The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth — Volume 1 (of 8) · Chapter 24The Old Cumberland BeggarA
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The class of Beggars to which the old man here described belongs, will probably soon be extinct. It consisted of poor, and, mostly, old and infirm persons, who confined themselves to a stated round in their neighbourhood, and had certain fixed days, on which, at different houses, they regularly received charity; sometimes in money, but mostly in provisions.-W. W. 1800.
Observed, and with great benefit to my own heart, when I was a child. Written at Racedown and Alfoxden in my twenty-third yearB. The Political Economists were about that time beginning their war upon mendicity in all its forms, and by implication, if not directly, on alms-giving also. This heartless process has been carried as far as it can go by the Amended Poor Law Bill, tho' the inhumanity that prevails in this measure is somewhat disguised by the profession that one of its objects is to throw the poor upon the voluntary donations of their neighbours; that is, if rightly interpreted, to force them into a condition between relief in the Union Poor House and alms robbed of their Christian grace and spirit, as being forced rather from the benevolent than given by them; while the avaricious and selfish, and all, in fact, but the humane and charitable, are at liberty to keep all they possess from their distressed brethren.—I. F.
Included among the "Poems referring to the Period of Old Age."—Ed.
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The lines from "Then be assured" to "worthless" were added in the edition of 1837.
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Footnote A:
In an early MS. the title of this poem is
Description of a Beggar
, and in the editions 1800 to 1820 the title was
The Old Cumberland Beggar, a Description
.—Ed.
Footnote B:
Wordsworth went to Racedown in 1795, when he was twenty-five years of age; and was at Alfoxden in his twenty-eighth year.—Ed.
Footnote C:
Compare Ovid's
Metamorphoses
I. 84:
Os homini sublime dedit, cœlumque videre Jussit et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.
Ed.
Footnote D:
With this poem compare Frederick William Faber's "Hymn," which he called
The Old Labourer
, beginning:
What end doth he fulfil! He seems without a will.
Ed.
Footnote E:
In January 1801 Charles Lamb thus wrote to Wordsworth of his
Old Cumberland Beggar
:
"It appears to me a fault that the instructions conveyed in it are too direct, and like a lecture: they don't slide into the mind of the reader while he is imagining no such matter,"
At the same time he refers to
"the delicate and curious feeling in the wish of the Beggar that he may have about him the melody of birds, although he hears them not."
(
The Letters of Charles Lamb
, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. i. p. 163.)—Ed.