r its fanaticism, but its conservatism and crystallization. It as been much inclined to settle into a dangerous quietism, the eeds of which lay hidden in the original interpretation of s principle, but whenever strong social sympathies and uman interests have blended with its inner passion for God a fine type of religious life has flowered out and a eautiful quality of sainthood has been realized.

THE MYSTICISM OF WORDSWORTH

E. HERSHEY SNEATH

Notwithstanding the production of an exceptionally large literature relating to Wordsworth's poetry, very few writers have reckoned sufficiently with his mysticism in its influence upon his life and art; neither has the literary critic nor professional psychologist dealt thoroughly with the nature of this unique mode of functioning of the poet's consciousness. And yet there can be no adequate understanding of much of the poetry of Wordsworth without a careful consideration of this conspicuous feature of his personal psychology. Those refined spiritual conceptions of Nature and her wholesome ministry to the spirit of man; that perception of the unity of things, and of the unity of man under moral law; those intimations of preëxistence and immortality, to be found in his poetry, are largely due to the mystic flashes of his genius and to the more profound trance experiences that gave warmth to it. And when we eliminate the poetry of mystical insight from his large body of verse, comparatively little is left that would entitle him to a seat among the immortals.

It is fortunate that we are able to deal with this unique experience, to a very large extent, first hand. "The Prelude," Wordsworth's elaborate metrical autobiography, “The Excursion," "Lines Composed above Tintern Abbey," "Ode, Intimations of Immortality," and other poems by the author, are descriptive and, in a measure, explanatory of it. There are also several letters containing conversations of Wordsworth which throw light on the nature of the trance experience to which he was subject in his boyhood

and youth, and which largely determined his spiritual interpretation of Nature and Man. With such sources of information at our command, there is little danger of going astray in our attempts to discover the real nature of Wordworth's mysticism.

"The Prelude" is Wordsworth's chief autobiographical

poem.

It is, as the sub-title suggests, an account of the growth of a poet's mind." In it we find a record of experiences which leave no doubt in the reader's mind that Wordsworth was essentially a mystic. In the first book he relates three that occurred in early boyhood, which, while not of the trance order, were the beginnings of that mystical apprehension of Nature so peculiar to the poet. They are experiences of a moral character and are interpreted by him as Nature's "( visitations to his soul. The first recites an adventure in trapping woodcock by night. In his pursuit, he stole a bird trapped by another. The result was that, under the influence of a guilty conscience, he had an immediate apprehension of Nature as possessed of spirit, and bent on punishing him for his theft:

"And when the deed was done

I heard among the solitary hills

Low breathings coming after me, and sounds
Of undistinguishable motion, steps

Almost as silent as the turf they trod." 1

If this were the only case of the kind, it might be dismissed without consideration. But, when we take it in connection with similar cases, we will note thus early in the poet's experience a unique functioning of consciousness in its relation to Nature, which later takes on the form of a profound mystical trance.

Immediately following the above account, Wordsworth relates another case of boyish theft. He robs a raven's nest, 1 The Prelude, Bk. I, ll. 321-325.

and again he is the subject of peculiar sounds as well as sights. The sound of the wind seems unusual in character, and the clouds wear an unearthly aspect. It is not a boy's ordinary perception of Nature. There is something mysterious about it so mysterious that Wordsworth many years afterward regarded it as one of Nature's "visitings" in which she administered wholesome moral discipline. The important point is, that here again consciousness functions in a peculiar. manner the boy perceives a strange utterance" in the wind, an unusual aspect in the sky, and a peculiar movement in the clouds:

"Nor less when spring had warmed the cultured Vale,
Moved we as plunderers where the mother-bird
Had in high places built her lodge; though mean
Our object and inglorious, yet the end
Was not ignoble. Oh! when I have hung
Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass
And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock
But ill sustained, and almost (so it seemed)
Suspended by the blast that blew amain,
Shouldering the naked crag, oh, at that time
While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,
With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind
Blow through my ear! the sky seemed not a sky

Of earth- and with what motion moved the clouds!" 2

This, too, might be dismissed as merely the result of the activity of a vivid imagination under the influence of peculiar excitement; but the narrative is followed by the recital of another incident which resulted in a more pronounced experience of a unique and most uncanny character. Once more the boy is guilty of an act of stealth." He takes a boat belonging to another, and, as he rows on the lake, under the influence of fear and compunction, he becomes conscious of a spirit in Nature. A huge black peak pursues him "with purpose of its own, and measured motion like a living 2 The Prelude, Bk. I, 11. 326-339.

thing." For many days afterward he has a vague sense of unknown modes of being." Normal sense-perception is superseded by an abnormal consciousness. Familiar objects are banished, and strange and mighty forms take their place by day and trouble him in his dreams by night. This is one of Nature's "severer interventions," and the effect on consciousness is unusual compared with what might be expected in the case of the average boy under similar cir

cumstances:

"I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct

Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the covert of the willow tree;
There in her mooring-place I left my bark,——
And through the meadows homeward went, in grave
And serious mood; but after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sky or sea, no colors of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams." 3

Again it may be said that these somewhat singular mental
The Prelude, Bk. I, 11. 373-400.