Coleridge as a Philologist

Coleridge as a PhilologistAuthor(s): L. A. WilloughbySource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Apr., 1936), pp. 176-201Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3716292 .

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COLERIDGE AS A PHILOLOGIST1 WHEN in the January of 1799 Coleridge exchanged the flesh-pots and

the agreeable society of Ratzeburg for the higher thinking and cheaper living of G6ttingen, he was only following in the general tradition of the time. The University of Gottingen, since its foundation some sixty years before by our English George II, had steadily increased in reputation, and by the end of the century easily eclipsed Leipzig as the most fashion- able university in Germany.2 A steady stream of young Englishmen, who were sent to finish their education in Germany, turned the pleasant little Hanoverian city into a favourite haunt of young Oxford and Cambridge, and helped to establish its reputation in England as the home of the ' purest German'; a delusion from which, even to-day, we in England have not entirely emancipated ourselves.

Coleridge had already acquired from the good pastor of Ratzeburg and his five children a solid grounding in language. He began in the most

approved direct method, wandering with his host from attic to cellar, enquiring the name of every domestic utensil and piece of furniture which met his eyes.3 It is true that his pronunciation was 'hideous' and that he found difficulty in understanding the natives when they spoke to each

other;4 but, on the other hand, he had steeped himself in the theological and philosophical terminology and could argue on any metaphysical subject with the best! We must not forget, of course, that the educated classes in Northern Germany mostly spoke English, especially in Ham-

burg and Hanover, owing to their business or political connexions. And

Coleridge was urged by its familiar appearance to take up the study of

Plattdeutsch, which he claimed to know 'better than most even of the educated natives'.5

1 I owe the suggestion of this paper to an instructive article by J. H. Hanford in Modern Philology (1919), xvi, p. 615 entitled 'Coleridge as a Philologian'. A fresh examination of the sources and the wealth of new material published since Hanford wrote in 1919 are my excuse for attempting the task anew.

2 In 1801, of 701 registered students 456 were foreigners, i.e. non-Hanoverians. Cf. E. Brandes, Uber den gegenwdrtigen Zustand der Universitdt Gottingen (Gottingen, 1802), p. 87. The university's period of greatest splendour was just before Coleridge arrived from about 1786 to 1790 when it was celebrating its fiftieth jubilee and numbered three royal princes amongst its alumni. Cf. J. S. Piitter, Selbstbiographie (Gottingen, 1798), p. li.

3 Letters, edited by E. H. Coleridge, 2 vols. (London, 1895), I, p. 263 (quoted as E. H. C.) and Biographia Literaria (Shedd), I, p. 300 note.

4 Biographia Epistolaris, ed. S. Turnbull (London, 1911), I, p. 180. In his MS. notes Coleridge observes that 'to a foreigner all unknown languages appear to be spoken by the natives with extreme rapidity' and to those who are but beginning to understand it, 'with a distressing indistinction', and he makes use of the observation as an argument for the necessity of revelation or pre-knowledge for a full apprehension of the truth. Cf. A. D. Snyder, Coleridge on Logic and Learning (New Haven, 1929), p. 133.

6 E. H. C., i, p. 268.



L. A. WILLOUGHBY

Coleridge had come to Germany with the intention of studying philosophy and the natural sciences and, above all, to prepare a life of Lessing. Actually his linguistic and literary interests drove other studies into the

background. In Christian Gottlieb Heyne, 'the first genius in Gottingen ', to whom Coleridge had a personal introduction, the university possessed one of the greatest Greek scholars in Europe, whose conception of

antiquity had revolutionised classical studies. For him, the study of Greek was no longer restricted to the critical study of texts, but com-

prised the whole civilisation of the ancient world, including its history, customs, art, mythology and thought. It was not for nothing that

Heyne had shared the enthusiasm of Herder and Winckelmann and their

conception of historical continuity of the human race.2 It was philology in its greatest and widest sense, used, as it is still used

in Germany, to embrace all humane liberal studies. And hand in hand with this enthusiasm for the culture of the ancients went a revival of interest in the Germanic past and, even beyond, to the origins of civilisa-' tion itself. Since the seventies, Herder, in the wake of his master

Hamann, had been preaching that art and literature were conditioned by the circumstances, the milieu in which they arose; that language, in particular, was the reflex of the whole inner life of a nation, and that it was born of the intensity of feeling in the human soul which found expression in speech and poetry at once.3 To Coleridge, for whom deep feeling was

synonymous with deep thinking,4 the reaction to Herder must have been immediate and intense. The intellectual and spiritual bonds which united the two men were very close. Coleridge was not unlike Herder in the wealth of his ideas which, like him, he transmitted to future generations. Just as Herder has been called the gatekeeper of the nineteenth century, so Coleridge was described by J. S. Mill as one of the 'seminal minds of the century',5 and both were as prolific in plans as they were sparing in their realisation. None has pointed out the affinities of their minds more clearly than De Quincey who writes of Herder as the German

1 From the 'Letter of a Gentleman at Gottingen to his friend in Cambridge', printed in the Morning Post of April 20, 1775. Cf. A. H. L. Heeren, C. G. Heyne (Gottingen, 1813), p. 531. Heyne, like Herder, owed much to English scholarship, particularly to Robert Wood's Essay on the original Genius of Homer (London, 1769), translated into German in 1773. Cf. Heeren, p. 210.

2 Cf. especially his '/tloge de Winckelmann' in the Memoires de la Societe des Antiquites de Cassel (1780), a book which Coleridge took out of the University Library on April 4. Cf. A. D. Snyder, 'Books borrowed by Coleridge from the Library of the University of Gottingen, 1799' in Modern Philology (1928), xxv, p. 377. He was also familiar with Her- der's History of the Hunman Race. Cf. Unpublished Letters of S. T. C., ed. by E. L. Griggs (London, 1932) (quoted as Griggs), i, p. 129.

3 'Der Genius der Sprache ist auch der Genius von der Litteratur einer Nation', quoted by R. Haym, Herder, I, p. 138, from 'tber den Ursprung der Sprache'.

4 E. H. C., p. 351. 5 Dissertations and Discussions (1859), I, p. 330.

M.L.R. XXXI 12

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Coleridge as a Philologist

Coleridge: 'having the same all-grasping erudition, the same spirit of universal research, the same occasional superficiality and inaccuracy, the same indeterminateness of object, the same obscure and fanciful mysticism, the same plethoric fullness of thought, the same fine sense of the beautiful and (I think) the same incapacity for dealing with simple and austere

grandeur'.1 It must, of course, be borne in mind that philology, both in its widest

and strictest sense, was largely of English origin. Shaftesbury and

Young, Thomas Warton and Bishops Hurd and Lowth, Percy, Mac-

pherson and Chatterton had, after all, taught the Germans and Herder at their head the importance of genius and the imagination, and had turned their attention to the Middle Ages and the national source of

poetry. And even in philological speculations the English,2 as Herder himself acknowledged,3 were earlier in the field.

Most of the philosophers of the eighteenth century had treated of

language chiefly in relation to thought; and their views are coloured

primarily by their attitude to the all-important question of innate ideas. Locke had naturally denied the existence of universal notion behind the

word, and Adam Smith, too, postulates that the concrete must have

preceded the abstract. David Hartley applies to words his doctrine of association of ideas. Joseph Priestley regarded language as determined by natural forces over which man himself had no direct control. Berkeley and Hume were both nominalists in the strictest sense. One and all reflected the opinion of the Enlightenment which sought to explain lan-

guage as the work of the human reason. Not so, however, James Harris and his friend Lord Monboddo, who, as Platonists, both believe that human language is the imperfect reflection, in words, of ideas pre-existing in the mind. They are the precursors of the Romantic attitude of which

Coleridge, as he threw off the influence of Berkeley and Hartley, was to become the supreme exponent. And it is in this respect that Coleridge writes to Godwin,4 after his acquaintance with German idealism, urging him to philosophise the system of Horne Tooke, who, according to Cole-

ridge, 'had confused word formation with the philosophy of language, which is a very different thing !'5

1 Quoted in Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), ini, p. 733. 2 Cf. 0. Funke, Englische Sprachphilosophie im spateren 18. Jahrhundert (Bern, 1934). 3 In his Preface to E. A. Schmid's translation of Lord Monboddo Von dem Ursprung und

Fortgange der Sprache (Riga, 1784-85), which he had instigated: 'Die Grundsatze unsres Autors und seines Freundes Harris diinken mir die einzig wahren und vesten....Und so ware einmal eine Philosophie des menschlichen Verstandes aus seinem eigentiimlichsten Werk, den verschiedenen Sprachen der Erde, moglich.' 4 Griggs, I, p. 155.

5 Table Talk, May 7, 1830.

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L. A. WILLOUGHBY

Home Tooke, though Coleridge might laugh at him for his eccentrici- ties, was probably the better linguist; he had what most of the philosophers lacked, a sound grounding not only in the ancient but in the older forms of modern languages, and his inductive method of approach marked a new era in linguistic discovery.l It is in his deductions that he mostly goes astray! As an extreme nominalist and sensualist he was opposed naturally to the abstract reasoning of Harris and Monboddo; he even denies the reality of 'general or complex terms', holding that Locke himself had erred in ascribing to philosophy what properly belonged to lan-

guage, general terms being no more than the abbreviations or complex terms for a number of particular terms. And it is primarily as a means of

discrediting realism that he practises etymology: 'as it may serve to get rid of the false philosophy received concerning language and the human

understanding'.2 Such was the state of linguistic knowledge in England towards the end

of the century, and there is evidence to show that Coleridge was not un-

acquainted with its development. Under the influence of Romantic circles in Bristol he had already begun to dabble in philological and critical problems;3 Young's Conjectures, Hugh Blair's Lectures, Chatter- ton's and Macpherson's forgeries, the Edda of Saemund, these are among the books borrowed by him from the Bristol Public Library in the years preceding the German visit. That he was already acquainted with the work of Horne Tooke appears from a letter of Poole to whom he had recommended the Diversions of Purley.4 He was vexed with him in later life 'for converting so beautiful, so divine a subject as language into the vehicle or make-weight of political squibs '.5 And even in his revolutionary period he was unable to see eye to eye with him in politics6, although he might celebrate his victory at the polls:

And high in air clasp his rejoicing wings, Patriot and Sage! whose breeze-like spirit first The hazy mists of Pedantry dispers'd.7

1 'Epea Pteroenta or The Diversions of Purley (London, 1786). The book was well known in Gottingen circles. Cf. Herder's letter to Eichhorn, December 24, 1798: 'Hier Home Tooke und Abdul Kurreen mit grosstem Dank', from Briefe aus der Frihzeit der deutschen Philo- logie an G. F. Benecke, hrsg. von R. Baier, Leipzig, 1901. Cf. too, M. C. Yarborough, John Horne Tooke (New York, 1926), especially chapter v.

2 'The Latin anima is in truth nothing but the breath of the body; and conversely the soul is of material origin just as is the spirit.' Diversions of Purley, p. 78. Cf. Funke, op. cit., p. 113. As well deny the existence of humour (something as intangible as the soul) because the word originally implied a certain secretion of the human body!

3 P. Kaufman, 'The Reading of Southey and Coleridge', in Modern Philology (1924), xxI, p. 317.

4 Mrs Sandford, Thos. Poole and his Friends, I, p. 280. Cf. E. H. C., I, p. 261. 5 Table Talk, May 7, 1830. 6 Griggs, I, p. 61. 7 Poems, Oxford ed., p. 150 (Griggs, I, p. 54), 'his rejoicing wings' refer to the Greek title

of the Diversions of Purley.

179



180 Coleridge as a Philologist It is clear that before he came to Germany Coleridge was taking a keen interest in the latest developments of philology; he had enjoyed, moreover, the advantage of a rigid discipline in the classics, both at Christ's

Hospital and at Cambridge, but it was a strictly critical attitude to the text, which had nothing in common with the larger approach through the

understanding of the conditions which had brought it forth. It was this

apprehension of the wider issues involved in the study of poetry and

language, of science and philosophy, which renders this short sojourn in

Germany epoch-making for Coleridge's intellectual development. Coleridge had hoped to learn more concerning Germany's ancient bards

from the venerable father of German poetry, Klopstock, in Hamburg. But when he enquired of him concerning the history of German poetry and the older German poets, to his great astonishment Klopstock confessed that he knew very little on the subject, as it had not particularly 'excited his curiosity'.' In Gottingen, on the other hand, Coleridge found more expert and willing guidance: there was first Georg Friedrich Benecke, librarian and later professor of English and German philology. A pupil of

Heyne, he applied his master's theories to the study of mediaeval languages and, as the teacher of Lachmann and Haupt, may well be termed 'the father of Germanistik'. To him, in spite of his strong Swabian pronunciation, Coleridge, like most young Englishmen in Gottingen, went for in- struction in German. Benecke's methods were commendably thorough, and he took his pupils through Faust and Nathan, to end up with the

Nibelungenlied! A strong active character, a man of the world, he was not easily deceived by his pupil's affectations. He noted with disapproval Coleridge's addiction to opium, and saw through his pretensions to exact German scholarship, when, as he declared long afterwards to an American student, 'Coleridge got a long ode of Klopstock's by heart, without under-

standing it, and declaimed to his fellow-students as a proof of the rapidity of his progress'.2 Yet Coleridge undoubtedly profited from his attentions. 'That good and great man',3 the physiologist Blumenbach, Gottingen's most renowned professor was, however, his closest acquaintance, and he was much impressed by his enormous knowledge. Coleridge was particularly attracted to his theory of races, in which Blumenbach showed

1 Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), in, p. 539. 2 'Gottingen in 1824' in Putnam's Magazine (December, 1856), p. 600. Dora Words-

worth, during the joint continental tour of 1828, reported that'her 'Father, with his few half dozen words of German makes himself better understood than Mr Coleridge with all his insight into German literature'. From Dorothy Wordsworth. A Biography, by E. de Selin- court (Oxford, 1933), p. 375. De Quincey, too, bears witness to his imperfect mastery of the spoken language: Works (1871), xi, p. 97.

3 The Friend, Essay v, note (April 8, 1817).



L. A. WILLOUGHBY

that the Caucasian race, both by the shape of its skull and the colour of its skin, took precedence of all others, thus affording an interesting

anticipation of the modern vogue for Nordic characteristics, of which

Coleridge already shows faint traces.1 'But my chief efforts', he writes in the Biographia Literaria,2 'were

directed towards a grounded knowledge of the German language and literature. From Professor Tychsen I received as many lessons in the Gothic of Ulphilas as sufficed to make me acquainted with its grammar and the radical words of most frequent occurrence; and with the occasional assistance of the same philosophical linguist, I read through Otfried's metrical paraphrase of the Gospel, and the most important remains of the Theotiscan, or the transitional state of the Teutonic

language from the Gothic to the Old-German of the Swabian period.' It is obvious that Coleridge makes the mistake (common enough in his

own day) of considering Gothic as the mother-tongue of German, instead of an elder sister.3 ?It is difficult to gauge the extent of his linguistic knowledge, because Schilter's Thesaurus,4 from which he drew, prints a Latin translation in the margin. In any case the title 'paraphrase' should warn us from expecting a literal rendering and, indeed, Coleridge uses his text freely, but avoids serious blunders.5 With unerring judgment he

recognised in the poem occasional passages of considerable mlerit (thus anticipating the revised opinion of modern German scholars) and chose as his subject one of the most genuinely poetical passages in the book, that in which the Virgin fondles the Divine Babe lying in the manger.6 Otfried has himself treated his Latin sources7 with a naive reticence which does honour to his sense of poetic propriety, and Coleridge has

1 Animn Poetae, ed. by E. H. Coleridge (London, Heinemann, 1895), p. 284: 'Are we not better than the other nations of Christendom? Yes-Perhaps, I don't know. I dare not affirm it. Better than the French certainly! Mammon versus Moloch and Belial. But Sweden, Norway, the Tyrol? No.' Cf. Table Talk (January 3, 1834). Coleridge possessed Blumenbach, Ueber die natiirlichen Verschiedenheiten im Menschengeschlechte (Leipzig, 1798). It is now in the library of Lord Coleridge with marginal annotations. See J. L. Haney, Bibliography of S. T. C. (Philadelphia, 1903), p. 103.

2 Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), III, p. 301. 3 Cf. Monboddo, Of the Origin and Progress of Language (Edinburgh, 1773-92), III, p. 411:

'Gothic the parent of the Teutonic Language.' Cf. also Funke. 4 Johannis Schilteri Thesaurus antiquitatum Teutonicarunm (Ulm, 1726-8). 5 Coleridge omits the line 'Joh muoter thiu 'nan quatta', perhaps because 'quatta' the

past tense of 'quettan' defeated him, although the Latin 'alloquebatur' provided the correct reading. 'Tuzta' from 'tuzen' puzzled him, as it puzzled Schilter (who translates 'obblandiebatur' caressed). Even the latest editor, E. Schroder (Erdmann's Olfrid, Halle, 19342), is doubtful, and hesitates between 'schaukeln' and 'haitscheln'. I note only one mistake: 'thuruhnahtin' is of the same stem as 'genuoc' and means 'perfect'. 'In the darkness and the night', consequently, is wrong.

6 Brandl points out that it is the source of the Christmas Carol. S. T. C. und die englische Romnantik (Strassburg, 1886).

7 'Beatus venter, qui te portavit et ubera, quae suxisti', Erdmann, p. 363.

181



182 Coleridge as a Philologist added a charming homely observation drawn from the personal ex-

perience of one who has not long been a father. As the accomplished craftsman he leaps lightly over Otfried's confessed technical difficulties in dealing adequately with such sublime matters as the Virgin's goodness and purity. Coleridge's version is so felicitous because the passage in

question represented to him his ideal of poetry: truth to nature modified

by power of imagination, the turning of body into spirit. Or, as he ex-

presses himself in a footnote to this passage: 'most interesting is it to consider the effect, when the feelings are wrought above the natural

pitch by the belief of something mysterious, while all the images are

purely natural. Then it is, that religion and poetry strike deepest.' She gave with joy her virgin breast; She hid it not, she bared the breast, Which suckled that divinest babe! Blessed, blessed were the breasts Which the Saviour infant kissed; And blessed, blessed was the mother Who wrapp'd his limbs in swaddling-clothes, Singing placed him on her lap, Hung o'er him with her looks of love, And soothed him with. a lulling motion. Blessed! for she sheltered him From the damp and chilling air; Blessed, blessed! for she lay With such a babe in one blest bed, Close as babes and mothers lie Blessed, blessed evermore With her virgin lips she kiss'd, With her arms, and to her breast She embraced the babe divine, Her babe divine the Virgin-mother! There lives not on this ring of earth A mortal, that can sing her praise. Mighty mother, virgin pure, In the darkness and the night For us she bore the heavenly Lord!

Coleridge pursued his philological studies 'through the Minnesingers down to their degenerate successors, the Mastersingers'.1 He read 'with sedulous accuracy' the metrical romances. (Benecke, we know, later edited the Wigalois of Wirt von Grafenberg, and printed many Minne- lieder in his Beytrdge zur Kenntnis der altdeutschen Sprache und Literatur, Gottingen, 1810.) Coleridge was particularly attracted by 'the rude, yet interesting strains of Hans Sachs, the cobbler of Niirenberg'; and he learned that Luther was not only the translator of the Bible, but the

1 He took out from the library on May 25 F. C. Wagenseil, De Sacri Romani Imperii Libera Civitate Noribergensi Commentatio, von der Meistersinger Origine, Praestantia, Utilitate et Institutis (Altdorf, 1697). I am indebted to Dr C. A. Weber of Gottingen for this additional entry from the 'Ausleihjournale'.



L. A. WILLOUGHBY

innovator of High German as a 'lingua communis'.1 He took his philological studies with such seriousness that, for a moment, he thought of

making philology his profession, although, apparently, he has no great opinion of learning as such. 'With the advantage of a great library, learning is nothing', he writes,2 'methinks merely a sad excuse for being idle. Yet a man gets reputation by it, and reputation gets money; and for

reputation I don't care a damn, but money, yes money I must get by all honest ways. Therefore at the end of two or three years, if God grant me life, expect to see me come out with some horribly learned book, full of

manuscript quotations from Laplandish or Patagonian authors, possibly on the striking resemblance of the Sweogothian and Sanskrit languages, and so on.'3 And earlier in the same letter: 'I find learning is a mighty easy thing, compared with any study else.'

Yet, in spite of his dislike of professional pedantry, it must be granted that Coleridge set to acquire knowledge systematically and with a will. He worked harder in those four months, he tells Wedgwood, 'than I trust

almighty God, I shall ever have occasion to work again' ; and in the Bio-

graphia Literaria he remarks with obvious pleasure: 'I made the best use of my time and means, and there is no period in my life on which I can look back with such unmingled satisfaction.'5 The 'Ausleihjournale' of the

university library fully bear out those professions of diligence. Heyne, as chief librarian, had made him free of the restrictions usually applicable to students. It is an imposing list of books borrowed which has been drawn

up by Miss Snyder;6 they are practically all philological. Wachter's Glossarium had definite pretensions to scholarship, and he has more than an inkling of etymological truth, although still ignorant of the laws

governing philological changes.7 Michaeler's Tabless contains a com-

parative grammar of the Germanic languages and a selection of Gothic and O.H.G. texts based on the collections of Hickes and Schilter. Willenbiicher's Praktische Anweisung der teutschen Sprache9 is a collection

1 Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), II, p. 303. 2 E. H. C., I, p. 299. 3 This comparison of Gothic and Sanskrit seems to presuppose Sir William Jones' recent

discoveries. 4 J. Cottle, Early Recollections (London, 1837), p. 427. 5 Loc. cit., p. 300. 6 Modern Philology (1928), xxv, p. 377. Cf. C. A. Weber, Bristols Bedeutung fir die

englische Romantik (Stud. zur engl. Phil., 89); Halle, 1935, p. 164 seq. 7 Glossarium Germanicurn continens origines et antiquitates totius linguae Germanicae...

(Lipsiae, 1738). Cf. M. H. Jellinek, Geschichte der nhd. Gramnmatik (Heidelberg, 1914), Ir, p. 147.

8 C. J. Michaeler, Tabulae parallelae antiquissimarum Teutonicae linguae dialectorum (Oenipente, 1776). ' Praktische Anweisung zur Kenntnis der Hauptverdnderungen und Mundarten der teutschen Sprache (Leipzig, 1789). It is the only book in Miss Snyder's list not in the British Museum.

183



Coleridge as a Philologist of ecclesiastical texts in Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and Old High and Low German with copious notes of a philological character.

Boie's Deutsches Museuml afforded a further selection of German

poetry from the Middle Ages to the sixteenth century and numerous

essays on German social and literary history, culminating in the famous

panegyrics on the Volkslied by Burger 2 and Herder,3 the latter, of course, largely indebted to Percy and Blair. Bodmer's Minnesinger4 provided access to the rich stores of the mediaeval lyric, which was supplemented by Wagenseil's classical account of the Meistersinger of Niirnberg.5 Both sixteenth and seventeenth-century literature are represented,6 and his lifelong interest in Hans Sachs dates from this period. It was primarily religious, like that of his chief authority, Ranisch, who planned his bio-

graphy 'zur Erlauterung der Geschichte der Reformation'.7 In Ranisch he found the information concerning Hans Sachs's famous hymn,' Warunl betribst du dich mein Herz', which he used in the Biographia Literaria,8 and a lengthy reference to the delightful Die Ungleichein Kinder Eve,9

1 Leipzig in der Weygandschen Buchhandlung (1776-80). Cf. W. Hofstaetter, Das deutsche Museum (Probefahrten 12) (Leipzig, 1908).

2 ' Herzensausguss ilber Volkspoesie' (1776), p. 443. 3 'Von Ahnlichkeit der mittleren englischen und deutschen Dichtkunst' (1777),

p. 421. 4 Proben der alten schwdbischen Poesie des 13. Jahrhunderts (Zurich, 1748) and Sammlung

von Minnesingern aus dem schwdbischen Zeitpunkt (Zurich, 1758-9). It was the Wordsworths who drew his attention to this 'volume of amorous verses' in a letter from Goslar. Cf. The Early Letters of Wm. and D. Wordsworth, ed. by E. de Selincourt (Oxford, 1935), p. 203.

5 See p. 182, note 1. 6 F. D. Ring, Ueber die Reise des Zurcher Breytopfes nach Strassburg vom Jahr 1576

(Bayreuth, 1787). D. C. Lohensteins, Ibrahim Sultan, Schauspiel; Agrippina, Trauerspiel; Epiclaris, Trauerspiel; und andere Poetische Gedichte (Breslau, 1689).

7 M. S. Ranisch, Historisch.kritische Lebensbeschreibung Hanns Sachsens, ehemals beriihm- ten Meistersingers zu Niurnberg (Altenburg, 1765).

8 Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), II, p. 303: 'An excellent hymn of Hans Sachs which has been de- servedly translated into almost all the European languages.' Cf. Ranisch, p. 207.

9 P. 139 note c: 'Da dieses 1553, den 6. Nov. verfertigte Stuck seinem Inhalte nach einigen zwar bekannt ist, ihrer Urschrift nach aber vollig unbekannt schcint, soverdient es, umstand- licher beschrieben zu werden. Der Inhalt ist kiirzlich dieses' (here follows the contents and a reference to Hans Sachs's sources: Melanchthon and Veit Creuzer). Presumably it was this reference that turned Coleridge's attention to the text, but why he should have made a special journey to Helmstedt for the purpose of transcribing it when it was contained in vol. I, p. x of the Sehr Herrliche Schone und wakrhalfte Gedichte of Hanns Sachs (Niirnberg, Christoff Heuss- ler, 1558) is a mystery which neither Professor F. L. Lowes (The Road to Xanadu, p. 542, note 19) nor Miss Snyder (Modern Philology (1928), xxv, p. 379) has been able to solve satis- factorily. Miss Snyder suggests that it was the 'Fastnachtspiel' of Adams und Evens Erschaffung und ihr Sundenfall that he transcribed, and not the' Comoedie'. A MS. volume of Coleridge was so described in a bookseller's catalogue of 1884. The mystery is deepened by the fact that the library at Helmstedt (dispersed at the dissolution of the university in 1809 and now mostly in Wolfenbiittel) does niot appear to have contained any Hans Sachs MSS. Cf. (. von Heinemann, Die Hss. der herzogl. Bibliothek zu Wolfenbittel, I: die Helmstddter Hss. (Wolfenbiittel, 1884-8) and H. Schneider, Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Universitdtsbibliothek Helmstedt (Helmstedt, 1924). That Coleridge did actually visit Helmstedt between July 3 and 6, 1799, seems clear from his letter to Greenough of July 6. Cf. E. Morley, 'Coleridge in Germany' in London Mercury (1931), p. 564.

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L. A. WILLOUGHBY

the story of which was to pursue him all his life.1 Meister's Charakte- ristiken and the Biographie of C. H. Schmid (Der Giessener Schmid) provided reliable, if loquacious guides to German poets both ancient and modern.2 Kindermann's Teutscher Wolredner3 was a well-known practical handbook for would-be letter writers and speech makers.

It must be obvious that Coleridge's German reading cannot have been confined to the books actually borrowed from the library. Of those con- sulted in the reading room there is no record, but he had access, for instance, to Herder's Volkslieder, from which he took his translations of 'Wenn ich ein Voglein war' sent to his wife on April 23.4 He brought back to England with him, moreover, a whole load of German books which were by no means all metaphysical, and some of which are still to be found with his marginal annotations in the British Museum or elsewhere.5 Such are Luther's Tischreden in an edition of 1711,6 and Hans Sachsen sehr herrliche Gedichte of 1781.7 Some of his German books he

acquired after his return, either by gift, as when De Quincey presented him with Bohme8, and Tieck with his own and other works,9 or else by purloining them from his friends, as when he carried off 'Luster's Tables' (as the maidservant called Luther's Table Talk) from Lamb's house when its master was absent !10 But he was equally free with his own books and

1 C. Carlyon, Early Years and Late Reflections (London, 1843-56), r, p. 93. Cf. the second lecture of 1818 in Miscellanies, ed. Ashe, p. 96 and Crabb Robinson, Diary (Sadler) (1869), I, p. 268.

2 L. Meisters Charakteristik deutscher Dichter nach der Zeitordnung gereihet, mit Bild- nissen, von H. Pfenninger, 2 vols. (St Gallen u. Leipzig, 1789), begins with O.H.G. literature to end with Salomon Gessner, contains short biographies, appreciations and selections. Charactere der vornehmsten Dichter aller Nationen, nebst kritischen und historischen Abhand- lrlngen iiber Gegenstdnde der schcnen Kiinste und Wissenschaften, von einer Gesellschaft von Gelehrten, vol. I (Leipzig, 1792). (Nachtrdge zu J. C. Sulzers Allgemeine Theorie der sch6nen Kiinste (1771-74). C. H. Schmid, Biographie der Dichter, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1769, 1770). He also took out C. G. Schiitz, Ueber Lessings Genie und Schriften (Halle, 1782). 3 Herrn Baltasar Kindermanns Teutscher Wolredner auff allerhand Begebenheiten im Staets- und Hauswesen gerichtet (Frankfurt u. Leipzig, 1688). 4 E. H. C., i, p. 294. Not from the Wunderhorn, as is usually maintained, for the latter did not appear until 1805.

5 Cf. J. L. Haney, oc. cit., and his article in Coleridge Centenary Papers, ed. by E. Blunden and E. L. Griggs (London, 1934), p. 107.

6 Coleridge also possessed the English translation of Captain Henry Bell, Colloquia Mensalia or The Familiar Discourses of Dr Martin Luther at his table, collected first together by Dr Antonius Lauterbach (London, 1711). 'This edition', writes Coleridge in the margin, 'is nothing equal to that of 1652-great liberties are taken in this of omissions and alterations.'

7 C 43 b 3. This volume (not to be confused with Heussler's edition, referred to above) does not contain Die Ungleichen Kinder Eve. A sheet of notepaper pasted to the flyleaf contains a transcription in Coleridge's hand of a passage from the comedy Solon und der Wl(rlbruder, and another extract concerning a pedlar beginning: 'Ich ein armer Kramer bin.'

8 Works (ed. 1871), xi, p. 76 note: 'We ourselves had the honour of presenting to Mr Coleridge Law's English version of Jacob Boehmen, a set of huge quartos.' 9 Cf. E. H. Zeydel, Ludwig Tieck and England (Princeton, 1931), p. 94.

10 Letters of Charles Lamb, ed. by A. Ainger (London, 1888), ii, p. 119.

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was asking Sharon Turner in 1808 for the return of a 'parcel of old Ger- man or Theotiscan books' together with a romance in Latin hexameters (was it the Waltharius ?).l

Coleridge gave heed to the strict philological discipline taught by Benecke, and the interest in linguistic problems persisted all his life. Like most of his contemporaries he had a passion for etymology (why not ven- ture on root-lore ?), which seems to him an admirable device for training the mind,2 but he denies that it is a science, except 'in the lowest and improper sense of the word '. It seems to him a 'logy which perishes from a plethora of probability'.3 He himself certainly makes some very wild shots in his

anxiety to bring home a point, as when he opposes 'thing' to 'thought' as

though the first were a present and the latter a past participle, thus con-

trasting the living and the dead:4 for 'feelings die by flowing into the mould of the intellect, becoming ideas'.5 He hazards a guess that in the first word of the Maltese expression 'nix mangiare' we have the Low Ger- man 'nichs', the slurring of 'nichts'.6 Gossamer is not a corruption of 'God's Dame's Hair'.7 And he blunders badly when he connects the 'Whit' in Whitsuntide with the 'wite' in 'Witenagemot', though to do him justice, this was before his visit to Germany.8 He is repeating an error of Horne Tooke in connecting the final -ive with 'vicus' and' oikos',9 and equally wrong in the assumption that 'who' is the Greek ho plus the

digammate prefix; nor does' qui' equal kai ho.10 He is entirely at sea when he informs John Gutch (the editor of the Horn Book) that the expression 'Op Zee Freeze' is a pun upon Vries,'a Dutch cant word for strong beer.l1 His assertion that 'brute animals have the vowel sounds; men only can utter the consonants' is simply not true, and is another instance of his obsession with the belief that Hebrew was the divinely inspired primitive language of mankind.12 He attacks Home Tooke for 'being shallow in the Gothic dialects' (or, as we now say, Germanic), and he is himself nearer the mark, though not quite correct, when he suggests that the form 'die' (it was actually 'de') did duty in the north of Germany for both masculine and feminine, and the 'der' as a distinct masculine form was

adopted by Luther from Ober-Deutsch.13 He quotes with approval the statement of the Abbe Raynal that the dual is a natural conception 'quite

Griggs, I, p. 400. 2 A. D. Snyder, Coleridge on Logic and Learning (New Haven, 1929), p. 126. 3 Anima Poetae, p. 123. 4 The Friend (Shedd), ii, p. 469. 5 Griggs, I, p. 352. 6 The Friend, loc. cit., p. 510. 7 Omniana, ed. T. Ashe (London, 1896), p. 349. 8 The Watchman (Shedd), Iv, p. 76, quoted by Hanford, loc. cit., p. 625. 9 Table Talk, August 16, 1833. Cf. Hanford, loc. cit., p. 129.

10 Omniana, p. 415. 11 Griggs, II, p. 139. 12 Table Talk, August 20, 1833. 13 Ibid., May 7, 1830.

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L. A. WILLOUGHBY

distinct from plurality '. But the agreement in ancient Greek of singular verbs with a neuter plural is not due to 'the successful resistance of meta-

physical grammar against the tyranny of formal grammar'. It is simply that the Greeks had a grammatical category for the collective which most modern languages have lost. Nor does it help to argue, as Coleridge does, that 'there may be Multeity in things, but there can only be Plurality in

persons', for persons, too, can be considered collectively. His views of the relationship of languages are correct as far as they go,

but limited: our Indo-European language (he terms it following a Biblical theory, Japetic, i.e. Japhetic,2 but confuses the people themselves with the Ionians) split up into two main divisions, the one mi-

grating south-west (Greeks, Ionians, etc.), the other north-west (Goths, Germans, Swedes, etc.). Although doubtful of the position of Sanskrit with regard to this family, he is convinced that Hebrew is Semitic.3

He quotes with approval a remark of Jakob Bohme that it was strange that there was not a different language for every degree of latitude (a favourite thought of Herder's), and in confirmation points to the infinite

variety of languages among the barbarous tribes of South America.4 He realises the importance of analogy as a formative principle and has ob- served that children, when forming new words,5 always act on it.

He is puzzled by the phenomenon of gender (as many more competent philologists than he have been!) and tries to account for 'Sonne' being feminine in modern German, whereas in Middle High German it was often masculine.6 He has some notion that the termination of nouns is purely arbitrary, and is correct in his assumption that the article performs a

primary function in the expression of sex (i.e. gender), at least in the older periods of the language. And he is really on the track of the

right explanation when he points out that the neuter noun in Greek has no real nominative case (this applies of course equally to the Germanic languages): 'a thing', he adds, 'has no subjectivity or nominative case; it exists only as an object in the accusative.'7 But instead he

spoils it all with the sweeping assertion that no nation ever imagined the sun in itself and apart from language, as the feminine power,8 although, had he read Horne Tooke more carefully, he would have learned that in ancient German mythology the sun was represented as a goddess !9 That,

1 Table Talk, July 7, 1832. 2 The term is now claimed for the Caucasian group. Cf. N. Marr, Der Japhetistiche

Kaukasus (Berlin, 1923). 3 Table Talk, February 24, 1827. 4 Ibid., July 12, 1827. 6 Anima Poetae, p. 11. 6 Table Talk, May 7, 1830. 7 Ibid., July 7, 1832. 8 He seems to derive here from J. Harris, Hermes (London, 1765), p. 45. 9 Diversions of Purley, ed. 1829, by R. Taylor, I, p. 54.

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188 Coleridge as a Philologist

however, he did not take himself too seriously as a philologist is proved by the facetious epigram (adapted from Wernicke) 'On the curious circumstances that in the German language the Sun is feminine and the Moon masculine':1

Our English poets, bad and good, agree To make the Sun a male, the Moon a she. He drives His dazzling diligence on high, In verse, as constantly as in the sky; And cheap as blackberries our sonnets show The Moon, Heaven's huntress, with Her silver bow; By which they'd teach us, if I guess aright, Man rules the day, and woman rules the night. In Germany they just reverse the thing; The Sun becomes a queen, the Moon a king. Now, that the Sun should represent the women, The Moon the men, to me seem'd mighty humming; And when I first read German, made me stare. Surely it is not that the wives are there As common as the Sun to lord and loon, And all their husbands horned as the Moon?

Coleridge had a perfect passion for coining and adapting words, and his efforts are not always successful! 'Oligosyllabic' has, indeed, passed into common usage,2 and 'co-arctation' is not a bad phrase for the double

narrowing of daylight and the interstice between the door and its jambs as the door is closed:3

And soon The narrowing line of day-light that ran after The closing door was gone.4

But 'aspheterise',5 to deny private property, from the privative particle 'a' and the Greek 'spheteros', is, as the Oxford Dictionary says, 'rare'; and 'ultra-crepidate',6 as applied to the presumptuous critic, and

'vaccimulgence', of the milking of cows, are mere etymological jests;7 'esemplastic' is, according to Ferrier,8 a plagiarism of Schelling's 'In-

eins-bildung', although as Mr Shawcross has pointed out,9 the equivalence is by no means exact. It has lately been assimilated to an earlier original formation of Coleridge,10 'coadunating', which may have suggested to him the later and better Greek equivalent 'esemplastic'. Not that he was

1 The verses were suggested, as H. G. Fiedler has shown in the Notes to the Oxford edition (1912) of Coleridge's Works (Ii, p. 1004), by an epigram of Christian Wernicke:

Die Sonn' heisst die, der Mond heisst der In unsrer Sprach', und kommt daher, Weil meist die Frauen wie die gemein Wie der gehdrnt wir Manner sein.

2 Table Talk, April 30, 1830. 3 Anima Poetae, p. 161. 4 Piccolomini, Act II, s. iv. 5 Lecture VI, 1811-12.

E. H. C., I, p. 338. Griggs, i, p. 148. 7 Biogr. Lit., II, p. 381. 8 Blackwood's Magazine (March, 1840), XLVii, p. 293. 9 Biogr. Lit. (Shawcross), I, p. Ixiii.

10 Cf. P. L. Carver in Mod. Lang. Rev. (1929), xxiv, p. 329.



L. A. WILLOUGHBY

averse from borrowing his philosophic terms from the German: why not

adopt 'all-common' for 'allgemein', he asks, and he would like to see 'universal' and 'occasional' used for Kant's 'notwendig' and 'zufillig'. 'Angeborenes tibel'=original sin would be better rendered, he thinks,

by 'co-innate' or 'ad-innate' and for 'Zundstoff' he suggests the 'incendent' or 'comburent';' 'he laments the lack of an English equivalent for 'uniibersehbar' (untranslatable) and 'Lichtpunkt'.2 So Ger- manised was his phraseology that already in Gottingen he used 'college' in the rare English sense of a course of lectures:

We both attended the same College, Where sheets of paper we did blur many, And now we're going to sport our knowledge, In England I, and you in Germany.3

He gave a wider meaning, the Oxford Dictionary informs us, to the word

'anachronism', being the first to invest it with the idea of a thing ap-

propriate to one age, but out of touch with another. The ambiguity of words and his concern for their exact definition led

Coleridge to the formulation of a magnificent and prophetic plan for

a new English Dictionary on scientific lines which should supersede Dr Johnson's,4 although he realises the magnitude of the task and the

improbability of its execution without outside financial help. 'Were I

asked', he writes in the Biographia Literaria, 'what I deemed the greatest and most unmixed benefit which a wealthy individual, or an association

of wealthy individuals, could bestow on their country, or on mankind, I should not hesitate to answer, "a philosophical English dictionary, with

the Greek, Latin, German, French, Spanish and Italian synonymes and

with corresponding indexes".' He defines it more precisely and less

ambitiously, but equally enthusiastically, in his 'Logic: 'A dictionary constructed on the one only philosophical principle, which, regarding words as living growths, affects, and organs of the human soul, seeks to

trace each historically through all the periods of its natural growth and

accidental modification-work worthy of a Royal and Imperial con-

federacy, and which would indeed hallow the Science! A work which, executed from any one language, would yet be a benefaction to the world, and to the nation itself a source of immediate honour and ultimate weal

beyond the power of victories to bestow or the mines of Mexico to pur-

1 The above examples from the 'Marginalia' published by H. Nideker in the Revue de Lit. Comp. (1927), vii, pp. 136, 338, 534.

2 Anima Poetae, p. 102. 3 'Lines in a German Student's Album', Oxford ed. p. 955. 4 On his opinion of Johnson's Dictionary see Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), ii, p. 325 note. 5 Ibi;., p. 326 note; (Shawcross), I, p. 241 note.

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chase. The realisation of this scheme lies in the far distance, but in the meantime it cannot but beseem every individual competent to its further- ance to contribute a portion of the materials for the future temple.'1

For puns, though to a less extent than his friend Charles Lamb, he had a lifelong weakness. He thought of writing a treatise in defence of

'paranomasy', as he somewhat pedantically termed the art.2 In his 1811- 12 Lectures he commends Shakespeare for his wise use of these verbal conceits.3 They are, he says elsewhere, 'analogous to sudden fleeting affinities of mind. Even, as in a dance, you touch and join and off again, and rejoin your partner... they too, not merely conform to, but are of and in and help to form the delicious harmony.'4 There are, of course, puns and puns, from 'its minimum in which it exists only in the violent intention and desire of the punster to make one' to that maximum of 'scornful triumph exulting and insulting as in Paradise Lost vi'.5 It

usually contains an element of contempt, and it is perhaps for this reason that Coleridge's praise of Southey's substitution of' metapothecaries' for

'metaphysicians' reads somewhat forced and self-conscious in its exag- geration.6 ('He deserves a pension far more', he vows, 'than Johnson for his dictionary.') And there is just a suggestion of irony when he puns on his initials to describe his system of philosophy as 'Estecean'.7 But on occasion he takes punning seriously, as when he defines the understanding as 'that which stands under the phenomenon, and gives it objectivity'.8 A bull, on the other hand, is only occasionally verbal (as when the closest thinker blunders in speaking a foreign tongue), but the true bull consists rather 'in a mental juxtaposition of incongruous ideas, with the sensation, but without the sense of connection'.9 And whilst 'humour is consistent with pathos, wit is not'.10

Coleridge was the inventor of the term, and the first discerning advo- cate of the process, of 'desynonymisation' as a means of enriching the language.1l For synonyms (he uses the word loosely) can only be counted a defect where the words remain synonymous, as when in German dialects there are a hundred different names for the alder-tree.1 But these defects, in languages of mixed origin, at least,13 can be turned into a source of strength; as in English where, either by some slight change in pro-

1 A. D. Snyder, op. cit., p. 116. 2 Anima Poetae, p. 225. 3 T. M. Raysor, Coleridge's Shakespearian Criticism (London, 1930), p. 122. 4 Anima Poetae, p. 108. 5 Omniana, p. 348. 6 Griggs, i, p. 183. 7 Snyder, op. cit., p, 5. 8 Table Talk, March 13, 1827. 8 Omniana, p. 359.

O1 Additional Table Talk, September 15, 1821. '1 Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), III, p. 201. 12 Table Talk, May 14, 1830. 13 Snyder, op. cit., p. 132.

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nunciation, as 'property' and 'propriety', due to a different feeling in the mind the same word is used with different meanings;l a theory which seems to anticipate vaguely Sperber's law of emotional causes.2 Or else by borrowing from different sources: fancy and imagination, imitation and copy.3 For words are subject to growth like any other living things; and he likens their development to that of the animalcula, those microscopic animals which divide into halves, and continue the process ad infinitum.4 In this respect, then, English is superior to a homogeneous language like German which, in order to translate Gray's line, 'the pomp and pro- digality of heaven', would be obliged to say 'the pomp and spendthrift- ness of heaven', because the German has not, as we have, one word with two such distinct meanings, one expressing the noble, the other the baser idea of the same action.5

In thus comparing languages on the grounds of their aesthetic and

literary merits Coleridge was helping to found a theory of language which, according to Professor Jespersen,6 has still to be developed in a truly scientific spirit. Not that Coleridge was always scientific, but as a poet and philosopher of no mean repute his remarks are well worthy of attention. He begins by referring his readers to 'a very pleasant and acute

dialogue in Schlegel's Athenaeum between a German, a Greek, a Roman, an Italian and a Frenchman on the merits of their respective languages '. Coleridge forgets the Englishman, yet the latter's remarks on his native

tongue, if few, are to the point; he praises its monosyllabic force, its rich- ness of expression, its freedom from obsolete terminations and its natural word-order. Like the true sportsman that every Englishman is supposed on the Continent to be, he pricks up his ears at the mention of 'verse races', and is ready to lay odds on the respective lengths of the Greek and German hexameter. On the whole, we find those questions discussed which are also Coleridge's concern: the value of brevity as opposed to force of expression, the due proportion between vowels and consonants and the relative concord of diphthongs and vowels, the harshness and softness of language to the ear; all in relation to language as the tool of

poetry. German comes in for its share of criticism, and though its force

1 Omniana, p. 415. 2 Zeitschrift f. d. Altert. (1922), LIX, p. 48. 3 Table Talk, July 3, 1833. 4 Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), III, p. 202 note. 5 Lectures, 1811-12. Raysor, op. cit., p. 120. 6 Language, its Nature, Development and Origin (London, 1922), p. 396. 7 Table Talk, September 4, 1833. Athenaeum (1798), i, p. 3: 'Die Sprachen. Ein Ge-

sprach fiber Klopstocks Grammatische Gesprache.' Another work with which he may have become acquainted in Germany, although I have no direct evidence, is D. Jenisch, Philo- sophisch-kritische Vergleichung und Wiirdiqung von vierzehn dltern und neuern Sprachen Europens (Berlin, 1796), a prize essay of the Prussian Academy which similarly broaches the comparative merits of languages.

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Coleridge as a Philologist and poetic capabilities are admlitted, exception is taken to its clumsiness of diction, its prolixity, its complications of accidence and syntax and the endlessness of its periods; Heiligeromischereichdeutschernazionsperioden as Schlegel mocks. The discussion is chiefly occupied with the refutation, or rather the limitation, of Klopstock's extravagant praise of the German

language in his Grammatische Gesprdche, especially of his contention that 'German is own sister to Greek'. According to the Biographia Literarial Coleridge had discussed with Klopstock the supposed likeness of German and Greek on the occasion of their famous meeting. He was on the whole inclined to admit Klopstock's claim that German alone was

capable of rivalling Greek in concentrating meaning, owing to the poly- syllabic character of the language and its unlimited power of forming compounds. In this respect it was definitely superior to English with its

monosyllabic character and its tendency to analytical paraphrase. In- deed, on another occasion, he maintains that German could vie with Greek in all things except harmony and sweetness.2 He constantly recurs to the vitality of its word-building resources. In this respect only Greek and Old Latin (not Virgil) can compare with it.3 He bemoans the loss of word-formative suffixes like -nd and -ing as in 'Jugend' and 'Jiingling': 'Why is that last word now lost to common use, and confined to sheep or other animals? 4 He does make bold, however, to use the diminutive

'goddessling' on one occasion.5 'Oh! for the power', he sighs, 'to per- suade all the writers of Great Britain to adopt the ver-, zer- and al- of the Germans!' (forgetful of the fact that the equivalent affix for- is itself obsolete in English). Why not 'verboil', 'zerboil', 'verrend', 'zerrend'? I should like the very words 'verflossen', 'zerflossen' to be naturalised:

And as I looked now feels my soul creative throes, And now all joy, all sense zerflows.6

And like any Germanising Carlyle he boldly writes of his 'all zermalming arguments!

7

It is a pity, he declares further,8 'that we dare not Saxonise as boldly as our forefathers, by unfortunate preference, Latinised. Then we should have " onglide ", " angleiten ", " onlook ", " anschauen ".' 'If you consider

only how much we should feel the loss of the prefix be-, as in "bedropt", "besprinkle", "besot", especially in our poetical language, and then think that this same mode of composition is carried through all their

simple and compound prepositions and many of their adverbs.'9 He 1 Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), II, p. 543. 2 Table Talk, April 20, 1811. 3 Ibid., September 2, 1833. 4 Omniana, p. 414. 5 Biogr. Lit. (Shawcross), I, p. 428. Cf. Mod. Lang. Rev. (1929), xxiv, p. 329. 8 Anima Poetae, p. 187. 7 Ibid., p. 243. 8 Ibid., p. 176. 9 Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), in, p. 543.

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points to the useful function of the suffix -inn, which enables the Germans to designate the sex in every possible relation of life: 'Amtmanninn', 'Amtschreiberinn', 'Obristinn' or 'Colonelinn' and 'Pastorinn', whereas our English -ess, he maintains (forgetting 'shepherdess' and 'goddess' !), is confined to words derived from French or Latin.1 He regrets the lack of a

genderless pronoun in English to refer to the sexless word 'person', and thinks the Latin 'homo' and the German 'Mensch' wonderfully con- venient in being of common gender,2 oblivious of the fact that the word 'man' could be applied to both sexes in Early English (i.e., 'woman', 'leman'). He praises the beauty of German as a homogeneous language, presenting as it does a harmony of words with each other which is not ob- tainable in any other language but Latin: 'heri vidi fragilem frangi, hodie mortalem mori' which he compares with 'Gestern sah ich Gebrechliches brechen, heute etwas Sterbliches sterben'.3 It is presumably for this reason that he considers that German 'can flash more images at once on the mind than can English, although English has equal, or even greater, powers of expression'.4 But he does appreciate the 'metaphysical and

psychological force' of German,5 referring no doubt to the vagueness and

mysteriousness of its simple-looking words, which accounts so largely for the supreme beauty of its lyrical poetry. 'Alles Lyrische', Goethe once remarked, 'muss im ganzen sehr verniinftig, im einzelnen ein bisschen

unverniinftig sein.'6 It was also one of Coleridge's favourite axioms that

'Poetry gives most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly under stood '. He testified, moreover, to its copiousness and power, byremarking that'in reading the German translation of the Georgics he could believe that he was reading the original'.8 English, on the other hand, strikes him 'by its practical words of monosyllabic character, more capable of

expressing action than any other language and so particularly appropriate to the drama'.9 Hence his belief that he had improved on Wallenstein because he had reduced its prolixity: 'Wherever I could retrench a syllable I did so, and I cleared away the greatest possible quantity of stuffing.'1 In brevity and conciseness of expression English can only be matched by Greek, and to prove his point he quotes a couplet in both languages absolutely equal in length and contents.11

1 Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), III, p. 517. 2 Anima Poetae, p. 190. 3 Ibid., p. 225. 4 Table Talk, September 4, 1833. 5 Lecture VI, 1811-12. Raysor, op. cit., ii, p. 119. 6 Maximen und Reflexionen, hrsg. v. Max Hecker, Nr. 130. 7 Anima Poetae, p. 5. 8 Cf. Beaten Paths and Those who trod them, by T. C. Grattan, 2 vols. (London, 1862), ii,

p. 112. 9 Raysor, op. cit., II, p. 120. o1 Beaten Paths, II, p. 112. ' Works (Oxford), n, p. 971.

M.L.R. XXXI 13

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Unlike Herder, for whom the combination of consonants imparted to German 'a certain measured pace',1 Coleridge finds in the language a want of proportion between its vowels and consonants: 'As though nature in the making had dropped an acid into the language which curdled the

vowels, and made all the consonants flow together.'2 The result is 'An unsmooth mixture of the vocal and organic, the fluid and the substance of the language'.3 He thinks it a pity that the Germans should not have retained or assumed the old dental spirants, the 'two beautifully dis- criminated sounds of the soft and hard theta'; and he compares that

grand English word 'death' with a German sound 'that puts you in mind of nothing but a loathsome toad'; (which, incidentally, betrays his own

anglicised pronunciation of 6 and disregard of the devoiced final d).4 His interest in German grammar even took the practical turn of compiling a skeleton German grammar which in ten pages contained all that was of the least use to a learner of intelligence.5 Yet although he is resolved to buy no other books except German (apart from the Greek and Latin classics),6 and though he fully admits the influence of German on his own style,7 he is no believer in the new-fangled methods in education advocated by the 'New-Broomers' (i.e., Lord Brougham and his fellow-reformers), and would most strictly 'exclude modern languages from the curriculum of the public schools'.8

It is obvious from any close study of Coleridge's philological observa- tions that he was very much of a dilettante where linguistics were concerned; that with his passion for etymology (it was the favourite hobby of the time as popular science became that of the Mid-Victorians!) he often makes wild guesses and looks for recondite meanings where there are

merely fossilised remains. He comes too early to profit by the discoveries of Rask, Grimm and Bopp; his authorities were rather Harris, van

Lennep and Horne Tooke. But though we cannot expect to find in his works any systematic and comprehensive theory of language, he has nevertheless flashes of intuition and visions of the truth, where his con-

temporaries were still walking in darkness. This is especially the case when his linguistic speculations tend to pass over into literary criticism. Such, for instance, is his recognition (derived, it is true, from Creutzer and

1 On Herder's view on language see E. Sapir, 'Herders Ursprung der Sprache' in Modern Philology (1907), v, p. 117.

2 Table Talk, July 7, 1832. 3 Omniana, p. 414. 4 Table Talk, July 7, 1832. 5 Beaten Paths, II, p. 118. 6 Anima Poetae, p. 207. 7 Griggs, iI, p. 10. Thelwall had warned him that familiarity with German would

encourage the 'faults in his composition'. Cf. Mod. Lang. Review (1930), xxv, p. 87. 8 Table Talk, August 4, 1833.

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Schelling) of the dionysiac content of the Prometheus of Aeschylus, and his still more remarkable anticipation of recent research when he asserts that the ultimate source of the Greek drama would be found in the

'Eleusynian and Samothracian mysteries'.l His analysis of the poetical process is rich in illuminating criticism and provides a new and suggestive interpretation of both Shakespeare and Wordsworth. His distinction between prose and poetry is not without application to some of our modern

poets: 'Prose is words in their best order; poetry is the best words in the best order.' 2 'Produce me one word out of Klopstock, Wieland, Schiller, Goethe, Voss, etc., which I will not find as frequently used in the most

energetic prose writers. The whole difference in style is that poetry de- mands a severe keeping-it admits nothing that prose may not often

admit, but it oftener rejects.'3 It is a good criterion of poetic style that

Coleridge adopts when he says that 'whatever lines of a poet can be translated into other words of the same language, without diminution of their significance...are so far vicious in their diction. I make bold to

affirm', he continues, 'that it would be scarcely more difficult to push a stone from the Pyramids with the bare hand, than to alter a word, or the

position of a word, in Milton or Shakespeare, without making the poet say something else, or something worse, than he does say.'4 And, of course, imagination must not be wanting, without which poetry is not

poetry. And there must be sense in it, too, 'for though poetry is some-

thing more than sense, yet it must be in good sense: just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house at least '. All these components together go to the making of poetic genius: 'Good Sense is its Body, Fancy its Drapery, Motion its Life, and Imagination the Soul that is

everywhere and in each, and forms all into one powerful and intelligent whole.'6

Coleridge is less concerned than one would imagine with the antiquarian interests which were so popular in England in his day, but rather with the

people as a living and active whole. Even before he came to Germany he had written on 'The Manners and Religion of the ancient Germans',7 inspired perhaps by the interest of Josiah Wedgwood in cultural problems. Readers of Satyrane's Letters8 will remember their lively description of German habits and customs: how in Hamburg Coleridge was

1 Works (Shedd), iv, p. 344. Cf. Hanford, loc. cit., p. 621. 2 Table Talk, July 12, 1827. 3 Anima Poetae, p. 229. 4 Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), III, p. 158. 5 Table Talk, May 9, 1830. 6 Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), III, p. 374. 7 The Watchman, No. III, March 17, 1796. Advertised as 'introductory to a Sketch of the

Manners, Religion and Politics of present Germany' which never appeared. 8 Biogr. Lit. (Shedd), III, p. 520.

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196 Coleridge as a Philologist struck by the picturesque costumes of the peasant women and the pipes and top-boots *f the men. He was amused by the painted sign-boards of the shops and awakened out of a distressful dream by the heat and dis- comfort of the feather bed, 'an abominable custom!' He pays attention to the shape and arrangement of German peasant dwellings, and even takes measurements of their proportions. From Ratzeburg he sends home the well-known account of Christmas festivities in Germany and so helps to spread their observance in England. All this, however, is only philology in its widest German sense. But as a pupil of Heyne Coleridge was

naturally interested in the cultural significance of language, although he was not always successful in its interpretation. The German 'Gang' in the sense of a course at dinner, he explains as coming from a practice which he describes to his wife as having witnessed with his own eyes: 'after an hour you rise up, each lady takes a gentleman's arm, and you walk about for a quarter of an hour, in the meantime another course is put upon the table.'1 Hermann Paul states less fancifully in his well-known dictionary that the perambulation refers to the servants who bring in the meats, not to the guests: 'Gang bei der Mahlzeit: fir sich aufgetragenes Gericht.'

Coleridge was interested enough in some doggerel verse on the sign-board of an inn in the Harz to make a note of them and to reproduce them fourteen years later in the Oinniana,2 but with characteristic disregard of

gender: Des Morgens ist das Branntwein gut, Desgleichen zum Mittage: Und wer am Abend ein Schluchgen thut, Der ist frei von ailer Plage: Auch kann es gar kein Schade seyn Zum Mitternacht, das Branntewein.

'The Rise and Condition of the German Boers' is the subject of a lengthy disquisition sent to Josiah Wedgwood in 1799. He derived much of his information from an article in that same journal of the Cassel antiquaries to which Heyne must have referred him for Winckelmann.3 His religious propensities lead him to speculate on the fact that it is only in the northern climes of Europe, in France, Germany and England, that Easter, commemorating the resurrection of the Saviour, coincides with the revival

1 E. H. C., i, p. 276. 2 Ed. T. Ashe, op. cit., p. 370. 3 See p. 177, note 2. The article in question by J. F. Runde ('Der Rechte und der

deutschen Reichshistorie Professor') is entitled: 'Vergleichung des ehemaligen und heutigen Zustandes der deutschen Bauern, und Untersuchung der Mittel, wodurch die erfolgten Veranderungen in dem deutschen Bauerstande bewiirkt worden sind.' Verbal agreement makes Coleridge's use of this source certain. It was one of the 'six huge letters' written for Josiah Wedgwood, but never posted, and intended, together with Wordsworth's Journal and other material as the nucleus of a book on Germany for which he hoped to receive ?30 from Longmans. Cf. Griggs, I, pp. 164 seq.



L. A. WILLOUGHBY

of life in nature.1 And the dearth of patronymics among the Welsh and Highland Scotch he explains, correctly no doubt, as the mark of a country not yet unfeudalised, and so lacking in trade names.2 Years later he calls to mind some charms which he and other boys at Christ's Hospital used to recite as a cure against cramp or 'pins and needles':

Foot! Foot! Foot! is fast asleep! Thumb! Thumb! Thumb! in spittle we steep: Crosses three we make to ease us, Two for the thieves, and one for Christ Jesus!

The same charm served for cramp in the leg with the following substitution:

The devil is tying a knot in my leg! Mark, Luke and John, unloose it I beg! Crosses three, etc....

'I can safely affirml', he comments ironically, 'that I do not remember an instance in which the cramp did not go away in a few seconds.'3 He re- lates in The Friend how he had once talked to a German soldier who had been sold to the English by his sovereign, an incident which naturally reminds him of 'Schiller's impassioned description of the scene in Cabal and Love'.4

Coleridge's main interest in philology was, however, neither linguistic, nor cultural, but philosophical. His attitude is that of the Renaissance:

'Duplex Grammnatica', Campanella had written, 'alia civilis, alia philosophica. Civilis peritia est, non scientia: constat enim ex auctoritate

usuque clarorum scriptorum. Philosophica vero, ratione constat; et haec scientiam olet.'5 Coleridge was similarly convinced that language was the reflection of the human understanding, and is an attempt to provide a logical scheme for the definition of ideas. Different languages accom-

plished this with varying success, and, of course, the classical languages and Hebrew were in this respect superior to all others. His approach was thus aesthetic, critical, metaphysical, religious, or even moral, but not

philological in the stricter sense. All the time he is haunted by the desire to find everywhere the working of the mind of God; and in his linguistic, as in his literary criticism, religious conviction is always lurking in the

background. No doubt this is why he was still unconvinced in 1827, in

spite of Leibniz and Friedrich Schlegel, that Hebrew was not the primitive language of mankind, and ridiculed the claims of Sanskrit to priority.6

Like Locke before him, and Goethe after him, Coleridge is concerned at the inadequacy of language to reproduce thought, and he is convinced,

1 Anima Poetae, p. 138. 2 Omniana, p. 413. 3 Table Talk, June 10, 1832. 4 The Friend, Section I, Essay 9. 6 Quoted by Home Tooke. 6 Table Talk, August 9, 1832.

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like some of our modern psychologists, that a more simple, more perfect process of intercommunication might have been evolved.1 He is aware of the enslaving power of words and wonders whether language, by ready- made and distinct images in the mind, may not be a hindrance to the

idea-creating force of originality.2 He realises at least that language is, in its essence, dynamic, is spoken and not merely written, when he maintains that to be intelligible it presupposes sympathetic apprehension on the part of the listener; or, as he expresses it in axiomatic form: 'the

conveyal of knowledge by words is in direct proportion to the stores and faculties of observation of the person who hears and reads them',3 thus

anticipating a conclusion of Wegener !4 It is the disinclination to relate a word to the precise fact or truth which it designates that, according to

Coleridge, is the disease of the age and leads to much muddy thinking. Where such terms do not exist in our present store of words 'they must be made and, indeed, all wise men have so acted from Moses to Aristotle and from Theophrastus to Linnaeus'.5 He turns to the philosopher in

support of this contention: 'I must extract and transcribe from the preface to the works of Paracelsus that eloquent defence of technical new words used in a new sense.'6 All improvements of style, he considers, come from 'the instinctive passion in the mind for one word to express one act or feeling', as when the phrase 'I envy him such and such a

thing' is used unconsciously for the complex synthesis comprised in the

regret of not being able to share, without any suggestion of deprivation of the lucky person.7

It is for men of genius to take in hand 'the ever-individualising process and dynamic Being of Ideas', and to reflect their thoughts in words.8 He gives an excellent definition of the genius of language: 'What a

magnificent History of acts of individual minds, sanctioned by the Col- lective Mind of the Country a Language is '9 It was in this sense, he thinks, that the Greeks employed the term 'logoi' for 'select, considerate, well-weighed, deliberate words' in contradistinction to 'rhemata'.10

Coleridge does not otherwise concern himself with the growth of language beyond this hint that it is consciously created from unconnected utter- ances by the action of gifted individuals: 'a chaos grinding itself into

compatibility.'ll The schoolmen of the Middle Ages deserve a word of 1 Additional Table Talk (Alsopp), ed. Ashe, p. 311. 2 Anima Poetae, p. 19. 3 Ibid., p. 268. 4 'Die Sympathie ist die fundamentale Voraussetzung alles Sprachverstiindnisses' Ph.

Wegener, Grundfragen der Sprachlebens (Halle, 1885), p. 68. 5 Anima Poetae, p. 268. 8 Ibid., p. 232. 7 Ibid., p. 155. 8 Snyder, Coleridge on Logic, p. 138. 9 Ibid., p. 138.

10 Ibid., p. 104. 1 Ibid., p. 138.

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L. A. WILLOUGHBY

commendation for the clearness and orderly disposition of their language, and Coleridge protests against 'the foolish laugh which Locke had raised

against them'.l It was the schoolmen, he avers, who made the languages of Europe what they now are, and, he adds proudly, 'two-thirds of the most ancient were of British birth'. 'We laugh at the quiddities of these writers now, but, in truth, these quiddities are just the parts of their

language which we have rejected, whilst we never think of the mass which we have adopted and have in daily use.'2

It is clear that Coleridge returned from Germany with much more than a wealth of linguistic learning. His rejection of the materialism of Hartley in favour of the German idealistic philosophy brought with it a change in his attitude to reality which is reflected in his new insight into words and their significance. By December 1800 he half sceptically refers to the

theory of language by which words were 'arbitrary symbols in imagination', and reports how his son Hartley, just able to speak a few words, made a fireplace of stones with stones for fire.3 Even earlier he had wondered whether thinking was not possible without arbitrary signs, whether words themselves were not organic like the rest of nature, 'parts and germinations of the plant?' 'I would endeavour to destroy the old antithesis of Words and Things, elevating, as it were, Words into Things and living Things too.'4 To think of a thing is different from perceiving it,5 just as to receive an idea is different from acquiring it. (Coleridge uses the German words 'auffassen' and 'erkennen' to illustrate his meaning.)6 Henceforward he distinguished between words and names of things, the former showing the harmony existing between mind and heart, the latter as mere arbitrary signs subject to endless discrepancies.7 His later work is filled with this conviction: 'It is the fundamental mistake of gram- marians and writers on the philosophy of grammar and language, to

suppose that words and their syntaxis are the immediate representatives of things, or that they correspond to things. Words correspond to thoughts and the legitimate order and connection of words, to the laws of thinking and to the acts and affections of the thinker's mind.'8 Words are thus no

longer the denomination of external objects, they are rather logical con- 1 Table Talk, April 20, 1811. He adds a year or two later that he has received 'great de-

light from Scotus Erigena, who was a Platonist rather than an Aristotelean', E. H. C., J, p. 424.

2 Table Talk, April 18, 1830. He journeyed to Durham in July 1801, apparently for the express purpose of reading Duns Scotus in the cathedral library: 'I am burning Locke, Hume and Hobbes under his nose. They stink worse than feather or assafoetida.' E. H. C., I, p. 358. By 1801 he had become a 'purus putus metaphysician' and had turned to Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant (Griggs, i, pp. 141, 173).

3 Anima Poetae, p. 13. 4 Griggs, I, p. 156. 6 Anima Poetae, p. 12. 6 Ibid., p. 78. 7 Table Talk, May 14, 1830. 8 To James Gillman, Jr., 1827.

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Coleridge as a Philologist structions of the mind, itself no longer passive but creative, and synonymous with the idea itself, for all truth is a species of revelation.1 It is this coalescence of subject and object which, as Mr Richards has emphasised in a recent study,2 is at the basis of Coleridge's theory of knowledge. Or, as Miss Snyder puts it in another way, it is the reconciliation of opposites when nature becomes self, and the material and the spiritual are com- bined by the imagination into poetry.3 It is in this sense that a work on the nature of poetry, describing the affinities of the feelings with words and ideas, would, in Coleridge's mind, 'supersede all the books of meta-

physics, and all the books of morals too'.4 It is an attitude not very different to that arrived at by Wilhelm von Humboldt some four years later: 'Im Grunde ist alles was ich treibe', he wrote to Wolf in 1805, 'Sprachstudium. Ich glaube die Kunst entdeckt zu haben, die Sprache als ein Vehikel zu gebrauchen, um das Hochste und Tiefste und die

Mannigfaltigkeit der ganzen Welt zu durchfahren.'5 Coleridge is still closer to the Romanticists for whom word and idea were identical and

language merely the outer form of an inward creative urge, like poetry with which speech is really identical. 'Das Reden', says von Baader, 'ist ein ausserlich und sichtbar gewordenes Denken. Das Denken nur ein innerliches Reden.' For Novalis language is magic and the poet 'ein

Sprachbegeisterter' (Heinrich von Ofterdingen), and Friedrich Schlegel carried the thought through to its logical conclusion with his conception of 'Universalpoesie', which should comprise all and sundry activities of the human soul.6

This all-comprehensive book on poetry, like so many others projected by Coleridge, was never written, but much of its substance is preserved in his letters, note-books, conversations and manuscripts, of which a rich selection has been given to the public in recent years.7 They have led to

1 E. H. C., I, p. 351. 2 I. A. Richards, Coleridge on Imagination (London, 1934). There is already a hint of

Mr Richards' conclusions in Mr Shawcross's Introduction to the Biogr. Lit., especially p. Ixvi.

3 'The Critical Principle of the Reconciliation of Opposites as employed by Coleridge' in Contributions to Rhetorical Theory (University of Michigan, ix, Ann Arbor, 1918).

4 E. H. C., I, p. 347. 5 Quoted by E. Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (Berlin, 1923), Teil I: Die

Sprache, p. 98. The date of this utterance, it will be noted, 1805, is the year when Coleridge met von Humboldt in Rome. But though they discussed literature there is no mention of grammar or philology in their conversations.

6 Cf. E. Fiesel, Die Sprachphilosophie der deutschen Romantik (Tiibingen, 1927). 7 I think principally of the Unpublished Letters of Griggs (1932), Miss Snyder's publica-

tions of Coleridgean MSS. (1929), J. H. Muirhead's penetrating study of Coleridge as Philosopher (London, 1930), of the older, but invaluable Anima Poetae with its wealth of extracts from the Note-Books (1895), and of J. Shawcross's indispensable edition of the Biographia Literaria (1907), and of the Coleridge Centenary Papers, ed. by E. Blunden and E. L. Griggs (London, 1934).

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L. A. WILLOUGHBY 201

a juster appreciation not only of his literary criticism but of the basic

originality of his mind. It is no longer possible, as it was only a short time ago, to term his famous distinction between fancy and the imagination 'useless' with Professor Garrod. And if, as Miss Snyder insists, Coleridge's chief contribution to the psychology of thinking was his in- sistence on the distinction between dynamic thought and passive atten-

tion, then the difference between fancy and the imagination is much more than one of degree, as Professor Abercrombie has suggested, and Pro- fessor Lowes would confirm. For who could deny that poetry does assume greater significance when it is invested, as Coleridge invests it, with a message from the other world? 'To be incapable of a feeling for

poetry, in my sense of the word', he declared in 1807, 'is to be without love of human nature and reverence for God.'l And he was still convinced when he wrote to H. J. Rose in 1816 that 'the true science of life is best taught in Poetry .2 For, true Romanticist that he was, Coleridge was convinced that the poet could penetrate intuitively into the nature of things, into which the man of science could only enter laboriously and

incompletely: 'I believe the souls of 500 Sir Isaac Newtons would go to the making up of a Shakespeare or a Milton.'3

With so high an opinion of the poet's mission, can we wonder that

Coleridge laid such stress on poetic diction, and that he should have given so much time and thought to the wider issues which language involves? The investigation of his views on language has led us, where the study of

any aspect of Coleridge's thought is bound to lead, to metaphysics. To

Coleridge, especially in the later years, philology is no mere accumulation of learning-he had left that phase behind in G6ttingen-it is, on the

contrary, 'in the noblest sense of the term, the most human, practical and fructifying form, and the most popular Disguise of Logic and

Psychology without which what is man?'4 L. A. WILLOUGHBY.

LONDON.

Memorials of Coleorton, ed. by W. Knight (Edinburgh, 1887), II, p. 9. 2 Griggs, u, p. 190. 3 E. H. C., I, p. 352. Cf., too, Griggs, I, p. 180: 'I look on Sir Isaac Newton as a very

puny agent compared with Milton.' 4 Griggs, II, p. 280.



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Coleridge as a Philologist