Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 1. No 1, June 1850

Heed not, wild Rover once through heath and glen.
Who mad'st at length the better life thy choice.
Heed not such onset! Nay, if praise of men
To thee appear not an unmeaning voice,
Lift up that gray-haired forehead and rejoice
In the just tribute of thy poet's pen.

Lamb in thanking the poet for his strange but clever poem, asked "Where was 'The Wagoner?'" of which he retained a pleasant remembrance from hearing Wordsworth read it in MS. when first written in 1806. Pleased with the remembrance of the friendly essayist, the poet determined on sending "The Wagoner" to press – and in 1815 the poem appeared with a dedication to his old friend who had thought so favorably of it. Another publication of this period which found still greater favor with many of his admirers, was "The White Doe of Rylstone;" founded on a tradition connected with the beautiful scenery that surrounds Bolton Priory, and on a ballad in Percy's collection called "The Rising of the North."

His next poem of consequence in the history of his mind is "The River Duddon," described in a noble series of sonnets, and containing some of his very finest poetry. The poem is dedicated to his brother, the Rev. Dr. Wordsworth, and appeared in 1820. The subject seems to have been suggested by Coleridge; who, among his many unfulfilled intentions, designed writing "The Brook," a poem which in his hands would surely have been a masterly performance.

The "Duddon" did much for the extension of Wordsworth's fame; and the public began to call, in consequence, for a fresh edition of his poems. The sneers of Byron, so frequent in his "Don Juan," such as,

Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope,
Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey,
Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,
The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthey;

and again in another place,

"Peddlers" and "Boats" and "Wagons." Oh! ye shades
Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this?

and somewhat further on,

The little boatman and his Peter Bell
Can sneer at him who drew Achitophel,

fell comparatively harmless. The public had now found out (what was known only to a few before) that amid much novelty of construction and connected with some very homely heroes, there was a rich vein of the very noblest poetry throughout the whole of Wordsworth's works, such as was not to be found elsewhere in the whole body of English poetry. The author felt at the same time the truth of his own remark, that no really great poet had ever obtained an immediate reputation, or any popular recognition commensurate to his merits.

Wordsworth's last publication of importance was his "Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems," published in 1835. The new volume, however, rather sustained than added to his reputation. Some of the finer poems are additions to his Memorials of a Tour in Scotland, which have always ranked among the most delightful of his works.

In the same year Mr. Wordsworth received a pension of £300 a year from Sir Robert Peel's government, and permission to resign his office of Stamp Distributor in favor of his son. The remaining fifteen years of his life were therefore even less diversified by events of moment than any fifteen years previous had been. He seems henceforth to have surrendered himself wholly to the muse – and to contemplations suitable to his own habits of mind and to the lovely country in which he lived. This course of life, however, was varied by a tour to Italy in company with his friend, Mr. Crabb Robinson. The result of his visit, as far as poetry is concerned, was not remarkable.

On Southey's death Mr. Wordsworth was appointed Poet Laureate: an appropriate appointment, if such an office was to be retained at all – for the laurel dignified by the brows of Ben Johnson, Davenant, Dryden, Tom Warton, and Southey, had been sullied and degraded by appearing on the unworthy temples of Tate, Eusden, Whitehead, and Pye. Once, and once only, did Wordsworth sing in discharge of his office – on the occasion of Her Majesty's visit to the University of Cambridge. There is more obscurity, however, than poetry in what he wrote. Indeed, the Ode in question must be looked on as another addition to the numerous examples that we possess of how poor a figure the Muse invariably makes when the occasion of her appearance is such as the poet himself would not have selected for a voluntary invocation.

If Wordsworth was unfortunate – as he certainly was – in not finding any recognition of his merits till his hair was gray, he was luckier than other poets similarly situated have been in living to, a good old age, and in the full enjoyment of the amplest fame which his youthful dreams had ever pictured. His admirers have perhaps carried their idolatry too far: but there can be no doubt of the high position which he must always hold among British Poets. His style is simple, unaffected, and vigorous – his blank verse manly and idiomatic – his sentiments both noble and pathetic – and his images poetic and appropriate. His sonnets are among the finest in the language: Milton's scarcely finer. "I think," says Coleridge, "that Wordsworth possessed more of the genius of a great philosophic poet than any man I ever knew, or, as I believe, has existed in England since Milton; but it seems to me that he ought never to have abandoned the contemplative position which is peculiarly – perhaps I might say exclusively – fitted for him. His proper title is Spectator ab extra."

Mr. Wordsworth's works are rich in quotations suitable to the various phases of human life; and his name will be remembered not by his "Peter Bell," or his "Idiot Boy," or even his "Wagoner," but by his "Excursion," his "Laodamia," his "Tintern Abbey," some twenty of his sonnets, his "Daisy," and his "Yarrow Unvisited." The lineaments of his face will be perpetuated by Chantrey's noble bust; not by the pictures of it, which in too many cases justify the description that he gave of one of them in our hearing: "It is the head of a drover, or a common juryman, or a writer in the Edinburgh Review, or a speaker in the House of Commons: … as for the head of a poet, it is no such thing."

THE MOTHER'S FIRST DUTY

I would wish every mother to pay attention to the difference between a course of action, adopted in compliance with the authority, and between a conduct pursued for the sake of another.

The first proceeds from reasoning; the second flows from affection. The first may be abandoned, when the immediate cause may have ceased to exist; the latter will be permanent, as it did not depend upon circumstances, or accidental considerations, but is founded in a moral and constant principle.

In the case now before us, if the infant does not disappoint the hope of the mother, it will be a proof, first of affection, secondly, of confidence.

Of affection – for the earliest, and the most innocent wish to please, is that of the infant to please the mother. If it be questioned, whether that wish can at all exist in one so little advanced in development. I would again, as I do upon almost all occasions, appeal to the experience of mothers.

It is a proof, also, of confidence. Whenever an infant has been neglected; when the necessary attention has not been paid to its wants; and when, instead of the smile of kindness, it has been treated with the frown of severity; it will be difficult to restore it to that quiet and amiable disposition, in which it will wait for the gratification of its desires without impatience, and enjoy it without greediness.

If affection and confidence have once gained ground in the heart, it will be the first duty of the mother to do every thing in her power to encourage, to strengthen, and to elevate this principle. —Pestalozzi.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

The revival of gymnastics is, in my opinion, the most important step that has been done in that direction. The great merit of the gymnastic art is not the facility with which certain exercises are performed, or the qualification which they may give for certain exertions that require much energy and dexterity; though an attainment of that sort is by no means to be despised. But the greatest advantage resulting from a practice of these exercises, is the natural progress which is observed in the arrangement of them, beginning with those which, while they are easy in themselves, yet lead as a preparatory practice to others which are more complicated and more difficult. There is not, perhaps, any art in which it may be so clearly shown, that energies which appeared to be wanting, are to be produced, as it were, or at least are to be developed, by no other means than practice alone. This might afford a most useful hint to all those who are engaged in teaching any object of instruction, and who meet with difficulties in bringing their pupils to that proficiency which they had expected. Let them recommence on a new plan, in which the exercises shall be differently arranged, and the subjects brought forward in a manner that will admit of the natural progress from the easier to the more difficult. When talent is wanting altogether, I know that it can not be imparted by any system of education. But I have been taught by experience to consider the cases, in which talents of any kind are absolutely wanting, but very few. And in most cases, I have had the satisfaction to find, that a faculty which had been quite given over, instead of being developed, had been obstructed rather in its agency by a variety of exercises which tended to perplex or to deter from further exertion.

And here I would attend to a prejudice, which is common enough, concerning the use of gymnastics; it is frequently said, that they may be very good for those who are strong enough; but that those who are suffering from weakness of constitution would be altogether unequal to, and even endangered by, a practice of gymnastics.

Now, I will venture to say, that this rests merely upon a misunderstanding of the first principles of gymnastics: the exercises not only vary in proportion to the strength of individuals; but exercises may be, and have been devised, for those also who were decidedly suffering. And I have consulted the authority of the first physicians, who declared, that in cases which had come under their personal observation, individuals affected with pulmonary complaints, if these had not already proceeded too far, had been materially relieved and benefited by a constant practice of the few and simple exercises, which the system in such cases proposes.

And for this very reason, that exercises may be devised for every age, and for every degree of bodily strength, however reduced, I consider it to be essential, that mothers should make themselves acquainted with the principles of gymnastics, in order that, among the elementary and preparatory exercises, they may be able to select those which, according to circumstances, will be most likely to suit and benefit their children.

If the physical advantage of gymnastics is great and incontrovertible, I would contend, that the moral advantage resulting from them is as valuable. I would again appeal to your own observation. You have seen a number of schools in Germany and Switzerland, of which gymnastics formed a leading feature; and I recollect that in our conversations on the subject, you made the remark, which exactly agrees with my own experience, that gymnastics, well conducted, essentially contribute to render children not only cheerful and healthy, which, for moral education, are two all-important points, but also to promote among them a certain spirit of union, and a brotherly feeling, which is most gratifying to the observer: habits of industry, openness and frankness of character, personal courage, and a manly conduct in suffering pain, are also among the natural and constant consequences of an early and a continued practice of exercises on the gymnastic system. —Pestalozzi.

Married Men. – So good was he, that I now take the opportunity of making a confession which I have often had upon my lips, but have hesitated to make from the fear of drawing upon myself the hatred of every married woman. But now I will run the risk – so now for it – some time or other, people must unburden their hearts. I confess, then, that I never find, and never have found a man more lovable, more captivating than when he is a married man; that is to say, a good married man. A man is never so handsome, never so perfect in my eyes as when he is married, as when he is a husband, and the father of a family, supporting, in his manly arms, wife and children, and the whole domestic circle, which, in his entrance into the married state, closes around him and constitutes a part of his home and his world. He is not merely ennobled by this position, but he is actually beautified by it. Then he appears to me as the crown of creation; and it is only such a man as this who is dangerous to me, and with whom I am inclined to fall in love. But then propriety forbids it. And Moses, and all European legislators declare it to be sinful, and all married women would consider it a sacred duty to stone me.

Nevertheless, I can not prevent the thing. It is so, and it can not be otherwise, and my only hope of appeasing those who are excited against me is in my further confession, that no love affects me so pleasantly; the contemplation of no happiness makes me so happy, as that between married people. It is amazing to myself, because it seems to me, that I living unmarried, or mateless, have with that happiness little to do. But it is so, and it always was so. —Miss Bremer.

[From the London Examiner.]

SIDNEY SMITH ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY

Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy; delivered at the Royal Institution, in the years 1804, 1805, and 1806. By the late Rev. Sydney Smith, M.A. Longman and Co.

How difficult it is to discover the merits of a manuscript appears from the history of this book. Lord Jeffrey, consulted as to the expediency of its publication, while it yet existed but in pen and ink, gave a decidedly adverse opinion. But some hundred copies having been printed for private distribution, and a copy reaching Lord Jeffrey, he hastened, with his accustomed candor and sweetness of disposition, to retract his hostile verdict, after reading the book in print; and (only three days before he was attacked by the illness which terminated his valuable life) thus wrote to Sydney Smith's widow:

"I am now satisfied that in what I then said, I did great and grievous injustice to the merit of these lectures, and was quite wrong in dissuading their publication, or concluding they would add nothing to the reputation of the author; on the contrary, my firm impression is, that, with a few exceptions, they will do him as much credit as any thing he ever wrote, and produce, on the whole, a stronger impression of the force and vivacity of his intellect, as well as a truer and more engaging view of his character, than most of what the world has yet seen of his writings."

One practical application of this anecdote is to enforce the importance of calligraphical studies upon authors. A hieroglyphical hand is the false medium excluding British authors from the public; In general we should say that there is no class of men whose education in this respect is so deplorably imperfect, or to whom "only six lessons" would so often be priceless.

We must confess that the book before us has taken us by surprise, notwithstanding our affectionate esteem and admiration for its writer. It has raised our estimate of the power and range of his intellect, of his insight into human character, of his well-balanced judgment, of his tolerance and charity undebased by compromise with the vicious or mean, of the vigorous play of his thoughts, of the sustained beauty of his style, of his eloquence as well as his humor, and of his profundity no less than of his wit. Hurriedly composed and unrevised though the lectures obviously are, fragmentary as the condition is in which they have been preserved, they are an invaluable addition to English literature.

Their delivery is associated with the first outbreak of a fashion ridiculed by Lord Byron in his Beppo and his Blues. The poet's satirical touches notwithstanding, we think that those lectures at the Royal Institution were even more wanted by their fashionable auditors at the time, than the similar prelections at Mechanics' Institutes which came in vogue for less fashionable auditors some few years later. Had it only been possible to insure the services of a series of Sydney Smiths, the Institution might have gone on lecturing to the present day to the unspeakable advantage of all parties concerned. What innumerable fopperies in literature, in politics, in religion, we might thus have escaped, it is not easy to conjecture!

The "Elementary Sketches" were delivered soon after the commencement of Sydney's metropolitan career, and bear strong marks of his recent residence in Edinburgh. In their general outline they closely approximate to the course delivered from the moral philosophy chairs of Scotch Universities. The division of the subject is the same; the authorities most frequently and panegyrically cited are the same; the principles and opinions set forth are in the main the same. Sydney Smith's moral philosophy belongs undeniably to the Scotch school – to the school of Reid, Stewart, and Adam Smith. But his "sketches" do not the less indicate an original thinker, a master in the science taught, and one who can suggest to the great men we have named almost as much as he receives from them.

The book is an excellent illustration of what could be gained by engrafting the Edinburgh philosophy on a full-grown healthy English intellect. The habits of English society, and the classical tastes imbibed at an English University, preserved Sydney Smith from that touch of pedantry which characterized the thinkers of the Scotch universities, trained in a provincial sphere, and trammeled by the Calvinistic logic even after they had freed themselves from the Calvinistic theology. Without disparaging the Edinburgh school of literature, the fact must be admitted that its most prominent ornaments have generally had the advantage of a "foreign" education. Hume and Black studied in France; Adam Smith was the member of an English university; Jeffrey had become familiar with Oxford, though he did not stay there; Homer was caught young, and civilized at Hackney; and Mackintosh and Brougham, thoroughly Scotch-bred, expanded amazingly when transplanted to the south. It may be a national weakness, but it occurs to us that Sydney Smith, who was southern born as well as bred, is still more free from narrownesses and angularities than any of them.

The healthy and genial nature of the man accounts for his most characteristic excellencies, but this book exhibits much we had not looked for. The lectures on the passions evince a power of comprehending and sympathizing with what is great in the emotional part of human nature for which we were not prepared. The lectures on the conduct of the understanding, and on habit, show that the writer had studied profoundly and successfully the discipline of the mind and character. The lectures on the beautiful are pervaded by a healthy and unaffected appreciation of the loveliness of external nature. And combined with these high qualities, is that incessant play of witty and humorous fancy (perhaps the only certain safeguard against sentimental and systematic excesses, and, when duly restrained by the judgment and moral sense, the best corrective of hasty philosophizing), so peculiar to Sydney Smith. Much of all that we have mentioned is indeed and undoubtedly attributable to the original constitution of Smith's mind; but for much he was also, beyond all question, indebted to the greater freedom of thought and conversation which (as compared with the Scotch) has always characterized literary and social opinion in England.

The topics discussed in the lectures naturally resolve themselves into, and are arranged in, three divisions. We have an analysis of the thinking faculties, or the powers of perception, conception, and reasoning; an analysis of the powers of taste, or of what Schiller and other Germans designate the æsthetical part of our nature; and an exposition of the "active powers of the mind," as they are designated in the nomenclature of the school of Reid, the appetites, passions, and will. All these themes are discussed with constant reference to a practical application of the knowledge conveyed. Every thing is treated in subordination to the establishment of rules for the right conduct of the understanding, and the formation of good habits. These practical lessons for the strengthening of the reason, and the regulation of the emotions and imagination, constitute what, in the language of Sydney Smith, and the school to which he belongs, is called "Moral Philosophy."

Apart from any particular school, the impression of the author left by the perusal of his lectures is that he was a man of considerable reading in books, but far more deeply read in the minds of those he encountered in society. It is in this extensive knowledge of the world, confirming and maturing the judgments suggested by his wisely-balanced powers of feeling and humor, that the superiority of Smith over the rest of his school consists. He knows men not merely as they are represented in books, but as they actually are; he knows them not only as they exist in a provincial sphere, narrowed by petty interests and trammeled by pedantic opinion, but as they exist in the freest community of the world, where boundless ambition and enterprise find full scope.

It appears to us that Sidney Smith is most perfectly at home – most entirely in his element – when discussing the "active powers" of man, or those impulses in which originate the practical business of life. Scarcely, if at all, secondary in point of excellence to his remarks on these topics, are those which he makes on the sublime and beautiful (a fact for which many will not be prepared), and on wit and humor (which every body will have expected). The least conclusive and satisfactory of his discussions are those which relate to the intellectual powers, or the anatomy of mind. With reference to this part of the course, however, it must be kept in remembrance that here, more than in the other two departments, he was fettered by the necessity of being popular in his language, and brief and striking in his illustrations, in order to keep within the range of the understandings and intellects of his auditory. These earlier lectures, too, survive in a more fragmentary and dilapidated condition than the rest. And after all, even where we seem to miss a sufficiently extensive and intimate acquaintance with the greatest and best writers on the subjects handled, or a sufficiently subtle and precise phraseology, we always find the redeeming qualities of lively and original conception, of witty and forcible illustration, and of sound manly sense most felicitously expressed.

In the general tone and tendency of the lectures there is something Socratic. There is the pervading common sense and practical turn of mind which characterized the Greek philosopher. There is the liberal tolerance, and the moral intrepidity. There is the amusement always insinuating or enforcing instruction. There is the conversational tone, and adaptation to the tastes and habits of the social circle. We feel that we are listening to a man who moves habitually in what is called the best society, who can relish and add a finishing grace to the pleasures of those portions of the community, but who retains unsophisticated his estimate of higher and more important matters, and whose incessant aim is to engraft a better and worthier tone of thought and aspiration upon the predominating frivolity of his associates. Nothing can be more graceful or charming than the way in which Sydney accommodates himself to the habitual language and thoughts of his brilliant auditory; nothing more manly or strengthening than the sound practical lessons he reads to them. Such a manual should now be invaluable to our aristocracy. Let them thoroughly embue themselves with its precepts, and do their best to act as largely as possible upon its suggestions. They can have no better chance of maintaining their position in the front of English society.