The Duddon Sonnets - Notes to Sonnet XVIII

XVIII. SEATHWAITE CHAPEL

          SACRED Religion! "mother of form and fear,"

          Dread arbitress of mutable respect,

          New rites ordaining when the old are wrecked,

          Or cease to please the fickle worshipper;

          Mother of Love! (that name best suits thee here)

          Mother of Love! for this deep vale, protect

          Truth's holy lamp, pure source of bright effect,

          Gifted to purge the vapoury atmosphere

          That seeks to stifle it;--as in those days

          When this low Pile a Gospel Teacher knew,                   10

          Whose good works formed an endless retinue:

          A Pastor such as Chaucer's verse portrays;

          Such as the heaven-taught skill of Herbert drew;

          And tender Goldsmith crowned with deathless praise!

See here for extended discussion of this sonnet

Gentleman’s magazine (1820) review

Samuel Daniel (1562 – 1619)

SACRED Religion, mother of form and fear,

  How gorgeously sometime dost thou sit decked,

What pompous vestures do we make thee wear,

  What stately piles we prodigal erect;

How sweet perfumed thou art, how shining clear,

  How solemnly observed, with what respect!

Another time all plain, all quite threadbare,

  Thou must have all within, and nought without;

Sit poorly, without light, disrobed; no care

  Of outward grace, t’amuse the poor devout;

Powerless, unfollowed, scarcely men can spare

  The necessary rites to set thee out.

L. 1 – 4  These summarise, and to extent critique, the position of Daniel

. Daniel’s poem contrasts two nuanced views of organised religion – the pomp of the organised church, the ‘solemn’ observations are presented as the products of a ‘prodigal’. However, stripped of outward symbols of devotion, faith becomes ‘unfollowed’.

Wordsworth questions the notion of sacred religion being a ‘dread arbitress’ – inferring that it is the fearful aspect which results in ‘mutable respect’.

The Christianity that the remainder of the sonnet portrays is one that it is more charitable and involves selfless ministry, a simple, practical religion such as that shown in the life of the rural pastor, Robert Walker, mentioned in the poem. Wordsworth’s note to the sonnet contains an extended memoir to the clergyman who is likened to other depictions of the ‘good pastor’ – in Chaucer, the works of the seventeenth century priest, hymn-writer and poet, George Herbert, and the depiction of the vicar in Goldsmith’s ‘The Deserted Village. The Rev. Walker also was the basis of the depiction of the Pastor in The Excursion.

These reflections on the life of the valley in the recent past relate to Wordsworth’s views on the localism of ‘The Republic of Shepherds and Agriculturalists’ mentioned in his Topographic Study. It is tempting to view this as a specific response to the industrial revolution. In truth, however, Wordsworth’s position is not dissimilar to that of Goldsmith in The Deserted Village, written in 1770. The issue of ‘luxury’ and the moral degradation that increased wealth might bring, was a theme from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, and not only in the writings of Rousseau, whose Discourse on Inequality’ is typical, but also earlier English writers such as the Earl of Shaftsbury for whom the rise of the mercantile economy presented social challenges.

Seathwaite Chapel