CHAPTER XIX

REMORSE AT DRURY LANE[46]

By what I _have_ effected, am I to be judged by my fellow-men; what I _could_ have done is a question for my own conscience.--S. T. C.

As the _Biographia Literaria_ does not mention all Mr. Coleridge's writings, it will be proper to give some account of them here.

The Poetical Works in three volumes include the _Juvenile Poems_, _Sibylline Leaves_, _Ancient Mariner_, _Christabel_, _Remorse_, _Zapolya_, and _Wallenstein_.

The first volume of _Juvenile Poems_ was published in the Spring of 1796. It contains three sonnets by Charles Lamb, and a poetical Epistle which he called "Sara's," but of which my Mother told me she wrote but little. Indeed it is not very like some simple affecting verses, which were wholly by herself, on the death of her beautiful infant, Berkeley, in 1799. In May, 1797, Mr. C. put forth a collection of poems, containing all that were in his first edition, with the exception of twenty pieces and the addition of ten new ones and a considerable number by his friends, Lloyd and Lamb. _The Ancient Mariner_, _Love_,[47] _The Nightingale_, _The Foster Mother's Tale_ first appeared with the _Lyrical Ballads_ of Mr. Wordsworth in the summer of 1798. There was a third edition of the _Juvenile Poems_ by themselves in 1803, with the original motto from Statius, _Felix curarum_, etc. _Silo. Lib._ iv. A spirit of almost child-like sociability seemed to reign among these young poets--they were fond of joint publications.

_Wallenstein_, a Play translated from the German of Schiller, appeared in 1800. _Christabel_ was not published till April 1816, but written, the first part at Stowey in 1797, the second at Keswick in 1800. It went into a third edition in the first year. The fragment called _Kubla Khan_, composed in 1797,[48] and the _Pains of Sleep_, which was annexed to the former by way of contrast, were published with the first edition of _Christabel_, in 1816.

The Tragedy called _Remorse_ was written in the summer and autumn of 1797, but not represented on the stage till 1813, when it was performed at Drury Lane--on the authority of an old play-bill of the Calne Theatre, "with unbounded applause thirty successive nights." On "the success of the _Remorse_," Mr. Coleridge wrote thus to his friend Mr. Poole, on the 14th of February, 1813:

LETTER 152.

"The receipt of your heart-engendered lines was sweeter than an unexpected strain of sweetest music;--or in humbler phrase, it was the only pleasurable sensation which the _success of the Remorse_ has given me. I have read of, or perhaps only imagined, a punishment in Arabia, in which the culprit was so bricked up as to be unable to turn his eyes to the right or to the left, while in front was placed a high heap of barren sand glittering under the vertical sun. Some slight analogue of this, I have myself suffered from the mere unusualness of having my attention forcibly directed to a subject which permitted neither sequence of imagery, nor series of reasoning. No grocer's apprentice, after his first month's permitted riot, was ever sicker of figs and raisins than I of hearing about the _Remorse_. The endless rat-a-tat-tat at our black-and-blue bruised door, and my three master fiends, proof sheets, letters (for I have a raging epistolophobia), and worse than these--invitations to large dinners, which I cannot refuse without offence and imputation of pride, nor accept without disturbance of temper the day before, and a sick aching stomach for two days after--oppress me so that my spirits quite sink under it.

"I have never seen the Play since the first night. It has been a good thing for the Theatre. They will get £8,000 or £10,000 by it, and I shall get more than all my literary labours put together, nay, thrice as much, subtracting my heavy losses in _The Watchman_ and _The Friend_, including the copyright."[49]

The manuscript of the _Remorse_, immediately after it was written, was shown to Mr. Sheridan, "who," says my Father, in the Preface to the first Edition, "by a twice conveyed recommendation (in the year 1797) had urged me to write a Tragedy for his theatre, who, on my objection that I was utterly ignorant of all stage tactics, had promised that _he_ would himself make the necessary alterations, if the piece should be at all representable." He however neither gave him any answer, nor returned him the manuscript, which he suffered to wander about the town from his house, and my Father goes on to say, "not only asserted that the Play was rejected because I would not submit to the alteration of one ludicrous line, but finally, in the year 1806, amused and delighted (as who was ever in his society, if I may trust the universal report, without being amused and delighted?) a large company at the house of a highly respectable Member of Parliament, with the ridicule of the Tragedy, as a _fair specimen_ of the _whole_ of which he adduced a line:

Drip! drip! drip! There's nothing here but dripping.

In the original copy of the Play, in the first scene of the fourth act, Isidore _had_ commenced his soliloquy in the cavern with the words:

Drip! drip! a ceaseless sound of water-drops,--

as far as I can at present recollect: for, on the possible ludicrous association being pointed out to me, I instantly and thankfully struck out the line." I repeat this story as told by Mr. C. himself, because it has been otherwise told by others. I have little doubt that it was more pointedly than faithfully told to him, and can never believe that Mr. S. represented a ludicrous line as a fair specimen of the whole Play, or his tenacious adherence to it as the reason for its rejection. I dare say he thought it, as Lord Byron afterwards thought _Zapolya_, "beautiful but not practicable." Mr. Coleridge felt that _he_ had some claim to a friendly spirit of criticism in that quarter, because he had "devoted the firstlings of his talents," as he says in a marginal note, "to the celebration of Sheridan's genius,"[50] and after the treatment described "not only never spoke unkindly or resentfully of it, but actually was zealous and frequent in defending and praising his public principles and conduct in the _Morning Post_"--of which, perhaps, Mr. S. knew nothing. However, in lighter moods, my Father laughed at Sheridan's joke as much as any of his auditors could have done in 1806, and repeated with great effect and mock solemnity "Drip!--Drip!--Drip!--nothing but dripping." I suppose it was at this time,--the winter of 1806-7--that he made an unsuccessful attempt to bring out the Tragedy at Drury Lane.[51]

When first written this Play had been called _Osorio_, from the principal character, whose name my Father afterwards improved into _Ordonio_. I believe he in some degree altered, if he did not absolutely recast, the three last acts after the failure with Mr. Sheridan, who probably led him to see their unfitness for theatrical representation.[52] But of this point I have not certain knowledge. It was when Drury Lane was under the management of Lord Byron and Mr. Whitbread, and through the influence of the former, that it was produced upon the stage. Mr. Gillman says, "Although Mr. Whitbread did not give it the advantage of a single new scene, yet the popularity of the Play was such, that the principal actor, (Mr. Roe,) who had performed in it with great success, made choice of it for his benefit night, and it brought an overflowing house." This was some time after Mr. Coleridge took up his residence at Highgate, in April, 1816. After all I am happy to think that this drama is a strain of _poetry_, and like all, not only dramatic poems, but highly poetic dramas, not to be fully appreciated on the stage.

_Zapolya_ came before the public in 1817. The stage fate of this piece is alluded to in the _B. L._ Mr. Gillman mentions that it was Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, then the critic for Drury Lane, who rejected the Play, and complained of its "metaphysics"--a term which is not, upon all occasions, to be strictly construed, but, when used in familiar talk, seems merely to denote whatever is too fine-spun, in the texture of thought and speech, for common wear; whatever is not readily apprehensible and generally acceptable. Schoolboys call everything in books or discourse, which is graver or tenderer than they like, "_metaphysics_." Mr. Kinnaird may have judged quite rightly that the Play was too _metaphysical_ for our theatres in their present state, though certainly plays as metaphysical were once well received on the stage. _Zapolya_, however, had a favourable audience from the public as a dramatic poem. Mr. Gillman says this Christmas Tale, which the author "never sat down to write, but dictated while walking up and down the room, became so immediately popular that 2,000 copies were sold in six weeks."

The collection of poems entitled _Sibylline Leaves_, "in allusion to the fragmentary and widely scattered state in which they had been long suffered to remain," appeared in 1817, about the same time with _Zapolya_, the _Biographia Literaria_, and the first _Lay Sermon_.

The _Miscellaneous Poems_ were composed at different periods of the author's life, many of them in his later years. I believe that _Youth and Age_ was written before he left the North of England in 1810,[53] when he was about seven or eight-and-thirty,--early indeed for the poet to say of himself

I see these locks in silvery slips, This drooping gait, this altered size: But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips, And tears take sunshine from thine eyes.

The whole of the _Poetical Works_, with the exception of a few which must be incorporated in a future edition, are contained in that in three volumes.[54] _The Fall of Robespierre_, an Historic drama, of which the first act was written by Mr. Coleridge, and published September 22, 1794, is printed in the first vol. of the _Lit. Remains_. This first act contains the Song on _Domestic Peace_. In the blank verse there are some faint dawnings of his maturer style, as in these lines:

The winged hours, that scatter'd roses round me, Languid and sad, drag their slow course along, And shake big gall-drops from their heavy wings--

and in these:

Why, thou hast been the mouth-piece of all horrors, And, like a blood-hound, crouch'd for murder! Now Aloof thou standest from the tottering pillar, Or, like a frighted child behind its mother, Hidest thy pale face in the skirts of--_Mercy_!

but it contains scarcely anything of his peculiar original powers, and some of the lines are in schoolboy taste; for instance,

While sorrow sad, like the dank willow near her, Hangs o'er the troubled fountain of her eye.

Yet three years after the date of this composition, in 1797, which has been called his _Annus Mirabilis_, he had reached his poetical zenith. But perhaps it may be said that, from original temperament, and the excitement of circumstances, my Father lived fast.

He had four poetical epochs, which represented, in some sort, boyhood, youthful manhood, middle age, and the decline of life. The first commenced a little on this side childhood, when he wrote _Time real and Imaginary_, and ended in 1796. This period embraces the Juvenile Poems, concluding with _Religious Musings_, written on the Christmas Eve of 1794, a few months after _The Fall of Robespierre_: _The Destiny of Nations_ was composed a little earlier. _Lewti_, written in 1795, _The Æolian Harp_, and _Reflections on having left a place of Retirement_, written soon after, are more finished poems, and exhibit more of his peculiar vein than any which he wrote before them; though one poet, Mr. Bowles, has said that he never surpassed the _Religious Musings_! _Fire, Famine, and Slaughter_ belongs to 1796. _The Lines to a Friend_ (Charles Lamb) _who had declared his intention of writing no more poetry_, and those _To a Young Friend_ (Charles Lloyd) were composed in the same year. These poems of 1794-5-6 may be considered intermediate in power as in time, and so forming a link between the first epoch and the next.[55]

Then came his poetic prime, which commenced with the _Ode to the Departing Year_, composed at the end of December, 1796. The year following, the five-and-twentieth of his life, produced the _Ancient Mariner_, _Love_, and _The Dark Ladie_, the first part of _Christabel_, _Kubla Khan_, _Remorse_, in its original cast, _France_, and _This Lime-tree bower_. _Fears in Solitude_, _The Nightingale_, and _The Wanderings of Cain_, were written in 1798. _Frost at Midnight_,[56] _The Picture_,[57] the _Lines to the Rev. G. Coleridge_,[58] and those _To W. Wordsworth_,[59] are all of this same Stowey period. It was in June, 1797, that my Father began to be intimate with Mr. Wordsworth, and this doubtless gave an impulse to his mind. _The Hymn before Sunrise_,[60] and other strains produced in Germany, link this period to the next. The _Hexameters written during a temporary blindness_, and the _Catullian Hendecasyllables_ (which are freely translated from Matthisson's _Milesisches Mährchen_) Mr. Cottle seems to place in 1797,[61] but the Author has marked the former as produced in 1799, and I believe that the latter are of the same date. The _Night Scene_, _Myrtle leaf that ill besped_,[62] _Maiden that with sullen brow_, are of this period, and so I believe are _Lines composed in a concert-room_, and some others.

The poems which succeed are distinguished from those of my Father's Stowey life by a less buoyant spirit. Poetic fire they have, but not the clear bright mounting flame of his earlier poetry. Their meditative vein is graver, and they seem tinged with the sombre hues of middle age; though some of them were written before the Author was thirty-five years old. A characteristic poem of this period is _Dejection, an Ode_: composed at Keswick, April 4, 1802. _Wallenstein_ had been written in London in 1800. _The Three Graves_ was composed in 1805 or 6;[63] the second part of _Christabel_ soon after the Author's settling in the Lake country (in 1801);[64] _Youth and Age_ not long before he quitted it as a residence for ever (in 1810).[65] _Recollections of Love_ must have been written on his return to Keswick from Malta in 1806: _The Happy Husband_ at that time, or earlier. The small fragment called _The Knight's Tomb_ probably belongs to the North. _The Devil's Thoughts_ appeared in _The Morning Post_ in 1800.[66] This production certainly has in it more of youthful sprightliness than of middle-aged soberness; still it is less fantastic and has more of world-wisdom in its satire than the _War Eclogue_ of 1796. The _Complaint and Reply_ first appeared in 1802. The _Ode to Tranquillity_ was published in _The Friend_, March, 1809.

The poems of his after years, even when sad, are calmer in their melancholy than those produced while he was ceasing to be young. We are less heavy-hearted when youth is out of sight than when it is taking its leave. _Duty surviving Self-Love_, _The Pang more sharp than all_, _Love's Apparition and Evanishment_, _The Blossoming of the solitary Date tree_, and some other poems of his latter years, have this character of resigned and subdued sadness. _Work without Hope_ was written at fifty-six. The _Visionary Hope_ and _The Pains of Sleep_,[67] which express more agitation and severer suffering, are of earlier date. These and all in the _Sibylline Leaves_ were written before the end of 1817, when he had completed his forty-fifth year. The productions of the fourth epoch, looked at as works of imagination, are tender, graceful, exquisitely finished, but less bold and animated than those of his earlier day. This may be said of _Zapolya_, _Alice du Clos_,[68] _The Garden of Boccaccio_,[69] _The Two Founts_, _Lines suggested by the last Words of Berengarius_, _Sancti Dominici Pallium_, and other poems written, I believe, when the poet was past forty, the four last-named after he was fifty years old. _Love, Hope, and Patience in Education_ was, I think, one of his latest poetical efforts, if not the very last.

The following prose compositions are included in the poetical volumes, and the _Apologetic Preface to Fire, Famine and Slaughter_, containing a comparison between Milton and Jeremy Taylor, is placed at the end of Vol. I: _An Allegoric Vision_, first published in _The Courier_ in 1811, and _New Thoughts on Old Subjects_, which first appeared in _The Keepsake_, are inserted in Vol. II.

The whole of the Poetical Works, except a few which have been reprinted in the _Literary Remains_, are contained in the stereotyped edition in three volumes. The Poems without the Dramas have been collected in a single volume,[70] from which some of the Juvenile Poems, and two or three of later date, are excluded, and which includes a few not contained in the three vol. edition.

I now proceed to Mr. Coleridge's compositions in Prose. _Conciones ad Populum_, are two addresses to the People, delivered at the latter end of February,[71] and then thrown into a small pamphlet. "After this," says Mr. Cottle, "he consolidated two other of his lectures, and published them under the title of _The Plot Discovered_." A moral and political Lecture delivered at Bristol by Mr. C. was published in the same year. I do not know whether he printed any of his other Bristol orations of the year ninety-five. _The Watchman_ was carried on in 1796. The first number appeared March 1; the tenth and last, May 13. These were youthful immature productions. Whatever was valuable and of a permanent nature in them was transferred into his later productions, or included in later publications.

_The Friend_, a Literary, Moral, and Political Weekly Paper, excluding personal and party politics and the events of the day, was written and published at Grasmere. The first number appeared on Thursday, June 1st, 1809, the 27th and last of that edition, March 15, 1810. _The Friend_ next appeared before the public in 3 vols. in 1818. This was "rather a rifacimento," as the Author said, "than a new edition, the additions forming so large a proportion of the whole work, and the arrangement being altogether new." (Essays V-XIII, pp. 38-128, treat of the _Duty of communicating truth, and the conditions under which it may be safely communicated_; Essay V is _on the expediency of pious frauds, etc._). The third edition of 1837 gave the Author's last corrections, an appendix containing the parts thrown out in the recast, with some other _miscellanea_, and a synoptical table of the contents by the Editor. There is now a fourth edition.

The two _Lay Sermons_ were published, the one in 1816, the other in 1817. The first is entitled _The Statesman's Manual_, or _The Bible the best Guide to Political skill and foresight_: a Lay Sermon addressed to the higher classes of society, with an Appendix, containing comments and essays connected with the study of the inspired writings:--the second _A Lay Sermon_, addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes, on the existing distresses and discontents. Mr. Gillman says he "had the intention of addressing a third to the lower classes."

The _Biographia Literaria_ was published in 1817, but parts of the first volume must have been composed some years earlier.[72] The _Edinburgh Review_ in its August number of that year was as favourable to the book _as could be expected_."[73]

FOOTNOTES:

[46] [The above chapter is by Sara Coleridge.]

[47] [_Love_, not till second edition of _Lyrical Ballads_, 1800.]

[48] [Should be 1798. See _Letters_, p. 245.]

[49] [Letter CXCV is our 152. Letters CLXXXIII-CXCIV precede it in chronological order: Letter CXCVI follows.]

[50] See his Sonnet to Sheridan.--S.C.

[51] [See Letter 136.]

[52] [The original _Osorio_ is republished in Dykes Campbell's edition of the _Poems_, p. 479.]

[53] [Should be 1822-1832.]

[54] [Issued in 1834.]

[55] [Many of the dates of the Poems are now ascertained to be different from those in the text of Sara Coleridge.]

[56] [Should be 1797.]

[57] [1800.]

[58] [1797.]

[59] [1806.]

[60] [1802.]

[61] [1799.]

[62] [1797.]

[63] [Should be 1797-1798.]

[64] [1800.]

[65] [1822-1832.]

[66] [1799.]

[67] [1803.]

[68] [1829.]

[69] [1828.]

[70] [Issued in 1848.]

[71] [1795.]

[72] [1815.]

[73] The remarks in that article upon my Father's remarks on _poetic diction_ I have vainly tried to understand:--"a paste of rich and honeyed words, like the candied coat of the auricula, a glittering tissue of quaint conceits and sparkling metaphors, crusting over the rough stalk of homely thoughts; &c. such is the style of Pope and Gray; such very often is that of Shakespeare and Milton; and, notwithstanding Mr. Coleridge's decision to the contrary, of Spenser's _Faëry Queen_." _Homely_ thoughts clothed in a glittering tissue of poetic diction are but pseudo-poetry; and the powder on the auricula would be nothing, if the coat itself were not of velvet. Mr. C.'s decision respecting the _Faëry Queen_ is equally misrepresented, for he maintains that Spenser's language _is_ distinct from that of prose, such language being required by his thoughts and in harmony with them. To say that he decided "the contrary," as if he had denied poetic diction to Spenser, is not like the auricula's coat, _candid_.--S. C.

##