Wasserman EnglishRomantics

WASSERMAN, EARL S.
, The English Romantics: The Grounds of Knowledge , Studies in

Romanticism, 4:1 (1964:Autumn) p.17
The English It0111antics:
The Grounds of J<nowlcdgc
TIAHL H. W ASSTIHMAN
X
JCO ltD I N G TO thc Humpty Dumpty principlc of seman-
tic wagcs we owe the word "Itomanticism" a good deal of
extra pay; we havc madc it do sllch a lot of ovcrtime work
by l11eaning so many things. Wc cven insist that, sincc thc word
exists, it lllust stand for somcthing rcal prior to our isolation of that
sOlllething, and wc have laborcd to divinc that arcallc meaning. W c
gencrally lop off a period of timc, variously and arhitrarily deter-
lllined, presuming it to he infllscd with somc idelltifying <]uality
1
. "I} .." I I . r
W lose name Js ..... olllantlclsm ; an( \VC t wn setout, 1Il ract, to con-
stitutc the t1 priori ph:Ultolll by ddlning it, with littlc resulting agrcc-
lncnt, usually by naming thc COJlllllon in manifcstations of
I 1
"I) . ", 1'1 I .. I fl"
w lat we assume IllUst )C,-Olllantic. lC oglc IS t lat 0: t lC VICIOUS
circlc: thc dcfinition aSSllmcs as ('xistent and understood that which is
to he defined and proved to exist. Since, likc I IUlllpty Dumpty, I'd
rathcr 110t have thc word COJllC round of a Saturday night to exact
such heavy wagcs ofmc, I ask permission to sack it. My theil,
is Wordsworth, Colcridgc, Kcat s, and Shelley. They sh:uc, of course,
11lany fcatures, but a catalogue of these would merely melt the (cHIr
pocts into an anonynlous confection and filter out: what is idiosyn-
cratic; that is, it would destroy our cssential reason for reading them
and disregard their poetic motivcs. ()n the other halld, the fOllr
belong to approximately the sallle cra, what they obviously share is
access to f.'lcets of a common culture. Ideally, thcrefore, it should hc
possible to relatc them to that clllture in such a way as not mcrely to
preserve their individual uni<lucllcss but indeed to locate it with some
precision, for if anything is palpahle it is that they vigorously dis-
agreed on central issues and that their works difTer in vastly more
essential and interesting ways than they arc similar.
The bulk of eighteen th-ccl1t:l1 ry descriptive Is so large as to
suggest that the poets must have- had a significalJt apprehension of the
external world, or at any ratc ca mc to grips with it in profound ways.
In point off.'lct nearly all this versc is, in these terms, trivial, and most
of it betrays an uncertain or ineffectual conceptiol1 of how one (:x-
[ 17 ]
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Copyright (c) Trustees of Boston University
WASSERMAN, EARL S., The English Romantics: The Grounds of Knowledge , Studies in
18 EARL R. WASSERMAN
periences the extenul nature which is its subject lnatter. Clearly the
external world for lnuch in that culture, and poetic repre-
sentation oflandscapt.' was thought vaguely significant. But the prob-
lelll of the transaction between the perceiving nlind and the perceived
world was either evaded or left uneasily indecisive in descriptive
verse, whcl'e one 1llight reasonably expcct it to,dcllland attcntion.
If eighteenth-century poetry hedgcd on this qucstion, which I shall
-very loosely-call epistelnological, contelnporary philosophy cer-
tainly did not, and it is highly likely that the subtleties of eighteenth-
ccntury cpistclnology both drove the poets to confront the external
world and deterred theln frol11 confronting it in any itnportant way.
By its very nature British elnpiricisnl had long tended to unsettle any
assurance of an external world whose existence and qualities are
exactly as the senses teport. I-Iobbes had recognized the disparity be-
tween sensible qualities and the object being perceived. Locke, build-
ing on Boyle's distinction, divided qualities into those which arc
attributes of the object and those in the perceiver's lnind, such as
sound and color; and by locating the fonner in a pure "substance,"
which is unknowable in itself, he left In an convinced of the reality of
his oWllll1ental ill1pressions, but highly uncertain about the nature or
reality of the external world. Berkeley then located both sets of
qualities in the perceiver's lllind and, destroying Locke's "S\l"'itance,"
lllade God the cause of our perceptions and assigned the rcali ty of the
external world to the act of its being perceived: natural science be-
COlnes 111erely a study of the principles governing the unifofln rela-
tions of our sensations. Hmne then cOlupleted Berkeley's subversioll
of the "external" by sceptically concluding that we can have no real
knowledge of the existence or nature of the external causes of our
iIupressions. Well l1light a landscape poet like Richard Jago be un-
easy lest "all this outward Fralue of Things" be "unsubstantial Air, I
Ideal Vision, or a waking Drealu" (Edgc-l-IiIl). Meanwhile, the ll1e-
chanists like I-Iartley and the French school tried to cut the episte-
111010gical knot by explaining both Inind and nature as lnatter and
Illotion; and the Scottish School took the coward's way out by
eschewing theory and liluiting itself to description of luental phe-
l10luena on the basis of unassailable, God-given COllUllon sense. The
stage was set for Kant and the episteluology of transcendentalislll.
To these whirlwinds of eighteenth-century episteluology the poets,
outwardly, reluained rather indifferent, as though their poetic valu-
(c) 2001 Pro Quest Information and Learning Company
Copynght (c) Trustees of Boston University
THE ENGLISH ROMANTICS 19
ing of the external world guaralltccd it against philosophic doubts.
Richard Jago was at least awarc of the philosophic storm and saw
that it was relcvant to the dcscriptive poet. "Iteason," he admitted,
"strives in vain to tcll I How Matter acts on incorporeal Mind I Or
how ... Itnagination paints I Unrcal Sccncs." And he was conscious
that SOlllC philosophcrs wcre questioning whether" All this outward
PranlC of Things I Is what it sccms" so that "this World, which wc
Jllaterial call," may be "A visionary Sccnc, like midnight Dreams, I
Without Existence, save what Pancy givcs." But apparcnt1y feding
that such qucstionings thrcatcned, rathcr than cnrichcd, his poctic
enterprise, he settled them in tlw cOJ11Jllonscnsical Scottish way, by
c. ," 1M' J' '1 " "(\ ' I
relusmg to rcnounce an s surcst -'-ViC cncc. <11It: wc rat lcr
then I These Metaphysical Subtletics," he said, rather hoping thcy
would go away and Icave l11an confidcnt his cxpcricnccs are 110t
imaginary.
Influcnced by the Lockcan distinction hetwccn primary and sec-
ondary qualitics, Edward Young arrivcd at the idca of a divinc,
creative power in the senscs that organizes and beautifies nature,
which otherwise "were a rudc, lInco1our'd chaos": are th'
occasion; ours th'cxploit ... I M:lll J11:lkcs thc ll1:ltchlcss image, man
admires" (Night TIIOUghts). But at worst, the same theory led to
Akensicle's trivializing our pcrception of external nature. Drawing
on Addison's version of Locke, Akcnside conceived of sound, color,
and odor as subjective qualities hestowed by a heneflcent 11lagician-
God to COlllpCnsate fi)r the dullncss of His outward crcation. The
I
, "k' I 'II ' " "I' " "]
resu t IS a m( I llSIOI1, a p cilsmg crrOf so convlIlclIlg t lat man
"Nor doubts thc paintcd green, or azure arch, I Nor qucstions J1v)re
the 1l1usic's mingling sounds." Evcn by assigning thc calise to a God
who hcncvolcntly wishcs to "make [man's] destined road of I De-
lightful to his fcet," Akcl1side ClIlllot rescue this cpistemology of
deccption. To him this half-fictitious world is mainly a stimulus to
subjectivc activities: adventitiously stirring the passiol1s; provoking
aesthetic feelings of sublimity, wondcr, and beauty; divinely causing
thc mind to connect things "which in thcmselves I Have no connec-
tion"; lcading the mind through the perception of dcsign in nature
to convcrsc with its divine At best, the most intimate rela-
tion Akenside can find betwccn object and suhject: is that of associative
analogy, so that 111an beholds "ill lifeless things, I The inexpressive
semblance ofhimsclf, I Of thought and passion." Briefly, Akcllsidc's
spcculations, dcspitc his attcntion to cxtcrnalnaturc, arc charactcristic
of cightccnth-ccntury criticisnl and poctry in being psychological
'lr Blorc than cpistclnological or ontological; his nlain acc01nplish-
Incnt is to dcscribc thc opcrations of thc nlind, not to dcfinc cxpcri-
cncc or reality.
This lack of any significant epistcl11ology can bc takcn as typical of
thc hundreds of cightecnth-ccntury 111cditativc-dcscriptivc pOCnlf..
Whcn the poct is not 111crcly organizing sensc data into SOlllC pic-
turcsque, sublilllC, or bcautiful distribution, he usually devotcs hilll-
self to hlll11anizing thc cxternal sccne by associating it with somc
c1110tion, llloral thcIne, historical cpisode, llloving narrative, or auto-
biographical expcriencc. The sccne bCCOlllCS significant only by
stilllulating thc poct to link it with lllan by SOllIe loosc association.
Evcn when he directly considcrs thc rclation of thc objectivc and sub-
jcctive worlds hc usually postulates nothing lllore intimate than
analogy. According to Akcnside, thc illlagination, working with
sense data, gives the lllind "ideas analogous to those of llloral appro-
bation and dislikc." Ah110St all the" OrnaIllents of poetic diction," hc
thought, arise fr0111 the analogy between the luaterial and immatcrial
worlds and between "lifeless things" and man's thought and passion.
Accordingly, thc eightccnth-ccntury poet is forever interrupting his
scene-painting to fmd its 1110ral or cnlotional analogue. A description
of flickering sunlight lllUSt be paired with a note on the analogous
eillotion of gaiety; if the poet observes that "Those thorns protect the
forest's hopes; I That trec thc slcndcr ivy props," hc Blust add, "Tlllts
rise thc luighty on the lllean! I Thus on the strong the feeble lean!"
(F. N. C. Munday, Nccdll'ood Forest, 1776). Does a river spill into a
cataract? Then
Thus man, the harpy of his own content,
With blust'ring passions, phrensically bent,
wild ill the windy vortex, whirls the soul,
Till Reason bursts, nor call herself controul.
(Thomas Maude. WClIslcyt/ale, 1771)
Such tcnuous, inorganic bonds bctwcen inner tllan and outer world
betray the ilupotence ofbter cightccnth-ccntury poetic epistcmolo-
gy, just as the ubiquitous urge to find S01l1C lllomi or subjective ana-
logue to thc scenc reveals the anxiety to internalize the external and
intcgrate the spiritual with the phcnOlllcnal. The resort to analogy
only dodges the problclu, sincc it both prctends to a relation between
THE ENGLISI-I ROMANTICS 21
subject and object and yet keeps theJll categorica11y apart. In J H02
Coleridge could justifiably complain of poetry in which
There reigns ... such a perpclual trick of /l/oraliz;II,I! every thilJg .... lJeVer to sel! or
describe any interesting appearance inllatllre, without connecting il: by dilll analo-
gies with the moral world proves (ainllless o( J m pression. N al.llre has her proper
interest; & he will know what it is, who believes & (ecls, that every Thing has a
Li(e of it's own, & that we arc all 0111' Life. A Poet's Ill'arl & /lIldlt'r/ should he (011/-
billcd, il/till/ately cOlllbined & ,1I/1ftcd, with the great: appearance'; in Nature----& not
merely held in solution & loose with the III , in the !>hape o((orJllal Sinlilies.
(Letter to Sothchy, Septelllber 10, I R(2)
Though the eighteenth-century poets bid liS behold nearly every
hill and plain, their reasons and those of the aesthcticialls are largel y
adventitious alHI extrinsic to the ul1mediated encounter with the
object. Por example, Archihal(l Alison at the end of the century
seems to promise a poetically viahle epistemology hy proposing that
"As it is only ... through the medillm of matter, that, in the present
condition of our being, the <]ualities of mind are known to liS, the
qualities of matter becollle necessarily expressive to us of all the
qualities of mind they signify" (lissays 011 till' Naltlft' alld Prillriph's
Taste, J790). What we might then expect: is a system -identifying
perception with significant cognition and resolving the divorce be-
tween subject and ohject by making perception an act of self-knowl-
edge. But the relations Alison develops are in (;lCt no
Blore than those employed by the descriptive poets: matter is the
immediate sign of mental powers al1(l ions; or it: is the sign of
11lental qualities as a of experience, analogy, and associa-
tion. In SlIlll, ollr "minds, illstcall of being governed hy the character
of external objects, arc enabled to bestow upon them a character
which docs llot belong to them" and to COllnect with the ap}warances
of nature "feelings of a nohler or a Illore interesting kind, than any
that the mere influences of Illatter can ever cOllvey"; awl Alison's
system implies little more than 1 he characteristic poetry in which the
scene is understo()(l as an indepcndcnt entity that hccOJ))cS siKni(icant
through equally independent values loosely linked to it.
His theory of matter as aesthetic sign merely a filzzy rationale
for the cstablished eightcenth-(:clltllry descriptive instead of
healing the dualislll anel leading to:l more organic poetry. The 1Il1re-
solved dualism of tlw poets alld aestheticians reslllts in a dualistic
poetry: the scene is perceived and then felt or associated or
but scldolll, if ever, apprehended ill the perception. It is therefore a
poctry ofhohhling siluile, rather than sYll1bol. And it is a poetry that
never fulfills itself to allow the poet to withdraw fr0111 a self-support-
ing creation; rather, it ends only when the poet has spent hitusclf, the
poeln being sustained as long as he continues to annotate his sensory
data with significances.
One radical heritage of the early nineteenth century, then, was a
deal of revolutionary epistetnological speculation and a literary tradi-
tion to which these speculations should have been itnportant, but
were not. What Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley chose to
confront lllore centrally and to a degree unprecedented in English
literature is a nagging problelll in their literary culture: I-low do sub-
ject and object Ineet in a nlcaningful relationship? Dy what Jl1eanS do
we have a sigllificant awareness of the world? Each of these pocts
offcrs a different answer, and each is unique as poet in proportion as
his answcr is special; but all share the necessity to resolve the question
their predecessors had Illade so pressing through philosophic and
aesthetic concern and. poetic neglect or incolnpetence. Evcn in 1796,
when Coleridge had not advanced beyond a poetics in which "tHoral
Sentitl1cnts, Affections, or Feelings, arc deduced frot11, and associated
with, the Scenery of Nature," he was conscious of a pressure to
"create ... [an] indissoluble union between the intellectual and the
Inatcrial world." of course cpistcll1ologies involve ontologies and
can, and did, interconnect with theologies; but the epistel11ological
problelll is radical to this poetry as poetry, since it detennines the role
the poet will assign his raw tuaterials, how he will confront thel11,
and how he will UloId the III into a poetH. Nothing I have to say about
each of the poets is lcss than f.'uuiliar; but I bclieve it has not becn
custoluary to view thenl collectively in tenus of what I have called
epistelnology or to see it as the COlluuon basc on which their poctry
rests.
Wordsworth's earlicst descriptive poetus, Au Eveuitlg Walk and
Descriptive Sketches, arc strictly in the eighteenth-century nlode and
arc dull in proportion as they lllercly organize itnages into picturesque
and sublilllC configurations and propose tHoral analogues. The elHer-
gcncc of the radically different Wordsworth is Inarked by a primi-
tive, childlike wondcrtncnt that hc expcriences thc outer \vorld at all.
In a scnse he is an ur-ROlnantic, celebrating unphilosophically the
forgotten basic luiracle that the self Inay possess the outer world in
SOllle te])ing way, and Illaking fresh the wonder of the act. I-Je seeks
to convey. for exulllple. the UWl' with which. whcn the boy of Win-
ander tensely waited in the silencc for thc owls to return his hoot,
a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carricd far into his hcart I hc voicc
Of mOllntain-torrcllts; or thc visiblc scene
Would cnter unawares into mincl
With \l its solcmn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that unccrtain hcaven received
Into thc hosom of t hc stcady Iakc.
(Prelude. v. 3fh-3fHi)
Many poems, such as and Reply," arc csscntiaJly dc-
lightcd responses to thc discovcry that thc extcrnal world cml move
into the consciousness. Stale and negligible as this fact had been to his
predecessors, Wordsworth, by responding to it with almost naive
amuzelllcnt, clearcd the ground for frcsh poctic considerations of the
transactions between things and mind. His "To a Highland Girl," for
exalllple, progrcssively transfers the perceivcd sccnc and girl into the
poet's nlind and nleillory, starting with the paradox, "Thcc, ncither
know I, nor thy peers; I And yet Illy eyes arc filled with tears." Sub-
ject is affected by object and yet is unrc1ated to it. Progressivc1y thc
poet proposes lllore binding rcbtionships: to pray for the girl after he
is gone, to make a garland for her, to dwcl1 hcsidc hcr and adopt hcr
ways, to share a COlll1110n neighborhood, to be hcr hrother, her
father. For as an external object, finite and fixed in space, shc is to him
"but as a wave I of the wild sea," a transient image on his senses and
unrelatcd to his being. The poet's pIca is, "I would have I Some c1aim
upon thee," the subject yearning to possess the objcct in some ah-
solute relationship, 110t 111crely to be transicntly touchcd by it. How
the ohject is transforlllcd into the stuff of the mind Wordsworth docs
not here say; but it is incorporated into the l1leJl10fY so that he may
part frotll the girl in space and time, and yet,
till I grow old,
/\s f.1ir before n,e shall behold,
As I do 1l0W, the cahill small,
The Iakc, tllC hay, the waterfall;
Anti Thce, thc Spirit of them alii
Whereas thc eightccllth-celltury poet took it for granted that we
perceive and sought by collateral accretions to give percepts value,
Wordsworth invested with value the very act of experience.
That Wordsworth had no philosophy in hitH has bccn widely sus-
pected, and it is likely that Coleridge foisted on hinl the burden of
appcaring a systcluatic thinker. At any rate, fonnal epistelllology was
of prillle iluportance to Coleridge; and Wordsworth, trying to look
like the philosophic poet Coleridge urged hin1 to be, offers ahnost
every variety of episteluological hypothesis. Associationislll and
analogy are there, and so, too, is lllutual interdependence:
an ennobling interchange
Of action from without and from within;
The excellence, pure function, and best power
Doth of the objects seen and eye that sees.
(Prelude, XIII. 375-378)
So, too, is sOluething of Coleridge's position: "thou nmst give, I
Else never canst receive" (Prelude, XII. 276-277). Or he can postulate,
to Blake's annoyance, the old teleological doctrine of the exquisite
fittingness of subject and object, speaking of the rclation, however,
not as a llleeting but as a wedding and of its result as a kind of bio-
logical creation, "which they with blended lllight I Accoluplish"
(R.ecluse). The power of the senses "to own I An intellectual chanu"
he attributed to "Those first-born affinities that fit I Our new exis-
tence to existing things" (Prelude, I. 552-556).
Varied and inconsistent though his tuany explanations are, they at
least reveal how recurrently the poetic enterprise of the ROluantic
required attention to the negotiations between the senses and the
tuind. It was inescapable for a poet whose plan, as Coleridge outlined
it, was "to treat of luan as ... a subject of eye, ear, touch, and taste, in
with naturc, and infonning the senses froln the
lllind, and not C0111pol1nding a lllind out of the senses." But W orcls-
worth was honest enough to adluit his tolerance for llluitiple views:
"To every natural fortll, rock, fruit, or flower ... I gave a 1l10rallife: I
saw thelll feel, or linked thelll to sonle feeling" (Prelude, III. 127-130).
Coleridge lllight well have thought of hinl as Dr. Johnson did of
pliant Poll Cannichacl: "I had sonIC hopes for her at first, ... hut she
was wiggle-waggle, and I could never persuade her to he categorical."
But when Wordsworth set about to shape a poetic union of the
world and the lllind, instead of theorizing about it, there tends to
TilE ENGLISH ROMANTICS 2S
appear one dominant mode, which can be described by the following
among his 111any formulations:
... hy cOlllelllplatillg these Forllls p.e., or lIature)
III the relatiolls which they hear t.o lIIall,
He shall discern, how, throllgh the varJOIlS meam
Which sjlently they yield, are IIlllltiplied
The spiritual presences o[ ahsent things.
(J:xCllrsiol1, IV. J230-12H)
"The Solitary Reaper," for example, ends with approximately the
sallle detailed description of the shlging reaper with which it began-
but with an essential In thc intcrvening stanzas the girl's
song is stretched out in space (by comparison with song among Ara-
bian sands and in the 1rthest Hebrides) and in time (pcrh:lps its hur-
den is oflong ago, today, or the future); and, hy yirtue of its heing in
a strange tongue, its contcnt has no spccificity. The hOllndaries
around the specific song have been stretched thill, and when we re-
turn at lcngth to the original scene the song, haying llearly lost its
finitude and become quasi-spiriwal, has made its way inl:o the pOcl'S
, ,
lIlner consclOusncss.
Pcrhaps thc bcst account of such a process of experience is Cole-
ridge's analysis of a partial, inade{}uate fc)rm of his own epistemolo-
gy. Since Coleridge, adapting Schelling, held that in knowJc.dge
objcct and subject "are identical, each involving, and supposing the
other" (BioJ!raphia Litl'rar;a), he rejected the possihility that either has
prccedcncc. Were thc ohjcctivc taken as prior, then we would "have
to account for the superventiol) of the which coalesces
with it." If thc were prior, as it is for Wordsworth, then it
" ' 'II' " urI') I ( I ' I)
lllUSt grow 111 to lllte Igence. lC p laellOIl1ena Ill'lIlall'rlfl ll1ust
wholly dif.appcar, and the laws alone (Iheforllla/) 1l111st rell1ain. Thellce
it that in nature itself the Illore the of Jaw hreaks
forth, the lllOre does the Ims/.! drop off, thc ph:lCnOIllCIl:l thelllsd vcs
become n}ore spiritual and at length cease altogether in 0111' con-
sciousncss." Coleridge rejected this position, but W or<bworth 's po-
etic instincts led him to it: the ohject: is perceivecl vividly, usually
with great spccificity; the husk is thcn dissolvcd; and whcn the phe-
I I 1
",' I' 1'" . I f
1l0lllCnOn las at ast )ecome s]>lrtwa lZC{ It passcs mt:o t IC core o.
the subjcctivc intelligence. Lucy Gray slips away (r'OJll her defining
surroundings, evaporatcs into ';)otprints in the snow, which, in turn,
vanish at the middlc of the bridge betwecn the phcnomenal and
spiritual worlds; and she beco1l1cs thc living spirit of solitude. of the
cuckoo's twofold voice, "At once f.'lf off, and ncar," the song to the
ncarby is addrcssed to the physical scene, and first becOlnes subordi-
nate to the 'lr-off one that brings "a talc I Of visionary hours" and
then is lost in it, so that thc bird Inay be "No bird, but an invisible
thing, I A voice, a Inystery," a spirit in natnre that binds the poet's
past with his present, his 'lr-off with his ncar. Or, in "Resolution and
Indcpendcncc" thc poct oscillatcs bctwecn perception of the leach-
gatherer and a dreallllike inner vision ofhinl until at length the leach-
gatherer has beCOll1e an object of the "lnind's eye" and Inoves into
the poct's spirit as a nloral force, instead of being only a visible
exclllphull.
To Coleridge the goal of art is "To tl1ake the external internal, the
internal external, to lllake Nature thought and thought Nature"
("On Poesy or Art"); and Wordsworth occasionally cchocd hitn:
"All things shall live in us and we shall live I In all things that sur-
round us." But in 'lct only thc first half of this statelnent truly
describes his poetic processes, and he was closer to the Illark when he
wrote that the illlagination, "either by conferring additional prop-
erties upon an object, or abstracting frOt)} it sonIC of those which it
actually possesses," enables it to cere-act upon the nlind which hath
perforllled the process, like a new existence" (ISIS Pref.'lce). The
senses shuck off or greatly attenuate the lllateriality of the itllage, or
the iluagination tranSlllutes sensory data into sOlllething quasi-inulla-
terial so that, for Wordsworth, sound was "Most audible ... when
the fleshly car . . . Forgot her functions, and slept undisturbed"
(Preltlde, II. 415-418): when "bodily eyes I Were utterly forgottcn
... what I saw I Appeared like sOlllething ill tuyself, a dre:,ln, I A
prospect oft/w mi"d" (Prelude, II. 349-352). This is why Keats, looking
frolll the other side of the fence, could speak ofW ordsworth' s poe illS
as "a kind of sketchy illtclIcc(Hallatldscape" (to Dailey, October I 8 17)
and why Shelley could describe Wordsworth's art as "Wakening a
sort of thought in scnsc." Wordsworth's poctic experience seeks to
recapture that condition of boyhood whcn, as hc said, he was "unable
to think of external things as having external existcncc, and I COln-
111uned with all that I saw as sOlllething not apart f1'OIn, but inhcrcnt
in, tny own illuuaterialnature."
It is notable that Wordsworth's tnajor contctuporarics-Colcridge,
Keats, l-Iazlitt, Dc Quinccy, and Shelley-all recognized that at the
core of his thought and art is I he tendency to assimilate the outer
worle! to the Illind, to absorb ohject into suhject. Their vivid aware-
ness of this suggests not ollly the epistemological cellter of Words-
worth's poetry but also the overriding importance to his contem-
poraries of the epistemological problem. Shelley, who identified
Wordsworth with Peter Bell, may speak for all of the]}]:
All things that Pctcr saw an(l fdt
Had a peculiar aspect to him;
And when thcy camc within the helt
Of his own naLlire, seemed to melt,
Lik\! cloud to ( 101lel, into him.
And so thc olltward world IIniting
To that within him, hc becalllc
Considerahly IIninviting
To thosc who, mcditation slighting,
Were Illoulded ill a different frame.
He had a mind which was somehow
At once circumfcrence and cent rc
Of all he might or feel or know;
Nothing wcnt cver Ollt, although
Something did ever ellter.
Yet his was inciividualminel,
And new created all he saw
In a new manllcr, and rcfincd
Those new Cf('atiol1S, and comhined
Thcm, by a 1ll3stcr-spirit's law.
Thus-though 1Il1illlagillativc-
An apprehension clear, illtcnse,
Of the mind's work, had made alive
The things it wrought on; I believe
Wakenillg a slIrt of thought in scme.
But from the first 'twas P c t c r ' ~ drift
To be a kinel of moral CIIIIIICh,
He tOllched the hem of Nature's shift,
Pelt faint-and never dared IIplift
The closest, all-concealing tunic.
Keats, who is Wordsworth's exact antithesis, had 110 sllch COI11-
punctions. Por him sigllificant experience ahsorhs the self into the
essence of the object, and therefore he condemned Wordsworth's
inversion of this relationship as the" egotistical sublinIe." The episte-
l11ological difference between the two is that which Coleridge drew
betwecn Milton and Shakespeare: Milton, like Wordsworth, "at-
tracts all fonus and things to hitllself, into the unity of his own
IDEAL," and all "things and luodcs of action shape thcluselves
anew" in his being; Shakespeare, like Keats, "darts hiluself forth, and
passes into all the fonlls of hU111an character and passion" and "bc-
COllIes all things." The differcnce is also that between the two eight-
eenth-century traditions frolu which they stCIU. Wordsworth derivcs
luainly frolll thc cnlpirical and associativc doctrincs whtch speculated
on how thc iluagination transnuttes sensation into thc stuff of thc
lllind; Keats belongs to thc tradition of sYlupathy, largely by way of
Hazlitt, who protested against an art itt which SOIlIC scntimcnt is
forevcr "luoulding cverything to itself." But however widely they
differ, they obviously sharc a deep-rooted concern with how the
jective and objective worlds carryon their transactions. It is thc qucs-
tion their culturc had Illadc of prillle illlportancc to the poetic act;
and Butch of their poetry is the act of answering it.
R.cjcctiug Wordsworth's "cgotistical" assimilation of object to
subject, Keats asslllued that cverything has its own vital and inll11U-
table quintessence and that the fulfllItllent of expcricncc is thc absorp-
tion of the expericncing self into that csscncc through the intensity of
thc sensory cncounter. The "Man of Genius," as opposed to thc
"M fl) " I ", I' '1 I' "" If'" 1
an 0 owcr, las no Ill( IVI( ua tty, no propcr se , SlllCC Ie
is "continually infonuing and filling SOIlIC othcr Body" or, accord-
ing to Hazlitt, losing his pcrsonal idclltity "in sonIC object dcarcr to
hinl than hiluself." When I alll in a 1'00111 full of pcoplc, Kcats wrote,
"thcnllot luyself goes hOluc to luyself: but the idcntity of every Olle
in thc 1'00111 bcgins so to prcss uponl11C that I alll in a very little timc
annihilated."
Consequently, whercas Wordsworth's luajor poetic process re-
quircs the dissolution of the objcct's scnsory finitude, awakening "a
sort of thought in scnse," Keats's proccss requires that the self risc to
incrcasingly Hlore intensc sensory ardor until it is of the order of the
objcct's dynaluic esscncc-just as his Porphyro Hlllst risc "Beyond a
l110rtal l11an illlpassion'd '\f" in order to lllelt into his own inll1111-
table cssence as it cxists in MadeHnc's intcnse drcaill. POl' Kcats thc
object becolllcs progressively sharper, richcr, lliore vibrant-lll0rc,
not less, itself-as the expericncing self is entanglcd, enthrallcd, dc-
THE ENGLISH ROMANTICS
stroyed, until, "Melting into its radiance, we blend, I Mingle, and so
becOllle a part of it" (I!I/(IYlllic>IJ, I. 79R-R J J). Correspondingly, his
images becOllle symbols, llot hy becoming "sketchy intellectual
Landscapes," but by achieving their most intense sensory natllrc,
since, as he wrote, everything becomes vallled hy the ardor with
which it is pursued. The poct, capable of ecstatically cntering thc
essences of objects, finds his way to the instincts of the eaglc and
knows the tiger's yell "Hke mother-tonguc"; he call explore "all
forms and substances I Straight homeward to their symhol-essences."
The first three stanzas of the 011 a Cirecian Urn" are a full en:lct:-
Illent of this process of empathic absorption, as the ohserver is pro-
gressively drawn to the urn, to the fiieze within it, and to the perdur-
ably ccstatic life in thc frieze-a life which he at: last experiences by
heing assimilated into it. Endymion's detested mOIllCIHS, OJ) the other
hand, arc those when, after absorption into essence, he makes "the
journey homeward to habiwal self," self-conscious instead of other-
conscious. This cpistelllology J( cats anchored in a private f:tith that
we create ollr own post-mortal existence, since iJ) our flnal ahsorp-
tion into the ultimate essence we shall experience hereafter in a "finer
tonc" and inllllutably ollr transient earthly absorptions into essences;
and most of Keats's poetry is all exploratioll of the ramifications of
this belief. But the f()rIn and <111;t1ity his poetic materials take and til<:
role they play arc determined l)y his epistemology of cmpathy.
Sincc for Coleridge thc goal of art is "to make Nature thought: and
thought neither thc Wordsworth ian nor the Keatsiall posi-
tion is ade'luate. Starting with the dualism of alld the self,
Coleridge made the purpose of his epistemology such a recollcilia-
tion of the two that they Jllay be "coinst:lnt:lneotls and one." Ulti-
Jllate knowledge is self-knowJt.dge, (c>r only in Ihis act are
and identical. But in to he an the infinite
nlUst also he finite; alld therefc>re the act of self-knowledge, wherehy
"a ... becollles a hy the act: of itself oh-
jectively to itself," is the recon( iliation anel idelltity of the fillite and
inflnite, nature and self. All higher knowledge ll1t1st he a mode of
this act, since "evcry ohject is, as an o/Ul'rf, dead, fixed, incapahle in
itself of any action, and Ilccess;)rily finite"; it is vital only insof:lr as
the self is viewing itself ill the ohject. J knce such Co1cridgc:ln carotl-
sels as this: "to Illake the olle with liS, wc ll1ust becoll1e one
with the all the must he itself;} :mh-
ject-partially a fworitc dog, principally a friend, wholly God, the
Friend"-that is, either vehicles for the self or the total selfhood.
Consequently the Coleridgean ilnagination is the act of reconciling
the phenoll1enal world of the understanding with the nOUll1enal
world of the reason. It incorporates "the reason in itnages of the
sense" and organizes "the flux of the senses by the pennanent and
self-circulating energies of the reason" to givc birth to synlbols,
which arc both "hannonious in thCll1selves, and consubstantial with
thc truths of which thcy arc thc conductors." Art, like the sclf-
knowing subject, is "thc luiddlc quality betwecn a thought and a
thing, or ... thc union and reconciliation of that which is nature
with that which is exclusively hUlllan"; and taste, a luodc of itnagina-
tion, "is thc intenllediatc 'lculty which connects thc activc with the
passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the senses; and its ap-
pointed function is to elevate the images of the latter [the W ords-
worthian nIode], while it realizes the ideas of the fonner." Words-
worth occasionally wished to say sonIc thing of the sort:
... his spirit drank
The spectacle. Sensation. soul. and focm
All melted into him. They swallowed up
I-lis animal being; in them did he live
And by them did he live. They were his life.
nut this is both Inore than the epistclnology that Inotivated hinl and
'11' less than Coleridge's purpose, which is not ll1ercly to dissolve self
and nature into each other, but, starting with "I al11" instead of "it
is," to develop the nOl1luenal potential in the
With a single sentence Coleridge has preserved frOl11 eillbarrass-
ll1ent the critic who would 111ake the transition frot11 his l11etaphysics
and poetics to his poetry: "I freely own that I have no title to the
naille of poet, according to IUY own definition of poetry." Frankly,
it is 110t readily conceivable how Coleridge's epistel11ology could be
translated into the life of a poenl by shaping its Iuatter, iluparting a
special quality to its il11agery, or providing a process for the trans-
fonuation of iluages into sYlubols. In other words, it is difficult to
conceivc of a poetry ill which his epistelllology and his theories of
itllagination and synlbolisnl would be recognizable as shaping forces.
But in filct he was not proflcring a prograln; he was defining the ideal
nature and role of poetry. As a practicing poet, for exatnple, he per-
fonns 110 special act to cause his sYlnbols to render intelligible the
rcality of which thcy partakc; he Illcrely deposits images which we
are expected to conceive of as significant. Occasionally it is true, we
find hilll l11aking poetic statcmcnts that approximatc his conception
of a self constituting itself by constructing and viewing itself as ob-
ject. Thus, of Mont Blanc hc wrote:
Thou, the meantime, wast hlending with Illy Thought,
Yca with my Life, and Life's own secret joy:
Till the dilating soul, (Onrapt, traJlsfllsed,
Into the mighty vision passing-there
As in her natural form " swelled vast to Heaven.
(" Hyllln before SUllrisc")
To the complaint of Wordsworth, expectedly unsympathetic all
cpistelllological grounds, that this is the "Mock Suhlime", Coleridge
replied: "frolll Illy childhood I havc bccn accustomcd to ahstract and
as it wcrc unrcalize whatever of more than comJllon interest my eyes
dwclt on; and thcn by a sort of transference and transmission of tlly
consciousncss to idcntify lllysc1f with thc objcct." And of coursc his
cpistCIllOlogy is the necessary gloss on the Dejection ode to cxplain
why the scnses arc inadcquate and how thc imagination develops
subjective lifc ill objects, which, as objccts, arc "dead, fixed":
I may not hope from outward fonm to win
The passion anel the life, whose fountains are witliin.
o Laely! we receive bllt what we givc,
Anel in our life alone docs Nature live:
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shrouel!
And would we alight behold, of higher worth,
Than that inanimate cold world allowed ...
Ah! fWIIl the soul itscl f Illust isslle forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminolls clolld
Enveloping the Elflh-
And frolll the s01l1 itself JllllSt there he sent
A sweet anel potent voice, of its own hirth,
Of all swcet sounds the and cleillent!
But the l110St important poctic rolc ofColcridgc's cpistemology is to
providc thc dramatic fonn fc:n a group of poems which act Ol1t the
principle that the self becomes :1 self by o4jectifying itself so as to
identify fJnitc and infinite. Lime-Tree Hower," which Jllay he
takcn as typical, hegins with the poet disconsolately in
the bower, isolated and unrelated to anything, like Keats detesting
the journey h0111cward to habitual selt: likc Wordsworth unable to
assert a clainl on the Highland girl. Between hiln and his departing
friend Charles Laillb is a dell, the divisive gulf separating the ego
frolll the nOll-ego. In ituagination he attends Latnb in his passage
through the dell until the itnagined friend elnerges on the glowing
plain with a frccdOl11 and joy that lllock the gloolll of the hower-
shaded poet:
So my friend
Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily ..
Escape froln the prison of selfhood requires a union, through the
ill1agination, with an object, an object that is itself a subject, a
"friend/' a Charles Lalnb; and the self Blust "becOll1e one with the
object" so that the poern ends with Coleridge watching the sunset
and ilnagining Laillb watching the sunset as he hitnself had once
\vatched it. The end is releasc frol11 thc prison, thc frccdOlll which is
the ground of the willful ar.t of itnagination; and the end is the joy
and vitality returned to thc self by its evolving its own life in the ob-
ject of experience.
Shelley's epistenlology is so dceply cl11bcddcd in an idiosyncratic
ontology that it is difficult to disengage it, especially since he does not
start with the usual distinction between autononlOUS subject and ob-
ject. I-lis grounds arc two eillpirical axiOlllS: "the 11lind cannot create,
it can only perceive"; and "nothing exists but as it is perceived." The
111cntal itnage results froln perceiving s0111cthing whosc naturc wc
cannot know, and consequently, with respect to thc nlind, thc pcr-
ception is the sole object. Shelley has cut the epistetllological knot by
putting asidc an external world that stands against the self and by
lllaking the basic transaction one between the self and its lllental itu-
pressions in all their cOlubinations. The subject is what we are; the
object, our percepts and feelings. But even this distinction is f.'llse,
relevant only because of the whole f.'llsity of our tuortal condition. In
childhood, Shelley writes, we "less habitually distinguished all that
we saw and felt, fr01u ourselves. They seetHed, as it were, to consti-
tute one lllass." In the Illost vivid apprehension of being, ll1Cl1 "feel
as if their natnre were dissolved into the surrounding universe, or as
if the snrrounding universe were absorbed into their being. They are
conscious of 110 distinction" ("all Life"). Only subsequently are we
THE ENGLISII ROMANTICS 33
Inisled into supposing a dualism of suhject ;m(l and a categori-
cal difference between things and thoughts. What we call a "thing,"
he said, is Inerely "any thought upon which any other thought is
elnployed with an apprehension of distinction"; and the division he-
" I" 1 ", Itt ' 1 'I I "I
tween externa an( lIlterna IS mere y nOl1lllla so t lat w lCll
speaking of the objects of thought, we indeed only descrihe one of
the forms of tho light" and, "speaking of thought, we only apprehend
onc of thc opcrations of the universal Systclll of beings." True plw-
nomenal knowledge, then, docs not consist in hridging the gap he-
tween self and nature, hut in withdrawing these illusory entities to
their COllllllon source. ConsequeJltly it is considerahly less than a fig-
ure of speech when Shelley commands the West Willd: "Be thOll,
Spirit fierce, I My spirit! Be thou me .... " 0 .. when, in "Mollt
Blanc," he prctc1Ids a distinction hetween thoughts and things, he can
define reality only as a continuous mental act, a vain striving hy the
Inind to identify its shadowy images with the corresponding hut un-
knowable external world that has cast thelll.
I-lence the curiol/sly insubstantial, uureaJized quality of Shdleis
poetic imagery. Clouds, winds, vapors, skylarks, and flowers hover
between thing and thought because his experiential reality is neither
suhjective nor ohjective, an irrelevant distinction if our heing and ollr
perceptions "constitute one mass." Jnsof.1r as, limited by time and
space, we perceive a lllutable world external to ourselves, we per-
, I" " I'" "SI II' I 'II I I celVC w lat SeCJllS, 110t w lat IS. lC cy S rea, nOllJ usory wor ( ,
unlike Wordsworth's or Keats's, is symholic in its very nature, since
it is not categorica11y different from other thoughts-or
t
more prop-
erly, since what we call the wodd is constituted of the mass of our
thoughts, including our own nature. The West Wind is N1xessity,
the summit of Mont Blanc is the residence of the Power, its ravine is
the Mind, and life is like a dome of many-colored glass, 110t because
things are like thoughts, hut hecause onc order of thought differs
frotH another, as Shelley said, only in
The four R.omantics, it is clear, are sharply at odds with each other,
in the terms J have been concerned with. But the very f.1ct that their
positions do clash so directly on these terms, instead of merely
unrelated, confirms that they all f.1CC the central need to find a sig-
nificant relationship between tile subjective and objective worlds.
We may conceive of poetry as wade lip superficially such
as nature images, Inelancholy, or lyricism; but it is made hy purposes,
and cpistclnology is poctically constitutive. All the ROlllantics, it is
truc, give cxtraordinary value to a 'lcuIty they call the inlagination
because they nUlst postulate an extraordinary 'lcuIty that bridges the
gap betwecn lllind and thc extcrnal world; but no two of thcln agrce
on a dcfinition of this 'lcuIty, any luore than they do on the lllode of
existcnce of thc cxtcrnal naturc thcy so cOllul1only write about. Ad-
11littcdly, all arc sYlnbolic poets, since the sYlnbol is the Inarriage of
the two worlds, but their kinds of sYlnbolislll arc nccessarily as
widely diverse as the epistcluologies that gcnerate thelu.
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVBnSI1'Y

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WASSERMAN, EARL S.

, The English Romantics: The Grounds of Knowledge , Studies in

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