I will not swear to understand precisely what Coleridge means here, though I believe that I do. But at any rate, and on the principle that of two hypotheses, each in itself adequate, we should choose the simpler, I suggest in all modesty that we shall do better with our own than with Coleridge’s, which has the further disadvantage of being scarcely amenable to positive evidence. We can say with historical warrant that Sappho struck the lyre, and argue therefrom, still within close range of correction, that her singing responded to the instrument: whereas to assert that Sappho’s mind “was balanced by a spontaneous effort which strove to hold in check the workings of passion” is to say something for which positive evidence will be less handily found, whether to contradict or to support.
Yet if you choose to prefer Coleridge’s explanation, no great harm will be done: since Coleridge, who may be presumed to have understood it, promptly goes on to deduce that,
as the elements of metre owe their existence to a state of increased excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by the natural language of excitement.
which is precisely where we found ourselves, save that where Coleridge uses the word “excitement” we used the word “emotion.”
Shall we employ an illustration before proceeding?—some sentence easily handled, some commonplace of the moralist, some copybook maxim, I care not what. “Contentment breeds Happiness”—that is a proposition with which you can hardly quarrel; sententious, sedate, obviously true; provoking delirious advocacy as little as controversial heat; in short a very fair touchstone. Now hear how the lyric treats it, in these lines of Dekker—
Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?
O sweet content!
Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplex’d?
O punishment!
Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vex’d
To add to golden numbers golden numbers?
O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content!
Work apace, apace, apace, apace;
Honest labour wears a lovely face;
Then hey, nonny nonny—hey, nonny nonny!
Canst drink the waters of the crystal spring?
O sweet content!
Swim’st thou in wealth, yet sink’st in thine own tears?
O punishment!
Then he that patiently want’s burden bears
No burden bears, but is a king, a king!
O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content!
Work apace, apace, apace, apace;
Honest labour wears a lovely face;
Then hey, nonny nonny—hey, nonny nonny!
There, in lines obviously written for music, you have our sedate sentence, “Contentment breeds Happiness,” converted to mere emotion. Note (to use Coleridge’s word) the “excitement” of it. There are but two plain indicative sentences in the two stanzas—(1) “Honest labour wears a lovely face” (used as a refrain), and (2) “Then he that patiently want’s burden bears no burden bears, but is a king, a king!” (heightened emotionally by inversion and double repetition). Mark throughout how broken is the utterance; antithetical question answered by exclamations: both doubled and made more antithetical in the second stanza: with cunning reduplicated inversions to follow, and each stanza wound up by an outburst of emotional nonsense—“hey, nonny nonny—hey, nonny nonny!”—as a man might skip or whistle to himself for want of thought.
Now (still keeping to our same subject of Contentment) let us prosify the lyrical order of language down to the lowest pitch to which genius has been able to reduce it and still make noble verse. You have all read Wordsworth’s famous Introduction to the Lyrical Ballads, and you know that Wordsworth’s was a genius working on a theory that the languages of verse and of prose are identical. You know, too, I dare say, into what banalities that theory over and over again betrayed him: banalities such as—
His widowed mother, for a second mate
Espoused the teacher of the village school:
Who on her offspring zealously bestowed
Needful instruction.
—and the rest. Nevertheless Wordsworth was a genius; and genius working persistently on a narrow theory will now and again “bring it off” (as they say). So he, amid the flat waste of his later compositions, did undoubtedly “bring it off” in the following sonnet:—
These times strike monied worldlings with dismay:
Ev’n rich men, brave by nature, taint the air
With words of apprehension and despair;
While tens of thousands, thinking on the affray,
Men unto whom sufficient for the day
And minds not stinted or untill’d are given,
Sound healthy children of the God of Heaven,
Are cheerful as the rising sun in May.
What do we gather hence but firmer faith
That every gift of noble origin
Is breath’d upon by Hope’s perpetual breath;
That Virtue and the faculties within
Are vital; and that riches are akin
To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death?
Here, I grant, are no repetitions, no inversions. The sentences, though metrical, run straightforwardly, verb following subject, object verb, as in strict prose. In short here you have verse reduced to the order and structure of prose as nearly as a man of genius, working on a set theory, could reduce it while yet maintaining its proper emotional key. But first let me say that you will find very few like instances of success even in Wordsworth; and few indeed to set against innumerable passages wherein either his verse defies his theory and triumphs, or succumbs to it and, succumbing, either drops sheer to bathos or spreads itself over dead flats of commonplace. Let me tell you next that the instances you will find in other poets are so few and so far between as to be negligible; and lastly that even such verse as the above has only to be compared with a passage of prose and its emotional pitch is at once betrayed. Take this, for example, from Jeremy Taylor:—
Since all the evil in the world consists in the