English Literature For Boys And Girls by H.E. Marshall

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In many ways his was a misspent life "at once unfinished and a
ruin."* His was the poet's soul bound in the body of clay. He
was an unhappy man, and we cannot but pity him, and yet remember
him with gratitude for the beautiful songs he gave us. In his
own words we may say--

*Carlyle.

"Is there a man, whose judgment clear,
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs, himself, life's mad career,
Wild as the wave?
Here pause--and, through the starting tear,
Survey this grave."

Burns was a true son of the soil. There is no art in his songs
but only nature. Apart form his melody what strikes us most is
his truth; he sang of what he saw, of what he felt and knew. He
knew the Scottish peasant through and through. Grave and
humorous, simple and cunning, honest and hypocritical, proud and
independent--every phase of him is to be found in Burns's poems.
He knew love too; and in every phase--happy and unhappy, worthy
and unworthy--he sings of it. But it is of love in truth that he
sings. Here we have no more the make-believe of the Elizabethan
age, no longer the stilted measure of the Georgian. The day of
the heroic couplet is done; with Burns we come back to nature.

BOOK TO READ

Selected Works of Robert Burns, edited by R. Sutherland. (This
is probably the best selection for juvenile readers.)

Chapter LXXIII COWPER--"THE TASK"

WHILE Burns was weaving his wonderful songs among the Lowland
hills of Scotland, another lover of nature was telling of placid
English life, of simple everyday doings, in a quiet little
country town in England. This man was William Cowper.

Cowper was the son of a clergyman. He was born in 1731 and
became a barrister, but it seemed a profession for which he was
little fitted. He was shy and morbidly religious, and he also
liked literature much better than law. Still he continued his
way of life until, when he was thirty-two, he was offered a post
as Clerk of the Journals of the House of Lords. He wished to
accept the post, but was told he must stand an examination at the
bar of the House of Lords.

This was more than his nervous sensitive nature could bear.
Rather than face the trial he decided to die. Three times he
tried to kill himself. Three times he failed. Then the darkness
of madness closed in upon him. Religious terrors seized him, and
for many months he suffered agonies of mind. But at length his
tortured brain found rest, and he became once more a sane man.

Then he made up his mind to leave London, and all the excitements
of a life for which he was not fit, and after a few changes here
and there he settled down to a peaceful life with a clergyman and
his wife, named Unwin. And when after two years Mr. Unwin died,
Cowper still lived with his widow. With her he moved to Olney in
Buckinghamshire. It was here that, together with the curate,
John Newton, Cowper wrote the Olney hymns, many of which are
still well loved to-day. Perhaps one of the best is that
beginning--

"God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm."

It was written when Cowper felt again the darkness of insanity
closing in upon him. Once again he tried to end his life, but
again the storm passed.

Cowper was already a man of nearly fifty when these hymns first
appeared. Shortly afterwards he published another volume of
poems in the style of Pope.

It was after this that Cowper found another friend who brought
some brightness into his life. Lady Austen, a widow, took a
house near Cowper and Mrs. Unwin, and became a third in their
friendship. It was she who told Cowper the story of John Gilpin.
The story tickled his fancy so that he woke in the night with
laughter over it. He decided to make a ballad of the story, and
the next day the ballad was finished. I think I need hardly give
you any quotation here. You all know that--

"John Gilpin was a citizen
Of credit and reknown,
A train-band captain eke was he
Of famous London town."

And you have heard his adventures on the anniversary of his
wedding day.

John Gilpin was first published in a magazine, and there it was
seen by an actor famous in his day, who took it for a recitation.
It at once became a success, and thousands of copies were sold.

It was Lady Austen, too, who urged Cowper to his greatest work,
The Task. She wanted him to try blank verse, but he objected
that he had nothing to write about. "You can write upon any
subject," replied Lady Austen, "write upon the sofa."

So Cowper accepted the task thus set for him, and began to write.
The first book of The Task is called The Sofa, and through all
the six books we follow the course of his simple country life.
It is the epic of simplicity, at once pathetic and playful. Its
tuneful, easy blank verse never rises to the grandeur of
Milton's, yet there are fine passages in it. Though Cowper lived
a retired and uneventful life, the great questions of his day
found an echo in his heart. Canada had been won and the American
States lost when he wrote--

"England, with all thy faults, I love thee still--
My Country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrained to love thee.
. . . . . .
Time was when it was praise and boast enough
In every clime, and travel where we might,
That we were born her children; praise enough
To fill the ambition of a private man,
That Chatham's language was his mother tongue,
And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own.
Farewell those honours, and farewell with them
The hope of such hereafter! they have fallen
Each in his field of glory: one in arms,
And one in council--Wolfe upon the lap
Of smiling Victory that moment won,
And Chatham heart-sick of his country's shame
They made us many soldiers. Chatham, still
Consulting England's happiness at home,
Secured it by an unforgiving frown,
If any wronged her. Wolfe, where'er he fought,
Put so much of his heart into his act,
That his example had a magnet's force,
And all were swift to follow where all loved."

These lines are from the second book of The Task called The
Timepiece. The third is called The Garden, the fourth The Winter
Evening. There we have the well-known picture of a quiet evening
by the cozy fireside. The post boy has come "with spattered
boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks." He has brought letters
and the newspaper--

"Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in."

The poem ends with two books called The Winter Morning Walk and
The Winter Walk at Noon. Though not grand, The Task is worth
reading. It is, too, an easily read, and easily understood poem,
and through it all we feel the love of nature, the return to
romance and simplicity. In the last book we see Cowper's love of
animals. There he sings, "If not the virtues, yet the worth, of
brutes."

Cowper loved animals tenderly and understood them in a wonderful
manner. He tamed some hares and made them famous in his verse.
And when he felt madness coming upon him he often found relief in
his interest in these pets. One of his poems tells how Cowper
scolded his spaniel Beau for killing a little baby bird "not
because you were hungry," says the poet, "but out of
naughtiness." Here is Beau's reply--

"Sir, when I flew to seize the bird
In spite of your command,
A louder voice than yours I heard,
And harder to withstand.

"You cried 'Forbear!;--but in my breast
A mightier cried 'Proceed!'--
'Twas nature, sir, whose strong behest
Impelled me to the deed.

"Yet much as nature I respect,
I ventured once to break
(As you perhaps may recollect)
Her precept for your sake;

"And when your linnet on a day,
Passing his prison door,
Had fluttered all his strength away
And panting pressed the floor,

"Well knowing him a sacred thing
Not destined to my tooth,
I only kissed his ruffled wing
And licked the feathers smooth.

"Let my obedience then excuse
My disobedience now,
Nor some reproof yourself refuse
From your aggrieved Bow-wow;

"If killing birds be such a crime
(Which I can hardly see),

What think you, sir, of killing Time
With verse addressed to me?"

As Cowper's life went on, the terrible lapses into insanity
became more frequent, but his sweet and kindly temper won him
many friends, and he still wrote a great deal. And among the
many things he wrote, his letters to his friends were not the
least interesting. They are among the best letters in our
language.

Perhaps Cowper's greatest accomplishment, though not his greatest
work, was a translation of Homer. He had never considered Pope's
Homer good, and he wished to leave to the world a better.
Cowper's version was published in 1791, and he fondly believed
that it would take the place of Pope's. But although Cowper's
may be more correct, it is plain and dry, and while Pope's is
still read and remembered, Cowper's is forgotten.

Indeed, that Cowper is remembered at all is due more to his
shorter poems such as Boadicea and The Wreck of the Royal George,
and chiefly, perhaps, to John Gilpin, which in its own way is a
treasure that we would not be without. Other of his shorter
poems are full of a simple pathos and gentle humor. The last he
wrote was called The Castaway, and the verse with which it ends
describes not unfittingly the close of his own life. For his
mind sank ever deeper into the shadow of madness until he died in
April 1800--

"No voice divine the storm allayed,
No light propitious shone;
When, snatched from all effectual aid,
We perished, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he."

Cowper was never a power in our literature, but he was a
forerunner, "the forerunner of the great Restoration of our
literature."* And unlike most forerunners he was popular in his
own day. And although it is faint, like the scent of forgotten
rose leaves, his poetry still keeps a charm and sweetness for
those who will look for it.

*Macaulay.

Chapter LXXIV WORDSWORTH--THE POET OF NATURE

COWPER was as a straw blown along the path; he had no force in
himself, he showed the direction of the wind. Now we come to one
who was not only a far greater poet, but who was a force in our
literature. This man was William Wordsworth. He was the apostle
of simplicity, the prophet of nature. He sang of the simplest
things, of the common happenings of everyday life, and that too a
simple life.

His desire was to choose words only which were really used by men
in everyday talk, "and, at the same time, to throw over them a
certain colouring of the imagination."

He chose to sing of humble life because there men's thoughts and
feelings were more free from art and restraint, there they spoke
a plainer, more forceful language, there they were in touch with
all that was lasting and true in Nature. Here then, you will
say, is the poet for us, the poet who tells of simple things in
simple words, such as we can understand. And yet, perhaps,
strange as it may seem, there is no poet who makes less appeal to
young minds than does Wordsworth.

In reading poetry, though we may not always understand every word
of it, we want to feel the thrill and glamour of it. And when
Wordsworth remembers his own rules and keeps to them there is no
glamour, and his simplicity is apt to seem to us mere silliness.

When we are very young we cannot walk alone, and are glad of a
kindly helping hand to guide our footsteps. In learning to read,
as in learning to walk, it is at first well to trust to a guiding
hand. And in learning to read poetry it is at first well to use
selections chosen for us by those wiser than ourselves. Later,
when we can go alone, we take a man's whole work, and choose for
ourselves what we will most love in it. And it is only by making
use of this power of choice that we can really enjoy what is
best. But of all our great writers Wordsworth is perhaps the
last in the reading of whose works we willingly go alone. He is
perhaps the writer who gains most by being read in selections.
Indeed, for some of us there never comes a time when we care to
read his whole works.

For if we take his whole works, at times we plow through pages of
dry-as-dust argument where there is never a glimmer of that
beauty which makes poetry a joy, till we grow weary of it. Then
suddenly there springs to our eye a line of truest beauty which
sets our senses atingle with delight, and all our labor is more
than paid. And if our great poets were to be judged by single
lines or single stanzas we may safely say that Wordsworth would
be placed high among them. He is so placed, but it is rather by
the love of the few than by the voice of the many.

I am not trying to make you afraid of reading Wordsworth, I am
only warning you that you must not go to him expecting to gather
flowers. You must go expecting to and willing to dig for gold.
Yet although Wordsworth gives us broad deserts of prose in his
poetry, he himself knew the joy of words in lovely sequence.

He tells us that when he was ten years old, or less, already his
mind--

"With conscious pleasure opened to the charm
Of words in tuneful order, found them sweet
For their own sakes, a passion, and a power;
And phrases pleased me chosen for delight,
For pomp, or love."*

*Prelude, book v.

When Wordsworth first published his poems they were received with
scorn, and he was treated with neglect greater even than most
great poets have had to endure. But in time the tide turned and
people came at last to acknowledge that Wordsworth was not only a
poet, but a great one. He showed men a new way of poetry; he
proved to them that nightingale was as poetical a word as
Philomel, that it was possible to speak of the sun and the moon
as the sun and the moon, and not as Phoebus and Diana. Phoebus,
Diana, and Philomel are, with the thoughts they convey, beautiful
in their right places, but so are the sun, moon, and nightingale.

Wordsworth tried to make men see with new eyes the little
everyday things that they had looked upon week by week and year
by year until they had grown common. He tried to make them see
these things again with "the glory and the freshness of a
dream."*

*Ode, Intimations of Immortality.

Wordsworth fought the battle of the simple word, and phrase, and
thought, and won it. And the poets who came after him, and not
the poets only, but the prose writer too, whether they
acknowledged it or not, whether they knew it or now, entered as
by right into the possession of the kingdom which he had won for
them.

And now let me tell you a little of the life of this nature poet.

William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth in Cumberland in 1770.
He was the second son of John Wordsworth, a lawyer, and law agent
for the Earl of Lonsdale. William's mother died when he was
still a very small boy, and he remembered little about her. He
remembered dimly that one day as he was going to church, she
pinned some flowers into his coat. He remembered seeing her once
lying in an easy chair when she was ill, and that was nearly all.

Before Wordsworth lost his mother he had a happy out-door
childhood. He spent long days playing about in garden and
orchard, or on the banks of the Derwent, with his friends and
brothers and his sister Dorothy. In one of his long poems called
The Prelude, which is a history of his own young life, he tells
of these happy childish hours. In other of his poems he tells of
the love and comradeship that there was between himself and his
sister, though she was two years younger--

"Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time, when, in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!

A very hunter did I rush
Upon the prey:--with leaps and springs
I followed on from brake to bush;
But she, God love her! feared to brush
The dust from off its wings."*

*To a Butterfly.

Together they spied out the sparrows' nests and watched the tiny
nestlings as they grew, the big rough boy learning much from his
tender-hearted, gentle sister. In after years he said--

"She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
And humble cares, and delicate fears;
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
And love, and thought, and joy."*

*The Sparrow's Nest.

When the mother died these happy days for brother and sister
together were done, for Willie went to school at Hawkshead with
his brothers, and Dorothy was sent to live with her grandfather
at Penrith.

But Wordsworth's school-time was happy too. Hawkshead was among
the beautiful lake and mountain scenery that he loved. He had a
great deal of freedom, and out of school hours could take long
rambles, day and night too. When moon and stars were shining he
would wander among the hills until the spirit of the place laid
hold of him, and he says--

"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."*

*Prelude, book i.

Wordsworth fished and bird-nested, climbing perilous crags and
slippery rocks to find rare eggs. In summer he and his
companions rowed upon the lake, in winter they skated.

"And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and visible for many a mile
The cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom,
I heeded not their summons: happy time
It was indeed for all of us--for me
A time of rapture! Clear and loud
The village clock tolled six,--I wheeled about,
Proud and exulting like an untired horse
That cares not for his home. All shod with steel,
We hissed along the polished ice in games.
. . . . . .
We were a noisy crew; the sun in heaven
Beheld not vales more beautiful than ours;
Nor saw a band in happiness and joy
Richer, or worthier of the ground they trod."*

*Prelude, book i.

Yet among all this noisy boyish fun and laughter, Wordsworth's
strange, keen love of nature took root and grew. At times he
says--

"Even then I felt
Gleams like the flashing of a shield:--the earth
And common face of nature spake to me
Rememberable things."*

*Prelude, book i.

He read, too, what he liked, spending many happy hours over
Gulliver's Travels, and the Tale of a Tub, Don Quixote, and the
Arabian Nights.

While Wordsworth was still at school his father died. His uncles
then took charge of him, and after he left school sent him to
Cambridge. Wordsworth did nothing great at college. He took his
degree without honors, and left Cambridge still undecided what
his career in life was to be. He did not feel himself good
enough for the Church. He did not care for law, but rather liked
the idea of being a soldier. That idea, however, he also gave
up, and for a time he drifted.

In those days one of the world's great dramas was being enacted.
The French Revolution had begun. With the great struggle the
poet's heart was stirred, his imagination fired. It seemed to
him that a new dawn of freedom and joy and peace was breaking on
the world, and "France lured him forth." He crossed the Channel,
and for two years he lived through all the storm and stress of
the Revolution. He might have ended his life in the fearful
Reign of Terror which was coming on, had not his friends in
England called him home. He left France full of pity, and
sorrow, and disappointment, for no reign of peace had come, and
the desire for Liberty had been swallowed up in the desire for
Empire.

In spite of his years of travel, in spite of the fact that it was
necessary for him to earn his living, Wordsworth was still
unsettled as to what his work in life was to be, when a friend
dying left him nine hundred pounds. With Wordworth's simple
tastes this sum was enough to live upon for several years, so he
asked his dearly loved sister Dorothy to make her home with him,
and together they settled down to a simple cottage life in
Dorsetshire. It was a happy thing for Wordsworth that he found
such a comrade in his sister. From first to last she was his
friend and helper, cheering and soothing him when need be--

"Her voice was like a hidden bird that sang,
The thought of her was like a flash of light,
Or an unseen companionship, a breath
Of fragrance independent of the wind."

Another poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whom William and Dorothy
Wordsworth now met, calls her "Wordsworth's exquisite sister."
"She is a woman indeed, in mind I mean, and in heart. . . . In
every motion her innocent soul out-beams so brightly that who saw
her would say 'Guilt was a thing impossible with her.'"

Chapter LXXV WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE--THE LAKE POETS

AFTER Coleridge and Wordsworth once met they soon became fast
friends, and in order to be near Coleridge the Wordsworths moved
to another house near Nether Stowey in Somersetshire.

Coleridge was two years or more younger than Wordsworth, having
been born in 1772. He was the thirteenth child of his father,
who was a clergyman. As a boy he was sensitive and lonely,
liking better to day-dream by himself than to play with his
fellows. While still a mere child he loved books. Before he was
five he had read the Arabian Nights, and he peopled his day
dreams with giants and genii, slaves and fair princesses. When
he was ten he went to school at Christ's Hospital, the Bluecoat
School. Here he met Charles Lamb, who also became a writer, and
whose Essays and Tales from Shakespeare I hope you will soon
read.

At school even his fellows saw how clever Coleridge was. He read
greedily and talked with any one who would listen and answer. In
his lonely wanderings about London on "leave days" he was
delighted if he could induce any stray passer-by to talk,
especially, he says, if he was dressed in black. No subject came
amiss to him, religion, philosophy, science, or poetry. From
school Coleridge went to Cambridge, but after a time, getting
into trouble and debt, he ran away and enlisted in a cavalry
regiment under the name of Silas Tomkyn Comberback.

In a few months, however, he was discovered, and his brothers
bought him out. He then went back to Cambridge, but left again
at the end of the same year without taking a degree.

Meantime, while on a visit to Oxford, he had met Southey, another
poet who was at this time a student there.

Robert Southey was born in 1774, and was the son of a Bristol
Linen draper, but he was brought up chiefly by an aunt in Bath.
At fourteen he went to school at Westminster, and later to
Balliol College, Oxford. When Coleridge met him he was just
twenty, and Coleridge twenty-two. Like Wordsworth, they were
both fired with enthusiasm for the French Revolution, and they
soon became friends.

With some others of like mind they formed a little society, which
they called the Pantisocracy, from Greek words meaning all-equal-
rule. They decided that they should all marry and then emigrate
to the banks of the Susquehanna (chosen, it has been said,
because of its beautiful name), and there form a little Utopia.
Property was to be in common, each man laboring on the land two
hours a day in order to provide food for the company. But the
fine scheme came to nothing, for meanwhile none of the company
had enough money to pay for his passage to the banks of the
beautiful-sounding river. Coleridge and Southey, however,
carried out part of the program. They both married, their wives
being sisters.

Coleridge, about the same time as he married, published a volume
of poems. But as this did not bring him wealth he then tried
various other ways of making a living. He began a weekly paper
which ceased after a few numbers, he lectured on history, and
preached in various Unitarian chapels. Then after a time he
settled at Nether Stowey, where he was living when he met
Wordsworth.

The two poets, as has been said, at once became friends,
Coleridge having a deep and whole-hearted admiration for
Wordworth's genius. "I speak with heartfelt sincerity," he says,
"and I think unblinded judgment, when I tell you that I feel a
little man by his side."

The two friends had many walks and talks together, shaping their
ideas of what poetry should be. They at length decided to
publish a book together to be called Lyrical Ballads.

In this book there was published the poem which of all that
Coleridge write is the best known, The Ancient Mariner. It tells
how this old old sailor stops a guest who is going to a wedding,
and bids him hear a tale. The wedding guest does not wish to
stay, but the old man holds him with his skinny hand--