Fears in Solitude
Encyclopedia
Fears in Solitude, written in April 1798, is one of the conversation poems
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
. The poem was composed while France
threatened to invade Great Britain
. Although Coleridge was opposed to the British government, the poem sides with the British people in a patriotic defense of their homeland. The poem also emphasizes a desire to protect one's family and to live a simple life in harmony with nature. The critical response to the poem was mixed, with some critics claiming that the work was "alarmist" and anti-British.
, was an early supporter of the French revolution
and believed that it would bring much-needed political change to Europe and to Great Britain. However, the actions of the French government after the beginning of the revolution, especially their invasion of other nations, caused him to lose faith in their cause. Although Coleridge was opposed to the British government under prime minister William Pitt
, he supported the British nation and the national defense when France threatened to invade Britain; the belief held by many Britons was that France would invade the Irish kingdom, which was experiencing rebellion at the time.
These fears of an invasion manifested in April 1798, and Britons began to arm themselves. In April, Coleridge traveled to his childhood home at Ottery
and then went to visit William
and Dorothy Wordsworth
; during this time Coleridge wrote "Fears in Solitude: Written in April 1798, During the Alarm of an Invasion". Fears in Solitude was first published in a small pamphlet collection that included Frost at Midnight
and France: An Ode
It was eventually printed seven times in various collections. One of the later printings of the poem, by Daniel Stuart, removed lines that directly attacked Pitt and the British government. This change reflected Coleridge's own changing political views from radical to more conservative beliefs.
The poem begins with a Quantocks
setting before moving onto politics:
The poem continues by pointing out that the best life is a simple life and that there are men that live with nature:
However, some of the British are like a plague that spreads their poor behavior to other nations:
Although he attacks the corruption of British politicians, the narrator supports Britain:
The poem ends with the narrator praising his home at Nether Stowey
and nature:
His other poem on the same topic, France: an Ode, describes how his view about the French revolution changed over time, especially with France's invasion of Switzerland.
The images of the poem operate in a circular pattern, and the poem begins and ends with the Stowey dell where Coleridge lived. The peaceful home at the beginning is a parallel to the "Valley of Seclusion" in Coleridge's Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement
, which is a quiet place that allows for a pleasant life. The ideas about nature also found in "The Eolian Harp
" are brought up, following Coleridge's familiar Plotinian
view. The poem also includes Coleridge's views on the unity of mankind and nature and the fear that an invasion would destroy this unity. To safeguard it, the narrator protects his family and the dell, along with the rest of Britain. There is also an emphasis on simple living, and the poem's conclusion, a return to the dell, represents a return of Coleridge to his own family.
The gothic elements of the poem connect it to many of his other works, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
, "Ballad of the Dark Ladie", France: An Ode, Frost at Midnight, The Nightingale
, "Three Graves", and "Wanderings of Cain".
described the poem as "beautiful". There were four contemporary reviews of the original pamphlet collection including Fears in Solitude. The Critical Review
believed that the poetry expressed alarmism. The British Critic
thought he was anti-Britain. A review in the December Monthly Visitor emphasized the "beautiful lines" starting with line 129 until the end. Another review, in the January 1799 Monthly Mirror, claims, "The author's Fears are, perhaps, not highly honourable to his feelings as a Briton, nor very complimentary to the national character."
The Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne
, in the Preface to the 1875 edition of Christabel, argues,
In a September 1889 Fortnightly Review
article called "Coleridge as a Poet", Edward Dowden
writes, "Coleridge still declaims against the sins of England, and protests against the mad idolatry of national wrong-doing [...] yet utters himself before the close with all the filial loyalty of a true son of England, and he declares in a noble strain of eloquence how the foundations of his patriotism have been laid in the domestic affections".
During the 20th-century, Virginia Radley points out that "The most serious charge that can be brought against the poem is that it is not poetry as Coleridge generally conceived poetry to be. In fact, it is the one poem in this group that may mean but is not [...] Like 'France' too, the poem suffers from a lack of 'heart'." George Watson declares that the poem "shows how precarious Coleridge's new achievement was. It is a shameless return to the older, effusive manner, evidently written in a white heat of patriotic indignation against the degradation of English public opinion during the French wars, and it is only by stretching charity that it can be considered a conversation poem at all."
Following this, Geoffrey Yarlott states, "though disproportionate in qualities of thought and feeling (and one of the less successful therefore of the major 'annus mirabilis' poems), [Fears in Solitude] exemplifies the problems Coleridge had to wrestle with in assimilating didacticism to the requirements of poetic organization." Richard Holmes claims Fears in Solitude as "one of the most difficult of [Coleridge's] Conversation Poems". The ending, to Holmes, is "evoked with the magic, pastoral power of a Samuel Palmer picture".
Conversation poems
The conversation poems are a group of eight poems composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge between 1795 and 1807. Each details a particular life experience which lead to the poet's examination of nature and the role of poetry...
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
. The poem was composed while France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
threatened to invade Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
. Although Coleridge was opposed to the British government, the poem sides with the British people in a patriotic defense of their homeland. The poem also emphasizes a desire to protect one's family and to live a simple life in harmony with nature. The critical response to the poem was mixed, with some critics claiming that the work was "alarmist" and anti-British.
Background
Coleridge, a radical and JacobinJacobin (politics)
A Jacobin , in the context of the French Revolution, was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary far-left political movement. The Jacobin Club was the most famous political club of the French Revolution. So called from the Dominican convent where they originally met, in the Rue St. Jacques ,...
, was an early supporter of the French revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and believed that it would bring much-needed political change to Europe and to Great Britain. However, the actions of the French government after the beginning of the revolution, especially their invasion of other nations, caused him to lose faith in their cause. Although Coleridge was opposed to the British government under prime minister William Pitt
William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...
, he supported the British nation and the national defense when France threatened to invade Britain; the belief held by many Britons was that France would invade the Irish kingdom, which was experiencing rebellion at the time.
These fears of an invasion manifested in April 1798, and Britons began to arm themselves. In April, Coleridge traveled to his childhood home at Ottery
Ottery St Mary
Ottery St Mary, known as "Ottery" , is a town in the East Devon district of Devon, England, on the River Otter, about ten miles east of Exeter on the B3174. It is part of a large civil parish of the same name, which also covers the villages of West Hill, Metcombe, Fairmile, Alfington, Tipton St...
and then went to visit William
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
and Dorothy Wordsworth
Dorothy Wordsworth
Dorothy Mae Ann Wordsworth was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives...
; during this time Coleridge wrote "Fears in Solitude: Written in April 1798, During the Alarm of an Invasion". Fears in Solitude was first published in a small pamphlet collection that included Frost at Midnight
Frost at Midnight
Frost at Midnight was a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in February 1798. Part of the conversation poems, the poem discusses Coleridge's childhood experience in a negative manner and emphasizes the need to be raised in the countryside...
and France: An Ode
France: An Ode
France an Ode was written by Samuel Coleridge in April 1798. The poem describes his development from supporting the French Revolution to his feelings of betrayal when they invaded Switzerland. Like other poems by Coleridge, it connects his political views with his religious thoughts...
It was eventually printed seven times in various collections. One of the later printings of the poem, by Daniel Stuart, removed lines that directly attacked Pitt and the British government. This change reflected Coleridge's own changing political views from radical to more conservative beliefs.
Poem
Quantock Hills
The Quantock Hills is a range of hills west of Bridgwater in Somerset, England. The Quantock Hills were England’s first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty being designated in 1956 and consists of large amounts of heathland, oak woodlands, ancient parklands and agricultural land.The hills run from...
setting before moving onto politics:
- A green and silent spot, amid the hills,
- A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place
- No singing skylark ever poised himself. (lines 1–3)
The poem continues by pointing out that the best life is a simple life and that there are men that live with nature:
- And he, with many feelings, many thoughts,
- Made up a meditative joy, and found
- Religious meanings in the forms of Nature! (lines 22–24)
However, some of the British are like a plague that spreads their poor behavior to other nations:
- Like a cloud that travels on,
- Steamed up from Cairo's swamps of pestilence,
- Even so, my countrymen! have we gone forth
- And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs,
- And, deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint
- With slow perdition murders the whole man,
- His body and his soul! (lines 47–53)
Although he attacks the corruption of British politicians, the narrator supports Britain:
- O native Britain! O my Mother Isle!
- How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy
- To me, who from thy lakes and mountain-hills,
- Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,
- Have drunk in all my intellectual life,
- All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
- All adoration of the God in nature,
- All lovely and all honourable things,
- Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
- The joy and greatness of its future being? (lines 183–192)
The poem ends with the narrator praising his home at Nether Stowey
Nether Stowey
Nether Stowey is a large village in the Sedgemoor district of Somerset, South West England. It sits in the foothills of the Quantock Hills , just below Over Stowey...
and nature:
- And now, beloved Stowey! I behold
- Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms
- Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend;
- And close behind them, hidden from my view,
- Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe
- And my babe's mother dwell in peace! With light
- And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend,
- Remembering thee, O green and silent dell!
- And grateful, that by nature's quietness
- And solitary musings, all my heart
- Is softened, and made worthy to indulge
- Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind (lines 222–233)
Themes
The politics within the poem emphasizes the problems within British politics and expresses Coleridge's views that the conservatives were warmongering and that there was corruption within the government. Although he feels this way, he still feels loyalty to the country and wants the British to be safe regardless of their problems.His other poem on the same topic, France: an Ode, describes how his view about the French revolution changed over time, especially with France's invasion of Switzerland.
The images of the poem operate in a circular pattern, and the poem begins and ends with the Stowey dell where Coleridge lived. The peaceful home at the beginning is a parallel to the "Valley of Seclusion" in Coleridge's Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement
Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement
Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement was a poem written by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1796. Like his earlier poem The Eolian Harp, the poem discusses Coleridge's understanding of nature and his married life, which was suffering from problems that developed after the...
, which is a quiet place that allows for a pleasant life. The ideas about nature also found in "The Eolian Harp
The Eolian Harp
The Eolian Harp was a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1795 and published in his 1796 poetry collection. It is one of the early conversation poems and discusses Coleridge's anticipation of a marriage with Sara Fricker along with the pleasure of conjugal love. However, The Eolian Harp is...
" are brought up, following Coleridge's familiar Plotinian
Plotinus
Plotinus was a major philosopher of the ancient world. In his system of theory there are the three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition...
view. The poem also includes Coleridge's views on the unity of mankind and nature and the fear that an invasion would destroy this unity. To safeguard it, the narrator protects his family and the dell, along with the rest of Britain. There is also an emphasis on simple living, and the poem's conclusion, a return to the dell, represents a return of Coleridge to his own family.
The gothic elements of the poem connect it to many of his other works, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and was published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Modern editions use a later revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss...
, "Ballad of the Dark Ladie", France: An Ode, Frost at Midnight, The Nightingale
The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem
The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem was a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in April 1798. Originally included in the joint collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads, the poem disputes the traditional idea that nightingales are connected to the idea of melancholy. Instead, the nightingale...
, "Three Graves", and "Wanderings of Cain".
Critical response
A letter sent to Coleridge from his friends Robert and Edith SoutheyRobert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
described the poem as "beautiful". There were four contemporary reviews of the original pamphlet collection including Fears in Solitude. The Critical Review
The Critical Review
The Critical Review was first edited by Tobias Smollett from 1756 to 1763, and was contributed to by Samuel Johnson, David Hume, John Hunter, and Oliver Goldsmith, until 1817....
believed that the poetry expressed alarmism. The British Critic
British Critic
The British Critic: A New Review was a quarterly publication, established in 1793 as a conservative and high church review journal riding the tide of British reaction against the French Revolution.-High church review:...
thought he was anti-Britain. A review in the December Monthly Visitor emphasized the "beautiful lines" starting with line 129 until the end. Another review, in the January 1799 Monthly Mirror, claims, "The author's Fears are, perhaps, not highly honourable to his feelings as a Briton, nor very complimentary to the national character."
The Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
, in the Preface to the 1875 edition of Christabel, argues,
Compare the nerveless and hysterical verses headed 'Fears in Solitude' (exquisite as is the overture, faultless in tone and colour, and worthy of a better sequel) with the majestic and masculine sonnet of Wordsworth [...] for, great as he is, I at least cannot hold Wordsworth, though so much the stronger and more admirable man, equal to Coleridge as a mere poet – speaks with a calm force of thought and resolution; Coleridge wails, appeals, deprecates, objurgates in a flaccid and querulous fashion without heart or spirit. This debility of mind and manner is set off in strong relief by the loveliness of landscape touches in the same poem.
In a September 1889 Fortnightly Review
Fortnightly Review
Fortnightly Review was one of the most important and influential magazines in nineteenth-century England. It was founded in 1865 by Anthony Trollope, Frederic Harrison, Edward Spencer Beesly, and six others with an investment of £9,000; the first edition appeared on 15 May 1865...
article called "Coleridge as a Poet", Edward Dowden
Edward Dowden
Edward Dowden , was an Irish critic and poet.He was the son of John Wheeler Dowden, a merchant and landowner, and was born at Cork, three years after his brother John, who became Bishop of Edinburgh in 1886. Edward's literary tastes emerged early, in a series of essays written at the age of twelve...
writes, "Coleridge still declaims against the sins of England, and protests against the mad idolatry of national wrong-doing [...] yet utters himself before the close with all the filial loyalty of a true son of England, and he declares in a noble strain of eloquence how the foundations of his patriotism have been laid in the domestic affections".
During the 20th-century, Virginia Radley points out that "The most serious charge that can be brought against the poem is that it is not poetry as Coleridge generally conceived poetry to be. In fact, it is the one poem in this group that may mean but is not [...] Like 'France' too, the poem suffers from a lack of 'heart'." George Watson declares that the poem "shows how precarious Coleridge's new achievement was. It is a shameless return to the older, effusive manner, evidently written in a white heat of patriotic indignation against the degradation of English public opinion during the French wars, and it is only by stretching charity that it can be considered a conversation poem at all."
Following this, Geoffrey Yarlott states, "though disproportionate in qualities of thought and feeling (and one of the less successful therefore of the major 'annus mirabilis' poems), [Fears in Solitude] exemplifies the problems Coleridge had to wrestle with in assimilating didacticism to the requirements of poetic organization." Richard Holmes claims Fears in Solitude as "one of the most difficult of [Coleridge's] Conversation Poems". The ending, to Holmes, is "evoked with the magic, pastoral power of a Samuel Palmer picture".