Thus inauspiciously commenced, there was no reason why the Bristol lectures of 1814 should be more successful than the London Inst.i.tution lectures of 1808; nor were they, it appears, in fact. They are said to have been "spa.r.s.ely attended,"--no doubt owing to the natural unwillingness of people to pay for an hour"s contemplation of an empty platform; and their pecuniary returns in consequence were probably insignificant. Coleridge remained in Bristol till the month of August, when he returned to London.
The painful task of tracing his downward course is now almost completed. In the middle of this year he touched the lowest point of his descent. Cottle, who had a good deal of intercourse with him by speech and letter in 1814, and who had not seen him since 1807, was shocked by his extreme prostration, and then for the first time ascertained the cause. "In 1814," he says in his _Recollections_, "S. T. C. had been long, very long, in the habit of taking from two quarts of laudanum a week to a pint a day, and on one occasion he had been known to take in the twenty-four hours a whole quart of laudanum.
The serious expenditure of money resulting from this habit was the least evil, though very great, and must have absorbed all the produce of his writings and lectures and the liberalities of his friends."
Cottle addressed to him a letter of not very delicate remonstrance on the subject, to which Coleridge replied in his wontedly humble strain.
There is a certain Pharisaism about the Bristol poet-publisher which renders it necessary to exercise some little caution in the acceptance of his account of Coleridge"s condition; but the facts, from whatever source one seeks them, appear to acquit him of any exaggeration in his summing up of the melancholy matter. "A general impression," he says, "prevailed on the minds of Coleridge"s friends that it was a desperate case, that paralysed all their efforts; that to a.s.sist Coleridge with money which, under favourable circ.u.mstances would have been most promptly advanced, would now only enlarge his capacity to obtain the opium which was consuming him. We merely knew that Coleridge had retired with his friend, Mr. John Morgan, to a small house at Calne in Wiltshire."
It must have been at Calne, then, that Coleridge composed the series of "Letters to Mr. Justice Fletcher concerning his charge to the Grand Jury of the county of Wexford, at the summer a.s.sizes in 1814," which appeared at intervals in the _Courier_ between 20th September and 10th December of this year. Their subject, a somewhat injudiciously animated address to the aforesaid Grand Jury on the subject of the relations between Catholicism and Protestantism in Ireland, was well calculated to stimulate the literary activity of a man who always took something of the keen interest of the modern Radical in the eternal Irish question; and the letters are not wanting either in argumentative force or in grave impressiveness of style. But their lack of spring and energy as compared with Coleridge"s earlier work in journalism is painfully visible throughout.
Calne, it is to be supposed, was still Coleridge"s place of abode when Southey (17th October) wrote Cottle that letter which appears in his _Correspondence_, and which ill.u.s.trates with such sad completeness the contrast between the careers of the two generous, romantic, brilliant youths who had wooed their wives together--and between the fates, one must add, of the two sisters who had listened to their wooing--eighteen years before: a letter as honourable to the writer as it is the reverse to its subject. "Can you," asks Southey, "tell me anything of Coleridge? A few lines of introduction for a son of Mr.---- of St. James"s, in your city, are all that we have received from him since I saw him last September twelvemonth (1813) in town. The children being thus left entirely to chance, I have applied to his brothers at Ottey (Ottery?) concerning them, and am in hopes through their means and the a.s.sistance of other friends of sending Hartley to college.
Lady Beaumont has promised 30 a year for the purpose, and Poole 10.
I wrote to Coleridge three or four months ago, telling him that unless he took some steps in providing for this object I must make the application, and required his answer within a given term of three weeks. He received the letter, and in his note by Mr.----promised to answer it, but he has never taken any further notice of it. I have acted with the advice of Wordsworth. The brothers, as I expected, promise their concurrence, and I daily expect a letter stating to what extent they will contribute." With this letter before him an impartial biographer can hardly be expected to adopt the theory which has commended itself to the filial piety of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge-- namely, that it was through the father"s "influence" that the sons were sent to college. On a plain matter of fact such as this, one may be permitted, without indelicacy, to uphold the conclusions compelled by the evidence. Such expressions of opinion, on the other hand, as that Coleridge"s "separation from his family, brought about and continued through the force of circ.u.mstances over which he had far less control than has been commonly supposed, was in fact nothing else but an ever-prolonged absence;" and that "from first to last he took an affectionate, it may be said a pa.s.sionate, interest in the welfare of his children"--such expressions of mere opinion as these it may be proper enough to pa.s.s by in respectful silence.
The following year brought with it no improvement in the embarra.s.sed circ.u.mstances, no reform of the disordered life. Still domiciled with Mr. Morgan at Calne, the self-made sufferer writes to Cottle: "You will wish to know something of myself. In health I am not worse than when at Bristol I was best; yet fluctuating, yet unhappy, in circ.u.mstances poor indeed! I have collected my scattered and my ma.n.u.script poems sufficient to make one volume. Enough I have to make another. But, till the latter is finished, I cannot, without great loss of character, publish the former, on account of the arrangement, besides the necessity of correction. For instance, I earnestly wish to begin the volumes with what has never been seen by any, however few, such as a series of odes on the different sentences of the Lord"s Prayer, and, more than all this, to finish my greater work on "Christianity considered as philosophy, and as the only philosophy.""
Then follows a request for a loan of forty pounds on the security of the MSS., an advance which Cottle declined to make, though he sent Coleridge "some smaller temporary relief." The letter concludes with a reference to a project for taking a house and receiving pupils to h.o.a.rd and instruct, which Cottle appeared to consider the crowning "degradation and ignominy of all."
A few days later we find Lord Byron again coming to Coleridge"s a.s.sistance with a loan of a hundred pounds and words of counsel and encouragement. Why should not the author of Remorse repeat his success I "In Kean," writes Byron, "there is an actor worthy of expressing the thoughts of the character which you have every power of embodying, and I cannot but regret that the part of Ordonio was disposed of before his appearance at Drury Lane. We have had nothing to be mentioned in the same breath with Remorse for very many years, and I should think that the reception of that play was sufficient to encourage the highest hopes of author and audience." The advice was followed, and the drama of Zapolya was the result. It is a work of even less dramatic strength than its predecessor, and could scarcely, one thinks, have been as successful with an audience. It was not, however, destined to see the footlights. Before it had pa.s.sed the tribunal of the Drury Lane Committee it had lost the benefit of Byron"s patronage through the poet"s departure from England, and the play was rejected by Mr.
Douglas Kinnaird, the then reader for the theatre, who a.s.signed, according to Mr. Gillman, "some ludicrous objections to the metaphysics." Before leaving England, however, Byron rendered a last, and, as the result proved, a not unimportant service to his brother- poet. He introduced him to Mr. Murray, who, in the following year, undertook the publication of _Christabel_--the most successful, in the sense of the most popular, of all its author"s productions in verse.
With the coming of spring in the following year that dreary story of slow self-destruction, into which the narrative of Coleridge"s life from the age of thirty to that of forty-five resolves itself, was brought to a close. Coleridge had at last perceived that his only hope of redemption lay in a voluntary submission of his enfeebled will to the control of others, and he had apparently just enough strength of volition to form and execute the necessary resolve. He appears, in the first instance, to have consulted a physician of the name of Adams, who, on the 9th of April 1816, put himself in communication with Mr.
Gillman of Highgate. "A very learned, but in one respect an unfortunate gentleman, has," he wrote, "applied to me on a singular occasion. He has for several years been in the habit of taking large quant.i.ties of opium. For some time past he has been in vain endeavouring to break himself of it. It is apprehended his friends are not firm enough, from a dread lest he should suffer by suddenly leaving it off, though he is conscious of the contrary, and has proposed to me to submit himself to any regimen, however severe. With this view he wishes to fix himself in the house of some medical gentleman who will have the courage to refuse him any laudanum, and under whose a.s.sistance, should he be the worse for it, he may be relieved." Would such a proposal, inquires the writer, be absolutely inconsistent with Mr. Gillman"s family arrangements? He would not, he adds, have proposed it "but on account of the great importance of the character as a literary man. His communicative temper will make his society very interesting as well as useful." Mr. Gillman"s acquaintance with Dr. Adams was but slight, and he had had no previous intention of receiving an inmate into his house. But the case very naturally interested him; he sought an interview with Dr. Adams, and it was agreed that the latter should drive Coleridge to Highgate the following evening. At the appointed hour, however, Coleridge presented himself alone, and, after spending the evening at Mr. Gillman"s, left him, as even in his then condition he left most people who met him for the first time, completely captivated by the amiability of his manners and the charm of his conversation. The next day Mr. Gillman received from him a letter, finally settling the arrangement to place himself under the doctor"s care, and concluding with the following pathetic pa.s.sage:
"And now of myself. My ever wakeful reason and the keenness of my moral feelings will secure you from all unpleasant circ.u.mstances connected with me save only one, viz. the evasion of a specific madness. You will never hear anything but truth from me; prior habits render it out of my power to tell an untruth, but, unless carefully observed, I dare not promise that I should not, with regard to this detested poison, be capable of acting one. Not sixty hours have yet pa.s.sed without my having taken laudanum, though, for the last week, comparatively trifling doses. I have full belief that your anxiety need not be extended beyond the first week, and for the first week, I shall not, must not, be permitted to leave your house, unless with you; delicately or indelicately, this must be done, and both the servants, and the a.s.sistant, must receive absolute commands from you.
The stimulus of conversation suspends the terror that haunts my mind; but, when I am alone, the horrors I have suffered from laudanum, the degradation, the blighted utility, almost overwhelm me. If (as I feel for the _first time_ a soothing confidence that it will prove) I should leave you restored to my moral and bodily health, it is not myself only that will love and honour you; every friend I have (and, thank G.o.d! in spite of this wretched vice I have many and warm ones, who were friends of my youth, and have never deserted me) will thank you with reverence. I have taken no notice of your kind apologies. If I could not be comfortable in your house and with your family, I should deserve to be miserable."
This letter was written on a Sat.u.r.day, and on the following Monday Coleridge presented himself at Mr. Gillman"s, bringing in his hand the proof--sheets of _Christabel_, now printed for the first time. He had looked, as the letter just quoted shows, with a "soothing confidence" to leaving his retreat at some future period in a restored condition of moral and bodily health; and as regards the restoration, his confidence was in a great measure justified. But the friendly doors which opened to receive him on this 15th of April 1816, were destined to close only upon his departing bier. Under the watchful and almost reverential care of this well-chosen guardian, sixteen years of comparatively quiet and well-ordered life, of moderate but effective literary activity, and of gradual though never complete emanc.i.p.ation from his fatal habit, were reserved to him. He had still, as we shall see, to undergo certain recurrences of restlessness and renewals of pecuniary difficulty; his shattered health was but imperfectly and temporarily repaired; his "shaping spirit of imagination" could not and did not return; his transcendental broodings became more and more the "habit of his soul." But henceforth he recovers for us a certain measure of his long-lost dignity, and a figure which should always have been "meet for the reverence of the hearth" in the great household of English literature, but which had far too long and too deeply sunk below it, becomes once more a worthy and even a venerable presence. At evening-time it was light.
FOOTNOTES
1. Coleridge made the acquaintance of this gentleman, who became his enthusiastic disciple, in 1818. His chief interest for us is the fact that for the next seven years he was Coleridge"s correspondent.
Personally, he was a man of little judgment or critical discrimination, and his sense of the ridiculous may be measured by the following pa.s.sage. Speaking of the sweetness of Charles Lamb"s smile, he says that "there is still one man living, a stockbroker, who has that smile," and adds: "To those who wish to see the only thing left on earth, _if it is still left_, of Lamb, his best and most beautiful remain--his smile, I will indicate its possessor, Mr.---- of Throgmorton Street." How the original "possessor" of this apparently a.s.signable security would have longed to "feel Mr. Allsop"s head"!
CHAPTER IX
Life at Highgate-Renewed activity-Publications and re-publications--The _Biographia Literaria_--The lectures of 1818-Coleridge as a Shakespearian critic.
[1816-1818.]
The results of the step which Coleridge had just taken became speedily visible in more ways than one, and the public were among the first to derive benefit from it. For not only was he stimulated to greater activity of production, but his now more methodical way of life gave him time and inclination for that work of arrangement and preparation for the press which, distasteful to most writers, was no doubt especially irksome to him, and thus insured the publication of many pieces which otherwise might never have seen the light. The appearance of _Christabel_ was, as we have said, received with signal marks of popular favour, three editions being called for and exhausted in the same year. In 1816 there appeared also The Statesman"s Manual; or the Bible the best guide to Political Skill and Foresight: a Lay Sermon addressed to the higher cla.s.ses of Society, with an Appendix containing Comments and Essays connected with the Study of the Inspired Writings; in 1817, another _Lay Sermon addressed to the higher and middle cla.s.ses on the existing distresses and discontents;_ and in the same year followed the most important publication of this period, the _Biographia Literaria_.
In 1817, too, it was that Coleridge at last made his long-meditated collection and cla.s.sification of his already published poems, and that for the first time something approaching to a complete edition of the poet"s works was given to the world. The _Sibylline Leaves_, as this reissue was called, had been intended to be preceded by another volume of verse, and "accordingly on the printer"s signatures of every sheet we find Vol. II, appearing." Too characteristically, however, the scheme was abandoned, and Volume II. emerged from the press without any Volume I. to accompany it. The drama of _Zapolya_ followed in the same year, and proved more successful with the public than with the critic of Drury Lane. The "general reader" a.s.signed no "ludicrous objections to its metaphysics;" on the contrary, he took them on trust, as his generous manner is, and _Zapolya_, published thus as a Christmas tale, became so immediately popular that two thousand copies were sold in six weeks. In the year 1818 followed the three-volume selection of essays from the _Friend_, a reissue to which reference has already been made. With the exception of _Christabel_, however, all the publications of these three years unfortunately proceeded from the house of Gale and Fenner, a firm which shortly afterwards became bankrupt; and Coleridge thus lost all or nearly all of the profits of their sale.
The most important of the new works of this period was, as has been said, the _Biographia Literaria_, or, to give it its other t.i.tle, _Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions_. Its interest, however, is wholly critical and ill.u.s.trative; as a narrative it would be found extremely disappointing and probably irritating by the average reader. With the exception of one or two incidental disclosures, but little biographical information is to be derived from it which is not equally accessible from sources independent of the author; and the almost complete want of sequence and arrangement renders it a very inconvenient work of reference even for these few biographical details. Its main value is to be found in the contents of seven chapters, from the fourteenth to the twentieth; but it is not going too far to say that, in respect of these, it is literally priceless. No such a.n.a.lysis of the principles of poetry--no such exact discrimination of what was sound in the modern "return-to- nature" movement from what was false--has ever been accomplished by any other critic, or with such admirable completeness by this consummate critic at any other time. Undoubtedly it is not of the light order of reading; none, or very little, of Coleridge"s prose is. The whole of chapter xv., for instance, in which the specific elements of "poetic power" are "distinguished from general talent determined to poetic composition by accidental motives," requires a close and sustained effort of the attention, but those who bestow it will find it amply re- paid. I know of no dissertation conceived and carried out in terms of the abstract which in the result so triumphantly justifies itself upon application to concrete cases, As regards the question of poetic expression, and the laws by which its true form is determined, Coleridge"s a.n.a.lysis is, it seems to me, final. I cannot, at least, after the most careful reflection upon it, conceive it as being other than the absolutely last word on the subject. Reasoning and ill.u.s.tration are alike so convincing that the reader, like the contentious student who listened unwillingly to his professor"s demonstration of the first proposition of Euclid, is compelled to confess that "he has nothing to reply." To the judicious admirer of Wordsworth, to every one who, while recognising Wordsworth"s inestimable services to English literature as the leader of the naturalist reaction in poetry, has yet been vaguely conscious of the defect in his poetic theory, and very keenly conscious of the vices of his poetic practice,--to all such persons it must be a profound relief and satisfaction to be guided as unerringly as Coleridge guides them to the "parting of the ways" of truth and falsity in Wordsworth"s doctrines, and to be enabled to perceive that nothing which has offended him in that poet"s thought and diction has any real connection with whatever in the poet"s principles has commanded his a.s.sent. There is no one who has ever felt uneasy under the blasphemies of the enemy but must entertain deep grat.i.tude for so complete a discharge as Coleridge has procured him from the task of defending such lines as
"And I have travelled far as Hull to see What clothes he might have left or other property."
Defend them indeed the ordinary reader probably would not, preferring even the abandonment of his theory to a task so humiliating. But the theory has so much of truth and value in it that the critic who has redeemed it from the discredit of Wordsworth"s misapplications of it is ent.i.tled to the thanks of every friend of simplicity, who is at the same time an enemy of bathos. There is no longer any reason to treat the deadly commonplaces, amid which we toil through so many pages of the _Excursion_, as having any true theoretic affinity with its but too occasional majestic interludes. The smooth square-cut blocks of prose which insult the natural beauty of poetic rock and boulder even in such a scene of naked moorland grandeur as that of _Resolution and Independence_ are seen and shown to be the mere intruders which we have all felt them to be. To the Wordsworthian, anxious for a full justification of the faith that is in him, the whole body of Coleridge"s criticism on his friend"s poetry in the _Biographia Literaria_ may be confidently recommended. The refutation of what is untenable in Wordsworth"s theory, the censure p.r.o.nounced upon certain characteristics of his practice, are made all the more impressive by the tone of cordial admiration which distinguishes every personal reference to the poet himself, and by the unfailing discrimination with which the critic singles out the peculiar beauties of his poetry. No finer selection of finely characteristic Wordsworthian pa.s.sages could perhaps have been made than those which Coleridge has quoted in ill.u.s.tration of his criticisms in the eighteenth and two following chapters of the _Biographia Literaria_. For the rest, however, unless indeed one excepts the four chapters on the Hartleian system and its relation to the German school of philosophy, the book is rather one to be dipped into for the peculiar pleasure which an hour in Coleridge"s company must always give to any active intelligence, than to be systematically studied with a view to perfecting one"s conception of Coleridge"s philosophical and critical genius considered in its totality.
As to the two lay sermons, the less ambitious of them is decidedly the more successful. The advice to "the higher and middle cla.s.ses" on the existing distresses and discontents contains at least an ingredient of the practical; its distinctively religious appeals are varied by sound political and economical arguments; and the enumeration and exposure of the various artifices by which most orators are accustomed to delude their hearers is as masterly as only Coleridge could have made it. Who but he, for instance, could have thrown a piece of subtle observation into a form in which reason and fancy unite so happily to impress it on the mind as in the following pa.s.sage: "The mere appeal to the auditors, whether the arguments are not such that none but an idiot or an hireling could resist, is an effective subst.i.tute for any argument at all. For mobs have no memories. They are in nearly the same state as that of an individual when he makes what is termed a bull. _The pa.s.sions, like a fused metal, fill up the wide interstices of thought and supply the defective links; and thus incompatible a.s.sertions are harmonised by the sensation, without the sense of connection_." The other lay sermon, however, the _Statesman"s Manual_, is less appropriately conceived. Its originating proposition, that the Bible is "the best guide to political skill and foresight," is undoubtedly open to dispute, but might nevertheless be capable of plausible defence upon _ priori_ grounds. Coleridge, however, is not content with this method of procedure; as, indeed, with so avowedly practical an object in view he scarcely could be, for a "manual" is essentially a work intended for the constant consultation of the artificer in the actual performance of his work, and ought at least to contain ill.u.s.trations of the application of its general principles to particular cases. It is in undertaking to supply these that the essential mysticism of Coleridge"s counsels comes to light. For instance: "I am deceived if you will not be compelled to admit that the prophet Isaiah revealed the true philosophy of the French Revolution more than two thousand years before it became a sad irrevocable truth of history. "And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever, so that thou didst not lay these things to thy heart neither didst remember the latter end of it.... Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth, etc."" And to this ast-quoted sentence Coleridge actually appends the following note: "The reader will scarcely fail to find in this verse a remembrancer of the sudden setting in of the frost before the usual time (in a country, too, where the commencement of its two seasons is in general scarcely less regular than that of the wet and dry seasons between the tropics) which caused, and the desolation which accompanied, the flight from Moscow." One can make no other comment upon this than that if it really be wisdom which statesmen would do well to lay to heart, the late Dr.
c.u.mming must have been the most profound instructor in statesmanship that the world has ever seen. A prime minister of real life, however, could scarcely be seriously recommended to shape his policy upon a due consideration of the possible allegoric meaning of a pa.s.sage in Isaiah, to say nothing of the obvious objection that this kind of appeal to _Sortes Biblicae_ is dangerously liable to be turned against those who recommend it. On the whole, one must say of this lay sermon that it justifies the apprehension expressed by the author in its concluding pages. It does rather "resemble the overflow of an earnest mind than an orderly and premeditated," in the sense, at any rate, of a well- considered "composition."
In the month of January 1818 Coleridge once more commenced the delivery of a course of lectures in London. The scope of this series-fourteen in number was, as will be seen from the subjoined syllabus, an immensely comprehensive one. The subject of the first was "the manners, morals, literature, philosophy, religion, and state of society in general in European Christendom, from the eighth to the fifteenth century;" and of the second "the tales and metrical romances common for the most part to England, Germany, and the north of France; and English songs and ballads continued to the reign of Charles I." In the third the lecturer proposed to deal with the poetry of Chaucer and Spenser, of Petrarch, and of Ariosto, Pulci, and Boiardo. The fourth, fifth, and sixth were to be devoted to the dramatic works of Shakespeare, and to comprise the substance of Coleridge"s former courses on the same subject, "enlarged and varied by subsequent study and reflection." In the seventh he was to treat of the other princ.i.p.al dramatists of the Elizabethan period, Ben Jonson, Ma.s.singer, and Beaumont and Fletcher; in the eighth of the life and all the works of Cervantes; in the ninth of Rabelais, Swift, and Sterne, with a dissertation "on the nature and const.i.tuents of genuine humour, and on the distinctions of humorous from the witty, the fanciful, the droll, the odd, etc." Donne, Dante, and Milton formed the subject of the tenth; the _Arabian Nights Entertainment_, and the _romantic_ use of the supernatural in poetry, that of the eleventh.
The twelfth was to be on "tales of witches and apparitions, etc.," as distinguished from magic and magicians of Asiatic origin; and the thirteenth,--"on colour, sound, and form in nature, as connected with Poesy--the word "Poesy" being used as the generic or cla.s.s term including poetry, music, painting, statuary, and ideal architecture as its species, the reciprocal relations of poetry and philosophy to each other, and of both to religion and the moral sense."" In the fourteenth and final lecture Coleridge proposed to discuss "the corruptions of the English language since the reign of Queen Anne, in our style of writing prose," and to formulate "a few easy rules for the attainment of a manly, unaffected, and pure language in our genuine mother tongue, whether for the purposes of writing, oratory, or conversation."
These lectures, says Mr. Gillman, were from Coleridge"s own account more profitable than any he had before given, though delivered in an unfavourable situation; a lecture-room in Flower de Luce Court, which, however, being near the Temple, secured to him the benefit--if benefit it were--of a considerable number of law students among his auditors.
It was the first time that his devoted guardian had ever heard him in public, and he reports the significant fact that though Coleridge lectured from notes, which he had carefully made, "it was obvious that his audience were more delighted when, putting his notes aside, he spoke extempore...." He was brilliant, fluent, and rapid; his words seemed to flow as from a person repeating with grace and energy some delightful poem. If he sometimes paused, it was not for the want of words, but that he was seeking their most appropriate or most logical arrangement.
An incident related with extreme, though in a great measure unconscious, drollery by Mr. Gillman in connection with a lecture delivered at this period is to my mind of more a.s.sistance than many of the accounts of his "lay sermons" in private circles, in enabling us to comprehend one element of Coleridge"s marvellous powers of discourse. Early one morning at Mr. Gillman"s he received two letters-one to inform him that he was expected that same evening to deliver a lecture, at the rooms of the London Philosophical Society, to an audience of some four or five hundred persons; the other containing a list of the previous lecturers and the lectures delivered by them during the course of the season. At seven o"clock in the evening Coleridge and Mr. Gillman went up to town to make some inquiries respecting this unexpected application; but, on arriving at the house of the gentleman who had written the letter, they were informed that he was not at home, but would return at eight o"clock-- the hour fixed for the commencement of the lecture. They then proceeded to the Society"s rooms, where in due time the audience a.s.sembled; and the committee having at last entered and taken their places on the seats reserved for them, "Mr. President arose from the centre of the group, and, putting on a "president"s hat," which so disfigured him that we could scarcely refrain from laughter, addressed the company in these words: This evening Mr. Coleridge will deliver a lecture on "the Growth of the Individual Mind.""
Coleridge at first "seemed startled," as well he might, and turning round to Mr. Gillman whispered: "A pretty stiff subject they have chosen for me." However, he instantly mounted his standing-place and began without hesitation, previously requesting his friend to observe the effect of his lecture on the audience. It was agreed that, should he appear to fail, Gillman was to "clasp his ancle; but that he was to continue for an hour if the countenances of his auditors indicated satisfaction." Coleridge then began his address in these words: "The lecture I am about to give this evening is purely extempore. Should you find a nominative case looking out for a verb, or a fatherless verb for a nominative case, you must excuse it. It is purely extempore, though I have read and thought much on the subject." At this the company smiled, which seemed to inspire the lecturer with confidence.
He plunged at once into his lecture--and most brilliant, eloquent, and logically consecutive it was. The time moved on so swiftly that Mr.
Gillman found, on looking at his watch, that an hour and a half had pa.s.sed away, and, therefore, he continues "waiting only a desirable moment--to use his own playful words--I prepared myself to punctuate his oration. As previously agreed, I pressed his ancle, and thus gave him the hint he had requested; when, bowing graciously, and with a benevolent and smiling countenance, he presently descended. The lecture was quite new to me, and I believe quite new to himself so far as the arrangement of his words was concerned. The floating thoughts were beautifully arranged, and delivered on the spur of the moment. What accident gave rise to the singular request, that he should deliver this lecture impromptu, I never learnt; nor did it signify, as it afforded a happy opportunity to many of witnessing in part the extent of his reading and the extraordinary strength of his powers."
It is tantalising to think that no record of this remarkable performance remains; but, indeed, the same may to some extent be said, and in various degrees, of nearly all the lectures which Coleridge ever delivered. With the exception of seven out of the fifteen of 1811, which were published in 1856 by Mr. Payne Collier from shorthand notes taken at the time, Coleridge"s lectures scarcely exist for us otherwise than in the form of rough preparatory notes. A few longer pieces, such as the admirable observations in the second volume of the _Literary Remains_, on poetry, on the Greek drama, and on the progress of the dramatic art in England, are, with the exception above noticed, almost the only general disquisitions on these subjects which appear to have reached us in a complete state. Of the remaining contents of the volume, including the detailed criticisms now textual, now a.n.a.lytic--of the various plays of Shakespeare, a considerable portion is frankly fragmentary, pretending, indeed, to no other character than that of mere marginalia. This, however, does not destroy--I had almost said it does not even impair--their value. It does but render them all the more typical productions of a writer, whose greatest services to mankind in almost every department of human thought and knowledge with which he concerned himself were much the most often performed in the least methodical way. In reading through these incomparable notes on Shakespeare we soon cease to lament, or even to remember, their unconnected form and often somewhat desultory appearance; if, indeed, we do not see reason to congratulate ourselves that the annotator, unfettered by the restraints which the composition of a systematic treatise would have imposed upon him, is free to range with us at will over many a flower-strewn field, for which otherwise he could not perhaps have afforded to quit the main road of his subject. And this liberty is the more welcome, because Coleridge, _primus inter pares_ as a critic of any order of literature, is in the domain of Shakespearian commentary absolute king. The principles of a.n.a.lysis which he was charged with having borrowed without acknowledgment from Schlegel, with whose Shakespearian theories he was at the time entirely unacquainted, were in fact of his own excogitation. He owed nothing in this matter to any individual German, nor had he anything in common with German Shakespearianism except its profoundly philosophising spirit, which, moreover, was in his case directed and restrained by other qualities, too often wanting in critics of that industrious race; for he possessed a sense of the ridiculous, a feeling for the poetic, a tact, a taste, and a judgment, which would have saved many a worthy but heavy-handed Teutonic professor, who should have been lucky enough to own these gifts, from exposing himself and his science to the satire of the light-minded. Very rarely, indeed, do we find Coleridge indulging _plus "quo_ his pa.s.sion for psychological a.n.a.lysis. Deeply as his criticism penetrates, it is yet loyally recognitive of the opacity of milestones. Far as he sees into his subject, we never find him fancying that he sees beyond the point at which the faculty of human vision is exhausted. His conception of the more complex of Shakespeare"s personages, his theory of their characters, his reading of their motives, is often subtle, but always sane; his interpretation of the master"s own dealings with them, and of the language which he puts into their mouths, is often highly imaginative, but it is rarely fanciful.
Take, as an ill.u.s.tration of the first-mentioned merit, the following acute but eminently sensible estimate of the character of Polonius:--
"He is the personified memory of wisdom no longer actually possessed.
This admirable character is always misrepresented on the stage.
Shakspeare never intended to exhibit him as a buffoon; for although it was natural for Hamlet--a young man of fire and genius, detesting formality and disliking Polonius on political grounds, as imagining that he had a.s.sisted his uncle in his usurpation--should express himself satirically, yet this must not be taken exactly as the poet"s conception of him. In Polonius a certain induration of character had arisen from long habits of business; but take his advice to Laertes, and Ophelia"s reverence for his memory, and we shall see that he was meant to be represented as a statesman somewhat past his faculties--his recollections of life all full of wisdom, and showing a knowledge of human nature, while what immediately takes place before him and escapes from him is indicative of weakness."
Or this comment on the somewhat faint individualisation of the figure of Lear:
"In Lear old age is itself a character-natural imperfections being increased by life-long habits of receiving a prompt obedience. Any addition of individualisation would have been unnecessary and painful; for the relation of others to him, of wondrous fidelity and of frightful ingrat.i.tude, alone sufficiently distinguish him. Thus Lear becomes the open and ample playroom of nature"s pa.s.sions."
Or lastly, in ill.u.s.tration of my second point, let us take this note on the remark of the knight that "since my young lady"s going into France the fool hath much pined away ":--
"The fool is no comic buffoon--to make the groundlings laugh--no forced condescension of Shakspeare"s genius to the taste of his audience.
Accordingly the poet prepares us for the introduction, which he never does with any of his common clowns and fools, by bringing him into living connection with the pathos of the play. He is as wonderful a creation as Caliban,--his wild babblings and inspired idiocy articulate and gauge the horrors of the scene."
The subject is a tempting one to linger over, did not imperative Exigencies of s.p.a.ce compel me to pa.s.s on from it. There is much--very much--more critical matter in the Literary Remains of which it is hard to forbear quotation; and I may mention in particular the profoundly suggestive remarks on the nature of the humorous, with their accompanying a.n.a.lysis of the genius and artistic method of Sterne. But it is, as has been said, in Shakespearian criticism that Coleridge"s unique mastery of all the tools of the critic is most conspicuous, and it is in the brilliant, if unmethodised, pages which I have been discussing that we may most readily find consolation for the too early silencing of his muse. For these consummate criticisms are essentially and above all the criticisms of a poet They are such as could not have been achieved by any man not originally endowed with that divine gift which was fated in this instance to expend itself within so few years. Nothing, indeed, could more strikingly ill.u.s.trate the commanding advantage possessed by a poet interpreting a poet than is to be found in Coleridge"s occasional sarcastic comments on the _ba.n.a.lits_ of our national poet"s most prosaic commentator, Warburton--the "thought-swarming, but idealess Warburton," as he once felicitously styles him. The one man seems to read his author"s text under the clear, diffused, unwavering radiance emitted from his own poetic imagination; while the criticism of the other resembles a perpetual scratching of damp matches, which ash a momentary light into one corner of the dark a.s.sage, and then go out.
CHAPTER X
Closing years--Temporary renewal of money troubles--The Aids to Reflection --Growing weakness-Visit to Germany with the Wordsworths--Last illness and death.
[1818-1834.]
For the years which now remained to Coleridge, some sixteen in number, dating from his last appearance as a public lecturer, his life would seem to have been attended with something, at least, of that sort of happiness which is enjoyed by the nation of uneventful annals. There is little to be told of him in the way of literary performance; little record remains, unfortunately, of the discursively didactic talk in which, during these years, his intellectual activity found its busiest exercise; of incident in the ordinary sense of the word there is almost none. An account of these closing days of his life must resolve itself almost wholly into a "history of opinion,"--an attempt to reanimate for ourselves that life of perpetual meditation which Coleridge lived, and to trace, so far as the scanty evidence of his utterances enables us to do so, the general tenor of his daily thoughts. From one point of view, of course, this task would be extremely difficult, if not impossible; from another comparatively easy. It is easy, that is to say, to investigate Coleridge"s speculations, so far as their subject is concerned, whatever difficulties their obscurity and subtlety may present to the inquirer; for, as a matter of fact, their subject is remarkably uniform. Attempts to divide the literary life of a writer into eras are more often arbitrary and fanciful than not; but the peculiar circ.u.mstances of Coleridge"s career did in fact effect the division for themselves. His life until the age of twenty-six may fairly be described as in its "poetic period." It was during these years, and indeed during the last two or three of them, that he produced all the poetry by which he will be remembered, while he produced little else of mark or memorability. The twenty years which follow from 1798 to 1818 may with equal accuracy be styled the "critical period." It was during these years that he did his best work as a journalist, and all his work as a public lecturer on aesthetics.
It was during them that he said his say, and even his final say, so far as any public modes of expression were concerned, on politics and on art. From 1818 to his death his life was devoted entirely to metaphysics and theology, and with such close and constant reference to the latter subject, to which indeed his metaphysics had throughout his life been ancillary, that it deserves to give the name of the "theological period" to these closing years.