playful was his manner, so simple his Language, so affectionate the glance of his pleasant eye! "There were, indeed, some whom Coleridge tired, and some whom he sent asleep. It would occasionally so happen, when the abstruser mood was strong upon him, and the visitor was narrow and ungenial. I have seen him at times when you could not incarnate him—when he shook aside your petty questions or doubts, and burst with some impatience through the obstacles of common conversation. Then, escaped from the flesh, he would soar upwards into an atmosphere almost too rare to breathe, but which seemed proper to him, and there he would float at ease. Like enough, what Coleridge then said, his subtlest listener would not understand, as a man understands a newspaper; but upon such a listener there would steal an influence, and an impression, and a sympathy; there would be a gradual attempering of his body and spirit, till his total being vibrated with one pulse alone, and thought became merged in contemplation ; And so, his senses gradually wrapt In a half sleep, he'd dream of better worlds, Aud dreaming hear thee still, O singing lark, That sangest like an angel in the clouds ! But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the general character of Mr. Coleridge's conversation was abstruse or rhapsodical. The contents of the following pages may, I think, be taken as pretty strong presumptive evidence that his ordinary manner was plain and direct enough; and even when, as sometimes happened, he seemed to ramble from the road, and to lose himself in a wilderness of digressions, the truth was, that at that very time he was working out his fore-known conclusion through an almost miraculous logic, the difficulty of which consisted precisely in the very fact of its minuteness and universality. He took so large a scope, that, if he was interrupted before he got to the end, he appeared to have been talking without an object; although, perhaps, a few steps more would have brought you to a point, a retrospect from which would show you the pertinence of all he had been saying. I have heard persons complain that they could get no answer to a question from Coleridge. The truth is, he answered, or meant to answer, so fully that the querist should have no second question to ask. In nine cases out of ten he saw the question was short or misdirected; and He knew that a mere yes or no answer could not embrace the truth-that is, the whole truth and might, very probably, by implication, convey error. Hence that exhaustive, cyclical mode of discoursing in which he frequently indulged; unfit, indeed, for a dinner-table, and too longbreathed for the patience of a chance visitor, but which, to those who knew for what they came, was the object of their profoundest admiration, as it was the source of their most valuable instruction. Mr. Coleridge's affectionate disciples learned their lessons of philosophy and criticism from his own mouth. was to them as an old master of the Academy or Lyceum. The more time he took, the better pleased were such visitors, for they came expressly to listen, and had ample proof how truly he had declared, that whatever difficulties he might feel, with pen in hand, in the expression of his meaning, he never found the smallest hitch or impediment in the utterance of his most subtle reasonings by word of mouth. How many a time and oft have I felt his abstrusest thoughts steal rhythmically on my soul, when chanted forth by him! Nay, how often have I fancied I heard rise up in answer to his gentle touch, an interpreting music of my own, as from the passive strings of some wind-smitten lyre! "Mr. Coleridge's conversation at all times required attention, because what he said was so individual and unexpected. But when he was dealing deeply with a question, the demand upon the intellect of the hearer was very great; not so much for any hardness of language, for his diction was always simple and easy ; nor for the abstruseness of the thoughts, for they generally explained, or appeared to explain, themselves; but pre-eminently on account of the seeming remoteness of his associations, and the exceeding subtlety of his transitional links. It happened to him as to Pindar, who in modern days has been called a rambling rhapsodist, because the connections of his parts, though never arbitrary, are so fine that the vulgar reader sees them not at all. But they are there, nevertheless, and may all be so distinctly shown, that no one can doubt their existence; and a little study will also prove that the points of contact are those which the true genius of lyric verse naturally evolved, and that the entire Pindaric ode, instead of being the loose and lawless outburst which so many have fancied, is, without any exception, the most artifi "If I had but two little wings, cial and highly-wrought composition the English poet loses half his fame which Time has spared to us from the by not having the German verses Greek Muse. So 1 can well remember which he translates printed with his. occasions in which, after listening to Mr. The poem, Coleridge for several delightful hours, I have gone away with divers splendid masses of reasoning in my head, the separate beauty and coherency of which I deeply felt, but how they had produced, or how they bore upon each other, I could not then perceive. In such cases I have mused sometimes even for days afterwards upon the words, till at length, spontaneously as it seemed, "the fire would kindle," and the association, which had escaped my utmost efforts of comprehension before, flash itself all at once upom my mind with the clearness of noonday light."-Table Talk, Vol. 1-Preface. While we are glad that these conversations are preserved, and while we altogether agree with Mr. Coleridge's editor that Coleridge did "the day's work of a giant," we still feel that his poetry is his true claim to that immortality in our language which may be safely predicted. In our last paper we were provoked into some discussion on the subject of his originality, and endeavoured to show that it cannot be denied, except on principles which would deny originality to Shakspeare and to Milton. A few translations and imitations of German peems, which are in everybody's hands, are printed among the "SIBYLLINE LEAVES." These, of course, ought to be specified, and we may as well at once mention them. The "LINES TO A CATARACT" are an imitation from Stolberg, and the original ought to be printed in the same page with the English as a curious proof of Coleridge's wonderful skill in versification. The resemblance to the original is preserved even in the succession of the same vowel sounds, and in a species of delicate alliteration, which, among our later English poets, Coleridge alone has sought. The " UNPERISHING YOUTH" of the English poet gives back to the ear the very sounds as well as the meaning of Stolberg's Unsterbliche Jüngling. In the verses, "Hear, my beloved, an old Milesian story," every syllable is an accurate repetition and echo of Matthison, and And were a little feathery bird," is in the same way a German ballad,* translated for the purpose of trying the effect of an unusual measure. The poems in question are, in the English writer, mere exercises of versification, an art which more than any other requires frequent and repeated application. If they be considered as translations, it is really curious to observe how perfect the transmutation is, and how superior in all these instances the English poem is. The branch thrown into some stream, whose sands are gold, a piece of dead wood, and taken up with all its leaves and blossoms and each minutest fibre preserved in form, but converted into the purest gold, expresses but inadequately the change of substance and of nature which these trifles receive in such translations as Coleridge's, and that in cataloguing and indexing them-a task which was probably neglected altogether by the poet himself, and performed by publishers more or less competent or careless-they should have been called rather by the name of him to whom they owe their existence in our poetry-or, indeed, in poetry at all, for the German originals are dull enough-was, after all, the most natural thing in the world. Which of us ever asks the name of the poet who wrote "Uprose the king of men with speed, And saddled straight his coal-black steed; The poem-as far as it is a poem-is The power exhibited in these trifles, and in the glorious work of Wallenstein, is such, that we regret he was not more often occupied in poetical translation. However, the tasks which * The original is printed in the notes to ANSTER'S Faust, page 444. a man's own spirit shapes for itself are, if they can be carried into execution, the best; and when we express such a wish, we perhaps ought to remember that the time which a literary man passes in preparatory studies is passed in more happy occupation than any exercise of his talents in his communications with the public can be; that, after all, translation, when truly successful, requires powers which seek for themselves worthier employment. Wallenstein was not succsssful on its first appearance. In one of the papers of THE FRIEND, (edition of 1818,) Mr. Coleridge having occasion to quote a passage from it on the subject of divination, thus speaks of what booksellers would call its failure : "I am tempted to quote a passage from my own translation of Schiller's Wallenstein, the more so that the work has been long ago used up as "winding sheets for pilchards," or extant only by (as I would fain flatter myself) the kind partiality of the trunk-makers: though with the exception of works for which public admiration supersedes or includes individual commendations, I scarce remember a book that has been more honored by the express attestations in favour of eminent, and even of popular literati, among whom I take this opportunity of expressing my acknowledgments to the author of Waverley, Guy Mannering, &c. How (asked Ulysses, addressing his guardian goddess) shall I be able to recognise Proteus, in the swallow that skims round our houses whom I have been accustomed to behold as a swan of Phoebus, measuring his movements to a celestial music? In both alike, she replied, thou canst recognize the god. But "So supported, I dare avow I have thought my translation worthy of a more favourable reception from the public and their literary guides and purveyors. when I recollect that a much better and very far more valuable work, the Rev. Mr. Carey's incomparable translation of Dante, had very nearly met with the same fate, I lose all right, and, I trust, all inclination to complain: an inclination which the mere sense of its folly and uselessness will not always suffice to preclude. COUNTESS. What? dost thou not believe, that oft in dreams A voice of warning speaks prophetic to us? WALLENSTEIN. I will not doubt that there have been such voices; Yet I would not call them Voices of warning, that announce to us Only the inevitable. As the sun, Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image Did ever vex and haunt me, like a tale, His quiet mind forsook him: the phantasma WALLENSTEIN, part ii. act v. scene i. It has been often mentioned as a subject of regret that Coleridge did not translate FAUST. We learn from the Table-Talk that he read it with some such purpose; nay, that the story of Faust had seized on his imagination to such an extent, that it became blended with an early conception of his own, in which he wished to embody, in the story of Michael Scott, his notions of the use which he thought ought to be made of the legend. His purposed story remained through his life among his many unaccomplished purposes; and we cannot but think that when he expressed in conversation a preference for Schiller above Goethe, that his judgment (if the conversation is to be regarded as expressing anything of permanent feeling, and is not to be considered with reference to some accidental turn of the dialogue) was in this particular case affected by his recollections of Schiller connecting him with accomplished purposes-perhaps, too, with a happy time of life and hope; and while he thought of Schiller in the affectionate feeling of discipleship, which his relation to him as translator in some degree involved, that with respect to Goethe the very opposite feeling was one which the nature of his proposed task must have suggested. Faust must have been read by him with reference to his own projected improvements-each scene rendered meaningless, or deprived of its true meaning by being considered in reference to a plotnot Goethe's--and which must have been connected in thought with that despondency in which, through his writings, he so often speaks of plans unfinished-nay, never commencedor in any way existing except in his recollections of the morning dreams of his earlier poetical life. Coleridge speaks of Faust as often vulgar, and, with amusing inconsistency, the coarsest scenes in the drama are those which he perversely prefers. To us the cause of all this is at once intelligible. There is no part of what is properly called poetry in the work which a poet such as Coleridge could not have preserved or surpassed. The very scenes which in his proposed drama he probably would altogether have omitted, which would not have fallen in with his plan, are those which-not being led to compare them with anything in the phantom-drama of his dream, and which were certainly less suited to his peculiar powers than the lyrical or tragical parts of the work-he praises with a full perception of their broad farce. These scenes of boisterous mirth we are far from enjoying. Their execution, is, however, beyond all praise. But it was not such scenes as these that made Goethe to Germany more than Wordsworth has been to England. Schiller died young; and what a poet, whose powers of execution at least were in each suceessive work improving, and who applied himself to the cultivation of his art under the most favourable circumstances might have done, we will not venture to conjecture; but we regard it as actually impossible that in any one faculty of the poet-except intensity of purpose-Coleridge should have regarded Schiller as at all approaching to Goethe. Between particular works of Schiller's and of Goethe's there may be numberless points of comparison, and causes of just preference, too, of the inferior writer; but in every power of the poet, Schiller was inferior-immeasurably inferior.* In our July number we incidentally mentioned Coleridge's translation of Wallenstein, and expressed our opinion of that wonderful work. We must be allowed to say one word on his own poems. A review of his Table-Talk, however, is not the place to discuss the matter as we could wish, even did we feel ourselves equal to the taskbut one word will be allowed us. The first part of the Romance of Christabel is probably the poem which more than any other in the language seizes upon the imagination, and this with but little aid from story, and none from sentiment; a few pictures are placed before the eye, and they live before it for ever. Then, the versification-throughout musical, though its measurement beats somewhat too distinctly upon the ear, and forces us as it were to count its cadences; though it wants variety, yet to use language which we have ourselves elsewhere used-"it acts on the heart and mind almost as a spell." The reader's mind is as powerless and yet as active as in a dream. The images presented to us we seem in some sort to create; and while every word brings As some evidence of the way in which Klopstock felt the difference of the claims of Goethe and Schiller, we transcribe from Coleridge's Biographia Literaria a few sentences. It should be remembered that this was in 1798, before either poet had produced his master-works:- "He spoke favourably of Goethe; but said that his Sorrows of Werter' was his best work, better than any of his dramas: he preferred the first written to the rest of Goethe's dramas. Schiller's Robbers' he found so extravagant, that he could not read it. I spoke of the scene of the setting sun. He did not know it. He said Schiller could not live. He thought Don Carlos the best of his dramas; but said that the plot was inextricable. It was evident he knew little of Schiller's works: indeed, he said he could not read them. Burgher, he said, was a true poet, and would live; that Schiller, on the contrary, must soon be forgotten; that he gave himself up to the imitation of Shakspeare, who was often extravagant, but that Schiller was ten thousand times more so."-B. L. vol. 2, p. 248. Schiller has been beyond any other poet fortunate in his translators-McKenzieColeridge-Monk Lewis-Moir-Lord Francis Egerton-Colonel D'Aguilar. VOL. VI. U with it its distinct meaning to the ear, yet there seems to be a strange cypherlanguage accompanying every sound, as a classical poet might be supposed to fancy that the song of the Naiad was clearly to be distinguished from the flow of the waters from whose murmur it was yet inseparable. If the meaning of the poet be imperfectly apprehended, the difficulty is to be resolved into anything but vagueness. There is one of Coleridge's poemsa song heard by him in sleep, and of which he remembered and has preserved some snatches. We can imagine the poet, when he first awoke into daylight life from such enchanted dreams, dwelling upon the magic sounds, till what was at first unintelligible, began to assume strange meaning,-till the Spirit, that sent the dream, seemed, as the poet's lips measured the sounds again and again, and the mystery, not yet altogether understood, was becoming familiar, to suggest something like an interpretation. Even in such a state as we imagine the poet when in his waking hours first wondering over the phantoms of fading dulcimer, and fleeting damsel, and of gardens and groves "rising like an exhalation" to the creative music, even so have we ourselves wondered over Christabel. It is Wilson, we believewe know it is some true poet-who has told us that Christabel is a fraginent, even as our dreams are fragments. To have completed it would have destroyed its character. We be lieve that the poet meant to intimate to us some mysterious connexion between the innocent Christabel's agonies and "the weal of her lover far away," and that in this poem some fancy of his on the subject of vicarious suffering was meant to be embodied--that in this some key will be found to the starworship of the Lady Geraldine—and to her "permitted" power, and to the anxious interference of Christabel's guardian angel-her mother's spirit. We cannot forbear transcribing a few stanzas, little as it is our habit or wish at any time to give fragments of a poem among our extracts. We mark a few lines * In former editions and words in italics, not for the purpose of giving them any peculiar emphasis, but to direct attention to the way in which the reader is told of Geraldine's being a sorceress, or, perhaps, an evil spirit-one in some suspicious way affected by the different matters which were, in the days of demonology among the tests by which those linked in unholy alliance with the powers of evil were detected. We print from the last of Mr. Pickering's editions, noticing a few variations from the form in which we remember the poem. The lovely lady, Christabel, She stole along, she nothing spoke, The sighs she heaved were soft and low, And naught was green upon the oak, But moss and rarest misletoe ; She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, And in silence prayeth she. The lady sprang up suddenly, The night is chill, the forest bare ; Hush, beating heart of Christabel! "The breezes they were still also." |