ballad of _The
Rising of the North_ gave him the hint. The story affected me more
deeply than I wish to be affected; younger readers, however, will
not object to the depth of the distress, and nothing was ever more
ably treated. He is looking, too, for a narrative subject, pitched
in a lower key."

One of the most interesting letters of S. T. Coleridge to Wordsworth is
an undated one, sent from London in the spring of 1808, containing a
characteristic criticism of _The White Doe_. The Wordsworth family had
asked Coleridge to discuss the subject of the publication of the poem
with the Longmans' firm. It is more than probable that it was
Coleridge's criticism of the structural defects in the poem, that led
Wordsworth to postpone its publication. The following is part of the
letter:--

"... In my reperusals of the poem, it seemed always to strike on
my feeling as well as judgment, that if there were any serious
defect, it consisted in a disproportion of the Accidents to the
spiritual Incidents; and, closely connected with this,--if it be
not indeed the same,--that Emily is indeed talked of, and once
appears, but neither speaks nor acts, in all the first
three-fourths of the poem. Then, as the outward interest of the
poem is in favour of the old man's religious feelings, and the
filial heroism of his band of sons, it seemed to require something
in order to place the two protestant malcontents of the family in
a light that made them beautiful as well as virtuous. In short, to
express it far more strongly than I mean or think, in order (in
the present anguish of my spirits) to be able to express it at
all, that three-fourths of the work is everything rather _than_
Emily; and then, the last--almost a separate and doubtless an
exquisite poem--wholly _of_ Emily. The whole of the rest, and the
delivering up of the family by Francis, I never ceased to find,
not only comparatively heavy, but to me quite obscure as to
Francis's motives. On the few, to whom, within my acquaintance,
the poem has been read, either by yourself or me (I have, I
believe, read it only at the Beaumonts'), it produced the same
effect.

"Now I have conceived two little incidents, the introduction of
which, joined to a little abridgment, and lyrical precipitation of
the last half of the third, I had thought would have removed this
defect, so seeming to me, and bring to a finer balance the
_b