Wordsworth | Page 8

suddenly the scene Changed, and the
unbroken dream entangled me In long orations, which I strove to plead
Before unjust tribunals,--with a voice Labouring, a brain confounded,
and a sense, Death-like, of treacherous desertion, felt In the last place
of refuge--my own soul.
These years of perplexity and disappointment, following on a season of
overstrained and violent hopes, were the sharpest trial through which
Wordsworth ever passed. The course of affairs in France, indeed, was
such as seemed by an irony of fate to drive the noblest and firmest
hearts into the worst aberrations. For first of all in that Revolution,
Reason had appeared as it were in visible shape, and hand in hand with
Pity and Virtue; then, as the welfare of the oppressed peasantry began
to be lost sight of amid the brawls of the factions of Paris, all that was
attractive and enthusiastic in the great movement seemed to disappear,
but yet Reason might still be thought to find a closer realization here
than among scenes more serene and fair; and, lastly, Reason set in
blood and tyranny and there was no more hope from France. But those
who, like Wordsworth, had been taught by that great convulsion to
disdain the fetters of sentiment and tradition and to look on Reason as
supreme were not willing to relinquish their belief because violence
had conquered her in one more battle. Rather they clung with the
greater tenacity,-- "adhered," in Wordsworth's words,
More firmly to old tenets, and to prove Their temper, strained them
more;
cast off more decisively than ever the influences of tradition, and in
their Utopian visions even wished to see the perfected race severed in

its perfection from the memories of humanity, and from kinship with
the struggling past.
Through a mood of this kind Wordsworth had to travel now. And his
nature, formed for pervading attachments and steady memories,
suffered grievously from the privation of much which even the coldest
and calmest temper cannot forego without detriment and pain. For it is
not with impunity that men commit themselves to the sole guidance of
either of the two great elements of their being. The penalties of trusting
to the emotions alone are notorious; and every day affords some
instance of a character that has degenerated into a bundle of impulses,
of a will that has become caprice. But the consequences of making
Reason our tyrant instead of our king are almost equally disastrous.
There is so little which Reason, divested of all emotional or instinctive
supports, is able to prove to our satisfaction that a sceptical aridity is
likely to take possession of the soul. It was thus with Wordsworth; he
was driven to a perpetual questioning of all beliefs and analysis of all
motives,--
Till, demanding formal proof, And seeking it in everything, I lost All
feeling of conviction; and, in fine, Sick, wearied out with contrarieties,
Yielded up moral questions in despair.
In this mood all those great generalized conceptions which are the food
of our love, our reverence, our religion, dissolve away; and
Wordsworth tells us that at this time
Even the visible universe Fell under the dominion of a taste Less
spiritual, with microscopic view Was scanned, as I had scanned the
moral world.
He looked on the operations of nature "in disconnection dull and
spiritless;" he could no longer apprehend her unity nor feel her charm.
He retained indeed his craving for natural beauty, but in an uneasy and
fastidious mood,--
Giving way To a comparison of scene with scene, Bent overmuch on
superficial things, Pampering myself with meagre novelties Of colour

and proportion; to the moods Of time and season, to the moral power,
The affections, and the spirit of the place, Insensible.
Such cold fits are common to all religions: they haunt the artist, the
philanthropist, the philosopher, the saint. Often they are due to some
strain of egoism or ambition which has intermixed itself with the
impersonal desire; sometimes, as in Wordsworth's case, to the
persistent tension of a mind which has been bent too ardently towards
an ideal scarce possible to man. And in this case, when the objects of a
man's habitual admiration are true and noble, they will ever be found to
suggest some antidote to the fatigues of their pursuit. We shall see as
we proceed how a deepening insight into the lives of the peasantry
around him,--the happiness and virtue of simple Cumbrian
homes,--restored to the poet a serener confidence in human nature,
amid all the shame and downfall of such hopes in France. And that still
profounder loss of delight in Nature herself,--that viewing of all things
"in disconnection dull and spiritless," which, as it has been well said, is
the truest definition of Atheism, inasmuch as a unity in the universe