The Press. — London, England, 1858-06-26 00:00:00

608 are leer calculated to convey clear ideas of what they profess to portray than the soberer volumes of Dr. Gilly. But Dr. Wylie, in this age of tourists, is nght in re-directing public attention to a district so well worthy of it ; and his volume, though not without some sins of taste, will doubtless prove a useful handbook to the Valleys, and bring the requisite historical reminiscences to bear upon the spots where the ordinary traveller is most likely to require them. EWE Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge. Edited by Thomas Allsop, Second Edition. London : Groombridge and Sons. Tins book is curious, not only on account of the recently-acquired notoriety of its editor, but as a specimen of the peculiar influence exerted by Coleridge upon hie disciples. That influence was of a very various character. It varied according to the disposition of the disciple. There are some who owe to Coleridge their manner of thinking and philosophizing ; others received from:hira the artistic and poetic spirit; others inherited his theologl ; others caught his taste in' the accurate discrimination of words. Among 'writers now living, Dean Trench may be said to represent his philological, and Mr. Maurice his theological aspect ; the Laureate would probably acknowledge that he owes to him much of the melody and music of his poetical style ; and the whole ochool of Idealists in England confess their thobligaticas to him. The gift, however, which Apo post characteristic of Coleridge was diffe mid *om all these, and far less transferable. The prodigious abundance and readiness of his eloquence, which astonished all who encountered him, even to his landlord in Newgate-market, cannot easily be reproduced in a disciple. There are some, however, of his followers who betray their connection with him chiefly in their style. Of these Mr. de Quincey is perhaps the best known. His own daughter and nephew, too, belong to this class; and in this class, also, Mr. Allsop is to be placed. Whatever the merits of this style may be, it is not one which a wise man will choose for a model. There are very few subjects which can be advantageously treated in it, and even in Coleridge's own works it has almost as many faults as merits. It reflects all the infirmities as well as all the excellences of Coleridge's own character. Its merits, its strenglie neatness, and splendour, are obvious at first sight. But Cole ridge passed almost his whole life in pouring forth metaphysical declamations. Now a meta physical declamation is an anomalous, almost a self-contradictory, phrase. It seems clear that in such a conjunction either the declamation or sustain damage. metaphysics lost man may be ever lived, and perfect mastery able to expound accurately in con- It is true, and of the course did not regard and poetry as philosophic insight, that the Intel be joined with wing, and that the is as necessary as the lenient of the understanding to the percep ,of spiritual truth. Still philosophy, like everything else which requires clearness and preFsion, can never be properly conveyed in nod and brilliant orations. The orderly pro , ef demonstration is deranged by the fervour the orator; much must be taken for granted; !Important steps of reasoning must be thrown Attu) parentheses; the hearer has no time to /( pe'tgh one proposition. before another is presented Wm. In short, it seems unnecessary to en ) upo Ise hod u , and i i h t e is e so l m tre e m wh e at in si e n u g u niveniar tchnacte one of who crel to follow Plato was in this respect playing the Sophist, and rendering him self obnoxious, by indulging in more than the f Aeepox.y:e of Gorgias, to those biting sarcasms against fluent metaphysicians which occur in every pageof Plato. But much as philosophy may suffer from this mode of treatment, the philosopher suffers still e s . more. In one of the letters contained in this volume Coleridge says :—" Eloquence itself—l "speak of it As habitual and at call—too often is, " and is alwAys like to engender, a species of his " trionism. He goes on to explain by what means he himself has been preserved, as he trusts, from falling into this fault. We cannot refrain from regarding this as an example of self-ignorance. We think that no one could read this volume or any of Coleridge's works without feeling that his prodigious command of language and of plausible subtleties betrayed him into exaggeration and ostentation. Scarcely a sentence in the most familiar letter but con tains some feat of analysis or verbal discrimina tion ; he cannot convey to a friend the common assurances of goodwill and esteem without a rhapsody of transcendental self-devotion. It is impossible not to suspect that the skill with which he produced these philosophical and poetical extravagances was not acquired by habit, but that the habit sprang from a consciousness of the skill. His eloquence did really, we think, betray him into a species of histrionism. This would be pardonable enough, considering the temptation, if it applied only to his conversa tion and his letters. Who is there among us who, conscious of such unrivalled facility in brilliant composition, could warrant himself never to overstep the bounds of sincerity in the use of it? It is the most universal of infirmities to be wanton in the use of power, and the triumph of self-restraint is to have a giant's strength and yet not to use it like a giant. The misfortune is that the same fault which infects the letters and the Table-talk in fects the philosophical treatises of Coleridge. For, indeed, Coleridge most religiously fol lowed Plato's rule, that the philosopher should make conversation his business and the writing of books his recreation. He deviated, how ever, from it in one point, which Plato would have considered all-important, by conversing, not in dialogue, but in monologue. The result is that the reader of Coleridge's books has to make just as much allowance and to put up with just as many deficiencies and omissions as he would have done if he had been listening to Coleridge's conversations. And in the conversa tion of Coleridge there would be more inaccuracy and omission than in that of other men, because, through his practice of monopolizing the con versation, he rendered it impossible for his hearers to pnt him in mind of his omissions, and Frew more inaccurate than he might have been if he had been accustomed to listen to the voice of criticism. The result of this error to Coleridge himself has been that a man who has perhaps never had his equal in England in the union of philosophical with poetical genius, and who might assuredly have produced works deserving to live for ever, is now, like Dr. Johnson, one whose great qualities we in a great degree take on trust from those who had the good fortune to see and hear him. The result has been as bad to those of his disciples who have endeavoured to imitate his style. The blemishes of this style, the excessive and fatiguing condensation of thought, the dis phiportion between assertion and proof, the grandiloquence, were far more pardonable in Coleridge than they can be in his disciples, Where he made assertions without proving them, the reader might allow him some credit for being able to prove them ; when he perplexed the reader with unnecessary parenthetical subtleties, there was a fair probability that these subtleties, however unnecessary, might be true or at the least worthy of attention ; when his style seemed to rise out of proportion to the subject, some thing might be excused to the restless fervour of a poet's imagination. But his followers have not earned the right to any such forbearance ; and when '6O assume the dignity and philosophic pretensinn of his style, his resounding periods and ambitious imagery, the result is often, as might be expected, mere bombast; when they crowd their pages with subtle distinctions, they become merely pedantic; and when' they treat the most thorny philosophical controversies with his careless familiarity, they only show them selves ostentatious and conceited. The most distinguished of this class, as we 'lure 'said, is !Ir. De Quincey, a man of m*ny gifts, and capable, if he had chosen to be himself, of doing great things, but in fact the author of nothing that is likely to endure, because he chose to be a Coleridge in tpiniatine. Who can refntin from smiling at the - hollow bombast and affectation of uht many passages in his recollecti ons o f hi s own childhood ii P Mr. Asop is another member o f this class.He is afflicted with the mania of believing him self a sage of the first class, and, havin g caught his master's phrases and Insist of his master's fluency, he takes occasion by way of comment upon the poet's letters to introduce long-winded discussions upon various subjects, and sometimes upon no very definite subject at all. This ill judged loquacity seriously diminishes the enter tainment which the book might otherwise afford. Coleridge's letters are hard morsels in them selves; they must be read with close attention if they are read at all, and, even if carefully read, they suggest so much and prove so little that the reader feels that of doubtful and questionable matter he gets more than he can carry, and of certain, demonstrated truth scarcely anything at all. This being the case with the letters, the editorial comments should certainly have been plain, sensible, unpretending. The reader, jaded and cloyed with the unceasing torrent of philo sophical declamation, falls back for relief upon the editor, and gets no relief. He too is declaim ing—not half so well, to be sure, but quite as copiously, quite as vaguely, and with quite as much satisfaction to himself. Overwrought cleverness pervades the book ; no plain sense, no kindly platitudes anywhere; page after page is profound, sagacious, eloquent, until stupidity itself would be welcome for variety's sake. It was written too soon, we suppose, after Cole ridge's death for any one to take a favourable view of his character without overrating his merit and being unduly influenced. But there is certainly still room, and perhaps the time has now come, for a cautious and fair estimate and biography of one who, of all the literary men whose genius was kindled by the great revolu tionary convulsion which closed the eighteenth century, was,perina and is now the most Infille*M4flq R oot 'Stin rtOrittr Antim aronian; kr Thelisseithos. By the Rev. F. "Metcalfe, Author of "The Oxonian in Nor way." London: Hurst and Illackett. Iv has sometimes been said that the reader's satisfaction with an author is likely to be in an inverse ratio to the author's satisfaction with himself. However true in the graver .44iiitt ments of literature, the dictum does not seam ap plicable to works of a lighter, and intended to be of a more exclusively amusing, purpppe. Here, when not carried into egotism, a ckfierful self complacency. is not only . tolerable in a writer, but even desirable, as it is calculated to produce a facility and buoyancy of style which is often his chief recommendation. Whether Mr. Met calfe has hit this golden mean, or has exceeded it, is a point on which people probably will differ. As far as we ourselves are concerned, we can only say that a certain brisk self-assurance which is present to us in every page of these volumes is not exhibited offensively. In default of any very exciting'adventures or very interesting people, it contributes to make the book readable. When united, as it sometimes is, with real native uaintness, it provokes friendly laughter. If M.r. etcalfe occasionally struts, he is never stiff; and if now and then silly, is never dull. If the ave remarks seem somewhat less favourable *wow observations on Mr. Met calfe's previous work, we can only assure him that our opinion of his literary ability has not really changed. But he has, unfortunately for himself, abandoned, to a great extent, those special subjects which constituted the great attraction of " The Oxonian in Norway." We augured badly for our future entertainment when we read in the fifth page of the first volume that " on this occasion he should bestow less attention " on the wild sports than on other matters., . No doubt the sportsman " whose game is man" has a Liner theme for his pen than the pursuer of ptarmigan and salmon. But in either case everything depends upon the hunting-ground. And it seems to us that the country over which Mr. Metcalfe travelled, though supplying him with racy bits of character here and the re, must be better adapted tbr the labours of the fisher man than the social philosopher. The q uestion is, whether in a region so thinly people d 1:17 the human race, and so abounding in all) varieties of the metaphysics could not but si Probably both did, but the mi more than the declamation. A the greatest philosopher that e' have at the same time the most p of language, but he will never be philosophy satisfactorily or accu tinuous impassioned harangues. it forms the best justification I which Coleridge adopted, that he the emotions excited by rhetoric disturbing the clearness of philc but, on the contrary, maintained lect cannot see clearly unless it 1 the heart in the act of perceiving excitement of the feelings is as excitement of the understanding tion of spiritual truth. Still p 7