BOOKS.

DR. woanswonTR's MEMOIRS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.. rze life of: William Wordsworth was as uneventful as any life well can be : the Wakefield family's emigration from the blue bed to the brown may be said to comprise the principle of the. whole. Sehool, college, frequent excursions in England, occasional travels abroad, residence at 'Grasmere, and a final settlement at R: dal Mount, where he sojourned for thirty-seven years and: where he died, form the substance of his life's external epochs. In his youth and early manhood he had to bear very narrow circum- stances, owing to the refusal of the first Earl of Lonsdale to settle the accounts of the poet's father, who had been the lord's lawyer and agent ; but a rigid economy enabled him to avoid the difficul- ties and distresses which have so often added ridicule or pathos to the poverty of poets. In his twenty-fifth year, (1795,) when, in obe- dience to the urging of prudent friends, he was hesitating on the pro- priety of doing something, and was thinking about an engagement on the press, a friend whom Wordsworth had attended. during his last illness left him a legacy of 900/. ; and, as the poet (writing to: Sir George Beaumont ten years afterwards) said, "The act was done entirely from a confidence on his part that I had powers and attainments which might be of use to mankind." This was the turning-point of his pecuniary fortune. The late Earl of Lons- dale, when he succeeded the first Earl, about 1802, paid. off the- debt with interest ; in 1813 Wordsworth was appointed Distri- butor of Stamps; in 1827 he took an annuity of 1001. "for an annual tour," under Sir George Beaumont's will ; in. our own days he accepted the office of Poet-Laureate, against his inclination and without much necessity, for his poems, that for thirty good years- and more had been something like a drug in the poetical market, began to be in demand some time before, and must have yielded an annual income. The chronology of the life of William. Words- worth is as follows : he was born in 1770 ; went to St. Tohn's Cambridge in 1787; published the " Lyrical Ballads " in 1798 ; was married in 1802; and died in 1850.

It was the poet's own opinion and that of his friends, that his. real life—his inward' or intellectual career—was best read in his works; but that it required a knowledge of the circumstances and the author's frame of mind at the time of writing, thoroughly to appreciate the poems. Such was the plan on which Wordsworth himself desired his, biography to be written. With this view, he dictated a very brief outline of his life, and copious remi- niscences of his poems—when and where they were produced, what suggested them, the originals of the scenery and persons, how far the poet deviated from the originals, and why, together• with his object in writing. From these memorials, the poet's cor- respondence, a journal of his sister, his own reminiscences, and the contributions of 'friends, Dr. Wordsworth has produced the present volumes, upon the plan indicated by his uncle.

The Memoirs are' thus not a life, but a species of commentary on the life. Essays on particular subjects or particular epochs super- sede the continuous narrative of biography. The work begins with a description of Rydal Mount, well known as the poet's resi- dence. This is followed by so many chapters on pedigree and birth, school-time, college life and vacations, residence in France, feelings and opinions on return, (meaning the poet's earlier demo- cratic ideas and hopes of human perfectibility,) with similar mat- ter-, relating to his. life. The works are treated in the same way. One chapter gives an account of the production of " the tragedy" of The Borderers, written very early, but only pub- lished in the author's decline of life ; a second of the Lyrical Bali lads ; another of.a pamphlet on the Convention of Cintra, and so on, until the last stage of all is reached, and the poet departs at fourscore years,with a reputation which after years of obloquy had reached its culminating point. For we hold, that as 'Words- worth was for many years unduly depreciated, so he was latterly somewhat over-praised; his disciples chanting their paeans loudly, and the world being too busy in other directions to care to gain- say them—perhaps, too, a little ashamed of its former neglect- not-to mention that a "good feeling," which costs nothing, was quite the fashion till the late Papal aggression. The plan hinted at by the poet and carried out by Dr. Words- worth appears a very good one. The writer is not tied down to any regular plan, with its inconvenient scale on heavy matters. He can throw aside the formal and the ponderous, take up with the most attractive parts, and treat them as wholes; be as discursive as he pleases, and write in fact a series of articles in as amusing a vein as he can. The result, however, does not come up to the ap- parent advantages of the plan. The cause may possibly be found in the nature of the subject. Although paying attention to public affairs and animated by patriotic feelings, yet Wordsworth's main ourrent of thought was fixed upon poetry, or rather upon his own poetry. "'Self still like oil upon the surface play'd ": much of his conversation, much of his correspondence, all his dictation, was about the art of poetry as he practised it, or the effect of his work, or the incidents and scenes, frequently trivial enough, on which it was based: Sometimes he passes beyond this, and turns com- mentator upon himself, with a touch of the weakness noted by Horace. as characteristic of the race of poets— "Repeat unask'd, lament the wit's too fine

For: vulgar eyes, and point out every line."

This oneness of topic, this predominance of self, gives a mo-

?Memoirs of William Wordinvorth,Poet Laureate, B Christopher Wonie-

worth, D.C., Canon of Westminster. In two volumes. P rldozow notonous character to the work ;- nor had Wordsworth the art of imparting attractiveness to hia prom He lacked the wide sym- pathies of Southey with the " quiequid agunt hominea"; he wanted his fertility in ideas. and diction ; so that Wordsworth's letters rarely have the charm. of that great master of English prose. In common, with Gibbon and many others,. Wordsworth had an aversion to letter-writing. Indeed, it seems that he wrote un- willingly. at all times. The mechanical act was an affair of pains if not of difficulty to him ; and Dr. Wordsworth appears to think that had he not been surrounded by willing peen--his sister,, his wife, and others—much of his poetry might have been lost. But this is unlikely. Some of the " slowness" of the present work arises from the fact that it is written- for disciples, by one who waahardly in, a position: to criticize closely. Correspondence is freely quoted that has little either of biographical or literary interest; trifling details are, too much multiplied: but the main source of heaviness is owing to the predominanee of a commentating spirit. Extracts, and- often imperfect onea, are continually made from the author'S pems ; so that the reader is as it were put under a course of Wordsworth's personal poetry, and presented. with annotations, when he' looked for biography. A good deal of curious matter connected with the poems and the author's mode of composition, together with many curious particulars of the man and his life, will be found in the book.; but it is rather a. colleotion of materials to serve for a life and commentary upon Wordsworth, than a finished work. The matter which is really commentatorial should appear connected with the poems to which it respectively- belongs. If this were skilfully done, it would give the poems a new value ; for many of them are of so peculiar a character that they lose much of their interest when the circumstances under' which they were written are unknown. Whether this indicates a poetical genius sufficiently catholic, in cases where the subject is of a general nature, may be doubted.

From the time of the Revolution, when Dryden was displaced, till. the Regency, when Southey was appointed after Scott's con- temptuous refusal, the office of Laureate had become a topic of mockery, owing to the feeble race of poetasters by whom it had been filled, and. the consequent. ridicule that had._ been thrown upon it.. Late efforts have been made to elevate the laureateship by the cha- racter of the bard upon whom it has been bestowed; but it may be- questioned whether they will succeed. Even if formally released' from the necessity of writing "birthday odes" and the like, a man will feel the. propriety of doing something for his money ; and that something must be on prescribed and hacknied subjects, most probably invite Minerva. Wordsworth declined the office, on account of his age, and this necessity of writing ; but he was induced to accept on the reiteration of the Lord. Chamberlain and the request of Peel.

" Mr. Wordsworth's letter did not, however, deter the Lord Chamberlains. from pressing the offer upon him, with an assurance that the duties of Lau- reate had not recently extended beyond the Annual Ode, and might in his case be considered as merely nominal, and would not in any way interfere• with his repose and retirement.

" The same post brought also the following letter.

•• Whitehall, April 3, 1243, " My dear Sir—I hope you. may be induced to reconsider your decision with regard to the appointment of Poet Laureate. " ' The offer was made to you by the Lord Chamberlain with my entire concurrence, not for the purpose of imposing on you any onerous or disagree- able duties, but in order to pay you that tribute of respect which is justly due to the first of living poets.

"'The Queen entirely approved' of the nomination.;' and there is one unanimous feeling on the part of all who have heard'of the proposal, (and it is pretty generally known,) that there could. not be a' question about the selection.

" 'Do not be deterred by the fear of any obligations which the appoint- ment may be supposed to imply : I will undertake that you shall have no- thing required from you. " 'But as the Queen um select for this honourable appointment no one whose claims for respect and.honour, on account of eminence as a poet, can be placed in competition with yours, I trust you will not longer hesitate to accept it.

" Believe me, my dear Sir, with sincere esteem, most faithfully yours,,

" ROBERT PEW..

" write this in haste, from my place in the Ilbuse of Commons.' °'

The natural sympathies of the poet with the poor, his North-of- England birth and education, and the narrow circumstances of his' early life, made him as familiarly acquainted as most men with the peasantry, and persons much below the peasantry as regards re-. spectability. Traits and sketches of humble life are frequent in the' volumes before us ; and they want but poetical art to have become. pastorals, a class of poetry into which Wordsworth could have. breathed originality and life. The following picture of agricultural peasantry is from a letter to Archdeacon Wrangham upon Edu- cation,—a thing which, so far as mere teaching went, the poet did not value so highly as many.

"I am entirely of accord with_ you in chieflyrecommending religious books, for the poor ; but of many of those which you recommend I can. neither. speak in praise nor blame, as .I have never read them. Yet, as far as my own observation goes, which has been mostly employed upon agricultural.: persons in thinly-peopled districts, I cannot find that there is much disposi.- tion to read among the labouring classes, or. much. occasion for it. Among, .manufacturers and persons engaged in sedentary employments, it is,, I know,. 'very different. The labouring man in. agriculture generally carries. on his. work either in solitude or with his own family—with persons whose minda. he is thoroughly acquainted with, and with-whom he is under no temptation,, to enter into discussions or to compare opinions. He goes home from the- -field or the barn, and within and about his own house he finds a hundred little jobs which furnish him with a change of employment which is grate- ful and profitable ; then comes supper and bed. Ibis for week...days.: Item pabbaths,, he goes to church with us often-or -madly tavicsa.day,; ou:aoulaur,

home, some one turns to the Bible, finds the text, and probably reads the chapter whence it is taken, or perhaps some other ; and in the afternoon the master or mistress frequently reads the Bible, if alone ; and on this day the mistress of the house almost always teaches the children to read, or, as they express it, hears them a lesson ; or if not thus employed, they visit their neighbours, or receive them in their own houses as they drop in, and keep

up by the hour a slow and familiar chat. This kind of life, of which I have seen much, and which I know would be looked upon with little complacency

by many religious persons, is peaceable, and as innocent as (the frame of so- ciety and the practices of government being what they are) we have a right to expect. Besides, it is much more intellectual than a careless observer would suppose. One of our neighbours, who lives as I have described, was yesterday walking with me ; and as we were pacing on, talking about indif- ferent matters, by the side of a brook, he suddenly said to me, with great

spirit and a lively smile, I like to walk where I can hear the sound of a

beck !' (the word, as you know, in our dialect for a brook). I cannot but think that this man, without being conscious of it, has had many devout

feelings connected with the appearances which have presented themselves to him in his employment as a shepherd, and that the pleasure of his heart at that moment was an acceptable offering to the Divine Being. But to re- turn to the subject of books. I find among the people I am speaking of halfpenny ballads and penny and twopenny histones in great abundance ; these are often bought as charitable tributes to the poor persons who hawk them about, (and it is the best way of procuring them). They are frequently stitched together in tolerably thick volumes, and such I have read : some of the contents, though not often religious, very good ; others objectionable, either for the superstition in them, such as prophecies, fortune-telling, &c., or more frequently for indelicacy. I have so much felt the influence of these Straggling papers, that I have many a time wished that I had talents to pro- duce songs, poems, and little histones, that might circulate among other good things in this way, supplanting partly the bad flowers and useless herbs, and to take place of weeds. Indeed, some of the poems which I have published were composed not without a hope that at some time or other they might answer this purpose. The kind of library which you recommend would not, I think, for the reasons given above, be of much direct use in any of the agricultural districts of Cumberland and Westmoreland with which I am ac- quainted, though almost every person here can read ; I mean of general use as to morals or behaviour. It might, however, with individuals, do much in awakening enterprise, calling forth ingenuity, and fostering genius. I have known several persons who would eagerly have sought, not after these books merely, but any books, and would have been most happy in having such a collection to repair to. The knowledge thus acquired would also have spread, by being dealt about in conversation among their neighbours, at the door and by the fireside ; so that it is not easy to foresee how' far the good might extend ; and harm I can see none which would not be greatly overbalanced by the advantage. The situation of manufacturers is deplorably different. The monotony of their employments renders some sort of stimulus, intellec- tual or bodily, absolutely necessary for them. Their work is carried on in clusters—men from different parts of the world, and perpetually changing ; so that every individual is constantly in the way of being brought into con- tact with new notions and feelings, and being unsettled in his own accord- ingly : a select library, therefore, in such situations, may be of the same use as a public dial, keeping everybody's do& in some kind of order."

This disposition to think lightly of reading, might perhaps arise from his own practice : in another letter to Wrangham he says-

" You astonish me with the account of your books ; and I should have been still more astonished if you had told me you had read a third (shall I say a tenth part ?) of them. My reading powers were never very good, and now they are much diminished, especially by candle-light; and as to buying books, I can affirm that in new books I have not spent five shillings for the last five years, i. e. in reviews, magazines, pamphlets, &c. &c. ; so that there would be an end of Mr. Longman and Mr. Cadell, &c. &c. if nobody had more power or inclination to buy than myself. And as to old books, my dealings in that way, for want of means, have been very trifling. Neverthe- less, small and paltry as my collection is, I have not rend a fifth part of it."

This is an example of his annotational matter : it will be seen that he recited as he composed, and it appears to have been his habit to finish many things before they were committed to paper.

" The poem of The Poet and Caged Turtle-dove' ought to be mentioned

here.

• As often as I murmur here My half-formed melodies, Straight from her osier mansion near The turtle-dove replies.'

" This dove,' said the poet, ` was one of a pair that had been given to My daughter by our excellent friend Miss Jewsbury, (the donor of the fish,) Who went to India with her husband Mr. Fletcher, where she died of cho- lera. The dove survived its mate many years, and was killed, to our great sorrow, by a neighbour's cat that got in at a window and dragged it partly out of the cage. These verses were composed extempore to the letter, in the terrace summer-house before spoken of. It was the habit of the bird to be- gin cooing and murmuring whenever it heard me making my verses.' "

The excesses of the great Revolution, the French exaltation of Bonaparte, and their submission to his tyranny, together with the anti-English policy of the Whigs, caused Wordsworth to change his original views in politics and to become Conservative ; but, like Southey, he had no sort of faith in the Ministers he sup- ported as a kind of necessary evil. His lofty poetical principles and his critical faculty induced him to look closely into men, and of course he easily discovered faults. It may be doubted, in- deed, whether he was not sometimes incorrect in his criticism. Merit like Nelson's is surely rarer than he supposes : Nelson rose, too, without interest, indeed in the face of official dislike.

"You will find that the verses are allusive to Lord Nelson; and they will show that I must have sympathized with you in admiration of the man, and sorrow for our loss. Yet, considering the matter coolly, there was little to regret. The state of Lord Nelson's health, I suppose, was such that he could not have lived long; and the first burst of exultation upon landing in his native country, and his reception here, would have been dearly bought, perhaps, by pain and bodily weakness, and distress among his friends, which he could neither remove nor alleviate. Few men have ever died under cir- cumstances so likely to make their deaths of benefit to their country : it is not easy to see what his life could have done comparable to it. The loss of such men as Lord Nelson is, indeed, great and real; but surely not for the reason which makes most people grieve, a supposition that no other such man is in the country. The old ballad has taught us how to feel on these

occaaions:

• I trust I have within my realm, Five hundred good as he.'

But this is the evil, that nowhere is merit so much under the power of what (to avoid a more serious expression) one may call that of fortune, as in mili-

tary and naval service ; and it is five hundred to one that such men will not have attained situations where they can show themselves so that the country may know in whom to trust. Lord Nelson had attained that situation ; and therefore, I think, (and not for the other reason,) ought we chiefly to lament that he is taken from us.

"Mr. Pitt is also gone ! by tens of thousands looked upon in like manner as a great loss. For my own part, as probably you know, I have never been able to regard his political life with complacency. I believe him, however, to have been as disinterested a man, and as true a lover of his country, as it was possible for so ambitious a man to be. His first wish (though probably unknown to himself) was that his country should prosper under hex admi- nistration; his next, that it should prosper. Could the order of these wishes have been reversed, Mr. Pitt would have avoided many of the grievous mistakes into which, I think, he fell."

Get Wordsworth away from his own poetry, and his judgment on life and affairs was sound, with an aversion to convention and humbug. The following remarks on statues to poets are sensible.

" Rydal Mount, April 21, 1819.

" Sir—The letter with which you have honoured me, bearing data the 31st of March, I did not receive until yesterday ; and therefore could not earlier express my regret that, notwithstanding a cordial approbation of the feeling which has prompted the undertaking, and a genuine sympathy in admiration with the gentlemen who have subscribed towards a monument for Burns, I cannot unite my humble efforts with theirs in promoting this object. " Sincerely can I affirm that my respect for the motives which have swayed these gentlemen has urged use to trouble you with a brief statement of the reasons of my dissent. " In the first place, eminent poets appear to me to be a class of men who less than any others stand in need of such marks of distinction ; and hence I infer that this mode of acknowledging their merits is one for which they would not in general be themselves solicitous. Burns did indeed erect a monument to Ferguson ; but I apprehend his gratitude took this course be- cause he felt that Ferguson had been prematurely cut off, and that his fame bore no proportion to his deserts. In neither of these particulars can tho fate of Burns justly be said to resemble that of his predecessor : his years were indeed few, but numerous enough to allow him to spread his name far and wide, and to take permanent root in the affections of his countrymen; in short, he has raised for himself a monument so conspicuous and of such im- perishable materials as to render a local fabric of stone superfluous, and therefore comparatively insignificant."

In common with many of his admirers, Dr. Wordsworth in some measure misses, we think, the exact feature of Words- worth's genius and originality. The last did not altogether arise from discarding the empty state and pompous formality of the imitators of Dryden, Pope, and the French school of Louis Qua- torze, and coming back to what is called nature. A tendency in this direction had been going on for more than half a century. As regards subject and imagery, Thomson had begun the change, and Collins continued it. • Goldsmith, in his Hermit, pushed it further, even to elegant simplicity of diction. The labours of Walton and Percy in our old authors made triviality of incident and common- place plainness of language so fashionable, that Johnson oftener than once ridiculed it in parody. Cowper in England and Burns in Scotland, were as natural, indeed as homely, in subject, treat- ment, and diction, as poetry can properly become. The more obvious peculiarities of Wordsworth—the common character of his subjects, the affected triviality of his images, the baldness of his language, and even his extreme attempts to endow natural ob- jects with a moral dignity—were faults, worthy of all the ridicule that was cast upon him. It was not these things that exalted his name, but the freshness of his observation, his depth of feel- ing, his widespread sympathies with man and nature, the frequent felicity of his language, and the musical flow of his verse. We sus- pect, however, that the secret of his growing fame is to be sought for deeper down than even these things. It is to be found in his kindly regard for the poor and needy, his recognition of humanity in the human creature, in spite of vices and of rags. Burns and Southey were doing something similar, and about the same time : the Scotch ploughman, with a feeling alter- nately manly or bitter according to his mood, but with the dignity of man ever welling up ; Southey, (in his ballad poems, insuffi- ciently cultivated,) with more of satire against the shows and " shams" of society. But neither of them struck a chord so widely responded to as that which Wordsworth sounded. It is probable that the movements in favour of the poor, apart from re- ligious conversion-mongering, that has for some time past distin- guished the age, may be ascribed to the influence of Wordsworth, as well in its goodness as in its more questionable points. That which was mawkish sensibility in the poet became cant in the mass; and cant is more readily attainable than manly dignity or satire, and a far more profitable article to trade upon.