The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Part 20

The look, those shrunken serpent eyes, had made such a deep impression on Christabel,

That all her features were resign'd To the sole image in her mind: And pa.s.sively did imitate That look of dull and treacherous hate.

And thus she stood in dizzy trance, Still picturing that look askance.

But when the trance was o'er, the maid Paus'd awhile and inly pray'd, "By my mother's soul do I entreat That thou this woman send away!"

She said, and more she could not say, For what she knew she could not tell O'er master'd by the mighty spell.

The poet now describes the Baron as suffering under the confused emotions of love for Christabel, and anger at her apparent jealousy, and the insult offered to the daughter of his friend, which so wrought upon him that,

He roll'd his eye with stern regard Upon the gentle minstrel bard, And said in tones abrupt, austere-- "Why, Bracy? dost thou loiter here?

"I bade thee hence!" The bard obey'd, And turning from his own sweet maid, The aged knight, Sir Leoline Led forth the lady Geraldine!

Here ends the second canto.

In the conclusion to the second canto, he speaks of a child and its father's fondness, so often expressed by "you little rogue," " you little rascal," with an endearing kiss, says:

A little child, a limber elf, Singing, dancing to itself; A fairy thing with red round cheeks, That always finds and never seeks; Makes such a vision to the sight, As fills a father's eyes with light; And pleasures flow in so thick and fast Upon his heart, that he at last Must needs express his love's excess, With words of unmeant bitterness.

The following relation was to have occupied a third and fourth canto, and to have closed the tale.

Over the mountains, the Bard, as directed by Sir Leoline, "hastes" with his disciple; but in consequence of one of those inundations supposed to be common to this country, the spot only where the castle once stood is discovered,--the edifice itself being washed away. He determines to return. Geraldine being acquainted with all that is pa.s.sing, like the Weird Sisters in Macbeth, vanishes. Re-appearing, however, she waits the return of the Bard, exciting in the mean time, by her wily arts, all the anger she could rouse in the Baron's breast, as well as that jealousy of which he is described to have been susceptible. The old Bard and the youth at length arrive, and therefore she can no longer personate the character of Geraldine, the daughter of Lord Roland de Vaux, but changes her appearance to that of the accepted though absent lover of Christabel. Next ensues a courts.h.i.+p most distressing to Christabel, who feels--she knows not why--great disgust for her once favoured knight.

This coldness is very painful to the Baron, who has no more conception than herself of the supernatural transformation. She at last yields to her father's entreaties, and consents to approach the altar with this hated suitor. The real lover returning, enters at this moment, and produces the ring which she had once given him in sign of her betrothment. Thus defeated, the supernatural being Geraldine disappears.

As predicted, the castle bell tolls, the mother's voice is heard, and to the exceeding great joy of the parties, the rightful marriage takes place, after which follows a reconciliation and explanation between the father and daughter.

Lamb, who visited us soon after Coleridge's death, and not long before his own, talking of the Christabel, observed, "I was very angry with Coleridge, when I first heard that he had written a second canto, and that he intended to finish it; but when I read the beautiful apostrophe to the two friends, it calmed me." He was one of those who strongly recommended Coleridge to leave as a fragment what he had so beautifully begun. With the first edition of the Christabel was given Kubla Khan, the dream within a dream, written in harmonious and fluent rhythm.

'The Pains of Sleep' was also added. This is a poem communicating a portion of his personal sufferings. [6] All these were published in 1816.

In the introduction to 'The Lay of the last Minstrel', 1830, Sir Walter says,

"Were I ever to take the unbecoming freedom of censuring a man of Mr.

Coleridge's extraordinary talents, it would be on account of the caprice and indolence with which he has thrown from him, as in mere wantonness, those unfinished sc.r.a.ps of poetry, which, like the Ta.s.so of antiquity, defied the skill of his poetical brethren to complete them. The charming fragments which the author abandons to their fate, are surely too valuable to be treated like the proofs of careless engravers, the sweepings of whose studies often make the fortune of some pains-taking collector. And in a note to the Abbot, alluding to Coleridge's beautiful and tantalizing fragment of Christabel, he adds, Has not our own imaginative poet cause to fear that future ages will desire to summon him from his place of rest, as Milton longed

'To call up him who left half told The story of Cambuscam bold.'"

Since writing the preceding pages, I have met with a critique on the Christabel, written immediately after it was published, from which I select a few pa.s.sages, in the hope that they may further interest the admirers of this poem:

'The publication of Christabel cannot be an indifferent circ.u.mstance to any true lover of poetry--it is a singular monument of genius, and we doubt whether the fragmental beauty that it now possesses can be advantageously exchanged for the wholeness of a finished narrative. In its present form it lays irresistible hold of the imagination. It interests even by what it leaves untold.--The story is like a dream of lovely forms, mixed with strange and indescribable terrors. The scene, the personages, are those of old romantic superst.i.tion; but we feel intimate with them, as if they were of our own day, and of our own neighbourhood. It is impossible not to suppose that we have known "sweet Christabel," from the time when she was "a fairy thing, with red round cheeks," till she had grown up, through all the engaging prettinesses of childhood, and the increasing charms of youth, to be the pure and dignified creature, which we find her at the opening of the poem. The scene is laid at midnight, in the yet leafless wood, a furlong from the castle-gate of the rich Baron Sir Leoline, whose daughter, "the lovely Lady Christabel," has come, in consequence of a vow, to pray at the old oak tree, "for the weal of her lover that's far away." In the midst of her orisons she is suddenly alarmed by a moaning near her, which turns out to be the complaint of the Lady Geraldine, who relates, that she had been carried off by warriors, and brought to this wild wood, where they had left her with intent quickly to return. This story of Geraldine's easily obtains credence from the unsuspecting Christabel, who conducts her secretly to a chamber in the castle. There the mild and beautiful Geraldine seems transformed in language and appearance to a sorceress, contending with the spirit of Christabel's deceased mother for the mastery over her daughter; but Christabel's lips are sealed by a spell. What she knows she cannot utter; and scarcely can she herself believe that she knows it.

On the return of morning, Geraldine, in all her pristine beauty, accompanies the innocent but perplexed Christabel to the presence of the Baron, who is delighted when he learns that she is the daughter of his once loved friend, Sir Roland de Vaux, of Tryermaine.--We shall not pursue the distress of Christabel, the mysterious warnings of Bracy the Bard, the a.s.sumed sorrow of Geraldine, or the indignation of Sir Leoline, at his daughter's seemingly causeless jealousy--what we have princ.i.p.ally to remark with respect to the tale is, that, wild and romantic and visionary as it is, it has a truth of its own, which seizes on and masters the imagination from the beginning to the end.

The poet unveils with exquisite skill the finer ties of imagination and feeling by which they are linked to the human heart.

The elements of our sensibility, to all that concerns fair Christabel, are of the purest texture; they are not formally announced in a set description, but they accompany and mark her every movement throughout the piece--Incessu patuit Dea.--She is the support of her n.o.ble father's declining age--sanctified by the blessing of her departed mother--the beloved of a valorous and absent knight--the delight and admiration of an inspired bard--she is a being made up of tenderness, affection, sweetness, piety! There is a fine discrimination in the descriptions of Christabel and Geraldine, between the lovely and the merely beautiful. There is a moral sensitiveness about Christabel, which none but a true poet could seize. It would be difficult to find a more delicate touch of this kind in any writer, than her anxious exclamation when, in pa.s.sing the hall with Geraldine, a gleam bursts from the dying embers.

Next in point of merit to the power which Mr. Coleridge has displayed, in interesting us by the moral beauty of his heroine, comes the skill with which he has wrought the feelings and fictions of superst.i.tion into shape. The witchlike Geraldine lying down by the side of Christabel, and uttering the spell over her, makes the reader thrill with indefinable horror.

We find another striking excellence of this poem, and which powerfully affects every reader, by placing, as it were before his eyes, a distinct picture of the events narrated, with all their appendages of sight and sound--the dim forest--the ma.s.sive castle-gate--the angry moan of the sleeping mastiff--the sudden flash of the dying embers--the echoing hall--the carved chamber, with its curious lamp--in short, all that enriches and adorns this tale, with a luxuriance of imagination seldom equalled.' [7]

Whilst in the full enjoyment of his creative powers, Coleridge wrote in a letter to a friend the following critique on "the Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni," which is supposed to have been composed about the time of the Christabel, though not published till 1816, in the Sibylline Leaves. It will serve to shew how freely he a.s.sented to the opinions of his friends, and with what candour he criticised his own poems, recording his opinions whether of censure or of praise:--

"In a copy of verses, ent.i.tled 'a Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni,' I describe myself under the influence of strong devotional feelings, gazing on the mountain, till as if it had been a shape emanating from and sensibly representing her own essence, my soul had become diffused through the mighty vision and there,

'As in her natural form, swell'd vast to Heaven.'

Mr. Wordsworth, I remember, censured the pa.s.sage as strained and unnatural, and condemned the hymn in toto, (which, nevertheless, I ventured to publish in my 'Sibylline Leaves,') as a specimen of the mock sublime. It may be so for others, but it is impossible that I should myself find it unnatural, being conscious that it was the image and utterance of thoughts and emotions in which there was no mockery.

Yet, on the other hand, I could readily believe that the mood and habit of mind out of which the hymn rose, that differs from Milton's and Thomson's and from the psalms, the source of all three, in the author's addressing himself to 'individual' objects actually present to his senses, while his great predecessors apostrophize 'cla.s.ses' of things presented by the memory, and generalized by the understanding; --I can readily believe, I say, that in this there may be too much of what our learned 'med'ciners' call the 'idiosyncratic' for true poetry.--For, from my very childhood, I have been accustomed to 'abstract', and as it were, unrealize whatever of more than common interest my eyes dwelt on, and then by a sort of transfusion and transmission of my consciousness to identify myself with the object; and I have often thought within the last five or six years, that if ever I should feel once again the genial warmth and stir of the poetic impulse, and refer to my own experiences, I should venture on a yet stranger and wilder allegory than of yore--that I would allegorize myself as a rock, with its summit just raised above the surface of some bay or strait in the Arctic Sea, 'while yet the stern and solitary night brooked no alternate sway'--all around me fixed and firm, methought, as my own substance, and near me lofty ma.s.ses, that might have seemed to 'hold the moon and stars in fee,' and often in such wild play with meteoric lights, or with the quiet s.h.i.+ne from above, which they made rebound in sparkles, or dispand in off-shoot, and splinters, and iridiscent needle shafts of keenest glitter, that it was a pride and a place of healing to lie, as in an apostle's shadow, within the eclipse and deep substance-seeming gloom of 'these dread amba.s.sadors from earth to heaven, great hierarchs!' And though obscured, yet to think myself obscured by consubstantial forms, based in the same foundation as my own. I grieved not to serve them--yea, lovingly and with gladsomeness I abased myself in their presence: for they are my brothers, I said, and the mastery is theirs by right of older birth, and by right of the mightier strivings of the hidden fire that uplifted them above me."

This poem has excited much discussion, and many individuals have expressed different opinions as to its origin. Some a.s.sert that it is borrowed from our own great poets; whilst German readers say, that it is little more than a free translation from a poem of Frederica Brun. That it is founded on Frederica Brun's poem cannot be doubted; but those who compare the two poems must at once feel, that to call Coleridge's a translation, containing as it does new thoughts, exciting different feelings, and being in fact a new birth, a glorification of the original, would be a misuse of words. I insert the following note of Coleridge's, which appears applicable to the subject:

"In looking at objects of nature, while I am thinking, as at yonder moon dim-glimmering through the dewy window-pane, I seem rather to be seeking, as it were 'asking', a symbolical language for something within me that already and for ever exists, than observing any thing new. Even when that latter is the case, yet still I have always an obscure feeling, as if that new phoenomenon were the dim awaking of a forgotten or hidden truth of my inner nature.--It is still interesting as a word, a symbol! It is the [Greek: logos], the Creator! and the Evolver! What is the right, the virtuous feeling and consequent action, when a man having long meditated and perceived a certain truth finds another, a foreign writer, who has handled the same with an approximation to the truth, as he had previously conceived it? Joy!

Let truth make her voice audible! While I was preparing the pen to write this remark I lost the train of thought which had led me to it.

I meant to have asked something else, now forgotten for the above answers itself--it needed no new answer, I trust, in my heart."

'15th April, 1805'.

Coleridge, who was an honest man, was equally honest in literature; and had he thought himself indebted to any other author, he would have acknowledged the same.

Born a poet, and a philosopher, by reflection, the mysterious depths of nature and the enquiry into these depths were among his chief delights.

And from boyhood he had felt that it was the business of this life, to prepare for that which is to come. His schoolfellow, Lamb, also observed, that from his youth upward, "he hungered for eternity,"

sincerely and fervently praying to be so enlightened as to attain it.

Though usually described "as doing nothing,"--"an idler," "a dreamer,"

and by many such epithets--he sent forth works which, though they had cost him years of thought, never brought him any suitable return. In a note written in 1825, speaking of himself, he says,

"A man of letters, friendless, because of no faction: repeatedly, and in strong language inculpated of hiding his light under a bushel, yet destined to see publication after publication abused by the Edinburgh Review, as the representative of one party, and not even noticed by the Quarterly Review, as the representative of the other--and to receive as the meed of his labours for the cause of freedom against despotism and jacobinism, of the church against infidelity and schism; and of principle against fas.h.i.+on and sciolism, slander, loss, and embarra.s.sment."

If, however, we were to collect the epithets applied to Milton in his time, they would now appear incredible;--so when the misconceptions arising from slander shall have ceased, the name of Coleridge will be enrolled among those of our most ill.u.s.trious men. The poet has said of Gay, "in wit, a 'man'; simplicity, a 'child'."

But such was the extent and grasp of Coleridge's intellectual powers, that of him it may be said, "In wit, a giant; in simplicity, a very child." Though conscious of his own powers, with other men, he walked most humbly, and whatever their station or acquirements, he would talk to them as equals. He seemed but slightly connected with the things of the world, for which, save the love of those dear to him, he cared but little, living in this affection for his friends, and always feeling and acting in the spirit of that humility he has so beautifully described.

"That humility which is the mother of charity," and which was in-woven in his being, revealing itself in all his intercourse throughout the day--for he looked on man as G.o.d's creature. All that he thought and taught was put forth in the same spirit and with the strongest sense of duty, so that they might learn of him with pleasure. Whatever be considered the faulty part of his own character, he freely acknowledged to others, with an admonition to avoid the like. His sensitive nature induced a too great p.r.o.neness to a self-accusing spirit; yet in this was there no affected humility, though it might unfortunately dispose some to think evil of him where little or none existed, or form an excuse to others for their neglect of him. With respect to other men, however, all his feelings and judgments ever gave proof of the very reverse. The natural piety of his mind, led him most frequently to dwell on the thought of time and eternity, and was the cause of his discussions 'ending' generally with theology.

During the first week of his residence at Highgate, he conversed frequently on the Trinity and on Unitarianism, and in one of these conversations, his eye being attracted by a large cowry, very handsomely spotted:

"Observe," said he, "this sh.e.l.l, and the beauty of its exterior here pourtrayed. Reverse it and place it to your ear, you will find it empty, and a hollow murmuring sound issuing from the cavity in which the animal once resided. This sh.e.l.l, with all its beautiful spots, was secreted by the creature when living within it, but being plucked out, nothing remains save the hollow sound for the ear. Such is Unitarianism; it owes any beauty it may have left to the Christianity from which it separated itself. The teachers of Unitarianism have severed from 'their' Christianity its 'Life', [8] by removing the doctrine of St. John; and thus mutilated, 'they' call the residue the religion of Christ, implying the whole of the system, but omitting in their teaching the doctrine of redemption."

This ill.u.s.tration reminds me of what took place between two men well known in the literary world, who were at a dinner party together, both dissenters,--one a Unitarian. In the evening, tea was brought on a large silver waiter. They were popular writers of the day. One of them observing the salver facetiously cried out, "See how we authors swim."

"Read the inscription on it," said the kindhearted Unitarian: his friend did so, and seeing that it had been presented in token of satisfaction for his friend's labours in the "Improved Version of the New Testament,"

emphatically exclaimed, "Take it away! I am a Unitarian, because I am a Trinitarian; you have hitherto at least adopted a misnomer." Twenty-five years since the Unitarians were of two creeds; one cla.s.s materialists, the other immaterialists, but both agreeing that Christ was only an inspired 'man'. If I am rightly informed, they are not more orthodox at the present day.

When Coleridge was among the Unitarians, his deeper course of reasoning had not yet commenced. During his school education he became a Socinian; the personality of the Trinity had staggered him, and he in consequence preached for a short time at different Unitarian meetings; but in the course of examination, he found that the doctrines he had to deliver were mere moral truths, while he was "craving for a 'faith'," his heart being with Paul and John, though his head was with Spinoza. In after life, speaking of his conversion to Christianity, he often repeated--He did not believe in the Trinity, because to him at that time, the belief seemed contradictory to reason and scripture. "What care I," said he, "for Rabbi Paul, or Rabbi John, if they be opposed to moral sense." This was going a step beyond the Socinians, but this step was the means of his being reclaimed from error, for having by his course of reasoning gradually diminished "even this faith," that which remained with him was so small, that it altogether sank into unbelief; and he then felt compelled to retrace his steps from the point whence he had started. Led by further enquiries after truth, deeper meditation revealed to him the true value of the scriptures; and at the same time his philosophic views enlarging, he found that the doctrine of the Trinity was not contrary to reason--to reason in its highest sense; and he then discovered how far he had misbelieved, or had been, as he stated, puffed up by Socinian views. On quitting Shrewsbury and returning to Bristol, he seceded from the Unitarians, and observed, that if they had attempted to play the same tricks with a neighbour's will, which they had done with the New Testament, they would deserve to be put in the pillory. He continued attached to the writings of St. John and St. Paul, for thirty-four years of his life, [9] and having grown in strength with increase of years, he died in the faith of these apostles. And yet but lately did it appear in print, that "he was ever s.h.i.+fting his opinions."

When at Cambridge, his acquaintance with Mr. Frend led him to study the philosophy of Hartley, and he became one of his disciples. Perhaps the love of Coleridge for his college, "the ever honoured Jesus," might have had some share in the cause of his early predilection in favour of Hartley. He too was the son of a clergyman, was admitted to Jesus at the age of fifteen, and became a fellow in 1705. According to the account given of him by his biographer, Coleridge in several respects seems to have resembled him. All his early studies were intended to fit him for the church, but scruples arose in his mind, because he could not conscientiously subscribe to the thirty-nine articles: he therefore gave up all thoughts of the clerical profession, and entered the medical, for which, as Coleridge himself states, he also had had the most ardent desire. Hartley, when he had taken his degree, practised physic; and his knowledge, his general acquirements, his sensibility, and his benevolence, made him an ornament to the profession. In this profession too, Coleridge, had circ.u.mstances allowed him to enter it, must have been pre-eminent. Hartley, like Coleridge, was formed for sympathy and all the charities of life--his countenance was benign--his manners were gentle--and his eloquence pathetic and commanding. He first practised at Newark, and afterwards removed to Bury St. Edmonds, where he ended his career, dying in 1757, at the age of fifty-two. He was much afflicted with stone, and was in part the means of procuring from the government five thousand pounds for Mrs. Stevens, as a reward for the secret of preparing the solvent, sold and advertised in her name. In 1740, he published the work on which his fame rests, under the t.i.tle of 'Observations on Man, his frame, his duty, and his expectations.' In it he expounded his doctrine of vibrations, and attempted by reasoning to explain the origin and propagation of sensation, built on gratuitous a.s.sumption of certain vibrations of the brain and nerves, coupled by a.s.sociation. Coleridge on his visit to Germany, soon made himself master of this subject. In his Biographia Literaria, he devotes a chapter to the examination of the work, and having seen the hollowness of the argument, abandoned it. While in Germany, Coleridge also studied Des Cartes, and saw the source of Locke's Theory, from which he entirely differed. He next turned his attention to Spinoza, but with a mind so logically formed, and so energetic in the search after truth, it was impossible for him to dwell long on a philosophy thus constructed--and Coleridge was still left to yearn for a resting place on which to base his faith. After he had successively studied in the schools of Locke, Berkeley, Leibnitz, and Hartley, and could find in one of them an abiding place for his reason;

"I began," says he, "to ask myself, Is a system of philosophy, as differing from mere history and cla.s.sification, possible? If possible, what are its necessary conditions? I was for a while disposed to answer the first question in the negative, and to admit that the sole practicable employment for the human mind was to observe, to recollect, and to cla.s.sify. Christianity however is not a theory, or a speculation, but a life--not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process." [10]

Spinoza being one of the writers which Coleridge, in his pa.s.sage from Socinianism to Christianity, had studied, the reader will probably be interested with the following note, written by himself on the subject:

"Paradoxical, as it a.s.suredly is, I am convinced that Spinoza's innocence and virtue, guarded and matured into invincible habit of being, by a life of constant meditation and of intellectual pursuit, were the conditions or temptations, 'sine quibus non' of his forming and maintaining a system subversive of all virtue. He saw so clearly the 'folly' and 'absurdity' of wickedness, and felt so weakly and languidly the pa.s.sions tempting to it, that he concluded, that nothing was wanting to a course of well-doing, but clear conceptions and the 'fort.i.tudo intellectualis'; while his very modesty, a prominent feature in his character, rendered him, as it did Hartley, less averse to the system of necessity. Add to these causes his profound admiration of pure mathematics, and the vast progress made in it so unspeakably beneficial to mankind, their bodies as well as souls, and souls as well as bodies; the reflection that the essence of mathematical science consists in discovering the absolute properties of forms and proportions, and how pernicious a bewilderment was produced in this 'sublime' science by the wild attempt of the Platonists, especially the later (though Plato himself is far from blameless in this respect,) to explain the 'final' cause of mathematical 'figures' and of numbers, so as to subordinate them to a principle of origination out of themselves; and the further comparison of the progress of this SCIENCE, ('pura Mathesis') which excludes all consideration of final cause, with the unequal and equivocal progress of those branches of literature which rest on, or refer to final causes; and that the uncertainty and mixture with error, appeared in proportion to such reference--and if I mistake not, we shall have the most important parts of the history of Spinoza's mind. It is a duty which we owe to truth, to distinguish Spinoza from the Voltaires, Humes, and the whole nest of 'popular' infidels, to make manifest how precious a thing is the sincere thirst of truth for the sake of truth undebased by vanity, appet.i.te, and the ambition of forming a sect of 'arguescents' and trumpeters--and that it is capable, to a wonderful degree, of rendering innoxious the poisonous pangs of the worst errors--nay, heaven educing good out of the very evil--the important advantages that have been derived from such men. Wise and good men would never have seen the true basis and bulwark of the right cause, if they had not been made to know and understand the whole weight and possible force of the wrong cause; nor would have even purified their own system from these admissions, on which the whole of Spinozism is built, and which admissions were common to all parties, and therefore fairly belonging to Spinoza.--Now I affirm that none but an eminently pure and benevolent mind could have constructed and perfected such a system as that of the ethics of Spinoza. Bad hearted men always 'hate'

the religion and morality which they attack--but hatred dims and 'inturbidates' the logical faculties. There is likewise a sort of lurking terror in such a heart, which renders it far too painful to keep a steady gaze on the being of G.o.d and the existence of immortality--they dare only attack it as Tartars, a hot valiant inroad, and then they scour off again. Equally painful is self-examination, for if the wretch be 'callous', the 'facts' of psychology will not present themselves--if not, who could go on year after year in a perpetual process of deliberate self-torture and shame. The very torment of the process would furnish facts subversive of the system, for which the process was inst.i.tuted. The mind would at length be unable to disguise from itself the unequivocal 'fact' of its own shame and remorse, and this once felt and distinctly acknowledged, Spinozism is blown up as by a mine."