From The Contemporary Review.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

among those whose thoughts have passed into the sap which circulates in a national life. There are not many men in the whole history of literature of whom we can say as much.

No member of that brilliant constellation which made England illustrious at the opening of the nineteenth century is more worthy of contemplation We may hope shortly for aid from than Coleridge. The names of Scott, fresh material in our apprehension of a Byron, and Shelley call up a more mind so worthy of study. But, as Mr. romantic and attractive background, Morley remarked on the eve of Sir while that of Wordsworth marks a George Trevelyan's biography of Mamore dignified and continuous career. caulay, the period just preceding any The biography of Coleridge could not biography which strongly stimulates become a classic like that of the first public interest is one specially fitted named of these poets, it could not even for taking stock of our previous knowltake, in popular and literary interest, edge of its subject. Before we add the much lower place we must accord new data to our impressions of a great to that of the second, and his fame man it is well to gather up all which could no more form the foundation of are already familiar. We invite our such a cult as that which attaches to readers, therefore, to prepare for a the third, than it could court the rigid perusal of the eagerly expected edition scrutiny which brings out the spotless- of "Coleridge's Letters" from the ness of the last. Nevertheless, looking hand of his grandson by a review of back on the group as a whole, we see the wealth already at their disposal. him, in some respects, the most re- It would be impossible, we believe, to markable of any. Indeed, some of that collect a larger amount of opinion and brilliancy in which they excel him is reminiscence bearing on almost any indirectly due to his rays. We cannot life than that which lies ready to hand read certain passages in the "Excur- for this purpose,1 and what is new will sion" without catching echoes of Kant, be studied with more profit and more and Wordsworth must have received interest if we prepare its background these through Coleridge; we cannot by a backward glance on what is old. read the "Lay of the Last Minstrel " Our special object now is to bring his without thinking of "Christabel," and literary achievement into connection "Christabel" was written and seen by with his personal history and character, Scott before the "Lay" was published. and to gather up the teaching involved These are striking instances of a both in what he did and what he failed stimulating influence unquestionably to do. In the life of genius we may exercised by Coleridge on his contem-read, writ large, many of the lessons poraries independently of his literary that lie hidden in other lives. To debequest to posterity. He was a poet, tach this element from the biography and he was also a thinker. We need and the work of Coleridge is the aim look no further than to a group includ- of the following essay. ing Keats and Scott to see that a poet is not necessarily a thinker. As we have from them immortal verse in which the poetic rays transcend the thought rays, so in Coleridge we reach the other end of the spectrum; the thought element transcends the poetic expression, and claims independent attention. If he had never written a line of poetry, his prose, and even more the record of his influence in all

important memoirs of his time, would establish his claim to a high position

He lived a little more than sixty years, and we may, on a broad view, divide that period between the two divisions of his literary activity. edited, the Watchman and wrote some

He

1 It is not my intention to give references, but I may mention that by far the most interesting life of Coleridge known to me that by Professor judged by its English translation. It is written in German, which again and again leads the reader to fancy himself reading French, and should be studied by every Englishman who cares for the

Brand of Strasburg-can unfortunately not be

history of his country and century and is not confined to his own language.

-

have lost its charm in a conclusion. On the whole, of course, his poetry would have gained much if less fragmentary, but there is something which it would thus have lost.

newspaper articles sufficiently impor- | power lay within the man and not tant, it is said, to rouse the hostility of without, that it was not the result of Napoleon, before his thirtieth year; some tragic situation throwing its while a few beautiful lines date later. shadow on a mind specially prepared But on the whole his poetry belongs to for sympathy with all that it involves, his youth, and his prose, as those or of some profound thought winning a readers of to-day know it who know it sudden splendor from its sacramental at all, to what we must call his old age. reflection on the world of nature, but a This correspondence between the char- real creation, a summons from the acter and the date of his productions world of the unseen by that magic, of seems more natural at first than at last. which, we cannot but think ShakeHis prose writings are all introductions speare intended Prospero's wand to to some fuller exposition of his philos- symbolize his own mastery. A certain ophy; and while they look to the variety of form is needed to establish future, most of his finest verse owes its this, and as no one short poem can peculiar beauty, in our opinion, to the prove its author to be a poet, so the pathos of a half-suggested past. The scant proportion of Coleridge's contripoetry which would have entitled him, bution to the poetic wealth of the had he died at the age of Keats, to world must tell in our estimate of his Wordsworth's description of Chatter- poetic rank. But his place is with the ton, "the marvellous boy" a de-immortals, and his eminence is in some scription, it has been truly said, far respects the more remarkable from the more applicable to Keats - has always very causes which shroud it, as a peak something autumnal in its tone. Hardly looks higher among clouds. The mysany other poet, equally well known, tic twilight of "Christabel " might ever made so little use of his genius. We can recall only the fame of Gray as one equally secure above the rising waters of oblivion and yet attaching to as minute a production. Two tiny octavos would contain all that is in We would compare his verse to one the full sense original to him, and that of those gleamy, picturesque days in posterity will care to remember; and late autumn, when the brief interval the verse which makes up this minute between morning and sunset seems legacy is not only scanty, its several touched by reminiscence or anticipaparts are also incomplete. The "An- tion of the twilight. The light is never cient Mariner" is the only important brilliant, and never steady; it is alpoem by him which is neither a mere ways a "gleam upon gloom," but from self-utterance, nor a fragment. It this very reason it has a peculiar, soft, may seem a poor thing to estimate the delicate, misty radiance under which production of a poet by mere bulk, as the commonest objects take a new if we were dealing with bales of cotton, charm. At its noontide it has somebut there is such a thing as exquisite thing of an evening beauty, and the poetry of which there is hardly enough evening is upon us before we realize to entitle the writer to the name of that the afternoon has begun. His last poet. We should scarcely apply the important poem was finished while he word to the author either of the most had still the lifetime of a generation to perfect elegy in the language the pass in this world; and even the out"Burial of Sir John Moore; or of ward imagery of this dirge on his one of its most perfect sonnets-that "shaping spirit of imagination" harof Blanco White's on "Night and monizes with the spirit of an approachDeath." To have expressed noble ing twilight of the soul. It is with thought in poetic form does not make a the fulness of poetic utterance that he poet, unless there be enough of the takes his farewell of poetry. We see production to show, as it were, that the in that farewell, in all its perfection,

--

Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling
spirit

By its own moods interprets - everywhere
Echo or mirror-seeking of itself.

Perhaps we must set him beside Wordsworth before we can fully appreciate his legacy, just as the faint flush of a rose-petal may need association with its neighbors to make its delicate color tell. His poetry is full of what we may call Wordsworthian touches; indeed, his name might just as well have afforded an epithet for the poetic and accurate delineation of natural objects in verse, if only he had written more; it was his office as much as

his delicate observation of nature, espe- | Making it a companionable form, cially of those more ethereal aspects of nature which belong to atmospheric influences: the green evening sky at which his unintelligent critics sneered, the thin, evanescent clouds that "give away their motion to the stars," such faint, pure, transient shades and tints as Turner, who may be considered his pictorial brother, was just then preparing to reveal in a world previously contemplated under the influence of vague conventional description, and needing a poet's touch to be truly seen. It is not only in objects belonging to what we are accustomed to associate with nature, in the conventional sense of the word, that we may follow this re- Wordsworth's to impress on us all that vealing, sympathetic gaze. Coleridge enlarges that meaning, he shows us new beauties not only in the heavens but in regions where we have been accustomed to look for nothing poetic. The lines entitled (not very happily, we think) "Frost at Midnight," bring this attentiveness to all subdued, evanescent forms of light to bear on an object as prosaic as his bedroom fire. When he tells us that

the thin blue flame

Lies on my low burnt fire, and quivers not,
how expressively, as it were with a
Zoroastrian touch, he associates the
life in the flame with his own sense of
repose, and the soft breathings of his
sleeping babe.
Shut into his own
chamber with the curtains drawn, his
imagination still finds appropriate ma-
terial; here also we trace his vivid,
dreamy sympathy with whatever is
shadowy, whatever leaves the imagina-
tion space and scope, and is most suited
as a symbolism of sad memory. The
stillness of midnight is painted with a
peculiar force in the following lines,
fixing attention on a trivial object of
which the faint movement could only
in that absolute quiet be admitted to a
fantastic impersonation, natural in the
eerie solitude of that hour:

Only that film which fluttered on the grate
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks its motion in the hush of Nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,

Cole

is hidden in the every-day scenes
around us. It is as when, in the dawn
of the Newtonian astronomy, a writer
"A Dis-
published a work entitled
course concerning a New Planet"
the earth, to wit. It was a new planet
in the literal sense of the word; it
took its place among the stars, but did
not cease to remain our familiar home.
In this sense it may be said that
Wordsworth and Coleridge combined
in the discovery of a new planet — they
gave this every-day world the glory of
a star. If common things may be
looked into, and not merely looked at,
it is mainly to these two poets we owe
this priceless gift. But the difference
of the "great twin brethren" is as in-
structive as their resemblance.
ridge is always intimate with his reader.
We might almost say that Wordsworth
is never intimate with his reader. He
teaches, informs, narrates, but does
not confide. The single exception
which occurs to us-the verses enti-
tled "A Complaint" - if, as it is said,
they were inspired by Coleridge, may
be said to prove the rule. The tone of
pathetic appeal of unreproachful love
sensible of chill-is certainly much
more like Coleridge than the writer,
and if indeed he was the friend there
immortalized, we may trace the close
spiritual kindred of the two poets in a
sort of mesmeric influence potent even
in absence and estrangement. Words-
worth speaks of himself continually,

his poetic legacy contains his autobiog- | Upon a lonesome wild

way,

And now moans low in utter grief and fear,
And now screams loud, and hopes to make

her mother hear.

'Tis midnight; and small thoughts have I of sleep,

Full

Visit

seldom may my friend such vigils keep!

him, gentle Sleep, with wings of healing,

And may this storm be but a mountain birth.

May all the stars hang bright above his dwelling,

Silent as though they watched the silent

earth.

With light heart may he rise,
Gay fancy, cheerful eyes.
And sing his lofty song, and teach me to
rejoice!

Oh, Wordsworth! friend of my devoutest
choice,

Oh, raised from anxious dread and busy

care

raphy, and his verse is occasionally Not far from home, but she hath lost her egotistic; but the lines to which we have referred are the only instance we can recall in which we should describe it as confidential. Coleridge is in this respect more allied to Byron; the fact that there is nothing of the "pageant in his "bleeding heart," makes it seem unnatural to compare them; but we feel equally with both that the interest lies in the unveiling of an individuality. Except in the "Ancient Mariner a notable exception, no doubt, but one which in many respects stands apart from the rest of his poetry -all the finer interests of Coleridge's verse lies in the revelation of himself. The ode which we have noticed as glowing with the sunset of his muse bears in its very form the impress of an intimate confidence. It is addressed to no vague public, but (as at first written) to an "Edmund," whose ideal personality formed a transparent veil for that of Wordsworth. The change of that pseudonym for the anonymous "Lady" (whom we are taught to identify with Wordsworth's sister-in-law) is on several accounts to be regretted; it introduces a slight touch of sentimentality which, just because it is not altogether out of harmony with the self-revelation of a morbid nature, should have been resolutely held at bay; and it commemorates a bitter recollection of the saddest estrangement of Coleridge's sad life. Let the reader always substitute not the original Edmund, but the real Wordsworth for the nameless "Lady" (and the unknown Otway), and let us especially recall the conclusion, as peculiarly expressive, in one way or another, of both poets and of their friendship. We give the lines as they at first appeared in the Morning Post, with this single and desirable alteration. The subject is the sound of the wind in the Eolian harp :

It tells another tale, with sounds less deep

and loud,

As Wordsworth's self had framed the ten-
der lay.
'Tis of a little child

By the immenseness of the good and fair
Which thou seest everywhere
Joy lifts thy spirit, joy attunes thy voice;
To thee do all things live from pole to pole,
Their life the eddying of thy living soul.
O simple spirit, guided from above!
O lofty poet, full of life and love!
Brother and friend of my devoutest choice,
Thus mayest thou ever, evermore rejoice!

The reader who studies that address from Coleridge to Wordsworth, and remembers that it is the last verse in his last poem, and that he lived thirty-two years after writing it, holds a clue to all that is most vital in the life of both poets, and the literary movement that centres in them. That in its present form it commemorates estrangement rather than union does but enhance its significance as a revelation of the life of Coleridge.

If he had died in the year in which he wrote these lines we should have almost the same little collection of fragmentary remains that we possess now, and they would be surrounded by brilliant promise cut off by the inex that peculiar halo which belongs to orable. Why should an early blight raise nothing of the emotion with which we contemplate an early death? No