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	WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) was educated at the grammarschool of Hawkshead and St. John's College, Cambridge. In 1790he went on a walking tour in France, the Alps, and Italy. He returnedto France late in 1791 and spent a year there; the revolutionarymovement was then at its height and exercised a strong influenceon his mind. While in France he fell in love with the daughterof a surgeon at Blois, Annette Vallon, who bore him a daughter.When the French Revolution was followed by the English declarationof war and the Terror, Wordsworth's republican enthusiasm gaveplace to a period of pessimism. In 1795 he made the acquaintanceof S. T. Coleridge. A close and long-enduring friendship developedbetween the poets, and Wordsworth, with his sister Dorothy andMr. and Mrs. Coleridge, lived for a year in close intercourseat Alfoxden and Stowey in Somerset. Together the poets publishedin 1798 Lyrical Ballads, which marked a revival in English poetry.Together also, at the end of the same year, the poets went toGermany, Wordsworth and his sister wintering at Goslar. Here Wordsworthbegan The Prelude and wrote Ruth, Lucy Gray, the lines on Lucy,and other poems. He married in 1802 Mary Hutchinson of Penrith.Events abroad now changed his political attitude to one of patrioticenthusiasm. In 1805 he completed The Prelude which, however, wasnot published until after his death. In 1807 he moved to RydalMount, Grasmere, which he occupied till his death. In 1843 hesucceeded Southey as Poet Laureate and died in 1850.

	- thus it was that Wordsworth struck the critical eye of his localinnkeeper. Chaucer, likewise, cut no great figure in the opinionof Chaucer's Host; still a far less unhappy figure than this. And yet one of the essential things about Wordsworth is, precisely,his happiness. Few men, certainly few poets, have found so muchof it as the writer ofThe Happy Warrior. And, to complete hishappiness, he was himself aware of it. He was not, like Virgil'srustics, ignorant of his own bliss. "No one," he said,"has completely understood me - not even Coleridge. He is nothappy enough(Footnote 1). I am myself one of the happiest of men, andno man who lives a life of constant bustle and whose happinessdepends on the opinions of others can possibly comprehend thebest of my poems." What, then, was Wordsworth's secret? He was born with no silverspoon in his mouth. In youth he suffered both poverty and unhappypassion; nor was his the happy-go-lucky temper of a Leigh Hunt- he felt too violently. "Had I been a writer of love-poetry,it would have been natural to me to write it with a degree ofwarmth which could hardly have been approved of by my principles,and which might have been undesirable for the reader." Indeed,inThe Borderers there are moments as savagely embittered as Beddoes,as gloomy as modern Europe : ...We look But at the surfaces of things; we hear Of towns in flames, fields ravaged, young and old Driven out in troops to want and nakedness: Then grasp our swords and rush upon a cure That flatters us because it asks not thought: The deeper malady is better hid, The world is poisoned at the heart. Nor, again, did the key to Wordsworth's happiness lie simplyin his poetic gift. History is full of "mighty poets in theirmisery dead". For as often as not this gift of Apollo canprove a curse like Cassandra's. Nor was it his poetic success.For by thirty, it is said, Wordsworth had earned only £10,then earned no more till sixty-five; while if reviews could kill..... No, Wordsworth doggedly trod out his own path to happiness;because he knew himself, and how to find himself and, above all,how to lose himself. "I1 nous faut nous abestir pour nous assagir," "Inorder to become sages, we must first become beasts" observesthe wise Montaigne. "I have been too hard on my brother theass," said the dying St. Francis of his body. The authorofPeter Bell made no such mistake. He realized betimes how muchthe cities of our modern civilization are Cities of Destruction:he fled, with all the fervour of Bunyan's Pilgrim, from the snaresof material "Progress." No doubt all civilization must be an encroachment on Nature. Thosewho think it an argument against anything to call it "unnatural"should for consistency fling off their clothes and skip up thenearest tree. Yet encroach on Nature one step too far, and her revenges are terrible. She cannot prevent the giant-city smokingwhere once waved her woods; but her slow retribution sets itsmark on paling cheeks and failing nerves, on foreheads haggardwith the rush of modern life, on childless hearths. This is nonew revelation. Theocritus, Virgil, Horace, Montaigne, Ronsard,Cowley, Rousseau, Walt Whitman, W. H. Davies, D. H. Lawrence -all of them in their different times and ways have heard "abovethe roar of streets" the voice of her whom we may at momentsimagine we have tamed, but who can still destroy the minds andsouls, as well as the bodies, of all who outrage her. Yet Wordsworth, in his return to her, never grew morbid likeRousseau, or animal like D. H. Lawrence. "Love had he foundin huts where poor men lie." He did not try, like Whitman,"to turn and live with the animals". So to-day his isstill a living voice, crying in the wilderness its prophetic protest,not only against the unhealthiness of all over-civilization, butalso against the drab brutality of the machine-world and of themass-state. (He was not always a pleasant individual: but he wasalways individual.) He wrote no poem more characteristic thanResolution and Independence. And in our herd-age he still standsout in passionate opposition, as one who vindicates unceasinglythe freedom of soul not only of Shakespeare and Milton, but evenof leech-gatherers and old shepherds like Michael; the individualworth, to the eye of vision, of even the meanest flower, eventhe commonest clod. No doubt in later years he ossified. It is always one of the hardestthings in life to hold the balance between letting the world be"too much with us", and too little: and Wordsworth tendedto grow too much the Hermit of Grasmere, the Grand Lama of theLakes. But at least he never renounced his conviction that itis only states of mind and feeling that really matter; not things,nor machinery, nor even books (that was poor Southey's mistake)- for books, too, are machines, however good ones. This is the true Wordsworth who has ministered to so many mindsdiseased; not the defender of Capital Punishment or of the IrishChurch. This is the Wordsworth who was happy; so far as man canbe. Happiness consists largely, as in a grim boutade Johnson oncesuggested, in being drunk. But not in Johnson's literal sense;for that brings headache and repentance. "Enivrez-vous; enivrez-voussans cesse! De vin, de vertu, ou de poésie, a votre guise."Wordsworth, happier than Baudelaire, was a man intoxicated, notwith wine, but with brook-water; with the burn tumbling from Glaramara,with the wind across Helvellyn, with the spin of his own healthyCumberland blood. And these leave no stings behind. Hence his appeal to souls like J. S. Mill, who had grown froman infant-prodigy, nourished on book-dust and ink, into a desiccated,depressed young man. Hence his power over many minds, as the founderalmost of a new church, prophet as well as poet; wiser than Rousseau,though less wise, I feel, than Montaigne. Because of this simplestrength his work endures, without any of the rainbow magic ofColeridge, or the kiss of La Belle Dame sans Merci on the palelips of Keats, or the sun-shimmering mists of Shelley's vision,or the calling clarions of Scott, or the passionate gloom of Byron,or Landor's quiet, proud grace. He goes his own way, this grey,homespun man, who would wear his woollen stockings even to Court,under his silk ones: he goes his own way, but he does not loseit. As a "pure poet" he is easy to criticize. We can wellunderstand how, at exasperated moments, he seemed even to admirerslike Tennyson and Arnold "thick-ankled" and "aboor" ; to FitzGerald, "Daddy Wordsworth" ; toSwinburne, "Philistine"; to Rossetti, "good, youknow, but unbearable"; to Meredith inRichard Feverel, "asuperior donkey reclaimed from the heathen". His famous theoryof style is merely a natural revulsion frozen into a foolish rule;and his style in practice is often the very opposite of his owntheory, without being any the better for that. Even in his bestyears he could vandalize the simple beauty of Helen of Kirkconnelinto the unspeakable- He was seldom good at telling a story. He was seldom good atcharacters (unless, like Michael, they were kin to his own). Hischildren, in particular, are often odious. Even his central ideasare sometimes thin and parochial - above all, his worship of Natureas a sort of gentle Quakeress, which forgets how afew thousand miles to southward she becomes a gaudy murderess. And yet he remains a standing example of that mystery and miracle- inspiration, the power of the unconscious levels of the mind.As J. K. Stephen said, there are two wholly different Wordsworths.Suddenly in this rough block of granite the mica flashes out,like diamond, beneath the moon; on this blunt, whale-headed fellthe sunset strikes, like a great transfiguration, athwart, thegrey, crawling rags of mist, until ....the sky seems not a sky Of earth - and with what motion move the clouds! Like a great lonely ram he stalks across his moorlands; andto some souls he has been like the ram of Odysseus, carrying themout of their prisoning darkness to the light of deliverance. Thebell about his neck tolls on, deep-toned and moving; though ourhearts, indeed, can seldom dance to it. But Landor has said it all better, in words not the less truefor being half humorous (as all English hexameters, willy-nilly,tend to be): F. L. LUCAS.

- thus it was that Wordsworth struck the critical eye of his localinnkeeper. Chaucer, likewise, cut no great figure in the opinionof Chaucer's Host; still a far less unhappy figure than this.

And yet one of the essential things about Wordsworth is, precisely,his happiness. Few men, certainly few poets, have found so muchof it as the writer ofThe Happy Warrior. And, to complete hishappiness, he was himself aware of it. He was not, like Virgil'srustics, ignorant of his own bliss. "No one," he said,"has completely understood me - not even Coleridge. He is nothappy enough(Footnote 1). I am myself one of the happiest of men, andno man who lives a life of constant bustle and whose happinessdepends on the opinions of others can possibly comprehend thebest of my poems."

What, then, was Wordsworth's secret? He was born with no silverspoon in his mouth. In youth he suffered both poverty and unhappypassion; nor was his the happy-go-lucky temper of a Leigh Hunt- he felt too violently. "Had I been a writer of love-poetry,it would have been natural to me to write it with a degree ofwarmth which could hardly have been approved of by my principles,and which might have been undesirable for the reader." Indeed,inThe Borderers there are moments as savagely embittered as Beddoes,as gloomy as modern Europe :

...We look
But at the surfaces of things; we hear
Of towns in flames, fields ravaged, young and old
Driven out in troops to want and nakedness:
Then grasp our swords and rush upon a cure
That flatters us because it asks not thought:
The deeper malady is better hid,
The world is poisoned at the heart.

Nor, again, did the key to Wordsworth's happiness lie simplyin his poetic gift. History is full of "mighty poets in theirmisery dead". For as often as not this gift of Apollo canprove a curse like Cassandra's. Nor was it his poetic success.For by thirty, it is said, Wordsworth had earned only £10,then earned no more till sixty-five; while if reviews could kill.....

No, Wordsworth doggedly trod out his own path to happiness;because he knew himself, and how to find himself and, above all,how to lose himself.

"I1 nous faut nous abestir pour nous assagir," "Inorder to become sages, we must first become beasts" observesthe wise Montaigne. "I have been too hard on my brother theass," said the dying St. Francis of his body. The authorofPeter Bell made no such mistake. He realized betimes how muchthe cities of our modern civilization are Cities of Destruction:he fled, with all the fervour of Bunyan's Pilgrim, from the snaresof material "Progress."

No doubt all civilization must be an encroachment on Nature. Thosewho think it an argument against anything to call it "unnatural"should for consistency fling off their clothes and skip up thenearest tree. Yet encroach on Nature one step too far, and her revenges are terrible. She cannot prevent the giant-city smokingwhere once waved her woods; but her slow retribution sets itsmark on paling cheeks and failing nerves, on foreheads haggardwith the rush of modern life, on childless hearths. This is nonew revelation. Theocritus, Virgil, Horace, Montaigne, Ronsard,Cowley, Rousseau, Walt Whitman, W. H. Davies, D. H. Lawrence -all of them in their different times and ways have heard "abovethe roar of streets" the voice of her whom we may at momentsimagine we have tamed, but who can still destroy the minds andsouls, as well as the bodies, of all who outrage her.

Yet Wordsworth, in his return to her, never grew morbid likeRousseau, or animal like D. H. Lawrence. "Love had he foundin huts where poor men lie." He did not try, like Whitman,"to turn and live with the animals". So to-day his isstill a living voice, crying in the wilderness its prophetic protest,not only against the unhealthiness of all over-civilization, butalso against the drab brutality of the machine-world and of themass-state. (He was not always a pleasant individual: but he wasalways individual.) He wrote no poem more characteristic thanResolution and Independence. And in our herd-age he still standsout in passionate opposition, as one who vindicates unceasinglythe freedom of soul not only of Shakespeare and Milton, but evenof leech-gatherers and old shepherds like Michael; the individualworth, to the eye of vision, of even the meanest flower, eventhe commonest clod.

No doubt in later years he ossified. It is always one of the hardestthings in life to hold the balance between letting the world be"too much with us", and too little: and Wordsworth tendedto grow too much the Hermit of Grasmere, the Grand Lama of theLakes. But at least he never renounced his conviction that itis only states of mind and feeling that really matter; not things,nor machinery, nor even books (that was poor Southey's mistake)- for books, too, are machines, however good ones.

This is the true Wordsworth who has ministered to so many mindsdiseased; not the defender of Capital Punishment or of the IrishChurch. This is the Wordsworth who was happy; so far as man canbe. Happiness consists largely, as in a grim boutade Johnson oncesuggested, in being drunk. But not in Johnson's literal sense;for that brings headache and repentance. "Enivrez-vous; enivrez-voussans cesse! De vin, de vertu, ou de poésie, a votre guise."Wordsworth, happier than Baudelaire, was a man intoxicated, notwith wine, but with brook-water; with the burn tumbling from Glaramara,with the wind across Helvellyn, with the spin of his own healthyCumberland blood. And these leave no stings behind.

Hence his appeal to souls like J. S. Mill, who had grown froman infant-prodigy, nourished on book-dust and ink, into a desiccated,depressed young man. Hence his power over many minds, as the founderalmost of a new church, prophet as well as poet; wiser than Rousseau,though less wise, I feel, than Montaigne. Because of this simplestrength his work endures, without any of the rainbow magic ofColeridge, or the kiss of La Belle Dame sans Merci on the palelips of Keats, or the sun-shimmering mists of Shelley's vision,or the calling clarions of Scott, or the passionate gloom of Byron,or Landor's quiet, proud grace. He goes his own way, this grey,homespun man, who would wear his woollen stockings even to Court,under his silk ones: he goes his own way, but he does not loseit.

As a "pure poet" he is easy to criticize. We can wellunderstand how, at exasperated moments, he seemed even to admirerslike Tennyson and Arnold "thick-ankled" and "aboor" ; to FitzGerald, "Daddy Wordsworth" ; toSwinburne, "Philistine"; to Rossetti, "good, youknow, but unbearable"; to Meredith inRichard Feverel, "asuperior donkey reclaimed from the heathen". His famous theoryof style is merely a natural revulsion frozen into a foolish rule;and his style in practice is often the very opposite of his owntheory, without being any the better for that. Even in his bestyears he could vandalize the simple beauty of Helen of Kirkconnelinto the unspeakable-

He was seldom good at telling a story. He was seldom good atcharacters (unless, like Michael, they were kin to his own). Hischildren, in particular, are often odious. Even his central ideasare sometimes thin and parochial - above all, his worship of Natureas a sort of gentle Quakeress, which forgets how afew thousand miles to southward she becomes a gaudy murderess.

And yet he remains a standing example of that mystery and miracle- inspiration, the power of the unconscious levels of the mind.As J. K. Stephen said, there are two wholly different Wordsworths.Suddenly in this rough block of granite the mica flashes out,like diamond, beneath the moon; on this blunt, whale-headed fellthe sunset strikes, like a great transfiguration, athwart, thegrey, crawling rags of mist, until

....the sky seems not a sky
Of earth - and with what motion move the clouds!

Like a great lonely ram he stalks across his moorlands; andto some souls he has been like the ram of Odysseus, carrying themout of their prisoning darkness to the light of deliverance. Thebell about his neck tolls on, deep-toned and moving; though ourhearts, indeed, can seldom dance to it.

But Landor has said it all better, in words not the less truefor being half humorous (as all English hexameters, willy-nilly,tend to be):

F. L. LUCAS.

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