[A] These remarks do not of course apply to Cowper and Burns, to whom
our modern literature is so deeply indebted, but to their predecessors,
from Pope downwards.
[B] Memoirs of William Wordsworth, by Dr. Wordsworth, vol. 1, page 7.
[C] De Quincy, Tait’s Magazine, for 1839.
[D] It is related by De Quincy, that during Wordsworth’s early
residence in the lake country--after his return from Cambridge--his
mind was so oppressed by the gloomy aspect of his fortunes, that
evening card-playing was resorted to, to divert him from actual
despondency.
[E] Dr. Wordsworth’s Memoir, page 53.
[F] Memoir, page 71-2.
[G] Chambers’ Papers for the People, article Wordsworth.
[H] Vol. 1, page 149 to 154.
[I] Memoirs, Vol. 1., page 156
[J] Dr. Wordsworth’s “Memoirs,” vol. 2, p. 94.
[K] “Memoirs,” vol. 2, p. 102-105.
[L] Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 121.
[M] This view of Coleridge is confirmed by Carlyle, in his “Life of
John Sterling,” just published.
“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 point to
the Church of England, with its singular old rubrics and surplices
at Allhallowtide, _Esto perpetua_. * * * * 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,) the most excellent. 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. * * *
* * I still recollect his ‘object’ and ‘subject,’ terms of continual
recurrence in the Kantean province; and how he sung and snuffled them
into ‘om-m-mject’ ‘sum-m-mject,’ with a kind of solemn shake or quaver,
as he rolled along. No talk, in his century or in any other, could be
more surprising.
* * * * *
“He had knowledge about many things and topics,--much curious reading;
but generally all topics led him, after a pass or two, into the
high seas of theosophic philosophy, the hazy infinitude of Kantean
transcendentalism, with its ‘sum-m-mjects’ and ‘om m-mjects.’ Sad
enough, for with such indolent impatience of the claims and ignorances
of others, he had not the least talent for explaining this or anything
unknown to them; and you swam and fluttered in the mistiest, wide,
unintelligible deluge of things,--for most part in a rather profitless,
uncomfortable manner. Glorious islets, too, I have seen rise out
of the haze; but they were few, and soon swallowed in the general
element again. * * * * * * One right peal of concrete laughter at some
convicted flesh-and-blood absurdity, one burst of noble indignation
at some injustice or depravity rubbing elbows with us on this solid
earth,--how strange would it have been in that Kantean haze-world, and
how infinitely cheering amid its vacant air-castles, and dim-melting
ghosts and shadows! None such ever came. His life had been an abstract
thinking and dreaming, idealistic one, passed amid the ghosts of
defunct bodies and of unborn ones. The mourning sing-song of that
theosophico-metaphysical monotony left on you, at last, a very dreary
feeling.”