Vales of the Wye—Valley of Tintern—Tintern Abbey—History—Church—Character of the ruin—Site—Coxe’s description—Monuments—Insecurity of sepulchral fame—Churchyarde on tombs—Opinions on Tintern—Battle of Tintern.
The “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour,” are justly esteemed one of the masterpieces of modern poetry; but independently of this, they belong so peculiarly to the river we are attempting to illustrate, and are associated so intimately with the character of its scenery, and its reputation as a fountain of high thoughts and beautiful feelings, that our volume would have been incomplete without them. It is curious that this piece, which is dated in the concluding years of the last century, should be the only fruits as yet given to the world of the poetical inspiration of the Wye—for the effusions of Bloomfield are not to be named with those of Wordsworth.
We have seen that where the picturesque character of the Wye is chiefly formed by its banks, which is the case from Goodrich Castle downwards, these embrace the stream with more or less straitness, rising in naked crags from the water’s edge, or throwing their waving woods over the current. At intervals, however, they recede to some little distance from either side; picturesque hills forming the side-screens, and hills, rocks, and trees terminating the perspective in front, and enclosing the river like a lake. In such cases, the bottom is formed by a green pastoral meadow, through which the stream wanders leisurely, as if reposing after former struggles, and preparing for new ones. These lonely vales are not merely secluded from “the hum, the crowd, the shock of men,” but from all turbulent thoughts and unholy desires. The world lives in them only in the recollections of dead things, and feelings, and persons. They are spots, to use the fine but unappreciated image of Maturin,
“Where memory lingers o’er the grave of passion, Watching its tranced sleep!”
The admirable taste so unequivocally displayed by the monks of old, in the selection of sites for their ascetic retreats, could not have overlooked this characteristic of the Wye; and accordingly we find, in the most beautiful of these delightful nooks, standing on a gently swelling meadow, by the banks of the lake-like river, the finest conventual ruins in England.