Biographia Literaria

S >> Samuel Taylor Coleridge >> Biographia Literaria

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32

Silver and gold man searcheth out:
Bringeth the ore out of the earth, and darkness into light.

But where findeth he wisdom?
Where is the place of understanding?

The abyss crieth; it is not in me!
Ocean echoeth back; not in me!

Whence then cometh wisdom?
Where dwelleth understanding?

Hidden from the eyes of the living
Kept secret from the fowls of heaven!

Hell and death answer;
We have heard the rumour thereof from afar!

GOD marketh out the road to it;
GOD knoweth its abiding place!

He beholdeth the ends of the earth;
He surveyeth what is beneath the heavens!

And as he weighed out the winds, and measured the sea,
And appointed laws to the rain,
And a path to the thunder,
A path to the flashes of the lightning!

Then did he see it,
And he counted it;
He searched into the depth thereof,
And with a line did he compass it round!

But to man he said,
The fear of the Lord is wisdom for thee!
And to avoid evil,
That is thy understanding. [36]

I become convinced, that religion, as both the cornerstone and the
key-stone of morality, must have a moral origin; so far at least, that
the evidence of its doctrines could not, like the truths of abstract
science, be wholly independent of the will. It were therefore to be
expected, that its fundamental truth would be such as might be denied;
though only, by the fool, and even by the fool from the madness of the
heart alone!

The question then concerning our faith in the existence of a God, not
only as the ground of the universe by his essence, but as its maker
and judge by his wisdom and holy will, appeared to stand thus. The
sciential reason, the objects of which are purely theoretical, remains
neutral, as long as its name and semblance are not usurped by the
opponents of the doctrine. But it then becomes an effective ally by
exposing the false show of demonstration, or by evincing the equal
demonstrability of the contrary from premises equally logical [37].
The understanding meantime suggests, the analogy of experience
facilitates, the belief. Nature excites and recalls it, as by a
perpetual revelation. Our feelings almost necessitate it; and the law
of conscience peremptorily commands it. The arguments, that at all
apply to it, are in its favour; and there is nothing against it, but
its own sublimity. It could not be intellectually more evident without
becoming morally less effective; without counteracting its own end by
sacrificing the life of faith to the cold mechanism of a worth less
because compulsory assent. The belief of a God and a future state, (if
a passive acquiescence may be flattered with the name of belief,) does
not indeed always beget a good heart; but a good heart so naturally
begets the belief, that the very few exceptions must be regarded as
strange anomalies from strange and unfortunate circumstances.

From these premises I proceeded to draw the following conclusions.
First, that having once fully admitted the existence of an infinite
yet self-conscious Creator, we are not allowed to ground the
irrationality of any other article of faith on arguments which would
equally prove that to be irrational, which we had allowed to be real.
Secondly, that whatever is deducible from the admission of a self-
comprehending and creative spirit may be legitimately used in proof of
the possibility of any further mystery concerning the divine nature.
Possibilitatem mysteriorum, (Trinitatis, etc.) contra insultus
Infidelium et Haereticorum a contradictionibus vindico; haud quidem
veritatem, quae revelatione sola stabiliri possit; says Leibnitz in a
letter to his Duke. He then adds the following just and important
remark. "In vain will tradition or texts of scripture be adduced in
support of a doctrine, donec clava impossibilitatis et contradictionis
e manibus horum Herculum extorta fuerit. For the heretic will still
reply, that texts, the literal sense of which is not so much above as
directly against all reason, must be understood figuratively, as Herod
is a fox, and so forth."

These principles I held, philosophically, while in respect of revealed
religion I remained a zealous Unitarian. I considered the idea of the
Trinity a fair scholastic inference from the being of God, as a
creative intelligence; and that it was therefore entitled to the rank
of an esoteric doctrine of natural religion. But seeing in the same no
practical or moral bearing, I confined it to the schools of
philosophy. The admission of the Logos, as hypostasized (that is,
neither a mere attribute, nor a personification) in no respect removed
my doubts concerning the Incarnation and the Redemption by the cross;
which I could neither reconcile in reason with the impassiveness of
the Divine Being, nor in my moral feelings with the sacred distinction
between things and persons, the vicarious payment of a debt and the
vicarious expiation of guilt. A more thorough revolution in my
philosophic principles, and a deeper insight into my own heart, were
yet wanting. Nevertheless, I cannot doubt, that the difference of my
metaphysical notions from those of Unitarians in general contributed
to my final re-conversion to the whole truth in Christ; even as
according to his own confession the books of certain Platonic
philosophers (libri quorundam Platonicorum) commenced the rescue of
St. Augustine's faith from the same error aggravated by the far darker
accompaniment of the Manichaean heresy.

While my mind was thus perplexed, by a gracious providence for which I
can never be sufficiently grateful, the generous and munificent
patronage of Mr. Josiah, and Mr. Thomas Wedgwood enabled me to finish
my education in Germany. Instead of troubling others with my own crude
notions and juvenile compositions, I was thenceforward better employed
in attempting to store my own head with the wisdom of others. I made
the best use of my time and means; and there is therefore no period of
my life on which I can look back with such unmingled satisfaction.
After acquiring a tolerable sufficiency in the German language [38] at
Ratzeburg, which with my voyage and journey thither I have described
in The Friend, I proceeded through Hanover to Goettingen.

Here I regularly attended the lectures on physiology in the morning,
and on natural history in the evening, under Blumenbach, a name as
dear to every Englishman who has studied at that university, as it is
venerable to men of science throughout Europe! Eichhorn's lectures on
the New Testament were repeated to me from notes by a student from
Ratzeburg, a young man of sound learning and indefatigable industry,
who is now, I believe, a professor of the oriental languages at
Heidelberg. But my chief efforts were directed towards a grounded
knowledge of the German language and literature. From professor
Tychsen I received as many lessons in the Gothic of Ulphilas as
sufficed to make me acquainted with its grammar, and the radical words
of most frequent occurrence; and with the occasional assistance of the
same philosophical linguist, I read through [39] Ottfried's metrical
paraphrase of the gospel, and the most important remains of the
Theotiscan, or the transitional state of the Teutonic language from
the Gothic to the old German of the Swabian period. Of this period--
(the polished dialect of which is analogous to that of our Chaucer,
and which leaves the philosophic student in doubt, whether the
language has not since then lost more in sweetness and flexibility,
than it has gained in condensation and copiousness)--I read with
sedulous accuracy the Minnesinger (or singers of love, the Provencal
poets of the Swabian court) and the metrical romances; and then
laboured through sufficient specimens of the master singers, their
degenerate successors; not however without occasional pleasure from
the rude, yet interesting strains of Hans Sachs, the cobbler of
Nuremberg. Of this man's genius five folio volumes with double columns
are extant in print, and nearly an equal number in manuscript; yet the
indefatigable bard takes care to inform his readers, that he never
made a shoe the less, but had virtuously reared a large family by the
labour of his hands.

In Pindar, Chaucer, Dante, Milton, and many more, we have instances of
the close connection of poetic genius with the love of liberty and of
genuine reformation. The moral sense at least will not be outraged, if
I add to the list the name of this honest shoemaker, (a trade by the
by remarkable for the production of philosophers and poets).

His poem entitled THE MORNING STAR, was the very first publication
that appeared in praise and support of Luther; and an excellent hymn
of Hans Sachs, which has been deservedly translated into almost all
the European languages, was commonly sung in the Protestant churches,
whenever the heroic reformer visited them.

In Luther's own German writings, and eminently in his translation of
the Bible, the German language commenced. I mean the language as it is
at present written; that which is called the High-German, as contra-
distinguished from the Platt-Teutsch, the dialect on the flat or
northern countries, and from the Ober-Teutsch, the language of the
middle and Southern Germany. The High German is indeed a lingua
communis, not actually the native language of any province, but the
choice and fragrancy of all the dialects. From this cause it is at
once the most copious and the most grammatical of all the European
tongues.

Within less than a century after Luther's death the German was
inundated with pedantic barbarisms. A few volumes of this period I
read through from motives of curiosity; for it is not easy to imagine
any thing more fantastic, than the very appearance of their pages.
Almost every third word is a Latin word with a Germanized ending, the
Latin portion being always printed in Roman letters, while in the last
syllable the German character is retained.

At length, about the year 1620, Opitz arose, whose genius more nearly
resembled that of Dryden than any other poet, who at present occurs to
my recollection. In the opinion of Lessing, the most acute of critics,
and of Adelung, the first of Lexicographers, Opitz, and the Silesian
poets, his followers, not only restored the language, but still remain
the models of pure diction. A stranger has no vote on such a question;
but after repeated perusal of the works of Opitz my feelings justified
the verdict, and I seemed to have acquired from them a sort of tact
for what is genuine in the style of later writers.

Of the splendid aera, which commenced with Gellert, Klopstock, Ramler,
Lessing, and their compeers, I need not speak. With the opportunities
which I enjoyed, it would have been disgraceful not to have been
familiar with their writings; and I have already said as much as the
present biographical sketch requires concerning the German
philosophers, whose works, for the greater part, I became acquainted
with at a far later period.

Soon after my return from Germany I was solicited to undertake the
literary and political department in the Morning Post; and I acceded
to the proposal on the condition that the paper should thenceforwards
be conducted on certain fixed and announced principles, and that I
should neither be obliged nor requested to deviate from them in favour
of any party or any event. In consequence, that journal became and for
many years continued anti-ministerial indeed, yet with a very
qualified approbation of the opposition, and with far greater
earnestness and zeal both anti-Jacobin and anti-Gallican. To this hour
I cannot find reason to approve of the first war either in its
commencement or its conduct. Nor can I understand, with what reason
either Mr. Perceval, (whom I am singular enough to regard as the best
and wisest minister of this reign,) nor the present Administration,
can be said to have pursued the plans of Mr. Pitt. The love of their
country, and perseverant hostility to French principles and French
ambition are indeed honourable qualities common to them and to their
predecessor. But it appears to me as clear as the evidence of the
facts can render any question of history, that the successes of the
Perceval and of the existing ministry have been owing to their having
pursued measures the direct contrary to Mr. Pitt's. Such for instance
are the concentration of the national force to one object; the
abandonment of the subsidizing policy, so far at least as neither to
goad nor bribe the continental courts into war, till the convictions
of their subjects had rendered it a war of their own seeking; and
above all, in their manly and generous reliance on the good sense of
the English people, and on that loyalty which is linked to the very
[40] heart of the nation by the system of credit and the
interdependence of property.

Be this as it may, I am persuaded that the Morning Post proved a far
more useful ally to the Government in its most important objects, in
consequence of its being generally considered as moderately anti-
ministerial, than if it had been the avowed eulogist of Mr. Pitt. The
few, whose curiosity or fancy should lead them to turn over the
journals of that date, may find a small proof of this in the frequent
charges made by the Morning Chronicle, that such and such essays or
leading paragraphs had been sent from the Treasury. The rapid and
unusual increase in the sale of the Morning Post is a sufficient
pledge, that genuine impartiality with a respectable portion of
literary talent will secure the success of a newspaper without the aid
of party or ministerial patronage. But by impartiality I mean an
honest and enlightened adherence to a code of intelligible principles
previously announced, and faithfully referred to in support of every
judgment on men and events; not indiscriminate abuse, not the
indulgence of an editor's own malignant passions, and still less, if
that be possible, a determination to make money by flattering the envy
and cupidity, the vindictive restlessness and self-conceit of the
half-witted vulgar; a determination almost fiendish, but which, I have
been informed, has been boastfully avowed by one man, the most
notorious of these mob-sycophants! From the commencement of the
Addington administration to the present day, whatever I have written
in THE MORNING POST, or (after that paper was transferred to other
proprietors) in THE COURIER, has been in defence or furtherance of the
measures of Government.

Things of this nature scarce survive that night
That gives them birth; they perish in the sight;
Cast by so far from after-life, that there
Can scarcely aught be said, but that they were!

Yet in these labours I employed, and, in the belief of partial friends
wasted, the prime and manhood of my intellect. Most assuredly, they
added nothing to my fortune or my reputation. The industry of the week
supplied the necessities of the week. From government or the friends
of government I not only never received remuneration, nor ever
expected it; but I was never honoured with a single acknowledgment, or
expression of satisfaction. Yet the retrospect is far from painful or
matter of regret. I am not indeed silly enough to take as any thing
more than a violent hyperbole of party debate, Mr. Fox's assertion
that the late war (I trust that the epithet is not prematurely
applied) was a war produced by the Morning Post; or I should be proud
to have the words inscribed on my tomb. As little do I regard the
circumstance, that I was a specified object of Buonaparte's resentment
during my residence in Italy in consequence of those essays in the
Morning Post during the peace of Amiens. Of this I was warned,
directly, by Baron Von Humboldt, the Prussian Plenipotentiary, who at
that time was the minister of the Prussian court at Rome; and
indirectly, through his secretary, by Cardinal Fesch himself. Nor do I
lay any greater weight on the confirming fact, that an order for my
arrest was sent from Paris, from which danger I was rescued by the
kindness of a noble Benedictine, and the gracious connivance of that
good old man, the present Pope. For the late tyrant's vindictive
appetite was omnivorous, and preyed equally on a Duc d'Enghien [41],
and the writer of a newspaper paragraph. Like a true vulture [42],
Napoleon with an eye not less telescopic, and with a taste equally
coarse in his ravin, could descend from the most dazzling heights to
pounce on the leveret in the brake, or even on the field mouse amid
the grass. But I do derive a gratification from the knowledge, that my
essays contributed to introduce the practice of placing the questions
and events of the day in a moral point of view; in giving a dignity to
particular measures by tracing their policy or impolicy to permanent
principles, and an interest to principles by the application of them
to individual measures. In Mr. Burke's writings indeed the germs of
almost all political truths may be found. But I dare assume to myself
the merit of having first explicitly defined and analyzed the nature
of Jacobinism; and that in distinguishing the Jacobin from the
republican, the democrat, and the mere demagogue, I both rescued the
word from remaining a mere term of abuse, and put on their guard many
honest minds, who even in their heat of zeal against Jacobinism,
admitted or supported principles from which the worst parts of that
system may be legitimately deduced. That these are not necessary
practical results of such principles, we owe to that fortunate
inconsequence of our nature, which permits the heart to rectify the
errors of the understanding. The detailed examination of the consular
Government and its pretended constitution, and the proof given by me,
that it was a consummate despotism in masquerade, extorted a
recantation even from the Morning Chronicle, which had previously
extolled this constitution as the perfection of a wise and regulated
liberty. On every great occurrence I endeavoured to discover in past
history the event, that most nearly resembled it. I procured, wherever
it was possible, the contemporary historians, memorialists, and
pamphleteers. Then fairly subtracting the points of difference from
those of likeness, as the balance favoured the former or the latter, I
conjectured that the result would be the same or different. In the
series of essays entitled "A comparison of France under Napoleon with
Rome under the first Caesars," and in those which followed "On the
probable final restoration of the Bourbons," I feel myself authorized
to affirm, by the effect produced on many intelligent men, that, were
the dates wanting, it might have been suspected that the essays had
been written within the last twelve months. The same plan I pursued at
the commencement of the Spanish revolution, and with the same success,
taking the war of the United Provinces with Philip II as the ground
work of the comparison. I have mentioned this from no motives of
vanity, nor even from motives of self defence, which would justify a
certain degree of egotism, especially if it be considered, how often
and grossly I have been attacked for sentiments, which I have exerted
my best powers to confute and expose, and how grievously these charges
acted to my disadvantage while I was in Malta. Or rather they would
have done so, if my own feelings had not precluded the wish of a
settled establishment in that island. But I have mentioned it from the
full persuasion that, armed with the two-fold knowledge of history and
the human mind, a man will scarcely err in his judgment concerning the
sum total of any future national event, if he have been able to
procure the original documents of the past, together with authentic
accounts of the present, and if he have a philosophic tact for what is
truly important in facts, and in most instances therefore for such
facts as the dignity of history has excluded from the volumes of our
modern compilers, by the courtesy of the age entitled historians.

To have lived in vain must be a painful thought to any man, and
especially so to him who has made literature his profession. I should
therefore rather condole than be angry with the mind, which could
attribute to no worthier feelings than those of vanity or self-love,
the satisfaction which I acknowledged myself to have enjoyed from the
republication of my political essays (either whole or as extracts) not
only in many of our own provincial papers, but in the federal journals
throughout America. I regarded it as some proof of my not having
laboured altogether in vain, that from the articles written by me
shortly before and at the commencement of the late unhappy war with
America, not only the sentiments were adopted, but in some instances
the very language, in several of the Massachusetts state papers.

But no one of these motives nor all conjointly would have impelled me
to a statement so uncomfortable to my own feelings, had not my
character been repeatedly attacked, by an unjustifiable intrusion on
private life, as of a man incorrigibly idle, and who intrusted not
only with ample talents, but favoured with unusual opportunities of
improving them, had nevertheless suffered them to rust away without
any efficient exertion, either for his own good or that of his fellow
creatures. Even if the compositions, which I have made public, and
that too in a form the most certain of an extensive circulation,
though the least flattering to an author's self-love, had been
published in books, they would have filled a respectable number of
volumes, though every passage of merely temporary interest were
omitted. My prose writings have been charged with a disproportionate
demand on the attention; with an excess of refinement in the mode of
arriving at truths; with beating the ground for that which might have
been run down by the eye; with the length and laborious construction
of my periods; in short with obscurity and the love of paradox. But my
severest critics have not pretended to have found in my compositions
triviality, or traces of a mind that shrunk from the toil of thinking.
No one has charged me with tricking out in other words the thoughts of
others, or with hashing up anew the cramben jam decies coctam of
English literature or philosophy. Seldom have I written that in a day,
the acquisition or investigation of which had not cost me the previous
labour of a month.

But are books the only channel through which the stream of
intellectual usefulness can flow? Is the diffusion of truth to be
estimated by publications; or publications by the truth, which they
diffuse or at least contain? I speak it in the excusable warmth of a
mind stung by an accusation, which has not only been advanced in
reviews of the widest circulation, not only registered in the bulkiest
works of periodical literature, but by frequency of repetition has
become an admitted fact in private literary circles, and thoughtlessly
repeated by too many who call themselves my friends, and whose own
recollections ought to have suggested a contrary testimony. Would that
the criterion of a scholar's utility were the number and moral value
of the truths, which he has been the means of throwing into the
general circulation; or the number and value of the minds, whom by his
conversation or letters, he has excited into activity, and supplied
with the germs of their after-growth! A distinguished rank might not
indeed, even then, be awarded to my exertions; but I should dare look
forward with confidence to an honourable acquittal. I should dare
appeal to the numerous and respectable audiences, which at different
times and in different places honoured my lecture rooms with their
attendance, whether the points of view from which the subjects treated
of were surveyed,--whether the grounds of my reasoning were such, as
they had heard or read elsewhere, or have since found in previous
publications. I can conscientiously declare, that the complete success
of the REMORSE on the first night of its representation did not give
me as great or as heart-felt a pleasure, as the observation that the
pit and boxes were crowded with faces familiar to me, though of
individuals whose names I did not know, and of whom I knew nothing,
but that they had attended one or other of my courses of lectures. It
is an excellent though perhaps somewhat vulgar proverb, that there are
cases where a man may be as well "in for a pound as for a penny." To
those, who from ignorance of the serious injury I have received from
this rumour of having dreamed away my life to no purpose, injuries
which I unwillingly remember at all, much less am disposed to record
in a sketch of my literary life; or to those, who from their own
feelings, or the gratification they derive from thinking
contemptuously of others, would like job's comforters attribute these
complaints, extorted from me by the sense of wrong, to self conceit or
presumptuous vanity, I have already furnished such ample materials,
that I shall gain nothing by withholding the remainder. I will not
therefore hesitate to ask the consciences of those, who from their
long acquaintance with me and with the circumstances are best
qualified to decide or be my judges, whether the restitution of the
suum cuique would increase or detract from my literary reputation. In
this exculpation I hope to be understood as speaking of myself
comparatively, and in proportion to the claims, which others are
entitled to make on my time or my talents. By what I have effected, am
I to be judged by my fellow men; what I could have done, is a question
for my own conscience. On my own account I may perhaps have had
sufficient reason to lament my deficiency in self-control, and the
neglect of concentering my powers to the realization of some permanent
work. But to verse rather than to prose, if to either, belongs the
voice of mourning for

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32