MEMORABILIA OF MR. COLERIDGE
The Atlas.][March 22, 1829.
He said of an old cathedral, that it always appeared to him like apetrified religion.
Hearing some one observe that the religious sentiments introduced in Sheridan’sPizarromet with great applause on the stage, he replied, that he thought this a sure sign of the decay of religion; for when people began to patronise it as an amiable theatrical sentiment, they had no longer any real faith in it.
He said of a Mr. H——, a friend of Fox’s, who always put himself forward to interpret the great orator’s sentiments, and almost took the words out of his mouth, that it put him in mind of the steeple of St. Thomas, on Ludgate-hill, which is constantly getting in the way when you wish to see the dome of St. Paul’s.
Seeing a little soiled copy of Thomson’sSeasonslying in the window-seat of an obscure inn on the sea-coast of Somersetshire, he said, ‘Thatis true fame.’
He observed of some friend, that he hadthought himselfout of a handsome face, and into a fine one.
He said of the French, that they received and gave out sensations too quickly, to be a people of imagination. He thought Moliere’s father must have been an Englishman.
According to Mr. Coleridge, common rhetoricians argued by metaphors; Burke reasonedinthem.
He considered acuteness as ashop-boyquality compared with subtlety of mind; and quoted Paine as an example of the first, Berkeley as the perfection of the last.
He extolled Bishop Butler’sSermons at the Rolls’ Chapelas full of thought and sound views of philosophy; and conceived that he had proved the love of piety and virtue to be as natural to the mind of man as the delight it receives from the colour of a rose or the smell of a lily. He spoke of theAnalysisas theological special-pleading.
He had no opinion of Hume, and very idly disputed his originality. He said the whole of his argument on miracles was to be found stated (as an objection) somewhere in Barrow.
He said Thomson was a true poet, but an indolent one. He seldom wrote a good line, but he ‘rewarded resolution’ by following it up with a bad one. Cowper he regarded as the reformer of the Della Cruscan style in poetry, and the founder of the modern school.
Being asked which he thought the greater man, Milton or Shakspeare, he replied that he could hardly venture to pronounce anopinion—that Shakspeare appeared to him to have the strength, the stature of his rival, with infinitely more agility; but that he could not bring himself after all to look upon Shakspeare as any thing more than a beardless stripling, and that if he had ever arrived at man’s estate, he would not have been a man but a monster of intellect.
Being told that Mrs. Wolstonecraft exerted a very great ascendancy over the mind of her husband, he said—‘It was always the case: people of imagination naturally took the lead of people of mere understanding and acquirement.’ This was scarcely doing justice to the author ofCaleb Williams.
He spoke of Mackintosh as deficient in original resources: he was neither the great merchant nor manufacturer of intellectual riches; but the ready warehouseman, who had a large assortment of goods, not properly his own, and who knew where to lay his hand on whatever he wanted. An argument which he had sustained for three hours together with another erudite person on some grand question of philosophy, being boasted of in Coleridge’s hearing as a mighty achievement, the latter bluntly answered—‘Had there been a man of genius among you, he would have settled the point in five minutes.’
Having been introduced to a well-known wit and professed jester, and his own silence being complained of, he said he should no more think of speaking where Mr. —— was present, than of interrupting an actor on the stage.
Mr. Coleridge preferred Salvator Rosa to Claude, therein erring. He however spoke eloquently and feelingly of pictures, where the subject-matter was poetical, and where ‘more was meant than met the eye.’ Thus he described the allegorical picture by Giotto in the cemetery at Pisa, theTriumph of Death, where the rich, the young, and the prosperous, are shrinking in horror and dismay from the grim monster; and the wretched, the cripple, and the beggar, are invoking his friendly aid, both in words and tones worthy of the subject. Mr. Coleridge’s was the only conversation we ever heard in which the ideas seemed set to music—it had the materials of philosophy and the sound of music; or if the thoughts were sometimes poor and worthless, the accompaniment was always fine.
He stated of Henderson, the actor, or some person of whom a very indifferent jest was repeated, that it was the strongest proof of his ability, and of the good things hemust have saidto make his bad ones pass current.
He characterised thePrometheus Boundof Æschylus, as being less a drama than anOde to Justice.
He said that formerly men concealed their vices; but now, in thechange of manners and the laxity of theories, they boasted of those they had not.
He sometimes told a story well, though but rarely. He used to speak with some drollery and unction of his meeting in his tour in Germany with a Lutheran clergyman, who expressed a great curiosity about the fate of Dr. Dodd in a Latin gibberish which he could not at first understand. ‘Doctorem Tott, Doctorem Tott! Infelix homo, collo suspensus!‘—he called out in an agony of suspense, fitting the action to the word, and the idea of the reverend divine just then occurring to Mr. Coleridge’s imagination. The Germans have a strange superstition that Dr. Dodd is still wandering in disguise in the Hartz forest in Germany; and hisPrison Thoughtsare a favourite book with the initiated.
If these remarkable sayings are fewer than the reader might expect, they are all we remember; and we might avail ourselves of the answer which Quevedo puts into the mouth of the door-keeper of Hell, when the poet is surprised to find so few kings in his custody—‘There are all that ever existed!’