"Frail creatures are we all; to be the best | knowing; one who does not judge merely Is but the fewest faults to have; "For shame, dear friend forego this canting strain; What wouldst thou have the good great man obtain ? Wealth, titles, salary, a gilded chain; slain? Goodness and greatness are not means but ends. Hath he not always treasures, aways friends, The good great man? - Three treasures, life and light, And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath; And three firm friends, more sure than day and night Himself, his maker, and the Angel Death." by what the past has done, but who, by the poet's heart within him, is made quick to welcome whatever new thing, however seemingly irregular, a young poet may cre ate. Such a critic was Coleridge. An imagination richer and more penetrative than that of most poets of his time; a power of philosophic reflection and of subtle discrimination, almost over-active; a sympathy and insight of marvellous universality; and a learning "laden with the spoils of all times," these things made him the greatest we had almost said, the only truly philosophic-critic England has yet seen. Of his critical power, the two most emiworth's poetry in the Biographia Literaria, nent examples are his chapters on Wordsand his notes on Shakspeare in the Literary Remains. If one wished to learn what genuine criticism should be, where else in our country's literature would he find so I worthy a model, as in that dissertation on Wordsworth? An excellent authority has lately said that the business of "criticism, is to know the best thing that is known or thought in the world, and to make this Wordsworth, Coleridge has done something known to others." In these chapters on more than this. In opposition to the blind and utterly worthless criticism which Jeffery If from his own poetry we pass to his represented, he thought out for himself, and judgments on the poetry of others, we shall laid down the principles on which Wordssee an exemplification of the adage, "Set a worth or any other poet such as he should poet to catch a poet." Here for once were be judged, and showed these principles fulfilled the necessary conditions of a critic to be grounded, not on the caprices of the or judge, in the highest sense; that is, a hour, but on the essential and permanent man possessing in himself abundantly the elements which human nature contains. originative poetic faculty which he is to He gave definitions of poetry in its essential judge of in others, combined with that pow- nature, and showed, in opposition to Wordser of sober generalization, and delicate, worth's preface, wherein poetry really patient analysis, which, if poets possess, they differs from prose. We wish we could stay generally find it irksome to exercise. This to quote his description of the poet and his is but another way of saying, that before a work, in their ideal perfection. Then how man can pass worthy judgment on a thing, truly and with what fine analysis he dishe must know that thing at first, and not at criminates between the language of prose second, hand. The other kind of critic is and of metre! How good is his account of he who, though with little or none of the the origin of metre ! "This I would trace poetic gift in himself, has yet, from a careful to the balance in the mind, effected by study of the great master-models of the art, that spontaneous effort which strives to hold deduced certain canons by which to judge in check the workings of passion." There of poetry universally. But a critic of this is more to be learned about poetry from a kind, as the world has many a time seen, few pages of that dissertation, confined whenever he is called upon to estimate some though it is to a specific kind of poetry, new and original work of art, like to which than from all the reviews that have been the past supplies no models, is wholly at written in English on poets and their works fault. His canons no longer serve him, and from Addison to the present hour. Nor is the native sympathetic insight he has not. the result of the whole a mere defence or To judge aright in such a case takes indiscriminating eulogy on Wordsworth, another order of critic; one who knows after rudely as that poet was then assailed by another and more immediate manner of those who were also Coleridge's own re and verse. vilers. From several of Wordsworth's theories about poetry he dissents entirely, especially from the whole of his remarks on the sameness of the language of prose At times, too, he finds fault with his practice, and lays his hand on faulty passages and defective poems, in which he traces the influence of false theory; while the true merits of these poems he places not on mere blind preference or individual taste, but on a solid foundation of principles. These principles few or none at that time acknowledged, but they have since won the assent of all competent judges. Canons of judgment they are, not mechanical, but living. They do not furnish the reader with a set of rules which he can take up and apply ready-made. But they require, before they can be used aright, to be assimilated by thought made our own inwardly. They open the eye to see, generate the power of seeing for one's self, call forth from within a living standard of judgment, which is based on truth and nature. Again, turn to his criticisms on Shakspeare and the Drama. They are but brief notes, scattered leaves, written by himself or taken down by others, from lectures, given mainly in London. His lectures were in general wholly oral, and were best when delivered with no scrap of paper before him. But short as these notes are, they mark, and helped to cause, a revolution in men's ways of thinking about Shakspeare. First he taught, and himself exemplified, that he who would understand Shakspeare must not, Dr. Johnson-wise, seat himself on the critical throne, and thence deliver verdiet, as on an inferior, or at best a mere equal; but that he has need to come before all things with reverence, as for the poet of all poets, and that, wanting this, he wants one of the senses the "language of which he is to employ." Again, Coleridge was the first who clearly saw through and boldly denounced the nonsense that had been talked about Shakspeare's irregularity and extravagance. Before his time it had been customary to speak of Shakspeare as of some great abnormal creature, some fine but rude barbarian, full of all sorts of blemishes and artistic solecisms, which were to be tolerated for the sake of the beauties which counterbalanced them. In the face of all this he ventured to ask, "Are then the plays of Shakspeare works of rude uncultivated genius, in which the splendour of the parts compensates for the barbarous shapelessness and irregularity of the whole? Or is the form equally admirable with the matter, and the judgment of the poet not less deserving our admiration than his genius?" The answer which he gave to his own question, and which he enforced with manifold argument, is in effect that the judgment of Shakspeare is as great as his genius; "nay, that his genius reveals itself in his judgment as in its most exalted form." In arguing against those who at that time "were still trammelled with the notion of the Greek unities, and who thought that apologies were due for Shakspeare's neglect of them, he showed how the form of Shakspeare's dramas was suited to the substance, not less than the form of the Greek dramas to theirs. He pointed out the contrast between mechanic form superinduced from without, and organic form growing from within; that if Shakspeare or any modern were to hold by the Greek dramatic unities, he would be imposing on his creations a dead form from without, instead of letting them shape themselves from within, and clothe themselves with a natural and living form, as the tree clothes itself with its bark. Another point which Coleridge insists on in these lectures and throughout his works, a point often unheeded, sometimes directly denied, is the close connection between just taste and pure morality, because true taste springs out of the ground of the moral nature of man. We cannot now follow him into detail, and show the new light which he has thrown on Shakespeare's separate plays, and on his leading characters. We can but remark in passing, that Hamlet was the character in exposition of which Coleridge first proved his Shaksperian insight. In the Table Talk he says, "In fact, I have a smack of Hamlet in myself." If any one wishes to see what a really masterly elucidation of a subtle character is, let him turn to the remarks on Hamlet in the second volume of the Literary Remains. We had intended to quote it here entire, but space forbids. This and other of Coleridge's Shakspearian criticisms have been claimed for Schlegel. But most of these had, we believe, been given to the world in lectures before Schlegel's book appeared; and as to this exposition of Hamlet, Hazlitt bears witness that he had heard it from Coleridge before his visit to Germany in 1798. That view of Hamlet has long since become almost a common place in literature, but the idea of it was first conceived and expressed by Coleridge. Some of the other criticisms may be more subtle than many may care to follow. But any one who shall master these notes on Shakspeare, taken as a whole, will find in them more fine analysis of the hidden things of the heart, more truthful insight into the workings of passion, than are to be found in whole treatises of psychology. - the system or institution, and kept it alive. Even in those of his works, as the Literary Life, The Friend, and the Lay Sermons, which most enter into practical details, the granite every here and there crops out, the underlying philosophy appears. But that searching for fundamental principles, which seems to have been in him from the first an intellectual necessity, was increased by that morbidly introvertive turn of mind which, at some stages of his life, had nearly overbalanced him. In an often-quoted passage from the Ode to Dejection, written at Keswick in 1802, he laments the decay within himself of the shaping imagination, and says, that "By abstruse research to steal Any survey of Coleridge's speculations would be incomplete if it did not include some account of his political philosophy, which holds so prominent a place among them. Not that he ever was a party politician, his whole nature was averse to this, but his mind was too universal in its range, his sympathy with all human interests too strong, to have allowed him to pass by these questions. But happily, the thorough and comprehensive discussion of this department of Coleridge's thought, which occupies the greater part of Mr. Mill's celebrated essay, relieves us from the necessity of entering on that subject here. There is, however, one important point to which that distinguished writer fails to advert. He speaks of Coleridge as an original thinker, but "within the bounds of traditional opinions," and as looking at received beliefs This passage opens a far glimpse into his from within. But it must surely have been mental history. It shows how metaphysics, known to Mr. Mill that Coleridge, during for which he had from the first an innate his youth and early manhood, stood as en- propension, became from circumstances altirely outside of established opinions, and most an unhealthy craving. What then looked at existing institutions as purely was his ultimate metaphysical philosophy? from without as it was possible to do. No This is not set forth systematically in any of extremest young radical of the present his works, but we must gather it, as best we hour, when intellectual radicalism has once can, from disquisitions scattered through again become a fashion, can question re- them all. And here we must be allowed to ceived beliefs more freely, or assail the es- call to mind a few elementary matters, tablished order more fearlessly, than Cole- which, however trite to students of philosoridge in his fervent youth did. The convic-phy, are necessary to be borne in mind for tions on politics and religion, therefore, in the clear understanding of Coleridge's posiwhich he ultimately rested, are entitled to tion. the weight, whatever it be, of having been formed by one who all his life long sought truth from every quarter, not from within traditionary beliefs only, but for many years from without also; and who, when his thought had gone full circle, became conservative, if that word is to be applied to him, not from self-interest or expediency, or from weariness of thinking, but after ample experience and mature reflection. With this one remark on his political side we pass on. Every one knows that from the dawn of thought down to the present hour, the question as to the origin of knowledge has been the Sphinx's riddle to philosophers. This strange thing named thought, what is it? This wondrous fabric we call knowledge, whence comes it? It is a web woven out of something, but is it wholly or chiefly woven from outward materials, or mainly wrought by self-evolving powers from within? Or, if due to the combined action of these, what part does each contribute? Criticism, such as we have described How much is due to the raw material, how above, presupposes profound and compre- much to the weaver who fashions it? These hensive thought on questions not lying questions, even if they be insoluble, will within, but based on wider principles be- never cease to provoke the scrutiny of yond, itself. His critical studies, if nothing every new generation of thoughtful men. else, would have driven Coleridge back on There always have been a set of thinkers metaphysics. But it was the same with who have regarded outward things as the whatever subject he took up, whether art fixed reality, which impresses representaor politics, or morals or theology. Every- tions of itself on mind as on a passive where he strove to reach a bottoming, to recipient. There have always existed alo grasp the living idea which gave birth to another set, who have held the mind to be a free creative energy, evolving from itself the laws of its own thinking, and stamping on outward things the forms which are inherent in its own constitution. The one have held that outward things are genetic of knowledge, and that what are called laws of thought are wholly imposed on the mind by qualities which belong essentially to outward things. The others have maintained that it is the mind which is genetic, and that in reality makes what it sees. This great question, as Mr. Miil has well said, "would not so long have remained a question, if the more obvious arguments on either side had been unanswerable." There must, however, be a point of view, if we could reach it, from which these opposing tendencies of thought shall be seen to combine into one harmonious whole. But the man who shall achieve this final synthesis, and the age which shall witness it, are probably still far distant. Philosophic thought in Britain has in the main leant towards the external side, towards that extreme which makes the mind out of the senses, and maintains experience to be the ultimate ground of all belief. This way of thinking, so congenial to the prevailing English temper of mind, dates from at least as far back as Hobbes, but was first fairly established, almost like a part of the British Constitution, by the famous essay of Locke. In his polemic against innate ideas he asserted two sources of all knowledge. "Our observation," he 66 says, employed either about external sensible, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with materials of thinking." The latter of these two sources, here somewhat vaguely announced, was never very strongly insisted upon by Locke himself, and was by his followers speedily discarded. This development of Locke's system is seen most clearly in Hume, who divided all the mind's furniture into impressions or lively perceptions, as when we see, hear, hate, desire, will; and ideas or faint perceptions, which are copies of our sensible or lively impressions. So that with him all the materials of thought are derived from outward sense, or inward sentiment or emotion. Contemporary with Hume, and like him a follower of Locke, Hartley appeared at Cambridge, and carried out the same views to still more definite issues. He gathered up and systematized the materialistic views which were at that time floating about his university. Being, like Locke, a physician, he imported into his system a much larger amount of his professional knowledge, and sought to explain the movements of thought by elaborate physiological theories. He held that vibrations in the white medullary substance of the brain are the immediate causes of sensation, and that these first vibrations give birth to vibratiuncles or miniatures of themselves which are conceptions, or the simple ideas of sensible things. In another point he differed from Locke, in that, discarding Reflection, he brought more prominently forward Association, as the great weaving power of the mental fabric, which compounds all our ideas, and gives birth to all our faculties. Such theories as these were the chief philosophical aliment to be found in England when Coleridge was a young man. At Cambridge, having entered Hartley's college, where the name of that philosopher was still held in honour, Coleridge became his ardent disciple. In the Religious Musings, after Milton and Newton, he speaks of Hartley as "He of mortal kind Wisest; the first who marked the ideal tribes Up the fine fibres to the sentient brain.” Materialistic though his system was, Hartley was himself a believer in Christianity, and a religious man. His philosophical system came to be in high favour with Priestley and the Unitarians towards the end of last century; so that when Coleridge became a Hartleian, he adopted Necessitarian views of the will, and Unitarian tenets in religion. A Materialist, a Necessitarian, a Unitarian, such was Coleridge during his Cambridge and Bristol sojourn. But it was not possible that he should be permanently holden of these things. There were ideal lights and moral yearnings within him which would burst these bonds. The piece of divinity that was in him would not always do homage to Materialism. Before he visited Germany he had begun to awake out of his Hartleianism. It had occured to him that all association Hartley's great instrument — " presupposes the existence of the thoughts and images to be associated." In short, association cannot account for its own laws. All that association does is to use these laws, or latent a priori forms, to wit, contiguity of time and place, resemblance, contrast, so as to bring particular things under them. When two things have been thus brought together under one law say contiguity in timethey may get so connected in thought that it becomes difficult to conceive them apart. But it never can be impossible so to con ceive them; that is, to separate them in or group of causes, for the presence of that thought. Further, he began to see that the order which we know to exist as far as our hypothesis of all knowledge, being derived knowledge extends. This necessity to think a from sense, does not get rid of the need of cause for every existence or event, a necesa living intellectual mechanism, which sity which we cannot get rid of, forms the makes these copies from sensible impres- essential peculiarity of the notion of causalisions. His own illustration is, the existence ty; marking it out as a necessary form of of an original picture, say Raphael's Trans- thought, born from within, and not gathered figuration, does not account for the exist- from experience. That which is created ence of a copy of it; but rather the copy- by experience is strengthened by the same. ist must have put forth the same powers, But this belief that every event must have and gone through the same process, as the a cause, is one which, as soon as we have first painter did when he made the original clearly comprehended the terms, we feel to picture. Or take that instance, which is a be inevitable. Experience, no doubt, first kind of standing Hougoumont to sensation- brings this cognition out into distinct conal and idealistic combatants. we mean sciousness; but as soon as we refl ct on it, causality, or the belief that every event we discover that it must have been present must have a cause. Sensationalists, from as a constituent element of that very expeHume to Mr. Mill, have laboured to derive rience. Of causality, then, as of time and this, the grand principle of all inductive space, it may be said, to adopt the language reasoning, from invariable experience. Mr. of an able young mataphysician, 64 themMill's theory, the latest and most accredited selves cognitions generalized from experifrom that side, thus explains it. He says ence, and, in that point of view, later than that we arrive, by simple enumeration of experience; they are discovered to have individual instances, first at one and then been also elements of those very cognitions at another particular uniformity, till we have of experience from which they have been collected a large number of such uniformi- generalized, present in them as constituent ties, or groups of cases in which the law of elements, undistinguished before analysis. causation holds good. From this collection.. They are elements of any and every of the more obvious particular uniformities, particular experience, entering into every in all of which the law of causation holds, we generalize the universal law of causation, or the belief that all things whatever have a cause; and then we proceed to apply this law so generalized as an inductive instrument to discover those other particular laws which go to make up itself, but which have hitherto eluded our investigation. Thus, according to this philosopher, we arrive at the universal law by generalizing from many laws of inferior generality. But as these last do not rest on rigid induction, but only on simple enumeration of instances, the universal law can not lay claim to any greater cogency than the inferior laws on which it rests. One authenticated instance in which the law of causality does not hold may upset our belief in the universal validity of that law; and that there may be worlds in which it is so upset -in which events succeed each other at random, and by no fixed law- Mr. Mill finds no difficulty in conceiving. But this is really a reductio ad absurdum. This world of causeless disorder, which Mr. Mill finds no difficulty in conceiving, is simply inconceivable by any intelligence. If such a world were proved to exist, we should be compelled to believe that for this absence of order there is a cause, or group of causes; just as we know there is a cause, I one of them as its necessary form." Or, as Coleridge put it, " Though first revealed to us by experience, they must yet have preexisted in order to make experience itself possible; even as the eye must exist previously to any particular act of seeing, though by sight only can we know that we have eyes." And again, "How can we make bricks without straw, or build without cement? We learn things, indeed, by occasion of experience; but the very facts so learned force us inward on the antecedents that must be presupposed in order to render experience itself possible." These and suchlike thoughts were sure to arise in a mind naturally so open to the idealistic side of thought as that of Coleridge, and to shake to pieces the materialistic fabric in which he had for a time ensconced himself. And not merely intellectual misgiving would work this way, but the soul's deeper cravings. Driven by hunger of heart, he wandered from the school of Locke and Hartley, successively on through those of Berkeley, Leibnitz, and, we believe, Spinoza, and finding in them no abiding place, began to despair of philosophy. To this crisis of his history probably apply these words: "I found myself all afloat. Doubts rushed |
