groans to the spirit of God, (Rev. viii. 26.), is founded on constant experience, and even if it can be ever ‘explained away’, it must still remain as the rising and setting of the sun itself, as the darkness and as the light — it must needs have the most efficient character of reality, — quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus! Deeply do I both know and feel my weakness — God in his wisdom grant, that my day of visitation may not have been past.”
Lest some ‘will-worshiping’ individuals, inflated by vanity, and self-righteousness, should misunderstand or misconstrue him, the following lines are copied from his poems: —
“HUMILITY, THE MOTHER OF CHARITY.”
”Frail creatures are we all! To be the best,
Is but the fewest faults to have: —
Look thou then to thyself, and leave the rest
To God, thy conscience and the grave.”
‘Poetical Works.’
There is not, perhaps, to be found on record a more perfect example of humility and charity, than that which he exhibited and sustained for so long a period of suffering and trial. Surely he could not be compared to the generality of his fellows — to men who, though possessing great worldly reputation, never gave him their support; but, on the contrary, were sometimes even ready to whisper down his fair name!
”For whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above.”
CHRISTOBEL.
Some of these might be well meaning enough to believe, that in giving publicity to what they erroneously considered moral infirmities, (not possessing the knowledge to discriminate between moral and physical infirmities), they were performing a religious duty — were displaying a beacon to deter others from the same course. But in the case of Coleridge, this was a sad misconception. Neither morally nor physically was he understood. He did all that in his state duty could exact; and had he been more favoured in his bodily constitution, he would not have been censured for frailties which did not attach to him.
Alas! how little do the many know of the hearts of truly great men!
Least of all could such men as Coleridge be known by modern pharisees.
“It is no uncommon thing,” says an affectionate and kindhearted friend, whose genius is rarely equalled, “to see well intentioned men please themselves with the feeling that they are not as others; that they are the favorites of Heaven, and washed clean by special dispensation from the spots of frail mortality; who moreover assume that they possess the most delicate feelings; but then those feelings are under such admirable discipline, that they can, with the most exquisite suffering, cry over their own sentences, shed tears of pity and blood for their duty, make a merit of the hardness which is contrary to their nature, and live in perpetual apprehension of being too tender-hearted. It is wonderful with what ingenuity these people can reconcile their flexible consciences to acts at which their inferiors might blush or shudder, and no less fearful to reflect how many poor wretches, not wholly past hope or reformation, may have been sent to their last account, with all their imperfections on their heads, to satisfy the religious or political fears of these pharisees. The patrons and employers of spies, we may expect to make the greatest sacrifice to expediency, — a word which every man will explain after his own way.”
To have written during his life any thing like an eulogy on Coleridge would have been most painful to him, yet he must have felt, that he deserved well of his fellow beings; for fame, and fame only, he observes, is the aim and object of every good and great man, though it is too often confounded with mere reputation. When a youth, he had learnt how to value that bubble reputation, its fleeting character, but the love of which, in some men, is so injurious both to head and heart. Reputation, “the morrow’s meal,” the “breakfast only,” the furnisher of the tinsel ornaments, or at most of some of the worldly agreeables, sown perhaps for future worldly enjoyment. ‘He’ laboured for riches of another kind, and stored them, in the hope of receiving a more permanent reward:
“By fame of course,” says Coleridge, “I mean any thing rather than reputation, the desire of working in the good and great permanently, through indefinite ages, the struggle to be promoted into the rank of God’s fellow-labourers. For bold as this expression is, it is a quotation from Scripture, and therefore justified by God himself, for which we ought to be grateful, that he has deigned to hold out such a glory to us! This is however only one consistent part of the incomprehensible goodness of Deity in taking upon himself man.”
His notebooks abound with “his hints and first thoughts; “as he says, his “Cogitabilia rather than actual cogitata à me,” — not always to be understood as his fixed opinions, but often merely suggestions of the disquisition, and acts of obedience to the apostolic command of “Try all things, hold fast that which is good.” Among them is the following characteristic of the man and his feelings, noted down for some future disquisition.
“Würde, Worthiness, VIRTUE, consist in the mastery over the sensuous and sensual impulses; but Love requires INNOCENCE. Let the lover ask his heart whether he could endure that his mistress should have ‘struggled’ with a sensual impulse for another, though she overcame it from a sense of duty to him? Women are LESS offended with men, from the vicious habits of men in part, and in part from the difference of bodily constitution; yet still to a pure and truly loving woman it must be a painful thought. That he should struggle with and overcome ambition, desire of fortune, superior beauty, &c. or with desire objectless, is pleasing; but ‘not’ that he has struggled with positive appropriated desire, i.e. desire ‘with’ an object. Love in short requires an absolute ‘peace’ and ‘harmony’ between all parts of human nature, such as it is, and it is offended by any war, though the battle should be decided in favour of the worthier.
This is perhaps the final cause of the ‘rarity’ of true love, and the efficient and immediate cause of its difficulty. Ours is a life of probation, we are to contemplate and obey ‘duty’ for its own sake, and in order to this we, in our present imperfect state of being, must see it not merely abstracted from, but in direct opposition to the ‘wish’, the ‘inclination’. Having perfected this, the highest possibility of human nature, he may then with safety harmonize ‘all’ his being with it; ‘he may’ LOVE! — To perform duties absolutely from the sense of duty, is the ‘ideal’, which perhaps no human being ever can arrive at, but which every human being ought to try to draw near unto. This is in the only wise, and verily, in a most sublime sense to see God face to face; which, alas! it seems too true, that no man can do and ‘live’, i.e. a ‘human’ life. It would become incompatible with his organization, or rather it would ‘transmute’ it, and the process of that transmutation to the senses of other men would be called ‘death’. — Even as to caterpillars; in all probability the caterpillar dies, and he either does not see, which is most probable, or at all events he does not see the connection between the caterpillar and the butterfly, the beautiful Psyche of the Greeks.
Those who in this life ‘love’ in perfection — if such there be — in proportion as their love has no struggles, see God darkly and through a veil: — for when duty and pleasure are absolutely coincident, the very nature of our organization necessitates that duty, will be contemplated as the symbol of pleasure, instead of pleasure being (as in a future life we have faith it will be) the symbol of duty. This then is the distinction between human and angelic ‘happiness’. Human happiness — humanly happy I call him, who in enjoyment finds his duty; angelically happy he, who seeks and finds his ‘duty’ in enjoyment. Happiness in general may be defined — not the aggregate of pleasurable sensations, for this is either a dangerous error and the creed of sensualists, or else a mere translation or wordy paraphrase
