sooner the remainder comes forth to explain them, the better. One thing is evident, that no man need sit down to read Christabel with any prospect of gratification, whose mind has not rejoiced habitually in the luxury of visionary and superstitious reveries. He that is determined to try every thing by the standard of what is called common sense, and who has an aversion to admit, even in poetry, of the existence of things more than are dreamt of in philosophy, had better not open this production, which is only proper for a solitary couch and a midnight taper. Mr Coleridge is the prince of superstitious poets; and he that does not read Christabel with a strange and harrowing feeling of mysterious dread, may be assured that his soul is made of impenetrable stuff. The circumstances with which the poem opens are admirably conceived. There is in all the images introduced a certain fearful stillness and ominous meaning, the effect of which can never be forgotten. The language, also, is so much in harmony with the rude era of the tale, that it seems scarcely to have been written in the present age, and is indeed a wonderful proof of what genius can effect, in defiance of unfavourable associations. Whoever has had his mind penetrated with the true expression of a Gothic building, will find a similar impression conveyed by the vein of language employed in this legend. The manners, also, and forms of courtesy ascribed to the personages, are full of solemn grace. -He kissed her forehead as he spake ; The general import of the poem cannot yet be guessed at; but it is evident that the mysterious lady whom Christabel meets in the forest-whom she introduces by stealth into the castle of her father-and in whom her father recognizes the daughter of the VOL. VI. long-estranged friend of his youth, The night is chill; the forest bare; There she sees a damsel bright, Mary mother, save me now! sweet, Did thus pursue her answer meet :—— Five warriors seiz'd me yestermorn, They chok'd my cries with force and fright, They spurr'd amain, their steeds were white; I have no thought what men they be; I thought I heard, some minutes past, Sounds as of a castle bell. Then Christabel stretch'd forth her hand, And straight be convoy'd, free from thrall, out. The lady sank, belike thro' pain, And mov'd, as she were not in pain. Who hath rescued thee from thy distress! I cannot speak for weariness. So free from danger, free from fear, The brands were flat, the brands were dying, But they without its light can see The silver lamp burns dead and dim; She trimm'd the lamp, and made it bright, With what exquisite delicacy are all these hints of the true character of this stranger imagined.-The difficulty of passing the threshold-the dread and incapacity of prayer-the moaning of the old mastiff in his sleep-the rekindling of the lying embers as she passes-the influence of the lamp "fastened to the angel's feet."—All these are conceived in the most perfect beauty. The next intimation is of a far more fearful and lofty kind. The stranger is invited by Christabel to drink of wine made by his departed mother; and listens to the tale of that mother's fate who died it seems, 66 in the hour that Christabel was born." Christabel expresses a wish of natural and innocent simplicity O mother dear that thou wert here- But soon with alter'd voice, said she- After the notion of evil has once been suggested to the reader, the external beauty and great mildness of demeanour ascribed to the Stranger produce only the deeper feeling of terror and they contrast, in a manner singularly impressive, with the small revelations which every now and then take place of what is concealed beneath them. It is upon this happy contrast that the interest of the whole piece chiefly hinges, and would Mr Coleridge only take heart, and complete what he has so nobly begun-he would probably make Christabel the finest exemplification to be found in the English, or perhaps in any language since Homer's, of an idea which may be traced in most popular superstitions. In these two poems-we might even say in the extracts we have made from them the poetical faculties of Coleridge are abundantly exhibited in the whole power and charm of their native beauty. That such exercise of these faculties may have been so far injudicious as not calculated to awaken much of the ordinary sympathies of mankind-but rather addressing every thing to feelings of which in their full strength and sway only a few. are capable-all this is a reproach easy to be made, and in a great measure perhaps it may be a well-founded reproach. But nothing surely can be more unfair, than to overlook or deny the existence of such beauty and such strength on any grounds of real or pretended misapplication. That the author of these productions is a poet of a most noble class a poet most original in his conceptions-most masterly in his execution-above all things a most inimitable master of the language of poetry-it is impossible to deny. His powers indeed-to judge. from what of them that has been put forth and exhibited-may not be of the widest―or even of the very highest kind. So far as they go, surely, they are the most exquisite of powers. In his mixture of all the awful and all the gentle graces of conception-in his sway of wild-solitary-dreamy phantasies in his music of words-and magic of numbers-we think he stands absolutely alone among all the poets of the most poetical age. In one of the great John Müller's early letters (compositions, by the way, which it is a thousand pities the Eng-, lish reader should have no access to admire) there is a fine passionate disquisition on the power of words-and on the unrivalled use of that power exemplified in the writings of Rousseau. "He sways mankind with that delicious might"-says the youthful historian-" as Jupiter does with his lightnings." We know not that there is any English poet who owes so much to this single element of power as Coleridge. It appears to us that there is not one of them, at least not one that has written since the age of Elizabeth, in whose use of words the most delicate sense of beauty concurs with so much exquisite subtlety of metaphy sical perception. To illustrate this by individual examples is out of the ques tion, but we think a little examination would satisfy any person who is accustomed to the study of language of the justice of what we have said. In the kind of poetry in which he has chiefly dealt, there can be no doubt the effect of his peculiar mastery over this instrument has been singularly happy-more so than, perhaps, it could have been in any other. The whole essence of his poetry is more akin to music than that of any other poetry we have ever met with. Speaking generally, his poetry is not the poetry! of high imagination-nor of teeming fancy-nor of overflowing sentiment-least of all, is it the poetry of intense or overmastering passion. If there be such a thing as poetry. of the senses strung to imaginationsuch is his. It lies in the senses, but they are senses breathed upon by ima gination-having reference to the ima gination though they do not reach to it having a sympathy, not an union,' with the imagination-like the beauty of flowers. In Milton there is between sense and imagination a strict union-their actions are blended into one. In Coleridge what is borrowed' from imagination or affection is brought to sense-sense is his sphere. In him the pulses of sense seem to die away in sense. The emotions in which he deals-even the love in which he deals -can scarcely be said to belong to the class of what are properly called passions. The love he describes the best is a romantic and spiritual movement of wonder, blended and exalted with an ineffable suffusion of the powers of sense. There is more of aerial romance, than of genuine tenderness, even in the peerless love of his Genevieve. Her silent emotions are an unknown world which her minstrel watches with fear and hope-and yet there is exquisite propriety in calling that poem Love, for it truly represents the essence of that passionwhere the power acquired over the hu man soul depends so much upon the awakening, for a time, of the idea of infinitude, and the bathing of the universal spirit in one interminable sea of thoughts undefineable. We are aware that this inimitable poem is better known than any of its author's productions and doubt not that many hundreds of our readers have got it by heart long ago, without knowing by whom it was written-but there can be no harm in quoting it, for they that have read it the most frequently. will be the most willing to read it a gain. All thoughts, all passions, all delights, And feed his sacred flame. Oft in my waking dreams do I Beside the ruin'd tower. The Moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, She leant against the armed man, Amid the lingering light. I told her of the Knight that wore I told her how he pined; and ah! Interpreted my own. She listen'd with a flitting blush, Too fondly on her face! But when I told the cruel scorn There came and look'd him in the face And that unknowing what he did, And how she wept, and claspt his knees; The scorn that crazed his brain. And that she nursed him in a cave ; A dying man he lay. His dying words-but when I reach'd The rich and balmy eve; And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, Subdued and cherish'd long! She wept with pity and delight, I heard her breathe my name. She fled to me and wept. She half enclosed me with her arms, The swelling of her heart. I calm'd her fears, and she was calm, My bright and beauteous Bride. We shall take an early opportunity of offering a few remarks on Mr Coleridge's efforts in tragedy-and in particular on his wonderful translation, or rather improvement of the Wallenstein. We shall then, perhaps, be able still more effectually to carry our readers along with us when we presume to address a few words of expostulation to this remarkable man on the strange and unworthy indolence which has, for so many years, condemned so many of his high gifts to slumber in comparative uselessness and inaction. "A cheerful soul is what the muses love A soaring spirit is their prime delight." THE MISSIONARY; A POEM. NEVER were any two poets more unlike each other than Bowles and Coleridge; and we believe that the associating principle of contrast has now recalled to our remembrance the author of so many beautiful strains of mere human affection and sensibility, after we have been indulging ourselves in the wild and wonderful fictions of that magician. Coleridge appears before us in his native might, only when walking through the mistiness of preternatural fear; and even over his pictures of ordinary life, and its ordinary emotions, there is ever and anon the "glimmer and the gloom" of an imagination that loves to steal away from the earth we inhabit, and to bring back upon it a lovelier, and richer, and more mysterious light, from the haunts of another world. Bowles, on the contrary, looks on human life with delighted tenderness and love, and unreservedly opens all the pure and warm affections of the most amiable of hearts, to all those impulses, and impressions, and joys, and sorrows, which make up the sum of our mortal happiness or misery. He is, beyond doubt, one of the most pathe tic of our English poets. The past is to him the source of the tenderest inspirations; and while Coleridge summons from a world of shadows the imaginary beings of his own wild creation, to seize upon, to fascinate, and to enchain our souls in a pleasing dread, -Bowles recalls from death and oblivion the human friends whom his heart loved in the days of old-the human affections that once flowed purely, peacefully, and beautifully between them-and trusts, for his dominion over the spirits of his readers, to thoughts which all human beings may recognise, for they are thoughts which all human beings must, in a greater or less degree, have experienced. Coleridge is rich in fancy and imagination-Bowles in sensibility and tenderest passion. The genius of the one would delight to fling the radiance or the mists of fiction over the most common tale of life-that of the other would clothe even a tale of fic BY THE REV. W. L. BOWLES. tion with the saddest and most mournful colours of reality. Fear and wonder are the attendant spirits of Cole ridge-pity and sadness love to walk by the side of Bowles. We have heard indeed they themselves have told us-that these poets greatly admire the genius of each other; nor is it surprising that it should be so; for how delightful must it be for Bowles, to leave, at times, the "quiet homestead" where his heart indulges its melancholy dreams of human life, and to accompany the " winged bard" on his wild flights into a far-off land! -and how can it be less delightful to Coleridge to return from the dreary shadowiness of his own haunted regions, back into the bosom of peace, tenderness, and quiet joy! We intend, on an early occasion, to take a survey of all Mr Bowles' poetical works; for some of them are, we suspect, not very generally known, and even those which are established in the classical poetry of this age, are not so universally familiar as they ought to be to our countrymen in Scotland. Mr Bowles was a popular poet before any one of the great poets of the day arose, except Crabbe and and Rogers; and though the engrossing popularity of some late splendid productions has thrown his somewhat into the shade, yet, though little talked of, we are greatly mistaken if they are not very much read-if they have not a home and an abiding in the heart of England. The extreme grace and elegance of his diction, the sweetness and occasional richness of his versification, and his fresh and teeming imagery, would of themselves be sufficient to give him a respectable and permanent station among our poets; but when to these qualities are added a pure, natural, and unaffected pathos, a subduing tenderness, and a strain of genuine passion, we need not scruple to say that Mr Bowles possesses more of the poetical character than some who enjoy a more splendid reputation, and that while they sink with sinking fashion and caprice, he will rise with rising nature and truth. * London, John Murray. 1816. |