world by me, the foremost of his admirers! But both of us had sufficient reasons,' &c. As Mr. Dequincey has asserted that all this dialogue took place twenty-eight years ago, I waive all objections to its apparent improbability. And I know nothing about this poor stick' of a German, whose name, by the by, Mr. Dequincey does not mention; but this I know, that I was a little boy at Eton in the fifth form, some six or seven years after this dialogue is said to have taken place, and I can testify, what I am sure I could bring fifty of my contemporaries at a week's notice to corroborate, that this solution of the Pythagorean abstinence from beans was regularly taught us in school, as a matter of course, whenever occasion arose. Whether this great discovery was a peculium of Eton I know not; nor can I precisely say that Dr. Keate, and the present Provost of King's, and the Bishop of Chester, and other assistant masters (for they all had the secret), did not in fact learn it from this German; but I exceedingly doubt their doing so, unless Mr. Dequincey will assure me that there was an English translation of the German book, if the book was in German, existing at that time. If I am asked whence the interpretation came, I must confess my ignorance, except that I very well remember that in Lucian's Vitarum auctio, a favourite school treatise of ours, upon the bidder demanding of Pythagoras, who is put up to sale, why he had an aversion to beans, the philosopher says that he has no such aversion; but that beans are sacred things, first, for a physical reason there mentioned; but principally, because, amongst the Athenians, all elections for offices in the Government took place by means of them. Of the correctness of this interpretation, if the Golden Verses were in fact genuine, which they are not, we might, indeed, well doubt; for there are numerous authorities which would lead us to believe that the practice of voting by beans or ballot was long subsequent to the time of Pythagoras, to whom in all probability the cheirotonia or natural mode of election by a show of hands was alone known. But let that pass. Mr. Coleridge, it seems, at a dinner party of country gentlemen in Somersetshire, mentioned this solution of the difficulty-a solution commonly taught at Eton then, and, as far as I can learn, for fifty years before, and I believe also at Westminster, Winchester, &c.—not to say a word of Oxford or Cambridge-and, because he did not refer to a 'poor stick' of a German, of whom and his book we even now know nothing, the foremost of Coleridge's admirers' publishes the tale as the first hint he received of a singular infirmity besetting Coleridge's mind'! Very sharp, learned, and charitable at least; but let us go on. Mr. Dequincey says, that Coleridge in one of his Odes describes France as Her footsteps insupportably advancing (sic); and his charge is, not that the words were borrowed without marks of quotation, but-that Coleridge 'thought fit positively to deny that he was indebted to Milton' for them. Now, without any view of defending Mr. Coleridge upon such grounds, but simply to show the universal carelessness with which Mr. Dequincey has made all these insinuations, I must observe that there is no such line in Coleridge's Ode; the word 'footsteps' is neither in Samson Agonistes nor the Ode; the line in the first beingWhen insupportably his foot advanced; and in the second, simply, When, insupportably advancing. But this is unimportant. That these latter words were in Milton was a mere fact about which, with a book-shelf at hand, there could of course be no dispute ;-if, therefore, Mr. Coleridge denied that he was indebted to Milton for them, I believe (as who in the world, but this 'foremost of admirers', would not believe ?)—that he meant to deny any distinct consciousness of their Miltonic origin, at the moment of his using them in his Ode. A metaphysician like Mr. Dequincey can explain what every common person, who has read half a dozen standard books in his life, knows -that thoughts, words, and phrases, not our own, rise up day by day, from the depths of the passive memory, and suggest themselves as it were to the hand, without any effort of recollection on our part. Such thoughts are indeed not natural born, but they are denizens at least; and Coleridge could have meant no more. And so it seems that in Shelvocke's Voyage, there is a passage showing how 'Hatley, being a melancholy man, was possessed by a fancy that some long season of foul weather was due to an albatross which had steadily pursued the ship; upon which he shot the bird, but without mending their condition.' This Mr. Dequincey considers the germa prolific one to be sure-of "The Ancient Mariner'; and he says, that upon a question being put to Mr. Coleridge by him on the subject, Mr. Coleridge 'disowned so slight an obligation'. If he did, I firmly believe he had no recollection of it. What Mr. Dequincey says about the Hymn in the vale of Chamouni is just. This glorious composition, of upwards of ninety lines, is truly indebted for many images and some striking expressions to Frederica Brun's little poem. The obligation is so clear that a reference to the original ought certainly to have been given, as Coleridge gave in other instances. Yet, as to any ungenerous wish on the part of Mr. Coleridge to conceal the obligation, I for one totally disbelieve it; the words and images that are taken are taken bodily and without alteration, and not the slightest art is used-and a little would have sufficedto disguise the fact of any community between the two poems. The German is in twenty lines, and I print them here with a very bald English translation, that all my readers may compare them as a curiosity with their glorification in Coleridge : Aus tiefem Schatten des schweigenden Tannenhains Ahndend mein Geist ins Unendliche schwebet! Wer senkte den Pfeiler tief in der Erde Schooss, Wer goss Euch hoch aus des ewigen Winters Reich, PREFACE Wer zeichnet dort dem Morgensterne die Bahn ? Jehovah! Jehovah! Kracht's im berstenden Eis: CHAMOUNI AT SUNRISE. TO KLOPSTOCK. 21 Out of the deep shade of the silent fir-grove trembling I survey thee, mountain head of eternity, dazzling (blinding) summit, from whose height my dimly perceiving spirit floats into the everlasting (or hovers, is suspended in the everlasting). Who sank the pillar deep into the lap of earth, which for centuries past props (or sustains) thy mass? Who up-reared (thürmte, up-towered) high in the vault of ether mighty and bold thy beaming countenance? (umstrahltes, beamed around). Who poured you from on high out of eternal winter's realm, O jagged streams (Zackenströme), downward with thunder noise ? And who commanded loud, with the voice of Omnipotence, 'Here shall the stiffening billows rest' ? Who Who marks out there the path for the morning star? wreathes with blossoms the edge (skirt, border) of eternal frost? To whom, wild Arveiron, does thy wave-commotion (or wavedizziness, hurly-burly, or tumult of waves, Wogentümmel) sound in terrible harmonies ? Jehovah! Jehovah! crashes in the bursting ice; avalanchethunders roll it down the chasm (cleft, ravine). Jehovah! rustles (or murmurs) in the bright tree-tops; it whispers in the purling silver brooks. Mr. Dequincey proceeds thus: All these cases amount to nothing at all as cases of plagiarism, and for that reason expose the more conspicuously that obliquity of feeling which could seek to decline the very slight acknowledgements required. But now I come to a case of real and palpable plagiarism; yet that too of a nature to be quite unaccountable in a man of Coleridge's attainments.' I will leave all the rest to the pen of Julius Hare. 66 'I have been speaking on the supposition that the charges of plagiarism and insincerity brought by the Opium-eater against Coleridge are strictly, accurately, true-that Coleridge is guilty to the full amount and tale of the offences imputed to him. Even in this case it indicates a singular "obliquity of feeling", thus to drag them forth and thrust them forward. But are they true? Doubtless, -seeing that he who thrusts them forward can only do it out of a painful and rankling love of truth and justice; seeing that the voice which comes forth from his ... mask proclaims him to be "the foremost of Coleridge's admirers " Reader, be not deluded and put to sleep by a name; look into the charges; sift them. Among them, the accuser himself acknowledges that there is only one of any moment, the others having been lugged in to swell the counts of the indictment, through a somewhat over-anxious fear-a fear which would have been deemed malicious in any one but the foremost of his admirers-lest any tittle that could tell against Coleridge should be forgotten. One case, however, there is, he assures us, "of real and palpable plagiarism : so, lest some cursed reviewer " eight hundred or a thousand years hence," should make the discovery", he determines to prevent him by forestalling him, and states it in full, as in admirership bound. The dissertation in the Biographia Literaria "on the reciprocal relations of the esse and the cogitare" is asserted to be a translation from an essay in the volume of Schelling's Philosophische Schriften. True: the Opium-eater is indeed mistaken in the name of the book; but that is of little moment, except as an additional mark of audacious carelessness in impeaching a great man's honour. The dissertation, as it stands in the Biographia Literaria, vol. i, pp. 254-61, is a literal translation from the introduction to Schelling's system of Transcendental Idealism; and though the assertion that there is "no attempt in a single instance to appropriate the paper, by developing the arguments, or by diversifying the illustrations", is not quite borne out by the fact, Coleridge's additions are few and slight. But the Opium-eater further says, that "Coleridge's essay is prefaced by a few words, in which, aware of his coincidence with Schelling, he declares his willingness to acknowledge 66 |