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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-185o)

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Originally appearing in Volume V28, Page 831 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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WILLIAM See also:WORDSWORTH (1770-185o)  , 'See also:English poet, was See also:born at See also:Cockermouth, on the See also:Derwent, in See also:Cumberland, on the 7th of See also:April 1770 . He was the son of See also:John See also:Wordsworth (1741-1783), an See also:attorney, See also:law See also:agent to the first See also:earl of See also:Lonsdale, a prosperous See also:man in his profession, descended from an old See also:Yorkshire See also:family of landed gentry . On the See also:mother's See also:side also Wordsworth was connected with the See also:middle territorial class:his mother, See also:Anne Cookson, was the daughter of a well-to-do See also:mercer in See also:Penrith, but her mother was Dorothy Crackanthorpe, whose ancestors had been lords of the See also:manor of Newbiggin, near Penrith, from the See also:time of See also:Edward III . He thus came of " See also:gentle " See also:kin, and was proud of it . The See also:country squires and farmers whose See also:blood flowed in Wordsworth's See also:veins were not far enough above See also:local See also:life to be out of sympathy with it, and the poet's See also:interest in the See also:common scenes and common folk of the See also:North country hills and dales had a traceable hereditary See also:bias . See also:William Wordsworth was one of a family of five, the others being See also:Richard (1768-1816), Dorothy (q.v.), John (1772-1805), and See also:Christopher (q.v.) . Though his parents were of sturdy stock, both died prematurely, his mother when he was eight years old, his See also:father when he was thirteen . At the See also:age of eight Wordsworth was sent to school at Hawkshead, in the Esthwaite valley in See also:Lancashire . His father died while he was there, and at the age of seventeen he was sent to St John's See also:College, See also:Cambridge . He did not distinguish himself in the studies of the university, and for some time after taking his degree of B.A., in See also:January 1791, he showed what seemed to his relatives a most perverse reluctance to adopt any See also:regular profession . His mother had noted his " stiff, See also:moody and violent See also:temper " in childhood, and it seemed as if this family See also:judgment was to be confirmed in his manhood . After taking his degree, he was pressed to take See also:holy orders, but would not; he had no See also:taste for the law; he idled a few months aimlessly in See also:London, a few months more with a Welsh college friend, with whom he had made a pedestrian tour in See also:France and Switzer-See also:land during his last Cambridge vacation; then in the See also:November of 1791 he crossed to France, ostensibly to learn the See also:language, made the acquaintance of revolutionaries, sympathized with them vehemently, and was within an See also:ace of throwing in his See also:lot with the Girondins .

When it came to this, his relatives cut off his supplies, and he was obliged to return to London towards the See also:

close of 1792 . But still he resisted all pressure to enter any of the regular professions, published his poems An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches in 1793, and in 1794, still moving about to all See also:appearance in stubborn aimlessness among his See also:friends and relatives, had no more rational purpose of livelihood than See also:drawing up the See also:prospectus of a periodical of strictly republican principles to be called " The Philanthropist." But all the time from his boyhood upwards a See also:great purpose had been growing and maturing in his mind . The Prelude expounds in lofty impassioned See also:strain how his sensibility for nature was " augmented and sustained," and how it never, except for a brief See also:interval, ceased to be " creative " in the See also:special sense of his subsequent theory . But it is with his feelings to-wards nature that The Prelude mainly deals; it says little regarding the See also:history of his ambition to See also:express those feelings in See also:verse . It is the autobiography, not of the poet of nature, but of the worshipper and See also:priest . The salient incidents in the history of the poet he communicated in See also:prose notes and in See also:familiar discourses . Commenting on the See also:couplet in the Evening Walk " And, fronting the See also:bright See also:west, See also:yon See also:oak entwines Its darkening boughs and leaves in stronger lines—" he said: " This is feebly and imperfectly exprest; but I recollect distinctly the very spot where this first struck me . It was on the way between Hawkshead and See also:Ambleside, and gave me extreme See also:pleasure . The moment was important in my poetical history; for I date from it my consciousness of the See also:infinite variety of natural appearances which had been unnoticed by the poets of any age or country, so far as I was acquainted with them; and I made a See also:resolution to See also:supply in some degree the deficiency . I could not at that time have been above fourteen years of age." About the same time he wrote, as a school task at Hawkshead, verses that show considerable acquaintance with the poets of his own country at least, as well as some previous practice in the See also:art of verse-making.' The fragment that stands at the ' See also:Memoirs of William Wordsworth, by See also:Canon Wordsworth, vol. i. pp. to, u . According to his own statement in the memoranda dictated to his biographer, it was the success of this exercise that " put it into his See also:head to compose verses from the impulse of his own beginning of his collected See also:works, recording a resolution to end his life among his native hills, was the conclusion of a See also:long poem written while he was still at school . And, undistinguished as he was at Cambridge in the contest for See also:academic honours, the Evening Walk, his first publication, was written during his vacations.' He published it in 1793, to show, as he said, that he could do something, although he had not distinguished himself in university See also:work .

There are touches here and there of the See also:

bent of See also:imagination that became dominant in him soon after-wards, notably in the moral aspiration that accompanies his Remembrance of See also:Collins on the See also:Thames:-- " O glide, See also:fair stream! for ever so Thy quiet soul on all bestowing, Till all our minds for ever flow As thy deep See also:waters now are flowing." But in the See also:main this first publication represents the poet in the See also:stage described in the twelfth See also:book of The Prelude: " Bent overmuch on superficial things, Pampering myself with meagre novelties Of See also:colour and proportion ; to the moods Of time and See also:season, to the moral See also:power, The affections, and the spirit of the See also:place Insensible." But, though he had not yet found his distinctive aim as a poet, he was inwardly bent upon See also:poetry as " his See also:office upon See also:earth." In this determination he was strengthened by his See also:sister Dorothy (q.v.), who with rare devotion consecrated her life henceforward to his service . A timely See also:legacy enabled them to carry their purpose into effect . A friend of his, whom he had nursed in a last illness, Raisley See also:Calvert, son of the steward of the See also:duke of See also:Norfolk, who had large estates in Cumberland, died See also:early in 1995, leaving him a legacy of boo . It may be well to See also:notice how opportunely, as De Quincey See also:half-ruefully remarked, See also:money always See also:fell in to Wordsworth, enabling him to pursue his poetic career without See also:distraction . Calvert's See also:bequest came to him when he was on the point of concluding an engagement as a journalist in London . On it and other small resources he and his sister, thanks to her frugal management, contrived to live for nearly eight years . By the end of that time See also:Lord Lonsdale, who owed Wordsworth's father a large sum for professional services, and had steadily refused to pay it, died, and his successor paid the See also:debt with interest . His wife, See also:Mary See also:Hutchinson, whom he married on the 4th of See also:October 18o2, brought him some See also:fortune; and in 1813, when in spite of his See also:plain living his family began to See also:press upon his income, he was appointed See also:stamp-distributor for See also:Westmorland, with an income of £500, afterwards nearly doubled by the increase of his See also:district . In 1842, when he resigned his stamp-distributorship, See also:Sir See also:Robert See also:Peel gave him a See also:Civil See also:List See also:pension of £300 . To return, however, to the course of his life from the time when he resolved to labour with all his See also:powers in the office of poet . The first two years, during which he lived with his self-sacrificing sister at Racedown, in See also:Dorset, were spent in half-hearted and very imperfectly successful experiments, satires in See also:imitation of See also:Juvenal, the tragedy of The Borderers,2 and a poem in the Spenserian See also:stanza, now entitled See also:Guilt and Sorrow . How much longer this time of self-distrustful endeavour might have continued is a subject for curious See also:speculation; an end was put to it by a fortunate incident, a visit from See also:Coleridge, who had read his first publication, and seen in it, what none of the public critics had discerned, the See also:advent of " an See also:original poetic See also:genius." mind." The resolution to supply the deficiencies of poetry in the exact description of natural appearances was probably formed while he was in this See also:state of boyish See also:ecstasy at the accidental See also:revelation of his own powers .

The date of his beginnings as a poet is confirmed by the lines in The Idiot Boy, written in 1798 " I to the See also:

Muses have been See also:bound These fourteen years by strong indentures." ' In The Prelude, book iv., he speaks of himself during his first vacation as " harassed with the toil of verse, much pains and little progress." 2 Not published till 1842 . For the history of this tragedy see Memoirs, vol. i. p . 113; for a See also:sound, if severe, See also:criticism of it, A . C . See also:Swinburne's Miscellanies, p . 118 . And yet it was of the See also:blank verse of The Borderers that Coleridge spoke when he wrote to Cottle that " he See also:felt a little man by the side of his friend." Stubborn and See also:independent as Wordsworth was, he needed some friendly See also:voice from the See also:outer See also:world to give him confidence in himself . Coleridge rendered him this indispensable service . He had begun to seek his themes in " Sorrow, that is not sorrow, but delight; And miserable love, that is not See also:pain To hear of, for the See also:glory that redounds Therefrom to human See also:kind, and what we are." He read to his visitor one of these experiments, the See also:story of the ruined cottage, afterwards introduced into the first book of The Excursion .3 Coleridge, who had already seen original poetic genius in the poems published before, was enthusiastic in his praise of them as having " a See also:character, by books not hitherto reflected." See also:June 1797 was the date of this memorable visit . So pleasant was the companionship on both sides that, when Coleridge returned to Nether Stowey, in See also:Somerset, Wordsworth at his instance changed his quarters to Alfoxden, within a mile and a half of Coleridge's temporary See also:residence, and the two poets lived in almost daily intercourse for the next twelve months . During that See also:period Wordsworth's powers rapidly See also:expanded and matured; ideas that had been gathering in his mind for years, and lying there in dim confusion, felt the stir of a new life, and ranged themselves in clearer shapes under the fresh quickening breath of Coleridge's See also:swift and discursive See also:dialectic . The Lyrical See also:Ballads were the poetic fruits of their See also:companion-See also:ship .

Out of their frequent discussions of the relative value of common life and supernatural incidents as themes for imaginative treatment See also:

grew the See also:idea of See also:writing a See also:volume together, composed of poems of the two kinds . Coleridge was to take the super-natural; and, as his See also:industry was not equal to his friend's, this kind was represented by the See also:Ancient Mariner alone . Among Wordsworth's contributions were The See also:Female Vagrant, We are Seven, Complaint of a Forsaken See also:Indian Woman, The Last of the See also:Flock, The Idiot Boy, The Mad Mother (" Her eyes are See also:wild "), The See also:Thorn, Goody See also:Blake and Harry Gill, The See also:Reverie of Poor Susan, See also:Simon See also:Lee, Expostulation and Reply, The Tables Turned, Lines See also:left upon a See also:Yew-See also:tree Seat, An Old Man Travelling (" See also:Animal Tranquillity and Decay "), Lines above Tintern See also:Abbey . The volume was published by Cottle of See also:Bristol in See also:September 1798 . It is necessary to enumerate the contents of this volume in fairness to the contemporaries of Wordsworth, for their See also:cold or scoffing reception of his first distinctive work . Those Wordsworthians who give up The Idiot Boy,' Goody Blake and The Thorn as mistaken experiments have no right to See also:triumph over the first derisive critics of the Lyrical Ballads, or to wonder at the dullness that failed to see at once in this humble issue from an obscure provincial press the advent of a great See also:master in literature . It is true that Tintern Abbey was in the volume, and that all the highest qualities of Wordsworth's imagination and of his verse could be illustrated from the lyrical ballads proper in this first publication; but clear See also:vision is easier for us than it was when the revelation was fragmentary and incomplete . Although Wordsworth was not received at first with the respect to which he was entitled, his power was not entirely without recognition . There is a curious commercial See also:evidence of this, which ought to be noted, because a perversion of the fact is sometimes used to exaggerate the supposed neglect of Wordsworth at the outset of his career . When the See also:Longmans a The version read to Coleridge, however, must have been in Spenserian stanzas, if Coleridge was right in his recollection that it was in the same See also:metre with The Female Vagrant, the original See also:title of Guilt and Sorrow . ' The defect of The Idiot Boy is really rhetorical, rather than poetic . Wordsworth himself said that " he never wrote anything with so much See also:glee," and, once the source of his glee is felt in the nobly affectionate relations between the two half-witted irrational old See also:women and the glorious See also:imbecile, the work is seen to be executed with a See also:harmony that should satisfy the most exacting criticism .

Poetically, there-fore, the poem is a success . But rhetorically this particular See also:

attempt to "breathe grandeur upon the very humblest See also:face of human life " must be pronounced a failure, inasmuch 'as the writer did not use sufficiently forcible means to disabuse his readers of vulgar prepossessions . took over Cottle's See also:publishing business in 1799, the value of the See also:copyright of the Lyrical Ballads, for which Cottle had paid See also:thirty guineas, was assessed at nil . Cottle therefore begged that it might be excluded altogether from the bargain, and presented it to the authors . But in i800, when the first edition was exhausted, the Longmans offered Wordsworth Doc) for two issues of a new edition with an additional volume and an explanatory See also:preface . The sum was small compared with what See also:Scott and See also:Byron soon afterwards received, but it shows that the public neglect was not quite so See also:complete as is sometimes represented . Another edition was called for in 18oa, and a See also:fourth in 18o5 . The new volume in the 1800 edition was made up of poems composed during his residence at See also:Goslar in See also:Germany (where he went with Coleridge) in the See also:winter of 1798-1799, and after his See also:settlement at See also:Grasmere in See also:December 1799 . It contained a large portion of poems now universally accepted :—See also:Ruth, Nutting, Three Years She Grew, A Poet's See also:Epitaph, Hartleap Well, See also:Lucy See also:Gray, The See also:Brothers, See also:Michael, The Old Cumberland See also:Beggar, Poems on the Naming of Places . But it contained also the famous Preface, in which he infuriated critics by presuming to defend his eccentricities in an elaborate theory of poetry and poetic diction . This document (and let it be noted that all Wordsworth's Prefaces are of the utmost interest in See also:historical See also:literary criticism) is constantly referred to as a sort of revolutionary See also:proclamation against the established taste of the 18th See also:century . For one who has read Wordsworth's original, hundreds have read Coleridge's brilliant criticism, and the fixed conception of the doctrines put forth by Wordsworth is taken from that.' It is desirable, therefore, considering the celebrity of the affair, that Words-See also:worth's own position should be made clear .

Coleridge's criticism of his friend's theory proceeded avowedly " on the See also:

assumption that his words had been rightly interpreted, as purporting that the proper diction for poetry in See also:general consists altogether in a language taken, with due exceptions, from the mouths of men in real life, a language which actually constitutes the natural conversation of men under the See also:influence of natural feelings." Coleridge assumed further that, when Wordsworth spoke of there being " no essential difference between the language of prose and metrical See also:composition," he meant by language not the See also:mere words but the See also:style, the structure and the See also:order of the sentences; on this assumption he argued as if Wordsworth had held that the metrical order should always be the same as the prose order . Given these assumptions, which formed the popular See also:interpretation of the theory by its opponents, it was easy to demonstrate its absurdity, and Coleridge is very generally supposed to have given Wordsworth's theory in its See also:bare and naked extravagance the coup de grdce . But the truth is that neither of the two assumptions is warranted; both were expressly disclaimed by Wordsworth in the Preface itself . There is not a single qualification introduced by Coleridge that was not made by Wordsworth himself in the original statement ? In the first place, it was not put forward as a theory of poetry in general, though from the vigour with which he carried the See also:war into the enemy's country it was naturally enough for polemic purposes taken as such; it was a statement and See also:defence of the principles on which his own poems of humbler life were composed . Wordsworth also assailed the public taste as " depraved," first i Sir See also:Henry See also:Taylor, one of the most acute and judicious of Words-worth's champions, came to this conclusion in 1834 . 2 Although Coleridge makes the qualifications more prominent than they were in the original statement, the two theories are at bottom so closely the same that one is sometimes inclined to suspect that parts, at least, of the original emanated from the fertile mind of Coleridge himself . The two poets certainly discussed the subject together in Somerset when the first ballads were written, and Coleridge was at Grasmere when the Preface was prepared in 'Soo . The diction of the Preface is curiously Hartleian, and, when they first met, Coleridge was a devoted See also:disciple of See also:Hartley, naming his first son after the philosopher, while Wordsworth detested See also:analytic See also:psychology . If Coleridge did contribute to the original theory in 1798 or 'Soo, he was likely enough to have forgotten the fact by 1814 . At any See also:rate, he evidently wrote his criticism without making a close study of the Preface, and what he did in effect was to restate the original theory against popular misconceptions of it.and mainly in so far as it was adverse to See also:simple incidents simply treated, being accustomed to " See also:gross and violent stimulants," " craving after extraordinary incident," possessed with a " degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation," " frantic novels, sickly and stupid See also:German tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse." This, and not adherence to the classical See also:rule of See also:Pope, which had really suffered deposition a See also:good half century before, was the first See also:count in Wordsworth's defensive See also:indictment of the taste of his age . As regards the " poetic diction," the liking for which was the second count in his indictment of the public taste, it is most explicitly clear that, when he said that there was no essential difference between the language of poetry and the language of prose, he meant words, plain and figurative, and not structure and order, or, as Coleridge otherwise puts it, the " ordonnance " of composition .

Coleridge says that if he meant this he was only uttering a truism, which nobody who knew Wordsworth would suspect him of doing; but, See also:

strange to say, it is as a truism, nominally acknowledged by everybody, that Wordsworth does advance his See also:doctrine on this point . Only he adds—" if in what I am about to say it shall appear to some that my labour is unnecessary, and that I am like a man fighting a See also:battle without enemies, such persons may be reminded that, whatever be the language outwardly See also:holden by men, a See also:practical faith in the opinions which I am wishing to establish is almost unknown." What he wished to establish was the simple truth that what is false, unreal, affected, bombastic or nonsensical in prose is not less so in verse . The See also:form in which he expresses the theory was conditioned by the circumstances of the polemic, and readers were put on a false See also:scent by his purely incidental and See also:collateral and very much overstrained defence of the language of rustics, as being less conventional and more permanent, and therefore better fitted to afford materials for the poet's selection . But this was a side issue, a paradoxical See also:retort on his critics, seized upon by them in turn and made prominent as a See also:matter for easy ridicule; all that he says on this head might be cut out of the Preface without affecting in the least his main thesis . The See also:drift of this is fairly apparent all through, but stands out in unmistakable clearness in his criticism of the passages from See also:Johnson and See also:Cowper: " But the sound of the See also:church-going See also:bell These valleys and rocks never heard, Ne'er sighed at the sound of a knell Or smiled when a See also:Sabbath appeared." The epithet " church-going " offends him as a puritan in See also:grammar; whether his objection is well founded or See also:ill founded, it applies equally to prose and verse . To represent the valleys and rocks as sighing and smiling in the circumstances would appear feeble and absurd in prose composition, and is not less so in metrical composition; " the occasion does not justify such violent expressions." These are examples of all that Wordsworth meant by saying that " there is no essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition." So far is Wordsworth from contending that the metrical order should always be the same as the prose order, that See also:part of the Preface is devoted to a subtle See also:analysis of the See also:peculiar effect of metrical arrangement . What he See also:objects to is not departure from the structure of prose, but the assumption, which seemed to him to underlie the criticisms of his ballads, that a writer of verse is not a poet unless he uses artificially ornamental language, not justified by the strength of the emotion expressed . The furthest that he went in defence of prose structure in poetry was to maintain that, if the words in a verse happened to be in the order of prose, it did not follow that they were prosaic in the sense of being unpoetic—a side-stroke at critics who complained of his prosaisms for no better See also:reason than that the words stood in the order of prose composition . Wordsworth was far from repudiating See also:elevation of style in poetry . " If," he said, " the poet's subject be judiciously chosen, it will naturally, and upon See also:fit occasion, See also:lead him to passions the language of which, if selected truly and judiciously, must necessarily be dignified and variegated, and alive with metaphors and figures." Such was Wordsworth's theory of poetic diction . Nothing could be more grossly mistaken than the notion that the greater part of Wordsworth's poetry was composed in See also:defiance of his own theory, and that he succeeded best when he set his own theory most at defiance . The misconception is traceable to the authority of Coleridge .

His just, sympathetic and penetrating criticism on Wordsworth's work as a poet did immense service in securing for him a wider recognition; but his proved friendship and brilliant style have done sad injustice to the poet as a theorist . It was natural to assume that Coleridge, if any-See also:

body, must have known what his friend's theory was; and it was natural also that readers under the See also:charm of his lucid and melodious prose should gladly See also:grant themselves a See also: