Biographia Literaria
A box, where sweets compacted lie
My music shews, ye have your closes,
And all must die.
THE BOSOM SIN:
A SONNET BY GEORGE HERBERT.
Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round,
Parents first season us; then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason, holy messengers,
Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises;
Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,
The sound of Glory ringing in our ears
Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.
Yet all these fences and their whole array
One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.
LOVE UNKNOWN.
Dear friend, sit down, the tale is long and sad
And in my faintings, I presume, your love
Will more comply than help. A Lord I had,
And have, of whom some grounds, which may improve,
I hold for two lives, and both lives in me.
To him I brought a dish of fruit one day,
And in the middle placed my heart. But he
(I sigh to say)
Look’d on a servant, who did know his eye,
Better than you know me, or (which is one)
Than I myself. The servant instantly,
Quitting the fruit, seiz’d on my heart alone,
And threw it in a font, wherein did fall
A stream of blood, which issued from the side
Of a great rock: I well remember all,
And have good cause: there it was dipt and dyed,
And wash’d, and wrung: the very wringing yet
Enforceth tears. “Your heart was foul, I fear.”
Indeed ’tis true. I did and do commit
Many a fault, more than my lease will bear;
Yet still ask’d pardon, and was not denied.
But you shall hear. After my heart was well,
And clean and fair, as I one eventide
(I sigh to tell)
Walk’d by myself abroad, I saw a large
And spacious furnace flaming, and thereon
A boiling caldron, round about whose verge
Was in great letters set AFFLICTION.
The greatness shew’d the owner. So I went
To fetch a sacrifice out of my fold,
Thinking with that, which I did thus present,
To warm his love, which, I did fear, grew cold.
But as my heart did tender it, the man
Who was to take it from me, slipt his hand,
And threw my heart into the scalding pan;
My heart that brought it (do you understand?)
The offerer’s heart. “Your heart was hard, I fear.”
Indeed ’tis true. I found a callous matter
Began to spread and to expatiate there:
But with a richer drug than scalding water
I bath’d it often, ev’n with holy blood,
Which at a board, while many drank bare wine,
A friend did steal into my cup for good,
Ev’n taken inwardly, and most divine
To supple hardnesses. But at the length
Out of the caldron getting, soon I fled
Unto my house, where to repair the strength
Which I had lost, I hasted to my bed:
But when I thought to sleep out all these faults,
(I sigh to speak)
I found that some had stuff’d the bed with thoughts,
I would say thorns. Dear, could my heart not break,
When with my pleasures ev’n my rest was gone?
Full well I understood who had been there:
For I had given the key to none but one:
It must be he. “Your heart was dull, I fear.”
Indeed a slack and sleepy state of mind
Did oft possess me; so that when I pray’d,
Though my lips went, my heart did stay behind.
But all my scores were by another paid,
Who took my guilt upon him. “Truly, Friend,
“For aught I hear, your Master shews to you
“More favour than you wot of. Mark the end.
“The font did only what was old renew
“The caldron suppled what was grown too hard:
“The thorns did quicken what was grown too dull:
“All did but strive to mend what you had marr’d.
“Wherefore be cheer’d, and praise him to the full
“Each day, each hour, each moment of the week
“Who fain would have you be new, tender quick.”
CHAPTER XX
The former subject continued--The neutral style, or that common to Prose
and Poetry, exemplified by specimens from Chaucer, Herbert, and others.
I have no fear in declaring my conviction, that the excellence defined
and exemplified in the preceding chapter is not the characteristic
excellence of Mr. Wordsworth’s style; because I can add with equal
sincerity, that it is precluded by higher powers. The praise of uniform
adherence to genuine, logical English is undoubtedly his; nay, laying
the main emphasis on the word uniform, I will dare add that, of all
contemporary poets, it is his alone. For, in a less absolute sense of
the word, I should certainly include Mr. Bowies, Lord Byron, and, as to
all his later writings, Mr. Southey, the exceptions in their works being
so few and unimportant. But of the specific excellence described in
the quotation from Garve, I appear to find more, and more undoubted
specimens in the works of others; for instance, among the minor poems of
Mr. Thomas Moore, and of our illustrious Laureate. To me it will always
remain a singular and noticeable fact; that a theory, which would
establish this lingua communis, not only as the best, but as the only
commendable style, should have proceeded from a poet, whose diction,
next to that of Shakespeare and Milton, appears to me of all others the
most individualized and characteristic. And let it be remembered too,
that I am now interpreting the controverted passages of Mr. Wordsworth’s
critical preface by the purpose and object, which he may be supposed to
have intended, rather than by the sense which the words themselves must
convey, if they are taken without this allowance.
A person of any taste, who had but studied three or four of
Shakespeare’s principal plays, would without the name affixed scarcely
fail to recognise as Shakespeare’s a quotation from any other play,
though but of a few lines. A similar peculiarity, though in a less
degree, attends Mr. Wordsworth’s style, whenever he speaks in his own
person; or whenever, though under a feigned name, it is clear that he
himself is still speaking, as in the different dramatis personae of
THE RECLUSE. Even in the other poems, in which he purposes to be most
dramatic, there are few in which it does not occasionally burst forth.
The reader might often address the poet in his own words with reference
to the persons introduced:
“It seems, as I retrace the ballad line by line
That but half of it is theirs, and the better half is thine.”
Who, having been previously acquainted with any considerable portion
of Mr. Wordsworth’s publications, and having studied them with a full
feeling of the author’s genius, would not at once claim as Wordsworthian
the little poem on the rainbow?
“The Child is father of the Man, etc.”
Or in the LUCY GRAY?
“No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor;
The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door.”
Or in the IDLE SHEPHERD-BOYS?
“Along the river’s stony marge
The sand-lark chants a joyous song;
The thrush is busy in the wood,
And carols loud and strong.
A thousand lambs are on the rocks,
All newly born! both earth and sky
Keep jubilee, and more than all,
Those boys with their green coronal;
They never hear the cry,
That plaintive cry! which up the hill
Comes from the depth of Dungeon-Ghyll.”
Need I mention the exquisite description of the Sea-Loch in THE BLIND
HIGHLAND BOY. Who but a poet tells a tale in such language to the little
ones by the fire-side as--
“Yet had he many a restless dream;
Both when he heard the eagle’s scream,
And when he heard the torrents roar,
And heard the water beat the shore
Near where their cottage stood.
Beside a lake their cottage stood,
Not small like our’s, a peaceful flood;
But one of mighty size, and strange;
That, rough or smooth, is full of change,
And stirring in its bed.
For to this lake, by night and day,
The great Sea-water finds its way
Through long, long windings of the hills,
And drinks up all the pretty rills
And rivers large and strong:
Then hurries back the road it came
Returns on errand still the same;
This did it when the earth was new;
And this for evermore will do,
As long as earth shall last.
And, with the coming of the tide,
Come boats and ships that sweetly ride,
Between the woods and lofty rocks;
And to the shepherds with their flocks
Bring tales of distant lands.”
I might quote almost the whole of his RUTH, but take the following
stanzas:
But, as you have before been told,
This Stripling, sportive, gay, and bold,
And, with his dancing crest,
So beautiful, through savage lands
Had roamed about with vagrant bands
Of Indians in the West.
The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult of a tropic sky,
Might well be dangerous food
For him, a Youth to whom was given
So much of earth--so much of heaven,
And such impetuous blood.
Whatever in those climes he found
Irregular in sight or sound
Did to his mind impart
A kindred impulse, seemed allied
To his own powers, and justified
The workings of his heart.
Nor less, to feed voluptuous thought,
The beauteous forms of nature wrought,
Fair trees and lovely flowers;
The breezes their own languor lent;
The stars had feelings, which they sent
Into those magic bowers.
Yet in his worst pursuits, I ween,
That sometimes there did intervene
Pure hopes of high intent
For passions linked to forms so fair
And stately, needs must have their share
Of noble sentiment.”
But from Mr. Wordsworth’s more elevated compositions, which already form
three-fourths of his works; and will, I trust, constitute hereafter a
still larger proportion;--from these, whether in rhyme or blank verse,
it would be difficult and almost superfluous to select instances of a
diction peculiarly his own, of a style which cannot be imitated without
its being at once recognised, as originating in Mr. Wordsworth. It would
not be easy to open on any one of his loftier strains, that does not
contain examples of this; and more in proportion as the lines are more
excellent, and most like the author. For those, who may happen to have
been less familiar with his writings, I will give three specimens
taken with little choice. The first from the lines on the BOY OF
WINANDER-MERE,--who
“Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,
That they might answer him.--And they would shout
Across the watery vale, and shout again,
With long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild
Of mirth and jocund din! And when it chanced,
That pauses of deep silence mocked his skill,
Then sometimes in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene [73]
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.”
The second shall be that noble imitation of Drayton [74] (if it was not
rather a coincidence) in the lines TO JOANNA.
--“When I had gazed perhaps two minutes’ space,