Coleridge’s examination of Wordsworth’s views.
Interesting, however, as the Preface and its satellites are in themselves, they are far more interesting as the occasion of the much longer examination of the main document which forms the centre, and as criticism the most valuable part, of the Biographia Literaria[[352]] of Coleridge, Wordsworth’s fellow-worker in these same Lyrical Ballads. That Wordsworth was himself not wholly pleased with this criticism of his criticism, we know: and it would have been strange if he had been—nay, if a much less arrogant and egotistical spirit than his had taken it quite kindly. But Coleridge was on this occasion entirely within his right. The examination, though in some parts unsparing enough, was conducted throughout in the most courteous, indeed in the most eulogistic, tone; the critic, especially after the lapse of so many years,[[353]] could not be denied the right of pointing out the limits of his agreement with a manifesto which, referring as it did to joint work of his and another’s, might excusably be supposed to represent his conclusions as well as those of his fellow-worker.
As to his competence for the task, there could even then be little, and can now be no, dispute. Wordsworth himself, though he has left some valuable critical dicta, had by no means all, or even very many, of the qualifications of a critic. His intellect, save at his rare moments of highest poetical inspiration, was rather strong than fine or subtle; and it could not, even at those moments, be described as in any degree flexible or wide-ranging. He carried into literature the temperament of the narrowest theological partisan; and would rather that a man were not poetically saved at all, than that he were saved while not following “W. W.’s” own way. His reading, moreover, was far from wide, and his intense self-centredness made him indifferent about extending it: while he judged everything that he did read with reference to himself and his own poetry.
His critical qualifications.
In all these respects, except poetical intensity, Coleridge was his exact opposite. But for a certain uncertainty, a sort of Will-o'-the-Wispishness which displays itself in some of his individual critical estimates—and for the too well-known inability to carry out his designs, which is not perhaps identical, or even closely connected, with this uncertainty,—he might be called, he may perhaps even in spite of them be called, one of the very greatest critics of the world. He had read immensely, and much of his reading had been in the philosophy of æsthetics, more in pure literature itself. The play of his intellect—when opium and natural tendency to digression did not drive it devious and muddle it—was marvellously subtle, flexible, and fine. He could take positions not his own with remarkable alacrity; was nothing if not logical, and few things more than historical-literary. Further, such egotisms as came into play in this particular quarrel all made for righteousness in his case, while they were snares to Wordsworth. It may be ungracious, but is not unfair, to say that Wordsworth’s contempt for poetic diction, and his belittling of metre, arose very mainly from the fact that, in his case, intense meaning was absolutely required to save his diction from stiffness on the one hand and triviality on the other, while he had no very special metrical gifts. Coleridge, though he certainly had no lack of meaning, and could also write simply enough when he chose, was a metrist[[354]] such as we have not more than five or six even in English poetry, and could colour and harmonise language in such a way that, at his best, not Shakespeare himself is his superior, and hardly any one else his equal. The old, the true, sense of Cui bono? comes in here victoriously. It was certainly to Wordsworth’s interest that diction and metre should be relegated to a low place. Coleridge, though he had personal reasons for taking their part, could do well without them, and was not obliged to be their champion.
Unusual integrity of his critique.
However all this may be, there is no doubt about the importance of the discussion of Wordsworth’s literary theories, in chaps. xiv. to xxii. of the Biographia. Some have held that Coleridge could not write a book; more have laid it down that he never did write one. Certainly the title is to be allowed to the Biographia as a whole only by the most elastic allowance, while large parts of it are at best episodes, and at worst sheer divagations. But, if books were not sacred things, it would be possible, and of no inconsiderable advantage, to sub-title this part of the book A Critical Enquiry into the Principles which guided the Lyrical Ballads, and Mr Wordsworth’s Account of Them, to print this alone as substantive text,[[355]] and to arrange all the rest as notes and appendices.