* * * * *
It is nearly fifteen years since I was, for the first time, enabled to
become a frequent and attentive visitor in Mr. Coleridge's domestic
society. His exhibition of intellectual power in living discourse struck me
at once as unique and transcendant; and upon my return home, on the very
first evening which I spent with him after my boyhood, I committed to
writing, as well as I could, the principal topics of his conversation in
his own words. I had no settled design at that time of continuing the work,
but simply made the note in something like a spirit of vexation that such a
strain of music as I had just heard, should not last forever. What I did
once, I was easily induced by the same feeling to do again; and when, after
many years of affectionate communion between us, the painful existence of
my revered relative on earth was at length finished in peace, my occasional
notes of what he had said in my presence had grown to a mass, of which this
volume contains only such parts as seem fit for present publication. I
know, better than any one can tell me, how inadequately these specimens
represent the peculiar splendour and individuality of Mr. Coleridge's
conversation. How should it be otherwise? Who could always follow to the
turning-point his long arrow-flights of thought? Who could fix those
ejaculations of light, those tones of a prophet, which at times have made
me bend before him as before an inspired man? Such acts of spirit as these
were too subtle to be fettered down on paper; they live--if they can live
any where--in the memories alone of those who witnessed them. Yet I would
fain hope that these pages will prove that all is not lost;--that something
of the wisdom, the learning, and the eloquence of a great man's social
converse has been snatched from forgetfulness, and endowed with a permanent
shape for general use. And although, in the judgment of many persons, I may
incur a serious responsibility by this publication; I am, upon the whole,
willing to abide the result, in confidence that the fame of the loved and
lamented speaker will lose nothing hereby, and that the cause of Truth and
of Goodness will be every way a gainer. This sprig, though slight and
immature, may yet become its place, in the Poet's wreath of honour, among
flowers of graver hue.
If the favour shown to several modern instances of works nominally of the
same description as the present were alone to be considered, it might seem
that the old maxim, that nothing ought to be said of the dead but what is
good, is in a fair way of being dilated into an understanding that every
thing is good that has been said by the dead. The following pages do not, I
trust, stand in need of so much indulgence. Their contents may not, in
every particular passage, be of great intrinsic importance; but they can
hardly be without some, and, I hope, a worthy, interest, as coming from the
lips of one at least of the most extraordinary men of the age; whilst to
the best of my knowledge and intention, no living person's name is
introduced, whether for praise or for blame, except on literary or
political grounds of common notoriety. Upon the justice of the remarks here
published, it would be out of place in me to say any thing; and a
commentary of that kind is the less needed, as, in almost every instance,
the principles upon which the speaker founded his observations are
expressly stated, and may be satisfactorily examined by themselves. But,
for the purpose of general elucidation, it seemed not improper to add a few
notes, and to make some quotations from Mr. Coleridge's own works; and in
doing so, I was in addition actuated by an earnest wish to call the
attention of reflecting minds in general to the views of political, moral,
and religious philosophy contained in those works, which, through an
extensive, but now decreasing, prejudice, have hitherto been deprived of
that acceptance with the public which their great preponderating merits
deserve, and will, as I believe, finally obtain. And I can truly say, that
if, in the course of the perusal of this little work, any one of its
readers shall gain a clearer insight into the deep and pregnant principles,
in the light of which Mr. Coleridge was accustomed to regard God and the
World,--I shall look upon the publication as fortunate, and consider myself
abundantly rewarded for whatever trouble it has cost me.
A cursory inspection will show that this volume lays no claim to be ranked
with those of Boswell in point of dramatic interest. Coleridge differed
not more from Johnson in every characteristic of intellect, than in the
habits and circumstances of his life, during the greatest part of the time
in which I was intimately conversant with him. He was naturally very fond
of society, and continued to be so to the last; but the almost unceasing
ill health with which he was afflicted, after fifty, confined him for many
months in every year to his own room, and, most commonly, to his bed. He
was then rarely seen except by single visiters; and few of them would feel
any disposition upon such occasions to interrupt him, whatever might have
been the length or mood of his discourse. And indeed, although I have been
present in mixed company, where Mr. Coleridge has been questioned and
opposed, and the scene has been amusing for the moment--I own that it was
always much more delightful to me to let the river wander at its own sweet
will, unruffled by aught but a certain breeze of emotion which the stream
itself produced. If the course it took was not the shortest, it was
generally the most beautiful; and what you saw by the way was as worthy of
note as the ultimate object to which you were journeying. It is possible,
indeed, that Coleridge did not, in fact, possess the precise gladiatorial
power of Johnson; yet he understood a sword-play of his own; and I have,
upon several occasions, seen him exhibit brilliant proofs of its
effectiveness upon disputants of considerable pretensions in their
particular lines. But he had a genuine dislike of the practice in himself
or others, and no slight provocation could move him to any such exertion.
He was, indeed, to my observation, more distinguished from other great men
of letters by his moral thirst after the Truth--the ideal truth--in his
own mind, than by his merely intellectual qualifications. To leave the
everyday circle of society, in which the literary and scientific rarely--
the rest never--break through the spell of personality;--where Anecdote
reigns everlastingly paramount and exclusive, and the mildest attempt to
generalize the Babel of facts, and to control temporary and individual
phenomena by the application of eternal and overruling principles, is
unintelligible to many, and disagreeable to more;--to leave this species
of converse--if converse it deserves to be called--and pass an entire day
with Coleridge, was a marvellous change indeed. 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 genial 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 human and divine; marshalling
all history, harmonizing all experiment, probing the depths of your
consciousness, and revealing visions of glory and of 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 on others, save when any given act
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 party-coloured
rays of his discourse should converge in light. In all this 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 pleasant eye!
There were, indeed, some whom Coleridge tired, and some whom he sent
asleep. It would occasionally so happen, when the abstruser mood was strong
upon him, and the visiter was narrow and ungenial. I have seen him at times
when you could not incarnate him,--when he shook aside your petty questions
or doubts, and burst with some impatience through the obstacles of common
conversation. Then, escaped from the flesh, he would soar upwards into an
atmosphere almost too rare to breathe, but which seemed proper to _him_,
and there he would float at ease. Like enough, what Coleridge then said,
his subtlest listener would not understand as a man understands a
newspaper; but upon such a listener there would steal an influence, and an
impression, and a sympathy; there would be a gradual attempering of his
body and spirit, till his total being vibrated with one pulse alone, and
thought became merged in contemplation;--
And so, his senses gradually wrapt
In a half sleep, he'd dream of better worlds,
And dreaming hear thee still, O singing lark,
That sangest like an angel in the clouds!
But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the general character of
Mr. Coleridge's conversation was abstruse or rhapsodical. The contents of
the following pages may, I think, be taken as pretty strong presumptive
evidence that his ordinary manner was plain and direct enough; and even
when, as sometimes happened, he seemed to ramble from the road, and to
lose himself in a wilderness of digressions, the truth was, that at that
very time he was working out his fore-known conclusion through an almost
miraculous logic, the difficulty of which consisted precisely in the very
fact of its minuteness and universality. He took so large a scope, that,
if he was interrupted before he got to the end, he appeared to have been
talking without an object; although, perhaps, a few steps more would have
brought you to a point, a retrospect from which would show you the
pertinence of all he had been saying. I have heard persons complain that
they could get no answer to a question from Coleridge. The truth is, he
answered, or meant to answer, so fully that the querist should have no
second question to ask. In nine cases out of ten he saw the question was
short or misdirected; and knew that a mere _yes_ or _no_ answer could not
embrace the truth--that is, the whole truth--and might, very probably, by
implication, convey error. Hence that exhaustive, cyclical mode of
discoursing in which he frequently indulged; unfit, indeed, for a dinner-
table, and too long-breathed for the patience of a chance visiter,--but
which, to those who knew for what they came, was the object of their
profoundest admiration, as it was the source of their most valuable
instruction. Mr. Coleridge's affectionate disciples learned their lessons
of philosophy and criticism from his own mouth. He was to them as an old
master of the Academy or Lyceum. The more time he took, the better pleased
were such visiters; for they came expressly to listen, and had ample proof
how truly he had declared, that whatever difficulties he might feel, with
pen in hand, in the expression of his meaning, he never found the smallest
hitch or impediment in the utterance of his most subtle reasonings by word
of mouth. How many a time and oft have I felt his abtrusest thoughts steal
rhythmically on my soul, when chanted forth by him! Nay, how often have I
fancied I heard rise up in answer to his gentle touch, an interpreting
music of my own, as from the passive strings of some wind-smitten lyre!
Mr. Coleridge's conversation at all times required attention, because what
he said was so individual and unexpected. But when he was dealing deeply
with a question, the demand upon the intellect of the hearer was very
great; not so much for any hardness of language, for his diction was always
simple and easy; nor for the abstruseness of the thoughts, for they
generally explained, or appeared to explain, themselves; but preeminently
on account of the seeming remoteness of his associations, and the exceeding
subtlety of his transitional links. Upon this point it is very happily,
though, according to my observation, too generally, remarked, by one whose
powers and opportunities of judging were so eminent that the obliquity of
his testimony in other respects is the more unpardonable;--"Coleridge, to
many people--and often I have heard the complaint--seemed to wander; and he
seemed then 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. * * * * However, I can
assert, upon my 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." [Footnote: Tait's Mag. Sept. 1834, p. 514.] True: his
mind was a logic-vice; let him fasten it on the tiniest flourish of an
error, he never slacked his hold, till he had crushed body and tail to
dust. He was _always_ ratiocinating in his own mind, and therefore
sometimes seemed incoherent to the partial observer. It happened to him as
to Pindar, who in modern days has been called a rambling rhapsodist,
because the connections of his parts, though never arbitrary, are so fine
that the vulgar reader sees them not at all. But they are there
nevertheless, and may all be so distinctly shown, that no one can doubt
their existence; and a little study will also prove that the points of
contact are those which the true genius of lyric verse naturally evolved,
and that the entire Pindaric ode, instead of being the loose and lawless
out-burst which so many have fancied, is, without any exception, the most
artificial and highly wrought composition which Time has spared to us from
the wreck of the Greek Muse. So I can well remember occasions, in which,
after listening to Mr. Coleridge for several delightful hours, I have gone
away with divers splendid masses of reasoning in my head, the separate
beauty and coherency of which I deeply felt, but how they had produced, or
how they bore upon, each other, I could not then perceive. In such cases I
have mused sometimes even for days afterwards upon the words, till at
length, spontaneously as it seemed, "the fire would kindle," and the
association, which had escaped my utmost efforts of comprehension before,
flash itself all at once upon my mind with the clearness of noon-day light.
It may well be imagined that a style of conversation so continuous and
diffused as that which I have just attempted to describe, presented
remarkable difficulties to a mere reporter by memory. It is easy to
preserve the pithy remark, the brilliant retort, or the pointed anecdote;
these stick of themselves, and their retention requires no effort of mind.
But where the salient angles are comparatively few, and the object of
attention is a long-drawn subtle discoursing, you can never recollect,
except by yourself thinking the argument over again. In so doing, the order
and the characteristic expressions will for the most part spontaneously
arise; and it is scarcely credible with what degree of accuracy language
may thus be preserved, where practice has given some dexterity, and long
familiarity with the speaker has enabled, or almost forced, you to catch
the outlines of his manner. Yet with all this, so peculiar were the flow
and breadth of Mr. Coleridge's conversation, that I am very sensible how
much those who can best judge will have to complain of my representation of
it. The following specimens will, I fear, seem too fragmentary, and
therefore deficient in one of the most distinguishing properties of that
which they are designed to represent; and this is true. Yet the reader will
in most instances have little difficulty in understanding the course which
the conversation took, although my recollections of it are thrown into
separate paragraphs for the sake of superior precision. As I never
attempted to give dialogue--indeed, there was seldom much dialogue to give
--the great point with me was to condense what I could remember on each
particular topic into intelligible _wholes_ with as little injury to the
living manner and diction as was possible. With this explanation, I must
leave it to those who still have the tones of "that old man eloquent"
ringing in their ears, to say how far I have succeeded in this delicate
enterprise of stamping his winged words with perpetuity.
In reviewing the contents of the following pages, I can clearly see that I
have admitted some passages which will be pronounced illiberal by those
who, in the present day, emphatically call themselves liberal--_the_
liberal. I allude of course to Mr. Coleridge's remarks on the Reform Bill
and the Malthusian economists. The omission of such passages would probably
have rendered this publication more generally agreeable, and my disposition
does not lead me to give gratuitous offence to any one. But the opinions of
Mr. Coleridge on these subjects, however imperfectly expressed by me, were
deliberately entertained by him; and to have omitted, in so miscellaneous a
collection as this, what he was well known to have said, would have argued
in me a disapprobation or a fear, which I disclaim. A few words, however,
may be pertinently employed here in explaining the true bearing of
Coleridge's mind on the politics of our modern days. He was neither a Whig
nor a Tory, as those designations are usually understood; well enough
knowing that, for the most part, half-truths only are involved in the
Parliamentary tenets of one party or the other. In the common struggles of
a session, therefore, he took little interest; and as to mere personal
sympathies, the friend of Frere and of Poole, the respected guest of
Canning and of Lord Lansdowne, could have nothing to choose. But he threw
the weight of his opinion--and it was considerable--into the Tory or
Conservative scale, for these two reasons:--First, generally, because he
had a deep conviction that the cause of freedom and of truth is now
seriously menaced by a democratical spirit, growing more and more rabid
every day, and giving no doubtful promise of the tyranny to come; and
secondly, in particular, because the national Church was to him the ark of
the covenant of his beloved country, and he saw the Whigs about to coalesce
with those whose avowed principles lead them to lay the hand of spoliation
upon it. Add to these two grounds, some relics of the indignation which the
efforts of the Whigs to thwart the generous exertions of England in the
great Spanish war had formerly roused within him; and all the constituents
of any active feeling in Mr. Coleridge's mind upon matters of state are, I
believe, fairly laid before the reader. The Reform question in itself gave
him little concern, except as he foresaw the present attack on the Church
to be the immediate consequence of the passing of the Bill; "for let the
form of the House of Commons," said he, "be what it may, it will be, for
better or for worse, pretty much what the country at large is; but once
invade that truly national and essentially popular institution, the Church,
and divert its funds to the relief or aid of individual charity or public
taxation--how specious soever that pretext may be--and you will never
thereafter recover the lost means of perpetual cultivation. Give back to
the Church what the nation originally consecrated to its use, and it ought
then to be charged with the education of the people; but half of the
original revenue has been already taken by force from her, or lost to her
through desuetude, legal decision, or public opinion; and are those whose
very houses and parks are part and parcel of what the nation designed for
the general purposes of the Clergy, to be heard, when they argue for making
the Church support, out of her diminished revenues, institutions, the
intended means for maintaining which they themselves hold under the
sanction of legal robbery?" Upon this subject Mr. Coleridge did indeed feel
very warmly, and was accustomed to express himself accordingly. It weighed
upon his mind night and day, and he spoke upon it with an emotion, which I
never saw him betray upon any topic of common politics, however decided his
opinion might be. In this, therefore, he was _felix opportunitate mortis;
non enim vidit_----; and the just and honest of all parties will heartily
admit over his grave, that as his principles and opinions were untainted by
any sordid interest, so he maintained them in the purest spirit of a
reflective patriotism, without spleen, or bitterness, or breach of social
union.
It would require a rare pen to do justice to the constitution of
Coleridge's mind. It was too deep, subtle, and peculiar, to be fathomed by
a morning visiter. Few persons knew much of it in any thing below the
surface; scarcely three or four ever got to understand it in all its
marvellous completeness. Mere personal familiarity with this extraordinary
man did not put you in possession of him; his pursuits and aspirations,
though in their mighty range presenting points of contact and sympathy for
all, transcended in their ultimate reach the extremest limits of most men's
imaginations. For the last thirty years of his life, at least, Coleridge
was really and truly a philosopher of the antique cast. He had his esoteric
views; and all his prose works from the "Friend" to the "Church and State"
were little more than feelers, pioneers, disciplinants for the last and
complete exposition of them. Of the art of making hooks he knew little, and
cared less; but had he been as much an adept in it as a modern novelist, he
never could have succeeded in rendering popular or even tolerable, at
first, his attempt to push Locke and Paley from their common throne in
England. A little more working in the trenches might have brought him
closer to the walls with less personal damage; but it is better for
Christian philosophy as it is, though the assailant was sacrificed in the
bold and artless attack. Mr. Coleridge's prose works had so very limited a
sale, that although published in a technical sense, they could scarcely be
said to have ever become _publici juris_. He did not think them such
himself, with the exception, perhaps, of the "Aids to Reflection," and
generally made a particular remark if he met any person who professed or
showed that he had read the "Friend" or any of his other books. And I have
no doubt that had he lived to complete his great work on "Philosophy
reconciled with Christian Religion," he would without scruple have used in
that work any part or parts of his preliminary treatises, as their
intrinsic fitness required. Hence in every one of his prose writings there
are repetitions, either literal or substantial, of passages to be found in
some others of those writings; and there are several particular positions
and reasonings, which he considered of vital importance, reiterated in the
"Friend," the "Literary Life," the "Lay Sermons," the "Aids to Reflection,"
and the "Church and State." He was always deepening and widening the
foundation, and cared not how often he used the same stone. In thinking
passionately of the principle, he forgot the authorship--and sowed beside
many waters, if peradventure some chance seedling might take root and bear
fruit to the glory of God and the spiritualization of Man.
His mere reading was immense, and the quality and direction of much of it
well considered, almost unique in this age of the world. He had gone
through most of the Fathers, and, I believe, all the Schoolmen of any
eminence; whilst his familiarity with all the more common departments of
literature in every language is notorious. The early age at which some of
these acquisitions were made, and his ardent self-abandonment in the
strange pursuit, might, according to a common notion, have seemed adverse
to increase and maturity of power in after life: yet it was not so; he
lost, indeed, for ever the chance of being a popular writer; but Lamb's
_inspired charity-boy_ of twelve years of age continued to his dying day,
when sixty-two, the eloquent centre of all companies, and the standard of
intellectual greatness to hundreds of affectionate disciples far and near.
Had Coleridge been master of his genius, and not, alas! mastered by it;--
had he less romantically fought a single-handed fight against the whole
prejudices of his age, nor so mercilessly racked his fine powers on the
problem of a universal Christian philosophy,--he might have easily won all
that a reading public can give to a favourite, and have left a name--not
greater nor more enduring indeed--but--better known, and more prized, than
now it is, amongst the wise, the gentle, and the good, throughout all ranks
of society. Nevertheless, desultory as his labours, fragmentary as his
productions at present may seem to the cursory observer--my undoubting
belief is, that in the end it will be found that Coleridge did, in his
vocation, the day's work of a giant. He has been melted into the very heart
of the rising literatures of England and America; and the principles he has
taught are the master-light of the moral and intellectual being of men,
who, if they shall fail to save, will assuredly illustrate and condemn, the
age in which they live. As it is, they 'bide their time.
Coleridge himself--blessings on his gentle memory!--Coleridge was a frail
mortal. He had indeed his peculiar weaknesses as well as his unique powers;
sensibilities that an averted look would rack, a heart which would have
beaten calmly in the tremblings of an earthquake. He shrank from mere
uneasiness like a child, and bore the preparatory agonies of his death-
attack like a martyr. Sinned against a thousand times more than sinning, he
himself suffered an almost life-long punishment for his errors, whilst the
world at large has the unwithering fruits of his labours, his genius, and
his sacrifice. _Necesse est tanquam immaturam mortem ejus defleam; si tamen
fas est aut flere, aut omnino mortem vocare, qua tanti viri mortalitas
magis finita quam vita est. Vivit enim, vivetque semper, atque etiam latius
in memoria hominum et sermone versabitur, postquam ab oculis recessit._
* * * * *
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the youngest child of the Reverend John
Coleridge, Vicar of the Parish of Ottery St. Mary, in the county of Devon,
and master of Henry the Eighth's Free Grammar School in that town. His
mother's maiden name was Ann Bowdon. He was born at Ottery on the 21st of
October, 1772, "about eleven o'clock in the forenoon," as his father the
vicar has, with rather a curious particularity, entered it in the register.
He died on the 25th of July, 1834, in Mr. Gillman's house, in the Grove,
Highgate, and is buried in the old church-yard, by the road side.
[Greek: ----]