George S. Phillips

“ And yet Wordsworth is abused for his tameness and want of inspiration! Dead asses and idiots, Peter Bells and Waggoners, it is said, are not elevated facts enough for poetry! The foolish objectors do not understand how all poetry is based upon facts, and how the most obscure things become purified and poetic, when they are raised by imagination, and placed in new connections of thought. It is the province of the Poet to elevate the homely, and to beautify the mean. To him, indeed, nothing is mean, nothing worthless. What God has made, he, the exponent of God, shall love and honour. ”

“ Surely, Wordsworth was worthy of his{164} sweet cottage, and sweeter and dearer sister, and his glorious lake, with its one green island,—his mountains, and woods, and dales,—his church, and the cottages, “clustered like stars,” around it; for he had the great heart, and large brain, which Nature makes the condition for all those who would share her communion. And, then, his tastes were so simple, natural, and unaffected; he lived so close to Nature, and knew so many of her secrets, and loved her too, with the passion of a first and only love. ”

“ This idea so unique and at the same time so splendid, he was enabled to realize: and posterity, at the distance of six centuries, beholds with ineffable delight and admiration, a composition, the outlines and details of which, for their beauty and variety, render it one of the noblest facades in existence. Towards the north and south are two lofty turrets, flanked at the angles by clustered shafts, rising from a projecting base and crowned with spires, the height of which from the ground, makes a square with the breadth of the front. ”

“ It is useless to question and criticise in our foolish manner the new bard of God, whoever{25} he may be, or under what circumstances soever he may appear among us. He does not live by questionings and logical inductions, but by faith and inspiration. Entranced in the miracle of his own existence, with all these vast orbs of immensity pressing upon his brain, and the silent creatures of the fair earth stealing like noiseless musical shadows into the temple of his soul, he has no time to consult the critics whether this or that mode of reproducing them is the orthodox one. ”

“ The other thing that hapned of more fatal consequences was this:—it being that time of the year when young lads are busie in rifling jackdaws nests to get their young, a scholar of the free-school, a son to a parliament officer, was got upon the top of the minster about this employment; who going along the cieling in the body of the church, and treading unwarily on some rotten boards, fell down from thence, upon the loft where the organ now stands, having his pockets filled with those inauspicious birds, and with the fall from so great a height, was slain outright and never stirred more. ”

“ Wordsworth came to tear away the mask, and spurn the dead from her temple.
The great object of Wordsworth’s life was to win men back, by his poetic example, to an admiration and love of the natural in all its aspects. To him nature is not only divine and glorious as a whole, but equally so in all her parts. In the meanest worm that crawls, in the tinyest flower and the rankest weed ”

“ It is indeed one of the finest specimens which the universe can produce, of the Pointed style of architecture. As a west front, scarcely any in this kingdom can be brought into comparison with it for beauty of proportion, and elegance of design. The west fronts of the cathedrals of Wells, York, and Lichfield have been mentioned as surpassing it in some respects; and in point of richness of detail, the two first may be perhaps considered as superior to it; but they all of them fall far short of Peterborough in the grandeur of their general effect. ”

“ And it was necessary, if Wordsworth was to be any thing, that he should continue this foolish habit of dreaming, of rhyming, and writing, into which he had so singularly fallen. For in her education of the poet, Nature—who is a wise teacher and developer—always adopts one regular method, although she frequently varies the process: and this method consists in impressing the mind with her manifold forms, colours, sounds, and works, that they may hereafter be reproduced in the glorious imagination of the poet, and shine, like rich mosaics, in the wisdom of his teaching. ”

“ With such a mother as this, it is no wonder that Wordsworth—in spite of his occasional devilry—was a happy and joyous boy. He looks back, indeed, in after life, upon the home and scenes of his childhood, as upon some enchanted region. He has no withering recollections of poverty or distress; all is sunshine and delight. The sweet, melodious, and romantic Derwent is the syren of these dreams, and it sings with wondrous music in his verse. ”

“ That the Normans not only employed a peculiar style and character in the buildings of their own provence, and in England, after they possessed this country, is sufficiently proved by history, by the older edifices still remaining, and by the admission of the best informed antiquaries. It seems to me therefore absurd, as well as false, to say there is no Norman architecture—that the term is misapplied,—that the Normans were incompetent either to invent a novelty in art, or improve upon any thing of their Saxon predecessors. ”

“ In all the departments of literature, the same lifelessness and uniformity were manifest. The deadest materialism prevailed both in science and philosophy, and the national soul seemed paralyzed beneath the weight of a dire, unknown, unseen incubus of death. In the meanwhile, however, there were influences at work both in England and Europe, which were silently preparing the way for a revolution in the thoughts and opinions of men. The spiritual element awoke in Germany and France, and like a mighty, but half-blind god, began to react upon the materialism of the age. ”

“ First then they demolished Queen Katherin's tomb, Henry the Eighth his repudiated wife: they break down the rails that enclosed the place, and take away the black velvet pall which covered the herse,—overthrow the herse itself, displaced the gravestone that lay over her body, and have left nothing now remaining of that tomb, but only a monument of their own shame and villany. The like they had certainly done to the Queen of Scots, but that her herse and pall were removed with her body to Westminster by King James the First, when he came to the crown. ”

“ We see Orion, like the starry skeleton of a mighty giant, go forth into the solitudes of unfathomable space; we witness the planting of the solar stars, and hear the everlasting roar of the vast sun, as it wheels, seething from God’s hands, upon its fiery axis; and these unspeakable sights are heightened in their magnificence and terrific grandeur by the poet, who holds us fast to their symbolical meaning, and chains them to the being of God, as the expressions in appearance of His thoughts and will. ”

“ The arches and windows are bounded by buttresses, which are broken by offsets and empannelled with niches. Besides these, the porch is flanked with staircases, one on each side, forming three parts of an octagon, and leading to an apartment now used as a library. The summit is closed with an embattled parapet, having a pediment at each end, and one in the centre. The surface of the walls is enriched with canopied niches, pilasters, brackets, panel work, and string courses in all the wildness and profusion which distinguish the last stage of gothic architecture. ”

“ The greatest deductions from Miss Wordsworth’s attractions, and from the exceeding interest which surrounded her in right of her character, her history, and the relation which she fulfilled towards her brother, was the glancing quickness of her motions, and other circumstances in her deportment—such as her stooping attitude when walking, which gave an ungraceful, and even an unsexual character to her appearance when out of doors. She did not cultivate the graces which preside over the person and its carriage. ”

“ In the progress of great undertakings it not unfrequently happens that fresh objects present themselves to the mind, which at first were not thought of. Such appears to have been the case in respect of this cathedral, the architect of which, while completing the front, seems to have caught a new idea—that of erecting two lofty turrets beyond the outer angles of the transept, towards the west, and of converting the intermediate space into a sort of piazza, by arches constructed in front of the nave and closed in above by a vaulted roof. ”

“ I describe myself as having been exalted to the highest pitch of delight by the joyousness and beauty of Nature; and then as depressed, even in the midst of these beautiful objects, to the lowest dejection and despair. A young poet in the midst of the happiness of Nature is described as overwhelmed by the thoughts of the miserable reverses which have befallen the happiest of all men—viz., poets. ”

“ He is the awful Seer, who unveils the spirit of Nature and looks with solemn and unscathed eyes upon her naked loveliness and terror.{26} The Beloved of God, he is admitted into the very presence of the Invisible, and reports, in such wild and strange words as he can find, the sights he has beheld there. He is the renovator of man and Nature. He lifts the human soul upon his daring wings, and carries it into light and immortality. ”

“ A wet or gloomy day, even in summer, reduces it to little more than a wildish pond, surrounded by miniature hills; and the sole circumstances which restore the sense of a romantic region, and an Alpine character, are the knowledge (but not the sense) of endless sylvan scenery, stretching for twenty miles to the sea-side, and the towering groups of Langdale and Grasmere fells, which look over the little pasture barrier of Esthwaite, from distances of eight, ten, and fourteen miles. ”

“ Every new poet—every genius indeed that is divine—is a notification to us that the world of things is about to be classified anew, and to assume a deeper meaning. And certainly one would think that so great an announcement might gladden the hearts of men, instead of making them savage and ferocious at it. For of all men the poet is highest and noblest. ”

“ I had looked upon Wordsworth as a kind-hearted, generous, and unselfish man; noble, friendly, and without the vanity which has so often blurred the fair page of a great man’s nature. I was sorry to find that I was mistaken in this estimate of the poet; and that he, like me, and all the rest of us, had faults and failings manifold. De Quincy’s own account of his first visit to Wordsworth, the deep reverence with which he regarded him, and the overwhelming feelings which beset him on the occasion, is very affecting ”

“ Notwithstanding the confusion of his outer circumstances, and the general aimless tenor of his life, Wordsworth did not entirely neglect his own culture—and in the silence of the academic groves, by the sweetly remembered Cam, or in his own rooms in the Gothic court of St. John’s, he brooded over the problems of life,{76} death, and immortality. The ghosts of the mighty dead haunted him likewise, as he walked through the familiar places, where they were wont to walk whilst dwelling in their earthly tenements, and roused him, at times, to commence anew the race of learning and distinction. ”

“ His chaste simplicity is the work of an artist, and by no means the necessity of a limited intellect. If this fact were borne in mind by his detractors, it is not unlikely that they would be less furious when they speak of him. For an author should always be read, measured, and judged by his own standard, and not by ours.—Nothing can be more absurd than the subjection of a poet to any critical canon or authority. ”

“ He does not seem to me to be a great poet in either of the classes of poets. At the head of the first I would place Homer and Shakspeare, whose universal minds are able to reach every variety of thought and feeling, without bringing his own individuality before the reader. They infuse, they breathe life into every object they approach, but you cannot find themselves. At the head of the second class, those whom you can trace individually in all they write, I would place Spenser and Milton. In all that Spenser writes, you can trace the gentle, affectionate spirit of the man ”

“ Montgomery had sent Wordsworth a copy of his poems, and in reply, the poet answers: “I cannot conclude without one word of literary advice which I hope you will deem my advanced age entitles me to give. Do not, my dear sir, be anxious about any individual’s opinion concerning your writings, however highly you may think of his genius, or rate his judgment. Be a severe critic to yourself; and depend upon it no person’s decision upon the merit of your works will bear comparison in point of value with your own. ”

“ There is a continued opening between the trees, a narrow slip of green turf, besprinkled with flowers, chiefly daisies; and here it is that this pretty path plays its pranks, weaving among the turf and flowers at its pleasure.” And it was in these woods, just five days after their introduction to each other, that Wordsworth and De Quincy spent a whole glorious morning in wild ramblings and in conversation. ”

“ In my ardour to attain the goal, I do not forget the nature of the ground where the race is to be run. The destruction of those institutions which I condemn, appears to me to be hastening on too rapidly. I abhor the very idea of a revolution. I am a determined enemy to every species of violence. ”

“ It is our acknowledged want of sympathy with the common, which induced Wordsworth to devote his life and attention to the awakening of it. He knew that whatever is touched{23} by genius is converted into gold, and stamped thenceforth as sacred, by the impress of its image. The Betty Foys of human existence, although they, too, are “encompassed by eternity,” and destined to the same futurity as the Queens Elizabeth and Mary, have never, before Wordsworth’s time, had a poetic priest high enough to make them religious by his love and fidelity to them. ”