Nigh foundered, on he fares, Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, Half flying. Much of this crude consistence will be found in the following pages, To discern its boundaries, to discriminate the false from the true in it, is a task which itself demands a trained faculty and a sound judgement. And this demand, which is made on us when we study Coleridge's literary criticism, is just one of the main reasons why the study of it is not only illuminating, but stimulating and formative, in so high a degree. This is true of his criticism on Wordsworth. It is true, with a difference, of his criticism on Shakespeare, which comes next to the other both in amount and in value. But here we are at an incidental disadvantage; we do not possess it in any continuous and considered shape. His lectures on Shakespeare were for the most part brilliant but erratic improvisations. In this,' Crabb Robinson drily notes in his diary of one of them, 'he surpassed himself in the art of talking in a very interesting way, without speaking at all on the subject.' Of another in the same series, a month later, he records that it was incomparably the best' of the seven : 'he was spirited, methodical, and for the greater part, intelligible.' Even for what he said we have to depend on imperfect notes taken among the audience. Beyond these there is nothing but a number of detached remarks, or records of spoken monologues. In this heterogeneous mass of fragments gold is mixed with dross. But we shall find here also that the chief permanent value of what is preserved lies in particular criticisms, and that his generalizations are often incoherent and sometimes nearly meaningless. He had, indeed, in the fullest measure one great qualification: his admiration for Shakespeare was boundless. But it was not always true. In his critical as in his creative work he was a romantic; and to both the saying of Sainte-Beuve applies, 'L'écueil particulier du genre romantique, c'est le faux.' In dealing with his predecessors in Shakespearian criticism he is always, or nearly always, admirable; he sees where they went wrong, and how: but he falls into errors of his own which it is now easy to see and perhaps, therefore, a little ungracious to emphasize. It was natural, one may even say it was inevitable, to exaggerate where the task was that of breaking down an inveterate tradition. But that very exaggeration helped to create a new tradition which was largely false, and which, so far as it was false, has been necessarily mischievous, all the more so that he clothed it in the colours of a persuasive and seductive eloquence. Not only individuals,' he says in his attack on the eighteenthcentury tradition, but even whole nations are ofttimes so enslaved to the habits of their education and immediate circumstances as not to judge disinterestedly.' It sounds strangely in our ears now to hear Coleridge accuse any one of being enslaved to habits. For the self-wrought enslavement of his senses communicated itself-slowly, perhaps, but in the end surely-to his once lucid and unconfined intelligence. Of him we may be apt to say, as he said then of those others, that 'individuals may attain to exquisite discrimination, but a true critic cannot be such without placing himself on some central point, some general rule founded in reason, or the faculties common to all. He believed himself to have found that central point. Other critics before him, and others after him, have thought the same. No such point exists. It is for ever being sought, and for ever eluding the seeker; it shifts before him as he advances towards it, like the retreating horizon. The history of criticism, like the history of poetry itself, is one of perpetual progress: for criticism is itself a function of life, and life does not stand still. The radiant point from which all the swarming streams of light issue, from which or by reference to which alone they fall into intelligible order, is itself moving with incalculable speed and on a curve of which we cannot trace the law. Thus it is that all criticism necessarily becomes obsolete. Its reference is to a synthesis of life which is provisional and evanescent. It bases itself on a momentary configuration of human intelligence, which it treats as though it were a fixed chart giving ascertained distances and relations. Thus, also, it is that no criticism, in another sense, ever becomes obsolete: for it is part of history; and history is alive. Coleridge's criticism illuminated Shakespeare and the Shakespearian age in poetry for his own genera LITERARY CRITICISM POETRY THE poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of Imagination. This power, first put in action by the will and understanding, and retained under their irremissive, though gentle and unnoticed, controul (laxis effertur habenis) reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general with the concrete; the idea with the image; the individual with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order; judgement ever awake and steady self-possession with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry. Doubtless,' as Sir John Davies observes of the soul-(and his words may with slight alteration be applied, and even more appropriately, to the poetic Imagination) Doubtless this could not be, but that she turns From their gross matter she abstracts their forms, Thus does she, when from individual states Finally, Good Sense is the Body of poetic Genius, Fancy its Drapery, Motion its Life, and Imagination the Soul that is everywhere, and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole. Biog. Lit., ch. xiv. Peculiar, not far-fetched; natural, but not obvious; delicate, not affected; dignified, not swelling; fiery, but not mad; rich in imagery, but not loaded with it-in short, a union of harmony and good sense, of perspicuity and conciseness. Thought is the body of such an ode, enthusiasm the soul, and imagery the drapery. Anima Poetae, p. 4. Poetry, like schoolboys, by too frequent and severe correction, may be cowed into dullness! Anima Poetae, p. 4. |