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Byron has taken us by rough roads, and Wordsworth led us through some desperately flat and dreary lowlands to his favourite "bits;" but we feel that we have seen mountain and valley, wood and river, glen and waterfall at their best. But Coleridge's poetry leaves too much of the feeling of a walk through a fine country on a misty day.
Coleridge's power is in the very fineness with which, as by some really ghostly finger, he brings home to our inmost sense his inventions, daring as they are the skeleton ship, the polar spirit, the inspiriting of the dead corpses of the ship's crew.
It is said, in defence of the variations which exist between the German original and the version given by Coleridge, that he translated from a prompter's copy in manuscript, before the drama had been printed, and that Schiller himself subsequently altered it, by omitting some passages, adding others, and even engrafting several of Coleridge's adaptations.
A song written with any spirit in this measure has, other things not being quite equal, yet almost a certainty of becoming more popular than one written in any other measure. Most of Barry Cornwall's and Mrs. Heman's songs are written in it. Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel," Coleridge's "Christabel," Byron's "Siege of Corinth," Shelley's "Sensitive Plant," are examples of the rhythm.
But one should, indeed, be a classic, for it is in my judgment by all odds the best narrative ballad of the last century that is if I am right in supposing that "The Ancient Mariner" appeared at the very end of the eighteenth. I would put Coleridge's tour de force of grim fancy first, but I know none other to compare in glamour and phrase and easy power with "Ticonderoga."
He became an idealist and used the idealistic teachings of the German metaphysicians to combat the utilitarian and sense-bound philosophy of Bentham, Malthus, and Mill. We pass by Coleridge's Aids to Reflection , the weightiest of his metaphysical productions, to consider those works which possess a more vital interest for the student of literature.
There is indeed no moral theory of life, there are no maxims of conduct, such as youth above all things craves for, in Coleridge's teaching. Apart from the intrinsic difficulties of the task to which he invites his disciples, it labours under a primary and essential disadvantage of postponing moral to intellectual liberation.
I have also looked through Michelet's Luther, with great delight; and have read the fourth volume of Coleridge's Literary Remains, in which there are things that would interest you. He has a great hankering after Cromwell, and explicitly defends the execution of Charles. "Of Mrs. Strachey we have seen a great deal; and might have seen more, had I had time and spirits for it.
Collier, November 2, 1824, and to H. Dodwell, October 7, 1827, all in acknowledgment of pigs sent to Lamb probably from an impulse found in this essay. Later, Lamb abandoned the extreme position here taken. But he disclaims all such green-sickness appetites in future." "Ere sin could blight ..." From Coleridge's "Epitaph on an Infant." My good old aunt. Probably Aunt Hetty.
These emendations came too late for admission in the second edition; nor have they appeared in the last edition. They will remain therefore for insertion in any future edition of Mr. Coleridge's Poems. "Stowey, 1797. My dear Cottle, ... Public affairs are in strange confusion. I am afraid that I shall prove, at least, as good a Prophet as Bard. Oh, doom'd to fall, my country! enslaved and vile!
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