Part 28 (1/2)

And in some such activity as that, varied as his wide learning, in a many-sided dramatic kind of poetry, a.s.signing its place and value to every mode of the inward life, seems to have been for Coleridge the original path of artistic success. But in order to follow that path one must hold ideas loosely in the relative spirit, not seek to stereotype any one of the many modes of that life; one must acknowledge that the mind is ever greater than its own products, devote ideas to the service of art rather than of ???s??, not disquiet oneself about the absolute. Perhaps Coleridge is more interesting because he did not follow this path. Repressing his artistic interest and voluntarily discolouring his own work, he turned to console and strengthen the human mind, vulgarized or dejected, as he believed, by the acquisition of new knowledge about itself in the _eclairciss.e.m.e.nt_ of the eighteenth century.

What the reader of our own generation will least find in Coleridge's prose writings is the excitement of the literary sense. And yet in those grey volumes we have the production of one who made way ever by a charm, the charm of voice, of aspect, of language, above all, by the intellectual charm of new, moving, luminous ideas. Perhaps the chief offence in Coleridge is an excess of seriousness, a seriousness that arises not from any moral principle, but from a misconception of the perfect manner. There is a certain shade of levity and unconcern, the perfect manner of the eighteenth century, which marks complete culture in the handling of abstract questions. The humanist, he who possesses that complete culture, does not 'weep' over the failure of 'a theory of the quantification of the predicate', nor 'shriek' over the fall of a philosophical formula. A kind of humour is one of the conditions of the true mental att.i.tude in the criticism of past stages of thought. Humanity cannot afford to be too serious about them, any more than a man of good sense can afford to be too serious in looking back upon his own childhood. Plato, whom Coleridge claims as the first of his spiritual ancestors, Plato, as we remember him, a true humanist, with Petrarch and Goethe and M. Renan, holds his theories lightly, glances with a blithe and nave inconsequence from one view to another, not antic.i.p.ating the burden of meaning 'views' will one day have for humanity. In reading him one feels how lately it was that Croesus thought it a paradox to say that external prosperity was not necessarily happiness. But on Coleridge lies the whole weight of the sad reflection that has since come into the world, with which for us the air is full, which the children in the market-place repeat to each other. Even his language is forced and broken, lest some saving formula should be lost--'distinct.i.ties', 'enucleation', 'pentad of operative Christianity'--he has a whole vocabulary of such phrases, and expects to turn the tide of human thought by fixing the sense of such expressions as 'reason', 'understanding', 'idea'.

Again, he has not the jealousy of the true artist in excluding all a.s.sociations that have no charm or colour or gladness in them; everywhere he allows the impress of an inferior theological literature; he is often prolix and importunate about most indifferent heroes--Sir Alexander Ball, Dr. Bell, even Dr. Bowyer, the coa.r.s.e pedant of the Blue-coat School. And the source of all this is closely connected with the source of his literary activity. For Coleridge had chosen as the mark of his literary egotism a kind of intellectual _tour de force_--to found a religious philosophy, to do something with the 'idea' in spite of the essential nature of the 'idea'. And therefore all is fict.i.tious from the beginning. He had determined, that which is humdrum, insipid, which the human spirit has done with, shall yet stimulate and inspire. What he produced symbolizes this purpose--the ma.s.s of it _ennuyant_, depressing: the _Aids to Reflection_, for instance, with Archbishop Leighton's vague pieties all twisted into the jargon of a spiritualistic philosophy. But sometimes 'the pulse of the G.o.d's blood' does trans.m.u.te it, kindling here and there a spot that begins to live; as in that beautiful fragment at the end of the _Church and State_, or in the distilled and concentrated beauty of such a pa.s.sage as this:

The first range of hills, that encircles the scanty vale of human life, is the horizon for the majority of its inhabitants. On its ridges the common sun is born and departs. From them the stars rise, and touching them they vanish. By the many, even this range, the natural limit and bulwark of the vale, is but imperfectly known. Its higher ascents are too often hidden by mists and clouds from uncultivated swamps, which few have courage or curiosity to penetrate. To the mult.i.tude below these vapours appear now as the dark haunts of terrific agents, on which none may intrude with impunity; and now all a-glow, with colours not their own, they are gazed at as the splendid palaces of happiness and power. But in all ages there have been a few who, measuring and sounding the rivers of the vale at the feet of their furthest inaccessible falls, have learned that the sources must be far higher and far inward; a few who, even in the level streams, have detected elements which neither the vale itself nor the surrounding mountains contained or could supply.

_Biographia Literaria._

'I was driven from life in motion to life in thought and sensation.'

So Coleridge sums up his childhood with its delicacy, its sensitiveness, and pa.s.sion. From his tenth to his eighteenth year he was at a rough school in London. Speaking of this time, he says:

When I was first plucked up and transplanted from my birthplace and family, Providence, it has often occurred to me, gave me the first intimation that it was my lot, and that it was best for me, to make or find my way of life a detached individual, a _terrae filius_, who was to ask love or service of no one on any more specific relation than that of being a man, and as such to take my chance for the free charities of humanity.[38]

[38] Biographical Supplement to _Biographia Literaria_, chap.

ii.

Even his fine external nature was for years repressed, wronged, driven inward--'at fourteen I was in a continual state of low fever.' He becomes a dreamer, an eager student, but without ambition.

This depressed boy is nevertheless, on the spiritual side, the child of a n.o.ble house. At twenty-five he is exercising a wonderful charm, and has defined for himself a peculiar line of intellectual activity.

He had left Cambridge without a degree, a Unitarian. Unable to take orders, he determined through Southey's influence to devote himself to literature. When he left Cambridge there was a prejudice against him which has given occasion to certain suspicions. Those who knew him best discredit these suspicions. What is certain is that he was subject to fits of violent, sometimes fantastic, despondency. He retired to Stowey, in Somersets.h.i.+re, to study poetry and philosophy.

In 1797 his poetical gift was in full flower; he wrote _Kubla Khan_, the first part of _Christabel_, and _The Ancient Mariner_. His literary success grew in spite of opposition. He had a strange attractive gift of conversation, or rather of monologue, as De Stael said, full of _bizarrerie_, with the rapid alternations of a dream, and here and there a sudden summons into a world strange to the hearer, abounding with images drawn from a sort of divided, imperfect life, as of one to whom the external world penetrated only in part, and, blended with all this, pa.s.sages of the deepest obscurity, precious only for their musical cadence, the echo in Coleridge of the eloquence of the older English writers, of whom he was so ardent a lover. All through this brilliant course we may discern the power of the Asiatic temperament, of that voluptuousness which is perhaps connected with his appreciation of the intimacy, the almost mystical _rapport_, between man and nature. 'I am much better', he writes, 'and my new and tender health is all over me like a voluptuous feeling.'

And whatever fame, or charm, or life-inspiring gift he has had is the vibration of the interest he excited then, the propulsion into years that clouded his early promise of that first buoyant, irresistible self-a.s.sertion: so great is even the indirect power of a sincere effort towards the ideal life, of even a temporary escape of the spirit from routine. Perhaps the surest sign of his election--that he was indeed, on the spiritual side, the child of a n.o.ble house--is that story of the Pantisocratic scheme, which at this distance looks so grotesque. In his enthusiasm for the French Revolution, the old communistic dream with its appeal to nature (perhaps a little theatrical), touched him, as it had touched Rousseau, Saint-Pierre, and Chateaubriand. He had married one, his affection for whom seems to have been only a pa.s.sing feeling; with her and a few friends he was to found a communistic settlement on the banks of the Susquehannah--'the name was pretty and metrical.' It was one of Coleridge's lightest dreams; but also one which could only have pa.s.sed through the liberal air of his earlier life. The later years of the French Revolution, which for us have discredited all such dreams, deprived him of that youthfulness which is the preservative element in a literary talent.

In 1798, he visited Germany. A beautiful fragment of this period remains, describing a spring excursion to the Brocken. His excitement still vibrates in it. Love, all joyful states of mind, are self-expressive; they loosen the tongue, they fill the thoughts with sensuous images, they harmonize one with the world of sight. We hear of the 'rich graciousness and courtesy' of Coleridge's manner, of the white and delicate skin, the abundant black hair, the full, almost animal lips, that whole physiognomy of the dreamer already touched with fanaticism. One says of the text of one of his Unitarian sermons, 'his voice rose like a stream of rich distilled perfumes'; another, 'he talks like an angel, and does--nothing.'

Meantime, he had designed an intellectual novelty in the shape of a religious philosophy. Socinian theology and the philosophy of Hartley had become distasteful. 'Whatever is against right reason, that no faith can oblige us to believe.' Coleridge quotes these words from Jeremy Taylor. And yet ever since the dawn of the Renaissance, had subsisted a conflict between reason and faith. From the first, indeed, the Christian religion had affirmed the existence of such a conflict, and had even based its plea upon its own weakness in it. In face of the cla.s.sical culture, with its deep wide-struck roots in the world as it permanently exists, St. Paul a.s.serted the claims of that which could not appeal with success to any genuinely human principle.

Paradox as it was, that was the strength of the new spirit; for how much is there at all times in humanity which cannot appeal with success for encouragement or tolerance to any genuinely human principle. In the Middle Ages it might seem that faith had reconciled itself to philosophy; the Catholic church was the leader of the world's life as well as of the spirit's. Looking closer we see that the conflict is still latent there; the supremacy of faith is only a part of the wors.h.i.+p of sorrow and weakness which marks the age. The weak are no longer merely a majority, they are all Europe. It is not that faith has become one with reason; but a strange winter, a strange suspension of life, has pa.s.sed over the cla.s.sical culture which is only the human reason in its most trenchant form. Glimpse after glimpse, as that pagan culture awoke to life, the conflict was felt once more. It is at the court of Frederick II that the Renaissance first becomes discernible as an actual power in European society. How definite and unmistakable is the att.i.tude of faith towards that! Ever since the Reformation all phases of theology had been imperfect philosophies--that is, in which there was a religious _arriere pensee_; philosophies which could never be in the ascendant in a sincerely scientific sphere. The two elements had never really mixed.

Writers so different as Locke and Taylor have each his liberal philosophy, and each has his defence of the orthodox belief; but, also, each has a divided mind; we wonder how the two elements could have existed side by side; brought together in a single mind, but unable to fuse in it, they reveal their radical contrariety. The Catholic church and humanity are two powers that divide the intellect and spirit of man. On the Catholic side is faith, rigidly logical as Ultramontanism, with a proportion of the facts of life, that is, all that is despairing in life coming naturally under its formula. On the side of humanity is all that is desirable in the world, all that is sympathetic with its laws, and succeeds through that sympathy.

Doubtless, for the individual, there are a thousand intermediate shades of opinion, a thousand resting-places for the religious spirit; still, t? d?????e?? ??? ?st? t?? p?????, fine distinctions are not for the majority; and this makes time eventually a dogmatist, working out the opposition in its most trenchant form, and fixing the horns of the dilemma; until, in the present day, we have on one side Pius IX, the true descendant of the fisherman, issuing the Encyclical, pleading the old promise against the world with a special kind of justice; and on the other side, the irresistible modern culture, which, as religious men often remind us, is only Christian accidentally.

The peculiar temper of Coleridge's intellect made the idea of reconciling this conflict very seductive. With a true speculative talent he united a false kind of subtlety and the full share of vanity. A dexterous intellectual _tour de force_ has always an independent charm; and therefore it is well for the cause of truth that the directness, sincerity, and naturalness of things are beyond a certain limit sacrificed in vain to a fact.i.tious interest. A method so forced as that of Coleridge's religious philosophy is from the first doomed to be insipid, so soon as the temporary interest or taste or curiosity it was designed to meet has pa.s.sed away. Then, as to the manner of such books as the _Aids to Reflection_, or _The Friend_:--These books came from one whose vocation was in the world of art; and yet, perhaps, of all books that have been influential in modern times, they are farthest from the cla.s.sical form--bundles of notes--the original matter inseparably mixed up with that borrowed from others--the whole, just that mere preparation for an artistic effect which the finished artist would be careful one day to destroy.

Here, again, we have a trait profoundly characteristic of Coleridge.

He often attempts to reduce a phase of thought, subtle and exquisite, to conditions too rough for it. He uses a purely speculative gift in direct moral edification. Scientific truth is something fugitive, relative, full of fine gradations; he tries to fix it in absolute formulas. The _Aids to Reflection_, or _The Friend_, is an effort to propagate the volatile spirit of conversation into the less ethereal fabric of a written book; and it is only here and there that the poorer matter becomes vibrant, is really lifted by the spirit.

At forty-two, we find Coleridge saying in a letter:

I feel with an intensity unfathomable by words my utter nothingness, impotence, and worthlessness in and for myself.

I have learned what a sin is against an infinite, imperishable being such as is the soul of man. The consolations, at least the sensible sweetness of hope, I do not possess. On the contrary, the temptation which I have constantly to fight up against is a fear that, if annihilation and the possibility of heaven were offered to my choice, I should choose the former.

What was the cause of this change? That is precisely the point on which, after all the gossip there has been, we are still ignorant. At times Coleridge's opium excesses were great; but what led to those excesses must not be left out of account. From boyhood he had a tendency to low fever, betrayed by his constant appet.i.te for bathing and swimming, which he indulged even when a physician had opposed it.

In 1803, he went to Malta as secretary to the English Governor. His daughter suspects that the source of the evil was there, that for one of his const.i.tution the climate of Malta was deadly. At all events, when he returned, the charm of those five wonderful years had failed at the source.

De Quincey said of him, 'he wanted better bread than can be made with wheat.' Lamb said of him that from boyhood he had 'hungered for eternity'. Henceforth those are the two notes of his life. From this time we must look for no more true literary talent in him. His style becomes greyer and greyer, his thoughts _outre_, exaggerated, a kind of credulity or superst.i.tion exercised upon abstract words. Like Clifford, in Hawthorne's beautiful romance--the born Epicurean, who by some strange wrong has pa.s.sed the best of his days in a prison--he is the victim of a division of the will, often showing itself in trivial things: he could never choose on which side of the garden path he would walk. In 1803, he wrote a poem on 'The Pains of Sleep'. That unrest increased. Mr. Gillman tells us 'he had long been greatly afflicted with nightmare, and when residing with us was frequently aroused from this painful sleep by any one of the family who might hear him'.

That faintness and continual dissolution had its own consumptive refinements, and even brought, as to the 'Beautiful Soul' in _Wilhelm Meister_, a faint religious ecstasy--that 'singing in the sails' which is not of the breeze. Here, again, is a note of Coleridge's:

'In looking at objects of nature while I am thinking, as at yonder moon, dim-glimmering through the window-pane, I seem rather to be seeking, as it were asking, a symbolical language for something within me that already and for ever exists, than observing anything new. Even when that latter is the case, yet still I have always an obscure feeling, as if that new phenomenon were the dim awaking of a forgotten or hidden truth of my inner nature.' Then, 'while I was preparing the pen to write this remark, I lost the train of thought which had led me to it.'