Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud- And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All colours a suffusion from that light. There was a time when, though my path was rough, Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness: Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, From my own nature all the natural man- In Biographia the narrative commits the worst fault of narrative: it breaks key. It falsettos upon irrelevant trifles; frequently at inordinate length, and not seldom with a touch of devastating facetiousness of the sort that, as practised by De Quincey, again and again stings the gentlest reader with a mad desire to arise and hurl the book across the room. (I wish indeed we could be sure De Quincey did not catch the trick from Coleridge.) Nor can I, for one, greatly prefer even to this, the "soft shower of words," as Mr Saintsbury calls it-the gradual dusky veil closing Chapter XIV. "Finally, good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its drapery, emotion its life, and imagination the soul"-with the rest of it. It is so pretty: Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, And drunk the milk of Paradise. It is very pretty. But who knows precisely what it means? IX When he turns to examine and settle the question of Poetic Diction, his sword-play becomes quite masterly. Every youth who loves letters should get this part of Biographia by heart, and not only for its truth but for the way of it. But even here I find myself in agreement with Mr Shawcross that, done otherwise, it had perhaps in the circumstances better served Coleridge's purpose. That purpose was, as we have seen, to clear himself (though late) of consent with a certain few extravagances in Wordsworth's Preface, while assenting to it generally. The circumstances were that the two men, for long dear to one another, had become estranged in 1810, owing to a rash word of Wordsworth misreported by Basil Montagu, who was a fool to report it at all; that the breach had been. healed by Crabb Robinson in 1812, was re-opened in 1813 (apparently through Wordsworth's omission to answer a tender letter of sympathy on the loss of his son) and never again thoroughly patched. Certainly few sorrows in life had caused Coleridge a worse heart-ache. I agree, then, with Mr Shawcross that if, instead of dwelling on mistakes which he allows to be few if not trivial, Coleridge had briefly cleared himself of complicity with these and gone on to elaborate-to improve-what was true and useful and (as he casually shows in the opening of Chapter XIX) of primary importance in the gospel of both, he had done a better general service to criticism, with a better personal service to Wordsworth, and at the same time avoided the suspicion that he wrote out of an embittered mind. "Something at least must have occurred to pervert Coleridge's vision, if he could really believe that, in his criticisms in Biographia Literaria, he was serving Wordsworth's cause (and this cause was his own also) to the best of his ability." No one surely can read the book and miss to detect on page after page the wistful solicitude for Wordsworth's feelings. Since the Nether Stowey days eighteen years had scored themselves on Coleridge, and fatally scored out promise after promise. His family life had gone to ruin. Opium had wrecked his will, and plunged in perpetual shadow the brightness of his genius which in Kubla Khan had shone as something ineffable. He was no longer a Michael armed and eager, but a spent old man. He was no longer a poet. In the book he never reckons himself a poet: it is always of Wordsworth he is thinking. Yes, that is it of Wordsworth, his friend. Broken as he is, yet he knows (he must have known) that in criticism—the matter of his discourse-he stands to Wordsworth as a giant: and the business of his self-justification involves the correction of Wordsworth where Wordsworth has been wrong. Yet how tenderly he handles him, how eager he is to praise, how chivalrously (as you follow the argument) he breaks ground, lowers his guard, forbears to use his own strength! I say that, if we read Biographia with this in our minds, this alone will suffice to make it, for us, a beautiful book. Wordsworth read it and judged it, conscientiously, in his own way. To Crabb Robinson he confided that "the praise he considered extravagant, and the censure inconsiderate. It had given him no pleasure." It was Wordsworth who had written Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning. But it is not enough, in this world, to have the right within you. To be "in the right" is more satisfactory, and easier, and far safer. ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH 10 December 1919 So wenig er auch bestimmt seyn mag, andere zu belehren, so wünscht er doch sich denen mitzutheilen, die er sich gleich gesinnt weiss, (oder hofft,) deren Anzahl aber in der Breite der Welt zerstreut ist; er wünscht sein Verhältniss zu den altesten Freunden dadurch wieder anzuknüpfen, mit neuen es fortzusetzen, und in der letzten Generation sich wieder. andere für seine übrige Lebenszeit zu gewinnen. Er wünscht der Jugend die Umwege zu ersparen, auf denen er sich selbst verirrte. (GOETHE, Einleitung in die Propyläen.) TRANSLATION. Little call as he may have to instruct others, he wishes nevertheless to open out his heart to such as he either knows or hopes to be of like mind with himself, but who are widely scattered in the world: he wishes to knit anew his connections with his oldest friends, to continue those recently formed, and to win other friends among the rising generation for the remaining course of his life. He wishes to spare the young those circuitous paths, on which he himselt had lost his way. BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA CHAPTER I. Motives to the present work-Reception of the Author's first publication-Discipline of his taste at school-Effect of contemporary writers on youthful minds-Bowles's Sonnets-Comparison between the poets before and since Pope. It has been my lot to have had my name introduced both in conversation, and in print, more frequently than I find it easy to explain, whether I consider the fewness, unimportance, and limited circulation of my writings, or the retirement and distance, in which I have lived, both from the literary and political world. Most often it has been connected with some charge which I could not acknowledge, or some principle which I had never entertained. Nevertheless, had I had no other motive or incitement, the reader would not have been troubled with this exculpation. What my additional purposes were, will be seen in the following pages. It will be found, that the least of what I have written concerns myself personally. I have used the narration chiefly for the purpose of giving a continuity to the work, in part for the sake of the miscellaneous reflections suggested to me by particular events, but still more as introductory to a statement of my principles in Politics, Religion, and Philosophy, and an application of the rules, deduced from philosophical principles, to poetry and criticism. But of the objects, which I proposed to myself, it was not the least important to effect, as far as possible, a settlement of the long continued controversy concerning the true nature of poetic diction; and at the same time to define with the utmost impartiality the real poetic character of the poet, by whose writings this controversy was first kindled, and has been since fuelled and fanned. In the spring of 1796, when I had but little passed the verge of manhood, I published a small volume of juvenile poems. C. B. L. |