ART. IX. THE ROMANTIC ELEMENT IN WORDS

WORTH

THE great difficulty in the discussion of this subject is to determine the meaning of the term "romanticism." There have been innumerable definitions offered, and many disputes over the question, but it seems to be as far from settled as ever. One view, that of Heine, also upheld by Professor Beers, has attained considerable prominence: the romantic movement was a return to the Middle Ages for the inspiration and sources of poetry, or "die Wiedererweckung der Poesie des Mittelalters." Professor Beers quotes Heine as saying: "All the poetry of the Middle Ages has a certain definite character, through which it differs from the poetry of the Greeks and Romans. In reference to this difference the former is called romantic, the latter classic. These names, however, are misleading, and have hitherto caused the most vexatious confusion." This is a first-class definition for purely scientific investigation, where an exact standard must be laid down and everything measured by that; but it is too narrow for the subject in hand. General considerations are preferable, and we turn to Walter Pater's discussion of this term as quoted by Professor Phelps: "The essential classical element is that quality of order in beauty. It is the addition of strangeness to beauty that constitutes the romantic character in art. . . . It is the addition of curiosity to the desire of beauty that constitutes the romantic temper.. . . The essential elements, then, of the romantic spirit are curiosity and the love of beauty; and it is as the accidental effects of these qualities only that it seeks the middle age." This is not an exact definition of the subject matter of romantic poetry, as was the other, but rather indicates the romantic "mood." Romanticism and classicism are not schools of poetry, but "spirits" present to a greater or less degree in all poetry. We may consider together with this the idea of Dr. F. H. Hedge, as given by Professor Phelps: "The essence of romance is mystery. It is the essence of something hidden, of imperfect revelation. . . . The peculiarity of the classic style

is reserve, self-suppression of the writer. . . . The romantic is

To the Greeks the world was a fact, to us

it is a problem. Byron is simply and wholly romantic, with no tincture of classicism in his nature or works." Just one more hint along the same line. Mr. Saintsbury says: "The terins 'classic' and 'romantic' apply to treatment, not to subject, and the difference is that the treatment is classic when the idea is represented as directly and with as exact an adaptation of form as possible, while it is romantic when the idea is left to the reader's faculty of divination assisted only by suggestion and symbol." It is the general idea of the writers last quoted which reaches best the heart of romanticism. The mood of the author, the spirit in which he writes, and hence the manner in which he deals with his subject, these are the tests. Classicism is objective, restrained, complete; romanticism is subjective, free, constantly aspiring, and suggestive. These spirits manifest themselves in an author's choice of subjects, his style, and especially in his method of treatment. It is by studying these that conclusions are reached as to the romantic elements in a poet.

Wordsworth is a tremendous spirit: independent, solitary, forceful, full of inquiry, and of great strength. He is essentially revolutionary in character. He is the first conscious poet of nature for nature's sake, and is the leader of the reaction against the school of Pope and Dryden. This very fact, that he took such a prominent part in the overthrow of the classical school, shows that there is something essentially romantic in his make-up. Yet there exists, as there must in such a sturdy spirit, a classic tendency, something which we do not find in the extreme romanticists of his age; or, to put it the other way, we find in Coleridge and Keats and Shelley, in a marked degree, a trait which is scarcely observable in Wordsworth. That wild, weird cry of Shelley, that extravagant delicate sensuousness of Keats, that varied and strange beauty of Coleridge, Wordsworth does not possess, but he does possess that which stamps him as essentially romantic and makes him the greatest poet of his age: deep, meditative, inquiring spirit; that inner eye which perceived the deeper meaning of all his subjects and was a true interpreter of realms before unknown

to man. The classical element in his poetry, which prevents his going to the extremes of his contemporaries and which aids remarkably that wonderful insight in its search after the truths of life, is self-restraint. "There is a volition and self-government in every line of his poetry, and his best thoughts come from his steady resistance to the ebb and flow of ordinary desires and regrets. He contests the ground inch by inch with all despondent and indolent humors, and often, too, with movements of inconsiderate and wasteful joy." Thus Wordsworth is essentially romantic in possessing a deep, spiritual, inquiring and aspiring temperament rather than the superficial, cold, matter-of-fact, complete sense of the classic, yet one of his chief characteristics is self-control, as opposed to the free wild spirit of the pure romanticist. In this combination of the strongest element of the classic with the spiritual insight of the romantic lies the force which places Wordsworth in the front rank of poets. Tracing these elements of romanticism and classicism in Wordsworth's mind, they express themselves in (1) his treatment, (2) subject-matter, and (3) style; they come into conflict or they support each other; they, vary in strength, and they rise or fall in quality-the meditative inquiry sinking into metaphysics and the self-restraint into stubbornness.

First, with regard to the treatment. In the author's method of treating a subject lies the individuality that makes him what he is. The subject-matter and style are largely the result of environment, circumstances, and training, but the treatment portrays the spirit of the man. So it is with Wordsworth. He is always inquiring as deeply as possible into his theme; his treatment is subjective. He is satisfied with no superficial glance at nature or human life. His view is certainly not objective. He considers everything with regard to the spirit within it. Nature is to him not merely a collection of objects, of scenes, of views; but a universal spirit:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts,
And rolls through all things.

Wordsworth goes to the bottom of whatever he touches. All poets

before him had simply used nature as a background, as Shakespeare or Milton, or described some one scene, as Burns. Wordsworth taxes nature and describes her, and then tries to interpret her; to get behind the visible and to discover the meaning of it all and of what nature is the manifestation. When he turns to tell of his own life it is no mere narrative, but an interpretation of the growth of his spirit. His childhood is full of the deepest meaning. He sees how in every game of sport, in every experience he was absorbing nature, and how, step by step, he became conscious of his love for her. Then came his travels abroad and the effect of the French Revolution upon his spirit, his great hope in that cause, the utter despair resulting from the failure of the movement, in which his heart had been wholly centered, and then his interest in and study of nature, as aroused by his sister, which lifted him from his despondency. We can see here that his mind is absolutely subjective and can note its marvelous penetrating power. In one of his first poems, "Written In Very Early Youth," composed when he was sixteen years of age, we find:

Now, in this blank of things, a harmony
Home-felt, and home-created, comes to heal
That Grief for which the senses still supply
Fresh food; for only then, when memory
Is hushed, am I at rest.

He begins immediately to read the true meaning of a mood of nature and its effect upon his spirit. And so he continues, perhaps not in so many words revealing the inner meaning of his theme, but at least describing it so that it may reveal itself. Even in the "Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle," which would most of all be a poem of action, this moral element enters, and the best stanza is:

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky

The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

Is not this attitude toward his theme essentially romantic? It is contrary to the superficial manner of Pope. Can we not say that the man who wrote the "Intimations of Immortality," with all its deep thoughts, its spirituality, its aspiration, its hopes and long

ings, was a true romanticist? Yet there is a classic element present here. It is that saneness of treatment. He refuses to be carried away by the whirlwind of emotion which his subjectivity arouses in him. He is the exact opposite of Shelley in this particular. That poet can feel the deeper spirit of nature and is borne into a world of unutterable longing and idealism; he makes no move to stop his headlong career. Wordsworth, on the other hand, though he realizes nature as fully as Shelley, yet combats these tendencies and holds himself in check, refusing to be carried away by melancholy, as Shelley, or by ecstatic joy, as Keats. Wordsworth has ballast; the other two lack it. Mr. Hutton, in his essay on "The Genius of Wordsworth," illustrates this point most forcibly. He puts side by side two poems on the same subject, "The Fountain," one by Tennyson, the other by Wordsworth, and brings out the characteristics of Wordsworth's treatment of the subject by comparison. He shows how Tennyson is cast into a mood of reflection on the past by the fountain and remains there through the entire poem; a melancholy strain. Wordsworth is at first thrown into the same emotion, but, recovering himself, he refuses to be thus bound and turns to treat of the matter sanely and naturally. This sane method is also shown in the "Liberty Sonnets." He will not wander along, ranting on some hobby, but looks honestly and openly at the entire field and restrains whatever wild impulses he may have. You feel the power and masterful self-control of the mind behind the sonnets as you do not when Coleridge expresses himself freely and extravagantly. In this self-restraint Wordsworth resembles the classic school. Pope was entirely sane and matter-of-fact. His poetry lacked Wordworth's insight and subjectivity, but he prided himself upon his absolute refusal to soar, and condemned utterly those who did. Thus we have the two determining factors in Wordsworth's treatment of his themesubjectivity and self-restraint; the former romantic, the latter classic. These two are constantly present but in varying degree, the one contending against the other. The interpretative sense raising a tumult in his mind, which is ever seeking after expression and gives us those beautiful passages so apt and so often quoted, the restraint holding this tumult in check, now mastering