5 the adverbs, and affixing them to their foreheads; thus, "the wine out-sparkled" [1. 154]; the "multitude up-followed" [1. 164]; and "night up-took" [1. 561]. The wind up-blows" [1. 627]; and the "hours are down-sunken" [1. 708]. But if he sinks some adverbs in the verbs, he compensates the language with adverbs and adjectives which he separates from the 10 parent stock. Thus, a lady "whispers pantingly and close" [1. 407], makes "hushing signs" [1. 409], and steers her skiff into a ripply cove' [1. 430]; a shower falls "refreshfully" [I. 898]; and a vulture has 15 a "spreaded tail" [1. 867]. We come now to the author's taste in 20 versification. He cannot indeed write a sentence, but perhaps he may be able to spin a line. Let us see. The following are specimens of his prosodial notions of our English heroic metre. Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon, -[1. 324] "Endymion! the cave is secreter And trembles through my labyrinthine hair." By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied as to the meaning of his sentences and the structure of his lines. We now present them with some of the new words with which, in imitation of Mr. Leigh Hunt, he adorns our language. We are told that "turtles passion their voices" [1. 248]; that an "arbor was nested [1.431]; and a lady's locks "gordian'd up" [1. 614]; and to supply the place of the nouns thus verbalized, Mr. Keats, with great fecundity, spawns new ones; such as slugs and human serpentry" [1. 821]; the honey-feel of bliss" [1. 903]; "wives prepare needments" [1. 208]-and so forth. "men Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting off their natural tails, 25 And fancied wanderings with a fair-hair'd 10 Bound with so playful and so light a foot, If from my lips some angry accents fell, 'Twas but the error of a sickly mind 5 And waters clear, of Reason; and for me Let this my verse the poor atonement be-My verse, which thou to praise wert e'er inclined Too highly, and with a partial eye to see No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show 10 Kindest affection; and would oft-times lend An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend. Where are they gone, the old familiar faces? I had a mother, but she died, and left me, Died prematurely in a day of horrors1All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 5 I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I have been laughing, I have been carousing, Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies 10 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I loved a love once,2 fairest among women. Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. I have a friend," a kinder friend has no man. 15 Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly; Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood. Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse, Seeking to find the old familiar faces. 4 20 Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother! 25 Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling? So might we talk of the old familiar faces. For some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 1 Lamb's mother was killed in 1796 by his sis ter Mary, who was suffering an attack of insanity. 2 Ann Simmons, referred to in Was It Some Sweet Device of Faëry (p. 915). 3 Charles Lloyd (1775-1815), a minor English poet. He was a pupil of Coleridge, with whom he lived for some time. 4 Coleridge. When maidens such as Hester die, With vain endeavor. 5 A month or more hath she been dead, A springy motion in her gait, 10 A rising step, did indicate Of pride and joy no common rate, I know not by what name beside 20 Her parents held the Quaker rule, A waking eye, a prying mind, A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind, 25 My sprightly neighbor, gone before Some summer morning, When from thy cheerful eyes a ray Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings. "Hang, baby, hang; mother's love loves such forces; 10 Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging: Black manhood comes, when violent law A floweret crushed in the bud, A nameless piece of Babyhood, 5 Was in her cradle-coffin lying; Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying; So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb For darker closets of the tomb! She did but ope an eye, and put 10 A clear beam forth, then straight up shut For the long dark: ne'er more to see Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know 15 What thy errand here below? Shall we say, that Nature blind Checked her hand, and changed her mind, 20 Could she flag, or could she tire, Or lacked she the Promethean fire1 That should thy little limbs have quick- Limbs so firm, they seemed to assure 25 Life of health, and days mature: Woman's self in miniature! Limbs so fair, they might supply (Themselves now but cold imagery) The sculptor to make Beauty by. 30 Or did the stern-eyed Fate descry, That babe, or mother, one must die; So in mercy left the stock, And cut the branch; to save the shock Of young years widowed; and the pain, 35 When Single State comes back again To the lone man who, reft of wife, Thenceforward drags a maimed life? The economy of Heaven is dark; And wisest clerks2 have missed the mark, 40 Why human buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral, That has his day; while shrivelled crones Which pale death did late eclipse; Though thou want 'st not, thou shalt have LETTER TO WORDSWORTH Thanks for your letter and present. I had already borrowed your second volume.2 What most pleases me are the Song of Lucy-Simon's sickly daughter in The 5 Sexton made me cry. Next to these are the description of the continuous echoes in the story of Joanna's laugh," where the mountains and all the scenery absolutely seem alive-and that fine Shakesperian charac10 ter of the happy man, in The Brothers, -that creeps about the fields, Following his fancies by the hour, to bring Tears down his cheek, or solitary smiles Into his face, until the setting sun 15 Write fool upon his forehead. I will mention one more: the delicate and curious feeling in the wish for the Cumberland Beggar, that he may have about him the melody of birds, altho' he Here the mind knowingly passes a fiction upon herself, first substi 20 hear them not. 1 coffin 2 A copy of the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, published in two volumes in 1800. 3 Lucu Gray (p. 241). See To a Sexton, 14. See To Joanna, 51-65. This poem was addres d to Joanna Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth's sister. LI. 108-12. See The Old Cumberland Beggar, 184-5 (p. 237). 5 10 25 tuting her own feelings for the Beggar's, and, in the same breath detecting the fallacy, will not part with the wish.-The Poet's Epitaph1 is disfigured, to my taste, by the vulgar satire upon parsons and lawyers in the beginning, and the coarse epithet of pin-point in the 6th stanza. All the rest is eminently good, and your own. I will just add that it appears to me a fault in the Beggar that the instructions conveyed in it are too direct and like a lecture; they don't slide into the mind of the reader while he is imagining no such matter. An intelligent reader finds a sort of insult in being told: I will teach you how to think 15 upon this subject. This fault, if I am right, is in a ten-thousandth worse degree to be found in Sterne and many, many novelists and modern poets, who continually put a sign post up to show where you are 20 to feel. They set out with assuming their readers to be stupid. Very different from Robinson Crusoe, The Vicar of Wakefield, Roderick Random, and other beautiful bare narratives. There is implied an unwritten compact between author and reader: I will tell you a story, and I suppose you will understand it. Modern novels, St. Leons and the like, are full of such flowers as these: "Let not my reader suppose""Imagine, if you can"-modest!-etc.-I will here have done with praise and blame. I have written so much, only that you may not think I have passed over your book without observation.-I am sorry that Coleridge has christened his Ancient Marinere2 "a Poet's Reverie"-it is as bad as Bottom the Weaver's declaration that he is not a lion but only the scenical representation of a lion.3 What new idea is gained by this title, but one subversive of all credit, which the tale should force upon us, of its truth? For me, I was never so affected with any human tale. After first reading it, I was totally possessed with it for many 45 days I dislike all the miraculous part of it, but the feelings of the man under the operation of such scenery dragged me along like Tom Piper's magic whistle. I totally differ from your idea that the Marinere 50 should have had a character and profes 1 See p. 239. 2 See p. 335. See A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, 1, 40 ff.; Probably a reference to the legend of the piner 30 35 40 1 sion. This is a beauty in Gulliver's Trav Reverie, published in the first volume of In later editions entitled Her Eyes Are Wild, See p. 233. For the contents of Lyrical Ballads, see Glos |