paper no.5 . Comparative study of writing style of poets – Wordsworth & Coleridge

paper no.5.Romantic age 

  Comparative study of writing style of poets –

Wordsworth & Coleridge

Ø  William Wordsworth.

Wordsworth was born at Cocker mouth, a town which is actually outside The Lake District but well within hail of it. His father, who was a lawyer, died when William was thirteen years old. The elder Wordsworth left very little money, and that was mainly in the form of a claim on Lord Lonsdale, who refused outright to pay his debt, so that William had to depend on the generosity of two uncles, who paid for his schooling at Hawks head, near Lake Windermere. (Subsequently Wordsworth went to

Cambridge, entering St John's College in 1787) His work at the university was quite undistinguished, and having graduated in 1791 he left with no fixed career in view. After spending a few months in London he crossed over to France (1791), and stayed at Orleans and Blois for nearly a year. An enthusiasm for the Revolution was aroused in him; he himself has chronicled the mood in one of his happiest passages:

‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!’

He returned to Paris in 1792, just after the September massacres, and the sights and stories that greeted him there shook his faith in the dominant political doctrine. Even yet, however, he thought of becoming a Gironde, or moderate Republican, but his allowance from home was stopped, and he returned to England. With his sister Dorothy (henceforward his lifelong companion) he settled in a little cottage in Dorset; then, having met Coleridge, they moved to Alfoxden, a house in Somersetshire, in order to live near him. It was there that the two poets took the series of walks the fruit of which was to be the Lyrical Ballads.

After a visit to Germany in 1798-99 the Wordsworths settled in the Lake District, which was to be their home for the future. In turn they occupied Dove Cottage, at Town End, Grasmere (1799), Allan Bank (1808), Grasmere Parsonage (1811), and lastly the well-known residence of Rydal Mount, which was Wordsworth's home from 1813 till his death. Shortly before he had moved to Rydal Mount he received the sinecure of Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, and was put out of reach of poverty.

The remainder of his life was a model of domesticity. He was carefully tended by his wife and sister, who, with a zeal that was noteworthy, though it was injudicious, treasured every scrap of his poetry that they could lay their hands on. His great passion was for travelling. He explored most of the accessible parts of the Continent, and visited Scotland several times. On the last occasion (1831) he and his daughter renewed their acquaintance with Scott at Abbotsford, and saw the great novelist when he was fast crumbling into mental ruin. Wordsworth's poetry, which at first had been received with derision or indifference, was now winning its way, and recognition was general. In 1839 Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L.; in 1842 the Crown awarded him a pension of £300 a year; and on the death of Southey in 1843 he became Poet Laureate.

Long before this time he had discarded his early ideals and become the upholder of conservatism. Perhaps he is not "the lost leader" whose recantation Browning bewails with rather theatrical woe; but he lived to deplore the

Reform Bill and to oppose the causes to which his early genius had been dedicated.

Throughout his life, however, he never wavered in his faith in himself and his immortality as a poet. He lived to see his own belief in his powers triumphantly justified. It is seldom indeed that such gigantic egoism is so amply and so justly repaid.

Ø His Poetic Style

He records that his earliest verses were written at school, and that they were "a tame imitation of Pope's versification." This is an interesting admission of the still surviving domination of the earlier poet.(At the university he composed some poetry, which appeared as An Evening Walk (1793). but they already show the Wordsworthian eye for nature.(The first fruits of his genius were seen in_ the Lyrical Ballads (1798), a joint production by Coleridge and himself which was published at Bristol. Regarding the inception of this remarkable book both Wordsworth and Coleridge have left accounts, which vary to some extent, though not materially. Coleridge's may be taken as the more plausible.

Ø SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

Coleridge was born in Devonshire, and was the youngest of the thirteen children of the vicar of Ottery St Mary. As a child he was unusually precocious: "I never thought as a child," he says, "never had the language of a child." When he was nine years old his father died; he then obtained a place in Christ's Hospital, where he astonished his schoolmates, one of whom was Charles Lamb, with his queer tastes in reading and speculation. He went to Cambridge (1791), where he was fired with the revolutionary doctrines. He abandoned the university and enlisted in the Light Dragoons, but a few months as a soldier ended his military career. In 1794 he returned to Cambridge, and later in the year became acquainted at Oxford with Southey, with whom he planned the founding of an ideal republic in America. With Southey he lived for a space at Bristol, and there he met Southey's wife's sister, whom he eventually married. At Bristol Coleridge lectured, wrote poetry, and issued a newspaper called the Watchman (1796), all with the idea of converting humanity; yet in spite of it all humanity remained unperturbed in its original sin. At this time (1797) he met Wordsworth, and, as has already been noticed, planned their joint production of the Lyrical Ballads, which was published at Bristol. After a brief spell as a Unitarian minister, Coleridge, who was now dependent on a small annuity from two rich friends, studied German philosophy on the Continent returned to England (1799), and for a time poetical inspiration, produced the second part of Charitable and his ode Dejection. By now he was in almost continual ill-health, and by 1803 he had become enslaved to the opium which was to have such disastrous effect upon him. Ill-health and an unhappy domestic life sent him abroad to Malta and Italy (1804-06), and on his return he began a period of restless wandering round the country, never staying very long anywhere. It was during these restless years that his lectures were given, starting with a very poor series at the Royal Institution in 1808. The year 1811 saw his finest series of lectures, those on Shakespeare and other poets, which were followed by a further series in 1812 and 1813. During this period he struggled with little success to break himself of the opium habit which was sapping his abilities, and then, in 1816, he entered the house of a Mr Gillman, in Highgate. This provided for him a kind of refined and sympathetic inebriates' home. Here he gradually shook himself free from opium-taking, and he spent the last years of his life in an atmosphere of subdued content, visited by his friends, and conversing interminably in that manner of wandering but luminous intelligence that marked his later years. From the house in High-gate he issued a few books that, with all their faults, are among the best of their class. He lived in the Lake District. There followed a serious attempt at political journalism, which failed because of his constitutional incapacity to provide regular contributions. In 1800 he was at Keswick, and, during what was to be his final period of great poetical inspiration, produced the second part of Christabel! And his ode Dejection By now he was in almost continual ill-health, and by 1803 he had become enslaved to the opium which was to have such disastrous effect upon him. Ill-health and an unhappy domestic life sent him abroad to Malta and Italy (1804-06), and on his return he began a period of restless wandering round the country, never staying very long anywhere. It was during these restless years that his lectures were given, starting with a very poor series at the Royal Institution in 1808. The year 1811 saw his finest series of lectures, those on Shakespeare and other poets, which were followed by a further series in 1812 and 1813. During this period he struggled with little success to break himself of the opium habit which was sapping his abilities, and then, in 1816, he entered the house of a Mr Gillman, in Highgate. This provided for him a kind of refined and sympathetic inebriates' home. Here he gradually shook himself free from opium-taking, and he spent the last years of his life in an atmosphere of subdued content, visited by his friends, and conversing interminably in that manner of wandering but luminous intelligence that marked his later years. From the house in High-gate he issued a few books that, with all their faults, are among the best of their class.

Ø His Poetry:

The real blossoming of Coleridge's poetical genius was brief indeed, but the fruit of it was rich and wonderful. With the exception of a very few pieces, the best of his poems were composed within two years, 1797-98.

His first book was Poems on Various Subjects (1796), issued at Bristol. The miscellaneous poems that the volume contains have only a very moderate merit. Then, in collaboration with Wordsworth, he produced the Lyrical Ballads (1798). This remarkable volume contains nineteen poems by Wordsworth and four by Coleridge; and of these four by far the most noteworthy is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.)

Wordsworth has set on record the origin of The Ancient Mariner. He and Coleridge discussed the poem during their walks on the Quantock Hills. The main idea of the voyage, founded on a dream of his own, was Coleridge's; Wordsworth suggested details, and they thought of working on it together. Very soon, however, Coleridge's imagination was fired with the story, and his friend very sensibly left him to write it all.

Hence we have that marvellous series of dissolving pictures, so curiously distinct and yet so strangely fused into one: the voyage through the polar ice; the death of the albatross the amazing scenes during the calm and the storm; and the return home; In style, in swift steaithiness of narrative speed, and in its weird and compelling strength of imagination the poem is without a parallel.

In 1797 Coleridge also wrote the first part of Christabel, but, though a second part was added in 1800, the poem remained unfinished, and lay unpublished till 1816. Christabel is the tale of a kind of witch, who, by taking the shape of a lovely lady, wins the confidence of the heroine Christabel The tale is barely begun when it collapses Already Coleridge's fatal indecision is declaring itself. Incomplete as it is, and with its second part somewhat inferior to its first, the poem is yet clear evidence of Coleridge's superlative power as a poet. The supernatural atmosphere is here less obviously created than in The Ancient Mariner; Coleridge relies on the most delicate and subtle suggestion, hidden in minute but highly significant details in the story. There are passages of wonderful beauty and of charming natural description, though they scarcely reach the heights of The Ancient Mariner. The metre, now known as the Christabel metre, is a loose but exceedingly melodious form of the octosyllabic couplet full of skilful rhythmic variations. It became exceedingly popular, and its influence is still unimpaired. We give extract to show the metre, and also to give a slight idea of the poet's descriptive power:

There is not wind enough to twirl

The one red leaf, the last of its clan,

That dances as often as dance it can,

Hanging so light, and hanging so high,

On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

Kubla Khan, written in 1798, was, like Christabel, unfinished, and it also remained unpublished until 1816. It is the echo of a dream-- the shadow of a shadow. Coleridge avers that he dreamt the lines, awoke in a fever of inspiration, threw the words on paper, but before the fit was over was distracted from the composition, so that the glory of the dream never returned and Kubla Khan remained unfinished. The poem, beginning with a description of the stately pleasure-dome built by Kubla Khan in Xanadu, soon becomes a dreamlike series of dissolving views) each expressed in the most perfect imagery and most magical of verbal music) but it collapses in mid-career.

(In the same year Coleridge composed several other poems, including the fine Frost at Midnight and France: An Ode.) In 1802 he wrote the great ode Dejection, in which he already bewails the suspension of his "shaping spirit of Imagination." Save for a few fragments, such as the beautiful epitaph The Knight's Tomb, the remainder of his poems are of poorer quality and slight in bulk. His play Remorse was, on the recommendation of Byron, accepted by the management of the Drury Lane Theatre and produced in 1813. It succeeded on the stage, but as literature it is of little importance.