No More Learning

By the very same argument the supporters
of the Ptolemaic system might have rebuffed the Newtonian, and pointing
to the sky with self-complacent grin [26] have appealed to common sense,
whether the sun did not move and the earth stand still.




CHAPTER IX

Is Philosophy possible as a science, and what are its
conditions? --Giordano Bruno--Literary Aristocracy, or the existence of
a tacit compact among the learned as a privileged order--The Author's
obligations to the Mystics--to Immanuel Kant--The difference between the
letter and the spirit of Kant's writings, and a vindication of prudence
in the teaching of Philosophy--Fichte's attempt to complete the Critical
system--Its partial success and ultimate failure--Obligations to
Schelling; and among English writers to Saumarez.


After I had successively studied in the schools of Locke, Berkeley,
Leibnitz, and Hartley, and could find in none of them an abiding place
for my reason, I began to ask myself; is a system of philosophy; as
different from mere history and historic classification, possible? If
possible, what are its necessary conditions? I was for a while disposed
to answer the first question in the negative, and to admit that the sole
practicable employment for the human mind was to observe, to collect,
and to classify. But I soon felt, that human nature itself fought up
against this wilful resignation of intellect; and as soon did I find,
that the scheme, taken with all its consequences and cleared of all
inconsistencies, was not less impracticable than contranatural. Assume
in its full extent the position, nihil in intellectu quod non prius
in sensu, assume it without Leibnitz's qualifying praeter ipsum
intellectum, and in the same sense, in which the position was understood
by Hartley and Condillac: and then what Hume had demonstratively deduced
from this concession concerning cause and effect, will apply with equal
and crushing force to all the other eleven categorical forms [27], and
the logical functions corresponding to them. How can we make bricks
without straw;--or build without cement? We learn all things indeed by
occasion of experience; but the very facts so learned force us inward on
the antecedents, that must be presupposed in order to render experience
itself possible. The first book of Locke's Essay, (if the supposed
error, which it labours to subvert, be not a mere thing of straw, an
absurdity which, no man ever did, or indeed ever could, believe,) is
formed on a sophisma heterozaetaeseos, and involves the old mistake of
Cum hoc: ergo, propter hoc.

The term, Philosophy, defines itself as an affectionate seeking after
the truth; but Truth is the correlative of Being. This again is no way
conceivable, but by assuming as a postulate, that both are ab initio,
identical and coinherent; that intelligence and being are reciprocally
each other's substrate. I presumed that this was a possible conception,
(i. e. that it involved no logical inconsonance,) from the length of time
during which the scholastic definition of the Supreme Being, as actus
purissimus sine ulla potentialitate, was received in the schools of
Theology, both by the Pontifician and the Reformed divines. The early
study of Plato and Plotinus, with the commentaries and the THEOLOGIA
PLATONICA of the illustrious Florentine; of Proclus, and Gemistius
Pletho; and at a later period of the De Immenso et Innumerabili and the
"De la causa, principio et uno," of the philosopher of Nola, who could
boast of a Sir Philip Sidney and Fulke Greville among his patrons, and
whom the idolaters of Rome burnt as an atheist in the year 1600; had all
contributed to prepare my mind for the reception and welcoming of the
Cogito quia Sum, et Sum quia Cogito; a philosophy of seeming hardihood,
but certainly the most ancient, and therefore presumptively the most
natural.

Why need I be afraid? Say rather how dare I be ashamed of the Teutonic
theosophist, Jacob Behmen? Many, indeed, and gross were his delusions;
and such as furnish frequent and ample occasion for the triumph of
the learned over the poor ignorant shoemaker, who had dared think for
himself. But while we remember that these delusions were such, as might
be anticipated from his utter want of all intellectual discipline, and
from his ignorance of rational psychology, let it not be forgotten that
the latter defect he had in common with the most learned theologians
of his age. Neither with books, nor with book-learned men was he
conversant. A meek and shy quietest, his intellectual powers were never
stimulated into feverous energy by crowds of proselytes, or by the
ambition of proselyting. Jacob Behmen was an enthusiast, in
the strictest sense, as not merely distinguished, but as
contra-distinguished, from a fanatic. While I in part translate the
following observations from a contemporary writer of the Continent, let
me be permitted to premise, that I might have transcribed the substance
from memoranda of my own, which were written many years before his
pamphlet was given to the world; and that I prefer another's words to my
own, partly as a tribute due to priority of publication; but still
more from the pleasure of sympathy in a case where coincidence only was
possible.

Whoever is acquainted with the history of philosophy, during the last
two or three centuries, cannot but admit that there appears to have
existed a sort of secret and tacit compact among the learned, not to
pass beyond a certain limit in speculative science. The privilege of
free thought, so highly extolled, has at no time been held valid in
actual practice, except within this limit; and not a single stride
beyond it has ever been ventured without bringing obloquy on the
transgressor. The few men of genius among the learned class, who
actually did overstep this boundary, anxiously avoided the appearance of
having so done. Therefore the true depth of science, and the penetration
to the inmost centre, from which all the lines of knowledge diverge to
their ever distant circumference, was abandoned to the illiterate and
the simple, whom unstilled yearning, and an original ebulliency of
spirit, had urged to the investigation of the indwelling and living
ground of all things. These, then, because their names had never been
enrolled in the guilds of the learned, were persecuted by the registered
livery-men as interlopers on their rights and privileges. All without
distinction were branded as fanatics and phantasts; not only those,
whose wild and exorbitant imaginations had actually engendered only
extravagant and grotesque phantasms, and whose productions were, for the
most part, poor copies and gross caricatures of genuine inspiration; but
the truly inspired likewise, the originals themselves. And this for no
other reason, but because they were the unlearned, men of humble
and obscure occupations. When, and from whom among the literati by
profession, have we ever heard the divine doxology repeated, I thank
thee, O Father! Lord of Heaven and Earth! because thou hast hid these
things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes
[28]. No; the haughty priests of learning not only banished from the
schools and marts of science all who had dared draw living waters from
the fountain, but drove them out of the very Temple, which mean time the
buyers, and sellers, and money-changers were suffered to make a den of
thieves.

And yet it would not be easy to discover any substantial ground for
this contemptuous pride in those literati, who have most distinguished
themselves by their scorn of Behmen, Thaulerus, George Fox, and others;
unless it be, that they could write orthographically, make smooth
periods, and had the fashions of authorship almost literally at their
fingers' ends, while the latter, in simplicity of soul, made their words
immediate echoes of their feelings. Hence the frequency of those
phrases among them, which have been mistaken for pretences to immediate
inspiration; as for instance, "It was delivered unto me; "--"I strove
not to speak;"-"I said, I will be silent;"--"But the word was in my
heart as a burning fire;"--"and I could not forbear. " Hence too the
unwillingness to give offence; hence the foresight, and the dread of the
clamours, which would be raised against them, so frequently avowed in
the writings of these men, and expressed, as was natural, in the words
of the only book, with which they were familiar [29]. "Woe is me that I
am become a man of strife, and a man of contention,--I love peace: the
souls of men are dear unto me: yet because I seek for light every one
of them doth curse me! " O! it requires deeper feeling, and a stronger
imagination, than belong to most of those, to whom reasoning and fluent
expression have been as a trade learnt in boyhood, to conceive with what
might, with what inward strivings and commotion, the perception of a
new and vital truth takes possession of an uneducated man of genius.
His meditations are almost inevitably employed on the eternal, or the
everlasting; for "the world is not his friend, nor the world's law. "
Need we then be surprised, that, under an excitement at once so strong
and so unusual, the man's body should sympathize with the struggles of
his mind; or that he should at times be so far deluded, as to mistake
the tumultuous sensations of his nerves, and the co-existing spectres of
his fancy, as parts or symbols of the truths which were opening on
him? It has indeed been plausibly observed, that in order to derive any
advantage, or to collect any intelligible meaning, from the writings
of these ignorant Mystics, the reader must bring with him a spirit and
judgment superior to that of the writers themselves:

And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?

--a sophism, which I fully agree with Warburton, is unworthy of Milton;
how much more so of the awful Person, in whose mouth he has placed it?
One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own experience,
that there exist folios on the human understanding, and the nature
of man, which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and
celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be found as much
fulness of heart and intellect, as burst forth in many a simple page of
George Fox, Jacob Behmen, and even of Behmen's commentator, the pious
and fervid William Law.

The feeling of gratitude, which I cherish toward these men, has caused
me to digress further than I had foreseen or proposed; but to have
passed them over in an historical sketch of my literary life and
opinions, would have seemed to me like the denial of a debt, the
concealment of a boon. For the writings of these Mystics acted in
no slight degree to prevent my mind from being imprisoned within the
outline of any single dogmatic system. They contributed to keep alive
the heart in the head; gave me an indistinct, yet stirring and working
presentiment, that all the products of the mere reflective faculty
partook of death, and were as the rattling twigs and sprays in winter,
into which a sap was yet to be propelled from some root to which I had
not penetrated, if they were to afford my soul either food or shelter.
If they were too often a moving cloud of smoke to me by day, yet they
were always a pillar of fire throughout the night, during my wanderings
through the wilderness of doubt, and enabled me to skirt, without
crossing, the sandy deserts of utter unbelief. That the system is
capable of being converted into an irreligious Pantheism, I well know.
The Ethics of Spinoza, may, or may not, be an instance. But at no time
could I believe, that in itself and essentially it is incompatible with
religion, natural or revealed: and now I am most thoroughly persuaded of
the contrary. The writings of the illustrious sage of Koenigsberg, the
founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than any other work, at once
invigorated and disciplined my understanding. The originality, the
depth, and the compression of the thoughts; the novelty and subtlety,
yet solidity and importance of the distinctions; the adamantine chain
of the logic; and I will venture to add--(paradox as it will appear to
those who have taken their notion of Immanuel Kant from Reviewers and
Frenchmen)--the clearness and evidence, of the Critique of the Pure
Reason; and Critique of the Judgment; of the Metaphysical Elements
of Natural Philosophy; and of his Religion within the bounds of Pure
Reason, took possession of me as with the giant's hand. After fifteen
years' familiarity with them, I still read these and all his other
productions with undiminished delight and increasing admiration. The few
passages that remained obscure to me, after due efforts of thought, (as
the chapter on original apperception,) and the apparent contradictions
which occur, I soon found were hints and insinuations referring to
ideas, which KANT either did not think it prudent to avow, or which he
considered as consistently left behind in a pure analysis, not of human
nature in toto, but of the speculative intellect alone. Here therefore
he was constrained to commence at the point of reflection, or natural
consciousness: while in his moral system he was permitted to assume a
higher ground (the autonomy of the will) as a postulate deducible from
the unconditional command, or (in the technical language of his school)
the categorical imperative, of the conscience. He had been in imminent
danger of persecution during the reign of the late king of Prussia, that
strange compound of lawless debauchery and priest-ridden superstition:
and it is probable that he had little inclination, in his old age,
to act over again the fortunes, and hair-breadth escapes of Wolf. The
expulsion of the first among Kant's disciples, who attempted to complete
his system, from the University of Jena, with the confiscation and
prohibition of the obnoxious work by the joint efforts of the courts of
Saxony and Hanover, supplied experimental proof, that the venerable
old man's caution was not groundless. In spite therefore of his own
declarations, I could never believe, that it was possible for him to
have meant no more by his Noumenon, or Thing in itself, than his mere
words express; or that in his own conception he confined the whole
plastic power to the forms of the intellect, leaving for the external
cause, for the materiale of our sensations, a matter without form, which
is doubtless inconceivable. I entertained doubts likewise, whether, in
his own mind, he even laid all the stress, which he appears to do, on
the moral postulates.

An idea, in the highest sense of that word, cannot be conveyed but by
a symbol; and, except in geometry, all symbols of necessity involve an
apparent contradiction. Phonaese synetoisin: and for those who could
not pierce through this symbolic husk, his writings were not intended.
Questions which cannot be fully answered without exposing the respondent
to personal danger, are not entitled to a fair answer; and yet to say
this openly, would in many cases furnish the very advantage which the
adversary is insidiously seeking after. Veracity does not consist
in saying, but in the intention of communicating, truth; and the
philosopher who cannot utter the whole truth without conveying
falsehood, and at the same time, perhaps, exciting the most malignant
passions, is constrained to express himself either mythically or
equivocally. When Kant therefore was importuned to settle the disputes
of his commentators himself, by declaring what he meant, how could
he decline the honours of martyrdom with less offence, than by simply
replying, "I meant what I said, and at the age of near fourscore, I have
something else, and more important to do, than to write a commentary on
my own works. "

Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, or Lore of Ultimate Science, was to add the
key-stone of the arch: and by commencing with an act, instead of a thing
or substance, Fichte assuredly gave the first mortal blow to Spinozism,
as taught by Spinoza himself; and supplied the idea of a system truly
metaphysical, and of a metaphysique truly systematic: (i. e. having
its spring and principle within itself). But this fundamental idea he
overbuilt with a heavy mass of mere notions, and psychological acts
of arbitrary reflection. Thus his theory degenerated into a crude [30]
egoismus, a boastful and hyperstoic hostility to Nature, as lifeless,
godless, and altogether unholy: while his religion consisted in the
assumption of a mere Ordo ordinans, which we were permitted exoterice
to call GOD; and his ethics in an ascetic, and almost monkish,
mortification of the natural passions and desires. In Schelling's
Natur-Philosophie, and the System des transcendentalen Idealismus, I
first found a genial coincidence with much that I had toiled out for
myself, and a powerful assistance in what I had yet to do.

I have introduced this statement, as appropriate to the narrative
nature of this sketch; yet rather in reference to the work which I have
announced in a preceding page, than to my present subject. It would be
but a mere act of justice to myself, were I to warn my future readers,
than an identity of thought, or even similarity of phrase, will not be
at all times a certain proof that the passage has been borrowed from
Schelling, or that the conceptions were originally learnt from him. In
this instance, as in the dramatic lectures of Schlegel to which I have
before alluded, from the same motive of self-defence against the charge
of plagiarism, many of the most striking resemblances, indeed all the
main and fundamental ideas, were born and matured in my mind before
I had ever seen a single page of the German Philosopher; and I might
indeed affirm with truth, before the more important works of Schelling
had been written, or at least made public. Nor is this coincidence
at all to be wondered at. We had studied in the same school; been
disciplined by the same preparatory philosophy, namely, the writings
of Kant; we had both equal obligations to the polar logic and dynamic
philosophy of Giordano Bruno; and Schelling has lately, and, as of
recent acquisition, avowed that same affectionate reverence for the
labours of Behmen, and other mystics, which I had formed at a much
earlier period. The coincidence of Schelling's system with certain
general ideas of Behmen, he declares to have been mere coincidence;
while my obligations have been more direct. He needs give to Behmen only
feelings of sympathy; while I owe him a debt of gratitude. God forbid!
that I should be suspected of a wish to enter into a rivalry with
Schelling for the honours so unequivocally his right, not only as a
great and original genius, but as the founder of the Philosophy of
Nature, and as the most successful improver of the Dynamic System [31]
which, begun by Bruno, was re-introduced (in a more philosophical form,
and freed from all its impurities and visionary accompaniments) by Kant;
in whom it was the native and necessary growth of his own system. Kant's
followers, however, on whom (for the greater part) their master's cloak
had fallen without, or with a very scanty portion of, his spirit, had
adopted his dynamic ideas, only as a more refined species of mechanics.
With exception of one or two fundamental ideas, which cannot be withheld
from Fichte, to Schelling we owe the completion, and the most important
victories, of this revolution in philosophy. To me it will be happiness
and honour enough, should I succeed in rendering the system itself
intelligible to my countrymen, and in the application of it to the most
awful of subjects for the most important of purposes. Whether a work
is the offspring of a man's own spirit, and the product of original
thinking, will be discovered by those who are its sole legitimate
judges, by better tests than the mere reference to dates. For readers in
general, let whatever shall be found in this or any future work of
mine, that resembles, or coincides with, the doctrines of my German
predecessor, though contemporary, be wholly attributed to him: provided,
that the absence of distinct references to his books, which I could
not at all times make with truth as designating citations or thoughts
actually derived from him; and which, I trust, would, after this general
acknowledgment be superfluous; be not charged on me as an ungenerous
concealment or intentional plagiarism. I have not indeed (eheu! res
angusta domi! ) been hitherto able to procure more than two of his
books, viz. the first volume of his collected Tracts, and his System of
Transcendental Idealism; to which, however, I must add a small pamphlet
against Fichte, the spirit of which was to my feelings painfully
incongruous with the principles, and which (with the usual allowance
afforded to an antithesis) displayed the love of wisdom rather than the
wisdom of love. I regard truth as a divine ventriloquist: I care not
from whose mouth the sounds are supposed to proceed, if only the words
are audible and intelligible. "Albeit, I must confess to be half in
doubt, whether I should bring it forth or no, it being so contrary to
the eye of the world, and the world so potent in most men's hearts, that
I shall endanger either not to be regarded or not to be understood. "

And to conclude the subject of citation, with a cluster of citations,
which as taken from books, not in common use, may contribute to the
reader's amusement, as a voluntary before a sermon: "Dolet mihi quidem
deliciis literarum inescatos subito jam homines adeo esse, praesertim
qui Christianos se profitentur, et legere nisi quod ad delectationem
facit, sustineant nihil: unde et discipline severiores et philosophia
ipsa jam fere prorsus etiam a doctis negliguntur. Quod quidem propositum
studiorum, nisi mature corrigitur, tam magnum rebus incommodum dabit,
quam dedit barbaries olim. Pertinax res barbaries est, fateor: sed minus
potent tamen, quam illa mollities et persuasa prudentia literarum,
si ratione caret, sapientiae virtutisque specie mortales misere
circumducens. Succedet igitur, ut arbitror, haud ita multo post, pro
rusticana seculi nostri ruditate captatrix illa communi-loquentia robur
animi virilis omne, omnem virtutem masculam, profligatura nisi cavetur. "

A too prophetic remark, which has been in fulfilment from the year
1680, to the present 1815. By persuasa prudentia, Grynaeus means self-
complacent common sense as opposed to science and philosophic reason.

Est medius ordo, et velut equestris, ingeniorum quidem sagacium, et
commodorum rebus humanis, non tamen in primam magnitudinem patentium.
Eorum hominum, ut sic dicam, major annona est. Sedulum esse, nihil
temere loqui, assuescere labori, et imagine prudentiae et modistiae
tegere angustiores partes captus, dum exercitationem ac usum, quo isti
in civilibus rebus pollent, pro natura et magnitudine ingenii plerique
accipiunt.

"As therefore physicians are many times forced to leave such methods of
curing as themselves know to be the fittest, and being overruled by the
patient's impatiency, are fain to try the best they can: in like sort,
considering how the case doth stand with this present age, full of
tongue and weak of brain, behold we would (if our subject permitted it)
yield to the stream thereof. That way we would be contented to prove
our thesis, which being the worse in itself, is notwithstanding now by
reason of common imbecility the fitter and likelier to be brooked. "

If this fear could be rationally entertained in the controversial age
of Hooker, under the then robust discipline of the scholastic logic,
pardonably may a writer of the present times anticipate a scanty
audience for abstrusest themes, and truths that can neither be
communicated nor received without effort of thought, as well as patience
of attention.

"Che s'io non erro al calcolar de' punti,
Par ch' Asinina Stella a noi predomini,
E'l Somaro e'l Castron si sian congiunti.
Il tempo d'Apuleio piu non si nomini:
Che se allora un sol huom sembrava un Asino,
Mille Asini a' miei di rassembran huomini! "




CHAPTER X

A chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an interlude preceding that on
the nature and genesis of the Imagination or Plastic Power--On
pedantry and pedantic expressions--Advice to young authors respecting
publication--Various anecdotes of the Author's literary life, and the
progress of his opinions in Religion and Politics.


"Esemplastic. The word is not in Johnson, nor have I met with it
elsewhere. " Neither have, I. I constructed it myself from the Greek
words, eis en plattein, to shape into one; because, having to convey a
new sense, I thought that a new term would both aid the recollection of
my meaning, and prevent its being confounded with the usual import of
the word, imagination. "But this is pedantry! " Not necessarily so, I
hope. If I am not misinformed, pedantry consists in the use of words
unsuitable to the time, place, and company. The language of the market
would be in the schools as pedantic, though it might not be reprobated
by that name, as the language of the schools in the market. The mere
man of the world, who insists that no other terms but such as occur in
common conversation should be employed in a scientific disquisition, and
with no greater precision, is as truly a pedant as the man of letters,
who either over-rating the acquirements of his auditors, or misled by
his own familiarity with technical or scholastic terms, converses at the
wine-table with his mind fixed on his museum or laboratory; even though
the latter pedant instead of desiring his wife to make the tea should
bid her add to the quant. suff. of thea Sinensis the oxyd of hydrogen
saturated with caloric. To use the colloquial (and in truth somewhat
vulgar) metaphor, if the pedant of the cloister, and the pedant of the
lobby, both smell equally of the shop, yet the odour from the Russian
binding of good old authentic-looking folios and quartos is less
annoying than the steams from the tavern or bagnio. Nay, though the
pedantry of the scholar should betray a little ostentation, yet a
well-conditioned mind would more easily, methinks, tolerate the fox
brush of learned vanity, than the sans culotterie of a contemptuous
ignorance, that assumes a merit from mutilation in the self-consoling
sneer at the pompous incumbrance of tails.

The first lesson of philosophic discipline is to wean the student's
attention from the degrees of things, which alone form the vocabulary of
common life, and to direct it to the kind abstracted from degree. Thus
the chemical student is taught not to be startled at disquisitions on
the heat in ice, or on latent and fixible light. In such discourse the
instructor has no other alternative than either to use old words
with new meanings (the plan adopted by Darwin in his Zoonomia;) or to
introduce new terms, after the example of Linnaeus, and the framers
of the present chemical nomenclature. The latter mode is evidently
preferable, were it only that the former demands a twofold exertion of
thought in one and the same act. For the reader, or hearer, is required
not only to learn and bear in mind the new definition; but to unlearn,
and keep out of his view, the old and habitual meaning; a far more
difficult and perplexing task, and for which the mere semblance of
eschewing pedantry seems to me an inadequate compensation. Where,
indeed, it is in our power to recall an unappropriate term that had
without sufficient reason become obsolete, it is doubtless a less evil
to restore than to coin anew. Thus to express in one word all that
appertains to the perception, considered as passive and merely
recipient, I have adopted from our elder classics the word sensuous;
because sensual is not at present used, except in a bad sense, or at
least as a moral distinction; while sensitive and sensible would each
convey a different meaning. Thus too have I followed Hooker, Sanderson,
Milton and others, in designating the immediateness of any act or
object of knowledge by the word intuition, used sometimes subjectively,
sometimes objectively, even as we use the word, thought; now as the
thought, or act of thinking, and now as a thought, or the object of
our reflection; and we do this without confusion or obscurity. The very
words, objective and subjective, of such constant recurrence in the
schools of yore, I have ventured to re-introduce, because I could not
so briefly or conveniently by any more familiar terms distinguish the
percipere from the percipi. Lastly, I have cautiously discriminated the
terms, the reason, and the understanding, encouraged and confirmed
by the authority of our genuine divines and philosophers, before the
Revolution.

------both life, and sense,
Fancy and understanding; whence the soul
Reason receives, and reason is her bring,
Discursive or intuitive: discourse [32]
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,
Differing but in degree, in kind the same.

I say, that I was confirmed by authority so venerable: for I had
previous and higher motives in my own conviction of the importance, nay,
of the necessity of the distinction, as both an indispensable condition
and a vital part of all sound speculation in metaphysics, ethical or
theological. To establish this distinction was one main object of
The Friend; if even in a biography of my own literary life I can with
propriety refer to a work, which was printed rather than published, or
so published that it had been well for the unfortunate author, if it
had remained in manuscript. I have even at this time bitter cause for
remembering that, which a number of my subscribers have but a trifling
motive for forgetting. This effusion might have been spared; but I
would fain flatter myself, that the reader will be less austere than an
oriental professor of the bastinado, who during an attempt to extort per
argumentum baculinum a full confession from a culprit, interrupted his
outcry of pain by reminding him, that it was "a mere digression! " "All
this noise, Sir! is nothing to the point, and no sort of answer to my
questions! " "Ah! but," (replied the sufferer,) "it is the most pertinent
reply in nature to your blows. "

An imprudent man of common goodness of heart cannot but wish to turn
even his imprudences to the benefit of others, as far as this is
possible. If therefore any one of the readers of this semi-narrative
should be preparing or intending a periodical work, I warn him, in the
first place, against trusting in the number of names on his subscription
list. For he cannot be certain that the names were put down by
sufficient authority; or, should that be ascertained, it still remains
to be known, whether they were not extorted by some over zealous
friend's importunity; whether the subscriber had not yielded his name,
merely from want of courage to answer, no; and with the intention of
dropping the work as soon as possible. One gentleman procured me nearly
a hundred names for THE FRIEND, and not only took frequent opportunity
to remind me of his success in his canvass, but laboured to impress my
mind with the sense of the obligation, I was under to the subscribers;
for, (as he very pertinently admonished me,) "fifty-two shillings a year
was a large sum to be bestowed on one individual, where there were so
many objects of charity with strong claims to the assistance of the
benevolent. " Of these hundred patrons ninety threw up the publication
before the fourth number, without any notice; though it was well known
to them, that in consequence of the distance, and the slowness and
irregularity of the conveyance, I was compelled to lay in a stock of
stamped paper for at least eight weeks beforehand; each sheet of which
stood me in five pence previously to its arrival at my printer's; though
the subscription money was not to be received till the twenty-first week
after the commencement of the work; and lastly, though it was in nine
cases out of ten impracticable for me to receive the money for two or
three numbers without paying an equal sum for the postage.

In confirmation of my first caveat, I will select one fact among many.
On my list of subscribers, among a considerable number of names equally
flattering, was that of an Earl of Cork, with his address. He might as
well have been an Earl of Bottle, for aught I knew of him, who had been
content to reverence the peerage in abstracto, rather than in concretis.
Of course THE FRIEND was regularly sent as far, if I remember right, as
the eighteenth number; that is, till a fortnight before the subscription
was to be paid. And lo! just at this time I received a letter from his
Lordship, reproving me in language far more lordly than courteous for my
impudence in directing my pamphlets to him, who knew nothing of me or my
work! Seventeen or eighteen numbers of which, however, his Lordship
was pleased to retain, probably for the culinary or post-culinary
conveniences of his servants.

Secondly, I warn all others from the attempt to deviate from the
ordinary mode of publishing a work by the trade. I thought indeed, that
to the purchaser it was indifferent, whether thirty per cent of the
purchase-money went to the booksellers or to the government; and that
the convenience of receiving the work by the post at his own door would
give the preference to the latter. It is hard, I own, to have been
labouring for years, in collecting and arranging the materials; to have
spent every shilling that could be spared after the necessaries of life
had been furnished, in buying books, or in journeys for the purpose of
consulting them or of acquiring facts at the fountain head; then to buy
the paper, pay for the printing, and the like, all at least fifteen per
cent beyond what the trade would have paid; and then after all to give
thirty per cent not of the net profits, but of the gross results of the
sale, to a man who has merely to give the books shelf or warehouse room,
and permit his apprentice to hand them over the counter to those who may
ask for them; and this too copy by copy, although, if the work be on any
philosophical or scientific subject, it may be years before the edition
is sold off. All this, I confess, must seem a hardship, and one, to
which the products of industry in no other mode of exertion are subject.
Yet even this is better, far better, than to attempt in any way to unite
the functions of author and publisher. But the most prudent mode is to
sell the copy-right, at least of one or more editions, for the most that
the trade will offer. By few only can a large remuneration be expected;
but fifty pounds and ease of mind are of more real advantage to a
literary man, than the chance of five hundred with the certainty
of insult and degrading anxieties. I shall have been grievously
misunderstood, if this statement should be interpreted as written
with the desire of detracting from the character of booksellers or
publishers. The individuals did not make the laws and customs of their
trade, but, as in every other trade, take them as they find them. Till
the evil can be proved to be removable, and without the substitution of
an equal or greater inconvenience, it were neither wise nor manly even
to complain of it. But to use it as a pretext for speaking, or even for
thinking, or feeling, unkindly or opprobriously of the tradesmen, as
individuals, would be something worse than unwise or even than unmanly;
it would be immoral and calumnious. My motives point in a far different
direction and to far other objects, as will be seen in the conclusion of
the chapter.

A learned and exemplary old clergyman, who many years ago went to his
reward followed by the regrets and blessings of his flock, published
at his own expense two volumes octavo, entitled, A NEW THEORY OF
REDEMPTION. The work was most severely handled in THE MONTHLY or
CRITICAL REVIEW, I forget which; and this unprovoked hostility became
the good old man's favourite topic of conversation among his friends.
"Well! " (he used to exclaim,) "in the second edition, I shall have an
opportunity of exposing both the ignorance and the malignity of the
anonymous critic. " Two or three years however passed by without any
tidings from the bookseller, who had undertaken the printing and
publication of the work, and who was perfectly at his ease, as the
author was known to be a man of large property. At length the accounts
were written for; and in the course of a few weeks they were presented
by the rider for the house, in person. My old friend put on
his spectacles, and holding the scroll with no very firm hand,
began--"Paper, so much: O moderate enough--not at all beyond my
expectation! Printing, so much: well! moderate enough! Stitching,
covers, advertisements, carriage, and so forth, so much. "--Still
nothing amiss. Selleridge (for orthography is no necessary part of
a bookseller's literary acquirements) L3. 3s. "Bless me! only three
guineas for the what d'ye call it--the selleridge? " "No more, Sir! "
replied the rider. "Nay, but that is too moderate! " rejoined my old
friend. "Only three guineas for selling a thousand copies of a work in
two volumes? " "O Sir! " (cries the young traveller) "you have mistaken
the word. There have been none of them sold; they have been sent
back from London long ago; and this L3. 3s. is for the cellaridge,
or warehouse-room in our book cellar. " The work was in consequence
preferred from the ominous cellar of the publisher's to the author's
garret; and, on presenting a copy to an acquaintance, the old gentleman
used to tell the anecdote with great humour and still greater good
nature.

With equal lack of worldly knowledge, I was a far more than equal
sufferer for it, at the very outset of my authorship. Toward the close
of the first year from the time, that in an inauspicious hour I left the
friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever honoured Jesus
College, Cambridge, I was persuaded by sundry philanthropists and
Anti-polemists to set on foot a periodical work, entitled THE WATCHMAN,
that, according to the general motto of the work, all might know the
truth, and that the truth might make us free! In order to exempt it from
the stamp-tax, and likewise to contribute as little as possible to the
supposed guilt of a war against freedom, it was to be published on every
eighth day, thirty-two pages, large octavo, closely printed, and price
only four-pence. Accordingly with a flaming prospectus,--"Knowledge is
Power," "To cry the state of the political atmosphere,"--and so forth,
I set off on a tour to the North, from Bristol to Sheffield, for the
purpose of procuring customers, preaching by the way in most of
the great towns, as an hireless volunteer, in a blue coat and white
waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be seen on me.
For I was at that time and long after, though a Trinitarian (that is
ad normam Platonis) in philosophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in religion;
more accurately, I was a Psilanthropist, one of those who believe our
Lord to have been the real son of Joseph, and who lay the main stress on
the resurrection rather than on the crucifixion. O! never can I remember
those days with either shame or regret. For I was most sincere, most
disinterested. My opinions were indeed in many and most important points
erroneous; but my heart was single.
Wealth, rank, life itself then
seemed cheap to me, compared with the interests of what I believed to
be the truth, and the will of my Maker. I cannot even accuse myself of
having been actuated by vanity; for in the expansion of my enthusiasm I
did not think of myself at all.

My campaign commenced at Birmingham; and my first attack was on a rigid
Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall dingy man, in whom
length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost have been
borrowed for a foundery poker. O that face! a face kat' emphasin! I
have it before me at this moment. The lank, black, twine-like hair,
pingui-nitescent, cut in a straight line along the black stubble of his
thin gunpowder eye-brows, that looked like a scorched after-math from a
last week's shaving. His coat collar behind in perfect unison, both of
colour and lustre, with the coarse yet glib cordage, which I suppose
he called his hair, and which with a bend inward at the nape of the
neck,--the only approach to flexure in his whole figure,--slunk in
behind his waistcoat; while the countenance lank, dark, very hard, and
with strong perpendicular furrows, gave me a dim notion of some one
looking at me through a used gridiron, all soot, grease, and iron! But
he was one of the thorough-bred, a true lover of liberty, and, as I was
informed, had proved to the satisfaction of many, that Mr. Pitt was one
of the horns of the second beast in THE REVELATIONS, that spake as a
dragon. A person, to whom one of my letters of recommendation had been
addressed, was my introducer. It was a new event in my life, my first
stroke in the new business I had undertaken of an author, yea, and of
an author trading on his own account. My companion after some imperfect
sentences and a multitude of hums and has abandoned the cause to his
client; and I commenced an harangue of half an hour to Phileleutheros,
the tallow-chandler, varying my notes, through the whole gamut of
eloquence, from the ratiocinative to the declamatory, and in the latter
from the pathetic to the indignant. I argued, I described, I promised, I
prophesied; and beginning with the captivity of nations I ended with the
near approach of the millennium, finishing the whole with some of my own
verses describing that glorious state out of the Religious Musings:

------Such delights
As float to earth, permitted visitants!
When in some hour of solemn jubilee
The massive gates of Paradise are thrown
Wide open, and forth come in fragments wild
Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,
And odours snatched from beds of amaranth,
And they, that from the crystal river of life
Spring up on freshened wing, ambrosial gales!

My taper man of lights listened with perseverant and praiseworthy
patience, though, as I was afterwards told, on complaining of certain
gales that were not altogether ambrosial, it was a melting day with
him. "And what, Sir," he said, after a short pause, "might the cost be? "
"Only four-pence,"--(O! how I felt the anti-climax, the abysmal
bathos of that four-pence! )--"only four-pence, Sir, each number, to be
published on every eighth day. "--"That comes to a deal of money at
the end of a year. And how much, did you say, there was to be for
the money? "--"Thirty-two pages, Sir, large octavo, closely
printed. "--"Thirty and two pages? Bless me! why except what I does in a
family way on the Sabbath, that's more than I ever reads, Sir! all
the year round. I am as great a one, as any man in Brummagem, Sir!
for liberty and truth and all them sort of things, but as to this,--no
offence, I hope, Sir,--I must beg to be excused. "

So ended my first canvass: from causes that I shall presently mention, I
made but one other application in person. This took place at Manchester
to a stately and opulent wholesale dealer in cottons. He took my letter
of introduction, and, having perused it, measured me from head to foot
and again from foot to head, and then asked if I had any bill or invoice
of the thing. I presented my prospectus to him. He rapidly skimmed
and hummed over the first side, and still more rapidly the second and
concluding page; crushed it within his fingers and the palm of his hand;
then most deliberately and significantly rubbed and smoothed one part
against the other; and lastly putting it into his pocket turned his back
on me with an "over-run with these articles! " and so without another
syllable retired into his counting house. And, I can truly say, to my
unspeakable amusement.

This, I have said, was my second and last attempt. On returning baffled
from the first, in which I had vainly essayed to repeat the miracle of
Orpheus with the Brummagem patriot, I dined with the tradesman who had
introduced me to him. After dinner he importuned me to smoke a pipe with
him, and two or three other illuminati of the same rank. I objected,
both because I was engaged to spend the evening with a minister and
his friends, and because I had never smoked except once or twice in
my lifetime, and then it was herb tobacco mixed with Oronooko. On the
assurance, however, that the tobacco was equally mild, and seeing
too that it was of a yellow colour; not forgetting the lamentable
difficulty, I have always experienced, in saying, "No," and in
abstaining from what the people about me were doing,--I took half a
pipe, filling the lower half of the bowl with salt. I was soon however
compelled to resign it, in consequence of a giddiness and distressful
feeling in my eyes, which, as I had drunk but a single glass of ale,
must, I knew, have been the effect of the tobacco. Soon after, deeming
myself recovered, I sallied forth to my engagement; but the walk and the
fresh air brought on all the symptoms again, and, I had scarcely entered
the minister's drawing-room, and opened a small pacquet of letters,
which he had received from Bristol for me; ere I sank back on the sofa
in a sort of swoon rather than sleep. Fortunately I had found just time
enough to inform him of the confused state of my feelings, and of
the occasion. For here and thus I lay, my face like a wall that is
white-washing, deathly pale and with the cold drops of perspiration
running down it from my forehead, while one after another there dropped
in the different gentlemen, who had been invited to meet, and spend the
evening with me, to the number of from fifteen to twenty. As the
poison of tobacco acts but for a short time, I at length awoke from
insensibility, and looked round on the party, my eyes dazzled by the
candles which had been lighted in the interim. By way of relieving my
embarrassment one of the gentlemen began the conversation, with "Have
you seen a paper to-day, Mr. Coleridge? " "Sir! " I replied, rubbing my
eyes, "I am far from convinced, that a Christian is permitted to read
either newspapers or any other works of merely political and temporary
interest. " This remark, so ludicrously inapposite to, or rather,
incongruous with, the purpose, for which I was known to have visited
Birmingham, and to assist me in which they were all then met, produced
an involuntary and general burst of laughter; and seldom indeed have
I passed so many delightful hours, as I enjoyed in that room from
the moment of that laugh till an early hour the next morning.
Never, perhaps, in so mixed and numerous a party have I since heard
conversation, sustained with such animation, enriched with such variety
of information and enlivened with such a flow of anecdote. Both then
and afterwards they all joined in dissuading me from proceeding with
my scheme; assured me in the most friendly and yet most flattering
expressions, that neither was the employment fit for me, nor I fit for
the employment. Yet, if I determined on persevering in it, they promised
to exert themselves to the utmost to procure subscribers, and insisted
that I should make no more applications in person, but carry on the
canvass by proxy. The same hospitable reception, the same dissuasion,
and, that failing, the same kind exertions in my behalf, I met with at
Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield,--indeed, at every place in
which I took up my sojourn. I often recall with affectionate pleasure
the many respectable men who interested themselves for me, a perfect
stranger to them, not a few of whom I can still name among my friends.
They will bear witness for me how opposite even then my principles were
to those of Jacobinism or even of democracy, and can attest the strict
accuracy of the statement which I have left on record in the tenth and
eleventh numbers of THE FRIEND.

From this rememberable tour I returned with nearly a thousand names on
the subscription list of THE WATCHMAN; yet more than half convinced,
that prudence dictated the abandonment of the scheme. But for this
very reason I persevered in it; for I was at that period of my life
so completely hag-ridden by the fear of being influenced by selfish
motives, that to know a mode of conduct to be the dictate of prudence
was a sort of presumptive proof to my feelings, that the contrary
was the dictate of duty. Accordingly, I commenced the work, which was
announced in London by long bills in letters larger than had ever been
seen before, and which, I have been informed, for I did not see them
myself, eclipsed the glories even of the lottery puffs. But alas!
the publication of the very first number was delayed beyond the day
announced for its appearance. In the second number an essay against fast
days, with a most censurable application of a text from Isaiah for its
motto, lost me near five hundred of my subscribers at one blow. In the
two following numbers I made enemies of all my Jacobin and democratic
patrons; for, disgusted by their infidelity, and their adoption of
French morals with French psilosophy; and perhaps thinking, that charity
ought to begin nearest home; Instead of abusing the government and the
Aristocrats chiefly or entirely, as had been expected of me, I levelled
my attacks at "modern patriotism," and even ventured to declare my
belief, that whatever the motives of ministers might have been for the
sedition, or as it was then the fashion to call them, the gagging bills,
yet the bills themselves would produce an effect to be desired by all
the true friends of freedom, as far as they should contribute to deter
men from openly declaiming on subjects, the principles of which they had
never bottomed and from "pleading to the poor and ignorant, instead
of pleading for them. " At the same time I avowed my conviction, that
national education and a concurring spread of the Gospel were the
indispensable condition of any true political melioration. Thus by the
time the seventh number was published, I had the mortification--(but why
should I say this, when in truth I cared too little for any thing that
concerned my worldly interests to be at all mortified about it? )--of
seeing the preceding numbers exposed in sundry old iron shops for a
penny a piece. At the ninth number I dropt the work. But from the London
publisher I could not obtain a shilling; he was a ------ and set me at
defiance. From other places I procured but little, and after such delays
as rendered that little worth nothing; and I should have been inevitably
thrown into jail by my Bristol printer, who refused to wait even for a
month, for a sum between eighty and ninety pounds, if the money had
not been paid for me by a man by no means affluent, a dear friend,
who attached himself to me from my first arrival at Bristol, who has
continued my friend with a fidelity unconquered by time or even by my
own apparent neglect; a friend from whom I never received an advice that
was not wise, nor a remonstrance that was not gentle and affectionate.

Conscientiously an opponent of the first revolutionary war, yet with
my eyes thoroughly opened to the true character and impotence of the
favourers of revolutionary principles in England, principles which
I held in abhorrence,--(for it was part of my political creed, that
whoever ceased to act as an individual by making himself a member of
any society not sanctioned by his Government, forfeited the rights of
a citizen)--a vehement Anti-Ministerialist, but after the invasion of
Switzerland, a more vehement Anti-Gallican, and still more intensely
an Anti-Jacobin, I retired to a cottage at Stowey, and provided for my
scanty maintenance by writing verses for a London Morning Paper. I saw
plainly, that literature was not a profession, by which I could expect
to live; for I could not disguise from myself, that, whatever my talents
might or might not be in other respects, yet they were not of the sort
that could enable me to become a popular writer; and that whatever my
opinions might be in themselves, they were almost equi-distant from
all the three prominent parties, the Pittites, the Foxites, and the
Democrats. Of the unsaleable nature of my writings I had an amusing
memento one morning from our own servant girl. For happening to rise
at an earlier hour than usual, I observed her putting an extravagant
quantity of paper into the grate in order to light the fire, and mildly
checked her for her wastefulness; "La, Sir! " (replied poor Nanny) "why,
it is only Watchmen. "

I now devoted myself to poetry and to the study of ethics and
psychology; and so profound was my admiration at this time of Hartley's
ESSAY ON MAN, that I gave his name to my first-born. In addition to the
gentleman, my neighbour, whose garden joined on to my little orchard,
and the cultivation of whose friendship had been my sole motive in
choosing Stowey for my residence, I was so fortunate as to acquire,
shortly after my settlement there, an invaluable blessing in the society
and neighbourhood of one, to whom I could look up with equal reverence,
whether I regarded him as a poet, a philosopher, or a man. His
conversation extended to almost all subjects, except physics and
politics; with the latter he never troubled himself. Yet neither my
retirement nor my utter abstraction from all the disputes of the day
could secure me in those jealous times from suspicion and obloquy, which
did not stop at me, but extended to my excellent friend, whose perfect
innocence was even adduced as a proof of his guilt. One of the many busy
sycophants of that day,--(I here use the word sycophant in its original
sense, as a wretch who flatters the prevailing party by informing
against his neighbours, under pretence that they are exporters of
prohibited figs or fancies,--for the moral application of the term it
matters not which)--one of these sycophantic law-mongrels, discoursing
on the politics of the neighbourhood, uttered the following deep
remark: "As to Coleridge, there is not so much harm in him, for he is a
whirl-brain that talks whatever comes uppermost; but that ------! he is
the dark traitor. You never hear HIM say a syllable on the subject. "

Now that the hand of Providence has disciplined all Europe into
sobriety, as men tame wild elephants, by alternate blows and caresses;
now that Englishmen of all classes are restored to their old English
notions and feelings; it will with difficulty be credited, how great an
influence was at that time possessed and exerted by the spirit of secret
defamation,--(the too constant attendant on party-zeal)--during
the restless interim from 1793 to the commencement of the Addington
administration, or the year before the truce of Amiens. For by the
latter period the minds of the partizans, exhausted by excess of
stimulation and humbled by mutual disappointment, had become languid.
The same causes, that inclined the nation to peace, disposed the
individuals to reconciliation. Both parties had found themselves in
the wrong. The one had confessedly mistaken the moral character of
the revolution, and the other had miscalculated both its moral and
its physical resources. The experiment was made at the price of great,
almost, we may say, of humiliating sacrifices; and wise men foresaw that
it would fail, at least in its direct and ostensible object. Yet it
was purchased cheaply, and realized an object of equal value, and,
if possible, of still more vital importance. For it brought about
a national unanimity unexampled in our history since the reign of
Elizabeth; and Providence, never wanting to a good work when men have
done their parts, soon provided a common focus in the cause of Spain,
which made us all once more Englishmen by at once gratifying and
correcting the predilections of both parties. The sincere reverers of
the throne felt the cause of loyalty ennobled by its alliance with that
of freedom; while the honest zealots of the people could not but admit,
that freedom itself assumed a more winning form, humanized by loyalty
and consecrated by religious principle. The youthful enthusiasts who,
flattered by the morning rainbow of the French revolution, had made a
boast of expatriating their hopes and fears, now, disciplined by the
succeeding storms and sobered by increase of years, had been taught
to prize and honour the spirit of nationality as the best safeguard of
national independence, and this again as the absolute pre-requisite and
necessary basis of popular rights.

If in Spain too disappointment has nipped our too forward expectations,
yet all is not destroyed that is checked. The crop was perhaps springing
up too rank in the stalk to kern well; and there were, doubtless,
symptoms of the Gallican blight on it. If superstition and despotism
have been suffered to let in their wolvish sheep to trample and eat it
down even to the surface, yet the roots remain alive, and the
second growth may prove the stronger and healthier for the temporary
interruption. At all events, to us heaven has been just and gracious.
The people of England did their best, and have received their rewards.
Long may we continue to deserve it! Causes, which it had been too
generally the habit of former statesmen to regard as belonging to
another world, are now admitted by all ranks to have been the main
agents of our success. "We fought from heaven; the stars in their
courses fought against Sisera. " If then unanimity grounded on moral
feelings has been among the least equivocal sources of our national
glory, that man deserves the esteem of his countrymen, even as patriots,
who devotes his life and the utmost efforts of his intellect to the
preservation and continuance of that unanimity by the disclosure
and establishment of principles. For by these all opinions must be
ultimately tried; and, (as the feelings of men are worthy of regard only
as far as they are the representatives of their fixed opinions,) on the
knowledge of these all unanimity, not accidental and fleeting, must be
grounded. Let the scholar, who doubts this assertion, refer only to
the speeches and writings of Edmund Burke at the commencement of the
American war and compare them with his speeches and writings at the
commencement of the French revolution. He will find the principles
exactly the same and the deductions the same; but the practical
inferences almost opposite in the one case from those drawn in the
other; yet in both equally legitimate and in both equally confirmed by
the results. Whence gained he the superiority of foresight? Whence arose
the striking difference, and in most instances even, the discrepancy
between the grounds assigned by him and by those who voted with him, on
the same questions? How are we to explain the notorious fact, that
the speeches and writings of Edmund Burke are more interesting at the
present day than they were found at the time of their first publication;
while those of his illustrious confederates are either forgotten, or
exist only to furnish proofs, that the same conclusion, which one man
had deduced scientifically, may be brought out by another in consequence
of errors that luckily chanced to neutralize each other. It would be
unhandsome as a conjecture, even were it not, as it actually is, false
in point of fact to attribute this difference to the deficiency
of talent on the part of Burke's friends, or of experience, or of
historical knowledge. The satisfactory solution is, that Edmund Burke
possessed and had sedulously sharpened that eye, which sees all things,
actions, and events, in relation to the laws that determine their
existence and circumscribe their possibility. He referred habitually
to principles. He was a scientific statesman; and therefore a seer. For
every principle contains in itself the germs of a prophecy; and, as the
prophetic power is the essential privilege of science, so the fulfilment
of its oracles supplies the outward and, (to men in general,) the
only test of its claim to the title. Wearisome as Burke's refinements
appeared to his parliamentary auditors, yet the cultivated classes
throughout Europe have reason to be thankful, that he

------went on refining,
And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining.

Our very sign-boards, (said an illustrious friend to me,) give evidence,
that there has been a Titian in the world. In like manner, not only the
debates in parliament, not only our proclamations and state papers,
but the essays and leading paragraphs of our journals are so many
remembrancers of Edmund Burke. Of this the reader may easily convince
himself, if either by recollection or reference he will compare the
opposition newspapers at the commencement and during the five or six
following years of the French revolution with the sentiments, and
grounds of argument assumed in the same class of journals at present,
and for some years past.

Whether the spirit of jacobinism, which the writings of Burke exorcised
from the higher and from the literary classes, may not, like the ghost
in Hamlet, be heard moving and mining in the underground chambers
with an activity the more dangerous because less noisy, may admit of
a question. I have given my opinions on this point, and the grounds of
them, in my letters to judge Fletcher occasioned by his charge to the
Wexford grand jury, and published in the Courier. Be this as it may, the
evil spirit of jealousy, and with it the Cerberean whelps of feud and
slander, no longer walk their rounds, in cultivated society.

Far different were the days to which these anecdotes have carried me
back. The dark guesses of some zealous Quidnunc met with so congenial a
soil in the grave alarm of a titled Dogberry of our neighbourhood, that
a spy was actually sent down from the government pour surveillance of
myself and friend. There must have been not only abundance, but variety
of these "honourable men" at the disposal of Ministers: for this proved
a very honest fellow. After three weeks' truly Indian perseverance in
tracking us, (for we were commonly together,) during all which
time seldom were we out of doors, but he contrived to be within
hearing,--(and all the while utterly unsuspected; how indeed could such
a suspicion enter our fancies? )--he not only rejected Sir Dogberry's
request that he would try yet a little longer, but declared to him his
belief, that both my friend and myself were as good subjects, for aught
he could discover to the contrary, as any in His Majesty's dominions. He
had repeatedly hid himself, he said, for hours together behind a bank at
the sea-side, (our favourite seat,) and overheard our conversation. At
first he fancied, that we were aware of our danger; for he often heard
me talk of one Spy Nozy, which he was inclined to interpret of himself,
and of a remarkable feature belonging to him; but he was speedily
convinced that it was the name of a man who had made a book and lived
long ago. Our talk ran most upon books, and we were perpetually desiring
each other to look at this, and to listen to that; but he could not
catch a word about politics. Once he had joined me on the road; (this
occurred, as I was returning home alone from my friend's house, which
was about three miles from my own cottage,) and, passing himself off
as a traveller, he had entered into conversation with me, and talked
of purpose in a democrat way in order to draw me out. The result, it
appears, not only convinced him that I was no friend of jacobinism; but,
(he added,) I had "plainly made it out to be such a silly as well as
wicked thing, that he felt ashamed though he had only put it on. " I
distinctly remembered the occurrence, and had mentioned it immediately
on my return, repeating what the traveller with his Bardolph nose had
said, with my own answer; and so little did I suspect the true object
of my "tempter ere accuser," that I expressed with no small pleasure my
hope and belief, that the conversation had been of some service to the
poor misled malcontent. This incident therefore prevented all doubt as
to the truth of the report, which through a friendly medium came to me
from the master of the village inn, who had been ordered to entertain
the Government gentleman in his best manner, but above all to be silent
concerning such a person being in his house. At length he received Sir
Dogberry's commands to accompany his guest at the final interview;
and, after the absolving suffrage of the gentleman honoured with the
confidence of Ministers, answered, as follows, to the following queries:
D. "Well, landlord! and what do you know of the person in question? L.
I see him often pass by with maister ----, my landlord, (that is, the
owner of the house,) and sometimes with the new-comers at Holford; but
I never said a word to him or he to me. D. But do you not know, that he
has distributed papers and hand-bills of a seditious nature among the
common people? L. No, your Honour! I never heard of such a thing. D.
Have you not seen this Mr. Coleridge, or heard of, his haranguing and
talking to knots and clusters of the inhabitants? --What are you grinning
at, Sir? L. Beg your Honour's pardon! but I was only thinking, how
they'd have stared at him. If what I have heard be true, your Honour!
they would not have understood a word he said. When our Vicar was here,
Dr. L. the master of the great school and Canon of Windsor, there was a
great dinner party at maister's; and one of the farmers, that was there,
told us that he and the Doctor talked real Hebrew Greek at each other
for an hour together after dinner. D. Answer the question, Sir! does he
ever harangue the people? L. I hope your Honour an't angry with me. I
can say no more than I know. I never saw him talking with any one, but
my landlord, and our curate, and the strange gentleman. D. Has he not
been seen wandering on the hills towards the Channel, and along the
shore, with books and papers in his hand, taking charts and maps of
the country? L. Why, as to that, your Honour! I own, I have heard; I am
sure, I would not wish to say ill of any body; but it is certain, that I
have heard--D. Speak out, man! don't be afraid, you are doing your duty
to your King and Government. What have you heard? L. Why, folks do
say, your Honour! as how that he is a Poet, and that he is going to put
Quantock and all about here in print; and as they be so much together,
I suppose that the strange gentleman has some consarn in the
business. "--So ended this formidable inquisition, the latter part of
which alone requires explanation, and at the same time entitles the
anecdote to a place in my literary life. I had considered it as a defect
in the admirable poem of THE TASK, that the subject, which gives the
title to the work, was not, and indeed could not be, carried on beyond
the three or four first pages, and that, throughout the poem, the
connections are frequently awkward, and the transitions abrupt and
arbitrary. I sought for a subject, that should give equal room and
freedom for description, incident, and impassioned reflections on men,
nature, and society, yet supply in itself a natural connection to the
parts, and unity to the whole. Such a subject I conceived myself to
have found in a stream, traced from its source in the hills among the
yellow-red moss and conical glass-shaped tufts of bent, to the first
break or fall, where its drops become audible, and it begins to form a
channel; thence to the peat and turf barn, itself built of the same dark
squares as it sheltered; to the sheepfold; to the first cultivated
plot of ground; to the lonely cottage and its bleak garden won from the
heath; to the hamlet, the villages, the market-town, the manufactories,
and the seaport. My walks therefore were almost daily on the top
of Quantock, and among its sloping coombes. With my pencil and
memorandum-book in my hand, I was making studies, as the artists call
them, and often moulding my thoughts into verse, with the objects and
imagery immediately before my senses. Many circumstances, evil and good,
intervened to prevent the completion of the poem, which was to have been
entitled THE BROOK. Had I finished the work, it was my purpose in the
heat of the moment to have dedicated it to our then committee of public
safety as containing the charts and maps, with which I was to have
supplied the French Government in aid of their plans of invasion. And
these too for a tract of coast that, from Clevedon to Minehead, scarcely
permits the approach of a fishing-boat!

All my experience from my first entrance into life to the present hour
is in favour of the warning maxim, that the man, who opposes in toto the
political or religious zealots of his age, is safer from their obloquy
than he who differs from them but in one or two points, or perhaps only
in degree. By that transfer of the feelings of private life into the
discussion of public questions, which is the queen bee in the hive of
party fanaticism, the partisan has more sympathy with an intemperate
opposite than with a moderate friend. We now enjoy an intermission,
and long may it continue! In addition to far higher and more important
merits, our present Bible societies and other numerous associations
for national or charitable objects, may serve perhaps to carry off
the superfluous activity and fervour of stirring minds in innocent
hyperboles and the bustle of management. But the poison-tree is not
dead, though the sap may for a season have subsided to its roots. At
least let us not be lulled into such a notion of our entire security, as
not to keep watch and ward, even on our best feelings. I have seen gross
intolerance shown in support of toleration; sectarian antipathy
most obtrusively displayed in the promotion of an undistinguishing
comprehension of sects: and acts of cruelty, (I had almost said,) of
treachery, committed in furtherance of an object vitally important
to the cause of humanity; and all this by men too of naturally kind
dispositions and exemplary conduct.

The magic rod of fanaticism is preserved in the very adyta of human
nature; and needs only the re-exciting warmth of a master hand to bud
forth afresh and produce the old fruits. The horror of the Peasants' war
in Germany, and the direful effects of the Anabaptists' tenets,
(which differed only from those of jacobinism by the substitution of
theological for philosophical jargon,) struck all Europe for a time with
affright. Yet little more than a century was sufficient to obliterate
all effective memory of these events. The same principles with
similar though less dreadful consequences were again at work from the
imprisonment of the first Charles to the restoration of his son. The
fanatic maxim of extirpating fanaticism by persecution produced a civil
war. The war ended in the victory of the insurgents; but the temper
survived, and Milton had abundant grounds for asserting, that "Presbyter
was but OLD PRIEST writ large! " One good result, thank heaven! of this
zealotry was the re-establishment of the church. And now it might have
been hoped, that the mischievous spirit would have been bound for a
season, "and a seal set upon him, that he should deceive the nation
no more. " [33] But no! The ball of persecution was taken up with
undiminished vigour by the persecuted. The same fanatic principle that,
under the solemn oath and covenant, had turned cathedrals into stables,
destroyed the rarest trophies of art and ancestral piety, and hunted the
brightest ornaments of learning and religion into holes and corners, now
marched under episcopal banners, and, having first crowded the prisons
of England, emptied its whole vial of wrath on the miserable Covenanters
of Scotland [34]. A merciful providence at length constrained both
parties to join against a common enemy.