STACX
V. C. L. A.
. DEPT.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
STUDIES OF THE MIND AND
ART OF ROBERT BROWNING
BY JAMES FOTHERINGHAM
Crown Sw, 570 //., Price Js. &/.
FOURTH EDITION IN PREPARATION
The Bishop of Durham writes : " I read the first edition
with very great interest and profit, and have frequently
had the pleasure of recommending it to friends as (in my
opinion) the best introduction to the study of Browning."
Literature says : " It is sound, sympathetic, and readable."
The Standard says: "Written from the standpoint of a man
who finds in Browning, as a spiritual teacher, not dogma,
but a free recognition of the value of certain great religious
principles."
The New AffC says : " Mr. Fotheringham describes these
'Studies 'as 'critical and expository, literary and ethical.'
We know of none so comprehensive in their scope as these ;
they touch upon every aspect of Browning's work ; they
show an intimate knowledge ; and, what is of so much
importance in a book of this kind, a broad and discrimin-
ating sympathy."
The Bradford Observer says : " It must be pronounced to
be a great and worthy performance. Governed by large
philosophical ideas, it is happily free from technicalities,
and is throughout informed by a full and ripe wisdom of
life which makes its perusal a discipline in culture.'
LONDON : HORACE MARSHALL & SON
WORDSWORTH'S " PRELUDE "
AS A
STUDY OF EDUCATION
BY
JAMES FOTHERINGHAM
AUTHOR OF
'STUDIES OF THE MIND AND ART OF ROBERT BROWNING'
LONDON
HORACE MARSHALL & SON
TEMPLE HOUSE, TEMPLE
AVENUE, E.C
1899
U. C. L. A.
NOTE
Parts of this Essay were originally
read to the Bradford Branch of the
Teacher? Guild. Their wish to have it
is one reason for its publication. But
as now issued it is much fuller than and
otherwise different from the paper they
heard with such friendly interest.
August, 1899.
U. C, L A.
EDUC. DEPT,
WORDSWORTH'S PRELUDE
AS A
STUDY OF EDUCATION
THE Pyelude has suffered the usual fate
of long poems, especially when such
poems are of a philosophical cast, of an
intellectual texture it has been but little
read even by readers of the other poetry of
its author his lyrics and odes. And yet it
has some of Wordsworth's most character-
istic poetry, and not a little of his char-
acteristic wisdom. Few, indeed, of the poet's
works are more important for the compre-
hension of his Ethic than this " philosophic
Song of Truth which cherishes our daily
life" (Prelude, i. 229-30).
But this poem was not published by its
author, nor was it named by him, It was
published by the poet's wife shortly after
his death, and its title was assigned by her.
As to both points she showed that insight
and judgment which made her through so
many years a true helpmeet of the poet in
1823958
6 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
the things of his genius as of his life. It
must have been touching for her just then
to give the public this record of years so
long gone past.
And the Prelude, in fact, belongs to an
early time in the work of the poet. It
was deliberately composed at intervals
during a period of some six years the
years following the poet's settlement at
Grasmere. The " preamble " of the poem
(cf. bk. vii. 1-12) was made at the time
when, on leaving Goslar, the poet felt the
"quickening breeze" that met him as he
turned his face again to his own country.
This stir of feeling and thought led him
to sing " with fervour irresistible " the
theme that came to him as he reviewed
his past and considered his future. That
fervid impulse was "short-lived," but the
theme was soon resumed with " less im-
petuous stream," that flowed steadily for
a time and then stopped for some years.
It was again taken up in " the primrose
time " five years later, and finished after
a further interval in the following year.
The poem was thus composed between
February, 1799, and May, 1805. About half
of it had been composed by the end of
April, 1804; a great part of the rest of it
As a Study of "Education 7
was done between October and December
of 1804 ; and the closing books during April
and May, 1805, after the death of the poet's
brother, John Wordsworth.
It was dedicated to the friend on whose
interest and sympathy he could implicitly
count Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Cole-
ridge took five books of it with him when
he went to Malta in 1804, and the whole
poem was read to him in December, 1806.
It was revised in 1832 ; but the poet left
it unpublished for more than forty years.
Coleridge was greatly impressed by its
verse and its matter, by its poetry and its
truth. He speaks of it (vide Sibylline Leaves,
" To William Wordsworth ") as
An Orphic song indeed,
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts,
To their own music chaunted !
But, in the judgment of its author, the time
had not come for its publication, and that
time did not arrive during his own life.
The Prelude is, in fact, in the nature of an
autobiography, and an autobiography of a
special kind. The sub-title of the poem
gives the kind and its theme. It is, so the
title justly tells us, the story of The Growth
of a Poet's Mind. Coleridge's phrase had
been " the growth of an individual mind "-
8 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
the story of " the foundations and growth of
a human spirit." Now the study of a poet's
life, uneventful as such lives mostly are,
might seem bad enough; but the history of
a poet's mind the unfolding of his genius,
of his poetic intuition and principles, what
is called with a shrug a " psychological
study," a study of moral growth and little
more seems to be many degrees worse.
Wordsworth possibly felt this, and partly
deferred to it. But besides this, he felt that
his own position in English poetry, and the
interest so far shown in his work, scarcely
justified such length and intimacy of auto-
biography as the Prelude contained, although
indeed his poetic position was fairly recog-
nised in the late " thirties," and his value
well assured some years before his death.
The recognition of the poem after its
issue in the summer of 1850 was cold
enough. It was the <l Life," we may say,
of the most original poet of his time. It
threw a flood of light on his mental history
and growth during the most important
period of that history and growth, and
through his experience and course of
thought it cast much light on the life of
his time during important years of that age
of revolutions. But the public had other
As a Study of Education 9
interests, and did not see the interest or
the significance of these things.
A few things have, however, happened
since 1850, and not the least of them, per-
haps, a considerable intellectual and spirit-
ual change. The world seems to move in
the line of growth of its greater and more
original poets ; and works which one
generation finds obscure, impossible, the
next finds legible and quick with meaning.
The Prelude may seem a case in point. We
have now a pocket edition of the poem, and
a considerable and excellent volume by a
French scholar devoted to its study.
The poem, we have said, is an "Auto-
biography" that delicate and dangerous,
and yet in the best instances how interest-
ing, kind of autobiography which is termed
" spiritual autobiography " a history not
of events or doings, but of thoughts, feel-
ings, experiences and vital constructions.
In such writings it is hard rather to see the
facts that are to be presented, to see them
with clear eyes and in due proportions, to
know what is valuable and what is not, to
keep out the distortions of egoism, the taint
of morbidity. It is desirable to escape these
defects, these faults, and not easy to do so
in this kind of wTitings ; so we say. And
io Wordsworth's "Prelude"
yet it has to be admitted that there are
autobiographies which by no means fulfil
these conditions, and still are most interest-
ing, and are so, moreover, in part because
they do not fulfil the above conditions of
" good autobiography." The age of Words-
worth, as we all know, saw an astonishing
instance of this in the Confessions of Rous-
seau, that document of "the age of feel-
ing."
The work before us is, anyhow, a sound
and healthy record. It was done, we have
seen, in the poet's best years. Its best pas-
sages stand safely among the best parts of
his work. It throws much light on the
larger principles of his interpretation of
nature and human nature. Its grasp of his
poetic ideas is firm, its statement of them
fresh and luminous. It may be that the
poem is too long for its theme, that it is
tiresome in parts, and heavy at times. Its
temper and diction are too uniformly weighty
and serious ; but it is honest and lofty and
true. Distinctly self-conscious it may be
that is in the point of view, and in the pro-
cess of the work but it is proudly sincere,
and, in spite of the risks of its theme, it is
surely free from vanity. As Mr. F. Myers
has said, "You can read it with implicit
As a Study of Education 1 1
confidence." And, as M. Legouis says,
" There are no theatrical attitudes," no
arrangements or utterances for effect. The
poet knows his own value too well for that
kind of show. He has " too much pride to
be vain." His aim, let us say, was simply
to trace his own growth, to know his own
powers, his principles, himself, the gifts and
truths his culture had brought him and the
destiny of his mind. His aim was no way
to determine the "merit" of those powers
and attainments. He does not think of their
value in relation to others.
It will now be clear that the Prelude may
be usefully and suggestively studied on
several sides literary, historical, ethical.
It may, of course, be taken in the literary
and historical way, and considered fruit-
fully with reference to its sources in the
life and literature of the time. Professor
Legouis has done very good work here. It
may be taken as a study of the " origin and
progress " of this poet's powers the rise and
growth within his experience of his gifts
and insights. It may be regarded in a more
general way as a study of man of man
as this poet knew him, in relation to man's
whole environment in nature and human
nature. Or it may be regarded in relation
12 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
to the poet's works as " the prelude " to
those, setting forth in a deliberate and
deeply-considered introduction the grounds
and elements of that interpretation of nature
and human nature which the rest of his
works were to illustrate and unfold. It was
in this light and relation that Mrs. Words-
worth took the poem when she called it the
Prelude. For her it was the first great
section of his total work. It was for her an
" Essay " opening his work as a whole,
giving for the years up to his maturity as
man and poet his experience, his discipline,
his point of view, the factors and attain-
ments of his culture, his fundamental prin-
ciples as a poet and master of life.
It will be seen from the title of this essay
which of the lines thus sketched has been
selected for consideration now. It is the
Prelude as a study of education simply
we propose to take on this occasion. Our
specific aim is to show the value and interest
of the Prelude in this aspect of it, to set
out the principles and truths of this poetry,
the ideas and intuitions of this poet, in their
bearing on education in its larger sense and
scope. This seemed an inquiry very suit-
able for a guild of teachers, and not less
suitable because somewhat off the usual
As a Study of Education i 3
track of professional discussions regarding
education.
Students of the Prelude, whether they
regard its literary or its biographic value,
may indeed raise objections. They may
urge that the poet conceived and planned
the poem as a study of the poetic mind
of his own mind and that, in the phrase of
Coleridge, a highly " individual mind," with
a unique experience. But allowing its full
value to this view of such work, it cannot be
thought that that is its whole value, or even
the better part of its value. For the poet as
poet is not apart from other men, however
much he may for a time be ahead of them.
He is, we may say, in virtue of his powers,
a leader and helper of other men, a bringer
of joy to them out of the deeper, fresher
wells of his nature and experience. Other
men are his heirs, and in time enter into
his experiences. If his experience were not
in measure yet sincerely open to other men,
then Art were an illusion or an impossi-
bility. Its appeal to us, and our sympathy
with it, spring from kinship in nature and
community of experience. The poet, with
reference to his own matters, is quicker,
more vital, richer it may be, than most of
us, but the principles and the laws are the
14 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
same for all of us, and the last test of the
poet's vision and genius is his power to bring
other men to see what he has seen, to enjoy
what has pleased him, to be what he is in
the things where he is most human.
The general plan of the Prelude is to
follow the course of the poet's life, and select
the things and the events in its course which
had a significant influence in shaping his
mind and his character, in unfolding his
intellectual powers and principles, and the
moral elements of his nature as well. And
the survey of things and events from this
point of view is full of meaning. In its
mere conception, in its starting-point, in
what it selects and in what it omits, there
was much significance at a time when the
whole question of education was under
discussion and when treatises on the subject
were a fashion, and many new and plaus-
ible schemes of human culture were being
zealously advocated as a part of the passion
of the time for human improvement.
And our poet's survey, if the Prelude be
taken as in a certain true sense a " treatise "
on education, was, we say, extremely signi-
ficant in its conception of culture, in its
starting-point, and in the things put forth
i -.illy influential. In the large concep-
As a Study of Education 1 5
tion of the poem regarded from the educa-
tional point of view there was great
significance, since it presented " the growth
of a mind " from childhood to maturity, and
yet took all that was merely scholastic,
technical, formal, as incidental rather than
essential as even relatively unimportant.
It may be thought that this was in the
theme, and in the poet's purpose as a poet,
and, of course, there is truth there ; otherwise
the Prelude would not have been a poem,
though it might have been a " treatise" of
much interest. Yet that surely in no way
lessens the significance of the conception
from our present point of view, seeing that
it is of the very substance of the conception
that, as regards both intellectual and moral
growth, life is a scheme of stimulus, disci-
pline, training, in which the scholastic and
academic elements and factors are always
subsidiary and often comparatively unim-
portant. Hawkshead Grammar School did
not badly for William Wordsworth. It
taught him Latin pretty well, and some
mathematics, and one teacher there made
a distinct and genial impression on the boy.
And St. John's College, Cambridge, accord-
ing to the temper of the age and its " lights,"
and as far as he let it, may be said to have
1 6 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
done fairly for the by no means studious
north country youth entrusted to her care.
But in the scheme of his true culture as he
saw and described it in his early manhood,
when the scheme had become clear to
him, neither St. John's College nor the old
Grammar School counted for much with re-
ference to that development of his genuine
powers that self-knowledge and that mas-
tery of himself and of life which were the
basis of all he had thus become and of all
he was to do.
Now from the educationist's point of view
this may appear a heresy or a truism.
Most of us would, when the matter is thus
broadly put, regard it as perfectly " sound
doctrine." We recognise in terms, and as
a general truth, that what is technically
called education is but a part of the real
education of a human being. But, as thus
loosely allowed, the truth has often no
practical value is, perhaps, only admitted
to be ignored. And the question is, What
is the bearing of the truth so conceived on
the scholastic scheme as such on its aims,
und on our estimate of the place and scope
of the scheme in life itself? In so far as
the Prelude may give clues for a right
answer to that question, it would render an
As a Study of Education 17
important service indeed. What clues has
it then for an answer to this question which
is always facing the educationist, and
always bringing his particular scheme and
procedure under trenchant criticism ? The
poet's conception of the mind's growth and
of life's real culture, as proceeding through
all experience, his idea of life itself as
education, is the first point. The Prelude
makes that stand out as few writings do.
We must get a just perception of that. We
must clearly and frankly recognise that
larger scheme, and in the spirit of Emerson
admit that what we do not call education
is more precious than that which is so
called by us. We must increasingly, and
with careful judgment, fit our scholastic
means and scheme into the vital order.
We can only do this as we are on our
guard against what a recent writer has
well called the idola scholarum, as we
keep a free and active sympathy with life,
as we see how little our technical means can
do as compared with the great things life is
always doing.
And then we have said the poet's starting-
point is significant. His starting-point is
childhood and the child- mind. The interest
and importance of childhood and the child-
B
1 8 Wordsworth's " Pre/uae "
mind was one of the ruling ideas of Words-
worth's poetry. It was part of the spiritual
movement of the age of Wordsworth, part of
its deeper naturalism. It is well known that
a " return to nature" was, perhaps, the most
characteristic passion and deepest move-
ment in the mind of the later i8th century
in France, England, and Germany, manifest-
ing itself in art and philosophy, in politics
and conduct. Romanticism itself may be
conceived as part of that great movement.
And that " return to nature," to " natural
things and principles," so strongly marked
in the sentiment as in the thought of the
time, led in one aspect of it to what has been
called " the glorification of the savage," and
in another aspect to what has been termed
" the worship of the child." It is clear that
many of those who took up the cry of a
" return to nature " to work from it, to
reform with it forgot to inquire what they
meant by nature, though that inquiry was
equally important on the philosophic and
on the practical sides. In the same way it
has to be said that fervid followers of Words-
worth seem apt to forget to ask what their
master really meant by the sovereign im-
portance he gave childhood and the child-
mind in his " scheme of virtues. 1 '
As a Study of Education 19
Our childhood sits,
Our simple childhood sits upon a throne
That hath more power than all the elements.
(Prelude, v. 508.)
So the poet sings. But in regard to the
culture of life, what does this mean? We
all recognise that mental and moral growth
begin from early childhood, and that a
certain body of principles and habits is un-
folded, and partly organized then. That is a
bit of natural history and of interest for the
nursery. But beyond that it would seem
that the doctrine we are considering has
for many no practical use, and is even for
some a piece of misleading sentimentalism.
It was, however, a living principle for the
age of Wordsworth, and one it greatly
needed to break the bonds of the past, to
quicken and enlarge the life of the time.
It has been fruitful in our own century
in many ways, and it is a principle the
educationist surely needs, and tends some-
what to thrust aside.
Let us see, then, by help of the poetry in
which the idea was best interpreted, what
it means, and how it bears on education.
Wordsworth has put it in certain verses
which may be taken as the classical state-
ment of the idea.
2O Wordsworth 's " Prelude "
The child is father of the man,
And I would have my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety
" the child " " father of the man," and
"natural piety" as the bond of all our
habits and all our days what law of
growth, what truths of culture, do the
words contain ? The principle is not, per-
haps, stated anywhere in the Prelude quite
so explicitly as in the lines just quoted, but
the whole study of growth in that poem is
subject to the principle, and throws light on
the meaning it had for the poet. At the
opening of the poem the poet tells how, in
the case of his own mind, impressive train-
ing began with the first dawn of childhood.
Then, as he came to see his own growth,
was " the seed-time of the soul." The voice
of the Derwent " blent its murmurs with
his nurse's song," and " flowed along his
dreams." And all the things of his first
days are conceived as bearing a part in the
foundation of his powers and the texture of
his mind (Prelude, bks. i., ii. passim). Nor
is it a matter of things and experiences
only ; it is also a matter of affections and
principles. The lines above quoted which
are of 1802 set forth a law, enforce a cer-
tain loyalty loyalty to the instincts and
As a Study of Education 2 1
principles of childhood ; while the lines
quoted from the Prelude (bk. v.) declare the
native strength of the mind, and its power
from the first to transform experience it
rules, as we may say, by " right divine."
In such words the poet seems to some of
us to speak only as an "oracle" speaks,
words of no sure meaning. And, in fact,
the words and his doctrine on this matter
have been taken often in that way. And
yet if we read them in due relation to the
movement of which they are a part, they
have plain and fruitful meanings. They
mean that in all our culture, in our treat-
ment of mind and in our estimates of
things, we must respect nature and natural
principles. They mean that we must value
the great simple things of life and nature,
the primitive and general principles and
powers of mind and heart. They mean
that in one aspect of it the right culture
is a loyal evolution of the native powers
of the soul, and that we must respect the
Ideal implicit in nature, and not seek to
constrain her to some idea of ours to some
end arising out of our utilities, our conven-
tions, or our pride. " Natural piety " is
thus allegiance to "the nature of things,"
and to the true order of life. It is fidelity
22 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
to the great and simple laws of intelligence
and morality.
And still to some of us it will seem that
we have here only a "counsel of perfec-
tion," open to the charge of vague ideality.
It goes without saying that only as we do
our sensible best to ascertain what in re-
spect of minds the true nature is, and to
what principles our obedience is demanded,
can any good come of the truth Wordsworth
so much emphasized. In part through his
own happy experience, and in part through
his deep insight into the great movement of
which his poetry was so true an expression,
Wordsworth at the point in hand grasped
one of the greatest principles of the move-
ment to give it his own form. But it often
happens that the form into which an
original and vivid poetic mind puts a truth
partly reveals and in part conceals his prin-
ciple for many who follow him. It has been
so here. Wordsworth's praise of childhood
has often been so read that his principle
has been missed by mere deference to the
" letter " of his statement. And yet the poet
had himself put his underlying principle
into terse and happy phrases, both in verse
and prose. In the preface to the second
edition of the Lyrical Bui lads such state-
As a Study of Education 23
ment is found (cf. Works, vi. 308). And
there it is -defined as a "religious" regard
for " the essential passions of the heart," for
" the primary laws of human nature," for
" the sacred simplicities of life." Elsewhere
it is seen to be the poet's sense of and rever-
ence for that " empire " which every human
being "inherits," and which he stands
answerable for "as a natural being in the
strength of nature."
It thus appears that Wordsworth's stress
on the child-nature, and on other simplici-
ties, was rather a consequence of his prin-
ciple and spirit than the principle itself from
the educational point of view. But, in any
case, he did a capital service by his study of
a growth and a culture far behind the first
schooldays, and behind all teaching through
words and notions. It is owing to the move-
ment he so well interpreted, and in good
part it is owing to him, that we have studied
the child-nature so much and so carefully
as we have lately been doing. And, without
doubt, all who face the problems and re-
sponsibilities of the education of young
children, especially now that by law we
virtually bring them under a process of
formal education so much earlier than we
were wont to do all of us, at least, who are
24 Wordsworth's " Prelude "
not, in Professor Laurie's phrase, " teachers
by grace of God," and of the scholastic
tradition as such will agree that a still
fuller and more exact study of the primary
laws and conditions of intelligence, and of
the factors of mental growth in a well-
ordered educational scheme, is desirable.
We have yet to work out more carefully
the lines on which, the means by which, the
steps through which, the ideas, feelings, and
efforts of children may be healthily and
fruitfully stimulated, guided, unfolded.
Perez, Preyer, Darwin, and Professor Sully
have worked in the field, and they bring
help ; but our range of observations is not
as yet sufficiently wide, nor are our generali-
zations on many points sufficiently definite
and exact. And the fallacy of ready infer-
ence from single cases, or from a few cases, a
fallacy specially apt to arise in the teacher's
field of practice and observation, has to be
watchfully guarded against, and shut out
from the writings of investigators and from
the judgment and work of teachers.
In other ways also our gains from the
movement and principle we are considering
have been important. It is one of its con-
sequences that more and more our schemes
and machinery in education are being set
As a Study of Education 25
to find and to unfold the "nature" the
true powers of the minds to be trained,
and less and less to force " another nature "
on them than that which after due care and
proper tests we infer to belong to them.
The idea of a " nature " in things, which
must be observed and respected, is as a
working conception comparatively recent.
The idea of a " nature " in minds which
must be studied and served, not browbeaten,
is largely a result of the romantic and
scientific movements since the Revolution.
It means an attitude of modesty and inquiry
towards mind as towards a natural struc-
ture, giving up wholly the old notion that
you can and may make of minds just what
you wish, and in " the best cases " anything
whatever. It means that whether there be
a " science of mind " practically available
for the teacher or not and some appear to
assume a posture of impatience or superiority
to extant psychologies it is the interest and
some part of the business of the teacher to
study mind in its elements and laws. It is
a troublesome study possibly; but once
recognise that there is a nature and a
" reign of law " in minds, and the inference
is straight and swift that the art and matter
of teaching must fit themselves to that
nature and its laws, and can do so only
as the teacher understands Mind.
And if Wordsworth's naturalism carries
in it the conception that Mind is a natural
structure and must be so treated, his " natural
piety " carries the conception that the stages
of human growth and culture as they are
bound to each other by vital coherence so
they should be by moral fidelity ; and that
only as each stage is honourably treated for
all it is worth, and duly fulfilled, can we
reach integrity and strength, whether of
mind or character. Now this, it will be seen,
is one of Froebel's great ideas ; and, in fact,
Froebel and Wordsworth are in frequent
agreement and close sympathy on the matters
of humane education and human welfare.
Froebel was but twelve years younger than
Wordsworth; and though he lived amid
different circumstances and for different
purposes, he belonged to the same natural-
istic and romantic movement, and as the
" prophet and apostle of a kingdom of God "
to be reached through a wise and real edu-
cation covering the whole of life, his ideas
often, his aims almost always, are such as
the poet of the Prelude and the Excursion
would have heartily approved. And so
when Froebel, in his mystic way, insists that
As a Study of Education 27
human development should go from point to
point, should go steadily, should be viewed
and treated as continuously advancing, when
he insists that the child, the boy, the youth,
the man are not separate from, but intimately
and vitally related to, each other, and that
the vigorous and complete unfolding of each
successive stage of life depends on the
vigour and completeness of the develop-
ment of the preceding stages (cf. Student's
Froebel, Herford, p. u), Wordsworth would
have understood and heartily agreed. And
when Froebel further insists that while we
must foresee development must see the man
and the youth in the child we must cer-
tainly not expect the child or the youth to
act or think as if he were already a man, but
respect loyally the stage reached (Student's
Froebel, pp. 17, 18), the poet would again
have agreed with the educationist. His
own trouble at the crisis of his life was to
break with his past and with the great
principles of growth. He came to see that
only as each part of life is read in the light
of the whole, and is loyal to the whole, do
we live truly. He came to understand that
not only is the child, by the laws of growth,
and by the very quality of life, " father of the
man," but that only as the man is loyal to
28 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
the principles of his childhood does he reach
wisdom and power. Our theory of life, our
scheme of discipline, must embrace and do
justice to all parts of life, and be capable
of interpreting and fulfilling its powers
genially throughout its course.
Then, connected with points we have just
touched, there comes up here a truth of which
the Prelude is full. By its temper and its
theme the poem stresses, over-stresses it may
be thought, the deep individuality of all real
education. It is, to some, one of the offences
of the Prelude that it is so intensely indi-
vidual. It has been said that the " hero "
in all parts of it is William Wordsworth,
austerely complacent as he reviews every-
thing in his story from that standpoint. We
have said the Prelude wears an aspect of
that sort. It was in the special subject and
plan of the poem. It was in the quality of
the poet. It was part of his independence,
of his life-long self-reliance. It was, be-
sides, in the movement of revolt, and roman-
ticism. The return to nature was in part a
return to the individual. It affirmed the
interest and worth of each man. It stood
for his " rights." It stirred him to a sense
of his place and his powers. And in many a
passage of the Prelude all the goings and
As a Study of Education 29
even the "ends" of nature appear to find
their function and centre in the child of the
Derwent Valley, in the boy of Esthwaite
Vale, and in the young man of later days.
For our serious poet it almost seems as if
the " Wisdom and Spirit of the universe "
had set and shaped all things to build up
this human soul.
And surely in a deep, and a very true
sense, it is so. In respect of education it cer-
tainly is so. As subjects of that process we
are each of us centres, and must be treated
as such. All that is done is ours only as it
comes that way, in that relation. It must
come for, it must act on and through our
minds. The idealist is right there. We must
all be individualists so far. Nature and
the scheme of life, as it goes on around us,
play on us at every moment as persons, and
the result as " read," as " organized," is per-
sonal.
This was one of the truths of " the Re-
volt," we have said. It seems now to some
of us perhaps a truism. No one who has
measured the significance of the truth will
think so. But in any case our educational
schemes and methods must accurately re-
cognise it, and in so far as they do not, or
do not cordially take account of it, they
30 Wordsworth's " Prelude "
are working on wrong lines, and in a wrong
spirit. Every mind must be treated as an
unit, and as a moral factor, with respect for
its powers and for its uses, and especially
with respect for its own proper good.
There is, of course, that other truth which
" the Revolt " did not see, or saw very par-
tially, which Wordsworth saw in time, and
which our recent developments in various
ways have been bringing out and emphasiz-
ing, the truth without which education could
not go a step the truth that intelligence
and morality are social. It is through the
general mind, the "universal heart," that
we know each other. It is the " common
reason" that makes knowledge possible, and
society. It is the will towards a common
good that humanizes and unites. But the
truth of "the Revolt" stands, if it must
submit to a larger reading, for it is only
through minds that you have mind, only
through personalities that reason and con-
duct are possible. And so in our methods
as in our ideals of education, not only at the
top, but right through our system, we must
loyally recognise the personal constitution
of mind, and the sacred rights of every
child and every youth to be and to remain
a person, while at the same time we under-
As a Study of Education 3 I
stand that paradox of the higher reason,
and open secret of the true life that it is
only as each accepts the " common reason"
and serves the "general good" that he
reaches and fills out his true nature. The
value of our results both practical and in-
tellectual largely depends on our knowing
how to recognise both sides of this truth
and the scope of this law.
Another truth the Prelude finely illus-
trates, and towards its close strongly in-
sists on, is this that any education that is
mainly intellectual is so far forth futile and
injurious. You must get, and cultivate,
right, sound, active, vital feeling. In a
phrase of this poet that is in true sympathy
with the best naturalism of his age, the
"vital soul " is the ground of all real edu-
cation, and the free expansion of the " vital
soul " is the true end of education. In the
case of Wordsworth this doctrine, which he
held strongly, and never wearied of urging,
was cordially out of the poetic mind. It
was also on his part, especially in the Pre-
lude, a protest against a narrow and really
absurd intellectualism in which he had him-
self been caught for a time. In the crisis
of his life, when the new democratic move-
ments were disappointing him, and his Re-
32 Wordsworth *s "Prelude"
publican hopes were in distress, when the
Revolution in France seemed a satire on
freedom and an insult to reason, the young
poet took up with the philosophy to be found
in Godwin's Political Justice. According to
that philosophy, if we may roughly sum
it up, our only hope lies in each man be-
coming, and the ideal state will be reached
when each of us has become, an indepen-
dent and rational agent. And for Godwin,
who complacently sought to spread his
own type over the wide and various field
of human function and character, it was all
a matter of reason. When you have got
men completely rationalized, and when they
have made use of their trained reason to
adopt a sound philosophy, the problems of
education and of society too will have been
duly solved. You will then have got en-
lightened citizens in a reasonable social
order. And Wordsworth took up that
position, and held it for a time (cf. Prelude^
bk. xi. 224-254). But it was only for a
short time that so narrow and morally un-
genial a doctrine could have seemed to him
tenable, not to say adequate. By his build
as by his culture it could for him have been
possible only for a short time. And, in
fact, he soon saw, and felt to the very heart
As a Study of Education 33
of it, the narrowness and absurdity of such
a philosophy. It ignored a great part of
human nature, and lacked the root power,
the propelling and sustaining force, of life.
It left out in apparent strength, in real
weakness, that which gives life its energy
and interest, and very largely its mean-
ing and its value the " vital soul "
the life of feeling, and all the wealth and
energy of the heart. In the closing books
of the Prelude the poet dwells earnestly on
this truth. And in other poems of his great
period it is a leading idea. There is no real
and right growth for human minds without
depth and cordiality of feeling. The culture
that does not give this is barren, and in a
large degree a failure. Knowledge without
this is almost nothing, and little good.
Whatever is merely formal and not vital is
a mistake ; whatever tends to dull or im-
poverish interests to narrow or deaden feel-
ing, is not only a loss, but an injury. The
cultivation and enrichment, the direction
and development of feeling, is in a sense the
end and finer use of knowledge itself. To
bring out and organize, to enlighten and get
power for a body of just and noble feelings
is a better and wiser result, and for the
happiness of the individual, as for the good
34 Wordsworth's " Prelude "
of society, a finer and more valuable result,
than any merely or mainly intellectual cul-
ture. So this poet held with a strengthen-
ing conviction. Such, it seems to us, is the
truth, a truth of first-rate importance in
education.
Closely connected with the foregoing
principle are other truths to be found in the
Prelude, regarding it as a study of educa-
tion. Wordsworth held very strongly, in
spite of the notes of austerity and parsi-
mony to be felt in his poetry and in his
character, that a great and necessary force
in the growth of mind, and in the evolution
of will and character, is what he terms
" vital feelings of delight." Through things
kindly fitted to our natures, and to which
our natures are in turn genially fitted, the
mind is fed and grows. Through genial
relations to all the things that are ours
the spirit in us, which is right feeling and
right reason harmonized and united, grows
rightly. This poet held indeed, as all his
readers know from certain lines of the
great Tintern Abbey poem, that it is really
through " the power of joy " that we " see
into the life of things." A certain deep
yet frugal pleasure is for him the medium
of light, and the true pitch of life. His
As a Study of Education 35
poetry is full of the spirit and results of
this conviction. It was for Wordsworth a
poetic and an ethical law. His whole view
of life is full of the light of it. His view of
the world is so. His simplicity, his matter-
of-fact quality, in art as in life, are made
beautiful by his cordial and pervading
sense of this principle.
This principle has other bearings of
course, since it is a principle of poetic
apprehension because it is a principle of
things, and on these w r e shall touch later.
Our concern now is with its bearing on the
method and spirit of education. The older
educationists had made everything, or most
things, hard, distasteful. They even seemed
to act on the principle that the educational
value of things in a course of training turned
on their hardness, their unpleasantness.
The early sentimentalists in education, fol-
lowing Jean Jacques, their prophet, went to
the opposite extreme. Just as they went to
the extreme of individualism, abolishing
constraint and authority, they went to a
kindred extreme here. They wanted to
make everything easy, genial in the shallow
sense, and agreeable at once. We were to
slide along on the level, or the line of
ascent was to be so nearly level that we
36 Wordsworth 's "Prelude"
should never have the sense of effort. But
very plainly that is not the order of the
world. The conditions and circumstance
of life, however they got set, have not been
set to that strain. And to follow that strain,
that quality and method of work, were to
degrade and enfeeble humanity. Wisdom,
goodness, joy, have all another strain than
that. Happiness of the healthy and lasting,
of the permanently stimulating sort, has
ever a strain of austerity and strenuousness
in it. It comes of the play and equilibrium
of the finer forces of our natures. Our
work, therefore, and all real discipline of
mind and will, must be keyed to this, only
remembering that work and discipline are
not ends in themselves, that our end is life
and the good of life, and that the last test of
the right life and its proper activities is the
good they bring.
This matter of pleasure, when it should
arise and to whom it should come, raises
questions that are highly important in edu-
cation and in conduct. The sentimentalists
and they are " still in the land " seem to
think that the pleasure should arise " all the
time," and that " pleasure " is the end.
The individualists hold that the pleasure
should accrue with " quick returns " to each
As a Study of Education 37
individual. But such positions unguardedly
taken are misleading, and have, in fact,
misled not a few since the gospel of
Rousseau began to be preached. The truth
is that in education and in conduct our aim
must be set and our effort adjusted not to
the nearer pleasure but to the larger good.
We must learn more and more to regard
the common reason as our standard and to
take the common good as our law ; and the
scope of all just and real education is to
bring the subjects of it to this power and
to this aim.
In keeping with the foregoing truths, and,
in fact, as our poet thought of matters,
springing out of some of them, is another,
that the closing books of the Prelude set
forth with emphasis (cf. bks. xii., xiii.) this,
viz. : that the right method in knowledge
and therefore in education is constructive,
not analytic ; that the real apprehension of
things is a creative and not a mechanical
process. Taking things to bits, and regard-
ing them singly, we never know them.
Taking them coldly, and through a medium
of logical processes only, we never grasp
them, and cannot give them to other minds.
We must grasp them as living facts, in a
whole that itself lives for us. In analytic
38 Wordsworth's " Prelude"
processes " we murder to dissect." In that
kind of approach to, and investigation of,
things the life, the reality of things, escapes
us. Merely intellectual processes of the
type of 1 8th century rationalism, of the
type of Hume's critical scepticism, give us
no contact with things, and certainly no
hold of them in their proper reality.
The loss of a true hold of, and vital interest
in, things was a great part of the trouble of
Wordsworth's mind at the crisis of his life
(cf. bk. xi. 270-320). Things went " meagre
and stale," all the things of human life and
of the world too. He tried to recover his
faith, his interest, in things through reason-
ing and intellectual appreciation; but this
only aggravated the trouble. His sceptical,
analytic habit, his demand that each thing
should "prove" itself at the bar of the
" abstract reason," only brought the very
" crisis of his strong disease."
What brought his cure? How did he
recover again a real hold of things and a
right relation to them ? This is the " bur-
den " of the last three books of the Prelude.
Briefly and simply it may be said his cure
was wrought by his again taking up a true
relation to things, and by a right use of his
powers in their apprehension, since the only
As a Study of Education 39
cure for a malady that has arisen through
thought is a deeper and truer thought. It
is not easy to give more fully and still very
briefly the " argument " of these books,
which tell of this new method, and give
the "secret of the new life" of the poet.
Yet some of his phrases put clues in our
hands: "genial faith," " sympathies" with
and " love " towards the things of life and
of nature, " wise " as poets and " as women
are " (cf. bk. xii. 68-72, and 11. 156-8), truths
of "the universal heart," "spiritual love"
that is one with intellectual power, and
imagination that is one with " reason in her
most exalted mood " (cf. bk. xiv. 187-205).
Keeping in view only the matter that now
concerns us, since there is a good deal of
other matter in those books, it will be seen
that the author of this poem might have
entitled his organ of knowledge Imagina-
tive Reason. It is through processes akin
to the poetic, it is through imagination as
the faculty of vital constructions, the faculty
that " strikes into one " and sees things
from the heart of a vital appreciation it is
thus that you get at things and know them.
There must be a genial care for things.
There must be an intellectual love of them.
We must value the fact of things without
40 Wordsworth's " Prelude "
self-regards and with no vain or mean
comparisons. We must bring a spirit that
feels and appreciates. We must open eye
and heart to their life. We must bring an
active, not a passive, taste to the appre-
hension of them. Enjoyment more than
criticism is wanted a spiritual rather than
a microscopic view. We must judge not
by abstract standards, by " rules of mimic
art applied to things above all art," but
by intuitions of things taken in their own
life and place. Our judgments of things
must be not of "one sense," but of "all the
senses," and of our free and total power,
and our knowledge result of
A balance, an ennobling interchange
Of action from without and from within ;
The excellence, pure function, and best power
Both of the object seen and eye that sees.
(Bk. xiii. 370-78 ; cf. 151-57.)
And again he gives his method and secret
in the lines (bk. xiii. 206-7) : ~
In Nature's presence stood as now I stand,
A sensitive being, a creative soul.
It is, then, by faithful use of this method
and function of mind that we gain a know-
ledge of things. It is through such method
and power that we can give a knowledge of
things. Only the mind that has the life
As a Study of Education 41
and interest of things in itself, in its own
honest care for, and appreciation of, them,
can rightly teach, conveying the interest
and life of things to other minds. Only one
who stands " in the light of things," with
power over them through a degree of
imaginative reason, can give those things
to be possessions of other minds. And this
is the truer because the end of the business
of learning is not merely to have a know-
ledge of things, but to get the truth and
worth of things to enrich one's own life
the " vital soul " in each of us. And if
any should stumble at the poet's phrase,
there are others in which it can very well
be put. Put it thus: Knowledge itself is
never a true end any more than the things
you can gain by its means are such an
end. It is life, and the wealth and good
of that, that are the end. And no one more
than the teacher needs to keep this wisely
and steadily in view, not as a " counsel of
perfection," but as a constant test of right
method and results in educational work.
Cognate with the point we have just
handled is a point we have already touched,
but which it will be well to deal with here,
since it runs through the Preltfde, and is
indicated in more than one happy phrase in
42 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
the poem. We refer to that subtle concep-
tion of the nature of mind, its laws and
mode of operation, which the poet owed
partly to Coleridge, but mostly to his own
genius as a master of the moral nature of
man : the conception, namely, that mind is
vital, organic, built up of living elements
by organic processes, experiences, and
actions, not by mechanical additions. The
poet is here, again, in sympathy with
Froebel, who was but little of a psycholo-
gist, and with the best psychologists of both
schools since the organic conception entered
the science. The finest expression of the
idea in the poem is in those lines (bk. i.
340-47), but most of the poet's references to
mind and to his own growth are fully in
keeping with them :
Dust as we are the immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music ; there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, and makes them cling together
In one society.
The idea of mind as a living power,
formed by, yet informing, all experience, i^
present in those lines poetically, not psy-
chologically, of course. Our concern with
them is, that they are well on the path of
the right idea, and that this idea of mind
As a Study of Education 43
as organic in its nature and operations is
an idea of fruitful importance in education.
It is impossible to do more than suggest the
bearings of the idea here. It seems well to
do so much. The mind, then, is a living
power active, not passive. Intelligence is
a vital function. It is not merely taking or
reviving impressions, absorb ing or arranging
" facts." Knowledge is creative apprehen-
sion. Perception and memory, as well as
conception and judgment, are vital con-
structions. The relation of states of mind
to their objects may be as obscure as Pro-
fessor James argues ; but the mind is a
living force, not a camera, and thought a
function of life, not of mechanism. As or-
ganic, the mind is, moreover, a living whole.
Every moment of conscious life is a vital
unity, and so is the whole complex life of
the mind.
But how does such conception of the
working of mind apply, and what value has
it in education ? Some of its bearings have
been usefully developed by Froebel and by
Herbart. The well-known and fruitful dic-
tum of Froebel, that only by creative activ-
ity does mind grow and knowledge become
real, springs from such a conception of mind ;
and the kindergarten is a fruit of it. And
44 Wordsworth's " Prelude "
Herbart's idea of the operation of mind as
" apperception " is from the same principle.
The mind is built not by notions or words,
nor by things or facts, but by its own
activities and by all it becomes. You have
to deal with a living whole of actions and
reactions, and you have to work in your in-
struction, your knowledge, on those terms,
as a living addition to such a whole of life.
It has to find its place in such a whole. It
will live and serve only as it is fitted within
mind as such a whole. You do not " put "
knowledge into the mind, nor do you "ac-
cumulate " it within the mind. Something
called " knowledge " may indeed be " put "
there and " accumulate " considerably, and
nothing be known at all. The aim of
education is not of that sort. It is to pro-
mote and unfold those activities of mind,
that evolution of mind, through which only
knowledge is real and by which only it can
be retained and used. And this is still
true if we agree that there is no process
nor any product of mind that can be shown
to be independent of experience.
When we turn to the question of the
factors of education the means and powers
by which the growth of the human soul is
promoted it is a commonplace to say that
As a Study of Education 45
this poet counted nature, external nature,
and the total order and beauty of the world,
as one factor, and a great one. In its early
books this poem is largely the record of
the influence of nature on the poet's own
mind. It seems to be a common opinion,
among such as know Wordsworth and do
not know the history of the nature senti-
ment, or even English poetry before Words-
worth, that he " began " this sentiment, and
first "preached" education through nature.
He did not begin it, but he was the first to
grasp the sentiment to its depth and ex-
emplify its influence and scope as an educa-
tive power. And it was he who first taught
us the love of nature, and a free response
to her, in her whole extent. In doing this
he was profoundly right, and thereby he
not only enriched the poetry but the life
and thought of England, and the resources
of culture for ever.
There are many lovely and many strong
and subtle passages in the Prelude in which
the work and influence of nature on the
mind are set forth passages, too, in which
the poet gives us a philosophy of the educa-
tive influence of nature as he read it on the
basis and from the vantage ground of his
own experience. And those passages are
46 Wordsworth's " Prelude "
not "sentimental," nor do they deal with
what is called the picturesque and roman-
tic parts or aspects of nature only, or
chiefly. In early days the poet began to
feel influences deeper and subtler than those
of the external beauty of nature. The
peace and loneliness of nature, a certain
mystic depth and suggestiveness in her life,
and something of her grandeur and awe
began to be felt even in his schooldays. It
was years before the full sentiment of
nature, her vital loveliness and greatness,
were appreciated ; but she was pretty soon a
moral influence on his mind and in his life.
And his philosophy of this influence of
nature, of which the chief exposition is in the
Prelude and in the Tintern poem, is interest-
ing, and touches other points in his scheme.
The poet holds that mind and nature are
fitted to each other ; that they act and react
on each other. Our minds are not aliens
and strangers in the world when we arrive
here; we are fitted to our scene of life.
Beauty old as creation touches us, gladdens
us, because our minds and our senses
have been formed by the very powers and
processes that have given form to all the
beauty of the world. We respond to, we
interpret, nay, in our finest moments we
As a Study of Education 47
"create," the truth and loveliness and
splendour of the world, because the life of
our senses, and the laws of our minds, are
wrought in true affinity and vital corre-
spondence with these. The " Spirit of the
universe," that gives to all natural " forms
and images breath and motion," builds up
our souls by pure response to "works"
that are the expression of a life akin to
our own.
It was a bold doctrine at the time when
the Prelude was written, and even when it
was published. It was, we may say, a hypo-
thesis devised to account for the action of
nature on the poet's own mind, and the
extraordinary freshness and vigour of that
action. The sense of loveliness and joy that
fell on his heart at dawn, or at midnight, or
in the glory of the day, by the waters or
among the hills, when the voice of winds or
the stars of night touched the springs ol
feeling that sense of beauty, that deep
response of the soul to the life of things,
seemed too great to have grown up in his
brief life-time, in his single life. So he
thought.
And now we should say that the poet's
intuition, or hypothesis, must, in some sense,
be true. We are made for nature, and
48 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
nature for us, to train intellect, feeling,
sense, and all the passions that build up our
minds in wisdom and strength. And the
pity of it at present is, that so many of us
have to go months and years without any
real contact with it, so that many are losing
sense of nature's eternal function in re-
spect of human health and happiness. The
growth of the mind and the heart cannot,
in such cases, our poet held, be sound or
satisfactory ; and no doubt he is right. For,
with some over-stress, he stood for a great
truth, and for a true law of culture. Those
of us who have scarcely ever seen the dawn,
or felt the freshness of the morning, who
have scarcely ever stood under the open
sky and seen some wide landscape full ot
light and air, who have never felt the lone-
liness and peace of nature in quiet places,
who have never in some still hour stood
under the arch of the midnight sky alone-
such, and there are not a few of them in our
towns to-day, miss not only precious know-
ledge of the great world, but knowledge of
themselves of the heart, and the high
powers of emotion and thought.
And our poet recognised almost more
emphatically, though that is by no means a
common opinion, our human environment
As a Study of "Education 49
and our close and healthy relation to human
life as a factor in our culture. He sees and
sets forth in some remarkable passages of
the Prelude his conviction that this is a
condition of all culture that is real and to
the quick. It is by touch with others, by
knowing others, by taking and keeping in
simple fidelity our due place with other
lives, our full and frank relation to them,
that " the human heart by which we live "
is unfolded and nourished in us. The poet
is grateful that he grew up in the freedom
and simplicity of the little country town ot
Hawkshead, scarcely more than a village.
When he returns to Hawkshead and the
simple home where he had lived during his
schooldays, he sees its human facts from a
new point of view, and feels in a new and
deeper way their interest, and something of
their pathos and their moral significance.
His very passion for nature, his sense of
her grandeur and loveliness, gave an added
meaning and dignity to human life, for
nature is not merely the theatre of human
life, she is the minister and teacher of man.
He shares her life, he reads her meaning
and rejoices in her beauty. She reflects
something of her glory and her amplitude
on man, even on peasants as they go about
D
50 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
their tasks and live their lives in her pres-
ence and by her help.
Thus it happens that this poet of the
Prelude, who for many is no more than the
poet of nature, is also the poet of the Ex-
cursion ; is in truth even more the poet of
simple lives and virtues, of rustic men and
women, and the teacher for all of us of the
precious life to be won, and the mellow
wisdom to be got, from the essential virtues
and simple tasks and relations of every
honest human life. It was part of the
" malady " of his crisis that time when the
good of things, their vital ground, seemed to
have gone that he lost the simple, cordial
sense of the worth of the common life. It
had gone dull and small ; it had come to
seem "a kind of trouble of ants" on the
surface of a vast mechanism we call nature
Both the world and human life had lost
their " soul," he says their substance and
their value. And the recovery of his
humanity, and a new conviction of the
spirituality, the livingness of the world,
brought back to him his poetic power gave
him that power, indeed, for the first time
fully. He felt as he had never felt before
the pure and tender interest of human lives,
and a kind of sacred beauty in the simplest.
As a Study of Education 5 1
We may smile at his Peter Bells and Simon
Lees, and even at his Margarets, his Pedlars
and Leech-Gatherers and they are rustics
of course but the vision and truth they
are the vehicle of is a vision and truth of
increasing value, and one that, whether
for discipline or for life, can never grow
old.
The position taken in the Prelude on this
matter, and the strong conviction of the
poet that no part of culture is so important
as true human relations, raises the question
of the best environment for this part of
training, and the place of school life in it.
Wordsworth was sent to school at Hawks-
head when only eight years old, and he was
there until he was seventeen. But the life
at Hawkshead was of the simplest and most
frugal kind, and extremely natural and
homely. The boys were no way a class
apart. They lived in the village, and the
homely village life was a part of their lives.
They knew the men and women of the
place, and its events, its joys and sorrows.
And Wordsworth holds that such normal
environment and healthy experience of life
is best. The heart is nourished, and grows
familiar with the quality and relations of
life, its facts of good and ill, of joy and
52 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
sorrow, and in time understands and re-
sponds to them.
To many this will seem but a part of this
poet's " rusticity," and almost stoical fru-
gality of experience. Yet on the main point
we shall agree. A full and free natural
environment is better for this part of train-
ing than an artificial one, and things on this
side of life are learned rather by examples
and deeds than by words. A selected en-
vironment for the better education of youth
was one of the ideas of the poet's age.
Wordsworth prefers the natural circum-
stances of life, and the children trained
healthily amid such circumstances. In this
matter, too, his " love of nature " sways
him, and he prefers natural children, with
their wits and feelings in sound order, to
the children of artifice and pressure. His
scheme is home and school life, not school
life only. He would have recognised the
moral training in a good school system,
and given it a high value, but as poet and
moralist he clung to the daily humanities.
It is, of course, in part, a question of what
you are training for, and of what your
ideal of life is. If you are training for life
simply as a rough struggle of wits and
wills, and your ideal be skill and success
As a Study of Education 53
in such a contest, then a certain school
system will give the training you want;
but if your aim be a friendly and generous
life and character, and a society whose
citizens live in this spirit with each other,
then perhaps the poet is right.
It is impossible to read the Prelude,
especially to read it as a suggestive study
of education, without thinking pretty
frequently of Rousseau and the views he
expounded in his Entile. There is little
evidence that Wordsworth had studied the
theories of Rousseau seriously ; but the
ideas and spirit of Rousseau were " in the
air," and to get clearly the significance of
some parts of the Prelude, it is useful, it is
even necessary, to compare the two writers.
On this matter of the scheme and factors of
a true education a comparison is interesting ;
and on comparison important differences
are found. Rousseau proposes an artificial
scheme he would isolate, and select condi-
tions. He is thus working to a more or
less abstract standard, and would form the
child to a pattern of his own, while he re-
gards himself as defending it against every-
thing that might hinder or even disturb the
natural development of its powers. And
pretty largely Rousseau's " nature " and
54 Wordsworth's " Prelude "
his "natural being" are a fiction of "the
revolt." He assumes a body of "native"
instincts and impulses, which are there to
act and which know what to do. As a con-
sequence his doctrine is to a great extent a
glorification of impulse ; his scheme a plan
to give leisure and scope to individual pre-
ferences. But life is not such a sphere, nor
is society such a structure as he imagines,
and no individual is ever constituted in the
way he assumes. If the individual were
such as Rousseau assumes, and his relation
to society such as Rousseau supposes, then
one could quite understand why social re-
lations should bring feelings of constraint,
and why it might be well to get the young
into artificial Utopias to train them freely,
congenially. On the other hand, if the true
individual and society belong to each other,
and are closely interwoven from the first,
the whole situation is very different from
what Rousseau imagined, and our poet's
views represent a better philosophy and a
wiser regime. His is the old method of
the world, we may say. He sees in the
wholesome relations and process of life
itself a priceless education for heart and
will. For him the natural discipline and
setting of life is best. In that order, helped
As a Study of Education 55
by the experience and by the love of others,
and stimulated by our relations with them,
we learn a careful wisdom, and that love of
our kind without which "we are as dust,"
and life a thing of little worth.
Rousseau resented "interference," and
stood for "the rights of nature." Words-
worth had a vigorous part in the protest,
we have seen. But in his maturity he felt
another resentment, and made another pro-
test those against the rash theorist and
the sentimental reformer. One of these
protests is to be found in the Prelude (bk. v.
347-363), where he speaks of
These mighty workmen of our later age,
Who, with a broad highway, have overbridged
The froward chaos of futurity,
. . . ; they who have skill
To manage books, and things, and make them act
On infant minds as surely as the sun
Deals with a flower ; the keepers of our time,
The guides and wardens of our faculties,
Sages who in their prescience would control
All accidents, and to the very road
Which they have fashioned would confine us down
Like engines ; when will their presumption learn
That in the unreasoning progress of the world
A wiser spirit is at work for us
A better eye than theirs, most prodigal
Of blessings, and most studious of our good,
Even in what seem our most unfruitful hours ?
56 Wordsworth's " Prelude "
There is a " naturalism," modest and truth-
ful, a moral induction, patient and very
cautious, only impatient of self-confident
meddlers and their ways. Now in this
passage and the parts of his " argument "
connected with it the poet was protesting
against certain changes and on behalf of
certain principles. He is opposed to those
who would be for ever " instructing " and
" improving," and who recognise nothing
for education but their sort of instruction
and improvement. He dislikes the self-con-
scious intellectualism and moral priggish-
ness which their sort of education tended to
produce, and holds the freedom and sim-
plicity of his own training to have been
better, and to have taught him greater
things, besides giving his true nature a
deeper stimulus and a sounder ethic. He
draws "the model child" of the new edu-
cation, " a miracle of scientific lore," shut
"within the pinfold of his own conceit,"
and, for all his lore of science, shut away
from nature (Prelude, v. 298-340). He
wholly prefers " a nice of real children ;
not too wise, too learned, or too good," but
fresh, buoyant, natural, serious at times,
and full of spirit (cf. Prelude, v. 411-420).
The protest here is not yet out of date on
As a Study of Education 57
the intellectual, or on the moral side of it.
But as against this new type the poet gives
certain further points in his own training
which we ought to note : (i) The place of
free reading from pure interest, and the
worth of that. (2) The uses of romantic and
childish literature. (3) The place of sports.
(4) The proper spirit of youthful effort. (5)
The worth and power of wonder and awe
in the training of character.
Wordsworth put less value on books than
most of us do, but he counted it one of the
advantages of the simple scheme of education
at Hawkshead that there were a few good
books there, and that he was left free to
read them out of pure interest in the spirit
and matter of them. These books counted
for much in opening his mind. They make
a short list, but they are all good : Fielding,
Swift, Cervantes, Lesage. They made a
stronger impression on him than his class
work. And it is a thing of the first impor-
tance for a capable young mind to come for
itself into contact with the great minds that
live through literature. The better part of
education is in that contact. But what can
be done to this end? Books can be put
within reach, and inducements given to
read them, or else the matter be left quite
58 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
open if the books be there. There is the
difficulty of time and "used up" interest,
which our crowded curriculum makes ; and
there is the danger, great at present, 01
reading the many books that are worth so
little, and often nothing at all, and leaving
unread the great books. The whole matter
demands thoughtful attention.
Then it is interesting to find the poet
defending against the prosaic educationists
of his day the beautiful uses of the old
romances and fairy books (cf. Prelude, v.
341-46). After naming some of them in
glad reminiscence Old Fortunatus, Jack
the Giant Killer, Robin Hood, and " Sabra
in the Forest with St. George," he says :
The child whose love is here at least doth reap
One precious gain, that he forgets himself.
Further on in the same book of the Prelude
(v. 460-78), he tells of a certain " yellow
canvas-covered book," containing some of
" the Arabian tales," which led him to long
for the whole collection. The typical i8th
century mind did not know the moral or
the intellectual worth of these things, but
it was fit that the poet of the new romantic
movement should thus early respond to the
charm of the old romances, and he speaks
As a Study of Education 59
finely of their appeal to feeling and imagi-
nation those "dreamers" and "forgers
of fairy tales " who make us strangely
aware of
Faculties to whom
Earth crouches, the elements are potter's clay,
Space like a heaven filled up with northern lights,
Here, nowhere, there, and everywhere at once.
(Prelude, v. 510-33.)
It is a further point of interest in the
Prelude, the zest with which this boy threw
himself into the sports and pastimes of his
youth; the zest, too, with which the poet
describes them and the place he assigns
them in the " growth of his mind." In that
he is English. Thousands of youths have
done and will do that. That is a lively
form of " self-education," it may seem, and
one we have carried pretty far, without any
poet's encouragement. There are schools,
it is hinted, that exist largely for that form
of education. That it is education, not
exercise only, and valuable education too,
goes without saying. But the points to be
noted in the parts of the Prelude in which
the poet describes the sports of his youth
are that they are all associated with nature,
and that some of the subtlest and deepest
glimpses into nature of the poet's school-
6o Wordsworth's " Prelude "
days arose in connection with those plea-
sant sports. The keen play of the senses
and the nerves, the state of exhilaration and
delight connected with healthy sports in
the face of nature, were the occasion of
those insights, doubtless. But the fact has
possibly an educational value. It points to
more than the poetic sensibility of this lad.
It points also to the extraordinary purity
and delicacy of the senses when cultivated
by vigorous exercise and constant contact
with nature. The pity of it is that our
sports are so often dissociated from nature,
and that they seem to leave no leisure for
what of nature there may be about (cf. bk.
i- 326-339, 425-498, 567-596 ; bk. ii. 5-77,
H5-I37, 164-1/0; bk. v. 364-388).
There is another point that comes up in
connection with these sports, but has a
much wider bearing. This poet condemns
emulation and rivalry in sports and in
studies. On both lines the competition was
" mild " in his day. We have developed it
greatly since the early years of this century.
Wordsworth was quite against it. To him
it seemed the poorest of principles to appeal
to in education, the least fruitfully stimu-
lating, and, as a motive with reference to
character, the least social and humanly
As a Study of Education 61
serviceable. For himself he refused to act
on it, and indeed he acted through life on
the contrary principle, standing with stoical
independence on the merit of his work
whatever it might prove to be.
The principle of rivalry has gone deeply
into our system of education since then.
It is indeed now assumed to be a funda-
mental principle of the struggle of existence
and of the progress of life. It is a fair
question what our standard of " progress "
is in that case, and whether the best com-
mon good is not better. In any case we are
paying a good deal for this " competition "
and our constant appeal to this principle
of selection ; and it behoves us to see what
we are doing, and whither it is taking us.
It is said that you cannot get the general
mind to work without, that you will not
get the best results of the best minds with-
out " emulation." Our poet, on the con-
trary, urges that " toil and pains should
spread from heart to heart " by sympathy
and by the spirit of the place and the
society (bk. iii. 378) ; and that knowledge
should be "sincerely sought and prized for
its own sake" (bk. iii. 389-90). He says
elsewhere (in a letter of 1846), "I have
from my youth cultivated knowledge for
62 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
its own sake and for the good that may
come out of it." It is pretty certain that
he there speaks for the highest class of
" workers " of every sort. Truth and
beauty can only be won on terms of pure
service. The more we can get of such
" service " the better. And if we urge that
our "great competitive system" is simply
a rough and ready test for the readiest, if
not the best, practical talent, let us give it
the value it has in that way. Only let us
make a strong stand against covering the
field of educational influence and work
with the spirit and appeal of emulation.
For even if it be admitted that it must come
into play in practical life, and that it is a
part of life's discipline there, that may be
a reason against, and not at all in favour
of, bringing it into the earlier years. It is
surely to be desired that those years should
be kept for higher and more generous
emotions and principles.
Then in the matter of education, con-
ceived as a full and genial growth of mind,
there is a further principle in the Prelude we
ought not to omit, and that is the value the
poet puts on the emotion of admiration
deepening into wonder and awe. This is
a chord of the romantic spirit which the
As a Study of Education 63
Prelude, like other works of its author,
frequently strikes. It was in part because
in his own experience nature, in im-
pressive hours and great phenomena,
struck this chord so strongly, that he urges
her function in education, her value for
imagination. He thought his age lacking
in what was for him a principle rather than
a sentiment, and it was one great aim of
his art to recover and interpret this prin-
ciple. Are we not in some danger of losing
it ? Is nature not made often enough to
seem a great and interesting machine, and
nothing more ? Is there not a tendency for
our " little light " to banish wonder and leave
only curiosity, and in certain cases a sense of
our own cleverness chiefly ? But the " higher
mind" is then best nourished and expanded
when it is drawn on to admire and feel little
of itself and much of the greatness of the
world that offers itself through all exper-
ience to be known.
" We live by admiration," says our poet.
And for him the principle of wonder meant
not only that there is more to be known,
nor only that that more is immeasurable,
but that it is of such sort that it upholds and
cherishes the amplest and best life of our
minds. And then only are we " reading "
64 Wordsworth's " Prelude "
things rightly when our science has this
result. There is a kind of teaching which
makes knowledge and the world too seem
little and of no great interest. And there is
a way of teaching which makes knowledge,
as a human achievement, seem great, yet
hardly touches the sense of wonder at all,
and never the sense of worship. Yet the
latter is not more necessary to consummate
knowledge than it is to stimulate mind, and
only the teaching that modestly has it can
reach the finer results, or maintain them
through fruitful activity in the life of themind.
And if the Prelude has thus our poet's
intuition of the greatness of the world, it
has even more distinctively his sense of the
greatness, and what is often called the
spirituality, of the mind. " Dust as we
are" our natures have yet an " immortal "
quality. Through spirit we have intuition
of the nature of things. Through wisdom
and goodwill we share that nature. We
have seen how the poet implicitly held the
organic quality of mind. We have noted
his large and subtle conception of "the
growth of mind," and how his idea of the
correspondence of Nature and Mind carries
in it a large and subtle conception of " the
history of mind." And we have seen how
As a Study of Education 65
for our poet mind is a " creative " power,
and knowledge a "creative" interpreta-
tion.
In this he is romantic, not rationalist.
He is here in sympathy with Coleridge, in
reaction from Hartley and against Hume.
He was one of the first to strike the roots
of his view of human nature into the deep
grounds of the new thought. He is " tran-
scendentalist " as well as romantic. He was
one of the first to reject the mechanical
theory of mind one of the first to get a
glimpse of the evolution of mind in relation
both to its own life and the life of nature.
Very largely through sympathy with the
moral nature of man, and through an
original insight into, and an independent
judgment regarding, moral facts, he got
behind the sensualism of Hobbes, the
individualism of Locke, the atomism of
Hume. For him mind is great, not merely
through its achievements, but in its prin-
ciples and its essential relations. The most
living part of a living universe, it has not
only been built by the elements and laws
of that universe through its whole process,
but it stands somehow above it as inter-
preter, clothed with a power and a dignity
that are' all its ow r n. The play of nature's
E
66 Wordsworth's " Prelude "
forces and relations upon mind does not ex-
plain mind, nor the tissue and structure of
inferences from any sensuous experience as
such. Mind brings a principle of its own
to give structure and meaning to such ex-
perience, and is aware of a Law above all
laws of a Reason that is the "fountain
light of all our day," the " Master light of
all our seeing."
But whether this be true or matter of
opinion only, what has it to do with educa-
tion ? Not a little, as it seems to us. It is
enough to suggest its bearings. The great
teachers have been those who have worked
with a great and fruitful idea of mind, and
of human nature. A temper of exhaustless
interest in, and of reverence towards, the
human mind is needed if the teacher
would keep the patience and gather the
wisdom required for his work. Only such
interest and reverence can help him to
watch, or enable him to guide, that fair
development of minds which is his best
task and his finer reward. For if the poet's
idea of the nature and destiny of minds be
right, then knowledge is for minds, not
minds for knowledge. Mind is greater and
richer than the science we have hitherto
systematised, than the art we have so far
As a Study of Education 67
shaped ; and the temper of the true teacher,
and the scope of his teaching, will recog-
nise this even where such recognition is
very simple or may be quite implicit. It
will be seen in his respect for growing
and flexible intelligences. It will keep him
from pedagogic hardening and dogmatism.
It will be felt in his spirit of openness and
hopefulness towards young minds. It will
lift, ahead of means and tasks alike, a
generous notion of what these minds ought
to become a fair ideal of the life that
belongs to them, and will give, too, a
grounded hope of its realisation.
Then these later points bring us to cer-
tain ethical ideas of Wordsworth's poetry
which have such bearing on education that
we must, at least, indicate that bearing ere
we bring this paper to a close. Most of the
poet's critics have dealt with those ideas in
a wider relation. M. Legouis has an in-
teresting criticism of some of them in the
last part of his Study. But there is one
that is not dealt with, and that is not per-
haps easy to state fully. It is the way in
which our poet reached his sense of ethical
reality, and took up that posture of interest,
acceptance and free response to life and the
world as they are around us, which is a
68 Wordsworth's "Prelude
critical point in the development of most
natures. This is sometimes dealt with as
a the rise of belief," sometimes as the awak-
ing of " moral consciousness." In the case
"of a good many in recent years, as in the
case of Wordsworth, it may be said to pass
through more than one stage, and to be
consummated only after a " crisis." In
its main principle it is the sense of ethical
reality, the sense of a world and an order
of life about us which sets the conditions
of our lives, and towards w r hich we must
take up a certain posture. Like most who
have lived, and learned by living, our poet
passed through a period of alienation and
even revolt, and thereafter came to a time of
cordial acceptance and loyal response. He
then knew his place, the meaning of duty,
and the worth of things, for the first time.
He not merely recognised that a man must
put himself into the world as it is because it
is his only world, but he took his place in
frank and simple allegiance and obedience
to the great order in which he found himself.
Is one mistaken in thinking that many
that all natures of any force and indepen-
dence, of any earnestness or ideality, need
wise help here, and that the time when
such help is needed is always critical?
As a Study of Education 69
Goethe recognises the crisis in his Wilhelm
Meister, and Carlyle in his Sartor] and
Omar Khayyam, in a different temper, long
before either. It comes as we become aware
of will and judgment in face of a " world " ;
it comes acutely with the sense of a world
that does not answer to desire or to reason
apparently, and is thrust upon us. We then
need the poet's truth. We must be brought
to see that our " seed-plot of time " is our one
field, and that we must take it heartily and
till it, "for good and all." To unfold
" belief" in this sense, to cultivate a ready
allegiance to reality, is an important part
of training, and if life does the greater part
of it, wise help can often guide heart and
will to the right attitude and decision.
This will appear a small matter, a slight
achievement. It may even seem that most
minds achieve it unawares. We should
say that such is not the case, and that most
minds pass through the " crisis " we are
describing when they turn from dreams
and fancies, and wishes, and vague hopes,
that yet are scarcely hopes, of a scheme
of life shaped to the heart's desire, to accept
the fact as it is and make what they can of
it. But not to get farther than this were
certainly to stop at the beginning. To
70 Wordsworth's " Prelude "
accept reality, even if we accept it ethically,
with a frank determination to take it for
all it is worth, is to have got but a little
way. If we " nor love nor hate our life,"
we shall hardly, any of us, most of us
pretty certainly will not, " live well what
we live." Much reasonableness, a certain
goodness, a certain austere pleasure can be
got on those terms ; but that loyalty to and
zeal for reality, without which most find it
impossible to live "well," demands more
surely. We need for that not only the eye
to see the fact, and the will to take it for
all it may be worth, but the heart to love it.
And how get and how keep that ? Through
perception of its lovableness, through the
conviction that it is good. But the fact,
as it is, is not wholly fair or good, and it
often seems hard to put the heart cordially
into it. To the poet, as we have seen, it
was so at one time. All things in the life
of man seemed worse than unprofitable, and
the world itself dull and poor. Through
the " thinking heart " it was that he again
took up the facts of life and of the world and
found for the first time their simple beauty
and goodness, and a meaning in them that
proved to be now too rich for words.
It often seems as if this part of vital
As a Study of Education 71
culture were omitted or forgotten. It is
thought, perhaps, that every one can get
at this "secret" for himself, and that none
can really help another. Yet one great
lesson of this poetry is that a mind that has
the secret can put other minds on the track
of it, and even make it one of their posses-
sions. The joy of beauty, the sense of good,
a deep faith in things, and a strong, simple
love of man can be thus communicated.
Can any gift of culture be more precious ?
Yet often enough this sense of the interest
and worth of life and of the world is the
one thing education fails to give. It fosters
a certain impatience with, or superiority to,
the old and simple things of the world. It
begets a tendency to pessimism. It raises
a doubt whether goodness be worth the
effort it costs, the reward it brings. To
such cynicism and leanness of soul the poet
virtually says, "Open your eyes to the world,
your hearts to the life about you. Learn to
see things through faith in and love of them,
through their ' total beauty and meaning,' not
through their 'partial appearances.' Live
simply for high ends. Put yourself in
touch with your kind. Learn to care for
them if only because they are tied up in
the same bundle of life with yourself.
72 Wordsworth's "Prelude"
Learn the value and beauty of simple lives
and lowly virtues. Set yourself to live
kindly with all sorts of men, and you will
soon find that the best you can bring to the
general good will seem all too little. And
therein you will have found that which
gives satisfaction through the sense of a
growing and an infinite good."
Wordsworth's conviction of the goodness
of things and of the worth of life was thus
a moral intuition and an imaginative truth.
It did not rest on any dogma, and still less
on any dream. It rested squarely, we may
say, on a poetic construction of the life of
things in relation to human nature and the
mind of man. He gave up his dreams his
scheme of a world as he would have it ;
he gave up his revolt from a world that
would not have his dreams thrust on it
there and then ; he gave up his rational-
ism, his abstract scheme of a world accord-
ing to reason. And for what did he give
up dreams, doubts, and the dogmas of rea-
son? For the customary way, for the old
tradition, and things as they are ? No, not
so really. What he did really, and what
gives value, on the large question in hand,
to the Prelude, to the Lyrics, and even to the
Excursion is this, as it seems to us, that he
As a Study of 'Education 73
says on this question through the whole of
his mature work, " Take the world and the
life of man as they are, make the best of
them, and you will find that all necessary
good is possible. You will find the ade-
quacy of the kindly honest life, however
simple. You will find besides that the life
and powers of man make his spiritual hopes
reasonable. And you will join the great
fellowship of men moving towards the un-
known goal with patient and splendid trust."
So we read many passages which it is im-
possible here to quote. And if we read them
rightly you have there a temper and a truth
needed then, needed now, and good always.
Well is it for the youth, or the man, whose
larger education brings him to these convic-
tions, and settles him in this spirit, in despite
of all that fights against them.
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