WORDSWORTH[346]

I remember hearing Lord Macaulay say, after Wordsworth’s death, when subscriptions were being collected to found a memorial of him, that ten years earlier more money could have been raised in Cambridge alone, to do honor to Wordsworth, than was now raised all through the country.  Lord Macaulay had, as we know, his own heightened and telling way of putting things, and we must always make allowance for it.  But probably it is true that Wordsworth has never, either before or since, been so accepted and popular, so established in possession of the minds of all who profess to care for poetry, as he was between the years 1830 and 1840, and at Cambridge.  From the very first, no doubt, he had his believers and witnesses.  But I have myself heard him declare that, for he knew not how many years, his poetry had never brought him in enough to buy his shoe-strings.  The poetry-reading public was very slow to recognize him, and was very easily drawn away from him.  Scott effaced him with this public.  Byron effaced him.

The death of Byron seemed, however, to make an opening for Wordsworth.  Scott, who had for some time ceased to produce poetry himself, and stood before the public as a great novelist; Scott, too genuine himself not to feel the profound genuineness of Wordsworth, and with an instinctive recognition of his firm hold on nature and of his local truth, always admired him sincerely, and praised him generously.  The influence of Coleridge upon young men of ability was then powerful, and was still gathering strength; this influence told entirely in favor of Wordsworth’s poetry.  Cambridge was a place where Coleridge’s influence had great action, and where Wordsworth’s poetry, therefore, flourished especially.  But even amongst the general public its sale grew large, the eminence of its author was widely recognized, and Rydal Mount[347] became an object of pilgrimage.  I remember Wordsworth relating how one of the pilgrims, a clergyman, asked him if he had ever written anything besides the Guide to the Lakes.  Yes, he answered modestly, he had written verses.  Not every pilgrim was a reader, but the vogue was established, and the stream of pilgrims came.

Mr. Tennyson’s decisive appearance dates from 1842.[348] One cannot say that he effaced Wordsworth as Scott and Byron had effaced him.  The poetry of Wordsworth had been so long before the public, the suffrage of good judges was so steady and so strong in its favor, that by 1842 the verdict of posterity, one may almost say, had been already pronounced, and Wordsworth’s English fame was secure.  But the vogue, the ear and applause of the great body of poetry-readers, never quite thoroughly perhaps his, he gradually lost more and more, and Mr. Tennyson gained them.  Mr. Tennyson drew to himself, and away from Wordsworth, the poetry-reading public, and the new generations.  Even in 1850, when Wordsworth died, this diminution of popularity was visible, and occasioned the remark of Lord Macaulay which I quoted at starting.