Part I

. Chap. IV. 5, 15.

COLERIDGE’S LITERARY LIFE

This review, though claimed for Jeffrey by Lord Cockburn, and marked doubtful by Mr. Ireland, is certainly Hazlitt’s. Nearly the whole of the long passage on Burke (pp. 150–154 of the present volume), after doing duty in _The Champion_ (Oct. 5, 1817), was published by Hazlitt in _Political Essays_ as the first of two ‘Characters of Mr. Burke’ which appeared in that volume. See vol. III. pp. 250–253.

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135. ‘_It will be found_,’ _etc._ Chap. I.

‘_At school_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._

138. _Bowles’s Sonnets._ William Lisle Bowles’s (1762–1850) famous _Fourteen Sonnets written chiefly on Picturesque Spots during a Journey_ appeared anonymously in 1789. More sonnets were added in later editions. The sonnets of Thomas Warton (1728–1790) are frequently quoted by Hazlitt, and were eulogised by him in his _Lectures on the English Poets_ (see vol. V. pp. 120–1). See Chap. I. of _Biographia Literaria_ for Coleridge’s praise of Bowles.

138. _Jacob Behmen._ Jakob Boehme (1575–1624), the mystic.

The _Morning Post._ Coleridge’s contributions to _The Morning Post_ (chiefly during 1800) were reprinted in _Essays on his own Times_ (1850).

139. ‘_It is not, however_,’ _etc._ Note at the end of Chap. III.

_The Cannings, the Giffords, and the Freres._ William Gifford (1756–1826) was the editor of the _Anti-Jacobin_ (1797–8), and George Canning (1770–1827) and _John Hookham Frere_ (1769–1846) were the chief contributors. See an article in _The Athenæum_ for May 31, 1890, on ‘Coleridge and _The Anti-Jacobin_.’

140. ‘_Publicly_,’ _etc._ _Biographia Literaria_, Chap. III.

142. ‘_Full of wise saws_,’ _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc. 7.

‘_It has been hinted_,’ _etc._ _Biographia Literaria_, Chap. IV.

143. _Mr. C. thinks fit, etc._ Chap. V.

144. _A series of citations._ Hazlitt probably refers to an article in _The Examiner_ for March 31, 1816, which consists to a large extent of quotations from Hobbes’s _Leviathan_, and which is referred to in a later volume of the present edition; but he was never tired of proclaiming the greatness and originality of Hobbes. Cf. the essay or lecture ‘On the writings of Hobbes,’ published in _Literary Remains_.

145. ‘_Sound book-learnedness._’ _A Lay Sermon_ (Bohn), p. 327.

‘_Wander down_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, XI. 282–284.

‘_Towards the close_,’ _etc._ Chap. X.

150. ‘_As our very sign-boards_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._

‘_Let the scholar_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._

_It is not without reluctance, etc._ The greater part of this character of Burke, down to the foot of p. 154, was repeated in _Political Essays_. See vol. III. pp. 250 _et seq._, and notes.

155. _Any account of it at all._ At this point in The Edinburgh Review a long note, signed F. J., is appended, in which Jeffrey replies to what he describes as ‘averments of a personal and injurious nature’ against the _Edinburgh Review_. A great part of the note relates to Coleridge’s attack on Jeffrey in Chap. III. of the _Biographia Literaria_ (see Bohn’s edition, p. 25 note), but part of it concerns Hazlitt. Coleridge had said (Chap. xxiv.): ‘In the _Edinburgh Review_ it [_Christabel_] was assailed with a malignity and a personal hatred that ought to have injured only the work in which such a tirade was suffered to appear: and this review was generally attributed (whether rightly or no I know not) to a man, who both in my presence and in my absence has repeatedly pronounced it the finest poem in the language.’ Jeffrey refers to this passage, and states that when he visited Coleridge at Keswick, there was some talk about the poem. ‘We spoke,’ he says, ‘of _Christabel_, and I advised him to publish it; but I did not say it was either the finest poem of the kind, or a fine poem at all; and I am sure of this, for the best of all reasons, that at this time, and indeed till after it was published, I never saw or heard more than four or five lines of it, which my friend Mr. Scott once repeated to me. That eminent person, indeed, spoke favourably of it; and I rather think I told Mr. C. that I had heard him say, that it was to it he was indebted for the first idea of that romantic narrative in irregular verse, which he afterwards exemplified in his _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, and other works. In these circumstances, I felt a natural curiosity to see this great original; and I can sincerely say, that no admirer of Mr. C. could be more disappointed or astonished than I was, when it did make its appearance. I did not review it.’ With regard to _A Lay Sermon_, Coleridge had said (_Biographia Literaria_, chap. xxiv.): ‘A long delay occurred between its first annunciation and its appearance; it was reviewed, therefore, by anticipation with a malignity so avowedly and exclusively personal as is, I believe, unprecedented even in the present contempt of all common humanity that disgraces and endangers the liberty of the press. After its appearance, the author of this lampoon was chosen to review it in the _Edinburgh Review_: and under the single condition, that he should have written what he himself really thought, and have criticised the work as he would have done had its author been indifferent to him, I should have chosen that man myself, both from the vigour and the originality of his mind, and from his particular acuteness in speculative reasoning, before all others. I remembered Catullus’s lines [lxxiii.]:

“Desine de quoquam quicquam bene velle mereri, Aut aliquem fieri posse putare pium. Omnia sunt ingrata: nihil fecisse benigne est: Immo, etiam taedet, taedet obestque magis. Ut mihi, quem nemo gravius nec acerbius urget Quam modo qui me unum atque unicum amicum habuit.”

But I can truly say, that the grief with which I read this rhapsody of predetermined insult had the rhapsodist himself for its whole and sole object: and that the indignant contempt which it excited in me, was as exclusively confined to his employer and suborner.’ Coleridge here refers to the first of the two reviews of _A Lay Sermon_, contributed by Hazlitt to _The Examiner_ in 1816. See _Political Essays_, vol. III. pp. 138–142. Jeffrey’s reply is as follows: ‘As to the review of the _Lay Sermon_, I have only to say, in one word, that I never employed or suborned any body to abuse or extol it or any other publication. I do not so much as know or conjecture what Mr. C. alludes to as a malignant lampoon or review by anticipation, which he says had previously appeared somewhere else. I never saw nor heard of any such publication. Nay, I was not even aware of the existence of the _Lay Sermon_ itself, when a review of it was offered me by a gentleman in whose judgment and talents I had great confidence, but whom I certainly never suspected, and do not suspect at this moment, of having any personal or partial feelings of any kind towards its author. I therefore accepted his offer, and printed his review, with some retrenchments and verbal alterations, just as I was setting off, in a great hurry, for London, on professional business, in January last.’

156. ‘_The dew of Castalie._’ Cf. ‘With verses, dipt in deaw of Castalie.’ Spenser, _The Ruines of Time_, l. 431.

‘_Sky-tinctured._’ _Paradise Lost_, V. 285.

‘_Thoughts that voluntary move_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._, III. 37–38.

157. ‘_The golden cadences of poesy._’ _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, Act IV. Sc. 2.

‘_Poets_ [lovers and madmen] _have such seething brains_.’ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act V. Sc. 1.

_With Plato._ _The Republic_,