Pages from a Journal with Other Papers Part 4

The year 1798 was a year of great excitement: England was alone in the struggle against Buonaparte; the mutiny at the Nore had only just been quelled: the 3 per cent. Consols had been marked at 49 or 50; the Gazettes were occupied with accounts of b.l.o.o.d.y captures of French s.h.i.+ps; Ireland may be said to have been in rebellion, and horrible murders were committed there; the King sent a message to Parliament telling it that an invasion might be expected and that it was to be a.s.sisted by "incendiaries" at home; and the Archbishop of Canterbury and eleven bishops pa.s.sed a resolution declaring that if the French should land, or a dangerous insurrection should break out, it would be the duty of the clergy to take up arms against an enemy whom the Bishop of Rochester described as "instigated by that desperate malignity against the Faith he has abandoned, which in all ages has marked the horrible character of the vile apostate."

In the midst of this raving political excitement three human beings were to be found who although they were certainly not unmoved by it, were able to detach themselves from it when they pleased, and to seclude themselves in a privacy impenetrable even to an echo of the tumult around them.

In April or May, 1798, the Nightingale was written, and these are the sights and sounds which were then in young Coleridge's eyes and ears:-

"No cloud, no relique of the sunken day Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.

Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!

You see the glimmer of the stream beneath, But hear no murmuring: it flows silently, O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still, A balmy night! and tho' the stars be dim, Yet let us think upon the vernal showers That gladden the green earth, and we shall find A pleasure in the dimness of the stars."

We happen also to have Dorothy Wordsworth's journal for April and May.

Here are a few extracts from it:-

April 6th.--"Went a part of the way home with Coleridge. . . . The spring still advancing very slowly. The horse-chestnuts budding, and the hedgerows beginning to look green, but nothing fully expanded."

April 9th.--"Walked to Stowey . . . The sloe in blossom, the hawthorns green, the larches in the park changed from black to green in two or three days. Met Coleridge in returning."

April 12th.--" . . . The spring advances rapidly, mult.i.tudes of primroses, dog-violets, periwinkles, st.i.tchwort."

April 27th.--"Coleridge breakfasted and drank tea, strolled in the wood in the morning, went with him in the evening through the wood, afterwards walked on the hills: the moon; a many-coloured sea and sky."

May 6th, Sunday.--"Expected the painter {101} and Coleridge. A rainy morning--very pleasant in the evening. Met Coleridge as we were walking out. Went with him to Stowey; heard the nightingale; saw a glow-worm."

What was it which these three young people (for Dorothy certainly must be included as one of its authors) proposed to achieve by their book?

Coleridge, in the Biographia Literaria, says (vol. ii. c. 1): "During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself--(to which of us I do not recollect)--that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the agents and incidents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second cla.s.s, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them, when they present themselves.

"In this idea originated the plan of the LYRICAL BALLADS; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which const.i.tutes poetic faith.

Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of everyday and to excite a feeling a.n.a.lOGOUS TO THE SUPERNATURAL, {103} by awakening the mind's attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.

"With this view I wrote THE ANCIENT MARINER, and was preparing, among other poems, THE DARK LADIE and the CHRISTABEL, in which I should have more nearly have realised my ideal, than I had done in my first attempt."

Coleridge, when he wrote to Cottle offering him the Lyrical Ballads, affirms that "the volumes offered to you are, to a certain degree, ONE WORK IN KIND" {104a} (Reminiscences, p. 179); and Wordsworth declares, "I should not, however, have requested this a.s.sistance, had I not believed that the poems of my Friend would in a great measure HAVE THE SAME TENDENCY AS MY OWN, {104b} and that though there would be found a difference, there would be found no discordance in the colours of our style; as our opinions on the subject of poetry do almost entirely coincide" (Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1800).

It is a point carefully to be borne in mind that we have the explicit and contemporary authority of both poets that their aim was the same.

There are difficulties in the way of believing that The Ancient Mariner was written for the Lyrical Ballads. It was planned in 1797 and was originally intended for a magazine. Nevertheless, it may be a.s.serted that the purpose of The Ancient Mariner and of Christabel (which was originally intended for the Ballads) was, as their author said, TRUTH, living truth. He was the last man in the world to care for a story simply as a chain of events with no significance, and in these poems the supernatural, by interpenetration with human emotions, comes closer to us than an event of daily life. In return the emotions themselves, by means of the supernatural expression, gain intensity. The texture is so subtly interwoven that it is difficult to ill.u.s.trate the point by example, but take the following lines:-

"Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea!

And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I.

The self-same moment I could pray: And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea.

And the hay was white with silent light Till rising from the same, Full many shapes, that shadows were, In crimson colours came.

A little distance from the prow Those crimson shadows were: I turned my eyes upon the deck - Oh, Christ! what saw I there!

Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, And, by the holy rood!

A man all light, a seraph-man, On every corse there stood."

Coleridge's marginal gloss to these last stanzas is "The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies, and appear in their own forms of light."

Once more from Christabel:-

"The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone, She nothing sees--no sight but one!

The maid, devoid of guile and sin, I know not how, in fearful wise, So deeply had she drunken in That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, That all her features were resigned To this sole image in her mind: And pa.s.sively did imitate That look of dull and treacherous hate."

What Wordsworth intended we have already heard from Coleridge, and Wordsworth confirms him. It was, says the Preface of 1802, "to present ordinary things to the mind in an unusual way." In Wordsworth the miraculous inherent in the commonplace, but obscured by "the film of familiarity," is restored to it. This translation is effected by the imagination, which is not fancy nor dreaming, as Wordsworth is careful to warn us, but that power by which we see things as they are. The authors of The Ancient Mariner and Simon Lee are justified in claiming a common object. It is to prove that the metaphysical in Shakespeare's sense of the word interpenetrates the physical, and serves to make us see and feel it.

Poetry, if it is to be good for anything, must help us to live. It is to this we come at last in our criticism, and if it does not help us to live it may as well disappear, no matter what its fine qualities may be.

The help to live, however, that is most wanted is not remedies against great sorrows. The chief obstacle to the enjoyment of life is its dulness and the weariness which invades us because there is nothing to be seen or done of any particular value. If the supernatural becomes natural and the natural becomes supernatural, the world regains its splendour and charm. Lines may be drawn from their predecessors to Coleridge and the Wordsworths, but the work they did was distinctly original, and renewed proof was given of the folly of despair even when fertility seems to be exhausted. There is always a hidden conduit open into an unknown region whence at any moment streams may rush and renew the desert with foliage and flowers.

The reviews which followed the publication of the Lyrical Ballads were nearly all unfavourable. Even Southey discovered nothing in The Ancient Mariner but "a Dutch attempt at German sublimity." A certain learned pig thought it "the strangest story of a c.o.c.k and bull that he ever saw on paper," and not a single critic, not even the one or two who had any praise to offer, discerned the secret of the book. The publisher was so alarmed that he hastily sold his stock. Nevertheless Coleridge, Wordsworth, and his sister quietly went off to Germany without the least disturbance of their faith, and the Ballads are alive to this day.

SOME NOTES ON MILTON

Much of the criticism on Milton, if not hostile, is apologetic, and it is considered quite correct to say we "do not care" for him. Partly this indifference is due to his Nonconformity. The "superior"

Englishman who makes a jest of the doctrines and ministers of the Established Church always pays homage to it because it is RESPECTABLE, and sneers at Dissent. Another reason why Milton does not take his proper place is that his theme is a theology which for most people is no longer vital. A religious poem if it is to be deeply felt must embody a living faith. The great poems of antiquity are precious to us in proportion to our acceptance, now, as fact, of what they tell us about heaven and earth. There are only a few persons at present who perceive that in substance the account which was given in the seventeenth century of the relation between man and G.o.d is immortal and worthy of epic treatment. A thousand years hence a much better estimate of Milton will be possible than that which can be formed to-day. We attribute to him mechanic construction in dead material because it is dead to ourselves.

Even Mr. Ruskin who was far too great not to recognise in part at least Milton's claims, says that "Milton's account of the most important event in his whole system of the universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently unbelievable to himself; and the more so, that it is wholly founded on, and in a great part spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod's account of the decisive war of the younger G.o.ds with the t.i.tans. The rest of his poem is a picturesque drama, in which every artifice of invention is visibly and consciously employed; not a single fact being for an instant conceived as tenable by any living faith" (Sesame and Lilies, section iii.).

Mr. Mark Pattison, quoting part of this pa.s.sage, remarks with justice, "on the contrary, we shall not rightly apprehend either the poetry or the character of the poet until we feel that throughout Paradise Lost, as in Paradise Regained and Samson, Milton felt himself to be standing on the sure ground of fact and reality" (English Men of Letters--Milton, p. 186, ed. 1879).

St. Jude for ages had been sufficient authority for the angelic revolt, and in a sense it was a reasonable dogma, for although it did not explain the mystery of the origin of evil it pushed it a step further backwards, and without such a revolt the Christian scheme does not well hold together. So also with the entrance of the devil into the serpent.

It is not expressly taught in any pa.s.sage of the canonical Scriptures, but to the Church and to Milton it was as indisputable as the presence of sin in the world. Milton, I repeat, BELIEVED in the framework of his poem, and unless we can concede this to him we ought not to attempt to criticise him. He was impelled to turn his religion into poetry in order to bring it closer to him. The religion of every Christian if it is real is a poem. He pictures a background of Holy Land scenery, and he creates a Jesus who continually converses with him and reveals to him much more than is found in the fragmentary details of the Gospels. When Milton goes beyond his doc.u.ments he does not imagine for the purpose of filling up: the additions are expression.

Milton belonged to that order of poets whom the finite does not satisfy.

Like Wordsworth, but more eminently, he was "powerfully affected" only by that "which is conversant with or turns upon infinity," and man is to him a being with such a relations.h.i.+p to infinity that Heaven and h.e.l.l contend over him. Every touch which sets forth the eternal glory of Heaven and the scarcely subordinate power of h.e.l.l magnifies him.

Johnson, whose judgment on Milton is unsatisfactory because he will not deliver himself sufficiently to beauty which he must have recognised, nevertheless says of the Paradise Lost, that "its end is to raise the thoughts above sublunary cares," and this is true. The other great epic poems worthy to be compared with Milton's, the Iliad, Odyssey, AEneid, and Divine Comedy, all agree in representing man as an object of the deepest solicitude to the G.o.ds or G.o.d. Milton's conception of G.o.d is higher than Homer's, Virgil's, or Dante's, but the care of the Miltonic G.o.d for his offspring is greater, and the profound truth unaffected by Copernican discoveries and common to all these poets is therefore more impressive in Milton than in the others.

There is nothing which the most gifted of men can create that is not mixed up with earth, and Milton, too, works it up with his gold. The weakness of the Paradise Lost is not, as Johnson affirms, its lack of human interest, for the Prometheus Bound has just as little, nor is Johnson's objection worth anything that the angels are sometimes corporeal and at other times independent of material laws. Spirits could not be represented to a human mind unless they were in a measure subject to the conditions of time and s.p.a.ce. The princ.i.p.al defect in Paradise Lost is the justification which the Almighty gives of the creation of man with a liability to fall. It would have been better if Milton had contented himself with telling the story of the Satanic insurrection, of its suppression, of its author's revenge, of the expulsion from Paradise, and the promise of a Redeemer. But he wanted to "justify the ways of G.o.d to man," and in order to do this he thought it was necessary to show that man must be endowed with freedom of will, and consequently could not be directly preserved from yielding to the a.s.saults of Satan.

Paradise Regained comes, perhaps, closer to us than Paradise Lost because its temptations are more nearly our own, and every amplification which Milton introduces is designed to make them more completely ours than they seem to be in the New Testament. It has often been urged against Paradise Regained that Jesus recovered Paradise for man by the Atonement and not merely by resistance to the devil's wiles, but inasmuch as Paradise was lost by the devil's triumph through human weakness it is natural that Paradise Regained should present the triumph of the Redeemer's strength. It is this victory which proves Jesus to be the Son of G.o.d and consequently able to save us.