Gents Mag 1834 part 2 p.547
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Gentleman's Magazine 1834 part 2 p.547
Sibylline Leaves, a collection of Poems; and a Second Lay Sermon; and in 1818 Zapolya, A Christmas Tale. For many years he continued his lectures at Literary institutions, though with repugnance to the task. In a letter written in 1819, he says - "Wo is me! that at forty-six I am under the necessity of appearing as a lecturer, and obliged to regard every hour that I give to the permanent, whether as a poet or philosopher, an hour stolen from others' as well as from my own maintenance; so that, after a life (for I might be said to have commenced in earliest childhood) - a life of observation, meditation, and almost encyclopedic studies, I am forced to bewail, as in my poem addressed to Mr. Wordsworth - Sense of past youth and manhood come in vain, And genius given and knowledge won in vain, And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild, And all which patient toil had reared, and all Commune with Thee had opened out, - but flowers Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier, In the same coffin to the self-same grave. Wo from without, but well for me, however, from within, that I have been 'more sinned against than sinning.' My lectures are, though not very numerously, yet very respectably attended - and as respectably attended to. My next Friday's lecture will, if I do not grossly flatter-blind myself, be interesting, and the points of view not only original, but new to the audience. I make this distinction, because sixteen, or rather seventeen, years ago, I delivered eighteen lectures on Shakespeare at the Royal Institution - three-fourths of which appeared at that time startling paradoxes, which have since been adopted by men who at the time made use of them as proofs of my flighty and parodoxical turn of mind - all tending to prove that Shakespeare's judgment was, if possible, still more wonderful than his genius: or rather, that the contra-distinction itself between judgment and genius, rested on an utterly false theory. This, and its proofs and grounds have been, I should not have said adopted, but produced as their own legitimate children - nay, the merit given to a foreign writer, whose lectures were not given orally till two years after mine - rather than to their countryman, though I dare appeal to the most adequate judges - as Sir G. Beaumont, the Bishop of Durham, Mr. Sotheby, and afterwards to Mr. Rogers and Lord Byron, whether there is one single principle in Schlegel's work (which is not an admitted drawback from its merits) that was not established and applied in detail by me." This letter has been lately published in the "The Canterbury Magazine;" and in the Literary Gazette another has appeared on the same subject, which was addressed in the same year to John Britton, esq. with reference to some lectures Coleridge then delivered at the Russell Institution. This contains the following interesting passage, describing his method and management in these compositions: "The fact is this: during a course of lectures, I faithfully employ all the intervening days in collecting and digesting the materials; whether I have or have not lectured on the same subject before, making no difference. The day of the lecture, till the hour of commencement, I devote to the consideration, what of the mass before me is best fitted to answer the purposes of a lecture - i.e. to keep th audience awake and interested during the delivery, and to leave a sting behind - i.e. a disposition to study the subject anew, under the light of a new principle. Several times, however, partly from apprehension respecting my health and animal spirits, partly from the wish to possess copies that might afterwards be marketable among the publishers, I have previously written the lecture; but before I had proceeded twenty minutes, I have been obliged to push the MSS. away, and give the subject a new turn. Nay, this was so notorious, that many of my auditors used to threaten me, when they saw any number of written papers on my desk, to steal them away; declaring they never felt so secure of a good lecture, as when they perceived I had not a single scrap of writing before me. I take far, far more pains than would go to the set composition of a lecture, both by varied reading and by meditation; but for the words, illustrations, &c. I know almost as little as any one of my audience (i.e. those of any thing like the same education with myself) what they will be five minutes before the lecture begins. Such is my way, for such is my nature; and in attempting any other, I should only torment myself in order to disappoint my auditors." In a subsequent passage of the same letter he says, "Were it in my power, my works should be confined to the second volume of my 'Literary Life,' the Essays from the third volume of the 'Friend,' from page 67 to page 165, with about fifty or sixty pages from the two former volumes, and some half-dozen of my poems. There has been still another interesting letter lately published in the newspapers, which was written in 1826 in reply to an application for pecuniary relief from a brother poet, and in which he thus describes his own situation: |
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