Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 2: being The Biographical Supplement of Coleridge's Biographia LiterariaColeridge, Samuel Taylor
General
Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 2: being The Biographical Supplement of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834 -- Correspondence
Accept my thanks for your kind remembrance of me, and for the proof of
it in the present of your tribute of friendship, I have read it with
uninterrupted interest, and with satisfaction scarcely less continuous.
In adding the three last words, I am taking the word satisfaction in its
strictest sense: for had I written pleasure, there would have been no
ground for the limitation. Indeed as it was, it is a being scrupulous
over much. For at the two only passages at which I made a moment's
_halt_ (viz. § p. 3, and p. 53, last line but five,) "she had
seldom"----"oppressive awe," my not _objection_ but _stoppage_ at the
latter amounted only to a doubt, a _quære_, whether the trait of
character here given should not have been followed by some little
comment, as for instance, that such a state of feeling, though not
desirable in a regenerate person, in whom belief had wrought love, and
love obedience, must yet be ranked amongst those constitutional
differences that may exist between the best and wisest Christians,
without any corresponding difference in their spiritual progress. One
saint fixes his eyes on the _palm_, another saint thinks of the previous
_conflict_, and closes them in prayer. Both are waters of the same
fountain--_this_ the basin, _that_ the salient column, both equally dear
to God, and both may be used as examples for men, the one to invite the
thoughtless sceptic, the other to alarm the reckless believer. You will
see, therefore, that I do not object to the sentence itself; but as a
matter of _feeling_, it met me too singly and suddenly. I had not
anticipated such a trait, and the surprise counterfeited the sensation
of perplexity for a moment or two. On as little objection to anything
you have said, did the _desiderium_ the sense of not being quite
satisfied, proceed in regard to the § p. 3. In the particular instance
in the application of the sentiment, I found nothing to question or
qualify. It was the rule or principle which a certain class of your
readers might be inclined to deduce from it, it was the possible
generalization of the particular instance that made me pause. I am
jealous of the disposition to turn Christianity or Religion into a
particular _business_ or line. "Well, Miss, how does your pencil go on,
I was delighted with your last landscape." "Oh, sir, I have quite given
_up_ that, I have got into the religious line." Now, my dear sir, the
rule which I have deduced from the writings of St. Paul and St. John,
and (permit me also to add) of Luther, would be this. Form and endeavour
to strengthen into an habitual and instinct-like feeling, the sense of
the utter incompatibility of Christianity with every thing wrong or
unseemly, with whatever betrays or fosters the mind of flesh, the
predominance of the _animal_ within us, by having habitually present to
the mind, the full and lively conviction of its perfect compatibility
with whatever is innocent of its harmony, with whatever
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