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CHAPTER VI.

By what I have effected, am I to be judged by my fellow-men; what I could have done is a question for my own conscience."-S. T. C.

As the Biographia Literaria does not mention all Mr. Coleridge's writings, it will be proper, in conclusion, to give some account of them here.

The Poetical Works, in three volumes, include the Juvenile Poems, Sibylline Leaves, Ancient Mariner, Christabel, Remorse, Zapolya, and Wallenstein.

The first volume of Juvenile Poems was published in the Spring of 1796. It contains three sonnets by Charles Lamb, and a poetical Epistle which he called "Sara's," but of which my Mother told me she wrote but little. Indeed, it is not very like some simple, affecting verses, which were wholly by herself, on the death of her beautiful infant, Berkeley, in 1799. In May, 1797, Mr. C. put forth a collection of poems, containing all that were in his first edition, with the exception of twenty pieces, and the addition of ten new ones, and a considerable number by his friends, Lloyd and Lamb. The Ancient Mariner, Love, The Nightingale, The Foster Mother's Tale, first appeared with the Lyrical Ballads of Mr. Wordsworth, in the summer of 1798. There was a third edition of the Juvenile Poems, by themselves, 1803, with the original motto from Statius, Felix curarum, &c. Silo. Lib. iv. A spirit of almost child-like sociability seemed to reign among these young poets-they were fond of joint publications.

Wallenstein, a play, translated from the German of Schiller, appeared in 1800. Christabel was not published till April, 1816, but written, the first part at Stowey in 1797, the second at Keswick in 1800. It went into a third edition in the first year. The fragment called Kubla Khan, composed in 1797, and the Pains of Sleep, which was annexed to the former by way of contrast, were published with the first edition of Christabel, in 1816.

The tragedy called Remorse was written in the summer and autumn of 1797, but not represented on the stage till 1813, when it was performed at Drury Lane-on the authority of an old play-bill of the Calne

Theatre-" with unbounded applause thirty successive nights." On the 66 success of the Remorse," Mr. Coleridge wrote thus to his friend Mr. Poole, on the 14th of February, 1813:

"The reciept of your heart-engendered lines were sweeter than an unexpected strain of sweetest music; or, in humbler phrase, it was the only pleasurable sensation which the success of the Remorse has given me. I have read of, or, perhaps, only imagined, a punishment in Arabia, in which the culprit was so bricked up as to be unable to turn his eyes to the right or to the left, while in front was placed a high heap of barren sand glittering under the vertical sun. Some slight analogue of this I have myself suffered from the mere unusualness of having my attention forcibly directed to a subject which permitted neither sequence of imagery nor series of reasoning. No grocer's apprentice, after his first month's permitted riot, was ever sicker of figs and raisins than I of hearing about the Remorse. The endless rat-a-tat-tat at our black-and-blue bruised door, and my three master fiends, proof-sheets, letters (for I have a raging epistolophobia), and worse than these-invitations to large dinners, which I cannot refuse without offence and imputation of pride, nor accept without disturbance of temper the day before, and a sick aching stomach for two days after-oppress me so that my spirits quite sink under it.

"I have never seen the play since the first night. It has been a good thing for the Theatre. They will get 8,000l. or 10,0001. by it, and I shall get more than all my literary labors put together, nay, thrice as much, subtracting my heavy losses in The Watchman and The Friend, including the copyright."

The manuscript of the Remorse, immediately after it was written, was shown to Mr. Sheridan, “who,” says my Father, in the Preface to the first edition, "by a twice-conveyed recommendation (in the year 1797), had urged me to write a Tragedy for his theatre; who, on my objection that I was utterly ignorant of all stage tactics, had promised that he would himself make the necessary alterations if the piece should be at all representable." He, however, neither gave him any answer, nor returned him the manuscript, which he suffered to wander about the town from his house; and my Father goes on to say, "not only asserted that the play was rejected because I would not submit to the alteration of one ludicrous line, but finally, in the year 1806, amused and delighted (as who was ever in his society, if I may trust the universal report, without being amused and delighted ?) a large company at the house of a highly respectable Member of Parliament, with the ridicule of the Tragedy, as a fair specimen of the whole of which he adduced a line:

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Drip! drip drip! there's nothing here but dripping."

"In the original copy of the play, in the first scene of the fourth act, Isidore had commenced his soliloquy in the cavern, with the words:

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Drip! drip! a ceaseless sound of water-drops,"

as far as I can at present recollect; for, on the possible ludicrous association being pointed out to me, I instantly and thankfully struck out the line." I repeat this story as told by Mr. C. himself, because it has been otherwise told by others. I have little doubt that it was more pointedly than faithfully told to him, and can never believe that Mr. S. represented a ludicrous line as a fair specimen of the whole play, or his tenacious adherence to it as the reason for its rejection. I dare say he thought it, as Lord Byron afterwards thought Zapolya, “beautiful but not practicable." Mr. Coleridge felt that he had some claim to a friendly spirit of criticism in that quarter, because he had "devoted the firstlings of his talents," as he says in a marginal note, "to the celebration of Sheridan's genius;" and, after the treatment described, "not only never spoke unkindly or resentfully of it, but actually was zealous and frequent in defending and praising his public principles and conduct in the Morning Post”—of which, perhaps, Mr. S. knew nothing. However, in lighter moods, my Father laughed at Sheridan's joke as much as any of his auditors could have done in 1806, and repeated, with great effect and mock solemnity, “Drip !—Drip !—Drip !—nothing but dripping." I suppose it was at this time-the winter of 1806-7-that he made an unsuccessful attempt to bring out the tragedy at Drury Lane.

When first written this play had been called Osorio, from the principal

7 A certain fair poetess, encore resplendissante de beauté, if she ever casts her eye on this page, will take no offence at its contents, nor will her filial feelings quarrel angrily with mine. The " dripping," whatever its unction may once have been, is stale enough now; but the story has freshness in it yet. Such neglects, as that of Mr. S. in not returning the MS. of Remorse, are always excusable in public men of great and various occupation; but the lesson to the literary aspirant is just the same as if he had been ever so blamable. My Father's whole history is a lesson to the professors of literature, and that which relates to the Remorse is a small but significant part of it, teaching patience and hope, while it may serve to repress the expectation, that money and credit can soon and certainly be obtained, even by writers possessed of genius not wholly unaccompanied with popular ability, and who have been favored with an introduction to some of the leaders and guides of the public, men of taste and talent and general influence.

• See his Sonnet to Sheridan. P. W., i., p. 65.

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character, whose name my Father afterwards improved into Ordonio. I believe he in some degree altered, if he did not absolutely recast, the three last acts, after the failure with Mr. Sheridan, who probably led him to see their unfitness for theatrical representation. But of this point I have not certain knowledge. It was when Drury Lane was under the management of Lord Byron and Mr. Whitbread, and through the influence of the former, that it was produced upon the stage. Mr. Gillman says, Although Mr. Whitbread did not give it the advantage of a single new scene, yet the popularity of the play was such, that the principal actor (Mr. Roe), who had performed in it with great success, made choice of it for his benefit-night, and it brought an overflowing house." This was some time after Mr. Coleridge took up his residence at Highgate, in April, 1816. After all I am happy to think that this drama is a strain of poetry, and like all, not only dramatic poems, but highly poetic dramas, not to be fully appreciated on the stage.

Zapolya came before the public in 1817. The stage fate of this piece is alluded to in the B. L. Mr. Gillman mentions that it was Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, then the critic for Drury Lane, who rejected the play, and complained of its "metaphysics"-a term which is not, upon all occasions, to be strictly construed, but, when used in familiar talk, seems merely to denote whatever is too fine-spun, in the texture of thought and speech, for common wear; whatever is not readily apprehensible and generally acceptable. Schoolboys call everything in books or discourse, which is graver or tenderer than they like, "metaphysics." Mr. Kinnaird may have judged quite rightly that the Play was too metaphysical for our theatres in their present state, though certainly plays as metaphysical were once well received on the stage. Zapolya, however, had a favorable audience from the public as a dramatic poem. Mr. Gillman says this Christmas Tale, which the author "never sat down to write, but dictated while walking up and down the room, became so immediately popular that 2000 copies were sold in six weeks."

The collection of poems entitled Sybilline Leaves, " in allusion to the fragmentary and widely-scattered state in which they had been long suffered to remain," appeared in 1817, about the same time with Zapolya, the Biographia Literaria, and the first Lay Sermon.

The Miscellaneous Poems were composed at different periods of the author's life, many of them in his later years. I believe that Youth and

9 An important error in punctuation has crept into the later editions of Zapolya. In a speech of Sarolta, Act iii., Scene i., the note of admiration is placed after" visitations," at the end of line 22; whereas it should be placed at the end of line 21, after "morsel of bread." Poet. Works, ii., p. 314.

Age was written before he left the North of England in 1810, when he was about seven or eight-and-thirty,-early indeed for the poet to say of himself

"I see these locks in silvery slips,

This drooping gait, this altered size:
But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,

And tears take sunshine from thine eyes.”

The whole of the Poetical Works, with the exception of a few which must be incorporated in a future edition, are contained in that in three volumes. The Fall of Robespierre, an historic drama, of which the first act was written by Mr. Coleridge, and published September 22, 1794, is printed in the first vol. of the Lit. Remains. This first act contains the Song on Domestic Peace. In the blank verse there are some faint dawnings of his maturer style, as in these lines:—

"The winged hours, that scattered roses round me,
Languid and sad, drag their slow course along,
And shake big gall-drops from their heavy wings"—

and in these :-

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Why, thou hast been the mouth-piece of all horrors,
And, like a blood-hound, crouch'd for murder! Now
Aloof thou standest from the tottering pillar,

Or, like a frighted child behind its mother,
Hidest thy pale face in the skirts of-Mercy!"

but it contains scarcely anything of his peculiar original powers, and some of the lines are in a school-boy taste; for instance :

"While sorrow sad, like the dank willow near her,

Hangs o'er the troubled fountain of her eye."

Yet three years after the date of this composition, in 1797, which has been called his Annus Mirabilis, he had reached his poetical zenith. But perhaps it may be said that, from original temperament, and the excitement of circumstances, my Father lived fast.

Then

He had four poetical epochs, which represented, in some sort, hood, youthful manhood, middle age, and the decline of life. commenced a little on this side childhood, when he wrote Time R Imaginary, and ended in 1796. This period embraces the TufPoems, concluding with Religious Musings, written on the PorcuEve of 1794, a few months after The Fall of Robespierr of Nations was composed a little earlier. Lewti, wri

.-N. B.

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