"North. It is the fashion to undervalue Oxford and Cambridge prize-poems; but it is a stupid fashion. Many of them are most beautiful. Heber's 'Palestine!' A flight, as upon angel's wing, over the Holy Land! How fine the opening!
[We omit the lines quoted,the well-known beginning of the poem.]
"Tickler. More than one of Wrangham's prize-poems are excellent;
Richard's 'Aboriginal Brutus' is a powerful and picturesque performance;
Chinnery's 'Dying Gladiator' magnificent; and Milman's 'Apollo Belvedere' splendid, beautiful, and majestic.
"North. Macaulay and Praed have written very good prize-poems. These two young gentlemen ought to make a figure in the world."
Heber was a contemporary and friend of Wilson at Oxford; as was also Lockhart, among others. The distant See of Calcutta interrupted the intercourse of the former, in after-life, while Maga and party bound the latter still closer to his old college-friend. One of Wilson's college-mates has given an odd anecdote descriptive of his appearance at their social gatherings:
"I shall never forget his figure, sitting with a long earthen pipe, a great tie-wig on. Those wigs had descended, I fancy, from the days of Addison, (who had been a member of our college,) and were worn by us all, (in order, I presume, to preserve our hair and dress, from tobacco-smoke,) when smoking commenced after supper; and a strange appearance we made in them."
Wilson left Oxford in 1807, after passing a highly creditable examination for his degree. His disappointed affections had so weighed upon him, that he had a nervous apprehension of being plucked,which, however, turned out to be quite unnecessary. He was now twenty-two years of age, a man singularly favored both by Nature and by fortune,possessed of almost everything which might seem to insure the fullest measure of health, happiness, success, and fame. Rarely, indeed, do the gods give so freely of their good gifts to a single mortal. His circumstances were easy: a fortune of some fifty thousand pounds having come to him from his father, who had died while his son was a mere boy. After visiting his mother at Edinburgh, and rambling largely here and there, he purchased the beautiful estate of Elleray on Lake Windermere, and there fixed his residence. These were the halcyon days of that noted region: the "Lakers," as they were called, were then in their glory. A rare coterie, indeed, it was that was gathered together along the banks of Windermere. Though they are now no more, yet is their memory so linked to these scenes that thousands of fond pilgrims still visit these placid waters to throw one glance upon the home of genius, the birthplace of great thoughts. Here Wilson was in his element. His soul feasted itself on the wondrous charms of Nature, and held high converse with the master-minds of literature. There was quite enough to satisfy the cravings even of his multiform spirit. He soon came to know, and to be on terms of greater or less intimacy with, Coleridge, Wordsworth, De Quincey, Southey, the celebrated Bishop Watson, of the See of Llandaff, Charles Lloyd, and others,then the genii loci. It may be remembered that his admiration for Wordsworth was already of long standing, his boyish enthusiasm having led him, when at Glasgow, to send his tribute of praise to the author of the "Lyrical Ballads." Some fifteen to twenty years later,in one of the numbers of the "Noctes,"his admiration for the poet had temporarily cooled somewhat. Then was its aphelion, and soon it began to return once more toward its central sun. It must have been transient spleen which dictated such sentences as these:
"Tickler. Wordsworth says that a great poet must be great in all things.
"North. Wordsworth often writes like an idiot; and never more so than when he said of Milton, 'His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart!' For it dwelt in tumult, and mischief, and rebellion. Wordsworth is, in all things, the reverse of Milton,a good man, and a bad poet.
"Tickler. What! that Wordsworth whom Maga cries up as the Prince of Poets?
"North. Be it so: I must humor the fancies of some of my friends. But had that man been a great poet, he would have produced a deep and lasting impression on the mind of England; whereas his verses are becoming less and less known every day, and he is, in good truth, already one of the illustrious obscure
"And yet, with his creed, what might not a great poet have done? That the language of poetry is but the language of strong human passion! And what, pray, has he made out of this true and philosophical creed? A few ballads, (pretty, at the best,) two or three moral fables, some natural description of scenery, and half a dozen narratives of common distress or happiness. Not one single character has he created, not one incident, not one tragical catastrophe. He has thrown no light on man's estate here below; and Crabbe, with all his defects, stands immeasurably above Wordsworth as the Poet of the Poor I confess that the 'Excursion' is the worst poem, of any character, in the English language. It contains about two hundred sonorous lines, some of which appear to be fine, even in the sense, as well as the sound. The remaining seven thousand three hundred are quite ineffectual. Then what labor the builder of that lofty rhyme must have undergone! It is, in its own way, a small Tower of Babel, and all built by a single man."
Christopher was surely in the dumps, when he wrote thus: he was soured by an Edinburgh study. After a run in the crisp air of the moors, he would never have written such atrabilious criticism of a poet whom he admired highly, for it was not honestly in the natural man. Neither his postulates nor his inferences are quite correct. It is incorrect to say that the poet's creed was a true one; that, with it, he might have been a great poet; but that, from not making the most of it, he was a bad one. De Quincey's position, we think, was the only true one: that Wordsworth's poetic creed was radically false,a creed more honored in the breach than the observance,a creed good on paper only; that its author, though professing, did in fact never follow it; that, with it, he could never have been a great poet; and that, without it, he was really great.
Wilson at Windermere, like Wilson at Oxford, was versatile, active, Titanic, mysterious, and fascinating. An immense energy and momentum marked the man; and a strange fitfulness, a lack of concentration, made the sum total of results far too small. There was power; but much of it was power wasted. He overflowed everywhere; his magnificent physique often got the better of him; his boundless animal spirits fairly ran riot with him; his poetic soul made him the fondest and closest of Nature's wooers; his buoyant health lent an untold luxury to the mere fact of existence; his huge muscles and tuneful nerves always hungered for action, and bulged and thrilled joyously when face to face with danger. He was exuberant, extravagant, enthusiastic, reckless, stupendous, fantastic. It is only by the cumulation of epithets that one can characterize a being so colossal in proportion, so many-sided in his phases, so manifold in operation. He was a brilliant of the first water, whose endless facets were forever gleaming, now here, now there, with a gorgeous, but irregular light. No man could tell where to look for the coming splendor. The glory dazzled all eyes, yet few saw their way the clearer by such fitful flashes.
Wilson, in some of his phases, reminds us often of a great glorified child, rejoicing in an eternal boyhood. He had the same impulse, restlessness, glee, zest, and abandon. All sport was serious work with him, and serious work was sport. No frolic ever came amiss, whatever its guise. He informed play with the earnestness of childhood and the spirituality of poesy. He could turn everything into a hook on which to hang a frolic. No dark care bestrode the horse behind this perennial youth. No haggard spectre, reflected from a turbid soul, sat moping in the prow of his boat, or kept step with him in the race. Like the Sun-god, he was buoyant and beautiful, careless, free, elastic, unfading. Years never cramped his bounding spirits, or dimmed the lustre of his soul. He was ever ready for prank and pastime, for freak and fun. Of all his loves at Elleray, boating was the chief. He was the Lord-High-Admiral of all the neighboring waters, and had a navy at his beck. He never wearied of the lake: whether she smiled or frowned on her devotee, he worshipped all the same. Time and season and weather were all alike to the sturdy skipper. One howling winter's night he was still at his post, when Billy Balmer brought tidings that "his master was wellnigh frozen to death, and had icicles a finger-length hanging from his hair and beard." Though there was storm without, the great child had his undying sunshine within.