Lost Leaders
The First Romantics. By Malcolm Elwin. (Macdonald. 15s.)
"I' DO seriously believe,' wrote Coleridge in 1803, "that the chief cause of Wordsworth's and Southey's having been classed with me as a school, originatds- entirely in. our not hating or envying each other. It is so unusual that three professed poets, in every respect unlike each other, shAold nevertheless take pleasure in each other's welfare and reputattiiir- It was a remark typical of the generous Coleridge. But by 1803 they were never to be so near in sympathy again. The pantisocratic dream that had brought together Coleridge and Southey had come to an end in 1795; the early bright and fertile friendship of Coleridge and Wordsworth was settling down into its long anti-climax of guilt, disapproval and estrangement. All three had embarked on dulling marriages. Hardly more than thirty, Coleridge was already haunted by the sense of non-achievement, comparing himself in a frightening image to
"an herbaceous plant, as large as a large tree, with a trunk of the same girth, and branches as large and shadowing, but with pith within the plant, not heart of .wood."
And, what is particularly relevant to Mr. Elwin's thesis, disappoint- ment with France had caused him to retract from his romantic ideals and to support the second war against Napoleon.
But though it is his apostasy that brings to a close this "collective biography" 'of the three poets itt their early years, the best of Coleridge still comes within the scope of the book. Here is his quick mind, "spawning plans like a herring" in Southey's phrase ; his humanity ; his energy (on one occasion he walked forty miles in one day to meet "that great and excellent woman, Mrs. Barbauld ") ; his popularity and charm (even a government spy sent down to Alfoxden during the invasion scare of 1796 succumbed to it and confessed his deception): his critical good sense about his own work, and his warm praise of the writings of his friends. Even the pro- crastination and the unreliability have, it this distance, their appealing side, and the drifting away (foreshadowed in this book) from his responsibilities to his wife and children seems, as we read, unhappy but inevitable.
The burden of supporting his family was eventually to be taken over by Southey ; but towards his second Romantic Mr. Elwin shows only a fitful and reluctant sympathy. Today the Laureate Southey seems a remote figure, with little personal legend, his gift for dry humour buried under a weight of facile, exotic verse narrative, his lucid prose hardly known. Yet the diligent and kindly recluse of later years, turning from the writing of poetry because it was "too exciting," was a different being indeed from the young rebel and atheist expelled from Westminster for writing an attack on flogging in a magazine, The Flagellant, the young Republican to whom Christchurch (though not Balliol) refused admission. Mr. Elwin tells well and fairly the story of these early days. But his Southey is also the wrecker of Coleridge's Cambridge career, the deserter from the ranks of pantisocracy for the sake of his uncle's fay= and six months in Portugal (" 0 selfish, money-loving man," wrote his wounded friend, "what principle have you not given up? "), and, worst of all, the instigator of Coleridge's disastrous marriage. That was the really unforgivable thing, though a natural error on the part of the man whn could be content with the lymphatic Edith Fricker, forever summed up in Coleridge's comment : "She sym- pathises with nothing, she enters into none of his peculiar pursuits— she only loves him : she is therefore a respectable Wife, but not a Companion. Dreary, dreary would be the Hours passed with her."
In Mr. Elwin's Wordsworth the Romantic fire burned for an even shorter time. If we turn to the index, we find the following headings included under the poet's name: Egoism, ingratitude, in- sensibility, insincerity, lack of invention, self-absorption, self- deception, self-interest, self-pity, sensuality, sex-repression, sullen- ness, ungenerous criticism. Even as a revolutionary, says Mr. Elwin, he was not an intellectual idealist, but a "repressed malcontent " ; he was a hypocrite, showing "moral condescension" in later years to men like Fawcett, who had influenced him in his youth. "Cataracts and mountains are good occasional society, but they will not do for constant companions." Lamb? No, double-faced Wordsworth, writing to his friend Mathews for work on a newspaper. (That he was never much of a reader I differ from Mr. Elwin in finding a matter for approval. No writer of his stature owes so little to books.) Admittedly he was cautious to timidity, mean and self-centred: "not a man as folks could crack wi'''" said Hartley's landlord, "nor a man as could crack wi' folks." True, he left Dorothy or his wife to deal with awkward situations or correspondence. But the one thing about him on the grand scale—his poetry—is missing from Mr. Elwin's story.
That omission is a significant one. For the subjects of his bio- graphy are to Mr. Elwin not so much poets as lost leaders, apostate :dealists. More at home in the Romantic age than in our own, he continually breaks into his narrative with the dangerous game of analogy. Thus Wordsworth setting himself up as peacemaker be- tween friends is compared to Mr. Neville Chamberlain. Coleridge's youthful social theories are related to the views of Dick Sheppard, Sir Richard Acland and Dr. C. E. M. Joad. The last verses of The Ancient Mariner are claimed to be an affirmation of the faith of the pacifist Small wonder, then, that Mr. Elwin deplores Coleridge's horror at Fox's " appeasement " visit to Buonaparte. (" Let us be humble before our Maker," the poet wrote on this occasion, "but not spirit-palsied- before our bloodthirsty enemies.")
Yet, after all, these excursions do not take from the interest or even the truth of this absorbing story. For Mr. Elwin's airy taste in speculation is offset by his respect for facts and his diligence in assembling them. It is not necessary to agree with him about the meaning of the Romantic spirit to find his book a useful and stimu- lating contribution to a part of English literary historY which has
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