第23章 COLERIDGE(2)

Sterling,who assiduously attended him,with profound reverence,and was often with him by himself,for a good many months,gives a record of their first colloquy.[8]Their colloquies were numerous,and he had taken note of many;but they are all gone to the fire,except this first,which Mr.Hare has printed,--unluckily without date.It contains a number of ingenious,true and half-true observations,and is of course a faithful epitome of the things said;but it gives small idea of Coleridge's way of talking;--this one feature is perhaps the most recognizable,"Our interview lasted for three hours,during which he talked two hours and three quarters."Nothing could be more copious than his talk;and furthermore it was always,virtually or literally,of the nature of a monologue;suffering no interruption,however reverent;hastily putting aside all foreign additions,annotations,or most ingenuous desires for elucidation,as well-meant superfluities which would never do.Besides,it was talk not flowing any-whither like a river,but spreading every-whither in inextricable currents and regurgitations like a lake or sea;terribly deficient in definite goal or aim,nay often in logical intelligibility;_what_you were to believe or do,on any earthly or heavenly thing,obstinately refusing to appear from it.So that,most times,you felt logically lost;swamped near to drowning in this tide of ingenious vocables,spreading out boundless as if to submerge the world.

To sit as a passive bucket and be pumped into,whether you consent or not,can in the long-run be exhilarating to no creature;how eloquent soever the flood of utterance that is descending.But if it be withal a confused unintelligible flood of utterance,threatening to submerge all known landmarks of thought,and drown the world and you!--I have heard Coleridge talk,with eager musical energy,two stricken hours,his face radiant and moist,and communicate no meaning whatsoever to any individual of his hearers,--certain of whom,I for one,still kept eagerly listening in hope;the most had long before given up,and formed (if the room were large enough)secondary humming groups of their own.He began anywhere:you put some question to him,made some suggestive observation:instead of answering this,or decidedly setting out towards answer of it,he would accumulate formidable apparatus,logical swim-bladders,transcendental life-preservers and other precautionary and vehiculatory gear,for setting out;perhaps did at last get under way,--but was swiftly solicited,turned aside by the glance of some radiant new game on this hand or that,into new courses;and ever into new;and before long into all the Universe,where it was uncertain what game you would catch,or whether any.

His talk,alas,was distinguished,like himself,by irresolution:it disliked to he troubled with conditions,abstinences,definite fulfilments;--loved to wander at its own sweet will,and make its auditor and his claims and humble wishes a mere passive bucket for itself!He had knowledge about many things and topics,much curious reading;but generally all topics led him,after a pass or two,into the high seas of theosophic philosophy,the hazy infinitude of Kantean transcendentalism,with its "sum-m-mjects "and "om-m-mjects."Sad enough;for with such indolent impatience of the claims and ignorances of others,he had not the least talent for explaining this or anything unknown to them;and you swam and fluttered in the mistiest wide unintelligible deluge of things,for most part in a rather profitless uncomfortable manner.

Glorious islets,too,I have seen rise out of the haze;but they were few,and soon swallowed in the general element again.Balmy sunny islets,islets of the blest and the intelligible:--on which occasions those secondary humming groups would all cease humming,and hang breathless upon the eloquent words;till once your islet got wrapt in the mist again,and they could recommence humming.Eloquent artistically expressive words you always had;piercing radiances of a most subtle insight came at intervals;tones of noble pious sympathy,recognizable as pious though strangely colored,were never wanting long:but in general you could not call this aimless,cloud-capt,cloud-based,lawlessly meandering human discourse of reason by the name of "excellent talk,"but only of "surprising;"and were reminded bitterly of Hazlitt's account of it:"Excellent talker,very,--if you let him start from no premises and come to no conclusion."Coleridge was not without what talkers call wit,and there were touches of prickly sarcasm in him,contemptuous enough of the world and its idols and popular dignitaries;he had traits even of poetic humor:but in general he seemed deficient in laughter;or indeed in sympathy for concrete human things either on the sunny or on the stormy side.One right peal of concrete laughter at some convicted flesh-and-blood absurdity,one burst of noble indignation at some injustice or depravity,rubbing elbows with us on this solid Earth,how strange would it have been in that Kantean haze-world,and how infinitely cheering amid its vacant air-castles and dim-melting ghosts and shadows!None such ever came.His life had been an abstract thinking and dreaming,idealistic,passed amid the ghosts of defunct bodies and of unborn ones.The moaning singsong of that theosophico-metaphysical monotony left on you,at last,a very dreary feeling.