ABSTRACT

…But what shall we say of Mr. Coleridge, who is the author not only of a successful but a meritorious tragedy? We may say of him what he has said of Mr. Maturin, that he is of the transcendental German school. He is a florid poet, and an ingenious metaphysician, who mistakes scholastic speculations for the intricate windings of the passions, and assigns possible reasons instead of actual motives for the excesses of his characters. He gives us studied special-pleadings for the involuntary bursts of feeling, and the needless strain of tinkling sentiments, for the point-blank language of nature. His Remorse is a spurious tragedy, Take the following passage, and then ask, whether the charge of sophistry and paradox, and dangerous morality, to startle the audience, in lieu of more legitimate methods of exciting their sympathy, which he brings against the author of Bertram, may not be retorted on his own head. Ordonio is made to defend the project of murdering his brother by such arguments as the following: What? if one reptile sting another reptile? Where is the crime? The goodly face of nature Hath one disfeaturing stain the less upon it. Are we not all predestined Transiency, And cold Dishonor? Grant it, that this hand Had given a morsel to the hungry worms Somewhat too early—where’s the crime of this? That this must needs bring on the idiotcy Of moist-eyed Penitence—’tis like a dream! Say, I had lay’d a body in the sun! Well! in a month there swarm forth from the corse A thousand, nay, ten thousand sentient beings In place of that one man.—Say, I had killed him! Yet who shall tell me that each one and all 453Of these ten thousand lives is not as happy, As that one life, which being push’d aside Made room for these unnumber’d!