vives, now in his eightieth year. But what is more remarkable, there are living two poets, who were known as poets when Wordsworth was a youth-Bowles and Rogers, each on the verge of fourscore and ten. It seems scarcely credible that there should be living now a poet (I refer to Mr. Rogers) whose first poem was published. sixty-four years ago, in 1786, fourteen years before the death of Cowper, (whom he has survived half a century,) and within a twelvemonth after the publication of the Task.* A subsequent poem of Rogers, "The Pleasures of Memory," a subject of universal interest agreeably presented, established his reputation, and was no doubt the prompting of Campbell's poem on "Hope." Rogers' higher poetic power is, however, to be found in a later work, which, appearing at a time when new poets had gained the public ear, never attained the same popularity as his earlier poem, which was more fortunate in its time. From the poem-I allude to the "Italy"—I am tempted to cite one passage for the sake of the fine picture it gives of an occurence of which I made a passing mention in a former lecture-the interview of Galileo and Milton: "Nearer we hail Thy sunny slope, Arcetri, sung of old * This was written in 1850, and now, in 1855, this aged poet still lives, the survivor of him who thus spoke of him. W. B. R..... Some verse of Ariosto. There, unseen, Blind, at noonday exploring with his staff, Who could requite him, who would spread his name As in a glass, what he himself should be; Destined so soon to fall on evil days And evil tongues; so soon, alas! to live In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, Of the other aged poet, William Lisle Bowles, who has survived so many of his brother bards, I can only remark, in so cursory a survey of the contemporary literature as this must be, that Coleridge acknowledged a deep obligation to his poems-a tribute which in itself is proof of some beauty and power in them. The most decided and marked influence of a contemporary production is that which is known to have been exerted by Coleridge's Christabel-an influence that may be traced on the genius of Scott, Shelley, and Byron. It was an influence that Scott acknowledged with all his characteristic frankness, and Byron too, though with more reserve, for it was not his habit to acknowledge or perhaps to recognise such influences. "Christabel" was circulated in manuscript many years before it was pub *Italy, p. 115. lished; and, recited among the poets, it made, especially on their minds, an impression that proved an agency of poetic inspiration to them. Mr. Lockhart tells us that the casual recitation of "Christabel" in Scott's presence SO "fixed the music of that noble fragment in his memory," that it prompted the production of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel."* It was a great lesson to the poets, in that it disclosed an unknown, or at least forgotten, freedom and power in English versification-a music the echoes of which are to be heard in the poems both of Scott and Byron. The grandeur of its imagery, too, moved the poets to whom it was made known, as in that sublime and familiar passage on a broken friendship : "They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between; But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, The marks of that which once hath been." "Christabel" proved its influence over the poetry that followed, by the power with which both the natural and the supernatural were imaged in it; in the latter respect, particularly, Scott felt the power of the poem. There is probably nothing finer of its kind in poetry than those passages which tell of the wicked might of witchcraft in the eye of the witch, who has assumed a beautiful human form: it is first felt as Christabel passes with her by the nearly extinct embers on the hall-hearth: "They passed the hall that echoes still, Pass as lightly as you will! The brands were flat, the brands were dying, * Lockhart's Scott, vol. ii. p. 210. But when the lady passed, there came And nothing else saw she thereby, Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall, And in that other passage, which shows the magic might of witchcraft in the witch's eye as she fascinates her mute victim with it, the shrinking up of the eye, the sudden dilation again when the look of innocence is counterfeited once more, and Christabel's unconscious imitation of the serpent-look that fascinated and appalled her: "A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy, And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head- And with somewhat of malice, and more of dread, At Christabel she looked askance ! One moment--and the sight was fled! Full of wonder and full of grief, She rolled her large bright eyes divine The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone; The maid devoid of guile and sin, So deeply had she drunken in That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, To this sole image in her mind; And passively did imitate That look of dull and treacherous hate ! And thus she stood, in dizzy trance, In eyes so innocent and blue! And when the trance was o'er, the maid Then falling at the Baron's feet, It is that description of the serpent-look of the witch's eyes that, being read in a company at Lord Byron's, so affected Shelley's sensitive fancy that he fainted.* Along with the influence of this poem on the imagination of Walter Scott, there was blended the influence of his long-cherished and studious culture of the early minstrelsy, for which he laboured with patriotic as well as poetic zeal. The genius of Scott, thus wrought on, produced that series of poems which fills a large space in the poetic literature of the early part of this century. With much of Homeric animation, and with the pathos of Greek and British minstrel combined, he sung of the chivalry and the rude heroism of the olden time; and to those heroic lays there was given a popularity which was dimmed only by the sudden splendour of the speedy and In Moore's Life of Byron, vol. iv. p. 147, is the anecdote which I presume is referred to. Lord Byron was most earnest in his admiration of Christabel. His correspondence is full of it. "I won't have any one," he writes to Mr. Murray in 1816, " sneer at Christabel; it is a fine, wild poem." W. B. R. |