REMORSE AT DRURY LANE[46]
By what I _have_ effected, am I to be judged by my fellow-men; what I
_could_ have done is a question for my own conscience.--S. T. C.
As the _Biographia Literaria_ does not mention all Mr. Coleridge's
writings, it will be proper to give some account of them here.
The Poetical Works in three volumes include the _Juvenile Poems_,
_Sibylline Leaves_, _Ancient Mariner_, _Christabel_, _Remorse_,
_Zapolya_, and _Wallenstein_.
The first volume of _Juvenile Poems_ was published in the Spring of
1796. It contains three sonnets by Charles Lamb, and a poetical Epistle
which he called "Sara's," but of which my Mother told me she wrote but
little. Indeed it is not very like some simple affecting verses, which
were wholly by herself, on the death of her beautiful infant, Berkeley,
in 1799. In May, 1797, Mr. C. put forth a collection of poems,
containing all that were in his first edition, with the exception of
twenty pieces and the addition of ten new ones and a considerable number
by his friends, Lloyd and Lamb. _The Ancient Mariner_, _Love_,[47] _The
Nightingale_, _The Foster Mother's Tale_ first appeared with the
_Lyrical Ballads_ of Mr. Wordsworth in the summer of 1798. There was a
third edition of the _Juvenile Poems_ by themselves in 1803, with the
original motto from Statius, _Felix curarum_, etc. _Silo. Lib._ iv. A
spirit of almost child-like sociability seemed to reign among these
young poets--they were fond of joint publications.
_Wallenstein_, a Play translated from the German of Schiller, appeared in
1800. _Christabel_ was not published till April 1816, but written, the
first part at Stowey in 1797, the second at Keswick in 1800. It went
into a third edition in the first year. The fragment called _Kubla Khan_,
composed in 1797,[48] and the _Pains of Sleep_, which was annexed to the
former by way of contrast, were published with the first edition of
_Christabel_, in 1816.
The Tragedy called _Remorse_ was written in the summer and autumn of
1797, but not represented on the stage till 1813, when it was performed
at Drury Lane--on the authority of an old play-bill of the Calne
Theatre, "with unbounded applause thirty successive nights." On "the
success of the _Remorse_," Mr. Coleridge wrote thus to his friend Mr.
Poole, on the 14th of February, 1813:
LETTER 152.
"The receipt of your heart-engendered lines was sweeter than an
unexpected strain of sweetest music;--or in humbler phrase, it was the
only pleasurable sensation which the _success of the Remorse_ has given
me. I have read of, or perhaps only imagined, a punishment in Arabia, in
which the culprit was so bricked up as to be unable to turn his eyes to
the right or to the left, while in front was placed a high heap of
barren sand glittering under the vertical sun. Some slight analogue of
this, I have myself suffered from the mere unusualness of having my
attention forcibly directed to a subject which permitted neither
sequence of imagery, nor series of reasoning. No grocer's apprentice,
after his first month's permitted riot, was ever sicker of figs and
raisins than I of hearing about the _Remorse_. The endless rat-a-tat-tat
at our black-and-blue bruised door, and my three master fiends, proof
sheets, letters (for I have a raging epistolophobia), and worse than
these--invitations to large dinners, which I cannot refuse without
offence and imputation of pride, nor accept without disturbance of
temper the day before, and a sick aching stomach for two days
after--oppress me so that my spirits quite sink under it.
"I have never seen the Play since the first night. It has been a good
thing for the Theatre. They will get £8,000 or £10,000 by it, and I
shall get more than all my literary labours put together, nay, thrice as
much, subtracting my heavy losses in _The Watchman_ and _The Friend_,
including the copyright."[49]
The manuscript of the _Remorse_, immediately after it was written, was
shown to Mr. Sheridan, "who," says my Father, in the Preface to the
first Edition, "by a twice conveyed recommendation (in the year 1797)
had urged me to write a Tragedy for his theatre, who, on my objection
that I was utterly ignorant of all stage tactics, had promised that _he_
would himself make the necessary alterations, if the piece should be at
all representable." He however neither gave him any answer, nor returned
him the manuscript, which he suffered to wander about the town from his
house, and my Father goes on to say, "not only asserted that the Play
was rejected because I would not submit to the alteration of one
ludicrous line, but finally, in the year 1806, amused and delighted (as
who was ever in his society, if I may trust the universal report,
without being amused and delighted?) a large company at the house of a
highly respectable Member of Parliament, with the ridicule of the
Tragedy, as a _fair specimen_ of the _whole_ of which he adduced a line:
Drip! drip! drip!
There's nothing here but dripping.
In the original copy of the Play, in the first scene of the fourth act,
Isidore _had_ commenced his soliloquy in the cavern with the words:
Drip! drip! a ceaseless sound of water-drops,--
as far as I can at present recollect: for, on the possible ludicrous
association being pointed out to me, I instantly and thankfully struck
out the line." I repeat this story as told by Mr. C. himself, because it
has been otherwise told by others. I have little doubt that it was more
pointedly than faithfully told to him, and can never believe that Mr. S.
represented a ludicrous line as a fair specimen of the whole Play, or
his tenacious adherence to it as the reason for its rejection. I dare
say he thought it, as Lord Byron afterwards thought _Zapolya_,
"beautiful but not practicable." Mr. Coleridge felt that _he_ had some
claim to a friendly spirit of criticism in that quarter, because he had
"devoted the firstlings of his talents," as he says in a marginal note,
"to the celebration of Sheridan's genius,"[50] and after the treatment
described "not only never spoke unkindly or resentfully of it, but
actually was zealous and frequent in defending and praising his public
principles and conduct in the _Morning Post_"--of which, perhaps,
Mr. S. knew nothing. However, in lighter moods, my Father laughed
at Sheridan's joke as much as any of his auditors could have done
in 1806, and repeated with great effect and mock solemnity
"Drip!--Drip!--Drip!--nothing but dripping." I suppose it was at this
time,--the winter of 1806-7--that he made an unsuccessful attempt to
bring out the Tragedy at Drury Lane.[51]
When first written this Play had been called _Osorio_, from the
principal character, whose name my Father afterwards improved into
_Ordonio_. I believe he in some degree altered, if he did not absolutely
recast, the three last acts after the failure with Mr. Sheridan,
who probably led him to see their unfitness for theatrical
representation.[52] But of this point I have not certain knowledge. It
was when Drury Lane was under the management of Lord Byron and Mr.
Whitbread, and through the influence of the former, that it was produced
upon the stage. Mr. Gillman says, "Although Mr. Whitbread did not give
it the advantage of a single new scene, yet the popularity of the Play
was such, that the principal actor, (Mr. Roe,) who had performed in it
with great success, made choice of it for his benefit night, and it
brought an overflowing house." This was some time after Mr. Coleridge
took up his residence at Highgate, in April, 1816. After all I am happy
to think that this drama is a strain of _poetry_, and like all, not only
dramatic poems, but highly poetic dramas, not to be fully appreciated on
the stage.
_Zapolya_ came before the public in 1817. The stage fate of this piece
is alluded to in the _B. L._ Mr. Gillman mentions that it was Mr.
Douglas Kinnaird, then the critic for Drury Lane, who rejected the Play,
and complained of its "metaphysics"--a term which is not, upon all
occasions, to be strictly construed, but, when used in familiar talk,
seems merely to denote whatever is too fine-spun, in the texture of
thought and speech, for common wear; whatever is not readily
apprehensible and generally acceptable. Schoolboys call everything in
books or discourse, which is graver or tenderer than they like,
"_metaphysics_." Mr. Kinnaird may have judged quite rightly that the
Play was too _metaphysical_ for our theatres in their present state,
though certainly plays as metaphysical were once well received on the
stage. _Zapolya_, however, had a favourable audience from the public as
a dramatic poem. Mr. Gillman says this Christmas Tale, which the author
"never sat down to write, but dictated while walking up and down the
room, became so immediately popular that 2,000 copies were sold in six
weeks."
The collection of poems entitled _Sibylline Leaves_, "in allusion to the
fragmentary and widely scattered state in which they had been long
suffered to remain," appeared in 1817, about the same time with
_Zapolya_, the _Biographia Literaria_, and the first _Lay Sermon_.
The _Miscellaneous Poems_ were composed at different periods of the
author's life, many of them in his later years. I believe that _Youth
and Age_ was written before he left the North of England in 1810,[53]
when he was about seven or eight-and-thirty,--early indeed for the poet
to say of himself
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size:
But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes.
The whole of the _Poetical Works_, with the exception of a few which
must be incorporated in a future edition, are contained in that in three
volumes.[54] _The Fall of Robespierre_, an Historic drama, of which the
first act was written by Mr. Coleridge, and published September 22,
1794, is printed in the first vol. of the _Lit. Remains_. This first act
contains the Song on _Domestic Peace_. In the blank verse there are some
faint dawnings of his maturer style, as in these lines:
The winged hours, that scatter'd roses round me,
Languid and sad, drag their slow course along,
And shake big gall-drops from their heavy wings--
and in these:
Why, thou hast been the mouth-piece of all horrors,
And, like a blood-hound, crouch'd for murder! Now
Aloof thou standest from the tottering pillar,
Or, like a frighted child behind its mother,
Hidest thy pale face in the skirts of--_Mercy_!
but it contains scarcely anything of his peculiar original powers, and
some of the lines are in schoolboy taste; for instance,
While sorrow sad, like the dank willow near her,
Hangs o'er the troubled fountain of her eye.
Yet three years after the date of this composition, in 1797, which has
been called his _Annus Mirabilis_, he had reached his poetical zenith.
But perhaps it may be said that, from original temperament, and the
excitement of circumstances, my Father lived fast.
He had four poetical epochs, which represented, in some sort, boyhood,
youthful manhood, middle age, and the decline of life. The first
commenced a little on this side childhood, when he wrote _Time real and
Imaginary_, and ended in 1796. This period embraces the Juvenile Poems,
concluding with _Religious Musings_, written on the Christmas Eve of
1794, a few months after _The Fall of Robespierre_: _The Destiny of
Nations_ was composed a little earlier. _Lewti_, written in 1795, _The
Æolian Harp_, and _Reflections on having left a place of Retirement_,
written soon after, are more finished poems, and exhibit more of his
peculiar vein than any which he wrote before them; though one poet, Mr.
Bowles, has said that he never surpassed the _Religious Musings_! _Fire,
Famine, and Slaughter_ belongs to 1796. _The Lines to a Friend_
(Charles Lamb) _who had declared his intention of writing no more
poetry_, and those _To a Young Friend_ (Charles Lloyd) were composed in
the same year. These poems of 1794-5-6 may be considered intermediate in
power as in time, and so forming a link between the first epoch and the
next.[55]
Then came his poetic prime, which commenced with the _Ode to the
Departing Year_, composed at the end of December, 1796. The year
following, the five-and-twentieth of his life, produced the _Ancient
Mariner_, _Love_, and _The Dark Ladie_, the first part of _Christabel_,
_Kubla Khan_, _Remorse_, in its original cast, _France_, and _This
Lime-tree bower_. _Fears in Solitude_, _The Nightingale_, and _The
Wanderings of Cain_, were written in 1798. _Frost at Midnight_,[56] _The
Picture_,[57] the _Lines to the Rev. G. Coleridge_,[58] and those _To W.
Wordsworth_,[59] are all of this same Stowey period. It was in June,
1797, that my Father began to be intimate with Mr. Wordsworth, and this
doubtless gave an impulse to his mind. _The Hymn before Sunrise_,[60]
and other strains produced in Germany, link this period to the next. The
_Hexameters written during a temporary blindness_, and the _Catullian
Hendecasyllables_ (which are freely translated from Matthisson's
_Milesisches Mährchen_) Mr. Cottle seems to place in 1797,[61] but the
Author has marked the former as produced in 1799, and I believe that the
latter are of the same date. The _Night Scene_, _Myrtle leaf that ill
besped_,[62] _Maiden that with sullen brow_, are of this period, and so
I believe are _Lines composed in a concert-room_, and some others.
The poems which succeed are distinguished from those of my Father's
Stowey life by a less buoyant spirit. Poetic fire they have, but not the
clear bright mounting flame of his earlier poetry. Their meditative
vein is graver, and they seem tinged with the sombre hues of middle age;
though some of them were written before the Author was thirty-five years
old. A characteristic poem of this period is _Dejection, an Ode_:
composed at Keswick, April 4, 1802. _Wallenstein_ had been written in
London in 1800. _The Three Graves_ was composed in 1805 or 6;[63] the
second part of _Christabel_ soon after the Author's settling in the Lake
country (in 1801);[64] _Youth and Age_ not long before he quitted it as
a residence for ever (in 1810).[65] _Recollections of Love_ must have
been written on his return to Keswick from Malta in 1806: _The Happy
Husband_ at that time, or earlier. The small fragment called _The
Knight's Tomb_ probably belongs to the North. _The Devil's Thoughts_
appeared in _The Morning Post_ in 1800.[66] This production certainly
has in it more of youthful sprightliness than of middle-aged soberness;
still it is less fantastic and has more of world-wisdom in its satire
than the _War Eclogue_ of 1796. The _Complaint and Reply_ first appeared
in 1802. The _Ode to Tranquillity_ was published in _The Friend_, March,
1809.
The poems of his after years, even when sad, are calmer in their
melancholy than those produced while he was ceasing to be young. We are
less heavy-hearted when youth is out of sight than when it is taking its
leave. _Duty surviving Self-Love_, _The Pang more sharp than all_,
_Love's Apparition and Evanishment_, _The Blossoming of the solitary
Date tree_, and some other poems of his latter years, have this
character of resigned and subdued sadness. _Work without Hope_ was
written at fifty-six. The _Visionary Hope_ and _The Pains of Sleep_,[67]
which express more agitation and severer suffering, are of earlier date.
These and all in the _Sibylline Leaves_ were written before the end of
1817, when he had completed his forty-fifth year. The productions of the
fourth epoch, looked at as works of imagination, are tender, graceful,
exquisitely finished, but less bold and animated than those of his
earlier day. This may be said of _Zapolya_, _Alice du Clos_,[68] _The
Garden of Boccaccio_,[69] _The Two Founts_, _Lines suggested by the last
Words of Berengarius_, _Sancti Dominici Pallium_, and other poems
written, I believe, when the poet was past forty, the four last-named
after he was fifty years old. _Love, Hope, and Patience in Education_
was, I think, one of his latest poetical efforts, if not the very last.
The following prose compositions are included in the poetical volumes,
and the _Apologetic Preface to Fire, Famine and Slaughter_, containing a
comparison between Milton and Jeremy Taylor, is placed at the end of
Vol. I: _An Allegoric Vision_, first published in _The Courier_ in 1811,
and _New Thoughts on Old Subjects_, which first appeared in _The
Keepsake_, are inserted in Vol. II.
The whole of the Poetical Works, except a few which have been reprinted
in the _Literary Remains_, are contained in the stereotyped edition in
three volumes. The Poems without the Dramas have been collected in a
single volume,[70] from which some of the Juvenile Poems, and two or
three of later date, are excluded, and which includes a few not
contained in the three vol. edition.
I now proceed to Mr. Coleridge's compositions in Prose. _Conciones ad
Populum_, are two addresses to the People, delivered at the latter end
of February,[71] and then thrown into a small pamphlet. "After this,"
says Mr. Cottle, "he consolidated two other of his lectures, and
published them under the title of _The Plot Discovered_." A moral and
political Lecture delivered at Bristol by Mr. C. was published in the
same year. I do not know whether he printed any of his other Bristol
orations of the year ninety-five. _The Watchman_ was carried on in 1796.
The first number appeared March 1; the tenth and last, May 13. These
were youthful immature productions. Whatever was valuable and of a
permanent nature in them was transferred into his later productions, or
included in later publications.
_The Friend_, a Literary, Moral, and Political Weekly Paper, excluding
personal and party politics and the events of the day, was written and
published at Grasmere. The first number appeared on Thursday, June 1st,
1809, the 27th and last of that edition, March 15, 1810. _The Friend_
next appeared before the public in 3 vols. in 1818. This was "rather a
rifacimento," as the Author said, "than a new edition, the additions
forming so large a proportion of the whole work, and the arrangement
being altogether new." (Essays V-XIII, pp. 38-128, treat of the _Duty of
communicating truth, and the conditions under which it may be safely
communicated_; Essay V is _on the expediency of pious frauds, etc._).
The third edition of 1837 gave the Author's last corrections, an
appendix containing the parts thrown out in the recast, with some other
_miscellanea_, and a synoptical table of the contents by the Editor.
There is now a fourth edition.
The two _Lay Sermons_ were published, the one in 1816, the other in
1817. The first is entitled _The Statesman's Manual_, or _The Bible the
best Guide to Political skill and foresight_: a Lay Sermon addressed to
the higher classes of society, with an Appendix, containing comments and
essays connected with the study of the inspired writings:--the second _A
Lay Sermon_, addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes, on the existing
distresses and discontents. Mr. Gillman says he "had the intention of
addressing a third to the lower classes."
The _Biographia Literaria_ was published in 1817, but parts of the first
volume must have been composed some years earlier.[72] The _Edinburgh
Review_ in its August number of that year was as favourable to the book
_as could be expected_."[73]
FOOTNOTES:
[46] [The above chapter is by Sara Coleridge.]
[47] [_Love_, not till second edition of _Lyrical Ballads_, 1800.]
[48] [Should be 1798. See _Letters_, p. 245.]
[49] [Letter CXCV is our 152. Letters CLXXXIII-CXCIV precede it in
chronological order: Letter CXCVI follows.]
[50] See his Sonnet to Sheridan.--S.C.
[51] [See Letter 136.]
[52] [The original _Osorio_ is republished in Dykes Campbell's
edition of the _Poems_, p. 479.]
[53] [Should be 1822-1832.]
[54] [Issued in 1834.]
[55] [Many of the dates of the Poems are now ascertained to be
different from those in the text of Sara Coleridge.]
[56] [Should be 1797.]
[57] [1800.]
[58] [1797.]
[59] [1806.]
[60] [1802.]
[61] [1799.]
[62] [1797.]
[63] [Should be 1797-1798.]
[64] [1800.]
[65] [1822-1832.]
[66] [1799.]
[67] [1803.]
[68] [1829.]
[69] [1828.]
[70] [Issued in 1848.]
[71] [1795.]
[72] [1815.]
[73] The remarks in that article upon my Father's remarks on _poetic
diction_ I have vainly tried to understand:--"a paste of rich
and honeyed words, like the candied coat of the auricula, a
glittering tissue of quaint conceits and sparkling metaphors,
crusting over the rough stalk of homely thoughts; &c. such is
the style of Pope and Gray; such very often is that of
Shakespeare and Milton; and, notwithstanding Mr. Coleridge's
decision to the contrary, of Spenser's _Faëry Queen_."
_Homely_ thoughts clothed in a glittering tissue of poetic
diction are but pseudo-poetry; and the powder on the auricula
would be nothing, if the coat itself were not of velvet. Mr.
C.'s decision respecting the _Faëry Queen_ is equally
misrepresented, for he maintains that Spenser's language _is_
distinct from that of prose, such language being required by
his thoughts and in harmony with them. To say that he decided
"the contrary," as if he had denied poetic diction to Spenser,
is not like the auricula's coat, _candid_.--S. C.