The Dramatic End of The Excursion

Abstract

At the end of The Excursion, the Wanderer calls for System of National Education established universally by Government (Cornell ed. 47): Oh for the coming of that glorious time When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth And best protection, this Imperial Realm, While she exacts allegiance, shall admit An obligation, on her part, to leach Them who are to serve her and obey; herself by Statute ... (IX 292-98) An endnote to the line on Binding ... by Statute--the last piece of text in The Excursion--cites Andrew 's monitorial system of education using the of tuition by the scholars themselves (Madras School [1808] 96, 23): P. 400. Line 19.--Binding herself by Statute. The discovery of Dr. affords marvellous facilities for carrying this into effect, and it is impossible to overrate the benefit which might accrue to humanity from the universal application of this simple engine under an enlightened and conscientious government. (The Excursion 1814, 447; Cornell ed., 314) Wordsworth claimed that The Excursion had something of a dramatic (Preface 1814 x; Cornell ed. 39). But his friendship with and personal interest in the system suggest that there is very little drama left by the end of the poem. The Wanderer calling for statutory education reads like Wordsworth ventriloquizing through another man's mouth (Coleridge, Table Talk I 308-9, 307). Wordsworth was the last of the Lake Poets publicly to endorse and the Madras system. As De Quincey put it, was taken up by the Westmoreland people: by with his usual temperate fervor; by Coleridge with such monomaniac liking that London was abuzz with his lecture on and the (De Quincey II 278). This Dragon was Joseph Lancaster, a Quaker and author of a rival system, allied with the ministry of all the talents and the Edinburgh Review. Bell and the was the working title of Southey's October, 1811, essay on education in the Quarterly (CLRS letter 1992). Thomas Rowlandson's cartoon of December 1811 reflects the public impact. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Historical scholarship has recovered the context of reactionary progressivism (Gilmartin 66-7) that solves the problem of the Romantic poets supporting the Gradgrind school. The multiplication of power in Bell's system reflected new industrial and colonial conditions. It was also traditionally English: framed in the same spirit, on the same principle as the Anglican Church (Bell 321). Madras thus modelled the Lake Poets' developing ideas of Clerisy, National Church, and transformative historical genius. (1) By supporting and his Anglican intellectual steam-engine (Southey, QR 15:29 [1816], 227), Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey became champion [s] of the old order ... in an ideal (Butler 165). But is the Wanderer's call for unambitious Schools and rudimentary teaching for those born to serve . . . and obey (IX 297-398) really Wordsworth's authentic comment on education? Any more than the Wanderer's advocacy of early rising, hill-climbing, and goat chasing (IV 489-504) adequately reflects Wordsworth's philosophy of nature? (2) Wordsworth's correspondence suggests rather a continual ambivalence on the issue. A letter of June, 1808, to Francis Wrangham sets the tone. National education will not take in a complex commercial society: Heaven and Hell are scarcely more different from each other than Sheffield and Manchester, etc. differ from the plains and Vallies of Surrey, Essex, Cumberland, or Westmoreland. We have mighty cities, and towns of all sizes, with villages and cottages scattered everywhere. We are mariners, miners, manufacturers in tens of thousands, traders, husbandmen, everything. What form of discipline, what books or doctrines --I will not say would equally suit all these--but which, if happily fitted for one, would not perhaps be an absolute nuisance in another? …