A moment white, then gone for ever.’
His mind has infinite activity, which only leads him into numberless chimeras; and infinite resources, which not being under the guidance of his will, only distract and perplex him. His genius has angel’s wings; but neither hands nor feet. He soars up to heaven, circles the empyrean, or dives to the centre of the earth, but he neither lays his hands upon the treasures of the one, nor can find a resting place for his feet in the other. He is no sooner borne to the utmost point of his ambition, than he is hurried away from it again by the same fantastic impulse, or his own specific levity. He has all the faculties of the human mind but one, and yet without that one, the rest only impede and interfere with each other—‘Like to a man on double business bound who both neglects.’ He would have done better if he had known less. His imagination thus becomes metaphysical, his metaphysics fantastical, his wit heavy, his arguments light, his poetry prose, his prose poetry, his politics turned—but not to account. He belongs to all parties and is of service to none. He gives up his independence of mind, and yet does not acquire independence of fortune. He offends others without satisfying himself, and equally by his servility and singularity, shocks the prejudices of all about him. If he had had but common moral principle, that is, sincerity, he would have been a great man; nor hardly, as it is, appears to us—
‘Less than arch-angel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscur’d.’
We lose our patience when we think of the powers that he has wasted, and compare them and their success with those, for instance, of such a fellow as the ——, all whose ideas, notions, apprehensions, comprehensions, feelings, virtues, genius, skill, are comprised in the two words which Peachum describes as necessary qualifications in his gang, ‘To stand himself and bid others stand!’
When his six Irish friends, the six Irish gentlemen, Mr. Makins, Mr. Dunkley, Mr. Monaghan, Mr. Gollogher, Mr. Gallaspy, and Mr. O’Keeffe, after an absence of several years, discovered their old acquaintance John Buncle, sitting in a mixed company at Harrowgate Wells, they exclaimed with one accord—‘There he is—making love to the finest woman in the universe!’ So we may say at a venture of Mr. Coleridge—‘There he is, at this instant (no matter where) talking away among his gossips, as if he were at the Court of Semiramis, with the Sophi or Prestor John.’ The place can never reach the height of his argument. He should live in a world of enchantment, that things might answer to his descriptions. His talk would suit the miracle of the Conversion of Constantine, or Raphael’s Assembly of the Just. It is not short of that. His face would cut no figure there, but his tongue would wag to some purpose. He is fit to take up the deep pauses of conversation between Cardinals and Angels—his cue would not be wanting in presence of the beatific vision. Let him talk on for ever in this world and the next; and both worlds will be the better for it. But let him not write, or pretend to write, nonsense. Nobody is the better for it. It was a fine thought in Mr. Wordsworth to represent Cervantes at the day of judgment and conflagration of the world carrying off the romance of Don Quixote under his arm. We hope that Mr. Coleridge, on the same occasion, will leave ‘the Friend’ to take its chance, and his ‘Lay Sermon’ to get up into the Limbo of Vanity, how it can.
The Statesman’s Manual; or the Bible the best Guide to Political Skill and Foresight. A Lay Sermon, addressed to the Higher Classes of Society. By S. T. Coleridge, Esq. Gale and Fenner.
Dec. 29, 1816.
Here is the true Simon Pure. We have by anticipation given some account of this Sermon. We have only to proceed to specimens in illustration of what we have said.
It sets out with the following sentence:—