THE story of the so-called Coleridge plagiarism is an
old one now, but it is one which roused much feeling at the time, and
likewise one on which there is considerable division of opinion even in the
present day. Into this controversy Ferrier plunged by writing a formidable
indictment of Coleridge's position in Black- wood's Magazine for March of
1840. When Ferrier took up the
cudgels the matter stood thus. In the earlier quarter of the century German
Philosophy was coming, or rather had already come, more or less into vogue
in England; and as the German language was not largely read, and yet people
were vaguely interested, though in what they hardly knew, they welcomed an
appreciative interpreter of that philosophy, and an original writer on
similar lines, in one whose reputation was esteemed so highly as that of
Coleridge. Coleridge in this matter, indeed, occupied a position which was
unique; for the treasures of German poetry and prose had not as yet been
fully opened up, and he was held to possess the means of doing this in a
quite exceptional degree. The works of Schiller, Goethe, and the other poets
came to the world—and to Coleridge with the rest—as a sort of
revelation. But the poet in his own mind was nothing if not a I)hilosopher -
a kind of seer amongst men, speculating, somewhat vaguely it might be, on
matters of transcendental import—and in Schelling he thought he had
discovered a kindred spirit; in his writings he believed he had found the
Idealism for which he had so long been seeking in Bohme, Fox, and the other
mystics a creed which, though pantheistic in its essence, yet fulfilled the
condition of being both orthodox and Trinitarian in its form. This, for many
reasons, was a creed presenting many attractions to the younger men of the
day, especially when set forth with a certain literary flavour. We have
Carlyle's immortal picture of how it influenced John Sterling and his
friends. Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, in
which the principal so-called Schelling plagiarisms are contained, was
published in 1817, but it was not for a considerable time after that that
the plagiarisms were discovered, or at least taken notice of. The first
serious indictment came from no less an authority than De Quincey, whose
interest in philosophical matters was as great as Cole- ridge's, and who
published his views in an appreciative but gossipy article in Tail's
Magazine of September 1834. To commence with, he took up the question of the
'Hymn to Chamouni'; but since, in this matter, Coleridge afterwards admitted
his indebtedness to a German poetess, Frederica Brun, it does not seem an
important one. Nor, indeed, does De Quincey pretend to take exception to
certain expressions in Coleridge's 'France' which are evidently borrowed
from Milton, or to regard them as indicating more than a peculiar omission
of quotation marks. But the really serious matter, one for which De Quincey
cannot by any means account, is that in the Biographia Literaria there
occurs a dissertation on the doctrine of Knowing and Being which is an exact
translation from an essay written by Schelling. De Quincey cannot indeed
explain away the mystery, but he makes the best of it, pleading excuses such
as we often hear adduced in cases of 'kleptomania' when they occur amongst
the well-to-do, or so-called higher classes—e.g., the evident fact that
there was no necessity so to steal, no motive for stealing, even though the
theft had evidently been committed. Still, though the defence may be
ingenious, and though we may go so far as to acknowledge that Coleridge had
sufficient originality of mind to weave out theories of his own without
borrowing from others, it must be confessed that under the aggravated
circumstances the argument falls somewhat flat; and this was the impression
made on many minds even at the time. The ball once set rolling, the dispute
went on, and the next important incident was an article by Julius Hare in
the British Magazine of January 1835. This is a hot defence of the so-called
'Christian' philosopher, who is said to be influencing the best and most
promising young men of the day, as against the assault of the 'English
Opium-Eater' -'that ill-boding alias of evil record.' As to De Quincey's
somewhat unkind but entertaining stories, there is some reason in Hare's
objections, seeing that they were told of one to whom the writer owned
himself indebted. But when Hare tackles the plagiarisms themselves, and
endeavours to defend them, his task is harder. Coleridge had indeed stated
that his ideas were thought out and matured before he had seen a page of
Schelling; but at the same time, in an earlier portion of his work, he made
a somewhat ambiguous reference to his indebtedness to the German
philosopher, and deprecated his being accused of intentioned plagiarism from
his writings. Of course it may be said that a thief does not draw attention
to the goods from which he has stolen, but yet even Hare acknowledges that
it is hard to understand how half a dozen pages (we now know that it really
exceeded thirty) should have been bodily transferred from one work to
another, and suggests that the most probable solution is that Coleridge had
a practice of keeping notebooks for his thoughts, mingled with extracts from
what he had been reading at the time, and that he thus became confused
between the two.
At this point Ferrier steps
in and takes the whole matter under review—a matter which he looked upon as
serious (perhaps more serious than we should now consider it) from a
national as well as an individual point of view. He held that the reputation
of his country was at stake, as well as that of a single philosophic
thinker, and that neither De Quince)' nor Hare had gone into the matter with
sufficient care or knowledge, or ascertained how large it really was. It was
undoubtedly the case that Coleridge's reputation in philosophic matters—and
in these days that reputation was not small—was derived from what he had
purloined from the writings of a German youth, and whatever the poet's claim
on our regard on other scores may be, it was certainly due to Schelling that
the debt should be acknowledged. As far as the Biographia Literaria is
concerned, the facts are plain. Coleridge makes certain general
acknowledgments of indebtedness to Schelling to begin with. He acknowledges
that there may be found in his works an identity of thought or phrase with
Schelling's, and allows him to be the founder of the philosophy of nature;
but he claims at the same time the honour of making that philosophy
intelligible to his fellow- countrymen, and even of thinking it out
beforehand. Having said so much, there follow pages together—sometimes as
many as six or eight on end—which are virtually copied verbatim from
Schelling, though with occasional interpolations of the so-called author
here and there. Ferrier has examined the whole matter most minutely, and
made a long list of the more flagrant cases of copying: thirty-one pages, he
points out, are faithfully transcribed, partially or wholly, from
Schelling's works alone, without allowing for what the author admits to be
translated in part from a 'contemporary writer of the Continent.' And
Schelling was not the only sufferer, nor was it only in the region of
metaphysics that the thefts were made. The substratum of a whole chapter of
the Biographia Li/era na is, Ferrier discovered, taken from another author
named Maasz, and Coleridge's lecture 'On Poesy or Art' is closely copied and
largely translated from Schelling's ' Discourse upon the Relations in which
the Plastic Arts stand to Nature.' This was a blow indeed to those who had
boasted of the profundity of Coleridge's views on art; but his poetry surely
remained intact. But no, 'Verses exemplifying the Homeric Metre' are found
to be-unacknowledged—a translation from Schiller; and yet worse, because
less likely to be discovered, the lines written 'To a Cataract' have the
same metre, language, and thought as certain verses by Count von Stolberg,
which were shown to Ferrier by a friend.
The whole matter is a very strange one and not easy
to explain. Of course the references to Schelling's labours in similar lines
are there, and may in a sense disarm our criticism. But then, unfortunately,
there also are the statements that the ideas had been matured in Coleridge's
mind before he had seen a single line of Sehelling's work, and he clearly
gives us to understand that he had toiled out the system for himself, and
that it was the 'offspring of his own spirit.' It is this overmuch
protesting that makes us, like Ferrier, disposed to take the darkest view of
the affair: anything that can be said in Coleridge's defence is found in the
manner in which it was taken by the one who had most right to feel
aggrieved. In the life of Jowett,I recently published, there is an
interesting account of Schelling's views on Coleridge, taken from a
conversation, notes of which were made by the late Sir Alexander Grant,
Ferrier's son-in-law, when still an undergraduate. Jowett, while at Berlin,
had, it appears, seen Schelling, and talked to him of the plagiarisms. He
took the matter, Jowett states, good- naturedly, thought Coleridge to have
been attacked unfairly, and even went so far as to assert that he had
expressed many things better than he could have done himself— certainly a
very generous acknowledgment. Probably the most charitable construction we
can put on Coleridge's act is that which Jowett himself advances in saying
that the poet is not to be looked upon or judged as an ordinary man would
be, seeing that often enough he hardly could be said to have been
responsible for his actions; while his egotism, which was extreme, may have
likewise led him—it may be almost unconsciously—into acts of doubtful
honesty. But evidently, in spite of Ferrier's work, Jowett, and possibly
even Schelling himself, had no idea of the extent to which the plagiarisms
extended. There would, of course, have been comparatively little harm in
Coleridge's action had he been content to borrow materials which he was
about to work up in his own way, or to do what his biographer Gillman says
is done by the 'bee which flies from flower to flower in quest of food,' but
which 'digests and elaborates' that food by its native power. Unfortunately,
the more we read Coleridge's philosophic writings, the more we feel
constrained to agree with Ferrier that the matter is not digested as Gillman
suggests, but taken possession of in its ready-made condition. The parts
which he adds do not assist in throwing light on what precedes, but are
evidently padding of a somewhat commonplace and superficial kind. We can
only say, like Jowett, that the manner of his life may have injured
Coleridge's moral sense, and that his desire to pose as a philosopher who
should yet be a so-called 'Christian may have led him to encroach upon the
spheres of others, instead of keeping to those in which he could hold his
own unchallenged.
A labour of love with
Ferrier, on very different lines than the above, was to bring out in five
volumes the works of his father-in-law, John Wilson, ' Christopher North,'
including the Noctes Anthrosiance, and his Essays and Papers contributed to
Blackwood. This was published in 1856, but must, of course, have meant a
considerable amount of work to the editor for some time previously. One of
the most interesting parts of the work is Ferrier's preface to the famous 'Chaldee
Manuscript,' in vol. iv. The story of the 'Chaldee MS.' is now a matter of
history, fully recorded in the recently published records of the famous
house of Blackwood. In 1817 the Whigs ruled in matters literary, mainly
through the instrumentality of the Edinburgh Review, then in its heyday of
fame. A reaction, however, set in, and the change was inaugurated by the
publication of the so-called 'Chaldee MS.,' a wild extravaganza, orjeu
d'esprit, hitting off the foibles of Whiggism, under the guise of an
allegory describing the origin and rise of Biackwood's Magazine, the rival
which had risen up in opposition to the Review, and the discomfiture of
another journal carried on under the auspices of Constable. It was in the
seventh number of Blackwood that the satire appeared—that is, the first
number of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine as distinguished from the Edinburgh
Monthly Magazine, published from Blackwood's office to begin with, but on
comparatively mild and inoffensive lines. One may imagine the effect of this
Tory outburst on the society of Edinburgh. All the literati of the town were
involved: Sir Walter Scott himself, Mackenzie, Sir David Brewster, Sir
William Hamilton, Professor Jamieson, Tytler, Playfair, and many others,
some of whom emerged but seldom from the retirement of private life.
Nowadays it would be difficult, if not impossible, to identify the different
characters, were it not for the assistance of Professor Ferrier's marginal
notes; but in those days they were no doubt recognisable enough. Of course
the magazine went like wildfire; but the ludicrous description in
semi-biblical language of individuals with absurd allegorical appendages,
constituted, as Ferrier acknowledges, an offence against propriety which
could not be defended, even though no real malevolence might be signified.
Whether Ferrier was justified in republishing the Nodes, in so far as they
could be identified with Wilson, has been disputed; but, as the publisher,
Major Blackwood, points out, the time was past for anyone to be hurt by the
personalities which they contained, and the only harm the republication
could inflict was upon the lodes themselves. The conception of the 'Chaldee
Manuscript,' he tells us, was in the first part due to Hogg; and Wilson and
Lockhart were held responsible for the last. There is a tradition, too,
though Ferrier does not mention it, that Hamilton was one of the party in
Mr. Wilson's house (53 Queen Street) where the skit was said to have been
concocted, and that he even contributed to it a verse. This may have been
the case, as Wilson and Lockhart were his intimate friends; but it seems
strange to think of so thoroughgoing a Whig being found mixed up in such a
plot, and with such companions.
Though it is
easy to understand that Ferrier felt the editing of his father-in-Jaw and
uncle's work was a duty which it was incumbent upon him to perform, one
cannot help surmising that it may have been a less congenial task to him
than many others. There was little in common between the two men, both
distinguished in their way, and Wilson's humour and poetic fancy, however
bright and vivid, was not of the sort that would appeal most to Ferrier. A
few years before his death Ferrier gave up the project he had in view of
writing Wilson's life, partly in despair of setting forth his talents as he
felt they should be set forth, and partly from the lack of material to work
from. He says, in a letter written at the time, 'It would do no good to talk
in general terms of his wonderful powers, of his genius being greater (as in
some sense it was) than that of any of his contemporaries—greater, too, than
any of his publications show. The public would require other evidences of
this beyond one's mere word—something might have been done had some of us
Boswellized him judiciously, but this having been omitted, I do not see how
it is possible to do him justice.' The book was eventually undertaken, and
successfully accomplished, by Wilson's daughter, Mrs. Gordon.
We have spoken of Ferrier's interest in German
literature; so early as 1839 he published a translation of Pietro d'Abano by
Ludwig Tieck, one of the inner circle of the so-called Romantic School to
which the Schlegels and Novalis also belonged—the school which opposed
itself to the eighteenth-century enlightenment, making its cry the return to
nature, and demanding with Fichte that a work of art should be a 'free
product of the inner consciousness.' Another specimen of Ferrier's
translating powers is given in a rendering from Deinhardstein's Bud dci-
Dana, a love story in which Salvator Rosa figures. This appeared in
Black-wood of September 1841, and an extract from it is published in the
Remains. But one of the earliest and most
remarkable of Ferrier's literary criticisms in Blackwood's Magazine was an
anonymous article on the various translations of Goethe's Faust published in
1840. We have seen that Ferrier had made a special study of the writings of
Schiller and Goethe, and that his work had been much appreciated both by
Lytton and De Quincey. In this article the writer takes seven different
renderings of the drama, carefully analyses them, points out their
deficiencies, and even adventures on the difficult task, for a critic, of
himself translating one or two pages. Now that German is so widely read in
England, we are all too well aware of the insufficiency of any translation
of Faust to regard even the best in any other light than as a makeshift. But
then things were different, and it was possible that wrong impressions of
the original might be conveyed by inadequate translations. Ferrier's point
was that Goethe, while writing in rhyme and in exquisitely poetical
language, managed at the same time to find words such as might really be
used by ordinary mortals; but the translators, in endeavouring rightly
enough to keep to the rhyming form, entirely fail in their endeavour after
the same end. He considers that though in prose we may deviate from the
ordinary proprieties of language, we may not do so in rhyming poetry; for
though the poet has to describe the thought and passion of real men in the
language of real life, his dialect must at the same time be taken out of the
category of ordinary discourse because of the use of rhyme; and he is
therefore called upon as far as possible to remove this bar, and reconcile
us to the peculiarity of his style by the simplicity of his language;
otherwise all illusion will be at an end. Rhymes brought together by force
can succeed in giving us no pleasure; the writer should possess the power of
mastering his material and compelling it to serve his ends.
Ferrier's speculative instincts naturally led him to
discuss the often-discussed motive of the play. Is it so, as Coleridge says,
that the love of knowledge for itself could not bring about the evil
consequences depicted in the character of Faust, but only the love of
knowledge for some base purpose? Ferrier replies, No, the love of knowledge
as an end in itself would people the world with Fausts. 'Such a love of
knowledge exercises itself in speculation merely, and not in action; and if
the experiences of purely speculative men were gathered, we think that most
of them would be found to confess, bitterly confess, that indulgence in an
abstract reflective thinking (whatever effect it may have ultimately upon
their nobler genius, supposing them to have one) in the meantime absolutely
kills, or appears to kill, all the minor faculties of the soul—all the
lesser genial powers, upon the exercise of which the greater part of human
happiness depends. They would own, not without remorse, that pure
speculation—that is, knowledge pursued for itself alone—has often been
tasted by them to be, as Coleridge elsewhere says, 'the bitterest and
rottenest part of the core of the fruit of the forbidden tree.' This seems a
strange confession for a thinker reputed so abstract as Ferrier, but of
course the truth of what he says is evident. Knowledge regarded as an end in
itself might have brought Faust into his troubles, it is true, and he might
likewise have found himself ready to rush into what he conceives to be the
opposite extreme; but a greater philosopher than Ferrier has said that
though 'knowledge brought about the Fall, it also contains the principle of
Redemption,' and we take this to signify that we must look at knowledge as a
necessary element in the culture and education of an individual or a people,
which, though it carries trouble in its wake, does not leave us in our
distress, but brings along with it the principle of healing, or is the
'healer of itself.'
Soon after the above,
Ferrier contributes to the same journal an article entitled 'The Tittle-Tattle
of a Philosopher,' or an account of the 'Journey through Life' of Professor
Krug of Leipzig. Krug appears to have been a sort of Admirable Crichton
amongst philosophers, to whom no subject came amiss, and who was ready to
take his part in every sort of philosophical discussion. By Hegel and the
idealist school he is somewhat contemptuously referred to as one of that
class of writers of whom it is said 'Ps se soul bathes it's Jiancs pour etre
de rands izommes.' Anyhow, his recollections are at least amusing, if not
philosophically edifying.
A review of the
poems of Coventry Patmore a few years later is a very different production.
It carries us back to the old days of Blackwood, when calm judgment was not
so much an object as strength of expression, withering criticism, and biting
sarcasm. Ferrier no doubt believed it would be well for literature to turn
back to the old days of the knout but few, we fancy, will agree with him,
even if they suffer for so differing by permitting certain trashy
publications to see the light. Too often, unfortunately, the knout, when it
is applied, arrives on shoulders that are innocent. Of course Ferrier
believed that the worst prognostications of a quarter of a century before
were now being realised by the application not being persevered in; but as
to this particular piece of criticism, whatever our opinion of Patmore's
poetic powers may be, surely the writer was unreasonably severe surely the
work does not deserve to be dealt with in such unmeasured terms of
opprobrium. It is refreshing to turn to an appreciative, if also somewhat
critical review of the poems of Elizabeth Barrett, published in the same
year, 1844, part of which has been republished in the Remains. In this
article Ferrier urges once more the point on which he continually
insists—the adoption of a direct simplicity of style one which goes straight
to the point, or, as he puts it, which is felt to 'get through business.'
Excepting certain criticism on the score of style and phraseology, however,
Ferrier is all praise of the high degree of poetic merit which the writings
revealed - merit which he must have been amongst the first to discover and
make known. The last of Ferrier's work for the
magazine in which he had so often written, was a series of articles on the
New Readings from Shakespeare, published in 1853. These articles were in the
main a criticism of Mr. Payne Collier's 'Notes and Emendations' to the Text
of Shakespeare's 'Plays' from early MS. corrections which he had discovered
in a copy of the folio 1632. Ferrier, who was a thorough Shakespeare
student, and whose appreciation of Shakespeare is often spoken of by those
who knew him, had no faith in the authenticity of the new readings, though
he thinks they have a certain interest as matter of curiosity. He goes
through the plays and the alterations made in them seriatim, and comes to
the conclusion that in most cases they have little value. In fact, he
proceeds so far as to say that they have opened his eyes to 'a depth of
purity and correctness in the received text of Shakespeare' of which he had
no suspicion—a satisfactory conclusion to the ordinary reader.
Besides his work for Blackwood, Ferrier was in the
habit of contributing articles to the Imperial Dictionary of Universal
Biography on the various philosophers. Two of these, the biographies of
Schelling and Hegel, are printed in the Remains, but besides these he wrote
on Adam Smith, Swift, Schiller, etc., and occasionally utilised the articles
in his lectures.
On yet another line Ferrier
wrote a pamphlet in 1848, entitled Observations on Church and State,
suggested by the Duke of Argyll's essay on the Ecclesiastical History of
Scotland. This pamphlet aims at proving that the Assembly of the Church is
really, as the Duke argues, not merely an ecclesiastical, but a national
council, or, as Ferrier terms it, the 'second and junior of the Scottish
Houses of Parliament.' Being therefore amenable to no other earthly power,
it was justified in opposing the decrees of the Court of Session; though,
however, the Free Church ministers were right in defending their
constitutional privileges, Ferrier holds that they were wrong in doing so as
the 'Church' in opposition to the 'State,' and that this brought upon them
their discomfiture. They should not, in his view, have acknowledged that the
Church's property could be forfeit to the State, and consequently should not
have voluntarily resigned their livings. The pamphlet shows considerable
interest in the controversy raging so vehemently at the time.
In St. Andrews there was no social meeting at which
Ferrier was not a welcome guest. When popular lectures, then coming into
vogue, were instituted in the town, Ferrier was called upon to deliver one
of the series, the subject chosen being 'Our Contemporary Poetical
Literature.' He says in a letter: 'I am in perfect agony in quest of
something to say about "Our Contemporary Poets" in the Town Hall here on
Friday. I must pump up something, being committed like an ass to that
subject, but devil a thing will come. I wish Aytoun would come over and
plead their cause.' However, in spite of fears, the lecture appears to have
been a success: it was an eloquent appeal on behalf of poetry as an
invaluable educational factor and agent in carrying forward the work of
human civilisation, and an appreciation of the work of Tennyson, Macaulay,
Aytoun, and Lytton. In the same year, but a few months later, Ferrier was
asked to deliver the opening address of the Edinburgh Philosophical
Institution. This Institution has for long been the means of bringing
celebrities from all parts of the country to lecture before an Edinburgh
audience, and its origin and conception was largely due to Professor Wilson,
Ferrier's father-in-law, who was in the habit of opening the session with an
introductory address. His health no longer permitting this to be done, the
directors requested Ferrier to take his place. The address was on purely
general topics, dealing mainly with the objects of the Institution, then
somewhat of a novelty. He concluded: 'Labour is the lot of man. No pleasure
can surpass the satisfaction which a man feels in the efficient discharge of
the active duties of his calling. But it is equally true that every
professional occupation, from the highest to the lowest, requires to be
counterpoised and alleviated by pursuits of a more liberal order than
itself. Without these the best faculties of our souls must sink down into an
ignoble torpor, and human intercourse be shorn of its highest enjoyments,
and its brightest blessings.' This is characteristic of Ferrier's view of
life. One-sidedness was his particular abhorrence, and if he could in any
measure impress its evil upon those whose daily business was apt to engross
their attention, to the detriment of the higher spheres of thinking, he was
glad at least to make the attempt.
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