Biographia Literaria
yet all is not destroyed that is checked. The crop was perhaps springing
up too rank in the stalk to kern well; and there were, doubtless,
symptoms of the Gallican blight on it. If superstition and despotism
have been suffered to let in their wolvish sheep to trample and eat it
down even to the surface, yet the roots remain alive, and the
second growth may prove the stronger and healthier for the temporary
interruption. At all events, to us heaven has been just and gracious.
The people of England did their best, and have received their rewards.
Long may we continue to deserve it! Causes, which it had been too
generally the habit of former statesmen to regard as belonging to
another world, are now admitted by all ranks to have been the main
agents of our success. “We fought from heaven; the stars in their
courses fought against Sisera.” If then unanimity grounded on moral
feelings has been among the least equivocal sources of our national
glory, that man deserves the esteem of his countrymen, even as patriots,
who devotes his life and the utmost efforts of his intellect to the
preservation and continuance of that unanimity by the disclosure
and establishment of principles. For by these all opinions must be
ultimately tried; and, (as the feelings of men are worthy of regard only
as far as they are the representatives of their fixed opinions,) on the
knowledge of these all unanimity, not accidental and fleeting, must be
grounded. Let the scholar, who doubts this assertion, refer only to
the speeches and writings of Edmund Burke at the commencement of the
American war and compare them with his speeches and writings at the
commencement of the French revolution. He will find the principles
exactly the same and the deductions the same; but the practical
inferences almost opposite in the one case from those drawn in the
other; yet in both equally legitimate and in both equally confirmed by
the results. Whence gained he the superiority of foresight? Whence arose
the striking difference, and in most instances even, the discrepancy
between the grounds assigned by him and by those who voted with him, on
the same questions? How are we to explain the notorious fact, that
the speeches and writings of Edmund Burke are more interesting at the
present day than they were found at the time of their first publication;
while those of his illustrious confederates are either forgotten, or
exist only to furnish proofs, that the same conclusion, which one man
had deduced scientifically, may be brought out by another in consequence
of errors that luckily chanced to neutralize each other. It would be
unhandsome as a conjecture, even were it not, as it actually is, false
in point of fact to attribute this difference to the deficiency
of talent on the part of Burke’s friends, or of experience, or of
historical knowledge. The satisfactory solution is, that Edmund Burke
possessed and had sedulously sharpened that eye, which sees all things,
actions, and events, in relation to the laws that determine their
existence and circumscribe their possibility. He referred habitually
to principles. He was a scientific statesman; and therefore a seer. For
every principle contains in itself the germs of a prophecy; and, as the
prophetic power is the essential privilege of science, so the fulfilment
of its oracles supplies the outward and, (to men in general,) the
only test of its claim to the title. Wearisome as Burke’s refinements
appeared to his parliamentary auditors, yet the cultivated classes
throughout Europe have reason to be thankful, that he
------went on refining,
And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining.
Our very sign-boards, (said an illustrious friend to me,) give evidence,
that there has been a Titian in the world. In like manner, not only the
debates in parliament, not only our proclamations and state papers,
but the essays and leading paragraphs of our journals are so many
remembrancers of Edmund Burke. Of this the reader may easily convince
himself, if either by recollection or reference he will compare the
opposition newspapers at the commencement and during the five or six
following years of the French revolution with the sentiments, and
grounds of argument assumed in the same class of journals at present,
and for some years past.
Whether the spirit of jacobinism, which the writings of Burke exorcised
from the higher and from the literary classes, may not, like the ghost
in Hamlet, be heard moving and mining in the underground chambers
with an activity the more dangerous because less noisy, may admit of
a question. I have given my opinions on this point, and the grounds of
them, in my letters to judge Fletcher occasioned by his charge to the
Wexford grand jury, and published in the Courier. Be this as it may, the
evil spirit of jealousy, and with it the Cerberean whelps of feud and
slander, no longer walk their rounds, in cultivated society.
Far different were the days to which these anecdotes have carried me
back. The dark guesses of some zealous Quidnunc met with so congenial a
soil in the grave alarm of a titled Dogberry of our neighbourhood, that
a spy was actually sent down from the government pour surveillance of
myself and friend. There must have been not only abundance, but variety
of these “honourable men” at the disposal of Ministers: for this proved
a very honest fellow. After three weeks’ truly Indian perseverance in
tracking us, (for we were commonly together,) during all which
time seldom were we out of doors, but he contrived to be within
hearing,--(and all the while utterly unsuspected; how indeed could such
a suspicion enter our fancies?)--he not only rejected Sir Dogberry’s
request that he would try yet a little longer, but declared to him his
belief, that both my friend and myself were as good subjects, for aught
he could discover to the contrary, as any in His Majesty’s dominions. He
had repeatedly hid himself, he said, for hours together behind a bank at
the sea-side, (our favourite seat,) and overheard our conversation. At
first he fancied, that we were aware of our danger; for he often heard
me talk of one Spy Nozy, which he was inclined to interpret of himself,
and of a remarkable feature belonging to him; but he was speedily
convinced that it was the name of a man who had made a book and lived
long ago. Our talk ran most upon books, and we were perpetually desiring
each other to look at this, and to listen to that; but he could not
catch a word about politics. Once he had joined me on the road; (this
occurred, as I was returning home alone from my friend’s house, which
was about three miles from my own cottage,) and, passing himself off
as a traveller, he had entered into conversation with me, and talked
of purpose in a democrat way in order to draw me out. The result, it
appears, not only convinced him that I was no friend of jacobinism; but,
(he added,) I had “plainly made it out to be such a silly as well as
wicked thing, that he felt ashamed though he had only put it on.” I
distinctly remembered the occurrence, and had mentioned it immediately
on my return, repeating what the traveller with his Bardolph nose had
said, with my own answer; and so little did I suspect the true object
of my “tempter ere accuser,” that I expressed with no small pleasure my
hope and belief, that the conversation had been of some service to the
poor misled malcontent. This incident therefore prevented all doubt as
to the truth of the report, which through a friendly medium came to me
from the master of the village inn, who had been ordered to entertain
the Government gentleman in his best manner, but above all to be silent
concerning such a person being in his house. At length he received Sir
Dogberry’s commands to accompany his guest at the final interview;
and, after the absolving suffrage of the gentleman honoured with the
confidence of Ministers, answered, as follows, to the following queries:
D. “Well, landlord! and what do you know of the person in question? L.
I see him often pass by with maister ----, my landlord, (that is, the
owner of the house,) and sometimes with the new-comers at Holford; but
I never said a word to him or he to me. D. But do you not know, that he
has distributed papers and hand-bills of a seditious nature among the
common people? L. No, your Honour! I never heard of such a thing. D.
Have you not seen this Mr. Coleridge, or heard of, his haranguing and
talking to knots and clusters of the inhabitants?--What are you grinning
at, Sir? L. Beg your Honour’s pardon! but I was only thinking, how
they’d have stared at him. If what I have heard be true, your Honour!
they would not have understood a word he said. When our Vicar was here,
Dr. L. the master of the great school and Canon of Windsor, there was a
great dinner party at maister’s; and one of the farmers, that was there,
told us that he and the Doctor talked real Hebrew Greek at each other
for an hour together after dinner. D. Answer the question, Sir! does he
ever harangue the people? L. I hope your Honour an’t angry with me. I
can say no more than I know. I never saw him talking with any one, but
my landlord, and our curate, and the strange gentleman. D. Has he not
been seen wandering on the hills towards the Channel, and along the
shore, with books and papers in his hand, taking charts and maps of
the country? L. Why, as to that, your Honour! I own, I have heard; I am
sure, I would not wish to say ill of any body; but it is certain, that I
have heard--D. Speak out, man! don’t be afraid, you are doing your duty
to your King and Government. What have you heard? L. Why, folks do
say, your Honour! as how that he is a Poet, and that he is going to put
Quantock and all about here in print; and as they be so much together,
I suppose that the strange gentleman has some consarn in the
business.”--So ended this formidable inquisition, the latter part of
which alone requires explanation, and at the same time entitles the
anecdote to a place in my literary life. I had considered it as a defect
in the admirable poem of THE TASK, that the subject, which gives the
title to the work, was not, and indeed could not be, carried on beyond
the three or four first pages, and that, throughout the poem, the
connections are frequently awkward, and the transitions abrupt and
arbitrary. I sought for a subject, that should give equal room and
freedom for description, incident, and impassioned reflections on men,
nature, and society, yet supply in itself a natural connection to the
parts, and unity to the whole. Such a subject I conceived myself to
have found in a stream, traced from its source in the hills among the
yellow-red moss and conical glass-shaped tufts of bent, to the first
break or fall, where its drops become audible, and it begins to form a
channel; thence to the peat and turf barn, itself built of the same dark
squares as it sheltered; to the sheepfold; to the first cultivated
plot of ground; to the lonely cottage and its bleak garden won from the
heath; to the hamlet, the villages, the market-town, the manufactories,
and the seaport. My walks therefore were almost daily on the top
of Quantock, and among its sloping coombes. With my pencil and
memorandum-book in my hand, I was making studies, as the artists call
them, and often moulding my thoughts into verse, with the objects and
imagery immediately before my senses. Many circumstances, evil and good,
intervened to prevent the completion of the poem, which was to have been
entitled THE BROOK. Had I finished the work, it was my purpose in the
heat of the moment to have dedicated it to our then committee of public
safety as containing the charts and maps, with which I was to have