Studies in Literature | Page 4

and his wife, as well as to feed a
couple of pigs on the refuse. Wordsworth and his sister were settled at
Racedown, near Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire. In 1797 they moved to
Alfoxden, in Somersetshire, their principal inducement to the change
being Coleridge's society. The friendship bore fruit in the production of
Lyrical Ballads in 1798, mainly the work of Wordsworth, but
containing no less notable a contribution from Coleridge than the
Ancient Mariner. The two poets only received thirty guineas for their
work, and the publisher lost his money. The taste of the country was
not yet ripe for Wordsworth's poetic experiment.
Immediately after the publication of the _Lyrical Ballads_, the two
Wordsworths and Coleridge started from Yarmouth for Hamburg.

Coleridge's account in Satyrane's Letters, published In the _Biographia
Literaria_, of the voyage and of the conversation between the two
English poets and Klopstock, is worth turning to. The pastor told them
that Klopstock was the German Milton. "A very German Milton
indeed," they thought. The Wordsworths remained for four wintry
months at Goslar, in Saxony, while Coleridge went on to Ratzeburg,
Göttingen, and other places, mastering German, and "delving in the
unwholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic depths." Wordsworth
made little way with the language, but worked diligently at his own
verse.
When they came back to England, Wordsworth and his sister found
their hearts turning with irresistible attraction to their own familiar
countryside. They at last made their way to Grasmere. The opening
book of the _Recluse_, which is published for the first time in the
present volume, describes in fine verse the emotions and the scene. The
face of this delicious vale is not quite what it was when
"Cottages of mountain stone Clustered like stars some few, but single
most, And lurking dimly in their shy retreats, Or glancing at each other
cheerful looks Like separated stars with clouds between."
But it is foolish to let ourselves be fretted by the villa, the hotel, and the
tourist. We may well be above all this in a scene that is haunted by a
great poetic shade. The substantial features and elements of beauty still
remain, the crags and woody steeps, the lake, "its one green island and
its winding shores; the multitude of little rocky hills." Wordsworth was
not the first poet to feel its fascination. Gray visited the Lakes in the
autumn of 1769, and coming into the vale of Grasmere from the
north-west, declared it to be one of the sweetest landscapes that art ever
attempted to imitate, an unsuspected paradise of peace and rusticity.
We cannot indeed compare the little crystal mere, set like a gem in the
verdant circle of the hills, with the grandeur and glory of Lucerne, or
the radiant gladness and expanse of Como: yet it has an inspiration of
its own, to delight, to soothe, to fortify, and to refresh.
"What want we? have we not perpetual streams, Warm woods, and
sunny hills, and fresh green fields, And mountains not less green, and
flocks and herds, And thickets full of songsters, and the voice Of lordly
birds, an unexpected sound Heard now and then from morn to latest eve,
Admonishing the man who walks below Of solitude and silence in the

sky. These have we, and a thousand nooks of earth Have also these, but
nowhere else is found, Nowhere (or is it fancy?) can be found The one
sensation that is here;...'tis the sense Of majesty, and beauty, and repose,
A blended holiness of earth and sky, Something that makes this
individual spot, This small abiding-place of many men, A termination,
and a last retreat, A centre, come from wheresoe'er you will, A whole
without dependence or defect, Made for itself, and happy in itself,
Perfect contentment, Unity entire."
In the Grasmere vale Wordsworth lived for half a century, first in a
little cottage at the northern corner of the lake, and then (1813) in a
more commodious house at Rydal Mount at the southern end, on the
road to Ambleside. In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, of Penrith,
and this completed the circle of his felicity. Mary, he once said, was to
his ear the most musical and most truly English in sound of all the
names we have. The name was of harmonious omen. The two beautiful
sonnets that he wrote on his wife's portrait long years after, when
"morning into noon had passed, noon into eve," show how much her
large heart and humble mind had done for the blessedness of his home.
Their life was almost more simple than that of the dalesmen their
neighbours. "It is my opinion," ran one of his oracular sayings to Sir
George Beaumont, "that a man of letters, and indeed all public men of
every pursuit, should be severely frugal."