C CC 
 
 c CC 
 
 v <T< <L < C 
 
 CC C CC 
 
 * CC C dC 
 
 CC c 
 
 CC «c 
 
 .cc <>:■ 
 CC c 
 
 <S c <: 
 
 €C C 
 c C c 
 
 ■■■ .«c_^_ 
 
 v <£_S 
 
 5-.:c<* 
 
 ' ^ <S1<: 
 
 « <Z 
 
 C<CA ' 
 
 ^<3T: 
 
 V <c< 
 
 c ^cc. 
 
 £: <C< 
 
 ; <X 
 
 ~* <XL5 
 
 <3I 
 
 <cjC 
 
 < <c; 
 
 <C* 
 
 «3 
 
 <_A 
 
 «C 
 
 C <-• «c_< 
 
 <: 
 
 l> «C< 
 
 <C 
 
 C?:<jc 
 
 «c 
 
 r - <cl< 
 
 <C 
 
 c • 
 
 c_ 
 
 
 «C 
 
 c_ 
 
 C_ 
 
 
 
 CJ 
 
 c 
 
 '- 
 
 V~" 
 
 c_ . 
 
 c 
 
 •<«c< 
 
 <6I 
 
 < 
 
 c 
 
 <t'«c=s 
 
 *d 
 
 c 
 
 c 
 
 «jC 
 
 ir 
 
 
 c 
 
 v.<. 
 
 <t "ClC 
 
 CldC 
 
 C CCL 
 -? CO 
 
 || LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.^! 
 
 ^<^ 
 
 c > -5 
 
 . C<L 
 
 c C ^ 
 
 c "c<- 
 
 
 oC 
 
 C <3CL 
 
 < < ^ 
 
 < <^ 
 
 " c <:-* 
 
 d"<C 
 
 ^r. 
 
 0*t 
 
 c c_ ^ 
 
 c:<^ c 
 
 c: 
 
 
 <> 
 
 
 < 
 
 r<^sCL^ 
 
 ^^ s££ 
 
 4 : <^ 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, f 
 
 c < 
 
 vjc « 
 
 « -*-w 
 
 :" 
 
 
 C3EC 
 
 <£: 
 
 4" <. '"■<• 
 
 . 
 
 c 
 
 <3_ 
 
 
 
 
 <<gl 
 
 
 
 <-cc 
 
 cc 
 
 
 c 
 
 
 
 
 CO 
 
 «<3C, 
 
 <C c 
 
 
 <r 
 
 
 c_ < 
 
 
 Or:- 
 
cc <^ < 
 
 ex. «« 
 
 < c « 5 
 
 Vc <£ - 
 
 <c c <c <z<: 
 
 ' 0.-C c<_CL«C 
 
 ^c<c <acC<£<C 
 
 <3C 
 
 or: 
 <C 
 
 
 
 
 _ c: c <^v<7<c 
 
 c ^ 
 
 _ cl « <:< :<r< 
 
 
 c; c 
 jcT c ■- 
 
 c «crf 
 
 •c «C* 
 
 c:«Cjk 
 
 _c^C<0«c 
 Leer «r • -« 
 
 
 <cc 
 
 
 
 ~ c<_ 
 
 :; <ci 
 - <cc 
 
 <«CC<&. 
 
 <l*c 
 
 <fccc « 
 
 <~e"<gSL CC 
 
 <c^<C 
 <C*C<C 
 
 civic 
 
 
 -_, * -■■:,: 
 
 ^c<LO:C- i 
 
 
 ~L Cc <Suc_ 
 c: CS <r:, 
 
 c-.cs <e 
 
 n cc^ ■■- 
 
 cj cc «& «c: 
 
 C Cc - 
 
 Clv-CC 
 
 «£C'<C 
 
 ^ «. 
 
 i^I <0: ^C 
 

 ON THE 
 
 UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 OF 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 BY 
 
 C M INGLEBY, LL.D. 
 
 
 \ Reprinted from the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature. .] 
 
ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS OF 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 By C. M. Ingleby, LL.D. 
 
 [From the Transactions of the Eoyal Society of Literature, Yol. IX., new series.] 
 (Read June 12th, 1867.) 
 
 If a well known proverb concerning good intentions 
 were a rule without an exception, it would go hard 
 with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His was a life of 
 schemes partly elaborated and abandoned, of projects 
 suggested and never realized, of resolutions taken 
 and never fulfilled. Such is the naked truth ; with 
 the culpability of such conduct in his case I do not 
 meddle. There are known facts in his life which go 
 far to convince me that the fault I have indicated was 
 rather due to physical infirmity than to moral pravity. 
 But, nevertheless, the example of a man whose 
 powers were great, whose acquirements were large, 
 whose aspirations were sublime, indicating the out- 
 lines of a complete philosophy of nature, and dedica- 
 ting the greater part of his life to the special studies 
 which could alone train him for achieving the work, 
 and after all, leaving, as the only fruit of his travail, 
 the slightest possible aperpu of his subject, is not one 
 to admire, and can only be edifying to his successors 
 as a terrible and deplorable warning. 
 
 A 
 
& ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 Such is the reflection natural to a reader of his 
 published works. If it be unjust to the memory of 
 this good man, the fact remains to be shown by the 
 publication of some work of his which has slumbered 
 in portly manuscript on the shelf of some friend or 
 relative of the author. But such a possibility is put 
 forth as a last resort, and almost cm desespoir ; for it 
 seems in the highest degree unlikely that any large 
 work of Coleridge's, the publication of which could 
 augment his fame, and clear his name from the charge 
 of unfaithfulness to his own genius, should have re- 
 mained all these years a private possession. Such 
 an event as the discovery of Coleridge's lost work, the 
 work of his life, seems more than we can hope for ; 
 but, as a means of removing all doubt on the matter, 
 it is eminently desirable that the public should know 
 distinctly what works Coleridge is reported to have 
 written which have never seen the light, and what 
 works actually exist in manuscript in certain assigned 
 depositories. 
 
 This is the question which has harassed me ever 
 since I took up the study of the life and works of 
 Coleridge. I believe I have left no stone unturned 
 to discover the clue to the missing treasure ; and 
 I do not expect that any material addition will be 
 made to the facts I have ascertained respecting the 
 Coleridge manuscripts. Accordingly, I venture to lay 
 the result, insignificant as it is, before the Koyal Society 
 of Literature. The name of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
 has been closely associated with this Society almost 
 from the era of its birth. It was founded in 1823; 
 and in the following year Coleridge was elected a 
 Royal Associate of the Society. From this time till the 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 6 
 
 death of George IV., he received from its funds a pen- 
 sion of £100 a year. It must, I should think, be a 
 source of gratification to every member of the Boyal 
 Society of Literature to reflect that, in this instance, 
 at least, its royal bounty was enjoyed by a man who, 
 from his ability and worth pre-eminently deserved it, 
 and who from the unremitting pressure of disease truly 
 needed it. At the same time we must all regret that 
 the grant was discontinued at a period when Coleridge 
 most needed it. 
 
 The facts I am about to bring before you this 
 evening have, in truth, a considerable bearing on 
 Coleridge's moral character. They who uphold that 
 character against his detractors maintain that he was 
 singularly candid, sincere, and truthful. Allowing the 
 fact of his numerous misstatements, both as to the 
 matter and as to the originality of his own writings, 
 the upholders allege that those very misstatements 
 manifest a constitutional infirmity, being the mistakes 
 of a man of abstraction and distraction, and not at all 
 those of a man of simulation or dissimulation. As 
 to what he had actually composed, it is affirmed that 
 his statements, if a little coloured by his peculiar 
 temperament, are, in the main, trustworthy ; that if 
 he has stated that he had written a certain essay, 
 we may be sure that the essay was written ; though 
 it may turn out that he took an exaggerated estimate 
 of its value, or that a portion only of the work was 
 actually written out ; that he did not, like Pascal, take 
 to himself the credit of a vast work, of which he had 
 written but a few pages ; and that if a work was merely 
 a project or design, Coleridge spoke of it as such — pos- 
 sibly raising expectation unduly as to the likelihood of 
 
 a 2 
 
4 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 the design being realized, but still sincerely intending 
 to realize it, health and leisure permitting. Thus, he 
 says ('Biographia Literaria,'ii.p. 296,1847),"Noprivate 
 feeling, that affected myself only, should prevent me 
 from publishing the same, (i.e. ' my own Life,') for write 
 it I assuredly shall, should life and leisure be granted 
 me," etc. Here was a determination to compose his 
 autobiography; he had, doubtless, a thoroughly sincere 
 intention of doing so, but, so far as we know, he never 
 accomplished it. When, therefore, we find him treat- 
 ing an essay on the imagination as a fait accompli, as 
 having been submitted to the judgment of a friend, 
 and by the advice of that friend withdrawn from 
 the 'Biographia Literaria,' are we bound to believe 
 that he had written it % or is this belief to be in- 
 validated by the very curious circumstances of that 
 withdrawal, which, for all one sees to the contrary, 
 may admit of explanation without impeaching Cole- 
 ridge's veracity % Those circumstances will be detailed 
 in the course of this paper, and it will be for you, 
 rather tha,n for me, to draw a correct inference from 
 them. 
 
 The principal of Coleridge's printed works were pub- 
 lished in his lifetime. But I think an almost equal 
 quantity of manuscript material remained unpublished 
 at his death. It was then that his representatives gave 
 to the world a series of notes, fragments, and finished 
 treatises, which he had prepared for the press, or left 
 in such a condition as rendered them not unfit for im- 
 mediate publication. The most important of these was 
 the 'Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, 1 which was first 
 published in 1840 ; and from that time have appeared 
 at intervals a series of volumes consisting either 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. O 
 
 of fragments left in manuscript by Coleridge, or of 
 writings which had been published in his lifetime. 
 By dint of editing and commenting, by virtne of 
 preliminary dissertations, introductions, appendices, 
 and treatises by Coleridge's nephew and daughter, and 
 by Messrs. Green and Marsh, the works of Coleridge 
 (exclusive of the four volumes of ' Literary Remains,' 
 and the two volumes of ' Letters,' etc.), were made to 
 extend to about twenty volumes in 12mo, which with 
 two or three exceptions 1 were published by the late 
 Mr. Pickering ; and these were reinforced by three 
 additional volumes, published by the late Mr. Moxon, 
 who had stood sponsor to the ' Letters, Conversations, 
 and Recollections of Samuel Taylor Coleridge' in 1836. 
 The publication of the last supplementary volume 
 by Mr. Moxon was, to all appearance, a stale to catch 
 purchasers ; possibly an unintentional source of decep- 
 tion. The preface, referring to the ' Literary Remains,' 
 and to no other publication bearing Coleridge's name, 
 apprises the reader of the fact, that a considerable por- 
 tion of this volume is a reprint of old matter. The 
 natural inference is, that it is a reprint of matter con- 
 tained in the ' Literary Remains ' only. The reader 
 who possesses, let me suppose, the volume containing 
 the 'Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit,' edition 1840 or 
 1849, is thus not so much warned as put off his guard. 
 If he is eager, as I was, to complete his set of Cole- 
 ridge's theological writings, he purchases, as I did, 
 this concluding volume, and not till he has carefully 
 
 1 The ' Treatise on Method' was published in the ' Encyclopaedia 
 Metropolitana ; and Dr. Seth B. Watson (who had been Coleridge's 
 amanuensis), edited the ' Theory of Life ' for Mr. Churchill. The 
 ' Table Talk ' was published by Mr. Murray. 
 
b ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 examined it, does he discover that he has now the 
 uncoveted privilege of reading a dozen and a half of 
 Coleridge's articles and notes, in two editions, which 
 do not differ from one another in a single important 
 feature — save, indeed, in the index, which as to those 
 notes collectively called ' OmnianaJ only serves to veil 
 the identity between the matter of the one volume and 
 the matter of the other. 
 
 Coleridge's published writings are only volumin- 
 ous in one sense ; they have been unconscionably 
 beaten out into twenty-seven volumes, while they 
 might have been comfortably housed in six. Now, 
 there are two ways of giving his works these biblio- 
 thecal dimensions ; the one has been adopted by his 
 representatives, and is such as I have described ; the 
 other is to publish the more important manuscripts 
 which still remain unpublished. Many will probably 
 now hear for the first time, that a considerable 
 number of works, and works of a considerable size 
 and importance by Coleridge, exist in manuscript 
 in private collections. The British public would 
 probably, have long remained in ignorance of the 
 fact, if I had not, by a somewhat discourteous 
 process I own, extorted from his executor a public 
 statement of the Coleridgean treasures which were 
 then in his safe keeping. As long as a decent silence 
 could be maintained, silence was maintained. The 
 national catechist yclept ' Notes and Queries,' and 
 nicknamed, from his occasional petty assaults, Gnats 
 rend Queries, plied note and query in vain for years. 
 What is everybody's business is nobody's. If a cor- 
 poration lacks the wherewithal to receive physical cas- 
 tigation, much more is the general personage who is 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 7 
 
 appealed to as " the fortunate possessor of Coleridge's 
 manuscripts " deaf, dumb, and blind. The course 
 adopted by the querists was futile ; no catechumen 
 ever presented himself, and none was ever forced into 
 court. When I took up the subject I repeated the 
 old folly. At length, discovering the name and person 
 of Coleridge's principal amanuensis, who turned out 
 to be his executor also, I published a " note " ad- 
 dressed to him by name. This appeal was equally 
 disregarded. Then, and not till then, did I resort to 
 the knout; one stroke was sufficient, and the late 
 respected Joseph Henry Green, with anything but 
 " smiling face and courteous grace," stepped into the 
 witness-box. He complained, as he had the right to 
 do, of the " inconsiderate, not to say coarse, attack" 
 I had made on him ; but despite that complaint he 
 proceeded to make a clean breast of the matter in 
 hand. I obtained some of the information of which 
 I was then in quest. I learned that certain manu- 
 scripts of Coleridge's were in Mr. Green's possession, 
 and the reason why they had not been and were not 
 to be published: of all this presently. I subse- 
 quently augmented and perfected my facts by con- 
 sulting the Eev. Derwent Coleridge (the poet's last 
 surviving son), and the widow of Mr. Stutfield who, 
 like Messrs. Green and Watson, had been Coleridge's 
 pupil and amanuensis. 
 
 Coleridge transfigured all he touched. If the story 
 of Maria Scheming in the second volume of ' The 
 Friend ' be an exception, it is so in appearance only, 
 viz. because he did not touch it; it is ill-written 
 indeed, but, to my mind, bears no trace of Cole- 
 ridge's style. The merest sticks of humanity loom 
 
8 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 heroic to his charmed imagination. Alexander Ball 
 and Andrew Bell were great men as Coleridge portrayed 
 them ; and the monster Bowyer, of whom De Quincey 
 records that he wrote an heroic line, 2 where fourteen 
 vowels went to twenty-nine consonants, seven of which 
 came in sequence (viz. t, h,d,s, t,t,h),was in Coleridge's 
 mind a genius of great poetic sensibility . In return for 
 this generous usage, nearly all who have essayed the 
 treatment of Coleridge's life, genius, or works, have 
 foully bewrayed him. De Quincey, who by a timely and 
 munificent gift, and subsequently by a pension be- 
 stowed on the poet with superfluous delicacy, had 
 proved himself to be one of Coleridge's best friends, 
 slandered and libelled him in the same breath with the 
 most extravagant laudation of his genius. Cottle and 
 Gillman, his generous patron and his no less generous 
 physician, wrote his life ; the former indirectly re- 
 flecting on his character, the latter on his common 
 sense. Mr. Alsop put forth his "Letters and Conversa- 
 tions " with somewhat of the air of a wild-beast show- 
 man ; and perhaps worst of all, Green compiled what 
 he sincerely believed to be a digest of his philosophy. 
 De Quincey proposed to supersede the proverb, " as 
 dead as a door nail," by another, "as dead as Gillman's 
 Coleridge." Doubtless, Gillman's unfinished volume, 3 
 unfinished because unfellowed, is about the deadest 
 piece of biography afloat (for afloat it still is, I believe, 
 though it has no sale) ; a third biography, written by 
 
 a " 'Twas thou that smooth'd'st the rough-rugg'd bed of pain." 
 " ' Smooth'd'st ! ' Would the teeth of a crocodile not splinter under that 
 word ? It seems to us as if Mr. Bowyer's verses ought to be boiled 
 before they can be read." — De Quincey, (Black's ed. xi. 94) 
 
 3 Shakespeare's ' unfinished eye ' in the ' Merchant of Venice' has 
 been excepted to. I wonder why P If it is unfellowed it is unfinished. 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLE1UDGE. 9 
 
 the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, is soon to be at press, 
 which, it is hoped, will in a measure supply the want 
 which its predecessors only helped to create, and 
 served to make manifest. But dead as Gillman's 
 book is, Green's ' Spiritual Philosophy,' 2 vols., 1866, 
 is, in De Quincey's phrase, deader; that is, dead in a far 
 profounder sense. As Coleridge used to say of other 
 works, the parts cohere by synartesis, not by synthesis — 
 in fact, Green's book mainly consists of extracts from 
 other men's writings, tacked together by a few flimsy 
 notes. It is no more a Spiritual Philosophy than the 
 fragments of an Ichthyosaurus cemented together is 
 an animal, nay it is less so, for Green's book has not 
 even the evidences of a past vitality. The student, 
 on reading it, is disposed to say to it, ' Coleridge I 
 know, and Schelling I know ; but who are you T I 
 am sorry that I cannot here respect the good old 
 maxim, Be mortuis nil nisi bonum ; for like Othello, 
 
 " I do perceive here a divided dutj'.'' 
 
 I dare not speak of Green as well as I could wish, 
 because I can do so only by speaking of Coleridge 
 worse than he deserves. In short, they who would 
 master the philosophy of Coleridge will do wisely to 
 study it in Coleridge's works, and not in the digest of 
 his disciple. 
 
 Green's ' Spiritual Philosophy ' was in every sense 
 still-born. It was a still-birth of his brain, and it was 
 a still-birth of Messrs. Macmillan's press. If, as I 
 trust, that prudent firm are guaranteed against loss, 
 they have the same substantial consolation as the 
 sturdy blacksmith in the story, whose wife was always 
 boxing his ears, and who replied to some friends, who 
 wondered why he submitted so patiently — "Why, 
 
10 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 where's the harm 1 It amuses her and it doesn't hurt 
 me ! " I doubt not Green's book served to entertain 
 his active mind in his declining years ; and I shall be 
 much surprised if it turns out that the publishers 
 undertook it at their own risk. 
 
 I dare say it has seemed to you that I have dwelt 
 with unnecessary length on this posthumous work of 
 Coleridge's loving friend and disciple, but the sequel 
 will show you that I have not said a word too much. It 
 was for the sake of writing this work, that Mr. Green, 
 by his own confession ( 4 Notes and Queries,' May 27, 
 1854), excused himself from undertaking the editorial 
 labour of preparing any of Coleridge's unpublished 
 manuscripts for the press. He writes, in answer to 
 one of my applications, " I have devoted more than 
 the leisure of a life to a work in which I hope to 
 present the philosophic views of my ' great master' 
 in a systematic form of unity — in a form which may 
 best concentrate to a focus and principle of unity the 
 light diffused in his writings, and which may again 
 reflect it in all departments of human knowledge, so 
 that truths may become intelligible in the one light 
 of divine truth." To this I replied that — 
 
 " I, for one, must enter my protest against the 
 publication of Mr. Green's book being made the 
 pretext of depriving the public of their right (may I 
 say ?) to the perusal of such works as do exist in 
 manuscript, finished or unfinished." 
 
 The protest, of course, was unheeded. Mr. Green 
 pursued his labours, and died, I believe before his own 
 work had received its final touches. We now know 
 how stupendous was the mistake he committed ; and in 
 comparison with the veriest fragment of Coleridge's 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 11 
 
 how barren is that creation for which he allowed some 
 of his great master's manuscripts to remain unedited. 
 
 I feel sure that even now we should have known 
 nothing whatever of these manuscripts but for Mr. 
 Alsop. Of Coleridge's most intimate friends and 
 well intentioned bewrayers — friends from whom he 
 had reason enough to pray for safety, 1 refer to 
 Hazlitt and De Quincey, the traducers ; to Cottle and 
 Gillman, the twaddlers ; to the late Joseph Henry 
 Green and Mr. Thomas Alsop — the last, who is the 
 least culpable, alone survives. I suppose I may, in his 
 case, act on the maxim, Be vivis nil nisi verum. He was 
 a member of the Stock Exchange, and I believe he 
 was both self-educated, and educated somewhat late 
 in life ; if so, it is the more honourable to him that he 
 was able to fit himself for the friendship of Coleridge, 
 Lamb, Landor, Wordsworth, and a score of the most 
 eminent writers and conversationalists of that day. 
 In several respects he was a remarkable man ; he 
 was, like his friends and fellow-workers, Robert 
 Owen of Lanark, Richard Oastler, and Feargus 
 O'Connor, a practical philanthropist and economist. 
 I believe I met him once in company with Robert 
 Owen, but I had no opportunity of making his ac- 
 quaintance. He is, however, described to me as a 
 man of quiet, unostentatious, and gentlemanly demean- 
 our, but of somewhat peculiar and eccentric habits. 
 
 Twice has Mr. Alsop been brought before the 
 public; on the one occasion, he achieved publicity 
 by the publication of Coleridge's 4 Letters and Conver- 
 sations ;' on the other occasion he had publicity thrust 
 upon him, to wit, in connection with the Rue Lepel- 
 letier plot. The latter case had a very ugly look for 
 
12 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 him ; but it is quite certain that he had no compli- 
 city in the plot against the life of Napoleon III. 
 Even if he were, as has been stated, the agent for the 
 supply of the hand-grenades, there is no reason to 
 believe that he knew of their final destination any 
 more than the house that executed the order. My 
 own impression is, that Mr. Alsop was imposed upon 
 by the chief conspirators, and induced to be their 
 agent under colour of assisting an Italian insurrection. 
 Of the charge on which he was sought to be arraigned 
 I hold him innocent ; for the lesser and literary 
 offence of bad editing he has been found guilty, and 
 was lampooned by the Rev. John Moultrie in the 
 following sonnet : — 
 
 " A gibbering ape that leads an elephant ; 
 A dwarf cleform'd, the presence heralding 
 Of potent wizard, or the elfin king ; 
 Caliban, deigning sage advice to grant 
 To mighty Prosper in some hour of want ; 
 Sweet bully Bottom, while the fairies sing, 
 Braying applause to their rich carolling, 
 But feebly typify thy flippant cant, 
 Stupid defamer, who for many a year 
 With earth's profoundest teacher wast at school, 
 And, notwithstanding, dost at last appear 
 A brainless, heartless, faithless, hopeless fool. 
 Come, take thy cap and bells, and throne thee here, 
 Conspicuous on the dunce's loftiest stool." 
 
 When Mr. Moultrie penned the last couplet he 
 did not perceive that he was conferring on himself 
 the honours of the 6 Dunciad,' for he could not invite 
 Mr. Alsop to share his throne (" Come take thy cap 
 and bells, and throne thee heee;" i.e. where I the 
 speaker am), unless the poet had already himself 
 assumed that dignity. I confess it rejoices me to 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 13 
 
 observe this slip of composition, because it does 
 look very like the work of the lame but persistent 
 avenger, who tracks the slanderer to earth, and drops 
 in on him there most unexpectedly. 
 
 The offence which not unnaturally stirred the 
 mortal ire in Mr. Moultrie's anima coelestis, lay in 
 this : that Mr. Alsop was, like Robert Owen, a socialist 
 and secularist. He saw Coleridge's religious faith 
 through a strongly refracting medium ; hence it is 
 that he strove to make it appear that Coleridge was 
 not an orthodox Christian. I am not going to discuss 
 that question now, but I must say, that view was not 
 wholly without warrant : for Coleridge, even before 
 his re-conversion to the Catholic Church of England 
 (the only wide-portaled communion in this world), 
 and while he was a Unitarian preacher, held a philo- 
 sophic dogma concerning the Blessed Trinity, which 
 he seems to have borrowed from Pythagoras and 
 Plato. The best refutation of Mr. Moultrie's slander 
 is ' The Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of 
 S. T. Coleridge.' While I allow that it might have been 
 better edited, I must confess I find it a most delight- 
 ful work, and I read and re-read it with ever increas- 
 ing enjoyment: one reason why these volumes are 
 delightful is, that they are permeated either by the 
 genius of the master or by the devotion of the dis- 
 ciple, testifying to his thorough-going admiration of 
 the great intellect, and his love of the great heart. 
 No man ought to be called a fool who is susceptible 
 of such feelings; or take it the other way, let the 
 writer be a fool— and so much the more wonderful 
 is the book. On the whole, I hold that Mr. Alsop 
 has done his work with more than average ability ; 
 
14 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 though it is somewhat marred by the editor's egotism, 
 as well as by his incommunity with Coleridge's in- 
 tellect. But egotistic and crotchety as he is, he is not 
 an opinionated or intolerant writer. For example, 
 take the following sentence from the address to his 
 children : — 
 
 " Cherished and sustained by his extraordinary 
 intellect, and still more by the love and sympathy 
 in which ... he always superabounded, and the 
 fulness of which seemed to arise from its overflowing, 
 I have been able to arrive at settled and definite con- 
 clusions upon all matters to which I have heretofore 
 attached value or interest. When I say that I have 
 arrived at settled conclusions, you will not for a 
 moment believe that my opinions can or ought to be 
 received by others of a totally different experience 
 as truths for their minds, still less that matters which 
 depend upon individual experience and tempera- 
 ment can be permanent truths for all time. You 
 will find, and this it is which I wish to impress 
 upon your minds, that a spirit of pure and intense 
 humanity* a spirit of love and kindness, to which no- 
 thing is too large, for which nothing is too small, will 
 be to you, as it has been to me, its own exceeding 
 great reward." 
 
 From Mr. Alsop's two volumes I have obtained 
 clues to several extant manuscripts of Coleridge, and 
 also direct information as to what works Coleridge 
 had contemplated composing, and as to what he had 
 actually dictated to his amanuenses. By these means, 
 and also by the aid of some passages in his published 
 
 4 " Religious zeal," says Lord Chatham, " has been called divinity, 
 but remember that the only true divinity is humanity." 
 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 15 
 
 works, I have been enabled to determine that about 
 the period 1820-3, after he had become domesticated 
 with the Gillmans, Messrs. Green, Stutneld, and 
 Watson were in the habit of attending at Gillman's 
 house (now, alas ! modernized by the destruction of 
 the old dormers, and the construction of a hideous new 
 front to the third floor), and acting as Coleridge's 
 scribes ; and that he was then engaged upon the com- 
 position of three capital works, viz. : — 
 
 1. A complete constructive philosophy of the 
 universe, to be called Logosophia, said to be the 
 great work of his life; 2. A treatise on Logic, in 
 three books ; and 3. A treatise on the ideal basis of 
 Christianity, to be called The Assertion of Religion. 
 
 Besides, I have ascertained that there is still in 
 existence a shorthand report of a course of lectures 
 by Coleridge on The History of Philosophy. From 
 private sources I have learned that there still remain 
 in manuscript two or more fragments, which may 
 represent one book of the Logic, and a collection of 
 notes, chiefly on religion, bearing the quaint and 
 modest name of Fly-catchers. The Eev. Derwent 
 Coleridge has suggested to me that Mr. Green may 
 have used, as raw material, a good deal of the work 
 dictated to him by Coleridge, and which was then in 
 his possession, in the text of his 'Spiritual Philosophy.' 
 Of course, neither he nor I (not having collated Col- 
 ridge's manuscripts in Green's handwriting, with 
 Green's posthumous work), can say positively that 
 this has been done : but it is likely ; and those who 
 know Green's peculiarities can have no doubt that, if 
 he did so use Coleridge's manuscript, he re-wrote all 
 the passages which he borrowed. 
 
16 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 I shall now proceed to say something on each of 
 these manuscript works; my general plan being to 
 give the illustrated extracts first, and my own remarks 
 afterwards. 
 
 I. — LOGOSOPHIA. 
 
 This work is first introduced to our notice in the 
 first volume of the ' Biographia Literaria' (1847, 
 vol. i. p. 267), where Coleridge says: — 
 
 " In the third treatise of my ( Logosophia/ announced at 
 the end of the volume, I shall give (Deo volente) the demon- 
 strations and constructions of the Dynamic Philosophy 
 scientifically arranged. It is, according to my conviction, 
 no other than the system of Pythagoras and of Plato revised 
 and purified from impure mixtures. Doctrina per tot manus 
 tradita tandem in vcuppam desiit !" 
 
 These remarks are followed by the ten theses, said 
 (by Professor Ferrier) to be mainly taken from 
 Schelling. 
 
 We are, as you observe, referred by Coleridge to the 
 end of the volume (i. e. vol. i.), for an announcement of 
 the great work. There, sure enough, we find an an- 
 nouncement, but in an unexpected form. It seems 
 this great work contains a number of treatises, one of 
 which is, 'On the Imagination, or Esemplastic Faculty.' 
 Now, chapter xii. of the ' Biographia Literaria' is 
 nothing more nor less than the vestibule to chapter 
 xiii. ; it is merely an introduction to the succeeding 
 chapter, ' On the Imagination or Esemplastic Faculty.' 
 
 What act 
 That roars so loud and thunders in the index ? 
 
 Why, it is next to nothing at all ; in Coleridge's own 
 expression, "A magnificent portal leads to a mud 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 17 
 
 hovel ; you ascend a marble staircase, and arrive at 
 garret." Chapter xiii., so far as concerns the promised 
 dissertation on the Imagination, is a blank. The reason 
 why it is a blank forms the actual subject of the chap- 
 ter. It is a reproduction, mutatis mutandis, of the oft- 
 repeated chapter on snakes in Iceland or in Norway, 
 as given in the works of Horrebow and Pontoppidan ; 
 the last simply states the fact in so many words, 
 that there are no snakes in the island, but Horrebow 
 swells out his chapter to as many lines by giving the 
 reason why there are no snakes in Norway. 6 So 
 Coleridge tells us that the treatise on the Imagina- 
 tion is deferred ; and the reason for the omission is 
 thus given : — 
 
 " Thus far had the work been transcribed for the press 
 [the few preceding pages of the chapter being mere adapta- 
 tions from Schelling and Kant — CM. I.], when I received the 
 following letter from a friend, whose practical judgment I have 
 had ample reason to estimate and revere, and whose taste 
 and sensibility preclude all the excuses which my self-love 
 might possibly have prompted me to set up in plea against 
 the decision of advisers of equal good sense, but with less 
 tact and feeling : — 
 
 <e ' Dear 0., — You ask my opinion concerning your chapter 
 on the Imagination, both as to the impressions it made on 
 myself, and as to those which I think it will make on the 
 public, i. e. that part of the public who, from the title of 
 the work, and from its forming a sort of introduction to a 
 volume of poems, are likely to constitute the great majority 
 of your readers. . . .[ 
 
 The writer then states the effect of the missing* 
 chapter (1) on his understanding, (2) on his feelings, 
 ending thus : — 
 
 5 Horrebow's 'Natural History '; Norway, 1758, fol., p. 91: and 
 Pontoppidan's ' Iceland,' 1755, fol., 2nd part, p. 34. 
 
 B 
 
18 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 " l Yet, after all, I could not but repeat the lines which you 
 had quoted from a manuscript poem of your own in the 
 ' Friend/ and applied to a work of Mr. Wordsworth, though 
 with a few words altered : — 
 
 ' An orphic tale indeed, 
 A tale obscure of high and passionate thoughts 
 To a strange music chanted ! ' 
 
 Be assured, however, that I look forward anxiously to your 
 great book on the Consteuctive Philosophy which you have 
 promised and announced, and that I will do my best to 
 understand it. Only I will not promise to descend into the 
 dark cave of Trophonius with you, there to rub my own eyes, 
 in order to make the sparks and figured flashes which I am 
 required to see. 
 
 " ' So much for myself. But for the public I do not hesi- 
 tate a moment in advising and urging you to withdraw the 
 Chapter from the present work, and to reserve it for your 
 announced treatises on the 'Logos/ or Communicative 
 Intellect in Man and Deity. First, because imperfectly as I 
 understand the present chapter, I see clearly that you have 
 done too much, and yet not enough. You have been obliged 
 to omit many links, from the necessity of compression, that 
 what remains looks (if I may recur to my former illustra- 
 tions) like the fragments of the winding steps of an old 
 ruined tower. Secondly, a still stronger argument (at least, 
 one that I am sure will be more forcible with you) is, that 
 your readers will have both right and reason to complain 
 of you. This chapter, which cannot, when it is printed, 
 amount to so little as an hundred pages, will, of necessity, 
 greatly increase the expense of the work ; and every reader 
 who, like myself, is neither prepared nor perhaps calculated 
 for the study of so abstruse a subject so abstrusely treated, 
 will, as I have before hinted, be almost entitled to accuse 
 you of a sort of imposition on him ... In that greater work 
 to which you have devoted so many years, and study so in- 
 tense and various, it will be in its proper place. Your pro- 
 spectus will have described and announced both its contents 
 and their nature ; and if any persons purchase it who feel 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 19 
 
 no interest in the subject of which it treats, they will have 
 themselves only to blame . . . All success attend you, for if 
 hard thinking and hard reading are merits, you have 
 
 deserved it. 
 
 ' Your affectionate, etc' 
 
 " In consequence of this very judicious letter, which pro- 
 duced complete conviction on my mind, I shall content my- 
 self for the present with stating the main result of the 
 chapter, which I have reserved for that future publication, a 
 detailed prospectus of which the reader will find at the close 
 of the second volume. " 
 
 The main result of so elaborate and abstruse a dis- 
 sertation is then summed up in twenty-three lines ; 
 but the reader will search in vain for the prospectus 
 of the work : it is iiot at the close of the second 
 volume, nor anywhere else in the ' Biographia Lite- 
 raria' (see ed. 1847, vol. i. p. 295-7). 
 
 From all this apparatus of friendly advice, the 
 detractors of Coleridge see nothing but a flimsy 
 pretence for the omission of a dissertation which was 
 either a mere translation from Schelling, or Avhich it 
 was not then in Coleridge's power to produce. I give 
 no opinion on this, simply recording my conviction 
 that the letter in all its parts bears the impress of 
 Coleridge's mind and style. It may have been written 
 by Coleridge, and yet have been an honest expression 
 of a judicious friend's advice. Anyhow, the omission 
 both of the inaugurated essay and of the promised 
 prospectus is curious, and the whole affair has a very 
 awkward complexion. 
 
 The terms we have seen applied to the Logosophia 
 may give us a faint notion of the nature and scope 
 of the work. It is called 'The Constructive Phi- 
 losophy.' Mr. Green, in the only interview I ever had 
 
 b2 
 
20 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 with him, told me that the volume he possessed con- 
 tained an announcement of the doctrine, that me- 
 chanical force is a manifestation of life, so that dead 
 matter, considered as the external material of whose 
 organization life is a property, is a non-entity ; the 
 spiritual reality being as much required to account 
 for dead matter, as rightly considered, it is required 
 to account for organization : which is the catholic 
 doctrine of the 'Theory of Life;' and the Rev. Der- 
 went Coleridge tells me that Mr. Green described that 
 volume to him as an attempt to construct the world 
 a priori. 
 
 From all this, one might suppose that Coleridge's 
 work was the counterpart of Schelling's ' Natur- 
 philosophie' or Oken's ' Physico-philosophie.' Indeed, 
 I had made up my mind that it was so, till I was con- 
 fronted with a forgotten passage which Coleridge 
 added in manuscript to Mr. Alsop's copy of 'The 
 Friend' (after the word vacuum, led. 1818, vol. iii. p. 
 263), and a modification of which is found in the 
 edition of 1844, vol. iii. p. 214. 
 
 " From Zeno, the Eleatrice, to Spinoza, and from Spinoza 
 to Schelling, Oken, and the German ' Natur-philosophen ' of 
 the present day, the result has been, and ever must be, Pan- 
 theism, under some one or other of its modes or disguises," 
 
 which he sternly discountenances. 6 
 
 Hence it may be safely inferred that Coleridge's 
 Logosophia is not identical with the great systems of 
 the Germans. It is also called a set of ' Treatises on 
 the Logos or Communicative Intellect in Man and 
 Deity,' a title which seems to savour more of mysticism 
 than of science. The third treatise was to contain 
 
 6 ' Letters, Conversations, and Recollections,' vol. i. p. 30. 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 21 
 
 the ■ Dynamic Philosophy ;' another, the dissertation 
 on the 'Imagination or Esemplastic Faculty;' and pro- 
 bably another on ' Ideas.' It is hard to believe that 
 this great work was, after all, a gorgeous dream begot 
 between opium and Schelling ; and it is satisfactory 
 to know that, at least, one large volume of it is ex- 
 tant. We read in the ' Letters,' vol. i. p. 7, under the 
 date of December 2, 1818, of — 
 
 "the almost insurmountable difficulties which the anxieties 
 of to-day oppose to my completion of the great work, the 
 form and materials of which it has been the employment of 
 the best and most genial hours of the last twenty years to 
 mature and collect." 
 
 Again, under the date January, 1821 : — 
 
 " In addition to these — of my Great Work, to the pre- 
 paration of which more than twenty years of my life have 
 been devoted, and on which my hopes of extensive and per- 
 manent utility, of fame, in the noblest sense of the word, 
 mainly rest — that, by which I might, 
 
 ' As now by thee, by all the good be known, 
 
 When this weak frame lies moulder'd in the grave, 
 
 Which self-surviving I might call my own, 
 
 Which Folly cannot mar, nor Hate deprave, — 
 
 The incense of those powers, which, risen in flame, 
 Might make me dear to Him from whom they came,' 
 
 " Of this work, to which all my other writings (unless 
 I except my poems, and these 1 can exclude in part only) 
 are introductory and preparative, and the result of which (if 
 the premises be, as I, with the most tranquil assurance am 
 convinced they are — insubvertible, the deductions legitimate, 
 and the conclusions commensurate, and only commensurate 
 with both), must finally be a revolution of all that has been 
 called philosophy or metaphysics in England and France, 
 since the era of the commencing predominance of the me- 
 chanical system at the restoration of our second Charles ; 
 and with this the present fashionable views, not only of reli- 
 
22 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 gion, morals and politics, but even of the modern physics 
 and physiology. (You will not blame the earnestness of my 
 expressions nor the high importance which I attach to this 
 work ; for how with less noble objects, and less faith in their 
 attainment, could I stand acquitted of folly, and abuse of 
 time, talents, and learning, in a labour of three-fourths of 
 my intellectual life ?) Of this work something more than a 
 volume has been dictated by me, so as to exist fit for the 
 press, to my friend and enlightened pupil, Mr. Green/'' 7 
 
 Here is Coleridge's own statement ; not put forth to 
 throw dust in the eyes of the public, but com- 
 municated to a private friend, that by January, 1821, 
 " something more than a volume" was finished for 
 the press, and existed at that date in the handwriting 
 of Mr. Green. We also know that in its author's 
 judgment it was the most important of all his works, 
 the fruit of twenty years' genial and learned toil, 
 and that upon it rested his hope of permanent fame. 
 We cannot, then, be far wrong in pronouncing it, 
 beforehand, the work which par excellence, of all he 
 ever wrote, deserves publication. Moreover, for want 
 of that part of it which concerns the Imagination or 
 Esemplastic Faculty, the first volume of the ' Bio- 
 graphia Literaria' is, as we have seen, incomplete, as 
 hardly any other work of repute is, there being an 
 awful hiatus of nearly all chapter xiii., " the imperial 
 theme," to which the preceding long chapter was but 
 the " prologue." Surely such an overture as that was 
 never before written to an anticlimax. But granting 
 the judiciousness of the omission of that essay on the 
 grounds stated, those grounds are no longer reasons ; 
 for if the volume of which Coleridge writes com- 
 
 7 ' Letters. Conversations and Recollections of Coleridge,' 1836, 
 vol. i. 154-6 (cf. ibid., vol. i. p. 161). 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 23 
 
 prises the wanting dissertation, and is extant, it pro- 
 bably discusses the Imagination at length, without 
 regard to the need of compression, and its publication 
 as a supplement to vol. i. of the ' Biographia Literaria' 
 would now be no imposition on the purchaser of the 
 old work. 
 
 Now what says Mr. Green to all this? He says, 
 
 " Although in the material [sic] for the volumes there are 
 introductions and intercalations on subjects of speculative 
 interest^ such as to entitle them to appear in print; the main 
 portion of the work is a philosophical cosmogony which I 
 fear is scarcely adapted for scientific readers, or corresponds 
 to the requirements of modern science. At all events, I do 
 not hesitate to say that the completion of the whole would 
 be requisite for the intelligibility of the part which exists in 
 manuscript. Whatever may be, however, the opinion of 
 others, I have decided, according to my own convictions of 
 the issue, against the experiment." 8 
 
 Now if the experiment referred to is that of trying 
 whether any readers of the work could understand it 
 as it is, surely that is their affair, and they may be 
 left to puzzle it out, or give it up. If, however, the 
 experiment is a commercial one only, that might have 
 been a serious obstacle with Mr. Green, but for the 
 fact that he had received and refused an offer to defray 
 all the expenses of printing the work. All, then, I 
 can gather from this miserable fudge is, that he would 
 not part with the manuscript for another person to 
 edit and see through the press, and he had not the 
 disposition to do so himself; for, surely, all that talk 
 about the necessity of completing the treatise before 
 the volume in his possession saw the light could not 
 have been seriously intended as a reason for with- 
 
 8 ' Notes and Queries,' June 10, 1854. 
 
24 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 holding it. He could not have seriously looked for- 
 ward to Coleridge's return across the bourn called 
 Anostum, in order to revisit the country of his mor- 
 tality, and complete his great work ; as little could he 
 seriously have thought it a condition precedent to 
 publication that some one else should rewrite and 
 complete what Coleridge had dictated to his ama- 
 nuensis. I venture to take all that for pretext, the 
 real reason being that Mr. Green had his own work to 
 complete, and wanted some of Coleridge's materials 
 to stuff it out. But if he did honestly believe it in- 
 expedient to publish a fragmentary volume of Cole- 
 ridge's great work, (1) because it was a fragment, and 
 (2) because it did not meet the requirements of 
 modern science, he must, to be consistent, have de- 
 plored the republication in our day of Aristotle's 
 ' Physics,' Bacon's 4 Novum Organum,' and Newton's 
 ' Optics,' for all of these fall far short of those require- 
 ments, and the first two are fragments only. 
 
 II. — Logic. 
 
 We first hear of this work in a letter from Cole- 
 ridge to Mr. Alsop, under the date of September 24, 
 1821 :— 
 
 " I entertain some hope, too, that my Logic, which I could 
 begin printing immediately if I could find a publisher 
 willing to undertake it on equitable terms, might prove an 
 exception to the general fate of my publications. " 9 
 
 Again under the date of December 26, 1822, we 
 read : — 
 
 " There are two ways of giving you pleasure and comfort ; 
 
 n 'Letters, Conversations, and Eecollections of Coleridge,' 1836, 
 vol. ii p. 10 (ef. ibid.. «*ol. i. p. 141. and vol. ii. p. 77-8). 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 25 
 
 would to God I could have made the one com/possible with 
 the other, and have done both. The first, the having finished 
 the Logic in its three main divisions, — as the Canon, or that 
 which prescribes the rule and form of all conclusion or con- 
 clusive reasoning ; second, as the Criterion, or that which 
 teaches to distinguish truth from falsehood, containing all 
 the sorts, forms, and sources of error, and means of deceiv- 
 ing or being deceived; third, as the Organ, or positive 
 instrument for discovering truth, together with the general 
 introduction to the whole. The second was to come to town, 
 
 and pass a week with you and Mrs. . The latter I 
 
 could not have done, and yet have been able to send you the 
 present good tidings, that with regard to the former we are 
 in sight of land; that Mr. Stutfield will give three days in 
 the week for the next fortnight, and that I have no doubt 
 . . . that by the end of January the whole book will not 
 only have been finished, for that I expect will be the case 
 next Sunday fortnight, but ready for the press. In reality, 
 I have now little else but to transcribe, and even this would 
 in part only be necessary, but that, I must, of course, dictate 
 the sentences to Mr. Stutfield and Mr. Watson ; and shall, 
 therefore, avail myself of the opportunity for occasional cor- 
 rection and improvement. When this is done, and can be 
 offered as a whole to Murray or other publisher, I shall have 
 the Logical Exercises, or the Logic exemplified and supplied 
 in a critique on (1) Condillae; (2) Paley; (3) French Che- 
 mistry and Philosophy, with other miscellaneous matters from 
 the present fashions of the age, moral and political, ready to 
 go to the press with by the time the other is printed off." 10 
 
 There is a mystery to be cleared up concerning 
 this work. On Mr. Stutfield's death his widow took 
 charge of his papers, and at the time I write they 
 are deposited at Tilbury's warehouse. But Mrs. 
 Stutfield tells me that among them there is only one 
 
 10 ' Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of Coleridge,' 1836, 
 vol. ii. p. 150-2. 
 
26 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 manuscript which had been dictated by Coleridge to 
 Mr. Stutfield, and that is a logical manuscript " con- 
 sisting of a few pages only." Where is the rest 1 
 Is it credible that it never existed save in Cole- 
 ridge's forgetive brain ] I can hardly believe that in 
 the face of his express statements, that on December 
 26th, 1822, there remained little else to be done in 
 completion of the Logic, in its three parts of Canon, 
 Criterion, and Organ, but transcription of what had 
 been already written ; and that day being Saturday, 
 that by the 15th day Coleridge expected the whole 
 work to be finished. 
 
 Mr. Green, in reply to my inquiry respecting this 
 work, says: — 
 
 "I apprehend it may be proved by reference to Mr. 
 Stutfield's notes, the gentleman to whom it is said they were 
 dictated, and who possesses the original copy, that the work 
 never was finished. Of the three parts mentioned as the com- 
 ponents of the work, the ' Criterion' and ' Organ' do not to 
 my knowledge exist ; and with regard to the other parts of 
 the manuscript, including the l Canon/ I believe that I have 
 exercised a sound discretion in not publishing them in their 
 present form and unfinished state/' 11 
 
 Of course such a reply as this is little more than a 
 subterfuge. What Mr. Green expected to happen to 
 the manuscript to render it fit for publication it is 
 hard to say. If he really looked forward to the pos- 
 sibility, or even contemplated the desirability, of the 
 work being hashed up to meet the market, he must 
 have had much less reverence for Coleridge, and a 
 much narrower view of the ends and aims of literature, 
 than became the disciple and exponent of a great 
 original genius. 
 
 11 ' Notes and Queries,' June 10, 1854. 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 27 
 
 III. — Assertion of Religion. 
 
 We have four references to this work in Coleridge's 
 letters, viz. August 8, 1820. 
 
 " I at least am as well as I ever am, and my regular em- 
 ployment in which Mr. Green is weekly my amanuensis, the 
 work on the books of the Old and New Testaments, intro- 
 duced by the assumptions and postulates required as the pre- 
 conditions of a fair examination of Christianity as a scheme 
 of doctrines, precepts, and histories, drawn or at least 
 deducible from these books." u 
 
 November 27, 1820:— 
 
 " Besides this, I have latterly felt increasingly anxious to 
 avail myself of every moment that ill health left me to get 
 forward with my Logic and with my 'Assertion of Religion.'" 13 
 
 September 24, 1821:— 
 
 " I am now able to hope that I shall be capable of setting 
 apart such a portion of my usable time to my greater work 
 (in assertion of the ideal truths and a priori probability, and 
 a posteriori internal and external evidence of the historic 
 truth of the Christian religion), as to leave a sufficient por- 
 tion for a not unprofitable series of articles for pecuniary 
 supply." 14 
 
 December 26, 1822 :— 
 
 " And this, without interrupting the greater work on 
 Religion, of which the first half, containing the Philosophy 
 or Ideal Truth, possibility, and a priori probability of the 
 articles of Christian Faith, was completed on Sunday last." 15 
 
 This, in all probability, is the matter referred to in 
 
 12 ' Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of Coleridge,' 1836, 
 vol. i. p. 104 (cf. ibid., vol. i. p. 153). 
 
 13 Ibid., vol. i. p. 141. 
 
 14 ' Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of Coleridge,' 1836, 
 vol. ii. p. 9. 15 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 152. 
 
28 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 the following extracts. The first is from a work by 
 Coleridge's daughter : — 
 
 " Reason cannot oblige us to receive/' said Kant, " more 
 than reason can prove. But what mere speculative reason 
 cannot oblige us to receive, the moral and spiritual within us 
 may. This is the doctrine of the f Aids to Reflection ; ' 
 I believe that my father, in his latter years, added something 
 to it on the subject of Ideas, which will appear, I trust, 
 hereafter." 16 
 
 The second is from Henry Nelson Coleridge's 'Pre- 
 face to the Table Talk ' : — 
 
 "And I have no doubt that had he lived to complete his 
 great work c On Philosophy reconciled with Christian Reli- 
 gion/ he would without scruple have used in that work any 
 part or parts of his preliminary treatises, as their intrinsic 
 fitness required/'' 17 
 
 There seems some great difficulty here. It is by no 
 means clear what this book was, nor how far it had 
 progressed when it was finally suspended. Mr. Green 
 was not able to throw any light on the question ; he 
 writes, — "Of the alleged work on the Old and New 
 Testaments, to be called ' The Assertion of Religion,' 
 I have no knowledge." Yet, as we have seen, Cole- 
 ridge's daughter and nephew knew of some such a 
 fragment, and the former speaks of its publication as 
 at least probable. I ought, however, to mention that 
 there is some doubt in my mind whether both these 
 allusions are not to a part of the Logosophia. 
 
 16 Sara Coleridge's Introduction to the ' Biographia Literaria,' vol. i. 
 p. cxxxviii. (Cf. the ' Friend,' vol. i. p. 240, vol. iii. p. 196, and ' Theory 
 of Life,' p. 62.) 
 
 v ' Specimens of the Table Talk of S. T. Coleridge,' 3rd ed. 1851, 
 p. xxii. 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 29 
 
 IV. — Lectures on the History of Philosophy. 
 
 Under the date of December 2, 1818, Coleridge 
 writes to Mr. Alsop concerning the success of these 
 lectures, speaking of their delivery as a future event. 
 Again, under the date of December 26, 1822, he 
 writes : — 
 
 " The publication of my Shakspeare and other similar lec- 
 tures, sheet per sheet, in Blackwood, with the aid of Mr. 
 Frere's shorthand copies, and those on the History of 
 Philosophy in one volume, would nearly suffice." [i. e. for 
 the purpose of a maintenance] . 18 
 
 " The prospectus of these Lectures," says Mr. Alsop, " is 
 so full of interest, and so well worthy of attention, that I 
 subjoin it ; trusting that the lectures themselves will soon be 
 furnished by, or under the auspices of Mr. Green, the most 
 constant and the most assiduous of his disciples. 
 
 " That gentleman will, I earnestly hope — and doubt not — 
 see and feel the necessity of giving the whole of his great 
 master's views, opinions, and anticipations ; not those alone 
 in which he more entirely sympathizes, or those which may 
 have more ready acceptance in the present time. He will 
 not shrink from the great, the sacred duty he has volunta- 
 rily undertaken, from any regards of prudence, still less from 
 that most hopeless form of fastidiousness, the wish to con- 
 ciliate," etc. 19 
 
 Mr. Green did not see the matter at all from Mr. 
 Alsop's point of view — nor from mine. He says the 
 the work is in his possession. 
 
 " It was presented to me," he continues, " by the late J. 
 Hookham Frere, and consists of notes taken for him by an 
 
 18 ' Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of Coleridge,' 1836, 
 vol. ii. p. 152. (Cf. ibid., vol. i. p. 152.) 
 
 19 'Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of Coleridge,' 1836, 
 vol. ii. p. 218-19. 
 
30 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 eminent shorthand writer, of the course of lectures delivered 
 by Coleridge on that subject [the History of Philosophy]. 
 Unfortunately however, these notes are wholly unfit for 
 publication, as indeed may be inferred from the fact com- 
 municated to me by Coleridge, that the person employed 
 confessed that after the first lecture he was unable to follow 
 the lecturer in consequence of becoming perplexed and de- 
 layed by the novelty of the language, for which he was 
 wholly unprepared by the ordinary exercise of his art. If 
 this ' History of Philosophy ' is to be published in an intel- 
 ligible form, it will require to be re-written, and I would 
 willingly undertake the task, had I not in connection with 
 Coleridge' s views, other and more pressing objects to ac- 
 complish," 20 
 
 to wit, his own " great work " aforesaid. 
 
 The Rev. Derwent Coleridge tells me that Mr. 
 Green owned to him that in these lectures were some 
 valuable remarks on Spinoza. 
 
 V. — Fly-catchers. 
 
 Under this title are collected twenty-three mis- 
 cellaneous notes by Coleridge. The majority of these 
 are theological, and for the most part critical. The 
 manuscript is in the possession of the Rev. Derwent 
 Coleridge. He informs me that a few of the notes 
 in this manuscript were published in the ' Literary 
 Remains,' (vol. ii. or iii. I suppose). " To me," writes 
 that gentleman, " they appear, however faulty in 
 detail, to be animated by a spirit, and at times to 
 reveal several principles, of extreme interest . . . 
 The remainder is chiefly letters, journals, and other 
 memoranda, juvenilia, and a few fragments of great 
 
 -° 'Notes and Queries,' June 10, 1854. 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 31 
 
 use towards the composition of a literary biography, 
 but not otherwise available." 
 
 He further tells me that on his sister's death he 
 received all the papers that were in her possession 
 when she died ; and that on Mr. Green's death he 
 received all those papers on which he was assumed to 
 have any claim, but none in Mr. Green's handwriting. 
 
 Besides these rive works, there is little of Cole- 
 ridge's in manuscript deserving mention, save, per- 
 haps, 
 
 VI. — Some Fragments on Logic, Grammar, etc. 
 
 In the possession of his son ; and which may or 
 may not be identical with No. III., probably not; and 
 
 VII. — Some still Unpublished ' Marginalia.' 
 
 De Quincey says in a note to his article on ' Cole- 
 ridge and Opium-eating:' — 
 
 " We ourselves had the honour of presenting to Mr. 
 Coleridge Law's English version of Jacob [Behmen] — a 
 set of huge quartos. Some months afterwards we saw this 
 work lying open, and one volume, at least overflowing in 
 parts, with the commentaries and other ' corollaries' of Cole- 
 ridge. Whither has this work, and so many others scattered 
 about with Coleridge's manuscript notes, vanished from the 
 world?" 21 
 
 Such a work should be sought for in the libraries 
 
 21 This edition of Behmen is often cited as Law's Edition, but in 
 truth Wm. Law never edited Behmen's works. The edition of 1764- 
 1781 (4 vols. 4to) he had no hand in ; in fact, he died in 1761. Some 
 diagrams, illustrative of Behmen's Theosophy were found among his 
 papers after his death, and these were engraved and published with the 
 edition in question ; hence the error. 
 
32 ON THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS 
 
 of professed Theosophers ; the chief of whom is Mr. 
 Christopher Walton, the editor of a thick volume on 
 the subject of Behmen's speculations. There is also 
 a copy of ' Ealeigh's History of the World,' with some 
 of Coleridge's annotations, which came into my pos- 
 session some years ago, and is now lying on the table. 
 I communicated the notes without delay to ' Notes 
 and Queries.' 
 
 Besides these annotated works, there is a copy of 
 Fleury's 'Ecclesiastical History,' 1727-1732 (English), 
 the first volume of which has marginalia in Cole- 
 ridge's hand. It is in the possession of Edward Eig- 
 gall, Esq., of No. 141, Queen's Boad, Bayswater. 
 Mr. Pickering, too, has a copy of the Eev. Joseph 
 Eann's edition of ' Shakespeare,' 1786, in six volumes, 
 of which vols, i., ii., v., and vi. have notes by Cole- 
 ridge, some in pencil and some in ink. Many of the 
 pencil notes have been cut through in binding, and 
 are illegible. Some time ago Mr. Pickering sold a 
 copy of Boerhaave's ' Method of Chymistry,' 4to, 
 1727, with Coleridge's marginalia. I have not ascer- 
 tained the name of the purchaser. 
 
 As I said, the result of my inquiries, though closely 
 pursued, is but insignificant. But small as it is, it is 
 satisfactory to know what we have and what we ought 
 to have of Coleridge's manuscript works, which have 
 remained unedited and unpublished. 
 
 Coleridge's will, dated September, 1829, authorizes 
 his executor (the late Mr. Green), " if he should think 
 it expedient, to publish any of the notes or writings 
 made by him (Coleridge) in his books, or any other 
 of his manuscripts or writings, or any letters which 
 should thereafter be collected from or supplied by his 
 
OF SAMUEL TAYLOK COLERIDGE. 88 
 
 friends or correspondents." So that in Mr. Green was 
 vested an absolute discretion to publish or withhold 
 from the press any of Coleridge's works. Now, that 
 Mr. Green is dead, and one obstacle, at least, is re- 
 moved, let us hope that those works will receive the 
 tardy justice of publication. 1 make no question that 
 these extant manuscripts need careful editing to lit 
 them for publication ; but rough as some of the 
 materials undoubtedly are, it is surely possible to give 
 them some sort of arrangement without destroying 
 their identity or originality. It is hard to conceive 
 a worse case than that of Buckle's fragments on 
 Queen Elizabeth ; and yet these were woven into an 
 organic whole by means of intercalary sentences 
 enclosed in square brackets. Probably, nothing so 
 difficult of treatment as this will be found among 
 Coleridge's remains; so that I hold the family of 
 Coleridge wholly without excuse, if they do not make 
 some attempt to issue, at least, the more important of 
 his unpublished manuscripts. 
 
 PRINTED BY J. E. TAYLOR AND CO., 
 LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. 
 
I 
 

 > CSX**- <:ccX 
 
 
 <cc< 
 
 
 
 - <trc_ 
 -s . «rcc 
 
 s 
 
 
 
 " <CL ««£ 5=1" V«T 
 
 c:<£~^fe£^ 
 
 
 <£ 
 
 
 SIT' C *£«< - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ccC 
 
 
 <i!«CC, 
 
 
 
 "CC.C 
 
 6C : ; : -^ 
 
 a: 
 
 
 r <ic<;-^<I>« 
 
 
 
■r'. <oc<L 
 
 C*SL«C 
 
 
 
 <CCC* 
 
 ^ c <s 
 
 <scc<: 
 
 <^ 
 
 <TcCc: 
 
 f v(.^; 
 
 Ccc< 
 
 r <* «s 
 
 <£cC< 
 
 r <c<C 
 
 <SCc 
 
 ■ '■< -^ <c 
 
 <TcC.<L 
 
 c<.C< <t. 
 
 c 
 
 ccje «^ 
 
 c 
 
 c^3( <^ 
 
 _ <3 
 
 <<M <£ 
 
 «C5«r; 
 
 
 - 
 
 « < C 
 
 <c: < < 
 <s < < 
 
 <C c c 
 «C < c 
 
 • r 
 
 \<J^ 
 
 
 «c. c. 
 
 
 re 
 
 ;. c: <-' 
 
 cc: 
 
 "CC'C 
 
 4t«<< 
 
 .x 
 
 ~XC 
 
 r c < - 
 3?CC 
 
 ccco. 
 Cccd 
 
 cue '«is:< <i<lc_