The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poems, Plays, Essays, Lectures, Autobiography & Personal Letters (Illustrated). Samuel Taylor Coleridge
his good sword rust; —
His soul is with the saints, I trust.
‘Poetical Works’, Vol. ii. p. 64.
The late Mr. Sotheby informed me, that, at his house in a large party,
Sir Walter made the following remark:
“I am indebted to Coleridge for the mode of telling a tale by question and answer. This was a new light to me, and I was greatly struck by it.”
Yet when Sir Walter said this, he must surely have forgotten many of our ancient and most beautiful ballads, in which the questions are so significant, and are made to develope the progress of the fable more clearly than could be affected by the ordinary course of narration. In fact every lover of our old poetry will recollect a hundred pieces in which the same form of evolution is observed. Thus in ‘Johnie of Breadis Lee’:
”What news, what news, ye grey-headed carle,
What news bring ye to me?”
And in ‘Halbert the Grim’:
”There is pity in many, —
Is there any in him?
No! ruth is a strange guest
To Halbert the Grim.”
Scott particularly admired Coleridge’s management of the supernatural. The “flesh and blood reality,” given to Geraldine, the life, the power of appearing and disappearing equally by day as by night, constitutes the peculiar merit of the Christabel: and those poets who admire, and have reflected much on the supernatural, have ever considered it one of the greatest efforts of genius. But the effect has ever been degraded by unnatural combinations. Thus on the stage, where such creations are the most frequent, it has been the custom for stage-managers to choose ‘male’ actors for the female parts. In ‘Macbeth’, men are called on to stir the caldron and other witcheries requiring muscular power. Again, when Macbeth listens to those extraordinary beings, who, with muttering spells, with charms, foreknowledge and incantations imperfectly announced to him his fate; he, with an air of command, says, “Speak!” &c. They shew their power, and give their best answer by disappearing. The manner of representing this is unnatural, as exhibited by our managers. Coleridge observed, that it would be better to withdraw the light from the stage, than to exhibit these miserable attempts at vanishing, though could the thought have been well executed, he considered it a master-stroke of Shakspeare’s. Yet it should be noticed, that Coleridge’s opinion was, that some of the plays of our “myriad-minded” bard ought never to be acted, but looked on as poems to be read, and contemplated; and so fully was he impressed with this feeling, that in his gayer moments he would often say, “There should be an Act of Parliament to prohibit their representation.” Here ‘he’ excelled: he has no incongruities, no gross illusions. In the management of the supernatural, the only successful poets among our own countrymen have been Shakspeare and Coleridge. Scott has treated it well in the Bride of Lammermoor, and in one or two other works.
Of the Christabel, as now published, Coleridge says, “The first part was composed in 1797.” This was the Annus Mirabilis of this great man; in it he was in his best and strongest health. He returned from Germany in 1799, and in the year following wrote the ‘second’ part, in the preface to which he observes, “Till very lately my poetic powers have been in a state of suspended animation.” The subject indeed remained present to his mind, though from bad health and other causes, it was left as a mere fragment of his poetic power. When in health he sometimes said, “This poem comes upon me with all the loveliness of a vision;” and he declared, that though contrary to the advice of his friends, he should finish it: At other times when his bodily powers failed him, he would then say, “I am reserved for other works than making verse.”
In the preface to the Christabel, he makes the following observation:
“It is probable,” he says, “that if the poem had been finished at either of the former periods, ‘i.e’. 1797 and 1800, or if even the first and second part of this fragment had been published in the year 1800, the impression of its originality would have been much greater than I dare at present expect. But for this, I have only my own indolence to blame. The dates are mentioned for the exclusive purpose of precluding charges of plagiarism or servile imitation from myself. For there is among us a set of critics who seem to hold, that every possible thought and image is traditional; who have no notion that there are such things as fountains in the world, small as well as great; and who would therefore charitably derive every rill, they behold flowing, from a perforation made in some other man’s tank. I am confident, however, that as far as the present poem is concerned, the celebrated poets whose writings I might be suspected of having imitated, either in particular passages, or in the tone and the spirit of the whole, would be among the first to vindicate me from the charge, and who, on any striking coincidence, would permit me to address them in this dogged version of two monkish Latin hexameters:
’Tis mine and it is likewise your’s,
But an if this will not do;
Let it be mine, good friend! for I
Am the poorer of the two.”
I have only to add, that the metre of the Christabel is not, properly speaking, irregular, though it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle; namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will be found to be only four. Nevertheless, this occasional variation in the number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence with some transition in the nature of the imagery or passion.”
In conversation many of his brother poets would, like the reviewer, echo his praises, while in secret, they were trying to deprive him of his fair fame.
It has been said, that “Coleridge never explained the story of
Christabel.” To his friends he did explain it; and in the Biographia
Literaria, he has given an account of its origin.
The story of the Christabel is partly founded on the notion, that the virtuous of this world save the wicked. The pious and good Christabel suffers and prays for
“The weal of her lover that is far away,”
exposed to various temptations in a foreign land; and she thus defeats the power of evil represented in the person of Geraldine. This is one main object of the tale.
At the opening of the poem all nature is laid under a spell:
’Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
And the owls have awak’ned the crowing cock;
Tu-whit! — Tu-whoo!
And hark, again! The crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew —
Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff-bitch,
From her kennel beneath the rock
Maketh answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;
Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
Some say, she sees my lady’s shroud.
Is the night chilly and dark?
The night is chilly, but not dark.
The thin gray cloud is spread on high,
It covers but not hides the sky.
The moon is behind, and at the full;
And yet she looks both small and dull.
The night is chill, the cloud is gray:
’Tis a month before the month of May,
And the Spring comes slowly up this way.
The spell is laid by an evil being, not of this world, with whom Christabel, the heroine,