CHAPTER VI.

COLERIDGE.

WHEN we rise from a study of the life and works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge—I do not mean so much of a single poem or of a single period of his life, but a general survey of the whole subject—probably in' most of us the predominant feeling is one of disappointment at what may seem a picture of splendid talents unused or even abused, and of a wasted life. Possibly to some extent our estimate is true, and we shall see what grounds we have for this belief when we have considered the life and poems of this poetic philosopher-for such we may justly name him in contradistinction to the philosophic poet Wordsworth.

However, I conceive that in this as in many other cases we ground our estimate too much on substantial results. We are not easily persuaded that a mind such as that of Coleridge can be of much value, because it is so apt to fly off into infinite space rather than to complete the entire orbit—leaving us a fragment of an arc rather than the whole perfection of a figure.

But mathematicians will tell us that besides the circle, and the ellipse (the arcs of which have a returning tendency and therefore describe a bounded figure "teretem atque rotundam," round and complete), there is also the hyperbola rushing off into infinite space; and astronomers will illustrate such curves from the motions of the constant planets moving in their elliptic orbs, and of the comet,-for, unless I am mistaken, some comets do so-flaring for a brief space across our sky and then plunging away from our sight, never again to return. Of this nature are some minds; and we are very apt to underrate their value.

It is, I think, at least probable that such men as Coleridge have their special function, and that a very important one, though not one which can be easily estimated or defined. The eccentric curve cannot bound any material object-for such purposes it is useless; and, losing our material result, we lament. "What a waste of talent!" we say: "What vague profitless transcendentalism!"

This quality of Coleridge is to be seen in all he did, in all he wrote, and in all he said. De Quincey, with his melodious majesty of language, gives us his explanation. He asserts that it is falsly stated that Coleridge allowed his thoughts to rush off (like our comet) into infinite space; it was rather that the immense orbit described by his ideas, even in ordinary conversation, was beyond the power of his listeners to follow; but, he argues, Coleridge always did think

out his points in logical sequence. But why endeavour to express this, when this master of words has expressed it for us?

"To many people," says De Quincey, "Coleridge seemed to wander and he seemed then to wander the most when . . . the compass and huge circuit by which his illustrations moved travelled furthest into remote regions, before they began to revolve. Long before this coming round commenced, most people had lost him, and naturally enough supposed that he had lost himself. They continued to admire the separate beauty of the thoughts, but did not see their relation to the dominant theme. However, I can assert from my long and intimate knowledge of Coleridge's mind, that logic the most severe was as inalienable from his modes of thought as grammar was from his language."

With all due deference to De Quincey's opinion, founded as it was on this long and intimate knowledge of the poet's mind, I should beg to differ from him. I feel thoroughly convinced that, though Coleridge may not have lost himself, though his ideas were connected and proceeded on true analogies, yet that the arc of his thoughts often had no returning tendency that these never did "begin to revolve" again towards their starting place, but went off into eternity of space. And this-which is about the same thing as saying that he argued from the sensible to the unseen, that he had an eminently

ideal, if a sadly unpractical mind-is to be seen in his life and poems, as well as in his conversation. It is of this life and these poems that I wish especially to speak: but before entering upon the relation of facts in connection with this subject, I wished to bring forward this theory which seems to me to make some of the facts more intelligible.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on the 21st of October, 1772, about two and a half years after the birth of Wordsworth. His birthplace was the vicarage of Ottery St. Mary's, in Devonshire.

That the poet, the youngest of ten children, inherited certain traits of character from his father, the Rev. John Coleridge, head master of the Grammar School and afterwards vicar of the parish of Ottery St. Mary's, is apparent from the fact that, like the son, the father was deeply devoted to study and book-learning, and was so disregardful of the common events and interests of life that he went by the name of the "absent man." His analysing tendency may be seen by the fact, which his biographers relate, that he was not satisfied with the usual name which Julius Cæsar gave to the case in Latin that (as schoolboys are taught) expresses "from, by, or how "-i.e. the ablative; but taught his pupils to call it the Quale-quarequidditive," which means what we might express by the "how, why, and what" case.

Another fact related illustrates his absence of

mind. It is said that once his wife, when packing his portmanteau for a journey, put in five shirts, and told him to put on a clean one every day. The good man did as he was bid; put a clean one on every day, but forgot to take off the other, and arrived at home with all five on his back.

The boyhood of the young poet was subjected to the baleful influence of a tyrannizing schoolmaster— Dr. Bowyer, head master of Christ's Hospital. The description that Charles Lamb gives of this school life makes one wonder how any one, far less one with the delicate sensibilities and the original mind of Coleridge, could have survived the daily and hourly torment of the "drilled dull lesson forced down word by word," the brutal cuffs and floggings and Latin syntax, which were then considered necessary for the education of a gentleman. Indeed, though in after life he praised his teacher, how intolerable such things became to Coleridge by the time that he was fifteen years of age is apparent from the fact that he endeavoured to apprentice himself to a shoemaker in order to get rid of school and schoolmasters. It was during this school life that he first contracted the tendency to rheumatism, brought on by a chill caught after swimming across the New River in his clothes. I mention this because, as we shall see, these bodily pains induced a subsequent state of mental depression which is visible in his later poems, and for relief from which he was led to a habit that increased his mental misery tenfold.