Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired the Ancient Mariner very much,
but that there were two faults in it,--it was improbable, and had no moral.
As for the probability, I owned that that might admit some question; but as
to the want of a moral, I told her that in my own judgment the poem had too
much; and that the only, or chief fault, if I might say so, was the
obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or
cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought to have had no
more moral than the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to
eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a
genie starts up, and says he _must_ kill the aforesaid merchant, _because_
one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's
son.[1]
I took the thought of "_grinning for joy_," in that poem, from my
companion's remark to me, when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and
were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the constriction,
till we found a little puddle under a stone. He said to me,--"You grinned
like an idiot!" He had done the same.
[Footnote 1:
"There he found, at the foot of a great walnut-tree, a fountain of a very
clear running water, and alighting, tied his horse to a branch of a tree,
and sitting clown by the fountain, took some biscuits and dates out of his
portmanteau, and, as he ate his dates, threw the shells about on both sides
of him. When he had done eating, being a good Mussulman, he washed his
hands, his face, and his feet, and said his prayers. He had not made an
end, but was still on his knees, when he saw a genie appear, all white with
age, and of a monstrous bulk; who, advancing towards him with a cimetar in
his hand, spoke to him in a terrible voice thus:--'Rise up, that I may kill
thee with this cimetar as you have killed my son!' and accompanied these
words with a frightful cry. The merchant being as much frightened at the
hideous shape of the monster as at these threatening words, answered him
trembling:--'Alas! my good lord, of what crime can I be guilty towards you
that you should take away my life?'--'I will,' replies the genie, 'kill
thee, as thou hast killed my son!'--'O heaven!' says the merchant, 'how
should I kill your son? I did not know him, nor ever saw him.'--'Did not
you sit down when you came hither?' replies the genie. 'Did not you take
dates out of your portmanteau, and, as you ate them, did not you throw the
shells about on both sides?'--'I did all that you say,' answers the
merchant, 'I cannot deny it.'--'If it be so,' replied the genie, 'I tell
thee that thou hast killed my son; and the way was thus: when you threw the
nutshells about, my son was passing by, and you threw one of them into his
eye, which killed him, _therefore_ I must kill thee.'--'Ah! my good lord,
pardon me!' cried the merchant.--'No pardon,' answers the genie, 'no mercy!
Is it not just to kill him that has killed another?'--'I agree to it,' says
the merchant, 'but certainly I never killed your son, and if I have, it was
unknown to me, and I did it innocently; therefore I beg you to pardon me,
and suffer me to live.'--'No, no,' says the genie, persisting in his
resolution, 'I must kill thee, since thou hast killed my son;' and then
taking the merchant by the arm, threw him with his face upon the ground,
and lifted up his cimetar to cut off his head!"--The Merchant and the
Genie. First night.--Ed.]
* * * * *
Undine is a most exquisite work. It shows the general want of any sense for
the fine and the subtle in the public taste, that this romance made no deep
impression. Undine's character, before she receives a soul, is marvellously
beautiful.[1]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge's admiration of this little romance was unbounded. He read it
several times in German, and once in the English translation, made in
America, I believe; the latter he thought inadequately done. Mr. C. said
that there was something in Undine even beyond Scott,--that Scott's best
characters and conceptions were _composed_; by which I understood him to
mean that Baillie Nicol Jarvie, for example, was made up of old
particulars, and received its individuality from the author's power of
fusion, being in the result an admirable product, as Corinthian brass was
said to be the conflux of the spoils of a city. But Undine, he said, was
one and single in projection, and had presented to his imagination, what
Scott had never done, an absolutely new idea--ED.]
* * * * *
It seems to me, that Martin never looks at nature except through bits of
stained glass. He is never satisfied with any appearance that is not
prodigious. He should endeavour to school his imagination into the
apprehension of the true idea of the Beautiful.[1]
The wood-cut of Slay-good[2] is admirable, to be sure; but this new edition
of the Pilgrim's Progress is too fine a book for it. It should be much
larger, and on sixpenny coarse paper.
The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without
slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy
the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in
very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more
necessary it is to be plain.
This wonderful work is one of the few books which may be read over
repeatedly at different times, and each time with a new and a different
pleasure. I read it once as a theologian--and let me assure you, that there
is great theological acumen in the work--once with devotional feelings--and
once as a poet. I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could
be painted in such exquisitely delightful colours.[3]
[Footnote 1:
Mr. Coleridge said this, after looking at the engravings of Mr. Martin's
two pictures of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and the Celestial City,
published in the beautiful edition of the Pilgrim's Progress by Messrs.
Murray and Major, in 1830. I wish Mr. Martin could have heard the poet's
lecture: he would have been flattered, and at the same time, I believe,
instructed; for in the philosophy of painting Coleridge was a master.--ED.]
[Footnote 2:
P. 350., by S. Mosses from a design by Mr. W. Harvey. "When they came to
the place where he was, they found him with one _Feeble-mind_ in his hand,
whom his servants had brought unto him, having taken him in the way. Now
the giant was rifling him, with a purpose, after that, to pick his bones;
for he was of the nature of flesh eaters."--ED.]
[Footnote 3:
I find written on a blank leaf of my copy of this edition of the P.'s P.
the following note by Mr. C.:--"I know of no book, the Bible excepted as
above all comparison, which I, according to _my_ judgment and experience,
could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth
according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress.
It is, in my conviction, incomparably the best _summa theologiae
evangalicae_ ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired." June 14.
1830.--ED.]
_June_ 1. 1830.