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The beliefs for which he pleaded were not in his day, as they had been in Wordsworth's, part of a progressive wave of thought. He occupied the disadvantageous position of a conservative thinker. The later poet of spiritual beliefs had to make his way not with, but against, a great incoming tide of contemporary speculation.
In both these respects Coleridge may and does occasionally offend, but his workmanship is, on the whole, as much more artistic than Byron's as the material of his poetry is of more uniformly equal value than Wordsworth's. Yet, with almost the sole exception of the Ancient Mariner, his work is in a certain sense more disappointing than that of either.
I feel I hardly feel enough for him; my own calamities press about me, and involve me in a thick integument not to be reached at by other folks' misfortunes. But I feel all I can, all the kindness I can, towards you all. God bless you! I hear nothing from Coleridge. Yours truly, Mrs. Wordsworth's sister. December 25, 1815.
The stars tell him anything he wishes to believe, and he can conjure up spirits as easily as another man can order a cab. It is not that he is a fool. In practical affairs he is astonishingly astute. It is that he has an illimitable capacity for belief. He is always on the road to Damascus. For my part I am content to wait. I am for Wordsworth's creed of "wise passiveness."
"...we're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred tunes nor cared to see." Sometimes it is only after reading Shakespeare that we can see "...winking Mary buds begin To ope their golden eyes. With everything that pretty is." and only after spending some time in Wordsworth's company that the common objects of our daily life become invested with
The wide range of his erudition is shown by the fact that he could write such fine literary criticisms as On Wordsworth's Poetry and On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth, such clear, strong, and vivid descriptions of historical events and characters as The Caesars, Joan of Arc, and The Revolt of the Tartars, and such acute essays on unfamiliar topics as The Toilette of a Hebrew Lady, The Casuistry of Roman Meals, and The Spanish Military Nun.
But she will wander at sundown through the exquisite woods of Eastwell, and will watch the owlets in their downy nest or the nightingale silhouetted against the fading sky. Then her constitutional depression passes, and she is able once more to be happy: Our sighs are then but vernal air, But April-drops our tears, as she says in delicious numbers that might be Wordsworth's own.
In Wordsworth's prefatory advertisement to the first edition of The Prelude, published in 1850, it is stated that that work was intended to be introductory to The Recluse: and that The Recluse, if completed, would have consisted of three parts. The second part is The Excursion.
As before, the service began and ended with the National Anthem; but in the evening the great assembly was thrilled to its heart by the Australian prima donna's splendid singing of Wordsworth's Ode to Duty in the setting specially composed for this occasion by Doctor Elgar.
Now it is a question, important historically, but more important to ourselves privately, whether Wordsworth's temporary subjugation by Political Justice was due to pure intellectual conviction. I think not. Coleridge noticed that Wordsworth suffered much from hypochondria.
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