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Non-Fictional
Prose
by
Charles G.D. Roberts
Edited
by D.M.R. Bentley and Laurel Boone
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Wordsworth's
Poetry*
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If it be true, as Arnold said,
that "almost every one who has praised Wordsworth’s
poetry has praised it well," the explanation
is perhaps not far to seek. It lies partly in
the poetry itself, whose charm stands so small
a chance of being discovered by the undiscriminating
or vulgarized by the familiarities of incompetent
enthusiasm; and partly in the fact that the lovers
of Wordsworth have felt the task of justifying
their passion to the world to be one that required
the exercise of their utmost powers. At the present
day, when Wordsworth criticism, having freed itself
from the personal element, has ceased to be controversial,
it is easy to understand the vehement differences
of opinion between critics on the subject of Wordsworth’s
genius. We can comprehend, and perhaps make allowance
for, the attitude of Jeffrey when, on reading
the "Lyrical Ballads," he exclaimed
"This will never do!" We can appreciate,
on the other hand, the veiled enthusiasm of Arnold,
which led him to set Wordsworth immediately after
Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, in the pantheon of
modern poets, and to claim for him a definite
superiority over his equals— Hugo, Byron, Shelley,
Heine, Burns, and others. There could hardly be
a more persuasive and seemingly disinterested
statement of an extravagant claim than is afforded
by Arnold’s famous essay. For all the pains he
took to divest himself of prejudice, Arnold was
biased by that very Wordsworthianism which, in
some of its more obtrusive phases, he impales
so delicately on the point of his urbane derision.
Arnold was brought up in the camp of militant
Wordsworthianism; and there was that in Wordsworth’s
poetry which responded irresistibly to Arnolds
personal needs, as also to the personal needs
of many others of the best minds of England, fretted
as they were by the modern unrest. Hence it was
as inevitable that Arnold should tend to an overestimate
of Wordsworth, as that he should fall into a depreciation
of Shelley;—so hard is it to be absolutely judicial
in regard to a concern so personal and so intimate
as poetry. Had Arnold belonged a generation later,
or had he looked with the eyes of continual criticism
we can hardly doubt that he would have placed
Wordsworth amid, rather that above, the little
band of great singers who made the youth of this
century magnificent.
With a fairness all too rare
among critics, Arnold himself warns us that he
is under the sway of an enthusiasm; for at the
close of his plea he confesses that which proclaims
him incapable of estimating Wordsworth by those
rigid standards of criticism which to others he
applied with a precision so unerring. He says:—"I
can read with pleasure and edification Peter
Bell, and the whole
series of Ecclesiastical Sonnets, and the
address to Mr. Wilkinson’s spade, and even the
Thanksgiving Ode;—everything of Wordsworth,
I think, except Vaudracour and Julia.
It is not for nothing that one has been brought
up in the veneration of a man so truly worthy
of homage; that one has seen and heard him, lived
in his neighborhood, and been familiar with his
country."
We may be reasonably sure that
only a
profound personal veneration could enable Arnold
to read with pleasure and edification such lines
as:
"But
when the pony moved his legs,
Oh! then for the poor idiot
boy!
For joy he cannot hold the bridle,
For joy his head and heels are idle,
He’s idle all for
very joy."
This is not an unfair specimen
of the puerility which goes to make up a large
part of what Arnold confesses to reading with
pleasure and edification. A vastly larger portion
is distinguished mainly by a colossal dullness,
a platitude which can only be realized in the
mass, and of which no quotation could convey an
adequate idea. There is little room to hope that
the intelligent reader, who begins his acquaintance
with Wordsworth by The
Idiot Boy, or Peter
Bell, or even by the
lines on Simon Lee (which Mr. Palgrave has unhappily
included in his admirable anthology), can easily
be brought to share in Arnold’s veneration, or
to believe that Wordsworth was a man "so
truly worthy of homage." It is very unprofitable
to ignore the fact that the larger portion of
Wordsworth’s verse is worthless; and only by a
frank avowal of the fact can we expect to secure
a fair judgment. By such a frank avowal we rule
out all that mass of commonplace, or worse, which
has hopelessly alienated so many lovers of poetry;
and we bring under consideration nothing but that
select body of verse by which alone Wordsworth
ought to be judged,— verse meagre indeed in quantity,
but of a quality hardly to be matched. It is pretty
safe to assume that criticism will continue to
agree with Arnold as to the supreme excellence
of that portion of Wordsworth’s verse which was
truly inspired. Where the elimination of the personal
element is likely to tell most markedly against
Arnold’s conclusions, will be seen in the shrinkage
which must, I think, take place in the number
of Wordsworth’s poems accepted as ranking among
the truly inspired.
In
the foregoing paragraphs I have endeavored to
show that severe selection was called for in order
that full justice might be done to the genius
of Wordsworth,—a selection more severe and discriminating
than would be necessary in the case of any other
poet equally great. For the present volume there
is yet more sufficient justification. Justice
to the student whose mind is in a state to receive
and to accept first impressions, makes it imperative
that he should be brought first in contact with
Wordsworth’s genius through the medium of a volume
of selections, and thus saved from the false impression
he would be sure to receive if he plunged at once
into the stupefying wilderness of Wordsworth’s
Complete Works. The
distinctive excellence of Wordsworth’s poetry
is something so high, so ennobling, so renovating
to the spirit, that it can be regarded as nothing
short of a calamity for one to acquire a preconception
which will seal him against its influence. One
so sealed is deaf to the voice which, more than
any other in modern song, conveys the secret of
repose. To be shut out from hearing Wordsworth’s
message is to lose the surest guide we have to
those regions of luminous calm which this breathless
age so needs for its soul’s health. Wordworth’s
peculiar province is that border-land wherein
Nature and the heart of Man act and react upon
each other. His vision is occupied not so much
with Nature as with the relations between Nature
and his inmost self. No other poet, of our race
at least, has made so definite and intelligible
the terms of our communion with external Nature.
But it must be always born in mind that of great
poets there are those, like Dante, Shakespeare,
Goethe, whose greatness is orbic and universal,
and those again, of a lower station, whose greatness
may be set forth as lying within certain more
or less determinable limits. Among these latter,
and high among them, we may be sure that Wordsworth
will hold unassailable place. |
"Wordsworth's
Poetry," introduction to Poems of Wordsworth
(From Arnold's Selections), ed. J.E.
Wetherell (Toronto: Gage, 1892), 28-32 [back]
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