circumstances may occasionally drive them out, they return again to find ready welcome and permanent lodgment. So it proved with Wordsworth. Here in Racedown, under most favorable conditions, the mental situation was gradually changing. What was gone was slowly returning. Far from the noisy and fretful life of the world remedial agencies were at work to restore his soul. The faithful ministries of a devoted sister, the daily intercourse with Nature in peaceful haunts, the lessons he had learned from her in years gone by, his conversation with men of humble spirit and open manners, the silent communion with wholesome books, the restoring power of definite and daily occupation, the hours of meditation and calm reflection, remote from the mad course of political events- these were the forces at work to restore Wordsworth to his normal self. It is impossible, of course, to determine definitely just when a full recovery was effected. As in the case of bodily disease, it was gradual. However, it is safe to say that, by the time he and his sister left Racedown to take up their abode in Alfoxden, Wordsworth was mentally and spiritually in the advanced stages of convalescence. How complete the restoration was when it did come is indicated in the thirteenth book of "The Prelude." The Poet's account of the marvelous change that took place is both interesting and instructive, revealing as it does Wordsworth's conception of Nature's part in the work of his recovery. She did not desert the heart that loved her. She calmed him, and gently led him back to the recognition of great truths, and forward to the acceptance of others, concerning both herself and Man. "Long time," he says, "in search of knowledge did I range To no impatient or fallacious hopes, Of kindred permanence, unchanged in form One of the most interesting features of his recovery is the reestablishment, by degrees, under the guidance of Nature, of his faith in Man. He begins to study him not as an abstract creature a mere mental creation - but as a real being clothed in flesh and blood. Having gained more judicious views of the worth of individual man, he inquires with more interest than heretofore why we find this glorious creature in such small numbers — "one in ten thousand." Why may not millions be what one is? If the obstructions of animal appetites and daily wants be not insuperable, then all others vanish. So he exhorts himself: "Inspect the basis of the social pile: He turned to men as he found them in his daily walks-humble, unassuming, simple folk. He loved to Converse with men, where if we meet a face He began to talk with strangers whom he met in his wanderings, and to learn of them important lessons. His intercourse with these lowly people began in Racedown, and was continued in Alfoxden. It proved to be a revelation to him. He was both astonished and gratified at the amount of native intelligence and virtuous sentiment his conversations with such men revealed, and it brought peace and steadiness, healing and repose, to his ruffled passions. These men were a direct contradiction of his Godwinian philosophy, which maintained that virtue belonged to the wise, and vice was the offspring of ignorance. Godwin taught that we owe everything to education. Here Wordsworth feels how little we are indebted, at least to formal education - how little it has to do with genuine feeling and just sentiment. The outcome of all this subsequently had a most vital bearing on his poetry, for he was led to a firm determination to make Man the chief subject of his song. Furthermore, he would sing of Man not as judged by externals, but as he really is within himself. He would sing, too, of Man as found not in high places but in "the walks of homely life," for it is here, according to Wordsworth, that we find the fundamentally human. He would deal with men in the simplicity of their being, and in 2 Ibid., 138-141. 8 Ibid., 168-185. 1 The Prelude, XIII, 94–100. simple everyday circumstances and situations, and in the ordinary language of men instead of in a diction foreign to common life and belonging to a particular class of men whom we call poets. This determination is the key to much of his poetry. In this gradual recovery of Wordsworth his former convictions concerning Nature were also strengthened. He was convinced that she for all conditions wants not power To consecrate, if we have eyes to see, The outside of her creatures, and to breathe He began to see an intimate relation existing between the works of Nature and those of Man; to note that the passion which animates Nature's various forms intermingles with the work of Man to which she calls him. Again, he is convinced that the poet stands side by side with the prophet "in a mighty scheme of truth," each having his own peculiar gift, heaven-born, that enables him to perceive things never seen before. In other words, he is again conscious of the powers of the poet, the source from which they spring, the obligations they entail upon the possessor, and cherishes a hope that, thus endowed, he may be able to produce an enduring work. Thus, gradually, a restoration to moral and spiritual health was taking place. Slowly faith and hope, and with them peace and joy, were returning. The soul of Nature and the soul of Man were again realities for him. The lost vision was beginning to dawn once more on the renewed spirit. He began, as of old, "to see into the life of things," to be conscious of heaven-born powers and sacred obligations. The process of recovery begun in Racedown was continued and completed at Alfoxden, where we shall soon find him standing again in Nature's presence, A sensitive being, a creative soul. 1 The Prelude, XIII, 283-287. CHAPTER VI COLERIDGE. THE "LYRICAL BALLADS." POETRY RELATING TO MAN Wordsworth and his sister moved from Racedown to Alfoxden July 13, 1797. This was a fortunate change, and was productive of one of the most fruitful chapters in the Poet's history. It was here, under the healing influence of his natural surroundings and the society of congenial friends, that he progressed rapidly to a complete restoration of his mental and spiritual health. It was here, also, that his brief acquaintance with Coleridge ripened into a warm friendship to the mutual advantage of both — a friendship that was destined to leave a permanent impression upon their work and greatly to enrich the pages of English poetry. Here, too, the "Lyrical Ballads" were written, inspired chiefly by what he learned from lowly folk, and by the beauty and charm with which Nature in the Quantock Hills greets the eye of sense and speaks to the spirit of man. Nature has invested Alfoxden with a cheerful beauty which did not fail to have a salutary effect upon Wordsworth. The "Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth" abound in descriptions of the scenery. On her first visit she writes: "There is everything there, sea, woods wild as fancy ever painted, brooks clear and pebbly as in Cumberland, villages so romantic; and William and I, in a wander by ourselves, found out a sequestered waterfall in a dell formed by steep hills covered with full-grown timber-trees. The woods are as fine as those at Lowther, and the country more romantic; it has the character of the less grand parts of the neighborhood of the lakes." Again, in a letter bearing the date of August 14, 1797, she writes: 1 Dorothy Wordsworth, Memoirs, I, 102. |