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native tongue, and expresses striking thoughts in concise, elevated, and nervous language. An easy and perspicuous manner was always beyond his reach. His faults are those of negligence and rapidity, and many of them arise from over fondness for abstruse expressions, and an unwillingness to incur the labor of translating the philosophical terms of one nation into those of another.

Again, he has been commended for perfect amiableness of disposition, quietude under suffering, and meekness when reproachfully assailed. After some study of his prose writings, we are entirely at a loss how to ascertain the grounds on which this opinion rests. His temper appears querulous in the extreme. No one was ever more fortunate in obtaining disinterested admirers and assistants; witness the Wedgwoods, and the kind surgeon in whose dwelling he passed the later portion of his life. Yet he was eternally complaining of the ingratitude of his friends and the malice of his enemies. We have no wish to allude to the state of his domestic relations. Our concern is only with those features of his character, that are apparent in his writings, and which may help to show the probable influ. ence of his works on those who are most fond of studying them. His ill-will occasionally breaks out into coarseness of language, which it would be difficult to match in the vilest pages of literary controversy.

This is plain speaking, and we feel bound, to support the charge. Take the following passage from the “ Biographia Literaria," in which he alludes to the criticisms, that had appeared, of his own works and those of his friends.

“ Individuals below mediocrity, not less in natural power than acquired knowledge; nay, bunglers that had failed in the lowest mechanic crafts, and whose presumption is in due proportion to their want of sense and sensibility; men, who, being first scribblers from idleness and ignorance, next become libellers from envy

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and malevolence, have been able to drive a successful trade in the employment of booksellers, nay, have raised themselves into temporary name and reputation with the public at large, by that most powerful of all adulation, the appeal to the bad and malignant passions of mankind. But as it is the nature of scorn, envy, and all malignant propensities, to require a quick change of objects, such writers are sure, sooner or later, to awake from their dream of vanity to disappointment and neglect, with embittered and envenomed feelings. Even during their short-lived success, sible, in spite of themselves, on what a shifting foundation it rested, they resent the mere refusal of praise, as a robbery, and at the justest censures kindle at once into violent and undisciplined abuse; till the acute disease changing into chronical, the more deadly as the less violent, they become the fit instruments of literary detraction and moral slander. They are then no longer to be questioned without exposing the complainant to ridicule, because, forsooth, they are anonymous critics, and authorized as synodical individuals' to speak of themselves plurali majesta

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The “ungentle craft” have had many a lecture read to them, but we have yet seen nothing to equal the fiery wrath of this retort. The unconsciousness of the writer is admirable. In the very chapter which contains this pretty piece of denunciation, may be found the following remark. “ Indignation at literary wrongs, I leave to men born under

I happier stars. I cannot afford it.A single sentence will suffice to exemplify his mode of thinking on political subjects. “The Roman 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, and the attack on the Church, are so many toadlets, one after another detaching themselves from their parent brute." +

No great sagacity is required to perceive the probable

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Biog. Lit. p. 30. Am. ed.

+ Table-Talk, Vol. 11. p. 164.

influence of the writings of Coleridge. Possessed of so marked a character, and by no means popular in their nature, the admirers of them would necessarily form a sect, and their admiration of their teacher be expressed in no measured terms. They would adopt the harshness of his manner towards opponents, imitate his enthusiastic dreams, and revel in the richness of his illustrations. Impatient of the restraints put upon their researches by the limited powers of the human mind, they would indulge in highly wrought and abstruse affirmations, in the hope that these might contain the elements of some truth, which they could not fully grasp and distinctly enunciate. Systematic inquiry would be abandoned for the piecemeal promulgation of unconnected facts and desultory reasoning. The results of immethodical research, connected by no chain in the mind even of the inquirer, would naturally be expressed in short essays and distinct aphorisms. Sanguine in their expectations, the possibility of weaving such materials into a new and satisfactory scheme of philosophy would ever be present to their minds, but the attempt to realize such a hope would constantly be postponed.

But the most pernicious effect of the prose works of Coleridge must be ascribed to his fanciful and poetic mode of expression. The imagery, in which he delighted to clothe his mystic speculations, is the prominent object to the observer, who often adopts as a truth what is nothing but an ingenious illustration. The appeal is made to passion and sentiment, not to the understanding; and the result is persuasion, rather than conviction. There is a fallacy in such a proceeding, which deserves to be constantly guarded against. Poetic and philosophical truth are essentially distinct. They differ in kind. The former relates to propriety in the manner by which the emotive part of our nature is addressed, and does not aspire to accuracy either

in word or thought. The latter respects strict conformity to reality and fact; absolute and entire correctness is its proper test. A painting may be true to nature, when the whole composition is ideal, and no archetype is to be found in the works of creation. We say, that Shakspeare does not violate truth in his most imaginative creations, - in his Calibans and Ariels, - his witches, fairies, and ghosts. But the reference is to the keeping of the portraiture, to its consistency with itself. Philosophical truth, of which the subject is man and the end is action, is the exhibition of things as they are, and demands the utmost severity of expression. The value of a principle consists in its unity and entireness. An error in part vitiates the whole. Algebraic simplicity of language is therefore required in its enunciation. All truths are linked together by innumerable relations into an infinite series, the complete exhibition of which would constitute the only perfect scheme of philosophy.

All hyperboles, all figures of speech, are therefore wilful departures from the only true road, - are the distorted, partial, or exaggerated expression of a principle, giving to it false relations, whereby its proper position and bearing cannot be ascertained. The inherent difficulties of the rigid method of philosophizing do not form the only objec. tion to it in the minds of most inquirers. Men are in love with the opposite mode from its pleasant vices. “Eloquence, like the fair sex, has too prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken against. And it is in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be deceived."

Undoubtedly, the artifices of rhetoric have their place among the means for the instruction and improvement of mankind. But their office is in the enforcement of truth as a rule of conduct, not the discovery and original expression of that truth. Pure rays of light, passing a medium of fog,

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are refracted into a thousand gorgeous hues, that hold the spectator in mingled wonder and admiration. Yet the centre of such a cloud is hardly the best place for distinct vis. ion, for perceiving things as they are. Objects appear enlarged, defects are hidden in the wreaths of vapor, and the general effect is grand and impressive. But there is a sim- . ple beauty in the pure sunshine without, in the clear atmosphere, and the sharp outlines of surrounding things, which one would hardly barter, after all, for the most striking illusion. This may appear too strong for an illustration, yet the heated and bewildering effect of the most brilliant passages of Transcendental writing goes far to justify the comparison. A sweeping statement is made, which, in the obvious and literal sense of the words, is a wild paradox, but in which every one fancies, that he can perceive the elements of some truth, though probably no two interpretations would be alike. There is no limit to the number of such apophthegms, except in the poverty or richness of the writer's fancy. Where positive truth is not the object of pursuit, the result will too often be nothing but a brilliant play upon words. Splendid generalizations are usually splendid follies. We are always suspicious of an Edipus, who professes to explain the secret of the universe.

A fair comparison of the different modes of inquiry and instruction adopted by Bacon and Locke on the one side, and by the members of the New School on the other, must be based on a consideration of the different ends in view, " In a historical, plain method,” Locke professes to “consider the discerning faculties of a man, as they are employed about the objects which they have to do with, and to give an account of the ways whereby our understandings come to attain those notions of things we have.” Whatever may be thought of the importance of this object, or of the success with which he pursued it, nothing is more certain

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