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De Nieuwe Gids. Jaargang 47 (1932)

De Nieuwe Gids. Jaargang 47

(1932)– [tijdschrift] Nieuwe Gids, De–rechtenstatus Gedeeltelijk auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

The relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge by J.A. Russell, Ph. D.

It was in the nature of things that the people of Britain, hating to be fettered in the matter of expression and attaining slowly to a recognition of the pre-eminence of Shakespeare, should about the middle of the eighteenth century detect current poetic falsity. The vigour with which they thereupon sought to remove the intolerable, if regularly-placed, barriers raised by the Augustans was characteristic. Attention was once again directed to the romantic past as a source of poetic inspiration. Also, in an age which purported to bestow its entire interest upon the study of Man, the reactionaries had the temerity to begin to describe Nature. But the new tendencies were irresistible to a people whose heart was still poetically sound, and the two streams of romanticism and naturalism came into English poetry. It was, of course, not surprising that unanimity concerning how the two might best mingle was not arrived at immediately. The traditions of a century were not to be cast aside all in a moment, nor was it desirable that the influence of Dryden and Pope should be wholly expunged. Thus, half a century had to elapse before the correct correspondence between romanticism and naturalism was evolved. On the Quantock Hills in the years 1797-98 the two streams flowed into one. In the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ Wordsworth and Coleridge between them solved the problem of how to make the romantic natural and the natural romantic.

The circumstances which led to the two poets joining forces to produce that volume are wellknown. Copious testimony has

been supplied by contemporaries, and both authors have themselves left ample records of this heralding of the Romantic Revival, the basis of their literary relationship. On the extent of that relationship opinionating still goes on. Too often is it considered in the light of a hard-and-fast partnership, tacitly dissolved with the production of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’; or personal preferment induces the attempt to credit one or other poet with a favourable balance of imparted influence, on the dictum apparently that it is better to give than to receive. The zealots of both methods err: those of the first, in supposing that the poets' interaction ended when Cottle brought out the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ and Nether Stowey knew them no more; those of the second, in attempting to be categorical where much is, of necessity, not definitive. The influence of each upon the other and who gained most by the friendship are not to be known by gauging what each handed over piecemeal to the other during the period of their most direct intercourse. Their respective influences would have been great and incalculable even though they had never renewed their first association, for, as Burton says, ‘we steal from the poets’. Of the critics who reach categorical conclusions, the majority seem desirous of awarding Coleridge the verdict. This, I suppose, is because the pièce de résistance of the volume was contributed by him - actually, too, in the shape of his poetic masterpiece - and because the more connected account of the genesis of the book was left by him in the ‘Biographia Literaria’. These facts in combination are evidently taken as indicative of a maturer poetic development on the part of Coleridge; and, accordingly, the exerting of a greater influence than was possible to Wordsworth. But such theorising is unsatisfactory. Neither was ‘Lyrical Ballads’ the virtual end of the inter-relationship (it was, indeed, only a remarkably fine beginning) nor are we bound to discover a preponderate weight of influence on one side or the other. Where contact was so close and personal, and where mutual benefit was so evidently realized and acknowledged, it is certainly possible to obtain considerable understanding of the far-reaching relationship, but it must be suggested rather than expressly defined.

It was in 1795 that the poets first became acquainted, and

their coming together when they did could not have been more opportune. In 1795 Wordsworth was not the Wordsworth of tradition, the orthodox Churchman and politician, the contented ‘Sage of Rydal’. The central fact of his life, the solitary upheaval which disturbed his otherwise placid career, was then in course of enactment. He was at that strenuous time in the toils of the tremendous spiritual crisis brought on him by the French Revolution. Like many reflecting young men in the ghastly warfare of our own time, he had passed from his early enthusiastic reception of the Revolutionary ideal to moody questioning and finally to a despairing view not concerned so much with the entire principle of war, as we in our day, as with paricular applications of it. It was not revulsion to the mere fact of war that shook his faith; but the renunciation by the Revolutionary party of its first principles, ‘the September massacres’, the effect of Godwin's political and ethical doctrines, all combined to involve him in a labyrinth of doubt. Coleridge has even recorded that he was then a ‘semi-atheist at least’. Even the influence of his devoted sister Dorothy was not wholly salutary. In her society, says M. Legouis, he might be cured of Godwin, but he would also endanger his chances of ever arriving at a comprehensive philosophy of his own. The fact is that they were so thoroughly identified with one another that they formed but a single being. Of necessity her influence was of an uncritical kind, and too often threw Wordsworth back on himself. At such a juncture ‘acquaintanceship wih Coleridge provided him with a friend who was able to accompany or even to precede him in the path of speculation when he required a new philosophical creed’1).

Coleridge himself might appear to be in little better plight. Nor was he, in reality, though his condition differed from Wordsworth's much as his temperament and outlook differed. Like Wordsworth, he had early conceived a passion for the French Revolution; and like Wordsworth, too, he was reluctantly brought to the sobering conclusion that Europe was mistaken in its true meaning. The situation was not without its ironical side, for at an earlier period he had with Southey formulated the

wildly-Utopean scheme of founding a new state, the Pantisocracy, to show the world that the principles which underlay the Revolution were right. Coleridge was still young in philosophy, but the enforced swaying of his thought in so violent a manner could not but perturb him. Monetary difficulties also supervened. And yet, gowing to Nether Stowey, Coleridge took what proved the most momentous decision of his life. It brought him within reach of the influences of Nature at a time when his sensibilities were at their keenest; and it gave him a friend under whose affection and understanding, genius seemed to break through of a kind as there had before been little promise of.

M. Legouis in his ‘Early Life of Wordsworth’, in a chapter dealing largely with Coleridge, remarks a striking difference between the poets when in youth, but adds later, ‘From the day when Coleridge left school for Cambridge the difference apparently was on the wane’. Each was at once republican, poet and philosopher. Both ardently supported the French Revolution, and for a time Godwin numbered them among his admirers. The deep and permanent differences beneath these surface resemblances will be considered later. Enough for the moment that they were sunk in their common need. Even when at the University we know that Coleridge saw in the ‘Descriptive Sketches’, a poem only remotely Wordsworthian, ‘the emergence of an originial poetic genius above the horizon’, a piece of penetration hardly rivalled by most other contemporaries in fifty years. Until he met Wordsworth he lived a troubled and distracted life. It is hardly too much to say that if they had never met and lived in community of ideals, literature would have suffered an incalculable loss. Greatly as Coleridge desired to live near one whom he already admired from a distance, his desire was no less eager than that of the Wordsworths to profit by the friendship of one who impressed at once their discerning minds. In their common love of Nature the poets hardly realized at first that each possessed something the other had not. They quickly found they were friends in spirit, and at once began to exchange confidences. The inner significance of the Alfoxden life of the Wordsworths, which lasted just a year, is their association with Coleridge. So close and constant was it that the rising genius of the three underwent a

real creative fusion, like the welding of metals. Coleridge's description is typical. ‘We are three people’, he said, ‘but only one soul.’

The comings and goings between Nether Stowey and Alfoxden were incessant. Several sources may be considered as offering light upon the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge at the most fertile period of their long friendship. The most vivid is a journal kept by Dorothy Wordsworth which is a worthy forerunner of the record of the tour in Scotland in 1803 in conjunction with her brother. Unfortunately, the extent of her influence on both poets, while unquestionably great, is highly conjectural. Both, we feel certain, responded to her lively sensibility and rapid suggestion - qualites she possessed in a more eminent degree than her brother. Both have lines, Coleridge more especially, which seem almost to derive from corresponding entries in the journal. We stop just short of thinking them more than coincidences. The relevance of this lies in the fact that neither the poetry of Coleridge nor that of Wordsworth is characterized by the careful - the almost purely aesthetic - registration of natural effects which the writings of Dorothy Wordsworth reveal. Yet even this is far from sufficient to determine the individual contributions to an intimacy so intense and spiritual. Coleridge's poem ‘The Nightingale’, however, was evidently inspired by the time, the place, and the companionship. It is Wordsworth in its revelation of Coleridge's individual attitude towards the non-human natural world; and yet it is not. It is certainly in an essentially Wordsworthian strain that he calls on the poet who would know Nature rightly to forget her moods,

 
‘Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song
 
And of his fame forgetful,’

but he translates the nightingale's notes into a strain altogether too romantic for Wordsworth. Of greater importance, perhaps, is the fact that the nature of the intimacy is clearly displayed. In turn, may be noted a noble and affectionate piece of reminiscence of this idyllic time in the last book of ‘The Prelude’. The

healing of his soul was begun by his sister, but to Coleridge was due much of his final recovery, and that Wordsworth never forgot -

 
‘Thus fear relaxed
 
Her overweening grasp; thus thoughts and things
 
In the self-haunting spirit learned to take
 
More rational proportions.’

But it was to the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ that life among the Quantocks led up; and, as the very essence of the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge, they must now be adjudged. Intending very seriously to be poets, they made not only poetry but plans as they walked ‘on the hills like Gods together’. The idea that co-operation was contemplated by Wordsworth and Coleridge is not surprising. Joint-ventures in poetry were common at that time; and in the case of our poets the wide gulf separating their poetical and critical faculties was not as yet clearly made known to them; for never did two men give more whole-hearted devotion to poetry, as such. First then they planned, light-heartedly enough, to write a prose-poem called ‘The Wanderings of Cain’. It was to consist of three cantos, of which Wordsworth was to write the first and Coleridge the second, the third being reserved for the one finishing first the preliminary task. The whole work was to be completed in one night. Coleridge duly complied, and his canto may still be read. The work, however, assumed no greater dimensions, for Wordsworth's creative power flagged completely in the attempt to write thus to order. Long afterwards he imposed upon himself the writing of a poem with ‘The Pillar of Trajan’ as its subject, which remains the poorest of his few classical poems. Another plan was ambitious and grandiose. In the minds of both the underlying interest was the inter-relations of Man, Nature, and Society. In the streams rising among the Quantocks and working their way on and down to sea, Coleridge saw types of human society on which a great poem might be built. Wordsworth's imagination when later he set himself to trace out the River Dudon from source to sea worked towards a somewhat similar end, and may have been stirred by this earlier

philosophising. But the projected symbolizing of the mountain streams never took shape. Instead, a simpler plan suggested itself. The trio set out on a longer walking expedition than usual, and it was proposed that the inevitable expenses should be defrayed by the sales of a joint-poem. It was from this modest intention that the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ sprang into existence. As they walked on, Coleridge recounted a dream experienced by a friend of his, of a skeleton ship with figures in it, and this dream he proceeded to resolve into a story. To the story Wordsworth characteristically suggested a moral. Having read in Shelvock's ‘Voyages’ of the albatrosses which abound near Cape Horn, he proposed that the navigators of Coleridge's tale should be made to kill one of those birds capriciously and suffer punishment by their tutelary spirits. So the plan was outlined, Wordsworth's only further contribution being the idea, afterwards incorporated, of the ship's being navigated by dead men. Thus far they proposed, but the actual composition, begun a few hours later, disposed of the scheme, at least as a joint-effort. From that point of view it failed as signally as ‘The Wanderings of Cain’. With Wordsworth's early abandonment of the Old Navigator's story, Coleridge was left in ‘splendid isolation’ to evolve one of the greatest of English narrative poems. That was in itself a magnificent achievement.

But though the idea of a joint-composition was foregone, the joint plans of the poets were still pursued and, indeed, took an even wider shape than when originally conceived. Otherwise, ‘The Ancient Mariner’ and not the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ would have found its way into the world in 1798. The parting of the ways in the matter of a joint-production came over something which had its roots deep in the mind of Wordsworth. Wordsworth if he was a poet because the poetic gift and faculty had been so bestowed upon him that he could not fail in one way or another to exercise it, was also in deliberate purpose and plan a poet, because poetry offered him the richest, the most varied, and the completest method of reaching truth in the matters which interested him. In their Nether Stowey and Alfoxden intercourse he found many opportunities to discuss with Coleridge poetic theories, and the functions of the faculty of imagination from

which poetry comes. Each being occupied in the making of poems instinct with young, yet powerful, genius, theory and practice suggested themselves in the most natural manner. Poetry and the criticism of poetry were raised together. The Romantic Revival was at hand, and both poets, treading as they were on its outer fringes, were deeply conscious of two things: first, that poetry ought to give pleasure by the surprise of novelty; and second, that, since Milton, it had depended too much on artificial magniloquence and violent improbability for that purpose. There must, they agreed, be a ‘return to Nature’ if poetry were to be capable of yielding its utmost potency, and that could only be achieved by the rigid avoidance of artificiality and conventionality in expression, and the production of novelty by the spontaneous exercise of imagination, ‘that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith,’ as Coleridge so brilliantly expressed it. The proper subjects of poetry were natural, and in that sense, ordinary, but they must be made extraordinary, novel, by the poet's imaginative treatment. And for this two different methods suggested themselves. One was that poetry, while being true to the realities of human nature, need not reject the preternatural, though the introduction of a preternatural machinery should be conditional on its assisting somehow the presentment of the natural. The other way was for the poet to dispense with the preternatural, or even with the explicitly romantic, and, without suffering the imagination to renounce any of its functions, to find in the persons, scenes, and incidents of ordinary experience, the novelty demanded by poetry, so that the natural should seem preternatural. Thus, it was arranged that a series of poems should be written demonstrative of these two methods. To Coleridge, who had taken the lead in ‘The Ancient Mariner’, belonged the first method, and it was left to Wordsworth, who in comparison with his friend hardly affected the supernatural at all, to exhibit the romance of everyday life and experience involved by advocacy of the second scheme.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1798 the double task proceeded. Coleridge had appropriated the completion of ‘The Ancient Mariner’, but Wordsworth far outran his desultory colleague in the preparation of the contents of the famous volume.

‘The Ancient Mariner’ was the sole representative of the preternatural poetry, and though the first part of ‘Christabel’ had been written, only ‘The Nightingale’ poem previously referred to and a few dramatic fragments were, of Coleridge's work, additionally included. Wordsworth, on the other hand, worked industriously at his avowed purpose of giving ‘the charm of novelty to things of everyday’, and produced, among others, such typical and well-known - and greatly discussed - pieces as ‘The Idiot Boy’, ‘Goody Blake’, ‘The Thorn’ and ‘We are Seven’. The result was the issuing of the 210-page volume of ‘Lyrical Ballads’ by two of the greatest masters of English poetry. Yet, so slight was Coleridge's share in it that the work was essentially Wordsworth's. With relation to this West-country poetry of both Coleridge and Wordsworth, it is certain that it went far beyond the bounds of the plan on which much of it was undertaken. Though we must judge it absolutely we ought also to judge it relatively to that plan. In so far as it was a joint one, it of course broke down at once. Then, Wordsworth seems not only to have avoided the preternatural but to have theoretically deprecated it. This is clearly set forth in his prologue to ‘Peter Bell’, which poem, though omitted from the first edition of ‘Lyrical Ballads’, comes under the Alfoxden poetry of Wordsworth. This poem has been set off, mostly to its disadvantage, against ‘The Ancient Mariner’, the only poem in ‘Lyrical Ballads’ which contains many preternatural elements. Professor Sir Walter Raleigh has admirably illustrated the contrast by showing that ‘Peter Bell’, describing the fate of a cruel tinker who killed a donkey, is Wordsworth's counterpart for Coleridge's tale of the man who shot the albatross. The contrast, though illustrative psychologically, becomes unfair when it is pressed far in the way of narrational interest and ingenuity. It is, of course, by such a poem as ‘Ruth’ - or even as ‘Lucy Gray’ in all its simplicity - that Wordsworth can afford to be compared with Coleridge in narrative. On such a basis his plain treatment, drawing the soul out of common incident, is not inferior to Coleridge's wonderful work of embodying visions never seen on earth.

Though a supernatural mechanism contributed nothing directly

to Wordsworth's poetic equipment, it would seem as though some such elements were unconsciously admitted by his imagination. ‘The Thorn’ seems, at any rate, to evidence this. There the power of uncanny suggestion is freely used, and Wordsworth had finally to leave the theme in an almost-Coleridgean confusion. In the light of Coleridge's later charge of inconsistency, it is interesting to discover Wordsworth involved in a preternaturalism almost as mystifying as in an old-world ballad, or as in ‘Christabel’ itself. Though, all over, the Alfoxden poetry of Wordsworth stands out distinctively as genuine poetry of humble life, there are yet doubtful applications of his self-confessed intention: to ‘build a princely throne on humble truth’. But for the ‘Tintern Abbey’ lines, the best and greatest of his contributions to ‘Lyrical Ballads’, the humility of the truth might be readily conceded. The princeliness of the throne, however, sometimes engenders misgivings. In this early work Wordsworth, perhaps too conscious of his own mental agitation, hardly touches the sublime or the tragic in human life. The tragedy in ‘The Thorn’ or ‘The Forsaken Indian Woman’ can only be held to be artifical. Still, the difficulty is not exactly there. It lies in Wordsworth's display of that inconstant sense of dignity which still dismays admirers. The humble, it is agreed, is a fit theme for poetry; but in one or two of these poems there seems to be an actual sublimation of the trivial, and the trivial, fortunately, rules itself out in great poetry. ‘Simon Lee’ contains beautiful lines and phrases and it carries a sentimental wistfulness, yet once or twice it descends to the trivial. But ‘The Last of the Flock’ sins more flagrantly against the great law of dignity. In Wordsworthian heroes who encounter misfortune we do not look for the burning indignation against, and magnificant resistance to, the evil their minds conceive, that we have in Hardy's most tragic figures. But neither do we expect such unmanly nervelessness as the hero of this poem manifests. We turn instinctively to Michael with his lofty nobility in adversity, or to the much-tried Mariner with a verve shaken but never lost.

It is possible, of course, to regard this period of Wordsworth's literary career, when Coleridge's influence upon him was most direct, as remarkable, not so much on account of the poetry he

wrote, but rather as the history of his soul. To that time we must attribute the chief part of that process of recovery from the shocks of revolution, of which Wordsworth has told us so much, to the full realization of the life inspired by ‘admiration, hope, and love’ towards which all true poets strive. But it does not necessarily follow that without the Revolution he would never have become a great poet, as Mr. Harper endeavours to make out. Just as the late war probably never converted anyone into an articulate poet who was not already a ‘silent’ one, so the elements which afterwards united and expressed themselves in Wordsworth's poetry were latent from boyhood. Who can read the first books of ‘The Prelude’ and doubt it?

 
‘Oh, then, the calm
 
And dead still water lay upon my mind
 
Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky,
 
Never before so beautiful, sank down
 
Into my heart, and held me like a dream!
 
Thus were my sympathies enlarged, and thus
 
Daily the common range of visible things
 
Grew dear to me.’

The Revolution, of course, could not but re-act upon such an acute mind as Wordsworth's. In his case we feel how true it is that an organism suffers proportionately to its sensibility. The misery that Wordsworth suffered between 1793 and the time of meeting with Coleridge was that of a tragic struggle between his heart and his mind. He lived long before the time when men shrink from the doctrine which insists on the inevitability of war. The conviction that Britain was fighting in an unjust cause was, with all the moral questions which arose from it, sufficient to keep him in an agony of suspense. It created the mood of burning indignation in which was penned the scathing letter intended for Bishop Watson, a mood which, however commendable, was subversive to the expression of great poetry. Only when this turbulent mood passed with the return of a settled faith did Wordsworth find himself as a poet. If the Revolution had been his inspiration we should have expected political poetry. But what is notable

about this spiritual restoration is that it produced no great poetry dealing with political subjects. Indeed, contrary to Professor Harper's belief, Wordsworh seems hardly to have been occupied with politics at all during the great Alfoxden days. Never did he require to seek adventitious support from exceptional events or actions; it was not a revolution in France that caused him to choose the commonplace stuff of life and set himself to reveal its depths. That a similar refutation is never deemed necessary in the case of Coleridge, who likewise was not untouched by the Revolutionary movement, is perhaps sufficient comment.

But if Wordsworth's Alfoxden poetry was not the outcome, unless it may be considered so indirectly, of a social and political upheaval, neither was it, despite its design, merely an experiment conceived by the probing mind of Wordsworth to give a poetic rendering to subjects hitherto counted beneath the dignity of the muse. It stands out certainly as a poetry of humble life, but in reading it it is possible to forget the poet's theoretic claim for peasants and their language, and appreciate the poetry as poetry. It justifies itself. Yet, as the result chiefly of the brilliant critical powers brought to bear on it by Coleridge in the ‘Biographia Literaria’, its peculiar interest and importance tend to be thought of as belonging more to the history of criticism than to the history of poetry. Wordsworth too engaged in criticism, by which he was as much in touch with Coleridge as by his poetry, though naturally the two cannot be separated. Coleridge's philosophy of poetry, his body of poetic theory, indeed, derived its origin in great measure from the influence of Wordsworth, an influence which was often antagonistic. Coleridge was both a literary critic proper, but it is with Coleridge the literary theorist's that Wordsworth's criticism takes rank, for it dealt chiefly with abstract principles, and little with particular works or particular writers. It is to be found in the preface to the second issue of ‘Lyrical Ballads’ in 1800; in an appendix-note on poetic diction to the first collected edition of the poems in 1815. The first preface is the true critical counterpart of Wordsworth's strongest young poetry. He intended the two to be complementary: the poetry was to illustrate the theory, and the theory was to explain the poetry. The specific objects of the preface of 1800 were,

firstly, to defend the style of ‘Lyrical Ballads’, and, secondly, to define and defend poetry; the defence of that extremely plain diction which created consternation in the literary world of the time. The main lines of the argument need but be touched on. The poet was to find his theme in ordinary life and simple humanity, and to deal with it in language formed out of the ordinary speech of men and women. The resultant poetry was to receive the colouring of the imagination, and to be surcharged with emotion. In the second place, Wordsworth discourses on the mission and methods of true poetry. He always considers the poet, in spite of the feeling which he claims for him, as a philosophical thinker who recollects, reflects, and selects, and who, though his immediate object is to give pleasure, is always more or less directly conscious of aiming at truth. Poetry takes its origin, Wordsworth held, from ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’. The poet is he who deliberately calls up in tranquillity impassioned ideas and situations, and who can find no better language to express them in than the ordinary speech of men. In all this Wordsworth seems to be feeling after a theory of imagination such as he expanded later in the preface and essay of 1815.

Coleridge, despite the reverence in which he held Wordsworth and his poetry, found much to object to in these theories, which Wordsworth worked out alone. True, they were colleagues, and together they planned a new poetry and published ‘Lyrical Ballads’. But collaboration ceased there. Coleridge was always interested and appreciative, but never uncritical, being, in fact, at times disapproving. In particular, he disapproved of the poetic diction and the fancy-and-the-imagination doctrines. He, however, did not enter the combat as a challenger until 1817 when was published the ‘Biographia Literaria’. It appears now that what was at first contemplated by Coleridge was a piece of prose to take the form of a preface to his poems, but that this preface grew into the literary autobiography which the ‘Biographia’ largely constitutes. There can be little doubt that the publishing of Wordsworth's preface of 1815 did much towards deciding him to expand on his original intention. About the same time he wrote to a friend: ‘I have given a full account of the controversy

concerning W.'s Poems and Theory, in which my name has been so constantly included. I have no doubt that W. will be displeased, but I have done my duty to myself and to the public.’

Wordsworth, of course, was displeased, as Coleridge well conjectured. H.C. Robinson in an entry in his ‘Diary’ wrote at the time: ‘I recollect hearing Hazlitt say that W. would not forgive a single censure, mingled with however great a mass of eulogy.’ At the close of the year (1817) Wordsworth came to London, and had much intercourse with his old friend. Before he returned to Westmorland he did what he could to further the plan suggested for Coleridge of taking up a course of lectures. On this it is pleasing to reflect, for the ‘Biographia Literaria’, however brilliant an an exposition of the critical art, was little calculated to wean the critics and the public generally from their concerted condemnation of Wordsworth's poetry to a sensible recognition of its intrinsic worth. It was, in fact, more likely to confirm the bigoted verdict of twenty years, and to draw admiring attention to Coleridge as a critic of the first rank. Wordsworth's life-long disregard of critics is, of course, historic. His immovable self-complacency, with all the stiffness in which he could sustain it, was born of the absolute conviction that his work would yet come into its own. Never at any time, though he was the constant butt of reviewers and was rewarded by everyone else with cold contempt, or, worse, with studied neglect, had he the slightest dubiety about his final place in poetry. To read of him that, being introduced once to the magnificent library of a friend he calmly proceeded to select from its shelves a volume containing his own poems, evinces an effrontery which, however amazing, well-nigh excites admiration. And as we know now, it was amply justified in the end. But what a chance the ‘Biographia Literaria’ afforded! Wordsworth might well have been excused for thinking that the tide was about to turn in his favour at last. If anyone knew of his deep poetic strivings it was surely Coleridge. But no, he must remain still in the wilderness and allow a further twenty years to run their course till he himself had slowly but surely educated the public taste to receive his works as he had already determined the public should receive them. At the same time, there can be little doubt that Wordsworth, for all the just feeling of confidence

the sense of the excellence of his own poems gave him, felt the criticisms contained in the ‘Biographia’ as keenly as, with his sublime egotism, he was capable of being affected by any criticism whatsoever. While he was as far off as ever of resigning to chance what he deemed to be immortal, it was almost as though he had said at the last in his disappointment, ‘Et tu, Brute?’ To Crabb Robinson he confessed that no man had completely understood him, not excepting Coleridge, who was not happy enough to enter into his feelings. To Wordsworth actual resentment where Coleridge was concerned was probably out of the question. He was the one man to whose judgment he did occasionally defer. Yet, to some extent, he was justified in feeling aggrieved at the treatment meted out to him by Coleridge in the ‘Biographia Literaria’. That book, though certainly rather desultory as befitted Coleridge's nature, is one of the landmarks of criticism, and more particularly of romantic criticism; in the light shed by an absolutely great critic, it reveals the inner workings of a literary movement in which he bore a chief part. But the Wordsworthion criticism contained in it has not all an equal absolute value.

Part of it is criticism, not of Wordsworths' poetry, but of his theories of poetry; and with these theories Coleridge had uncomfortable personal entanglements. The theory of poetry which the ‘Biographia’ exemplified was excogitated by the two poets on the Nether Stowey road and among the Quantocks, but when Wordsworth published the full account of the poetry in later issues, Coleridge did not find himself altogether in agreement with it. And much, therefore, of his book is occupied with dissent from Wordsworth's doctrines of imagination and poetic diction, and with a display of the inconsistencies between his theory and his practice. Wordsworth's execution was admittedly far from beng conformable to this theory. It may well be that the poet himself could not have told how he came to write verses like ‘We are Seven’ or ‘The Solitary Reaper’ - save in the language of poetry itself, in, for example, the strangely Blakelike lines of ‘The Fountain’ -

 
‘I live and sing my idle songs
 
Upon these happy plains.’

Yet we cannot think Coleridge hypercritical in conducting, side by side, a strict enquiry into both theory and practice. The brilliance of the thought, the keenness of the perception, and the tremendous critical acumen, displayed, keep us from doing him such an injustice; it is impossible to feel the reasoning otherwise than as a warm-hearted, if somewhat misunderstood, attempt to set Wordsworth and his poetry right with the world.

Above all, the critic departs from the side-tracking ways of the reviewers of the ‘Edinburgh’ and the ‘Quarterly’ and from that indulgence in personalities so strongly denounced in contemporaries by Hazlitt, and never denies Wordsworth true poetic genius. He is far from being all praise, especially as his task committed him to correlate poetry to corresponding principle. Wordsworth's egotism, his matter-of-factness, his prosaic detail, are complained of. Nor was he able to praise Wordsworth's addiction to rural forms of low life. With reservations he was prepared to admit the essential dignity of the humblest human being, and the equality, in certain respects, of all men; but these, he considered, were facts for the moralist rather than the poet: the poet's primary aim is aesthetic; and it is somewhat morbid to derive pleasure exclusively, or even chiefly, from the lowest rank of life, especially when, as in the case of the Wanderer in ‘The Excursion’, the sentiments attributed to a pedlar would have been more natural to a more dignified personage. In arraigning Wordsworth on the score of definite didacticism, Coleridge was able to press home the charge, being free himself from any trammels of the kind. Not that Wordsworth's verse has suffered any great violence in consequence. There is, however, an interest in the opposed opinions of the two on the subject. Coleridge, we know, deprecated the attempt to read any particular lesson into ‘The Ancient Mariner’. Yet, notwithstanding this, ‘The Ancient Mariner’, by virtue of being permeated with a wide charity, a humanitarian spirit, is one of the truly great moral poems in our literature. In this respect, it may be placed beside Wordsworth's ‘Hart-Leap Well’, the last verses of which afford an illuminating parallel to the conclusion of Coleridge's poem.

 
‘One lesson, shepherd, let us two divide,
 
Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals,
 
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
 
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.’

Finally, Coleridge complained of an occasional want of the sense of proportion in Wordsworth; of an approach at times to ‘mental bombast’, the use of ‘thoughts and images too great for the subject’. He does not actually impute to him a lack of humour, but such a deficiency in his sense of proportion as is thus made out implies that. Wordsworth's humour was certainly a relatively small element in his constitution; but humour was there, and of a genuine kind. And paradoxical as it may appear from ‘results’, it was never more apparent than in the Alfoxden poems. Further, of the first ‘Lyrical Ballads’ and of ‘Peter Bell’ it is actually a main inspiration, and the failure to recognize this explains and condemns much of the criticisms heaped upon Wordsworth's early poetry. Poetry of that kind has three incontestable claims. It may plead the oneness of human nature common to all men with its possibilities of grandeur and tragedy; it lends itself to pathos; and it lends itself to humour. Few of Wordsworth's contributions to the first edition of ‘Lyrical Ballads’ and of his West-country poetry outside the limits of that edition completely satisfy the first claim. ‘Tintern Abbey’ is the great and obvious example. In the matter of the second, contemporary critics allowed him to have achieved bathos, but true pathos, no! They were, in the main, absurdly mistaken; though any pathos such a poem as ‘The Last of the Flock’ might have possessed is vitiated by the obscurity and doubtful ethics of the situation. But that a large part of the significance, and significance for good, of the Alfoxden poetry should depend upon humour, that quality with which Wordsworth was so slenderly endowed, was something that never occurred to the critics of the time - or even to some of later days. Swinburne speaks of ‘The Idiot Boy’ and ‘The Thorn’ as ‘doleful examples of eccentricity in dullness’. But Coleridge's judgment, though he criticised both poems, was very different. We cannot but feel that he made a careful endeavour to understand the intention of each of these maligned

ballad poems. Though there is probably not one of them which has not received sterling praise from at least one capable judge, Coleridge, perhaps, comes nearest of all in doing them collective justice. Though he errs sometimes, it results in several instances from the natural tendency of the philosopher to become over-analytic. It was certainly characteristic of Coleridge to enter into intricate processes of reasoning in elucidation when a simple explanation might have been as satisfactory and as correct. But in some of his remarks on ‘The Idiot Boy’ he comes within measurable distance of the ‘humour’ theory, though they are only an alternative explanation, and, perversely enough, the poem warrants censure if capable of being so interpreted. Coleridge writes: ‘The other (explanation) is, that the idiocy of the boy is so evenly balanced by the folly of the mother, as to present to the general reader rather a laughable burlesque on the blindness of anile dotage, than an analytic display of maternal affection in its ordinary workings.’ ‘The Idiot Boy’ is laughable, but it is hardly ‘burlesque’. Burlesque is just what we cannot associate with Wordsworth in these simple, yet heart-felt, tales. Wordsworth was neither non-moral nor yet satirical. But they are laughable - because they are essentially humorous poems.

‘The Idiot Boy’, ‘Goody Blake’, and ‘Peter Bell’ are outstanding in this connection, and, realized thus, there seems no reason why they should seem ridiculous or other than successful and delightful. ‘The Idiot Boy’, about which many foolish things have been written, is almost as mirth-provoking as ‘John Gilpin’. Its fun is less rollicking, but the dignity of the respective situations seems about on a level; and the atmosphere and local colouring of ‘The Idiot Boy’ are no whit less poetic than they are in Cowper's classic. Wordsworth himself records that he was never happier than during the extemporare composition of this poem as he walked in the groves round Alfoxden. Coleridge makes little reference to ‘Goody Blake’ (or, as he emphasizes, ‘Harry Gill’). It is a ballad-idyll of peasant life, in which likewise a light sprinkling of preternatural suggestion is laid on a basis of verisimilitude in incident, the excellence of the lyrical style being again secured by the humour of the treatment. Coleridge makes no mention of ‘Peter Bell’, but it bears an even deeper charm in the humour of its style.

Here, it may be well to remark, the application of style to Wordsworth of all poets sounds like paradox, for it is another quality the possession of which is generally denied him. True, just as his sense of humour was inconstant, so his style was uncertain and variable. But good verse, it is clear, is never written in a bad style, which is tantamount to saying that it is impossible in poetry to separate matter and form. To that rule Wordsworth's Alfoxden poetry proves no exception. And though Coleridge was conscious of what he calls the ‘inconstancy’ of Wordsworth's style, his frequent lapses from the distinguished into the prosaic, he had the insight, nevertheless, to take entire stock of it and to find room to bespeak its praises too. In particular, he was impressed by the appropriate nature of his words, their ‘untranslatableness in words of the same language without injury to the meaning’, Wordsworth aimed, undoubtedly, at extreme verbal exactitude, and in his style he found not only a literary element but a moral one also, a proof of truthfulness as well as of artistic ability. His style, like his matter, changed comparatively little in the course of his literary life, and never from the time of ‘Lyrical Ballads’ did he write anything very conspicuously marked by humour. The conviction grows that in some subtle way the influence of Coleridge lies behind these facts. Not for a moment is it inferred that Wordsworth modelled himself in any essential upon Coleridge. Coleridge was, during the period of their closest communion, a young man of twenty-five, and, therefore, little beyond feeling a way to a style of his own (indeed, that was to come most notably through later German influence). In any case, Wordsworth would have scorned to be beholden to anyone in a way that a pupil is to his master. ‘There have been greater poets than Wordsworth,’ says Professor Bradley, ‘but none more original.’ Nothing can surpass Wordsworth's sturdy independence of mind. Yet, somehow, it seems a correct assumption to make that it was through Coleridge's commendation that Wordsworth was constrained to persevere in writing poetry of the description which had procured him such a disciple. It is not retraction to say that even Wordsworth, the most self-assured of men, could have been aware but dimly at first of his own peculiar powers, and that through Coleridge came confirmed belief. Though

Coleridge in the beginning probably exerted more influence through the influence he felt than through that which he aroused, the advance made by Wordsworth in the two years of their companionship was marvellous. Before he was influenced at all by the philosophy of the young Neo-Platonist, Wordsworth was stimulated during their early interviews by his frank and genuine admiration. His accommodating temper and his mental alertness, together with his ready and sincere encouragement, helped him into ‘that blessed mood’, so requisite to the poet of lofty sentiment, when not all

 
‘The dreary intercourse of daily life,
 
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
 
Our cheerful faith.’

That is something not to be measured in terms of material interchange, but to be discovered in the light of spiritual values; and these we can but guess at where a Coleridge is concerned.

So far, it might appear as though Wordsworth had received everything and given practically nothing in return beyond, at second hand, an idea, and a few lines to ‘The Ancient Mariner’. That, however, was far from being the truth of the relationship. Coleridge was, indeed, the only man who influenced Wordsworth's self-reliant nature, and it can be but emphasized again how impossible it is to measure the springs which he unsealed in those twelve months at Nether Stowey especially. But he received in giving: from that period date ‘Christabel’ and ‘The Ancient Mariner’ which between them make up his own title to fame. Nothing else of the poetry of Coleridge, except the fragment, ‘Kubla Khan’, and, possibly, the two lyrics, ‘Love’ and ‘Youth and Age’, approach this early excellence. If Wordsworth conduced in any marked manner to the achieving of such a truly gorgeous output of poetry, he must have made a ready impression upon the mind of his friend. And this we must understand he did, for Wordsworth's was a creative mind, making ideas its own by bringing deep and deliberate thought to bear on all that interested, excited and puzzled it. Though Coleridge's presence, personality and intellect led him to widen the range of his thought,

not at once was their influence apparent. But to Coleridge Wordsworth was from the beginning of their magnificent friendship a force so powerful that one of his nature could not but reflect something of its effects in the work closest to his heart. Temperamentally, each was the antithesis of the other; Coleridge a dreamer of dreams who had sprung from ‘the English Italy’, and Wordsworth a solid mountaineer of simple character belonging almost to Scotland. In the words of M. Legouis, ‘Wordsworth was stern and unyielding.... inclined to hide the warmth of his feelings under an air of cold reserve.... Coleridge, to no less an extent, was unreserved, quick to catch enthusiasm.’ Small wonder it is, then, that Coleridge, who already in meditations and dreams had begun his long-continued worship of Wordsworth, should make a ready response, even before their mutual footing was rightly determined. The psychological difference of the two is brought out by the facts that what Wordsworth said or wrote of the poetry of Coleridge is practically negligible, what Coleridge said and wrote of Wordsworth's, especially in his staunch early partisanship, would fill volumes if capable of being collected. But, perhaps, enough has been gathered. We smile now at the echoes of some of his opinions; that, for example, he would rather have written ‘Ruth’ and ‘Lucy Gray’ than a million such poems as ‘Christabel’; of ‘The Borderers’, that it has in it ‘those profound touches of the human heart’ found often in Shakespeare, ‘but in Wordsworth there are no inequalities’! Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It was true also of Coleridge's infatuation, for imitation of Wordsworth Coleridge attempted in a flagrant manner by incorporating in the traitor of his own ‘Osorio’ some characteristics of the villain of ‘The Borderers’. For two momentous years Wordsworth was a focal centre for Coleridge, for Coleridge who afterwards became a focal centre for his entire generation. Could Wordsworth's influence have been but great, immeasurable! True, Coleridge never came to write upon a child crying for the loss of her cloak or on an old man poking his stick into a mere to find leeches. Yet, though he soared into the empyrean, even he sometimes, as in the story of the Ancient Mariner, spoke the language, and moved the hearts, of common folk, and then, it can be safely

affirmed, his sublimity had something in common with Wordsworth's. Coleridge, as has been shown, quickly recognized and admired the predominant faculty in his friend's mind. More than that, he even sought to produce its effects in his own work, though ultimately their paths led far apart in the process. But investigation into this period of closest association of Wordsworth and Coleridge can no more be prolonged. Innumerable as were the points of contact between life and work during that time, it was far from exhausting the influence and counter-influence which related them. Had that ‘best portion’ of Coleridge's career and that most salutary time for the soul of Wordsworth continued....! But it is profitless to speculate.

The connection of the two poets with the Quantock country carried with it the cause of its own dissolution. They had been drawn thither largely by revolutionary sympathies, and for revolutionary sympathies they were practically driven from it, though by 1798 both had moved far from the ideals of any section of revolutionists in France or England. But the orthodox conservatism of Somersetshire took no heed of fine distinctions. Months before their retirement from Somerset actually occurred, the Wordsworths, realizing, without being unduly concerned, that such was inevitable planned to go to Germany in company with Coleridge. In the autumn of 1798 they set out, but, after landing at Hamburg, they parted in a few days. Their so-doing has often been misinterpreted, but it is now proved to have taken place under no shadow of unfriendliness. It was, in fact, not at all surprising. Coleridge brought to Germany a mind loaded with contemporary philosophy, which had been moulded largely by the mature philosophy of Kant. In visiting, therefore, the country whose greatest philosopher's influence had done so much in assisting his mind to a strong and coherent philosophic doctrine, Coleridge himself embarked upon a serious mission. Metaphysical studies were engaged in immediately. Simultaneously he worked hard to perfect himself in the language, a task essential to his main purpose; and matriculated at the University of Göttingen, where he collected materials for a life of Lessing. Coleridge, in fact, passed from the period of his most systematic poetic labour to that of his most systematic philosophic cultivation. Indeed, his

deportment during this sojourn abroad was something in the nature of a triumph for him. And, as a result, he was to be identified more nearly than with anything else, with the mysteries of German idealism. Kant's system became, as M. Legouis says, ‘the very basis of the doctrine which he made it his mission to teach his countrymen, and on which he strove to reconstruct the religion of the Church of England’.

How different with Wordsworth! With Wordsworth the expedition was very nearly a failure. It provided him with no fresh inspiration nor did it add much to his knowledge of the language or its literature. He certainly wrote some of his best poetry, but nothing that might not have been written as well in England. Yet there was enough both in German prose and verse, it might have been thought, to have arrested a mind like Wordsworth's, and given it a powerful bent. But ideas which Coleridge could adopt - and readily adopt, since they harmonised well with his own tendencies to mysticism - were entirely new to Wordsworth. And, in addition, he was intensely insular. He could feel the beating of the universal heart, but not easily through books; it had to communicate itself to him though the mountain solitudes of his native land. Wordsworth was a philosopher, indeed, and an idealist; but his philosophy was his own; he was no student, and would never have had patience or docility enough to enrich his mind with the systematic thought of the Germans, expressed in a language he always found difficult. And so, though he was far from being idle during his stay at Goslar, his energy was the energy of reminiscence. While he walked about the ghost-haunted imperial city, his spirit wandered still in lakeland or among the Alfoxden groves, and his outlook lost nothing of its individuality. He was never really at home in his German environment. The picture of the poet sitting over the dreary un-English stove, and pouring, with home-sick longings all the time, over German, contrasts vividly with that of Coleridge, easily fraternising with Klopstock, Schlegel, and a host of their compatriots. Wordsworth in his whimsical

 
‘A plague on your languages, German and Norse!
 
Let me have the song of the kettle’

shows a similar sudden rising detestation of German institutions as Rupert Brooke's ‘Grantchester’ lines

 
‘Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot,
 
And there the shadowed waters fresh
 
Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.’

It seems, then, utterly illogical to round off these remarks by saying that in many things there was actually a German bent to the mind of Wordsworth. Coleridge's mind had assuredly such a bent; in fact, it was altogether more German than English. But to suggest seriously that Wordsworth had the slightest Germanic affinity, Wordsworth who differed less than the other great ones from the norm of Englishmen in gifts of the mind and in ideals of comfort, may seem illogical. When the full results of the Goslar sojourn are realized, however, it is far from being so. But the results were already inferred to have been productions such as ‘Nutting’, ‘Lucy Gray’, ‘Ruth’, and the delightful ‘Lucy’ poems, than any of which nothing could be more English. In these we certainly have the first-fruits of a prolific period, but that hurricane energy of reminiscence and versemaking brought about greater results still.

Amid them all Wordsworth was preoccupied with the idea of a great poem on the relations of Man and Nature, such an idea, in fact, as had already haunted him not a little under Coleridge's tutelage. This was to be his life-work, his epic; and Coleridge it was, Coleridge the devoted student of German metaphysics, who laid the foundations for Wordsworth to build his optimism and his natural religion upon; or more accurately, as M. Legouis expresses it, ‘he put into his head the idea of a mighty synthesis’. With, therefore, an appropriateness pleasing to reflect on, Wordsworth, as he drove towards Coleridge at Göttingen, began the poem which was to embody the idea by means of a record of the paths by which Nature and he won to each other, ‘The Prelude’. Through that account of the ‘Growth of a Poet's Mind’ his connection with Coleridge runs like a golden thread. To him it was dedicated, and by its many touching references to himself Coleridge was almost overcome in reading it. For him to hear

it read through, as he did, must have been at once an exultation and an agony. Tortured as he was by self-pity and self-contempt for the lethargising of his own gifts, he was moved, in a great burst of admiration, to pen a fresh effusion in honour of ‘that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown’. The truth is that in many essentials their art was akin. Above all, in their feeling for Nature, they constantly met on common ground. Both could describe the very spirit of Nature's phases in a language of the homeliest simplicity. Thus, Coleridge in ‘Christabel’, a poem of the most gorgeous texture, could write

 
‘The thin gray cloud is spread on high,
 
It covers but not hides the sky;
 
The moon is behind, and at the full,
 
And yet she looks both small and dull,’

and even through an entire poem could approach to Wordsworth's faithful rendering of Nature and her re-action upon the mind. ‘This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison’ is a delightful example of the poetry of natural description in combination with a human interest, for at times of high emotions of re-awakened interest in life and living, the poets' feeling for Nature did not mean mere appreciation of her wonder and beauty. They looked on her, in her entirety, as an expression of the divine; and in her organic whole all animated beings were one in fellowship. Their attitude to her was bound up with their philosophy, and was extended to active sympathy with all sentient creatures.

Coleridge's responsiveness to external influences was peculiarly his own, though to Wordsworth he speaks of all

 
‘Commune with thee had opened out.’

In subtlety and persuasiveness of thought, however, he far surpassed the other; and, since the very keenness of his sensibilities were bound up with the close connection between his feelings and his intellect, he always abandoned himself to the feelings of the moment, knowing that they were dictated by thought. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was thoroughly anti-scientific and

anti-rationalistic in temper, and, therefore, in radical opposition to all forms of philosophy which assume that the intellect is the only guide of truth. He advanced to his transcendent belief in a world of divine reality behind and within the ordinary world of experience and observation by three stages. These mark a steady awakening of love of Nature as his knowledge of life deepened and mellower years brought ‘the philosophic mind’. At first it was only a healthy boy's delight in the open air. Soon this gave place to an intermediate stage when the sensuous beauty of Nature was loved with an unreflecting passion altogether untouched by intellectual interests. But beyond this he passed, into a mood of mind in which his love became profoundly religious in character. The world for him grew to be alive with strange hints and symbols. His spiritual faculties, now quickened into activity, found their chief satisfaction in intimate communion with the indwelling spirit of external things, which were conceived to be subjective as well as objective. But in this communion the spiritual faculties were themselves, ‘not as in the hour of thoughtless youth’, the intermediaries and interpreters. This delightful and awe-inspiring sense of fitness between the mind and the ‘external’ world - a correspondence testifying to the unity of Nature - became the cardinal feature of Wordsworth' poetic philosophy. In order to attain to it, he had to become a ‘metaphysical’ poet and to use language suggesting the idealistic philosophy which was growing up contemporaneously in Germany.

Coleridge, on the other hand, attained more automatically to what was, if anything, a Christian pantheism (for every theist must be a pantheist too) by his studied absorption of that philosophy. And in the different modes of their acquisition of it lies, perhaps, the key to the voluminous quantity of Wordsworth's nature poetry and the comparative paucity of Coleridge's. On his return from Germany Coleridge was evidently unable to make up his mind to settle far from Wordsworth, and took up residence at Greta Hall, twelve miles from Grasmere. Thereafter for many years, unless for varying intervals of absence, he was constantly with the Wordsworths, delighting them, distressing them, enriching them, preying on them. Dorothy Wordsworth's journal of the period is full of Coleridge, full of the old affectionate appre-

ciation, full also of a keener pain. Coleridge was then barely thirty, yet what Carlyle said of him in reviewing his complete career was already applicable to him: ‘To the man himself Nature had given, in high measure, the seeds of a noble endowment; and to unfold it had been forbidden him.’ It was almost the case of Burns repeated, of a spirit, ‘which might have soared could it but have walked’. Wordsworth, Coleridge considered, as neither more nor less than a hypochondriac, who was happy not because of his temperament but in spite of it. Wordsworth was happy, thus, because he was a philosoher. But Coleridge who was a systematic philosopher became a hypochondriac. To his friends his brooding melancholy caused grave anxiety; and the inactivity it induced in his creative powers was, besides, tantalising to those who were convinced he had still much to do. The climax came in the shape of the famous and much-discussed ‘Dejection’ ode. Its note of dejection is unmistakable, but something of his inimitable artistry, the artistry of ‘Christabel’ and of ‘The Ancient Mariner’, is in its accents. Looking despondently across Derwentwater Coleridge is haunted by a wild ominious stanza from ‘the grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens’. There is hopeless blank despair in the lines -

 
‘A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
 
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
 
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
 
In word, or sigh, or tear.’

Tranquil Nature, the aspect of Nature of which he had sung in his ‘Nightingale’ poem, can do nothing for him. He thinks of Wordsworth as he looks up at the beauty of the sky. At least, he thinks of one ‘Edmund’, and (literary fictions notwithstanding) by ‘Edmund’ is intended, unmistakably, Wordsworth. Edmund, as Alfred Ainger points out in his critique of the ode, tells nothing, suggests nothing, and is a name Coleridge was fond of, using it elsewhere for imaginary persons. There seems really no ‘problem’ at all, especially, as now appears certain, William was the name which had its place in the original draft and Edmund but a later substitute. Throughout, the Wordsworthian

references are as clear as they might well be. And there is deep pathos in the fact that it was to Wordsworth that Coleridge's thoughts turned, ‘not only as the confident of his griefs, but as supplying the most poignant contrast to his own condition and state of mind’1). As telling us what the author thought of Wordsworth, the ode becomes as interesting in its bearing upon one as upon the other. After describing the grief which has taken possession of him, he exclaims that he can no longer gain from Nature the joy she used to impart, for he can no longer bring joy to meet her half-way; and he has discovered, with Wordsworth, that she can give nothing to those who do not come read to receive, for

 
‘We receive but what we give,
 
And in our life alone does nature live.’

This is the key-note of the poem, and it could hardly have been given sadder expression than by thus contrasting himself with one who possessed in abundant measure just those qualities in which he was wanting.

It is joy that he lacks, the joy that makes beauty, and must be within as well as without. And it is joy, in more than any vulgar sense of the word, that he has lost -

 
‘Afflictions bow me down to earth;
 
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth,
 
But ah! each visitation
 
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
 
My shaping spirit of Imagination.’

The tragic conviction was forcing itself upon him, too, that his poetic powers - and to Coleridge these centred round his imagination - were growing powerless within him. To Wordsworth the conveying of such mournful intelligence through an ode addressed to himself must have been painful in the extreme. Lines written in the same year in his copy of ‘The Castle of Indolence’

were his most obvious poetic response to it. These lines are tinged with an air of melancholy, and the noble portrait of Coleridge, round which they centre, disclose, in turn, how much Coleridge meant to Wordsworth. In the same year, too, in fact but a month after the ‘Ode to Wordsworth’, ‘The Leech-Gatherer’ was written. It was founded upon an actual incident, but since that incident was by no means recent, Mr. Ainger attempts to read into certain of its lines Wordsworth's solicitude and sorrow for his friend. And the hypothesis seems not unsound. The touching story of the old leech-gatherer is related to provide a moral for Wordsworth's own musings. His pervading thoughts are still of the contrast between joy and despondency, and of ‘mighty Poets in their misery dead’.

 
‘We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
 
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.’

The line, ‘By our own spirits are we deified’, is a full echo of the moral of Coleridge's ode -

 
‘We receive but what we give.’

Coleridge, with his mighty mind overthrown, can, in his hopelessness, go no further. But Wordsworth, the epitome of ‘man's unconquerable mind’, cannot stop there. And precisely in this power of his to continue, and finally resolve, the dictum, jointly arrived at, into something of true import and positive worth, lies the reason of Wordsworth's completeness as a poet of Nature. Coleridge's natural philosophy broke down at last, but Wordsworth's never. In the impasse Coleridge was thrown back on his own mental resources, and the old antagonism between mind and matter re-asserted itself. But Wordsworth resigned himself to the virtue, the active principle, he believed to inhabit in external nature -

 
‘I have felt
 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
 
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
 
Of something far more deeply interfused,
 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
 
And the round ocean, and the living air,
 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
 
A motion and a spirit that impels
 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
 
And rolls through all things.’

It was this submission to, and trust in, the ‘Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe’ that enabled him, in great measure, to realize his theory of poetry as ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’, though for the latter half of his life the pulse of the emotion was feeble and there seemed little but tranquil reflection left.

Yet, at one time, Coleridge's poetry likewise fulfilled that theory, but in his case comparative stagnation arose not through a redistribution of his emotional interest in the cosmic scheme, but through the ravages wrought on his mind by opium. He could not find happiness even amid the most exquisite surroundings. His natural pleasure was poisoned, and when this ensued emotion, finding no outlet from himself, finally consumed him. He had found nature too late, and too early he lost her. In Wordsworth, though he was unable to interpret ‘nature's holy plan’ with assurance until the influence of boyhood had been chastened by social experience and political shocks, the conditions were already present when he was haunting the shores of Esthwaite and Winandermere, storing up the stuff of poetry -

 
‘Those first affections,
 
Those shadowy recollections,
 
Which, be they what they may,
 
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
 
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
 
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
 
Of the eternal Silence.’

But there was no such range of experience for Coleridge to build his ‘circle of thought’ around; and when he came to steep

himself in nature it was too late for him to collect the store of precise images and minute observations which had been Wordsworth's since childhood. His nature knowledge could, therefore, be but fragmentary by comparison. His keen perception, however, was turned to good account in nature as in romance and, for a time, the element of tuth necessary to complete the effect of imaginative scenes was imparted by sheer divination. But the revolutionary violence of his imagination spent itself, and his art declined equally in both branches. Too many complications arose for the distracted Coleridge to know the mood that was responsible for the exultant declaration -

 
‘Nor less I deem that there are Powers
 
Which of themselves our minds impress;
 
That we can feed this mind of ours
 
In a wise passiveness.’

Thenceforth, with the loss of faith and personal confidence, the poet was but a shadow of his former exuberant self. The former Pantisocrat turned into a narrow patriot, and eventually into a strong Conservative. Revolutionary idealism was a dead thing of the past: ‘the doors were shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding was low.’

Socially and politically, Wordsworth became all that Coleridge did - and about the same time. But apparently the revolutionary dust was more clinging in his case; at any rate, it was not so abruptly shaken off. Though it is inconceivable that Wordsworth would not have been a great poet but for the occurrence of the French Revolution, it is also true that that tremendous event forced his mind to dwell on many social and ethical problems which, otherwise, must have had much weaker presentment. Undoubtedly much intellectual data was obtained thereby which eventually found expression in his poetry, beginning with the sonnets of 1802. ‘Recantation’ was the last of Coleridge's poems produced definitely under pressure of the French Revolution. But from Wordsworth no formal capitulation ever came. Adapting himself to the changed viewpoint Napoleonic aggression rendered imperative, he continued to draw upon that teeming mine of ore,

so that his passion for public liberty was almost as strong as his passion for nature.

And, now, the chief points at which Wordsworth and Coleridge touched one another in the course of their literary histories have been indicated. It would have been pressed further, much further, but reason - and authenticity - step in to decree otherwise. The inter-relationship was of far-reaching import, bu they were not just all in all to each other. Mental types like Wordsworth and Coleridge do not sit down together with heads bent over the one parchment in community of purpose. Their relationship was more ennobling and less sophisticated inner significance; no one will ever be able to know fully. Yet, so much is certain and so much material is there to glean from, that what is reaped cannot be left to be dispersed again without an attempt at a nearer valuation. In comparison with what is known of Wordsworth and Coleridge conjointly, the relationships between Shakespeare and Marlowe, Shakespeare and Chapman, Shakespeare and Middleton, seem flimsy almost to breaking point. Yet, all of them are ‘confirmed’. Apart from what is incapable of being known now, it is improbable that any other pair of English poets ever came together in the same way, by deliberate design, and remained literary confreres by an indissoluble attachment. The friendship of Wordsworth and Coleridge is, indeed, one of the most beautiful on record, fit almost to take rank with the great classical instances, Hercules and Hylas, Pylades and Orestes. From the day that they first met at Bristol, the city of Chatterton, until the day, nearly forty years later, of Coleridge's death, their friendship was almost continuous. The only interruption to it was the unfortunate misunderstanding - felt keenly by both - which lasted from 1810 until 1812, in which year they were happily reconciled by their new mutual friend and warm admirer, H.C. Robinson. Wordsworth, with sixteen years yet to live, wrote no ‘Lycidas’ or ‘Adonais’ in 1834; nor was any such needed: his most monumental work, ‘The Prelude’, was written also for Coleridge, ‘the brother of his soul’, and its subscription to his name and fame is imperishable.

The question of the affinities of the great contemporaries is not, of course, to be solved merely by collecing the opinions of

each concerning the other, or by uniting them to the rest of the external evidence available. Nor is it to be explained away by segregating them, with Southey, in a circle of Jeffrey's devising and styling them ‘Lakists’, intending to connote thereby poetic incompetence and triviality parading as affected simplicity and pretentious philosophy. ‘Lake School’ limits, by the arbitrariness and utter falseness of their application, could not long brand Wordsworth and Coleridge as protagonists of a minor, almost puerile, reaction, and cut them off from the great poetic movement of their age. The success of the latter has long since ensured them positions in the forefront of English poetry and discounted the charge of sectarianism. Their aims, with a few modifications in either case, were held in common, though there was no concerted line of action to secure these. ‘My relations with Schiller’, said Goethe, ‘rested on the decided tendency of both of us towards a single aim, and our common activity rested on the means by which we endeavoured to secure that aim.’ So it was with Wordsworth and Coleridge. They, too, knew a ‘common activity’ in the sacred interests of poetry, but still each is inimitable. It was almost as though each was the complement of the other, and that their entire resources were pooled to permit the most being made of the common stock, in accordance with their respective talents. It will, of course, always remain a matter of contention who gave, and who received, most. And there is even a view that the connection was not for their highest good at all; that Wordsworth especially suffered on account of it, and was only capable of producing his best when he got away from the spell of Coleridge's German metaphysics. But this view is quite untenable, and the facts refute it completely. A recent writer on Wordsworth, Professor Garrod, takes up a position exactly opposite to this view in so far as it relates to the adverse effect of Coleridge upon Wordsworth. He holds that the decline of the latter commenced about the time of their estrangement. That took place in 1810, and the main body of Wordsworth's best work was certainly done by that date. But Coleridge's outstanding poetry was all written twelve years previously. In fact, the gap separating its three marvellous constituents and the rest of his poetry is not to be measured. Never after his residence at Nether

Stowey was he capable of intensive poetizing at all. His customary mode was to work by fits and starts, and to that mode he soon resorted. His hand had been kept to the plough during that time by the aid of some mightly stimulus, by a greater than himself, by Wordsworth. Common-sense dictates it, and many indications confirm it, so.

‘“The Borderers”’, says Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ‘was the sort of stuff Wordsworth wrote before he visited Nether Stowey’, and he goes on to demonstrate how expression came to him with a rush when his mind had been unlocked by Coleridge. Coleridge's influence was admittedly great, but was it so all-embracing as this piece of critical calculation would seek to make out? Was Wordsworth the kind of man to be, by himself, helpless and impotent? I think not. Nothing, in fact, could repress a poetic genius such as his. To him poetry was as the very breath of life. These two - poetry and life - were regarded almost as the one operation, as cause and effect. Before he met Coleridge he had also written ‘Descriptive Sketches, and ‘An Evening Walk’, containing at least the embryonic Wordsworthian seed. Without having the desire to be dogmatic upon the question. I consider, then, that Wordsworth's influence over Coleridge was stronger, and in its results more enduring, than was Coleridge's over his fellow-poet. But above all such considerations the great fact emerges that, though amenable to the influence of one another in a way that they were to that of no one else, yet their individual identities were at no time endangered. Nothing is so arresting in Wordsworth as his essential solitariness, while for Coleridge it is possible to advance claims to consideration as the most original poet of the ‘nineteenth century’, which dates from 1798.


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