entirety--that is to say, as a poetic narrative--by completion. Its
main idea--that the purity of a pure maiden is a charm more powerful
for the protection of those dear to her than the spells of the evil one
for their destruction--had been already sufficiently indicated, and the
mode in which Coleridge, it seems, intended to have worked would hardly
have added anything to its effect. [4] And although he clung till very
late in life to the belief that he _could_ have finished it in
after days with no change of poetic manner--"If easy in my mind," he
says in a letter to be quoted hereafter, "I have no doubt either of the
reawakening power or of the kindling inclination"--there are few
students of his later poems who will share his confidence. Charles Lamb
strongly recommended him to leave it unfinished, and Hartley Coleridge,
in every respect as competent a judge on that point as could well be
found, always declared his conviction that his father could not, at
least _qualis ab incepto_, have finished the poem.

The much-admired little piece first published in the _Lyrical Ballads_
under the title of _Love_, and probably best known by its
(original) first and most pregnant stanza, [5] possesses a twofold
interest for the student of Coleridge's life and works, as illustrating
at once one of the most marked characteristics of his peculiar
temperament, and one of the most distinctive features of his poetic
manner. The lines are remarkable for a certain strange fascination of
melody--a quality for which Coleridge, who was not unreasonably proud
of his musical gift, is said to have especially prized them; and they
are noteworthy also as perhaps the fullest expression of the almost
womanly softness of Coleridge's nature. To describe their tone as
effeminate would be unfair and untrue, for effeminacy in the work of a
male hand would necessarily imply something of falsity of sentiment,
and from this they are entirely free. But it must certainly be admitted