xxxii Charity believeth all things, not blindly,

discipline with Schelling, by reflection upon the doctrines of Kant, their perfect reasonableness, so far as they advanced beyond all previous thought, their unsatisfactoriness where they stopped short, and clung, in words at least, to the old dogmatism, might have been led into modes of rectifying and completing his system similar to those which Schelling adopted? That Coleridge does not appear to have gone beyond the subtle German in the path of discovery is insufficient to prove, that he might not independently have gone as far; for we do not commonly see that more than one important advance is made in metaphysical science at any one period. Berkeleyanism presented itself to the mind of Arthur Collier before he had read a syllable of Berkeley's metaphysical writings, and he maintained the non-existence of matter by arguments substantially the same as those employed in the Principles of Human Knowledge and "Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, without communication, as we may reasonably suppose, with their admirable author.16 Let us suppose Collier to have been a man careless and immethodical in his habits, continually diverted from regular scientific inquiry by a "shaping spirit of imagination,"-one whose disposition led him to be ever seeking matter for new thought, rather than labouring to reduce into presentable order that which he had already acquired; let us further suppose that, before he had given expression to his views in a regular treatise, the works of Berkeley had fallen in his way; would it not almost inevitably have happened, that the conceptions, floating in his mind, but not yet fixed in language, would have

16 See Mr. Benson's Memoirs of Collier, pp. 18, 19.

mixed themselves up indistinguishably with those of the older author, and assumed the same form? But if the form into which his thoughts were thrown had been the same with that adopted by his "predecessor though contemporary," the philosophy of the two would have been identical, for Collier's view neither materially added to Berkeley's nor varied from it. On such considerations as these it may surely be deemed possible, that my Father did not wholly deceive himself, much less wilfully seek to deceive others, when he affirmed that "the main and fundamental ideas" of Schelling's system were born and matured in his mind before he read the works of Schelling; and if such a belief would do no great discredit to the head of any inquirer into this question, how much more honourable to his heart would be the readiness to think thus, especially of one whose services in the cause of truth are at this time wholly denied by none but his personal or party enemies, than the impulse to fling it aside with a scornful "credat Judæus Apella, non ego!" Those were the words of a Heathen Satirist. We Christians know, that it was not credulity, but want of faith and of a spirit quicker to discern truth and goodness than to suspect imposture and evil, by which they of the circumcision were most painfully characterized.1

17 When I had written thus far I received a letter from Mr.

Green, containing the following remarks: "It would not be difficult, I apprehend, to shew that he (Coleridge) might have worked out a system, not dissimilar to Schelling's in its essential features. What however did Coleridge himself mean by the fundamental truths of Schelling's scheme? It is very true that the reader of the Biographia is under the necessity of supposing, that he meant the doctrines, which he has adopted in the passages taken from Schelling's works: but I confess that

But the writer in Blackwood, out of his great zeal in behalf of the plundered and aggrieved, would not only deprive Coleridge of his whole credit as a philosopher-he would fain take from him some of the

66

I strongly doubt that such was the meaning of Coleridge. My acquaintance with S. T. C. commenced with the intention of studying the writings of Schelling; but after a few interviews the design was given up, in consequence of Coleridge declaring his dissent from Schelling's doctrines; and he began immediately the exposition of his own views.

"This perhaps renders the Biographia more inexplicable. For herein S. T. C. assumes the originality of Schelling--which can only be received with great qualifications—and is content to have it admitted, that the agreements between himself and Schelling were the coincidences of two minds working on the same subject and in the same direction. Now this is the more remarkable, that it may be shewn, that many or most of the views entertained by Coleridge, at least at the period of our first acquaintance, might have been derived from other sources, and that his system differs essentially from that of Schelling. Some light might perhaps be thrown upon this interesting question by a knowledge, which unfortunately I do not possess, of the circumstances under which the fragment called the Biographia was drawn up. It is possible, no doubt, that Coleridge's opinions might have undergone a change between the period, at which the B. L. was published, and that at which I had the happiness of becoming acquainted with him. But at the latter period his doctrines were based upon the self same principles, which he retained to his dying hour, and differing as they do fundamentally from those of Schelling, I cannot but avow my conviction, that they were formed at a much earlier period, nay that they were growths of his own mind, growing with his growth, strengthening with his strength, the result of a Platonic spirit, the stirrings of which had already evinced themselves in his early boyhood, and which had been only modified, and indirectly shaped and developed by the German school."

"That in the B. L. when developing his own scheme of thought, he adopted the outward form, in which Schelling had clothed his thoughts, knowing, that is to say, that the formula

brightest gems in his poetic wreath itself." It is thus that two couplets, exemplifying the Homeric and Ovidian metres,19 are described by his candid judge; and in the same spirit he describes my Father as hav

was Schelling's, though forgetting that it was also the language of Schelling, may be attributed to idleness, carelessness, or to any fault of the kind which deserves a harsher name; but certainly not to dishonesty, not to any desire of obtaining reputation at the expense, and by the spoliation, of the intellectual labours of another-and can form no ground for denying to him the name of a powerful and original thinker. And the unacknowledged use of the quotations from Schelling in the B. L. which have been the pretext for branding him with the opprobrious name of plagiarist, are only evidences, in my humble judgment at least, of his disregard to reputation, and of a selflessness, (if I may be allowed such a term, in order to mark an absence of the sense of self, which constituted an inherent defect in his character,) which caused him to neglect the means of vindicating his claim to the originality of the system, which was the labour of his life and the fruit of his genius."

19 He pronounces them in part worse, in no respect a whit better than the originals.

Im pentameter drauf fällt sie melodisch herab.

In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.

To my ear, as I fancy, the light dactylic flow of the latter half of the pentameter, is still more exquisite in the English than in the German, though the spondee which commences the latter is an advantage. The English line is rather the more liquid of the two, and the word "back," with which it closes, almost imitates the plash of the refluent water against the ground.

Even from the sentence on the inferiority of Coleridge's Homeric verses there might perhaps be an appeal: but neither in German nor in English could a pair of hexameters be made to present such variety in unity, such a perfect little whole, as the elegiac distich.

Readers may compare the translated verses with the original in the last edition of Coleridge's Poems in one volume; where they will also find the poem of Stolberg, which suggested, and partly produced, my Father's Lines on a Cataract.

ing sought to conceal the fact, that they were translated from Schiller, a poet whose works are perhaps as generally read here as those of Shakespeare in Germany.

The expression "brightest gems" however is meant to include Lines on a Cataract, which are somewhat more conspicuous in Coleridge's poetic wreath than the pair of distiches; in these he is said to have closely adopted the metre, language and thoughts of another man. Now the metre, language and thoughts of Stolberg's poem are all in Coleridge's expansion of it, but those of the latter are not all contained in the former, any more than the budding rose contains all the riches of the rose full blown. 66 'It is but a shadow," says the critic, "a glorified shadow perhaps," but still only a shadow cast from another man's "substance." Is not such glory the substance, or part of the substance, of poetic merit? How much of admired poetry must we not unsubstantialize, if the reproduction of what was before, with additions and improvements, is to be made a shadow of? That which is most exquisite in the Lines on a Cataract is Coleridge's own: though some may even prefer Stolberg's striking original. These and the verses from Schiller were added to the poetical works of Mr. Coleridge by his late Editor. tended the edition, into which they were first inserted, himself, he would, perhaps, have made references to Schiller and Stolberg in these instances, as he had done in others; if he neglected to do so, it could not have been in any expectation of keeping to himself what he

had borrowed from them.

Had the author superin

Lastly, Mr. Coleridge's obligations to Schelling in Lecture VIII. on Poesy and Art are spoken of by the writer in Blackwood, after his own manner.