Let me share in thy burden, if sorrow should gall thee: O remain with us still, gentle youth; and I'll call thee "Then accept my devotion. In scorn do not slight me, "All in vain are my prayers, and all fruitless my sorrow; To that land of thy hopes would'st thou deign but to take me, And the thought that her love blessed thy being would make me When away from the parents with glad pride who view me, O then take me, love, with thee, that by thee reposing, "When thy bark reached our shores, if we welcomed thee here, If the plantain-tree ever hath shaded thy brow, If the love which my bosom held sacred and dear Should pursue thy false feet, as it roams through the sky!" When the first ray of morn shed its light o'er the plain, She was sought 'neath the roof of her cottage in vain, D. G. O. VOL. II.-N. S. FF 218 THE CHARTIST EPIC AND COLERIDGE'S PHILOSOPHY (A Letter to the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.) Dear Sir, The Chartist poem seems a fine production. I long to read it, I like the faith and spirit of it. Wordsworth and you have abandoned the poetic sphere, i. e. rebellion. Wordsworth was once a rebel, and so was Southey now they have sunk into Tories. Milton was a rebel when he wrote Paradise Lost. He had cooled down into your quotation, and Paradise Regained, when he became reconciled to the world. Byron was a rebel; Dante was a rebel; Tasso was a rebel; and even the parasitical Virgil was obliged to own that there were higher subjects than conservative subjects. Sicelides musæ paullo majora canamus." Is the poet a chartist? I doubt it. He goes beyond the charter: he teaches the doctrine of the community of land. This is true poetry. Many of your observations are very just and eloquent, but you never touched the grand point of dispute-the influence of external condition on the moral feelings; and consequently, there can be no conviction; but rather an irritation of feeling produced in the mind of a reformer. It seems like shuffling, to deny the influence of condition on the moral feelings. It kills affection, and widens the breach. There is a heartlessness in conservatism, which is incompatible with poetry. The very soul of poetry is justice and incorruption: I am surprised to see you write as you do in defence of the world. You mean something better, I dare say: but your language conveys the idea of special pleading in behalf of things as they are; in behalf of corruption, venality, plunder and oppression. As for any thing out of time and space, it is beyond poetry, and beyond speech, and beyond writing. Poetry is creative like God; it makes imagery in time and space like God himself, who never created any thing out of time and space.* I felt very angry with the conclusion of your article on Coleridge's remains, it was so very unjust; no progress can ever be made by unfair means. I do not wonder at the spirit of rebellion that now arms itself for vengeance; there is a recklessness of truth, of feeling, of justice, throughout every department of human thought and activity. The chartists are as bad as others; but perhaps they are God's battle-axe for retribution; there is no more party spirit in them than in their opponents. I felt my heart sink within me, when I read the latter end of your Coleridgean article. I was more vexed than angry: I love truth too dearly to see her mangled and torn to please a personal predilection, or bolster up the name of an individual; but of course you are master on your own premises. I hope, at least, that you will accept the challenge, to prove the unitism of Coleridgean philosophy; "Verbum auditum perit, sed litera scripta manet." I should like to see some propositions in writing that I could muse upon: I believe I know something of Coleridge, which his friends are not aware of. On the contrary, no CREATION ever was in Space or Time. ED. The Chartist Epic and Coleridge's Philosophy. 219 You proclaim the Coleridgean philosophy as the only unitary system with which you are acquainted-all other systems, Plato's excepted, being nothing more than bipolarities. What you mean by this I know not; but I should like to know what, in your opinion, is the philosophy of Coleridge. He himself says, "If you once master it, or any part of it, you cannot hesitate to acknowledge it as the truth; you cannot be sceptical about it." Mr. Owen says the same of his philosophy; but then nobody understands it but Mr. Owen himself. Coleridge says, "All Theology depends on mastering the term Nature."" Has Coleridge mastered it? Did he, or can you in his name answer the following questions? If not; I conclude either that the Coleridgean philosophy is "vox et preterea nihil," or so indefinite that his most talented admirers and disciples know not what to make of it. Quest. 1. Does the word "God" include the idea of universal being? Is God the subjective nature, and nature, the objective God? * Q. 2. Is nature, or the power which animates nature, a power distinct from God-a self-determining power for whose operations God is not morally responsible? ↑ Q. 3. Is partial evil a necessary and essential attribute of universal good? Q. 4. Does partial evil originate directly or indirectly in God as its voluntary agent? § Q. 5. Can either good or evil originate in a created being irrespective of, or in opposition to, the will of God? || Q. 6. Is the author of evil, self-existent ? ¶ Q. 7. Is Satan included in the prothetic unity, as the personification of attributes essential to the Divine perfection? ** Does the Coleridgean philosophy give a definite answer to these questions? Truth is simple, and will not equivocate. It has little occasion for circumstances. A good artist draws his figure with a clear and bold outline; a bad artist makes a shadowy outline, by many strokes which attest the vagueness of his own conceptions. I doubt the unity of the Coleridgean philosophy; and I entreat the Editor of the Monthly or any of Coleridge's friends, to make it manifest. There is much truth and clairvoyance in Coleridge's writings, more clearly expressed than in any preceding writer; but if the "one philosophy" ever had a residence in Coleridge's mind, it has never revealed itself in his works in any systematic or methodic form. He is no Prometheus: he has left no image, no form of universal truth; he [Neither-God is the source to universal being, intelligence, and goodness; the universe is an idea, a word, and a work of God. To each belongs its own subject and correlated object. ED.] + [Nature is a god-determined power. To whom is God responsible ?—The phrase is nonsense! ED.] [No! But what is evil? Sin is power minus intelligence and goodness-Evil is its antagonist manifestation in nature. ED.] § [No! ED.] Nothing originates in a created being. ED.] ¶ [In what sense are the words "author" and "evil" used?—query, also, whether partial evil or not? if more, is there more? ED.] ** [Included-but not as Satan, nor as personifying essential attributes, but as the potentiality of a possible manifestation. E. g. Since evil exists, it is clear that there ever was, and is a possibility of God creating a being who should commit evil. The words evil and sin, however, are confounded in these inquiries. No definite answer therefore can be given. ED.] has modelled hands, and arms, and toes, and fingers of the statue, but the statue itself he has not completed; notwithstanding his own proud boast that he had perfected philosophy. It requires very great precision, to be a teacher of any species of science or philosophy. That Plato wanted that precision, is evident from the fact, that to this day it is uncertain what Platonism is. At any rate, there is no evidence of its being a unitary philosophy. It had too many self-determining agencies. The Psyche was self-determining, and so was the Demiourgos. Matter was eternal, and God the Ovoid was the imperator that kept all these and many other litigants in order. The common faith of Christendom is not unitary, for it makes the devil the original author of evil, irrespective of God. In what manner the Coleridgean philosophy exceeds these in unity, I know not: but until I see some definite expression of his thoughts on these universal and fundamental subjects, I will treat all the eulogistic verbiage of his friends respecting the superiority of his system, as mere parlage-dust for the eyes of the simple and the credulous, who feel the beauty of his little moral sayings, but are obliged to take his unitary and final system of philosophy upon credit, because it has no positive existence.* Again I ask, what is Coleridgean philosophy? and where is a compend of its universal principles to be found? Can it be reduced within as small a compass as the Thirty-nine articles? Is it like Ossian's ghost, so ill defined that "the stars twinkle through its shadowy form?" or is it like "yonder cloud" which Hamlet showed to Polonius, "very like a whale ? or is it something clearer still "Defined anon and growing visible, A shade, a shape, a symbol it became, Till soon the vapoury mass appeared the robe PROTHETICUS. EDITOR S REPLY. *** The writer of the above Letter, it is evident, is more solicitous concerning human progress, than the permanence of human institutions. Now we care for both. We are catholic, he is sectarian. We are not unmindful of the influence of condition on the moral feelings-but we regard such condition itself as an exhibition of the state of moral feeling at the particular time and place; we therefore seek to purify the moral feelings themselves in the first instance, feeling assured that the improved physical condition will follow. But we will not stultify ourself by reversing the order of cause and effect. Had the writer legitimately assumed the name of PROTHETICUS, he would have required no teaching on this score. What there is in the conclusion of our Coleridgean review to excite the anger of any human being, is a mystery to us. Why should we not speak the truth of Coleridge? Because the writer of the letter, as proved by his seven questions, is a Bipolarist, and no more, shall we not Why in the very article animadverted upon, the primary unity required is stated in Coleridge's own words-" a primary unity, which gives itself forth into two things, from whose union results a representative unity, as a third something." ED. rise above the limits of chemical science (how narrow, is confessed by Dr. Prout in his Bridgewater Treatise), into the wider spaces of a divine philosophy, by aid of which, we have been able to answer the questions themselves, in notes at the foot of the page-satisfactorily, where the terms were explicit. But look at the sad confusion of terms; evil used both for sin and evil! Sin is the moral proclivity, which the evil in nature is appointed to antagonise. Satan too, is the name, not of the unfallen, but of the fallen archangel-only the former of course can be involved in the prothesis; and our answer must therefore be taken as applicable to the pure Being in the Divine idea. The assertion that the "one philosophy" never had a residence in Coleridge's mind, is, to say the least, a very hardy one. That it has not been produced in a system, is its merit. See how fragmentary the Bible is yet how moral! The one philosophy there, is taught poetically, narratively, dramatically, lyrically, proverbially, and even so it is in the writings of Coleridge. It is for the commentator to put them together -whereof sad work is often made, simply for this cause, that, wanting nothing but the inspiration of the original writer, the commentator therefore wants all. The opinions passed by our correspondent on Coleridge and Plato, serve eminently to illustrate this position. The Editor of this Magazine gave a compend of Coleridge's philosophy in the well-known ORATION delivered by him at the Russell Institution. That compend is capable of enlargement, and materials are yet accumulating. Until all is published, it would be unjust finally to pronounce on Coleridge. What is now before the world, is of such rare excellence, that we may reasonably hope what remains behind will add to his fame, not detract from it. We suspect that our correspondent has read but some of the works of Coleridge; we have read all. OUR MONTHLY CRYPT. CRYPTIC DIALOGUES. Οι θεοι οικτειραντες ανθρώπων επίπονον πεφυκος γενος, τας Μεσας και Απολλωνα και Διονυσου ξυνεορταστας εδοσαν.-Plato de Legibus, L. 2. Editor. Ah! this requires translation. So writes friend Alerist; probably, he is right. Let the English reader then take this, as a literal version. "The gods in compassion to the race of men, born to toil and trouble, appointed the Muses, and Apollo, and Bacchus, for the companions of their festivals." Voices within." Jolly companions every one!" Editor. Gleesome, within!-But where? Pish!-They say the Crypt is haunted within! This is the only apartment-there is none other-none inner. Within! within the air, then; and these voices are aëreal. I grow fantastic, or even now I see the Nine, and the Sun-god, and the Vine-god, shape themselves in the vault's atmosphere. Giulio Romano, and Apelles, and-Why, surely the old Gobie has some hand in this! The Gobie (entering). I have, by aid of the Franciscan. An invite, in your name, has been circulated among your contributors, soliciting them to high festival, as your guests-and, lo, where they are all assembled in the hall of |