There is a tentativeness of manner
which seems to come from a conscious aptitude for many poetic styles
and an incapacity to determine which should be definitively adopted and
cultivated to perfection. Hence one too often returns from any
prolonged ramble through Coleridge's poetry with an unsatisfied feeling
which does not trouble us on our return from the best literary country
of Byron or Wordsworth. Byron has taken us by rough roads, and
Wordsworth led us through some desperately flat and dreary lowlands to
his favourite "bits;" but we feel that we have seen mountain and
valley, wood and river, glen and waterfall at their best. But
Coleridge's poetry leaves too much of the feeling of a walk through a
fine country on a misty day. We may have had many a peep of beautiful
scenery and occasional glimpses of the sublime; but the medium of
vision has been of variable quality, and somehow we come home with an
uneasy suspicion that we have not seen as much as we might. It is
obvious, however, even upon a cursory consideration of the matter, that
this disappointing element in Coleridge's poetry is a necessary result
of the circumstances of its production; for the period of his
productive activity (at least after attaining manhood) was too short to
enable a mind with so many intellectual distractions to ascertain its
true poetic bent, and to concentrate its energies thereupon.
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