unlike that of the Cumbrian hills and vales; although, as a matter of course, there was special delight in tracing the resemblance of scene to scenea thing in which almost all travellers rejoice. The sister's Journal must be read as a whole, and must be read along with the brother's poems on the tour, in order that both may be adequately understood. The following is the briefest abstract of the route taken.

First week. From Keswick they went by Hesket-New

* See Preface, p. xxxv.

« AnteriorContinuar »