The Crown of Wild Olive
must not forget that, over yonder, are the Andes, all the while.
Wordsworth's rank and scale among poets were determined by himself, in a
single exclamation:--
'What was the great Parnassus' self to thee,
Mount Skiddaw?'
Answer his question faithfully, and you have the relation between the
great masters of the Muse's teaching, and the pleasant fingerer of his
pastoral flute among the reeds of Rydal.
Wordsworth is simply a Westmoreland peasant, with considerably less
shrewdness than most border Englishmen or Scotsmen inherit; and no sense
of humour: but gifted (in this singularly) with vivid sense of natural
beauty, and a pretty turn for reflections, not always acute, but, as far
as they reach, medicinal to the fever of the restless and corrupted life
around him. Water to parched lips may be better than Samian wine, but do
not let us therefore confuse the qualities of wine and water. I much
doubt there being many inglorious Miltons in our country churchyards;
but I am very sure there are many Wordsworths resting there, who were
inferior to the renowned one only in caring less to hear themselves
talk.
With an honest and kindly heart, a stimulating egoism, a wholesome
contentment in modest circumstances, and such sufficient ease, in that
accepted state, as permitted the passing of a good deal of time in
wishing that daisies could see the beauty of their own shadows, and
other such profitable mental exercises, Wordsworth has left us a series
of studies of the graceful and happy shepherd life of our lake country,
which to me personally, for one, are entirely sweet and precious; but
they are only so as the mirror of an existent reality in many ways more
beautiful than its picture.
But the other day I went for an afternoon's rest into the cottage of one
of our country people of old statesman class; cottage lying nearly
midway between two village churches, but more conveniently for downhill
walk towards one than the other. I found, as the good housewife made tea
for me, that nevertheless she went up the hill to church. 'Why do not
you go to the nearer church?' I asked. 'Don't you like the clergyman?'
'Oh no, sir,' she answered, 'it isn't that; but you know I couldn't
leave my mother.' 'Your mother! she is buried at H---- then?' 'Yes, sir;
and you know I couldn't go to church anywhere else.'
That feelings such as these existed among the peasants, not of
Cumberland only, but of all the tender earth that gives forth her fruit
for the living, and receives her dead to peace, might perhaps have been,
to our great and endless comfort, discovered before now, if Wordsworth
had been content to tell us what he knew of his own villages and people,
not as the leader of a new and only correct school of poetry, but simply
as a country gentleman of sense and feeling, fond of primroses, kind to
the parish children, and reverent of the spade with which Wilkinson had
tilled his lands: and I am by no means sure that his influence on the
stronger minds of his time was anywise hastened or extended by the
spirit of tunefulness under whose guidance he discovered that heaven
rhymed to seven, and Foy to boy.
Tuneful nevertheless at heart, and of the heavenly choir, I gladly and
frankly acknowledge him; and our English literature enriched with a new
and a singular virtue in the aerial purity and healthful rightness of
his quiet song;--but _aerial_ only,--not ethereal; and lowly in its
privacy of light.
A measured mind, and calm; innocent, unrepentant; helpful to sinless
creatures and scatheless, such of the flock as do not stray. Hopeful at
least, if not faithful; content with intimations of immortality such as
may be in skipping of lambs, and laughter of children,--incurious to see
in the hands the print of the Nails.
A gracious and constant mind; as the herbage of its native hills,
fragrant and pure;--yet, to the sweep and the shadow, the stress and
distress, of the greater souls of men, as the tufted thyme to the laurel
wilderness of Tempe,--as the gleaming euphrasy to the dark branches of
Dodona.
* * * * *
[I am obliged to defer the main body of this paper to next
month,--revises penetrating all too late into my lacustrine seclusion;
as chanced also unluckily with the preceding paper, in which the reader
will perhaps kindly correct the consequent misprints, p. 29, l. 20, of
'scarcely' to 'securely,' and p. 31, l. 34, 'full,' with comma, to
'fall,' without one; noticing besides that _Redgauntlet_ has been
omitted in the italicised list, p. 25, l. 16; and that the reference to
note 2 should not be at the word 'imagination,' p. 24, but at the word
'trade,' p. 25, l. 7. My dear old friend, Dr. John Brown, sends me, from
Jamieson's _Dictionary_, the following satisfactory end to one of my
difficulties:--'Coup the crans.' The language is borrowed from the
'cran,' or trivet on which small pots are placed in cookery, which is
sometimes turned with its feet uppermost by an awkward assistant. Thus
it signifies to be _completely_ upset.]
JOHN RUSKIN.
[BYRON.]
'Parching summer hath no warrant
To consume this crystal well;
Rains, that make each brook a torrent,
Neither sully it, nor swell.'
So was it, year by year, among the unthought-of hills. Little Duddon and
child Rotha ran clear and glad; and laughed from ledge to pool, and
opened from pool to mere, translucent, through endless days of peace.
But eastward, between her orchard plains, Loire locked her embracing
dead in silent sands; dark with blood rolled Iser; glacial-pale,
Beresina-Lethe, by whose shore the weary hearts forgot their people, and
their father's house.
Nor unsullied, Tiber; nor unswoln, Arno and Aufidus; and Euroclydon high
on Helle's wave; meantime, let our happy piety glorify the garden rocks
with snowdrop circlet, and breathe the spirit of Paradise, where life is
wise and innocent.
Maps many have we, now-a-days clear in display of earth constituent, air
current, and ocean tide. Shall we ever engrave the map of meaner
research, whose shadings shall content themselves in the task of showing
the depth, or drought,--the calm, or trouble, of Human Compassion?
For this is indeed all that is noble in the life of Man, and the source
of all that is noble in the speech of Man. Had it narrowed itself then,
in those days, out of all the world, into this peninsula between
Cockermouth and Shap?
Not altogether so; but indeed the _Vocal_ piety seemed conclusively to
have retired (or excursed?) into that mossy hermitage, above Little
Langdale. The _Un_vocal piety, with the uncomplaining sorrow, of Man,
may have had a somewhat wider range, for aught we know: but history
disregards those items; and of firmly proclaimed and sweetly canorous
religion, there really seemed at that juncture none to be reckoned upon,
east of Ingleborough, or north of Criffel. Only under Furness Fells, or
by Bolton Priory, it seems we can still write Ecclesiastical Sonnets,
stanzas on the force of Prayer, Odes to Duty, and complimentary
addresses to the Deity upon His endurance for adoration. Far otherwise,
over yonder, by Spezzia Bay, and Ravenna Pineta, and in ravines of
Hartz. There, the softest voices speak the wildest words; and Keats
discourses of Endymion, Shelley of Demogorgon, Goethe of Lucifer, and
Buerger of the Resurrection of Death unto Death--while even Puritan
Scotland and Episcopal Anglia produce for us only these three minstrels
of doubtful tone, who show but small respect for the 'unco guid,' put
but limited faith in gifted Gilfillan, and translate with unflinching
frankness the _Morgante Maggiore_.[184]
Dismal the aspect of the spiritual world, or at least the sound of it,
might well seem to the eyes and ears of Saints (such as we had) of the
period--dismal in angels' eyes also assuredly! Yet is it possible that
the dismalness in angelic sight may be otherwise quartered, as it were,
from the way of mortal heraldry; and that seen, and heard, of
angels,--again I say--hesitatingly--_is_ it possible that the goodness
of the Unco Guid, and the gift of Gilfillan, and the word of Mr.
Blattergowl, may severally not have been the goodness of God, the gift
of God, nor the word of God: but that in the much blotted and broken
efforts at goodness, and in the careless gift which they themselves
despised,[185] and in the sweet ryme and murmur of their unpurposed
words, the Spirit of the Lord had, indeed, wandering, as in chaos days
on lightless waters, gone forth in the hearts and from the lips of those
other three strange prophets, even though they ate forbidden bread by
the altar of the poured-out ashes, and even though the wild beast of the
desert found them, and slew.
This, at least, I know, that it had been well for England, though all
her other prophets, of the Press, the Parliament, the Doctor's chair,
and the Bishop's throne, had fallen silent; so only that she had been
able to understand with her heart here and there the simplest line of
these, her despised.
I take one at mere chance:
'Who thinks of self, when gazing on the sky?'[186]
Well, I don't know; Mr. Wordsworth certainly did, and observed, with
truth, that its clouds took a sober colouring in consequence of his
experiences. It is much if, indeed, this sadness be unselfish, and our
eyes _have_ kept loving watch o'er Man's Mortality. I have found it
difficult to make any one now-a-days believe that such sobriety can be;
and that Turner saw deeper crimson than others in the clouds of Goldau.
But that any should yet think the clouds brightened by Man's
_Im_mortality instead of dulled by his death,--and, gazing on the sky,
look for the day when every eye must gaze also--for behold, He cometh
with the clouds--this it is no more possible for Christian England to
apprehend, however exhorted by her gifted and guid.
'But Byron was not thinking of such things!'--He, the reprobate! how
should such as he think of Christ?
Perhaps not wholly as you or I think of Him. Take, at chance, another
line or two, to try:
'Carnage (so Wordsworth tells you) is God's daughter;[187]
If _he_ speak truth, she is Christ's sister, and
Just now, behaved as in the Holy Land.'
Blasphemy, cry you, good reader? Are you sure you understand it? The
first line I gave you was easy Byron--almost shallow Byron--these are of
the man in his depth, and you will not fathom them, like a tarn,--nor in
a hurry.
'Just now behaved as in the Holy Land.' How _did_ Carnage behave in the
Holy Land then? You have all been greatly questioning, of late, whether
the sun, which you find to be now going out, ever stood still. Did you
in any lagging minute, on those scientific occasions, chance to reflect
what he was bid stand still _for_? or if not--will you please look--and
what, also, going forth again as a strong man to run his course, he saw,
rejoicing?
'Then Joshua passed from Makkedah unto Libnah--and fought against
Libnah. And the Lord delivered it and the king thereof into the hand of
Israel, and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls
that were therein.' And from Lachish to Eglon, and from Eglon to
Kirjath-Arba, and Sarah's grave in the Amorites' land, 'and Joshua smote
all the country of the hills and of the south--and of the vale and of
the springs, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly
destroyed all that breathed--as the Lord God of Israel commanded.'
Thus 'it is written:' though you perhaps do not so often hear _these_
texts preached from, as certain others about taking away the sins of the
world. I wonder how the world would like to part with them! hitherto it
has always preferred parting first with its Life--and God has taken it