CHAPTER XII.

THE CLERGY AND MEN OF LETTERS.

A

RIDGE. DOUBT AND BELIEF.

COLE

ND who is the interpreter of the will of the Maker to our generation? Carlyle emphatically replies that it is not the priesthood of any Church. "The so-called Christian clerus," he describes in these fiercely contemptuous terms: "Legions of them, in their black or other gowns, I still meet in every country; masquerading in strange costume of body, and still stranger of soul; mumming, primming, grimacing,-poor devils, shamming, and endeavouring not to sham: that is the sad fact. Brave men many of them, after their sort; and in a position which we may admit to be wonderful and dreadful! On the outside of their heads some singular head-gear, tulip mitre, felt coal-scuttle, purple hat; and in the inside,—I must say, such a theory of God Almighty's universe as I, for my share, am right thankful to have no concern with at all." Such is his negative answer to our question-clear enough at all events. Now for the positive answer. "The poet in the fine arts, especially the poet in speech, what Fichte calls the 'Scholar' or the 'Literary Man,' is defined by Fichte as the Priest' of these modern epochs,—all the And indeed nature herself will teach us that the man born with what we call 'genius,' which will

priest they have.

mean, born with better and larger understanding than others; the man in whom 'the inspiration of the Almighty,' given to all men, has a higher potentiality;-that he, and properly he only, is the perpetual priest of men; ordained to the office by God Himself, whether men can be so lucky as to get him ordained to it or not: nay, he does the office, too, after a sort, in this and in all epochs." In our time and country the office of the literary priesthood is to write the Bible of our past and present history-to extract from the doings and sayings of Englishmen in the past, as well as from current events, what perennial truth they may contain.

Carlyle's views on religion and literature are exemplified and maintained in the Life of John Sterling. Here was an ardent, noble-minded young man, who sought earnestly to lead a noble life in England. He encountered the doubts and difficulties of the time, ran hither and thither in search of knowledge, visited this and that oracle of wisdom. Carlyle details what may be described as his voyage of discovery in quest of a religion, and of an honourable vocation. At first he was a speculative Radical, uttering fierce words against the clergy which ravish the heart of Carlyle, content with negation and destruction, or what his biographer calls "the work of blasting into merited annihilation the innumerable and immeasureable recognised deliriums, and extirpating or coercing to the due pitch those legions of 'black dragoons,' of all varieties and purposes, who patrol, with horse-meat and man's-meat, this afflicted earth, so hugely to the detriment of it." He tried law a little, but did not take to it. His religion at this time Carlyle describes as "altogether Ethnic, Greekish, what Goethe calls the Heathen form of religion." But such religion did not satisfy him, and among those to whom he turned for guidance to a better faith was the renowned poet and thinker, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Understood to be

familiar with the latest results of German speculation, and to be himself a man of original and powerful genius, Coleridge nevertheless "could still, after Hume and Voltaire had done their best and worst with him, profess himself an orthodox Christian." Carlyle's chapter on Coleridge is in literary form, as I may remark in passing, one of the finest things in the English language. The satire is very keen, but it is now of a far more quiet and polished kind than we had in the Pamphlets. I quote a passage.

COLERIDGE.

The good man, he was now getting old, towards sixty, perhaps; and gave you the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings; a life heavyladen, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other bewilderment. Brow and head were round, and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of inspiration; confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute; expressive of weakness under possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping attitude; in walking, he rather shuffled than decisively stept; and a lady once remarked he never could fix which side of the garden-walk would suit him best, but, continually shifted, in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both. A heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely much-suffering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and sing-song; he spoke as if preaching, you would have said, preaching earnestly and also hopelessly the weightiest things. I still recollect his object" and "subject," terms of continual recurrence in the Kantean province; and how he sung and snuffled them into " om-m-mject" and sum-m-mject,” with a kind of solemn shake or quaver, as he rolled along. No talk, in this century or in any other, could be more surprising.

66

66

and

Sterling, who assiduously attended him, with profound reverence, was often with him by himself, for a good many months, gives a record of their first colloquy. Their colloquies were numerous, and he had taken note of many; but they are all gone to the fire, except this first, which Mr. Hare has printed-unluckily without date. It contains a number of ingenious, true, and half-true observations, and is, of course, a faithful epitome of the things said; but it gives small idea of Coleridge's way of talking;-this one feature is, perhaps, the most recognisable, "Our interview lasted for three hours, during which he talked two hours and three-quarters." Nothing could be more copious than his talk; and furthermore, it was always, virtually or literally, of the nature of a monologue; suffering no interruption, however reverent; hastily putting

aside all foreign additions, annotations, or most ingenuous desires for elucidation, as well-meant superfluities which would never do. Besides, it was talk not flowing anywhither, like a river; but spreading everywhither in inextricable currents and regurgitations, like a lake or sea; terribly deficient in definite goal or aim-nay, often in logical intelligibility; what you were to believe or do, on any earthly or heavenly thing, obstinately refusing to appear from it. So that, most times, you felt logically lost; swamped near to drowning in this tide of ingenious vocables, spreading out boundless, as if to submerge the world.

He

To sit as a passive bucket, and be pumped into, whether you consent or not, can in the long run be exhilarating to no creature; how eloquent soever the flood of utterance that is descending. But if it be withal a confused, unintelligible flood of utterance, threatening to submerge all known landmarks of thought, and drown the world and you! I have heard Coleridge talk, with eager musical energy, two stricken hours, his face radiant and moist, and communicate no meaning whatsoever to any individual of his hearers-certain of whom, I for one, still kept eagerly listening in hope; the most had long before given up, and formed (if the room were large enough) secondary humming groups of their own. began anywhere; you put some question to him, made some suggestive observation. Instead of answering this, or decidedly setting out towards answer of it, he would accumulate formidable apparatus, logical swimbladders, transcendental life-preservers, and other precautionary and vehiculatory gear for setting out; perhaps did at last get under way, but was swiftly solicited, turned aside by the glance of some radiant new game on this hand or that, into new courses, and ever into new, , and before long into all the Universe, where it was uncertain what game you would catch, or whether any. His talk, alas, was distinguished, like himself, by irresolution; it disliked to be troubled with conditions, abstinences, definite fulfilments; loved to wander at its own sweet will, and make its auditor and his claims and humble wishes a mere passive bucket for itself! He had knowledge about many things and topics, much curious reading; but generally all topics led him, after a pass or two, into the high seas of theosophic philosophy, the hazy infinitude of Kantean transcendentalism, with its "sum-m-mjects and "om-m-mjects." Sad enough; for with such indolent impatience of the claims and ignorances of others, he had not the least talent for explaining this or anything unknown to them; and you swam and fluttered in the mistiest, wide, unintelligible deluge of things, for most part in a rather profitless, uncomfortable manner. Glorious islets, too, I have seen rise out of the haze; but they were few, and soon swallowed in the general element again. Balmy, sunny islets, islets of the blest and intelligible-on which occasions those secondary humming groups would all cease humming. Eloquent artistically expressive words you always had; piercing radiances of a most subtle insight came at intervals; tones of noble pious sympathy, recognisable as pious, though strangely coloured, were never wanting long; but in general you could not call this aimless, cloud-capt, cloud-based, lawlessly

Reason and Understanding.

107

meandering human discourse of reason by the name of excellent talk; but only of "surprising," and were reminded bitterly of Hazlitt's account of it; Excellent talker, very-if you let him start from no premises, and come to no conclusion.

The irresolution which foiled the possibilities of Coleridge's life, and showed itself in his aimless, interminable talk, is represented by Carlyle as producing its worst result in his theory that the Christian Churches, though they "had died away into a godless mechanical condition," and though their theology had been refuted by Hume and Voltaire, could be "revivified into pristine florid vigour," by listening to man's "reason," and " duly chaining up" man's "understanding." The reference is to Coleridge's celebrated doctrine that the reason alone discerns spiritual truth, and that the understanding is authoritative only when it deals with the facts revealed by our senses, and with the inferences drawn from them. Carlyle laughs at this doctrine, declaring that "it all turned on the Vernunft (Reason) and Verstand (Understanding) of the Germans, if you could well understand them, which you couldn't." At one period of his life, however, he himself attached supreme importance to this distinction. In his essay on Voltaire he writes as a disciple of Coleridge, and supremely honours the particular doctrine which, in his Life of Sterling, he derides. "Religion," he says in the essay, "is not of sense, but of faith; not of understanding, but of reason. He who finds himself without the latter, who by all his studying has failed to unfold it in himself, may have studied to great or to small purpose, we say not which; but of the Christian Religion, as of many other things, he has and can have no knowledge."

Why did Carlyle, having at one time agreed with Coleridge as to the supreme importance, in judging spiritual things, of having recourse to reason and faith, not to the senses and the logical understanding, afterwards sneer at Coleridge's position? In the first place, the disciple of Carlyle might