CHAPTER XXIII.

LETTERS TO MISS FENWICK, AUBREY DE VERE, ESQ., PROFESSOR HENRY REED, REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE, MISS MORRIS, EDWARD QUILLINAN, ESQ., HON. MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE: July-December, 1850.

I.

Rain, Roses, and Hay-Experiences of Wesley as a Preacher among the Agriculturists and Manufacturers-Influences of Society, Education, and Scenery, on the Development of Poetic Genius. To Mrs. MoORE.

Chester Place, July 26th, 1850.-I have had a most agreeable letter from dear Miss H- this morning. She tantalizes me with an account of the flood of sunlight which has been pouring into B- Park, to illuminate all its beauties and glories within and without, since our departure, and she almost brings tears into my eyes by reminding me of the roses "laughing and singing in the pouring rain," a touch worthy of Shelley, the Poet of the "Sensitive Plant;" and in the thought of these darlings rejoicing in the dews of heaven, which they think, I dare say, made on purpose for them, she magnanimously adds, "never mind my hay." Now, where is the farmer, or any masculine professor of hay, from the Land's End to Johnny Groat's House, who would have said, or felt, "never mind my hay"? All that set of men think their hay and stubble far more important than other men's gold and silver, and precious stones. So Wesley found, and Whitfield too. All their diamonds and pearls did the farmers set at nought, and they were harder to be taught to prize the great pearl of the Gospel itself, than even the poor benighted sinners and gin-soddened manufacturers.

All this is very uncharitable and narrow, perhaps you will

think, with a more fortunate race of husbandmen around you than those I am thinking of. In truth, these field-preacher experiences impeach particular circumstances rather than men. I suppose if the farmers are more prejudiced and less ready to give than manufacturers, and agricultural labourers more like clods, than operatives of the loom and the mill are like lumps of greasy wool, it is because they have a less brisk intercourse with their fellow-men, and the Promethean sparks of their minds are not elicited so constantly by mutual attrition. "A parcel of auld fells" will leave the men who live around them as hard and savage as their own rocks and wild woods, if a book-softened mind is not brought to bear upon them; and this thought comes strongly upon me in reading Mr. Wordsworth's great posthumous poem. He ascribes his poetry to his poetical mode of life, first as a child, and then as a schoolboy. But whatever he might or might not have been without that training, certain it is that of the many companions of his early years who shared it, none proved a poet, much less a great poet, but himself. And there was my father, as the author remarks at the end, city-bred, yet ready with an Ancient Mariner, and Christabel, as he with his volumes dedicated to Nature. And Milton was city-born and bred too. I suppose, however, that the detailed observation of the forms of nature exhibited, as Ruskin remarks, in the works of Mr. Wordsworth, could not have been but for his mountaineer education. How I should like to ruminate over this new feast with Mr. Moore !

II.

Domestic Architecture, Medieval and Modern.

To Mrs. MOORE, Eccleshall Vicarage, Staffordshire.

Chester Place, July 27th, 1850.-Mr. S is coming to see me this evening. He appears charmed with my descriptions of T- Wood, Eccleshall, and B— Park. He concludes with, "An old manor-house is to me only

less sacred and venerable than a church, and many degrees more so than a Dissenting chapel!" I love and admire genuine remains of antiquity in every way; and there certainly was a practical poetry in old times, both ancient and medieval, which showed itself not only in books, but in pictures, and statues, and buildings. All we can now do, for the most part, is to reproduce this old poetry, to make likenesses of it in a new material.

I must say, however, in regard to dwelling-houses, that the imitation is vastly better than the original, and that no houses of our ancestors could have approached in enjoyableness to T Wood and B—— Park. The lowness of the rooms is, to our modern feelings, the greatest possible preclusion of comfort. The loftiness of the sleeping rooms at B-Park is one of their greatest advantages, even more than all the sumptuous and elegant upholstery and pottery. At the house of Sir Thomas Boleyn (father of the unfortunate consort of Henry VIII.), though it is called Castle— something-with much state, or pretension to it, and much that indicates stately living for those times, there is a rudeness in the whole fabric and a stifling want of height in the rooms, which made me feel that our ancestors' way of daily life must have been what we should now pronounce worthy of Gryll, who had such a "hoggish mind," in the days of Spenser.

III.

First appearance of Mr. Tennyson's "In Memoriam "-Moral Tone of the "Prelude❞—Neuralgia, and Dante's Demons.

TO AUBREY DE VERE, Esq.

10, Chester Place, August 6th, 1850.—I have just received your kind present; * many thanks. What a treasure it will be, if I can but think of it and feel about it as you do, and as Mr. T does! You said, "the finest strain since Shakespeare; " and afterwards that you and Mr. T

*"In Memoriam."-E. C.

agreed that it set the author above all modern poets, save only W. W. and S. T. C.

My impression of the pieces you recited was that they expressed great intensity of feeling,-but all that is in such poetry cannot be perceived at first, especially from recitation. The poetry of feeling gains by impassioned recitation, but where there is deep thought, as well as emotion in the strain, to do justice to it, we must adopt the usual attitude of study and dwell with our eyes upon the page; for the mind is a creature of habit, and moves but in the accustomed track.

Evening I have read "In Memoriam" as far as p. 48. I mark with three crosses

"One writes that other friends remain."

which you recited ;- -with one cross the next

"Dear house," etc.

ditto the next

"A happy hour," etc.

Most beautiful and Petrarchan is

"Fair ship, that from the Italian shore."

Very striking is XIV.—p. 22—

"If one should bring me this report."

XIX. and XX. I specially admire; and XXI., and still more XXII.

"The path by which we twain did go."

There is a very Italian air in this set of mourning poems throughout, as far as I have read. It is Petrarch come again, and become an Englishman.

Morning-I read "In Memoriam" in the night, and was much affected by XXX.

"With trembling fingers," p. 48.

The last stanza but one is to me obscure, and obscurity mars pathos. At present, many passages are to me not clear, and some, which I do understand, strike me as too quaint. For instance, p. 43, last stanza. My father used

to complain of Petrarch's eternal hooks, and baits, and keys, which "turned the lock on many a passage of true passion." "A shadow waiting with keys, to cloak him from his proper scorn," is to me all shadowy and misty, like some of Turner's allegorical pictures, the wantonness and wilfulness of a mist-loving genius, who yet could clear off the mist, and display underneath a bold and beauteous plan, to delight the engraver and the lover of engravings.

This poem, and page 14, and the betrothed tying a riband or a rose, are in his old vein, of bright, fanciful imagery, vivid with detail. But the poems, as a whole, are distinguished by a greater proportion of thought to sensuous imagery, than his old ones; they recede from Keatsland into Petrarchdom, and now and then approach the confines of the Dantescan new hemisphere.

I must tell you that the posthumous Poem* gains to my mind by reperusal. That is a fine passage at page 306. Did you note the explicit recognition of eternal life, eternity and God, at p. 361 ?

Perhaps one of the most striking passages of those that had not been printed before, is that in the Retrospect, describing the shepherd beheld in connection with nature, and thus ennobled and glorified. And, oh! how affectionate is all the concluding portion! I do feel deeply thankful for the revelation of Wordsworth's heart in this poem. Whatever sterner feelings may have succeeded at times to this tenderness and these outpourings of love, it raises him greatly in my mind to find that he was able to give himself thus out to another, during one period of his life,not to absorb all my father's affectionate homage, and to respond no otherwise than by a gracious reception of it. There are many touches too of something like softness, and modesty, and humbleness, which, taken in conjunction with those virtues of his character which are allied to confidence *"The Prelude."-E. C.