of which he hoped to pass through the mists and shadows of words and thoughts to a steadier contemplation, to the apprehension if not the comprehension of the mysteries of Truth and Being.
The various excerpts which I have selected for publication are arranged, as far as possible, in chronological order. They begin with the beginning of Coleridge's literary career, and are carried down to the summer of 1828, when he accompanied Wordsworth and his daughter Dora on a six months' tour on the Continent. The series of note-books which belong to the remaining years of his life (1828-1834) were devoted for the most part to a commentary on the Old and New Testament, to theological controversy, and to metaphysical disquisition. Whatever interest they may have possessed, or still possess, appeals to the student, not to the general reader. With his inveterate love of humorous or facetious titles, Coleridge was pleased to designate these serious and abstruse dissertations as "The Flycatchers."
My especial thanks are due to Amy, Lady Coleridge, who, in accordance with the known wishes of the late Lord Coleridge, has afforded me every facility for collating my own transcripts of the note-books, and those which were made by my father and other members of my family, with the original MSS. now in her possession.
I have to also thank Miss Edith Coleridge for valuable assistance in the preparation of the present work for the press.
The death of my friend, Mr. James Dykes Campbell, has deprived me of aid which he alone could give.
It was due to his suggestion and encouragement that I began to compile these pages, and only a few days before his death he promised me (it was all he could undertake) to "run through the proofs with my pencil in my hand." He has passed away multis flebilis, but he lived to accomplish his own work both as critic and biographer, and to leave to all who follow in his footsteps a type and example of honest workmanship and of literary excellence.
Ernest Hartley Coleridge.
CHAPTER I
1797-1801
"O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
'Tis known, that Thou and I were one."
S. T. C.
PAST AND PRESENT
"We should judge of absent things by the absent. Objects which are present are apt to produce perceptions too strong to be impartially compared with those recalled only by the memory." Sir J. Stewart.
True! and O how often the very opposite is true likewise, namely, that the objects of memory are, often, so dear and vivid, that present things are injured by being compared with them, vivid from dearness!
LOVE
Love, a myrtle wand, is transformed by the Aaron touch of jealousy into a serpent so vast as to swallow up every other stinging woe, and makes us mourn the exchange.
Love that soothes misfortune and buoys up to virtue—the pillow of sorrows, the wings of virtue.
Disappointed love not uncommonly causes misogyny, even as extreme thirst is supposed to be the cause of hydrophobia.
Love transforms the soul into a conformity with the object loved.
DUTY AND EXPERIENCE
From the narrow path of virtue Pleasure leads us to more flowery fields, and there Pain meets and chides our wandering. Of how many pleasures, of what lasting happiness, is Pain the parent and Woe the womb!
Real pain can alone cure us of imaginary ills. We feel a thousand miseries till we are lucky enough to feel misery.
Misfortunes prepare the heart for the enjoyment of happiness in a better state. The life of a religious benevolent man is an April day. His pains and sorrows [what are they but] the fertilising rain? The sunshine blends with every shower, and look! how full and lovely it lies on yonder hill!
Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of a child deadly sick.
Human happiness, like the aloe, is a flower of slow growth.
What we must do let us love to do. It is a noble chymistry that turns necessity into pleasure.
INFANCY AND INFANTS
1. The first smile—what kind of reason it displays. The first smile after sickness.
2. Asleep with the polyanthus held fast in its hand, its bells dropping over the rosy face.
3. Stretching after the stars.
4. Seen asleep by the light of glowworms.
5. Sports of infants; their excessive activity, the means being the end. Nature, how lovely a school-mistress!... Children at houses of industry.
6. Infant beholding its new-born sister.
7. Kissing itself in the looking-glass.
8. The Lapland infant seeing the sun.
9. An infant's prayer on its mother's lap. Mother directing a baby's hand. (Hartley's "love to Papa," scrawls pothooks and reads what he meant by them.)
10. The infants of kings and nobles. ("Princess unkissed and foully husbanded!")
11. The souls of infants, a vision (vide Swedenborg).
12. Some tales of an infant.
13. Στοργη. The absurdity of the Darwinian system (instanced by) birds and alligators.
14. The wisdom and graciousness of God in the infancy of the human species—its beauty, long continuance, etc. (Children in the wind—hair floating, tossing, a miniature of the agitated trees below which they played. The elder whirling for joy the one in petticoats, a fat baby eddying half-willingly, half by the force of the gust, driven backward, struggling forward—both drunk with the pleasure, both shouting their hymn of joy.) [Letters of S. T. C., 1895, i. 408.]
15. Poor William seeking his mother, in love with her picture, and having that union of beauty and filial affection that the Virgin Mary may be supposed to give.
POETRY
Poetry, like schoolboys, by too frequent and severe correction, may be cowed into dullness!
Peculiar, not far-fetched; natural, but not obvious; delicate, not affected; dignified, not swelling; fiery, but not mad; rich in imagery, but not loaded with it—in short, a union of harmony and good sense, of perspicuity and conciseness. Thought is the body of such an ode, enthusiasm the soul, and imagery the drapery.
Dr. Darwin's poetry is nothing but a succession of landscapes or paintings. It arrests the attention too often, and so prevents the rapidity necessary to pathos.
The elder languages were fitter for poetry because they expressed only prominent ideas with clearness,
