Coleridge's position in his later years--His discourse--His influence
on contemporary thought--Final review of his intellectual work.
The critic who would endeavour to appreciate the position which
Coleridge fills in the history of literature and thought for the first
half of the nineteenth century must, if he possesses ordinary candour
and courage, begin, I think, with a confession. He must confess an
inability to comprehend the precise manner in which that position was
attained, and the precise grounds on which it was recognised. For vast
as were Coleridge's powers of thought and expression, and splendid, if
incomplete, as is the record which they have left behind them in his
works, they were never directed to purposes of instruction or
persuasion in anything like that systematic and concentrated manner
which is necessary to him who would found a school. Coleridge's
writings on philosophical and theological subjects were essentially
discursive, fragmentary, incomplete. Even when he professes an
intention of exhausting his subject and affects a logical arrangement,
it is not long before he forgets the design and departs from the order.
His disquisitions are in no sense connected treatises on the subjects
to which they relate. Brilliant _apercus,_ gnomic sayings, flights of
fervid eloquence, infinitely suggestive reflections--of these there is
enough and to spare; but these, though an ample equipment for the
critic, are not sufficient for the constructive philosopher. Nothing,
it must be frankly said, in Coleridge's philosophical and theological
writings--nothing, that is to say, which appeals in them to the mere
intelligence--suffices to explain, at least to the appreciation of
posterity, the fact that he was surrounded during these closing years
of his life by an eager crowd of real or supposed disciples, including
two, at any rate, of the most remarkable personalities of the time. And
if nothing in Coleridge's writings serves to account for it, so neither
does anything traceable or tangible in the mere matter of his
conversations. This last point, however, is one which must be for the
present reserved. I wish for the moment to confine myself to the fact
of Coleridge's position during his later life at Highgate. To this we
have, as we all know, an extremely eminent witness, and one from whose
evidence most people, one may suppose, are by this time able to make
their own deductions in all matters relating to the persons with whom
he was brought into contact. Carlyle on Charles Lamb, few as the sour
sentences are, must always warn us to be careful how we follow Carlyle
"on" anybody whomsoever. But there is no evidence of any ill feeling on
Carlyle's part towards Coleridge--nothing but a humorous,
kindly-contemptuous compassion for his weaknesses and eccentricities;
and the famous description in the _Life of Sterling_ may be taken
therefore as a fairly accurate account of the man and the circumstances
to which it refers:--
"Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill in those years, looking
down on London and its smoke tumult like a sage escaped from the
inanity of life's battle, attracting towards him the thoughts of
innumerable brave souls still engaged there. His express contributions
to poetry, philosophy, or any specific province of human literature or
enlightenment had been small and sadly intermittent; but he had,
especially among young inquiring men, a higher than literary, a kind of
prophetic or magician character. He was thought to hold--he alone in
England--the key of German and other Transcendentalisms; knew the
sublime secret of believing by the 'reason' what the 'understanding'
had been obliged to fling out as incredible; and could still, after
Hume and Voltaire had done their best and worst with him, profess
himself an orthodox Christian, and say and print to the Church of
England, with its singular old rubrics and surplices at Allhallowtide,
_Esto perpetua._ A sublime man; who alone in those dark days had saved
his crown of spiritual manhood, escaping from the black materialisms
and revolutionary deluges with 'God, Freedom, Immortality,' still his;
a king of men. The practical intellects of the world did not much heed
him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer; but to the
rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime
character, and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and
enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gillman's house at Highgate)
whispering strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon."
The above quotation would suffice for my immediate purpose, but it is
impossible to deny oneself or one's readers the pleasure of a refreshed
recollection of the noble landscape-scene and the masterly portrait
that follow:
"The Gillmans did not encourage much company or excitation of any sort
round their sage; nevertheless, access to him, if a youth did
reverently wish it, was not difficult. He would stroll about the
pleasant garden with you, sit in the pleasant rooms of the
place--perhaps take you to his own peculiar room, high up, with a
rearward view, which was the chief view of all. A really charming
outlook in fine weather. Close at hand wide sweeps of flowing leafy
gardens, their few houses mostly hidden, the very chimney-pots veiled
under blossoming umbrage, flowed gloriously down hill; gloriously
issuing in wide-tufted undulating plain country, rich in all charms of
field and town. Waving blooming country of the brightest green, dotted
all over with handsome villas, handsome groves crossed by roads and
human traffic, here inaudible, or heard only as a musical hum; and
behind all swam, under olive-tinted haze, the illimitable limitary
ocean of London, with its domes and steeples definite in the sun, big
Paul's and the many memories attached to it hanging high over all.
Nowhere of its kind could you see a grander prospect on a bright summer
day, with the set of the air going southward--southward, and so
draping with the city smoke not _you_ but the city."
Then comes the invariable final touch, the one dash of black--or green,
shall we call it--without which the master left no picture that had a
human figure in the foreground:--
"Here for hours would Coleridge talk concerning all conceivable or
inconceivable things; and liked nothing better than to have an
intelligent, or, failing that, even a silent and patient human
listener. He distinguished himself to all that ever heard him as at
least the most surprising talker extant in this world,--and to some
small minority, by no means to all, as the most excellent."
Then follows the well-known, wonderfully vivid, cynically pathetic,
sketch of the man:--
"The good man--he was now getting old, towards sixty perhaps, and gave
you the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings; a life
heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of
manifold physical and other bewilderment. Brow and head were round and
of massive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The deep
eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of inspiration;
confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of mild
astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise,
might be called flabby and irresolute; expressive of weakness under
possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent,
and stooping attitude; in walking he rather shuffled than decisively
stept; and a lady once remarked he never could fix which side of the
gardenwalk would suit him best, but continually shifted, corkscrew
fashion, and kept trying both; a heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely
much-suffering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted
itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong; he spoke as if
preaching--you could have said preaching earnestly and almost
hopelessly the weightiest things. I still recollect his 'object' and
'subject,' terms of continual recurrence in the Kantean province; and
how he sang and snuffled them into 'om-m-ject' and 'sum-m-mject,' with
a kind of solemn shake or quaver as he rolled along. [1] No talk in his
century or in any other could be more surprising."
Such, as he appeared to this half-contemptuous, half-compassionate, but
ever acute observer, was Coleridge at this the zenith of his influence
over the nascent thought of his day. Such to Carlyle seemed the
_manner_ of the deliverance of the oracles; in his view of their
matter, as we all know from an equally well-remembered passage, his
tolerance disappears, and his account here, with all its racy humour,
is almost wholly impatient. Talk, "suffering no interruption, however
reverent," "hastily putting aside all foreign additions, annotation, or
most ingenuous desires for elucidation, as well-meant superfluities
which would never do;" talk "not flowing anywhither, like a river, but
spreading everywhither in inextricable currents and regurgitations like
a lake or sea;" a "confused unintelligible flood of utterance,
threatening to submerge all known landmarks of thought and drown the
world with you"--this, it must be admitted, is not an easily
recognisable description of the Word of Life. Nor, certainly, does
Carlyle's own personal experience of its preaching and effects--he
having heard the preacher talk "with eager musical energy two stricken
hours, his face radiant and moist, and communicate no meaning
whatsoever to any individual of his hearers,"--certain of whom, the
narrator for one, "still kept eagerly listening in hope, while the most
had long before given up and formed (if the room was large enough)
humming groups of their own." "He began anywhere," continues this
irresistibly comic sketch; "you put some question to him, made some
suggestive observation; instead of answering this, or decidedly setting
out towards an answer of it, he would accumulate formidable apparatus,
logical swim-bladders, transcendental life-preservers, and other
precautionary and vehiculatory gear for setting out; perhaps did at
last get under way--but was swiftly solicited, turned aside by the
flame of some radiant new game on this hand or on that into new
courses, and ever into new; and before long into all the universe,
where it was uncertain what game you would catch, or whether any." He
had, indeed, according to the dissatisfied listener, "not the least
talent for explaining this or anything to them; and you swam and
fluttered on the mistiest, wide, unintelligible deluge of things for
most part in a rather profitless uncomfortable manner." And the few
vivid phrases of eulogy which follow seem only to deepen by contrast
the prevailing hue of the picture. The "glorious islets" which were
sometimes seen to "rise out of the haze," the "balmy sunny islets of
the blest and the intelligible, at whose emergence the secondary
humming group would all cease humming and hang breathless upon the
eloquent words, till once your islet got wrapped in the mist again, and
they would recommence humming"--these, it seems to be suggested, but
rarely revealed themselves; but "eloquent, artistically expressive
words you always had; piercing radiances of a most subtle insight came
at intervals; tones of noble pious sympathy recognisable as pious
though strangely coloured, were never wanting long; but, in general,
you could not call this aimless cloud-capt, cloud-bound, lawlessly
meandering discourse, by the name of excellent talk, but only of
surprising.... The moaning sing-song of that theosophico-metaphysical
monotony left in you at last a very dreary feeling."
It is tolerably clear, I think, that some considerable discount must be
allowed upon the sum of disparagement in this famous criticism. We have
learnt, indeed, to be more on the look-out for the disturbing
influences of temperament in the judgments of this atrabilious observer
than was the case when the _Life of Sterling_ was written, and it is
difficult to doubt that the unfavourable strokes in the above-quoted
description have been unduly multiplied and deepened, partly in the
mere waywardness of a sarcastic humour, and partly perhaps from a less
excusable cause. It is always dangerous to accept one remarkable
talker's view of the characteristics of another; and if this is true of
men who merely compete with each other in the ordinary give-and-take of
the dinner-table epigrammatist and _raconteur,_ the caution is doubly
necessary in the case of two rival prophets--two competing oracles.
There are those among us who hold that the conversation of the Chelsea
sage, in his later years, resembled his own description of the Highgate
philosopher's, in this, at any rate, that it was mightily intolerant of
interruption; and one is apt to suspect that at no time of his life did
Carlyle "understand duologue" much better than Coleridge. It is
probable enough, therefore, that the young lay-preacher did not quite
relish being silenced by the elder, and that his account of the sermons
was coloured by the recollection that his own remained undelivered.
There is an abundance of evidence that the "glorious islets" emerged
far more often from the transcendental haze than Carlyle would have us
suppose. Hazlitt, a bitter assailant of Coleridge's, and whose caustic
remark that "his talk was excellent if you let him start from no
premisses and come to no conclusion" is cited with approval by Carlyle,
has elsewhere spoken of Coleridge as the only person from whom he ever
learned anything, has said of him that though he talked on for ever you
wished him to talk on for ever, that "his thoughts did not seem to come
with labour and effort, but as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as
if the wings of his imagination lifted him from his feet." And besides
this testimony to the eloquence which Carlyle only but inadequately
recognises, one should set for what it is worth De Quincey's evidence
to that consequence of thought which Carlyle denies altogether. To De
Quincey the complaint that Coleridge wandered in his talk appeared
unjust. According to him the great discourser only "seemed to wander,"
and he seemed to wander the most "when in fact his resistance to the
wandering instinct was greatest, viz. when the compass and huge circuit
by which his illustrations moved travelled farthest into remote regions
before they began to revolve. Long before this coming round commenced
most people had lost him, and, naturally enough, supposed that he had
lost himself. They continued to admire the separate beauty of the
thoughts, but did not see their relations to the dominant theme." De
Quincey however, declares positively in the faith of his "long and
intimate knowledge of Coleridge's mind, that logic the most severe was
as inalienable from his modes of thinking as grammar from his language."
Nor should we omit the testimony of another, a more partial, perhaps,
but even better informed judge. The _Table Talk_, edited by Mr. Nelson
Coleridge, shows how pregnant, how pithy, how full of subtle
observation, and often also of playful humour, could be the talk of the
great discourser in its lighter and more colloquial forms. The book
indeed is, to the thinking of one, at any rate, of its frequent
readers, among the most delightful in the world. But thus speaks its
editor of his uncle's conversation in his more serious moods:--
"To pass an entire day with Coleridge was a marvellous change indeed
[from the talk of daily life]. It was a Sabbath past expression, deep
and tranquil and serene. You came to a man who had travelled in many
countries and in critical times; who had seen and felt the world in
most of its ranks and in many of its vicissitudes and weaknesses; one
to whom all literature and art were absolutely subject; and to whom,
with a reasonable allowance as to technical details, all science was,
in a most extraordinary degree, familiar. Throughout a long-drawn
summer's day would this man talk to you in low, equable, but clear and
musical tones concerning things Iranian and divine; marshalling all
history, harmonising all experiment, probing the depths of your
consciousness, and revealing visions of glory and terror to the
imagination; but pouring withal such floods of light upon the mind that
you might for a season, like Paul, become blind in the very act of
conversion. And this he would do without so much as one allusion to
himself, without a word of reflection upon others, save when any given
art fell naturally in the way of his discourse; without one anecdote
that was not proof and illustration of a previous position;
--gratifying no passion, indulging no caprice, but, with a calm mastery
over your soul, leading you onward and onward for ever through a
thousand windings, yet with no pause, to some magnificent point in
which, as in a focus, all the parti-coloured rays of his discourse
should converge in light. In all these he was, in truth, your teacher
and guide; but in a little while you might forget that he was other
than a fellow-student and the companion of your way--so playful was his
manner, so simple his language, so affectionate the glance of his eye!"
Impressive, however, as these displays may have been, it is impossible
to suppose that their direct didactic value as discourses was at all
considerable. Such as it was, moreover, it was confined in all
probability to an extremely select circle of followers. A few mystics
of the type of Maurice, a few eager seekers after truth like Sterling,
may have gathered, or fancied they gathered, distinct dogmatic
instruction from the Highgate oracles; and no doubt, to the extent of
his influence over the former of these disciples, we may justly credit
Coleridge's discourses with having exercised a real if only a
transitory directive effect upon nineteenth-century thought. But the
terms in which his influence is sometimes spoken of appear, as far as
one can judge of the matter at this distance of time, to be greatly
exaggerated. To speak of it in the same way as we are--or
were--accustomed to speak of the influence of Carlyle, is to subject it
to an altogether inappropriate comparison. It is not merely that
Coleridge founded no recognisable school, for neither did Carlyle. It
is that the former can show absolutely nothing at all resembling that
sort of power which enabled the latter to lay hold upon all the
youthful minds of his time--minds of the most disparate orders and
associated with the utmost diversities of temperament, and detain them
in a captivity which, brief as it may have been in some cases, has in
no case failed to leave its marks behind it. Over a few spirits already
prepared to receive them Coleridge's teachings no doubt exerted power,
but he led no soul captive against its will. There are few middle-aged
men of active intelligence at the present day who can avoid a
confession of having "taken" Carlylism in their youth; but no mental
constitutions not predisposed to it could ever have caught Coleridgism
at all. There is indeed no moral theory of life, there are no maxims of
conduct, such as youth above all things craves for, in Coleridge's
teaching. Apart from the intrinsic difficulties of the task to which he
invites his disciples, it labours under a primary and essential
disadvantage of postponing moral to intellectual liberation. Contrive
somehow or other to attain to just ideas as to the capacities and
limitations of the human consciousness, considered especially in
relation to its two important and eternally distinct functions, the
Reason and the Understanding: and peace of mind shall in due time be
added unto you. That is in effect Coleridge's answer to the inquirer
who consults him; and if the distinction between the Reason and the
Understanding were as obvious as it is obscure to the average
unmetaphysical mind, and of a value as assured for the purpose to which
Coleridge applies it as it is uncertain, the answer would nevertheless
send many a would-be disciple sorrowful away. His natural impulse is to
urge the oracle to tell him whether there be not some one moral
attitude which he can wisely and worthily adopt towards the universe,
whatever theory he may form of his mental relations to it, or without
forming any such theory at all. And it was because Carlyle supplied, or
was believed to supply an answer, such as it was, to this universal
question, that his train of followers, voluntary and involuntary,
permanent and temporary, has been so large.
It appears to me, therefore, on as careful an examination of the point
as the data admit of, that Coleridge's position in these latter days of
his life has been somewhat mythically exalted by the generation which
succeeded him. There are, I think, distinct traces of a Coleridgian
legend which has only slowly died out. The actual truth I believe to be
that Coleridge's position from 1818 or 1820 till his death, though one
of the greatest eminence, was in no sense one of the highest, or even
of any considerable influence. Fame and honour, in the fullest measure,
were no doubt his: in that matter, indeed, he was only receiving
payment of long-delayed arrears. The poetic school with which he was,
though not with entire accuracy, associated had outlived its period of
contempt and obloquy. In spite of the two quarterlies, the Tory review
hostile, its Whig rival coldly silent, the public had recognised the
high imaginative merit of _Christabel;_ and who knows but that if the
first edition of the _Lyrical Ballads_ had appeared at this date
instead of twenty years before, it would have obtained a certain number
of readers even among landsmen? [2] But over and above the published
works of the poet there were those extraordinary personal
characteristics to which the fame of his works of course attracted a
far larger share than formerly of popular attention. A remarkable man
has more attractive power over the mass of mankind than the most
remarkable of books, and it was because the report of Coleridge among
those who knew him was more stimulating to public curiosity than even
the greatest of his poems, that his celebrity in these latter years
attained such proportions. Wordsworth said that though "he had seen
many men do wonderful things, Coleridge was the only wonderful man he
had ever met," and it was not the doer of wonderful things but the
wonderful man that English society in those days went out for to see.
Seeing would have been enough, but for a certain number there was
hearing too, with the report of it for all; and it is not surprising
that fame of the marvellous discourser should, in mere virtue of his
extraordinary power of improvised speech, his limitless and untiring
mastery of articulate words, have risen to a height to which writers
whose only voice is in their pens can never hope to attain.
A reputation of that kind, however, must necessarily perish with its
possessor; and Coleridge's posthumous renown has grown, his place in
English literature has become more assured, if it has not been even
fixed higher, since his death than during his lifetime. This is, in
part no doubt, one among the consequences of those very defects of
character which so unfortunately limited his actual achievements. He
has been credited by faith, as it were, with those famous "unwritten
books" of which he assured Charles Lamb that the titles alone would
fill a volume, and such "popular reputation," in the strict sense of
the word, as he has left behind him, is measured rather by what he was
thought capable of doing than by what he did. By serious students,
however, the real worth of Coleridge will be differently estimated. For
them his peculiar value to English literature is not only undiminished
by the incompleteness of his work; it has been, in a certain sense,
enhanced thereby. Or, perhaps, it would be more strictly accurate to
say that the value could not have existed without the incompleteness. A
Coleridge with the faculty of concentration, and the habit of method
superadded--a Coleridge capable of becoming possessed by any one form
of intellectual energy to the exclusion of all others--might, indeed,
have left behind him a more enduring reputation as a philosopher, and
possibly (although this, for reasons already stated, is, in my own
opinion, extremely doubtful) bequeathed to his countrymen more poetry
destined to live; but, unquestionably, he would never have been able to
render that precise service to modern thought and literature which, in
fact, they owe to him. To have exercised his vivifying and fertilising
influence over the minds of others his intellect was bound to be of the
dispersive order; it was essential that he should "take all knowledge
to be his province," and that that eager, subtle, and penetrative mind
should range as freely as it did over subject after subject of human
interest;--illuminating each of them in turn with those rays of true
critical insight which, amid many bewildering cross-lights and some few
downright _ignes fatui,_ flash forth upon us from all Coleridge's work.
Of the personal weaknesses which prevented the just development of the
powers, enough, perhaps, has been incidentally said in the course of
this volume. But, in summing up his history, I shall not, I trust, be
thought to judge the man too harshly in saying that, though the natural
disadvantages of wretched health, almost from boyhood upward, must, in
common fairness, be admitted in partial excuse for his failure, they do
not excuse it altogether. It is difficult not to feel that Coleridge's
character, apart altogether from defects of physical constitution, was
wanting in manliness of fibre. His willingness to accept assistance at
the hands of others is too manifestly displayed even at the earlier and
more robust period of his life. It would be a mistake, of course, in
dealing with a literary man of Coleridge's era, to apply the same
standards as obtain in our own days. Wordsworth, as we have seen, made
no scruple to accept the benevolences of the Wedgwoods. Southey, the
type of independence and self-help, was, for some years, in receipt of
a pension from a private source. But Coleridge, as Miss Meteyard's
disclosures have shown, was at all times far more willing to depend
upon others, and was far less scrupulous about soliciting their bounty,
than was either of his two friends. Had he shared more of the spirit
which made Johnson refuse to owe to the benevolence of others what
Providence had enabled him to do for himself, it might have been
better, no doubt, for the world and for the work which he did therein.
But when we consider what that work was, how varied and how wonderful,
it seems idle--nay, it seems ungrateful and ungracious--to speculate
too curiously on what further or other benefits this great intellect
might have conferred upon mankind, had its possessor been endowed with
those qualities of resolution and independence which he lacked. That
Coleridge so often only _shows_ the way, and so seldom guides our steps
along it to the end, is no just ground of complaint. It would be as
unreasonable to complain of a beacon-light that it is not a steam-tug,
and forget in the incompleteness of its separate services the glory of
their number. It is a more reasonable objection that the light itself
is too often liable to obscuration,--that it stands erected upon a rock
too often enshrouded by the mists of its encircling sea. But even this
objection should not too greatly weigh with us. It would be wiser and
better for us to dwell rather upon its splendour and helpfulness in the
hours of its efficacy, to think how vast is then the expanse of waters
which it illuminates, and its radiance how steady and serene.
FOOTNOTES
1. No one who recollects the equally singular manner in which another
most distinguished metaphysician--the late Dean Hansel--was wont to
quaver forth his admirably turned and often highly eloquent phrases of
philosophical exposition, can fail to be reminded of him by the above
description. No two temperaments or histories however could be more
dissimilar. The two philosophers resembled each other in nothing save
the "om-mject" and "sum-mject" of their studies.
2. The Longmans told Coleridge that the greater part of the first
edition of the Lyrical Ballads had been sold to seafaring men, who,
having heard of the _Ancient Mariner_, took the volume for a naval
song-book.
INDEX
Adams, Dr.,
_Aeolian Harp,_
circumstances under which it was written,
Coleridge's opinion of,
_Aids to Reflection,_ its popularity,
its value as a spiritual manual,
its inferiority from a literary point of view,
Allan Bank,
Allsop, Mr. Thomas,
_Ancient Mariner,_
how and when first conceived,
its uniqueness,
Wordsworth's account of its origin
and of his suggestions,
a sublime "pot-boiler,"
realistic force of its narrative,
its vividness of imagery,
its wonderful word-pictures,
its evenness of execution,
examples of its consummate art,
its chief characteristics,
Anecdotes,
Ball, Sir Alexander,
Beaumont, Lady,
Berkeley,
_Biographia Literaria,_
its interest, critical and illustrative,
its main value,
its analysis of the principles of poetry,
its examination of Wordsworth's theory,
its contents,
_Blackwood's Magazine,_
Coleridge's contributions to,
Bonaparte,
_Borderers_ (Wordsworth's),
Bowles, William Lisle,
Burke,
sonnet to,
Byron,
Calne, Coleridge at,
_Cambridge Intelligencer _(Flower's),
Carlyle, description of Coleridge by,
Carrlyon, Dr.,
reminiscences of Coleridge in Germany by,
_Christabel,_
Coleridge's opinion of,
its unfinished condition,
the lines on the "spell,"
its high place as a work of creative art,
its fragmentary beauties,
the description of Christabel's chamber,
its main idea,
outline of the unfinished parts,
Lamb and Hartley Coleridge on,
its perfection from the metrical point of view,
publication of the second part,
its popularity,
Coleridge's great desire to complete it,
_Circassian Love Chant_,
its charm of melody,
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor.
His biographers,
birth and family history,
his boyhood and school days,
early childhood,
death of his father,
goes to Christ's Hospital,
goes to Jesus College, Cambridge,
wins the Browne Gold Medal,
leaves Cambridge suddenly and enlists in the army,
his discharge,
returns to Cambridge,
his meeting with Southey and Sara Fricker (his future wife),
writes the _Fall of Robespierre_ with Southey,
leaves Cambridge,
delivers the Bristol lectures,
marries Sara Fricker at Bristol,
writes the _Aeolian Harp_,
plunges into politics and journalism,
projects the _Watchman_ and goes on a canvassing tour,
preaches Unitarian sermons by the way,
brings out the _Watchman_,
retires to a cottage in Somersetshire with Charles Lloyd,
his meeting with Wordsworth,
cooling of his revolutionary enthusiasm,
his intercourse with Wordsworth,
writes _Osorio_,
his rambles with Wordsworth among the Quantock Hills,
projects the _Lyrical Ballads_,
writes the _Ancient Mariner_,
_Christabel_,
_Love_,
_Kubla Khan_,
undertakes the duties of a Unitarian preacher at Shrewsbury,
accepts an annuity from the two Wedgwoods,
goes to Germany with the Wordsworths,
returns to England after a year's absence,
translates Schiller's _Wallenstein_,
devotes himself again to journalism,
goes to the Lake country,
takes opium as an anodyne,
writes the _Ode to Dejection_,
goes on a tour with Thomas Wedgwood,
visits the Wordsworths at Grasmere,
his illness there,
goes to Malta,
ill effects of his stay there,
becomes Secretary to the Governor of the island,
goes to Italy,
returns to England after two and a half years' absence,
his wretched condition of mind and body,
estrangement from his wife,
domestic unhappiness,
meeting with De Quincey,
pecuniary embarrassments,
his lectures at the Royal Institution,
lives with Wordsworth at Allan Bank,
founds and edits the _Friend_,
delivers lectures on Shakespeare,
returns to journalism,
his necessities,
loses his annuity,
neglect of his family,
successful production of his play _Remorse_,
lectures again at Bristol,
retires to Calne with Mr. Morgan,
more financial troubles,
lives with Dr. Gillman at Highgate,
undergoes medical treatment for the opium habit,
returning health and vigour,
renewed literary activity,
writes the _Biographia Literaria_,
lectures again in London,
more money troubles,
publishes _Aids to Reflection_,
accompanies Wordsworth on a tour up the Rhine,
his declining years,
contemplation of his approaching end,
his death,
Poet and Thinker.
His early bent towards poetry and metaphysics,
his prose style,
his early poems, their merits and defects,
his sonnets,
Coleridge at his best,
untimely decline of his poetic impulse,
Wordsworth's great influence on him,
Coleridge's mastery of the true ballad manner,
estimate of his poetic work,
comparison with Byron and Wordsworth,
his wonderful power of melody,
his great projects,
his critical powers,
his criticism of Shakespeare,
his philosophy,
his contemplated "Great Work,"
his materials for various poems,
his metaphysics and theology,
his discourses,
exaggerated notions of his position and influence,
his "unwritten books,"
Precocious boyhood,
descriptions of him at various times,
his voice,
his conduct as a husband,
religious nature,
revolutionary enthusiasm,
consciousness of his great powers,
generous admiration for the gifts of others,
his womanly softness,
his pride in his personal appearance,
his contempt for money,
his ill-health,
his opium-eating,
his restlessness,
best portrait of him,
his unbusinesslike nature,
sorrows of his life,
his laudanum excesses,
his talk,
his weaknesses,
Coleridge, Mrs.,
Coleridge, Rev. Derwent,
Coleridge, Rev. George,
Coleridge, Hartley,
Coleridge, Rev. John,
Coleridge, Luke,
Coleridge, Nelson,
Coleridge, Sarah,
_Coleridge and Opium Eating_ (De Quincey's),
_Condones ad Populum _(Bristol Lectures),
their warmth of language,
evidence of deep thought and reasoning in,
their crudeness,
Consulate, Coleridge on the French,
Cottle, Joseph,
_Courier, The,_
_Dark Ladie,_
_Dejection, Ode to,_
Coleridge's swan song,
its promise,
Coleridge's spiritual and moral losses bewailed in,
stanzas from,
biographical value of,
De Quincey,
Descartes,
_Descriptive Sketches _(Wordsworth's),
_Devil's Thoughts,_
_Early Years and Late Reflections_ (Dr. Carrlyon's),
_Effusions,_
Erasmus,
_Essays on his own Times,_
_Eve of St Agnes_ (Keats's),
_Excursion_ (Wordsworth's),
_Fall of Robespierre_,
_Fears in Solitude_,
_Fire, Famine and Slaughter_,
Fox, Letters to,
France, Coleridge on,
ode to,
Fricker, Edith,
Mary,
Sara,
_Friend, The_,
Coleridge's object in starting it,
its short-lived career,
causes of its failure,
compared with the _Spectator_,
_Frost at Midnight_ (lines),
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire,
Ode to,
Germany, Coleridge and Wordsworth in,
Gibbon,
Gillman, Mr.,
Green, Mr. J. H.,
Grenville, Lord,
Greta Hall, description of,
_Group of Englishmen_ (Miss Meteyard's),
Harz Mountains, Coleridge's tour through the,
Hazlitt,
Hume,
_Joan of Arc_ (Southey's), Coleridge's contribution to,
Johnson, Samuel,
_Juvenile Poems_,
Kean,
Keats, Coleridge's meeting with and description of,
Keswick,
_Kosciusko_ (Sonnet),
_Kubla Khan_, 39; a wild dream-poem,
its curious origin,
when written,
_Lake Poets_ (De Quincey's),
Lamb, Charles,
Lamb, Mary,
_Lay Sermons_,
"Lear,": Coleridge on,
Lectures, Coleridge's,
at Bristol,
at the Royal Institution,
on Shakespeare and Milton,
at Flower de Luce Court,
extempore lecture,
Le Grice, Charles,
_Liberal, The_,
_Lines on ascending the Bracken_,
_Lines to William Wordsworth_,
_Literary Remains_,
Lloyd, Charles,
Locke,
_Love_,
fascination of melody in,
Lovell, Robert,
_Lover's Resolution_,
Luther,
_Lyrical Ballads_,
origin of,
Coleridge's contributions to,
appearance of,
anecdote concerning,
Malta, Coleridge's stay at,
Maurice,
Metaphysics and theology; Coleridge's,
Meteyard, Miss,
Milton, lectures on Shakespeare and,
_Monody on the Death of Chatterton_,
Montagu, Mr. and Mrs.,
Morgan, Mr. John,
_Morning Post, The_, Coleridge's connection with,
Nether Stowey, Coleridge at,
_New Monthly Magazine_,
_Nightingale_,
_Omniana_ (Southey's), Coleridge's contribution to,
Opium,
Coleridge's resort to,
origin of the habit,
De Quincey on,
_Pains of Sleep_,
"Pantisocraey,"
Parry, Coleridge's fellow-student in Germany,
_Peau de Chagrin_ (Balzac's),
Philosophy, Coleridge's,
(see _Spiritual Philosophy_)
_Pilgrimage_ (Purchas's),
Pitt,
sonnet to,
Pius VII., Pope,
_Poems on Various Subjects_,
_Poetical and Dramatic Works_,
Poetry and the Fine Arts, Coleridge's lectures on,
"Polonius," Coleridge's estimate of the character of,
Poole, Mr. Thomas,
_Prometheus_, Coleridge's paper on,
Quantock Hills, Coleridge and Wordsworth among the,
_Recantation_,
_Recollections_ (Cottle's),
_Recollections of a Literary Life_ (Miss Mitford's)
_Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement_,
_Religious Musings_,
_Remorse_,
Revolution, the French,
_Robbers_,
Rome, Coleridge in,
Rousseau,
Royal Institution, Coleridge's lectures at the,
Schiller,
Schlegel,
Scott, Sir Walter,
_Sermons, Lay_,
Shakespeare,
lectures on,
criticisms on,
Shakespearianism, German,
Shelley,
Sheridan,
Shrewsbury, Coleridge's preaching in,
_Sibylline Leaves_,
Slave Trade, Coleridge's Greek Ode on the,
_Songs of the Pixies_,
_Sonnets on Eminent Characters_,
Sotheby, Mr.,
Southey,
Southey, Cuthbert,
Southey, Edith,
_Spectator_,
_Spiritual Philosophy_ (Green's),
an exposition of Coleridge's Philosophy,
Coleridge's great fundamental principle,
the reason and the understanding,
will, not thought, the ultimate fact of self-consciousness,
a philosophy of Realism,
philosophy valued by Coleridge mainly as an organon of religion,
growth of the soul,
the idea of God,
idea of the Trinity,
"a guidebook written in hieroglyphics,"
_Statesman's Manual_,
_Sterling, Life of_ (Carlyle's),
Sterne,
Stuart, Mr. Daniel,
Swinburne's praise of Coleridge's lyrics,
_Table Talk_,
Theology and metaphysics, Coleridge's system of,
Unitarian, Coleridge as a,
_Visionary Hope_,
Voltaire,
_Voyages_ (Shelvocke's),
_Wallenstein_, Coleridge's translation of,
Warburton,
_Watchman_,
Wedgwood, Josiah,
Wedgwood, Thomas,
Wordsworth,
Wordsworth, Dorothy,
_Year, Ode to the Departing_,
_Zapolya_,
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's English Men of Letters: Coleridge, by H. D. Traill