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Expostulation And Reply

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Joseph Warren Beach
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Extract

The poet Wordsworth has been for a century the synonym of wholesomeness and piety. It is only within the past decade that it has become the fashion to regard him as a dangerous influence. There is a school of critics at the present moment who go about sadly shaking their heads over Wordsworth's case. They think it a pity that, like Shelley, he should have devoted so fine a talent to the propagation of a subtly vicious teaching.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , June 1925 , pp. 346 - 361
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1925

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References

1 The fountain head of all the philosophy implied in the criticism of Wordsworth by Professor Babbitt and Professor Cerf would seem to be an essay by Mr. Paul Elmer More entitled “Definitions of Dualism” and included in The Drift of Romanticism, the eighth volume of Shelburne Essays, 1913. This is a serious and plausible attempt to give some account of “the relation of the human soul to nature.” But the “insight” on which Mr. More relies so much for guidance among these mysteries does not seem to me essentially different from the “auxiliar light” of Wordsworth's Prelude, or what he calls in the Intimations Ode the “master-light of all our seeing,” which again does not seem essentially different from what Coleridge calls in his great Ode the voice from the soul,

“A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,

Of all sweet sounds the life and element.“

2 Legouis, The Early Life of Wordsworth, tr. by J. W. Matthews, London, 1897 (see especially Book III, Chapter I, sections iv and v, and Chapter II). Beatty, William Wordsworth, his Doctrine and Art in their Historical Relations, University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, No. 17, Madison, 1922 (see especially Chapters VI, VII, and X, and particularly pp. 189-191). Professor Beatty presents the most complete systematic study of Wordsworth's philosophy of Nature and of the effect of the associationist psychology on Wordsworth's conception of the relation between man's mind and the outer world. My little essay was written several years ago and before my attention had been drawn to Professor Beatty's brilliant and detailed study; but I am gratified to find how nearly my conclusions agree, in general and in detail, with those of so notable a scholar. The main point of difference lies in the much greater stress laid by Professor Beatty on systematic and consistent philosophy in Wordsworth.

3 The Prelude, XI, 293-305.

4 II, 362-70. Observe that this was written probably before Coleridge's Dejection which developes the same doctrine. Professor Cerf (p. 620) cites Coleridge's doctrine as sounder than Wordsworth's; but here they are the same.

5 I, 401.

6 I, 409.

7 II, 292-93.

8 III, 106-7.

9 III, 117-21.

10 XIII, 18-37.

11 See, for example, Professor Cerf, p. 618.

12 P. 638.

13 Cf. also Professor Beatty, especially Chapter X.

14 See especially Books VIII and XIII.

15 VIII, 665-79.

16 P. 617.

17 A Slumber did my Spirit Seal.

18 Lines Written in Early Spring.

19 P. 622.