despair, I called for assistance, when aid soon drew near. Mr W. first brought his ingenuity into exercise, but after several unsuccessful efforts, he relinquished the achievement, as altogether impracticable. Mr Coleridge now tried his hand, but showed no more grooming skill than his predecessors; for after twisting the poor horse's neck, almost to strangulation, and to the great danger of his eyes, he gave up the useless task, pronouncing that 'the horse's head must have grown (gout or dropsy !) since the collar was put on, for,' he said, ‘it was a downright impossibility for such a huge os frontis to pass through so narrow a collar!' Just at this instant the servant girl drew near, and understanding the cause of our consternation, La, master,' said she, 'you do not go about the work in the right way. You should do like this,' when, turning the collar completely upside down, she slipped it off in a moment, to our great humiliation and wonderment, each satisfied afresh that there were heights of knowledge in the world to which he had not attained. "We were now summoned to dinner, and a dinner it was, such as every blind and starving man in the three kingdoms would have rejoiced to behold. At the top of the table stood a superb brown loaf. The centre dish presented a pile of the true coss lettuces, and at the bottom appeared an empty plate, where the 'stout piece of cheese' ought to have stood (cruel mendicant!) and though the brandy was 'clean gone,' yet its place was well, if not better supplied by a superabundance of fine sparkling Castalian Champagne ! A happy thought at this time started into one of our minds, that some sauce would render the lettuces a little more acceptable, when an individual in the company recollected a question once propounded by the most patient of men, How can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt?' and asked for a little of that valuable culinary article. 'Indeed, sir,' Betty replied, 'I quite forgot to buy salt.' A general laugh followed the announcement, in which our host heartily joined. This was nothing. We had plenty of other good things, and while crunching our succulents, and munching our crusts, we pitied the far worse condition of those, perchance as hungry as ourselves, who were forced to dine alone off æther. For our next meal, the mile-off village furnished all that could be desired, and these trifling incidents present the sum and the result of half the little passing disasters of life.”* On the 26th of June the Wordsworths left Alfoxden, spent a farewell week with Coleridge at Stowey, another week with Cottle in Bristol (arranging details about the forthcoming volume), and then left for that short ramble up the Wye, with which the Lines on Tintern Abbey are for ever associated. It is thus that Wordsworth narrates it: "We left Alfoxden on Monday morning, the 26th of June, stayed with Coleridge till the Monday following, then set forth on foot towards Bristol. We were at Cottle's for a week, and thence we went toward the banks of the Wye. We crossed the Severn Ferry, and walked ten miles further to Tintern Abbey, a very beautiful ruin on the Wye. The next morning we walked along the river through Monmouth to Goodrich Castle, there slept, and returned the next day to Tintern, thence to Chepstow, and from Chepstow back again in a boat to Tintern, where we slept, and thence back in a small vessel to Bristol. "The Wye is a stately and majestic river from its width and depth, but never slow and sluggish; you can always hear its murmur. It travels through a woody country, now varied with cottages and green meadows, and now with huge and fantastic rocks." † * See Cottle's Early Recollections, vol. i., pp. 309-324. + See Memoirs, vol. i., pp. 116, 117. His own account of the Lines on Tintern Abbey is as follows: "No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of four or five days with my sister. Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol. It was published almost immediately after, in the little volume of which so much has been said in these notes." * "After the Wye tour," Wordsworth and his sister took up their abode at Bristol, "in order," says the late Bishop of Lincoln, † "that he might be nearer the printer." His sister wrote, July 18th, 1798: "William's poems are now in the press; they will be out in six weeks. They are in one small volume, without the name of the author; their title is Lyrical Ballads, with other Poems."" "On August 27," adds Bishop Wordsworth, "they"— i.e., the poet and his sister-"had arrived in London, having passed Oxford and Blenheim. In a few days the Lyrical Ballads appeared; and on the 16th September, Wordsworth, his sister, and Mr Coleridge left Yarmouth for Hamburgh. CHAPTER XI. HAMBURGH AND GOSLAR. THE Voyage from Yarmouth to Hamburgh is graphically described by Coleridge in Satyrane's Letters. In his imaginary conversation with the Dane, Coleridge's humour is at its best. His reference to the "single, solitary, wild duck," swimming in "that round, objectless desert of waters," and his description of the scenery during the sail from Cuxhaven up the Elbe to Altona, may be compared. with Dorothy Wordsworth's shorter jottings in her Journal. This Journal is only the record of the two days spent in crossing the North Sea, and sixteen days spent in Hamburgh and its vicinity. A Journal would probably be kept of the winter at Goslar, but I have not seen it. The incidents of that winter were few, and may be stated in a paragraph; but there are passages in the Journal which deserve a place by themselves. The party reached Hamburgh on the 18th September, spent eight or ten days in studying the people and the place, had introductions to Mr Klopstock, the brother of the poet, met the latter at his brother's house, and had long conversations with him-of which Wordsworth afterwards wrote out extensive notes, which Coleridge reproduced in The Friend, and in the Biographia Literaria. After a week's residence in Hamburgh, Coleridge-whose chief aim in coming to Germany was the acquisition of the German language-went on to Ratzeburg, a small town on the road to Lubeck, about thirty-five miles to the north-east of Hamburgh, a place recommended to him by Klopstock, who gave him an introduction to the Amtmann. He left Hamburgh, on Sunday the 23rd, apparently alone, and being satisfied with Ratzeburg, and the pastor-to whom the Amtmann sent him-returned to Hamburgh on the 27th, to say good-bye to the Wordsworths, with whom his friend Chester had remained during his four days' absence. On the 1st October Coleridge and Chester went back to Ratzeburg, where they staid four months; and on the 3rd, Wordsworth and his sister left Hamburgh, by the Brunswick coach for Goslar. Coleridge's account of the days spent at Hamburgh, and of his visit with Wordsworth to Klopstock's house beyond the city gates, is much more graphic than his friend's letter on the same subject to Thomas Poole, or his sister's Journal.* The beauty and singularity of one sunset in particular, which they saw together on leaving Klopstock's house-and its effect on the objects around-at once broke the thread of their talk on the old poet they had left. "There were woods in the distance. A rich sandy light (nay, of a much deeper colour than sandy) lay over these woods that blackened in the blaze. Over that part of the woods which lay immediately under the intenser light a brassy mist floated. The trees on the ramparts, and the people moving to and fro between them, were cut or divided into equal segments of deep shade and brassy light. Had the trees, and the bodies of the men and women, been divided into equal segments by a rule or pair of compasses, the portions could not have been more regular. All else was obscure. It was a fairy scene," &c. t * Coleridge's description of the lakes of Ratzeburg in winter, and the skating there (see The Friend, Essay iii.), is one of the finest he ever wrote, and almost equal to the skating scene in The Prelude. + See Satyrane's Letters, Biog. Lit., vol. ii., p. 241. |