Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 047.djvu/299

1840.]

Rh late years the works of Mr Coleridge, both in prose and verse, have been continually gaining upon public notice, and now enjoy, we believe, a pretty extensive popularity. Most of them have been reprinted since his death, and several volumes of posthumous miscellanies have been added to their number. Their celebrity being thus established, and on the daily increase, we think it not improbable that his Biographia Literaria (one of his principal works, and one which has been long out of print) may likewise be re-issued before long by some enterprising bookseller. But at the same time we think it would be highly discreditable to the literature of the country, if any reprint of that work were allowed to go abroad, without embodying some accurate notice and admission of the very large and unacknowledged appropriations it contains from the writings of the great German philosopher Schelling. Partly, therefore, for the sake of any future editor or publisher who may choose to profit by our animadversions, and partly because we think the case can hardly fail to be a matter of some interest to the general reader, as disclosing a curious page in the history of literature, we propose to do our best to supply the requisite information on this subject—tracing Coleridge's plagiarisms to their true sources, fixing their precise amount, or nearly so, (as far, at least, as Schelling is concerned,) and arguing the whole question on its broadest grounds, both literary and moral.

We are aware that this subject is not now broached for the first time. It was mooted some years ago in Tait's Magazine, (September 1834,) and in the British Magazine, (January 1835,) Mr De Quincy appearing in the former for the prosecution, and Mr J. C. Hare in the latter for the defence. But on both sides the case was very badly conducted; indeed we may say it was altogether bungled. Neither party appears to have possessed a competent knowledge of the facts; and the question was not fairly and fully argued on the grounds either of its condemning or justifying circumstances. The Opium-Eater was evidently ignorant of the extent to which Coleridge's plagiarisms from Schelling had been carried; and therefore, with all his willingness, he was not in a position to press the charge very far or very successfully. But besides this, even in the one great instance in which he convicts Coleridge, losing sight of his usual extreme accuracy, he not only does not lead us to the right work of Schelling from which the "borrowed plumes" are taken; but he refers us to a work which, under the tide he gives it, is not to be found in the list of the German philosopher's publications. As the source of Coleridge's plagiarisms, his accuser refers the inquisitive reader to a work which never existed! This, it must be admitted, is not a very