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THE BRETHREN OF THE LAKES.

in his private and social relations with his words as Author and Teacher ? To what extent was he a mere Artist, to what extent was he a Man? These are the questions, and these have to students of human character absorbing interest.

The character of William Wordsworth is curiously interesting to us, for he illustrates a most remarkable place in the literary history of our country. He stands as the central light of a new school of Poetry. It was for some time the fashion to class Him with Coleridge and Southey, and two or three others, beneath the general denomination of the Lake School; in fact nothing could be more false in classification. Southey was fond of recounting the story of human interest. He wanted the lofty imagination, and the deep intuition to make the Epic Poet, but his tastes lay entirely with that school. Coleridge was, indeed, the Poet of Metaphysical Analysis and colour, of all men most liberated from the actual world in the flights of his fancy, and yet preserving the balance of his wings steadily aloft, through fields of azure and gold, reflecting themselves on his pages. Neither of these although possessed of a very clear personal identity among Poets, can be regarded as the centre of a school, certainly not as having in their Poet character greatly influenced their age. But Wordsworth stands as a Poet at the centre and head of a new Order and Æra. He not only created a new school, but he greatly influenced all other schools. There is not one of all the young Poets-the men who are now read-who has not derived from him

WHAT IS ESTHETIC BIOGRAPHY.

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light and strength. He is as lonely in his place of power as either Milton or Shakspere, and he has exercised and will exercise a more perennial influence than any writer since those illustrious masters. The reason of this we shall analyse presently; meantime this is the foundation of his great claim on our homage-this constitutes our interest in him, that He is the greatest Subjective Poet of our language. It is also true that more than is perceptible either in Shakspere or Milton, his poems constitute his life; this may be regarded as either praise or blame; it seems as if he lived only to record in verse his own experiences, emotions, and volitions; and hence equally with the poets to whom reference has been made it be said he does not need a biographer; then let us hope that we may not be wasting the reader's time while we attempt to make him the expositor of his own verse and philosophy.

may

By Esthetic Biography is simply intended a Life in its Ideal Attitudes. A life sketched from the Artist's point of vision, in which the faces, and dates, and events, shall be subsidiary to their effect on the study and habits of thought of the subject of his life. Thus there is no interference at all with the affectionate and voluminous life of Dr. Wordsworth, the poet's nephew. The aim throughout of the present author is, simply interfusion, and as he has said before, exposition; partially to bring the life and the poem into their mutual aspect, and contemplate them from one point of vision, and so shew how the life, and habits, and friendships, of the poet acted on his works; and again, by doing this to

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ESTHETIC BIOGRAPHY

arrive if possible at the central principles of the poet's genius-the roots from whence sprang those glorious branches, and fruitful and blossoming boughs of peculiar thought and fancy, which have made him so illustrious as a teacher and writer.

Thus, then, narrative in the ordinary sense of the word forms but a small portion of the present plan. Dissertation, and Illustration, and Elucidation, are of far more import to it, and however impertinent the office of guide sometimes is, there are those who will be grateful to one who will be, through these many volumes a mental cicerone, halting here and there to say to them, "this is beautiful,"

This volume is called an Esthetic Biography. It does not take that for life which is regarded as such by ordinary biographies. It regards rather the hidden life. Biography usually concerns itself with the seen and the known; the river runs along in the open day, in the bright, clear sunshine. The life of the Statesman-the Warrior-the Philanthropist, cannot be usually Esthetic; life with them cannot be an art; but this life is fed by unseen brooks and streams; they reflect shadows from the dim, obscure nooks of little village bays and solitary spots. It is true that every man has a life hidden from the world; nor is it the business of the world, either the prating, or the thinking, or the reading world to attempt to draw that life from its obscurity. But there are some men who have unfolded their life to us; their secret and hidden life, in their writings, and we find in their life the working of principles, and we no

tice the influence of inner circumstances. There is a world within a world, which contains within itself the principles of unity, An Esthetic Biography descends to that world; it does not regard the mental life as unimportant, or less important, but much more so than the outer, since it is the spring and fountain of all outer life. In truth all those dramas and fictions are æsthetic biographies, which unwind through the long soliloquy, and meditation, and conversation, the secret clue of motive. But this is a world of which most people know but little, the world of inner facts,-facts by the bye, usually ignored by Compts and others, and therefore the actors on the bustling stage of outer life engage the attention most.

Most men feel no interest in tracking the course and the developement of a Passion, and noting it may be how in the kingdom of the mind one tyrannic and dominant Impulse overturns another; how the dynasty of passion perhaps yields at last altogether to the dynasty of Intelligence; or how the empire of passion merges in the anarchy of Crime. How the kingdom of mind has its own various spots of light and shade; recesses in whose umbrageous solitudes the great thoughts linger and fix their home; and open spaces where the people of fancy and affection pitch their tents; and how all these peoples, sometimes in commotion and sometimes in tranquility, pursue their way through the system of the soul. Now the poet makes us acquainted with all these, for they are his world; he watches their movements; he detects their points of

weakness and of strength; he has but little outerworld. Wordsworth for instance, whose memoirs we now propose to run through and link together, had but little Objective history; his Poems are his Life; they are a record of himself; of his own personal and private thoughts. No man depended less on what the outer could do for him, although he allowed the outer world to make an impression on him; say rather he allowed the world to take him wheresoever it listed, but insisted on preserving his own impressions of it, and giving them forth in independent tones and utterances.

For such men as Schiller, or Wordsworth, or Goethe, an Esthetic or Subjective biography, is the only possible biography.

In the course of the following pages our attempt will be to connect the various portions of our author's history into a life. Biographies are of various characters. We have the Boswellian: a style of biography the interest of which seems to transcend its morality,-in a few exceptional instances it may be true that our ideal does not suffer by the nearness of our approach, and Johnson's is one. Wordsworth himself once remarked to the writer of this volume that "by-and-by the works of Johnson would be principally remarkable and valuable as commentaries on Boswell's life of him." Wordsworth's life is interesting as elucidating his works. A great life should be sketched as a painting, or wrought as a piece of sculpture, it should be the result of an acquaintance with the subject of it;-but what acquaintance? There are men who must be seen near at