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torate; and his increasing devotion philosophy was religious in spirit. While Wordsworth at Goslar was brooding over his past and pluming his wings for "The Prelude," Coleridge, having matriculated at the University of Göttingen, was devouring German literature and German philosophy; and after his return to England he dedicated himself, in his wholehearted but ineffectual way, to the task of solving at the same time the final problems of both philosophy and religion. He gave not a little promise, in his public lectures and in his prose writings, of becoming one of the great leaders of modern > thought; but his temperamental weaknesses, and the manifold ills that are mainly traceable to them, virtually frustrated his powers. Within four years the joyous enthusiasm of the Lyrical Ballads days had lapsed to the mood of "Dejection: An Ode" (page 78). Although there are wonderful passages of eloquence and insight in his subsequent prose works, in the main his "afflictions" bowed him "down to earth," and his later prose and poetry alike are but a shadow of what lay unrealized in him.

THE ANCIENT MARINER

For Coleridge's artistic purpose in writing the poem, see the fourth paragraph of the biography (page 667 above). In form, it is imitative of the old ballads; many of the archaisms of the 1798 version, however, such as "yspread," "withouten," "Ancyent Marinere," were subsequently removed.

"Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention; but certain parts," says Wordsworth, "I myself suggested: for example, some crime was to be committed which should bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime and his own wanderings. I had been reading in Shelvocke's Voyages, a day or two before, that, while doubling Cape Horn, they frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings twelve or thir

teen feet. 'Suppose,' said I, 'you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime.' The incident was thought fit for the purpose and adopted accordingly." Later, Coleridge was apparently doubtful of the advisability of this heightening of the moral significance of the narration. "Mrs. Barbauld once told me," he said, "that she admired 'The Ancient Mariner' very much, but that there were two faults in it, it was improbable, and had no moral. As for the probability, I owned that that might admit some question: but as to the want of a moral, I told her that in my own judgment the poem had too much; and that the only, or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a work of pure imagination. It ought to have had no more moral than the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie starts up and says he must kill the aforesaid merchant because one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son."

Quotations in the notes, below, are from the marginal glosses added by Coleridge in 1815-1816.

(57.) 101-102. 'Twas right etc.: They "thus make themselves accomplices in the crime."

106. that silent sea: "The ship enters the Pacific Ocean, and sails northward, even till it reaches the Line" (i.e. the Equator).

(58.) 141-142. Instead of the cross etc.: "The shipmates, in their sore distress, would fain throw the whole guilt on the Mariner."

(59.) 197. I've won: "Death and Life-inDeath have diced for the ship's crew, and she (the latter) winneth the Mariner."

226-227. And thou -- sea-sand: These two lines were contributed by Wordsworth.

(60.) 263-266. The moving Moon etc.: "In his loneliness and fixedness, he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move on

ward; and every where the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and their native country, and their own natural homes."

(61.) 379. The spirit: "The lonesome Spirit from the south-pole carries on the ship as far as the Line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still requireth vengeance."

397. Two voices in the air: "The Polar Spirit's fellow-daemons, the invisible inhabitants of the element [the air], take part in his wrong; and two of them relate, one to the other, that penance long and heavy for the ancient Mariner hath been accorded to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward."

(62.) 422-423. But why drives on etc.: "The Mariner hath been cast into a trance; for the angelic power causeth the vessel to drive northward faster than human life could endure."

(63.) 535. ivy-tod: ivy-bush.

(64.) 614-617. He prayeth best, etc.: This is the sequel to lines 236-247, 282-288. For Wordsworth's early doctrine of sympathy, see note on "Simon Lee" (page 657, above).

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CONCLUSION TO PART II

Here, perhaps Coleridge projected a retrospective passage (like the Conclusion to Part I) touching first upon the Baron's light rebukes to Christabel in her childhood, and then leading back to his present anger at her.

James Gillman, friend and biographer of the poet, records that Coleridge intended to carry the story through a third and fourth part as follows: - Old Bracy the bard finds only the ruins of Lord Roland's castle, and hastens to return with the news that Geraldine's story must be false. She, in the meantime, has been artfully fomenting Sir Leoline's suspicion and anger against his daughter. But being aware, like the witches in "Macbeth," of all that is happening, Geraldine changes her appearance, on Bracy's return, to that of Christabel's absent lover (see lines 27-30, 292-297). The girl feels, without knowing why, a great disgust for the courtship of her once favored knight. But, urged by her father, she at length consents to marriage. As the couple approach the altar, however, the real lover enters, and produces a ring that Christabel had once given him. Thereupon the supernatural being "Geraldine" disappears. The castle bell tolls (see lines 198-201), the mother's voice in heard, the rightful marriage takes place, and the story closes upon the concord of father and daughter.

KUBLA KHAN

Coleridge tells us that this poem came to him in a dream induced by an "anodyne," opium. He had just been reading, in an old book of travels, a prose description of the "sumptuous house of pleasure" (as it was called in the book) and its

surroundings. The main features of this description Coleridge borrows, investing them, however, with his magical imagery and incomparable music. The earthly paradise pictured in the poem may be regarded as an expression of the immemorial tendency of the human heart to seek a refuge from the ills of life by creating a world closer to the heart's desire.

Kubla Khan was the founder, in the thirteenth century, of the Mongol dynasty of China. Xanadu, or "Zaindu" (as the old book gave it), is a region in Tartary. Mount Abora, in line 41, has not been identified with certainty, and may have been invented by Coleridge.

FRANCE: AN ODE

Compare with Wordsworth's poems bearing on political ideas, especially the passage from "The Prelude" (pages 1217). Wordsworth clung to his faith in the French Revolution longer than Coleridge, whose more pliant nature responded early to the conservative reaction. The present poem he originally entitled "The Recantation." He abandons his earlier hope of witnessing the reign of liberty in human society, without, however, relinquishing his faith in "The spirit of divinest Liberty" (line 21) present in nature. There it may still be joyously felt by the pure in heart when they approach "all things with intensest love" (line 104).

First the poet calls upon free nature to bear witness that he has ever worshipped the spirit of Liberty. In the second stanza, he expresses his early enthusiasm for the Revolution, an enthusiasm that continued after the Allies, including his own country, waged war upon the French Revolutionists. In the third stanza, he indicates that his hope for the regeneration of the world by France survived even the wild excesses of the movement behind the storms "The Sun was rising." In the fourth, he laments that France, the "Champion of human kind," should have fallen so low as to invade free Switzerland and thus show herself no better than kings pursuing "the low lust of sway." And in the concluding stanza, perceiving that champions of lib

erty are all too likely to be slaves at heart, at bottom enemies to their own cause, he turns sadly, yet joyously, to nature, where the spirit of liberty is pure and unsullied. (76.) 95-96. Alike from Priestcraft's etc.: the mean-souled tyranny of the church and the equally mean-souled tyranny of the sect of atheists. In 1793 the "Goddess of Reason" was enthroned in Notre Dame.

FROST AT MIDNIGHT

Writing at his cottage in Nether Stowey, Coleridge meditates on "extreme silentness;" and looks back to his boyhood years in "the great city" (London), and forward to his son Hartley's wanderings "like a breeze" by lakes and mountains. (77.) 26. "that fluttering stranger: soot adhering to the bars of the grate and presaging, according to superstition, the approach of a visitor.

DEJECTION: AN ODE

(78.) 40. what can these: i.e., the clouds. stars, etc., of the preceding stanza. The beauties of nature cannot alleviate his depression.

new

(79.) 67-69. Joy, Lady Heaven: This sentence resumes the image of the "wedding-garment" in line 49, and sums up the thought of the intervening lines only the highest kind of human joy can so marry Nature to our spirits as to invest her with the highest beauty and meaning. Throughout these two stanzas Coleridge has in mind the poetry and doctrines of Wordsworth, to whom this ode was originally addressed. But he makes more explicit than Wordsworth this double condition: the dependence of nature upon man's joy and, at the same time, of man's joy upon his purity of character. Compare, for instance, "Tintern Abbey" (page 6), "Most Sweet It Is" (page 54), and "Not in the Lucid Intervals" (page 54).

100. mountain-tairn: "tairn" is Scottish for "tarn."

(80.) 120. as Otway's self: as if Otway himself, viz., Thomas Otway, the seventeenth-century dramatist.

THE GARDEN OF BOCCACCIO

Coleridge's kind of imaginative memory, so to phrase it, can fruitfully be compared with Wordsworth's, as in the "Ode on Intimations of Immortality" (page 40). (82.) 5. the numbing spell: For the mood of lines 1-10, cf. "Dejection," stanza II (page 78). There, the poet could find no relief in nature; here, he can find none in "the Past."

14-18. this exquisite design etc.: an engraving by Thomas Stothard (17551834), entitled "The Garden of Boccaccio," in company with which this poem was published the next year in "The Keepsake." Details of the picture are alluded to from line 57 to the end. — Boccaccio: the great Italian narrator of the fourteenth century.

19. a newly-bathed steep: a high hill which has just been drenched with rain or fog. The sheep, quiet in the distance, are moving slowly down, out of a cloud of mist. Following this image of sight, an image of sound (lines 20-22) carries on the quiet, gradual influence of the picture upon the poet. This influence, strong though soft, reaches his heart and dispels his apathy (lines 23-26). He can turn with feeling to "the Past"; see note to line 5, above.

now

(83.) 28-56. All spirits of power etc.: Notice how they are given climactically, in these lines; and compare the powers that affected his younger life in "Youth and Age" (page 81).

38. Hertha: the Earth-goddess of North German mythology. (84.) 98. roll of old Maeonides: copy of Homer's poems. Homer received the name Maeonides because he was supposed to have been born at Smyrna in Lydia, once called Maeonia.

EPITAPH

7. Mercy for praise, to be forgiven for fame: "for" here means "instead of."

LAMB: THE OLD FAMILIAR
FACES

The pauses should be emphasized in reading this poem, to bring out its harmony

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of rhythmic and emotional tones. parable with it, in respect of winning gentleness, is Coleridge's poem to Lamb, "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," written in the preceding year. But peculiar to Charles Lamb (1775-1834) is his simple. nostalgia of affection. It appears with humor, though still with pathos, in his Essays of Elia. It swayed his comments upon Shakespeare, and the other sixteenth and seventeenth century dramatists, who were worshipped and "revived" by Coleridge, Hazlitt, and Lamb, — proponents of so-called "Romantic criticism" in England.

(85.) 16. Friend of my bosom: Coleridge.

SOUTHEY: BATTLE OF BLENHEIM

The humanitarian view of public troubles, which appears also in the greater poetry of his friends Coleridge and Wordsworth, is here rendered by Robert Southey (1774-1843) in a simple, satiric humor which they did not possess (see, for example, Wordsworth's "Lines in Early Spring," page 5). Four years earlier, he and Coleridge, under the inspiration of youth and the French Revolution, had planned a "Pantisocracy" (government by all) in the wilds of America, where public troubles were to be no more. But presently Southey settled down to the life of a voluminous writer of verse and prose, and became Poet Laureate in 1813. His Life of Nelson (1813), though too early to be reliable, is a classic for narrative interest. The best of his ambitious verse-romances, regarded by him as epical,- is "The Curse of Kehama" (1810).

Eugene:

55-56. Marlb'ro' The Duke of Marlborough and the Austrian Prince Eugene led English and German forces against the French and Bavarians. The battle took place near Blenheim in 1704.

CAMPBELL: YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND

This piece, so different in tone from the preceding, is here the first example of

that poetry of external action - battle and romantic adventure · which runs through the work of Southey, Thomas Campbell (1777-1844), Scott, Wolfe, and Byron. Campbell's "Hohenlinden" and "Battle of the Baltic," inspired like the present poem by the warfare that followed the French Revolution, have the same full-sounding vigor. His "Lord Ullin's Daughter" is a romantic ballad. On the other hand, his "Pleasures of Memory” (1799) continued the same eighteenth-century tradition as Rogers' "Pleasures of Memory" (see note on Rogers, page 655, above).

(86.) 10. And the stormy winds do blow: This verse originally read, "And the stormy tempests blow." What is the effect of the change?

15. Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell: When the poem was first published in "The Morning Chronicle," March 18, 1801, this verse read: "Where Blake, the boast of Freedom, fell." It was changed to its present form after Nelson fell at Trafalgar in 1805. Robert Blake, Cromwell's great admiral, died in 1657.

SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832)

Scott was born in Edinburgh, a city famed for its picturesque beauty and its memories of the past. Through his father, an attorney, and his mother, daughter of a professor in the University, he was descended from Border ancestors, to whose life in the stirring old days he early began to look back with deep interest. When but eighteen months old, he was lamed for life by a severe illness; and though eventually a robust man, he remained delicate for some years, gaining strength gradually at his grandfather's farm near the Tweed. "My grandmother, in whose youth the old Border depredations were matter of recent tradition, used to tell me many a tale of Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead, and other heroes- merry men all of the persuasion and calling of Robin Hood and Little John."

After his return to his father's house in Edinburgh, Scott's love of reading and of the past continued: in particular, he tells

us, he was drawn "by the wonderful and the terrible the common taste of children, but in which I have remained a child even unto this day,". - learning such passages by heart and reciting them aloud to others and to himself. While at the High School he read with avidity books of travel, history, poetry, fairy tales, romances, etc. ("Spenser," he says, "I could have read forever"); and shortly after leaving school he chanced upon a copy of Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, the famous eighteenth century collection of old ballads, which he read "with a delight which may be imagined but cannot be described." As a student in Edinburgh University, Scott did not distinguish himself, and ever afterwards, he says, felt himself "pinched and hampered" by his failure to acquire a "solid foundation of learning." Yet he was by no means idle; pursuing his own course, he read widely in balladry and romance in several languages, a habit that he continued even after becoming a legal apprentice in his father's office. In 1792 he was called to the bar. Instead of seeking a large practice, however, he aimed at a position which would afford leisure for his favorite studies; and such a position he attained in 1799, when he was appointed sheriff of Selkirk. Before that year, he had already, in 1795, translated Bürger's ballad of "Lenore," and published it along with another poem translated from Bürger. In 1799 followed his translation of Goethe's early drama, "Goetz von Berlichingen."

Scott's first work of considerable importance, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, appeared in 1802. A work similar to Percy's Reliques, it originated in Scott's enthusiasm for the romantic background of his Border ancestry, and was carried to completion by his zeal in collecting ballads expressing the old Border traditions. It was followed in 1805 by his first important original work, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, a verse-romance that reads like an amplified ballad. Then came Marmion and The Lady of the Lake, through which he attained an international reputation. By means of his large financial returns from these poems, he was now enabled to buy Abbotsford, an estate on his beloved

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