UNIV. OF

VINNOJIVO

LECTURE I.

WORDSWORTH.

'THE PRELUDE ETC.

'THE PRELUDE,' Wordsworth's longest poem, it is my purpose to examine to-day. At the same time, I do not propose to look at it entirely by itself. I have come to this decision mainly because it is connected in a remarkable-from some points of view, in a melancholy-manner, with all that is highest in Wordsworth's poetical achievements, with all that is likely to be most enduring in his poetical renown. Even on its own merits it well deserves a close and careful examination; but we must travel outside of this poem, and beyond it, if we wish to understand its full significance, both whilst the author was writing his 'Prelude,' and again, immediately after it had been written and completed. Taken by itself, it is, if not the best, at any rate, one of the most interesting productions of the age to which it belongs. Indeed, in one respect it stands, so far as I know, alone. No other poem occurs to me of equal length, of equal importance, composed by a great poet, at the very time when all his faculties were in their fullest vigour, which yet was kept apart and hidden away for so many years. 'Nonumque prematur in annum' has become a proverb to express the ne plus ultra of discreet reticence and self-criticising suppression. But Wordsworth suppressed 'The Prelude,' not for nine years only, but for forty years at least. Nay, as far as he personally is concerned, when we remember how profound

was his instinct of immortality, how deeply-rooted his faith in the future destinies of the human spirit, we cannot help saying even more than this. According to his notions, everything that earth can bestow becomes, immediately after man's transference to a higher state of things, absolutely valueless and childish We may then fairly say that 'The Prelude' was suppressed for good and all. This I affirm, because it was not given to us by him, but rescued from oblivion by others after his death; and because, in this very poem by him so suppressed, we see of how little importance what is called posthumous fame appeared to Wordsworth, in comparison with all that is reserved for man, after he has passed beyond the limits of time. With solemn emphasis he, ranking among the few to whom a lasting reputation has been vouchsafed, finely expresses his conviction that the immortal soul, whatever its intellectual achievements here, must discover, as soon as it has been uplifted into other conditions of existence, that it has outgrown all the trappings and equipments belonging to its infancy on earth. It will have passed out of the atmosphere and surroundings where such things have any reality or purpose. Accordingly, in speaking of the power and permanence of man's literary work, this is what he says:

Thou also, man, hast wrought,
For commerce of thy nature with itself,

Thoughts that aspire to unconquerable life :
And yet we feel, we cannot choose but feel,

That they must perish. Tremblings of the heart

It gives, to think that our immortal spirits
No more shall need such garments.

If, therefore, I do not misinterpret him, Wordsworth deliberately sacrificed this gigantic composition, during all those years when to publish it would have had a meaning for him. That this was anything but a light sacrifice for a poet possessed, and worthily possessed, by so high an opinion of himself and his own works, I need scarcely tell you. To proceed, however,

let us hear his own account of what 'The Prelude' was, or, at least, was intended to be :

:

'Several years ago, when the author retired to his native mountains, with the hope of being able to construct a literary work that might live, it was a reasonable thing that he should take a review of his own mind, and examine how far nature and education had fitted him for such an employment. As subsidiary to this preparation, he undertook to record in verse the origin and progress of his own powers, so far as he was acquainted with them. The preparatory poem (that is, this very Prelude), is biographical, and conducts the author's mind to the point where he was emboldened to hope that his faculties were sufficiently matured, for entering on the arduous labour which he had proposed to himself; and the two works (namely "The Prelude," and "The Recluse," which came to nothing as a whole), have the same kind of relationship to each other as the antechapel has to the body of a Gothic church.'

One would have said that this passage, instinct as it is with a modest confidence and a noble self-dedication to the poet's art, augured well for the poet's hopes. But, alas for the vanity of all human wishes! Alas for the evanescence of all human expectations! 'The Prelude' was begun in 1799, it was finished in the summer of 1805. Now, after 1805 or 1806, at latest, the history of Wordsworth's mental progress was, comparatively speaking, of little importance to mankind. Those faculties which 'The Prelude' was to test and gauge may have been matured, but they were also somewhat chilled. Much fruit ripened, no doubt, after these years; but it did not ripen as genially as it should have done; and it is out of the beauty of promise, not out of the beauty of fulfilment, or the fondly anticipated harvests of perfection, that Wordsworth's wreath of immortality has, after all, to be woven. It is, if we may borrow his own metaphor, ' Of budding roses, not of roses in full bloom,' that his unfading coronal has been framed. The Prelude,' begun, as I have said in 1799, and ended in 1805, was looked upon by its author scarcely as a poem in itself; it was rather the stedfast and solemn preparation for a poetical career. In other words, it was, as he tells us, only a prelude. The great

ode of his life was destined to be sung to higher music; when the self-examination had been carried into effect, the education completed, the strength measured and ascertained. Alas! I say again, for the vanity of human wishes! for the evanescence of human expectations! The trained poet, who was so eager and so confident, rejoicing as a giant to run his course, did indeed run his course as a giant; but he ran it whilst the prelude was being written-whilst the process of education was going on-not after it had been accomplished and left behind. And this, perhaps, may be one reason-a somewhat melancholy reason, as I have said-why the world at large knew little or nothing of 'The Prelude,' till all worldly reputation had become 'the dream of a shadow,' till the eyes and ears of the poet were occupied by other lights, and other harmonies, than those of earth.

I know very well that the imagination helps us, when we speak of Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, and the like, to raise up forms and pictures for the mind, without consciously analysing them into their ultimate elements. But if they are so analysed what we really mean is this. By Lord Byron we now mean 'Childe Harold,' 'Manfred,' 'The Siege of Corinth,' 'Don Juan,' &c. By Shelley, Alastor,' 'Adonais,' 'The Cenci,' and so on. By Wordsworth, in like manner, we mean little more than a certain number of his poems. And if we look into the matter, we shall find that, when 'The Prelude' was written and finished, these poems, or, at any rate, the great majority of them, were written and finished also. You can easily verify this statement for yourselves. Without wearying you by a long list of names, I will only observe that the 'Lines on Revisiting Tintern Abbey' were written in 1799; 'The Brothers' in 1800; and the 'Ode on the Anticipations of Immortality,' the latest, I think, of Wordsworth's productions, revealing his genius at its highest point of energy, between 1803 and 1806.

The principal effort made by him to surpass his earlier self, in the after years, was, perhaps, when he wrote 'The Excursion'