A POET'S LETTERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 798, 5 November 1954, Page 13

A POET'S LETTERS

LETTERS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. selected by Philip Wayne. the World's Classies: Géofitey Cutnberlege, Oxford University Press, English price 5/-. NE feads the letters of a great poet for variolis reasohs-not least among them, the hope of discovéring some part of the cifcumstantial scaffolding of his poems. Ifi the case of Wordsworth there is addéd another main reason for scrutinyto find a clué why poetry of a Lueétetian magnificence gave place to verse of pedestrian bathos. These let-

ters do afford the hint of a cause. There are strong contrasts of style and content between the earlier and latér letters of Wordsworth. In June, 1794, he writes t6 W. Mathews condemning "hereditary distinctions and privileged orders of every Species." In Déceéthber, 1821, he writes to James Lesh: "When I was young, giving myself éredit for qualities which I did hot posséss, aiid méasuring mankind by that standard, I thought it derogatory to human nature to sét up Property in preference to Person, as 4 title for legislative power. That notion has vafiished. . ." It ig hatdly the part of the literary | critic to disctiss in which view Words- | wofth was neater the truth. But after ; (continued on néxt page)

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1805 a gradual, permanent and profound change is evident in Wordsworth’s view of society and of himself. From intuitive pantheism he progresses, not to a Christian vision of God immanent in His creation. but to stoic moralism"Every great Poet is a Teacher: I wish either to be considered as a Teacher, or nothing. . ." Wordsworth was indeed -at all times a man of acute moral feel‘ing. At the age of thirty-four he wrote to De Quincey, then at Oxford: "... I -am anxious to hear .. . above all, that you have not been seduced into unworthy pleasures or pursuits. . . I need "not say to you that there is not’ true dignity but in virtue and temperance, and, let me add, chastity. . .". These words might come wéll from the pen of a Bishop; but scarcely from an older writer to a young literary acquaintance. _ Wordsworth’s positive counsels are over-tame. His scathing exhortation of "Coleridge in 1808 seems the voice of 'one folded in the coils of the Cold _ Dragon who observes the danger of another in the gullet of the Hot Dragon, but not, alas, his own. The estrangefrom Coleridge deprived Wordsworth of an irreplaceable literary collaborator. Thenceforward he enters a private winter, with no profound literary companionship, excepting that of his sister. The relation between William and. Dorothy Wordsworth has been often extolled. I hazard the view that its exclusive nature, beyond \all other factors, led to the impotence of his genius and her own eventual mental collapse. At least,‘ his letters offer ground for this

| conjecture.

James K.

Baxter