The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
History
The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Literature -- History and criticism
In my last lecture I stated that the descendants of Japhet and Shem
peopled Europe and Asia, fulfilling in their distribution the prophecies
of Scripture, while the descendants of Ham passed into Africa, there
also actually verifying the interdiction pronounced against them. The
Keltic and Teutonic nations occupied that part of Europe, which is now
France, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, &c. They were in general a
hardy race, possessing great fortitude, and capable of great endurance.
The Romans slowly conquered the more southerly portion of their tribes,
and succeeded only by their superior arts, their policy, and better
discipline. After a time, when the Goths,--to use the name of the
noblest and most historical of the Teutonic tribes,--had acquired some
knowledge of these arts from mixing with their conquerors, they invaded
the Roman territories. The hardy habits, the steady perseverance, the
better faith of the enduring Goth rendered him too formidable an enemy
for the corrupt Roman, who was more inclined to purchase the subjection
of his enemy, than to go through the suffering necessary to secure it.
The conquest of the Romans gave to the Goths the Christian religion as
it was then existing in Italy; and the light and graceful building of
Grecian, or Roman-Greek order, became singularly combined with the massy
architecture of the Goths, as wild and varied as the forest vegetation
which it resembled. The Greek art is beautiful. When I enter a Greek
church, my eye is charmed, and my mind elated; I feel exalted, and proud
that I am a man. But the Gothic art is sublime. On entering a cathedral,
I am filled with devotion and with awe; I am lost to the actualities
that surround me, and my whole being expands into the infinite; earth
and air, nature and art, all swell up into eternity, and the only
sensible impression left, is, 'that I am nothing!' This religion, while
it tended to soften the manners of the Northern tribes, was at the same
time highly congenial to their nature. The Goths are free from the stain
of hero worship. Gazing on their rugged mountains, surrounded by
impassable forests, accustomed to gloomy seasons, they lived in the
bosom of nature, and worshipped an invisible and unknown deity. Firm in
his faith, domestic in his habits, the life of the Goth was simple and
dignified, yet tender and affectionate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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