Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

4

March 12. 1810. Sir Francis Burdett made a motion in the House of Commons for the discharge of Mr. Gale Jones, who had been committed to Newgate by a resolution of the House on the 21st of February preceding. Sir Francis afterwards published, in Cobbett's Political Register, of the 24th of the same month of March, a "Letter to his Constituents, denying the power of the House of Commons to imprison the people of England," and he accompanied the letter with an argument in support of his position. On the 27th of March a complaint of breach of privilege, founded on this publication, was made in the House by Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Lethbridge, and after several long debates, a motion that Sir Francis Burdett should be committed to the Tower was made on the 5th of April, 1810, by Sir Robert Salisbury, and carried by a majority of 38.—ED.

5

See this position stated and illustrated in detail in Mr. Coleridge's work, "On the Constitution of the Church and State, according to the Idea of each," p. 21. 2d edit. 1830. Well acquainted as I am with the fact f the comparatively small acceptation which Mr. Coleridge's prose works have ever found in the literary world, and with the reasons, and, what is more, with the causes, of it, I still wonder that this particular treatise has not been more noticed: first, because it is a little book; secondly, because it is, or at least nineteen-twentieths of it are, written in a popular style; and thirdly, because it is the only work, that I know or have ever heard mentioned, that even attempts a solution of the difficulty in which an ingenious enemy of the church of England may easily involve most of its modern defenders in Parliament, or through the press, upon their own principles and admissions. Mr. Coleridge himself prized this little work highly, although he admitted its incompleteness as a composition:—"But I don't care a rush about it," he said to me, "as an author. The saving distinctions are plainly stated in it, and I am sure nothing is wanted to make them tell, but that some kind friend should steal them from their obscure hiding-place, and just tumble them down before the public as his own."—ED.

6

"Try to conceive a man without the ideas of God, eternity, freedom, will, absolute truth; of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite. An animal endowed with a memory of appearances and facts might remain. But the man will have vanished, and you have instead a creature more subtle than any beast of the field, but likewise cursed above every beast of the field; upon the belly must it go, and dust must it eat all the days of its life."—Church and State, p. 54. n.

7

See p. 26. Mr. Coleridge meant in both these passages, that Xenophon had preserved the most of the man Socrates; that he was the best Boswell; and that Socrates, as a persona dialogi, was little more than a poetical phantom in Plato's hands. On the other hand, he says that Plato is more Socratic, that is, more of a philosopher in the Socratic mode of reasoning (Cicero calls the Platonic writings generally, Socratici libri); and Mr. C. also says, that in the metaphysical disquisitions Plato is Pythagorean, meaning, that he worked on the supposed ideal or transcendental principles of the extraordinary founder of the Italian school.

8

Greek: hos eipon, alochoio thilaes en chersin ethaeke paid eon hae d ara min chaeodei dexato cholpo, dachruoen gelasasa.]—Illiad. Z. vi. 482

9

John, ch. i. v. 1, 2.

10

I have preserved this, and several other equivalent remarks, out of a dutiful wish to popularize, by all the honest means in my power, this fundamental distinction; a thorough mastery of which Mr. Coleridge considered necessary to any sound system of psychology; and in the denial or neglect of which, he delighted to point out the source of most of the vulgar errors in philosophy and religion. The distinction itself is implied throughout almost all Mr. C.'s works, whether in verse or prose; but it may be found minutely argued in the "Aids to Reflection," p. 206, &c. 2d edit. 1831.—ED.

11

See Aids to Reflection, p. 180. note.

12

Mr. Coleridge named him, but the name was strange to me, and I have been unable to recover it—ED.

13

Here, at least, the prophecy has been fulfilled. The wisdom of our ancestors, in the reign of King William III., would have been jealous of the daily increase in the numbers of the Romish church in England, of which every attentive observer must be aware. See Sancti Dominici Pallium, in vol. ii. p. 80. of Mr. Coleridge's Poems.-Ed.

14

The Zend, or Zendavesta, is the sacred book ascribed to Zoroaster, or Zerdusht, the founder or reformer of the Magian religion. The modern edition or paraphrase of this work, called the Sadda, written in the Persian of the day, was, I believe, composed about three hundred years ago —Ed.

15

See this point suggested and reasoned with extraordinary subtlety in the third essay (marked C), in the Appendix to the Statesman's Manual, Or first Lay Sermon, p. 19, &c. One beautiful paragraph I will venture to quote:– "Not only may we expect that men of strong religious feelings, but little religious knowledge, will occasionally be tempted to regard such occurrences as supernatural visitations; but it ought not to surprise us if such dreams should sometimes be confirmed by the event, as though they had actually possessed a character of divination. For who shall decide how far a perfect reminiscence of past experiences (of many, perhaps, that had escaped our reflex consciousness at the time)—who shall determine to what extent this reproductive imagination, unsophisticated by the will, and undistracted by intrusions from the senses, may or may not be concentred and sublimed into foresight and presentiment? There would be nothing herein either to foster superstition on the one hand, or to justify contemptuous disbelief on the other. Incredulity is but Credulity seen from behind, bowing and nodding assent to the Habitual and the Fashionable"-ED.

16

2 Kings, iii. 15., and see 1 Sam. x. 5.—ED.

17

This is the story which Mr. Washington Irving has dressed up very prettily in the first volume of his "Tales of a Traveller," pp. 84-119.; professing in his preface that he could not remember whence he had derived the anecdote.—ED.

18

See p. 9. n.—ED.

19

Mr. Coleridge particularly noticed, for its classical air, the 32d stanza of this Canto (the third):—

"A band of children, round a snow-white ram,
There wreathe his venerable horns with flowers,
While, peaceful as if still an unwean'd lamb,
The patriarch of the flock all gently cowers
His sober head, majestically tame,
Or eats from out the palm, or playful lowers
His brow, as if in act to butt, and then
Yielding to their small hands, draws back again."

But Mr. C. said that then, and again, made no rhyme to his ear. Why should not the old form agen be lawful in verse? We wilfully abridge ourselves of the liberty which our great poets achieved and sanctioned for us in innumerable instances.—ED.

20

See Church and State, second part, p. 189.

21

"Enter Lady FALCONBRIDGE and JAMES GURNEY.

BAST. O me! it is my mother:—How now, good lady?
What brings you here to court so hastily?

LADY F. Where is that slave, thy brother? where is he?
That holds in chase mine honour up and down?

BAST. My brother Robert? Old Sir Robert's son?
Colbrand the giant, that same mighty man?
Is it Sir Robert's son that you seek so?

LADY F. Sir Robert's son! Ay, thou unreverend boy,
Sir Robert's son: why scorn'st thou at Sir Robert?
He is Sir Robert's son; and so art thou.

BAST. James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave a while?

GUR. Good leave, good Philip.