NOTES TO VOL. II

(For abbreviations, see explanation at head of Notes to Vol. I.)

CHAPTER XIV

PAGE 5 1. 6. The sudden charm... which moon-light or sun-set. Cp. C.'s marginal note in Tenneman's Geschichte der Phil. (date uncertain after 1817): 'The imaginative power (a multiform power which acting with its permeative, modifying, unifying might on the Thoughts and Images specificates the Poet) the swimming crimson of Eve on Mountain, Lake, River, Vale, Village and Village Church, the flashing or sleeping Moonshine in Nature's Poesy-and which exercising the same power in moral intuitions by the representation of worth or baseness in action is the essential constitution of a good heart'; and The Excursion, Bk. IV, l. 1058:

Within the soul a faculty abides

As the ample moon

In the deep stillness of a summer even
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove,
Burns, like an unconsuming fire of light
In the green trees: and kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own,
Yea, with her own incorporated, by power
Capacious and serene. Like power abides
In man's celestial spirit: virtue thus
Sets forth and magnifies herself.

Cp. also the concluding book of The Prelude.

25. In this idea originated the plan of the 'Lyrical Ballads'. According to Wordsworth's account (Fenwick Note to We are Seven) the original plan of the poets was to write a single poem, to defray the expenses of their tour to Linton in 1798. But the poem thus planned (the Ancient Mariner) 'grew and grew till it became too important for our first object, which was limited to our first expectation of five pounds; and we began to talk of a volume which was to consist, as Mr. Coleridge has told the world, of poems chiefly on natural subjects taken from common life, but looked at, as much as might be, through an imaginative medium.' Wordsworth, it will be seen, does not give quite the same account

of

of the origin of the Ancient Mariner as does Coleridge (see p. 6, 1. 16, 'With this view I wrote the Ancient Mariner'), nor does he speak of the 'two sorts' of poems. One is inclined to believe that their attempted collaboration in the Ancient Mariner, and its failure, revealed to each the idiosyncrasies of his poetic genius, and led to the division of subject and treatment. But a letter written by Coleridge to Sir H. Davy * in 1800 seems to prove that Wordsworth's account is the correct one. Coleridge there speaks of the L. B. as 'an experiment to see how far those passions which alone give any value to extraordinary incidents were capable of interesting, in and for themselves, in the incidents of common life'. And what is still more significant, he adds further that Christabel 'was written in direct opposition to the very purpose for which the lyrical ballads were published'. It may, perhaps, not be fanciful to see in these 'two sorts' of poems an illustration of the two types of genuine imitation as defined by Coleridge on p. 56, 'the interfusion of the same throughout the radically different, or of the different throughout a base radically the same.'

PAGE 6 1. 5. that willing suspension. Cp. note on p. 107, 1. 18 and p. 187, l. 1, infra.

17. The Dark Ladie' and the 'Christabel'. The Ballad of the Dark Ladie was first printed in Poems, 1834, without comment. The poem Love, which appeared in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), had already been printed a year before in the Morning Post under the title of 'An Introduction to "The Dark Ladie", and Mr. Dykes Campbell speaks of 'a much-tortured draft' of Love in the British Museum, which is actually entitled The Dark Ladie (Poet. Works, p. 136, and note). In 1802 Coleridge writes to Sotheby (Letters, p. 375): 'Tell Mrs. Sotheby that I will endeavour to send her soon the completion of "The Dark Ladie as she was good-natured enough to be pleased with the first part.'

On the whole it seems not improbable that Love is the original form of The Dark Ladie, the only form in which it existed prior to Coleridge's departure for Germany, and that The Dark Ladie was written during or after his German sojourn. For one verse (the twelfth) bears I think unmistakable traces of the influence of Bürger's Lenore, with which in the original Coleridge would not have become acquainted before then. The poem was never finished. The first part of Christabel was composed in 1797 (i.e. before the Ancient Mariner or the Lyrical Ballads had been thought of), the second in 1800. It was intended to print Christabel in the Lyrical Ballads of 1800 (second edition, vol. ii); but Coleridge could not finish it, though he himself gives other reasons for its nonappearance. A full account of the circumstances attending its

* Fragr. Remains of Sir H. Davy, p. 82.

composition and publication will be found in Poet. Works, pp. 601 ff.

21. the number of his poems so much greater. The first edition of the L. B. contained twenty-three poems, of which four only were by Coleridge.

27. were presented by him, as an experiment. See Advertisement to first edition: The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the lower and middle classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure.'

32. To the second edition he added, &c. The earliest version of the Preface (1800) differs considerably from the version of 1802 and 1805. Both versions will be found in the reprint of the L. B., edited by Mr. G. Sampson (Methuen, 1903), pp. 369 ff.

PAGE 71. 4. the language of real life. Cp. L. B., p. 369, ‘a selection of the real language of men'; p. 377, 'I propose to imitate and as far as possible to adopt the very language of men'; p. 386, 'I have endeavoured to bring my language near to the real language of men.' This is in the first version of the Preface. In the second more stress is laid on the significant word 'selection': see p. 18, 'a selection of the language really spoken by men,' and following passage, this selection,' &c., p. 24 and p. 28. The vital importance of this qualification has perhaps not been taken into sufficient account by either of the poets.

4. From this preface, &c. See the criticisms in the Edin. Review referred to in a previous note (to vol. i, p. 151, l. 29).

27. its religious fervor. Cp. Miscellanies, p. 255, where Coleridge gives his opinion of the causes of this enthusiasm.

34. With many parts of this preface... I never concurred. The exact nature of Coleridge's contribution to the Preface must necessarily remain uncertain: but we have, fortunately, some letters of his own which throw light on the matter. To the first version of the Preface I do not find any allusion in his correspondence: but on the second, published in 1800, he expressed himself at some length. To Southey he wrote in July, 1882 (Letters, p. 386): 'I will apprise you of one thing, that although Wordsworth's preface is half a child of my own brain, and arose out of conversations so frequent that, with few exceptions, we could scarcely either of us, perhaps, positively say which first started any particular thought (I am speaking of the Preface as it stood in the second volume), yet I am far from going all lengths with Wordsworth. He has written lately a number of poems . the greater number of these, to my feelings, very excellent compositions, but here and there a daring humbleness of language and versification, and a strict adherence to matter of fact, even to prolixity, that startled me. . . His alterations likewise in "Ruth" perplexed me, and

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I have thought and thought again, and have not had my doubts solved by Wordsworth. I rather suspect that there is a radical difference in our theoretical opinions respecting poetry. ...' And to Sotheby he writes in the same month (Letters, p. 373): 'I must set you right with regard to my perfect coincidence with his (Wordsworth's) poetic creed. It is most certain that the heads of our mutual conversations, &c. and the passages, were indeed taken from note (? notes) of mine; for it was at first intended that the preface should be written by me. And it is likewise true that I warmly accord with Wordsworth in his abhorrence of those poetic licences, as they are called which are indeed mere tricks of convenience and laziness. . . . In my opinion, every phrase, every metaphor, every personification should have its justifying clause in some passion, that is, a state of excitement both in the poet's mind, and is expected, (sic) in part, of the reader; and, though I stated this to Wordsworth, and he has in some sort stated it in his preface, yet he has not done justice to it nor has he, in my opinion, sufficiently answered it. In my opinion, poetry justifies as poetry, independent of any passion, some new combinations of language and commands the omission of many others allowable in other compositions. Now Wordsworth, me saltem judice, has in his system not sufficiently admitted the former, and in his practice has too frequently sinned against the latter. Indeed we have had lately some little controversy on the subject, and we begin to suspect that there is somewhere or other a radical difference in our opinions.'

From these passages (which contain the germ of the criticism of the Biog. Lit.) it is evident that however far Wordsworth felt himself at one with Coleridge in the general spirit of his theory, in expounding and amplifying it he had been led into bypaths where Coleridge could not follow him. Nor is it surprising that Coleridge, with his greater psychological insight, should have been dissatisfied with Wordsworth's reasoned account of his theory. So little indeed did the Preface seem to him to contain an adequate account of his own views, that Coleridge contemplated a separate publication of them, to accompany a volume of selections from the Poets. See Supplementary Note to Introduction, vol. i, p. xc.

PAGE 8 1. 5. Mr. Wordsworth in his recent collection, &c.: i. e. in the 1815 editions of his poems. In a note prefixed to the Preface (in 1849) Wordsworth explains that 'in succeeding Editions, when the collection was much enlarged and diversified, this Preface was transferred to the end of the Volumes as having no special application to the contents'.

PAGE 10 1.6. by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, &c. A fuller statement of this definition will be found in the Essays on Criticism (Biog. Lit. ii. 224). See also Lectures, pp. 47 ff., 209.

PAGE 11 1. 9. Praecipitandus est liber spiritus. Arbiter, Satyric, p. 63, edit. Lug. Bat. 1623 (ref. Biog. Lit. 1847).

15. we have still to seek for a definition of poetry. Elsewhere Coleridge does not make this distinction of 'poem' and 'poetry (e. g. in Lectures, p. 47, immediate pleasure is stated to be the purpose of poetry). And it is doubtful whether the distinction, as here drawn, makes for clearness, or indeed whether it can be fairly drawn at all. Coleridge gives no real justification of the bold statement that 'a poem of any length neither can be, nor ought to be, all poetry', and instead of reaching a clear definition of poetry he contents himself with a description of the poet, which in its turn resolves itself into an enumeration of the characteristics of Imagination.

16. the 'Theoria Sacra' of Burnet. Telluris Theoria Sacra, 1681-9, by Thomas Burnet, D.D. (1635-1715: English translation, 1684-9). A fanciful theory of the earth's structure, which aroused much controversy at the time. A passage from this work is quoted by Wordsworth in a Note to The Excursion, Bk. III, 1. 113, as illustrative of the sentiments expressed in the text (O. W., pp. 788, 926).

PAGE 12 1. 9. The poet described in ideal perfection. For this definition see Lectures, 1818 (p. 186), where it occurs in almost the same terms.

29. as Sir John Davies observes from his poem 'On the soul of Man', Sect. IV. In the first stanza quoted, 'meats' is altered to 'food': and the third runs thus in the original:

Thus doth she, when from things particular

She doth abstract the universal kinds,
Which bodyless and immaterial are,

And can be only lodged within our minds.

PAGE 13 1. 9. Good sense is the body of poetic genius. Cp. Letter to Lady Beaumont (June, 1814), Memorials of Coleorton, ii. 172: 'The sum total of all intellectual excellence is good sense and method. When these have passed into the instinctive readiness of habit, when the wheel revolves so rapidly that we cannot see it revolve at all, then we call the combination Genius. But in all modes alike, and in all professions, the two sole component parts even of Genius, are GOOD SENSE and METHOD.' And speaking of Shakespeare's dramas, Coleridge defines the excellence of their method' as consisting in that just proportion, that union and interpenetration of the universal and particular, which must ever pervade all works of decided genius and true science. For method implies a progressive transition, and it is the meaning of the word in the original language' (The Friend (1818), Sect. II, Essay 4).