Wordsworth | Page 5

became
an index of delight, Of grace and honour, power and worthiness.
"This sanctity of Nature given to man,"--this interfusion of human
interest with the sublimity of moor and hill,--formed a typical
introduction to the manner in which Wordsworth regarded mankind to
the end,--depicting him as set, as it were, amid impersonal influences,
which make his passion and struggle but a little thing; as when painters
give but a strip of their canvas to the fields and cities of men, and
overhang the narrowed landscape with the space and serenity of
heaven.
To this distant perception of man--of man "purified, removed, and to a
distance that was fit"--was added, in his first summer vacation, a

somewhat closer interest in the small joys and sorrows of the villagers
of Hawkshead,--a new sympathy for the old Dame in whose house the
poet still lodged, for "the quiet woodman in the woods," and even for
the "frank-hearted maids of rocky Cumberland," with whom he now
delighted to spend an occasional evening in dancing and country mirth.
And since the events in this poet's life are for the most part inward and
unseen, and depend upon some stock and coincidence between the
operations of his spirit and the cosmorama of the external world, he has
recorded with especial emphasis a certain sunrise which met him as he
walked homewards from one of these scenes of rustic gaiety,--a sunrise
which may be said to have begun that poetic career which a sunset was
to close:
Ah! Need I say, dear Friend! That to the brim My heart was full; I
made no vows, but vows Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, A dedicated Spirit.
His second long vacation brought him a further gain in human
affections. His sister, of whom he had seen little for some years, was
with him once more at Penrith, and with her another maiden,
By her exulting outside look of youth And placid under-countenance,
first endeared;
whose presence now laid the foundation of a love which was to be
renewed and perfected when his need for it was full, and was to be his
support and solace to his life's end. His third long vacation he spent in a
walking tour in Switzerland. Of this, now the commonest relaxation of
studious youth, he speaks as of an "unprecedented course," indicating
"a hardy slight of college studies and their set rewards." And it seems,
indeed, probable that Wordsworth and his friend Jones were actually
the first undergraduates who ever spent their summer in this way. The
pages of the Prelude which narrate this excursion, and especially the
description of the crossing of the Simplon,--
The immeasurable height Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,--
form one of the most impressive parts of that singular autobiographical

poem, which, at first sight so tedious and insipid, seems to gather force
and meaning with each fresh perusal. These pages, which carry up to
the verge of manhood the story of Wordsworth's career, contain,
perhaps, as strong and simple a picture as we shall anywhere find of
hardy English youth,--its proud self-sufficingness and careless
independence of all human things. Excitement, and thought, and joy,
seem to come at once at its bidding; and the chequered and struggling
existence of adult men seems something which it need never enter, and
hardly deigns to comprehend.
Wordsworth and his friend encountered on this tour many a stirring
symbol of the expectancy that was running through the nations of
Europe. They landed at Calais "on the very eve of that great federal
day" when the Trees of Liberty were planted all over France. They met
on their return
The Brabant armies on the fret For battle in the cause of liberty.
But the exulting pulse that ran through the poet's veins could hardly yet
pause to sympathize deeply even with what in the world's life appealed
most directly to ardent youth.
A stripling, scarcely of the household then Of social life, I looked upon
these things As from a distance; heard, and saw, and felt-- Was touched,
but with no intimate concern. I seemed to move along them as a bird
Moves through the air--or as a fish pursues Its sport, or feeds in its
proper element. I wanted not that joy, I did not need Such help. The
ever-living universe, Turn where I might, was opening out its glories;
And the independent spirit of pure youth Called forth at every season
new delights, Spread round my steps like sunshine o'er green fields.
CHAPTER II.
RESIDENCE IN LONDON AND IN FRANCE.
Wordsworth took his B.A. degree in January, 1791, and quitted
Cambridge with no fixed intentions as to his future career. "He did not
feel himself," he said long