THE RETURN TO NATURE
TIME-CHART OF THE CHIEF AUTHORS
_The thick line shows the period of important literary work._
1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850
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Wordsworth |...║==================║...|........|........|........|║
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Coleridge |...║================║.....|........|...║ | |
(1772–1834) | | | | | | |
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Byron |........|........|.║==========║ | | |
(1788–1824) | | | | | | |
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Shelley | ║......|........|.║=========║ | | |
(1792–1822) | | | | | | |
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Keats | ║.....|........|...║======║ | | |
(1795–1821) | | | | | | |
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Scott |........|..║========║=================║ | |
(1771–1832) | | | ║ | | | |
| ║[196] | ║ | | | |
Austen |...║==================║ | | | |
(1775–1817) | | | | | | |
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Lamb |........|....║=========================║ | |
(1775–1834) | | | | | | |
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De Quincey |........|........|........|.║========================+
(1785–1859) | | | | | | |
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Hazlitt |........|...║========================║ | |
(1778–1830) | | | | | | |
THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1790–1830)
To an overwhelming extent the history of the time is the record of the
effects of the French Revolution.
=1. The European War.= The close of the eighteenth century saw
England and France engaged in open warfare (1793). Many causes
contributed to set the war in motion, and many more kept it intractably
in operation. Hostilities dragged on till 1815, in the end bringing
about the extinction of the French Republic, the birth of which was
greeted so joyfully by the English Liberals, the rise and destruction
of the power of Napoleon, and the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty.
These events had their effects in every corner of Europe, and in none
more strongly than in England.
=2. The Reaction.= It has been well said: “At the beginning of
every revolution men hope, for they think of all that mankind may
gain in a new world; in its next phase they fear, for they think of
what mankind may lose.” This was the case with the French Revolution.
The elder writers of the period, with Wordsworth and Coleridge as
conspicuous examples, hailed the new era with joy. Then, as the
Revolution proceeded to unexpected developments, there came in turn
disappointment, disillusion, dejection, and despair, and, notably in
the case of Wordsworth, the rejection of youthful ideas and the soured
adoption of the older reactionary faith. The younger writers, such as
Leigh Hunt, Shelley, and Keats, still adhered to the Revolutionary
doctrines, but the warmth of the early days had already passed away.
=3. Social Conditions.= The conclusion of the long war brought
inevitable misery; low wages, unemployment, and heavy taxation gave
rise to fiery resentment and fierce demands on the part of the people.
Men like Shelley and Ebenezer Elliott called aloud for social justice;
in gentler mood Mrs. Hemans and Tom Hood bewailed the social misery. We
have the massacre of Peterloo and the wild rioting over the Reform Bill
and the Corn Laws.
The Reform Bill (1832) was a grudging concession to the general
discontent. To conservative minds, like those of Scott and the maturer
Wordsworth, the Bill seemed to pronounce the dissolution of every
social tie. But the Bill brought only disappointment to its friends. In
the next chapter we shall see how the demand for social amelioration
deepened and broadened, and colored the literature of the time.
The interest in social conditions became intensified toward the end
of the nineteenth century, until it has grown to be one of the chief
features of modern literature.
THE RETURN TO NATURE
In the last chapter we noted the beginnings and development of the new
feeling for nature. This chapter sees the full effects of the movement,
and the subsequent reaction that followed.
=1. Abundant Output.= Even the lavishness of the Elizabethans
cannot excel that of this age. The development of new ideas brings
fresh inspiration for poetry, and the poetical sky is bright with
luminaries of the first magnitude. In prose we may note especially the
fruitful yield of the novel, the rejuvenation of the essay, and the
unprecedented activity of critical and miscellaneous writers. This is
the most fertile period of our literature.
=2. Great Range of Subject.= The new and buoyant race of writers,
especially the poets, lays the knowledge and experience of all ages
under a heavy toll. The classical writers are explored anew, and are
drawn upon by the genius of Keats and Shelley; the Middle Ages inspire
the novels of Scott and the poems of Coleridge, Southey, and many more;
modern times are analyzed and dissected in the work of the novelists,
the satires of Byron, and the productions of the miscellaneous writers.
This is indeed the return to nature, for all nature is scrutinized and
summed up afresh.
=3. Treatment of Nature.= If for the moment we take the restricted
meaning of the word, and understand by “nature” the common phenomena of
earth, air, and sea, we find the poetical attitude to nature altering
profoundly. In the work of Cowper, Crabbe, and Gray the treatment is
principally the simple chronicle and sympathetic observation of natural
features. In the new race of poets the observation becomes more matured
and intimate. Notably in the case of Wordsworth, the feeling for
nature rises to a passionate veneration that is love and religion too.
To Wordsworth nature is not only a procession of seasons and seasonal
fruition: it is the eye of all things, natural and supernatural, into
which the observant soul can peer and behold the spirit that inhabits
all things. Nature is thus amplified and glorified; it is to be sought,
not only in the flowers and the fields, but also in
the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.
=4. Political and Periodical Writing.= The age did not produce a
pamphleteer of the first class like Swift or Burke, but the turbulence
of the period was clearly marked in the immense productivity of its
political writers. The number of periodicals was greatly augmented, and
we notice the first of the great daily journals that are still a strong
element in literature and politics. _The Morning Chronicle_ (1769)
and _The Morning Post_ (1772) were started by Henry Bate, _The Times_
(1785) by John Walter. Of a more irresponsible type were the Radical
_Political Register_ (1802) of Cobbett and _The Examiner_ (1808) of
Leigh Hunt. A race of powerful literary magazines sprang to life: _The
Edinburgh Review_ (1802), _The Quarterly Review_ (1809), _The London
Magazine_ (1817), _Blackwood’s Magazine_ (1817), and _The Westminster
Review_ (1827). Such excellent publications reacted strongly upon
authorship, and were responsible for much of the best work of Hazlitt,
Lamb, Southey, and a host of other miscellaneous writers.
=5. The Influence of Germany.= The increasing bitterness of the long
war with France almost extinguished the literary influence of the
French language, which, as was indicated in the last chapter, had been
affecting English literature deeply. In the place of French, the study
of German literature and learning came rapidly into favor. The first
poetical work of Scott is based on the German, and the effects of
the new influence can be further observed in the works of Coleridge,
Shelley, Byron, and many more. In the course of time German increased
its hold upon English, until by the middle of the nineteenth century it
was perhaps the dominating foreign tongue.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770–1850)
=1. His Life.= Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, a town which is
actually outside the Lake District, but well within hail of it. His
father, who was a lawyer, died when William was thirteen years old. The
elder Wordsworth left a modest sum of money, which was not available
at the time of his death, so that William had to depend on the
generosity of two uncles, who paid for his schooling at Hawkshead, near
Lake Windermere. Subsequently Wordsworth went to Cambridge, entering
St. John’s College in 1787. His work at the university was quite
undistinguished, and having graduated in 1791 he left with no fixed
career in view. After spending a few months in London he crossed over
to France (1791), and stayed at Orléans and Blois for nearly a year.
An enthusiasm for the Revolution was aroused in him; he himself has
chronicled the mood in one of his happiest passages:
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven.
He returned to Paris in 1792 just after the September massacres, and
the sights and stories that greeted him there shook his faith in
the dominant political doctrine. Even yet, however, he thought of
becoming a Girondin, or moderate Republican, but his allowance from
home was stopped, and he returned to England. With his sister Dorothy
(henceforward his lifelong companion) he settled in a little cottage
in Dorset; then, having met Coleridge, they moved to Alfoxden, a house
in Somersetshire, in order to live near him. It was there that the
two poets took the series of walks the fruit of which was to be the
_Lyrical Ballads_.
After a visit to Germany in 1798 the Wordsworths settled in the Lake
District, which was to be their home for the future. In turn they
occupied Dove Cottage, at Town-End, Grasmere (1802), Allan Bank (1808),
Grasmere Parsonage (1811), and lastly the well-known residence of
Rydal Mount, which was Wordsworth’s home from 1813 till his death.
Shortly after he had moved to Rydal Mount he received the sinecure of
Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, and was put out of reach of
poverty.
The remainder of his life was a model of domesticity. He was carefully
tended by his wife and sister, who, with a zeal that was noteworthy,
though it was injudicious, treasured every scrap of his poetry that
they could lay their hands on. His great passion was for traveling. He
explored most of the accessible parts of the Continent, and visited
Scotland several times. On the last occasion (1831) he and his daughter
renewed their acquaintance with Scott at Abbotsford, and saw the great
novelist when he was fast crumbling into mental ruin. Wordsworth’s
poetry, which at first had been received with derision or indifference,
was now winning its way, and recognition was general. In 1839 Oxford
conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L.; in 1842 the Crown awarded him
a pension of £300 a year; and on the death of Southey in 1843 he became
Poet Laureate.
Long before this time he had discarded his early ideals and become the
upholder of conservatism. Perhaps he is not “the lost leader” whose
recantation Browning bewails with rather theatrical woe; but he lived
to deplore the Reform Bill and to oppose the causes to which his early
genius had been dedicated. Throughout his life, however, he never
wavered in his faith in himself and his immortality as a poet. He
lived to see his own belief in his powers triumphantly justified. It
is seldom indeed that such gigantic egoism is so amply and so justly
repaid.
=2. His Poetry.= He records that his earliest verses were written at
school, and that they were “a tame imitation of Pope’s versification.”
This is an interesting admission of the still surviving domination of
the earlier poet. At the university he composed some poetry, which
appeared as _The Evening Walk_ (1793) and _Descriptive Sketches_
(1793). In style these poems have little originality, but they already
show the Wordsworthian eye for nature. The firstfruits of his genius
were seen in the _Lyrical Ballads_ (1798), a joint production by
Coleridge and himself, which was published at Bristol.
Regarding the inception of this remarkable book both Wordsworth and
Coleridge have left accounts, which vary to some extent, though not
materially. Coleridge’s may be taken as the more plausible. He says in
his _Biographia Literaria_:
It was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons
and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as
to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a
semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of
the imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the
moment which constitutes poetic faith. Mr Wordsworth was to give
the charm of novelty to things of everyday life by awakening
the mind’s attention to the loveliness and wonders of the world
before us.
This volume is epoch-making, for it is the prelude to the Romantic
movement proper. Wordsworth had the larger share in the book. Some of
his poems in it, such as _The Thorn_ and _The Idiot Boy_, are condemned
as being trivial and childish in style; a few, such as _Simon Lee_ and
_Expostulation and Reply_, are more adequate in their expression; and
the concluding piece, _Tintern Abbey_, is one of the triumphs of his
genius.
During his visit to Germany in 1798–99 Wordsworth composed such typical
poems as _Lucy Gray_, _Ruth_, and _Nutting_, which along with a large
number of the same kind were issued in two volumes in 1807. This work,
which comprises the flower of his poetry, was sharply assailed by the
critics; but on the whole it amended the puerilities of the earlier
volume, and set in motion the steady undercurrent of appreciation that
was finally to overwhelm his detractors. While he was in Germany he
planned _The Prelude_, which was not concluded till 1805, and remained
unpublished during his lifetime. _The Prelude_, which dealt with his
education and early ideals, was meant to be the introduction to an
enormous blank-verse poem, chiefly on himself. The entire work was to
be called _The Recluse_, and _The Excursion_ (1814) was the second and
only other completed part of it. It is on the whole fortunate that the
entire poem was never finished. _The Excursion_ is in itself a huge
poem of nine books, and long stretches of it are dull and prosaic. It
is inferior to _The Prelude_, which, though it is unequal in style,
has some of the very best Wordsworthian blank verse; and it is only
reasonable to imagine that further instalments of _The Recluse_ would
mark an increasing decline in poetic merit.
After the publication of _The Excursion_ Wordsworth’s poetical power
was clearly on the wane, but his productivity was unimpaired. His later
volumes include _The White Doe of Rylstone_ (1815), _The Waggoner_
(1819), _Peter Bell_ (1819), _Yarrow Revisited_ (1835), and _The
Borderers_ (1842), a drama. The progress of the works marks the decline
in an increasing degree. There are flashes of the old spirit, such as
we see in his lines upon the death of “the Ettrick Shepherd”; but the
fire and stately intonation become rarer, and mere garrulity becomes
more and more apparent.
=3. His Theory of Poetry.= In the preface to the second edition of the
_Lyrical Ballads_ Wordsworth set out his theory of poetry, and to this
theory he continued to do lip-service, while in practice he constantly
violated it. The Wordsworthian dogma can be divided into two portions,
concerning (_a_) the subject and (_b_) the style of poetry.
(_a_) Regarding subject, Wordsworth declares his preference for
“incidents and situations from common life”; to obtain such situations
“humble and rustic life is generally chosen, because in that condition
the essential passions of the heart find a better soil.” In this
respect Wordsworth was staunch to his declared opinions, because the
majority of his poems deal with humble and rustic. life, including his
own.
(_b_) With regard to style, Wordsworth declares that the language
of poetry ought to be “the language really used by men,” especially
by rustics, because the latter “speak a plainer and more emphatic
language.” A little reflection will show that this contention is
at best only half true, and Wordsworth laid himself open to deadly
criticism. It was this part of his theory, moreover, that he himself
constantly violated. Coleridge, who was Wordsworth’s great friend, but
who held his critical faith higher than personal predilection, had but
to quote Wordsworth’s own poems to condemn him. No doubt Wordsworth in
such pieces as _Lucy Gray_ and _We are Seven_ does use the language
of ordinary men; but in his greatest poems he prefers a language of
a certain stiff ornateness, fired and fused by the passion of his
imaginative insight. As Coleridge pointed out, it is not likely that a
rustic would say
The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion.
Yet this expression is typical of Wordsworth’s style at its best.
=4. Features of his Poetry.= (_a_) _Its Inequality and its
Limitations._ All the critics of Wordsworth are at pains to point out
the mass of inferior work that came from his pen. Matthew Arnold,
one of the acutest of the poet’s admirers, closes the record of
Wordsworth’s best work with the year 1808, even before the composition
of _The Excursion_. This poem is long, meditative, and often prosaic,
and these tendencies become more marked as the years pass. Before the
year 1808 he had produced poems as intensely and artistically beautiful
as any in the language. It was hard, however, for Wordsworth to
appreciate his limitations, which were many and serious. He had little
sense of humor, a scanty dramatic power, and only a meager narrative
gift, but he strove to exploit all these qualities in his work. His one
drama, _The Borderers_, was only a partial success, and his narrative
poems, like _Ruth_ and _The White Doe of Rylstone_, are not among the
best of his work.
(_b_) _Its Egoism._ In a person of lesser caliber such a degree of
self-esteem as Wordsworth’s would have been ridiculous; in his case,
with the undoubted genius that was in the man, it was something almost
heroic. Domestic circumstances--the adoration of a couple of women and
the cloistral seclusion of the life he led--confirmed him in the habit
of taking himself too seriously. The best of his shorter poems deal
with his own experiences; and his longest works, _The Prelude_ and
_The Excursion_, describe his career, both inward and outward, with
a fullness, closeness, and laborious anxiety that are unique in our
literature.
(_c_) In spite of this self-obsession he is curiously deficient in the
purely _lyrical_ gift. He cannot bare his bosom, as Burns does; he
cannot leap into the ether like Shelley. Yet he excels, especially in
the face of nature, in the expression of a reflective and analytic mood
which is both personal and general. The following lyric illustrates
this mood to perfection:
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.
Sometimes he does touch on intimate emotions, but then he tends to
be diffident and decorous, hinting at rather than proclaiming the
passions that he feels. The series of _Lucy_ poems are typical of
their kind:
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.
* * * * *
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
Such a lyrical gift, reflective rather than passionate, finds a
congenial mode of expression in the sonnet, the most complicated and
expository of the lyrical forms. In his sonnets his lyrical mood burns
clear and strong, and as a result they rank among the best in English
poetry.
(_d_) _His Treatment of Nature._ His dealings with nature are his chief
glory as a poet.
(1) His treatment is accurate and first-hand. As he explained, he wrote
with his eye “steadily fixed on the object.” Even the slightest of his
poems have evidence of close observation:
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one.
The most polished of his poems have the same stamp, as can be seen in
_Resolution and Independence_. “The image of the hare,” he says with
reference to this poem, quoted below, “I then observed on the ridge of
the Fell.”
There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.
All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning’s birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops;--on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.
(2) This personal dealing with Nature in all her moods produces a joy,
a plenteousness of delight, that to most readers is Wordsworth’s most
appealing charm. Before the beauty of nature he is never paltry; he is
nearly always adequate; and that is perhaps the highest achievement
that he ever desired. The extracts just quoted are outstanding examples
of this aspect of his poetry.
(3) In his treatment of nature, however, he is not content merely to
rejoice: he tries to see more deeply and to find the secret springs of
this joy and thanksgiving. He says:
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
He strives to capture and embody in words such deep-seated emotions,
but, almost of necessity, from the very nature of the case, with little
success. He gropes in the shadows, and comes away with empty hands. He
cannot solve the riddle of
those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings.
Yet, with a remarkable fusion of sustained thought and of poetic
imagination, he does convey the idea of “the Being that is in the
clouds and air,” the soul that penetrates all things, the spirit,
the mystical essence, the divine knowledge that, as far as he was
concerned, lies behind all nature. Lastly, in one of the most exalted
poetical efforts in any language, he puts into words the idea of the
continuity of life that runs through all existence:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
_Ode: Intimations of Immortality_
(_e_) In _style_ Wordsworth presents a remarkable contrast, for
he ranges from the sublime (as in the extract last quoted) to the
ridiculous:
In the sweet shire of Cardigan,
Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall,
An old Man dwells, a little man,--
’Tis said he once was tall.
Full five-and-thirty years he lived
A running huntsman merry;
And still the centre of his cheek
Is red as a ripe cherry.
_Simon Lee_
This verse illustrates the lower ranges of his style, when he is
hag-ridden with his theories of poetic diction. The first two lines
are mediocre; the second pair are absurd; and the rest of the verse
is middling. This is simplicity overdone; yet it is always to be
remembered that at his best Wordsworth can unite simplicity with
sublimity, as he does in the lyrics we have already quoted. He has
a kind of middle style; at its best it has grace and dignity, a
heart-searching simplicity, and a certain magical enlightenment
of phrase that is all his own. Not Shakespeare himself can better
Wordsworth when the latter is in a mood that produces a poem like the
following:
“She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn,
Or up the mountain springs;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm,
Of mute insensate things.
“The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her; for her the willow bend;
Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the Storm
Grace that shall mould the Maiden’s form
By silent sympathy.
“The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.”
_The Education of Nature_
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772–1834)
=1. His Life.= Coleridge was born in Devonshire, and was the youngest
of the thirteen children of the vicar of Ottery St. Mary. As a child
he was unusually precocious: “I never thought as a child,” he says,
“never had the language of a child.” When he was nine years old his
father died, and then at the age of ten he obtained a place in Christ’s
Hospital, where he astonished his schoolmates, one of whom was Charles
Lamb, with his queer tastes in reading and speculation. He went to
Cambridge (1791), where he was fired with the revolutionary doctrines.
He abandoned the university and enlisted in the Light Dragoons, but a
few months as a soldier ended his military career. In 1794 he returned
to Cambridge, and later in the year became acquainted at Oxford with
Southey, with whom he planned the founding of an ideal republic in
America. With Southey he lived for a space at Bristol, and there he
met Southey’s wife’s sister, whom he eventually married. At Bristol
Coleridge lectured, wrote poetry, and issued a newspaper called _The
Watchman_, all with the idea of converting humanity; yet in spite of
it all humanity remained unperturbed in its original sin. At this time
(1797) he met Wordsworth, and, as has already been noticed, planned
their joint production of the _Lyrical Ballads_, which was published at
Bristol.
After a brief spell as a Unitarian minister, Coleridge, who was now
dependent on a small annuity from two rich friends, studied German
philosophy on the Continent; returned to England (1799), and for a
time lived in the Lake District; tried journalism and lecturing; and
in general pursued a restless and unhappy existence. As a writer and
lecturer he was already failing, and failing fast. His work languished,
and his ability and energy were relaxed. The cause of this early
decline lay in his habit of opium-taking, which was now apparently
past mending. He parted from his wife and children, leaving them to
the charity of his friends. Till 1816 he drifted about in London, a
moral and physical wreck, his rare genius revealing itself only in
fitful gleams. In 1816, after repeated efforts to rid himself of the
foul fiend that would not let him be, he entered the house of a Mr.
Gillman, in Highgate. This provided for him a kind of refined and
sympathetic inebriates’ home. Here he gradually shook himself free from
opium-taking, and he spent the last years of his life in an atmosphere
of subdued content, visited by his friends, and conversing interminably
in that manner of wandering but luminous intelligence that marked his
later years. From the house in Highgate he issued a few books that,
with all their faults, are among the best of their class.
=2. His Poetry.= The real blossoming of Coleridge’s poetical genius
was brief indeed, but the fruit of it was rich and wonderful. With the
exception of a very few pieces, the best of his poems were composed
within two years, 1797–98.
His first book was _Poems on Various Subjects_ (1797), issued at
Bristol. The miscellaneous poems that the volume contains have only
a very moderate merit. Then, in collaboration with Wordsworth, he
produced the _Lyrical Ballads_. This remarkable volume contains
nineteen poems by Wordsworth and four by Coleridge; and of these four
by far the most noteworthy is _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_.
Wordsworth has set on record the origin of the _Ancient Mariner_.
He and Coleridge discussed the poem during their walks on the Quantock
Hills. The main idea of the voyage, founded on a dream of his own,
was Coleridge’s; Wordsworth suggested details, and they thought of
working on it together. Very soon, however, Coleridge’s imagination was
fired with the story, and his friend very sensibly left him to write
it all. Hence we have that marvelous series of dissolving pictures,
so curiously distinct and yet so strangely fused into one: the voyage
through the polar ice; the death of the albatross; the amazing scenes
during the calm and the storm; and the return home. In style, in swift
stealthiness of narrative speed, and in its weird and compelling
strength of imagination the poem is without a parallel.
In 1797 Coleridge also wrote _Christabel_ and _Kubla Khan_. Both
of these poems remained unfinished, and lay unpublished till 1816.
_Christabel_ is the tale of a kind of vampire which, by taking the
shape of a lovely lady, wins the confidence of the heroine Christabel.
The tale is barely begun when it collapses. Already Coleridge’s fatal
indecision is declaring itself. The poem is long enough, however, to
show us Coleridge’s superlative power as a poet. There are passages
of wonderful beauty and of charming natural description, though they
scarcely reach the heights of the _Ancient Mariner_. The meter, now
known as the _Christabel_ meter, is a loose but exceedingly melodious
form of the octosyllabic couplet. It became exceedingly popular, and
its influence is still unimpaired. We give a brief extract to show the
meter, and also to give a slight idea of the poet’s descriptive power:
There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
_Kubla Khan_ is the echo of a dream--the shadow of a shadow. Coleridge
avers that he dreamt the lines, awoke in a fever of inspiration,
threw the words on paper, but before the fit was over was distracted
from the composition, so that the glory of the dream never returned
and _Kubla Khan_ remained unfinished. The poem, beginning with a
description of the stately pleasure-dome built by Kubla Khan in Xanadu,
soon becomes a dreamlike series of dissolving views, grows wilder
and wilder into a dervish-dance of the imagination, and collapses in
mid-career.
In the same year Coleridge composed several other poems, including
the fine _Frost at Midnight_, _Love_, and the _Ode to France_. In
1802 he wrote the great ode _Dejection_, in which he already bewails
the suspension of his “shaping spirit of Imagination.” Save for a few
fragments, such as the beautiful epitaph _The Knight’s Tomb_, the
remainder of his poems are of poorer quality and slight in bulk. His
play _Remorse_ was, on the recommendation of Byron, accepted by the
management of the Drury Lane Theatre and produced in 1813. It succeeded
on the stage, but as literature it is of little importance.
=3. Features of his Poetry.= Within its peculiar limits his poetical
work, slight though it is, is of the highest.
(_a_) The most conspicuous feature of the poems is their intense
_imaginative power_. Sometimes this riots into excess. It exploits
the weird, the supernatural, and the obscure. Yet, such is the power
of true imagination, it can produce what Coleridge calls “that
willing suspension of disbelief,” and for the moment he can compel us
to believe it all. He sees nature with a penetrating and revealing
glance, drawing from it inspiration for the stuff of his poetry. He is
particularly fine in his descriptions of the sky and the sea and the
wider and more remote aspects of things.
(_b_) No poet has ever excelled Coleridge in _witchery of language_.
His is the song the sirens sang. The _Ancient Mariner_ has more than
one passage like the following:
And now ’twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute;
And now it is an angel’s song,
That makes the heavens be mute.
It ceased; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
The epitaph we have mentioned is another fine example:
Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O’Kellyn?
Where may the grave of that good man be?
By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn,
Under the twigs of a young birch tree.
The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,
And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,
And whistled and roared in the winter alone,
Is gone,--and the birch in its stead is grown.--
The knight’s bones are dust,
And his good sword rust:--
His soul is with the saints, I trust.
The reader of such passages can discover something of the secret of
their charm by observing the dexterous handling of the meter, the
vowel-music, and other technical features, but in the last analysis
their beauty defies explanation: it is there that genius lies.
(_c_) Along with his explosive fervor Coleridge preserves a fine
_simplicity of diction_. He appeals directly to the reader’s
imagination by writing with great clearness. In this respect he
often closely resembles Wordsworth. His meditative poem _Frost at
Midnight_ strongly shows this resemblance:
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon.
=4. His Prose.= The same blight that afflicted Coleridge’s poetry
lies upon his prose. It is scrappy, chaotic, and tentative. In bulk it
is large and sprawling; in manner it is diffuse and involved; but in
its happier moments it possesses a breadth, a depth, and a searching
wisdom that are as rare as they are admirable.
Most of his prose was of journalistic origin. In theme it is chiefly
philosophical or literary. In 1796 he started _The Watchman_, a
periodical, ambitious in scope, which ran to ten numbers only. To
this journal Coleridge contributed some typical essays, which, among
much that is both obscure and formless, show considerable weight and
acuteness of thought. He followed with much more miscellaneous prose,
some of it being written for _The Morning Post_, to which he was for
a time a contributor. In 1808 he began a series of lectures on poetry
and allied subjects, but already the curse of opium was upon him, and
the lectures were failures. While he resided in the Lake District
he started _The Friend_ (1809), which was published at Penrith, but
like _The Watchman_ it had a brief career. Then in 1817, when he had
shaken himself free from opium, he published _Biographia Literaria_ and
_Sibylline Leaves_.
_Biographia Literaria_ is his most valuable prose work. It pretends
to record his literary upbringing, but as a consecutive narrative it
is quite worthless. After sixteen chapters of philosophizing, almost
entirely irrelevant, he discusses the poetical theory of his friend
Wordsworth, and then in the last seven chapters of the book he gives
a remarkable demonstration of his critical powers. He analyzes the
Wordsworthian theory in masterly fashion, and, separating the good from
the bad, upon the sounder elements bases a critical dogma of great and
permanent value. These last chapters of the book, which are the most
enduring exposition of the Romantic theory as it exists in English,
place Coleridge in the first flight of critics.
In addition, he gave another series of lectures (1818), and wrote
(1825) _Aids to Reflection_. But he seemed to be incapable of writing
a work of any size. After his death his _Table Talk_ was published,
giving fleeting glimpses of a brilliant and erratic mind.
We give a short extract from his prose. This shows not only his sincere
and temperate admiration for the poems of Wordsworth, but also the
nature of his prose style. As a style it is not wholly commendable. It
is too involved, and clogged with qualifications and digressions; but,
though he develops his ideas in a curious indirect fashion, he makes
rapid progress.
Had Mr Wordsworth’s poems been the silly, the childish things,
which they were for a long time described as being; had they
been really distinguished from the compositions of other poets
merely by meanness of language and inanity of thought; had they
indeed contained nothing more than what is found in the parodies
and pretended imitations of them; they must have sunk at once,
a dead weight, into the slough of oblivion, and have dragged
the preface along with them. But year after year increased the
number of Mr Wordsworth’s admirers. They were found, too, not
in the lower classes of the reading public, but chiefly among
young men of strong sensibility and meditative minds; and their
admiration (inflamed perhaps in some degree by opposition) was
distinguished by its intensity, I might almost say, by its
_religious_ fervour. These facts, and the intellectual
energy of the author, which was more or less consciously felt,
where it was outwardly and even boisterously denied, meeting
with sentiments of aversion to his opinions, and of alarm at
their consequences, produced an eddy of criticism, which would
of itself have borne up the poems by the violence with which it
whirled them round and round. With many parts of this preface,
in the sense attributed to them, and which the words undoubtedly
seem to authorise, I never concurred; but on the contrary
objected to them as erroneous in principle, and as contradictory
(in appearance at least) both to other parts of the same
preface, and to the author’s own practice in the greater number
of the poems themselves. Mr Wordsworth in his recent collection
has, I find, degraded this prefatory disquisition to the end of
his second volume, to be read or not at the reader’s choice. But
he has not, as far as I can discover, announced any change in
his poetic creed.
_Biographia Literaria_
LORD BYRON (1788–1824)
=1. His Life.= George Gordon Byron, sixth Lord Byron, was as proud
of his ancestry as he was of his poetry, and his ancestors were as
extraordinary as was his poetry. They stretched back to the Norman
Conquest, and included among them a notorious admiral, Byron’s
grandfather. The poet’s father was a rake and a scoundrel. He married
a Scottish heiress, Miss Gordon of Gight, whose money he was not long
in squandering. Though the poet was born in London, his early years
were passed in Aberdeen, his mother’s native place. At the age of ten
he succeeded his grand-uncle in the title and in the possession of
the ruinous Abbey of Newstead, and Scotland was left behind for ever.
He was educated at Harrow and Cambridge, where he showed himself to
be heir to the ancestral nature, dark and passionate, but relieved by
humor and affection. All his life through Byron cultivated the somber
and theatrical side of his disposition, which latterly became a byword;
but there can be little doubt that his “Byronic” temperament was not
entirely affected. His mother, a foolish, unbalanced woman, warped
the boy’s temper still more by her frequent follies and frenzies. The
recollection of the tortures he underwent in the fruitless effort to
cure him of a malformity of his foot remained with him till his death.
Leaving the university (1807), he remained for a while at Newstead,
where with a few congenial youths he plunged into orgies of puerile
dissipation. In the fashion of the time, he gloried in the reputation
he was acquiring for being a dare-devil, but he lived to pay for it.
Wearying of loose delights, he traveled for a couple of years upon the
Continent. He had previously taken his seat in the House of Lords, but
made no mark in political affairs.
Then with a sudden bound he leaped into the limelight. His poem on his
travels became all the rage. He found himself the darling of society,
in which his youth, his title, his physical beauty, his wit, and his
picturesque and romantic melancholy made him a marvel and a delight.
He married a great heiress (1814), but after a year his wife left him,
for reasons that were not publicly divulged. Regarding his conduct dark
rumors grew apace; his popularity waned, and in the face of a storm
of abuse he left England for good (1816). For the last eight years of
his life he wandered about the Continent, visiting Italy, and there
meeting Shelley. Finally the cause of Greek independence caught his
fancy. He devoted his money, which was inconsiderable, and the weight
of his name, which was gigantic, to the Greeks, who proved to be very
ungrateful allies. He died of fever at Missolonghi, and his body was
given a grand funeral in the England that had cast him out.
=2. His Poetry.= Byron’s first volume was a juvenile effort, _Hours
of Idleness_ (1807), which was little more than the elegant trifling
of a lord who condescends to be a minor poet. This frail production
was roughly handled by _The Edinburgh Review_, and Byron, who never
lacked spirit, retorted with some effect. He composed a satire in the
style of Pope, calling it _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ (1809).
The poem is immature, being often crudely expressed, and it throws
abuse recklessly upon good writers and bad; but in the handling of
the couplet it already shows some of the Byronic force and pungency.
The poem is also of interest in that it lets us see how much he is
influenced by the preceding age.
Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan,
The golden-crested haughty Marmion,
Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight,
Not quite a felon, yet but half a knight,
The gibbet or the field prepared to grace;
A mighty mixture of the great and base.
And think’st thou, Scott! by vain conceit perchance,
On public taste to foist thy stale romance,
Though Murray with his Miller may combine
To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line?
Then followed the two years of travel, which had their fruit in the
first two cantos of _Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage_ (1812). The hero
of the poem is a romantic youth, and is very clearly Byron himself.
He is very grand and terrible, and sinister with the stain of a dark
and awful past. He visits some of the popular beauty-spots of the
Continent, which he describes in Spenserian stanzas of moderate skill
and attractiveness. The poem is diffuse, but sometimes it can be terse
and energetic; the style is halfheartedly old-fashioned, in deference
to the stanza. Byron is to do much better things, but already he shows
a real appreciation of nature, and considerable dexterity in the
handling of his meter.
On, on the vessel flies, the land is gone,
And winds are rude in Biscay’s sleepless bay.
Four days are sped, but with the fifth, anon,
New shores descried make every bosom gay;
And Cintra’s mountain greets them on their way,
And Tagus dashing onward to the deep,
His fabled golden tribute bent to pay;
And soon on board the Lusian pilots leap.
And steer ’twixt fertile shores where yet few rustics reap.
_Childe Harold_ brought its author a dower of fame, which in the next
few years he was to squander to the uttermost. In the intervals of
society functions he produced poetic tales in astonishing profusion:
_The Giaour_ and _The Bride of Abydos_ in 1813, _The Corsair_ and
_Lara_ in 1814, _The Siege of Corinth_ and _Parisina_ in 1815. These
tales deal with the romantic scenes of the East; they almost uniformly
reproduce the young Byronic hero of _Childe Harold_; and to a great
extent they are mannered and stagy. Written in the couplet form, the
verse is founded on that of the metrical tales of Scott, whom Byron was
not long in supplanting in popular favor, although the masculine fervor
of Scott’s poems is lacking from his work. In sentiment his lines are
often sickly enough, yet they sometimes have a vehemence that might be
mistaken for passion, and a tawdriness that imitates real beauty.
In 1816 Byron was hounded out of England, and his wanderings are
chronicled in the third (1816) and fourth (1817) cantos of _Childe
Harold’s Pilgrimage_. In meter and general scheme the poem is
unaltered, but in spirit and style the new parts are very different
from the first two cantos. The descriptions are firmer and terser, and
are often graced with a fine simplicity; the old-fashioned mannerisms
are entirely discarded; and the tone all through is deeper and more
sincere. There is apparent an undercurrent of bitter pessimism that is
only natural under the circumstances, though he dwells too lengthily
upon his misfortunes. The following stanza is a fair specimen of this
later and simpler style:
They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died;
The mountain village where his latter days
Went down the vale of years, and ’tis their pride--
An honest pride--and let it be their praise,
To offer to the passing stranger’s gaze
His mansion and his sepulchre; both plain
And venerably simple, such as raise
A feeling more accordant with his strain
Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fane.
During these years on the Continent he was not idle. Some of his longer
poems are _The Prisoner of Chillon_ (1816) and _Mazeppa_ (1819), the
last of his metrical tales. He also composed a large number of lyrics,
most of them only mediocre in quality; and he added several great
satirical poems, the most notable of which are _Beppo_ (1818), _The
Vision of Judgment_ (1822), directed mainly against Southey, and, the
longest of all, _Don Juan_.
In range, in vigor, and in effectiveness _Don Juan_ ranks as one of
the greatest of satirical poems. It was issued in portions during the
years 1819–24, just as Byron composed it. It is a kind of picaresque
novel cast into verse. The hero, like that of the picaresque novel,
has many wanderings and adventures, the narration of which might go
on interminably. At the time of its publication it was denounced by a
shocked world as vile and immoral, and to a great extent it deserves
the censure. In it Byron expresses the wrath that consumes him, and
all the human race comes under the lash. The strength and flexibility
of the satire are beyond question, and are freely revealed in bitter
mockery, in caustic comment, and in burning rage. The stanzas, written
in _ottava rima_, are as keen and supple as a tempered steel blade.
The style is a kind of sublimated, half-colloquial prose, showing a
disdainful abrogation of the finer poetical trappings; but in places it
rises into passages of rare and lovely tenderness. When affliction came
upon him, in the words of Lear he had vowed a vow:
No, I’ll not weep;
I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Will break into a hundred thousand flaws
Or ere I’ll weep.
But sometimes the poet prevails over the satirist, and the mocking
laughter is stifled with the sound of bitter weeping.
The first extract given below shows Byron in his bitter and cynical
mood; the tone of the second and third is far removed from such
asperity:
(1) Ovid’s a rake, as half his verses show him,
Anacreon’s morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,
I don’t think Sappho’s Ode a good example,
Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn
Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample;
But Virgil’s songs are pure, except that horrid one
Beginning with “Formosum Pastor Corydon.”
Lucretius’ irreligion is too strong
For early stomachs to prove wholesome food;
I can’t help thinking Juvenal was wrong,
Although no doubt his real intent was good,
For speaking out so plainly in his song,
So much indeed as to be downright rude;
And then what proper person can be partial
To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?
(2) Round her she made an atmosphere of life;
The very air seemed lighter from her eyes,
They were so soft and beautiful, and rife
With all we can imagine of the skies,
As pure as Psyche ere she grew a wife--
Too pure even for the purest human ties;
Her overpowering presence made you feel
It would not be idolatry to kneel.
Her eyelashes, though dark as night, were tinged--
It is the country’s custom--but in vain;
For those large black eyes were so blackly fringed,
The glossy rebels mocked the jetty stain,
And in her native beauty stood avenged:
Her nails were touched with henna; but again
The power of art was turned to nothing, for
They could not look more rosy than before.
(3) Thus lived--thus died she; never more on her
Shall sorrow light or shame. She was not made
Through years or moons the inner weight to bear,
Which colder hearts endure till they are laid
By age in earth: her days and pleasures were
Brief, but delightful--such as had not stayed
Long with her destiny; but she sleeps well
By the sea-shore whereon she loved to dwell.
That isle is now all desolate and bare,
Its dwelling down, its tenants passed away;
None but her own and father’s grave is there
And nothing outward tells of human clay;
Ye could not know where lies a thing so fair;
No one is there to show, no tongue to say
What was; no dirge except the hollow seas
Mourns o’er the beauty of the Cyclades.
=3. His Drama.= Byron’s dramas are all blank-verse tragedies that were
composed during the later stages of his career, when he was in Italy.
The chief are _Manfred_ (1817), _Marino Faliero_ (1820), _The Two
Foscari_ and _Cain_ (1821), and _The Deformed Transformed_ (1824). In
nearly all we have a hero of the Byronic type. In _Cain_, for example,
we have the outcast who defies the censure of the world; in _The
Deformed Transformed_ there are thinly screened references to Byron’s
own deformity. In this fashion he showed that he had little of the real
dramatic faculty, for he could portray no character with any zeal
unless it resembled himself. The blank verse has power and dignity, but
it lacks the higher poetic inspiration.
=4. Features of his Poetry.= (_a_) For a man of his egotistical temper
Byron’s _lyrical gift_ is disappointingly meager. He wrote many tuneful
and readable lyrics, such as _She walks in Beauty_ and _To Thyrza_. His
favorite theme draws on variations of the following mood:
Do thou, amid the fair white walls,
If Cadiz still be free,
At times, from out her latticed halls,
Look o’er the dark blue sea;
Then think upon Calypso’s isles,
Endeared by days gone by;
To others give a thousand smiles,
To me a single sigh.
In such lyrics he is merely sentimental, and the reader cannot avoid
thinking that he is posturing before the world. When he attempts more
elevated themes, as he does in _The Isles of Greece_, he is little
better than a poetical tub-thumper. Of the genuine passionate lyric
there is little trace in his poems.
(_b_) His _satirical power_ is gigantic. In the expression of his
scorn, a kind of sublime and reckless arrogance, he has the touch
of the master. Yet in spite of his genius he has several defects.
In the first place, his motive is to a very large extent personal,
and so his scorn becomes one-sided. It is, however, a sign of the
essential bigness of his mind that he hardly ever becomes mean and
spiteful. Secondly, he lacks the deep vision of the supreme satirist,
like Cervantes, who behind the shadows of the crimes and follies
of men can see the pity of it all. In the third place, he is often
deliberately outrageous. When he found how easily and deeply he could
shock a certain class of people he went out of his way to shock them,
and succeeded only too well. No doubt this satisfied Byron’s injured
feelings, but it is a rather cheap and juvenile proceeding, and
detracts from the solid value of his work.
(_c_) He treats _nature_ in a rather lordly fashion, more as a humble
helper in his poems than as a light and inspiration. In his later poems
he agreeably modified this attitude; and his passion for the sea never
paled.
(_d_) His _style_ has been sufficiently revealed in the extracts we
have given. He could modulate it with great skill to the purpose in
hand. Dignified in his dramas, melodious in his songs, vigorous in his
narratives, and stinging in his satires, he is hardly ever dull, seldom
obscure, and always the master of his medium.
(_e_) A word is necessary regarding the fluctuations of his
_reputation_. In his earlier manhood he was reckoned among the great
poets; he lived to hear himself denounced, and his poetry belittled.
After his death Victorian morality held up hands in horror over his
iniquity, and his real merits were steadily decried. Since those days
his reputation has been climbing back to take a stable position high
above the second-rate poets. In some European countries he still
ranks second to none among English poets. He broke down the labored
insularity of the English, and he gave to non-English readers a clear
and forcible example of what the English language can accomplish.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792–1822)
=1. His Life.= Shelley was born in Sussex, the heir to a baronetcy
and a great fortune. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, but from a
very early age showed great eccentricity of character. He frequented
graveyards, studied alchemy, and read books of dreadful import. While
he was at the university he wrote several extraordinary pamphlets, one
of which, _The Necessity of Atheism_, caused him to be expelled from
Oxford. He had already developed extreme notions on religion, politics,
and morality generally, a violence that was entirely theoretical, for
by nature he was among the most unselfish and amiable of mankind.
His opinions, as well as an early and unhappy marriage which he
contracted, brought about a painful quarrel with his relatives. This
was finally composed by the poet’s father, Sir Timothy Shelley, who
settled an annuity upon his son. The poet immediately took to the life
that suited him best, ardently devoting himself to his writing, and
wandering where the spirit led him. In 1816 his first wife committed
suicide; and Shelley, having married the daughter of William Godwin,
settled in Italy, the land he loved the best. The intoxication of
Rome’s blue sky and the delicious unrestraint of his Italian existence
set his genius blossoming into the rarest beauty. In the full flower
of it he was drowned, when he was only thirty years old, in a sudden
squall that overtook his yacht in the Gulf of Spezzia. His body--a fit
consummation--was burned on the beach where it was found, and his ashes
were laid beside those of Keats in the Roman cemetery that he had nobly
hymned. It is impossible to estimate the loss to literature that was
caused by his early extinction. The crudeness of his earlier opinions
was passing away, his vision was gaining immeasurably in clearness and
intensity, and his singing-robes seemed to be developing almost into
seraph’s wings. In his case the grave can indeed claim a victory.
=2. His Poetry.= His earliest effort of any note is _Queen Mab_ (1813).
The poem is clearly immature; it is lengthy, and contains much of
Shelley’s cruder atheism. It is written in the irregular unrhymed meter
that was made popular by Southey. The beginning is worth quoting, for
already it reveals a touch of the airy music that was to distinguish
his later work:
How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon
With lips of lurid blue;
The other, rosy as the morn
When throned on ocean’s wave
It blushes o’er the world:
Yet both so passing wonderful!
_Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude_ (1816) followed. It is a kind
of spiritual autobiography. The chief character is a wild youth who
retires into the wilderness and stays there under highly romantic
circumstances. The poem is too long and formless, and in places the
expression becomes so wild as to be only a foamy gabble of words. It is
written in blank verse that shows Shelley’s growing skill as a poet.
After this came _Laon and Cynthia_ (1817), afterward called _The Revolt
of Islam_. It has the fault of its immediate predecessor--lack of grip
and coherence; but it is richer in descriptive passages, and has many
outbursts of rapturous energy.
Then Shelley left for Italy. The first fruits of his new life were
apparent in _Prometheus Unbound_ (1819). This wonderful production
is a combination of the lyric and the drama. The story is that of
Prometheus, who defied the gods and suffered for his presumption.
There is a small proportion of narrative in blank verse, but the
chief feature of the poem is the series of lyrics that both sustain
and embellish the action. As a whole the poem has a sweep, a soar,
and an unearthly vitality that sometimes staggers the imagination. It
is peopled with spirits and demigods, and its scenes are cast in the
inaccessible spaces of sky, mountain, and sea.
In _The Cenci_ (1819) Shelley started to write formal drama. In this
play he seems deliberately to have set upon himself the restraints
that he defied in _Prometheus Unbound_. The plot is not of the sky and
the sea; it is a grim and sordid family affair; in style it is neither
fervent nor ornate, but bleak and austere. Yet behind this reticence of
manner there is a deep and smoldering intensity of passion and enormous
adequacy of tragic purpose. Many of the poet’s admirers look upon it as
his masterpiece; and there can be little doubt that, with the exception
possibly of the _Venice Preserved_ of Otway, it is the most powerful
tragedy since the days of Shakespeare. The last words of the play,
when the heroine goes to her doom, are almost heart-breaking in their
simplicity:
_Beatrice._ Give yourself no unnecessary pain,
My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie
My girdle for me, and bind up this hair
In any simple knot; ay, that does well.
And yours I see is coming down. How often
Have we done this for one another! Now
We shall not do it any more. My lord,
We are quite ready. Well, ’tis very well.
The poems of this period are extraordinary in their number and quality.
Among the longer ones are _Julian and Maddalo_ (1818) and _The Masque
of Anarchy_ (1819). The latter, inspired by the news of the massacre
of Peterloo, expresses Shelley’s revolutionary political views, and is
very severe on Lord Castlereagh. The beginning of the poem is startling
enough:
I met Murder on the way,
He had a mask like Castlereagh;
Very smooth he looked, yet grim,
Seven bloodhounds followed him.
In _The Witch of Atlas_ (1820) and _Epipsychidion_ (1821) Shelley rises
further and further into the ether of poetical imagination, until he
becomes almost impossible of comprehension. _Adonais_ (1821) is a
lament for the death of Keats. In plan the poem is crazily constructed,
but it glows with some of the most splendid of Shelley’s conceptions:
He has outsoared the shadow of our night.
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again.
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain
He is secure; and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey, in vain--
Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
He lives, he wakes--’tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais.--Thou, young Dawn,
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone!
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains; and, thou Air,
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
O’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!
With the longer poems went a brilliant cascade of shorter lyrical
pieces. To name them is to mention some of the sweetest English lyrics.
The constantly quoted _Skylark_ and _Cloud_ are among them; so are some
exquisite songs, such as _Lines to an Indian Air_, _Music, when soft
voices die_, _On a Faded Violet_, _To Night_, and the longer occasional
pieces--for example, _Lines written among the Euganean Hills_, and
the _Letter to Maria Gisborne_. Of his many beautiful odes, the most
remarkable is _To the West Wind_. The stanzas have the elemental rush
of the wind itself, and the conclusion, where Shelley sees a parallel
to himself, is the most remarkable of all:
Make me thy lyre, ev’n as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither’d leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
=3. His Prose.= Shelley began his literary career with two boyish
romances, _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_. These books were written when
he was still at school, and are almost laughably bad in style and
story. The only other prose work that is worth mention is his short
essay _The Defence of Poetry_. The work is soundly written, and is a
strong exposition of the Romantic point of view. His published letters
show him to have been a man of considerable common sense, and not
merely the crazy theorist of popular imagination. His prose style is
somewhat heavy, but always clear and readable.
=4. Features of his Poetry.= (_a_) His _lyrical power_ is equal to
the highest to be found in any language. It is now recognized to be
one of the supreme gifts in literature, like the dramatic genius of
Shakespeare. This gift is shown at its best when it expresses the
highest emotional ecstasy, as in the lyrics of _Prometheus Unbound_.
It is a sign of his great genius that, in spite of the passion that
pervades his lyrics, he is seldom shrill and tuneless. He can also
express a mood of blessed cheerfulness, a sane and delectable joy. To
the Spirit of Delight he says:
I love Love, though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee.
Thou art love and life! O come,
Make once more my heart thy home.
He can also express the keenest note of depression and despair, as in
the lyric _O World! O Life! O Time!_
(_b_) In his _choice of subject_ he differs from such a poet as Burns,
who is almost the only other poet who challenges him as master of the
lyric. Shelley lacks the homely appeal of Burns; he loves to roam
through space and infinity. In his own words he
Feeds upon the aerial kisses
Of shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses.
He rejoices in nature, but nature of a spiritual kind, which he peoples
with phantoms and airy beings:
I love all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves drest,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.
I love snow, and all the forms
Of the radiant frost:
I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Everything almost
Which is nature’s, and may be
Untainted by man’s misery.
(_c_) His _descriptive power_ at once strikes the imagination. The
effect is instantaneous. His fancy played among wild and elemental
things, but it gave them form and substance, as well as a radiant
loveliness. His favorite device for this purpose is personification, of
which the following is an excellent example:
For Winter came; the wind was his whip;
One choppy finger was on his lip;
He had torn the cataracts from the hills,
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles.
_The Sensitive Plant_
We add another extract to show his almost unearthly skill in
visualizing the wilder aspects of nature. Note the extreme simplicity
and ease of the style:
We paused among the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced.
_The Pine Forest_
(_d_) His _style_ is perfectly attuned to his purpose. Like all
the finest lyrical styles, it is simple, flexible, and passionate.
Sometimes, as in _The Cenci_, it rises to a commanding simplicity. The
extracts already given sufficiently show this.
(_e_) Shelley’s _limitations_ are almost as plain as his great
abilities. His continual rhapsodizings tend to become tedious and
baffling; in his narrative he is diffuse and argumentative; he lacks
humor; and his political poetry is often violent and unreasonable.
(_f_) _His Reputation._ During his lifetime Shelley’s opinions obscured
his powers as a poet. Even to Scott, who with all his Tory prejudices
was liberal enough in his views on literature, he was simply “that
atheist Shelley.” After his death his reputation rose rapidly, and by
the middle of the nineteenth century his position was assured. By the
curious alternation that seems to affect popular taste, his fame since
that time has paled a little; but no fluctuations in taste can ever
remove him from his place among the great.
JOHN KEATS (1795–1821)
=1. His Life.= Keats was born in London, the son of the well-to-do
keeper of a livery stable. He was educated at a private school at
Enfield, and at the age of fifteen was apprenticed to a surgeon. In
1814 he transferred his residence to London, and followed part of the
regular course of instruction prescribed for medical students. Already,
however, his poetical bent was becoming apparent. Surgery lost its
slight attraction, and the career of a poet became a bright possibility
when he made the acquaintance of Leigh Hunt (1815), the famous Radical
journalist and poet, whose collisions with the Government had caused
much commotion and his own imprisonment. Keats was soon intimate with
the Radical brotherhood that surrounded Leigh Hunt, and thus he became
known to Shelley and others. In 1817 he published his first volume of
verse, but it attracted little notice, in spite of the championship
of Hunt. By this time the family tendency to consumption became
painfully manifest in him, and he spent his time in searching for
places, including the Isle of Wight and the suburbs of London, where
his affliction might be remedied. While he was staying in London he
became acquainted with Fanny Brawne, and afterward was engaged to
her for a time. His malady, however, became worse, and the mental and
physical distress caused by his complaint, added to despair regarding
the success of his love-affair, produced a frantic state of mind
painfully reflected in his letters to the young lady. These letters
were foolishly printed (1879), long after the poet’s death.
His second volume of verse, published in 1818, was brutally assailed by
_The Quarterly Review_ and (to a lesser degree) by _Blackwood’s
Magazine_. These Tory journals probably struck at him because of
his friendship with the radical Leigh Hunt. Keats bore the attack with
apparent serenity, and always protested that he minded it little; but
there can be little doubt that it affected his health to some degree.
In 1820 he was compelled to seek warmer skies, and died in Rome early
in the next year, at the age of twenty-five.
=2. His Poetry.= When he was about seventeen years old Keats
became acquainted with the works of Spenser, and this proved to be
the turning-point in his life. The mannerisms of the Elizabethan
immediately captivated him, and he resolved to imitate him. His
earliest attempt at verse is his _Imitation of Spenser_ (1813), written
when he was eighteen. This and some other short pieces were published
together in his _Poems_ (1817), his first volume of verse. This book
contains little of any outstanding merit. The different poems, which
include the pieces _On Death_, _To Hope_, and _Sleep and Poetry_,
follow the methods of Shenstone, Gray, and Byron. Of a different
quality was his next volume, which bore the title of _Endymion_ (1818).
Probably based partly on Drayton’s _Man in the Moon_ and Fletcher’s
_Faithful Shepherdess_, this remarkable poem of _Endymion_ professes to
tell the story of the lovely youth who was kissed by the moon-goddess
on the summit of Mount Latmos. Keats develops this simple myth into an
intricate and flowery tale of over four thousand lines. The work is
clearly immature, and flawed with many weaknesses both of taste and
of construction, but many of the passages are most beautiful, and
the poem shows the tender budding of the Keatsian style--a rich and
suggestive beauty obtained by a richly ornamented diction. The first
line is often quoted, and it contains the theory that Keats followed in
a subconscious fashion during most of his poetical career:
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.
The crudeness of the work laid it temptingly open to attack, and, as we
have noticed, the hostile reviews found it an easy prey.
Keats’s health was already failing, but the amount of poetry he wrote
is marvelous both in magnitude and in quality. His third and last
volume, published just before he left England, contains a collection of
poems of the first rank, which were written approximately in the order
that follows.
_Isabella, or The Pot of Basil_ (1818), is a version of a tale from
Boccaccio, and deals with the murder of a lady’s lover by her two
wicked brothers. The poem, which is written in _ottava rima_, marks
a decided advance in Keats’s work. The slips of taste are fewer; the
style is richer and deeper in tone; and the conclusion, though it is
sentimentally treated, is not wanting in pathos.
_The Eve of St. Agnes_ (1818) has for a plot the merest incident
dealing with the elopement of two lovers. The tale is so sumptuously
adorned with the silks and jewels of poetical imagination that it
is almost lost in the decoration. This is sometimes considered his
masterpiece; it is certainly the most typical of his poems. The
richness of fancy and pictorial effect mark the summit of the poet’s
art. It is somewhat hectic and overloaded, but its faults are quite
venial. We add one of its exquisite Spenserian stanzas:
Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeleine’s fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon;
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint:
She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven:--Porphyro grew faint:
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.
_Hyperion_ (1818) is of a different type. For this poem Keats adopts
blank verse, and for theme he goes to the primeval warfare between
early deities, such as Saturn and Thea, and younger divinities, such
as Apollo and Minerva. The poem remains unfinished, owing, it is
stated, to the poet’s discouragement over the reception of _Endymion_.
It is doubtful if Keats could ever have finished it. The scale of the
story is so gigantic, and the style is pitched at such an altitude of
sublimity that Keats appears to have been lacking in mere physical
fitness to carry it to a conclusion. In the fragment that we have an
observant reader can see that the poet’s grip is loosening, and his
breath failing, before the effort ceases entirely. Keats, with his
usual insight, appropriately writes the poem in a style of bleak and
almost terrible simplicity. The opening lines are among the best:
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale,
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star,
Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer’s day
Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad ’mid her reeds
Pressed her cold finger closer to her lips.
Next was written _The Eve of St. Mark_ (1819), which also remains
unfinished. The tale shows how far even Keats can improve upon himself.
It is adorned with brilliant descriptive passages, and the strokes are
more dashing than usual. The earlier languor and sentimentality are
almost eliminated:
The bells had ceased, the prayers begun,
And Bertha had not yet half done
A curious volume, patched and torn,
That all day long, from earliest morn,
Had taken captive her two eyes,
Among its golden broideries;
Perplexed her with a thousand things,
The stars of heaven, and angels’ wings,
Martyrs in a fiery blaze,
Azure saints and silver rays,
Moses’ breastplate, and the seven
Candlesticks John saw in heaven,
The winged Lion of St Mark,
And the Covenantal Ark,
With its many mysteries,
Cherubim and golden mice.
The story of _Lamia_ (1819) is taken from Burton’s _Anatomy of
Melancholy_, and tells of a beautiful enchantress. It is the weakest of
all the longer poems, and the lapses are more numerous. The language
becomes mannered and overdone:
He answered, bending to her open eyes,
Where he was mirrored small in paradise,--
“My silver planet, both of eve and morn!
Why will you plead yourself so sad forlorn,
While I am striving how to fill my heart
With deeper crimson, and a double smart?
How to entangle, trammel up and snare
Your soul in mine, and labyrinth you there,
Like the hid scent in an unbudded rose?”
In this passage we observe the strength of Keats running to seed.
Phrases like “plead yourself” and “labyrinth you” go beyond the limits
of poetical license; and the whole passage in conception resembles
the conceits of the Caroline poets rather than the finer and stronger
flights of imagination of which Keats was so thoroughly capable.
Together with the longer poems are many shorter pieces of supreme
beauty. The great odes--_To a Nightingale_, _On a Grecian Urn_, _To
Autumn_--were nearly all written in 1819. Among the other shorter poems
_La Belle Dame sans Merci_, a kind of lyrical ballad, is considered to
be one of the choicest in the language.
In 1819 Keats collaborated in a drama, _Otho the Great_, and began
another, _King Stephen_, which he did not complete. Neither effort
is of much consequence. _The Cap and Bells_, a longish fairy-tale
which also is unfinished, is much below the level of his usual work.
=3. Features of his Poetry.= (_a_) His _style_ should be considered
first, for Keats is above all a stylist. The typical Keatsian poetry
is, one imagines, the ideal of what is popularly considered to be
“poetry”: it is gorgeously attractive, with its melodic beauty and
sensuous passion; soft and caressing, like velvet; and richly colored
and odorous. At its very best the spell of it works like a divine
enchantment; but at even a little less than the best it becomes
unctuous, sickly, and stuffily uncomfortable. There can be little
doubt that Keats’s physical malady shows itself in his writings. With
all their genius, they are the work of an unhealthy brain. His heroes
are languid and neurotic creatures, and his style is attuned to their
swoons and faintings. A stanza from _Isabella_ will illustrate what has
already been exemplified in the verse we have quoted from _The Eve of
St. Agnes_:
So once more had he waked and anguished
A dreary night of love and misery,
If Isabel’s quick eye had not been wed
To every symbol on his forehead high;
She saw it waxing very pale and dead,
And straight all flushed; so, lisped tenderly,
“Lorenzo!”--here she ceased her timid quest,
But in her tone and look he read the rest.
(_b_) His _descriptive and romantic quality_ is of the highest. He
modeled his work upon that of Spenser, but before he had finished
he almost bettered his model. In beauty and splendor he is nearly
unrivaled. He ranges among classical and medieval subjects, and
distills from them the essence of their beauty. For example, he knew no
Greek, but he could reproduce the full charm of the Greek seaboard:
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
_Ode on a Grecian Urn_
(_c_) Keats’s _lyrical faculty_ is limited. When brooding over his woes
he can utter a complaint on the true lyrical note. Hence we obtain
such results as his wonderful last sonnet and _La Belle Dame sans
Merci_, which is a lyric thinly disguised as a ballad. He was perhaps
physically unable to experience the healthier joys of Burns, and so was
incapable of expressing them.
(_d_) _His Influence._ A single glance at the table at the head of this
chapter will show how piteously short was his poetical career; but,
short as it was, his labor created a larger school than that of any of
his contemporaries. His tradition was carried on by Tennyson and the
Pre-Raphaelites, and to this day his influence is strong in English
poetry.
OTHER POETS
=1. Robert Southey (1774–1843).= Southey was born at Bristol,
educated at Westminster School and at Oxford, and settled down to lead
the laborious life of a man of letters. He produced a great mass of
work, much of which is of considerable merit, and he ranked as one of
the leading writers of his age. Most of his work was written at Greta
Hall, near Keswick, where he lived most of his life. He was made Poet
Laureate in 1813. His reputation, especially as a poet, has not been
maintained.
His poems, which are of great bulk, include _Joan of Arc_ (1798),
_Thalaba the Destroyer_ (1801), _The Curse of Kehama_ (1810), and
_Roderick the Goth_ (1814); they are pretentious in style and subject,
but are now almost forgotten. Some shorter pieces, such as _The
Holly-tree_, _The Battle of Blenheim_, and _The Inchcape Rock_, are
still in favor, and deservedly so.
His numerous prose works include _The History of Brazil_ (1810–19) and
_The Peninsular War_ (1822–33). The slightest of them all, _The Life
of Nelson_ (1813), is the only one now freely read. It shows Southey’s
easy yet scholarly style at its best.
=2. Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864).= Landor had a long life, for
he was born five years after Wordsworth, and lived to see the full
yield of the Victorian era. Of an ancient family, he was born in
Warwickshire, and was educated at Rugby and Oxford. Later he was fired
with republican ideas, abandoned his projected career in the British
Army, and supported the revolutionaries in Spain. In temper he was
impulsive to the point of mania; and his life is marked by a succession
of violent quarrels with his friends and enemies. The middle years of
his life were passed in Italy. He returned to England in 1838, and
lived in Bath until 1858. In this year his pugnacity involved him in an
action for damages, in which as defendant he cut a lamentable figure.
Poor and dishonored, he forsook England, and settled again in Florence,
where he died.
His _Gebir_ (1798) is a kind of epic poem written in blank verse. It
is “classical” in its stiff and formal style; but it has a stately
beauty and much powerful natural description. _Count Julian_ (1812),
a tragedy, has much the same qualities, good and bad, as _Gebir_. His
shorter pieces, especially the eight-line lyric _Rose Aylmer_, have
more ease and passion, and are gracefully expressed.
His bulkiest prose work is his _Imaginary Conversations_, which was
published at intervals from 1824 to 1846. The volumes record imaginary
dialogues between all kinds of people on a great variety of subjects.
They have Landor’s chief defect, a stony lifelessness; but in style
they are stately, strong, and scholarly, with frequent passages of
noble description. All his life he continued to issue essays and
pamphlets. A collection of them, called _Dry Sticks_ (1858), as has
been noticed, brought upon his head the weight of the law. Landor
professed to despise popularity; he was moody, crotchety, and often
deliberately perverse. Posterity has repaid him by consigning him to an
oblivion that only the devotion of a small but eminent band of admirers
keeps from being absolute.
=3. Thomas Moore (1779–1852).= Moore was born in Dublin, took his
degree at Trinity College, and studied law in the same city. He too
was imbued with revolutionary notions, and attempted to apply them to
Ireland, but with no success. He obtained a valuable appointment in
the Bermudas, the duties of which were discharged by a deputy, who in
this case proved faithless and caused Moore financial loss. Moore was
a friend of Byron and a prominent literary figure of the time. Most of
his life was passed as a successful man of letters.
His poems were highly successful during his lifetime, but after his
death there was a reaction against them. His _Irish Melodies_ are set
to the traditional musical airs of Ireland. They are graceful, and
adapt themselves admirably to the tunes. Moore, however, lacked the
depth and far-ranging strength of Burns, and so he failed to do for
Ireland what the Ayrshire poet did for Scotland: he did not raise
the national sentiment of Ireland into one of the precious things of
literature. His _Lalla Rookh_ (1817) is an Oriental romance, written
in the Scott-Byron manner then so popular. The poem had an immense
success, which has now almost totally faded. It contains an abundance
of florid description, but as poetry it is hardly second-rate. Moore’s
political satires, such as _The Twopenny Postbag_ (1813), _The Fudge
Family in Paris_ (1818), and _Fables for the Holy Alliance_ (1823), are
keen and lively, and show his Irish wit at its very best.
His prose works include his _Life of Byron_ (1830), which has taken
its place as the standard biography of that poet. It is an able and
scholarly piece of work, and is written with much knowledge and
sympathy.
=4. Thomas Campbell (1777–1844).= Campbell was born in Glasgow, of
a poor but ancient family. After studying at Glasgow University he
became tutor to a private family; but his _Pleasures of Hope_ (1799)
brought him fame, and he adopted the career of a poet. He visited the
Continent, and saw much of the turmoil that there reigned. Returning,
he settled in London, where he was editor of _The New Monthly Magazine_
from 1820 to 1830.
His longer poems are quite numerous, and begin with the _Pleasures
of Hope_, which consists of a series of descriptions of nature in
heroic couplets, written in a style that suggests Goldsmith. Other
longer poems include _Gertrude of Wyoming_ (1809), a longish tale
of Pennsylvania, written in Spenserian stanzas, and _The Pilgrim of
Glencoe_ (1842). Campbell, however, is chiefly remembered for his
stirring songs, some of which were written during his early Continental
tour and were published in newspapers. His most successful are _Ye
Mariners of England_ and _The Battle of the Baltic_, which are
spirited without containing the bluster and boasting that so often
disfigure the patriotic song.
=5. Samuel Rogers (1763–1855).= Rogers was born in London, the son of a
rich banker. He soon became a partner in his father’s firm, and for the
rest of his life his financial success was assured. His chief interest
lay in art and poetry, which he cultivated in an earnest fashion. He
was a generous patron of the man of letters, and was acquainted with
most of the literary people of the time. His breakfasts were famous.
His _Pleasures of Memory_ (1792) is a reversion to the typical
eighteenth-century manner, and as such is interesting. He could
compose polished verses, but he was little of the poet. Other works are
_Columbus_ (1812), _Jacqueline_ (1814), a tale in the Byronic manner,
and _Italy_ (1822).
Rogers was a careful and fastidious writer, but his excellence does not
go much further. His name is a prominent one in the literary annals of
the time, but his wealth rather than his merit accounts for this.
=6. Leigh Hunt (1784–1859)=, unlike Rogers, was not a wealthy amateur
who could trifle for years with mediocre production; he was of the
arena, taking and giving hard knocks in both political and literary
scuffles. He was born in Middlesex, educated at Christ’s Hospital, and
while still in his teens became a journalist, and remained a journalist
all his life. His Radical journal _The Examiner_ (1808) was strongly
critical of the Government, and Hunt’s aptitude for abuse landed him
in prison for two years. His captivity, as he gleefully records, made
a hero of him; and most of the literary men who prided themselves upon
their Liberalism--among them being Wordsworth, Byron, Moore, Keats, and
Shelley--sought his friendship. Hunt had a powerful influence on Keats,
and published some of the latter’s shorter poems in _The Examiner_. He
tried various other journalistic ventures, but none of them had the
success of _The Examiner_; his attempted collaboration in journalism
with Byron was a lamentable failure. He died, like Wordsworth and
others, a respectable pensioner of the Government he had once so
strongly condemned.
He much fancied himself as a poet, and popular taste confirmed him
in his delusion. The best of his longer poems is _Rimini_ (1811), an
Italian tale in verse. The poem is of interest because its flowing
couplets were the model for Keats’s _Endymion_. Hunt’s shorter
pieces--for example, _Abou Ben Adhem_--are often graceful, but their
poetical value is not very high.
His prose includes an enormous amount of journalistic matter, which
was occasionally collected and issued in book form. Such was his _Men,
Women, and Books_ (1847). His _Autobiography_ (1850) contains much
interesting biographical and literary gossip. He is an agreeable
essayist, fluent and easygoing; his critical opinions are solid
and sensible, though often half-informed. He wrote a novel, _Sir
Ralph Esher_ (1832), and a very readable book on London called _The
Town_ (1848). Hunt is not a genius, but he is a useful and amiable
second-rate writer.