stored
them, in the hope of receiving a more permanent reward:
"[By] fame of course," says Coleridge, "I mean any thing rather than reputation,[6] the desire of working in the good and great permanently, through indefinite ages, the struggle to be promoted into the rank of God's fellow-labourers. For bold as this expression is, it is a quotation from Scripture, and therefore justified by God himself, for which we ought to be grateful, that he has deigned to hold out such a glory to us! This is however only one consistent part of the incomprehensible goodness of Deity in taking upon himself man."
His note-books abound with "his hints and first thoughts; "as he says, his "Cogitabilia rather than actual cogitata à me," — not always to be understood as his fixed opinions, but often merely suggestions of the disquisition, and acts of obedience to the apostolic command of "Try all things, hold fast that which is good." Among them is the following characteristic of the man and his feelings, noted down for some future disquisition.
"Würde, Worthiness, Virtue, consist in the mastery over the sensuous and sensual impulses; but Love requires Innocence. Let the lover ask his heart whether he could endure that his mistress should have struggled with a sensual impulse for another, though she overcame it from a sense of duty to him? Women are Less offended with men, from the vicious habits of men in part, and in part from the difference of bodily constitution; yet still to a pure and truly loving woman it must be a painful thought. That he should struggle with and overcome ambition, desire of fortune, superior beauty, &c. or with desire objectless, is pleasing; but not that he has struggled with positive appropriated desire, i.e. desire with an object. Love in short requires an absolute peace and harmony between all parts of human nature, such as it is, and it is offended by any war, though the battle should be decided in favour of the worthier.
This is perhaps the final cause of the rarity of true love, and the efficient and immediate cause of its difficulty. Ours is a life of probation, we are to contemplate and obey duty for its own sake, and in order to this we, in our present imperfect state of being, must see it not merely abstracted from, but in direct opposition to the wish, the inclination. Having perfected this, the highest possibility of human nature, he may then with safety harmonize all his being with it; he may Love! — To perform duties absolutely from the sense of duty, is the ideal, which perhaps no human being ever can arrive at, but which every human being ought to try to draw near unto. This is in the only wise, and verily, in a most sublime sense to see God face to face; which, alas! it seems too true, that no man can do and live, i. e. a human life. It would become incompatible with his organization, or rather it would transmute it, and the process of that transmutation to the senses of other men would be called death. — Even as to caterpillars; in all probability the caterpillar dies, and he either does not see, which is most probable, or at all events he does not see the connection between the caterpillar and the butterfly, the beautiful Psyche of the Greeks.
Those who in this life love in perfection — if such there be — in proportion as their love has no struggles, see God darkly and through a veil: — for when duty and pleasure are absolutely coincident, the very nature of our organization necessitates that duty, will be contemplated as the symbol of pleasure, instead of pleasure being (as in a future life we have faith it will be) the symbol of duty. This then is the distinction between human and angelic happiness. Human happiness — humanly happy I call him, who in enjoyment finds his duty; angelically happy he, who seeks and finds his duty in enjoyment. Happiness in general may be defined — not the aggregate of pleasurable sensations, for this is either a dangerous error and the creed of sensualists, or else a mere translation or wordy paraphrase — but the state of that person who, in order to enjoy his nature in its highest manifestations of conscious feeling, has no need of doing wrong, and who in order to do right is under no necessity of abstaining from enjoyment."
On the arrival of the new secretary at Malta, Mr. Coleridge left it, September 27, 1805, and after a day's voyage, arrived at Syracuse. He remained in Sicily a short time only, for he was eager to visit the "eternal city" (Rome,) in which he staid some months.
next date marking his progress, is the 15th December, 1806, Naples, — the usual place of the residence of travellers during summer.
This gap in his minutes is partly filled up by his own verbal account, repeated at various times to the writer of this memoir. While in Rome, he was actively employed in visiting the great works of art, statues, pictures, buildings, palaces, &c. &c. observations on which he minuted down for publication. Here he became acquainted with the eminent literary men at that time collected there, and here he first saw the great American painter Alston, for whom he always cherished an unfeigned regard. The German poet Tieck, he then for the first time also saw, and many others of celebrity. To one of them he was mainly indebted for his safety, otherwise he might have terminated his career in the Temple at Paris: for to Buonaparte, through one of his industrious emissaries, Coleridge had become obnoxious, in consequence of an article written by him in the