'Letters _four_ do form his name.
* * * * *
He came by stealth and unlock'd my den;
And I have drunk the blood since then
Of thrice three hundred thousand men.'
Good: but the sting of the hornet lies in the conclusion. If this
quadriliteral man had done so much for _them_, (though really, we think,
6s. 8d. might have settled his claim,) what, says Fire, setting her arms
a-kimbo, would they do for _him_? Slaughter replies, rather crustily,
that, as far as a good kicking would go--or (says Famine) a little
matter of tearing to pieces by the mob--they would be glad to take
tickets at his benefit. 'How, you bitches!' says Fire, 'is that all?
'I alone am faithful; I
_Cling to him everlastingly_.'
The sentiment is diabolical. And the question argued at the London
dinner-table was--Could the writer have been other than a devil? The
dinner was at the late excellent Mr. Sotheby's, known advantageously in
those days as the translator of Wieland's _Oberon_. Several of the great
guns amongst the literary body were present; in particular, Sir
Walter Scott; and he, we believe, with his usual good-nature, took the
apologetic side of the dispute. In fact, he was in the secret. Nobody
else, barring the author, knew at first whose good name was at stake.
The scene must have been high. The company kicked about the poor
diabolic writer's head as if it had been a tennis-ball. Coleridge, the
yet unknown criminal, absolutely perspired and fumed in pleading for the
defendant; the company demurred; the orator grew urgent; wits began to
_smoke_ the case, as active verbs; the advocate to _smoke_, as a neuter
verb; the 'fun grew fast and furious;' until at length _delinquent
arose_, burning tears in his eyes, and confessed to an audience, (now
bursting with stifled laughter, but whom he supposed to be bursting with
fiery indignation,) 'Lo! I am he that wrote it.'
For our own parts, we side with Coleridge. Malice is not always of the
heart. There is a malice of the understanding and the fancy. Neither do
we think the worse of a man for having invented the most horrible and
old-woman-troubling curse that demons ever listened to. We are too apt
to swear horribly ourselves; and often have we frightened the cat, to
say nothing of the kettle, by our shocking [far too shocking!] oaths.
There were other celebrated men whom Coleridge detested, or seemed
to detest--Paley, Sir Sidney Smith, Lord Hutchinson, (the last Lord
Donoughmore,) and Cuvier. To Paley it might seem as if his antipathy had
been purely philosophic; but we believe that partly it was personal;
and it tallies with this belief, that, in his earliest political tracts,
Coleridge charged the archdeacon repeatedly with his own joke, as if
it had been a serious saying, viz.--'That he could not afford to keep
a conscience;' such luxuries, like a carriage, for instance, being
obviously beyond the finances of poor men.
With respect to the philosophic question between the parties, as to the
grounds of moral election, we hope it is no treason to suggest that both
were perhaps in error. Against Paley, it occurs at once that he himself
would not have made consequences the _practical_ test in valuing the
morality of an act, since these can very seldom be traced at all up to
the final stages, and in the earliest stages are exceedingly different
under different circumstances; so that the same act, tried by its
consequences, would bear a fluctuating appreciation. This could not have
been Paley's _revised_ meaning. Consequently, had he been pressed
by opposition, it would have come out, that by _test_ he meant only
_speculative_ test: a very harmless doctrine certainly, but useless
and impertinent to any purpose of his system. The reader may catch our
meaning in the following illustration. It is a matter of general belief,
that happiness, upon the whole, follows in a higher degree from constant
integrity, than from the closest attention to self-interest. Now
happiness is one of those consequences which Paley meant by final or
remotest. But we could never use this idea as an exponent of integrity,
or interchangeable criterion, because happiness cannot be ascertained or
appreciated except upon long tracts of time, whereas the particular act
of integrity depends continually upon the election of the moment. No
man, therefore, could venture to lay down as a rule, Do what makes you
happy; use this as your test of actions, satisfied that in that case
always you will do the thing which is right. For he cannot discern
independently what _will_ make him happy; and he must decide on the
spot. The use of the _nexus_ between morality and happiness must
therefore be inverted; it is not practical or prospective, but simply
retrospective; and in that form it says no more than the good old rules
hallowed in every cottage. But this furnishes no practical guide for
moral election which a man had not, before he ever thought of this
_nexus_. In the sense in which it is true, we need not go to the
professor's chair for this maxim; in the sense in which it would serve
Paley, it is absolutely false.
On the other hand, as against Coleridge, it is certain that many acts
could be mentioned which are judged to be good or bad only because their
consequences are known to be so, whilst the great catholic acts of life
are entirely (and, if we may so phrase it, haughtily) independent of
consequences. For instance, fidelity to a trust is a law of immutable
morality subject to no casuistry whatever. You have been left executor
to a friend--you are to pay over his last legacy to X, though a
dissolute scoundrel; and you are to give no shilling of it to the
poor brother of X, though a good man, and a wise man, struggling
with adversity. You are absolutely excluded from all contemplation of
results. It was your deceased friend's right to make the will; it is
yours simply to see it executed. Now, in opposition to this primary
class of actions stands another, such as the habit of intoxication,
which are known to be wrong only by observing the consequences. If
drunkenness did not terminate, after some years, in producing bodily
weakness, irritability in the temper, and so forth, it would _not_ be a
vicious act. And accordingly, if a transcendent motive should arise in
favor of drunkenness, as that it would enable you to face a degree of
cold, or contagion, else menacing to life, a duty would arise, _pro hac
vice_, of getting drunk. We had an amiable friend who suffered under
the infirmity of cowardice; an awful coward he was when sober; but,
when very drunk, he had courage enough for the Seven Champions of
Christendom, Therefore, in an emergency, where he knew himself suddenly
loaded with the responsibility of defending a family, we approved highly
of his getting drunk. But to violate a trust could never become right
under any change of circumstances. Coleridge, however, altogether
overlooked this distinction: which, on the other hand, stirring in
Paley's mind, but never brought out to distinct consciousness, nor ever
investigated, nor limited, has undermined his system. Perhaps it is not
very important how a man _theorizes_ upon morality; happily for us all,
God has left no man in such questions practically to the guidance of his
understanding; but still, considering that academic bodies _are_
partly instituted for the support of speculative truth as well as truth
practical, we must think it a blot upon the splendor of Oxford and
Cambridge that both of them, in a Christian land, make Paley the
foundation of their ethics; the alternative being Aristotle. And, in
our mind, though far inferior as a moralist to the Stoics, Aristotle is
often less of a pagan than Paley.
Coleridge's dislike to Sir Sidney Smith and the Egyptian Lord Hutchinson
fell under the category of Martial's case.
'Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare,
Hoc solum novi--non amo te, Sabidi.'
Against Lord Hutchinson, we never heard him plead anything of moment,
except that he was finically Frenchified in his diction; of which he
gave this instance--that having occasion to notice a brick wall, (which
was literally _that_, not more and not less,) when reconnoitring the
French defences, he called it a _revêtement_. And we ourselves remember
his using the French word _gloriole_ rather ostentatiously; that is,
when no particular emphasis attached to the case. But every man has his
foibles; and few, perhaps, are less conspicuously annoying than this of
Lord Hutchinson's. Sir Sidney's crimes were less distinctly revealed
to our mind. As to Cuvier, Coleridge's hatred of _him_ was more to our
taste; for (though quite unreasonable, we fear) it took the shape of
patriotism. He insisted on it, that our British John Hunter was the
genuine article, and that Cuvier was a humbug. Now, speaking privately
to the public, we cannot go quite so far as _that_. But, when publicly
we address that most respectable character, _en grand costume_,
we always mean to back Coleridge. For we are a horrible John Bull
ourselves. As Joseph Hume observes, it makes no difference to us--right
or wrong, black or white--when our countrymen are concerned. And John
Hunter, notwithstanding he had a bee in his bonnet, [Footnote: _Vide_,
in particular, for the most exquisite specimen of pigheadedness that the
world can furnish, his perverse evidence on the once famous case at the
Warwick assizes, of Captain Donelan for poisoning his brother-in-law,
Sir Theodosius Boughton.] was really a great man; though it will not
follow that Cuvier must, therefore, have been a little one. We do not
pretend to be acquainted with the tenth part of Cuvier's performances;
but we suspect that Coleridge's range in that respect was not much
greater than our own.
Other cases of monomaniac antipathy we might revive from our
recollections of Coleridge, had we a sufficient motive. But in
compensation, and by way of redressing the balance, he had many strange
likings--equally monomaniac--and, unaccountably, he chose to exhibit his
whimsical partialities by dressing up, as it were, in his own clothes,
such a set of scarecrows as eye has not beheld. Heavens! what an ark
of unclean beasts would have been Coleridge's private _menagerie_
of departed philosophers, could they all have been trotted out in
succession! But did the reader feel them to be the awful bores which,
in fact, they were? No; because Coleridge had blown upon these withered
anatomies, through the blowpipe of his own creative genius, a stream of
gas that swelled the tissue of their antediluvian wrinkles, forced color
upon their cheeks, and splendor upon their sodden eyes. Such a process
of ventriloquism never _has_ existed. He spoke by their organs. They
were the tubes; and he forced through their wooden machinery his own
Beethoven harmonies.
First came Dr. Andrew Bell. We knew him. Was he dull? Is a wooden spoon
dull? Fishy were his eyes; torpedinous was his manner; and his main
idea, out of two which he really had, related to the moon--from which
you infer, perhaps, that he was lunatic. By no means. It was no craze,
under the influence of the moon, which possessed him; it was an idea of
mere hostility to the moon. The Madras people, like many others, had an
idea that she influenced the weather. Subsequently the Herschels,
senior and junior, systematized this idea; and then the wrath of Andrew,
previously in a crescent state, actually dilated to a plenilunar orb.
The Westmoreland people (for at the lakes it was we knew him) expounded
his condition to us by saying that he was 'maffled;' which word means
'perplexed in the extreme.' His wrath did not pass into lunacy; it
produced simple distraction; an uneasy fumbling with the idea; like that
of an old superannuated dog who longs to worry, but cannot for want of
teeth. In this condition you will judge that he was rather tedious. And
in this condition Coleridge took him up. Andrew's other idea, because he
_had_ two, related to education. Perhaps six-sevenths of that also came
from Madras. No matter, Coleridge took _that_ up; Southey also; but
Southey with his usual temperate fervor. Coleridge, on the other
hand, found celestial marvels both in the scheme and in the man. Then
commenced the apotheosis of Andrew Bell: and because it happened that
his opponent, Lancaster, between ourselves, really _had_ stolen his
ideas from Bell, what between the sad wickedness of Lancaster and the
celestial transfiguration of Bell, gradually Coleridge heated himself to
such an extent, that people, when referring to that subject, asked each
other, 'Have you heard Coleridge lecture on _Bel and the Dragon_?'
The next man glorified by Coleridge was John Woolman, the Quaker. Him,
though we once possessed his works, it cannot be truly affirmed that
we ever read. Try to read John, we often did; but read John we did not.
This, however, you say, might be our fault, and not John's. Very likely.
And we have a notion that now, with our wiser thoughts, we _should_ read
John, if he were here on this table. It is certain that he was a good
man, and one of the earliest in America, if not in Christendom, who
lifted up his hand to protest against the slave-trade. But still, we
suspect, that had John been all that Coleridge represented, he would
not have repelled us from reading his travels in the fearful way that he
did. But, again, we beg pardon, and entreat the earth of Virginia to lie
light upon the remains of John Woolman; for he was an Israelite, indeed,
in whom there was no guile.
The third person raised to divine honors by Coleridge was Bowyer, the
master of Christ's Hospital, London--a man whose name rises into
the nostrils of all who knew him with the gracious odor of a
tallow-chandler's melting-house upon melting day, and whose memory
is embalmed in the hearty detestation of all his pupils. Coleridge
describes this man as a profound critic. Our idea of him is different.
We are of opinion that Bowyer was the greatest villain of the eighteenth
century. We may be wrong; but we cannot be _far_ wrong. Talk of
knouting indeed! which we did at the beginning of this paper in the
mere playfulness of our hearts--and which the great master of the knout,
Christopher, who visited men's trespasses like the Eumenides, never
resorted to but in love for some great idea which had been outraged;
why, this man knouted his way through life, from bloody youth up to
truculent old age. Grim idol! whose altars reeked with children's blood,
and whose dreadful eyes never smiled except as the stern goddess of the
Thugs smiles, when the sound of human lamentations inhabits her ears.
So much had the monster fed upon this great idea of 'flogging,' and
transmuted it into the very nutriment of his heart, that he seems to
have conceived the gigantic project of flogging all mankind; nay
worse, for Mr. Gillman, on Coleridge's authority, tells us (p. 24) the
following anecdote:--'"_Sirrah, I'll flog you_," were words so familiar
to him, that on one occasion some _female_ friend of one of the boys,'
(who had come on an errand of intercession,) 'still lingering at the
door, after having been abruptly told to go, Bowyer exclaimed--"Bring
that woman here, and I'll flog her."'
To this horrid incarnation of whips and scourges, Coleridge, in his
_Biographia Literaria_, ascribes ideas upon criticism and taste, which
every man will recognise as the intense peculiarities of Coleridge.
Could these notions really have belonged to Bowyer, then how do we know
but he wrote _The Ancient Mariner_? Yet, on consideration, no. For even
Coleridge admitted that, spite of his fine theorizing upon composition,
Mr. Bowyer did not prosper in the practice. Of which he gave us this
illustration; and as it is supposed to be the only specimen of the
Bowyeriana which now survives in this sublunary world, we are glad to
extend its glory. It is the most curious example extant of the melodious
in sound:--
''Twas thou that smooth'd'st the rough-rugg'd bed of pain.'
'Smooth'd'st!' Would the teeth of a crocodile not splinter under that
word? It seems to us as if Mr. Bowyer's verses ought to be boiled before
they can be read. And when he says, 'Twas thou, what is the wretch
talking to? Can he be apostrophizing the knout? We very much fear it.
If so, then, you see (reader!) that, even when incapacitated by illness
from operating, he still adores the image of his holy scourge, and
invokes it as alone able to smooth 'his rough-rugg'd bed.' Oh,
thou infernal Bowyer! upon whom even Trollope (_History of Christ's
Hospital_) charges 'a discipline _tinctured_ with more than due
severity;'--can there be any partners found for thee in a quadrille,
except Draco, the bloody lawgiver, Bishop Bonner, and Mrs. Brownrigg?
The next pet was Sir Alexander Ball. Concerning Bowyer, Coleridge did
not talk much, but chiefly wrote; concerning Bell, he did not write
much, but chiefly talked. Concerning Ball, however, he both wrote
and talked. It was in vain to muse upon any plan for having Ball
blackballed, or for rebelling against Bell. Think of a man, who had
fallen into one pit called Bell; secondly, falling into another pit
called Ball. This was too much. We were obliged to quote poetry against
them:--
'Letters four do form his name;
He came by stealth and unlock'd my den;
And the nightmare I have felt since then
Of thrice three hundred thousand men.'
Not that we insinuate any disrespect to Sir Alexander Ball. He was
about the foremost, we believe, in all good qualities, amongst Nelson's
admirable captains at the Nile. He commanded a seventy-four most
effectually in that battle; he governed Malta as well as Sancho governed
Barataria; and he was a true practical philosopher--as, indeed, was
Sancho. But still, by all that we could ever learn, Sir Alexander had
no taste for the abstract upon any subject; and would have read, as
mere delirious wanderings, those philosophic opinions which Coleridge
fastened like wings upon his respectable, but astounded, shoulders.
We really beg pardon for having laughed a little at these crazes of
Coleridge. But laugh we did, of mere necessity, in those days, at
Bell and Ball, whenever we did not groan. And, as the same precise
alternative offered itself now, viz., that, in recalling the case, we
must reverberate either the groaning or the laughter, we presumed the
reader would vote for the last. Coleridge, we are well convinced, owed
all these wandering and exaggerated estimates of men--these diseased
impulses, that, like the _mirage_, showed lakes and fountains where
in reality there were only arid deserts, to the derangements worked by
opium. But now, for the sake of change, let us pass to another topic.
Suppose we say a word or two on Coleridge's accomplishments as a
scholar. We are not going to enter on so large a field as that of his
scholarship in connection with his philosophic labors, scholarship in
the result; not this, but scholarship in the means and machinery, range
of _verbal_ scholarship, is what we propose for a moment's review.
For instance, what sort of a German scholar was Coleridge? We dare
say that, because in his version of the _Wallenstein_ there are some
inaccuracies, those who may have noticed them will hold him cheap in
this particular pretension. But, to a certain degree, they will be
wrong. Coleridge was not _very_ accurate in anything but in the use of
logic. All his philological attainments were imperfect. He did not
talk German; or so obscurely--and, if he attempted to speak fast, so
erroneously--that in his second sentence, when conversing with a German
lady of rank, he contrived to assure her that in his humble opinion she
was a ----. Hard it is to fill up the hiatus decorously; but, in fact,
the word very coarsely expressed that she was no better than she should
be. Which reminds us of a parallel misadventure to a German, whose
colloquial English had been equally neglected. Having obtained an
interview with an English lady, he opened his business (whatever it
might be) thus--'High-born madam, since your husband have kicked de
bucket'----'Sir!' interrupted the lady, astonished and displeased. 'Oh,
pardon!--nine, ten thousand pardon! Now, I make new beginning--quite
oder beginning. Madam, since your husband have cut his stick'----It may
be supposed that this did not mend matters; and, reading that in the
lady's countenance, the German drew out an octavo dictionary, and said,
perspiring with shame at having a second time missed fire,--'Madam,
since your husband have gone to kingdom come'----This he said
beseechingly; but the lady was past propitiation by this time, and
rapidly moved towards the door. Things had now reached a crisis; and, if
something were not done quickly, the game was up. Now, therefore, taking
a last hurried look at his dictionary, the German flew after the lady,
crying out in a voice of despair--'Madam, since your husband, your most
respected husband, have hopped de twig'----This was his sheet-anchor;
and, as this also _came home_, of course the poor man was totally
wrecked. It turned out that the dictionary he had used (Arnold's, we
think,)--a work of a hundred years back, and, from mere ignorance,
giving slang translations from Tom Brown, L'Estrange, and other jocular
writers--had put down the verb _sterben (to die)_ with the following
worshipful series of equivalents--1. To kick the bucket; 2. To cut one's
stick; 3. To go to kingdom come; 4. To hop the twig.
But, though Coleridge did not pretend to any fluent command of
conversational German, he read it with great ease. His knowledge
of German literature was, indeed, too much limited by his rare
opportunities for commanding anything like a well-mounted library. And
particularly it surprised us that Coleridge knew little or nothing of
John Paul (Richter). But his acquaintance with the German philosophic
masters was extensive. And his valuation of many individual German words
or phrases was delicate and sometimes profound.
As a Grecian, Coleridge must be estimated with a reference to the state
and standard of Greek literature at that time and in this country.
Porson had not yet raised our ideal. The earliest laurels of Coleridge
were gathered, however, in that field. Yet no man will, at this day,
pretend that the Greek of his prize ode is sufferable. Neither did
Coleridge ever become an accurate Grecian in later times, when better
models of scholarship, and better aids to scholarship, had begun
to multiply. But still we must assert this point of superiority for
Coleridge, that, whilst he never was what may be called a well-mounted
scholar in any department of verbal scholarship, he yet displayed
sometimes a brilliancy of conjectural sagacity, and a felicity of
philosophic investigation, even in this path, such as better scholars do
not often attain, and of a kind which cannot be learned from books. But,
as respects his accuracy, again we must recall to the reader the state
of Greek literature in England during Coleridge's youth; and, in all
equity, as a means of placing Coleridge in the balances, specifically we
must recall the state of Greek metrical composition at that period.
To measure the condition of Greek literature even in Cambridge, about
the initial period of Coleridge, we need only look back to the several
translations of Gray's _Elegy_ by three (if not four) of the reverend
gentlemen at that time attached to Eton College. Mathias, no very great
scholar himself in this particular field, made himself merry, in his
_Pursuits of Literature_, with these Eton translations. In that he was
right. But he was _not_ right in praising a contemporary translation by
Cook, who (we believe) was the immediate predecessor of Porson in
the Greek chair. As a specimen of this translation, [Footnote: It was
printed at the end of Aristotle's _Poetics_, which Dr. Cook edited.] we
cite one stanza; and we cannot be supposed to select unfairly, because
it is the stanza which Mathias praises in extravagant terms. "Here,"
says he, "Gray, Cook, and Nature, do seem to contend for the mastery."
The English quatrain must be familiar to every body:--
"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour:
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
And the following, we believe, though quoting from a thirty-three years'
recollection of it, is the exact Greek version of Cook:--
'A charis eugenon, charis a basilaeidos achas
Lora tuchaes chryseaes, Aphroditaes kala ta dora,
Paith ama tauta tethiake, kai eiden morsimon amar
Proon kle olole, kai ocheto xunon es Adaen.'
Now really these verses, by force of a little mosaic tesselation from
genuine Greek sources, pass fluently over the tongue; but can they be
considered other than a _cento_? Swarms of English schoolboys, at this
day, would not feel very proud to adopt them. In fact, we remember (at a
period say twelve years later than this) some iambic verses, which were
really composed by a boy, viz., a son of Dr. Prettyman, (afterwards
Tomline,) Bishop of Winchester, and, in earlier times, private tutor to
Mr. Pitt; they were published by Middleton, first Bishop of Calcutta,
in the preface to his work on the Greek article; and for racy idiomatic
Greek, self-originated, and not a mere mocking-bird's iteration of alien
notes, are so much superior to all the attempts of these sexagenarian
doctors, as distinctly to mark the growth of a new era and a new
generation in this difficult accomplishment, within the first decennium
of this century. It is singular that only one blemish is suggested by
any of the contemporary critics in Dr. Cook's verses, viz., in the
word _xunon_, for which this critic proposes to substitute _ooinon_,
to prevent, as he observes, the last syllable of _ocheto_ from being
lengthened by the _x_. Such considerations as these are necessary to the
_trutinæ castigatio_, before we can value Coleridge's place on the scale
of his own day; which day, _quoad hoc_, be it remembered, was 1790.
As to French, Coleridge read it with too little freedom to find pleasure
in French literature. Accordingly, we never recollect his referring for
any purpose, either of argument or illustration, to a French classic.
Latin, from his regular scholastic training, naturally he read with a
scholar's fluency; and indeed, he read constantly in authors, such as
Petrarch, Erasmus, Calvin, &c., whom he could not then have found in
translations. But Coleridge had not cultivated an acquaintance with the
delicacies of classic Latinity. And it is remarkable that Wordsworth,
educated most negligently at Hawkshead school, subsequently by reading
the lyric poetry of Horace, simply for his own delight as a student of
composition, made himself a master of Latinity in its most difficult
form; whilst Coleridge, trained regularly in a great Southern school,
never carried his Latin to any classical polish.
There is another accomplishment of Coleridge's, less broadly open to
the judgment of this generation, and not at all of the next--viz., his
splendid art of conversation, on which it will be interesting to say a
word. Ten years ago, when the music of this rare performance had not yet
ceased to vibrate in men's ears, what a sensation was gathering amongst
the educated classes on this particular subject! What a tumult of
anxiety prevailed to 'hear Mr. Coleridge'--or even to talk with a man
who _had_ heard him! Had he lived till this day, not Paganini would have
been so much sought after. That sensation is now decaying; because a new
generation has emerged during the ten years since his death. But many
still remain whose sympathy (whether of curiosity in those who did _not_
know him, or of admiration in those who _did_) still reflects as in a
mirror the great stir upon this subject which then was moving in the
world. To these, if they should inquire for the great distinguishing
principle of Coleridge's conversation, we might say that it was the
power of vast combination 'in linked sweetness long drawn out.'
He gathered into focal concentration the largest body of objects,
_apparently_ disconnected, that any man ever yet, by any magic, could
assemble, or, _having_ assembled, could manage. His great fault was,
that, by not opening sufficient spaces for reply or suggestion, or
collateral notice, he not only narrowed his own field, but he grievously
injured the final impression. For when men's minds are purely passive,
when they are not allowed to re-act, then it is that they collapse most,
and that their sense of what is said must ever be feeblest. Doubtless
there must have been great conversational masters elsewhere, and at many
periods; but in this lay Coleridge's characteristic advantage, that he
was a great natural power, and also a great artist. He was a power in
the art, and he carried a new art into the power.
But now, finally--having left ourselves little room for more--one or two
words on Coleridge as an opium-eater.
We have not often read a sentence falling from a wise man with
astonishment so profound, as that particular one in a letter of
Coleridge's to Mr. Gillman, which speaks of the effort to wean
one's-self from opium as a trivial task. There are, we believe, several
such passages. But we refer to that one in particular which assumes
that a single 'week' will suffice for the whole process of so mighty a
revolution. Is indeed leviathan _so_ tamed? In that case the quarantine
of the opium-eater might be finished within Coleridge's time, and
with Coleridge's romantic ease. But mark the contradictions of this
extraordinary man. Not long ago we were domesticated with a venerable
rustic, strong-headed, but incurably obstinate in his prejudices, who
treated the whole body of medical men as ignorant pretenders, knowing
absolutely nothing of the system which they professed to superintend.
This, you will remark, is no very singular case. No; nor, as we believe,
is the antagonist case of ascribing to such men magical powers. Nor,
what is worse still, the co-existence of both cases in the same mind,
as in fact happened here. For this same obstinate friend of ours, who
treated all medical pretensions as the mere jest of the universe, every
'third day was exacting from his own medical attendants some exquisite
_tour-de-force_, as that they should know or should do something,
which, if they _had_ known or done, all men would have suspected them
reasonably of magic. He rated the whole medical body as infants; and
yet what he exacted from them every third day as a matter of course,
virtually presumed them to be the only giants within the whole range of
science. Parallel and equal is the contradiction of Coleridge. He speaks
of opium excess, his own excess, we mean--the excess of twenty-five
years--as a thing to be laid aside easily and for ever within seven
days; and yet, on the other hand, he describes it pathetically,
sometimes with a frantic pathos, as the scourge, the curse, the one
almighty blight which had desolated his life.
This shocking contradiction we need not press. All readers will see
_that_. But some will ask--Was Mr. Coleridge right in either view?
Being so atrociously wrong in the first notion, (viz., that the opium
of twenty-five years was a thing easily to be forsworn,) where a child
could know that he was wrong, was he even altogether right, secondly,
in believing that his own life, root and branch, had been withered by
opium? For it will not follow, because, with a relation to happiness and
tranquillity, a man may have found opium his curse, that therefore, as
a creature of energies and great purposes, he must have been the wreck
which he seems to suppose. Opium gives and takes away. It defeats the
_steady_ habit of exertion, but it creates spasms of irregular exertion;
it ruins the natural power of life, but it develops preternatural
paroxysms of intermitting power. Let us ask of any man who holds that
not Coleridge himself but the world, as interested in Coleridge's
usefulness, has suffered by his addiction to opium; whether he is aware
of the way in which opium affected Coleridge; and secondly, whether
he is aware of the actual contributions to literature--how large they
were--which Coleridge made _in spite_ of opium. All who were intimate
with Coleridge must remember the fits of genial animation which were
created continually in his manner and in his buoyancy of thought by a
recent or by an _extra_ dose of the omnipotent drug. A lady, who knew
nothing experimentally of opium, once told us, that she 'could tell when
Mr. Coleridge had taken too much opium by his shining countenance.' She
was right; we know that mark of opium excesses well, and the cause of
it; or at least we believe the cause to lie in the quickening of the
insensible perspiration which accumulates and glistens on the face. Be
that as it may, a criterion it was that could not deceive us as to the
condition of Coleridge. And uniformly in that condition he made his most
effective intellectual displays. It is true that he might not be happy
under this fiery animation, and we fully believe that he was not. Nobody
is happy under laudanum except for a very short term of years. But in
what way did that operate upon his exertions as a writer? We are of
opinion that it killed Coleridge as a poet. 'The harp of Quantock' was
silenced for ever by the torment of opium. But proportionably it roused
and stung by misery his metaphysical instincts into more spasmodic life.
Poetry can flourish only in the atmosphere of happiness. But subtle and
perplexed investigations of difficult problems are amongst the commonest
resources for beguiling the sense of misery. And for this we have the
direct authority of Coleridge himself speculating on his own case.
In the beautiful though unequal ode entitled _Dejection_, stanza six,
occurs the following passage:
'For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient all I can;
_And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man_--
This was my sole resource, my only plan;
Till that, which suits a part, infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.'
Considering the exquisite quality of some poems which Coleridge has
composed, nobody can grieve (or _has_ grieved) more than ourselves, at
seeing so beautiful a fountain choked up with weeds. But had Coleridge
been a happier man, it is our fixed belief that we should have had far
less of his philosophy, and perhaps, but not certainly, might have
had more of his general literature. In the estimate of the public,
doubtless, _that_ will seem a bad exchange. Every man to his taste.
Meantime, what we wish to show is, that the loss was not absolute,
but merely relative.
It is urged, however, that, even on his philosophic speculations, opium
operated unfavorably in one respect, by often causing him to leave them
unfinished. This is true. Whenever Coleridge (being highly charged,
or saturated, with opium) had written with distempered vigor upon any
question, there occurred soon after a recoil of intense disgust, not
from his own paper only, but even from the subject. All opium-eaters are
tainted with the infirmity of leaving works unfinished, and suffering
reactions of disgust. But Coleridge taxed himself with that infirmity in
verse before he could at all have commenced opium-eating. Besides, it is
too much assumed by Coleridge and by his biographer, that to leave off
opium was of course to regain juvenile health. But all opium-eaters make
the mistake of supposing every pain or irritation which they suffer to
be the product of opium. Whereas a wise man will say, suppose you _do_
leave off opium, that will not deliver you from the load of years (say
sixty-three) which you carry on your back. Charles Lamb, another man of
true genius, and another head belonging to the Blackwood Gallery, made
that mistake in his _Confessions of a Drunkard_. 'I looked back,' says
he, 'to the time when always, on waking in the morning, I had a song
rising to my lips.' At present, it seems, being a drunkard, he has no
such song. Ay, dear Lamb, but note this, that the drunkard was fifty-six
years old, the songster was twenty-three. Take twenty-three from
fifty-six, and we have some reason to believe that thirty-three will
remain; which period of thirty-three years is a pretty good reason for
not singing in the morning, even if brandy has been out of the question.
It is singular, as respects Coleridge, that Mr. Gillman never says one
word upon the event of the great Highgate experiment for leaving off
laudanum, though Coleridge came to Mr. Gillman's for no other purpose;
and in a week, this vast creation of new earth, sea, and all that in
them is, was to have been accomplished. We _rayther_ think, as Bayley
junior observes, that the explosion must have hung fire. But _that_ is
a trifle. We have another pleasing hypothesis on the subject. Mr.
Wordsworth, in his exquisite lines written on a fly-leaf of his own
_Castle of Indolence_, having described Coleridge as 'a noticeable man
with large grey eyes,' goes on to say, 'He' (viz., Coleridge) 'did that
other man entice' to view his imagery. Now we are sadly afraid that 'the
noticeable man with large grey eyes' did entice 'that other man,' viz.,
Gillman, to commence opium-eating. This is droll; and it makes us laugh
horribly. Gillman should have reformed _him_; and lo! _he_ corrupts
Gillman. S. T. Coleridge visited Highgate by way of being converted
from the heresy of opium; and the issue is--that, in two months' time,
various grave men, amongst whom our friend Gillman marches first in
great pomp, are found to have faces shining and glorious as that of
AEsculapius; a fact of which we have already explained the secret
meaning. And scandal says (but then what will not scandal say?) that
a hogshead of opium goes up daily through Highgate tunnel. Surely one
corroboration of our hypothesis may be found in the fact, that Vol. I.
of Gillman's Coleridge is for ever to stand unpropped by Vol. II. For we
have already observed, that opium-eaters, though good fellows upon the
whole, never finish anything.
What then? A man has a right never to finish anything. Certainly he has;
and by Magna Charta. But he has no right, by Magna Charta or by Parva
Charta, to slander decent men, like ourselves and our friend the author
of the _Opium Confessions_. Here it is that our complaint arises against
Mr. Gillman. If he has taken to opium-eating, can we help _that_? If
_his_ face shines, must our faces be blackened? He has very improperly
published some intemperate passages from Coleridge's letters, which
ought to have been considered confidential, unless Coleridge had
left them for publication, charging upon the author of the _Opium
Confessions_ a reckless disregard of the temptations which, in that
work, he was scattering abroad amongst men. Now this author is connected
with ourselves, and we cannot neglect his defence, unless in the case
that he undertakes it himself.
We complain, also, that Coleridge raises (and is backed by Mr. Gillman
in raising) a distinction perfectly perplexing to us, between himself
and the author of the _Opium Confessions_ upon the question--Why they
severally began the practice of opium-eating? In himself, it seems, this
motive was to relieve pain, whereas the Confessor was surreptitiously
seeking for pleasure. Ay, indeed--where did he learn _that_? We have no
copy of the _Confessions_ here, so we cannot quote chapter and verse;
but we distinctly remember, that toothache is recorded in that book
as the particular occasion which first introduced the author to the
knowledge of opium. Whether afterwards, having been thus initiated
by the demon of pain, the opium confessor did not apply powers thus
discovered to purposes of mere pleasure, is a question for himself; and
the same question applies with the same cogency to Coleridge. Coleridge
began in rheumatic pains. What then? This is no proof that he did not
end in voluptuousness. For our parts, we are slow to believe that ever
any man did, or could, learn the somewhat awful truth, that in a certain
ruby-colored elixir, there lurked a divine power to chase away the
genius of ennui, without subsequently abusing this power. To taste but
once from the tree of knowledge, is fatal to the subsequent power
of abstinence. True it is, that generations have used laudanum as an
anodyne, (for instance, hospital patients,) who have not afterwards
courted its powers as a voluptuous stimulant; but that, be sure, has
arisen from no abstinence in _them_. There are, in fact, two classes of
temperaments as to this terrific drug--those which are, and those which
are not, preconformed to its power; those which genially expand to its
temptations, and those which frostily exclude them. Not in the energies
of the will, but in the qualities of the nervous organization, lies
the dread arbitration of--Fall or stand: doomed thou art to yield; or,
strengthened constitutionally, to resist. Most of those who have but a
low sense of the spells lying couchant in opium, have practically none
at all. For the initial fascination is for _them_ effectually defeated
by the sickness which nature has associated with the first stages of
opium-eating. But to that other class, whose nervous sensibilities
vibrate to their profoundest depths under the first touch of the angelic
poison, even as a lover's ear thrills on hearing unexpectedly the voice
of her whom he loves, opium is the Amreeta cup of beatitude. You know
the _Paradise Lost_? and you remember, from the eleventh book, in its
earlier part, that laudanum already existed in Eden--nay, that it was
used medicinally by an archangel; for, after Michael had 'purged with
euphrasy and rue' the eyes of Adam, lest he should be unequal to the
mere _sight_ of the great visions about to unfold their draperies before
him, next he fortifies his fleshly spirits against the _affliction_ of
these visions, of which visions the first was death. And how?
'He from the well of life three drops instill'd.'
What was their operation?
'So deep the power of these ingredients pierced,
_Even to the inmost seat of mental sight_,
That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes,
Sank down, and all his spirits became entranced.
But him the gentle angel by the hand
Soon raised'----
The second of these lines it is which betrays the presence of laudanum.
It is in the faculty of mental vision, it is in the increased power of
dealing with the shadowy and the dark, that the characteristic virtue
of opium lies. Now, in the original higher sensibility is found some
palliation for the _practice_ of opium-eating; in the greater temptation
is a greater excuse. And in this faculty of self-revelation is found
some palliation for _reporting_ the case to the world, which both
Coleridge and his biographer have overlooked.