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
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, [14], 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 any thing you have said, did the
'desiderium' the sense of not being quite satisfied, proceed in regard
to the 44. 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 predominence
of the 'animal' within us, by having habitually present to the mind,
the full and lively conviction of its perfect compatibility with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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