The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge by James Gillman

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Coleridge and his companions in their tour passed through a district
belonging to the elector of Metz, and he often repeated the following
story, which one of the party has since related in print; that, going
through this district, chiefly inhabited by boors, who were Romanists,
of the lowest form of this persuasion of Christians, the party fatigued
and much exhausted, with the exception of Blumenbach, arrived somewhat
late, though being a summer evening, it was still light, at a Hessian
village, where they had hoped, as in England, to find quarters for the
night. Most of the inhabitants had retired to rest, a few only loitering
about, perhaps surprized at the sight of strangers. They shewed no
inclination to be courteous, but rather eyed them with suspicion and
curiosity. The party, notwithstanding this, entered the village
ale-house, still open, asked for refreshments and a night's lodging, but
no one noticed them. Though hungry, they could not procure any thing for
supper, not even a cup of coffee, nor could they find beds; after some
time, however, they asked for a few bundles of straw, which would
probably have been granted, had not Coleridge, out of patience at seeing
his friends' forlorn situation, imprudently asked one of them, if there
lived any Christians in Hesse Cassel? At this speech, which was soon
echoed by those within the house to the bystanders without, the boors
became instantly so infuriated, that rushing in, the travellers were
immediately driven out, and were glad to save themselves from the
lighted fire-wood on the hearth, which was hurled at them. On this they
went to seek a spot to bivouac for the night. Coleridge lay under the
shelter of a furze-bush, annoyed by the thorns, which, if they did not
disturb his rest, must have rendered it comfortless. Youth and fatigue,
inducing sleep, soon rose above these difficulties. In the ascent of the
Brocken, they despaired of seeing the famous spectre, in search of which
they toiled, it being visible only when the sun is a few degrees above
the horizon. Haue says, he ascended thirty times without seeing it, till
at length he was enabled to witness the effect of this optical delusion.
For the best account of it, see the Natural Magic of Sir D. Brewster,
[26] who explains the origin of these spectres, and shews how the mind
is deluded among an ignorant and easily deceived people, and thus traces
the birth of various ghost stories in the neighbourhood, extending as
far in Europe, as such stories find credence.

"In the course of my repeated tours through the Hartz," Mr. Jordan
says, "I ascended the Brocken twelve different times, but I had the
good fortune only twice (both times about Whitsuntide), to see that
atmospheric phenomenon called the Spectre of the Brocken, which
appears to me worthy of particular attention, as it must, no doubt, be
observed on other high mountains, which have a situation favourable
for producing it. The first time I was deceived by this extraordinary
phenomenon, I had clambered up to the summit of the Brocken, very
early in the morning, in order to wait there for the inexpressibly
beautiful view of the sun rising in the east. The heavens were already
streaked with red: the sun was just appearing above the horizon in
full majesty, and the most perfect serenity prevailed throughout the
surrounding country. When the other Hartz mountains in the south-west,
towards the Worm mountains, lying under the Brocken, began to be
covered by thick clouds; ascending at this moment the granite rocks
called the Teufelskauzel, there appeared before me, though at a great
distance towards the Worm mountains, the gigantic figure of a man, as
if standing on a large pedestal. But scarcely had I discovered it when
it began to disappear; the clouds sank down speedily and expanded, and
I saw the phenomenon no more. The second time, however, I saw the
spectre somewhat more distinctly, a little below the summit of the
Brocken, and near the Heinrichs-hoehe, as I was looking at the sun
rising about four o'clock in the morning. The weather was rather
tempestuous, the sky towards the level country was pretty clear, but
the Harz mountains had attracted several thick clouds which had been
hovering around them, and which, beginning to settle on the Brocken,
confined the prospect. In these clouds, soon after the rising of the
sun, I saw my own shadow of a monstrous size, move itself for a couple
of seconds exactly as I moved, but I was soon involved in clouds, and
the phenomenon disappeared."

It is impossible to see this phenomenon, except when the sun is at such
an altitude as to throw his rays upon the body in a horizontal
direction; for, if he is higher, the shadow is thrown rather under the
body than before it. After visiting the Hartz, Coleridge returned to
Goettingen, and in his note-book in a leave-taking memorial as well as
autograph, the following lines were written by Blumenbach, the son:--

"Wenn Sie, bester Freund, auch in Jhrer Heimath die
Natur bewundern werden, wie wir beide es auf dem Harze
gethan haben, so erinnern Sie sich des Harzes, und ich darf
dann hoffen, das Sie auch mich nicht vergessen werden.

"Leben Sie wohl, und reisen gluecklich,

"Jhr. BLUMENBACH."

TRANSLATION.

If you perchance, my dearest friend, should still continue
to admire the works of nature at your home, as we have done
together on the Hartz; recall to your recollection the Hartz,
and then I dare hope that you will also think of me.

Farewell, may you have a prosperous voyage.

(Signed) yours, BLUMENBACH.

Coleridge returned to England after an absence of fourteen mouths, and
arrived in London the 27th November, 1799.

He went to Germany but little versed in the language, and adopted the
following plan of acquiring it, which he recommends to others

"To those," says he, "who design to acquire the language of a country
in the country itself, it may be useful, if I mention the incalculable
advantages which I derived from learning all the words that could
possibly be so learnt, with the objects before me, and without the
intermediation of the English terms. It was a regular part of my
morning studies for the first six weeks of my residence at Ratzeburg,
to accompany the good and kind old pastor, with whom I lived, from the
cellar to the roof, through gardens, farm-yards, &c., and to call
every the minutest thing by its German name. Advertisements, farces,
jest-books, and conversation of children while I was at play with
them, contributed their share to a more homelike acquaintance with the
language, than I could have procured from books of polite literature
alone, or even from polite society."

In support of this plan, he makes a quotation from the massive folios of
Luther--a passage as he calls it of "_hearty_ sound sense," and gives
the simple, sinewy, idiomatic words of the "original," with a
translation of his own:

"For one must not ask the letters in the Latin tongue, how one ought
to speak German; but one must ask the mother in the house, the
children in the lanes and alleys, the common man in the market,
concerning this; yea, and look at the _moves_ of their mouths while
they are talking, and thereafter interpret. They understand then, and
mark that one talks German with them."

Whether he owed his successful acquirement of the language to these
plans adopted by him, or whether to his extraordinary powers of mind, it
must be left to others to judge. To form any thing like an accurate
opinion, it may be necessary to re-state, that during this fourteen
months' residence, he acquired such a knowledge of the German, as
enabled him to make that extraordinary translation of the Wallenstein,
(which will be presently noticed), reading at the same time several
German authors, and storing up for himself the means of becoming
familiar with others, on subjects in which the English language was
deficient. In addition to what in this short period he effected, I may
say that some part of this time was employed in receiving many lessons
from professor Tychsen, in the Gothic of Ulphilas, which, says he,

"sufficed to make me acquainted with its grammar, and the radical
words of most frequent occurrence; and with the occasional assistance
of the same philosophical linguist, I read through Ottfried's Metrical
Paraphrase of the Gospel, and the most important remains of the
Theotiscan."

Coleridge's Biographia contains the history and developement of his mind
till 1816, when it was published; he called it his Literary Life, but of
necessity it is intermixed with his biography, as he must have found it
impossible to separate them. He had even half promised himself to write
his own biography, but the want of success in his literary labours, and
the state of his health, caused him to think seriously that his life was
diminishing too fast, to permit him to finish those great works, of
which he had long planned the execution. The conception of these works
was on such a scale, that even his giant intellect, with his great and
continuous powers of application, could not have executed them. But to
continue.--On his return to London, his first literary occupation was
the translation of the Wallenstein, which he effected in six weeks, in a
lodging in Buckingham-street, in the Strand; it was printed and
published in 1800.

The MS. was purchased by Longman's house under the condition that the
English Version and Schiller's Play in German were to be published at
the same time. The play, as is well known to all German readers, is in
three parts; the first part, the Camp, being considered by Coleridge as
not sufficiently interesting to the British public to translate, it was
not attempted; the second part, the Piccolomini, was translated with the
occasional addition of some lines, in order to make out the thought when
it appeared to require it, particularly in the Horological scene of the
Watch Tower. In the last part the Death of Wallenstein is equally free,
but the liberties taken with this play are those of omission.

German was not at that time cultivated in England, and the few plays
which were translated, were but bad specimens of German Literature. The
Wallenstein is an historical play, without any of those violent tragic
events which the public expect to find in German plays, and this was one
cause perhaps of disappointment.--It is a play of high thoughts--
ennobling sentiments, and for the reflecting individual with good
feelings, one of those plays, by which, even without reference to the
story, the head and the heart are both benefited. There is no violent
excitement produced, and in quiet thought one can dwell on it with
pleasure. Coleridge truly prophesied its fate, for when translating it,
he said it would fall dead from the press, and indeed but few of the
copies were sold;--his advice to the publishers, whom he had forewarned
of this failure, was to reserve the unsold copies, and wait till it
might become fashionable. They however parted with it as waste paper,
though sixteen years afterwards it was eagerly sought for, and the few
remaining copies doubled their price; but now that the German language
has become more general, and the merit of this translation been
appreciated, it has been reprinted with success.

Since the visit of these remarkable men to Germany, the taste for German
literature has each year slowly increased, so as to make it almost
appear that they have given the direction to this taste, which in
England has caused a free inquiry into the writings of German authors,
particularly of their poets and philosophers for the one class; and also
into the interesting tales and stories to be found for the many who
require such amusement.

The edition of Wallenstein, 1800, contains the following preface, which
was afterwards abridged, but is here given as it was originally written;
the first criticism on it was wholly made out of this preface, and these
lines were quoted by the reviewer, in condemnation of the play and the
translation, though it is well known that the critic was ignorant of
German. The date of the MS. by Schiller is September 30th, 1799, the
English is 1800. Coleridge indeed calls it a translation, but had it
been verbatim, it would have required much longer time; take it however
as we will, it displays wonderful powers; and as he noticed in a letter
to a friend, it was executed in the prime of his life and vigour of his
mind. Of the metre of this drama he spoke slightingly, and said
according to his taste,

"it dragged, like a fly through a glue-pot. It was my intention," he
writes, "to have prefixed a life of Wallenstein to this translation;
but I found that it must either have occupied a space wholly
disproportionate to the nature of the publication, or have been merely
a meagre catalogue of events narrated, not more fully than they
already are in the play itself. The recent translation, likewise, of
Schiller's History of the Thirty Years' War, diminished the motives
thereto. In the translation, I have endeavoured to render my author
literally, wherever I was not prevented by absolute differences of
idiom; but I am conscious, that in two or three short passages, I have
been guilty of dilating the original; and, from anxiety to give the
full meaning, have weakened the force. In the metre I have availed
myself of no other liberties, than those which Schiller had permitted
to himself, except the occasional breaking up of the line, by the
substitution of a trochee for an iambus; of which liberty, so frequent
in our tragedies, I find no instance in these dramas.

The two Dramas, Piccolomini, or the first part of Wallenstein, and
Wallenstein, are introduced in the original manuscript by a prelude in
one act, entitled Wallenstein's camp. This is written in rhyme, and in
nine syllable verse, in the same lilting metre (if that expression may
be permitted) with the second eclogue of Spencer's Shepherd's
Calendar. This prelude possesses a sort of broad humour, and is not
deficient in character, but to have translated it into prose, or into
any other metre than that of the original, would have given a false
idea, both of its style and purport; to have translated it into the
same metre, would have been incompatible with a faithful adherence to
the sense of the German, from the comparative poverty of our language
in rhymes; and it would have been unadvisable, from the incongruity of
those lax verses with the present state of the English public.
Schiller's intention seems to have been merely to have prepared his
reader for the tragedies, by a lively picture of the laxity of
discipline, and the mutinous disposition of Wallenstein's soldiery. It
is not necessary as a preliminary explanation. For these reasons it
has been thought expedient not to translate it.

The admirers of Schiller, who have abstracted their idea of that
author from the Robbers, and the Cabal and Love plays, in which the
main interest is produced by the excitement of curiosity, and in which
the curiosity is excited by terrible and extraordinary incident, will
not have perused, without some portion of disappointment, the dramas
which it has been my employment to translate. They should, however,
reflect, that these are historical dramas, taken from a popular German
history; that we must therefore judge of them in some measure with the
feelings of Germans, or by analogy with the interest excited in us by
similar dramas in our own language. Few, I trust, would be rash or
ignorant enough, to compare Schiller with Shakspeare, yet, merely as
illustration, I would say, that we should proceed to the perusal of
Wallenstein, not from Lear or Othello, but from Richard the Second, or
the three parts of Henry the Sixth. We scarcely expect rapidity in an
historical drama; and many prolix speeches are pardoned from
characters, whose names and actions have formed the most amusing tales
of our early life. On the other hand, there exist in these plays more
individual beauties, more passages the excellence of which will bear
reflection than in the former productions of Schiller.

The description of the Astrological Tower, and the reflections of the
young lover, which follow it, form in the original a fine poem, and my
translation must have been wretched indeed, if it can have wholly
overclouded the beauties of the scene in the first act of the first
play, between Questenberg, Max. and Octavio Piccolomini.

If we except the scene of the setting sun in the Robbers, I know of no
part in Schiller's plays, which equals the whole of the first scene of
the fifth act of the concluding play. It would be unbecoming in me to
be more diffuse on this subject. A translator stands connected with
the original author by a certain law of subordination, which makes it
more decorous to point out excellencies than defects; indeed, he is
not likely to be a fair judge of either. The pleasure or disgust from
his own labour, will mingle with the feelings that arise from an after
view of the original poem; and in the first perusal of a work in any
foreign language, which we understand, we are apt to attribute to it
more excellence than it really possesses, from our own pleasurable
sense of difficulty overcome without effort. Translation of poetry
into poetry is difficult, because the translator must give a
brilliancy to his language without that warmth of original conception,
from which such brilliancy would follow of its own accord. But the
translator of a living author is encumbered with additional
inconveniences. If he render his original faithfully, as to the
'sense' of each passage, he must necessarily destroy a considerable
portion of the 'spirit'; if he endeavour to give a work executed
according to laws of 'compensation', he subjects himself to
imputations of vanity, or misrepresentation. I thought it my duty to
remain by the sense of my original, with as few exceptions as the
nature of the language rendered possible."

About this time, or soon after his return from Germany, the proprietor
of the Morning Post, who was also the editor, engaged Coleridge to
undertake the literary department. In this he promised to assist,
provided the paper was conducted on fixed and announced principles, and
that he should neither be requested nor obliged to deviate from them in
favour of any party or any event. In consequence, that journal became,
and for many years continued, 'anti-ministerial, yet with a very
qualified approbation of the opposition, and with far greater
earnestness and zeal, both anti-jacobin and anti-gallican. As
contributors to this paper, the editor had the assistance of Mr.
Wordsworth, Mr. Southey, and Mr. Lamb. Mr. Southey, from his extreme
activity and industry, with powers best suited for such employment, with
a rapidity and punctuality which made him invaluable to the proprietor,
was the largest contributor. The others not possessing the same
qualifications, although extremely powerful in their way, were not of
the same value to the proprietor.

To Coleridge, he continued liberal and kind, and Coleridge appreciated
his talents; often has he been heard to say, if Mr. Stuart "knew as much
of man as he does of men, he would be one of the first characters in
Europe." The world, and even that part of it, who either receive
pleasure, or are benefited by the labours of literary men, often seem to
forget how many there are who being compelled to work during the week
for the provision of the week, are (if not possessed of much bodily
strength) unfit to continue further mental exertions; nor can they find
the leisure and repose necessary to produce any work of importance,
though such efforts must always be found so much more congenial to the
feelings of a man of genius. Whatever his enemies or his more envious
friends may choose to have put forth, it was to him a most painful
thought, particularly as he had made literature his profession, to have
lived in vain. This feeling sometimes haunted him, and when the feelings
are gloomily disposed, they often become in their turn depressing
causes, which frequently ended in a deep and painful sigh, and a renewal
of his laborious and inspiring thoughts as an antidote. The severest of
his critics have not pretended to have found in his compositions
triviality, or traces of a mind that shrank from the toil of thinking.

A respectable portion of literary talent will secure the success of a
newspaper, provided that it impartially adheres "to a code of
intelligible principles previously announced, and faithfully referred to
in support of every judgment on men and events." Such were the opinions
and feelings by which the contributors to this paper, as well as the
proprietor was influenced during this period; and to these causes, as
well as from the talents of the editor and of the writers, it mainly
owed its success. Papers so conducted do not require the aid of party,
nor of ministerial patronage. Yet a determination to make money by
flattering the envy and cupidity, and the vindictive restlessness of
unthinking men, seems frequently to have succeeded, not confining itself
to the daily press, but diffusing itself into periodicals of a different
stamp.

"I do derive," says Coleridge, "a gratification from the knowledge,
that my essays have contributed to introduce the practice of placing
the questions and events of the day in a moral point of view. In
Burke's writings, indeed, the germs of all political truths may be
found. But I dare assume to myself the merit of having first
explicitly defined and analysed the nature of Jacobinism; and in
distinguishing the Jacobin from the Republican, the Democrat, and the
mere Demagogue," ('vide Friend'.)

Whilst Coleridge retained the opinions of the Unitarians, or rather
preached among them, they hailed him as the rising star of their
society, but when he seceded from them on his change of opinions, many
of them bruited his name in execration. Not so was it with Mr. Estlin
and other amiable and intelligent men, they understood him, and felt he
had acted on the full conviction of his mind, and that he was acting
conscientiously when he declined the opportunity of possessing a fixed
income, of which he stood so much in need. Those who knew him, knew how
much he suffered, and how painful it was for him to have differed with
such a friend as Mr. Estlin, one to whom he had been indebted for many
kind offices: But Coleridge was too sincere a man to dissemble.--There
were however others, who, from motives and feelings not honourable to
them, dissemblers even in Unitarianism, who sought every opportunity of
defaming him, and attempted to strip him of his virtues, and of his
genius, by calumny and detraction. In this, however, they were foiled.
On the other hand, the party more inclined to favour fanaticism, were so
indiscreet in their praise as to become in their turn equally injurious
to his character, and verified the old adage, that indiscreet friends
are too often the worst of enemies; for this party considered his
conversion as nothing less than a special miracle. It was impossible for
a mind so philosophical and so constituted, to remain long in the
trammels of a philosophy like Hartley's, or to continue to adhere to
such a substitute for Christianity as Unitarianism; like the
incarcerated chicken, he would on increase of growth and power, liberate
himself from his imprisonment and breathe unencumbered the vital air,
the pabulum of animal life, which by parallel reasoning, Coleridge was
aiming at in a spiritual life. From such a substitute for Christianity,
that imitation so unvitalizing in its effects, the studiously
industrious and sincere man will recoil; but the vain and superficial
man will find much in it for the display of his egotism, and superficial
knowledge. Often did he remark when conversing on these subjects, there
was a time, when

"I disbelieved down to Unitarianism, it would have been _more honest_
to have gone farther, to have denied the existence of a GOD! but that
my heart would not allow me to do."

But to this subject we shall have occasion to return. The mind which
grows with its culture, seeks deeper research, and so was it with his.
Certainly, one of the effects of his visits to Germany, was to root up
whatever remained of the Mechanical Philosophy of Hartley, after whom he
had named his eldest son, and to open to his mind in philosophy new and
higher views, and in religion more established views. But change with
the many, though the result of conviction and the growth of truth, is
still a change; and with the unthinking, it deteriorates from the
character of a man, rather than as it should do elevate him,

... unless _above_ himself he can
Erect himself, how mean a thing is man!

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