"there is nothing so ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher." Even so it has befallen that all the chapters through which, in Biographia, Coleridge wandered in search of the difference between Fancy and Imagination have passed into shades of a shade. They started upon the almost forgotten system of Hartley and that origin had faded for Coleridge almost before he started to trace their growth; and the editor has omitted them from this book. On the other hand Coleridge's examination of Poetic Diction, and his analysis of the beauties and defects of Wordsworth's poetry, remain as fresh as on the day they were first written, and as invaluable to anyone who would distinguish between good and bad in poetry. And the reason, surely, lies just here. Philosophy and poetry work on different planes, and their terms belong to different categories. The one seeks to comprehend, the other to apprehend: the one, moving round, would embrace the circumference of God's purpose, the other is content to leap from a centre within us to a point of the circumference, and seize it by direct vision. Argument from one to the other simply declines to travel. We might as easily explain poetry through mathematics or through biology as through metaphysics. Our strongest efforts waste themselves out in logomachy: in vain grasping at the thing, by substitution of one phrase for another which, meaning the same, gets no nearer to meaning it. And yet here is no real but only a seeming paradoxhopeless as is, and probably ever will be, the attempt to make philosophy explain poetry, poetry has one right background and one only, and that background is a philosophy of life; a sense, supported by reason, of an ordered universe, of a great scheme from which the poet fetches his types or his particulars, and to which he allows us to refer them. Shakerefer speare had this eminently: Coleridge had it profoundly: and for this reason, when Coleridge criticises Shakespeare, we get one of the noblest enjoyments of which the human intellect is capable: deep answering height, and between them a grand orchestra set sounding. Yes, and lacking this sense of the Universal, Tò kalóλov, we write in anarchy, we judge in chaos. VII The story of Biographia itself—that is, of its composition -is a story of ludicrous dilatoriness, yet may be briefly told. In March, 1815, Coleridge was collecting some "scattered and manuscript poems, sufficient to make a volume." In May he tells Wordsworth he is designing a preface for it "which I shall have done in two, or at farthest three days." Two months later he has been kept a prisoner by the necessity to amplify "a preface to an Autobiographia Literaria, sketches of my literary Life and Opinions." This next becomes "a full account (raisonné) of the controversy concerning Wordsworth's poems and theory" with (fatal accession) "a disquisition on the powers of Association...and on the generic difference between the Fancy and the Imagination." At this Coleridge writes on and on, until it becomes too long for a preface, and the whole too long for a single volume. His next proposal is to extend the work to three volumes; and his next step after that, to quarrel with his printers. Fresh publishers are found, and with them, too, differences arise: the second volume is not long enough. Fresh matter (Chapter XXII, on the Defect and Beauties of Wordsworth's Poetry) was added; and then, as the volume obstinately remained too small, he tossed in Satyrane, an epistolary account of his wanderings in Germany, topped up with a critique of a bad play, and gave the whole painfully to the world in July, 1817. "The Biographia Literaria," says Mr Arthur Symons1, "is the 1 Introduction in Everyman's Library. greatest book of criticism in English, and one of the most annoying books in any language." It annoys, of course, mainly by its disconnectedness, to which Coleridge himself pleaded guilty, calling it an "immethodical miscellany." It sets out with an account of the motives which led to its composition. He gets to business on lines which readers of Newman's Apologia will probably allow to be the most effective of lines upon which to write an inner autobiography. After some premonitory lapses, and with the confession "I have wandered far from the object in view," he arrives at Stowey and the Lyrical Ballads. Thence he slides off upon the "law of Association," on Hartley, on Hylozoism, on the Mystics, on Kant, Schelling and others; interjects three chapters "of digression and anecdotes, etc.,' ” “An Affectionate Exhortation," "of requests and premonitions concerning the perusal or omission of the chapter that follows"; re-engages upon Fancy and Imagination; reaches (in Chapter XIV) his real subject; deals with it magnificently through Chapters XIV and xv: interjects a comparison between the poets of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and those of his own time; girds up his loins again, and through Chapters XVIII and xix, treats us to a really superb display of archery upon the target of Poetic Diction-until we seem to hear Apollo's own bow twanging, as shot upon shot whistles into the gold; pauses, wipes his brow, lets fall some chatty well-chosen remarks, a little heated, but obviously irrelevant enough to be only his own fun, and generally suggesting the spirit of a "tea interval," upon "the Present Mode of Conducting Critical Journals"; suddenly wonders "What has become of Wordsworth?" and again "God bless my soul, it's beginning to rain and I must have left my Autobiographia in the house! Does anyone by any chance remember where he saw it last?" Nobody does, but somebody fetches out Satyrane's Letters for a substitute. That will do: "after all, you know-a mere shower!.... Well, and that old Critique on Bertram?.... Thank you-if you insist. Shall we go in?" We move to the house. On the threshold our august host recollects himself, turns, lifts a hand in benediction— “ΘΕΩ ΜΟΝΩ ΔΟΞΑ "So sorry-must you really go?" The door is shut: and for a second time the Wedding-Guest turns away; from an entertainment superlative indeed but curiously irreconcilable with his card of invitation. Last time, he dressed for a wedding and found himself attending a confessional. This time a confessional was advertised, but its closing stages have been reminiscent rather of a Pleasant Sunday Afternoon. VIII As for the confession, it breaks off just at the point where it would have been most interesting: and we must turn from Biographia to the letters, and to the Ode Dejection, for the sad details of the passage through which his bright seraphic spirit plunged and reawoke an old man, eloquent but old—old!— through his loss of "the shaping spirit of imagination," through his felt insensibility (if I may use the term) to those spiritual effluences of Nature which had once set his every nerve quivering. "The Poet is dead in me," he writes to Godwin in March 1801. "My imagination... lies like a cold snuff on the circular rim of a brass candlestick," and here is a passage from the Ode, written in April 1802-a poet, for once saying a genuine, a heart-broken, farewell to Poesy. Ah, if Nature and his spirit could speak together as of yore, could thrill to each other in the old intimate way, could startle this dull pain, and provoke and make it more alive! A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, In word, or sigh, or tear O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood, In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; I see, not feel, how beautiful they are! My genial spirits fail; And what can these avail To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? It were a vain endeavour, Though I should gaze for ever On that green light that lingers in the west; And in our life alone does Nature live: Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud! And from the soul itself must there be sent 0 This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given, Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower, |