GLORIFYING THE SLIPSHOD LIFE. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:]
you allow a sympathetic reader of more than a generation to record a protest against your recent use of the Coleridge letters as a text for your warning against "Glori- fying the Slipshod Life "? The warning itself is one which, in weighty words at present familiar to all of us, is "desirable when it is necessary ; " and with reference to that part which is of general significance, I would merely express a regret that it loses force by passing into exaggeration; you surely do not mean, as you say, that "of all characters, the slipshod character is the least admirable." You mean, no doubt, that the slipshod are "a Dio spiacenti ed a' nemici sui,"—that. they make the worst of both worlds. It is true, but still I can imagine several characters less admirable. However„ what I would urge now is not the rights of the slipshod to a merciful position in the critical Inferno, but the unsuit- ability of the selection of Coleridge as a type to point that, moral. Genius provides no excuse for a man's leaving undone the things that he ought to do, except so far as it makes what he ought to do more difficult ; but when you say, "it is more than possible that but for the habit of taking opium he might. never have composed the few great poems by which he will always be remembered," you remind us how immensely it may have just this effect. You paint the most tremendous temptation that a human being can conceive (a temptation which only culminates in a particular habit, and is latent in every other), and then class its victim with the merely lazy and self-indulgent. No doubt the life of a Coleridge does, in some aspects, terribly approach the life of a Micawber, and it may be well, if you point out much else, to point out the vast descent of such an approximation ; but to select this as the salient point in the career which it mars, seems to me unjust and somewhat ungrateful. I cannot but think, indeed, that your verdict was pronounced before the case was heard -out. It is surely untrue that the slipshod period of life was -extended by Coleridge "to the very end of what might well have been a glorious life." The last eighteen years of his life present a specimen of victory over temptation such as we can find in very few lives, and the fact that they never brought back the power of verse surely shows at what a price -that victory was obtained, and claims for it, to my mind, something like reverence.
All that can be said of Coleridge's moral disasters, has been said by himself more forcibly than it can possibly be said by any critic. An attentive student of these two volumes will question your assertion that "he never recognised the fluidity of his own character ; " there is more than one letter in which -he confesses this quality with an emphasis which did not, perhaps, help him to overcome it, but at least may help ethers to escape it. The warning is emphasised by his fate as well as by his confessions. He lived to expiate his sin by the most terrible punishment man can know,—he saw it bequeathed to a son. All this does not establish a claim that his failings should be ignored. The tendency of our -time to relax the claim for all that is arduous in virtue, is the root of our worst ills, and all to whom the ideal of strenuous self-control is dear must value your continued and much- needed protest against the assumption of the hour that it is impossible. Such a protest cannot be altogether excluded from any criticism of the life of Coleridge. But in that life itself—its confessions, its sorrows, and its aspirations—that protest is expressed so much more forcibly than in any criticism, that I would, on the whole, seek to bring before the world of readers all that makes such a life a tragedy—and then, again, all that makes it a promise and an encouragement —rather than to dwell upon that portion, no doubt quite as real, which makes it a warning.—I am, Sir, &c.,
JULIA WEDGWOOD.
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