22

GOETHE'S CHILDHOOD.

look my fill at the setting sun, which went down directly opposite my windows. And when, at the same time, I saw the neighbours wandering through their gardens taking care of their flowers, the children playing, parties of friends enjoying themselves, and could hear the bowls rolling and the nine pins dropping, it early excited within me a feeling of solitude, and a sense of vague longing resulting from it, which, conspiring with the seriousness and awe implanted in me by nature, exerted its influence at an early age, and shewed itself more distinctly in after years. The old, many cornered, and gloomy arrangement of the house was moreover adapted to awaken dread and terror in childish minds. Unfortunately, too, the principle of discipline that young persons should be early deprived of all fear for the awful and invisible, and accustomed to the terrible, still prevailed. We children, therefore, were compelled to sleep alone, and when we found this impossible, and softly slipped from our beds to seek the society of the servants and maids, our father, with his dressing-gown turned inside out, which disguised him sufficiently for the purpose, placed himself in the way, and frightened us back to our resting-places. The evil effect of this any one may imagine. How is he who is encompassed with a double terror to be emancipated from fear? My mother, always cheerful and gay, and willing to render others so, discovered a much better pedagogical expedient. She managed to gain her end by rewards. It was the season for peaches, the plentiful enjoyment of

EARLY SUBJECTIVENESS.

23

which she promised us every morning if we overcame our fears during the night. In this way she succeeded, and both parties were satisfied."*

We have quoted these interesting cases as illustrating the idiosyncracies of Genius in Childhood, and we have cited the two instances of Richter and Goethe from Wordsworth's close relationship to them both, by the marriage in him of the tenderness and fancy of the one, with the iron art and imagination of the other. But Wordsworth could not have written in lively and interesting prose the narrative of his early days by Esthwaite lake; His memory did not linger over the impressions which make autobiography delightful to the general reader: He does not mention incidents, and particularize days, but he generalises boldly the individualities of scenery. We think he erred greatly in not making the Prelude to partake more of the character of the Excursion; His own narrative of his childhood and boyhood wants more objective and actual interest. We are grieved to see that at this time his nurse, his schoolmaster, his playmates were not objects of great interest to him; it is true they were grouped into artistic relationship afterwards, they became furniture for the Poet's study by and by; we would have had them occupying a more human place now. But neither then nor at any time could he glide easily into the peculiar humours and individualities of people around him. He speaks of his being alone, and being a trouble to the peace that dwelt among his companions. Every

* Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit, p. p. 3, 4,

1

man is a trouble to us, who is among us, but not with us. He tells us how he felt the self-sufficing power of solitude. And solitude seems pressed upon our attention wherever we notice him; all other forms and figures are lost sight of. We see only the long chain of mountains, the loneliness of the lake, and the one figure of the musing boy by the side of all. The song of the invisible bird among the ruins of the Old Chauntry, over the cross-legged knight, and the old stone abbot, seems to strike more our thought, and his, than the picture of the village inn, and the sports and gladness of boyhood. The wren singing in the church was an incident principally subjective. Nothing was interesting to Wordsworth even at that early age that was not subjective. In that "Auxiliar power" which he has celebrated streaming from his own mind, and bestowing on the sun his splendour, and darkening in the presence of his eye the thunder storm,—we behold how the spirit of the boy begins to react on nature, and now trace the first intimations of that peculiarity of his genius to absorb the perception of personality in the sense of being. Even thus early his mind became an alembic in which things perceived, lost their identity in his own. It may seem premature and strange to discuss, or hint at this question and topic, now in these first years of boyhood. But Wordsworth was no ordinary boy, though it would be very wonderful to have revealed to us many a child's thoughts. He was haunted early as he plainly enough shows us with that mischievous tendency, that curse of our age, though it possibly never became this to him, to

sponge out for the most part objective being, or to make it only a wing on which to float away through the vast void of subjective and indefinite abstraction. From this he was ultimately saved. But the feeling and the tendency beset him. The childhood of Wordsworth unfortunately has proved the manhood of millions of men in our age, he says

"I felt the sentiment of being spread

O'er all that moves, and all that seemeth still."

But it is a glittering, cold, unsubstantial page that sentiment of being, it affects us personally like the glaring wide open eyes of a beautiful corpse, or say, the eyeless socket of a dead universe.

We have reached the first pause in life-school days, school haunts, and school associations must be left behind, and the Mountains exchanged for the Fens: for Cambridge then was a very different place to Cambridge now,—there were then the stately colleges, which awe the spirit and soothe the heart, the petrified religions of the middle ages; but many of those noble structures which now meet the eye were not erected until a later period; the change however would be great. Some time was allowed, during which thought collected her forces and perhaps arranged some plans. To such a youth surely a time like this, an interval between the School and the University, between the Youth and the Manhood of life, would not be thrown away. The mind perhaps needs some such pause as this-Milton had it: the time for concentrated and fixed review and forethought,-when all the powers are standing on tiptoe

D

26

THE NIGHT BEFORE KNIGHTHOOD.

with expectation of what is to be,-when over the deep future, whisperings call, and from the deep heart, echoes answer,-when Imagination, and Conscience, and Motive, and Will, stand looking at each other,-when all the powers are waiting for the curtain to draw up, and the drama to commence. How solemn to all eyes is that moment in the history of youth. But indeed every moment in life is solemn, for does not a vast ocean untracked lie before, and is there not a whole wide region behind?

The University is the portal to the world. The young Knight in the ancient days of chivalry watched all the long dark hours of the night in the church, before he received his spurs, his sword, and his knightly character. He was left to pace to and fro the aisles, to bow himself before the altar-the last sunbeam looked in through the lofty window and saw him there. Cold starbeam and moonbeam, and earliest sunbeam shone over the nave and transept, through the stained glass, and saw him still watching and praying preparing himself for the battle-field. The image may provoke a smile on many a face; the occupations may suppose so mournful a contrast between the knightly preparations and the University career, and to this it must be answered, the intention in either instance is the same-the consecration of lofty powers, and opportunities for lofty work. Say indeed if the hours intended for Sacrament be dedicated to folly, still now as in every age it is the Heart which constitutes the Sacrament. We indeed think that many of the most sacred purposes of the Univer