The Life and Times of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Complete Autobiographical Works. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

as a new species in our English poetry. But from the train of argument that follows; from the reference to Milton; and from the spirit of his critique on Gray’s sonnet; those sentences appear to have been rather courtesies of modesty, than actual limitations of his system. Yet so groundless does this system appear on a close examination; and so strange and overwhelming in its consequences, that I cannot, and I do not, believe that the poet did ever himself adopt it in the unqualified sense, in which his expressions have been understood by others, and which, indeed, according to all the common laws of interpretation they seem to bear. What then did he mean? I apprehend, that in the clear perception, not unaccompanied with disgust or contempt, of the gaudy affectations of a style which passed current with too many for poetic diction, (though in truth it had as little pretensions to poetry, as to logic or common sense,) he narrowed his view for the time; and feeling a justifiable preference for the language of nature and of good sense, even in its humblest and least ornamented forms, he suffered himself to express, in terms at once too large and too exclusive, his predilection for a style the most remote possible from the false and showy splendour which he wished to explode. It is possible, that this predilection, at first merely comparative, deviated for a time into direct partiality. But the real object which he had in view, was, I doubt not, a species of excellence which had been long before most happily characterized by the judicious and amiable Garve, whose works are so justly beloved and esteemed by the Germans, in his remarks on Gellert, from which the following is literally translated. “The talent, that is required in order to make, excellent verses, is perhaps greater than the philosopher is ready to admit, or would find it in his power to acquire: the talent to seek only the apt expression of the thought, and yet to find at the same time with it the rhyme and the metre. Gellert possessed this happy gift, if ever any one of our poets possessed it; and nothing perhaps contributed more to the great and universal impression which his fables made on their first publication, or conduces more to their continued popularity. It was a strange and curious phaenomenon, and such as in Germany had been previously unheard of, to read verses in which everything was expressed just as one would wish to talk, and yet all dignified, attractive, and interesting; and all at the same time perfectly correct as to the measure of the syllables and the rhyme. It is certain, that poetry when it has attained this excellence makes a far greater impression than prose. So much so indeed, that even the gratification which the very rhymes afford, becomes then no longer a contemptible or trifling gratification.”

      However novel this phaenomenon may have been in Germany at the time of Gellert, it is by no means new, nor yet of recent existence in our language. Spite of the licentiousness with which Spenser occasionally compels the orthography of his words into a subservience to his rhymes, the whole FAIRY QUEEN is an almost continued instance of this beauty. Waller’s song GO, LOVELY ROSE, is doubtless familiar to most of my readers; but if I had happened to have had by me the Poems of Cotton, more but far less deservedly celebrated as the author of the VIRGIL TRAVESTIED, I should have indulged myself, and I think have gratified many, who are not acquainted with his serious works, by selecting some admirable specimens of this style. There are not a few poems in that volume, replete with every excellence of thought, image, and passion, which we expect or desire in the poetry of the milder muse; and yet so worded, that the reader sees no one reason either in the selection or the order of the words, why he might not have said the very same in an appropriate conversation, and cannot conceive how indeed he could have expressed such thoughts otherwise without loss or injury to his meaning.

      But in truth our language is, and from the first dawn of poetry ever has been, particularly rich in compositions distinguished by this excellence. The final e, which is now mute, in Chaucer’s age was either sounded or dropt indifferently. We ourselves still use either “beloved” or “belov’d” according as the rhyme, or measure, or the purpose of more or less solemnity may require. Let the reader then only adopt the pronunciation of the poet and of the court, at which he lived, both with respect to the final e and to the accentuation of the last syllable; I would then venture to ask, what even in the colloquial language of elegant and unaffected women, (who are the peculiar mistresses of “pure English and undefiled,”) what could we hear more natural, or seemingly more unstudied, than the following stanzas from Chaucer’s TROILUS AND CRESEIDE.

      “And after this forth to the gate he wente,

      Ther as Creseide out rode a ful gode pass,

      And up and doun there made he many’ a wente,

      And to himselfe ful oft he said, Alas!

      Fro hennis rode my blisse and my solas

      As woulde blisful God now for his joie,

      I might her sene agen come in to Troie!

      And to the yondir hil I gan her Bide,

      Alas! and there I toke of her my leve

      And yond I saw her to her fathir ride;

      For sorow of whiche mine hert shall to-cleve;

      And hithir home I came whan it was eve,

      And here I dwel, outcast from ally joie,

      And steal, til I maie sene her efte in Troie.

      “And of himselfe imaginid he ofte

      To ben defaitid, pale and woxin lesse

      Than he was wonte, and that men saidin softe,

      What may it be? who can the sothe gesse,

      Why Troilus hath al this hevinesse?

      And al this n’ as but his melancolie,

      That he had of himselfe suche fantasie.

      Anothir time imaginin he would

      That every wight, that past him by the wey,

      Had of him routhe, and that thei saien should,

      I am right sory, Troilus wol dey!

      And thus he drove a daie yet forth or twey,

      As ye have herde: suche life gan he to lede

      As he that stode betwixin hope and drede:

      For which him likid in his songis shewe

      Th’ encheson of his wo as he best might,

      And made a songe of words but a fewe,

      Somwhat his woful herte for to light,

      And whan he was from every mann’is sight

      With softe voice he of his lady dere,

      That absent was, gan sing as ye may here:

      This song, when he thus songin had, ful Bone

      He fil agen into his sighis olde

      And every night, as was his wonte to done;

      He stode the bright moone to beholde

      And all his sorowe to the moone he tolde,

      And said: I wis, whan thou art hornid newe,

      I shall be glad, if al the world be trewe!”

      Another exquisite master of this species of style, where the scholar and the poet supplies the material, but the perfect well-bred gentleman the expressions and the arrangement, is George Herbert. As from the nature of the subject, and the too frequent quaintness of the thoughts, his TEMPLE; or SACRED POEMS AND PRIVATE EJACULATIONS are Comparatively but little known, I shall extract two poems. The first is a sonnet, equally admirable for the weight, number, and expression of the thoughts, and for the simple dignity of the language. Unless, indeed, a fastidious taste should object to the latter half of the sixth line. The second is a poem of greater length, which I have chosen not only for the present purpose, but likewise as a striking example and illustration of an assertion hazarded in a former page of these sketches namely, that the characteristic fault of our elder poets is the reverse of that, which distinguishes too many of our more recent versifiers; the one conveying the most fantastic thoughts in the most correct and natural language; the other in the most fantastic language conveying