Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1884-12-25
Talts and Skrtthts.
Some En.Ilsl Classics.


comes TO lesser than to greater poets. For
the most part, literary history discovers
few brilliant advents of genius; itrecords
a slow, gradual ascent of the star TO the
zenith, with frequent over-cloudings anc.
sometimes. a long eclipse. Wordsworth
had the patience OF genius as truely as
its creative power; he could wait long
wears for the world to come round to him
and he is waiting still. There were q
few who recognized him early in his ca
reer. as a new and great force IN litera-
ture; there are many now who speak OF
him with that reverence which is rendered
only to the masters of the poetic art; but
compared with the following, which at
various times Scott, Byron and TeDnyson
have had, the lovers of Wordsworth are
but an handful, Nevertheless, the Judge
ment of the best minds has been not only
favorable to him. but urgent in its appeal
to the world for hearing and confirmation,
and to-day no enumeration of great names
in English poetry could by any possibility
omit the name of Wordsworth.
Born in Cumberland on April 7th, 1770,
the son OF an attorney-at-law he lost his
mother at eight and his father at IA years
of age. The firmness and decision which
were characteristic OF his maturity were
prophesied In early youth, in temper
which he himself describes as stiff. moody
and VIOLENT His school days, as he re-
called them in later life, were few and
happy; he read Fielding's novels, Don
Quixote. Gil Bias. and Swift; and better
still as an education for the great and
unique work to which he was called, he
had an open mind. as he roamed the fields
and woods and came under that spell of
nature which he was to extend over a gen.
Grafton OF poets, and to prolong, perhaps.
to the very end of our history. Entering
ST. Johns College, Cambridge, in the
autumn of 1887. Wordsworth drew from
the venerable university something bet
ter than her store of knowledge; be
felt the power of her unbroken
literary tradition, and fed his ma
ture with those memories and inspra-
tons which have never departed from the
place where Spencer, Milton, Dryden
Gray, and host of kindred spirits spent
years of thought and growth. The intel
lectual current at the universities was
sluggish in those DAYS. but if it had been
rapid it is doubtful if Wordsworth would
have gained much more than he did. His
was not an agile, vivacous mind; he was
| dW OiIcn uUCOu-
genial. He had in him something of the
isolation. the silence and the ruggedness
of those hills which he came to love so
much, and whose sublime voices will
never again be silent in human speech
because he found words for them.
| A brief residence in London and visit
to France. followed Immediately after
WOrdsworth's departure from Cambridge
in 1891; he felt the fever of the great rev.
olution which was focusing the thoughts
of all Europe on Paris, and passed from
the greatest hopefulness for the immedi-
ate future of humanity, into the deepest
despair. as the terrible drama advanced
stage by stage to its bloody climax. In
1898, Mr.. Cottle. OF Bristol. published q
little volume of poems under the title of
Lyrical Ballads" by William Words
worth. This slender little book contained
"Goody Blake" 1.-The Idiot Boy" and
several other pieces of verse that offered
even friendly critics every facility tor rid
icule; but it also contained those deep,
poetic Lines Written above Intern
Abbey" in which few discerning minds
saw the presence of new and unique
power in English poetry. This remarka-
BILE poem contains the very soul OF Words
worth's conception of nature and life. and
gives us, in few lines the secret of his
power.
The secret is twofold a secret of in
sight and secret of method. Other poets
had given us wonderful glimpses into the
mighty movement of the natural world;
from Chaucer's time, English poetry had
been rich in descriptions, illusions, SMILES
drawn from nature; but Wordsworth was
the first English poet to grasp nature as a
whole and make US feel the presence.
"Of something more deeply Interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and In the mind of man;
motion and apirt. that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things"
1t is this Interpretation of the universal
element in nature which gives the verse
of Wordsworth an unfailing charm for the
most poetic minds, and makes it in some
sense test of ones power to enter into
the highest moods of poetry. This deep
insight into the source of natural phenom-
ena gave a wonderful freshness to the ex-
ternal aspects of nature, and we find in
many of the shorter poems quality which
| is like the bloom of the rose, at once the
most striking and the most conclusive of
all its properties. The ten years between
| 1898 and 1908. registered the high-water
mark of Wordsworth's genius; to those
years belong those brief but perfect crea-
tons, the "Daffodils," the four poems
which grew out of his Highland tour. the
sonnets on Westminster Bridge and
"Calais Sands" 1t was during this de-
cade. that his genius triumphed over a
temperament less sensitive to poetic infiu-
ences than many poet of far less power
has possessed, and kindled nature cold
and reserved to an unusual degree. When
the tide OF inspiration subsidized, as it did
in later years. it laid bare that foundation
of theory on which the poet believed he
had constructed the whole body of his
| poetry. but which, it is hardly necessary
to say. one cannot find beneath his best
work; that had its roots in the soil OF
nature itself and not in the aridity of
| theory.
! His great service to the generation to
whom he first spoke Law in the fact that he
led them back to nature. GRAY had in a
way, redIscovered nature and Cowper had
broken away from the artificial and purely
mechanical traditions which were crushing
the soul out of English poetry. but Words
worth, tar more richly endowed than
either of his predecessors, saw clearly
that which they knew mainly bv instinct,
and did boldly and intelhgently that which
they did timidly and half-unconsciously