WORDSWORTH Wordsworth was always primarily a poet and an artist. But he was also in a true sense a psychological and a philosophical poet, which fact or facts are necessary to grasp in order to understand the true import of his work. He not only "attended with care to the reports of the senses" and showed remarkable "ability to observe with accuracy things as they are in themselves," but also sedulously traced in his poems "the primary laws of our nature," attempting to show the action and reaction of mind upon its environment. Always strongly introspective, he revealed the workings of his own mind, or with rare insight transferred some of his own mental processes to those of his characters, giving them a verisimilitude to life. He was throughout his career profoundly interested in the growth of the mind, to which the long poem The Prelude is devoted, Not only did he consider deeply the origin and nature of human knowledge, but it was almost habitual with him to contemplate a given object in its largest and ultimate relations. He viewed social problems, political issues, incidents of every-day life, and external nature, in the light of moral and spiritual principles. Even when dealing with an ordinary landscape or a simple story, his mind reached outward to a horizon that is infinite and penetrated inward to a world that is spiritual. By virtue of this interpenetrating energy of mind, which perceived the ideal in the real, the spiritual in the sensuous, and which reverently applied ultimate moral principles with trans 91 forming effect to many phases of life, Wordsworth's poetry may be said to embody a religious philosophy. The spiritual growth of Wordsworth was steady and continuous. His outlook from any two points of his life more than a few years apart was not the same; he had undergone a change. He was constantly testing his past experiences by new truth or by new experiences, and thus he put into practice his deep belief in growth. The development in his philosophy of life was strikingly similar to that of Coleridge, although he was not so radically necessitarian in his youth nor so extremely transcendental in his mature years. The changes in him were also far more subtle than in Coleridge. Due, however, to a certain simplicity in his art and to his genuine sincerity, his poems accurately register the subtle changes; so that if one looks at the poems closely from a chronological point of view one can trace the story of the inner life of the poet. I The first chapter in this story is that of his childhood and youth. In the first two books of The Prelude, written between the age of twenty-eight and thirty, he gives an account of all that he could remember of significance that related to the building up of his soul in childhood. Although the Bible and the catechism were taught him, these did not take hold of him as did what we may call natural religion, derived at first hand from the influences of Nature. Though not able to define his experiences consciously, Nature from the beginning as of her own initiative wrought upon the sensitive mind of the child and held it as by fascination. Love, awe, and beauty were the prime elements in this devotion. Desire grew |