describing natural objects by clothing them appropriately with human passions “Lo, here the gentle lark”…8 Energy, depth and activity of Thought without which a man may be a pleasing and effective poet; but never a great one. Here introduce Dennis’s “The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry”…& end with Chapman’s “Homer”52
He wound up the lecture by leaving his audience with a single, striking image of Shakespeare’s godlike creative power to transform himself into other forms of being: “to become by power of Imagination another Thing – Proteus, a river, a lion, yet still the God felt to be there”.*
In his fourth lecture, which followed promptly on Friday, 2 April, he turned to analyse in greater detail the visionary gift and power of the Imagination. It was “the power of so carrying the eye of the Reader as to make him almost lose the consciousness of words – to make him see every thing…without any anatomy of description”. The effect was achieved by converting a series of visual details into a single, unified impression or feeling: “by a sort of fusion to force many into one”.
Here the Imagination, “this greatest faculty of the human mind”, used language to imitate a shaping principle within the natural world itself. It created an interior landscape within the mind’s eye, with a unifying perspective. Poetry worked “even as Nature, the greatest of Poets, acts upon us when we open our eyes upon an extended prospect”. Coleridge here returned to Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis”, to give one of his most brilliant re-enactments of the imaginative process in the reader’s mind. It is based on a single couplet from the poem, an evocation of the emotions of separation and departure.
Thus the flight of Adonis from the enamoured Goddess in the dusk of evening:
“Look! How a bright star shooteth from the Sky
So glides he in the night from Venus’ Eye”
How many Images & feelings are here brought together without effort & without discord – the beauty of Adonis – the rapidity of his flight – the yearning yet hopelessness of the enamoured gazer – and a shadowy ideal character thrown over the whole – or it acts by impressing the stamp of human feeling, over inanimate Objects…53
Wordsworth was witnessing Coleridge lecture in public for the first time, and listening to a historic declaration of the Romantic principle of the Imagination. He had also had the peculiar satisfaction of hearing Coleridge quote his own lines on “Daffodils” in the third lecture (themselves adapted from an entry in Dorothy’s Journal), as a signal illustration of that power. Yet he was dry in his praise to Sir George Beaumont, though he now seemed to accept the physical and mental struggle of Coleridge’s undertaking. “I heard Coleridge lecture twice and he seemed to give great satisfaction; but he was not in spirits, and suffered much during the course of the week both in body and mind.”54
Nonetheless Wordsworth did not think Coleridge too ill to leave him without several important commissions, concerning his own work, to fulfil in London. He was to undertake entire charge of the “White Doe” manuscript; to show it to Lamb for comments and present it to Sir George Beaumont, and negotiate the financial terms of its publication with Longman. He also hoped that Coleridge would puff it when he came to lecture on “The Moderns”.
Dorothy was particularly anxious that William would not change his mind about immediate publication, despite the likelihood of a hostile reception from reviewers, as they needed the money for Allan Bank – “what matter, if you get your 100 guineas in your pocket?”55 Later she wrote herself to Coleridge: “Our main reason (I speak in the name of the Females) for wishing that the Poem may be speedily published, is that William may get it out of his head; but further we think that it is of the utmost importance that it should come out before the Buzz of your Lectures is settled.”56
Wordsworth spent the entire Saturday night after this fourth lecture in Coleridge’s rooms in the Strand. They talked over its themes, the concept of the Imagination, and the use Coleridge had made of Wordsworth’s poem “Daffodils” to illustrate the “fifth instance of poetic power”, that of producing visual images in the mind. It was quite like old times, and their friendship was much restored by this all-night vigil together on purely literary matters.
Wordsworth left at seven o’clock on Sunday morning to catch the mail coach north from the City. It was snowing lightly, and his thoughts were very full, of Coleridge and poetry and the Imagination they both worshipped. He described his sensations in a most beautiful passage to Sir George Beaumont, which he later turned into a blank-verse poem. It can be taken as a tribute to their ancient comradeship, even as their paths and destinies were dividing; the one left to struggle in the great city, the other returning to his native stronghold.
“You will deem it strange,” he told Beaumont “but really some of the imagery of London has since my return hither been more present to my mind, than that of this noble Vale. I will tell you how this happens to be. – I left Coleridge at 7 o’clock on Sunday morning; and walked towards the City in a very thoughtful and melancholy state of mind; I had passed through Temple Bar and by St Dunstans, noticing nothing, and entirely occupied by my own thoughts, when looking up, I saw before me the avenue of Fleet Street, silent, empty, and pure white with a sprinkling of new fallen snow, not a cart or carriage to obstruct the view…and beyond and towering above it was the huge and majestic form of St Paul’s, solemnized by a thin veil of falling snow. I cannot say how much I was affected at this un-thought of sight, in such a place and what a blessing I felt there is in habits of exalted Imagination.”57 It was precisely this gift of poetic vision that Coleridge had been analysing in his fourth lecture.
6
Coleridge continued lecturing twice weekly, mainly using Shakespeare and Milton, until the end of May. He rarely stuck to his programme, but noted: “Illustration of principles my main Object, am therefore not so digressive as might appear.”58 The records of the remaining sixteen lectures are very scattered, but Crabb Robinson, the newly appointed Foreign Correspondent to The Times, was particularly struck by the combination of close textual readings of English poetry, with sudden upward flights into dizzy philosophical speculations from Kant, Schiller and Herder. He also observed that the digressions could be the most valuable and moving part of a session.59 Later Coleridge would pride himself on the risky, but electrifying effect of seeming to have no text, like a high-wire artist working without a net.
The diarist Joseph Farrington recorded one characteristic opening gambit: “When Coleridge came into the Box there were several Books laying. He opened two or three of them silently and shut them again after a short inspection. He then paused, & leaned his head on his hand, and at last said, He had been thinking for a word to express the distinct character of Milton as a Poet, but not finding one that would express it, He should make one – ’Ideality‘. He spoke extempore.”60
The shorthand reporter, J. P. Collier, who covered the later 1811 lecture series, recalled how Coleridge had learned his technique in 1808 by painful trial and error, finally claiming to hold his audience by complete spontaneity. “The first lecture he prepared himself
