LECTURE IV. COLERIDGE. COLERIDGE has not written much poetry, but he has written a great deal of theology. We know him as a theologian and his views, and the difficulty, of course, in such a lecture as this, which keeps strictly to the theology in his poetry, is to prevent oneself from slipping into discussion of his philosophic prose, and to think and speak of him only as a poet. I shall try to get what I have to say about his poetic view of Nature, Man, and God, into one lecture. First, he too, with the rest of the God-fearing English poets, saw in the proclamation of the revolutionary ideas the revelation of God; saw that the truth of universal brotherhood, and of the right of the meanest man to equal liberty, followed on and ought to be founded on the truth of God's universal Fatherhood. And when the first bright outburst of the Revolution took place, Coleridge was the poet who sang it with the stormiest glee and passion; something of the "storm and stress" (Sturm und Drang) period in Germany marks his verses, a violence of words and ideas, as if the more noise the more expression. Such lines as these show what I mean, Thus to sad sympathies I soothed my breast, Fierce on her front the blasting Dog-star glowed; She came, and scattered battles from her eyes! They are poor, but still they have a certain strength which will mellow-it is a shout of triumph, it is not the sensational shriek which exhausts itself. And they had a real enthusiasm at their root, that enthusiasm which delights to challenge established beliefs, as when Coleridge claimed heaven as the right of Chatterton the suicide; which is full of wild projects, as when with Southey and some others he planned their communistic expedition, and society on the banks of the Susquehanna, where he hoped to realize his new dreams of human peace and equality, O'er the ocean swell Sublime of Hope I seek the cottage dell, Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray; O, Chatterton that thou wert yet alive Sure thou would'st spread the canvas to the gale And it was an enthusiasm which, taking fire from the fire of the world, made him think, in the hope and joy which filled his heart, that all things were possible to faith so strong, and aspiration so intense; but which failed in expressing itself, at least at first, with any of the poetic force that is the child of temperance. Later on, in 1796, when the early excitement had lessened, and he had had time to learn his art, Coleridge put into two Odes his past and present feelings about the Revolution. They form the transition between his first wild hopes and his later conservative despair. The "Ode to the Departing Year" is the first of these, and it has its historical interest as well as its theological. It begins with the statement of his belief in God who regulates into one vast harmony all the events of time, however calamitous some of them may seem. It calls on God by the voice of the "Spirit of the Earth" to avenge the wrongs of the poor and the slave, to speak in thunder to England who has been the oppressor, and who now seeks to league herself against liberty. And its revolutionary character is strongly marked in this, that it dissolves the tie of patriotism, in behalf of the interests of mankind. It makes the nations rise to curse England, abandoned of heaven, standing aloof at cowardly distance from the interests of mankind. Nor is the same character less forcibly seen in the "Ode to France," where he looks back in 1797 on what he had felt some years before. When France in wrath her giant limbs upreared, And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea, Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band: And when to whelm the disenchanted nation, Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand, Though dear her shores and circling ocean, Though many friendships, many youthful loves And flung a magic light o'er all her hills and groves; To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance, I dimmed thy light or damped thy holy flame; And hung my head and wept at Britain's name. Like Wordsworth, he divided himself, for the sake of Man, from an attack on liberty, even when made by his own country, for it was an attack on God; and unpartaking of the evil thing, bewailed the vileness of his nation; nor did he remain in solitude, pampering his heart with feelings about human wrongs and liberty too delicate for use, but, made active by his fervour, went among men, doing what practical work he could. Nor, at first, did the blasphemy, and Terror, and blood of the Revolution in Paris daunt his hopes any more than they did Wordsworth's. These evils, he thought, could not be helped; they were the necessary storms that precede the fulfilment of a vast change for the better in human things, and behind them, though they hid its light, the sun was rising. And soon, when France had quelled domestic treason, and the Terror ceased, and her armies went forth, "insupportably advancing" to overthrow the enemies of freedom, his heart recovered, his hopes seemed fulfilled. And soon, I said, shall Wisdom teach her love And conquering by her happiness alone, Shall France compel the nations to be free, Till love and joy look round, and call the earth their own. It was not, then, the horrors of the Revolution that shook his faith in it. But it was this-it was the attack of France, the champion of freedom, upon the freest spot in Europe, upon the "stormy wilds" of Switzerland and on her bloodless liberty. It was when she "mixed with kings in the low lust of sway," and insulted the shrine of liberty with spoils From freemen torn, that Coleridge fell back in hopelessness of the world, in hatred of the Revolution, upon the sense of liberty in his own heart, and taking refuge in the solitudes of nature, declared, with a certain impatient petulance, that he could only truly feel the spirit of Freedom when he sent his being out of himself through earth and sea and air, and possessed All things with intensest love. And the reaction was deepened when England herself was threatened with invasion, and when France that threatened her was no longer the apostle of liberty but the apostle of despotism. It seemed a duty then to lay aside wild hopes of universal love of Man, and to fall back on the old idea of patriotism; and doing so, the last large idea of the Revolution passed away from men like Coleridge. They might have been able to be true to their first love, even when England was menaced, if France had been without Napoleon. But the Empire was more than human nature could bear. The hope had been so high, and the disappointment so deep, that it produced anger towards the ideas that had given birth to the hope, and men felt towards them as one does to a treacherous friend whose love |