ART. II.-COLERIDGE.

In

The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with an Introductory Essay upon his Philosophical and Theological Opinions. Edited by Professor Shedd. Seven Volumes. New-York: Harper & Brothers. 1853.

AN American edition of Coleridge's complete works is at this time a significant and interesting fact. To print and publish a volume, or a work of several volumes, is no very great matter-less than the construction of a railroad, or the building of a steamship, or even the erection of a dwelling; but the doing it often has a significance of much greater interest than any of these. Very few books would be written but for the expectation that they will be read, and yet fewer would be printed but for the assurance that they will be bought. The issuing of this work, therefore, indicates the prevalence of the conviction that the public demand for the writings of Coleridge is sufficient to justify, commercially, the outlay. We have great confidence in the judgment of the more intelligent members of "the trade" in such matters, and are, therefore, prepared to hail this event as an indication of a healthy condition of the public mind in matters of literature; and we receive it as a hearty practical endorsement of the good taste and common sense of our reading public, since only through these qualities, exercised by them, can the enterprise be adequately rewarded.

Few names have figured more largely in current English literature, during the last half-century, than that of Samuel Taylor Coleridge; and as to scarcely any other has there prevailed so wide a diversity of opinions. The causes of this diversity are obvious. In the case of a living, or recently deceased writer, the man and the author are often so much at variance, that the life of the former is constantly marring the precepts of the latter. Men naturally look to the every-day life of a didactic writer for an exemplification of his own precepts; nor are they ready to believe that he can be wise as an author who wants the practical wisdom requisite to guide his affairs with discretion, and to keep himself from vices and follies; and where they behold the common frailties and infirmities in the man, they are slow to believe that his writings can contain anything greatly elevated above the common range of thought. This, however, is only a temporary embarrassment. The author whose works survive their own novelty, comes at length to be known only by his works: the man is forgotten, and only the author remains. This

apotheosis Coleridge is now undergoing, though the process is yet incomplete. It is, however, so far effected that even now he may be contemplated as he is seen in his writings, rather than as he was known in his lifetime.

As a writer, Coleridge was very unequal in the various departments of literature to which he devoted his pen. Beginning as a mediocre English poet, above which rank he never rose in the service of the Muses, he afterward became a critic and essayist, still evincing the same characteristics that appear in his poetry, varied with occasional indications of greater force of thought, and a more profound philosophy; but Coleridge the poet and critic will be little talked of by the next generation. Already his reputation is becoming that of a philosophical and theological writer, to the exclusion of all else; and this publication of a standard edition of his works, in which the appropriate prominence is given to those subjects, will increase that tendency.

But even as a philosopher and theologian he is very differently estimated by different persons; and by those, too, whose opinions are entitled to much credit. Not a few respectable critics have considered him as a second-rate retailer of German transcendentalism, -a writer of incoherent fragments of thoughts, adumbrating commonplace notions, which, clothed in a party-coloured jargon, made up of Latin, Greek, and German, strangely commingled with his own barbarous English, though only the chimeras of a disordered. fancy-disordered, too, by well-ascertained physical causes-have been mistaken for profound philosophical speculations; and though such censures are, to some extent, unjust, they are not altogether groundless. His devotion to German literature and philosophy so far transposed his mental stand-point, that he wrote and philosophized as a German rather than as an Englishman; and since, on account of the dissimilarity of the English and the German mind, the same thought as set forth by one would scarcely be recognised as identical with itself as embodied by the other, Coleridge sometimes seems to be profound when he is commonplace, and at other times his real excellences escape the observation of his readers. This difficulty, however, is rapidly giving way, as English scholars (under which designation we include all who use the English language, without any reference to their political nationalities) are becoming more familiar with the modes of thought and forms of expression employed by their Teutonic contemporaries. If, however, it shall be asserted, on the one hand, that Coleridge has taken ideas familiar to the English mind, and, after decking them in a foreign costume, pro

duced them as novelties, and also brought with them a variety of German conceits, which he has passed off as profound truths,-it may be answered on the other, that, while we cannot wholly deny the charge, it is equally true that he has not only corrected the aberrations of our philosophy from the observations of those strangers, but also suggested much valuable matter from his own original reflections.

His modes of thinking, and especially of expressing his thoughts, are not altogether felicitous. Though he is unquestionably profound, yet for want of clearness his apparent depth is ever liable to be charged to his obscurity. His thoughts are brilliant rather than transparent, and as in an atmosphere surcharged with foreign particles, the same causes that illuminate also obscure his meditations. His thoughts are fragmentary in their form and character; his themes are seldom or never discussed in all their relations, and their characters are commonly only partially developed. These things of course add to the unsatisfactoriness of his discussions; since isolated truths, like the fragments of an arch, are not commonly self-sustaining, as are symmetrical systems.

But to a certain and very large class of minds, the chief objections to Coleridge, as a philosophical writer, are not against the accidents, but rather the whole character of his works,-not so much, indeed, as to the matter set forth, as to the manner in which it is presented. Coleridge provides aids to reflection; but aids always imply that efforts are to be made by those who receive them, and these such persons have no wish to make. Most readers would have all their thinking done for them; they delight to be carried along on a smooth train of thought, which passes over the subject without requiring any labour, and which makes its impressions on the memory as the carriage-wheel marks its track, instead of entering into the mind and assimilating itself with the internal elements of thought. Because he is a suggestive and not a dogmatical writersupplying elements and methods of thought, but leaving the reader to use them, if he would be profited by them-Coleridge is not a favourite with the indolent and the imbecile. Even among learned men there are very few original thinkers, while to the multitudenot only the imbruted and ignorant, but even the generally intelligent-reflection" is a word that has no definite signification. In proportion as a writer transcends the beaten track of disquisition, he diminishes the number of his readers; and there is but little doubt that the fact that Coleridge has struck out new methods of thinking, and elucidated truth by original processes, is among the causes that have prejudiced his acceptance with the public. But truth is

essentially vital; it may be obscured or perverted, but it cannot be destroyed. It is also life-giving; and when it has been once uttered it will find a response somewhere, and at some time,--though its voice may seem to be stifled in the noise of the multitude, or overborne by the trumpet tones of authority. Whether he scattered the vital seeds of thought, or only chaff and cockle, must be determined by the harvest that shall follow, and which is already beginning to mature.

In the field of metaphysical disquisition Coleridge appeared as an unheralded and unaccredited observer. Having entered by another way than the one prescribed by authority, he pursued such paths as seemed good to himself, and explored the scene upon which he had entered in whatever method promised the best results. That his thoughts are really new-that he was the first that ever entertained them—is not supposed; nor is it certain that they were entirely original with himself, since similar reflections are found scattered over the whole field of literature, both domestic and foreign, as well as constantly occurring in the ordinary remarks and conversations of mankind. It were scarcely to be presumed that an earnest and gifted mind, after casting off the shackles of authority, would confine itself to the beaten track of thought, or fail either to detect latent truths, or to present old ones in new and startling aspects.

The system of mental philosophy that at that time pervaded and reigned over the English mind was unsatisfactory, because it was defective. As a scientific generalization it fails legitimately to answer the necessities of its subject, since a large class of the phenomena to which it applies cannot be brought without violence into its classification. Its tendency to materialism has often been felt, and only resisted by a conviction of the absurdity to which its acknowledged premises were leading. In the highest department of human psychology,—the illustration of spiritual phenomena, as contradistinguished from the quasi-mechanical-that system is especially defective and perniciously misleading; and as this had been carried into theology, which is itself inseparable from the highest forms of the philosophy of mind, the result had been, on the one hand, the adoption of a kind of mechanical fatalism, and, on the other, the abnegation of all metaphysical inquiry upon a subject at once purely metaphysical and essentially transcendental. These were the themes upon which Coleridge loved to reflect, and as to which he has bequeathed, to all who will use them, his "Aids to Reflection." But these are really what their title imports, and the same character, to a great extent, prevails in all his metaphysical writings: they help to think, rather than supply perfected thinking to the reader.

Our present purpose will confine our remarks to a discussion of Coleridge's writings as they apply to questions of a theological character and bearing. In them philosophy is considered in its relations to theology, and theology is viewed from a philosophical stand-point. We can, in this article, consider only the former portion of this general subject; the latter we reserve for another opportunity. We are aware that there is a strong and wide-spread prejudice against the use of philosophical modes in theological discussions, a prejudice with which we in some measure sympathize, unless philosophy shall be emancipated from the clogs and fetters of materialism. Yet it will be granted by every rational mind that the necessity for such a divorce is an evil to be deprecated, and, were it possible, avoided. But since it has been found impossible to reconcile the deductions of the prevailing mechanico-mental philosophy to many spiritual phenomena in their theological relations, it has seemed necessary to exclude philosophy from their discussion. The result of this separation has been a state of hostility between the partisans of the two dissevered systems. The theologian feels compelled to decry a system which, while it pretends to embrace his themes, fails entirely to elucidate them; and the philosopher looks with disfavour upon a science which engrosses the best part of his domains, and sets his laws at defiance. If by any means the necessity for this separation may be obviated, and theology and philosophy made to harmonize, certainly a most desirable end would be effected.

It is very evident that there can be no real discrepancy between these two sciences; for truth cannot be inconsistent with itself. It is equally certain that if there is radical error in either system, it must be in the latter; for the elements of theological truth are too obvious and immutable to be widely misconstrued. Notwithstanding all that has been said against rationalism in theology, no one but a stark enthusiast will confess that his religious opinions are irrational. The proper use of reason in matters of religious belief is a subject of great practical importance; and its difficulty has, no doubt, been not a little enhanced by the unfortunate position of the prevailing system of mental philosophy. Every intelligent thinker must be ready to confess that, since reason and revelation are concurrent streams from the same great fountain-the truth-there must be a substantial agreement between them. Each has indeed its own channel, and each is designed to beautify and fertilize its own banks; but while distinct, they are parallel or convergent, and in their confluence the highest excellence of each is demonstrated. A system of theology should embrace all the doctrinal truths of revelation, and