Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey Part 13

"Dear Coleridge,

You have referred your two last Poems to my judgment. I do not think your first, 'Maiden! that with sullen brow,' admissible, without a little more of your nice picking.

The first verse is happy, but two objections apply to the second. To my ear, (perhaps too fastidious) 'inly,' and 'inmost,' are too closely allied for the same stanza; but the first line presents a more serious objection, in containing a transition verb, (or rather a participle, with the same government) without an objective:

'Inly gnawing, thy distresses Mock those starts of sudden glee.'

Gnawing what? surely not distresses; though the bar of a comma can hardly keep them apart. In order to give it any decent meaning, a tortuous ellipsis is necessary; to pursue which, gives the reader too much toil.

Rejecting the first horse in the team, the three last are beautiful animals.

To the last line in the third stanza, I rather object; 'With a wiser innocence.' The meaning, it appears to me, would be more definite and in character, if you were to say, as you do not represent her utterly debased, 'With thy wreck of innocence.' The apostrophe to the 'Weeping mother's cot,' is then impressive. In the fourth stanza, why do you introduce the old word 'Lavrac' a word requiring an explanatory note? Why not say at once, sky-lark? A short poem, _you_ know better than _I_, should be smooth as oil, and lucid as gla.s.s. The two last stanzas, with their a.s.sociates, will require a few of your delicate touches, before you mount them on the nautilus which is to bear them buoyant round the world.

These two last stanzas, about the 'Lavrac' though good in themselves, (with the exception of one line, which I will not point out, its roughness absolutely reminds one of 'Bowling-green Lane!') appear to me to be awkward appendages. The ill.u.s.tration is too much extended. It is laboured; far-fetched. It is an infelicitous attempt to blend sportive fancy with fact that has touched the heart, and which, in this its sobered mood, shrinks from all idle play of imagination. The transition is too abrupt from truth to fancy. This simile of two stanzas, also, out of five, is a tail disproportioned to the size of so small a body:--A thought elongated, ramified, attenuated, till its tendril convolutions have almost escaped from their parent stem. I would recommend you to let this Lavrac fly clean away, and to conclude the Poem with the third affecting stanza, unless you can continue the same train of feeling. This you might readily effect, by urging the 'unfortunate' in seeking her 'weeping mother's cot' to cheer that mother by moral renovation.

I now come to the second Poem, 'Allegorical lines.' This poem has sound materials, but it wants some of your hard tinkering. Pardon my unceremonious language. I do not like that affected old word, 'ill-besped' in the first line. To ascribe human feelings to a leaf, as you have done through the whole Poem, notwithstanding your authority, as I conceive, offensively violates reason. There is no a.n.a.logy; no conceivable bond of union between thought and inanimate things, and it is about as rational as though, in sober reasoning, you were to make the polished shoe remonstrate with its wearer, in being soiled so soon after it had received its l.u.s.tre. It is the utmost stretch of human concession, to grant thought and language to living things;--birds, beasts, and fishes; rights which the old fablers have rendered inalienable, as vehicles of instruction; but here, as I should think, the liberty ends.

It is always a pity when sense and poetry cannot go together. They are excellent arm-in-arm companions, but quarrelsome neighbours, when a stile separates them. The first line in the second stanza I do not like.

'When the scythesman o'er his sheaf.'

Two objections apply to this line. The word scythesman, for a short poem, is insufferably rough; and furthermore requires the inhalation of a good breath, before it can be p.r.o.nounced; besides which, as the second objection, by connecting sheaves with scythesman, it shows that the scythe is cutting wheat, whereas, wheat is cut with a hook or sickle. If my agricultural knowledge be correct, barley and oats are cut with a scythe, but these grains are not put into sheaves. Had you not better subst.i.tute rustic, for scythesman?

The first line in the third stanza is not happy. The spondee, in a compound word, sometimes gives a favourable emphasis; but to my taste, rarely, when it is formed of a double epithet. It has the appearance of labour, like tugging against a hill. Would not 'foolish' be simpler and better than 'poor fond?' I have one other objection, and that, unfortunately, is in the last line.

'Flung to fade, and rot, and die!'

Surely, if it rots, it must die, or have died.

Query. 'Flung to wither and to die.'

I am astonished at my own temerity. This is reversing the order of things; the pupil correcting his master. But, candidly speaking, I do think these two poems the most defective of any I ever saw of yours, which, usually, have been remarkably free from all angles on which the race of snarlers can lay hold.

From, &c. &c.,

Joseph Cottle."

Mr. Coleridge's reply to the preceding letter.

"Wednesday morning, 10 o'clock.

My dearest Cottle,

... 'Ill besped' is indeed a sad blotch; but after having tried at least a hundred ways, before I sent the Poem to you, and often since, I find it incurable. This first Poem is but a so so composition. I wonder I could have been so blinded by the ardour of recent composition, as to see anything in it.

Your remarks are _perfectly just_ on the 'Allegorical lines,' except that, in this district, corn is as often cut with a scythe, as with a hook. However, for '_Scythesman_' read _Rustic_. For '_poor fond thing_'

read _foolish thing_, and for '_flung to fade, and rot, and die_,' read _flung to wither and to die_.[30]

Milton (the carrier) waits impatiently.

S. T. C."

Having once inquired of Mr. Coleridge something respecting a nicety in hexameters, he asked for a sheet of paper, and wrote the following. These hexameters appear in the last edition of Mr. C.'s Poems, though in a less correct form, and without the condensed and well-expressed preliminary remarks. Two new lines are here also added.

"The Hexameter consists of six feet, or twelve times. These feet, in the Latin and Greek languages, were always either dactyls, or spondees; the time of a dactyl, being only that of a spondee. In modern languages, however, metre being regulated by the emphasis, or intonation of the syllables, and not by the position of the letters, spondees can scarcely exist, except in compound words, as dark-red. Our dissyllables are for the most part, either iambics, as desire; or trochees, as languid. These therefore, but chiefly the latter, we must admit, instead of spondees.

The four first feet of each line may be dissyllable feet, or dactyls, or both commingled, as best suits the melody, and requisite variety; but the two last feet must, with rare exceptions, be uniformly, the former a dactyl, the latter a dissyllable. The amphimacer may, in English, be subst.i.tuted for the dactyl, occasionally.

EXAMPLES.

Oh, what a life is the eye! What a fine and inscrutable essence!

He that is utterly blind, nor glimpses the fire that warms him; He that never beheld the swelling breast of his mother, He that smiled at the bosom, the babe that smiles in its slumber, Even to him it exists. It moves, and stirs in its prison; Lives with a separate life, and "Is it a spirit?" he murmurs, Sure it has thoughts of its own, and to see is only a language.

ANOTHER SPECIMEN, DESCRIBING HEXAMETERS IN HEXAMETERS.

Strongly it tilts us along, o'er leaping and limitless billows, Nothing before, and nothing behind, but the sky and the ocean.

ANOTHER SPECIMEN.

In the Hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column In the Pentameter still, falling melodious down.

THE ENGLISH DUODECASYLLABLE.

This consists of two dactyls, and three trochees; the two dactyls first; and the trochees following.

Hear, my beloved! an old Milesian story; High and embosomed in congregated laurels, Glimmered a temple, upon a breezy headland In the dim distance, amid the skyey billows, Rose a fair island; the G.o.d of flocks had blest it: From the dim sh.o.r.es of this bleak resounding island, Oft in the moon-light a little boat came floating, Came to the sea-cave beneath the breezy headland, Where between myrtles a path-way stole in mazes, Up to the groves of the high embosomed temple.

There in a thicket of consecrated roses, Oft did a Priestess, as lovely as a vision, Pouring her soul to the son of Cytherea, Pray him to hover around the light canoe boat, And with invisible pilotage to guide it Over the dusky waves, till the nightly sailor s.h.i.+v'ring with ecstacy sank upon her bosom.

Now, by the immortals! he was a beauteous stripling, Worthy to dream the sweet dream of young Endymion."

In the last edition of Mr. Coleridge's poems, (3 vols., 1835) there is a poem, called "The Destiny of Nations, a Vision;"--a sounding t.i.tle, with which the contents but ill accord. No note conveys information to the reader, what was the origin of this poem; nor does any argument show its object, or train of thought. Who the maid is, no one can tell, and if there be a vision respecting the destiny of nations, it is nearly as confused and incoherent as a true vision of the night; exciting in the mind some such undefined wonderment, as must have accompanied the descent of one of Peter Wilkins' winged Aerials.

The reader may here be informed, that the Second book of Mr. Southey's "Joan of Arc," to line 452, as acknowledged, was written by Mr.

Coleridge, with the intermixture of 97 lines, written by Mr. Southey, in which there are n.o.ble sentiments, expressed in the loftiest poetical diction; and in which also there is a tutelary spirit introduced to instruct and counsel the Maid of Orleans. In the second edition of "Joan of Arc," Mr. Southey omitted the whole of these lines, and intimated to Mr. C. his intention so to do, as early as the autumn of 1795. I advised Mr. Coleridge, from the intrinsic merit of the lines, to print them in the second edition of his poems. To this he a.s.sented, but observed, that he must greatly extend them.

Some considerable time after, he read me the poem in its enlarged state, calling it "The Progress of Liberty, or the Visions of the Maid of Orleans." After hearing it read, I at once told him, it was all very fine, but what it was all about, I could not tell: that it wanted, I thought, an obvious design, a definite purpose, a cohesion of parts, so as to make it more of a whole, instead of its being, as it then was, profuse, but detached splendour, and exhibiting in the management, nothing like construction. Thus improved, I told him the poem would be worthy of him. Mr. C. was evidently partial to the lines, and said, "I shall consider of what you say, and speak again about them."

Amongst my papers I find two or three notes from Mr. C. on this subject, subsequently received.

"Stowey.

My dear Cottle,

If you delay the press it will give me the opportunity I so much wish, of sending my "Visions of the Maid of Arc" to Wordsworth, who lives[31] not above twenty miles from this place; and to Charles Lamb, whose taste and judgment, I see reason to think more correct and philosophical than my own, which yet I place pretty high...."