Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge | Page 6

to be fathomed
by a morning visiter. Few persons knew much of it in any thing below
the surface; scarcely three or four ever got to understand it in all its
marvellous completeness. Mere personal familiarity with this
extraordinary man did not put you in possession of him; his pursuits
and aspirations, though in their mighty range presenting points of
contact and sympathy for all, transcended in their ultimate reach the
extremest limits of most men's imaginations. For the last thirty years of
his life, at least, Coleridge was really and truly a philosopher of the
antique cast. He had his esoteric views; and all his prose works from
the "Friend" to the "Church and State" were little more than feelers,
pioneers, disciplinants for the last and complete exposition of them. Of
the art of making hooks he knew little, and cared less; but had he been
as much an adept in it as a modern novelist, he never could have
succeeded in rendering popular or even tolerable, at first, his attempt to
push Locke and Paley from their common throne in England. A little
more working in the trenches might have brought him closer to the
walls with less personal damage; but it is better for Christian
philosophy as it is, though the assailant was sacrificed in the bold and
artless attack. Mr. Coleridge's prose works had so very limited a sale,
that although published in a technical sense, they could scarcely be said
to have ever become publici juris. He did not think them such himself,
with the exception, perhaps, of the "Aids to Reflection," and generally
made a particular remark if he met any person who professed or
showed that he had read the "Friend" or any of his other books. And I
have no doubt that had he lived to complete his great work on
"Philosophy reconciled with Christian Religion," he would without
scruple have used in that work any part or parts of his preliminary
treatises, as their intrinsic fitness required. Hence in every one of his

prose writings there are repetitions, either literal or substantial, of
passages to be found in some others of those writings; and there are
several particular positions and reasonings, which he considered of
vital importance, reiterated in the "Friend," the "Literary Life," the
"Lay Sermons," the "Aids to Reflection," and the "Church and State."
He was always deepening and widening the foundation, and cared not
how often he used the same stone. In thinking passionately of the
principle, he forgot the authorship--and sowed beside many waters, if
peradventure some chance seedling might take root and bear fruit to the
glory of God and the spiritualization of Man.
His mere reading was immense, and the quality and direction of much
of it well considered, almost unique in this age of the world. He had
gone through most of the Fathers, and, I believe, all the Schoolmen of
any eminence; whilst his familiarity with all the more common
departments of literature in every language is notorious. The early age
at which some of these acquisitions were made, and his ardent
self-abandonment in the strange pursuit, might, according to a common
notion, have seemed adverse to increase and maturity of power in after
life: yet it was not so; he lost, indeed, for ever the chance of being a
popular writer; but Lamb's _inspired charity-boy_ of twelve years of
age continued to his dying day, when sixty-two, the eloquent centre of
all companies, and the standard of intellectual greatness to hundreds of
affectionate disciples far and near. Had Coleridge been master of his
genius, and not, alas! mastered by it;-- had he less romantically fought
a single-handed fight against the whole prejudices of his age, nor so
mercilessly racked his fine powers on the problem of a universal
Christian philosophy,--he might have easily won all that a reading
public can give to a favourite, and have left a name--not greater nor
more enduring indeed--but--better known, and more prized, than now it
is, amongst the wise, the gentle, and the good, throughout all ranks of
society. Nevertheless, desultory as his labours, fragmentary as his
productions at present may seem to the cursory observer--my
undoubting belief is, that in the end it will be found that Coleridge did,
in his vocation, the day's work of a giant. He has been melted into the
very heart of the rising literatures of England and America; and the
principles he has taught are the master-light of the moral and
intellectual being of men, who, if they shall fail to save, will assuredly

illustrate and condemn, the age in which they live. As it is, they 'bide
their time.
Coleridge himself--blessings on his gentle memory!--Coleridge was a
frail mortal. He had indeed his peculiar weaknesses as well as his
unique