In politics, theology, and metaphysics, as in literary criticism, Coleridge represents the reaction against the spirit of the eighteenth century. In youth, as is well known, he was, like his friends Wordsworth and Southey, a "friend of liberty," a sympathizer with the principles of the French Revolution, and a fierce denouncer of the acts of the Pitt and Grenville ministry. In 1794 he joined Southey in the composition of a revolutionary drama on the Fall of Robespierre. In 1795-the year of his and Southey's marriage to the two Misses Fricker, at Bristol-he was projecting with Southey and Lovell a Pantisocracy or community on the banks of the Susquehanna. This visionary scheme was abandoned, chiefly for want of funds, and by 1798, as appears from his ode to France, Coleridge had learned to despair of any good accruing to liberty from the course of the French revolutionists. "The sensual and the dark rebel in vain, of his conversations, taken during the last twelve years of his life (1822-34), by his nephew and son-in-law, Henry Nelson Coleridge. It exhibits, better than any other single volume, the range of his reading and the fullness of his mind. As specimens of the familiar discourse of the most wonderful talker of his time, these notes are of the greatest interest; but to compare them, as has been done, on the one hand with Bacon's Essays, and on the other, with Dr. Johnson's talk, as reported by Boswell, is misleading. Bacon's Essays were condensed, but deliberately arranged written thoughts, not paragraphs caught here and there-" Sunny islets of the blest and the intelligible," as Carlyle describes them, emerging from floods of lawlessly meandering discourse." As to Johnson's talk, its charm is its colloquial character, its aptness in rejoinder, while Coleridge was great in monologue only. By 1799, the year of his return from Germany, his conversion was complete. In after life, indeed, he strenuously denied that he had ever been a Jacobin: he had only been a Pantisocrat. To the political doctrine of the Revolution-the doctrine, viz., that monarchy, class distinctions, a state church, and in fact all the institutions of society, as then constituted, were absurd in theory and corrupt in fact and ought to be utterly abolished and a new beginning made on the abstract principles of universal liberty and equality-to this destructive reform, this root and branch democracy, Coleridge opposed the view that any belief or institution which human society had built up, must have had a rational idea at the bottom of it; must have served at some time a useful end. He proposed to inquire what this idea was the idea, e. g., which underlay monarchy, or aristocracy, or the Church of England. Is there not something in each of these which is useful or, perhaps, even necessary? May we not preserve this useful part, while modifying the institution to suit modern needs? If the institution has wandered away from its original idea, may we not, without destroying it altogether, recall it to that idea, and make it once more a benefit to society, rather than a nuisance and an anachronism? "By Coleridge," says J. S. Mill, men have been led to ask themselves, in regard to any ancient or received opinion, not' Is it true,' but 'What is the meaning of it?' . . . He looked at it from within and endeavored to see it with the eye of a believer in it. . . The very fact that any doctrine had been believed by thoughtful men, and received by whole nations or gen erations of mankind was part of the problem to be solved." Such then was Coleridge's conservatism; and it is evident how far this reverent and enlightened wish to find whatever of good could be found in the ancient beliefs and institutions of England, differed from the stupid bigotry and mere junkerism of the rabble of Tory statesmen and churchmen whose prejudices Coleridge armed with reasons. So far, Coleridge's political doctrines were in line with that whole historical method of inquiry which has been applied, since his time, with such valuable results in the various sciences of man. They were in line with the later writings of Burke, though Burke still called himself a Whig, and Coleridge became, in fact if not in name, a Tory. Indeed the indurating effects of age, and of the long holding of any particular set of doctrines, is sadly apparent in Coleridge's case, when one finds his liberal conservatism gradually giving way to a somewhat intolerant obstructionism; finds him opposing the Reform Bill of 1832, Catholic emancipation, the admission of dissenters to the universities, and the repeal of the corn laws, nay, even apologizing for the burning of Serve"A right to protection," he says, "I can understand; but a right to toleration seems to me a contradiction in terms." † tus. : *Coleridge London and Westminster Review, March, 1840. + Table Talk, 498, and see p. 117 of these selections. The most important source for a knowledge of Coleridge's political opinions is the series of essays entitled The Friend, and especially the first section (Essays I.-XVI.), “On the Principles of Political Knowledge." These were originally issued in the form of a "If it be true as Lord Bacon affirms," wrote J. S. Mill in 1840, "that a knowledge of the speculative opinions of the men between twenty and thirty years of age is the great source of political prophecy, the existence of Coleridge will show itself by no slight or ambiguous traces in the coming history of our country, for no one has contributed more to shape the opinions of those among its younger men, who can be said to have opinions at all." Among these younger men were Thomas Arnold of Rugby, Julius Hare, F. D. Maurice, and other theologians popularly identified with that Broad Church Party* which traces its intellectual origin to the writings and conversations of Coleridge. As a young man, he had been a Unitarian and had preached from Unitarian pulpits in Taunton and Shrewsbury. His opinions finally crys weekly journal, which ran through twenty-seven numbers (August, 1809-March, 1810) and were recast and published in book form in 1818. Coleridge was residing with Wordsworth at Allan Bank, when he undertook this most unpractical experiment in journalism, "to aid in the formation of fixed principles in politics, morals, and religion." A newspaper filled with fundamentals and high abstractions was doomed to failure. But to make failure more sure, the editor regaled his readers with "literary amusements interspersed -designated in the reprint of 1818 as First Landing Place," "Second Landing Place," etc.-and consisting of essays on the distinction between the Reason and the Understanding, and notices of the life and character of Sir Alexander Ball, the Governor of Malta, whom Coleridge served as secretary, during his sojourn at the island in 1804-05. *Maurice always protested against the term Broad Church Party" and against the notion that there were—or should be-parties in the Church. tallized into trinitarian orthodoxy, and he became even somewhat violently anti-Socinian. The national Church establishment too, he zealously upheld, though he took no narrow view of its functions; considering it is an endowment for the advancement of civilization in the community; a fund for the support, not of a priestly class merely, but of the clerisy of the nation, i. e., the learned of all denominations and of all arts. This is the ideal of a national Church laid down in his treatise, On the Constitution of the Church and State (1830). On the subjects of Apostolic Succession, and the divine ordination of the episcopal form of church government, Coleridge seems to have held very much the same opinions as were held by the author of Ecclesiastical Polity, to whose authority, as to that of Coleridge, Broad-church men are accustomed to refer. But on these points, as on all others of doctrine and discipline, he made complete submission of his private judgment, and "could still," says Carlyle, "say, and point to the Church of England, with its singular old rubrics and surplices at Allhallowtide, Esto perpetua." * The change in Coleridge's religious beliefs was accompanied or preceded by a corresponding change in his philosophy. In his youth he had been an admirer of Hartley and accepted his system, a modification of the empirical philosophy of Locke, which * The fullest statement of Coleridge's theology is to be looked for in his Aids to Reflection, put forth in 1825, and many times reprinted. It is in the shape of a series of aphorisms, commenting on passages from Leighton, Taylor, Field, Hooker, Burnet, and other old English divines. |