Part 22

In the latter part of his life, and for the generation which followed, Coleridge was ranked by many young English churchmen of liberal views as the greatest religious thinker of their time. As Carlyle has told in his _Life of Sterling_, the poet's distinction, in the eyes of the younger churchmen with philosophic interests, lay in his having recovered and preserved his Christian faith after having passed through periods of rationalism and Unitarianism, and faced the full results of German criticism and philosophy. His opinions, however, were at all periods somewhat mutable, and it would be difficult to state them in any form that would hold good for the whole even of his later writings. He was, indeed, too receptive of thought impressions of all kinds to be a consistent systematizer. As a schoolboy, by his own account, he was for a time a Voltairean, on the strength of a perusal of the _Philosophical Dictionary_. At college, as we have seen, he turned Unitarian. From that position he gradually moved towards pantheism, a way of thought to which he had shown remarkable leanings when, as a schoolboy, he discoursed of Neo-Platonism to Charles Lamb, or--if we may trust his recollection--translated the hymns of Synesius. Early in life, too, he met with the doctrines of Jacob Behmen, of whom, in the _Biographia Literaria_, he speaks with affection and gratitude as having given him vital philosophic guidance. Between pantheism and Unitarianism he seems to have balanced till his thirty-fifth year, always tending towards the former in virtue of the recoil from "anthropomorphism" which originally took him to Unitarianism. In 1796, when he named his first child David Hartley, but would not have him baptized, he held by the "Christian materialism" of the writer in question, whom in his _Religious Musings_ he terms "wisest of mortal kind."

When, again, he met Wordsworth in 1797, the two poets freely and sympathetically discussed Spinoza, for whom Coleridge always retained a deep admiration; and when in 1798 he gave up his Unitarian preaching, he named his second child Berkeley, signifying a new allegiance, but still without accepting Christian rites otherwise than passively. Shortly afterwards he went to Germany, where he began to study Kant, and was much captivated by Lessing. In the _Biographia_ he avows that the writings of Kant "more than any other work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding"; yet the gist of his estimate there is that Kant left his system undeveloped, as regards his idea of the Noumenon, for fear of orthodox persecution--a judgment hardly compatible with any assumption of Kant's Christian orthodoxy, which was notoriously inadequate. But after his stay at Malta, Coleridge announced to his friends that he had given up his "Socinianism" (of which ever afterwards he spoke with asperity), professing a return to Christian faith, though still putting on it a mystical construction, as when he told Crabb Robinson that "Jesus Christ was a Platonic philosopher." At this stage he was much in sympathy with the historico-rationalistic criticism of the Old Testament, as carried on in Germany; giving his assent, for instance, to the naturalistic doctrine of Schiller's _Die Sendung Moses_. From about 1810 onwards, however, he openly professed Christian orthodoxy, while privately indicating views which cannot be so described. And even his published speculations were such as to draw from J. H. Newman a protest that they took "a liberty which no Christian can tolerate," and carried him to "conclusions which were often heathen rather than Christian." This would apply to some of his positions concerning the Logos and the Trinity. After giving up Unitarianism he claimed that from the first he had been a Trinitarian on Platonic lines; and some of his latest statements of the doctrine are certainly more pantheistic than Christian.

The explanation seems to be that while on Christian grounds he repeatedly denounced pantheism as being in all its forms equivalent to atheism, he was latterly much swayed by the thought of Schelling in the pantheistic direction which was natural to him. To these conflicting tendencies were probably due his self-contradictions on the problem of original sin and the conflicting claims of feeling and reason. It would seem that, in the extreme spiritual vicissitudes of his life, conscious alternately of personal weakness and of the largest speculative grasp, he at times threw himself entirely on the consolations of evangelical faith, and at others reconstructed the cosmos for himself in terms of Neo-Platonism and the philosophy of Schelling. So great were his variations even in his latter years, that he could speak to his friend Allsop in a highly latitudinarian sense, declaring that in Christianity "the miracles are supererogatory," and that "the law of God and the great principles of the Christian religion would have been the same had Christ never assumed humanity."

From Schelling, whom he praised as having developed Kant where Fichte failed to do so, he borrowed much and often, not only in the metaphysical sections of the _Biographia_ but in his aesthetic lectures, and further in the cosmic speculations of the posthumous _Theory of Life_. On the first score he makes but an equivocal acknowledgment, claiming to have thought on Schelling's lines before reading him; but it has been shown by Hamilton and Ferrier that besides transcribing much from Schelling without avowal he silently appropriated the learning of Maass on philosophical history. In other directions he laid under tribute Herder and Lessing; yet all the while he cast severe imputations of plagiarism upon Hume and others. His own plagiarisms were doubtless facilitated by the physiological effects of opium.

Inasmuch as he finally followed in philosophy the mainly poetical or theosophic movement of Schelling, which satisfied neither the logical needs appealed to by Hegel nor the new demand for naturalistic induction, Coleridge, after arousing a great amount of philosophic interest in his own country in the second quarter of the century, has ceased to "make a school." Thus his significance in intellectual history remains that of a great stimulator. He undoubtedly did much to deepen and liberalize Christian thought in England, his influence being specially marked in the school of F. D. Maurice, and in the lives of men like John Sterling. And even his many borrowings from the German were assimilated with a rare power of development, which bore fruit not only in a widening of the field of English philosophy but in the larger scientific thought of a later generation. (J. M. RO.)

Of Coleridge's four children, two (Hartley and Sara) are separately noticed. His second child, Berkeley, died when a baby. The third, Derwent (1800-1883), a distinguished scholar and author, was master of Helston school, Cornwall (1825-1841), first principal of St Mark's College, Chelsea (1841-1864), and rector of Hanwell (1864-1880); and his daughter Christabel (b. 1843) and son Ernest Hartley (b. 1846) both became well known in the world of letters, the former as a novelist, the latter as a biographer and critic.

After Coleridge's death several of his works were edited by his nephew, Henry Nelson Coleridge, the husband of Sara, the poet's only daughter. In 1847 Sara Coleridge published the _Biographia Literaria_, enriched with annotations and biographical supplement from her own pen. Three volumes of political writings, entitled _Essays on his Own Times_, were also published by Sara Coleridge in 1850. The standard life of Coleridge is that by J. Dykes Campbell (1894); his letters were edited by E. H. Coleridge.

COLERIDGE, SARA (1802-1852), English author, the fourth child and only daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his wife Sarah Fricker of Bristol, was born on the 23rd of December 1802, at Greta Hall, Keswick. Here, after 1803, the Coleridges, Southey and his wife (Mrs Coleridge's sister), and Mrs Lovell (another sister), widow of Robert Lovell, the Quaker poet, all lived together; but Coleridge was often away from home; and "Uncle Southey" was a _pater familias_. The Wordsworths at Grasmere were their neighbours. Wordsworth, in his poem, the _Triad_, has left us a description, or "poetical glorification," as Sara Coleridge calls it, of the three girls--his own daughter Dora, Edith Southey and Sara Coleridge, the "last of the three, though eldest born." Greta Hall was Sara Coleridge's home until her marriage; and the little Lake colony seems to have been her only school. Guided by Southey, and with his ample library at her command, she read by herself the chief Greek and Latin classics, and before she was five-and-twenty had learnt French, German, Italian and Spanish.

In 1822 Sara Coleridge published _Account of the Abipones_, a translation in three large volumes of Dobrizhoffer, undertaken in connexion with Southey's _Tale of Paraguay_, which had been suggested to him by Dobrizhoffer's volumes; and Southey alludes to his niece, the translator (canto iii. stanza 16), where he speaks of the pleasure the old missionary would have felt if

".... he could in Merlin's glass have seen By whom his tomes to speak our tongue were taught."

In less grandiloquent terms, Charles Lamb, writing about the _Tale of Paraguay_ to Southey in 1825, says, "How she Dobrizhoffered it all out, puzzles my slender Latinity to conjecture." In 1825 her second work appeared, a translation from the medieval French of the "Loyal Serviteur," _The Right Joyous and Pleasant History of the Feats, Jests, and Prowesses of the Chevalier Bayard, the Good Knight without Fear and without Reproach: By the Loyal Servant_.

In September 1829 at Crosthwaite church, Keswick, after an engagement of seven years' duration, Sara Coleridge was married to her cousin, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1798-1843), younger son of Captain James Coleridge (1760-1836). He was then a chancery barrister in London. The first eight years of her married life were spent in a little cottage in Hampstead. There four of her children were born, of whom two survived. In 1834 Mrs Coleridge published her _Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children; with some Lessons in Latin in Easy Rhyme_. These were originally written for the instruction of her own children, and became very popular. In 1837 the Coleridges removed to Chester Place, Regent's Park; and in the same year appeared _Phantasmion, a Fairy Tale_, Sara Coleridge's longest original work. The songs in _Phantasmion_ were much admired at the time by Leigh Hunt and other critics. Some of them, such as "Sylvan Stay" and "One Face Alone," are extremely graceful and musical, and the whole fairy tale is noticeable for the beauty of the story and the richness of its language.

In 1843 Henry Coleridge died, leaving to his widow the unfinished task of editing her father's works. To these she added some compositions of her own, among which are the _Essay on Rationalism, with a special application to the Doctrine of Baptismal_ _Regeneration_, appended to Coleridge's _Aids to Reflection_, a Preface to the _Essays on his Own Times, by S. T. Coleridge_, and the Introduction to the _Biographia Literaria_. During the last few years of her life Sara Coleridge was a confirmed invalid. Shortly before she died she amused herself by writing a little autobiography for her daughter. This, which reaches only to her ninth year, was completed by her daughter, and published in 1873, together with some of her letters, under the title _Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge_. The letters show a cultured and highly speculative mind. They contain many apt criticisms of known people and books, and are specially interesting for their allusions to Wordsworth and the Lake Poets. Sara Coleridge died in London on the 3rd of May 1852.

Her son, Herbert Coleridge (1830-1861), won a double first class in classics and mathematics at Oxford in 1852. He was secretary to a committee appointed by the Philological Society to consider the project of a standard English dictionary, a scheme of which the _New English Dictionary_, published by the Clarendon Press, was the ultimate outcome. His personal researches into the subject were contained in his _Glossarial Index to the Printed English Literature of the Thirteenth Century_ (1859).

COLET, JOHN (1467?-1510), English divine and educationist, the eldest son of Sir Henry Colet (lord mayor of London 1486 and 1495), was born in London about 1467. He was educated at St Anthony's school and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took the M.A. degree in 1490. He already held the non-resident rectory of Dennington, Suffolk, and the vicarage of St Dunstan's, Stepney, and was now collated rector of Thurning, Hunts. In 1493 he went to Paris and thence to Italy, studying canon and civil law, patristics and the rudiments of Greek. During his residence abroad he became acquainted with Budaeus (Guillaume Budé) and Erasmus, and with the teaching of Savonarola. On his return to England in 1496 he took orders and settled at Oxford, where he lectured on the epistles of St Paul, replacing the old scholastic method of interpretation by an exegesis more in harmony with the new learning. His methods did much to influence Erasmus, who visited Oxford in 1498, and in after years Erasmus received an annuity from him. Since 1494 he had been prebendary of York, and canon of St Martin le Grand, London. In 1502 he became prebendary of Salisbury, in 1505 prebendary of St Paul's, and immediately afterwards dean of the same cathedral, having previously taken the degree of doctor of divinity. Here he continued his practice of lecturing on the books of the Bible; and he soon afterwards established a perpetual divinity lecture, on three days in each week, in St Paul's church. About the year 1508, having inherited his father's large wealth, Colet formed his plan for the re-foundation of St Paul's school, which he completed in 1512, and endowed with estates of an annual value of £122 and upwards. The celebrated grammarian William Lilly was the first master, and the company of mercers were (in 1510) appointed trustees, the first example of non-clerical management in education. The dean's religious opinions were so much more liberal than those of the contemporary clergy (whose ignorance and corruption he denounced) that they deemed him little better than a heretic; but William Warham, the archbishop, refused to prosecute him. Similarly Henry VIII. held him in high esteem despite his sermons against the French wars. In 1514 he made the Canterbury pilgrimage, and in 1515 preached at Wolsey's installation as cardinal. Colet died of the sweating sickness on the 16th of September 1519. He was buried on the south side of the choir of St Paul's, where a stone was laid over his grave, with no other inscription than his name. Besides the preferments above mentioned, he was rector of the gild of Jesus at St Paul's and chaplain to Henry VIII.

Colet, though never dreaming of a formal breach with the Roman Church, was a keen reformer, who disapproved of auricular confession, and of the celibacy of the clergy. Though no great scholar or writer, he was a powerful force in the England of his day, and helped materially to disintegrate the medieval conditions still obtaining, and to introduce the humanist movement. Among his works, which were first collectively published in 1867-1876, are _Absolutissimus de octo orationis partium constructione libellus_ (Antwerp, 1530), _Rudimenta Grammatices_ (London, 1539), _Daily Devotions_, _Monition to a Godly Life_, _Epistolae ad Erasmum_, and commentaries on different parts of the Bible.

See F. Seebohm, _The Oxford Reformers_; J. H. Lupton, _Life of John Colet_ (1887); art. in _The Times_, July 7, 1909.

COLET, LOUISE (1810-1876), French poet and novelist, was born at Aix of a Provençal family named Revoil, on the 15th of September 1810. In 1835 she came to Paris with her husband Hippolyte Colet (1808-1851), a composer of music and professor of harmony and counterpoint at the conservatoire. In 1836 appeared her _Fleurs du Midi_, a volume of verse, of liberal tendency, followed by _Penserosa_ (1839), a second volume of verse; by _La Jeunesse de Goethe_ (1839), a one-act comedy; by _Les Coeurs brisés_ (1843), a novel; _Les Funerailles de Napoléon_ (1840), a poem, and _La Jeunesse de Mirabeau_ (1841), a novel. Her works were crowned five or six times by the Institute, a distinction which she owed, however, to the influence of Victor Cousin rather than to the quality of her work. The criticisms on her books and on the prizes conferred on her by the Academy exasperated her; and in 1841 Paris was diverted by her attempted reprisals on Alphonse Karr for certain notices in _Les Guêpes_. In 1849 she had to defend an action brought against her by the heirs of Madame Récamier, whose correspondence with Benjamin Constant she had published in the columns of the _Presse_. She produced a host of writings in prose and verse, but she is perhaps best known for her intimate connexion with some of her famous contemporaries, Abel Villemain, Gustave Flaubert and Victor Cousin. Only one of her books is now of interest--_Lui: roman contemporain_ (1859), the novel in which she told the story of her life. She died on the 8th of March 1876.

COLEUS, a genus of herbaceous or shrubby plants belonging to the natural order Labiatae, chiefly natives of the tropics. They are very ornamental plants, the colour of their leaves being exceedingly varied, and often very brilliant. They are of the easiest culture. The cuttings of young shoots should be propagated every year, about March, being planted in thumb pots, in sandy loam, and placed in a close temperature of 70°. After taking root shift into 6-in. pots, using ordinary light loamy compost, containing abundance of leaf-mould and sand, and keeping them near the light. They may be passed on into larger pots as often as required, but 8-in. pots will be large enough for general purposes, as they can be fed with liquid manure. The young spring-struck plants like a warm growing atmosphere, but by midsummer they will bear more air and stand in a greenhouse or conservatory. They should be wintered in a temperature of 60° to 65°. The stopping of the young shoots must be regulated by the consideration whether bushy or pyramidal plants are desired. Some of the varieties are half-hardy and are used for summer bedding.

COLFAX, SCHUYLER (1823-1885), American political leader, vice-president of the United States from 1869 to 1873, was born in New York city on the 23rd of March 1823. His father died before the son's birth, and his mother subsequently married a Mr Matthews. The son attended the public schools of New York until he was ten, and then became a clerk in his step-father's store, removing in 1836 with his mother and step-father to New Carlisle, Indiana. In 1841 he removed to South Bend, where for eight years he was deputy auditor (his step-father being auditor) of St Joseph county; in 1842-1844 he was assistant enrolling clerk of the state senate and senate reporter for the _Indiana State Journal_. In 1845 he established the _St Joseph Valley Register_, which he published for eighteen years and made an influential Whig and later Republican journal. In 1850 he was a member of the state constitutional convention, and in 1854 took an active part in organizing the "Anti-Nebraska men" (later called Republicans) of his state, and was by them sent to Congress. Here he served with distinction from 1855 until 1869, the last six years as speaker of the House. At the close of the Civil War he was a leading member of the radical wing of the Republican party, advocating the disfranchisement of all who had been prominent in the service of the Confederacy, and declaring that "loyalty must govern what loyalty has preserved." In 1868 he had presidential aspirations, and was not without supporters. He accepted, however, the Republican nomination as vice-president on a ticket headed by General Grant, and was elected; but he failed in 1872 to secure renomination. During the political campaign of 1872 he was accused, with other prominent politicians, of being implicated in corrupt transactions with the Crédit Mobilier, and a congressional investigation brought out the fact that he had agreed to take twenty shares from this concern, and had received dividends amounting to $1200. It also leaked out during the investigation that he had received in 1868, as a campaign contribution, a gift of $4000 from a contractor who had supplied the government with envelopes while Colfax was chairman of the post office committee of the House. At the close of his term Colfax returned to private life under a cloud, and during the remainder of his lifetime earned a livelihood by delivering popular lectures. He died at Mankato, Minnesota, on the 13th of January 1885.

See J. C. Hollister's _Life of Schuyler Colfax_ (New York, 1886).

COLIC (from the Gr. [Greek: kolon] or [Greek: kôlon], the large intestine), a term in medicine of very indefinite meaning, used by physicians outside England for any paroxysmal abdominal pain, but generally limited in England to a sudden sharp pain having its origin in the pelvis of the kidney, the ureter, gall-bladder, bile-ducts or intestine. Thus it is customary to speak of renal, biliary or intestinal colic. There is a growing tendency, however, among professional men of to-day, to restrict the use of the word to a pain produced by the contraction of the muscular walls of any of the hollow viscera of which the aperture has become more or less occluded, temporarily or otherwise. For renal and biliary colic, see the articles KIDNEY DISEASES and LIVER, only intestinal colic being treated in this place.

In infants, usually those who are "bottle-fed," colic is exceedingly common, and is shown by the drawing up of their legs, their restlessness and their continuous cries.

Among adults one of the most serious causes is that due to lead-poisoning and known as lead colic (_Syn._ painters' colic, _colica Pictonum_, Devonshire colic), from its having been clearly ascertained to be due to the absorption of lead into the system (see LEAD-POISONING). This disease had been observed and described long before its cause was discovered. Its occurrence in an epidemic form among the inhabitants of Poitou was recorded by François Citois (1572-1652) in 1617, under the title of _Novus et popularis apud Pictones dolor colicus biliosus_. The disease was thereafter termed _colica Pictonum_. It was supposed to be due to the acidity of the native wines, but it was afterwards found to depend on lead contained in them. A similar epidemic broke out in certain parts of Germany in the end of the 17th century, and was at the time believed by various physicians to be caused by the admixture of acid wines with litharge to sweeten them.

About the middle of the 18th century this disease, which had long been known to prevail in Devonshire, was carefully investigated by Sir George Baker (1722-1809), who succeeded in tracing it unmistakably to the contamination of the native beverage, cider, with lead, either accidentally from the leadwork of the vats and other apparatus for preparing the liquor, or from its being sweetened with litharge.

In Germany a similar colic resulting from the absorption of copper occurs, but it is almost unknown in England.