TUPPER'S GERALDINE. [ DECEMBER 1886, ] COLERIDGE's Christabel is the most exquisite of all his inspirations; and, incomplete as it is, affects the imagination more magically than any other poem concerning the preternatural. We are all the while in our own real and living world, and in the heart of its best and most delightful affections. Yet trouble is brought among them from some region lying beyond our ken, and we are alarmed by the shadows of some strange calamity overhanging a life of beauty, piety, and peace. We resign all our thoughts and feelings to the power of the mystery-seek to enjoy rather than to solve it—and desire that it may be not lengthened but prolonged, so strong is the hold that superstitious Fear has of the human heart, entering it in the light of a startling beauty, while Evil shows itself in a shape of heaven; and in the shadows that Genius throws over it, we know not whether we be looking at Sin or Innocence, Guilt or Grief. Coleridge could not complete Christabel. The idea of the poem, no doubt, dwelt always in his imagination-but the poet knew that power was not given him to robe it in words. The Written rose up between him and the Unwritten; and seeing that it was "beautiful exceedingly," his soul was satisfied, and shunned the labour-though a labour of love-of a new creation. But we Therefore 'tis but a Fragment-and for the sake of all that is most wild and beautiful, let it remain so for ever. are forgetting ourselves; as many people as choose may publish what they call continuations and sequels of Christabel -but not one of them will be suffered to live. If beyond a month any one of them is observed struggling to protract its rickety existence, it will assuredly be strangled, as we are about to strangle Mr Tupper's Geraldine. Mr Tupper is a man of talent, and in his Preface writes, on the whole judiciously, of Christabel. "Every word tellsevery line is a picture: simple, beautiful, and imaginative, it retains its hold upon the mind by so many delicate feelers and touching points, that to outline harshly the main branches of the tree, would seem to be doing the injustice of neglect to the elegance of its foliage, and the microscopic perfection of every single leaf. Those who now read it for the first time will scarcely be disposed to assent to so much praise; but the man to whom it is familiar will remember how it has grown to his own liking-how much of melody, depth, nature, and invention, he has found from time to time hiding in some simple phrase or unobtrusive epithet." In no poem can 66 every line be a picture; " and there is little or no meaning in what Mr Tupper says above about the tree; but our wonder is, how, with his feeling of the beauty of Christabel, he could have so blurred and marred it in his unfortunate sequel. "My excuse," he says, "for continuing the fragment at all, will be found in Coleridge's own words to the preface of the 1816 pamphlet edition, where he says, 'I trust that I shall be able to embody in verse the three parts yet to come, in the course of the present year'-a half-promise which, I need scarcely observe, has never been redeemed." Mr Tupper continues: “In the following attempt I may be censured for rashness, or commended for courage; of course, I am fully aware, that to take up the pen where COLERIDGE has laid it down, and that in the wildest and most original of his poems, is a most difficult, nay, dangerous proceeding; but upon these very characteristics of difficulty and danger I humbly rely; trusting that, in all proper consideration for the boldness of the experiment, if I be adjudged to fail, the fall of Icarus may be broken; if I be accounted to succeed, the flight of Dedalus may apologise for his presumption." "Finally," he says, "I deem it due to myself to add, what I trust will not be turned against me, viz., that, if not written literally currente calamo, GERALDINE has been the pleasant labour of but a very few days. Mr Tupper does not seem to know that Christabel " was continued" many years ago, in a style that perplexed the public and pleased even Coleridge. The ingenious writer meant it for a mere jeu de sprit1; but Geraldine is dead serious, and her father hopes an immortal fame. We neither 66 censure him for rashness nor commend him for courage," but are surprised at his impertinence, and pained by his stupidity —and the more for that he possesses powers that, within their own proper province, may gain him reputation. We like him, and hope to praise him some day-nay, purpose to praise him this very day-therefore we shall punish him at present but with forty stripes. He need not fear a fall like that of Icarus, for his artificial wings have not lifted his body fairly off the ground—and so far from soaring through the sky like a Dædalus, he labours along the sod after the fashion of a Dodo. In the summer of 1797, Coleridge wrote the first part of Christabel-in 1800, the second-and published them in 1816-so perfected, that his genius, in its happiest hours, feared to look its own poem in the face, and left it for many long years, and at last, without an altered or an added word, to the delight of all ages. Mr Tupper's " Geraldine has been the pleasant labour of a very few days!"-(Loud cries of Oh! oh! oh!) Mr Tupper in the Third Canto shows us the Lady Geraldine beneath the oak-the scene of the Witch's first meeting with Christabel. You remember the lines in Coleridge. how, when the Witch unbound her cincture, "Her silken robe and inner vest Dropt to her feet, and full in view, A sight to dream of, not to tell ! O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!" And These few words signify some unimaginable horror-and never did genius, not even Shakespeare's, so give to one of its creations, by dim revelation mysteriously diffused, a fearful being that all at once is present "beyond the reaches of our souls"-something fiendish in what is most fair, and blasting in what is most beautiful. Powerful as Prospero was Coleridge; but what kind of a wand is waved by Mr Tupper? "Thickly curls a poisonous smoke, And terrible shapes with evil names 1 See Blackwood's Magazine, vol. v. p. 286. 2 Quoted ante, p. 330. Are leaping around in a circle of flames, Previous to these apparitions, the wolf has been hunting, the raven croaking, the owl screeching, the clock of course tolling twelve, "And to her cauldron hath hurried the witch, And aroused the deep bay of the mastiff bitch;" The moon is gibbous, and looks "like an eyeball of sorrow,' and yet is called "sun of the night,"-most perversely-and oh how unlike the sure inspiration of Coleridge! While, with the "Sun of the Night" shining, Geraldine is absurdly said to be "Fair truant-like an angel of light, Hiding from heaven in dark midnight." One touch of the Poet's would have shown the scene in all the power of midnight, by such an accumulation of ineffective and contradictory imagery thus utterly destroyed. S. T. C. made the Witch dreadful-M. F. T. makes her disgusting. "All dauntless stands the maid In mystical robe array'd, And to the moon like one possest, Hath shown-O dread! that face so fair Haggard and brown, as hangeth there— 66 Muttering wildly through her set teeth, Why were not already "terrible shapes with evil names leaping around a circle of flames? But "Now one nearer than others is heard Or liker the dark-dwelling ravenous shark Of her or him we hear no more-and it is well-but who that ever saw a shark in the sea would say that his style of motion was like that of a huge sea-bird flapping its wings? Geraldine feels "the spell hath power," and "Her mouth grows wide, and her face falls in, And sea-green scales are beginning to speck A may-fly down the river glides, Struggling for life and liberty too,— You remember the dream of Bracy the Bard in Christabel— told by himself to Sir Leoline? "In my sleep I saw that dove, That gentle bird, whom thou dost love, Fluttering, and uttering fearful moan I wondered what might ail the bird; For nothing near it I could see, Save the grass and green herbs underneath the old Tree. And in my dream methought I went To search out what might there be found; That thus lay fluttering on the ground. |