The preceding letter is about a fair example of that playful and
ebullient imagination for which Mr. Coleridge, at this time, was
distinguished. Subjects high and low received the same embellishment.
Figure crowded on figure, and image on image, in new and perpetual
variety.
He was once reprobating the introduction of all bull and bear similes
into poetry. "Well," I replied, "whatever your antipathies may be to
bulls and bears, you have no objection to wolves." "Yes," he answered, "I
equally abominate the whole tribe of lion, bull, bear, boar, and wolf
similes. They are more thread-bare than a beggar's cast-off coat. From
their rapid transition from hand to hand, they are now more hot and
sweaty than halfpence on a market day. I would as soon meet a wolf in the
open field, as in a friend's poem." I then rejoined, "Your objection,
once at least, to wolf similes, was not quite so strong, seeing you
prevailed on Mr. Southey to throw into the first book of "Joan of Arc," a
five-line flaming wolf simile of yours. One could almost see the wolf
leap, he was so fierce!" "Ah" said Mr. C. "but the discredit rests on
him, not on me."
The simile, in question, if not a new subject, is at least, perhaps, as
energetically expressed as any five lines in Mr. Coleridge's writings.
As who, through many a summer night serene
Had hover'd round the fold with coward wish;
Horrid with brumal ice, the fiercer wolf,
From his bleak mountain and his den of snows
Leaps terrible and mocks the shepherd's spear.
Book 1. L. 47.
"June, 1796.
My dear Cottle,
I am sojourning for a few days at Racedown, Dorset, the mansion of our
friend Wordsworth; who presents his kindest respects to you....
Wordsworth admires my tragedy, which gives me great hopes. Wordsworth has
written a tragedy himself. I speak with heartfelt sincerity, and I think,
unblinded judgment, when I tell you that I feel myself a little man by
his side, and yet I do not think myself a less man than I formerly
thought myself. His drama is absolutely wonderful. You know I do not
commonly speak in such abrupt and unmingled phrases, and therefore will
the more readily believe me. There are, in the piece, those profound
touches of the human heart, which I find three or four times in the
"Robbers" of Schiller, and often in Shakspeare, but in Wordsworth there
are no inequalities....
God bless you, and eke,