His mind not early understood. xxi exercised in its most appropriate sphere, there was no appreciation where it might most surely have been expected; no interest in it—no value for it. Hence" the cold water" of which he continually complained, eager as he was both to receive and to supply a fostering warmth of sympathy and encouragement. The Friend was held to be hard and dry; the Aids to Reflection mystical and difficult; nothing was seen in the Biographia Literaria but its faults and deficiencies, - as if a book is not chiefly to be judged by what it is rather than by what it is not, even if it has sinned so deeply as to bear a promise in its title-page which it has not fulfilled; -every one of his productions was either coldly received or condemned. Censures which seemed to be issued by authority from the house of Friendship, malignants reproduced with additions,-flippant sciolists and shallow prosers, those worst foes of refined genius, continued to circulate, handing on the original criticisms from year to year, with such insensate perseverance, that even at this hour, in face of his many volumes, certainly of close thought if not of methodical composition, he is affirmed to have done nothing but "hatch vain empires" in the universe of mind; and while it is acknowledged, tacitly by many, who hang upon his writings, like bees upon the beds of thyme, and openly by a few, who shed their sweets abroad, that he influenced the thoughts of his generation as much as any other individual belonging to it, even the most voluminous, he is quietly disposed of by numbers as a splendid dreamer, whose dreams never brightened any imagination save his own. But to retire from the field of personal remark, into which however I have never entered except to reply, I doubt not that this publication together with The Friend will in future evidence my Father's virtual consistency, xxii He was ever an opponent of Mobs. and shew him to have been the life-long champion of light, and of that liberty which is the child and companion of light, though like all other leaders of reflection, he was equally an opponent of the mob, whether consisting of the uneducated many in the humbler ranks of society, or the herd of mediocre and undisciplined intellects in the higher, who seek to tyrannize over their betters by the mere shew of hands. A volume of letters, which may hereafter appear, will add a few more touches to the portrait of S. T. Coleridge, in his character of patriot and political philosopher, and in particular will prove how real and influencive were his feelings for the privations, mental and bodily, of his poorer brethren, that the sentiments embodied in the Religious Musings and some of his other poems, on this head, are no mere poetry in the vulgar ironical sense, as contrasted with those emotions of the heart and movements of the will, which flow forth into the outward deed. -- SECTION II. Consistency of the Author's career of Opinion. ALTHOUGH, however, Mr. Dequincey's opinion, that my Father's disinterested pursuit of truth is luminously displayed in his conduct with respect to politics, is not at this time perhaps doubted by any one who bestows a thought upon the subject, personal prejudice apart, still, as honesty and consistency do not always presuppose each other, his steady coherency of thought and action might yet be doubted by those who impugned not his motives: but, from the two following premises, which will be denied, I think, by few, first His changes of opinion explained. xxiii that in him an understanding strong and perspicacious was united with a temper of spiritual susceptibility; secondly, that he was at all times singularly free, by position, from external bias, having the world of political judgment before him, where to choose, unimpeded by the fetters of favour or the burden of emolument, it may be anticipated that he can have betrayed no other discrepancies in his literary political career than such as are sure to arise, when a man gradually frames his own system of belief, instead of receiving it ready-made on authority. In the former case it is truly his own, imbued with his deepest feelings and fashioned by his highest powers; he both holds and imparts it in a superior style and method to that in which a pre-formed creed can be held and handed on. But even because it is thus a part of himself, it needs must grow and alter with his altering growth, and will surely exhibit, in its earlier stages, the immaturity of his being. This is all that can be made out, as respects inconsistency, from a comparison of the Conciones ad Populum with the Lay Sermons, even in regard to the Church. S. T. Coleridge of 1796, 7, differs from S. T. Coleridge of 1816, 17, less in principles and sentiments than in their applications. Perhaps it may be replied that in these latter the diversity of opinion among thoughtful men mainly consists, and that the vast majority of reasoners seek to set forth that which is conformable with the divine will and reflects the light of the Supreme Reason, differing only as to the medium of outward condition and circumstance, in which the precious essence is to be exhibited. But in a closer and more particular sense than this it may be affirmed that the cast of my Father's opinions was ever of one kind -ever reflected his personal character and individuality. In 1796, 7, xxiv He preached to the end against Mammon; he saw in a strong light the evils of a rich hierarchy and entered into Milton's mood on Prelacy: in 1816, 17, he was supporting our Episcopal Church with a fervent Esto perpetua; but though, at the latter period, he was joined in no bond of sympathy either with Anti-Churchmen or with those Anti-Reformed-Churchmen, who play into the hands of the former, shedding as rosy a light over the things of the Church on the continent as Romanists themselves can wish to clothe them in, while they cast over the same class of things here the livid hue of deep disparagement, most unfilially intimating that they stand by their mother church only because she is their mother, while they represent her person as unworthy of reverence, indignant as he would have been to observe the concurrence of enmity in these two parties, he was far from having lost sight of all the ills which flow from prelatical grandeur and clerical domination. He was still preaching against Mammon, still opposing the rich and powerful as much as ever. Had he come to regard the clergy as the Church, that primal falsity, as he has represented it, to which all thinkers verge in proportion as they incline toward Rome and from the doctrines and spirit of the Reformation, or to uphold in argument the proceedings of Laud and Sheldon, with "the gay religions, full of pomp and gold," and "dim religious light," which their views embraced; had he proceeded to decry his "idol Milton" and to exalt the Stuarts and the would-be tyrant Strafford, that "victim of his own false strength and his master's weakness," as saints and martyrs, then we might truly say that his mind had undergone a vital change, or at least that his opinions had undergone a total revolution. He did indeed learn to think better of our great Anglican divines, as a body, in part from the expansion and con and ever protested in favour of Reform. xxv solidation of his views with regard to the Church, and partly from increased acquaintance with their works, and high admiration of many of them in their literary and theological capacity, as may be seen from his Literary Remains; in particular he learned to think well of Horsley, to speak of him as "the one red leaf, the last of its clan," with relation to the learned teachers of our Church, truly "pillars" within and not merely "buttresses" of her authority without. But he never ceased to oppose despotism in all its forms; and emphatically to oppose the encroachments of that system, which on principle endeavours to shut up light from the general eye, under pretence that it may be converted into the means of darkness. In 1811, when he united his forces with those who strove to drag the rushing wheels of the Reform-Chariot, which appeared, from the state of the public mind, to have an inclined plane to travel upon, he carefully recorded his protest in favour of reform, conducted judiciously and on sound principles of policy.* The spirit of his teaching was ever the same amid all the variations and corrections of the letter. Y SECTION III. The Author's Course of Political Opinion. ET it is in the province of religion that his greatest changes took place. In politics, after his hour of boyish enthusiasm at the outburst of the French Revolution, when the meteor vision of Liberty was looming on the horizon vague and vast, not yet lurid * See note to the article of April 19, 1811. The Regent and Mr. Perceval. |