WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

(1770-1850).

PORTRAITS OF WORDSWORTH.

Of the twenty-seven or more portraits of Wordsworth, that by Mr. Inman has perhaps met with most approbation. It was painted in 1844, at Rydal Mount, for Professor Reed of Philadelphia, and when completed was pronounced by the poet himself to be his best likeness—an opinion seconded by Mrs. Wordsworth, who, in the same year, wrote to the Professor: "I can have no hesitation in saying that, in my opinion, and, what is of more value, to my feelings, Mr. Inman's portrait of my husband is the best likeness that has been taken of him. And I am happy on this occasion to congratulate you and Mrs. Reed upon the possession of so valuable a treasure; at the same time I must express the obligation I feel to the painter for having produced so faithful a record. To this testimony I may add that my daughter and her younger brother are as much satisfied with the portrait of their father as I am.” America is also the fortunate possessor of another likeness of this great poet-a crayon sketch-which Mary Russell Mitford obtained for her friend, the late James T. Fields, of Boston. But undoubtedly the face of Wordsworth is most widely known through the various likenesses by the eminent artist, Mr. Haydon. He has represented the poet climbing Helvellyn--an impressive picture, with its rocky background; while his delineation of him in the character of an apostle attending his Master, in his picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, is well known. The portrait for St. John's College, Cambridge-the poet's alma mater-was

painted by Pickersgill, and seems to have ranked next to that of Inman in Wordsworth's estimation. A bust was also executed by Chantrey. De Quincey considered the best likeness of him to be the portrait of Milton, prefixed to Richardson's "Paradise Lost."

DE QUINCEY'S FULL-LENGTH PORTRAITURE.

Wordsworth was, upon the whole, not a well-made man. His legs were pointedly condemned by all the female connoisseurs in legs that ever I heard lecture upon that topic; not that they were bad in any way which would force itself upon your notice--there was no absolute deformity about them, and undoubtedly they had been serviceable legs beyond the average standard of human requisition; for I cal culate, upon good data, that with these identical legs Wordsworth must have traversed a distance of one hundred and seventy-five to one hundred and eighty thousand English miles a mode of exertion which, to him, stood in the stead of wine, spirits, and all other stimulants whatsoever to the animal spirits; to which he has been indebted for a life of unclouded happiness, and we for much of what is most excellent in his writings. But, useful as they have proved themselves, the Wordsworthian legs were certainly not ornamental; and it was really a pity, as I agreed with a lady in thinking, that he had not another pair for evening-dress parties, when no boots lend their friendly aid to mask our imperfections from the eyes of female rigorists— the elegantes formarum spectatrices. A sculptor would cer tainly have disapproved of their contour. But the worst part of Wordsworth's person was the bust; there was a narrowness and a droop about the shoulders which became striking, and had an effect of meanness when brought into close juxtaposition with a figure of a most statuesque order. . . . But the total effect of Wordsworth's person was always worst in a state of motion; for, according to the remark I have heard from many country people, "he walked like a cade"-a cade being some sort of insect which advances by an oblique motion. Meantime his

face-that was one which would have made amends for greater defects of figure; it was certainly the noblest for intellectual effects that, in actual life, I have seen, or at least have consciously been led to notice. Many such, or even finer, I have seen among the portraits of Titian, and, in a later period, among those of Vandyck, from the great era of Charles I., as also from the court of Elizabeth and of Charles II.; but none which has so much impressed me in my own time. It was a face of the long order, often falsely classed as oval. The forehead was not remarkably lofty, but it is perhaps remarkable for its breadth and expansive development. Neither are the eyes of Wordsworth "large," as is erroneously stated somewhere in "Peter's Letters;" on the contrary they are (I think) rather small; but that does not interfere with their effect, which at times is fine and suitable to his intellectual character.... I have seen Wordsworth's eyes oftentimes affected powerfully in this respect; his eyes are not, under any circumstances, bright, lustrous, or piercing; but, after a long day's toil in walking, I have seen them assume an appearance the most solemn and spiritual that it is possible for the human eye to wear. The light which resides in them is at no time a superficial light, but under favorable accidents it is a light which seems to come from depths below all depths; in fact, it is more truly entitled to be held "The light that never was on land or sea"--a light radiating from some far spiritual world than any the most idealizing light that ever yet a painter's hand created. The nose, a little arched and large, which, by the way (according to a natural phrenology existing centuries ago among some of the lowest among the human species), has always been accounted an unequivocal expression of animal appetites organically strong. And that was in fact the basis of Wordsworth's intellectual power; his intellectual passions were fervent and strong, because they rested upon a basis of animal sensibility superior to that of most men, diffused through all the animal passions (or appetites); and something of that will be found to hold of all poets who have

been great by original force and power, not (as Virgil) by means of fine management and exquisite artifice of composition applied to their conceptions. The mouth, and the region of the mouth-the whole circumjacencies of the mouth-were about the strongest feature in Wordsworth's face.- Literary Reminiscences, vol. i. [For brief sketches of the poet's personal appearance, see Hazlitt's essay, "My First Acquaintance with Poets," Carlyle's "Reminiscences," and Brinley's "Essays," p. 158-160.]

COMMENTS.

The English Philosophical Poet.

The Patriarch of the Lakes.

Nihil humani a me alienum puto is the motto of his works.HAZLITT.

I do not know a man more to be venerated for uprightness of heart and loftiness of genius.-Sir Walter Scott.

He seems a very intelligent man-for a "horse-couper."JAMES HOGG.

To feel for the first time a communion with his mind is to discover loftier faculties in our own.-THOMAS N. TALFOURD.

Wordsworth lived in the open air, Southey in his library, which Coleridge used to call his wife. Southey had particularly elegant habits (Wordsworth called them finical) in the use of books. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was so negligent and so self-indulgent in the same case that, as Southey, laughing, expressed it to me some years afterwards, when I was staying at Greta Hall on a visit, "To introduce Wordsworth into one's library is like letting a bear into a tulip garden."-THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

I think 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.-S. T. COLeridge.

The incommunicable, the unmitigable might of Wordsworth, when the god has indeed fallen on him, cannot but be felt by all, and can but be felt by any; none can partake and catch it up. There are many men greater than he; there are men much great

er; but what he has of greatness is his only. His concentration, his majesty, his pathos have no parallel; none have touched precisely the same point as he.-THOMAS CARLYLE.

The apostle of imagination.—JAMES Russell Lowell.

Of no other poet except Shakespeare have so many phrases become household words as of Wordsworth. If Pope has made current more epigrams of worldly wisdom, to Wordsworth belongs the nobler praise of having defined for us, and given us for a daily possession, those faint and vague suggestions of other-worldliness, of whose gentle ministry with our baser nature the hurry and bustle of life scarcely ever allowed us to be conscious. He has won for himself a secure immortality by a depth of intuition which makes only the best minds at their best hours worthy, or, indeed, capable, of his companionship, and by a homely sincerity of human sympathy which reaches the humblest heart. Our language owes him gratitude for the habitual purity and abstinence of his style, and we who speak it for having emboldened us to take delight in simple things, and to trust ourselves to our own instincts. And he hath his reward. It needs not to bid

"Renowned Chaucer lie a thought more nigh

To rare Beaumond, and learned Beaumond lie
A little nearer Spenser ;"

for there is no fear of crowding in that little society with whom he is now enrolled as fifth in the succession of the great English poets.-Ibid.

What made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of mind was that they expressed not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought colored by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure which could be shared in by all human beings, which had no connection with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed, and I felt myself at once better and happier as I came under their influence.-JOHN Stuart MILL. Wordsworth wrote as if all other men looked upon the universe with his eyes. It has been well remarked that what he