In chap. IX. Mr. Coleridge, taking leave of that ‘sound book-learnedness’ which he had opposed, in the Lay Sermon, to the upstart pretensions of modern literature, praises the inspired ignorance, upward flights, and inward yearnings of Jacob Behmen, George Fox and De Thoyras, and proceeds to defend himself against the charge of plagiarism, of which he suspects that he may be suspected by the readers of Schlegel and Schelling, when he comes to unfold, in fulness of time, the mysterious laws of the drama and the human mind. And thereafter, the ‘extravagant and erring’ author takes leave of the Pantheism of Spinoza, of Proclus, and Gemistius Pletho, of the philosopher of Nola, ‘whom the idolaters of Rome, the predecessors of that good old man, the present Pope, burnt as an atheist in the year 1660;’ of the Noumenon, or Thing in itself; of Fichte’s Ordo Ordinans, or exoteric God; of Simon Grynæus, Barclay’s Argenis, and Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity, from whom the author ‘cites a cluster of citations, to amuse the reader, as with a voluntary before a sermon’—to plunge into Chap. X., entitled ‘A Chapter of Digressions and Anecdotes, as an interlude preceding that on the Nature and Genesis of the Imagination or Plastic Power!’
As this latter chapter, by the advice of a correspondent, has been omitted, we must make the most of what is left, and ‘wander down into a lower world obscure and wild,’ to give the reader an account of Mr. Coleridge’s setting up the Watchman, which is one of the first things to which he digresses, in the tenth chapter of his Literary Biography. Out of regard to Mr. C. as well as to our readers, we give our longest extract from this narrative part of the work—which is more likely to be popular than any other part—and is, upon the whole, more pleasingly written. We cannot say much, indeed, either for the wit or the soundness of judgment it displays. But it is an easy, gossipping, garrulous account of youthful adventures—by a man sufficiently fond of talking of himself, and sufficiently disposed to magnify small matters into ideal importance.
‘Toward the close of the first year from the time that, in an inauspicious hour, I left the friendly cloysters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever-honoured, Jesus College, Cambridge, I was persuaded, by sundry Philanthropists and Antipolemists, to set on foot a periodical work, entitled The Watchman, that (according to the general motto of the work) all might know the truth, and that the truth might make us free! In order to exempt it from the stamp-tax, and likewise to contribute as little as possible to the supposed guilt of a war against freedom, it was to be published on every eighth day, thirty-two pages, large octavo, closely printed, and price only Fourpence. Accordingly, with a flaming prospectus, “Knowledge is power,” &c. to try the state of the political atmosphere, and so forth, I set off on a tour to the North, from Bristol to Sheffield, for the purpose of procuring customers; preaching by the way in most of the great towns, as a hireless volunteer, in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be seen on me. For I was at that time, and long after, though a Trinitarian (i.e. ad normam Platonis) in philosophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in religion; more accurately, I was a psilanthropist, one of those who believe our Lord to have been the real son of Joseph, and who lay the main stress on the resurrection, rather than on the crucifixion. O! never can I remember those days with either shame or regret. For I was most sincere, most disinterested! My opinions were indeed in many and most important points erroneous; but my heart was single. Wealth, rank, life itself then seemed cheap to me, compared with the interests of (what I believed to be) the truth, and the will of my Maker. I cannot even accuse myself of having been actuated by vanity; for in the expansion of my enthusiasm, I did not think of myself at all.
‘My campaign commenced at Birmingham; and my first attack was on a rigid Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall dingy man, in whom length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost have been borrowed for a foundery poker. O that face! a face κατέμφασιν! I have it before me at this moment. The lank, black, twine-like hair, pingui-nitescent, cut in a straight line along the black stubble of his thin gunpowder-eyebrows, that looked like a scorched after-math from a last week’s shaving. His coat-collar behind in perfect unison, both of colour and lustre, with the coarse, yet glib cordage, that I suppose he called his hair, and which, with a bend inward at the nape of the neck, (the only approach to flexure in his whole figure), slunk in behind his waistcoat; while the countenance, lank, dark, very hard, and with strong perpendicular furrows, gave me a dim notion of some one looking at me through a used gridiron, all soot, grease, and iron! But he was one of the thoroughbred, a true lover of liberty; and (I was informed) had proved to the satisfaction of many, that Mr. Pitt was one of the horns of the second beast in the Revelation, that spoke like a dragon. A person, to whom one of my letters of recommendation had been addressed, was my introducer. It was a new event in my life, my first stroke in the new business I had undertaken, of an author; yea, and of an author trading on his own account. My companion, after some imperfect sentences, and a multitude of hums and haas, abandoned the cause to his client; and I commenced an harangue of half an hour to Phileleutheros the tallow-chandler, varying my notes through the whole gamut of eloquence, from the ratiocinative to the declamatory, and in the latter, from the pathetic to the indignant. I argued, I described, I promised, I prophesied; and, beginning with the captivity of nations, I ended with the near approach of the millennium; finishing the whole with some of my own verses, describing that glorious state, out of the Religious Musings.
—‘“Such delights,
As float to earth, permitted visitants!
When in some hour of solemn jubilee
The massive gates of Paradise are thrown
Wide open: and forth come in fragments wild
Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,