[From _The Quarterly Review_, August, 1834]
_The Poetical Works of S.T. Coleridge_. 3 vols. 12mo. London, 1834.
Let us be indulged, in the mean time, in this opportunity of making a
few remarks on the genius of the extraordinary man whose poems, now for
the first time completely collected, are named at the head of this
article. The larger part of this publication is, of course, of old date,
and the author still lives; yet, besides the considerable amount of new
matter in this edition, which might of itself, in the present dearth of
anything eminently original in verse, justify our notice, we think the
great, and yet somewhat hazy, celebrity of Coleridge, and the
ill-understood character of his poetry, will be, in the opinion of a
majority of our readers, more than an excuse for a few elucidatory
remarks upon the subject. Idolized by many, and used without scruple by
more, the poet of "Christabel" and the "Ancient Mariner" is but little
truly known in that common literary world, which, without the
prerogative of conferring fame hereafter, can most surely give or
prevent popularity for the present. In that circle he commonly passes
for a man of genius, who has written some very beautiful verses, but
whose original powers, whatever they were, have been long since lost or
confounded in the pursuit of metaphysic dreams. We ourselves venture to
think very differently of Mr. Coleridge, both as a poet and a
philosopher, although we are well enough aware that nothing which we can
say will, as matters now stand, much advance his chance of becoming a
fashionable author. Indeed, as we rather believe, we should earn small
thanks from him for our happiest exertions in such a cause; for
certainly, of all the men of letters whom it has been our fortune to
know, we never met any one who was so utterly regardless of the
reputation of the mere author as Mr. Coleridge--one so lavish and
indiscriminate in the exhibition of his own intellectual wealth before
any and every person, no matter who--one so reckless who might reap
where he had most prodigally sown and watered. "God knows,"--as we once
heard him exclaim upon the subject of his unpublished system of
philosophy,--"God knows, I have no author's vanity about it. I should be
absolutely glad if I could hear that the _thing_ had been done before
me." It is somewhere told of Virgil, that he took more pleasure in the
good verses of Varius and Horace than in his own. We would not answer
for that; but the story has always occurred to us, when we have seen Mr.
Coleridge criticising and amending the work of a contemporary author
with much more zeal and hilarity than we ever perceived him to display
about anything of his own.
Perhaps our readers may have heard repeated a saying of Mr. Wordsworth,
that many men of this age had done wonderful _things_, as Davy, Scott,
Cuvier, &c.; but that Coleridge was the only wonderful _man_ he ever
knew. Something, of course, must be allowed in this as in all other such
cases for the antithesis; but we believe the fact really to be, that the
greater part of those who have occasionally visited Mr. Coleridge have
left him with a feeling akin to the judgment indicated in the above
remark. They admire the man more than his works, or they forget the
works in the absorbing impression made by the living author. And no
wonder. Those who remember him in his more vigorous days can bear
witness to the peculiarity and transcendant power of his conversational
eloquence. It was unlike anything that could be heard elsewhere; the
kind was different, the degree was different, the manner was different.
The boundless range of scientific knowledge, the brilliancy and
exquisite nicety of illustration, the deep and ready reasoning, the
strangeness and immensity of bookish lore--were not all; the dramatic
story, the joke, the pun, the festivity, must be added--and with these
the clerical-looking dress, the thick waving silver hair, the
youthful-coloured cheek, the indefinable mouth and lips, the quick yet
steady and penetrating greenish grey eye, the slow and continuous
enunciation, and the everlasting music of his tones,--all went to make
up
the image and constitute the living presence of the man. He is now no
longer young, and bodily infirmities, we regret to know, have pressed
heavily upon him. His natural force is indeed abated; but his eye is not
dim, neither is his mind yet enfeebled. "O youth!" he says in one of the
most exquisitely finished of his later poems--
O youth! for years so many and sweet,
'Tis known that thou and I were one,
I'll think it but a fond conceit--
It cannot be that thou art gone!
Thy vesper bell hath not yet tolled:--
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
What strange disguise hast now put on,
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size;--
But springtide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
Life is but thought: so think I will
That Youth and I are house-mates still.
Mr. Coleridge's conversation, it is true, has not now all the brilliant
versatility of his former years; yet we know not whether the contrast
between his bodily weakness and his mental power does not leave a deeper
and more solemnly affecting impression, than his most triumphant
displays in youth could ever have done. To see the pain-stricken
countenance relax, and the contracted frame dilate under the kindling of
intellectual fire alone--to watch the infirmities of the flesh shrinking
out of sight, or glorified and transfigured in the brightness of the
awakening spirit--is an awful object of contemplation; and in no other
person did we ever witness such a distinction,--nay, alienation of mind
from body,--such a mastery of the purely intellectual over the purely
corporeal, as in the instance of this remarkable man. Even now his
conversation is characterized by all the essentials of its former
excellence; there is the same individuality, the same _unexpectedness_,
the same universal grasp; nothing is too high, nothing too low for it:
it glances from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, with a speed and
a splendour, an ease and a power, which almost seem inspired: yet its
universality is not of the same kind with the superficial ranging of the
clever talkers whose criticism and whose information are called forth
by, and spent upon, the particular topics in hand. No; in this more,
perhaps, than in anything else is Mr. Coleridge's discourse
distinguished: that it springs from an inner centre, and illustrates by
light from the soul. His thoughts are, if we may so say, as the radii of
a circle, the centre of which may be in the petals of a rose, and the
circumference as wide as the boundary of things visible and invisible.
In this it was that we always thought another eminent light of our time,
recently lost to us, an exact contrast to Mr. Coleridge as to quality
and style of conversation. You could not in all London or England hear a
more fluent, a more brilliant, a more exquisitely elegant converser than
Sir James Mackintosh; nor could you ever find him unprovided. But,
somehow or other, it always seemed as if all the sharp and brilliant
things he said were poured out of so many vials filled and labelled for
the particular occasion; it struck us, to use a figure, as if his mind
were an ample and well-arranged _hortus siccus_, from which you might
have specimens of every kind of plant, but all of them cut and dried for
store. You rarely saw nature working at the very moment in him. With
Coleridge it was and still is otherwise. He may be slower, more
rambling, less pertinent; he may not strike at the instant as so
eloquent; but then, what he brings forth is fresh coined; his flowers
are newly gathered, they are wet with dew, and, if you please, you may
almost see them growing in the rich garden of his mind. The projection
is visible; the enchantment is done before your eyes. To listen to
Mackintosh was to inhale perfume; it pleased, but did not satisfy. The
effect of an hour with Coleridge is to set you thinking; his words haunt
you for a week afterwards; they are spells, brightenings, revelations.
In short, it is, if we may venture to draw so bold a line, the whole
difference between talent and genius.
A very experienced short-hand writer was employed to take down Mr.
Coleridge's lectures on Shakespeare, but the manuscript was almost
entirely unintelligible. Yet the lecturer was, as he always is, slow and
measured. The writer--we have some notion it was no worse an artist than
Mr. Gurney himself--gave this account of the difficulty: that with
regard to every other speaker whom he had ever heard, however rapid or
involved, he could almost always, by long experience in his art, guess
the form of the latter part, or apodosis, of the sentence by the form of
the beginning; but that the conclusion of every one of Coleridge's
sentences was a _surprise_ upon him. He was obliged to listen to the
last word. Yet this unexpectedness, as we termed it before, is not the
effect of quaintness or confusion of construction; so far from it, that
we believe foreigners of different nations, especially Germans and
Italians, have often borne very remarkable testimony to the grammatical
purity and simplicity of his language, and have declared that they
generally understood what he said much better than the sustained
conversation of any other Englishman whom they had met. It is the
uncommonness of the thoughts or the image which prevents your
anticipating the end.
We owe, perhaps, an apology to our readers for the length of the
preceding remarks; but the fact is, so very much of the intellectual
life and influence of Mr. Coleridge has consisted in the oral
communication of his opinions, that no sketch could be reasonably
complete without a distinct notice of the peculiar character of his
powers in this particular. We believe it has not been the lot of any
other literary man in England, since Dr. Johnson, to command the devoted
admiration and steady zeal of so many and such widely differing
disciples--some of them having become, and others being likely to
become, fresh and independent sources of light and moral action in
themselves upon the principles of their common master. One half of these
affectionate disciples have learned their lessons of philosophy from the
teacher's mouth. He has been to them as an old oracle of the Academy or
Lyceum. The fulness, the inwardness, the ultimate scope of his doctrines
has never yet been published in print, and if disclosed, it has been
from time to time in the higher moments of conversation, when occasion,
and mood, and person begot an exalted crisis. More than once has Mr.
Coleridge said, that with pen in hand, he felt a thousand checks and
difficulties in the expression of his meaning; but that--authorship
aside--he never found the smallest hitch or impediment in the fullest
utterance of his most subtle fancies by word of mouth. His abstrusest
thoughts became rhythmical and clear when chaunted to their own music.
But let us proceed now to the publication before us.
This is the first complete collection of the poems of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. The addition to the last edition is not less than a fourth of
the whole, and the greatest part of this matter has never been printed
before. It consists of many juvenile pieces, a few of the productions of
the poet's middle life, and more of his later years. With regard to the
additions of the first class, we should not be surprised to hear
friendly doubts expressed as to the judgment shown in their publication.
We ourselves think otherwise; and we are very glad to have had an
opportunity of perusing them. There may be nothing in these earlier
pieces upon which a poet's reputation could be built; yet they are
interesting now as measuring the boyish powers of a great author. We
never read any juvenile poems that so distinctly foretokened the
character of all that the poet has since done; in particular, the very
earliest and loosest of these little pieces indicate that unintermitting
thoughtfulness, and that fine ear for verbal harmony in which we must
venture to think that not one of our modern poets approaches to
Coleridge.
* * * * *
We, of course, cite these lines for little besides their luxurious
smoothness; and it is very observable, that although the indications of
the more strictly intellectual qualities of a great poet are very often
extremely faint, as in Byron's case, in early youth,--it is universally
otherwise with regard to high excellence in _versification_ considered
apart and by itself. Like the ear for music, the sense of metrical
melody is always a natural gift; both indeed are evidently connected
with the physical arrangement of the organs, and never to be acquired by
any effort of art. When possessed, they by no means necessarily lead on
to the achievement of consummate harmony in music or in verse; and yet
consummate harmony in either has never been found where the natural gift
has not made itself conspicuous long before. Spenser's Hymns, and
Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis," and "Rape of Lucrece," are striking
instances of the overbalance of mere sweetness of sound. Even "Comus" is
what we should, in this sense, call luxurious; and all four gratify the
outward ear much more than that inner and severer sense which is
associated with the reason, and requires a meaning even in the very
music for its full satisfaction. Compare the versification of the
youthful pieces mentioned above with that of the maturer works of those
great poets, and you will recognize how possible it is for verses to be
exquisitely melodious, and yet to fall far short of that exalted
excellence of numbers of which language is in itself capable. You will
feel the simple truth, that melody is a part only of harmony. Those
early flashes were indeed auspicious tokens of the coming glory, and
involved some of the conditions and elements of its existence; but the
rhythm of the "Faerie Queene" and of "Paradise Lost" was also the fruit
of a distinct effort of uncommon care and skill. The endless variety of
the pauses in the versification of these poems could not have been the
work of chance, and the adaptation of words with reference to their
asperity, or smoothness, or strength, is equally refined and scientific.
Unless we make a partial exception of the "Castle of Indolence," we do
not remember a single instance of the reproduction of the exact rhythm
of the Spenserian stanza, especially of the concluding line. The precise
Miltonic movement in blank verse has never, to our knowledge, been
caught by any later poet. It is Mr. Coleridge's own strong remark, that
you might as well think of pushing a brick out of a wall with your
forefinger, as attempt to remove a word out of the finished passages in
Shakespeare or Milton. The motion or transposition will alter the
thought, or the feeling, or at least the tone. They are as pieces of
Mosaic work, from which you cannot strike the smallest block without
making a hole in the picture.
And so it is--in due proportion--with Coleridge's best poems. They are
distinguished in a remarkable degree by the perfection of their rhythm
and metrical arrangement. The labour bestowed upon this point must have
been very great; the tone and quantity of words seem weighed in scales
of gold. It will, no doubt, be considered ridiculous by the Fannii and
Fanniae of our day to talk of varying the trochee with the iambus, or of
resolving either into the tribrach. Yet it is evident to us that these,
and even minuter points of accentual scansion, have been regarded by Mr.
Coleridge as worthy of study and observation. We do not, of course, mean
that rules of this kind were always in his mind while composing, any
more than that an expert disputant is always thinking of the
distinctions of mood and figure, whilst arguing; but we certainly
believe that Mr. Coleridge has almost from the commencement of his
poetic life looked upon versification as constituting in and by itself a
much more important branch of the art poetic than most of his eminent
contemporaries appear to have done. And this more careful study shows
itself in him in no technical peculiarities or fantastic whims, against
which the genius of our language revolts; but in a more exact adaptation
of the movement to the feeling, and in a finer selection of particular
words with reference to their local fitness for sense and sound. Some of
his poems are complete models of versification, exquisitely easy to all
appearance, and subservient to the meaning, and yet so subtle in the
links and transitions of the parts as to make it impossible to produce
the same effect merely by imitating the syllabic metre as it stands on
the surface. The secret of the sweetness lies within, and is involved in
the feeling. It is this remarkable power of making his verse musical
that gives a peculiar character to Mr. Coleridge's lyric poems. In some
of the smaller pieces, as the conclusion of the "Kubla Khan," for
example, not only the lines by themselves are musical, but the whole
passage sounds all at once as an outburst or crash of harps in the still
air of autumn. The verses seem as if _played_ to the ear upon some
unseen instrument. And the poet's manner of reciting verse is similar.
It is not rhetorical, but musical: so very near recitative, that for any
one else to attempt it would be ridiculous; and yet it is perfectly
miraculous with what exquisite searching he elicits and makes sensible
every particle of the meaning, not leaving a shadow of a shade of the
feeling, the mood, the degree, untouched. We doubt if a finer rhapsode
ever recited at the Panathenaic festival; and the yet unforgotten Doric
of his native Devon is not altogether without a mellowing effect in his
utterance of Greek. He would repeat the
[Greek: autar Achilleus dakrusas, etaron aphar ezeto. k. t. l.]
with such an interpreting accompaniment of look, and tone and gesture,
that we believe any commonly-educated person might understand the import
of the passage without knowing alpha from omega. A chapter of Isaiah
from his mouth involves the listener in an act of exalted devotion. We
have mentioned this, to show how the whole man is made up of music; and
yet Mr. Coleridge has no _ear_ for music, as it is technically called.
Master as he is of the intellectual recitative, he could not _sing_ an
air to save his life. But his delight in music is intense and
unweariable, and he can detect good from bad with unerring
discrimination. Poor Naldi, whom most of us remember, and all who
remember must respect, said to our poet once at a concert--"That he did
not seem much interested with a piece of Rossini's which had just been
performed." Coleridge answered, "It sounded to me exactly like _nonsense
verses_. But this thing of Beethoven's that they have begun--stop, let
us listen to this, I beg!" ...
The minute study of the laws and properties of metre is observable in
almost every piece in these volumes. Every kind of lyric measure, rhymed
and unrhymed, is attempted with success; and we doubt whether, upon the
whole, there are many specimens of the heroic couplet or blank verse
superior in construction to what Mr. Coleridge has given us. We mention
this the rather, because it was at one time, although that time is past,
the fashion to say that the Lake school--as two or three poets,
essentially unlike to each other, were foolishly called--had abandoned
the old and established measures of the English poetry for new conceits
of their own. There was no truth in that charge; but we will say this,
that, notwithstanding the prevalent opinion to the contrary, we are not
sure, after perusing _some passages_ in Mr. Southey's "Vision of
Judgment," and the entire "Hymn to the Earth," in hexameters, in the
second of the volumes now before us, that the question of the total
inadmissibility of that measure in English verse can be considered as
finally settled; the true point not being whether such lines are as good
as, or even like, the Homeric or Virgilian models, but whether they are
not in themselves a pleasing variety, and on that account alone, if for
nothing else, not to be rejected as wholly barbarous ...
We should not have dwelt so long upon this point of versification,
unless we had conceived it to be one distinguishing excellence of Mr.
Coleridge's poetry, and very closely connected with another, namely,
fulness and individuality of thought. It seems to be a fact, although we
do not pretend to explain it, that condensation of meaning is generally
found in poetry of a high import in proportion to perfection in metrical
harmony. Petrarch, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton are obvious
instances. Goethe and Coleridge are almost equally so. Indeed, whether
in verse, or prose, or conversation, Mr. Coleridge's mind may be fitly
characterized as an energetic mind--a mind always at work, always in a
course of reasoning. He cares little for anything, merely because it was
or is; it must be referred, or be capable of being referred, to some law
or principle, in order to attract his attention. This is not from
ignorance of the facts of natural history or science. His written and
published works alone sufficiently show how constantly and accurately he
has been in the habit of noting all the phenomena of the material world
around us; and the great philosophical system now at length in
preparation for the press demonstrates, we are told, his masterly
acquaintance with almost all the sciences, and with not a few of the
higher and more genial of the arts. Yet his vast acquirements of this
sort are never put forward by or for themselves; it is in his apt and
novel illustrations, his indications of analogies, his explanation of
anomalies, that he enables the hearer or reader to get a glimpse of the
extent of his practical knowledge. He is always reasoning out from an
inner point, and it is the inner point, the principle, the law which he
labours to bring forward into light. If he can convince you or himself
of the principle _à priori_, he generally leaves the facts to take care
of themselves. He leads us into the laboratories of art or nature as a
showman guides you through a caravan crusted with spar and stalactites,
all cold, and dim, and motionless, till he lifts his torch aloft, and on
a sudden you gaze in admiration on walls and roof of flaming crystals
and stars of eternal diamond.
All this, whether for praise or for blame, is perceptible enough in Mr.
Coleridge's verse, but perceptible, of course, in such degree and mode
as the law of poetry in general, and the nature of the specific poem in
particular, may require. But the main result from this frame and habit
of his mind is very distinctly traceable in the uniform subjectivity of
almost all his works. He does not belong to that grand division of
poetry and poets which corresponds with painting and painters; or which
Pindar and Dante are the chief;--those masters of the picturesque, who,
by a felicity inborn, view and present everything in the completeness of
actual objectivity--and who have a class derived from and congenial
with them, presenting few pictures indeed, but always full of
picturesque matter; of which secondary class Spenser and Southey may be
mentioned as eminent instances. To neither of these does Mr. Coleridge
belong; in his "Christabel," there certainly are several _distinct
pictures_ of great beauty; but he, as a poet, clearly comes within the
other division which answers to music and the musician, in which you
have a magnificent mirage of words with the subjective associations of
the poet curling, and twisting, and creeping round, and through, and
above every part of it. This is the class to which Milton belongs, in
whose poems we have heard Mr. Coleridge say that he remembered but two
proper pictures--Adam bending over the sleeping Eve at the beginning of
the fifth book of the "Paradise Lost," and Delilah approaching Samson
towards the end of the "Agonistes." But when we point out the intense
personal feeling, the self-projection, as it were, which characterizes
Mr. Coleridge's poems, we mean that such feeling is the soul and spirit,
not the whole body and form, of his poetry. For surely no one has ever
more earnestly and constantly borne in mind the maxim of Milton, that
poetry ought to be _simple, sensuous, and impassioned_. The poems in
these volumes are no authority for that dreamy, half-swooning style of
verse which was criticized by Lord Byron (in language too strong for
print) as the fatal sin of Mr. John Keats, and which, unless abjured
betimes, must prove fatal to several younger aspirants--male and female--
who for the moment enjoy some popularity. The poetry before us is
distinct and clear, and accurate in its imagery; but the imagery is
rarely or never exhibited for description's sake alone; it is rarely or
never exclusively objective; that is to say, put forward as a spectacle,
a picture on which the mind's eye is to rest and terminate. You may if
your sight is short, or your imagination cold, regard the imagery in
itself and go no farther; but the poet's intention is that you should
feel and imagine a great deal more than you see. His aim is to awaken in
the reader the same mood of mind, the same cast of imagination and fancy
whence issued the associations which animate and enlighten his pictures.
You must think with him, must sympathize with him, must suffer yourself
to be lifted out of your own school of opinion or faith, and fall back
upon your own consciousness, an unsophisticated man. If you decline
this, _non tibi spirat_. From his earliest youth to this day, Mr.
Coleridge's poetry has been a faithful mirror reflecting the images of
his mind. Hence he is so original, so individual. With a little trouble,
the zealous reader of the "Biographia Literaria" may trace in these
volumes the whole course of mental struggle and self-evolvement narrated
in that odd but interesting work; but he will see the track marked in
light; the notions become images, the images glorified, and not
unfrequently the abstruse position stamped clearer by the poet than by
the psychologist. No student of Coleridge's philosophy can fully
understand it without a perusal of the illumining, and if we may so say,
_popularizing_ commentary of his poetry. It is the Greek put into the
vulgar tongue. And we must say, it is somewhat strange to hear any one
condemn those philosophical principles as altogether unintelligible,
which are inextricably interwoven in every page of a volume of poetry
which he professes to admire....
To this habit of intellectual introversion we are very much inclined to
attribute Mr. Coleridge's never having seriously undertaken a great
heroic poem. The "Paradise Lost" may be thought to stand in the way of
our laying down any general rule on the subject; yet that poem is as
peculiar as Milton himself, and does not materially affect our opinion,
that the pure epic can hardly be achieved by the poet in whose mind the
reflecting turn _greatly_ predominates. The extent of the action in such
a poem requires a free and fluent stream of narrative verse;
description, purely objective, must fill a large space in it, and its
permanent success depends on a rapidity, or at least a liveliness, of
movement which is scarcely compatible with much of what Bacon calls
_inwardness_ of meaning. The reader's attention could not be preserved;
his journey being long, he expects his road to be smooth and
unembarrassed. The condensed passion of the ode is out of place in
heroic song. Few persons will dispute that the two great Homeric poems
are the most delightful of epics; they may not have the sublimity of the
"Paradise Lost," nor the picturesqueness of the "Divine Comedy," nor the
etherial brilliancy of the "Orlando"; but, dead as they are in language,
metre, accent,--obsolete in religion, manners, costume, and country,--
they nevertheless even now _please_ all those who can read them beyond
all other narrative poems. There is a salt in them which keeps them
sweet and incorruptible throughout every change. They are the most
popular of all the remains of ancient genius, and translations of them
for the twentieth time are amongst the very latest productions of our
contemporary literature. From beginning to end, these marvellous poems
are exclusively objective; everything is in them, except the poet
himself. It is not to Vico or Wolfe that we refer, when we say that
_Homer_ is _vox et praeterea nihil_; as musical as the nightingale, and
as invisible....
The "Remorse" and "Zapolya" strikingly illustrate the predominance of
the meditative, pausing habit of Mr. Coleridge's mind. The first of
these beautiful dramas was acted with success, although worse acting was
never seen. Indeed, Kelly's sweet music was the only part of the
theatrical apparatus in any respect worthy of the play. The late Mr.
Kean made some progress in the study of Ordonio, with a view of
reproducing the piece; and we think that Mr. Macready, either as Ordonio
or Alvar, might, with some attention to music, costume, and scenery,
make the representation attractive even in the present day. But in
truth, taken absolutely and in itself, the "Remorse" is more fitted for
the study than the stage; its character is romantic and pastoral in a
high degree, and there is a profusion of poetry in the minor parts, the
effect of which could never be preserved in the common routine of
representation. What this play wants is dramatic movement; there is
energetic dialogue and a crisis of great interest, but the action does
not sufficiently grow on the stage itself. Perhaps, also, the purpose of
Alvar to waken remorse in Ordonio's mind is put forward too prominently,
and has too much the look of a mere moral experiment to be probable
under the circumstances in which the brothers stand to each other.
Nevertheless, there is a calmness as well as superiority of intellect in
Alvar which seem to justify, in some measure, the sort of attempt on his
part, which, in fact, constitutes the theme of the play; and it must be
admitted that the whole underplot of Isidore and Alhadra is lively and
affecting in the highest degree. We particularly refer to the last scene
between Ordonio and Isidore in the cavern, which we think genuine
Shakespeare; and Alhadra's narrative of her discovery of her husband's
murder is not surpassed in truth and force by anything of the kind that
we know....
We have not yet referred to the "Ancient Mariner," "Christabel," the
"Odes on France," and the "Departing Year," or the "Love Poems." All
these are well known by those who know no other parts of Coleridge's
poetry, and the length of our preceding remarks compels us to be brief
in our notice. Mrs. Barbauld, meaning to be complimentary, told our
poet, that she thought the "Ancient Mariner" very beautiful, but that it
had the fault of containing no moral. "Nay, madam," replied the poet,
"if I may be permitted to say so, the only fault in the poem is that
there is _too much_ In a work of such pure imagination I ought not to
have stopped to give reasons for things, or inculcate humanity to
beasts. 'The Arabian Nights' might have taught me better." They might--
the tale of the merchant's son who puts out the eyes of a genii by
flinging his date-shells down a well, and is therefore ordered to
prepare for death--might have taught this law of imagination; but the
fault is small indeed; and the "Ancient Mariner" is, and will ever be,
one of the most perfect pieces of imaginative poetry, not only in our
language, but in the literature of all Europe. We have, certainly,
sometimes doubted whether the miraculous destruction of the vessel in
the presence of the pilot and hermit, was not an error, in respect of
its bringing the purely preternatural into too close contact with the
actual frame-work of the poem. The only link between those scenes of
out-of-the-world wonders, and the wedding guest, should, we rather
suspect, have been the blasted, unknown being himself who described
them. There should have been no other witnesses of the truth of any part
of the tale, but the "Ancient Mariner" himself. This is by the way: but
take the work altogether, there is nothing else like it; it is a poem by
itself; between it and other compositions, in _pari materia_, there is a
chasm which you cannot overpass; the sensitive reader feels himself
insulated, and a sea of wonder and mystery flows round him as round the
spell-stricken ship itself. It was a sad mistake in the ablest artist--
Mr. Scott, we believe--who in his engravings has made the ancient
mariner an old decrepit man. That is not the true image; no! he should
have been a growthless, decayless being, impassive to time or season, a
silent cloud--the wandering Jew. The curse of the dead men's eyes should
not have passed away. But this was, perhaps, too much for any pencil,
even if the artist had fully entered into the poet's idea. Indeed, it is
no subject for painting. The "Ancient Mariner" displays Mr. Coleridge's
peculiar mastery over the wild and preternatural in a brilliant manner;
but in his next poem, "Christabel," the exercise of his power in this
line is still more skilful and singular. The thing attempted in
"Christabel" is the most difficult of execution in the whole field of
romance--witchery by daylight; and the success is complete. Geraldine,
so far as she goes, is perfect. She is _sui generis_. The reader feels
the same terror and perplexity that Christabel in vain struggles to
express, and the same spell that fascinates her eyes. Who and what is
Geraldine--whence come, whither going, and what designing? What did the
poet mean to make of her? What could he have made of her? Could he have
gone on much farther without having had recourse to some of the ordinary
shifts of witch tales? Was she really the daughter of Roland de Vaux,
and would the friends have met again and embraced?...
We are not amongst those who wish to have "Christabel" finished. It
cannot be finished. The poet has spun all he could without snapping. The
theme is too fine and subtle to bear much extension. It is better as it
is, imperfect as a story, but complete as an exquisite production of the
imagination, differing in form and colour from the "Ancient Mariner,"
yet differing in effect from it only so as the same powerful faculty is
directed to the feudal or the mundane phases of the preternatural....
It has been impossible to express, in the few pages to which we are
necessarily limited, even a brief opinion upon all those pieces which
might seem to call for notice in an estimate of this author's poetical
genius. We know no writer of modern times whom it would not be easier to
characterize in one page than Coleridge in two. The volumes before us
contain so many integral efforts of imagination, that a distinct notice
of each is indispensable, if we would form a just conclusion upon the
total powers of the man. Wordsworth, Scott, Moore, Byron, Southey, are
incomparably more uniform in the direction of their poetic mind. But if
you look over these volumes for indications of their author's poetic
powers, you find him appearing in at least half a dozen shapes, so
different from each other, that it is in vain to attempt to mass them
together. It cannot indeed be said, that he has ever composed what is
popularly termed a _great_ poem; but he is great in several lines, and
the union of such powers is an essential term in a fair estimate of his
genius. The romantic witchery of the "Christabel," and "Ancient
Mariner," the subtle passion of the love-strains, the lyrical splendour
of the three great odes, the affectionate dignity, thoughtfulness, and
delicacy of the blank verse poems--especially the "Lover's Resolution,"
"Frost at Midnight," and that most noble and interesting "Address to Mr.
Wordsworth"--the dramas, the satires, the epigrams--these are so
distinct and so whole in themselves, that they might seem to proceed
from different authors, were it not for that same individualizing power,
that "shaping spirit of imagination" which more or less sensibly runs
through them all. It is the _predominance_ of this power, which, in our
judgment, constitutes the essential difference between Coleridge and any
other of his great contemporaries. He is the most imaginative of the
English poets since Milton. Whatever he writes, be it on the most
trivial subject, be it in the most simple strain, his imagination, _in
spite of himself_, affects it. There never was a better illustrator of
the dogma of the Schoolmen--_in omnem actum intellectualem imaginatio
influit_. We believe we might affirm, that throughout all the mature
original poems in these volumes, there is not one image, the
_expression_ of which does not, in a greater or less degree,
individualize it and appropriate it to the poet's feelings. Tear the
passage out of its place, and nail it down at the head of a chapter of a
modern novel, and it will be like hanging up in a London exhibition-room
a picture painted for the dim light of a cathedral. Sometimes a single
word--an epithet--has the effect to the reader of a Claude Lorraine
glass; it tints without obscuring or disguising the object. The poet has
the same power in conversation. We remember him once settling an
elaborate discussion carried on in his presence, upon the respective
sublimity of Shakespeare and Schiller in Othello and the Robbers, by
saying, "Both are sublime; only Schiller's is the _material_ sublime--
that's all!" _All_ to be sure; but more than enough to show the whole
difference. And upon another occasion, where the doctrine of the
Sacramentaries and the Roman Catholics on the subject of the Eucharist
was in question, the poet said, "They are both equally wrong; the first
have volatilized the Eucharist into a metaphor--the last have condensed
it into an idol." Such utterance as this flashes light; it supersedes
all argument--it abolishes proof by proving itself.
We speak of Coleridge, then, as the poet of imagination; and we add,
that he is likewise the poet of thought and verbal harmony. That his
thoughts are sometimes hard and sometimes even obscure, we think must be
admitted; it is an obscurity of which all very subtle thinkers are
occasionally guilty, either by attempting to express evanescent feelings
for which human language is an inadequate vehicle, or by expressing,
however adequately, thoughts and distinctions to which the common reader
is unused. As to the first kind of obscurity, the words serving only as
hieroglyphics to denote a once existing state of mind in the poet, but
not logically inferring what that state was, the reader can only guess
for himself by the context, whether he ever has or not experienced in
himself a corresponding feeling; and, therefore, undoubtedly this is an
obscurity which strict criticism cannot but condemn. But, if an author
be obscure, merely because this or that reader is unaccustomed to the
mode or direction of thinking in which such author's genius makes him
take delight--such a writer must indeed bear the consequence as to
immediate popularity; but he cannot help the consequence, and if he be
worth anything for posterity, he will disregard it. In this sense almost
every great writer, whose natural bent has been to turn the mind upon
itself, is--must be--obscure; for no writer, with such a direction of
intellect, will be great, unless he is individual and original; and if
he is individual and original, then he must, in most cases, himself make
the readers who shall be competent to sympathize with him.
The English flatter themselves by a pretence that Shakespeare and Milton
are popular in England. It is good taste, indeed, to wish to have it
believed that those poets are popular. Their names are so; but if it be
said that the works of Shakespeare and Milton are popular--that is,
liked and studied--amongst the wide circle whom it is now the fashion to
talk of as enlightened, we are obliged to express our doubts whether a
grosser delusion was ever promulgated. Not a play of Shakespeare's can
be ventured on the London stage without mutilation--and without the most
revolting balderdash foisted into the rents made by managers in his
divine dramas; nay, it is only some three or four of his pieces that can
be borne at all by our all-intelligent public, unless the burthen be
lightened by dancing, singing, or processioning. This for the stage. But
is it otherwise with "the _reading_ public"? We believe it is worse; we
think, verily, that the apprentice or his master who sits out Othello or
Richard at the theatres, does get a sort of glimpse, a touch, an
atmosphere of intellectual grandeur; but he could not keep himself awake
during the perusal of that which he admires--or fancies he admires--in
scenic representation. As to understanding Shakespeare--as to entering
into all Shakespeare's thoughts and feelings--as to seeing the idea of
Hamlet, or Lear, or Othello, as Shakespeare saw it--this we believe
falls, and can only fall, to the lot of the really cultivated few, and
of those who may have so much of the temperament of genius in
themselves, as to comprehend and sympathize with the criticism of men of
genius. Shakespeare is now popular by name, because, in the first place,
great men, more on a level with the rest of mankind, have said that he
is admirable, and also because, in the absolute universality of his
genius, he has presented points to all. Every man, woman, and child, may
pick at least one flower from his garden, the name and scent of which
are familiar. To all which must of course be added, the effect of
theatrical representation, be that representation what it may. There are
tens of thousands of persons in this country whose only acquaintance
with Shakespeare, such as it is, is through the stage.
We have been talking of the contemporary mass; but this is not all; a
great original writer _of a philosophic turn_--especially a poet--will
almost always have the fashionable world also against him at first,
because he does not give the sort of pleasure expected of him at the
time, and because, not contented with that, he is sure, by precept or
example, to show a contempt for the taste and judgment of the
expectants. He is always, and by the law of his being, an idoloclast. By
and by, after years of abuse or neglect, the aggregate of the single
minds who think for themselves, and have seen the truth and force of his
genius, becomes important; the merits of the poet by degrees constitute
a question for discussion; his works are one by one read; men recognize
a superiority in the abstract, and learn to be modest where before they
had been scornful; the coterie becomes a sect; the sect dilates into a
party; and lo! after a season, no one knows how, the poet's fame is
universal. All this, to the very life, has taken place in this country
within the last twenty years. The noblest philosophical poem since the
time of Lucretius was, within time of short memory, declared to be
intolerable, by one of the most brilliant writers in one of the most
brilliant publications of the day. It always puts us in mind of Waller--
no mean parallel--who, upon the coming out of the "Paradise Lost," wrote
to the duke of Buckingham, amongst other pretty things, as follows:--
"Milton, the old blind schoolmaster, has lately written a poem on the
Fall of Man--_remarkable for nothing but its extreme length!_" Our
divine poet asked a fit audience, although it should be but few. His
prayer was heard; a fit audience for the "Paradise Lost" has ever been,
and at this moment must be, a small one, and we cannot affect to believe
that it is destined to be much increased by what is called the march of
intellect.
Can we lay down the pen without remembering that Coleridge the poet is
but half the name of Coleridge? This, however, is not the place, nor the
time, to discuss in detail his qualities or his exertions as a
psychologist, moralist, and general philosopher. That time may come,
when his system, as a whole, shall be fairly placed before the world, as
we have reason to hope it will soon be; and when the preliminary works--
the "Friend," the "Lay Sermons," the "Aids to Reflection," and the
"Church and State,"--especially the last two--shall be seen in their
proper relations as preparatory exercises for the reader. His "Church
and State, according to the Idea of Each"--a little book--we cannot help
recommending as a storehouse of grand and immovable principles, bearing
upon some of the most vehemently disputed topics of constitutional
interest in these momentous times. Assuredly this period has not
produced a profounder and more luminous essay. We have heard it asked,
what was the proposed object of Mr. Coleridge's labours as a
metaphysical philosopher? He once answered that question himself, in
language never to be forgotten by those who heard it, and which,
whatever may be conjectured of the probability or even possibility of
its being fully realized, must be allowed to express the completest idea
of a system of philosophy ever yet made public.
"My system," said he, "if I may venture to give it so fine a name, is
the only attempt that I know, ever made, to reduce all knowledge into
harmony. It opposes no other system, but shows what was true in each;
and how that which was true in the particular in each of them, became
error, _because_ it was only half the truth. I have endeavoured to unite
the insulated fragments of truth, and therewith to frame a perfect
mirror. I show to each system that I fully understand and rightfully
appreciate what that system means; but then I lift up that system to a
higher point of view, from which I enable it to see its former position,
where it was indeed, but under another light and with different
relations,--so that the fragment of truth is not only acknowledged, but
explained. So the old astronomers discovered and maintained much that
was true; but because they were placed on a false ground, and looked
from a wrong point of view, they never did--they never could--discover
the truth--that is, the whole truth. As soon as they left the earth,
their false centre, and took their stand in the sun, immediately they
saw the whole system in its true light, and the former station
remaining--but remaining _as a part_ of the prospect. I wish, in short,
to connect a moral copula, natural history with political history; or,
in other words, to make history scientific, and science historical:--to
take from history its accidentality, and from science its fatalism."
Whether we shall ever, hereafter, have occasion to advert to any new
poetical efforts of Mr. Coleridge, or not, we cannot say. We wish we had
a reasonable cause to expect it. If not, then this hail and farewell
will have been well made. We conclude with, we believe, the last verses
he has written--
_My Baptismal Birth-Day._
God's child in Christ adopted,--Christ my all,--
What that earth boasts were not lost cheaply, rather
Than forfeit the blest name, by which I call
The Holy One, the Almighty God, my Father?
Father! in Christ we live, and Christ in Thee;
Eternal Thou, and everlasting we.
The heir of heaven, henceforth I fear not death:
In Christ I live: in Christ I draw the breath
Of the true life:--Let then earth, sea, and sky
Make war against me! On my heart I show
Their mighty Master's seal. In vain they try
To end my life, that can but end its woe.
Is that a death-bed where a Christian lies?
Yes! but not his--'tis Death itself there dies.--Vol. ii, p. 151.