It was thus that Coleridge carried out | opher as he is to the depth of his soul, be his first great poetical theory the theory is yet so much more poet as to see that suggested to him in some celestial way by any theory of spiritual hate against the the flitting of the shadows and gleams of happiness of earth would confuse the unity light over the Somersetshire valleys as of his strain, and probably transfer, as it seen from the heights of Quantock. There has done in "Paradise Lost," our interest is nothing which the poetic eye more loves to the despairing demon, whose envy and to watch than that mystic voiceless rhythm enmity arise out of that hopeless majesty of nature; but never eye yet watched it of wretchedness, great enough to be subto such purpose, and never has its still lime, which devours his own soul. Colesolemnity, its wayward lights, the pathos ridge has avoided this danger. He has and splendour of shade and sunshine, been assigned no cause for the hideous and termore wonderfully reflected in verse. rible persecution of which his lovely lady We need not pause to remark upon the Christabel, symbolical even in name, is minor productions of this brief summer of the object. The poem is a romance of the poet's life. His tragedy of "Remorse" Christianity, a legend of sainthood. The was not a minor production to him, but heroine is not only the lovely but the holy something much more important than the Christabel. For no fault of hers, but "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" so rather for her virtues, are the powers of wonderfully is ignorance mixed with in- evil raised against her; and one of the sight even in the most clear-sighted. He most subtle and wonderful touches of truth let his great poem go lightly into the in the tale is the ignorance of her indoomed volume which critics were to maul nocence - her want of any knowledge or and booksellers despise; but it was a experience which can explain to her what great and sore mortification to him that the evil is, or how to deal with it. The his tragedy was not performed, or even witch Geraldine has all the foul wisdom noticed, by the theatrical deities to whom of her wickedness to help her her sorceit was submitted. We presume that of ries, her supernatural knowledge, her spells the myriads who honour Coleridge now, and cunning. But Christabel has nothing not one in a thousand knows this same but her purity, and stands defenceless as tragedy, or would dreain of reading it ex- a lamb, not even knowing where the dancept under compulsion. Wordsworth's ger is to come from; exposed at every Borderers," produced about the same point in her simplicity, and paralyzed, not time, has shared a similar fate; but at instructed, by the first gleam of bewilderthat moment the two young poets thought ing acquaintance with evil. Never was very magnificently of their tragedies, and there a higher or more beautiful conception. trusted in them, though still not unwilling It is finer in its indefiniteness than even to dispose of them for the invariable sum the contrast of Una and Duessa — the pure of thirty guineas each, had the judicious and impure, the false and true of a more Cottle thought fit - which, wisely, he did elaborate allegory. Spenser, who lived not. Wordsworth, however, had his in a more downright age, keeps himself thirty guineas for the "Lyrical Ballads." within a narrower circle, and is compelled There is no record that Coleridge had any- by his story to direct action; but his very thing at all for the "Ancient Mariner " distinctness limits his power. The soceress perhaps, most likely, it had been paid for or lovely demon of Coleridge does not atand eaten months before, as was the habit tempt to ruin her victim in such an unof the thriftless poet. compromising way. What she does is to However, the same period which pro- throw boundless confusion into the gentle duced the "Ancient Mariner " brought soul, to fill its limpid depths with fear and into being at least the first part of the horror, and distrust of all fair appearances, never-completed tale of "Christabel." and of itself-a still more appalling doubt; This wonderful poem has a more distinct to undermine the secret foundations of all character than its predecessor. The first that love and honour in which Christabel's was, as it were, introductory - the uplift- very name is enshrined; and to establish ing of the veil, the revelation of a vast un- herself a subtle enemy, an antagonist seen world, full of struggles and mysteries. power of evil, at the pure creature's side, The second is the distinct identification of turning all her existence into chaos. Una a mystery of evil, an unseen harm and is a foully-slandered and innocent maid; bane, working secretly in the dark places but Christabel is a martyr-soul, suffering of the earth against white innocence, for her race without knowing it—strugpurity, and truth. The poet does not gling in a dumb consternation, yet resiststop to tell us why this should be. Philos-ance, against the evil that holds her spell

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And the very vagueness of the horror helps its supreme effect. Had we known what the fatal mark was which she saw on Geraldine's side, half our consternation and dismay would have been dissipated. And then, too, the incompleteness of the tale, that broken thread of story which

bound. And all the more pathetic, all the more enthralling, is the picture, that the Christ-maiden is entirely human- - too young, too childlike, too simple even to understand the high mission which has dropped upon her from the skies. She knows nothing, neither her own wonderful position a sight for angels to watch has tantalized so many readers, increases nor all that depends upon her steadfast adherence to her white banner of religious faith and purity; but her antagonist knows everything, and has an armoury of subtle perilous weapons at her disposal. "Jesu, Maria, shield her well!" for she is at fearful odds.

And once again, the poet fits all his accessories, all his scenery, into accordance with the soul of his meaning. The clock strikes in the middle of the night, a mysterious life in the stillness. The owls awake the crowing cock; the mastiff bays in answer to the chimes. There is nothing audible except this thrill of unrest among the dumb creatures, who are bound from all human communication by chains of nature. Why do they stir and make a movement in the silence? because the very air is full of harm unseen. They are aware of evil approaching with that subtle sense of supernatural danger which the lower creatures (so called) possess in a higher degree than ourselves. The very "thin grey cloud," which covers but does not hide the sky; the moon, which though at the full, looks "both small and dull," betray the same consciousness. All creation feels it with a pang of suppressed fear and pain, unable to warn or aid the only being who is unconscious, the innocent and fearless sufferer. All but she have an instinctive knowledge of her election to endure for them, to stand their spiritual representative in the mysterious conflict. And the dumb inexpressible support of the material world-which in some silent awful way is affected, we know not how, by every struggle for the mastery between good and evil is with her; and the minstrel's instinctive adherence, and the listener's confused and aching sympathythese and no more. Such is the picture the poet sets before us, painting the scene, the struggle, and the beautiful fated creature who is the centre of the whole, with such a tender and exquisite touch, and with such mysterious reality, that we catch our very breath as we gaze. Christabel is no allegorical martyr, and yet she is something other than a bewitched maiden. The very world seems to hang with a suspense beyond words upon the issue of her fiery trial.

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the power of the poem. Completion could scarcely have failed to lessen its reality, for the reader could not have endured, neither could the poet's own theory have endured, the sacrifice of Christabel, the triumph of evil over good; and had she triumphed, there is a vulgar wellbeing in victory which has nothing to do with such a strain. It was indolence, no doubt, that left the tale half told -indolence and misery and a poetic instinct higher than all the better impulses of industry and virtuous gain. The subject by its very nature was incomplete; it had to be left, a lovely, weird suggestion - a vision for every eye that could see.

We have said nothing of the poetry itself in which this vision is clothed, for language and music are both subservient to the noble conception of the poem. And perhaps it is unnecsssary to quote what everybody knows or ought to know; but was there ever any ideal picture more exquisite and delicate than this opening scene, which presents the holy maiden to us in her saintly unconsciousness, before thought of evil has come near her? With what sweet trust and fearless gentle freedom enemy!

she accosts her supernatural

Such is the unfinished and unfinishable tale of Christabel - a poem which, despite its broken notes and over-brevity, has raised its author to the highest rank of poets, and which in itself is at once one of the sweetest, loftiest, most spiritual utterances that has ever been framed in English words. We know of no existing poem in any language to which we can compare it. It stands by itself, exquisite, celestial, ethereal -a song of the spheres - yet full of such pathos and tenderness and sorrowful beauty as only humanity can give.

It is difficult to make out from the confused and chaotic record of Coleridge's

And gentle wishes long subdued,

Subdued and cherished long,"

thing else is of secondary excellence, while these are of the highest. As we with which he looked forward to it. There have said, there is perhaps no poet in the is the faintest touch of sadness indeed in language whose fame rests on a material that this crown of existence has been; but foundation so limited; while there is not one it is so near and present still, that the (the great Master of English song alone very sadness is but an additional element but always excepted) who stands on a in the perfection of the joy. It is a won-higher elevation; and in his own sphere derful instance of the poet's power over he is unapproachable. He is the lord of us and of the atmosphere and charmed that mystic region which lies between Its wild spiritual circle in which he has placed us, that the heaven and earth. curious construction, the tale within a forces, its weird dangers and delights tale, of this poem does not impair our in- the primal struggle between light and terest or loosen the spell upon us. The darkness, order and chaos - the everlastcontrast of "the cruel scorn which crazed ing warfare between the spirits of earth that bold and lovely knight," does not and hell and that feeble and ignorant husomehow (though by all rules of poetic manity which yet is panoplied and sheathed art it should) distract us from the sweeter in invulnerable defences by the protection strain which floods the "doleful tale" and inspiration of God - are familiar to about, and runs across its very current. him as the air he breathes; these are his Even the wonderful glance aside into the themes, the burden of his lofty, historic, and in this wondrous mysterious yet familiar regions of the un- prophetic song sphere he is at once supreme and alone.

seen

"There came and looked him in the face,
An angel beautiful and bright,
And how he knew it was a Fiend,

That miserable knight!"

It is not for us here and now to enter upon any discussion of the fatal mists in which so much of Coleridge's after-life was lost. He was but twenty-five when this splendid climax of poetry burst forth a glory around his path. It is like the sudden gleam of ineffable sunshine before a storm. For a moment the whole wide country is visible, with its lovely woodland ways, its cottages and roses, as well as its high mountain-sides, and the ominous masses of cloud that gather on its horizon. And then the light departs, the clouds rush together, and through the gloom there are but sounds of rending and thundering, and lightning arrows of distorting light. So completely and so sud

appears to the reader, in the state of exaltation which the poet has wrought him into, but an additional glory. For is not everything that tended to bring about that hour of life's purest triumph to be remembered and glorified for ever "the statue of the armed man," the tale of the rejected knight everything that had to do with it? They are all written on the lover's memory, a portion of the "thoughts" and "delights" which "feed love's holy flame." And in the mystic tale itself there is all the mysterious an-denly is the poet lost to us in the gloom guish of baffled love to contrast with the and conflict of powers infernal. We turn love that is satisfied and victorious. The with a sick heart from the miserable discraze of melancholy passion, the penitence cussion whether he had recourse to opium too late of the scornful lady, throws into to soothe his bodily pain, or whether his sweetest relief that harmony of love re- ill-health was produced by that fatal indulsponsive which is breathing from the min- gence. That his friends should have lastrel's harp, and from the maiden's "flit- boured to prove the one thing is very natting blush," her "downcast eyes and mod- ural; and perhaps it is not unnatural that est grace." Thus, beyond rule and in the friends who had to bear so many of his spite of art, by sheer inspiration and nat- burdens should have been so far mastered ural divinity, this twisted and tangled by that moral indignation which so often strain, with its two stories, comes out per- accompanies a long course of benefits, as fect from the poet's hands, a golden gossa- to consider it worth their while to assert mer web of loveliest completeness, jew- the other. Nothing, however, could be elled and shining all over with the dia- more painful than the whole controversy; monds of sunshine and dew. and while the mind refuses to sympathize

On these three poems we are well con- with a man who abandoned to a great detent to rest Coleridge's fame. Many gree his natural duties, the heart cannot other beautiful verses and tender appari- but mourn over the beautiful and splendid tions, seen as with "the half-shut eye," are life, so full of all tender sympathies and to be found among his works. But every- susceptibilities, which thus sank and was