English Men of Letters: Coleridge

by H. D. Traill

In the month of January 1818 Coleridge once more commenced the delivery of a course of lectures in London. The scope of this series-fourteen in number was, as will be seen from the subjoined syllabus, an immensely comprehensive one. The subject of the first was "the manners, morals, literature, philosophy, religion, and state of society in general in European Christendom, from the eighth to the fifteenth century;" and of the second "the tales and metrical romances common for the most part to England, Germany, and the north of France; and English songs and ballads continued to the reign of Charles I." In the third the lecturer proposed to deal with the poetry of Chaucer and Spenser, of Petrarch, and of Ariosto, Pulci, and Boiardo. The fourth, fifth, and sixth were to be devoted to the dramatic works of Shakespeare, and to comprise the substance of Coleridge's former courses on the same subject, "enlarged and varied by subsequent study and reflection." In the seventh he was to treat of the other principal dramatists of the Elizabethan period, Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Beaumont and Fletcher; in the eighth of the life and all the works of Cervantes; in the ninth of Rabelais, Swift, and Sterne, with a dissertation "on the nature and constituents of genuine humour, and on the distinctions of humorous from the witty, the fanciful, the droll, the odd, etc." Donne, Dante, and Milton formed the subject of the tenth; the Arabian Nights Entertainment, and the romantic use of the supernatural in poetry, that of the eleventh. The twelfth was to be on "tales of witches and apparitions, etc.," as distinguished from magic and magicians of Asiatic origin; and the thirteenth, – "on colour, sound, and form in nature, as connected with Poesy – the word 'Poesy' being used as the generic or class term including poetry, music, painting, statuary, and ideal architecture as its species, the reciprocal relations of poetry and philosophy to each other, and of both to religion and the moral sense.'" In the fourteenth and final lecture Coleridge proposed to discuss "the corruptions of the English language since the reign of Queen Anne, in our style of writing prose," and to formulate "a few easy rules for the attainment of a manly, unaffected, and pure language in our genuine mother tongue, whether for the purposes of writing, oratory, or conversation."

These lectures, says Mr. Gillman, were from Coleridge's own account more profitable than any he had before given, though delivered in an unfavourable situation; a lecture-room in Flower de Luce Court, which, however, being near the Temple, secured to him the benefit – if benefit it were – of a considerable number of law students among his auditors. It was the first time that his devoted guardian had ever heard him in public, and he reports the significant fact that though Coleridge lectured from notes, which he had carefully made, "it was obvious that his audience were more delighted when, putting his notes aside, he spoke extempore...." He was brilliant, fluent, and rapid; his words seemed to flow as from a person repeating with grace and energy some delightful poem. If he sometimes paused, it was not for the want of words, but that he was seeking their most appropriate or most logical arrangement.

An incident related with extreme, though in a great measure unconscious, drollery by Mr. Gillman in connection with a lecture delivered at this period is to my mind of more assistance than many of the accounts of his "lay sermons" in private circles, in enabling us to comprehend one element of Coleridge's marvellous powers of discourse. Early one morning at Mr. Gillman's he received two letters-one to inform him that he was expected that same evening to deliver a lecture, at the rooms of the London Philosophical Society, to an audience of some four or five hundred persons; the other containing a list of the previous lecturers and the lectures delivered by them during the course of the season. At seven o'clock in the evening Coleridge and Mr. Gillman went up to town to make some inquiries respecting this unexpected application; but, on arriving at the house of the gentleman who had written the letter, they were informed that he was not at home, but would return at eight o'clock – the hour fixed for the commencement of the lecture. They then proceeded to the Society's rooms, where in due time the audience assembled; and the committee having at last entered and taken their places on the seats reserved for them, "Mr. President arose from the centre of the group, and, putting on a 'president's hat,' which so disfigured him that we could scarcely refrain from laughter, addressed the company in these words: This evening Mr. Coleridge will deliver a lecture on 'the Growth of the Individual Mind.'" Coleridge at first "seemed startled," as well he might, and turning round to Mr. Gillman whispered: "A pretty stiff subject they have chosen for me." However, he instantly mounted his standing-place and began without hesitation, previously requesting his friend to observe the effect of his lecture on the audience. It was agreed that, should he appear to fail, Gillman was to "clasp his ancle; but that he was to continue for an hour if the countenances of his auditors indicated satisfaction." Coleridge then began his address in these words: "The lecture I am about to give this evening is purely extempore. Should you find a nominative case looking out for a verb, or a fatherless verb for a nominative case, you must excuse it. It is purely extempore, though I have read and thought much on the subject." At this the company smiled, which seemed to inspire the lecturer with confidence. He plunged at once into his lecture – and most brilliant, eloquent, and logically consecutive it was. The time moved on so swiftly that Mr. Gillman found, on looking at his watch, that an hour and a half had passed away, and, therefore, he continues "waiting only a desirable moment – to use his own playful words – I prepared myself to punctuate his oration. As previously agreed, I pressed his ancle, and thus gave him the hint he had requested; when, bowing graciously, and with a benevolent and smiling countenance, he presently descended. The lecture was quite new to me, and I believe quite new to himself so far as the arrangement of his words was concerned. The floating thoughts were beautifully arranged, and delivered on the spur of the moment. What accident gave rise to the singular request, that he should deliver this lecture impromptu, I never learnt; nor did it signify, as it afforded a happy opportunity to many of witnessing in part the extent of his reading and the extraordinary strength of his powers."

It is tantalising to think that no record of this remarkable performance remains; but, indeed, the same may to some extent be said, and in various degrees, of nearly all the lectures which Coleridge ever delivered. With the exception of seven out of the fifteen of 1811, which were published in 1856 by Mr. Payne Collier from shorthand notes taken at the time, Coleridge's lectures scarcely exist for us otherwise than in the form of rough preparatory notes. A few longer pieces, such as the admirable observations in the second volume of the Literary Remains, on poetry, on the Greek drama, and on the progress of the dramatic art in England, are, with the exception above noticed, almost the only general disquisitions on these subjects which appear to have reached us in a complete state. Of the remaining contents of the volume, including the detailed criticisms now textual, now analytic – of the various plays of Shakespeare, a considerable portion is frankly fragmentary, pretending, indeed, to no other character than that of mere marginalia. This, however, does not destroy – I had almost said it does not even impair – their value. It does but render them all the more typical productions of a writer, whose greatest services to mankind in almost every department of human thought and knowledge with which he concerned himself were much the most often performed in the least methodical way. In reading through these incomparable notes on Shakespeare we soon cease to lament, or even to remember, their unconnected form and often somewhat desultory appearance; if, indeed, we do not see reason to congratulate ourselves that the annotator, unfettered by the restraints which the composition of a systematic treatise would have imposed upon him, is free to range with us at will over many a flower-strewn field, for which otherwise he could not perhaps have afforded to quit the main road of his subject. And this liberty is the more welcome, because Coleridge, primus inter pares as a critic of any order of literature, is in the domain of Shakespearian commentary absolute king. The principles of analysis which he was charged with having borrowed without acknowledgment from Schlegel, with whose Shakespearian theories he was at the time entirely unacquainted, were in fact of his own excogitation. He owed nothing in this matter to any individual German, nor had he anything in common with German Shakespearianism except its profoundly philosophising spirit, which, moreover, was in his case directed and restrained by other qualities, too often wanting in critics of that industrious race; for he possessed a sense of the ridiculous, a feeling for the poetic, a tact, a taste, and a judgment, which would have saved many a worthy but heavy-handed Teutonic professor, who should have been lucky enough to own these gifts, from exposing himself and his science to the satire of the light-minded. Very rarely, indeed, do we find Coleridge indulging plus 'quo his passion for psychological analysis. Deeply as his criticism penetrates, it is yet loyally recognitive of the opacity of milestones. Far as he sees into his subject, we never find him fancying that he sees beyond the point at which the faculty of human vision is exhausted. His conception of the more complex of Shakespeare's personages, his theory of their characters, his reading of their motives, is often subtle, but always sane; his interpretation of the master's own dealings with them, and of the language which he puts into their mouths, is often highly imaginative, but it is rarely fanciful. Take, as an illustration of the first-mentioned merit, the following acute but eminently sensible estimate of the character of Polonius: –

"He is the personified memory of wisdom no longer actually possessed. This admirable character is always misrepresented on the stage. Shakspeare never intended to exhibit him as a buffoon; for although it was natural for Hamlet – a young man of fire and genius, detesting formality and disliking Polonius on political grounds, as imagining that he had assisted his uncle in his usurpation – should express himself satirically, yet this must not be taken exactly as the poet's conception of him. In Polonius a certain induration of character had arisen from long habits of business; but take his advice to Laertes, and Ophelia's reverence for his memory, and we shall see that he was meant to be represented as a statesman somewhat past his faculties – his recollections of life all full of wisdom, and showing a knowledge of human nature, while what immediately takes place before him and escapes from him is indicative of weakness."

Or this comment on the somewhat faint individualisation of the figure of Lear:

"In Lear old age is itself a character-natural imperfections being increased by life-long habits of receiving a prompt obedience. Any addition of individualisation would have been unnecessary and painful; for the relation of others to him, of wondrous fidelity and of frightful ingratitude, alone sufficiently distinguish him. Thus Lear becomes the open and ample playroom of nature's passions."

Or lastly, in illustration of my second point, let us take this note on the remark of the knight that "since my young lady's going into France the fool hath much pined away ": –

"The fool is no comic buffoon – to make the groundlings laugh – no forced condescension of Shakspeare's genius to the taste of his audience. Accordingly the poet prepares us for the introduction, which he never does with any of his common clowns and fools, by bringing him into living connection with the pathos of the play. He is as wonderful a creation as Caliban, – his wild babblings and inspired idiocy articulate and gauge the horrors of the scene."

The subject is a tempting one to linger over, did not imperative Exigencies of space compel me to pass on from it. There is much – very much – more critical matter in the Literary Remains of which it is hard to forbear quotation; and I may mention in particular the profoundly suggestive remarks on the nature of the humorous, with their accompanying analysis of the genius and artistic method of Sterne. But it is, as has been said, in Shakespearian criticism that Coleridge's unique mastery of all the tools of the critic is most conspicuous, and it is in the brilliant, if unmethodised, pages which I have been discussing that we may most readily find consolation for the too early silencing of his muse. For these consummate criticisms are essentially and above all the criticisms of a poet They are such as could not have been achieved by any man not originally endowed with that divine gift which was fated in this instance to expend itself within so few years. Nothing, indeed, could more strikingly illustrate the commanding advantage possessed by a poet interpreting a poet than is to be found in Coleridge's occasional sarcastic comments on the banalitès of our national poet's most prosaic commentator, Warburton – the "thought-swarming, but idealess Warburton," as he once felicitously styles him. The one man seems to read his author's text under the clear, diffused, unwavering radiance emitted from his own poetic imagination; while the criticism of the other resembles a perpetual scratching of damp matches, which ash a momentary light into one corner of the dark assage, and then go out.