Literary Notes. REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER has been for some time engaged upon a "Life of Christ." Mark Lemon-as a pure Sir John Falstaff of the nineteenth century -"not only witty himself, but the cause of wit in others," editor of Punch, and author of several novels and tales, died 23rd May, aged 61. The closing portion of the life of the celebrated Scottish bard is elucidated in a work by Mr. McDowall, "Burns in Dumfriesshire." An Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy by John Grote, B.D., is to be issued shortly, edited by J. B. Mayor, M.A. This, judging from the same author's Exploratio," will, though posthumous, be a work of great value. 66 The Clarendon Press edition of "The Works of Bishop Berkeley," in four vols., edited by Prof. A. C. Fraser, is promised "before Christ mas. "Gleanings of the Gloamin " is to be the title of a collection of poems by John Ramsay, a poet born some seventy years ago in the town in which Robert Burns's first edition was printed - Kilmarnock, where Ramsay was originally a carpet weaver. Mr. W. R. Shedden-Ralston, only son of Mr. Shedden, claimant of Roughwood Estate, in the parish of Beith, whose sister pleaded her father's cause in the Courts, has gone to Russia, to collect materials for a work on "Muscovite Folk-lore." T. H. Huxley's Lectures have been reissued in America with a title used previously by Coleridge and Hogg, "Lay Sermons." Letters by Charlotte Brontë are to appear in an American magazine, Hours at Home. Charles Dickens-beloved "Boz" -died 9th June, aged 58. Mary Pyper, a poetess in humble life, author of "Sacred Poems," born 1795, died 25th May. Rev. Thomas Binney, of Weigh House Chapel, is likely soon to present us with a collected edition of his varied and interesting writings. Dr. Newman (of Washington, U.S.) has accepted a challenge from Brigham Young to discuss with him on logical and scriptural grounds the moral legitimacy of polygamy, at Salt Lake City. A People's Edition (2s. 6d.) of Charles C. Hennell's "Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity," and "Christian Theism," has been issued in one vol. The Congregational Lectures are about to be resumed. Dr. Rey nolds, of Cheshunt College, Dr. Henry Rogers, Dr. Raleigh, Dr. Pulsford, and Rev. R. W. Dale, are spoken of as likely to contribute to the series. The English Dialect Society, an association of philologists, has just been inaugurated. An edition of the works of Thomas Carlyle's early friend-Thomas Erskine, of Linlathen-is announced. Cyrus Redding has left among his MSS. a Life of William IV., and a Wine Book of Europe. Dr. Christlieb, Professor of Theology in the University of Bonn, formerly pastor of the German Church, Islington, has just issued an important work on "Modern Doubts concerning the Christian Faith." It treats of the divorce of science and faith, reason and revelation. Ideas of God-(1) Atheism, Deism, Pantheism, Materialism, and Rationalism; (2) Theism and Trinitarianism, miracles, modern lives of Jesus, their merits and failures, the critical Christianity of Tubingen, its deserts and defects. Modern Metaphysicians. JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, F.R.S., D.C.L. :— The Coleridgean; Author of " Vital Dynamics,' 66 "A TRUE thinker," says John Stuart Mill, can only be justly estimated when his thoughts have worked their way into minds formed in a different school; have been wrought and moulded into consistency, with all other true and relevant thoughts, when the noisy conflict of half-truths, angrily denying one another, has subsided, and ideas, which seemed mutually incompatible, have been found only to require mutual limitations." * The proper time for this just appraising and accurate discrimination of the character of Coleridge as a philosophical thinker, at the period when he so wrote, 1840,-had not, in Mr. Mill's opinion, yet come." For this there were then two good reasons :-Coleridge had but too recently passed away; and, it was generally understood that valuable, and, in fact, indispensable materials for forming a correct judgment were under proper and authorized editorship, to be given to the world in selections from his posthumous writings, papers, notes, and outlines of his thoughts. Among the expectaucies of the public the following may be noted:-"(1) A complete constructive Philosophy of the Universe, to be called Logosophia, said to be the great work of his life; (2) a treatise on Logic, in three books; and (3) a treatise on the ideal basis of Christianity, to be called 'The Assertion of Religion; (4) a Course of Lectures on The History of Philosophy,' from Pythagoras to Locke and Condillac; (5) Letters on the Old and New Testament;' (6) a collection of notes, chiefly connected with religion, collected in a book and bearing the quaint and modest name of Fly catchers;' besides (7) almost innumerableMarginalia.' Thirty years have now elapsed since Mr. Mill's plea for reservation of judgment, and in regard to the unpublished writings of Coleridge we are little fur ther advanced. It is true that since then, "by dint of editing and commenting, by virtue of preliminary dissertations, introductions, appendices, and treatises, by Coleridge's nephew and daughter, and by Messrs. Green and Marsh, the works of Coleridge (exclusive of the four volumes of the 'Literary Remains,' and the two volumes of 'Letters,' &c.) have been made to extend to about twenty * "Dissertations and Discussions," article Coleridge, vol. i., p. 398. 1870. G 6 volumes in duodecimo, which, with two or three exceptions, were published by the late Mr. Pickering." But the great gifts in store for English literature, and the good things said to have been prepared by Coleridge for philosophical thinkers, on which his "hopes of extensive and permanent utility, of fame in the noblest sense of the word," mainly rested, have not been yet forthcoming from the grasp of collectors (if they exist), or from the archives of his literary executor, the late Joseph Henry Green, F.R.S., D.C.L., &c. Coleridge died 25th July, 1834. By his will, dated 1829, Green was appointed trustee for his children, and executor in regard to his posthumous works, to publish, at his discretion, any manuscripts or writings, and permitting him, as such, to purchase, at any sum he might himself determine, any of these books which were likely to be serviceable to him in bringing these books or manuscripts of his to the best use or market. It was understood that, by private arrangement, Dr. Green was to systematize, develop, and establish from the matter thus left, as much as possible of the philosophy of Coleridge, acting generally as his expositor and defender. Under this arrangement there were issued four volumes of his "Literary Remains," collected and edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge, 1836-9; and "The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit," to the second edition of which, 1849, Green prefixed a preface of 38 pages, in which he defended Coleridge against a charge of plagiarism, from Lessing. Dr. Seth B. Watson edited for Mr. Churchill "The Theory of Life," which Coleridge had dictated to him, and H. N. Coleridge, who had Boswellized a little during the latter part of his great uncle's lifetime, produced two volumes of "Specimens of the Table-Talk" of S. T. Coleridge; a Treatise on Method," in embryo, contained in "The Friend," was republished as the introductory volume of the second edition of "The Encyclopædia Metropolitana." 66 The intellectual and moral relationship between Coleridge and Green was very intimate. Coleridge calls him "my friend and enlightened pupil;" Mr. Alsop characterizes him as the worthy and excellent friend," who is "the most constant and the most assiduous" of Coleridge's disciples. "Invariably he spent with Coleridgethey two alone at their work-many hours of every week, in talk of pupil and master; and so"-we are speaking on Dr. Simon's authority" year after year he sat at the feet of his Gamaliel, getting more and more insight of his teacher's beliefs and aspirations." He was at last looked upon as the beloved disciple, and there was "imposed on Mr. Green what he accepted as an obligation, to devote, so far as necessary, the whole remaining strength and earnestness of his life to the one task of systematizing, developing, and establishing the principles of the Coleridgean philosophy. withdrew from private practice, and passed nearly twenty-eight years" of devoted studentship in fulfilment of his adopted duty;" and "he," it is said, "with his indefatigable industry, guided by a unique knowledge of Coleridge's conceptions and purposes, set to He work to systematize the Coleridgean doctrines out of the disjecta membra of his published writings, his verbal hints, his conversational communications, a few notes and bare outlines, and thence to provide the world with the soul of Coleridge. Of this mighty task the "Spiritual Philosophy" of Joseph Henry Green is the ripest product and outcome. Dr. C. M. Ingleby, in his paper "On the Unpublished Manuscripts of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," read before the Royal Society of Literature, 12th June, 1867, expresses no very high opinion of this book: "Dead as Gillman's book is, Green's 'Spiritual Philosophy' (2 vols., 1866) is, in De Quincey's phrase, deader; that is, dead in a far profounder sense. As Coleridge used to say of other works, the parts cohere by synartesis [stitchment], not by synthesis [coherence]; in fact, Green's book mainly consists of extracts from other men's writings, tacked together by a few flimsy notes. It is no more a spiritual philosophy than the fragments of an ichthyosaurus cemented together is an animal; nay, it is less so, for Green's book has not even the evidences of a past vitality. They who would master the philosophy of Coleridge will do wisely to study it in Coleridge's works, and not in the digest of his disciple. 'Spiritual Philosophy' was in every sense stillborn. of his brain, and it was a stillbirth of Messrs. Macmillan's press. We now know how stupendous was the mistake he committed; and in comparison with the veriest fragment of Coleridge's, how barren is that creation for which he allowed some of his great master's manuscripts to remain unedited!" Green's It was a stillbirth While we regret, with Dr. Ingleby, the form of executorship to which Dr. Green adstricted himself, the neglect of the author of "Spiritual Philosophy" to advise the public of the true state of the materials in his possession, and the cast which has been given to the Coleridgean metaphysic, we are not, on the whole, inclined to endorse the severe judgment of worthlessness, real and relative, which he has pronounced upon it. We receive the book as one containing a considerable amount of Coleridgean thought;-an opinion in which Dr. Ingleby seems to concur with the Rev. Derwent Coleridge-from whom the philosophic public has long been expecting a complete biography, and a thorough survey of the labours of his father-when he says, "that Mr. Green may have used, as raw material, a good deal of the work dictated to him by Coleridge, which was in his possession, in the text of his Spiritual Philosophy." Besides this, however, it may be suggested that a system of philosophy is peculiarly which, to prove its applicability to solve, for man, the problems of experience, purpose, and imagination; correlativity, duty and existence; thought, will, and deity must make itself intelligible to that class of thinkers, at least, who feel concerned in such topics; for a philosophy which is so unique as to be comprehensible only to its author is, by that very fact, proclaimed to be a failure. It seems to me a distinct gain to philo sophical literature to have had the systematability, intelligibility, and exponibility of Coleridge's metaphysic tested; to know the form it assumed in the mind of a disciple avouched and avowed, of one who was recognised by the master, and acknowledged by himself, to be a disciple, and nothing more; and to have an authoritative digest drawn up, with which we can compare and contrast our own conceptions of the doctrines of Coleridge, their relevancy and their accuracy. Not that we, for a moment, suppose, suggest, or affirm, that such a book could in any wise be accepted in lieu of or as a substitute for the merest shreds and patches of the author; for they would have in them an original, this only a representative value. Considering, besides, the far-scattered formlessness and expensive mode of issue of the original works, we think that a bird'seye view of Coleridge's system-if it could be had-would be a boon to the student. We cannot accept Dr. Green as the author of an original treatise, nor can we recognise him as a mere expositor, but we can regard him as a reporter of Coleridgean thought, as it appeared to him after close study and confidential communion,-as a copy made by the pupil of a great master after a design which he had special facilities for knowing, though the first model was never completed by the artist in chief. The great and signal service which is usually affirmed to have been performed by Coleridge in regard to English thought was this, that in an age of materialistic psychology, whose watchword and creed was sensation, he reinstated in the interests of men's spirits that which is most difficult and most elevated in all philosophymetaphysics; and by the rare logic of his idealism men saw their most familiar experiences and the most palpable sensational facts readily and marvellously transformed and "disciplined From shadowy types to truth; from flesh to spirit." The writings of Coleridge, it is said, "open a sphere of metaphysical thinking well adapted to counteract the objective tendency of our national philosophy, and to direct the mind to those lofty views respecting human nature and human destiny which, in the turmoil of our practical life, and in the want of a more spiritual system, we are so inclined to forget. His works form just the turning-point in the philosophical history of our country, in which the advancement of sensationalism came to a stand and the tide of spiritualism began to return."* "The existence of Coleridge will show itself by no slight or ambiguous traces in the coming history of our country; for no one has contributed more to shape the opinions of those among its younger men who can be said to have any opinions at all. He has been the great awakener, in this country, of the spirit of philosophy within the bounds of traditional opinions."+ It was his avowed aim * J. D. Morell's "Modern Philosophy," vol. ii., p. 350. |