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SPECIMENS 
 
 TABLE TALK 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOE COLERIDGE. 
 
 NEW EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 1852. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 BKAUliURY AND E V AN S, PRIK TER3, W HITEKRI A U S. 
 
TO 
 
 JAMES GILLMAN, Esq. 
 
 Of the Grove, HigLgate, 
 
 AND TO 
 
 MES, GILLMAN, 
 
 IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IT is nearly fifteen years since I was, for the first 
 time^ enabled to become a frequent and attentive 
 visiter in Mr. Coleridge^s domestic society. His 
 exhibition of intellectual power in living discourse 
 struck me at once as unique and transcendent ; and 
 upon my return home^ on the very first evening which 
 I spent with him after my boyhood^ I committed to 
 writing, as well as I could, the principal topics of his 
 conversation in his own words. I had no settled 
 design at that time of continuing the work, but 
 simply made the note in something like a spirit of 
 vexation that such a strain of music as I had just 
 heard^ should not last for ever. What I did once, I 
 was easily induced, by the same feeling to do again : 
 and when, after many years of affectionate communion 
 between us, the painful existence of my revered rela- 
 tive on earth was at length finished in peace, my 
 occasional notes of what he had said in my presence 
 had grown to a mass, of which tliis volume contains 
 only such parts as seem fit for present publication. 
 I know, better than any one can tell me, how in- 
 adequately these specimens represent the pecuKar 
 
viii 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Splendour and individuality of Mr. Coleridge^s con- 
 versation. How should it be otherwise? Who 
 could always follow to the turning-point his long 
 arrow-flights of thought? "Who could fix those 
 ejaculations of Hght^ those tones of a prophet, which 
 at tunes have made me bend before him as before an 
 inspired man ? Such acts of spirit as these were too 
 subtle to be fettered down on paper; they live — ^if 
 they can live anywhere — in the memories alone of 
 those who witnessed them. Yet I would fain hope 
 that these pages will prove that all is not lost ; — that 
 something of the wisdom, the learning, and the 
 eloquence of a great man^s social converse has been 
 snatched from forgetfulness, and endowed with a 
 permanent shape for general use. And although, in 
 the judgment of many persons, I may incur a serious 
 responsibility by this publication, I am, upon the 
 whole, willing to abide the result, in confidence that 
 the fame of the loved and lamented speaker will lose 
 nothing hereby, and that the cause of Truth and of 
 Goodness will be every way a gainer. Tliis sprig, 
 though shght and immature, may yet become its 
 place, in the Poef s wreath of honour, among flowers 
 of graver hue. 
 
 If the favour shown to several modern instances of 
 works nominally of the same description as the pre- 
 sent were alone to be considered, it might seem that 
 the old maxim, that nothing ought to be said of the 
 dead but what is good, is in a fair way of being 
 dilated into an understanding that everything is good 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 ix 
 
 that has been said by the dead. The following pages 
 do not, I trust, stand in need of so much indulgence. 
 Their contents may not, in every particular passage, 
 be of great intrinsic importance ; but they can hardly 
 be without some, and, I hope, a worthy, interest, as 
 coming from the lips of one, at least, of the most 
 extraordinary men of the age ; whilst, to the best of 
 my knowledge and intention, no living person^s name 
 is introduced, whether for praise or for blame, except 
 on hterary or political grounds of common notoriety. 
 Upon the justice of the remarks here published, it 
 would be out of place in me to say anything ; and a 
 commentary of that kind is the less needed, as, in 
 almost every instance, the principles upon which the 
 speaker founded his observations are expressly stated, 
 and may be satisfactorily examined by themselves. 
 But, for the purpose of general elucidation, it seemed 
 not improper to add a few notes, and to make some 
 quotations from Mr. Coleridge^s own works ; and, in 
 doing so, I was in addition actuated by an earnest 
 wish to call the attention of reflecting minds in general 
 to the views of political, moral, and religious philo- 
 sophy contained in those works, which, through an 
 extensive, but now decreasing, prejudice, have hitherto 
 been deprived of that acceptance with the pubKc 
 wliich their great preponderating merits deserve, and 
 will, as I believe, finally obtain. And I can truly 
 say, that if, in the course of the perusal of this Kttle 
 work, any one of its readers shall gain a clearer insight 
 into the deep and pregnant principles, in the light of 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 which Mr. Coleridge was accustomed to regard God 
 and the World, — I shall look upon the publication as 
 fortunate, and consider myself abundantly rewarded 
 for whatever trouble it has cost me. 
 
 A cursory inspection wiU show that this volume 
 lays no claim to be ranked with those of Boswell in 
 point of dramatic interest. Coleridge differed not 
 more from J ohnson in every characteristic of intellect, 
 than in the habits and circumstances of his life, during 
 the greatest part of the time in which I was intimately 
 conversant with him. He was naturally very fond of 
 society, and continued to be so to the last ; but the 
 almost unceasing iU-health with which he was afflicted, 
 after fifty, confined him for many months in every 
 year to his own room, and, most commonly, to his 
 bed. He was then rarely seen except by single 
 visiters ; and few of them would feel any disposition 
 upon such occasions to interrupt him, whatever might 
 have been the length or mood of his discourse. And 
 indeed, although I have been present in mixed com- 
 pany, where Mr. Coleridge has been questioned and 
 opposed, and the scene has been amusing for the 
 moment — I own that it was always much more de- 
 lightful to me to let the river wander at its own sweet 
 will, unruffled by aught but a certain breeze of emotion 
 which the stream itseK produced. If the course it 
 took was not the shortest, it was generally the most 
 beautiful; and what you saw by the way was as 
 worthy of note as the ultimate object to which you 
 were journeying. It is possible, indeed, that Coleridge 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xi 
 
 did not, in fact, possess the precise gladiatorial power 
 of Johnson ; yet he understood a sword-play of his 
 own ; and I have, upon several occasions, seen him 
 exhibit brilliant proofs of its effectiveness upon dis- 
 putants of considerable pretensions in their particular 
 lines. But he had a genuine dishke of the practice 
 in himseK or others, and no shght provocation could 
 move him to any such exertion. He was, indeed, to 
 my observation, more distinguished from other great 
 men of letters by his moral thirst after the Truth — 
 the ideal truth — ^in his own mind, than by his merely 
 intellectual qualifications. To leave the every-day 
 circle of society, in which the literary and scientific 
 rarely — ^the rest never — break through the spell of 
 personality; — where Anecdote reigns everlastingly 
 paramount and exclusive, and the mildest attempt to 
 generalise the Babel of facts, and to control temporary 
 and individual phenomena by the appHcation of eternal 
 and overruling principles, is unintelligible to many, 
 and disagreeable to more; — to leave this species of 
 converse — if converse it deserves to be called — and 
 pass an entire day with Coleridge, was a marvellous 
 change indeed. It was a Sabbath past expression 
 deep, and tranquil, and serene. You came to a man 
 who had travelled in many countries, and in critical 
 times ; who had seen and felt the world in most of 
 its ranks and in many of its vicissitudes and weak- 
 nesses ; one to whom all literature and genial art were 
 absolutely subject, and to whom, with a reasonable 
 allowance as to technical details, all science was in a 
 
xii 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 most extraordinary degree familiar. Throughout a 
 long-drawn summer^s day would this man talk to you 
 in low, equable, but clear and musical, tones, con- 
 cerning things human and divine; marshalling all 
 history, harmonising all experiment, probing the 
 depths of your consciousness, and revealing visions 
 of glory and of terror to the imagination ; but pouring 
 withal such floods of light upon the mind, that you 
 might, for a season, like Paul, become bHnd in the 
 very act of conversion. And this he would do, with- 
 out so much as one allusion to himself, without a 
 word of reflection on others, save when any given act 
 fell naturally in the way of his discourse, — ^without 
 one anecdote that was not proof and illustration of a 
 previous position ; — gratifying no passion, indulging 
 no caprice, but, with a calm mastery over your soul, 
 leading you onward and onward for ever through a 
 thousand windings, yet with no pause, to some mag- 
 nificent point in which, as in a focus, aU the parti- 
 coloured rays of his discourse should converge in 
 light. In all this he was, in truth, your teacher and 
 guide; but in a little while you might forget that 
 he was other than a feUow-student and the com- 
 panion of your way, — so playful was his manner, so 
 simple liis language, so aff'ectionate the glance of his 
 pleasant eye ! 
 
 There were, indeed, some whom Coleridge tired, 
 and some whom he sent asleep. It would occasion- 
 ally so happen, when the abstruser mood was strong 
 upon him, and the visiter was narrow and ungenial. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xiii 
 
 I have seen him at times when you could not incar« 
 nate him, — when he shook aside your petty questions 
 or doubts, and burst with some impatience through 
 the obstacles of common conversation. Then, escaped 
 from the flesh, he would soar upwards into an atmo- 
 sphere almost too rare to breathe, but w^hich seemed 
 proper to him, and there he would float at ease. Like 
 enough, what Coleridge then said, his subtlest listener 
 would not understand as a man understands a news- 
 paper; but, upon such a listener, there would steal 
 an influence, and an impression, and a sympathy; 
 there would be a gradual attempering of his body 
 and spirit, till his total being vibrated with one 
 pulse alone, and thought became merged in con- 
 templation : — 
 
 And so, his senses gradually wrapt 
 In a half sleep, he 'd dream of better worlds, 
 And dreaming hear thee still, 0 singing lark, 
 That sangest like an angel in the clouds ! 
 
 But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the 
 general character of Mr. Coleridge^s conversation was 
 abstruse or rhapsodical. The contents of the following 
 pages may, I think, be taken as pretty strong pre- 
 sumptive evidence that his ordinary manner was plain 
 and direct enough; and even when, as sometimes 
 happened, he seemed to ramble from the road, and to 
 lose himseK in a wilderness of digressions, the truth 
 was, that at that very time he was working out his 
 fore-known conclusion through an almost miraculous 
 logic, the difiiculty of which consisted precisely in the 
 
xiv 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 very fact of its minuteness and universality. He took 
 so large a scope^ that^ if lie was interrupted before he 
 got to the end^ he appeared to have been talking 
 without an object; although^ perhaps, a few steps 
 more would have brought you to a point, a retrospect 
 from which would show you the pertinence of all he 
 had been saying. I have heard persons complain 
 that they could get no answer to a question from 
 Coleridge. The truth is, he answered, or meant to 
 answer, so fully, that the querist should have no 
 second question to ask. In nine cases out of ten he 
 saw the question was short or misdirected ; and knew 
 that a mere yes or no answer could not embrace the 
 truth — ^that is, the whole truth — and might, very 
 probably, by impHcation, convey error. Hence that 
 exhaustive, cychcal mode of discoursing in which he 
 frequently indulged; unfit, indeed, for a dinner- 
 table, and too long-breathed for the patience of a 
 chance visiter, — but wliich, to those who knew for 
 what they came, was the object of their profoundest 
 admiration, as it was the source of their most valuable 
 instruction. Mr. Coleridge^s affectionate disciples 
 learned their lessons of philosophy and criticism from 
 his own mouth. He was to them as an old master 
 of the Academy or Lyceum. The more time he took, 
 the better pleased were such visiters ; for they came 
 expressly to listen, and had ample proof how truly he 
 had declared, that whatever difficulties he might feel, 
 with pen in hand, in the expression of his meaning, 
 he never found the smallest liitch or impediment in 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XV 
 
 the utterance of his most subtle reasonings hy word 
 of mouth. How many a time and oft have I felt his 
 abstrusest thoughts steal rhytlmiicaUy on my soul^ 
 when chanted forth by him ! Nay^ how often have I 
 fancied I heard rise up in answer to his gentle touch,, 
 an interpreting music of my own^ as from the passive 
 strings of some wind-smitten lyre ! 
 
 Mr. Coleridge^s conversation at all times required 
 attention^ because what he said was so individual and 
 unexpected. But when he was dealing deeply with a 
 question^ the demand upon the intellect of the hearer 
 was very great ; not so much for any hardness of lan- 
 guage^ for his diction was always simple and easy ; 
 nor for the abstruseness of the thoughts^ for they 
 generally explained^ or appeared to explain^ them- 
 selves ; but pre-eminently on account of the seeming 
 remoteness of his associations^ and the exceeding 
 subtlety of his transitional links. Upon this point 
 it is very happily^ though^ according to my observa- 
 tion, too generally, remarked, by one whose powers 
 and opportunities of judging were so eminent, that 
 the obliquity of his testimony in other respects is the 
 more unpardonable ; — Coleridge to many people — 
 and often I have heard the complaint — seemed to 
 wander; and he seemed then to wander the most, 
 when, in fact, his resistance to the wandering instinct 
 was greatest, — viz., when the compass and huge 
 circuit, by which liis illustrations moved, travelled 
 farthest into remote regions, before they began to 
 revolve. Long before this coming round commenced. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 most people had lost him, and naturally enough sup- 
 posed that he had lost himself. They continued to 
 admire the separate beauty of the thoughts, but did 
 not see their relations to the dominant theme. * * * * 
 However, I can assert, upon my long and intimate 
 knowledge of Coleridge^s mind, that logic the most 
 severe was as inalienable from his mode of thinking, 
 as grammar from his language."^"* * True : his mind 
 was a logic-vice; let him fasten it on the tiniest 
 flourish of an error, he never slacked his hold, till he 
 had crushed body and tail to dust. He was always 
 ratiocinating in his own mind, and therefore some- 
 times seemed incoherent to the partial observer. It 
 happened to him as to Pindar, who in modern days 
 has been called a rambling rhapsodist, because the 
 connections of his parts, though never arbitrary, are 
 so fine, that the vulgar reader sees them not at all. 
 But they are there nevertheless, and may all be so 
 distinctly shown, that no one can doubt their exist- 
 ence ; and a little study will also prove that the points 
 of contact are those which the true genius of lyric 
 verse naturally evolved, and that the entire Pindaric 
 ode, instead of being the loose and lawless outburst 
 which so many have fancied, is, without any excep- 
 tion, the most artificial and highly-wrought composi- 
 tion which Time has spared to us from the wreck of 
 the Greek Muse. So I can well remember occasions, 
 in which, after listening to Mr. Coleridge for several 
 delightful hours, I have gone away with divers 
 
 * Tail's Mag , Sept. 1834, p. 614. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xvii 
 
 splendid masses of reasoning in my head, the separate 
 beauty and coherency of which T deeply felt ; but how 
 they had produced, or how they bore upon, each other, 
 I could not then perceive. In such cases I have 
 mused sometimes even for days afterwards upon the 
 words, till at length, spontaneously as it seemed, 
 ^Hhe fire would kindle,^^ and the association, which 
 had escaped my utmost efforts of comprehension 
 before, flash itself all at once upon my mind with 
 the clearness of noon-day light. 
 
 It may well be imagined that a style of conversation 
 so continuous and diffused as that which I have just 
 attempted to describe, presented remarkable difficul- 
 ties to a mere reporter by memory. It is easy to 
 preserve the pithy remark, the brilliant retort, or the 
 pointed anecdote; these stick of themselves, and 
 their retention requires no effort of mind. But 
 where the salient angles are comparatively few, and 
 the object of attention is a long-drawn subtle dis- 
 coursing, you can never recollect, except by yourself 
 tliinking the argument over again. In so doing, the 
 order and the characteristic expressions wiU for the 
 most part spontaneously arise; and it is scarcely 
 credible with what degree of accuracy language may 
 thus be preserved, where practice has given some 
 dexterity, and long familiarity with the speaker has 
 enabled, or almost forced, you to catch the outhnes 
 of his manner. Yet with aU this, so peculiar were 
 the flow and breadth of Mr. Coleridge^s conversation, 
 
 that I am very sensible how much those who can 
 
 b 
 
xviii 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 best judge will have to complain of my representa- 
 tion of it. The following specimens will, I fear, 
 seem too fragmentary, and therefore deficient in one 
 of the most distinguisliing properties of that which 
 they are designed to represent ; and this is true. 
 Yet the reader will in most instances have little diffi- 
 culty in understanding the course which the conver- 
 sation took, although my recollections of it are 
 thrown into separate paragraphs for the sake of 
 superior precision. As I never attempted to give 
 dialogue — indeed, there was seldom much dialogue 
 to give — the great point with me was to condense 
 what I could remember on each particular topic into 
 intelligible wholes with as little injury to the living 
 manner and diction as was possible. With this 
 explanation, I must leave it to those who still have 
 the tones of ^Hhat old man eloquent ringing in 
 their ears, to say how far I have succeeded in this 
 delicate enterprise of stamping his winged words with 
 perpetuity. 
 
 In reviewing the contents of the following pages, I 
 can clearly see that I have admitted some passages 
 which will be pronounced illiberal by those who, in 
 the present day, emphatically call themselves liberal 
 — the liberal. I allude of course to Mr. Coleridge^s 
 remarks on the Eeform BiU and the Malthusian 
 economists. The omission of such passages would 
 probably have rendered this publication more generally 
 agreeable, and my disposition does not lead me to 
 give gratuitous offence to any one. But the opinions 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xix 
 
 of Mr. Coleridge on these subjects^ however imper- 
 fectly expressed by me, were deliberately entertained 
 by him ; and to have omitted, in so miscellaneous a 
 collection as this, what he was well known to have 
 said, would have argued in me a disapprobation or a 
 fear, which I disclaim. A few words, however, may 
 be pertinently employed here in explaining the true 
 bearing of Coleridge^s mind on the politics of our 
 modern days. He was neither a Wliig nor a Tory, 
 as those designations are usually understood; well 
 enough knowing that, for the most part, half-truths 
 only are involved in the Parhamentary tenets of one 
 party or the other. In the common struggles of a 
 session, therefore, he took Httle interest ; and as to 
 mere personal sympathies, the friend of Frere and of 
 Poole, the respected guest of Canning and of Lord 
 Lansdowne, could have nothing to choose. But he 
 threw the w^eight of his opinion — and it was con- 
 siderable — into the Tory or Conservative scale, for 
 these two reasons : — Pirst, generally, because he had 
 a deep conviction that the cause of freedom and of 
 truth is now seriously menaced by a democratical 
 spirit, growing more and more rabid every day, and 
 giving no doubtful promise of the tyranny to come ; 
 and secondly, in particular, because the national 
 Church was to him the ark of the covenant of his 
 beloved country, and he saw the Whigs about to 
 coalesce with those whose avowed principles lead them 
 to lay the hand of spoliation upon it. Add to these 
 two grounds, some rehcs of the indignation w^hich 
 
 h 2 
 
XX 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 the efforts of the Whigs to thwart the generous 
 exertions of England in the great Spanish war had 
 formerly roused within him ; and all the constituents 
 of any active feeling in Mr. Coleridge's mind upon 
 matters of state are, I believe, fairly laid before the 
 reader. The Eeform question in itself gave him little 
 concern, except as he foresaw the present attack on 
 the Church to be the immediate consequence of the 
 passing of the Bill ; for let the form of the House 
 of Commons/^ said he, be what it may, it will be, 
 for better or for worse, pretty much what the country 
 at large is ; but once invade that truly national and 
 essentially popular institution, the Church, and divert 
 its funds to the relief or aid of individual charity or 
 public taxation — ^how specious soever that pretext 
 may be — and you will never thereafter recover the 
 lost means of perpetual cultivation. Give back to 
 the Church what the nation originally consecrated to 
 its use, and it ought then to be charged with the 
 education of tlie people; but half of the original 
 revenue has been already taken by force from her, 
 or lost to her through desuetude, legal decision, or 
 public opinion ; and are those whose very houses and 
 parks are part and parcel of what the nation designed 
 for the general purposes of the Clergy, to be heard, 
 when they argue for making the Church support, out 
 of her diminished revenues, institutions, the intended 
 means for maintaining which they themselves hold 
 under the sanction of legal robbery Upon this 
 subject Mr. Coleridge did indeed feel very warmly. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xxi 
 
 and was accustomed to express himself accordingly. 
 It weighed upon his mind night and day^ and he 
 spoke upon it with an emotion^ which I never sav/ 
 him betray upon any topic of common politics^ how- 
 ever decided his opinion might be. In this^ there- 
 fore, he was felix opportunitate mortis; non enim 
 
 vidit ; and the just and honest of all parties 
 
 will heartily admit over his grave, that as his prin- 
 ciples and opinions were untainted by any sordid 
 interest, so he maintained them in the purest spirit of 
 a reflective patriotism, without spleen, or bitterness, 
 or breach of social union. 
 
 It would require a rare pen to do justice to the 
 constitution of Coleridge^s mind. It was too deep, 
 subtle, and pecuhar, to be fathomed by a morning 
 visiter. Pew persons knew much of it in anything 
 below the surface ; scarcely three or four ever got to 
 understand it in all its marvellous completeness. 
 Mere personal familiarity with this extraordinary man 
 did not put you in possession of him; his pursuits 
 and aspirations, though in their mighty range pre- 
 senting points of contact and sympathy for all, 
 transcended in their ultimate reach the extremest 
 limits of most men'^s imaginations. For the last 
 thirty years of his life, at least, Coleridge was really 
 and truly a philosopher of the antique cast. He had 
 his esoteric views ; and all his prose works from the 
 "Friend'' to the "Church and State'' were Httle 
 more than feelers, pioneers, disciplinants for the last 
 and complete exposition of them. Of the art of 
 
xxii 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 making books he knew little^ and cared less ; but had 
 he been as much an adept in it as a modern novehst^ 
 he never could have succeeded in rendering popular 
 or even tolerable^ at firsts his attempt to push Locke 
 and Paley from their common throne in England. A 
 little more working in the trenches might have brought 
 him closer to the walls with less personal damage; 
 but it is better for Christian philosophy as it is, 
 though the assailant was sacrificed in the bold and 
 artless attack. Mr. Coleridge^s prose works had so 
 very limited a sale, that although pubhshed in a 
 technical sense, they could scarcely be said to have 
 evei hecome publici Juris . He did not think them 
 such himself, with the exception, perhaps, of the 
 
 Aids to Eeflection,^^ and generally made a particular 
 remark if he met any person who professed or showed 
 that he had read the Friend,^^ or any of his other 
 books. And I have no doubt that had he lived to 
 complete his great work on Philosophy reconciled 
 with Christian Eeligion,^^ he would without scruple 
 have used in that work any part or parts of his pre- 
 liminary treatises, as their intrinsic fitness required. 
 Hence in every one of his prose writings there are 
 repetitions, either literal or substantial, of passages to 
 be found in some others of those writings ; and there 
 are several particular positions and reasonings, which 
 he considered of vital importance, re-iterated in the 
 
 Priend,'' the Literary Life,'' tlie Lay Sermons,'' 
 the ^^Aids to Eeflection," and the "Church and 
 State." He was always deepening and widening the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xxiii 
 
 foundation^ and cared not how often he used the 
 same stone. In thinking passionately of the prin- 
 ciple^ he forgot the authorship — and sowed beside 
 many waters, if peradventure some chance seedling 
 might take root and bear fruit to the glory of God 
 and the spiritualisation of Man. 
 
 His mere reading was immense, and the quality 
 and direction of much of it well considered, almost 
 unique in this age of the world. He had gone 
 through most of the Fathers, and, I believe, all the 
 Schoolmen of any eminence; whilst his familiarity 
 with all the more common departments of literature 
 in every language is notorious. The early age at 
 which some of these acquisitions were made, and his 
 ardent self-abandonment in the strange pursuit, might, 
 according to a common notion, have seemed adverse 
 to increase and maturity of power in after life : yet 
 it was not so ; he lost, indeed, for ever the chance of 
 being a popular writer ; but Lamb^s inspired charity- 
 hoy of twelve years of age continued to his dying day, 
 when sixty-two, the eloquent centre of all companies, 
 and the standard of intellectual greatness to hundreds 
 of affectionate disciples far and near. Had Coleridge 
 been master of his genius, and not, alas ! mastered 
 by it; — had he less romantically fought a single- 
 handed fight against the whole prejudices of his age, 
 nor so mercilessly racked his fine powers on the 
 problem of a universal Christian philosophy, — he 
 might have easily won all that a reading public can 
 give to a favourite, and have left a name — not greater 
 
xxiv 
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 nor more enduring indeed — but — better known,, and 
 more prized, than now it is, amongst the wise, the 
 gentle, and the good, throughout all ranks of society. 
 Nevertheless, desultory as his labours, fragmentary as 
 his productions at present may seem to the cursory 
 observer — my undoubting belief is, that in the end it 
 will be found that Coleridge did, in his vocation, the 
 da/s work of a giant. He has been melted into the 
 very heart of the rising literatures of England and 
 America; and the principles he has taught are the 
 master-light of the moral and intellectual being of 
 men, who, if they shall fail to save, will assuredly 
 illustrate and condemn, the age in which they live. 
 As it is, they bide their time. 
 
 Coleridge himself — blessings on his gentle memory ! 
 — Coleridge \^as a frail mortal. He had indeed his 
 peculiar weaknesses as well as his imique powers; 
 sensibilities that an averted look would rack, a heart 
 w^hich would have beaten calmly in the tremblings of 
 an earthquake. He shrank from mere uneasiness 
 like a child, and bore the preparatory agonies of liis 
 death-attack like a martyr. Sinned against a thou- 
 sand times more than sinning, he himself suffered an 
 almost life-long punishment for his errors, whilst the 
 world at large has the unwithering fruits of his 
 labours, his genius, and his sacrifice. Necesse est 
 tanquam immaturam mortem ejus dejleam ; si tamen 
 fas est aut jlere, aut omnino mortem vocare qiia tanti 
 viri mortalitas mugis finita quam vita est. Vivit 
 enhn, vivetque semper, atque etiam latius in memoria 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XXV 
 
 hominum et sermone versabitur, postquam ah oculis 
 recessit. 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the youngest child of 
 the Reverend John Coleridge^ Vicar of the Parish of 
 Ottery St. Mary, in the county of Devon, and master 
 of Henry the Eighth^s Free Grammar School in that 
 town. His mother^s maiden name was Ann Bowdon, 
 He was born at Ottery on the 21st of October, 1 772, 
 
 about eleven o'clock in the forenoon,^' as his father 
 the Vicar has, with rather a curious particularity, 
 entered it in the register. 
 
 He died on the 25th of July, 1834, in Mr. 
 Gillman's house, in the Grove, Highgate, and is 
 buried in the old churchyard, by the road side. 
 
 AI AE TEAI ZnOYSIN AHA0NE5 . 
 
 H. N. C. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Character of Othello . . . 1 
 Schiller's Robbers . . . . 2 
 
 Shakspeare 2 
 
 Scotch Novels . . . . 2 
 Lord Byron .... 2 
 John Kemble . . . . 2 
 
 Mathews 3 
 
 Parliamentary Privilege . . 4 
 Permanency and Progression of 
 
 Nations 6 
 
 Kant's Races of Mankind . . 7 
 Materialism .... 7 
 
 Ghosts 8 
 
 Character of the Age for Logic . 9 
 Plato and Xenophon . . .10 
 
 Greek Drama 10 
 
 Kotzebue 10 
 
 Burke 10 
 
 St. John's Gospel . . .11 
 
 Christianity 12 
 
 Epistle to the Hebrews . . 12 
 
 The Logos 13 
 
 Reason and Understanding . 14 
 
 Kean 14 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh . . 14 
 
 Sir H.Davy 14 
 
 Robert Smith . . . .15 
 
 Canning 15 
 
 National Debt . . . .16 
 
 Poor Laws 16 
 
 Conduct of the Whigs . . 17 
 Reform of the House of Commons 18 
 Church of Rome . . . .19 
 
 Zendavesta 20 
 
 Pantheism and Idolatry . . 21 
 Difference between Stories of 
 
 Dreams and Ghosts . . . 21 
 Phantom Portrait . . .25 
 Witch of Endor . . . . 28 
 Socinianism . . . .28 
 Plato and Xenophon . . . 29 
 Religions of the Greeks . . 29 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Egyptian Antiquities . . 29 
 
 Milton 30 
 
 Virgil 30 
 
 Granville Penn and the Deluge 30 
 
 Rainbow 31 
 
 English and Greek Dancing . 31 
 Greek Acoustics . . . .31 
 Lord Byron's Versification and 
 
 Don Juan 32 
 
 Parental Control in Marriage . 32 
 Marriage of Cousins . . .33 
 Differences of Character . . 33 
 Blumenbach and Kant's Races . 33 
 lapetic and Semitic . . .33 
 
 Hebrew 33 
 
 Solomon . . . . .33 
 J ewish History . . . . 34 
 Spinozistic and Hebrew Schemes 34 
 Roman Catholics . . .35 
 Energy of Man and other Ani- 
 mals 35 
 
 Shakspeare in minimis . . 35 
 
 Paul Sarpi 36 
 
 Bartram's Travels . . .36 
 The Understanding . . . 36 
 Parts of Speech . . . .37 
 
 Grammar 38 
 
 Magnetism 38 
 
 Electricity 38 
 
 Galvanism 38 
 
 Spenser 39 
 
 Character of Othello . . .39 
 
 Hamlet 40 
 
 Polonius 40 
 
 Principles and Maxims . , 41 
 Love ...... 41 
 
 Measure for Measure . . . 42 
 Ben Jonson . . , . 42 
 Beaumont and Fletcher . . 42 
 Version of the Bible . . .43 
 Craniology . . . . . 43 
 
 Spurzheim ... .44 
 
xxviii 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 Bull and Waterland . . . 44 
 The Trinity .... 44 
 Scale of Animal Being . . . 45 
 
 Popedom 47 
 
 Scanderbeg 47 
 
 Thomas h Becket . . .47 
 Pure Ages of Greek, Italian, 
 and English . . . . 47 
 
 Luther 47 
 
 Baxter 47 
 
 Algernon Sidney's Style . . 48 
 Ariosto and Tasso . . . 48 
 Prose and Poetry . . .48 
 
 The Fathers 48 
 
 Khenferd 48 
 
 Jacob Behmen . . . . 49 
 Non-perception of Colours . . 49 
 
 Restoration 49 
 
 Reformation . . . .50 
 
 William III 50 
 
 Berkeley 50 
 
 Spinosa 50 
 
 Genius 50 
 
 Envy 50 
 
 Love 50 
 
 Jeremy Taylor . . . . 51 
 
 Hooker 51 
 
 Ideas 51 
 
 Knowledge 52 
 
 Painting 52 
 
 Prophecies of the Old Testament 52 
 
 Messiah 53 
 
 J ew3 53 
 
 The Trinity . . . .53 
 Conversion of the Jews . . 54 
 Jews in Poland . . . .55 
 Mosaic Miracles . . . . 56 
 
 Pantheism 57 
 
 Poetic Promise . . . . 57 
 Nominalists and Realists . . 58 
 British Schoolmen . . . . 59 
 
 Spinosa 59 
 
 Fall of Man 61 
 
 Madness 61 
 
 Brown and Darwin . ; . 62 
 Nitrous Oxide . . . .62 
 
 Plants 62 
 
 Insects 62 
 
 Men 62 
 
 Dog 62 
 
 Ant and Bee 62 
 
 Black Colonel . . . .63 
 Holland and the Dutch . . . 63 
 Jteligion gcntilises . . .64 
 Women and Men . . , . 65 
 Biblical Commentators . . 65 
 Walkerite Creed . . . . 65 
 Home Tooke . . . .65 
 Diversions of Parley . . . 65 
 Gender of the Sun in German . 66 
 Home Tooke . . . .68 
 Jacobins 68 
 
 Persian and Arabic Poetry . 69 
 Milesian Tales . . . .69 
 Sir T. Monro . . . . 70 
 Sir S. Raffles .... 70 
 
 Canning 70 
 
 Shakspeare 71 
 
 Milton 71 
 
 Homer 71 
 
 Reason and Understanding . . 72 
 Words and Names of Things . 72 
 
 The Trinity 73 
 
 Irving 73 
 
 Abraham 73 
 
 Isaac 74 
 
 Jacob 74 
 
 Origin of Acts . . . .75 
 
 liOve 5 
 
 Lord Eldon's Doctrine as to 
 
 Grammar Schools . . .75 
 
 Deriiocracy 76 
 
 The Eucharist . . . .76 
 St. John, xix. 11 . . . . 77 
 Divinity of Christ ... 79 
 Genuineness of Books of Moses . 79 
 Mosaic Prophecies . . . . 79 
 Talent and Genius . . .80 
 Motives and Impulses . . . 80 
 Constitutional and Functional 
 
 Life 80 
 
 Hysteria 81 
 
 Hydro-Carbonic Gas . . .81 
 Bitters and Tonics . . . . 81 
 Specific Medicines . . .81 
 Epistles to the Ephesians and 
 
 Colossians 82 
 
 Oaths 82 
 
 Flogging 83 
 
 Eloquence of Abuse . . .83 
 The Americans . . . . 84 
 Book of Job .... 84 
 Translation of the Psalms . . 85 
 Ancient Mariner . . .86 
 
 Undine 88 
 
 Martin 88 
 
 Pilgrim's Progress . . . 88 
 
 Prayer 89 
 
 Church-singing . . . . 90 
 
 Hooker 91 
 
 Dreams 91 
 
 Jeremy Taylor . . . .91 
 English Reformation . . . 93 
 
 Catholicity 94 
 
 Gnosis 94 
 
 Tertullian 94 
 
 St. John 94 
 
 Principles of a Review . . 95 
 
 Party Spirit 96 
 
 Southey's Life of Bunyan . . 96 
 
 Laud 97 
 
 Puritans and Cavaliers . . 97 
 Presbyterians, Independents, 
 
 and Bishops ... 97 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 xxix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Study of the Bible ... 97 
 
 Rabelais 98 
 
 Swift 98 
 
 Bentley 99 
 
 Burnet 99 
 
 Giotto 99 
 
 Painting 100 
 
 Seneca 100 
 
 Plato 100 
 
 Aristotle 101 
 
 Duke of Wellington . . .101 
 
 Monied Interest . . . . 102 
 
 Canning 102 
 
 Bourrienne 102 
 
 Jews 103 
 
 The Papacy and the Reforma- 
 tion 104 
 
 Leo X 105 
 
 Thelwall 105 
 
 Swift . . .106 
 Stella . . . 106 
 Iniquitous Legislation . 106 
 Spurzheim and Craniology . . 106 
 French Revolution, 1830 . . 108 
 Captain B. Hall and the Ame- 
 ricans 108 
 
 English Reformation . . 109 
 
 Democracy 110 
 
 Idea of a State . . . .110 
 
 Church 110 
 
 Government . . . .110 
 
 French Gendarmerie . . . Ill 
 Philosophy of Young Men at 
 
 the Present Day . . .111 
 
 Thucydides and Tacitus . . 112 
 
 Poetry 112 
 
 Modern Metre . . . . 113 
 
 Logic 113 
 
 Varro 114 
 
 Socrates 114 
 
 Greek Philosophy . . . 114 
 
 Plotinus 114 
 
 Tertullian 115 
 
 Scotch and English Lakes . 115 
 
 Love and Friendship opposed . 116 
 
 Marriage 116 
 
 Characterlessness of "Women . 116 
 Mental Anarchy . . . 117 
 Ear and Taste for Music dif- 
 ferent 117 
 
 English Liturgy . . . 117 
 
 Belgian Revolution . . . 118 
 
 Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Bacon 118 
 The Reformation . . .119 
 
 House of Commons . . . 120 
 
 Government .... 121 
 
 Earl Grey 122 
 
 Government .... 123 
 
 Popular Representation . . 124 
 
 Napier 125 
 
 Buonaparte 126 
 
 Southey 126 
 
 Patronage of the Fine Arts . 127 
 
 Old Women 127 
 
 Pictures 128 
 
 Chillingworth . . . . 131 
 Superstition of Maltese, Sici- 
 lians, and Italians . . 132 
 
 Asgill 133 
 
 The French . . . .134 
 
 The Good and the True . . 135 
 
 Romish Religion . . . 135 
 
 England and Holland . . . 136 
 
 Iron 136 
 
 Galvanism 136 
 
 Heat 136 
 
 National Colonial Character 
 
 and Naval Discipline . . 137 
 
 England 139 
 
 Holland and Belgium . . . 139 
 
 Greatest Happiness Principle . 141 
 
 Hobbism 142 
 
 The Two Modes of Political 
 
 Action 143 
 
 Truths and Maxims . . . 144 
 Drayton and Daniel . . . 145 
 Mr. Coleridge's System of Phi- 
 losophy 146 
 
 Keenness and Subtlety . . 148 
 Duties and Needs of an Advo- 
 cate 148 
 
 Abolition of the French Here- 
 ditary Peerage . . . . 150 
 Conduct of Ministers on the 
 Reform Bill . . . .151 
 
 Religion 153 
 
 Union Avith Ireland . . . 154 
 
 Irish Church . . . . 154 
 
 A State 155 
 
 Persons and Things . . . 155 
 
 History 156 
 
 Beauty 156 
 
 Genius 156 
 
 Church 157 
 
 State „ 157 
 
 Dissenters 157 
 
 Gracefulness of Children . . 158 
 
 Dogs 158 
 
 Ideal Tory and Whig . . 158 
 
 The Church 159 
 
 Ministers and the Reform Bill 159 
 
 Disfranchisement . . . 160 
 
 Genius Feminine . . . . 161 
 
 Pirates 161 
 
 Astrology 161 
 
 Alchemy 161 
 
 Reform Bill 162 
 
 Crisis 162 
 
 John, chap, iii. ver. 4 . . . 163 
 
 Dictation and Inspiration . 163 
 
 Gnosis 165 
 
 New Testament Canon . . 165 
 Unitarianism — Moral Pbilo- 
 
 sopliy 165 
 
XXX 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Moral Law of Polarity . . 167 
 Epidemic Disease . . . 168 
 Quarantine .... 169 
 
 Harmony 170 
 
 Intellectual Revolutions . .170 
 Modern Style . . . . 170 
 Genius of tlie Spanish and 
 
 Italians 171 
 
 Vico 171 
 
 Spinosa 171 
 
 Colours 171 
 
 Destruction of Jerusalem . 172 
 
 Epic Poem 172 
 
 Vox Populi Vox Dei . . 173 
 
 Black 173 
 
 Asgill and Defoe . . .173 
 Home Tooke . . . . 174 
 Fox and Pitt . . . .174 
 
 Horner 174 
 
 Adiaphori 175 
 
 Citizens and Christians . . 175 
 Professor Park .... 175 
 English Constitution . . . 175 
 Democracy . . . .176 
 Milton and Sidney . . . 176 
 De Vi Minimorum . . . 177 
 
 Hahnemann 177 
 
 Luther 177 
 
 Sympathy of old Greek and 
 
 Latin with English . . . 178 
 Roman Mind .... 178 
 
 War 179 
 
 Charm for Cramp . . . 179 
 
 Greek 180 
 
 Dual, Neuter plural, and Verb 
 
 singular 180 
 
 Theta 181 
 
 Talented 181 
 
 Homer 182 
 
 Valcknaer 182 
 
 Principles and Facts . . . 182 
 
 Schmidt 183 
 
 Puritans and Jacobins . . . 184 
 "Wordsworth .... 184 
 French Revolution . . . 186 
 Infant Schools . . . .187 
 Mr. Coleridge's Philosophy . . 188 
 
 Sublimity 188 
 
 Solomon 188 
 
 Madness 189 
 
 C.Lamb 189 
 
 Faith and Belief . . .189 
 
 Dobrizhoflfcr 190 
 
 Scotch and English . . . 191 
 Criterion of Genius . . . 192 
 Dryden and Pope . . . 192 
 Milton's Disregard of Painting 192 
 Baptismal Service . . . 193 
 Jews' Division of the Scripture 193 
 
 Sanskrit 194 
 
 Hesiod 194 
 
 Virgil 194 
 
 FA6B 
 
 Genius Metaphysical . . , 194 
 Don Quixote .... 194 
 
 Steinmetz 195 
 
 Keats 195 
 
 Christ's Hospital . . . . 196 
 
 Bowyer 196 
 
 St. Paul's Melita . . . . 197 
 English and German . . 198 
 Best State of Society . . . 199 
 Great Minds Androgynous . 199 
 Philosopher's Ordinary Lan- 
 guage 199 
 
 Juries 200 
 
 Barristers' and Physicians' 
 
 Fees 200 
 
 Quacks 200 
 
 Caesarean Operation . . . 200 
 Inherited Disease . . . 200 
 Mason's Poetry .... 201 
 Northern and Southern States 
 
 of the American Union . . 201 
 All and the Whole . . .202 
 Ninth Article . . . . 202 
 Sin and Sins . . . .202 
 
 Old Divines 203 
 
 Preaching extempore . . 203 
 Church of England . . . 204 
 Union with Ireland . . . 204 
 
 Faust 206 
 
 Michael Scott, Goethe, Schiller, 
 
 and Wordsworth . . . 207 
 Beaumont and Fletcher , . 212 
 Ben Jonson .... 213 
 
 Massinger 213 
 
 House of Commons appointing 
 the Officers of the Army and 
 
 Navy 214 
 
 Penal Code in Ireland . . . 215 
 Churchmen .... 215 
 Coronation Oaths . . . . 216 
 
 Divinity 217 
 
 Professions and Trades . . 217 
 Modern Political Economy . 217 
 National Debt . . . . 219 
 Property Tax . . . .220 
 Duty of Landholders . . , 220 
 
 Massinger 221 
 
 Shakspeare 223 
 
 Hieronimo .... 223 
 Love's Labour Lost . . . 224 
 Gifford's Massinger . . . 226 
 
 Shakspeare 226 
 
 The Old Dramatists . . 226 
 
 Statesmen 227 
 
 Burke 227 
 
 Prospect of Monarchy or De- 
 mocracy 228 
 
 The Reformed House of Com- 
 mons 228 
 
 United States of America . . 229 
 Captain B. Hall . . . 229 
 Northern and Southern States . 230 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 xxxi 
 
 PASB 
 
 Democracy with Slavery . . 230 
 
 Quakers 231 
 
 Land and Money . . . . 231 
 Methods of Investigation . . 232 
 Church of Rome . . . . 235 
 Celibacy of the Clergy . . 235 
 Roman Conquest of Italy . 236 
 "Wedded Love in Shakspeare 
 and his Contemporary Dra- 
 matists 236 
 
 Tennyson's Poems . . . 236 
 
 Rabelais and Luther . . 237 
 Wit and Madness . . .237 
 
 Colonization 238 
 
 Machinery . . . .238 
 
 Capital 238 
 
 Roman Conquest . . . 239 
 
 Constantine 239 
 
 Papacy and the Schoolmen . 239 
 Civil War of the Seventeenth 
 
 Century 240 
 
 Hampden's Speech . . . 241 
 
 Reformed House of Commons . 241 
 
 Food 242 
 
 Medicine 242 
 
 Poison 242 
 
 Obstruction . . . .243 
 
 Wilson 243 
 
 Shakspeare's Sonnets . . 245 
 
 Love 246 
 
 Wicliffe 246 
 
 Luther 246 
 
 Reverence for Ideal Truths . 246 
 Johnson the Whig . . .247 
 
 Asgill 248 
 
 James 1 248 
 
 Sir P. Sidney . . . . 249 
 
 Things are Finding their Level 249 
 
 German 249 
 
 Goethe 249 
 
 God's Providence . . . 250 
 Man's Freedom . . . . 250 
 Dom Miguel and Dom Pedro . 250 
 Working to better one's Con- 
 dition 250 
 
 Negro Emancipation . . . 251 
 Fox and Pitt . . . .251 
 
 Revolution 252 
 
 Virtue and Liberty . . . 252 
 
 Epistle to the Romans . . . 252 
 
 Erasmus 253 
 
 Luther 253 
 
 Negro Emancipation . . 253 
 Hacket's Life of Archbishop 
 
 Williams 254 
 
 Charles 1. ..... 254 
 
 Manners under Edward III., 
 
 Richard IL, and Henry VIII. 254 
 
 Hypothesis 255 
 
 Suffiction 255 
 
 Theory 255 
 
 Lyell's Geology . . .256 
 
 PAGK 
 
 Gothic Architecture . . . 256 
 Gerard Douw's " Schoolmas- 
 ter " and Titian's " Venus " . 257 
 Sir J. Scarlett . . . .257 
 Mandeville's Fable of the Bees 258 
 Bestial Theory . . . . 258 
 Character of Bertram . . 259 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's Dra- 
 mas 259 
 
 -(Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides 260 
 
 Milton . . . . . 262 
 
 Style 263 
 
 Cavalier Slang . . . .263 
 
 Junius 264 
 
 Prose and Verse . . . 264 
 
 Imitation and Copy . . . 265 
 
 Dr. Johnson .... 265 
 
 Boswell 265 
 
 Burke 265 
 
 Newton 266 
 
 Milton 266 
 
 Painting 266 
 
 Music 267 
 
 Poetry 268 
 
 Public Schools . . . .268 
 
 Scott and Coleridge . . . 269 
 
 Nervous Weakness . . . 270 
 
 Hooker and Bull . . . . 270 
 
 Faith 270 
 
 Quakers 271 
 
 Philanthropists .... 271 
 
 Jews 271 
 
 Sallust 272 
 
 Thucydides 272 
 
 Herodotus 272 
 
 Gibbon 273 
 
 Key to the Decline of the 
 
 Roman Empire . . . 274 
 Dr. Johnson's Political Pam- 
 phlets 274 
 
 Taxation 274 
 
 Direct Representation . . . 275 
 
 Universal Suffrage . . . 275 
 
 Right of Women to Vote . . 275 
 Home Tooke . . . .276 
 
 Etymology of the final Ive . . 276 
 " The Lord " in the English 
 
 Version of the Psalms, &c. . 277 
 
 Scotch Kirk and Irving . . 278 
 
 Milton's Egotism . . . . 278 
 
 Claudian 279 
 
 Sterne 279 
 
 Humour and Genius . . 280 
 
 Great Poets good Men . . . 281 
 Diction of the Old and New 
 
 Testament Version . . 281 
 
 Hebrew 281 
 
 Vowels and Consonants . . 282 
 
 Greek Accent and Quantity . 282 
 
 Consolation in Distress . . 284 
 
 Mock Evangelicals . . . 285 
 
 Autumn Day . . . 285 
 
xxxii 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Rosetti on Dante . . . . 285 
 Laughter : Farce and Tragedy 285 
 Baron Von Humboldt . . 286 
 Modern Diplomatists . . . 286 
 Man cannot be stationary . 288 
 Fatalism and Providence . . 288 
 Characteristic Temperament of 
 
 Nations .... 289 
 Greek Particles . . . . 289 
 Latin Compounds . . . 290 
 
 Propertius 290 
 
 Tibullus 290 
 
 Lucan 290 
 
 Statins 290 
 
 Valerius Flaccus . . . . 290 
 
 Claudian 290 
 
 Persius 291 
 
 Prudentius . . . .291 
 Hermesianax . . . . 291 
 Destruction of Jerusalem . . 291 
 
 Epic Poem 292 
 
 Paradise Lost . . . .292 
 German and English . . . 293 
 Modern Travels . . .293 
 
 The Trinity 293 
 
 Incarnation .... 293 
 
 Redemption 293 
 
 Education . ... 294 
 
 Elegy . .... 294 
 
 Lavacrum Pallados . . . 294 
 Greek and Latin Pentameter . 295 
 Milton's Latin Poems . . . 295 
 Poetical Filter . . . .295 
 Gray and Cotton . . . . 296 
 Homeric Heroes in Shakspeare 297 
 
 Dryden 297 
 
 Dr. Johnson 297 
 
 Scott's Novels . . . .298 
 Scope of Christianity . . . 298 
 Times of Charles I. . . .298 
 Messenger of the Covenant . . 299 
 
 Prophecy 299 
 
 Logic of Ideas and of Syllo- 
 gisms 300 
 
 W. S. Landor's Poetry . .300 
 Beauty . . . ... 300 
 
 Chronological Arrangement of 
 
 Works 301 
 
 Toleration 301 
 
 Norwegians .... 303 
 Articles of Faith . . . . 304 
 Modem Quakerism . . . 305 
 Devotional Spirit . . . . 305 
 Sectarianism .... 307 
 
 Origen 307 
 
 Some Men like Musical Glasses 307 
 Sublime and Nonsense , 307 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Atheist . . . . . . 307 
 
 Proof of lExistence of God * '. 307 
 Kant's Attempt . . . . 308 
 
 Plurality of Worlds . . .308 
 
 A Reasoner 308 
 
 Shakspeare' s Intellectual Ac- 
 tion 309 
 
 Crabbe and Southey . . . 309 
 Peter Simple and Tom Crin- 
 gle's Log . . . .309 
 
 Chaucer 310 
 
 Shakspeare .... 311 
 
 Ben Jonson 311 
 
 Daniel 311 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher . . 312 
 
 Massinger 312 
 
 Lord Byron and H. Walpole's 
 
 " Mysterious Mother " . . 313 
 Lewis's Jamaica Journal . 313 
 
 Sicily 314 
 
 Malta 315 
 
 Sir Alexander Ball . . . 315 
 Cambridge Petition to admit 
 Dissenters .... 316 
 
 Corn Laws 317 
 
 Christian Sabbath . . .318 
 High Prizes and Revenues of 
 
 the Church . . . . 320 
 Sir Charles Wetherell's Speech 322 
 National Church . . .322 
 
 Dissenters 322 
 
 Papacy 322 
 
 Universities 323 
 
 Schiller's Versification . . 323 
 German Blank Verse . . . 323 
 Roman Catholic Emancipation 323 
 Duke of Wellington . . 324 
 Coronation Oath . . . . 324 
 Corn Laws .... 324 
 Modern Political Economy . . 325 
 Socinianism .... 326 
 Unitarianism . . . . 327 
 Fancy and Imagination . . 327 
 Mr. Coleridge's System . . 329 
 Biographia Literaria . . 330 
 
 Dissenters 330 
 
 Lord Brooke . . . .331 
 Barrow and Dryden . . . 331 
 Peter Wilkins and Stothard . 331 
 Fielding and Richardson . . 332 
 Bishop Sandford . . .332 
 Roman Catholic Religion . . 332 
 Euthanasia .... 333 
 Recollections by Mr. Justice 
 
 Coleridge 334 
 
 Address to a Godchild 42 
 
TABLE-TALK. 
 
 December 29, 1822. 
 
 Character of Othello. — Schiller^s Rollers. — ShaJcspeare. — Scotch 
 Novels, — Lord Byron. — John Kemlle. — Mathews. 
 
 "OTHELLO must not be conceived as a negro^ but 
 
 " a high and chivalrous Moorish chief. Shakspeare 
 learned the spirit of the character from the Spanish 
 poetry,, which was prevalent in England in his time.^^ 
 Jealousy does not strike me as the point in his pas- 
 sion ; I take it to be rather an agony that the creature^ 
 whom he had believed angelic^ with whom he had 
 garnered up liis hearty and whom he could not help 
 still loving^ should be proved impure and wortliless. 
 It was the struggle not to love her. It was a moral 
 indignation and regret that virtue should so fall : — 
 " But yet the pity of it^ lago ! — 0 lago ! the jy/z^^ of 
 it^ lago!^^ In addition to this^ liis honour was 
 concerned: lago would not have succeeded but by 
 hinting that liis honour was compromised. There is 
 no ferocity in OtheUo ; his mind is majestic and com- 
 posed. He dehberately determines to die ; and speaks 
 
 * Caballeros Granadinos, 
 Aunque Moros, hijos d'algo. — Ed. 
 
2 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 his last speech with a view of showing his attachment 
 to the Venetian state^ though it had superseded him. 
 
 Schiller has the material Sublime;^ to produce an 
 effect, he sets you a whole town on fire, and throws 
 infants with their mothers into the flames, or locks up 
 a father in an old tower. But Shakspeare drops a 
 handkerchief, and the same or greater effects foUow. 
 
 Lear is the most tremendous effort of Shakspeare 
 as a poet ; Hamlet as a philosopher or meditater ; and 
 Othello is the union of the two. There is something 
 gigantic and unformed in the former two ; but in the 
 latter, everytliing assumes its due place and propor- 
 tion, and the whole mature powers of his mind are 
 displayed in admirable equilibrium. 
 
 I tliink Old Mortality and Guy Mannering the best 
 of the Scotch novels. 
 
 It seems, to my ear, that there is a sad want of 
 harmony in Lord Byron^'s verses. Is it not unnatural 
 to be always connecting very great intellectual power 
 with utter depravity ? Does such a combination often 
 really exist in rerum naturd? 
 
 I always had a great liking — I may say, a sort of 
 nondescript reverence — for John Kemble. What a 
 quaint creature he was ! I remember a party, in 
 which he was discoursing in his measured manner 
 after dinner, when the servant announced his carriage. 
 He nodded, and went on. The announcement took 
 
 * This expression — "material Sublime" — like a hundred others which 
 have slipped into general use, came originally from Mr. Coleridge, and was 
 by him, in the first instance, applied to Schiller's Robbers. — See Act iv., 
 sc. 5— Ed. 
 
JOHN KEMBLE. — ^ANECDOTE. 
 
 3 
 
 place twice afterwards; Kemble each time nodding 
 his head a little more impatiently^ but stiU going on. 
 At last, and for the fourth time, the servant entered, 
 and said, — Mrs. Kemble says, sir, she has the 
 rheumati^^, and cannot stay.^^ Add ism dropped 
 John, in a parenthesis, and proceeded quietly in his 
 harangue. 
 
 Kemble would correct any body, at any time, and 
 in any place. Dear Charles Mathews — a true genius 
 in his hue, in my judgment — told me he was once 
 performing privately before the King. The King was 
 much pleased with the imitation of Kemble, and said, 
 
 I liked Kemble very much. He was one of my 
 earliest friends. I remember once he was talking, 
 and found himself out of snuff. I offered him my 
 box. He dechned taking any — ^ he, a poor actor, 
 could not put his fingers into a royal box."* I said, 
 ^ Take some, pray ; you will obk^ge me."' Upon 
 which Kemble replied, ^ It would become your royal 
 mouth better to say, obKge me;^ and took a pinch.^^ 
 
 It is not easy to put me out of countenance, or 
 interrupt the feeling of the time by mere external 
 noise or circumstance; yet once I was thoroughly 
 done up, as you would say. I was reciting, at a par- 
 ticular house, the Eemorse f and was in the midst 
 of Alhadra^s description* of the death of her husband, 
 
 ♦ Alhadra. This night your chieftain arm'd himself, 
 And hurried from me. But I followed him 
 At distance, till I saw him enter there! 
 Naomi. The cavern? 
 
 . Alhadra. Yes, the mouth of yonder cavern. 
 After a while I saw the son of Valdez 
 Rush by with flaring torch : he likewise enter'd. 
 There was another and a longer pause ; 
 And once, methought, I heard the clash of swords ! 
 
 B 2 
 
4i COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 when a scrubby boy, with a shining face set in dirt, 
 burst open the door and cried out, Please, ma^am, 
 master says. Will you ha^, or wiH you not ha^, the 
 pin-round 
 
 January 1, 1823. 
 
 Parliamentary Privilege, — PerTaanency and Progression of Nations, 
 — Kanfs Races of Mankind. 
 
 PRIVILEGE is a substitution for Law, where, from 
 the nature of the circumstances, a law cannot act 
 
 And soon the son of Valdez re-appear'd : 
 He flung his torch towards the moon in sport, 
 And seem'd as he were mirthful ! I stood listening, 
 Impatient for the footsteps of my husband. 
 
 Naomi. Thou calledst him ? 
 
 Alhadra. I crept into the cavern — 
 'Twas dark and very silent. What saidst thou ? 
 No ! No ! I did not dare call Isidore, 
 Lest I should hear no answer ! A brief while, 
 Belike, I lost all thought and memory 
 Of that for which I came ! After that pause, 
 
 0 Heaven ! I heard a groan, and follow'd it; 
 And yet another groan, which guided me 
 Into a strange recess — and there was light, 
 
 A hideous light ! his torch lay on the ground ; 
 Its flame burnt dimly o'er a chasm's brink : 
 
 1 spake ; and whilst I spake, a feeble groan 
 
 Came from that chasm ! it was his last — his death-groan I 
 
 Naomi. Comfort her, Allah ! 
 
 Alhadra. I stood in unimaginable trance 
 And agony that cannot be remember'd. 
 Listening with horrid hope to hear a groan ! 
 But I had heard his last; — my husband's death-groan 1 
 
 Naomi. Haste ! let us onward ! 
 
 Alhadra. I look'd far down the pit — 
 My sight was bounded by a jutting fragment; 
 And it was stain'd with blood. Then first I shriek'd; 
 My eyeballs burnt, my brain grew hot as fire, 
 And all the hanging drops of the wet roof 
 Turn'd into blood — I saw them turn to blood! 
 And I was leaping wildly down the chasm. 
 When on the further brink I saw his sword. 
 And it said, Vengeance! — Curses on my tongue! 
 The moon liath moved in heaven, and I am here, 
 And he hath not had vengeance ! — Isidore ! 
 Spirit of Isidore, thy murderer lives! 
 Away, away !" — Act iv., sc. 3. 
 
■PAELIAMENTARY PUIVILEGE. 
 
 5 
 
 without clashing with greater and more general prin- 
 ciples. The House of Commons must^ of course^ have 
 the power of taking cognizance of offences against its 
 own rights. Sir Francis Burdett might have heen 
 properly sent to the Tower for the speech he made 
 in the House ; ^ but when afterwards he published it 
 in Cobbett^ and they took cognizance of it as a breach 
 of privilege,, they violated the plain distinction between 
 privilege and law. As a speech in the House^ the 
 House could alone animadvert upon it^ consistently 
 with the effective preservation of its most necessary 
 prerogative of freedom of debate; but when that 
 speech became a book^ then the law was to look to it ; 
 and there being a law of libel^ commensurate with 
 every possible object of attack in the state, privilege, 
 which acts, or ought to act, only as a substitute for 
 other laws, could have notliing to do with it. I have 
 heard that one distinguished individual said, " That 
 he, for one, would not shrink from affirming, that if 
 the House of Commons chose to hi^m one of their own 
 members in Palace Yard, it had an inherent power 
 and right by the constitution to do so.^^ This was 
 said, if at all, by a moderate-minded man ; and may 
 show to what atrocious tyranny some persons may 
 advance in theory, under shadow of this word privilege. 
 
 * March 12, 1810. Sir Francis Burdett made a motion in the House of 
 Commons for the discharge of Mr. Gale Jones, who had heen committed to 
 Newgate by a resolution of the House on the 21st of February preceding. 
 Sir Francis afterwards published, in Cobbett's Political Register, of the 24th 
 of the same month of March, a " Letter to his Constituents, denying the 
 power of the House of Commons to imprison the people of England, and he 
 accompanied the letter with an argument in support of his position. On the 
 27th of March a complaint of breach of privilege, founded on this publication, 
 was made in the House by Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Lethbridge, and after 
 several long debates, a motion that Sir Francis Burdett should be committed 
 to the Tower was made on the 5th of April, 1810, by Sir Robert Salisbury, 
 and carried by a majority of 38. — Ed. 
 
6 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 There are two principles in every European and 
 Christian state : Permanency and Progression.* In 
 the civil wars of the seventeenth century in England, 
 which are as new and fresh now as they were a hun- 
 dred and sixty years ago, and will be so for ever to 
 us, these two principles came to a struggle. It was 
 natural that the great and the good of the nation 
 should be found in the ranks of either side. In the 
 Mohammedan states, there is no principle of perma- 
 nence: and, therefore, they sink directly. They 
 existed, and could only exist, in their efforts at pro- 
 gression ; when they ceased to conquer, they fell in 
 pieces. Turkey would long since have fallen, had it 
 not been supported by the rival and conflicting in- 
 terests of Christian Europe. The Turks have no 
 church; religion and state are one; hence there is 
 no counterpoise, no mutual support. This is the very 
 essence of their Unitarianism. They have no past ; 
 they are not an historical people ; they exist only in 
 the present. China is an instance of a permanency 
 without progression. The Persians are a superior 
 
 * See this position stated and illustrated in detail in Mr. Coleridge's -work 
 " On the Constitution of the Church and State, according to the Idea of each," 
 p. 21, 2nd edit., 1830. Well acquainted as I am with the fact of the compara- 
 tively small acceptation which Mr. Coleridge's prose works have ever found 
 in the literary world, and with the reasons, and, what is more, with the 
 causes of it, I still wonder that this particular treatise has not been more 
 noticed : first, because it is a little book ; secondly, because it is, or at least 
 nineteen-twenticths of it are, written in a popular style ; and thirdly, because 
 it is the only work, that I know or have ever heard mentioned, that even 
 attempts a solution of the difficulty in which an ingenious enemy of the 
 Church of England may easily involve most of its modern defenders in Par- 
 liament, or tlirough the press, upon their own principles and admissions. 
 Mr. Coleridge himself prized this little work highly, although he admitted 
 its incompletenoss as a composition : — " But I don't care a rush about it," he 
 said to me, " as an author. The saving distinctions are plainly stated in it, 
 and I am sure notliing is wanted to make them tell, but that some kind friend 
 should steal them from their obscure hiding-place, and just tumble them down 
 before the public as his own^ — Ed. 
 
KANT. — MATERIALISM. 
 
 7 
 
 race : they have a history and a literature ; they were 
 always considered by the Greeks as quite distinct from 
 the other barbarians. The Afghans are a remarkable 
 people. They have a sort of repubhc. Europeans 
 and Orientalists may be well represented by two 
 figures standing back to back : the latter looking to 
 the east, that is, backwards ; the former looking west- 
 ward, or forwards. 
 
 Kant assigns three great races of mankind. If two 
 individuals of distinct races cross, a third, or tertium 
 aliquid, is invariably produced, different from either, 
 as a white and a negro produce a mulatto. But when 
 different varieties of the same race cross, the offspring 
 is according to what we call chance ; it is now like 
 one, now like the other parent. Note this, when you 
 see the children of any couple of distinct European 
 complexions, — as English and Spanish, German and 
 Italian, Eussian and Portuguese, and so on. 
 
 January 3, 1823. 
 Materialism. — Ghosts, 
 
 EITHEE we have an immortal soul, or we have 
 not. If we have not, we are beasts ; the first 
 and wisest of beasts, it may be ; but still true beasts.* 
 "We shall only differ in degree, and not in kind ; just 
 as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the 
 concession of aU the materialists of all the schools, 
 
 * " Try to conceive a man without the ideas of God, eternity, freedom, will, 
 absolute truth ; of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite. An animal 
 endowed with a memory of appearances and facts might remain. But the 
 Tnan will have vanished, and you have instead a creature more subtle than 
 any beast of the field, but likewise cursed above every beast of the field ; 
 upon the belly must it go, and dust must it eat all the days of its life." — 
 Church and State, p. 54, n. 
 
8 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 or almost all^ we are not of the same kind as beasts 
 — and this also we say from our own consciousness. 
 Therefore^ methinks^ it must be the possession of a 
 soul within us that makes the difference. 
 
 Read the first chapter of Genesis without preju- 
 dice^ and you will be convinced at once. After the 
 narrative of the creation of the earth and brute 
 animals^ Moses seems to pause^ and says : — And 
 God said^ Let us make man in our image, after our 
 likeness J' And in the next chapter^ he repeats the 
 narrative : — And the Lord God formed man of the 
 dust of the ground^ and breathed into his nostrils 
 the breath of life and then he adds these words^ — 
 ''and man became a living soul.'' Materialism will 
 never explain those last words. 
 
 Define a vulgar ghost with reference to all that is 
 called ghost-like. It is visibility without tangibility; 
 which is also the definition of a shadow. Therefore, 
 a vulgar ghost and a shadow would be the same ; be- 
 cause two different things cannot properly have the 
 same definition. A visible substance without suscep- 
 tibility of impact, I maintain to be an absurdity. 
 Unless there be an external substance, the bodily eye 
 cannot see it ; therefore, in all such cases, that which 
 is supposed to be seen is, in fact, not seen, but is an 
 image of the brain. External objects naturally pro- 
 duce sensation; but here, in truth, sensation produces, 
 as it were, the external object. 
 
 In certain states of the nerves, however, I do 
 believe that the eye, although not consciously so 
 directed, may, by a slight convulsion, see a portion of 
 
CHARACTER OF THE AGE FOR LOGIC. 
 
 9 
 
 the body^ as if opposite to it. The part actually seen 
 will by common association seem the whole ; and the 
 whole body will then constitute an external object^, 
 which explains many stories of persons seeing them- 
 * selves lying dead. Bishop Berkeley once experienced 
 this. He had the presence of mind to ring the bell^ 
 and feel his pulse ; keeping his eye still fixed on his 
 own figure right opposite to him. He was in a high 
 fever^ and the brain image died away as the door 
 opened. I observed something very like it once at 
 Grasmere ; and was so conscious of the cause^ that I 
 told a person what I was experiencing^ whilst the 
 image still remained. 
 
 Of course, if the vulgar ghost be really a shadow, 
 there must be some substance of which it is the 
 shadow. These visible and intangible shadows, with- 
 out substances to cause them, are absurd. 
 
 January 4, 1823. 
 
 Character of the age for Logic. — Plato and Xenophon. — GreeJc 
 Drama. — Kotzebue. — Burke. — Plagiarists. 
 
 npHIS is not a logical age. A friend lately gave me 
 some political pamphlets of the times of Charles I. 
 and the Cromwellate. In them the premisses are fre- 
 quently wrong, but the deductions are almost always 
 legitimate; whereas, in the writings of the present 
 day, the premisses are commonly sound, but the con- 
 clusions false. I tliink a great deal of commendation 
 is due to the University of Oxford for preserving the 
 study of logic in the schools. It is a great mistake 
 to suppose geometry any substitute for it. 
 
 Negatively, there may be more of the pliilosophy 
 
10 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 of Socrates in the Memorabilia of Xenophon than in 
 Plato : that is^ there is less of what does not belong 
 to Socrates ; but the general spirit of, and impression 
 left by^ Plato^ are more Socratic* 
 
 In ^schylus religion appears terrible^ malignant^ 
 and persecuting: Sophocles is the mildest of the 
 three tragedians, but the persecuting aspect is still 
 maintained : Euripides is like a modern Frenchman, 
 never so happy as when giving a slap at the gods 
 altogether. 
 
 Kotzebue represents the petty kings of the islands 
 in the Pacific Ocean exactly as so many Homeric 
 chiefs. Riches command universal influence, and aU 
 the kings are supposed to be descended from the gods. 
 
 I confess I doubt the Homeric genuineness of 
 haKpvoev yeXdaao-a.ii It sounds to me much more 
 like a prettiness of Bion or Moschus. 
 
 The very greatest writers write best when calm, 
 and exerting themselves upon subjects unconnected 
 with party. Burke rarely shows all his powers, unless 
 where he is in a passion. The Prench Revolution 
 
 * See p. 26. Mr. Coleridge meant in both these passages, that Xenophon 
 had preserved the most of the man Socrates ; that he was the best Boswell ; 
 and that Socrates, as a persona dialogi, was little more than a poetical phantom 
 in Plato's hands. On the other hand, he says, that Plato is more Socratic, 
 that is, more of a philosopher in the Socratic mode of reasoning (Cicero calls 
 the Platonic writings generally, Socratici Ubri); and Mr. C. also says, that in 
 the metaphysical disquisitions Plato is Pythagorean, meaning, that he worked 
 on the supposed ideal or transcendental principles of the extraordinary 
 founder of the Italian school. 
 
 rrouh^ iov ' V) S' ot,«u iu,iv xyiajhii hi^ocro xoKfTUf 
 ietx^voiv yiXota-xa-x. — Iliad. Z. vi. 452. 
 
PLAGIARISTS. — ST. JOHN^S GOSPEL. 11 
 
 was alone a subject fit for him. We are not yet 
 aware of all the consequences of that event. We are 
 too near it. 
 
 Goldsmith did everything happily. 
 
 You abuse snuff ! Perhaps it is the final cause of 
 the human nose. 
 
 A rogue is a roundabout fool ; a fool in circumben" 
 dilus. 
 
 Orme ignotum pro magnifico. A dunghill at a 
 distance sometimes smeUs like musk^ and a dead dog 
 like elder-flowers. 
 
 Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen 
 from^ — as pickpockets are observed commonly to 
 walk with their hands in their breeches^ pockets. 
 
 January 6, 1823. 
 
 St. John's Gospel. — Christianity. — Epistle to the Hebrews. — 
 The Logos. — Reason and Understanding. 
 
 ST. JOHN had a two-fold object in his Gospel and 
 his Epistles^ — ^to prove the divinity^ and also the 
 actual human nature and bodily sufferings of Jesus 
 Christy — ^that he was God and Man. The notion 
 that the effusion of blood and water from the Saviour^s 
 side was intended to prove the real death of the suf- 
 ferer originated^ I beheve_, with some modern Germans, 
 and seems to me ridiculous : there is, indeed, a very 
 small quantity of water occasionally in the prsecordia : 
 but in the pleura, where wounds are not generally 
 mortal, there is a great deal. St. John did not mean, 
 I apprehend, to insinuate that the spear-tlirust made 
 
12 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 the death, merely as such^ certain or evident^ but that 
 the eflFasion showed the hiunan nature. I saw it/^ 
 he would say_, with my own eyes. It was real bloody 
 composed of lymph and crassamentum^ and not a 
 mere celestial ichor^ as the Phantasmists allege."*^ 
 
 I think the verse of the three witnesses (1 John, 
 V. 7) spurious, not only because the balance of ex- 
 ternal authority is against it, as Porson seems to have 
 shown ; but also, because, in my way of looking at 
 it, it spoils the reasoning. 
 
 St. John^s logic is Oriental, and consists chiefly in 
 position and parallel ; whilst St. Paul displays all the 
 intricacies of the Greek system. 
 
 "Whatever may be thought of the genuineness or 
 authority of any part of the book of Daniel, it makes 
 no difference in my belief in Christianity ; for Cln^is- 
 tianity is witliin a man, even as he is a being gifted 
 with reason; it is associated with your mother^s 
 chair, and with the fijst-remembered tones of her 
 blessed voice. 
 
 I do not believe St. Paul to be the author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews. Luther^s conjecture is very 
 probable, that it was by ApoUos, an Alexandrian Jew. 
 The plan is too studiously regular for St. Paul. It 
 was evidently written during the yet existing glories 
 of the Temple. Por three hundred years the church 
 did not affix St. Paulas name to it ; but its apostolical 
 or catholic character, independently of its genuineness 
 as to St. Paul, was never much doubted. 
 
CHRISTIANITY. THE LOGOS. 
 
 13 
 
 The first three Gospels show the history^ that is, 
 the fulfilment of the prophecies in the facts. St. John 
 declares explicitly the doctrine, oracularly, and with- 
 out comment, because, being pure reason, it can only 
 be proved by itself. Por Christianity proves itself, 
 as the sun is seen by its own light. Its evidence is 
 involved in its existence. St. Paul writes more par- 
 ticularly for the dialectic understanding ; and proves 
 those doctrines, which were capable of such proof, by 
 common logic. 
 
 St. John used the term 6 Aoyos technically. Philo- 
 Judseus had so used it several years before the 
 probable date of the composition of this Gospel ; and 
 it was commonly understood amongst the Jewish 
 Eabbis at that time, and afterwards, of the manifested 
 God. 
 
 Our translators, unfortunately, as 1 tliihk, render 
 the clause Trpo? rbv Geov/- with God ; that w^ould 
 be right, if the Greek were (tvv 06<3. By the 
 preposition Trpoj in this place, is meant the utmost 
 possible j^ro^mi/f^^, without confusion; Hkeness, with- 
 out sameness. The Jewish Church understood the 
 Messiah to be a divine person. Philo expressly 
 cautions against any one supposing the Logos to be 
 a mere personification, or symbol. He says, the 
 Logos is a substantial, seK-existent Being. The 
 Gnostics, as they were afterwards called, were a kind 
 of Arians ; and thought the Logos was an after-birth. 
 They placed " k^vaaos and Styr) (the Abyss and 
 Silence) before him. Therefore it was that St. John 
 
 * John, ch. i., v. 1. 2. 
 
14 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 said, with emphasis, iv apxfi r}v 6 Aoyos — In the 
 beginning was the Word/^ He was begotten in the first 
 simultaneous burst of Godhead, if such an expression 
 maj be pardoned, in speaking of eternal existence. 
 
 The Understanding suggests the materials of rea- 
 soning : the Reason decides upon them. The first 
 can only say, — This is, or ought to be so. The last 
 says, — It must be so.* 
 
 April 27, 1823. 
 Kean. — Sir James Mackintosh. — Sir ff. Davy. — Robert Smith. — 
 Canning. — National Debt. — Poor Laws, 
 
 TT'E AN is original ; but he copies from himself. His 
 -'-^ rapid descents from the hyper-tragic to the infra- 
 colloquial, though sometimes productive of great 
 effect, are often unreasonable. To see him act, is like 
 reading Shakspeare by flashes of lightning. I do not 
 think liim thorough-bred gentleman enough to play 
 OtheUo. 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh is the king of the men of 
 talent. He is a most elegant converser. How well I 
 remember his giving breakfast to me and Sir Humphry 
 Davy, at that time an unknown young man, and our 
 having a very spirited talk about Locke and Newton, 
 and so forth ! When Davy was gone. Mackintosh 
 said to me, That ^s a very extraordinary young man ; 
 
 * I have preserved this, and several other equivalent remarks, out of a 
 dutiful wish to popularize, by all the honest me;vns in my power, this funda- 
 mental distinction ; a thorough mastery of which Mr. Coleridge considered 
 necessary to any sound system of psychology ; and in the denial or neglect of 
 which he doliglitod to point out tlie source of most of tlic vulgar errors in 
 philosophy and religion. The distinction itself is implied throughout almost 
 all Mr. C.'s works, whether in verse or prose ; but it may be found minutely 
 arjjued in the " Aids to Keflection," p. 206, &c., 2nd edit., 1831.— Ed. 
 
CANNING. — ^NATIONAL DEBT. 
 
 15 
 
 but he is gone wrong on some points/^ But Davy 
 was, at that time at least, a man of genius; and I 
 doubt if Mackintosh ever heartily appreciated an emi- 
 nently original man. He is uncommonly powerful in 
 his own line ; but it is not the hue of a first-rate man. 
 After all his fluency and brilliant erudition, you can 
 rarely carry off anything worth preserving. You might 
 not improperly write on his forehead, Warehouse to 
 let!^' He always dealt too much in generaHties for 
 a lawyer. He is deficient in power in applying his 
 principles to the points in debate. I remember Robert 
 Smith had much more logical abiHty; but Smith 
 aimed at conquest by any gladiatorial shift ; whereas 
 Mackintosh was uniformly candid in argument. I am 
 speaking now from old recollections.* 
 
 Canning is very irritable, surprisingly so for a wit 
 who is always giving such hard knocks. He should 
 have put on an ass^s skin before he went into parlia- 
 ment. Lord Liverpool is the single stay of this 
 ministry; but he is not a man of a directing mind. 
 He cannot ride on the whirlwind. He serves as the 
 isthmus to connect one half of the cabinet with the 
 other. He always gives you the common sense of the 
 matter, and in that it is that his strength in debate lies. 
 
 * These remarks on the intellectual character of Sir James Mackintosh, 
 by his intimate friend, Robert Hall, the celebrated Baptist Minister, are 
 given in his " Life," by his Son. 
 
 " I know no man equal to Sir James in talents. The powers of his mind 
 are admirably balanced. He is defective only in Imagination. He has 
 imagination, too — but with him imagination is an acquisition rather than a 
 faculty. He has, however, plenty of embellishment at command, for his 
 memory retains everything. His mind is a spacious repository, hung round 
 with beautiful images ; and when he wants one, he has nothing to do but 
 reach up his hand to a peg and take it down. But his images were not 
 manufactured in his mind : they were imported." — G-regory's Memoirs, S. C. 
 
16 
 
 COLERIDGE^'S TABLE TALK. 
 
 The National Debt has, in fact, made more men 
 rich than have a right to be so, or, rather, any ultimate 
 power, in case of a struggle, of actualizing their riches. 
 It is, in effect, like an ordinary, where three hundred 
 tickets have been distributed, but where there is, in 
 truth, room only for one hundred. So long as you 
 can amuse the company with anything else, or make 
 them come in successively, all is well, and the whole 
 three hundred fancy themselves sure of a dinner ; but 
 if any suspicion of a hoax should arise, and they were 
 all to rush into the room at once, there would be two 
 hundred without a potato for their money ; and the 
 table would be occupied by the landholders, who live 
 on the spot. 
 
 Poor-laws are the inevitable accompaniments of an 
 extensive commerce and a manufacturing system. In 
 Scotland, they did without them, till Glasgow and 
 Paisley became great manufacturing places, and then 
 people said, " We must subscribe for the poor, or else 
 we shall have poor-laws. That is to say, they enacted 
 for themselves a poor-law in order to avoid having a 
 poor-law enacted for them. It is absurd to talk of 
 Queen Elizabeths act as creating the poor-laws of 
 this country. The poor-rates are the consideration 
 paid by, or on behalf of, capitalists for having labour 
 at demand. It is the price, and nothing else. The 
 hardship consists in the agricultural interest having to 
 pay an undue proportion of the rates ; for altliough, 
 perhaps, in the end, the land becomes more valuable, 
 yet, at the first, the landowners have to bear all the 
 brunt. I think there ought to be a fixed revolving 
 period for the cquahsation of rates. 
 
CONDUCT OF THE WHIGS. 
 
 17 
 
 April 28, 1823. 
 Conduct of the Whigs. — Reform of the House of Commons. 
 
 THE conduct of the Whigs is extravagantly incon- 
 sistent. It originated in the fatal error which 
 Fox committed^ in persisting^ after the first three 
 years of the French Eevolution^ when every shadow 
 of freedom in France had vanished^ in eulogizing the 
 men and measures of that shallow-hearted people. So 
 he went on gradually^ further and further departing 
 from all the principles of English policy and wisdom, 
 till at length he became the panegyrist,, through thick 
 and thin, of a military frenzy, under the influence of 
 which the very name of liberty was detested. And 
 thus it was that, in course of time, Eox^s party 
 became the absolute abettors of the Buonapartean 
 invasion of Spain, and did all in their power to thwart 
 the generous efforts of this country to resist it. Now, 
 when the invasion is by a Bourbon, and the cause of 
 the Spanish nation neither united nor, indeed, sound 
 in many respects, the Whigs would precipitate this 
 country into a crusade to fight up the cause of a 
 faction. 
 
 I have the honour of being slightly known to my 
 Lord Darnley. In 1808-9, I met him accidentally, 
 when, after a few words of salutation, he said to me, 
 ''Are you mad, Mr. Coleridge?'' — Not that I 
 know, my lord,'' I replied ; " what have I done which 
 argues any derangement of mind ?" — '''Wliy,Imean," 
 said he, " those letters of yours in the Courier, ' On 
 the Hopes and Fears of a People invaded by foreign 
 Armies.' The Spaniards are absolutely conquered; 
 it is absurd to talk of their chance of resisting." — 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 Very well^ my lord/^ I said,, " we shall see. Bat 
 will your lordship permit me^ in the course of a year 
 or two^ to retort your question upon you^ if I should 
 have grounds for so doing V — ^' Certainly V' said he ; 
 ^^that is fair!'' Two years afterwards, when affairs 
 were altered in Spain, I met Lord Darnley again, and, 
 after some conversation, ventured to say to him, Does 
 your lordship recoRect giving me leave to retort a 
 certain question upon you about the Spaniards ? Who 
 is mad now? — ''^ Very true, very true, Mr. Coleridge,'^ 
 cried he : you are right. It is very extraordinary. 
 It was a very happy and bold guess."*^ Upon which I 
 remarked, ^'1 think ^ guess ^ is hardly a fair term* 
 Por, has anything happened that has happened, from 
 any other causes, or under any other conditions, than 
 such as I laid down beforehand ? Lord Darnley, 
 who was always very courteous to me, took this with 
 a pleasant nod of his head. 
 
 Many votes are given for reform in the House of 
 Commons, which are not honest. Whilst it is well 
 known that the measure will not be carried in Parlia- 
 ment, it is as well to purchase some popularity by 
 voting for it. When Hunt and his associates, before 
 the Six Acts, created a panic, the Ministers lay on 
 their oars for three or four months, until the general 
 cry, even from the Opposition, was, Why don^t the 
 Ministers come forward with some protective mea- 
 sure The present Ministry exists on the weakness 
 and desperate character of the Opposition. The sober 
 part of the nation are afraid of the latter getting into 
 power, lest they should redeem some of their pledges. 
 
* CHUECH OF EOME. 
 
 19 
 
 April 29, 1823. 
 Church of Rome, 
 
 THE present adherents of the Church of Eome are 
 not^ in my judgment, Catholics. We are the 
 Catholics. We can prove that we hold the doctrines 
 of the primitive Church for the first three hundred 
 years. The Council of Trent made the Papists what 
 they are.* A foreign Eomish bishop t has declared, 
 that the Protestants of his acquaintance were more 
 like what he conceived the enhghtened Catholics to 
 have been before the Council of Trent, than the best 
 of the latter in his days. Perhaps you will say, this 
 bishop was not a ^ood CathoUc. I cannot answer for 
 that. The course of Christianity and the Christian 
 Church may not unaptly be likened to a mighty river, 
 which filled a wide channel, and bore along with its 
 waters mud, and gravel, and weeds, tiU it met a great 
 rock in the middle of its stream. By some means or 
 other, the water flows purely, and separated from the 
 filth, in a deeper and narrower course on one side of 
 the rock, and the refuse of the dirt and troubled 
 water goes off on the other in a broader current, and 
 then cries out, JFe are the river \" 
 
 A person said to me lately, ^^But you will, for 
 civilit/s sake, call them Catholics, wiU you not I 
 answered, that I would not ; for I would not teU a 
 lie upon any, much less upon so solemn an, occasion. 
 The adherents of the Church of Eome, I repeat, are 
 not Catholic Christians. If they are, then it follows 
 
 * See " Aids to Reflection," p. 180, note, 
 t Mr. Coleridge named him, but the name was strange to me, and I have 
 been unable to recover it. — Ed. 
 
20 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 that we Protestants are heretics and schismatics^ as, 
 indeed, the Papists very logically, from their own 
 premises, call us. And "Roman Catholics^^ makes 
 no difference. Catholicism is not capable of degrees 
 or local apportionments. There can be but one body 
 of Catholics, ex vi termini. To talk strictly of Irish 
 or Scotch Roman Cathohcs is a mere absurdity. 
 
 It is common to hear it said, that, if the legal dis- 
 abilities are removed, the Komish Church will lose 
 ground in this country. I think the reverse : the 
 Eomish religion is, or, in certain hands, is capable of 
 being made, so flattering to the passions and seK- 
 delusion of men, that it is impossible to say how far 
 it would spread, amongst the liigher orders of society 
 especially, if the secular disadvantages now attending 
 its profession were removed.* 
 
 April 30, 1823. 
 Zendavesta. — Pantheism and Idolatry, 
 
 nPHE Zendavesta must, I think, have been copied 
 in parts from the writings of Moses. In the 
 description of the creation, the first chapter of Genesis 
 is taken almost hterally, except that the sun is created 
 before the light, and then the herbs and the plants 
 after the sun ; which are precisely the two points they 
 did not understand, and therefore altered as errors.f 
 
 * Here, at least, the prophecy has been fulfilled. The -wisdom of our 
 ancestors, in the reign of King William III., would have been jealous 
 of the daily increase in the numbers of the Romish Church in England, of 
 which every attentive observer must be aware. See Sancti Dominici Pallium, 
 in vol. ii. p. 80, of Mr. Coleridge's Poems.— Ed. 
 
 t The Zend, or Zendavesta, is the sacred book ascribed to Zoroaster, or 
 Zcrdusht, tlie founder or reformer of the Magian religion. The modern edition 
 or paraphrase of this work, called the Sadda, written in the Tersian of the 
 day was, I believe, composed about three hundred years ago.— -Ed. 
 
DREAMS AND GHOSTS. 
 
 21 
 
 There are only two acts of creation^ properly so 
 caUed_, in the Mosaic account^ — the material universe, 
 and man. The intermediate acts seem more as the 
 results of secondary causes, or, at any rate, of a modi- 
 fication of prepared materials. 
 
 Pantheism and idolatry naturally end in each other ; 
 for all extremes meet. The Judaic religion is the 
 exact medium, the true compromise. 
 
 May 1, 1823. 
 
 Difference between Stories of Dreams and Ghosts. — Phantom 
 Portrait. — Witch of Endor. — Socinianism, 
 
 n"^HEEE is a great difference in the credibility to 
 be attached to stories of dreams and stories of 
 ghosts. Dreams have nothing in them which are 
 absurd and nonsensical; and, though most of the 
 coincidences may be readily explained by the diseased 
 system of the dreamer, and the great and surprising 
 power of association, yet it is impossible to say whether 
 an inner sense does not really exist in the mind, 
 seldom developed, indeed, but which may have a 
 power of presentiment.* All the external senses 
 
 * See this point suggested and reasoned with extraordinary subtlety in 
 the third essay (marked C), in the Appendix to the Statesman's Manual, or 
 first Lay Sermon, p. 19, &c. One beautiful paragraph I will venture to 
 quote : — ^' Not only may we expect that men of strong religious feelings, but 
 little religious knowledge, will occasionally be tempted to regard such occur- 
 rences as supernatural visitations ; but it ought not to surprise us if such 
 dreams should sometimes be confirmed by the event, as though they had 
 actually possessed a character of divination. For who shall decide how far 
 a perfect reminiscence of past experiences (of many, perhaps, that Lad 
 escaped our reflex consciousness at the time)— who shall determine to what 
 extent this reproductive imagination, unsophisticated by the will, and undis- 
 tracted by intrusions from the senses, may or may not be concentred and 
 sublimed into foresight and presentiment ? There would be nothing herein 
 either to foster superstition on the one hand, or to justify contemptuous 
 disbelief on the other. Incredulity is but Credulity seen from behind, 
 bowing and nodding assent to the Habitual and the Fashionable." — Ed. 
 
22 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 have their correspondents in the mind ; the eye can 
 see an object before it is distinctly apprehended; — 
 why may there not be a corresponding power in the 
 soul? The power of prophecy might have been 
 merely a spiritual excitation of this dormant faculty. 
 Hence you will observe that the Hebrew seers some- 
 times seem to have required music, as in the instance 
 of Elisha before Jehoram : — But now bring me a 
 minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel 
 played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him.^^* 
 Everytliing in nature has a tendency to move in 
 cycles; and it would be a miracle if, out of such 
 myriads of cycles moving concurrently, some coinci- 
 dences did not take place. No doubt, many such 
 take place in the daytime ; but then our senses drive 
 out the remembrance of them, and render the impres- 
 sion hardly felt; but when we sleep, the mind acts 
 without interruption. Terror and the heated imagi- 
 nation will, even in the daytime, create all sorts of 
 features, shapes, and colours out of a simple object 
 possessing none of them in reahty. 
 
 But ghost stories are absurd. "Whenever a real 
 ghost appears, — by which I mean some man or 
 woman dressed up to frighten another, — if the super- 
 natural character of the apparition has been for a 
 moment beheved, the effects on the spectator have 
 always been most terrible, — convulsion, idiocy, mad- 
 ness, or even death on the spot. Consider the awful 
 descriptions in the Old Testament of the effects of a 
 spiritual presence on the prophets and seers of the 
 Hebrews ; the terror, the exceeding great dread, the 
 utter loss of all animal power. But in our common 
 
 ♦ 2 Kings, iii. 15, and Boe 1 Sam., x. 5— Ed. 
 
GHOSTS. 
 
 23 
 
 ghost stories^ you always find that the seer^ after a 
 most appalling apparition^ as you are to believe^ is 
 quite well the next day. Perhaps, he may have a 
 headache ; but that is the outside of the effect pro- 
 duced. Alston, a man of genius, and the best painter 
 yet produced by America, when he was in England 
 told me an anecdote which confirms what I have been 
 saying. It was, I think, in the University of Cam- 
 bridge, near Boston, that a certain youth took it into 
 his wise head to endeavour to convert a Tom-Painish 
 companion of liis by appearing as a ghost before him. 
 He accordingly dressed himseK up in the usual way, 
 having previously extracted the ball from the pistol 
 which always lay near the head of his friend^s bed. 
 Upon first awaking, and seeing the apparition, the 
 youth who was to be frightened. A., very coolly looked 
 his companion the ghost in the face, and said, I 
 know you. This is a good joke ; but you see I am 
 not frightened. Now you may vanish The ghost 
 stood still. Come,^^ said A., that is enough. I 
 shall get angry. Away!^^ Still the ghost moved 
 
 not. By ejaculated A., if you do not in 
 
 three minutes go away, 1^11 shoot you."*^ He waited 
 the time, deliberately levelled the pistol, fired, and, 
 with a scream at the immobility of the figure, became 
 convulsed, and afterwards died. The very instant 
 he believed it to he a ghost, liis human nature fell 
 before it. 
 
 * Last Thursday my uncle, S. T. C, dined with 
 us, and several men came to meet him. I have heard 
 
 * What follows in the text -within commas was written about this time, and 
 communicated to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge.— Ed. 
 
24 
 
 COLEETDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 him more brilliant,, but he was very fine, and delighted 
 every one very much. It is impossible to carry off, 
 or commit to paper, his long trains of argument ; in- 
 deed, it is not always possible to understand them, he 
 lays the foundation so deep, and views every question 
 in so original a manner. Nothing can be finer than 
 the principles which he lays down in morals and 
 religion. His deep study of Scripture is very astonish- 
 ing j the rest of the party were but as children in his 
 hands, not merely in general views of theology, but 
 in nice verbal criticism. He thinks it clear that St. 
 Paul did not write the Epistle to the Hebrews, but 
 that it must have been the work of some Alexandrian 
 Greek, and he thinks ApoUos. It seemed to him. a 
 desirable thing for Christianity that it should have 
 been written by some other person than St. Paul ; 
 because, its inspiration being unquestioned, it added 
 another independent teacher and expounder of the 
 faith. 
 
 We fell upon ghosts, and he exposed many of 
 the stories physically and metaphysically. He seemed 
 to think it impossible that you should really see with 
 the bodily eye what was impalpable, unless it were a 
 shadow ; and if what you fancied you saw with the 
 bodily eye was in fact oidy an impression on the 
 imagination, then you were seeing something out of 
 your senses, and your testimony was full of uncertainty. 
 He observed how uniformly, in all the best-attested 
 stories of spectres, the appearance might be accounted 
 for from the disturbed state of the mind or body of 
 the seer, as in the instances of Dion and Brutus. 
 Upon some one saying that he wished to believe these 
 stories true, thinking that they constituted a useful 
 
THE PHANTOM POETEAIT. 
 
 25 
 
 subsidiary testimony of another state of existence, 
 Mr. C. differed, and said, he thought it a dangerous 
 testimony, and one not wanted : it was Saul, with the 
 Scriptures and the Prophet before him, calling upon 
 the witch of Endor to certify him of the truth ! He 
 explained very ingeniously, yet very naturally, what 
 has often startled people in ghost stories — such as 
 Lord Lyttelton'^s — namely, that when a real person 
 has appeared, habited like the phantom, the ghost- 
 seer has immediately seen two, the real man and the 
 phantom. He said that such must be the case. The 
 man under the morbid delusion sees with the eye of 
 the imagination, and sees with the bodily eye too ; if 
 no one were really present, he would see the spectre 
 with one, and the bed-curtains with the other. "When, 
 therefore, a real person comes, he sees the real man 
 as he would have seen any one else in the same place, 
 and he sees the spectre not a whit the less : being 
 perceptible by different powers of vision, so to say, 
 the appearances do not interfere with each other. 
 
 " He told us the following story of the Phantom 
 Portrait : — • 
 
 * " A stranger came recommended to a merchants 
 house at Lubeck. He was hospitably received; but, 
 the house being full, he was lodged at night in an 
 apartment handsomely furnished, but not often used. 
 There was nothing that struck him particularly in the 
 room when left alone, till he happened to cast his 
 eyes on a picture, which immediately arrested liis 
 attention. It was a single head; but there was 
 
 * This is the story which Mr. Washington Irving has dressed up very 
 prettily in the first volume of his " Tales of a Traveller," pp. 84—119; pro- 
 fessing in his preface that he could not rememher whence he had derived the 
 anecdote. — Ed. 
 
26 
 
 COLEUIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 something so micommon^ so frightful and unearthly, 
 in its expression, though by no means ugly, that he 
 found himself irresistibly attracted to look at it. In 
 fact, he could not tear himself from the fascination of 
 this portrait, tiU his imagination was filled by it, and 
 his rest broken. He retired to bed, dreamed, and 
 awoke from time to time with the head glaring on 
 him. In the morning, his host saw by his looks that 
 he had slept ill, and inquired the cause, which was 
 told. The master of the house was much vexed, and 
 said the picture ought to have been removed, that it 
 was an oversight, and that it always was removed 
 when the chamber was used. The picture, he said, 
 was, indeed, terrible to every one ; but it was so fine, 
 and had come into the family in so curious a way, 
 that he could not make up his mind to part with it, 
 or to destroy it. The story of it was this : — ^ My 
 father,^ said he, ^ was at Hamburgh on business, and, 
 whilst dining at a coffee-house, he observed a young 
 man of a remarkable appearance enter, seat himself 
 alone in a corner, and commence a solitary meal. His 
 countenance bespoke the extreme of mental distress, 
 and every now and then he turned his head quickly 
 round, as if he heard something, then shudder, grow 
 pale, and go on with his meal after an effort as before. 
 My father saw this same man at the same place for 
 two or three successive days ; and at length became 
 so much interested about him, that he spoke to 
 him. The address was not repulsed, and the stranger 
 seemed to find some comfort in the tone of sympathy 
 and kindness which my father used. He was an 
 Italian, weU informed, poor but not destitute, and 
 living economically upon the profits of his art as a 
 
WITCH OF ENDOH. 
 
 27 
 
 painter. Their intimacy increased; and at length 
 the ItaUan^ seeing my father^s involuntary emotion at 
 his convnlsive turnings and shudderings^ wliich con- 
 tinued as formerly, interrupting their conversation 
 from time to time, told him his story. He was a 
 native of Eome, and had lived in some familiarity 
 with, and been much patronised by, a young noble- 
 man j but upon some slight occasion they had fallen 
 out, and his patron, besides using many reproachful 
 expressions, had struck him. The painter brooded 
 over the disgrace of the blow. He could not challenge 
 the nobleman, on account of his rank ; he therefore 
 watched for an opportunity, and assassinated him. 
 Of course he fled from his country, and finally had 
 reached Hamburgh. He had not, however, passed 
 many weeks from the night of the murder, before, one 
 day, in the crowded street, he heard his name called 
 by a voice familiar to liim : he turned short round, 
 and saw the face of his victim looking at him with a 
 fixed eye. "Prom that moment he had no peace : at 
 all hours, in all places, and amidst all companies, 
 however engaged he might be, he heard the voice, 
 and could never help looking round ; and, whenever 
 he so looked round, he always encountered the same 
 face staring close upon him. At last, in a mood of 
 desperation, he had fixed himself face to face, and eye 
 to eye, and dehberately drawn the phantom visage as 
 it glared upon him; and this was the picture so 
 drawn. The ItaHan said he had struggled long, but 
 life was a burden which he could now no longer bear; 
 and he was resolved, when he had made money enough 
 to return to Eome, to surrender himseK to justice, and 
 expiate his crime on the scaffold. He gave the finished 
 
28 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 picture to my father, in return for the kindness which 
 he had shown him/ 
 
 I have no doubt that the Jews believed generally in 
 a future state, independently of the Mosaic law. The 
 story of the witch of Endor is a proof of it. What 
 we translate witch,^' or "famihar spirit/^ is, in the 
 Hebrew, Ob, that is, a bottle or bladder, and means 
 a person whose belly is swelled like a leathern bottle 
 by divine inflation. In the Greek it is kyyaa-rpiixvOoSy 
 a ventriloquist. The text (1 Sam., ch. xxviii.) is a 
 simple record of the facts, the solution of which the 
 sacred liistorian leaves to the reader. I take it to 
 have been a trick of ventriloquism, got up by the 
 courtiers and friends of Saul, to prevent him, if pos- 
 sible, from hazarding an engagement with an army 
 despondent and oppressed with bodings of defeat. 
 Saul is not said to have seen Samuel; the woman 
 only pretends to see him. And then what does this 
 Samuel do ? He merely repeats the prophecy known 
 to all Israel, which the true Samuel had uttered some 
 years before. Eead Captain Lyon^s account of the 
 scene in the cabin with the Esquimaux bladder, or 
 conjurer ; it is impossible not to be reminded of the 
 witch of Endor. I recommend you also to look at 
 Webster^s admirable treatise on Witchcraft. 
 
 The pet texts of a Socinian are quite enough for 
 his confutation with acute thinkers. If Christ had 
 been a mere man, it would have been ridiculous in 
 him to call liimseE ^Hhc Son of man/^ but being 
 God and man, it then became, in his own assmuption 
 of it, a peculiar and mysterious title. So, if Christ 
 
RELIGIONS OF THE GREEKS. 
 
 29 
 
 had been a mere man^ his sayings '^My Father is 
 greater than I^^ (John^ xv. 28), would have been as 
 unmeaning. It would be laughable enough, for 
 example, to hear me say, My ' Eemorse^ succeeded, 
 indeed, but Shakspeare is a greater dramatist than I.^^ 
 But how immeasurably more foohsh, more monstrous, 
 would it not be for a man, however honest, good, or 
 wise, to say, ^^But Jehovah is greater than I V' 
 
 May 8, 1824. 
 
 Plato and Xenoplion, — Religions of the GreeJcs. — Egyptian 
 Antiquities. — Milton, — Virgil, 
 
 P BATONS works are logical exercises for the mind. 
 Little that is positive is advanced in them. So- 
 crates may be fairly represented by Plato in the more 
 moral parts ; but in all the metaphysical disquisitions 
 it is Pythagoras. Xenophon^'s representation of his 
 master is quite different.* 
 
 Observe the remarkable contrast between the reli- 
 gion of the tragic and other poets of Greece. The 
 fornier are always opposed in heart to the popular 
 divinities. In fact, there are the popular, the sacer- 
 dotal, and the mysterious rehgions of Greece, repre- 
 sented roughly by Homer, Pindar, and JEschylus. 
 The ancients had no notion of a Jhll of man, though 
 they had of his gradual degeneracy. Prometheus, in 
 the old mythus, and for the most part in iEschylus, 
 is the Eedeemer and the Devil jumbled together. 
 
 I cannot say I expect much from mere Egyptian 
 antiquities. Almost everything really, that is, intel- 
 lectually, great in that country seems to me of Grecian 
 origin. 
 
 ■ * See p. 10, n .— Ed. 
 
so 
 
 COLERIDGE S TABLE TALK. 
 
 I think nothing can be added to Milton^s definition 
 or rule of poetry^ — that it ought to be simple^ sensu- 
 ous^ and impassioned ; that is to say^ single in con- 
 ception^ abounding in sensible images, and informing 
 them all with the spirit of the mind. 
 
 Milton^s Latin style is, I think, better and easier 
 than his Enghsh. His style, in prose, is quite as 
 characteristic of him as a philosophic repubHcan, as 
 Cowley^ s is of Um as a first-rate gentleman. 
 
 If you take from Yirgil his diction and metre, what 
 do you leave him ? 
 
 June 2, 1824. 
 Granville Penn and the Deluge, — Rainbow. 
 
 I CONFESS I have small patience with Mr. GranviUe 
 Penn^s book against Professor Buckland. Science 
 will be superseded, if every phenomenon is to be 
 referred in this manner to an actual miracle. I think 
 it absurd to attribute so much to the Deluge. An 
 inundation, which left an olive-tree standing, and bore 
 up the ark peacefully on its bosom, could scarcely 
 have been the sole cause of the rents and dislocations 
 observable on the face of the earth. How could 
 the tropical animals, which have been discovered in 
 England and in Eussia in a perfectly natural state, 
 have been transported thither by such a flood ? Those 
 animals must evidently have been natives of the 
 countries in which they have been found. The 
 climates must have been altered. Assume a sudden 
 evaporation upon the retiring of the Deluge to have 
 caused an intense cold, the solar heat might not be 
 sufficient afterwards to overcome it. I do not think 
 
GREEK ACOUSTICS. 
 
 81 
 
 that the polar cold is adequately explained by mere 
 comparative distance from the sun. 
 
 You will observe, that there is no mention of rain 
 previously to the Deluge. Hence it may be inferred, 
 that the rainbow was exhibited for the first time after 
 God^s covenant with Noah. However, I only suggest 
 this. 
 
 The Earth with its scarred face is the symbol of 
 the Past ; the Air and Heaven, of Futurity. 
 
 June 5, 1824. 
 English and Qreeh Dancing, — Greek Acoustics, 
 
 THE fondness for dancing in English women is the 
 re-action of their reserved manners. It is the only 
 way in which they can throw themselves forth in 
 natural liberty. We have no adequate conception 
 of the perfection of the ancient tragic dance. The 
 pleasure which the Greeks received from it had for 
 its basis Difference ; and the more unfit the veliicle, 
 the more lively was the curiosity and intense the 
 delight at seeing the difficulty overcome. 
 
 The ancients certainly seem to have understood 
 some principles in acoustics which we have lost, or, 
 at least, they applied them better. They contrived 
 to con vey the voice distinctly in their huge theatres 
 by means of pipes, which created no echo or con- 
 fusion. Our theatres — Drury Lane and Co vent 
 Garden — are fit for nothing : they are too large for 
 acting, and too small for a buU-fight. 
 
32 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 June 7, 1824. 
 Lord Byron's Versification, and Don Juan. 
 
 HOW lamentably the art of versification is neglected 
 by most of the poets of the present day ! — ^by 
 Lord Byron^ as it strikes me, in particular, among 
 those of eminence for other qualities. Upon the 
 whole, I think the part of Don Juan in which 
 Lambro^s return to his home, and Lambro himself, 
 are described, is the best, that is, the most individual, 
 thing in all I know of Lord B.'^s works. The festal 
 abandonment puts one in mind of Nicholas Poussin^s 
 pictures.^ 
 
 June 10, 1824. 
 
 Parental Control in Marriage. — Marriage of Cousins. — Difference 
 of Character. 
 
 UP to twenty-one, I hold a father to have power 
 over his cliildren as to marriage ; after that age, 
 authority and influence only. Show me one couple 
 unhappy merely on account of their limited circum- 
 stances, and I will show you ten that are wretched 
 from other causes. 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge particularly noticed, for its classical air, the 32nd stanza 
 of tliis Canto (the third) : — 
 
 " A band of children, round a snow-white ram, 
 There wreathe his venerable horns with flowers, 
 
 While, peaceful as if still an unwean'd lamb, 
 The patriarch of the flock all gently cowers 
 
 His sober head, majestically tame, 
 Or eats from out the palm, or playful lowers 
 
 His brow, as if in act to butt, and then 
 
 Yielding to their small hands, draws back again." 
 
 But Mr. C. said that then, and again, made no rhyme to his ear. Why should 
 not the old form agen be lawful in verse ? We wilfully al)ridgc ourselves of 
 the liberty which our great poets achieved and sanctioned for us in innu- 
 merable instances.— Ed. 
 
BLUMENBACH^S EACES. 
 
 33 
 
 K the matter were quite open^ I should inchne to 
 disapprove the intermarriage of first cousins; but 
 the church has decided otherwise on the authority of 
 Augustine, and that seems enough upon such a point. 
 
 You may depend upon it, that a slight contrast of 
 character is very material to happiness in marriage. 
 
 February 24, 1827. 
 
 Blumenhach and Kanfs Races. — lapetic and Semitic. — Hebrew. — 
 Solomon. 
 
 "DLUMENBACH makes five races; Kant, three. 
 
 Blumenbach^s scale of dignity may be thus 
 figured : — 
 
 1. 
 
 Caucasian or European. 
 
 2. \. American. 
 
 \. Mongolian = 
 ■■ 3. \^ Asiatic. 
 
 There was, I conceive, one great lapetic original 
 of language, under which Greek, Latin, and other 
 European dialects, and, perhaps, Sanscrit, range as 
 species. The lapetic race, 'laov^s, separated into two 
 branches; one, with a tendency to migTate south- 
 west, — Greeks, ItaHans, &c. ; and the other north- 
 west, — Goths, Germans, Swedes, &c. The Hebrew 
 is Semitic. 
 
 Hebrew, in point of force and purity, seems at its 
 height in Isaiah. It is most corrupt in Daniel, and 
 not much less so in Ecclesiastes ; which I cannot be- 
 lieve to have been actually composed by Solomon, but 
 
COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 rather suppose to have been so attributed by the Jews^ 
 in their passion for ascribing all works of that sort to 
 their ^rand monarque. 
 
 March 10, 1827. 
 Jewish History. — Spinozistic and Hebrew Schemes. 
 
 HE people of all other nations^ but the Jewish^ 
 
 seem to look backwards and also to exist for the 
 present ; but in the Jewish scheme everything is pro- 
 spective and preparatory; nothings however triflings 
 is done for itself alone^ but all is typical of something 
 yet to come. 
 
 I would rather caUthe Book of Proverbs Solomonian 
 than as actually a work of Solomon^s. So I appre- 
 hend many of the Psalms to be Davidical only, not 
 David^s own compositions. 
 
 You may state the Pantheism of Spinosa, in con- 
 trast with the Hebrew or Christian scheme, shortly, 
 as thus : — 
 
 W — G=0 ; i.e. the World without God is an 
 impossible idea. 
 
 G — W=0; i.e. God without the World is so 
 likewise. 
 
 W — G = 0 ; i.e. The same as Spinosa^s premiss. 
 ButG-W=G; i.e. God without the World is God 
 the self-subsistent. 
 
 Spinosism. 
 
 Hebrew or Christian scheme. 
 
ENERGY OF MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS. 
 
 35 
 
 March 12, 1827. 
 Roman Catholics. — Energy of Man and other Animals. — ShaJcspeare 
 in minimis. — Paul Sarpi. — Bartram's Travels, 
 
 I HAVE no doubt that the real object closest to the 
 hearts of the leading Irish Romanists is the de- 
 struction of the Irish Protestant Churchy and the 
 re-establishment of their own. I think more is in- 
 volved in the manner than the matter of legislating 
 upon the civil disabihties of the members of the 
 Church of Rome ; and, for one, I should be wilKng 
 to vote for a removal of those disabilities, with two or 
 three exceptions, upon a solemn declaration being 
 made legislatively in Parliament, that at no time, nor 
 under any circumstances, could or should a branch 
 of the Romish hierarchy, as at present constituted, 
 become an estate of this realm.* 
 
 Internal or mental energy and external or corporeal 
 modificability are in inverse proportions. In man, 
 internal energy is greater than in any other animal ; 
 and you wiU see that he is less changed by cKmate 
 than any animal. For the highest and lowest speci- 
 mens of man are not one haK so much apart from 
 each other as the different kinds even of dogs, animals 
 of great internal energy themselves. 
 
 Por an instance of Shakspeare^s power in minimisj 
 I generally quote James Gurney^s character in King 
 John. How individual and comical he is with the 
 four words allowed to his dramatic hfe \ \ And pray 
 look at Skelton^'s Richard Sparrow also ! 
 
 * See Church and State, second part, p. 189. 
 I " Enter Lady Falconbkidge and James Gxtrney. 
 
 Bast. O me ! it is my mother : — How now, good lady ? 
 What brings you here to court so hastily ? 
 
36 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 Paiil Sarpi^s History of the Council of Trent de- 
 serves your study. It is very interesting. 
 
 The latest book of travels I know, written in the 
 spirit of the old travellers,, is Bartram'^s account of his 
 tour in the Floridas. It is a work of high merit 
 every way.* 
 
 March 13, 1827. 
 
 The Understanding. 
 
 A PUN will sometimes facilitate explanation, as 
 thus ; — the Understanding is that which stands 
 under the phenomenon, and gives it objectivity. You 
 know what a thing is by it. It is also worthy of 
 remark, that the Hebrew word for the understand- 
 ing, Bineh, comes from a root meaning between or 
 distinguishing. 
 
 Lady F. Where is that slave, thy brother? where is he? 
 That holds in chase mine honour up and down ? 
 
 Bast. My brother Robert? Old Sir Robert's son? 
 Colbrand the giant, that same mighty man? 
 Is it Sir Robert's son that you seek so ? 
 
 Lady F. Sir Robert's son ! Ay, thou unreverend boy, 
 Sir Robert's son: why scom'st thou at Sir Robert? 
 He is Sir Robert's son; and so art thou. 
 
 Bast. James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave a while ? 
 
 GuR. Good leave, good Philip. 
 
 Bast. Philip? — Sparrow! James, 
 There 's toys abroad ; anon I '11 tell thee more. 
 
 [Exit GUENEY." 
 
 The very exit Gurnet/ is a stroke of James's character.— Ed. 
 
 * " Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West 
 Florida, the Cherokee Country, the extensive territories of the Muscogulges, 
 or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws, &c. By William 
 Bartram." Philadelphia, 1791. London, 1792. 8vo. The expedition was 
 made at the request of Dr. Fothergill, the Quaker physician, in 1773, and wao 
 particularly directed to botanical discoveries. — Ed. 
 
PARTS OF SPEECH. GRAMMAR. 
 
 37 
 
 March 18, 1827. 
 Parts of Speech, — Grammar, 
 
 T^HERE are seven parts of speech, and they agree 
 with the five grand and universal divisions into 
 which all things finite, by which I mean to exclude 
 the idea of God, will be found to fall ; that is, as you 
 will often see it stated in my writings, especially in 
 the Aids to Reflection — 
 
 Prothesis. 
 1. 
 
 Thesis. Mesothesis, Antithesis. 
 
 2. 4. 3. 
 
 Synthesis. 
 5. 
 
 Conceive it thus : — 
 
 1. Prothesis, the noun- verb, or verb-substantive, 
 / am, which is the previous form, and implies identity 
 of being and act, 
 
 HN^ote, each of these may be 
 
 2. Thesis, the noun. J converted ; that is, they 
 
 3. Antithesis, the verb. | are only opposed to each 
 
 L other. 
 
 4. Mesothesis, the infinitive mood, or the indiffer- 
 ence of the verb and noun, it being either the one 
 or the other, or both at the same time, in different 
 relations. 
 
 5. Synthesis, the participle, or the community of 
 verb and noun ; being an acting at once. 
 
 Now, modify the noun by the verb, that is, by an 
 act, and you have — 
 
 6. The adnoun, or adjective. 
 
 * p. 170, 2nd edition. 
 
38 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 Modify the verb by the noun^ that is, by being, 
 and you have — 
 7. The adverb. 
 
 Interjections are parts of sound, not of speech. 
 Conjunctions are the same as propositions ; but they 
 are prefixed to a sentence, or to a member of a sen- 
 tence, instead of to a single word. 
 
 The inflexions of nouns are modifications as to 
 place j the inflexions of verbs, as to time. 
 
 The genitive case denotes dependence ; the dative, 
 transmission. It is absurd to talk of verbs governing. 
 In Thucydides, I believe, every case has been found 
 absolute.* 
 
 The inflexions of the tenses of a verb are formed 
 by adjuncts of the verb substantive. In Greek it is 
 obvious. The E is the prefix significative of a past time. 
 
 June 15, 1827. 
 
 Magnetism, — Electricity. — Galvanism, 
 
 PERHAPS the attribution or analogy may seem 
 fanciful at first sight, but I am in the habit of 
 realising to myself Magnetism as length ; Electricity 
 as breadth or surface ; and Galvanism as depth. 
 
 * Nominative absolute : — ^iuv (poQoq ^ uvB^uttuv vofjt,os ovtiig a.^tl^yi, to 
 
 fJLiV X^tVOVTi? iv OUCtM XOt) (Ti^UV XOt) fJiVl TUV CCf^a^Tyj/XOiTIUV OV^ii^ 
 
 iXTt^iuf fA€;c$' ^txviv yiviffdat jBlOV^ OCV TVIV TlfAU^iaV OCVTlhoVVOCl. — 
 
 Time. II. 53. 
 
 Dative: — il ^yo fAivoi^ ecvTol^ t^? Boe,'Ka.a'a'vi<; xou xutoi. yY,v tt o^Bovfje>ivotq 
 ivix^/i^Yi(ra.v Ttvis «r§os *Advivaiovg ocyocyiiv tv,v 'xoKiv. — Thuc. VIII. 24. 
 This is the Latin usage. 
 
 Accusative. — I do not rememhcr an instance of the proper accusative 
 absolute in Thucydides; but it seems not uncommon in other authors: — 
 u letve, fJiA) ^ocufjcocit TT^Oi TO A/rra^£?, 
 Tixv* it (potvivT ctikfTTa fx-vizCvci) Xoyov. 
 
 Soph. (Ed. C. 1119. 
 
 Yet all such instances may be nominatives ; for I cannot find an example of 
 the accusative absolute in the masculine or feminine gender, where the 
 difference of inflexion would show the case. — Ed. 
 
CHAEACTER OP OTHELLO. 
 
 39 
 
 June 24, 1827. 
 
 Spenser. — Character of Othello. — Hamlet. — Polonius. — Principles 
 avid Maxims. — Love. — Measure for Measure. — Ben Jonson. — 
 Beaumont and Fletcher. — Version of the Bible, — Spurzheim. — 
 Craniology, 
 
 SPENSEE'S Epithalamioii is truly sublime; and 
 pray mark the swan-like movement of his exqui- 
 site Prothalamion.* His attention to metre and 
 rhythm is sometimes so extremely minute as to be 
 painful even to my ear^ and you know how highly I 
 prize good versification. 
 
 I have often told you that I do not think there is 
 any jealousy^ properly so called^ in the character of 
 Othello. There is no predisposition to suspicion^ 
 which I take to be an essential term in the definition 
 of the word. Desdemona very truly told Emilia that 
 he was not jealous^ that is^ of a jealous habit^ and he 
 
 * How well I remember this Midsummer-day ! I shall never pass such 
 another. The sun was setting behind Caen Wood, and the calm of the 
 evening was so exceedingly deep that it arrested Mr. Coleridge's attention. 
 We were alone together in Mr. Gillman's drawing-room, and Mr. C. left 
 off talking, and fell into an almost trance-like state for ten minutes whilst 
 contemplating the beautiful prospect before us. His eyes swam in tears, 
 his head inclined a little forward, and there was a slight uplifting of the 
 fingers, which seemed to tell me that he was in prayer. I was awe-stricken, 
 and remained absorbed in looking at the man, in forgetfulness of external 
 nature, when he recovered himself, and after a word or two fell by some 
 secret link of association upon Spenser's poetry. Upon my telling him that 
 I did not very well recollect the Prothalamion : " Then I must read you a bit 
 of it," said he ; and fetching the book from the next room, he recited the whole 
 of it in his finest and most musical manner. I particularly bear in mind the 
 sensible diversity of tone and rhythm with which he gave : — 
 
 " Sweet Thames ! run softly till I end my song," 
 the concluding line of each of the ten strophes of the poem. 
 
 When I look upon the scanty memorial, which I have alone preserved 
 of this afternoon's converse, I am tempted to bum these pages in despair. 
 Mr. Coleridge talked a volume of criticism that day, which, printed verbatim 
 as he spoke it, would have made the reputation of any other person but 
 himself. He was, indeed, particularly brilliant and enchanting; and I left 
 him at night so thoroughly magnetized, that I could not for two or three days 
 afterwards reflect enough to put anything on paper. — Ed. 
 
40 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 says so as truly of himself. lago^s suggestions^ you 
 see^ are quite new to him; they do not correspond 
 with anything of a like nature previously in his mind. 
 If Desdemona had, in fact, been guilty, no one would 
 have thought of calling Othello's conduct that of a 
 jealous man. He could not act otherwise than he 
 did with the lights he had; whereas jealousy can 
 never be strictly right. See how utterly unlike 
 Othello is to Leontes, in the Winter's Tale, or even 
 to Leonatus, in Cymbeline ! The jealousy of the first 
 proceeds from an evident trifle, and something like 
 hatred is mingled with it ; and the conduct of Leonatus 
 in accepting the wager, and exposing his wife to the 
 trial, denotes a jealous temper already formed. 
 
 Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the abstract- 
 ing and generahsing habit over the practical. He 
 does not want courage, skill, wiU, or opportunity ; but 
 every incident sets him thinking ; and it is curious, 
 and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, 
 who all the play seems reason itself, should be impelled, 
 at last, by mere accident to effect his object. I have 
 a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so. 
 
 A Maxim is a conclusion upon observation of 
 matters of fact, and is merely retrospective : an Idea, 
 or, if you like, a Principle, carries knowledge within 
 itself, and is prospective. Polonius is a man of 
 maxims. Whilst he is descanting on matters of past 
 experience, as in that excellent speech to Laertes before 
 he sets out on his travels,* he is admirable ; but when 
 he comes to advise or project, he is a mere dotard. 
 You see Hamlet, as the man of ideas, despises him. 
 
 * Act. i. sc. 3. 
 
HAMLET. — LOVE. 
 
 41 
 
 A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one 
 eye^ and that eye placed in the back of his head. 
 
 In the scene with Ophelia^ in the third act^* Hamlet 
 is beginning with great and unfeigned tenderness; 
 but perceiving her reserve and coyness^ fancies there 
 are some Ksteners^ and then^ to sustain his part^ breaks 
 out into all that coarseness. 
 
 Love is the admiration and cherishing of the 
 amiable quahties of the beloved person^ upon the 
 condition of yourseK being the object of their action. 
 The quahties of the sexes correspond. The man^s 
 courage is loved by the woman^ whose fortitude again 
 is coveted by the man. His vigorous intellect is 
 answered by her infallible tact. Can it be true what 
 is so constantly affirmed^ that there is no sex in souls ? 
 — I doubt it^ I doubt it exceedingly .f 
 
 * Sc. 1. 
 
 t Mr. Coleridge was a great master in the art of love, but he had not 
 studied in Ovid's school. Hear his account of the matter : — 
 
 " Love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the world, and 
 mutual love still less so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beauti- 
 fully delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, 
 in the well-known ballad, ' John Anderson, my Jo, John,' in addition to a 
 depth and constancy of character of no every-day occurrence, supposes a 
 peculiar sensibility and tenderness of nature ; a constitutional communi- 
 cativeness and utterancy of heart and soul ; a delight in the detail of 
 sympathy, in the outward and visible- signs of the sacrament within, — to 
 count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But, above all, it supposes a 
 soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life, even in the lustihood 
 of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest that which age 
 cannot take away, and which in all our lovings is the love ; I mean, that 
 willing sense of the unsufficingness of the self for itself, which predisposes a 
 generous nature to see, in the total being of another, the supplement and 
 completion of its OAvn ; that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of 
 the beloved object modulates, not suspends, where the heart momently finds, 
 and, finding again, seeks on; lastly, when 'life's changeful orb has passed 
 the full,' a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus brought home 
 and pressed, as it were, to the veiy bosom of hourly experience ; it supposes, 
 I say, a heartfelt reverence for worth, not the less deep because divested of 
 its solemnity by habit, by familiarity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a 
 feeling of modesty which will arise in delicate minds, when they are con- 
 
42 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 Measure for Measure is the single exception to the 
 deHghtMness of Shakspeare^s plays. It is a hateful 
 work^ although Shaksperian throughout. Our feel- 
 ings of justice are grossly wounded in Angelo^s escape. 
 Isabella herseK contrives to be unamiable^ and Claudio 
 is detestable. 
 
 I am inclined to consider The Pox as the greatest 
 of Ben Jonson^s works. But his smaller works are 
 full of poetry. 
 
 Monsieur Thomas and the little French Lawyer 
 are great favourites of mine amongst Beaumont and 
 rietcher^s plays. How those plays overflow with 
 wit ! And yet I scarcely know a more deeply tragic 
 scene any where than that in Eollo, in which Edith 
 pleads for her father's life^ and then^ when she cannot 
 prevail^ rises up and imprecates vengeance on his 
 murderer.* 
 
 scious of possessing the same, or the correspondent, excellence in their own 
 characters. In short, there must be a mind, which, while it feels the 
 beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its own, and by right of love 
 appropriates it, can call goodness its playfellow ; and dares make sport of 
 time and infirmity, while, in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared 
 partner, we feel for aged virtue the caressing fondness that belongs to the 
 innocence of childhood, and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies 
 which had been dictated by the same affection to the same object when 
 attired in feminine loveliness or in manly beauty." (Poetical Works, vol. ii. 
 p. 120.)— Ed. 
 * Act iii. sc. 1.: — 
 
 " RoLLO. Hew off her hands ! 
 Hammond. Lady, hold off! 
 
 Edith. No I hew 'em ; 
 
 Hew off my innocent hands, as he commands you I 
 They '11 hang the faster on for death's convulsion. — 
 Thou seed of rocks, will nothing move thee, then ? 
 Are all my tears lost, all my righteous prayers 
 Drown'd in thy drunken wrath? I stand up thus, then, 
 Thou boldly bloody tyrant, 
 
 And to thy face, in hcav'n's high name defy thee! 
 And may sweet mercy, when thy soul sighs for it, — 
 When under thy bhir.k mischiefs thy flesh trembles. 
 
CHANIOLOGY. 
 
 43 
 
 Our version of the Bible is to be loved and prized 
 for this^ as for a thousand other things^ — that it has 
 preserved a purity of meaning to many terms of natural 
 objects. Without this holdfast^ our vitiated imagina- 
 tions would refine away language to mere abstractions. 
 Hence the Prench have lost their poetical language ; 
 and Mr. Blanco White says the same thing has hap- 
 pened to the Spanish. 
 
 I have the perception of individual images very 
 strongs but a dim one of the relation of place. I re- 
 member the man or the tree^ but where I saw them 
 I mostly forget.* 
 
 Craniology is worth some consideration^ although 
 it is merely in its rudiments and guesses yet. But 
 all the coincidences which have been observed could 
 scarcely be by accident. The confusion and absurdity^ 
 however, will be endless until some names or proper 
 
 When neither strength, nor youth, nor friends, nor gold, 
 Can stay one hour ; when thy most wretched conscience, 
 Waked from her dream of death, like fire sliall melt thee, — 
 When all thy mother's tears, thy brother's wounds. 
 Thy people's fears, and curses, and my loss. 
 
 My aged father's loss, shall stand before thee 
 
 RoLLO. Save him, I say ; run, save him, save her father ; 
 Fly and redeem his head ! 
 
 Edith. May then that pity," &c. 
 
 * There was no man whose opinion in morals, or even in a matter of general 
 conduct in life, if you furnished the pertinent circumstances, I would have 
 sooner adopted than Mr. Coleridge's ; but I would not take him as a guide 
 through streets or fields or earthly roads. He had much of the geometrician 
 about him ; but he could not find his way. In this, as in many other pecu- 
 liarities of more importance, he inherited strongly from his learned and 
 excellent father, who deserves, and will, I trust, obtain, a separate notice for 
 himself when his greater son's life comes to be written. I believe the 
 beginning of Mr. C.'s liking for Dr. Spurzheim was the hearty good humour 
 with which the Doctor bore the laughter of a party, in the presence of which 
 he, unknowing of his man, denied any Ideality, and awarded an unusual 
 share of Locality, to the majestic silver-haired head of my dear uncle and 
 father-in-law. But Mr. Coleridge immediately shielded the craniologist 
 under the distinction preserved in tne text, and perhaps, since that time, 
 there may be a couple of organs assigned to the latter faculty. — Ed. 
 
44 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 terms are discovered for the organs, which are not 
 taken from their mental appHcation or significancy. 
 The forepart of the head is generally given up to the 
 higher intellectual powers; the hinder part to the 
 sensual emotions. 
 
 Silence does not always mark wisdom. I was at 
 dinner, some time ago, in company with a man, who 
 listened to me and said nothing for a long time ; but 
 he nodded his head, and I thought him intelligent. 
 At length, towards the end of the dinner, some apple 
 dumphngs were placed on the table, and my man 
 had no sooner seen them, than he burst forth with — 
 ^^Them'^s the jockies for me l^"* I wish Spurzheim 
 could have examined the fellow^s head. 
 
 Some folks apply epithets as boys do in making 
 Latin verses. "When I iSrst looked upon the Tails of 
 the Clyde, I was unable to find a word to express 
 my feelings. At last, a man, a stranger to me, who 
 arrived about the same time, said: — ^^How majestic 1'^ 
 — (It was the precise term, and I turned round and 
 was saying — Thank you. Sir ! that is the exact Avord 
 for it — when he added, eodem fiaUi) — Yes ! how 
 Y&cy pretty 
 
 July 8, 1827. 
 Bull and Waterland. — TIte Trinity. 
 
 "DULL and Waterland are the classical writers on 
 the Trinity.* In the ^frinity there is, I. Ipseity. 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge's admiration of Bull and Waterland as high theologians, 
 was very great. Bull he used to read in the Latin Defensio Fidei Nicsena;, 
 using tlie Jesuit Zola's edition of 1784, which, I think, he bought at Home. 
 He told me once, that when he was reading a Protestant English Bishop's 
 work on the Trinity, in a copy edited by an Italian Jesuit in Italy, he felt 
 pntud of the church of England, and in good humour with the church of 
 Home. — Ed. 
 
THE TRINITY. 
 
 45 
 
 2, Alterity. 3. Community. You may express the 
 formula thus : — 
 
 God, the absolute Will or Identity, =Prothesis. 
 The Father = Thesis. The Son = Antithesis. The 
 Spirit = Synthesis. 
 
 The author of the Athanasian Creed is unknown. 
 It is, in my judgment, heretical in the omission, or 
 implicit denial, of the Filial subordination in the God- 
 head, which is the doctrine of the Nicene Creed, and 
 for which Bull and Waterland have so fervently and 
 triumphantly contended ; and by not holding to wliich, 
 Sherlock staggered to and fro between Tritheism and 
 SabeUianism. This creed is also tautological, and, 
 if not persecuting, which I will not discuss, certainly 
 containing harsh and ill-conceived language. 
 
 How much I regret that so many religious persons 
 of the present day think it necessary to adopt a certain 
 cant of manner and pliraseology as a token to each 
 other. They must improve this and that text, and 
 they must do so and so in 2,jprayerful way ; and so on. 
 Why not use common language ? A young lady the 
 other day urged upon me that such and such feel- 
 ings were the marrow of aU. religion ; upon wliich I 
 recommended her to try to walk to London upon her 
 marrow-bones only. 
 
 July 9, 1827. 
 
 ^cdle of Animal Being. 
 
 IN the very lowest link in the vast and mysterious 
 chain of Being, there is an effort, although scarcely 
 apparent, at individualisation ; but it is almost lost 
 in the mere nature. A little liigher up, the individual 
 
46 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 is apparent and separate, but subordinate to anything 
 in man. At length, the animal rises to be on a par 
 with the lowest power of the human nature. There 
 are some of our natural desires which only remain in 
 our most perfect state on earth as means of the higher 
 powers^ acting.* 
 
 * These remarks seem to call for a citation of that wonderful passage, 
 transcendant alike in eloquence and philosophic depth, which the readers of 
 the " Aids to Reflection " have long since laid up in cedar : — 
 
 " Every rank of creatures, as it ascends in the scale of creation, leaves 
 death behind it or under it. The metal at its height of being seems a mute 
 prophecy of the coming vegetation, into a mimic semblance of which it 
 crystallizes. The blossom and flower, the acm6 of vegetable life, divides 
 into correspondent organs with reciprocal functions, and by instinctive 
 motions and approximations seems impatient of that fixure, by which it is 
 differenced in kind from the flower-shaped Psyche that flutters with free 
 wing above it. And wonderfully in the insect realm doth the irritability, 
 the proper seat of instinct, while yet the nascent sensibility is subordinate 
 thereto, — most wonderfully, I say, doth the muscular life in the insect, and 
 the musculo-arterial in the bird, imitate and typically rehearse the adaptive 
 understanding, yea, and the moral afiections and charities of man. Let us 
 carry ourselves back, in spirit, to the mysterious week, the teeming work- 
 days of the Creator, as they rose in vision before the eye of the inspired 
 historian " of the generations of the heaven and earth, in the days that 
 the Lord God made the earth and the heavens," And who that hath watched 
 their ways with an understanding heart, could, as the vision evolving still 
 advanced towards him, contemplate the filial and loyal bee; the home- 
 building, wedded, and divorceless swallow ; and, above all, the manifoldly 
 intelligent ant tribes, with their commonwealth and confederacies, their 
 warriors and miners, the husband-folk, that fold in their tiny flocks on the 
 honied leaf, and the virgin sisters with the holy instincts of maternal love, 
 detached and in selfless purity, and not say to himself. Behold the shadow of 
 approaching Humanity, the sun rising from behind, in the kindling morn of 
 creation 1 Thus all lower natures find their highest good in semblances and 
 seekings of that which is higher and better. All things strive to ascend, 
 and ascend in their striving. And shall man alone stoop ? Shall his pur- 
 suits and desires, the reflections of his inward life, be like the reflected image 
 of a tree on the edge of a pool, that grows downward, and seeks a mock 
 heaven in the unstable element beneatli it, in neighbourhood with the slim 
 water-weeds and oozy bottom-grass that are yet better than itself and more 
 noble, in as far as substances that appear as shadows are preferable to 
 shadows mistaken for substance ! No! it must be a higher good to make 
 you happy. While you labour for anything below your proper humanity, 
 you seek a happy life in the region of death. Well saith the moral poet : — 
 
 ' Unless above himself ho can 
 Erect himself, how mean a thing is man ! ' " 
 P .105, 2nd ed.— Ed. 
 
SCANDERBEG. LUTHEE. BAXTER. 47 
 
 July 12, 1827. 
 
 Popedom. — Scanderbeg. — Thomas a Becket. — Pure Ages of Greeh^ 
 Italian, and English. — Luther. — Baxter. — Algernon Sidney's 
 Style. — Ariosto and Tasso. — Prose and Poetry. — The Fathers. 
 Rhenferd, — Jacol Behmen, 
 
 HAT a grand subject for a history the Popedom 
 
 is ! The Pope ought never to have affected 
 temporal sway,, but to have lived retired "within 
 St. Angelo^ and to have trusted to the superstitious awe 
 inspired by his character and office. He spoiled his 
 chance when he meddled in the petty Italian pohtics. 
 
 Scanderbeg would be a very fine subject for "Walter 
 Scott ; and so would Thomas a Becket, if it is not 
 rather too much for him. It involves in essence the 
 conflict between arms, or force, and the men of letters. 
 
 Observe the superior truth of language, in Greek, to 
 Theocritus inclusively ; in Latin, to the Augustan age 
 exclusively ; in Italian, to Tasso exclusively ; and in 
 EngHsh, to Taylor and Barrow inclusively. 
 
 Luther is, in parts, the most evangelical writer I 
 know, after the apostles and apostolic men. 
 
 Pray read with great attention Baxter^s Life of 
 himself. It is an inestimable work.* I may not 
 unfrequently doubt Baxter^s memory, or even his 
 
 * This, a very thick folio of the old sort, was one of Mr. Coleridge's text 
 books for English church history. He used to say that there was no sub- 
 stitute for it in a course of study for a clergyman or public man, and that 
 the modem political Dissenters, who affected to glory in Baxter as a leader, 
 would read a bitter lecture on themselves in every page of it. In a marginal 
 note I find Mr. C. writing thus: "Alas! in how many respects does my lot 
 resemble Baxter's I But how much less have my bodily evils been, and yet 
 how very much greater an impediment have I suffered them to be ! But 
 verily Baxter's labours seem miracles of supporting grace." — Ed. 
 
48 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 competence^ in consequence of his particular modes 
 of thinking; but I could ahnost as soon doubt 
 the Gospel verity as his veracity. 
 
 I am not enough read in Puritan divinity to know 
 the particular objections to the surplice^ over and 
 above the general prejudice against the retenta of 
 Popery. Perhaps that was the only ground^ — a foohsh 
 one enough. 
 
 In my judgment BoHngbroke^s style is not in any 
 respect equal to that of Cowley or Dryden. Eead 
 Algernon Sidney; his style reminds you as httle of 
 books as of blackguards. "What a gentleman he was ! 
 
 Burke^s Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful seems 
 to me a poor tiling ; and what he says upon Taste is 
 neither profound nor accurate. 
 
 Well ! I am for Ariosto against Tasso ; though I 
 would rather praise Ariosto^s poetry than his poem. 
 
 I wish our clever young poets would remember my 
 homely definitions of prose and poetry ; that is^ prose 
 = words in their best order ; — poetry = the best 
 words in the best order. 
 
 I conceive Origen^ Jerome, and Augustine to be 
 the three great fathers in respect of theology, and 
 Bazil, Gregory Nazianzen, and Glirysostom in respect 
 of rhetoric. 
 
 Rhenfcrd possessed the immense learning and 
 robust sense of Selden, with the acuteness and wit of 
 Jortin. 
 
HESTOIIATION. 
 
 49 
 
 Jacob Behmen remarked^ that it was not wonderful 
 that there were separate languages for England^ Prance, 
 Germany, &c. ; but rather that there was not a dif- 
 ferent language for every degree of latitude. In 
 confirmation of which, see the infinite variety of 
 languages amongst the barbarous tribes of South 
 America. 
 
 July 20, 1827. 
 Non-perce]ption of Colours. 
 
 WHAT is said of some persons not being able to 
 distinguish colours, I believe. It may proceed 
 from general weakness, which wiU render the differ- 
 ences imperceptible, just as the dusk or twilight makes 
 all colours one. This defect is most usual in the blue 
 ray, the negative pole. 
 
 I conjecture that when finer experiments have been 
 applied, the red, yellow, and orange rays will be found 
 as capable of communicating magnetic action as the 
 other rays, though, perhaps, under different circum- 
 stances. Eemember this, if you are alive twenty years 
 hence, and think of me. 
 
 .July 21, 1827. 
 
 Restoration. — Reformation. 
 
 THE elements had been well shaken together 
 during the civil wars and interregnum under 
 the Long Parliament and Protectorate ; and notliing 
 but the cowardliness and impolicy of the Noncon- 
 formists, at the Eestoration, could have prevented a 
 real reformation on a wider basis. But the truth is, 
 by going over to Breda with their stiff flatteries to 
 
 K 
 
50 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 the hollow-hearted King^ they put Sheldon and the 
 bishops on the side of the constitution. 
 
 The Heformation in the sixteenth century narrowed 
 Reform. As soon as men began to call themselves 
 names^ all hope of further amendment was lost. 
 
 July 23, 1827. 
 William III. — Berkeley. — Sjpinosa. — Genius, — Envy. — Love. 
 T1,^ILLIAM the Third was a greater and much 
 ^ * honester man than any of his ministers. I 
 believe every one of them^ except Shrewsbury, has 
 now been detected in correspondence with James. 
 
 Berkeley can only be confuted^, or answered, by one 
 sentence. So it is with Spinosa. His premiss granted, 
 the deduction is a chain of adamant. 
 
 Genius may co-exist with wildness, idleness, folly, 
 even with crime; but not long, believe me, with 
 selfishness, and the indulgence of an envious dispo- 
 sition. Envy is KaKia-ros kol bLKatoraros Oeos, as I 
 once saw it expressed somewhere in a page of Stobseus : 
 it dwarfs and withers its worshippers. 
 
 The man^s desire is for the woman ; but the woman^s 
 desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.* 
 
 * " A woman's fricridship," I find written by Mr. C. on a page dyed red 
 with an imprisoned rose-leaf, " a woman's fricndsliip borders more closely on 
 love than man's. Men affect each other in the reflection of noble or friendly 
 acts; whilst women ask fewer proofs, and more signs and cx))ressions of 
 attachment." — Ej). 
 
JEREMY TAYLOE. HOOKER. IDEAS. 51 
 
 August 29, 1827. 
 Jeremy Taylor. — Hooker , — Ideas. — Knoidedge. 
 
 JEREMY TAYLOR is an excellent author for a 
 young man to study^ for the purpose of imbibing 
 noble principles^ and at the same time of learning to 
 exercise caution and thought in detecting his numer- 
 ous errors. 
 
 I must acknowledge^ with some hesitation, that I 
 think Hooker has been a little over-credited for his 
 judgment. 
 
 Take as an instance of an idea,* the continuity 
 and coincident distinctness of nature ; or tliis, — vege- 
 table life is always striving to be something that it is 
 not ; animal life to be itself. Hence, in a plant the 
 parts, as the root, the stem, the branches, leaves, &c., 
 remain after they have each produced or contributed 
 to produce a different status of the whole plant : in an 
 
 * The reader -who has never studied Plato, Bacon, Kant, or Coleridge in 
 their philosophic works, will need to be told that the word Idea is not used 
 in this passage in the sense adopted hy Dr. Holofernes, who, in a lecture on 
 metaphysics, delivered at one of the Mechanics' Institutions, explodes all 
 ideas but those of sensation ; whilst his friend, deputy Costard, has no idea 
 of a better-flavoured haunch of venison, than he dined off at the London 
 Tavern last week. He admits (for the deputy has travelled) that the French 
 have an excellent idea of cooking in general; but holds that their most 
 accomplished mattres de cuisine have no more idea of dressing a turtle, than 
 the Parisian gourmands themselves have any real idea of the true taste and 
 colour of the fat." Church and State, p. 78. No ! what Mr. Coleridge meant 
 by an idea in this place may be expressed in various ways out of his own 
 works. I subjoin a sufficient definition from the Church and State, p. 6. 
 " That which, contemplated objectively, (that is, as existing externally to the 
 mind,) we call a law; the same contemplated subjectively, (that is, as existing 
 in a subject or mind,) is an idea. Hence Plato often names Ideas, Law s ; 
 and Lord Bacon, the British Plato, describes the laws of the material 
 universe as the ideas in Nature. " Quod in Natura naturata Lex, in natura 
 naturante Idea dicitur." A more subtle limitation of the word may be found 
 in the last paragraph of Essay (E) in the Appendix to the Statesman's 
 Manual. — Ed. 
 
52 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 animal nothing of the previous states remains distinct, 
 but is incorporated into, and constitutes progressively, 
 the very seK. 
 
 To know anything for certain is to have a clear 
 insight into the inseparability of the predicate from 
 the subject (the matter from the form), and vice versa. 
 This is a verbal definition, — a real definition of a 
 thing absolutely known is impossible. I hnoio a 
 circle, when I perceive that the equality of all possible 
 radii from the centre to the circumference is insepar- 
 able from the idea of a circle. 
 
 August 30, 1827. 
 Painting. 
 
 lAINTHNTG is the intermediate somewhat between 
 a thought and a thing. 
 
 April 13, 1830. 
 
 Prophecies of the Old Testament. — Messiah. — Jews. — The Trinity. 
 
 TF the prophecies of the Old Testament are not 
 rightly interpreted of Jesus our Christ, then there 
 is no prediction whatever contained in it of that 
 stupendous event — the rise and establishment of 
 Christianity — in comparison with which all the pre- 
 ceding Jewish history is as nothing. "With the 
 exception of the book of Daniel, which the Jews 
 themselves never classed among the prophecies, and 
 an obscure text of Jeremiah, there is not a passage in 
 all the Old Testament which favours the notion of a 
 temporal Messiah. What moral object was there, 
 for which such a Messiah should come? What 
 could he have been but a sort of virtuous Sesostris 
 or 13 uoriaparte? 
 
THE TEINITY. 
 
 53 
 
 I know that some excellent men — Israelites with- 
 out guile — do not^ in fact^ expect the advent of any 
 Messiah ; but believe^ or suggest^ that it may possibly 
 have been God^s will and meaning, that the Jews 
 should remain a quiet light among the nations for the 
 purpose of pointing at the doctrine of the unity of 
 God. To which I say, that this truth of the essen- 
 tial unity of God has been preserved, and gloriously 
 preached, by Christianity alone. The Romans never 
 shut up their temples, nor ceased to worship a hun- 
 dred or a thousand gods and goddesses, at the bidding 
 of the Jews ; the Persians, the Hindus, the Chinese, 
 learned nothing of this great truth from the Jews. 
 But from Christians they did learn it in various 
 degrees, and are still learning it. The religion of the 
 Jews is, indeed, a light; but it is as the light of the 
 glow-worm, which gives no heat, and illumines nothing 
 but itself. 
 
 It has been objected to me, that the vulgar notions 
 of the Trinity are at variance with this doctrine ; and 
 it was added, whether as flattery or sarcasm matters 
 not, that few believers in the Trinity thought of it as 
 I did. To which again humbly, yet confidently, I 
 reply, that my superior light, if superior, consists in 
 nothing more than this, — that I more clearly see that 
 the doctrine of Trinal Unity is an absolute truth 
 transcending my human means of understanding it, 
 or demonstrating it. I may or may not be able to 
 utter the formula of my faith in this mystery in more 
 logical terms than some others ; but this I say. Go 
 and ask the most ordinary man, a professed believer 
 in this doctrine, whether he believes in and worships 
 
54 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 a plurality of Gods^ and lie will start with horror at 
 the bare suggestion. He may not be able to explain 
 his creed in exact terms ; but he will tell you that 
 he does believe in one God_, and in one God only^ — 
 reason about it as you may. 
 
 What all the churches of the East and West^ what 
 Romanist and Protestant beheve in common^ that I 
 call Christianity. In no proper sense of the word can 
 I call Unitarians and Socinians believers in Christ ; at 
 leasts not in the only Christ of whom I have read or 
 know any thing. 
 
 April 14, 1830- 
 Conversion of the Jews. — Jews in Poland. 
 nPHEEE is no hope of converting the Jews in the 
 way and with the spirit unhappily adopted by our 
 church ; and^ indeed^ by all other modern churches. 
 In the first age^ the Jewish Christians undoubtedly 
 considered themselves as the seed of Abraham^ to 
 whom the promise had been made ; and^ as such^ a 
 superior order. Witness the account of St. Peter^s 
 conduct in the Acts^ ^ and the Epistle to the Gala- 
 tians.f St. Paul protested against this^ so far as it 
 went to make Jewish observances compulsory on 
 Christians who were not of Jewish blood, and so far 
 as it in any way led to bottom the religion on the 
 Mosaic covenant of works ; but he never denied the 
 birthright of the chosen seed : on the contrary, he 
 himself evidently believed that the Jews would ulti- 
 mately be restored; and he says, — If the Gentiles 
 have been so blest by the rejection of the Jews, how 
 
 * Chap. XV. 
 
 t Chap. ii. 
 
JEWS IN POLAND. 
 
 55 
 
 much rather shall they be blest by the conversion and 
 restoration of Israel ! Why do we expect the Jews 
 to abandon their national customs and distinctions ? 
 The Abyssinian church said that they claimed a 
 descent from Abraham ; and that^ in virtue of such 
 ancestry^ they observed circumcision : but declaring 
 withal, that they rejected the covenant of works, and 
 rested on the promise fulfilled in Jesus Christ. In 
 consequence of tliis appeal, the Abyssinians were 
 permitted to retain their customs. 
 
 If Ehenferd^s Essays were translated — ^if the Jews 
 were made acquainted with the real argument — if 
 they were addressed kindly, and were not required to 
 abandon their distinctive customs and national type, 
 but were invited to become Christians as of the seed 
 of Abraham — I believe there would be a Christian 
 synagogue in a yearns time. As it is, the Jews of 
 the lower orders are the very lowest of mankind; 
 they have not a principle of honesty in them ; to grasp 
 and be getting money for ever is their single and ex- 
 clusive occupation. A learned Jew once said to me, 
 upon this subject : — O Sir ! make the inhabitants of 
 Holywell Street and Duke^s Place Israelites first, and 
 then we may debate about making them Cliristians.^^"^ 
 
 In Poland, the Jews are great landholders, and are 
 the worst of tyrants. They have no kind of sympathy 
 with their labourers and dependants. They never 
 meet them in common worship. Land, in the hand 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge had a very friendly acquaintance with several learned 
 Jews in this country, and he told me that, whenever he had fallen in with 
 a Jew of thorough education and literary habits, he had always found him 
 possessed of a strong natural capacity for metaphysical disquisitions. I may 
 mention here the best known of his Jewish friends, one whom he deeply 
 respected, Hyman Hurwitz. — Ed. 
 
56 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 of a large number of Jews^ instead of beings what it 
 ought to be^ the organ of permanence, would become 
 the organ of rigidity, in a nation; by their inter- 
 marriages within their own pale, it would be, in fact, 
 perpetually entailed. Then, again, if a popular 
 tumult were to take place in Poland, who can doubt 
 that the Jews would be the first objects of murder 
 and spoliation ? 
 
 April 17, 1830. 
 
 Mosaic Miracles. — Pantheism. 
 
 TN the miracles of Moses, there is a remarkable 
 interminghng of acts, which we should now-a-days 
 call simply providential, with such as we should still 
 call miraculous. The passing of the Jordan, in the 
 3rd chapter of the book of Joshua, is perhaps the 
 purest and sheerest miracle recorded in the Bible ; it 
 seems to have been wrought for the miracle^s sake, 
 and so thereby to show to the Jews — the descendants 
 of those who had come out of Egypt — that the same 
 God who had appeared to their fathers, and who had by 
 miracles, in many respects providential only, preserved 
 them in the wilderness, was lAeir God also. The 
 manna and quails were ordinary provisions of Pro- 
 vidence, rendered miraculous by certain laws and 
 qualities annexed to them in the particular instance. 
 The passage of the Red Sea was effected by a strong 
 wind, which, we are told, drove back the waters ; and 
 so on. But then, again, the death of the first-born 
 was purely miraculous. Hence, then, both Jews and 
 Egyptians might take occasion to learn, that it was 
 one and the same God who interfered specially, and 
 who governed all generally. 
 
POETIC PROMISE. 
 
 57 
 
 Take away the first verse of the book of Genesis^ 
 and then what immediately follows is an exact history 
 or sketch of Pantheism. Pantheism was taught in 
 the mysteries of Greece ; of which the Samothracian 
 or Cabeiric were probably the purest and the most 
 ancient. 
 
 April 18, 1830. 
 Poetic Promise, 
 
 TN the present age it is next to impossible to predict 
 from specimens^ however favourable^ that a young 
 man will turn out a great poet, or rather a poet at all. 
 Poetic taste, dexterity in composition, and ingenious 
 imitation, often produce poems that are very promis- 
 ing in appearance. But genius, or the power of doing 
 something new, is another thing. Mr. Tennyson^s 
 sonnets, such as I have seen, have many of the cha- 
 racteristic excellencies of those of Wordsworth and 
 Southey. 
 
 April 19, 1830. 
 
 IT is a small thing that the patient knows of liis 
 own state ; yet some things he does know better 
 than his physician. 
 
 I never had, and never could feel, any horror at 
 death, simply as death. 
 
 Good and bad men are each less so than they seem. 
 
 April 30, 1830. 
 Nominalists and Realists. — British Schoolmen. — Spinosa. 
 
 THE result of my system will be, to show, that, so 
 far from the world being a goddess in petticoats, 
 it is rather the Devil in a strait waistcoat. 
 
58 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 The controversy of the Nominalists and Eealists 
 was one of the greatest and most important that ever 
 occupied the human mind. They were both rights 
 and both wrong. They each maintained opposite 
 poles of the same truth ; which truth neither of them 
 saw^ for want of a higher premiss. Duns Scotus was 
 the head of the EeaKsts : Ockham^* his own disciple^ 
 of the Nominalists. Ockham, though certainly very 
 prolix, is a most extraordinary writer. 
 
 * John Duns Scotus was horn in 1274, at Dunstone in the parish of 
 Emildune, near Alnwick. He was a fellow of Merton College, and Professor 
 of Divinity at Oxford. After acquiring an uncommon reputation at his own 
 university, he went to Paris, and thence to Cologne, and there died in 1308, 
 at the early age of thirty-four years. He was called the Subtle Doctor, and 
 found time to compose works which now fill twelve volumes in folio. See the 
 Lyons edition, by Luke Wadding, in 1639. 
 
 William Ockham was an Englishman, and died about 1347 ; but the place 
 and year of his birth are not clearly ascertained. He was styled the Invin- 
 cible Doctor, and wrote bitterly against Pope John XXII. We all remember 
 Butler's account of these worthies : — 
 
 " He knew what's what, and that's as high 
 
 As metapliysic wit can fly; 
 
 In school divinity as able 
 
 As he that bight Irrefragable, 
 
 A second Thomas, or at once 
 
 To name them all, another Dunse ; 
 
 Profound in all the Nominal 
 
 And Real ways beyond them all ; 
 
 For he a rope of sand could twist 
 
 As tough as learned Sorbonist." 
 
 HuDiBRAs. Part I. Canto I. v. 149. 
 The Irrefragable Doctor was Alexander Hales, a native of Gloucestershire, 
 who died in 1245. Amongst his pupils, at Paris, was Fidanza, better known 
 by the name of Bonavcntura, the Seraphic Doctor. The controversy of the 
 Realists and the Nominalists cannot be explained in a note ; but in substance 
 the original point of dispute may be thus stated. The Realists held generally 
 with Aristotle, that there wore universal ideas or essences impressed upon 
 matter, or coeval with, and inherent in, their objects. Plato held that these 
 universal forms existed as exemplars in the divine mind previously to, and 
 independently of, matter ; but both maintained, under one shape or other, 
 the real existence of universal forms. On the other hand, Zcno and the old 
 Stoics denied tlie existence of tliese univcrsals, and contended that they were 
 no more tlian mere tenns and nominal representatives of their particular 
 objects. Tlie Nominalists were the followers of Zcno, and held that 
 universal forms are merely modes of conception, and exist solely in and for 
 the mind. It does not retjuire much reflection to see how great an influence 
 thcso dificrent systems miglit have upon the cnuuciation of the higher 
 doctrines of Christianity.— Ei>. 
 
BRITISH SCHOOLMEN. 
 
 59 
 
 It is remarkable, that two-thirds of the eminent 
 schoolmen were of British birth. It was the school- 
 men who made the languages of Europe what they 
 now are. We laugh at the quiddities of those writers 
 now, but, in truth, these quiddities are just the parts 
 of their language which we have rejected ; whilst we 
 never think of the mass which we have adopted, and 
 have in daily use. 
 
 One of the scholastic definitions of God is this, — 
 Beus est J ciii omne quod est est esse omne quod est : as 
 long a sentence made up of as few words, and those 
 as oligosyllabic, as any I remember. By the by, that 
 oligosyllaUc is a word happily illustrative of its own 
 meaning, ex opjposito. 
 
 Spinosa, at the very end of his Kfe, seems to have 
 gained a glimpse of the truth. In the last letter 
 published in his works, it appears that he began to 
 suspect his premiss. His tmica substantia is, in fact, a 
 mere notion, — a subject of the mind, and no object at all. 
 
 Plato^s works are preparatory exercises for the 
 mind. He leads you to see, that propositions in- 
 volving in themselves contradictory conceptions, are 
 nevertheless true ; and which, therefore, must belong 
 to a higher logic — that of ideas. They are contra- 
 dictory only in the Aristotelian logic, wliicli is the 
 instrument of the understanding. I have read most 
 of the works of Plato several times with profound 
 attention, but not aU his writings. In fact, I soon 
 found that I had read Plato by anticipation. He was 
 a consummate genius.* 
 
 * " This is the test and character of a truth so affirmed (—a truth of the 
 reason, an Idea) — that in its own proper form it is inconceivable. For to 
 conceive, is a function of the understanding, which can be exercised only on 
 
60 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 My mind is in a state of philosophical doubt as to 
 animal magnetism. Yon Spix^ the eminent naturalist, 
 makes no doubt of the matter, and talks coolly of 
 giving doses of it. The torpedo affects a third or 
 external object, by an exertion of its own. will : such 
 a power is not properly electrical ; for electricity acts 
 invariably under the same circumstances. A steady 
 gaze will make many persons of fair complexion blush 
 deeply. Account for that.* 
 
 subjects subordinate thereto. And yet to the forms of the understanding all 
 truth must be reduced, that is to be fixed as an object of reflection, and to be 
 rendered expressible. And here we have a second test and sign of a truth so 
 affirmed, that it can come forth out of the moulds of the understanding only 
 in the disguise of two contradictory conceptions, each of which is partially 
 true, and the conjunction of both conceptions becomes the representative 
 or expression ( — the exponent) of a truth beyond conception and inexpressible. 
 Examples : before Abraham was, i am. God is a circle, the centre of which 
 is every where, and the circumference no where. The soul is all in every 
 part." Aids to Reflection, p. 224, n. See also Church and State, p. 12. — Ed. 
 
 * I find the following remarkable passage in p. 301, vol. i., of the richly 
 annotated copy of Mr. Southey's Life of Wesley, which Mr. C. bequeathed 
 as his " darling book and the favourite of his library " to its great and 
 honoured author and donor : — 
 
 " The coincidence throughout of all these Methodist cases with those of the 
 Magnetists makes me wish for a solution that would apply to all. Now this 
 sense or appearance of a sense of the distant, both in time and space, is 
 common to almost all the magnetic patients in Denmark, Germany, France, 
 and North Italy, to many of whom the same or a similar solution could not 
 apply. Likewise, many cases have been recorded at the same time, in 
 different countries, by men who had never heard of each other's names, 
 and where the simultaneity of publication proves the independence of the 
 testimony. And among the Magnetisers and Attestors are to be found 
 names of men, whose competence in respect of integrity and incapability of 
 intentional falsehood is fully equal to that of Wesley, and their competence 
 in respect of physio- and psycho-logical insight and attainments incomparably 
 greater. Who would dream, indeed, of comparing Wesley with a Cuvier, 
 Ilufeland, Blumcnbach, Eschenmeyer, Reil, &c. ? Were I asked, what /think, 
 my answcrwould be, — that the evidence enforces scepticism and a non liqtiet; — 
 too strong and consentaneous for a candid mind to be satisfied of its false- 
 hood, or its solvibility on the supposition of imposture or casual coincidence ; 
 — too fugacious and unfixablo to support any tlicory that supposes the always 
 potential, and, under certain conditions and circumstances, occasionally 
 active, existence of a correspondent faculty in the human soul. And nothing 
 less than sucli an hypothesis would bo adequate to the satisfactory explanation 
 of the facts ; — thougli tliat of a metastasis of specific functions of the nervous 
 energy, taken in conjunction with extreme nervous excitement, plus some 
 delusion, plus some illusion, plus some imposition, plus some chance and 
 
MADNESS. 
 
 61 
 
 May 1, 1830. 
 
 Fall of Man. — Madness, — Brown and Darwin. — Nitrous Oxide. 
 
 A PALL of some sort or other — the creation^ as 
 it were^ of the non-absolute — is the fundamental 
 postulate of the moral history of Man. Without this 
 hypothesis^ Man is unintelligible ; with it^ every phe- 
 nomenon is explicable. The mystery itself is too 
 profound for human insight. 
 
 Madness is not simply a bodily disease. It is the 
 sleep of the spirit with certain conditions of wakeful- 
 ness; that is to say^ lucid intervals. During this 
 sleep^ or recession of the spirit^ the lower or bestial 
 states of life rise up into action and prominence. It 
 is an awful thing to be eternally tempted by the per- 
 verted senses. The reason may resist — ^it does resist 
 — for a long time ; but too often^ at lengthy it yields 
 for a moment^ and the man is mad for ever. An act 
 of the wiU is^ in many instances^ precedent to com- 
 plete insanity. I think it was Bishop Butler who 
 said, that he was aU his life struggling against the 
 devilish suggestions of his senses, which would have 
 maddened him, if he had relaxed the stern wakefulness 
 of his reason for a single moment. 
 
 accidental coincidence, might determine the direction in which the scepticism 
 should vibrate. Nine years has the subject of Zoo-raagnetism been before 
 me. T have traced it historically, collected a mass of documents in French, 
 German, Italian, and the Latinists of the sixteenth century, have never 
 neglected an opportunity of questioning eye-witnesses, ex. gr. Tieck, Trevi- 
 ranus, De Prati, Meyer, and others of literary or medical celebrity, and I 
 remain where I was, and where the first perusal of King's works had left me, 
 without having moved an inch backAvard or forward. The reply of Trevi- 
 ranus, the famous botanist, to me, when he was in London, is worth 
 recording : — ' Ich habe gesehen was (ich weiss das) ich nicht wlirde geglaubt 
 haben auf iJiren erziihlung,' &c. ' I have seen what I am certain I would not 
 have believed on your telling ; and in all reason, therefore, I can neither 
 expect nor wish that you should believe on mine.'-'' — Ed. 
 
62 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 Brown and Darwin^s theories are both ingenious ; 
 but the first will not account for sleep, and the last 
 will not account for death : considerable defects, you 
 must allow. 
 
 It is said that every excitation is followed by a 
 commensurate exhaustion. That is not so. The 
 excitation caused by inhaling nitrous oxide is an 
 exception at least; it leaves no exhaustion on the 
 bursting of the bubble. The operation of this gas 
 is to prevent the decarbonating of the blood; and, 
 consequently, if taken excessively, it would produce 
 apoplexy. The blood becomes black as ink. The 
 voluptuous sensation attending the inhalation is pro- 
 duced by the compression and resistance. 
 
 May 2, 1830. 
 Plants. — Insects. — Men. — Dog. — Ant and Bee. 
 
 PLANTS exist in themselves. Insects by^ or by 
 means of, themselves. Men, for themselves. 
 The perfection of irrational animals is that which is 
 best for them ; the perfection of man is that which is 
 absolutely best. There is growth only in plants ; but 
 there is irritability, or, a better word, instinctivity, 
 in insects. 
 
 You may understand by insect, life in sections — 
 diffused generally over aU the parts. 
 
 The dog alone, of all brute animals, has a G-ropyrj, 
 or affection upwards to man. 
 
 The ant and the bee are, I think, much nearer man 
 
HOLLAND AND THE DUTCH. 
 
 63 
 
 in the understanding or faculty of adapting means to 
 proximate ends than the elephant.* 
 
 May 3, 1830. 
 
 Black Colonel. 
 
 WHAT an excellent character is the black Colonel 
 in Mrs. Bennett's Beggar Girl V t 
 
 If an inscription be put upon my tomb^ it may be 
 that I was an enthusiastic lover of the church ; and 
 as enthusiastic a hater of those who have betraved it, 
 be they who they may 4 
 
 May 4, 1830. 
 Holland and the Dutch, 
 TTOLLAND and the Netherlands ought to be seen 
 ^ once, because no other country is like them. 
 Everything is artificial. You will be struck with 
 the combinations of vivid greenery, and water, and 
 building; but everything is so distinct and remem- 
 berable, that you would not improve your conception 
 by visiting the country a hundred times over. It is 
 interesting to see a country and a nature made, 
 
 * I remember Mr. C. was accustomed to consider the ant as the most 
 intellectual, and the dog as the most affectionate, of the irrational creatures, 
 so far as our present acquaintance with the facts of natural history enables 
 us to judge. — Ed. 
 
 t This ^character was frequently a subject of pleasant description and 
 enlargement with Mr. Coleridge, and he generally passed from it to a high 
 commendation of Miss Austen's novels, as being in their way perfectly 
 genuine and individual productions. — Ed. 
 
 X This was a strong way of expressing a deep-rooted feeling. A better 
 and a truer character would be, that Coleridge was a lover of the church, 
 and a defender of the faith! This last expression is the utterance of a 
 conviction so profound that it can patiently wait for time to prove its 
 truth.— Ed. 
 
64 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 as it were, by man, and to compare it with God^s 
 nature.* 
 
 If you go, remark (indeed you will be forced to do 
 so in spite of yourself), remark, I say, the identity 
 (for it is more than proximity) of a disgusting dirti- 
 ness in all that concerns the dignity of, and reverence 
 for, the human person; and a persecuting painted 
 cleanliness in everything connected with property. 
 You must not walk in their gardens ; nay, you must 
 hardly look into them. 
 
 The Dutch seem very happy and comfortable, cer- 
 tainly ; but it is the happiness of animals. In vain 
 do you look for the sweet breath of hope and advance- 
 ment among them.f 
 
 In fact, as to their villas and gardens, they are not 
 to be compared to an ordinary London merchant's box. 
 
 May 5, 1830. 
 
 Religion gentilises, — Women and Men. — Biblical Commentators. — 
 WalJcerite Creed. 
 
 YOU may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, 
 the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It 
 will alone gentilise, if unmixed with cant; and I 
 know nothing else that will, alone. Certainly not 
 the army, which is thought to be the grand embel- 
 lisher of manners. 
 
 * In the summer of 1828, Mr. Coleridge made an excursion witli 
 Mr. Wordsworth in Holland, Flanders, and up the Rhine, as far as Bergen, 
 lie came hack delighted, especially with his stay near Bonn, hut with an 
 abiding disgust at the filthy habits of the people. Upon Cologne, in 
 particular, he avenged himself in two epigrams. See Poet. Works, vol. ii., 
 p. 144.— Ed. 
 
 t " For every gift of noble origin 
 
 Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
HOJRNE TOOKE. 
 
 65 
 
 A woman^s head is usually over ears in her heart. 
 Man seems to have been designed for the superior 
 being of the two ; but as things are^ I think women 
 are generally better creatures than men. They have, 
 taken universally, weaker appetites and weaker intel- 
 lects, but they have much stronger affections. A man 
 with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong 
 head ; but a corrupt woman is lost for ever. 
 
 I never could get much information out of the 
 biblical commentators. Cocceius has told me the 
 mostj but he, and all of them, have a notable trick 
 of passing siccissimis pedibus over the parts which 
 puzzle a man of reflection. 
 
 The Walkerite creed, or doctrine of the New 
 Church, as it is called, appears to be a miscellany of 
 Calvinism and Quakerism ; but it is hard to under- 
 stand it. 
 
 May 7, 1830. 
 
 Home Tooke. — Diversions of Purley. — Gender of the Sun in 
 German. 
 
 TTOENE TOOKE was pre-eminently a ready-witted 
 man. He had that clearness which is founded 
 on shallowness. He doubted nothing ; and, therefore, 
 gave you all that he himseK knew, or meant, with 
 great completeness. His voice was very fine, and liis 
 tones exquisitely discriminating. His mind had no 
 progression or development. All that is worth any- 
 thing (and that is but Httle) in the Diversions of 
 Purley is contained in a short pamphlet-letter wliich 
 he addressed to Mr. Dunning ; then it was enlarged 
 to an octavo, but there was not a foot of progression 
 
 p 
 
66 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 beyond the pamphlet; at last, a quarto volume, I 
 beheve, came out; and yet, verily, excepting news- 
 paper lampoons and political insinuations, there was 
 no addition to the argument of the pamphlet. It 
 shows a base and unpoetical mind to convert so beau- 
 tiful, so divine, a subject as language into the vehicle 
 or make- weight of political squibs. AR that is true 
 in Ilorne Tooke^s book is taken from Lennep, who 
 gave it for so much as it was worth, and never pre- 
 tended to make a system of it. Tooke affects to 
 explain the origin and whole philosophy of language 
 by what is, in fact, only a mere accident of the history 
 of one language, or one or two languages. His abuse 
 of Harris is most shallow and unfair. Harris, in the 
 Hermes, was dealing — not very profoundly, it is true, 
 — with the philosophy of language, the moral, physical, 
 and metaphysical causes and conditions of it, &c. 
 Horne Tooke, in writing about the formation of words 
 only, thought he was explaining the philosophy of 
 language, which is a very different thing. In point 
 of fact, he was very shallow in the Gothic dialects. 
 I must say, all that decantata fahula about the gen- 
 ders of the sun and moon in German seems to me 
 great stuff. Originally, I apprehend, in the Flatt- 
 Leutsch of the north of Germany there were only two 
 definite articles — die for masculine and feminine, and 
 das for neuter. Then it was die sonne, in a masculine 
 sense, as we say with the same word as article, the 
 sun. Luther, in constructing the Hoch-Letitsch (for 
 really his miraculous and providential translation of 
 the Bible was the fundamental act of construction of 
 the literary German), took for his distinct mascuHne 
 article the der of the Ober-Beutsch, and thus consti- 
 
HORNE TOOKE. 
 
 67 
 
 tuted the three articles of the present High German, 
 der, die, das. Naturally, therefore, it would then have 
 been, der sonne ; but here the analogy of the Greek 
 grammar prevailed, and as sonne had the arbitrary 
 feminine termination of the Greek, it was left with its 
 old article die, which, originally including masculine 
 and feminine both, had grown to designate the feminine 
 only. To the best of my recollection, the Minnesingers 
 and all the old poets always use the sun as masculine ; 
 and, since Luther^ s time, the poets feel the awkward- 
 ness of the classical gender affixed to the sun so much, 
 that they more commonly introduce Phoebus or some 
 other synonyme instead. I must acknowledge my 
 doubts, whether, upon more accurate investigation, it 
 can be shown that there ever was a nation that con- 
 sidered the sun in itself, and apart from language, as 
 the feminine power. The moon does not so clearly 
 demand a feminine as the sun does a masculine sex : 
 it might be considered negatively or neuter ; — ^yet if 
 the reception of its light from the sun were known, 
 that would have been a good reason for making her 
 feminine, as being the recipient body. 
 
 As our the was the German die, so I believe our 
 that stood for das, and was used as a neuter definite 
 article. 
 
 The Platt'Beutsch was a compact language like the 
 English, not admitting much agglutination. The Oher- 
 Leutsch was fuller and fonder of agglutinating words 
 together, although it was not so soft in its sounds. 
 
 f2 
 
68 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 May 8, 1830. 
 
 Home Toohe. — Jacobins, 
 
 HORNE TOOKE said that his friends might, if 
 they pleased, go as far as Slough, — he should go 
 no farther than Hounslow ; but that was no reason why 
 he should not keep them company so far as their roads 
 were the same. The answer is easy. Suppose you 
 know, or suspect, that a man is about to commit a 
 robbery at Slough, though you do not mean to be his 
 accomplice, have you a moral right to walk arm in 
 arm with him to Hounslow, and, by thus giving him 
 your countenance, prevent his being taken up ? The 
 history of all the world tells us, that inunoral means 
 will ever intercept good ends. 
 
 Enlist the interests of stern morality and religious 
 enthusiasm in the cause of political liberty, as in the 
 time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible ; 
 but the Jacobins played the whole game of religion, 
 and morals, and domestic happiness into the hands 
 of the aristocrats. Thank God ! that they did so. 
 England was saved from civil war by their enormous, 
 their providential, blundering. 
 
 Can a politician, a statesman, slight the feelings 
 and the convictions of the whole matronage of his 
 country ? The women are as influential upon such 
 national interests as the men. 
 
 Home Tooke was always making a butt of Mr. 
 Godwin ; who, nevertheless, had that in him which 
 Tooke could never have understood. I saw a good 
 deal of Tooke at one time : he left upon me the 
 impression of his being a keen, iron man. 
 
MILESIAN TALES. 
 
 69 
 
 May 9, 1830. 
 
 Persian and Arabic Poetry » — Milesian Tales, 
 
 I MUST acknowledge I never conld see much merit 
 in the Persian poetry^ which I have read in 
 translation. There is not a ray of imagination in it^ 
 and but a glimmering of fancy. It is, in fact, so far 
 as I know, deficient in truth. Poetry is certainly 
 something more than good sense, but it must be good 
 sense, at all events ; just as a palace is more than a 
 house, but it must be a house, at least* The Arabian 
 Nights^ Tales are a different thing — they are dehght- 
 ful, but I cannot help surmising that there is a good 
 deal of Greek fancy in them. No doubt we have had 
 a great loss in the Milesian Tales.* The book of Job is 
 pure Arab poetry of the highest and most antique cast. 
 
 Think of the sublimity, I should rather say the 
 profundity, of that passage in Ezekiel,t ^^Son of 
 
 * The Milesiacs were so called, because -written or composed by Aristides 
 of Miletus, and also because the scene of all or most of them was placed in 
 that rich and luxurious city. Harpocration cites the sixth book of this 
 collection. Nothing, I believe, is now known of the age or history of this 
 Aristides, except what may be inferred from the fact that Lucius Cornelius 
 Sisenna translated the tales into Latin, as we learn from Ovid : — 
 Junxit Aristides Milesia crimina secum — 
 
 and afterwards, 
 
 Vertit Aristidem Sisenna, nec obfuit illi 
 Historise turpes inseruisse jocos : — 
 
 Fasti, ii. 412—443. 
 
 and also from the incident mentioned in the PlutarcMan life of Crassus, that 
 after the defeat at Carrhse, a copy of the Milesiacs of Aristides was found in 
 the baggage of a Roman officer, and that Surena (who, by the by, if history 
 has not done him injustice, was not a man to be over scrupulous in such a 
 case,) caused the book to be brought into the senate house of Seleucia, and a 
 portion of it read aloud, for the purpose of insulting the Romans, who, even 
 during war, he said, could not abstain from the perusal of such infamous 
 compositions, — c. 32. The immoral character of these tales, therefore, may 
 be considered pretty clearly established; they were the Decameron and 
 Heptameron of antiquity.— Ed. 
 
 t Chap, xxxvii. v. 3. 
 
70 
 
 GOLEB-IDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 mmiy can these bones live? And I answered^ O 
 Lord God^ tliou knowest/^ I know nothing Hke it. 
 
 May 11, 1830. 
 
 Sir T, Monro. — Sir S. Baffles. — Canning, 
 
 SIR THOMAS MONRO and Sir Stamford Eaffles 
 were both great men; but I recognise more 
 genius in the latter^ though, I beheve, the world says 
 otherwise. 
 
 I never found what I call an idea in any speech or 
 writing of ^s. Those enormously prolix ha- 
 rangues are a proof of weakness in the higher intel- 
 lectual grasp. Canning had a sense of the beautiful 
 
 and the good; rarely speaks but to abuse, 
 
 detract, and degrade. I confine myself to institutions, * 
 of course, and do not mean personal detraction. In 
 my judgment, no man can rightly apprehend an abuse 
 tiU he has first mastered the idea of the use of an 
 institution. How fine, for example, is the idea of the 
 unhired magistracy of England, taking in and linking 
 together the duke to the country gentleman in the 
 primary distribution of justice, or in the preservation 
 of order and execution of law at least throughout the 
 country ! Yet some men never seem to have thought 
 of it for one moment, but as connected with brewers, 
 and barristers, and tyrannical Squire "Westerns ! From 
 what I saw of Horner, I thought him a superior man, 
 in real intellectual greatness. 
 
 Canning flashed such a light around the constitu- 
 tion, that it was difficult to see the ruins of the fabric 
 tlirough it. 
 
SHAKSPEARE. — MILTON. HOMER. 
 
 71 
 
 May 12, 1830. 
 Shahspeare. — Milton. — Homer. 
 
 SHAKSPEAEE is the Spinosistic deity — an omni- 
 present creativeness. Milton is the deity of 
 prescience; he stands ah extra, and drives a fiery 
 chariot and four^ making the horses feel the iron curb 
 which holds them in. Shakspeare^s poetry is cha- 
 racterless; that is^ it does not reflect the individual 
 Shakspeare ; but John Milton himseK is in every line 
 of the Paradise Lost. Shakspeare^s rhymed verses 
 are excessively condensed^ — epigrams with the point 
 everywhere; but in his blank dramatic verse he is 
 diffused^ with a linked sweetness long drawn out. No 
 one can understand Shakspeare^s superiority fuUy 
 until he has ascertained^ by comparison^ all that 
 which he possessed in common with several other 
 great dramatists of his age^ and has then calculated 
 the surplus which is entirely Shakspeare^s own. His 
 rhythm is so perfect^ that you may be almost sure 
 that you do not understand the real force of a line, if 
 it does not run well as you read it. The necessary 
 mental pause after every hemistich or imperfect line 
 is always equal to the time that would have been 
 taken in reading the complete verse. 
 
 I have no doubt whatever that Homer is a mere 
 concrete name for the rhapsodies of the Iliad.* Of 
 course there was a Homer^ and twenty besides. I 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge was a decided AYolfian in the Homeric question ; but lie 
 had never read a word of the famous Prolegomena, and knew nothing of 
 Wolf's reasoning, hut what I told him of it in conversation. Mr. C. informed 
 me, that he adopted the conclusion contained in the text upon the first 
 perusal of Vico's Scienza Nuova ; " not," he said, " that Vico has reasoned 
 it out with such learning and accuracy as ynu report of Wolf, but Vico 
 struck out all the leading hints, and I soon filled up the rest out of my own 
 head." — Ed. 
 
72 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 will engage to compile twelve books with characters 
 just as distinct and consistent as those in the Iliad^ 
 from the metrical ballads, and other chronicles of 
 England, about Arthur and the Knights of the Eound 
 Table. I say nothing about moral dignity, but the 
 mere consistency of character. The different qualities 
 were traditional. Tristram is always courteous, 
 Lancelot invincible, and so on. The same might be 
 done with the Spanish romances of the Cid. There is 
 no subjectivity whatever in the Homeric poetry. There 
 is a subjectivity of the poet, as of Milton, who is him- 
 self before himseK in everything he writes; and there is 
 a subjectivity of the j)ersona^ or dramatic character, as 
 in all Shakspeare^s great creations, Hamlet, Lear, &c. 
 
 Reason and Understanding. — Words and Names of Things, 
 TNTIL you have mastered the fundamental dif- 
 
 ^ ference, in kind, between the reason and the 
 understanding as faculties of the human mind, you 
 cannot escape a thousand difficulties in philosophy. 
 It is pre-eminently the Gmdus ad PJiilosophiam, 
 
 The general harmony between the operations of 
 the mind and heart, and the words which express 
 them in almost all languages, is wonderful; whilst 
 the endless discrepancies between the names of tilings 
 is very well deserving notice. There are nearly a 
 hundred names in the different German dialects for 
 the alder-tree. I believe many more remarkable in- 
 stances are to be found in Arabic. Lideed, you may 
 take a very pregnant and useful distinction between 
 words and mere arbitrary na7iies of things. 
 
 May 14, 1830. 
 
ABRAHAM. — ISAAC. 
 
 73 
 
 May 15, 1830. 
 
 The Trinity. — Irving, 
 
 rPHE Trinity is,— 1. the Will; 2. the Reason, or 
 ^ Word; 3. the Love, or Life. As we distinguish 
 these three, so we must unite them in one God. The 
 union must be as transcendant as the distinction. 
 
 Mr. Lving^s notion is tritheism, — nay, rather in 
 terms, tri-dsemonism. His opinion about the sinful- 
 ness of the humanity of our Lord is absurd, if con- 
 sidered in one point of view ; for body is not carcass. 
 How can there be a sinful carcass ? But what he 
 says is capable of a sounder interpretation. Irving 
 caught many things from me ; but he would never 
 attend to anything which he thought he could not 
 use in the pulpit. I told him the certain consequence 
 would be, that he would fall into grievous errors. 
 Sometimes he has five or six pages together of the 
 purest eloquence, and then an outbreak of almost 
 madman^s babble,^ 
 
 May 16, 1830. 
 Abraham. — Isaac. — Jacob. 
 
 TTOW wonderfully beautiful is the delineation of 
 the characters of the three patriarchs in Genesis ! 
 To be sure, if ever man could, without impropriety, 
 be called, or supposed to be, the friend of God,^^ 
 Abraham was that man. We are not surprised that 
 Abimelech and Epliron seem to reverence him so 
 
 * The admiration and sympathy which Mr. Coleridge felt and expressed 
 towards the late Mr. Irving, at his first appearance in London, were great 
 and sincere ; and his grief at the deplorable change which followed was in 
 proportion. But, long after the tongues shall have failed and been forgotten, 
 Irving's name will live in the splendid eulogies of his friend. See Church 
 and State, p. 180. n.— Ed. 
 
74 
 
 COLEETDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 profoundly. He was peaceful^ because of his con- 
 scious relation to God; in other respects^ he takes 
 fire^ like an Arab sheikh^ at the injuries suffered by 
 Lot^ and goes to war with the combined kinglings 
 immediately. 
 
 Isaac is, as it were, a faint shadow of liis father 
 Abraham. Born in possession of the power and 
 wealth which his father had acquired, he is always 
 peaceful and meditative ; and it is curious to observe 
 his timid and almost childish imitation of Abraham^s 
 stratagem about his wife.* Isaac does it beforehand, 
 and without any apparent necessity. 
 
 Jacob is a regular Jew, and practises aU sorts of 
 tricks and wiles, which, according to our modern 
 notions of honour, we cannot approve. But you wiR 
 observe that all these tricks are confined to matters 
 of prudential arrangement, to worldly success and 
 prosperity (for such, in fact, was the essence of the 
 birtliright) ; and I think we must not exact from men 
 of an imperfectly civilized age the same conduct as to 
 mere temporal and bodily abstinence which we have 
 a right to demand from Christians. Jacob is always 
 careful not to commit any violence ; he shudders at 
 bloodshed. See his demeanour after the vengeance 
 taken on the Schechemites.f He is the exact com- 
 pound of the timidity and gentleness of Isaac, and of 
 the underhand craftiness of his mother Eebecca. No 
 man could be a bad man who loved as he loved 
 Rachel. I dare say Laban thought none the worse 
 of Jacob for his plan of making the ewes bring forth 
 ring-streaked lambs. 
 
 Gen. xxvi. C. 
 
 t Gen. xxxiv. 
 
GRAMMAE SCHOOLS. 
 
 75 
 
 May 17, 1830. 
 Origin of Acts, — Love. 
 
 IF a man^s conduct cannot be ascribed to the angelic, 
 nor to the bestial within him, what is there left 
 for us to refer it to, but the fiendish ? Passion with- 
 out any appetite is fiendish. 
 
 The best way to bring a clever young man, who has 
 become sceptical and unsettled, to reason, is to make 
 him/eel something in any way. Love, if sincere and 
 unworldly, will, in nine instances out of ten, bring 
 him to a sense and assurance of something real and 
 actual ; and that sense alone will make him tkink to a 
 sound purpose, instead of dreaming that he is thinking. 
 
 " Never marry but for love,^^ says William Penn 
 in his Reflexions and Maxims ; but see that thou 
 lovest what is lovely.**^ 
 
 Lord EldoTCs Doctrine as to Grammar Schools, — Democracy. 
 
 OED ELDON^S doctrine, that grammar-schools. 
 
 in the sense of the reign of Edward YI. and 
 Queen Elizabeth, must necessarily mean schools for 
 teaching Latin and Greek, is, I think, founded on an 
 insufficient knowledge of the history and literature of 
 the sixteenth century. Ben Jonson uses the term 
 grammar" without any reference to the learned 
 languages. 
 
 It is intolerable when men, who have no other 
 knowledge, have not even a competent understanding 
 of that world in wliich they are always living, and to 
 which they refer everytliing. 
 
 May 18, 1830. 
 
76 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 Although contemporary events obscure past events 
 in a living man^s life, yet as soon as he is dead, and 
 his whole life is a matter of history, one action stands 
 out as conspicuously as another. 
 
 A democracy, according to the prescript of pure 
 reason, would, in fact, be a church. There would be 
 focal points in it, but no superior. 
 
 May 20, 1830. 
 
 The Eucharist. — aS^^. John, xix. 1 J . — Genuineness of Boohs of Moses. 
 — Divinity of Christ — Mosaic Prophecies. 
 
 "VrO doubt, Chrysostom, and the other rhetorical 
 
 fathers, contributed a good deal, by their rash 
 use of figurative language, to advance the superstitious 
 notion of the eucharist;-^ but the beginning had been 
 much earlier. In Clement, indeed, the mystery is 
 treated as it was treated by Saint John and Saint 
 Paul ; but in Hermas we see the seeds of the error, 
 and more clearly in Irenaeus ; and so it went on till 
 the idea was changed into an idol. 
 
 The errors of the Sacramentaries, on the one hand, 
 and of the Romanists on the other, are equally great. 
 The fn^st have volatilized the eucharist into a meta- 
 phor ; the last have condensed it into an idol. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor, in his zeal against transubstantiation, 
 contends that the latter part of the sixth chapter of 
 St. John^s Gospel has no reference to the eucharist. 
 If so, St. John wholly passes over this sacred mystery ; 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge made these remarks upon my quoting Selden's well-known 
 saying (Table Talk), " tliat transubstantiation was nothing but rhetoric 
 turned into logic."— Ed. 
 
MEANING OF A PASSAGE IN ST. JOHN. 77 
 
 for he does not include it in his notice of the 
 last supper. Would not a total silence of this 
 great apostle and evangelist upon this mystery be 
 strange ? A mystery^ T say ; for it is a mystery ; it 
 is the only mystery in our religious worship. When 
 many of the disciples left our Lord^ and apparently 
 on the very ground that this saying was hard^ he does 
 not attempt to detain them by any explanation^ but 
 simply adds the comment^ that his words were spirit. 
 If he had really meant that the eucharist should be a 
 mere commemorative celebration of his deaths is it 
 conceivable that he would let these disciples go away 
 from him upon such a gross misunderstanding? 
 Would he not have said, ^^You need not make a 
 difficulty; I only mean so and so 
 
 Arnauld^ and the other learned Eomanists, are 
 irresistible against the low sacramentary doctrine. 
 
 The sacrament of baptism applies itself, and has 
 reference to the faith or conviction^ and is^ therefore, 
 only to be performed once ; — it is the light of man. 
 The sacrament of the eucharist is a symbol of all 
 our religion ; — it is the Hfe of man. It is commen- 
 surate with our will, and we must, therefore, want 
 it continually. 
 
 The meaning of the expression, et juir) riv croi btbofxivov 
 avo)6€v^ " except it were given thee fro7n ahove,^^ in 
 the 19th chapter of St. John, ver. 11., seems to me 
 to have been generally and grossly mistaken. It is 
 commonly understood as importing that Pilate could 
 have no power to deliver Jesus to the Jews, unless it 
 had been given him I2/ God, which, no doubt, is true ; 
 
78 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 but if that is the meanings where is the force or con- 
 nexion of the following clause^ bta rovTOy therefore 
 he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin 
 In what respect were the J ews more sinful in deliver- 
 ing J esus up^ because Pilate could do nothing except 
 by God^s leave? The explanation of Erasmus and 
 Clarke^ and some others^ is very dry-footed. I con- 
 ceive the meaning of our Lord to have been simply 
 this^ that Pilate would have had no power or juris- 
 diction — k^ovaiav — over him, if it had not been given 
 by the Sanhedrim^ the avca (BovXi], and therefore it 
 was that the Jews had the greater sin. There was 
 also this further peculiar baseness and malignity in 
 the conduct of the Jews. The mere assumption of 
 Messiahship^ as such^ was no crime in the eyes of the 
 Jews ; they hated Jesus, because he would not be their 
 sort of Messiah : on the other hand, the Eomans cared 
 not for his declaration that he was the Son of God ; 
 the crime in their eyes was his assuming to be a king. 
 Now, here were the Jews accusing Jesus before the 
 Roman governor of that which, in the first place, they 
 knew that Jesus denied in the sense in which they 
 urged it, and which, in the next place, had the charge 
 been true, would have been so far from a crime in 
 their eyes, that the very gospel history itself, as well 
 as all the history to the destruction of Jerusalem, 
 shows it would have been popular with the whole 
 nation. They wished to destroy him, and for that 
 purpose charge him falsely with a crime wliich yet 
 was no crime in their own eyes, if it had been true ; 
 but only so as against the Eoman domination, which 
 they hated with all their souls, and against wliich they 
 were themselves continually conspiring ! 
 
MOSAIC PUOPHECIES. 79 
 
 Observe, 1 pray, the manner and sense in which 
 the high-priest understands the plain declaration of 
 our Lord, that he was the Son of God.* " I adjure 
 thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou 
 be the Clnist, the Son of God,^^ or the Son of the 
 Blessed,^^ as it is in Mark. Jesus said, I am, — 
 and hereafter ye shall see the Son of man (or me) 
 sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the 
 clouds of heaven.''^ Does Caiaphas take this explicit 
 answer as if Jesus meant that he was full of God''s 
 spirit, or was doing his commands, or walking in his 
 ways, in which sense Moses, the prophets, nay, all 
 good men, were and are the sons of God ? No, no ! 
 He tears his robes in sunder, and cries out, He hath 
 spoken blasphemy. What further need have we of 
 w^itnesses? Behold, now ye have heard his blas- 
 phemy.''^ What blasphemy, I should like to know, 
 unless the assuming to be the Son of God was 
 assuming to be of the divine nature? 
 
 One striking proof of the genuineness of the Mosaic 
 books is this, — ^they contain precise prohibitions — by 
 way of predicting the consequences of disobedience — 
 of all those things which David and Solomon actually 
 did, and gloried in doing, — raising cavaby, making a 
 treaty with Egypt, laying up treasure, and polyga- 
 mising. Now, would such prohibitions have been 
 fabricated in those kings' reigns, or afterwards? 
 Impossible. 
 
 The manner of the predictions of Moses is very 
 remarkable. He is like a man standing on an eminence, 
 and addressing people below him, and pointing to 
 
 * Matt. xxvi. V. 63. Mark, xiv. 61. 
 
80 
 
 COLEEIDGE S TABLE TALK. 
 
 things which he can, and they cannot, see. He does 
 not say. You will act in such and such a way, and 
 the consequences will be so and so ; but. So and so 
 will take place, became you will act in such a way ! 
 
 May 21, 1830. 
 
 Talent and Genius. — Motives and Impulses, 
 
 n|"^ALENT, lying in the understanding, is often 
 inherited; genius, being the action of reason 
 and imagination, rarely or never. 
 
 Motives imply weakness, and the existence of evil 
 and temptation. The angelic nature would act from 
 impulse alone. A due mean of motive and impulse 
 is the only practicable object of our moral philosophy. 
 
 May 23, 1830. 
 
 Constitutional and Functional Life. — Hysteria. — Hydro- Carbonic 
 Gas. — Bitters and Tonics. — Specific Medicines. 
 
 IT is a great error in physiology not to distinguish 
 between what may be called the general or fun- 
 damental life — the prmci]^mm vita, and the functional 
 life — the life in the functions. Organisation must 
 presuppose life as anterior to it : without life, there 
 could not be or remain any organisation ; but then 
 there is also a life in the organs, or functions, distinct 
 from the other. Thus, a flute presupposes, — demands 
 the existence of a musician as anterior to it, without 
 whom no flute could ever have existed ; and yet again, 
 without the instrument there can be no music. 
 
 It often happens that, on the one hand, the prin- 
 
BITTERS AND TONICS. 
 
 81 
 
 ciinum vitcEj or constitutional life^ may be affected 
 without any, or the least imaginable, affection of the 
 functions ; as, in inoculation, where one pustule only 
 has appeared, and no other perceptible symptom, and 
 yet this has so entered into the constitution, as to 
 indispose it to infection under the most accumulated 
 and intense contagion, and, on the other hand, hysteria, 
 hydrophobia, and gout, will disorder the functions to 
 the most dreadful degree, and yet often leave the life 
 untouched. In hydrophobia, the mind is quite sound ; 
 but the patient feels his muscular and cutaneous life 
 forcibly removed from under the control of his will. 
 
 Hysteria may be fitly called mimosa^ from its coun- 
 terfeiting so many diseases, — even death itself. 
 
 Hydro-carbonic gas produces the most death-like 
 exhaustion, without any previous excitement. I think 
 this gas should be inhaled by way of experiment in 
 cases of hydrophobia. 
 
 There is a great difference between bitters and tonics. 
 Where weakness proceeds from excess of irritabiUty, 
 there bitters act beneficially ; because all bitters are 
 poisons, and operate by stilling, and depressing, and 
 lethargizing the irritability. But where weakness 
 proceeds from the opposite cause of relaxation, there 
 tonics are good ; because they brace up and tighten 
 the loosened string. Bracing is a correct metaphor. 
 Bark goes near to be a combination of a bitter and a 
 tonic ; but no perfect medical combination of the two 
 properties is yet kno\\Ti. 
 
 The study of specific medicines is too much dis- 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 regarded now. No doubt the hunting after specifics 
 is a mark of ignorance and weakness in medicine^ yet 
 the neglect of them is proof also of immaturity ; for^ 
 in fact^ all medicines will be found, specific in the 
 perfection of the science. 
 
 May 25, 1830. 
 
 Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, — Oaths. 
 
 'HE Epistle to the Ephesians is evidently a catholic 
 
 epistle, addressed to the whole of what might be 
 called St. PauPs diocese. It is one of the divinest 
 compositions of man. It embraces every doctrine 
 of Christianity; — first, those doctrines pecuhar to 
 Christianity, and then those precepts common to it 
 with natural religion. The Epistle to the Colossians 
 is the overflowing, as it were, of St. PauFs mind upon 
 the same subject. 
 
 The present system of taking oaths is horrible. It 
 is awfully absurd to make a man invoke God^s wrath 
 upon himself, if he speaks false ; it is, in my judg- 
 ment, a sin to do so. The Jews^ oath is an adjuration 
 by the judge to the witness : In the name of God, 
 I ask you."'^ There is an express instance of it in the 
 high-priest^s adjuring or exorcising Cln-ist by the 
 living God, in the twenty-sixth chapter of Matthew, 
 and you will observe that our Lord answered the 
 appeal.^ 
 
 You may depend upon it, the more oath-taking, the 
 more lying, generally among the people. 
 
 * See this instance cited, and the whole history and moral policy of tlie 
 common system of judicial swearing examined with clearness and good 
 feeling, in Mr. Tyler's late work on Oaths. — Ed. 
 
ELOQUENCE OF ABUSE. 
 
 83 
 
 May 27, 1830. 
 Ftogying. — Eloquence of Abuse. 
 
 I HAD one just flogging. When I was about 
 thirteen, I went to a shoemaker, and begged him 
 to take me as his apprentice. He, being an honest 
 man, immediately brought me to Bowyer, who got 
 into a great rage, knocked me down, and even pushed 
 Crispin rudely out of the room. Bowyer asked me 
 why I had made myself such a fool? to which I 
 answered, that I had a great desire to be a shoemaker, 
 and that I hated the thought of being a clergyman. 
 ^^Why so?^^ said he. — Because, to tell you the 
 truth, sir,^^ said I, I am an infidel ! Tor this, 
 without more ado, Bowyer flogged me, — wisely, as I 
 think, — soundly, as I know. Any whining or ser- 
 monizing would have gratified my vanity, and con- 
 firmed me in my absurdity ; as it was, I was laughed 
 at, and got heartily ashamed of my folly. 
 
 How rich the Aristophanic Greek is in the eloquence 
 of abuse ! — 
 
 Kal fxiape, koL Tcafxpiiape, /cat /j.iapdorare.'^' 
 
 We are not beliindhand in English. Fancy my 
 calling you, upon a fitting occasion, — Pool, sot, silly, 
 simpleton, dunce, blockhead, jolterhead, clumsy-pate, 
 dullard, ninny, nincompoop, lackwit, numskull, ass, 
 owl, loggerhead, coxcomb, monkey, shallow-brain, 
 addlehead, tony, zany, fop, fop-doodle; a maggot- 
 pated, hare-brained, muddle-pated, muddle-headed. 
 Jackanapes ! Why I could go on for a minute more! 
 
 * In The Frogs.— Ed. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 May 28, 1830. 
 The Americans. 
 
 T DEEPLY regret the anti-American articles of 
 some of the leading reviews. The Americans 
 regard what is said of them in England a thousand 
 times more than they do anything said of them in 
 any other country. The Americans are excessively 
 pleased with any kind or favourable expressions, and 
 never forgive or forget any sUght or abuse. It would 
 be better for them if they were a trifle thicker-skinned. 
 
 The last American war was to us only something to 
 talk or read about ; but to the Americans it was the 
 cause of misery in their own homes. 
 
 I, for one^ do not call the sod under my feet my 
 country. But language, religion, laws, government, 
 blood, — identity in these makes men of one country. 
 
 May 29, 1830. 
 Book of Job. 
 
 THE Book of Job is an Arab poem, antecedent to 
 the Mosaic dispensation. It represents the mind 
 of a good man not enlightened by an actual revelation, 
 but seeking about for one. In no other book is the 
 desire and necessity for a Mediator so intensely 
 expressed. The personality of God, the I AM of the 
 Hebrews, is most vividly impressed on the book, in 
 opposition to pantheism. 
 
 I now think, after many doubts, that the passage,* 
 I know that my Redeemer hveth,^^ &c., may fairly 
 be taken as a burst of determination, a quasi pro- 
 
 * Chap. xix. 26, 26. 
 
TEANSLATION OF THE PSALMS. 
 
 85 
 
 pliecy. I know not how this can be ; but in spite 
 of all my difficulties^ this I do know, that I shall be 
 recompensed/^ 
 
 It should be observed, that all the imagery in the 
 speeches of the men is taken from the East, and is no 
 more than a mere representation of the forms of 
 material nature. But when God speaks the tone is 
 exalted; and almost all the images are taken from 
 Egypt, the crocodile, the war-horse, and so forth. 
 Egypt was then the first monarchy that had a splendid 
 court. 
 
 Satan, in the prologue, does not mean the devil, 
 our Diabolus. There is no calumny in his words. 
 He is rather the circuitor, the accusing spirit, a dra- 
 matic attorney-general. But after the prologue, which 
 was necessary to bring the imagination into a proper 
 state for the dialogue, we hear no more of this Satan. 
 
 Warburton^'s notion, that the Book of Job was of so 
 late a date as Ezra, is wholly groundless. His only 
 reason is this appearance of Satan. 
 
 May 30, 1830. 
 
 Translation of the Psalms, 
 
 IAVISH the Psalms were translated afresh; or, 
 rather, that the present version were revised. 
 Scores of passages are utterly incoherent as they now 
 stand. If the primary visual images had been oftener 
 preserved, the connection and force of the sentences 
 would have been better perceived.* 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge, like so many of the elder divines of the Christian church, 
 had an affectionate reverence for the moral and evangelical portion of the 
 Book of Psalms. He told me that after having studied every page of the 
 
86 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 May 31, 1830. 
 
 Ancient Mariner. — Undine, — Martin, — Pilgrim'' s Progress, 
 
 MES. BARBAULD once told me that she admired 
 the Ancient Mariner very much^ but that there 
 were two faults in it^ — it was improbable^ and had no 
 moral. As for the probability^ I owned that that 
 might admit some question ; but as to the want of a 
 morale I told her that in my own judgment the poem 
 had too much ; and that the only^ or chief faulty if I 
 might say so^ was the obtrusion of the moral senti- 
 ment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause 
 of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought 
 to have had no more moral than the Arabian Nights^ 
 
 Bible with the deepest attention, he had found no other part of Scripture 
 come home so closely to his inmost yearnings and necessities. During many 
 of his latter years he used to read ten or twelve verses every evening, 
 ascertaining (for his knowledge of Hebrew was enough for that) the exact 
 visual image or first radical meaning of every noun substantive; and he 
 repeatedly expressed to me his surprise and pleasure at finding that in nine 
 cases out of ten the bare primary sense, if literally rendered, threw great 
 additional light on the text. He was not disposed to allow the prophetic or 
 allusive character so largely as is done by Home and others ; but he acknow- 
 ledged it in some instances in the fullest manner. In particular, he rejected 
 the local and temporary reference which has been given to the 110th Psalm, 
 and declared his belief in its deep mystical import with regard to the 
 Messiah. Mr. C. once gave me the following note upon the 22nd Psalm 
 written by him, I believe, many years previously, but which, he said, he 
 approved at that time. It will find as appropriate a niche here as anywhere 
 else :— 
 
 " I am much delighted and instructed by the hypothesis, which I think 
 probable, that our Lord in repeating Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani, really recited 
 the whole or a large part of the 22d Psalm. It is impossible to read that 
 psalm without tlic liveliest feelings of love, gratitude, and sympathy. It is, 
 indeed, a wonderful prophecy, whatever might or might not have been 
 David's notion when he composed it. Whether Christ did audibly repeat 
 the whole or not, it is certain I think, that he did it mentally, and said aloud 
 what was sufficient to enable his followers to do the same. Even at this day 
 to repeat in the same manner but the first line of a common hymn, would be 
 understood as a reference to the whole. Above all, I am thankful for the 
 thougbt wliich suggested itself to my mind, whilst I was reading this 
 beautiful psalm, namely, that we should not exclusively think of Christ as 
 the Logos united to liuman nature, but likewise as a perfect man united to 
 the Logos. This distinction is most important in order to conceive, much 
 more, appropriately to feel, the conduct and exertions of Jesus." — Ed. 
 
ANCIENT MARINER. 
 
 87 
 
 tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by 
 the side of a well^ and throwing the shells aside^ and 
 lo ! a genie starts up, and says he must kill the 
 aforesaid merchant, because one of the date shells had, 
 it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son.* 
 
 I took the thought of grinning for jot/,' in that 
 poem, from my companion's remark to me, when we 
 had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and were nearly 
 dead with thirst. We could not speak from the con- 
 striction, till we found a little puddle under a stone. 
 He said to me, — " You grinned like an idiot ! " He 
 had done the same. 
 
 * " There he found, at the foot of a great walnut-tree, a fountain of a very- 
 clear running water, and alighting, tied his horse to a branch of a tree, and 
 sitting down by the fountain, took some biscuits and dates out of his port- 
 manteau, and, as he ate his dates, threw the shells about on both sides o 
 him. When he had done eating, being a good Mussulman, he washed his 
 hands, his face, and his feet, and said his prayers. He had not made an 
 end, but was still on his knees, when he saw a genie appear, all white with 
 age, and of a monstrous bulk ; who, advancing towards him with a cimetar 
 in his hand, spoke to him in a terrible voice thus : — ' Rise up, that I may 
 kill thee with this cimetar as you have killed my son ! ' and accompanied 
 these words with a frightful cry. The merchant being as much frightened 
 at the hideous shape of the monster as at these threatening words, answered 
 him trembling : — ' Alas ! my good lord, of what crime can I be guilty towards 
 you that you should take away my life ? ' — ' I will,' replies the genie, * kill 
 thee, as thou hast killed my son ! ' — ' O heaven,' says the merchant, ' how 
 should I kill your son ? I did not know him, nor ever saw him.' — * Did not 
 you sit down when you came hither ? ' replies the genie. ' Did not you take 
 dates out of your portmanteau, and as you ate them, did not you throw the 
 shells about on both sides ? ' — ' I did all that you say,' answers the merchant, 
 I cannot deny it.' — ' If it be so,' replied the genie, ' I tell thee that thou hast 
 killed my son ; and the way was thus : when you threw the nutshells about, 
 my son was passing by, and you threw one of them into his eye, which killed 
 him, therefore I must kill thee.' — ' Ah ! my good lord, pardon me ! ' cried the 
 merchant. — ' No pardon,' answers the genie, ' no mercy ! Is it not just to 
 kill him that has killed another ? '— ' I agree to it,' says the merchant, ' but 
 certainly I never killed your son, and if I have, it was unknown to me, and 
 I did it innocently ; therefore I beg you to pardon me, and suffer me to live.' 
 — ' No, no,' says the genie, persisting in his resolution, ' I must kill thee, 
 since thou hast killed my son : ' and then taking the merchant by the arm, 
 threw him with his face upon the ground, and lifted up his cimetar to cut off 
 his head ! "—The Merchant and the Genie. Fii-st night.— Ed. 
 
88 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 Undine is a most exquisite work. It shows the 
 general want of any sense for the fine and the subtle 
 in the public taste^ that this romance made no deep 
 impression. Undine^s character, before she receives 
 a soul, is marvellously beautiful.* 
 
 It seems to me, that Martin never looks at nature 
 except through bits of stained glass. He is never 
 satisfied with any appearance that is not prodigious. 
 He should endeavour to school his imagination into 
 the apprehension of the true idea of the Beautiful.t 
 
 The wood-cut of Slay-good J is admirable, to be 
 sure ; but this new edition of the Pilgrim^s Progress 
 is too fine a book for it. It should be much larger, 
 and on sixpenny coarse paper. 
 
 The Pilgrim^s Progress is composed in the lowest 
 style of English, without slang or false grammar. If 
 you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge's admiration of this little romance was unbounded. He 
 read it several times in German, and once in the English translation, made 
 in America, I believe; the latter he thought inadequately done. Mr. C. 
 said that there was something in Undine even beyond Scott, — that Scott's 
 best characters and conceptions were composed ; by which I understood him 
 to mean that Baillie Nicol Jarvie, for example, was made up of old particulars, 
 and received its individuality from the author's power of fusion, being in the 
 result an admirable product, as Corinthian brass was said to be the conflux 
 of the spoils of a city. But Undine, he said, was one and single in projection, 
 and had presented to his imagination, what Scott had never done, an abso- 
 lutely new idea. — Ed. 
 
 t Mr. Coleridge said this, after looking at the engravings of Mr. Martin's 
 two pictures of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and the Celestial City, 
 published in the beautiful edition of the " Pilgrim's Progress," by Messrs. 
 Murray and Major, in 1830. I wish Mr. Martin could have heard the poet's 
 lecture : he would have been flattered, and at the same time, I believe in- 
 structed ; for in the philosophy of painting Coleridge was a master. — Ed. 
 
 X P. 350, by S. Mosses from a design by Mr. W. Harvey. " When they 
 came to the place where he was, they found hira with one Feeble-mind in his 
 hand, whom his servants had brought unto him, having taken him in the 
 way. Now the giant was rifling him, with a purpose, after that, to pick his 
 bones : for he was of the nature of flesh-eaters." — Ed. 
 
PHAYEE. 
 
 89 
 
 reality of the vision. For works of imagination 
 should be written in very plain language ; the more 
 purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is 
 to be plain. 
 
 This wonderful work is one of the few books which 
 may be read over repeatedly at different times^ and 
 each time with a new and different pleasure. I read 
 it once as a theologian^ — and let me assure you, that 
 there is great theological acumen in the work — once 
 with devotional feelings — and once as a poet. I could 
 not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be 
 painted in such exquisitely delightful colours.* 
 
 June 1, 1830. 
 Prayer, — Church-singing, — Hooker. — Dreams . 
 'HEEE are three sorts of prayer: — 1. Public; 
 
 ^ 2. Domestic; 3. Solitary. Each has its peculiar 
 uses and character. I think the church ought to 
 publish and authorise a directory of forms for the 
 latter two. Yet I fear the execution would be 
 inadequate. There is a great decay of devotional 
 unction in the numerous books of prayers put out 
 now-a-days. I reaUy tliink the hawker was very 
 happy, who blundered New Eorm of Prayer into New 
 former Prayers, f 
 
 * I find written on a blank leaf of ray copy of this edition of the P/s P., 
 the following note by Mr. C: — " I know of no book, the Bible excepted as 
 above all comparison, which I, according to my judgment and experience, 
 could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth 
 according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the ' Pilgrim's Progress.' 
 It is, in my conviction, incomparably the best summa tlieologice evangelical 
 ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired." June 14, 1830. — Ed. 
 
 t " I will add, at the risk of appearing to dwell too long on religious topics, 
 that on this, my first introduction to Coleridge, he reverted with strong 
 compunction to a sentiment which he had expressed in earlier days upon 
 prayer. In one of his youthful poems, speaking of God, he had said,— 
 
90 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 I exceedingly regret that our church pays so little 
 attention to the subject of congregational singing. 
 See how it is ! In that particular part of the public 
 worship in which, more than in all the rest, the com- 
 mon people might, and ought to, join, — which, by its 
 association with music, is meant to give a fitting vent 
 and expression to the emotions, — ^in that part we all 
 sing as Jews ; or, at best, as mere men, in the 
 abstract, without a Saviour. You know my venera- 
 tion for the Book of Psalms, or most of it ; but with 
 some half-dozen exceptions, the Psalms are surely not 
 adequate vehicles of Christian thanksgiving and joy ! 
 Upon this deficiency in our service, Wesley and 
 
 hitfield seized ; and you know it is the hearty con- 
 gregational singing of Christian hymns which keeps 
 the humbler Methodists together. Luther did as 
 
 * Of whose all-seeing eye 
 
 Aught to demand were impotence of mind.' 
 
 This sentiment he now so utterly condemned, that, on the contrary, he told 
 me, as his own peculiar opinion, that the act of praying was the very highest 
 energy of which the human heart was capable, praying, that is, with the 
 total concentration of the faculties ; and the great mass of worldly men and 
 of learned men he pronounced absolutely incapable of prayer." — Tail's 
 Magazine, September, 1834, p. 515. 
 
 Mr. Coleridge within two years of his death very solemnly declared to me 
 his conviction upon the same subject. I was sitting by his bedside one 
 afternoon, and he fell, an unusual thing for him, into a long account of many 
 passages of his past life, lamenting some things, condemning others, but 
 complaining withal, though very gently, of the way in which many of his most 
 innocent acts had been cruelly misrepresented. " But I have no difficulty," 
 said he, " in forgiveness ; indeed, I know not how to say with sincerity the 
 clause in the Lord's Prayer, which asks forgiveness as we forgive. I feel 
 nothing answering to it in my heart. Neither do I find, or reckon, the most 
 solemn faith in God as a real object, the most arduous act of the reason and 
 will. O no, my dear, it is to pray, to pray as God would have us ; this is 
 what at times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe me, to pray with all 
 your heart and strength, with the reason and the will, to believe vividly that 
 God will listen to your voice through Christ, and verily do the thing he 
 pleaseth thereupon — tliis is the last, the greatest achievement of the 
 Christian's warfare upon earth. Teach us to pray, O Lord 1 " And then he 
 burst into a flood of tears, and begged mc to pray for him. O what a siglit 
 was there ! — Ed. 
 
JEEEMY TAYLOR. 
 
 91 
 
 much for the Reformation by his hymns as by his 
 translation of the Bible. In Germany^ the hymns 
 are known by heart by every peasant : they advise, 
 they argue from the hymns, and every soul in the 
 church praises God, like a Christian, with words 
 which are natural and yet sacred to his mind. No 
 doubt this defect in our service proceeded from the 
 dread which the English Reformers had of being 
 charged with introducing anything into the worship 
 of God but the text of Scripture. 
 
 Hooker said, — That by looking for that in the 
 Bible which it is impossible any hooh can have, we 
 lose the benefits which we might reap from its being 
 the hest of all books. 
 
 You will observe, that even in dreams nothing is 
 fancied without an antecedent quasi cause. It could 
 not be otherwise. 
 
 June 4, 1830. 
 Jeremy Taylor, — English Reformation. 
 
 n^AYLOR^S * was a great and lovely mind ; yet how 
 much and injuriously was it perverted by his 
 being a favourite and follower of Laud, and by his 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge placed Jeremy Taylor amongst the four great geniuses of 
 old English literature. I think he used to reckon Shakspeare and Bacon, 
 Milton and Taylor, four-square, each against each. In mere eloquence, he 
 thought the Bishop without any fellow. He called him Chrysostom. Fur- 
 ther, he loved the man, and was anxious to find excuses for some weak parts 
 in his character. But Mr. Coleridge's assent to Taylor's views of many of 
 the fundamental positions of Christianity was very limited ; and, indeed, he 
 considered him as the least sound in point of doctrine of any of the old 
 divines, comprehending, within that designation, the writers to the middle of 
 Charles II.'s reign. He speaks of Taylor in " The Friend" in the following 
 terms : — " Among the numerous examples with which I might enforce this 
 warning, I refer, not without reluctance, to the most eloquent, and one of the 
 most learned, of our divines ; a rigorist, indeed, concerning the authority of 
 
92 
 
 COLEUIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 intensely popish feelings of church authority. His 
 Liberty of Prophesying is a work of wonderful elo- 
 quence and skiR; but if we believe the argument, 
 what do we come to ? Wliy to nothing more or less 
 than this, that — so much can be said for every opinion 
 and sect, — so impossible is it to settle anything by 
 reasoning or authority of Scripture, — we must appeal 
 to some positive jurisdiction on earth, ut sit finis con- 
 troversiarum. In fact, the whole book is the precise 
 argument used by the Papists to induce men to admit 
 the necessity of a supreme and infalhble head of the 
 church on earth. It is one of the works wliich pre- 
 eminently gives countenance to the saying of Charles 
 or James II., I forget wliich : — When you of the 
 Church of England contend with the CathoHcs, you 
 use the arguments of the Puritans ; when you con- 
 tend with the Puritans, you immediately adopt all 
 the weapons of the CathoHcs."'^ Taylor never speaks 
 with the slightest symptom of affection or respect of 
 Luther, Calvin, or any other of the great Reformers — 
 at least, not in any of his learned works; but he 
 saints every trumpery monk and friar, down to the 
 very latest canonizations by the modern popes. I 
 fear you will think me harsh, when I say that I 
 believe Taylor was, perhaps unconsciously, half a 
 Socinian in heart. Such a strange inconsistency 
 would not be impossible. The Eomish Church has 
 produced many such devout Socinians. The cross of 
 Christ is dimly seen in Taylor^s works. Compare him 
 in this particular with Donne, and you will feel the 
 
 the church, but a latitudinarian in the articles of its faith ; who stretched the 
 latter almost to the advanced posts of Socinianism, and strained the foiTner 
 to a hazardous conformity with the assumptions of the Roman hierarchy." 
 Vol. ii. p. 108.— Ed. 
 
ENGLISH REFORMATION. 
 
 93 
 
 difference in a moment. Why are not Donne^s volumes 
 of sermons reprinted at Oxford ? ^ 
 
 In the reign of Edward VI., the Eeformers feared 
 to admit ahnost anything on human' authority alone. 
 They had seen and felt the abuses consequent on the 
 popish theory of Christianity ; and I doubt not they 
 wished and intended to reconstruct the religion and 
 the churchy as far as was possible^ upon the plan of 
 the primitive ages. But the Puritans pushed this 
 bias to an absolute bibliolatry. They would not put 
 on a corn-plaster without scraping a text over it. 
 Men of learnings however, soon felt that tliis was 
 wrong in the other extreme, and indeed united itself 
 to the very abuse it seemed to shun. They saw that 
 a knowledge of the Fathers, and of early tradition, 
 was absolutely necessary; and unhappily, in many 
 instances, the excess of the Puritans drove the men 
 of learning into the old popish extreme of denying 
 the Scriptures to be capable of affording a rule of 
 faith without the dogmas of the church. Taylor is a 
 striking instance how far a Protestant might be driven 
 in this direction. 
 
 * Why not, indeed ! It is really quite unaccountable that the sermons of 
 this great divine of the English church should be so little known as they are, 
 even to very literary clergymen of the present day. It might have been 
 expected, that the sermons of the greatest preacher of his age, the admired 
 of Ben Jonson, Selden, and all that splendid band of poets and scholars, 
 would even as curiosities have been reprinted, when works, which are 
 curious for nothing, are every year sent forth afresh under the most authori- 
 tative auspices. Dr. Donne was educated at both universities, at Hart Hall, 
 Oxford, first, and afterwards at Cambridge, but at what college Walton does 
 not mention. — Ed. 
 
94 
 
 COLERTDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 June 6, 1830. 
 Catholicity. — Gnosis. — Tertullian.— St, John. 
 
 IN the first century^ catholicity was the test of a 
 book or epistle — whether it were of the Evan- 
 gelicon or Apostolicon — being canonical. This catholic 
 spirit was opposed to the gnostic or peculiar spirit^ — 
 the humour of fantastical interpretation of the old 
 Scriptures into Christian meanings. It is this gnosis, 
 or knowingnesSy which the Apostle says pufFeth up, — 
 not knowledge, as we translate it. The Epistle of 
 Barnabas, of the genuineness of which I have no 
 sort of doubt, is an example of this gnostic spirit. 
 The Epistle to the Hebrews is the only instance of 
 gnosis in the canon : it was written evidently by 
 some apostolical man before the destruction of the 
 Temple, and probably at Alexandria. Eor three 
 hundred years, and more, it was not admitted into 
 the canon, especially not by the Latin church, on 
 account of this difference in it from the other Scrip- 
 tures. But its merit was so great, and the gnosis in 
 it is so kept within due bounds, that its admirers at 
 last succeeded, especially by aflRxing St. Paulas name to 
 it, to have it included in the canon ; which was first 
 done, I think, by the council of Laodicea in the middle 
 of the fourth century. Fortunately for us it was so. 
 
 I beg Tertullian^s pardon ; but amongst his many 
 bravuras, he says sometliing about St. Paulas auto- 
 graph. Origen expressly declares the reverse. 
 
 It is delightful to think, that the beloved apostle 
 was born a Plato. To him was left the almost oracular 
 
PRINCIPLES OF A REVIEW. 
 
 95 
 
 utterance of the mysteries of the Christian religion ; - 
 wliile to St. Paul was committed the task of expla- 
 nation, defence, and assertion of all the doctrines, 
 and especially of those metaphysical ones touching 
 the will and grace; for which purpose his active 
 mind, his learned education, and his Greek logic, 
 made him pre-eminently fit. 
 
 June 7, 1830. 
 Principles of a Review. — Party-spirit. 
 
 NOTWITHSTANDING what you say, I am per- 
 suaded that a review would amply succeed even 
 now, which should be started upon a published code 
 of principles, critical, moral, political, and religious ; 
 wliich should announce what sort of books it would 
 review, namely, works of literature as contradistin- 
 guished from aU that offspring of the press, which in 
 the present age supplies food for the craving caused 
 by the extended ability of reading without any cor- 
 respondent education of the mind, and which formerly 
 was done by conversation, and which should reaUy 
 give a fair account of what the author intended to do, 
 and in his own words, if possible, and in addition, 
 afford one or two fair specimens of the execution, — 
 itself never descending for one moment to any per- 
 sonality. It should also be provided before the com- 
 mencement with a dozen powerful articles upon 
 fundamental topics to appear in succession. You see 
 the great reviewers are now ashamed of reviewing 
 works in the old style, and have taken up essay 
 
 * " The imperative and oracular form of the inspired Scripture is the form 
 of reason itself, in all things purely rational and moral." — Statesman's 
 Manual, p. 22. 
 
96 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 writing instead. Hence arose such publications as 
 the Literary Gazette and others^ which are set up for 
 the purpose — not a useless one — of advertising new 
 books of all sorts for the circulating libraries. A mean 
 between the two extremes still remains to be taken. 
 
 Party men always hate a slightly differing friend 
 more than a downright enemy. I quite calculate on 
 my being one day or other holden in worse repute 
 by many Christians than the Unitarians and open 
 infidels. It must be undergone by every one who loves 
 the truth for its own sake beyond all other things. 
 
 Truth is a good dog ; but beware of barking too 
 close to the heels of an error^ lest you get yoiu* brains 
 kicked out. 
 
 June 10, 1830. 
 
 Southey^s Life of Bunyan. — Laud. — Puritans and Cavaliers. — 
 Preshyterian^, Independents, and Bishops. 
 
 SOUTHED S Life of Bunyan is beautiful. I wish 
 he had illustrated that mood of mind which 
 exaggerates, and still more, mistakes, the inward 
 depravation, as in Bunyan, Nelson, and others, by 
 extracts from Baxter^s Life of himself. What genuine 
 superstition is exemplified in that bandjdng of texts 
 and half-texts, and demi-semi-texts, just as memory 
 happened to suggest them, or chance brought them 
 before Bunyan^s mind ! His tract, entitled, Grace 
 abounding to the Chief of Sinners,^^* is a study for 
 a philosopher. Is it not, however, an historical error 
 
 * Gracfi abounding to the Chief of Sinners, in a faithful Account of the 
 Life and Death of John Bunyan, &c. 
 
STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 97 
 
 to call the Puritans dissenters ? Before St. Bartholo- 
 mew's day, they were essentially a part of the church, 
 and had as determined opinions in favour of a church 
 establishment as the bishops themselves. 
 
 Laud was not exactly a Papist, to be sure ; but he 
 was on the road with the church with him to a point, 
 where declared popery would have been inevitable. 
 A wise and vigorous Papist king would very soon, 
 and very justifiably too, in that case, have efiected a 
 reconciliation between the churches of Eome and 
 England, when the hne of demarcation had become 
 so very faint. 
 
 The faults of the Puritans were many ; but surely 
 their morality will, in general, bear comparison with 
 that of the Cavaliers after the E-estoration. 
 
 The Presbyterians hated the Independents much 
 more than they did the bishops, which induced them 
 to co-operate in effecting the Eestoration. 
 
 The conduct of the bishops towards Charles, wliilst 
 at Breda, was wise and constitutional. They knew, 
 however, that when the forms of the constitution were 
 once restored, all their power would revive again as 
 of course. 
 
 June 14, 1830. 
 Study of the Bible. 
 
 NTENSE study of the Bible will keep any writer 
 from being vulgar , in point of style. 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 June 15, 1830. 
 Rabelais. — Swift. — Bentley. — Burnet. 
 
 RABELAIS is a most wonderful writer. Panta- 
 gruel is the Eeason; Panurge the Understandings 
 — ^the pollarded man^ the man with every faculty- 
 except the reason. I scarcely know an example 
 more illustrative of the distinction between the two. 
 Rabelais had no mode of speaking the truth in those 
 days but in such a form as this ; as it was, he was 
 indebted to the King^s protection for his life. Some 
 of the commentators talk about liis book being all 
 political; there are contemporary politics in it, of 
 course, but the real scope is much higher and more 
 philosophical. It is in vain to look about for a 
 hidden meaning in all that he has written ; you will 
 observe that, after any particularly deep thrust, as the 
 Papimania,^ for example, Eabelais, as if to break the 
 blow, and to appear unconscious of what he has done, 
 writes a chapter or two of pure buffoonery. He, 
 every now and then, flashes you a glimpse of a real 
 face from his magic lantern, and then buries the 
 whole scene in mist. The morality of the work is of 
 the most refined and exalted kind ; as for the man- 
 ners, to be sure, I cannot say much. 
 
 Swift was anima Rahellaisii hahitans in sicco, — the 
 soul of Eabelais dwelling in a dry place. 
 
 Yet Swift was rare. Can anything beat his remark 
 on King William^s motto, — liecepit, non rapuit, — 
 that the receiver was as bad as the thief ? 
 
 • B. iv. c. 48. " Comment Pantagruel descendit en I'lsle de Papimanes. 
 See the five following chapters, especially c. 50 ; and note also c. 9 of the 
 fifth book ; " Comment nous fut monstr(5 Papegaut ii gmndc difficultc."— Ed 
 
GIOTTO. 
 
 99 
 
 The ejffect of the Tory wits attacking Bentley with 
 such acrimony has been to make them appear a set of 
 shallow and incompetent scholars. Neither Bentley 
 nor Burnet suffered from the hostility of the wits. 
 Burnetts History of his own Times is a truly 
 valuable book. His credulity is great^ but his sim- 
 pKcity is equally great ; and he never deceives you for 
 a moment. 
 
 June 25, 1830. 
 Giotto. — Painting, 
 
 nnHE fresco paintings by Giotto* and others^ in the 
 cemetery at Pisa^ are most noble. Giotto was a 
 contemporary of Dante : and it is a curious question, 
 whether the painters borrowed from the poet^ or vice 
 versa. Certainly M. Angelo and Raffael fed their 
 imaginations highly with these grand drawings^ espe- 
 cially M. Angelo, who took from them his bold yet 
 graceful lines. 
 
 People may say what they please about the gradual 
 improvement of the Arts. It is not true of the sub- 
 stance. The Arts and the Muses both spring forth 
 in the youth of nations, like Minerva from the front 
 of Jupiter, all armed : manual dexterity may, indeed, 
 be improved by practice. 
 
 * Giotto, or Angiolotto's birth is fixed by Vasari in 1276, but there is some 
 reason to think that he was born a little earlier. Dante, who was his friend, 
 was bom in 1265. Giotto was the pupil of Cimabue, whom he entirely 
 eclipsed, an Dante testifies in the well-known lines in the Purgatorio : — 
 " O vana gloria dell' umane posse ! 
 Com' poco verde in si\ la cima dura, 
 Se non 6 giunta dall' etati grosse! 
 Credette Cimabue nella pintura 
 Tener lo campo : ed ora ha Giotto 11 grido, 
 Si che la fama di colui oscura." — C. xi. v. 91. 
 His six great frescoes in the cemetery at Pisa are upon the sufferings and 
 patience of Job. — Ed. 
 
 H 2 
 
100 
 
 COLERIDGE^'S TABLE TALK. 
 
 Painting went on in power till^ in Eaffael^ it 
 attained the zenith^ and in him too it showed signs of 
 a tendency downwards by another path. The painter 
 began to think of overcoming difficulties. After this 
 the descent was rapid^ till sculptors began to work 
 inveterate likenesses of perriwigs in marble^ — as see 
 Algarotti^s tomb in the cemetery at Pisa^ — and 
 painters did nothing but copy^ as well as they could, 
 the external face of nature. Now^ in this age, we 
 have a sort of reviviscence, — not, I fear, of the power, 
 but of a taste for the power, of the early times. 
 
 June 26, 1830. 
 Seneca. 
 
 T/^OU may get a motto for every sect in religion, or 
 line of thought in morals or philosophy, from 
 Seneca ; but nothing is ever thought out by him. 
 
 July 2, 1830. 
 Plato, — A ristotle. 
 
 EVEEY man is born an Aristotelian, or a Platonist. 
 I do not think it possible that any one born an 
 Aristotehan can become a Platonist ; and I am sure 
 no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. 
 They are the two classes of men, beside which it is 
 next to impossible to conceive a third. The one 
 considers reason a quality, or attribute; the other 
 considers it a power. I believe that Aristotle never 
 could get to understand what Plato meant by an idea. 
 There is a passage, indeed, in the Eudemian Ethics 
 which looks like an exception ; but I doubt not of its 
 being spurious, as that whole work is supposed by 
 
DUKE OF WELLINGTOl^. 
 
 101 
 
 some to be. With Plato ideas are constitutive in 
 themselves.* 
 
 Aristotle was^ and still is, the sovereign lord of the 
 understanding; the faculty judging by the senses. 
 He was a conceptualist, and never could raise him- 
 seK into that higher state, which was natural to Plato, 
 and has been so to others, in which the understanding 
 is distinctly contemplated, and, as it were, looked 
 down upon from the throne of actual ideas, or living, 
 inborn, essential truths. 
 
 Yet what a mind was Aristotle^ s — only not the 
 greatest that ever animated the human form ! — ^the 
 parent of science, properly so called, the master of 
 criticism, and the founder or editor of logic ! But 
 he confounded science with philosophy, which is an 
 error. Philosophy is the middle state between science, 
 or knowledge, and sophia, or wisdom. 
 
 July 4, 1830. 
 Duke of Wellington. — Moneyed Interest. — Canning . 
 
 T SOMETIMES fear the Duke of Wellington is 
 too much disposed to imagine, that he can govern 
 a great nation by word of command, in the same way 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge said the Eudemian Ethics ; hut I half suspect he must 
 have meant the Metaphysics, although I do not know that all the fourteen 
 books under that title have been considered non-genuine. The 'Hdixoc 
 Evlr,fji,uoe, are not Aristotle's. To what passage in particular allusion is here 
 made, I cannot exactly say ; many might be alleged, but not one seems to 
 express the true Platonic idea, as Mr. Coleridge used to understand it ; and 
 as, I believe, he ultimately considered ideas in his own philosophy. Four- 
 teen or fifteen years previously, he seems to have been undecided upon 
 this point. " Whether," he says, " ideas are regulative only, according to 
 Aristotle and Kant, or likewise constitutive, and one with the power and life 
 of nature, according to Plato and Plotinus ( — h Xoyu iuvi ^v, xot) v iuvi r,v 
 TO <pM5 TMv ocvO^uTcuv — ), Is the hlghcst problem of philosophy, and not part of 
 its nomenclature." Essay (E) in the Appendix to the Statesman's Manual , 
 1816.— Ed. 
 
102 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 in which he governed a highly disciphned army. He 
 seems to be unaccustomed to^ and to despise^ the 
 inconsistencies^ the weaknesses^ the bursts of heroism 
 followed by prostration and cowardice, which inva- 
 riably characterise all popular efforts. He forgets 
 that, after aU, it is from such efforts that all the great 
 and noble institutions of the world have come ; and 
 that, on the other hand, the discipline and organiza- 
 tion of armies have been only like the flight of the 
 cannon-ball, the object of which is destruction.* 
 
 The stock-jobbing and moneyed interest is so strong 
 in this country, that it has more than once prevailed in 
 our foreign councils over national honour and national 
 justice. The country gentlemen are not slow to join 
 in this infl.uence. Canning felt this very keenly, and 
 said he was unable to contend against the city 
 trained-bands. 
 
 July 6, 1830. 
 
 Bourrienne, 
 
 BOUEEIE]S^]>fE is admirable. He is the French 
 Pepys, — a man with right feelings, but always 
 wishing to participate in what is going on, be it 
 what it may. He has one remark, when comparing 
 Buonaparte with Charlemagne, the substance of which 
 I have attempted to express in " The Priend,^^ f but 
 which Bourrienne has condensed into a sentence worthy 
 of Tacitus, or Machiavel, or Bacon. It is tliis ; that 
 
 * straight forward goes 
 The lightning's path, and straiglit the fearful path 
 Of tlic cannon-l)all. Direct it flics and rapid, 
 Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches. 
 
 Wnllenstein, Part I. act i. sc. 4, 
 t Vol. i. Essay 12, p. 133. 
 
OEWS. 
 
 103 
 
 Charlemagne was above his age, whilst Buonaparte 
 was only above his competitors, but under his age ! 
 Bourrienne has done more than any one else to show 
 Buonaparte to the world as he really was, — always 
 contemptible, except when acting a part, and that part 
 not his own. 
 
 July 8, 1830. 
 Jews. 
 
 ^HE other day I was what you would call floored by 
 a Jew. He passed me several times crying out 
 for old clothes in the most nasal and extraordinary 
 tone I ever heard. At last I was so provoked, that 
 I said to him, " Pray, why can'^t you say ^ old clothes^ 
 in a plain way as I do now ? The Jew stopped, and 
 looking very gravely at me, said in a clear and even 
 fine accent, " Sir, I can say ' old clothes ' as well as 
 you can; but if you had to say so ten times a 
 minute, for an hour together, you would say Ogh Clo 
 as I do now/^ and so he marched off. I was so 
 confounded with the justice of his retort, that I 
 followed and gave him a shilling, the only one I had. 
 
 I have had a good deal to do with Jews in the 
 course of my hfe, although I never borrowed any money 
 of them. Once I sat in a coach opposite a Jew — a 
 symbol of old clothes^ bags — an Isaiah of Holywell 
 Street. He would close the window; I opened it. 
 He closed it again ; upon wliich, in a very solemn 
 tone, I said to him, Son of Abraham ! thou smellest ; 
 son of Isaac ! thou art offensive ; son of Jacob ! thou 
 stinkest foully. See the man in the moon! he is 
 holding his nose at thee at that distance ; dost thou 
 
104 
 
 coleeidge's table talk. 
 
 think that I, sitting here^ can endure it any longer V 
 My Jew was astounded^ opened the window forthwith 
 himself^ and said^ ^^he was sorry he did not know 
 before I was so great a gentleman/^ 
 
 July 24, 1830. 
 The Pajpacy and the Reformation, —Leo X. 
 TTiURINGr the early part of the middle ages^ the 
 J-^ papacy was nothings in fact, but a confederation 
 of the learned men in the west of Europe against the 
 barbarism and ignorance of the times. The Pope 
 was chief of this confederacy ; and so long as he 
 retained that character exclusively^ his power was just 
 and irresistible. It was the principal mean of pre- 
 serving for us and for our posterity all that we now 
 have of the illumination of past ages. But as soon 
 as the Pope made a separation between his character 
 as premier clerk in Christendom and as a secular 
 prince; as soon as he began to squabble for towns 
 and castles ; then he at once broke the charm^ and 
 gave birth to a revolution. Prom that moment, 
 those who remained firm to the cause of truth and 
 knowledge became necessary enemies to the Roman 
 See. The great British schoolmen led the way ; then 
 Wicliffe rose, Huss, Jerome, and others; — in short, 
 everywhere, but especially througliout the north of 
 Europe, the breach of feeling and sympathy went on 
 widening, — so that all Germany, England, Scotland, 
 and other countries, started like giants out of their 
 sleep at the first blast of Lutlier^s trumpet. In 
 Prance, one half of the people — and that the most 
 wealthy and enlightened — embraced the Eeformation. 
 
LEO X. THELWALL. 
 
 105 
 
 The seeds of it were deeply and widely spread in 
 Spain and in Italy; and as to the latter^ if James I. 
 had been an Elizabeth^ I have no doubt at all that 
 Venice would have publicly declared itself against 
 Rome. It is a profound question to answer^ why it 
 is, that since the middle of the sixteenth century the 
 Reformation has not advanced one step in Europe. 
 
 In the time of Leo X. atheism, or infidelity of 
 some sort, was almost universal in Italy amongst the 
 high dignitaries of the Romish church. 
 
 July 26, 1830. 
 ThelwalL — Swift, — Stella. 
 
 JOHN THELWALL had something very good 
 about him. We were once sitting in a beautiful 
 recess in the Quantocks, when I said to him, Citizen 
 John, tb's is a fine place to talk treason in ! — 
 " Nay ! Citizen Samuel,^^ replied he, it is rather a 
 place to make a man forget that there is any necessity 
 for treason ! 
 
 Thelwall thought it very unfair to influence a cliild's 
 mind by inculcating any opinions before it should 
 have come to years of discretion, and be able to choose 
 for itself. I showed him my garden, and told him it 
 was my botanical garden. ^''How so?''^ said he, ^^it 
 is covered with weeds.''^ — Oh," I rephed, that is 
 only because it has not yet come to its age of discre- 
 tion and choice. The weeds, you see, have taken 
 the liberty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to 
 prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries.''^ 
 
106 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 I think Swift adopted the name of Stella, which is 
 a man^s name, with a feminine termination, to denote 
 the mysterious epicene relation in which poor Miss 
 Johnston stood to liim. 
 
 July 28, 1830. 
 Iniquitous Legislation. 
 
 THAT legislation is iniquitous which sets law in 
 conflict with the common and unsophisticated 
 feelings of our nature. If I were a clergyman in a 
 smuggling town, I would not preach against smug- 
 gling. I would not be made a sort of clerical revenue 
 oSicer. Let the government, which by absurd duties 
 fosters smuggling, prevent it itself, if it can. How 
 could I show my hearers the immorality of going 
 twenty miles in a boat, and honestly buying with 
 their money a keg of brandy, except by a long deduc- 
 tion which they could not understand ? But were I 
 in a place where wrecking went on, see if I would 
 preach on anything else ! 
 
 July 29, 1830. 
 
 Spurzheim and Craniology, 
 
 O PURZHEIM is a good man, and I like him ; but 
 he is dense, and the most ignorant German I 
 ever knew. If he had been content with stating 
 certain remarkable coincidences between the moral 
 qualities and the configuration of the skull, it would 
 have been well ; but when he began to map out the 
 cranium dogmatically, he fell into infinite absurdities. 
 You know that every intellectual act, however you 
 may distinguish it by name in respect of the origi- 
 
SPURZHEIM AND CHANIOLOq^Y. 107 
 
 nating faculties^ is truly the act of the entire man ; 
 the notion of distinct material organs^ therefore, in 
 the brain itself, is plainly absurd. Pressed by this, 
 Spurzheim has, at length, been guilty of some sheer 
 quackery; and ventures to say that he has actually 
 discovered a different material iu the different parts 
 or organs of the brain, so that he can tell a piece of 
 benevolence from a bit of destructiveness and so forth. 
 Observe, also, that it is constantly found, that so far 
 from there being a concavity in the interior surface 
 of the cranium answering to the convexity apparent 
 on the exterior — the interior is convex too. Dr. 
 Baillie thought there was something in the system, 
 because the notion of the brain being an extendible 
 net helped to explain those cases where the intellect 
 remained after the solid substance of the brain was 
 dissolved in water.* 
 
 That a greater or less development of the forepart 
 of the head is generally coincident with more or less 
 of reasoning power, is certain. The line across the 
 forehead, also, denoting musical power, is very 
 common. 
 
 * " The very marked, positive as -well at? comparative, magnitude and 
 prominence of the hump, entitled benevolence (see Spurzheim' s map of the 
 human skull) on the head of the late Mr. John Thurtell, has woefully un- 
 Bettled the faith of many ardent phrenologists, and strengthened the pre- 
 vious doubts of a still greater number into utter disbelief. On m^/ mind this 
 fact (for a fact it is) produced the directly contrary effect ; and inclined me 
 to suspect, for the first time, that there may be some truth in the Spurz- 
 heimian scheme. Whether future craniologists may not see cause to new- 
 name this and one or two others of these convex gnomons, is quite a different 
 question. At present, and according to the present use of words, any such 
 change would be premature ; and we must be content to say, that Mr. 
 Thurtell's benevolence was insufficiently modified by the unprotrusive and 
 unindicated convolutes of the brain, that secrete honesty and common sense. 
 The organ of destructiveness was indirectly potentiated by the absence or 
 imperfect development of the glands of reason and conscience in this * unfor- 
 tunate gentleman.^ " — Aids to Bejiection, p. 143, n. 
 
108 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 August 20, 1830, 
 French Revolution, 1830. — Captain B, Hall and the Americans, 
 "PHE French must have greatly improved under 
 
 the influence of a free and regular government 
 (for such it, in general, has been since the restoration), 
 to have conducted themselves with so much modera- 
 tion in success as they seem to have done, and to be 
 disposed to do. 
 
 I must say I cannot see much in Captain B. Hallos 
 account of the Americans, but weaknesses — some of 
 which make me like the Yankees all the better. How 
 much more amiable is the American fidgettiness and 
 anxiety about the opinion of other nations, and espe- 
 cially of the English, than the John Bullism, which 
 affects to despise the sentiments cf the rest of the 
 world.* 
 
 * " There exists in England a gentlemanly character, a gentlemanly feeling, 
 very different even from that which is the most like it, — the character of a 
 well-born Spaniard; and unexampled in the rest of Europe. This feeling 
 originated in the fortunate circumstance, that the titles of our English 
 nobility follow the law of their property, and are inherited by the eldest 
 sons only. From this source, under the influences of our constitution and of 
 our astonishing trade, it has diffused itself in different modifications through 
 the whole country. The uniformity of our dress among all classes above 
 that of the day labourer, while it has authorised all ranks to assume the 
 appearance of gentlemen, has at the same time inspired the wish to con- 
 form their manners, and still more their ordinary actions in social inter- 
 course, to their notions of the gentlemanly; the most commonly received 
 attribute of which character is a certain generosity in trifles. On the other 
 hand, the encroachments of the lower classes on the higher, occasioned and 
 favoured by this resemblance in exteriors, by this absence of any cognizable 
 marks of distinction, have rendered each class more reserved and jealous in 
 their general communion ; and, far more than our climate or natural temper, 
 have caused that haughtiness and reserve in our outward demeanour, which 
 is so generally complained of among foreigners. Far be it from me to de- 
 preciate the value of this gentlemanly feeling: I respect it under all its 
 forms and varieties, from the House of Commons * to the gentleman in the 
 one-shilling gallery. It is always the ornament of virtue, and oftentimes a 
 support; but it is a wretched substitute for it. Its vwrth, as a moral good, i3 
 by no moans in proportion to its value as a social advantage. These obser- 
 
 * Tills was written long before the Reform Act.— Ed. 
 
ENGLISH REFORMATION. 
 
 109 
 
 As to wliat Captain Hall says about the English 
 loyalty to the person of the King — I can only say^ I 
 feel none of it. I respect the man while^ and only 
 while^ the king is translucent through him : I 
 reverence the glass case for the Saint^s sake within ; 
 except for that^ it is to me mere glazier^ s work^ — 
 patty, and glass, and wood. 
 
 September 8, 1830. 
 
 English Reformation, 
 
 THE fatal error into which the peculiar character 
 of the English Reformation threw our church, 
 has borne bitter fruit ever since, — I mean that of its 
 clinging to court and state, instead of cultivating the 
 people. The church ought to be a mediator between 
 the people and the government^ between the poor 
 and the rich. As it is, I fear the church has let the 
 hearts of the common people be stolen from it. See 
 how differently the Church of Rome — wiser in its 
 generation — has always acted in this particular. Eor a 
 long time past the Church of England seems to me to 
 have been blighted with prudence, as it is called. I wish 
 with aU my heart we had a little zealous imprudence. 
 
 vations are not irrelevant : for to the want of reflection that this diffusion of 
 gentlemanly feeling among us is not the growth of our moral excellence, but 
 the effect of various accidental advantages peculiar to England ; to our not 
 considering that it is unreasonable and uncharitable to expect the same 
 consequences, where the same causes have not existed to produce them ; and 
 lastly, to our proneness to regard the absence of this character (which, as I 
 have before said, does, for the greater part, and in the common apprehension, 
 consist in a certain frankness and generosity in the detail of action) as 
 decisive against the sum total of personal or national worth ; we must, I am 
 convinced, attribute a large portion of that conduct, which in many instances 
 has left the inhabitants of countries conquered or appropriated by Great 
 Britain doubtful whether the various solid advantages which they have 
 derived from our protection and just government Avere not bought dearly by 
 the wounds inflicted on their feelings and prejudices, by the contemptuous and 
 insolent demeanour of the English, as individuals." — Friend, vol. iii., p. 322. 
 
110 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 September 19, 1830. 
 Democracy. — Idea of a State, — Church. 
 
 TT has never yet been seen, or clearly announced, 
 that democracy, as such, is no proper element in 
 the constitution of a state. The idea of a state is 
 undoubtedly a government e/c rwz; apiaroiv — an aris- 
 tocracy. Democracy is the healthful life-blood which 
 circulates through the veins and arteries, which sup- 
 ports the system, but which ought never to appear 
 externally, and as the mere blood itself. 
 
 A state, in idea, is the opposite of a church. A 
 state regards classes, and not individuals; and it 
 estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external 
 accidents, as property, birth, &c. But a church does 
 the reverse of this, and disregards all external acci- 
 dents, and looks at men as individual persons, allow- 
 ing no gradation of ranks, but such as greater or less 
 msdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A 
 church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy. 
 The church, so considered, and the state, exclusively 
 of the church, constitute together the idea of a state 
 in its largest sense. 
 
 LL temporal government must rest on a com- 
 
 promise of interests and abstract rights. Who 
 would Hsten to the county of Bedford, if it were to 
 declare itself disannexed from the British empire, and 
 
 to set up for itseK ? 
 
 The most desirable thing that can happen to 
 
 September 20, 1830. 
 Government. — French Gend^a 
 
 armerie. 
 
PHILOSOPHY OP YOUNG MEN. 
 
 Ill 
 
 France, with her immense army of gensd^armes, is, 
 that the service may at first become very irksome to 
 the men themselves, and ultimately, by not being 
 caUed into real service, faU into general ridicule, like 
 our trained bands. The evil in France, and through- 
 out Europe, seems now especially to be, the subordi- 
 nation of the legislative power to the direct physical 
 force of the people. The French legislature was weak 
 enough before the late revolution ; now it is absolutely 
 powerless, and manifestly depends even for its exist- 
 ence on the wiU of a popular commander of an irre- 
 sistible army. There is now in France a daily 
 tendency to reduce the legislative body to a mere 
 deputation from the provinces and towns. 
 
 September 21, 1830. 
 Philosophy of Young Men at the present Day, 
 
 I DO not know whether I deceive myself, but it 
 seems to me that the young men, who were my 
 contemporaries, fixed certain principles in their minds, 
 and followed them out to their legitimate consequences, 
 in a way which I rarely witness now. No one seems 
 to have any distinct convictions, right or wrong ; the 
 mind is completely at sea, rolling and pitching on 
 the waves of facts and personal experiences. Mr. 
 
 is, I suppose, one of the rising young men of 
 
 the day ; yet he went on talking, the other evening, 
 and making remarks with great earnestness, some of 
 which were palpably irreconcilable with each other. 
 He told me that facts gave birth to, and were the 
 absolute groimd of, principles ; to which I said, that 
 unless he had a principle of selection, he would not 
 
112 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 have taken notice of those facts upon which he 
 grounded his principle. You must have a lantern in 
 your hand to give lights otherwise all the materials in 
 the world are useless^ for you cannot find them ; and 
 if you could^ you could not arrange them. *'^But 
 
 then/' said Mr. , " t/mt principle of selection 
 
 came from facts V' — ^*'To be sure V' I replied ; ^^but 
 there must have been again an antecedent light to see 
 those antecedent facts. The relapse may be carried 
 in imagination backwards for ever^ — but go back as 
 you may^ you cannot come to a man without a pre- 
 vious aim or principle. He then asked me what 
 I had to say to Bacon^s induction : I told him I had 
 a good deal to say^ if need were; but that it was 
 perhaps enough for the occasion to remark^ that what 
 he was evidently taking for the Baconian i^.duction 
 was mere ^^duction — a very different thing.* 
 
 September 22, 1830. 
 Thucydides and Tacitus. — Poetry. — Modern Metre, 
 
 nn HE object of Thucydides was to show the ills 
 resulting to Greece from the separation and con- 
 flict of the spirits or elements of democracy and 
 oligarchy. The object of Tacitus w^as to demonstrate 
 the desperate consequences of the loss of liberty on 
 the minds and hearts of men. 
 
 A poet ought not to pick nature^s pocket : let him 
 borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of 
 borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write 
 
 * As far as I can judge, the most complete and masterly thing ever done 
 by Mr. Coleridge in prose, is the analysis and reconcilement of the Platonic 
 and Baconian methods of philosophy, contained in the third volume of the 
 Friend, from p. 176 to 21G, No edition of fhe Novum Organum Bhould ever 
 be published without a transcript of it. — Ed. 
 
LOGIC. 
 
 113 
 
 from recollection : and trust more to your imagination 
 than to your memory. 
 
 Eeally the metre of some of the modern poems I 
 have read^ bears about the same relation to metre 
 properly understood^ that dumb bells do to music ; 
 both are for exercise, and pretty severe too, I think. 
 
 Nothing ever left a stain on that gentle creature^s 
 mind, which looked upon the degraded men and 
 things around him like moonshine on a dunghill, 
 which shines and takes no pollution. All things 
 are shadows to him, except those which move his 
 affections. 
 
 September 23, 1830. 
 Logic, 
 
 T^HEEE are two kinds of logic: 1. Syllogistic. 
 
 2. Criterional. How any one can by any spin- 
 ning make out more than ten or a dozen pages about 
 the first, is inconceivable to me; all those absurd 
 forms of syllogisms are one half pure sophisms, and 
 the other half mere forms of rhetoric. 
 
 All syllogistic logic is — 1. &clusion ; 2. 7;zclusion; 
 3. C(9?^clusion ; which answer to the understanding, 
 the experience, and the reason. The first says, this 
 ought to be ; the second adds this is ; and the last 
 pronounces, this must be so. The criterional logic, 
 or logic of premisses, is, of course, much the most 
 important ; and it has never yet been treated. 
 
 The object of rhetoric is persuasion, — of logic, 
 conviction, — of grammar, significancy. A fourth 
 term is wanting, the rhematic, or logic of sentences. 
 
114 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 September 24, 1830. 
 Varro. — Socrates. — Greek Philosophy. — Plotinus. — TertuUian. 
 
 T7HAT a loss we have had in Yarrows mythological 
 
 ' ^ and critical works ! It is said that the works 
 of Epicurus are probably amongst the Herculauean 
 manuscripts. I do not feel much interest about them, 
 because, by the consent of aU antiquity, Lucretius has 
 preserved a complete view of his system. But I 
 regret the loss of the works of the old Stoics, Zeno 
 and others, exceedingly. 
 
 Socrates, as such, was only a poetical character to 
 Plato, who worked upon his own ground. The several 
 disciples of Socrates caught some particular points 
 from him, and made systems of philosophy upon them 
 according to their own views. Socrates himself had 
 no system. 
 
 I hold aU claims set up for Egypt having given 
 birth to the Greek philosophy, to be groundless. It 
 sprang up in Greece itself, and began with physics 
 only. Then it took in the idea of a living cause, and 
 made pantheism out of the two. Socrates introduced 
 ethics, and taught duties; and then, finally, Plato 
 asserted or re-asserted the idea of a God the maker of 
 the world. The measure of human philosophy was 
 thus fuU, when Christianity came to add what before 
 was wanting — assurance. After this again, the Neo- 
 Platonists joined theurgy with philosophy, which 
 ultimately degenerated into magic and mere mysticism. 
 
 Plotinus was a man of wonderful ability, and some 
 of the sublunest passages I ever read are in his works. 
 
SCOTCH AND ENGLISH LAKES. 
 
 115 
 
 I was amused the other day with reading in Ter- 
 tulKan, that spirits or demons dilate and contract 
 themselves^ and wriggle about like worms — lumbricis 
 similes. 
 
 September 26, 1830. 
 Scotch and English Lakes, 
 
 THE five finest tilings in Scotland are — 1. Edin- 
 burgh; 2. The antechamber of the EaU of 
 Eoyers; 3. The view of Loch Lomond from Inch 
 Tavannach^ the highest of the islands ; 4. The Tro- 
 sachs; 5. The view of the Hebrides from a pointy 
 the name of which I forget. But the intervals be- 
 tween the fine things in Scotland are very dreary ; — 
 whereas in Cumberland and "Westmoreland there is a 
 cabinet of beauties^ — each thing being beautiful in 
 itself, and the very passage from one lakcy mountain^ 
 or valley^ to another^ is itself a beautiful thing again. 
 The Scotch lakes are so like one another^ from their 
 great size^ that in a picture you are obhged to read 
 their names ; but the English lakes^ especially Derwent 
 Water^ or rather the whole vale of Keswick^ is so 
 rememberable^ that^ after having been once seen, no 
 one ever requires to be told what it is when drawn. 
 This vale is about as large a basin as Loch Lomond ; 
 the latter is covered with water ; but in the former 
 instance, we have two lakes, with a charming river to 
 connect them, and lovely villages at the foot of the 
 mountain, and other habitations, which give an air of 
 life and cheerfulness to the whole place. 
 
 The land imagery of the north of Devon is most 
 delightful. 
 
 I 2 
 
116 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 September 27, 1830. 
 
 Love and Friendship opposed. — Marriage, — Characterlessness 
 of Women. 
 
 PERSON once said to me^ that he coiild make 
 
 nothing of love^ except that it was friendship 
 accidentally combined with desire. Whence I con- 
 cluded that he had never been in love. For what 
 shaU we say of the feeling which a man of sensibility 
 has towards his wife with her baby at her breast ! 
 How pure from sensual desire ! yet how different from 
 friendship ! 
 
 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. 
 
 Luther has sketched the most beautiful picture of 
 the nature^ and ends^ and duties of the wedded life I 
 ever read. St. Paul says it is a great symbol, not 
 mystery, as we translate it.* 
 
 Most w^omen have no character at aU/^ said Pope,t 
 and meant it for satire. Shakspeare, who knew man 
 and woman much better, saw that it, in fact, was the 
 perfection of woman to be characterless. Every one 
 wishes a Desdemona or Ophelia for a wife, — creatures 
 who, though they may not always understand you, do 
 always feel you, and feel with you. 
 
 t " Nothing so true as what you once let fall — 
 ' Most women have no character at all,' — 
 Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, 
 And best distinguish'd by black, brown, and fair," 
 
 Epist. to a Lady, v. 1. 
 
ENGLISH LITURGY. 
 
 117 
 
 September 28, 1830. 
 Mental Anarchy. 
 
 WHY need we talk of a fiery hell ? If the wiU, 
 which is the law of our nature^ were with- 
 drawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and 
 reason, no other heU could equal, for a spiritual being, 
 what we should then feel, from the anarchy of our 
 powers. It would be conscious madness — a horrid 
 thought ! 
 
 October 5, 1830. 
 
 Ear and Taste for Music Different. — English Liturgy. — Belgian 
 Revolution. 
 
 IN politics, what begins in fear usually ends in 
 foUy. 
 
 An ear for music is a very different thing from a 
 taste for music. I have no ear whatever; I could 
 not sing an air to save my life ; but I have the in- 
 tensest dehght in music, and can detect good from 
 bad. Naldi, a good fellow, remarked to me once at 
 a concert, that I did not seem much interested with 
 a piece of Eossini^s which had just been performed. 
 I said, it sounded to me like nonsense verses. But 
 I could scarcely contain myseK when a thing of 
 Beethoven^s followed. 
 
 I never distinctly felt the heavenly superiority of 
 the prayers in the English liturgy, till I had attended 
 some kirks in the country parts of Scotland. 
 
 I caU these strings of school boys or girls which 
 we meet near London — walking advertisements. 
 
118 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 The Brussels riot — I cannot bring myself to dignify 
 it with a liigher name — is a wretched parody on the 
 last French revolution. Were I King WiUiam, I 
 would banish the Belgians^ as Coriolanus banishes 
 the Eomans in Shakspeare.* It is a wicked rebellion 
 without one just cause. 
 
 ALILEO was a great genius^ and so was Newton ; 
 
 " but it would take two or three Galileos and 
 Newtons to make one Kepler, f It is in the order of 
 Providence, that the inventive, generative, constitu- 
 tive mind — the Kepler — should come first ; and then 
 that the patient and collective mind — the Newton — 
 should follow, and elaborate the pregnant queries and 
 illumining guesses of the former. The laws of the 
 planetary system are, in fact, due to Kepler. There 
 is not a more glorious achievement of scientific genius 
 upon record, than Kepler's guesses, prophecies, and 
 ultimate apprehension of the law I of the mean dis- 
 tances of the planets as connected with the periods of 
 their revolutions round the sun. Gravitation, too, 
 he had fully conceived ; but, because it seemed in- 
 consistent with some received observations on light. 
 
 * " You common cry of curs ! whose breath I hate 
 As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize 
 As the dead carcasses of unbiiried men 
 That do corrupt my air, I banisli you; 
 And here remain with your uncertainty ! " 
 
 Act iii. sc. 3. 
 
 t Galileo Galilei was bom at Pisa, on the 15th of February, 1564. John 
 Kepler was bom at Weil, in the duchy of Wirtemberg, on the 21st of 
 December, 1571. — Ed. 
 
 X Namely, that the squares of their times vary as the cubes of their 
 distances. — Ed. 
 
 October 8, 1830. 
 GalileOf Newton, Kepler, Bacon. 
 
THE REFORMATION. 
 
 ]19 
 
 he gave it up^ in allegiance^ as he says^ to Nature. 
 Yet the idea vexed and haunted his mind ; Fexat 
 me et lacessitj' are his words, I believe. 
 
 We praise Newton^s clearness and steadiness. He 
 loas clear and steady, no doubt, whilst working out, 
 by the help of an admirable geometry, the idea brought 
 forth by another, Newton had his ether, and could 
 not rest in — he could not conceive — the idea of a 
 law. He thought it a physical thing after all. As 
 for his chronology, T believe, those, who are most 
 competent to judge, rely on it less and less every day. 
 His lucubrations on Daniel and the Revelations seem 
 to me little less than mere raving. 
 
 Personal experiment is necessary, in order to correct 
 our own observation of the experiments which Nature 
 herself makes for us — I mean, the phenomena of the 
 universe. But then observation is, in turn, wanted 
 to direct and substantiate the course of experiment. 
 Experiments alone cannot advance knowledge, with- 
 out observation; they amuse for a time, and then 
 pass off the scene and leave no trace behind them. 
 
 Bacon, when like himself — for no man was ever 
 more inconsistent — says, ^'Pmdens qtccestio — dwiidium 
 scientice est,'' 
 
 October 20, 1830. 
 The Reformation. 
 
 AT the Reformation, the first reformers were bese 
 with an almost morbid anxiety not to be con- 
 sidered heretical in point of doctrine. They knew 
 that the Romanists were on the watch to fasten the 
 
120 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 brand of heresy upon them whenever a fair pretext 
 could be found ; and I have no doubt it was the 
 excess of this fear which at once led to the burning 
 of Servetus, and also to the thanks offered by all the 
 Protestant Churches^ to Calvin and the Church of 
 Geneva^ for burning him* 
 
 November 21, 1830. 
 
 House of Commons. 
 
 never makes a figure in quietude. He astounds 
 
 the vulgar with a certain enormity of exertion; he 
 takes an acre of canvass^ on which he scrawls every- 
 thing. He thinks aloud; everything in liis mind, 
 good, bad, or indifferent, out it comes ; he is like the 
 Newgate gutter, flowing with garbage, dead dogs, and 
 mud. He is pre-eminently a man of many thoughts, 
 with no ideas : hence he is always so lengthy, because 
 he must go through everything to see anything. 
 
 It is a melancholy thing to live when there is no 
 vision in the land. Where are our statesmen to meet 
 this emergency ? I see no reformer who asks himself 
 the question, What is it that I propose to myseK to 
 effect in the result ? 
 
 Is the House of Commons to be re-constructed on 
 the principle of a representation of interests, or of a 
 delegation of men ? If on the former, we may, per- 
 haps, see our way ; if on the latter, you can never, 
 in reason, stop short of universal suffrage; and in 
 that case, I am sure that women have as good a right 
 to vote as men.* 
 
 * In Mr. Colfiridge's masterly analysis and confutation of the physiocratic 
 system of the early French revolutionists, in the Friend, he has the following 
 passage in the nature of a reductio ad ahsurdum. " Itousscau, indeed, asserts 
 
GOVERNMENT. 
 
 121 
 
 March 20, 1831. 
 Government. — Earl Grey, 
 
 n OYEENMENT is not founded on property, taken 
 ^ merely as such, in the abstract ; it is founded 
 on unequal property ; the inequality is an essential 
 term in the position. The phrases — higher, middle, 
 and lower classes, with reference to this point of 
 representation — are delusive; no such divisions as 
 
 that there is an inalienable sovereignty inherent in every human being 
 possessed of reason ; and from this the framers of the Constitution of 1791 
 deduce, that the people itself is its own sole rightful legislator, and at most 
 dare only recede so far from its right as to delegate to chosen deputies the 
 power of representing and declaring the general will. But this is wholly 
 without proof; for it has been already fully shown, that, according to the 
 principle out of which this consequence is attempted to be drawn, it is not the 
 actual man, but the abstract reason alone, that is the sovereign and rightful 
 lawgiver. The confusion of two things so different is so gross an error, that 
 the Constituent Assembly could scarce proceed a step in their declaration of 
 rights, without some glaring inconsistency. Children are excluded from all 
 political power ; are they not human beings in whom the faculty of reason 
 resides ? Yes ! but in them tlie faculty is not yet adequately developed. 
 But are not gross ignorance, inveterate superstition, and the habitual 
 tyranny of passion and sensuality, equally preventives of the development, 
 equally impediments to the rightful exercise, of the reason, as childhood and 
 early youth? Who would not rely on the judgment of a well-educated 
 English lad, bred in a virtuous and enlightened family, in preference to that 
 of a brutal Russian, who believes that he can scourge his wooden idol into 
 good humour, or attributes to himself the merit of perpetual prayer, when he 
 has fastened the petitions, which his priest has written for him, on the wings 
 of a windmill ? Again : women are likewise excluded ; a full half, and that 
 assuredly the most innocent, the most amiable half, of the whole human race 
 is excluded, and this too by a Constitution which boasts to have no other 
 foundations but those of universal reason ! Is reason, then, an affair of sex ? 
 No ! but women are commonly in a state of dependence, and are not likely to 
 exercise their reason with freedom. Well! and does not this ground of 
 exclusion apply with equal or greater force to the poor, to the infirm, to men 
 in embarrassed circumstances, to all, in short, whose maintenance, be it 
 scanty, or be it ample, depends on the will of others ? How far are we to 
 go ? Where must we stop ? What classes should we admit ? Whom must 
 we disfranchise ? The objects concerning whom we are to determine these 
 questions, are all human beings, and differenced from each other by degrees 
 only, these degrees, too, oftentimes changing. Yet the principle on which 
 the whole system rests, is that reason is not susceptible of degree. Nothing, 
 therefore, which subsists wholly in degrees, the changes of which do not obey 
 any necessary law, can be the object of pure science, or determinable by 
 mere reason." — Vol. i., p. 341. Ed. 
 
122 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 classes actually exist in society. There is an indis- 
 soluble blending and interfusion of persons from top 
 to bottom ; and no man can trace a line of separation 
 through them^ except such a confessedly unmeaning 
 and unjustifiable line of political empiricism as 10/. 
 householders. I cannot discover a ray of principle in 
 the government plan, — not a hint of the effect of the 
 change upon the balance of the estates of the realm, 
 — not a remark on the nature of the constitution of 
 England, and the character of the property of so many 
 millions of its inhabitants. Half the wealth of this 
 country is purely artificial, — existing only in and on 
 the credit given to it by the integrity and honesty of 
 the nation. This property appears, in many instances, 
 a heavy burthen to the numerical majority of the 
 people, and they beheve that it causes all their dis- 
 tress : and they are now to have the maintenance of 
 this property committed to their good faith — the 
 lamb to the wolves ! 
 
 Necker, you remember, asked the people to come 
 and help him against the aristocracy. The people 
 came fast enough at his bidding ; but, somehow or 
 other, they would not go away again when they had 
 done their work. I hope Lord Grey will not see 
 himself or his friends in the woeful case of the conju- 
 ror, who, with infinite zeal and pains, called up the 
 devils to do something for him. They came at the 
 word, thronging about him, grinning, and howling, 
 and dancing, and whisking their long tails in diabolic 
 glee ; but when they asked him what he wanted of 
 them, the poor wretch, frightened out of his wits, 
 could only stammer forth, — I pray you, my friends. 
 
GOVERNMENT. 
 
 123 
 
 be gone down again At which the devils, with 
 one voice, replied, — 
 
 Yes ! yes ! we '11 go down ! we '11 go down ! — 
 
 But we '11 take you with us to swim or to drown ! " * 
 
 June 25, 1831. 
 Government, — Popular Representation . 
 ^HE three great ends which a statesman ought to 
 propose to himself in the government of a nation, 
 are, — 1. Security to possessors; 2. Pacihty to ac- 
 quirers; and, 3. Hope to all. 
 
 A nation is the unity of a people. King and par- 
 liament are the unity made visible. The king and 
 the peers are as integral portions of this manifested 
 unity as the commons.t 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge must have been thinking of that " very pithy and profit- 
 able " ballad by the Laureate, wherein is shown how a young man would 
 read unlawful books, and how he was punished : " — 
 " The young man, he began to read 
 
 He knew not what, but he would proceed, 
 
 When there was heard a sound at the door, 
 
 Which as he read on grew more and more. 
 " And more and more the knocking grew, 
 
 The young man knew not what to do : 
 
 But trembling in fear he sat within. 
 
 Till the door was broke, and the devil came in. 
 " ' What would' st thou with me ? ' the wicked one cried ; 
 
 But not a word the young man replied ; 
 
 Every hair on his head was standing upright. 
 
 And his limbs like a palsy shook with affright. 
 " ' What would'st thou with me ? ' cried the author of ill ; 
 
 But the wretched young man was silent still," &c. 
 
 The catastrophe is very terrible, and the moral, though addressed by the 
 poet to young men only, is quite as applicable to old men, as the times show. 
 " Henceforth let all young men take heed 
 How in a conjuror's books they read ! " 
 
 Southey's Minor Poems, vol. iii. p. 92. — Ed. 
 t Mr. Coleridge was very fond of quoting George Withers's fine lines : — 
 " Let not your king and parliament in one, 
 Much less apart, mistake themselves for that 
 
124 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 In that imperfect state of society in which our 
 system of representation began^ the interests of the 
 country were pretty exactly commensurate with its 
 municipal divisions. The counties, the towns, and 
 the seaports, accurately enough represented the only 
 interests then existing ; that is to say, — the landed, 
 the shop-keeping or manufacturing, and the mercan- 
 tile. But for a century past, at least, this division 
 has become notoriously imperfect, some of the most 
 vital interests of the empire being now totally uncon- 
 nected with any English localities. Yet now, when 
 the evil and the want are known, we are to abandon 
 the accommodations which the necessity of the case 
 had worked out for itself, and begin again with 
 a rigidly territorial plan of representation ! The 
 miserable tendency of all is to destroy our nationality, 
 which consists, in a principal degree, in our represen- 
 tative government, and to convert it into a degrading 
 delegation of the populace. There is no unity for a 
 people but in a representation of national interests ; 
 a delegation from the passions or wishes of the 
 individuals themselves is a rope of sand. 
 
 Undoubtedly it is a great evil, that there should be 
 such an evident discrepancy between the law and the 
 practice of the constitution in the matter of the 
 representation. Such a direct, yet clandestine, con- 
 
 Which is most worthy to be thought upon : 
 
 Nor think they are, essentially, The State. 
 
 Let them not fancy that th' authority 
 
 And privileges upon them bestown, 
 
 Conferr'd are to set up a majesty, 
 
 A power, or a glory, of their own ! 
 
 But let them know, 'twas for a deeper life, 
 
 Which tliey but represent — 
 
 That there 's on earth a yet auguster thing, 
 
 Veil'd though it be, than parliament and king ! " — Ed. 
 
NAPIER. BUONAPAETE. 
 
 125 
 
 travention of solemn resolutions and established laws 
 is immoral^ and greatly injurious to the cause of legal 
 loyalty and general subordination in the minds of the 
 people. But then a statesman should consider that 
 these very contraventions of law in practice point out 
 to him the places in the body politic which need a 
 remodelling of the law. You acknowledge a certain 
 necessity for indirect representation in the present 
 day, and that such representation has been instinc- 
 tively obtained by means contrary to law ; why then 
 do you not approximate the useless law to the useful 
 practice, instead of abandoning both law and practice 
 for a completely new system of your own ? 
 
 The malignant duplicity and unprincipled tergiver- 
 sations of the specific Whig newspapers are to me 
 detestable. I prefer the open endeavours of those 
 publications which seek to destroy the church, and 
 introduce a republic in effect : there is a sort of 
 honesty in that which I approve, though I would with 
 joy lay down my life to save my country from the 
 consummation which is so evidently desired by that 
 section of the periodical press. 
 
 June 26, 1831. 
 Na'pier. — Buonaparte. — Southey, 
 
 IHAYE been exceedingly impressed with the evil 
 precedent of Colonel Napier^ s History of the Penin- 
 sular War. It is a specimen of the true French 
 military school ; not a thought for the justice of the 
 war, — not a consideration of the damnable and damn- 
 ing iniquity of the French invasion. All is looked 
 at as a mere game of exquisite skill, and the praise 
 
126 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 is regularly awarded to the most successful player. 
 How perfectly ridiculous is the prostration of Napier^s 
 mind, apparently a powerful one> before the name 
 of Buonaparte ! I declare I know no book more 
 likely to undermine the national sense of right and 
 wrong in matters of foreign interference than this 
 work of Napier^ s. 
 
 If A. has a hundred means of doing a certain thing, 
 and B. has only one or two, is it very wonderful, or 
 does it argue very transcendant superiority, if A. 
 surpasses B. ? Buonaparte was the child of circum- 
 stances, which he neither originated nor controlled. 
 He had no chance of preserving his power but by 
 continual warfare. No thought of a wise tranquil- 
 lisation of the shaken elements of France seems ever 
 to have passed through his mind ; and I believe that 
 at no part of his reign could he have survived one 
 yearns continued peace. He never had but one ob- 
 stacle to contend with — physical force; commonly 
 the least difficult enemy a general, subject to courts- 
 martial and courts of conscience, has to overcome. 
 
 Southe/s History* is on the right side, and starts 
 from the right point ; but he is personally fond of the 
 Spaniards, and in bringing forward their nationality 
 in the prominent manner it deserves, he does not, in 
 my judgment, state with sufficient clearness the truth, 
 that the nationality of the Spaniards was not founded 
 on any just ground of good government or wise laws, 
 but was, in fact, very little more than a rooted an- 
 tipathy to all strangers as such. In this sense every- 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge said that the conchision of this great work was the finest 
 specimen of liistoric eulogy he had ever read in English ;— that it was more 
 than a campaign to the duke's fame— Ed. 
 
OLD WOMEN. 
 
 127 
 
 thing is national in Spain. Even their so-called 
 Catholic religion is exclusively national in a genuine 
 Spaniard's mind; he does not regard the religious 
 professions of the Frenchman or ItaHan at all in the 
 same light with liis own. 
 
 Patronage of the Fine Arts. — Old Women* 
 
 HE darkest despotisms on the Continent have 
 
 done more for the growth and elevation of the 
 fine arts than the English government. A great 
 musical composer in Germany and Italy is a great 
 man in society^ and a real dignity and rank are 
 universally conceded to him. So it is with a sculp- 
 tor, or painter, or architect. Without this sort of 
 encouragement and patronage such arts as music and 
 painting will never come into great eminence. In 
 this country there is no general reverence for the fine 
 arts; and the sordid spirit of a money-amassing plii- 
 losophy would meet any proposition for the fostering 
 of art, in a genial and extended sense, with the 
 commercial maxim, — Laissez /aire, Paganini, indeed, 
 will make a fortune, because he can actually sell the 
 tones of his fiddle at so much a scrape ; but Mozart 
 himself might have languished in a garret for any- 
 thing that would have been done for liim here. 
 
 There are three classes into which all the women 
 past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided : — 
 I. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That 
 old witch. 
 
 July 7, 1831. 
 
128 
 
 COLERTDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 July 24, 1831. 
 Pictures,* 
 
 OBSEEVE the remarkable difference between Claude 
 and Teniers in their power of painting vacant 
 space. Claude makes his whole landscape a plenum : 
 the air is quite as substantial as any other part of the 
 scene. Hence there are no true distances^ and every- 
 thing presses at once and equally upon the eye. There 
 is something close and almost suffocating in the 
 atmosphere of some of Claude^s sunsets. Never did 
 any one paint air^ the thin air_, the absolutely appa- 
 rent vacancy between object and object,, so admirably 
 as Teniers. That picture of the Archers t exemplijSes 
 this excellence. See the distances between those ugly 
 louts ! how perfectly true to the fact ! 
 
 * All the following remarks in this section were made at the exhibition of 
 ancient masters at the British Gallery in Pall Mall. The recollection of 
 those two hours has made the rooms of that Institution a melancholy place 
 for me. Mr. Coleridge was in high spirits, and seemed to kindle in his 
 mind at the contemplation of the splendid pictures before him. He did not 
 examine them all by the catalogue, but anchored himself before some three 
 or four great works, telling me that he saw the rest of the Gallery potentially. 
 I can yet distinctly recall him, half leaning on his old simple stick, and his 
 hat off in one hand, whilst with the fingers of the other he went on, as was 
 his constant wont, figuring in the air a commentary of small diagrams, 
 wherewith, as he fancied, he could translate to the eye those relations of 
 form and space which his words might fail to convey with clearness to the 
 ear. His admiration for Rubens showed itself in a sort of joy and brotherly 
 fondness ; he looked as if he would shake hands with his pictures. What 
 the company, which by degrees formed itself round this silver-haired, 
 bright-eyed, music-breathing old man, took him for, I cannot guess ; there 
 was probably not one there who knew him to be that Ancient Mariner, who 
 held people with his glittering eye, and constrained them, like three years' 
 children, to hear his tale. In the midst of his speech, he turned to the right 
 hand, where stood a very lovely young woman, whose attention he had 
 involuntarily arrested ; — to her, without apparently any consciousness of her 
 being a stranger to him, he addressed many remarks, although I must 
 acknowledge they were couched in a somewhat softer tone, as if he were 
 soliciting her sympathy, lie was, verily, a gentle-hearted man at all times; 
 but I never was in company with him in my life, when the entry of a 
 woman, it mattered not who, did not provoke a dim gush of emotion, which 
 passed lik(; an infant's breath over the mirror of his intellect. — Ed. 
 
 t " Figures shooting at a Target," belonging, I believe, to Lord Bandon. 
 —Ed. 
 
PICTURES. 
 
 129 
 
 But oh ! what a wonderful picture is that Triumph 
 of Silenus ! * It is the very revelry of hell. Every 
 evil passion is there that could in any way be forced 
 into juxtaposition with joyance. Mark the lust, and, 
 hard by, the hate. Every part is pregnant with 
 libidinous nature without one spark of the grace of 
 Heaven. The animal is triumphing — not over, but — 
 in the absence, in the non-existence, of the spiritual 
 part of man. I could fancy that Eubens had seen in 
 a vision — 
 
 " All the souls that damned be 
 Leap up at once in anarchy, 
 Clap their hands and dance for glee ! " 
 
 That landscape t on the other side is only less 
 magnificent than dear Sir George Beaumont^ s, now in 
 the National Gallery. It has the same charm. Eubens 
 does not take for his subjects grand or novel con- 
 formations of objects ; he has, you see, no precipices, 
 no forests, no frowning castles, — nothing that a poet 
 would take at aU times, and a painter take in these 
 times. No ; he gets some little ponds, old tumble- 
 down cottages, that ruinous chateau, two or three 
 peasants, a hay-rick, and other such humble images, 
 wliich looked at in and by themselves convey no 
 pleasure and excite no surprise; but he — and he 
 Peter Paul Eubens alone — handles these every-day 
 ingredients of all common landscapes as they are 
 handled in nature ; he throws them into a vast and 
 magnificent whole, consisting of heaven and earth and 
 all things therein. He extracts the latent poetry out 
 of these common objects, — that poetry and harmony 
 which every man of genius perceives in the face of 
 
 * Tins belongs to Sir Robert Peel.— Ed. 
 t " Landscape with setting Sun,"— Lord Famborough's picture.— Ed. 
 
 K 
 
130 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 nature, and which many men of no genius are taught 
 to perceive and feel after examining such a picture as 
 this. In other landscape painters the scene is con- 
 fined and as it were imprisoned; — in Eubens the 
 landscape dies a natural death ; it fades away into the 
 apparent infinity of space. 
 
 So long as Eubens confines himseK to space and 
 outward figure — to the mere animal man with animal 
 passions — he is, I may say, a god amongst painters. 
 His satyrs, Silenuses, lions, tigers, and dogs, are 
 almost godlike; but the moment he attempts any- 
 thing involving or presuming the spiritual, his gods 
 and goddesses, liis nymphs and heroes, become beasts, 
 absolute, unmitigated beasts. 
 
 The Italian masters differ from the Dutch in this — 
 that in their pictures ages are perfectly ideal. The 
 infant that Eaffael^s Madonna holds in her arms cannot 
 be guessed of any particular age ; it is Humanity in 
 infancy. The babe in the manger in a Dutch painting 
 is a fac-simile of some real new-born bantling ; it is 
 just like the little rabbits we fathers have all seen 
 with some dismay at first burst. 
 
 Carlo Dolce^s representations of our Saviour are 
 pretty, to be sure ; but they are too smooth to please 
 me. His Christs are always in sugar-candy. 
 
 That is a very odd and funny picture of the 
 Connoisseurs at Eome* by Reynolds. 
 
 The more I see of modern pictures, the more I am 
 
 ♦ " Portraits of distinguished Connoisseurs painted at Rome,"-— belonging 
 to Lord Burlington. — Ed. 
 
CHILLINGWORTH. 
 
 131 
 
 convinced that the ancient art of painting is gone, 
 and something substituted for it, — very pleasing, but 
 different, and different in kind and not in degree 
 only. Portraits by the old masters, — take for example 
 the pock-fritten lady by Cuyp,* — are pictures of men 
 and women : they fill, not merely occupy, a space ; 
 they represent individuals, but individuals as types of 
 a species. Modern portraits — a few by Jackson and 
 Owen, perhaps, excepted — give you not the man, not 
 the inward humanity, but merely the external mark, 
 that in which Tom is different from Bill. There is 
 something affected and meretricious in the Snake in 
 the Grass,t and such pictures, by Reynolds. 
 
 July 25, 1831. 
 
 Chillingworth, — Superstition of Maltese, Sicilians, and Italians, 
 TT is now twenty years since I read Chillingworth^s 
 book j { but certainly it seemed to me that his 
 main position, that the mere text of the Bible is the 
 sole and exclusive ground of Christian faith and 
 practice, is quite untenable against the Romanists. 
 It entirely destroys the conditions of a church, of an 
 authority residing in a religious community, and all 
 that holy sense of brotherhood which is so sublime 
 and consolatory to a meditative Christian. Had I 
 been a Papist, I should not have wished for a more 
 vanquishable opponent in controversy. I certainly 
 believe ChiUingworth to have been in some sense 
 
 * I almost forget, but have some recollection that the allusion is to Mr. 
 Heneage Finch's picture of a Lady with a Fan. — Ed. 
 \ Sir Robert Peers.— Ed. 
 
 X " The Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation ; or, an Answer to 
 a Booke entitled * Mercy and Truth ; or, Charity maintained by Catholicks,' 
 which pretends to prove the contrary." 
 
 k2 
 
132 
 
 coleeidge's table talk. 
 
 a Socinian, Lord Falkland^ his friend, said so in 
 substance. I do not deny his skill in dialectics ; he 
 was more than a match for Knott* to be sure» 
 
 I must be bold enough to say, that I do not think 
 that even Hooker puts the idea of a church on the 
 true foundation. 
 
 The superstition of the peasantry and lower orders 
 generally in Malta, Sicily, and Italy exceeds common 
 belief. It is unlike the superstition of Spain, which 
 is a jealous fanaticism, having reference to their 
 Catholicism, and always glancing on heresy. The 
 popular superstition of Italy is the offspring of the 
 cHmate, the old associations, the manners, and the 
 very names of the places. It is pure paganism, 
 undisturbed by any anxiety about orthodoxy, or 
 animosity against heretics. Hence, it is much more 
 good-natured and pleasing to a traveUer^s feelings, 
 and certainly not a whit less like the true religion 
 of our dear Lord than the gloomy idolatry of the 
 Spaniards. 
 
 * Socinianism, or some inclination that way, is an old and clinging charge 
 against Chillingworth. On the one hand, it is well known that he subscribed 
 the articles of the Church of England, in the usual form, on the 20th of July, 
 1638; and on the other, it is equally certain that within two years imme- 
 diately previous, he wrote the letter to some unnamed correspondent, begin- 
 ning " Dear Harry," and printed in all the Lives of Chillingworth, in which 
 letter he sums up his arguments upon the Arian doctrine in this passage : — 
 " In a word, whosoever shall freely and impartially consider of this thing, 
 and how on the other side the ancient fathers' weapons against the Arrians 
 are in a manner only places of Scripture (and these now for the most part 
 discarded as importunate and unconcluding), and how in the argument 
 drawne from the authority of the ancient fathers, they are almost always 
 defendants, and scarse ever opponents, he shall not choose but confesse, or at 
 least he very inclinable to beleeve, that the doctrine of Arrius is ei/ther a truth, or 
 at least no damnable heresy^ The truth is, however, that the Socinianism of 
 Chillingworth, such as it may have been, had more reference to the doctrine 
 of the redemption of man tlian of the being of God. 
 
 Edward Knott's real name was Matthias Wilson. - Ed. 
 
ASGILL. 
 
 I well remember^ when in Valetta in 1805^ asking 
 a boy who waited on me^ what a certain procession, 
 then passing, was, and his answering with great 
 quickness, that it was Jesus Christ, who lives here {sta 
 di casa qui), and when he comes out, it is in the 
 shape of a wafer. But Eccelenza,^^ said he, smiling 
 and correcting himself, " non e Cristiano/^ * 
 
 July 30, 1831. 
 
 AsgilL — The French. 
 
 ASGILL was an extraordinary man, and his pamph- 
 let t is invaluable. He undertook to prove that 
 
 * The following anecdote related by Mr. Coleridge, in April, 1811, was 
 preserved and communicated to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge : — 
 
 " As I was descending from Mount ^tna with a very lively talkative 
 guide, we passed through a village (I think called) Nicolozzi, when the host 
 happened to be passing through the street. Everyone was prostrate ; my 
 guide became so ; and, not to be singular, I went down also. After resuming 
 our journey, I observed in my guide an unusual seriousness and long silence, 
 which, after many hums and Tiahs, was inten-upted by a low bow, and leave 
 requested to ask a question. This was of course granted, and the ensuing 
 dialogue took place. Guide. " Signor, are you then a Christian ?" Coleridge. 
 "I hope so." G. "What! are all Englishmen Christians?" C. "I hope 
 and trust they are." G. " What ! are you not Turks ? Are you not damned 
 eternally ? " C. " I trust not, through Christ." G. " What ! you believe in 
 Christ then ? " C. " Certainly." This answer produced another long silence. 
 At length my guide again spoke, still doubting the grand point of my 
 Christianity. G. " I 'm thinking, Signor, what is the difference between 
 you and us, that you are to be certainly damned ? " C. " Nothing very 
 material ; nothing that can prevent our both going to heaven, I hope. We 
 believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." G. (inteiTupting me) 
 " Oh those damned priests ! what liars they are ! But (pausing) we can't do 
 without them ; we can't go to heaven without them. But tell me, Signor, 
 what are the differences ? " C. " Why, for instance, we do not worship the 
 Virgin." G. "And why not, Signor?" C. "Because, though holy and 
 pure, we think her still a woman, and, therefore, do not pay her the honour 
 due to God." G. " But do you not worship Jesus, who sits on the right hand 
 of God?" C. "We do." G. " Then why not worship the Virgin, who sits 
 on the left?" C. " I did not know she did. If you can show it me in the 
 Scriptures, I shall readily agree to worship her." " Oh," said my man, with 
 uncommon triumph, and cracking his fingers, " sicuro, Signor ! sicuro, 
 Signor!"— Ed. 
 
 t " An argument proving, that, according to the covenant of eternal life, 
 revealed in the Scriptures, man may he translated from hence, without pass- 
 
134 
 
 COLERlDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 man is literally immortal ; or, rather, that any given 
 living man might probably never die. He complains 
 of the cowardly practice of dying. He was expeUed 
 from two Houses of Commons for blasphemy and 
 atheism, as was pretended ; — really I suspect because 
 he was a staunch Hanoverian, I expected to find the 
 ravings of an enthusiast, or the sullen snarhngs of 
 an infidel ; whereas I found the very soul of Swift — 
 an intense haK seK-deceived humorism. I scarcely 
 remember elsewhere such unconunon skill in logic, 
 such lawyer-like acuteness, and yet such a grasp of 
 common sense. Each of his paragraphs is in itself 
 a whole, and yet a link between the preceding and 
 following ; so that the entire series forms one argu- 
 ment, and yet each is a diamond in itself. 
 
 Was there ever such a miserable scene as that of 
 the exhibition of the Austrian standards in the French 
 house of peers the other day ? * Every other nation 
 but the Erench would see that it was an exhibition of 
 their own falsehood and cowardice. A man swears 
 that the property intrusted to him is burnt, and then, 
 when he is no longer afraid, produces it, and boasts 
 
 ing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself could not be 
 thus translated, till he had passed through death." Asgill died in the year 
 1738, in the King's Bench prison, where he had been a prisoner for debt 
 thirty years. — Ed. 
 
 * When the allies were in Paris in 1815, all the Austrian standards were 
 reclaimed. The answer was that they had been burnt by the soldiers at the 
 Hotel des Invalides. This was untrue. The Marquis de Semonville con- 
 fessed with pride that he, knowing of the fraud, had concealed these standards, 
 taken from Mack at Ulm in 1805, in a vault under the Luxemburg palace. 
 " An inviolable asylum," said the Marquis in his speech to the peers, 
 "formed in the vault of this hall has protected this treasure from every 
 search. Vainly, during this long space of time, have the most authoritative 
 researches endeavoui-ed to penetrate the secret. It would have been culpable 
 to reveal it, as long as we were liable to the demands of haughty foreigners. 
 No one in this atmosphere of honour is capable of so great a weakness," 
 &c.— Ed. 
 
THE GOOD AND THE TRUE. 
 
 135 
 
 of the atmosphere of honour through which the 
 lie did not transpire. 
 
 Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder, — each 
 by itself smutty and contemptible, but mass them 
 together and they are terrible indeed. 
 
 A S there is much beast and some devil in man ; so 
 is there some angel and some God in him. The 
 beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life 
 
 I will defy any one to answer the arguments of a 
 St. Simonist, except on the ground of Christianity — 
 its precepts and its assurances. 
 
 August 6, 1831. 
 The Good and the True, — Romish Religion. 
 nnHERE is the love of the good for the good^s sake, 
 -■- and the love of the truth for the truth^s sake. I 
 have known many, especially women, love the good 
 for the good^s sake ; but very few, indeed, and scarcely 
 one woman love the truth for the truth^s sake. Yet 
 without the latter, the former may become, as it has 
 a thousand times been, the source of persecution of 
 the truth, — ^the pretext and motive of inquisitorial 
 cruelty and party zealotry. To see clearly that the 
 love of the good and the true is ultimately identical 
 — is given only to those who love both sincerely and 
 without any foreign ends. 
 
 Look through the whole history of countries pro- 
 fessing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly 
 
 August 1, 1831. 
 
 never destroyed. 
 
136 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle 
 of action — that the end will sanction any means. 
 
 August 8, 1831. 
 England and Holland, 
 
 npHE conduct' of this country to King William of 
 Holland has been^ in my judgment^ base and 
 unprincipled beyond anytliing in our history since 
 the times of Charles the Second. Certainly, Holland 
 is one of the most important allies that England has ; 
 and we are doing our utmost to subject it, and 
 Portugal, to French influence, or even dominion ! 
 Upon my word, the English people, at this moment, 
 are like a man palsied in every part of his body but 
 one, in wliich one part he is so morbidly sensitive 
 that he cannot bear to have it so much as breathed 
 upon, whilst you may pinch him with a hot forceps 
 elsewhere without his taking any notice of it. 
 
 August 8, 1831. 
 Iron, — Galvanism, — Heat. 
 
 TRON is the most ductile of all hard metals, and 
 the hardest of all ductile metals. With the ex- 
 ception of nickel, in which it is dimly seen, iron is 
 the only metal in which the magnetic power is visible. 
 Indeed, it is almost impossible to purify nickel of iron. 
 
 Galvanism is the union of electricity and magnetism, 
 and, by being continuous, it exhibits an image of life ; 
 — I say, an image only : it is life in death. 
 
 Heat is the mesothesis or indifference of light and 
 matter. 
 
NATIONAL COLONIAL CHARACTER. 
 
 137 
 
 August 14, 1831. 
 National Colonial Character, and Naval Discipline. 
 
 T^HE cliaracter of most nations in their colonial 
 dependencies is in an inverse ratio of excellence 
 to their character at home. The best people in the 
 mother-country will generally be the worst in the 
 colonies j the worst at home will be the best abroad, 
 Or^ perhaps^ I may state it less offensively thus : — 
 The colonists of a well-governed country will degene- 
 rate ; those of an iU-governed country will improve. 
 I am now considering the natural tendency of such 
 colonists if left to themselves ; of course, a direct act 
 of the legislature of the mother-country wiU break in 
 upon this. Where this tendency is exemphfied, the 
 cause is obvious. In countries well governed and 
 happily conditioned, none, or very few, but those who 
 are desperate through vice or folly, or who are mere 
 trading adventurers, will be willing to leave their 
 homes and settle in another hemisphere ; and of those 
 who do go, the best and worthiest are always striving 
 to acquire the means of leaving the colony, and of 
 returning to their native land. In iU-governed and 
 ill-conditioned countries, on the contrary, the most 
 respectable of the people are willing and anxious to 
 emigrate for the chance of greater security and en- 
 larged freedom : and if they succeed in obtaining 
 these blessings in almost any degree, they have little 
 inducement, on the average, to wish to abandon their 
 second and better country. Hence, in the former 
 case, the colonists consider themselves as mere 
 strangers, sojourners, birds of passage, and shift to 
 live from hand to mouth, with little regard to lasting 
 
138 
 
 COLEUIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 improvement of the place of their temporary com- 
 merce; whilst, in the latter case, men feel attached 
 to a community to which they are individually in- 
 debted for otherwise unattainable benefits, and for 
 the most part learn to regard it as their abode, and 
 to make themselves as happy and comfortable in it as 
 possible. I believe that the internal condition and 
 character of the English and French West India 
 islands of the last century amply verified this dis- 
 tinction ; the Dutch colonists most certainly did, and 
 have always done. 
 
 Analogous to this, though not founded on precisely 
 the same principle, is the fact that the severest naval 
 discipline is always found in the sliips of the freest 
 nations, and the most lax discipline in the ships of 
 the most oppressed. Hence, the naval discipline of 
 the Americans is the sharpest ; then that of the 
 English;"^ then that of the French (I speak as it 
 
 * This expression needs explanation. It looks as if Mr. Coleridge rated 
 the degree of liberty enjoyed by the English, after that of the citizens of the 
 United States; but he meant no such thing. His meaning was, that the 
 form of government of the latter was more democratic, and formally assigned 
 more power to each individual. The Americans, as a nation, had no better 
 friend in England than Coleridge; he contemplated their growth with 
 interest, and prophesied highly of their destiny, whether under their present 
 or other governments. But he well knew their besetting faults and their 
 peculiar difficulties, and was most deliberately of opinion that the English 
 had, for 130 years last past, possessed a measure of individual freedom and 
 social dignity which had never been equalled, much less surpassed, in any 
 other country ancient or modern. There is a passage in Mr. Coleridge's 
 latest publication {Church and State), which clearly expresses his opinion 
 upon this subject: — "It has been frequently and truly observed that in 
 England, where the ground-plan, the skeleton, as it were, of the government 
 is a monarchy, at once buttressed and limited by the aristocracy (the asser- 
 tions of its popular character finding a better support in the harangues and 
 theories of popular men, than in state documents, and the records of clear 
 history), a far greater degree of liberty is, and long has been, enjoyed, than 
 ever existed in the ostensibly freest, that is, most democratic, commonwealths 
 of ancient or modern times ; greater, indeed, and with a more decisive pre- 
 dominance of the spirit of freedom, than the wisest and most philanthropic 
 statesmen of antiquity, or than the great commonwealth's-men, — the stars of 
 
ENGLAND. 
 
 139 
 
 used to be) ; and on board a Spanish ship, there is no 
 discipKne at all. 
 
 At Genoa^ the word Liberty is, or used to be, 
 engraved on the chains of the galley-slaves, and the 
 doors of the dungeons. 
 
 August 15, 1831. 
 England. — Holland and Belgium, 
 
 I CANNOT contain my indignation at the conduct 
 of our government towards Holland. They have 
 undoubtedly forgotten the true and well-recognised 
 poKcy of this country in regard to Portugal in per- 
 mitting the war faction in France to take possession 
 of the Tagus, and to bully the Portuguese upon so 
 flimsy — indeed, false, a pretext ;* yet, in this instance, 
 something may be said for them. Miguel is such a 
 wretch, that I acknowledge a sort of moraHty in 
 leaving him to be cuffed and insulted; though, of 
 course, this is a poor answer to a statesman who 
 alleges the interest and policy of the country. But, 
 
 that narrow interspace of blue sky between the black clouds of the first and 
 second Charles's reigns — believed compatible, the one with the safety of the 
 state, the other with the interests of morality. Yes ! for little less than a 
 century and a-half. Englishmen have, collectively and individually, lived 
 and acted with fewer restraints on their free-agency, than the citizens of any 
 known republic, past or present." (p. 120.) Upon which he subjoins the 
 following note: — "It will be thought, perhaps, that the United States of 
 North America should have been excepted. But the identity of stock, lan- 
 guage, customs, manners, and laws scarcely allows us to consider this an 
 exception, even though it were quite certain both that it is and that it will 
 continue such. It was at all events a remark worth remembering, which I 
 once heard from a traveller (a prejudiced one, I must admit), that where 
 every man may take liberties, there is little liberty for any man ; or, that 
 where every man takes liberties, no man can enjoy any." (p. 121.) See also a 
 passage to the like effect in the Friend, vol. i. p. 129. — Ed. 
 
 * Meaning, principally, the whipping, so richly deserved, inflicted on a 
 Frenchman called Bonhomme, for committing a disgusting breach of common 
 decency in the cathedral of Coimbra, during divine service in Passion 
 Week.— Ed. 
 
140 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 as to the Dutch and King William : the firsts as a 
 nation^ the most ancient ally^ the alter idem of Eng- 
 land^ the best deserving of the cause of freedom and 
 religion and morahty of any people in Europe ; and 
 the second^ the very best sovereign now in Christendom, 
 with, perhaps, the single exception of the excellent 
 King of Sweden ; * — was ever anytliing so mean and 
 cowardly as the behaviour of England ! The Eive 
 Powers have, throughout this conference, been actuated 
 exclusively by a selfish desire to preserve peace — I 
 should rather say, to smother war — at the expense of 
 a most valuable but inferior power. They have over 
 and over again acknowledged the justice of the Dutch 
 claims, and the absurdity of the Belgian pretences ; 
 but as the Belgians were also as impudent as they 
 were iniquitous, — as they would not yield their point, 
 why then — that peace may be preserved — the Dutch 
 must yield theirs ! A foreign prince comes into 
 Belgium, pending these negociations, and takes an 
 unquahfied oath to maintain the Belgian demands : — 
 what could King William or the Dutch do, if they 
 ever thereafter meant to call themselves independent, 
 but resist and resent this outrage to the uttermost ? 
 It was a crisis in which every consideration of state 
 became inferior to the strong sense and duty of 
 national honour. When, indeed, the French appear 
 in the field. King William retires. I now see,^^ he 
 may say, " that the powers of Europe are determined 
 to abet the Belgians. The justice of such a pro- 
 ceeding I leave to their conscience and the decision 
 
 * " Everything that I have heard or read of this sovereign has contributed 
 to the impression on my mind, that he is a good and a wise man, and worthy 
 to be the king of a virtuous people, the purest specimen of the Gothic race." 
 — Church and State p. 125. n. — El>, 
 
GREATEST HAPPINESS PEINCIPLE. 
 
 141 
 
 of history. It is now no longer a question whether 
 I am tamely to submit to rebels and an usurper ; it 
 is no longer a quarrel between Holland and Belgium : 
 it is an alliance of all Europe against Holland, — 
 in which case I yield. I have no desire to sacrifice 
 my people."'^ 
 
 When Leopold said that he was caUed to reign 
 over four millions of noble Belgians/^ I thought the 
 phrase would have been more germane to the matter 
 if he had said that he was called to " rein in four 
 million restive asses.'^^ 
 
 P. Q. in the Morning Chronicle is a clever 
 
 ^ • fellow. He is for the greatest possible happi- 
 ness for the greatest possible number, and for the 
 longest possible time ! So am I ; so are you, and 
 every one of us, I will venture to say, round the tea- 
 table. First, however, what does 0. P. Q. mean by 
 the word happiness ? and, secondly, how does he pro- 
 pose to make other persons agree in his definition of 
 the term ? Don^t you see the ridiculous absurdity of 
 setting up that as a principle or motive of action, 
 which is, in fact, a necessary and essential instinct of 
 our very nature — an inborn and inextinguishable 
 desire ? How can creatures susceptible of pleasure 
 and pain do otherwise than desire happiness ? But, 
 what happiness ? That is the question. The American 
 savage, in scalping his fallen enemy, pursues his hap- 
 piness naturally and adequately. A Chickasaw, or 
 Pawnee Bentham, or 0. P. Q., would necessarily 
 
 August 20, 1831. 
 Greatest Happiness Principle. — Hobbism. 
 
142 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 hope for the most frequent opportunities possible of 
 scalping the greatest possible number of savages^ for 
 the longest possible time. There is no escaping this 
 absurdity^ unless you come back to a standard of 
 reason and duty, imperative upon our merely plea- 
 surable sensations. Oh ! but, says 0. P. Q., I am 
 for the happiness of others ! Of others ! Are you, 
 indeed ? Well, I happen to be one of those others, 
 and, so far as I can judge from what you show me of 
 your habits and views, I would rather be excused 
 from your banquet of happiness. Your mode of 
 happiness would make me miserable. To go about 
 doing as much good as' possible to as many men as 
 possible, is, indeed, an excellent object for a man to 
 propose to himself ; but then, in order that you may 
 not sacrifice the real good and happiness of others to 
 your particular views, which may be quite different 
 from your neighbour's, you must do that good to 
 others which the reason, common to all, pronounces 
 to be good for all. In this sense your fine maxim is 
 so very true as to be a mere truism. 
 
 So you object, with old Hobbes, that I do good 
 actions for the pleasure of a good conscience; and 
 so, after all, I am only a refined sensualist ! Heaven 
 bless you, and mend your logic ! Don't you see that 
 if conscience, which is in its nature a consequence, 
 were thus anticipated and made an antecedent — a 
 party instead of a judge — it would dishonour your 
 draft upon it — it would not pay on demand ? Don't 
 you see that, in truth, the very fact of acting with 
 this motive properly and logically destroys all claim 
 upon conscience to give you any pleasure at all ? 
 
THE TWO MODES OE POLITICAL ACTION. 143 
 
 August 22, 1831. 
 The Two Modes of Political Action, 
 
 THERE are many able and patriotic members in 
 the House of Commons — Sir Robert Inglis, Sir 
 Robert Peel, and some others. But I grieve that they 
 never have the courage or the wisdom — I know not 
 in which the failure is — to take their stand upon duty, 
 and to appeal to all men as men, — to the Good and 
 the True, which exist for all, and of which all have an 
 apprehension. They always set to work — especially, 
 his great eminence considered. Sir Robert Peel — by 
 addressing themselves to individual interests ; the 
 measure will be injurious to the linen-drapers, or to 
 the bricklayers; or this clause wiR bear hard on 
 bobbin-net or popHns, and so forth. Whereas their 
 adversaries — the demagogues — always work on the 
 opposite principle : they always appeal to men as 
 men; and, as you know, the most terrible convul- 
 sions in society have been wrought by such phrases 
 as Rights of Man, Sovereignty of the People, &c., 
 which no one understands, which apply to no one in 
 particular, but to all in general.* The devil works 
 
 * " It is with nations as with individuals. In tranquil moods and peace- 
 able times we are quite practical; facts only, and cool common sense, are 
 then in fashion. But let the winds of passion swell, and straightway men 
 begin to generalize, to connect by remotest analogies, to express the most 
 universal positions of reason in the most glowing figures of fancy ; in short, 
 to feel particular truths and mere facts as poor, cold, narrow, and incom- 
 mensurate with their feelings." — Statesman's Manual, p. 18. 
 
 It seems a paradox only to the unthinking, and it is a fact that none but 
 the unread in history will deny, that, in periods of popular tumult and 
 innovation, the more abstract a notion is, the more readily has it been found 
 to combine, the closer has appeared its afl&nity, with the feelings of a people, 
 and with all their immediate impulses to action. At the commencement of 
 the French Revolution, in the remotest villages every tongue was employed 
 in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the physio- 
 cratic politicians and economists. The public roads were crowded with 
 
144 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 precisely in the same way. He is a very clever 
 fellow; I have no acquaintance with him^ but I 
 respect his evident talents. Consistent truth and 
 goodness will assuredly in the end overcome every- 
 thing ; but inconsistent good can never be a match 
 for consistent evil. Alas ! I look in vain for some 
 wise and vigorous man to sound the word Duty in 
 the ears of this generation. 
 
 August 24, 1831. 
 Truths and Maxims, 
 
 THE English pubHc is' not yet ripe to comprehend 
 the essential difference between the reason and 
 the understanding — between a principle and a maxim 
 — an eternal truth and a mere conclusion generalized 
 from a great number of facts. A man, having seen a 
 million moss roses all red, concludes from his own 
 experience and that of others that all moss roses are 
 red. That is a maxim w ith him — the greatest amount 
 of his knowledge upon the subject. But it is only 
 true until some gardener has produced a white moss 
 rose, — after which the maxim is good for nothing. 
 Again, suppose Adam watching the sun sinking under 
 the western horizon for the first time ; he is seized 
 with gloom and terror, relieved by scarce a ray of hope 
 that he shall ever see the glorious light again. The 
 next evening, when it declines, his hopes are stronger, 
 but still mixed with fear ; and even at the end of a 
 thousand years, all that a man can feel is a hope and 
 
 armed enthusiasts, disputing on the inalienable sovereignty of the people, 
 the imprescriptible laws of the pure reason, and the universal constitution, 
 which, as rising out of the nature and rights of man as man, all nations alike 
 were under the obligation of adopting.'* — Statesman's Manual, 
 
Drx,AYTON. 
 
 145 
 
 an expectation so strong as to preclude anxiety. Now 
 compare this in its highest degree with the assurance 
 which you have that the two sides of any triangle are 
 together greater than the third. This, demonstrated 
 of one triangle, is seen to be eternally true of all 
 imaginable triangles. This is a truth perceived at 
 once by the intuitive reason, independently of expe- 
 rience. It is and must ever be so, multiply and vary 
 the shapes and sizes of triangles as you may. 
 
 It used to be said that four and five make nine. 
 Locke says, that four and five are nine. Now I say, 
 that four and five are not nine, but that they will 7nake 
 nine. When I see four objects which will form a 
 square, and five which will form a pentagon, I see that 
 they are two different things ; when combined, they 
 will form a third different figure, which we call nine. 
 When separate they are not it, but will make it. 
 
 September ] 1, 1831. 
 Drayton and Daniel. 
 
 TT^RAYTON is a sweet poet, and Selden^s iiotes to 
 the early part of the Polyolbion are well worth 
 your perusal. Daniel is a superior man; his diction 
 is pre-eminently pure — of that quality which I belie^■e 
 has always existed somewhere in society. It is just 
 such English, without any alteration, as Wordsworth 
 or Sir George Beaumont might have spoken or written 
 in the present day. 
 
 Yet there are instances of sublimity in Drayton. 
 When deploring the cutting down of some of our old 
 forests, he says, in language which reminds the reader 
 
146 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 of Lear^ written subsequently, and also of several 
 passages in Mr. Wordsworth^s poems : — 
 
 " our trees so hack'd above the ground, 
 
 That where their lofty tops the neighbouring countries crownM, 
 Their trunks (like aged folks) now bare and naked stand, 
 As for revenge to Heaven each held a withered hand."' * 
 
 That is very fine. 
 
 September 12, 1831. 
 Mr. Coleridge's System of Philosophy, 
 
 IV/TY system, if I inay venture to give it so fine a 
 name, is the only attempt I know, ever made 
 to reduce all knowledges into harmony. It opposes 
 no other system, but shows what was true in each ; 
 and how that which was true in the particular, in each 
 of them became error, because it was only half the 
 truth. I have endeavoured to unite the insulated 
 fragments of truth, and therewith to frame a perfect 
 
 * Polyol. VII. 
 
 " He (Drayton) -was a poet by nature, and carefully improved his talent ; 
 one who sedulously laboured to deserve the approbation of such as were 
 capable of appreciating and cared nothing for the censures which others 
 might pass upon him. ' Like me that list,* he says, 
 
 * my honest rhymes 
 
 Nor care for critics, nor regard the times.' 
 
 And though he is not a poet virum voUtare per ora, nor one of those whose 
 better fortune it is to live in the hearts of their devoted admirers, — yet what 
 he deemed his greatest work will be preserved by its subject ; some of his 
 minor poems have merit enough in their execution to ensure their preserva- 
 tion ; and no one who studies poetry as an art will think his time misspent 
 in perusing the whole, if he have any real love for the art he is pursuing. 
 The youth who enters upon that pursuit without a feeling of respect and 
 gratitude for those elder poets, who by their labours have prepared the way 
 for him, is not likely to produce any thing himself that will be held in 
 remembrance by posterity." — The Doctor, &c. c. 36, P. I. 
 
 I heartily trust that the author or autli /rs, as the case may be, of this 
 singularly thoughtful and diverting book will in due time continue it. Let 
 some people say what they please, there has not been the fellow of it pub- 
 lished for many a long day. — Ed. 
 
COLERIDGE^S SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY. 147 
 
 mirror. I show to each system that I fully understand 
 and rightfully appreciate what that system means ; 
 but then I lift up that system to a higher point of 
 view^ from which I enable it to see its former position, 
 where it was, indeed, but under another light and 
 with different relations ; — so that the fragment of 
 truth is not only acknowledged, but explained. Thus 
 the old astronomers discovered and maintained much 
 that was true ; but, because they were placed on a 
 false ground, and looked from a wrong point of view, 
 they never did, they never could, discover the truth 
 — that is, the whole truth. As soon as they left the 
 earth, their false centre, and took their stand in the 
 sun, immediately they saw the whole system in its 
 true light, and their former station remaining, but 
 remaining as a part of the prospect. I wish, in short, 
 to connect by a moral copula natural history with 
 political history ; or, in other words, to make history 
 scientific, and science historical — to take from history 
 its accidentality, and from science its fatalism. 
 
 I never from a boy could, under any circumstances, 
 feel the slightest dread of death as such. In all my 
 illnesses I have ever had the most intense desire to be 
 released from this life, unchecked by any but one wish, 
 namely, to be able to finish my work on Philosophy. 
 Not that I have any author^s vanity on the subject : 
 God knows that I should be absolutely glad, if I could 
 hear that the thing had already been done before me. 
 
 Illness never in the smallest degree affects my in- 
 tellectual powers. I can tJiinJc with all my ordinary 
 vigour in the midst of pain : but I am beset with the 
 
 L 2 
 
148 
 
 COLERlDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 most wretched and unmanning reluctance and shrink- 
 ing from action. I could not upon such occasions 
 take the pen in hand to write down my thoughts for 
 all the wide world. 
 
 October 26, 1831. 
 Keenness and Subtlety. 
 
 T7EW men of genius are keen; but almost every 
 man of genius is subtle. If you ask me the 
 difference between keenness and subtlety, I answer 
 that it is the difference between a point and an edge. 
 To split a hair is no proof of subtlety ; for subtlety 
 acts in distinguishing differences — in showing that two 
 things apparently one are in fact two ; whereas, to 
 split a hair is to cause division, and not to ascertain 
 difference. 
 
 October 27, 1831. 
 Duties and Needs of an Advocate. 
 
 nPHERE is undoubtedly a limit to the exertions of 
 an advocate for his client. He has a right, it is 
 his bounden duty, to do everything which his client 
 might honestly do, and to do it with all the effect 
 which any exercise of skill, talent, or knowledge of 
 his own may be able to produce.' But the advocate 
 has 'no right, nor is it his duty, to do that for his 
 client which his client inforo conscientla has no right 
 to do for himself ; as, for a gross example, to put in 
 evidence a forged deed or will, knowing it to be so 
 forged. As to mere confounding of witnesses by 
 skilful cross-examination, I own I am not disposed to 
 be very strict. The whole thing is perfectly well 
 
DUTIES AND NEEDS OF AN ADVOCATE. 
 
 149 
 
 understood on all liands^ and it is little more in general 
 than a sort of - cudgel-playing between tlie counsel and 
 the witness^ in which^ I speak with submission to you, 
 I think I have seen the Avitness have the best of it as 
 often as liis assailant. It is of the utmost importance 
 in the administration of justice that knowledge and 
 intellectual power should be as far as possible equalised 
 between the Crown and the prisoner, or plaintiff and 
 defendant. Hence especially arises the necessity for 
 an order of advocates, — men whose duty it ought to 
 be to know what the law allows and disallows ; but 
 whose interests should be wholly indifferent as to the 
 persons or characters of their clients. If a certain 
 latitude in examining witnesses is, as experience seems 
 to have shown, a necessary mean towards the evisce- 
 ration of the truth of matters of fact, I have no doubt, 
 as a moralist, in saying, that such latitude within the 
 bounds now existing is justifiable. We must be con- 
 tent with a certain quantum in this life, especially in 
 matters of public cognisance ; the necessities of society 
 demand it ; we must not be righteous overmuch, or 
 wise overmuch ; and, as an old father says, in what 
 vein may there not be a plethora, when the Scripture 
 tells us that there may under circumstances be too 
 much of virtue and of wisdom ? 
 
 StiU I think that, upon the whole, the advocate is 
 placed in a position unfavourable to his moral being, 
 and, indeed, to his intellect also, in its higher powers. 
 Therefore I would recommend an advocate to devote 
 a part of his leisure time to some study of the meta- 
 physics- of the mind, or metaphysics of theology; 
 something, I mean, which shall call forth aU his 
 powers, and centre his wishes in the investigation of 
 
150 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 truth alone^ without reference to a side to be sup- 
 ported. No studies give such a power of distinguishing 
 as metaphysical^ and in their natural and unperverted 
 tendency they are ennobling and exalting. Some such 
 studies are wanted to counteract the operation of 
 legal studies and practice^ which sharpen^ indeed^ but^ 
 hke a grinding- stoiie^ narrow whilst they sharpen. 
 
 ' November 19, 183 L 
 Abolition of the French Hereditary Peerage, 
 
 T CANNOT say what the French peers tvill do ; but 
 1 can tell you what they ought to do. So far/^ 
 they might say^ as our feelings and interests^ as in- 
 dividuals^ are concerned in this matter — if it really be 
 the prevailing wish of our felloAV- countrymen to destroy 
 the hereditary peerage — we shall^ without regret^ retire 
 into the ranks of private citizens : but we are bound 
 by the provisions of the existing constitution to con- 
 sider ourselves collectively as essential to the well -being 
 of France : we have been placed here to defend what 
 France^ a short time ago at least, thought a vital part 
 of its government ; and, if we did not defend it, what 
 answer could we make hereafter to France itself, if she 
 should come to see, what we think to b^ an error, in 
 the light in which we view it ? We should be justly 
 branded as traitors and cowards, who had deserted 
 the post which we were specially appointed to main- 
 tain. As a House of Peers, therefore, — as one sub- 
 stantive branch of the legislature, we can never, in 
 honour or in conscience, consent to a measure of the 
 impolicy and dangerous consequences of which we arc 
 convinced. 
 
CONDUCT OF MINISTERS ON EEFOEM BILL. 151 
 
 ^^If, therefore^ this measure is demanded by the 
 country^ let the king and the deputies form them- 
 selves into a constituent assembly ; and then^ assuming 
 to act in the name of the total nation^ let them 
 decree the abolition. In that case we yield to a just, 
 perhaps, but revolutionary, act, in which we do not 
 participate, and against w^hich we are, upon the sup- 
 position, quite powerless. If the deputies, however, 
 consider themselves so completely in the character of 
 delegates as to be at present absolutely pledged to 
 vote without freedom of deliberation, let a concise, 
 but perspicuous, summary of the ablest arguments 
 that can be adduced on either side be drawn up, and 
 printed, and circulated throughout the country ; and 
 then, after two months, let the deputies demand fresh 
 instructions upon this point. One thing, as men of 
 honour, w^e declare beforehand — that, come what will, 
 none of us who are now peers will ever accept a peerage 
 created de novo for life.''^ 
 
 November 20, 1831. 
 Conduct of Ministers on the Reform, Bill. — The Multitude. 
 
 npHE present ministers have, in my judgment, been 
 guilty of two things pre-eminently wicked, sensu 
 politico, in their conduct upon tliis Eeform Bill. 
 "First, they have endeavoured to carry a fundamental 
 change in the material and mode of action of the 
 government of the country by so exciting the passions, 
 and playing upon the necessary ignorance of the 
 numerical majority of the nation, that all freedom and 
 utility of discussion, by competent heads, in the proper 
 place, should be precluded. In doing this they have 
 
152 
 
 COLElllDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 used^ or sanctioned the use of, arguments which may- 
 be applied with equal or even greater force to the car- 
 rying of any measure whatever^ no matter how atrocious 
 in its character or destructive in its consequences. 
 They have appealed directly to the argument of the 
 greater number of voices^ no matter whether the 
 utterers were drunk or sober^ competent or not com- 
 petent ; and they have done the utmost in their power 
 to rase out the sacred principle in politics of a repre- 
 sentation of interests^ and to introduce the mad and 
 barbarising scheme of a delegation of individuals. 
 And they have done all this without one word of 
 thankfulness to God for the manifold blessings of 
 which the constitution^ as settled at the Revolution, 
 imperfect as it may be, has been the source or vehicle 
 or condition to this great nation, — without one honest 
 statement of the manner in which the anomalies in 
 the practice grew up, or any manly declaration of the 
 inevitable necessities of government which tliose ano- 
 malies have met. With no humility, nor fear, nor 
 reverence, like Ham the accursed, they have beckoned, 
 with grinning faces, to a vulgar mob, to come and 
 insult over the nakedness of a parent ; when it had 
 become them, if one spark of filial patriotism had 
 burnt within their breasts, to have marched with 
 silent steps and averted faces to lay their robes upon 
 his destitution ! 
 
 Secondly, they have made the Idng the prime mover 
 in all this political wickedness : they have made the 
 king tell his people that they were deprived of their 
 rights, and, by direct and necessary implication, that 
 they and their ancestors for a century past liad been 
 slaves j they have made the king vilify the memory of 
 
RELIGION. 
 
 ]5S 
 
 his own brother and father. Rights ! There are no 
 rights whatever without corresponding duties. Look 
 at the history of the growth of our constitution^ and 
 you will see that our ancestors never upon any occa- 
 sion stated, as a ground for claiming any of their 
 privileges, an abstract right inherent in themselves ; 
 you will nowhere in our parliamentary records find 
 the miserable sophism of the Rights of Man. No ! 
 they were too wise for that. They took good care to 
 refer their claims to custom and prescription, and 
 boldly — sometimes very impudently — asserted them 
 upon traditionary and constitutional grounds. The 
 Bill is bad enough, God knows; but the arguments 
 of its advocates, and the manner of their advocacy, are 
 a thousand times worse than the Bill itself; and you 
 will live to think so. 
 
 I am far^ very far, from wishing to indulge in any 
 vulgar abuse of the vulgar. I believe that the feeling 
 of the multitude will, in most cases, be in favour of 
 something good ; but this it is which I perceive, that 
 they are always under the domination of some one 
 feeling or view ; — whereas truth, and above all, prac- 
 tical wisdom, must be the result of a wide compre- 
 hension of the more and the less, the balance and 
 the counterbalance. 
 
 December 3, 1831. 
 Religion. 
 
 A RELIGION, that is, a true religion, must consist 
 of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone with- 
 out facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy ; — nor 
 of facts alone vvdthout ideas, of which those facts are 
 
154 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 the symbols^ or out of which they arise^ or upon which 
 they are grounded : for then it would be mere History. 
 
 December 17, 1831. 
 Union with Ireland. — Irish Church. 
 
 T AM quite sure that no dangers are to bfi feared by 
 England from the disannexing and independence 
 of Ireland at all comparable with the evils which 
 have been^ and will yet be^ caused to England by the 
 Union. We have never received one particle of ad- 
 vantage from our association with Ireland^ whilst we 
 have in many most vital particulars violated the prin- 
 ciples of the British constitution solely for the purpose 
 of conciliating the Irish agitators^ and of endeavouring 
 — a vain endeavour — to had room for them under the 
 same government. Mr. Pitt has received great credit 
 for effecting the Union ; bat I believe it will sooner 
 or later be discovered that the manner in which^ and, 
 the terms upon which^ he effected it^ made it the most 
 fatal blow that ever was levelled against the peace and 
 prosperity of England. Erom it came the Catholic 
 Bill. Erom the Catholic Bill has come this Reform 
 Bill ! And what next ? 
 
 The case of the Irish Church is certainly anomalous, 
 and full of practical difficulties. On the one hand, it 
 is the only church which the constitution can admit ; 
 on the other, such are the circumstances, it is a church 
 that cannot act as a church towards five-sixths of the 
 persons nominally and legally within its care. 
 
A STATE. PETx-SONS AND THINGS. HISTORY. 155 
 
 December 18, 1831. 
 A State. — Persons and Things. — History. 
 
 nnHE difference between an inorganic and an organic 
 body lies in this : — In the first — a sheaf of corn 
 — ^the whole is nothing more than a collection of the 
 individual parts or phenomena. In the second — a 
 man — the whole is the effect of^ or results from^ the 
 parts; it — the whole — is everything, and the parts 
 are nothing. 
 
 A State is an idea intermediate between the two — 
 the wiiole being a result from, and not a mere total 
 of, the parts, and yet not so merging the constituent 
 parts in the result, but that the individual exists 
 integrally w^ithin it. Extremes, especially in politics, 
 meet. In Athens each individual Athenian was of 
 no value ; but taken altogether, as Demus, they were 
 everything in such a sense that no individual citizen 
 was anything. In Turkey there is the sign of unity 
 put for unity. The Sultan seems himself the State ; 
 but it is an illusion : there is in fact in Turkey no 
 State at all : the whole consists of nothing but a vast 
 collection of neighbourhoods. 
 
 When the government and the aristocracy of this 
 country had subordinated 5 to things , and treated 
 the one like the other — the poor, with some reason, 
 and almost in seK-defence, learned to set up rigUs 
 above duties. The code of a Christian society is, 
 Debeo, et tit debes — of Heathens or Barbarians, Teneo, 
 teneto et tu, si jjotes.^ 
 
 * "And this, again, is evolved ont of the yet higher idea of person in 
 contradistinction from thing, all social law and justice being grounded on 
 the principle that a person can never, but by his own fault, become a thing, 
 
156 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 If men could learn from history^ what lessons it 
 might teach us ! But passion and party blind our 
 eyes^ and the light wMch experience gives is a lantern 
 on the stern^ which shines only on the waves behind us ! 
 
 'HE old definition of beauty in the Eoman school 
 
 of painting was^ il piu nelV uno — multitude in 
 unity ; and there is no doubt that such is the principle 
 of beauty. And as one of the most characteristic and 
 infallible criteria of the different ranks of men^s intel- 
 lects^ observe the instinctive habit which all superior 
 minds have of endeavouring to brings and of never 
 resting tiU they have brought^ into unity the scattered 
 facts which occur in conversation^ or in the statements 
 of men of business. To attempt to argue any great 
 question upon facts only^ is absurd; you cannot state 
 any fact before a mixed audience^ which an opponent 
 as clever as yourself cannot with ease twist towards 
 another bearings or at least meet by a contrary fact, 
 as it is called. I wonder why facts were ever called 
 stubborn things : I am sure they have been found 
 
 or, without grievous wrong, be treated as such; and the distinction consist- 
 ing in this, that a thing may be used altogether, and merely as the means to 
 an end ; but the person must always be included in the end ; his interest 
 must always form a part of the object, — a mean to which he, by consent, 
 tliat is, by his own act, makes himself. We plant a tree, and we fell it; we 
 breed the sheep, and we shear, or we kill it, — in both cases wholly as means 
 to our ends : for trees and animals are things. The woodcutter and the hind 
 are likewise employed as means ; but on agreement, and that too an agree- 
 ment of reciprocal advantage, which includes them as well as their employer 
 in the end; for they are persons. And the governinent under which the 
 contrary takes ])lace is not worthy to be called a state, if, as in the kingdom 
 of Dahomey, it be unprogressive; or only by anticipation, where, as in 
 Russia, it is in advance to a better and more man-worthy order of things." — 
 Church and State, p. 10. 
 
 December 27, 1831. 
 Beauty. — Genius. 
 
CHURCH. STATE . DISSExNfTERS . 
 
 157 
 
 pliable enough lately in the House of Commons and 
 elsewhere. Facts^ you know, are not truths; they 
 are not conclusions ; they are not even premisses, but 
 in the nature and parts of premisses. The truth 
 depends on, and is only arrived at, by a legitimate 
 deduction from all the facts which are truly material. 
 
 December 28, 1831. 
 C hurch. — State. — Dissenters. 
 
 EVEN to a church, — the only pure democracy, 
 because in it persons are alone considered, and 
 one person a priori is equal to another person, — even 
 to a church, discipline is an essential condition. But 
 a state regards classes, and classes as they represent 
 classified property; and to introduce a system of 
 representation which must inevitably render all dis- 
 cipline impossible, what is it but madness — the mad- 
 ness of ignorant vanity, and reckless obstinacy ? 
 
 I have known, and still know, many Dissenters, who 
 profess to have a zeal for Christianity ; and I dare say 
 they have. But I have known very few Dissenters 
 indeed, whose hatred to the Church of England was 
 not a much more active principle of action with them 
 than their love for Christianity. The Wesleyans, in 
 uncorrupted parts of the country, are nearly the only 
 exceptions. There never was an age since the days of 
 the apostles, in which the cathoUc spirit of rehgion 
 was so dead, and put aside for love of sects and parties, 
 as at present. 
 
158 
 
 COLEHIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 January 1, 1832. 
 Gracef ulness of Children, — Dogs. 
 TTOW inimitably graceful children are in general 
 before they learn to dance ! 
 
 There seems a sort of sympathy between the more 
 generous dogs and little children. I beHeve an in- 
 stance of a little child being attacked by a large dog is 
 very rare indeed. 
 
 January 28, 1832. 
 Ideal Tory and Whig. 
 
 n^HE ideal Tory and the ideal Whig (and some such 
 there have really been) agreed in the necessity 
 and benefit of an exact balance of the three estates : 
 but the Tory was more jealous of the balance being 
 deranged by the people ; the Whig^ of its being 
 deranged by the Crown. But this was a habit^ a 
 jealousy only ; they both agreed in the ultimate pre- 
 servation of the balance j and accordingly they might 
 each, under certain circumstances, without the slight- 
 est inconsistency, pass from one side to the other, as 
 the ultimate object required it. This the Tories did 
 at the Revolution, but remained Tories as before. 
 
 I have half a mind to write a critical and philoso- 
 phical essay on Whiggism, from Dryden^s Achitophel 
 (Shaftesbury), the first Whig (for, with Dr. Johnson's 
 
 leave, the devil is no such cattle), down to , who 
 
 I trust, in God^s mercy to the interests of peace, 
 union, and liberty in this nation, wdll be the last. In 
 it 1 would take the last years of Queen Anne's reign 
 as the zcriitli, or palmy state, of Whiggism in its 
 
MINISTERS AND THE EEPORM BILL. 159 
 
 divinest avatar of common sense^ or of the under- 
 standing, vigorously exerted in the right direction on 
 the right and proper objects of the understanding; 
 and would then trace the rise, the occasion, the 
 progress, and the necessary degeneration of the Whig 
 spirit of compromise, even down to the profound 
 ineptitudes of their party in these days. A clever 
 fellow might make sometliing of tliis hint. How 
 Asgill would have done it ! 
 
 February 22, 1832. 
 The Church. 
 
 T^HE church is the last rehc of our nationahty. 
 
 Would to God that the bishops and the clergy in 
 general could once fully understand that the Christian 
 church and the national church are as little to be con- 
 founded as divided ! I think the fate of the Reform 
 Bill, in itself, of comparatively minor importance; 
 the fate of the national church occupies my mind 
 with greater intensity. 
 
 February 24, 1832. 
 Ministers and the Reform Bill. 
 
 T COULD not help smiling, in reading the report 
 of Lord Grey's speech in the House of Lords, the 
 other night, when he asked Lord Wicklow whether 
 he seriously believed that he. Lord Grey, or any of 
 the ministers, intended to subvert the institutions of 
 the country. Had I been in Lord Wicklow^s place, 
 I should have been tempted to answer tliis question 
 something in the following way : — Waiving the 
 charge in an offensive sense of personal consciousness 
 
160 
 
 COLEHIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 against the noble earl^ and all but one or two of his 
 colleagues^ upon my honour^ and in the presence of 
 Almighty God, I answer. Yes ! You have destroyed 
 the freedom of Parliament ; you have done your best 
 to shut the door of the House of Commons to the 
 property, the birth, the rank, the wisdom of the 
 people, and have flung it open to their passions and 
 their follies. You have disfranchised the gentry, and 
 the real patriotism of the nation : you have agitated 
 and exasperated the mob, and thrown the balance of 
 political power into the hands of that class (the shop- 
 keepers) which, in all countries and in all ages, has 
 been, is now, and ever will be, the least patriotic and 
 the least conservative of any. You are now preparing 
 to destroy for ever the constitutional independence of 
 the House of Lords ; you are for ever displacing it 
 from its supremacy as a co-ordinate estate of the 
 realm ; and wdiether you succeed in passing your bill 
 by actually swamping our votes by a batch of new 
 peers, or by frightening a sufficient immber of us out 
 of our opinions by the threat of one — equally you 
 will have superseded the triple assent which the con- 
 stitution requires to the enactment of a valid law, and 
 have left the king alone with the delegates of the 
 populace ! ^"^ 
 
 March 3, 1832. 
 Dhfranchisement. 
 T AM afraid the Conservative party see but one-half 
 of the truth. The mere extension of the franchise 
 is not the evil; I should be glad to see it greatly 
 extended; — there is no harm in that per se ; the mis- 
 chief is that the franchise is nominally extended. 
 
ASTROLOGY. — ALCHEMY. 
 
 161 
 
 but to such classes, and in such a manner, that a 
 practical disfranchisement of all above, and a discon- 
 tenting of all below, a favoured class are the unavoid- 
 able results. 
 
 March 17, 1832. 
 Oerdus Feminine. — Pirates, 
 
 face is almost the only exception I know to 
 
 the observation, that something feminine — not effemi- 
 nate, mind — is discoverable in the countenances of all 
 men of genius. Look at that face of old Dampier, a 
 rough sailor, but a man of exquisite mind. How soft 
 is the air of his countenance, how delicate the shape 
 of his temples ! 
 
 I think it very absurd and misplaced to call Ealeigli 
 and Drake, and others of our naval heroes of Eliza- 
 beth's age, pirates. No man is a pirate, unless his 
 contemporaries agree to call him so. Drake said, — 
 
 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.'' "Would it not be silly to 
 call the Argonauts pirates in our sense of the word ? 
 
 March 18, 1832. 
 A strology. — A Ichemy^ 
 
 IT is curious to mark how instinctively the reason 
 has always pointed out to men the ultimate end of 
 the various sciences, and how immediately afterwards 
 they have set to work, like children, to reaHse that 
 end by inadequate means. Now they applied to their 
 appetites, now to their passions, now to their fancy, 
 
 M 
 
162 
 
 COLERIBGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 now to the understanding, and lastly, to the intuitive 
 reason* again. There is no doubt but that astrology 
 of some sort or other would be the last achievement 
 of astronomy : there must be chemical relations be- 
 tween the planets ; the difference of their magnitudes 
 compared with that of their distances is not ex- 
 plicable otherwise; but this, though, as it were, 
 blindly and unconsciously seen, led immediately to 
 fortune-teUing and other nonsense. So alchemy is 
 the theoretic end of chemistry: there must be a 
 common law, upon which all can become each, and 
 each all ; but then the idea was turned to the coining 
 of gold and silver. 
 
 March 20, 1832. 
 Reform Bill. — Crisis, 
 
 r HAVE heard but two arguments of any weight 
 adduced in favour of passing this Reform Bill, and 
 they are in substance these : — 1. We will blow your 
 brains out if you don^t pass it. 2. We will drag you 
 through a horsepond if you don^t pass it ; and there 
 is a good deal of force in both. 
 
 Talk to me of your pretended crisis ! Stuff ! A 
 vigorous government would in one month change all 
 the data for your reasoning. Would you have me 
 believe that the events of this world are fastened to 
 a revolving cycle with God at one end and the Devil 
 at the other, and that the Devil is now uppermost ! 
 Are you a Christian, and talk about a crisis in that 
 fatalistic sense ! 
 
DICTATION AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 163 
 
 March 31, 1832. 
 John, chap. iii. ver. 4. — Dictation and Inspiration. — Gnosis, — 
 New Testament Canon. 
 
 I CERTAINLY understand the tl e\xol koX ao\ yvvai\ 
 in the second chapter* of St. John^s Gospel^ as 
 having aliquid increjpatioms in it — a mild reproof from 
 Jesus to Mary for interfering in his ministerial acts 
 by requests on her own account. I do not think that 
 yvvai was ever used by child to parent as a common 
 mode of addi'ess : between husband and wife it was ; 
 but I cannot think that /x^rep and yvvai were equiva- 
 lent terms in the mouth of a son speaking to liis 
 mother. No part of the Christopsedia is found in 
 John or Paul ; and after the baptism there is no recog- 
 nition of any maternal authority in Mary. See the 
 two passages where she endeavours to get access to 
 him when he is preaching ; — Whosoever shall do 
 the will of God, the same is my brother, and my 
 sister, and my mother :^^t and also the recommenda- 
 tion of her to the care of John at the crucifixion. 
 
 There may be dictation without inspiration, and 
 inspiration without dictation; they have been and 
 continue to be grievously confounded. Balaam and his 
 ass were the passive organs of dictation ; but no one, 
 I suppose, will venture to call either of those worthies 
 inspired. It is my profound conviction that St. John 
 and St. Paul were divinely inspired; but I totally 
 disbelieve the dictation of any one word, sentence, or 
 argument throughout their writings. Observe, there 
 was revelation. All religion is revealed; — revealed 
 religion is, in my judgment, a mere pleonasm. Reve- 
 
 Verse 4. 
 
 t Mark, ch. iii. ver, 35. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 lations of facts were undoubtedly made to the pro- 
 phets j revelations of doctrines were as undoubtedly 
 made to John and Paul ; — but is it not a mere matter 
 of our very senses that John and Paul each dealt with 
 those revelations,, expounded them^ insisted on them^ 
 just exactly according to his own natural strength of 
 intellect, habit of reasoning, moral, and even physical 
 temperament ? We receive the books ascribed to John 
 and Paul as their books on the judgment of men, for 
 whom no miraculous discernment is pretended; nay, 
 whom, in their admission and rejection of other books, 
 we believe to have erred. Shall we give less credence 
 to J ohn and Paul themselves ? Surely the heart and 
 soul of every Christian give him sufficient assurance 
 that, in all things that concern him as a man, the 
 words that he reads are spirit and truth, and could 
 only proceed from Him who made both heart and 
 soul. — Understand the matter so, and all difficulty 
 vanishes : you read without fear, lest your faith meet 
 with some shock from a passage here and there 
 which you cannot reconcile with immediate dictation, 
 by the Holy Spirit of God, without an absurd violence 
 offered to the text. You read the Bible as the best 
 of all books, but still as a book ; and make use of 
 all the means and appliances which learning and 
 skill, under the blessing of God, can afPord towards 
 rightly apprehending the general sense of it — not 
 solicitous to find out doctrine in mere epistolary 
 familiarity, or facts in clear ad homiriem et pro tempore 
 allusions to national traditions. 
 
 Tertullian, I think, says he had seen the autograph 
 copies of some of the apostles' writings. The truth 
 
UNITAUIANISM. 
 
 165 
 
 is^ the ancient Church was not guided by the mere 
 fact of the genuineness of a writing in pronouncing it 
 canonical ; — its cathohcity was the test applied to it. 
 I have not the smallest doubt that the Epistle of 
 Barnabas is genuine ; but it is not catholic ; it is full 
 of the yvcocTLs, though of the most simple and pleasing 
 sort. I think the same of Hermas. The Church 
 would never admit either into the canon^ although 
 the Alexandrians always read the Epistle of Barnabas 
 in their churches for three hundred years together. 
 It was upwards of three centuries before the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews was admitted, and this on account of 
 its yvSiCTis : at length, by help of the venerable prefix 
 of St. Paulas name, its admirers, happily for us, 
 succeeded. 
 
 So little did the early bishops and preachers think 
 their Christian faith wrapped up in, and solely to be 
 learned from, the New Testament, — indeed, can it be 
 said that there was any such collection for three hun- 
 dred years ? — that I remember a letter from * 
 
 to a friend of his, a bishop in the East, in which he 
 most evidently speaks of the Christian Scriptures as 
 of works of which the bishop knew little or notliing. 
 
 April 4, 1832. 
 Unitarianism, — Moral Philosophy. 
 
 I MAKE the greatest difference between a?ts and 
 isms, I should deal insincerely with you, if I said 
 that I thought Unitarianism was Christianity. No ; 
 as I believe and have faith in the doctrine, it is not 
 the truth in Jesus Clirist ; but God forbid that I 
 
 * I have lost the name which Mr, Coleridge mentioned.— Ed. 
 
166 
 
 COLEBJDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 should doubt that you^ and many other Unitarians, as 
 you call yourselves, are, in a practical sense, very good 
 Christians. We do not win heaven by logic. 
 
 By the by, what do you mean by exclusively assum- 
 ing the title of Unitarians ? As if Tri-Unitarians were 
 not necessarily Unitarians, as much (pardon the illus- 
 tration) as an apple-pie must of course be a pie ! The 
 schoolmen woiJd, perhaps, have called you Unicists ; 
 but your proper name is Psilanthropists — ^behevers in 
 the mere human nature of Christ. 
 
 Upon my word, if I may say so without offence, I 
 really think many forms of Pantheistic Atheism more 
 agreeable to an imaginative mind than Unitarianism 
 as it is professed in terms : in particular, I prefer the 
 Spinosistic scheme infinitely. The early Socinians 
 were, to be sure, most unaccountable logicians ; but, 
 when you had swallowed their bad reasoning, you 
 came to a doctrine on which the heart, at least, might 
 rest for some support. They adored Jesus Christ. 
 Both Laehus and Faustus Socinus laid down the 
 adorability of Jesus in strong terms. I have nothing, 
 you know, to do with their logic. But Unitarianism 
 is, in effect, the worst of one kind of Atheism, joined 
 to the worst of one kind of Calvinism, like two asses 
 tied tail to tail. It has no covenant with God ; and 
 looks upon prayer as a sort of seK-magnetizing — a 
 getting of the body and temper into a certain status, 
 desirable ][^er se, but having no covenanted reference 
 to the Being to whom the prayer is addressed. 
 
 The sum total of moral philosophy is found in this 
 one question. Is Good a superfluous word, — or mere 
 lazy synonyme for the pleasurable, and its causes ; — 
 
MORAL LAW OF POLAEITY. 
 
 167 
 
 at most, a mere modification to express degree, and 
 comparative duration of pleasure? — Or the question 
 may be more unanswerably stated thus, Is good super- 
 fluous as a word exponent of a hind ? — If it be, then 
 moral philosophy is but a subdivision of physics. If 
 not, then the writings of Paley and all his predeces- 
 sors and disciples are false and mmt pernicious ; and 
 there is an emphatic propriety in the superlative, and 
 in a sense which of itself would supply and exemplify 
 the difference between most and very. 
 
 April 5, 1832. 
 
 Moral Law of Polarity » 
 TT is curious to trace the operation of the moral law 
 of polarity in the history of politics, religion, &c. 
 When the maximum of one tendency has been attained, 
 there is no gradual decrease, but a direct transition to 
 its minimum, till the opposite tendency has attained 
 its maximum ; and then you see another corresponding 
 revulsion. With the Restoration came in all at once 
 the mechanico-corpuscular philosophy, which, with the 
 increase of manufactures, trade, and arts, made every- 
 thing in philosophy, religion, and poetry objective; 
 till, at length, attachment to mere external worldliness 
 and forms got to its maximum, — when out burst the 
 Prench revolution: and with it everything became 
 immediately subjective, without any object at all. 
 The Rights of Man, the Sovereignty of the People, 
 were subject and object both. We are now, I think, 
 on the turning point again. Tliis Reform seems the 
 ne plus ultra of that tendency of the public mind, 
 which substitutes its own undefined notions or passions 
 
168 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 for real objects and historical actualities. There is 
 not one of the ministers — except the one or two 
 revolutionists among them — who has ever given us 
 a hint^ throughout this long struggle^ as to what he 
 really does believe will be the product of the bill; 
 w^hat sort of House of Commons it will make for the 
 purpose of governing this empire soberly and safely. 
 No ; they have actualised for a moment a wish, a fear, 
 a passion, but not an idea. 
 
 April 7, 1832. 
 Epidemic Disease. — Quarantine, 
 n^HERE are two grand divisions under which all 
 contagious diseases may be classed: — 1. Those 
 which spring from organized living beings, and from 
 the life in them, and which enter, as it were, into the 
 life of those in whom they reproduce themselves — 
 such as small-pox and measles. These become so 
 domesticated with the habit and system, that they 
 are rarely received twice. 2. Those which spring 
 from dead organized, or unorganized matter, and 
 \^hich may be comprehended under the wide term 
 walaria. 
 
 You may have passed a stagnant pond a hundred 
 times without injury : you happen to pass it again, in 
 low spirits and chilled, precisely at the moment of the 
 explosion of the gas : the malaria strikes on the 
 cutaneous or veno- glandular system, and drives th( 
 blood from the surface ; the shivering fit comes on, 
 till the musculo-arterial irritability re-acts, and then 
 the hot fit succeeds : and, unless bark or arsenic — 
 particularly bark, because it is a bitter as well as a 
 
EPIDEMIC. QUARANTINE. 
 
 169 
 
 tonic — be applied to strengthen the veno-glandular, 
 and to moderate the musculo-arterial, system, a man 
 may have the ague for thirty years together. 
 
 But if, instead of being exposed to the solitary 
 malaria of a pond, a man, travelling through the 
 Pontine Marshes, permits his animal energies to flag, 
 and surrenders himself to the drowsiness which gene- 
 rally attacks liim, then blast upon blast strikes upon 
 the cutaneous system, and passes through it to the 
 musculo-arterial, and so completely overpowers the 
 latter that it cannot re-act, and the man dies at once, 
 instead of only catching an ague. 
 
 There are three factors of the operation of an epi- 
 demic or atmospheric disease. The first and principal 
 one is the predisposed state of the body; secondly, 
 the specific vims in the atmosphere; and, thirdly, 
 the accidental circumstances of weather, locality, food, 
 occupation, &c. Against the second of these we are 
 powerless : its nature, causes, and sympathies are too 
 subtle for our senses to find data to go upon. Against 
 the first, medicine may act profitably. Against the 
 third, a wise and sagacious medical poUce ought to be 
 adopted; but, above all, let every man act like a 
 Christian, in all charity, and love, and brotherly 
 kindness, and sincere reliance on God^s merciful 
 providence. 
 
 Quarantine cannot keep out an atmospheric disease; 
 but it can, and does always, increase the predisposing 
 causes of its reception. 
 
170 
 
 COLERlDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 April 10, 1832. 
 Harmony, 
 
 ALL harmony is founded on a relation to rest — -on 
 relative rest. Take a metallic plate^ and strew 
 sand on it ; sound an harmonic chord over the sand, 
 and the grains will whirl about in circles and other 
 geometrical figures, all, as it were, depending on some 
 point of sand relatively at rest. Sound a discord, and 
 every grain will whisk about without any order at all, 
 in no figures, and with no points of rest. 
 
 The clerisy of a nation, that is, its learned men, 
 whether poets, or philosophers, or scholars, are these 
 points of relative rest. There could be no order, no 
 harmony of the whole, without them. 
 
 April 21, 1832. 
 Intellectual Revolutions, — Modem Style. 
 
 THERE have been three silent revolutions in Eng- 
 land : — first, when the professions fell off from 
 the church; secondly, when literature fell off from 
 the professions ; and, thirdly, when the press fell off 
 from literature. 
 
 Common phrases are, as it were, so stereotyped now 
 by conventional use, that it is really much easier to 
 write on the ordinary politics of the day in the common 
 newspaper style, than it is to make a good pair of shoes. 
 An apprentice has as much to learn now to be a shoe- 
 maker as ever he had ; but an ignorant coxcomb, with 
 a competent want of honesty, may very effectively 
 wield a pen in a newspaper office, with infinitely less 
 pains and preparation than were necessary formerly. 
 
COLOURS. 
 
 171 
 
 April 23, 1832. 
 Genius of the Spanish and Italians. — Vico. — Spinosa. 
 ^HE genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely 
 subtle^ without being at all acute ; hence there is 
 so much humour and so little wit in their hterature. 
 The genius of the Italians^ on the contrary, is acute, 
 profound, and sensual, but not subtle ; hence what 
 they think to be humourous, is merely witty. 
 
 To estimate a man like Vico, or any great man who 
 has made discoveries and committed errors, you ought 
 to say to yourseK — " He did so and so in the year 
 1720, a Papist, at Naples. Now, what would he not 
 have done if he had lived now, and could have availed 
 himseK of aU our vast acquisitions in physical science? 
 
 After the Scienza Nnova,^ read Spinosa, Be Mo- 
 narchia ex mtionis prascripto.'^ They differed — Vico 
 in thinking that society tended to monarchy ; Spinosa 
 in thinking it tended to democracy. Now, Spinosa^s 
 ideal democracy was realised by a contemporary — ^not 
 in a nation, for that is impossible, but in a sect — I 
 mean by George Fox and his Quakers. J 
 
 April 24, 1832. 
 
 Colours, 
 
 COLOURS may best be expressed by a heptad, the 
 largest possible formula for things finite, as the 
 pentad is the smallest possible form. Indeed, the 
 heptad of tilings finite is in all cases reducible to the 
 
 * See Michelet's Principes de la Philosophie de THistoire, &c. Paris, 
 1827. An admirable analysis of Vico. — Ed. 
 t Tractatus Politici, c. vi. 
 X Spinosa died in 1677 ; Fox in 1681.— Ed. 
 
172 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 pentad. The adorable tetractys, or tetrad, is the 
 formula of God ; which, again, is reducible into, and 
 is, in reality, the same with, the Trinity. Take 
 colours thus : — 
 
 Prothesis. , ^ 
 
 Red, or Colour ««t e^o^'/j*. 
 
 April 28, 1832. 
 Destruction of Jerusalem, — Epic Poem, 
 
 T^HE destruction of Jerusalem is the only subject 
 now remaining for an epic poem; a subject 
 which, like Milton^s Fall of Man, should interest all 
 Christendom, as the Homeric War of Troy interested 
 all (Jreece. There would be difficulties, as there are 
 in all subjects ; and they must be mitigated and 
 thrown into the shade, as Milton has done with the 
 numerous difficulties in the Paradise Lost. But there 
 would be a greater assemblage of grandeur and splen- 
 dour than can now be found in any other theme. As 
 for the old mythology, incredulus odi ; and yet there 
 must be a mythology, or a ^'Wi^^^'-mythology, for an 
 epic poem. Here there would be the completion of 
 the prophecies — the termination of the first revealed 
 
ASGILL AND DEFOE. 
 
 173 
 
 national religion under the violent assault of Paganism, 
 itself the immediate forerunner and condition of the 
 spread of a revealed mundane religion ; and then 
 you would have the character of the Roman and the 
 Jew, and the awfulness, the completeness, the justice. 
 I schemed it at twenty-five ; but, alas ! venturum 
 expectat, 
 
 April 29, 1832. 
 Vox Populi, Vox Dei. — Black, 
 
 I NEVER said that the vox populi was of course 
 the vox Dei. It may be ; but it may be, and 
 with equal probability, a priori^ vox Diaboli, That 
 the voice of ten millions of men calling for the 
 same thing, is a spirit, I believe ; but whether that 
 be a spirit of Heaven or Hell, I can only know by 
 trying the thing called for by the prescript of reason 
 
 and God^s wiU. 
 
 Black is the negation of colour in its greatest 
 energy. "Without lustre, it indicates or represents 
 vacuity, as, for instance, in the dark mouth of a 
 cavern ; add lustre, and it will represent the highest 
 degree of solidity, as in a polished ebony box. 
 
 In finite forms there is no real and absolute identity. 
 God alone is identity. In the former, the prothesis 
 is a bastard prothesis, a quasi identity only. 
 
 April 30, 1832. 
 Asgill and Defoe. 
 
 I KNOW no genuine Saxon English superior to 
 AsgilFs. I tliink his and Defoe^s irony often 
 finer than Swift^s. 
 
174 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 May 1, 1832. 
 Home TooJce. — Fox and Pitt. 
 
 OENE TOOKF/S advice to the rriends of the 
 • People was profound : — If you wish to be 
 
 powerful^ pretend to be powerful."'^ 
 
 Pox and Pitt constantly played into each other^s 
 hands. Mr. Stuart, of the Courier, who was very 
 Knowing in the pohtics of the day, soon found out 
 the gross lies and impostures of that club as to its 
 numbers and told Pox so. Yet, instead of disclaim- 
 ing them and exposing the pretence, as he ought to 
 have done. Pox absolutely exaggerated their numbers 
 and sinister intentions ; and Pitt, who also knew the 
 lie, took him at his word, and argued against him 
 triumphantly on his own premisses. 
 
 Pox^s Gallicism, too, was a treasury of weapons 
 to Pitt. He could never conceive the Prench 
 right without making the Enghsh wrong. Ah! 1 
 remember — 
 
 it vex*d my soul to see 
 
 So grand a cause, so proud a realm 
 With Goose and Goody at the helm ; 
 Who long ago had fallen asunder 
 But for their rivals' baser blunder, 
 The coward whine and Frenchified 
 Slaver and slang of the other side ! 
 
 May 2, 1832. 
 
 Horner, 
 
 T CANNOT say that I thought Mr. Horner a man 
 of genius. He seemed to me to be one of those 
 men who have not very extended minds, but who 
 
PROFESSOR PARK. 
 
 175 
 
 know what they know very well — shallow streams, 
 and clear because they are shallow. There was great 
 goodness about him. 
 
 May 3, 1832. 
 Adiaphori. — Citizens and Christians. 
 
 is one of those men who go far to shake 
 
 my faith in a future state of existence ; I mean, on 
 account of the difficulty of knowdng where to place 
 him. I could not bear to roast him ; he is not so 
 bad as all that comes to : but then, on the other 
 hand, to have to sit down with such a fellow in the 
 very lowest pot-house of heaven is utterly inconsis- 
 tent with the behef of that place being a place of 
 happiness for me. 
 
 In two points of view I reverence man ; first, as a 
 citizen, a part of, or in order to, a nation; and, 
 secondly, as a Christian. If men are neither the 
 one nor the other, but a mere aggregation of indi- 
 vidual bipeds, who acknowledge no national unity, 
 nor believe with me in Christ, I have no more per- 
 sonal sympathy with them than with the dust beneath 
 my feet. 
 
 Professor Park. — English Constitution — Democracy. — Milton and 
 
 PROEESSOE PAEK talks * about its being very 
 doubtful whether the constitution described by 
 Blackstone ever in fact existed. In the same mamier, 
 
 * In his " Dogmas of the Constitution, four Lectures on the Theory and 
 Practice of the Constitution, delivered at the King's College, London," 1832. 
 Lecture I. There was a stiffness, and an occasional uncouthness in Professor 
 
 May 21, 1832. 
 
 Sidney. 
 
176 
 
 COLERTDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 I suppose^ it is doubtful whether the moon is made of 
 green cheese^ or whether the souls of Welchmen do, 
 in point of fact^ go to heaven on the backs of mites. 
 Blackstone^s was the age of shallow law. Monarchy^, 
 aristocracy, and democracy, as such, exclude each 
 the other : but if the elements are to interpenetrate, 
 how absurb to call a lump of sugar hydrogen, 
 oxygen, and carbon ! nay, to take three lumps, and 
 call the first hydrogen ; the second, oxygen ; and the 
 third, carbon ? Don^t you see that each is in all, 
 and all in each ? 
 
 The democracy of England, before the Reform Bill, 
 was, where it ought to be, in the corporations, the 
 vestries, the joint-stock companies, &c. The power, 
 in a democracy, is in focal points, without a centre ; 
 and in proportion as such democratical power is 
 strong, the strength of the central government ought 
 to be intense — otherwise the nation will fall to pieces. 
 
 We have just now incalculably increased the demo- 
 cratical action of the people, and, at the same time, 
 weakened the executive power of the government. 
 
 It was the error of Milton, Sidney, and others of 
 that age, to think it possible to construct a purely 
 aristocratical government, defecated of all passion, 
 and ignorance, and sordid motive. The truth is, such 
 a government would be weak from its utter want of 
 sympathy with the people to be governed by it. 
 
 Park's style ; but his two works, the one just mentioned, and his " Contre- 
 Projct to tlie Ilumphn^ysian Code," are full of original views and vigorous 
 reasonings. To those who wished to see the profession of the law assume a 
 more scientific character than for the most part it has hitherto done in 
 England, the early death of John James Park was a very great loss. — Ed. 
 
DE VI MINIMOEUM. LUTHER. 177 
 
 May 25, 1832. 
 
 De Vi Minimorum. — Hahnemann. — Luther. 
 
 MERCUEY strongly illustrates the theory de vi 
 mmimomm. Divide five grains into fifty dosPs, 
 and they may poison you irretrievably. I don^t be- 
 lieve in all that Hahnemann says; but he is a fine 
 fellow, and, like most Germans, is not altogether 
 wrong, and hke them also, is never altogether right. 
 
 Six volumes of translated selections from Luther^s 
 works, two being from liis Letters, would be a delight- 
 ful work. The translator should be a man deeply 
 imbued with his Bible, with the English writers from 
 Henry the Seventh to Edward the Sixth, the Scotch 
 divines of the 16th century, and with the old racy 
 German.* 
 
 Hugo de Saint Yictor,t Luther^s favourite divine, 
 was a wonderful man, w^ho, in the 12th century, the 
 jubilant age of papal dominion, nursed the lamp of 
 Platonic mysticism in the spirit of the most refined 
 Christianity. 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge was fond of pressing this proposed publication : — " I can 
 scarcely conceive," he says in the Friend, " a more delightful volume than 
 might be made from Luther's letters, especially those that were written from 
 the Warteburg, if they were translated in the simple, sinewy, idiomatic, 
 hearty mother tongue of the original. A difficult task I admit, and scarcely 
 possible for any man, however great his talents in other respects, whose 
 favourite reading has not lain among the English writers from Edward the 
 Sixth to Charles the First." Vol. i. p. 235. n.— Ed. 
 
 t This celebrated man was a Fleming, and a member of the Augustinian 
 society of St Victor, lie died at Paris in 1142, aged forty-four. His age 
 considered, it is sufficient praise for him that Protestants and Romanists 
 both claim him for their own on the subject of transubstantiation.— Ed. 
 
178 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 June 9, 1832. 
 
 Sympathy of Old Greek and Latin with English, — Roman Mind. — 
 War, 
 
 TP you take Sophocles^ Catullus, Lucretius, the 
 ^ better parts of Cicero, and so on, you may, just 
 with two or three exceptions arising out of the different 
 idioms as to cases, translate page after page into 
 good mother English, word by word, without altering 
 the order ; but you cannot do so with Yirgil or Tibul- 
 lus : if you attempt it, you will make nonsense. 
 
 There is a remarkable power of the picturesque in 
 the fragments we have of Ennius, Actius, and other 
 very old Eoman writers. This vivid manner was 
 lost in the Augustan age. 
 
 Much as the Eomans owed to Greece in the begin- 
 ning, whilst their mind was, as it were, tuning itself 
 to an after-effort of its own music, it suffered more in 
 proportion by the influence of Greek literature sub- 
 sequently, when it was already mature and ought to 
 have worked for itself. It then became a superfeta- 
 tion upon, and not an ingredient in, the national 
 character. With the exception of the stern prag- 
 matic historian and the moral satirist, it left nothing 
 original to the Latin Muse.* 
 
 A nation, to be great, ought to be compressed in 
 its increment by nations more civilized than itself — as 
 Greece by Persia ; and Rome by Etruria, the Italian 
 states, and Carthnge. I remember Commodore De- 
 
 * Perhaps it loft letter-writing also. Even if the Platonic epistles are 
 taken as genuino, wliich Mr. Coleridge, to my surprise, was inclined to 
 believe, they can liardly interfere, I think, with the uniqueness of the truly 
 incomparable collections from the correspondence of Cicero and Pliny. — Ed. 
 
CHAUM FOR CEAMP. 
 
 179 
 
 catur saying to me at Malta^ that he deplored the 
 occupation of Louisiana by the United States^ and 
 wished that province had been possessed by England. 
 He thought that if the United States got hold of 
 Canada by conquest or cession^ the last chance of his 
 country becoming a great compact nation would be lost. 
 
 "War in republican Eome was the offspring of its 
 intense aristocracy of spirit^ and stood to the state in 
 lieu of trade. As long as there was anything ah 
 extra to conquer, the state advanced : when nothing 
 remained but what w^as Roman^ then^ as a matter of 
 course^ civil war began. 
 
 HEN I was a little boy at the Blue-coat School, 
 
 ' ' there was a charm for one^s foot when asleep ; 
 and I believe it had been in the school since its foun- 
 dation, in the time of Edward the Sixth. The march 
 of intellect has probably now exploded it. It ran 
 thus : — 
 
 Foot ! foot ! foot ! is fast asleep ! 
 
 Thumb ! thumb ! thumb ! in spittle we steep : 
 
 Crosses three we make to ease us, 
 
 Two for the thieves, and one for Christ Jesus ! 
 
 And the same charm served for a cramp in the leg, 
 with the following substitution : — 
 
 The devil is tying a knot in my leg I 
 Mark, Luke, and John, unloose it I beg ! — 
 Crosses three, &c. 
 
 And really upon getting out of bed, where the cramp 
 most frequently occurred, pressing the sole of the foot 
 on the cold floor, and then repeating this charm with 
 
 June 10, 1832. 
 
 Charm for Cramp. 
 
 N 2 
 
180 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 the acts configurative thereupon prescribed^ I can safely 
 affirm tliat I do not remember an instance in which 
 the cramp did not go away in a few seconds. 
 
 I should not wonder if it were equally good for a 
 stitch in the side ; but I cannot say I ever tried it for 
 that. 
 
 July 7, 1832. 
 
 Greek. — Dual, Neuter Plural, and Verb Singular, — Theta. 
 
 TT is hardly possible to conceive a language more 
 perfect than the Greek. If you compare it with 
 the modern European tongues^ in the points of the 
 position and relative bearing of the vowels and con- 
 sonants on each other^ and of the variety of termina- 
 tions^ it is incalculably before all in the former 
 particulars^ and only equalled in the last by German. 
 But it is in variety of termination alone that the Ger- 
 man surpasses the other modern languages as to 
 sound; for^ as to position, Nature seems to have 
 dropped an acid into the language when a-forming, 
 which curdled the vowels and made all the consonants 
 flow together. The Spanish is excellent for variety of 
 termination ; the Italian, in this particular, the most 
 deficient. Italian prose is excessively monotonous. 
 
 It is very natural to have a dual, duality being a 
 conception quite distinct from plurality. Most very 
 primitive languages have a dual, as the Greek, Welch, 
 and the native Chilese, as you will see in the Abbe 
 Raynal. 
 
 The neuter plural governing, as they call it, a verb 
 singular is one of the many instances in Greek of the 
 inward and metaphysic grammar resisting successfully 
 
TALENTED. 
 
 181 
 
 the tyranny of formal grammar. In truth, there may 
 be Multeity in things ; but there can only be Flurality 
 in persons. 
 
 Observe also, that, in fact, a neuter noun in Greek 
 has no real nominative case, though it has a formal 
 one, that is to say, the same word with the accusative. 
 The reason is — a thing has no subjectivity or nomi- 
 native case : it exists only as an object in the accusative 
 or oblique case. 
 
 It is extraordinary that the Germans should not 
 have retained or assumed the two beautifully discrimi- 
 nated sounds of the soft and hard theta ; as in thy 
 thoughts — the thin ether that, &c. How particularly 
 fine the hard theta is in an English termination, as in 
 that grand word — Death — for which the' Germans 
 gutturize a sound that puts you in mind of nothing 
 but a loathsome toad. 
 
 July 8, 1832. 
 
 Talented, 
 
 T REGRET to see that vile and barbarous vocable 
 talented, stealing out of the newspapers into the 
 leading reviews and most respectable publications of 
 fhe day. Why not shillinged, farthinged, tenjpenced, 
 &c. ? The formation of a participle passive from a 
 noun, is a licence that nothing but a very peculiar 
 felicity can excuse. If mere convenience is to justify 
 such attempts upon the idiom, you cannot stop 
 till the language becomes, in the proper sense of 
 the word, corrupt. Most of these pieces of slang 
 come from America.* 
 
 * See "ewewiwate," in Mr, Washington Irvings "Tour on the Prairies,' 
 passim. — Ed. 
 
182 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 Never take an iambus as a Christian name. A 
 trochee, or tribrach, will do very well. Edith and 
 Eotha are my favourite names for women. 
 
 July 9, 1832. 
 Homer, — Yalchenaer, 
 
 I HAVE the firmest conviction that Homer is a 
 mere traditional synonyme with, or figure for, the 
 Hiad. You cannot conceive for a moment anything 
 about the poet, as you call him, apart from that poem. 
 Difference in men there was in a degree, but not in 
 kind; one man was, perhaps, a better poet than 
 another ; but he was a poet upon the same ground 
 and wdth -the same feelings as the rest. 
 
 The want of adverbs in the Iliad is very charac- 
 teristic. "With more adverbs there would have been 
 some subjectivity, or subjectivity would have made 
 them. 
 
 The Greeks were then just on the verge of the 
 bursting forth of individuality. 
 
 Valckenaer's treatise* on the interpolation of the 
 Classics by the later Jews and early Christians is well 
 worth your perusal as a scholar and critic. 
 
 July 13, 1832. 
 Principles and Facts. — Schmidt, 
 
 T HAVE read all the famous histories, and, I believe, 
 some history of every country and nation that is, 
 or ever existed ; but I never did so for the story itself 
 as a story. The only thing interesting to me was the 
 
 * Diatribe de Aristohulo Judcco. — Ed. 
 
PRINCIPLES AND FACTS. SCHMIDT. 
 
 183 
 
 principles to be evolved from^ and illustrated by, the 
 facts.* After I had gotten my principles, I pretty 
 generally left the facts to take care of themselves. I 
 never could remember any passages in books, or the 
 particulars of events, except in the gross. I can refer 
 to them. To be sure, I must be a different sort of 
 man from Herder, who once was seriously annoyed 
 wdth himself, because, in recounting the pedigree of 
 some German royal or electoral family, he missed some 
 one of those worthies and could not recall the name. 
 
 Schmidt t was a Eomanist; but I have generally 
 found him candid, as indeed almost all the Austrians 
 are. They are what is called good Catholics ; but, like 
 
 * " The true origin of human events is so little susceptible of that kind of 
 evidence which can compel our belief; so many are the disturbing forces 
 which, in every cycle or ellipse of changes, modify the motion given by the 
 first projection; and every age has, or imagines it has, its own circum- 
 stances, which render past experience no longer applicable to the present 
 case; that there will never be wanting answers, and explanations, and 
 specious flatteries of hope, to persuade and perplex its government, that the 
 history of the past is inapplicable to their case. And no wonder, if we read 
 history for the facts, instead of reading it for the sake of the general prin- 
 ciples, which are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree to its leaves ; and 
 no wonder if history so read should find a dangerous rival in novels ; nay, if 
 the latter should be preferred to the former, on the score even of probability. 
 I well remember that, when tlie examples of former Jacobins, as Julius 
 Csesar, Cromwell, and the like, were adduced in France and England, at the 
 commencement of the French consulate, it was ridiculed as pedantry and 
 pedants' ignorance, to fear a repetition of usurpation and military despotism 
 at the close of the enlightened eighteenth century ! Even so, in the very dawn 
 of the late tempestuous day, when the revolutions of Corcyra, the proscrip- 
 tions of the reformers Marius, Caesar, &c., and the direful eflfects of the 
 levelling tenets in the peasants' war in Germany (differenced from the tenets 
 of the first French constitution only by the mode of wording them, the 
 figures of speech being borrowed in the one instance from theology, and in 
 the other from modern metaphysics), were urged on the convention and its 
 vindicators; the magi of the day, the true citizens of the world, the plusquam 
 perfectiof patriotism, gave us set proofs that similar results were impossible, 
 and that it was an insult to so philosophical an age, to so enlightened a 
 nation, to dare direct the public eye towards them as to lights of warning." 
 — Statesman's Manual, p. 14. 
 
 t Michael Ignatius Schmidt, the author of the History of the Germans. 
 He died in the latter end of the last century.— Ed. 
 
184 
 
 COLEHTDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 our Charles the Second, they never let their religious 
 bigotry interfere with their political well-doing. Kaiser 
 is a most pious son of the church, yet he always keeps 
 his papa in good order. 
 
 July 20, 1832. 
 
 Puritans and Jacobins, 
 
 TT was God^s mercy to our age that our Jacobins 
 J- were infidels and a scandal to all sober Christians. 
 Had they been like the old Puritans, they would 
 have trodden church and king to the dust — at least 
 for a time. 
 
 Eor one mercy I owe thanks beyond all utterance, 
 — that, with all my gastric and bowel distempers, my 
 head hath ever been like the head of a mountain in 
 blue air and sunshine. 
 
 July 21, 1832. 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 I HAVE often wished that the first two books of 
 the Excursion had been published separately, 
 under the name of The Deserted Cottage.^'' They 
 would have formed, what indeed they are, one of the 
 most beautiful poems in the language. 
 
 Can dialogues in verse be defended? I cannot 
 but think that a great philosophical poet ought 
 always to teach the reader himself as from himself. 
 A poem does not admit argumentation, though it 
 does admit development of thought. In prose there 
 may be a difiercncc; though I must confess that. 
 
WORDSWORTH. 
 
 185 
 
 even in Plato and Cicero^ I am always vexed that the 
 authors do not say what they have to say at once in 
 their own persons. The introductions and little 
 urbanities, are, to be sure, very delightful in their 
 way ; I would not lose them ; but I have no admira- 
 tion for the practice of ventriloquizing through another 
 man^s mouth. 
 
 I cannot help regretting that Wordsworth did not 
 first publish his thirteen books on the growth of an 
 individual mind — superior, as I used to tliink, upon 
 the whole, to the Excursion. You may judge how I 
 felt about them by my own poem upon the occasion.* 
 Then the plan laid out, and, I believe, partly sug- 
 gested by me, was, that Wordsworth should assume 
 the station of a man in mental repose, one whose 
 principles were made up, and so prepared to deliver 
 upon authority a system of philosophy. He was to 
 treat man as man, — a subject of eye, ear, touch, and 
 taste, in contact with external nature, and informing 
 the senses from the mind, and not compounding a 
 mind out of the senses ; then he was to describe the 
 pastoral and other states of society, assuming some- 
 thing of the Juvenalian spirit as he approached the 
 high civilisation of cities and towns, and opening a 
 melancholy picture of the present state of degeneracy 
 and vice ; thence he was to infer and reveal the proof 
 of, and necessity for, the whole state of man and 
 society being subject to, and illustrative of, a redemp- 
 
 ♦ Poetical Works, vol. i. p. 206. It is not too much to say of this beautiful 
 poem, and yet it is difficult to say more, that it is at once worthy of the poet, 
 his subject, and his object: — 
 
 " An Orphic song indeed, 
 A song divine of high and passionate thoughts 
 To their own music chanted " — Ed. 
 
186 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 tive process in operation^ showing how this idea 
 reconciled all the anomalies^ and promised future 
 glory and restoration. Something of this sort was^ I 
 think^ agreed on. It is, in substance, what I have 
 been all mj life doing in my system of philosophy. 
 
 I think Wordsworth possessed more of the genius 
 of a great philosophic poet than any man I ever knew, 
 or, as I believe, has existed in England since Milton ; 
 but it seems to me that he ought never to have 
 abandoned the contemplative position, which is pecu- 
 liarly — perhaps I might say exclusively — fitted for 
 him. His proper title is Spectator ah extra. 
 
 July 23, 1832. 
 French Jievolution, 
 1^0 man was more enthusiastic than I was for 
 -'-^ France and the Revolution : it had all my wishes, 
 none of my expectations. Before 1793, 1 clearly saw 
 and often enough stated in public, the horrid delusion, 
 the vile mockery of the whole affair.* When some 
 
 * " Forgive me, Freedom ! O forgive those dreams ! 
 I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament, 
 From hleak Helvetia's icy cavern sent — 
 I hear thy groans upon her blood-stain'd streams ! 
 Heroes, that for your peaceful country perish'd, 
 And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain snows 
 With bleeding Avounds ; forgive me, that I clierish'd 
 One thought that ever blest your cruel foes! 
 To scatter rage and traitorous guilt. 
 Where Peace her jealous home had built; 
 A patriot race to disinherit 
 Of all that made her stormy wilds so dear : 
 And with inexpiable spirit 
 
 To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer— 
 O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind. 
 And patriot only in pernicious toils, 
 Are these thy boasts, champion of human-kind ? 
 
INFANT SCHOOLS. 
 
 187 
 
 one said in my brother Jameses presence* that I was 
 a Jacobin^ he very well observed, — No ! Samuel is 
 no Jacobin ; he is a hot-headed Moravian ! Indeed, 
 I was in the extreme opposite pole. 
 
 July 24, 1832. 
 Infant Schools. 
 
 T HAVE no faith in act of parliament reform. All 
 the great — the permanently great — things that 
 have been achieved in the world, have been so achieved 
 by individuals, working from the instinct of genius or 
 of goodness. The rage now-a-days is all the other way : 
 the individual is supposed capal)le of nothing ; there 
 must be organisation, classification, machinery, &c., 
 as if the capital of national morality could be increased 
 by making a joint stock of it. Hence you see these 
 infant schools so patronised by the bishops and others. 
 
 To mix with kings in the low lust of SAvay, 
 Yell in the hunt and share the murderous prey — 
 To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils 
 From freemen torn — to tempt and to betray ? — 
 
 The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain, 
 Slaves by their own compulsion ! In mad game 
 They burst their manacles, and wear the name 
 Of freedom, graven on a heavier chain ! 
 O Liberty ! with profitless endeavour 
 Have I pursued thee many a weary hour ; 
 But thou nor swell'st the victor's train, nor ever 
 Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power. 
 Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee, 
 (Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee,) 
 Alike fi'om priestcraft's harpy minions, 
 And factious blasphemy's obscener slaves, 
 Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions, 
 
 The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves/ " 
 
 France, an Ode. Poetical Works, vol. 1. p. 130. 
 * A soldier of the old cavalier stamp, to whom the King was the symbol 
 of the majesty, as the Church was of the life, of the nation, and who would 
 most assuredly have taken arms for one or the other against all the Houses 
 of Commons or committees of public safety in the world. — Ed. 
 
188 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 who think them a grand invention. Is it found that 
 an infant-school child^ who has been bawling all day 
 a column of the multiplication-table^ or a verse from 
 the Bible^ grows up a more dutiful son or daughter to 
 its parents ? Are domestic charities on the increase 
 amongst families under tliis system? In a great 
 town, in our present state of society, perhaps such 
 schools may be a justifiable expedient — a choice of 
 the lesser evil ; but as for driving these establishments 
 into the country villages, and breaking up the cottage 
 home education, I think it one of the most miserable 
 mistakes which the well-intentioned people of the day 
 have yet made ; and they have made, and are making, 
 a good many, God knows. 
 
 July 25, 1832. 
 
 Mr, Coleridge's Philosophy, — Sublimity. — Solomon. — Madness. — 
 0. Lamb. — Sforza^s Decision. 
 
 T^HE pith of my system is to make the senses out 
 J- of the mind — not the mind out of the senses, as 
 
 Locke did. 
 
 Could you ever discover any thing sublime, in our 
 sense of the term, in the classic Greek literature ? I 
 never could. Sublimity is Hebrew by birth. 
 
 I should conjecture that the Proverbs and Ecclesi- 
 astes were written, or, perhaps, rather collected, about 
 the time of Nehemiah. The language is Hebrew 
 with Chaldaic endings. It is totally unlike the 
 language of Moses on the one hand, and of Isaiah on 
 the other. 
 
 Solomon introduced the commercial spirit into his 
 
PAITH AND BELIEF. 
 
 189 
 
 kingdom. I cannot think his idolatry could have 
 been much more^ in regard to himself, than a state 
 protection or toleration of the foreign worship. 
 
 When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and 
 things^ he is mad, A madman is properly so defined. 
 
 Charles Lamb translated my motto Sermoni jpropnora 
 by — -jprqperer for a sermon ! 
 
 I was much amused some time ago by reading the 
 pithy decision of one of the Sforzas of Milan^ upon 
 occasion of a dispute for precedence between the 
 lawyers and physicians of his capital; — FrcBcedant 
 f teres — sequantur carmjices. I hardly remember a 
 neater thing. 
 
 '^FHE sublime and abstruse doctrines of Christian 
 
 belief belong to the church ; but the faith of the 
 individual, centered in his heart, is or may be collateral 
 to them.* !Faith is subjective. I throw myself 
 in adoration before God; acknowledge myself his 
 creature, — simple, weak, lost ; and pray for help and 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge used very frequently to insist upon the distinction bet-R^een 
 belief and faith. He once told me, with very great earnestness, that if he 
 were that moment convinced — a conviction, the possibility of which, indeed, 
 he could not realize to himself— that the New Testament was a forgery from 
 beginning to end — wide as the desolation in his moral feelings would be, he 
 should not abate one jot of his faith in God's power and mercy through some 
 manifestation of his being towards man, either in time past or future, or in 
 the hidden depths where time and space are not. This was, I believe, no 
 more than a vivid expression of what he always maintained, that no man 
 liad attained to a full faith who did not recognize in the Scriptures a cor- 
 respondency to his own nature, or see that his own powers of reason, will, 
 and understanding were preconfigured to the reception of the Christian 
 doctrines and promises. — Ed. 
 
 July 28, 1832. 
 
 Faitlh and Belief. 
 
190 
 
 COLEraDGE S TABLE TALK. 
 
 pardon through Jesus Christ : but when I rise from 
 
 mind, I mean, not by the same process of reasonings 
 of course. 
 
 T HAEDLY know anything more amusing than the 
 honest German Jesuitry of Dobrizhoffer. His 
 chapter on the dialects is most valuable. He is sur- 
 prised that there is no form for the infinitive, but 
 
 * " He was a man of rarest qualities, 
 
 Who to this barbarous region had confined 
 A spirit with the learned and the wise 
 Worthy to take its place, and from mankind 
 Receive their homage, to the immortal mind 
 Paid in its just inheritance of fame. 
 But he to humbler thoughts his heart inclined : 
 From Gratz amid the Styrian hills he came, 
 And Dobrizhoffer was the good man's honour' d name. 
 
 " It was his evil fortune to behold 
 
 The labours of his painful life destroyed; 
 
 His flock which he liad brought within the fold 
 
 Dispersed ; the work of ages render'd void, 
 
 And all of good that Paraguay enjoy'd 
 
 By blind and suicidal power o'erthrown. 
 
 So he the years of his old age employ'd, 
 
 A faithful chronicler, in handing down 
 Names which he loved, and things well worthy to be known. 
 
 " And thus when exiled from the dear-loved scene, 
 
 In proud Vienna he beguiled the pain 
 
 Of sad remembrance : and the empress-queen, 
 
 That great Teresa, she did not disdain 
 
 In gracious mood sometimes to entertain 
 
 Discourse with him both pleasurable and sage; 
 
 And sure a willing ear she well might deign 
 
 To one whose tales may equally engage 
 The wondering mind of youth, the thoughtful heart of age. 
 
 " But of his native speech, because well-nigh 
 Disuse in him forgctfulness had wrought, 
 In Latin lie composed his history ; 
 A garrulous, but a lively tale, and fraught 
 
 August 4, 1832. 
 
 Dohrizhoffer.* 
 
SCOTCH AND ENGLISH. 
 
 191 
 
 that they say^ — I wish^ (go^ or eat^ or drink^ &c.) 
 interposing a letter by way of copula^ — forgetting his 
 own German and the English^ which are^ in truth^ the 
 same. The confident belief entertained by the Abi- 
 pones of immortality^ in connection with the utter 
 absence in their minds of the idea of a God^ is very 
 remarkable. If Warburton were rights which he is 
 not, the Mosaic scheme would be the exact converse. 
 My dear daughter's translation of this book* is, in 
 my judgment, unsurpassed for pure mother English 
 by anything I have read for a long time. 
 
 August 6, 1832. 
 Scotch and English. — Criterion of Genius. — Dry den and Pope. 
 
 T HAVE generally found a Scotchman with a little 
 literature very disagreeable. He is a superficial 
 German or a dull Erenchman. The Scotch wiU 
 attribute merit to people of any nation rather than 
 the English; the English have a morbid habit of 
 
 With matter of delight, and food for thought. 
 And if he could in Merlin's glass have seen 
 By whom his tones to speak our tongue Avere taught, 
 The old man would have felt as pleased, I ween, 
 As when he won the ear of that great empress-queen. 
 
 " Little he deem'd, when with his Indian band 
 
 He through the wilds set forth upon his way, 
 
 A poet then unborn, and in a land 
 
 Which had proscribed his order, should one day 
 
 Take up from thence his moralizing lay, 
 
 And, shape a song that, with no fiction drest. 
 
 Should to his worth its grateful tribute pay, 
 
 And sinking deep in many an English breast, 
 Foster that faith divine that keeps the heart at rest." 
 
 Souther/' s Tale of Paraguay, canto iii. st, 16. 
 
 * "An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay 
 From the Latin of Martin Dobrizhoffer, eighteen Years a Missionary in 
 tliat Country." — Vol. ii. p. 176. 
 
192 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 petting and praising foreigners of any sort, to the 
 unjust disparagement of their own worthies. 
 
 You will find this a good gage or criterion of 
 genius, — whether it progresses and evolves, or only 
 spins upon itself. Take Dryden's Achitophel and 
 Zimri, — Shaftesbury and Buckingham ; every line 
 adds to or modifies the character, which is, as it were, 
 a-building up to the very last verse; whereas, in 
 Pope^s Timon, &c. the first two or three couplets 
 contain all the pith of the character, and the twenty 
 or thirty lines that follow are so much evidence or 
 proof of overt acts of jealousy, or pride, or whatever 
 it may be that is satirised. In like manner compare 
 Charles Lamb^s exquisite criticisms on Shakspeare 
 with Hazlitt^s round and round imitations of them. 
 
 August 7, 1832. 
 Milton's disregard of Fainting. 
 
 IT is very remarkable that in no part of his writings 
 does Milton take any notice of the great painters 
 of Italy, nor, indeed, of painting as an art ; whilst 
 every other page breathes his love and taste for music. 
 Yet it is curious that, in one passage in the Paradise 
 Lost, Milton has certainly copied the fresco of the 
 Creation in the Sistine Chapel at Eome. I mean 
 those lines — 
 
 " now half appeared 
 
 The tawny lion, pawing to get free 
 
 His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, 
 
 And rampant shakes hisbrmded mane &c.* 
 
 an image wliich the necessities of the painter justified, 
 
 * Par. Lost, book vii. vor. 4G3. 
 
BAPTISMAL SEUVICE. 
 
 193 
 
 but which was wholly unworthy^ in my judgment^ of 
 the enlarged powers of the poet. Adam bending over 
 the sleeping Eve in the Paradise Lost^ * and Dalilah 
 approaching Samson, in the Agonistes,t are the only 
 two proper pictures I remember in Milton. 
 
 August 9, 1832. 
 Baptismal Service. — Jews^ Division of the Scripture. — Sanskrit. 
 
 I THINK the baptismal service almost perfect. 
 What seems erroneous assumption in it to me, is 
 harmless. None of the services of the Church affect 
 me so much as this. I never could attend a clmsten- 
 ing without tears bursting forth, at the sight of the 
 helpless innocent in a pious clergyman^'s arms. 
 
 The Jews recognised three degrees of sanctity in 
 their Scriptures: — first, the writings of Moses, who 
 
 " so much the more 
 
 His wonder was to find unwaken'd Eve 
 With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek, 
 As through unquiet rest : he on his side 
 Leaning, half raised, with looks of cordial love 
 Hung over her enamour'd, and beheld 
 Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep. 
 Shot forth peculiar graces ; then, with voice 
 Mild, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes. 
 Her hand soft touching, whisper' d thus : Awake, 
 My fairest," &c. 
 
 Book V. ver. 8. 
 t " But who is this, what thing of sea or land ? 
 Female of sex it seems, 
 That so bedeck' d, ornate, and gay, 
 Comes this way sailing 
 Like a stately ship 
 Of Tarsus, bound for the isles 
 Of Javan or Gadire, 
 
 With all her bravery on, and tackle trim, 
 Sails fill'd, and streamers waving. 
 Courted by all the winds that hold them play ; 
 An amber-scent of odorous perfume 
 Her harbinger, a damsel train behind ! " 
 
194 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK, 
 
 had the avro^Ca; secondly^ the Prophets ; and, thirdly, 
 the Good Books. Philo, amusingly enough, places his 
 works somewhere between the second and third degrees. 
 
 The claims of the Sanskrit for priority to the He- 
 *brew as a language, are ridiculous. 
 
 August 11, 1832. 
 Hesiod, — Virgil. — Genius Metaphysical. — Don Quixote. 
 
 T LIKE reading Hesiod, meaning the "Works and 
 Days. If every verse is not poetry, it is, at least, 
 good sense, which is a great deal to say. 
 
 There is nothing real in the Georgics, except, to be 
 sure, the verse.* Mere didactics of practice, unless 
 seasoned with the personal interests of the time or 
 author, are inexpressibly dull to me. Such didactic 
 poetry as that of the Works and Days followed 
 naturally upon legislation and the first ordering of 
 municipahties. 
 
 All genius is metaphysical ; because the ultimate 
 end of genius is ideal, however it may be actualised 
 by incidental and accidental circumstances. 
 
 Don Quixote is not a man out of his senses, but a 
 a man in whom the imagination and the pure reason 
 are so powerful as to make him disregard the evidence 
 of sense when it opposed their conclusions. Sancho 
 
 * I usod to fancy Mr. Coleridge paulo iniquior Virgilio, and told him so; 
 to which he replied, that, like all Eton men, I swore per Maronem. This 
 was far enough from heing the case; hut I acknowledge that Mr. C.'s 
 api)arent indifference to the tenderness and dignity of Virgil excited my 
 surprise.— Ki>. 
 
STEINMETZ. KEATS. 
 
 195 
 
 is the common sense of the social man-animal, unen- 
 lightened and unsanctified by the reason. You see 
 how he reverences liis master at the very time he is 
 cheating him. 
 
 August 14, 1832. 
 Steinmeiz. — Keats. 
 
 POOR dear Steinmetz is gone, — his state of sure 
 blessedness accelerated; or, it may be, he is 
 buried in Christ, and there in that mysterious depth 
 grows on to the spirit of a just man made perfect ! 
 Could I for a moment doubt this, the grass would 
 become black beneath my feet, and this earthly frame 
 a charnel-house. I never knew any man so illustrate 
 the difference between the feminine and the effeminate. 
 
 A loose, slack, not well-dressed youth met Mr. 
 
 and myself in a lane near Highgate. knew 
 
 him, and spoke. It was Keats. He was introduced 
 to me, and stayed a minute or so. After he had left 
 us a little way, he came back and said : Let me 
 carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having pressed 
 your hand — " There is death in that hand,^^ I said 
 to , when Keats was gone ; yet this was, 1 be- 
 lieve, before the consumption showed itself distinctly.* 
 
 * It was to his friend, Mr. J. H. Green, that Mr. Coleridge addressed the 
 remark recorded, on the young poet's hand ; and from him I learned that the 
 interview took place certainly a year or two after 1817, when he and Mr. C. 
 were first introduced to each other, and veiy probably as late as the spring 
 of 1819, the time when Keats composed his exquisite Ode to a Nightingale, 
 about which Mr. Leigh Hunt says : " The poet had then his mortal illness 
 upon him, and knew it." That "sensuous and impassioned" poem, in its 
 feverish vividness and intensity, does indeed seem in some sort to attest 
 incipient consumption. But neither this nor any other utterance had, as yet, 
 announced the sorrowful fact that a fatal malady was already loosening the 
 silver cord that bound the gentle child Adonais " to this earth, the loveli- 
 ness of which, as Shellev, in his splendid "Lament," affirms, he "made 
 
 o 2 
 
196 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 August 16, 1832. 
 Christ's Hospital. — Bowyer. 
 
 nPHE discipline at Christ^s Hospital in my time was 
 ultra-Spartan; all domestic ties were to be put 
 aside. Boy ! " I remember Bowyer saying to me 
 once when I was crying the first day of my return 
 after the hohdays, Boy ! the school is your father ! 
 Boy ! the school is your mother ! Boy ! the school 
 is your brother ! the school is your sister ! the school 
 is your first cousin, and your second cousin, and all the 
 rest of your relations ! Let ^s have no more crying V 
 
 No tongue can express good Mrs. Bowyer. Val le 
 Grice and I were once going to be flogged for some 
 domestic misdeed, and Bowyer was thundering away 
 at us by way of prologue, when Mrs. B. looked in, 
 and said, Flog them soundly, sir, I beg ! This 
 saved us. Bowyer was so nettled at the interruption 
 that he growled out, Away, woman ! away ! " and 
 we were let off. 
 
 more lovely," setting it forth in verse of such a luxuriant summer flush of 
 beauty, as hardly any other poet's spring of life had produced. 
 
 " The hand of Keats felt to Coleridge clammy and cold," said Mr. Green, 
 pursuing his remembrances of the subject, " like the hand of a dead man. I 
 knew the young poet from his having been apprenticed to my father-in-law 
 at Southgate. On approaching us in the lane, he asked if I would introduce 
 him to Mr. Coleridge. * Yes, certainly,' I said. We talked of all this to 
 Mr. Gillman on our return to the house." 
 
 Mr. M. Milnes, in a note to the " Life and Letters of Keats," speaks as if 
 he supposed that my father's observation had been represented as having 
 he/in made to Mr. L. Hunt^ and adds : " This was at the period when Keats 
 first knew Mr. Hunt, and was in perfect health," all which is a little cluster 
 of mistakes. My father was not acquainted with Mr. Hunt when he resided 
 at Highgate, as that gentleman himself implies in a sentence of his " Fancy 
 and Imagination," which contains a genial and pleasing critique on Cole- 
 ridge's poetry ; and, according to the Memoir, Keats first knew Mr. Hunt 
 early in 1816, a year before tlje time when Mr. Green first knew Mr. Cole- 
 ridge, and long before the meeting really took place.— S. C. 
 
ST. PAULAS MELITA. 
 
 197 
 
 August 28, 1832. 
 St. PauVs Melita. 
 
 nnHE belief that Malta is the island on which St. 
 
 Paul was wrecked^ is so rooted in the common 
 Maltese, and is cherished with such a superstitious 
 nationality, that the Government would run the 
 chance of exciting a tumult, if it, or its representa- 
 tives, unwarily ridiculed it. The supposition itself is 
 quite absurd. Not to argue the matter at length, 
 consider these few conclusive facts : — The narrative 
 speaks of the barbarous people,^^ and ^^barbarians,^^ * 
 of the island. Now, our Malta was at that time fully 
 peopled and liighly civihsed, as we may surely infer 
 from Cicero and other writers.f A viper comes out 
 
 * Acts xxvii. 2 and 4. Mr. C. seemed to think that the Greek words had 
 reference to something more than the fact of the islanders not speaking 
 Latin»or Greek; the classical meaning of (Boc^Soteoi. — Ed. 
 
 Upwards of a century before the reign of Nero, Cicero speaks at con- 
 siderable length of our Malta in one of the Verrine orations. See Act. ii. 
 lib. iv. c. 46. " Insula est Melita, judices," &c. There was a town, and Verres 
 had established in it a manufactory of the fine cloth or cotton stuflfs, the 
 Melitensis vestis, for which the island is uniformly celebrated : — 
 
 " Fertilis est Melite sterili vicina Cocyrse 
 Insula, quam Libyci verberat unda freti." 
 
 Ovid. Fast. iii. 567. 
 
 And Silius Italicus has — 
 
 " telaque superba 
 
 Lanigera Melite." 
 
 Punic, xiv. 251. 
 
 Yet it may have been cotton after all — the present product of Malta. Cicero 
 describes an ancient temple of Juno situated on a promontory near the town, 
 so famous and revered, that, even in the time of Masinissa, at least 150 years 
 B. c, that prince had religiously restored some relics which his admiral had 
 taken from it. The plunder of this very temple is an article of accusation 
 against Verres ; and a deputation of Maltese {legati Melitenses) came to Rome 
 to establish the charge. These are all the facts, I think, which can be 
 gathered from Cicero ; because I consider his expression of midatcB urhes. in 
 the working up of this article, a piece of rhetoric. Strabo merely marks the 
 position of Melita, and says that the lap-dogs called xvnhoc, M6Xitoc7» were 
 sent from this island, though some writers attribute them to the other Melite 
 in the Adriatic (lib. vi.). Diodorus, however, a Sicilian himself by birth, 
 
198 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 from the sticks upon the fire being lighted : the men 
 are not surprised at the appearance of the snake, but 
 imagine first a murderer, and then a god from the 
 harmless attack. Now, in our Malta there are, I may 
 say, no snakes at all; which, to be sure, the Maltese 
 attribute to St. PauFs having cursed them away. 
 Melita in the Adriatic was a perfectly barbarous island 
 as to its native population, and was, and is now, in- 
 fested with serpents. Besides, the context shows that 
 the scene is in the Adriatic. 
 
 The Maltese seem to have preserved a fondness 
 and taste for architecture from the time of the knights 
 — naturally enough occasioned by the incomparable 
 materials at hand.* 
 
 August 19, 1832. 
 English and Oerman. — Best state of Society, 
 
 TT may be doubted whether a composite language 
 like the English, is not a happier instrument of 
 expression than a homogeneous one like the German. 
 We possess a wonderful richness and variety of 
 modified meanings in our Saxon and Latin quasi- 
 
 gives the following remarkable testimony as to the state of the island in his 
 time, which, it will be remembered, was considerably before the date of St. 
 Paul's shipwreck. " There are three islands to the south of Sicily, each of 
 which has a city or town (^oKiv), and harbours fitted for the safe reception of 
 ships. The first of these is Melite, distant about 800 stadia from Syracuse, 
 and possessing several harbours of surpassing excellence. Its inhabitants 
 are ricli and luxurious (rohs xotroixouvrotf rocU ova-ioas lu^cc/fj^ovx?). There 
 are artisans of every kind {^cx-vTodocrohi rajs i^yota-'iutt) ; the best are those 
 who weave cloth of a singular fineness and softness. The houses are 
 wortliy of admiration for their superb adornment with eaves and brilliant 
 whitewashing {olyJa.? a.^ioXoyw; y.ou xu.TiiTxiva.(riJL,'iva,i <pt\oTtiu,ot)f yn'trcois xoti 
 xovta,fjLot,(n Tri^irroTi^ov)." — Lib. v. c. 12. Mela (ii. c. 7) and Pliny (iii. 14), 
 simi)ly mark the position. — Ed. 
 
 * The passage which I have cited from Diodorus, shows that the origin 
 was much earlier. — Ed. 
 
philosopher's ohdinary language. 199 
 
 synonymes, which the Germans have not. For the 
 pomp prodigality of Heaven/^ the Germans must 
 have said, the sjoendthriftness,^'^ Shakspeare is 
 particularly happy in his use of the Latin synonymes, 
 and in distinguishing between them and the Saxon. 
 
 That is the most excellent state of society in which 
 the patriotism of the citizen ennobles, but does not 
 merge, the individual energy of the man. 
 
 September 1, 1832. 
 Oi'eat Minds Androgynous, — Philosopher's ordinary Language. 
 
 TN chemistry and nosology, by extending the degree 
 to a certain point, the constituent proportion may 
 be destroyed, and a new kind produced. 
 
 I have known strong minds, with imposing, un- 
 doubting, Cobbett-Kke manners ; but I have never met 
 a great mind of this sort. And of the former, they 
 are at least as often wrong as right. The truth is, a 
 great mind must be androgynous. Great minds — 
 Swedenborg^s for instance — are never wrong, but in 
 consequence of being in the right, but imperfectly. 
 
 A philosopher's ordinary language and admissions, 
 in general conversation or writings ad pojpulum, are as 
 his watch compared with his astronomical timepiece. 
 He sets the former by the town-clock, not because he 
 believes it right, but because his neighbours and his 
 cook go by it. 
 
 * Verschwendung, I suppose. — Ed 
 
200 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 January 2, 1833. 
 
 Juries. — Barristers* and Physicians' Fees. — Quacks. — Cesarean 
 Operation. — Inherited Disease, 
 
 JCEETAINLY tliink that juries would be more 
 conscientious, if they were allowed a larger dis- 
 cretion. But, after all, juries cannot be better than 
 the mass out of which they are taken. And if juries 
 are not honest and single-minded, they are the worst, 
 because the least responsible, instruments of judicial 
 or popular tyranny. 
 
 I should be sorry to see the honorary character of 
 the fees of barristers and physicians done away with. 
 Though it seems a shadowy distinction, I believe it to 
 be beneficial in effect. It contributes to preserve the 
 idea of a profession, of a class which belongs to the 
 pubKc, — in the employment and remuneration of 
 which no law interferes, but the citizen acts as he likes 
 in foro coTiscientice, 
 
 There undoubtedly ought to be a declaratory act, 
 withdrawing expressly from the St. John Longs and 
 other quacks, the protection which the law is inclined 
 to throw around the mistakes or miscarriages of the 
 regularly educated practitioner. 
 
 I think there are only two things wanting to justify 
 a surgeon in performing the Caesarean operation : first, 
 that he should possess infallible knowledge of his art; 
 and, secondly, that he should be infallibly certain that 
 he is infallible. 
 
 Can anything be more dreadful than the thought 
 that an innocent child has inherited from you a disease 
 
MASON'S POETHY. 
 
 201 
 
 or a weakness, the penalty in yourself of sin or want 
 
 of caution ? * 
 
 In the treatment of nervous cases, he is the best 
 physician, who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope. 
 
 January 3, 1833. 
 Mason's Poetry. 
 
 T CANNOT bruig myself to think much of Mason^s 
 poetry. I may be wrong ; but all those passages 
 in the Caractacus, which we learn to admire at school, 
 now seem to me one continued falsetto. 
 
 January 4, 1833. 
 
 Northern and Southern States of the American Union, — All and 
 the Whole, 
 
 VTATUEALLY one would have thought that there 
 would have been greater sympathy between the 
 northern and north-western states of the American 
 Union and England, than between England and the 
 Southern states. There is ten times as much English 
 blood and spirit in New England as in Virginia, the 
 Carolinas, &c. Nevertheless, such has been the force 
 of the interests of commerce, that now, and for some 
 years past, the people of the north hate England with 
 increasing bitterness, whilst, amongst those of the 
 south, who are Jacobins, the British connexion has 
 become popular. Can there ever be any thorough 
 national fusion of the Northern and Southern states ? 
 I think not. In fact, the Union will be shaken 
 almost to dislocation whenever a very serious question 
 between the states arises. The American Union has 
 no centre^ and it is impossible now to make one. 
 
202 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 The more they extend their borders into the Indians^ 
 land, the weaker will the national cohesion be. But 
 I look upon the states as splendid masses to be used, 
 by and by, in the composition of two or three great 
 governments. 
 
 There is a great and important difference, both in 
 politics and metaphysics, between all and the whole. 
 The first can never be ascertained as a standing quan- 
 tity j the second, if comprehended by insight into its 
 parts, remains for ever known. Mr. Huskisson, I 
 thought, satisfactorily refuted the shipowners; and 
 yet the shipping interest, who must know where the 
 shoe pinches, complain to this day. 
 
 January 7, 1833. 
 Ninth Article. — Sin and Sins. — Old Divines. — Preaching extem- 
 pore. 
 
 T7EEY far gone,^^ is quam longissime in the Latin 
 
 ' of the ninth article, — as far gone as possible, 
 that is, as was possible for man to go ; as far as was 
 compatible with his having any redeemable qualities 
 left in him. To talk of man^s being utterly lost to 
 good, is absurd ; for then he would be a devil at once. 
 
 One mistake perpetually made by one of our un- 
 happy parties in religion, — and with a pernicious 
 tendency to Antinomianism, — is to confound sin 
 with sins. To tell a modest girl, the watchful nurse 
 of an aged parent, that she is full of sins against God, 
 is monstrous, and as shocking to reason as it is un- 
 warrantable by Scripture, But to tell her that she, 
 and all men and women, are of a sinful nature, and 
 
PEEACHTNG EXTEMPOHE. 
 
 203 
 
 that, without Chrisf s redeeming love and God's 
 grace^ she cannot be emancipated from its dominion, 
 
 is true and proper.* 
 
 No article of faith can be truly and duly preaclied 
 without necessarily and simultaneously infusing a 
 deep sense of the indispensableness of a holy life. 
 
 How pregnant with instruction, and with knowledge 
 of all sorts, are the sermons of our old divines ! in this 
 respect, as in so many others, how different from the 
 major part of modern discourses ! 
 
 Every attempt, in a sermon, to cause emotion^ 
 except as the consequence of an impression made on 
 the reason, or the understanding, or the will, I hold 
 to be fanatical and sectarian. 
 
 No doubt preaching, in the proper sense of the 
 word, is more effective than reading ; and, therefore, I 
 would not prohibit it, but leave a liberty to the 
 clergyman who feels himself able to accomplish it. 
 But, as things now are, I am quite sure I prefer going 
 to church to a pastor who reads his discourse : for I 
 never yet heard more than one preacher without book, 
 who did not forget his argument in three minutes' 
 time ; and fall into vague and unprofitable declama- 
 tion, and generally, very coarse declamation too. 
 These preachers never progress ; they eddy round and 
 round. Sterihty of mind follows their ministry. 
 
 * In a marginal scrap Mr. C. wrote : — "What are the essential doctrines 
 of our religion, if not sin and original sin, as the necessitating occasion, 
 and the redemption of sinners by the Incarnate Word as the substance of 
 the Christian dispensation? And can these be intelligently believed 
 without knoAvledge and steadfast meditation? By the unlearned they 
 may be worthily received, but not by the unthinking and self-ignorant 
 Christian." — Ed. 
 
204 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 January 20, 1833. 
 Church of England. 
 
 "HEN the Church at the Reformation ceased to 
 
 be extra-national, it unhappily became royal 
 instead; its proper bearing is intermediate between 
 the crown and the people, with an inclination to the 
 latter. 
 
 The present prospects of the Church weigh heavily 
 on my soul. Oh ! that the words of a statesman- 
 like philosophy could win their way through the 
 ignorant zealotry and sordid vulgarity of the leaders 
 of the day ! 
 
 IF any modification of the Union takes place, I 
 trust it will be a total divorce a vinculo matrimonii, 
 I am sure we have lived a cat and dog life of it. Let 
 us have no silly saving of one crown and two legisla- 
 tures ; that would be preserving all the mischiefs with- 
 out any of the goods, if there are any, of the union. 
 
 I am deHberately of opinion, that England, in all 
 its institutions, has received injury from its union 
 with Ireland. My only difficulty is as to the Pro- 
 testants, to whom we owe protection. But I cannot 
 forget that the Protestants themselves have greatly 
 aided in accelerating the present horrible state of 
 things, by using that as a remedy and a reward which 
 should have been to them an opportunity.* 
 
 * " Whatever may be thought of the settlement that followed the battle 
 of the Boyne and the extinction of the war in Ireland, yet when this had 
 been made and submitted to, it would have been the far wiser policy, I doubt 
 not, to have provided for the safety of the constitution by improving the 
 
 February 5, 1833. 
 Union with Ireland, 
 
UNION WITH lEELAND. 
 
 205 
 
 If the Protestant Church in Ireland is removed,, of 
 course the Romish Church must be established in its 
 place. There can be no resisting it in common reason. 
 
 How miserably imbecile and objectless has the 
 Enghsh government of Ireland been for forty years 
 past ! Oh ! for a great man — but one reaUy great 
 man — who could feel the weight and the power of a 
 principle^ and unflinchingly put it into act ! But truly 
 there is no vision in the land^ and the people accord- 
 ingly perisheth. See how triumphant in debate and 
 in action O^Connell is ! Why ? Because he asserts 
 a broad principle and acts up to it, rests aU his body 
 on it and has faith in it. Our ministers — true Whigs 
 in that — have faith in nothing but expedients de die 
 in diem. Indeed, what principles of government can 
 they have, who in the space of a month recanted a life 
 of political opinions, and now dare to threaten this 
 
 quality of the elective franchise, leaving the eligibility open, or like the 
 former, limited only by considerations of property. Still, however, the 
 scheme of exclusion and disqualification had its plausible side. The ink 
 was scarcely dry on the parchment-rolls and proscription-lists of the popish 
 parliament. The crimes of the man were generalised into attributes of 
 his faith; and the Irish catholics collectively were held accomplices in 
 the perfidy and baseness of the king. Alas ! his immediate adherents 
 had afforded too great colour to the charge. The Irish massacre was in 
 the mouth of every Protestant, not as an event to be remembered, but 
 as a thing of recent expectation, fear still blending with the sense of 
 deliverance. At no time, therefore, could the disqualifying system have 
 been enforced with so little reclamation of the conquered party, or with 
 so little outrage on the general feeling of the country. There was no time 
 when it was so capable of being indirectly useful as a sedative, in order to 
 the application of the remedies directly indicated, or as a counter-power 
 reducing to inactivity whatever disturbing forces might have interfered 
 with their operation. And had this use been made of these exclusive 
 laws, and had they been enforced as the precursors and negative condi- 
 tions, — but, above all, as tond fide accompaniments of a process of eman- 
 cipation, properly and worthily so named, the code would at this day have 
 been remembered in Ireland only as when, recalling a dangerous fever of 
 our boyhood, we think of the nauseous drugs and drenching-hom. and 
 congratulate ourselves that our doctors now-a-days know how to manage 
 these things less coarsely. But this angry code was neglected as an. 
 opportunity, and mistaken for a substitute: et hinc illce lacrt/mcef' — Church 
 and State, p. 195. 
 
206 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 and that innovation at the huzza of a mob, or in pique 
 at a parliamentary defeat ? 
 
 T sometimes think it just possible that the Dissen- 
 ters may once more be animated by a wiser and 
 nobler spirit, and see their dearest interest in the 
 Church of England as the bulwark and glory of Pro- 
 testantism, as they did at the Revolution. But I 
 doubt their being able to resist the low factious 
 malignity to the Church which has characterised them 
 as a body for so many years. 
 
 February 16, 1833. 
 Faust. —Michael Scott, Goethe, Schiller, and Wordsworth, 
 
 BEPORE I had ever seen any part of Goethe^s 
 Eaust,* though, of course, when I was familiar 
 enough with Marlowe^ s, I conceived and drew up the 
 
 * " The poem "was first published in 1790, and forms the commence- 
 ment of the seventh volume of Goethe's Schriften, Wien und Leipzig, hey 
 J. Stahel and G. J. Goschen, 1790. This edition is now before me. The 
 poem is entitled, Faust, ein Fragment (not Doktor Faust, ein Trauer spiel, 
 as Doring says), and contains no prologue or dedication of any sort. It 
 commences with the scene in Faust's study, ant^, p. 17, and is continued, 
 as now, down to the passage ending, anth, p. 26, line 5. In the original, 
 the line— 
 
 " Und froh ist, wenn er Regenwurmer findet," 
 
 ends the scene. 
 
 The next scene is one between Faust and Mephistopheles, and begins 
 thus — 
 
 " Und was der ganzen Menschheit zugetheilt ist," 
 
 i. e., with the passage {ant^, p. 70) beginning, " I will enjoy, in my own 
 heart's core, all that is parcelled out among mankind," &c. All that inter- 
 venes, in later editions, is wanting. It is thenceforth continued, as now, to 
 the end of the cathedral scene {ant!^., p. 170), except that the whole scene, in 
 which Valentine is killed, is wanting. Thus Margaret's prayer to the 
 Virgin and tlie cathedral scene come together, and form the conclusion of the 
 work. According to Doring's Verzeichniss, there was no ncAV edition of 
 Faust until 1807. According to Dr. Sieglitz, the first part of Faust first 
 appeared, in its present sliape, in the collected edition of Goethe's works, 
 which was jjublished in 1808. — Hayward^a Translation of Faust, second edition, 
 note, p. 215. 
 
FAUST. 
 
 207 
 
 plan of a work^ a drama, which was to be, to my 
 mind, what the Paust was to Goethe^s. My Faust 
 was old Michael Scott; a much better and more 
 likely original than Paust. He appeared in the midst 
 of his college of devoted disciples, enthusiastic, ebul- 
 lient, shedding around him bright surmises of dis- 
 coveries fully perfected in after-times, and inculcating 
 the study of nature and its secrets as the pathway to 
 the acquisition of power. He did not love knowledge 
 for itself — for its own exceeding great reward — but 
 in order to be powerful. This poison-speck infected 
 his mind from the beginning. The priests suspect 
 him, circumvent him, accuse him ; he is condemned, 
 and thrown into solitary confinement : this constituted 
 the prologus of the drama. A pause of four or five 
 years takes place, at the end of which Michael escapes 
 from prison, a soured, gloomy, miserable man. He 
 will not, cannot study; of what avail had all his 
 study been to him ? His knowledge, great as it was, 
 had failed to preserve him from the cruel fangs of the 
 persecutors ; he could not command the lightning or 
 the storm to wreak their furies upon the heads of those 
 whom he hated and contemned, and yet feared. Away 
 with learning ! away with study ! to the winds with 
 all pretences to knowledge ! We know nothing ; we 
 are fools, wretches, mere beasts. Anon I began to 
 tempt him. I made him dream, gave him wdne, and 
 passed the most exquisite of women before him, but 
 out of his reach. Is there, then, no knowledge by 
 w^hich these pleasures can be commanded ? That way 
 lay witchcraft, and accordingly to witchcraft Michael 
 turns with all his soul. He has many failures and 
 some successes ; he learns the chemistry of exciting 
 
208 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 drugs and exploding powders, and some of the pro- 
 perties of transmitted and reflected light; his appe- 
 tites and his curiosity are both stimulated, and his old 
 craving for power and mental domination over others 
 revives. At last Michael tries to raise the Devil, and 
 the Devil comes at his call. My Devil was to be, 
 like Goethe^ s, the universal humourist, who should 
 make all things vain and nothing worth, by a per- 
 petual collation of the great with the little in the 
 presence of the infinite. I had many a trick for him 
 to play, some better, I think, than any in the Faust. 
 In the mean time, Michael is miserable ; he has power, 
 but no peace, and he every day more keenly feels the 
 tyranny of hell surrounding him. In vain he seems 
 to himseK to assert the most absolute empire over the 
 Devil, by imposing the most extravagant tasks ; one 
 thing is as easy as another to the Devil. What 
 next, Michael is repeated every day with more 
 imperious servility. Michael groans in spirit; his 
 power is a curse: he commands women and wine! 
 bat the women seem fictitious and devilish, and the 
 wine does not make him drunk. He now begins to 
 hate the Devil, and tries to cheat him. He studies 
 again, and explores the darkest depths of sorcery for 
 a receipt to cozen hell ; but all in vain. Sometimes 
 the Devil^s finger turns over the page for him, and 
 points out an experiment, and Michael hears a whisper 
 — ^^Try thaty Michael ! " The horror increases ; and 
 Michael feels that he is a slave and a condemned 
 criminal. Lost to hope, he throws himseK into every 
 sensual excess, — in the mid career of which he sees 
 Agatha, my Margaret, and immediately endeavours to 
 seduce her. Agatha loves him ; and the Devil faci- 
 
PAUST. 
 
 209 
 
 litates their meetings; but she resists MichaeFs 
 attempts to ruin her^ and implores liim not to act so 
 as to forfeit her esteem. Long struggles of passion 
 ensue^ in the result of which his affections are called 
 forth against his appetites^ and, love-born, the idea of 
 a redemption of the lost will dawns upon his mind. 
 This is instantaneously perceived by the Devil ; and 
 for the first time the humourist becomes severe and 
 menacing. A fearful succession of conflicts between 
 Michael and the Devil takes place, in which Agatha 
 helps and suffers. In the end, after subjecting him 
 to every imaginable horror and agony, I made him 
 triumphant, and poured peace into his soul in the con- 
 viction of a salvation for sinners through God^s grace. 
 
 The intended theme of the Faust is the consequences 
 of a misology, or hatred and depreciation of knowledge 
 caused by an originally intense thirst for knowledge 
 baffled. But a love of knowledge for itself, and for 
 pure ends, would never produce such a misology, but 
 only a love of it for base and unworthy purposes. 
 There is neither causation nor progression in the 
 Faust; he is a ready-made conjuror from the very 
 beginning; the mcredulus odi is felt from the first 
 line. The sensuality and the thirst after knowledge 
 are unconnected with each other. Mephistopheles 
 and Margaret are excellent; but Faust himself is 
 dull and meaningless. The scene in Auerbach''s 
 cellars is one of the best, perhaps the very best ; that 
 on the Brocken is also fine; and all the songs are 
 beautiful. But there is no whole in the poem ; the 
 scenes are mere magic-lantern pictures, and a large 
 part of the work is to me very flat. The German is 
 very pure and fine. 
 
210 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 Tlie young men in Germany and England who 
 admire Lord Byron, prefer Goethe to Schiller; but 
 you may depend upon it, Goethe does not, nor ever 
 wiU, command the common mind of the people of 
 Germany as Schiller does. Schiller had two legitimate 
 phases in his intellectual character : — the first as 
 author of the Robbers — a piece which must not be 
 considered with reference to Shakspeare, but as a work 
 of the mere material sublime, and in that line it is 
 undoubtedly very powerful indeed. It is quite 
 genuine, and deeply imbued with Schiller^s owii soul. 
 After this he outgrew the composition of such plays 
 as the Robbers, and at once took his true and only 
 rightful stand in the grand historical drama — the 
 Wallenstein ; — not the intense drama of passion, — he 
 was not master of that — but the diffused drama of 
 history, in which alone he had ample scope for his 
 varied powers. The Wallenstein is the greatest of 
 liis works; it is not unlike Shakspeare's historical 
 plays — a species by itself. You may take up any 
 scene, and it will please you by itself ; just as you 
 may in Don Quixote, which you read through once or 
 twice only, but which you read in repeatedly. After 
 this point it was, that Goethe and other writers 
 injured by their theories the steadiness and originahty 
 of Schiller's mind; and in every one of his works 
 after the Wallenstein you may perceive the fluctuations 
 of his taste and principles of composition. He got a 
 notion of re-introducing the characterlessness of the 
 Greek tragedy with a chorus, as in the Bride of Mes- 
 sina, and lie was for infusing more lyric verse into it. 
 Schiller sometimes afl*ected to despise the Robbers 
 and the other works of his first youth ; whereas he 
 
PATJST. 
 
 211 
 
 ought to have spoken of them as of works not in a 
 right line, but full of excellence in their way. In 
 his ballads and lighter lyrics Goethe is most excellent. 
 It is impossible to praise him too highly in this 
 respect. I like the Wilhelm Meister the best of his 
 prose works. But neither Schiller^ s nor Goethe^s 
 prose style approaches to Lessing's, whose writings, 
 for manner, are absolutely perfect. 
 
 Although Wordsworth and Goethe are not much 
 alike, to be sure, upon the whole ; yet they both have 
 this peculiarity of utter non-sympathy with the sub- 
 jects of their poetry. They are always, both of them, 
 spectators ah extra, — feeling/br, but never with, their 
 characters. Schiller is a thousand times more hearty 
 than Goethe. 
 
 I was once pressed — many years ago — to translate 
 the Paust ; and I so far entertained the proposal as 
 to read the work through with great attention, and to 
 revive in my mind my own former plan of Michael 
 Scott. But then I considered with myself whether 
 the time taken up in executing the translation might 
 not more worthily be devoted to the composition of a 
 work which, even if parallel in some points to the 
 Faust, should be truly original in motive and execu- 
 tion, and therefore more interesting and valuable than 
 any version which I could make ; and, secondly, I 
 debated with myself whether it became my moral 
 character to render into English — and so far, cer- 
 tainly, lend my countenance to language — much of 
 which I thought vulgar, licentious, and blasphemous. 
 I need not tell you that I never put pen to paper as a 
 translator of Eaust. 
 
 I have read a good deal of Mr. Hayward's version, 
 
 p 2 
 
212 
 
 COLERIDGE *S TABLE TALK. 
 
 and I think it done in a very manly style ; bat I do 
 not admit the argument for prose translations. I 
 would in general rather see verse attempted in so 
 capable a language as ours. The French cannot help 
 themselves^ of course^ with such a language as theirs. 
 
 February 17, 1833. 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, — Ben Jonson. — Massinger. 
 
 TN the romantic drama Beaumont and Fletcher are 
 almost supreme. Their plays are in general most 
 truly delightful. I could read the Beggar's Bush 
 from morning to night. How sylvan and sunshiny it 
 is ! The Little French Lawyer is excellent. Lawrit 
 is conceived and executed from first to last in genuine 
 comic humour. Monsieur Thomas is also capital. I 
 have no doubt whatever that the first act and the first 
 scene of the second act of the Two Noble Kinsmen 
 are Shakspeare^s. Beaumont and Fletcher^s plots 
 are^ to be sure^ wholly inartificial ; they only care to 
 pitch a character into a position to make him or her 
 talk ; you must swallow all their gross improbabilities, 
 and, taking it all for granted, attend only to the 
 dialogue. How lamentable it is that no gentleman 
 and scholar can be found to edit these beautiful plays ! * 
 Did the name of criticism ever descend so low as in 
 the hands of those two fools and knaves, Seward and 
 Simpson ? There are whole scenes in their edition 
 which I could with certainty put back into their 
 
 * I believe Mr. Dycc could edit Beaumont and Fletcher as well as any 
 man of the present or last generation ; but the truth is, the limited sale of the 
 late editions of lien Jonson, Sliirley, &c., has dam])ed the spirit of enterprise 
 amongst the respectable publishers. Still 1 marvel that some cheap reprint 
 of B. and F. is not undertaken. — Ed. 
 
BEN JONSON. MASSINGER. 
 
 213 
 
 original verse^ and more that could be replaced in 
 their native prose. Was there ever such an absolute 
 disregard of literary fame as that disjplayed by Shak- 
 speare^ and Beaumont and Metcher ? * 
 
 In Ben Jonson you have an intense and burning 
 art. Some of his plots, that of the Alchemist, for 
 example, are perfect. Ben J onson and Beaumont and 
 Fletcher would, if united, have made a great dramatist 
 indeed, and yet not have come near Shakspeare ; but 
 no doubt Ben Jonson was the greatest man after 
 Shakspeare in that age of dramatic genius. 
 
 The styles of Massinger^s plays and the Samson 
 Agonistes are the two extremes of the arc within which 
 the diction of dramatic poetry may oscillate. Shak- 
 speare in his great plays is the midpoint. In the 
 Samson Agonistes, colloquial language is left at the 
 greatest distance, yet something of it is preserved, to 
 render the dialogue probable : in Massinger the style 
 is differenced, but differenced in the smallest degree 
 possible, from animated conversation by the vein of 
 poetry. 
 
 There ^s such a divinity doth hedge our Shakspeare 
 round, that we cannot even imitate his style. I tried 
 to imitate his manner in the Eemorse, and, when I had 
 
 * " The men of the greatest genius, as far as we can judge from their own 
 works, or from the accounts of their contemporaries, appear to have heen of 
 calm and tranquil temper, in all that related to themselves. In the inward 
 assurance of permanent fame, they seem to have been either indiflferent or 
 resigned, with regard to immediate reputation." 
 
 " Shakspeare's evenness and sweetness of temper were almost proverbial 
 in his own age. That this did not arise from ignorance of his oym comparative 
 greatness, we have abundant proof in his sonnets, which could scarcely have 
 been known to Mr. Pope, when he asserted, that our great bard 'grew 
 immortal in his own despite.* " — Bioff. Lit. vol. i. p. 32. 
 
214 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 done, I found I had been tracking Beaumont and 
 Metcher, and Massinger instead. It is really very 
 curious. At first sight, Shakspeare and his contempo- 
 rary dramatists seem to write in styles much alike : 
 nothing so easy as to fall into that of Massinger and 
 the others ; whilst no one has ever yet produced one 
 scene conceived and expressed in the Shakspearian 
 idiom. I suppose it is because Shakspeare is univer- 
 sal, and, in fact, has no manner ; just as you can so 
 much more readily copy a picture than Nature herself. 
 
 February 20, 1833. 
 House of Commons appointing the Officers of the Army and Navy, 
 
 I WAS just now reading Sir John Cam Hobhouse^s 
 answer to Mr. Hume, I believe, upon the point of 
 transferring the patronage of the army and navy from 
 the Crown to the House of Commons. I think, if I 
 had been in the House of Commons, I would have 
 said, that, ten or fifteen years ago, I should have 
 considered Sir J. C. H.''s speech quite unanswerable, 
 — it being clear constitutional law that the House of 
 Commons has not, nor ought to have, any share, 
 directly or indirectly, in the appointment of the 
 officers of the army or navy. But now that the King 
 had been reduced, by the means and procurement of 
 the Honourable Baronet and his friends, to a puppet, 
 which, so far from having any independent will of its 
 own, could not resist a measure which it hated and 
 condemned, it became a matter of grave consideration 
 whetlier it was not necessary to vest the appointment 
 of such officers in a body like the House of Commons, 
 rather than in a junta of ministers, who were obliged 
 
CHURCHMEN. 
 
 215 
 
 to make common cause with the mob and democratic 
 press for the sake of keeping their places/' 
 
 March 9, 1833. 
 Penal Code in Ireland. — Churchmen. 
 nPHE penal code in Ireland^ in the beginning of the 
 last century^ was justifiable^ as a temporary mean 
 of enabling government to take breath and look about 
 them ; and if right measures had been systematically 
 pursued in a right spirit^ there can be no doubt that 
 all^ or the greater part, of Ireland would have become 
 Protestant. Protestantism under the Charter Schools 
 was greatly on the increase in the early part of that 
 century, and the complaints of the Romish priests to 
 that effect are on record. But^ unfortunately the 
 drenching-horn was itself substituted for the medicine. 
 
 There seems to me^ at present^ to be a curse upon 
 the English church, and upon the governors of all 
 institutions connected with the orderly advancement 
 of national piety and knowledge; it is the curse of 
 prudence, as they miscall it — in fact, of fear. 
 
 Clergymen are now almost afraid to explain in their 
 pulpits the grounds of tlieir being Protestants. They 
 are completely cowed by the vulgar harassiugs of the 
 press and of our Hectoring sciolists in Parliament. 
 There should be no joarti/ politics in the pulpit to be 
 sure ; but every church in England ought to resound 
 with national politics, — I mean the sacred character 
 of the national church, and an exposure of the base 
 robbery from the nation itself — for so indeed it is*— 
 
 * " That the maxims of a pure morality, and those sublime truths of the 
 divine unity and attributes, A^^hich a Plato found it hard to learn, and more 
 
216 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 about to be committed by these ministers^ in order to 
 have a sop to throw to the Irish agitators^ who will^ 
 of course, only cut the deeper, and come the oftener. 
 You cannot buy off a barbarous invader. 
 
 March 12, 1833. 
 Coronation Oaths. 
 
 T OED GE/EY has, in Parhament, said two things : 
 ^ first, that the Coronation Oaths only bind the 
 
 difficult to reveal ; that these should have hecome the almost hereditary pro- 
 perty of childhood and poverty, of the hovel and the workshop ; that even 
 to the unlettered they sound as common-place; this is a phenomenon which 
 must withhold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the 
 services even of the pulpit and the reading-desk. Yet he who should confine 
 the efficiency of an established church to these, can hardly be placed in a 
 much higher rank of intellect. That to every parish throughout the king- 
 dom there is transplanted a germ of civilisation; that in the remotest vil- 
 lages there is a nucleus, round which the capabilities of the place may 
 crystallise and brighten ; a model sufficiently superior to excite, yet suffi- 
 ciently near to encourage and facilitate imitation ; this unobtrusive, continuous 
 agency of a Protestant church establishment, this it is, which the patriot and 
 the philanthropist, who would fain unite the love of peace with the faith in 
 the progressive amelioration of mankind, cannot estimate at too high a price. 
 ' It cannot be valued with the gold of Opliir, with the precious onyx, or the 
 sapphire. No mention shall be made of coral or of pearls ; for the price of 
 wisdom is above rubies.' — The clergyman is with his parishioners and among 
 them ; he is neither in the cloistered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neigh- 
 bour and family man, whose education and rank admit him to the mansion 
 of the rich landholder, while his duties make him the frequent visitor of the 
 farm-house and the cottage. He is, or he may become, connected with the 
 families of his parish or its vicinity by marriage. And among the instances 
 of the blindness, or at best of the short-sightedness, which it is the nature 
 of cupidity to inflict, I know few more striking than the clamours of the 
 farmers against church property. Whatever was not paid to the clergyman 
 would inevitably at the next lease be paid to the landholder ; while, as the 
 case at present stands, the revenues of the church are in some sort the 
 reversionary property of every family tliat may have a member educated 
 for the church, or a daughter tliat may marry a clergyman. Instead of 
 being foreclosed and immovable, it is, in fact, the only species of landed 
 property that is essentially moving and circulative. That tliere exist no 
 incxniveniences who will pretend to assert? — But I have yet to expect the 
 proof, that the inconveniences are greater in this than in any other 
 Hpccios ; or that either the farmers or the clergy would be benefited by 
 forcing the latter to become either TruUibers oy ^QXaviad placemen.''— Church 
 and SlaiBf p. 90. 
 
MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 217 
 
 King in his executive capacity; and secondly, that 
 members of the House of Commons are bound to re- 
 present by their votes the wishes and opinions of their 
 constituents, and not their own. Put these two toge- 
 ther, and tell me what useful part of the constitutional 
 monarchy of England remains. It is clear that the 
 Coronation Oaths would be no better than Highgate 
 oaths. For in his executive capacity the King cannot 
 do anything, against the doing of which the oaths 
 bind him ; it is only in his legislative character that 
 he possesses a free agency capable of being bound. 
 The nation meant to bind that. 
 
 March 14, 1833. 
 Divinity. — Professions and Trades. 
 
 "PVIVINITY is essentially the first of the professions, 
 because it is necessary for all at all times ; law 
 and physic are only necessary for some at some times. 
 I speak of them, of course, not in their abstract exist- 
 ence, but in their apphcability to man. 
 
 Every true science bears necessarily within itself the 
 germ of a cognate profession, and the more you can 
 elevate trades into professions the better. 
 
 WHAT solemn humbug tliis modern political eco- 
 nomy is ! What is there true of the little that is 
 true m their dogmatic books, which is not a simple 
 deduction from the moral and religious credenda and 
 
 March 17, 1833. 
 Modern Political Economy. 
 
218 
 
 C0LEI11DGE''S TABLE TALK. 
 
 agenda of any good man^ and with which we were not 
 all previously acquainted^ and upon which every man 
 of common sense instinctively acted ? I know none. 
 But what they truly state, they do not truly under- 
 stand in its ultimate grounds and causes ; and hence 
 they have sometimes done more mischief by their half- 
 ignorant and half-sophistical reasonings about and 
 deductions from well-founded positions, than they 
 could have done by the promulgation of positive error. 
 This particularly applies to their famous ratios of 
 increase between man and the means of his subsist- 
 ence. Political economy, at the highest, can never 
 be a pure science. You may demonstrate that certain 
 properties inhere in the arch, which yet no bridge- 
 builder can ever reduce into brick and mortar ; but an 
 abstract conclusion in a matter of political economy, 
 the premisses of which neither exist now, nor ever 
 will exist within the range of the wildest imagination, 
 is not a truth, but a chimera — a practical falsehood. 
 For there are no theorems in political economy — ^but 
 problems only. Certain things being actually so and so; 
 the question is, liow to do so and so with them. Political 
 philosophy y indeed, points to ulterior ends, but even 
 those ends are all practical; and if you desert the 
 conditions of reality, or of common probability, you 
 may show forth your eloquence or your fancy, but 
 the utmost you can produce will be a Utopia or 
 Oceana. 
 
 You talk about making this article cheaper by 
 reducing its price in the market from 8r/. to But 
 suppose, in so doing, you have rendered your coun- 
 try weaker against a foreign foe ; suppose you have 
 demoralised thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and 
 
NATIONAL DEBT. 
 
 219 
 
 have sown discontent between one class of society and 
 another^ youx article is tolerably dear, I take it, after 
 all. Is not its real price enhanced to every Christian 
 and patriot a hundred-fold ? 
 
 All is an endless fleeting abstraction ; the whole is 
 a reality. 
 
 March 31, 1833. 
 National Debt. — Pvo'perty Tax. — Duty of Landholders. 
 
 WHAT evil results now to this country, taken at 
 large, from the actual existence of the National 
 Debt ? I never could get a plain and practical answer 
 to that question. I do not advert to the past loss of 
 capital, although it is hard to see how that capital 
 can be said to have been unproductive, which pro- 
 duces, in the defence of the nation itself, the conditions 
 of the permanence and productivity of all other capital. 
 As to taxation to pay the interest, how can the coun- 
 try suffer by a process, under which the money is never 
 one minute out of the pockets of the people ? You 
 may just as well say that a man is weakened by the 
 circulation of his blood. There may, certainly, be 
 particular local evils and grievances resulting from the 
 mode of taxation or collection ; but how can that debt 
 be in any proper sense a burthen to the nation, which 
 the nation owes to itself, a.nd to no one but itself ? It 
 is a juggle to talk of the nation owing the capital or 
 the interest to the stockholders ; it owes to itself only. 
 Suppose the interest to be owing to the Emperor of 
 Eussia, and then you would feel the difference of a 
 debt in the proper sense. It is really and truly 
 nothing more in effect than so much money, or 
 
220 
 
 COLEKIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 money^s worth,, raised annually by the state for the 
 purpose of quickening industry.* 
 
 I should like to see a well graduated property-tax, 
 accompanied by a large loan. 
 
 One common objection to a property-tax is, that it 
 tends to diminish the accumulation of capital. In 
 my judgment, one of the chief sources of the bad 
 economy of the country now is the enormous aggre- 
 gation of capitals. 
 
 When shall we return to a sound conception of the 
 right to property — namely, as being official, implying 
 and demanding the performance of commensurate 
 duties ? Nothing but the most horrible perversion of 
 humanity and moral justice, under the specious name 
 
 * See the splendid essay in the Friend (vol. ii., p. 47) on the vulgar errors 
 respecting taxes and taxation. 
 
 " A great statesman, lately deceased, in one of his anti-ministerial harangues 
 against some proposed impost, said, * The nation has been already bled in 
 every vein, and is faint with loss of blood.' This blood, however, was circu- 
 lating in the meantime through the whole body of the state, and what was 
 received into one chamber of the heart was instantly sent out again at the 
 other portal. Had he wanted a metaphor to convey the possible injuries of 
 taxation, he might have found one less opposite to the fact, in the known 
 disease of aneurism, or relaxation of the coats of particular vessels, by a dis- 
 proportionate accumulation of blood in them, which sometimes occurs when 
 the circulation has been suddenly and violently changed, and causes help- 
 lessness, or even mortal stagnation, though the total quantity of blood remains 
 the same in the system at large. 
 
 " But a fuller and fairer symbol of taxation, both in its possible good and 
 evil effects, is to be found in the evaporation of waters from the surface of the 
 earth. The sun may draw up the moisture from the river, the morass, and 
 the ocean, to be given back in genial showers to the garden, to the pasture, 
 and the corn-field ; but it may, likewise, force away the moisture from the 
 fields of tillage, to drop it on the stagnant pool, the saturated swamp, or the 
 unprofitable sand-waste. The gardens in the south of Europe supply, 
 perhaps, a not less apt illustration of a system of finance judiciously con- 
 ducted, where the tanks or reservoirs would represent the capital of a nation, 
 and the hundred rills, hourly varying their channels and directions under 
 the gardener's spade, give a pleasing image of the dispersion of that capital 
 through the whole population by the joint effect of taxation and trade. For 
 taxation itself is a part of commerce, and the government may be fairly con- 
 sidered as a great manufacturing house, carrying on, in different places, by 
 means of its partners and overseers, the trades of the shipbuilder, the 
 clothier, the iron-founder," &c., &c. — Ed. 
 
MASSINGER. 
 
 221 
 
 of political economy^ could have blinded men to this 
 truth as to the possession of land^ — the law of God 
 having connected indissolubly the cultivation of every 
 rood of earth with the maintenance and watchful 
 labour of man. But money^ stocky riches by credit^ 
 transferable and convertible at will^ are under no such 
 obligations; and^ unhappily^ it is from the selfish 
 autocratic possession of such property^ that our land- 
 holders have learnt their present theory of trading 
 with that which was never meant to be an object of 
 commerce. 
 
 April 5, 1833. 
 Massinger. — ShaJcspeare. — Hieronimo. 
 nnO please me^ a poem must be either music or 
 sense; if it is neither^ I confess I cannot interest 
 myself in it. 
 
 The first act of the Yirgin Martyr is as fine an act 
 as I remember in any play. The Very "Woman is^ I 
 think^ one of the most perfect plays we have. There 
 is some good fun in the first scene between Don John_, 
 or Antonio^ and Cuculo^ his master;^ and can any- 
 thing exceed the skill and sweetness of the scene 
 between him and his mistress, in which he relates 
 his story ? t The Bondman is also a dehghtful play. 
 
 * Act iii. sc. 2. 
 t Act iv. sc. 3 : — 
 
 " Ant. Not far from -where my father lives, a lady 
 
 A neighbour by, bless'd with as great a beauty 
 
 As nature durst bestow without undoing. 
 
 Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then, 
 
 And bless'd the home a thousand times she dwelt in. 
 
 This beauty, in the blossom of my youth. 
 
 When my first fire knew no adulterate incense, 
 
 Nor I no way to flatter, but my fondness ; 
 
 In all the bravery my friends could show me, 
 
222 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 Massinger is always entertaining ; his plays have the 
 interest of novels. 
 
 But, like most of his contemporaries, except Shak- 
 speare, Massinger often deals in exaggerated passion. 
 Malefort senior, in the Unnatural Combat, however 
 
 In all the faith my innocence could give me, 
 In the best language my true tongue could tell me, 
 And all the broken sighs my sick heart lent me, 
 I sued and served : long did I love this lady. 
 Long was my travail, long my trade to win her ; 
 With all the duty of my soul, I served her. 
 
 Alm. How feelingly he speaks ! (Aside.) And she loved you too ? 
 It must be so. 
 
 Ant. I would it had, dear lady ; 
 
 This story had been needless, and this place, 
 I think, unknown to me. 
 
 Alm. Were your bloods equal ? 
 
 Ant. Yes; and I thought our hearts too. 
 
 Alm. Then she must love. 
 
 Ant. She did — but never me ; she could not love me, 
 She would not love, she hated ; more, she scorn'd me, 
 And in so poor and base a way abused me, 
 For all my services, for all my bounties, 
 So bold neglects flung on me 
 
 Alm. An ill woman ! 
 
 Belike you found some rival in your love, then? 
 
 Ant. How perfectly she points me to my story ! [Aside.) 
 Madam, I did ; and one whose pride and anger, 
 111 manners, and worse mien, she doted on, 
 Doted to my undoing, and my ruin. 
 And but for honour to your sacred beauty. 
 And reverence to the noble sex, though she fall, 
 As she must fall that durst be so unnoble, 
 I should say something unbeseeming me. 
 What out of love, and worthy love, I gave her. 
 Shame to her most unworthy mind ! to fools. 
 To girls, and fiddlers, to her boys she flung. 
 And in disdain of me. 
 
 Alm. Pray you take me with you. 
 
 Of wliat complexion was she ? 
 
 Ant. But that I dare not 
 
 Commit so great a sacrilege 'gainst virtue, 
 She look'd not much unlike — though far, far short, 
 Something, I see, appears — your pardon, madam — 
 llor eyes would smile so, but her eyes could cozen 
 And so she would look sad ; but yours is pity, 
 A noble chorus to my wretched story: 
 Hers was disdain and cruelty. 
 
 Alm. Pray heaven, 
 
 Miue be no worse 1 he has told mc a strange story. (Aside.)" &c.— Ed. 
 
HIERONIMO. 
 
 223 
 
 he may have had the moral will to be so wicked^ could 
 never have actually done all that he is represented as 
 guilty of, without losing his senses. He would have 
 been^ in fact, mad. Eegan and Goneril are the only 
 pictures of the unnatural in Shakspeare — the pure 
 unnatural ; and you will observe that Shakspeare has 
 left their hideousness unsoftened or diversified by a 
 single line of goodness or common human frailty. 
 Whereas, in Edmund, for whom passion, the sense of 
 shame as a bastard, and ambition, offer some plausible 
 excuses, Shakspeare has placed many redeeming traits. 
 Edmund is what, under certain circumstances^ any 
 man of powerful intellect might be, if some other 
 qualities and feelings were cut off. Hamlet is, inclu- 
 sively, an Edmund, but different from him as a whole, 
 on account of the controlling agency of other prin- 
 ciples which Edmund had not. 
 
 It is worth while to remark the use which Shak- 
 speare always makes of his bold villains as vehicles 
 for expressing opinions and conjectures of a nature 
 too hazardous for a wise man to put forth directly as 
 his own, or from any sustained character. 
 
 The parts pointed out in Hieronimo as Ben Jonson^s 
 bear no traces of his style ; but they are very Hke 
 Shakspeare' s ; and it is very remarkable that every 
 one of them re-appears in full form and development, 
 and tempered with mature judgment, in some one or 
 other of Shakspeare's great pieces.* 
 
 * By Hieronimo Mr. Coleridge meant The Spanish Tragedy, and not the 
 previous play, which is usually called The First Part of Jeronimo. The 
 Spanish Tragedy is, upon the authority of Hey wood, attributed to Kyd. It 
 is supposed that Ben Jonson originally performed the part of Hieronimo, 
 and hence it has been surmised that certain passages and whole scenes 
 connected with that character, and not found in some of the editions of the 
 
224 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 April 7, 1833. 
 
 Lov^s Labour Lost. — Gifford^s Massinger. — Shakspeare. — The old 
 Dramatists, 
 
 I THINK I could point out to a haK line what is 
 really Shakspeare^s in Lovers Labour Lost^ and 
 some other of the not entirely genuine plays. What 
 
 play, are, in fact, Ben Jonson's own writing. Some of these supposed 
 interpolations are amongst the best things in the Spanish Tragedy; the 
 style is singularly unlike Jonson's, whilst there are turns and particular 
 images which do certainly seem to have been imitated by or from Shak- 
 speare. Mr. Lamb at one time gave them to Webster. Take this passage, 
 in the fourth act : — 
 
 " HiERON. What make you with your torches in the dark ? 
 
 Pedeo. You bid us light them, and attend you here. 
 
 HiERON. No ! you are deceived ; not I ; you are deceived. 
 Was I so mad to bid light torches now ? 
 Light me your torches at the mid of noon, 
 When as the sun-god rides in all his glory ; 
 Light me your torches then. 
 
 Pedro. Then we burn day-light. 
 
 HiERON. Let it he burnt ; night is a murderous slut. 
 That would not have her treasons to be seen ; 
 And yonder pale-faced Hecate there, the moon. 
 Doth give consent to that is done in darkness ; 
 And all those stars that gaze upon her face 
 Are aglets on her sleeve, pins on her train ; 
 And those that should be powerful and divine, 
 Do sleep in darkness when they most should shine. 
 
 Pedro. Provoke them not, fair sir, with tempting words. 
 The heavens are gracious, and your miseries and sorrow 
 Make you speak you know not what. 
 
 HiERON. Villain! thou liest, and thou dost nought 
 But tell me I am mad: thou liest, I am not mnd; 
 I know thee to be Pedro, and he Jaques ; 
 I'll prove it thee ; and were I mad, how could 19 
 Where was she the same night, when my Horatio was murder' d ! 
 She should have shone then : search thou the book : 
 Had the moon shone in my boy's face, there was a kind of grace, 
 That I know — nay, I do know, had the murderer seen him, 
 His weapon would have fallen, and cut the earth. 
 Had he been framed of nought but blood and death," &c. 
 
 Again, in the fifth act : — 
 
 " IIiEKON. But are you sure that they are dead? 
 Castile. Ay, slain, too sure. 
 liiEuoN. What, and yours too? 
 
 ViCKUOY. Ay, all are dead : not one of them survive 
 
LOVERS LABOUR LOST. 
 
 225 
 
 he wrote in that play is of his earliest manner^ having 
 the all-pervading sweetness which he never lost^ and 
 that extreme condensation which makes the couplets 
 fall into epigrams^ as in the Venus and Adonis^ and 
 Rape of Lucrece.* In the drama alone, as Shakspeare 
 soon found out, could the sublime poet and profound 
 pliilosopher find the conditions of a compromise. 
 In the Lovers Labour Lost there are many faint 
 sketches of some of his vigorous portraits in after- 
 
 HiERON. Nay, then I care not — come, we shall be friends ; 
 Let us lay our heads together. 
 See, here 's a goodly noose will hold them all. 
 
 Viceroy. 0 damn'd devil ! how secure he is ! 
 
 HiERON. Secure ! why dost thou wonder at it ? 
 I teU thee, Viceroy, this day Vve seen Revenge, 
 And in that sight am grown a prouder monarch 
 Than ever sate under the crown of Spain. 
 Had I as many lives as there he stars, 
 As many heavens to go to as those lives, 
 I ^d give them all, ay, and my soul to hoot, 
 But I would see thee ride in this red pool. 
 Methinks, since I grew inward with revenge, 
 I cannot look with scorn enough on death. 
 
 King. What! dost thou mock us, slave? Bring tortures forth. 
 
 HiERON. Do, do, do ; and meantime Vll torture you. 
 You had a son as I take it, and your son 
 
 Should have heen married to your daughter : ha ! was it not so ? 
 
 You had a son too, he was my liegeJ s nephew. 
 
 He was proud and politic — had he lived, 
 
 He might have come to wear the crown of Spain : 
 
 I think H was so — H loas I that kilVd him ; 
 
 Look you — this same hand was it that stahVd 
 
 His heart — do you see this hand ? 
 
 For one Horatio, if you ever knew him — 
 
 A youth, one that they hanged up in Ms father'' s garden — 
 
 One that did force your valiant son to yield," &c. — Ed. 
 
 * " In Shakspeare's Poems the creative power and the intellectual energy 
 wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to 
 threaten the extinction of the other. At length, in the drama, they were 
 reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other. 
 Or like two rapid streams, that, at their first meeting within narrow and 
 rocky banks, mutually strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly, 
 and in tumult ; but soon finding a wider channel and more yielding shores, 
 blend and dilate, and flow on in one current, and with one voice." — Biog. Lit. 
 vol. ii. p. 21. 
 
 Q 
 
226 
 
 COLERIDGE S TABLE TALK. 
 
 life — as for example, in particular, of Benedict and 
 
 Beatrice.* 
 
 Gifford has done a great deal for the text of Mas- 
 singer, but not as much as might easily be done. 
 His comparison of Shakspeare with his contemporary 
 dramatists is obtuse indeed. f 
 
 In Shakspeare one sentence begets the next natur- 
 ally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on 
 kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere ; 
 yet, when the creation in its outhne is once perfect, 
 then he seems to rest from his labour, and to smile 
 upon his work, and tell himself that it is very good. 
 You see many scenes and parts of scenes which are 
 simply Shakspeare^ s, disporting himself in joyous 
 triumph and vigorous fun after a great achievement 
 of his highest genius. 
 
 The old dramatists took great liberties in respect of 
 bringing parties in scene together, and representing 
 one as not recognising the other under some faint 
 disguise. Some of their finest scenes are constructed 
 on this ground. Shakspeare avails himself of this 
 artifice only twice, I think, — in Twelfth Night, where 
 the two are with great skill kept apart till the end of 
 the play ; and in the Comedy of Errors, which is a 
 pure farce, and should be so considered. The defini- 
 tion of a farce is, an improbability or even impos- 
 sibility granted in the outset; see what odd and 
 laughable events will fairly follow from it ! 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge, of course, alluded to Biron and Rosaline ; and there are 
 other ohvious prolusions, as the scene of the masque with the courtiers, 
 compared with the play in A Midsummer Night's Dream. — Ed. 
 
 t See his Introduction to Massinger, vol. i. p. 79, in which, amongst otlier 
 most sxtraordinary ass(',rti(ms, Mr. Gifford pronounces that rhythmical modu- 
 lation is not one of Shakspeare^ a merits I — Ed. 
 
STATESMEN. — BURKE. 
 
 227 
 
 April 8, 1833. 
 Statesmen. — Burlce. 
 
 T NEYEE, was much subject to violent political 
 humours or accesses of feelings. When I was 
 very young, I wrote and spoke very enthusiastically ; 
 but it was always on subjects connected with some 
 grand general principle, the violation of which I 
 thought I could point out. As to mere details of 
 administration, I honestly thought that ministers, 
 and men in office, must, of course, know much better 
 than any private person could possibly do; and it 
 was not till I went to Malta, and had to correspond 
 with official characters myself, that I fully understood 
 the extreme shallowness and ignorance with which 
 men of some note too were able, after a certain 
 fashion, to carry on the government of important 
 departments of the empire. I then quite assented 
 to Oxenstiern^s saying, Nescis, mi fill, q^mm joarva 
 sapientia regitur mundus. 
 
 Burke was, indeed, a great man. No one ever 
 read history so philosophically as he seems to have 
 done. Yet, until he could associate liis general 
 principles with some sordid interest, panic of property, 
 Jacobinism, &c., he was a mere dinner bell. Hence 
 you will find so many half truths in liis speeches and 
 writings. Nevertheless, let us heartily acknowledge 
 his transcendant greatness. He would have been 
 more influential if he had less surpassed liis contem- 
 poraries, as Fox and Pitt, men of much inferior minds 
 in all respects. 
 
 As a telegraph supposes a correspondent telescope, 
 so a scientific lecture requires a scientific audience. 
 
 q2 
 
228 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK, 
 
 April 9, 1833. 
 
 Prospect of Monarchy or Democracy. — The reformed House of 
 Commons. 
 
 T HAVE a deep^ though paradoxical,, conviction 
 that most of the European nations are more or 
 less on their way^ unconsciously indeed, to pure 
 monarchy ; that is, to a government in which, under 
 circumstances of complicated and subtle control, the 
 reason of the people shall become efficient in the 
 apparent will of the king.* As it seems to me, the 
 wise and good in every country will, in all likelihood, 
 become every day more and more disgusted with 
 the representative form of government, brutalised as 
 it is, and will be, by the predominance of demo- 
 cracy in England, Erance, and Belgium. The states- 
 men of antiquity, we know, doubted the possibility 
 of the effective and permanent combination of the 
 three elementary forms of government ; and, perhaps, 
 they had more reason than we have been accustomed 
 
 to think. 
 
 You see how this House of Commons has begun to 
 verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it — low, 
 vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal 
 competency, flattering every base passion, and sneering 
 at everything noble, refined, and truly national ! The 
 direct and personal despotism will come on by and by, 
 after the multitude shall have been gratified with the 
 ruin and the spoil of the old institutions of the land. 
 As for the House of Lords, what is the use of ever so 
 much fiery spirit, if there be no principle to guide and 
 to sanctify it ? 
 
 * This is hacking Vico against Spinosa. It must, however, be acknow- 
 ledged tliat at i)rescnt tlie prophet of democracy, has a good right to he 
 considered tlie favourite. — Ei>. 
 
UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 
 
 229 
 
 April 10, 1833. 
 
 United States of America. — Captain B, Hall. — Northern and 
 Southern States. — Democracy with Slavery. — Quakers. 
 
 nnHE possible destiny of the United States of 
 America^ — as a nation of a hundred millions of 
 freemen^ — stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific^ 
 living under the laws of Alfred, and speaking the 
 language of Shakspeare and Milton, is an august 
 conception. Why should we not wish to see it 
 realised? America would then be England viewed 
 through a solar microscope ; Great Britain in a state 
 of glorious magnification ! How deeply to be lamented 
 is the spirit of hostility and sneering which some of 
 the popular books of travels have shown in treating 
 of the Americans ! They hate us, no doubt, just as 
 brothers hate; but they respect the opinion of an 
 Englishman concerning themselves ten times as much 
 as that of a native of any other country on earth. A 
 very little humouring of their prejudices, and some 
 courtesy of language and demeanour on the part of 
 Englishmen, would work wonders, even as it is, with 
 the public mind of the Americans. 
 
 Captain Basil HaFs book is certainly very enter- 
 taining and instructive; but, in my judgment, his 
 sentiments upon many points, and more especially 
 his mode of expression, are unwise and uncharitable. 
 After all, are not most of the things shown up with 
 so much bitterness by him mere national foibles, 
 parallels to wliich every people has and must of 
 necessity have ? 
 
 What you say about the quarrel in the United 
 States is sophistical, No doubt, taxation may, and 
 
230 
 
 COLEUIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 perhaps in some cases must^ press unequally^ or appar- 
 ently so^ on different classes of people in a state. In 
 such cases there is a hardship ; bnt^ in the long run, 
 the matter is fully compensated to the over-taxed 
 class. For example, take the householders of London, 
 who complain so bitterly of the house and window 
 taxes. Is it not pretty clear that, whether such 
 householder be a tradesman, who indemnifies himself 
 in the price of his goods, — or a Jetter of lodgings, 
 who does so in his rent, — or a stockholder, who 
 receives it back again in his dividends, — or a country 
 gentleman, who has saved so much fresh levy on his 
 land or his other property, — one way or other, it 
 comes at last pretty nearly to the same thing, though 
 the pressure for the time may be unjust and vexatious, 
 and fit to be removed ? But when New England, 
 which may be considered a state in itself, taxes the 
 admission of foreign manufactures in order to cherish 
 manufactures of its own, and thereby forces the 
 Carolinians, another state of itself, with which there 
 is little intercommunion, which has no such desire 
 or interest to serve, to buy worse articles at a higher 
 price, it is altogether a different question, and is, in 
 fact, downright tyranny of the worst, because of the 
 most sordid, kind. What would you think of a law 
 which should tax every person in Devonshire for the 
 pecuniary benefit of every person in Yorkshire ? And 
 yet that is a feeble image of the actual usurpation of 
 the New England deputies over the property of the 
 Southern States. 
 
 There are two possible modes of unity in a State ; 
 one by absolute co-ordination of each to all, and of 
 all to each ; the other by subordination of classes and 
 
LAND AND MONEY. 
 
 231 
 
 offices. Now^ I maintain that tliere never was an in- 
 stance of the first^ nor can there be^ without slavery as 
 its condition and accompaniment^ as in Athens. The 
 poor Swiss cantons are no exception. 
 
 The mistake lies in confounding a state which must 
 be based on classes and interests and imequal pro- 
 perty, with a church, which is founded on the person, 
 and has no qualijScation but personal merit. Such a 
 community may exist, as in the case of the Quakers ; 
 but, in order to exist, it must be compressed and 
 hedged in by another society — 7mindus mundulus in 
 mundo immundo, 
 
 The free class in a slave state is always, in one 
 sense, the most patriotic class of people in an empire ; 
 for their patriotism is not simply the patriotism of 
 other people, but an aggregate of lust of power and 
 distinction and supremacy. 
 
 AND was the only species of property which, in 
 
 ^ the old time, carried any respectability with it. 
 Money alone, apart from some tenure of land, not 
 only did not make the possessor great and respectable, 
 but actually made him at once the object of plunder 
 and hatred. Witness the history of the Jews in this 
 country in the early reigns after the Conquest. 
 
 I have no objection to your aspiring to the poKtical 
 principles of our old Cavaliers ; but embrace them all 
 fully, and not merely this and that feeling, whilst in 
 other points you speak the canting foppery of the 
 Benthamite or Malthusian schools. 
 
 April 11, 1833. 
 Land and Money. 
 
232 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 April 14, 1833. 
 
 Methods of Investigation. 
 
 THERE are three ways of treating a subject ; — 
 In the first mode^ you begin with a definition, 
 and that definition is necessarily assumed as the 
 truth. As the argument proceeds^ the conclusion 
 from the first proposition becomes the base of the 
 second^ and so on. Now^ it is quite impossible that 
 you can be sure that you have included all the neces- 
 sary^ and none but the necessary, terms in your defi- 
 nition ; as, therefore, you proceed, the original speck 
 of error is multiplied at every remove; the same 
 infirmity of knowledge besetting each successive defi- 
 nition. Hence you may set out, like Spinosa, with all 
 but the truth, and end with a conclusion which is 
 altogether monstrous; and yet the mere deduction 
 shall be irrefragable. Warburton^s Divine Lega- 
 tion is also a splendid instance of this mode of 
 discussion, and of its inability to lead to the truth : in 
 fact, it is an attempt to adopt the mathematical series 
 of proof, in forgetfulness that the mathematician is 
 sure of the truth of his definition at each remove, 
 because he creates it, as he can do, in pure figure and 
 number. But you cannot maJc^ anything true which 
 results from, or is connected with, real externals ; you 
 can ovA^ find it out. The chief use of this first mode 
 of discussion is to sharpen the wit, for which purpose 
 it is the best exercitation. 
 
 2. The historical mode is a very common one : in 
 it the author professes to find out the truth by col- 
 lecting the facts of the case, and tracing them 
 downwards ; but tliis mode is worse than the other. 
 
METHODS OF INVESTIGATION. 
 
 233 
 
 Suppose the question is as to the true essence and 
 character of the English constitution. First, where 
 will you begin your collection of facts ? where will 
 you end it ? What facts will you select ? and how do 
 you know that the class of facts which you select, are 
 necessary terms in the premisses, and that other classes 
 of facts, which you neglect, are not necessary ? And 
 how do you distinguish phenomena which proceed 
 from disease or accident, from those which are the 
 genuine fruits of the essence of the constitution? 
 What can be more striking, in illustration of the 
 utter inadequacy of this line of investigation for 
 arriving at the real truth, than the political treatises 
 and constitutional histories which we have in every 
 library ? A Whig proves his case convincingly to the 
 reader who knows nothing beyond his author ; then 
 comes an old Tory (Carte, for instance), and ferrets 
 up a hamperful of conflicting documents and notices, 
 which proves Us case jper contra, A. takes this class 
 of facts ; B. takes that class : each proves something 
 true, neither proves the truth, or anything like the 
 truth j that is, the whole truth. 
 
 3. You must, therefore, commence with the philo- 
 sophic idea of the thing, the true nature of which you 
 wish to find out and manifest. You must carry your 
 rule ready made, if you wish to measure aright. If 
 you ask me how I can know that this idea — my own 
 invention — is the truth, by which the phenomena of 
 history are to be explained, I answer, in the same way 
 exactly that you know that your eyes were made to see 
 with ; and that is, because you do see with them. If 
 I propose to you an idea or self-realizing theory of the 
 constitution, which shall manifest itseK as in existence 
 
234 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 from the earliest times to the present, — which shaR 
 comprehend within it all the facts wliich history has 
 preserved, and shaR give them a meaning as inter- 
 changeably causals or effects ; — if I show you that 
 such an event or reign was an obliquity to the right 
 hand, and how produced, and such other event or reign 
 a deviation to the left, and whence originating, — that 
 the growth was stopped here, accelerated there, — that 
 such a tendency is, and always has been, corroborative, 
 and such other tendency destructive, of the main pro- 
 gress of the idea towards realization ; — if this idea, 
 not only like a kaleidoscope, shaR reduce aR the mis- 
 ceRaneous fragments into order, but shaR also minis- 
 ter strength, and knowledge, and light to the true 
 patriot and statesmen for working out the bright 
 thought, and bringing the glorious embryo to a per- 
 fect birth ; — then, I think, I have a right to say that 
 the idea which led to this is not only true, but the 
 truth, the only truth. To set up for a statesman upon 
 historical knowledge only, is as about as wise as to 
 set up for a musician by the purchase of some score 
 flutes, fiddles, and horns. In order to make music, 
 you must know how to play ; in order to make your 
 facts speak truth, you must know what the truth is 
 which ought to be proved, — the ideal truth, — the 
 truth which was consciously or unconsciously, strongly 
 or weakly, wisely or blindly, intended at all times.* 
 
 * I have preserved this passage, conscious, the while, how liable it is to be 
 misunderstood, or at least not understood. The readers of Mr. Coleridge's 
 works generally, or of his "Church and State" in particular, will have no 
 difficulty in entering into his meaning ; namely, that no investigation in the 
 non-mathematical sciences can be carried on in a way deserving to be called 
 philosophical, unless the investigator have in himself a mental initiative, or, 
 what comes to the same thing, unless he set out witli an intuition of the ulti- 
 mate aim or idea of the science or aggregation of facts to be explained or 
 interpreted. The analysis of the riatouic and Baconian methods in " The 
 
CHURCH OF ROME. 
 
 235 
 
 April 18, 1833. 
 CJmrch of Rome. — Celibacy of the Clergy. 
 
 IN my judgment^ Protestants lose a great deal of 
 time in a false attack wlien they labour to convict 
 the Eomanists of false doctrines. Destroy the Papacy, 
 and help the priests to wives^ and I am much mis- 
 taken if the doctrinal errors^ such as there really are, 
 would not very soon pass away. They might remain 
 in terminis, but they would lose their sting and body, 
 and lapse back into figures of rhetoric and warm de- 
 votion, from which they, most of them, — such as 
 transubstantiation, and prayers for the dead and to 
 saints, — originally sprang. But, so long as the Bishop 
 of Rome remains Pope, and has an army of Mamelukes 
 all over the world, we shall do very little by fulmi- 
 nating against mere doctrinal errors. In the Milanese, 
 and elsewhere in the north of Italy, I am told there 
 is a powerful feeling abroad against the Papacy. That 
 district seems to be something in the state of England 
 in the reign of our Henry the Eighth. 
 
 How deep a wound to morals and social purity has 
 that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been ! 
 Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist 
 countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage 
 of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without 
 its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in gene- 
 ral ? Impossible ! and the morals of both sexes in 
 Spain, Italy, Prance, &c. prove it abundantly. 
 
 The Papal church has had three phases, — anti- 
 Caesarean. extra-national, anti-Christian. 
 
 Friend," to which I have before referred, and the " Church and State." 
 exhibit respectively a splendid ^vindication and example of Mr. Coleridge's 
 mode of reasoning on this subject. — Ed. 
 
236 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 April 20, 1833. 
 Roman Conquest of Italy, 
 
 nPHE Eomans would never have subdued the Itahan 
 tribes if they had not boldly left Italy and con- 
 quered foreign nations^ and so, at last, crushed their 
 next-door neighbours by external pressure. 
 
 April 24, 1833. 
 
 Wedded Love in ShaJcspeare and his Contemporary Dramatists. — 
 Tennyson's Poems. 
 
 T? XCEPT in Shakspeare, you can find no such thing 
 J-^ as a pure conception of wedded love, in our old 
 dramatists. In Massinger, and Beaumont and 
 Pletcher, it really is on both sides little better than 
 sheer animal desire. There is scarcely a suitor in all 
 their plays, whose abilities are not discussed by the 
 lady or her waiting- woman. In this, as in all things, 
 how transcendant over his age and his rivals was 
 our sweet Shakspeare ! 
 
 I have not read through all Mr. Tennyson^s poems, 
 which have been sent to me ; but I think there are 
 some things of a good deal of beauty in what I have 
 seen. The misfortune is, that he has begun to write 
 verses without very well understanding what metre is. 
 Even if yoa write in a known and approved metre, 
 the odds are, if you are not a metrist yourself, that 
 you wiU not write harmonious verses ; but to deal in 
 new metres without considering what metre means 
 and requires, is preposterous. What I would, with 
 many wishes for success, prescribe to Tennyson, — 
 indeed without it he can never be a poet in act, — is 
 
HABELAIS AND LUTHER. 
 
 237 
 
 to write for the next two or three years in none but 
 one or two well known and strictly defined metres, 
 such as the heroic couplet, the octave stanza, or the 
 octo-syllabic measure of the Allegro and Penseroso. 
 He would, probably, thus get imbued with a sensa- 
 tion, if not a sense, of metre without knowing it, just 
 as Eton boys get to write such good Latin verses by 
 conning Ovid and Tibullus. As it is, I can scarcely 
 scan some of his verses. 
 
 May 1, 1833. 
 Rabelais and Luther. — Wit and Madness. 
 T THINK with some interest upon the fact that 
 J- Eabelais and Luther were born in the same year.* 
 Glorious spirits ! glorious spirits ! 
 
 " Hos utinam inter 
 
 Heroas natum me ! " 
 
 " Great wits are sure to madness near allied," 
 
 says Dryden, and true so far as this, that genius of 
 the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the 
 modifying power, which, detached from the discrimi- 
 native and reproductive power, might conjure a platted 
 straw into a royal diadem : but it would be at least 
 as true, that great genius is most alien from mad- 
 ness, yea, divided from it by an impassable mountain, 
 — namely, the activity of thought and vivacity of the 
 accumulative memory, which are no less essential 
 constituents of great wit.'^^ 
 
 * They were both horn within twelve months of each other, I believe ; but 
 Luther's birth was in November, 1484, and that of Rabelais is generally 
 placed at the end of the year preceding. — Ed. 
 
238 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 May 4, 1833. 
 
 Colonization* — Machinery. — Capital. 
 
 pOLONIZATION is not only a manifest expedient 
 ^ for^ but an imperative duty on^ Great Britain. God 
 seems to hold out his finger to us over the sea. But 
 it must be a national colonization^ such as was that 
 of the Scotch to America ; a colonization of hope^ and 
 not such as we have alone encouraged and effected for 
 the last fifty years^ a colonization of despair. 
 
 The wonderful powers of machinery can^ by multi- 
 plied production^ render the mere arte facta of life 
 actually cheaper : thus money and all other things 
 being supposed the same in value^ a silk gown is five 
 times cheaper now than in Queen Elizabeth''s time ; 
 but machinery cannot cheapen, in anything like an 
 equal degree, the immediate growths of nature or the 
 immediate necessaries of man. Now, the arte facta 
 are sought by the higher classes of society in a pro- 
 portion incalculably beyond that in which they are 
 sought by the lower classes ; and therefore it is 
 that the vast increase of mechanical powers has not 
 cheapened life and pleasure to the poor as it has done 
 to the rich. In some respects, no doubt, it has done 
 so, as in giving cotton dresses to maid-servants, and 
 penny gin to all. A pretty benefit truly ! 
 
 I think this country is now suffering grievously 
 under an excessive accumulation of capital, which, 
 having no field for profitable operation, is in a state 
 of fierce civil war with itself. 
 
PAPACY AND THE SCHOOLMEN. 
 
 239 
 
 May 6, 1833. 
 
 Roman Conquest. — Constantine. — Papacy and the Schoolmen. 
 T^HE Eomans had no national clerisy; their priest- 
 hood was entirely a matter of state^ and, as far 
 back as we can trace it, an evident stronghold of the 
 Patricians against the increasing powers of the Ple- 
 beians. All we know of the early Eomans is, that, 
 after an indefinite lapse of years, they had conquered 
 some fifty or sixty miles round their city. Then it is 
 that they go to war with Carthage, the great maritime 
 power, and the result of that Avar was the occupation 
 of Sicily. Thence they, in succession, conquered 
 Spain, Macedonia, Asia Minor, &c., and so at last 
 contrived to subjugate Italy, partly by a tremendous 
 back blow, and partly by bribing the Italian States 
 with a communication of their privileges, which the 
 now enormously enriched conquerors possessed over 
 so large a portion of the civilized world. They were 
 ordained by Providence to conquer and amalgamate 
 the materials of Christendom. They were not a 
 national people ; they were truly — 
 Romanos rerum dominos — 
 — and that ^s all. 
 
 Under Constantine the spiritual power became a 
 complete reflex of the temporal. There were four 
 patriarchs, and four prefects, and so on. The Clergy 
 and the Lawyers, the Church and the State, were 
 opposed. 
 
 The beneficial influence of the Papacy upon the 
 whole has been much over-rated by some writers ; and 
 certainly no country in E'U'ope received less benefit 
 
240 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 and more harm from it than England. In fact^ the 
 lawful kings and parliaments of England were always 
 essentially Protestant in feeling for a national church, 
 though they adhered to the received doctrines of the 
 Cliristianity of the day ; and it was only the usurpers, 
 John, Henry lY., &c., that went against this policy. 
 All the great English schoolmen, Scotus Erigena,* 
 Duns Scotus, Ockham, and others, those morning 
 stars of the Eeformation, were heart and soul opposed 
 to Rome, and maintained the Papacy to be Antichrist. 
 The Popes always persecuted, with rancorous hatred, 
 the national clerisies, the married clergy, and disliked 
 the universities which grew out of the old monasteries. 
 The Papacy was, and is, essentially extra-national, and 
 was always so considered in this country, although 
 not beheved to be anti-Christian. 
 
 May 8, 1833. 
 
 Civil War of the Seventeenth Century. — Hampden'' s Speech, 
 T KNOW no portion of history which a man might 
 
 write with so much pleasure as that of the great 
 struggle in the time of Charles L, because he may 
 feel the profoundest respect for both parties. The 
 side taken by any particular person was determined 
 by the point of view which such person happened to 
 command at the commencement of the inevitable 
 coUision, one line seeming straight to this man, another 
 
 * John Scotus, or Erigcna, was bom, according to clifTerent authors, in 
 Walos, Scotland, or Irehind ; but I do not find any account making him an 
 Englishman of Saxon blood. His death is uncertainly placed in the beginning 
 of the ninth century, lie lived in well-known intimacy with Charles the 
 Bald, of France, who died about a.d. 874. He resolutely resisted the doctrine 
 of transuhstantiation, and was publicly accused of heresy on that account. 
 But the king of France protected him.— Ed. 
 
REFORMED HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 211 
 
 line to another. No man of that age saw the truth, 
 the whole truth; there was not light enough for that. 
 The consequence, of course, was a violent exaggeration 
 of each party for the time. The King became a martyr, 
 and the Parliamentarians traitors, and vice versa. The 
 great reform brought into act by and under William 
 the Third combined the principles truly contended for 
 by Charles and his Parliament respectively : the great 
 revolution of 1831 has certainly, to an almost ruinous 
 degree, dislocated those principles of government 
 again. As to Hampden^s speech,* no doubt it means 
 a declaration of passive obedience to the sovereign, as 
 the creed of an English Protestant individual : every 
 man, CromweU and all, would have said as much ; it 
 was the antipapistical tenet, and almost vauntingly 
 asserted on all occasions by Protestants up to that 
 time. But it implies nothing of Hampden"^s creed as 
 to the duty of Parliament. 
 
 May 10, 1833. 
 
 Reformed House of Commons. 
 TT7ELL, I think no honest man will deny that the 
 ^ ^ prophetic denunciations of those who seriously 
 and solemnly opposed the Reform Bill are in a fair 
 
 * On his impeachment with the other four members, 1642. See the " Letter 
 to John Murray, Esq., touching Lord Nugent," 1833. It is extraordinary 
 that Lord N. should not see the plain distinction taken by Hampden, between 
 not obeying an unlawful command, and rebelling against the king because 
 of it. He approves the one, and condemns the other. His words are, " to 
 yield obedience to the commands of a king, if against the true religion, against 
 the ancient and fundamental laws of the land, is another sign of an ill 
 subject:" — "To resist the lawful power of the king; to raise insurrection 
 against the king ; admit him adverse in his religion ; to conspire against his 
 sacred person, or any ways to rebel, though commandiyig things against our con- 
 sciences in exercising religion, or against the rights and privileges of the subject, 
 is an absolute sign of the disaffected and traitorous subject." — Ed. 
 
 R 
 
242 
 
 COLEUIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 way of exact fulfilment ! Por myself, I own I did 
 not expect such rapidity of movement. I supposed 
 that the first parliament would contain a large number 
 of low factious men^ who would vulgarize and degrade 
 the debates of the House of Commons^ and consider- 
 ably impede public business^ and that the majority 
 would be gentlemen more fond of their property than 
 their politics. But really the truth is something more 
 than this. Think of upwards of 160 members voting 
 away two millions and a half of tax on Friday,* at the 
 bidding of whom, shall I say ? and then no less than 
 70 of those very members rescinding their votes on 
 the Tuesday next following, nothing whatever having 
 intervened to justify the change, except that they had 
 found out that at least seven or eight millions more 
 must go also upon the same principle, and that the 
 revenue was cut in two ! Of course I approve the 
 vote of rescission, however dangerous a precedent; 
 but what a picture of the composition of tliis House 
 of Commons ! 
 
 May 13, 1833. 
 Food. — M edicine. — Poison, — Obstruction. 
 n^HAT which is digested wholly, and part of which is 
 assimilated, and part rejected, is — Food. 
 
 2. That which is digested wholly, and the whole 
 of which is partly assimilated, and partly not, is — 
 Medicine. 
 
 3. That which is digested, but not assimilated, is 
 — Poison. 
 
 * On Friday, the 26th of April, ia33, Sir William Ingilby moved and 
 carried a resolution for reducing tlie duty on malt from 28,s. 8d. to 10s. per 
 quarter. One Imndrcd and sixty-two members voted with him. On Tuesday 
 following, the 30th of April, seventy-six members only voted against the 
 rescission of the same resolution— Ed. 
 
WILSON, 
 
 243 
 
 4. That which is neither digested nor assimilated 
 is — Mere Obstruction. 
 
 As to the stories of slow poisons^ I cannot say 
 whether there was any^ or what^ truth in them ; but 
 I certainly believe a man may be poisoned by arsenic 
 a year after he has taken it. In fact, I tliink that is 
 known to have happened. 
 
 May 14, 1833. 
 
 Wilson. — Shalcspeare's Sonnets. — Love, 
 
 PROPESSOR WILSON'S character of Charles 
 Lamb in the last Blackwood, Twaddle on Tweed- 
 side,^ is very sweet indeed, and gratified me much. It 
 does honour to Wilson, to his head and his heart. 
 
 How can I wish that Wilson should cease to write 
 what so often soothes and suspends my bodily miseries, 
 and my mental conflicts ! Yet what a waste, what a 
 reckless spending, of talent, ay, and of genius, too, 
 in his I know not how many years' management 
 of Blackwood ! If Wilson cares for fame, for an 
 enduring place and prominence in literature, he 
 
 * " Charles Lamb ought really not to abuse Scotland in the pleasant -way 
 he so often does in the sylvan shades of Enfield ; for Scotland loves Charles 
 Lamb ; but he is wayward and wilful in his wisdom, and conceits that many 
 a Cockney is a better man even than Christopher North. But what will not 
 Christopher forgive to genius and goodness ! Even Lamb, bleating libels on 
 his native land. Nay, he learns lessons of humanity even from the mild 
 malice of Elia, and breathes a blessing on him and his household in tlieir 
 bower of rest." 
 
 Some of Mr. Coleridge's poems were first published with some of 
 C. Lamb's at Bristol, in 1797. The remarkable words on the title-page 
 have been aptly cited in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1835, 
 p. 198 : — '^Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitice et similium jiinctarumque Camce- 
 narum, — quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longiiiquitas.^^ And 
 even so it came to pass after thirty-seven years more had passed over their 
 heads. — Ed. 
 
 r2 
 
244 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 should now^ I think, hold his hand, and say, as he 
 well may, — 
 
 " Militam non sine gloria : 
 
 Nunc arma defunctumque hello 
 
 Barbiton hie ^paries habebity 
 
 IVo or three volumes collected out of the magazine by 
 himseK would be very delightful. But he must not 
 leave it for others to do ; for some recasting and much 
 condensation would be required ; and literary executors 
 make sad work in general with their testators^ brains. 
 
 I believe it possible that a man may, under certain 
 states of the moral feeling, entertain something 
 deserving the name of love towards a male object — 
 an affection beyond friendship, and wholly aloof from 
 appetite. In Elizabeth's and James's time it seems 
 to have been almost fashionable to cherish such a 
 feehng ; and perhaps we may account in some measure 
 for it by considering how very inferior the women of 
 that age, taken generally, were in education and accom- 
 plisliment of mind to the men. Of course there 
 were brilliant exceptions enough; but the plays of 
 Beaumont and lletcher — the most popular dramatists 
 that ever wrote for the English stage — will show us 
 what sort of women it was generally pleasing to 
 represent. Certainly the language of the two friends, 
 Musidorus and Pyrocles, in the Arcadia, is such as 
 we could not now use except to women; and in 
 Cervantes the same tone is sometimes adopted, as in 
 the novel of the Curious Impertinent. And I think 
 there is a passage in the New Atlantis* of Lord Bacon, 
 
 * I cannot fix upon any paRsage in this work, to which it can be supposed 
 that Mr. ColcridRc alhided, unless it be the speech of Joabin the Jew; but it 
 contains nothing coming up to the meaning in the text. The only approach 
 
SHAKSPEARE^S SONNETS. 
 
 245 
 
 in which he speaks of the possibility of such a feehng^ 
 but hints the extreme danger of entertaining it^ or 
 allowing it any place in a moral theory. I mention 
 this with reference to Shakspeare^s sonnets, which 
 have been supposed, by some, to be addressed to 
 WiUiam Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, whom Clarendon 
 calls the most beloved man of his age, though his 
 licentiousness was equal to liis virtues. I doubt this. 
 I do not think that Shakspeare, merely because he 
 was an actor, would have thought it necessary to veil 
 his emotions towards Pembroke under a disguise, 
 though he might probably have done so, if the real 
 object had perchance been a Laura or a Leonora. It 
 seems to me that the sonnets could only have come 
 from a man deeply in love, and in love with a woman; 
 and there is one sonnet which, from its incongruity, 
 I take to be a purposed blind. These extraordinary 
 sonnets form, in fact, a poem of so many stanzas of 
 fourteen lines each; and, like the passion which 
 inspired them, the sonnets are always the same, with 
 a variety of expression, — continuous, if you regard 
 the lover^s soul, — distinct, if you listen to him, as he 
 heaves them sigh after sigh. 
 
 to it seems to be : — " As for masculine love, they have no touch of it ; and 
 yet there are not so faithful and inviolate friendships in the world again as 
 are there ; and to speak generally, as I said before, I have not read of any 
 such chastity in any people as theirs." — Ed. 
 
 * " William Earl of Pembroke was next, a man of another mould and 
 making, and of another fame and reputation with all men, being the most 
 universally beloved and esteemed of any man of that age." . . . . " He 
 indulged to himself the pleasures of all kinds, almost in all excesses." — Hist, 
 of the Rebellion, Book i. He died in 1630, aged fifty years. The dedication 
 by T. T. (Thomas Thorpe) is to " the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, 
 Mr. W. H.," and Malone is inclined to think that William Hughes is 
 meant. As to Mr. W. H. being the only begetter of these sonnets, it must 
 be observed, that at least the last twenty-eight are beyond dispute addressed 
 to a woman. I suppose the twentietli sonnet was the particular one con- 
 ceived by Mr. C. to be a blind ; but it seems to me that many others may be 
 so construed, if we set out with a conviction that the real object of the poet 
 was a woman.— Ed. 
 
246 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 These sonnets, like the Venus and Adonis, and 
 the Rape of Lucrece, are characterised by boundless 
 fertility and laboured condensation of thought, with 
 perfection of sweetness in rhythm and metre* These 
 are the essentials in the budding of a great poet. 
 Afterwards habit and consciousness of power teach 
 more ease — -^racijoitandum liberum spiritum. 
 
 Every one who has been in love, knows that the 
 passion is strongest, and the appetite weakest, in the 
 absence of the beloved object, and that the reverse is 
 the case in her presence. 
 
 Wicliffe. — Luther. — Reverence for Ideal Truths. — Johnson the 
 
 ICLIFEE^S genius was, perhaps, not equal to 
 
 ' ' Luther^s ; but really the more I know of him 
 from Yaughan and Le Bas, both of whose books I 
 like, I think him as extraordinary a man as Luther 
 upon the whole. He was much sounder and more 
 truly catholic in his view of the Eucharist than Luther. 
 And I find, not without some pleasure, that my own 
 view of it, which I was afraid was original, was main- 
 tained in the tenth century, that is to say, that the 
 body broken had no reference to the human body of 
 Christ, but to the Cara IMoumenon, or symbolical 
 Body, the Eock that followed the Israelites. 
 
 Whitaker beautifully says of Luther : — Felix ille, 
 quem. Dom.inus eo lionore dignatus est, ut homines ne- 
 quissimos suos haberet inimicos. 
 
 May 15, 1833. 
 
 Whig. — Asgill. — James /. 
 
 There is now no reverence for anything; and the 
 
JOHNSON THE WHIG. 
 
 247 
 
 reason is^ that men possess conceptions only^ and all 
 their knowledge is conceptional only. Now as^ to 
 conceive, is a work of the mere understanding, and as 
 all that can be conceived may be comprehended, it is 
 impossible that a man should reverence that, to which 
 he must always feel something in himself superior. 
 If it were possible to conceive God in a strict sense, 
 that is, as we conceive a horse or a tree, even God 
 himseK could not excite any reverence, though he 
 might excite fear or terror, or perhaps love, as a tiger 
 or a beautiful woman. But reverence, which is the 
 synthesis of love and fear, is only due from man, and, 
 indeed, only excitable in man, towards ideal truths, 
 which are always mysteries to the understanding, for 
 the same reason that the motion of my finger behind 
 my back is a mystery to you now — your eyes not 
 being made for seeing through my body. It is the 
 reason only which has a sense by which ideas can be 
 recognised, and from the fontal light of ideas only 
 can a man draw intellectual power. 
 
 Samuel Johnson,* whom, to distinguish him from 
 the Doctor, we may call the Whig, was a very 
 remarkable writer. He may be compared to his 
 contemporary De Poe, whom he resembled in many 
 points. He is another instance of King William^s 
 discrimination, which was so much superior to that of 
 
 * Diyden's Ben Jochanan, in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel. 
 He was born in 1649, and died in 1703. He was a clergyman. In 1686, when 
 the army was encamped on Hounslow Heath, he published " A humble and 
 hearty Address to all English Protestants in the present Army." For this 
 he was tried and sentenced to be pilloried in three places, pay a fine, and be 
 whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. An attempt was also made to degrade 
 him from his orders, but this failed through an informality. After the 
 Revolution he was preferred. — Ed, 
 
248 
 
 COLERIDGE^'S TABLE TALK. 
 
 any of his ministers. Johnson was one of the most 
 formidable advocates for the Exclusion Bill, and he 
 suffered by whipping and imprisonment under James 
 accordingly. Like Asgill, he argues with great appa- 
 rent candour and clearness till he has his opponent 
 within reach^ and then comes a blow as from a sledge- 
 hammer. I do not know where I could put my hand 
 upon a book containing so much sense and sound 
 constitutional doctrine as this thin folio of Johnson^s 
 Works ; and what party in this country would read 
 so severe a lecture in it as our modern Whigs ! 
 
 A close reasoner and a good writer in general may 
 be known by his pertinent use of connectives. Read 
 that page of Johnson ; you cannot alter one conjunc- 
 tion without spoiling the sense. It is a linked strain 
 throughout. In your modern books, for the most 
 part, the sentences in a page have the same connection 
 with each other that marbles have in a bag; they 
 touch without adhering. 
 
 Asgill evidently formed his style upon Johnson^s, 
 but he only imitates one part of it. Asgill never 
 rises to Johnson^s eloquence. The latter was a sort 
 of Cobbett-Burke. 
 
 James the Pirst thought that, because all power in 
 the state seemed to proceed from the crown, all power 
 therefore remained in the crown ; — as if, because the 
 tree sprang from the seed, the stem, branches, leaves, 
 and fruit were all contained in the seed. The consti- 
 tutional doctrine as to the relation which the king 
 bears to the other components of the state is in two 
 words this : — He is a representative of the whole of 
 that, of which he is himself a part. 
 
GERMAN. GOETHE. 
 
 249 
 
 May 17, 1833. 
 Sir P, Sidney. — Things are finding their Level. 
 
 HEN Sir Philip Sidney saw the enthusiasm 
 
 Y » which agitated every man, woman, and child in 
 the Netherlands against Pliilip and D^Alva, he told 
 Queen Elizabeth that it ¥^as the spirit of God, and 
 that it was invincible. What is the spirit which 
 seems to move and unsettle every other man in Eng- 
 land and on the Continent at this time ? Upon my 
 conscience, and judging by St. John^s rule, I think 
 it is a special spirit of the devil — and a very vulgar 
 devil too ! 
 
 Your modern political economists say that it is a 
 principle in their science — that all things find their 
 level ]- — which I deny ; and say, on the contrary, that 
 the true principle is, that all things are finding their 
 level like water in a storm. 
 
 Qerman. — Goethe. — God's Providence. — Man's Freedom. 
 
 EEMAN is inferior to English in modifications 
 ^ of expression of the affections, but superior to it in 
 modifications of expression of all objects of the senses. 
 
 Goethe^s small lyrics are dehghtful. He showed 
 good taste in not attempting to imitate Shakspeare^s 
 Witches, which are threefold, — Eates, Euries, and 
 earthly Hags o^ the caldron. 
 
 May 18,1833. 
 
 Man does not move in cycles, though nature does. 
 Man^s course is like that of an arrow ; for the portion 
 
250 
 
 COLEPvIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 of the great cometary ellipse which he occupies is no 
 more than a needless length to a mile. 
 
 In natural history^ God^s freedom is shown in the 
 law of necessity. In moral history^ God^s necessity 
 or providence is shown in man^s freedom. 
 
 June 8, 1833. 
 
 Dom Miguel and Dom Pedro. — Working to hetter One'^s Condition. 
 — Negro Emancipation, — Fox and Pitt. — Revolution. 
 
 THERE can be no doubt of the gross violations of 
 strict neutrality by this government in the Por- 
 tuguese affair; but I wish the Tories had left the 
 matter alone^ and not given room to the people to 
 associate them with that scoundrel Dom Miguel. You 
 can never interest the common herd in the abstract 
 question ; with them it is a mere quarrel between the 
 men ; and though Pedro is a very doubtful character, 
 he is not so bad as his brother ; and, besides, we are 
 naturally interested for the girl. 
 
 It is very strange that men who make light of the 
 direct doctrines of the Scriptures, and turn up their 
 noses at the recommendation of a line of conduct sug- 
 gested by religious truth, will nevertheless stake the 
 tranquillity of an empire, the lives and properties of 
 millions of men and women, on the faith of a maxim 
 of modern political economy ! And this, too, of a 
 maxim true only, if at all, of England or a part of 
 England, or some other country ; — namely, that the 
 desire of bettering their condition will induce men 
 to labour even more abundantly and profitably than 
 
FOX AND PITT. 
 
 251 
 
 servile compulsion^ — to which maxim the past history 
 and present state of all Asia and Africa give the lie. 
 Nay^ even in England at this day, every man in Man- 
 chester, Birmingham, and in other great manufac- 
 turing towns, knows that the most skilful artisans, 
 who may earn high wages at pleasure, are constantly 
 in the habit of working but a few days in the week, 
 and of idling the rest . I believe St. Monday is very 
 weU kept by the workmen in London. The love of 
 indolence is universal, or next to it. 
 
 Must not the ministerial plan for the West Indies 
 lead necessarily to a change of property, either by force 
 or dereliction ? I can^t see any way of escaping it. 
 
 You are always talking of the riglits of the negroes. 
 As a rhetorical mode of stimulating the people of 
 England here, I do not object ; but I utterly condemn 
 your frantic practice of declaiming about their rights 
 to the blacks themselves. They ought to be forcibly 
 reminded of the state in which their brethren in Africa 
 still are, and taught to be thankful for the providence 
 which has placed them within reach of the means of 
 grace. I know no right except such as flows from 
 righteousness; and as every Christian believes his 
 righteousness to be imputed, so must his right be an 
 imputed right too. It must flow out of a duty, and 
 it is under that name that the process of humanization 
 ought to begin and to be conducted throughout. 
 
 Thirty years ago, and more, Pitt a^^ailed himself, 
 with great political dexterity, of the apprehension, 
 which Burke and the conduct of some of the clubs in 
 London had excited, and endeavoured to inspire into 
 
252 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 the nation a panic of property. Pox, instead of 
 exposing the absurdity of this by showing the real 
 numbers and contemptible weakness of the disaf- 
 fected, fell into Pitt's trap, and was mad enough to 
 exaggerate even Pittas surmises. The consequence 
 was, a very general apprehension throughout the coun- 
 try of an impending revolution, at a time when, I will 
 venture to say, the people were more heart-whole than 
 they had been for a hundred years previously. After 
 I had travelled in Sicily and Italy, countries where 
 there were real grounds for fear, I became deeply 
 impressed with the difference. Now, after a long 
 continuance of high national glory and influence, 
 when a revolution of a most searching and general 
 character is actually at work, and the old institutions 
 of the country are all awaiting their certain destruc- 
 tion or violent modification — the people at large are 
 perfectly secure, sleeping or gambolling on the very 
 brink of a volcano. 
 
 June 15, 1833. 
 
 Virtue and Liberty. — Epistle to the Romans. — Erasmus. — Luther. 
 THHE necessity for external government to man is in 
 an inverse ratio to the vigour of his self-govern- 
 ment. Where the last is most complete, the first is least 
 wanted. Plence, the more virtue the more liberty. 
 
 1 think St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans the most 
 profound work in existence ; and I hardly believe that 
 the writings of the old Stoics, now lost, could have 
 been deeper. Undoubtedly it is, and must be, very 
 obscure to ordinary readers ; but some of the difficulty 
 
NEGRO EMANCIPATION. 
 
 253 
 
 is accidental, arising from the form in which the 
 Epistle appears. If we could now arrange this work 
 in the way in which we may be sure St. Paul would 
 himseK do, were he now alive, and preparing it for 
 the press, his reasoning would stand out clearer. His 
 accumulated parentheses would be thrown into notes, 
 or extruded to the margin. You will smile, after this, 
 if I say that I think I understand St. Paul ; and I 
 think so, because, really and truly, I recognize a 
 cogent consecutiveness in the argument — the only 
 evidence I know that you understand any book. How 
 different is the style of this intensely passionate argu- 
 ment from that of the catholic circular charge called 
 the Epistle to the Ephesians ! — and how different 
 that of both from the style of the Epistles to Timo- 
 thy and Titus, which I venture to call cTrtoroAat 
 
 navXoetSet?. 
 
 Erasmuses paraphrase of the New Testament is clear 
 and explanatory; but you cannot expect anything 
 very deep from Erasmus. The only fit commentator 
 on Paul was Luther — not by any means such a gen- 
 tleman as the Apostle, but almost as great a genius. 
 
 June 17, 1833. 
 Negro Emancipation. 
 
 HAVE you been able to discover any principle in 
 this Emancipation Bill for the Slaves, except a 
 principle of fear of the aboKtion party strugghng with 
 a dread of causing some monstrous calamity to the 
 empire at large ? Well ! I will not prophesy ; and 
 God grant that this tremendous and unprecedented 
 act of positive enactment may not do the harm to the 
 
254 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 cause of humanity and freedom which I cannot but 
 fear ! But yet^ what can be hoped^ when all human 
 wisdom and counsel are set at nought^ and religious 
 faith — the only miraculous agent among men — ^is not 
 invoked or regarded ! and that most unblest phrase — 
 the Dissenting interest — enters into the question ! 
 
 June 22, 1833. 
 
 HackeCs Life of ArcJibishop Williams. — Charles I . — Manners under 
 Edward III., Richard II., and Henry VIII. 
 
 TTTHAT a delightful and instructive book Bishop 
 
 ' ^ Hacket^s Life of Archbishop "Williams is ! You 
 learn more from it of that which is valuable towards 
 an insight into the times preceding the Civil War than 
 from all the ponderous histories and memoirs now 
 composed about that period. 
 
 Charles seems to have been a very disagreeable per- 
 sonage during Jameses life. There is nothing dutiful 
 in his demeanour. 
 
 I think the spirit of the court and nobility of 
 Edward III. and Richard II. was less gross than 
 that in the time of Henry YIII. ; for in this latter 
 period the chivalry had evaporated^ and the whole 
 coarseness was left by itself. Chaucer represents a 
 very high and romantic style of society amongst the 
 gentry. 
 
HYPOTHESIS. — SUFFICTlOy. — THEOEY. 255 
 
 June 29, 1833. 
 
 Hypothesis. — Suffiction. — Theory. — LyelVs Geology. — Gothic A rchi 
 tecture. — Gerard Douvfs " Schoolmaster^^ and Titian^ s Venus. 
 — Sir J, Scarlett, 
 
 IT seems to me a great delusion to call or suppose 
 the imagination of a subtle fluid, or molecules 
 penetrable with the same, a legitimate hypothesis. It 
 is a mere snffiction, Newton took the fact of bodies 
 falling to the centre, and upon that built up a legiti- 
 mate hypothesis. It was a subposition of something 
 certain. But Descartes^ vortices were not an hypo- 
 thesis ; they rested on no fact at all ; and yet they 
 did, in a clumsy way, explain the motions of the 
 heavenly bodies. But your subtle fluid is pure 
 gratuitous assumption ; and for what use ? It explains 
 nothing. 
 
 Besides, you are endeavouring to deduce power 
 from mass, in which you expressly say there is no 
 power but the vis inertice ; whereas, the whole analogy 
 of chemistry proves that power produces mass. 
 
 The use of a theory in the real sciences is to help 
 the investigator to a complete view of all the hitherto 
 discovered facts relating to the science in question ; 
 it is a collected view, ^ecopta, of aU he yet knows in one. 
 Of course, whilst any pertinent facts remain unknown, 
 no theory can be exactly true, because every new fact 
 must necessarily, to a greater or less degree, displace 
 the relation of all the others. A theory, therefore, 
 only helps investigation ; it cannot invent or discover. 
 The only true theories are those of geometry, because 
 in geometry all the premisses are true and unalterable. 
 But, to suppose that, in our present exceedingly im- 
 
256 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 perfect acquaintance with the facts^ any theory in che- 
 mistry or geology is altogether accurate, is absurd : — 
 it cannot be true. 
 
 Mr. Lyeirs system of geology is just half the truth, 
 and no more. He affirms a great deal that is true, 
 and he denies a great deal which is equally true; 
 which is the general characteristic of all systems not 
 embracing the whole truth. So it is with the recti- 
 Knearity or undulatory motion of light; — I believe 
 both ; though philosophy has as yet but imperfectly 
 ascertained the conditions of their alternate existence, 
 or the laws by which they are regulated. 
 
 Those who deny light to be matter do not, there- 
 fore, deny its corporeity. 
 
 The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity 
 made imaginable. It is, no doubt, a sublimer effort of 
 genius than the Greek style ; but then it depends much 
 more on execution for its effect. I was more than ever 
 impressed with the marvellous sublimity and transcend- 
 ant beauty of King^s College Chapel.- It is quite 
 unparalleled. 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge visited Cambridge upon the occasion of the scientific 
 meeting there in June, 1833. — "My emotions," he said, "at revisiting the 
 university were at first overwhelming. I could not speak for an hour; yet 
 my feelings were upon the whole very pleasurable, and I have not passed, 
 of late years, at least, three days of such great enjoyment and healthful 
 excitement of mind and body. The bed on which I slept — and slept soundly 
 too — was, as near as I can describe it, a couple of sacks full of potatoes tied 
 together. I understand the young men think it hardens them. Truly I lay 
 down at night a man, and arose in the morning a bruise." He told me " that 
 the men were much amused at his saying that the fine old Quaker philoso- 
 pher Dalton's face was like All Souls' College." The two persons of whom 
 he spoke with the greatest interest were Mr. l^araday and Mr. Thirlwall; 
 saying of the fomner, " that he seemed to have the true temperament of 
 genius, that carrying-on of the spring and freshness of youthfiil, nay, 
 boyish feelings, into the matured strength of manhood! " For, as Mr. Cole- 
 ridge had long before expressed the same thought, — " To find no contradic- 
 
SIR JAMES SCARLETT. COBBETT. 257 
 
 I think Gerard Douw's Schoolmaster/^ in the 
 Pitzwilliam Museum^ the finest thing of the sort I 
 ever saw; — whether you look at it at the common 
 distance^ or examine it with a glass^ the wonder is 
 equal. And that glorious picture of the Venus — so 
 perfectly beautiful and perfectly innocent — as if 
 beauty and innocence could not be dissociated ! The 
 Trench thing below is a curious instance of the in- 
 herent grossness of the Trench taste. Titian^s picture 
 is made quite bestial. 
 
 I think Sir James Scarlett^s speech for the defendant, 
 in the late action of Cobbett v. The Times, for a libel, 
 worthy of the best ages of Greece or Eome ; though, 
 to be sure, some of his remarks could not have been 
 very palatable to his cKents. 
 
 I am glad you came in to punctuate my discourse, 
 which I fear has gone on for an hour without any 
 stop at all. 
 
 tion in the union of old and new ; to contemplate the Ancient of Days and all 
 His works with feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first 
 creative fiat, this characterises the mind that feels the riddle of the world, 
 and may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the 
 powers of manhood; to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with 
 the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered 
 familiar — 
 
 ' With sun and moon and stars throughout the year. 
 And man and woman ; ' 
 this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which 
 distinguish genius from talent. And therefore is it the prime merit of 
 genius, and its most imequivocal mode of manifestation, so to represent 
 familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others a kindred feeling 
 concerning them, and that freshness of sensation which is the constant 
 accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence. Who has 
 not a thousand times seen snow fall on water ? AVho has not watched it 
 with a new feeling, from the time that he has read Burns' s comparison of 
 sensual pleasure- 
 To snow that falls upon a river, 
 A moment white — then gone for ever ! ' " 
 
 Biog. Lit. vol. i., p. 85.— Ed. 
 
 S 
 
258 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 July 1, 1833. 
 
 Mandeville's Fable of the Bees. — Bestial Theory. — Character of 
 Bertram. — Beaumont and Fletcher^ s Dramas. — ^schylus, 
 Sophocles, Euripides. — Milton. 
 
 TP I could ever believe that Mandeville really meant 
 anything more by his Table of the Bees than a 
 ionne houcJie of solemn raillery,, I should like to ask 
 those man-shaped apes who have taken up his sug- 
 gestions in earnest^ and seriously maintained them as 
 bases for a rational account of man and the world — 
 how they explain the very existence of those dexterous 
 cheats, those superior charlatans, the legislators and 
 philosophers, who have known how to play so well 
 upon the peacock-Hke vanity and follies of their fellow- 
 mortals. 
 
 By the by, I wonder some of you lawyers [sub 
 rosa, of course) have not quoted the pithy lines in 
 Mandeville upon this registration question : — 
 
 " The lawyers, of whose art the basis 
 Was raising feuds and splitting cases, 
 Opposed all Registers, that cheats 
 Might make more work with dipt estates ; 
 As 't were unlawful that one's own 
 Without a lawsuit should be known ! 
 They put off hearings wilfully, 
 To finger the refreshing fee ; 
 And to defend a wicked cause 
 Examined and survey 'd the laws, 
 As burglars shops and houses do. 
 To see where best they may break through." 
 
 There is great Hudibrastic vigour in these lines ; 
 and those on the doctors are also very terse. 
 
 Look at that head of Cline, by Chantrey ! Is that 
 forehead, that nose, those temples and that chin, akin 
 
BERTRAM AND HELENA. 
 
 259 
 
 to the monkey tribe ? 'No, no. To a man of sensibility 
 no argument could disprove the bestial theory so con- 
 vincingly as a quiet contemplation of that fine bust. 
 
 I cannot agree with the solemn abuse which the 
 critics have poured out upon Bertram in, " All ^s Well 
 that ends Well.''^ He was a young nobleman in feudal 
 times, just bursting into manhood, with aU the feel- 
 ings of pride of birth and appetite for pleasure and 
 liberty natural to such a character so circumstanced. 
 Of course, he had never regarded Helena otherwise 
 than as a dependant in the family; and of aU that 
 which she possessed of goodness and fidelity and 
 courage, which might atone for her inferiority in other 
 respects, Bertram was necessarily in a great measure 
 ignorant. And after aU, hev _primd facie merit was 
 the having inherited a prescription from her old father 
 the doctor, by which she cures the king, — a merit 
 which supposes an extravagance of personal loyalty in 
 Bertram to make conclusive to him in such a matter 
 as that of taking a wife. Bertram had surely good 
 reason to look upon the king^s forcing him to marry 
 Helena as a very tyrannical act. Indeed, it must be 
 confessed that her character is not very delicate, and 
 it required all Shakspeare^s consummate skiU to in- 
 terest us for her; and he does this chiefly by the 
 operation of the other characters, — the Countess, 
 Lafeu, &c. We get to like Helena from their praising 
 and commending her so much. 
 
 In Beaumont and Metcher^s tragedies the comic 
 scenes are rarely so interfused amidst the tragic as to 
 produce a unity of the tragic on the whole, without 
 
 s 2 
 
260 
 
 COLEUIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 which the intermixture is a fault. In Shakspeare^ this 
 is always managed with transcendant skill. The Pool 
 in Lear contributes in a very sensible manner to the 
 tragic wildness of the whole drama. Beaumont and 
 Metcher^s serious plays or tragedies are complete 
 hybrids^ — neither fish nor fleshy — upon any rules, 
 Greek, Roman, or Gothic ; and yet they are very 
 dehghtful notwithstanding. No doubt, they imitate 
 the ease of gentlemanly conversation better than Shak- 
 speare, who was unable not to be too much associated 
 to succeed perfectly in this. 
 
 When I was a boy, I was fondest of JEschylus ; in 
 youth and middle age, I preferred Euripides ; now in 
 my declining years, I admire Sophocles. I can now at 
 length see that Sophocles is the most perfect. Yet he 
 never rises to the sublime simplicity of ^schylus — 
 simplicity of design, I mean — nor diffuses himself in 
 the passionate outpourings of Euripides. I understand 
 why the ancients called Euripides the most tragic of 
 their dramatists : he evidently embraces within the 
 scope of the tragic poet many passions, — ^love, con- 
 jugal affection, jealousy, and so on, wliich Sophocles 
 seems to have considered as incongruous with the 
 ideal statuesqueness of the tragic drama. Certainly 
 Euripides was a greater poet in the abstract than 
 Sophocles. His choruses may be faulty as choruses, 
 but how beautiful and affecting they are as odes and 
 songs ! I think the famous EitTTTrov, ^eVe, in the 
 (Edipus Coloneus,* cold in comparison with many of 
 the odes of Euripides, as that song of the chorus in 
 
 'Lkou rot x^UTio-roL ycig iTUvXot, 
 
 rh* ot^yriTot. Koaa;voi> * — k. t. A. V. (3G8 
 
CHORIC ODE IN THE HECUBA. 
 
 261 
 
 the Hippolytus — '^Epoos, ^'Epco?,* and so on; and I 
 remember a clioric ode in the Hecuba^ which always 
 struck me as exquisitely rich and finished ; I mean, 
 where the chorus speaks of Troy and the night of the 
 capture.! 
 
 * "E§a;?,"E^a;?, o xoir ofJLijtMTm 
 (rrx^ug z'Sdov, il(ra,ym •yXvzilotv 
 
 (Jt,'/] fJUOl CTOTi trilV XOCXS) (p(X,VUYi?j 
 
 fjuvih* a,ppv9/xo? 'ixQoi? ' — x. r. A. V. 527. 
 f I take it for granted that Mr. Coleridge alluded to the chorus,— 
 
 ovyAri Ki^W rotov 'EX- 
 
 ^o^i dvif ^o^t trs^o'otv' — X. r. A, V. 899. 
 
 Thou, then, O natal Troy ! no more 
 The city of the unsack'd shalt be, 
 So thick from dark Achaia's shore 
 The cloud of war hath cover'd thee. 
 
 Ah ! not again 
 
 I tread thy plain — 
 The spear — the spear hath rent thy pride ; 
 The flame hath scarr'd thee deep and wide ; 
 Thy coronal of towers is shorn, 
 And thou most piteous art — most naked and forlorn 
 
 I perish'd at the noon of night ! 
 When sleep had seal'd each weary eye ; 
 When the dance was o'er. 
 And harps no more 
 Rang out in choral minstrelsy. 
 In the dear bower of delight 
 My husband slept in joy ; 
 His shield and spear 
 Suspended near. 
 Secure he slept : that sailor band 
 Full sure he deem'd no more should stand 
 Beneath the walls of Troy. 
 And I too, by the taper's light, 
 Which in the golden mirror's haze 
 Flash'd its interminable rays, 
 Bound up the tresses of my hair. 
 That I Love's peaceful sleep might share. 
 
 I slept ; but, hark ! that war-shout dread. 
 Which rolling through the city spread ; 
 And this the cry, — " When, Sons of Greece, 
 When shall the lingering leaguer cease ? 
 
262 
 
 COLEllIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 There is nothing very surprising in Milton'^s pre- 
 ference of Euripides, though so unlike himself. It 
 is very common — very natural — for men to like and 
 even admire an exhibition of power very different in 
 kind from anything of their own. No jealousy arises. 
 Milton preferred Ovid too, and I dare say he admired 
 both as a man of sensibility admires a lovely woman, 
 with a feeling into which jealousy or envy cannot 
 enter. With JSschylus or Sophocles he might per- 
 chance have matched himself. 
 
 In Euripides you have oftentimes a very near ap- 
 proach to comedy, and I hardly know any writer in 
 whom you can find such fine models of serious and 
 dignified conversation. 
 
 When will ye spoil Troy's watch-tower high, 
 And home return ? " — I heard the cry, 
 And, starting from the genial bed, 
 Veil'd, as a Doric maid, I fled, 
 And knelt, Diana, at thy holy fane, 
 A trembling suppliant — all in vain. 
 They led me to the sounding shore — 
 
 Heavens ! as I pass'd the crowded way. 
 
 My bleeding lord before me lay — 
 I saw — I saw — and wept no more, 
 Till, as the homeward breezes bore 
 The bark returning o'er the sea, 
 My gaze, O Ilion, turn'd on thee ! 
 Then, frantic, to the midnight air, 
 I cursed aloud the adulterous pair: — 
 " They plunge me deep in exile's woe ; 
 They lay my country low : 
 
 Their love — no love ! but some dark spell, 
 
 In vengeance breathed, by spirit fell. 
 Rise, hoary sea, in awful tide. 
 And whelm that vessel's guilty pride ; 
 Nor e'er, in high Mycene's hall. 
 Let Helen boast in peace of mighty Ilion's fall." 
 
 The translation was given to mo by Mr. Justice Coleridge. — Ed. 
 
STYLE. CAVALIER SLANG. 
 
 263 
 
 July 3, 1833. 
 
 Style. — Cavalier Slang. — Junius, — Prose and Verse. — Imitation 
 
 '^PHE collocation of words is so artificial in Shak- 
 
 speare and Milton^ that you may as well think of 
 pushing a brick out of a wall with your fore-finger, as 
 attempt to remove a word out of any of their finished 
 passages.* 
 
 A good lecture upon style might be composed, by 
 taking, on the one hand, the slang of L^E strange, and 
 perhaps even of Roger North, t which became so 
 fashionable after the Restoration as a mark of loyalty; 
 and, on the other, the Johnsonian magniloquence or 
 the balanced metre of Junius ; and then showing how 
 each extreme is faulty, upon different grounds. 
 
 It is quite curious to remark the prevalence of the 
 Cavalier slang style in the divines of Charles the 
 Second^s time. Barrow could not, of course, adopt 
 such a mode of writing throughout, because he could 
 not in it have communicated his elaborate thinkings 
 and lofty rhetoric ; but even Barrow not unfrequently 
 
 * " The amotion or transposition will alter the thonght, or the feeling, or 
 at least the tone. They are as pieces of mosaic work, from which you cannot 
 strike the smallest block without making a hole in the picture." — Quarterly 
 Review, No. GUI. p. 7. 
 
 t But Mr. Coleridge took a great distinction between North and the other 
 writers commonly associated with him. In speaking of the Examen and the 
 Life of Lord North, in the Friend, Mr. C. calls them "two of the most 
 interesting biographical works in our language, both for the weight of the 
 matter, and the incuriosa felicitas of the style. The pages are all alive with 
 the genuine idioms of our mother tongue. A fastidious taste, it is true, will 
 find offence in the occasional vulgarisms, or what we now call slang, which 
 not a few of our writers, shortly after the Restoration of Charles the Second, 
 seem to have affected as a mark of loyalty. These instances, however, are 
 but a trifling drawback. They are not sought for, as is too often and too 
 plainly done by L'Estrange, Collyer, Tom Brown, and their imitators. North 
 never goes out of his way, either to seek them, or to avoid them ; and, in the 
 main, his language gives us the very nerve, pulse, and sinew of a hearty, 
 healthy, conversational English''' — Vol. ii. p. 307. — Ed. 
 
 and Copy. 
 
264j coleeidge^s table talk. 
 
 lets slip a phrase here and there^ in the regular Eoger 
 North way, — much to the delight, no doubt, of the 
 largest part of his audience and contemporary readers. 
 See particularly, for instances of this, his work on the 
 Pope^s supremacy. South is full of it. 
 
 The style of Junius is a sort of metre, the law of 
 which is a balance of thesis and antithesis. When he 
 gets out of this aphorismic metre into a sentence of 
 five or six lines long, nothing can exceed the sloven- 
 liness of the English. Horne Tooke and a long sen- 
 tence seem the only two antagonists that were too 
 much for him. Still the antithesis of Junius is a real 
 antithesis of images or thought ; but the antithesis of 
 Johnson is rarely more than verbal. 
 
 The definition of good prose is — proper words in 
 their proper places ; — of good verse — the most pro- 
 per words in their proper places. The propriety is 
 in either case relative. The words in prose ought to 
 express the intended meaning, and no more ; if they 
 attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault. 
 In the very best styles, as Southey^s, you read page 
 after page, understanding the author perfectly, without 
 once taking notice of the medium of communication ; 
 — it is as if he had been speaking to you aU the while. 
 But in verse you must do more ; — there the words, 
 the w£dia, must be beautiful, and ought to attract 
 your notice — yet not so much and so perpetually as 
 to destroy the unity which ought to result from the 
 whole poem. This is the general rule, but, of course, 
 subject to some modifications, according to the dif- 
 ferent kinds of prose or verse. Some prose may 
 approach towards verse, as oratory, and therefore a 
 more studied exhibition of the media may be proper ; 
 
DR. JOHNSON. 
 
 265 
 
 and some verse may border more on mere narrative, 
 and there the style should be simpler. But the great 
 thing in poetry is, quocunque modo, to effect a unity of 
 impression upon the whole ; and a too great fulness 
 and profusion of point in the parts will prevent this. 
 Who can read with pleasure more than a hundred lines 
 or so of Hudibras at one time ? Each couplet or 
 quatrain is so whole in itself, that you can^t connect 
 them. There is no fusion, — ^just as it is in Seneca. 
 
 Imitation is the mesothesis of likeness and difference. 
 The difference is as essential to it as the likeness ; for 
 without the difference, it would be copy or fac-simile. 
 But to borrow a term from astronomy, it is a librating 
 mesothesis : for it may verge more to likeness as in 
 painting, or more to difference, as in sculpture. 
 
 July 4, 1833. 
 Dr. J ohnson. — Bosivell. — Burke. — Newton, — Milton, 
 "PvR. JOHNSON^s fame now rests principally upon 
 Boswell. It is impossible not to be amused 
 with such a book. But his bow-wow manner must 
 have had a good deal to do with the effect produced ; 
 — for no one, I suppose, will set Johnson before 
 Burke, — and Burke was a great and universal talker ; 
 — yet now we hear nothing of this except by some 
 chance remarks in Boswell. The fact is. Burke, like 
 all men of genius who love to talk at all, was very 
 discursive and continuous ; hence he is not reported ; 
 he seldom said the sharp short things that Johnson 
 almost always did, which produce a more decided 
 effect at the moment, and which are so much more 
 
266 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 easy to carry off. Besides^ as to Burke^s testimony 
 to Johnson^'s powers^ you must remember that Burke 
 was a great courtier ; and after all^ Burke said and 
 wrote more than once that he thought Johnson 
 greater in talking than writing, and greater in Bos- 
 well than in real life.f 
 
 Newton was a great man, but you must excuse me 
 if I think that it would take many Newtons to make 
 one Milton. 
 
 July 6, 1833. 
 Painting. — Music, — Poetry, 
 7 T is a poor compliment to pay to a painter to tell 
 him that his figure stands out of the canvas, or 
 that you start at the likeness of the portrait. Take 
 almost any daub, cut it out of the canvas, and place 
 the figure looking into or out of a window, and any one 
 may take it for life. Or take one of Mrs. Salmon^s 
 wax queens or generals, and you will very sensibly 
 
 * Burke, I am persuaded, was not so continuous a talker as Coleridge. 
 Madame de Stael told a nephew of the latter, at Coppet, that Mr. C. was a 
 master of monologue, mais quHl ne savait pas le dialogue. There was a spice 
 of vindictiveness in this, the exact history of which is not worth explaining. 
 And if dialogue must be cut down in its meaning to small talk, I, for one, 
 will admit that Coleridge, amongst his numberless qualifications, possessed 
 it not. But I am sure that he could, when it suited him, converse as well as 
 any one else, and with women he frequently did converse in a very winning 
 and popular style, confining tliem, however, as well as he could, to the detail 
 of facts or of their spontaneous emotions. In general, it was certainly 
 otherwise. " You must not be surprised," he said to me, " at my talking so 
 long to you — I pass so much of my time in pain and solitude, yet ever- 
 lastingly thinking, that, when you or any other persons call on me, I can 
 hardly help easing my mind, by pouring forth some of the accumulated 
 mass of reflection and feeling, upon an apparently interested recipient." 
 But the principal reason, no doubt, was the habit of his intellect, which was 
 under a law of discoursing upon all subjects with reference to ideas or ulti- 
 mate ends. You miglit interrupt him wlien you pleased, and he was patient 
 Of every sort of conversation except mere personality, which he absolutely 
 hat'id.— Ed. 
 
 t This was said, I believe, to the late Sir James Mackintosh. — Eu. 
 
MUSIC. POETRY. 
 
 267 
 
 feel the difference between a copy^ as they are^ and an 
 imitation^ of the human form^ as a good portrait ought 
 to be. Look at that flower vase of Van Huysum, 
 and at these wax or stone peaches and apricots ! The 
 last are likest to their original, but what pleasure do 
 they give ? None, except to children.* 
 
 Some music is above me; most music is beneath 
 me. I like Beethoven and Mozart — or else some of 
 the aerial compositions of the elder Italians, as Pales- 
 trina and Carissimi.f And I love Purcell. 
 
 The best sort of music is what it should be — 
 sacred; the next best, the military, has fallen to the 
 lot of the Devil. 
 
 Good music never tires me, nor sends me to sleep. 
 I feel physically refreshed and strengthened by it, as 
 Milton says he did. 
 
 * This passage, and those following, will evidence, what the readers even 
 of this little work must have seen, that Mr. Coleridge had an eye, almost 
 exclusively, for the ideal or universal in painting and music. He knew 
 nothing of the details of handling in the one, or of rules of composition in 
 the other. Yet he was, to the best of my knowledge, an unerring judge of 
 the merits of any serious effort in the fine arts, and detected the leading 
 thought or feeling of the artist, with a decision which used sometimes to 
 astonish me. Every picture which I have looked at in company with him, 
 seems now, to my mind, translated into English. He would sometimes say, 
 after looking for a minute at a picture, generally a modern one, " There 's no 
 use in stopping at this ; for I see the painter had no idea. It is mere 
 mechanical drawing. Come on ; here the artist meant something for the 
 mind." It was just the same with his knowledge of music. His appetite for 
 what he thought good, was literally inexhaustible. He told me he could listen 
 to fine music for twelve hours together, and go away refreshed. But he 
 required in music either thought or feeling ; mere addresses to the sensual 
 ear he could not away with ; hence his utter distaste for Rossini, and his 
 reverence for Beethoven and Mozart. — Ed. 
 
 t G iovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was bom about 1529, and died in 1594. 
 I believe he may be considered the founder or reformer of the Italian church 
 music. His masses, motets, and hymns are tolerably well known amongst 
 lovers of the old composers ; but Mr. Coleridge used to speak with delight of 
 some of Palestrina's madrigals which he heard at Rome. 
 
 Giacomo Carissimi composed about the years 1640 — 1650. His style has 
 been charged with effeminacy; but Mr. C. thought it very graceful and 
 chaste. Henry Purcell needs no addition in England. — Ed. 
 
268 
 
 COLERTDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 I could write as good verses now as ever I did^ if 
 I were perfectly free from vexations^ and were in the 
 ad libitum hearing of fine music,, which has a sensible 
 effect in harmonising my thoughts^ and in animating 
 and^ as it were^ lubricating my inventive faculty. The 
 reason of my not finishing Christabel is not^ that I 
 don^t know how to do it — for I have^ as I always had, 
 the whole plan entire from beginning to end in my 
 mind ; but I fear I could not carry on with equal 
 success the execution of the idea, an extremely subtle 
 and difiicult one.* Besides, after this continuation of 
 Paust, which they tell me is very poor, who can have 
 courage to attempt a reversal of the judgment of all 
 criticism against continuations ? Let us except Don 
 Quixote, however, although the second part of that 
 transcendant work is not exactly uno flatu with the 
 original conception. 
 
 July 8,1833. 
 Public ScJiools. 
 
 T AM clear for public schools as the general rule ; 
 
 but for particular children private education may 
 be proper. For the purpose of moving at ease in the 
 best English society, — mind, I don^t call the London 
 exclusive clique the best English society, — the defect 
 of a public education upon the plan of our great 
 schools and Oxford and Cambridge is hardly to be 
 supplied. But the defect is visible positively in some 
 men, and only negatively in others. The first offend 
 
 * " Thn thing attempted in Christabel is the most difficult of execution 
 in the whole field of romance — witchery by daylight — and the success is 
 complete."— ^aarieWy Review, No. CIII., p. 29. 
 
SCOTT AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 269 
 
 you by habits and modes of thinking and acting 
 directly attributable to their private education : in the 
 others you only regret that the freedom and facility of 
 the established and national mode of bringing up is 
 not added to their good qualities. 
 
 I more than doubt the expediency of making even 
 elementary mathematics a part of the routine in the 
 system of the great schools. It is enough, I think, 
 that encouragement and faciUties should be given; 
 and I think more will be thus effected than by com- 
 peUing all. Much less would I incorporate the 
 German or French, or any modern language, into the 
 school labours. I think that a great mistake.* 
 
 |EAR Sir Walter Scott and myself were exact, but 
 
 ^ harmonious, opposites in this ; — that every old 
 ruin, hill, river, or tree called up in his mind a host 
 of historical or biographical associations, — ^just as a 
 bright pan of brass, when beaten, is said to attract 
 the swarming bees; — whereas, for myself, notwith- 
 
 * " One constant blunder " — I find it so pencilled by Mr. C. on a margin^ 
 *' of these New-Broomers — these Penny Magazine sages and philanthropists, 
 in reference to our public schools, is to confine their view to what school- 
 masters teach the boys, with entire oversight of all that the boys are excited 
 to learn from each other and of themselves — with more geniality even 
 lecause it is not a part of their compelled school knowledge. An Eton boy's 
 knowledge of the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Missouri, Orellana, &c., will be, 
 generally, foimd in exact proportion to his knowledge of the Ilissus, Hebrus, 
 Orontes, &c. ; inasmuch as modern travels and voyages are more entertaining 
 and fascinating than Cellarius ; or Robinson Crusoe, Dampier, and Captain 
 Cook, than the Periegesis. Compare the lads themselves from Eton and 
 Harrow, &c., with the alumni of the New-Broom Institution, and not the lists 
 of school-lessons ; and be that comparison the criterion. — Ed. 
 
 August 4, 1833. 
 Scott and Coleridge. 
 
270 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 standing Dr. Johnson^ I believe I should walk over 
 the plain of Marathon without taking more interest 
 in it than in any other plain of similar features. Yet 
 I receive as much pleasure in reading the account of 
 the battle^ in Herodotus^ as any one can. Charles 
 Lamb wrote an essay* on a man who lived in past 
 time : — I thought of adding another to it on one who 
 lived not in time at all^ past^ present, or future, — but 
 beside or collaterally. 
 
 August 10, 1833. 
 Nervous Weakness. — Hooker and Bull. — Faith. — A Poefs need 
 of Praise. 
 
 i PEESON, nervously weak, has a sensation of 
 
 weakness which is as bad to him as muscular 
 weakness. The only difference lies in the better 
 chance of removal. 
 
 The fact, that Hooker and Bull, in their two palmary 
 works respectively, are read in the Jesuit Colleges, is 
 a curious instance of the power of mind over the most 
 profound of all prejudices. 
 
 There are permitted moments of exultation through 
 faith, when we cease to feel our own emptiness save as 
 a capacity for our Redeemer's fulness. 
 
 There is a species of applause scarcely less genial 
 to a poet, than the vernal warmth to the feathered 
 songsters during their nest-breeding or incubation; 
 a sympathy, an expressed hope, that is the open air 
 
 * I know not when or where; but arc not all the writings of this exquisite 
 genius the offiisions of one whose spirit lived in past time ? The place which 
 Lamb holds, and will continue to hold, in English literature, seems less liable 
 to interruption than that of any other writer of our day. — Ed. 
 
QUAKERS. PHILANTHROPISTS. J EWS. 271 
 
 in which the poet breathes^ and without which the 
 sense of power sinks back on itself^ like a sigh heaved 
 up from the tightened chest of a sick man. 
 
 QUAKEE is made up of ice and flame. He has 
 
 ^ no composition^ no mean temperature. Hence 
 he is rarely interested about any public measure but 
 he becomes a fanatic^ and oversteps^ in his irrespective 
 zeal^ every decency and every right opposed to his 
 course. 
 
 I have never known a trader in philanthropy who 
 was not wrong in heart somewhere or other. Indi- 
 viduals so distinguished are usually unhappy in their 
 family relations, — men not benevolent or beneficent to 
 individuals, but almost hostile to them, yet lavishing 
 money and labour and time on the race, the abstract 
 notion. The cosmopolitism which does not spring 
 out of, and blossom upon, the deep-rooted stem of 
 nationality or patriotism, is a spurious and rotten 
 growth. 
 
 When I read the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters 
 of the Epistle to the Romans to that fine old man 
 
 Mr. , at Ramsgate, he shed tears. Any Jew^ of 
 
 sensibihty must be deeply impressed by them. 
 
 The tw^o images farthest removed from each other 
 which can be comprehended under one term, are, I 
 think, Isaiah * — Hear, O heavens, and give ear. 
 
 August 14, 1833. 
 Quakers. — Philcmthropists. — Jews, 
 
 * I remember Mr. Coleridge used to call Isaiah his ideal of the Hebrew 
 prophet. He studied that part of tlie Scripture with unremitting attention 
 
272 
 
 COLEHIDGE^S TAJ3LE TALK. 
 
 0 earth ! ''—and Levi of Holywell Street— Old 
 clothes ! '' — both of them Jews^ you '11 observe. 
 
 Immane quantum discrepant ! 
 
 August 15, 1833. 
 Sallust. — TkucTjdides.— 'Herodotus. — Gibbon. — Key to the Decline 
 of the Roman Empire. 
 
 T CONSIDER the two works of Sallust which have 
 come down to us entire, as romances founded on 
 facts ; no adequate causes are stated, and there is no 
 real continuity of action. In Thucydides, you are 
 aware from the beginning that you are reading the 
 reflections of a man of great genius and experience 
 upon the character and operation of the two great 
 political principles in conflict in the civilised world in 
 his time ; his narrative of events is of minor import- 
 ance, and it is evident that he selects for the purpose 
 of illustration. It is Thucydides himself whom you 
 read throughout under the names of Pericles, Nicias, &c. 
 But in Herodotus it is just the reverse. He has as 
 little subjectivity as Homer; and, delighting in the 
 great fancied epic of events, he narrates them without 
 impressing any thing as of his own mind upon the 
 narrative. It is the charm of Herodotus that he gives 
 you the spirit of his age — that of Thucydides, that he 
 
 and most reverential admiration. Although Mr. C. was remarkably deficient 
 in the technical memory of words, he could say a great deal of Isaiah by heart, 
 and he deliglited in pointing out the hexamctrical rhythm of numerous 
 passages in the English version : — 
 
 " Hear, O heavens, and give ear, | O earth : for the Lord hath spoken. 
 I have nourished and brought up children, | and they have rebelled 
 against me. 
 
 The ox knoweth his owner, | and the ass his master's crib : 
 liut Israel doth not know, | my people doth not consider."— Ed. 
 
GIBBON^S DECLINE AND FALL. 
 
 273 
 
 reveals to you his own, which was above the spirit of 
 liis age. 
 
 The difference between the composition of a history 
 in modern and ancient times is very great ; still there 
 are certain principles upon which the history of a 
 modern period may be written, neither sacrificing all 
 truth and reality, Kke Gibbon, nor descending into 
 mere biography and anecdote. 
 
 Gibbon^s style is detestable, but his style is not the 
 worst thing about him. His history has proved an 
 effectual bar to all real familiarity with the temper 
 and habits of imperial Eome. Few persons read the 
 original authorities, even those which are classical; and 
 certainly no distinct knowledge of the actual state of 
 the empire can be obtained from Gibbon^s rhetorical 
 sketches. He takes notice of nothing but what may 
 produce an effect; he skips on from eminence to 
 eminence, without ever taking you through the valleys 
 between : in fact, his work is little else but a disguised 
 collection of all the splendid anecdotes which he could 
 find in any book concerning any persons or nations 
 from the Antonines to the capture of Constantinople. 
 When I read a chapter in Gibbon, I seem to be 
 looking through a luminous haze or fog : — figures 
 come and go, I know not how or why, all larger than 
 life, or distorted or discoloured ; nothing is real, vivid, 
 true; all is scenical, and as it were, exhibited by 
 candlehght. And then to call it a History of the 
 Decline and Fall of the Koman Empire ! Was there 
 ever a greater misnomer ? I protest I do not remem- 
 ber a single philosophical attempt made throughout 
 the work to fathom the ultimate causes of the decline 
 or fall of that empire. How miserably deficient is 
 
274 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 the narrative of the important reign of Justinian ! 
 And that poor scepticism, which Gibbon mistook for 
 Socratic philosophy, has led him to misstate and mis- 
 take the character and influence of Christianity in a 
 way which even an avowed infidel or atheist would 
 not and could not have done. Gibbon was a man of 
 immense reading ; but he had no philosophy ; and he 
 never fully understood the principle upon which the 
 best of the old historians wrote. He attempted to 
 imitate their artificial construction of the whole work 
 — their dramatic ordonnance of the parts — without 
 seeing that their histories were intended more as 
 documents illustrative of the truths of political phi- 
 losophy than as mere chronicles of events. 
 
 The true key to the declension of the Eoman empire 
 — which is not to be found in all Gibbon^s immense 
 work — may be stated in two words : — the imperial 
 character overlaying, and finally destroying, the na- 
 tional character. Eome under Trajan was an empire 
 without a nation. 
 
 August 16, 1833. 
 
 Dr. Johnson's Political Pamphlets. — Taxation. — Direct Representor- 
 tion. — Universal Suffrage. — Right of Women to Vote. — Home 
 TooJce. — Etymology of the final I YE. 
 
 I LIKE Dr. Johnson^s political pamphlets better 
 than any other parts of his works : — particularly 
 his "Taxation no Tyranny is very clever and spirited, 
 though he only sees half of his subject, and that not 
 in a very philosophical manner. Plunder — Tribute 
 — Taxation — are the three gradations of action by the 
 sovereign on the property of the subject. The first 
 
DR. JOHNSON^S POLITICAL PAMPHLETS. 275 
 
 is mere violence^ bounded by no law or custom, and 
 is properly an act only between conqueror and con- 
 quered, and that, too, in the moment of victory. The 
 second supposes law ; but law proceeding only from, 
 and dictated by, one party — the conqueror; law, by 
 which he consents to forego his right of plunder upon 
 condition of the conquered giving up to him, of their 
 own accord, a fixed commutation. The third implies 
 compact, and negatives any right to plunder, — tax- 
 ation being professedly for the direct benefit of the 
 party taxed, that, by paying a part, he may tlirough 
 the labours and superintendence of the sovereign be 
 able to enjoy the rest in peace. As to the right to 
 tax being oidy commensurate with direct representa- 
 tion, it is a fable, falsely and treacherously brought 
 forward by those who know its hollowness well enough. 
 You may show its weakness in a moment, by observing 
 that not even the universal suffrage of the Benthamites 
 avoids the difficulty ; — for although it may be allowed 
 to be contrary to decorum that women should legis- 
 late ; yet there can be no reason why women should 
 not choose their representatives to legislate; and if 
 it be said that they are merged in their husbands, let 
 it be allowed where the wife has no separate property; 
 but where she has a distinct taxable estate, in which 
 her husband has no interest, what right can her hus- 
 band have to choose for her the person whose vote 
 may affect her separate interest? — Besides, at all 
 events, an unmarried woman of age, possessing one 
 thousand pounds a year, has surely as good a moral 
 right to vote, if taxation without representation is 
 tyranny, as any ten-pounder in the kingdom. The 
 truth, of course, is, that direct representation is a 
 
 T 2 
 
276 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 chimera, impracticable in fact, and useless or noxious 
 if practicable. 
 
 Johnson had neither eye nor ear ; for nature, there- 
 fore, he cared, as he knew, nothing. His knowledge 
 of town life was minute ; but even that was imperfect, 
 as not being contrasted with the better life of the 
 country. 
 
 Horne Tooke was once holding forth on language, 
 when, turning to me, he asked me if I knew what the 
 meaning of the final ive was in English words. I 
 said I thought I could tell what he, Horne Tooke, 
 himself thought. " Why, what ? said he. Fis/' 
 I replied ; and he acknowledged I had guessed right. 
 I told him, however, that I could not agree with him; 
 but believed that the final ive came from ick — vicus, 
 oLKos ; the root denoting collectivity and community, 
 and that it was opposed to the final m^, which sig- 
 nifies separation, particularity, and individual property, 
 from in^le, a hearth, or one man^s place or seat : olkos, 
 vicus, denoted an aggregation of ingles. The alter- 
 ation of the c and k of the root into the v was evidently 
 the work of the digammate power, and hence we find 
 the icus and ivus indifferently as finals in Latin. The 
 precise difference of the etymologies is apparent in 
 these phrases : — The lamb is ^ortive ; that is, has a 
 nature or habit of sporting: the lamb is sport^^; 
 that is, the animal is now performing a sport. Horne 
 Tooke, upon this, said nothing to my etymology; but 
 I believe he found that he could not make a fool 
 of me, as he did of Godwin and some other of his 
 butts. 
 
TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS. 277 
 
 August 17, 1833. 
 
 " The Lord'' in the English Version of the Psalms, etc, — Scotch 
 Kirk and Irving. 
 
 IT is very extraordinary that, in our translation of 
 the Psahns, which professes to be from the Hebrew, 
 the name, Jehovah — *0 — The Being, or God — 
 should be omitted, and, instead of it, the Kvpios, or 
 Lord, of the Septuagint be adopted. The Alexandrian 
 Jews had a superstitious dread of writing the name of 
 God, and put Kvpios not as a translation, but as a 
 mere mark or sign — every one readily understanding 
 for what it really stood. We, who have no such 
 superstition, ought surely to restore the Jehovah, and 
 thereby bring out in the true force the overwhehning 
 testimony of the Psalms to the divinity of Christ, the 
 Jehovah or manifested God.* 
 
 * I find the same remark in the late most excellent Bishop Sandford's 
 diary, under date 17th December, 1827 : — " Xoti^tn Iv tm Kvoicu. KOfiio? idem 
 significat quod nin" apud Hebrseos. Hebrsei enim nomine mn" sanctissimo 
 nempe Dei nomine, nunquam in coUoquio utebantur, sed vice ejus *D1K 
 pronuntiabant, quod LXX per KO^ios exprimebant." — Bemains of Bishop 
 Sandford, vol. i. p. 207. 
 
 Mr. Coleridge saw this work for the first time many months after making 
 the observation in the text. Indeed it was the very last book he ever read. 
 He was deeply interested in the picture drawn of the Bishop, and said that 
 the mental struggles and bodily suflferings indicated in the Diary had been 
 his own for years past. He conjured me to peruse the Memoir and the 
 Diary with great care : — " I have received," said he, " much spiritual comfort 
 and strength from the latter. O ! were my faith and devotion, like my 
 sufferings, equal to that good man's ! He felt, as I do, how deep a depth is 
 prayer in faith." 
 
 In connexion with the text, I may add here, that Mr. C. said, that long 
 before he knew that the late Bishop Middleton was of the same opinion, he 
 had deplored the misleading inadequacy of our authorised version of the 
 expression, '^^utotoxo? -xcctr'/i? xTta-iai? in the Epistle to the Colossians, i. 15 : 
 o; Ittiv iizav t6v @iov rov octPocrov, tt^ojtotokos to-o-vi? xriffiui. He rendered the 
 verse in these words ; — Who is the manifestation of God the invisible, the 
 begotten antecedently to all creation ; " observing, that in ^^cororoxos there 
 was a double superlative of priority, and that the natural meaning of ^^first- 
 horn of every cr^a^ure,"— the language of our version, — afforded no premiss 
 for the casual on in the next verse. The same criticism may be found in the 
 Stateman's Manual, p. 56, n.; and see Bishop Sandford's judgment to the 
 same efi'ect, vol. i., p. 165.— Ed. 
 
278 
 
 COLEEIDGE S TABLE TALK. 
 
 I cannot understand the conduct of the Scotch 
 Kirk with regard to poor Irving. They mighty with 
 ample reason^ have visited him for the monstrous 
 indecencies of those exhibitions of the spirit ; — per- 
 haps the Kirk would not have been justified in over- 
 looking such disgraceful breaches of decorum ; but to 
 excommunicate liim on account of his language about 
 Christ^s body was very foolish. Irving^s expressions 
 upon this subject are ill-judged^ inconvenient^ in bad 
 taste^ and in terms false : nevertheless^ his apparent 
 meanings such as it is^ is orthodox. Christy's body — 
 as mere body^ or rather carcass (for body is an asso- 
 ciated word), was no more capable of sin or righteous- 
 ness than mine or yours ; — that his humanity had a 
 capacity of sin, follows from its own essence. He 
 was of like passions as we, and was tempted. How 
 could he be tempted, if he had no formal capacity of 
 being seduced ? 
 
 It is Irving's error to use declamation, high and 
 passionate rhetoric, not introduced and pioneered by 
 calm and clear logic, which is — to borrow a simile, 
 though with a change in the application, from the 
 witty-wise, but not always wisely-witty, FuUer — hke 
 knocking a nail into a board, without wimbling a hole 
 for it, and which then either does not enter, or turns 
 crooked, or splits the wood it pierces. 
 
 August 18, 1833. 
 Milton'' s Egotism . — Claudian. — Sterne. 
 
 TN the Paradise Lost — indeed in every one of his 
 poems — it is Milton himself whom you see ; his 
 Satan, his Adam, his Raphael, almost his Eve — are 
 
CLATJDIAN. 
 
 279 
 
 all John Milton; and it is a sense of tliis intense 
 egotism that gives me the greatest pleasure in reading 
 Milton^s works. The egotism of such a man is a 
 revelation of spirit. 
 
 Claudian deserves more attention than is generally 
 paid to him. He is the linlc between the old classic 
 and the modern way of thinking in verse. You will 
 observe in liim an oscillation between the objective 
 poetry of the ancients and the subjective mood of the 
 moderns. His power of pleasingly reproducing the 
 same thought in different language is remarkable, as 
 it is in Pope. Read particularly the Phoenix, and see 
 how the single image of renascence is varied.* 
 
 I think highly of Sterne — ^that is, of the first part 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge referred to Claudian's first Idyll : — 
 " Oceani summo circumfluus aequore lucus 
 Trans Indos Eurumque viret," &c. 
 
 See the lines— 
 
 " Hie neque concepto fetu, nee semine surgit 
 Sed pater est prolesque sibi, nuUoque creante 
 Emeritos artus foecunda morte reformat, 
 Et petit alternam totidem per fiinera vitam. 
 
 Et cumulum texens pretiosa fronde Sabseum 
 Componit bustumque sibi partumque futurum. 
 
 O senium positure rogo, falsisque sepulcris 
 Natales habiture vices, qui saepe renasci 
 Exitio, proprioque soles pubescere leto, 
 Accipe principium rursus. 
 
 Parturiente rogo 
 
 Victuri cineres 
 
 Qui fiierat genitor, natus nunc prosilit idem, 
 Succeditque novus 
 
 O felix, hseresque tui ! quo solvimur omnes, 
 
 Hoc tibi suppeditat vires ; prsebetur origo 
 
 Per cinerem ; moritur te non pereunte senectus." — Ed. 
 
280 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 of Tristram Shandy : for as to the latter part about 
 the widow Wadman, it is stupid and disgusting ; and 
 the Sentimental Journey is poor sickly stuff. There 
 is a great deal of affectation in Sterne, to be sure ; 
 but still the characters of Trim and the two Shandies* 
 are most individual and delightful. Sterne^s morals 
 are bad, but I don't think they can do much harm to 
 any one whom they would not find bad enough before. 
 Besides, the oddity and erudite grimaces under which 
 much of his dirt is hidden take away the effect for 
 the most part ; although, to be sure, the book is 
 scarcely readable by women. 
 
 August 20, 1833. 
 Humour and Genius. — Great Poets Good Men, — Diction of the 
 Old and New Testament Version, — Hebrew, — Voioels and 
 Consonants, 
 
 ll/TEN of humour are always in some degree men 
 of genius ; wits are rarely so, although a man 
 of genius may, amongst other gifts, possess wit, as 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 Genius must have talent as its complement and 
 implement, just as, in like manner, imagination must 
 have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers 
 can only act through a corresponding energy of the 
 lower. 
 
 Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge considered the character of the father, the elder Shandy, 
 as by much tlie finer delineation of the two. I fear his low opinion of the 
 Sentimental Journey will not suit a thorough Sterneist ; but I could never 
 get him to modify his criticism. He said, " The oftener you read Sterne, the 
 more clearly will you perceive the great diflFerence between Tristram Shandy 
 and the Sentimental Journey. There is truth and reality in the one, and 
 little beyond a clever affectation in the other."— Ed. 
 
HEBREW. 
 
 281 
 
 company of vulgar people, because they have a power 
 of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of 
 another race altogether. 
 
 I quite agree with Strabo, as translated by Ben 
 Jonson in his splendid dedication of the Fox* — that 
 there can be no great poet who is not a good man, 
 though not, perhaps, 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 how can he 
 who is ignorant of his own heart know anything of, 
 or be able to move, the heart of any one else ? 
 
 I think there is a perceptible difference in the 
 elegance and correctness of the English in our ver- 
 sions of the Old and New Testament. I cannot 
 yield to the authority of many examples of usages 
 which may be alleged from the New Testament ver- 
 sion. St. Paul is very often most inadequately ren- 
 dered, and there are slovenly phrases which would 
 never have come from Ben Jonson, or any other good 
 prose writer of that day. 
 
 Hebrew is so simple, and its words are so few and 
 near the roots, that it is impossible to keep up any 
 adequate knowledge of it without constant application. 
 The meanings of the words are chiefly traditional. 
 The loss of Origen^s Heptaglott Bible, in which he 
 had written out the Hebrew words in Greek charac- 
 ters, is the heaviest which biblical literature has ever 
 
 * 'H [k^lryi) trotvirou avvi^ivarxi rvi tov ocvO^urou * xxi ovx oTov re ocyocdh 
 yivirBoti TTOiYiry.Vj ju.^ t^oti^ov yivviBivrex, xvh^ot otyocdov. — Lib. I., p. 33. folio. 
 
 " For, if men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and 
 function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility 
 of any man's being the good poet without first being a good man." 
 
282 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 experienced. It would have fixed tlie sounds as 
 
 known at that time. 
 
 Brute animals have the vowel sounds ; man only 
 can utter consonants. It is natural^ therefore, that 
 the consonants should be marked first, as being the 
 framework of the word ; and no doubt a very simple 
 living language might be written quite intelligibly to 
 the natives without any vowel sounds marked at all. 
 The words would be traditionally and conventionally 
 recognised as in short hand — ^thus — Gd crtd th Hvn 
 nd th RtL I wish I understood Arabic ; and yet 
 I doubt whether, to the European philosopher or 
 scholar, it is worth while to undergo the immense 
 labour of acquiring that or any other Oriental tongue, 
 except Hebrew. 
 
 August 23, 1833. 
 Greek Accent and Quantity. 
 
 rn HE distinction between accent and quantity is 
 clear, and was, no doubt, observed by the ancients 
 in the recitation of verse. But I believe such recit- 
 ation to have been always an artificial thing, and that 
 the common conversation was entirely regulated by 
 accent. I do not think it possible to talk any lan- 
 guage without confounding the quantity of syllables 
 with their high or low tones;* although you may 
 
 * This opinion, I need not say, is in direct opposition to the conclusion of 
 Foster and Mitford, and scarcely reconcileable with the apparent meaning of 
 the authorities from the old critics and grammarians. Foster's opponent 
 was for rejecting the accents and attending only to the syllabic quantity ; — 
 Mr. C. would, in prose, attend to the accents only as indicators of the 
 quantity, being unable to conceive any practical distinction between time 
 and tone in ommon speech. Yet how can we deal with the authority of 
 Dionysius of llalicamassus aloue, who, on the one hand, discriminates quan- 
 
GREEK ACCENT AND QUANTITY. 283 
 
 sing or recitative the difference well enough. Why 
 should the marks of accent have been considered 
 exclusively necessary for teaching the pronunciation 
 to the Asiatic or African Hellenist^ if the knowledge 
 of the acuted syllable did not also carry the stress of 
 time with it ? If avOpaiiros was to be pronounced in 
 common conversation with a perceptible distinction of 
 the length of the penultima as well as of the elevation 
 of the antepenultima, why was not that long quantity 
 also marked ? It was surely as important an ingre- 
 dient in the pronunciation as the accent. And although 
 the letter omega might in such a word show the quan- 
 tity, yet what do you say to such words as \eX6yxa<n, 
 Tv\l/a(Tay and the like — the quantity of the penultima 
 of which is not marked to the eye at all ? Besides, 
 can we altogether disregard the practice of the modern 
 Greeks ? Their confusion of accent and quantity in 
 verse is of course a barbarism, though a very old one, 
 
 tity so exquisitely as to make four degrees of shortness in the penultimates 
 of odoi, p ohos, oTo? and <rT§ (Kpc?, and this expressly ev Xoyot; •^iXolsj or plain 
 prose, as well as in verse ; and on the other hand declares, according to the 
 evidently correct interpretation of the passage, that the difference between 
 music and ordinary speech consists in the number only, and not in the 
 quality, of tones : — ru Hoo-m dioiXka,Trov<r» t*jj Iv uhou? tiou o^ya-vois, fccii ov^i tZ 
 Tloioi. (Jli^) 2yv. c. 11.?) The extreme sensibility of the Athenian ear to the 
 accent in prose is, indeed, proved by numerous anecdotes, one of the most 
 amusing of which, though, perhaps, not the best authenticated as a fact, is 
 that of Demosthenes in the Speech for the Crown, asking, " Whether, O 
 Athenians, does ^schines appear to you to be the mercenary (tjcio-BcoTo;) of 
 Alexander, or his guest or friend (Ijvu?) ? " It is said that he pronounced 
 fjcia-Oiuroi with a false accent on the antepenultima, as f/^io-dcoros, and that upon 
 the audience immediately crying out, by way of correction, fjLKrQcjros, with an 
 emphasis, the orator continued coolly, — «.x,ovu^ a. Xiyovo-i — " You yourself 
 hear what they say ! " Demosthenes is also said, whether aflfectedly, or in 
 ignorance, to have sworn in some speech by ' Aa-xXriTio;, throwing the accent 
 falsely on the antepenultima, and that, upon being interrupted for it, he 
 declared, in his justification, that the pronunciation was proper, for that the 
 divinity was vi-rto?, mild. The expressions in Plutarch are very striking : — 
 
 rokXoizn i6o^vQr,0ri." Dec. Orat. — Ed. 
 
284 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 as the versus politici of John Tzetzes* in the tweKth 
 century and the Anacreontics prefixed to Proclus will 
 show ; but these very examples prove a fortiori what 
 the common pronunciation in prose then was. 
 
 August 24, 1833. 
 Consolation in Distress, — Mock Evangelicals. — Autumn Day, 
 T AM never very forward in offering spiritual conso- 
 -■- lation to any one in distress or disease. I believe 
 that such resources, to be of any service, must be 
 self-evolved in the first instance. I am something of 
 the Quaker^s mind in this, and am inclined to wait 
 for the spirit. 
 
 The most common effect of this mock evangelical 
 
 * See his Chiliads. The sort of verses to which Mr. Coleridge alluded are 
 the following, which those who consider the scansion to be accentual, take 
 for tetrameter catalectic iambics, like — 
 
 (cDs vihv xa) I vo/5 tT^ocyfjcuffiv \ xa) ^t^m^ | oixiXCi—) 
 
 'O 'A^r»xotfx,ocs ^oceriXsvs ^^vyia? rij? fjuiya.Xv^s . 
 'HgoJoTO? TOv Tvyviy ^\ croif^ivoe, /xlv ov Xiyu. 
 'H 'E^txOsens U^ox^ts n xtx,) U^x^iOixs xo^yj. 
 AvviSacs us Aio^cti^of y^oi^u xal Ateov ccfjcoc, — 
 
 Chil. I. 
 
 I '11 climb the frost | y mountains high | , and there I '11 coin | the 
 weather ; 
 
 I '11 tear the rain | bow from the sky | , and tie both ends | to- 
 gether. 
 
 Some critics, however, maintain these verses to be trochaics, although 
 very loose and faulty. See Foster, p. 113. A curious instance of the early 
 confusion of accent and quantity may be seen in Prudentius, who shortens 
 the penultima in eremus and idola, from t^vifjuos and jl'SaX*. 
 
 Cui jejuna eremi saxa loquacibus 
 
 Exundant scatebris, &c. 
 
 Cathemer. V. 89. 
 
 cognatumque malum, pigmenta, Camoenas, 
 
 Idola, couflavit fallendi trina potestas. 
 
 Gout. Symm. 47.— Ed. 
 
FARCE AND TRAGEDY. 
 
 285 
 
 spirit, especially with young women, is self-inflation 
 and busy-bodyism. 
 
 How strange and awful is the synthesis of life and 
 death in the gusty winds and faUing leaves of an 
 autumnal day 
 
 August 25, 1833. 
 Rosetti on Dante, — Laughter : Farce and Tragedy. 
 
 ROSETTPs view of Dante^s meaning is in great 
 part just, but he has pushed it beyond all bounds 
 of common sense. How could a poet — and such a 
 poet as Dante — have written the details of the allegory 
 as conjectured by Eosetti ? The boundaries between 
 his allegory and his pure picturesque are plain enough, I 
 think, at first reading. 
 
 To resolve laughter into an expression of contempt 
 is contrary to fact, and laughable enough. Laughter 
 is a convulsion of the nerves ; and it seems as if nature 
 cut short the rapid thrill of pleasure on the nerves by 
 a sudden convulsion of them, to prevent the sensation 
 becoming painful. Aristotle^s definition is as good as 
 can be : — surprise at perceiving anytliing out of its 
 usual place, when the unusualness is not accompanied 
 by a sense of serious danger. Such surprise is always 
 pleasurable ; and it is observable that surprise accom- 
 panied with circumstances of danger becomes tragic. 
 Hence farce may often border on tragedy; indeed, 
 farce is nearer tragedy in its essence than comedy is. 
 
286 
 
 COLERIDGE^'S TABLE TALK. 
 
 August 28, 1833. 
 Baron Von Humboldt. — Modern Diplomatists, 
 
 T) AEON VON HUMBOLDT, brother of the great 
 -L^ traveller, paid me the following compliment at 
 Eome : — I confess, Mr. Coleridge, I had my sus- 
 picions that you were here in a political capacity of 
 some sort or other ; but upon reflection I acquit you. 
 For in Germany and, I believe, elsewhere on the 
 Continent, it is generally understood that the English 
 government, in order to divert the envy and jealousy 
 of the world at the power, wealth, and ingenuity of 
 your nation, makes a point, as a ruse de guerre, of 
 sending out none but fools of gentlemanly birth and 
 connexions as diplomatists to the courts abroad. An 
 exception is, perhaps, sometimes made for a clever 
 fellow, if sufficiently libertine and unprincipled.'^ Is 
 the case much altered now, do you know ? 
 
 What dull coxcombs your diplomatists at home 
 generally are. I remember dining at Mr. Frere^s 
 once in company with Canning and a few other inte- 
 resting men. Just before dinner Lord called 
 
 on Frere, and asked himself to dinner. From the 
 moment of his entry he began to talk to the whole 
 party, and in French — all of us being genuine English 
 — and I was told his French was execrable. He had 
 followed the Russian army into France, and seen a 
 good deal of the great men concerned in the war : of 
 none of those things did he say a word, but went on, 
 sometimes in English and sometimes in French, 
 gabbling about cookery and dress and the like. At 
 last he paused for a little — and I said a few words 
 remarking how a great image may be reduced to the 
 
DIPLOMATISTS. 
 
 287 
 
 ridiculous and contemptible by bringing the consti- 
 tuent parts into prominent detail^ and mentioned the 
 grandeur of the deluge and the preservation of life in 
 Genesis and the Paradise Lost^* and the ludicrous 
 effect produced by Drayton^s description in his Noah^s 
 Mood :— 
 
 *^ And now the beasts are walking from the wood, 
 As well of ravine, as that chew the cud. 
 The king of beasts his fury doth suppress, 
 And to the Ark leads down the lioness ; 
 The bull for his beloved mate doth low, 
 And to the Ark brings on the fair-eyed cow," &c. 
 
 Hereupon Lord resumed^ and spoke in raptures 
 
 of a picture which he had lately seen of Noah^s Ark, 
 and said the animals were all marching two and two, 
 the little ones first, and that the elephants came last 
 in great majesty and filled up the fore-ground. Ah ! 
 no doubt, my lord,^^ said Canning ; your elephants, 
 wise fellows ! staid behind to pack up their trunks ! 
 This floored the ambassador for half an hour. 
 
 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries almost 
 all our ambassadors were distinguished men.f Read 
 Lloyd^s State Worthies. The third-rate men of those 
 
 * Genesis, c. vi. vii. Par. Lost, book xi., v. 728, &c. 
 
 t Yet Diego de Mendoza, the author of Lazarillo de Tormes, himself a 
 veteran diplomatist, describes his brethren of the craft, and their duties, in 
 the reigns of Charles the Emperor and Philip the Second, in the following 
 t^rms :~ - 
 
 O embaj adores, puros majaderos, 
 
 Que si los reyes quieren enganar, 
 
 Comienzan por nosotros los primeros. 
 Nuestro mayor negocio es, no danar, 
 
 Y jamas hacer cosa, ni dezilla, 
 
 Que no corramos riesgo de ensefiar. 
 
 What a pity it is that modern diplomatists, -vrho, for the most part, very 
 carefully observe the precept contained in the last two lines of this passage, 
 should not equally bear in mind the importance of the preceding remark — 
 that their principal business is Just to do no mischief. — Ed. 
 
288 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 days possessed an infinity of knowledge^ and were 
 intimately versed not only in the history, but even 
 in the heraldry, of the countries in which they were 
 resident. Men were almost always, except for mere 
 compliments, chosen for their dexterity and experience 
 — not, as now, by parliamentary interest. 
 
 The sure way to make a foolish ambassador is to 
 bring him up to it. What can an English minister 
 abroad really want but an honest and bold heart, a 
 love for his country and the ten commandments? 
 Your art diplomatic is stuff: — no truly great man 
 now would negociate upon any such shallow principles. 
 
 August 30, 1833. 
 Man cannot he Stationary. — Fatalism and Providence. — 
 Sympathy in Joy. 
 
 TP a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, 
 depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a 
 devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most 
 savage of men are not beasts : they are worse, a great 
 deal worse. 
 
 The conduct of the Mohammedan and Western 
 nations on the subject of contagious plague illustrates 
 the two extremes of error on the nature of God^s 
 moral government of the world. The Turk changes 
 Providence into fatalism; the Christian relies upon 
 it — when he has nothing else to rely on. He does 
 not practically rely upon it at all. 
 
 Por compassion a human heart suffices; but for 
 full and adequate sympathy with joy an angeFs only. 
 
GllEEK PARTICLES. 
 
 289 
 
 And ever remember^ that the more exquisite and 
 delicate a flower of joy^ the tenderer must be the 
 hand that plucks it. 
 
 Characteristic Temperament of Nations. — Greelc Particles. — Latin 
 Compounds. — Propertius. — Tihullus. — Lucan. — Statins. — 
 Valerius Flaccus. — Claudian. — Persius. — Prudentius. — 
 Hermesianax. 
 
 nnHE English affect stimulant nourishment — beef 
 
 and beer. The Trench^ excitants^ irritants — 
 nitrous oxide^ alcohol^ champagne. The Austrians^ 
 sedatives — hyoscyamus. The Russians, narcotics — 
 opium, tobacco, and beng. 
 
 It is worth particular notice how the style of Greek 
 oratory, so full, in the times of political independence, 
 of connective particles, some of passions, some of 
 sensation only, and escaping the classification of mere 
 grammatical logic, became, in the hands of the de- 
 claimers and philosophers of the Alexandrian sera, and 
 still later, entirely deprived of this peculiarity. So it 
 was with Homer as compared with Nonnus, Tryphio- 
 dorus, and the like. In the latter there are in the 
 same number of lines fewer words by one half than 
 in the Iliad. All the appoggiaturas of time are lost. 
 
 All the Greek writers after Demosthenes and his 
 contemporaries, what are they but the leavings of 
 tyranny, in which a few precious things seem shel- 
 tered by the mass of rubbish ! Yet, whenever liberty 
 began but to hope and strive, a Polybius appeared. 
 Theocritus is almost the only instance I know of a 
 man of true poetic genius flourishing under a tyranny. 
 
 September 2, 1833. 
 
 u 
 
290 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 The old Latin poets attempted to compound as 
 largely as the Greek ; hence in Ennius such words as 
 helligerentes, &c. In nothing did Yirgil show his 
 judgment mor€ than in rejecting these, except just 
 where common usage had sanctioned them,, as omni- 
 potens and a few more. He saw that the Latin was 
 too far advanced in its formation^ and of too rigid a 
 character, to admit such composition or agglutination. 
 In this particular respect YirgiFs Latin is very admi- 
 rable and deserving preference. Compare it with the 
 language of Lucan or Statins, and count the number 
 of words used in an equal number of liues^ and observe 
 how many more short words Virgil has. 
 
 I cannot quite understand the grounds of the high 
 admiration which the ancients expressed forPropertius, 
 and I own that Tibullus is rather insipid to me. 
 Lucan was a man of great powers ; but what was to 
 be made of such a shapeless fragment of party warfare, 
 and so recent too ! He had fancy rather than imagi- 
 nation, and passion rather than fancy. His taste was 
 wretched, to be sure; still the Pharsalia is in my 
 judgment a very wonderful work for such a youth as 
 Lucan * was. 
 
 I think Statins a truer poet than Lucan, though he 
 is very extravagant sometimes. Valerius Placcus is 
 very pretty in particular passages. I am ashamed to 
 say, I have never read Silius Italicus. Claudian I 
 recommend to your careful perusal, in respect of his 
 being properly the first of the moderns, or at least the 
 
 * Lucan died by the command of Nero, a.d. 65, in his twenty-sixth 
 year. I think this should be printed at the beginning of every book of tlie 
 Pharsalia. — Ed. 
 
DESTRUCTION OE JERUSALEM. 291 
 
 transitional link between the Classic and the Gothic 
 mode of thought. 
 
 I call Persius hard — not obscure. He had a bad 
 style ; but I dare say^ if he had lived^^ he would have 
 learned to express himseK in easier language. There 
 are many passages in him of exquisite fehcity, and his 
 vein of thought is manly and pathetic. 
 
 Prudentiust is curious for this^ — that you see how 
 Christianity forced allegory into the place of mytho- 
 logy. Mr. Prere [6 (fycXoKaXoSy 6 Ka\oKayaOos~\ used to 
 esteem the Latin Christian poets of Italy very highly, 
 and no man in our times was a more competent judge 
 than he. 
 
 How very pretty are those lines of Hermesianax in 
 Athenaeus about the poets and poetesses of Greece ! J 
 
 September 4, 1833. 
 
 Destruction of Jerusalem, — Epic Poem. — German and English, — 
 Modern Travels. — Paradise Lost. 
 
 I HAVE already told you that in my opinion the 
 destruction of Jerusalem is the only subject now 
 left for an epic poem of the highest kind. Yet, with 
 all its great capabiUties, it has this one grand defect — 
 that, whereas a poem, to be epic, must have a personal 
 interest, — ^in the destruction of Jerusalem no genius 
 or skill could possibly preserve the interest for the 
 hero from being merged in the interest for the event. 
 
 * Aulus Persius Flaccus died in the 30th year of his age, a.d. 62. — Ed. 
 t Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was born a.d. 348, in Spain. — Ed. 
 X See the fragment from the Leontium : — 
 
 OIyiV [Av if/Ao5 v\o<; kvYiyuyiv O'/ciy^oio 
 
 Athodiv X. r. A. Athen. xiii. s. 71.— Ed, 
 
 u 2 
 
292 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 The fact is^ the event itself is too sublime and over- 
 whelming. 
 
 In my judgment^ an epic poem must either be 
 national or mundane. As to Arthur, you could not 
 by any means make a poem on him national to Eng- 
 lishmen. What have we to do with him ? Milton 
 saw this, and with a judgment at least equal to his 
 genius, took a mundane theme — one common to all 
 mankind. His Adam and Eve are all men and 
 women inclusively. Pope satirises Milton for making 
 God the Eather talk like a school divine.* Pope was 
 hardly the man to criticise Milton. The truth is, the 
 judgment of Milton in the conduct of the celestial 
 part of his story is very exquisite. Wherever God is 
 represented as directly acting as Creator, without any 
 exhibition of his own essence, Milton adopts the 
 simplest and sternest language of the Scriptures. 
 He ventures upon no poetic diction, no amplification, 
 no pathos, no affection. It is truly the Voice of the 
 Word of the Lord coming to, and acting on, the 
 subject Chaos. But, as some personal interest was 
 demanded for the purposes of poetry, Milton takes 
 advantage of the dramatic representation of God^s 
 address to the the Son, the Eilial Alterity, and in those 
 addresses slips in, as it were by stealth, language of 
 affection, or thought, or sentiment. Indeed, although 
 Milton was undoubtedly a high Arian in his mature 
 life, he does in the necessity of poetry give a greater 
 objectivity to the Eather and the Son, than he would 
 
 * Milton's strong pinion now not Heav'n can bound, 
 Now, Herp(;nt-like, in prose he sweeps the ground ; 
 In (luibMos angel and archangel join, 
 And God the Father turns a school divine." 
 
 IIou.. Book II., Ep.i., 99. 
 
THE TlilNITY. 
 
 293 
 
 have justified in argument. He was very wise in 
 adopting the strong anthropomorphism of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures at once. Compare the Paradise Lost with 
 Klopstock^s Messiah^ and you will learn to appreciate 
 Milton^s judgment and skill quite as much as his 
 genius. 
 
 The conquest of India by Bacchus might afford 
 scope for a very brilliant poem of the fancy and the 
 understanding. 
 
 It is not that the German can express external 
 imagery more f ully than English ; but that it can 
 flash more images at once on the mind than the 
 English can. As to mere power of expression, I 
 doubt whether even the Greek surpasses the English. 
 Pray, read a very pleasant and acute dialogue in 
 SchlegeFs Athenaeum between a German, a Greek, a 
 Roman, Italian, and a Frenchman, on the merits of 
 their respective languages. 
 
 I wish the naval and military officers who write 
 accounts of their travels would just spare us their 
 sentiment. The Magazines introduced this cant. Let 
 these gentlemen read and imitate the old captains and 
 admirals, as Dampier, &c. 
 
 October 15, 1833. 
 The Trinity, — Incarnation . — Redem'ption. — Education. 
 
 T^HE Trinity is the idea : the Incarnation, which 
 implies the Pali, is the fact : the Redemption is 
 the mesothesis of the two — that is — the religion* 
 
294 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK, 
 
 If you bring up your children in a way which puts 
 them out of sympathy with the religious feelings of 
 the nation in which they live^ the chances are, that 
 they will ultimately turn out ruffians or fanatics — and 
 one as likely as the other. 
 
 October 23, 1833. 
 Elegy. — Lmiacrum, Pallados. — Greelc and Latin Pentameter, — 
 Milton's Latin Poems. — Poetical Filter. — Or ay and Cotton. 
 
 T?LEGY is the form of poetry natural to the reflec- 
 ^ tive mind. It may treat of any subject, but it 
 must treat of no subject for itself; but always and 
 exclusively with reference to the poet himself. As he 
 will feel regret for the past or desire for the future, so 
 sorrow and love become the principal themes of elegy. 
 Elegy presents every thing as lost and gone, or absent 
 and future. The elegy is the exact opposite of the 
 Homeric epic, in which all is purely external and 
 objective, and the poet is a mere voice. 
 
 The true lyric ode is subjective too ; but then it 
 delights to present things as actually existing and 
 visible, although associated with the past, or coloured 
 highly by the subject of the ode itself. 
 
 I think the Lavacrum Pallados of Callimachus very 
 beautiful indeed, especially that part about the motlier 
 of Tiresias and Minerva.* I have a mind to try how 
 it would bear translation; but what metre have we 
 to answer in feeling to the elegiac couplet of the 
 Greeks ? 
 
 Tovhv rt xee,) ni^i ^ikctTO roiv iriootv, 
 (/.ctri^oL Tu^ia-txo, xct) »v^oxot, x.^^*' lytvro' — ». r. X. — V. 57, &C. 
 
THE POETICAL FILTER/^ 
 
 295 
 
 I greatly prefer the Greek rhythm of the short verse 
 to Ovid^s, though, observe, I don^t dispute his taste 
 with reference to the genius of his own language. 
 Augustus Schlegel gave me a copy of Latin elegiacs 
 on the King of Prussians going down the Rhine, in 
 which he had almost exclusively adopted the manner 
 of Propertius. I thought them very elegant. 
 
 You may find a few minute faults in Milton^s Latin 
 verses ; but you will not persuade me that, if these 
 poems had come down to us as written in the age of 
 Tiberius, we should not have considered them to be 
 very beautiful. 
 
 I once thought of making a collection, — to be called 
 The Poetical Pilter,^^ — upon the principle of simply 
 omitting from the old pieces of lyrical poetry which 
 we have, those parts in which the whim or the bad 
 taste of the author or the fashion of his age prevailed 
 over his genius. You would be surprised at the 
 number of exquisite wholes which might be made by 
 this simple operation, and, perhaps, by the insertion of 
 a single line or half a line, out of poems which are 
 now utterly disregarded on account of some odd or 
 incongruous passages in them ; — ^just as whole volumes 
 of Wordsworth^s poems were formerly neglected or 
 laughed at, solely because of some few wilfulnesses, if 
 I may so call them, of that great man — whilst at the 
 same time five-sixths of his poems would have been 
 admired, and indeed popular, if they had appeared 
 without those drawbacks, under the name of Byron 
 or Moore or Campbell, or any other of the fashionable 
 favourites of the day. But he has won the battle 
 
296 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 now^ ay ! and will wear the crown^ whilst EngHsh is 
 EngHsh. 
 
 I think there is something very majestic in Gray^s 
 Installation Ode ; but as to the Bard and the rest of 
 his lyrics, I must say I think them frigid and arti- 
 ficial. There is more real lyric feeling in Cotton^s 
 Ode on Winter.* 
 
 * Let me borrow Mr. Wordsworth's account of, and quotation from, this 
 poem : — 
 
 " Finally, I will refer to Cotton's ' Ode upon Winter,' an admirable com- 
 position, though stained with some peculiarities of the age in which he 
 lived, for a general illustration of the characteristics of Fancy. The middle 
 part of this ode contains a most lively description of the entrance of Winter, 
 with his retinue, as ' a palsied king,' and yet a military monarch, advancing 
 for conquest with his array ; the several bodies of which, and their arms and 
 equipments, are described with a rapidity of detail, and a profusion of 
 fanciful comparisons, which indicate, on the part of the poet, extreme activity 
 of intellect, and a correspondent hurry of delightful feeling. He retires 
 from the foe into his fortress, where — 
 
 a magazine 
 Of sovereign juice is cellared in ; 
 Liquor that will the siege maintain 
 Should Phoebus ne'er return again. 
 
 Though myself a water-drinker, I cannot resist the pleasin*e of transcribing 
 what follows, as an instance still more happy of Fancy employed in the 
 treatment of feeling than, in its preceding passages, the poem supplies of 
 her management of forms. 
 
 'Tis that, that gives the Poet rage, 
 And thaws the gelly'd blood of Age ; 
 Matures the young, restores the Old, 
 And makes the fainting coward bold 
 
 It lays the careful head to rest, 
 Calms palpitations in the breast. 
 Renders our lives' misfortune sweet; 
 * * * * 
 
 Then let the cMll Scirocco blow, 
 And gird us round with hills of snow; 
 Or else go whistle to the shore, 
 And make the hollow mountains roar : 
 
 Whilst we together jovial sit 
 Careless, and crowned with mirth and wit; 
 Where, though bleak winds confine us home, 
 Our fancies round the world shall roam. 
 
HOMERIC HEROES IN SHAKSPEARE. 297 
 
 November 1, 1833. 
 
 Homeric Heroes in ShaJcspeare. — Dryden. — Dr. Johnson, — Scott's 
 Novels. — Scope of Christianity, 
 
 COMPARE Nestor, Ajax, Achilles, &c., in the 
 Troilus and Cressida of Shakspeare with their 
 namesakes in the Iliad. The old heroes seem all to 
 have been at school ever since. I scarcely know a 
 more striking instance of the strength and pregnancy 
 of the Gothic mind. 
 
 Dryden^s genius was of that sort which catches fire 
 by its own motion; his chariot wheels get hot by 
 driving fast. 
 
 Dr. Johnson seems to have been really more power- 
 
 We '11 think of all the friends we know, 
 And drink to all worth drinking to ; 
 When, having drunk all thine and mine, 
 W e rather shall want healths than wine. 
 
 But where friends fail us, we '11 supply 
 Our friendships with our charity ; 
 Men that remote in sorrows live 
 Shall by our lusty brimmers thrive. 
 
 We '11 drink the wanting into wealth, 
 And those that languish into health, 
 Th' afflicted into joy, th' opprest 
 Into security and rest. 
 
 The worthy in disgrace shall find 
 Favour return again more kind. 
 And in restraint who stifled lie 
 Shall taste the air of liberty. 
 
 The brave shall triumph in success, 
 The lovers shall have mistresses. 
 Poor unregarded virtue, praise. 
 And the neglected poet, bays. 
 
 Thus shall our healths do others good, 
 Whilst we ourselves do all we would ; 
 For, freed from envy and from care. 
 What would we be but wha,t we are? " 
 Freface to the editions of Mr. W.'s Poems, in 1815 and 1820.— Ed. 
 
298 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 ful in discoursing viva voce in conversation than with 
 his pen in hand. It seems as if the excitement of 
 company called something like reality and consecu- 
 tiveness into his reasonings^ which in liis writings I 
 cannot see. His antitheses are almost always verbal 
 only ; and sentence after sentence in the Rambler may 
 be pointed out to which you cannot attach any definite 
 meaning whatever. In his political pamphlets there 
 is more truth of expression than^^in his other works, 
 for the same reason that his conversation is better 
 than his writings in general. He was more excited 
 and in earnest, 
 
 When I am very ill indeed, I can read Scott^s novels, 
 and they are almost the only books I can then read. 
 I cannot at such times read the Bible; my mind 
 reflects on it, but I can^t bear the open page. 
 
 Unless Christianity be viewed and felt in a high 
 and comprehensive way, how large a portion of our 
 intellectual and moral nature does it leave without 
 object and action ! 
 
 Let a young man separate I from Me as far as he 
 possibly can, and remove Me till it is almost lost in 
 the remote distance. I am me,^^ is as bad a fault 
 in intellectuals and morals as it is in grammar, whilst 
 none but one — God — can say, I am I,^^ or That 
 T am.^^ 
 
 November 9, 1833. 
 Times of Charles I. 
 
 TTOW many books are still written and published 
 about Charles the First and his times ! Such is 
 
MESSENGER OF THE COVENANT. 
 
 299 
 
 the fresh and enduring interest of that grand crisis of 
 morals^ religion^ and government ! But these books 
 are none of them works of any genius or imagination; 
 not one of these authors seems to be able to throw 
 himself back into that age ; if they did^ there would 
 be less praise and less blame bestowed on both sides. 
 
 December 21, 1833. 
 Messenger of the Covenant. — Prophecy. — Logic of Ideas and 
 of Syllogisms, 
 
 WHEN I reflect upon the subject of the messenger 
 of the covenant, and observe the distinction 
 taken in the prophets between the teaching and suffer- 
 ing Christ, — the Priest, who was to precede, and the 
 triumphant Messiah, the Judge, who was to follow, — 
 and how Jesus always seems to speak of the Son of 
 Man in a future sense, and yet always at the same 
 time as identical with himself; I sometimes think 
 that our Lord himself in his earthly career was the 
 Messenger ; and that the way is now still preparing 
 for the great and visible advent of the Messiah of 
 Glory. I mention this doubtingly. 
 
 What a beautiful sermon or essay might be written 
 on the growth of prophecy ! — from the germ, no 
 bigger than a man^s hand, in Genesis, till the column 
 of cloud gathers size and height and substance, and 
 assumes the shape of a perfect man; just like the 
 smoke in the Arabian Nights^ tale, which comes up 
 and at last takes a genie^s shape.* 
 
 * The passage in Mr. Coleridge's mind was, I suppose, the following : — 
 " He (the fisherman) set it before him, and while he looked upon it atten- 
 tively, there came out a very thick smoke, which obliged him to retire two or 
 
300 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 The logic of ideas is to that of syllogisms as the 
 infinitesimal calculus to common arithmetic ; it proves, 
 but at the same time supersedes. 
 
 January 1, 1834. 
 Landor's Poetry. — Beauty. — Chronological Arrangement of Worhs. 
 
 WHAT is it that Mr. Landor wants, to make him 
 a poet ? His powers are certainly very consi- 
 derable, but he seems to be totally deficient in that 
 modifying faculty, which compresses several units 
 into one whole. The truth is, he does not possess 
 imagination in its highest form, — that of stamping 
 il piu nelV uno. Hence his poems, taken as wholes, 
 are unintelligible; you have eminences excessively 
 bright, and all the ground around and between them 
 in darkness. Besides which, he has never learned, 
 with all his energy, how to write simple and lucid 
 EngKsh, 
 
 The useful, the agreeable, the beautiful, and the 
 good, are distinguishable. You are wrong in resolv- 
 ing beauty into expression or interest ; it is quite 
 distinct ; indeed it is opposite, although not contrary. 
 Beauty is an immediate presence, between {inter) 
 which and the beholder nihil est. It is always one 
 and tranquil ; whereas the interesting always disturbs 
 and is disturbed. I exceedingly regret the loss of 
 
 three paces from it. The smoke ascended to the clouds, and extending itself 
 along the sea, and upon the shore, formed a great mist, which, we may well 
 imagine, did mightily astonish the fisherman. When the smoke was all out 
 of the vessel, it reunited itself, and became a solid body, of which there was 
 formed a genie twice as high as the greatest of giants." Story of the 
 Fisherman. Ninth Night, — Ed. 
 
TOLEUATION. 
 
 301 
 
 those essays on beauty, which I wrote in a Bristol 
 newspaper. I would give much to recover them. 
 
 After all you can say, I still think the chronolo- 
 gical order the best for arranging a poet's works. All 
 your divisions are in particular instances inadequate, 
 and they destroy the interest which arises from watch- 
 ing the progress, maturity, and even the decay of 
 genius. 
 
 January 3, 1834. 
 
 Toleration. — Norwegians. 
 
 IHAYE known books written on Tolerance, the 
 proper title of which would be — intolerant or 
 intolerable books on tolerance. Should not a man 
 who writes a book expressly to inculcate tolerance 
 learn to treat with respect, or at least with indulgence, 
 articles of faith which tens of thousands ten times 
 told of his fellow-subjects or his fellow-creatures 
 believe with all their souls, and upon the truth of 
 which they rest their tranquillity in this world, and 
 their hopes of salvation in the next, — those articles 
 being at least maintainable against his arguments, and 
 most certainly innocent in themselves ? — Is it fitting 
 to run Jesus Christ in a silly parallel with Socrates 
 — the Being whom thousand millions of intellectual 
 creatures, of whom I am a humble unit, take to be 
 their Redeemer, with an Athenian philosopher, of 
 whom we should know nothing except through his 
 glorification in Plato and Xenophon ? — And then to 
 hitch Latimer and Servetus together ! To be sure 
 there was a stake and a fire in each case, but where 
 the rest of the resemblance is I cannot see. Wliat 
 
302 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 ground is there for throwing the odium of Servetus^s 
 death upon Calvin alone ? Why, the mild Melanc- 
 thon wrote to Calvin,* expressly to testify his concur- 
 rence in the act, and no doubt he spoke the sense of 
 the German reformers; the Swiss churches advised 
 the punishment in formal letters, and I rather think 
 there are letters from the English divines, approving 
 Calvin's conduct ! — Before a man deals out the slang 
 of the day about the great leaders of the Reformation, 
 he should learn to throw himself back to the age of 
 the Reformation, when the two great parties in the 
 church were eagerly on the watch to fasten a charge 
 of heresy on the other. Besides, if ever a poor fanatic 
 thrust himself into the fire, it was Michael Servetus. 
 He was a rabid enthusiast, and did every thing he 
 could in the way of insult and ribaldry to provoke the 
 feeling of the Christian church. He called the Trinity 
 triceps monstrum et Cerberum quendam tripartitumy 
 and so on. 
 
 Indeed, how should the principle of religious toler- 
 ation have been acknowledged at first? — It would 
 require stronger arguments than any which I have 
 heard as yet, to prove that men in authority have not 
 a right, involved in an imperative duty, to deter those 
 under their control from teaching or countenancing 
 doctrines which they believe to be damnable, and even 
 to punish with death those who violate such prolii- 
 bition. I am sure that BeUarmine would have had 
 small difficulty in turning Locke round his fingers' 
 ends upon this ground. A right to protection I can 
 understand ; but a right to toleration seems to me a 
 
 * Mclancthon's words are : — " Tuo judicio prorsus assentior. Affinno etiam 
 vcRtros magistratus juste fecisse quod hominem blasphemum, re ordine 
 judicata, intcrfecerunt.'' 14th Oct. 1654— Ed. 
 
TOLERATION. 
 
 303 
 
 contradiction in terms. Some criterion must in any 
 case be adopted by the state ; otherwise it might be 
 compelled to admit whatever hideous doctrine and 
 practice any man or number of men may assert to be 
 his or their religion, and an article of his or their 
 faith. It was the same Pope who commanded the 
 Eomanists of England to separate from the national 
 church, which previously their own consciences had 
 not dictated, nor the decision of any council, — and 
 who also connnanded them to rebel against Queen 
 Elizabeth, whom they were bound to obey by the laws 
 of the land ; and if the Pope had authority for one, 
 he must have had it for the other. The only true 
 argument, as it seems to me, apart from Christianity, 
 for a discriminating toleration is, that it is of no use 
 to attempt to stop heresy or schism by persecution, 
 unless, perhaps, it be conducted upon the plan of 
 direct warfare and massacre. You cannot preserve 
 men in the faith by such means, though you may 
 stifle for a while any open appearance of dissent. The 
 experiment has now been tried, and it has failed ; and 
 that is by a great deal the best argument for the 
 magistrate against a repetition of it. 
 
 I know this, — that if a parcel of fanatic missionaries 
 were to go to Norway, and were to attempt to disturb 
 the fervent and undoubting Lutheranism of the fine 
 independent inhabitants of the interior of that coun- 
 try, I should be right glad to hear that the busy fools 
 had been quietly shipped off — any where. I don^t 
 include the people of the seaports in my praise of the 
 Norwegians ; — I speak of the agricultural population. 
 If that country could be brought to maintain a million 
 more of inhabitants, Norway might defy the world ; 
 
304 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 it would be avrapKrjs and impregnable ; but it is mucli 
 under-handed now. 
 
 January 12, 1834. 
 
 Articles of Faith. — Modern Quakerism, — Devotional Spirit, — 
 Sectarianism. — Origen. 
 
 T HAYE drawn up four or perhaps five articles of 
 faith^ by subscription^ or rather by assent^ to which 
 I think a large comprehension might take place. My 
 articles would exclude Unitarians^ and I am sorry to 
 say^ members of the church of Eome^ but with this 
 difference — that the exclusion of Unitarians would be 
 necessary and perpetual ; that of the members of the 
 church of Eome depending on each individuaFs own 
 conscience and intellectual light. What I mean is 
 this : — that the Romanists hold the faith in Christy — 
 but unhappily they also hold certain opinions^ partly 
 ceremonial^ partly devotional^ partly speculative^ which 
 have so fatal a facihty of being degraded into base, 
 corrupting, and even idolatrous practices, that if the 
 Romanist will make them of the essence of his religion, 
 he must of course be excluded. As to the Quakers, I 
 hardly know what to say. An article on the sacra- 
 ments would exclude them. My doubt is, whether 
 Baptism and the Eucharist are properly any parts of 
 Christianity, or not rather Christianity itself; — the 
 one, the initial conversion or light, — the other, the 
 sustaining and invigorating life ; — both together the 
 <^(S? Kol C^T], which are Christianity. A line can only 
 begin once; hence, there can be no repetition of 
 baptism ; but a line may be endlessly prolonged by 
 continued production; hence the sacrament of love 
 and Hfe lasts for ever. 
 
AKTICLES OF FAITH. 
 
 305 
 
 But really there is no knowing what the modern 
 Quakers are, or believe, excepting this — that they are 
 altogether degenerated from their ancestors of the 
 seventeenth century. I should call modern Quakerism, 
 so far as I know it as a scheme of faith, a Socinian 
 Calvinism. Penn himself was a Sabellian, and seems 
 to have disbelieved even the historical fact of the life 
 and death of Jesus — most certainly Jesus of Nazareth 
 was not Penn^s Christ, if he had any. It is amusing 
 to see the modern Quakers appealing now to history 
 for a confirmation of their tenets and discipline — and 
 by so doing, in effect abandoning the strong hold of 
 their founders. As an imperium in imj^erio, I think 
 the original Quakerism a conception worthy of Lycur- 
 gus. Modern Quakerism is like one of those gigantic 
 trees which are seen in the forests of North America — 
 apparently flourishing, and preserving all its greatest 
 stretch and spread of branches ; but when you cut 
 through an enormously thick and gnarled bark, you 
 find the whole inside hollow and rotten. Modern 
 Quakerism, like such a tree, stands upright by help 
 of its inveterate bark alone. Bark a Quaker, and he 
 is a poor creature. 
 
 How much the devotional spirit of the church has 
 suffered by that necessary evil, the Reformation, and 
 the sects which have sprung up subsequently to it ! 
 All our modern prayers seem tongue-tied. We appear 
 to be thinking more of avoiding an heretical expres- 
 sion or thought than of opening ourselves to God. 
 We do not pray with that entire, unsuspecting, 
 unfearing, childlike profusion of feehng, which so 
 beautifully shines forth in Jeremy Taylor and Andrewes 
 and the writings of some of the older and better saints 
 
306 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 of the Eomish churchy particularly of that remarkable 
 woman, St. Theresa.* And certainly Protestants, in 
 their anxiety to have the historical argument on their 
 side, have brought down the origin of the Eomish 
 errors too late. Many of them began, no doubt, in 
 the Apostolic age itself ; — I say errors — not heresies, 
 as that dullest of the fathers, Epiphanius, calls them. 
 Epiphanius is very long and fierce upon the Ebionites. 
 There may have been real heretics under that name ; 
 but I believe that, in the beginning, the name was, 
 on account of its Hebrew meaning, given to, or 
 adopted by, some poor mistaken men — perhaps of 
 the Nazarene way — who sold all their goods and 
 lands, and were then obhged to beg. I think it not 
 improbable that Barnabas was one of these chief men- 
 dicants; and that the collection made by St. Paul 
 was for them. You should read Ehenferd^s account 
 of the early heresies. I think he demonstrates about 
 eight of Epiphanius^ s heretics to be mere nick-names 
 given by the Jews to the Christians. Read Hermas, 
 or the Shepherd," of the genuineness of which and 
 of the epistle of Barnabas I have no doubt. It is 
 perfectly orthodox, but full of the most ludicrous 
 tricks of gnostic fancy — the wish to find the New 
 Testament in the Old. This gnosis is perceptible in 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, but kept exquisitely 
 within the limit of propriety. In the others it is 
 rampant, and most truly "puffeth up," as St. Paul 
 said of it. 
 
 * She was a native of Avila in Old Castile, and a Carmelite mm. Theresa 
 established an order which she called the " Refonned," and which became 
 very powerful. Her works are divided into ten books, of which her auto- 
 biography forms a remarkable part. She died in 1582, and was canonised by 
 Gregory XV., in 1622.— Ed. 
 
PROOF OP EXISTENCE OE GOD. 307 
 
 What between the sectarians and the political 
 economists, the English are denationalised. England 
 I see as a country, but the English nation seem? 
 obliterated. What could redintegrate us again ? Must 
 it be another threat of foreign invasion ? 
 
 I never can digest the loss of most of Origen^s 
 works : he seems to have been almost the only very 
 great scholar and genius combined amongst the early 
 Fathers. Jerome was very inferior to him. 
 
 January 20, 1834. 
 Some Men like Musical Glasses. — Sublime and Nonsense, — Atheist, 
 
 SOME men are like musical glasses ; — to produce 
 their finest tones, you mast keep them wet. 
 
 Well! that passage is what I call the sublime 
 dashed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery- 
 four-in-hand round the corner of nonsense. 
 
 How did the Atheist get his idea of that God whom 
 he denies ? 
 
 February 22, 1834. 
 Proof of Existence of God. — Kant's Attempt, — Plurality 
 of Worlds. 
 
 ASSUME the existence of God, — and then the 
 harmony and fitness of the physical creation may 
 be shown to correspond with and support such an 
 assumption ; — ^but to set about proving the existence 
 of a God by such means is a mere circle, a delusion. It 
 can be no proof to a good reasoner, unless he violates 
 all syllogistic logic, and presumes his conclusion. 
 
 X 2 
 
308 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 Kant once set about proving the existence of God^ 
 and a masterly effort it was.^ But in his later great 
 work^ the Critique of the Pure Reason/^ he saw its 
 fallacy^ and said of it — that if the existence could 
 be proved at all^ it must be on the grounds indicated 
 by him. 
 
 I never could feel any force in the arguments for a 
 plurality of worlds^ in the common acceptation of that 
 term. A lady once asked me — " What then could 
 be the intention in creating so many great bodies^ so 
 apparently useless to us ? I said — I did not know, 
 except, perhaps, to make dirt cheap. The vulgar 
 inference is in alio genere, ^Tiat in the eye of an 
 intellectual and omnipotent Being is the whole sidereal 
 system to the soul of one man for whom Clirist died ? 
 
 March 1, 1834. 
 A Reasoner. 
 
 I AM by the law of my nature a reasoner. A 
 person who should suppose I meant by that word, 
 an arguer, would not only not understand me, but 
 would understand the contrary of my meaning. I can 
 take no interest whatever in hearing or saying any- 
 . thing merely as a fact — merely as having happened. 
 It must refer to something within me before I can 
 regard it with any curiosity or care. My mind is 
 always energic — I don^t mean energetic ; I require in 
 everything what, for lack of another word, I may call 
 propriety y — that is, a reason, why the thing is at all, 
 
 * In his essay, " Der einzig moglichc Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des 
 Daseyns Gottesy — " The only possible argument or ground of proof for a 
 demonstration of the existence of God." It was published in 1763; the 
 " Critique " in 1781.— Ed. 
 
CRABBE AND SOUTHEY. 
 
 309 
 
 and why it is there or then rather than elsewhere or at 
 another time. 
 
 March 5, 1834. 
 
 Shakspeare^s Intellectual Action, — Crabhe and Southey, — Peter 
 Simple and Tom Cringle's Log, 
 
 O HAKSPEARE'S intellectual action is wholly unlike 
 ^ that of Ben Jonson or Beaumont and Eletcher. 
 The latter see the totality of a sentence or passage^ 
 and then project it entire. Shakspeare goes on creating, 
 and evolving B. out of A., and C. out of B., and so 
 on, just as a serpent moves, which makes a fulcrum 
 of its own body, and seems for ever twisting and 
 untwisting its own strength. 
 
 I think Crabbe and Southey are something alike ; 
 but Crabbers poems are founded on observation and 
 real life — Southe/s on fancy and books. In facility 
 they are equal, though Crabbers English is of course 
 not upon a level with Southey'' s, which is next door to 
 faultless. But in Crabbe there is an absolute defect 
 of the high imagination ; he gives me little or no 
 pleasure : yet, no doubt, he has much power of a 
 certain kind, and it is good to cultivate, even at some 
 pains, a catholic taste in literature. I read all sorts 
 of books with some pleasure, except modern sermons 
 and treatises on poHtical economy. 
 
 I have received a great deal of pleasure from some 
 of the modern novels, especially Captain Marryat^s 
 
 Peter Simple.^^ That book is nearer Smollett than 
 any I remember. And Tom Cringle^s Log " in 
 Blackwood is also most excellent. 
 
310 
 
 COLEHIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 March 15, 1834. 
 Chaucer. — Shaksjpeare. — Ben Jonson. — Beaumont and Fletcher, — 
 Daniel. — Massinger. 
 
 I TAKE unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly 
 cheerfulness is especially delicious to me in my 
 old age.* How exquisitely tender he is^ and yet how 
 perfectly free from the least touch of sickly melan- 
 choly or morbid drooping! The sympathy of the 
 poet with the subjects of his poetry is particularly 
 remarkable in Shakspeare and Chaucer ; but what the 
 first effects by a strong act of imagination and mental 
 metamorphosis^ the last does without any effort^ merely 
 by the inborn kindly joyousness of his nature. How 
 well we seem to know Chaucer ! How absolutely 
 nothing do we know of Shakspeare ! 
 
 I cannot in the least allow any necessity for Chaucer^s 
 poetry^ especially the Canterbury Tales^ being con- 
 sidered obsolete. Let a few plain rules be given for 
 sounding the final e of syllables, and for expressing 
 the termination of such words as ocean, and nation^ 
 &c., as dissyllables, — or let the syllables to be sounded 
 in such cases be marked by a competent metrist. This 
 simple expedient would, with a very few trifling ex- 
 ceptions, where the errors are inveterate, enable any 
 reader to feel the perfect smoothness and harmony of 
 Chaucer^s verse. As to understanding his language, 
 if you read twenty pages with a good glossary, you 
 surely can find no further difficulty, even as it is ; but 
 
 * Eighteen years before, Mr. Coleridge entertained the same feelings 
 towards Chaucer: — "Through all the works of Chaucer there reigns a 
 cheerfulness, a manly hilarity, which makes it almost impossible to doubt 
 a correspondent habit of feeling in the author himself." Biog. Lit., vol. i., 
 p. 32.— Ed. 
 
SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 311 
 
 I should have no objection to see this done : — Strike 
 out those words wliich are now obsolete^ and I wiU 
 venture to say that I wiU replace every one of them 
 by words still in use out of Chaucer himself, or Gower 
 his disciple. I don^t want this myself : 1 rather like 
 to see the significant terms which Chaucer unsuccess- 
 fully offered as candidates for admission into our lan- 
 guage ; but surely so very slight a change of the text 
 may well be pardoned^ even by \A2.Qk.4eUerati, for the 
 purpose of restoring so great a poet to his ancient 
 and most deserved popularity. 
 
 Shakspeare is of no age. It is idle to endeavour to 
 support his phrases by quotations from Ben Jonson, 
 Beaumont and Metcher^ &c. His language is entirely 
 his own, and the younger dramatists imitated him. 
 The construction of Shakspeare^ s sentences, whether 
 in verse or prose, is the necessary and homogeneous 
 vehicle of his peculiar manner of thinking. His is 
 not the style of the age. More particularly, Shak- 
 speare^s blank verse is an absolutely new creation. 
 Read Daniel — the admirable Daniel — in his Civil 
 Wars,^^ and Triumphs of Hymen.''^ The style and 
 language are just such as any very pure and manly 
 writer of the present day — ^Wordsworth, for example 
 — ^would use j it seems quite modern in comparison 
 
 * " This poet's -well-merited epithet is that of the * well-languaged Daniel ; ' 
 but, likewise, and by the consent of his contemporaries, no less than all suc- 
 ceeding critics, the 'prosaic Daniel.' Yet those who thus designate this 
 ■wise and amiable writer, from the frequent incorrespondency of his diction 
 with his metre, in the majority of his compositions, not only deem them 
 valuable and interesting on other accounts, but willingly admit that there 
 are to be found throughout his poems, and especially in his Epistles and in 
 his Hymens Triumph, many and exquisite specimens of that style, which, 
 as the neutral ground of prose and verse, is common to both." — Biog. Lit., 
 vol. ii., p. 82. 
 
312 
 
 Coleridge's table talk. 
 
 with the style of Shakspeare. Ben Jonson's blank 
 verse is very masterly and individual, and perhaps 
 Massinger's is even still nobler. In Beaumont and 
 Pletcher it is constantly slipping into lyricisms. 
 
 I believe Shakspeare was not a whit more intelli- 
 gible in his own day than he is now to an educated 
 man, except for a few local allusions of no consequence. 
 As I said, he is of no age — nor, I may add, of any 
 religion, or party, or profession. The body and sub- 
 stance of his works came out of the unfathomable 
 depths of his own oceanic mind : his observation and 
 reading, which was considerable, supplied him with 
 the drapery of his figures.* 
 
 As for editing Beaumont and Fletcher, the task 
 would be one immensi lahoris. The confusion is now 
 so great, the errors so enormous, that the editor must 
 use a boldness quite unallowable in any other case. 
 All I can say as to Beaumont and Fletcher is, that I 
 can point out well enough where something has been 
 lost, and that sometliing so and so was probably 
 in the original ; but the law of Shakspeare's thought 
 and verse is such, that I feel convinced that not 
 only could I detect the spurious, but supply the 
 genuine, word. 
 
 * Mr. Coleridge called Shakspeare " the myriad-minded mxmj'' oivvi^ /ucv^io ovs 
 — "a phrase," said he, " which I have borrowed from a Greek monk, 
 who applies it to a patriarch of Constantinople. I might have said, 
 that I have reclaimed, rather than borrowed, it, for it seems to belong to 
 Shakspeare dejure singulari, et ex privilegio natures''' See Biog. Lit., vol. ii., 
 p. 13.— Ed. 
 
LEWISES "JAMAICA JOURNAL/^ 313 
 
 March 20, 1834. 
 Lord Byron and H. Walpole's " Mysterious Mother, ""^ — Lewis's 
 " Jamaica Journal''' 
 
 LOED BYEON, as quoted by Lord Dover,* says, 
 that the "Mysterious Mother raises Horace 
 Walpole above every author living in his. Lord 
 Byron'^s, time. Upon which I venture to remark, 
 first, that I do not believe that Lord Byron spoke 
 sincerely ; for I suspect that he made a tacit exception 
 in favour of himseK at least ; — secondly, that it is a 
 miserable mode of comparison which does not rest on 
 difference of kind. It proceeds of envy and malice 
 and detraction to say that A. is higher than B, unless 
 you show that they are in pari materia ; — thirdly, 
 that the " Mysterious Mother is the most disgust- 
 ing, vile, detestable composition that ever came from 
 the hand of man. No one with a spark of true 
 manliness, of which Horace Walpole had none, could 
 have written it. As to the blank verse, it is indeed 
 better than Eowe^s and Thomson^ s, which was ex- 
 ecrably bad : — any approach, therefore, to the manner 
 of the old dramatists was, of course, an improve- 
 ment ; but the loosest lines in Shirley are superior 
 to "Walpole^s best. 
 
 Lewises "Jamaica JournaP^ is delightful; it is 
 almost the only unaffected book of travels or touring 
 
 * In the memoir prefixed to the correspondence with Sir. H. Mann, Lord 
 Byron's words are : — " He is the uUimus Romanorum, the author of the 
 * Mysterious Mother,' a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling 
 love play. He is the father of the first romance, and of the last tragedy, 
 in our language; and surely worthy of a higher place than any living 
 author, he he who he may." — Preface to Marino Faliero. Is not " Borneo 
 and Juliet" a love play? — But why reason about such insincere, splenetic 
 trash ?— Ed. 
 
814 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 I have read of late years. You have the man himself, 
 and not an inconsiderable man, — certainly a much 
 finer mind than I supposed before from the perusal of 
 his romances, &c. It is by far his best work, and will 
 live and be popular. Those verses on the Hours are 
 very pretty; but the Isle of Devils is, Hke his romances, 
 — a fever dream — horrible, without point or terror. 
 
 April 16, 1834. 
 Sicily. — Malta. — Sir Alexander Ball. 
 
 T FOUND that everything in and about Sicily had 
 ^ been exaggerated by travellers, except two things 
 — the folly of the government and the wretchedness 
 of the people. Thei/ did not admit of exaggeration. 
 
 EeaUy you may learn the fundamental principles 
 of political economy in a very compendious way, by 
 taking a short tour through Sicily, and simply re- 
 versing in your own mind every law, custom, and 
 ordinance you meet with. I never was in a country 
 in wliich everything proceeding from man was so 
 exactly wrong. You have peremptory ordinances 
 against making roads, taxes on the passage of 
 common vegetables from one miserable viUage to 
 another, and so on. 
 
 By the by, do you know any parallel in modern 
 history to the absurdity of our giving a legislative 
 assembly to the Sicilians? It exceeds anything I 
 know. This precious legislature passed two bills 
 before it was knocked on the head : the first was, to 
 render lands inalienable; and the second, to cancel 
 all debts due before the date of the bill. 
 
SIR ALEXANDER BALL. 
 
 315 
 
 And then consider the gross ignorance and folly of 
 our laying a tax upon the Sicilians ! Taxation in its 
 proper sense can only exist where there is a free cir- 
 culation of capital, labour, and commodities tliroughout 
 the community. But to tax the people in countries 
 Hke Sicily and Corsica, where there is no internal 
 communication, is mere robbery and confiscation. A 
 crown taken from a Corsican living in the sierras 
 would not get back to him again in ten years. 
 
 It is interesting to pass from Malta to Sicily — 
 from the highest specimen of an inferior race, the 
 Saracenic, to the most degraded class of a superior 
 race, the European. 
 
 No tongue can describe the moral corruption of the 
 Maltese when the island was surrendered to us. There 
 was not a family in it in which a wife or a daughter 
 was not a kept mistress. A marquis of ancient family 
 applied to Sir Alexander Ball to be appointed his 
 valet. " My valet \ said Ball, what can you mean, 
 sir?^^ The marquis said, he hoped he should then 
 have had the honour of presenting petitions to his 
 Excellency. " Oh, that is it, is it ? " said Sir Alex- 
 ander : my valet, sir, brushes my clothes and brings 
 them to me. If he dared to meddle with matters of 
 public business, I should kick him down stairs ."^^ 
 
 In short, Malta was an Augean stable, and Ball 
 had aU the inclination to be a Hercules.* His task 
 
 * I refer the reader to the five concluding essays of the third volume of the 
 " Friend," as a specimen of what Mr. C. might have done as a biographer if 
 an irresistible instinct had not devoted him to profounder labours. As a 
 sketch — and it pretends to nothing more — is there anything more perfect in 
 our literature than the monument raised in those essays to the memory of 
 Sir Alexander Ball ? — and there are some touches added to the character of 
 Nelson, which the reader, even of Southey's matchless Life of our hero, will 
 find both new and interesting.— Ed. 
 
316 
 
 COLERIDGE'S TABLE TALK. 
 
 was most difficulty although his qualifications were 
 most remarkable. I remember an English officer of 
 very high rank soliciting him for the renewal of a 
 pension to an abandoned woman who had been noto- 
 riously treacherous to us. That officer had promised 
 the woman as a matter of course, — she having 
 sacrificed her daughter to him. Ball was determined, 
 as far as he could, to prevent Malta from being made 
 a nest of home patronage. He considered, as was 
 the fact, that there was a contract between England 
 and the Maltese. Hence the government at home, 
 especially Dundas, disliked him, and never allowed 
 him any other title than that of Civil Commissioner. 
 We have, I believe, nearly succeeded in alienating 
 the hearts of the inhabitants from us. Every officer 
 in the island ought to be a Maltese, except those 
 belonging to the immediate executive : 100/. per 
 annum to a Maltese, to enable him to keep a gilt 
 carriage, will satisfy him where an Englishman must 
 have 2000/. 
 
 May 1, 1834. 
 
 Cambridge Petition to admit Dissenters, 
 
 THEEE are, to my grief, the names of some men 
 to the Cambridge petition for admission of the 
 Dissenters to the University, whose cheeks I think 
 must have burned with shame at the degrading 
 patronage and befouling eulogies of the democratic 
 press, and at seeing themselves used as the tools of 
 the open and rancorous enemies of the church. How 
 miserable to be held up for the purpose of inflicting in- 
 sult upon men, whose worth and ability and sincerity 
 you well know, — and this by a faction banded together 
 
CORN LAWS. 
 
 817 
 
 like obscene dogs and cats and serpents, against a 
 church which you profoundly revere ! The time — 
 the time — the occasion and the motive ought to have 
 been argument enough, that even if the measure were 
 right or harmless in itself, not now, nor with such as 
 these, was it to be effected ! 
 
 May 3, 1834. 
 Corn Laws, 
 
 T^HOSE who argue that England may safely depend 
 upon a supply of foreign corn, if it grow none or 
 an insufficient quantity of its own, forget that they 
 are subjugating the necessaries of life itself to the 
 mere luxuries or comforts of society. Is it not cer- 
 tain that the price of corn abroad will be raised upon 
 us as soon as it is once known that we must buy ? — 
 and when that fact is known, in what sort of a situa- 
 tion shall we be ? Besides this, the argument sup- 
 poses that agriculture is not a positive good to the 
 nation, taken in and by itself, as a mode of existence 
 for the people, which supposition is false and per- 
 nicious; and if we are to become a great horde of 
 manufacturers, shall we not, even more than at pre- 
 sent, excite the iU-will of all the manufacturers of 
 other nations ? It has been already shown, in evidence 
 which is before all the world, that some of our manu- 
 facturers have acted upon the accursed principle of 
 deliberately injuring foreign manufacturers, if they 
 can, even to the ultimate disgrace of the country and 
 loss to themselves. 
 
318 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 May 19, 1834. 
 Christian Sahhath, 
 
 TTOW grossly misunderstood the genuine character 
 -■--L of the Christian sabbath, or Lord^s-day, seemg 
 to be even by the church ! To confound it with the 
 Jewish sabbath, or to rest its observance upon the 
 fourth commandment, is, in my judgment, heretical, 
 and would so have been considered in the primitive 
 church. That cessation from labour on the Lord^s 
 day could not have been absolutely incumbent on 
 Christians for two centuries after Christ, is apparent ; 
 because during that period the greater part of the 
 Christians were either slaves or in ofBcial situations 
 under Pagan masters or superiors, and had duties to 
 perform for those who did not recognise the day. 
 And we know that St. Paul sent back Onesimus to 
 liis master, and told every Christian slave, that, being 
 a Christian, he was free in his mind indeed, but still 
 must serve his earthly master, although he might 
 laudably seek for his personal freedom also. If the 
 early Cliristians had refused to work on the Lord^s 
 day, rebellion and civil war must have been the 
 immediate consequences. But there is no notice of 
 any such cessation. 
 
 The Jewish sabbath was commemorative of the ter- 
 mination of the great act of creation ; it was to record 
 that the world had not been from eternity, nor had 
 arisen as a dream by itself, but that God had created 
 it by distinct acts of power, and that he had hallowed 
 the day or season in which he rested or desisted from 
 his work. When our Lord arose from the dead, the 
 old creation was, as it were, superseded, and the new 
 
CHRISTIAN SABBATH. 
 
 319 
 
 creation then began ; and therefore the first day and 
 not the last day, the commencement and not the end, 
 of the work of God was solemnised. 
 
 Luther, in speaking of the good hy itself, and the 
 good for its expediency alone, instances the observance 
 of the Christian day of rest, — a day of repose from 
 manual labour, and of activity in spiritual labour, — a 
 day of joy and co-operation in the work of Christ^s 
 creation. Keep it holy**^ — says he — for its use^ 
 sake, — ^both to body and soul ! But if anywhere the 
 day is made holy for the mere day'^s sake, — if any- 
 where any one sets up its observance upon a Jewish 
 foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride 
 on it, to dance on it, to feast on it — to do anything 
 that shall reprove this encroachment on the Christian 
 spirit and liberty ."'^ 
 
 The early church distinguished the day of Christian 
 rest so strongly from a fast, that it was unlawful for a 
 man to bewail even Jiis own sins, as such only, on that 
 day. He was to bewail the sins of all, and to pray 
 as one of the whole of Christ^s body. 
 
 And the English Reformers evidently took the 
 same view of the day as Luther and the early church. 
 But, unhappily, our church, in the reigns of James 
 and Charles the Pirst, was so identified \vdth the undue 
 advancement of the royal prerogative, that the puri- 
 tanical Judaising of the Presbyterians was but too 
 well seconded by the patriots of the nation, in re- 
 sisting the wise efforts of the church to prevent the 
 incipient alteration in the character of the day of 
 rest. After the Eestoration, the bishops and clergy 
 in general adopted the view taken and enforced by 
 their enemies. 
 
320 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 By the by^ it is curious to observe^ in this semi- 
 infidel and Malthusian Parliament, how the Sabba- 
 tarian spirit unites itself with a rancorous hostility to 
 that one institution, which alone, according to reason 
 and experience, can insure the continuance of any 
 general religion at all in the nation at large. Some 
 of these gentlemen, who are for not letting a poor 
 labouring man have a dish of baked potatoes on a 
 Sunday, religionis gratia — (God forgive that audacious 
 blashemy !) — are foremost among those who seem to 
 live but in viUfying, weakening, and impoverishing 
 the national church. I own my indignation boils 
 over against such contemptible feUows. 
 
 I sincerely wish to preserve a decent quiet on 
 Sunday. I would prohibit compulsory labour, and 
 put down operas, theatres, &c., for this plain reason 
 — that if the rich be allowed to play, the poor will 
 be forced, or, what comes to the same thing, will be 
 induced, to work. I am not for a Paris Sunday. But 
 to stop coaches, and let the gentleman^s carriage run, 
 is monstrous. 
 
 May 25, 1834. 
 High Prizes and Revenues of the Church. 
 
 YOUR argument against the high prizes in the 
 church might be put strongly thus: — Admit 
 that in the beginning it might have been fairly said, 
 that some eminent rewards ought to be set apart for 
 the purpose of stimulating and rewarding transcendant 
 merit ; what have you to say now, after centuries of 
 experience to the contrary? — Have the high prizes 
 been given to the highest genius, virtue, or learning ? 
 
HIGH PRIZES OF THE CHUECH. 
 
 321 
 
 Is it not rather the truths as Jortiii said^ that twelve 
 votes in a contested election will do more to make a 
 man a bishop than an admired commentary on the 
 twelve minor prophets ? — To all which and the like I 
 say again^ that you ought not to reason from the 
 abuse^ which may be rectified^ against the inherent 
 uses of the thing. Apjooint the most deserving — and 
 the prize will answer its purpose. As to the bishops^ 
 incomes^ — in the first place^ the net receipts — that 
 which the bishops may spend — have been confessedly 
 exaggerated beyond measure ; but, waiving that, and 
 allowing the liighest estimate to be correct, I should 
 like to have the disposition of the episcopal revenue 
 in any one year by the late or the present Bishop of 
 Durham, or the present Bishops of London or Win- 
 chester, compared with that of the most benevolent 
 nobleman in England, of any party in politics. I 
 firmly beheve that the former give away in charity of 
 one kind or another, public, official, or private, three 
 times as much in proportion as the latter. You may 
 have a hunks or two, now and then ; but so you would 
 much more certainly, if you vrere to reduce the in- 
 comes to 2000/. per annum. As a body, in my 
 opinion, the clergy of England do in truth act as if 
 their property were impressed with a trust to the 
 utmost extent that can be demanded by those who 
 affect to believe, ignorantly or not, that lying legend 
 of a tripartite or quadripartite division of the tithe 
 by law. 
 
 Y 
 
322 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 May 31, 1834. 
 
 Sir C. WetherelVs Speech. — National CJmrch. — Dissenters. — 
 Papacy. — Universities, 
 
 T THINK Sir Charles Wetlierell's speech before the 
 -1- Privy Council very effective. I doubt if any 
 other lawyer in Westminster Hall could have done 
 the thing so well. 
 
 The National Church requires, and is required by, 
 the Christian Church for the perfection of each. Por 
 if there were no national Church, the mere spiritual 
 Church would either become, like the Papacy, a 
 dreadful tyranny over mind and body; — or else would 
 fall abroad into a multitude of enthusiastic sects, as 
 in England in the seventeenth century. It is my deep 
 conviction that, in a country of any religion at all, 
 liberty of conscience can only be permanently pre- 
 served by means and under the shadow of a national 
 Chui'ch, — a political establishment connected with, 
 but distinct from, the Spiritual Cliurch. 
 
 I sometimes hope that the undisguised despotism 
 of temper of the Dissenters may at last awaken a 
 jealousy in the laity of the Church of England. But 
 the apathy and inertness are, I fear, too profound — 
 too providential. 
 
 Whatever the Papacy may have been on the Con- 
 tinent, it was always an unquaHfied evil to this country. 
 It destroyed what was rising of good, and introduced 
 a thousand evils of its own. The Papacy was and still 
 is essentially extra-national ; — it affects, temporally, to 
 do that which the spiritual Church of Christ can alone 
 do — to break down the natural distinctions of nations. 
 
SCHILLER^S VERSIFICATION. 
 
 323 
 
 Now, as the Roman Papacy is in itseK local and pecu- 
 liar, of course this attempt is nothing but a direct 
 attack on the political independence of other nations. 
 
 The institution of Universities was the single check 
 on the Papacy. The Pope always hated and maligned 
 the Universities. The old coenobitic establishments 
 of England were converted — ^perverted, rather — into 
 monasteries and other monking receptacles. You see 
 it was at Oxford that Wicliffe alone found protection 
 and encouragement. 
 
 June 2, 1834. 
 
 Schiller's Versification. — Oerman Blank Verse. 
 
 OCHILLEE^S blank verse is bad. He moves in 
 it as a fly in a glue bottle. His thoughts have 
 their connection and variety, it is true, but there is 
 no sufficiently corresponding movement in the verse. 
 How different from Shakspeare^s endless rhythms ! 
 
 There is a nimiety — a too-muchness — in all Ger- 
 mans. It is the national fault. Lessing had the best 
 notion of blank verse. The trochaic termination of 
 German words renders blank verse in that language 
 almost impracticable. We have it in our dramatic 
 hendecasyllable ; but then we have a power of inter- 
 weaving the iambic close ad libitum. 
 
 June 14, 1834. 
 Roman Catholic Emancipation. — Duke of Wellington. — 
 Coronation Oath, 
 
 n^HE Eoman Catholic Emancipation Act — carried in 
 the violent, and, in fact, unprincipled manner it 
 was — was in effect a Surinam toad ; — and the Reform 
 Bill, the Dissenters^ admission to the Universities, 
 
 T 2 
 
324 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 and the attack on the Churchy are so many toadlets, 
 one after another detaching themselves from their 
 parent brute. 
 
 If you say there is nothing in the Eomish religion, 
 sincerely felt, inconsistent with the duties of citizen- 
 ship and allegiance to a territorial Protestant sovereign, 
 cadit qucestio. For if that is once admitted, there can 
 be no answer to the argument from numbers. Cer- 
 tainly, if the religion of the majority of the people be 
 innocuous to the interests of the nation^ the majority 
 have a natural right to be trustees of the nationalty — - 
 that property which is set apart for the nation^s use, 
 and rescued from the gripe of private hands. But 
 when I s^j—for the nation's me — I mean the very 
 reverse of what the Eadicals mean. They would 
 convert it to relieve taxation, which I call a private, 
 personal, and perishable use. A nation^s uses are 
 immortal. 
 
 How lamentable it is to hear the Duke of Welling- 
 ton expressing himself doubtingly on the abominable 
 sophism that the Coronation Oath only binds the 
 King as the executive power — thereby making a High- 
 gate oath of it ! But the Duke is conscious of the 
 ready retort which his language and conduct on the 
 Emancipation Bill afford to his opponents. He is 
 hampered by that affair. 
 
 June 20, 1834. 
 Corn Laws. — Modern Political Economy. 
 TN the argument on the Corn Laws there is a /utera- 
 ^ ^acTis €19 aXXo yivos. It may be admitted that the 
 great principles of commerce require the interchange of 
 
MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 325 
 
 commodities to be free ; but commerce^ which is barter, 
 has no proper range beyond luxuries or conveniences ; 
 — it is properly the complement to the full existence 
 and development of a state. But how can it be shown 
 that the principles applicable to an interchange of 
 conveniences or luxuries apply also to an interchange 
 of necessaries ? No state can be such properly, which 
 is not self-subsistent at least ; for no state that is not 
 so, is essentially independent. The nation that cannot 
 even exist without the commodity of another nation, 
 is in effect the slave of that other nation. In common 
 times, indeed, pecuniary interest will prevail, and pre- 
 vent a ruinous exercise of the power which the nation 
 supplying the necessary must have over the nation 
 which has only the convenience or luxury to return ; 
 but such interest, both in individuals and nations, 
 will yield to many stronger passions. Is Holland any 
 authority to the contrary ? If so. Tyre and Sidon and 
 Carthage were so ! Would you put England on a 
 footing with a country, which can be overrun in a 
 campaign, and starved in a year ? 
 
 The entire tendency of the modern or Malthusian 
 political economy is to denationalize. It would dig up 
 the charcoal foundations of the temple of Ephesus to 
 burn as fuel for a steam-engine ! 
 
 June 21, 1834. 
 
 MB,. . in his poem, makes trees co-eval with 
 Chaos; — which is next door to Hans Sachse,* 
 who, in describing Chaos, said it was so pitchy dark, 
 that even the very cats ran against each other ! 
 
 * Hans Sachse was born 1494, and died 1576. — Ed. 
 
COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 June 23, 1834. 
 Socinianism. — TJnitarianism. — Fancy and Imagination, 
 
 Tj^AUSTUS SOCINUS worshipped Jesus Christ, and 
 said that God had given him the power of being 
 omnipresent. Davidi, with a little more acuteness, 
 urged that mere audition or creaturely presence could 
 not possibly justify worship from men ; — that a man, 
 how glorified soever, was no nearer God in essence 
 than the vulgarest of the race. ♦ Prayer, therefore, was 
 inapplicable. And how could a man be a mediator 
 between God and man ? How could a man with sins 
 himself offer any compensation for, or expiation of, 
 sin, unless the most arbitrary caprice were admitted 
 into the counsels of God ? — And so, at last, you see, 
 it was discovered by the better logicians amongst the 
 Socinians, that there was no such thing as sin at all. 
 
 It is wonderful how any Socinian can read the 
 works of Philo Judseus without some pause of doubt 
 in the truth of his views as to the person of Christ. 
 Whether Philo wrote on his own ground as a Jew, or 
 borrowed from the Christians, the testimony as to the 
 then Jewish expectation and belief, is equally strong. 
 You know Philo calls the Logos vlos ©eoO, the Son of 
 G6>r/,and ayairrjTbv reKvov, beloved Son. He calls him 
 ap\iep€vSf high joriesty hevT epos Sebs, second divinity ^ 
 €Ik(^v &€ov, image of Gody and describes him as 
 kyyvTOLTco jJLTjbevos ovtos ixeOopiov hiaarriixaTos the 
 nearest possible to God witJiout any intervening sepa- 
 ration. And there are numerous other remarkable 
 expressions of the same sort. 
 
 My faith is this : — God is the Absolute Will : it is 
 his Name and the meaning of it. It is the Hypo- 
 
ITNITARIANISM. 
 
 327 
 
 stasis. As begetting his own Alterity, the Jehovah, 
 the Manifested — He is the Father ; but the Love and 
 the Life — the Spirit — proceeds from both, 
 
 I think Priestley must be considered the author of 
 the modern Unitarianism. I owe, under God, my 
 return to the faith, to my having gone much further 
 than the Unitarians, and so having come round to 
 the other side. I can truly say, 1 never falsified the 
 Scripture. I always told them that their interpre- 
 tations of the Scripture were intolerable upon any 
 principles of sound criticism; and that, if they were 
 to offer to construe the will of a neighbour as they 
 did that of theii' Maker, they would be scouted out of 
 society. I said then plainly and openly, that it was 
 clear enough that John and Paul were not Unitarians. 
 But at that time I had a strong sense of the repug- 
 nancy of the doctrine of vicarious atonement to the 
 moral being, and I thought nothing could counter- 
 balance that. ^^What care 1'^ I said, ^^for the 
 Platonisms of John, or the Eabbinisms of Paul? — 
 My conscience revolts ! That was the ground of 
 my Unitarianism. 
 
 Always believing in the government of God, I was 
 a fervent Optimist. But as I could not but see that 
 the present state of things was not the best, I was 
 necessarily led to look forward to some future state. 
 
 You may conceive the difference in kind between 
 the Pancy and the Imagination in this way, — that if 
 the check of the senses and the reason were withdrawn, 
 the first would become delirium, and the last mania. 
 The Pancy brings together images which have no con- 
 nection natural or moral, but are yoked together by 
 
328 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 the poet by means of some accidental coincidence ; as 
 in the well-known passage in Hudibras : — 
 
 The sun had long since in the lap 
 Of Thetis taken out his nap, 
 And like a lobster boy I'd, the morn 
 From black to red began to turn." * 
 
 The Imagination modifies images, and gives unity to 
 variety ; it sees all things in one_, il piu neW uno. 
 There is the epic imagination, the perfection of which 
 is in Milton ; and the dramatic, of which Shakspeare 
 is the absolute master. The first gives unity by tlirow- 
 ing back into the distance ; as after the magnificent 
 approach of the Messiah to battle,t the poet, by one 
 touch from himself — 
 
 " far off their coming shone ! " — 
 
 * Part II., c. 2, V. 29. 
 
 t " Forth rush'd with whirlwind sound 
 
 The chariot of Paternal Deity, 
 
 Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn, 
 
 Itself instinct with spirit, but convoy'd 
 
 By four cherubic shapes ; four faces each 
 
 Had wonderous ; as with stars their bodies all 
 
 And Avings were set with eyes ; with eyes the wheels 
 
 Of beryl, and careering fires between ; 
 
 Over their heads a crystal firmament, 
 
 Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure 
 
 Amber, and colours of the showery arch. 
 
 He, in celestial panoply all arm'd 
 
 Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought, 
 
 Ascended ; at his right hand Victory 
 
 Sat eagle-wing'd ; beside him hung his bow 
 
 And quiver, with three-bolted thunder stored ; 
 
 And from about him fierce effusion roll'd 
 
 Of smoke, and bickering flame, and sparkles dire ; 
 
 Attended with ten thousand thousand saints, 
 
 He onward came ; far off their coming sho7ie ; 
 
 And twenty thousand (I their number heard) 
 
 Chariots of God, half on each hand, were seen : 
 
 He on the wings of cherub rode sublime 
 
 On the crystalline sky, in sappliire throned, 
 
 Illustrious far and wide ; but by his own 
 
 First seen."— P. L., book vi., ver. 749, &c. 
 
MR. Coleridge's system. 
 
 329 
 
 makes the whole one image. And so at the conclusion 
 of the description of the appearance of the entranced 
 angels^ in which every sort of image from all the 
 regions of earth and air is introduced to diversify and 
 illustrate, — the reader is brought back to the single 
 image by — 
 
 " He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep 
 
 The dramatic imagination does not throw back, but 
 brings close ; it stamps all nature with one, and that 
 its own, meaning, as in Lear throughout. 
 
 At the very outset, what are we to think of the 
 soundness of this modern system of political economy, 
 the direct tendency of every rule of which is to de- 
 nationalize, and to make the love of our country a 
 foolish superstition ? 
 
 June 28, 1834. 
 Mr, Coleridge^s System. — Biograjphia Literaria. — Dissenters. 
 
 OU may not understand my system, or any given 
 part of it, — or by a determined act of wilful- 
 
 His legions, angel forms, who lay intranced 
 
 Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the hrooks 
 
 In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades, 
 
 High over-arch'd, embower ; or scatter'd sedge 
 
 Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm'd 
 
 Hath vex'd the Ked-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew 
 
 Busiris, and his Memphian Chivalry, 
 
 While with perfidious hatred they pursued 
 
 The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 
 
 From the safe shore their floating carcasses 
 
 And broken chariot wheels ; so thick bestrown. 
 
 Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood, 
 
 Under amazement of their hideous change. 
 
 He call'd so loud, that all the hoUovj deep 
 
 0/ Hell resounded.'" — P. L., book i., ver. 300, &c. 
 
 Of Hell resounded." 
 
 " and call'd 
 
830 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 ness, you may, even though perceiving a ray of light, 
 reject it in anger and disgust : — but this I will say, — 
 that if you once master it, or any part of it, you 
 cannot hesitate to acknowledge it as the truth. You 
 cannot be sceptical about it. 
 
 The metaphysical disquisition at the end of the first 
 volume of the ^^Biographia Literaria^^ is unformed 
 and immature; — it contains the fragments of the 
 truth, but it is not fully thought out. It is wonder- 
 ful to myseK to think how infinitely more profound 
 my views now are, and yet how much clearer they are 
 withal. The circle is completing ; the idea is coming 
 round to, and to be, the common sense. 
 
 The generation of the modern worldly Dissenter 
 was thus: Presbyterian, Arian, Socinian, and last, 
 Unitarian. 
 
 Is it not most extraordinary to see the Dissenters 
 calling themselves the descendants of the old Non- 
 conformists, and yet clamouring for a divorce of 
 Church and State ? Why — Baxter, and the other 
 great leaders, would have thought a man an atheist 
 who had proposed such a thing. They were rather for 
 merging the State in the Church. But these our 
 modern gentlemen, who are blinded by political pas- 
 sion, give the kiss of alliance to the harlot of Rome, 
 and walk arm in arm with those who deny the God 
 that redeemed them, if so they may but wreak their 
 insane antipathies on the National Church ! Well ! 
 I suppose they have counted the cost, and know what 
 it is they would have, and can keep. 
 
LORD BROOKE. — BARROW AND DRYDEN. 331 
 
 July 5, 1834. 
 
 Lord Brooke. — Barrow and Dryden. — Peter Wilkins and Stothard. 
 — Fielding and Richardson. — Bishop Sandford, — Roman 
 Catholic Religion, 
 
 T DO not remember a more beautiful piece of prose 
 in English than the consolation addressed by Lord 
 Brooke (Fulke Greville) to a lady of quality on certain 
 conjugal infelicities. The diction is such that it might 
 have been written now^ if we could find any one com- 
 bining so thoughtful a head with so tender a heart 
 and so exquisite a taste. 
 
 Barrow often debased his language merely to evi- 
 dence his loyalty. It was^ indeed^ no easy task for a 
 man of so much genius^ and such a precise mathe- 
 matical mode of thinkings to adopt even for a moment 
 the slang of L^Estrange and Tom Brown; but he 
 succeeded in doing so sometimes. With the excep- 
 tion of such parts^ Barrow must be considered as 
 closing the first great period of the English lan- 
 guage. Dryden began the second. Of course there 
 are numerous subdivisions. 
 
 Peter Wilkins is to my mind a work of uncommon 
 beauty; and yet Stothard^s illustrations have added 
 beauties to it. If it were not for a certain tendency 
 to affectation, scarcely any praise could be too liigh 
 for Stothard^s designs. They give me great pleasure. 
 I believe that Eobinson Crusoe and Peter Wilkins 
 could only have been written by islanders. No con- 
 tinentalist could have conceived either tale. Davis^'s 
 story is an imitation of Peter Wilkins ; but there are 
 many beautiful things in it ; especially his finding his 
 
332 
 
 COLERlDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 wife crouching by the fire-side^ — she havings in his 
 absence^ plucked out all her feathers — to be like him ! 
 
 It would require a very peculiar genius to add 
 another tale, ejusdem generis, to Robinson Crusoe and 
 Peter Wilkins. I once projected such a thing ; but 
 the difficulty of a pre-occupied ground stopped me. 
 Perhaps La Motte Pouque might efiect something; 
 but T should fear that neither he, nor any other 
 German, could entirely understand what may be 
 called the desert island'' feeling. I would try the 
 marvellous line of Peter Wilkins, if I attempted it, 
 rather than the real fiction of Robinson Crusoe. 
 
 What a master of composition Pielding was ! Upon 
 my word, I think the QEdipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, 
 and Tom Jones, the three most perfect plots ever 
 planned. And how charming, how wholesome, Pield- 
 ing always is ! To take him up after Eichardson, is 
 like emerging from a sick room heated by stoves, 
 into an open lawn, on a breezy day in May. 
 
 I have been very deeply interested in the account 
 of Bishop Sandford^'s life, pubhshed by his son. He 
 seems to have been a thorough gentleman upon the 
 model of St. Paul, whose manners were the finest of 
 any man^s upon record. 
 
 I think I could have conformed to the then domi- 
 nant Church before the Reformation. The errors 
 existed, but they had not been riveted into peremptory 
 articles of faith before the Council of Trent. If a 
 Romanist were to ask me the question put to Sir 
 Henry Wotton,* I should content myself by answer- 
 
 * " Having, at his being in Rome, made acquaintance with a pleasant 
 priest, who invited him, one evening, to hear their vesper music at clmrcli ; 
 ihe priest, seeing Sir Henry stand obscurely in a corner, sends to him by a 
 
EUTHANASIA. 
 
 333 
 
 ing, that I could not exactly say when my religion, 
 as he was pleased to call it, began — but that it was 
 certainly some sixty or seventy years before his, at all 
 events — which began at the Council of Trent. 
 
 July 10, 1834. 
 
 Eutlianada, 
 
 T AM dying, but without expectation of a speedy 
 release. Is it not strange that very recently by- 
 gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into 
 my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of 
 Youth and Hope — those twin realities of this phantom 
 world ! I do not add Love, — for what is Love but 
 Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one? 
 I say realities ; for reality is a thing of degrees, from 
 the Iliad to a dream; koX yap t* ovap e/c Atoj eVri. 
 Yet, in a strict sense, reality is not predicable at all 
 of aught below Heaven. Es enim in coelis, Pater 
 noster, qui tu vere es V' Hooker wished to live to 
 finish his Ecclesiastical Polity : — so I own I wish life 
 and strength had been spared to me to complete my 
 Philosophy. Eor, as God hears me, the originating, 
 continuing, and sustaining wish and design in my 
 heart were to exalt the glory of his name ; and, which 
 is the same thing in other words, to promote the 
 improvement of mankind. But visum aliter Deo, and 
 his will be done, 
 
 *** This note may well finish the present specimens. 
 What followed was for the memory of private friends 
 
 boy of the choir this question, -writ in a small piece of paper ; — * Where was 
 your religion to be found before Luther ? To which question, Sir Henry 
 presently underwrit ; — * My religion was to be found then, where yours is 
 not to be found now— in the written word of God.' "—/zoafc Walton's Life of 
 Sir Henry Wotton. 
 
334 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 only. Mr. Coleridge was then extremely ill; but 
 certainly did not believe his end to be quite so near 
 at hand as it was. — Ed. 
 
 The following Eecollections of Mr. Coleridge^ written 
 in May, 1811, have been also communicated to me 
 by my brother, Mr. Justice Coleridge : — 
 
 "April 20, ISll^ at RicJimond, 
 We got on pohtics, and he related some curious 
 facts of the Prince and Perceval. Then, adverting to 
 the present state of affairs in Portugal, he said that 
 he rejoiced, not so much in the mere favourable turn, 
 as in the end that must now be put to the base reign 
 of opinion respecting the superiority and invincible 
 skill of the Prench generals. Brave as Sir John Moore 
 was, he thought him deficient in that greater and more 
 essential manliness of soul, which should have made 
 him not hold liis enemy in such fearful respect, and 
 which should have taught him to care less for the 
 opinion of the world at home. 
 
 " We then got, I know not how, to German topics. 
 He said that the language of their literature was en- 
 tirely factitious, and had been formed by Luther from 
 the two dialects. High and Low German; that he 
 had made it, grammatically, most correct, more so, 
 perhaps, than any other language; it was equal to 
 the Greek, except in harmony and sweetness. And 
 yet the Germans themselves thought it sweet; — 
 Klopstock had repeated to him an ode of his own to 
 prove it, and really had deceived himself, by the force 
 of association, into a belief that the harsh sounds. 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. COLERIDGE. 335 
 
 conveying, indeed, or being significant of, sweet images 
 or thoughts, were themselves sweet. Mr. C. was asked 
 what he thought of Klopstock. He answered, that 
 his fame was rapidly declining in Germany ; that an 
 Englishman might form a correct notion of him by 
 uniting the moral epigram of Young, the bombast of 
 Hervey, and the minute description of Eichardson. 
 As to sublimity, he had, with all Germans, one rule 
 for producing it; — it was, to take something very 
 great, and make it very small in comparison with 
 that which you wish to elevate. Thus, for example, 
 Klopstock says, — ^ As the gardener goes forth, and 
 scatters from his basket seed into the garden ; so does 
 the Creator scatter worlds with his right hand."* Here 
 worlds, a large object, are made small in the hands of 
 the Creator ; consequently, the Creator is very great. 
 In short, the Germans were not a poetical nation in 
 the very highest sense. Wieland was their best poet : 
 his subject was bad, and his thoughts often impure; 
 but his language was rich and harmonious, and his 
 fancy luxuriant. Sotheby^s translation had not at 
 all caught the manner of the original. But the Ger- 
 mans were good metaphysicians and critics : they 
 criticised on principles previously laid down; thus, 
 though they might be wrong, they were in no danger 
 of being self-contradictory, which was too often the 
 case with English critics. 
 
 Young, he said, was not a poet to be read through 
 at once. His love of point and wit had often put an 
 end to his pathos and sublimity; but there were parts 
 in him which must be immortal. He (Mr. C.) loved to 
 read a page of Young, and walk out to think of him. 
 " Returning to the Germans, he said that the state 
 
336 
 
 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 of their religion^ when he was in Germany^ was 
 really shocking. He had never met one clergyman 
 a Christian ; and he found professors in the universi- 
 ties lecturing against the most material points in the 
 Gospel. He instanced^ I think^ Paulus, whose lec- 
 tures he had attended. The object was to resolve 
 the miracles into natural operations ; and such a 
 disposition evinced was the best road to preferment. 
 He severely censured Mr. Taylor^s book, in which 
 the principles of Paulus were explained and insisted 
 on with much gratuitous indelicacy. He then entered 
 into the question of Socinianism, and noticed, as I 
 recollect, the passage in the Old Testament; ^The 
 people bowed their faces, and worsJiipped God and 
 the king."^ He said, that all worship implied the 
 presence of the object worshipped : the people wor- 
 shipped, bowing to the sensuous presence of the one, 
 and the conceived omnipresence of the other. He 
 talked of his having constantly to defend the Church 
 against the Socinian Bishop of Llandaff, Watson. 
 The subject then varied to Roman Catholicism, and 
 he gave us an account of a controversy he had had 
 with a very sensible priest in Sicily, on the worship 
 of saints. He had driven the priest from one post 
 to another, till the latter took up the ground, that 
 though the saints were not omnipresent, yet God, who 
 was so, imparted to them the prayers offered up, and 
 then they used their interference with Him to grant 
 them. ^That is, father, (said C. in reply) — excuse 
 my seeming levity, for I mean no impiety — that is ; 
 I have a deaf and dumb wife, who yet understands 
 me, and I her, by signs. You have a favour to ask of 
 me, and want my wife's interference; so you com- 
 
EECOLLECTIONS OF MR. COLERIDGE. 337 
 
 municate your request to me^ who impart it to her, 
 and she, by signs back again, begs me to grant it.^ 
 The good priest laughed, and said, ^ Po^ulus vult 
 decipiy et decipiaturl' 
 
 " We then got upon the Oxford controversy, and 
 he was decidedly of opinion that there could be no 
 doubt of Copleston^s complete victory. He thought 
 the Review had chosen its points of attack ill, as 
 there must doubtless be in every institution so old 
 much to reprehend and carp at. On the other hand, 
 he thought that Copleston had not been so severe or 
 hard upon them as he might have been ; but he 
 admired the critical part of his work, which he 
 thought very highly valuable, independently of the 
 controversy. He wished some portion of mathe- 
 matics was more essential to a degree at Oxford, as 
 he thought a gentleman^s education incomplete with- 
 out it, and had himself found the necessity of getting 
 up a httle, when he could ill spare the time. He 
 every day more and more lamented his neglect of 
 them when at Cambridge. 
 
 Then glancing off to Aristotle, he gave a very 
 high character of him. He said that Bacon objected 
 to Aristotle the grossness of his examples, and Davy 
 now did precisely the same to Bacon: both were 
 wrong ; for each of those philosophers wished to con- 
 fine the attention of the mind in their works to the 
 form of reasoning only, by which other truths might 
 be established or elicited, and therefore the most trite 
 and common-place examples were in fact the best. 
 He said that during a long confinement to his room, 
 he had taken up the Schoolmen, and was astonished 
 at the immense learning and acute knowledge dis- 
 
 z 
 
338 
 
 COLERTDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 played by them; that there was scarcely anything which 
 modern philosophers had proudly brought forward as 
 their own, which might not be found clearly and 
 systematically laid down by them in some or other of 
 their writings. Locke had sneered at the Schoolmen 
 unfairly, and had raised a foolish laugh against them 
 by citations from their Qicid libet questions, which 
 were discussed on the eves of holydays, and in which 
 the greatest latitude was allowed, being considered 
 mere exercises of ingenuity. We had ridiculed their 
 quiddities, and why ? Had we not borrowed their 
 quantity/ and their quality, and why then reject their 
 quiddity, when every schoolboy in logic must know, 
 that of everything may be asked, Quantum est? Quale 
 est? and Qjiid est? the last bringing you to the most 
 material of all points, its individual being. He after- 
 wards stated, that in a History of Speculative Phi- 
 losophy which he was endeavouring to prepare for 
 publication, he had proved, and to the satisfaction of 
 Sir James Mackintosh, that there was nothing in 
 Locke which his best admirers most admired, that 
 might not be found more clearly and better laid down in 
 Descartes, or the old Schoolmen ; not that he was him- 
 self an impHcit disciple of Descartes, though he thought 
 that Descartes had been much misinterpreted. 
 
 "When we got on the subject of poetry and 
 Southey, he gave us a critique of the Curse of 
 Kehama, the fault of which he thought consisted in 
 the association of a plot and a machinery so very wild 
 with feelings so sober and tender : but he gave the 
 poem high commendation, admired the art displayed 
 in the employment of the Hindu monstrosities, and 
 begged us to observe the noble feeling excited of the 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. COLERIDGE. 339 
 
 superiority of virtue over vice ; that Kehama went on, 
 from the beginning to the end of the poem, increasing 
 in power, whilst Kailyal gradually lost her hopes and 
 her protectors ; and yet by the time we got to the 
 end, we had arrived at an utter contempt and even 
 carelessness of the power of evil, as exemplified in the 
 almighty Rajah, and felt a complete confidence in the 
 safety of the unprotected virtue of the maiden. This 
 he thought the very great merit of the poem. 
 
 When we walked home with him to the inn, he 
 got on the subject of the English Essay for the year 
 at Oxford*, and thought some consideration of the 
 corruption of language should be introduced into it. 
 It originated, he thought, in a desire to abbreviate 
 all expression as much as possible ; and no doubt, if 
 in one word, without violating idiom, I can express 
 what others have done in more, and yet be as fully 
 and easily understood, I have manifestly made an 
 improvement ; but if, on the other hand, it becomes 
 harder, and takes more time to comprehend a thought 
 or image put in one word by Apuleius than when 
 expressed in a whole sentence by Cicero, the saving 
 is merely of pen and ink, and the alteration is 
 evidently a corruption."^^ 
 
 April 21. — Richmond. 
 
 *'T)EEOEE breakfast we went into Mr. May's 
 ^ dehghtful book-room, where he was again 
 silent in admiration of the prospect. After breakfast, 
 we walked to church. He seemed full of calm piety, 
 and said he always felt the most delightful sensations 
 
 * On Etymolog)\ 
 
 z 2 
 
MO 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 in a Sunday church-yard^ — that it struck him as if 
 God had given to man fifty-two springs in every 
 year. After the service^ he was vehement against the 
 sermon^ as common-place^ and invidious in its tone 
 towards the poor. Then he gave many texts from 
 the lessons and gospel of the day^ as aftbrding fit 
 subjects for discourses. He ridiculed the absurdity 
 of refusing to believe everything that you could not 
 understand; and mentioned a rebuke of Dr. Parr''s 
 to a man of the name of Prith^ and that of another 
 clergyman to a young man, who said he would beheve 
 nothing which he could not understand : — ^ Then, 
 young man, your creed will be the shortest of any 
 man^s I know.^ 
 
 As we walked up Mr. Cambridge's meadows to- 
 wards Twickenham, he criticised Johnson and Gray 
 as poets, and did not seem to allow them high merit. 
 The excellence of verse, he said, was to be untrans- 
 latable into any other words without detriment to the 
 beauty of the passage ; — the position of a single word 
 could not be altered in Milton without injury. Gray's 
 personifications, he said, were mere printer's devils' 
 personifications — persons with a capital letter, abstract 
 qualities with a small one. He thought Collins had 
 more genius than Gray, who was a singular instance 
 of a man of taste, poetic feeling, and fancy, without 
 imagination. He contrasted Dryden's opening of the 
 10th satire of Juvenal with Johnson's : — 
 
 " * Let observation, with extensive view, 
 Survey mankind from Ganges to Peru.' 
 
 which was as much as to say, — 
 
 " * Let observation with extensive observation observe man- 
 kind.' 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF ME. COLEEIDGE. 341 
 
 " After dinner he told us a humorous story of his 
 enthusiastic fondness for Quakerism^ when he was at 
 Cambridge, and his attending one of their meetings, 
 which had entirely cured him. When the little 
 children came in, he was in raptures with them, and 
 descanted upon the delightful mode of treating them 
 now, in comparison with what he had experienced in 
 childhood. He lamented the haughtiness with which 
 Englishmen treated all foreigners abroad, and the 
 facility with which our government had always given 
 up any people which had allied itself to us, at the 
 end of a war ; and he particularly remarked upon our 
 abandonment of Minorca. These two tilings, he said, 
 made us universally disliked on the Continent; though, 
 as a people, most higlily respected. He thought a 
 war with America inevitable; and expressed his 
 opinion, that the United States were unfortunate in 
 the prematureness of their separation from this coun- 
 try, before they had in themselves the materials of 
 moral society — before they had a gentry and a learned 
 class, — the former looking backwards, and giving the 
 sense of stability — the latter looking forwards, and 
 regulating the feehngs of the people. 
 
 Afterwards, in the drawing-room, he sat down by 
 Professor Rigaud, with whom he entered into a dis- 
 cussion of Kanf s System of Metaphysics. The little 
 knots of the company were speedily silent : Mr. C.'^s 
 voice grew louder ; and abstruse as the subject was, 
 yet his language was so ready, so energetic, and so 
 eloquent, and his illustrations so very neat and appo- 
 site, that the ladies even paid him the most solicitous 
 and respectful attention. They were really entertained 
 with Kant's Metaphysics ! At last I took one of them. 
 
342 
 
 COLERTDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 a very sweet singer^, to the piano-forte; and^ when 
 there was a pause^ she began an Itahan air. She was 
 anxious to please him, and he was enraptured. His 
 frame quivered with emotion, and there was a titter 
 of uncommon dehght on his countenance. When it 
 was over, he praised the singer warmly, and prayed 
 she might finish those strains in heaven ! 
 
 " This is nearly all, except some anecdotes, which 
 I recollect of our meeting with this most interesting, 
 most wonderful man. Some of his topics and argu- 
 ments I have enumerated; but the connection and 
 the words are lost. And nothing that I can say can 
 give any notion of his eloquence and manner, — of 
 the hold which he soon got on his audience — of the 
 variety of his stores of information — or, jSnally, of 
 the artlessness of his habits, or the modesty and tem- 
 per with which he listened to, and answered arguments, 
 contradictory to his own."'^ — J. T. C. 
 
 The following address has been printed before ; but 
 it cannot be too widely circulated, and it will form an 
 appropriate conclusion to this volume. 
 
 To Adam Steinmetz K . 
 
 My deae Godchild, 
 
 I offer up the same fervent prayer for you 
 now, as I did kneeling before the altar, when you 
 were baptized into Christ, and solemnly received as a 
 living member of his spiritual body, the Church. 
 
 Years must pass before you will be able to read, 
 with an understanding heart, what I now write. But 
 I trust that the all-gracious God, the Father of oiu- 
 
EECOLLECTIONS OF MR. COLERIDGE. 
 
 343 
 
 Lord Jesus Christy the Father of Mercies^ who by 
 his only-begotten Son (all mercies in one sovereign 
 mercy !) has redeemed you from the evil ground^ and 
 willed you to be born out of darkness, but into light — 
 out of death, but into life — out of sin, but into righte- 
 ousness, even into the ^^Lord our Eighteousness I 
 trust that He will graciously hear the prayers of your 
 dear parents, and be with you as the spirit of health 
 and growth in body and mind ! 
 
 My dear Godchild! — You received from Chrisfs 
 ]Tiinister at the baptismal font, as your Christian name, 
 the name of a most dear friend of your father's, and 
 who was to me even as a son, the late Adam Steinmetz, 
 whose fervent aspiration, and ever paramount aim, even 
 from early youth, was to be a Christian in thought, 
 word, and deed — in will, mind, and affections. 
 
 I too, your Godfather, have known what the enjoy- 
 ments and advantages of this life are, and what the 
 more refined pleasures which learning and intellectual 
 power can bestow ; and with all the experience that 
 more than threescore years can give, I now, on the 
 eve of my departure, declare to you, (and earnestly 
 pray that you may hereafter Hve and act on the con- 
 viction,) that health is a great blessing — competence 
 obtained by honourable industry a great blessing, — 
 and a great blessing it is to have kind, faithful, and 
 loving friends and relatives ; but that the greatest of all. 
 blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, 
 is to be indeed a Christian. But I have been like- 
 wise, through a large portion of my later life, a sufferer, 
 sorely afflicted with bodily pains, languors, and mani- 
 fold infirmities ; and, for the last three or four years, 
 have, with few and brief intervals, been confined to a 
 
344 
 
 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 
 
 sick-room^ and^ at this moment^ in great weakness 
 and heaviness^ write from a sick-bed^ hopeless of a 
 recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy removal ; 
 and I, thus on the very brink of the grave, solemnly 
 bear witness to you, that the Almighty Eedeemer, 
 most gracious in his promises to them that truly seek 
 him, is faithful to perform what he hath promised, 
 and has preserved, under all my pains and infirmities, 
 the inward peace that passeth all understanding, with 
 the supporting assurance of a reconciled God, who 
 will not withdraw his spirit from me in the conflict, 
 and in his own time will deliver me from the Evil 
 One! 
 
 O, my dear Godchild ! eminently blessed are those 
 who begin early to seek, fear, and love their God, 
 trusting wholly in the righteousness and mediation of 
 their Lord, Redeemer, Saviour, and everlasting High 
 Priest, Jesus Christ ! 
 
 0 preserve this as a legacy and bequest from your 
 unseen Godfather and friend, 
 
 S. T. Coleridge, 
 
 Grove, Highgate, 
 
 July 13, 1834. 
 
 He died on the 25th day of the same month. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abraham, 73. 
 Abuse, Eloquence of, 83. 
 Acoustics, 31. 
 Acts, Origin of, 75. 
 Adiaphori, 175. 
 
 Advocate, Duties and Needs of an, 
 148. 
 
 ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euri- 
 pides, 260. 
 
 Alchemy, 161. 
 
 All and the Whole, 202. 
 
 America, United States of, 229. 
 
 American Union, Northern and 
 Southern States of the, 201. 
 
 Americans, the, 84. 
 
 Anarchy, Mental, 117. 
 
 Ancient Mariner, 86. 
 
 Animal Being, Scale of, 45. 
 
 Ant and Bee, 62. 
 
 Architecture, Gothic, 256. 
 
 Ariosto and Tasso, 48. 
 
 Aristotle, 101. 
 
 Army and Navy, House of Com- 
 mons appointing the Oflicers of 
 the, 214. 
 
 Article, Ninth, 202. 
 
 Asgill, 133, 248. 
 — and Defoe, 173. 
 
 Astrology, 161. 
 
 Atheist, 307. 
 
 Autumn Day, 285. 
 
 Bacon, 118. 
 
 Ball, Sir Alexander, 315. 
 Baptismal Service, 193. 
 Barrow and Dry den, 331. 
 Bartram's Travels, 36. 
 
 Baxter, 47. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, 42, 212, 
 312. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's Dramas, 
 259. 
 
 Beauty, 156, 300. 
 Behmen, Jacob, 49. 
 Bentley, 99. 
 Berkeley, 50. 
 
 Bertram, Character of, 259. 
 Bestial Theory, 258. 
 Bible, Study of the, 97. 
 
 — Version of the, 43. 
 Biblical Commentators, 65. 
 Biographia Literaria, 
 Bitters and Tonics, 81. 
 Black, 173. 
 
 Black Colonel, 63. 
 
 Blumenbach and Kant's Races, 33. 
 
 Books of Moses, Genuineness of, 79. 
 
 Boswell, 265. 
 
 Bourrienne, 102. 
 
 Bowyer, 196. 
 
 British Schoolmen, 59. 
 
 Brooke, Lord, 331. 
 
 Brown and Darwin, 62. 
 
 Bull and Waterland, 44. 
 
 Burke, 10, 227, 265. 
 
 Burnet, 99. 
 
 Buonaparte, 126. 
 
 Byron, Lord, 2. 
 
 — and H. Walpole's " Jlys- 
 
 terious Mother," 313. 
 
 — his Versification, and Don 
 Juan, 32. 
 
 C. 
 
 Caesarean Operation, 200. 
 Cambridge Petition to admit Dis- 
 senters, 316. 
 
346 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Canning, 15, 70, 102. 
 Capital, 238. 
 Catholicity, 94. 
 Cavalier Slang, 263. 
 Character, Differences of, 33. 
 Charles I., 254. 
 Chaucer, 310. 
 
 Children, Gracefulness of, 158. 
 Chillingworth, 131. 
 Christ, Divinity of, 79. 
 Christ's Hospit{\]. 196. 
 Christian Sabbath, 318. 
 Christianity, 12. 
 
 — Scope of, 298. 
 Church, 110, 157, 159. 
 
 — High Prizes and Revenues 
 
 of the, 320. 
 
 — National, 322. 
 
 — of England, 204. 
 
 — of Rome, 19, 235. 
 Churchmen, 215. 
 Church Singing, 90. 
 Citizens and Christians, 175. 
 Claudian, 279, 290. 
 Clergy, Celibacy of the, 235. 
 Coleridge's (Mr.) System, 329. 
 Colonization, 238. 
 
 Colours, 171, 
 
 — Non-perception of, 49. 
 Commons, House of, 120. 
 
 — the Reformed House of. 
 228, 241. 
 Compounds, Latin, 290. 
 Consolation in Distress, 284. 
 Constantine, 239. 
 Constitution, English, 175. 
 Corn Laws, 317, 324. 
 Coronation Oaths, 216, 324. 
 Crabbe and Southey, 309. 
 Cramp, Charm for, 179. 
 Craniology, 43. 
 Crisis, 162. 
 
 D. 
 
 Dancing, English and Greek, 31. 
 Daniel, 311. 
 Davy, Sir H., 14. 
 Democracy, 76, 110, 176. 
 
 — with Slavery, 230. 
 Devotional Spirit, 305. 
 De vi Minimorum, 177. 
 Dictation and Inspiration, 163. 
 Diction of the Old and New Testa- 
 ment Version, 281. 
 Diplomatists, Modern, 286. 
 Disfranchisement, 160. 
 Dissenters, 157, 322, 330. 
 Diversions of Parley, 65. 
 Divines, Old, 203. 
 Divinity, 217. 
 
 Dobrizhoffer, 190. 
 
 Dog, 62, 158. 
 
 Don Quixote, 194. 
 
 Douw's (Gerard) "Schoolmaster," 
 
 and Titian's " Venus," 257. 
 Dramatists, the Old, 226. 
 Drayton and Daniel, 145. 
 Dreams, 91. 
 
 — and Ghosts, Difference 
 between Stories of, 21. 
 
 Dryden, 297. 
 
 — and Pope, 192. 
 
 Dual, Neuter plural, and Verb sin- 
 gular, 180. 
 
 E. 
 
 Education, 294. 
 Egyptian Antiquaries, 29. 
 Eldon's (Lord) Doctrine as to 
 
 Grammar Schools, 75. 
 Electricity, 38. 
 Elegy, 294. 
 
 Energy of Man and other Animals, 
 35. 
 
 England, 139. 
 
 — and Holland, 136. 
 English and German, 198. 
 Envy, 50. 
 
 Epidemic Disease, 168. 
 Epistles to the Ephesians and Co- 
 lossians, 82. 
 
 — to the Hebrews, 12. 
 
 — to the Romans, 252. 
 Erasmus, 253. 
 
 Etymology of the final Ive, 276. 
 Eucharist, the, 76. 
 Euripides, 260. 
 Euthanasia, 333. 
 Evangelicals, Mock, 285. 
 
 F. 
 
 Faith, 270. 
 
 — Articles of, 304. 
 
 — and Belief, 189. 
 Fancy and Imagination, 327. 
 Fatalism and Providence, 288. 
 Fathers, the, 48. 
 
 Faust, 206. 
 
 Fees, Barristers' and Physicians', 
 200. 
 
 Fielding and Richardson, 332. 
 Fine Arts, Patronage of the, 127. 
 Flaccus, Valerius, 290. 
 Flogging, 83. 
 Food, 242. 
 
 Fox and Pitt, 174, 251. 
 French, the, 134. 
 
 — Gendarmerie, 111. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 347 
 
 French Hereditaiy Peerage, Abo- 
 lition of the, 150. 
 
 G. 
 
 Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Bacon, 
 118. 
 
 Galvanism, 38, 136. 
 Gas, Hydro-carbonic, 81. 
 Gender of the Sun in German, 66. 
 Genius, 50, 156. 
 Genius, Criterion of, 192. 
 
 — Feminine, 161. 
 
 — Metaphysical, 194. 
 
 — of the Spanish and Ita- 
 lians, 171. 
 
 German, 249. 
 
 — Blank Verse, 323. 
 
 — and English, 293. 
 Ghosts, 8. 
 
 Gibbon, 273. 
 
 Gilford's Massinger, 226. 
 Giotto, 99. 
 Gnosis, 94, 165. 
 
 God, Proof of Existence of, 307. 
 
 God's Providence, 250. 
 
 Goethe, 207, 249. 
 
 Good and the True, the, 135. 
 
 Government, 110, 121, 123. 
 
 Grammar, 38. 
 
 Gray and Cotton, 296. 
 
 Great Minds androgynous, 199. 
 
 — Poets, good Men, 281. 
 Greek, 180. 
 
 — Italian, and English, pure 
 
 Ages of, 47. 
 
 — Accent and Quantity, 282. 
 
 — Drama, 10. 
 
 — Particles, 289. 
 Grey, Earl, 122. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hacket's Life of Archbishop "Wil- 
 liams, 254. 
 Hahnemann, 177. 
 Hall, Captain B., 229. 
 
 — and the Americans, 108. 
 Hamlet, 40. 
 
 Hampden's Speech, 241. 
 Harmony, 170. 
 Heat, 136. 
 Hebrew, 33, 281. 
 Hermesianax, 291. 
 Herodotus, 272. 
 Hesiod, 194. 
 Hieronimo, 223. 
 History, 156. 
 
 — Jewish, 34. 
 Hobbism, 142. 
 
 Holland and Belgium, 139. 
 
 — and the Dutch, 63. 
 Homer, 71, 182. 
 
 Homeric Heroes in Shakspeare, 
 
 297. 
 Hooker, 51, 91. 
 Hooker and Bull, 270. 
 Horner, 174. 
 
 Humour and Genius, 280. 
 Hypothesis, 255. 
 Hysteria, 81. 
 
 I, 
 
 lapetic and Semitic, 33. 
 Ideal Tory and Whig, 158. 
 Ideal Truths, Reverence for, 246. 
 Ideas, 51. 
 
 Imitation and Copy, 265. 
 Incarnation, 293. 
 Inherited Disease, 200. 
 Insects, 62. 
 Interest, Monied, 102. 
 Investigation, Methods of, 232. 
 Ireland, Union with, 154, 204. . 
 Irish Church, 154. 
 Iron, 136. 
 Irving, 73. 
 Isaac, 74. 
 
 Italy, Roman Conquest of, 236. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jacob, 74. 
 Jacobins, 68. 
 James I., 248. 
 
 Jerusalem, Destruction ot, 172, 
 291. 
 
 Jews, 53, 103, 271. 
 
 — Conversion of the, 54. 
 
 — Division of the Scripture, 
 
 193. 
 
 — in Poland, 55. 
 Job, Book of, 84. 
 Johnson, Dr., 265, 297. 
 
 — his Political Pamphlets, 
 
 274. 
 
 — the Whig, 247. 
 Jonson, Ben, 42, 213, 311. 
 Junius, 264. 
 
 Juries, 200. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kant's Attempt, 308. 
 
 — Races of Mankind, 7. 
 Kean, 14. 
 Keats, 195. 
 
 Keenness and Subtlety, 148. 
 
348 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Kemble, John, 2. 
 Kepler, 118. 
 Knowledge, 52. 
 Kotzebue, 10. 
 
 L. 
 
 Lakes, Scotch and English, 115. 
 Lamb, C, 189. 
 Land and Money, 231. 
 Landholders, Duty of, 220. 
 Landor's (W. S.) Poetry, 300. 
 Laud, 97. 
 
 Laughter: Farce and Tragedy, 285. 
 Lavacrum Pallados, 294. 
 Legislation, Iniquitous, 106. 
 Leo X., 105. 
 
 Lewis's Jamaica Journal, 313. 
 Life, Constitutional and Function- 
 al, 80. 
 Liturgy, English, 117. 
 Logic, 113. 
 
 — Character of the Age for, 9. 
 
 — of Ideas and of Syllogisms, 
 300. 
 
 Logos, the, 13. 
 
 " Lord, the," in the English Ver- 
 sion of the Psalms, 277. 
 Love, 41, 50, 75, 246. 
 
 — and Friendship opposed, 116. 
 Love's Labour Lost, 224. 
 Lucan, 290. 
 
 Luther, 47, 177, 246, 253. 
 Lyell's Geology, 256. 
 
 M. 
 
 Machinery, 238. 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 14. 
 Madness, 61, 189. 
 Magnetism, 38. 
 Malta, 315. 
 
 Man cannot be stationary, 288. 
 — Fall of, 61. 
 Man's Freedom, 250. 
 Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, 
 258. 
 
 Manners under Edward III., Ri- 
 chard II., and Henry VIII., 254. 
 Marriage, 116. 
 
 — Parental Control in, 32. 
 
 — of Cousins, 33. 
 Martin, 88. 
 
 Mason's Poetry, 201. 
 Massinger, 213, 221, 312. 
 Materialism, 7. 
 Mathews, 3. 
 
 Measure for Measure, 42. 
 Medicine, 242. 
 Medicines, Specific, 81. 
 
 Men, 62. 
 
 Messenger of the Covenant, 299. 
 Messiah, 53. 
 Metre, Modern, 113. 
 Miguel, Dom, and Dom Pedro, 
 250. 
 
 Milesian Tales, 69. 
 Milton, 30, 71, 262, 266. 
 
 — and Sidney, 176. 
 Milton's Disregard of Painting, 
 
 192. 
 
 — Egotism, 278. 
 
 — Latin Poems, 295. 
 Ministers and the Reform Bill, 
 
 159. 
 
 Monarchy or Democracy, Prospect 
 
 of, 228. 
 Monro, Sir T., 70. 
 Mosaic Miracles, 56. 
 
 — Prophecies, 79. 
 Motives and Impulses, 80. 
 Music, 267. 
 
 — Ear and Taste for, different, 
 117. 
 
 Musical Glasses, some Men like, 
 307. 
 
 N. 
 
 Napier, 125. 
 
 National Colonial Character and 
 Naval Discipline, 137. 
 — Debt, 16, 219. 
 
 Nations, Characteristic Tempera- 
 ment of, 289. 
 
 Negro Emancipation, 251, 253. 
 
 Nervous Weakness, 270. 
 
 New Testament Canon, 165. 
 
 Newton, 118, 266. 
 
 Nitrous Oxide, 62. 
 
 Nominalists and Realists, 58. 
 
 Northern and Southern States, 
 230. 
 
 Norwegians, 303. 
 
 O. 
 
 Oath, Coronation, 216, 324. 
 Oaths, 82. 
 Obstruction, 243. 
 Origen, 307. 
 
 Othello, Character of, 1, 39. 
 
 P. 
 
 Painting, 52, 100, 266. 
 Pantheism, 57. 
 
 — and Idolatry, 21. 
 Papacy, 322. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 849 
 
 Papacy, the, and the Reformation, 
 104. 
 
 — and the Schoolmen, 239. 
 Paradise Lost, 292. 
 Park, Professor, 175. 
 Parliamentary Privilege, 4. 
 Party Spirit, 96. 
 Penal Code in Ireland, 215. 
 Penn, Granville, and the Deluge, 
 
 30. 
 
 Pentameter, Greek and Latin, 295. 
 Permanency and Progression of 
 
 Nations, 6. 
 Persius, 291. 
 
 Persons and Things, 155. 
 
 Peter Simple and Tom Cringle's 
 
 Log, 309. 
 Phantom Portrait, 25. 
 Philanthropists, 271. 
 Philosopher's ordinary Language, 
 
 199. 
 
 Philosophy, Greek, 114. 
 
 — Moral, 165. 
 
 — Mr. Coleridge's Sys- 
 
 tem of, 146, 188. 
 
 — of young Men of the 
 present Day, 111. 
 
 Pictures, 128. 
 Pilgrim's Progress, 88. 
 Pirates, 161. 
 Plants, 62. 
 Plato, 100. 
 
 — and Xenophon, 10, 29. 
 Plotinus, 114. 
 
 Poem, Epic, 172, 292. 
 Poetic Promise, 57. 
 Poetical Filter, 295. 
 Poetry, 112, 268. 
 
 — Persian and Arabic, 69. 
 Poison, 242. 
 
 Polarity, Moral Law of, 167. 
 Political Action, the two Modes of, 
 143. 
 
 — Economy, Modern, 217, 
 325. 
 Polonius, 40. 
 Poor Laws, 16. 
 Popedom, 47. 
 Prayer, 89. 
 
 Preaching Extempore, 203. 
 Presbyterians, Independents, and 
 
 Bishops, 97. 
 Principle, Greatest Happiness, 141. 
 Principles and Facts, 182. 
 
 — and Maxims, 41. 
 Professions and Trades, 217. 
 Propertius, 290. 
 Property Tax, 220. 
 Prophecies of the Old Testament, 
 
 52. 
 
 Prophecy, 299. 
 Prose and Poetry, 48. 
 
 Prose and Verse, 264. 
 Prudentius, 291. 
 Psalms, Translation of the, 85. 
 Puritans and Cavaliers, 97. 
 — and Jacobins, 184. 
 
 Q. 
 
 Quacks, 200. 
 
 Quakerism, Modern, 305. 
 Quakers, 231, 271. 
 Quarantine, 169. 
 
 R. 
 
 Rabelais, 98. 
 
 — and Luther, 7. 
 Raffles, Sir S., 70. 
 Rainbow, 31. 
 
 Reason and Understanding, 14, 72. 
 Reaaoner, a, 308. 
 Redemption, 293. 
 Reform of the House of Commons, 
 18. 
 
 — Bill, 162. 
 
 — — Conduct of Ministers 
 on the, 151. 
 
 Reformation, 50, 119. 
 
 — English, 93, 109. 
 Religion, 153. 
 Religion gentilises, 64. 
 
 — of the Greeks, 29. 
 
 — Roman Catholic, 332. 
 
 — Romish, 135. 
 Representation, Popular, 124. 
 
 — Direct, 275. 
 
 Restoration, 49. 
 Review, Principles of a, 95. 
 Revolution, 252. 
 
 — Belgian, 118. 
 
 — French, 108, 186. 
 
 — Intellectual, 170. 
 Rhenferd, 48. 
 
 Roman Conquest, 239. 
 
 — Empire, Key to the De- 
 
 cline of the, 274. 
 
 — Mind, 178. 
 
 — Catholics, 35. 
 
 — Catholic Emancipation, 
 323. 
 
 Rosetti on Dante, 285. 
 
 S. 
 
 Sallust, 272. 
 Sandford, Bishop, 332. 
 Sanskrit, 194. 
 Sarpi, Paul, 36. 
 Scauderbeg, 47. 
 
350 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Scarlett, Sir J., 257. 
 Schemes, Spinozistic and Hebrew, 
 34. 
 
 Schiller, 207. 
 Schiller's Robbers, 2. 
 
 — Versification, 323. 
 Schmidt, 183. 
 
 Schools, Infant, 187. 
 
 — Public, 268. 
 Scotch and English, 191. 
 
 — Kirk and Irving, 278. 
 
 — Novels, 2. 
 Scott, Michael, 207. 
 
 — and Coleridge, 269. 
 Scott's Novels, 298. 
 Sectarianism, 307. 
 Seneca, 100. 
 
 Shakspeare, 71, 223, 226, 311. 
 
 — 171 Minimis, 35. 
 Shakspeare' s Intellectual Action, 
 309. 
 
 — Sonnets, 245. 
 Sicily, 314. 
 
 Sidney, Sir P., 249. 
 Sin and Sins, 202. 
 Smith, Robert, 15. 
 Society, best State of, 199. 
 Socinianism, 28, 326. 
 Socrates, 114. 
 Solomon, 33, 188. 
 Sophocles, 260. 
 Southey, 126. 
 
 Southey's Life of Bunyan, 96. 
 Speech, Parts of, 37. 
 Spenser, 39. 
 Spinosa, 50, 59, 171. 
 Spurzheim, 44. 
 
 — and Craniology, 106. 
 St. John, 94. 
 
 St. John's Gospel, 11. 
 
 — Chap. xix. Ver. 11, 77. 
 
 — Chap. iii. Ver. 4, 163. 
 St. Paul's Melita, 197. 
 
 State, 157. 
 155. 
 
 — Idea of a, 110. 
 Statesmen, 227. 
 Statius, 290. 
 Steinmetz, 195. 
 Stella, 106. 
 Sterne, 279. 
 
 Style, 263. 
 
 — Algernon Sydney's, 48. 
 
 — Modern, 170. 
 Sublime and Nonsense, 307. 
 Sublimity, 188. 
 Suffiction, 255. 
 
 Superstition of Maltese, Sicilians, 
 
 and Italians, 132. 
 Swift, 98, 106. 
 
 Sympathy of Old Greek and Latin 
 with English, 178. 
 
 T. 
 
 Talent and Genius, 80. 
 Talented, 181. 
 Taxation, 274. 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 51, 91. 
 Tennyson's Poems, 236. 
 TertuUian, 94, 115. 
 Thelwall, 105. 
 Theory, 255. 
 Theta, 181. 
 
 Things are finding their Level, 
 249. 
 
 Thomas h Becket, 47. 
 Thucydides, 272. 
 
 — and Tacitus, 112. 
 TibuUus, 290. 
 Times of Charlea I., 298. 
 Toleration, 301. 
 Tooke, Home, 65, 68, 174, 276. 
 Travels, Modern, 293. 
 Trinity, the, 44, 53, 73, 293. 
 Truths and Maxims, 144. 
 
 U. 
 
 Understanding, the, 36. 
 Undine, 88. 
 
 Unitarianism, 165, 327. 
 Universal Suffrage, 275. 
 Universities, 323. 
 
 V. 
 
 Valcknaer, 182. 
 
 Varro, 114. 
 
 Vico, 171. 
 
 Virgil, 30, 194. 
 
 Virtue and Liberty, 252. 
 
 Von Humboldt, Baron, 286. 
 
 Vote, Right of Women to, 275. 
 
 Vowels and Consonants, 282. 
 
 Vox Populi, Vox Dei, 173. 
 
 W. 
 
 Walkerite Creed, 65. 
 War, 179. 
 
 — Civil, of the Seventeenth 
 
 Century, 240. 
 Wedded Love in Shakspeare and 
 
 his contemporary Dramatists, 
 
 236. 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, 101, 324. 
 Wetherell's (Sir Charles) Speech, 
 322. 
 
 Whigs, Conduct of the, 17. 
 Wicliffe, 246. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 351 
 
 Wilkins, Peter, and Stothard, 331. 
 
 William III., 50. 
 
 Wilson, 243. 
 
 Wit and Madness, 237. 
 
 Witch of Endor, 28. 
 
 Women, Characterlessness of, 116. 
 
 — Old, 127. 
 
 — and Men, 65. 
 
 Words and Names of Things, 72. 
 Wordsworth. 184, 207. 
 
 Works, Chronological AiTange- 
 
 ment of, 301. 
 Working to better one's condition, 
 
 250. 
 
 Worlds, Plurality of, 308. 
 
 Z. 
 
 Zendavesta, 20. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 LONDON: BRADCfUT AM) EVANS, FRIMKUS, W U I T f F R I ARS. 
 
AL3KM.VRLE STREET, LONOON'. 
 
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16 
 
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