Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Part 7

Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The G.o.dhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face; Flowers laugh before thee on their beds; And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.

Mr. Watts spoke with enthusiasm of the strength and simplicity, the sonorousness and stately march of these lines; and numbered them, I think, among the n.o.blest verses yet written, for every highest quality of style.

But Rossetti was unyielding, and though he admitted the beauty of the pa.s.sage, and was ungrudging in his tribute to another pa.s.sage which I had instanced--

O joy that in our embers--

he would not allow that Wordsworth ever possessed a grasp of the great style, or that (despite the Ode on Immortality and the sonnet on _Toussaint L'Ouverture_, which he placed at the head of the poet's work) vital lyric impulse was ever fully developed in his muse. He said:

As to Wordsworth, no one regards the great Ode with more special and unique homage than I do, as a thing absolutely alone of its kind among all greatest things. I cannot say that anything else of his with which I have ever been familiar (and I suffer from long disuse of all familiarity with him) seems at all on a level with this.

In all humility I regard his depreciatory opinion, not at all as a valuable example of literary judgment, but as indicative of a clear radical difference of poetic bias between the two poets, such as must in the same way have made Wordsworth resist Rossetti if he had appeared before him. I am the more confirmed in this view from the circ.u.mstance that Rossetti, throughout the period of my acquaintance with him, seemed to me always peculiarly and, if I may be permitted to say so without offence, strangely liable to Mr. Watts's influence in his critical estimates, and that the case instanced was perhaps the only one in which I knew him to resist Mr. Watts's opinion upon a matter of poetical criticism, which he considered to be almost final, as his letters to me, printed in Chapter VIII. of this volume, will show. I had a striking instance of this, and of the real modesty of the man whom I had heard and still hear spoken of as the most arrogant man of genius of his day, on one of the first occasions of my seeing him. He read out to me an additional stanza to the beautiful poem _Cloud Confines_: As he read it, I thought it very fine, and he evidently was very fond of it himself. But he surprised me by saying that he should not print it. On my asking him why, he said:

"Watts, though he admits its beauty, thinks the poem would be better without it."

"Well, but you like it yourself," said I.

"Yes," he replied; "but in a question of gain or loss to a poem, I feel that Watts must be right."

And the poem appeared in _Ballads and Sonnets_ without the stanza in question. The same thing occurred with regard to the omission of the sonnet _Nuptial Sleep_ from the new edition of the Poems in 1881. Mr.

Watts took the view (to Rossetti's great vexation at first) that this sonnet, howsoever perfect in structure and beautiful from the artistic point of view, was "out of place and altogether incongruous in a group of sonnets so entirely spiritual as _The House of Life_," and Rossetti gave way: but upon the subject of Wordsworth in his relations to Coleridge, Keats, and Sh.e.l.ley, he was quite inflexible to the last.

In a letter treating of other matters, Rossetti asked me if I thought "Christabel" really existed as a mediaeval name, or existed at all earlier than Coleridge. I replied that I had not met with it earlier than the date of the poem. I thought Coleridge's granddaughter must have been the first person to bear the name. The other names in the poem appear to belong to another family of names,--names with a different origin and range of expression,--Leoline, Geraldine, Roland, and most of all Bracy. It seemed to me very possible that Coleridge invented the name, but it was highly probable that he brought it to England from Germany, where, with Wordsworth, he visited Klopstock in 1798, about the period of the first part of the poem. The Germans have names of a kindred etymology and, even if my guess proved wide of the truth, it might still be a fact that the name had German relations. Another conjecture that seemed to me a reasonable one was that Coleridge evolved the name out of the incidents of the opening pa.s.sages of the poem.

The beautiful thing, not more from its beauty than its suggestiveness, suited his purpose exactly. Rossetti replied:

Resuming the thread of my letter, I come to the question of the name Christabel, viz.:--as to whether it is to be found earlier than Coleridge. I have now realized afresh what I knew long ago, viz.:--that in the grossly garbled ballad of _Syr Cauline_, in Percy's _Reliques_, there is a Ladye Chrystabelle, but as every stanza in which her name appears would seem certainly to be Percy's own work, I suspect him to be the inventor of the name, which is a.s.suredly a much better invention than any of the stanzas; and from this wretched source Coleridge probably enriched the sphere of symbolic nomenclature. However, a genuine source may turn up, but the name does not sound to me like a real one. As to a German origin, I do not know that language, but would not the second syllable be there the one accented? This seems to render the name shapeless and improbable.

I mentioned an idea that once possessed me despotically. It was that where Coleridge says

Her silken robe and inner vest Dropt to her feet, and full in view Behold! her bosom and half her side-- A sight to dream of and not to tell,. . .

Shield the Lady Christabel!

he meant ultimately to show _eyes_ in the _bosom_ of the witch. I fancied that if the poet had worked out this idea in the second part, or in his never-compa.s.sed continuation, he must have electrified his readers. The first part of the poem is of course immeasurably superior in witchery to the second, despite two grand things in the latter--the pa.s.sage on the severance of early friendships, and the conclusion; although the dexterity of hand (not to speak of the essential spirit of enchantment) which is everywhere present in the first part, and nowhere dominant in the second, exhibits itself not a little in the marvellous pa.s.sage in which Geraldine bewitches Christabel. Touching some jocose allusion by Rossetti to the necessity which lay upon me to startle the world with a continuation of the poem based upon the lines of my conjectural scheme, I asked him if he knew that a continuation was actually published in Coleridge's own paper, _The Morning Post_. It appeared about 1820, and was satirical of course--hitting off many peculiarities of versification, if no more. With Coleridge's playful love of satirising himself anonymously, the continuation might even be his own. Rossetti said:

I do not understand your early idea of _eyes_ in the bosom of Geraldine. It is described as "that bosom old," "that bosom cold," which seems to show that its withered character as combined with Geraldine's youth, was what shocked and warned Christabel. The first edition says--

A sight to dream of, not to tell:-- And she is to sleep with Christabel!

I dare say Coleridge altered this, because an idea arose, which I actually heard to have been reported as Coleridge's real intention by a member of contemporary circles (P. G.

Patmore, father of Coventry P. who conveyed the report to me)--viz., that Geraldine was to turn out to be a man!! I believe myself that the conclusion as given by Gillman from Coleridge's account to him is correct enough, only not picturesquely worded. It does not seem a bad conclusion by any means, though it would require fine treatment to make it seem a really good one. Of course the first part is so immeasurably beyond the second, that one feels Chas. Lamb's view was right, and it should have been abandoned at that point. The pa.s.sage on sundered friendship is one of the masterpieces of the language, but no doubt was written quite separately and then fitted into _Christabel_. The two lines about Roland and Sir Leoline are simply an intrusion and an outrage. I cannot say that I like the conclusion nearly so well as this. It hints at infinite beauty, but somehow remains a sort of cobweb. The conception, and partly the execution, of the pa.s.sage in which Christabel repeats by fascination the serpent-glance of Geraldine, is magnificent; but that is the only good narrative pa.s.sage in part two. The rest seems to have reached a fatal facility of jingling, at the heels whereof followed Scott.

There are, I believe, many continuations of _Christabel_. Tupper did one! I myself saw a continuation in childhood, long before I saw the original, and was all agog to see it for years. Our household was all of Italian, not English environment, and it was only when I went to school later that I began to ransack bookstalls. The continuation in question was by one Eliza Stewart, and appeared in a shortlived monthly thing called _Smallwood's Magazine_, to which my father contributed some Italian poetry, and so it came into the house. I thought the continuation spirited then, and perhaps it may have been so. This must have been before 1840 I think.

The other day I saw in a bookseller's catalogue--_Christabess_, by S. T.

Colebritche, translated from the Doggrel by Sir Vinegar Sponge (1816).

This seems a parody, not a continuation, in the very year of the poem's first appearance! I did not think it worth two shillings,--which was the price.... Have you seen the continuation of _Christabel_ in _European Magazine?_ of course it _might_ have been Coleridge's, so far as the date of the composition of the original was concerned; but of course it was not his.

I imagine the "Sir Vinegar Sponge" who translated "_Christabess_ from the _Doggerel_" must belong to the family of Sponges described by Coleridge himself, who give out the liquid they take in much dirtier than they imbibe it. I thought it very possible that Coleridge's epigram to this effect might have been provoked by the lampoon referred to, and Rossetti also thought this probable. Immediately after meeting with the continuation of _Christabel_ already referred to, I came across great numbers of such continuations, as well as satires, parodies, reviews, etc., in old issues of _Blackwood, The Quarterly, and The Examiner_.

They seemed to me, for the most part, poor in quality--the highest reach of comicality to which they attained being concerned with side slaps at _Kubla Khan_:

Better poetry I make When asleep than when awake.

Am I sure, or am I guessing?

Are my eyes like those of Lessing?

This latter elegant couplet was expected to serve as a scorching satire on a letter in the _Biographia Literaria_ in which Coleridge says he saw a portrait of Lessing at Klopstock's, in which the eyes seemed singularly like his own. The time has gone by when that flight of egotism on Coleridge's part seemed an unpardonable offence, and to our more modern judgment it scarcely seems necessary that the author of _Christabel_ should be charged with a desire to look radiant in the glory reflected by an accidental personal resemblance to the author of _Laokoon_. Curiously enough I found evidence of the Patmore version of Coleridge's intentions as to the ultimate disclosure of the s.e.x of Geraldine in a review in the _Examiner_. The author was perhaps Hazlitt, but more probably the editor himself, but whether Hazlitt or Hunt, he must have been within the circle that found its rallying point at Highgate, and consequently acquainted with the earliest forms of the poem. The review is an unfavourable one, and Coleridge is told in it that he is the dog-in-the-manger of literature, and that his poem is proof of the fact that he can write better nonsense poetry than any man in England. The writer is particularly wroth with what he considers the wilful indefiniteness of the author, and in proof of a charge of a desire not to let the public into the secret of the poem, and of a conscious endeavour to mystify the reader, he deliberately accuses Coleridge of omitting one line of the poem as it was written, which, if printed, would have proved conclusively that Geraldine had seduced Christabel after getting drunk with her,--for such sequel is implied if not openly stated. I told Rossetti of this brutality of criticism, and he replied:

As for the pa.s.sage in _Christabel_, I am not sure we quite understand each other. What I heard through the Patmores (a complete mistake I am sure), was that Coleridge meant Geraldine to prove to be a man bent on the seduction of Christabel, and presumably effecting it. What I inferred (if so) was that Coleridge had intended the line as in first ed.: "And she is to sleep with Christabel!" as leading up too nearly to what he meant to keep back for the present.

But the whole thing was a figment.

What is a.s.suredly not a figment is, that an idea, such as the elder Patmore referred to, really did exist in the minds of Coleridge's so-called friends, who after praising the poem beyond measure whilst it was in ma.n.u.script, abused it beyond reason or decency when it was printed. My settled conviction is that the _Examiner_ criticism, and _not_ the sudden advent of the idea after the first part was written, was the cause of Coleridge's adopting the correction which Rossetti mentions.

Rossetti called my attention to a letter by Lamb, about which he gathered a good deal of interesting conjecture:

There is (given in _Cottle_) an inconceivably sarcastic, galling, and admirable letter from Lamb to Coleridge, regarding which I never could learn how the deuce their friendship recovered from it. Cottle says the only reason he could ever trace for its being written lay in the three parodied sonnets (one being _The House that Jack Built_) which Coleridge published as a skit on the joint volume brought out by himself, Lamb, and Lloyd. The whole thing was always a mystery to me. But I have thought that the pa.s.sage on division between friends was not improbably written by Coleridge on this occasion. Curiously enough (if so) Lamb, who is said to have objected greatly to the idea of a second part of _Christabel_, thought (on seeing it) that the mistake was redeemed by this very pa.s.sage. He _may_ have traced its meaning, though, of course, its beauty alone was enough to make him say so.

The three satirical sonnets which Rossetti refers to appear not only in _Cottle_ but in a note to the _Biographia Literaria_ They were published first under a fict.i.tious name in _he Monthly Magazine_ They must be understood as almost wholly satirical of three distinct facets of Coleridge's own manner, for even the sonnet in which occur the words

Eve saddens into night, {*}

has its counterpart in _The Songs of the Pixies_--

Hence! thou lingerer, light!

Eve saddens into night,

and nearly all the phrases satirised are borrowed from Coleridge's own poetry, not from that of Lamb or Lloyd. Nevertheless, Cottle was doubtless right as to the fact that Lamb took offence at Coleridge's conduct on this account, and Rossetti almost certainly made a good shot at the truth when he attributed to the rupture thereupon ensuing the pa.s.sage on severed friendship. The sonnet on _The House that Jack Built_ is the finest of the three as a satire.

* So in the Biographia Literaria; in Cottle, "Eve darkens into night."

Indeed, the figure used therein as an equipoise to "the hindward charms"

satirises perfectly the style of writing characterised by inflated thought and imagery. It may be doubted if there exists anything more comical; but each of the companion sonnets is good in its way. The egotism, which was a constant reproach urged by _The Edinburgh_ critics and by the "c.o.c.kney Poets" against the poets of the Lake School, is splendidly hit off in the first sonnet; the low and creeping meanness, or say, simpleness, as contrasted with simplicity, of thought and expression, which was stealing into Wordsworth's work at that period, is equally cleverly ridiculed in the second sonnet. In reproducing the sonnets, Coleridge claims only to have satirised types. As to Lamb's letter, it is, indeed, hard to realise the fact that the "gentle-hearted Charles," as Coleridge himself named him, could write a galling letter to the "inspired charity-boy," for whom at an early period, and again at the end, he had so profound a reverence. Every word is an outrage, and every syllable must have hit Coleridge terribly. I called Rossetti's attention to the surprising circ.u.mstance that in a letter written immediately after the date of the one in question, Loyd tells Cottle that he has never known Lamb (who is at the moment staying with him) so happy before as _just then!_ There can hardly be a doubt, however, that Rossetti's conjecture is a just one as to the origin of the great pa.s.sage in the second part of _Christabel_. Touching that pa.s.sage I called his attention to an imperfection that I must have perceived, or thought I perceived long before,--an imperfection of craftsmanship that had taken away something of my absolute enjoyment of its many beauties.

The pa.s.sage ends--

They parted, ne'er to meet again!

But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining-- They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between, But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.

This is, it is needless to say, in almost every respect, finely felt, but the words italicised appeared to display some insufficiency of poetic vision. First, nothing but an earthquake would (speaking within limits of human experience) unite the two sides of a ravine; and though _frost_ might bring them together temporarily, _heat and thunder_ must be powerless to make or to unmake the _marks_ that showed the cliffs to have once been one, and to have been violently torn apart. Next, _heat_ (supposing _frost_ to be the root-conception) was obviously used merely as a balancing phrase, and _thunder_ simply as the inevitable rhyme to _asunder_. I have not seen this matter alluded to, though it may have been mentioned, and it is certainly not important enough to make any serious deduction from the pleasure afforded by a pa.s.sage that is in other respects so rich in beauty as to be able to endure such modest discounting. Rossetti replied:

Your geological strictures on Coleridge's "friendship"

pa.s.sage are but too just, and I believe quite new. But I would fain think that this is "to consider too nicely." I am certainly willing to bear the obloquy of never having been struck by what is nevertheless obvious enough. {*}... Lamb's letter _is_ a teazer. The three sonnets in _The Monthly Magazine_ were signed "Nehemiah Higginbotham," and were meant to banter good-humouredly the joint vol. issued by Coleridge, Lamb, and Lloyd,--C. himself being, of course, the most obviously ridiculed. I fancy you have really hit the mark as regards Coleridge's epigram and Sir Vinegar Sponge. He might have been worth two shillings after all....

_I_ also remember noting Lloyd's a.s.sertion of Lamb's exceptional happiness just after that letter. It is a puzzling affair. However C. and Lamb got over it (for I certainly believe they were friends later in life) no one seems to have recorded. The second vol. of Cottle, after the raciness of the first, is very disappointing.

* In a note on this pa.s.sage, Canon Dixon writes: What is meant is that in cliffs, actual cliffs, the action of these agents, heat, cold, thunder even, might have an obliterating power; but in the severance of friendship, there is nothing (heat of nature, frost of time, thunder of accident or surprise) that can wholly have the like effect.

On one occasion Rossetti wrote, saying he had written a sonnet on Coleridge, and I was curious to learn what note he struck in dealing with so complex a subject. The keynote of a man's genius or character should be struck in a poetic address to him, just as the expressional individuality of a man's features (freed of the modifying or emphasising effects of pa.s.sing fashions of dress), should be reproduced in his portrait; but Coleridge's mind had so many sides to it, and his character had such varied aspects--from keen and beautiful sensibility to every form of suffering, to almost utter disregard of the calls of domestic duty--that it seemed difficult to think what kind of idea, consistent with the unity of the sonnet and its simplicity of scheme, would call up a picture of the entire man. It goes against the grain to hint, adoring the man as we must, that Coleridge's personal character was anything less than one of untarnished purity, and certainly the persons chiefly concerned in the alleged neglect, Southey and his own family, have never joined in the strictures commonly levelled against him: but whatever Coleridge's personal ego may have been, his creative ego was a.s.suredly not single in kind or aim. He did some n.o.ble things late in life (instance the pa.s.sage on "Youth and Age," and that on "Work without Hope"), but his poetic genius seemed to desert him when Kant took possession of him as a gigantic windmill to do battle with, and it is now hard to say which was the deeper thing in him: the poetry to which he devoted the sunniest years of his young life, or the philosophy which he firmly believed it to be the main business of his later life to expound. In any discussion of the relative claims of these two to the grat.i.tude of the ages that follow, I found Rossetti frankly took one side, and constantly said that the few unequal poems Coleridge had left us, were a legacy more stimulating, solacing, and enduring, than his philosophy could have been, even if he had perfected that attempt of his to reconcile all learning and revelation, and if, when perfected, the whole effort had not proved to be a work of supererogation. I doubt if Rossetti quite knew what was meant by Coleridge's "system," as it was so frequently called, and I know that he could not be induced by any eulogiums to do so much as look at the _Biographia Literaria_, though once he listened whilst I read a chapter from it. He had certainly little love of the German elements in Coleridge's later intellectual life, and hence it is small matter for surprise that in his sonnet he chose for treatment the more poetic side of Coleridge's genius.

Nevertheless, I think it remains an open question whether the philosophy of the author of _The Ancient Mariner_ was more influenced by his poetry, or his poetry by his philosophy; for the philosophy is always tinged by the mysticism of his poetry, and his poetry is always adumbrated by the disposition, which afterwards become paramount, to dig beneath the surface for problems of life and character, and for "suggestions of the final mystery of existence." I have heard Rossetti say that what came most of all uppermost in Coleridge, was his wonderful intuitive knowledge and love of the sea, whose billowy roll, and break, and sibilation, seemed echoed in the very mechanism of his verse. Sleep, too, Rossetti thought, had given up to Coleridge her utmost secrets; and perhaps it was partly due to his own sad experience of the dread curse of insomnia, as well as to keen susceptibility to poetic beauty, that tears so frequently filled his eyes, and sobs rose to his throat when he recited the lines beginning

O sleep! it is a gentle thing--