CHAPTER XXIX

ALARIC WATTS

[While at Highgate, Coleridge contributed some short pieces of poetry, which may be regarded as his Autumn Leaves, to the Annals got up by Alaric Alexander Watts and F. M. Reynolds, to which Sir Walter Scott and the other leading literary men of the time were induced to send their less ambitious pieces. Fine steel engravings accompanied the poems and novelettes; and one of these by Stoddart, entitled the _Garden of Boccaccio_, was the subject of a poem by Coleridge in the _Keepsake_ of 1829. For this poem and some trifling epigrams Coleridge received the sum of £50 (_Life of Alaric Watts_, i, 292). The name of Coleridge must have stood high to command so large a fee for the things given to the _Keepsake_. The _Lines on Berengarius_ appeared in the _Literary Souvenir_ of 1827, and _Youth and Age_ and _Work without Hope_ in the _Bijou_ of 1828.

Some conception of the importance of these annuals may be gathered from stating that the _Literary Souvenir_ of 1827, got up by Alaric Watts, sold to the number of 7,712 copies in England, between November and April, and 700 in America of the ordinary edition, and 528 of a large-paper edition. There were other annuals besides these already mentioned, called the _Forget-me-Not_, _Friendship's Offering_, _The Amulet_, _The Winter's Wreath_, _The Anniversary_, _The Gem_, and other kindred publications (_Life of Alaric Watts_, i, 305).

The most finished production of Coleridge's latest period is _Alice Du Clos_, a ballad of the Romantic Movement. Much speculation as to the date of its origin has been put forth, some thinking it belongs to the time when the _Ancient Mariner_, _Christabel_, and the _Three Graves_ were written, others placing it between the publication of the last two Editions of the Collected Poems, 1829-1834. But in Letter 205 of date 8th October 1822, the quotation of the two lines

That names but seldom meet with Love, And Love wants courage without a name!

seems to imply that the ballad was then extant. Coleridge, as we know (see _Letters_, ii, 717), was engaged between 1822 and 1825 writing his _Aids to Reflection_, and the following curious passage occurs in Aphorism XXXI (Moral and Religious Aphorisms). Speaking of slander, he says: "It is not expressible how deep a wound a tongue sharpened to this work will give, with no noise and a very little word. This is the true white gunpowder, which the dreaming projectors of silent mischief and insensible poisons sought for in the laboratories of art and nature, in a world of good; but which was to be found in its most destructive form, in _the world of evil_, the Tongue" (Bohn Library edition, p. 70). _Alice Du Clos, or the Forked Tongue_, is the full title of the ballad; and it looks as if it had been written to illustrate the passage, though it has an affinity with Lewis's _Ellen of Eglantine_ and _The Troubadour, or Lady Alice's Bower_ (_Tales of Terror and Wonder_).[142]

In a letter to William Blackwood of 20th October 1829 Coleridge says he has among other poems for the Magazine, "a Lyrical Tale, 250 lines," which he could give if desired (_William Blackwood and his Sons_, by Mrs. Oliphant, i, 415). The date of the poem may therefore be put down as 1822-1829.

_Alice Du Clos_ ranks with the _Ancient Mariner_, _Christabel_, _Kubla Khan_, _Love_ and the _Ballad of the Dark Ladye_, among Coleridge's poems in which he rises out of his own subjectivity into the clear realm of objective art. The remark of Thomas Ashe (Preface to the Aldine Edition of the _Poems_, cxxxvi), that "the great fault of Coleridge is that he puts too much of himself, _unidealized_, into his verses," is perfectly true. Coleridge was himself aware of this defect, and in Letter 167, speaking of the _Hymn before Sunrise_, he admits that there is in the Hymn too much of the _idiosyncratic_ for true poetry, a piece of self-criticism that can be alleged against a great number of his poems, beautiful of their kind yet savouring too often of the Ego. The _Lime Tree Bower_, _Dejection, an Ode_, the _Lines to Wordsworth_, the _Pains of Sleep_, the _Tombless Epitaph_, _Youth and Age_, the _Garden of Boccaccio_, _Work without Hope_, are not exceptions. It is only in the _Ancient Mariner_, _Christabel_, _Kubla Khan_, _The Three Graves_, _Love_, _The Ballad of the Dark Ladye_, and _Alice Du Clos_, that Coleridge succeeds in hiding his own personal identity behind his melodious utterance, and attains to that simplicity which is truly classical. Most of his other poems are autobiographical, and can be thoroughly understood only as part of his epistolary correspondence. His finest ode, _Dejection_, is only a versified letter to Wordsworth, afterwards denuded of its most personal references, and addressed to a "Lady," to give it a more artistic cast.

The relationship between Coleridge and Alaric Watts was not confined to the contributions to the Annuals. An agreeable social intimacy sprang up between the Highgate household and the Watts; and a correspondence between Mr. and Mrs. Watts and Coleridge took place. Five fine letters by Coleridge are contained in the _Life of Alaric Watts_, from which it seems Coleridge and Mr. Watts intended to collaborate in the issue of an edition of Shakespeare, which would have been a congenial task to Coleridge, and one can feel regret that it was not carried out. A feature of the edition was to be "properly critical notes, prefaces, and analyses, comprising the results of five and twenty years' study: the object being to ascertain and distinguish what Shakespeare possessed in common with other great men of his age, or differing only in degree, and what was his, peculiar to himself" (_Life of Alaric Watts_, i, 243). This, of course, as any one acquainted with Coleridge's Lectures on Shakespeare knows, was one of Coleridge's favourite topics, and one which could have been better illustrated in an annotated edition than in popular lectures.

In one of his letters to Alaric Watts Coleridge gives the best account of the lack of voluntary power to open letters sent him; and counsels Watts if he wishes an immediate answer to his letters to send them under cover to Mrs. Gillman, who is his "outward conscience." In another letter, sending contributions for the Annual, he encloses his poem entitled _Limbo_, which he says is a pretended fragment of the poet Lee.]

FOOTNOTES:

[142] [The error "Ellen" in line 91 may have arisen from Coleridge having called the heroine Ellen, after that of Lewis's _Ellen of Eglantine_, but afterwards having changed that name for Alice in the other stanzas forgetting to alter the word in line 91.]

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