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History of English Literature

Notes which the burden of the mystery’ being lighted, he sees into ‘the life of things’. Blake, who seems to
have lived almost continuously in this visionary ecstasy, affirmed that the ‘vegetable universe’ of
phenomena is but a shadow of that real world which is the Imagination.”

This “escape from actuality” was attempted by different romantic poets in different ways. Each
invented an interesting and wondrous world of his own. Coleridge escaped to the world of the
supernatural which was to him curiously exciting as well as satisfying. Scott threw a romantic veil
over the middle Ages in which he found his spiritual home. Keats was lost in the world of ancient
Hellenic beauty. Byron twitched his nose at the whole world and lived in the make-believe world
of his own egocentric creation. Moore was interested in the world of Oriental splendour and
gorgeousness. The contemplation of all these “worlds” was productive of the feelings of wonder
as they were all imaginary worlds having little to do with the world of gnawing, humdrum
reality. Of all the important romantic poets it was only Wordsworth who kept his feet firmly
planted on the real world. But even he looked at this world through the spectacles of romance,
with the result that it excited his wonder in the same measure as the various imaginary worlds did
that of the other romantic poets.

16.3 Coleridge and the Supernatural
Coleridge, perhaps the most romantic of all the romantic poets, always lived in the wonderful
world of his dreams and imagination. Though Keats, Scott, and Coleridge were all fascinated by
the world of the supernatural, yet for the last named it meant something like a natural habitat.
Coleridge’s most outstanding poems, namely, The Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, and Christabel
have all a strong tincture of the supernatural. In dealing with the supernatural in his works
Coleridge was by no means the pioneer. Not to speak of Shakespeare, even in the eighteenth
century many writers had taken up the supernatural as almost their cult. The spate of “Gothic”
novels was an outcome of this cult. To name only a few, Horace Walpole, Mrs. Ann Radcliffe,
“Monk” Lewis, and William Beckford had introduced a lot of supernatural characters and incidents
in their novels. However, their work is singularly free from any artistic merit. They only catered
for the ordinary people who had long been bored by the literature of reason and common sense
and were then craving for cheap thrills. They candidly and crudely produced blood-curdling and
spine-curling concoctions emanating from a ghoulish fancy. There is something morbid in their
works which are so abundantly peopled with “death-pale spectres and clanking chains.” To naive
readers, they cause terror; to the knowing they cause disgust; but they cause wonder to none. The
supernaturalism of the writers of the novel of terror is as counterfeit as their Gothicism.
Coleridge’s supernaturalism, however, is neither shocking nor disgusting. It excited his wonder,
and he conveyed this feeling of wonder to his readers. His treatment of supernaturalism is
suggestive, delicate, refined, elegant, and eminently psychological. He altogether differed from
the sensation-mongering of the exponents of Gothicism. As he himself pointed out in Biographia
Liter aria, his subject and approach in the Lyrical Ballads were to be different from those of
Wordsworth. His own endeavours were to be directed to persons and incidents supernatural, yet
was he to make them look natural and credible by dint of his subtle, psychological approach. The
supernatural is, generally, terrifying; but “naturalised supernatural” is not terrifying but conducive
to the feeling of wonder. Even when Coleridge is describing something ordinary, he makes it
suggestive of the supernatural. Lines like the following represent Coleridge at his best and are
perhaps unrivalled for their suggestiveness in the whole range of English poetry:
A savage place; as holy and enchanted

As ever beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover.
A critic asserts that this is magic pure and simple; the rest is poetry.
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