The Lake Poets

The term "Lake Poets" was applied, first in derision, to Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, who lived for some years in the beautiful Lake Country of England. From their close intimacy, it was thought that they had united upon some special theory of composition and style, and that they were about to establish a new school of poetry. Like all attempts at reform, the idea was at first ridiculed; but the term "Lake Poets" has won for itself an abiding-place of dignity and honor in the history of English literature. These three poets, differing in almost every particular, did agree in one thing, namely, antagonism to the stiff and formal style of poetry then in vogue; an antagonism, however, which each manifested in his own peculiar way. Wordsworth was preeminently the poet of nature and of human life. He had strongly imbibed the spirit of the French revolution, was enthusiastic in behalf of the rights of the people, and opposed earnestly not only hereditary kings and nobles, but all social distinctions and privileges which the will of the people had not decreed. Holding these political sentiments, it was very easy for him to feel that poetry also should be brought within reach of the people, and into the development of this theory he threw himself with all the ardor of his enthusiastic nature. He was unmercifully ridiculed in the Edinburgh Review, but he kept on writing, and as his views of life grew larger he became more moderate in his opinions; while the tender and the thoughtful elements in common life still appealed to him as the fit theme of poetry, he relaxed somewhat his extreme plebeian views of poetic construction. The circle of his readers and admirers grew, critics ceased to jeer, and before his death he was recognized as the foremost poet of his generation. "We are Seven" is a specimen of his non-conventional style, and it is probably to his minor poems that he owes his warm and lasting place in the English heart. "Meanwhile his star is climbing even higher in the unclouded sky." Wordsworth was born in 1770, married in 1802, was made poet-laureate on the death of Southey, in 1843, and died April 23d, 1850. It is an odd mistake, in the last edition of Worcester's Dictionary (Lippincott, 1887), to chronicle his death as in 1791.

Coleridge, Southey, and Lovell married sisters in 1795, and they formed a scheme for emigrating to the banks of the Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania, and there founding a model republic (with a community of goods), from which all selfishness was to be banished. But the "Pantisocracy," as Coleridge called it, was abandoned for want of means to carry it out. Coleridge is also celebrated as a conversationalist; as a thinker he exerted greater influence through conversation than through printed works. He spent the first years of his married life in the Lake Country, and while there he wrote his master-poem, "The Ancient Mariner," and "Christabel," and published his noble translation of Schiller's "Wallenstein." He was the first representative of German literature and philosophy in England, and, until Carlyle appeared, the most powerful.

The opium habit gradually took possession of him; he left his wife and family with Southey, and went to reside in London; first with Mr. Basil Montague, and afterward, until his death, with Mr. Gillman, at Highgate. There he held weekly conversazioni, on every subject, human and divine, for hours at a time; and thither, from all parts of the country, ardent young men flocked to listen to the sage. Coleridge died at Highgate, July 25th, 1834, in his sixty-second year.

The religious and political views of Southey, in his early years, made him a skeptic and a republican, but these were abandoned later in life, and he became a firm believer in Christianity and a staunch supporter of the English Constitution. He was made poet-laureate in 1813, and in 1835 he declined a baronetcy, mainly for the reason that his income was inadequate. His mental activity was prodigious in every department of literature, and at length, under the strain of it, his mind gave way. His wife, who for years had been hopelessly insane, died in 1837; two years after this he married Caroline Bowles, but on the very day when he brought his new wife to his home he fell into a state of mental prostration, which grew into imbecility and continued until his death, March 21st, 1843. His chief poetical works are "Thalaba the Destroyer," a story of the Arabian hero; "The Curse of Kehama," founded on Hindoo fables, and "Roderick, the Last of the Goths," a story of the overthrow of the Gothic Kingdom in Spain, by the Moors. He also translated "The Chronicle of the Cid" from the Spanish (See Vol. I.), and wrote a history of Brazil, and the lives of Nelson and Bunyan. He contributed for many years to the Quarterly Review.

Charles Lamb, the humorist, Lloyd, and Wilson have also been included under the head of Lake Poets. But Wordsworth was the founder of the School, and his chief followers were Coleridge and Southey.