1888.] Mr. Leslie Stephen on S. T. Coleridge. 233 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, March 9, 1888. 



Edward Woods, Esq. M. Inst. C.E. Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Leslie Stephen, Esq. M.A.. 



S. T. Coleridge.* 



In the period which intervened between the Great War and the first 

 Eeform Bill, there were two centres of intellectual light in England. 

 Jeremy Bcntham, in his cheerful old age, reached his eightieth 

 birthday in 1828, still, as lie phrased it, codifying like any dragon, 

 solving all problems by the application of his famous formula alDout 

 the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and adding day by day 

 to the vast piles of manuscript which were to embody the principles 

 of all future legislation. To his hermitage in Westminster were 

 admitted a little group of chosen disciples, the stern political econo- 

 mists, rigid utilitarians, and energetic reformers, some of whom were 

 in \h.e coming years to assume the title of philosophical radicals. 

 Another band of enthusiasts sought a drifferent shrine. They listened 

 to an oracle which taught them that utilitarianism was " moral 

 anarchy," political economy a "solemn humbug," radicalism the 

 direct road to ruin, and true wisdom only to be found in regions of 

 contemplation which Benthara could never enter — for a reason 

 analogous to that which forbids pachydermatous quadrupeds to soar 

 into the empyrean. We know pretty well what was the manner of 

 man at whose feet these disciples sat. The keenest of contemporary 

 observers has left a picture which must be laid under contribution for 

 every description of Coleridge. Carlyle saw an old man — though in 

 point of actual years he was Bentham's junior by nearly a quarter of 

 a century — with the brow of a philosopher and the eye of a poet, but 

 with the irresolute flabby mouth of a sensuous dreamer of dreams, 

 consuming cups of tea, lukewarm but better than he deserved, or 

 strolling, corkscrew fashion, along both sides of a garden path, un- 

 able to make up his mind to either. You put him a question ; he re- 

 plied by accumulating " formidable apparatus, logical swim-bladders, 



* It seems desirable to say that some of the statements in the Lecture rest 

 upon an examination of original documents, many of which have not hitherto 

 been accessible to biographers. I owe ray knowledge of them chiefly to Mr. 

 Dykes Campbell, whose knowledge of the subject is most minute and exhaus- 

 tive. A complete biography still remains to be written ; it may be expected from 

 Mr. Ernest Coleridge, who is in possession of his grandfather's MSS. — Leslie 

 Stephen. 



Vol. XIL (No. 82.) r 



