Wordsworth | Page 7

Orleans and learn French. Up to this date the French Revolution had
impressed him in a rather unusual manner,--namely, as being a matter
of course. The explanation of this view is a somewhat singular one.
Wordsworth's was an old family, and his connexions were some of
them wealthy and well placed in the world; but the chances of his
education had been such, that he could scarcely realize to himself any
other than a democratic type of society. Scarcely once, he tells us, in
his school days had he seen boy or man who claimed respect on the
score of wealth and blood; and the manly atmosphere of Cambridge
preserved even in her lowest days a society
Where all stood thus far Upon equal ground; that we were brothers all
In honour, as in one community, Scholars and gentlemen;
while the teachings of nature and the dignity of Cumbrian peasant life
had confirmed his high opinion of the essential worth of man. The
upheaval of the French people, therefore, and the downfall of privilege,
seemed to him no portent for good or evil, but rather the tardy return of
a society to its stable equilibrium. He passed through revolutionized
Paris with satisfaction and sympathy, but with little active emotion, and
proceeded first to Orleans, and then to Blois, between which places he
spent nearly a year. At Orleans he became intimately acquainted with
the nobly-born but republican general Beaupuis, an inspiring example
of all in the Revolution that was self-devoted and chivalrous and had
compassion on the wretched poor. In conversation with him
Wordsworth learnt with what new force the well-worn adages of the
moralist fall from the lips of one who is called upon to put them at once
in action, and to stake life itself on the verity of his maxims of honour.
The poet's heart burned within him as he listened. He could not indeed
help mourning sometimes at the sight of a dismantled chapel, or
peopling in imagination the forest-glades in which they sat with the
chivalry of a bygone day. But he became increasingly absorbed in his
friend's ardour, and the Revolution--mulier formosa superne--seemed

to him big with all the hopes of man.
He returned to Paris in October 1792,--a month after the massacres of
September; and he has described his agitation and dismay at the sight
of such world-wide destinies swayed by the hands of such men. In a
passage which curiously illustrates that reasoned self-confidence and
deliberate boldness which for the most part he showed only in the
peaceful incidents of a literary career, he has told us how he was on the
point of putting himself forward as a leader of the Girondist party, in
the conviction that his singleheartedness of aim would make him, in
spite of foreign birth and imperfect speech, a point round which the
confused instincts of the multitude might not impossibly rally.
Such a course of action,--which, whatever its other results, would
undoubtedly have conducted him to the guillotine with his political
friends in May 1793,--was rendered impossible by a somewhat
undignified hindrance. Wordsworth, while in his own eyes "a patriot of
the world," was in the eyes of others a young man of twenty-two,
travelling on a small allowance, and running his head into unnecessary
dangers. His funds were stopped, and he reluctantly returned to
England at the close of 1792.
And now to Wordsworth, as to many other English patriots, there came,
on a great scale, that form of sorrow which in private life is one of the
most agonizing of all--when two beloved beings, each of them erring
greatly, become involved in bitter hate. The new-born Republic flung
down to Europe as her battle-gage the head of a king. England, in an
hour of horror that was almost panic, accepted the defiance, and war
was declared between the two countries early in 1793. "No shock," says
Wordsworth,
Given to my moral nature had I known Down to that very moment;
neither lapse Nor turn of sentiment that might be named A revolution,
save at this one time;
and the sound of the evening gun-fire at Portsmouth seemed at once the
embodiment and the premonition of England's guilt and woe.

Yet his distracted spirit could find no comfort in the thought of France.
For in France the worst came to the worst; and everything vanished of
liberty except the crimes committed in her name.
Most melancholy at that time, O Friend! Were my day-thoughts, my
nights were miserable. Through months, through years, long after the
last beat Of those atrocities, the hour of sleep To me came rarely
charged with natural gifts-- Such ghastly visions had I of despair, And
tyranny, and implements of death;... And levity in dungeons, where the
dust Was laid with tears. Then