ing interest as to what would happen to Ulysses in the future). These are the most prominent instances. Ought we to add Dante's great poem? We think not, for the infinity contained in it is a known infinity; an infinity without change, as measurable and comprehensible as is the infinity of a pair of parallel lines. It transcend: our intellect by magnitude, not by the nature of the ideas it contains. Whereas the infinity here spoken of is that of an ever varying and developing reality.

For the only genuine and truly delightful | chylus, Michael Angelo's statues of Night poems of Southey-his ballads have not and Day, Hamlet' (not so much by virtue sufficient importance to be put in the same of the story as from the intense personality rank; and Moore, Campbell, and Crabbe of Hamlet, which we cannot conceive as cannot be considered so high. perishing even with his bodily death), and We have hitherto said scarcely anything Goethe's Faust;' in a lesser degree, perof those two poems of Coleridge by which haps, the Odyssey' (for surely no one he is most widely known, the Ancient ever finished that poem without a wonderMariner,' and 'Christabel; and, in fact, there is scarcely anything to be said of them that is not already acknowledged and undisputed. Yet it is worth while to note briefly their distinctive character. As written in his youth, they have naturally no marks of a wide experience; nor would perhaps, the range of his mind be easily conjectured from them. And though there are many marks of his tender sensitiveness, it does not (especially in the Ancient Mariner') come out as prominently as in his later poems. But for pure imagination, no man since Shakspeare has written anything to equal them. It is true that it is in many respects a dreamlike imagination; the links which bind it on to reality are few; its wanderings centre in a primeval region of the mind, where things are linked together by laws more slack and capricious than in the world which we know. But it is a true and not a forced imagination; it is a native growth of the mind, and not a mere arrangement of things observed and thought; and is thus pointedly distinguished from such a mess of arbitrary monstrosities as 'Kehama.' 'Christabel' is the finer of the two poems, and perhaps it gains rather than loses by the fact that it is unfinished. For a finished work rather excludes the thought of that infinity which surrounds every human history; it makes us think that there is an end, which having been gained, there are no more questions to be asked, no changes to be expected. This is the effect which we commonly experience on laying down a novel, whether it have a prosperous or calamitous end. When Ivanhoe marries Row-cism is that made by Coleridge himself. ena, the reader is satisfied; when the Laird of Ravenswood is swallowed up in the sands, he is, if not satisfied, at least not inclined to make any further inquiries; in fact, it does not enter his head to do so. He does not concern himself about the future at all. But the realm of reality never stops; whether we perceive it or not, it extends onward into the illimitable continuity of the universe. And to express this infinity is a rare and peculiar merit in a work of art; few even among the greatest men have compassed it; and perhaps in many cases where it is found, it may be rather an exquisite accident than the result of study and knowledge. The 'Prometheus' of Es

Though Christabel cannot for substance and comprehensiveness be classed with the great works above-named, it is no less unique, no less genuine, no less spiritual, than any of them. What shall be said of the creation of such a poem? Observation, thought, intellectual energy, these contributed to it but the barest lineaments, the scantiest outlines. The matter of it came from the heart of the poet; it is the personification and embodiment of those forces whose struggle takes place, not in the region of nerve and muscle, but in the inmost circle of the spirit; amid those pulses and delicate fibres which in most men vibrate unheeded and unfelt, but which the sensitive tact of the poet retains, observes, and brings to light. This is the true essence of poetry. It is curious to compare Christabel' with the earthly energy of the Lay of the Last Minstrel,' or with the passionate force of the Giaour' either of them equally plain and straightforward, and intelligible to the coarsest understanding.

Of the Ancient Mariner' the best criti

Mrs. Barbauld - -so we read in the Tabletalk'- had alleged two faults in it: first, that the story was improbable; secondly, that it had no moral.

As for the probability,' Coleridge says, 'I as to the want of a moral, I told her that in my owned that that might admit some question; but only, or chief fault, if I might say so, was the judgment the poem had too much; and that the obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought to have had no more moral than the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie starts up, and

says he must kill the aforesaid merchant, because | Whose scarlet robe was stiff with earthly pomp, one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son.'

Who drank iniquity in cups of gold,
Whose names were many and all blasphemous,
Hath met the horrible judgment! Whence that
cry!

The mighty army of foul spirits shrieked
Disherited of earth! For she hath fallen
On whose black front was written Mystery, &c.,
Shrieked Ambition's giant throng,

&c.

It may, perhaps, be reasonably thought that the latter part of this criticism goes too far, and that some moral or emotional principle ought to underlie every poem, however remote it may apparently be from the world to which we are accustomed; that a series of fanciful pictures, like the Ara- And with them hissed the locust-fiends that bian Nights,' is not, in the strict sense, poetry. But the obtrusiveness of the moral is no doubt a fault in the Ancient Mariner,'

and puts it below the level of Christabel,' which has besides throughout a more delicate workmanship. Take for instance from the latter the following passage, which has always appeared to us to be marked by a curiously felicitous blending of imagery and

sentiment:

The moon shines dim in the open air, And not a moonbeam enters here; But they without its light can see The chamber carved so curiously, Carved with figures strange and sweet, All made out of the carver's brain, For a lady's chamber meet: The lamp with twofold silver chain Is fastened to an angel's feet. The silver lamp burns dead and dim: But Christabel the lamp will trim.' Taken in connexion with the rest of the poem, the dimness of the room and of the lamp have a mysterious meaning; but, independently of this, the figures strange and sweet, all made out of the carver's brain,' carry us away to far other regions than those which are actually present before The twofold silver chain' is a graphic

us.

touch.

crawled

And glittered in Corruption's slimy track’

passages which harmoniously, but not agreeably, combine the styles of Dr. Cumming, Mr. Robert Montgomery, and Mr. M. F. Tupper, but of which it is at first sight inexplicable how Coleridge came to write them. We believe, however, that it resulted partly from his admiration of Mr. Bowles: a poet admired at that time by many men of genius, of whom Wilson was one, and who was flattered even by Byron, but whose works to readers of the present day seem downright twaddle. Our respect for Coleridge forbids us to quote more of the Religious Musings' or the 'Destiny of Nations; and if those two poems, together with his early sonnets, were excluded from his published works it would be the better for his poetic fame. After all, the same nus,' of Byron's Hints from Horace,' and be said of Shelley's Edipus Tyranof a still more considerable portion of Wordsworth's poems. An age of effervescence is always an age of inequality.

may

;

Two of Coleridge's most celebrated poems are the Ode to France,' extolled by Shelley as the finest ode of modern times and the Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni,' which, as is well known, is an expansion of twenty lines by Frederica Brunn. Neither, however, can be placed altogether in the first rank of poems. The 'France' is too contentious: we hear too much of 'blasphemy' and priestcraft; it is instinct rather with the spirit of the controversialist than of the lyrist. Yet the first stanza is fine and worthy of remembrance. The Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni,' again, is open to this criticism-that it has, strictly speaking, no subject: no central point, that is, to which all the lines converge. To which of these two things is it that the poet seeks to direct our attention: the intrinsic beauty and majesty of the mountains and rocks and gla ciers, or the fact that all this richness of external Nature was the creation of God? When Isaiah wrote, Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a meas

the aware

and being also at the same time deeply impressed by, and exercising a keen observation on, the phenomena of Nature:

ure, and weighed the mountains in scales, | Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, and the hills in a balance ? ... It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in,' it is plain that the Prophet uses the majesty of Nature as a mere step to lead to the majesty of God; he would not mention the heavens and mountains and hills at all, In the shuddering forests new awe; in the sudwere it not for the sake of the other. On den wind-thrills; the other hand, when Wordsworth wrote these lines

"I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a newborn day
Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality,' &c.,
-it is the pure beauty of Nature, clearly,
which is his central point, into whatever
distant regions of thought or feeling it
leads him and he does wander very far
from it in the course of his poem-yet that
which inspires him is always felt to be the
glory of flowers and waters and stars and
sunsets. But now take these lines of
Coleridge -

'Ye icefalls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living

flowers

Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!" What, here, is the true theme of the poet, the inspiring reality? Is it, as was the case with Isaiah, and as is professedly the case here, the Divine Being? We answer, No. It was a sentiment of propriety, and not of inspiration, that led Coleridge to give a religious turn to his lines; and propriety is bad guide in poetry. He had no business to feign an enthusiasm. The real poetic vigour of the piece, which is considerable, lies entirely in the descriptions.

a

It may be remarked that Mr. Browning, in one of his most celebrated poems, 'Saul,' has fallen into a similar error, where he represents David in returning from the presence of Saul, to whom he has been prophesying, as at once conscious of the -presence of unseen spirits—

"There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,

'I saw it die out in the day's tender birth; In the gathered intensity brought to the grey of

the hills;

In the startled wild beasts that bore off,' &c.

We are incredulous. If David had really felt the angels present he would not have observed external things so accurately.

None of Coleridge's pieces is better known than the Genevieve.' The first stanza of it is most excellent :

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of love,

And feed his sacred flame.'

But the rest is not much more than sentimentally pretty, of that sort of prettiness which is often popular. On the other hand, the ode on 'Dejection' is less known than it ought to be; some stanzas of it are scarcely rivalled for the mixture of philosophical reflection and deep pathos :

Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth

light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud And from the soul itself must there be sent Enveloping the earth

-

A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, Of all sweet sounds the life and element!'

Of the poems written by Coleridge in his later years we have already spoken. Let us quote one more of them; it is on the famous maxim of the Greek sage, 'know thyself: "

• Γνῶθι σεαυτὸν ! and is this the prime
And heavensprung adage of the olden time!
Say, canst thou make thyself? learn first that
trade;

Haply thou may'st know what thyself had made.

What hast thou, Man, that thou dar'st call thine | liar province, much more was it the case

own?

with respect to his practical action, in which
he never had trained himself to resolution
and decision. Here all his weaknesses lay
his perpetual procrastination;
open
and bare to every eye. His indolence;
his promises,
never to be redeemed; and that efferves-
cence of small vanity which, though alien to
his true nature, he never could entirely quell
or restrain; all these have been the ready
mark of his opponents, and have laid him open
to charges, some true, some unfairly exag-
gerated, or even false. He took opium,

In these lines, rough and ungainly as they may seem, devoid of all poetic imagery or effect, there yet may be found matter for thought. They express in Coleridge's mind the vanishing of philosophy into religion. Was he sincere? We are convinced that he and continued to take it, in the midst of was the very roughness of these lines, and incessant lamentations and repentances; he those associated with them, speaks of sin-left his wife and children to the care of cerity. We do not hold, with Mr. Matthew Southey. These things are to be admitted: Arnold, that he was a man devoid of moral- yet the one was the natural sequence of the ity; nor with Mr. Carlyle, that he spent other, for infirmity of will entails many unhis life in unavailing wanderings over the foreseen consequences, yet not the less deserts of thought. On the contrary, it grievous. With respect to the other charge seems to us that he was fundamentally a that has been urged against him that of good man, and that his efforts have been plagiarism- - we are convinced that if Coleproductive of much good to mankind. Still, ridge published in his own works with inboth in his life and in his writings there is sufficient acknowledgment the labours of much to be regretted, and which none re- others, this was the result of his confused gretted more than himself. He sought af- habits of mind, joined to a powerful but yet ter goodness, and he sought after clearness most fitful and inaccurate memory, and not of thought; but his original aim was to be to any desire of taking to himself the credit all-comprehensive, and in this endeavour he due to others. It appears to us that, when lost much of both intellectual and moral ex-in his Biographia Literaria' he published cellence.

6

extracts from Schelling's philosophy, the With respect to his writings, it must be acknowledgment that he made to that phiborne in mind that the pen was not his instru- losopher was such as, if not really sufficient, ment. He was great only through instinct; might yet well appear sufficient to a person he floundered and became helpless directly of his careless habits and clumsy methods he came to a matter requiring patient sys- of expressing himself. That he intended tematization; and hence, judging both by deliberately to defraud Schelling is so far the reports of others and by those fragments from proved, that it is scarcely possible to of his conversation and lectures that have suppose it, if we consider the eulogistic been preserved, the conclusion is forced up- terms in which he spoke of him; and the on us that the books which he composed same remark applies to the reminiscences with the greatest care, such as the Friend' of Schlegel that occur in his 'Lectures on and the Aids to Reflection,' very inade- Shakspeare' (which, besides, were extemquately represent the real man; and, in pore fectures, never published by himself, fact, there is not in them nearly the force nor at all, except in fragments). Concernand the brilliancy that there is in the Table- ing Schlegel, he said: If all the comments talk' or the 'Lectures on Shakspeare.' He that have been written on Shakspeare by said of himself, I can think with all my or- his editors could have been collected into a dinary vigour in the midst of pain; but I pile and set on fire, that by the blaze Schleam beset with the most wretched and un- gel might have written his lectures, the manning reluctance and shrinking from ac- world would have been equally a gainer by tion. I could not upon such occasions take the books destroyed and the book written.' the pen in hand to write down my thoughts Do plagiarists usually speak in this way of for all the wide world.' And the greater the writer from whom they steal? In one part of his life was spent under the pressure point only does Coleridge seem to us really of illness. Still, making all allowance for culpable: namely, in his almost unqualified this, it must be admitted that his thoughts assertion of his own contemporaneous diswere frequently obscure and perplexed, and covery of the theories promulgated by that he was himself unaware of their obscur- Schelling. Herein, as his manner was, he ity. And if this was the case with respect forgot the difference between design and to speculative matters that were his pecu- execution. There is no reason to doubt

that the outline of Schelling's theories was | ted himself from the crowd, in order to obin Coleridge's mind some time before he tain a clearer view of his road; but in dohad read Schelling's works; but between the outline of theories and their development there is a vast interval, which Coleridge was bound (especially in this instance) to recognise, but which he always overlooked.

In recounting the faults of Coleridge, let it not be forgotten that he was so conscious of his own failings that he desired his life to be written, not as an example to other men, but as a warning.

No poet is ever an isolated phenomenon; and no poct's works can be adequately understood without a reference to his contemporaries and the age in which he lived. And hence, that the position of Coleridge in relation to others may be made clear, it will be necessary to consider the principal similarities and differences between his poems and those of his most distinguished contemporaries.

The poet with whom Coleridge, as a single poet, may best be compared, is Wordsworth. Wordsworth and Coleridge, again, will naturally be set over against Byron and Shelley, the representatives of a different impulse and a different mode of thinking.

ing so he lost his communication with men. It is true that, in a practical point of view, the result has justified him; his success has been commensurate with his aim, which was itself no mean one. All succeeding English poetry has followed him, and not Byron, or Shelley, or Coleridge. Not to speak of avowed disciples, such as the author of Philip van Artevelde,' neither Tennyson, nor Clough, nor Mr. Matthew Arnold, are ever without marked traces of his influence. They have taken his intellectual sphere as the general groundwork of their ideas; the instances in which they have gone beyond it are very few indeed, though they have rendered it more soft and pliable, and mingled it with a sceptical tone from which his nature was abhorrent. Mr. Browning, it is true, is not a follower of Wordsworth; but neither is he a follower of any other master; and to say the truth, his originality seems to us rather of an intellectual than of a poetic character.

It will be found that Wordsworth's critical writings, greatly as they contributed to his immediate unpopularity, have been an essential element in his influence, not in The minds of Coleridge and Wordsworth themselves, but as explanatory of his genbore, in many points, a very remarkable re- eral position. It is true that the poems semblance to each other. Each had the which he wrote with an immediate reference poetical and critical faculties in the very to his critical theory, and almost one might highest degree; each too had the specula-say with the view of illustrating it, were by tive faculty, but with this difference, that whereas in Coleridge it germinated and luxuriated abundantly, and ruled over, though it could not overpower, the rest of his nature, in Wordsworth, on the other hand, it was strictly kept under. Wordsworth was a man who, of deliberate purpose, narrowed his mind and forced it into one channel, in order that he might thereby produce a greater effect. His sympathies were naturally wide: witness the intense enthusiasm he felt and expressed for the French Revolution at the outset; witness also the sincere affection displayed in his more mature writings for all classes and characters of the people among whom he dwelt. But his stern practical design, the rigidity with which he set himself to do a fixed work, cut off one half of the sphere of which he might have been the master, and weakened the living force of the other half. He read hardly any books; and though books will not serve as a foundation for poetical or any other excellence, they indefinitely increase its range. He travelled, indeed, but he did not mingle with the people among whom he travelled; he surveyed them from a distance. He isola

no means good; sometimes very bad indeed. But this was not because the theory was bad, but because a critical theory cannot supply the place of, though it may direct and control, the overflowing energy of passion. It was his criticism that marked out the region which he intended to occupy; and the world at once felt that the region was one to which they had never been introduced before, and one well worthy of being cultivated. The intellectual design was with him the ruling element; into it, as into a Procrustean bed, he forced his emotions and sympathies; it could not quench them, but it seldom let them have quite free play. Nevertheless, we do not wish to underrate the real pathos, intensity, and poetic imagination of which he was master. The genius in him was too often curbed by the understanding; but it did at times get loose, and then the regions to which it soared were the highest. It is a curious result of his self-narrowing humour that its influence is entirely confined to England; neither his temperament nor his intellectual sphere is adapted to the continent, where he is almost unknown.

It is here that Coleridge is so sharply