Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (288 page)

"Of
course,"
was
the
answer.
"Who
has
not
heard
of
him?
It
is
impossible
to
avoid.
He
publishes
a
fresh
volume
of
verse
every
year;
but ever
since
he
has
lived
at
Torquay,
where
he
originally
settled
down some
thirty
years
ago,
he
has
written
practically
nothing
except
about agriculture
and
crops
and
livestock.
The
hero
of
his
last
verse-narrative was
a
Shorthom.
He
writes
too
much.
All
very
instructive,
of
course, and
parts
of
it
are
descriptive,
but
he
writes
a
great
deal
too
much. That's
just
what
ruined
Coleridge."

"But
Coleridge
is
surely
not
alive?"
I
said.

"He
died,"
I
was
informed,
"two
or
three
years
ago.
He
was
eighty years
old.
He
died
of
overwork.
He
had
just
finished
the
last
book
of his
epic,
Kubla
Khan.
It
has
fifteen
books,
you
will
remember,
and
it is
the
longest
epic
in
the
English
language.
His
one
fear
was
that
he should
die
before
he
should
complete
it.
As
it
was,
he
finished
it
just six
months
before
his
death,
and
he
had
the
joy
of
seeing
the
massive work
in
print.
It
is
longer
than
the
Iliad
and
the
Odyssey
put
together, and
the
building
of
it
occupied
the
whole
of
the
poet's
life."

"And
did
it
meet
with
a
satisfactory
reception?"
I
asked.

"Most
satisfactory.
One
critic
in
the
Quarterly
Review
even
went
so far—it
was
perhaps
a
little
extravagant
on
his
part—as
to
put
it
in
the same
rank
as
Southey's
immortal
epics."

"Did
Coleridge
finish
all
his
poems?"
I
asked.

My
guide
seemed
quite
offended
by
this
question.
Offended
for Coleridge
and
shocked
at
my
ignorance.

"Of
course
he
did,"
he
said.
"Coleridge
was
the
most
hard-working and
conscientious
of
writers,
and,
as
I
have
already
told
you,
he
died of
overwork."

"But,"
I
persisted,
"did
he
ever
finish
Christabel?"

My
guide
smiled
a
superior,
tolerant
smile.

"Christabel,"
he
said,
"is
not
by
Coleridge
at
all.
It
is
by
De Quincey."

I
gasped
with
astonishment. "De
Quincey,
the
opium
eater?"

"He
wrote
several
things
of
the
same
kind.
The
Albatross
and
The Dark
Lady,
all
most
fantastic
stuff.
Poor
man,
he
was
lightheaded
at the
last.
It
came
from
taking
drugs."

This
account
of
the
world
of
poetry
so
bewildered
me
that
I thought
I
should
feel
on
firmer
ground
if
we
passed
to
the
domain
of prose,
and
I
asked
who
were
considered
the
best
novelists
of
the
day.

"Well,"
said
my
guide,
"there
has
been
nothing
very
interesting
in that
way
just
lately.
Mr.
Thackeray
has
written
a
most
insignificant story
called
Vanity
Fair;
all
about
those
trumpery
Jacobin
Wars, which
interest
nobody
now.
Mr.
Carlyle
wrote
a
spirited
romance some
years
ago
which
suffered
from
the
same
fault,
namely,
that
of dealing
with
a
hackneyed,
commonplace
and
dreary
epoch:
the
Jacobin
revolt.
Indeed,
Mr.
Carlyle's
work
is
the
more
tedious
as
it
deals solely
with
France
and
with
the
French,
and
nobody
now
takes
any interest
in
that
country.
There
are,
of
course,
a
fine
series
of
romances by
Froude,
and
the
powerful
but
rather
morbid
studies
of
real
life
by Miss
Charlotte
Yonge;
the
monumental
history
of
Harrison
Ains-worth;
the
fantastic
short
stories
of
Ruskin,
and
the
almost
too sprightly,
too
flippant
satire
and
Puck-like
wit
of
Herbert
Spencer."