Cliffsnotes the Prelude

CliffsNotes on WORDSWORTH'S

THE PRELUDE

www.cliffs.com

WORDSWORTH'S THE PRELUDE Notes including • • • • • • •

Life and Background of the Author Introduction to the Work A Brief Synopsis Critical Commentaries Critical Essays Essay Topics and Review Questions Selected Bibliography

by Warren Paul, Ph.D.

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA 68501 1-800-228-4078 www.CLIFFS.com ISBN 0-8220-7293-9 © Copyright 1964 by Cliffs Notes, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

1

www.cliffs.com

LIFE AND BACKGROUND OF THE AUTHOR William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, a small quiet market town in northwest England, on the edge of the Lake District. Thus from the very beginning he was associated with that region which he loved more than any other, and except for brief sojourns in Britain, Germany, and Italy, he never left his beloved Lake Country. He died in 1850 and was buried at Grasmere, Westmoreland, about twenty-five miles from his birthplace. His personal history was just about as uneventful as his lack of movement would lead one to expect. The excitement in his life took place on the level of intellect; he found ideas more exciting than any other thing. Though he appreciated the intimacy of a small circle of friends, he consistently avoided any larger portion of society. Like the American Thoreau, his philosophy was one rooted in simplicity of living, and like Thoreau, he sought always to practice it. In fact, he preferred humble surroundings and a minimum of personal effects. From his childhood onward, he invariably strove for economy, frequently from necessity, but always because of principle. He was born one of five children to a modest land lawyer. Wordsworth's only sister, Dorothy was one year his junior. She never married because she preferred to become the poet's lifelong companion and informal biographer. William reportedly demonstrated no childish precocity. He was self-willed and often displayed such a violent temper that his mother confided she was worried more about his future than the destinies of her other children. His mother died in 1779, evidently of a cold. Soon afterward, the poet and his elder brother were sent to the small, free grammar school at Hawkshead, near Windermere. He was not an outstanding student, but among his more rustic classmates he seems to have shone somewhat. He lodged and boarded with a childless landlady, and she seems to have come in many ways to replace his lost mother in his affections. For years he regarded her cottage as home and considered it a welcome relief from the establishments of his stern relatives. The cottage was a mere stone's throw from the open fields. In 1783, his father died, and the young Wordsworth became an orphan at thirteen. Before his death, the father named his own brother and his wife's elder brother as joint guardians of the children, and it was to the latter that the four orphaned boys were sent. Their uncle proved to be hostile and insensitive toward them, never ceased to remind them of their poverty, and seems even to have encouraged the servants to neglect and abuse his charges. William appears to have been particularly disliked by master and servant alike. As Wordsworth grew older, he decided he might like to become a lawyer. Accordingly, in October 1787, he left his uncle's home in Penrith and went to attend St. John's College, Cambridge. His apparent early enthusiasm for Cambridge was not long in turning to apathy. He found teachers and students shallow and the course of study inconsequential; he openly proclaimed that he could not stand the regimentation. He did desire admission to the circles representing the gentry and intelligentsia at Cambridge, but they would have none of him because he was poor and quite common. During his vacations, he spent his time visiting his former landlady at Hawkshead and, with his sister Dorothy, covering some of Derbyshire and Yorkshire on foot. At the end of his junior year, he abandoned his earlier idea of applying for a fellowship. He and a schoolmate left on a three-month walking tour through France and on into the Alps and got as far as Lakes Maggiore and Como. Here he gathered the impressions which were to crystallize in his first volume of poems.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

2

www.cliffs.com He took his B.A. degree in 1791 and soon after made one of a series of visits to London. He next considered becoming a clergyman. However, after a year of postgraduate work, he decided to go to France, where he intended to learn more of the language and customs of France with the intention of becoming a tutor. He stayed only four days in Paris before he moved on to Orléans to live among the natives. He shared lodgings with several members of the cavalry and probably through them was introduced to Paul Vallon, a clerk, and then to the latter's sister, Marie Anne ("Annette"). She was nearly four years older than the poet; she was a Royalist, and he was a self-styled "democrat," she was a Catholic and he a non-practicing Protestant; but love seems to have leveled all things. When she returned to her family home at Blois, farther south along the Loire, Wordsworth went with her. In the spring, she announced that she was going to have a baby and that the poet was the father. He meantime had been planning to return to England that spring (1792) to engage in some kind of literary activity or finally to take orders. The natural thing would have been for the two young people to marry, and from all indications, they were perfectly willing. The poet acknowledged (by proxy) the baby--a girl, Caroline--as his own at her baptism. But there were serious parental objections to nuptials. At Orléans and Blois, Wordsworth was plunged into the midst of the intrigue that surrounded the French Revolution (1789-99). He was at first completely indifferent to the Revolution and its ideals. Slowly, however, he began to fancy himself a patriot and spoke up for the revolutionary cause. While at Blois, he had the good fortune to meet Michel Beaupuy, a captain, whom he met possibly through the local revolutionary club which the young Englishman had just joined. No other man except Samuel Taylor Coleridge had as great an influence on Wordsworth. When King Louis XVI was beheaded on January 21, 1793, Wordsworth was back in England. Though the poet was compelled to defend the French Reign of Terror outwardly, his inner convictions were slowly altering, and he underwent a serious spiritual malaise, during which he seemed to be finally and completely without desire or design. As one biographer says, "largely because of what he underwent between 1792 and 1795, he became one of the voices of his age." His relatives would now have none of him; they considered him an anarchist, as well as a disbeliever and an idler. His first volumes of poems were unpopular with the critics, when they were noticed at all. There was one man, nevertheless, who was much struck by these early endeavors, and that was Coleridge. In October 1793, Wordsworth managed once more to return to Paris, a feat that took much courage. He found Blois cut off from Paris and once again returned to England. For years after, he had nightmares about what he had seen of the Terror. In September of 1795, William and Dorothy got one of their most ardent wishes fulfilled--that of living together--when they let a house at Racedown, in Dorset, in southwest England. Wordsworth and Coleridge met in Bristol late in 1795 and corresponded thereafter. They did not become close friends until 1797. Together they planned a revolutionary volume which they supposed would change the course of English literature. Lyrical Ballads appeared September 1, 1798. It was slow to win literary favor but gradually acquired its permanent significance as the turning point in English poetry. In 1802, Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson, a friend from childhood. She bore him six children. In 1805, a favorite brother drowned at sea, and this event shocked the poet. In the spring, The Prelude, begun in 1799, was concluded. In 1812, two of his children died within months of each other. The first collected edition of his poems appeared in 1815; five more editions followed between then and 1850. A bequest enabled him to indulge his passion for travel, and he toured Europe. From about 1829, his sister, who had always been high-strung, began to be mentally ill; in 1835, she went completely mad.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

3

www.cliffs.com The later years of his life were peaceful. He had been given a job in the civil service in 1813 and thereafter took the large house called Rydal Mount, near Grasmere, where he was to live the rest of his life. His youthful religious skepticism was resolved, and he embraced the established church. He veered toward conservatism from the very moment of Napoleon's rise to power, and later he vociferously opposed many of the beneficial liberal measures of the time. He received honorary degrees from Durham (1838) and Oxford (1839). In 1842, he resigned his civic post and was awarded a pension. The following year, on the death of Southey, he was appointed Poet Laureate. Toward the end of his life, he knew much fame. He was welcomed everywhere as a celebrity. The critics were stilled by his laureateship, and his verse became quite popular with the burgeoning middle class. It was very fashionable among the early Victorians to gather for group readings of Wordsworth's poetry. In 1850, the death of his beloved daughter Dora (Dorothy) brought a depression from which he could not recover. On April 23, he died at the age of eighty. Thus was silenced one of the noblest voices of Romantic times and of all times.

INTRODUCTION TO THE WORK Between 1770 and 1850, the intellectual life of Europe came to be dominated by what historians have referred to since as the romantic mood. The doctrines it represented and the literary and artistic works it produced came to be known as romanticism. The men who partook of this temper came to be known as romantics. Wordsworth was one of these; indeed, he was one of the very first. He wrote some of the first romantic poetry. In order to appreciate his poetry fully, it is helpful to place it in the historical setting in which it was composed. Basically, the romantic mood was a reaction to the neoclassical Age of Reason--the age of Newton and Locke in England, Leibniz and the Encyclopaedists on the Continent. The world was ripe for a great rebirth of human spirit. Romanticism came to be a new way of viewing man and his relationship to his environment. The writers of the Enlightenment had preached human perfectibility ad nauseam; they described man as flourishing in a world which was completely rational and utterly predictable. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) is usually called the father of romanticism. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, his ideas were upon the lips of every educated person. A contemporary of the French Philosophs, he was one of the first to cry out at the stultification of the Age of Reason. To this end, he was quick to point out that invention and artifact--the proliferation of culture--had done more to hurt humanity than to benefit it. As an antidote, he saw a neo-primitive return to more natural ways for restoring the soul to humanity. He stressed naturalness in education and religion and simplicity in government, and thus attacked the very ramparts of the entrenched institutions which fostered traditionalism--the literati, the Church, and absolutism. Though Rousseau was only the first to express what many were beginning to feel, his legacy was indeed a rich one: The leaders of the French Revolution were his acknowledged disciples, and his nonpolitical ideas flowered in the romantic movement. The great guiding principle of the romantic revolt was a reinvigorated humanism, which was greater than any since the Renaissance. It taught individualism and freedom of action; in the political sphere, it brought the end of privilege and substituted constitutionalism and extension of the franchise; in the religious realm, its earmarks were pietism and renewed fundamentalism (in England, manifested by such phenomena as Methodism). In the world of the arts, it brought freedom from the restraint of longestablished rules and the unabashed expression of temperament.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

4

www.cliffs.com As an aesthetic, it spread to all the arts and ultimately to the whole Western world. Since the beginning of early modern times, the fine arts had sought their inspiration in Greek and Roman models. At the height of the Enlightenment, classical rules, forms, and themes necessarily excluded much that was immediate and vital in human experience from creative expression. The romantic reform threw open the floodgates. Its greatest effect was perhaps felt in literature. Indeed, the revolt ushered in an age rich in both poetry and prose. The intellectuals were young, and enthusiasm was boundless. Everyone felt the change--the great minds and the lesser. Wordsworth's was one of the great minds, and one that led where others followed. The most important event of the latter part of the eighteenth century was the French Revolution. It affected the lives of almost everyone, whether in France or elsewhere. Before it had run its course, it had effected changes throughout Europe and even in America. Because Wordsworth had a youthful enthusiasm for democratic movements and because he had an opportunity to witness some of the revolutionary activities in person, the Revolution had a great effect on his philosophy and on his works. As Wordsworth was just beginning his literary career, prospects for a popularly desired outcome to the conflict were still promising, but the somewhat poorly formulated aims of the revolutionists were far from realized. The Jacobins had not yet come to power, and the more mature and moderate disciples of Montesquieu still directed the course of revolutionary activities. Their goal was a limited, or constitutional, monarchy, much like the English, with guarantees of all personal freedoms. The vociferous egalitarians, following Rousseau, sought to bring about in a quick and painless transition what the British had taken hundreds of years to create. The patriots sparked the Assembly in such a way as to cause admiration at home and among the liberals abroad. The Assembly had done away with or curbed many of the royal and feudal abuses that had set off the revolt, reorganized the political and representative structure of the state, and, by erasing many older restrictions, created an equality of opportunity for many numbers of those who had never known it before. Importantly, it stabilized national finances and created a uniform and integral judicial system (where formerly there had been a multiplicity of unique local systems), and it curbed the irresponsible Catholic hierarchy in France. The magic word was liberté. It excused everything. The legislature unfortunately was susceptible to any whim of the sanguine Paris mobs which pressured it. Violence loomed always as a very real possibility. A fanatical element was beginning to gain control. The Congressional Assembly deliberately voted itself out of existence as part of the deadwood of the old regime, and many of the wisest legislators retired. Control then passed to the radical Legislative Assembly. As Wordsworth arrived in Paris, the Assembly was busy sentencing émigré royalists and recalcitrant priests with the death penalty; intrigue and suspicion gripped the capital. To compound the difficulties, the great powers of Europe were menacing the borders of France with their armies in an undisguised effort to keep King Louis XVI the instrument of government. To safeguard the gains already won, Robespierre instituted the celebrated Reign of Terror. The young Wordsworth continued to condone the acts of the radicals. On August 10, Louis XVI was dethroned amid bloodshed; the first step toward securing the new republic had been established. From then on, the Jacobin Club devoted itself to the extermination of all Bourbon supporters. Upon report of actual invasion, 900 royalist men, women, and children were wiped out in the September Massacres. Finally, the king was beheaded early in 1793. The excesses of the Revolution, its inevitable miscarriages of justice, continued to be excused because of the fanatical dedication of its leaders to exalting humanity. Not until the coming of the Directory (1795) and Bonaparte's drawing attention from the national to the international hostilities did control pass to the moderate middle class and the revolutionary activities abate somewhat.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

5

www.cliffs.com And there was a revolution going on in England, though it was one fought without arms. Its origin was two-pronged: the emphatic rise of the merchant class, with its demands for less personal restraint from government, and the penetration of the romantic attitude into the mores of the nation. The political situation in 1793-94 was the result of two credos which grew out of two basic and conflicting aspects of human nature itself--tendencies toward conservatism and toward liberalism, both intricately commingled in the human breast, but one managing to predominate over the other from time to time. The Revolution in France whipped to nonviolent frenzy the sympathies of liberals and the reaction of conservatives. The resulting crisis was the most serious in England since the Puritan Revolution (1649). There was a curtailment of rights and liberties by the Tory government, which feared an actual armed uprising. The social injustices resulting from the Industrial Revolution were manifesting themselves at a time when reform was blocked by the conservative social philosophy, while liberal sentiment outspokenly supported the French insurgents. Finally, the press smoldered with much pamphleteering for and against the Revolution, innate rights, and the theory of equality. There were strident pleas for the immediate reform of the British constitution, and several societies were founded for the propagation of radical views. In the midst of this turmoil, Wordsworth composed his early poetry. The romantic revolt had gotten well underway by 1800; it reached its climax in the first third of the nineteenth century. Revolutionary ideals from France created an intense political response in Britain. Moreover, the Napoleonic Wars (1796-1815) and war with the United States (1812) strained the economy and burdened the poor. In English statecraft, a pattern had been slowly emerging in which evolutionary progress and reform were obtained by solving political and social conflicts through compromise; after the Whig Party came to power (1830), this way of proceeding became predominant. Thereafter, the suffering which had been the direct result of the Industrial Revolution and laissez faire was ameliorated through a series of legislative acts curbing the abuse of labor and through revisions of the poor and criminal laws. The stage was set for a new leisure, prosperity, and enjoyment of more of the arts and material refinements of life. And a great technological and literary effort responded to the challenge.

A BRIEF SYNOPSIS The Prelude affords one of the best approaches to Wordsworth's poetry in general and to the philosophy of nature it contains. However, the apparent simplicity of the poem is deceptive; comprehension is seldom immediate. Many passages can tolerate two or more readings and afford new meaning at each reading. Wordsworth, it will be recalled, likened his projected great philosophical work to a magnificent Gothic cathedral. And he explained (in the Preface to The Excursian) that The Prelude was like an antechapel through which the reader might pass to gain access to the main body of the structure. The poem begins in his boyhood and continues to 1798. By the latter date, he felt that his formative years had passed, that his poetic powers were mature, and that he was ready to begin constructing the huge parent work. Alternating with his almost religious conviction, there is an unremitting strain of dark doubt through the poem. The poem itself therefore may be considered an attempt to stall for time before going on to what the poet imagined would be far more difficult composition. As he tells the reader repeatedly, his purpose was threefold: to provide a reexamination of his qualifications, to honor Coleridge, and to create an introduction to The Recluse. It was actually finished in 1805 but was carefully and constantly revised until 1850, when it was published posthumously. It had been remarked that Wordsworth had the good sense to hold back an introductory piece until he was certain that what it was to introduce had some chance of being realized. Moreover, The Prelude contained passages which promised to threaten the sensibilities of others, as well as himself, during the rapidly changing course of events after 1805. The year 1805 is the approximate

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

6

www.cliffs.com date of his conversion to a more conservative outlook. However, his later-year recollection was that this change occurred some ten years earlier, and he tries in his revisions to push the date back. The 1805 original draft was resurrected by Ernest de Selincourt and first published in 1926. A comparison of it with the 1850 (and final) version shows the vast change the work underwent. Some passages in the earlier version do not appear at all in the later; others are altered almost beyond recognition. The 1805 draft contains the clearest statement of Wordsworth's philosophy and is fresher and more vigorously written. The toned-down work as published in 1850 represents the shift of his thought toward conservatism and orthodoxy during the intervening years. The student is likely to find the 1850 version much more accessible for the purpose of reading the whole poem. Yet on the whole, critics tend to prefer the 1805 version when citing actual lines from the poem. The only action in the entire poem is an action of ideas. Similarly, it would be inaccurate to speak of the poem has having a plot in any standard sense. Its "story" is easily summarized. The poem falls rather naturally into three consecutive sections: Books 1-7 offer a half-literal, half-fanciful description of his boyhood and youthful environment; Book 8 is a kind of reprise. Books 9-11, in a more fluid and narrative style, depict his exciting adventures in France and London. Books 12-14 are mostly metaphysical and are devoted to an attempt at a philosophy of art, with the end of the last book giving a little summary. Each of these three "sections" corresponds roughly to a phase in Wordsworth's poetic development and to a period in his life. The first dates from the time of his intuitive reliance on nature, when he wrote simple and graceful lyrics. The second represents his days of hope for, and then disappointment with, the Revolution, and his adoption of Godwinian rationalism, during which he wrote the strong and inspiring sonnets and odes. The last coincides with his later years of reaction and orthodoxy, when he wrote dull and proper works such as The Excursion and Ecclesiastical Sonnets. The Prelude is critically central to his life work because it contains passages representing all three styles. In the last analysis, The Prelude is valuable because it does precisely what its subtitle implies: It describes the creation of a poet, and one who was pivotal in English letters. In fact, The Prelude was so successful in its attempt that there was nothing left to deal with in The Recluse. Wordsworth could reach the high level of abstraction needed for a true philosophical epic only sporadically, in some of the shorter lyrics and odes, and could not sustain the tone.

CRITICAL COMMENTARIES BOOK 1 Introduction--Childhood and School-Time It is a magnificent autumn day. The poet has, by his own account, been too long pent-up in London and only now has managed to return to the beloved Lake District where he spent his childhood and adolescence. It is difficult to fix his age as the poem opens because time constantly shifts backward and forward throughout the narrative. The start of Book 1 finds Wordsworth speaking from a mature point of view. The body of the poem employs flashbacks to describe the development of the poetic mind during youth. This material is amalgamated with the poet's adult views of philosophy and art (those views held during the writing and endless revision of The Prelude, roughly from 1799 until 1850). Wordsworth experiences relief in coming back to nature. He immediately identifies spiritual freedom with the absence of the encumbrances of civilization. Feelings of irresponsible freedom and lack of purpose quickly give way to a prevision of an impending period of optimism and creativity. In the delicious quiet,

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

7

www.cliffs.com Wordsworth suddenly sees in his mind's eye the cottage of the landlady with whom he stayed as a schoolboy. He recalls that even then he had intimations of his future greatness. His wish to create some profound work of art calls for a re-disciplining of his mind, which has recently been dulled by the artificiality of society. He mentions in passing the typical moodiness of the poet in likening him to a lover. In assessing his faculties, Wordsworth finds he has the three necessary ingredients for creativity: a vital soul; knowledge of the underlying principles of things; and a host of painstaking observations of natural phenomena. He rejects historical and martial themes, as well as mere anecdotes from his personal history. He is searching instead for "some philosophic song that cherishes our daily life." He is next assailed by doubts about the maturity of his views. If such views change radically after he has recorded them, his analysis of them will be worthless. In his indecision, he feels that if he reviews the ideas he formed in childhood and traces their history up until early manhood, he will find whether they have had any lasting truth and permanence. He recollects some of his childhood activities, among them river-bathing (he sported like a naked savage) and climbing and robbing of birds' nests while wandering at night. In a discussion of simple education, he stresses the importance of reaction on the part of the child to every action upon it by its natural environment. In this way, nature develops morality in the child. Wordsworth sets the tone of the poem by speaking religiously of nature. He sees it as a great and awesome intelligence. Occasionally he communicates his mood to the reader by employing natural objects as symbols of his feelings. In a celebrated passage filled with much color, the poet describes how as a youth he stole a boat and rowed one night across Ullswater Lake. At the climax of this experience, he imagined that a peak beyond the lake became a presence which reared up and menaced him because of his misdeed in taking the boat. He confides that for some time thereafter he struggled to clarify a conception of pantheism which had been teasing his brain. He addresses what he terms the spirit of the universe. He decries the artifacts of civilization and praises enduring things--life and nature. In a more literal section, he tells of his youthful pastimes and mentions winter ice games with a group of companions and games of cards and tick-tack-toe in front of the peat fire. But above all, he tried to be outdoors at all times of the year so that nature could be unstinting in its education of him. He is particularly troubled when he remembers that certain vistas in Westmoreland--particularly the sea-brought him great pleasure, though he had no prior experience of the same kind of joy. Since beauty is eternal, he may have learned to love such sights during a previous existence of his soul. He then proceeds to develop a romantic theory of aesthetics. He maintains that certain individuals create great art because, in the midst of mundane events, they sense the magical urgency in everyday objects. Insignificant things take on a critical meaning over and above their common and instrumental role. They suggest to the practitioner of the fine arts, the clergyman, and the idealistic philosopher that the universe is of vast and harmonious design. The layman, on the other hand, is insensible to this oneness of all things, and the idea must be communicated to him.

BOOK 2 School-Time (continued) Wordsworth continues the account of his simple childhood. Though he is reviewing his period at Hawkshead and his early education, he never speaks of the grammar school he attended there. The only learning that he mentions takes place outside the classroom, at the hands of nature. He remarks somewhat ruefully that if the mature sense of duty and truth could be joined to childish enthusiasm, we might have a better human species. He once more mentions the games and sports of childhood. He bemoans a missing rock on the site of which a meeting hall has now been erected. In his youth, the rock was occupied by a

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

8

www.cliffs.com woman street vendor from whom Wordsworth and his chums bought goodies. Here--as elsewhere--we feel the poet's remorse at the prospect of what was at one time simple and charming having yielded to things more contrived. Above all, the year moved swiftly. Wordsworth describes the boating races in summer. Three isles in Lake Windermere were favorite haunts of the boys. The poet tried to strike a happy balance between companionship and meditation. Instead of prizing skill and strength in group competition, he came to value a quiet independence and seemed to derive an inner power from solitude. He is mindful of his onetime fare of frugal meals and general poverty. He and his schoolmates did spare-time jobs during the summer and returned to the school with "weightier purses." He talks of horseback excursions by the pupils. They borrowed horses from a nearby innkeeper and sometimes lied to him about the distance which they meant to ride. In rich tones, he describes trips through far woods and valleys to ruins of temples and abbeys. The music of the wren affected him particularly. Wordsworth recalls a tavern on the eastern shore of Lake Windermere replete with all the elegance and frivolities that high society might wish. The memory of the inn's futile pomp delights him. The manner of its patrons seemed odd indeed to a rough country lad. In any case, the young scholars made excellent use of its grounds. They enjoyed the garden and picnicked in the grove and had some of the wild strawberries for dessert. In a somewhat precious passage, the poet describes how, after an outing such as this, the boys rowed across the lake and deposited a solitary member on an islet to blow a flute in the gathering dusk. Following praise of the sun and the moon as great natural gifts to humanity, Wordsworth turns again to the role of nature in education and religion. There is a turning point in the mental development of the young poet. Heretofore, nature had been an arena with varied distractions, where idle participation afforded continual amusement. Manipulation of the environment was more important than observation of it. Now amusement of a more subtle kind came as a result of the study and valuing of the objects of nature in themselves. Wordsworth praises the awareness of Coleridge (the "Friend" to whom The Prelude is addressed) of the unity of all things. He mentions infant sensibility and describes maternal love as the intermediary between nature and the childish mind. The feelings of the mother toward her surroundings suffuse the baby's mind and instill the first urgings of poetry. Childish candor continues right into maturity as artistic inspiration. In the ordinary mind, however, it is much abated during aging by too much attention to the incidentals of living. Wordsworth thanks nature for having kept him innocent of the feelings of egotism and greed so widespread at the time. In a nation and epoch where material wealth and free enterprise are highly admired, Wordsworth points out the two extremes which cripple the public mind. On the one hand, some see nothing but a multiplicity of unrelated objects in the world around them; they are unaware of the abstract ideas which establish an interconnectedness among these objects. Others suffer from an opposite deficiency: They do not look closely enough at things to recognize the wealth of individuality that still exists among similar objects. The loss of his mother was a blow to his affections. He half expected his spirit to flag, but it went on staunchly and independently. He speaks of his youthful delight in knowledge and his satisfaction that every moment on every hand there was something new to learn. The seasons and events moved swiftly, and it was owing to the "most watchful power of love" that his poetic intelligence overlooked nothing. He recalls his solitary nocturnal ramblings and communings during which the elements evoked in him "the visionary power" and his soul foresaw its spiritual development to the point of near sublimity. His morning walks--often five miles around the lake--were sometimes undertaken with a companion whom he remembers fondly but has not seen since that time in childhood. The poet remembers sitting in the woods at dawn, when the magnificent solitude overwhelmed him with such inner peacefulness that he was

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

9

www.cliffs.com uncertain as to the source of the feeling. So perfect was the experience that he could not tell how much of it was reality and how much a dream on his part. It was with "religious love" that the youth responded to nature. The monotonous routine of everyday activities could not stultify his soul. A higher faculty within him continued to heighten ordinary objects and events with a refreshing excitement that kept them perennially interesting. Nothing in the poet's world was immune: the sun, birds, breezes, fountains, the midnight storm. As a result of this attitude, the poet never scorned the meaner tasks of life, but welcomed them as elevating. Toward the close of Book 2, Wordsworth has just turned seventeen years old. His childhood and adolescence are now behind him. Finally, in a paean of great beauty and power, the poet gives unstinting praise and thanks to nature. As he has before, he addresses the natural features of the land around his birthplace as living, feeling presences. "The Child is father of the Man," says Wordsworth in an epigraph to his famous immortality ode. Nature alone kept him pure in heart and satisfied with his simple, rustic pleasures. In contrast, more important men--men who acquire ambitions and set out to fulfill them-become filled with apathy and greed. But nature has insinuated that it will help people once again to rise above their baser selves. Says Wordsworth: "O Nature! Thou hast fed / My lofty speculations; and in thee, / For this uneasy heart of ours, I find / A never-failing principle of joy / And purest passion." He then suggests that ambition may come from too much concern with society; people become status-seekers competing with their fellow humans to acquire the material symbols of status. They are made petty and grasping because they are confined to the city, the arena for ambition, and are cut off from nature. There are, however, rare exceptions, and Coleridge is one of these. Though reared in the city, and having traveled a different road, he has sought the same goal as Wordsworth: truth in solitude and simple, natural living. The poet wishes his mentor health and a long and happy life.

BOOK 3 Residence at Cambridge From the introspection and sometimes moody tone of the first two books, we turn to somewhat more forthright events, which are described in a lighter vein. The more fundamental philosophical questions about life have been partially answered. These investigations are to be put aside while the poet explores some of the larger world about him. His views have mostly formed; he must decide now through what occupation he will express those views. In a broad sense, the simplicity of his youthful habitat and companions forced him inward upon his own imagination. Now he is about to be challenged by the stimulating sophistication of gifted young men who come from near and far and from all walks of life. It is a dreary morning. As the wheels of the coach lumber over the desolate plain, the poet's mood matches that of the weather. However, his heart stirs and beats more quickly as he sees the chapel of King's College. The coach passes a student who is hurrying on his way. The poet speculates about the cause of his haste--whether he is pressed for time or for exercise. The town and its university suddenly seem to draw the coach and its occupants. They pass beneath the castle and across Magdalene Bridge, from which there is a vista of Cambridge town. They alight at a famous inn called the Hoop. The excitement of the university town begins to take hold of him. He has made a few acquaintances, mostly overgrown schoolboys like himself. He dramatizes much that happens about him. There is a buzz of activity: Students guide one another, make inquiries, and offer opinions. His spirits are up as he explores shop after shop. "I was the dreamer, they the dream," he recalls. Withal, the crowd strikes him as a motley one, but he finds it exciting.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

10

www.cliffs.com His person has changed. He is now wealthy and well dressed. He sports powdered hair. He has all the clothes of a gentleman, but he cannot yet boast a beard. He moves within a small circle, and his many invitations and diversions have the effect of making time fly. In short, he is leading the life of the dandy. He chose St. John as his patron. In the first of three courts of the college yard was Wordsworth's favorite spot. It was a nook just below the college kitchens, not far from the clock of Trinity College, which told the quarter-hours night and day. He was also within sound of the Trinity organ. He mentions the round of college labors, lectures, and the hopes and fears connected with exams. Academic glory was little sought by him, however, and seldom won. He had occasional fears about his future worldly maintenance. As the dazzle of the university wore off, he forsook his companions and sought the countryside. Here, his mood was without fail brightened. He felt a holiness in the permanence and reasonableness of all things. He says he "gave" a moral life to the very stones, and everything in his life was filled with inward meaning. Others who caught him off guard imagined him mad, but he knew they were witnessing the divine madness that is prophecy. He says that he recognized genius and divinity by exploring inwardly not through outward deeds. He praises the immortal soul and claims that every person, however poor, has known "godlike" hours which could not be communicated to others. The poet suggests that he read rather widely, but it imparted no certainty or useful knowledge. He notices a change in himself: Often to escape loneliness, he leaned toward the throng. He speaks of social acts, riots, bull sessions at night, riding, and sailing on the River Cam. In trying to curb his laziness, he is mindful of the great alumni of Cambridge. He tries in reverie to link them as human beings with the unchanged landmarks of the university. His attempt to imagine them as flesh and blood is not altogether successful. He speaks with awe of Newton (who attended Trinity), Chaucer, Spenser (Wordsworth calls him "brother"), and of Milton ("an awful soul"). One of the poet's friends occupied the room in which Milton once stayed. Wordsworth gives a somewhat naive account of how he not long ago drank too much wine in that very room while toasting the memory of Milton. He relates that he became tipsy and rushed out to find himself late for chapel. He asks Milton's and Coleridge's forgiveness for this escapade. Wordsworth laments that even an envy of the minds of the great will not rouse him from his lassitude. He has no one to blame but himself for his lack of desire and ambition. He was spoiled by his "education" outdoors. Not that he now has slighted books, but he looked upon indoor study as a kind of captivity and took slowly to it. Though his natural education was random and undirected, it brought genuine conviction. Science, art, and written lore cannot overpower him, but he can imagine a place so austere and so dedicated to wisdom that its atmosphere would compel him to books and make him pay homage to written lore. He accuses the schools of promoting folly and sophistry and urges that these not be allowed to spread beyond the academic environment. The older ways, when youth were trained at home "in pious service," produced a self-reliance which is now lacking in the youthful character. Furthermore, he takes the school leaders to task for letting their officiousness spread to religion and science. These become ridden with disputation and ambiguity rather than with the simple authority of truth. The poet had long imagined what an enriching experience college would be, but the actuality fell far short of his expectations. He is disappointed to find only trivial and thoughtless ceremony and conversation among students and faculty. In his chagrin, he pictures a utopian grove filled only with the harmony of nature, where music and peaceful pastoral sounds induce reflection and growth of wisdom. He contrasts the life of the latter-day scholar with the university student of the Middle Ages. The latter, out of a love of learning, put up with a life of Spartan simplicity. The medieval scholar lived in a small cell, wore simple clothes, often went without food, kept austere hours, and learned directly from books, without an intermediary teacher. Addressing Cambridge, he cites the Renaissance when youths from indenture sought a patron or scholar-

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

11

www.cliffs.com ship by roaming from town to town with a book underarm to beg for an education. What a sorry contrast with learning in the poet's own time. Wordsworth suddenly decides to stop feeling sorry about the past. His youth might have been much worse: ". . . happy is the gowned youth, / Who only misses what I missed, who falls / No lower than I fell." In what seems like a change of tune, the poet deplores the narrowness of his university curriculum: He "could have wished / To see the river flow with ampler range / And freer pace." (He eschewed the classical and scientific bent to his studies and preferred to learn modern languages and literature.) He remarks that he gave the hardworking students wide berth because he found the mediocre students more diverting companionship. Once more he speaks of his social whirl at school as a "vacation." Yet, he observes, it was not without utility. It served as a transitional phase from his lonely youth to the manners and ways of human business. College and its life formed for him a microcosm of the larger, competitive world, and exhibited all the virtues and vices in a lesser degree. Without this steppingstone, Wordsworth might have been thrown out upon the world with only his rustic simplicity to fall back on. He and his friends at school apprenticed themselves by attending to all the gossip about the scandals of students and faculty. They were always eager to ridicule the school officials and their ways. The poet compares the latter men with the healthy old shepherds of Westmoreland as alternative ways of aging. In a somewhat whimsical transport, Wordsworth likens society at large and men's activities to the colors and strands in a tapestry; its complexity is represented by the subtle graduations and intermingling of hues and patterns. Even in maturity, he still remembers odd events and eccentricities of old acquaintances which seem to him now no more than a mime show: ". . . here in all proportions were expressed / The limbs of the great world." All the vagaries of human nature and all the follies of society were to be seen in the fabric surrounding the young poet, and their formative influence upon him was not lost: . . . for, all degrees And shapes of spurious fame and short-lived praise Here state in state, and fed with daily alms Retainers won away from solid good; And here was Labour, his own bond-slave; Hope, That never set the pains against the prize; Idleness halting with his weary clog, And poor misguided Shame, and witless Fear, And simple Pleasure foraging for Death; Honour misplaced, and Dignity astray; Feuds, factions, flatteries, enmity, and guile, Murmuring submission, and bald government, (The idol weak as the idolater), And Decency and Custom starving Truth, And blind Authority beating with his staff The child that might have led him; Emptiness Followed as of good omen, and meek Worth Left to herself unheard of and unknown. From this frightening description we can imagine the nightmarish college atmosphere of deadly competition and perverted values. How unfavorably it compares to the wholesome countryside and nature with "her tender scheme / Of teaching comprehension with delight." But eight months in this situation have passed, and the ninth month brings a welcome vacation to the poet.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

12

www.cliffs.com

BOOK 4 Summer Vacation It is a bright summer day. The poet scurries in anticipation across the moor and climbs a ridge to witness Lake Windermere spread out before him. Because the lake is long and narrow, he likens it to a river. At last he knows exultation. He finds the scene "magnificent, and beautiful, and gay." He rushes down the hill shouting for the ferryman who will row him across. On the other side, up the hill, and an hour's walk beyond brings him to that beloved valley in which he was reared. He espies the church and the rising smoke marking the site of the town. At the cottage door, he is greeted by the woman (he calls her his "old Dame") whose home he shared when he attended the local grammar school. She studies him to see how much he has changed and sheds motherly tears because of the reunion. In his maturity, Wordsworth is grateful for the memory of her kindness, and he proves tireless in eulogizing her. In retrospection he sketches her: Her life was a narrow one, but it was busy. She had been childless but knew a filial love from strangers. She lived eighty happy years before she was laid to rest. The sight of the woman, her house and its belongings, moved Wordsworth on that occasion very deeply. Though gone only the length of one school year, the poet must refresh his memory by reexamining all the objects, inside the house and out. He is particularly delighted to see in the yard the old stone table on which he studied and played, and is elated by the sight of the brook, to which he turns his attention as a live thing and addresses as "friend." He reflects that since human beings diverted the brook in order to make it pass through the garden, the stream has lost its strength and gaiety. He finds in the brook's present sluggishness a symbol of his own life during the recent college months. But the joy of his being home prevents his lapsing into moody meditation. Together with his erstwhile landlady (whom he allows to lead him), he goes for a walk among the fields, where he sees and greets former neighbors. He is glad to encounter some fellow students whom he had known not too long before at the Hawkshead grammar school. He finds himself with mixed emotions, however, and cannot decide whether to be proud or ashamed of his gentleman's dress recently acquired at Cambridge. He is delighted to be able to sit at the old dining table and to sleep once more in the bed he occupied as a schoolboy. He remembers how satisfying it had been to lie there just under the roof and listen to the wind and to the driving rain. On clear nights, he loved to gaze at the moon's image between dancing leaves of a nearby tree. One old companion that he is especially delighted to see is a terrier he used to romp with. As with the brook, there is the suggestion that humanity here again has perverted natural functions and purposes. Meant by bloodlines to be a healthy hunter of small mammals, the dog had been pressed into a somewhat less rugged sport by the youthful poet. They were companions on nature walks, and the animal was forced to witness the youth's communings and the pangs which accompanied the birth of poetry within him. It is worth noting Wordsworth's own words, somewhat suggestive of Shelley after him, in describing his inspiration to poetry and how his canine companion took the ordeal with long-suffering: ". . . day by day / Along my veins I kindled with the stir, / The fermentation, and the vernal heat / Of poesy, affecting private shades / Like a sick Lover, then his dog was used / To watch me, an attendant and a friend." Wordsworth speaks of being "harassed with the toil of verse," of having exercised much bardic effort with little song to show for it. Suddenly the poetic image he had been groping for crystallized and the youth rushed forward and expressed all his joy in affection for the dog. In a charming vignette, Wordsworth describes how he unabashedly rhapsodized his verse as he went for evening walks. His terrier would go ahead as a sentinel and warn the poet of the approach of anyone. In

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

13

www.cliffs.com that way, the poet could come back to earth, compose himself, and avoid being labeled an eccentric by the people of the countryside. He praises the walks he took. They return with a vernal freshness. On the first evening after his return, he made the circuit of the lake, full of happiness. The air is cold and raw--"untuned," as he expresses it. He has the impression that his speculation in the solitude lays his soul bare--as though at the Last Judgment-and he is forced to appraise what he sees. He has not been particularly sad, but he has a sudden rush of joy. Once again a distinct intimation of immortality swells his consciousness. But his purpose in life must always be noble. He seats himself in a wood and quietly contemplates the lake. He tells us rather suddenly of his joy of witnessing human life and its occupations. Though he has been gone from the town but a short time, many persons and their fortunes have changed. None of these changes escapes the poet's attention. The simple routine about him contrasts sharply with the artificiality that he knew at Cambridge. He speaks of new love for his foster mother. Her "smooth domesticated" life pleases him, as does her piety. He marvels at her falling asleep over her Bible on a Sunday afternoon. . Wordsworth reveals that his love for objects around him is undergoing a change. He used to feel for things with the wild love of the tortured poet. Now it appears that his feelings are becoming more humane, insofar as they are distinct. He compares his uncertainty about his feelings at the time with the occupant of a boat bending over to peer into the depths; he is unable to discern the reflections of objects overhead from the images of objects on the bottom of the body of water. The poet confesses that his old admiration for lofty things continues. He finds this joined, however, to a new affection for "vanities." He explains that these are for the most part social frivolities which have come between him and his former self-detachment. He complains that the new excitement was a poor exchange for nature and books. He recalls one evening particularly when there was dancing, chatter, and high spirits, even evidences of puppy love. Pleasure quickened both mind and blood. The poet danced all night and returned home by morning. He tells us that the sweetness of that dawn filled his heart. A vow that he will be a dedicated spirit is forced upon him. He speaks of his mind as being full of contrasts--carefree and sober by turns. He knows that his powers are worthy but feels that he is slighting them through disuse. In fact, he has misgivings that he is still wasting time, and he has not the confinement of Cambridge to blame this time. He does feel that his newfound frivolity is tempered with the contemplation of God's works. He recalls with fondness the blessing of solitude when one is weary of the world's turmoil. The remainder of Book 4 is devoted to an account of an incident which made a tremendous impression on the poet and on everyone who has ever read his poem. The incident in substance is rather a trivial one, but Wordsworth never forgot its moral lesson. He recalls a time when summer was past and autumn brought boat contests to Windermere. He had lolled idly at someone's house all day and left at night to return home. Climbing a hill, he recalls the gleaming moon on the road. There is only the sound of the brook in the stillness. He suddenly sees a soldier leaning against a milestone, motionless. He is tall and thin and has the look of a specter in the eerie moonlight. Wordsworth steps back into a bush to observe him. He wears a faded uniform. His simple appearance strikes the poet as being in sharp contrast to the gaudy world. Though the soldier is stiff and unflinching in bearing, from time to time he utters low sounds which sound like groans. The poet suddenly feels guilty about watching in hiding and steps out to hail the stranger. The latter stands slowly upright, returns a sedate military salute, and resumes his original position. Wordsworth asks the man's history. The soldier tells his tale with perfect composure. He had served in the tropics and been dismissed almost at once. He is now trying to bum his way back home. The poet bids him to follow, whereupon the stranger takes up a staff unnoticed heretofore. He walks weakly and cautiously but seems to be without pain. As they walk, they exchange observations and opinions, mostly

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

14

www.cliffs.com about generalities. However, the soldier is rather detached in his replies, so they finally continue on in silence. Wordsworth goes up to the first cottage they encounter and knocks. When the door is opened, he presents the soldier as a poor, friendless, and sick man who needs help. He admonishes the soldier to seek help himself the next time he needs it. With a wonderful innocence, the soldier replies: "My trust is in the God of Heaven, / And in the eye of him who passes me!" The cottage is at the disposal of the soldier. He touches his hat and thanks Wordsworth with a new eagerness. And thus they part, though the poet lingers a little way off before turning for home.

BOOK 5 Books A lilting passage evokes the mood of solitude. The subject of the poet's habitual contemplation is humanity. Wordsworth laments that it is not life's pains that are our worst affliction; the chief cause of despair is our winning a little fame after constant and unending labor. In some of the very strongest and most resounding lines so far, Wordsworth contrasts the immortality of the physical universe and the human soul with our own attempts at eternal self-perpetuation. He suggests that we yearn to have immortality through our ideas and dreams; while the supreme Intelligence is infinite and timeless, man's intelligence is neither of these: "Oh! why hath not the Mind / Some element to stamp her image on / In nature somewhat nearer to her own?" Wordsworth finds that a friend is troubled by similar fears. The poet relates something that had happened to him previously. One day in summer, he sat in a rocky cove overlooking the sea and read Don Quixote. This same feeling of futility and despair seized him. He closed the book and began to meditate "on poetry and geometric truth." At length, he fell asleep and dreamed the following dream: He was alone in the desert and afraid. An Arab appears on a camel. He carries a lance, a stone, and a shell. Wordsworth is happy in the anticipation of being guided out of the desert by the newcomer. The Arab explains that the stone he carries is Euclid's Elements, while the resplendent shell is alleged to be a prophetic book of song. Bidden to hold the shell to his ear, the poet hears an ode which amounts to an apocalypse telling of the coming destruction of humanity in a great flood. The Arab declares he will bury the books he carries to prevent them being destroyed in the deluge. Wordsworth asks that he may be allowed to accompany him. The Arab, however, rides off, with the poet trailing behind. The poet suddenly sees the rider as Don Quixote. Keeping apace, Wordsworth presently sees a glittering wave in the distance. The Bedouin tells him it is the approaching flood and immediately rides off. Wordsworth awakes in terror to see the sea and the volume of Don Quixote lying beside him. Clearly this fanciful episode is an allegory dramatizing Wordsworth's despair over human attempts to gain immortality through works of art. The poet has subsequently imagined the Arab a living being on the very quest which took place in the dream. He should be held in great reverence even though a symbol, says Wordsworth. In the case of a calamity as a great flood enveloping the world, the multitudes would only be concerned with protecting their loved ones, but not the wise knight-errant. Often Wordsworth has had the feeling that he would sacrifice himself to protect the creations of the great writers. Book 5 next gives us a glimpse of the child learning from juvenile literature and his deep, though perhaps unuttered, thankfulness. Wordsworth then passes to praise and to a benediction for all creators of verse and story and calls them "Powers for ever to be hallowed" and depicts them as great benefactors of humanity. They are second only to nature, which is "the breath of God." Addressing Coleridge, Wordsworth once again lauds nature and its teaching and asks where would the two poets be if they had not been able to take to the field and open road, unlike the over-protected children of the time at which he writes.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

15

www.cliffs.com

He likens the wise mother to a hen with her brood: She gives her offspring only a judicious amount of attention and lets them have independence to develop their own enterprise. He speaks of his own mother, on whom he and his sister and brothers depended. Her death left them destitute. In life she was wise and permissive toward them. She felt that God and his deputy, nature, would protect and educate them. She was extremely patient and contented with her lot, not wishing for things beyond her reach. In fact, we see in her the very qualities we saw in Wordsworth's landlady. Wordsworth proceeds to portray what is considered the model child of his time, a product of the "modern system." He is a proper gentleman, courteous, beneficent, fearless. He is innocent but not naive. He loves the kind of knowledge he can put to use and knows boats and navigation, geology, astronomy, politics, political geography. But greater than wisdom, says Wordsworth, the model child loves vanity. All he would have to do is go abroad among the fields and along the streams, but his conceit prevents this. The poet extols the youth who has imagination and mentions the educative power of some of the fanciful tales from childhood lore. Fortunatus and the wishing cap are particularly to the point; the moral of that tale is that material wealth alone is insufficient for happiness. He summarizes: "The child, whose love is here, at least, doth reap / One precious gain, that he forgets himself." Wordsworth once again reminds the educators and administrators of his day that even though nature's way seems slower and less reasonable, it has humanity's good as its aim. He suddenly recalls a childhood companion who liked to stand in the evening by the lake and imitate the hooting of the owls. The owls would be provoked to response across the water in a wild profusion of cries and then be silent. The boy was then able to contemplate the lovely landscape. He died at twelve years of age. The poet has on summer evenings stood looking long at his grave in the grassy churchyard. His mournful gravestone looked down upon Wordsworth and his companions who were "wanton, fresh, / And bandied up and down by love and hate." They were as happy as children could be because simplicity and honesty molded their minds. Wordsworth recalls his first coming to Esthwaite's Lake and its little valley. At twilight, he crossed one of the peninsulas and discovered some discarded clothing, on an opposite shore, left perhaps by some nocturnal bather. He watched until it was dark, but no one claimed the garments. The next day, there was a crowd upon the shore and people in boats on the lake were sounding with poles. Suddenly Wordsworth imagines the drowned man rising as a ghostly apparition from the lake. But the poet is unnerved: . . . yet no soul-debasing fear, Young as I was, a child not nine years old, Possessed me, for my inner eye had seen Such sights before, among the shining streams Of faery land, the forest of romance, Their spirit hallowed the sad spectacle With decoration of ideal grace; A dignity, a smoothness, like the works Of Grecian art, and purest poesy. Wordsworth prized a book of selections from the Arabian Nights. He learned from companions that the complete tales extended to four large volumes and determined that he and his friends must save to buy them. The scheme was never successful, however. The poet describes how he loved to read beside Derwent Water, another of the lakes. He praises the entertaining power of romances; humanity will always have a need for them. In a passage of loveliness and strength, he lauds the ability of the dreamers of romances and legends to bring some color to a drab everyday world and to make life a little more exciting for the ungifted child. The writer fulfills the subconscious wish in humans to do the marvelous

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

16

www.cliffs.com and supernatural. Growing older brings the desire for literature in which there is more of the immediate world. The desire for magic that is wizardry gives way to a craving for the magic which the poet's eye sees in the world around him. Wordsworth tells of a common experience--how deeply he was moved by some poetry in youth, only to find that it lacked beauty and meaning. He was ten when he came to love verse. He and a friend would go along the lake, happy as birds, and recite favorite stanzas together. They were exhilarated by the poetry to a state beyond intoxication. The poet remarks ruefully that the idols of their reverence were often found unworthy upon later reflection. But that factor could not diminish the memory of the first great rapture of the original experience. He himself alleges that escapism was important "in that delicious world of poesy." A pause is in order. Wordsworth likens the joy derived from nature itself to that experienced in poetry. The poet is given the power of prophecy. He is able to look into the heart of things and see their hidden message.

BOOK 6 Cambridge and the Alps Autumn arrives and summer vacation is at an end. The poet must return to Cambridge. He is not as eager to return to school as he was to leave it. On the other hand, neither is he depressed. He recalls the girls of the Lake District and their nightly revelries. Wordsworth says the time was uneventful--nothing of importance occurred during his second and third school years, and he intends to skip over them. He does tell us that he drew farther away from the crowd he had known previously and took to independent reading and study. As he writes, he is thirty-four. He recollects the return to his second year at college. He was already a poet by ambition, and some of the success and fame he envisioned at that time has since come to pass. One of his favorite activities that winter was taking nocturnal walks in the college grove. He was commonly the last one to be seen there. The trees lent a special tranquility to the place. One huge ash tree was the poet's favorite spot for meditation: The wind sang through its upper branches. Watching the winter moon through them, the young poet had visions which he imagined noble enough to compare with those of the youthful Spenser. His reading continued without much direction and discipline. More frequently, he admits, his mind eschewed what he read. However, there was always recourse to reality, which he used as a yardstick to measure what he read. He did not advance very far into the study of geometry, but he was fascinated with its ability to make nature orderly. He also found it comforting as evidence for eternity and an immutable deity. He gives a little illustration of a shipwrecked man who was without food and clothes but who had managed to have a book of geometry, and how it took his mind off his predicament. The pure reasoning of geometry provides a balm for the tortured poetic soul. After he once more mentions his indolence, he recalls his summer rambles with his sister Dorothy in Derbyshire and Yorkshire. He expresses his affection for his sister and his happiness in being reunited with her. She seems to have been as eager to explore as he was. He describes the countryside through which they wandered; he states that their happiness was so full that he cannot, in retrospect, help but place Coleridge beside them in his mind's eye. He addresses Coleridge who, at the time of writing, is off in the Mediterranean in order to regain his health. But though Coleridge may be far from Wordsworth's sight, he

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

17

www.cliffs.com is never far from his mind. Wordsworth once more compares their similar ideals, which derived from divergent backgrounds. He recalls how he had no sooner left Cambridge than Coleridge was lured there. He was a serious and eager student, but he was always handicapped by debts. He was forced by poverty to withdraw from school for a time. Wordsworth imagines that had they attended college at the same time, he might have had a steadying influence on his junior. Wordsworth turns once more to his own activities. During his third summer vacation, he and a youthful friend--another aspiring mountaineer--took off on a long walking trip and were bound for the Alps. Apparently Wordsworth had been expected by school and family to devote the summer to studying, but he was willing to accept censure for not doing that. He is about to obey the call of nature once more. The friends land at Calais on the anniversary of the French Revolution. Such a journey would be exciting at any time, "but Europe at that time was thrilled with joy, / France standing on the top of golden hours, / And human nature seeming born again." As the Englishmen proceed southward, they see many vestiges of the recent celebration of Bastille Day. They watch the young people dance in village after village. They travel south through Burgundy on the Saone, and then on the Rhone, past "woods and farms and orchards." For a time, they have as fellow passengers some delegates returning from the renewal of the civic oath in Paris. They prove a very rowdy group. Wordsworth and his companion are saluted by them as free Englishmen. Proceeding on foot, the two youths come to the Convent of the Grand Chartreuse; they rest there in the "awful solitude." Wordsworth suddenly "foresees" the expulsion of the monastics (in 1792) by the revolutionary republicans and is aghast. He hears the ominous voice of nature cry out in defense of the monastery. Wordsworth himself defends the justice of the Revolution and praises the new liberty (this is his first mention in The Prelude of the Revolution). But like the Revolution, says Wordsworth, allegiance to the monastic vow also levels the difference between aristocrat and peasant. He asks that the monastery be spared because it has been devoted to unworldliness and has been a fountainhead of truth. Seeing a cross upon the monastery, the poet reflects that it has withstood many a natural storm, but it may not withstand the political storm which now rages in the French nation. They resume their journey at a very rapid pace. There is the panorama of quickly changing vistas, and Wordsworth speculates upon the peaceful life of the peasant. From a ridge overlooking the Chamonix Valley, the companions are first moved by the sight of the summit of Mont Blanc. The poet describes the contrast in the valley of summertime activities alongside streams of ice bringing a touch of winter down from the mountains. Wordsworth somewhat jestingly terms himself and his friend "social pilgrims": Whate'er in this wide circuit we beheld, Or heard, was fitted to our unripe state Of intellect and heart. With such a book Before our eyes, we could not choose but read Lessons of genuine brotherhood, the plain And universal reason of mankind, The truths of young and old. The five lines 557-561 of this book are thought to be a somewhat cryptic reference in retrospect to his 1792 visit to France and to his notorious, though long unpublicized, love affair with Annette Vallon. The two youths travel across the Vallais Canton and through the Simplon Pass. Stumbling upon a band of muleteers, they join them for lunch. After a time, the group moves on, while the pair lag behind. When their guide has gone ahead, they commence the journey once more but can find neither the guide nor their way. A path lies down the hill, where it stops at a stream, only to begin again across the stream. After

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

18

www.cliffs.com they ford the stream and climb a mountain, they meet a peasant who tells them they must return to the valley. At this, they discover they have crossed the Alps. The poet's keen disappointment at the venture having reached its climax causes him to philosophize about anticipation and effort. In addressing his soul, he says, in often-quoted lines: . . . whether we be young or old, Our destiny, our being's heart and home, Is with infinitude, and only there; With hope it is, hope that can never die, Effort, and expectation, and desire, And something evermore about to be. Under such banners militant, the soul Seeks for no trophies, struggles for no spoils That may attest her prowess, blest in thoughts That are their own perfection and reward, Strong in herself and in beatitude That hides her, like the mighty flood of Nile Poured from his fount of Abyssinian clouds To fertilise the whole Egyptian plain. They descend and go along the way they sought previously. In the wild and rugged scenery, Wordsworth sees evidence of the unity of all things. After a night's lodging, they travel on into Italy, pause at Lake Maggiore, and go on to Lake Como. The gardens attract them. Wordsworth praises the houses, groves, and walks of Como. He mentions the sweetness of the colorful town. They travel around the lake. Two nights later, they misinterpret the chimes of a church clock and expect dawn to break, although it is actually the middle of the night. Soon after they start out, they are lost. They finally pause and try to sleep but are annoyed by insects and frightened by unidentifiable sounds. But the poet must break off. He could describe day after day details of the trip. They traveled ever forward, until the first snowfall. When he analyzes his trip, he says that almost all he saw was heightened by intelligence. In turn, what he saw was having an effect on his sensibilities that was evident only much later, if ever. He returns to the exciting spectacle of war and the prospect of liberty for all. He has mixed feelings about war: He feels himself a spectator apart, with curiosity, but not with much interest. He claims he is too happy with everyday living.

BOOK 7 Residence in London Compared with the books preceding and following, there is a curious lack of introspection in this one. Six years have passed, Wordsworth says, since he began his poem, and he bemoans that it has gone very slowly. It was begun (in 1798) with a great gush of enthusiasm which was inspired by the poet's ecstasy in being free of the city. It soon settled to a quiet philosophical flow of reflections. This book, however, will return us to the rawness of life itself. From 1800 to the spring of 1804, there has been an actual lapse in the writing of the work. Now, as Book 7 is begun, a chorus of birds and a solitary glowworm tell the poet of winter's approach. He resumes his narrative and tells us that he returned from his Alpine journey and has since left Cambridge for good. He is uncertain about his future career. He had been in London before as a transient, but now (1791) he has determined to take lodgings and live the life of a cosmopolitan. All the fairy tales

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

19

www.cliffs.com he had ever read about the magic of exotic cities and the records of the pomp of ancient empires were nothing compared to what he imagined of London. As a boy, one of his companions had been permitted to go to the capital, and, on his return, the young Wordsworth questioned him fiercely about the atmosphere of the place. But the boy's account was not nearly as rich as the poet's imaginary picture. He says his fancy had fed upon the romantic night life in the parks of London. It also dwelt upon many of the city's landmarks--the Thames "proudly bridged," the dome of St. Paul's, Westminster, the monument at Fishgate, the Tower, among others. Now he beholds the originals. Calling London an "ant-hill," he recalls the buzz of activity and the sounds, the shops and wares, the houses and signs, the statuary. A turn away from the main thoroughfares takes him from the din. In the quiet byways, he encounters some of the street entertainments: a peep show, minstrels, a ballad singer. He describes a jaunt into the suburbs and the types of people to be met there. Back in the heart of town, he sees every nationality and every racial type. He describes the wonder of the museums and the art galleries; he tells of some of the sculpture and scale models he has viewed. He enjoyed the theater. He mentions Sadler's Wells (then half-rural), where he witnessed vaudeville and pantomimes. He enjoyed watching the absorption of the audience in the spectacle performed. The dramas of the stage made a lasting impression on him; one of these--The Maid of Buttermere--he tells Coleridge is a tragedy concerning a girl of the Cumberland hills whom the poet and Coleridge had known personally, though slightly. They had known her as a graceful and modest servant at an inn. Her tranquility of spirit had always amazed them. She had been seduced by a married man and had had a child. The poet remembers a child who was beautiful and seraphic. He is remembered among the uncouth and dissolute patrons of a tavern. He was admired by all as a child whom the vice and folly ever about him could not touch. Wordsworth remarks ruefully that it was a shame that a spell could not have been cast upon nature such that the infant might have been kept from growing old, with the inevitable coarseness and unfeeling of age. That child, having grown old and jaded, as must most people who live amid the world and its pleasures, might well envy the pristine purity that had been that of a nameless child of the Maid of Buttermere, who lies in the earth beside a mountain chapel. He digresses briefly to recall how he had first witnessed the woman profane herself. It struck him that this robbed her of her human qualities. The spectacle had caused the poet much distress, though he gradually became reconciled to it. He found that incidental events of everyday life could be more fascinating and moving than the stage, even though Mrs. Siddons was acting. Nevertheless, the theater was his mainstay. He apparently attended constantly and enjoyed everything from deep tragedy to broad farce. Between watching the members of the audience and the spectacle on the stage, his mind was kept constantly alert. He speaks of his delight in visiting country playhouses. He pauses to apologize for the superficiality of his theme. Loftier subjects could not stimulate his imagination as much as lesser ones which had a certain veneer glamour. Blunt tragedy from life often had a deadening effect on sensibility because it lacked dramatic possibilities. He found, in fact, that subjects taken directly from real life lacked poetry. The poet tells us that he attended the trial courts in order to enjoy the forensic. He extols the solicitors he heard speak. Apparently he found the courtroom almost as exciting as the stage. He mentions the thrill he had in attending the House of Lords when one of England's famed noblemen stood up to address the assembly. He visited the House of Commons with much pleasure, also. He praises the conservative speeches of Edmund Burke in an admirable tribute. Wordsworth sees him as "old, but vigorous in age" and as an eloquent defender of the monarchy and the established order; the liberals in his audience murmured in discontent. Wordsworth did not share Burke's political orientation, but, young as he was, he could not help being inspired.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

20

www.cliffs.com

While on the subject of oratory, Wordsworth cannot neglect the pulpit. He lauds the clergymen whom he has heard and is particularly impressed by the learned allusions which are sprinkled among the "awful truths" in their sermons. Wordsworth is obviously undergoing a period of intoxication with words and their power. For the conceited "little" man, the poet has no regard and little attention. He likens the crowd to shells on a beach or daisies swarming in fields. Foolishness and madness exist aplenty, and he will do his best to ignore them. He seeks the singular individual in the act of "courage, or integrity, or truth." He describes some of the people of the streets: a poor laborer who has brought his infant to a square for sun and air; a blind beggar who has a paper which gives his history pinned to him. Wordsworth attributes a certain perversity to the mind in its preference for dramatizing the more routine events: ". . . things that are, are not, / As the mind answers to them, or the heart / Is prompt, or slow, to feel." The poet turns to a description of the St. Bartholomew's Fair. He skillfully evokes the color of a grand pageant. The judicious selection of sights and sounds sets the reader in the very midst of the bustling fair. The frenzied and confused comings and goings at the fair are an epitome for the poet of the city itself. He sees all its denizens scurrying along on futile ways. He takes them to task for their lack of depth and individuality. The educated man, the poet, has a fuller life: But though the picture weary out the eye, By nature an unmanageable sight, It is not wholly so to him who looks In steadiness, who hath among least things An under-sense of greatest; sees the parts As parts, but with a feeling of the whole. In thinking of the wide world beyond, he links nature and spiritual beauty: This did I feel, in London's vast domain. The Spirit of Nature was upon me there; The soul of Beauty and enduring Life Vouchsafed her inspiration, and diffused, Through meagre lines and colours, and the press Of self-destroying, transitory things, Composure, and ennobling Harmony.

BOOK 8 Retrospect--Love of Nature Leading to Love of Mankind We have left London and are in the Lake Country again, in Cumberland. There is thematic continuity, however, because a description of a small annual country fair follows that of St. Bartholomew's Fair at the end of Book 7. Shepherds and farmers have brought their families. In contrast to the London festivities, the rural one is orderly and quiet. The poet describes the fair. Livestock abounds. There are a few stalls. A lame man begs and a blind man entertains with music. An aged woman hawks simple wares. There is a peep show. A farm girl sells fruit. The children have been given money for the day. Older couples sit and contemplate the spectacle and relive the days of their youth. Wordsworth stresses the wholesomeness of the people and of their countryside even though they may be almost without importance in the eyes of the world.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

21

www.cliffs.com He returns to praise of nature, which first opened his eyes to beauty. Amid the turbulence of the city, he has remembered the country devotedly. He praises his childhood habitat because it is more fair than exotic oriental gardens and lush tropical landscapes. He speaks of his home as a paradise and suggests that the freedom and industriousness of the yeoman impart to him a natural beauty and grace. The common man of Westmoreland has become for Wordsworth what the noble savage was for Rousseau. The poet studies human nature in the abstract. He admired local shepherds at first--these did not resemble the learned herdsmen of classical Rome or Greece or those of whom Shakespeare and Spenser write. The pastoral scenes of Wordsworth's own youth were peopled with unaffected and lustier men and maidens. He speaks of the happy and easy life of the shepherd in classical times on the banks of the Galesus in Magna Graecia and along the Adriatic, when the climate was mild and Pan protected the flock. Wordsworth has seen English grazing pastures as happily beautiful, though they lack the temperateness and richness of the Italian. He is reminded briefly of lovely scenes in Goslar (Germany). The English shepherd must take into account the severe winter. In very picturesque lines, the poet describes the life of the herdsman through the varying seasons. In winter, he pens the sheep in rocky recesses and carries them food through the snow. In spring and summer, he rises at dawn and breakfasts with his dog, and then goes forth from hill to hill to guard and lead the sheep. His ways as a freeman might inspire even the philosopher. The young poet admired the shepherd as a symbol of man's stature. Through him he came to love human nature as a whole. Wordsworth learned much from the herdsman's simple ritual, though he was not aware of it then. Although he was inexperienced, he saw man as purified and as a giant. He suspects it was because he saw simple people in unadorned natural surroundings that he came to admire the human race so much. Because these people were not called upon to exploit one another, they were free from the meanness and greed exhibited by others in society. Until he was twenty-two, nature was more important to him than humanity. Then his imagination tried to express itself in poetic form. Every facet of nature was transformed through his fancy. He gives several examples of what stimulated his poetic sensibility. As he became more mature, his fancy turned to human beings and their passions for subject matter: Thus wilful Fancy, in no hurtful mood, Engrafted far-fetched shapes on feelings bred By pure Imagination: busy Power She was, and with her ready pupil turned Instinctively to human passions, then Least understood. He tells us, too, that it was the abundance of natural beauty around him that stimulated his fancy to the degree of someone well beyond his years. He talks of man amid the glories of nature; man is a glory himself who has not only instinct, but also godhead. His growing interest in real people and their problems began to push abstract ideas from his mind. Folly and vice stimulated his sympathy and caused him to have concern for humanity. He became preoccupied with the nature of good and evil so that his mind was guided and tempered. The moral basis for action, he says, was always the good of humanity. This faith wrought within him a love for the wholesome harmony of all things. We are whisked abruptly back to London. The poet recollects first coming into town atop an open bus. In a second he underwent a transformation, he says. At that very moment, he felt descend upon him a great weight and a power. The weight was doubtless his obligation to teach humanity through his verse; the awful power was his ability to rise to the challenge.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

22

www.cliffs.com For the second time in the poem, we have an illustration somewhat reminiscent of Plato's allegory of the cave in the Republic. We are given the picture of a traveler in a grotto who first cannot distinguish shadow from substance. Then all stands out in perfect interrelationship, though flat and lifeless. After a while, through the play of the imagination, little differences develop which break up the monotonous uniformity. This serves Wordsworth as a double-pronged analogy: First, the poet examines the world so minutely that objects are deprived of all individuality; then he must use his own invention to revitalize his world. Second, he likens it to his introduction to London: the first bus ride into town when all was a jumble of sense impressions; his growing familiarity with it, until all seemed matter-of-fact; finally, a seeing again of new patterns in the old familiar picture. London was the place for an education in worldly ways; as much as the city gave, the poet took. The history of his country excited him anew, and he was thrilled to think he was in the center of history that was being made. He says: "There I conversed with majesty and power / Like independent natures." Not all the vice and misery apparent about him "could overthrow my trust / In what we may become." In fact, the debasement on all sides could only accentuate the unmistakable potential of our souls for goodness.

BOOK 9 Residence in France Wordsworth likens his own attempt to recapture the formative past to the meandering of a river. When it is threatened with dissolution by absorption into the sea, it tries to work its way back to its origins. He apologizes for his digressions and compares himself to a traveler who has reached a commanding summit and views all before him. He "strives, from that height, with one and yet one more / Last Look" lest he disregard some significant feature. The poet vows once more to forge ahead. In London, he was free as a colt. He went everywhere and sought not the distinguished person but the simpler things in life. After a year, he determined to return to France; he had fond memories of it from his earlier journey. His destination was Orléans, a small, quiet town on the Loire River. His route from the Channel lay through Paris. There he visited some of the sights connected with contemporary history. He mentions the Champ de Mars, the Faubourg St. Antoine, Montmartre, and the Pantheon (in his day the Church of St. Geneviève). He says: "I saw the Revolutionary Power / Toss like a ship at anchor, rocked by storms." He describes the hectic scene around the Palais Royale. He saw in the faces of the crowd both hope and fear. At the site of the Bastille, he picked up a stone as a souvenir "affecting more emotion than I felt." The Magdalene of the painter Le Brun thrilled him more than the places connected with the Revolution. Going on to Orléans, he found himself fascinated with local manners and customs and tended to ignore the revolutionary fervor. He confesses an ignorance of the origins of the Revolution and its aims. He read the pamphlets and attended the meetings of learned societies. But he was brought to identify with the Revolution only after the initial violence had died, and then only through his love for the ordinary people. However, he found himself presently most at home with a certain band of military officers stationed at Orléans. They were all members of the upper classes. In political sympathies, they were Royalists, naturally, and almost to a man they dreamed of turning back the tide of the growing Revolution. At this point, Wordsworth began a friendship with Michel Beaupuy that was to have a profound influence on his intellectual outlook. He says of the officer who befriended him that he was a young man in the prime of life, but that the trials of life and circumstances of the time have aged him prematurely. The poet says it is "an hour of universal ferment"; he thinks the future will judge the present harshly. He says that the group of officers befriended him and tried to win him to their cause because he was an Englishman and a youth.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

23

www.cliffs.com

The poet was simply indifferent to the political and social lessons of history; he responded to events only as drama. He always felt dislike for royalty and mere pomp and observed that those who ruled were often the least worthy. In his childhood environment, he had been taught that money and noble blood were worthless if strength of character did not accompany them. He praises the academic institutions in that they strive to create a democratic community and award honors only on the basis of personal merit. In fact, the slow development of Wordsworth's enthusiasm for the liberating effect of the Revolution was because he took it for granted that liberty was an inalienable right and long overdue. All about him the youth of the country were proceeding to the frontier to confront the nations in coalition against France. Some of the scenes of farewell rent the poet's heart. He looked upon them as part of the redeeming price to pay for liberty. His favorite officer (Beaupuy) was a patriot, he says, and was hence rejected by his fellows. Wordsworth calls him meek and benign, and describes him as passing through the revolutionary chaos with perfect faith in man: Man he loved As man; and, to the mean and the obscure, And all the homely in their homely works, Transferred a courtesy which had no air Of condescension. Alone together, the two frequently talked politics. They also discussed humanity's inclinations and noble aims, history and its leaders, the foundling or amalgamation of new nations where none existed before. To natural man they imputed only the loftiest motives: Elate we looked Upon their virtues; saw, in rudest men, Self-sacrifice the firmest; generous love, And continence of mind, and sense of right, Uppermost in the midst of fiercest strife. Wordsworth says it is wonderful on some nameless rill, To ruminate, with interchange of talk, On rational liberty, and hope in man, Justice and peace. He likens Beaupuy to the type of deliverer who arises in time of crisis--the true philosopher who risks his life to try and put his political philosophy into action. The poet recollects Beaupuy's death on the banks of the Loire and is glad the soldier did not live to see the tyranny of Napoleon, who had declared himself emperor in 1804. Wordsworth recalls their walks along the Loire prior to Beaupuy's death. They talked of politics; but the poet's mind kept wandering away from the subject to people and the woods with fanciful characters. The sight of convents closed by the revolutionaries caused the poet remorse. The sight of Chateau de Blois causes them to reflect on the dissoluteness of kings and on their absolutist ways. The sight of a halfstarved peasant girl who leads an emaciated cow causes the poet's friend to cry out against the injustice

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

24

www.cliffs.com which produces the many poor and the few rich. Both the companions were filled with a faith that the ancient regime and its system of privilege would soon pass. Wordsworth refers to the tale of Vaudracour and Julia, which was told to him by Beaupuy. It was a tale of young love, typical in its frustration which was caused by the overvaluation of status and position in prerevolutionary France. Vaudracour and Julia had grown up together in a small town in the heart of France. They feel deeply in love, but Vaudracour's father disapproved of any union because a member of the nobility would degrade himself in marrying a maid of no rank. The lovers finally decided to defy the father. Julia had an illegitimate child. The father continued to conspire against the couple. Julia at length entered a convent to escape persecution. Her lover retired with the child to a lodge in the forest. Soon after, the child died, and Vaudracour was left to lose his reason in the lonely solitude. The passage was originally written in 1804 and intended for Book 9. It ran to 380 lines and made Book 9 disproportionately long. However, for some reason Wordsworth excised the section, reduced it to 308 lines, and published it as a separate poem in 1820. It was considered one of his dullest, but critics valued it as an autobiographical account of his affair with Annette Vallon. The passion, frustration, and remorse in the poem are reminiscent of the feelings which actually pervaded the affair of the poet with his French mistress. In the lines that remain in Book 9, Wordsworth alludes to these feelings and remarks ruefully that the leveling of class distinctions by the Revolution came too late to save Vaudracour.

BOOK 10 Residence in France (Continued) On a captivating day, the poet pauses and surveys the Loire countryside in anticipation of returning to Paris. During his absence from the capital, King Louis XVI has been dethroned and the republic proclaimed; the first coalition of foreign powers against France, at first aggressors, have been routed and pushed from the country. The republic has been bought at a price, of course, but the carnage was only a means to liberty. As he returns to Paris, Wordsworth is cheered with the thought that the revolutionary crimes were only temporary and now past. He roams over the city again and passes the Temple where Louis and his family are imprisoned. Such sites of martyrdom as the square of the Carrousel are beginning to infect him with a patriotic enthusiasm. By candlelight in his room high under the eaves, he alternately read about and looked out upon the revolutionary activities. He begins to envision some of the bloodshed to come and then sleep overtakes him. Next morning, in the arcades of the Palais Royale, he witnesses verbal and written denunciations of Robespierre. The poet voices his secret fears that the direction of the revolution will stay in the hands of the heedless extremists, and he has sudden misgivings about the end of the struggle. He prays that truth will instill honor among men. He says he feels he would risk his life for the revolutionary cause; he goes on to express his belief that a supreme consciousness acts through the instincts of ordinary people and leads them toward wisdom and well-being. He reflects that the minds of people work certainly and always, though perhaps unconsciously, against tyrants. He returns to England. Two winters have passed since he has been gone, he tells us. His return is timely, for he was about to join some of the patriots actively and probably would have died with them. He is glad to be in London where there has been recent antislavery agitation and a spirit of general humanitarianism prevails. He identifies these conditions as sympathetic responses to the revolutionary agitation for egalitarianism in France. He is therefore desolate when England joins France's enemies and declares war. From that moment, he and other idealistic young Englishmen began to have thoughts of political subversion. He confesses that not too much later he felt elation when an English army would be routed or

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

25

www.cliffs.com vanquished. He indicts the pro-war conservatives for robbing the English youth of their spontaneous love of country, a particularly dangerous course in such turbulent times. He has had a short stay on the Isle of Wight and has seen the British navy assembled at Portsmouth prior to entering the war against France. He has heard the boom of the sunset cannon, and it has filled his heart with foreboding. The French patriots welcomed the invasion as an excuse for rallying the people to their cause and for committing all kinds of crimes and excesses in the name of expediency. The fever of invasion caused the mobs to go mad. The senate was powerless; the commune and the Jacobin Club directed affairs, official and unofficial. Wordsworth proceeds to give a rather vivid description of the Reign of Terror, though it cannot be firsthand because he was in England in 1793. His love for the dignity of the human being causes him to react with revulsion at the lust of the Terror for blood. He says: --all perished, all-Friends, enemies, of all parties, ages, ranks, Head after head, and never heads enough For those that bade them fall. The idea of liberty has been lost sight of. He cites Mme. Roland's famous utterance--"O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!"--as epigrammatic of the turn the Revolution has taken. The French rallied and held their own in the wars, and the Terror consequently went on. For years after, the poet confesses, his dreams were uneasy: --my nights were miserable; Through months, through years, long after the last beat Of those atrocities, the hour of sleep To me came rarely charged with natural gifts, Such ghastly visions had I of despair And tyranny, and implements of death; And innocent victims sinking under fear, And momentary hope, and worn-out prayer, Each in his separate cell, or penned in crowds For sacrifice, and struggling with fond mirth And levity in dungeons, where the dust Was laid with tears. He dreamed of himself pleading before the Revolutionary Tribunal at great length on behalf of the condemned. In a devout tone, he once more calls upon the Supreme Being as the bulwark of humanity's quasi-divine nature. He contrasts the sweet willingness with which he obeyed God's plan as revealed in nature with the great reluctance he has in accepting it as evidenced by the actions of the revolutionary mob. He feels that the role of prophet is necessarily thrust upon him as he envisions the terrible retribution awaiting man. He says that man should wring from the affliction of the times a restored faith in himself. Equality and popular government are not to be blamed for the excesses of the Revolution; rather, man, in his depravity, is not ready for them. He recalls his first trip through France in 1790 and the happy anticipation on the part of the people. He remembers the celebration at Arras, the birthplace of Robespierre. Now, the poet feels, the townspeople should be denouncing their native son. He says that the memory of the festivities in Arras now rises up to chide him for his own misguided optimism at the time.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

26

www.cliffs.com In a change of mood, Wordsworth also recalls the day the Terror ended. It holds a special place in his memory. He had been tramping through his old haunts and turned aside to visit the grave of the headmaster of his grammar school. He recalls that teacher's love of the great poets and wonders if the headmaster might not have thought Wordsworth's own early efforts showed promise. Wordsworth proceeds along the plain to an estuary where a band of travelers have been waiting for the ebb of the tide so that they may ford the river. One of the men calls to the poet with the news that Robespierre is dead. Wordsworth is elated. Those who lived by spilling blood have died by it. His erstwhile mood of disappointment gives way once more to hope that a new righteousness will still emerge from the revolutionary struggle.

BOOK 11 France (Concluded) Much of this book deals with political science, and it shows the change which is beginning to take place in Wordsworth's political philosophy. In particular, it features the poet's account of his struggle to find a middle road between the sanguine radicalism of the revolutionary movement in France and the timidity, hesitancy, and slowness of liberal reform in England. The Terror is over in France. There is very little in the scene to encourage the idealist; nevertheless, the poet is optimistic. The government and senate seem ineffectual, but Wordsworth's hope is in the people. He scoffs at what he considers the futile attempts of British conservatives to stem the tide of progress and reform. He calls them deluded who prophesy disaster wherever the republican cause is not turned back. But he cautions that as a liberal, he bent over backward and endorsed unsound notions simply because the conservatives denounced them. He takes to task the statesmen of Britain for using the law to suit their own ends and thereby wiping out that precious liberty it had taken centuries to acquire. He returns to his own development. His feelings had always carried the conviction of man's nobility; now he must study man's attempts at polity to find out how law and government foster the nobility in humanity. In particular, he is going to devote himself to the writings of William Godwin. He says of the prospect, in the most-quoted words from the whole poem: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven! This sentiment can be taken as heralding the decline of classicism and the birth of the period of romanticism. Reason is going to permeate the affairs of people. Society is to be molded to the desires of people, all people in the very world, which is the world Of all of us, --the place where, in the end, We find our happiness, or not at all! The poet sees the world as virginal and capable of being shaped to his own image of what things should be. When people made mistakes, he was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because he believed the end would soon justify the means. But his attitude changed when Britain went to war with France. His hopes sank even further when France turned from self-defense to aggression and oppression. All that remained were his bare hopes and his old beliefs.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

27

www.cliffs.com For some time Wordsworth had been studying the doctrines of Godwin and trying to put the rationalism preached by him into practice. This course has not, however, satisfied the deep need for feeling that the poet has. But he reaffirms his anticipation of the working of the passions once more through reason and the building by humanity of "social upon personal Liberty." His expectation is that man will rise to great heights and yet not sacrifice his basic nature. Established institutions and their aristocratic defenders, law and custom, had fallen into disgrace. Ordinary people were having their eyes opened. Old opinions were crumbling. Wordsworth says his mind was both let loose and goaded. He dedicated himself to working for the new society and to that end tried to search out from existing society and government what would be best for all people. He subjected "all precepts, judgments, maxims, creeds" to severe scrutiny. But truth eluded him. In very bitter terms, he denounces Godwin's utilitarian rationalism as a tool for social justice. He says he was endlessly perplexed With impulse, motive, right and wrong, the ground Of obligation, what the rule and whence The sanction; till, demanding formal proof, And seeking it in every thing, I lost All feeling of conviction, and, in fine, Sick, wearied out with contrarieties, Yielded up moral questions in despair. Before he was to resolve this dilemma, even his very religion was threatened. But the end of his malaise was in sight; he will emerge from it an adult with a purpose in life. It is only by passing through this moral crisis that he will come to ethical maturity and be able to teach others about right and wrong through feeling and poetry: This was the crisis of that strong disease, This the soul's last and lowest ebb; I drooped, Deeming our blessed reason of least use Where wanted most: "The lordly attributes Of will and choice," I bitterly exclaimed, "What are they but a mockery of a Being Who hath in no concerns of his a test Of good and evil." Instead of trying to divert himself through simple pleasures, he turned to even more complicated study. He says it was his sister Dorothy who kept alive his faith in himself by the constant reminder that his basic feelings had not changed, but merely broadened. It was she who finally convinced him he was by nature a poet. He and Dorothy began long walking trips at this time, and it was the getting back amid natural surroundings that restored in him "those sweet counsels between head and heart" that make for a balanced outlook. This new composure stood him in good stead and does even as he writes (1805), when Napoleon not long since has betrayed the aims of the Revolution by being crowned emperor at the hands of the pope. Coleridge is in the Mediterranean, and Wordsworth thinks of him as being among the "fallen" nations. He is reminded of Sicily, which has lately felt Napoleon's wrath, and is saddened because its glorious past-like that of France herself--cannot stir the people to present patriotism. He tells Coleridge: There is One great society alone on earth: The noble Living and the noble Dead.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

28

www.cliffs.com

He refers sorrowfully to Coleridge's illness, which has driven him away from England to warmer climates. He speaks of his missing Coleridge and prays for his recovery. He tells us that as a child he dreamed of Sicily, without ever having seen it. Thinking of Sicilian seas and vales, his spirit brightens; the thought of her great poets and thinkers of antiquity gladdens him. In an imaginary setting which evokes the rich symbols of the classical landscape, the poet sees Coleridge disguised as one of the poets of antiquity. He sees him drinking inspiration at the fountain of Arethuse (or some other)--a devoted disciple of the Muses, not a prisoner in exile.

BOOK 12 Imagination and Taste, How Impaired and Restored Wordsworth says he has spent too long a time contemplating human ignorance and guilt. The poem began on a more lofty note, and it must end thus. In a gush of emotion, he praises the breezes, the brooks, and the groves for healing his spirit: Oh! that I had a music and a voice Harmonious as your own, that I might tell What ye have done for me. Spring has returned, and the poet praises the natural agents around him for exhibiting "the wondrous influence of power gently used." The wisdom of nature is always present. It amounted to a counterbalance all during his recent trials so beset with mental anguish. He reviews his mental history and the record he has made of it. Intellectual power in his youthful mind had brought him the assurance of his love for all things and of the truth of his vision. But his "natural graciousness of mind" was not a match for the troublesome times that intervened. He likens himself to a voyager who is close to blessed shores but who cannot land. He hopes to be a different man in times to come and wonders where to turn for guidance. He rejects the wise men and heroes of the past and finally even the poets. They all fall short of fulfilling his vision of human greatness. The Godwinian tenets which guide his thinking lead him to find the great men of history and art wanting reason and slavishly devoted to passion. In such a "strange passion" he says he warred with himself--an addict to the new cult of reason. He examines everything rationally, but he finds himself cut off from the very sentiment that binds humanity together. He fears he has even examined away the physical world. He addresses the soul of nature and recalls his former joy in his affection for primitive things. He misses his vision of a harmonious natural universe run by divine law. Then he was strong; now he is feeble in his new intellectualism. He accuses himself of presumption and calls his supposed art mimicry. The title of the present book (Book 12) is very significant and highly personal. In these passages, the poet tenders a vivid picture of how, through his adoption of the Godwinian philosophy of rationalism and antisentiment and the application of it both to his general outlook and to contemporary political events, his imagination was impaired. He finds himself paying too much attention to trivial things at the expense of insight. Nature, in its wisdom, showed him the unreliability of the senses as ends in themselves. He suddenly accuses himself of having desired pleasures always. There is a bitter though vague allusion to his life of idleness and drifting. He confesses he was disappointed in his performance at college and in his lack of plans for a profession. He mentions a girl (the description is reminiscent of Mary Hutchinson) of steadfast character whom he had known and intimates that women are perhaps less troubled with guile and satisfied with a simpler and less demanding life than men:

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

29

www.cliffs.com

methought Her very presence such a sweetness breathed, That flowers, and trees, and even the silent hills, And everything she looked on, should have had An intimation how she bore herself Towards them and to all creatures. God delights In such a being; for her common thoughts Are piety, her life is gratitude. He suggests that his recent defects and his irresolution are due to his ability to be only a mute witness to things and to his incapability of forming a moral opinion about them. The mood passed, however, and he once again came into his powers. How, says he, is the impaired imagination to be restored? The mind is master of the human organism, guides it, and heals it when necessary. Furthermore, the mind is able to heal itself by returning to experiences in time when the soul knew truly great moments in rising to the challenge of external events. These return to the poetic mind as vivid memories of natural configurations where the whole was more than the sum of its parts. He describes one rather enigmatic instance in youth. He had been horseback riding and became separated from his attendant. He dismounts because he fears that his horse may bolt. He comes to a spot where there was once a murder and the murderer's initials suddenly and mysteriously appeared soon after, carved by an unknown hand. The young poet flees in fright and confusion, and the random panorama which floods his mind is of the sullen pool beneath the bare hills, a beacon on the lonely crag, and a maid with a pitcher struggling against the wind. His young mind caught these things up as associative symbols for the terror he felt. Strangely, revisiting the very scene in adulthood, the memory of the earlier experience brought the feeling of happiness and well-being. Finally, he relates an anecdote. He recalls a time at school when the Christmas holidays were upon him. Exhilarated by his great anticipation, he is impatient for the arrival of the family livery which will carry him and his brothers home, and he climbs a nearby hill to await the first glimpse of the horses. Ten days later his father died, and Wordsworth interpreted this as a kind of retribution for his boyish impatience and preoccupation with worldly pleasures. Whenever he relived these moments in later life, they chastened him to humility and acceptance.

BOOK 13 Imagination and Taste, How Impaired and Restored (Concluded) As he continues his theory of the development of poetic genius, Wordsworth turns to one of his favorite themes: emotion recollected in tranquility. He says the strength of nature lies in the fact that it can deliver moods of emotional excitement as well as of tranquility. Both are essential to the creation of truth by the poet. He tells again of his futile intellectual search for wisdom and the reversion on his part to the dependence on nature and feeling, as in his youth. This attitude brings meekness and an indifference to ephemeral objects. The soul sees eternal good only in us and in our everyday lives, in contrast to the immorality and confusion so apparent in historical events. The poet's ethical strength was thus renewed; he was able once again to give his intellect freer rein.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

30

www.cliffs.com He suddenly attacks the statesmen and their books for ineptitude in attempting to preserve the public economy and welfare. He sets himself to inquire why so few leaders arise from humble origins and concludes it is because the common person is overburdened with toiling to satisfy animal appetites and daily wants. In simplifying his own wants to include those imperative to the soul, the poet has thrown off all constraints preventing the soul from soaring. In a mood strange to the poem, he praises the delight in rambling with a loved one through the countryside. He speaks enthusiastically of wandering off alone to meditate. He tells of how he would pause and rest and watch the simple countryfolk pass and of all the wisdom he gained from talking with them every chance he got. He found that such people had profound souls, though to the careless observer they might appear to be crude individuals. He calls education artificial and sterile. He is dismayed that a person, forced to toil by nature, should be compelled by civilization to exist in ignorance. Wordsworth says it is a mistake to say that strong affection can be nurtured only amid leisure and opulence, though he says that truly harsh oppression may prevent its blossoming. He criticizes books for misleading, for watering down the truth, and for being addressed to the taste and imagination of the wealthy few: . . . they most ambitiously set forth Extrinsic differences, the outward marks Whereby society has parted man From man, neglect the universal heart. He tells how he decided to devote his poetic efforts to exalting the common person. In one of several passages that are to exemplify his strong humanism, he says his theme will be "the very heart of man." He once more mentions the poet in the role of prophet. His mission will be to follow where his imagination leads and to reveal man's soul to man. Wordsworth contrasts the "eloquent" man-of-the-world with the poet. The former is a master of the spoken word, and his mind forever literally interprets things. But the poet and the noble common person can look directly into the inner life of things and interpret God's goodness. Wordsworth's re-adoption of feeling as a guide brought him to a new mystical relationship with nature, and he gives an impassioned statement of his pantheistic views. "The forms of Nature have a passion in themselves," he says. Once more addressing Coleridge, he declares that all poets are related to one another because they share a vision of the truth. He mentions once again, somewhat apologetically, his wish to be an immortal poet. He recollects that this sense of mission came to him on the Salisbury Plain. His mood was matched then by his vision of the first Britons and their primitive rites. Near Stonehenge, he was reminded of the Celts and their Druid priests, practicing a pagan nature-worship religion much resembling the poet's own pantheistic communings. In his reverie, he sees the white-robed priestlawgivers point alternately to heaven and then earth, a symbolic suggestion that deity and earthly nature are one and the same. He reminds Coleridge of his improvisation of Guilt and Sorrow as they wandered along in Wiltshire. It was here that Coleridge told Wordsworth that the latter was able to transmute the everyday world into something divine through his philosophical verse. Coleridge had been given new insight into familiar things through the poems of Wordsworth. The poet, for his own part, recalls it was at this time he envisioned "a new world" of cosmic and earthly harmony to be described to anyone who would listen.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

31

www.cliffs.com

BOOK 14 Conclusion The poet recalls one of his walking trips in northern Wales. He and his friend rose early, intending to see the sunrise from Mount Snowdon, the highest point in Wales. They proceed to the base of the mountain and wake the shepherd who is to be their guide. After breakfast, they set out in the sultry, summer night. After talking at first, they proceed in silence. Wordsworth is soon climbing ahead of the others, and as he reaches the summit, the clouds overhead dissipate and the moon showers her silver beams upon him. There is the beautiful blaze of the moon rays upon the mist at his feet and upon the fog enveloping nearby peaks and stretching off over the Atlantic. There is no sound but the roar of mountain torrents amid the rugged and wild Welsh landscape. Here the poet has a religious experience, and he says once more, pantheistically: . . . it appeared to me the type Of a majestic intellect, its acts And its possessions, what it has and craves, What in itself it is, and would become. There I beheld the emblem of a mind That feeds upon infinity, that broods Over the dark abyss. He proceeds to describe this transcendental power that even the most untutored mind would be compelled to acknowledge. Once more he proclaims that this active power which invests the natural world finds its counterpart in the mental faculties of the great thinker. In this way, the person who is poet is able to interpret the universe and does it spontaneously because nature continuously inspires him: "Such minds are truly from the Deity, / For they are Powers." These intellects know the highest possible happiness, states the poet. They experience ecstasy as they grow to learn that they are among the elect of humanity. They will create for themselves freedom from human desire--true liberty and the only kind worth knowing. Wordsworth has sudden pangs about the time he has wasted in the past and about his many strayings from the path leading to truth and greatness. But he says by way of apology: "Never did I, in quest of right and wrong, / Tamper with conscience from a private aim." He was ready always to battle those mean cares and low pursuits which might interfere with his artistic development. His repetitions of this point are important, and none is better phrased than when he says: . . . [he] shrunk with apprehensive jealousy From every combination which might aid The tendency, too potent in itself, Of use and custom to bow down the soul Under a growing weight of vulgar sense, And substitute a universe of death For that which moves with light and life informed, Actual, divine, and true. Wordsworth then draws upon the Platonic theory of love to reinforce his aesthetic. Plato identified love roughly with aspiration. He viewed it as a cosmic power impelling all natural things toward perfection, and in humanity it culminates in the desire for immortality. The poet has demonstrated the truth of this philosophy in his own living; his implicit devotion to it underlies the whole of The Prelude. Here once

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

32

www.cliffs.com more he wants to be sure that its relation to artistic creativity is made obvious. Such varieties as maternal love, love of natural sights, love of man for woman, must lead humanity to a higher love--a love that leavens physical, sensuous love with spiritual love, with awe. In this way the soul is permitted to soar. The mind adores things, not because they are pleasing or merely useful, but because they are part of that marvelous unity that is being. We can come to know intellectual love, he says, only with the aid of the imagination. From it can be derived faith in humanity, in immortality, and in deity. He hails his sister Dorothy as a kindred spirit and as a help to him in youth and maturity. Without her influence, he suggests, he would still have revered things but not loved them. He praises her for leading him out of the rationalist snare and back to feeling. He praises Mary Hutchinson, who had become his wife during the writing of The Prelude, for sharing all his mature experiences, great and small. Finally, he turns once more to praise Coleridge, who helped to mitigate his fears and encouraged him to write. Wordsworth signals the end of the poem. He hopes that his abilities have been proved to the extent that there is no longer any doubt he will write an "enduring" philosophical epic. He cites some shortcomings in the poem he is presently writing: the slighting of books, of nature's immediate beauties, of psychology. Lastly, he pays tribute to Raisley Calvert, the friend who left the poet a small legacy when it was badly needed. He has come a long way. He likens his vision of his own past to that of a lark which has ascended on wing, and his satisfaction is to be heard throughout the poem, which he compares with the lark's song. He is uncertain whether his future efforts will justify this somewhat conceited and long personal history. He observes that, when those artistically stimulating ramblings around Bristol are recalled, the poem will be justified to Coleridge himself at any rate. Wordsworth hopes once again for the restoration of his friend's health and looks forward to the moment when Coleridge first dips into The Prelude. He suggests that humanity may once more surrender to ignorance and tyranny, but our ultimate freedom is assured; he and Coleridge may find great happiness in the knowledge that they have contributed--even though in a small way--to our deliverance.

CRITICAL ESSAYS ANALYSIS OF THE PRELUDE "The Prelude is the greatest long poem in our language after Paradise Lost," says one critic. Its comparison with the great seventeenth-century epic is in some respects a happy one since Milton was (after Coleridge) Wordsworth's greatest idol. The Prelude may be classed somewhat loosely as an epic; it does not satisfy all the traditional qualifications of that genre. The epic is customarily defined as a long narrative poem which recounts heroic actions, commonly legendary or historical, and usually of one principal hero (from whence it derives its unity). The Prelude takes its unity from the fact that the central "hero" is its author. The poem is written in blank verse, unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter with certain permissible substitutions of trochees and anapests to relieve the monotony of the iambic foot and with total disregard for the stanza form. In the middle of the eighteenth century, there was an eclipse of interest in the rhymed heroic couplet. A revival of interest in Milton led to the establishment of Miltonic blank verse as the standard medium for lengthy philosophical or didactic poetical works. The resulting form came to be called the "literary" epic as opposed to heroic and folk epics. To this type, Wordsworth, with his unconventional ideas of diction, brought a natural and conversational tone.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

33

www.cliffs.com The general procedure in The Prelude is to record an experience from the poet's past and then to examine its philosophical and psychological significance and relate it to nature and society at large. Unfortunately, this results in a certain definite unevenness in the development of the narrative. At times, particularly in the latter half of the work, the narrative dries up altogether, and the reader must pick his way through a welter of disconnected disquisitions. Frequently verbose, diffuse, and bathetic, the verse is carried by those rare moments when it flashes fire or reaches a resounding note of rich poetic song. The unwavering strength and unity of purpose which underlie it also help it to soar. Only a mere fraction of the whole poem may be said to be great, but it is this fraction that has continued to secure it a place high in English literature. Another drawback of the verse is its blatant repetition. Wordsworth will describe an intellectual experience again and again with only minor variations. Much of this repetition may be due to the poet's episodic efforts to show his shifting point of view in connection with certain basic ideas. Most of the imagery, as well as the diction, reflects the natural environment, especially the English countryside, and manages to capture much of the wildness and beauty of that terrain. The influence of the English character may be traced in many of the ideas behind the poem. Just as Wordsworth never got far or was long from his native regions physically, so they continued to color his emotional reactions throughout his life. It is doubtful that he would have created an inimitable philosophy of nature had he been reared in London's slums. In his lifetime, his mental outlook swung from youthful radicalism to ultraconservatism. Politically, the fierce independence of character the poet admired in the yeoman of the North Country came to be symbolized by the French patriot; later he felt that conservative British institutions were the bulwark of true freedom. Artistically and religiously, he found youthful inspiration in the hills and vales of the Lake District; he responded to them with his simple ballads and a joyous mysticism. In maturity, it was the high Anglican Church tradition to which he turned, for a personal faith and as a source for many of his later poetical ideas. Of course, we do not witness the entire spectrum in The Prelude. That poem is basically democratic in spirit. Only at the very end do we feel the impending onset of conservatism. The work seems deceptively free of learned allusions, but the reader is sure to find many obscure classical references. In addition, there are quite a few local place names which are difficult to trace. The poem employs symbols in a somewhat unsophisticated way so that language and feeling tend to be indistinguishable. When Wordsworth puts aside his tendency to pamphleteer, mood and form tend to merge in highest harmony; the words perfectly evoke feeling. In the best instances, there is such mastery of the medium that the true goal of poetry is achieved: There is so perfect a communication of experience that the language as a vehicle is forgotten. From this harmony, a great poetic power emerges; with the very simplest of words and images, Wordsworth creates the impression of terrible intensity. For many readers, the aesthetic problem may be solved by adopting the fragmentary approach of picking favorite passages singular for their strength or beauty. But the reputation of The Prelude does not stand or fall as measured against the canon of uninterrupted beauty alone. Fortunately, it is the thematic framework behind the poem that holds the greatest lasting reward for the reader. The outstanding virtue of The Prelude is its imaginative interpretation of nature. For Wordsworth, nature forms a cosmic order of which the material world is one manifestation and the moral world is another. Usually, in such a view, either mind or matter must have the upper hand. From the fanciful, mechanistic interpretation of nature in his youth, he moved in maturity to a vitalist view in which mind transcended the physical world and in which a universal spirit provided the ultimate motivation for all things, as exemplified in universal, natural law. This is as close as he comes to building a philosophical system. And it is just this long and painful transition that is related in The Prelude. What Wordsworth offers is not a great philosophical system. He presents an emancipatory attitude toward life and toward art. He forever examines experience. Nothing in the world is so trivial or commonplace that it cannot be a stimulus for the mind. No thought,

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

34

www.cliffs.com no matter how pedestrian or contemptuous it may at first seem, is to be excluded from the realm of poetry.

WORDSWORTH'S LITERARY HISTORY Even the very earliest of Wordsworth's poetic efforts were addressed to his "dear native regions." They remained a lifelong source of inspiration for him even though, in his later years, he tended to forsake nature as a direct source for subject matter. Perhaps his favorite pursuit at Cambridge was the reading of contemporary poetry, so much so that he learned modern languages so that he was able to read such poetry in the original. His Italian master was professedly fond of Gray, and we find many echoes of Gray in the early poems. Indeed, the Juvenilia smacked of much of the somewhat sterile poetry turned out with such abundance following 1700. The impetus toward this type of poetry that would come to be uniquely Wordsworth's during the ambitious walking tours he began while in college and continued long after. On jaunts at home and abroad, he derived inspiration for some of his lofty lyrics. Descriptive Sketches of a Pedestrian Tour in the Alps, his first collection, commemorates the summer walking tour through France and Switzerland in 1790. It was published in 1793, along with An Evening Walk. The latter volume was written in the eighteenth-century manner and was dedicated to his sister Dorothy. The former work contained crude expressions of revolutionary sympathies in isolated passages; it also occasionally exhibited as a tone of moral dejection and even moods of religious disbelief. There was considerable haste in getting both these early volumes printed, and as a consequence quite a few errors appeared, which were, of course, rectified in future editions. Unfortunately, much of the youthful fire that animated the earlier volume was at the same time edited out because of the change in the poet's political thinking during the intervening years. As for the quality of this early poetry, it was somewhat uncertain. There was much of the plain language that Wordsworth was to become famous for, but it was used awkwardly and self-consciously. There was great borrowing, both of poetic device and of image. In all, clearly the rambling phrase was meant to be a departure from the snug couplet in vogue at the time, an intention which indicated the independence and daring of the poet. Lastly, the poems definitely did not please Wordsworth's guardian; in fact, they pleased scarcely anyone but Coleridge. By the autumn of 1793, amid the menace of war, Wordsworth had settled in southwest England, explored (as was his wont) the countryside on foot, and composed as he went. In the vicinity of Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, he was inspired to the conception of On Salisbury Plain. In 1794, this effort was amalgamated with a poem called "The Female Vagrant" (the latter was to appear alone in Lyrical Ballads in 1798). As Guilt and Sorrow, this volume was much revised and finally published in 1842. The poetry reflected the strong grip which the rationalistic philosophy of Godwin had on the poet's mind in the early 1790s. As poetry, Guilt and Sorrow marked a great and momentous change in style and featured chiefly a sophisticated attempt at narration which replaced the naive description of nature in the earlier poems. As close inspection reveals, tighter versification--not so many liberties were taken as earlier--and the Spenserian stanza appear. Amid this evenness and control are the visions of humble life couched in plain language (with a political tinge). The early poems had been published by one Joseph Johnson. His shop was a favorite meeting place for republicans and freethinkers, such as Thomas Paine and Godwin, with whom Wordsworth mingled and conversed. The Bishop of Llandaff (Wales), a former liberal turned conservative, had recently delivered a strong anti-republican attack and a defense of the constitution. Wordsworth undertook a long written rebuttal which justified the Reign of Terror and seizure of Church property in France, and extolled the superiority of popular sovereignty over monarchy. The poet was twenty-three at the time. The treatise was

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

35

www.cliffs.com not published until 1876, after which it was ranked as one of the best philosophical works to come out of England at the time of the revolutionary movement. In 1795-96, in the midst of his deepest period of depression, he wrote his only verse play, the gloomy tragedy, The Borderers. The play attempted to demonstrate the impotence of common sense in the face of life's great mishaps and signifies Wordsworth's struggle to free himself from Godwin's philosophy. He was helped from this crisis by the staunch friendship of his sister and of Coleridge, both of whom constantly reassured him as to his promise as a poet. He started in earnest to write splendid little lyrics of homely wisdom and simple tragedy which, through arousing strong compassion, would inculcate in readers a yearning to see the reform of all social injustice. His first truly characteristic piece, beginning "Nay, traveller, rest," marked his victory over Godwinism. From the highly stimulating association with Coleridge came the plan for the Lyrical Ballads. Between 1798 and 1807, he wrote some of his finest and most successful lyrics; many found their way into later editions of Lyrical Ballads. For the most part, these took their departure from English rural scenery; native flora and fauna were treated in the poet's growing style of sober realism. In the summer of 1802, the poet and his sister arrived in Calais for a prearranged meeting with Annette Vallon and her daughter. While there, he wrote some of his best sonnets. These resound with ringing cries which laud humanity's eternal struggle for freedom everywhere. Returning, he continued to compose sonnets in which the earlier vein of heroics was transformed into a patriotism which extolled the English character. His disgust with Napoleon accounted for the change in tone. In the same year, among others, he wrote the celebrated sonnets "Upon Westminster Bridge" and "London, 1802." After 1803, he wrote nothing sustained or ambitious. From the time of his first talks with Coleridge, Wordsworth had envisioned a magnum opus (he likened it to a vast Gothic cathedral) in which all his verse would find some place or other. This desire seemed like not too great a perversion of poetic purpose since all his verse was similar as to tone and philosophical foundation. All of the published poems, including the shorter ones, would be merely tentative and might be reworked until they made a more or less perfect fit within, or as a framework to, the grand opus. The whole structure, Wordsworth (and Coleridge) decided, would be the world's first truly philosophical poem. It would deal with people and their environment as these were seen through the eyes of "a poet living in retirement." It was to be called, appropriately, The Recluse. Like Chaucer and Spenser before him, Wordsworth never completed his projected masterpiece. He did complete The Prelude; it was published posthumously. The main body of The Recluse, again like a cathedral, was to be divided into three parts. The first part was begun, only to be postponed, the poet intending to turn to the other parts before proceeding; the last third was never started at all. Of the three parts, the second, The Excursion, was completed and published in 1814. It ran nearly nine thousand lines and hence was the longest poetical work ever attempted. The lasting critical judgment has been that it does not approach The Prelude in beauty, depth, or form. With his poetic source ostensibly becoming depleted, Wordsworth turned mostly to editing and revising. In 1807, he published Poems in Two Volumes, featuring some of the smaller poems written since Lyrical Ballads and the two famous Odes. Some of the later works were The White Doe of Aylstone (1815), Peter Bell (1819), The Waggoner (1819), and The River Duddon (1820), Memorials of a Tour on the Continent (1822). In Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1822), Evening Voluntaries (1835), and Yarrow Revisited and Other Poems (1838), one finds flashes of the old greatness. The first collected edition of the poems appeared in 1815; five more editions followed between that year and 1850 because the poet was revising his older work continuously.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

36

www.cliffs.com

After his death in 1850 began the long critical reappraisal of his place in poetry. De Quincey, his contemporary, said: "Up to 1820 the name of Wordsworth was trampled under foot; from 1820 to 1830 it was militant; from 1830 to 1835 it has been triumphant." Arnold, who stressed the vital need of separating the good poetry from the bad, called him the greatest after Shakespeare and Milton.

WORDSWORTH'S POETIC THEORY----"Preface" By way of understanding and appraisal, it must first be asked what Wordsworth set out to do and then to what degree he succeeded. It has been remarked that he was one of the giants; almost single-handedly he revivified English poetry from its threatened death from emotional starvation. What Burns, Blake, and Cowper, his contemporaries, wanted to do and could not, he did. The neo-classically oriented writers of the so-called Augustan Age (1701 to about 1750), Swift, Gay, Addison and Steele, Pope, and to a lesser extent Richardson and Fielding, chose Latin authors of the time of the Pax Romana (hence the name Augustan) as their models. They admired Virgil and Horace for correctness of phrase and polished urbanity and grace. By contrast, Shakespeare they found crude. They wrote and criticized according to what they considered the proper and acceptable rules of taste. Their relationship to the natural environment was one of cautious imitation. They did not hold with simple tutelage at the hands of nature; reason and good sense had to intervene. Reason, indeed, was the prime source of inspiration; emotion had to be subordinated to thought. Thematically, conditions in "high" society furnished many of the plots and characters, and humble life tended to be contemptuously ignored. From about 1750 to 1790, literature came to be dominated indirectly by Doctor Samuel Johnson. Johnson, while no romanticist, was, like Voltaire in France, scornful of neo-classicism's aims and methods and, through ridicule, hastened its undoing. New forces were at work in England; change and vitality were coming to the front. The full emergence of the party system and cabinet government had taken place; the empire grew, trade increased, and the middle class asserted new power. But the rules and fetters of neoclassicism still bound literature. For Johnson, reason and common sense still prevailed over imagination and sentiment. His violent and neat literary opinions and his didactic prose and verse came to symbolize the retrenchment of reactionary forces and the kind of literary creation which amounted to a kind of "apology" for the old ways. In poetry, a break with traditionalism had begun. The so-called protoromantics (transition poets), Cowper, Gray, Blake, and Burns, among others, balked at merely copying classical subjects and forms once more. They wrote instead about simple, natural things in plain language, though they retained many of the older poetic structures. And they still subscribed to the notion that poetry had to be "fancier" than prose--an idea Wordsworth was to denounce. Poetic language was devitalized, and so was the thematic province of poetry: Neither any longer evoked feeling. The Romantics were compelled to look about for new ways of saying things. Before their arrival on the literary scene, the amount of jargon was astonishing: It was vulgar to call a man a man; he was commonly a swain. The elaborate and absurd similes and images had to be banished, and fresh and incisive poetic insights would have to replace the stereotyped and labored abstractions of their predecessors. Finally, the heroic couplet gave way to blank verse. One of Wordsworth's finest achievements was that his simple childhood readied his mind to the value of the non-artificial, and he was not slow to appreciate the need for a reform of "poetic" language. Poetry became an immediate and intimate experience told by the experiencer. Beauty was to be admired for its own sake. Wordsworth's reliance on unaffected speech and action and his deep conviction that simplicity of living was a philosophy harmoniously in agreement with nature wrought a revolution in poetic values. His Preface to the Lyrical Ballads became the symbol and the instrument of romantic revolt.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

37

www.cliffs.com

Wordsworth's philosophy of life, his theory of poetry, and his political credo were all intricately connected. A change in one characteristically brought parallel changes in the others. In 1793, the poet found himself without a penny, banished from the homes of his relatives, embittered by the excesses of the Revolution in France, and beset by personal fears and uncertainties. He became a member of the socalled Godwin circle in London. William Godwin, the political philosopher and novelist, deplored the role of emotion in human affairs and claimed salvation lay only in reason perfected by education. Wordsworth began a serious reading of Godwin and soon determined to abandon his early naive reliance on intuition and subject all his beliefs to close scrutiny. For four years, he clung tenaciously to his Godwinian outlook until he nearly suffered a nervous breakdown. And his poetry suffered as a result of his philosophy. He said of some of Guilt and Sorrow that its diction was "vicious" and the descriptions "often false." The Borderers, from the same vintage, is so artificial in tone as to be depressing. By 1798, Wordsworth turned back to nature and her wholesome teachings. "The Tables Turned" and "Expostulation and Reply" (both 1798) are both anti-intellectual in tone and mood, and signal the final break with Godwinism. It chanced that David Hartley, founder of the associationist school in psychology--his views were adapted afterward in the social philosophy of the Utilitarians--who at the moment absorbed Coleridge's attention, had expounded views which Wordsworth fancied matched his very own. Hartley put fundamental emphasis on environment in the shaping of personality. He was an empiricist in the tradition of Locke. He had won vogue for his skill in translating the theory of the association of ideas into a psychology of learning. Wordsworth had been looking for a satisfactory psychology, and this was it. Hartley taught that sensations (elemental ideas) produced vibrations in the nervous system. He held (with Locke) that the mind was a "blank slate" until sensation introduced simple ideas into it; hence, sensation was the basis of all knowledge. The debt to Hartley is apparent throughout Lyrical Ballads. Nature, Wordsworth reasoned, teaches the only knowledge important to humanity. The human beings who possessed this vital knowledge would be those closest to nature--the farmers and shepherds of the countryside. So it was to describing the visions of people like this that he turned in Lyrical Ballads. The critics immediately pounced upon him, saying, in effect, he did not know poetry from agronomy, whereupon he reissued the poems and added his notorious Preface, which informed the critics (though not in certain terms) that it was they who were absolutely ignorant of the real nature of poetry. In late 1797, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and his sister Dorothy planned a trip from Alfoxden, where they lived, to the Valley of Stones, near Lynmouth, in Devon. They proposed meeting expenses for the modest trip by writing a poem, "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere," and submitting it to the Monthly Magazine in the hope of getting five pounds. Wordsworth early had misgivings and withdrew from authorship because he feared that he would botch the poem. He was in the process of writing his own poems, and the two men constantly aired their views on the nature of poetry and the poetic faculty. The two men complemented each other. Coleridge thought in terms of quick and brilliant generalizations and Wordsworth thought somewhat ploddingly and provided a valuable devotion to detail. Jointly, they conceived the romantic formula which was to enliven poetry from that day to this, Coleridge with his vast knowledge of German transcendental philosophy in which traces of romanticism were already evident, and Wordsworth with his cunning awareness of the magic of the commonplace. They induced a mutual flood of creativity. It was Coleridge who afterward urged Wordsworth on with The Prelude and persuaded him to undertake The Recluse. Coleridge's contemporaries alleged it was impossible not to plan on a vast and abstract scale while under his influence. Out of the discussions between the two men about what poetry ought to be and how it should affect its audience came a growing desire on the part of the two poets to collaborate on a volume of verse. They

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

38

www.cliffs.com adopted a division of labor in which Coleridge would endeavor through poetic means to make the uncommon (supernatural) credible; Wordsworth would attempt to make the common uncommon--through simple but meticulous descriptions of everyday things. The decision to be guided by these tenets amounted to the fanfare announcing the romantic revolt in English literature. Lyrical Ballads became both the symbol and instrument of that revolution. Thus was disclosed the prescription which was to carry poetry and prose through romantic, realist, and modern phases, and which invests them to this very day; the evocation of emotion and inculcation of transcendental awareness through the artistic examination of immediate experience. The spearhead and chief mechanism for this process was going to be a revolutionary type of poetic diction for which Wordsworth was to become famous. The original formulation was rather crude, and it underwent transformation at the hands of the poets as they proceeded. Coleridge became less and less convinced of its power as an artistic tool and finally disclaimed it altogether, saying that he and Wordsworth might have subscribed to it in theory but fell far short of exploiting it in actuality. Wordsworth himself felt that his work was a shining embodiment of the doctrine--as well as a vindication--and never completely abandoned it. The second edition of Lyrical Ballads appeared in two volumes in 1800 in Wordsworth's name alone. In the anonymous 1798 edition, there had been a mere "advertisement" to orient the reader to the poems; in 1800, the famous "Preface" took its place. Wordsworth notes that friends had urged him to write a defense of the collection, but he preferred to write instead a "simple" introduction. This turned out to be a somewhat long explanation of the poet's attempt to write in a manner hitherto unknown. He describes poetry as the spontaneous overflow of emotions. Poetry is not dependent upon rhetorical and literary devices, but is the free expression of the poet's thought and feeling. The poet is a teacher and must strive to reveal truth, not through scientific analysis and abstraction, but through an imaginative awareness of persons and things. He may broaden and enrich our human sympathies and our enjoyment of nature in this way. He must communicate his ideas and emotions through a powerful re-creation of the original experience. For this, he must have a sensibility far beyond that of the ordinary individual. He tells how he weeded out the dead expressions from the older poetic vocabulary and substituted the flesh-andblood language of the common person. Poetry and prose, he says, differ only as to presence or absence of rhyme; they do not differ as to language. For Wordsworth, the important thing was the emotion aroused by the poem, not the poem itself (hence his lukewarm regard for form). In the last analysis, a poem restimulated past emotion in the reader and promoted learning by using pleasure as a vehicle. Coleridge remarked that half the Preface was in fact the child of his own brain. Yet, he felt that there was much that was inadequate in the document. He felt that Wordsworth's conception of poetry relied too much on Hartley's theories and did not adequately explain Wordsworth's poems. Coleridge says in the Biographia Literaria 1814) that he was convinced Wordsworth's work was not the product of simple fancy, but of imagination--a creative, and not a mere associative, faculty. Furthermore, he thought the difference between poetry and prose was substantial, and it lay in the different ways they treated the same subject. He agreed with Wordsworth's idea of plain poetic diction but felt his colleague had not given enough thought to selecting from the language of everyday life. He thought Wordsworth's poetry reached a true sublimity when he most forgot his own ideas. Wordsworth's position in his later work grew closer to that of Coleridge. But the poetic doctrines elaborated in the Preface solidly underlay Lyrical Ballads and were the springboard to the expanded philosophy of art throughout The Prelude.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

39

www.cliffs.com

ESSAY TOPICS AND REVIEW QUESTIONS 1. What is Wordsworth's attitude toward nature? Does it undergo a significant change in the course of The Prelude? If so, how? (Books 1, 2, 8, 12, 13) 2. What was Wordsworth's feeling for history in general? What was his attitude toward the French Revolution? Does it undergo a change during the course of The Prelude? How did he feel about England's actions toward France? How did he react to Napoleon? (Books 6, 8-11, 13) 3. What does Wordsworth think of humanity? What is his opinion of society? How much do you think this was influenced by his unsettled childhood? Is his extreme view justified? (Books 1-3, 7, 8, 11, 13) 4. What does Wordsworth think of traditional education? What suggestions does he make for improving it? (Books 1, 3, 5, 8) 5. What is the role of a poet? How does a poet fulfill his role? (Books 1, 5, 7, 12, 14) 6. How does Wordsworth regard beauty? What is the function of beauty according to Wordsworth? (Books 1, 7, 8) 7. What, in your opinion, constitutes progress in Wordsworth's view? How does this differ from the view of the average person? (Books 2, 3) 8. Discuss Wordsworth's theory of poetry. How does this compare with traditional views? 9. What does Wordsworth mean by imagination? Is it comparable to fancy? (Books 8, 12-14) 10. Summarize Wordsworth's experiences at Cambridge. Was he happy there? How did he react to the teaching there? Was he a good student? (Books 3, 6) 11. How does Wordsworth interpret his dream of an encounter with the Bedouin? (Book 5) 12. How did Wordsworth occupy himself during his summer vacations? Were they profitable to him in the long run? (Books 5, 6) 13. What did Wordsworth think of London? How does he describe it? Did it live up to the image he had of it? How did he spend his time there? (Books 7, 8) 14. What are Wordsworth's feelings about the English character? Do his own ideas reflect his English background? In the last analysis, is he proud to be English? (Book 10) 15. What did Wordsworth think of the theater? (Book 7) 16. Wordsworth uses the term "love" in a larger sense. What does he mean by it? (Books 2, 14) 17. What was the significance of the tale of Vaudracour and Julia in connection with Wordsworth's life? What was its significance politically? Book 9) 18. What was Wordsworth's experience with Godwinian rationalism? (Books 11, 12)

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

40

www.cliffs.com

19. What does Wordsworth think of books? (Books 5, 13) 20. Do you think calling Wordsworth a pantheist is a fair appraisal of his religious position? Did his religion change throughout his life? (Books 5, 8, 12-14) 21. How did The Prelude fit into Wordsworth's scheme for his life's work? What became of the scheme? 22. What characteristics of The Prelude show that it is correctly classified in the romantic period of English literature? 23. What is the literary form of The Prelude? Describe its texture. Give some of its motivational ideas. Has it any unity? What are some of its stylistic faults? 24. Are Wordsworth's ideas valid for contemporary society? What can we learn of value from his ideas?

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY GENERAL BABBITT, IRVING. Rousseau and Romanticism. Boston, 1919. BARZUN, JACQUES. Romanticism and the Modern Ego. New York, 1943. BRINTON, CRANE. A Decade of Revolution: 1780-1799. New York, 1935. CLOUGH, S. B., and C. W. COLE. Economic History of Europe. 3rd ed. Boston, 1952. FAIRCHILD, HOXIE N. Religious Trends in English Poetry. Vol. III. New York, 1949. _____. The Romantic Quest. Philadelphia, 1931. HAYES, C. J. H. History of Western Civilization. Vol. II, Part IX. New York, 1962. PRAZ, MARIO. The Romantic Agony. 2nd ed. New York, 1951. TRILLING, LIONEL. The Liberal Imagination. New York, 1950. MISCELLANEOUS WISE, THOMAS J. Two Lake Poets, a Catalogue of Printed Books, Manuscripts, and Autograph Letters by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. London, 1927. COLERIDGE BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM CHAMBERS, E. K. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Biographical Study. New York, 1938. LOWES, JOHN L. Road to Xanadu. Boston, 1927.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

41

www.cliffs.com STAUFFER, DONALD A., ed. Selected Poetry and Prose of Coleridge. New York, 1951. The "Biographia Literaria" throws light on the relationship between Coleridge and Wordsworth and on the latter's poetic theories. WORDSWORTH BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM BATESON, F. W. Wordsworth: A Reinterpretation. 2nd ed. New York, 1956. BATHO, E. C. The Later Wordsworth. Cambridge, 1933. DARBISHIRE, HELEN. The Poet Wordsworth. Oxford, 1950. DE SELINCOURT, ERNEST. The Early Wordsworth. New York, 1936. DUNKLIN, GILBERT T., ed. Wordsworth. Princeton, N. J., 1951. FERRY, DAVID. The Limits of Morality. Middletown, Conn., 1959. GARROD, H. W. Wordsworth: Lectures and Essays. 2nd ed. Oxford, 1927. HARPER, GEORGE M. William Wordsworth, His Life, Works, and Influence. 2 Vols. New York, 1960. The definitive biography. _____. Wordsworth's French Daughter. Princeton, 1921. KNIGHT, WILLIAM. The Life of William Wordsworth. 3 Vols. Edinburgh, 1889. LEGOUIS, EMILE. The Early Life of William Wordsworth. Trans. by J. W. Mathews. 2nd ed. London, 1921. _____. William Wordsworth and Annette Vallon. London, 1922. MOORMAN, MARY. William Wordsworth: The Early Years. New York, 1957. RALEIGH, WALTER. Wordsworth. 8th ed. London, 1921. READ, HERBERT, Wordsworth. London, 1948. STALLKNECHT, NEWTON P. Strange Seas of Thought. Bloomington, Ind., 1958. WORDSWORTH, CHRISTOPHER. Memoirs of William Wordsworth. 2 Vols. London, 1851. WORDSWORTH, DOROTHY. Journals. Ed. by E. de Selincourt. 2 Vols. London, 1952. WORKS Convention of Cintra, with an introduction by A. V. Dicey, London, 1915. BAKER, CARLOS, ed. William Wordsworth's The Prelude with a Selection from the Shorter Poems and the Sonnets and the 1800 Preface to Lyrical Ballads. New York, 1948.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

42

www.cliffs.com DARBISHIRE, HELEN, ed. Poems in Two Volumes. Oxford, 1914. _____. Prose Works. 2 Vols. London, 1896. DE SELINCOURT, ERNEST, ed. Guide to the Lakes. London, 1926. _____. The Early Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth (1787-1805). Oxford, 1940. _____. The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. 5 Vols. Oxford, 1937-39. _____. The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind. Oxford, 1926. Edited from the original manuscripts. _____, and HELEN DARBISHIRE, eds. The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. 7 Vols. Oxford, 1940-49. HUTCHINSON, THOMAS, ed. The Political Works. Oxford, 1914. KNIGHT, WILLIAM, ed. The Poetical Works. 8 Vols. London, 1882-6, 1896. WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE BRETT, R. L., and A. R. JONES, eds. Lyrical Ballads. New York, 1963.

Cliffs Notes on The Prelude © 1964

43