is true that Coleridge himself makes no direct application of the conclusions at which he had arrived.1 For the poetical criticism of the second part is based, not on the deductions of the metaphysician, but on the intuitive insight of the poet: and its author owes nothing to Schelling's system or another's, but everything to the teaching of his own inward experience, long ripened into settled convictions. Thus we find that his preliminary analysis of the poetic faculty in the early chapters of Volume II adds little to our knowledge of his philosophy of art. Much of it is, in all probability, a résumé of the matter of earlier lectures. Hence it would be unprofitable for our purpose to consider, in detail, his exposition of the faults and virtues of Wordsworth's theory and practice in poetry. One passage, however, is instructive. In justifying the choice of rustic life in his poems, Wordsworth had spoken of the passions as 'incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of Nature'. To this Coleridge replies, that in the absence of a definite mental and moral condition, innate or acquired, natural forms must remain indifferent, or worse than indifferent, to those that dwell among them; and that 'the ancient mountains with all their terrors, and all their glories, are pictures to the blind, and music to the deaf'." Nor is it without reason that he introduces this criticism: to him, indeed, it seems to illustrate 'the point where all the lines of difference converge as to their common source and centre'. For he regards the influence of nature as among those accidents which 'poetry, as poetry, must avoid and exclude'; and

1 This, however, no doubt in part arises from (as it is an illustration of) the difficulty, if not impossibility, of applying philosophical theories of art to the criticism of any particular work of art-a fact to which Schiller draws attention in reference to Schelling's own art-philosophy (Schiller's Correspondence with Goethe, ed. Cotta, No. 834).

2 So in 1803 (Anima Poetae, p. 28) he writes:-'A curious, and more than curious fact, that when the country does not benefit, it depraves.'

his protest is at once against a view of poetry which admits such accidents among its proper subjects, and a view of nature which regards her influence, not as an incidental circumstance, but as something essential to the growth of a complete and representative character. That Coleridge himself believed this view of nature to be Wordsworth's own, is hardly to be credited of him, But he was undoubtedly alive to the danger of a mistaken interpretation on the part of others, of the language in which Wordsworth's attitude to nature found expression; an interpretation which, if it did not identify nature with the object of man's highest spiritual needs, might yet hold her capable of supplying the full, if not the only, means to their satisfaction. But such an interpretation, which would find its psychological correlative in the elevation of imagination to the supreme place among the faculties, Coleridge could not but regard as a complete reversal of the true order of things.1

VII. THE ESSAY 'ON POESY OR ART',

In the year 1818, the necessity of delivering a fresh course of lectures gave a new impulse to Coleridge's waning interest in problems of aesthetic. Of these lectures (the subject, as announced in the prospectus, is 'Shakespeare and Poetic Literature') but a scanty record has been

1

Cp. Aids to Reflection (Bohn's ed., p. 271), where Coleridge distinguishes Wordsworth's language from his sense or purpose in the well-known lines

A sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused, &c. In a letter to Allsop, referring to this passage in the Biog. Lit., Coleridge speaks as if to interpret Wordsworth pantheistically were not to misinterpret. One prefers, however, to believe that Coleridge's real opinion is that expressed in the Aids to Reflection. Yet from Anima Poetae (p. 35) we see that as early as 1803 Coleridge was not in entire sympathy with Wordsworth on this question.

2

left. In H. N. Coleridge's reproduction of the course in the Literary Remains1 there occurs under Lecture XIII an essay 'On Poesy or Art' which, whether it actually formed part of the course or not, must have been composed about the same period. This essay contains Coleridge's maturest utterance on the subject, though it bears the fragmentary and tentative character of all his speculation in the region of pure aesthetic. Coleridge's language is here again largely the language of Schelling; and here, again, as in the Biographia Literaria, the point of divergence from Schelling is not clearly indicated, and must be gathered from other sources. The main object of the essay is to define the relation of the true artist to nature. 'If the artist copies the mere nature, the natura naturata' (we read), 'what idle rivalry! . . . Believe me, you must master the essence, the natura naturans, which presupposes a bond between nature in the higher sense and the soul of man.' And Coleridge thus explains the nature of this bond. The wisdom in nature is distinguished from that in man by the co-instantaneity of the plan and the execution; the thought and the plan are one, or are given at once; but there is no reflex act, and hence there is no moral responsibility. In man there is reflexion, freedom, and choice; he is therefore the head of the visible creation. In the objects of nature are presented, as in a mirror, all the possible elements, steps, and processes of intellect antecedent to self-consciousness, and therefore to full development of the intelligential act.' Hence there arises an analogy between the processes of nature and intelligence, which it is the business of the poet (in the widest sense) to interpret; for 'so to place these images, totalized, and fitted to the limits

1 Reprinted by T. Ashe (Lectures, &c.), pp. 169-487.

2 Coleridge's debt in this Essay to Schelling's Über das Verhältniss der bildenden Künste zur Natur is dealt with in the Appendix to Notes and Lectures on Shakespeare, edited by Sara Coleridge, 1849. See notes to present edition.

of the human mind, as to elicit from and to superinduce upon the forms themselves the moral reflexions to which they approximate, to make the external internal, the internal external, to make nature thought and thought nature-this is the mystery of genius in the fine arts'. In every work of art 'the conscious is so impressed upon the unconscious as to appear in it. ... He who combines the two is the man of genius; and for that reason he must partake of both. Hence there is in genius itself an unconscious activity; nay, that is the genius in the man of genius'.

'But in order to read the symbol accurately, the artist must first be familiar with the thing symbolized. He must therefore absent himself for a season from her (nature), in order that his own spirit, which has the same ground with nature, may learn her unspoken language in its radicals, before he approaches to her endless composition of them.' Thus only is he fitted for the true interpretation of nature, which consists not in copying the external form, but in revealing 'that which is active through form and figure, and discourses to us by symbols-the Naturgeist or spirit of nature, as we unconsciously imitate those whom we love'.

This conception of the essence of art, so far as it is here made clear, is certainly in close accord with that of Schelling. For 'Art' (says Schelling, in the "Transcendental Idealism") 'announces perpetually and for ever anew that which philosophy cannot externally present, the unconscious in action and creation and its original identity with the conscious.' 'What we call nature is a poem, which lies sealed up in a secret and marvellous writing...' As to the philosopher, so to the artist, nature is but 'the ideal world appearing under constant limitations, or the imperfect reflection of a world which exists not outside but in himself'. But Schelling's point of view in the Transcen

1

...

Already in 1804 Coleridge had written: 'In looking at Objects of Nature while I am thinking, as at yonder moon dim

dental Idealism is, in its implications, pantheistic and materialist, whereas that of Coleridge is avowedly theistic, The question therefore arises, How are we to reconcile the language of this essay, which represents the spirit of man as 'one in its radicals with nature', with Coleridge's theism, which regards the divine being as wholly prior, and irrelative to the existence of the universe (not, as in Schelling's view, dependent on that universe for its existence as a self), and man as participating in that being? Now, if the self-consciousness in man is to be reflected in the unconscious life of nature, it is evident that it must be, in its essence, one with that life. And to this point of view Coleridge seems at first sight to incline. Thus he defines self-consciousness as the state in which life and intelligence, ascending from the plant upwards, becomes a new kind through the difference of degree, and not by essential opposition.1 This is also Schelling's standpoint, and it is consistent with his conception of nature as the necessary correlative of intelligence. This view Coleridge, as we saw, attempted in the Biographia Literaria to adapt to his theistic conceptions, but without success. And his verdict on that attempt, that it was not 'fully thought out', probably applies with equal force to the essay which we are con sidering. Coleridge has not clearly answered the question ' in what sense we can speak of "natura naturans "' and glimmering through the dewy window-pane, I seem rather to be seeking, as it were asking for, a symbolical language for something within me that already and for ever exists, than observing anything new. Even when the latter is the case, yet still I have always an obscure feeling as if that new phenomena were the dim awaking of a forgotten or hidden truth of my inner nature' (Anima Poetae, p. 136). And elsewhere he wrote (Gillman, Life of Coleridge, p. 309): From my very childhood I have been accustomed to abstract and as it were unrealize whatever of more than common interest my eyes dwelt upon, and then by a sort of transfusion and transmission of my consciousness to identify myself with the object.' 1 Letter to Wordsworth, 1815 (Letters, ii. 649).