Dux Redivivus
Wordsworth's Anti-climax. By Willard L. Sperry. (Harvard
University Press.: Oxford University press. 10s. .8d.) !rim use—and abuse—Of Wordsworth as a controversial figure has been going on for some time now and is significant' of the similarity between our modern dilemma and his own, • hundred years ago, among circumstances disquietingly familiar. The trouble has been that preoccupation with the dilemma has led some critics to take their eye off the Wordsworth himself—with results in unfairness to W• M as a man, when not in positive psychologizing in the void. The earlier of these estimates (e.g., those of Mr. Herbert Read and Mr. Hugh Fausset), prompted mainly by the fact—
• tempting to the modern psychologist—of the Annette revelations, and imbued, moreover, With the " Loirt Leader" lend, were on the whole destructive in tendency. But the tide soon turned : Miss Edith ,Batho came forward, with her line inpignation and her rather' terrifying female scholarship, to:rehabilitate the poet in his maturity, as man, social,thinker
poet. It could be felt that she protested a little too much_4 lint the fault was on the right side. New here comes Mr. Sperry to correct the balance with his delicate and exceedingly actUte understanding of the problem. True, he does not pietend much to like Wordsworth the man (but who, writing frbm America—that land of hospitality—could like a man who greeted his guests with the objurgation to "keep quiet or go aWay ") ; yet he is at pains to be minutely fair to-him. He shies not !nuke the issue, recognizing plainly that Wordsworth's maturity was, after the golden period of 1796-1800, in fact an anti-climax ; but he goes- deeper. and more successfully into the causes of it than any `other critic, and in doing so has incidentally restored the poet's character to a position from which it commands respect, if not love ; showing, in fine, that so much of the recent criticism of the man springs from the absurd hypothesis If only he had been like this . . . i.e., a totally different man from what he was. Mr. Sperry examines in detail, one by one, the causes which have hitherto 'been posited of Wordsworth's decline from poet of geniteil to verse-monger : the decay of his Libertarian faith, 'his manner, of dealing with the Annette affair, the rigid Toryisni of his later years, his 'persecution by Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review ; and finds them all wanting in final cogency. So persuasive, so lucid are his arguments, that it is difficult not to conclude that he has had the last word (though he judiciously Opines that, on the subject *of Wordsworth, the last word will never be said).
The charge of being a political turncoat has already been dealt with in full by Miss Bathe, who showed-ff-il grand retifo4 of quotations—that the foundations of Wordsworth's soCial creed were always the same, and that it' was only his views of what would best realize that creed which clanged With! experience. It remained to, Mr. Sperry to emphasize the, point that, purely idealistic as the poet's early revolutionary! tendencies were, it is not surprising that the spectacle of the Terror in France should have made him realize that these were not methods best calculated to preserve the hierarchies of tradition and the devotion to hearth and home and earth which constituted his vision of life.
Mr. Sperry's defence of Wordsworth's behaviour in the Annette affair amounts to the assertion that, given the circumstances (which were peculiar and complicated) he did, not in fact behave worse than most young men would have done, and that he did net abandon the woman, who was in any case worth little. The essence of Mr. Read's attack ; on the poet was that the sense of guilt set Up by his behaviour to Annette acted as a repressive influence—as a .sort ot curse—on his spirit, effectually desiccating it. But, as Mr: Sperry points , out, a guilt-complex assumes secrecy as arm important concomitant ; and Wordsworth told everyone' about Annette whom he considered had any right to klion?' (including his wife and sister). Mr. Sperry seems to. think there may be more in the theory that Jeffrey's mockery had a 'de.: pressing effect on Wordsworth, but points but that the attacki. ceased as early as /829, when Jeffrey left the Edinburgh; Review-21 years before the poet's death.
The solution would seem to be that Wordsworth (1) wrote- too much, on too circumscribed a series of subjects, ancl' (2) worked his famous theory of diction too hard. The fast mistake resulted, in the end, when the vein had been worked out, in dullness -and " unreality," the second in prosaic flatriesie and occasional downright bathos.
The only fallacy, I seem to detect in Mr. Sperry's argun*lif lies in the following judgement "This delayed springtime' might seem to have augured for Wordsworth an autumn' harvest of better verse than is usually reaped by ageing poets.. Probably the exact reverse is the truth ; for in matters: Or the mind, as in matters of the body, a skill that is only mastered in the late twenties or the early thirties neyer becomes secend nature." On the contrary, few lutists of Wordsworth's statiue achieve a finished technique before they are thirty. The point 'surely is that lyric poetry is an inalienable prerogative of youth, and that Wordsworth began to write it too late, in life—and persisted in doing so.
There is mtich more , in this admirable monograph thañ
have had space to touch on here. Let me end with another quotation,, peculiarly pertinent to the occasion : `.` There is no known ciretimlocution by ,which a saint ,or an artist Can avoid the appearance' of egotism.' Wordswerth not only appeared egotistical he was so ; but the sense of his vocation.
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justified him, in all but the most aggressively philistine. eyes, in the undeviating attitude he assumed towards the world—in his rigid independence—even in his appearance (only appearance this time) of inhumanity: The immense, importance of the figure he cuts for us today is a further and deeper justification. To think of him as a prophet, in the social sense,:is no longer aS absurd or paradoxical as it would haVe seemed 15 or 20 ')rears ago.' For the subject of Wordsworth is—like that of the law--a creative one ; its solutions differ according to the position in time and space occupied by!'
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