372.

finger-speed, I hastened to him with my manuscript-that look of humorous despondency fixed on his almost blank sheet of paper, and then its silent mock-piteous admission of failure struggling with the sense of the exceeding ridiculousness of the whole scheme-which broke up in a laugh and The Ancient Mariner was written instead.

"Years afterward, however, the draft of the plan and proposed incidents, and the portion executed, obtained favor in the eyes of more than one person, whose judgment on a poetic work could not but have weighed with me, even though no parental partiality had been thrown into the same scale, as a make-weight: and I determined on commencing anew, and composing the whole in stanzas, and made some progress in realizing this intention, when adverse gales drove my bark off the 'Fortunate Isles' of the Muses: and then other and more momentous interests prompted a different voyage, to firmer anchorage and a securer port. I have in vain tried to recover the lines from the palimpsest tablet of my memory and I can only offer the introductory stanza, which had been committed to writing for the purpose of procuring a friend's judgment on the metre, as a specimen :

Encinctured with a twine of leaves,
That leafy twine his only dress!
A lovely boy was plucking fruits,
By moonlight, in a wilderness.

The moon was bright, the air was free,
And fruits and flowers together grew

On many a shrub and many a tree:

And all put on a gentle hue,
Hanging in the shadowy air

Like a picture rich and rare.

It was a climate where, they say,

The night is more belov'd than day.
But who that beauteous boy beguil'd,

That beauteous boy to linger here?
Alone, by night, a little child,
In place so silent and so wild-

Has he no friend, no loving mother near?

"I have here given the birth, parentage, and premature decease of The Wanderings of Cain, a Poem,-intreating, however, my readers, not to think so meanly of my judgment as to suppose that I either regard or offer it as any excuse for the publication of the fol lowing fragment (and may add, of one or two others in its neighborhood) in its primitive crudity. But I should find still greater difficulty in forgiving myself were I to record pro tædio publico a set of petty mishaps and annoyances which I myself wish to forget. I must be content therefore with assuring the friendly reader, that the less he attributes its appearance to the author's will, choice, or judgment, the nearer to the truth he will be."-Coleridge (1828).

The Death of Abel is a drama by Soloman Gessner (1730-88), a Swiss poet and painter.

BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA

"It has been my lot to have had my name introduced both in conversation, and in print,

375.

more frequently than I find it easy to ex-
plain, whether I consider the fewness, unim-
portance, and limited circulation of my writ-
ings, or the retirement and distance, in which
I have lived, both from the literary and po-
litical world. Most often it has been con-
nected with some charge which I could not
acknowledge, or some principle which I had
never entertained. Nevertheless, had I had
no other motive or incitement, the reader
would not have been troubled with this excul-
pation. What my additional purposes were,
will be seen in the following pages. It will
be found, that the least of what I have writ-
ten concerns myself personally. I have used
the narration chiefly for the purpose of giv
ing a continuity to the work, in part for
the sake of the miscellaneous reflections sug-
gested to me by particular events, but still
more as introductory to a statement of my
principles in politics, religion, and philoso-
phy, and an application of the rules, deduced
from philosophical principles, to poetry and
criticism. But of the objects, which I pro-
posed to myself, it was not the least impor-
tant to effect, as far as possible, a settlement
of the long continued controversy concerning
the true nature of poetic diction; and at the
same time to define with the utmost impar-
tiality the real poetic character of the poet,
by whose writings this controversy was first
has
kindled, and
been since fuelled and
fanned."-Opening paragraph of Biographia
Literaria, ch. 1.

In Chapter 15 is discussed the symptoms of poetic power as elucidated in an analysis of Shakspere's Venus and Adonis and Lucrece; Chapter 16 considers the points of difference between the poets of the early 19th century and those of the 15th and 16th centuries. 378a. 49-51. See Her Eyes Are Wild (p. 229). The following stanzas are from The Idiot Boy:

And Betty's husband's at the wood,
Where by the week he doth abide,
A woodman in the distant vale;
There's none to help poor Susan Gale;
What must be done? what will betide?

And Betty from the lane has fetched
Her pony, that is mild and good;
Whether he be in joy or pain,
Feeding at will along the lane,
Or bringing fagots from the wood.

And he is all in travelling trim,-
And, by the moonlight, Betty Foy
Has on the well-girt saddle set
(The like was never heard of yet)
Him whom she loves, her Idiot Boy.

30

35

40

WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-1759) p. 48

EDITIONS
Poetical Works, ed. by W. M. Thomas (Aldine ed.:
London, Bell, 1871; New York, Macmillan).
Poems, ed., with a Life and Critical Study, by
W. C. Bronson (Athenæum Press ed.: Boston,
Ginn, 1898).

Poems, with Johnson, Goldsmith, and Gray, ed.
by T. M. Ward (Muses' Library ed.; London,
Routledge, 1905; New York, Dutton).
Poems, ed. by C. Stone (Oxford Univ. Press, 1907).

And, while the pony moves his legs,
In Johnny's left hand you may see
The green bough motionless and dead:
The moon that shines above his head
Is not more still and mute than he.

80

Montégut, Emile: Heures de Lecture d'un Critique (Paris, 1891).

Perry, T. S.: "Gray, Collins, and Beattie," The Atlantic Monthly, Dec., 1880 (46:810). Shairp, J. C.: "Nature in Collins, Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper and Burns," On Poetic Interpretation of Nature (Edinburgh, Douglas, 1877; New York, Hurd, 1878; Boston, Houghton, 1885).

Swinburne, A. C.: Miscellanies (London, Chatto, 1886, 1911; New York, Scribner).

CRITICAL NOTES

"Have you seen the works of two young authors, 95 a Mr. Warton and Mr. Collins, both writers of odes? It is odd enough, but each is the half of a tonsiderable man, and one the counterpart of the other. The first has but little invention, very poetical choice of expression, and a good ear; the second, a fine fancy, modelled upon the antique, a

100

bad ear, great variety of words and images, with no choice at all. They both deserve to last some years, but will not."-Gray, in Letter to Wharton, Dec. 27, 1746.

"He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the water-falls of Elysian gardens. This was, however, the character rather of his inclination than his genius; the grandeur of wildness and the novelty of extravagance were always desired by him, but not always attained. Yet, as diligence is never wholly lost, if his efforts sometimes caused harshness and obscurity, they likewise produced in happier moments sublimity and splendor. This idea which he had formed of excellence led him to oriental fictions and allegorical imagery, and perhaps, while he was intent upon description, he did not sufficiently cultivate

sentiment.

His diction was often harsh, unskilfully labored, and injudiciously selected. He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry. His lines commonly are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants. As men are often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise when it gives little pleasure."Samuel Johnson, in "Collins," The Lives of the English Poets (1779-81).

trian Succession; at Prestonpans, Scotland (Sept. 21, 1745), and at Falkirk, Scotland (Jan. 17, 1746), in battles with the forces of Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender. In all of these battles, the English were defeated with enormous losses.

ODE TO EVENING

"The most perfect and original poem of Collins, as well as the most finely appreciative of nature, is his Ode to Evening. No doubt evening is personified in his address as 'maid composed,' and 'calm votaress,' but the personification is so delicately handled, and in so subdued a tone, that it does not jar on the feelings as such personifications too often do. There is about the whole ode

a subdued twilight tone, a remoteness from men and human things, and a pensive evening musing, all the more expressive, because it does not shape itself into definite thoughts, but reposes in appropriate images."-Shairp, in On Poetic Interpretation of Nature (1877). 9-12. Cf. Macbeth, III, 2, 40-43:

Ere the bat hath flown

His cloistered flight, are to black Hecate's

summons

The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums Hath rung night's yawning peal.

108.

tory.

53.

THE PASSIONS

Sphere descended.-Heaven descended. Recording sister.-Clio, the Muse of his

ON THE DEATH OF MR. THOMSON

This poem is an elegy on James Thomson, the poet. See p. 18.

AN ODE ON THE POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS OF THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND

This poem, which was left unfinished by Collins was not published until after his death. Soon after it appeared in its incomplete form, what purported to be a perfect copy of the ode as revised by Collins was published in London. The bracketed passages in the text are supplied from this version, which is the one usually adopted.

"The whole Romantic School, in its germ, no doubt, but yet unmistakably foreshadowed, lies already in the Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands. He [Collins] was the first to bring back into poetry something of the antique fervor, and found again the long-lost secret of being classically elegant without being pedantically cold."-Lowell, in "Pope," My Study Windows (1871).

56. 192-205. Jerusalem Delivered, by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso (1544-95), was translated into English by Fairfax in 1600. The following stanzas (13:41-43, 46) explain the allusions in Collins's lines:

He drew his sword at last and gaue the tree
A mightie blow, that made a gaping wound,
Out of the rift red streames he trickling see
That all bebled the verdant plaine around,
His haire start vp, yet once againe stroake he,
He nould giue ouer till the end he found
Of this aduenture, when with plaint and mone,
(As from some hollow graue) he heard one
grone.

Enough enough the voice lamenting said, Tancred thou hast me hurt, thou didst me driue

Out of the bodie of a noble maid,

Who with me liu'd, whom late I kept on liue,
And now within this woeful Cipresse laid,
My tender rinde thy weapon sharpe doth riue,
Cruell, ist not enough thy foes to kill,
But in their graues wilt thou torment them
still?

I was Clorinda, now imprison'd heere,
(Yet not alone) within this plant I dwell,
For euerie Pagan Lord and Christian peere,
Before the cities walles last day that fell,
(In bodies new or graues I wote not cleere)
But here they are confin'd by magikes spell,
So that each tree hath life, and sense each
bou,

A murderer if thou cut one twist art thou.

Works, 15 vols., ed., with a Life, by R. Southey (London, Baldwin, 1836-37).

Poetical Works, 3 vols., ed., with a Memoir by T. Mitford, by J. Bruce (Aldine ed.: London, Bell, 1830-31, 1865; New York, Macmillan). Poetical Works, ed., with a Biographical Introduction, by W. Benham (Globe ed.: London, Macmillan, 1870).

Poems, 2 vols., ed. by H. T. Griffith (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1874).

Poems, ed. by H. S. Milford (Oxford Univ. Press, 1906).

Selections from the Poetical Works, ed., with an

Introduction, by J. O. Murray (Athenæum Press ed. Boston, Ginn, 1898). Unpublished and Uncollected Poems, ed. by T.

Wright (Cameo Poets ed.: London, Collins,
1900).

Letters, ed. by W. Benham (Golden Treasury ed.:
London, Macmillan, 1884).
Correspondence, 4 vols., ed. by T. Wright (Lon-
don, Hodder, 1904; New York, Dodd).
Letters, selected and edited by E. V.

Lucas (World's Classics ed.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1908, 1911).

Wright, T.: The Life of Cowper (London, Unwin, 1902). CRITICISM

Bagehot, W.: The National Review, July, 1855; Literary Studies, 3 vols., ed. by R. H. Hutton (London and New York, Longmans, 1878-79, 1895).

Birrell, A.: Res Judicata (London, Stock, 1892; New York, Scribner).

Brooke, S. A.: Theology in the English Poets (London, King, 1874; New York, Dutton, 1910).

Cheever, G. B.: Lectures on the Life, Genius, and Insanity of Cowper (London, Nisbet, 1856). Dobson, Austin: Eighteenth Century Vignettes (London, Chatto, 1892; New York, Dodd). Dowden, E.: "Cowper and William

Elizabethan

Hayley," (London,

Essays Modern and Dent, 1910; New York, Dutton). Hazlitt, W.: "On Thomson and Cowper," Lectures on the English Poets (London, 1818); Collected Works, ed. Waller and Glover (London, Dent, 1902-06; New York, McClure), 5, 85.

Jeffrey, F.: "Hayley's Life of Cowper," The Edinburgh Review, April, 1803 (2:64). More, P. E.: "The Correspondence of William Cowper," Shelburne Essays, Third Series (New York and London, Putnam, 1906). Norman, H. J.: "Melancholy of Cowper," The Westminster Review, June, 1911 (175:638). North American Review, The, A review of "British Poetry at the Close of the Last Century, 4 vols.," Jan. 1836 (42:67). Sainte-Beuve, C. A.: Causeries du Lundi, Vol. 9 (Paris, 1854); English trans. by K. P. Wormeley, as Portraits of the Eighteenth Century (New York, Putnam, 1905), and by E. Lee, as Essays of Sainte-Beuve (Camelot Series ed.: London, Scott, 1892).

Shairp, J. C.: "Nature in Collins, Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper, and Burns," On Poetic Interpretation of Nature (Edinburgh, Douglas, 1877; New York, Hurd, 1878; Boston, Houghton, 1885).

Shorter, C. K.: Immortal Memories (New York, Harper, 1907).

Steele, F. W.: "Catholicism and English Literature in the Eighteenth Century," The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Oct., 1911 (36:634).

Stephen, L.: "Cowper and Rousseau," Hours in a Library, 3 vols. (London, Smith, 1874-79; New York and London, Putnam, 1899); 4 vols.. (1907).

Woodberry, G. E.:

"Three Men of Piety," Makers of Literature (New York, Macmillan, 1901).

CONCORDANCE

of William Cowper (London, Low, 1887).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Murray, J. O.: In Selections from the Poetical Works of William Cowper (Athenæum Press ed.; Boston, Ginn, 1898).