at play, and 'like that woman's face as gold is like to gold.' Here is
the conclusion of this memorable adventure.
'They bolted on me thus, and lo!
Each ready with a plaintive whine;
Said I, "Not half an hour ago
Your mother has had alms of mine."
"That cannot be," one answered, "She is dead."
"Nay but I gave her pence, and she will buy you bread."
"She has been dead, Sir, many a day."
"Sweet boys, you're telling me a lie";
"It was your mother, as I say--"
And in the twinkling of an eye,
"Come, come!" cried one; and, without more ado,
Off to some other play they both together flew.' I. 79.
'Alice Fell' is a performance of the same order. The poet, driving into
Durham in a postchaise, hears a sort of scream; and, calling to the
post-boy to stop, finds a little girl crying on the back of the vehicle.
"My cloak!" the word was last and first,
And loud and bitterly she wept,
As if her very heart would burst;
And down from off the chaise she leapt.
"What ails you, child?" she sobb'd, "Look here!"
I saw it in the wheel entangled,
A weather beaten rag as e'er
From any garden scarecrow dangled.' I. 85, 86.
They then extricate the torn garment, and the good-natured bard takes
the child into the carriage along with him. The narrative proceeds--
"My child, in Durham do you dwell?"
She check'd herself in her distress,
And said, "My name is Alice Fell;
I'm fatherless and motherless.
And I to Durham, Sir, belong."
And then, as if the thought would choke
Her very heart, her grief grew strong;
And all was for her tatter'd cloak.
The chaise drove on; our journey's end
Was nigh; and, sitting by my side,
As if she'd lost her only friend
She wept, nor would be pacified.
Up to the tavern-door we post;
Of Alice and her grief I told;
And I gave money to the host,
To buy a new cloak for the old.
"And let it be of duffil grey,
As warm a cloak as man can sell!"
Proud creature was she the next day,
The little orphan, Alice Fell!' I. p. 87, 88.
If the printing of such trash as this be not felt as an insult on the
public taste, we are afraid it cannot be insulted.
After this follows the longest and most elaborate poem in the volume,
under the title of 'Resolution and Independence.' The poet, roving about
on a common one fine morning, falls into pensive musings on the fate of
the sons of song, which he sums up in this fine distich.
'We poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.' I. p. 92.
In the midst of his meditations--
'I saw a man before me unawares;
The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.
----------
Motionless as a cloud the old man stood;
That heareth not the loud winds when they call;
And moveth altogether, if it move at all.
At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
Upon the muddy water, which he conn'd,
As if he had been reading in a book:
And now such fre[e]dom as I could I took;
And, drawing to his side, to him did say,
"This morning gives us promise of a glorious day."
----------
"What kind of work is that which you pursue?
This is a lonesome place for one like you."
He answer'd me _with pleasure and surprise_;
And there was, while he spake, a fire about his eyes.
He told me _that he to this pond had come
To gather leeches_, being old and poor:
Employment hazardous and wearisome!
And he had many hardships to endure:
From pond to pond he roam'd, from moor to moor,
Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance:
And in this way he gain'd an honest maintenance.' I. p. 92-95.
Notwithstanding the distinctness of this answer, the poet, it seems, was
so wrapped up in his own moody fancies, that he could not attend to it.
'And now, not knowing what the old man had said,
My question eagerly did I renew,
"How is it that you live, and what is it you do?"
He with a smile did then his words repeat;
And said, that, _gathering leeches_, far and wide
He travelled; stirring thus _about his feet_
The waters of the ponds where they abide.
"_Once I could meet with them on every side_;
But they have dwindled long by slow decay;
Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may." I. p. 96, 97.
This very interesting account, which he is lucky enough at last to
comprehend, fills the poet with comfort and admiration; and, quite glad
to find the old man so cheerful, he resolves to take a lesson of
contentedness from him; and the poem ends with this pious ejaculation--
"God," said I, "be my help and stay secure;
I'll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor." I. p. 97.
We defy the bitterest enemy of Mr Wordsworth to produce anything at all
parallel to this from any collection of English poetry, or even from the
specimens of his friend Mr Southey. The volume ends with some sonnets,
in a very different measure, of which we shall say something by and by.
The first poems in the second volume were written during a tour in
Scotland. The first is a very dull one about Rob Roy; but the title that
attracted us most was 'an Address to the Sons of _Burns_, after visiting
their Father's Grave.' Never was anything, however, more miserable. This
is one of the four stanzas.
'Strong bodied if ye be to bear
Intemperance with less harm, beware!
But if your father's wit ye share,
Then, then indeed,
Ye sons of Burns! for watchful care
There will be need.' II. p. 29.
The next is a very tedious, affected performance, called 'the Yarrow
Unvisited.' The drift of it is, that the poet refused to visit this
celebrated stream, because he had 'a vision of his own' about it, which
the reality might perhaps undo; and, for this no less fantastical
reason--
"Should life be dull, and spirits low,
'Twill soothe us in our sorrow,
That earth has something yet to show,
The bonny holms of Yarrow!" II. p. 35.
After this we come to some ineffable compositions which the poet has
simply entitled, 'Moods of my own Mind.' One begins--
'O Nightingale! thou surely art
A creature of a fiery heart--
Thou sing'st as if the god of wine
Had help'd thee to a valentine.' II. p. 42.
This is the whole of another--
'My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.' II. p. 44.
A third, 'on a Sparrow's Nest,' runs thus--
'Look, five blue eggs are gleaming there!
_Few visions have I seen more fair,_
_Nor many prospects of delight_
More pleasing than that simple sight.' II. p. 53.
The charm of this fine prospect, however, was, that it reminded him of
another nest which his sister Emmeline and he had visited in their
childhood.
'She look'd at it as if she fear'd it;
Still wishing, dreading to be near it:
Such heart was in her, being then
A little prattler among men,' &c., &c. II. p. 54.
We have then a rapturous mystical ode to the Cuckoo; in which the
author, striving after force and originality, produces nothing but
absurdity.
'O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?' II. p. 57.
And then he says, that the said voice seemed to pass from hill to hill,
'about and all about!'--Afterwards he assures us, it tells him 'in the
vale of visionary hours,' and calls it a darling; but still insists,
that it is
'No bird; but an invisible thing,
A voice,--a mystery.' II. p. 58.
It is afterwards 'a hope;' and 'a love;' and, finally,
'O blessed _bird_! the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, faery place,
That is fit home for thee!' II. p. 59.
After this there is an address to a butterfly, whom he invites to visit
him, in these simple strains--
'This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
My trees they are, my sister's flowers;
Stop here whenever you are weary.' II. p. 61.
We come next to a long story of a 'Blind Highland Boy,' who lived near
an arm of the sea, and had taken a most unnatural desire to venture on
that perilous element. His mother did all she could to prevent him; but
one morning, when the good woman was out of the way, he got into a
vessel of his own, and pushed out from the shore.
'In such a vessel ne'er before
Did human creature leave the shore.' II. p. 72.
And then we are told, that if the sea should get rough, 'a bee-hive
would be ship as safe.' 'But say, what is it?' a poetical interlocutor
is made to exclaim most naturally; and here followeth the answer, upon
which all the pathos and interest of the story depend.
'A HOUSEHOLD TUB, like one of those
Which women use to wash their clothes!!' II. p. 72.
This, it will be admitted, is carrying the matter as far as it will well
go; nor is there anything,--down to the wiping of shoes, or the
evisceration of chickens,--which may not be introduced in poetry, if
this is tolerated. A boat is sent out and brings the boy ashore, who
being tolerably frightened we suppose, promises to go to sea no more;
and so the story ends.
Then we have a poem, called 'the Green Linnet,' which opens with the
poet's telling us;
'A whispering leaf is now my joy,
And then a bird will be the _toy_
That doth my fancy _tether_.' II. p. 79.
and closes thus--
'While thus before my eyes he gleams,
A brother of the leaves he seems;
When in a moment forth _he teems_
His little song in gushes:
As if it pleas'd him to disdain
And mock the form which he did feign,
While he was dancing with the train
Of leaves among the bushes.' II. p. 81.
The next is called 'Star Gazers.' A set of people peeping through a
telescope, all seem to come away disappointed with the sight; whereupon
thus sweetly moralizeth our poet.
'Yet, showman, where can lie the cause? Shall thy implement have blame,
A boaster, that when he is tried, fails, and is put to shame?
Or is it good as others are, and be their eyes in fault?
Their eyes, or minds? or, finally, is this resplendent vault?
Or, is it rather, that conceit rapacious is and strong,
And bounty never yields so much but it seems to do her wrong?
Or is it, that when human souls a journey long have had,
And are returned into themselves, they cannot but be sad?' II. p. 88.
There are then some really sweet and amiable verses on a French lady,
separated from her own children, fondling the baby of a neighbouring
cottager;--after which we have this quintessence of unmeaningness,
entitled, 'Foresight.'
'That is work which I am rueing--
Do as Charles and I are doing!
Strawberry-blossoms, one and all,
We must spare them--here are many:
Look at it--the flower is small,
Small and low, though fair as any:
Do not touch it! Summers two
I am older, Anne, than you.
Pull the primrose, sister Anne!
Pull as many as you can.
Primroses, the spring may love them--
Summer knows but little of them:
Violets, do what they will,
Wither'd on the ground must lie:
Daisies will be daisies still;
Daisies they must live and die:
Fill your lap, and fill your bosom,
Only spare the strawberry-blossom!' II. p. 115, 116.
Afterwards come some stanzas about an echo repeating a cuckoo's voice;
here is one for a sample--
'Whence the voice? from air or earth?
_This the cuckoo cannot tell_;
But a startling sound had birth,
_As the bird must know full well_.' II. p. 123.
Then we have Elegiac stanzas 'to the Spade of a friend,' beginning--
'Spade! with which Wilkinson hath till'd his lands,'
--but too dull to be quoted any further.
After this there is a Minstrel's Song, on the Restoration of Lord
Clifford the Shepherd, which is in a very different strain of poetry;
and then the volume is wound up with an 'Ode,' with no other title but
the motto, _Paulo majora canamus_. This is, beyond all doubt, the most
illegible and unintelligible part of the publication. We can pretend to
give no analysis or explanation of it;--our readers must make what they
can of the following extracts.
'----But there's a tree, of many one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?' II. 150.
----------
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benedictions: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest:
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether fluttering or at rest,
With new-born hope forever in his breast:--
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realiz'd,
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surpriz'd:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our feeling
Uphold us, cherish us, and make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,
To perish never;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor man nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence, in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.' II. 154-6.
We have thus gone through this publication, with a view to enable our
readers to determine, whether the author of the verses which have now
been exhibited, is entitled to claim the honours of an improver or
restorer of our poetry, and to found a new school to supersede or
new-model all our maxims on this subject. If we were to stop here, we do
not think that Mr Wordsworth, or his admirers, would have any reason to
complain; for what we have now quoted is undeniably the most peculiar
and characteristic part of his publication, and must be defended and
applauded if the merit or originality of his system is to be seriously
maintained. In our own opinion, however, the demerit of that system
cannot be fairly appreciated, until it be shown, that the author of the
bad verses which we have already extracted, can write good verses when
he pleases; and that, in point of fact, he does always write good
verses, when, by any accident, he is led to abandon his system, and to
transgress the laws of that school which he would fain establish on the
ruin of all existing authority.
The length to which our extracts and observations have already extended,
necessarily restrains us within more narrow limits in this part of our
citations; but it will not require much labour to find a pretty decided
contrast to some of the passages we have already detailed. The song on
the restoration of Lord Clifford is put into the mouth of an ancient
minstrel of the family; and in composing it, the author was led,
therefore, almost irresistibly to adopt the manner and phraseology that
is understood to be connected with that sort of composition, and to
throw aside his own babyish incidents and fantastical sensibilities. How
he has succeeded, the reader will be able to judge from the few
following extracts.
[Quotes fifty-six lines of _Lord Clifford_.]
All English writers of sonnets have imitated Milton; and, in this way,
Mr Wordsworth, when he writes sonnets, escapes again from the trammels
of his own unfortunate system; and the consequence is, that his sonnets
are as much superior to the greater part of his other poems, as Milton's
sonnets are superior to his.
[Quotes the sonnets _On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic_,
_London_, and _I griev'd for Buonaparte_.]
When we look at these, and many still finer passages, in the writings of
this author, it is impossible not to feel a mixtures of indignation and
compassion, at that strange infatuation which has bound him up from the
fair exercise of his talents, and withheld from the public the many
excellent productions that would otherwise have taken the place of the
trash now before us. Even in the worst of these productions, there are,
no doubt, occasional little traits of delicate feeling and original
fancy; but these are quite lost and obscured in the mass of childishness
and insipidity with which they are incorporated; nor can any thing give
us a more melancholy view of the debasing effects of this miserable
theory, than that it has given ordinary men a right to wonder at the
folly and presumption of a man gifted like Mr Wordsworth, and made him
appear, in his second avowed publication, like a bad imitator of the
worst of his former productions.
We venture to hope, that there is now an end of this folly; and that,
like other follies, it will be found to have cured itself by the
extravagances resulting from its unbridled indulgence. In this point of
view, the publication of the volumes before us may ultimately be of
service to the good cause of literature. Many a generous rebel, it is
said, has been reclaimed to his allegiance by the spectacle of lawless
outrage and excess presented in the conduct of the insurgents; and we
think there is every reason to hope, that the lamentable consequences
which have resulted from Mr Wordsworth's open violation of the
established laws of poetry, will operate as a wholesome warning to those
who might otherwise have been seduced by his example, and be the means
of restoring to that antient and venerable code its due honour and
authority.--_The Edinburgh Review_.
[Footnote H: See Vol. I. p. 63, &c.--Vol. VII. p. 1, &c.]
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
_Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision. The Pains of Sleep_. By S.T.
COLERIDGE, ESQ. London, Murray, 1816.
The advertisement by which this work was announced to the publick,
carried in its front a recommendation from Lord Byron,--who, it seems,
has somewhere praised Christabel, as 'a wild and singularly original and
beautiful poem.' Great as the noble bard's merits undoubtedly are in
poetry, some of his latest _publications_ dispose us to distrust his
authority, where the question is what ought to meet the public eye; and
the works before us afford an additional proof, that his judgment on
such matters is not absolutely to be relied on. Moreover, we are a
little inclined to doubt the value of the praise which one poet lends
another. It seems now-a-days to be the practice of that once irritable
race to laud each other without bounds; and one can hardly avoid
suspecting, that what is thus lavishly advanced may be laid out with a
view to being repaid with interest. Mr Coleridge, however, must be
judged by his own merits.
It is remarked, by the writers upon the Bathos, that the true _profound_
is surely known by one quality--its being wholly bottomless; insomuch,
that when you think you have attained its utmost depth in the work of
some of its great masters, another, or peradventure the same, astonishes
you, immediately after, by a plunge so much more vigorous, as to outdo
all his former outdoings. So it seems to be with the new school, or, as
they may be termed, the wild or lawless poets. After we had been
admiring their extravagance for many years, and marvelling at the ease
and rapidity with which one exceeded another in the unmeaning or
infantine, until not an idea was left in the rhyme--or in the insane,
until we had reached something that seemed the untamed effusion of an
author whose thoughts were rather more free than his actions--forth
steps Mr Coleridge, like a giant refreshed with sleep, and as if to
redeem his character after so long a silence, ('his poetic powers having
been, he says, from 1808 till very lately, in a state of suspended
animation,' p. v.) and breaks out in these precise words--
''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock;
Tu ---- whit! ---- Tu ---- whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew.'
'Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
From her kennel beneath the rock
She makes answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour:
Ever and aye, moonshine or shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
Some say she sees my lady's shroud.'
'Is the night chilly and dark?
The night is chilly, but not dark.' p. 3, 4.
It is probable that Lord Byron may have had this passage in his eye,
when he called the poem 'wild' and 'original;' but how he discovered it
to be 'beautiful,' is not quite so easy for us to imagine.
Much of the art of the wild writers consists in sudden
transitions--opening eagerly upon some topic, and then flying from it
immediately. This indeed is known to the medical men, who not
unfrequently have the care of them, as an unerring symptom. Accordingly,
here we take leave of the Mastiff Bitch, and lose sight of her entirely,
upon the entrance of another personage of a higher degree,
'The lovely Lady Christabel,
Whom her father loves so well'--
And who, it seems, has been rambling about all night, having, the night
before, had dreams about her lover, which 'made her moan and _leap_.'
While kneeling, in the course of her rambles, at an old oak, she hears a
noise on the other side of the stump, and going round, finds, to her
great surprize, another fair damsel in white silk, but with her dress
and hair in some disorder; at the mention of whom, the poet takes
fright, not, as might be imagined, because of her disorder, but on
account of her beauty and her fair attire--
'I guess, 'twas frightful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she--
Beautiful exceedingly!'
Christabel naturally asks who she is, and is answered, at some length,
that her name is Geraldine; that she was, on the morning before, seized
by five warriors, who tied her on a white horse, and drove her on, they
themselves following, also on white horses; and that they had rode all
night. Her narrative now gets to be a little contradictory, which gives
rise to unpleasant suspicions. She protests vehemently, and with oaths,
that she has no idea who the men were; only that one of them, the
tallest of the five, took her and placed her under the tree, and that
they all went away, she knew not whither; but how long she had remained
there she cannot tell--
'Nor do I know how long it is,
For I have lain in fits, I _wis_;'
--although she had previously kept a pretty exact account of the time.
The two ladies then go home together, after this satisfactory
explanation, which appears to have conveyed to the intelligent mind of
Lady C. every requisite information. They arrive at the castle, and pass
the night in the same bed-room; not to disturb Sir Leoline, who, it
seems, was poorly at the time, and, of course, must have been called up
to speak to the chambermaids, and have the sheets aired, if Lady G. had
had a room to herself. They do not get to their bed, however in the
poem, quite so easily as we have carried them. They first cross the
moat, and Lady C. 'took the key that fitted well,' and opened a little
door, 'all in the middle of the gate.' Lady G. then sinks down 'belike
through pain;' but it should seem more probably from laziness; for her
fair companion having lifted her up, and carried her a little way, she
then walks on 'as she were not in pain.' Then they cross the court--but
we must give this in the poet's words, for he seems so pleased with
them, that he inserts them twice over in the space of ten lines.
'So free from danger, free from fear,
They crossed the court--right glad they were.'
Lady C. is desirous of a little conversation on the way, but Lady G.
will not indulge her Ladyship, saying she is too much tired to speak. We
now meet our old friend, the mastiff bitch, who is much too important a
person to be slightly passed by--
'Outside her kennel, the mastiff old
Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.
The mastiff old did not awake,
Yet she an angry moan did make!
And what can ail the mastiff bitch?
Never till now she uttered yell
Beneath the eye of Christabel.
Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch:
For what can ail the mastiff bitch?'