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life, by the sacrifice of all principle and all opinions; to lessen that contempt which prevents a young man from improving his own understanding, by making a proper and prudent use of the understandings of his fellow creatures.

There is another unchristian fault which must be guarded against in the profession of the law, and that is, misanthropy

an exaggerated opinion of the faults and follies of mankind. It is naturally the worst part of mankind who are seen in courts of justice, and with whom the professors of the law are most conversant. The perpetual recurrence of crime and guilt insensibly connects itself with the recollections of the human race: mankind are always painted in the attitude of suffering and inflicting. It seems as if men were bound together by the relations of fraud and crime; but laws are not made for the quiet, the good, and the just: you see and know little of them in your profession, and, therefore, you forget them: you see the oppressor, and you let loose your eloquence against him; but you do not see the man of silent charity, who is always seeking out objects of compassion: the faithful guardian does not come into a court of justice, nor the good wife, nor the just servant, nor the dutiful son; you punish the robbers who ill treated the wayfaring man, but you know nothing of the good Samaritan who bound up his wounds. The lawyer who tempted his Master had heard, perhaps, of the sins of the woman at the feast, without knowing that she had poured her store of precious ointment on the feet of Jesus. - Assize Sermon- The Lawyer that tempted Christ.

LII.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

1772-1834.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born at the Vicarage of Ottery St. Mary's, Devonshire, on the 21st of October, 1772. From the age of nine he was educated at Christ's Hospital, where he already gave signs of his many-sided genius, as well as of that constitutional weakness which almost overpowered it. In 1791 he entered Jesus College, Cambridge; but he had anticipated life, and his mind was too much occupied with poetry, and with that new world of speculative politics opened up to mankind by the French Revolution, to allow him to attend to the regular studies of the University, which he left in 1794 without taking a degree.

The next few years he spent mainly at Bristol, in various ineffectual attempts to obtain an income as an author, a political lecturer, a Unitarian preacher, or the editor of a newspaper. He formed a close friendship with Southey and Wordsworth, and was excited by intercourse with the latter to write his best poetry. But the interest of ethical and political speculation was beginning to overpower in him the poetical impulse, and this tendency was very much increased by his visit to Germany in 1798. He found the German Universities in the fresh enthusiasm of speculative thought which Kant had awakened, and partook in it; and, though he never ceased to be original and independent, henceforward it became more or less consciously

the work of his life to absorb German thought and reproduce it in English forms. And it was a task not unworthy of him, if he had been able to fulfil it. But he had been led to soothe rheumatic pains by the use of opium, and this habit so utterly sapped all his vital energies, that for the next fifteen years he produced no work worthy of his genius, with the exception of the essays contained in the Friend. From 1816 till his death, on July 25th, 1834, he resided with a physician at Highgate, and under the restraint to which he there submitted, he partially recovered, and wrote most of his works, critical, theological, and philosophical. Aids to Reflection appeared in 1825, and the Constitution of Church and State in 1830. Moreover, his great reputation made his residence a kind of centre of literary pilgrimage, and by his wonderful conversation he probably exercised a wider influence than by his books, which, while full of striking reflexions, are rather collections of notes and essays than complete treatises on any subject. After his death several volumes of his Literary Remains and Table Talk were published, gathering up the fragments which remained of his intellectual life.

His writings must be viewed as the broken remains of a genius which, for want of self-command, of health, of physical and moral energy, never produced a perfect result in any one direction, though giving promise of the highest kind in many. His thought is suggestive, stimulating rather than satisfying, and the greatest result of his life was the intellectual activity he awakened in England. He prepared the way for German literature and philosophy, and broke down the wall that kept England so long shut up from the influence of European culture. Even the imperfection of his works might be useful to this end. His persevering attempts to justify everything English on principles of pure reason, opened ears to reason that otherwise would have been shut. Above all, he shows always, and always inspires, that unmistakeable love of light which makes even the mistakes of genius full of interest and instruction.

1. Of the Importance of Method.

WHAT is that which first strikes us, and strikes us at once, in a man of education, and which, among educated men, so instantly distinguishes the man of superior mind, that (as was observed with eminent propriety of the late Edmund Burke) 'we cannot stand under the same arch-way during a shower of rain, without finding him out'? Not the weight or novelty of his remarks; not any unusual interest of facts communicated by him; for we may suppose both the one and the other precluded by the shortness of our intercourse, and the triviality of the subjects. The difference will be impressed and felt, though the conversation should be confined to the state of the weather or the pavement. Still less will it arise from any peculiarity in his words and phrases. For if he be, as we now assume, a well-educated man as well as a man of superior powers, he will not fail to follow the golden rule of Julius Caesar, insolens verbum, tanquam scopulum, evitare. Unless where new things necessitate new terms, he will avoid an unusual word as a rock. It must have been among the earliest lessons of his youth, that the breach of this precept, at all times hazardous, becomes ridiculous in the topics of ordinary conversation. There remains but one other point of distinction possible; and this must be, and in fact is, the true cause of the impression made on us. It is the unpremeditated and evidently habitual arrangement of his words, grounded on the habit of foreseeing, in each integral part, or (more plainly) in every sentence, the whole that he then intends to communicate. However irregular and desultory his talk, there is method in the fragments.

Listen, on the other hand, to an ignorant man, though perhaps shrewd and able in his particular calling, whether

he be describing or relating. We immediately perceive, that his memory alone is called into action; and that the objects and events recur in the narration in the same order, and with the same accompaniments, however accidental or impertinent, in which they had first occurred to the narrator. The necessity of taking breath, the efforts of recollection, and the abrupt rectification of its failures, produce all his pauses; and with exception of the and then,' the 'and there,' and the still less significant and so,' they constitute likewise all his connections.

Our discussion, however, is confined to method as employed in the formation of the understanding, and in the constructions of science and literature. It would indeed be superfluous to attempt a proof of its importance in the business and economy of active or domestic life. From the cotter's hearth or the workshop of the artizan to the palace or the arsenal, the first merit, that which admits neither substitute nor equivalent, is, that every thing be in its place. Where this charm is wanting, every other merit either loses its name, or becomes an additional ground of accusation and regret. Of one, by whom it is eminently possessed, we say proverbially, he is like clock-work. The resemblance extends beyond the point of regularity, and yet falls short of the truth. Both do, indeed, at once divide and announce the silent and otherwise indistinguishable lapse of time. But the man of methodical industry and honourable pursuits does more; he realizes its ideal divisions, and gives a character and individuality to its moments. If the idle are described as killing time, he may be justly said to call it into life and moral being, while he makes it the distinct object not only of the consciousness, but of the conscience. He organizes the hours, and gives them a soul; and that, the very essence of which is to fleet away, and evermore to have been, he

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