wasserman englishromantics

WASSERMAN, EARL S., The English Romantics: The Grounds of Knowledge , Studies in Romanticism, 4:1 (1964:Autumn) p.17

The English It0111antics: The Grounds of J<nowlcdgc

TIAHL H. W ASSTIHMAN

XJCO ltD I N G TO thc Humpty Dumpty principlc of semantic wagcs we owe the word "Itomanticism" a good deal of extra pay; we havc madc it do sllch a lot of ovcrtime work

by l11eaning so many things. Wc cven insist that, sincc thc word exists, it lllust stand for somcthing rcal prior to our isolation of that sOlllething, and wc have laborcd to divinc that arcallc meaning. W c gencrally lop off a period of timc, variously and arhitrarily deterlllined, presuming it to he infllscd with somc idelltifying <]uality

1 . "I} .." I I . r W lose name Js ..... olllantlclsm ; an( \VC t wn setout, 1Il ract, to con-stitutc the t1 priori ph:Ultolll by ddlning it, with littlc resulting agrcclncnt, usually by naming thc COJlllllon f(~atul'es in manifcstations of

I 1 "I) . ", 1'1 I .. I fl" w lat we assume IllUst )C,-Olllantic. lC oglc IS t lat 0: t lC VICIOUS

circlc: thc dcfinition aSSllmcs as ('xistent and understood that which is to he defined and proved to exist. Since, likc I IUlllpty Dumpty, I'd rathcr 110t have thc word COJllC round of a Saturday night to exact such heavy wagcs ofmc, I ask permission to sack it. My sul~ject, theil, is Wordsworth, Colcridgc, Kcat s, and Shelley. They sh:uc, of course, 11lany fcatures, but a catalogue of these would merely melt the (cHIr pocts into an anonynlous confection and filter out: what is idiosyncratic; that is, it would destroy our cssential reason for reading them and disregard their poetic motivcs. ()n the other halld, sillC(~ the fOllr belong to approximately the sallle cra, what they obviously share is access to f.'lcets of a common culture. Ideally, thcrefore, it should hc possible to relatc them to that clllture in such a way as not mcrely to preserve their individual uni<lucllcss but indeed to locate it with some precision, for if anything is palpahle it is that they vigorously disagreed on central issues and that their works difTer in vastly more essential and interesting ways than they arc similar.

The bulk of eighteen th-ccl1t:l1 ry descriptive po(~t:ry Is so large as to suggest that the poets must have- had a significalJt apprehension of the external world, or at any ratc ca mc to grips with it in profound ways. In point off.'lct nearly all this versc is, in these terms, trivial, and most of it betrays an uncertain or ineffectual conceptiol1 of how one (:x-

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18 EARL R. WASSERMAN

periences the extenul nature which is its subject lnatter. Clearly the external world cOL~hted for lnuch in that culture, and poetic representation oflandscapt.' was thought vaguely significant. But the problelll of the transaction between the perceiving nlind and the perceived world was either evaded or left uneasily indecisive in descriptive verse, whcl'e one 1llight reasonably expcct it to,dcllland attcntion.

If eighteenth-century poetry hedgcd on this qucstion, which I shall -very loosely-call epistelnological, contelnporary philosophy certainly did not, and it is highly likely that the subtleties of eighteenthccntury cpistclnology both drove the poets to confront the external world and deterred theln frol11 confronting it in any itnportant way. By its very nature British elnpiricisnl had long tended to unsettle any assurance of an external world whose existence and qualities are exactly as the senses teport. I-Iobbes had recognized the disparity between sensible qualities and the object being perceived. Locke, building on Boyle's distinction, divided qualities into those which arc attributes of the object and those in the perceiver's lnind, such as sound and color; and by locating the fonner in a pure "substance," which is unknowable in itself, he left In an convinced of the reality of his oWllll1ental ill1pressions, but highly uncertain about the nature or reality of the external world. Berkeley then located both sets of qualities in the perceiver's lllind and, destroying Locke's "S\l"'itance," lllade God the cause of our perceptions and assigned the rcali ty of the external world to the act of its being perceived: natural science beCOlnes 111erely a study of the principles governing the unifofln relations of our sensations. Hmne then cOlupleted Berkeley's subversioll of the "external" by sceptically concluding that we can have no real knowledge of the existence or nature of the external causes of our iIupressions. Well l1light a landscape poet like Richard Jago be uneasy lest "all this outward Fralue of Things" be "unsubstantial Air, I Ideal Vision, or a waking Drealu" (Edgc-l-IiIl). Meanwhile, the ll1echanists like I-Iartley and the French school tried to cut the episte-111010gical knot by explaining both Inind and nature as lnatter and Illotion; and the Scottish School took the coward's way out by eschewing theory and liluiting itself to description of luental phel10luena on the basis of unassailable, God-given COllUllon sense. The stage was set for Kant and the episteluology of transcendentalislll.

To these whirlwinds of eighteenth-century episteluology the poets, outwardly, reluained rather indifferent, as though their poetic valu-

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THE ENGLISH ROMANTICS 19

ing of the external world guaralltccd it against philosophic doubts. Richard Jago was at least awarc of the philosophic storm and saw that it was relcvant to the dcscriptive poet. "Iteason," he admitted, "strives in vain to tcll I How Matter acts on incorporeal Mind I Or how ... Itnagination paints I Unrcal Sccncs." And he was conscious that SOlllC philosophcrs wcre questioning whether" All this outward PranlC of Things I Is what it sccms" so that "this World, which wc Jllaterial call," may be "A visionary Sccnc, like midnight Dreams, I Without Existence, save what Pancy givcs." But apparcnt1y feding that such qucstionings thrcatcned, rathcr than cnrichcd, his poctic enterprise, he settled them in tlw cOJ11Jllonscnsical Scottish way, by

c. ," 1M' J' '1 " "(\ ' I relusmg to rcnounce an s surcst -'-ViC cncc. <11It: wc rat lcr then I These Metaphysical Subtletics," he said, rather hoping thcy would go away and Icave l11an confidcnt his cxpcricnccs are 110t imaginary.

Influcnced by the Lockcan distinction hetwccn primary and secondary qualitics, Edward Young arrivcd at the idca of a divinc, creative power in the senscs that organizes and beautifies nature, which otherwise "were a rudc, lInco1our'd chaos": "()l~jccts are th' occasion; ours th'cxploit ... I M:lll J11:lkcs thc ll1:ltchlcss image, man admires" (Night TIIOUghts). But at worst, the same theory led to Akensicle's trivializing our pcrception of external nature. Drawing on Addison's version of Locke, Akcnside conceived of sound, color, and odor as subjective qualities hestowed by a heneflcent 11lagicianGod to COlllpCnsate fi)r the dullncss of His outward crcation. The

I , "k' I 'II ' " "I' " "] resu t IS a m( I llSIOI1, a p cilsmg crrOf so convlIlclIlg t lat man "Nor doubts thc paintcd green, or azure arch, I Nor qucstions J1v)re the 1l1usic's mingling sounds." Evcn by assigning thc calise to a God who hcncvolcntly wishcs to "make [man's] destined road of Iif(~ I Delightful to his fcet," Akcl1side ClIlllot rescue this cpistemology of deccption. To him this half-fictitious world is mainly a stimulus to subjectivc activities: adventitiously stirring the passiol1s; provoking aesthetic feelings of sublimity, wondcr, and beauty; divinely causing thc mind to connect things "which in thcmselves I Have no connection"; lcading the mind through the perception of dcsign in nature to convcrsc with its divine Desif~ner. At best, the most intimate relation Akenside can find betwccn object and suhject: is that of associative analogy, so that 111an beholds "ill lifeless things, I The inexpressive semblance ofhimsclf, I Of thought and passion." Briefly, Akcllsidc's




spcculations, dcspitc his attcntion to cxtcrnalnaturc, arc charactcristic of cightccnth-ccntury criticisnl and poctry in being psychological £'lr Blorc than cpistclnological or ontological; his nlain acc01nplishIncnt is to dcscribc thc opcrations of thc nlind, not to dcfinc cxpcricncc or reality.

This lack of any significant epistcl11ology can bc takcn as typical of thc hundreds of cightecnth-ccntury 111cditativc-dcscriptivc pOCnlf.. Whcn the poct is not 111crcly organizing sensc data into SOlllC picturcsque, sublilllC, or bcautiful distribution, he usually devotcs hilllself to hlll11anizing thc cxternal sccne by associating it with somc c1110tion, llloral thcIne, historical cpisode, llloving narrative, or autobiographical expcriencc. The sccne bCCOlllCS significant only by stilllulating thc poct to link it with lllan by SOllIe loosc association. Evcn when he directly considcrs thc rclation of thc objectivc and subjcctive worlds hc usually postulates nothing lllore intimate than analogy. According to Akcnside, thc illlagination, working with sense data, gives the lllind "ideas analogous to those of llloral approbation and dislikc." Ah110St all the" OrnaIllents of poetic diction," hc thought, arise fr0111 the analogy between the luaterial and immatcrial worlds and between "lifeless things" and man's thought and passion. Accordingly, thc eightccnth-ccntury poet is forever interrupting his scene-painting to fmd its 1110ral or cnlotional analogue. A description of flickering sunlight lllUSt be paired with a note on the analogous eillotion of gaiety; if the poet observes that "Those thorns protect the forest's hopes; I That trec thc slcndcr ivy props," hc Blust add, "Tlllts rise thc luighty on the lllean! I Thus on the strong the feeble lean!" (F. N. C. Munday, Nccdll'ood Forest, 1776). Does a river spill into a cataract? Then

Thus man, the harpy of his own content, With blust'ring passions, phrensically bent, wild ill the windy vortex, whirls the soul, Till Reason bursts, nor call herself controul.

(Thomas Maude. WClIslcyt/ale, 1771)

Such tcnuous, inorganic bonds bctwcen inner tllan and outer world betray the ilupotence ofbter cightccnth-ccntury poetic epistcmology, just as the ubiquitous urge to find S01l1C lllomi or subjective analogue to thc scenc reveals the anxiety to internalize the external and intcgrate the spiritual with the phcnOlllcnal. The resort to analogy only dodges the problclu, sincc it both prctends to a relation between



THE ENGLISI-I ROMANTICS 21

subject and object and yet keeps theJll categorica11y apart. In J H02

Coleridge could justifiably complain of poetry in which

There reigns ... such a perpclual trick of /l/oraliz;II,I! every thilJg .... lJeVer to sel! or describe any interesting appearance inllatllre, without connecting il: by dilll analogies with the moral world proves (ainllless o( J m pression. N al.llre has her proper interest; & he will know what it is, who believes & (ecls, that every Thing has a Li(e of it's own, & that we arc all 0111' Life. A Poet's Ill'arl & /lIldlt'r/ should he (011/

billcd, il/till/ately cOlllbined & ,1I/1ftcd, with the great: appearance'; in Nature----& not merely held in solution & loose mixtlln~ with the III , in the !>hape o((orJllal Sinlilies. (Letter to Sothchy, Septelllber 10, I R(2)

Though the eighteenth-century poets bid liS behold nearly every hill and plain, their reasons and those of the aesthcticialls are largel y adventitious alHI extrinsic to the ul1mediated encounter with the object. Por example, Archihal(l Alison at the end of the century seems to promise a poetically viahle epistemology hy proposing that "As it is only ... through the medillm of matter, that, in the present condition of our being, the <]ualities of mind are known to liS, the qualities of matter becollle necessarily expressive to us of all the qualities of mind they signify" (lissays 011 till' Naltlft' alld Prillriph's (~r Taste, J790). What we might then expect: is a system -identifying perception with significant cognition and resolving the divorce between subject and ohject by making perception an act of self-knowledge. But the sllhject-()I~icct relations Alison develops are in (;lCt no Blore than those employed by the descriptive poets: matter is the immediate sign of mental powers al1(l a{J(~cl ions; or it: is the sign of 11lental qualities as a c()nse(IlIenc(~ of experience, analogy, and association. In SlIlll, ollr "minds, illstcall of being governed hy the character of external objects, arc enabled to bestow upon them a character which docs llot belong to them" and to COllnect with the ap}warances of nature "feelings of a nohler or a Illore interesting kind, than any that the mere influences of Illatter can ever cOllvey"; awl Alison's system implies little more than 1 he characteristic poetry in which the scene is understo()(l as an indepcndcnt entity that hccOJ))cS siKni(icant

through equally independent s\ll~jcctive values loosely linked to it. His theory of matter as aesthetic sign merely ofl(~rs a filzzy rationale for the cstablished eightcenth-(:clltllry descriptive Ill()d(~ instead of healing the dualislll anel leading to:l more organic poetry. The 1Il1resolved dualism of tlw poets alld aestheticians reslllts in a dualistic poetry: the scene is perceived and then felt or associated or thollght~




but scldolll, if ever, apprehended ill the perception. It is therefore a poctry ofhohhling siluile, rather than sYll1bol. And it is a poetry that never fulfills itself to allow the poet to withdraw fr0111 a self-supporting creation; rather, it ends only when the poet has spent hitusclf, the poeln being sustained as long as he continues to annotate his sensory data with significances.

One radical heritage of the early nineteenth century, then, was a deal of revolutionary epistetnological speculation and a literary tradition to which these speculations should have been itnportant, but were not. What Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley chose to confront lllore centrally and to a degree unprecedented in English literature is a nagging problelll in their literary culture: I-low do subject and object Ineet in a nlcaningful relationship? Dy what Jl1eanS do we have a sigllificant awareness of the world? Each of these pocts offcrs a different answer, and each is unique as poet in proportion as his answcr is special; but all share the necessity to resolve the question their predecessors had Illade so pressing through philosophic and aesthetic concern and. poetic neglect or incolnpetence. Evcn in 1796, when Coleridge had not advanced beyond a poetics in which "tHoral Sentitl1cnts, Affections, or Feelings, arc deduced frot11, and associated with, the Scenery of Nature," he was conscious of a pressure to "create ... [an] indissoluble union between the intellectual and the Inatcrial world." of course cpistcll1ologies involve ontologies and can, and did, interconnect with theologies; but the epistel11ological problelll is radical to this poetry as poetry, since it detennines the role the poet will assign his raw tuaterials, how he will confront thel11, and how he will UloId the III into a poetH. Nothing I have to say about each of the poets is lcss than f.'uuiliar; but I bclieve it has not becn custoluary to view thenl collectively in tenus of what I have called epistelnology or to see it as the COlluuon basc on which their poctry rests.

Wordsworth's earlicst descriptive poetus, Au Eveuitlg Walk and Descriptive Sketches, arc strictly in the eighteenth-century nlode and arc dull in proportion as they lllercly organize itnages into picturesque and sublilllC configurations and propose tHoral analogues. The elHergcncc of the radically different Wordsworth is Inarked by a primitive, childlike wondcrtncnt that hc expcriences thc outer \vorld at all. In a scnse he is an ur-ROlnantic, celebrating unphilosophically the forgotten basic luiracle that the self Inay possess the outer world in




SOllle te])ing way, and Illaking fresh the wonder of the act. I-Je seeks to convey. for exulllple. the UWl' with which. whcn the boy of Winander tensely waited in the silencc for thc owls to return his hoot,

a gentle shock of mild surprise Has carricd far into his hcart I hc voicc Of mOllntain-torrcllts; or thc visiblc scene Would cnter unawares into I~;s mincl With ~ \l its solcmn imagery, its rocks, Its woods, and that unccrtain hcaven received Into thc hosom of t hc stcady Iakc.

(Prelude. v. 3fh-3fHi)

Many poems, such as "}~xpostuJatioll and Reply," arc csscntiaJly dclightcd responses to thc discovcry that thc extcrnal world cml move into the consciousness. Stale and negligible as this fact had been to his predecessors, Wordsworth, by responding to it with almost naive amuzelllcnt, clearcd the ground for frcsh poctic considerations of the transactions between things and mind. His "To a Highland Girl," for exalllple, progrcssively transfers the perceivcd sccnc and girl into the poet's nlind and nleillory, starting with the paradox, "Thcc, ncither know I, nor thy peers; I And yet Illy eyes arc filled with tears." Subject is affected by object and yet is unrc1ated to it. Progressivc1y thc poet proposes lllore binding rcbtionships: to pray for the girl after he is gone, to make a garland for her, to dwcl1 hcsidc hcr and adopt hcr ways, to share a COlll1110n neighborhood, to be hcr hrother, her father. For as an external object, finite and fixed in space, shc is to him "but as a wave I of the wild sea," a transient image on his senses and unrelatcd to his being. The poet's pIca is, "I would have I Some c1aim upon thee," the subject yearning to possess the objcct in some ahsolute relationship, 110t 111crely to be transicntly touchcd by it. How the ohject is transforlllcd into the stuff of the mind Wordsworth docs not here say; but it is incorporated into the l1leJl10fY so that he may part frotll the girl in space and time, and yet,

till I grow old, /\s f.1ir before n,e shall behold, As I do 1l0W, the cahill small, The Iakc, tllC hay, the waterfall; Anti Thce, thc Spirit of them alii

Whereas thc eightccllth-celltury poet took it for granted that we




perceive and sought by collateral accretions to give percepts value, Wordsworth invested with value the very act of experience.

That Wordsworth had no philosophy in hitH has bccn widely suspected, and it is likely that Coleridge foisted on hinl the burden of appcaring a systcluatic thinker. At any rate, fonnal epistelllology was of prillle iluportance to Coleridge; and Wordsworth, trying to look like the philosophic poet Coleridge urged hin1 to be, offers ahnost every variety of episteluological hypothesis. Associationislll and analogy are there, and so, too, is lllutual interdependence:

an ennobling interchange Of action from without and from within; The excellence, pure function, and best power Doth of the objects seen and eye that sees.

(Prelude, XIII. 375-378)

So, too, is sOluething of Coleridge's position: "thou nmst give, I Else never canst receive" (Prelude, XII. 276-277). Or he can postulate, to Blake's annoyance, the old teleological doctrine of the exquisite fittingness of subject and object, speaking of the rclation, however, not as a llleeting but as a wedding and of its result as a kind of biological creation, "which they with blended lllight I Accoluplish" (R.ecluse). The power of the senses "to own I An intellectual chanu" he attributed to "Those first-born affinities that fit I Our new existence to existing things" (Prelude, I. 552-556).

Varied and inconsistent though his tuany explanations are, they at least reveal how recurrently the poetic enterprise of the ROluantic required attention to the negotiations between the senses and the tuind. It was inescapable for a poet whose plan, as Coleridge outlined it, was "to treat of luan as ... a subject of eye, ear, touch, and taste, in COllt~ct with cxtcrn~l naturc, and infonning the senses froln the lllind, and not C0111pol1nding a lllind out of the senses." But W orclsworth was honest enough to adluit his tolerance for llluitiple views: "To every natural fortll, rock, fruit, or flower ... I gave a 1l10rallife: I saw thelll feel, or linked thelll to sonle feeling" (Prelude, III. 127-130). Coleridge lllight well have thought of hinl as Dr. Johnson did of pliant Poll Cannichacl: "I had sonIC hopes for her at first, ... hut she was wiggle-waggle, and I could never persuade her to he categorical."

But when Wordsworth set about to shape a poetic union of the world and the lllind, instead of theorizing about it, there tends to



TilE ENGLISH ROMANTICS 2S

appear one dominant mode, which can be described by the following among his 111any formulations:

... hy cOlllelllplatillg these Forllls p.e., or lIature) III the relatiolls which they hear t.o lIIall, He shall discern, how, throllgh the varJOIlS meam Which sjlently they yield, are IIlllltiplied The spiritual presences o[ ahsent things.

(J:xCllrsiol1, IV. J230-12H)

"The Solitary Reaper," for example, ends with approximately the sallle detailed description of the shlging reaper with which it beganbut with an essential diffi~rencc. In thc intcrvening stanzas the girl's song is stretched out in space (by comparison with song among Arabian sands and in the £1rthest Hebrides) and in time (pcrh:lps its hurden is oflong ago, today, or the future); and, hy yirtue of its heing in a strange tongue, its contcnt has no spccificity. The hOllndaries around the specific song have been stretched thill, and when we return at lcngth to the original scene the song, haying llearly lost its finitude and become quasi-spiriwal, has made its way inl:o the pOcl'S , , lIlner consclOusncss.

Pcrhaps thc bcst account of such a process of experience is Coleridge's analysis of a partial, inade{}uate fc)rm of his own epistemology. Since Coleridge, adapting Schelling, held that in knowJc.dge objcct and subject "are identical, each involving, and supposing the other" (BioJ!raphia Litl'rar;a), he rejected the possihility that either has prccedcncc. Were thc ohjcctivc taken as prior, then we would "have to account for the superventiol) of the sul~jective, which coalesces with it." If thc ol:~ect were prior, as it is for Wordsworth, then it

" ' 'II' " urI') I ( I ' I) lllUSt grow 111 to lllte Igence. lC p laellOIl1ena Ill'lIlall'rlfl ll1ust wholly dif.appcar, and the laws alone (Iheforllla/) 1l111st rell1ain. Thellce it COIl}(~S, that in nature itself the Illore the pril1cipl(~ of Jaw hreaks forth, the lllOre does the Ims/.! drop off, thc ph:lCnOIllCIl:l thelllsd vcs become n}ore spiritual and at length cease altogether in 0111' consciousncss." Coleridge rejected this position, but W or<bworth 's poetic instincts led him to it: the ohject: is perceivecl vividly, usually with great spccificity; the husk is thcn dissolvcd; and whcn the phe-

I I 1 ",' I' 1'" . I f 1l0lllCnOn las at ast )ecome s]>lrtwa lZC{ It passcs mt:o t IC core o. the subjcctivc intelligence. Lucy Gray slips away (r'OJll her defining surroundings, evaporatcs into ';)otprints in the snow, which, in turn, vanish at the middlc of the bridge betwecn the phcnomenal and




spiritual worlds; and she beco1l1cs thc living spirit of solitude. of the cuckoo's twofold voice, "At once f.'lf off, and ncar," the song to the ncarby is addrcssed to the physical scene, and first becOlnes subordinate to the £'lr-off one that brings "a talc I Of visionary hours" and then is lost in it, so that thc bird Inay be "No bird, but an invisible thing, I A voice, a Inystery," a spirit in natnre that binds the poet's past with his present, his £'lr-off with his ncar. Or, in "Resolution and Indcpendcncc" thc poct oscillatcs bctwecn perception of the leachgatherer and a dreallllike inner vision ofhinl until at length the leachgatherer has beCOll1e an object of the "lnind's eye" and Inoves into the poct's spirit as a nloral force, instead of being only a visible exclllphull.

To Coleridge the goal of art is "To tl1ake the external internal, the internal external, to lllake Nature thought and thought Nature" ("On Poesy or Art"); and Wordsworth occasionally cchocd hitn: "All things shall live in us and we shall live I In all things that surround us." But in £'lct only thc first half of this statelnent truly describes his poetic processes, and he was closer to the Illark when he wrote that the illlagination, "either by conferring additional properties upon an object, or abstracting frOt)} it sonIC of those which it actually possesses," enables it to cere-act upon the nlind which hath perforllled the process, like a new existence" (ISIS Pref.'lce). The senses shuck off or greatly attenuate the lllateriality of the itllage, or the iluagination tranSlllutes sensory data into sOlllething quasi-inullaterial so that, for Wordsworth, sound was "Most audible ... when the fleshly car . . . Forgot her functions, and slept undisturbed" (Preltlde, II. 415-418): when "bodily eyes I Were utterly forgottcn ... what I saw I Appeared like sOlllething ill tuyself, a dre:,ln, I A prospect oft/w mi"d" (Prelude, II. 349-352). This is why Keats, looking frolll the other side of the fence, could speak ofW ordsworth' s poe illS as "a kind of sketchy illtclIcc(Hallatldscape" (to Dailey, October I 8 17) and why Shelley could describe Wordsworth's art as "Wakening a sort of thought in scnsc." Wordsworth's poctic experience seeks to recapture that condition of boyhood whcn, as hc said, he was "unable to think of external things as having external existcncc, and I COln-111uned with all that I saw as sOlllething not apart f1'OIn, but inhcrcnt in, tny own illuuaterialnature."

It is notable that Wordsworth's tnajor contctuporarics-Colcridge, Keats, l-Iazlitt, Dc Quinccy, and Shelley-all recognized that at the




core of his thought and art is I he tendency to assimilate the outer worle! to the Illind, to absorb ohject into suhject. Their vivid awareness of this suggests not ollly the epistemological cellter of Wordsworth's poetry but also the overriding importance to his contemporaries of the epistemological problem. Shelley, who identified Wordsworth with Peter Bell, may speak for all of the]}]:

All things that Pctcr saw an(l fdt Had a peculiar aspect to him; And when thcy camc within the helt Of his own naLlire, seemed to melt, Lik\! cloud to ( 101lel, into him.

And so thc olltward world IIniting To that within him, hc becalllc Considerahly IIninviting To thosc who, mcditation slighting, Were Illoulded ill a different frame.

He had a mind which was somehow At once circumfcrence and cent rc Of all he might or feel or know; Nothing wcnt cver Ollt, although Something did ever ellter.

Yet his was inciividualminel, And new created all he saw In a new manllcr, and rcfincd Those new Cf('atiol1S, and comhined Thcm, by a 1ll3stcr-spirit's law.

Thus-though 1Il1illlagillativcAn apprehension clear, illtcnse, Of the mind's work, had made alive The things it wrought on; I believe Wakenillg a slIrt of thought in scme.

But from the first 'twas Pctcr'~ drift To be a kinel of moral CIIIIIICh, He tOllched the hem of Nature's shift, Pelt faint·-·and never dared IIplift The closest, all-concealing tunic.

Keats, who is Wordsworth's exact antithesis, had 110 sllch COI11-

punctions. Por him sigllificant experience ahsorhs the self into the essence of the object, and therefore he condemned Wordsworth's




inversion of this relationship as the" egotistical sublinIe." The epistel11ological difference between the two is that which Coleridge drew betwecn Milton and Shakespeare: Milton, like Wordsworth, "attracts all fonus and things to hitllself, into the unity of his own IDEAL," and all "things and luodcs of action shape thcluselves anew" in his being; Shakespeare, like Keats, "darts hiluself forth, and passes into all the fonlls of hU111an character and passion" and "bcCOllIes all things." The differcnce is also that between the two eighteenth-century traditions frolu which they stCIU. Wordsworth derivcs luainly frolll thc cnlpirical and associativc doctrincs whtch speculated on how thc iluagination transnuttes sensation into thc stuff of thc lllind; Keats belongs to thc tradition of sYlupathy, largely by way of Hazlitt, who protested against an art itt which SOIlIC scntimcnt is forevcr "luoulding cverything to itself." But however widely they differ, they obviously sharc a deep-rooted concern with how the ~,ubjective and objective worlds carryon their transactions. It is thc qucstion their culturc had Illadc of prillle illlportancc to the poetic act; and Butch of their poetry is the act of answering it.

R.cjcctiug Wordsworth's "cgotistical" assimilation of object to subject, Keats asslllued that cverything has its own vital and inll11Utable quintessence and that the fulfllItllent of expcricncc is thc absorption of the expericncing self into that csscncc through the intensity of thc sensory cncounter. The "Man of Genius," as opposed to thc "M fl) " I ", I' '1 I' "" If'" 1 an 0 owcr, las no Ill( IVI( ua tty, no propcr se , SlllCC Ie is "continually infonuing and filling SOIlIC othcr Body" or, according to Hazlitt, losing his pcrsonal idclltity "in sonIC object dcarcr to hinl than hiluself." When I alll in a 1'00111 full of pcoplc, Kcats wrote, "thcnllot luyself goes hOluc to luyself: but the idcntity of every Olle in thc 1'00111 bcgins so to prcss uponl11C that I alll in a very little timc annihilated."

Consequently, whercas Wordsworth's luajor poetic process requircs the dissolution of the objcct's scnsory finitude, awakening "a sort of thought in scnse," Keats's proccss requires that the self risc to incrcasingly Hlore intensc sensory ardor until it is of the order of the objcct's dynaluic esscncc-just as his Porphyro Hlllst risc "Beyond a l110rtal l11an illlpassion'd £'\f" in order to lllelt into his own inll1111-table cssence as it cxists in MadeHnc's intcnse drcaill. POl' Kcats thc object becolllcs progressively sharper, richcr, lliore vibrant-lll0rc, not less, itself-as the expericncing self is entanglcd, enthrallcd, dc-



THE ENGLISH ROMANTICS

stroyed, until, "Melting into its radiance, we blend, I Mingle, and so becOllle a part of it" (I!I/(IYlllic>IJ, I. 79R-R J J). Correspondingly, his images becOllle symbols, llot hy becoming "sketchy intellectual Landscapes," but by achieving their most intense sensory natllrc, since, as he wrote, everything becomes vallled hy the ardor with which it is pursued. The poct, capable of ecstatically cntering thc essences of objects, finds his way to the instincts of the eaglc and knows the tiger's yell "Hke mother-tonguc"; he call explore "all forms and substances I Straight homeward to their symhol-essences." The first three stanzas of the "Od(~ 011 a Cirecian Urn" are a full en:lct:Illent of this process of empathic absorption, as the ohserver is progressively drawn to the urn, to the fi·ieze within it, and to the perdurably ccstatic life in thc frieze-a life which he at: last experiences by heing assimilated into it. Endymion's detested mOIllCIHS, OJ) the other hand, arc those when, after absorption into essence, he makes "the journey homeward to habiwal self," self-conscious instead of otherconscious. This cpistelllology J( cats anchored in a private f:tith that we create ollr own post-mortal existence, since iJ) our flnal ahsorption into the ultimate essence we shall experience hereafter in a "finer tonc" and inllllutably ollr transient earthly absorptions into essences; and most of Keats's poetry is all exploratioll of the ramifications of this belief. But the f()rIn and <111;t1ity his poetic materials take and til<: role they play arc determined l)y his epistemology of cmpathy.

Sincc for Coleridge thc goal of art is "to make Nature thought: and thought Natl1re~" neither thc Wordsworth ian nor the Keatsiall position is ade'luate. Starting with the dualism of ])at.lln~ alld the self, Coleridge made the purpose of his epistemology such a recollciliation of the two that they Jllay be "coinst:lnt:lneotls and one." UltiJllate knowledge is self-knowJt.dge, (c>r only in Ihis act are sl1l~jcct: and ()l~ject identical. But in ord(~r to he an ol~ject the infinite s111~j('ct nlUst also he finite; alld therefc>re the act of self-knowledge, wherehy "a s111~ject ... becollles a ~1I1~ject hy the act: of cOIl~trucling itself ohjectively to itself," is the recon( iliation anel idelltity of the fillite and inflnite, nature and self. All higher knowledge ll1t1st he a mode of this act, since "evcry ohject is, as an o/Ul'rf, dead, fixed, incapahle in itself of any action, and Ilccess;)rily finite"; it is vital only insof:lr as the self is viewing itself ill the ohject. J knce such Co1cridgc:ln carotlsels as this: "to Illake the ol~ject olle with liS, wc ll1ust becoll1e one with the ol~ject-II~,!O, all ()l~ject. li~,!o, the ()l~ject: must he itself;} :mh-




ject-partially a fworitc dog, principally a friend, wholly God, the Friend"-that is, either vehicles for the self or the total selfhood. Consequently the Coleridgean ilnagination is the act of reconciling the phenoll1enal world of the understanding with the nOUll1enal world of the reason. It incorporates "the reason in itnages of the sense" and organizes "the flux of the senses by the pennanent and self-circulating energies of the reason" to givc birth to synlbols, which arc both "hannonious in thCll1selves, and consubstantial with thc truths of which thcy arc thc conductors." Art, like the sclfknowing subject, is "thc luiddlc quality betwecn a thought and a thing, or ... thc union and reconciliation of that which is nature with that which is exclusively hUlllan"; and taste, a luodc of itnagination, "is thc intenllediatc £'lculty which connects thc activc with the passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the senses; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter [the W ordsworthian nIode], while it realizes the ideas of the fonner." Wordsworth occasionally wished to say sonIc thing of the sort:

... his spirit drank The spectacle. Sensation. soul. and focm All melted into him. They swallowed up I-lis animal being; in them did he live And by them did he live. They were his life.

nut this is both Inore than the epistclnology that Inotivated hinl and £'11' less than Coleridge's purpose, which is not ll1ercly to dissolve self and nature into each other, but, starting with "I al11" instead of "it is," to develop the nOl1luenal potential in the phenol~·~ena1.

With a single sentence Coleridge has preserved frOl11 eillbarrassll1ent the critic who would 111ake the transition frot11 his l11etaphysics and poetics to his poetry: "I freely own that I have no title to the naille of poet, according to IUY own definition of poetry." Frankly, it is 110t readily conceivable how Coleridge's epistel11ology could be translated into the life of a poenl by shaping its Iuatter, iluparting a special quality to its il11agery, or providing a process for the transfonuation of iluages into sYlubols. In other words, it is difficult to conceivc of a poetry ill which his epistelllology and his theories of itllagination and synlbolisnl would be recognizable as shaping forces. But in filct he was not proflcring a prograln; he was defining the ideal nature and role of poetry. As a practicing poet, for exatnple, he perfonns 110 special act to cause his sYlnbols to render intelligible the




rcality of which thcy partakc; he Illcrely deposits images which we are expected to conceive of as significant. Occasionally it is true, we find hilll l11aking poetic statcmcnts that approximatc his conception of a self constituting itself by constructing and viewing itself as object. Thus, of Mont Blanc hc wrote:

Thou, the meantime, wast hlending with Illy Thought, Yca with my Life, and Life's own secret joy: Till the dilating soul, (Onrapt, traJlsfllsed, Into the mighty vision passing-there As in her natural form " swelled vast to Heaven.

(" Hyllln before SUllrisc")

To the complaint of Wordsworth, expectedly unsympathetic all

cpistelllological grounds, that this is the "Mock Suhlime", Coleridge replied: "frolll Illy childhood I havc bccn accustomcd to ahstract and as it wcrc unrcalize whatever of more than comJllon interest my eyes dwclt on; and thcn by a sort of transference and transmission of tlly consciousncss to idcntify lllysc1f with thc objcct." And of coursc his cpistCIllOlogy is the necessary gloss on the Dejection ode to cxplain why the scnses arc inadcquate and how thc imagination develops subjective lifc ill objects, which, as objccts, arc "dead, fixed":

I may not hope from outward fonm to win The passion anel the life, whose fountains are witliin.

o Laely! we receive bllt what we givc, Anel in our life alone docs Nature live: Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shrouel!

And would we alight behold, of higher worth, Than that inanimate cold world allowed ...

Ah! fWIIl the soul itscl f Illust isslle forth A light, a glory, a fair luminolls clolld

Enveloping the Elflh-And frolll the s01l1 itself JllllSt there he sent

A sweet anel potent voice, of its own hirth, Of all swcet sounds the li((~ and cleillent!

But the l110St important poctic rolc ofColcridgc's cpistemology is to providc thc dramatic fonn fc:n a group of poems which act Ol1t the principle that the self becomes :1 self by o4jectifying itself so as to identify fJnitc and infinite. "Thi~ Lime-Tree Hower," which Jllay he takcn as typical, hegins with the poet disconsolately iJ1lprison(~cl in the bower, isolated and unrelated to anything, like Keats detesting the journey h0111cward to habitual selt: likc Wordsworth unable to




assert a clainl on the Highland girl. Between hiln and his departing friend Charles Laillb is a dell, the divisive gulf separating the ego frolll the nOll-ego. In ituagination he attends Latnb in his passage through the dell until the itnagined friend elnerges on the glowing plain with a frccdOl11 and joy that lllock the gloolll of the howershaded poet:

So my friend Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood, Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem Less gross than bodily ..••

Escape froln the prison of selfhood requires a union, through the ill1agination, with an object, an object that is itself a subject, a "friend/' a Charles Lalnb; and the self Blust "becOll1e one with the object" so that the poern ends with Coleridge watching the sunset and ilnagining Laillb watching the sunset as he hitnself had once \vatched it. The end is releasc frol11 thc prison, thc frccdOlll which is the ground of the willful ar.t of itnagination; and the end is the joy and vitality returned to thc self by its evolving its own life in the object of experience.

Shelley's epistenlology is so dceply cl11bcddcd in an idiosyncratic ontology that it is difficult to disengage it, especially since he does not start with the usual distinction between autononlOUS subject and object. I-lis grounds arc two eillpirical axiOlllS: "the 11lind cannot create, it can only perceive"; and "nothing exists but as it is perceived." The 111cntal itnage results froln perceiving s0111cthing whosc naturc wc cannot know, and consequently, with respect to thc nlind, thc pcrception is the sole object. Shelley has cut the epistetllological knot by putting asidc an external world that stands against the self and by lllaking the basic transaction one between the self and its lllental itupressions in all their cOlubinations. The subject is what we are; the object, our percepts and feelings. But even this distinction is f.'llse, relevant only because of the whole f.'llsity of our tuortal condition. In childhood, Shelley writes, we "less habitually distinguished all that we saw and felt, fr01u ourselves. They seetHed, as it were, to constitute one lllass." In the Illost vivid apprehension of being, ll1Cl1 "feel as if their natnre were dissolved into the surrounding universe, or as if the snrrounding universe were absorbed into their being. They are conscious of 110 distinction" ("all Life"). Only subsequently are we



THE ENGLISII ROMANTICS 33

Inisled into supposing a dualism of suhject ;m(l ol~jccl: and a categorical difference between things and thoughts. What we call a "thing," he said, is Inerely "any thought upon which any other thought is elnployed with an apprehension of distinction"; and the division he-

" I" 1 ", Itt ' 1 'I I "I tween externa an( lIlterna IS mere y nOl1lllla • so t lat w lCll speaking of the objects of thought, we indeed only descrihe one of the forms of tho light" and, "speaking of thought, we only apprehend onc of thc opcrations of the universal Systclll of beings." True plwnomenal knowledge, then, docs not consist in hridging the gap hetween self and nature, hut in withdrawing these illusory entities to their COllllllon source. ConsequeJltly it is considerahly less than a figure of speech when Shelley commands the West Willd: "Be thOll, Spirit fierce, I My spirit! Be thou me .... " 0 .. when, in "Mollt Blanc," he prctc1Ids a distinction hetween thoughts and things, he can define reality only as a continuous mental act, a vain striving hy the Inind to identify its shadowy images with the corresponding hut unknowable external world that has cast thelll.

I-lence the curiol/sly insubstantial, uureaJized quality of Shdleis poetic imagery. Clouds, winds, vapors, skylarks, and flowers hover between thing and thought because his experiential reality is neither suhjective nor ohjective, an irrelevant distinction if our heing and ollr

perceptions "constitute one mass." Jnsof.1r as, limited by time and space, we perceive a lllutable world external to ourselves, we per-

, I" " I'" "SI II' I 'II I I celVC w lat SeCJllS, 110t w lat IS. • lC cy S rea, nOllJ usory wor ( , unlike Wordsworth's or Keats's, is symholic in its very nature, since it is not categorica11y different from other thoughts-or t more properly, since what we call the wodd is constituted of the mass of our thoughts, including our own nature. The West Wind is N1xessity, the summit of Mont Blanc is the residence of the Power, its ravine is the Mind, and life is like a dome of many-colored glass, 110t because things are like thoughts, hut hecause onc order of thought differs frotH another, as Shelley said, only in forc~.

The four R.omantics, it is clear, are sharply at odds with each other, in the terms J have been concerned with. But the very f.1ct that their positions do clash so directly on these terms, instead of l)l~ing merely unrelated, confirms that they all f.1CC the central need to find a significant relationship between tile subjective and objective worlds. We may conceive of poetry as wade lip superficially (~rfeatllres, such as nature images, Inelancholy, or lyricism; but it is made hy purposes,




and cpistclnology is poctically constitutive. All the ROlllantics, it is truc, give cxtraordinary value to a £'lcuIty they call the inlagination because they nUlst postulate an extraordinary £'lcuIty that bridges the gap betwecn lllind and thc extcrnal world; but no two of thcln agrce on a dcfinition of this £'lcuIty, any luore than they do on the lllode of existcnce of thc cxtcrnal naturc thcy so cOllul1only write about. Ad-11littcdly, all arc sYlnbolic poets, since the sYlnbol is the Inarriage of the two worlds, but their kinds of sYlnbolislll arc nccessarily as widely diverse as the epistcluologies that gcnerate thelu.

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVBnSI1'Y


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