<SPAN name="2_His_Politics"></SPAN>
<h3><b>2. His Politics</b></h3>
<br/>
<p>"Just for a handful of silver he left us." Browning was asked if he
really meant the figure in <i>The Lost Leader</i> for Wordsworth, and
he
admitted that, though it was not a portrait, he had Wordsworth vaguely
in his mind. We do not nowadays believe that Wordsworth changed his
political opinions in order to be made distributor of stamps for the
county of Westmoreland, or even (as he afterwards became in addition)
for the county of Cumberland. Nor did Browning believe this. He did
believe, however, that Wordsworth was a turncoat, a renegade—a poet who
began as the champion of liberty and ended as its enemy. This is the
general view, and it seems to me to be unassailable.</p>
<p>Mr. A.V. Dicey, in a recent book, <i>The Statesmanship of Wordsworth</i>,
attempts to portray Wordsworth as a sort of early Mazzini—one who "by
many years anticipated, thought out, and announced the doctrine of
Nationalism, which during at least fifty years of the nineteenth
century
(1820-70) governed or told upon the foreign policy of every European
country." I think he exaggerates, but it cannot be denied that
Wordsworth said many wise things about nationality, and that he showed
a
true liberal instinct in the French wars, siding with the French in the
early days while they were fighting for liberty, and afterwards siding
against them when they were fighting for Napoleonic Imperialism.
Wordsworth had not yet abandoned his ardour for liberty when, in 1809,
he published his <i>Tract on the Convention of Cintra.</i> Those who
accuse
him of apostasy have in mind not his "Tract" and his sonnets of
war-time, but the later lapse of faith which resulted in his opposing
Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill, and in his sitting down
seriously to write sonnets in favour in capital punishment.</p>
<p>He began with an imagination which emphasized the natural goodness
of
man: he ended with an imagination which emphasized the natural evil of
man. He began with faith in liberty; he ended with faith in restraint.
Mr. Dicey admits much of the case against the later Wordsworth, but his
very defence of the poet is in itself an accusation. He contends, for
instance, that "it was natural that a man, who had in his youth seen
face to face the violence of the revolutionary struggle in France,
should have felt the danger of the Reform Act becoming the commencement
of anarchy and revolution in England." Natural it may have been, but
none the less it was a right-about-turn of the spirit. Wordsworth had
ceased to believe in liberty.</p>
<p>There is very little evidence, indeed, that in his later years
Wordsworth remained interested in liberty at all. The most important
evidence of the kind is that of Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, author of
<i>The Purgatory of Suicides</i>, who visited him in 1846 after serving
a
term in prison on a charge of sedition. Wordsworth received him and
said
to him: "You Chartists are right: you have a right to votes, only you
take the wrong way to obtain them. You must avoid physical violence."
Referring to the conversation, Mr. Dicey comments:—</p>
<div class="blkquot">
<p>At the age of seventy-six the spirit of the old revolutionist and of
the friend of the Girondins was still alive. He might not think much of
the Whigs, but within four years of his death Wordsworth was certainly
no Tory.</p>
</div>
<p>There is no reason, however, why we should trouble our heads over
the
question whether at the age of seventy-six Wordsworth was a Tory or
not.
It is only by the grace of God that any man escapes being a Tory long
before that. What is of interest to us is his attitude in the days of
his vitality, not of his senility. In regard to this, I agree that it
would be grossly unfair to accuse him of apostasy, simply because he at
first hailed the French Revolution as the return of the Golden Age—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,<br/>
</span><span>But to be young was very heaven!<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>—and ten or fifteen years later was to be found gloomily prophesying
against a premature peace with Napoleon. One cannot be sure that, if
one
had been living in those days oneself, one's faith in the Revolution
would have survived the September massacres and Napoleon undiminished.
Those who had at first believed that the reign of righteousness had
suddenly come down from Heaven must have been shocked to find that
human
nature was still red in tooth and claw in the new era. Not that the
massacres immediately alienated Wordsworth. In the year following them
he wrote in defence of the French Revolution, and incidentally
apologized for the execution of King Louis. "If you had attended," he
wrote in his unpublished <i>Apology for the French Revolution</i> in
1793,
"to the history of the French Revolution as minutely as its importance
demands, so far from stopping to bewail his death, you would rather
have
regretted that the blind fondness of his people had placed a human
being
in that monstrous situation which rendered him unaccountable before a
human tribunal." In <i>The Prelude</i>, too (which, it will be
remembered,
though it was written early, Wordsworth left to be published after his
death), we are given a perfect answer to those who would condemn the
French Revolution, or any similar uprising, on account of its
incidental
horrors:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span class="i11">When a taunt<br/>
</span><span>Was taken up by scoffers in their pride,<br/>
</span><span>Saying, "Behold the harvest that we reap<br/>
</span><span>From popular government and equality,"<br/>
</span><span>I clearly saw that neither these nor aught<br/>
</span><span>Of wild belief engrafted on their views<br/>
</span><span>By false philosophy had caused the woe,<br/>
</span><span>But a terrific reservoir of guilt<br/>
</span><span>And ignorance filled up from age to age.<br/>
</span><span>That would no longer hold its loathsome charge,<br/>
</span><span>But burst and spread in deluge through the land.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>Mr. Dicey insists that Wordsworth's attitude in regard to the
horrors
of September proves "the statesmanlike calmness and firmness of his
judgment." Wordsworth was hardly calm, but he remained on the side of
France with sufficiently firm enthusiasm to pray for the defeat of his
own countrymen in the war of 1793. He describes, in <i>The Prelude</i>,
how
he felt at the time in an English country church:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>When, in the congregation bending all<br/>
</span><span>To their great Father, prayers were offered up,<br/>
</span><span>Or praises for our country's victories;<br/>
</span><span>And, 'mid the simple worshippers, perchance<br/>
</span><span>I only, like an uninvited guest<br/>
</span><span>Whom no one owned, sate silent, shall I add,<br/>
</span><span>Fed on the day of vengeance yet to come.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>The faith that survived the massacres, however, could not survive
Napoleon. Henceforth Wordsworth began to write against France in the
name of Nationalism and Liberty.</p>
<p>He now becomes a political thinker—a great political thinker, in the
judgment of Mr. Dicey. He sets forth a political philosophy—the
philosophy of Nationalism. He grasped the first principle of
Nationalism
firmly, which is, that nations should be self-governed, even if they
are
governed badly. He saw that the nation which is oppressed from within
is
in a far more hopeful condition than the nation which is oppressed from
without. In his <i>Tract</i> he wrote:—</p>
<div class="blkquot">
<p>The difference between inbred oppression and that which is from
without [i.e. imposed by foreigners] is <i>essential</i>; inasmuch as
the former does not exclude, from the minds of the people, the feeling
of being self-governed; does not imply (as the latter does, when
patiently submitted to) an abandonment of the first duty imposed by the
faculty of reason.</p>
</div>
<p>And he went on:—</p>
<div class="blkquot">
<p>If a country have put on chains of its own forging; in the name of
virtue, let it be conscious that to itself it is accountable: let it
not have cause to look beyond its own limits for reproof: and—in the
name of humanity—if it be self-depressed, let it have its pride and
some hope within itself. The poorest peasant, in an unsubdued land,
feels this pride. I do not appeal to the example of Britain or of
Switzerland, for the one is free, and the other lately was free (and, I
trust, will ere long be so again): but talk with the Swede; and you
will see the joy he finds in these sensations. With him animal courage
(the substitute for many and the friend of all the manly virtues) has
space to move in: and is at once elevated by his imagination, and
softened by his affections: it is invigorated also; for the whole
courage of his country is in his breast.</p>
</div>
<p>That is an admirable statement of the Liberal faith. Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman was putting the same truth in a sentence when he
said
that good government was no substitute for self-government. Wordsworth,
however, was not an out-and-out Nationalist. He did not regard the
principles of Nationalism as applicable to all nations alike, small and
great. He believed in the "balance of power," in which "the smaller
states must disappear, and merge in the large nations of widespread
language." He desired national unity for Germany and for Italy (which
was in accordance with the principles of Nationalism), but he also
blessed the union of Ireland with Great Britain (which was a violation
of the principles of Nationalism). He introduced "certain limitations,"
indeed, into the Nationalist creed, which enable even an Imperialist
like Mr. Dicey to look like a kind of Nationalist.</p>
<p>At the same time, though he acquiesced in the dishonour of the Irish
Union, his patriotism never became perverted into Jingoism. He regarded
the war between England and France, not as a war between angel and
devil, but as a war between one sinner doing his best and another
sinner
doing his worst. He was gloomy as a Hebrew prophet in his summoning of
England to a change of heart in a sonnet written in 1803:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>England! the time is come when thou shouldst
wean<br/>
</span><span>Thy heart from its emasculating food;<br/>
</span><span>The truth should now be better understood;<br/>
</span><span>Old things have been unsettled; we have seen<br/>
</span><span>Fair seed-time, better harvest might have been<br/>
</span><span>But for thy trespasses; and, at this day,<br/>
</span><span>If for Greece, Egypt, India, Africa,<br/>
</span><span>Aught good were destined, thou wouldst step between.<br/>
</span><span>England! all nations in this charge agree:<br/>
</span><span>But worse, more ignorant in love and hate,<br/>
</span><span>Far, far more abject is thine Enemy:<br/>
</span><span>Therefore the wise pray for thee, though the freight<br/>
</span><span>Of thy offences be a heavy weight:<br/>
</span><span>Oh grief, that Earth's best hopes rest all with Thee!<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>All this means merely that the older Wordsworth grew, the more he
became
concerned with the duties rather than the rights of man. The
revolutionary creed seems at times to involve the belief that, if you
give men their rights, they will perform their duties as a necessary
consequence. The Conservative creed, on the other hand, appears to be
based on the theory that men, as a whole, are scarcely fit for rights
but must be kept to their duties with a strong hand. Neither belief is
entirely true. As Mazzini saw, the French Revolution failed because it
emphasized the rights so disproportionately in comparison with the
duties of man. Conservatism fails, on the other hand, because its
conception of duty inevitably ceases before long to be an ethical
conception: duty in the mouth of reactionaries usually means simply
obedience to one's "betters." The melancholy sort of moralist
frequently
hardens into a reactionary of this sort. Burke and Carlyle and
Ruskin—all of them blasphemed the spirit of liberty in the name of
duty. Mr. Dicey contends that Burke's and Wordsworth's political
principles remained essentially consistent throughout. They assuredly
did nothing of the sort. Burke's principles during the American War and
his principles at the time of the French Revolution were divided from
each other like crabbed age and youth. Burke lost his beliefs as he did
his youth. And so did Wordsworth. It seems to me rather a waste of time
to insist at all costs on the consistency of great men. The great
question is, not whether they were consistent, but when they were
right.
Wordsworth was in the main right in his enthusiasm for the French
Revolution, and he was in the main right in his hatred of Napoleonism.
But, when once the Napoleonic Wars were over, he had no creed left for
mankind. He lived on till 1850, but he ceased to be able to say
anything
that had the ancient inspiration. He was at his greatest an inspired
child of the Revolution. He learned from France that love of liberty
which afterwards led him to oppose France. Speaking of those who, like
himself, had changed in their feelings towards France, he wrote:—</p>
<div class="blkquot">
<p>Though there was a shifting in temper of hostility in their minds as
far as regarded persons, they only combated the same enemy opposed to
them under a different shape; and that enemy was the spirit of selfish
tyranny and lawless ambition.</p>
</div>
<p>That is a just defence. But the undeniable fact is that, after that
time, Wordsworth ceased to combat the spirit of selfish tyranny and
lawless ambition as he once had done. There is no need to blame him:
also there is no need to defend him. He was human; he was tired; he was
growing old. The chief danger of a book like Mr. Dicey's is that, in
accepting its defence of Wordsworth's maturity, we may come to
disparage
his splendid youth. Mr. Dicey's book, however, is exceedingly
interesting in calling attention to the great part politics may play in
the life of a poet. Wordsworth said, in 1833, that "although he was
known to the world only as a poet, he had given twelve hours' thought
to
the condition and prospects of society, for one to poetry." He did not
retire into a "wise passiveness" as regards the world's affairs until
he
had written some of the greatest political literature—and, in saying
this, I am thinking of his sonnets rather than of his political
prose—that has appeared in England since the death of Milton.</p>
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