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Updated: May 15, 2025
Before they reached Rothieden the events of the night began to wear the doubtful aspect of a dream. No allusion was made to what had occurred while Robert slept; but all the journey Ericson felt towards Miss St. John as Wordsworth felt towards the leech-gatherer, who, he says, was like a man from some far region sent, To give me human strength, by apt admonishment.
In real life, and, I trust, even in my imagination, I honour a virtuous and wise man, without reference to the presence or absence of artificial advantages. Whether in the person of an armed baron, a laurelled bard, or of an old Pedlar, or still older Leech-gatherer, the same qualities of head and heart must claim the same reverence.
Wordsworth's primary function is to interpret nature to man: the interpretation of man to himself is with him a secondary process only-the response, in almost every instance, to impressions from without. This poet can nobly brace the human heart to fortitude; but he must first have seen the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor.
And when in the afternoon he toddled away, and back into the forest, what wonder if I felt like Wordsworth after his talk with the old leech-gatherer? 'And when he ended, I could have laughed myself to scorn to find In that decrepit man so firm a mind; God, said I, be my help and stay secure, I'll think of thee, leech-gatherer, on the lonely moor. On the Monday morning there was a great parade.
Only a few scattered samples can be given here; and I will begin with one on whose significance the poet has himself dwelt. This is the poem called The Leech-Gatherer, afterwards more formally named Resolution and Independence.
The Leech-Gatherer and the story of "Margaret" in The Excursion also deal with lowly characters and exhibit Wordsworth's power of pathos and simple earnestness. He could not present complex personalities; but these characters, which belonged to the landscapes of the Lake District and partook of its calm and its simplicity, he drew with a sure hand.
The Leech-Gatherer and The Idiot Boy are not the only poems of Wordsworth that are injured by the insertion of banal dialogue. It is as though there were, despite his passion for liberty, equality, and fraternity, a certain gaucherie in his relations with other human beings, and he were at his happiest as a solitary.
As Crabbe thus recalled the scene of his own resolve, it may have struck him as a touching coincidence that it was by the Leech-pool on "the lonely moor" though there was no "Leech-gatherer" at hand to lend him fortitude that he resolved to encounter "Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty." He was, indeed, little better equipped than Chatterton had been for the enterprise.
"God," said I, "be my help and stay secure; I'll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor." I, p. 97. We defy the bitterest enemy of Mr. Wordsworth to produce anything at all parallel to this from any collection of English poetry, or even from the specimens of his friend Mr. Southey.... The first poems in the second volume were written during a tour in Scotland.
Before the psalm ended, an old man came in and stood by the door a poor man in mean garments, with the air of a beggar who had contrived to give himself a Sunday look. Perhaps he had come hoping to find it warmer in church than at home. There he stood, motionless as the leech-gatherer, leaning on his stick, disregarded of men it may have been only by innocent accident, I do not know.
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