tured in his mind before he read the works of Schelling; and if such a belief would do no great discredit to the head of any inquirer into this question, how much more honorable to his heart would be the readiness to think thus, especially of one whose services in the cause of truth are at this time wholly denied by none but his personal or party enemies, than the impulse to fling it aside with a scornful "credat Judæus Apella, non ego!" Those were the words of a Heathen Satirist. We Christians know, that it was not credulity, but want of faith and of a spirit quicker to discern truth and goodness than to suspect imposture and evil, by which they of the circumcision were most painfully characterized.* *When I had written thus far I received a letter from Mr. Green, containing the following remarks: "It would not be difficult, I apprehend, to show that he (Coleridge) might have worked out a system, not dissimilar to Schelling's in its essential features. What however did Coleridge himself mean by the fundamental truths of Schelling's scheme? It is very true that the reader of the Biographia is under the necessity of supposing, that he meant the doctrines, which he has adopted in the passage taken from Schelling's works: but I confess that I strongly doubt that such was the meaning of Coleridge. My acquaintance with S. T. C. commenced with the intention of studying the writings of Schelling; but after a few interviews the design was given up, in consequence of Coleridge's declaring his dissent from Schelling's doctrines; and he began immediately the exposition of his own views. "This perhaps renders the Biographia more inexplicable. For herein S. T. C. assumes the originality of Schelling-which can only be received with great qualifications--and is content to have it admitted, that the agreements between himself and Schelling were the coincidences of two minds working on the same subject and in the same direction. Now this is the more remarkable, that it may be shown, that many or most of the views entertained by Coleridge, at least at the period of our first acquaintance, might have been derived from other sources, and that his system differs essentially from that of Schelling. Some light might perhaps be thrown upon this interesting question by a knowledge, which unfortunately I do not possess, of the circumstances under which the fragment called the Biographia was drawn up. It is possible, no doubt, that Coleridge's opinions might have undergone a change between the period, at which the B. L. was published, and that at which I had the happiness of becoming acquainted with him. But at the latter period his doctrines were based upon the selfsame principles, which he retained to his dying hour, and differing as they do fundamentally from those of Schelling, I can not but avow my conviction, that they were formed at a much earlier period, nay that they were growths of his own mind, growing with his growth, strengthening with his strength, the result of a Platonic spirit, the stirrings of which had already But the writer in Blackwood, out of his great zeal in behalf of the plundered and aggrieved, would not only deprive Coleridge of his whole credit as a philosopher-he would fain take from him " some of the brightest gems in his poetic wreath itself." It is thus that two couplets, exemplifying the Homeric and Ovidian metres,* are described by his candid judge; and in the same spirit he describes my Father as having sought to conceal the fact, that they were translated from Schiller, a poet whose evinced themselves in his early boyhood, and which had been only modified, and indirectly shaped and developed by the German school." "That in the B. L. when developing his own scheme of thought, he adopted the outward form, in which Schelling had clothed his thoughts, knowing, that is to say, that the formula was Schelling's, though forgetting that it was also the language of Schelling, may be attributed to idleness, carelessness, or to any fault of the kind which deserves a harsher name; but certainly not to dishonesty, nor to any desire of obtaining reputation at the expense, and by the spoliation, of the intellectual labors of another --and can form no ground for denying to him the name of a powerful and original thinker. And the unacknowledged use of the quotations from Schelling in the B. L. which have been the pretext for branding him with the opprobrious naine of plagiarist, are only evidences, in my humble judgment at least, of his disregard to reputation, and of a selflessness (if I may be allowed such a term, in order to mark an absence of the sense of self, which constituted an inherent defect in his character), which caused him to neglect the means of vindicating his claim to the originality of the system, which was the labor of his life and the fruit of his genius." *He pronounces them in part worse, in no respect a whit better than the originals. Im pentameter drauf fällt sie melodisch herab. To my ear, as I fancy, the light dactylic flow of the latter half of the pentameter, is still more exquisite in the English than in the German, though the spondee which commences the latter is an advantage. The English line is rather the more liquid of the two, and the word “back,” with which it closes, almost imitates the plash of the refluent water against the ground. Even from the sentence on the inferiority of Coleridge's Homeric verses there might perhaps be an appeal: but neither in German nor in English could a pair of hexameters be made to present such variety in unity, such a perfect little whole, as the elegiac distich. Readers may compare the translated verse with the original in the last edition of Coleridge's Poems in one volume; where they will also find the poem of Stolberg, which suggested, and partly produced, my Father's Lines on a Cataract. works are perhaps as generally read here as those of Shakspeare in Germany. The expression "brightest gems," however, is meant to include Lines on a Cataract, which are somewhat more conspicuous in Coleridge's poetic wreath than the pair of distiches; in these he is said to have closely adopted the metre, language, and thoughts of another man. Now the metre, language, and thoughts of Stolberg's poem are all in Coleridge's expansion of it, but those of the latter are not all contained in the former, any more than the budding rose contains all the riches of the rose full blown. "It is but a shadow," says the critic, a glorified shadow perhaps," but still only a shadow cast from another man's "substance." Is not such glory the substance, or part of the substance, of poetic merit? How much of admired poetry must we not unsubstantialize, if the reproduction of what was before, with additions and improvements, is to be made a shadow of? That which is most exquisite in the Lines on a Cataract is Coleridge's own: though some may even prefer Stolberg's striking original. These and the verses from Schiller were added to the poetical works of Mr. Coleridge by his late Editor. Had the author superintended the edition, into which they were first inserted, himself, he would, perhaps, have made references to Schiller and Stolberg in these instances, as he had done in others; if he neglected to do so, it could not have been in any expectation of keeping to himself what he had borrowed from them. Lastly, Mr. Coleridge's obligations to Schelling in Lecture VIII. on Poesy and Art are spoken of by the writer in Blackwood, after his own manner. It is true, that the most important principles delivered in that Lecture are laid down by the German Sage in his Oration on the relationship of the Plastic Arts to Nature,*—yet I can not think it quite correct to say that it is "closely copied and in many parts translated" from Schelling's discourse. It not only omits a great deal that the other contains, but adds, and, as it seems to me, materially, to what is borrowed neither, as far as I can find, after a second careful perusal of the latter, has it any passage translated from Schelling, only a few words here and there being the same as in that great philosopher's treatise. Let me add, that Mr. Coleridge did not publish this Lecture * Phil. Schrift. p. 343. ** himself. Whenever it is re-published, what it contains of Schelling's will be stated precisely. Would that an equal restitution could be made in all quarters of all that has been borrowed, with change of shape but little or no alteration of substance! In this case, not a few writers, whose originality is now unquestioned, would lose more weight from their coinage than my Father will do, by subtraction of that which he took without disguise from Schelling and others--for how commonly do men imagine themselves producing and creating, when they are but metamorphosing! That Coleridge was tempted into this course by vanity," says the writer in Blackwood toward the end of his article; “by the paltry desire of applause, or by any direct intention to defraud others of their due, we do not believe; this never was believed and never will be believed." Truly I believe not; but no thanks to the accuser who labors to convict him of "wanting rectitude and truth;" who reads his apologies the wrong way, as witches say their prayers backward;--who hatches a grand project for Schelling in order to bring him in guilty of a design to steal it ; who uses language respecting him which the merest vanity and dishonesty alone could deserve. This never has been or will be believed by the generous and intelligent, though men inclined to fear and distrust his opinions are strengthened in their prejudices. by such imputations upon their maintainer, and many are prevented from acquiring a true knowledge of him and of them. What Schelling himself thought on the subject will be seen from the following extract of a letter of Mr. Stanley, author of the Life of Dr. Arnold, kindly communicated to me by Archdeacon Hare. Schelling's remarks about Coleridge were too generally expressed, I fear, to be of any use in a vindication of him, except so far as proving his own friendly feeling toward him. But as far as I can reconstruct his sentence it was much as follows, being in answer to a question whether he had known Coleridge personally. Whether I have seen Coleridge or not, I can not tell; if he called upon me at Jena, it was before his name had become otherwise known to me, and amongst the number of young Englishmen, whom I then saw, I can not recall the persons of individuals. But I have read what he has written with great pleasure, and I took occasion in my lectures to vindicate him from the charge, which has been brought against him, of pla giarizing from me, and I said that it was I rather who owed much to him, and that, in the Essay on Prometheus, Coleridge in his remark, that "Mythology was not allegorical but tautegorical," had concentrated in one striking expression (in einem schlagenden Ausdruck) what I had been laboring to represent with much toil and trouble. This is all that I can be sure of.'" Such was this truly great Man's feeling about the wrongs that he had sustained from my Father. Had the writer in Blackwood pointed out his part in the Biographia Literaria without one word of insult to the author's memory, he would have proved his zeal for the German Philosopher, and for the interests of literature more clearly than now, because more purely, and deserved only feelings of respect and obligation from all who love and honor the name of Coleridge. been " It will already have been seen, that no attempt is here made to justify my Father's literary omissions and inaccuracies, or to deny that they proceeded from any thing defective in his frame of mind; I would only maintain that this fault has not been fairly reported or becomingly commented upon. That a man who has more highly gifted than his fellows," is therefore to have less required of him in the way of "rectitude and truth," that he is to be "held less amenable to the laws which ought to bind all human beings," is a proposition which no one sets up except for the sake of taking it down again, and some man of genius along with it; but there is another proposition, confounded by some perhaps with the aforesaid, which is true, and ought, in justice and charity, to be borne in mind; I mean that men of “ peculiar intellectual conformation," who have peculiar powers of intellect, are very often peculiar in the rest of their constitution, to such a degree that points in their conduct, which, in persons of ordinary faculties and habits of mind, could only result from conscious wilful departure from the rule of right, may in their case have a different origin, and though capable, more or less, of being controlled by the will may not arise out of it. Marked gifts are often attended by marked deficiencies even in the intellect those best acquainted with my Father are well aware that there was in him a special intellectual flaw; Archdeacon Hare has said, that his memory was "notoriously irretentive notoriously irretentive;" and it is true that, on a certain class of subjects, it was extraordinarily con * Lectures on Shakspeare, IV. p. 351. |