From Wilderness to Landscape: Charles Harpur's Dialogue with Wordsworth and Antipodean Nature

Abstract

READ WORDSWORTH FOR HIS SIMPLE POWER, / NOT FOR HIS NAMBY-PAMBY-ness. (1) This caution was offered by largely self-educated poet Charles Harpur (1813-1868). (2) son of convict parents and a vocal opponent of all Monarchy Men and Empire-worshippers, (3) he called for increased access land and positions of influence for native-born white population, as well as for an independent national literature. Aspiring be first authentic singer of Australian colonies, he searched for empowering models, working way through greats of English prosody from Chaucer Shelley. (4) Milton appealed strongly Harpur, who was an avowed republican in every fibre of being, as did Percy Bysshe's allegiance intellectual ideals and the Social True (PW, p. 823). But it was Wordsworth who exercised most sway over poetic apprenticeship. Contemporaries were quick notice this influence--and disparage it. G. B. Barton in pioneering study Poets and Prose Writers of New South Wales (1866) depicted Harpur as a man who never developed fully gift for landscape painting, but strove instead after subtlety of and to emulate lofty flights of so that he grasped at objects placed beyond reach by while neglecting those which might have been attained with ease. (5) Subsequent commentary echoed this notion of Wordsworth's impeding effect, as in H. M. Green's monumental History of Australian Literature (1962), where it asserted that Harpur had worn thinner here and there veil that reading, tradition, custom, habit of mind had hung between new country and its white inhabitants, but that his eye might have been truer and language more appropriate if he had done wandering without a Wordsworth in pocket, or if he had put life first and books second. (6) This verdict, however, far from incontestable, and in what follows I wish clarify precise nature of Harpur's debt Wordsworth, especially as it bears on t he relation of thought landscape depiction in work, and show how Australian, not content with simple emulation, extended Wordsworth's concerns in conformity with own radical program. (7) Given background, Harpur's response Romantic poet was at once predictable and refreshingly independent. He knew that Wordsworth, by 1840s, had become defender of that Old World caste whose representatives held sway in antipodes, and he passed severe strictures on Englishman's conservative stance: Lofty and strenuous of sentiment, But narrow and partial in its scope and bent, And thence bigot of a local set Of habitudes, meshed round him like a net. Hence too intellect, though large it be By nature, hath one prime deficiency-- Of moral difference that broad view which leads steps of Thought beyond snares of creeds And circles of opinion, whether they Be of Old Time or of yesterday. Hence too narrow bias, I suspect, Even in Poesy attempt a sect. (Wordsworth, PW, p. 817) (8) Poetically, later Wordsworth belonged that group, designated by Harpur as veritably vulgar, which is abject enough begod a lord or king, (9) unlike earlier author of works like Lyrical Ballads, Peter Bell, and The White Doe, whom he was willing champion in pages of a colonial press opposed opinions of aging English ideologue. Scorning Wordsworth's final avatar as Victorian sage and poet laureate, Harpur seized on notorious levelling tendency of earlier verse. He praised Englishman's appreciation of nature, capacity invoke impressions of childhood, and celebration of commonplace: How much, O Wordsworth! in this world how much Has thy surpassing love made rich for me, Of what was once unpraized. …