infrequently was in face of the laws on that subject which he had
himself repeatedly laid down! Could it be believed of a man so quick to
feel, so rapid to arrest all phenomena, that in a matter so important as
that of style, he should have nothing loftier to record of his own
merits, services, reformations, or cautions, than that he has always
conscientiously forborne to use the personal genitive _whose_ in
speaking of inanimate things? For example, that he did not say, and
could not have been tempted or tortured into saying, 'The bridge _whose_
piers could not much longer resist the flood.' Well, as they say in
Scotland, some people are thankful for small mercies. We--that is, you,
the reader, and ourselves--are _persons_; the bridge, you see, is but a
_thing_. We pity it, poor thing, and, as far as it is possible to
entertain such a sentiment for a bridge, we feel respect for it. Few
bridges are thoroughly contemptible; and we make a point, in obedience
to an old-world proverb, always to speak well of the bridge that has
carried us over in safety, which the worst of bridges never yet has
refused to do. But still there _are_ such things as social distinctions;
and we conceive that a man and a 'contributor' (an _ancient_ contributor
to _Blackwood_), must in the herald's college be allowed a permanent
precedency before all bridges whatsoever, without regard to number of
arches, width of span, or any other frivolous pretences. We acknowledge
therefore with gratitude Coleridge's loyalty to his own species in not
listening to any compromise with mere things, that never were nor will
be raised to the peerage of personality, and sternly refusing them the
verbal honours which are sacred to us humans. But what is the principle
of taste upon which Coleridge justifies this rigorous practice? It
is--and we think it a very just principle--that this mechanic mode of
giving life to things inanimate ranks 'amongst those worst mimicries of
poetic diction by which imbecile writers fancy they elevate their
prose.' True; but the same spurious artifices for giving a fantastic
elevation to prose reappear in a thousand other forms, from some of
which neither Coleridge nor his accomplished daughter is absolutely
free. For instance, one of the commonest abuses of pure English amongst
our Scottish brethren, unless where they have been educated out of
Scotland, is to use _aught_ for _anything_, _ere_ for _before_,
_well-nigh_ for _almost_, and scores besides. No home-bred, _i.e._
Cockney Scotchman, is aware that these are poetic forms, and are as
ludicrously stilted in any ear trained by the daily habits of good
society to the appreciation of pure English--as if, in Spenserian
phrase, he should say, '_What time_ I came home to breakfast,' instead
of '_When_ I came home.' The _'tis_ and _'twas_, which have been
superannuated for a century in England, except in poetic forms, still
linger in Scotland and in Ireland, and these forms also at intervals
look out from Coleridge's prose. Coleridge is also guilty at odd times
(as is Wordsworth) of that most horrible affectation, the _hath_ and
_doth_ for _has_ and _does_. This is really criminal. But amongst all
barbarisms known to man, the very worst--and this also, we are sorry to
say, flourishes as rankly as weeds in Scotch prose, and is to be found
in Coleridge's writings--is the use of the _thereof_, _therein_,
_thereby_, _thereunto_. This monstrous expression of imperfect
civilization, which for one hundred and fifty years has been cashiered
by cultivated Englishmen as _attorneys' English_, and is absolutely
frightful unless in a lease or conveyance, ought (we do not scruple to
say) to be made indictable at common law, not perhaps as a felony, but
certainly as a misdemeanour, punishable by fine and imprisonment.
In nothing is the characteristic mode of Coleridge's mind to be seen
more strikingly than in his treatment of some branches of dramatic
literature, though to that subject he had devoted the closest study. He
was almost as distinguished, indeed, for the points he missed as for
those he saw. Look at his position as regards some questions concerning
the French drama and its critics, more particularly the views of
Voltaire, though some explanation may be found in the fact, which I have
noticed elsewhere, that Coleridge's acquaintance with the French
language was not such as to enable him to read it with the easy
familiarity which ensures complete pleasure. But something may also be
due to his deep and absorbed religious feeling, which seemed to
incapacitate him from perceiving the points where Voltaire, despite his
scepticism, had planted his feet on firm ground. Coleridge was aware
that Voltaire, in common with every Frenchman until the present
generation, held it as a point of faith that the French drama was
inapproachable in excellence. From Lessing, and chiefly, from his
_Dramaturgie_, Coleridge was also aware, on the other hand, upon what
erroneous grounds that imaginary pre-eminence was built. He knew that it
was a total misconception of the Greek unities (excepting only as
regards the unity of fable, or, as Coleridge otherwise calls it, the
_unity of interest_) which had misled the French. It was a huge blunder.
The case was this: Peculiar embarrassments had arisen to the Athenian
dramatists as to time and place, from the chorus--out of which chorus
had grown the whole drama. The chorus, composed generally of men or
women, could not be moved from Susa to Memphis or from one year to
another, as might the spectator. This was a fetter, but, with the
address of great artists, they had turned their fetters into occasions
of ornament. But, in this act of beautifying their narrow field, they
had done nothing to enlarge it. They had submitted gracefully to what,
for _them_, was a religious necessity. But it was ridiculous that modern
dramatists, under no such necessity (because clogged with no inheritance
of a personal chorus), should voluntarily assume fetters which, having
no ceremonial and hallowed call for a chorus, could have no meaning. So
far Coleridge was kept right by his own sagacity and by his German
guides; but a very trifle of further communication with Voltaire, and
with the writers of whom Voltaire was speaking, would have introduced
him to two facts calculated a little to raise Voltaire in his esteem,
and very much to lower the only French writer (viz., Racine) whom he
ever thought fit to praise. With regard to Voltaire himself he would
have found that, so far from exalting the French poetic literature
_generally_ in proportion to that monstrous pre-eminence which he had
claimed for the French drama, on the contrary, from this very drama,
from the very pre-eminence, he drew an argument for the general
inferiority of the French poetry. The French drama, he argued, was
confessedly exalted amongst the French themselves beyond any other
section of their literature. But why? Why was this? If the drama had
prospered disproportionately under public favour, what caused that
favour? It was, said Voltaire, the social nature of the French, with
their consequent interest in whatever assumed the attire of conversation
or dialogue; and, secondly, it was the peculiar strength of their
language in that one function, which had been nursed and ripened by
this preponderance of social habits. Hence it happened that the drama
obtained at one and the same time a greater _interest_ for the French,
and also (by means of this culture given to conversational forms) most
unhappily for his lordship's critical discernment of flavours, as well
as his Greek literature, happens to be a respectable Joe Miller from the
era of Hierocles, and through _him_ probably it came down from
Pythagoras. Yet still Voltaire was very far indeed from being a
'scribbler.' He had the graceful levity and the graceful gaiety of his
nation in an exalted degree. He had a vast compass of miscellaneous
knowledge; pity that it was so disjointed, _arena sine calce_; pity that
you could never rely on its accuracy; and, as respected his epic poetry,
'tis true 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true, that you are rather
disposed to laugh than to cry when Voltaire solemnly proposes to be
sublime. His _Henriade_ originally appeared in London about 1726, when
the poet was visiting this country as a fugitive before the wrath of
Louis the Well-beloved; and naturally in the opening passage he
determined to astonish the weak minds of us islanders by a flourish on
the tight-rope of sublimity. But to his vexation a native Greek (viz., a
Smyrniot), then by accident in London, called upon him immediately after
the publication, and, laying his finger on a line in the exordium (as it
then stood), said, 'Sare, I am one countryman of Homer's. He write de
Iliad; you write de Henriade; but Homer vos never able in all de total
whole of de Iliad to write de verse like dis.' Upon which the Greek
showed him a certain line.
Voltaire admired the line itself, but in deference to this Greek irony,
supported by the steady advice of his English friends, he finally
altered it. It is possible to fail, however, as an epic poet, and very
excusable for a Frenchman to fail, and yet to succeed in many other
walks of literature. But to Coleridge's piety, to Coleridge's earnest
seeking for light, and to Coleridge's profound sense of the necessity
which connects from below all ultimate philosophy with religion, the
scoffing scepticism of Voltaire would form even a stronger repulsion
than his puerile hostility to Shakespeare. Even here, however, there is
something to be pleaded for Voltaire. Much of his irreligion doubtless
arose from a defective and unimpassioned nature, but part of it was
noble, and rested upon his intolerance of cruelty, of bigotry, and of
priestcraft--but still more of these qualities not germinating
spontaneously, but assumed fraudulently as masques. But very little
Coleridge had troubled himself to investigate Voltaire's views, even
where he was supposing himself to be ranged in opposition to them.
A word or two about those accusations of plagiarism of which far too
much has been made by more than one critic; we ourselves having,
perhaps, been guilty of too wantonly stirring these waters at one time
of our lives; and in the attempt to make matters more clear, only, it
may be, succeeded in muddying them. Stolberg, Matthison, Schiller,
Frederika Brun, Schelling, and others, whom he has been supposed to have
robbed of trifles, he could not expect to lurk[8] in darkness, and
particularly as he was actively contributing to disperse the darkness
that yet hung over their names in England. But really for such
bagatelles as were concerned in this poetic part of the allegation--even
Bow Street, with the bloodiest Draco of a critical reviewer sitting on
the bench, would not have entertained the charge. Most of us, we
suppose, would be ready enough to run off with a Titian or a Correggio,
provided the coast were clear, and no policemen heaving in sight; but to
be suspected of pocketing a silver spoon, which, after all, would
probably turn out to be made of German silver--faugh!--we not only defy
the fiend and his temptations generally, but we spit in his face for
such an insinuation. With respect to the pretty toy model of Hexameter
and Pentameter from Schiller, we believe the case to have arisen thus:
in talking of metre, and illustrating it (as Coleridge often did at
tea-tables) from Homer, and then from the innumerable wooden and
cast-iron imitations of it among the Germans--he would be very likely to
cite this little ivory bijou from Schiller; upon which the young ladies
would say: 'But, Mr. Coleridge, we do not understand German. Could you
not give us an idea of it in some English version?' Then would he, with
his usual obligingness, write down his mimic English echo of Schiller's
German echo. And of course the young ladies, too happy to possess an
autograph from the 'Ancient Mariner,' and an autograph besides having a
separate interest of its own, would endorse it with the immortal
initials 'S. T. C.,' after which an injunction issuing from the Court of
Chancery would be quite unavailing to arrest its flight through the
journals of the land as the avowed composition of Coleridge. They know
little of Coleridge's habits who suppose that his attention was
disposable for cases of this kind. Alike, whether he were unconsciously
made by the error of a reporter to rob others, or others to rob him, he
would be little likely to hear of the mistake--or, hearing of it by some
rare accident, to take any pains for its correction. It is probable that
such mistakes sometimes arose with others, but sometimes also with
himself from imperfect recollection; and _that_, owing chiefly to his
carelessness about the property at issue, so that it seemed not worth
the requisite effort to vindicate the claim if it happened to be _his_,
or formally to renounce it if it were not. But, however this might be,
his daughter's remark remains true, and is tolerably significant, that
the people whom (through anybody's mistake) he seems to have robbed were
all pretty much in the sunshine of the world's regard; there was no
attempt to benefit by darkness or twilight, and an intentional robber
must have known that the detection was inevitable.
A second thing to be said in palliation of such plagiarisms, real or
fancied, intentional or not intentional, is this--that at least
Coleridge never insulted or derided those upon whose rights he is
supposed to have meditated an aggression.
Coleridge has now been dead for more than fifteen years,[9] and he lived
through a painful life of sixty-three years; seventy-eight years it is
since he first drew that troubled air of earth, from which with such
bitter loathing he rose as a phoenix might be supposed to rise, that,
in retribution of some treason to his immortal race, had been compelled
for a secular period to banquet on carrion with ghouls, or on the spoils
of _vivisection_ with vampires. Not with less horror of retrospect than
such a phoenix did Coleridge, when ready to wing his flight from
earth, survey the chambers of suffering through which he had trod his
way from childhood to gray hairs. Perhaps amongst all the populous
nations of the grave not one was ever laid there, through whose bones so
mighty a thrill of shuddering anguish would creep, if by an audible
whisper the sound of earth and the memories of earth could reach his
coffin. Yet why? Was he not himself a child of earth? Yes, and by too
strong a link: _that_ it was which shattered him. For also he was a
child of Paradise, and in the struggle between two natures he could not
support himself erect. That dreadful conflict it was which supplanted
his footing. Had he been gross, fleshly, sensual, being so framed for
voluptuous enjoyment, he would have sunk away silently (as millions
sink) through carnal wrecks into carnal ruin. He would have been
mentioned oftentimes with a sigh of regret as that youthful author who
had enriched the literature of his country with two exquisite poems,
'Love' and the 'Ancient Mariner,' but who for some unknown reason had
not fulfilled his apparent mission on earth. As it was, being most
genial and by his physical impulses most luxurious; yet, on the other
hand, by fiery aspirations of intellect and of spiritual heart being
coerced as if through torments of magical spells into rising heavenwards
for ever, into eternal commerce with the grander regions of his own
nature, he found this strife too much for his daily peace, too imperfect
was the ally which he found in his will; treachery there was in his own
nature, and almost by a necessity he yielded to the dark temptations of
opium. That 'graspless hand,' from which, as already in one of his early
poems (November, 1794) he had complained--
'Drop friendship's priceless pearls as hour-glass sands,'
was made much _more_ graspless, and in this way the very graces of his
moral nature ministered eventually the heaviest of his curses. Most
unworldly he was, most unmercenary, and (as somebody has remarked) even
to a disease, and, in such a degree as if an organ had been forgotten by
Nature in his composition, disregardful of self. But even in these
qualities lay the baits for his worldly ruin, which subsequently caused
or allowed so much of his misery. Partly from the introversion of his
mind, and its habitual sleep of reverie in relation to all external
interests, partly from his defect in all habits of prudential
forecasting, resting his head always on the pillow of the _present_--he
had been carried rapidly past all openings that offered towards the
creation of a fortune before he even heard of them, and he first awoke
to the knowledge that such openings had ever existed when he looked back
upon them from a distance, and found them already irrecoverable for
ever.
Such a case as this, as soon as it became known that the case stood
connected with so much power of intellect and so much of various
erudition, was the very ideal case that challenges aid from the public
purse. Mrs. Coleridge has feelingly noticed the philosophic fact. It was
the case of a man lame in the faculties which apply to the architecture
of a fortune, but lame through the very excess in some other faculties
that qualified him for a public teacher, or (which is even more
requisite) for a public stimulator of powers else dormant.
A perfect romance it is that settles upon three generations of these
Coleridges; a romance of beauty, of intellectual power, of misfortune
suddenly illuminated from heaven, of prosperity suddenly overcast by the
waywardness of the individual. The grandfather of the present
generation, who for us stands forward as the founder of the family,
viz., the Rev. John Coleridge; even _his_ career wins a secret homage of
tears and smiles in right of its marvellous transitions from gloom to
sudden light, in right of its entire simplicity, and of its eccentric
consistency. Already in early youth, swimming against a heady current of
hindrances almost overwhelming, he had by solitary efforts qualified
himself for any higher situation that might offer. But, just as this
training was finished, the chances that it might ever turn to account
suddenly fell down to zero; for precisely then did domestic misfortunes
oblige his father to dismiss him from his house with one solitary
half-crown and his paternal benediction. What became of the half-crown
is not recorded, but the benediction speedily blossomed into fruit. The
youth had sat down by the roadside under the mere oppression of grief
for his blighted prospects. But gradually and by steps the most
unexpected and providential, he was led to pedagogy and through this to
his true destination--that of a clergyman of the English church--a
position which from his learning, his devotion, and even from his very
failings--failings in businesslike foresight and calculation--his
absence of mind, his charitable feelings, and his true docility of
nature, he was fitted to adorn; and, indeed, but for his eccentricities
and his complete freedom from worldly self-seeking, and indifference to
such considerations as are apt to weigh all too little with his fellows
of the cloth, he might have moved as an equal among the most eminent
scholars and thinkers. Beautiful are the alternate phases of a good
parish priest--now sitting at the bedside of a dying neighbour, and
ministering with guidance and consolation to the labouring spirit--now
sitting at midnight under the lamp of his own study, and searching the
holy oracles of inspiration for light inexhaustible. These pictures were
realized in J. Coleridge's life.
Mr. Wordsworth has done much to place on an elevated pedestal a very
different type of parish priest--Walker of Seathwaite. The contrast
between him and John Coleridge is striking; and not only striking but
apt, from some points of view, to move something of laughter as well as
tears. The strangest thing is that, if some demon of mischief tempts us,
a hurly-burly begins again of laughter and mockery among that ancient
brotherhood of hills, like Handel's chorus in 'l'Allegro' of 'laughter
holding both his sides.'
'Old Skiddaw blows
His speaking-trumpet; back out of the clouds
On Glaramara, "_I say, Walker_" rings;
And Kirkstone "goes it" from his misty head.'
The Rev. Walker, of Seathwaite, it is recorded, spent most of his time
in the parish church; but doing what? Why, spinning; _always_ spinning
wool on the steps of the altar, and only _sometimes_ lecturing his
younger parishioners in the spelling-book. So passed his life. And, if
you feel disposed to say, '_An innocent life_!' you must immediately add
from Mr. Wordsworth's 'Ruth,' '_An innocent life, but far astray_!' What
time had he for writing sermons? The Rev. John Coleridge wrote an
exegetical work on the Book of Judges; we doubt whether Walker could
have spelt _exegetical_. And supposing the Bishop of Chester, in whose
diocese his parish lay, had suddenly said, 'Walker, _unde derivatur_
"_exegesis_"?' Walker must have been walked off into the corner, as a
punishment for answering absurdly. But luckily the Bishop's palace
stood ninety and odd miles south of Walker's two spinning-wheels. For,
observe, he had _two_ spinning-wheels, but he hadn't a single Iliad. Mr.
Wordsworth will say that Walker did something besides spinning and
spelling. What was it? Why, he read a little. A _very_ little, I can
assure you. For _when_ did he read? Never but on a Saturday afternoon.
And _what_ did Walker read? Doubtless now it was Hooker, or was it
Jeremy Taylor, or Barrow? No; it was none of these that Walker honoured
by his Saturday studies, but a magazine. Now, we all know what awful
rubbish the magazines of those days carted upon men's premises. It would
have been indictable as a nuisance if a publisher had laid it down
_gratis_ at your door. Had Walker lived in _our_ days, the case would
have been very different. A course of _Blackwood_ would have braced his
constitution; his spinning-wheel would have stopped; his spelling would
have improved into moral philosophy and the best of politics. This very
month, as the public is by this time aware, Walker would have read
something about himself that _must_ have done him good. We might very
truly have put an advertisement into the _Times_ all last month, saying,
'Let Walker look into the next _Blackwood_, and he will hear of
something greatly to his advantage.' But alas! Walker descended to
Hades, and most ingloriously as _we_ contend, before _Blackwood_ had
dawned upon a benighted earth. We differ therefore by an inexpressible
difference from Wordsworth's estimate of this old fellow. And we close
our account of him by citing two little sallies from his only known
literary productions, viz., two letters, one to a friend, and the other
to the Archbishop of York. In the first of these he introduces a child
of his own under the following flourish of rhetoric, viz., as 'a pledge
of conjugal endearment.' We doubt if his correspondent ever read such a
bit of sentiment before. In the other letter, addressed to the
Metropolitan of the province, Walker has the assurance to say that he
trusts the young man, his son (_not_ the aforesaid cub, the pledge of
conjugal endearment) will never disgrace the _paternal_ example, _i.e._,
Walker's example. Pretty strong _that_! And, if exegetically handled, it
must mean that Walker, junr., is to continue spinning and spelling, as
also once a week reading the _Town and Country Magazine_, all the days
of his life. Oh, Walker, you're a very sad fellow! And the only excuse
for you is, that, like most of your brethren in that mountainous nook of
England, so beautiful but so poor, you never saw the academic bowers of
either Oxford or Cambridge.
Both in prose and verse, much prose and a short allowance of verse, has
Wordsworth celebrated this man, and he has held him aloft like the
saintly Herbert[10] as a shining model of a rural priest. We are glad,
therefore, for Wordsworth's sake, that no judge from the Consistorial
Court ever happened to meet with Walker when trudging over the Furness
Fells to Ulverston with a _long_ cwt. (120 lb. avoirdupois) of wool on
his back, a thing which he did in all weathers. The wool would have been
condemned as a good prize, and we much fear that Walker's gown would
have been stripped over his head; which is a sad catastrophe for a
pattern priest. Mr. John Coleridge came much nearer to Chaucer's model
of a _Parish_ Priest, whilst at the same time he did honour to the
Academic standard of such a priest. He loved his poor parishioners as
children confided to his pastoral care, but he also loved his library.
But, on the other hand, as to Walker, if ever _he_ were seen burning the
midnight oil, it was not in a gentleman's study--it was in a horrid
garret or cock-loft at the top of his house, disturbing the 'conjugal
endearments' of roosting fowl, and on a business the least spiritual
that can be imagined. By ancient usage throughout this sequestered
region, which is the Savoy of England (viz., Cumberland, Westmoreland,
and Furness) all accounts are settled annually at Candlemas, which means
the middle of February. From Christmas, therefore, to this period the
reverend pastor was employed in making out bills, receipts, leases and
releases, charges and discharges, wills and codicils to wills for most
of the hardworking householders amongst his flock. This work paid better
than spinning. By this night work, by the summer work of cutting peats
and mowing grass, by the autumnal work of reaping barley and oats, and
the early winter work of taking up potatoes, the reverend gentleman
could average seven shillings a day besides beer. But meantime our
spiritual friend was poaching on the manors of the following people--of
the chamber counsel, of the attorney, of the professional accountant, of
the printer and compositor, of the notary public, of the scrivener, and
sometimes, we fear, of the sheriff's officer in arranging for special
bail. These very uncanonical services one might have fancied sufficient,
with spinning and spelling, for filling up the temporal cares of any one
man's time. But this restless Proteus masqueraded through a score of
other characters--as seedsman, harvester, hedger and ditcher, etc. We
have no doubt that he would have taken a job of paving; he would have
contracted for darning old Christopher's silk stockings, or for a mile
of sewerage; or he would have contracted to dispose by night of the
sewage (which the careful reader must not confound with the sewerage,
that being the ship and the sewage the freight). But all this coarse
labour makes a man's hands horny, and, what is worse, the starvation,
or, at least, impoverishment, of his intellect makes his mind horny;
and, what is worst of all in a clergyman, who is stationed as a watchman
on a church-steeple expressly to warn all others against the
all-besetting danger of worldliness, such an incessant preoccupation of
the heart by coarse and petty cares makes the spiritual apprehensiveness
and every organ of spiritual sensibility more horny than the hoofs of a
rhinoceros.