A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century Part 6

is, of course, from Coleridge's

"The water, like a witch's oils, Burned green and blue and white."

In "The Lord of the Isles" Scott describes the "elvish l.u.s.tre" and "livid flakes" of the phosph.o.r.escence of the sea, and cites, in a note, the description, in "The Ancient Mariner," of the sea snakes from which

"The elvish light Fell off in h.o.a.ry flakes."

The most direct descendant of "Christabel" was "The Eve of St. Agnes."

Madeline's chamber, "hushed, silken, chaste," recalls inevitably the pa.s.sage in the older poem:

"The moon shines dim in the open air, And not a moonbeam enters here.

But they without its light can see The chamber carved so curiously, Carved with figures strange and sweet, All made out of the carver's brain, For a lady's chamber meet: The lamp with twofold silver chain Is fastened to an angel's feet."

The rest of Coleridge's ballad work is small in quant.i.ty and may be dismissed briefly. "Alice du Clos" has good lines, but is unimportant as a whole. The very favourite poem "Love" is a modern story enclosing a mediaeval one. In the moonshine by the ruined tower the guileless Genevieve leans against the statue of an armed man, while her lover sings her a tale of a wandering knight who bore a burning brand upon his shield and went mad for the love of "The Lady of the Land." [25]

The fragment ent.i.tled "The Dark Ladie" was begun as a "sister tale" to "Love." The hero is a "knight that wears the griffin for his crest."

There are only fifteen stanzas of it, and it breaks off with a picture of an imaginary bridal procession, whose "nodding minstrels" recall "The Ancient Mariner," and incidentally some things of Chatterton's. Lines of a specifically romantic colouring are of course to be found scattered about nearly everywhere in Coleridge; like the musical little song that follows the invocation to the soul of Alvar in "Remorse":

"And at evening evermore, In a chapel on the sh.o.r.e, Shall the chanters sad and saintly-- Yellow tapers burning faintly-- Doleful ma.s.ses chant for thee, _Miserere Domine_!"

or the wild touch of folk poesy in that marvellous opium dream, "Kubla Khan"--the "deep romantic chasm":

"A savage place, as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon lover."

Or the well-known ending of "The Knight's Grave":

"The knight's bones are dust, And his good sword rust; His soul is with the saints, I trust."

In taking account of Coleridge's services to the cause of romanticism, his critical writings should not be overlooked. Matthew Arnold declared that there was something premature about the burst of creative activity in English literature at the opening of the nineteenth century, and regretted that the way had not been prepared, as in Germany, by a critical movement. It is true that the English romantics put forth no body of doctrine, no authoritative statement of a theory of literary art.

Scott did not pose as the leader of a school, or compose prefaces and lectures like Hugo and Schlegel.[26] As a contributor to the reviews on his favourite topics, he was no despicable critic; shrewd, good-natured, full of special knowledge, anecdote, and ill.u.s.tration. But his criticism was never polemic, and he had no quarrel with the cla.s.sics. He cherished an unfeigned admiration for Dryden, whose life he wrote and whose works he edited. Doubtless he would cheerfully have admitted the inferiority of his own poetry to Dryden's and Pope's. He had no programme to announce, but just went ahead writing romances; in practice an innovator, but in theory a literary conservative.

Coleridge, however, was fully aware of the scope of the new movement. He represented, theoretically as well as practically, the reaction against eighteenth-century academicism, the Popean tradition[27] in poetry, and the maxims of pseudo-cla.s.sical criticism. In his a.n.a.lysis and vindication of the principles of romantic art, he brought to bear a philosophic depth and subtlety such as had never before been applied in England to a merely belletristic subject. He revolutionised, for one thing, the critical view of Shakspere, devoting several lecture courses to the exposition of the thesis that "Shakspere's judgment was commensurate with his genius." These lectures borrowed a number of pa.s.sages from A. W. von Schlegel's "Vorlesungen uber Dramatische Kunst und Litteratur," delivered at Vienna in 1808, but engrafted with original matter of the highest value. Compared with these Shakspere notes, with the chapters on Wordsworth in the "Biographia Literaria," and with the _obiter dicta_, sown through Coleridge's prose, all previous English criticism appears crude and superficial, and the contemporary squabble over Pope like a scolding match in the nursery.

Coleridge's acute and sympathetic insight into the principles of Shaksperian drama did not save him from producing his abortive "Zapolya"

in avowed imitation of the "Winter's Tale." What curse is on the English stage that men who have done work of the highest grade in other departments, as soon as they essay playwriting, become capable of failures like "The Borderers" and "John Woodville" and "Manfred" and "Zapolya"? As for "Remorse," with its Moorish sea-coasts, wild mountains, chapel interiors with painted windows, torchlight and moonlight, dripping caverns, dungeons, daggers and poisoned goblets, the best that can be said of it is that it is less bad than "Zapolya." And of both it may be said that they are romantic not after the fashion of Shakspere, but of those very German melodramas which Coleridge ridiculed in his "Critique on Bertram." [28]

[1] For Coleridge's relations with German romance, see vol. i., pp.

419-21. For his early interest in Percy, Ossian, and Chatterton, ibid., pp. 299, 328, 368-70.

[2] "There is as much difference between Coleridge's brief poem 'Christabel' and all the narrative poems of Walter Scott . . . as between a precious essence and a coa.r.s.e imitation of it got up for sale." (Leigh Hunt's "Autobiography," p. 197).

[3] "Samuel Taylor Coleridge und die Englische Romantik," Alois Brandl, Berlin, 1886.

[4] It is in view of his critical att.i.tude, not of his poetry, that Saintsbury applies this t.i.tle to Coleridge. "The att.i.tude was that of a mediaevalism inspired by much later learning, but still more by that intermediate or decadent Greek philosophy which had so much influence on the Middle Ages themselves. This is, in other words, the Romantic att.i.tude, and Coleridge was the high priest of Romanticism, which, through Scott and Byron, he taught to Europe, repreaching it even to Germany, from which it had partly come." ("A Short History of English Literature," by George Saintsbury, London, 1898, p. 656).

[5] "Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the English Romantic School," by Alois Brandl. Lady Eastlake's translation, London, 1887, pp. 219-23.

[6] See vol. i., pp. 160-61.

[7] "Fourteen Sonnets, written chiefly on Picturesque Spots." Bath, 1789.

[8] "Samuel Taylor Coleridge," p. 37. _Cf._ Wordsworth's Sonnets "Upon Westminster Bridge" (1802) and "Scorn Not the Sonnet."

[9] _Cf._ vol. i., p. 182.

[10] See Sonnet xvii., "On Revisiting Oxford."

See also Sonnet xi., "At Ostend:"

"The mournful magic of their mingled chimes First waked my wondrous childhood into tears."

And _Cf._ Francis Mahony's "The Bells of Shandon"--

"Whose sounds so wild would, in the days of childhood, Fling round my cradle their magic spells."

And Moore's "Those Evening Bells." The tw.a.n.g of the wind-harp also resounds through Bowles' Sonnets. See for the Aeolus' harp, vol. i., p.

165. and _Cf._ Coleridge's poem, "The Eolian Harp."

[11] "Dejection: An Ode" (1802).

[12] SONNET XX.

_November, 1792_.

"There is strange music in the stirring wind When lowers the autumnal eve, and all alone To the dark wood's cold covert thou art gone Whose ancient trees, on the rough slope reclined, Rock, and at times scatter their tresses sear.

If in such shades, beneath their murmuring, Thou late hast pa.s.sed the happier hours of spring, With sadness thou wilt mark the fading year; Chiefly if one with whom such sweets at morn Or eve thou'st shared, to distant scenes shall stray.

O Spring, return! return, auspicious May!

But sad will be thy coming, and forlorn, If she return not with thy cheering ray, Who from these shades is gone, gone far away."

[13] _Cf._ Scott's "Harp of the North, that mouldering long hast hung,"

etc. "Lady of the Lake," Canto I.

[14] "Shall gentle Coleridge pa.s.s unnoticed here, To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?"

--"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers."

[15] No. xxix., August, 1819, "Remarks on Don Juan."

[16] "Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days Ign.o.ble themes obtained mistaken praise.

When sense and wit with poesy allied, No fabled graces, nourished side by side. . . .

Then, in this happy isle, a Pope's pure strain Sought the rapt soul to charm, nor sought in vain; A polished nation's praise aspired to claim, And raised the people's, as the poet's fame. . . .

[But] Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot, Resign their hallowed bays to Walter Scott."

--"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers."

[17] For the benefit of any reader who may wish to follow up the steps of the Pope controversy, I give the t.i.tles of Bowles' successive pamphlets.

"The Invariable Principles of Poetry: A Letter to Thomas Campbell, Esq.,"

1819. "A Reply to an 'Unsentimental Sort of Critic,'" Bath, 1820. [This was in answer to a review of "Spence's Anecdotes" in the _Quarterly_ in October, 1820.] "A Vindication of the Late Editor of Pope's Works,"

London, 1821, second edition. [This was also a reply to the _Quarterly_ reviewer and to Gilchrist's letters in the _London Magazine_, and was first printed in vol. xvii., Nos. 33, 34, and 35 of the _Pamphleteer_.]

"An Answer to Some Observations of Thomas Campbell, Esq., in his Specimens of British Poets" (1822). "An Address to Thomas Campbell, Esq., Editor of the _New Monthly Magazine_, in Consequence of an Article in that Publication" (1822). "Letters to Lord Byron on a Question of Poetical Criticism," London, 1822. "A Final Appeal to the Literary Public Relative to Pope, in Reply to Certain Observations of Mr. Roscoe,"