The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 10 (of 12)

by William Hazlitt

SCHLEGEL ON THE DRAMA.

August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s (1767–1845) ‘Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature’ were delivered in Vienna in 1808. Hazlitt reviews the English translation, published in 1815, by John Black (1783–1855), who afterwards became editor of The Morning Chronicle.

PAGE [79]. The admirable translator. Schlegel had translated Shakespeare (9 vols. 1797–1810), and Calderon (Spanish Theatre, 2 vols., 1803–1809). Madame de Staël. Schlegel lived for many years at Madame de Staël’s house at Coppet. [81]. Florimel. The Faerie Queene, Book III., Canto VII. [82]. ‘There was magic in the web.’ Othello, Act III. Sc. 4. Schlegel somewhere compares, etc. Lectures XXV. ‘So withered,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 3. ‘Metaphysical aid.’ Ibid., Act I. Sc. 5. [83]. ‘That she moved with grace,’ etc. Possibly Hazlitt was thinking of the scene in the Iliad (III. 150, et seq.), where at the Scaean Gate the Trojan elders see Helen for the first time. ‘Upon her eyelids,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book II., Canto III., St. 25. ‘All plumed,’ etc. Henry IV., Part I., Act IV. Sc. 1. ‘For they are old,’ etc. King Lear, Act II. Sc. 4. [85]. ‘Antres vast,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3. Orlando’s enchanted sword, etc. In Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. [86]. ‘New-lighted,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4. ‘The evidence of things seen.’ Hebrews, xi. 1.

Cf. ‘She hath pursued conclusions infinite

Of easy ways to die.’

Antony and Cleopatra, Act V. Sc. 2.

LEIGH HUNT’S ‘RIMINI’

The Edinburgh Review for June, 1816 (vol. XXVI. pp. 476–491) contained a notice of Leigh Hunt’s The Story of Rimini. Lord Cockburn includes this review in his List of Lord Jeffrey’s articles in the Edinburgh (see Life of Francis Jeffrey); Mr. W. C. Hazlitt (Memoirs, I. pp. xxv. and 225) attributes it to Hazlitt; and Mr. Ireland, in his Bibliography of Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, marks it as doubtful. The Blackwood set regarded or professed to regard Hazlitt as the author, as appears from a passage in Lockhart’s attack on Hunt in the first number (October 1817) of Blackwood’s Magazine: ‘The very culpable manner in which his [Hunt’s] chief poem was reviewed in the Edinburgh Review (we believe it is no secret, at his own impatient and feverish request, by his partner in the Round Table), was matter of concern to more readers than ourselves.... Mr. Jeffrey does ill when he delegates his important functions into such hands as those of Mr. Hazlitt.’ Lockhart, however, knew nothing about Hunt or Hazlitt, and his ‘no secret’ (which afforded an opportunity for a hit at Jeffrey) does not throw any light on the question. Hunt denied the insinuation. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. 225. The review does not read like Hazlitt, but, from a letter which he afterwards addressed to Leigh Hunt, it would seem that at the least he had some hand in it. The letter is dated April 21, 1821 (see Four Generations of a Literary Family, I. 133), and contains an account of Hazlitt’s grievances against Leigh Hunt. In course of it, he says: ‘For instance, I praised you in the Edinburgh Review.’ There does not seem to be any praise of Hunt to which this passage can refer except this review, which is possibly the result of some rather free handling of Hazlitt’s MS. by Jeffrey.

The review is given below. The long extracts from the poem are roughly indicated by the first and last line, though in a few cases some of the intermediate lines are omitted in the review.

The Story of Rimini, a Poem. By Leigh Hunt. pp. 111. London, Murray, 1816.

‘There is a great deal of genuine poetry in this little volume; and poetry, too, of a very peculiar and original character. It reminds us, in many respects, of that pure and glorious style that prevailed among us before French models and French rules of criticism were known in this country, and to which we are delighted to see there is now so general a disposition to recur. Yet its more immediate prototypes, perhaps, are to be looked for rather in Italy than in England: at least, if it be copied from any thing English, it is from something much older than Shakespeare; and it unquestionably bears a still stronger resemblance to Chaucer than to his immediate followers in Italy. The same fresh, lively and artless pictures of external objects,—the same profusion of gorgeous but redundant and needless description,—the same familiarity and even homeliness of diction,—and, above all, the same simplicity and directness in representing actions and passions in colours true to nature, but without any apparent attention to their effect, or any ostentation, or even visible impression as to their moral operation or tendency. The great distinction between the modern poets and their predecessors, is, that the latter painted more from the eye and less from the mind than the former. They described things and actions as they saw them, without expressing, or at any rate without dwelling on the deep-seated emotions from which the objects derived their interest, or the actions their character. The moderns, on the contrary, have brought these most prominently forward, and explained and enlarged upon them perhaps at excessive length. Mr. Hunt, in the piece before us, has followed the antient school; and though he has necessarily gone something beyond the naked notices that would have suited the age of Chaucer, he has kept himself far more to the delineation of visible, physical realities, than any other modern poet on such a subject.

‘Though he has chosen, however, to write in this style, and has done so very successfully, we are not by any means of opinion, that he either writes or appears to write it as naturally as those by whom it was first adopted; on the contrary, we think there is a good deal of affectation in his homeliness, directness, and rambling descriptions. He visibly gives himself airs of familiarity, and mixes up flippant, and even cant phrases, with passages that bear, upon the whole, the marks of considerable labour and study. In general, however, he is very successful in his attempts at facility, and has unquestionably produced a little poem of great grace and spirit, and, in many passages and many particulars, of infinite beauty and delicacy.

‘In the subject he has selected, he has ventured indeed upon sacred ground; but he has not profaned it. The passage in Dante, on which the story of Rimini is founded, remains unimpaired by the English version, and has even received a new interest from it. The undertaking must be allowed to have been one of great nicety. An imitation of the manner of Dante was an impossibility. That extraordinary author collects all his force into a single blow: His sentiments derive an obscure grandeur from their being only half expressed; and therefore, a detailed narrative of this kind, a description of particular circumstances done upon this ponderous principle, an enumeration of incidents leading to a catastrophe, with all the pith and conclusiveness of the catastrophe itself, would be intolerable. Mr. Hunt has arrived at his end by varying his means; and the effect of his poem coincides with that of the original passage, mainly, because the spirit in which it is written is quite different. With the personages in Dante, all is over before the reader is introduced to them; their doom is fixed;—and his style is as peremptory and irrevocable as their fate. But the lovers, whose memory the muse of the Italian poet had consecrated in the other world, are here restored to earth, with the graces and the sentiments that became them in their lifetime. Mr. Hunt, in accompanying them to its fatal close, has mingled every tint of many-coloured life in the tissue of their story—blending tears with smiles, the dancing of the spirits with sad forebodings, the intoxication of hope with bitter disappointment, youth with age, life and death together. He has united something of the voluptuous pathos of Boccacio with Ariosto’s laughing graces. His court dresses, and gala processions he has borrowed from Watteau. His sunshine and his flowers are his own! He himself has explained the design of his poem in the Preface. [A long passage from the Preface is quoted.]

‘The poem opens with the following passage of superb description:—

[“The sun is up, and ’tis a morn of May,” to

“And pilgrims, chanting in the morning sun.”]

‘Such is the manner in which the business of the day is ushered in. The rest of the first canto is taken up in describing the preparations for receiving the bridegroom, the processions of knights that precede his expected arrival; the dresses, &c.—There is something in all this part of the poem which gives back the sensation of the scene and the occasion;—a glancing eye, a busy ear, great bustle and gaiety, and, where it is required, great grace of description. Perhaps the subject is too long dwelt upon; and there is, occasionally, a repetition of nearly the same images and expressions. The reader may take the following as fair specimens:

[“And hark! the approaching trumpets, with a start,” to

“The shift, the tossing, and the fiery tramping.”]

‘After all, the future husband does not appear, but his younger brother, Paulo, who comes as his proxy to take the bride to Rimini; and it is to the mistaken impression thus made on her mind that all the subsequent distress is owing. His person, his dress, the gallantry of Paulo’s demeanour, are very vividly described, and the effect of his appearance on the surrounding multitude.

[“And on a milk-white courser, like the air,” to

“These catch the extrinsic and the common eye.”]

‘The Second Canto gives an account of the bride’s journey to Rimini, in the company of her husband’s brother, which abounds in picturesque descriptions. Mr. Hunt has here taken occasion to enter somewhat learnedly into the geography of his subject; and describes the road between Ravenna and Rimini, with the accuracy of a topographer, and the liveliness of a poet. There is, however, no impertinent minuteness of detail; but only those circumstances are dwelt upon, which fall in with the general interest of the story, and would be likely to strike forcibly upon the imagination in such an interval of anxiety and suspense. We have only room for the concluding lines.

[“Various the trees and passing foliage here,” to

“Night and a maiden silence wrap the plains.”]

‘We have detained our readers longer than we intended, from that which forms the most interesting part of the poem, the Third Canto, of which the subject is the fatal passion between Paulo and Francesca. We shall be ample in our extracts from this part of the poem, because we have no other way of giving an idea of its characteristic qualities. Mr. Hunt, as we have already intimated, does not belong to any of the modern schools of poetry; and therefore we cannot convey our idea of his manner of writing, by reference to any of the more conspicuous models. His poetry is not like Mr. Wordsworth’s, which is metaphysical; nor like Mr. Coleridge’s, which is fantastical; nor like Mr. Southey’s, which is monastical. But it is something which we have already endeavoured to sketch by its general features, and shall now enable the reader to study in detail in the following extracts.

‘The first disappointment of the warm-hearted bride, and the portraits of the rival brothers, are sketched with equal skill and delicacy.

[“Enough of this. Yet how shall I disclose,” to

“And like a morning beam, wake to him every morrow.”]

‘Paulo’s growing passion for Francesca is described with equal delicacy and insight into the sophistry of the human heart. He is represented as first concealing his attachment from himself; then struggling with it; then yielding to it.

[“Till ’twas the food and habit day by day,” to

“’Twas but the taste of what was natural.”]

‘But we hasten on to the principal event and the catastrophe of the poem. The scene of the fatal meeting between the lovers is laid in the gardens of the palace, which are here described with the utmost elegance and beauty.

[“So now you walked beside an odorous bed,” to

“A summer-house so fine in such a nest of green.”]

‘Such is the landscape:—now for the figures.

[“All the green garden, flower-bed, shade and plot,” to

“To ask the good King Arthur for assistance.”]

‘We cannot give the whole extract of the story,—only she becomes more deeply engaged as she comes to the love scenes.—What follows, we think is very exquisitely written.

[“Ready she sat with one hand to turn o’er,” to

“Desperate the joy.—That day they read no more.”]

‘We do not think the execution of the fourth and last Canto quite equal to that of the third: Yet there are passages in it of the greatest beauty; and an air of melancholy breathes from the whole with irresistible softness and effect.

‘The feelings of Francesca, arising from the consciousness of her melancholy situation and broken vows, are thus finely represented.

[“And oh, the morrow, how it used to rise!” to

“That Heaven would take her, if it pleased, away.”]

‘From the distress and agitation of her mind, she afterwards betrays the secret of her infidelity to her husband in her sleep. This leads to a rencounter between the two brothers, which is fatal to Paulo, who runs voluntarily upon his brother’s sword; and partly from the shock of the news, partly from previous grief preying on her mind and body, Francesca dies the same day. Her death is profoundly affecting, and leaves an impression on the imagination, icy, cold, and monumental. The squire of Paulo is admitted to the side of her sad couch, to tell the dismal story—and repeats, in the Prince’s own words, how he had been forced to fight with his brother—

[“——And that although,” to

“The gentle sufferer was at peace in death.”]

‘The bodies of the two lovers are sent back, by order of the husband, to Ravenna, to be buried in one tomb. We shall close our extracts with the account of the arrival of this mournful procession, so different in every respect from the former one.

[“The days were then at close of autumn—still,” to

“Young hearts betrothed used to go there to pray.”]

‘We have given these extracts at length, that our readers might judge of the story of Rimini, less on our authority, than its own merits; and we have few remarks to add to those which we ventured to make at the beginning. The diction of this little poem is among its chief beauties—and yet its greatest blemishes are faults in diction.—It is very English throughout—but often very affectedly negligent, and so extremely familiar as to be absolutely low and vulgar. What, for example, can be said for such lines as

“She had stout notions on the marrying score,” or

“He kept no reckoning with his sweets and sours;—” or

“And better still—in my idea at least,” or

“The two divinest things this world has got.”

‘We see no sort of beauty either in such absurd and unusual phrases as “a clipsome waist,”—“a scattery light,” or “flings of sunshine,”—nor any charm in such comparatives as “martialler,” or “tastefuller,” or “franklier,” or in such words as “whisks,” and “swaling,” and “freaks and snatches,” and an hundred others in the same taste. We think the author rather heretical too on the subject of versification—though we have much less objection to his theory than to his practice. But we cannot spare him a line more on the present occasion—and must put off the rest of our admonitions till we meet him again.’

COLERIDGE’S ‘CHRISTABEL’

In the Edinburgh Review for September, 1816 (vol. XXVII. pp. 58–67), appeared a review of Coleridge’s Christabel, as to the authorship of which there has been a good deal of discussion. Coleridge himself believed that it was written by Hazlitt. (See post, note to p. 155.) Hazlitt never acknowledged the authorship, and there is indeed no external evidence upon the subject. Mr. Dykes Campbell (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 225, note 1) regards the ascription of the review to Hazlitt as being ‘probably, though not certainly, correct.’ Neither Mr. Ireland nor Mr. W. C. Hazlitt ascribes it to Hazlitt. Quite recently the question of Hazlitt’s authorship, determined one way or the other by a consideration of the internal evidence, has been the subject of a controversy in Notes and Queries (9th Series, A. 388, 429: XI. 170, 269), to which reference should be made. Mr. Andrew Lang in his Life of J. G. Lockhart (vol. I. pp. 139–142) refers to the review at some length as a kind of set-off against Lockhart’s early indiscretions in Blackwood. Without discussing the authorship of the review, he is indignant with Jeffrey for having admitted it into the Edinburgh. The present editors are disposed to think that the review is substantially the work of Hazlitt, though, as in the case of the review of Rimini, it may be conjectured that Jeffrey used his editorial pen pretty freely. Since absolute certainty is not at present attainable, the review, instead of being printed in the text, is given below.

Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision. The Pains of Sleep. By S. T. Coleridge, Esq. London. Murray, 1816.

‘The advertisement by which this work was announced to the publick, carried in its front a recommendation from Lord Byron,—who, it seems, has somewhere praised Christabel, “as a wild and singularly original and beautiful poem.” Great as the noble bard’s merits undoubtedly are in poetry, some of his latest publications dispose us to distrust his authority, where the question is what ought to meet the public eye; and the works before us afford an additional proof, that his judgment on such matters is not absolutely to be relied on. Moreover, we are a little inclined to doubt the value of the praise which one poet lends another. It seems now-a-days to be the practice of that once irritable race to laud each other without bounds; and one can hardly avoid suspecting, that what is thus lavishly advanced may be laid out with a view to being repaid with interest. Mr. Coleridge, however, must be judged by his own merits.

‘It is remarked, by the writers upon the Bathos, that the true profound is surely known by one quality—its being wholly bottomless; insomuch, that when you think you have attained its utmost depth in the work of some of its great masters, another, or peradventure the same, astonishes you, immediately after, by a plunge so much more vigorous, as to outdo all his former outdoings. So it seems to be with the new school, or, as they may be termed, the wild or lawless poets. After we had been admiring their extravagance for many years, and marvelling at the ease and rapidity with which one exceeded another in the unmeaning or infantine, until not an idea was left in the rhyme—or in the insane, until we had reached something that seemed the untamed effusion of an author whose thoughts were rather more free than his actions—forth steps Mr. Coleridge, like a giant refreshed with sleep, and as if to redeem his character after so long a silence, (“his poetic powers having been, he says, from 1808 till very lately, in a state of suspended animation,” p. v.) and breaks out in these precise words—

“’Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,

And the owls have awaken’d the crowing cock;

Tu—whit!——Tu—whoo!

And hark, again! the crowing cock,

How drowsily it crew.

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,

Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;

From her kennel beneath the rock

She makes answer to the clock,

Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;

Ever and aye, moonshine or 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.” Pp. 3,4.

‘It is probable that Lord Byron may have had this passage in his eye, when he called the poem “wild” and “original”: but how he discovered it to be “beautiful,” is not quite so easy for us to imagine.

‘Much of the art of the wild writers consists in sudden transitions—opening eagerly upon some topic, and then flying from it immediately. This indeed is known to the medical men, who not unfrequently have the care of them, as an unerring symptom. Accordingly, here we take leave of the Mastiff Bitch, and lose sight of her entirely, upon the entrance of another personage of a higher degree,

“The lovely Lady Christabel,

Whom her father loves so well”—

And who, it seems, has been rambling about all night, having, the night before, had dreams about her lover, which “made her moan and leap.” While kneeling, in the course of her rambles, at an old oak, she hears a noise on the other side of the stump, and going round, finds, to her great surprize, another fair damsel in white silk, but with her dress and hair in some disorder; at the mention of whom, the poet takes fright, not, as might be imagined, because of her disorder, but on account of her beauty and her fair attire—

“I guess, ’twas frightful there to see

A lady so richly clad as she—

Beautiful exceedingly!”

Christabel naturally asks who she is, and is answered, at some length, that her name is Geraldine; that she was, on the morning before, seized by five warriors, who tied her on a white horse, and drove her on, they themselves following, also on white horses; and that they had rode all night. Her narrative now gets to be a little contradictory, which gives rise to unpleasant suspicions. She protests vehemently, and with oaths, that she has no idea who the men were; only that one of them, the tallest of the five, took her and placed her under the tree, and that they all went away, she knew not whither; but how long she had remained there she cannot tell—

“Nor do I know how long it is,

For I have lain in fits, I wis;”

—although she had previously kept a pretty exact account of the time. The two ladies then go home together, after this satisfactory explanation, which appears to have conveyed to the intelligent mind of Lady C. every requisite information. They arrive at the castle, and pass the night in the same bed-room; not to disturb Sir Leoline, who, it seems, was poorly at the time, and, of course, must have been called up to speak to the chambermaids, and have the sheets aired, if Lady G. had had a room to herself. They do not get to their bed, however, in the poem, quite so easily as we have carried them. They first cross the moat, and Lady C. “took the key that fitted well,” and opened a little door, “all in the middle of the gate.” Lady G. then sinks down “belike through pain”; but it should seem more probably from laziness; for her fair companion having lifted her up, and carried her a little way, she then walks on “as she were not in pain.” Then they cross the court—but we must give this in the poet’s words, for he seems so pleased with them, that he inserts them twice over in the space of ten lines—

“So free from danger, free from fear,

They crossed the court—right glad they were.”

‘Lady C. is desirous of a little conversation on the way, but Lady G. will not indulge her Ladyship, saying, she is too much tired to speak. We now meet our old friend, the mastiff bitch, who is much too important a person to be slightly passed by—

“Outside her kennel, the mastiff old

Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.

The mastiff old did not awake,

Yet she an angry moan did make!

And what can ail the mastiff bitch?

Never till now she uttered yell

Beneath the eye of Christabel.

Perhaps it is the owlet’s scritch:

For what can ail the mastiff bitch?”

‘Whatever it may be that ails the bitch, the ladies pass forward, and take off their shoes, and tread softly all the way up stairs, as Christabel observes that her father is a bad sleeper. At last, however, they do arrive at the bed-room, and comfort themselves with a dram of some home-made liquor, which proves to be very old; for it was made by Lady C.’s mother; and when her new friend asks if she thinks the old lady will take her part, she answers, that this is out of the question, in as much as she happened to die in childbed of her. The mention of the old lady, however, gives occasion to the following pathetic couplet.—Christabel says,

“O mother dear, that thou wert here!

I would, said Geraldine, she were!”

‘A very mysterious conversation next takes place between Lady Geraldine and the old gentlewoman’s ghost, which proving extremely fatiguing to her, she again has recourse to the bottle—and with excellent effect, as appears by these lines.

“Again the wild-flower wine she drank;

Her fair large eyes ’gan glitter bright,

And from the floor whereon she sank,

The lofty Lady stood upright:

She was most beautiful to see,

Like a Lady of a far countrée.”

—From which, we may gather among other points, the exceeding great beauty of all women who live in a distant place, no matter where. The effects of the cordial speedily begin to appear; as no one, we imagine, will doubt, that to its influence must be ascribed the following speech—

“And thus the lofty lady spake—

All they, who live in the upper sky,

Do love you, holy Christabel!

And you love them—and for their sake

And for the good which me befel,

Even I in my degree will try,

Fair maiden, to requite you well.”

‘Before going to bed, Lady G. kneels to pray, and desires her friend to undress, and lie down; which she does “in her loveliness”; but being curious, she leans “on her elbow,” and looks towards the fair devotee,—where she sees something which the poet does not think fit to tell us very explicitly.

“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, not to tell!

And she is to sleep by Christabel.”

‘She soon rises, however, from her knees; and as it was not a double-bedded room, she turns in to Lady Christabel, taking only “two paces and a stride.” She then clasps her tight in her arms, and mutters a very dark spell, which we apprehend the poet manufactured by shaking words together at random; for it is impossible to fancy that he can annex any meaning whatever to it. This is the end of it.

“But vainly thou warrest,

For this is alone in

Thy power to declare,

That in the dim forest

Thou heard’st a low moaning,

And found’st a bright lady, surpassingly fair:

And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity,

To shield her and shelter her from the damp air.”

‘The consequence of this incantation is, that Lady Christabel has a strange dream—and when she awakes, her first exclamation is, “Sure I have sinn’d”—“Now heaven be praised if all be well!” Being still perplexed with the remembrance of her “too lively” dream—she then dresses herself, and modestly prays to be forgiven for “her sins unknown.” The two companions now go to the Baron’s parlour, and Geraldine tells her story to him. This, however, the poet judiciously leaves out, and only signifies that the Baron recognized in her the daughter of his old friend Sir Roland, with whom he had had a deadly quarrel. Now, however, he despatches his tame poet, or laureate, called Bard Bracy, to invite him and his family over, promising to forgive every thing, and even make an apology for what had passed. To understand what follows, we own, surpasses our comprehension. Mr. Bracy, the poet, recounts a strange dream he has just had, of a dove being almost strangled by a snake; whereupon the Lady Geraldine falls a hissing, and her eyes grow small, like a serpent’s,—or at least so they seem to her friend; who begs her father to “send away that woman.” Upon this the Baron falls into a passion, as if he had discovered that his daughter had been seduced; at least, we can understand him in no other sense, though no hint of such a kind is given; but, on the contrary, she is painted to the last moment as full of innocence and purity.—Nevertheless,

“His heart was cleft with pain and rage,

His cheeks they quiver’d, his eyes were wild,

Dishonour’d thus in his old age;

Dishonour’d by his only child;

And all his hospitality

To th’ insulted daughter of his friend

By more than woman’s jealousy,

Brought thus to a disgraceful end——”

‘Nothing further is said to explain the mystery; but there follows incontinently, what is termed “The conclusion of Part the Second.” And as we are pretty confident that Mr. Coleridge holds this passage in the highest estimation; that he prizes it more than any other part of “that wild, and singularly original and beautiful poem Christabel,” excepting always the two passages touching the “toothless mastiff Bitch;” we shall extract it for the amazement of our readers—premising our own frank avowal that we are wholly unable to divine the meaning of any portion of it.

“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.

Perhaps ’tis pretty to force together

Thoughts so all unlike each other;

To mutter and mock a broken charm,

To dally with wrong that does no harm.

Perhaps ’tis tender too, and pretty,

At each wild word to feel within

A sweet recoil of love and pity.

And what if in a world of sin

(O sorrow and shame should this be true!)

Such giddiness of heart and brain

Comes seldom save from rage and pain,

So talks as it’s most used to do.”

‘Here endeth the Second Part, and, in truth, the “singular” poem itself; for the author has not yet written, or, as he phrases it, “embodied in verse,” the “three parts yet to come;”—though he trusts he shall be able to do so “in the course of the present year.”

‘One word as to the metre of Christabel, or, as Mr. Coleridge terms it, “the Christabel”—happily enough; for indeed we doubt if the peculiar force of the definite article was ever more strongly exemplified. He says, that though the reader may fancy there prevails a great irregularity in the metre, some lines being of four, others of twelve syllables, yet in reality it is quite regular; only that it is “founded on a new principle, namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables.” We say nothing of the monstrous assurance of any man coming forward coolly at this time of day, and telling the readers of English poetry, whose ear has been tuned to the lays of Spenser, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, that he makes his metre “on a new principle!” but we utterly deny the truth of the assertion, and defy him to show us any principle upon which his lines can be conceived to tally. We give two or three specimens, to confound at once this miserable piece of coxcombry and shuffling. Let our “wild, and singularly original and beautiful” author, show us how these lines agree either in number of accents or of feet.

“Ah wel-a-day!”—

“For this is alone in”—

“And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity”—

“I pray you drink this cordial wine”—

“Sir Leoline”—

“And found a bright lady surpassingly fair”—

“Tu—whit!——Tu—whoo!”

‘Kubla Khan is given to the public, it seems, “at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity;”—but whether Lord Byron the praiser of “the Christabel,” or the Laureate, the praiser of Princes, we are not informed. As far as Mr. Coleridge’s “own opinions are concerned,” it is published, “not upon the ground of any poetic merits,” but “as a PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITY!” In these opinions of the candid author, we entirely concur; but for this reason we hardly think it was necessary to give the minute detail which the Preface contains, of the circumstances attending its composition. Had the question regarded “Paradise Lost,” or “Dryden’s Ode” we could not have had a more particular account of the circumstances in which it was composed. It was in the year 1797, and the summer season. Mr. Coleridge was in bad health;—the particular disease is not given; but the careful reader will form his own conjectures. He had retired very prudently to a lonely farm-house; and whoever would see the place which gave birth to the “psychological curiosity,” may find his way thither without a guide; for it is situated on the confines of Somerset and Devonshire, and on the Exmoor part of the boundary; and it is, moreover, between Porlock and Linton. In that farm-house, he had a slight indisposition, and had taken an anodyne, which threw him into a deep sleep in his chair, (whether after dinner or not he omits to state), “at the moment that he was reading a sentence in Purchas’s Pilgrims,” relative to a palace of Kubla Khan. The effects of the anodyne, and the sentence together, were prodigious: They produced the “curiosity” now before us; for, during his three-hours sleep, Mr. Coleridge “has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines.” On awaking, he “instantly and eagerly” wrote down the verses here published; when he was (he says “unfortunately”) called out by a “person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour;” and when he returned, the vision was gone. The lines here given smell strongly, it must be owned, of the anodyne; and, but that an under dose of a sedative produces contrary effects, we should inevitably have been lulled by them into forgetfulness of all things. Perhaps a dozen more such lines as the following would reduce the most irritable of critics to a state of inaction.

“A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid

And on her dulcimer she play’d,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight ’twould win

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread:

For he on honey-dew hath fed.” &c. &c.

‘There is a good deal more altogether as exquisite—and in particular a fine description of a wood, “ancient as the hills;” and “folding sunny spots of greenery!” But we suppose this specimen will be sufficient.

‘Persons in this poet’s unhappy condition, generally feel the want of sleep as the worst of their evils; but there are instances, too, in the history of the disease, of sleep being attended with new agony, as if the waking thoughts, how wild and turbulent soever, had still been under some slight restraint, which sleep instantly removed. Mr. Coleridge appears to have experienced this symptom, if we may judge from the title of his third poem, “The Pains of Sleep;” and, in truth, from its composition—which is mere raving, without any thing more affecting than a number of incoherent words, expressive of extravagance and incongruity.—We need give no specimen of it.

‘Upon the whole, we look upon this publication as one of the most notable pieces of impertinence of which the press has lately been guilty; and one of the boldest experiments that has yet been made on the patience or understanding of the public. It is impossible, however, to dismiss it, without a remark or two. The other productions of the Lake School have generally exhibited talents thrown away upon subjects so mean, that no power of genius could ennoble them; or perverted and rendered useless by a false theory of poetical composition. But even in the worst of them, if we except the White Doe of Mr. Wordsworth and some of the laureate odes, there were always some gleams of feeling or of fancy. But the thing now before us, is utterly destitute of value. It exhibits from beginning to end not a ray of genius; and we defy any man to point out a passage of poetical merit in any of the three pieces which it contains, except, perhaps, the following lines in p. 32, and even these are not very brilliant; nor is the leading thought original—

“Alas! they had been friends in youth;

But whispering tongues can poison truth;

And constancy lives in realms above;

And life is thorny; and youth is vain;

And to be wroth with one we love,

Doth work like madness in the brain.”

‘With this one exception, there is literally not one couplet in the publication before us which would be reckoned poetry, or even sense, were it found in the corner of a newspaper or upon the window of an inn. Must we then be doomed to hear such a mixture of raving and driv’ling, extolled as the work of a “wild and original” genius, simply because Mr. Coleridge has now and then written fine verses, and a brother poet chooses, in his milder mood, to laud him from courtesy or from interest? And are such panegyrics to be echoed by the mean tools of a political faction, because they relate to one whose daily prose is understood to be dedicated to the support of all that courtiers think should be supported? If it be true that the author has thus earned the patronage of those liberal dispensers of bounty, we can have no objection that they should give him proper proofs of their gratitude; but we cannot help wishing, for his sake, as well as our own, that they would pay in solid pudding instead of empty praise; and adhere, at least in this instance, to the good old system of rewarding their champions with places and pensions, instead of puffing their bad poetry, and endeavouring to cram their nonsense down the throats of all the loyal and well affected.’