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Coleridge's Criticism of Wordsworth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Thomas M. Raysor
Thomas M. Raysor*
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska
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Extract

For an admirer of Coleridge's literary criticism it is most unsettling and mortifying to observe that the scholars who have questioned his reputation, though they have been in the minority, are among the most distinguished students of literature in our time. Sometimes, it is true, this distinction has come in Wordsworth studies, which often produce not only the inevitable study of Wordsworth's friendly association with Coleridge but also an unconsciously partisan defence of Wordsworth against the criticism in Biographia Literaria. In other cases one assumes that these doubters of Coleridge's fame have been annoyed by the uncritical and sanctimonious chorus in his praise, and wish to work back toward a more balanced judgment. Yet when Mr. Lucas—to take the most explicit and severe critic for a first instance—ridicules a few selected absurdities of Coleridge without acknowledging his profundities, one does not get the impression of balanced literary criticism but of urbane and deadly satire. Such absurdities as he quotes are numerous enough in Coleridge, no doubt; one might even agree that many of them are not exceptional, but characteristic. But we do not judge Shakespeare by Titus Andronicus or Wordsworth by The Excursion or Keats by Endymion. Even if we consider the whole mind of a great man as the background of his genius, we judge him ultimately only by the genius itself, which can never be more than part of his mind. Surely this is more necessary with Coleridge than with almost any other writer whom one could name, for his ill-health, unhappiness, and slavery to opium, and the instability of his temperament, all clouded his genius so much that it is easier to see the clouds than the light. Students who have collected fragments never intended for publication have given only too ample a field of choice for those who wish to illustrate the dullness or the nonsense of Coleridge's prose, but these students have presumably worked for other students, who wish material for complete historical information. As a finished and sensitive historical student of English and classical literature, Mr. Lucas is surely as fully qualified to select for praise as for blame, though he limits himself to the latter. The illustrations which he so deftly and plausibly presents of “the art of sinking” in criticism might well be matched by similar bits from the poetry, which Mr. Lucas, like Mr. Garrod, praises at the expense of Coleridge's criticism. Yet neither he, nor any one else, has ever offered the poorer poems as a proof that The Ancient Mariner has no excellence.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , June 1939 , pp. 496 - 510
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1939

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References

1 Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal (Cambridge, England, and New York, 1936), pp. 157–200.

2 Like the author of this article.

3 Garrod, H. W., Coleridge, Poetry and Prose (Oxford, 1925), p. xv.Google Scholar

4 “Essential,” or “essentially.”

5 Biographia Literaria (Oxford), ii, 48.

6 It is well to note that Coleridge makes two tests of differences in the language of poetry and prose: first, word-order, and second, figures of speech. Professor William Minto in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (eleventh edition, xxviii, 828) and in Literature of the Georgian Era (p. 189) mentions only the first and is followed by Thomas Hutchinson in the introduction to his edition of Lyrical Ballads (1907), p. xxxi.

7 Biographia Literaria (Oxford), ii, 49.

8 Ibid., ii, 276.

9 Biographia Liter aria (Cambridge), p. 304.—I have given Mr. Sampson's note for its bearing on the main issue, the question of Wordsworth's intention in using the word “language.” But it is clear to every one, I suppose, that Wordsworth does not content himself with so moderate an assertion as that which Mr. Sampson quotes. “We will go further,” he says, after reaffirming this claim. And then comes the paradox, that “there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.”

10 Barstow, M. L., Wordsworth's Theory of Poetic Diction (New Haven, 1917), pp. 134–135.I find, with some surprise, that Mr. Lucas shares this view, or at least refuses to accept the limitation of the word “language” to the meaning of vocabulary. Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal, p. 181, n. 1.Google Scholar

11 MLR, xiii (1918), 351–353 (G. L. Bickersteth).

12 From the date of the review this would seem to be of the eleventh edition, in which Professor Minto's article (originally from the ninth edition) has been revised by the editor, Hugh Chisholm. I have, accordingly, quoted from the eleventh edition.

13 In the introduction to his edition of Lyrical Ballads (1907), pp. xxix–xxxiii.

14 Minto, William, Literature of the Georgian Era (New York, 1895), pp. 190–192.Google Scholar

15 Encyclopaedia Britannica (eleventh edition, 1911), xxviii, 828.

16 Both here and in the case immediately following the italics are mine.

17 Wordsworth's Literary Criticism, edited by Nowell C. Smith (London, 1905), p. 41. I have given references throughout to this convenient collection, though references are scarcely necessary to such short documents as Wordsworth's critical essays.

18 Ibid., p. 46.

19 Ibid., p. 41.

20 Ibid., p. 42.

21 Ibid., p. 42.

22 Here and elsewhere I quote from the latest form of the Preface. This quotation, and the two which follow, do not appear in the version of 1800.

23 Wordsworth's Literary Criticism, pp. 23–24.

24 Ibid., p. 24.

25 The second and third lay in MS until 1876, when they were published by Grosart in the Prose Works of Wordsworth.

26 Ibid., pp. 115–116.

27 Ibid., p. 114.

28 Ibid., p. 116.

29 Ibid., p. 115.

30 Ibid., p. 121.

31 Ibid., p. 123.

32 Biographia Literaria (Oxford), ii, 47.

33 Ibid., ii, 83. Presumably a reference to Darwin.

34 Ibid., ii, 276–277.

35 Wordsworth's Literary Criticism, p. 185.

36 Book viii ll. 685–708.

37 Coleridge cited the image (misquoted), together with lines 691–92, in a citation of this passage as an illustration of our “pseudo-poetic diction.” Biographia Literaria (Oxford), i, 26–27, note.

38 Wordsworth's Literary Criticism, p. 185.

39 Indian Emperor, iii.ii. 1–6.

All things are hush'd as Nature's self lay dead;
The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head.
The little Birds in dreams their songs repeat,
And sleeping Flowers beneath the Night-dew sweat:
Even Lust and Envy Sleep; yet Love denies
Rest to my soul, and slumber to my eyes.

40 Wordsworth's Literary Criticism, pp. 17–18.

41 Ibid., p. 19.

42 Ibid., pp. 18–19.

43 Ibid., p. 19.

44 Ibid., p. 20.

45 Ibid., p. 20.

46 Ibid., pp. 21–22. Here again is a passage which does not appear in the Preface of 1800.

47 Biographia Literaria (Oxford), ii, 281.

48 Mr. Sampson, it is true, attempts to answer Coleridge by reaffirming Wordsworth's argument: “The metre, or better, the rhythm of poetry is a quality in itself, and does not involve an obligation to use, or to refrain from using, any particular kind of language.” (Biographia Literaria, Cambridge, p. 306). But I think that few will agree with him.