The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Part 17

The first half hour I was with you convinced me that I should owe my reception into your family exclusively to motives not less flattering to me than honourable to yourself. I trust we shall ever in matters of intellect be reciprocally serviceable to each other. Men of sense generally come to the same conclusions; but they are likely to contribute to each other's enlargement of view, in proportion to the distance or even opposition of the points from which they set out.

Travel and the strange variety of situations and employments on which chance has thrown me, in the course of my life, might have made me a mere man of 'observation', if pain and sorrow and self-miscomplacence had not forced my mind in on itself, and so formed habits of 'meditation'. It is now as much my nature to evolve the fact from the law, as that of a practical man to deduce the law from the fact.

With respect to pecuniary remuneration, allow me to say, I must not at least be suffered to make any addition to your family expences-- though I cannot offer any thing that would be in any way adequate to my sense of the service; for that indeed there could not be a compensation, as it must be returned in kind, by esteem and grateful affection.

And now of myself. My ever wakeful reason, and the keenness of my moral feelings, will secure you from all unpleasant circ.u.mstances connected with me save only one, viz. the evasion of a specific madness. You will never 'hear' any thing but truth from me:--prior habits render it out of my power to tell an untruth, but unless carefully observed, I dare not promise that I should not, with regard to this detested poison, be capable of acting one. No sixty hours have yet pa.s.sed without my having taken laudanum, though for the last week comparatively trifling doses. I have full belief that your anxiety need not be extended beyond the first week, and for the first week, I shall not, I must not be permitted to leave your house, unless with you. Delicately or indelicately, this must be done, and both the servants and the a.s.sistant must receive absolute commands from you.

The stimulus of conversation suspends the terror that haunts my mind; but when I am alone, the horrors I have suffered from laudanum, the degradation, the blighted utility, almost overwhelm me. If (as I feel for the 'first time' a soothing confidence it will prove) I should leave you restored to my moral and bodily health, it is not myself only that will love and honour you; every friend I have, (and thank G.o.d! in spite of this wretched vice [2] I have many and warm ones, who were friends of my youth, and have never deserted me,) will thank you with reverence. I have taken no notice of your kind apologies. If I could not be comfortable in your house, and with your family, I should deserve to be miserable. If you could make it convenient, I should wish to be with you by Monday evening, as it would prevent the necessity of taking fresh lodgings in town.

With respectful compliments to Mrs. Gillman and her sister, I remain, dear sir,

Your much obliged,

S.T. COLERIDGE."

On the evening appointed, Coleridge came, bringing in his hand the proof sheets of 'Christabel', which was now for the first time printed. The fragment in ma.n.u.script was already known to many, for to many had Coleridge read it, who had listened to it with delight--a delight so marked that its success seemed certain. But the approbation of those whom, in the worldly acceptation of the term, we call 'friends', is not always to be relied upon. Among the most plausible connexions, there is often a rivals.h.i.+p, both political and literary, which constrains the sacrifice of sincerity, and subst.i.tutes secret for open censure. Of this melancholy fact Coleridge had seen proof. The Fragment had not long been published before he was informed, that an individual had been selected (who was in truth a great admirer of his writings; and whose very life had been saved through the exertions of Coleridge and Mr. Southey,) to "'cut up'" Christabel in the Edinburgh Review. The subject being afterwards mentioned in conversation, the reviewer confessed that he was the writer of the article, but observed, that as he wrote for the Edinburgh Review, he was compelled to write in accordance with the character and tone of that periodical. This confession took place after he had been extolling the Christabel as the finest poem of its kind in the language, and ridiculing the public for their want of taste and discrimination in not admiring it.--Truly has it been said,

"Critics upon all writers there are many, Planters of truth or knowledge scarcely any."

Sir Walter Scott always spoke in high praise of the Christabel, and more than once of his obligations to Coleridge; of this we have proof in his Ivanhoe, in which the lines by Coleridge, ent.i.tled "The Knight's Tomb,"

were quoted by Scott before they were published, from which circ.u.mstance, Coleridge was convinced that Sir Walter was the author of the Waverly Novels. The lines were composed as an experiment for a metre, and repeated by him to a mutual friend--this gentleman the following day dined in company with Sir Walter Scott, and spoke of his visit to Highgate, repeating Coleridge's lines to Scott, and observing at the same time, that they might be acceptable to the author of Waverley.

THE KNIGHT'S TOMB.

Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn?

Where may the grave of that good man be?-- By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, Under the twigs of a young birch tree!

The Oak that in summer was sweet to hear, And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year; And whistled and roar'd in the winter alone, Is gone,--and the birch in its stead is grown.-- The Knight's bones are dust, And his good sword rust;-- His soul is with the saints, I trust.

'Poetical Works', Vol. ii. p. 64.

The late Mr. Sotheby informed me, that, at his house in a large party, Sir Walter made the following remark:

"I am indebted to Coleridge for the mode of telling a tale by question and answer. This was a new light to me, and I was greatly struck by it."

Yet when Sir Walter said this, he must surely have forgotten many of our ancient and most beautiful ballads, in which the questions are so significant, and are made to develope the progress of the fable more clearly than could be affected by the ordinary course of narration. In fact every lover of our old poetry will recollect a hundred pieces in which the same form of evolution is observed. Thus in 'Johnie of Breadis Lee':

"What news, what news, ye grey-headed carle, What news bring ye to me?"

And in 'Halbert the Grim':

"There is pity in many,-- Is there any in him?

No! ruth is a strange guest To Halbert the Grim."

Scott particularly admired Coleridge's management of the supernatural.

The "flesh and blood reality," given to Geraldine, the life, the power of appearing and disappearing equally by day as by night, const.i.tutes the peculiar merit of the Christabel: and those poets who admire, and have reflected much on the supernatural, have ever considered it one of the greatest efforts of genius. But the effect has ever been degraded by unnatural combinations. Thus on the stage, where such creations are the most frequent, it has been the custom for stage-managers to choose 'male' actors for the female parts. In 'Macbeth', men are called on to stir the caldron and other witcheries requiring muscular power. Again, when Macbeth listens to those extraordinary beings, who, with muttering spells, with charms, foreknowledge and incantations imperfectly announced to him his fate; he, with an air of command, says, "Speak!"

&c. They shew their power, and give their best answer by disappearing.

The manner of representing this is unnatural, as exhibited by our managers. Coleridge observed, that it would be better to withdraw the light from the stage, than to exhibit these miserable attempts at vanis.h.i.+ng, [3] though could the thought have been well executed, he considered it a master-stroke of Shakspeare's. Yet it should be noticed, that Coleridge's opinion was, that some of the plays of our "myriad-minded" bard ought never to be acted, but looked on as poems to be read, and contemplated; and so fully was he impressed with this feeling, that in his gayer moments he would often say, "There should be an Act of Parliament to prohibit their representation." [4] Here 'he'

excelled: he has no incongruities, no gross illusions. In the management of the supernatural, the only successful poets among our own countrymen have been Shakspeare and Coleridge. Scott has treated it well in the Bride of Lammermoor, and in one or two other works.

Of the Christabel, as now published, Coleridge says, "The first part was composed in 1797." This was the Annus Mirabilis of this great man; in it he was in his best and strongest health. He returned from Germany in 1799, and in the year following wrote the 'second' part, in the preface to which he observes, "Till very lately my poetic powers have been in a state of suspended animation." The subject indeed remained present to his mind, though from bad health and other causes, it was left as a mere fragment of his poetic power. When in health he sometimes said, "This poem comes upon me with all the loveliness of a vision;" and he declared, that though contrary to the advice of his friends, he should finish it: At other times when his bodily powers failed him, he would then say, "I am reserved for other works than making verse."

In the preface to the Christabel, he makes the following observation:

"It is probable," he says, "that if the poem had been finished at either of the former periods, 'i.e'. 1797 and 1800, or if even the first and second part of this fragment had been published in the year 1800, the impression of its originality would have been much greater than I dare at present expect. But for this, I have only my own indolence to blame. The dates are mentioned for the exclusive purpose of precluding charges of plagiarism or servile imitation from myself.

For there is among us a set of critics who seem to hold, that every possible thought and image is traditional; who have no notion that there are such things as fountains in the world, small as well as great; and who would therefore charitably derive every rill, they behold flowing, from a perforation made in some other man's tank. I am confident, however, that as far as the present poem is concerned, the celebrated poets whose writings I might be suspected of having imitated, either in particular pa.s.sages, or in the tone and the spirit of the whole, would be among the first to vindicate me from the charge, and who, on any striking coincidence, would permit me to address them in this dogged version of two monkish Latin hexameters:

'Tis mine and it is likewise your's, But an if this will not do; Let it be mine, good friend! for I Am the poorer of the two."

I have only to add, that the metre of the Christabel is not, properly speaking, irregular, though it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle; namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will be found to be only four. Nevertheless, this occasional variation in the number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence with some transition in the nature of the imagery or pa.s.sion."

In conversation many of his brother poets would, like the reviewer, echo his praises, while in secret, they were trying to deprive him of his fair fame.

It has been said, that "Coleridge never explained the story of Christabel." To his friends he did explain it; and in the Biographia Literaria, he has given an account of its origin. [5]

The story of the Christabel is partly founded on the notion, that the virtuous of this world save the wicked. The pious and good Christabel suffers and prays for

"The weal of her lover that is far away,"

exposed to various temptations in a foreign land; and she thus defeats the power of evil represented in the person of Geraldine. This is one main object of the tale.

At the opening of the poem all nature is laid under a spell:

'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awak'ned the crowing c.o.c.k; Tu-whit!--Tu-whoo!

And hark, again! The crowing c.o.c.k, How drowsily it crew--

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff-b.i.t.c.h, From her kennel beneath the rock Maketh answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; Ever and aye, by s.h.i.+ne and shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud; Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.

Is the night chilly and dark?

The night is chilly, but not dark.

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.

The night is chill, the cloud is gray: 'Tis a month before the month of May, And the Spring comes slowly up this way.

The spell is laid by an evil being, not of this world, with whom Christabel, the heroine, is about to become connected; and who in the darkness of the forest is meditating the wreck of all her hopes

The lovely lady, Christabel, Whom her father loves so well, What makes her in the wood so late, A furlong from the castle gate?

She had dreams all yesternight Of her own betrothed knight; And she in the midnight wood will pray For the weal of her lover that's far away.

She stole along, she nothing spoke, The sighs she heaved were soft and low, And naught was green upon the oak, But moss and rarest misletoe: She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, And in silence prayeth she.

There are persons who have considered the description of Christabel in the act of praying, so far from the baron's castle, too great a poetical license. He was fully aware that all baronial castles had their chapels and oratories attached to them,--and that in these lawless times, for such were the middle ages, the young lady who ventured unattended beyond the precincts of the castle, would have endangered her reputation. But to such an imaginative mind, it would have been scarcely possible to pa.s.s by the interesting image of Christabel, presenting itself before him, praying by moonlight at the old oak tree. But to proceed:

The lady sprang up suddenly, The lovely lady Christabel!

It moaned as near, as near can be, But what it is, she cannot tell.-- On the other side it seems to be, Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree.

The night is chill; the forest bare; Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?