article of faith on arguments which would equally prove ‘that’ to be irrational, which we had allowed to be ‘real’. Secondly, that whatever is deducible from the admission of a ‘self-comprehending’ and ‘creative’ spirit, may be legitimately used in proof of the ‘possibility’ of any further mystery concerning the Divine Nature.
“Possibilitatem mysteriorum (Trinitatis, &c.) contra insultus infidelium et hereticorum a contradictionibus vindico; haud quidem veritatem, quæ revelatione sola stabiliri possit;” says Leibnitz, in a letter to his duke. He then adds the following just and important remark. “In vain will tradition or texts of Scripture be adduced in support of a doctrine, ‘donec clava impossibilitatis et contradictionis e manibus horum Herculum extorta fuerit.’ For the heretic will still reply, that texts, the literal sense of which is not so much above as directly against all reason, must be understood figuratively, as Herod is a Fox, &c.
These principles,” says he, “I held philosophically, while in respect of revealed religion, I remained a zealous Unitarian. I considered the idea of a Trinity a fair scholastic inference from the being of God, as a creative intelligence; and that it was therefore entitled to the rank of an esoteric doctrine of natural religion: but seeing in the same no practical or moral bearing, I confined it to the schools of philosophy. The admission of the Logos, as hypostasized (i.e. neither a mere attribute nor a personification), in no respect removed my doubts concerning the incarnation and the redemption by the cross; which I could neither reconcile in ‘reason’ with the impassiveness of the Divine Being, nor in my moral feelings with the sacred distinction between things and persons, the vicarious payment of a debt and the vicarious expiation of guilt.
A more thorough revolution in my philosophic principles, and a deeper insight into my own heart were yet wanting. Nevertheless, I cannot doubt, that the difference of my metaphysical notions from those of Unitarians in general ‘contributed’ to my final reconversion to the ‘whole truth’ in ‘Christ;’ even as according to his own confession the books of certain Platonic philosophers (Libri quorundam Platonicorum) commenced the rescue of St. Augustine’s faith from the same error, aggravated by the far darker accompaniment of the Manichean heresy.”
Perhaps it is right also to state, that no small share of his final reconversion was attributable to that zeal and powerful genius, and to his great desire that others should become sharers in his own acquirements, which he was so desirous to communicate. During his residence at the foot of Quantock, his thoughts and studies were not only directed to an enquiry into the great truths of religion, but, while he stayed at Stowey, he was in the habit of preaching often at the Unitarian Chapel at Taunton, and was greatly respected by all the better and educated classes in the neighbourhood.
He spoke of Stowey with warmth and affection to the latest hours of his life. Here, as before mentioned, dwelt his friend Mr. Thomas Poole — the friend (justly so termed) to whom he alludes in his beautiful dedicatory poem to his brother the Rev. George Coleridge, and in which, when referring to himself, he says,
”To me the Eternal Wisdom hath dispensed
A different fortune and more different mind —
Me from the spot where first I sprang to light
Too soon transplanted, ere my soul had fix’d
Its first domestic loves; and hence through life
Chasing chance-started friendships. A brief while
Some have preserved me from life’s pelting ills;
But, like a tree with leaves of feeble stem,
If the clouds lasted, and a sudden breeze
Ruffled the boughs, they on my head at once
Dropp’d the collected shower; and some most false,
False and fair foliaged as the Manchineel,
Have tempted me to slumber in their shade
E’en mid the storm; then breathing subtlest damps,
Mix’d their own venom with the rain from Heaven,
That I woke poison’d! But, all praise to Him
Who gives us all things, more have yielded me
Permanent shelter; and beside one friend,
Beneath the impervious covert of one oak,
I’ve raised a lowly shed, and know the names
Of husband and of father; not unhearing
Of that divine and nightly-whispering voice,
Which from my childhood to maturer years
Spake to me of predestinated wreaths,
Bright with no fading colours!”
These beautiful and affecting lines to his brother are dated May 26th, 1797, Nether Stowey, Somerset. In his will, dated Highgate, July 2nd, 1830, he again refers to this friend, and directs his executor to present a plain gold mourning ring to Thomas Poole, Esq., of Nether Stowey.
“The Dedicatory Poem to my ‘Juvenile Poems,’ and my ‘Fears in Solitude,’ render it unnecessary to say more than what I then, in my early manhood, thought and felt, I now, a gray-headed man, still think and feel.”
In this volume, dedicated to his brother, are to be found several poems in early youth and upwards, none of later date than 1796.
The “Ode,” he says, “on the Departing Year, was written on the 24th, 25th, and 26th of December, 1796, and published separately on the last day of that year. ‘The Religious Musings’ were written as early as Christmas 1794.”
He then was about to enter his 23rd year. The preface to this volume is a key to his opinions and feelings at that time, and which the foregoing part of this memoir is also intended to illustrate.
“Compositions resembling those of the present volume are not unfrequently condemned for their querulous egotism. But egotism is to be condemned only when it offends against time and place, as in a history or epic poem. To censure it in a monody or sonnet is almost as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then write sonnets or monodies? Because they give me pleasure when, perhaps, nothing else could. After the more violent emotions of sorrow, the mind demands amusement, and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is a painful and most often an unavailing effort.
’But O! how grateful to a wounded heart
The tale of misery to impart
From others’ eyes bid artless sorrows flow,
And raise esteem upon the base of woe.’
(Shaw.)
The communicativeness of our nature leads us to describe our own sorrows; in the endeavour to describe them, intellectual activity is exerted; and from intellectual activity there results a pleasure, which is gradually associated, and mingles as a corrective, with the painful subject of the description. ‘True,’ (it may be answered) ‘but how are the PUBLIC interested in your sorrows or your description’?’ We are for ever attributing personal unities to imaginary aggregates. — What is the PUBLIC, but a term for a
