COLERIDGE’S “TABLE TALK”
Coleridge was not master of his genius; his genius was master of him. In one place he speaks of the midrashic fancies about the state of our first parents as “Rabbinic dotages”; in another he laments, with Schelling, that these same rabbinic stories are neglected, and proceeds in his periodical, The Friend, to quote several with obvious approval. Again, he writes in one passage of the “proverbial misanthropy and bigotry” of Pharisaism; then, in another, he asserts, on the authority of Grotius, that the “Lord’s Prayer” was a selection from the liturgy of the Synagogue.
The truth is that a large part of Coleridge’s work is of the nature of table talk. His relative indeed published the poet’s “Table Talk,” but a good deal else in Coleridge belongs to the same category. His thoughts are, for the most part, obiter dicta, stray jottings, often stating profound truths, often expressing sheer nonsense. On the whole, he was not unkind to the Jews. He delivered many lectures on Shakespeare, but he never spoke on the Merchant of Venice. He alludes with contempt to the incident of the pound of flesh. Jacob, it is true, he regards as “a regular Jew” because of his trickiness; but he hastens to take the sting out of the remark by adding: “No man could be a bad man who loved as he loved Rachel.”
Throughout we find, in Coleridge’s remarks on the Jews and Judaism, the same mixture of conventional views and original judgments. He notes the theory that the Jews were destined to “remain a quiet light among the nations for the purpose of pointing out the doctrine of the unity of God,” but spoils the compliment by the comment: “The religion of the Jew is, indeed, a light; but it is the light of the glow-worm, which gives no heat, and illumines nothing but itself.” He can see in the Jew only love of money, yet he always found Jews “possessed of a strong national capacity for metaphysical discussions.”
The last remark points to his personal familiarity with Jews. This was actually the case. “I have had,” he says, “a good deal to do with Jews in the course of my life, although I never borrowed any money from them.” He records several conversations with Jews, and does not hesitate to admit that he mostly got the worst of the argument. He argued with one Jew about conversion, and he cites the Jew’s answer: “Let us convert Jews to Judaism first”—an epigram which has been a good deal repeated in other forms since 1830, when Coleridge first recorded it. On one occasion he accosted an “Old Clothes” man, and in a hectoring tone exclaimed: “Why can’t you pronounce your trade cry clearly, why must you utter such a grunt?” The Jew answered: “Sir, I can say ‘Old Clothes’ as well as you can, but if you had to say it ten times a minute, for an hour, you would say, ‘Ogh clo’’ as I do now,” and so he marched off. Coleridge confesses that he “felt floored.” He was so much confounded by the justice of his retort, that, to cite his own words again: “I followed, and gave him a shilling, the only one I had.”
Of one particular Jewish friend we know. Coleridge had a deep affection for Hyman Hurwitz, whom he terms “pious, learned, strong-minded, single-hearted.” Afterwards Professor of Hebrew at University College, London, Hurwitz was, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the head of the “Highgate Academy.” He died in 1844, surviving Coleridge by ten years; the latter died at Highgate in 1834. Thus the poet and the Hebraist were neighbors as well as friends. Coleridge translated into poor English verse Hurwitz’s feeble Hebrew elegy on the death of Princess Charlotte. He also contracted to prepare for the publisher, Murray, a volume of “Rabbinical Tales”; in this work Hurwitz was to collaborate with him. The fee was settled; it was to be two hundred guineas; but the arrangement came to nothing. Coleridge was rich in plans which he failed to accomplish. As an instance, let me cite what he says about an epic on the “Destruction of Jerusalem.” “That,” he declares, “is the only subject now remaining for an epic poem.” Mark what follows: “I schemed it at twenty-five, but, alas! venturum expectat.” Perhaps another remark of his explains why he never attempted the task. The subject of the destruction of Jerusalem, with great capabilities, has one great defect. “No genius or skill could possibly preserve the interest for the hero being merged in the interest for the event”—a profound sentiment.
Perhaps in no direction was Coleridge more in advance of his age than in his treatment of the ethics of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were, he contends truly, not a sect; they were, he puts it less aptly, the Evangelicals of their day. By that he means those who made religion the main concern of life; therein he is right, but the term is somewhat unhappily chosen. Yet not from one point of view. I have already cited Coleridge’s opinion as to the Jewish sources of the “Lord’s Prayer.” He takes up a similar position with regard to the ethics of the Gospels in general. Here is a very remarkable concession: “The Being and Providence of the Living God, holy, gracious, merciful, the creator and preserver of all things, and a father of the righteous; the Moral Law in its utmost height, breadth, and purity; a state of retribution after death, the Resurrection of the Dead, and a Day of Judgment—all these were known and received by the Jewish people, as established articles of national faith, at or before the proclaiming of Christ by the Baptist.” This is taken, not from the collection of “Table Talk” so named, but from the “Aids to Reflection” (Aphorism vii). Coleridge justifies his claim in behalf of the Jews by citing Leviticus 19. 2 and Micah 6. 8, finding the acme of morality in the command to be holy and in the prophet’s answer to the question, “What doth the Lord require of thee?” Just so did Huxley choose Micah’s saying: “To do justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God,” as the last word of religion. To give the words of Huxley which cannot be repeated too often: “If any so-called religion takes away from this great saying of Micah, I think it wantonly mutilates, while if it adds thereto, I think it obscures, the perfect idea of religion.” No two minds were more unlike than Huxley’s and Coleridge’s—the one the scientist, the other the metaphysician; the one the agnostic, the other the mystic. Yet they agreed in perceiving in the prophetic teaching a unique expression of basic moral truth.