Table Talk is a collection of the recorded conversations of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, assembled and edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge, who was a frequent and attentive visitor in Coleridge’s domestic society for nearly fifteen years before the poet-philosopher’s death. The volume is inscribed to James Gillman, Esquire, of the Grove, Highgate, and to Mrs. Gillman, the family with whom Coleridge resided during his later years. The front matter includes an illustration by F. Finden, dated London, John Murray, Albernarle Street, 1837, and a signed autograph reading “Dear Sir, Your obliged servant. S. T. Coleridge.”
The work presents Coleridge’s table talk—his informal conversation on a vast range of subjects—as recorded by the editor over many years of affectionate communion. The editor states that on the first evening he spent with Coleridge after his boyhood, he committed the principal topics of conversation to writing in Coleridge’s own words, initially without a settled design, prompted by vexation that such music should not last forever. Over time, these occasional notes grew into a mass, and the volume contains only parts fit for present publication.
The conversations span from December 29, 1822, through August 24, 1831, and cover topics as diverse as Shakespeare’s characters, the nature of ghosts, parliamentary privilege, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, the Trinity, the Book of Job, the character of Napoleon, the poetry of Homer and Milton, the state of the Church, the French character, the Scottish and English lakes, and the nature of love and marriage. The book is presented as a series of dated entries, each recording Coleridge’s observations on particular subjects, often with editorial footnotes providing context, biographical details, or supplementary explanations.
The editor acknowledges the difficulty of reporting continuous, diffused conversation, noting that pithy remarks stick while long-drawn subtle discoursing requires re-thinking the argument. He condensed recollections into intelligible wholes, never attempting dialogue, and leaves judgment to those with “that old man eloquent” ringing in their ears. The editor also admits that some passages will be called illiberal by self-styled liberals, particularly remarks on the Reform Bill and Malthusian economists, and notes that Coleridge was neither Whig nor Tory, knowing half-truths in both.
Context
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born at Ottery St. Mary in Devon on October 21, 1772, the youngest child of the Reverend John Coleridge, Vicar of Ottery and master of Henry the Eighth’s Free Grammar School. His mother’s maiden name was Ann Bowdon. He died July 25, 1834, in Mr. Gillman’s house in the Grove, Highgate, and is buried in the old churchyard by the roadside.
The conversations recorded in this volume took place during the last decade or so of Coleridge’s life, when he was in his fifties and sixties. The editor notes that Coleridge was fond of society but confined by ill health after fifty, rarely seen except by single visitors. The editor preferred letting “the river wander at its own sweet will” rather than interrupting Coleridge’s discourse.
The historical context of these conversations is significant. The entries reference the Reform Bill debates, the Belgian Revolution of 1830, the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, and the political tensions of early nineteenth-century England. Coleridge comments on the Duke of Wellington’s premiership, the moneyed interest’s influence on foreign policy, and the state of the national Church. He was a friend of Frere and Poole, guest of Canning and Lord Lansdowne, and threw his weight to the Tory/Conservative scale: first, because he believed democracy grows rabid and threatens freedom and truth; second, because the national Church was his “ark of the covenant,” and he feared Whigs would coalesce with those who would spoilate it.
The editor describes Coleridge as “a philosopher of the antique cast” with esoteric views, noting that for thirty years his prose works from the “Friend” to “Church and State” were feelers and disciplinants. Coleridge knew little of the art of making hooks and could not have made Locke and Paley’s overthrow popular. His prose works had limited sale; he did not think them publici juris except perhaps “Aids to Reflection.” He would have used parts of preliminary treatises in his great work on “Philosophy reconciled with Christian Religion,” hence repetitions across the “Friend,” “Literary Life,” “Lay Sermons,” “Aids to Reflection,” and “Church and State.”
The editor offers a tribute to Coleridge, acknowledging his frailties—extreme sensitivity, childlike avoidance of discomfort—while praising his martyr-like endurance of death’s agonies. The editor asserts Coleridge was “sinned against a thousand times more than sinning” and that the world benefits from his labours, genius, and sacrifice. A Latin passage follows, mourning his death while affirming his eternal life in human memory and speech.
Structure of the Book
The book is structured as a series of dated entries recording Coleridge’s table talk, beginning on December 29, 1822, and continuing through August 24, 1831. Each entry is headed by a date and a list of the principal topics discussed, followed by the substance of Coleridge’s observations on those topics. The entries vary in length and scope, from brief aphoristic remarks to extended disquisitions on philosophical, theological, and literary subjects.
The opening entries establish the pattern. The entry for December 29, 1822, covers Coleridge’s character of Othello, Schiller’s Robbers, Shakespeare’s plays, the Scotch novels, Lord Byron, John Kemble, and Mathews. The entry for January 1, 1823, discusses parliamentary privilege, the permanency and progression of nations, and Kant’s races of mankind. The entry for January 4, 1823, addresses ghosts and visual perception, the character of the age for logic, Plato and Xenophon, Greek drama, Kotzebue, Homeric genuineness, Burke, and miscellaneous observations.
The entries continue in this vein, with occasional gaps in the record. Some entries are dated years apart—for instance, there is an entry for January 4, 1828, followed by entries for April 17, 1830, and May 9, 1830. The conversations recorded are not continuous but represent selected occasions when the editor was present and chose to record Coleridge’s remarks.
The editor’s presence is felt throughout through footnotes that provide biographical details, explain references, quote from Coleridge’s published works, and offer supplementary information. For example, a footnote on the Milesian Tales explains that they were written by Aristides of Miletus and that after the battle of Carrhae, Surena found a copy in a Roman officer’s baggage and read it aloud in the Seleucia senate house to insult the Romans. A footnote on the story of the phantom portrait identifies it as the story Washington Irving dressed up in “Tales of a Traveller.”
The book concludes with the entry for August 24, 1831, on the House of Commons and political appeals, in which Coleridge laments that able and patriotic members like Sir Robert Inglis and Sir Robert Peel lack the courage or wisdom to base their appeals on duty and universal truths rather than individual interests. He contrasts them with demagogues who appeal to men as men, using phrases like “Rights of Man” and “Sovereignty of the People,” which have caused terrible convulsions. He seeks a man to sound the word Duty.
Main Arguments
Throughout the table talk, Coleridge advances a series of interconnected arguments about literature, philosophy, religion, politics, and human nature. These arguments emerge from his conversational observations and are often developed through contrast and comparison.
On literature, Coleridge argues that Shakespeare’s Othello must not be conceived as a negro but as a high and chivalrous Moorish chief, noting that Shakespeare learned the spirit of the character from Spanish poetry prevalent in England. Jealousy is not the point of Othello’s passion; rather, it is an agony that a creature believed angelic should prove impure—a struggle not to love her, moral indignation that virtue should fall. There is no ferocity in Othello; his mind is majestic and composed. He deliberately determines to die, speaking his last speech to show attachment to the Venetian state though it had superseded him.
Coleridge contrasts Shakespeare with Schiller, arguing that Schiller has the “material Sublime”—he sets a whole town on fire, throws infants with mothers into flames, locks a father in an old tower—while Shakespeare drops a handkerchief, and the same or greater effects follow. He ranks Shakespeare’s plays, calling Lear the most tremendous effort as poet, Hamlet as philosopher or meditater, and Othello the union of the two. The former two have something gigantic and unformed; in Othello everything assumes due place and proportion, with mature powers in admirable equilibrium.
On the nature of poetry, Coleridge argues that poetry must be at least good sense, comparing it to a palace which must be a house. He dismisses Persian poetry in translation as lacking imagination, with only a glimmer of fancy, and deficient in truth. He praises The Arabian Nights’ Tales as delightful but suspects Greek influence, and laments the loss of the Milesian Tales. He calls the Book of Job pure Arab poetry of the highest and most antique cast.
On philosophy, Coleridge argues that every man is born either Aristotelian or Platonist, and neither type can change into the other. They are two classes beside which a third is nearly inconceivable. The one considers reason a quality or attribute; the other a power. Aristotle never understood Plato’s meaning of “idea.” With Plato, ideas are “constitutive in themselves.” Aristotle is “sovereign lord of the understanding”—the faculty judging by senses—a conceptualist who never rose to Plato’s state where understanding is contemplated from the throne of “actual ideas, or living, inborn, essential truths.” Yet Aristotle’s mind was “only not the greatest that ever animated the human form”: parent of science, master of criticism, founder or editor of logic. But he confounded science with philosophy—an error. Philosophy is the middle state between science (knowledge) and sophia (wisdom).
On religion, Coleridge argues that St. John had twofold objects in Gospel and Epistles: proving both the divinity and the actual human nature and bodily suffering of Jesus Christ—that he was God and Man. He thinks the verse 1 John v. 7 spurious, noting external authority is against it and it spoils the reasoning. He does not believe St. Paul authored the Epistle to the Hebrews, finding Luther’s conjecture that Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew, wrote it probable. He distinguishes St. John’s logic as Oriental, consisting in position and parallel, while St. Paul displays Greek system intricacies.
On the Trinity, Coleridge argues that the Trinity is Will, Reason/Word, and Love/Life—distinguished yet united in one God, the union as transcendent as the distinction. He criticizes Mr. Irving’s notion as tritheism, even tri-daemonism. He names Bull and Waterland the classical writers on the Trinity, and describes the formula: God, the absolute Will or Identity, = Prothesis; the Father = Thesis; the Son = Antithesis; the Spirit = Synthesis. He judges the Athanasian Creed heretical in the omission, or implicit denial, of the Filial subordination in the Godhead, which is the doctrine of the Nicene Creed.
On politics, Coleridge argues that two principles exist in every European and Christian state: permanency and progression. In seventeenth-century English civil wars, these principles struggled, and the great and good were found on either side. Mohammedan states lack permanence and sink directly—they existed only in efforts at progression; ceasing to conquer, they fell. China exemplifies permanency without progression. He argues that parliamentary privilege substitutes for Law where a law cannot act without clashing with greater principles, and that the House of Commons must have power over offences against its own rights.
On the Jews, Coleridge argues there is no hope of converting Jews under the current spirit of the church. In the first age, Jewish Christians saw themselves as the seed of Abraham, a superior order. St. Paul protested only against making Jewish observances compulsory for non-Jewish Christians and against basing religion on the Mosaic covenant of works; he never denied the Jewish birthright and believed Jews would ultimately be restored. If Jews were addressed kindly and invited to become Christians as of the seed of Abraham without abandoning their customs, a Christian synagogue could appear in a year.
Key Concepts
Several specific named ideas and motifs recur throughout the table talk and serve as organizing concepts for Coleridge’s thought.
Reason and Understanding: Coleridge insists on the fundamental difference in kind between reason and understanding as the “Gradus ad Philosophiam.” He notes harmony between mind and heart operations and words in languages, but discrepancies in names of things—nearly a hundred German dialect names for the alder-tree, more in Arabic. He distinguishes words from arbitrary names of things.
Permanency and Progression: Coleridge identifies these as the two principles existing in every European and Christian state. He uses them to analyze the English civil wars, the decline of Mohammedan states, and the character of China.
The Logos: Coleridge explains that St. John used “ho Logos” technically, noting that Philo-Judæus had so used it years before, and it was understood among Jewish Rabbis of the manifested God. He argues that our translators wrongly render “pros ton Theon” as “with God”; that would require “syn to Theo.” The preposition “pros” means utmost proximity without confusion, likeness without sameness.
The Trinity: Coleridge presents the Trinity as Will, Reason/Word, and Love/Life, distinguished yet united in one God. He gives the formula: God, the absolute Will or Identity, = Prothesis; the Father = Thesis; the Son = Antithesis; the Spirit = Synthesis. He names Bull and Waterland the classical writers on the Trinity.
The Nominalist/Realist Controversy: Coleridge calls this one of the greatest controversies, arguing both sides were right and wrong, holding opposite poles of the same truth without a higher premiss. Duns Scotus headed the Realists; Ockham, his disciple, the Nominalists. Two-thirds of eminent schoolmen were British; they made European languages what they are.
The Material Sublime: Coleridge uses this term to describe Schiller’s method of achieving sublime effects through physical horrors—setting towns on fire, throwing infants with mothers into flames—in contrast to Shakespeare’s method of dropping a handkerchief to achieve the same or greater effects.
The Spinosistic Deity: Coleridge describes Shakespeare as the “Spinosistic deity”—omnipresent creativeness—while Milton is the deity of prescience, standing ab extra with an iron curb. Shakespeare’s poetry is characterless, not reflecting the individual; Milton is in every line of Paradise Lost.
The Circuitor: Coleridge distinguishes the Satan of the prologue to Job from the Devil. This Satan is not calumnious; he is the “circuitor,” the accusing spirit, a “dramatic attorney-general.”
The Three Sorts of Prayer: Coleridge identifies Public, Domestic, and Solitary prayer, each with peculiar uses. He thinks the church should publish a directory of forms for the latter two but fears the execution would be inadequate.
The Fall of Man: Coleridge argues that a Fall of some sort—the creation of the non-absolute—is the fundamental postulate of moral history; without it man is unintelligible.
Mental Anarchy: Coleridge asks why we need talk of a fiery hell. If the will—the law of our nature—were withdrawn from memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal what we should then feel from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness—a horrid thought.
The Characterlessness of Women: Coleridge argues that Shakespeare, who knew man and woman better than Pope, saw that it was woman’s perfection to be characterless. Everyone wishes a Desdemona or Ophelia for a wife—creatures who may not always understand you but always feel you and feel with you.
The Ear vs. Taste for Music: Coleridge distinguishes between having an ear for music and having a taste for music. He has no ear—cannot sing an air to save his life—but has intensest delight in music and can detect good from bad.
Themes
Several deeper recurring meanings emerge from the table talk, reflecting Coleridge’s characteristic concerns and preoccupations.
The Nature of Genius: Throughout the conversations, Coleridge returns to the question of what constitutes true genius. He distinguishes between poetic taste, dexterity, and imitation, which can produce promising poems, and genius, which means doing something new. He observes that in the present age, predicting a great poet from favourable specimens is nearly impossible. He contrasts the inventive, generative, constitutive mind—the Kepler—with the patient, collective mind—the Newton—noting that Providence orders that the former comes first, then the latter elaborates the pregnant queries and illumining guesses of the former. He argues that arts and Muses spring forth in nations’ youth “like Minerva from the front of Jupiter, all armed”; only manual dexterity improves by practice.
The Conflict Between the Ideal and the Actual: Coleridge repeatedly explores the tension between ideal truth and practical reality. He notes that Coleridge was distinguished by “moral thirst after the Truth—the ideal truth”—more than intellectual qualifications. He observes that in tranquil times facts and common sense prevail, but in passion, men generalize and use abstract phrases. He laments that able and patriotic members of Parliament lack the courage or wisdom to base their appeals on duty and universal truths rather than individual interests.
The Nature of Love: Coleridge defines love as the admiration and cherishing of the amiable qualities of the beloved person, upon the condition of yourself being the object of their action. He argues that the qualities of the sexes correspond: the man’s courage is loved by the woman, whose fortitude is coveted by the man. His vigorous intellect is answered by her infallible tact. He doubts the constant affirmation that there is no sex in souls, doubting it exceedingly. He distinguishes love from friendship, arguing that sympathy constitutes friendship, but in love there is a sort of antipathy or opposing passion—each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.
The Decline and Revival of Art: Coleridge rejects gradual improvement of the Arts as untrue of their substance. He traces the progress of painting until Raphael attained the zenith, but notes that in Raphael himself there were signs of decline—”the painter began to think of overcoming difficulties.” Descent was rapid until sculptors worked “inveterate likenesses of perriwigs in marble” and painters merely copied nature’s external face. The present age shows “reviviscence”—not of power, but of taste for the early times’ power.
The Character of Nations: Coleridge offers observations on national character throughout the table talk. He contrasts Europeans and Orientalists, represented by two figures back to back: the latter looking east (backwards), the former west (forwards). He describes the French as like grains of gunpowder—smutty and contemptible singly, but terrible when massed. He contrasts Italian superstition, which is offspring of climate, old associations, manners, and place names, with Spain’s jealous fanaticism glancing on heresy. Italian superstition is pure paganism, undisturbed by orthodoxy or animosity against heretics, more good-natured and pleasing.
The Importance of Language: Coleridge repeatedly emphasizes the significance of language. He praises the English version of the Bible for preserving a purity of meaning to many terms of natural objects, arguing that without this holdfast, vitiated imaginations would refine away language to mere abstractions. Hence the French have lost their poetical language, and Mr. Blanco White says the same has happened to the Spanish. He notes that works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative, the more necessary to be plain. He observes that the Pilgrim’s Progress is composed in the “lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar,” and that polishing it would destroy the reality of the vision.
The Nature of Evil: Coleridge explores the nature of evil in various contexts. He argues that conduct not ascribable to angelic or bestial within man must be fiendish; passion without appetite is fiendish. He observes that consistent evil will beat inconsistent good. He notes that the devil is clever and works by appealing to men as men, using phrases like “Rights of Man” and “Sovereignty of the People.”
The Value of Tradition: Coleridge repeatedly defends tradition and established institutions. He praises the unhired magistracy of England as linking duke to country gentleman. He argues that one must master the idea of an institution’s use before apprehending its abuse. He laments the church’s inattention to congregational singing, noting that in that part of worship where the common people might and ought to join, “we all sing as Jews; or, at best, as mere men, in the abstract, without a Saviour.”
The Author’s Conclusions
The table talk presents Coleridge’s mature reflections on a wide range of subjects, and while the entries are conversational rather than systematic, certain conclusions emerge with consistency.
On the nature of Christianity, Coleridge concludes that Christianity proves itself as the sun is seen by its own light. The first three Gospels show history—fulfilment of prophecies in facts. St. John declares doctrine oracularly without comment, being pure reason provable only by itself. St. Paul writes for the dialectic understanding, proving doctrines by common logic. Coleridge’s belief in Christianity is within a man as a reasoning being, associated with one’s mother’s chair and first-remembered tones of her voice.
On the character of Jesus Christ, Coleridge concludes that we should not exclusively think of Christ as the Logos united to human nature, but also as “a perfect man united to the Logos”—a distinction important for conceiving and feeling Jesus’ conduct. He hypothesizes that Christ, in repeating “Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani,” recited the whole or a large part of the 22nd Psalm, doing it mentally and saying aloud enough for his followers to do the same, like citing the first line of a hymn.
On the nature of the Church, Coleridge concludes that the national Church was his “ark of the covenant.” He argues that once you invade that truly national and essentially popular institution, the Church, “you will never thereafter recover the lost means of perpetual cultivation.” He believes that Chillingworth’s main position—that the mere text of the Bible is the sole ground of Christian faith—is untenable against Romanists, as it destroys the conditions of a church, authority in a religious community, and the sense of brotherhood.
On politics, Coleridge concludes that democracy grows rabid and threatens freedom and truth. He fears Wellington imagines he can govern a great nation by word of command as he governed a disciplined army, and that Wellington forgets that from popular efforts all great institutions have come. He observes that the stock-jobbing and moneyed interest is so strong in England it has “more than once prevailed in our foreign councils over national honour and national justice.”
On the nature of the age, Coleridge concludes that this is not a logical age. Political pamphlets from Charles I’s time and the Cromwellate have frequently wrong premises but almost always legitimate deductions; modern writings have commonly sound premises but false conclusions. He commends Oxford University for preserving logic in the schools, noting geometry is no substitute.
On the nature of human existence, Coleridge concludes that a Fall of some sort—the creation of the non-absolute—is the fundamental postulate of moral history; without it man is unintelligible. He observes that good and bad men are each less so than they seem. He never felt horror at death simply as death.
On the nature of women, Coleridge concludes that Shakespeare, who knew man and woman better than Pope, saw that it was woman’s perfection to be characterless. Everyone wishes a Desdemona or Ophelia for a wife—creatures who may not always understand you but always feel you and feel with you.
On the nature of the French, Coleridge concludes that Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder—smutty and contemptible singly, but terrible when massed. He decries the exhibition of Austrian standards in the French house of peers as a miserable scene, an exhibition of French falsehood and cowardice.
On the nature of the Jews, Coleridge concludes that there is no hope of converting Jews under the current spirit of the church. He argues that if Jews were addressed kindly and invited to become Christians as of the seed of Abraham without abandoning their customs, a Christian synagogue could appear in a year.
On the nature of genius, Coleridge concludes that Providence orders that the inventive, generative, constitutive mind—the Kepler—comes first; then the patient, collective mind—the Newton—follows, elaborating the pregnant queries and illumining guesses of the former.
Detailed Section-by-Section Summary
The Editor’s Preface and the Character of Coleridge
The volume is inscribed to James Gillman, Esquire, of the Grove, Highgate, and to Mrs. Gillman, with an illustration by F. Finden dated London, John Murray, Albernarle St. 1837, and a signed autograph reading “Dear Sir, Your obliged servant. S. T. Coleridge.” A prefatory note warns that Greek transliterations throughout the file are missing or suspect.
The editor states that nearly fifteen years before publication, he became a frequent and attentive visitor in Mr. Coleridge’s domestic society. On the first evening spent with Coleridge after the editor’s boyhood, he committed the principal topics of conversation to writing in Coleridge’s own words, initially without a settled design—prompted by vexation that such music should not last forever. Over many years of affectionate communion, these occasional notes grew into a mass; this volume contains only parts fit for present publication.
The editor acknowledges inadequacy in representing Coleridge’s peculiar splendour, asking who could follow his “long arrow-flights of thought” or fix his “ejaculations of light” and prophetic tones. He compares Coleridge to an inspired man before whom he sometimes bent. The editor contrasts Coleridge with Johnson, noting Coleridge differed in every characteristic of intellect and in life habits. Coleridge was fond of society but confined by ill health after fifty, rarely seen except by single visitors. The editor preferred letting “the river wander at its own sweet will” rather than interrupting. Though Coleridge lacked Johnson’s “gladiatorial power,” he possessed his own sword-play, effective against disputants, though he disliked the practice.
Coleridge was distinguished by “moral thirst after the Truth—the ideal truth”—more than intellectual qualifications. He left everyday society’s anecdote-reigning conversation for a “Sabbath past expression deep.” He had travelled in many countries and critical times, knew all literature and genial art, and was familiar with science. He would talk through a long summer’s day in low, equable, clear, musical tones, marshalling history, harmonizing experiment, probing consciousness, revealing visions—pouring floods of light so that one might, “like Paul, become blind in the very act of conversion.” He made no allusion to himself, no reflection on others, no anecdote not proof of a previous position.
Some found Coleridge tiresome or fell asleep. When the abstruser mood struck, he would soar into an atmosphere “almost too rare to breathe.” The editor quotes a remark that Coleridge seemed to wander most when his resistance to wandering was greatest—when his illustrations travelled farthest before revolving. The editor compares him to Pindar, called a rambling rhapsodist because his connections are too fine for vulgar readers, yet the Pindaric ode is the most artificial composition from the Greek Muse. Coleridge’s mind was “a logic-vice”; he was always ratiocinating.
The editor notes the difficulty of reporting continuous, diffused conversation. Pithy remarks stick; long-drawn subtle discoursing requires re-thinking the argument. He condensed recollections into intelligible wholes, never attempting dialogue. He leaves judgment to those with “that old man eloquent” ringing in their ears.
The editor admits passages will be called illiberal by self-styled liberals—remarks on the Reform Bill and Malthusian economists. Coleridge was neither Whig nor Tory, knowing half-truths in both. Friend of Frere and Poole, guest of Canning and Lord Lansdowne, he threw his weight to the Tory/Conservative scale: first, because democracy grows rabid and threatens freedom and truth; second, because the national Church was his “ark of the covenant,” and Whigs would coalesce with those who would spoilate it. He also resented Whig efforts against England’s Spanish war. On Reform, he cared little except that it would lead to Church attack: “let the form of the House of Commons be what it may, it will be pretty much what the country at large is; but once invade that truly national and essentially popular institution, the Church… you will never thereafter recover the lost means of perpetual cultivation.” He was “felix opportunitate mortis”—fortunate in death’s opportunity.
For thirty years Coleridge was “a philosopher of the antique cast” with esoteric views; his prose works from the “Friend” to “Church and State” were feelers and disciplinants. He knew little of the art of making hooks, and could not have made Locke and Paley’s overthrow popular. His prose works had limited sale; he did not think them publici juris except perhaps “Aids to Reflection.” He would have used parts of preliminary treatises in his great work on “Philosophy reconciled with Christian Religion,” hence repetitions across the “Friend,” “Literary Life,” “Lay Sermons,” “Aids to Reflection,” and “Church and State.” His reading was immense—most Fathers, all eminent Schoolmen. Lamb’s “inspired charity-boy” of twelve continued to sixty-two as the eloquent centre of companies. Had Coleridge mastered his genius rather than been mastered by it, he might have won popular favour; yet the editor believes Coleridge did “the day’s work of a giant.”
Biographical Sketch and Early Table Talk
The editor, H. N. C., offers a tribute to Coleridge, acknowledging his frailties—extreme sensitivity, childlike avoidance of discomfort—while praising his martyr-like endurance of death’s agonies. The editor asserts Coleridge was “sinned against a thousand times more than sinning” and that the world benefits from his labours, genius, and sacrifice. A Latin passage follows, mourning his death while affirming his eternal life in human memory and speech.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the youngest child of the Reverend John Coleridge, Vicar of Ottery St. Mary in Devon and master of Henry the Eighth’s Free Grammar School. His mother’s maiden name was Ann Bowdon. He was born at Ottery on October 21, 1772, “about eleven o’clock in the forenoon,” as recorded with curious particularity by his father in the register. He died July 25, 1834, in Mr. Gillman’s house in the Grove, Highgate, and is buried in the old churchyard by the roadside.
On December 29, 1822, Coleridge argues Othello must not be conceived as a negro but as a high and chivalrous Moorish chief, noting Shakespeare learned the spirit of the character from Spanish poetry prevalent in England. Jealousy is not the point of his passion; rather, it is an agony that a creature believed angelic should prove impure—a struggle not to love her, moral indignation that virtue should fall. His honour was also concerned; Iago succeeded by hinting this honour was compromised. There is no ferocity in Othello; his mind is majestic and composed. He deliberately determines to die, speaking his last speech to show attachment to the Venetian state though it had superseded him. Schiller has the “material Sublime”
Maxims and the Single Eye
A man who governs his conduct by maxims alone is like a Cyclops whose single eye is set in the back of his head: he can see only the past and received wisdom, never the living present or the future. This image captures the danger of living by formula rather than by perception.
Hamlet and Ophelia
In the third-act scene with Ophelia, Hamlet begins with genuine and unfeigned tenderness. But perceiving her reserve and coyness, he suspects listeners and, to sustain his assumed part, breaks out into all that coarseness which follows. The tenderness is real; the coarseness is a mask adopted under pressure.
The Definition of Love
Love is the admiration and cherishing of the amiable qualities of the beloved, upon the condition that you yourself are the object of their action. The sexes correspond: the man’s courage is loved by the woman, whose fortitude is coveted by the man; his vigorous intellect is answered by her infallible tact. The speaker doubts exceedingly the common affirmation that there is no sex in souls.
Measure for Measure
This play is the single exception to the delightfulness of Shakespeare’s works—a hateful work, though Shakespearian throughout. Our feelings of justice are grossly wounded in Angelo’s escape; Isabella contrives to be unamiable, and Claudio is detestable.
Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher
The Fox is the greatest of Ben Jonson’s works, but his smaller pieces are full of poetry. Among Beaumont and Fletcher, Monsieur Thomas and The Little French Lawyer are great favourites, overflowing with wit. A deeply tragic scene occurs in Rollo, where Edith pleads for her father’s life, and when she cannot prevail, rises up and imprecates vengeance on his murderer.
The Bible and Language
The English version of the Bible is to be loved and prized for preserving a purity of meaning to many terms of natural objects. Without this holdfast, vitiated imaginations would refine away language to mere abstractions. Hence the French have lost their poetical language, and Mr. Blanco White says the same has happened to the Spanish.
Personal Perception and Craniology
The speaker has a strong perception of individual images, but a dim one of the relation of place; he remembers the man or the tree, but mostly forgets where he saw them. Craniology is worth some consideration, though merely in its rudiments and guesses; the coincidences observed could scarcely be by accident. Confusion will be endless until proper terms are discovered for the organs, not taken from their mental application. The forepart of the head is generally given up to the higher intellectual powers; the hinder part to the sensual emotions.
Silence and Wisdom
Silence does not always mark wisdom. The speaker recalls a man at dinner who listened and nodded, seeming intelligent, until apple dumplings were placed on the table, upon which he burst forth with “Them’s the jockies for me!” The speaker wishes Spurzheim could have examined the fellow’s head.
Epithets and the Falls of Clyde
Some folks apply epithets as boys do in making Latin verses. At the Falls of the Clyde, the speaker was unable to find a word to express his feelings. A stranger said “How majestic!”—the precise term—but then added, in the same breath, “Yes! how very pretty!”
Bull and Waterland on the Trinity
Bull and Waterland are the classical writers on the Trinity. In the Trinity there is: 1. Ipseity. 2. Alterity. 3. Community. The formula is expressed thus: God, the absolute Will or Identity, equals Prothesis; the Father equals Thesis; the Son equals Antithesis; the Spirit equals Synthesis.
The Athanasian Creed
The author is unknown. It is judged heretical in the omission, or implicit denial, of the Filial subordination in the Godhead—the doctrine of the Nicene Creed, for which Bull and Waterland contended. By not holding to this, Sherlock staggered between Tritheism and Sabellianism. The creed is also tautological, and contains harsh and ill-conceived language.
Religious Cant
The speaker regrets that many religious persons adopt a certain cant of manner and phraseology as a token to each other, such as improving texts and acting in a prayerful way. A young lady urged that such feelings were the marrow of all religion, upon which he recommended she try to walk to London upon her marrow-bones only.
Scale of Animal Being
In the lowest link of the chain of Being, there is an effort at individualization, almost lost in mere nature. A little higher, the individual is apparent but subordinate. At length, the animal rises to be on a par with the lowest power of human nature. Some natural desires only remain in our most perfect state on earth as means of the higher powers’ acting.
Popedom and Scanderbeg
The Popedom is a grand subject for a history. The Pope ought never to have affected temporal sway, but to have lived retired within St. Angelo, trusting to the superstitious awe inspired by his character and office. He spoiled his chance when he meddled in petty Italian politics. Scanderbeg would be a fine subject for Walter Scott, as would Thomas à Becket, though it might be too much for him; it involves the conflict between arms, or force, and the men of letters.
The Superior Truth of Language
The superior truth of language is observed in Greek, to Theocritus inclusively; in Latin, to the Augustan age exclusively; in Italian, to Tasso exclusively; and in English, to the age of Shakespeare and Milton.
On the Jews
There is no hope of converting Jews under the current spirit of the church. In the first age, Jewish Christians saw themselves as the seed of Abraham, a superior order, as shown in Acts and Galatians. St. Paul protested only against making Jewish observances compulsory for non-Jewish Christians and against basing religion on the Mosaic covenant of works; he never denied the Jewish birthright and believed Jews would ultimately be restored. The Abyssinian church, which claimed descent from Abraham and observed circumcision, rejected the covenant of works, resting on the promise in Jesus Christ; they were permitted their customs. If Rhenferd’s Essays were translated and Jews addressed kindly, invited to become Christians as of the seed of Abraham without abandoning their customs, a Christian synagogue could appear in a year. As it is, lower-order Jews are the lowest of mankind, lacking honesty and obsessed with money. A learned Jew told Coleridge: “make the inhabitants of Hollywell Street and Duke’s Place Israelites first, and then we may debate about making them Christians.” In Poland, Jews are great landholders and worst tyrants, with no sympathy for labourers; land held by many Jews would become an organ of rigidity, perpetually entailed by intermarriage; a popular tumult would make Jews first objects of murder.
Mosaic Miracles and Pantheism
In Moses’ miracles, providential acts intermingle with purely miraculous ones.
Swift and Rabelais
Coleridge characterized Swift as “the soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place,” praising him as a rare genius. He cited Swift’s remark on King William’s motto Recepit, non rapuit—that the receiver was as bad as the thief—as evidence of his sharp moral insight. A footnote directed readers to Rabelais’s account of Pantagruel’s descent to the Isle of Papimanes.
Bentley and the Tory Wits
The Tory wits’ acrimonious attacks on Bentley only exposed them as shallow and incompetent scholars. Neither Bentley nor Burnet suffered from this hostility. Burnet’s History of his own Times remained truly valuable; his credulity was great, but his simplicity equally so, and he never deceived the reader for a moment.
Giotto and Painting
The frescoes by Giotto and others in the cemetery at Pisa were “most noble.” Giotto was Dante’s contemporary, raising the question of whether painters borrowed from the poet or vice versa. Michelangelo and Raphael fed their imaginations on these drawings, especially Michelangelo, who took from them his bold yet graceful lines. A footnote gave Giotto’s birth as 1276 per Vasari, noted Dante’s birth in 1265, and quoted Dante’s Purgatorio on Giotto eclipsing Cimabue.
Arts and Improvement
Coleridge rejected the gradual improvement of the Arts as untrue of their substance. Arts and Muses spring forth in nations’ youth like Minerva from the front of Jupiter, all armed; only manual dexterity improves by practice. Painting progressed until Raphael attained the zenith, but in him showed signs of decline—the painter began to think of overcoming difficulties. Descent was rapid until sculptors worked inveterate likenesses of perriwigs in marble and painters merely copied nature’s external face. The present age showed a reviviscence—not of power, but of taste for the early times’ power.
Seneca
One may get a motto for every religious sect or philosophical line from Seneca, “but nothing is ever thought out by him.”
Plato and Aristotle
Every man is born either Aristotelian or Platonist; neither type can change into the other. The one considers reason a quality or attribute; the other a power. Aristotle never understood Plato’s meaning of “idea.” With Plato, ideas are constitutive in themselves. Aristotle is sovereign lord of the understanding—a conceptualist who never rose to Plato’s state where understanding is contemplated from the throne of actual ideas. Yet Aristotle’s mind was only not the greatest that ever animated the human form. But he confounded science with philosophy—an error. Philosophy is the middle state between science and wisdom.
Duke of Wellington, Moneyed Interest, Canning
Coleridge feared Wellington imagined he could govern a great nation by word of command as he governed a disciplined army. Wellington forgot that from popular efforts all great institutions have come. The stock-jobbing and moneyed interest was so strong in England it had more than once prevailed over national honour. Canning felt this keenly, saying he could not contend against the city trained-bands.
Bourienne
Bourienne was “admirable”—the French Pepys. Comparing Buonaparte with Charlemagne, Bourienne condensed into a sentence worthy of Tacitus: “Charlemagne was above his age, whilst Buonaparte was only above his competitors, but under his age!” Bourienne had done most to show Buonaparte as he really was—always contemptible, except when acting a part.
Jews
Coleridge was “floored” by a Jewish acquaintance’s argument, the substance of which he could not answer.
Scottish and English Lakes
Coleridge lamented the loss of Varro’s works and the old Stoics’ writings. On Socrates, he claimed Socrates was only a poetical character to Plato; Socrates himself had no system. All claims that Egypt gave birth to Greek philosophy were groundless. Philosophy sprang up in Greece itself, beginning with physics, then pantheism, then ethics, then Plato’s assertion of God as maker. Human philosophy was full when Christianity added assurance. The Neo-Platonists degenerated into magic. Plotinus had wonderful ability. Scotland’s five finest things were Edinburgh, the Fall of Foyers, Loch Lomond from Inch Tavannach, the Trosachs, and the Hebrides view. But Cumberland and Westmoreland formed a cabinet of beauties—each thing beautiful in itself, and the passage between them beautiful too.
Love and Friendship Opposed; Marriage; Characterlessness of Women
Someone told Coleridge he could make nothing of love except friendship accidentally combined with desire; Coleridge concluded that person had never been in love. Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy—each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole. Luther sketched the most beautiful picture of wedded life. Pope said most women have no character as satire, but Shakespeare saw it was woman’s perfection to be characterless. Everyone wishes a Desdemona or Ophelia for a wife—creatures who may not always understand you but always feel you.
Mental Anarchy
If the will were withdrawn from memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness.
Ear and Taste for Music Different; English Liturgy; Belgian Revolution
What begins in fear usually ends in folly. An ear for music differs from a taste for music. Coleridge had no ear but intensest delight in music. He never felt the heavenly superiority of English liturgy prayers till attending Scottish kirks. The Brussels riot was a wretched parody on the last French revolution—a wicked rebellion without one just cause.
Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Bacon
It would take two or three Galileos and Newtons to make one Kepler. The inventive, generative mind comes first; then the patient, collective mind follows. The planetary system’s laws are due to Kepler. Gravitation he had fully conceived, but gave it up because inconsistent with his calculations.
The British Gallery and the Masters
Coleridge anchored himself before three or four great works, claiming he saw the rest potentially. His admiration for Rubens was shown with joy and brotherly fondness. The Italian masters differ from the Dutch in that their pictures have perfectly ideal ages. Carlo Dolce’s Christs were “always in sugar-candy.” Ancient art is gone, replaced by something different in kind. Modern portraits give not the man but the external mark.
Chillingworth
Chillingworth’s main position—that the mere text of the Bible is the sole ground of Christian faith—was untenable against Romanists. It destroys the conditions of a church. Coleridge believed Chillingworth was in some sense a Socinian. Even Hooker does not put the idea of a church on the true foundation.
Superstition in Malta, Sicily, Italy
Italian superstition is pure paganism, more good-natured than Spain’s gloomy idolatry. In Valetta in 1805, a boy answered that Jesus Christ “lives here,” coming out in the shape of a wafer.
Whiggism and the Church (February 22, 1832)
Coleridge sketches a projected essay tracing the history of Whiggism from its origin in Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel—where Shaftesbury appears as “the first Whig”—down to a contemporary figure he hopes will be the last. He locates the movement’s zenith in the last years of Queen Anne’s reign, calling it the “divinest avatar of common sense,” and would trace the “necessary degeneration of the Whig spirit of compromise” into the “profound ineptitudes” of the present party, noting that Asgill was a man capable of executing such a work. Turning to the Church, he calls it “the last relic of our nationality,” insisting that the Christian church and the national church must be neither confounded nor divided. He deems the Reform Bill of comparatively minor importance; the fate of the national church occupies him far more intensely.
Ministers and the Reform Bill (February 24, 1832)
Coleridge imagines answering Lord Grey’s question to Lord Wicklow—whether ministers intended to subvert institutions—in the affirmative. He would accuse them of destroying parliament’s freedom, opening the Commons to “passions and follies” rather than to property, birth, rank, and wisdom; disfranchising the gentry; agitating the mob; and handing power to the shopkeepers, “the least patriotic and the least conservative” class. He would charge them with destroying the Lords’ constitutional independence and superseding the “triple assent” required for valid law, leaving “the king alone with the delegates of the populace.” On disfranchisement (March 3), he fears the Conservative party sees only half the truth: extension of the franchise is not evil per se, and he would welcome it. The mischief lies in nominal extension to classes producing “a practical disfranchisement of all above, and a discontenting of all below.”
Genius Feminine; Pirates; Astrology and Alchemy (March 17–18)
Coleridge notes something feminine—not effeminate—in the faces of men of genius, citing old Dampier’s soft countenance. He calls it absurd to label Raleigh and Drake pirates, since piracy requires the agreement of contemporaries; Drake’s logic was simply: “The subjects of the king of Spain have done their best to ruin my country: ergo, I will try to ruin the king of Spain’s country.” He compares this to calling the Argonauts pirates. On astrology and alchemy, he observes that reason instinctively points toward the ultimate ends of sciences, after which men employ inadequate means. Astrology would be astronomy’s last achievement—planets must have chemical relations—but it degenerated into fortune-telling. Alchemy is chemistry’s theoretic end, a common law whereby all becomes each, but it was debased into coining gold and silver.
Reform Bill Crisis; John, Chapter III (March 20–31)
Coleridge reports the two arguments for the Reform Bill: “We will blow your brains out if you don’t pass it” and “We will drag you through a horsepond.” He dismisses the “pretended crisis,” asserting that a vigorous government could change all the data in a month, and rejects fatalistic cycles with “God at one end and the Devil at the other.” On John 2:4, he reads the Greek address as a mild reproof, noting it was not a common child-to-parent form. He distinguishes dictation from inspiration: Balaam and his ass were passively dictated to, not inspired; John and Paul were inspired but not dictated to, dealing with revelations according to their own intellects and temperaments. The canon was judged by catholicity, not genuineness—Barnabas and Hermas are genuine but not catholic, while Hebrews took three centuries for admission due to its gnosis. He cites a letter from an unnamed writer to an Eastern bishop showing how little the early bishops knew of the Christian Scriptures.
Unitarianism; Moral Philosophy; Polarity (April 4–5)
Coleridge distinguishes ans from isms: Unitarians may be practically good Christians, but Unitarianism is not Christianity. He calls them “Psilanthropists,” preferring Spinosistic Pantheism, and notes that early Socinians adored Jesus. Unitarianism he calls “the worst of one kind of Atheism, joined to the worst of one kind of Calvinism.” Moral philosophy hinges on whether “good” is superfluous—if so, it is physics; if not, Paley’s writings are “false and most pernicious.” On polarity, he traces its operation in history: the maximum of one tendency transitions directly to the minimum. The Restoration brought mechanico-corpuscular philosophy and objectivity; this peaked, then the French Revolution made everything subjective. The Reform Bill is the ne plus ultra of substituting “undefined notions or passions for real objects,” and ministers have never stated what its product will be.
Epidemic Disease; Quarantine (April 1)
Coleridge classifies contagious diseases into those from organized living beings (small-pox, measles, rarely twice) and those from dead matter (malaria), detailing malaria’s action on the cutaneous system.
Opening Fragment and the Constitution (Undated)
A fragment states that the democratical action of the people has been “incalculably increased” while the executive power of government has been weakened; a footnote identifies it as from “Dogmas of the Constitution,” lectures delivered at King’s College, London, in 1832. The editor praises Professor John James Park’s original views and vigorous reasonings, lamenting his early death as a great loss to those wishing the law more scientific in England.
Milton, Sidney, and Aristocracy (May 25, 1832)
Coleridge states it was the error of Milton, Sidney, and others of that age to think a purely aristocratical government possible, “defecated of all passion, and ignorance, and sordid motive.” Such a government would be weak from utter want of sympathy with the governed people.
De Vi Minimorum; Hahnemann; Luther (May 25)
Mercury illustrates the theory de vi minimorum: five grains divided into fifty doses may poison irretrievably. Coleridge does not believe all Hahnemann says, but calls him a fine fellow—like most Germans, not altogether wrong, never altogether right. He proposes six volumes of translated selections from Luther’s works, the translator deeply imbued with the Bible, English writers from Henry the Seventh to Edward the Sixth, Scotch divines of the sixteenth century, and old racy German. A footnote quotes Coleridge from The Friend pressing this publication and praising Luther’s letters from the Warteburg. Hugo de Saint Victor, Luther’s favourite divine, was a wonderful man who in the twelfth century nursed Platonic mysticism in refined Christianity; the editor notes Hugo was a Fleming, Augustinian of St. Victor, who died in Paris in 1142, and that both Protestants and Romanists claim him on transubstantiation.
Translation and National Character (June 9, 1832)
Opening Editorial Excerpt on Taxation
The segment opens with an editor’s quotation that likens taxation to the evaporation of waters. The sun may draw moisture from river, morass, and ocean to return as genial showers to garden, pasture, and corn field—or it may force moisture from tillage fields to drop on stagnant pools, saturated swamps, or unprofitable sand-wastes. Southern European gardens illustrate judicious finance: tanks or reservoirs represent national capital, while the hundred rills under the gardener’s spade image capital’s dispersion through population via taxation and trade. Taxation itself is part of commerce; government is a great manufacturing house carrying on the trades of shipbuilder, clothier, and iron-founder through its partners and overseers.
Massinger, Shakspeare, and Hieronimo
Coleridge states that a poem must be either music or sense to please him. The first act of The Virgin Martyr is as fine an act as he remembers in any play. The Very Woman is one of the most perfect plays we have, with good fun in the first scene between Don John (or Antonio) and Cuculo his master, and exquisite skill in the scene where Antonio relates his story to his mistress. The Bondman is delightful; Massinger is always entertaining, his plays having the interest of novels.
Like most contemporaries except Shakspeare, Massinger deals in exaggerated passion. Malefort senior in The Unnatural Combat, however morally willing to be wicked, could never have done all represented without losing his senses—he would have been mad. Regan and Goneril are Shakspeare’s only pictures of the pure unnatural, their hideousness unsoftened by any line of goodness. Edmund, by contrast, has redeeming traits—passion, shame as a bastard, and ambition offer plausible excuses. Edmund is what any man of powerful intellect might be with certain qualities cut off. Hamlet is inclusively an Edmund, but different as a whole through other controlling principles. Shakspeare uses bold villains as vehicles for opinions too hazardous for a wise man to state directly.
The parts pointed out in Hieronimo as Ben Jonson’s bear no traces of his style but resemble Shakspeare’s; remarkably, each reappears fully developed in Shakspeare’s great pieces. The editor’s footnote identifies Hieronimo as The Spanish Tragedy, attributed to Kyd, with Jonson possibly performing the title role.
Love’s Labour Lost and the Old Dramatists
Coleridge could point to half a line that is Shakspeare’s in Love’s Labour Lost. His writing there shows his earliest manner: all-pervading sweetness and extreme condensation making couplets fall into epigrams, as in Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece. Only in drama could the sublime poet and profound philosopher find compromise. The play contains faint sketches of vigorous portraits, particularly Benedict and Beatrice (the editor notes Biron and Rosaline).
Gifford has done much for Massinger’s text but not enough; his comparison of Shakspeare with contemporaries is obtuse. In Shakspeare, one sentence begets the next naturally; meaning is all inwoven. He kindles like a meteor through dark atmosphere; once creation’s outline is perfect, he rests, smiles, and tells himself it is very good. Many scenes show Shakspeare disporting in joyous triumph after great achievement. Old dramatists took liberties bringing parties together with one not recognizing another under faint disguise. Shakspeare uses this artifice only twice: Twelfth Night (the two kept apart till the end) and Comedy of Errors (a pure farce). A farce grants an improbability or impossibility at the outset, then shows what odd events fairly follow.
Statesmen and Burke
Coleridge was never subject to violent political humours. Young, he wrote enthusiastically only on grand general principles. He thought ministers knew better than private persons until Malta, where corresponding with officials revealed extreme shallowness and ignorance in governing important departments. He assented to Oxenstiern’s saying: Nescis, mi fili, quam parva sapientia regitur mundus.
Burke was a great man who read history philosophically. Yet until he associated general principles with sordid interest, panic of property, and jacobinism, he was a mere dinner bell—hence so many half truths. Burke would have been more influential had he less surpassed contemporaries like Fox and Pitt, men of much inferior minds. A scientific lecture requires a scientific audience, as a telegraph supposes a correspondent telescope.
Monarchy or Democracy
Coleridge has a paradoxical conviction that European nations are unconsciously moving to pure monarchy—government where the people’s reason becomes efficient in the king’s apparent will under complicated subtle control. The wise and good will grow disgusted with representative government, brutalized by democracy’s predominance in England, France, and Belgium. Ancient statesmen doubted effective permanent combination of the three elementary forms; perhaps they had reason.
The House of Commons has verified ill prophecies: low, vulgar, meddling, assuming universal competency, flattering base passion, sneering at everything noble. Direct personal despotism will come after the multitude is gratified with the ruin and spoil of old institutions. The House of Lords’ fiery spirit is useless without principle to guide and sanctify it.
Protestant Attack on Romanism
Coleridge argues Protestants waste time attacking Roman Catholic doctrinal errors. If the Papacy were destroyed and priests permitted to marry, doctrinal errors would lose their force and revert to the rhetorical figures and devotional expressions from which they originated (transubstantiation, prayers for the dead and to saints). While the Bishop of Rome remains Pope with “an army of Mamelukes” worldwide, fulminating against doctrines accomplishes little. He reports a powerful anti-Papal feeling in the Milanese and northern Italy, comparing that district to England under Henry the Eighth. He condemns clerical celibacy as deeply wounding morals and social purity, noting even enlightened men in Romanist countries attach impurity to clerical marriage, which affects estimation of wedded life generally, as proven by morals in Spain, Italy, and France. The Papal church has had three phases: anti-Caesarean, extra-national, anti-Christian.
Roman Conquest and Wedded Love in Shakespeare
The Romans would never have subdued Italian tribes had they not first left Italy and conquered foreign nations, crushing their neighbours by external pressure. Except in Shakespeare, no pure conception of wedded love exists in old dramatists. In Massinger and Beaumont and Fletcher, love is “little better than sheer animal desire”; suitors’ abilities are discussed by ladies or waiting-women. Shakespeare was transcendent over his age.
Regarding Tennyson’s poems sent to him, Coleridge finds some beauty but says Tennyson has begun writing verses without understanding metre. Writing in new metres without considering what metre means is preposterous. Coleridge prescribes writing for two or three years only in well-known metres—heroic couplet, octave stanza, or octo-syllabic measure of Allegro and Penseroso—so he might absorb metre unconsciously, as Eton boys learn Latin verse from Ovid and Tibullus.
August 23, 1833 — Wit and Genius; Hebrew Language; Greek Accent and Quantity
Coleridge distinguished between men of humour and wits, asserting that men of humour are always in some degree men of genius, while wits are rarely so, though a man of genius may possess wit among other gifts, as Shakespeare did. Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as imagination must have fancy, for the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower. He noted that men of genius are rarely annoyed by vulgar people because they can look at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether. Agreeing with Strabo, as translated by Ben Jonson in his dedication of The Fox, Coleridge held that no great poet can exist who is not a good man—though not necessarily a “goody” man. His heart must be pure; he must have learned to look into his own heart, and sometimes to look at it, for one ignorant of his own heart cannot know or move the heart of another.
Turning to biblical English, Coleridge perceived a difference in elegance and correctness between the English of the Old and New Testament versions, and he could not yield to the authority of many examples from the New Testament version. St. Paul is often inadequately rendered, with slovenly phrases that Ben Jonson or any good prose writer of that day would never have produced. On the Hebrew language, he observed that it is simple, with few words near their roots, making constant application necessary to maintain knowledge, and that meanings are chiefly traditional. The loss of Origen’s Heptaglott Bible—where Hebrew words were written in Greek characters—is the heaviest loss biblical literature has experienced, as it would have fixed the sounds as known at that time. He noted that brute animals have vowel sounds; only man can utter consonants, and consonants were naturally marked first as the framework of words. A simple living language might be written intelligibly without vowel marks, recognized traditionally as in shorthand—thus: “Gd crtd th Hvn nd th Rth.” He wished he understood Arabic but doubted whether the immense labour of acquiring Oriental tongues, except Hebrew, is worthwhile for European philosophers.
On Greek accent and quantity, Coleridge stated that the distinction between accent and quantity is clear and was observed by ancients in verse recitation, but such recitation was always artificial; common conversation was regulated entirely by accent. He thought it impossible to talk any language without confounding syllable quantity with high or low tones, though one may sing or recite the difference. He questioned why accent marks were considered necessary for teaching pronunciation to Asiatic or African Hellenists if the acuted syllable did not carry stress of time. If anthropos required perceptible distinction of penultima length as well as antepenultima elevation, why was the long quantity not marked? Words like lelonchasi and tupsasa show no quantity to the eye. He cited modern Greek practice—the versus politici of John Tzetzes in the twelfth century and Anacreontics prefixed to Proclus—as proof of what common prose pronunciation then was.
August 24, 1833 — Consolation; Mock Evangelicals; Autumn
Coleridge was never forward in offering spiritual consolation to the distressed or diseased, for such resources must be self-evolved; he inclined to the Quaker’s mind, waiting for the spirit. The most common effect of the mock evangelical spirit, especially with young women, is self-inflation and busy-bodyism. He reflected on the strange and awful synthesis of life and death in the gusty winds and falling leaves of an autumnal day.
August 25, 1833 — Rossetti on Dante; Laughter
Rosetti’s view of Dante’s meaning is largely just but pushed beyond common sense; no poet—especially not Dante—could have written the allegorical details Rosetti conjectures. The boundaries between Dante’s allegory and pure picturesque are plain at first reading. On laughter, Coleridge held that resolving laughter into contempt is contrary to fact. Laughter is a convulsion of the nerves; nature seems to cut short the rapid thrill of pleasure by sudden convulsion to prevent pain. Aristotle’s definition is good: surprise at perceiving anything out of its usual place, when unusualness lacks serious danger. Such surprise is pleasurable; surprise with danger becomes tragic. Farce may border on tragedy; indeed, farce is nearer tragedy in essence than comedy is.
August 28, 1833 — Humboldt; Diplomatists
At Rome, Baron von Humboldt said he had suspected Coleridge was there in a political capacity but acquitted him, noting the Continent generally understood that the English government, as a ruse de guerre, sends out none but fools of gentlemanly birth as diplomatists, with occasional exceptions for clever libertines. Coleridge recalled dining at Mr. Frere’s with Canning. Lord —- invited himself, talked incessantly in execrable French to the whole party, gabbling about cookery and dress, having followed the Russian army into France. Coleridge remarked how a great image may be reduced to ridiculous by detailing constituent parts, citing the deluge in Genesis and Paradise Lost, and Drayton’s ludicrous description in Noah’s Flood. Lord —- then praised a picture of Noah’s Ark with animals marching two by two, elephants last, and Canning.
Cotton’s “Ode upon Winter” and Fancy
Coleridge cited Cotton’s “Ode upon Winter” as an admirable composition, though “stained with some peculiarities of the age.” The middle part describes Winter’s entrance as “a palsied king” and military monarch advancing with his army, with rapid fanciful comparisons showing “extreme activity of intellect” and “correspondent hurry of delightful feeling.” Winter retires to a fortress containing a “magazine of sovereign juice” that will sustain the siege “Should Phoebus ne’er return again.” Coleridge, though a water-drinker, transcribed further lines as a happier instance of Fancy treating feeling rather than forms: the liquor “gives the Poet rage,” “thaws the gelly’d blood of Age,” matures the Young, restores the Old, makes cowards bold, calms palpitations, and sweetens misfortune. The poem continues with jovial sitting, drinking to friends, supplying failed friendships with charity, drinking the wanting into wealth, the afflicted into joy, the oppressed into security, the disgraced into favour, the stifled into liberty, the brave into success, lovers into mistresses, virtue into praise, and neglected poets into bays. The passage closes with the editor’s note that this preface belonged to editions of Mr. W.’s Poems in 1815 and 1820.
Homeric Heroes in Shakspeare; Dryden; Johnson; Scott
Comparing Nestor, Ajax, Achilles in Shakspeare’s Troilus and Cressida with their Iliad namesakes, Coleridge said the old heroes “seem all to have been at school ever since”—a striking instance of “the strength and pregnancy of the Gothic mind.” Dryden’s genius “
