Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

therefore, feed as the many direct them, or with the many are greedy after vicious provocatives."

So much for the detractors from Wordsworth's merits. On the other hand, much as I might wish for their fuller sympathy, I dare not flatter myself, that the freedom with which I have declared my opinions concerning both his theory and his defects, most of which are more or less connected with his theory, either as cause or effect, will be satisfactory or pleasing to all the poet's admirers and advocates. More indiscriminate than mine their admiration may be deeper and more sincere it cannot be. But I have advanced no opinion either for praise or censure, other than as texts introductory to the reasons which compel me to form it. Above all, I was fully convinced that such a criticism was not only wanted; but that, if executed with adequate ability, it must conduce, in no mean degree, to Mr. Wordsworth's reputation. His fame belongs to another age, and can neither be accelerated nor retarded. How small the proportion of the defects are to the beauties, I have repeatedly declared; and that no one of them originates in deficiency of poetic genius. Had they been more and greater, I should still, as a friend to his literary character in the present age, consider an analytic display of them as pure gain; if only it removed, as surely to all reflecting minds even the foregoing analysis must have removed, the strange mistake, so slightly grounded yet so widely and industriously propagated, of Mr. Wordsworth's turn for simplicity! I am not half as much irritated by hearing his enemies abuse him for vulgarity of style, subject, and conception; as I am disgusted with the gilded side of the same meaning, as displayed by some affected admirers, with whom he is, forsooth, a "sweet, simple poet!" and so natural, that little master Charles and his younger sister are so charmed with them, that they play at "Goody Blake," or at "Johnny and Betty Foy!"

Were the collection of poems, published with these biographical sketches, important enough (which I am not vain enough to be

co [Supplement to the Preface. P. W., iii., p. 322.

The next paragraph to this sentence, with a small foot-note, is withdrawn; respecting which see the Introduction. S. C.]

lieve) to deserve such a distinction; even as I have done, so would I be done unto.

For more than eighteen months have the volume of Poems, entitled SIBYLLINE LEAVES, and the present volumes, up to this page, been printed, and ready for publication. But, ere I speak of my. self in the tones which are alone natural to me under the cir. cumstances of late years, I would fain present myself to the Reader as I was in the first dawn of my literary life:

When hope grew round me, like the climbing vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seem'd mine !61

For this purpose I have selected from the letters, which I wrote home from Germany, those which appeared likely to be most interesting, and at the same time most pertinent to the title of this work.

61 [Coleridge's Poetical Works, i., p. 238. S. C. Miraturque novas frondes, et non sua poma

Georg. 11., v. 82. Ed.]

SATYRANE'S LETTERS.

LETTER I.

On Sunday morning, September 16, 1798, the Hamburg packe set sail from Yarmouth, and I, for the first time in my life, beheld my native land retiring from me. At the moment of its disappearance--in all the kirks, churches, chapels, and meetinghouses, in which the greater number, I hope, of my countrymen were at that time assembled, I will dare question whether there was one more ardent prayer offered up to heaven than that which I then preferred for my country. "Now, then" (said I to a gentleman who was standing near me), "we are out of our country." "Not yet, not yet!" he replied, and pointed to the sea; "This, too, is a Briton's country." This bon mot give a fillip to my spirits, I rose and looked round on my fellow-passengers, who were all on the deck. We were eighteen in number, videlicet, five Englishmen, an English lady, a French gentleman and his servant, an Hanoverian and his servant, a Prussian, a Swede, two Danes, and a Mulatto boy, a German tailor and his wife (the smallest couple I ever beheld), and a Jew. We were all on the deck; but, in a short time, I observed marks of dismay. The lady retired to the cabin in some confusion, and many of the faces round me assumed a very doleful and frog-colored appearance; and, within an hour, the number of those on deck was lessened by one half. I was giddy, but not sick, and the giddiness soon went away, but left a feverishness and want of appetite, which I attributed, in great measure, to the sava Mephitis of the bilge-water; and it was certainly not decreased by the

exportations from the cabin. However, I was well enough to join the able-bodied passengers, one of whom observed, not inaptly, that Momus might have discovered an easier way to see a man's inside than by placing a window in his breast. He needed only have taken a salt-water trip in a packet-boat.

I am inclined to believe that a packet is far superior to a stagecoach, as a means of making men open out to each other. In the latter, the uniformity of posture disposes to dozing, and the definitiveness of the period at which the company will separate, makes each individual think more of those to whom he is going, than of those with whom he is going. But, at sea, more curiosity is excited, if only on this account, that the pleasant or unpleasant qualities of your companions are of greater importance to you, from the uncertainty how long you may be obliged to house with them. Besides, if you are countrymen, that now begins to form a distinction and a bond of brotherhood; and, if of different countries, there are new incitements of conversation, more to ask and more to communicate. I found that I had interested the Danes in no common degree. I had crept into the boat on the deck and fallen asleep, but was awakened by one of them, about three o'clock in the afternoon, who told me that they had been seeking me in every hole and corner, and insisted that I should join their party and drink with them. He talked English with such fluency, as left me wholly unable to account for the singular and even ludicrous incorrectness with which he spoke it. I went, and found some excellent wines, and a dessert of grapes, with a pine-apple. The Danes had christened me Doctor Teology, and dressed as I was, all in black, with large shoes and black worsted stockings, I might certainly have passed very well for a Methodist missionary. However, I disclaimed my title. What, then, may you be? A man of fortune? No!-A merchant? No!-A merchant's traveller? No!-A clerk? No!-un Philosophe, perhaps? It was at that time in my life in which of all possible names and characters I had the greatest disgust to that of " un Philosophe." But I was weary of being questioned, and, rather than be nothing, or at the best only the abstract idea of a man, I submitted, by a bow, even to the aspersion implied in the word "un Philosophe."-The Dane then informed me, that all in the

Certes we were not

present party were Philosophers likewise. of the Stoic school, for we drank and talked and sung, till we talked and sung all together; and then we rose and danced on the deck a set of dances, which, in one sense of the word at least, were very intelligibly and appropriately entitled reels. The passengers, who lay in the cabin below in all the agonies of seasickness, must have found our bacchanalian merriment

-a tune

Harsh and of dissonant mood from their complaint.1

I thought so at the time; and (by way, I suppose, of supporting my newly-assumed philosophical character) I thought, too, how closely the greater number of our virtues are connected with the fear of death, and how little sympathy we bestow on pain, where there is no danger.

The two Danes were brothers. The one was a man with a clear white complexion, white, hair, and white eyebrows; looked silly, and nothing that he uttered gave the lie to his looks. The other, whom, by way of eminence, I have called the Dane, had likewise white hair, but was much shorter than his brother, with slender limbs, and a very thin face slightly pock-fretten. This man convinced me of the justice of an old remark, that many a faithful portrait in our novels and farces has been rashly censured for an outrageous caricature, or, perhaps, nonentity. I had retired to my station in the boat he came and seated himself by my side, and appeared not a little tipsy. He commenced the conversation in the most magnific style, and, as a sort of pioneering to his own vanity, he flattered me with such grossness! The parasites of the old comedy were modest in the comparison. His language and accentuation were so exceedingly singular, that I determined, for once in my life, to take notes of a conversation. Here it follows, somewhat abridged, indeed, but in all other respects as accurately as my memory permitted.

THE DANE. Vat imagination! vat language! vat vast sci

' [Milton's Samson Agonistes. I., 661. S. C.]

« AnteriorContinuar »