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the letter to Scott already mentioned; "Yarrow Unvisited," composed in 1803;" The Matron of Jedborough and her Husband," composed between 1803 and 1805, though, as Dorothy says, long after seeing the persons described; "Fly, Some Kind Harbinger to GrasmereDale," composed September 25, 1803; and "The Blind Highland Boy, a Tale told by the Fireside, after returning to the Vale of Grasmere," a poem suggested long after the tour, but coloured by it in several details, as, for example, in stanzas 12, 13, and 14, which reproduce observations recorded by Dorothy.

The general poetic level of this series is high. Three at least of the number, " At the Grave of Burns,"" The Solitary Reaper," and " Yarrow Unvisited," are among Wordsworth's best achievements. Even if they stood alone, they would indicate a remarkably wide range of power. The value of the tour, considered as a stage in Wordsworth's artistic development, is chiefly in the fact that it invited him to a fresh field of observation, unconnected with his past life. Yet, of course, the principles which he had learned to apply to nature and to human life were applicable to this field as well as to the familiar scenes around Grasmere. He could still carry out his central plan of self-development, which was to retain undiminished and uncorrupted the lively feelings of childhood and the pure ideals of youth, while attaching them, by means of manhood's riper knowledge and more deliberate will, to objects of permanent and universal experience. Here and there, in these new poems, we feel something of the freedom and irresponsible gaiety of a happy wayfarer, oftener still the lively and romantic spirit of Scotland. Sentiment, when it is not restrained altogether, is expressed with greater abandon by Scots than by the English. Adopting Burns's favourite form of stanza, Wordsworth follows his example also in opening wide the flood-gate of feeling. Similarly, for "Yarrow Unvisited," he took a reeling kind of Scottish melody, which is heard in several old ballads, and made it carry a certain gay wilfulness foreign to his own, and, indeed, to English character in general.

CHAPTER XXI

NEW INFLUENCES

A NEW current had begun to flow into Wordsworth's life shortly before he set out on the Scottish tour. It was an influence destined to alter profoundly his character and his art. That the acceptance of patronage affects the relation of the recipient to his benefactor is a rule of nature. The utmost delicacy of the giver and the proudest independence of the receiver never suffice to annul it altogether. There is a difference between accepting pecuniary aid offered by an old friend, on purely personal grounds, and accepting it as bounty from a stranger or a person of superior rank, as a retaining fee, so to speak, for work not yet accomplished. No doubt immense contributions to art have been rendered possible by patronage. But the tendency and spirit of the work have never been quite the same after the artist has accepted the obligation. No poet could have wished for a more high-minded patron than Sir George Beaumont. It was natural for a man of his great wealth to think that Wordsworth's narrow means were poverty, and that he might achieve more if relieved from the necessity of rigorous thrift. His benefactions were not alarmingly large, and no doubt they were not only prompted by genuine kindness, but proffered most delicately. He was himself a fellow-artist, and there were abundant grounds for the friendship that sprang up between him and Wordsworth. Nevertheless, in Wordsworth's letters to him there is perceptible an effort to adapt himself to a new point of view. To most of his correspondents Wordsworth had been stiffly uncompromising. He wrote few letters, and in them

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there was usually a touch of almost rude independence. One would suppose from his long and frequent epistles to Sir George that at last he acknowledged a superior. Of course, it is not to be imagined that Wordsworth surrendered a particle of his self-respect. But that his attitude towards society was modified by this new relationship there can be scarcely any doubt, and in the end his art reflected the change.

The acquaintance began at Coleridge's house in the early part of August, 1803. The baronet, who had a wide circle of friends among literary men in London, had met Coleridge before, and had now come, with Lady Beaumont, to lodge with him at Greta Hall. On August 12, after their departure, Coleridge wrote them a curious letter: "I have written a strange, rambling letter," he concludes; " for in truth I have written under a sort of perplexity of moral feeling,-my head prompting respect, my heart confident affectionateness; the one tells me it is my first letter to you, the other lets me know that unless I write to you as old friends I cannot write to you at all. Be so good therefore as with your wonted kindness to think of this letter as of a sort of awkward bow on entering a room. I shall find myself more at my ease when I have sat down. Believe me, I write every-day words with no every-day feeling, when I subscribe myself, dear Sir George and dear Lady Beaumont, with affectionate esteem, your obliged and grateful S. T. COLERIDGE."

Sir George had done something to account for this flutter. He had bought and presented to Wordsworth a piece of land, Applethwaite, near Keswick, in the hope that the poet would build on it, and thus be able to live nearer Coleridge. Wordsworth did not acknowledge this generous act till eight weeks later. He thenOctober 14-excused his delay as follows: " Owing to a set of painful and uneasy sensations which I have, more or less, at all times about my chest, I deferred writing to you, being at first made still more uncomfortable by travelling, and loathing to do violence to myself, in

"Memorials of Coleorton," I. 1.

↑ "Memoirs," I, 261.

what ought to be an act of pure pleasure and enjoyment, viz., the expression of my deep sense of your goodness." The letter is a singular exhibition of nervous hesitation, and makes one suspect that Coleridge was, indeed, not far wrong in thinking his friend a hypochondriac. The outcome is that Wordsworth keeps the Applethwaite property, though declining to build on it, partly because of the state of his own affairs," and still more from the improbability of Mr. Coleridge's remaining in the country." It was Coleridge's conviction at this time that nothing but removal to a hot climate would save his life. According to the Bishop of Lincoln,' Wordsworth sent with this letter three sonnets, one composed during the Scottish tour, at Nidpath, "Now as I Live I Pity that Great Lord ";" Vanguard of Liberty, Ye Men of Kent "; and "Shout, for a mighty Victory is Won!" The third of these was an "anticipation of the slaughter that awaited the French if they should set foot on British soil. It is also, unhappily, an anticipation of the strain of highly artificial ferocity which henceforth disfigures some of Wordsworth's political verse. The hard logic of events had made him feel that with all her abuses Britain was the bulwark of liberty. France, he thought, had lost all her titles to respect in embracing the tyrant Bonaparte. Under the necessity of doing his share to preserve his country's life, Wordsworth was willing to relinquish at last, and openly, his long-cherished principles and hopes. The days of his youth were ended.

"

Sir George was very much interested in military affairs, had raised a corps of infantry at Coleorton, another of pioneers at Dunmow in Essex, and had a share in another of infantry at Haverhill. Wordsworth is able to report to him: "At Grasmere, we have turned out almost to a man. We are to go to Ambleside on Sunday to be mustered, and put on, for the first time, our military apparel."

Coleridge, who returned from Scotland ten days before the Wordsworths, lost no time before writing

Memoirs," I. 263.

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to Sir George. In his letter of September 23* he states, by the way, that his poem "The Pains of Sleep" was written nine years before, when he had an attack of the same kind as that which he describes in his letter to Southey from Edinburgh. It is in this letter that he felicitously describes the style of Pascal as "a robe of pure light." Another epistle, dated October 1, is less admirable. It is as wild as a dream of delirium. But there is method in its madness; it is Coleridge's retractation of the generous errors" of his earlier years. Robert Emmet had just been executed, at the age of twenty-four. "At that age, dear Sir George," writes Coleridge, "I was retiring from politics, disgusted beyond measure by the manners and morals of the Democrats, and fully awake to the inconsistency of my practice with my speculative principles." This statement-which is not true-leads him into reviewing his past. In a cataract of phrases, in sentences a page long, he betrays his fear that his Jacobinical conduct may rise up against him and cut him off from Sir George's friendship. Excuses, protests, renunciations, are poured forth in an utter abandonment of dignity or loyalty to old friends and old beliefs. The climax is reached in an outburst of terror at what might have happened if Emmet had succeeded, and then we have this conclusion, which explains much: "My honoured friends, as I live, I scarcely know what I have been writing; but the very circumstance of writing to you, added to the recollection of the unwise and unchristian feelings with which, at poor Emmet's age, I contemplated all persons of your rank in society, and that recollection confronted with my present feelings towards you, it has agitated me, dear friends, and I have written, my heart at a full gallop down hill." Surely this is apostasy, and there is unhappy significance in the fact that it is made at the feet of a baronet who was known to be a rich patron of letters. We are glad Wordsworth was not so precipitate, even though it would have been more polite not to wait eight weeks to render thanks for the gift of an estate.

* "Memorials of Coleorton," I. 6.