Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

‘By a singular vicissitude in taste, it has happened, that the Germans at first attacked our dramatic writers, as converting all their heroes into Frenchmen. They have, with reason, insisted on historic truth as necessary to contrast the colours, and give life to the poetry. But then, all at once, they have been weary of their own success in this way, and have produced abstract representations, in which the relations of mankind were expressed in a general manner, and in which time, place and circumstance, passed for nothing. In a drama of this kind by Goethe, the author calls the different characters the Duke, the King, the Father, the Daughter, &c., without any other designation.

‘Such a tragedy is only calculated to be acted in the palace of Odin, where the dead still continue their different occupations on earth; where the hunter, himself a shade, eagerly pursues the shade of a stag; and fantastic warriors combat together in the clouds. It should appear, that Goethe at one period conceived an absolute disgust to all interest in dramatic compositions. It was sometimes to be met with in bad works; and he concluded, that it ought to be banished from good ones. Nevertheless, a man of superior mind ought not to disdain what gives universal pleasure; he cannot relinquish his resemblance with his kind, if he wishes to make others feel his own value. Granting that the tyranny of custom often introduces an artificial air into the best French tragedies, it cannot be denied that there is the same want of natural expression in the systematic and theoretical productions of the German muse. If exaggerated declamation is affected, there is a certain kind of intellectual calm which is not less so. It is a kind of arrogated superiority over the affections of the soul, which may accord very well with philosophy, but is totally out of character in the dramatic art. Goethe’s works are composed according to different principles and systems. In the Tasso and Iphigenia, he conceives of tragedy as a lofty relic of the monuments of antiquity. These works have all the beauty of form, the splendour and glossy smoothness of marble;—but they are as cold and as motionless.’

We have, we trust, said enough of this work, to recommend it to the reader: We ought to add, that the translation appears to be very respectable.

COLERIDGE’S LAY SERMON

VOL. XXVII.] [_December 1816._

‘The privilege’ (says a certain author) ‘of talking, and even publishing nonsense, is necessary in a free state; but the more sparingly we make use of it, the better.’ Mr. Coleridge has here availed himself of this privilege,—but not sparingly. On the contrary, he has given full scope to his genius, and laid himself out in absurdity. In this his first Lay Sermon (for two others are to follow at graceful distances), we meet with an abundance of ‘fancies and good-nights,’ odd ends of verse, and sayings of philosophers; with the ricketty contents of his common-place book, piled up and balancing one another in helpless confusion; but with not one word to the purpose, or on the subject. An attentive perusal of this Discourse is like watching the sails of a windmill: his thoughts and theories rise and disappear in the same manner. Clouds do not shift their places more rapidly, dreams do not drive one another out more unaccountably, than Mr. Coleridge’s reasonings try in vain to ‘chase his fancy’s rolling speed.’ His intended conclusions have always the start of his premises,—and they keep it: while he himself plods anxiously between the two, something like a man travelling a long, tiresome road, between two stage coaches, the one of which is gone out of sight before, and the other never comes up with him; for Mr. Coleridge himself takes care of this; and if he finds himself in danger of being overtaken, and carried to his journey’s end in a common vehicle, he immediately steps aside into some friendly covert, with the Metaphysical Muse, to prevent so unwelcome a catastrophe. In his weary quest of truth, he reminds us of the mendicant pilgrims that travellers meet in the Desert, with their faces always turned towards Mecca, but who contrive never to reach the shrine of the Prophet: and he treats his opinions, and his reasons for them, as lawyers do their clients, and will never suffer them to come together lest they should join issue, and so put an end to his business. It is impossible, in short, we find, to describe this strange rhapsody, without falling a little into the style of it;—and, to do it complete justice, we must use its very words. ‘_Implicité_, it is without the COPULA—it wants the possibility—of every position, to which there exists any correspondence in reality.’

Our Lay-preacher, in order to qualify himself for the office of a guide to the blind, has not, of course, once thought of looking about for matters of fact, but very wisely draws a metaphysical bandage over his eyes, sits quietly down where he was, takes his nap, and talks in his sleep—but we really cannot say very wisely. He winks and mutters all unintelligible, and all impertinent things. Instead of inquiring into the distresses of the manufacturing or agricultural districts, he ascends to the orbits of the fixed stars, or else enters into the statistics of the garden plot under his window, and, like Falstaff, ‘babbles of green fields:’ instead of the balance of the three estates, King, Lords, and Commons, he gives us a theory of the balance of the powers of the human mind, the Will, the Reason, and—the Understanding: instead of referring to the tythes or taxes, he quotes the Talmud; and illustrates the whole question of peace and war, by observing, that ‘the ideal republic of Plato was, if he judges rightly, to “the history of the town of Man-Soul” what Plato was to John Bunyan:’—a most safe and politic conclusion!

Mr. Coleridge is not one of those whom he calls ‘alarmists by trade,’ but rather, we imagine, what Spenser calls ‘a gentle Husher, Vanity by name.’ If he does not excite apprehension, by pointing out danger and difficulties where they do not exist, neither does he inspire confidence, by pointing out the means to prevent them where they do. We never indeed saw a work that could do less good or less harm; for it relates to no one object, that any one person can have in view. It tends to produce a complete _interregnum_ of all opinions; an _abeyance_ of the understanding; a suspension both of theory and practice; and is indeed a collection of doubts and moot-points—all hindrances and no helps. An uncharitable critic might insinuate, that there was more quackery than folly in all this;—and it is certain, that our learned author talks as magnificently of his _nostrums_, as any advertising impostor of them all—and professes to be in possession of all sorts of morals, religions, and political panaceas, which he keeps to himself, and expects you to pay for the secret. He is always promising great things, in short, and performs nothing. The vagaries, whimsies, and pregnant throes of Joanna Southcote, were sober and rational, compared with Mr. Coleridge’s qualms and crude conceptions, and promised deliverance in this Lay Sermon. The true secret of all this, we suspect, is, that our author has not made up his own mind on any of the subjects of which he professes to treat, and on which he warns his readers against coming to any conclusion, without his especial assistance; by means of which, they may at last attain to ‘that imperative and oracular form of the understanding,’ of which he speaks as ‘the form of reason itself in all things purely rational and moral.’ In this state of voluntary self-delusion, into which he has thrown himself, he mistakes hallucinations for truths, though he still has his misgivings, and dares not communicate them to others, except in distant hints, lest the spell should be broken, and the vision disappear. Plain sense and plain speaking would put an end to those ‘thick-coming fancies,’ that lull him to repose. It is in this sort of waking dream, this giddy maze of opinions, started, and left, and resumed—this momentary pursuit of truths, as if they were butterflies—that Mr. Coleridge’s pleasure, and, we believe, his chief faculty, lies. He has a thousand shadowy thoughts that rise before him, and hold each a glass, in which they point to others yet more dim and distant. He has a thousand self-created fancies that glitter and burst like bubbles. In the world of shadows, in the succession of bubbles, there is no preference but of the most shadowy, no attachment but to the shortest-lived. Mr. Coleridge accordingly has no principle but that of being governed entirely by his own caprice, indolence, or vanity; no opinion that any body else holds, or even he himself, for two moments together. His fancy is stronger than his reason; his apprehension greater than his comprehension. He perceives every thing, but the relations of things to one another. His ideas are as finely shaded as the rainbow of the moon upon the clouds, as evanescent, and as soon dissolved. The subtlety of his tact, the quickness and airiness of his invention, make him perceive every possible shade and view of a subject in its turn; but this readiness of lending his imagination to every thing, prevents him from weighing the force of any one, or retaining the most important in mind. It destroys the balance and _momentum_ of his feelings; makes him unable to follow up a principle into its consequences, or maintain a truth in spite of opposition: it takes away all _will_ to adhere to what is right, and reject what is wrong; and, with the will, the power to do it, at the expense of any thing difficult in thought, or irksome in feeling. The consequence is, that the general character of Mr. Coleridge’s intellect, is a restless and yet listless dissipation, that yields to every impulse, and is stopped by every obstacle; an indifference to the greatest trifles, or the most important truths: or rather, a preference of the vapid to the solid, of the possible to the actual, of the impossible to both; of theory to practice, of contradiction to reason, and of absurdity to common sense. Perhaps it is well that he is so impracticable as he is; for whenever, by any accident, he comes to practice, he is dangerous in the extreme. Though his opinions are neutralized in the extreme levity of his understanding, we are sometimes tempted to suspect that they may be subjected to a more ignoble bias; for though he does not ply his oars very strenuously in following the tide of corruption, or set up his sails to catch the tainted breeze of popularity, he suffers his boat to drift along with the stream. We do not pretend to understand the philosophical principles of that anomalous production, ‘the Friend;’ but we remember that the practical measures which he there attempted to defend, were the expedition to Copenhagen, the expedition to Walcheren, and the assassination of Buonaparte, which, at the time Mr. Coleridge was getting that work into circulation, was a common topic of conversation, and a sort of _forlorn hope_ in certain circles. A man who exercises an unlimited philosophical scepticism on questions of abstract right or wrong, may be of service to the progress of truth; but a writer who exercises this privilege, with a regular leaning to the side of power, is a very questionable sort of person. There is not much of this kind in the present Essay. It has no leaning any way. All the sentiments advanced in it are ‘like the swan’s down feather—

‘That stands upon the swell at full of tide,
And neither way inclines.’

We have here given a pretty strong opinion on the merits of this performance: and we proceed to make it good by extracts from the work itself; and it is just as well to begin with the beginning.

‘If our whole knowledge and information concerning the Bible had been confined to the one fact, of its immediate derivation from God, we should still presume that it contained rules and assistances for all conditions of men, under all circumstances; and therefore for communities no less than for individuals. The contents of every work must correspond to the character and designs of the workmaster; and the inference in the present case is too obvious to be overlooked, too plain to be resisted. It requires, indeed, all the might of superstition, to conceal from a man of common understanding, the further truth, that the interment of such a treasure, in a dead language, must needs be contrary to the intentions of the gracious Donor. Apostasy itself dared not question the _premise_: and, that the practical _consequence_ did not follow, is conceivable only under a complete _system_ of delusion, which, from the cradle to the death-bed, ceases not to overawe the will by obscure fears, while it preoccupies the senses by vivid imagery and ritual pantomime. But to such a scheme, all forms of sophistry are native. The very excellence of the Giver has been made a reason for withholding the gift; nay, the transcendent value of the gift itself assigned as the motive of its detention. We may be shocked at the presumption, but need not be surprised at the fact, that a jealous priesthood should have ventured to represent the applicability of the Bible to all the wants and occasions of men, as a wax-like pliability to all their fancies and prepossessions. Faithful guardians of Holy Writ!’ &c.

And after a great deal to the same effect, he proceeds—

‘The humblest and least educated of our countrymen must have wilfully neglected the inestimable privileges secured to all alike, if he has not himself found, if he has not from his own personal experience discovered, the sufficiency of the Scriptures in all knowledge requisite for a right performance of his duty as a man and a Christian. Of the labouring classes, who in all countries form the great majority of the inhabitants, more than this is not demanded, more than this is not perhaps generally desirable.’—‘They are not sought for in public counsel, nor need they be found where politic sentences are spoken. It is enough if every one is wise in the working of his own craft: so best will they maintain the state of the world.’ p. 7.

Now, if this is all that is necessary or desirable for the people to know, we can see little difference between the doctrine of the Lay Sermon, and ‘that complete system of papal imposture, which inters the Scriptures in a dead language, and commands its vassals to take for granted what it forbids them to ascertain.’ If a candidate is to start for infallibility, we, for our parts, shall give our casting vote for the successor of St. Peter, rather than for Mr. Coleridge. The Bible, we believe, when rightly understood, contains no set of rules for making the labouring classes mere ‘workers in brass or in stone,’—‘hewers of wood or drawers of water,’ each wise in his own craft. Yet it is by confining their inquiries and their knowledge to such vocations, and excluding them from any share in politics, philosophy, and theology, ‘that the state of the world is best upheld.’ Such is the exposition of our Lay-Divine. Such is his application of it. Why then does he blame the Catholics for acting on this principle—for deducing the _practical consequence_ from the acknowledged _premise_? Great as is our contempt for the delusions of the Romish Church, it would have been still greater, if they had opened the sacred volume to the poor and illiterate; had told them that it contained the most useful knowledge for all conditions and for all circumstances of life, public and private; and had then instantly shut the book in their faces, saying, it was enough for them to be wise in their own calling and to leave the study and interpretation of the Scriptures to their betters—to Mr. Coleridge and his imaginary audience. The Catholic Church might have an excuse for what it did in the supposed difficulty of understanding the Scriptures, their doubts and ambiguities, and ‘wax-like pliability to all occasions and humours.’ But Mr. Coleridge has no excuse; for he says, they are plain to all capacities, high and low together. ‘The road of salvation,’ he says, ‘is for us a high road, and the way-farer, though simple, need not err therein.’ And he accordingly proceeds to draw up a provisional bill of indictment, and to utter his doubtful denunciations against us as a nation, for the supposed neglect of the inestimable privileges, _secured alike to all_, and for the lights held out to all for ‘maintaining the state’ of their country in the precepts and examples of Holy Writ; when, all of a sudden, his eye encountering that brilliant auditory which his pen had conjured up, the Preacher finds out, that the only use of the study of the Scriptures for the rest of the people, is to learn that they have no occasion to study them at all—‘so best shall they maintain the state of the world.’ If Mr. Coleridge has no meaning in what he writes, he had better not write at all: if he has any meaning, he contradicts himself. The truth is, however, as it appears to us, that the whole of this Sermon is written to sanction the principle of Catholic dictation, and to reprobate that diffusion of free inquiry—that difference of private, and ascendancy of public opinion, which has been the necessary consequence, and the great benefit of the Reformation. That Mr. Coleridge himself is as squeamish in guarding _his_ Statesman’s Manual from profanation as any Popish priest can be in keeping the Scriptures from the knowledge of the Laity, will be seen from the following delicate _morceau_, which occurs, p. 44.

‘When I named this Essay a Sermon, I sought to prepare the inquirers after it _for the absence of all the usual softenings suggested by worldly prudence, of all compromise between truth and courtesy_. But not even as a Sermon would I have addressed the present Discourse _to a promiscuous audience_; and for this reason I likewise announced it in the title-page, as exclusively _ad clerum, i.e._ (in the old and wide sense of the word) to men of _clerkly_ acquirements, of whatever profession. I would that the greater part of our publications could be thus _directed_, each to its appropriate class of readers.[6] But this cannot be! For among other odd burrs and kecksies, the misgrowth of our luxuriant activity, we have now a READING PUBLIC—as strange a phrase, methinks, as ever forced a splenetic smile on the staid countenance of Meditation; and yet no fiction! For our readers have, in good truth, multiplied exceedingly, and have waxed proud. It would require the intrepid accuracy of a Colquhoun to venture at the precise number of that vast company only, whose heads and hearts are dieted at the two public _ordinaries_ of Literature, the circulating libraries and the periodical press. But what is the result? Does the inward man thrive on this regimen? Alas! if the average health of the consumers may be judged of by the articles of largest consumption; if the secretions may be conjectured from the ingredients of the dishes that are found best suited to their palates; from all that I have seen, either of the banquet or the guests, I shall utter my _Profaccia_ with a desponding sigh. From a popular philosophy and a philosophic populace, good sense deliver us!’

If it were possible to be serious after a passage like this, we might ask, what is to hinder a convert of ‘the church of superstition’ from exclaiming in like manner, ‘From a popular theology, and a theological populace, Good Lord deliver us! ‘Mr. Coleridge does not say—will he say—that as many sects and differences of opinion in religion have not risen up, in consequence of the Reformation, as in philosophy or politics, from ‘the misgrowth of our luxuriant activity?’ Can any one express a greater disgust, (approaching to _nausea_), at every sect and separation from the Church of England, which he sometimes, by an hyperbole of affectation, affects to call the Catholic Church? There is something, then, worse than ‘luxuriant activity,’—the palsy of death; something worse than occasional error,—systematic imposture; something worse than the collision of differing opinions,—the suppression of all freedom of thought and independent love of truth, under the torpid sway of an insolent and selfish domination, which makes use of truth and falsehood equally as tools of its own aggrandisement and the debasement of its vassals, and always must do so, without the exercise of public opinion, and freedom of conscience, as its control and counter-check. For what have we been labouring for the last three hundred years? Would Mr. Coleridge, with impious hand, turn the world ‘twice ten degrees askance,’ and carry us back to the dark ages? Would he punish the _reading public_ for their bad taste in reading periodical publications which he does not like, by suppressing the freedom of the press altogether, or destroying the art of printing? He does not know what he means himself. Perhaps we can tell him. He, or at least those whom he writes to please, and who look ‘with jealous leer malign’ at modern advantages and modern pretensions, would give us back all the abuses of former times, without any of their advantages; and impose upon us, by force or fraud, a complete system of superstition without faith, of despotism without loyalty, of error without enthusiasm, and all the evils, without any of the blessings, of ignorance. The senseless jargon which Mr. Coleridge has let fall on this subject, is the more extraordinary, inasmuch as he declares, in an early part of his Sermon, that ‘Religion and Reason are their own evidence;’—a position which appears to us ‘fraught with _potential infidelity_’ quite as much as Unitarianism, or the detestable plan for teaching reading and writing, and a knowledge of the Scriptures, without the creed or the catechism of the Church of England. The passage in which this sweeping clause is introduced _en passant_, is worth quoting, both as it is very nonsensical in itself, and as it is one of the least nonsensical in the present pamphlet.

‘In the infancy of the world, signs and wonders were requisite, in order to startle and break down that superstition, idolatrous in itself, and the source of all other idolatry, which tempts the natural man to seek the true cause and origin of public calamities in outward circumstances, persons and incidents: in agents, therefore, that were themselves but surges of the same tide, passive conductors of the one invisible influence, under which the total host of billows, in the whole line of successive impulse, swell and roll shoreward; there finally, each in its turn, to strike, roar, and be dissipated.

‘But with each miracle worked there was a truth revealed, which thenceforward was to act as its substitute: And if we think the Bible less applicable to us on account of the miracles, we degrade ourselves into mere slaves of sense and fancy; which are, indeed, the appointed medium between earth and heaven, but for that very cause stand in a desirable relation to spiritual truth then only, when, as a mere and passive medium, they yield a free passage to its light. It was only to overthrow the usurpation exercised in and through the senses, that the senses were miraculously appealed to. Reason and Religion are their own evidence. The natural sun is, in this respect, a symbol of the spiritual. Ere he is fully arisen, and while his glories are still under veil, he calls up the breeze to chase away the usurping vapours of the night-season, and thus converts the air itself into the minister of its own purification: not surely in proof or elucidation of the light from heaven, but to prevent its interception.’ p. 12.

Here is a very pretty Della Cruscan image: and we really think it a pity, that Mr. Coleridge ever quitted that school of poetry to grapple with the simplicity of nature, or to lose himself in the depths of philosophy. His illustration is pretty, but false. He treats the miracles recorded in the Scriptures, with more than heretical boldness, as mere appeals to ‘sense and fancy,’ or to ‘the natural man,’ to counteract the impressions of sense and fancy. But, for the light of Heaven to have been like the light of day in this respect, the Sun ought to have called up other vapours opposite, as mirrors or pageants to reflect its light, dimmed by the intermediate vapours, instead of chasing the last away. We criticize the simile, because we are sure higher authority will object to the doctrine. We might challenge Mr. Coleridge to point out a single writer, Catholic, Protestant or Sectarian, whose principles are not regarded as _potential infidelity_ by the rest, that does not consider the miraculous attestation of certain revealed doctrines as proofs of their truth, independently of their internal evidence. They are a distinct and additional authority. Reason and Religion are no more the same in this respect, than ocular demonstration and oral testimony are the same. Neither are they opposed to one another, any more. We believe in credible witnesses. We believe in the word of God, when we have reason to suppose, that we hear his voice in the thunder of his power: but we cannot, consistently with the principles of reason or of sound faith, suppose him to utter what is contrary to reason, though it may be different from it. Revelation utters a voice in the silence of reason, but does not contradict it: it throws a light on objects too distant for the unassisted eye to behold. But it does not pervert our natural organs of vision, with respect to objects within their reach. Reason and religion are therefore consistent, but not the same, nor equally self-evident. All this, we think, is clear and plain. But Mr. Coleridge likes to darken and perplex every question of which he treats. So, in the passage above quoted, he affirms that Religion is its own evidence, to confound one class of readers; and he afterwards asserts that Reason is founded on faith, to astonish another. He proceeds indeed by the _differential method_ in all questions; and his chief care, in which he is tolerably successful, is not to agree with any set of men or opinions. We pass over his Jeremiad on the French Revolution,—his discovery that the state of public opinion has a considerable influence on the state of public affairs, particularly in turbulent times,—his apology for imitating St. Paul by quoting Shakespear, and many others: for if we were to collect all the riches of absurdity in this Discourse, we should never have done. But there is one passage, upon which he has plainly taken so much pains, that we _must_ give it.

‘A calm and detailed examination of the facts, justifies me to my own mind, in hazarding the bold assertion, that the fearful blunders of the late dread Revolution, and all the calamitous mistakes of its opponents, from its commencement even to the era of loftier principles and wiser measures (an era, that began with, and ought to be named from, the war of the Spanish and Portuguese insurgents), every failure, with all its gloomy results, may be unanswerably deduced, from the neglect of some maxim or other that had been established by clear reasoning and plain facts, in the writings of Thucydides, Tacitus, Machiavel, Bacon, or Harrington. These are red-letter names, even in the almanacks of worldly wisdom: and yet I dare challenge all the critical benches of infidelity, to point out any one important truth, any one efficient practical direction or warning, which did not preexist, and for the most part in a sounder, more intelligible, and more comprehensive form IN THE BIBLE.’

‘In addition to this, the Hebrew legislator, and the other inspired poets, prophets, historians and moralists, of the Jewish church, have two immense advantages in their favour. First, their particular rules and prescripts flow directly and visibly from universal principles, as from a fountain: they flow from principles and ideas that are not so properly said to be confirmed by reason, as to be reason itself! Principles, in act and procession, disjoined from which, and from the emotions that inevitably accompany the actual intuition of their truth, the widest maxims of prudence are like arms without hearts, muscles without nerves. Secondly, from the very nature of these principles, as taught in the Bible, they are understood, in exact proportion as they are believed and felt. The regulator is never separated from the main spring. For the words of the Apostle are literally and philosophically true: _We_ (that is the human race) _live by faith_. Whatever we do or know, that in kind is different from the brute creation, has its origin in a determination of the reason to have faith and trust in itself. This, its first act of faith, is scarcely less than identical with its own being. _Implicité_, it is the copula—it contains the _possibility_—of every position, to which there exists any correspondence in reality. It is itself, therefore, the realizing principle, the spiritual substratum of the whole complex body of truths. This primal act of faith is enunciated in the word, God: a faith not derived from experience, but its ground and source; and without which, the fleeting _chaos of facts_ would no more form experience, than the dust of the grave can of itself make a living man. The imperative and oracular form of the inspired Scripture, is _the form of reason itself_, in all things purely rational and moral.

‘If it be the word of Divine Wisdom, we might anticipate, that it would in all things be distinguished from other books, as the Supreme Reason, whose knowledge is creative, and antecedent to the things known, is distinguished from the understanding, or creaturely mind of the individual, the acts of which are posterior to the things it records and arranges. Man alone was created in the image of God: a position groundless and inexplicable, if _the reason_ in man do not differ from _the understanding_. For this the inferior animals (many at least) possess _in degree_: and assuredly the divine image or idea is not a thing of degrees,’ &c. &c. &c.

There is one short passage, just afterwards, in which the author makes an easy transition from cant to calumny: and, with equal credit and safety to himself, insults and traduces the dead. ‘One confirmation of the latter assertion you may find in the history of our country, written by the same Scotch Philosopher, who devoted his life to the undermining of the Christian Religion; and _expended his last breath in a blasphemous regret, that he had not survived it_!’ This last assertion is a gratuitous poetical fabrication, as mean as it is malignant. With respect to Mr. Hume’s History, here spoken of with ignorant petulance, it is beyond dispute the most judicious, profound, and acute of all historical compositions, though the friends of liberty may admit, with the advocate of servility, that it has its defects;—and the scepticism into which its ingenious and most amiable author was betrayed in matters of religion, must always be lamented by the lovers of genius and virtue. The venom of the sting meant to be inflicted on the memory of ‘the Scotch Philosopher,’ seems to have returned to the writer’s own bosom, and to have exhausted itself in the following bloated passage.

‘At the annunciation of PRINCIPLES, of IDEAS, the soul of man awakes, and starts up, as an exile in a far distant land at the unexpected sounds of his native language, when, after long years of absence, and almost of oblivion, he is suddenly addressed in his own mother tongue. He weeps for joy, and embraces the speaker as his brother. _How else can we explain the fact so honourable to Great Britain,[7] that the poorest amongst us will contend with as much enthusiasm as the richest for the rights of property?_ These rights are the spheres and necessary conditions of free agency. But free agency contains the idea of the free will; and in this he intuitively knows the sublimity, and the infinite hopes, fears, and capabilities of his own (English) nature. On what other ground but the _cognateness of ideas_ and principles to man as man, does the nameless soldier rush to the combat in defence of the liberties or _the honour_ of his country? Even men, wofully neglectful of the principles of religion, will shed their blood for its truth.’ p. 30.

How does this passage agree with Mr. C.’s general contempt of mankind, and that especial aversion to ‘Mob-Sycophancy’ which has marked him from the cradle, and which formerly led him to give up the periodical paper of the Watchman, and to break off in the middle of his ‘_Conciones ad Populum_?’ A few plain instincts, and a little common sense, are all that the most popular of our popular writers attribute to the people, or rely on for their success in addressing them. But Mr. Coleridge, the mob-hating Mr. Coleridge, here supposes them intuitively to perceive the cabalistical visions of German metaphysics; and compliments the poorest peasant, and the nameless soldier, not only on the cognateness of their ideas and principles to man as man, but on their immediate and joyous excitation at the mere annunciation of such delightful things as ‘_Principles_ and _Ideas_.’ Our mystic, in a Note, finds a confirmation of this cognateness of the most important truths to the vulgarest of the people, in ‘an anecdote told with much humour in one of Goldsmith’s Essays.’ Poor Goldy! How he would have stared at this transcendental inference from his humorous anecdote! He would have felt as awkwardly as Gulliver did, when the monkey at the palace of Brobdignag took him an airing on the tiles, and almost broke his neck by the honour. Mr. Coleridge’s patronage is of the same unwieldy kind.—The Preacher next gives his authorities for reading the Scriptures. They are—Heraclitus and Horace.—In earnest? In good sooth, and in sad and sober earnest.

‘Or would you wish for authorities?—for great examples?—You may find them in the writings of Thuanus, of Lord Clarendon, of Sir Thomas More, of Raleigh; and in the life and letters of the heroic Gustavus Adolphus. But these, though eminent statesmen, were Christians, and might lie under the thraldom of habit and prejudice. I will refer you then to authorities of two great men, both Pagans; but removed from each other by many centuries, and not more distant in their ages than in their characters and situations. The first shall be that of Heraclitus, the sad and recluse philosopher. Πολυμαθιη νοον οὐ διδασκει· Σιβυλλα δε μαινομενᾳ στόματι αγελαστα και ακαλλωπιστα και αμυριστα φθεγγομενη, χιλιων ετων εξικνεται τῃ φωνῃ δια τον θεον.[8] Shall we hesitate to apply to the prophets of God, what could be affirmed of the Sibylls by a philosopher whom Socrates, the prince of philosophers, venerated for the profundity of his wisdom?

‘For the other, I will refer you to the darling of the polished court of Augustus, to the man whose works have been in all ages deemed the models of good sense, and are still the pocket-companions of those who pride themselves on uniting the scholar with the gentleman. This accomplished man of the world has given an account of the subjects of conversation between the illustrious statesmen who governed, and the brightest luminaries who then adorned, the empire of the civilized world—

‘Sermo oritur non de villis domibusve alienis
Nec, male, nec ne lepus saltet. Sed quod magis ad nos
Pertinet, et nescire malum est, agitamus: utrumne
Divitiis homines, an sint virtute beati?
Et qua sit natura boni? summumque quid eius?’

It is not easy to conceive any thing better than this;—only the next passage beats it hollow, and is itself surpassed by the one after it, ‘as Alps o’er Alps arise.’

So far Mr. Coleridge has indulged himself in ‘a preparatory heat,’ and said nothing about the Bible. But now he girds himself up for his main purpose, places himself at the helm, and undertakes to conduct the statesman to his desired haven in Scripture prophecy and history. ‘But do you require some one or more particular passage from the Bible, that may at once illustrate and exemplify its applicability to the changes and fortunes of empires? Of the numerous chapters that relate to the Jewish tribes, their enemies and allies, before and after their division into two kingdoms, it would be more difficult to state a single one, from which some guiding light might _not_ be struck.’ Does Mr. Coleridge then condescend to oblige us with any one? Nothing can be farther from his thoughts. He is here off again at a tangent, and does not return to the subject for the next seven pages. When he does—it is in the following explicit manner.—‘But I refer to the demand. _Were it my object to touch on the present state of public affairs in this kingdom, or on the prospective measures in agitation respecting our sister island, I would direct your most serious meditations to the latter period of the reign of Solomon, and to the revolutions in the reign of Rehoboam, his successor. But I should tread on glowing embers: I will turn to the causes of the revolution, and fearful chastisement of France._’ Let the reader turn to the first book of Kings, in which the parallel passage to our own history at the present crisis stands, according to our author, so alarmingly conspicuous; and he will not be surprised that Mr. Coleridge found himself ‘treading on glowing embers.’ The insidious loyalty or covert Jacobinism of this same parallel, which he declines drawing on account of its extreme applicability, is indeed beyond our comprehension, and not a less ‘curious specimen of psychology,’ than the one immediately preceding it, in which he proves the doctrine of _divine right_ to be revealed in an especial manner in the Hebrew Scriptures.

We should proceed to notice that part of the Sermon, where the orator rails at the public praises of Dr. Bell, and abuses Joseph Lancaster, _con amore_. Nothing more flat and vapid, in wit or argument, was ever put before the public, which he treats with such contempt. Of the wit, take the following choice sample.

‘But the phrase of the READING PUBLIC, which occasioned this note, brings to my mind the mistake of a lethargic Dutch traveller, who returning highly gratified from a showman’s caravan, which he had been tempted to enter by the words, THE LEARNED PIG, gilt on the pannels, met another caravan of a similar shape, with THE READING FLY on it, in letters of the same size and splendour. “Why, dis is voonders above voonders!” exclaims the Dutchman; takes his seat as first comer; and, soon fatigued by waiting, and by the very hush and intensity of his expectation, gives way to his constitutional somnolence, from which he is roused by the supposed showman at Hounslow, with a—“_In what name, Sir! was your place taken? Are you booked all the way for Reading?_”—Now a Reading Public is (to my mind) more marvellous still, and in the third tier of “voonders above voonders!”’

Mr. Coleridge’s wit and sentimentality do not seem to have settled accounts together; for in the very next page after this ‘third tier of wonders,’ he says—

‘And here my apprehensions point to two opposite errors. The first consists in a disposition to think, that as the peace of nations has been disturbed by the diffusion of a false light, it may be re-established by excluding the people from all knowledge and all prospect of amelioration. O! never, never! Reflection and stirrings of mind, with all their restlessness, and all the errors that result from their imperfection, from the _Too much_, because _Too little_, are come into the world. The powers that awaken and foster the spirit of curiosity, are to be found in every village: Books are in every hovel: The infant’s cries are hushed with _picture_-books: and the Cottager’s child sheds its first bitter tears over pages, which render it impossible for the man to be treated or governed as a child. Here, as in so many other cases, the inconveniences that have arisen from a thing’s having become too general, are best removed by making it universal.’ p. 49.

And yet, with Mr. Coleridge, a reading public is ‘voonders above voonders’—a strange phrase, and yet no fiction! The public is become a reading public, down to the cottager’s child; and he thanks God for it—for that great moral steam-engine, Dr. Bell’s original and unsophisticated plan, which he considers as an especial gift of Providence to the human race—thus about to be converted into one great reading public; and yet he utters his _Profaccia_ upon it with a desponding sigh; and proposes, as a remedy, to put this spirit which has gone forth, under the tutelage of churchwardens, to cant against ‘liberal ideas,’ and ‘the jargon of this enlightened age;’—in other words, to turn this vast machine against itself, and make it a go-cart of corruption, servility, superstition and tyranny. Mr. Coleridge’s first horror is, that there should be a reading public: his next hope is to prevent them from reaping an atom of benefit from ‘reflection and stirrings of mind, with all their restlessness.’

The conclusion of this discourse is even more rhapsodical than the former part of it; and we give the pulpit or rostrum from which Mr. Coleridge is supposed to deliver it, ‘high enthroned above all height,’ the decided preference over that throne of dulness and of nonsense which Pope did erst erect for the doubtful merits of Colley and Sir Richard.

The notes are better, and but a little better than the text. We might select, as specimens of laborious foolery, the passage in which the writer defends _second sight_, to prove that he has unjustly been accused of visionary paradox, or hints that a disbelief in ghosts and witches is no great sign of the wisdom of the age, or that in which he gives us to understand that Sir Isaac Newton was a great astrologer, or Mr. Locke no conjurer. But we prefer (for our limits are straitened) the author’s description of a green field, which he prefaces by observing, that ‘the book of Nature has been the music of gentle and pious minds in all ages; and that it is the poetry of all human nature to read it likewise in a figurative sense, and to find therein correspondences and symbols of a spiritual nature.’

MR. COLERIDGE’S DESCRIPTION OF A GREEN FIELD.

‘I have at this moment before me, in the flowery meadow on which my eye is now reposing, one of Nature’s most soothing chapters, in which there is no lamenting word, no one character of guilt or anguish. For never can I look and meditate on the vegetable creation, without a feeling similar to that with which we gaze at a beautiful infant that has fed itself asleep at its mother’s bosom, and smiles in its strange dream of obscure yet happy sensations. The same tender and genial pleasure takes possession of me, and this pleasure is checked and drawn inward by the like aching melancholy, by the same whispered remonstrance, and made restless by a similar impulse of aspiration. It seems as if the soul said to herself—“From this state” (from that of a flowery meadow) “hast _thou_ fallen! Such shouldst thou still become, thyself all permeable to a holier power! Thyself at once hidden and glorified by its own transparency, as the accidental and dividuous in this quiet and harmonious object is subjected to the life and light of nature which shines in it, even as the transmitted power, love and wisdom, of God over all fills, and shines through, Nature! But what the plant _is_, by an act not its own, and unconsciously—_that_ must thou _make_ thyself to _become_! must by prayer, and by a watchful and unresisting spirit, _join_ at least with the preventive and assisting grace to _make_ thyself, in that light of conscience which inflameth not, and with that knowledge which puffeth not up.”’

This will do. It is well observed by Hobbes, that ‘it is by means of words only that a man becometh excellently wise or excellently foolish.’

COLERIDGE’S LITERARY LIFE

VOL. XXVIII.] [_August 1817._

There are some things readable in these volumes; and if the learned author could only have been persuaded to make them a little more conformable to their title, we have no doubt that they would have been the most popular of all his productions. Unfortunately, however, this work is not so properly an account of his Life and Opinions, as an Apology for them. ‘It will be found,’ says our Auto-Biographer, ‘that the least of what I have written concerns myself personally.’ What then, it may be asked, is the work taken up with? With the announcement of an explanation of the author’s Political and Philosophical creed, to be contained in another work—with a prefatory introduction of 200 pages to an Essay on the difference between Fancy and Imagination, which was intended to form part of this, but has been suppressed, at the request of a judicious friend, as unintelligible—with a catalogue of Mr. Southey’s domestic virtues, and author-like qualifications—a candid defence of the Lyrical Ballads—a critique on Mr. Wordsworth’s poetry—quotations from the Friend—and attacks on the Edinburgh Review. There are, in fact, only two or three passages in the work which relate to the details of the author’s life,—such as the account of his school-education, and of his setting up the Watchman newspaper. We shall make sure of the first of these curious documents, before we completely lose ourselves in the multiplicity of his speculative opinions.

‘At school, I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe master, the Rev. James Bowyer, many years Head Master of the Grammar-School, Christ’s Hospital. He early moulded my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again, of Virgil to Ovid. He habituated me to compare Lucretius (in such extracts as I then read), Terence, and, above all, the chaster poems of Catullus, not only with the Roman poets of the so called silver and brazen ages, but with even those of the Augustan era; and, on grounds of plain sense, and universal logic, to see and assert the superiority of the former, in the truth and nativeness both of their thoughts and diction. At the same time that we were studying the Greek tragic poets, he made us read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons: and they were the lessons, too, which required most time and trouble to _bring up_, so as to escape his censure. I learnt from him, that Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets, he would say, there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word; and I well remember, that, availing himself of the synonimes to the Homer of Didymus, he made us attempt to show, with regard to each, _why_ it would not have answered the same purpose; and _wherein_ consisted the peculiar fitness of the word in the original text.

‘I had just entered on my seventeenth year, when the Sonnets of Mr. Bowles, twenty in number, and just then published in a quarto pamphlet, were first made known and presented to me, by a school-fellow who had quitted us for the University, and who, during the whole time that he was in our first form (or, in our school language, a GRECIAN), had been my patron and protector. I refer to Dr. Middleton, the truly learned, and every way excellent Bishop of Calcutta—

‘Qui laudibus amplis
Ingenium celebrare meum, calamumque solebat,
Calcar agens animo validum. Non omnia terræ
Obruta! Vivit amor, vivit dolor! Ora negatur
Dulcia conspicere; at flere et meminisse relictum est.’
_Petr. Ep. Lib. 7. Ep. 1._

‘It was a double pleasure to me, and still remains a tender recollection, that I should have received from a friend so revered, the first knowledge of a poet, by whose works, year after year, I was so enthusiastically delighted and inspired. My earliest acquaintances will not have forgotten the undisciplined eagerness and impetuous zeal, with which I laboured to make proselytes, not only of my companions, but of all with whom I conversed, of whatever rank, and in whatever place. As my school finances did not permit me to purchase copies, I made, within less than a year and an half, more than forty transcriptions, as the best presents I could offer to those who had in any way won my regard. And, with almost equal delight, did I receive the three or four following publications of the same author.

‘Though I have seen and known enough of mankind to be well aware that I shall perhaps stand alone in my creed, and that it will be well, if I subject myself to no worse charge than that of singularity; I am not therefore deterred from avowing, that I regard, and ever have regarded the obligations of intellect among the most sacred of the claims of gratitude. A valuable thought, or a particular train of thoughts, gives me additional pleasure, when I can safely refer and attribute it to the conversation or correspondence of another. My obligations to Mr. Bowles were indeed important, and for radical good. _At a very premature age, even before my fifteenth year, I had bewildered myself in metaphysicks, and in theological controversy. Nothing else pleased me. History, and particular facts, lost all interest in my mind._ Poetry (though for a schoolboy of that age, I was above par in English versification, and had already produced two or three compositions which, I may venture to say, without reference to my age, were somewhat above mediocrity, and which had gained me more credit, than the sound, good sense of my old master was at all pleased with)—_poetry itself, yea novels and romances, became insipid to me_. In my friendless wanderings on our _leave-days_, (for I was an orphan, and had scarcely any connexions in London), highly was I delighted, if any passenger, especially if he were drest in black, would enter into conversation with me. For I soon found the means of directing it to my favourite subjects

Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate,
Fix’d fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute,
And found no end in wandering mazes lost.

‘This preposterous pursuit was, beyond doubt, injurious, both to my natural powers, and to the progress of my education. It would perhaps have been destructive, had it been continued; but from this I was auspiciously withdrawn, partly indeed by an accidental introduction to an amiable family, chiefly however by the genial influence of a style of poetry, so tender, and yet so manly, so natural and real, and yet so dignified and harmonious, as the sonnets, &c. of Mr. Bowles! Well were it for me, perhaps, had I never relapsed into the same mental disease; if I had continued to pluck the flower, and reap the harvest from the cultivated surface, instead of delving in the unwholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic depths. But if in after-time I have sought a refuge from bodily pain and mismanaged sensibility, in abstruse researches, which exercised the strength and subtlety of the understanding, without awakening the feelings of the heart; still there was a long and blessed interval, during which my natural faculties were allowed to expand, and my original tendencies to develop themselves—my fancy, and the love of nature, and the sense of beauty in forms and sounds.’ p. 17.