Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/72

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NOTES AND QUERIES. 12 s. iv. MARCH, wis.

SOUTHEY'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO 'THE CRITICAL REVIEW.'

(See ante, p. 35.)

THE review of the ' Lyrical Ballads,' which appeared in October, 1798, is Southey's. Wordsworth refers to the author- ship in a letter to Joseph Cottle complaining of its unfriendly tone ('Letters of the Words- worth Family,' i. 122). Lamb addresses Southey on Nov. 8, 1798, as follows : " If you wrote that review in The Critical Review I am sorry you are so sparing of praise to 'The Ancient Mariner'"; yet Mr. E. V. Lucas in his note on this passage hesitates over the attribution. Any lingering doubt that may exist on this point is, however, dispelled by a letter to William Taylor, antedating the review, in which Southey applies to ' The Ancient Mariner ' the phrase that gave particular offence :

" Have you seen the volume of ' Lyrical Ballads' ? "They are by Coleridge and Words- worth, but their names are not affixed. Cole- ridge's ballad of the Ancient Mariner is, I think, the clumsiest attempt at German sublimity I ever saw. Many of the others are very fine." Robberds, ' Memoir of William Taylor,' i. 223.

The article was written during the period of Southey's alienation from Coleridge, and toward Coleridge's poem it was particularly severe. The quarrel over Pantisocracy still rankled at the heart of the two poets, and other substances had been added to the flame. Southey had been touched in his poetic vanity by some sonnet-parodies of " Nehemiah Higginbottom " in which he suspected Coleridge of an attempt to ridicule his style. And the unstable Charles Lloyd, who had recently broken with Coleridge and succeeded in embroiling him with Lamb, seems to have been busy also in reporting Coleridge's uncomplimentary opinions of Southey. Lamb's letters at this time are filled with personal irritation toward Coleridge (it is the year of the "Theses qusedam theologicse "), and it is not surprising that Southey's mood should have been unsympathetic. While he re- cognized that many of the stanzas in ' The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ' were " labori- ously beautiful," he thought that in con- nexion they were absurd and unintelligible. He characterized the whole as " a Dutch attempt at German sublimity " in which

genius is employed in producing a poem of little merit. Lamb's reproof must have humbled Southey in his best feelings, in- asmuch as the grievance of the former against Coleridge was no slighter than his own :

" You have selected a passage," wrote Lamb, " fertile in unmeaning miracles, but have passed by fifty passages as miraculous as the miracles they celebrate. I never so deeply felt the pathetic as in that part,

A spring of love gush'd from my heart, And I bless' d them unaware.

It stung me into high pleasure through sufferings. Lloyd does not like it ; his head is too meta- physical, and your taste too correct ; at least I must allege something against you both, to excuse my own dotage ....

So lonely 'twas, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be !...., &c. &c.

But you allow some elaborate beauties .... you should have extracted "em. ' The Ancient Mariner ' plays more tricks with the mind than that last poem [' Tintern Abbey '], which is yet one of the finest written."

This was a lesson in generosity. When, not long after, a complete reconciliation was brought about between Coleridge and Southey, the latter no doubt preferred that a veil of oblivion should rest over his com- ments on ' The Ancient Mariner.'

The rest of the review does not sin conspicuously against justice. We can understand why it should have failed to satisfy Wordsworth, for it falls far short of the exalted tribute which even Southey later learned to pay him. But it is unfair to accuse Southey, as Prof. Harper does, of carefully planning an attack and hasten- ing its publication unduly with the design of injuring the sale of the volume ('Life of Wordsworth,' i. 381). It involves the gratuitous assumption that Southey sup- posed all the poems to be written by Coleridge, an assumption which we know to be contrary to truth. Of a grudge against Wordsworth there could have been no question, for the personal intimacy between them had not yet begun. And if we look at this part of the review dis- passionately, it does not appear nearly so perverted as Prof. Harper would make out. A slight change in the latter' s method of summarizing would give the review a different complexion. The adverse criti- cism centres upon ' The Idiot Boy,' of which Southey says that " it resembles a Flemish picture in the worthlessness of its design and the excellence of its execution " ; he adds that the " other ballads of this kind are as bald in story, and are not so highly