Coleridge
was then extremely ill;
but certainly did not believe his end to be quite so near at hand as it
was.
but certainly did not believe his end to be quite so near at hand as it
was.
Coleridge - Table Talk
WETHERELL'S SPEECH.
--NATIONAL CHURCH.
--DISSENTERS.
--PAPACY.
----
UNIVERSITIES.
I think Sir Charles Wetherell's speech before the Privy Council very
effective. I doubt if any other lawyer in Westminster Hall could have done
the thing so well.
* * * * *
The National Church requires, and is required by, the Christian Church, for
the perfection of each. For if there were no national Church, the mere
spiritual Church would either become, like the Papacy, a dreadful tyranny
over mind and body;--or else would fall abroad into a multitude of
enthusiastic sects, as in England in the seventeenth century. It is my deep
conviction that, in a country of any religion at all, liberty of conscience
can only be permanently preserved by means and under the shadow of a
national church--a political establishment connected with, but distinct
from, the spiritual Church.
* * * * *
I sometimes hope that the undisguised despotism of temper of the Dissenters
may at last awaken a jealousy in the laity of the Church of England. But
the apathy and inertness are, I fear, too profound--too providential.
* * * * *
Whatever the Papacy may have been on the Continent, it was always an
unqualified evil to this country. It destroyed what was rising of good, and
introduced a thousand evils of its own. The Papacy was and still is
essentially extra-national;--it affects, _temporally_, to do that which the
spiritual Church of Christ can alone do--to break down the natural
distinctions of nations. Now, as the Roman Papacy is in itself local and
peculiar, of course this attempt is nothing but a direct attack on the
political independence of other nations.
The institution of Universities was the single check on the Papacy. The
Pope always hated and maligned the Universities. The old coenobitic
establishments of England were converted--perverted, rather--into
monasteries and other monking receptacles. You see it was at Oxford that
Wicliffe alone found protection and encouragement.
_June_ 2. 1834.
SCHILLER'S VERSIFICATION. --GERMAN BLANK VERSE.
Schiller's blank verse is bad. He moves in it as a fly in a glue bottle.
His thoughts have their connection and variety, it is true, but there is no
sufficiently corresponding movement in the verse. How different from
Shakspeare's endless rhythms!
There is a nimiety--a too-muchness--in all Germans. It is the national
fault. Leasing had the best notion of blank verse. The trochaic termination
of German words renders blank verse in that language almost impracticable.
We have it in our dramatic hendecasyllable; but then we have a power of
interweaving the iambic close _ad libitum. _
_June_ 14. 1834.
ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. --DUKE OF WELLINGTON. --CORONATION OATH.
The Roman Catholic Emancipation Act--carried in the violent, and, in fact,
unprincipled manner it was--was in effect a Surinam toad;--and the Reform
Bill, the Dissenters' admission to the Universities, and the attack on the
Church, are so many toadlets, one after another detaching themselves from
their parent brute.
* * * * *
If you say there is nothing in the Romish religion, sincerely felt,
inconsistent with the duties of citizenship and allegiance to a territorial
Protestant sovereign, _cadit quaestio_. For if _that_ is once admitted,
there can be no answer to the argument from numbers. Certainly, if the
religion of the majority of the _people_ be innocuous to the interests of
the _nation_, the majority have a natural right to be trustees of the
nationalty--that property which is set apart for the nation's use, and
rescued from the gripe of private hands. But when I say--_for the nation's
use_. --I mean the very reverse of what the Radicals mean. They would
convert it to relieve taxation, which I call a private, personal, and
perishable use. A nation's uses are immortal.
* * * * *
How lamentable it is to hear the Duke of Wellington expressing himself
doubtingly on the abominable sophism that the Coronation Oath only binds
the King as the executive power--thereby making a Highgate oath of it. But
the Duke is conscious of the ready retort which his language and conduct on
the Emancipation Bill afford to his opponents. He is hampered by that
affair.
_June_ 20. 1834.
CORN LAWS. --MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY.
In the argument on the Corn Laws there is a [Greek: metazasis eis allo
gevos]. It may be admitted that the great principles of commerce require
the interchange of commodities to be free; but commerce, which is barter,
has no proper range beyond luxuries or conveniences;--it is properly the
complement to the full existence and development of a state. But how can it
be shown that the principles applicable to an interchange of conveniences
or luxuries apply also to an interchange of necessaries? No state can be
such properly, which is not self-subsistent at least; for no state that is
not so, is essentially independent. The nation that cannot even exist
without the commodity of another nation, is in effect the slave of that
other nation. In common times, indeed, pecuniary interest will prevail, and
prevent a ruinous exercise of the power which the nation supplying the
necessary must have over the nation which has only the convenience or
luxury to return; but such interest, both in individuals and nations, will
yield to many stronger passions. Is Holland any authority to the contrary?
If so, Tyre and Sidon and Carthage were so! Would you put England on a
footing with a country, which can be overrun in a campaign, and starved in
a year?
* * * * *
The entire tendency of the modern or Malthusian political economy is to
denationalize. It would dig up the charcoal foundations of the temple of
Ephesus to burn as fuel for a steam-engine!
_June_ 21. 1834.
Mr. ----, in his poem, makes trees coeval with Chaos;--which is next door
to Hans Sachse[1] who, in describing Chaos, said it was so pitchy dark,
that even the very _cats_ ran against each other!
[Footnote 1: Hans Sachse was born 1494, and died 1576. --ED],
_June_ 23. 1834.
SOCINIANISM. --UNITARIANISM. --FANCY AND IMAGINATION.
Faustus Socinus worshipped Jesus Christ, and said that God had given him
the power of being omnipresent. Davidi, with a little more acuteness, urged
that mere audition or creaturely presence could not possibly justify
worship from men;--that a man, how glorified soever, was no nearer God in
essence than the vulgarest of the race. Prayer, therefore, was
inapplicable. And how could a _man_ be a mediator between God and man? How
could a _man_ with sins himself offer any compensation for, or expiation
of, sin, unless the most arbitrary caprice were admitted into the counsels
of God? --And so, at last, you see, it was discovered by the better
logicians amongst the Socinians, that there was no such thing as sin at
all.
It is wonderful how any Socinian can read the works of Philo Judaeus
without some pause of doubt in the truth of his views as to the person of
Christ. Whether Philo wrote on his own ground as a Jew, or borrowed from
the Christians, the testimony as to the then Jewish expectation and
belief, is equally strong. You know Philo calls the Logos [Greek: yios
Theoy], the _Son of God_, and [Greek: agap_athon te non], _beloved Son_.
He calls him [Greek: arhchierheus], _high priest_, [Greek: deuterhos
Thehos], _second divinity_, [Greek: ei an Theoy], _image of God_, and
describes him as [Greek: eggutat_o m_adenhos ovtos methorhioy
diast_amatos], the _nearest possible to God without any intervening
separation_. And there are numerous other remarkable expressions of the
same sort.
My faith is this:--God is the Absolute Will: it is his Name and the meaning
of it. It is the Hypostasis. As begetting his own Alterity, the Jehovah,
the Manifested--He is the Father; but the Love and the Life--the Spirit--
proceeds from both.
I think Priestley must be considered the author of the modern
Unitarianism. I owe, under God, my return to the faith, to my having gone
much further than the Unitarians, and so having come round to the other
side. I can truly say, I never falsified the Scripture. I always told them
that their interpretations of the Scripture were intolerable upon any
principles of sound criticism; and that, if they were to offer to construe
the will of a neighbour as they did that of their Maker, they would be
scouted out of society. I said then plainly and openly, that it was clear
enough that John and Paul were not Unitarians. But at that time I had a
strong sense of the repugnancy of the doctrine of vicarious atonement to
the moral being, and I thought nothing could counterbalance that. "What
care I," I said, "for the Platonisms of John, or the Rabbinisms of Paul? --
My conscience revolts! " That was the ground of my Unitarianism.
Always believing in the government of God, I was a fervent Optimist. But as
I could not but see that the present state of things was not the best, I
was necessarily led to look forward to some future state.
* * * * *
You may conceive the difference in kind between the Fancy and the
Imagination in this way,--that if the check of the senses and the reason
were withdrawn, the first would become delirium, and the last mania. The
Fancy brings together images which have no connection natural or moral, but
are yoked together by the poet by means of some accidental coincidence; as
in the well-known passage in Hudibras:
"The sun had long since in the lap
Of Thetis taken out his nap,
And like a lobster boyl'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn. "[1]
The Imagination modifies images, and gives unity to variety; it sees all
things in one, _il piu nell' uno_. There is the epic imagination, the
perfection of which is in Milton; and the dramatic, of which Shakspeare is
the absolute master. The first gives unity by throwing back into the
distance; as after the magnificent approach of the Messiah to battle[2],
the poet, by one touch from himself--
--"far off their coming shone! "--
makes the whole one image.
And so at the conclusion of the description of the appearance of the
entranced angels, in which every sort of image from all the regions of
earth and air is introduced to diversify and illustrate,--the reader is
brought back to the single image by--
"He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded. "[3]
The dramatic imagination does not throw back, but brings close; it stamps
all nature with one, and that its own, meaning, as in Lear throughout.
[Footnote 1: Part II. c. 2. v. 29. ]
[Footnote 2:
----"Forth rush'd with whirlwind sound
The chariot of Paternal Deity,
Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn,
Itself instinct with spirit, but convoy'd
By four cherubic shapes; four faces each
Had wonderous; as with stars their bodies all
And wings were set with eyes; with eyes the wheels
Of beryl, and careering fires between;
Over their heads a crystal firmament,
Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure
Amber, and colours of the showery arch.
He, in celestial panoply all arm'd
Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought,
Ascended; at his right hand Victory
Sat eagle-wing'd; beside him hung his bow
And quiver, with three-bolted thunder stored;
And from about him fierce effusion roll'd
Of smoke, and bickering flame, and sparkles dire;
Attended with ten thousand thousand saints,
He onward came; _far off their coming shone;_
And twenty thousand (I their number heard)
Chariots of God, half on each hand, were seen:
He on the wings of cherub rode sublime
On the crystalline sky, in sapphire throned,
Illustrious far and wide; but by his own
First seen. "--P. L. b. vi. v. 749, &c. ]
[Footnote 3:
----"and call'd
His legions, angel forms, who lay intranced
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades,
High over arch'd, embower; or scatter'd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm'd
Hath vex'd the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris, and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcasses
And broken chariot wheels; so thick bestrewn,
Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
_He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded_. "--P. L. b. i. v. 300, &c. ]
* * * * *
At the very outset, what are we to think of the soundness of this modern
system of political economy, the direct tendency of every rule of which is
to denationalize, and to make the love of our country a foolish
superstition?
_June_ 28. 1834.
MR. COLERIDGE'S SYSTEM. --BIOGRAPHIA LITERAHIA. --DISSENTERS.
You may not understand my system, or any given part of it,--or by a
determined act of wilfulness, you may, even though perceiving a ray of
light, reject it in anger and disgust:--but this I will say,--that if you
once master it, or any part of it, you cannot hesitate to acknowledge it as
the truth. You cannot be sceptical about it.
The metaphysical disquisition at the end of the first volume of the
"Biographia Literaria" is unformed and immature;--it contains the fragments
of the truth, but it is not fully thought out. It is wonderful to myself to
think how infinitely more profound my views now are, and yet how much
clearer they are withal. The circle is completing; the idea is coming round
to, and to be, the common sense.
* * * * *
The generation of the modern worldly Dissenter was thus: Presbyterian,
Arian, Socinian, and last, Unitarian.
* * * * *
Is it not most extraordinary to see the Dissenters calling themselves the
descendants of the old Nonconformists, and yet clamouring for a divorce of
Church and State? Why--Baxter, and the other great leaders, would have
thought a man an atheist who had proposed such a thing. _They_ were rather
for merging the State _in_ the Church. But these our modern gentlemen, who
are blinded by political passion, give the kiss of alliance to the harlot
of Rome, and walk arm in arm with those who deny the God that redeemed
them, if so they may but wreak their insane antipathies on the National
Church! Well! I suppose they have counted the cost, and know what it is
they would have, and can keep.
_July_ 5. 1834.
LORD BROOKE. --BARROW AND DRYDEN. --PETER WILKINS AND STOTHARD. --FIELDING AND
RICHARDSON. --BISHOP SANDFORD. --ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION.
I do not remember a more beautiful piece of prose in English than the
consolation addressed by Lord Brooke (Fulke Greville) to a lady of quality
on certain conjugal infelicities. The diction is such that it might have
been written now, if we could find any one combining so thoughtful a head
with so tender a heart and so exquisite a taste.
* * * * *
Barrow often debased his language merely to evidence his loyalty. It was,
indeed, no easy task for a man of so much genius, and such a precise
mathematical mode of thinking, to adopt even for a moment the slang of
L'Estrange and Tom Brown; but he succeeded in doing so sometimes. With the
exception of such parts, Barrow must be considered as closing the first
great period of the English language. Dryden began the second. Of course
there are numerous subdivisions.
* * * * *
Peter Wilkins is to my mind a work of uncommon beauty; and yet Stothard's
illustrations have _added_ beauties to it. If it were not for a certain
tendency to affectation, scarcely any praise could be too high for
Stothard's designs. They give me great pleasure. I believe that Robinson
Crusoe and Peter Wilkins could only have been written by islanders. No
continentalist could have conceived either tale. Davis's story is an
imitation of Peter Wilkins; but there are many beautiful things in it;
especially his finding his wife crouching by the fireside--she having, in
his absence, plucked out all her feathers--to be like him!
It would require a very peculiar genius to add another tale, _ejusdem
generis_, to Robinson Crusoe and Peter Wilkins. I once projected such a
thing; but the difficulty of a pre-occupied ground stopped me. Perhaps La
Motte Fouque might effect something; but I should fear that neither he, nor
any other German, could entirely understand what may be called the "_desert
island_" feeling. I would try the marvellous line of Peter Wilkins, if I
attempted it, rather than the _real_ fiction of Robinson Crusoe.
* * * * *
What a master of composition Fielding was! Upon my word, I think the
Oedipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones the three most perfect plots
ever planned. And how charming, how wholesome, Fielding always is! To take
him up after Richardson, is like emerging from a sick room heated by
stoves, into an open lawn, on a breezy day in May.
* * * * *
I have been very deeply interested in the account of Bishop Sandford's
life, published by his son. He seems to have been a thorough gentleman upon
the model of St. Paul, whose manners were the finest of any man's upon
record.
* * * * *
I think I could have conformed to the then dominant Church before the
Reformation. The errors existed, but they had not been riveted into
peremptory articles of faith before the Council of Trent. If a Romanist
were to ask me the question put to Sir Henry Wotton, [1]I should content
myself by answering, that I could not exactly say when my religion, as he
was pleased to call it, began--but that it was certainly some sixty or
seventy years before _his_, at all events--which began at the Council of
Trent.
[Footnote 1:
"Having, at his being in Rome, made acquaintance with a pleasant priest,
who invited him, one evening, to hear their vesper music at church; the
priest, seeing Sir Henry stand obscurely in a corner, sends to him by a boy
of the choir this question, writ in a small piece of paper;--'Where was
your religion to be found before Luther? ' To which question Sir Henry
presently underwrit;--'My religion was to be found then, where yours is not
to be found now--in the written word of God. '"--_Isaak Walton's Life of Sir
Henry Wotton_. ]
_July_ 10. 1834.
_EUTHANASIA. _
I am, dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange
that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen
into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope--
those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love,--for what is
Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as _one? _ I say _realities_;
for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream; [Greek: *ai
g_or t onar e Di s esti]. Yet, in a strict sense, reality is not
predicable at all of aught below Heaven. "Es enim _in coelis_, Pater
noster, qui tu vere _es! _" Hooker wished to live to finish his
Ecclesiastical Polity;--so I own I wish life and strength had been spared
to me to complete my Philosophy. For, as God hears me, the originating,
continuing, and sustaining wish and design in my heart were to exalt the
glory of his name; and, which is the same thing in other words, to promote
the improvement of mankind. But _visum aliter Deo_, and his will be done.
* * * * *
** This note may well finish the present specimens. What followed was for
the memory of private friends only. Mr.
Coleridge was then extremely ill;
but certainly did not believe his end to be quite so near at hand as it
was. --ED.
The following Recollections of Mr. Coleridge, written in May, 1811, have
been also communicated to me by my brother, Mr. Justice Coleridge:--
"20_th April_, 1811, _at Richmond_.
"We got on politics, and he related some curious facts of the Prince and
Perceval. Then, adverting to the present state of affairs in Portugal, he
said that he rejoiced not so much in the mere favourable turn, as in the
end that must now be put to the base reign of opinion respecting the
superiority and invincible skill of the French generals. Brave as Sir John
Moore was, he thought him deficient in that greater and more essential
manliness of soul which should have made him not hold his enemy in such
fearful respect, and which should have taught him to care less for the
opinion of the world at home.
"We then got, I know not how, to German topics. He said that the language
of their literature was entirely factitious, and had been formed by Luther
from the two dialects, High and Low German; that he had made it,
grammatically, most correct, more so, perhaps, than any other language; it
was equal to the Greek, except in harmony and sweetness. And yet the
Germans themselves thought it sweet;--Klopstock had repeated to him an ode
of his own to prove it, and really had deceived himself, by the force of
association, into a belief that the harsh sounds, conveying, indeed, or
being significant of, sweet images or thoughts, were themselves sweet. Mr.
C. was asked what he thought of Klopstock. He answered, that his fame was
rapidly declining in Germany; that an Englishman might form a correct
notion of him by uniting the moral epigram of Young, the bombast of Hervey,
and the minute description of Richardson. As to sublimity, he had, with all
Germans, one rule for producing it;--it was, to take something very great,
and make it very small in comparison with that which you wish to elevate.
Thus, for example, Klopstock says,--'As the gardener goes forth, and
scatters from his basket seed into the garden; so does the Creator scatter
worlds with his right hand. ' Here _worlds_, a large object, are made small
in the hands of the Creator; consequently, the Creator is very great. In
short, the Germans were not a poetical nation in the very highest sense.
Wieland was their best poet: his subject was bad, and his thoughts often
impure; but his language was rich and harmonious, and his fancy luxuriant.
Sotheby's translation had not at all caught the manner of the original. But
the Germans were good metaphysicians and critics: they criticised on
principles previously laid down; thus, though they might be wrong, they
were in no danger of being self-contradictory, which was too often the case
with English critics.
"Young, he said, was not a poet to be read through at once. His love of
point and wit had often put an end to his pathos and sublimity; but there
were parts in him which must be immortal. He (Mr. C. ) loved to read a page
of Young, and walk out to think of him.
"Returning to the Germans, he said that the state of their religion, when
he was in Germany, was really shocking. He had never met one clergyman a
Christian; and he found professors in the universities lecturing against
the most material points in the Gospel. He instanced, I think, Paulus,
whose lectures he had attended. The object was to resolve the miracles into
natural operations; and such a disposition evinced was the best road to
preferment. He severely censured Mr. Taylor's book, in which the principles
of Paulus were explained and insisted on with much gratuitous indelicacy.
He then entered into the question of Socinianism, and noticed, as I
recollect, the passage in the Old Testament; 'The people bowed their faces,
and _worshipped_ God and the king. ' He said, that all worship implied the
presence of the object worshipped: the people worshipped, bowing to the
sensuous presence of the one, and the conceived omnipresence of the other.
He talked of his having constantly to defend the Church against the
Socinian Bishop of Llandaff, Watson. The subject then varied to Roman
Catholicism, and he gave us an account of a controversy he had had with a
very sensible priest in Sicily on the worship of saints. He had driven the
priest from one post to another, till the latter took up the ground, that
though the saints were not omnipresent, yet God, who was so, imparted to
them the prayers offered up, and then they used their interference with Him
to grant them. 'That is, father, (said C. in reply)--excuse my seeming
levity, for I mean no impiety--that is; I have a deaf and dumb wife, who
yet understands me, and I her, by signs. You have a favour to ask of me,
and want my wife's interference; so you communicate your request to me, who
impart it to her, and she, by signs back again, begs me to grant it. ' The
good priest laughed, and said, '_Populus milt decipi, et decipiatur! _'
"We then got upon the Oxford controversy, and he was decidedly of opinion
that there could be no doubt of Copleston's complete victory. He thought
the Review had chosen its points of attack ill, as there must doubtless be
in every institution so old much to reprehend and carp at. On the other
hand, he thought that Copleston had not been so severe or hard upon them as
he might have been; but he admired the critical part of his work, which he
thought very highly valuable, independently of the controversy. He wished
some portion of mathematics was more essential to a degree at Oxford, as he
thought a gentleman's education incomplete without it, and had himself
found the necessity of getting up a little, when he could ill spare the
time. He every day more and more lamented his neglect of them when at
Cambridge,
"Then glancing off to Aristotle, he gave a very high character of him. He
said that Bacon objected to Aristotle the grossness of his examples, and
Davy now did precisely the same to Bacon: both were wrong; for each of
those philosophers wished to confine the attention of the mind in their
works to the _form_ of reasoning only, by which other truths might be
established or elicited, and therefore the most trite and common-place
examples were in fact the best. He said that during a long confinement to
his room, he had taken up the Schoolmen, and was astonished at the immense
learning and acute knowledge displayed by them; that there was scarcely any
thing which modern philosophers had proudly brought forward as their own,
which might not be found clearly and systematically laid down by them in
some or other of their writings. Locke had sneered at the Schoolmen
unfairly, and had raised a foolish laugh against them by citations from
their _Quid libet_ questions, which were discussed on the eyes of holydays,
and in which the greatest latitude was allowed, being considered mere
exercises of ingenuity. We had ridiculed their _quiddities_, and why? Had
we not borrowed their _quantity_ and their _quality_, and why then reject
their _quiddity_, when every schoolboy in logic must know, that of every
thing may be asked, _Quantum est? Quale est? _ and _Quid est? _ the last
bringing you to the most material of all points, its individual being. He
afterwards stated, that in a History of Speculative Philosophy which he was
endeavouring to prepare for publication, he had proved, and to the
satisfaction of Sir James Mackintosh, that there was nothing in Locke which
his best admirers most admired, that might not be found more clearly and
better laid down in Descartes or the old Schoolmen; not that he was himself
an implicit disciple of Descartes, though he thought that Descartes had
been much misinterpreted.
"When we got on the subject of poetry and Southey, he gave us a critique of
the Curse of Kehama, the fault of which he thought consisted in the
association of a plot and a machinery so very wild with feelings so sober
and tender: but he gave the poem high commendation, admired the art
displayed in the employment of the Hindu monstrosities, and begged us to
observe the noble feeling excited of the superiority of virtue over vice;
that Kehama went on, from the beginning to the end of the poem, increasing
in power, whilst Kailyal gradually lost her hopes and her protectors; and
yet by the time we got to the end, we had arrived at an utter contempt and
even carelessness of the power of evil, as exemplified in the almighty
Rajah, and felt a complete confidence in the safety of the unprotected
virtue of the maiden. This he thought the very great merit of the poem.
"When we walked home with him to the inn, he got on the subject of the
English Essay for the year at Oxford, and thought some consideration of the
corruption of language should he introduced into it.
[Footnote: On Etymology. ]
It originated, he thought, in a desire to abbreviate all expression as much
as possible; and no doubt, if in one word, without violating idiom, I can
express what others have done in more, and yet be as fully and easily
understood, I have manifestly made an improvement; but if, on the other
hand, it becomes harder, and takes more time to comprehend a thought or
image put in one word by Apuleius than when expressed in a whole sentence
by Cicero, the saving is merely of pen and ink, and the alteration is
evidently a corruption. "
_"April_ 21. --Richmond. _
"Before breakfast we went into Mr. May's delightful book-room, where he was
again silent in admiration of the prospect. After breakfast, we walked to
church. He seemed full of calm piety, and said he always felt the most
delightful sensations in a Sunday church-yard,--that it struck him as if
God had given to man fifty-two springs in every year. After the service, he
was vehement against the sermon, as common-place, and invidious in its tone
towards the poor. Then he gave many texts from the lessons and gospel of
the day, as affording fit subjects for discourses. He ridiculed the
absurdity of refusing to believe every thing that you could not understand;
and mentioned a rebuke of Dr. Parr's to a man of the name of Frith, and
that of another clergyman to a young man, who said he would believe nothing
which he could not understand:--'Then, young man, your creed will be the
shortest of any man's I know. '
"As we walked up Mr. Cambridge's meadows towards Twickenham, he criticised
Johnson and Gray as poets, and did not seem to allow them high merit. The
excellence of verse, he said, was to be untranslatable into any other words
without detriment to the beauty of the passage;--the position of a single
word could not be altered in Milton without injury. Gray's
personifications, he said, were mere printer's devils' personifications--
persons with a capital letter, abstract qualities with a small one. He
thought Collins had more genius than Gray, who was a singular instance of a
man of taste, poetic feeling, and fancy, without imagination. He contrasted
Dryden's opening of the 10th satire of Juvenal with Johnson's:--
"'Let observation, with extensive view,
Survey mankind from Ganges to Peru. '
which was as much as to say,--
"'Let observation with extensive observation observe mankind. '
"After dinner he told us a humorous story of his enthusiastic fondness for
Quakerism, when he was at Cambridge, and his attending one of their
meetings, which had entirely cured him. When the little children came in,
he was in raptures with them, and descanted upon the delightful mode of
treating them now, in comparison with what he had experienced in childhood.
He lamented the haughtiness with which Englishmen treated all foreigners
abroad, and the facility with which our government had always given up any
people which had allied itself to us, at the end of a war; and he
particularly remarked upon our abandonment of Minorca. These two things, he
said, made us universally disliked on the Continent; though, as a people,
most highly respected. He thought a war with America inevitable; and
expressed his opinion, that the United States were unfortunate in the
prematureness of their separation from this country, before they had in
themselves the materials of moral society--before they had a gentry and a
learned class,--the former looking backwards, and giving the sense of
stability--the latter looking forwards, and regulating the feelings of the
people.
"Afterwards, in the drawing-room, he sat down by Professor Rigaud, with
whom he entered into a discussion of Kant's System of Metaphysics. The
little knots of the company were speedily silent: Mr. C. 's voice grew
louder; and abstruse as the subject was, yet his language was so ready, so
energetic, and so eloquent, and his illustrations so very neat and
apposite, that the ladies even paid him the most solicitous and respectful
attention. They were really entertained with Kant's Metaphysics! At last I
took one of them, a very sweet singer, to the piano-forte; and, when there
was a pause, she began an Italian air. She was anxious to please him, and
he was enraptured. His frame quivered with emotion, and there was a titter
of uncommon delight on his countenance. When it was over, he praised the
singer warmly, and prayed she might finish those strains in heaven!
"This is nearly all, except some anecdotes, which I recollect of our
meeting with this most interesting, most wonderful man. Some of his topics
and arguments I have enumerated; but the connection and the words are lost.
And nothing that I can say can give any notion of his eloquence and
manner,--of the hold which he soon got on his audience--of the variety of
his stores of information--or, finally, of the artlessness of his habits,
or the modesty and temper with which he listened to, and answered
arguments, contradictory to his own. "--J. T. C.
The following address has been printed before; but it cannot be too widely
circulated, and it will form an appropriate conclusion to this volume.
_To Adam Steinmetz K----. _
MY DEAR GODCHILD,
I offer up the same fervent prayer for you now, as I did kneeling before
the altar, when you were baptized into Christ, and solemnly received as a
living member of his spiritual body, the Church.
Years must pass before you will be able to read, with an understanding
heart, what I now write. But I trust that the all-gracious God, the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Mercies, who, by his only-begotten
Son, (all mercies in one sovereign mercy! ) has redeemed you from the evil
ground, and willed you to be born out of darkness, but into light--out of
death, but into life--out of sin, but into righteousness, even into the
Lord our Righteousness; I trust that He will graciously hear the prayers of
your dear parents, and be with you as the spirit of health and growth in
body and mind!
My dear Godchild! --You received from Christ's minister at the baptismal
font, as your Christian name, the name of a most dear friend of your
father's, and who was to me even as a son, the late Adam Steinmetz, whose
fervent aspiration, and ever-paramount aim, even from early youth, was to
be a Christian in thought, word, and deed--in will, mind, and affections.
I too, your Godfather, have known what the enjoyments and advantages of
this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learning and
intellectual power can bestow; and with all the experience that more than
threescore years can give, I now, on the eve of my departure, declare to
you, (and earnestly pray that you may hereafter live and act on the
conviction,) that health is a great blessing,--competence obtained by
honourable industry a great blessing,--and a great blessing it is to have
kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of
all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be
indeed a Christian. But I have been likewise, through a large portion of my
later life, a sufferer, sorely afflicted with bodily pains, languors, and
manifold infirmities; and, for the last three or four years, have, with few
and brief intervals, been confined to a sick-room, and, at this moment, in
great weakness and heaviness, write from a sick-bed, hopeless of a
recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy removal; and I, thus on the very
brink of the grave, solemnly bear witness to you, that the Almighty
Redeemer, most gracious in his promises to them that truly seek him, is
faithful to perform what he hath promised, and has preserved, under all my
pains and infirmities, the inward peace that passeth all understanding,
with the supporting assurance of a reconciled God, who will not withdraw
his spirit from me in the conflict, and in his own time will deliver me
from the Evil One!
O, my dear Godchild! eminently blessed are those who begin early to seek,
fear, and love their God, trusting wholly in the righteousness and
mediation of their Lord, Redeemer, Saviour, and everlasting High Priest,
Jesus Christ!
O preserve this as a legacy and bequest from your unseen Godfather and
friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
_Grove, Highgate, July_ 13. 1834.
He died on the 25th day of the same month.
UNIVERSITIES.
I think Sir Charles Wetherell's speech before the Privy Council very
effective. I doubt if any other lawyer in Westminster Hall could have done
the thing so well.
* * * * *
The National Church requires, and is required by, the Christian Church, for
the perfection of each. For if there were no national Church, the mere
spiritual Church would either become, like the Papacy, a dreadful tyranny
over mind and body;--or else would fall abroad into a multitude of
enthusiastic sects, as in England in the seventeenth century. It is my deep
conviction that, in a country of any religion at all, liberty of conscience
can only be permanently preserved by means and under the shadow of a
national church--a political establishment connected with, but distinct
from, the spiritual Church.
* * * * *
I sometimes hope that the undisguised despotism of temper of the Dissenters
may at last awaken a jealousy in the laity of the Church of England. But
the apathy and inertness are, I fear, too profound--too providential.
* * * * *
Whatever the Papacy may have been on the Continent, it was always an
unqualified evil to this country. It destroyed what was rising of good, and
introduced a thousand evils of its own. The Papacy was and still is
essentially extra-national;--it affects, _temporally_, to do that which the
spiritual Church of Christ can alone do--to break down the natural
distinctions of nations. Now, as the Roman Papacy is in itself local and
peculiar, of course this attempt is nothing but a direct attack on the
political independence of other nations.
The institution of Universities was the single check on the Papacy. The
Pope always hated and maligned the Universities. The old coenobitic
establishments of England were converted--perverted, rather--into
monasteries and other monking receptacles. You see it was at Oxford that
Wicliffe alone found protection and encouragement.
_June_ 2. 1834.
SCHILLER'S VERSIFICATION. --GERMAN BLANK VERSE.
Schiller's blank verse is bad. He moves in it as a fly in a glue bottle.
His thoughts have their connection and variety, it is true, but there is no
sufficiently corresponding movement in the verse. How different from
Shakspeare's endless rhythms!
There is a nimiety--a too-muchness--in all Germans. It is the national
fault. Leasing had the best notion of blank verse. The trochaic termination
of German words renders blank verse in that language almost impracticable.
We have it in our dramatic hendecasyllable; but then we have a power of
interweaving the iambic close _ad libitum. _
_June_ 14. 1834.
ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. --DUKE OF WELLINGTON. --CORONATION OATH.
The Roman Catholic Emancipation Act--carried in the violent, and, in fact,
unprincipled manner it was--was in effect a Surinam toad;--and the Reform
Bill, the Dissenters' admission to the Universities, and the attack on the
Church, are so many toadlets, one after another detaching themselves from
their parent brute.
* * * * *
If you say there is nothing in the Romish religion, sincerely felt,
inconsistent with the duties of citizenship and allegiance to a territorial
Protestant sovereign, _cadit quaestio_. For if _that_ is once admitted,
there can be no answer to the argument from numbers. Certainly, if the
religion of the majority of the _people_ be innocuous to the interests of
the _nation_, the majority have a natural right to be trustees of the
nationalty--that property which is set apart for the nation's use, and
rescued from the gripe of private hands. But when I say--_for the nation's
use_. --I mean the very reverse of what the Radicals mean. They would
convert it to relieve taxation, which I call a private, personal, and
perishable use. A nation's uses are immortal.
* * * * *
How lamentable it is to hear the Duke of Wellington expressing himself
doubtingly on the abominable sophism that the Coronation Oath only binds
the King as the executive power--thereby making a Highgate oath of it. But
the Duke is conscious of the ready retort which his language and conduct on
the Emancipation Bill afford to his opponents. He is hampered by that
affair.
_June_ 20. 1834.
CORN LAWS. --MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY.
In the argument on the Corn Laws there is a [Greek: metazasis eis allo
gevos]. It may be admitted that the great principles of commerce require
the interchange of commodities to be free; but commerce, which is barter,
has no proper range beyond luxuries or conveniences;--it is properly the
complement to the full existence and development of a state. But how can it
be shown that the principles applicable to an interchange of conveniences
or luxuries apply also to an interchange of necessaries? No state can be
such properly, which is not self-subsistent at least; for no state that is
not so, is essentially independent. The nation that cannot even exist
without the commodity of another nation, is in effect the slave of that
other nation. In common times, indeed, pecuniary interest will prevail, and
prevent a ruinous exercise of the power which the nation supplying the
necessary must have over the nation which has only the convenience or
luxury to return; but such interest, both in individuals and nations, will
yield to many stronger passions. Is Holland any authority to the contrary?
If so, Tyre and Sidon and Carthage were so! Would you put England on a
footing with a country, which can be overrun in a campaign, and starved in
a year?
* * * * *
The entire tendency of the modern or Malthusian political economy is to
denationalize. It would dig up the charcoal foundations of the temple of
Ephesus to burn as fuel for a steam-engine!
_June_ 21. 1834.
Mr. ----, in his poem, makes trees coeval with Chaos;--which is next door
to Hans Sachse[1] who, in describing Chaos, said it was so pitchy dark,
that even the very _cats_ ran against each other!
[Footnote 1: Hans Sachse was born 1494, and died 1576. --ED],
_June_ 23. 1834.
SOCINIANISM. --UNITARIANISM. --FANCY AND IMAGINATION.
Faustus Socinus worshipped Jesus Christ, and said that God had given him
the power of being omnipresent. Davidi, with a little more acuteness, urged
that mere audition or creaturely presence could not possibly justify
worship from men;--that a man, how glorified soever, was no nearer God in
essence than the vulgarest of the race. Prayer, therefore, was
inapplicable. And how could a _man_ be a mediator between God and man? How
could a _man_ with sins himself offer any compensation for, or expiation
of, sin, unless the most arbitrary caprice were admitted into the counsels
of God? --And so, at last, you see, it was discovered by the better
logicians amongst the Socinians, that there was no such thing as sin at
all.
It is wonderful how any Socinian can read the works of Philo Judaeus
without some pause of doubt in the truth of his views as to the person of
Christ. Whether Philo wrote on his own ground as a Jew, or borrowed from
the Christians, the testimony as to the then Jewish expectation and
belief, is equally strong. You know Philo calls the Logos [Greek: yios
Theoy], the _Son of God_, and [Greek: agap_athon te non], _beloved Son_.
He calls him [Greek: arhchierheus], _high priest_, [Greek: deuterhos
Thehos], _second divinity_, [Greek: ei an Theoy], _image of God_, and
describes him as [Greek: eggutat_o m_adenhos ovtos methorhioy
diast_amatos], the _nearest possible to God without any intervening
separation_. And there are numerous other remarkable expressions of the
same sort.
My faith is this:--God is the Absolute Will: it is his Name and the meaning
of it. It is the Hypostasis. As begetting his own Alterity, the Jehovah,
the Manifested--He is the Father; but the Love and the Life--the Spirit--
proceeds from both.
I think Priestley must be considered the author of the modern
Unitarianism. I owe, under God, my return to the faith, to my having gone
much further than the Unitarians, and so having come round to the other
side. I can truly say, I never falsified the Scripture. I always told them
that their interpretations of the Scripture were intolerable upon any
principles of sound criticism; and that, if they were to offer to construe
the will of a neighbour as they did that of their Maker, they would be
scouted out of society. I said then plainly and openly, that it was clear
enough that John and Paul were not Unitarians. But at that time I had a
strong sense of the repugnancy of the doctrine of vicarious atonement to
the moral being, and I thought nothing could counterbalance that. "What
care I," I said, "for the Platonisms of John, or the Rabbinisms of Paul? --
My conscience revolts! " That was the ground of my Unitarianism.
Always believing in the government of God, I was a fervent Optimist. But as
I could not but see that the present state of things was not the best, I
was necessarily led to look forward to some future state.
* * * * *
You may conceive the difference in kind between the Fancy and the
Imagination in this way,--that if the check of the senses and the reason
were withdrawn, the first would become delirium, and the last mania. The
Fancy brings together images which have no connection natural or moral, but
are yoked together by the poet by means of some accidental coincidence; as
in the well-known passage in Hudibras:
"The sun had long since in the lap
Of Thetis taken out his nap,
And like a lobster boyl'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn. "[1]
The Imagination modifies images, and gives unity to variety; it sees all
things in one, _il piu nell' uno_. There is the epic imagination, the
perfection of which is in Milton; and the dramatic, of which Shakspeare is
the absolute master. The first gives unity by throwing back into the
distance; as after the magnificent approach of the Messiah to battle[2],
the poet, by one touch from himself--
--"far off their coming shone! "--
makes the whole one image.
And so at the conclusion of the description of the appearance of the
entranced angels, in which every sort of image from all the regions of
earth and air is introduced to diversify and illustrate,--the reader is
brought back to the single image by--
"He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded. "[3]
The dramatic imagination does not throw back, but brings close; it stamps
all nature with one, and that its own, meaning, as in Lear throughout.
[Footnote 1: Part II. c. 2. v. 29. ]
[Footnote 2:
----"Forth rush'd with whirlwind sound
The chariot of Paternal Deity,
Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn,
Itself instinct with spirit, but convoy'd
By four cherubic shapes; four faces each
Had wonderous; as with stars their bodies all
And wings were set with eyes; with eyes the wheels
Of beryl, and careering fires between;
Over their heads a crystal firmament,
Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure
Amber, and colours of the showery arch.
He, in celestial panoply all arm'd
Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought,
Ascended; at his right hand Victory
Sat eagle-wing'd; beside him hung his bow
And quiver, with three-bolted thunder stored;
And from about him fierce effusion roll'd
Of smoke, and bickering flame, and sparkles dire;
Attended with ten thousand thousand saints,
He onward came; _far off their coming shone;_
And twenty thousand (I their number heard)
Chariots of God, half on each hand, were seen:
He on the wings of cherub rode sublime
On the crystalline sky, in sapphire throned,
Illustrious far and wide; but by his own
First seen. "--P. L. b. vi. v. 749, &c. ]
[Footnote 3:
----"and call'd
His legions, angel forms, who lay intranced
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades,
High over arch'd, embower; or scatter'd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm'd
Hath vex'd the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris, and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcasses
And broken chariot wheels; so thick bestrewn,
Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
_He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded_. "--P. L. b. i. v. 300, &c. ]
* * * * *
At the very outset, what are we to think of the soundness of this modern
system of political economy, the direct tendency of every rule of which is
to denationalize, and to make the love of our country a foolish
superstition?
_June_ 28. 1834.
MR. COLERIDGE'S SYSTEM. --BIOGRAPHIA LITERAHIA. --DISSENTERS.
You may not understand my system, or any given part of it,--or by a
determined act of wilfulness, you may, even though perceiving a ray of
light, reject it in anger and disgust:--but this I will say,--that if you
once master it, or any part of it, you cannot hesitate to acknowledge it as
the truth. You cannot be sceptical about it.
The metaphysical disquisition at the end of the first volume of the
"Biographia Literaria" is unformed and immature;--it contains the fragments
of the truth, but it is not fully thought out. It is wonderful to myself to
think how infinitely more profound my views now are, and yet how much
clearer they are withal. The circle is completing; the idea is coming round
to, and to be, the common sense.
* * * * *
The generation of the modern worldly Dissenter was thus: Presbyterian,
Arian, Socinian, and last, Unitarian.
* * * * *
Is it not most extraordinary to see the Dissenters calling themselves the
descendants of the old Nonconformists, and yet clamouring for a divorce of
Church and State? Why--Baxter, and the other great leaders, would have
thought a man an atheist who had proposed such a thing. _They_ were rather
for merging the State _in_ the Church. But these our modern gentlemen, who
are blinded by political passion, give the kiss of alliance to the harlot
of Rome, and walk arm in arm with those who deny the God that redeemed
them, if so they may but wreak their insane antipathies on the National
Church! Well! I suppose they have counted the cost, and know what it is
they would have, and can keep.
_July_ 5. 1834.
LORD BROOKE. --BARROW AND DRYDEN. --PETER WILKINS AND STOTHARD. --FIELDING AND
RICHARDSON. --BISHOP SANDFORD. --ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION.
I do not remember a more beautiful piece of prose in English than the
consolation addressed by Lord Brooke (Fulke Greville) to a lady of quality
on certain conjugal infelicities. The diction is such that it might have
been written now, if we could find any one combining so thoughtful a head
with so tender a heart and so exquisite a taste.
* * * * *
Barrow often debased his language merely to evidence his loyalty. It was,
indeed, no easy task for a man of so much genius, and such a precise
mathematical mode of thinking, to adopt even for a moment the slang of
L'Estrange and Tom Brown; but he succeeded in doing so sometimes. With the
exception of such parts, Barrow must be considered as closing the first
great period of the English language. Dryden began the second. Of course
there are numerous subdivisions.
* * * * *
Peter Wilkins is to my mind a work of uncommon beauty; and yet Stothard's
illustrations have _added_ beauties to it. If it were not for a certain
tendency to affectation, scarcely any praise could be too high for
Stothard's designs. They give me great pleasure. I believe that Robinson
Crusoe and Peter Wilkins could only have been written by islanders. No
continentalist could have conceived either tale. Davis's story is an
imitation of Peter Wilkins; but there are many beautiful things in it;
especially his finding his wife crouching by the fireside--she having, in
his absence, plucked out all her feathers--to be like him!
It would require a very peculiar genius to add another tale, _ejusdem
generis_, to Robinson Crusoe and Peter Wilkins. I once projected such a
thing; but the difficulty of a pre-occupied ground stopped me. Perhaps La
Motte Fouque might effect something; but I should fear that neither he, nor
any other German, could entirely understand what may be called the "_desert
island_" feeling. I would try the marvellous line of Peter Wilkins, if I
attempted it, rather than the _real_ fiction of Robinson Crusoe.
* * * * *
What a master of composition Fielding was! Upon my word, I think the
Oedipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones the three most perfect plots
ever planned. And how charming, how wholesome, Fielding always is! To take
him up after Richardson, is like emerging from a sick room heated by
stoves, into an open lawn, on a breezy day in May.
* * * * *
I have been very deeply interested in the account of Bishop Sandford's
life, published by his son. He seems to have been a thorough gentleman upon
the model of St. Paul, whose manners were the finest of any man's upon
record.
* * * * *
I think I could have conformed to the then dominant Church before the
Reformation. The errors existed, but they had not been riveted into
peremptory articles of faith before the Council of Trent. If a Romanist
were to ask me the question put to Sir Henry Wotton, [1]I should content
myself by answering, that I could not exactly say when my religion, as he
was pleased to call it, began--but that it was certainly some sixty or
seventy years before _his_, at all events--which began at the Council of
Trent.
[Footnote 1:
"Having, at his being in Rome, made acquaintance with a pleasant priest,
who invited him, one evening, to hear their vesper music at church; the
priest, seeing Sir Henry stand obscurely in a corner, sends to him by a boy
of the choir this question, writ in a small piece of paper;--'Where was
your religion to be found before Luther? ' To which question Sir Henry
presently underwrit;--'My religion was to be found then, where yours is not
to be found now--in the written word of God. '"--_Isaak Walton's Life of Sir
Henry Wotton_. ]
_July_ 10. 1834.
_EUTHANASIA. _
I am, dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange
that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen
into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope--
those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love,--for what is
Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as _one? _ I say _realities_;
for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream; [Greek: *ai
g_or t onar e Di s esti]. Yet, in a strict sense, reality is not
predicable at all of aught below Heaven. "Es enim _in coelis_, Pater
noster, qui tu vere _es! _" Hooker wished to live to finish his
Ecclesiastical Polity;--so I own I wish life and strength had been spared
to me to complete my Philosophy. For, as God hears me, the originating,
continuing, and sustaining wish and design in my heart were to exalt the
glory of his name; and, which is the same thing in other words, to promote
the improvement of mankind. But _visum aliter Deo_, and his will be done.
* * * * *
** This note may well finish the present specimens. What followed was for
the memory of private friends only. Mr.
Coleridge was then extremely ill;
but certainly did not believe his end to be quite so near at hand as it
was. --ED.
The following Recollections of Mr. Coleridge, written in May, 1811, have
been also communicated to me by my brother, Mr. Justice Coleridge:--
"20_th April_, 1811, _at Richmond_.
"We got on politics, and he related some curious facts of the Prince and
Perceval. Then, adverting to the present state of affairs in Portugal, he
said that he rejoiced not so much in the mere favourable turn, as in the
end that must now be put to the base reign of opinion respecting the
superiority and invincible skill of the French generals. Brave as Sir John
Moore was, he thought him deficient in that greater and more essential
manliness of soul which should have made him not hold his enemy in such
fearful respect, and which should have taught him to care less for the
opinion of the world at home.
"We then got, I know not how, to German topics. He said that the language
of their literature was entirely factitious, and had been formed by Luther
from the two dialects, High and Low German; that he had made it,
grammatically, most correct, more so, perhaps, than any other language; it
was equal to the Greek, except in harmony and sweetness. And yet the
Germans themselves thought it sweet;--Klopstock had repeated to him an ode
of his own to prove it, and really had deceived himself, by the force of
association, into a belief that the harsh sounds, conveying, indeed, or
being significant of, sweet images or thoughts, were themselves sweet. Mr.
C. was asked what he thought of Klopstock. He answered, that his fame was
rapidly declining in Germany; that an Englishman might form a correct
notion of him by uniting the moral epigram of Young, the bombast of Hervey,
and the minute description of Richardson. As to sublimity, he had, with all
Germans, one rule for producing it;--it was, to take something very great,
and make it very small in comparison with that which you wish to elevate.
Thus, for example, Klopstock says,--'As the gardener goes forth, and
scatters from his basket seed into the garden; so does the Creator scatter
worlds with his right hand. ' Here _worlds_, a large object, are made small
in the hands of the Creator; consequently, the Creator is very great. In
short, the Germans were not a poetical nation in the very highest sense.
Wieland was their best poet: his subject was bad, and his thoughts often
impure; but his language was rich and harmonious, and his fancy luxuriant.
Sotheby's translation had not at all caught the manner of the original. But
the Germans were good metaphysicians and critics: they criticised on
principles previously laid down; thus, though they might be wrong, they
were in no danger of being self-contradictory, which was too often the case
with English critics.
"Young, he said, was not a poet to be read through at once. His love of
point and wit had often put an end to his pathos and sublimity; but there
were parts in him which must be immortal. He (Mr. C. ) loved to read a page
of Young, and walk out to think of him.
"Returning to the Germans, he said that the state of their religion, when
he was in Germany, was really shocking. He had never met one clergyman a
Christian; and he found professors in the universities lecturing against
the most material points in the Gospel. He instanced, I think, Paulus,
whose lectures he had attended. The object was to resolve the miracles into
natural operations; and such a disposition evinced was the best road to
preferment. He severely censured Mr. Taylor's book, in which the principles
of Paulus were explained and insisted on with much gratuitous indelicacy.
He then entered into the question of Socinianism, and noticed, as I
recollect, the passage in the Old Testament; 'The people bowed their faces,
and _worshipped_ God and the king. ' He said, that all worship implied the
presence of the object worshipped: the people worshipped, bowing to the
sensuous presence of the one, and the conceived omnipresence of the other.
He talked of his having constantly to defend the Church against the
Socinian Bishop of Llandaff, Watson. The subject then varied to Roman
Catholicism, and he gave us an account of a controversy he had had with a
very sensible priest in Sicily on the worship of saints. He had driven the
priest from one post to another, till the latter took up the ground, that
though the saints were not omnipresent, yet God, who was so, imparted to
them the prayers offered up, and then they used their interference with Him
to grant them. 'That is, father, (said C. in reply)--excuse my seeming
levity, for I mean no impiety--that is; I have a deaf and dumb wife, who
yet understands me, and I her, by signs. You have a favour to ask of me,
and want my wife's interference; so you communicate your request to me, who
impart it to her, and she, by signs back again, begs me to grant it. ' The
good priest laughed, and said, '_Populus milt decipi, et decipiatur! _'
"We then got upon the Oxford controversy, and he was decidedly of opinion
that there could be no doubt of Copleston's complete victory. He thought
the Review had chosen its points of attack ill, as there must doubtless be
in every institution so old much to reprehend and carp at. On the other
hand, he thought that Copleston had not been so severe or hard upon them as
he might have been; but he admired the critical part of his work, which he
thought very highly valuable, independently of the controversy. He wished
some portion of mathematics was more essential to a degree at Oxford, as he
thought a gentleman's education incomplete without it, and had himself
found the necessity of getting up a little, when he could ill spare the
time. He every day more and more lamented his neglect of them when at
Cambridge,
"Then glancing off to Aristotle, he gave a very high character of him. He
said that Bacon objected to Aristotle the grossness of his examples, and
Davy now did precisely the same to Bacon: both were wrong; for each of
those philosophers wished to confine the attention of the mind in their
works to the _form_ of reasoning only, by which other truths might be
established or elicited, and therefore the most trite and common-place
examples were in fact the best. He said that during a long confinement to
his room, he had taken up the Schoolmen, and was astonished at the immense
learning and acute knowledge displayed by them; that there was scarcely any
thing which modern philosophers had proudly brought forward as their own,
which might not be found clearly and systematically laid down by them in
some or other of their writings. Locke had sneered at the Schoolmen
unfairly, and had raised a foolish laugh against them by citations from
their _Quid libet_ questions, which were discussed on the eyes of holydays,
and in which the greatest latitude was allowed, being considered mere
exercises of ingenuity. We had ridiculed their _quiddities_, and why? Had
we not borrowed their _quantity_ and their _quality_, and why then reject
their _quiddity_, when every schoolboy in logic must know, that of every
thing may be asked, _Quantum est? Quale est? _ and _Quid est? _ the last
bringing you to the most material of all points, its individual being. He
afterwards stated, that in a History of Speculative Philosophy which he was
endeavouring to prepare for publication, he had proved, and to the
satisfaction of Sir James Mackintosh, that there was nothing in Locke which
his best admirers most admired, that might not be found more clearly and
better laid down in Descartes or the old Schoolmen; not that he was himself
an implicit disciple of Descartes, though he thought that Descartes had
been much misinterpreted.
"When we got on the subject of poetry and Southey, he gave us a critique of
the Curse of Kehama, the fault of which he thought consisted in the
association of a plot and a machinery so very wild with feelings so sober
and tender: but he gave the poem high commendation, admired the art
displayed in the employment of the Hindu monstrosities, and begged us to
observe the noble feeling excited of the superiority of virtue over vice;
that Kehama went on, from the beginning to the end of the poem, increasing
in power, whilst Kailyal gradually lost her hopes and her protectors; and
yet by the time we got to the end, we had arrived at an utter contempt and
even carelessness of the power of evil, as exemplified in the almighty
Rajah, and felt a complete confidence in the safety of the unprotected
virtue of the maiden. This he thought the very great merit of the poem.
"When we walked home with him to the inn, he got on the subject of the
English Essay for the year at Oxford, and thought some consideration of the
corruption of language should he introduced into it.
[Footnote: On Etymology. ]
It originated, he thought, in a desire to abbreviate all expression as much
as possible; and no doubt, if in one word, without violating idiom, I can
express what others have done in more, and yet be as fully and easily
understood, I have manifestly made an improvement; but if, on the other
hand, it becomes harder, and takes more time to comprehend a thought or
image put in one word by Apuleius than when expressed in a whole sentence
by Cicero, the saving is merely of pen and ink, and the alteration is
evidently a corruption. "
_"April_ 21. --Richmond. _
"Before breakfast we went into Mr. May's delightful book-room, where he was
again silent in admiration of the prospect. After breakfast, we walked to
church. He seemed full of calm piety, and said he always felt the most
delightful sensations in a Sunday church-yard,--that it struck him as if
God had given to man fifty-two springs in every year. After the service, he
was vehement against the sermon, as common-place, and invidious in its tone
towards the poor. Then he gave many texts from the lessons and gospel of
the day, as affording fit subjects for discourses. He ridiculed the
absurdity of refusing to believe every thing that you could not understand;
and mentioned a rebuke of Dr. Parr's to a man of the name of Frith, and
that of another clergyman to a young man, who said he would believe nothing
which he could not understand:--'Then, young man, your creed will be the
shortest of any man's I know. '
"As we walked up Mr. Cambridge's meadows towards Twickenham, he criticised
Johnson and Gray as poets, and did not seem to allow them high merit. The
excellence of verse, he said, was to be untranslatable into any other words
without detriment to the beauty of the passage;--the position of a single
word could not be altered in Milton without injury. Gray's
personifications, he said, were mere printer's devils' personifications--
persons with a capital letter, abstract qualities with a small one. He
thought Collins had more genius than Gray, who was a singular instance of a
man of taste, poetic feeling, and fancy, without imagination. He contrasted
Dryden's opening of the 10th satire of Juvenal with Johnson's:--
"'Let observation, with extensive view,
Survey mankind from Ganges to Peru. '
which was as much as to say,--
"'Let observation with extensive observation observe mankind. '
"After dinner he told us a humorous story of his enthusiastic fondness for
Quakerism, when he was at Cambridge, and his attending one of their
meetings, which had entirely cured him. When the little children came in,
he was in raptures with them, and descanted upon the delightful mode of
treating them now, in comparison with what he had experienced in childhood.
He lamented the haughtiness with which Englishmen treated all foreigners
abroad, and the facility with which our government had always given up any
people which had allied itself to us, at the end of a war; and he
particularly remarked upon our abandonment of Minorca. These two things, he
said, made us universally disliked on the Continent; though, as a people,
most highly respected. He thought a war with America inevitable; and
expressed his opinion, that the United States were unfortunate in the
prematureness of their separation from this country, before they had in
themselves the materials of moral society--before they had a gentry and a
learned class,--the former looking backwards, and giving the sense of
stability--the latter looking forwards, and regulating the feelings of the
people.
"Afterwards, in the drawing-room, he sat down by Professor Rigaud, with
whom he entered into a discussion of Kant's System of Metaphysics. The
little knots of the company were speedily silent: Mr. C. 's voice grew
louder; and abstruse as the subject was, yet his language was so ready, so
energetic, and so eloquent, and his illustrations so very neat and
apposite, that the ladies even paid him the most solicitous and respectful
attention. They were really entertained with Kant's Metaphysics! At last I
took one of them, a very sweet singer, to the piano-forte; and, when there
was a pause, she began an Italian air. She was anxious to please him, and
he was enraptured. His frame quivered with emotion, and there was a titter
of uncommon delight on his countenance. When it was over, he praised the
singer warmly, and prayed she might finish those strains in heaven!
"This is nearly all, except some anecdotes, which I recollect of our
meeting with this most interesting, most wonderful man. Some of his topics
and arguments I have enumerated; but the connection and the words are lost.
And nothing that I can say can give any notion of his eloquence and
manner,--of the hold which he soon got on his audience--of the variety of
his stores of information--or, finally, of the artlessness of his habits,
or the modesty and temper with which he listened to, and answered
arguments, contradictory to his own. "--J. T. C.
The following address has been printed before; but it cannot be too widely
circulated, and it will form an appropriate conclusion to this volume.
_To Adam Steinmetz K----. _
MY DEAR GODCHILD,
I offer up the same fervent prayer for you now, as I did kneeling before
the altar, when you were baptized into Christ, and solemnly received as a
living member of his spiritual body, the Church.
Years must pass before you will be able to read, with an understanding
heart, what I now write. But I trust that the all-gracious God, the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Mercies, who, by his only-begotten
Son, (all mercies in one sovereign mercy! ) has redeemed you from the evil
ground, and willed you to be born out of darkness, but into light--out of
death, but into life--out of sin, but into righteousness, even into the
Lord our Righteousness; I trust that He will graciously hear the prayers of
your dear parents, and be with you as the spirit of health and growth in
body and mind!
My dear Godchild! --You received from Christ's minister at the baptismal
font, as your Christian name, the name of a most dear friend of your
father's, and who was to me even as a son, the late Adam Steinmetz, whose
fervent aspiration, and ever-paramount aim, even from early youth, was to
be a Christian in thought, word, and deed--in will, mind, and affections.
I too, your Godfather, have known what the enjoyments and advantages of
this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learning and
intellectual power can bestow; and with all the experience that more than
threescore years can give, I now, on the eve of my departure, declare to
you, (and earnestly pray that you may hereafter live and act on the
conviction,) that health is a great blessing,--competence obtained by
honourable industry a great blessing,--and a great blessing it is to have
kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of
all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be
indeed a Christian. But I have been likewise, through a large portion of my
later life, a sufferer, sorely afflicted with bodily pains, languors, and
manifold infirmities; and, for the last three or four years, have, with few
and brief intervals, been confined to a sick-room, and, at this moment, in
great weakness and heaviness, write from a sick-bed, hopeless of a
recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy removal; and I, thus on the very
brink of the grave, solemnly bear witness to you, that the Almighty
Redeemer, most gracious in his promises to them that truly seek him, is
faithful to perform what he hath promised, and has preserved, under all my
pains and infirmities, the inward peace that passeth all understanding,
with the supporting assurance of a reconciled God, who will not withdraw
his spirit from me in the conflict, and in his own time will deliver me
from the Evil One!
O, my dear Godchild! eminently blessed are those who begin early to seek,
fear, and love their God, trusting wholly in the righteousness and
mediation of their Lord, Redeemer, Saviour, and everlasting High Priest,
Jesus Christ!
O preserve this as a legacy and bequest from your unseen Godfather and
friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
_Grove, Highgate, July_ 13. 1834.
He died on the 25th day of the same month.
