part, perhaps a quarter of the whole, a translation from the German of Friederike Brun, but the remaining lines, which purport to be descriptive of Alpine scenery, were inspired by a solitary walk on Sca Fell. The critics, noticing the plagiarism and misliking the reiterated invocation of the Deity, God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, have written down this triumphant hymn of praise as pompous and artificial. Whether it be pompous or no is a question of taste, but that it was a genuine and spontaneous outburst of poetic enthusiasm may be demonstrated by a study of contemporary letters and journals. As he was brought for the first time face to face with the majesty of Nature, "his heart grew hot within him, the fire kindled, and he spake with his tongue." But little as Coleridge merited the disgrace or deserved the honour of being nicknamed a Lakist, it was not from want of physical activity or from any failure to perceive the charms and wonders of mountain scenery that his Muse was silent. Notebook in hand he wandered far and near over the Keswick and Wastwater mountains, and as he passed from crag to crag or "hunted the waterfalls," he jotted down in pencil the minutest features of the scene. Often, too, he noted the effects of mist and sunshine on the hills, of cloud and shadow on the Lakes as he sat in the "Organ Room" at Greta Hall. Here is a typical 66 word-picture of Lake scenery. The date is October 21, 1803 : A drizzling rain. Heavy masses of shapeless vapour upon the mountains (Oh, the perpetual forms of Borrowdale!) yet it is no unbroken tale of dull sadness. Slanting pillars travel across the lake at long intervals, the vaporous mass whitens in large stains of light-on the lakeward ridge of that huge arm-chair of Lodore fell a gleam of softest light, that brought out the rich hues of the late autumn. . . . Little woolpacks of white bright vapour rest on different summits and declivities. The vale is narrowed by the mist and cloud, yet through the wall of mist you can see into a bower of sunny light, in Borrowdale; the birds are singing in the tender rain, as if it were the rain of April, and the decaying foliage were flowers and blossoms (Anima Poetae, 1895, p. 34). The greater part of these topographical notes were, no doubt, originally composed with a view to writing a Guide-book to the Lake district, but long after that visionary scheme had been abandoned the habit remained of confiding his impressions to his note-books, "the confidants who have not betrayed me, the friends whose silence is not detraction, and the inmates before whom I was not ashamed to complain, to yearn, to weep, and even to pray." In April 1804 Coleridge left England for a two years' sojourn on the Continent. Thenceforth, until his death in 1834, he wrote but little verse, and on the rare occasions when the "genial ray" returned, the inspiration was from within, and of place, circumstance, or of communion with Nature there is only an occasional intimation. But neither "abstruse research," nor sickness, nor sorrow, nor "the poisons of self-harm" could make him a stranger or an alien in the courts of Nature. He gives proof of this in some stanzas entitled Recollections of Love, which were written on revisiting Nether Stowey in the summer of 1807 :— Eight springs have flown since last I lay And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills. Or take this glimpse of early morning on a hillside, from Alice du Clos, a later poem of uncertain date :— There stands the flow'ring may-thorn tree! The black and shadowy stem ;— Or this momentary response to the sweet influences of a sunny day in February 1827 : All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair— Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. Work without Hope, from which these lines are taken, and the exquisite Garden of Boccaccio (sole poetic testimony of a visit to Italy) were written in Coleridge's later days when he sat on the brow of Highgate Hill," when Nature in her homelier or in her 66 G wilder aspects was but a memory of the past, when it sufficed him to pace slowly along Lovers' Lane, or among the trees in front of "The Grove," or to look from his attic window across Lord Mansfield's woods to the country beyond. But the day had been when Philosophy had borne "no other name but Poesie," and to the last he kenned "the banks where amaranths blow." Though he had deserted Nature, Nature ne'er deserted him. Let him speak for himself:— The love of Nature is ever returned double to us, not only the delighter in our delight, but by linking our sweetest, but, of themselves, perishable feelings to distinct and vivid images. She is the preserver, the treasurer of our joys. ... And even when all men have seemed to desert us and the friend of our heart has passed on, with one glance from his "cold disliking eye"—yet, even then, the blue heaven spreads it out and bends over us, and the little tree still shelters us under its plumage as a second cope, a domestic firmament, and the low creeping gale will sigh in the heath-plant, and soothe us by sound of sympathy till the lulled grief lose itself in fixed gaze on the purple heath-blossom, till the present beauty becomes a vision of memory (Anima Poetae, p. 246). 1 SCOTT NOT less than Wordsworth's the Muse of Scott is the child and lover of Nature, and "Nature mourns her worshipper," where "the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of Tweed over its pebbles," murmurs by Sir Walter's tomb at Dryburgh. Scott has remarked in Rob Roy on the personal feeling of affection, and almost of reverence, which his countrymen entertain for the rivers of their native land, like the Greeks, and a legend tells of a lady who loved Tweed as dearly as Tyro, in Homer, loved Enipeus, "far the fairest of all streams that wander through the world." Though born in Edinburgh, Scott was a son of the Tweed; from Tweedside, and from the tributaries of the Tweed, Ettrick, Yarrow, and Teviot, came the forefathers who be queathed to him his spirit and his memories of the past. His "fancy's wakening hour," he says, was passed, indeed, and where no broad river swept along, scarce a puny streamlet's speed Claimed homage from the shepherd's reed. |