CHAPTER VII.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

ABOUT the latter end of the century, Coleridge visited North Germany again, in company with Mr. and Miss Wordsworth. Their tour was chiefly confined to the Hartz forest and its neighborhood. But the incidents most worthy of remembrance in their excursion, was a visit made to Klopstock; whom they found either at Hamburgh or, perhaps, at the Danish town (as then it was) of Altona; for Klopstock was a pensioner of the Danish king. An anonymous writer, who attacked Coleridge most truculently in an early number of Blackwood, and with an acharnement that must astonish those who knew its object, has made the mistake of supposing Coleridge to have been the chief speaker, who did not speak at all. The case was this: Klopstock could not speak English, though everybody remembers the pretty broken English of his second wife. Neither Coleridge nor Wordsworth, on the other hand, spoke German with any fluency. French, therefore, was the only medium of free communication; that being pretty equally familiar to Wordsworth and to Klopstock. But Coleridge found so much difficulty even in reading French, that, wherever (as in the case of Leibnitz's Theodicée) there was a choice between an original written in French and a translation, though it might be a very faulty one, in Ger

man, he always preferred the latter. Hence, it happened that Wordsworth, on behalf of the English party, was the sole supporter of the dialogue. The anonymous critic says another thing, which certainly has an air of truth, viz., that Klopstock plays a very secondary role in the interview (or words to that effect.) But how was that to be avoided in reporting the case, supposing the fact to have been such? Now the plain truth is, that Wordworth, upon his own ground, is an incomparable talker; whereas, Klubstick (as Coleridge used to call him) was always a feeble and careless one. Besides, he was now old and decaying. Nor at any time, nor in any accomplishment, could Klopstock have shore, unless in the noble art of skating. Wordsworth did the very opposite of that with which he was taxed; for, happening to look down at Klopstock's swollen legs, and recollecting his age, he felt touched by a sort of filial pity for his helplessness. And upon another principle, which, in my judgment, Wordsworth is disposed to carry too far, viz., the forbearance, and the ceremonious caution which he habitually concedes to an established reputation, even where he believes it to have been built on a hollow foundation, he came to the conclusion, that it would not seem becoming in a young, and as yet obscure author, to report faithfully the real superiority he too easily maintained in such a colloquy.

But neither had Klopstock the pretensions as a poet, which the Blackwood writer seems to take for granted. Germany, the truth is, wanted a great Epic poet. Not having produced one in that early condition of her literary soil when such a growth is natural and favored by circumstances, the next thing was to manufacture a substitute. The force of Coleridge's well known repartee — when, in reply to a foreigner asserting that Klopstock was the German Milton, he said, "True, sir; a very German

Milton,' cannot be fully appreciated but by one who is familiar with the German poetry, and the small proportion in which it is a natural and spontaneous product. It has been often noticed, as the misfortune of the Roman literature, that it grew up too much under the oppression of Grecian models, and of Grecian models depraved by Alexandrian art; a fact, so far as it was a fact, which crippled the genial and characteristic spirit of the national mind. But this evil, after all, did not take effect except in a partial sense. Rome had cast much of her literature in her own moulds before these exotic models had begun to domineer. Not so with Germany. Her literature, since its revival in the last century (and the revival upon the impulse of what cattle! - Bodmer on the one hand, and Gottsched on the other!) has hardly moved a step in the freedom of natural grace. England for nineteen, and France for the twentieth of all her capital works, has given the too servile law: and with regard to Klopstock, if ever there was a good exemplification of the spurious and the counterfeit in literature, seek it in the 'Messiah.' He is verily and indeed the Birmingham Milton. This Klopstockian dialogue, by the way, was first printed (hardly published) in the original, or Lake edition of 'The Friend.' In the recast of that work it was omitted: nor has it been printed anywhere else that I am aware of.

About the close of the first revolutionary war it must have been, or in the brief interval of peace, that Coleridge resorted to the English Lakes as a place of residence. Wordsworth had a natural connection with that region by birth, breeding, and family alliances. Wordsworth attracted Coleridge to the Lakes; and Coleridge, through his affinity to Southey, eventually attracted him. Southey, as is known to all who take an interest in the Lake colony, married a sister of Mrs. Coleridge's: and,

as a singular eccentricity in the circumstances of that marriage, I may mention, that, on his wedding day, (at the very portico of the church, I have been told,) Southey left his bride, to embark for Lisbon. His uncle, Dr. Herbert, was chaplain to the English factory in that city; and it was to benefit by the facilities in that way opened to him for seeing Portugal that Southey now went abroad. He extended his tour to Spain; and the result of his notices was communicated to the world in a volume of travels. By such accidents of personal or family connection as I have mentioned, was the Lake colony gathered; and the critics of the day, unaware of the real facts, supposed them to have assembled under common views in literature-particularly with regard to the true functions of poetry, and the true theory of poetic diction. Under this original blunder, laughable it is to mention, that they went on to find in their writings all the agreements and common characteristics which their blunder had presumed: and they incorporated the whole community under the name of the Lake School. Yet Wordsworth and Southey never had one principle in common. Indeed, Southey troubled himself little about abstract principles in anything; and so far from agreeing with Wordsworth to the extent of setting up a separate school in poetry, he told me himself (August 1812), that he highly disapproved both of Mr. Wordsworth's theories and of his practice. It is very true, that one man may sympathize with another, or even follow his leading, unconscious that he does so; or he may go so far as, in the very act of virtual imitation, to deem himself in opposition; but this sort of blind agreement could hardly be supposed of two men as discerning and as selfexamining as Wordsworth and Southey. And, in fact, a philosophic investigation of the difficult questions con

nected with this whole slang about schools, Lake schools, &c., would show that Southey has not, nor ever had, any peculiarities in common with Wordsworth, beyond that of exchanging the old prescriptive diction of poetry, introduced between the periods of Milton and Cowper, for the simpler and profounder forms of daily life in some instances, and of the Bible in others. The bold and uniform practice of Wordsworth. was here adopted timidly by Southey. In this respect, however, Cowper had already begun the reform; and his influence, concurring with the now larger influence of Wordsworth, has operated so extensively, as to make their own original differences at this day less perceptible.

By the way, the word colony, reminds me that I have omitted to mention, in its proper place, some scheme for migrating to America, which had been entertained by Coleridge and Southey about the year 1794-95, under the learned name of Pantisocracy. So far as I ever heard, it differed little, except in its Grecian name, from any other scheme for mitigating the privations of a wilderness, by settling in a cluster of families bound together by congenial tastes and uniform principles, rather than in self-depending, insulated households. Steadily pursued, it might, after all, have been a fortunate plan for Coleridge. Soliciting my food from daily toil,' a line in which Coleridge alludes to the scheme, implies a condition that would have upheld Coleridge's health and happiness, somewhat better than the habits of luxurious city life as now constituted in Europe. To return to the Lakes, and to the Lake colony of poets: - So little were Southey and Wordsworth connected by any personal intercourse in those days, and so little disposed to be connected, that, whilst the latter had a cottage in Grasmere, Southey' pitched his tent at Greta Hall, on a little eminence rising