the early loss of his father, separation from his mother, and removal
from Devon to London, is fully borne out by the more personal utterances
to be found in Coleridge's poems. Looking through them with this idea in
view, we are surprised at the deposit left in them by this conscious
experience on Coleridge's part. Not to dwell at all on what might be
very legitimately regarded as _indirect_ expressions of the sentiment,
we shall present here, in order to add emphasis to De Quincey's
position, some of the extracts which have most impressed us. From the
poem in the Early Poems 'To an Infant,' are these lines:
'Man's breathing miniature! thou mak'st me sigh--
A babe art thou--and such a thing am I,
To anger rapid and as soon appeased,
For trifles mourning and by trifles pleased,
Break friendship's mirror with a tetchy blow,
Yet snatch what coals of fire on pleasure's altar glow.'
Still more emphatic is this passage from the poem, 'Frost at Midnight':
'My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags; so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all and all things in Himself.
Great Universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.'
In another place, when speaking of the love of mother for child and that
of child for mother, awakened into life by the very impress of that love
in voice and touch, he concludes with the line:
'Why was I made for Love and Love denied to me?'
And, most significant of all, is that Dedication in 1803 of his Early
Poems to his brother, the Rev. George Coleridge of Ottery St. Mary, when
he writes, after having dwelt on the bliss this brother had enjoyed in
never having been really removed from the place of his early nurture:
'To me the Eternal Wisdom hath dispensed
A different fortune, and more different mind--
Me, from the spot where first I sprang to light
Too soon transplanted, ere my soul had fixed
Its first domestic loves; and hence, through life
Chasing chance-started friendships. A brief while
Some have preserved me from life's pelting ills,
But like a tree with leaves of feeble stem,
If the clouds lasted, and a sudden breeze
Ruffled the boughs, they on my head at once
Dropped the collected shower: and some most false,
False and fair-foliaged as the manchineel,
Have tempted me to slumber in their shade
E'en 'mid the storm; then breathing subtlest damps
Mixed their own venom with the rain from Heaven,
That I woke poisoned! But (all praise to Him
Who gives us all things) more have yielded me
Permanent shelter: and beside one friend,
Beneath the impervious covert of one oak
I've raised a lowly shed and know the name
Of husband and of father; not unhearing
Of that divine and nightly-whispering voice,
Which from my childhood to maturer years
Spake to me of predestinated wreaths,
Bright with no fading colours!
Yet, at times,
My soul is sad, that I have roamed through life
Still most a stranger, most with naked heart,
At mine own home and birthplace: chiefly then
When I remember thee, my earliest friend!
Thee, who didst watch my boyhood and my youth;
Did'st trace my wanderings with a father's eye;
And, boding evil yet still hoping good,
Rebuked each fault and over all my woes
Sorrowed in silence!'
And certainly all this only gains emphasis from the entry we have in the
'Table Talk' under date August 16, 1832, and under the heading,
'Christ's Hospital, Bowyer':
'The discipline of Christ's Hospital in my time was ultra-Spartan; all
domestic ties were to be put aside. "Boy!" I remember Bowyer saying to
me once when I was crying the first day of my return after the holidays.
"Boy! the school is your father! Boy! the school is your mother! Boy!
the school is your brother! the school is your sister! the school is
your first cousin, and all the rest of your relations! Let's have no
more crying!"'
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Really now I can't say that. No; I couldn't have stood Cruger's
arguments. 'Ditto to Mr. Burke' is certainly not a very brilliant
observation, but still it's supportable, whereas I must have found the
pains of contradiction insupportable.
[2] This sublimest of all Greek poets did really die, as some
biographers allege, by so extraordinary and, as one may say, so
insulting a mistake on the part of an eagle.
[3] _Frankistan._--There is no word, but perhaps Frankistan might come
nearest to such a word, for expressing the territory of Christendom
taken jointly with that of those Mahometan nations which have for a long
period been connected with Christians in their hostilities, whether of
arms or of policy. The Arabs and the Moors belong to these nations, for
the circle of their political system has always been made up in part by
a segment from Christendom, their relations of war being still more
involved with such a segment.
[4] 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' Act I., Sc. 4. Mrs. Quickly: '... An
honest, willing, kind fellow, as ever servant shall come in house
withal; and I warrant you no tell-tale, nor no breed-hate; his worst
fault is, that he is given to prayer; he is something peevish that way;
but nobody but has his fault--but let that pass.'--ED.
[5] '_Pun them into shivers_': Troilus and Cressida, Act II., Sc. 1. We
refer specially to the jolly boatswain, having already noticed the fact,
that sailors as a class, from retaining more of the simplicity and quick
susceptibility belonging to childhood, are unusually fond of waxen
exhibitions. Too much worldly experience indisposes men to the
playfulness and to the _toyfulness_ (if we may invent that word) of
childhood, not less through the ungenial churlishness which it gradually
deposits, than through the expansion of understanding which it promotes.
[6] '_Science not always fathomable._' Several distinguished Frenchmen
have pursued a course of investigations into these fenestral phenomena,
which one might call the _Fata Morgana of Frost_; and, amongst these
investigators, some--not content with watching, observing,
recording--have experimented on these floral prolusions of nature by
arranging beforehand the circumstances and conditions into which and
under which the Frost Fairy should be allowed to play. But what was the
result? Did they catch the Fairy? Did they chase her into her secret
cells and workshops? Did they throw over the freedom of her motions a
harness of net-work of coercion as the Pagans over their pitiful
Proteus? So far from it, that the more they studied the less they
understood; and all the traps which they laid for the Fairy, did but
multiply her evasions.
[7] The passage occurs at p. 354, vol. ii. of the _Lectures_; and we now
find, on looking to the place, that the illustration is drawn from 'a
dell of lazy Sicily.' The same remark has virtually been anticipated at
p. 181 of the same volume in the rule about 'converting mere
abstractions into persons.'
[8] It is true that Mr. De Quincey _did_ make the mistake of supposing
Coleridge to have 'calculated on' a remark which Mrs. Coleridge justly
characterises as a blind one. It _was_ blind as compared with the fact
resulting from grounds not then known; else it was _not_ blind as a
reasonable inference under the same circumstances.
[9] If for the words 'more than fifteen years' we say sixteen or
seventeen, as Coleridge died in 1834, this article would be written in
1850 or 1851.--ED.
[10] 'The Saintly Herbert,' the brother, oddly enough, of the brilliant
but infidel Lord Herbert of Cherbury; which lord was a versatile man of
talent, but not a man of genius like the humble rustic--his unpretending
brother.
[11] In saying this, Coleridge unduly disparaged his own personal
advantages. In youth, and before sorrow and the labour of thought had
changed him, he must have been of very engaging appearance. The _godlike
forehead_, which afterwards was ascribed to him, could not have been
wanting at any age. That exquisite passage in Wordsworth's description
of him,
'And a pale face, that seem'd undoubtedly
As if a blooming face it ought to be,'
had its justification in those early days. If to be blooming was the
natural tendency and right of his face, blooming it then was, as we have
been assured by different women of education and taste, who saw him at
twenty-four in Bristol and Clifton. Two of these were friends of Hannah
More, and had seen all the world. They could judge: that is, they could
judge in conformity to the highest standards of taste; and both said,
with some enthusiasm, that he was a most attractive young man; one
adding, with a smile at the old pastoral name, 'Oh, yes, he was a
perfect Strephon.' Light he was in those days and agile as a feathered
Mercury; whereas he afterwards grew heavy and at times bloated; and at
that gay period of life his animal spirits ran up _naturally_ to the
highest point on the scale; whereas in later life, when most
tempestuous, they seemed most artificial. That this, which was the
ardent testimony of females, was also the true one, might have been
gathered from the appearance of his children. Berkeley died an infant,
and him only we never saw. The sole daughter of Coleridge, as she
inherited so much of her father's intellectual power, inherited also the
diviner part of his features. The upper part of her face, at seventeen,
when last we saw her, seemed to us angelic, and pathetically angelic;
for the whole countenance was suffused by a pensive nun-like beauty too
charming and too affecting ever to be forgotten. Derwent, the youngest
son, we have not seen since boyhood, but at that period he had a
handsome cast of features, and (from all we can gather) the
representative cast of the Coleridge family. But Hartley, the eldest
son, how shall we describe _him_? He was most intellectual and he was
most eccentric, and his features expressed all that in perfection.
Southey, in his domestic playfulness, used to call him the _Knave of
Spades_; and he certainly _had_ a resemblance to that well-known young
gentleman. But really we do not know that it would have been at all
better to resemble the knave of hearts. And it must be remembered that
the knave of spades may have a brother very like himself, and yet a
hundred times handsomer. There _are_ such things as handsome likenesses
of very plain people. Some folks pronounced Hartley Coleridge too
Jewish. But to be a Jew is to be an Arab. And our own feeling was, when
we met Hartley at times in solitary or desolate places of Westmoreland
and Cumberland, that here was a son of Ishmael walking in the wilderness
of Edom. The coruscating _nimbus_ of his curling and profuse black hair,
black as erebus, strengthened the Saracen impression of his features and
complexion. He wanted only a turban on his head, and a spear in his
right hand, to be perfect as a Bedouin. But it affected us as all things
are affecting which record great changes, to hear that for a long time
before his death this black hair had become white as the hair of
infancy. Much sorrow and much thought had been the worms that gnawed the
roots of that raven hair; that, in Wordsworth's fine way of expressing
the very same fact as to Mary Queen of Scots:
'Kill'd the bloom before its time,
And blanch'd, without the owner's crime,
The most resplendent hair.'
Ah, wrecks of once blooming nurseries, that from generation to
generation, from John Coleridge the apostolic to S. T. C. the sunbright,
and from S. T. C. the sunbright to Hartley the starry, lie scattered
upon every shore!
_II. MR. FINLAY'S HISTORY OF GREECE._
In attempting to appraise Mr. Finlay's work comprehensively, there is
this difficulty. It comes before us in two characters; first, as a
philosophic speculation upon history, to be valued against others
speculating on other histories; secondly, as a guide, practical
altogether and not speculative, to students who are navigating that
great trackless ocean the _Eastern_ Roman history. Now under either
shape, this work traverses so much ground, that by mere multiplicity of
details it denies to us the opportunity of reporting on its merits with
that simplicity of judgment which would have been available in a case of
severer unity. So many separate situations of history, so many critical
continuations of political circumstances, sweep across the field of Mr.
Finlay's telescope whilst sweeping the heavens of four centuries, that
it is naturally impossible to effect any comprehensive abstractions, as
to principles, from cases individual by their nature and separated by
their period not less than by their relations in respect to things and
persons. The mere necessity of the plan in such a work ensures a certain
amount of dissent on the part of every reader; he that most frequently
goes along with the author in his commentary, will repeatedly find
himself diverging from it in one point or demurring to its inferences in
another. Such, in fact, is the eternal disadvantage for an author upon
a subject which recalls the remark of Juvenal:
'Vester porro labor fecundior, historiarum
Scriptores: petit hic plus temporis, atque olei plus:
Sic _ingens rerum numerus_ jubet, atque operum lex.'
It is this _ingens rerum numerus_ that constitutes at once the
attraction of these volumes, and the difficulty of dealing with them in
any adequate or satisfactory manner.
Indeed, the vistas opened up by Mr. Finlay are infinite; in _that_ sense
it is that he ascribes inexhaustibility to the trackless savannahs of
history. These vast hunting-grounds for the imaginative understanding
are in fact but charts and surveyors' outlines meagre and arid for the
timid or uninspired student. To a grander intellect these historical
delineations are not maps but pictures: they compose a forest
wilderness, veined and threaded by sylvan lawns, 'dark with horrid
shades,' like Milton's haunted desert in the 'Paradise Regained,' at
many a point looking back to the towers of vanishing Jerusalem, and like
Milton's desert, crossed dimly at uncertain intervals by forms doubtful
and (considering the character of such awful deserts) suspicious.
Perhaps the reader, being rather 'dense,' does not understand, but we
understand ourselves, which is the root of the matter. Let us try again:
these historical delineations are not lifeless facts, bearing no sense
or moral value, but living realities organized into the unity of some
great constructive idea.
Perhaps we are obscure; and possibly (though it is treason in a writer
to hint such a thing, as tending to produce hatred or disaffection
towards his liege lord who is and must be his reader), yet, perhaps,
even the reader--that great character--may be 'dense.' 'Dense' is the
word used by young ladies to indicate a slight shade--a _soupçon_--of
stupidity; and by the way it stands in close relationship of sound to
_Duns_, the schoolman, who (it is well known) shared with King Solomon
the glory of furnishing a designation for men weak in the upper
quarters. But, reader, whether the fault be in you or in ourselves,
certain it is that the truth which we wish to communicate is not
trivial; it is the noblest and most creative of truths, if only we are
not a Duns Scholasticus for explanation, nor you (most excellent
reader!) altogether a Solomon for apprehension. Therefore, again lend us
your ears.
It is not, it has not been, perhaps it never will be, understood--how
vast a thing is combination. We remember that Euler, and some other
profound Prussians, such as Lambert, etc., tax this word _combination_
with a fault: for, say they, it indicates that composition of things
which proceeds two by two (viz., com-_bina_); whereas three by three,
ten by ten, fifty by fifty, is combination. It is so. But, once for all,
language is so difficult a structure, being like a mail-coach and four
horses required to turn round Lackington's counter[12]--required in one
syllable to do what oftentimes would require a sentence--that it must
use the artifices of a short-hand. The word _bini-æ-a_ is here but an
exponential or representative word: it stands for any number, for
_number_ in short generally as opposed to unity. And the secret truth
which some years ago we suggested, but which doubtless perished as
pearls to swine, is, that com_bina_tion, or com_terna_tion, or
com_quaterna_tion, or com_dena_tion, possesses a mysterious virtue quite
unobserved by men. All knowledge is probably within its keeping. What we
mean is, that where A is not capable simply of revealing a truth
(_i.e._, by way of direct inference), very possible it is that A viewed
by the light of B (_i.e._, in some mode of combination with B) shall be
capable; but again, if A + B cannot unlock the case, these in
combination with C shall do so. And if not A + B + C, then, perhaps,
shall A + B + C combined with D; and so on _ad infinitum_; or in other
words that pairs, or binaries, ternaries, quaternaries, and in that mode
of progression will furnish keys intricate enough to meet and to
decipher the wards of any lock in nature.
Now, in studying history, the difficulty is about the delicacy of the
lock, and the mode of applying the key. We doubt not that many readers
will view all this as false refinement. But hardly, if they had much
considered the real experimental cases in history. For instance, suppose
the condition of a people known as respects (1) civilization, as
respects (2) relation to the sovereign, (3) the prevailing mode of its
industry, (4) its special circumstances as to taxation, (5) its physical
conformation and temperament, (6) its local circumstances as to
neighbours warlike or not warlike, (7) the quality and depth of its
religion, (8) the framework of its jurisprudence, (9) the machinery by
which these laws are made to act, (10) the proportion of its towns to
its rural labour, and the particular action of its police; these and
many other items, elements, or secondary features of a people being
known, it yet remains unknown which of these leads, which is inert, and
of those which are not inert in what order they arrange their action.
The _principium movendi_, the central force which organizes and assigns
its place in the system to all the other forces, these are quite
undetermined by any mere arithmetical recitation of the agencies
concerned. Often these primary principles can be deduced only
tentatively, or by a regress to the steps, historically speaking,
through which they have arisen. Sometimes, for instance, the population,
as to its principle of expansion, and as to its rate, together with the
particular influence socially of the female sex, exercises the most
prodigious influence on the fortunes of a nation, and its movement
backwards or forwards. Sometimes again as in Greece (from the oriental
seclusion of women) these causes limit their own action, until they
become little more than names.
In such a case it is essential that the leading outlines at least should
be definite; that the coast line and the capes and bays should be
well-marked and clear, whatever may become of the inland waters, and the
separate heights in a continuous chain of mountains.