non admirari hominem admiratione dignissimum, quia videre, complecti, nec laudare tantum, verum etiam amare contingit.""" I had just entered on my seventeenth year, when the sonnets of Mr. Bowles, twenty in number, and just then published in a quarto pamphlet," were first made known and presented to me, by a schoolfellow who had quitted us for the University, and who, during the whole time that he was in our first form (or in our school language a Grecian), had been my patron and protector. I refer to Dr. Middleton, the truly learned, and every way excellent Bishop of Calcutta: qui laudibus amplis Ingenium celebrare meum, calamumque solebat, Obruta; vivit amor, vivit dolor; ora negatur Dulcia conspicere; at flere et meminisse relictum est.14 It was a double pleasure to me, and still remains a tender recollection, that I should have received from a friend so revered the first knowledge of a poet, by whose works, year after year, I was so enthusiastically delighted and inspired. My earliest acquaintances will not have forgotten the undisciplined eagerness and impetuous zeal, with which 1 labored to make proselytes, not only of my companions, but of all with whom I conversed, o. whatever rank, and in whatever place. As my school finances did not permit me to purchase copies, I made, within less than a year and a half, more than forty transcriptions, as the best presents I could offer to those, who had in any way won my regard. And with almost equal delight did I receive the three or four following publications of the same author. Though I have seen and known enough of mankind to be well aware, that I shall perhaps stand alone in my creed, and that it 12 [Epist. I., p. 16. Ed.] 13 [The volume here mentioned appears to have been the second edition of Mr. Bowles's Sonnets, published in 1789, and containing twenty-one in number. The first edition with fourteen sonnets only had been published half a year previously. Ed.] 14 [Petrarc Epist. I., 1. Barbato Subnonensi. Bishop Middleton left Christ's Hospital on the 26th of September, 1788, on having been elected to Pembroke College, Cambridge. Ed will be well, if I subject myself to no worse charge than that of singularity; I am not, therefore, deterred from avowing, that I regard, and ever have regarded the obligations of intellect among the most sacred of the claims of gratitude. A valuable thought, or a particular train of thoughts, gives me additional pleasure, when I can safely refer and attribute it to the conversation or correspondence of another. My obligations to Mr. Bowles were indeed important, and for radical good. At a very premature age, even before my fifteenth year, I had bewildered myself in metaphysics, and in theological controversy." Nothing else pleased me. History, and particular facts, lost all interest in my mind. Poetry-(though for a school-boy of that age, I was above par in English versification, and had already produced two or three compositions which, I may venture to say, without reference to my age, were somewhat above mediocrity," and which had gained me more credit than the sound, good sense of my old master was at all pleased with)-poetry itself, yea, novels and romances, became insipid to me. In my friendless wanderings on our leave-days" (for I was an orphan, and had scarcely any connexions in London), highly was I delighted, if any passenger especially if he were dressed in black, would enter into conversation with me. For I soon found the means of directing it to my favorite subjects 15 ["Come back into memory," says Lamb, "like as thou wast in the day-spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee-the dark pillar not yet turned-Samuel Taylor Coleridge.-Logician, Metaphysician, Bard!-How have I seen the casual passer through the cloister stand still, intranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Lamblichus, or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxed not pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar,-while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charityboy!" Prose Works, II., p. 46. Ed.] 16 [See amongst his Juvenile Poems the lines entitled, Time Real and Imaginary (Poet. Works, I.), which is the first decided indication of his poetic and metaphysical genius together, and was written in his sixteenth year. Ed] 17 The Christ's Hospital phrase, not for holidays altogether, but for those on which the boys are permitted to go beyond the precincts of the school. Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate, This preposterous pursuit was, beyond doubt, injurious both tc my natural powers, and to the progress of my education. It would, perhaps, have been destructive, had it been continued; but from this I was auspiciously withdrawn, partly indeed by an accidental introduction to an amiable family, chiefly, however, by the genial influence of a style of poetry, so tender and yet so manly, so natural and real, and yet so dignified and harmonious, as the sonnets and other early poems of Mr. Bowles. Well would it have been for me, perhaps, had I never relapsed into the same mental disease; if I had continued to pluck the flower and reap the harvest from the cultivated surface, instead of delving in the unwholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic And if in after time I have sought a refuge from bodily pain and mismanaged sensibility in abstruse researches, which exercised the strength and subtilty of the understanding without awakening the feelings of the heart; still there was a long and blessed interval, during which my natural faculties were allow. ed to expand, and my original tendencies to develope themselves; -my fancy, and the love of nature, and the sense of beauty in forms and sounds.18 18 [For not to think of what I needs must feel, And haply by abstruse research to steal From my own nature all the natural man This was my sole resource, my only plan: Till that which suits a part infects the whole, Poet. Works, i., p. 238. The passage in the text has been more than once cited by those who cite nothing else from the writings of Coleridge, as warning authority against the pursuit of metaphysic science. With what candor or good sense let those judge, who know and appreciate the persistent labor of his life, and recollect that all the great verities of religion are ideas, the practical apprehension of, and faith in, which have in every age of the Church been, as from the constitution of the human mind they must necessarily be vitally affected by the metaphysic systems from time to time prevailing The second advantage, which I owe to my early perusal, and admiration of these poems (to which let me add, though knowr to me at a somewhat later period, the Lewesdon Hill of Mr. It is indeed to be observed that those who are so zealous in decrying metaphysic, and more especially psychological investigations, and spend entire sermons in reasoning against reason, have nevertheless invariably a particular system of metaphysics and even of psychology of their own, which they will as little surrender as examine. And what system? In nine cases out of ten, a patchwork of empirical positions, known historically to be directly repugnant to the principles maintained as well by the Reformers as the Fathers of the Catholic Church, and leading legitimately to conclusions subversive of the fundamental articles of the Christian faith. That those conclusions, indeed, have not been able to obtain a fixed footing within our Church, as they have long since done to a fearful extent elsewhere, is, under God's providence, mainly attributable to the reading of the Liturgy and Scriptures in the ears of the people. Yet who will not tremble at the dilemma in the case of an individual clergyman, who either sees the contrariety between his philosophical and religious creeds, and continues to hold both, or not seeing it, is at the mercy of the first Socinian reasoner who helps him to perceive it? ness. This vulgar scorn of the science of the human mind, its powers, capacities, and objects, as an essential part or fore-ground of the science of theology, is to be found passim in the written and oral teaching of those who, to use a confessedly inaccurate but very significant phrase, lead the Calvinistic and Arminian parties within the Church in England. To the former it seems more natural in respect of their being, upon the whole, men of lower education, meaner attainments, and more limited abilities. -in the latter, and especially in the most eminent of the latter, it is selfcontradiction, and has the appearance, to calm observers, of mere wilfulFor in the perusal of the many eloquent volumes which have proceeded of late years from the latter, there may be found metaphysic and even psychological arguments, which show a knowledge of Aristotle, and also-quod minime reris—an acquaintance with Coleridge,-the last, howwithout recognition by name, and speedily atoned for in a followingpage by some religious dehortation, or sullen dogma of contrary import. It is evident, therefore, that the particular system is the object of dislike. Would it not be more agreeable to the sincerity of lovers of truth, and to the courtesy of men of letters, to meet, commend or censure, adopt or reject, what stands in their path in a perfectly questionable shape, than to pass by on the other side in affected ignorance or contempt? Can the Aids to Reflection be honestly pretermitted by a divine of this day, or ought the only use made of it by a gentleman to be-to borrow from it without acknowledgment?-But it is a true saying, that they who begin by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving their own ever, Crowe) bears more immediately on my present subject. Among those with whom I conversed, there were, of course, very many who had formed their taste, and their notions of poetry, from the writings of Pope and his followers; or to speak more generally, in that school of French poetry, condensed and invigorated by English understanding, which had predominated from the last century. I was not blind to the merits of this school, yet, as from inexperience of the world, and consequent want of sympa. thy with the general subjects of these poems, they gave me little pleasure, I doubtless undervalued the kind, and with the presumption of youth withheld from its masters the legitimate name of poets. I saw that the excellence of this kind consisted in just and acute observations on men and manners in an artificial state of society, as its matter and substance; and in the logic of wit, conveyed in smooth and strong epigrammatic couplets, as its form that even when the subject was addressed to the fancy, or the intellect, as in the Rape of the Lock, or the Essay on -sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving themselves better than all. This is something of a digression, but it is needed. It can hardly be necessary to remark, that Mr. Coleridge is only speaking relatively to his youth, and his vocation as a poet, and the proportion which metaphysical studies should bear in a well-ordered education to the exercise of the imagination, and the observation of external nature. Something also was, no doubt, intended against particular books and lines of research, which, in his almost limitless range, he had perused or followed. There are unwholesome books in metaphysics as there are in divinity and romance, but not so many or so injurious by half; and it is just as wise to proscribe the former on account of Spinóza or Hume, as it would be to prohibit the latter for Socinius or Paul de Kock. No man could be a great metaphysician, or make an epoch in the history of the science without an acquaintance as extensive as Mr. C.'s with all that had been done or attempted before him; but such a course is not more necessary to the edu cation of the mind in general, to which the elements of metaphysic knowledge are essential, than five years' attendance at the State Paper Office to the accomplishment of a gentleman in the history of England; and it may perhaps be admitted that the philosophic spell which overmastered Coleridge's advancing manhood for ever slacked the strings of the enchanting lyre of his youth. But on this we can only speculate. Ed.] 19 [Lewesdon Hill was first published in 1786; there was a second edi. tion in 1788, and a third in 1804. Ed.] |