was not under the
influence of external objects. He had extraordinary powers of summoning
up an image or series of images in his own mind, and he might mean that
his idea of Marathon was so vivid, that no visible observation could
make it more so.' 'A remarkable instance of this,' added Mr. Wordsworth,
'is his poem, said to be "composed in the Vale of Chamouni." Now he
never was at Chamouni, or near it, in his life.' Mr. Wordsworth next
gave a somewhat humorous account of the rise and progress of the
'Ancient Mariner.' 'It arose,' he said, 'out of the want of five pounds
which Coleridge and I needed to make a tour together in Devonshire. We
agreed to write jointly a poem, the subject of which Coleridge took from
a dream which a friend of his had once dreamt concerning a person
suffering under a dire curse from the commission of some crime.' 'I,'
said Wordsworth, 'supplied the crime, the shooting of the albatross,
from an incident I had met with in one of Shelvocke's voyages. We tried
the poem conjointly for a day or two, but we pulled different ways, and
only a few lines of it are mine.' From Coleridge, the discourse then
turned to Scotland. Mr. Wordsworth, in his best manner, with earnest
thoughts given out in noble diction, gave his reasons for thinking that
as a poet Scott would not live. 'I don't like,' he said, 'to say all
this, or to take to pieces some of the best reputed passages of Scott's
verse, especially in presence of my wife, because she thinks me too
fastidious; but as a poet Scott _cannot_ live, for he has never in
verse written anything addressed to the immortal part of man. In making
amusing stories in verse, he will be superseded by some newer versifier;
what he writes in the way of natural description is merely rhyming
nonsense.' As a prose writer, Mr. Wordsworth admitted that Scott had
touched a higher vein, because there he had really dealt with feeling
and passion. As historical novels, professing to give the manners of a
past time, he did not attach much value to those works of Scott's so
called, because that he held to be an attempt in which success was
impossible. This led to some remarks on historical writing, from which
it appeared that Mr. Wordsworth has small value for anything but
contemporary history. He laments that Dr. Arnold should have spent so
much of his time and powers in gathering up and putting into imaginary
shape the scattered fragments of the history of Rome.[248]

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