COLKRIDOE, SAMUEL TAYLOR 



COLERIDGE, HARTLEY. 



S!0 



otioa for medicinal purp.se*, h*d Uken away from him by thin 

 tint* even what little amount of perseverance he might ouoe have 



On th* incorporation of the Royal Society of Literature by George IV. 

 in 18S5, Col-rids* wu selected M one of the ten Royal Associate*, and 

 u such received from that time 100 guinea* a year out of the king'* 

 private put*-. The annuity wu withdrawn at the commencement of 

 the nign of William IV. ' 



In hi. latter year* Coleridge wu in the habit of holding weekly 

 convsreuiooi ' at Mr. Oillman's house in Highgate. ThoM who 

 knew little e! of Coleridge are familiar by report with hU extra- 

 ordinary conversational power*. Of them the volume* of 'Tablo 

 Talk.' which have be^n published give no adequate notion. His con- 

 venation wa* not in fragment*, but wan wont to continue without lid 

 from other*, in the way either of tnggeition or of contradiction, for 

 hoar* at a time. All thing* human and divine, joined with one 

 another by subtlest link*, entered into hi* discourse ; which, though 

 employed upon ab*trun*t subject*, wu a apell whoso fascination even 

 the moit dull or ignorant could not resist. 



In June 18SS Coleridge wu present at the meeting of the British 

 Association of Science held that year in Cambridge. He died on the 

 35th of July 1-34 in hi* sixty-second year. 



Though not a man of strong character, Coleridge possessed many 

 amiable qualities. He had all the social affection* strongly developed. 

 Though not always successful in attaining it, he had an earnest desire 

 of truth. Thus he wu by nature tolerant. But in his later year* 

 fliian aeems to have engendered an asperity in judging of tun motives 

 of others which wu by no mean* consonant with the tenor of his earlier 



Snblication*. To the tame cause must be assigned a queruloutness of 

 imposition, which is exhibited in almost all bis prose writings. 



As a writer, Coleridge is to be viewed principally under two aspects : 

 u a poet, and as the author of certain prose writings which, though 

 miscellaneous in character, arc chiefly employed upon metaphysical 

 subject*. 



A* a poet, be wu for a long time coupled, owing to the joint publi 

 cation of the ' Lyric.il Ballads' and other accidental circumstances, 

 with Wordsworth. The silly outcry against the Lake-school has long 

 died away, and the force of reaction has perhaps supplied a tendency 

 u far u Coleridge U concerned, to run into the" opposite extreme of 

 admiration. But while we are ready to admit that Coleridge's poetry 

 will not rank in the highest class, we regard it u in the very foremo-t 

 rank of its own class. As specimens of finished poetic style, some ol 

 hi* odeg and later poems are almost perfect. In his translation ol 

 Schiller's ' Wallenstein* he has displayed taste and judgment of a huh 

 order. HU own tragedies, the 'Remorse' and 'Zapolyo,' contain 

 many passages excellent for the apt expression of just thoughts and 

 tender feelings, but Coleridge never grappled closely enough with the 

 stern realities of life to enable him to become a great dramatic writer. 

 The ' Ancient Mariner' is a highly successful effort of fancy, in a region 

 which bad not before been tried; and the 'Christabel' contains passages 

 which those who have once read cannot forget In some of his smaller 

 poems again a happy thought, or it may be a happy conceit, is as 

 happily developed. Still he U a poet of art rather than of nature. 

 It may be added that his earlier poems are wanting in the freshness 

 and individuality which have always marked the earliest efforts of the 

 greatest poete, which (to confine ourselves to modern instances) are 

 n*n in the poems of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Tennyson. His 

 imagination seem* to have been overlaid with reading and reflection 

 Had he been a las* profound metaphysician he might have been a 

 greater poet. Had he been aroused in early life from his morbic 

 ubjectiveneas (u he would have termed it), and been driven to look 

 with a keener interest on the world around him, to have regarded man 

 rather than mankind, bad hi* passions been fairly called into play anc 

 bis sense* stirred into activity, we might have had in Coleridge one 

 of the most imaginative of what in the true sense of the term might 

 be called oar ' metaphysical poets,' and the grander flight* as well as 

 the subtleties of thought might have been developed in poetry o 

 matchless melody and exquisite refinement. As it is, while we bavt 

 detached passages and short poems of the purest poetry, full of the 

 moct delicate shades of refined thought, vivid gleams of fancy, anc 

 evn occasional soaring* into the highest regions of imagination, we 

 have no great completed poem, and only some few short stanzas whicl 

 at once delight and satisfy the mind. 



In hi* proas writings, u in hi* poetry, Coleridge is perhaps, rathe 

 to be regarded u the successful stimulator of other writers than n 

 himvelf a writer, whow power is acknowledged by the general public. 

 As regard* the attainment of their main professed end, Coleridge' 

 proa* writings may have had little direct value. In mental science 

 or psychology, be espoused a particular hypothesi* (that propound* 

 by Sefaelling) of the ' absolute.' But, apart from the system itself 

 Coleridge has done little either to advance or diffuse it. As he got i 

 from Germany, so fau be left it. 



In moral acieooe CoUridge also followed the IMS* Gorman meta 

 physicians, who make moral science a part of psychology. Hi 

 political doctrine*, which appear to us confused and often singular! 



inaccurate are explained in the first volume of the 'Friend.' Hi 

 theological views (many of them very far from the standard o 

 orthodoxy, specially on the subject of inspiration), have only bee 



given to the world in posthumous publications. It wu one of 



is most cherished schemes his favourite vision in cloudland to 



compose a work of colossal proportion* which should embrace the 



whole range of mental philosophy taken in it* widest meaning. He 



really only wrote a few disconnected fragment* of hi* mighty task. 



lut these fragments have proved of immense sugcestiveness to 



ounger intellect*, and whatever be the position which Coleridge shall 



Itimately take among the thinkers of hi* country and his ag< , there 



an be now no question as to his great influence on the mind of 



he time. 



And incomplete u they are, there is not one of Coleridge's prose 

 Tilings which bos not incidental merits sufficiently many and great 

 to rescue it from oblivion with the general reader merits dUccruibla 

 either in scattered criticisms on our older writers both of poetry au 1 

 rose, or in illustrations drawn from stores of knowledge which a very 

 wide reading had amassed, or in passages of great acutencu an 1 

 sound practical wisdom, whenever the author lowers his flight to 

 subject* to which such qualities can be applied with any hope ,-n it 

 were of immediate practical profit And though, from the combined 

 effects of indolence and of an intense devotion to conversational 

 display, his ordinary style of writing is diffuse and obscure, and too 

 much loaded with quotations, these works contain occasional passages 

 of great beauty and power. In treating lighter subjects, his style 

 may even be pronounced happy. Witness his account of Sir Alexander 

 iall in the third, and the tale of Maria Schoning in the seond 

 Landing-place ' of tho ' Friend.' 



Coleridge's fame will greatly rest upon hi* powers a? a critic in 

 joetry and the fine arts. To establish his fame in this respect, then) 

 ire his ' Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution ' (published in 

 ;he second volume of Coleridge's 'Literary Remains'), his review of 

 Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, in the second volume of the ' Biographia 

 Literaria,' which is p rhaps the most philosophical piece of criticism 

 extant in the language ; and also his review of Mr. Maturiu's ' Bortr un,' 

 which, though, when first published, it exposed him to much obloquy 

 and many imputations of jealousy, is distinguished from common 

 criticisms, if by nothing else, by a constant reference to first principles 

 and a freedom from personality. The task of collecting and editing 

 the unpublished works of Coleridge, so carefully and reverently per- 

 formed by the poet's nephew and daughter, Henry Nelson and Sara 

 Coleridge, bss by their deaths devolved upon his son Derwent, who 

 in 1853 published a fifth and concluding volume of the ' Literary 

 Remains,' and has been said to be contemplating that mush-needed 

 labour, a life of the poet and a collected edition of his works. 



HARTLEY COLERIDUE, the eldest son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 

 was born at Clevedon, near Bristol, September 19th, 1796. Two sonnets 

 of his father are commemorative of his birth ; and an exquisite poetn 

 of Wordsworth, ' To H. C. six years old,' describes the peculiarities of 

 the child, " whose fancies from afar are brought" His infancy i* also 

 associated with two poems of his father, ' Frost at Midnight,' and ' The 

 Nightingale.' In 1800 S. T. Coleridge came to reside near the Lake 

 district ; and here Hartley was reared ; having a brother, Derwent, 

 four years younger than himself, and a sister, Sara, six years younger. 

 He was taken to London in 1807; and the various sights which be 

 saw " mode an indelible impression on bis mind, the effect being imme- 

 diately apparent in the complexion of those extraordinary day-dreams 

 in which he passed his visionary boyhood." In 180S he was placed, 

 as well as his brother Derwent, as day-scholars of the Rev. John 

 Dawes, at Ambleaide. As a school-boy his powers u a story-t Her 

 were unique ; his imagination weaving an enormous romance, whose 

 recital lasted night after night for a space of years. During their 

 school-days, the boys hod constant intercourse with Mr. Wordsworth 

 and his family; and Hartley made the acquaintance of Professor 

 Wilson, who wu his friend through life. His friendships and con- 

 nections formed the best part of his education, " by the living voice 

 of Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, Lloyd, Wilson, and De 

 Quincey." In 1814 Hartley left school ; and in 1815 went to Oxford, 

 u a scholar of Merton College. HU extraordinary powers u a con- 

 vener, and his numerous invitations to wine-parties, were injurious to 

 him in two ways he used great freedom of remark upon ' ali 

 blishmenta," and he acquired habits over which he had little subse- 

 quent power of control He passed his examination for hU degree in 

 1818, and soon afterwards obtained a fellowship at Oriel, with high dis- 

 tinction. An unhappy issue followed this honourable and independent 

 position. "At the close of his probationary year, he wu judged to 

 have forfeited hU Oriel fellowship, on the ground, mainly, of intem- 

 perance." The infirmity wu heavily visited. We have no record that 

 any friend stepped in to rescue one, so otherwise blameless, so sensi- 

 tive, so unfit for any worldly struggle, from the permanent conse- 

 quences of this early error. His brother, who record* this painful 

 epoch of his life, with a manly and touching sincerity says, "As too 

 often happen', the ruin of his fortunes served but to increase the 

 weakness which hod caused their overthrow." It U unnecessary for us 

 to follow the biographer's explanation of some of the causes which led 

 to thu unhappy result his morbid consciousness of hU own singu- 

 larity hU despondency at being unsuccessful in obtaining Unh 

 prises his incapacity for the government of the pupils whom he received 

 while at college hU impatience of control, and a belief that he was 

 watched by those who looked with suspicion upon the most nannies i 



