It was during one of the short tours of Wordsworth and Coleridge, with the bright and faithful Dorothy by their side, inspiring and stimulating (the expenses of which tour they desired to defray by writing a poem), that the story of "The Ancient Mariner" was conceived. Wordsworth has said of it in a passage oft-repeated:--
"In the autumn of 1797, Mr. Coleridge, my sister, and myself, started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon, with a view of visiting Linton and the valley of stones near it; and as our united funds were very small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a poem, to be sent to the new Monthly Magazine. In the course of this walk was planned the poem of 'The Ancient Mariner,' founded on a dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend, Mr. Cruikshank. Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention; but certain parts I suggested. For example, some crime to be committed, which was to bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime and his own wanderings. I had been reading in 'Shelvocke's Voyages,' a day or two before, that, while doubling Cape Horn, they frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude--the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings 12 or 13 feet. Suppose, said I, you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime. The incident was thought fitting for the purpose, and adopted accordingly. I also suggested the navigation of the ship by the dead man; but I do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem."
It was about this time that the Wordsworths made the acquaintance of Hazlitt. He was then staying with Coleridge, who took him over to Alfoxden. Of this visit Hazlitt says:--
"Wordsworth himself was from home; but his sister kept house, and set before us a frugal repast; and we had free access to her brother's poems, the lyrical ballads, which were still in manuscript, or in the form of sybilline leaves. I dipped into a few of these with great satisfaction, and with the faith of a novice. I slept that night in an old room, with blue hangings, and covered with the round-faced family portraits, of the age of George I. and II., and from the woody declivity of the adjoining park that overlooked my window, at the dawn of day,
'Heard the loud stag speak.'
"Next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled out into the park, and, seating ourselves on the trunk of an old ash tree, that stretched along the ground, Coleridge read aloud, with a sonorous and musical voice, the ballad of 'Betty Foy.' I was not critically or sceptically inclined. I saw touches of truth and nature, and took the rest for granted. But in 'The Thorn,' 'The Mad Mother,' and 'The Complaint of the Poor Indian Woman,' I felt that deeper power and pathos, which have been since acknowledged,
'In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,'
as the characteristics of this author, and the sense of a new style and a new spirit in poetry, came over me. It had to me something of the effect that arises from the turning up of the fresh soil, or of the first welcome breath of spring,
'While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed.'
"Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and his voice sounded high,
'Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate; Fixt fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,'
as we passed through the echoing groves, by fairy stream or waterfall, gleaming in the solemn moonlight.... We went over to Alfoxden again the day following, and Wordsworth read us the story of 'Peter Bell' in the open air. There is a _chant_ in the recitation, both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. Perhaps they have deceived themselves by making habitual use of this ambiguous accompaniment. Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and varied; Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and internal. Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to compose in walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling branches of a copsewood, whereas Wordsworth always composed walking up and down a straight gravel walk, or in some spot where the continuity of his verse met with no collateral interruptions.... Returning the same evening, I got into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while Coleridge was explaining the different notes of the nightingale to his sister, in which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves perfectly clear and intelligible."
This year was also celebrated by an introduction to Charles Lamb (the quaint and gentle-hearted "Elia") and his excellent sister Mary. Lamb was an old schoolfellow, and a close friend of Coleridge. They had been boys together at the Christ's Hospital, where the sympathy between them had been formed which became a life-long bond. A short emancipation from the toils of the East India House found Lamb and his sister spending a little time with Coleridge at Nether Stowey. From the time of the commencement of the acquaintance of Mary Lamb and Dorothy Wordsworth in this manner, their friendship was constant and their correspondence frequent. While, in temperament, they were totally unlike each other, there was that in the tenor of their lives, in the tender and helpful devotion of each of them to her brother--a devotion in both cases so warmly reciprocated--together with much in common in their tastes and pursuits, which served to cement a friendship begun under such pleasurable circumstances.
The poem "To my Sister," written in front of Alfoxden, is suggestive of the happy rural life at this time enjoyed by the poet and his sister.
What lover of Wordsworth does not remember how on "the first mild day of March," when, to the receptive spirit of the poet, each minute of the advancing, balmy day appeared to be lovelier than the preceding one, while, sauntering on the lawn, he wrote, desiring her to hasten with her household morning duties, and share his enjoyment of the genial sunshine?
"It is the first mild day of March: Each minute sweeter than before The red-breast sings from the tall larch That stands beside our door.
"There is a blessing in the air, Which seems a sense of joy to yield To the bare trees, and mountains bare, And grass in the green field.
"'My sister! ('tis a wish of mine), Now that our morning meal is done, Make haste, your morning task resign; Come forth and feel the sun.
"'Edward will come with you--and, pray, Put on with speed your woodland dress; And bring no book; for this one day We'll give to idleness.
"'No joyless forms shall regulate Our living calendar: We from to-day, my Friend, will date The opening of the year.
"'Love, now a universal birth, From heart to heart is stealing, From earth to man, from man to earth; --It is the hour of feeling.
"'One moment now may give us more Than years of toiling reason: Our minds shall drink at every pore The spirit of the season.
"'Some silent laws our hearts will make, Which they shall long obey; We for the year to come may take Our temper from to-day.
"'And from the blessed power that rolls About, below, above, We'll frame the measure of our souls: They shall be tuned to love.
"'Then come, my Sister! come, I pray, With speed put on your woodland dress; And bring no book: for this one day We'll give to idleness.'"
It was also during their residence at Alfoxden that Miss Wordsworth and her brother made their tour on the banks of the Wye, so signally memorialised in his famous lines on Tintern Abbey, of which he says, no poem of his was composed under circumstances more pleasant for him to remember. Its elevating reflections and rhythmic strains take captive the affections of the lover of Nature, and linger in his memory like the music of youth. In this place our interest in it arises from the allusions it contains to his beloved companion. He refers to the sweet sensations which, in hours of weariness in towns and cities, he has owed to the beauteous forms of Nature to which his mind has turned. He calls to memory the time when he had, indeed, loved Nature more passionately, and compares it with his present more mature and thoughtful affection, concluding with a fervid address to her who was by his side, and whose presence imparted an added charm--that of double vision--to every object and feeling; a sense of blessing shared:--
"For thou art with me here upon the banks Of this fair river: thou, my dearest Friend, My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege Thro' all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee; and, in after years, When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be as a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these, my exhortations! Nor, perchance, If I should be where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence--wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together....
Nor wilt thou then forget That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!"
Although Coleridge was at this time married, his wife does not seem to have entered very warmly into his pursuits--not, indeed, with the same interest that Miss Wordsworth did. It cannot be out of place, since it is a matter of almost common knowledge, to remark that we have in Coleridge one more instance of the many men of genius who have not been very suitably mated. Mrs. Coleridge did not feel the sympathy in her husband's aims to enable her to take pleasure in their intellectual conversations or perpetual rambles. In both of these Miss Wordsworth delighted. De Quincey, in his uncontrollable propensity to chatter, has taken occasion from this fact to suggest that Mrs. Coleridge resented the familiar friendship of the poetic trio. Although not mentioning Miss Wordsworth by name, he refers to a young lady who became a neighbour and a daily companion of Coleridge's walks, and who was "intellectually much superior to Mrs. Coleridge," in a way that shows that none other than Miss Wordsworth could be alluded to. He adds: "Mrs. Coleridge, not having the same relish for long walks or rural scenery, and their residence being at this time in a very sequestered village, was condemned to a daily renewal of this trial. Accidents of another kind embittered it still further. Often it would happen that the walking party returned drenched with rain; in which case the young lady, with a laughing gaiety, and evidently unconscious of any liberty that she was taking, or any wound that she was inflicting, would run up to Mrs.
Coleridge's wardrobe, array herself, without leave asked, in Mrs.
Coleridge's dresses, and make herself merry with her own unceremoniousness and Mrs. Coleridge's gravity. In all this she took no liberty that she would not most readily have granted in return; she confided too unthinkingly in what she regarded as the natural privileges of friendship, and as little thought that she had been receiving or exacting a favour as, under an exchange of their relative positions, she would have claimed to confer one." Although De Quincey states that the feelings of Mrs. Coleridge were moderated by the consideration of the kind-heartedness of the young lady, that she was always attended by her brother, and that mere intellectual sympathies in reference to literature and natural scenery associated them, it is to be regretted that the perfectly innocent friendship should have been the cause of this small gossip, a thing in which De Quincey rather delighted, and which sometimes mars the pleasurableness of his otherwise felicitous recollections. He was not at this time acquainted either with Coleridge or the Wordsworths, and the information could only have been derived from them during subsequent years of confidential friendship, and not intended for repetition. However it may have appeared to her then, Mrs.
Coleridge had in the future much cause to be thankful for the disinterested friendship of Miss Wordsworth.
How conducive to the best interests of her brother at this time was the companionship of Miss Wordsworth, and how complete was his restoration to a healthy and vigorous life after the political distractions of his Continental experience we gather from an allusion in the _Biographia Literaria_ of Coleridge. Referring to his life at Nether Stowey, he says: "I was so fortunate as to acquire, shortly after my settlement there, an invaluable blessing in the society of one to whom I could look up with equal reverence, whether I regarded him as a poet, a philosopher, or a man. His conversation extended to almost all subjects, except physics and politics; with the latter he never troubled himself."
The residence of Miss Wordsworth and her poet brother at Alfoxden, was terminated by circumstances which serve to illustrate at once something of the political attitude of the times, and also of the mental condition of their rustic neighbours in Somersetshire. Coleridge tells an amusing story how he and Wordsworth were followed and watched in their rambles by a person who was suspected to be a spy on their proceedings employed by the Government of the day. Whether this be well founded or not, the mere fact of two men living in their midst, without any apparent object, appears to have rather discomposed their neighbours. Why should they be continually spending their time in taking long and apparently purposeless rambles, engaged in earnest conversation? It was inconceivable that any one should walk a few miles in the light of the moon merely to look at the sea! They must be engaged in smuggling, or have other nefarious designs. In connection with this subject, there is one good story told. Some country gentlemen of the neighbourhood happened to be in the company of a party who were discussing the question whether Wordsworth and Coleridge might be traitors, and in correspondence with the French Administration, when one of them answered: "Oh! as to that Coleridge, he is a rattlebrain that will say more in a week than he will stand to in a twelvemonth. But Wordsworth, he is the traitor. Why, bless you! he is so close that you'll never hear him open his lips on the subject from year's end to year's end." The public belief in the absurd theory of Wordsworth's traitorous designs was, however, sufficient to induce the owner of the mansion in which he lived to put an end to the occupation.
The reputation of his friends and visitors suffered with his. In allusion to this, Mr. Howitt says: "The grave and moral Wordsworth, the respectable Wedgewoods, the correct Robert Southey, and Coleridge, dreaming of glorious intellectualities beyond the moon, were set down for a very disreputable gang. Innocent Mrs. Coleridge and poor Dolly Wordsworth were seen strolling about with them, and were pronounced no better than they should be. Such was the character that they unconsciously acquired that Wordsworth was at length actually driven out of the country."
It may not be out of place to repeat here Mr. Cottle's version of the affair. He says: "Mr. Wordsworth had taken the Alfoxden house, near Stowey, for one year (during the minority of the heir), and the reason why he was refused a continuance by the ignorant man who had the letting of it arose, as Mr. Coleridge informed me, from a whimsical cause, or rather a series of causes. The wiseacres of the village had, it seemed, made Mr. Wordsworth the subject of their serious conversation. One said that he had seen him wandering about by night and look rather strange at the moon! And then he roamed over the hills like a partridge! Another said he had heard him mutter, as he walked, in some outlandish brogue that nobody could understand! Another said: 'It is useless to talk, Thomas. I think he is what people call a wise man (a conjurer).' Another said: 'You are every one of you wrong. I know what he is. We have all met him tramping away toward the sea. Would any man in his senses take all that trouble to look at a parcel of water? I think he carries on a snug business in the smuggling line, and in these journeys is on the look-out for some _wet_ cargo!' Another very significantly said: 'I know that he has got a private still in his cellar; for I once passed his house at a little better than a hundred yards' distance, and I could smell the spirits as plain as an ashen faggot at Christmas!' Another said, 'However that was, he was surely a desperd (desperate) French Jacobin; for he is so silent and dark that nobody ever heard him say one word about politics!' And thus these ignoramuses drove from their village a greater ornament than will ever again be found amongst them."
After leaving Alfoxden, in the autumn of 1798, Miss Wordsworth accompanied her brother during a residence of six months in Germany, their chief object being the attainment of a knowledge of the language.
Although, from the absence of society at Goslar, where they were, they do not seem to have been fortunately circumstanced in this respect, Wordsworth was, according to his sister, very industrious, and here composed several poems.
Their life in Germany was not altogether without adventure. Mr. Howitt gives an account of an incident related to him by the poet of his arriving late one evening, accompanied by Miss Wordsworth and Coleridge, at a hamlet in Hesse Cassel, where they were unable to gain admittance to the inn, and feared having to pass the night in the open street. A continued knocking at the inhospitable doors only brought out the landlord armed with a huge cudgel, with which he began to beat them.
Regardless of their personal danger, and thinking of their female companion, to whom the prospect of an inclement night in the open air was by no means cheering, Wordsworth and his friend managed, after warding off the blows of the cudgel, to force their way into the house, and by reasoning with the surly landlord, and appealing to his better feelings, induced him to afford them a scanty lodging for the night. It appears that strangers travelling in these remote parts at this time received scant courtesy, even from those professing to provide them with entertainment, and that personal violence and plunder were not unfrequently resorted to.
On returning to England in the spring of 1799, Wordsworth, after spending some months with friends at Sockburn-on-Tees, wisely determined to have a fixed place of abode for himself, and, of course, his sister; eventually selecting that spot which is more than all others associated with his name and memory. A walking tour in company with his friend Coleridge in Westmoreland and Cumberland, resulted in his fixing upon Grasmere as the future home of himself and his faithful sister. To this place they accordingly repaired, walking a considerable part of the way--that from Wensleydale to Kendal--"accomplishing as much as twenty miles in a day over uneven roads, frozen into rocks, in the teeth of a keen wind and a driving snow," amid the crisp and biting blasts of a winter day, arriving at Grasmere--so long the scene of their future labours and rambles--on the shortest day of the last year in the last century.
CHAPTER V.
THE LAKE DISTRICT.
The lake and mountain district of England, which has now become so famous, was happily chosen by these children of Nature as their residence. Born as they both were on its outskirts, they had long been familiar with its beauties, and the only matter for surprise is that they had not earlier turned their faces to their native hills instead of spending some intervening years elsewhere.
No region could have been more in harmony with their sympathies and pursuits. The hardy inhabitants of these dales, and the simplicity of their lives and manners, formed fitting objects of study and reflection for the single-minded poet of Nature, who came to live and die amongst them. It is quite unnecessary, in these days of travel and of guide-books, which have done so much to make the district familiar ground, to give any description of it. It may not, however, be out of place to quote an extract or two from Wordsworth's own Description of the lakes. Referring to the aspect of the district at different seasons of the year, he says:--"It has been said that in human life there are moments worth ages. In a more subdued tone of sympathy may we affirm that in the climate of England there are, for the lover of Nature, days which are worth whole months--I might say even years. One of these favoured days sometimes occurs in spring-time, when that soft air is breathing over the blossoms and new-born verdure which inspired Buchanan with his beautiful 'Ode to the First of May'; the air which, in the luxuriance of his fancy, he likens to that of the golden age--to that which gives motion to the funereal cypresses on the banks of Lethe; to the air which is to salute beatified spirits when expiatory fires shall have consumed the earth, with all her habitations. But it is in autumn that days of such affecting influence most frequently intervene. The atmosphere becomes refined, and the sky rendered more crystalline, as the vivifying heat of the year abates; the lights and shadows are more delicate; the colouring is richer and more finely harmonised; and, in this season of stillness, the ear being unoccupied, or only gently excited, the sense of vision becomes more susceptible of its appropriate enjoyments. A resident in a country like this we are treating of will agree with me that the presence of a lake is indispensable to exhibit in perfection the beauty of one of these days; and he must have experienced, while looking on the unruffled waters, that the imagination by their aid is carried into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable.
The reason of this is that the heavens are not only brought down into the bosom of the earth, but that the earth is mainly looked at, and thought of, through the medium of a purer element. The happiest time is when the equinoctial gales are departed; but their fury may probably be called to mind by the sight of a few shattered boughs, whose leaves do not differ in colour from the faded foliage of the stately oaks from which these relics of the storm depend; all else speaks of tranquillity; not a breath of air, no restlessness of insects, and not a moving object perceptible, except the clouds gliding in the depth of the lake, or the traveller passing along, an inverted image, whose motion seems governed by the quiet of a time to which its archetype, the living person, is perhaps insensible; or it may happen that the figure of one of the larger birds--a raven or a heron--is crossing silently among the reflected clouds, while the voice of the real bird, from the element aloft, gently awakens in the spectator the recollection of appetites and instincts, pursuits and occupations, that deform and agitate the world, yet have no power to prevent Nature from putting on an aspect capable of satisfying the most intense cravings for the tranquil, the lovely, and the perfect, to which man, the noblest of her creatures, is subject."
His description of the Cumbrian cottages--
"Clustered like stars some few, but single most, And lurking dimly in their shy retreats, Or glancing on each other cheerful looks, Like separated stars with clouds between--"
is exceedingly happy.
"The dwelling-houses and contiguous outhouses are, in many instances, of the colour of the native rock, out of which they have been built; but frequently the dwelling or fire-house, as it is ordinarily called, has been distinguished from the barn or byre by rough-cast and whitewash, which, as the inhabitants are not hasty in renewing it, in a few years acquires, by the influence of weather, a tint at once sober and variegated. As these houses have been, from father to son, inhabited by persons engaged in the same occupations, yet necessarily with changes in their circumstances, they have received without incongruity additions and accommodations adapted to the needs of each successive occupant, who, being for the most part proprietor, was at liberty to follow his own fancy; so that these humble dwellings remind the contemplative spectator of a production of Nature, and may (using a strong expression) rather be said to have grown than to have been erected--to have risen, by an instinct of their own, out of the native rock--so little is there of formality, such is their wildness and beauty. Among the numerous recesses and projections in the walls, and in the different stages of their roofs, are seen bold and harmonious effects of contrasted sunshine and shadow. It is a favourable circumstance that the strong winds which sweep down the valleys induced the inhabitants, at a time when the materials for building were easily procured, to furnish many of these dwellings with substantial porches; and such as have not this defence are seldom unprovided with a projection of two large slates over their thresholds. Nor will the singular beauty of the chimneys escape the eye of the attentive traveller. Sometimes a low chimney, almost upon a level with the roof, is overlaid with a slate, supported upon four slender pillars, to prevent the wind from driving the smoke down the chimney.
Others are of a quadrangular shape, rising one or two feet above the roof; which low square is often surmounted by a tall cylinder, giving to the cottage chimney the most beautiful shape in which it is ever seen. Nor will it be too fanciful or refined to remark that there is a pleasing harmony between a tall chimney of this circular form, and the living column of smoke, ascending from it through the still air. These dwellings, mostly built, as has been said, of rough unhewn stone, are roofed with slates, which were rudely taken from the quarry before the present art of splitting them was understood; and are, therefore, rough and uneven in their surface, so that both the coverings and sides of the houses have furnished places of rest for the seeds of lichens, mosses, ferns, and flowers. Hence buildings, which in their very form call to mind the processes of Nature, do thus, clothed in part with a vegetable garb, appear to be received into the bosom of the living principle of things, as it acts and exists among the woods and fields; and, by their colour and their shape, affectingly direct the thoughts to that tranquil course of Nature and simplicity, along which the humble-minded inhabitants have, through so many generations been led. Add the little garden with its shed for beehives, its small bed of pot-herbs, and its borders and patches of flowers for Sunday posies, with sometimes a choice few too much prized to be plucked; an orchard of proportioned size; a cheese-press, often supported by some tree near the door; a cluster of embowering sycamores for summer shade; with a tall fir through which the winds sing when other trees are leafless; the little rill, or household spout, murmuring in all seasons; combine these incidents and images together, and you have the representative idea of a mountain cottage in this country so beautifully formed in itself, and so richly adorned by the hand of Nature.
"Till within the last sixty years[1] there was no communication between any of these vales by carriage-roads; all bulky articles were transported on pack-horses. Owing, however, to the population not being concentrated in villages, but scattered, the valleys themselves were intersected, as now, by innumerable lanes and pathways leading from house to house and from field to field. These lanes, where they are fenced by stone walls, are mostly bordered with ashes, hazels, wild roses, and beds of tall fern, at their base; while the walls themselves, if old, are overspread with mosses, small ferns, wild strawberries, the geranium, and lichens; and if the wall happen to rest against a bank of earth, it is sometimes almost wholly concealed by a rich facing of stone-fern. It is a great advantage to a traveller or resident, that these numerous lanes and paths, if he be a zealous admirer of Nature, will lead him on into all the recesses of the country, so that the hidden treasures of its landscapes may, by an ever-ready guide, be laid open to his eyes."