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Loading... Wordsworthby F. W. H. Myers
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Belongs to SeriesEnglish Men of Letters (Wordsworth)
The publication in 1798 of Lyrical Ballads, written by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is considered to have launched the Romantic movement. Published in 1881 in the first series of 'English Men of Letters', this biography of Wordsworth by classical scholar and psychical researcher F. W. H. Myers (1843-1901) shows how Wordsworth's profound imagination and thought characterised and shaped his literary era. He discusses the influence of Wordsworth's upbringing and love for the natural world on works such as The Excursion, and The Prelude, which are said to have marked the transition from neoclassicism to Romanticism. Showing Wordsworth to be widely respected as 'so much besides a poet', Myers describes the circumstances in which Wordsworth accepted the Laureateship in 1843, an apparent surrender to 'the establishment' which poets such as Robert Browning regarded as a betrayal of his own earlier radical idealism. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)821.7Literature English English poetry 1800-1837, romantic periodLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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These points aside, there is much of merit in this work, particularly for serious students of Wordsworth's poetry, or indeed of the Romantic movement, or of literature in the late 18th and early 19th centuries more generally. As a senior classicist, Myers writes with erudition and fluid grace, though this makes it slower for the modern non-expert reader to follow, especially when the references to classical and other authors come thick and fast. He does cover non-literary matters as well. The tracing of the author's political views is interesting. An early supporter of the French revolution, Wordsworth considered throwing in his lot with the moderate Girondins during his French sojourn in 1791-2, which would have meant almost certain death when the Jacobins took over and guillotined their opponents. Like many people, he was turned off the Revolution by the brutal excesses of the Reign of Terror, expressed in memorable terms by the author: "For first of all in that Revolution, Reason had appeared as it were in visible shape, and hand in hand with Pity and Virtue; then, as the welfare of the oppressed peasantry began to be lost sight of amid the brawls of the factions of Paris, all that was attractive and enthusiastic in the great movement seemed to disappear, but yet Reason might still be thought to find a closer realization here than among scenes more serene and fair; and, lastly, Reason set in blood and tyranny and there was no more hope from France"; and "....[France's] conduct towards Switzerland ..... decisively altered Wordsworth’s view. He saw her valiant spirit of self-defence corrupted into lust of glory; her eagerness for the abolition of unjust privilege turned into a contentment with equality of degradation under a despot’s heel".
Later Wordsworth became conservative in his views and opposed even reforms that are very moderate by our standards such as Catholic emancipation and the Great Reform Act; yet his conservatism was largely cultural and philosophical, rather than ideological. He loved his quiet and introspective life in the Lake District, and I totally understand why. His last 37 years were spent in the beautiful isolation of Rydal Mount, whose lovely gardens look over the beautiful and peaceful Rydal water. From the literary point of view, though, these was not his most productive years, and Myers considers his real genius limited to the 1798-1818 period at the latest, brusquely asserting that: "The gift then left him; he continued as wise and as earnest as ever, but his poems had no longer any potency, nor his existence much public importance". This includes his period as Poet Laureate in the last seven years of his life, when he produced no poems (he made his not having to do so a condition of accepting the post). During the heart of the productive period, he lived with his wife Mary and sister Dorothy at the more famous Dove Cottage by Grasmere, years of which were chronicled by Dorothy in her Grasmere Journal. Overall, I am glad I read this book, though it is difficult in places. ( )