The Rhetoric Of Sympathy In Smith And Wordsworth

Abstract

would seem to have little in common. The sonnet—though not limited to any one subject matter—was so thoroughly associated with the poet’s own self and feelings that Coleridge wrote in the preface to his Poems of 1797, ‘‘To censure [Egotism] in a Monody or Sonnet is almost as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round’’ (xiii). By contrast, the humanitarian poem necessarily looked outward, focusing on figures typically far different from the poet himself or herself. In practice, however, the opposition was rarely this simple, and there were far more connections between the two genres than one might initially expect. Even when they focused on the poet’s own self, many late eighteenth-century sonnets were either devoted to humanitarian themes or drew upon stock figures from the humanitarian tradition such as peasants, slaves, or forsaken women. And, despite their seemingly altruistic nature, humanitarian poems were often nearly as self-oriented as the sonnets of the time since, in the course of describing their unfortunate subjects, poets frequently called attention to themselves and their own benevolence. In the essay that follows, I shall examine the intersections between the sonnet and the humanitarian poem, analyzing how Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth—two of the most creative and self-aware poets of the late eighteenth century—negotiated the different demands of these two seemingly opposed genres. 2 To understand why it is that these two types of poetry would have gained such prominence at this time, we need only to turn to the prevailing moral philosophy—the ‘‘sentimental’’ school of ethics that culminates with Adam Smith’s 1759 The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Like Shaftesbury and other members of this school, Smith believes that morality results from an emotional response rather than any rational decision; however, what makes him particularly relevant to our purposes here is his emphasis on ‘‘sympathy,’’ what he describes as a ‘‘fellow feeling with any passion whatever’’ (1: 5) that can be so complete that ‘‘we become in some measure the same person’’ (1: 2) with the object of our sympathy. Largely beyond our conscious control, sympathetic responses come upon us suddenly and powerfully; we simply observe a particular situation and react: ‘‘When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of