COLERIDGE AS THINKER AND CRITIC.*

THAT Mr. Ashe has collected in this volume for the first time all the extant criticism of Coleridge on the English Dramatists, -entitles him as editor to the thanks of the reading public. Not- withstanding the. fact that this book is made up of lectures which are necessarily marred by countless repetitions, inasmuch as they date from different periods and handle the same subject; yet the thoughts here presented are of such value that we gladly overlook all shortcomings in the manner of treatment. These thoughts, too, are of no narrow range. From the drama, as from a point of vantage, Coleridge looks out over the whole expanse of life, and accordingly this book is sufficient to mark his place as a thinker and critic. Hitherto, he has been, in our opinion, de- cidedly underrated. Every one knows how Mr. Arnold compares him with Joubert,—how, both being men "of extraordinary ardour in the search for truth, and of extraordinary fineness in the perception of it," the critic yet gives to Jonbert the palm for "deli- cacy and penetration," while admitting Coleridge's pre-eminence in " richness and power." Now, at first sight, such a comparison must seem unfair to Coleridge, for it leaves his exquisite lyrical talent and his high imaginative power out of the reckoning. Such a line as "The fair humanities of old religions," has another and a higher value than a mere bald statement of the same truth could have. Yet, as insight into truth is the very essence of genius, Coleridge must abide the comparison according to this test. Nor need he fear it; the supremacy would still be his, even were the contest decided in a still • Lectures and Notes on Shakspese. By 8. T. Coleridge. Now first collected by T. Ashe, B.A. London: George Bell and Sons. 1883.

narrower field, even were it in Joubert's special domain of moral truth. Here are two of Joubert's most characteristic sayings, both of them hall-marked by Mr. Arnold,—" Piety is not a reli- gion, though it is the soul of all religions, just as philanthropy is not patriotism," and," If a truth is nude and crude, that is a proof it has not been steeped long enough in the soul ;" and over against them we place this one line of Coleridge, " Religion is the will in the reason, and love in the will." By the " will in the reason " Coleridge understands the practice of goodness, as well as the knowledge of truth ; and these, with love added, he tells us, con- stitute religion. But if in this instance Coleridge's insight be ascribed, as it may well be, to his Puritan training, here is a thought which for " delicacy and penetration " cannot be matched in Joubert, or even in Pascal,—" As the power of seeing is to light, so is an idea in mind to a law in nature ; they are correla- tives which suppose each other." Nor is Joubert the only thinker whom Coleridge has anticipated :—

" In older times, writers were looked up to as intermediate beings between angels and men ; afterwards, they were regarded as venerable and, perhaps, inspired teachers ; subsequently, they descended to the level of learned and instructive friends ; but in modern days, they are deemed culprits more than benefactors."

This thought is surely the one which came, some twenty years later, to light in Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-worship. And

do we not seem to hear Mr. Arnold himself speaking, when we read such sentences as these ?—

" I never have discovered the wrong use of a thing, without having

previously discovered the right use of it It is always unwise to judge of anything by its defects If a man show me beauties, I thank him for his information The great end of the body politic appears to be to humanise, and assist in the pro- gressiveness of, the animal man."

Evidently, we must go to a far greater critic than Joubert, in order to find Coleridge a peer. Here is a passage which may be compared to the famous one in the Wanderjahre, where Goethe speaks of the poet :—

" 0, few have there been among critics who have followed with the eye of the imagination the imperishable yet ever wandering spirit of poetry through its various metempsychoses, and consequent metamorphoses ; or who have rejoiced in the light of clear per- ception at beholding with each new birth, with each rare avatar, the human race frame to itself a new body, by assimilating materials of nourishment out of its new circumstances, and work for itself new organs of power appropriate to the new sphere of its motion and activity."

Indeed, Coleridge may most fitly be compared to Goethe, es- pecially in the exact prevision of truths afterwards established by science. Clearly, too, the very principle which led Goethe to his famous discoveries in botany and biology is the one here divined and applied by Coleridge to literature and art. And Coleridge grasps the workings of the principle as com- pletely as ever Goethe did ; he makes use of the very words which Darwin and Spencer adopted and popularised forty years later. Noting that language, the body of thought, must de- velop as does the spirit, he compares the Romance tongue with the Latin, as being,-

" Less perfect in simplicity and relation,—the privileges of a lan- guage formed by the mere attraction of homogeneous parts ; but yet more rich, more expressive and various, as one formed by more obscure affinities out of a chaos of apparently heterogeneous atoms. As more than a metaphor, as an analogy of this, I have named the true, genuine, modern poetry the Romantic ; and the works of Shak- spere are romantic poetry, revealing itself in the drama."

If the words we have italicised are carefully considered, the reader will acknowledge that intuition has here forestalled scientific induction. From this passage, too, it is easy to see how Coleridge came to the true explanation of the differences which sunder the Greek from the modern drama. Although Leasing and Goethe had here forestalled him in part, yet Coleridge was the first to demonstrate conclusively that the unities of place and time ought to be regarded partly as limitations born of the con- ditions of the Sophoclean stage, partly as mere consequences of the greater simplicity of the Greek mind. How far Coleridge, in this, outran the men of his time may be seen from the fact that still later Hazlitt speaks of Shakespeare's violations of these rules as "blemishes." Finally, Coleridge goes on to notice,—

" The fundamental characteristics which contra-distinguish the ancient literature from the modern generally, but which more es- pecially appear in the tragic drama. The ancient was allied to statuary, the modern refers to painting. In the first, there is a pre- dominance of rhythm and melody; in the second, of harmony and counterpoint."

Now, this analogy is as a steady light thrown from above which illumines the whole subject. The arts themselves stand in hierarchical order ; in them, too, an advance can be seen from the simple to the complex, from the homogeneous to the hetero- geneous. From the sculpture of the Greeks, through Italian painting and German music, to the poetry of England, there is a continuous progression. Coleridge did not apply the principle to its full extent, yet it is surely enough for one man's measure merely to have understood and followed it forty years before it was formulated. Because of this, Coleridge must share with Goethe the honour of having founded our modern literary criticism. Nor is Goethe, as a critic, always and altogether the superior of Coleridge. Even Goethe could scarcely have written this— "In Shakspere all the elements of womanhood are holy, and there is the sweet, yet dignified, feeling of all that continuates society, as sense of ancestry, and of sex, with a purity unassailable by sophistry, because it rests, not in the analytic processes, but in that sane equi. poise of the faculties, daring which the feelings are representative of all past experience, not of the individual only, but of all those by whom she has been educated, and their predecessors, even up to the first mother that lived."

Nor, in truth, could Coleridge have written it without Shake- speare, for much of the beauty of the passage is derived directly from the creator of Imogen. Still, as this source was as free to Goethe as to Coleridge, it must be acknowledged that a certain coarseness of nature fatally barred the great German from ever realising the emotion, the purity of which lifts this thought as with wings.

As might then be anticipated, Coleridge stands as an in- terpreter of Shakespeare without a rival; whatever he says about him is weighty, even after the lapse of three-quarters of a century. For instance, can anything be truer than this P-

" The styles of Massiuger's plays, and the 'Samson Agonistes,' are the two extremes of the arc within which the diction of dramatic poetry may oscillate. Shakspere in his great plays is the mid-point. In the Samson Agonistes,' colloquial language is left at the greatest distance; in Massinger the style is differenced, but differenced in the smallest degree possible, from animated conversation by the vein of poetry."

Coleridge was the first to show that Shakespeare's puns and conceits are often not only justifiable, but admirable, and here he quotes Shakespeare with effect in his own defence. When old Gaunt speaks of himself as "gaunt in being old," "gaunt for the grave," &c., and Richard asks,-

" Can sick men play so nicely with their names ?"

Gaunt answers,-

" No, misery makes sport to mock itself."

'Coleridge's comments upon the plays themselves are of similar value; a few extracts better commend his wisdom than can much praise. He speaks of Romeo and Juliet as the tragedy wherein are to be found " all the crude materials of future excellence," that is, " in Romeo and Juliet the passion of love is drawn truly, as well as beautifully, but the persons are not individualised." " Capulet and Montague talk a language only belonging to the poet," for they speak as if they were in the first blush of youth. And Coleridge deduces from this a truth of widest application. "True genius begins by generalising and condensing; it ends in realising and ex- panding."

Coleridge speaks of The Tempest as " an almost miraculous drama." " Calibau is a sort of creature of the earth, as Ariel is a sort of creature of the air." Yet even Caliban " is raised far above contempt ; he uses highly poetical images, displays no mean passion, beyond animal passion, and repugnance to command." In Lear, Coleridge notes that " old age is itself a character; any addition of individuality would have been un- necessary and painful," for "thus Lear becomes the open and ample playground of Nature's passions." The italics are ours.

We must confess that of all Coleridge's expositions, we like that one the least which has met with the most general com- mendation. We refer to his reading of the character of Hamlet. It is so unworthy of his genius that the present writer could find it in his heart to wish that Coleridge had in reality borrowed or stolen it from Schlegel, as has been falsely asserted, anything rather than have originated it. According to Coleridge, "Hamlet vacillates from sensibility and procrasti- nates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve." Now, in the first two acts of the play, Hamlet's inactivity is due to the fact that he does not fully trust the Ghost, witness his question (Act i., scene v.), " And shall I couple Hell P" In the last scene of the second act he again expresses the suspicion that the spirit that he has seen " may be the Devil," which abuses him to damn him, and decides,

"I'll have grounds "More relative than this,—the play's the thing," dro.

Further, Hamlet does not know whether his mother was privy to the murder or no, and this question affects the King's

guilt, and consequently his punishment. Coleridge pro- fesses himself unable to determine this, and accuses Shake- speare of leaving us in " unpleasant perplexity." Yet no

one can read Act iii., Scene 4, where the Queen meets the charge of murder first with blank amazement and then with utter indignation, without seeing (as Hamlet shows he does by changing the accusation) that the Queen is free of all blood- guiltiness. That is, throughout three acts Hamlet's inactivity is motived by the circumstances in which he is placed, and these circumstances are so complex, so calculated to suggest anxious doubts, that they might well give the most hasty temper pause.

In fine, Hamlet's character is so subtly compounded (for no one can ascribe the rash murder of Polonius to "an overbalance of the contemplative faculty ") that we cannot accept Coleridge's exposition of it as sufficient. We think that in Hamlet, Shake- speare has given us more of himself than in any other of his characters, and we do not believe that Hamlet can be read in the light of any one infirmity.

It may be asked how Shakespeare comes out of this criticism. Coleridge accuses him of only two faults : the passage of the

Porter in Macbeth (Act ii., scene 2) he says is " disgusting " and " low," and the blinding of Gloster in Lear (Act iii., scene 7) cannot but be wrong. Now, that the pain and horror in Lear pass the bounds of art, Shakespeare himself seems to admit :-

" The weight of this sad time we must obey;

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say."

And this explanation goes far to excuse the fault, if it cannot entirely justify it. The passage of the Porter, however, was

doubtless written for the gallery, and for the gallery of a time coarser and more brutal than our own. Shakespeare's words, nevertheless, about himself are found true after nearly three centuries, and because they are true they constitute at once the best description of him and the highest eulogy of his genius that has ever been penned Has he not himself said :—

" I am that I am, and they that level At my abuses, reckon up their own."