and illustration; the censures they contain are expressed in stern and vehement, but not in coarse or bitter language; and they burst forth from a carefully constructed argument like strong keen flames from a well heaped funeral pile. If they quiver as they stream upward-those flames of censure—it is from a meditative emotion, not from the turbulence of a spirit agitated by personal or party rage. Could any specimen of "abuse" be extracted from his writings at all similar to that "true history of the Anti-Jacobin poets," referred to above, in which three men of different characters and courses of life are put into a heap and conjointly accused of every turpitude which a politician can be guilty of, the language of the E. Review respecting his "abuse of his contemporaries" would so far not be unmerited. The strictures on that Journal in this work are also pieces of reasoning, and, when cleared from a few excrescences of personal anecdote and complaint, are not unworthy of a writer who ever strove to keep principle in view. Of the Critique of Bertram I have spoken elsewhere. The second sort of "abuse" that he dealt in, and which it were to be wished that all men would refrain from, consisted in pointed remarks, made in private respecting private things and persons. Some of these were as strictly true as they were clever and rememberable; some were just in themselves, but sounded unjust as well as unkind, when repeated unaccompanied by what should have gone along with them to take off their edge, expressed or understood by the utterer. Some, I dare say, were not wholly just; few men are wise or just at all hours; my Father had fits of satirizing with a habit of praising. I says, " rather than grew." But this is only a subordinate part of a general survey of his character as evinced in his public conduct. There is no attempt to characterize opinions not under examination by conjectures respecting the circumstances under which they may have been formed. The Character contains also a few sentences relating to Mr. Pitt's private life; but it should be remembered that some parts of a Prime Minister's private life, or what is private life in other cases, are necessarily before the public. My Father referred to tastes and habits of Mr. Pitt which were matters of notoriety. Still that passage is a blot in the essay, and I doubt not that, though interesting as a psychological analysis, the whole Character is too unmodified and severe. have heard a friend of his and mine remark, that some men "talk their gall cleverly," while there are others, who will show their cleverness though at the expense of being, for the moment, ill-natured. My Father's sharp speeches were not mere im. provements of gall. But I do not defend them. Psychological analysis on the living individual subject is an operation that can with difficulty be kept within the bounds of Christian justice and charity; even if we have a right to cut the pound of flesh at all, how can we be sure of cutting it exactly? But most to be blamed are they who repeat these keen sayings,-treasuring up the darts which they have not the skill to forge,-and bring them to the ears of those very persons, who are least likely to see their truth and most liable to feel their sharpness, the persons of whom they are said. There is a third part of this subject, respecting which I refer the reader to an apology by Mr. C. himself, placed at the end of vol. i. of the Poetical Works; I mean his flights of extravagant satire, the real object of which existed nowhere but in the Limbo of wild imagination. These extravagances of his early day, though I believe his own account of them to be strictly true-indeed can see the truth of it on the face of the productions themselves, have given me great pain; not for the vials of wrath that have been poured forth on occasion of them; they were filled, I well knew, mainly from another cistern ; but be 10 It is not my Father's rash sayings, but his conscientious and well weighed ones, his warm opposition to the “anti-national " policy, his free opinion of the philosophy of certain Northern schools,-his venturing to find fault with some of their Most Profound and Irrefragable Doctorsthat has ever excited, and still does excite, the animosity of the Northern critics against him. His politics were a reproach, his philosophy a disparagement to theirs, and the B. L. added vinegar to the bitters of the cup. What my Father said of Hume in the Lay Sermon, is styled by the E. Reviewer (who puts on the Scotch mantle for the nonce), "a mean and malignant fabrication," "a transition from cant to calumny,” “ sting, the venom of which returned into his own bosoin, to exhaust itself in a bloated passage," &c. Supposing the anecdote untrue, of which the reviewer gives no proof (his calling it a fabrication of my Father's is a gratuitous assertion" on his own part), where was the deep malignity ascribing to Hume at his death a sentiment undeniably consonant with the tenor of his life? The reviewer could not deny that he "devoted his a cause I see in these productions, though inspired by a petulant fancy rather than by an angry heart, the one stain upon the face of my Father's literary character. Yet though I deeply regret in regard to both, but by far the most in regard to one of them, life to undermining the Christian religion;" why then should he rage so at the second clause of the sentence, "expended his last breath in a blasphemous regret that he had not survived it?" Was it more discreditable to wish Christianity extinct than to have deliberately endeavored to-destroy it? However if there be no authority for the anecdote reported in the Lay Sermon, a mark shall be set against it in future. Mr. Coleridge's "ignorant petulance" on the subject of Hume's history has been amply confirmed by examiners on opposite sides in politics since the opinion was expressed. If that history be faulty at all, it is not superficially so but internally and radically-it is to a considerable extent virtually faithless and misleading; no one less cool, calm, and able than Hume could have given so misleading a representation of a certain most important part of English history. Like Hobbes, because he had no eye for a spiritual law, and because man must find firm ground to rest on somewhere, Hume rested his whole weight on human authority and kingshipan earthly divine right. Every one must admire his fine talents, must like his kindly and gentle nature; but is not an Infidel writer's hand against every Christian, and must not every Christian's hand be against him,—not of course to write a word that is untrue concerning his life and actions, but to struggle with him when he strives against eternal hopes,-nay to trample on him, when, like Caiaphas in Dante's penal realm, he lies across the way if that be the way of faith and salvation? Surely the Scotch may well afford to let Hume be judged according to his works,—I should rather say to let his works be judged according to their contents. They are not so deficient in worthies whom a Christian can approve that they must vehemently patronize the patron of despotism and infidelity. My Father did not abuse him because he was a Scotchman; he had contended warmly against Infidels in Germany, partial as he was to Germans and German writers. One thing I regret in Mr. Carlyle's admirable essay on Johnson, that deep-hearted essay !—the parallel at the end between Johnson and Hume. Oh! surely Hume should not have been set over against Johnson, who could not have looked him in the face without shuddering, and turning pale for sorrow! Right loath should I be to consider these Boreal blasts and Scotch mists, that have so outraged and obscured the Exteesian domain, as coming from bonny Scotland at large. The man of genius-the wise and liberal critic -is always a true Briton-neither English, Irish, nor Scotch. Acer Septentrio to S. T. C.-but this is a synecdoche-part for the whole. I have necessarily been looking of late more at the bad weather of my Father's literary life, the rough gales and chilling snow-falls,-than at its calm that he should ever have penned such pieces or suffered them to get abroad, I do not blame him for including them in his works when it was plain that they could not be suppressed. The wine was coarse and burning, but it was the same, however bad a sample, as that which glows in Kubla Khan and The Ancient Mariner, and no production, marked with a peculiar genius, if short and rememberable, will perish, though of small merit,especially when other more considerable fruits of that genius are before the world. It will ever be a grief to those interested in my Father's name that, when a young man, he wrote a lampoon, in sport, upon a good and gifted contemporary; but I scarce know what he could do more, after shooting off an arrow, which others would preserve on account of its curious make or some fantastic plumage with which its shaft was adorned, than try to blunt its point, and beg that it might be considered only as a plaything. The Apologetic Preface has been much misrepresented: it has been represented as a defence and a sophistical one; if it were intended as a defence or vindication it would be sophistical indeed; but it is no such thing: it is an apology in the modern sense of the term; that is an excuse. "It was not my intention, I said, to justify the publication, whatever its author's feelings might have been at the time of composing it. That they are caleulated to call forth so severe a reprobation from a good man, is not the worst feature of such poems. Their moral deformity is aggravated in proportion to the pleasure which they are capable and sunshine but these were not present always, and I trust they will henceforth be infrequent. Non semper imbres dulce-poeticos Myrteta Colerigi laborant Vitibus et viduantur ulmi. The twining vines are popularity and usefulness: the elms literary pro ductions of slow growth and stately character. of affording to vindictive, turbulent, and unprincipled readers."" Notwithstanding this declaration, an admirer of Mr. Pitt has affirmed that "the Apology is throughout defensive." As this charge is made in the shape of mere assertion "to refute it with not" will perhaps be sufficient. This and other assertions of the Pittite may be met with the counter-assertion, that the Preface contains neither "metaphysical jargon," " unphilosophical sentimentality," nor "wire-drawn argumentation," but expresses in clear language, and illustrates, I think, with some eloquence, the simple but not uninteresting psychological fact, that the wilder and more extravagant a satire appears, the more it contains of devious irrelevant fancy, and the less of individual application, or any attempt to give an air of reality and truth of fact to the representation, the less harm it does and the less of deliberate malice it shows.12 Such attacks may indeed be insults, but they are very seldom injuries, except so far as the one is the other. Had no one said worse of Mr. Coleridge himself than that the Old One was sure of him at last, he would never have complained so bitterly as he sometimes did of the mischiefs of the tongue. When Mr. Hatelight and Mr. Enmity employ a skilful artist to paint their enemy's portrait, he does not take a plain likeness of Satan and put the enemy's name under it; he takes the enemy's face as a foundation, and superinduces that of Satan upon it; there are perhaps few strongly marked minds that may not, with pains and skill, be made to assume somewhat of a Satanic aspect. 11 Poet. Works, vol. i., p. 275. The next sentence shows impliedly that palliation is the writer's aim. See also p. 280. 12 Mere outward marks for the identifying of the object, as "letters four do form his name," are distinct from individualizing features of mind. The admirer of Mr. Pitt, who is so dissatisfied with the Apologetic Preface, is highly displeased because Mr. Coleridge did not express the deepest contrition for his censures of that minister, without sufficiently considering, that, as Mr. Coleridge's opinion of the Pitt policy continued pretty much the same throughout his life, he could not repent of it to please Mr. Pitt's devotees; and that he expressed quite as much regret for, and disapproval of, his "flame-colored" language on the subject as may suffice to satisfy any but partisans and bigots, whom he never considered it his duty to conciliate. Let them pour out their streams of "trash," "nonsense,' "jargon," "muddy metaphysics" over his pages; of the abundance of the head the mouth speaketh when it speaks at this rate. |