Literary Remains, Vol. 2 by Coleridge
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THE LITERARY REMAINS
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
COLLECTED AND EDITED BY
HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ. M.A.
VOLUME THE SECOND
CONTENTS
VOL. II.
LITERARY REMAINS.
Extract from a Letter written by Mr. Coleridge, in February, 1818, to a
Gentleman who attended the Course of Lectures given in the Spring of
that Year.
Extract from a Letter to J. Britton, Esq.
SHAKSPEARE, WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER ON POETRY, THE DRAMA, AND THE STAGE
Definition of Poetry
Greek Drama
Progress of the Drama
The Drama generally, and Public Taste
Shakspeare, a Poet generally
Shakspeare's Judgment equal to his Genius
Recapitulation, and Summary of the Characteristics of Shakspeare's Dramas
Order of Shakspeare's Plays
Notes on the Tempest
Love's Labour's Lost
Midsummer Night's Dream
Comedy of Errors
As You Like It
Twelfth Night
All's Well that Ends Well
Merry Wives of Windsor
Measure for Measure
Cymbeline
Titus Andronicus
Troilus and Cressida
Coriolanus
Julius Caesar
Antony and Cleopatra
Timon of Athens
Romeo and Juliet
Shakspeare's English Historical Plays
King John
Richard II.
Henry IV. Part I.
Henry IV. Part II.
Henry V.
Henry VI. Part I.
Richard III.
Lear
Hamlet
Notes on Macbeth
Notes on the Winter's Tale
Notes on Othello
NOTES ON BEN JONSON
Whalley's Preface
Whalley's Life of Jonson
Every Man out of His Humour
Poetaster
Fall of Sejanus
Volpone
Epicene
The Alchemist
Catiline's Conspiracy
Bartholomew Fair
The Devil is an Ass
The Staple of News
The New Inn
NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER
Harris's Commendatory Poem on Fletcher
Life of Fletcher in Stockdale's Edition. 1811
Maid's Tragedy
A King and no King
The Scornful Lady
The Custom of the Country
The Elder Brother
The Spanish Curate
Wit Without Money
The Humorous Lieutenant
The Mad Lover
The Loyal Subject
Rule a Wife and have a Wife
The Laws of Candy
The Little French Lawyer
Valentinian
Rollo
The Wildgoose Chase
A Wife for a Month
The Pilgrim
The Queen of Corinth
The Noble Gentleman
The Coronation
Wit at Several Weapons
The Fair Maid of the Inn
The Two Noble Kinsmen
The Woman Hater
On the 'Prometheus' of AEschylus
Note on Chalmers's 'Life of Daniel'
Bishop Corbet Notes on Selden's 'Table Talk'
Note on Theological Lectures of Benjamin Wheeler, D.D.
Note on a Sermon on the Prevalence of Infidelity and Enthusiasm, by
Walter Birch, B. D.
Fenelon on Charity
Change of the Climates
Wonderfulness of Prose
Notes on Tom Jones
Jonathan Wild
Barry Cornwall
The Primitive Christian's Address to the Cross
Fuller's Holy State
Fuller's Profane State
Fuller's Appeal of Injured Innocence
Fuller's Church History
Asgill's Argument
Introduction to Asgill's Defence upon his Expulsion from the House of
Commons.
Notes on Sir Thomas Browne's 'Religio Medici'
Notes on Sir Thomas Browne's Garden of Cyrus
Notes on Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors
LITERARY REMAINS
Extract from a Letter written by Mr. Coleridge, in February, 1818, to a
gentleman who attended the course of Lectures given in the spring of
that year.
See the 'Canterbury Magazine', September, 1834. Ed.
My next Friday's lecture will, if I do not grossly flatter-blind myself,
be interesting, and the points of view not only original, but new to the
audience. I make this distinction, because sixteen or rather seventeen
years ago, I delivered eighteen lectures on Shakspeare, at the Royal
Institution; three-fourths of which appeared at that time startling
paradoxes, although they have since been adopted even by men, who then
made use of them as proofs of my flighty and paradoxical turn of mind;
all tending to prove that Shakspeare's judgment was, if possible, still
more wonderful than his genius; or rather, that the contradistinction
itself between judgment and genius rested on an utterly false theory.
This, and its proofs and grounds have been--I should not have said
adopted, but produced as their own legitimate children by some, and by
others the merit of them attributed to a foreign writer, whose lectures
were not given orally till two years after mine, rather than to their
countryman; though I dare appeal to the most adequate judges, as Sir
George Beaumont, the Bishop of Durham, Mr. Sotheby, and afterwards to
Mr. Rogers and Lord Byron, whether there is one single principle in
Schlegel's work (which is not an admitted drawback from its merits),
that was not established and applied in detail by me. Plutarch tells us,
that egotism is a venial fault in the unfortunate, and justifiable in
the calumniated, &c. ...
Extract from a Letter to J. Britton, Esq.
28th Feb., 1819, Highgate.
Dear Sir,
--First permit me to remove a very natural, indeed almost inevitable,
mistake, relative to my lectures; namely, that I 'have' them, or that
the lectures of one place or season are in any way repeated in another.
So far from it, that on any point that I had ever studied (and on no
other should I dare discourse--I mean, that I would not lecture on any
subject for which I had to 'acquire' the main knowledge, even though a
month's or three months' previous time were allowed me; on no subject
that had not employed my thoughts for a large portion of my life since
earliest manhood, free of all outward and particular purpose)--on any
point within my habit of thought, I should greatly prefer a subject I
had never lectured on, to one which I had repeatedly given; and those
who have attended me for any two seasons successively will bear witness,
that the lecture given at the London Philosophical Society, on the
'Romeo and Juliet', for instance, was as different from that given at
the Crown and Anchor, as if they had been by two individuals who,
without any communication with each other, had only mastered the same
principles of philosophic criticism. This was most strikingly evidenced
in the coincidence between my lectures and those of Schlegel; such, and
so close, that it was fortunate for my moral reputation that I had not
only from five to seven hundred ear witnesses that the passages had been
given by me at the Royal Institution two years before Schlegel commenced
his lectures at Vienna, but that notes had been taken of these by
several men and ladies of high rank. The fact is this; during a course
of lectures, I faithfully employ all the intervening days in collecting
and digesting the materials, whether I have or have not lectured on the
same subject before, making no difference. The day of the lecture, till
the hour of commencement, I devote to the consideration, what of the
mass before me is best fitted to answer the purposes of a lecture, that
is, to keep the audience awake and interested during the delivery, and
to leave a sting behind, that is, a disposition to study the subject
anew, under the light of a new principle. Several times, however, partly
from apprehension respecting my health and animal spirits, partly from
the wish to possess copies that might afterwards be marketable among the
publishers, I have previously written the lecture; but before I had
proceeded twenty minutes, I have been obliged to push the MS. away, and
give the subject a new turn. Nay, this was so notorious, that many of my
auditors used to threaten me, when they saw any number of written papers
on my desk, to steal them away; declaring they never felt so secure of a
good lecture as when they perceived that I had not a single scrap of
writing before me. I take far, far more pains than would go to the set
composition of a lecture, both by varied reading and by meditation; but
for the words, illustrations, &c., I know almost as little as any one of
the audience (that is, those of anything like the same education with
myself) what they will be five minutes before the lecture begins. Such
is my way, for such is my nature; and in attempting any other, I should
only torment myself in order to disappoint my auditors--torment myself
during the delivery, I mean; for in all other respects it would be a
much shorter and easier task to deliver them from writing. I am anxious
to preclude any semblance of affectation; and have therefore troubled
you with this lengthy preface before I have the hardihood to assure you,
that you might as well ask me what my dreams were in the year 1814, as
what my course of lectures was at the Surrey Institution.
'Fuimus Troes.'
SHAKSPEARE,
WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER ON POETRY, THE DRAMA, AND THE STAGE.
DEFINITION OF POETRY.
Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is
opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object
of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper
and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate
pleasure. This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and
other works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must be
some additional character by which poetry is not only divided from
opposites, but likewise distinguished from disparate, though similar,
modes of composition. Now how is this to be effected? In animated prose,
the beauties of nature, and the passions and accidents of human nature,
are often expressed in that natural language which the contemplation of
them would suggest to a pure and benevolent mind; yet still neither we
nor the writers call such a work a poem, though no work could deserve
that name which did not include all this, together with something else.
What is this? It is that pleasurable emotion, that peculiar state and
degree of excitement, which arises in the poet himself in the act of
composition;--and in order to understand this, we must combine a more
than ordinary sympathy with the objects, emotions, or incidents
contemplated by the poet, consequent on a more than common sensibility,
with a more than ordinary activity of the mind in respect of the fancy
and the imagination. Hence is produced a more vivid reflection of the
truths of nature and of the human heart, united with a constant activity
modifying and correcting these truths by that sort of pleasurable
emotion, which the exertion of all our faculties gives in a certain
degree; but which can only be felt in perfection under the full play of
those powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather than voluntary, and
in which the effort required bears no proportion to the activity
enjoyed. This is the state which permits the production of a highly
pleasurable whole, of which each part shall also communicate for itself
a distinct and conscious pleasure; and hence arises the definition,
which I trust is now intelligible, that poetry, or rather a poem, is a
species of composition, opposed to science, as having intellectual
pleasure for its object, and as attaining its end by the use of language
natural to us in a state of excitement,--but distinguished from other
species of composition, not excluded by the former criterion, by
permitting a pleasure from the whole consistent with a consciousness of
pleasure from the component parts;--and the perfection of which is, to
communicate from each part the greatest immediate pleasure compatible
with the largest sum of pleasure on the whole. This, of course, will
vary with the different modes of poetry;--and that splendour of
particular lines, which would be worthy of admiration in an impassioned
elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be a blemish and proof of vile
taste in a tragedy or an epic poem.
It is remarkable, by the way, that Milton in three incidental words has
implied all which for the purposes of more distinct apprehension, which
at first must be slow-paced in order to be distinct, I have endeavoured
to develope in a precise and strictly adequate definition. Speaking of
poetry, he says, as in a parenthesis, "which is simple, sensuous,
passionate." How awful is the power of words!--fearful often in their
consequences when merely felt, not understood; but most awful when both
felt and understood!--Had these three words only been properly
understood by, and present in the minds of, general readers, not only
almost a library of false poetry would have been either precluded or
still-born, but, what is of more consequence, works truly excellent and
capable of enlarging the understanding, warming and purifying the heart,
and placing in the centre of the whole being the germs of noble and
manlike actions, would have been the common diet of the intellect
instead. For the first condition, simplicity,--while, on the one hand,
it distinguishes poetry from the arduous processes of science, labouring
towards an end not yet arrived at, and supposes a smooth and finished
road, on which the reader is to walk onward easily, with streams
murmuring by his side, and trees and flowers and human dwellings to make
his journey as delightful as the object of it is desirable, instead of
having to toil, with the pioneers and painfully make the road on which
others are to travel,--precludes, on the other hand, every affectation
and morbid peculiarity;--the second condition, sensuousness, insures
that framework of objectivity, that definiteness and articulation of
imagery, and that modification of the images themselves, without which
poetry becomes flattened into mere didactics of practice, or evaporated
into a hazy, unthoughtful, daydreaming; and the third condition,
passion, provides that neither thought nor imagery shall be simply
objective, but that the _passio vera_ of humanity shall warm and animate
both.
To return, however, to the previous definition, this most general and
distinctive character of a poem originates in the poetic genius itself;
and though it comprises whatever can with any propriety be called a
poem, (unless that word be a mere lazy synonyme for a composition in
metre,) it yet becomes a just, and not merely discriminative, but full
and adequate, definition of poetry in its highest and most peculiar
sense, only so far as the distinction still results from the poetic
genius, which sustains and modifies the emotions, thoughts, and vivid
representations of the poem by the energy without effort of the poet's
own mind,--by the spontaneous activity of his imagination and fancy, and
by whatever else with these reveals itself in the balancing and
reconciling of opposite or discordant qualities, sameness with
difference, a sense of novelty and freshness with old or customary
objects, a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order,
self-possession and judgment with enthusiasm and vehement feeling,--and
which, while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial,
still subordinates art to nature, the manner to the matter, and our
admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the images, passions,
characters, and incidents of the poem:-
Doubtless, this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to _spirit_ by sublimation strange,
As fire converts to fire the things it burns--
As we our food into our nature change!
From their gross matter she abstracts _their_ forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things,
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings!
_Thus_ doth she, when from _individual states_
She doth abstract the universal kinds,
_Which then reclothed in diverse names and fates
Steal access thro' our senses to our minds._ [1]
[Footnote 1: Sir John Davies on the Immortality of the Soul, sect. iv.
The words and lines in italics (_between_) are substituted to apply
these verses to the poetic genius. The greater part of this latter
paragraph may be found adopted, with some alterations, in the 'Biographia
Literaria', vol. ii. c. 14; but I have thought it better in this
instance and some others, to run the chance of bringing a few passages
twice over to the recollection of the reader, than to weaken the force
of the original argument by breaking the connection. Ed.]
GREEK DRAMA.
It is truly singular that Plato,--whose philosophy and religion were but
exotic at home, and a mere opposition to the finite in all things,
genuine prophet and anticipator as he was of the Protestant Christian
aera,--should have given in his Dialogue of the Banquet, a justification
of our Shakspeare. For he relates that, when all the other guests had
either dispersed or fallen asleep, Socrates only, together with
Aristophanes and Agathon, remained awake, and that, while he continued
to drink with them out of a large goblet, he compelled them, though most
reluctantly, to admit that it was the business of one and the same
genius to excel in tragic and comic poetry, or that the tragic poet
ought, at the same time, to contain within himself the powers of comedy.
[1] Now, as this was directly repugnant to the entire theory of the
ancient critics, and contrary to all their experience, it is evident
that Plato must have fixed the eye of his contemplation on the innermost
essentials of the drama, abstracted from the forms of age or country. In
another passage he even adds the reason, namely, that opposites
illustrate each other's nature, and in their struggle draw forth the
strength of the combatants, and display the conqueror as sovereign even
on the territories of the rival power.
Nothing can more forcibly exemplify the separative spirit of the Greek
arts than their comedy as opposed to their tragedy. But as the immediate
struggle of contraries supposes an arena common to both, so both were
alike ideal; that is, the comedy of Aristophanes rose to as great a
distance above the ludicrous of real life, as the tragedy of Sophocles
above its tragic events and passions;--and it is in this one point, of
absolute ideality, that the comedy of Shakspeare and the old comedy of
Athens coincide. In this also alone did the Greek tragedy and comedy
unite; in every thing else they were exactly opposed to each other.
Tragedy is poetry in its deepest earnest; comedy is poetry in unlimited
jest. Earnestness consists in the direction and convergence of all the
powers of the soul to one aim, and in the voluntary restraint of its
activity in consequence; the opposite, therefore, lies in the apparent
abandonment of all definite aim or end, and in the removal of all bounds
in the exercise of the mind,--attaining its real end, as an entire
contrast, most perfectly, the greater the display is of intellectual
wealth squandered in the wantonness of sport without an object, and the
more abundant the life and vivacity in the creations of the arbitrary
will.
The later comedy, even where it was really comic, was doubtless likewise
more comic, the more free it appeared from any fixed aim.
Misunderstandings of intention, fruitless struggles of absurd passion,
contradictions of temper, and laughable situations there were; but still
the form of the representation itself was serious; it proceeded as much
according to settled laws, and used as much the same means of art,
though to a different purpose, as the regular tragedy itself. But in the
old comedy the very form itself is whimsical; the whole work is one
great jest, comprehending a world of jests within it, among which each
maintains its own place without seeming to concern itself as to the
relation in which it may stand to its fellows. In short, in Sophocles,
the constitution of tragedy is monarchical, but such as it existed in
elder Greece, limited by laws, and therefore the more venerable,--all
the parts adapting and submitting themselves to the majesty of the
heroic sceptre:--in Aristophanes, comedy, on the contrary, is poetry in
its most democratic form, and it is a fundamental principle with it,
rather to risk all the confusion of anarchy, than to destroy the
independence and privileges of its individual constituents,--place,
verse, characters, even single thoughts, conceits, and allusions, each
turning on the pivot of its own free will.
The tragic poet idealizes his characters by giving to the spiritual part
of our nature a more decided preponderance over the animal cravings and
impulses, than is met with in real life: the comic poet idealizes his
characters by making the animal the governing power, and the
intellectual the mere instrument. But as tragedy is not a collection of
virtues and perfections, but takes care only that the vices and
imperfections shall spring from the passions, errors, and prejudices
which arise out of the soul;--so neither is comedy a mere crowd of vices
and follies, but whatever qualities it represents, even though they are
in a certain sense amiable, it still displays them as having their
origin in some dependence on our lower nature, accompanied with a defect
in true freedom of spirit and self-subsistence, and subject to that
unconnection by contradictions of the inward being, to which all folly
is owing.
The ideal of earnest poetry consists in the union and harmonious melting
down, and fusion of the sensual into the spiritual,--of man as an animal
into man as a power of reason and self-government. And this we have
represented to us most clearly in the plastic art, or statuary; where
the perfection of outward form is a symbol of the perfection of an
inward idea; where the body is wholly penetrated by the soul, and
spiritualized even to a state of glory, and like a transparent
substance, the matter, in its own nature darkness, becomes altogether a
vehicle and fixure of light, a mean of developing its beauties, and
unfolding its wealth of various colors without disturbing its unity, or
causing a division of the parts. The sportive ideal, on the contrary,
consists in the perfect harmony and concord of the higher nature with
the animal, as with its ruling principle and its acknowledged regent.
The understanding and practical reason are represented as the willing
slaves of the senses and appetites, and of the passions arising out of
them. Hence we may admit the appropriateness to the old comedy, as a
work of defined art, of allusions and descriptions, which morality can
never justify, and, only with reference to the author himself, and only
as being the effect or rather the cause of the circumstances in which he
wrote, can consent even to palliate.
The old comedy rose to its perfection in Aristophanes, and in him also
it died with the freedom of Greece. Then arose a species of drama, more
fitly called, dramatic entertainment than comedy, but of which,
nevertheless, our modern comedy (Shakspeare's altogether excepted) is
the genuine descendant. Euripides had already brought tragedy lower down
and by many steps nearer to the real world than his predecessors had
ever done, and the passionate admiration which Menander and Philemon
expressed for him, and their open avowals that he was their great
master, entitle us to consider their dramas as of a middle species,
between tragedy and comedy,--not the tragi-comedy, or thing of
heterogeneous parts, but a complete whole, founded on principles of its
own. Throughout we find the drama of Menander distinguishing itself from
tragedy, but not, as the genuine old comedy, contrasting with, and
opposing, it. Tragedy, indeed, carried the thoughts into the mythologic
world, in order to raise the emotions, the fears, and the hopes, which
convince the inmost heart that their final cause is not to be discovered
in the limits of mere mortal life, and force us into a presentiment,
however dim, of a state in which those struggles of inward free will
with outward necessity, which form the true subject of the tragedian,
shall be reconciled and solved;--the entertainment or new comedy, on the
other hand, remained within the circle of experience. Instead of the
tragic destiny, it introduced the power of chance; even in the few
fragments of Menander and Philemon now remaining to us, we find many
exclamations and reflections concerning chance and fortune, as in the
tragic poets concerning destiny. In tragedy, the moral law, either as
obeyed or violated, above all consequences--its own maintenance or
violation constituting the most important of all consequences--forms the
ground; the new comedy, and our modern comedy in general, (Shakspeare
excepted as before) lies in prudence or imprudence, enlightened or
misled self-love. The whole moral system of the entertainment exactly
like that of fable, consists in rules of prudence, with an exquisite
conciseness, and at the same time an exhaustive fulness of sense. An old
critic said that tragedy was the flight or elevation of life, comedy
(that of Menander) its arrangement or ordonnance.
Add to these features a portrait-like truth of character,--not so far
indeed as that a 'bona fide' individual should be described or imagined,
but yet so that the features which give interest and permanence to the
class should be individualized. The old tragedy moved in an ideal
world,--the old comedy in a fantastic world. As the entertainment, or
new comedy, restrained the creative activity both of the fancy and the
imagination, it indemnified the understanding in appealing to the
judgment for the probability of the scenes represented. The ancients
themselves acknowledged the new comedy as an exact copy of real life.
The grammarian, Aristophanes, somewhat affectedly exclaimed:--"O Life
and Menander! which of you two imitated the other?" In short the form of
this species of drama was poetry; the stuff or matter was prose. It was
prose rendered delightful by the blandishments and measured motions of
the muse. Yet even this was not universal. The mimes of Sophron, so
passionately admired by Plato, were written in prose, and were scenes
out of real life conducted in dialogue. The exquisite Feast of Adonis
([Greek (transliterated): Surakousiai ae Ad'oniazousai]) in Theocritus,
we are told, with some others of his eclogues, were close imitations of
certain mimes of Sophron--free translations of the prose into
hexameters.
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