MR. COLERIDGE
From the “Spirit of the Age.”
[P. 205.] and thank. Cf. “Comus,” 176: “In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan.”
a mind reflecting. See p. [35] and n.
dark rearward. Cf. “Tempest,” i, 2, 50: “In the dark backward and abysm of time.”
[P. 206.] That which was. “Antony and Cleopatra,” iv, 14, 9.
quick, forgetive. 2 “Henry IV,” iv, 3, 107.
what in him is weak. Cf. “Paradise Lost,” I, 22: “What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support.”
[P. 207.] and by the force. Cf. “Macbeth,” iii, 5, 28: “As by the strength of their illusion Shalt draw him on to his confusion.”
rich strond. “Faërie Queene,” III, iv, 18, 29, 34.
goes sounding. “Hazlitt seems to have had a hazy recollection of two passages in Chaucer’s Prologue. In his essay on ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets,’ he says, ‘the scholar in Chaucer is described as going “sounding on his way,”’ and in his Lectures on the English Poets he says, ‘the merchant, as described in Chaucer, went on his way “sounding always the increase of his winning.”’ The scholar is not described as ‘sounding on his way,’ but Chaucer says of him, ‘Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,’ while the merchant, though ‘souninge alway th’ encrees of his winning,’ is not described as going on his way. Wordsworth has a line (‘Excursion,’ Book III), ‘Went sounding on a dim and perilous way,’ but it seems clear that Hazlitt thought he was quoting Chaucer.” Waller-Glover, IV, 412.
[P. 208.] his own nothings. “Coriolanus,” ii, 2, 81.
letting contemplation. Cf. Dyer’s “Grongar Hill,” 26: “till contemplation have its fill.”
Sailing with supreme dominion. Gray’s “Progress of Poesy.”
He lisped. Pope’s “Prologue to the Satires,” 128.
Ode on Chatterton. “Monody on the Death of Chatterton,” written by Coleridge in 1790, at the age of eighteen.
[P. 209.] gained several prizes. “At Cambridge Coleridge won the Browne Gold Medal for a Greek Ode in 1792.” Waller-Glover.
At Christ’s Hospital, a London school which Leigh Hunt and Lamb attended about the same time as Coleridge. The former has left a record of its life in his “Autobiography,” and Lamb has written of it, with special reference to Coleridge, in his “Recollections of Christ’s Hospital” and “Christ’s Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago.”
Struggling in vain. “Excursion,” VI, 557.
[P. 210.] Hartley, David (1705-1757), author of “Observations on Man” (1749), and identified chiefly with the theory of association. Cf. Coleridge’s “Religious Musings,” 368: “and he of mortal kind Wisest, he first who marked the ideal tribes Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain.”
Dr. Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804), scientist and philosopher of the materialistic school, author of “The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated” (1777). “See! Priestley there, patriot, and saint, and sage.” “Religious Musings,” 371.
Bishop Berkeley’s fairy-world. George Berkeley (1685-1753), idealistic philosopher. Cf. p. 287.
Malebranche, Nicholas (1638-1715), author of “De la Recherche de la Vérité” (1674).
Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688), author of “The True Intellectual System of the Universe” (1678).
Lord Brook’s hieroglyphical theories. Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628), friend and biographer of Sir Philip Sidney.
Bishop Butler’s Sermons. Joseph Butler (1692-1752), author of “Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel” (1726), and “The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature” (1736).
Duchess of Newcastle. Margaret Cavendish (1624?-1674), published about a dozen folio volumes of philosophical fancies, poems, and plays. In “Mackery End in Hertfordshire” Lamb refers to her as “the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat fantastical and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle.”
Clarke, Samuel (1675-1729), English theologian of latitudinarian principles.
South, Robert (1634-1716), controversial writer and preacher.
Tillotson, John (1630-1694), a popular theological writer of rationalistic tendency.
Leibnitz’s Pre-established Harmony. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716), a German philosopher, represented the world as consisting of an infinite number of independent substances or monads related to each other in such a way (by the pre-established harmony) as to form one universe. Cf. Coleridge’s “Destiny of Nations,” 38 ff.:
“Others boldlier think
That as one body seems the aggregate
Of atoms numberless, each organized;
So by a strange and dim similitude
Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds
Are an all-conscious spirit, which informs
With absolute ubiquity of thought
(His own eternal self-affirming act!)
All his involved Monads, that yet seem
With various province and apt agency
Each to pursue its own self-centering end.”
P. 210, n. And so by many. “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” ii, 7, 30.
[P. 211.] hortus siccus [dry garden] of Dissent. Burke’s “Reflections on the French Revolution,” Works, ed. Bohn, II, 287.
John Huss (1373?-1415), Bohemian reformer and martyr.
Jerome of Prague, a follower of Huss who was burnt for heresy in 1416.
Socinus. Fausto Paulo Sozzini (1539-1604), an Italian theologian who sought to simplify the doctrine of the Trinity.
John Zisca (1370?-1424), a leader of the extreme Hussite party.
Neal’s History. Daniel Neal (1648-1743) published his “History of the Puritans” 1732-38.
Calamy, Edmund (1671-1732) published an “Account of the Ministers, Lecturers, Masters and Fellows of Colleges, and Schoolmasters who were Ejected or Silenced after the Restoration of 1660” (1702 and 1713).
Spinoza, Baruch (1632-1677), a Dutch philosopher of Jewish parentage, the chief representative of Pantheism, “the doctrine of one infinite substance, of which all finite existences are modes or limitations.”
When he saw. Cf. Coleridge’s “Remorse,” iv, 2, 100:
“When we saw nought but beauty; when we heard
The voice of that Almighty One who loved us
In every gale that breathed, and wave that murmur’d!”
Proclus (410-485) and Plotinus (204-270), philosophers of the Neo-Platonic school. In “Biographia Literaria” (chap. 9) Coleridge refers to his “early study of Plato and of Plotinus, with the commentaries and the ‘Theologia Platonica’ of the illustrious Florentine; of Proclus, and Gemistius Pletho.”
Duns Scotus (1265 or 1275-1308) and Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274), two great theologians of the Catholic Church.
Jacob Behmen or Böhme (1575-1624), a German religious mystic who exerted considerable influence on English religious thought in the eighteenth century. In the “Biographia Literaria” (chap. 9) Coleridge writes: “A meek and shy quietist, his intellectual powers were never stimulated into feverous energy by crowds of proselytes, or by the ambition of proselyting. Jacob Behmen was an enthusiast in the strictest sense, as not merely distinguished, but as contradistinguished from a fanatic.... The writings of these Mystics acted in no slight degree to prevent my mind from being imprisoned within the outline of any single dogmatic system.”
Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688-1772), the Swedish scientist and mystic from whom have sprung some of the modern theosophical cults.
Religious Musings, published in his “Poems on Various Subjects” (1796).
the glad prose of Jeremy Taylor. Cf. “Literature of the Age of Elizabeth,” Lecture VII: “In his writings, the frail stalk of human life reclines on the bosom of eternity. His Holy Living and Dying is a divine pastoral. He writes to the faithful followers of Christ, as the shepherd pipes to his flock. He introduces touching and heartfelt appeals to familiar life; condescends to men of low estate; and his pious page blushes with modesty and beauty. His style is prismatic. It unfolds the colours of the rainbow; it floats like the bubble through the air; it is like innumerable dew-drops that glitter on the face of morning, and tremble as they glitter. He does not dig his way underground, but slides upon ice, borne on the winged car of fancy. The dancing light he throws upon objects is like an Aurora Borealis, playing betwixt heaven and earth.... In a word, his writings are more like fine poetry than any other prose whatever; they are a choral song in praise of virtue, and a hymn to the Spirit of the Universe.”
Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850), published “Fourteen Sonnets” in 1789, and a second edition containing twenty-one in the same year. In the first chapter of the “Biographia Literaria,” Coleridge credits the sonnets of Bowles with saving him from a premature absorption in metaphysics and theology and with introducing him to the excellences of the new school of poetry. In his enthusiasm he went about making proselytes for Bowles and “as my school finances did not permit me to purchase copies, I made, within less than a year and a half, more than forty transcriptions, as the best presents I could offer to those, who had in any way won my regard. And with almost equal delight did I receive the three or four following publications of the same author.” Coleridge also addressed a “Sonnet to Bowles,” opening
“My heart hath thanked thee, Bowles! for those soft strains,
That on the still air floating tremblingly,
Wak’d in me Fancy, Love, and Sympathy!”
[P. 212.] John Bull. Croker’s John Bull was a scurrilous newspaper edited by Theodore Hook, the first number of which appeared December 17, 1820.
Mr. Croker, John Wilson (1780-1857), politician and man of letters, one of Hazlitt’s pet aversions, and the same who comes in for such a severe chastisement in Macaulay’s review of his edition of Boswell’s “Johnson.”
Junius, the mysterious author of a famous series of political letters which appeared in the London Public Advertiser from January 21, 1769, to January 21, 1772, collected as the “Letters of Junius” in 1772. The name of Sir Philip Francis is the one most persistently associated with the composition of these letters.
Godwin, William (1756-1836), leader of the philosophical radicals in England and a believer in the perfectibility of man, wrote “An Enquiry concerning Political Justice” (1793), “Caleb Williams” (1794), and other novels and miscellaneous works. Godwin was the husband of Mary Wolstonecraft, and the father-in-law of Shelley. Hazlitt wrote a sketch of him in the “Spirit of the Age” and reviewed his last novel, “Cloudesley,” in the Edinburgh Review. Coleridge has a Sonnet to William Godwin:
“Nor will I not thy holy guidance bless,
And hymn thee, Godwin! with an ardent lay;
For that thy voice, in Passion’s stormy day
When wild I roam’d the bleak Heath of Distress,
Bade the bright form of Justice meet my way—
And told me that her name was Happiness.”
Sorrows of Werter, a sentimental novel of Goethe’s, the work by which he was most generally known to English readers in Hazlitt’s day.
laugh’d with Rabelais. Cf. Pope’s “Dunciad,” I, 22: “Or laugh and shake in Rab’lais easy chair.”
spoke with rapture of Raphael. Coleridge had visited Italy in 1806 on his return from a stay in Malta, and had devoted his time there to a study of Italian art. See p. [298] n.
Giotto (d. 1337), Ghirlandaio, whose real name was Domenico Bigardi (1449-1494), and Massaccio (1402-1429) were early Florentine painters.
wandered into Germany. Coleridge’s visit to Germany and his introduction to the leading German philosophers dates back to 1798-99.
Kantean philosophy. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was the leader of modern philosophy. “The writings of the illustrious sage of Königsberg, the founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than any other work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding. The originality, the depth, and the compression of the thoughts; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance of the distinctions; the adamantine chain of the logic; and I will venture to add—(paradox as it will appear to those who have taken their notion of Immanuel Kant from Reviewers and Frenchmen)—the clearness and evidence, of the Critique of Pure Reason; and Critique of the Judgment; of the Metaphysical Elements of Natural Philosophy; and of his Religion within the bounds of Pure Reason, took possession of me as with a giant’s hand. After fifteen years’ familiarity with them, I still read these and all his other productions with undiminished delight and increasing admiration.” “Biographia Literaria,” chap. IX.
Fichte, J. Gottlieb (1762-1814). “Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, or Lore of Ultimate Science, was to add the key-stone of the arch” of Kant’s system. Ibid.
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (1775-1829). “In Schelling’s Natur-Philosophie, and the System des Transcendentalen Idealismus, I first found a genial coincidence with much that I had toiled out for myself, and a powerful assistance in what I had yet to do.... Many of the most striking resemblances, indeed all the main and fundamental ideas, were born and matured in my mind before I had ever seen a single page of the German Philosopher; and I might indeed affirm with truth, before the most important works of Schelling had been written, or at least made public. Nor is this coincidence at all to be wondered at. We had studied in the same school; been disciplined by the same preparatory philosophy, namely, the writings of Kant; we had both equal obligations to the polar logic and dynamic philosophy of Giordano Bruno; and Schelling has lately, and, as of recent acquisition, avowed that same affectionate reverence for the labors of Behmen, and other mystics, which I had formed at a much earlier period.” Ibid.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729-1781), German dramatist and critic.
sang for joy. Coleridge had in 1789 composed some stanzas “On the Destruction of the Bastille,” but these were not published till 1834.
would have floated his bark. Coleridge and Southey with some other friends had in 1794 formed a plan for an ideal colony, the Pantisocracy, on the banks of the Susquehanna.
In Philharmonia’s. Cf. Coleridge’s “Monody on the Death of Chatterton,” 140: “O’er peaceful Freedom’s undivided dale.”
[P. 213.] Frailty. Cf. “Hamlet,” i, 2, 146: “thy name is woman.”
writing paragraphs. Coleridge was connected with the staff of the Courier as a sort of assistant-editor for five months in 1811. His contributions during this period appeared as the “Essays on His Own Times” in 1850.
poet-laureate and stamp-distributor are references respectively to Southey and Wordsworth.
bourne from whence. “Hamlet,” iii, 1, 79.
tantalized by useless resources. Compare this with Coleridge’s own lines of bitter self-reproach addressed “To a Gentleman”:
“Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain.”
[P. 214.] one splendid passage. The lines beginning “Alas! they had been friends in youth” (408-426). The same passage had been singled out for praise by Hazlitt in his lecture “On the Living Poets” and in the review of “Christabel” which had appeared in the Examiner of June 2, 1816. The authorship of this review has been disputed but should on internal evidence, despite its failure in appreciation, be ascribed to Hazlitt. See Works, XI, 580-582.
Translation of Schiller’s Wallenstein, made by Coleridge in 1799-1800.
Remorse. This tragedy was played at the Drury Lane Theatre with considerable popular success in 1813. It was a recast of an early play entitled “Osorio,” composed in 1797.
[P. 215.] The Friend; a literary, moral, and political weekly paper, excluding personal and party politics and the events of the day (1809-1810), was reissued in one volume in 1812, and with additions and alterations (rather a rifacimento than a new edition) in 1818.
The sketch in the Spirit of the Age concludes with a contrast between Coleridge and William Godwin.