The 'Lyrical Ballads,' in which the public first became acquainted with the rime of the Ancient Mariner,' were published in 1798. 'The thought suggested itself,' Coleridge writes in his ‘Biographia Literaria,'' that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural, and the excellence aimed at was to consist in interesting 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 divine agency. For the second class, 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 resemblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith. Now, Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural by awakening the mind's attention from 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.' In this finely suggestive passage we have the most succinct exposition of the individual mission which Wordsworth and Coleridge set before themselves in poetry, and to which each consistently adhered. The suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith, is very artfully brought about by Coleridge in the 'Ancient Mariner.' The ship, whose adventure we follow, sets sail for familiar seas, but ere we are aware her reckoning is lost, and her keel ploughs an enchanted ocean unknown to the geographers. The illusion is perfect, because at no point is there any rude surprise awaiting us. The incidents of an ordinary voyage glide imperceptibly into the marvellous, the natural and the supernatural mingle like homogeneous elements. Since Shakespere there was no such natural supernaturalism in English poetry. Spenser opens the wicket gate with his magic key, and we are straight in Fairyland; Milton transports us bodily to another world; but with Coleridge, while even now we have the green and solid earth beneath our feet, we look up and down, the mystic light has fallen around us, and the miracle has been wrought.

The running prose commentary that accompanies the poem displays the same sweet and delicate tone as his most musical verse, and the same dreamy richness of fancy. It were difficult to say whether there be any stanza in 'The Ancient Mariner' so truly of the finest poetic texture as the gloss upon the lines

'The moving moon went up the sky,

And nowhere did abide ;

Softly she was going up,

And a star or two beside;'

where the unuttered emotion of the mariner's heart at the sight is thus exquisitely suggested :

'In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward; and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and their native country, and their own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected, and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival.'

The poet Coleridge was but a part of the man, of whom, perhaps, the major part was philosopher-logician, metaphysician, bard,' as Charles Lamb in one of his happy phrases described him. And because poetry was not the serious business of his life, it has not the sustaining, spiritenriching power that belongs to poetry that grapples with the graver issues. But Coleridge's nature was one which vibrated to every breath of beauty; and he has so rendered his impressions, with such exactness and such winning grace, that his poetry, while not stimulative to thought in such a high degree as Wordsworth's, equals it in educative influence upon the feelings. The best of his poems would serve admirably as touchstones for determining a reader's apprehension of the finer shades of felicitous poetic expression. Few as are the songs he has left us of

'High and passionate thought

To their own music chanted,'

the golden richness of his cadences, the tender purity of his feeling, the firmness and delicacy of his touch in rendering Nature, the mystic halo that envelops it, these make his best poetry more like inspired incantation than the work of any mortal. Take almost any passage from Christabel' to represent all these qualities, or this, where the Mariner listens to the celestial music of a troop of angelic spirits

F

'And now 'twas like all instruments,

Now like a lonely flute;

And now it is an angel's song

That makes the heavens be mute.

It ceased; yet still the sails made on

A pleasant noise till noon

A noise like of a hidden brook

In the leafy month of June,

That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.'

Coleridge is one of the few poets who have been successful in communicating to their verse the power of awakening in the mind the eerie sense, the uneasy conviction of invisible presences inhabiting lonely places—

'Like one that on a lonesome road,

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;

Because he knows a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.'

Master of poetics as Coleridge was, it is natural that, as critic, his work should be penetrative and stimulating. We may regard him as the head and chief of the school of criticism which is exegetical rather than magisterial, interpretative rather than judicial. With Coleridge the court of criticism became for the first time not a court of legal but of scientific investigation. The fixed standards of Johnson, the classic precedents so long quoted as final by the professional reviewer, were now set aside, and, as the equity administered by the Supreme Court of Appeal varies according to the Chancellor's conscience, the literary conscience of Coleridge made sweeping reform of justice in the republic of letters. To his sagacity is due the rescue of criticism

from the not unmerited censure that its decisions were consistently reversed by later generations, and its reinstatement as an important official department of State. Criticism has often been a blind leading of the blind. True criticism is not that which calls attention to its own brilliancy or subtlety, but which obtains for the author criticised a more widespread and a more intelligent appreciation.

It is interesting to remember that the first poems of one of the most truly gifted of English critics, Charles Lamb, appeared in a volume of Coleridge. My friend Lloyd and myself,' he wrote, 'came into our first battle under cover of the greater Ajax.' But Lamb's name is secure from oblivion for other reasons than that he was Coleridge's friend. Perhaps he shares with Goldsmith the enviable lot of being 'the best beloved of English writers.'

The misleading appellation of the 'Lake School' has fostered the impression that a bond of similar poetic methods united Wordsworth, Southey and Coleridge. We have seen that it was not so. Beyond a renewed love of Nature, fuller and deeper than that of any previous poet, there is little in the poetry of one of this band of friends to remind us of another. And even here Coleridge is but an acolyte who swings a perfumed censer in her honour: Wordsworth, the true priest of Nature, for her law was engraved upon his heart, and he knew the language of her matins and her vespers.

We cannot call the beginning of the century, to which these, together with the other great poets of the time belonged, an epoch of serene mental temper. It was agitated with strong emotions, swayed by new and powerful ideas, filled to overflowing with all that can awaken enthusiasm and nerve sustained or excited action. We cannot