The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838Gillman, James
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The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838
Gillman, James
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834; Critics -- Great Britain -- Biography; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
it was a pride and a place of healing to lie, as in an apostle's
shadow, within the eclipse and deep substance-seeming gloom of 'these
dread ambassadors from earth to heaven, great hierarchs!' And though
obscured, yet to think myself obscured by consubstantial forms, based
in the same foundation as my own. I grieved not to serve them--yea,
lovingly and with gladsomeness I abased myself in their presence: for
they are my brothers, I said, and the mastery is theirs by right of
older birth, and by right of the mightier strivings of the hidden fire
that uplifted them above me."
This poem has excited much discussion, and many individuals have
expressed different opinions as to its origin. Some assert that it is
borrowed from our own great poets; whilst German readers say, that it is
little more than a free translation from a poem of Frederica Brun. That
it is founded on Frederica Brun's poem cannot be doubted; but those who
compare the two poems must at once feel, that to call Coleridge's a
translation, containing as it does new thoughts, exciting different
feelings, and being in fact a new birth, a glorification of the
original, would be a misuse of words. I insert the following note of
Coleridge's, which appears applicable to the subject:
"In looking at objects of nature, while I am thinking, as at yonder
moon dim-glimmering through the dewy window-pane, I seem rather to be
seeking, as it were 'asking', a symbolical language for something
within me that already and for ever exists, than observing any thing
new. Even when that latter is the case, yet still I have always an
obscure feeling, as if that new phoenomenon were the dim awaking of a
forgotten or hidden truth of my inner nature.--It is still interesting
as a word, a symbol! It is the [Greek: logos], the Creator! and the
Evolver! What is the right, the virtuous feeling and consequent
action, when a man having long meditated and perceived a certain truth
finds another, a foreign writer, who has handled the same with an
approximation to the truth, as he had previously conceived it? Joy!
Let truth make her voice audible! While I was preparing the pen to
write this remark I lost the train of thought which had led me to it.
I meant to have asked something else, now forgotten for the above
answers itself--it needed no new answer, I trust, in my heart."
'15th April, 1805'.
Coleridge, who was an honest man, was equally honest in literature; and
had he thought himself indebted to any other author, he would have
acknowledged the same.
Born a poet, and a philosopher, by reflection, the mysterious depths of
nature and the enquiry into these depths were among his chief delights.
And from boyhood he had felt that it was the business of this life, to
prepare for that which is to come. His schoolfellow, Lamb, also
observed, that from his youth upward, "he hungered for eternity,"
sincerely and fervently praying to be so enlightened as to attain it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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