the rise of the moon made witchcraft credible, and gave warrant for the boldest imaginations. To Wordsworth these imaginations seemed superfluous; the moonlight was witchcraft enough; his interest and affections turned homeward to the things of every day, now seen to be susceptible of this heavenly glamour. The two sorts of poems were not both attempted by both poets. "It was agreed," says Coleridge, "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 constitutes 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 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." This famous and momentous agreement was, no doubt, a treaty arrived at after much discussion and not a few differences. We have no record of our the discussion, but it is plain enough that Wordsworth, though he was full of admiration for the originality of his friend's genius, yet thought his own ambition loftier and his own method more poetic. The Ancient Mariner was begun in collaboration, but, "as we endeavoured," says Wordsworth, "to proceed conjointly, respective manners proved so widely different that it would have been quite presumptuous in me to do anything but separate from an undertaking upon which I could only have been a clog." In a note to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads he is more plain-spoken. "The Poem of my Friend," he says, "has indeed great defects." In the meantime he had set himself, with a barely concealed competitive intent, to work out a better way. Peter Bell, which was finished in the summer of 1798, is Wordsworth's Ancient Mariner. It was composed, as he tells Southey in the Dedication, "under a belief that the Imagination not only does not require for its exercise the intervention of supernatural agency, but that, though such agency be excluded, the faculty may be called forth as imperiously and for kindred results of pleasure, by incidents, within the compass of poetic probability, in the humblest departments of daily life." It is unfortunate that we have not the original text of Peter Bell, for when at last it was published in 1819 it had undergone repeated revisions. But even in the poem as it stands the comparison peeps out at every turn. For motto it bears this line:-"Brutus will start a Spirit as soon Cæsar," and the contrasted methods of spiritraising supply the matter of the Prologue :— Long have I loved what I behold, The night that calms, the day that cheers; Her humblest mirth and tears. The dragon's wing, the magic ring, These given, what more need I desire The protagonist of Wordsworth's tale, in place of the Mariner, is a drunken itinerant potter. He has not killed an albatross, but in the course of his reckless life he has committed a hundred more accessible crimes. At the opening of the poem he is discovered by the light of the moon cruelly beating a stray ass. The ordeal for the softening of his heart begins. Like the Mariner, he beholds a sign in the element, and horror follows. It is not a skeleton ship, but the corpse of the ass's dead master, seen in the river. Like the Mariner, though by strictly natural means, he is cast into a trance. There are no spirits of the air to contend, one with another, over his fate, although on him too, as surely as if it had been supernaturally uttered, the verdict is given The man hath penance done, In place of all the unearthly machinery of penance that is brought to bear on the Mariner, Wordsworth is resolved to content himself with the simplest incidents and chances of a moonlight night, as they might operate upon an excited and ignorant mind. And here he throws out a direct challenge. Although he has denied himself natural aid, he too has spirits within call— Then, coming from the wayward world, What may be done with Peter Bell! super The supernatural impression is very carefully elaborated from a series of natural causes. A withered leaf scurrying along in chase of Peter fills him with alarm The very leaves they follow me— So huge hath been my wickedness! A drop of blood on a stone proves to have fallen from the wound that Peter had inflicted on the ass. The rumbling noise underground is due, though he knows it not, to the blasting operations of miners. In his excitement his eyesight plays tricks with him; by a brake of furze, under the shiver of aspen leaves, he fancies that he sees the Highland girl whom long ago he had betrayed, and hears her crying the words that she cried at the moment of her death. Then, on a heart made ready by these repeated blows, there falls the strident voice of the Methodist preacher, shouting in his wayside tabernacle Repent! repent! though ye have gone, And, though your sins be red as scarlet, The gentle moral of the Ancient Mariner, which comes at the end of that far flight of the imagination like the settling of a bird into the nest, has its near counterpart in the close of Peter Bell. We do not leave Peter until, taught to feel That man's heart is a holy thing, he is overwhelmed with sorrow and pity for the |
