THE EDUCATION OF POETS. 165 which he has furnished himself in society. Let the Poet give us honestly what he himself has felt, tasted, and handled either in the city or in the fields, and it cannot come amiss. No two men are educated in the same way, no two Poets can be educated in the same way, the inner life determines the course of the education; put two seeds into the same spot of earth, and how different the result, how different even if both be one fruit or flower, the value of the Poet is in his honest individual inner life as a contribution to the experience and stock of our common humanity. You can lay down no law for the education of Poets, and speak of no scenery as especially fitted for their training, for they of all men on this earth will educate themselves, they are hardy plants, they will convert all soils, all seasons, all atmospheres into nutritive substances-it is the province of the great Poet to make his own world-to look at things as they are in truth, and in themselves. But Wordsworth was not so much a Hermit as was Goethe at Frankfort, the Recluse may not therefore necessarily be cut off from all sympathy with his world and his fellow-men. The Hermit may live, yet not hermitically sealed from all human intercourse, from the entrance into the walks, and ways, and words, of mankind; nay, he may have sought his cell from the loving desire to meditate on them and their ways, he may walk to and fro, longing to break the shell of the difficult problem perplexing and agonising man, he may be made acquainted with men too, for if reflection comes to his cell, it is equally certain that passion will find its way there, St. Hugo said, "Monastics make cloisters to enclose the outward man, O would to God they would do the like to restrain the inward man." And because they cannot do this, because Man entering the Hermit's cell cannot leave his manhood behind; nay, perhaps gives it the reins and makes it more potent over him, because we understand men better as we see them at a distance, and not in the mass, but in the individual; and because we love men best as we are farthest removed from them too, for all these reasons it may be affirmed that the life of the recluse is more favourable to instruction than the life of the citizen. Reflection gives then intensity to action, and strips life of the meretricious charms, of which in the crowded city even the Poet can scarce withstand the influence. It is very beautiful to sit down with our author and to realise from his pages a life that has almost, nay, that in many phases of it, has altogether passed away. Consider, it is nearly one hundred years since our Poet was born, it is quite eighty years since he was with his schoolmates, sporting on the banks of Esthwaite Lake, At that time and for many years after "The housewife plied her own peculiar work, But that useful and antique old Spinning wheel whirling through the long hours by the ingle corner has however long since gone. There is no "Benjamin the Waggoner" now. Pickford's Van was an improvement IN THE OLD TIME. 167 on Benjamin, but even Pickfords have been compelled to yield to the spirit of the times. See the "Companions of the night and day, Who have trod the toilsome way, The Wain announces." Years, nay ages, hence many of the lines of Wordsworth will be quoted as illustrations of local usages, of ancient manners, and traditions long obsolete. The description of the village funeral, the dirge chaunted on the way to the grave, not by priest or white-robed choristers, but by the inhabitants of the hills; the cadence rising mournful, clear, and slow, out of the deep heart, in the abyss of the mountain as the traveller journied to his last resting place: here in these verses lie the records of Rush bearings and Well flowerings. Confirmations and Consecrations of Churches, and descriptions of the cottage and the household furniture of the last century, when all life was plain and unadorned; those days "When no vain mirror glittered on the walls," but "when snow white curtains hung in decent folds," and the mats were made of tough moss, and long enduring mountain plants braided together, when the carpets were made of homespun wool, and the parlour floor of the pastoral homestead boasted no better foundation than the blue slabs of mountain stone; these hints of the last century life are scattered very plentifully over these works, they are interesting glimpses of the old world, a world now in almost every particular left behind; for even into the most untrodden of those dales to which they principally refer, to Wastdale, or Ennerdale, or Buttermere, or Borrowdale, what we call the spirit of the age has passed, removing much, preserving much; a new life has poured its waves along those valleys, those mountains have echoed to sounds then unknown, and the "Excursion" is the painting of a transitive age, a passage from the simplicity of the eighteenth, to the excitement of the nineteenth century. And so the reader must realize to himself a wholly different country to that which now he knows; it is needless to say that all our modern improvements and inventions were unknown. No line of railway had been reared, no steam boat launched, no cluster of tall chimneys had tainted the air or given a new direction and life to commerce; as to the lakes, those regions where Mr. Wordsworth fixed his home, to nearly all England, noble, gentle, commercial, and plebeian, they were a "terra incognita," they were a land of darkness, a Kerguelens Island of desolation; only a few years had elapsed when Mr. Wordsworth first began to write, since Gray had ventured there, and in some measure called attention to the Alpine Grandeur, the Anglo Genevan beauty of that far north land, but then it was for the most part inaccessible; from distant ages the AND OLD MANNERS. 169 statesmen of those hills and dales had formed a kind of rude Republic; our fathers were affected by the history of the dwellers in Cambria and Westmoreland much as we are affected this day who hear the deeds of the brave Montenegrins, and read descriptions of the mountain passes of the Balkans; of the dwellers in Dalmatia and in Servia; at present every thing exists in the Lake district to make it a most attractive and desirable spot to the young man from London, or Manchester, or Birmingham, whose time and means alike are limited, but who desires to see some of the noblest scenes of nature in miniature, and to have reared before him a small platform on which he may contemplate what those awful mountain ranges may be, for ever shut from his eyes. True even now he may lose his way among the hills, he may be overtaken by mists far from any shepherd's hut; far from any human habitation to be reached by his voice; there are dangerous and precipitous pieces of mountain cliff it would not even now be desirable to scale, but every thing upon the whole is very innocent, and the whole of the round of mountain, moor, and tarn, may be warranted free from any danger, except to those who are very rash and romantic indeed; not so at the close of the last and the beginning of the present century; many a forest tree has yielded since then to the cultivating hand of civilization; many a road has been made pleasant and accessible to the traveller's feet; many an inn reared in the neighbourhood of wild and desolate magnificence; many a field and farm if not actually |