e things of Chatterton's. Lines of
a specifically romantic colouring are of course to be found scattered
about nearly everywhere in Coleridge; like the musical little song that
follows the invocation to the soul of Alvar in "Remorse":

"And at evening evermore,
In a chapel on the shore,
Shall the chanters sad and saintly--
Yellow tapers burning faintly--
Doleful masses chant for thee,
_Miserere Domine_!"

or the wild touch of folk poesy in that marvellous opium dream, "Kubla
Khan"--the "deep romantic chasm":

"A savage place, as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover."

Or the well-known ending of "The Knight's Grave":

"The knight's bones are dust,
And his good sword rust;
His soul is with the saints, I trust."

In taking account of Coleridge's services to the cause of romanticism,
his critical writings should not be overlooked. Matthew Arnold declared
that there was something premature about the burst of creative activity
in English literature at the opening of the nineteenth century, and
regretted that the way had not been prepared, as in Germany, by a
critical movement. It is true that the English romantics put forth no
body of doctrine, no authoritative statement of a theory of literary art.
Scott did not pose as the leader of a school, or compose prefaces and
lectures like Hugo and Schlegel.[26] As a contributor to the reviews on
his favourite topics, he was no despicable critic; shrewd, good-natured,
full of special knowledge, anecdote, and illustration. But his criticism
was never polemic, and he had no quarrel with the classics. He cherished
an unfeigned admiration for Dryden, whose life he wrote and whose works
he edited. Doubtless he would cheerfully have admitted the inferiority
of his own poetry to Dryden's and Pope's. He had no programme to
announce, but just went ahead writing romances; in practice an innovator,
but in theory a literary conservative.

Coleridge, however, was fully aware of the scope of the new movement. He
represented, theoretically as well as practically, the reaction against
eighteenth-century academicism, the Popean tradition[27] in poetry, and
the maxims of pseudo-classical criticism. In his analysis and
vindication of the principles of romantic art, he brought to bear a
philosophic depth and subtlety such as had never before been applied in
England to a merely belletristic subject