WORDSWORTH'S INFLUENCE IN SCOTLAND.
IT would probably be unjust to some unknown or little-known men to say that the cultured Professor of Poetry in Oxford —cultured in impulse even more than in intellect—who a few days ago passed quietly to his rest in Argyllshire, was the last of the Scotch poets who have been rendered vocal by communing with the genius of Wordsworth. It would certainly be unjust to one living man to say that Mr. Shairp was the last of the Scotch Wordsworthians ; for is there not left in what he, even more than his friend Dean Stanley, regarded as "mine own St. Andrews," Professor Knight, most devoted of Wordsworth's disciples, most painstaking of Wordsworth's editors? Nature-worship is spreading in Scotland, as in England. It will pass Mr. Bryce's Access to Mountains Bill, as it has secured Epping Forest for Cockaigne. And the high priest of pare Nature-worship, as distinguished from the Enthusiasm of Humanity, is acknow- ledged in the North, as in the South, to be not Burns, but Wordsworth. But Mr. Shairp is the last of the poets known to the public generally, who on the Scotch hills openly raised the standard of the English Lakes. In his critical and other studies he has fully expressed his admiration of Wordsworth, as in his " Kilmahoe " he has offered him the only sincere and acceptable flattery of imitation. But we doubt if Mr. Shairp ever expressed better what as a man, even more than as a poet, he owed to Wordsworth than in his reminiscences of his life-long friend, Norman Macleod. Speaking of the winter of 1836-37, which he and Macleod spent together at Glasgow University, he says :—" Before coming to Glasgow, I had come upon Wordsworth, and in large measure taken him to heart. Norman had for some years done the same. Our sym- pathy in this became an immense bond of union. The admira- tion and study of Wordsworth were not then what they after- wards became,—a part of the discipline of every educated man. Those who really cared for him in Scotland might, I believe, have then been counted by units. Not a Professor in Glasgow University at that time ever alluded to him. Those, therefore, who read him in solitude, if they met another to whom they could open their mind on the subject, were bound to each other by a very inward chord of sympathy. I wish I could recall what we then felt as on those evenings we read or chaunted the great lines we already knew, or shouted for joy at coming on some new passage which was a delightful surprise." This passage has a historical interest, as indicating how little Wordsworth was known in Scotland only fourteen years before his death. Bat it is still more interesting as the representation, no less accurate than naive, of the first meeting between pure- minded and delicately-nurtured boyishness and the beauty of holiness as painted by Wordsworth. The philosophic mind which years bring, subjects to criticism even "The Ode to Immortality." But the first love of Wordsworth is a passion, an ecstasy, an intoxication of the soul which, and not Byron's, is the best of life. For to it there is no sordid or tragic sequel; it brings in its train no headache or remorse.
If those who "really care for Wordsworth in Scotland" may now be counted by thousands, the Scotch members of his school of poetry can still be counted only by units. The spell of Barns has held captive ninety-nine of the hundred poets, like himself, sprung from the soil, that have succeeded him. Scott and Hogg were, in different degrees, men of independent genius. In their love of the objective, their natural healthiness of body and mind, perhaps even in their intellectual conservatism, there was much in common between them and Wordsworth. But it is impossible to point to any direct, at least to any permanent, influence that he exercised upon them, or that they exercised upon him. Wilson, indeed, pitched his camp for a time within the enchanted circle of the Lakes ; and he is sometimes regarded as one, not only of Wordsworth's Scotch admirers, but of his disciples. But after he settled in Edinburgh, he wavered in his allegiance. If in the " Noctes " he is found, in the name of North, saying of the "Ode to Duty,"—" Human life is always, in its highest moral exhibition, sublime rather than beautiful—and the sublimity is not that of the imagination, but of the soul," he is also to be found giving utterance to such criticism as this :—" Wordsworth often writes like an idiot ; and never more so than when he said of Milton, - His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.' For it dwelt in tumult, and mischief, and rebellion." It is only charitable to suppose that here Wilson's Tory dislike to Milton blinded his judgment. But take this sentence as it stands, and it is safe to say Wilson could not have more completely missed Words- worth's admirable point, which, of course, is that while Milton in the flesh took an active part in the tumult of English public life during his time—he had as fierce a contempt for an arm- chair politician as he had for a fugitive and cloistered virtue — yet the soul, the immortal part of him, dwells apart in "regnant calmness." But in connection with Wilson, one must always remember what Carlyle termed "the rizzar'd haddocks and whisky-toddy " side of him. He was a sincere worshipper of Nature; but his enjoyment of it was not free from grossness. To Wordsworth and to Wordsworthians of the inner circle the delight that is derived from the contemplation of Nature is self-sufficing. Like virtue, it is its own reward. But in Wilson's case it was not self-sufficing ; in the " Noctes " it was not delight at all until after portentous play with knife and fork, and frequent applications to the Tower of Babel.
Scotland has, indeed, produced up to the present time only two pure Wordsworthian poets that are known in England—Thomas Aird, who worshipped Nature on the Scotch Border ; and John Campbell Shairp, who, although he knew the Border also, wor- shipped Nature chiefly in the Scotch Highlands. Neither can be said, more especially in his verse—Mr. Shairp's Words- worthian criticism is much to be preferred to his Wordsworthian poetry—to come within a measurable distance of his master. It is rather the general characteristics of their poetry, their joy in whatever is beautiful in Nature or in the Divine Economy of which even Nature is but apart, their reverence for the simplicities and purities which constitute three-fourths of practical life, perhaps above all things their capacity for the careful photo- graphy of all phenomena, material and moral, that came under their notice, which make them distinctly disciples of Wordsworth. The small volume which contains all Aird's poetical works—his "Summer Day," his "Winter Day," "The Swallows," and "The Devil's Dream "—and Shairp's still smaller volume of "Kilmahoe," may be known, more or less, to many, but, being Wordsworthian in essence, they are cherished only by a few. The very fact, however, that they are so cherished, renders it certain that where they are known at all they are known thoroughly, and renders also detailed criticism of them unnecessary. The points of agree- ment between Aird and Shairp we have already noted. As for points of differentiation, we are inclined to think that Shairp is most original when he escapes from Wordsworth into the Ossianic empyrean ; and that Aird is most at his ease when he blends Scott with Wordsworth. Both Aird and Shairp were conservative in religion, in morals, and after their fashion, in politics. Of the two, Aird was the less austere, or at least the more tolerant, perhaps because he passed his poetical apprenticeship at the feet of Wilson, and spent the latter half of his life within a stone's-throw of the grave of Burns. It seems to us that Shairp comes nearest his master in mood, as distinct from style, when dealing with a, purely religions subject, as in the beginning of his short poem on "Prayer : "—
"Ye tell us prayer is vain, that the divine plan Disowns it, and as waves indriven from mid-seas Break on the headlands, Nature's strong decrees Dash back his weakness on the heart of man. Against the universe who can prevail ? Will a voice cleave the everlasting bars ? The heart's poor sigh o'ersoar the loftiest stars, And through all laws to a Divine Will scale ?"
Aird, again, comes nearest his master's mood when reverence passes into mysticism, as in these lines from "A Summer Day :"— ." Here in their simple graves, The generations of the hamlet sleep ; All grassy simple, save that, here and there, Love.planted flowerets deck the lowly sod.
Fond love, we scorn thee not : to bring the bud Of living beauty from the ashes dear, Be still thine artless, emblematic war Against the dull dishonours of the grave. Bloom then, ye little flowers, and sweetly smell; Draw up the heart's dust in your flashing hues And odorous breath, and give it to the bee, And give it to the air, circling to go From life to life, through all that living flax Of interchange which makes this wondrous world."
Bat in Scotland, as in England, Wordsworth's influence has been felt in the regions of morals, religion, and even theology, rather than of poetry proper. There was much in common • between Wordsworth and Burns :— "True friends, tho' diversely inclined, But heart with heart and mind with mind, Where the main fibres are entwined, Through Nature's skill May even by contraries be joined More closely still."
But there was also much in common between Wordsworth's creed and the Calvinism of the Scotch pulpit and the Puritanism of the Scotch pew, which revolted against the Aristophanic riot of Burns's poetry, and were shocked by the errors and excesses of his life. When, therefore, the younger, more fervid, and more Liberal of Scotch theological students came—as they did before the century was fifty years old—to endeavour to adapt the preaching of their traditional theology to the spirit and wants of their times, they found their fountain of inspiration, not in Burns, bst in Wordsworth. Mr. Shairp has told how eagerly Norman Macleod drank of this fountain. "I verily believe," he says, "that Wordsworth did more for Norman, penetrating more deeply and vitally into him, puri- fying and elevating his thoughts and feelings at their fountain- head, than any other voice of uninspired man living or dead." Of all Scotch preachers since the days of Chalmers, Macleod has been the most influential, and through the contagion of his spirit rather than through direct teaching. What that spirit was he showed when, in his hour of trial, he said," So long as I have a good conscience towards God, and have His sun to shine on me, and can hear the birds singing, I can walk across the earth with a joyful and free heart." This is the creed of Wordsworthianism reduced to every-day practice. It is hardly too much to say that what is now known in Scotland as Broad-Churchism, and which Macleod did morethan any other man to populariseand humanise, is essentially Wordsworthianism. In a volume of" Scotch Ser- mons," edited appropriately enough by Professor Knight, which was published a few years ago, and which to all intents and pur- poses expressed the sentiments of Scotch Broad Churchism, we find these words in the course of a sermon by Principal Caird, of Glasgow :—" Then only have I attained to that which deserves the name of goodness, to that moral perfection of which Christ is the type, when law has passed into life, when duty has ceased to be a thing of self-denial, and has become a kind of self-indulgence, the expression of an irresistible inward impulse, the gratification of the deepest passion of the soul ; then only have I reached the elevation of nature to which Christ would exalt us, when I not only hearken to the voice of duty, but when, listening to the inmost utterances of my own spiritual nature, it is the very same accents I hear when the dictates of conscience not merely echo, but blend themselves inextinguishably with, the commands of the living God; and when, as I yield myself up to their sway, it is not two wills, but the one will of infinite goodness, that rules and reigns within me." This is the oratorio swell of Scotch pulpit eloquence; it is also the very attar of Wordsworthianism.
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