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 COLERIDGE 51 young men to the feet of the sage of Highgate. With an infirm will, he could not overcome the irksomeness of writing out his dreamy idealities and preternatural subtleties of thought ; but the gentle excitement of a social circle loosed his powers, and he uttered his lightest fancies and most comprehensive spec- ulations without impediment. His discourse can be judged now only by the effect which it is recorded to have produced upon the listeners, and in his happiest moods it must have been magnificent and most impressive. The poems of Coleridge exhibit his manifold powers. They comprise tragedy, songs of love, strains of patriotism, and wild, shadowy tales of super- stition; they are marked sometimes by a mysterious and wondrous imaginative witch- ery, sometimes by philosophical thought and retrospection ; and their style is according to the subject, either most melodious and flowing, or severe and stately. Several of them are fragmentary, but have no other imperfection, all that there is of them being faultless. The "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the "Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouny," and the unfinished story of "Christabel," are unsurpassed in any language in vivid imagery, solemn intensity of feeling, and skilful modu- lation of verse. No other poems could so justly be termed purely, absolutely imagina- tive. The musical versification of " Christabel " delighted Byron and Scott, and was imitated by them both ; it was the acknowledged model of the metre of the " Lay of the Last Min- strel." His translation of Schiller's " Wallen- stein " is equally remarkable. His tragedy of " Remorse " was brought out with great success at Drury Lane in 1813, but exhibits scenery and sentiment rather than character, and has not since been revived. The prose writings of Coleridge embrace theology, metaphysical and political philosophy, and literary criticism. His philosophical, more than his poetical works, are marked by a splendid incompleteness, and much as they have served to stimulate and direct the minds of others, they do not contain a fully developed system. He was born a Platonist, and he could not rest content, with Locke, to seek all knowledge in phenomena, or with Paley, to seek all good in happiness. His familiarity with the philosophy of Ger- many, which he first introduced to the notice of British scholars, supplied to him more spirit- ual theories. Above the understanding which generalizes from the data of perception, and gathers laws from experience, he enthroned the reason which seizes immediately upon universal and necessary truths, and whose intuitions are more certain than sensible phenomena, and more authoritative than the promptings to happiness. It is the clearness and earnestness with which Coleridge has illustrated this truth that has given to his name its philosophical significance, and made him the prompter of many English and American divines and thinkers. He also defended enthusiastically but not clearly the self-determining power of the human will. Coleridge's critical pieces need only completeness to have been alone sufficient to establish his fame. His remarks upon numerous authors and passages scattered upon the margins of books were such as to make his friends always eager to lend him their books for his reading. His review of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, in the "Biographia Literaria," is one of the most philosophical pieces of criticism in the language; and his lectures upon Shakespeare retain their place notwithstanding the many important works on that author which have more recently been published. The prose style of Coleridge is not always marked by that immaculate taste which distinguishes his poems, but is occasionally dis- figured by obscurities and prolixities. More impprtant than the works which he executed are those which he planned. The life of Les- sing, the dream of his German residence, was never really commenced. It was one of his later long-cherished schemes to compose a work of colossal proportions which should embrace the whole range of spiritual philoso- phy, show Christianity to be the only revela- tion of permanent and universal validity, unite the insulated fragments of truth, and reduce all knowledge into harmony. He also con- ceived an epic poem on the destruction of Jerusalem, a subject which would interest all Christendom as the siege of Troy interested Greece. His glowing conceptions and his am- bition to achieve some great work, joined to that infirmity of will which made him recoil from effort, he himself has depicted with great pathos in a poem which he addressed to Words- worth. His life ebbed away hi the contempla- tion of mighty projects, and the legacy which he left to mankind, though a valuable one, was but a fragment from the mine of his genius. The unpublished writings of Coleridge were carefully edited after his death by his nephew Henry Nelson Coleridge, his daughter Sara, and his son Derwent. All his works have been fre- quently republished separately. A collected edition, in nine volumes, with an introductory essay upon his philosophical and theological opinions, edited by the Rev. William T. Shedd, appeared in New York in 1853-'4. It also contains James Marsh's admirable preliminary essay to the "Aids to Reflection."- The best illustrations of his life are found in the "Per- sonal Recollections " of Joseph Cottle, and in the biographies and letters of his associates, Charles Lamb, Wordsworth, and Southey. The " Fragmentary Remains of Sir Humphry Davy," edited by his brother John Davy (Lon- don, 1858), contains letters by Coleridge. COLERIDGE, Sara, the only daughter of Sam- uel Taylor Coleridge, born at Keswick, Dec. 22, 1802, died May 3, 1852. She is described as the inheritor of her father's genius, and her life until her marriage was passed at Keswick in diligent study, in mountain rambles with Wordsworth, and in lending literary assistance