an instructive comment on the chapter concerning authorship as a trade, addressed to young men of genius in the first volume of this work. I remember the ludicrous effect which the first sentence of an auto-biography, which, happily for the writer, was as meagre in incidents as it is well possible for the life of an individual to be-"The eventful life which I am about to record, from the hour in which I rose into exist on this planet," &c. Yet when, notwithstanding this warning example of self-importance before me, I review my own life, I cannot refrain from applying the same epithet to it, and with inore than ordinary emphasis-and no private feeling, that affected myself only, should prevent me from publishing the same, (for write it I assuredly shall, should life and leisure be granted me) if continued reflection should strengthen my present belief, that my history would add its contingent to the enforcement of one important truth, viz. that we must not only love our neighbors as ourselves, but ourselves likewise as our neighbors; and that we can do neither, unless we love God above both.

Who lives that's not

Depraved or depraves? Who dies, that bears

generally attributed (whether rightly or no I know not) to a man who, both in my presence and in my absence, has frequently pronounced it the finest poem of its kind in the language. This may serve as a warning to authors, that in their calculations on the probable reception of a poem, they must subtract to a large amount from the panegyric; which may have encouraged them to publish it, however unsuspicious and however various the sources of this panegyric may have been. And first, allowances must be made for private enmity, of the very existence of which they had perhaps entertained no suspicionfor personal enmity behind the mask of anonymous criticism: secondly, for the necessity of a certain proportion of abuse and ridicule in a Review, in order to make it saleable; in consequence of which, if they had no friends behind the scenes, the chance must needs be against them; but lastly, and chiefly, for the excitement and temporary sympathy of feeling, which the recitation of the poem by an admirer, especially if he be at once a warm admirer and a man of acknowledged celebrity, calls forth in the audience. For this is really a species of Animal Magnetism, in which the enkindling Reciter by perpetual comment of looks and tones, lends his own will and apprehensive faculty to his Auditors. They live for the time within the dilated sphere of his intellectual Being. It is equally possible, though not equally common, that a reader left to himself should sink below the poem, as that the poem left to itself should flag beneath the feelings of the reader.But in my own instance, I had the additional misfortune of having been gossipped about, as devoted to metaphysics, and worse than all, to a system incomparably nearer to the visionary flights of Plato, and even to the jargon of the mystics, than to the established tenets of Locke. Whatever, therefore, appeared with my name, was condemned beforehand, as predestined metaphysics. In a dramatic poem, which had been submitted by me to a gentleman of great influence in the Theatrical world, occurred the following passage:

Not one spurn to the grave-of their friends' gift? Strange as the delusion may appear, yet it is most true, that three years ago I did not know or believe that I had an enemy in the world; and now, even my strongest sensations of gratitude are mingled with fear, and I reproach myself for being too often disposed to ask-Have I one friend?-During the many years which intervened between the composition and the publication of the Christabel, it became almost as well known among literary men, as if it had been on common sale; the same references were made to it, and the same liberties taken with it, even to the very names of the imaginary persons in the poem. From almost all of our most celebrated Poets, and from some with whom I had no personal acquaintance, I either received or heard of expressions of admiration that (I can truly say) appeared to myself utterly disproportionate to a work that pretended to be nothing more than a common Faery Tale. Many, who had allowed no merit to my other poems, whether printed or manuscript, and who have frankly told me as much, uniformly made an exception in favor of the CHRISTABEL and the Poem entitled Love. Year after year, and in societies of the most different kinds, I had been entreated to recite it; and the result was still the same in all, and altogether different in this respect from the effect produced by the occasional recitation of any other poems I had composed.-This before the publication. And since then, with very few exceptions, I have heard nothing but abuse, and this too in a spirit of bitterness at least as disproportionate to the pretensions of the poem, had it been the most pitiably below medi- *Poor unlucky Metaphysics and what are they? A sinocrity, as the previous eulogies, and far more inexpli-gle sentence expresses the object and thereby the contents of cable. In the Edinburgh Review, it was assailed with a malignity and a spirit of personal hatred that ought to have injured only the work in which such a tirade was suffered to appear; and this review was 48

O we are querulous creatures! Little less
Than all things can suffice to make us happy :
And little more than nothing is enough
To make us wretched.

Ay, here now! (exclaimed the Critic) here come
Coleridge's Metaphysics! And the very same motive
(that is, not that the lines were unfit for the present
state of our immense Theatres, but that they were
Metaphysics *) was assigned elsewhere for the re-
jection of the two following passages. The first is
spoken in answer to a usurper, who had rested his
plea on the circumstance, that he had been chosen
by the acclamations of the people :-

this science. Tvodi stavrov: et Deum quantum licet et il, Deo omnia scibis. Know thyself: and so shalt thou know things.-Surely, there is a strange--nay, rather a too natura! God, as far as is permitted to a creature, and in God all

aversion in many to know themselves.

What people? How convened? Or if convened,
Must not that magic power that charms together
Millions of men in council, needs have power
To win or wield them? Rather, O far rather,
Shout forth thy titles to yon circling mountains,
And with a thousandfold reverberation

Make the rocks flatter thee, and the volleying air
Unbribed, shout back to thee, King Emarich!

By wholesome laws to embank the Sovereign Power;
To deepen by restraint; and by prevention

Of lawless will to amass and guide the flood

In its majestic channel, is man's task

And the true patriot's glory! In all else

Men safelier trust to Heaven, than to themselves
When least themselves: even in those whirling crowds
Where folly is contagious, and too oft

Even wise men leave their better sense at home
To chide and wonder at them when return'd.

The second passage is in the mouth of an old and experienced Courtier, betrayed by the man in whom he had most trusted.

And yet Sarolta, simple, inexperienced,

Could see him as he was and oft has warned me.
Whence learnt she this? O she was innocent.
And to be innocent is Nature's wisdom.

The fledge dove knows the prowlers of the air,
Fear'd soon as seen, and flutters back to shelter!
And the young steed recoils upon his haunches,
The never-yet-seen adder's hiss first heard!
Ah! surer than suspicion's hundred eyes
Is that fine sense, which to the pure in heart
By mere oppugnancy of their own goodness
Reveals the approach of evil!

ceived and propagated with a degree of credence, of which I can safely acquit the originator of the calumny. I give the sentences as they stand in the sermon, premising only, that I was speaking exclusively of miracles worked for the outward senses of men. “It was only to overthrow the usurpation exercised in and through the senses, that the senses were miraculously appealed to. REASON AND RELIGION ARE THEIR OWN EVIDENCE. The natural sun is in this respect a symbol of the spiritual. Ere he is fully arisen, and while his glories are still under veil, he calls up the breeze to chase away the usurping vapors of the night season, and thus converts the air itself into the minister of its own purification: not surely in proof or elucidation of the light from heaven, but to prevent its interception.

"Wherever, therefore, similar circumstances coexist with the same moral causes, the principles revealed, and the examples recorded, in the inspired writings, render miracles superfluous: and if we neglect to apply truths in expectation of wonders, or under pretext of the cessation of the latter, we tempt God, and merit the same reply which our Lord gave to the Pharisees on a like occasion."

In the sermon and the notes, both the historical truth and the necessity of the miracles are strongly and frequently asserted. "The testimony of books of history, (i. e. relatively to the signs and wonders with which Christ came) is one of the strong and stately pillars of the church; but it is not the foundation!" Instead, therefore, of defending myself, which I could easily effect by a series of passages, expressing the same opinion, from the Fathers, and the most eminent Protestant Divines from the Reformation to the Revolution, I shall merely state here. what my belief is, concerning the true evidences of

As, therefore, my character as a writer could not easily be more injured by an overt-act than it was already in, consequence of the report, I published a work, a large portion of which was professedly metaphysical. A long delay occurred between its first annunciation and its appearance; it was reviewed therefore, by anticipation, with a malignity, so avowedly and exclusively personal, as is, I believe, unpre-Christianity. 1. Its consistency with right Reason, I cedented even in the present contempt of all common humanity that disgraces and endangers the liberty of the press. After its appearance, the author of this lampoon was chosen to review it in the Edinburgh Review; and under the single condition, that he should have written what he himself really thought, and have criticised the work as he would have done had its author been indifferent to him, I should have chosen that man myself both from the vigor and the originality of his mind, and from his particular acuteness in speculative reasoning, before all others. remembered Catullus's lines,

I

consider as the outer Court of the Temple, the common area, within which it stands. 2. The miracles with and through which the Religion was first re vealed and attested, I regard as the steps, the vestibule, and the portal of the Temple. 3. The sense, the inward feeling, in the soul of each believer of its exceeding desirableness-the experience that he needs something, joined with the strong foretokening, that the Redemption and the Graces propounded to us in Christ, are what he needs;-this I hold to be the true FOUNDATION of the spiritual Edifice. With the strong a priori probability that flows in from 1 and 3 on the correspondent historical evidence of 2, no man can refuse or neglect to make the experiment without guilt. But 4, it is the experience derived from a practical conformity to the conditions of the Gospelit is the opening Eye; the dawning Light; the terrors and the promises of spiritual Growth; the blessBut I can truly say, that the grief with which I edness of loving God as God, the nascent sense of read this rhapsody of premeditated insult, had the Sin hated as Sin, and of the incapability of attaining Rhapsodist himself for its whole and sole object: and to either without Christ; it is the sorrow that still that the indignant contempt which it excited in me rises up from beneath, and the consolation that meets was as exclusively confined to its employer and su- it from above; the bosom treacheries of the Principal borner. I refer to this Review at present, in conse- in the warfare, and the exceeding faithfulness and quence of information having been given me, that long suffering of the uninterested Ally-in a word, the innuendo of my "potential infidelity," grounded it is the actual Trial of the Faith in Christ, with its on one passage of my first Lay Sermon, has been re-accompaniments and results, that must form the arch

Desine de quoquam quicquam bene velle merer
Aut aliquem fieri posse putare pium.
Omnia sunt ingrata: nihil fecisse benigne est:
Imo, etiam tædet, tædet obestque magis.
Ut mihi, quem nemo gravius nec aceribus urget
Quam, modo qui me unum atque unicum amicum habuit.

will God reject a soul that sincerely loves him, be his speculative opinions what they may; and whether in any given instance certain opinions, be they unbelief or misbelief, are compatible with a sincere love of God, God only can know. But this I have said, and shall continue to say; that if the doctrines, the sum of which I believe to constitute the truth in Christ, be Christianity, then Unitarianism is not, and vice versa : and that in speaking theologically and impersonally, i. e. of PSILANTHROPISM and THEANTHROPISM as schemes of belief, without reference to individuals who profess either the one or the other, it will be absurd to use a different language as long as it is the dictate of common sense, that two opposites cannot properly be called by the same name. I should feel no offence if an Unitarian applied the same to me, any more than if he were to say, that 2 and 2 being 4, 4 and 4 must be 8.

Αλλα βροτων

Τον μεν κενοφρονες αυχαι

ed Roof, and Faith itself is the completing KEYSTONE. In order to an efficient belief in Christianity, a man must have been a Christian, and this is the seeming argumentum in circulo, incident to all spiritual Truths, to every subject not presentable under the forms of Time and Space as long as we attempt to master by the reflex acts of the Understanding, what we can only know by the act of becoming. "Do the will of my father, and ye shall KNOW whether I am of God." These four evidences I believe to have been, and still to be, for the world, for the whole Church, all necessary, all equally necessary; but that at present, and for the majority of Christians born in Christian countries, I believe the third and the fourth evidences to be the most operative, not as supersed ing, but as involving a glad undoubting faith in the two former. Credidi, indeoque intellexi, appears to me the dictate equally of Philosophy and Religion, even as I believe Redemption to be the antecedent of Sanctification, and not its consequent. All spiritual predicates may be construed indifferently as modes of Action, or as states of Being. Thus Holiness and Blessedness are the same idea, now seen in relation to act, and now to existence. The ready belief which has been yielded to the slander of my "potential infidelity," I attribute in part to the openness with This has been my object, and this alone can be my which I have avowed my doubts whether the heavy defence-and O! that with this my personal as well interdict, under which the name of BENEDICT SPIN- as my LITERARY LIFE might conclude! the unquenchOZA lies, is merited on the whole, or to the whole ex-ed desire I mean, not without the consciousness of tent. Be this as it may, I wish, however, that I could find in the books of philosophy, theoretical or moral, which are alone recommended to the present students of Theology in our established schools, a few passages as thoroughly Pauline, as completely accordant with the doctrines of the established Church, as the following sentences in the concluding page of Spinoza's Ethics. Deinde quo mens amore divino seu beatitudine magis gaudet, eo plus intelligit, eo majorem in affectus habet potentiam, et eo minus ab affectibus, qui mali sunt, patitur: atque adeo ex eo, quod mens hoc amore divino seu beatitudine gaudet, potestatem habet libidines coercendi, nemo beatitudine gaudet quia affectus coercuit; sed contra potestas libidines coercendi ex ipsa beatitudine oritur.

With regard to the Unitarians, it has been shamelessly asserted, that I have denied them to be Christians. God forbid! For how should I know what the piety of the heart may be, or what quantum of error in the understanding may consist with a saving faith in the intentions and actual dispositions of the whole moral being in any one individual? Never

Εξ αγαθών εβαλον.
Τον δ' αυ καταμεμφθεντο αγαν
Ισχυν οικείων κατεςφαλεν καλων

Χειρος ελκών οπιςςω, Θύμος ατολμος.

having earnestly endeavored to kindle young minds, and to guard them against the temptations of scorners, by showing that the scheme of Christianity, as taught in the Liturgy and Homilies of our Church, though not discoverable by human Reason, is yet in accordance with it; that link follows link by necessary consequence; that Religion passes out of the ken of reason only where the eye of reason has reached its own horizon; and that faith is then but its continuation: even as the day softens away into the sweet twilight, and twilight, hushed and breathless, steals into the darkness. It is night, sacred night! the upraised eye views only the starry heaven which manifests itself alone; and the outward beholding is fixed on the sparks twinkling in the awful depth, though suns of other worlds, only to preserve the soul steady and collected in its pure act of inward adoration to the great I AM, and to the filial WORD that re-affirmeth it from eternity to eternity, whose choral echo is the universe.

ΘΕΩ ΜΟΝΩ ΔΟΞΑ.

373

The Friend:

A SERIES OF ESSAYS, TO AID IN THE FORMATION OF

FIXED PRINCIPLES IN POLITICS, MORALS, AND RELIGION,

WITH

LITERARY AMUSEMENTS INTERSPERSED.

Accipe principium rursus, formamque coactam
Desere mutata melior procede figura.-Claudian.

Δίζει συ ψυχῆς ὀχετὸν, ὅθεν ἢ τίνι τάξει
Σώματι θητευσας ἔμι ταξιν, ἄφ' ἧς ἐρρύσθης,
Αὖθις ἀναζήσεις, ιέρῳ ΛΟΓΩ ἔργον ἐυώδας.

ΖΩΡΟΑΣΤΡΟΥ Λογία.

EPISTLE DEDICATORY.

but know, that I owe in great measure the power of having written at all to your medical skill, and to the characteristic good sense which directed its exertion in my behalf; and whatever I may have written in happier vein, to the influence of your society and to the daily proofs of your disinterested attachmentknowing too, in how entire a sympathy with your feelings in this respect the partner of your name has blended the affectionate regards of a sister or a daughter with almost a mother's watchfulness and unwearied solicitude alike for my health, interest, and tranquillity;-you will not, I trust, be pained, you ought not, I am sure, be surprised that

ΤΟ

FRIEND! were an Author privileged to name his own judge-in addition to moral and intellectual competence, I should look round for some man, whose knowledge and opinions had for the greater part been acquired experimentally: and the practical habits of whose life had put him on his guard with respect to all speculative reasoning, without rendering him insensible to the desirableness of principles more secure than the shifting rules and theories generalized from observations merely empirical, or unconscious in how many departments of knowledge, and with how large a portion even of professional men, such principles are still a desideratum. I would select too one who felt kindly, nay, even par- MR. AND MRS. GILLMAN, tially, toward me; but one whose partiality had its strongest foundations in hope, and more prospective than retrospective would make him quick-sighted in the detection, and unreserved in the exposure of the deficiencies and defects of each present work, in the anticipation of a more developed future. In you, honored Friend! I have found all these requisites combined and realized: and the improvement, which these Essays have derived from your judgment and judicious suggestions, would, of itself, have justified me in accompanying them with a public acknowledgment of the same. But knowing, as you cannot

OF HIGHGATE,

THESE VOLUMES ARE DEDICATED,

IN TESTIMONY OF HIGH

RESPECT

AND GRATEFUL AFFECTION, BY THEIR
FRIEND,

October 7, 1818.
Highgate.

S. T. COLERIDGE

THE FRIEND.

ESSAY I.

Crede mihi, non est parvæ fiducæ, polliceri opem decertantibus, consilium dubiis, lumen cæcis spem dejectis, refrigerium fessis. Magna quidem hæc sunt si fiant; parva, si pro- | mittantur. Verum ego non tam aliis legem ponam, quam legem vobis mea propriæ mentis exponam: quam qui probaverit, teneat; cui non placuerit, abjiciat. Optarem, fateor, talis esse, qui prodesse possem quam plurimis.

PETRARCH: "De Vita Solitaria."

ANTECEDENT to all History, and long glimmering through it as a holy Tradition, there presents itself to our imagination an indefinite period, dateless as Eternity, a State rather than a Time. For even the sense of succession is lost in the uniformity of the

stream.

seem to proceed. I stood still therefore, and in rev-
erence awaited its continuation. Sojourner of Earth!
(these were its words) hasten to the meeting of thy
Brethren, and the words which thou now hearest,
the same do thou repeat unto them. On the thirtieth
morn from the morrow's sun-rising, and during the
space of thrice three days and thrice three nights, a
thick cloud will cover the sky, and a heavy rain fall
on the earth. Go ye therefore, ere the thirtieth sun
ariseth, retreat to the cavern of the river, and there
abide till the clouds have passed away and the rain
be over and gone. For know ye of a certainty that
whomever that rain wetteth, on him, yea, on him and
on his children's children will fall-the spirit of Mad-
ness.'
Yes! Madness was the word of the voice:
what this be, I know not! But at the sound of the
word trembling came upon me, and a feeling which
I would not have had; and I remained even as ye
beheld and now behold me."

The old man ended, and retired. Confused murmurs succeeded, and wonder, and doubt. Day followed day, and every day brought with it a diminution of the awe impressed. They could attach no It was toward the close of this golden age (the me- image, no remembered sensations to the threat. The mory of which the self-dissatisfied Race of Men have ominous morn arrived, the Prophet had retired to the every where preserved and cherished) when Con- appointed cavern, and there remained alone during science acted in Man with the ease and uniformity the appointed time. On the tenth morning, he emerof Instinct; when Labor was a sweet name for the ged from his place of shelter, and sought his friends activity of sane Minds in healthful Bodies, and all and brethren. But alas! how affrightful the change! enjoyed in common the bounteous harvest produced, Instead of the common children of one great family, and gathered in, by common effort; when there ex-working towards the same aim by reason, even as the isted in the Sexes, and in the Individuals of each Sex, bees in their hives by instinct, he looked and beheld, just variety enough to permit and call forth the gen-here a miserable wretch watching over a heap of hard tle restlessness and final union of chaste love and individual attachment, each seeking and finding the beloved one by the natural affinity of their Beings; when the dread Sovereign of the Universe was known only as the Universal Parent, no Altar but the pure Heart, and Thanksgiving and grateful Love the sole Sacrifice

In this blest age of dignified Innocence one of their honored Elders, whose absence they were beginning to notice, entered with hurrying steps the place of their common assemblage at noon, and instantly attracted the general attention and wonder by the perturbation of his gestures, and by a strange trouble both in his eyes and over his whole countenance. After a short but deep silence, when the buzz of varied inquiry was becoming audible, the old man moved toward a small eminence, and having ascended it, he thus addressed the hushed and listening company.

"In the warmth of the approaching mid-day, as I was reposing in the vast cavern, out of which from its northern portal issues the river that winds through our vale, a voice powerful, yet not from its loudness, suddenly hailed me. Guided by my ear I looked toward the supposed place of the sound for some Form, from which it had proceeded. I beheld nothing but the glimmering walls of the cavern. Again, as I was turning round, the same voice hailed me: and whithersoever I turned my face, thence did the voice

and unnutritious substances, which he had dug out of the earth, at the cost of mangled limbs and exhausted faculties. This he appeared to worship, at this he gazed, even as the youths of the vale had been accustomed to gaze at their chosen virgins in the first season of their choice. There he saw a former companion speeding on and panting after a butterfly, or a withered leaf whirling onward in the breeze; and another with pale and distorted countenance following close behind, and still stretching forth a dagger to stab his precursor in the back. In another place he observed a whole troop of his fellow-men famishing and in fetters, yet led by one of their brethren who had enslaved them, and pressing furiously onwards in the hope of famishing and enslaving another troop moving in an opposite direction. For the first time, the Prophet missed his accustomed power of distinguishing between his dreams and his waking perceptions. He stood gazing and motionless, when several of the race gathered around him, and enquired of each other, who is this man? how strangely he looks! how wild!-a worthless idler! exclaims one: assuredly, a very dangerous madman! cries a second. In short, from words they proceeded to violence: till harassed, endangered, solitary in a world of forms like his own, without sympathy, without object of love, he at length espied in some foss or furrow a quantity of the maddening water still unevaporated, and uttering the last words of reason, IT IS IN VAIN