The Excursion: An Unparalleled "variety of musical effect"

Abstract

^ is the freedom ^ of the Universe (Excursion IX: 16) When a friend of Catherine Clarkson complained of the verse of The Excursion, Wordsworth replied with magnificent condescension, and some asperity: Unitarian hymns must by their dispassionate monotony have deprived your Friend's of all compass, which implies of all discrimination. To you I will whisper that the Excursion has one merit, if has no other, a versification to which for variety of musical effect no Poem in the language furnishes a parallel. Tell Patty Smith ... to study with her until she has learned to confess it (ME2: 187). (1) It is not impossible that Wordsworth was mistaken in this immodest claim, at which even so loyal an admirer as Henry Crabb Robinson might have raised an eyebrow: Robinson confided to his diary that the poem included passages which run heavily, tales which are prolix, and reasonings which are spun (Diary 1: 241). But the advice raises numerous issues which, as far as I can tell, have not been discussed in the two hundred years since the Clarksons pondered Wordsworth's letter over their toast and marmalade. Most of all, if received assumptions about Wordsworth's adherence to the norms of accentual-syllabic verse are correct, Patty Smith's fingers could have told her little or nothing. His boast suggests, prima facie, that an capable of any discrimination at all will discover an exceptional variety of fundamental rhythms, at least on a par with other blank verse renegades. Because Wordsworth is usually silent on the detail of his craft, one can only interpret his boast by appealing to his practice. Almost all that is known of his metrical theory, apart from some unhelpfully minimal comments in two prefaces, comes from a cordial letter to John Thelwall, in January, 1804, which has been much discussed and mostly misconstrued. I suspect that Wordsworth's practice is more sympathetic to Thelwall's radical ideas than is generally supposed, and the fact that Thelwall was The Excursion's most assiduous reader and one of its greatest enthusiasts, and that Wordsworth praised both Thelwall's blank verse and his good ear (ME 2: 361), may support that hypothesis. The key passage in Wordsworth's letter: [Y]our general rule is just that the art of verse should not compell you to read in [tone? some?] emphasis etc that violates the nature of Prose. But this rule should be taken with limitations for not to speak of other reasons as long as verse shall have the marked termination that rhyme gives it, and as long as blank verse shall be printed in lines, will be Physically impossible to pronounce the last words or syllables of the lines with the same indifference, as the others, i.e. not to give them an intonation of one kind or an other, or to follow them with a pause, not called out for by the passion of the subject, but by the passion of metre merely. This might be demonstrated. As to my own system of metre is very simple, 1st and 2nd syllables long or short indifferently except where the Passion of the sense cries out for one in preference 3d 5th 7th 9th short etc according to the regular laws of the Iambic. This the general rule. But I can scarcely say that I admit any limits to the dislocation of the verse, that is I know none that may not be justified by some passion or other. I speak in general terms. The most I know in my writing, is this in the Cumberland Beggar. 'Impressed on the white road in the same line' which taken by itself has not the sound of a verse ... The words to which the passion is att[ached?] are white road same and the verse dislocates [for the] sake of these. This will please or displ[case by th]e quantity of feeling excited by the image, to those in whom excites [such? much?] feeling, as in one will be musical to others not. Adieu. (EY 434-5) The dislocated line in context, with its beats italicised (one can't scan a single in a Wordsworthian cadence) (2): He plies his weary journey, ^ seeing still, ^ And never knowing that he sees, ^ some straw, ^ Some scatter'd leaf, ^ or marks which, ^ in one track, ^ The nails of cart or chariot wheel ^ have left / Im press'd|^ on the |white road, ^ |in the | same line, ^ At distance still the same. …