??sounding on his way.8
So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in passing from subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to slide on ice. He told me in confidence (going along) that he should have preached two sermons before he accepted the situation at Shrewsbury, one on Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord's Supper, showing that he could not administer either, which would have effectually disqualified him for the object in view. I observed that he continually crossed me on the way by shifting from one side of the footpath to the other. This struck me as an odd movement; but I did not at that time connect it with any instability of purpose or involuntary change of principle, as I have done since. He seemed unable to keep on in a straight line. He spoke slightingly of Hume9 (whose Essay on Miracles he said was stolen from an objection started in one of South's sermons?Credat Judaeus Appella!1). I was not very much pleased at this account of Hume, for I had just been reading, with infinite relish, that completest of all metaphysical choke-pears,2 his Treatise on Human Nature, to which the Essays, in point of scholastic subtlety and close reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, light summer reading. Coleridge even denied the excellence of Hume's general style, which I think betrayed a want of taste or candor. He however made me amends by the manner in which
5. In 'Lycidas,' line 55, Milton associates the 'wizard stream' of Deva (the river Dee in Wales) with the ancient bards. Hazlitt's point is that Cole- ridge will henceforth inhabit the terrain of the poetic imagination. 6. In classical mythology Mount Parnassus was sacred to the muses. In John Bunyan's allegory Pilgrim's Progress (1678?79), the pilgrim Christian, on his journey to the Celestial City, passes through the Delectable Mountains, where he is entertained by the shepherds. 7. A romance by the 17th-century French writer La Calpren.de. 8. The Canterbury1 Tales, 'General Prologue,' line 309: 'Souning in moral vertu was his speeche' (in Chaucer the meaning of 'souning in' is either 'resounding in' or 'consonant with'). 9. David Hume, 18th-century Scottish philosopher. 1. From Horace's Satires 1.5.100: 'Let Appella the Jew believe it' (Latin); implying that he himself does not. Robert South (1634?1716), Anglican divine. 2. A very sour variety of pear; hence anything hard to take in.
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MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS / 547
he spoke of Berkeley.3 He dwelt particularly on his Essay on Vision as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson for striking the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author's theory of matter and spirit, and saying, 'Thus I confute him, sir.'4 Coleridge drew a parallel (I don't know how he brought about the connection) between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine.5 He said the one was an instance of a subtle, the other of an acute mind, than which no two things could be more distinct. The one was a shop-boy's quality, the other the characteristic of a philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler6 as a true philosopher, a profound and conscientious thinker, a genuine reader of nature and of his own mind. He did not speak of his Analogy, but of his Sermons at the Rolls' Chapel, of which I had never heard. Coleridge somehow always contrived to prefer the unknown to the known. In this instance he was right. The Analogy is a tissue of sophistry, of wire- drawn,7 theological special-pleading; the Sermons (with the Preface to them) are in a fine vein of deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal to our observation of human nature, without pedantry and without bias. I told Coleridge I had written a few remarks, and was sometimes foolish enough to believe that I had made a discovery on the same subject (the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mind)s?and I tried to explain my view of it to Coleridge, who listened with great willingness, but I did not succeed in making myself understood. I sat down to the task shortly afterwards for the twentieth time, got new pens and paper, determined to make clear work of it, wrote a few meager sentences in the skeleton-style of a mathematical demonstration, stopped halfway down the second page; and, after trying in vain to pump up any words, images, notions, apprehensions, facts, or observations, from that gulf of abstraction in which I had plunged myself for four or five years preceding, gave up the attempt as labor in vain, and shed tears of helpless despondency on the blank unfinished paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I better than I was then? Oh no! One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go back to what I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet to the Road between Wem and Shrewsbury, and immortalize every step of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I would swear that the very milestones had ears, and that Harmer Hill stooped with all its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed! I remember but one other topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley,9 praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but condemned his sentiments, thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that 'the fact of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a textbook in our universities was a disgrace to the national character.' We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward
3. Bishop George Berkeley, 18th-century Irish idealist philosopher and author of an Essay toward a New Theory of Vision (1709). 4. The anecdote is in James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson. 5. Supporter of the American and French Revolutions and author of Common Sense and The Rights of Man. See pp. 163-67. 6. Joseph Butler, 18th-century theologian and moral philosopher, author of the Analogy of Religion (1736). 7. Drawn out to great length. 8. Published as An Essay on the Principles of Human Action (1805). 9. William Paley, author of Evidences of Christianity (1794) and Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), which became a textbook for generations of Cambridge students. With its account of how individuals' calculations of their best interests provide an adequate foundation for Christian morality, Paley's utilitarian theology would have displeased Coleridge. A 'casuist' uses reason in a slippery, deceptive manner.
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54 8 / WILLIAM HAZLITT
pensive but much pleased. I had met with unexpected notice from a person whom I believed to have been prejudiced against me. 'Kind and affable to me had been his condescension, and should be honored ever with suitable regard.'1 He was the first poet I had known, and he certainly answered to that inspired name. I had heard a great deal of his powers of conversation, and was not disappointed. In fact, I never met with anything at all like them, either before or since. I could easily credit the accounts which were circulated of his holding forth to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, an evening or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, when he made the whole material universe look like a transparency of fine words; and another story (which I believe he has somewhere told himself)2 of his being asked to a party at Birmingham, of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a sofa, where the company found him, to their no small surprise, which was increased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes, looked about him, and launched into a three hours' description of the third heaven, of which he had had a dream, very different from Mr. Southey's Vision of Judgment, and also from that other Vision of Judgment, which Mr. Murray, the secretary of the Bridge Street Junto,3 has taken into his especial keeping!
On my way back, I had a sound in my ears, it was the voice of Fancy: I had a light before me, it was the face of Poetry. The one still lingers there, the other has not quitted my side! Coleridge in truth met me half-way on the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been won over to his imaginative creed. I had an uneasy, pleasurable sensation all the time, till I was to visit him. During those months the chill breath of winter gave me a welcoming; the vernal air was balm and inspiration to me. The golden sunsets, the silver star of evening, lighted me on my way to new hopes and prospects. I was to visit Coleridge in the spring. This circumstance was never absent from my thoughts, and mingled with all my feelings. I wrote to him at the time proposed, and received an answer postponing my intended visit for a week or two, but very cordially urging me to complete my promise then. This delay did not damp, but rather increased my ardor. In the meantime, I went to Llangollen Vale,4 by way of initiating myself in the mysteries of natural scenery; and I must say I was enchanted with it. I had been reading Coleridge's description of England in his fine Ode on the Departing Year, and I applied it, con amore,5 to the objects before me. That valley
