Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning A STUDY IN HUMAN FREEDOM BY SOLOMON F. GINGERICH, A.M., Ph.D. INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN GEORGE WAHR, Publisher ANN ARBOR, MICH. I9II Copyright Solomon F. Gingerich 1911 ^^ /gCtZt^e^h^ \ PREFATORY NOTE For the material on Wordsworth in this book I have borrowed with absolute freedom from a volume I pub- lished on Wordsworth a few years ago. It is well nigh impossible for me to Indicate my in- debtedness to the many writers on the poets here treated. I shall only say that my indebtedness to them is great. For direct personal help in preparing and revising the manuscript, and reading proof, I wish to express my 'thanks to Professors I. N. Demmon and Louis A. Strauss of the University of Michigan. S. F. G. rfi05^22 CONTENTS Introduction 9 CHAPTER I. Wordsworth and His Times 31 CHAPTER n. Wordsworth : Memory and Will 48 CHAPTER HI Wordsworth : Freedom and Mysticism 74 CHAPTER IV. Wordsworth : Art and Freedom 96 CHAPTER V. Tennyson and His Times 1 13 CHAPTER VI. Tennyson : Memory and the Mystic Element 129 CHAPTER VII. Tennyson : Freedom and Law 146 CHAPTER VIII. Tennyson : Art and Law 165 8 CONTENTS CHAPTER IX. Browning and His Times 176 CHAPTER X. Browning : Passion and Will 192 CHAPTER XI. Browning: Freedom and Transcendentalism 211 CHAPTER XII. Browning : Art and Liberalism 235 Conclusion 247 Appendix 255 INTRODUCTION The spirit of freedom is a treasure of inestimable price to the human mind. Everywhere and at all times the love of freedom asserts itself — politically, socially, but most of all, individually. But our individual free- dom, which underlies social and political freedom, has its roots directly in the will. And the experience of the will — the act of striking an attitude, of choosing an alterna- tive, of meeting a situation with an undivided self, which gives a positive sense of freedom — this is the thing in us that is most distinctively and intimately human. Since this experience is human and universal, and since poets are wont to deal with things human and universal, it were strange if they did not reflect in their work a sense of will and a spirit of freedom. They do so, and they "awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense" of these qualities. The poet's method of appealing to the sense of will is most often indirect, but if the poet be of a volitional type, as \\'ordsworth, or Browning, he sometimes appeals to it directly. When he does so, his poefry may impress us as declamatory rather than poetic. The objection, however, is not to the volitional appeal, but to the bald- ness of the method of expression. More often the appeal is veiled in metaphor, and may be finely poetic. For instance, the line, '"Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,'" has often and justly been praised for the fineness and originality of the metaphor, while the simple beauty and superior power of the line just preceding it. 'Wordsworth, "Elegiac Stanzas." lO INTRODUCTION. "I love lo see ihe look with which it braves," has been passed by unnoticed. Here the volitional ap- peal, veiled by the slight though exquisite figure expres- sed in look and braves, is poetic and effective. We are glad that the castle has a look with which it can brave the destroying elements. Its heroism unobtrusively takes hold of us, and the effect is bracing. Most often, however, the volitional appeal is wholly indirect, and lies in the texture and spirit of the poem as a whole, such a poem, for example, as the "Charge of the Light Brigade." It is because of this indirectness of the volitional ap- peal in poetry that comparatively little has been written abqjat it in literary criticism. \ (Poetry is fundamentally the expression of personalit;^j^^> Ibut tEe central and most important element in personality is the will. Where there is a weak and nerveless will there can be no strong and rich personality. Where there is a strong will and a noble soul, there personality abounds. The human will is beset with dangers — dangers, for in- stance, of imperiousness and sterility; — but when these dangers are avoided and the will acts normally, it em- bodies the noblest elements of the human mind and fur- nishes to us our deepest organ of response to the truth of things. In the "Prelude" and in the "Excursion" Wordsworth frequently attests to the sublimity of mind possessed by the poor and those in the common walks of life. The Leech-Gatherer in "Resolution and Inde- pendence" has neither knowledge nor culture, and is devoid of romantic feelings. What he does possess, how- ever, is the power of self-sustenance, which flouts de- spair, which bears up against adversity, and which turns sorrow into pleasure and contentment. And Wordsworth could have laughed himself to scorn to find "in that de- INTRODUCTION. II crepit man so firm a mind." Far more than we are con- scious of, this firmness of mind resides at the core of human personahty.* It is certain that purely intellectual conceptions are of less importance to poetry than the energy of will. It has been said, for example, that "Paradise Lost" is a monument to dead ideas, and that it lacks human inter- est. The first part of this count may perhaps be accepted, but hardly the second. No doubt Milton's theological ideas, as ideas, are of little interest to us, but the vast volitional energy stored up in the poem makes it genu- inely human. Its imaginative sublimity is the natural and harmonious outgrowth of a volitional personality. This poem is "the precious life-blood of a master spirit," the song of a man with sword begirt to do mighty battle, a man who, "with danger compassed round," sang with "mortal voice unchanged to hoarse or mute." The human interest in the poem lies in the indomitable energy of its creator's mind, and not in its intellectuality. The energy of will, closely bound up with personality, is a more vital force in poetry than intellectual concep- tion s.f There are indefinable elements in the will ; and since this is so it is impossible to give a complete or accurate definition of it. We can proceed with sufficient clearness, however, by considering what is, so to speak, the raw material of which it is made, and by giving a partial defi- nition. The lower ground work of our will lies in our phys- ical reflexes, our impulses and instincts, our sensations and crude perceptions, in the clash between converging physical desires, in the unformed subconscious tendencies *See Note i, Appendix, t See Note 2, Appendix. I a INTRODUCTION. in us, vaguely pulling us hither and thither, in the oc- casional emergence into consciousness of this welter of unformed matter. This mass of experience furnishes the lower content and outer material for the will, and brings it to the very door of the outer and nonconscious world ; yet this does not constitute the will itself. On a higher level the material of our will consists in the con- flict of our desires other than the physical, in our higher aspirations and longings, in the conflict both of our pas- sions and of our knowledge regarding things prudential, ethical, aesthetical, and religious. These things, again, do not constitute the will; they form the inner and higher material for the will. The will itself is an independent, self-directing, self-developing, but otherwise indefinable power in us — (it requires a pure act of believing and not at all of knowing to accept this statement) — which lies back of the things that have been described as the mater- ial upon which it works. This material is conditioned by heredity and environment, but behind it there is an in- crement of will, however small, that is absolutely inde- pendent of heredity and environment ; else, where were the freedom? The will is the power "existent behind all laws," that makes laws, that selects and arranges and harmonizes our lower impulses and our higher aspira- tions, our passions and our knowledge; the power that organizes and unifies our personality. The will thus in its inmost circle ranges over the whole gamut of con- scious life — from the physical to the transcendental, from the natural to the mystical, from the finite to the infinite, from the lowest physical desire to the highest and finest essence of spirit in us that can give rise to conscious aspirations. But there are those who do not consider the will to have this self-directing and self-developing power, who INTKOdL'CTION. 13 deny the freedom of the human will. Such hold that consciousness is a mere cerebration of cells, the product of a materialistic evolution, and that freedom, so-called, is an illusion, a product of man's foolish fancies. Poets, however, like religionists, almost unanimously take for granted the existence of man's freedom. They hold implicitly that there is in consciousness a power inde- pendent of heredity and environment, and that this power, deep in the heart of man, gives man, in all ages and under all circumstances, an everlasting assurance of freedom. However strongly St. Paul may, when his logical faculty is active, reason about predestination, it is quite evident that "whosoever will" is the watchword written over the whole face of the Hebrew scriptures, including for the most part the writings of St. Paul him- self ; and perhaps in the advice of Tennyson, at the close of the poem "De Profundis," that we should attempt to find Nearer and ever nearer Him, who wrought Not matter, nor the finite-infinite, But this main-miracle, that thou art thou, With power on thine own act and on the world — perhaps in this advice there is an expression of what lies very close to the inner core of all high poetic truth. It is not for the poets to argue the theory of freedom ; and Milton in "Paradise Lost" and Chaucer in "Troilus and Criseyde" make sorry work of it when they attempt the argument. But it is of inestimable importance to the poet's work that it hold implicitly the theory of freedom and awaken in us an intimate sense of the spirit of free- dom. The first and simplest reason why the poet usually assumes the principle of freedom in his work is that the assumption is implied in the conduct and in the practical 14 INTRODUCTION'. beliefs of all men. True poetry alvva3'S has the roots of its growth imbedded in the soil of common experience. Poetry deals most generally with personal experience, and with the instincts, feelings, and volitions of men. Whatever else a great poetry may deal with, it deals first of all with the abiding and universal experiences of the heart and mind and soul — with the whole life of man. Life, it has been urged by various and competent critics, is the proper subject matter of poetry. But three-fourths of life, it has been said upon high authority, is made up of conduct. It may, however, be added that at least three-fourths of conduct consists in the proper exercise of the will. And thus the will — its exercise, its power, its freedom — is a good half of life. Nor is this by any means an overstatement of the will's importance in the every-day experience of living. It is an understate- ment rather. If the race is ever going to be saved, it must first strongly will to receive salvation. We are in a constant state of probation, and life is full of choices. We are forever at the parting ways — we can and must choose at every moment between alternatives, either great or small, momentous or trivial. We must choose be- tween reading a book or taking a walk, between wearing an overcoat or carrying an umbrella, between vocation and vocation, truth and falsehood, idealism and pessim- ism, religion and no religion. Each choice closes up that which has been a possibility hitherto, but also opens up new possibilities. Now, poetry seizes, more powerfully than science or philosophy, upon this practical phase of life and renders it concretely, and thereby purifies and strengthens our powers of choice. Lear makes his choice imperiously at the opening of the play, and the conse- quences of it are mercilessly followed out through his whole career. The Satan of "Paradise Lost" makes of INTKODUCTIOX. I5 necessity a virtue, declares it is better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven, and, by choosing and striving to attain this ideal and by exercising an unconquerable energy of will, gathers much glory unto himself. Certain it is that the assumption of the will's free choice has not merely a speculative interest for philosophers but has tremendous issues in the common afifairs of life. And since the p©et keeps his ear close to the tlirobbing heart of humanity he assumes, as human beings practically assume, the freedom of the will to be one of the funda- mentally true things both in his faith and in his practice. Another and higher reason — an artistic reason — why the poet does not find himself at variance with the prin- ciple of freedom but embraces it as the law of his life is that in the art of poetry, as in kindred arts, the highest function of the artist is creation, of "widening nature without going beyond it," of enlarging the sphere of life and freedom. We demand from the poet enough con- tact with the actual to make us sure we are on solid ground, but we also demand new idealizations and crea- tions that seem to us reasonable and worth while. The miracle of the art is that while the poet makes us feel that he has both feet planted solidly on this earth and that he is dealing with the deepest verities of actual and concrete experience, the poet's pen at the same time Gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. This is what Macaulay calls "the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imag- ination," and the truth that results is, for Macaulay, the "truth of madness."- As thougii the imagination were a 'Essay, "Milton." 1 6 INTRODUCTION. faculty easy to be deceived, and as though all other kinds of truth except common sense truth were madness ! No, the imagination sees straight, and the truth it finds is not the truth of madness but of creation. Poetry indeed pro- duces an illusion, not on the imagination, but on com- mon sense. Our common sense ideas find expression by means of our logical reason in forms other than poetry. Our feelings and volitions find expression by means of imaginative representation in poetry. And when, in reading poetry, we reach a certain imaginative intensity the imaginative representation seems illusory to the common sense element in us; but when with our imagin- ation active we read a piece of scientific writing the work seems illusory to the imagination. The one strand in us may thus seem unreal to the other, and vice versa. Common sense is the truth of our habitual matter-of- fact reactions. Imaginative truth is the truth of unusual moments of insight and creation, — a divine inspiration, as Plato calls it. And in this highly imaginative and creative process the poet feels that he is in a world where creation is still going on and that he is a participant in the act itself. He feels what philosophers sometimes insist upon, namely, that the world itself is still in the process of making, as it has been ever since the beginning of time. The philosopher arrives at this idea by the- orizing about it, while the poet, on the contrary, feels its truth as a thing in his immediate experience, to which his whole passional nature gives assent. The poet's experience is something like that of the musician in Browning's "Abt Vogler," who finds (seventh stanza) there is in the moment of creation a will behind all laws that made the laws themselves, and that this gift of will has been given to man, who therefore can frame out of three sounds "not a fourth sound, but a star," INTRODUCTION'. I J that is, he can create. Each tone in our scale, he says, is a very common thing — "it is every where in the world," — but wiien this commonplace tone is taken and mixed with two in the musician's thought, there is produced an absolutely new thing — a creation ! "Consider and bow the head !" In order to heighten the conception of his own art the musician contrasts his own achievement with that of the poet. liis own art is above law, but the poet's is "all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws." On the basis of creation, however, the two arts are identical. And in their highest moments of inspiration v^-e claim for the poets the same gift that Browning's musician claims — the gift of creation. Since the poet possesses this gift, he becomes conscious of the power of spiritual energy and spiritual freedom in the universe, of the fact that he himself possesses a will "existent behind all laws" that has the power to inform and to create. And he knows, therefore, in his own person the truth of the freedom of his will. To state this truth in physiological terms, the poet in his higher inspirations and in the act of creation lives in that region of his brain that is plastic, as yet unformed — free. Here are not many obstructions in the way of pre-existent, habitual reflexes. Here is nothing of those few simple and treadmill operations of t!ie mind char- acteristic of the matter-of-fact persons who seem not to know their capability of alternative choices. But here the mind, lifted as by inspiration above these treadmill operations, by one element of its power, perception, dips down into them and seizes upon common and matter-of- fact experience as a solid base upon which to rear its structure ; and by the other element of its power, imagina- tion, penetrates the cloudland of the unknown and flashes forth, by its own lightnings, unexpected vistas of hither- 1 8 INTRODUCTION. to unknown and uncreated truth — truth charged with the thunder roll of new harmonies and new melodies. Thus the brain, drawing its material from two opposite poles of our experience, "adverse, each from the other heaven- high, hell-deep removed," shoots together new combina- tions of truth — sometimes ingenious, sometimes start- ling, sometimes with a vast economy and compression of experience, but always radiant with new born heavenly light and always drenclied with the stuff reported by the senses, fresh from tlie v.orkl of fact and actualit}'. Here is God's plenty by way of evidence that the brain in its higher rounds is plastic and the will free. To doubt now is impertinence. It is onl}^ wdien the heavy-handed philosopher, for intellectual and logical reasons, demands that through a chain of causations each act must have had a sufficient preceding impingement, and that this im- pingement must have had a cause farther back, and so forth ad infinitum, that the question of freedom is at all attacked. When one's head is in an attitude to enjoy pure logic and is anxious for logic-chopping, it is always safe to take the side of determinism, predestination, and eternal necessity ; but when one is in a practical frame of mind and takes counsel v\dth the heart, one must insist on the freedom of the v/ill. Thus according to the practical beliefs of all men and according to the deep- est experience in his ovvn personality, the poet finds the verification of his conviction that man is a free moral agent. Now, what has this unique and indefinable power to do with the production of poetry? In the first place, if poetry is anything it is concrete and passionate. It is full of sensation and again sensation, full of sounds and sights. It has primitive freshness, flesh and blood quali- ties, oftentimes quite muscular and virile, at other times INTRODUCTION. 1 9 delicate and sensitive — but always sensuous. On the other hand, poetry draws just as freely from the purely transcendental and spiritual qualities of our experiences, the highest and most relincd of which we are capable. The things of sense whicli form its ground work become refined and are lifted up to a purified and lofty level. The body of sense, under the formative power of poetry, becomes, as it were, the temple of refined spirits. Now the power which draws these remote ends of our being together in a poem, which saves the things of sense from going the w^ay of the world and transforms them into vessels fit to hold the precious essence of divinity, is the power of will. This, then, is what will has to do with the production of poetry. It is the power which penetrates, which restrains, which expands, and which elevates. It may be urged, nevertheless, that however strongly a poet may believe in the freedom of the will, poets gen- erally are notoriously weak in the exercise of their indi- vidual wills. It must at once be granted that in special cases there are some grounds for this objection. The case that comes to mind first of all as an illustration is that of Robert Burns — one of the most beau- tiful lyric singers in the world and the most way- ward and weak-willed of the sons of men, it is said. There is indeed a considerable portion of his poetry that one might fairly wish otherwise and the failure of which one can trace directly to his weakness. But there are two things to be said on the point of the weakness — that poets more than odicr men are besieged by tempta- tions of the sort to which Burns was a victim, and that the will in some men seems to work intermittently. We have just seen that sensuousness and passion are the outer materials wath which the poet must deal. And if he is not especiall}^ gifted witli the will to restrain, direct, 20 INTRODUCTION. and control passion and sense, he is very liable to abuse them. But Robert Burns was determined to write poetry, and particularly ennobling and highly moral poetry. His will to write poetry was at most times quite steadfast. Long he pondered and often he improvised, and in the heart and will of him he was genuine. He was insistent on producing some good poetry for his country : Ev'n then a wish, (I mind its power), A wish that to my latest hour Shall strongly heave my breast; That I for poor auld Scotland's sake, Some usefu' plan, or beuk could make, Or sing a sang at least.^ In speaking of some favorite passages from Young and from Thomson, Burns says, "Though I have repeated them ten thousand times, still they rouse my manhood and steel my resolution like inspiration," and the thought of one of these passages is : What proves the hero truly great Is never, never to despair.* The result of these aspirations, endeavors and resolves was high and pu;-e poetry — ^the product indeed of a sturdy, determined will of a Scotchman, blessed with the gift of song. And yet his will sometimes faltered. There were indeed days and months continuously when the will unfalteringly carried the man forward in paths of virtue, self-restraint, and high achievement; but suddenly when the will was ofif guard and seemed strangely paralyzed and helpless, there came a vast inundation of passion flooding the life of the man into hopeless confusion and self-abasement. The senses were master. The mind ""Answer to Verses Addressed to the Poet." ^Thomson and Mallet, "The Masque of Alfred." INTRODUCTION. 21 succumbed to the power of the lowest material his haii'l wrought in. But the man repented, and rose again, and again there were days and montlis of high endeavor and the production of poetry instinct with will, energy, moral- ity, and freedom. The aberrations of will in Burns do not invalidate but rather confirm the statement that strong will power is an essential element in high and serious poetry. It is this power, on the one hand, that saves the feelings from senti- mentality, that gives dignity and manliness to human life, and that Raises man aboon the brute And mak's him ken himsel' ;' and tlie power, on the other hand, by which the artist draws his whole rich passional and spiritual nature within the scope of a single short poem or even into the expression of a single sententious phrase or line and makes us feel a peculiar tension of compression and charged energy that we are wont to call style. And though a few men like Burns reveal the anomaly of an unusually pow^erful will and of a will that seems dis- eased dwelling in the same breast, the steadfastness and lofty purpose of Milton, the singlemindedness and high endeavors of Wordsworth, the victorious war cry and death-defying spirit of Browning, and like qualities in a host of other poets, ought to shame us into silence regarding a few of their weaker brethren and ought to convince us of the vast importance to life and poetry of the freedom of the will and the sense of freedom in the lives of our poets. But a second and more serious objection may be made to the importance here attached to this principle "'The Tree of Liberty." 2 2 INTRODUCTION. in poetry. It may be urged that poetry in particular demands spontaneity, naturalness and effortless flow- ing rather than conscious energy of will. And this objection leads us directly to the heart of our subject. An act of will is at one and the same time the most simple and the most inexplicable of all the characteris- tics of our mental life. To ask a man to choose between two alternatives offered him is to ask something that the simplest can understand. But to explain the act rationally when the choice is once made is as yet an impossibility and has thus far defied all science and philosophy. Yet, however inexplicable the act is, we all feel in our practical experience that we know pre- cisely what it is to make choices, and we know that we are bound to go on making choices as long as we live. It is not enough that I will to be good or will to be true today. I must will the same today and tomorrov\r and always. It is not enough to will to write poetry today but it must be willed again and again. And the power of will when exerted, healthily and not narrowly, in one direction is the power to accumulate and increase will en- ergy. The will gains strength by continued persistence in a thing; it gathers power and volume like a rolling snow ball. In poetry especially, the will, working in and through and by means of passion and imagination, does not grow sterile but remains healthy and flexible. And what is the spontaneity and the flowingness that critics speak of but the result of accumulated will ener- gies suddenly unlocked under favorable circumstances? Does not the story of Burns, to which allusion has al- ready been made — his v/illing to write poetry, his re- peating favorite passages ten thousand times, his turn- ing out poems while at the plow tail, his improvizations, his ponderings, — does not this story illustrate the true INTRODUCTION'. 23 nature of any product that may be called spontaneou'i and natural? Is not the poetry of Keats which is sen- suous in a remarkable degree and which yet has, ac- cording to ]\Iatthcw Arnold, Hint and iron in it, an illus- tration of spontaneity and flowingness? "My heart is now made of iron" Keats writes to Fannie I^rawne when he is in the midst of a poetic deliverance. The iron and flint is in him because he willed single-heartedly to see and to love "the principle of beauty in all things" and to set about in an iron-hearted fasliion to realize his ideal. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is the iron in one's constitution that produces spontaneity in the thing to which one lays his hand ; and conversely, the spon- taneity required in poetry does not invalidate but rather confirms the statement that will power is one of the chiefest active faculties of the mind in the production of poetry. To state the same truth somewhat diiTerently, when- ever the will acts forcibly in a single direction it puts into action subconscious and allied powers whose ac- tivities may finally surpass the will's own. This surplus of energy thus produced, like the overtones in music, tends to enrich the product, give it spontaneity, and cover up, so to speak, the original moving power itself. To give a simple illustration from personal experience, I have for a long time been planning to write this chap- ter. I have long and persistently held my mind to it against conflicting interests. For many days the hand refused to put down the words, but at last its work began. Since then at times the words have come in floods faster than the hand could put them down ; and sometimes when I wished to stop the activity of forces thus set in motion, they persisted in spite of my efforts. Although the original conception of the chapter has been adhered 24 INTRODUCTION, to, yet many unforeseen and subconscious forces have worked themselves in and have enlarged the context. And thus whatever spontaneity there is in a production, is either the result of previous persistent will efforts or of the under-current forces set in motion by those same eft'orts. Most of second-rate poetry no doubt can practically be accounted for in this way. Have given a person reasonably developed and intelligent as a human being and reasonably poetic by nature, and if he wills to produce poetry, wills to ponder the idea of it as Burns pondered it, there is no reason why he should not be a poet of no mean order. The whole lesson of Words- VN^orth's "Prelude" is that a poet's mind can be had for the making, although Wordsworth himself, to be sure, was more than a second-rate poet. There exists, at any rate, no contradiction between volitional energy and spontaneity as far as the making of poetry is concerned, but, on the contrary, the latter seems either a direct or an indirect result of the former. There are, however, far greater things than spon- taneity in great poetry, and the will has greater func- tions to fulfill. If the will in the commonest acts of life is an inexplicable power to us, it becomes ten times more inexplicable when we view its action in connection with higher experiences than the ordinary. No doubt the most important functon of the will is to surrender itself worthily to what it conceives a higher will. In hyp- nosis it is not the scatterbrain who is easily hypnotized but it is the one who can concentrate his mind upon a single spot of nothing and hold it there until it is numb enough to be subjected to the will of the experimenter. Likewise it requires a strong and unified will to make a complete self-surrender to a higher will, and to ex- perience the joy of finding its own power enlarged and INTRODUCTION. 25 enriched. But in this act of will there is involvefl the essence of mystery, indeed one may say of all mystery : Our wills are ours, wc know not how ; Our wills are ours, to make them thine." How our wills can become one with another power — whether that power be conceived as God, or Spirit of the Universe, or the Spirit of Beauty, or the Oversoul, or the Absolute — this is the question of questions, the mystery of mysteries. Thus the will — this most com- mon of all our experiences — becomes the door through which we enter directly to the deepest mysteries of being. We need but to will to turn our faces toward the mys- terious and inexplicable of life and imagine ourselves m some sort of union or communion with it to be made keenly conscious of the indefinable powers of person- ality and being. And this is precisely wdiat a very large body of the greater sort of poetry attempts to do. There are many minor poets and scientific and prac- tical-minded thinkers who shut themselves for the most part away from the indefinable and inexplicable. Since it lies in the power of all men's wills to do so, it is a mat- ter of their choice. They deal with emotions and ordi- nary concepts concretly and abstractly, widi visible and conceptual objects, with demonstrable laws and possi- ble intellectual attainments, but steadfastly refuse to follow anything that they consider chimerical. Tlie ambitious poet, however, files from sense matter di- rectly to the incommunicable and the indefinable. Like Milton, the poet is content to soar with no middle flight in his adventurous song. He aspires to lay his hands 'Tennyson, "In Menioriam," Prologue. 26 INTRODUCTIOX. On that golden key That opes the palace of eternity' And, strangely enough, or rather naturally enough, the poet feels with more keenness than other men the pres- ence of a power that disturbs him "with the joy of ele- vated thoughts," of a power not himself but wholly other than himself, of a will higher than his own which he has in all ages been in the habit of invoking to his aid. He is like Wordsworth who early in youth felt the power of poetry come upon him: I made no vows, but vows Were then made for me; bond unknown to me Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, A dedicated Spirit.^ The poet is like the musician in "Abt Vogler" who felt that after he himself had done his best in rearing his structure the emulous powers of heaven yearned down to aid him. Novel and unexpected splendors seemed to burst forth and grow familiar and mingle with his own splendors; balls of blaze, meteor-moons, and wander- ing stars of heaven became one with the earth, obliter- ating for him time and space and the distinctions of higher and lower; and "there was no more near nor far" ; there was a surrender of his will to the will of the in- finite. Thus the poet feels in his own will the presence of the "Stern Lawgiver" that "wears the Godhead's most benignant grace" and that "preserves the stars from wrong." Sometimes the poet is merely interested in this power empirically and describes a process of mind, as Words- worth's description of the way in which he enters into '"Comus." '"Prelude," Bk. IV. IXTRODUCTIOX. 7^ union with and sees into the "hfe of things," in "Tintern Abbey," (Hnes 35 to 40) ; or as Shelley's most exquisite description of the way in which his mind long active in cognition finally became passive, and while in a trance, which was not a slumber, a vision was rolled in upon his brain : But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem The cone of night, now they were laid asleep Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep Of a green Apennine : before me fled The night; behind me rose the day; the deep Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head, When a strange trance over my fancy grew Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread Was so transparent that the scene came thro' As clear as when a veil of light is drawn O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew That I had felt the freshness of that dawn, Bathed in the same cold dew my brow and hair, And sat as thus upon that slope of lawn Under the self same bough, and heard as there The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold Sweet talk in music thro' the enamoured air, And then a vision on my brain was rolled." Or as Carlyle's description, not in poetic measure but poetically, of the way in wdiich his mind passed from an indifferent attitude to a positively assenting at^titudc toward the infinite God through the act of surrendering his will: — "Here, then, as I lay in that center of indiffer- ence; cast, doubtless by benignant upper Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new Earth. Tlie '■'The Triumph of Life." 2 8 INTRODUCTION. first preliminary moral Act, Annihilation of Self (Selbst- todtung), had been happily accomplished; and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved." When his eyes are thus unsealed and he beholds the visible ob- jects of nature, he puts the question, "What is Nature?" and answers: — "Why do I not name thee God? Art not thou the 'Living Garment of God?' O Heavens, is it, in very deed, He, then, that ever speaks through thee ; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me? Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splendours, of that Truth, and Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla; ah, like the mother's voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tu- mults ; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too- exasperated heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres ; but godlike, and my Father's I"^*' And it may be added that this, the moral act of self-surrender and the keen consciousness that personality pervades the universe, and that "through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul the glory of a pres- ent God still beams," — that this is the essence of high poetry and of mystery. The poets, however, do not merely give an empirical description of the way in which their minds enter into union with a higher power, but they attempt to render their conceptions of it in concrete forms. And as each poet differs somewhat from his fellows, each one in his own way has given a different report of what it means to him. He has bodied it forth concretely in a thousand forms. He has given the Uncreated a hab- "" Sartor Resartus," Bk. II, Chap. IX. INTRODUCTION. 29 itation and a name. Sometimes the dominant tendency in ilic rendering is theological, sometimes naturahstic, or morahstic, or pantheistic, or transcendental, or mys- tical, but always more or less transcendental and mys- tical. For the heart of both mysticism and transcendent- alism lies in the intensity and power with which we will to face the mysterious and the indefinable within us and around us and in the intensity and power with which in the end we surrender ourselves to the mysterious and the indefinable. There is a sort of criticism which identifies the trans- cendental and the mystical with the vague, and thinks it has condemned a poet when it shows that his poetry runs into transcendentalism and mysticism. This is rather loose and dubious criticism, to say the least. Of course, poetry must be passionate and concrete, but it ought also to be suggestive; and it is possible for it to be the most suggestive when it is the most concrete, the most inexhaustible and indefinable when it has the clearest definition. Even Shakespeare's great characters, natur- alistic and overwhelmingly real as they are, possess inex- haustible and indefinable spiritual powers. Though they are overcome by fate, they impress us as havng free souls that are at one with the spiritual freedom of the universe. From such well-springs of spiritual freedom flow the powers of transcendentalism and mysticism, and in such a foutain-head great poetry has its source. Grant- ing that a poetry remain sufficiently passionate and con- crete, a true measure of its greatness is the measure of the depth with which it reveals the transcendental, the mystical, the indefinable and spiritual elements of being. The purpose of this book is to study the poetry of Wordsworth, of Tennyson, and of Browning, respect- ively, from the points of view indicated in the preceding 30 INTRODUCTION. pages. We shall see, first, how the power of will and the spirit and theory of freedom have entered into the making of their poetry; and secondly, how the surren- der of their wills to a higher will led them into the region of the transcendental and the mystical, and how each characteristically bodied forth his vision of spiritual freedom and personality; and thirdly, what ethical and artistic estimates may be made of their respective per- formances from the point of view of our inquiry. The study is to be made in the light of a few fundamental characteristics of the times in which each lived — in the light of the action and reaction of the times upon the character and of the character upon the times. CHAPTER I WORDSWORTH AND HIS TIMES. What then are the chief characteristics of the times and the vital quahties of character with which we must begin our study of Wordsworth ? The times were chiefly rewlutionary : men were making radical attempts to re- adjust society on a higher level, which produced wide- spread social unrest; and men were seeking greater personal liberty, which tended to emphasize the differ- ences of personal opinion. This is not intended to be in any sense a complete statement of the characteristics of the times. One needs but to glance at the literature dealing with this period to see the futile attempts of writers to express in single phrases the forces then at work. Some of the phrases include so much that they are vague; others are so specific that they do not in- clude enough. "A time of growing intolerance of antiquated and artificial forms," a time of "reac- tion against eighteenth century civilization." of a "return to nature," of "simplification." a time of 'the "recreation of mediaevalism," of the "redis- covery and vindication of the concrete," a time of "a sudden increase of the vital energy of the species," a time of "growth in the notion of the brother- hood of man," a time of "the strengthening of the na- tional consciousness of the different nations of Europe," 32 WORDSWORTH. — all these are partial failures and partial successes ; they fail to give an adequate conception of the times, they succeed in expressing some important aspect of them. The complexity of the forces then at work makes it well nigh impossible to express those forces in a single phrase. And our own statement claims only to point out such aspects of the times as have the most important bearing on the development of Wordsworth's experiences regarding the power of will and the principle of mys- ticism. Yet the forces included in our statement are among the most permanent of the times. While many of the others, such as a "return to nature" and the "rediscov- ery and vindication of the concrete," have done their work, those included in our statement have still not spent their energy, even though a hundred years span the time between then and now. Our times are still revolu- tionary, only in a milder sense. Though our methods of work are dififerent from those of a hundred years ago, we have not abated our zeal to readjust social conditions. Though we may not proclaim personal liberty as vehem- ently as men did of old, yet the divergence of the ex- pression of personal opinion is greater than ever, and is ever widening. The times of Wordsworth initiated and gave a tremendous impetus to two forces that char- acterize the whole of the nineteenth century, the forces, namely, of increased efficiency and adjustment of organ- ized society, and the widened powers and range of per- sonal liberty. The revolutionary forces of those days were by no means confined to the settlement and readjustment of political problems. They invaded all the departments of human afifairs, even the affairs of practical religion. In a preface to a sonnet written in 1827, Wordsworth makes HIS TIMES. 33 this suggestive statement, — "Attendance at church on prayer-days, Wednesdays and Fridays and holidays, received a shock at the Revolution. It is now, however, happily reviving." Tiie spirit of revolution was in the atmosphere, and it found its way into every nook and corner of town and hamlet : 'Twas in truth an hour Of universal ferment ; mildest men Were agitated ; and commotions, strife Of passion and opinion, filled the walls Of peaceful houses with unquiet sounds/ Dominant in all the activities of the times was the note of an equilibrium less secure than in the period of time preceding, of an old anchorage breaking up, of malad- justments and instabilities, and at the same time, of promises and potencies of a slow but ever higher devel- opement. By the shock of the Revolution, men were compelled to revert to first principles, to explore all natures in order to find the law that governs each. And when, in the presence of danger, a man sinks deeply into himself to discover the grounds upon which to think and act, he not only finds his own opinions to diverge from those of others, but he also gathers courage for his own convictions. Such was the experience of Wordsworth in the time of the Revolution. But while the insecure equilibrium and the maladjustments of the times en- couraged and reinforced the expression of personal expe- rience, they also tended to produce the excesses of indi- vidualism, false perspectives of life, wild theories, and unattainable ideals. They account in part, it has been alleged and rightly, for the incoherencies of Shelley and the terrific convulsions of Byron. But do they not also '"Prelude," Bk. IX. 34 WORDSWORTH. in part account for the "amazing inequalities" in Words- worth that have been the wonder of critics from that day to this? It is the misfortune, or the fortune, of the great and the good to understand the burdens and the sorrows of a people and to bear those burdens and sor- rows in their own hearts. (Is it not indeed by virtue of this sympathetic understanding and this burden-bear- ing that posterity gives them the title of great and good?) And when those burdens are exceptionally heavy and those sorrows profoundly deep, they leave their scars in the characters of even the greatest. As our theme unfolds, we shall watch the dramatic interplay of the spirit of the times and the character of the man until we arrive at the volitional and mystical attitude toward life that is at once characteristic of the man and a natural outcome of the troubled times in which he lived. Since we have now before us the chief characteris- tics of the times, let us next consider the qualities of mind that were native to Wordsworth and that remained a personal possession with him through life. The powers that were given to him by nature and inheritance were the powers of passion wth extreme sensitiveness, and volition with a moral predisposition. Like our statement for the spirit of the times, this is not intended to be a complete formulation of all Wordsworth's excellent gifts of mind. Besides these, for example, he possessed an imagination that was not only "essentially scientific, and quite unlike the fancy that decorates and falsifies fact to gratify an idle mind with a sense of neatness and ingenu- ity," but an imagination that was penetrating and con- templative and that saw, in a very great measure, the "soul of truth in every part" of the objects of its vision. But this penetrating imagination in Wordsworth was peculiarly the product of the more elemental powers of HIS TIMES. 35 sensitiveness, passion, and volition. At any rate, it is the combination of these elemental powers which furnish the nucleus of his moral and intellectual being and give th e key to his character. /^Tn writing to a friend in 1792, the sister of Words- worth says, — "William has . . a sort of violence of af- fection, if I may so term it, which demonstrates itself every moment of the day, when the objects of his afifec- tion are present with him, in a thousand almost imper- ceptible attentions to their wishes, in a sort of restless watchfulness which I know not how to describe, a ten- derness that never sleeps.''- With keen penetration she points out the basic elements in the character of her brother.] "Restless watchfulness," "a. tenderness that never sleeps," and "violence of afifection" are the chief qualities of it. And this characterization accords re- markably with Wordsworth's description of his own childhood given to his intended biographer many years later. He says, "I was of a stiff, moody, violent temper." Allowing for some freedom in the use of terms, these characteristics may be respectively dignified (as, indeed, they were dignified in \\^ords worth's manhood) into volition, sensitiveness, and passion. The stiffness of temper of his childhood grew into the "restless watch- fulness" of his youth, and matured into that thorough- going volition which directed the events of his whole after-life ; the moodiness of his childhood grew, under the forming agency of the will, into the "tenderness that never sleeps" of his youth, and flowered into that exqui- site sensitiveness characteristic of his whole subsequent career; while the violent temper of his childhood grew into the"violent affections" of his youtii, and, tempered by "Taken from a letter quoted by Myers in "Wordsworth." 36 WORDSWORTH. the influence of a masterful will, finally bore fruit a hundred fold in deep and thoroughly subdued literary passions. Passion, sensitiveness, volition — these were the pow- ers that were with him when a child hidden away among the silences of the Westmoreland hills, long before the terrible rumblings of the French Revolution broke upon his ears. Wordsworth attests to the possession of them in his childhood: I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me •An appetite ; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest \ Unborrowed from the eye.^ There were not only "aching joys" and "dizzy raptures" with the child, but he w as strangely sensitive to all ob- _J_e£tSx_^ Before he was ten years old he would range through half the night among the mountain slopes and on the "open heights where woodcocks run along the smooth green turf," and would ply his anxious visita- tion: Sometimes it befell In these night wanderings, that a strong desire O'erpowered my better reason, and the bird Which was the captive of another's toil Became my prey; and when the deed was done I heard among the solitary hills Low breathings coming after me, and sounds Of undistinguishable motion, steps Almost as silent as the turf they trod.* '"Tintern Abbey." ^"Prelude," Bk. I. HIS TIMES. 37 This not only expresses the child's sensitiveness of mind, but also reveals the germ of a moral disposition. The silent steps, the sounds of undistinguishable motion, and the low breathings coming after him were due mainly to the deed he had committed. In speaking of a time before he was seventeen, he says : PnU let this Be not forgotten, that I still retained My first creative sensibility ; That by the regular action of the world My soul was unsubdued.' By his creative sensibility and by his strength of will he very early in youth kept his soul from being subdued "by the regular action of the world." And in the earliest of those days his strong will, similar to that of other boys with strong wills, manifested itself in the form of wilfulness and even stubbornness. His mother once told an intimate friend of hers that the only one of her five children about whose future life she was anxious was William, and that he would be remarkable either for good or for evil. But the force of moral conviction in his constitution was easily sufficient to save him from his mother's anxious fears and to give him not only the will to live, but to live morally, to realize the better alter- native of his mother's prophecy, and become remarkable only for good. These same powers of passion, sensitiveness, and vo- lition were with him in his youth. If any further testi- mony than that of his sister, which is clear and unmis- takable, is needed, it can be found in his early attitude toward the French Revolution. It especially illustrates his volitional activity. We all know how differently we '"Prelude," Bk. II. 38 WORDSWORTH, are affected by two characters, one of whom orders the activities of his life toward some definite end and always moves in a straight line when the direction is once chos- en, and the other of whom is frequently at variance with himself and is easily turned from any course by accident or circumstance. The first impresses us as having, the latter as lacking, will and volition. Now, Wordsworth, whose temperament from childhood was somewhat "stiff," was very slow in choosing a direction of activity, but when it was once chosen, he held to it with a tenacity equalled by very few men. As the "Prelude" shows and as Myers in his book on Wordsworth has well demonstrated,^ Wordsworth for a time accepted the French Revolution as a matter of course, without being deeply stirred. But even after he was thoroughly aroused and his "in- most soul was agitated," and he could almost Have prayed that throughout earth upon all men The gift of tongues might fall, and power arrive From the four quarters of the winds to do For France, what without help she could not do, A work of honour — " even then he was slow to throw himself into the cause. He checked and interrogated his emotions. It was his wont always to hold his emotions in restraint. He would not decide blindly, he would wait for light : A mind whose rest Is where it ought to be, in self restraint, In circumspection and simplicity, Falls rarely in entire discomfiture Below its aim, or meets with, from without A treacherv that foils it or defeats.' •"Prelude," Bk. X. ^"Prelude," Bk. X. HIS TIMES. 39 But finally, when he felt sure of the worthiness of the cause, he gave himself, not partly or stintingly, but whole- heartedly to it. He was then for France, out and out. Resolute and single-minded, he stood ready to serve her at any cost. What a shock then his moral and sensitive nature must have sustained when a little later his hopes for France were blasted ! Wordsworth was a man who accepted great human issues seriously. He believed in what truth he possessed as few men believe in truth. And when once in his life he was compelled to witness the complete failure of his highest hopes, it was only by a slow and painful process that he readjusted himself to another course. Had his desire to see the truth vic- torious been less intense, had the issues at stake in France been taken to heart less seriously, had his will in the matter been less strong, he would have passed through the moral crisis with correspondingly greater ease. The deep impression this crisis made in his life is proof of Wordsworth's tenacity of mind and unex- celled volitional and moral temper in youth. But these same powers of passion with sensitiveness, and volition with a moral predisposition, were with him in his mature years and manifest themselves in his best works. Though we cannot pluck the heart out of Wordsworth's mystery, it is quite certain that it lies in the direction of his wonderful sensitiveness to the simple and elemental forces of life, his insight into them, his firm grasp on them, and his power of compelling the reader to feel them, colored as they always are by his own moral disposition. The following familiar passage, I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, 40 WORDSWORTH. Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns. And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things — * does not primarily owe its strength and wonder to any new and original philosophical conception underlying it. The conception that there is a unified and living spirit 'back of all things and in and through all things is as old as the thinking race. But this passage owes its uniqueness and fame almost wholly to the mysterious vitality of volition. The power of it is due to the inti- macy of the presence, to the fact that the presence dis- turbs one's inmost being. One is compelled to feel the motion and the spirit that impels all things. If there is any new philosophical conception here at all, it is the concep- tion of vital movment — of attributing volition to the "goings-on of the universe." It should be remembered that the chief part of Wordsworth's definition of a poet makes him "a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them."^ And this passage of poetry is an illustration of his definition. It deepens immeasurably one's sense of the sublime ener- gies of volition — volition in the vast spaces of the uni- verse without and in the heart and mind of man within. Wordsworth's grasp on the elemental pas- sions and volitional energies of life was the grasp of a ^"Tintern Abbey." "Preface to "Lyrical Ballads." Ills TIMES. 41 giant; and the passionate and volitional life that springs from his poetry gives that poetry its chief distinction. There is also an undercurrent of motion in his poetry which gives it a peculiar distinction ; it seems to be a sublimation of activity, but expressed with such a strong grasp on reality that its force is extremely effective. In the little poem, "She Was a Phantom" there is drawn a woman that is "a spirit, yet a woman too :" She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight. This character does not impress one with the quali- ties of color, concreteness, flesh and blood, and the like, for she is too phantom-like and sublimated to possess these qualites. But she impresses one with a very dif- ferent kind of reality. She gleams upon one's sight. There is intensive movement inherent in Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin libert3% and the vitality of her motions is directly felt as a reality by the reader. She is A perfect Woman, nobly planned To warn, to comfort, and command. She is at once the embodiment of spiritual sublimation and reality, and her power over us lies in the complete fusion of these two opposite forces in her character by means of the mysterious vitality and intensity of the poet's volition. * In the great lyrical poetry of Wordsworth, then, there is not simply the purely lyrical strain which arises from a mood or a feeling, but there is in it a union of *See Note 3, Appendix. 42 WORDSWORTH. feeling and force, of mood and self-control, of emotion and volition. And the will has two functions to fulfill in the pro- duction of Wordsworth's poetry. He himself says that "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feel- ings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tran- quillity; the emotion is contemplated, till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful com- position generally begins and in a mood similar to this it is carried on." First, the will, by a species of reaction, whips a recollected emotion into a state of excitement, and then the overflow of the powerful emotion thus excited must be held under restraint as it enters into the making of a poetic composition. Though this theory for the production of poetry is by no means true for the production of all successful composition, it is certainly a careful and exact transcript of what took place in the conscious part of Wordsorth's own mind. Since this is not merely the description of an intel- lectual process, but involves the activities of passion and volition as well as intellect, it ofifers an excellent insight into Wordsworth's whole nature and character. His was a life of continuous "high endeavors" at "plain liv- ing and high thinking," conscious and purposive. To everything he did he imparted a touch of volition. Even his "wise passiveness" requires a certain mental alert- ness that does not belong to a lazy man since it presup- poses more or less conscious effort. In the early days -of Wordsworthian criticism Aubrey De Vere, in an elo- quent essay, showed that Wordsworth's nature was pas- sionate. He says : — "The whole of Wordsworth's nature HIS TIM lis. 43 was impassioned, body and spirit, intellect and imagina- tion." What aroused the critic was the fact that since Wordsworth was so completely the master of his pas- sions unsympathetic critics had alleged that he did not possess any. In Wordsworth's mature years the will al- ways dominates the feelings. "There is volition and self-government in every line of his poetry," says Hutton, and there is likewise volition and self-government in every act of his life. It is with him as though there were a great underground reservoir of passion. But the reservoir is so deeply and firmly set in adamant that an explosion is impossible. There is something of the wariness of a logician in Wordsworth's statement: "Had I been a writer of love- poetry it would have been natural for me to write with a degree of warmth which could hardly have been ap- proved by my principles, and which might have been undesirable for the reader." Like the logician who is, more than others, conscious of the limitations of logic, Wordsworth the man of volitions and self-government is constantly aware of the limits of the power of self- control; and like the logician again who is forever deal- ing with matter that is refractory to logic, W^ordsworth is always dealing with forces that lie just outside of his control, with intuitive impulses, with acts in which "we associate ideas in a state of excitement." with half con- scious forces that are defiant to the subordination of the mind yet do not overwhelm its conscious self-posses- sion. In close juxtaposition to a passage in the Fourth Book of the "Prelude," in which he emphasizes the in- dependent, self-directing and creative power of the Soul. there is this passage, which tells of half-conscious in- fluences to the finer influx of which his sensitive "mind lay open to a more exact and close communion:" 44 WORDSWORTH. Around me from among the hazel leaves, Now here, now there, moved by the straggling wind. Came €ver and anon a breath-like sound, Quick as the pantings of the faithful dog, The off and on companion of my walk; And such, at times, believing them to be, I turned my head to look if he were there; Then into solemn thought I passed once more. With the soul's subordination of powers Hke these — pervasive yet only half-conscious — Wordsworth was con- stantly dealing, but with the passion of love, which is sufficiently strong and self-conscious to require a degree of warmth in treatment that could hardly be approved by his principles, and which is likely to invade the power of self-control, he refused to deal directly. Though he acknowledged that Love, blessed Love, is ever3'where The spirit of my song," 3-et he preferred to keep so far from the borderline ot conflict between passionate love and self-control that he would always be absolutely sure of the supremacy of the latter. But he who would aspire to fathom the depth of the human soul and at the same time remain human- hearted, must also be willing to sound its tumult. Words- worth, however, consistently refused to do the latter, which resulted not only in a distinct loss of human- heartedness, but also in the gain of a certain conscious self-mastery which is at once the source of both his weakness and his strength. A precaution must be thrown out at this point. It is not here intended to convey the idea that Wordsworth's best and most characteristic poems were the product 'The Poet and the Caged Turtledove." HIS TIMES. 45 wholly of self-directed efifort and the "conscious con- quests of insight." There is at bottom no contradic- tion in saying that there is volition and self-government in every line of his poetry and that at the same time nature not only gave him the matter of his best poems but also wrote his poems for him. For it may be con- ceived that a richly endowed mind may have a great variety of instinctive and spontaneous qualities and still possess a more than usual amount of self-consciousness and self-government. Self-possession and spontaneity are not mutually exclusive, but may both abound in a genius of a volitional type. This seems to be the truth in the case of Wordsworth. His strength, from this point of view, lies in the happy co-operation, at rare moments, of self-possession and spontaneity. This co-operation is so difficult to attain that we should not expect Words- worth to attain to it always, but to fail at times, as indeed he does, on the side of spontaneity. How these uncon- scious and spontaneous elements are wrought into artistic structures we may never know from the very fact that they are unconscious and spontaneous. In his prefaces to his poems Wordsworth does not make enough allowance for the part they actually play in the makng of his poetry. But in those same prefaces, on the other hand, he gives the most accurate and profound descrip- tion of what took place consciously in his own mind, and in so far the prefaces are invaluable, not only as a criticism of the conscious side of his art, but as giving us excellent insights into his character. By the strenuous exercise of the power of passion and will Wordsworth developed an unusually strong spirit of personal liberty and acquired a complete mas- tery of his senses. When, in his mature years, he looked back over the passionate life of his childhood, he felt that 46 WORDSWORTH. he had lived too much the life of the senses. He says in the "Prelude:" I speak in recollection of a time When the bodily eye, in every stage of life The most despotic of our senses, gained Such strength in fne as often held my mind In absolute dominion." He very kindly and genially ascribes his mind's redemp- tion from this thralldom to the powers of nature, and suggests that if he cared to enter upon abstruser argu- ment, he could "unfold the means which nature studious- ly employs to thwart this tyranny." Whatever the agency by which this tyranny was thwarted, it is quite certain that by the time he was writing the "Prelude" his own mind had become a safe-guard against any such tyranny, and that too, without the agency of natural forces. Just as he resisted the power of passionate love to master his will, so he carefully guarded against the despotism of the senses and even looked back with a jealous eye upon their despotism in his childhood. He had now shaken oflf the domineering habit of the senses : I had known Too forcibly, too early in my life, Visitings of imaginative power For this to last : I shook the habit off Entirely and forever, and again In Nature's presence stood, as now I stand, A sensitive being, a creative soul." And he had now become the example of his own text : Man, if he do but live within the light Of high endeavours, daily spreads abroad His being armed with strength that cannot fail." ""Prelude," Bk. XII. ""Prelude," Bk. XII. ""Prelude," Bk. IV. HIS TIMES. 47 With a mind that was sensitive and creative and that con- stantly Hved in the light of high endeavors, Wordsworth had attained a high vantage ground from which to ex- plore nature and human life. He was like a man on a high eminence over-looking a broad expanse of country. The slightest change of position presents views of objects remote from each other and varied in kind and nature. He was like the Solitary of his own "Excursion," who in the wilds of America, Having gained the top Of some commanding eminence, which yet Intruder ne'er beheld, he thence surveys Regions of ' wood and wide savannah, vast Expanse of unappropriated earth, With mind that sheds a light on what he sees; Free as the sun, and lonely as the sun. Pouring above his head its radiance down Upon a living and rejoicing world !" And thus, with a mind that shed light on what it saw and that was as free as the sun and oftentimes as lonely as the sun, Wordsworth had attained to a perfect self-mas- tery and to a large and glorious freedom. We have now seen that the spirit of the times was rev- olutionary and that men attempted to readjust society on a higher level and sought greater personal liberty. We have also seen that Wordsworth possessed the powers of passion with extreme sensitiveness, and volition with a moral predisposition, and that by the exercise of these powers in a time of revolution and of liberty-seeking he attained to an excellent self-mastery and a glorious per- sonal freedom. "'Excursion," Bk. III. CHAPTER II WORDSWORTH : MEMORY AND WILL. Wordsworth's theory of freedom accords with his strong sense of personal freedom in actual experience, which we have just described. As early as his first col- lege vacation he had learned that the immortal soul has the God-like power to inform, to create, and to mould her environment : I had inward hopes And swellings of the spirit, was rapt and soothed, Conversed with promises, had glimmering views How life pervades the undecaying mind; How the immortal soul with God-like power Informs, creates, and thaws the deepest sleep That time can lay upon her.* He had also made careful observation of Those passages of life that give Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how, The mind is lord and master — outward sense The obedient servant of her will." And at a much later time, when writing the "Excursion,"* he observed that '"Prelude," Bk. IV. '"Prelude," Bk XIL MEMORY AND WILL. 49 Within the soul a faculty abides, That with interpositions, which would hide And darken, so can deal that they become Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt Her native brightness.* This free power of the mind, he says, sets forth and mag- nifies virtue, and saves the soul "from palpable oppres- sions of despair." In the opening of the Ninth Book of the "Excursion" he says that this principle of freedom subsists in all things : Whate'er exists hath properties that spread Be3'ond itself; from link to link, It circulates, the Soul of all the worlds. This is the freedom of the universe. But he adds that "its most apparent home" is in the human mind. And when the outward facts of life — the fact, for example, that men, who in the morn of youth defied the elements, must vanish — seem to deny that freedom has its most apparent home in the human mind, we are still intuitively to "feel that we are greater than we know" : Be it so ! Knough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour ; And if, as toward the silent tomb we go. Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower We feel that we are greater than we know.* The mind of man has the power to create and to inform; it is lord and master of outward sense, it can feel its faith in freedom, it can will to believe, and can go on forever living in the light of this faith. According to this philosophy knowledge is relegated to a second place. '"Excursion," Bk. IV. •"After-thought." 50 WORDSWORTH. Knowledge is great, but love, hope, faith, feeling, power of will, freedom — these are greater. But just as freedom has its most apparent home in the human mind, so Wordsworth finds the human mind the best home for his poetry. By the power of his will, he focused his feelings and imagination with great inten- sity upon the life within, upon memory, instincts, per- ception, moral power, etc. Penetrating deep into his own heart he there found revealed the fact of God, immor- tality, and freedom. Among these inner powers there is none that he dwells on more intensely than the power of memory ; and from the extraordinary frequency with which allsuions are made to his childhood in his poetry it is quite evident that the memories of his childhood were one of the objects of his experience upon which his will focused his feel- ings and imagination. But from tlie fact that he scarcely ever alludes to the time of his life between his childhood and maturity that is so fraught with important issues in the formation of character, we are convinced that he took slight interest in "the naked recollection of that time." To be sure in the Books from the Third to the Sixth, inclusive, of the "Prelude," in which poem he deliberately sets out to trace the growth of a poetic mind from childhood to maturity there is considerable said about adolescence and maturing youth. But even here, especially in the Fourth and Fifth Books, he has a tend- ency often to slip back into the period of "our simple childhood," which "sits upon a throne that hath more power than all the elements." Again and again he re- turns to this point of view. Even in the Eighth Book, where according to the natural evolution of the poem he should have passed this period, he not only g^ves a long retrospective view of that time when nature was "prized MEMORY AND WILL. 5I for her own sake" and became his joy, but he describes the quahty of childhood fancies at great length. In the Twelfth and Thirteenth Books, w'here one would think surely he had done with the subject, he turns upon it more strongly than ever in his attempts to explain the mystery of imagination and taste. He exclaims, Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth Proceed thy honors. I am lost, but see In simple childhood something of the base On which thy greatness stands." In fact, with the exception of the Seventh Book, which is perhaps the dullest in the "Prelude," and the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Books, into which political consider- ations enter, the "Prelude" continually eddies about the idea of childhood and never really passes beyond it. Outside his inner communings with himself and nature which he had begim in his childhood, Wordsworth has little to say about his college life and vacations that is instructive and inspiring. He says somewhat indiffer- ently : Companionships, Friendships, acquaintances, were welcome all. We sauntered, played, or rioted ; we talked Unprofitable talk at morning hours; Drifted about along the streets and walks, Read lazily in trivial books, went forth To gallop through the country in blind zeal Of senseless horsemanship, or on the breast Of Cam sailed boisterously, and let the stars Come forth, perhaps without one quiet thought.' It is highly instructive to contrast this allusion to sailing boisterously "on the breast of Cam" and letting the "stars *"Prelude," Bk. XII. '"Prelude," Bk. III. 52 WORDSWORTH. come forth perhaps without one quiet thought," with the description in the First Book of the "Prelude" of saiHng, when a boy, in an "elfin pinnace" which left Behind her still, on either side, Small circles glittering idly in the moon Until they melted all into one track Of sparkling light. It was not only the boisterous sailing on the breast of Jam but the companionships, idle talk, trivial books, senseless horsemanship — these were all matters of in- difference to him; and these indifferent things produced a sort of gap in the otherwise continuousness of his life. A link between his childhood and manhood was lost, which void gave rise to a sense of double consciousness : So wide appears The vacancy between me and those days Which yet have such self-presence in my mind That, musing on them, often do I seem Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself And of some other Being.' It is a simple fact of psychology that when any memory images are voluntarily recalled and are brooded over they become more vivid and lifelike than ordinary memory images, and can be made as vivid and lifelike as the im- ages of immediate perception. It seems that Words- worth, following somewhat the line of least resistance, voluntarily vivified the "remembrance of those long past hours" of childhood at the expense of the memories of adolescent years; and that as a consequence, the aggre- gate memories of childhood stood in his mind somewhat '"Prelude" Bk. II. MEMORY AND WILL. 53 apart from tlie images of immediate perception, so that he simultaneously felt conscious of himself and some otlier Being. Tlie fact, however, that Wordsworth voluntarily viv- ified the memories of childhood is not a fact of sufficient weight to account for this strangely divided conscious- ness. There is a deeper cause for it. There was another force that wrought in conjunction with his will toward the same end. That force was the great external fact of Wordsworth's late youth and early manhood, the fact, namely, of the French Revolution. During his adolesc- ent years and up to the dawn of his interest in the Rev- olution, he was much given to introspective tendencies.'/ In the parts of the "Prelude" relating to this period of time, are many passages that speak of the "reasonings of the mind turned inward." It was his wont to sepa- rate himself from his companions and allow his "mind to turn into herself." He early discovered that Caverns there were within my mind which sun Could never penetrate.' But in early days of youth this tendency toward intro- spection may easily become abnormal, and there is a slight touch of the morbid in some of Wordsworth's youthful moodiness. There existed in his mind, he says, at this time, A treasonable growth Of indecisive judgements, that impared And shook the mind's simplicity.* He slightly overstrained tiie instrument of introspection that was to do such effective work in later years. This •"Prelude," Bk. III. •"Prelude." Bk III. 54 WORDSWORTH. excess, however, can easily be overlooked in the light of the fact that he now also perfected this instrument for future use. But when, in his twenty-second year, Wordsworth became vitally alive to the agitation, the sorrow, and the terror of the Revolution, he was completely, though sjow- ly, taken out of himself. His mind turned from within, outward : I gradually withdrew Into a noisier world, and thus ere long Became a patriot; and my heart was all Given to the people, and my love was theirs." And when later he was at the point of leaving France, he assures us that he would I At this time with willing heart ' Have undertaken for a cause so great Service however dangerous." And the only reason why he did not perform this "ser- vice however dangerous" was that he was peremptorily called home by his guardians. His summons home, how- ever, did not lessen his enthusiasm for the cause of the Revolution but rather heightened it. It is a common ex- perience that a man's enthusiasm for a cause is height- ened when his hands are tied so that he cannot play the part in it he has espoused in his heart. Wordsworth had been at Orleans and had learned the local and national characteristics of the French. He had been at Blois and for three months had associated intimately with Beaupuy, who opened his mind to the real issues of the Revolution. He had seen the hunger- ""Prelude," Bk. IX. ""Prelude," Bk. X. MEMORY AND WILL. 55 bitten girl and the heifer, which incident greatly enforced the arguments of Beaupuy that a benignant spirit was abroad to destroy sucli poverty ; and Wordswortli's deep- est chords of sympathy were touched. He had accepted the September massacres as a necessary violence during a revolution, for, as he explained a little later, "a tijne of revolution is not a season of true liberty." He had been in""JParis and hacP'^assed the prison where the unhappy Monarch lay," and that night in a liigh and lonely room he had felt most deeply in what world he was, what ground he trod on, and what air he breathed. He thought of the September massacres ami of the Monarch in the prison, and conjured up similar scenes from "tragic fic- tions or true history." "And in this way," he says, I wrought upon myself, Until I seemed to hear a voice that cried. To the whole city, "Sleep no more."" He had clearly perceived that the forces at work in the Revolution did not arise in a day and were not the har- vest of "popular government and equality ;" but he clear- ly saw That neither these nor aught Of wild belief engrafted on their names By false philosophy had caused the woe, But a terrific reservoir of guilt And ignorance filled up from age to age, That could no longer hold its loathsome charge, But burst and spread in deluge through the land." What he did not perceive as clearly at this time was that it would take as many ages for the reservoir of guilt and ignorance to disappear as it had been in filling up from ""Prelude," Bk. X. ""Prelude." Bk. X. 56 WORDSWORTH. age to age. He had, on the contrary, looked for the im- mediate appearance of a new and glorious era of liberty .j .' He had also revolved in his mind "how much the des- tiny'of man had still hung upon single persons;" and if perchance he himself were destined by providence to lead the people through the present crisis, he would not thwart the designs of providence, but would be ready for the sacrifice. Reluctantly indeed, then, did he obey the summons that called him back to England. When once at home, he was unable to act, but was given much time to meditate. Then it was that the full power and the spirit of the Revolution reverberated through his whole sensitive nature. His senses and feelings and moral being were as alive to the issues of the Revolu- tion as they had ever been to the forces of nature. He was filled with the highest hopes and the most sanguine aspirations; but these hopes and aspirations were soon doomed to disappointment. It was only a few months after this that England declared war against the French Revolutionists, and Wordsworth's moral nature was given its first great shock: No shock Given to my moral nature had I known Down to that very moment; neither lapse Nor turn of sentiment that might be named A revolution, save at this one time ; All else was progress on the self-same path On which, with a diversity of pace I had been travelling; this a stride at once Into another region." But the stride was not as swift as one would surmise from this passage. Wordsworth's affections for his na- tive country and his native soil were of slow growth ""Prelude" Bk. X. MEMORY AND WILL. 57 and were deeply rooted. And slowly and painfully his alienation wrought itself into his character. But a second shock was awaiting him. It came when the French Revolutionists took aggressive steps in sub- duing the efforts made for liberty in Switzerland. France herself was abandoning the cause of human liberty, and Wordsworth's sympathies were alienated: Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defense For one of conquest, losing sight of all Which they had struggled for." Cut off from sympathy with his own country and with the country whose cause he had espoused, he was thrown back into himself more violently and more completely than he had been taken out of himself. For a number of years his depression was as great as his hopes and as- pirations had been high. Were all his aspirations for the relief of suft'ering humanity vain and foolish? Were there no grounds at all for the confidence he placed in human good? Was he, then, utterly wrong in his social and political ideals, and was life after all nothing but an empty mockery? These questions demanded answers. For Wordsworth there were just one method of finding answers to them and of escaping from his depression, the method, namely, of associating with the simple life and society of his early surroundings. Unfortunately this method was remote from his thoughts at first and he attempted another way of escape. He tried to find solace for his tempest-tossed soul in the speculative philoso- phies of his day : This was the time, when, all things tending fast To depravation, speculative schemes — That promised to abstract the hopes of Man "Prelude," Bk. XI. 58 WORDSWORTH. Out of his feelings, to be fixed thenceforth Forever in a purer element — Found ready welcome." But in that speculative scheming which promised to ab- stract the hopes of Man out of his feelings Wordsworth was wholly outside of his natural sphere. Perhaps none of the world's great geniuses have been more helpless than Wordsworth in mere abstract speculation. Here he was not only "out of the pale of love," his sentiment ^'soured and corrupted, upwards to the source," but he was really doing violence to his nature, his affections, and his powers. And the result of this prolonged experience was that he lost All feeling of conviction, and, in fine, Sick, wearied out with contrarieties, Yielded up moral questions in despair." This was the "soul's last and lowest ebb," and he turned for a time to the study of abstract science with the faint hope that his mind might be drawn away from the dark moral questions that had haunted it. But now he had come to live with his sister, and her companionship, together with the surroundings of simple life and nature, began to be a healing balm to the wounds of his mind, and gradually, as by inches, he recovered from his depression. As the process went on, memories of his early childhood joys, sweet and strong, came troop- ing into his mind. Associations with familiar haunts of childhood vividly recalled many memories that had been these years slumbering but half consciously in his mind. In the presence of these new joys of childhood memo- ""Prelude," Bk. XI. ""Prelude." Bk. XI. MEMORY AND WILL. 59 ries, the immediate past became almost a blank to him. His voluntary indifference to his college experiences and the tragic reaction of his interest in the Revolution wrought together to cut his life, as it were, in twain, and the days of his childhood stood out in bold relief from the rest of his life. They were now the only memories of the past that he could associate with all that he held most dear. Separated from him in point of time, they stood in his mind as an aggregate whole distinctly apart from his ideas and images of immediate perception. "So wide appears the vacancy between me and those days," it will be remembered the passage runs, "that often do I seem two consciousnesses, conscious of myself and of some other Being." What a unique and interesting bit of psychology is this when viewed in the right perspect- ive! Since the experiences of childhood were the only ex- periences that had not played him false he would cling to them as to life, and with that frugality of mind which loses no opportunities, he would turn them to the best account. So he cherished them and nurtured them all back to life, and they became to him a living reality. It is not to be wondered at, then, as he came back into the same surroundings and atmosphere in which he had \ spent his passionate life of childhood, and heard the 1 same sounds and saw the same sights over again whicli 1 he had seen and heard in tliose early days, that he would make one of his characters in a poem say: My eyes are dim with childish tears. My heart is idly stirred, For the same sound is in my ears Which in those days I heard : — '* "The Fountain." 60 WORDSWORTH. nor that in many another poem written soon after his recovery from the depression of the Revolution his mind would constantly slip back to the time of childhood, which he now believed held the key to the secret of the pro- foundest meanings of life: Our childhood sits, Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne That hath more power than all the elements, I guess not what this tells of Being past, Nor what it augurs of the life to come." It was in this way that the remembered instincts and intuitions of childhood were made to stand out distinctly in his consciousness and to furnish to his will a direct path to the eternal. II. \^ Since Wordsworth's life of childhood v/as almost wholly a life of love for natural objects, his return to the memories of childhood was simultaneous with his returning interest in nature. Hence these two experi- ences of his are inextricably bound up with each other, and we only speak of them separately for the purpose of exposition. In his essay on Wordsworth's Ethics, Les- lie Stephen says, "The great problem of life, that is, as he conceives it, is to secure continuity between the pe- riod at which we are guided by half-conscious instincts, and that in which man is able to supply the place of those primitive impulses by reasoned conviction. This is the "Prelude," Bk. V. MEMORY AND WILL. 6l thought which comes over and over again in his deepest poems and round which all his teachings center." : It would perhaps be more accurate to say that a great many poems written soon after his recovery from the depress- ing effects of the French Revolution, touch upon this idea; that in the light of the unfoldment of Wordsworth's character and the revolutionary times through which he had just passed, it was peculiarly necessary for him to attempt a unity of the two ends of his life that had been almost broken asunder; and that, instead of attempting to find a continuity between the instincts of childhoqd and the reason of man as such, Wordsworth, who had been thoroughly convinced of the absolute hollowness of rationalism and of all abstract speculation, was really at- tempting either to transcend reason or to level it down to the basis of childhood experiences themselves. Words- worth was now wholly on the side of the intuitionists, and he would give no cjuarter to the rationalists. He carried the revolutionary method and spirit with him. Though he may have become a "lost leader" from the political point of view, he had no intentions of giving up revolu- tionary leadership in other fields. He fell back upon his personal experiences as a basis for operation. He be- lieved that the experiences of his childhood were valid and he would dare to make the most of them. •^ Here Wordsworth comes into harmony with the movement in English Literature called the Romantic movement. The Romantic movement can in general be defined only in negative terms. If there was one quality, however, that all the leaders of the movement possessed, it was the insistence on the expression of liberty and per- sonal experience. These experiences were as varied as the individuals engaged in the movement, and that is why the movement has no other important quality com- 62 WORDSWORTH. men to all its leaders. But this spirit of insistence on the expression of personal experience gave Wordsworth the courage of his convictions; and had it not been so, perhaps those strange and beautiful raptures of his child- hood would have never been brought to light. It must not be supposed, however, that he was acting with a con- scious gusto in the matter. He was being deeply moved by the spirit of his times, and his conscious will wrought in harmony with that spirit. He was in dead earnest. The robe of the prophet had now fallen upon him. He had become a mystic and a seer. He was now formulat- ing his poetic principles both in prose and in verse. He had said that the poet, like the prophet, has "a sense that fits him to perceive objects unseen before." His mind ranged down the scale of thought to the instincts and impulses of childhood ; it ranged up the scale through reasoning to a transcendental experience. And these two remote ends of experience, he felt, met in a harmony of truth in one's immediate experience of memory, or recollection. And so the memories of childhood, which had been rejected by the builders, became one of the foundation stones in his experiment of life. , These memories of childhood, then, were for Words- worth no mere poetic imaginings, but they stood in his mind as a living reality. They were for him the source of joy, freedom, and intimations of immortality. In late years once, it is true, in a very scientific and unpoetic frame of mind, Wordsworth declared that in his child- hood he was of a "stiff, moody, violent temper." No doubt this is scientifically and unpoetically accurate. But according to his theory now, there was beneath this moody and unbending self, another and deeper self in the child, not tainted with original sin but invested with glorious and heavenly attributes ; and the experiences of MKMORV AND WII.I,. 63 this deeper self of the child furnished the material for the will and memory to act upon. It cannot be stated too early that one of the characteristics of the mystic is that he insists upon the validity of immediate experience. Wordsworth, it will be remembered, said that an early emotion may be contemplated in tranquillity "till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind." His will, focusing his feelings upon some past experience, produces an emotion that does actually exist in the mind and has immediate validity. In this sense, a memory image or an imaginat- ive picture is as valuable to the mind as an actual per- ceptive image. This is characteristic of much of Words- worth's experience. Witness one of many examples that might be given: That very day, From a bare ridge we also first beheld Unveiled the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved To have a soulless image on the eye That had usurped upon a living thought That never more could be.^ The "living thought" is to be valued more than the "soul- less image on the eye." The important point to seize is that a memory image is to be valued for its own sake. So, upon the most sacred experiences of his past, Words- worth long and earnestly focused his feelings and imag- inative thouglit until, around these experiences as a cen- ter, there irradiated a dome of light which he called the golden age, heaven, immortality. These glorified present memory experiences which had their concrete basis in '"Prelude," Bk. VI. 64 WORDSWORTH. childhood were what Wordsworth prized. They brought him joy, a deep sense of freedom, and intimations of immortahty. Immortahty is at best a vague and shadowy thing for us here below. We can never do more than speculate about it on this side the grave. We can only have inti- mations of it. We can see it only, so to speak, through a key hole ; and there are many key holes ; and it mat- ters little which we choose. Naturally we choose that which appeals most to our experiences. Wordsworth chose the key hole of his childhood experiences. Long and earnestly he peered through it into the shadowy and invisible world. Often he thought "of Eternity, of first, and last, and midst, and without end," and of "life, death, eternity ! momentous themes ;" and he could not guess what our childhood, our simple childhood "tells of Being past, nor what it augurs of the life to come." Joy, free- dom, intimations of immortality — these are substantial results in the experiment of life. And since our child- hood, which "sits upon a throne that hath more power than all the elements," is the substantial basis upon which they rest, the memories of childhood have absolute valid- ity in Wordsworth's scheme of life. On the question of the ultimate meaning and validity of Wordsworth's theory of childhood memories, critics differ. Because of the personal nature of the question, tempermental differences will enter into the opinions of those who judge. Perhaps the only point upon which there can be an agreement of opinion is that a number of passages, as, for instance, the eighth stanza of "Inti- mations of Immortality," taken singly cannot be accepted at their face value. They must be considered as polem- ical and exaggerated statements of a well enough defined principle that underlies them. The reason for these ex- MEMORY AND Wir.I.. 65 aggerations lies in Wordsworth's revolutionary zeal in opposing abstract speculation and logical reason, in his vigorous defence of a doctrine opposed to cold-hearted science, that "false secondary power by which we multiply distinctions/' Not that he was opposed to scientific facts as facts. No one was a closer and more careful observer of the habits and conduct of animals, children, and mature human beings. But the whole energy of his mind was leveled against dry scientific and speculative systems ; and in his fervor to state his own positive con- victions, he fell into making exaggerated statements. In- cident to these exaggerations, there is sometimes a lack of clearness to distinguish between childhood experiences and the memories of those experiences. When cleared of its exaggerations and its ambiguity, the doctrine is essen- tially a doctrine of recollection, which resolves itself real- ly into the simplicity of a psychological method rather than the dignity of a philosophical system. The child is not really the philosopher, in esse, but is the philosopher, in posse. He possesses fresh and divine potencies which, if conserved and transmuted by the power of volition, will constitute the solid substance in the experience of the philosopher that is to be. Reduced, then, to its normal proportions, what is the ultimate meaning and validity of this doctrine? Here it is that the widest difference of critical opinion prevails, and perhaps will always continue to prevail, due mainly to personal preferences. It all depends upon the point of view. To the hard-headed reasoner there is little in this doctrine that commends itself. He w^ill insist that it must be submitted to the arbitrament of scientific fact. It is certain that in childhood there is a great deal of impotence. The perceptive faculties are not trained. The imagination is crude. Thougiit is embryonic. To 66 WORDSWORTH. be sure, in childhood there is innocenc}- and sweetness. But it is the innocency of ignorance and the sweetness of inexperience. Besides in some types of childhood, at least, there is plenty of anger, spiteful jealousies, wrang- ling, screaming, and getting red in the face. And it is precisely the memory of these sharp and thorny exper- iences that rankles in the mind in after years. True in- deed is all this, Wordsworth would reply. He himself had visitings of those moodier hours. He had experi- enced all the manifest weaknesses of childhood. He would not write himself down a polished and philosophical little scholar. He would not put a false veneer on the facts. They are written large in the "Prelude," so that he that runs may read. But deeper and more vital facts than these Wordsworth also found in his childhood. His childhood, at bottom, he discovered was a vconderful compact of instincts and impulses that defied all analy- sis. There were gleams of light at opportune times. There were occasional flashes of insight into the life of things. His soul, like every other serious soul, had known its god-like hours : There's not a man That lives who hath not known his god-Hke hours, And feels not what an empire we inherit, As natural beings in the strength of Nature.^' It does not require the occult wisdom of a philosopher to distinguish between these higher moments of inspira- tion and the lower moods of sullenness. It lies within the power of every individual's will and memory to re- create the exalted moments of life until they are lived over again in the mind. This, then, may become a uni- versal method of life and a panacea for its ills. '"Prelude" Bk. III. MEMORY AND WILL. 67 There is. however, a still more serious objection to be made from the standpoint of scientific fact. Our per- spective of childhood naturally tends to become untrue. There is a natural inclination in us to give additional colors to the joys and pleasures of the past. In his zeal to revive his memories of childhood experiences, Words- worth did not guard against the possible deception that some of them might have been "called to life by after- meditation." And, therefore, he unconsciously drifted into an attitude toward his childhood experiences that is essentially unscientific and seems to be based on prejudice. To a disinterested person this natural inclination of the mind can easily be illustrated from experience. I remem- ber the school-house in ■which I attended school as a child. It was the largest school-house in the neighbor- hood. To me it seemed spacious indeed. I always carried an idea of its spaciousness with me. Some years after I had left the school-house I came back to it. Then it ap- peared to me not spacious, but small and dingy. My memory image that I had carried with me these years was shattered. ]\Iost of our early memory images, if they could be tested likewise, would be shattered. From the scientific standpoint, then. Wordsworth seemed to take a prejudicial position, for he deliberately chose not to have his memory images shattered. l.>ut he would not, of course, defend this position from the standpoint of prej- udice ; he would defend it from the standpoint of sub- jective experience. He would not have the vision from within invaded and outdone by the outward facts of hfe: We have a vision of our own ; Ah I why should we undo it?" ""Yarrow Unvisited.'' 68 WORDSWORTH. The immediate psychic entity in the form of a memory image was to him as valuable as the original experience from which that memory image took its rise. Though showing a reverent attitude toward the outward and verifiable facts of science, he showed a greater reverence for the immediate facts of consciousness. Whether an imaginative picture, or a memory image, or a transfused or interfused presence, the inner fact of consciousness held priority of validity in his mind. And at this point, Wordsworth, the mystic, parts company with those who insist on objective standards of scientific accuracy to de- cide what is true reality. It is exactly on these grounds of difference that critics are divided as to the ultimate value of Wordsworth's theory of childhood memories. This same divergence, based on two widely different methods of approaching the problems of life, is mani- fested in the criticism on the famous "Ode on Intima- tions of Immortality." The conclusion, it may be argued, that there is a future life, is based on the hypothesis that heaven lies about us in our infancy, which latter hypothe- sis, being the major premise, ought to be an incontro- vertible fact — a thing which most of us are quite un- willing to admit. Wordsworth reasons in a circle and there is no logical foundation for his thought. So says the man of logical thought and of scientific accuracy. On the other hand, it may be argued that in the immortal life which is a new state of existence, there may be a complete transcendence of our known order of time. Accordingly then, in eternity there is no such thing as time. Before and after, past and present, are terms not in the vocabulary of angels and the immortals. This idea is presented more clearly in a passage in the Fourteenth Book of the "Prelude." One night after MEMORY AND WILL. 69 a glorious vision from the top of a mountain in which Wordsworth says The Moon hung naked in a firmament Of azure without cloud, and at my feet Rested a silent sea of hoary mist — after this vision had partially dissolved into air, it ap- peared to him the "type of a majestic intellect": There I beheld the emblem of a mind That feeds upon infmity, that broods Over the dark abyss, intent to hear Its voices issuing forth to silent light In one continuous stream. And like unto this majestic intellect that feeds upon in- finity and that broods over the dark abyss, are the higher minds of human beings when inspired, which minds live in a world of life, By sensible impressions not enthralled. But by their quickening impulse made more prompt To hold fit converse with the spiritual world. And with the generations of mankind Spread over time, past, present, and to come, Age after age., till Time shall be no more. Just as time — past, present, and to come — is nothing to the inspired mind that can hold lit converse with the spiritual world, so our known order of time seems to be transcended in the Ode in which Wordsworth reached his highest point of inspiration. We have here, then, practically nothing to do with pre-existence and future life as such — it is simply one ever-present eternal state. And why should not the stray gleams of the pure white light of childhood intimate to us, as strongly as does any other phase of our experience, the life immortal? 70 WORDSWORTH. Or, waiving the point of actual transcendence of time, and granting that the poem is of a sufficiently earthly mould to have remained within the regular mudane order of time, we can still maintain that Wordsworth's grounds are perfectly tenable from the intuitionist's or mystical standpoint. The fulcrum, so to speak, upon which the mind turns from pre-existence to the future life, is not the objective experience represented in the child, but the subjective immediate memory experience of the poet. From the standpoints of tone, feeling, motive, and mean- ing of the poem as a whole, the passage, O joy! ttiat in our embers Is something that doth live — is much more nearly at the core of it than the passage, Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. In after years Wordsworth explained to his readers that he had used the theory of pre-existence merely as a de- vice, making the best of it that he could as a poet.* Some have said that the explanation was due to the weakness of old age; it would be more fair perhaps to say that it was due to the sanity of old age. Leslie Stephen says Wordsworth took unnecessary pains in making the ex- planation. It may be so, but judging from the extraordi- nary proneness of human beings to clutch at something outward and objective, something away from themselves, as a basis for reasoning and faith, Wordsworth's admoni- tion is not at all superfluous. He publicly said of the theory that "it is far too shadowy a notion to be recom- mended to faith, as more than an element in our instincts of immortality." But in spite of his disclaiming all rights to the theory, critics have again and again foisted *See Note 4, Appendix. MEMORY AND WILI.. ?! it upon him as thougli there were something distinctly Wordsworthian in it. In short, Wordsworth's theory of childhood memo- ries has constantly been discussed as though the ques- tion of origin were the prime question to decide. Un- doubtedly the whole trend of modern thought on the question of origin is to explain the marvellous illumi- nations that come to children as the reverberations of past life in its physical and psychical evolution. A mod- ern scientist, Dr. G. Stanley Hall, who of all living men has perhaps collected the largest number of facts con- cerning childhood and adolescence, speaks like a poet, yet speaks with the authority of science when he says, — "Whatever soul-stuflf may or may not be, it is most sus- ceptible and responsive to all present influences, and also,, in a yet far deeper sense, most pervaded with reverbera- tions from an innumerable past ;" and again, — "We are influenced in our deeper, more temperamental dispositions by the life-habits and codes of conduct of we know not what innumerable hosts of ancestors, which like a cloud of witnesses are present through our lives ; and our souls are echo chambers in which their whispers rever- berate."-^ No doubt the pre-existent theory must grad- ually give way to the more scientific theory. Nor does this latter theory in any way degrade the value and mean- ing of childhood memories. For the theory in question is influenced by a second trend of modern thought, the trend namely, to distinguish sharply between two kinds of judgments — existential and spiritual. The first is a judgment of origin, the second of value. Since these two judgments are independent of each other, the value of a thing cannot be determined by its origin, whether '"Aolcscence," Vol. II, Chap. X. 72 WORDSWORTH. that origin be lowly or high. Whether the child is a product of a long physical and psychical evolutionary process, or whether its soul conies directly from a state of spiritual pre-existence, its present spiritual experience Tias precisely the same value. "By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots." And with this latter conception Wordsworth was thoroughly in harmony. Whatever we may believe about the origin of child life, and whatever Wordsworth may have believed, it was "a. sense of the indomitableness of the spirit" in him as a child, and much more the sense of the volitional and in- domitable spirit in him as a man, which he felt was free and which would not and could not die, that gave life and genuineness to the Ode. The fame of the Ode cannot rest on any judgment concerning the origin of child life. Although Wordsworth was intellectually curious enough to wish to know the origin of life, his chief inter- est centered in the operations of his will and memory up- on his childhood experiences, for the purpose of pro- ducing an immediate excitation in his mind. And, in the moment of inspiration, he joined the memories of in- stinctive and impulsive childhood with an experience that transcended reason and time. But this new experience defies any sensible and rational explanation, says the man of a scientific temper of mind. Be it so ; and since it must be so, men of this temper of mind will always find in Wordsworth a rock of ofifense, after a certain point has been reached. They will find a permanent satisfac- tion in Jefifrey's and Macaulay's common sense way of dealing with Wordsworth. On the other hand, men whose temperaments are like that of Wordsworth will al- ways rate the man and his doctrine of childhood memo- ries extremely high. The intensity with which he focus- ed his mind upon his childhood experiences, and the still MEMORY AND WILL. 73 greater intensity witli which he penetrated the mysterious truths of consciousness to which the memories of those experiences were an inlet, will be to these critics but a natural complement to his extraordinary grasp on the essential and fudamental facts of every day life, and to his power of extracting out of the very pain and sorrow and tumult of that life, deep pleasure, joy, and an abiding sense of spiritual freedom. We have now seen that Wordsworth believed in the creative power and the freedom of the human mind, and that he resolutely turned his face toward the deep and the mysterious in man and the deep and the mysterious in the world. We have seen that he found a path directly to the eternal through the power of his will acting upon his childhood memories. We have also seen that the experiences of childhood that had value for him were those that were bound up with his interest in nature. We have had abundant proof that, in his effort of recol- lection to produce an intense excitation in his mind, there was present a deep strain of what is called the mystical. We are now prepared to take this principle of mysticism more fully into account. CHAPTER III WORDSWORTH: FREEDO.AI AND MYSTICISM. By the volitional intensity and the innerness of the experience of recollection, Wordsworth produced in him- self a deep strain of the mystical. But when he connect- ed outward sense perceptions to the memory of child- hood experiences there was present a still deeper strain of the mystical ; and when he attached a moral value to this double experience of memory and sense, as in "Tin- tern Abbey," the full tide of the mystical was on. The general outline of thought in "Tintern Abbey" is as follows : — First, the picture of the mind is revived. The landscape, the plots of cottage-ground, the orchard- tufts, the groves and copses, the hedge rows, "little lines of sportive wood run wild," the pastoral farms, the wreathes of smoke, — all these beauteous forms, through a long absence, had not been to the poet as a landscape to a blind man's eye, but had frequently been partially re- vived in his mind. But now, as he stood in the very pres- ence of the beauteous forms themselves, the memory of them was revived in full measure. Secondly, there is a development of immediate sense perceptions — percep- tions of The meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold FRKHDOM AND .MYSTICISM. 75 From this green earth, of all the mighty world Of eye and ear, — both what they half create, And what perceive. And thirdly, a moral value is given to this double expe- rience of memory and sense perceptions. "Therefore am I," he says, Well pleased to recognize In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being. It will be remembered that in the crisis following his overwrought interest in the Revolution, Wordsworth considered that his soul had attained its "last and lowest ebb" when, "wearied out with contrarieties," he "yielded up moral questions in despair." But it is fair to ask whether Wordsworth actually gave up moral cjuestions completely. It is to be suspected rather that his nature so imperatively demanded tnoral solace that he could not give up the moral problem at all. No doubt for a time he made conscious efforts to avoid the contrarieties of moral issues ; but even "The Borderers," which was writ- ten in his despondency, is much greater as a study in the moral nature of man than as a pla}'. He makes Mar- maduke, the young hero of the play, say to Oswald, his tempter : Young as I am, I might go forth a teacher, And you should see how deeply I could reason Of love in all its shapes, beginnings, ends ; Of moral qualities in their diverse aspects; Of actions, and their laws and tendencies. And so Wordsworth really never ceased reasoning about love in all its shapes, of moral qualities, and of actions ; and the poems written immediately after his recovery 76 WORDSWORTH. are steeped in moral sentiment. In the poem "To my Sister" the mind is made to "drink at every pore the spirit of the season" and the heart to take its temper from the day, and both heart and mind are attuned to the highest law of morals — the law of love. In "Expostula- tion and Reply" the powers of nature — "this mighty sum of things forever speaking" — give energy and self-con- trol to the mind that submits to them in a wise passive- ness. And in "The Tables Turned" Nature blesses our hearts and minds with spontaneous wisdom and with truth^^ Thus these poems all possess an unmistakable moral temper, and the source of their strength lies in their extracting moral nurture from the "blessed power that rolls about, below, above," from drawing upon the "ready wealth" of nature and allowing her to be the teacher. It may be, as Morley would have it, that to some persons im- pulses from vernal woods cannot teach anything of moral evil or of good ; but they greatly err who maintain that Wordsworth did not find this the prime source of moral strength. What happened to Wordsworth, then, is not that he gave up the consideration of moral questions, Vv'hich was impossible to a nature like his, but that he ceased to look for moral strength in the social and polit- ical philosophies of his day. And, thrown back upon the dignity and strength of his own inner life, he revived the memories of childhood, joined them to outward sense perceptions, and in that double process, rediscovered himself — his moral nature. From thenceforth those memory and sense impres- sions became the vehicle of expression for his inner mor- al life. It was through his reaction, therefore, on the French Revolution that Wordsworth's eyes were opened, and that his peculiar moral principles were formulated. And, carrying the revolutionary method and spirit with FREEDOM AND MYSTICISM. 77 him, he would teach men the new principles. He would readjust society on a new and simple basis, on the basis of the primal affections and moral strength derived through memory and sense from the powers of nature. Tims, with the intensity and whole-heartedness characteristic of Revolutionary leaders. Wordsworth became the proph- et and leader of a new moral and revolutionary move- ment. ?3ut this synthesis of memory images, sense percep- tions, and a moral idea by a mind that is volitional and passionate, is eminently productive of a mystical state of mind. When the inner moral world, exalted unvorthily and loved passionately but have, on account of unfortunate circumstances or ill-fitted environment, tailed here in love and achievement, as for instance, the speaker in "Evelyn Hope," may possess themselves in patience and look to another world for the things they missed on earth. Again, the imperfections of this life certainly suggest beginnings of a larger life to be carried on otherwise : On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round. And thus God and immortality are abundantly assured to the soul. On the vagueness and indefiniteness of Browning's notions of God and immortality much might be said, but the statements here must be brief. From such poems as "Evelyn Hope" and "The Last Ride Together" it is not very certain whether in heaven the immortals are given in marriage or are not given in marriage ; and this is emi- nently typical of all that Browning has to offer on the subject of immortality as a state for the blessed. In like manner God is sometimes conceived as the all-complete, infinite perfection, and as never changing, and sometimes again as in a state, like ourselves, of realizing his own possibilities. God is indeed omnipotent, omnipresent, and TKANSCKNUUNTALISM. 23I omniscient, and yet man may possibly "worst e'en the Giver in one gift" and "o'ertake God's own speed in the one way of love." Though from the dread Sabaoth"strcam the worlds, life and nature," yet man's own aspirations and imperfections and sacrifices may contain something that arouses the jealousy of the Divine Mind. And thus the contradictions of indefiniteness run. Let us take, for instance, the problem heretofore men- tioned as the crucial problem, how the flexible finite can be tightly fitted into the fixed and infinite. What is Browning's solution of it? His solution consists mainly in substituting something else for it and ignoring the problem proper. That is, he insists on the flexibility and changeableness of the finite and concerns himself little with the fixedness of the infinite. The infinite as a whole is uninteresting; only so much of it is interesting as can be actualized in finite experience. In fact, such terms as the fixed, infinite, neverchanging law, the absolute, predestination, are little more than so many names to Browning. They do not make for free- dom. They are not vitalized in his experience and there- fore are no living truth to him. Browning would say it is enough to know that the world here and now is imperfect, changeable, flexible, malleable and flowing, and that man's soul forever yearns up to God, that man is free and that he can exercise his love and power and will, his resusci- tating and regenerating powers, in moulding the world and in determining his own destiny. And beyond that — "With God be the rest:" Enough now, if the Right And Good and Infinite Be named here.'" ' "'Rablii Ben Ezra." 232 BROWNING. Browning thus takes a genuinely realistic, flesh and blood attitude toward things finite, flexible, and incom- plete, but a very colorless attitude toward things fixed and rigid, the unchangeableness of law. And the reason for it is plain. One who insists on the idea that every man "differs utterly from his fellows," that each one's truth and each one's God is materially different from that of his fellows, and that each individual is endowed with something like the God-creating power of adding self to self, is driven, by strict logic at least, to hold something of a pluralistic rather than a monistic view of the uni- verse, that there are creative energies in the world inde- pendent of each other. This is the logic of the situation, and if Browning were a technical philosopher he would have to take some such position. But Browning is not a technical philosopher and does not follow the strict log- ic of the situation. His intuitions and imagination teach him otherwise, and he always takes the monistic view. Yet the sum total of things which involve one Faith, one never-changing Law, and one God, are feebly dealt with by him. Feebly because the greatness and absolute diver- sity of gifts which he generously distributes to so many creatures give him a weak hold on the entirety, the wholeness, and the unity of all things. Browning's system, if we may use such a dry word in this place, is decidedly an open system where there is great room for endless expansion and freedom ; and expansion and free- dom are the things for which he pre-eminently stands. The best parts about any great poet's system, as far as he has any such thing, is that it is not only inarticu- late but that it is open. This is necessary in order to give free play to the poet's creative energy. Wordsworth's system was especially an open system; but Browning's was more decidedly so. Browning, like all poets, was in TRANSCENDENTALISM. 233 love with existence, but existence in the concrete, and concrete objects that seem free and independent. And these free and concrete objects of the universe are so various in kind and infinite in number that they will not fall into any closed or complete system. The fundament- al ideas of system are unity, harmony of parts, likeness of pattern, and a fixed principle lying underneath and running through all. And against this idea of fixed prin- ciple freedom rebels. Browning's "all's love, yet all's law" means mainly that all's love and freedom. It means the indulgence of Everj- instinct of the soul There where law, life, joy, impulse, are one thing !^ — which is pronounced to be "the ultimate angels' law." Browning has by no means shown how the flexible finite fits into the fixed infinite. How such diverse things as good and evil can exist in the same universe and have their source in the same author, how impersonal law and personal freedom, how predestination and free-will, how^ fixedness and flexibility can ever be harmonized in a world of fact, — these problems have not been solved by Browning. We should not expect him, nor any other poet, to solve them. We should expect him to take a character- istic attitude toward thcni ; and a characteristic and con- sistent attitude Browning has taken. Every man, be he philosopher, poet, or practical man of affairs, takes, con- sciously or unconsciously, an attitude toward them. We are hoping they may be solved sometime in the future. The race does not despair of such things. But it is enough in these pages to know that however weakly he dealt with "A Death in the Desert." 234 BROWNING. the unity and sum total of things, Robert Browning has given by far the most powerful exposition in modern times of the soul's individual worth and power, and of man's boundless energy and freedom. * * See Note 7, Appendix. CHAPTER XII BROWNING: ART AND LIBERALIS:^!. Bro\vniiig_wiis..^ liberal in art. as well as iii liis.pliil- osoph3^ of life. He was not s ^ti&lied with the conven- tional_forms of art and proceeded to create new forms. He was dissatisfied with the usual metrical schemes for poems and e^^ierioieDted with new meters. He was dar- ing in the use of phraseology that is heard in common speech and that is often near the improper. He took liberties with sentence construction by suppressing the less important words for the sake of condensation, and by collocating words in unusual ways. He w as a_ liberal in in troducing commonplace associations of life into his poetry and TTruTgTng in concrete imagery that is not tra- ditionally considered beautiful. Xll'5ilSl?.J?'s_work_shows irregularities and sometimes unpardonable license, tliemain effec t of it has been to show the variety of uses to which our metrical system can be piut, lo enlarge the range of the English language in expression, to give wider scope to the use of concrete objects in poetry, to make poetry approximate more near- ly to the real and detailed things of life than has been supposed to be possible, and to save to poetry such things as pins, axes, crowbars, umbrellas, creaking pianos, blind horses, and ragged thistle-stalks, wjtli which some of our most common and sometimes deepest affections are as- sodated. ~ 236 r.ROVVNIXG. This realistic attitude in Browning towarH things actual is matched only by his transcendental attitude toward those same things. It is only when they can be set to the music of life that they are of value. It is only when they can be made to associate with a life that is filled with passion and power that they become signifi- cant. It is only when this life itself can be made to ex- pand and dilate that it can be saved to art and to truth. Poetry is the art by which we give a new and higher eval- uation to both the outer and inner life of things. The finite everywhere, — and the finite of Browning always means something very realistic and often something very homely, — must partake of the infinite. It must be filled with the power and glory of heaven, like Boehme's rose, celebrated in the verse of some stout John of Halber- stadt : He with a 'look you!' vents a brace of rhymes, And in there breaks the sudden rose herself, Over us, under, round us every side, . . . Buries us with a glory, young once more, Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.^ This way of conceiving a thing at once as actual and ideal, realistic and transcendental, of exercising the see- ing eye upon it with great definiteness, and yet perceiving in it inexhaustible life and beauty without allowing it to lose its identity one whit — this is an absolute requisite for great art. Let great art be realistic if it pleases, (and it is often terribly realistic in no juggling sense of that term, more truly than the art that calls itself realistic), but it must also be creative and idealizing. There is no contradiction in the seeming paradox that it can be at ^ "Transcendentalism." ART AND LIBERALISM. 237 once the most realistic and the most transcendental. It has a hunger for facts and also for new idealizations. And it is large enough to represent in itself a great deal of both. It is really dilating and expansive, for it pos- sesses abundant life. There perhaps has never been an actual human character in the Anglo-Saxon race, unless it were Shakespeare himself, with as full a life of power and will and passion as, say, the character, Othello. So that though this character makes an impression on us of actuality, of flesh and blood qualities, he impresses us too as having something additional, the created energy and power the artist gave him — something more than fact. But the largeness of mould into which great art casts its characters and the passion and will and freedom which it displays and the liberty it takes confound the prudent and the wise. It shatters their little matter-of- fact systems to pieces. Dying for love, and happily too, as some of Browning's characters do, seems in the eyes of these persons an outrage to humanity. No doubt the smug and learned pharisee was astounded beyond all measure at the extraordinary liberties the Teacher took who first uttered the words "Ye have heard that it hath been said. Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you. Love your enemies, bless them that curse you," etc., for this seemed to reach the extreme limit of imprudence and to be against all tradi- tion and convention. No doubt the prudential and the compromising have little sympathy for poor Desdemona in the play who blessed him that cursed her and who meekly submitted to her fate and died for love without as much as raising a hand to assert her rights and dignity as a woman. No doubt prim makers of systems feel like clenching their teeth at such similar perversions of their 238 BROWNING. systems as are implied in the following suggestions of Browning on the secret of becoming a master of men: Resolve, for first step, to discard Nine-tenths of what you are! To make, you must be marred, — To raise your race, must stoop, — to teach them aught, must learn Ignorance, meet halfway what most 3^ou hope to spurn r the sequel So may you master men.° To brush aside traditions and conventions, to assert the maxims of the simple which confound the wise, to insist on stooping in order to rise, to penetrate through the show of things into things themselves, to reach the original sources of life and love and to find life and love in abundant overflow, to live for love rather than for ^ fame, to will mightily to die for love if need be — these are the paradoxical but inspiring ideals of the masters of life and of men. It is first eminently worth while to be- come thoroughly alive — alive in body and brain and ^ mind and soul, and then to accept cheerfully the con- sequences that this kind of living may bring. Alive in two senses — ^in the common, practical sense of living and in the idealistic creative sense, which is dilating and ex- pansive. And to meet these latter and higher demands of life the artist is constantly impelled, as Wordsworth said, to create intuitions and passions and volitions in the universe where he does not find them. And in the interest of more abundant life, Browning is a grand ful- fillment of the statement of Wordsworth. By the sheer power and intensity of passion and will Wordsworth in his best moments penetrated the hearts of men and the universe more deeply perhaps than Browning ever did. '-^ ^ "Fifine at the Fair.' ART AND LIBERALISM. 239 But his penetration was intensive rather than broadly universal, and in this sense he himself is the best fulfill- ment of his own statement. Yet Wordsworth's great moments were comparatively few, and the restraints he placed on life in many directions prevented the forces of sense and passion from bursting forth into energy and power in any flood-tide in his poetry. Brmvjiing, on the other hand, wiilr gr-eater sustained energy, with his principle af_fl£sli_and_ soul equilibrium, and his princi- ple of gain and expansion, made the pent up intuitions and passions and volitions of the soul dilate with energy and power that have something of Shakespearean magnitude about them. Browning was a genuine liberal in art. But this full flood-tide of passion and energy in Browning is precisely what alienates some critics. They say he has no reticence, no reserve, that his imagination does not exercise a selective power in repressing the ugly and seizing the beautiful, and that his style is too profuse to show any economy of attention. Such criticism tends to obscure the issue. For what is the state of the case with Browning? LtOok at the long series of dramatic monologues like "Saul," "Cleon," "Abt Vogler," "Rabbi .^ Ben Ezra," "My Last Ducliess," etc., and find anywhere in literature from a single hand an equal amount of poetic matter condensed into so narrow a space. It may be said tliat these poems are the very quintessence of econ- omized expression. Of the dramatic monologue Profes- sor E. Johnson writes : "The introduction of a second person acting powerfully upon the speaker throughout, draws the latter forth into a more complete and varied expression of his mind. The silent person in the back- ground, who may be all the time master of the situation, supplies a powerful stimulus to the imagination." This condensed art form, which is a favorite with Brownmg, 240 BROWNING. I furnishes an offset to the fulness of life of his characters. Browning's own art ideal is expressed in Andrea's de- scription of art in "Andrea del Sarto:" Well, I can fancy how he did it all, Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see. Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, / Above and through his art — for it gives way. To fill a form so full of expanding life that the life in it tends to reach above and through the form and make the form itself give way — this is Browning's ideal of art. -^"^ And when this ideal is attained, as it frequently is in Browning, it insures to us three of the most satisfying and enduring qualities of style — iinaginativ^ force, ex- pressiveness, vitality. Such qualities of style we find in their highest form in, for example, "Saul." The wild joys of physical living, the vast aspirations arising from a noble willingness to do and die for another, the engen- dering powers of spiritual love, the shaking of the very heavens themselves with this new instrument of love — these powers, vividly conjured up from the infinite depths of life and compressed within the narrow compass of the poem, give a powerful stimulus to the imagination, de- mand and attain a wonderful expressiveness from the language itself, and make the poem deeply vital through- out. The tension produced between the swelling life within and the form in which it is contained makes the poem sensitive and alive at every point. It gives the poem life, individuality, independent existence, makes of it a creation — a creation that can take care of itself in this world as well as can any other created thing upon which has been bestowed the gift of life. The dramatic monologue of Browning achieves com- pression, expressiveness, and vitality in another way. ART AND LIHKRALISM. 24 1 Browning is not concerned with the whole life history of a soul. There are all kinds of experiences that are barren in their influence on character, and these are pass- ed over in silence. There are others that are fruitful. They may be trivial, but they are significant. The fruit- ful and significant experiences, chiefly those associated with the mind in a state of excitement, or those connected with a central and critical experience of the character, are seized upon and rendered in the monologue.J Brown- ing seizes his character at a point where he can watch the inner "play and action"' of his mind, where he "catch- es fact in the making," where he can press close to the character's inner experience, where he can see back over his character's earlier career and see what former expe- riences cast their shadows on the present, where he can take a look into his character's future and get glimpses of what is to be. It is precisely at that nexus where thought enters into action that we receive a flashlight of personal- ity, a revelation of human motive and conduct. It is there that we get the deepest insight into human charac- ter. And Browning, working in this deeper stratum of human nature, flashes forth in vivid and expressive lan- guage the wonders he has seen. Though Browning is not interested in the whole life history of his character, he is interested in the whole of his character's experience at the point from which he has chosen to view it. He tries to render the whole of the single experience, and this fact explains the subtilty and complexity of Browning's art. A single ex- ample must sufifice. In "Andrea del Sarto" where An- drea is criticising Rafael's painting, Andrea says: That arm is wrongly put — and there again — A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, Its body, so to speak: its soul is right. 242 BROWNING. He means right — that, a child may understand. Still, what an arm ! and I could alter it : But all the play, the insight and the stretch — Out of me, out of me! It must be remembered that Andrea is under the stress of excitement. It is a serious situation he is confronting with his wife, and it is of great moment that he persuade her. In this condition, his mind becomes conscious, as any mind would, of everything — important and unimpor- tant, momentous and trivial. He sees the fault in the arm at one instant, and in the same instant he sees that the soul is right. Swiftly his mind turns again to the faulty arm and back once more to the soul of the picture. He sees everything at once and tries to express every- thing at once. And the swift movement of mind that Browning displays in rendering not a part but the whole of a character's experience at a given time, has earned for Browning the fame of an analytical thinker. But note what the thinking consists in. There is to be render- ed, first, not a logical proposition, but a per- sonality under the stress of excitement. Andrea is distinctly not a proposition but a character in a critical emotional and volitional state. Second- ly, the so called analysis is not made abstractly but concretely. First the arm, then the soul, and then "the insight and the stretch !" What a fine metaphor in the word "stretch !" And this is the poetry of insight, not of logical and scientific thought. And this is the way, not of intellectual analysis, but of poetic represen- tation. The result is concentrated, expressive, vital po- I etry. V^ When a character is under the stress of excitement and is facing a serious situation he not only is conscious of all the trivial and momentous things connected with ,5"// — 77 -/^^>" ART AND LIBERALISM. 243 his experiences and career, but he also is conscious of his own imperfections and his own soul freedom. He feels that he is overwhelmingly unable to cope with the situa- tion confronting him; yet he feels a free moral power within himself that makes him worthy to overcome. And this fact of human nature furnishes Browning with a lesson in art as well as a lesson in morals. Browning preferred early Italian art to Greek art because the for- mer gives a sense of man's strivings and imperfections and a sense of man's spiritual freedom, while the latter does not. After observing the strength and rounded beauty of Greek statues in "Old Pictures in Florence," he says. Growth came when, looking your last on them all, You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day And cried with a start — What if we so small . Be greater and grander the while than they? Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature? In both, of such lower types are we Precisely because of our wider nature; For time, theirs — ours, for eternity. To-day's brief passion limits their range; It seethes with the morrow for us and more. They are perfect — how else? they shall never change: We are faulty — why not? we have time in store. The Artificer's hand is not arrested With us ; we are rough-hewn, nowise polished : They stand for our copy, and, once invested With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished. 'Tis a life-long toil till our lump he leaven — The better! What's come to perfection perishes. Things learned on earth, we shall practice in heaven ! Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes. Thyself shalt afford the example, Giotto! 244 BROWNING. Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish, Done at a stroke, was just (was it not?) "O !" Thy great Campanile is still to finish. In the opening of this poem the poet one warm March day "looked over the aloed arch of the villa-gate" that confronted the valley where Florence lay out on the Mountain-side, and said that Of all I saw and of all I praised, The most to praise and the best to see, Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised : But why did it more than startle me? What more than startled him was the fact that although Giotto had finished a smaller work, he had here planned so magnificently that he could not finish what he had planned, and that this unfinished work was higher and greater than the finished. And in the same way when the poet thinks of the finish and the perfection of Greek statues he cries "with a start — What if we so small be greater and grander the while than they?" and then asks whether Man "shall have no more play and action than joy which is crystallized forever, or grief, an eternal patrifaction?" It was not crystallized joy and petrified grief, as represented in Greek art, that Browning wanted, but it was play and action, freedom ! and a sense of the eternal. So he gives the early Italian painters their "guerdon and glory for daring so much, before they well did it," and for giving man, through their art, a sense of imperfection and a sense of freedom. But can this principle of imperfection and of freedom be applied to the making of a poem? Is it worth while to plan a poem, as Giotto did his bell-tower, so magnifi- cently that it cannot be completed ? Is it true that a poem may, in its formal elements, be "rough-hewn and no wise ART AND HUliRALISM. 245 polished" and still be art? These questions are too large to be answered in full here, but a few things may be said about them. Granting, for the sake of the argument, what has already been implied, that there exists an antithesis between form and content in poetry, we may say that the principle in question may be measurably applied to form. Take "Old Pictures in Flor- ence," for instance. The main theme embodied concretely in tlic unfinished bell-tower is stated in the beginning, the middle, and the end of the poem. The details from the old pictures in Florence amplify the main theme of the poem. The stream of thought in the poem flows through a well-defined and unmistakable channel. Yet the borders of the stream are "rough- hewn," and the stream is constantly threatening to over- flow its banks. It has the power to make and to modify its own channel, well-defined as that may be. The con- tent of a poem must have power to break through and mould its form at will. We are here easily deceived by words. Forms at their best are but imperfect. Harmony and symmetry are but relative things. "Paradise Lost" has harmonious numbers, but could it have been possible for any one to make it harmoniously symmetrical throughout? Are there not great irregularities in "King_^ Lear?" For the sake of bringing the "invisible full into play," does it not let the symmetrically "visible go to the dogs?" The engendering and torrential passion and en- erg}^ of the play constantly l)reak through the boundaries of imperfect form, enlarge the truth without violating it, and reveal an art higher than the merely visible. This, or something like this, was the faith and, in a measure, the practice of our great modern liberal in art. If it is not impossible to convince men that tlie princi- ple of imperfection and of freedom can be applied to the 246 BROWNING. formal elements of a poem, it ought to be possible to convince them that it can be applied to the contents of a poem. The universal feeling of our imperfections and the universal sense of our spiritual freedom when we betake ourselves to the deeper levels of our being, ought to be a sufficient guarantee of truth for the highest poetic representations. But we will let Browning's superb half- men, his Andreas and Cleons and Norberts and the rest, with their aspirations and imperfections, their god-like powers and unsure purposes, their faiths diversified by doubts, with their half-free souls aspiring to be more free, answer for themselves. These characters, better than any others in literature, give us the sense both of man's spiritual shortcomings and of man's spiritual free- dom. CONCLUSION In an essay on "Reflex Action and Theism" Professor William James, to whose teachings the spirit of these pages owes not a little, writes as follows : "From its first dawn to its highest actual attainments, we find that the cognitive faculty, where it appears to exist at all, ap- pears but as one element in an organic mental whole, and as a minister to higher mental powers, — the powers of will It is probable that to the end of time our power of moral and volitional response to the nature of things will be the deepest organ of communication there- with we shall ever possess Certain it is that the acutest theories, the greatest intellectual power, the most elaborate education, are a sheer mockery when, as it of- ten happens, they feed mean motives and a nerveless will. And it is equally certain that a resolute moral energ)', no matter how inarticulate and unequipped with learning its owner may be, extorts from us a respect we should never pay were we not satisfied that the essential root of hu- man personality lay there." These are fitly spoken words; and are the simple truth. The fact is that the essential root of human personality lies in the will. It is the exercise of this power that makes us men and God- like. It is this power that we rely upon and draw from all tlie days of our lives. It is the power by which we can make or mar the beauty or worth of our daily living, in the lowly walks of life, or in the highest walks of life. It is the power by which we face and select alternatives 248 CONCLUSION. and so far determine our destiny. We have had alterna- tives before us as children and shall have them the last days of our lives; and thus we constantly exercise our wills. The power of will is the central power of person- ality. And passion, if it takes on the form of love, filial, or parental, or conjugal love, love for home, or country, or friends; if it takes on the form of devotion, devotion to a cause, a principle, or truth, or right; if it is deep- seated and not shallow, central and not peripheral, sub- dued and not hysterical, and if it is under the central power of the will, passion is one of the worthiest elements of our natures. It is the element that gives zest, mean- ing, tone, color, and substance to life. It is the second great power of personality. There are two things we have with us always — our passions and our wills. And poetry, more than science or philosophy, poetry, which ever keeps its ear close to the common heart of humanity and its common joys and sorrows, its choices and failures, its choices and successes, enshrines these experiences in the substance of its work. It awakens and purifies the passions; it arouses and nerves the will. And great poetry, which is great art and creative, enlarges the volume of passion and will and energy in created characters, and effects through pity and terror the puri- fying of our passions and the strengthening of our wills. Morley finely says of Wordsworth : "The trait that really places Wordsworth on an eminence above his poetic contemporaries, and ranks him, as the ages are likely to rank him, on a line just short of the greatest of all time, is his direct appeal to will and conduct." A similar trait, the appeal to will and a sense of freedom in man, also ranks Browning, as the ages are likely to rank him, just short CONCLUSION. 249 of the greatest of all time. And Tennyson, according to the gifts that were given him, sang nobly and well of One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.' Moreover, the fact of moral responsibility rests di- rectly on the fact of volitional and spiritual freedom. Moral responsibility is exactly commensurate with moral freedom, and both have their roots in the will. Since freedom and responsibility arise from the same source in our natures aestheticians can never successfully sepa- rate freedom in art from the responsibility which the fact of freedom entails. Wordsworth and Tennyson and Browning respectively look their share of responsibilities commensurate with the moral and spiritual freedom to which they had attained. Each came as a teacher as well as a singer to his generation. Each took the plain man's view that a man is as responsible for what he says in po- etry as for any other act of life. Each held that of the aes- thetic strain and the moral strain in human nature the latter is the deeper seated and that the former must be grounded in the latter. It cannot be doubted that the steady moral purpose which characterizes the efforts of these poets helps to account for the large and substantial output of work of each, and gives their works a solidity that sets them apart from the works of the rest of the English poets of the nineteenth century. But it may be urged that the sense of moral respon- sibility in these poets forced them to give expression to moral platitudes that are detrimental to poetry. It must be admitted that such is the case in their less happy mo- ments. Should the}', then, have attempted to lessen or ^ "Ulysses." 250 CONCLUSION. override their sense of moral responsibility? Certainly not. Such a course savors distinctly of shallowness and insincerity. Out of weakness these poets, in their happier moments, perfected strength, — 'the strength of volition. For itheir volition, when intensive and penetrative, and sustained by passion, produced a strain of spiritual free- dom and moral sublimity, a vision of a higher wisdom, in their poetry, which never could have been produced had they not had a deep sense of moral responsibility. Wherever the will is vigorously exercised there is always a healthy glow of life. There is reformation, growth, and expansion. Where it is not vigorously exer- cised there is lethargy, retrogression, and degeneration. There come times in the history of the race as in the life of an individual when lassitude, relaxation, and retrogres- sion seem natural and inevitable. But they are seasons Ihat do not abide with us any great length of time. They are perhaps only seed time for a greater harvest. At any rate, the tide soon turns toward the strenuous and ardu- ous and high enterprise, for it is in this direction that salvation lies ; and the call of our greater poets is not in vain. But if the social conditions are normal, as the tide rises and men act courageously and feel the strength of their wills, they feel inevitably the need of a higher will than theirs. This need is felt increasingly at the same ratio that the strength of will is felt increasingly. When a man enacts the greatest power of self-direction, he man- ifests the strongest spirit of self-surrender; when he be- comes the most conscious of his own actual and individ- ual power he becomes the most conscious of inexplica- ble and indefinable powers within him and around him and above him.. Thus in his highest experiences he exer- cises complete self - direction and absolute self - CONCLUSION. 251 surrender at one and the same moment. This is a paradox, but one of the deepest and truest paradoxes of life. When, in this paradoxical state of self-direction and self-surrender, the will does its work intensely and in- wardly, it makes a man "aware of his life's flow," aware of his own soul's passion and freedom. He then experi- ences the power and freedom of creating, and the joy of living. He becomes a creative artist, with a divine function. But this intense and inner experience of the will and the passions, giving as it does a sense of freedom to the soul, is the fountain head of the great poetry of all ages. The experience is always transcendental and, in its in- tenser moments, always mystical. Though the spirit of transcendentalism and mysticism is often disregarded by the lesser poets, it is universally cultivated by the greater poets as the source of their highest inspiration. This spirit is the soul's assurance of freedom, and the love of spiritual freedom is as old as the race. This love is the prime desire of all races. It inspired the Hebrew prophet and the Greek rhapsodist; it inspired the blind Milton and the greater of our modern poets. Wordsworth, the mys- tic, found the universe and the soul of man filled with the power of spiritual energy and freedom. Browning, ' the transcendentalist, found that in the wills and passions of men there was free and creative power enough to build new worlds. And Tennyson, though cautious and critical and strongly influenced by the idea of impersonal law, still found that life would not be worth living if one could not believe that the soul of man is free and immor- tal. This main miracle of our lives, this mystical and transcendental experience of spiritual freedom, is neces- sary to all the higher inspirations of poetry. 252 CONCLUSION. The transcendentalism and mysticism the world cares for and will not let die is that which grips and moves the mind. The chief power of the mind which it affects is the will. Its mysteriousness is ineffective if it does not touch the will. The pure transcendentalism of Shel- ley, for example, has all the good qualities that transcen- dentalism in poetry can possess, save one. The abstract mysteriousness of Shelley has no force on the will. It lacks grasp and convincing power. For this reason the poetry most characteristic of him vvill always be the po- etry for the select few. The mysterious, on the other hand, in Wordsworth, or in Tennyson, or in Browning, connects itself deeply with the volitions of the soul. It seizes hold of men not merely because it is mysterious or fascinating but because it forces them to discover them- selves on the deeper levels of their being. It unlocks for them their own hidden energies of mind and soul, and makes them aware of the inheritance of spiritual free- dom which is theirs. And this is one of the most im- portant functions of poetry. And it may be added that, since this inner and spirit- ual freedom is an abiding quality in human nature, poet- ry, which alone can render it, is a thing of the future as well as of the past and the present. There is nothing inherent in our social progress to destroy the power of poetry. Our social progress may tend to change the out- ward forms of poetic expression, — may make certain kinds of imagery and certain forms obsolete. But it cannot destroy or change the inner spirit of poetic sub- stance. The spirit of transcendentalism and mysticism is not dead. The sense of spiritual freedom in the race is not weakened. The power of its spiritual energy is not waning. If there be science, it shall fail; if there be CONCLUSION. 253 philosophy, it shall fail ; fail to express, with intensity and with innerness, the fundamental passions of the heart and volitions of the soul. These always have been and always will be reserved for the great art of poetry. So that poetry is a thing of the future as well as of the past and the present. Though many minor singers exist in every age and generation, poetic geniuses are rare. There have per- haps not been as many in the world as there have been centuries of human history. If, therefore, we cannot at the present time, point to a great living genius of poet- ry, let us not suppose he has forever vanished from the earth. It is reasonable to expect that within a century he will be with us again. And when he does come he will find in the hidden forces of man and the world and in the deeps of his own being abundant material for poetic expression. He will find that neither Wordsworth, nor Tennyson, nor Browning, nor any other poet, has ex- hausted the well springs of moral and spiritual life to which the human mind has access. Let us hope, there- fore, that his coming may be soon. Let us hope even that he is already born in our midst, and that we may live to see him vindicate anew the immensity of the future of poetry : Ah, that brave Bount}' of Poets, the only royal race That ever was, or will be, in this world ! They give no gift that bounds itself and ends r the giving and the taking: theirs so l)reeds r the heart and soul o' the taker, so transmutes The man who only was a man before, That he grows godlike in his turn, can give — He also : share the poets' privilege, Bring forth new good, new beauty, from the old.' Browning, "Balaustion's .Xdventure." APPENDIX Page II. Note i. It is not intended in this book to depreciate the vakie of emotions in poetry. If the will is the first power of personality certainly the "emotions, chiefly those essential and eternal in the heart" are a close second. But the will and the emotions are comple- mentary to each other, not antagonistic. The will pre- vents the emotions from becoming maudlin and the emo- tions prevent the will from becoming sterile. The emo- tions give tone and color and substance to the will and the will gives dignity and distinction to the emotions ; and the two together constitute the most important powers of personality and therefore the chiefest material for poetry. Page II. Note 2. It seems that in life, too, as in po- etry, the energy of will is a more vital force than intel- lectual conceptions. Professor Dewey in his Psycholog}', for instance, says : '"There is possible no knowledge with- out attention. Attention involves the discrimination of sensations from each other, and the identification of some one group of these sensations with self — in short, an act of choice The process of knowledge is a process of volition ;" and Professor William James, as quoted in this text on page 247, says that the cognitive faculty is but one element in the larger powers of will. Page 41. Note 3. Perhaps tlie most favorite words of Wordsworth, especially during tlie period of his great- est literary production, are tlie words "motion" and "gleam" with their various adjectival and verbal forms, 256 APPENDIX. together with words of kindred meaning — words at once dynamic and volitional. In addition to the examples given in the text, a few more must suffice: To cut across the reflex of a star That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed Upon the glassy plain. Even then I felt Gleams like the flashing of a shield. And add the gleam, The light that never was, on sea or land. Lighted by gleams of moonlight from the sea We beat with thundering hoofs the level sand. Now is crossed by gleam Of his own image, by a sunbeam now And wavering motions sent he knows not whence. Sounds of undistinguishable motion — No motion but the moving tide, a breeze — All the shadowy banks on either side Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still The rapid line of motion. Ye motions of delight that haunt the sides Of the green hills. From the blessed power that rolls About, below, above. No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees. Those hallowed and pure motions of the sense — On the first motion of a holy thought — And all the tender motions of the soul — APPENDIX. 257 Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought That givest to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion. Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder — everlastingly. This list might very easily be extended. From it we see that Wordsworth, in a very pectiliar sense, attributes vital movement, not only to all the objects of the otiter world, but also to the senses, the thoughts, and the soul of man, and even to God. And the mere act of pronouncing re- peatedly the words "gleam" and "motion" and "roll" in the sense Wordsworth uses them, gives a healthy and voluntary thrill to the soul. Page 70. Note 4. The device which the pre-existent idea was to serve was no doubt that of giving largeness of movement to the poem. There is indeed something of epic movement in it. This effect is produced mainly by the device of conceiving the soul as existing in an im- measurable past, coming "in trailing clouds of glory" to the present, and sweeping through the present into the meastireless future. This conception produces in the reader a sense of vast movernent and a sense of the su- periority of the soul over things of time. Any criticism that ignores Wordsworth's explanation and makes more of the pre-existent idea than a poetical device is likely to be unsound. Page 124. Note 5. To prove that this point is really as important as indicated here one needs only to turn to the testimony of the "Memoir" where Free-will is spoken of as the "main miracle, apparently an act of self-limi- tation by the Infinite, and yet a revelation by Himself of Himself." "Take away the sense of individual responsi- bility and men sink into pessimism and madness." etc. 258 APPENDIX. Vol. I, pages 316, 317, etc. Moreover, there are many passages in Tennyson's poetry besides those quoted in this book which emphasize the importance of the point, but the following single passage from Q^none must suffice as illustration : My vigor, wedded to thy blood, Shall strike within thy pulses, like a God's, To push thee forward thro' a life of shocks. Dangers, and deeds, until endurance grow Sinew'd with action, and the full-grown will, Circled thro' all experiences, pur«e law, Commeasure perfect freedom. That the goddess of wisdom should pronounce this pas- sage adds to its significance. For the end of wisdom is perfect freedom that is attained by the power of endur- ance and the power of will circling through all experi- ences. Page 178. Note 6. This and many other quotations from Browning that follow are taken from his dramatic monologues. It would certainly be wrong to identify the mind of Browning with the minds of some of the speakers in these monologues, as, for instance, the speak- er in "My Last Duchess." Yet it seems not to be wrong to quote from such a poem as "Rabbi Ben Ezra" in order to state an attitude of mind of Browning. This difiference of selection seems to be determined by two principles of criticism. The first principle is that, as in life we tend to identify a man with his best deeds and his solidest think- ing, so in literature we tend to identify the poet with his greatest and noblest characters, or at least, with the finest qualities in such characters. The best part of a poet's mind is bequeathed to his best characters. The second principle is that we tend to identify the mind of a poet with the ideas that recur oftenest in his work as a whole. APPENDIX. 259 We do this not only because they recur but because those that do recur have a vitality about them that makes us feel that they are characteristic of the author. I have tried to use these principles in my citations from Brown- ing's dramatic monologues. Page 234. Note 7. Since no room was given in the main discussion to Browning's views on political liberty a word may be said about them in this note. His views were individualistic and liberal. They are well summed up in the lines of a poem written in answer to the ques- tion, "Why I am a Liberal?" But little do or can the best of us: That little is achieved through Liberty. Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus. His fellow shall continue bound? Not I, Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why." This is intensely personal, and one wonders why Brown- ing did not have a greater sympathy for Wordsworth's political patriotism which, too, was intensely personal and at bottom very much like Browning's. What Words- worth finely says of Alilton was true of himself and of Browning: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea : Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free. For Wordsworth there was one decree "that by the soul only, the Nations shall be great and free." And Brown- ing grounded his sense of political freedom on this same basis. Wordsworth, however, felt there were many radical and liberal movements that did not contribute to the free- dom of the soul ; and to such movements he was opposed. Browning, on the other hand, hoped that larger freedom 260 APPENDIX. would result from practically every liberal political movement. Here the differences between the two were so great that the younger poet was unable to appreciate the position of the elder. Wordsworth was a conserva- tive, who believed that movements toward political free- dom must be of a fundamental and slow growing sort. Browning was a liberal, who believed that such move- ments must be aggressive and radical. And Tennyson, whose views have been discussed in their proper place, was a conservative-liberal, who expressed ideas adapted to practical politics.- INDEX "Abt Vogler," i6, 26, 239. "Adolescence" 71. "Affliction of Margaret," 102. "After-thought," 49. "Ancient Sage, The," 114, 130, 138, 140, 152, 155. 158. "Andrea del Sarto," 240, 241. "Answer to Verses Addressed to the Poet," 20. "A Poet!— He Hath Put His Heart to School," 192. "Apologia," 89. Arnold, Alatthew, 23, 119, 120, 123. B "Balaustion's Adventure," 253. "Bases of the Mystic Con- sciousness, The," 97. Beaupuy, 54. "Bishop Blougram's Apologj'," 179. 197, 198. "Borderers, The," 75. Brawne, Fannie, 23. "Break, Break, Break," 130. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 190. Burns, 19, 22, 24, 120 Byron, 33. "By the Fireside," 186, 194. 210. Calvinistic Creed, 156. Carlyle, 27, 120, 152, 157, 163, 177, 181, 188. "Charge of the Heavy Brig- ade, The," 153. "Charge of the Light Brigade, The," 10. Chaucer, 13. Chesterton, 189. "Cliilde Roland," 213. "Christinas Eve," 220, 223. "Cleon," 239. Clough, 120, 220. "Comus," 26. Corson, 125. D "Death in the Desert, A," 184, 197, 203, 228, 233. "De Gustibus— ," 185, 186. "De Profundis," 13, 124, 153, 164. "Despair," 156. De Vere, Aubrey, 42. Dewey, 255. Dowden, 160. "Easter Day," 120, 179, 186, 195, 202, 213, 215, 216. "Elegiac Stanzas," 106, 109 . Emerson, 94. "Empedocles," 119. "Epilogue to Asolando," 187. "Epilogue to Dramatis Pers- onae," 219, 225. "Evelyn Hope," 230. "Excursion," 10, 47, 49, 95. "Expositulation and Reply," 76. "Fifine at the Fair," 199, 223, 238. "Fountain, The," 59. 262 INDEX. "Francis Furini, Parleyings witli," 183. French Revolution, 33, 36, 37, 53, 61, ^6. "Garden of Proserpine, The," 118. H Hall, G. S., 71 Hallam, Arthur, 127, i8g. 'Higher Pantheism, The," 135. "Holy Grail, The," 175. "Home-Thoughts, from the Sea," 185. "House," 228. Hutton, 43. "Idylls of the King," 157. "In a Balcony," 205. "In a Gondola," 204,205, 207. "In Meni'oriam," 25, 123, 124, 126, 127, 131, 132, 136, 140, 143, 150, 151, 152, 155, 157, 159, 160, 161, 162, 171, 172. "Intimations of Immortality," 64, 68, 131, 256. "It Fortifies My 'Soul to Know," 220. "Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry," 126. James, William, 84, 212, 214, 247, 25s. "James Lee's Wife," 201, 203. Jeffrey, 72. Job, Book of, 126. Johnson, E., 239. K Keats, 23, 125. "King Lear," 245. Landor, Walter Savage, 188. "Last Ride Together, The," 184, 226, 230. Lockhart, 125. "Locksley Hall," 154, 160, 162. "Locksley Hall, Sixty Years' After," 154, 158, 162. "Love Among the Ruins," 185. Lowell, 95. "Lucy," 105. "Luria," 22},. "Lycidas," 127. "Lyrical Ballads," Preface to, 40. M Macaulay, 15, '/2. "Making of Man, The," 149. "Masque of Alfred," 20. "Maud," 171. "Memoir," 136, 138, 257. "Merchant of Venice, The,'' 180. "Michael," 102. "Miller's Daugliter, The," 121. Mill, John Stuart, 188. Milton, II, 13, IS, 21, 25, 259. Morley, 26, 248. Myers, 35, 38. "My Last Duchess," 239, 258. "My Star," 225. "Mystic, The," 133. N Newman, 88. "Nutting," 79. O "Ode to Duty,' iii, 114. "CEnone," 148, 258. "Old Pictures in Florence, 215, 243, 245. "One Word More," 227. INDEX. 263 "Palace of Art, The," 147. "Paracelsus," 209, 222. "Paradise Lost," 11, 13, 14, 245. "Peele Castle," 106. "Peter Bell," 78, 79, 94. "Pippa Passes," 218. Plato, 16. "Poet, The," 133. "Poet and the Caged Turtle- dove, The," 44. Pope, 123. "Pragmatism," 212, 221. "Prelude," 10, 24, 26, 33, ;i6, 37, 38, 43, 46, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54. 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 63, 66, 68, 80, 81, 82, 85, 91, 103, 108, no, 116. "Princess, The," 152, 158, 170. "Prospice," 190, 196. R "Rabbi Ben Ezra," 186, 195. 197, 198, 201, 207, 231, 239, 258. Recejac, E., 96. "Recluse, The," 92. "Reflex Action and Theism," 247. "Resolution and Independ- ence," 10. "Rime of the Ancient Marin- er, The, 99. "Ring and the Book, The," 194. 198, 203. "Rizpah," 121. Ruskin, 171, 188. Santyana, 204. "Sartor Resartus," 28, 164. "Saul," 201, 208, 219, 239, 240. Scott, 99. "Self E>eception," 119. Shakespeare, 29, 97, 103, 173, 181. 206, 227. Shelley, 27, 33. "She Was a Phantom," 41. "Sordello," 202. "Statue and the Bust, The," 202, 217. Stedman, 83. Stephen, 60, 70. Svvedcnborg, 88. Swinburne, 118. "Tables Turned, The," 76. "Tears, Idle Tears," 130. Thomson, 20. "Tintern Abbey/' 27, 36, 40, 74, 82. "To a Highland Girt," 104. "To My Sister," 76. "To the Cuckoo," 100. "To the Duke of Argyll," 148. "Transcendentalism," 236. "Tree of Liberty, The," 21. "Triumph of Life, The," 27. "Troilus and Criseyde," 13. "Two Poets of Croisic, The," 210. "Two Voices, The," 113, 136, 140, 144, 145. Tyndall, 138. U "LHysses," 121, 127, 249. V Van Dyke, 125. "Varieties of Religious Exper- ience," 84. "Vision of Sin, The," 170. W "Wages," 159. "Whv I am a Liberal?", 259. "Will" 158. Wordsworth, Dorothy, 35. Y "Yarrow Linvisited," 67. "You Ask Me," 147. Young, 20. "Youth and Art," 202. loH^ 9^^^1^^^^9^ DEPARTMENT lyJ^^^ ZU2 AAoi n Library LOAN PERIOD 1 ' HOME USE ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS Renewols and Rechorges may be made 4 days prior to the due date Books moy be Renewed by calling 642-3405. DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 3RAA NO. DD6 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY BERKELEY, CA 94720 (K.:iZV0Slo;4(u — .ti-o^ Berkeley UCI fwcicr^ n U.C. BtRKELtY LlBRftWt 020116056 ivi205*J2'^ THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY