James Joyce: Notes - Literary Figures [S. T. Coleridge]


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Textual History Literary Figures Joyce’s People Sundry Remarks

Index

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Works of Coleridge
Biographia Literaria 1817) Literary Remains 1836) The Friend - VIII & XIII (1818)

A List of the Works of Samuel Taylor ColeridgeCompiled by David Hall Radcliffe - as infra.

The Friend (1812 Edn. - Essay VI
[equiv. essay XVI in 1863 Edn.]
attached.
See remarks on and quotations from Giordano Bruno in Literary Remains - as infra.

John Saeed writes in Semantics [2nd edn] (Blackwell/Wiley 2007) -in footnotes to his chapter on Cognitive Semantics:
  1. Given what we have already said about the cognitivist rejection of objectivist semantics, it is interesting to read the remarks of the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in a letter to James Gillman, written in 1827 (cited in Hawkes 1972: 54-5) [quotes]:

‘It is the fundamental mistake of grammarians 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.’ (Saeed, op. cit., p.398.)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1] - Joyce writes “The Bruno Philosophy”, his review of J. Lewis McIntyre’s Giordano Bruno in the Daily Express (30 Oct. 1903): ‘Is it not strange, [133] then, that Coleridge should have set him down a dualist, a later Heraclitus, and should have represented him as saying in effect: “Every power in nature or in spirit must evolve an opposite as the sole condition and means of its manifestation; and every opposition is, therefore, a tendency to reunion”?’ (See Critical Writings, pp.132-34; p.134.)

[Editors’ Footnote: ‘Joyce is quoting, with slight variations, a footnote to Essay XIII in Coleridge’s The Friend. Coleridge anticipated Joyce’s interest in both Bruno and Vico.’ (Ellmann and Mason, eds., Critical Writings [1959], Viking Press 1966, p.134, n.1.])

Cf. ‘Every power in nature and in spirit must evolve an opposite as the sole means and condition of its manifestation: and all opposition is a tendency to re-union.’ (Essay XIII, in The Friend, 1863 Edn., p.97, n.; see also The Friend, ed. Barbara E. Rooke, in Collected Works, London: Routledge & Paul 1969, Vol. I [of 2], p.94 [i.e., 1st of 2 vols devoted to The Friend, being Vol. 4 of the Collected Works, gen. ed. Kathleen Coburn, asst. ed. Bart Winer in Bollinger Ser., 75].)

[Note: Joyce’s near-exact copy substitutes “or” for “and”, reverses the order of the phrase “means and condition”, supplies a semi-colon for Coleridge’s colon, and adds “therefore” with attendant commas to the last phrase.]

-Viz., ‘Every power in nature and in spirit must evolve an opposite as the sole means and condition of its manifestation: and all opposition is a tendency to re-union. This is the universal law of polarity or essential dualism, first promulgated by Heraclitus, 2000 years afterwards republished, and made the foundation both of logic, of physics, and of metaphysics by Giordano Bruno. The principle may be thus expressed. The identity of thesis and antithesis is the substance of allbeing; their opposition the condition of all existence or being manifested; and every thing or phænomenon is the exponent of a synthesis as long as the opposite energies are retained in that synthesis. Thus water is neither oxygen nor hydrogen, nor yet is it a commixture of both; but the synthesis or indifference of the two; and as long as the copula endures, by which it became water, or rather which alone is water, it is not less a simple body than either of the imaginary elements, improperly called its ingredients or components. It is the object of he mechanical atomiatic philosophy to confound synthesis with synartesis, or rather a mere juxta-position of corpuscules separated by invisible interspaces I find it difficult to determine, whether this theory contradicts the reason or the senses most: for it is alike inconceivable and unimaginable.’ (The Friend [1863], I, 97; quoted [in part] in Elaine D. Hocks, Dialectic and the ‘“Two Forces of One Power”’: Reading Coleridge, Polanyi, and Bakhtin in a New Key’, at Missouri Western Univ. online; - available as .pdf online; accessed 03.01.2013 [?citing p.94?]).

Note: The sentence that Joyce quotes almost verbatim - as infra - appears in a footnote annotating a passage in the body-text which runs as follows: ‘It is this: that as far as human practice [96] can realize the sharp limits and exclusive proprieties of science, law and religion should be kept distinct, there is, in strictness, no proper opposition but between the two polar forces of one and the same power.’ (Ibid., London: Edward Moxon 1863, p.97.) [See longer extracts in RICORSO > Library > “International Critics” - as attached.]

Note that the pagination is the same asin the modern scholarly edition my Barbara E. Rooke. Note also that James Atherton erroneously points to The Friend, Essay VI [recte Essay XIII and “Omniana” in Literary Remains], as the source of Bruno in translation for James Joyce. (See Atherton, The Books at the Wake [… &c. ] (1974), p.37 - citing The Friend, 1809-10, No. VI, pp.81-82; as quoted under Bruno, supra.]

Cf. Joyce, “The Day of the Rabblement” [1901]: ‘Every power in nature or in spirit must evolve an opposite as the sole condition and means of its manifestation; and every opposite is, therefore, a tendency to reunion.’ [CW135].

Cf. Finnegans Wake: ‘[...] they isce et ille [were] equals of opposites, evolved by a onesame power of nature or of spirit, iste, as the sole condition and means of its himundher manifestation and polarised for reunion by the symphysis of their antipathies.’ [FW092.]

Note: In a letter to Miss Weaver of 27 Jan. 1925, Joyce wrote by way of explanation: ‘Bruno Nolano (of Nola) another great Southern Italian was quoted in my first pamphlet The Day of the Rabblement. His philosophy is a kind of dualism - every power in nature must evolve an opposite in order to realise itself and opposition brings reunion &c. &c.’ (Letters, Vol. I, ed. Stuart Gilbert [1957] 1966, p.226; Selected Letters, ed. Richard Ellmann, London: Faber 1977, pp.305-06.)

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge [2] - The Friend (1809-10; ... 1863). Orig. as sheets 1809-10; compiled as book 1812 - as infra; other eds. 1818, &c.; 3rd Edn, ed. H. N. Coleridge, London: Pickering 1837; a new revised edition [pref. signed by Derwent Coleridge, St. Mark’s College, Chelsea, October 1863] (London: Edward Moxon & Co. 1863) - as here; copy in Oxford UL available at Internet Archive - online].

Essays VIII & XIII [extracts from 1863 edition]. ‘Object and Plan of the Work’, pp.[xi]-xiii: The whole is divided into two sections: ‘the first comprising a discussion of the principles of political knowledge’, and ‘the second treating the grounds of morals and religion, and revealing the systematic discipline of the mind requisite for a true understanding of the same’, to which is ‘prefixed a general introduction’, and with ‘three several collections of essays, in some degree miscellaneous, and called Landing-Places - interposes in various places for amusement, retrospect, and preparation’. (pp.xii-xiii). Henry Nelson Coleridge writes of the ‘reconciliation of Platonic and Baconian principles of investigation’ in the Third Section. (Advertisement to the Third Edition; here p.[x].) [See further from the Advertisment under The Friend, 1837 [3rd Edn.] - as infra.]

Note: The sentence from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 13th essay in The Friend (1818) which Joyce quotes verbatim to illustrate Bruno’s theory of coinciding opposites in the course of his [Joyce’s] review of McIntyre’s Giordano Bruno, in Daily Express (Oct. 1903) is neither quoted nor otherwise referred to in Isabella Frith’s Life of Giordano Bruno nor in the work by McIntyre. This suggests that Joyce must have met with it either in Coleridge’s Essay XIII of The Friend where the sentence figures in a lengthy footnote or else in some intermediate source where it is quoted. Likewise he may have read Coleridge on Bruno in “Omniana” (Literary Remains, 1836) where Coleridge remarks on the intellectual heroism of Bruno and copies in full quotation an ode written by Bruno shortly before his execution in which he compares himself to Daedalus in terms which might have occasioned Joyce’s adoption of the name as a nom de plume and a literary pseudonym in the person of his autobiographical persona (or alter ego) in Stephen Hero, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses. (That Joyce’s quotation of Bruno’s sentence expressing hatred of the vulgar ‘rabblement’ was taken from Frith is well known.) [See Bruno’s ode - infra.]

Cf. Coleridge’s definition of BrunO’s contraries as follows—

Edition of 1837: The Friend: A Series of Essays to aid in the formation of fixed principles in politics, Morals, and Religion, with Literary Amusements Interspersed, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, / Third Edition: / with the Author’s last corrections and an Appendix, and with a Synoptical Table of the Contents of the Work / by Henry Nelson Coleridge, Esq. M.A. Vol. 1 [of 2] (London: Pickering 1837) [available at Internet Archive - online.]

*Every power in nature and in spirit must evolve an opposite as the sole means and condition of its manifestation: and all opposition is a tendency to re-union. This is the universal law of polarity or essential dualism, first promulgated by Heraclitus, 2000 years afterwards republished, and made the foundation both of logic, of physics, and of metaphysics by Giordano Bruno. The principle may be thus expressed. The identity of thesis and antithesis is the substance of all things; their opposition the condition of all existence or being manifested; and every thing or phænomenon is the exponent of a synthesis as long as the opposite energies are retained in that synthesis. Thus water is neither oxygen nor hydrogen, nor yet is it a commixture of both; but the synthesis or indifference of the two: and as long as the copula endures, by which it becomes water, or rather which alone is water, it is not less a simple body than either of the imaginary elements, improperly called its ingredients or components. It is the object of the mechanical atomistic philosophy to confound synthesis with synartesis, or rather with mere juxta-position of corpuscules separated by invisible interspaces. I find it difficult to determine, whether this theory contradicts the reason or the senses most: for it is alike inconceivable and unimaginable.’ (p.97, n.)

The Friend - digital copy: see the 1863 edition at Internet Archive - online; accessed 27.07.2012). Note that H. N. Coleridge gives the first edition of The Friend as 1818 in his introduction to the 1863 Edition, while an edition of 1812 is available on Internet - viz.,

1812 Edition
Half-title: The Friend; / A / Series of Essays / By S. T. Coleridge / “Accipe principium rursus, corpusque coactum / Desere: mutata melior procede figura.” - Claudian. (London: Printed for Gale and Curtis, Paternoster Row, / 1812). Verso: the first Twenty-eight Sheets of this Work were originally Published as the successive Numbers of a Weekly Paper; which was discontinued from the inconveniences and difficulties of the place, and the mode of Publication. [The 1812 edition is available at Internet Archive - online; see also an extract - as attached.]

Full-title: The Friend; / A Literary, Moral and Political / Weekly Paper, / excluding personal events and party politics and the events of the day. / conducted / By S. T. Coleridge, / of / Grasmere, Westmorland.

Note: No. 1 - dated Thursday, June 1, 1809; No. 2 - dated Thursday, June 8, 1809, &c. No. 13 - Thursday November 16 1809 - is here prefaced by Wordsworth’s “The Three Graves” as an epigraph, being taken from manuscript. (p.193.) The series spanned 28 successive issues between 1809 and 1810.

1837 [3rd Edn.]
Another edition: [Half-title:] The Friend; [Full-title:] The Friend: A Series of Essays / To aid the formation of fixed principles / in politics, morals, and religion, / with literary amusements interspersed: / by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. / Third Edition: / With the Author’s Last Corrections and a Appendix, / and with a synoptical table of the / contents of the work. / By Henry Nelson Coleridge, Esq. M.A. [Device: Anchor and Dolphin; motto: Aldi Discie Anglus] Vol. I. / London: William Pickering. 1837.

Advertisement to the third edition [1837]: ‘The present edition of The Friend comprises all the corrections, and most of the notes, found in the author’s handwriting in an interleaved copy of the work, bequeathed by him to his daughter-in-law. [...] with an appendix, containing several passages, parts of the scattered essays originally published in 1809, and omitted in the recast of the work in 1818, but which seem worthy of preservation. It is earnestly to be hoped thas thus been done may further the more general acceptance of a work which, with all its imperfections, is, perhaps, the most vigorous of Mr. Coleridge’s compositions; and which, if it had contained nothing but the essays, in the first volume, on the duty and conditions of the communication of truth, and those in the third, on the principles of scientific method, with the reconcilement [iv] of the Platonic and the Baconian processes of investigation, would still, as the Editor conceives, have constituted one of the most signal benefits conferred in this age on the cause of morals and sound philosophy.’ [End Advertisement; signed Lincoln’s Inns, / 11th September 1837] (pp.[iv]-v). [This edition [1837] is available at Google Books - online; accessed 03.01.2013; viz., a copy held in the English Faculty Library, Oxford University.]

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge [3]: Joyce may have met with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s tributes to Bruno both in Biographia Literaria (1817) and Literary Remains (1836). Coleridge admired Bruno enough to plan a further volume of the Biographia devoted to the life of this humanist ‘whom the idolaters of Rome burnt as an atheist in year [94]’. (See Biographia Literaria, ed. John Shawcross, OUP 1907, p.94.) [BS]

Stagyrite: Note that Samuel Taylor Coleridge uses the formula ‘the wise Stagyrite’ when discussing the ‘law of association’ in Biographia Literaria (ed. J. Shawcross, OUP 1907, Vol. I. p.71). For Joyce’s use of the similar phrase ‘all wisest Stagyrite’, see under Aristotle, supra].

Note: Wordsworth writes in an elegy: “And all the wisdom of the Stagirite. / Enriched and beautified his studious mind.” See Brewer’s Dictionary of Fact and Fable; cited at Factmonster - online].

[See Isabella Frith’s reference in her Giordano Bruno (1887) to Coleridge’s account of Bruno in the Table-talk and Omniana - presumably the 1884 title issued by Thomas Ashe in Bohn’s Library (G. Bell 1884). The essay “Magnanimity” from which she quotes was part of Omniana, first published in Robert Southey’s Omniana, or Horae Otiosiores (1812), and later incorporated in a section named “Omniana” in the Literary Remains of STC, edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge (1836).]

The wise Stagyrite [Coleridge, Biog. Literaria: ‘[...a]s to the fullest and most perfect enunciation of the associative principle, viz, to the writings of Aristotle’ and of these principally to the books De Anima, De Memoria, and that which is entitled in old translations Parva Naturalia. In as much as later writers have either deviated from, or added to his doctrines, they appear to me to have introduced either error or groundless supposition. / In the first place, it is to be observed, that Aristotle’s positions on this subject ar unmixed with fiction. The wise Stagyrite speaks of no successive particles propagating motion like billiard balls (as Hobbs [sic]); nor of nervous or animal spirits, where inteimate and irrational solids are thawed down, and distilled, or filtrated by ascension, into living and intelligent fuilds, that etch and re-ethc engravings on the brain (as the followers of Des Cartes, and the humoral pathologist in general); nor of an oscillating ether which was to effect the dame service for the nerves of the brain considered as solid fibres, as the animal spirits perform for them under the notion of hollow tubes, (as Hartley teaches) - nor finally, (with yet more recent dreamers,) of chemical compositions by elective affinity, or of an electric light at once the immediate object and the ultimate rogan of inward vision, which rises to the brain like an Aura Borealis, and there disporting in various shapes, (as the balance of plus and minus, or negative and positive, is destroyed or re-established,) images out both past and present [sic]. Artistotle delivers a just theory, without pretending to an hypothesis; or in other words, [65] a comprehensive survey of the different facts, and of their relations to each other, without supposition, i.e., a fact placed under a number of facts, as their common support and explanation; though in the majority of instances, these hypotheses or suppositions better deserve the name of [Greek] or suffictions. He uses, indeed, the word [Greek], to exprss what we call representations or ideas, but he carefully distingushes them from material motion, designating the latter always by annexing the words, [Greek] or [Greek]. On the contrary, in his treatise De Anima, he excludes place and motion from all the operations of thought, whether representations or volitions, as attributes uterly and absurdly heterogeneous.’ (Biographia Literaria; or, Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions. Two vols. in one; NY: Leavitt, Lord & Co.; Boston: Crocker & Brewster 1834, p.65; available online.)

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Table-talk and Omniana
[A list of editions follows here.]

Note that the “Omniana” of Coleridge were first published in Omniana; or, Horae Otiosiores, by Robert Southey (London 1812) and afterwards included - with his own editorial emendations and additions based on Coleridge’s manuscripts - in Henry Nelson Coleridge’s edition of The Literary Remains (Pickering 1836), published immediately in the wake of his Specimens of Table-talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: Murray 1835) - in which, quite naturally, they are not included. The Table Talk and Omniana were later published together by Thomas Ashe for Bohn’s Library (London: G. Bell 1884). Whereas Southey used asterisks to denote pieces by Coleridge, Ashe used asterisks to denote those pieces to which Coleridge reputedly added manuscript editions and which H. N. C. had already incorporated. The compilation in question has thus a complex publishing history in which the following editions are paramount:
1.]
  • Specimens of the Table-talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. by H. N. C[oleridge] (London: John Murray 1835); Do. [another edn.], 2 vols. in 1 (NY: Harper 1835); Do. [2nd. Edn.] (London: John Murray 1836); Do. (London: John Murray editions in 1851 [3rd edn.], 1852, 1858]; Do. (London: Routledge & Sons. [1874]); Do., with an introduction by H. Morley [Morley’s Universal Library, called 3rd Edn.] ([London]: Routledge [1884]);

Ded. to James Gillman, Esq., of Grove Hill, Highgate, and to Mrs. Gillman [...]. Preface: ‘It is nearly fifty years since I was, for the first time, enabled to become a frequent and attentive visitor in Mr. Coleridge’s domestic society. [...].
Contents

Character of Othello; Schiller’s Robbers; Shakespeare; Scotch Novels; Lord Byron; John Kemble; Mathews; Parliamentary Privilege; Permanency and Progression of Nations; Kant’s Races of Mankind; Materialism; Ghosts; Character of the Age for Logic; Plato and Xenophon; Greek Drama; Kotzebue; Burke; St. John’s Gospel; Christianity; Epistle to the Hebrews; The Logos; Reason and Understanding; Kean; Sir James Mackintosh; Sir H. Davy; Robert Smith; Canning; National Debt; Poor Laws; Conduct of the Whigs; Reform of the House of Commons; Church of Rome; Zendavesta; Pantheism and Idolatry; Difference between Stories of Dreams and Ghosts; Phantom Portrait; Witch of Endor; Socinianism; Plato and Xenophon; Religions of the Greeks; Egyptian Antiquities; Milton; Virgil; Granville Penn and the Deluge; Rainbow; English and Greek Dancing; Greek Acoustics; Lord Byron’s Versification and Don Juan; Parental Control in Marriage; Marriage of Cousins; Differences of Character; Blumenbach and Kant’s Races; Iapetic and Semitic; Hebrew; Solomon; Jewish History; Spinozistic and Hebrew Schemes; Roman Catholics; Energy of Man and other Animals; Shakspeare in minimis; Paul Sarpi; Bartram’s Travels; The Understanding; Parts of Speech; Grammar; Magnetism; Electricity; Galvanism; Spenser; Character of Othello; Hamlet; Polonius; Principles and Maxims; Love; Measure for Measure; Ben Jonson; Beaumont and Fletcher; Version of the Bible; Craniology; Spurzheim; Bull and Waterland; The Trinity; Scale of Animal Being; Popedom; Scanderbeg; Thomas à Becket; Pure Ages of Greek, Italian, and English; Luther; Baxter; Algernon Sidney’s Style; Ariosto and Tasso; Prose and Poetry; The Fathers; Rhenferd; Jacob Behmen; Non-perception of Colours; Restoration; Reformation; William III.; Berkeley; Spinosa; Genius; Envy; Love; Jeremy Taylor; Hooker; Ideas; Knowledge; Painting; Prophecies of the Old Testament; Messiah; Jews; The Trinity; Conversion of the Jews; Jews in Poland; Mosaic Miracles; Pantheism; Poetic Promise; Nominalists and Realists; British Schoolmen; Spinosa; Fall of Man; Madness; Brown and Darwin; Nitrous Oxide; Plants; Insects; Men; Dog; Ant and Bee; Black, Colonel; Holland and the Dutch; Religion Gentilizes; Women and Men; Biblical Commentators; Walkerite Creed; Horne Tooke; Diversions of Purley; Gender of the Sun in German; Horne Tooke; Jacobins; Persian and Arabic Poetry; Milesian Tales; Sir T. Monro; Sir S. Raffles; Canning; Shakspeare; Milton; Homer; Reason and Understanding; Words and Names of Things; The Trinity; Irving; Abraham; Isaac; Jacob; Origin of Acts; Love; Lord Eldon’s Doctrine as to Grammar Schools; Democracy; The Eucharist; St. John, xix. 11.; Divinity of Christ; Genuineness of Books of Moses; Mosaic Prophecies; Talent and Genius; Motives and Impulses; Constitutional and functional Life; Hysteria; Hydro-carbonic Gas; Bitters and Tonics; Specific Medicines; Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians; Oaths; Flogging; Eloquence of Abuse; The Americans; Book of Job; Translation of the Psalms; Ancient Mariner; Undine; Martin; Pilgrim’s Progress; Prayer; Church-singing; Hooker; Dreams; Jeremy Taylor; English Reformation; Catholicity; Gnosis; Tertullian; St. John; Principles of a Review; Party Spirit; Southey’s Life of Bunyan; Laud; Puritans and Cavaliers; Presbyterians, Independents, and Bishops; Study of the Bible; Rabelais; Swift; Bentley; Burnet; Giotto; Painting; Seneca; Plato; Aristotle; Duke of Wellington; Monied Interest; Canning; Bourrienne; Jews; The Papacy and the Reformation; Leo X.; Thelwall; Swift; Stella; Iniquitous Legislation; Spurzheim and Craniology; French Revolution, 1830; Captain B. Hall and the Americans; English Reformation; Democracy; Idea of a State; Church; Government; French Gendarmerie; Philosophy of young Men at the present Day; Thucydides and Tacitus; Poetry; Modern Metre; Logic; Varro; Socrates; Greek Philosophy; Plotinus; Tertullian; Scotch and English Lakes; Love and Friendship opposed; Marriage; Characterlessness of Women; Mental Anarchy; Ear and Taste for Music different; English Liturgy; Belgian Revolution; Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Bacon; The Reformation; House of Commons; Government; Earl Grey; Government; Popular Representation; Napier; Buonaparte; Southey; Patronage of the Fine Arts; Old Women; Pictures; Chillingworth; Superstition of Maltese, Sicilians, and Italians; Asgill; The French; The Good and the True; Romish Religion; England and Holland; Iron; Galvanism; Heat; National Colonial Character, and Naval Discipline; England; Holland and Belgium; Greatest Happiness Principle; Hobbism; The Two Modes of Political Action; Truths and Maxims; Drayton and Daniel; Mr. Coleridge’s System of Philosophy; Keenness and Subtlety; Duties and Needs of an Advocate; Abolition of the French Hereditary Peerage; Conduct of Ministers on the Reform Bill; Religion; Union with Ireland; Irish Church; A State; Persons and Things; History; Beauty; Genius; Church; State; Dissenters; Gracefulness of Children; Dogs; Ideal Tory and Whig; The Church; Ministers and the Reform Bill; Disfranchisement; Genius feminine; Pirates; Astrology; Alchemy; Reform Bill; Crisis; John, Chap. III. Ver. 4.; Dictation and Inspiration; Gnosis; New Testament Canon; Unitarianism - Moral Philosophy; Moral Law of Polarity; Epidemic Disease; Quarantine; Harmony; Intellectual Revolutions; Modern Style; Genius of the Spanish and Italians; Vico; Spinosa; Colours; Destruction of Jerusalem; Epic Poem; Vox Populi Vox Dei; Black; Asgill and Defoe; Horne Tooke; Fox and Pitt; Horner; Adiaphori; Citizens and Christians; Professor Park; English Constitution; Democracy; Milton and Sidney; De Vi Minimorum; Hahnemann; Luther; Sympathy of old Greek and Latin with English; Roman Mind; War; Charm for Cramp; Greek; Dual, neuter pleural [sic], and verb singular; Theta; Talented; Homer; Valcknaer; Principles and Facts; Schmidt; Puritans and Jacobins; Wordsworth; French Revolution; Infant Schools; Mr. Coleridge’s Philosophy; Sublimity; Solomon; Madness; C. Lamb; Faith and Belief; Dobrizhoffer; Scotch and English; Criterion of Genius; Dryden and Pope; Milton’s disregard of Painting; Baptismal Service; Jews’ Division of the Scripture; Sanskrit; Hesiod; Virgil; Genius Metaphysical; Don Quixote; Steinmetz; Keats; Christ’s Hospital; Bowyer; St. Paul’s Melita; English and German; Best State of Society; Great Minds Androgynous; Philosopher’s Ordinary Language; Juries; Barristers’ and Physicians’ Fees; Quacks; Cæsarean Operation; Inherited Disease; Mason’s Poetry; Northern and Southern States of the American Union; All and the Whole; Ninth Article; Sin and Sins; Old Divines; Preaching extempore; Church of England; Union with Ireland; Faust; Michael Scott, Goethe, Schiller, and Wordsworth; Beaumont and Fletcher; Ben Jonson; Massinger; House of Commons appointing the officers of the Army and Navy; Penal Code in Ireland; Churchmen; Coronation Oaths; Divinity; Professions and Trades; Modern Political Economy; National Debt; Property Tax; Duty of Landholders; Massinger; Shakspeare; Hieronimo; Love’s Labour Lost; Gifford’s Massinger; Shakspeare; The Old Dramatists; Statesmen; Burke; Prospect of Monarchy or Democracy; The Reformed House of Commons; United States of America; Captain B. Hall; Northern and Southern States; Democracy with Slavery; Quakers; Land and Money; Methods of Investigation; Church of Rome; Celibacy of the Clergy; Roman Conquest of Italy; Wedded Love in Shakspeare and his Contemporary Dramatists; Tennyson’s Poems; Rabelais and Luther; Wit and Madness; Colonization; Machinery; Capital; Roman Conquest; Constantine; Papacy and the Schoolmen; Civil War of the Seventeenth Century; Hampden’s Speech; Reformed House of Commons; Food; Medicine; Poison; Obstruction; Wilson; Shakspeare’s Sonnets; Wickliffe; Love; Luther; Reverence for Ideal Truths; Johnson the Whig; Asgill; James I.; Sir P. Sidney; Things are finding their Level; German; Goethe; God’s Providence; Man’s Freedom; Dom Miguel and Dom Pedro; Working to better one’s condition; Negro Emancipation; Fox and Pitt; Revolution; Virtue and Liberty; Epistle to the Romans; Erasmus; Luther; Negro Emancipation; Hackett’s Life of Archbishop Williams; Charles I.; Manners under Edward III. Richard II. and Henry VIII.; Hypothesis; Suffiction; Theory; Lyell’s Geology; Gothic Architecture; Gerard’s Douw’s “Schoolmaster” and Titian’s “Venus”; Sir J. Scarlett; Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees; Bestial Theory; Character of Bertram; Beaumont and Fletcher’s Dramas; Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides; Milton; Style; Cavalier Slang; Junius; Prose and Verse; Imitation and Copy; Dr. Johnson; Boswell; Burke; Newton; Milton; Painting; Music; Poetry; Public Schools; Scott and Coleridge; Nervous Weakness; Hooker and Bull; Faith; Quakers; Philanthropists; Jews; Sallust; Thucydides; Herodotus; Gibbon; Key to the Decline of the Roman Empire; Dr. Johnson’s Political Pamphlets; Taxation; Direct Representation; Universal Suffrage; Right of Women to vote; Horne Tooke; Etymology of the final Ive; “The Lord” in the English Version of the Psalms, etc.; Scotch Kirk and Irving; Milton’s Egotism; Claudian; Sterne; Humour and Genius; Great Poets good Men; Diction of the Old and New Testament Version; Hebrew; Vowels and Consonants; Greek Accent and Quantity; Consolation in Distress; Mock Evangelicals; Autumn Day; Rosetti on Dante; Laughter: Farce and Tragedy; Baron Von Humboldt; Modern Diplomatists; Man cannot be stationary; Fatalism and Providence; Characteristic Temperament of Nations; Greek Particles; Latin Compounds; Propertius; Tibullus; Lucan; Statius; Valerius Flaccus; Claudian; Persius; Prudentius; Hermesianax; Destruction of Jerusalem; Epic Poem; German and English; Paradise Lost; Modern Travels; The Trinity; Incarnation; Redemption; Education; Elegy; Lavacrum Pallados; Greek and Latin Pentameter; Milton’s Latin Poems; Poetical Filter; Gray and Cotton; Homeric Heroes in Shakspeare; Dryden; Dr. Johnson; Scott’s Novels; Scope of Christianity; Times of Charles I.; Messenger of the Covenant; Prophecy; Logic of Ideas and of Syllogisms; W. S. Lander’s Poetry; Beauty; Chronological Arrangement of Works; Toleration; Norwegians; Articles of Faith; Modern Quakerism; Devotional Spirit; Sectarianism; Origen; Some Men like Musical Glasses; Sublime and Nonsense; Atheist; Proof of Existence of God; Kant’s attempt; Plurality of Worlds; A Reasoner; Shakspeare’s Intellectual Action; Crabbe and Southey; Peter Simple and Tom Cringle’s Log; Chaucer; Shakspeare; Ben Jonson; Beaumont and Fletcher; Daniel; Massinger; Lord Byron and H. Walpole’s “Mysterious Mother”; Lewis’s Jamaica Journal; Sicily; Malta; Sir Alexander Ball; Cambridge Petition to admit Dissenters; Corn Laws; Christian Sabbath; High Prizes and Revenues of the Church; Sir Charles Wetherell’s Speech; National Church; Dissenters; Papacy; Universities; Schiller’s Versification; German Blank Verse; Roman Catholic Emancipation; Duke of Wellington; Coronation Oath; Corn Laws; Modern Political Economy; Socinianism; Unitarianism; Fancy and Imagination; Mr. Coleridge’s System; Biographia Literaria; Dissenters; Lord Brooke; Barrow and Dryden; Peter Wilkins and Stothard; Fielding and Richardson; Bishop Sandford; Roman Catholic Religion; Euthanasia; Recollections, by Mr. Justice Coleridge; Address to a God-child. [All of these reprinted in Literary Remains, 1836.) [Available at Gutenberg - online.]
2.]

  • Do., as The Table Talk and Omniana of S. T. Coleridge [ed. H. N. Coleridge]. With additional Table Talk from Allsop’s “Recollections,” and manuscript matter not before printed. Arranged and edited by T[homas] Ashe [Bohn’s Standard Library; Smaller Collections. II. Prose] (London: G. Bell & Sons 1884); and Do., arranged and edited by T[homas] Ashe Bohn’s Standard Library; Smaller Collections. II. Prose] (London [s.l.; s.n.] 1888), xix, 446pp., 8°
CONTENTS
Editor’s Preface
 ‘Our volume comprises Coleridge’s “Table Talk”, edited by his son-in-law in 1835, and the “Omniana” of the first volume (published in 1836) of “The Literary Remains of S. T. Coleridge”, by the same editor, which includes Coleridge’s contributions to Southey’s “Omniana” of 1812.
 To the former we have been able to add some “Additional Table Talk”, extracted from T. Allsop’s “Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge”, 1836, by the kind permission of Allsop’s representatives; and to the latter some manuscript notes, made by Coleridge in 1819, in a coy of Southey’s publication now in the British Museum.

COPAC: “The Table Talk from the edition in 1836, with the preface of the original editor, H. N. Coleridge; and the “Omniana” from the Literary remains of S. T. Coleridge, by the same editor [COPAC].

Note [BS]: In giving the essays of Omniana, Ashe marks with asterisks those which ‘include additional matter from Coleridge’s Manuscript.’ [p.xvi.] Items. incl. “Egotism” (p.356-58) and “Magnanimity” (pp.367-69 [Daedaleas ... &c., pp.367-68]) - neither of these with asterisks.

[Internet: Ashe’s Table Talk and Omniana of S. T. Coleridge is available at Internet Archive online; partial view of Elibron Classics facs. rep. available at Amazon online]; Do. [Bohn’s Popular Library] (London: G. Bell 1903, 1909), xix, 446pp., 17 cm.; and Do. [rep. edn.] ([s.n.] 1923) [available at Google Books online.] Another edition in Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series is partially available online.
  • Do., as The Table Talk and Omniana[,] of S. T. Coleridge (London: Gay & Bird 1899);
  • Do., with a note on Coleridge by Coventry Patmore (London: Milford; Oxford UP 1917);
  • Do., as Table-talk [... &c.], recorded by Henry Nelson Coleridge, ed. by Carl Woodring, 2 vols. [Bollingen ser., 75; Collected Works of Coleridge, Vol. 41, 1 & 2] (Princeton UP; London: Routledge 1990);
  • [... &c.]

[Note: COPAC contains 78 items - online; for details of Coleridge texts held in the National Library of Ireland in 1901-03, see infra.]

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The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  • Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Collected and edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge, Esq, M.A. [4 vols.] (London: William Pickering 1836-39) - Vol. I [Sect.:] “The Fall of Robespierre”, “A Course of Lectures”, “Notes on Omniana, ... &c.”, 291pp. - available at Internet Archive - online; also in Gutenberg Project in several formats - Vol., I: details &. html.

    Contents

    Ded. to Joseph Henry Green, Esq., the approved friend of Coleridge]; pref. by H. N. Coleridge dated Lincoln’s Inn, Aug. 11th 1836; Fall of Robespierre [a trag.]; Poems; A Course of Lectures; Omniana (1812) [pp.282-395; in which “Egotism” is item 12, pp.291-93; and “Magnanimity” is item 28, pp.306-09].

    Do. [facs. rep. edition] 4 vols. (NY: AMS Press 1967), 22 cm. Contents. Vol. 1 [issued 1836]: The fall of Robespierre. Poems. A course of lectures. Omniana. Vol. 2 [issued ?1837 - supra]: Shakespeare, with introductory matter on poetry, the drama, and the stage. Notes on Ben Jonson; Beaumont and Fletcher; On the Prometheus of Æschylus [and others. Vol. 3 [issued 1838]: Preface. Formula fidei de ss. Trinitate. Nightly prayer. Notes on the book of common prayer; Hooker; Field; Donne; Henry More; Heinrichs; Hacket; Jeremy Taylor; The pilgrim’s progress; John Smith. Letter to a godchild. Vol. 4 [issued 1839]: Notes on Luther; St. Theresa; Bedell; Baxter; Leighton; Sherlock; Waterland; Skelton; Andrew Fuller; Whitaker; Oxlee; A barrister’s Hints; Davison; Irving; Noble. Essay on faith.
Extracts
Under “Egotism”

[Begin:] It is hard and uncandid to censure the great reformers in philosophy and religion for their egotism and boastfulness. It is scarcely possible for a man to meet with continued personal abuse, on account of his superior talents, without associating more and more the sense of the value of his discoveries or detections with his own person. The necessity of repelling unjust contempt, forces the most modest man into a feeling of pride and self-consciousness. How can a tall man help thinking of his size, when dwarfs are constantly on tiptoe beside him?--Paracelsus was a braggart and a quack; so was Cardan; but it was their merits, and not their follies, which drew upon them that torrent of detraction and calumny, which compelled them so frequently to think and write concerning themselves, that at length it became a habit to do so. Wolff too, though not a boaster, was yet persecuted into a habit of egotism both in his prefaces and in his ordinary conversation, and the same holds good of the founder of the Brunonian system, and of his great namesake Giordano Bruno. The more decorous manners of the present age have attached a disproportionate opprobrium to this foible, and many therefore abstain with cautious prudence from all displays of what they feel. Nay, some do actually flatter themselves, that they abhor all egotism, and never betray it either in their writings or discourse. But watch these men narrowly; and in the greater number of cases you will find their thoughts, feelings, and mode of expression, saturated with the passion of contempt, which is the concentrated vinegar of egotism. [...]
Under “Circulation of the Blood”

[Begin:] The ancients attributed to the blood the same motion of ascent and descent which really takes place in the sap of trees. Servetus discovered the minor circulation from the heart to the lungs. Do not the following passages of Giordano Bruno (published in 1591) seem to imply more? I put the question, pauperis forma, with unfeigned diffidence. De Immenso et Innumerabili, lib. vi. cap. 8. ‘Ut in nostro corpore sanguis per totum circumcursat et recursat, sic in toto mundo, astro, tellure. Quare non aliter quam nostro in corpore sanguis Hinc meat, hinc remeat, neque ad inferiora fluit vi Majore, ad supera a pedibus quam deinde recedat’: 'and still more plainly, in the ninth chapter of the same book, ‘Quid esset Quodam ni gyro naturae cuncta redirent Ortus ad proprios rursum; si sorbeat omnes Pontus aquas, totum non restituatque perenni Ordine; qua possit rerum consistere vita? Tanquam si totus concurrat sanguis in unam, In qua consistat, partem, nec prima revisat Ordia, et antiquos cursus non inde resumat.’ It is affirmed in the “Supplement to the Scotch Encyclopædia Britannica,” that Des Cartes was the first who in defiance of Aristotle and the Schools, attributed infinity to the universe. The very title of Bruno’s poem proves, that this honour belongs to him. [Latin in verse-form in original; see copy - attached.]
Under “Magnanimity”

[Begins:] The following ode was written by Giordano Bruno, under prospect of that martyrdom which he soon after suffered at Rome, for atheism: that is, as is proved by all his works, for a lofty and enlightened piety, which was of course unintelligible to bigots and dangerous to an apostate hierarchy. If the human mind be, as it assuredly is, the sublimest object which nature affords to our contemplation, these lines which portray the human mind under the action of its most elevated affections, have a fair claim to the praise of sublimity. The work from which they are extracted is exceedingly rare (as are, indeed, all the works of the Nolan philosopher), and I have never seen them quoted:

Daedaleas vacuis plumas nectere humeris
Concupiant alii; aut vi suspendi nubium
Alis, ventorumve appetant remigium;
Aut orbitae flammantis raptari alveo;
Bellerophontisve alitem

Nos vero illo donati sumus genio,
Ut fatum intrepedi objectasque umbras cernimus,
Ne caeci ad lumen solis, ad perspicuas
Naturae voces surdi, ad Divum munera
Ingrato adsimus pectore.

Non curamus stultorum quid opinio
De nobis ferat, aut queis dignetur sedibus.
Alis ascendimus sursum melioribus!
Quid nubes ultra, ventorum ultra est semita,
Vidimus, quantum satis est.

Illuc conscendent plurimi, nobis ducibus,
Per scalam proprio erectam et firmam in pectore,
Quam Deus, et vegeti sors dabit ingeni;
Non manes, pluma, ignis, ventus, nubes, spiritus,
Divinantum phantasmata.

Non sensus vegetans, non me ratio arguet,
Non indoles exculti clara ingenii;
Sed perfidi sycophantae supercilium
Absque lance, statera, trutina, oculo,
Miraculum armati segete.

Versificantis grammatistae encomium,
Buglossae Graecissantum, et epistolia
Lectorem libri salutantum a limine,
Latrantum adversum Zoilos, Momos, mastiges,
Hinc absint testimonia!

Procedat nudus, quern non ornant nubila,
Sol! Non conveniunt quadrupedum phalerae
Humano dorso! Porra veri species
Quaesita, inventa, et patefacta me efferat!
Etsi nullus intelligat,
Si cum natura sapio, et sub numine,
Id vere plus quam satis est.

Loose translation [Stanza 1]: My rough translation: ‘Daedalus, who others envy, lacking his wings who rows through the heavens, rising on the winds and onwards through the fiery ways of heaven like Bellephoron, the monster-slayer’.

See also Dorothy Waley Singer, Giordano Bruno (NY: Schumann 1950): ‘In the essay on Magnanimity [Coleridge], seven verses are quoted out of the eight prefixed by Bruno to De monade’ (p.55).

The conclusion alludes to a charge of impenetrable obscurity, in which Bruno shares one and the same fate with Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and in truth with every great discoverer and benefactor of the human race; excepting only when the discoveries have been capable of being rendered palpable to the outward senses, and have therefore come under the cognizance of our “sober judicious critics,” the men of “sound common sense;” that is, of those snails in intellect, who wear their eyes at the tips of their feelers, and cannot even see unless they at the same time touch. When these finger-philosophers affirm that Plato, Bruno, &c. must have been “out of their senses,” the just and proper retort is, “Gentlemen! it is still worse with you! you have lost your reason!”

By the by, Addison in the Spectator has grossly misrepresented the design and tendency of Bruno’s Bestia Triomphante; the object of which was to show of all the theologies and theogonies which have been conceived for the mere purpose of solving problems in the material universe, that as they originate in fancy, so they all end in delusion, and act to the hindrance or prevention of sound knowledge and actual discovery. But the principal and most important truth taught in this allegory is, that in the concerns of morality all pretended knowledge of the will of Heaven which is not revealed to man through his conscience; that all commands which do not consist in the unconditional obedience of the will to the pure reason, without tampering with consequences (which are in God’s power, not in ours); in short, that all motives of hope and fear from invisible powers, which are not immediately derived from, and absolutely coincident with, the reverence due to the supreme reason of the universe, are all alike dangerous superstitions. The worship founded on them, whether offered by the Catholic to St. Francis, or by the poor African to his Fetish differ in form only, not in substance. Herein Bruno speaks not only as a philosopher, but as an enlightened Christian; the Evangelists and Apostles every where representing their moral precepts not as doctrines then first revealed, but as truths implanted in the hearts of men, which their vices only could have obscured.

[Coleridge, Literary Remains - separate copy in RICORSO Library, “Criticism > Literary Figures” - as infra; also available online - index & text.]

Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets[,] by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, now first collected by T[homas] Ashe, B.A. (London: George Bell and Sons 1900), xi, 552 [incl. Index]. [Based on transcripts of the lectures made by P. J. Collier; being ‘all the extant criticism of Coleridge on the English Dramatists’ (Pref.) - with other writings including a selection from Table-talk (pp.529-41) [20 items. incl. “Milton’s Egotism, p.537.”].

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge [4]: See Bill Kuhns, ‘Reviewing the Reviews: Giordano Bruno and Marshall McLuhan’, in McLuhan Studies, 1, 2 [q.d.; 1996?], remarking that Samuel Taylor Coleridge proposed to write a biography of Bruno in Biographia Litteraria: ‘In the last volume of this work [...] I propose to give an account of the life of Giordano Bruno ... the scarcest books ever printed.’

Note that the sumrumary at the head of Chapter IX of Biographia Literaria includes the items ‘Giordano Bruno - Literary Aristocracy, or the existence of a tacit compact among the learned as a privileged order’. Text includes two passages on Bruno:

a) God forbid! that I should be suspected of a wish to enter into a rivalry with Schelling for the honours so unequivocally his right, not only as a great and original genius, but as the founder of the Philosophy of Nature, and as the most successful improver of the Dynamic System [31] which, begun by Bruno, was reintroduced (in a more philosophical form, and freed from all its impurities and visionary accompaniments) by Kant; in whom it was the native and necessary growth of his own system. Kant’s followers, however, on whom (for the greater part) their master’s cloak had fallen without, or with a very scanty portion of, his spirit, had adopted his dynamic ideas, only as a more refined species of mechanics. With exception of one or two fundamental ideas, which cannot be withheld from Fichte, to Schelling we owe the completion, and the most important victories, of this revolution in philosophy. (Biog. Lit., George Bell 1905, pp.31-32.)

[See Biographia Literaria, ed. John Shawcross, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1907, p.103-04 - as attached.]

b) We [Coleridge and Schelling] had studied in the same school; been disciplined by the same preparatory philosophy, namely, the writings of Kant; we had both equal obligations to the polar logic and dynamic philosophy of Giordano Bruno; and Schelling has lately, and, as of recent acquisition, avowed that same affectionate reverence for the labours of Behmen [Boehme], and other mystics, which I had formed at a much earlier period. (q.p.; but see 1905 edition by George Bell, London, p.73.)

For Coleridge’s definition of the IMAGINATION and FANCY, see Biographia Literaria, Chap. XIII - as attached. (Note also in this chapter his account of the relation between contraries and their underlying metaphysical unity - in the manner of Bruno modified by Kant - in idem.)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge [5]: ‘The most industrious historians of speculative philosophy have not been able to procure more than a few of his works [i.e., Giordano Bruno’s] out of eleven, the titles of which are preserved to us I have had an opportunity of perusing six.’ (Quoted in Kuhns, op. cit., online [no ref.]; accessed 14.10.2008).

[Note: the two quotations given here are effectively presented as one in Kuhn, op. cit.; the second, however, comes from Chap. XVI of The Friend. (1818; 1863 Edn., p.124, n.- as attached.)

See citation for above quotation [‘In the last volume of this work [...] perusing six.’] in Wikipedia article on Bruno, linked to Dorothy Singer, Giordano Bruno (1950) - online. Viz., Dorothy Waley Singer, Bruno: His Life and Thought, with an Annotated Translation of His Work, “On the Infinite Universe and Worlds” (NY: Henry Schuman 1950), p.229. The text is available at Positive Atheism website - online.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge [6]: In a letter of 16 July 1816, Coleridge wrote: ‘I had in the Friend announced my intention of writing the life of G. Bruno with a critique on his system’, and blamed the unwillingness of an associate called Hare [viz., J. C. Hare, the biographer of John Sterling] to lend him the necessary books to do so. (See Collected Letters, IV, p.626, quoted in a footnote to The Friend, Vol. I, ed. Barbara E. Rooke, Collected Works, London: Routledge, Kegan & Paul 1969, p.118.)

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge [7] - Coleridge reproduces Bruno’s final ode before his execution in January 1600 in the Literary Remains (1836) under the heading “Magnanimity”. This may be considered as a possible source for Joyce’s adoption of the name Daedalus/Dedalus in Stephen Hero [1944] and A Portrait (1916). See copy in RICORSO Library, “International Critics > Coleridge”, infra.)

Bibliographical notes: The study of Coleridge by H. D. Traill - viz., Coleridge [gen. ed. Henry Morley] (London: Macmillan 1884), xi, 211 - with reps. in & edns. in 1889, 1902, 1906, 1909, 1925, 1933 - contains no allusion to Giordano Bruno. See Do. [rep. edn.] (NY: Harper [q.d.]) available on at Internet Archive - online].

Likewise, Sir Hall Caine’s Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: Walter Scott 1887) is devoid of allusions to Bruno either. [Available online]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge [8] - E. K. Chambers writes: ‘He [Coleridge] reverted, with Giordano Bruno, to his earlier studies in Neoplatonism and now, for the first time, he seems to have become familiar with the writings of Kant. He is concerned with the “relations of thought to things”.’ (Chambers, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Biographical Study, 1958, p.139.)

Note that Samuel Taylor Coleridge uses the formula ‘the wisest Stagyrite’ (Biographia Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross, OUP 1907, Vol. I. p.71).

Samuel Taylor Coleridge [9]: J. C. Hare, about whom Coleridge complains in regard the non-supply of rare works by Bruno, was John Sterling’s biographer and cited is as such by Thomas Carlyle in his chapter on “Coleridge” in John Sterling (1851), p.54. Anthony John Harding writes in Coleridge and the Inspired Word (1985 that ‘Carlyle was prompted to write his Life of Sterling in part at least by his resentment at the favourable treatment given to Coleridge in Hare’s memoir.’ (p.115.)

[ See also Carlyle’s view of Coleridge, quoted under Carlyle in RICORSO > Authors > supra. ]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge [10] - Biographia Literaria (1817 First Edn.) - Thesis VIII (in Chap. XII - [sub-titled:] ‘A Chapter of and premonitions concerning the perusal or omission of the chapter that follows’, on the ontology of spirit: ‘Whatever in its origin in objective, is likewise as such a necessarily finite. Therefore, since the spirit is not originally an object and as the subject exists in antithesis to the obeject, the spirit cannot originally be finite. But neither can it be a subject witout becoming an object, and as it is originally the identity of both, it can be conceived neither as infinite nor finite exclusively, as as the most original union of both. In the existence, in the reconciling, and the recurrence of this contradiction consists the process and mystery of production and life.’ (See Biog. Lit., London: George Bell, 1905, p.132.)

[Note: the following chapter [XIII] is sub-titled entitled ‘On the Imagination, or esemplatic power’, while Chap. X begins: “Esemplastic. The word is not in Johnson, nor have I met with it elsewhere.” Neither have I! I constructed it myself from the Greek words [symbols] i.e., to shape into one; because, having to convey a new sense, I thought that a new term would both aid the recollection of my meaning, and prevent it from being confounded with the usual import of the word, imagination.’ (Bell Edn., 1905, p.76); available on Internet Archive [Google] - online]; also Shawcross Edn., Clarendon Press 1907, p.107 [online].

Bibl. The 1905 Bell edition is a ‘verbatim reprint’ of the 1817 original, with some addition pieces - viz., Statesman’s Manual and Lay Sermons [see online]. The 1907 Clarendon Press edition edited by John Shawcross reproduces the same sheet and pagination, but adds a lengthy introduction [xcvii] and Notes necessitating a second volume [See Vol. I, online]. There are 75 editions in Open Library - online.

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge [11] - definition of Imagination (Biog. Lit., Chap. XIII): ‘The imagination, then, I consider as either primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider to be as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and unify. It is essential vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead./ FANCY, on the other contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, with which we express the word than CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials from the law of association.’ (Shawcross Edn., 1907; p.202.)

Note: Coleridge then directs his reader to the introduction prefixed to ‘The Ancient Mariner’ on the ‘uses of the Supernatural in poetry‘. [For association, see his chapter on Hartley.]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge [12] - The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Notebooks 1819-1826 2 vols. [i.e., 4th double volume; Pt. 1: Text; Pt. 2: Notes] (London: Routledge 1990), Vol. 4 [of Notebooks] edited by Merton Christensen, Kathleen Coburn, remarks on Coleridge and Vico (pp.432-44). These incl. 1.] ‘The theory that there were several Homers, rather than one, was developed by Vico through his whole Book III-III, 1-41 - “Discovery of the True Homer”, where he contended that the Iliad and the Odyssey ‘were composed and compiled by various hands through successive ages”’. (The New Science (Fisch & Bergin, 804; here p.433.) 2.] ‘Coleridge’ excitement about Vico was quickly aroused by this first reading of one in whom he was delighted to find anticipation of his own approaches to cultural history. [...] There is ample support for the genuineness of his sense of “genial coincidences”.’ (Eds., p.434.)

See also
- ‘Coleridge and Vico’: Giambattista Vico: An International Symposium, eds. Giorgio Tagliacozzo & Hayden V. White (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press 1969).
- Alice D. Synder, ‘Coleridge on Giordano Bruno’, in Modern Language Notes, 42, 7 [Johns Hopkins UP] (Nov. 1927), pp.427-36 - available at JSTOR - online.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Sound sense: See Coleridge’s allusion to ‘the men of “sound common sense”; that is, of those snails in intellect’, where he speaks of Bruno in Literary Remains (1836), p.308-and also his gloss of persuasa prudentia, apparently from Bruno also, as ‘self-complacent common sense as opposed to science and philosophic reason’, in Biographia Literaria (ed. J. Shawcross, Oxford 1907, Chap. XIII, p.33) - and cf. Joyce’s ‘the beast of boredom, common sense’ [FW, 292.28]. (See also Wilde’s identification of ‘dullness’ with the bestia trionfante in “The Critic as Artist” (Works of Oscar Wilde, Galley Press 1987, p.966).

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S. T. Coleridge [13] - Essay on Our Own Times, forming a second series of The Friend, ed. by his daughter (London; Pickering 1850) - Section VII: Irish National Character Examined [...] p.xlvi; Their national vices and virtues, p.xlvii; Seeming opposite characteristics, p.xlviii; Irish moral symptomatic of Barbarians, p.xlix; Bloody early History of great Nation, p.l [extract follows]:

[...]
4. Indolence, which conjoined with Levity and Confusion of brain, brings forth a host of faults and follies, thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in the sha- diest watery glades of mother earth, and equally light, mobile and corruptible: as, Improvidence and her twin sister Recklessness; Procrastination, Day-dreaming, Passivity or Patience over much and out of place, Impracticality, Dirtiness, which goes arm in arm with Disorderliness, and the temper by Mr. de Vere archly styled “our Insolent Content and savage Merriment in Misery.” Berkeley had asked long before, “Whether the bulk of our Irish natives are not kept from thieving by that cynical content in dirt and beggary which they possess to a degree beyond any other people in Christendom?” (p.xlviii.)
[...]
The lower Irish are semi-savages - an oasis of barbarism amid the circumambient softness of the nineteenth century - thrown into relief by the neighbouring [xlix] civilization, like dead metal upon a burnished ground. If the Irish blood have any peculiar quality, - and if we are to believe Antiquarians, describing their mixed origin, how it can have any peculiarity is a puzzle and a problem - it appears to be nothing more than a special Excitability; and this attribute, not calmed by reflection, or regulated by reason, or steadied by sense of duty, is sufficient to produce all the mental hues and shades and mixtures of colour, which have just been passed in review before the eye. But after all, can the blood, now flowing in the veins of our Hibernian neighbours be traced back to one original fountain? Are not the Irish eminently a many-mingled race? Spenser keeps this truth before the reader’s mind during his whole discourse, and when he is disposed to break out into lamentation and reproach, it is “the genius of the soil,” rather than the nature of the people, that he inveighs against. (p.l; my italics.)
 

Cf. Joyce: ‘What race, or what language (if we except [165] the few whom a playful will seems to have preserved in ice, like the people of Iceland) can boast of being pure today? And no race has less right to utter such a boast than the race now living in Ireland. Nationality (if it really is not a convenient fiction like so many others to which the scalpels of present-day scientists have given the coup de grâce) must find its reason for being rooted in something that surpasses and transcends and informs changing things like blood and the human word.’ (“Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages”, 1907; in Critical Writings [1959] 1966, pp.165-66; see full-text copy - as attached.)

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge - works held in the National Library of Ireland in 1901-04 [being Joyce’s period of readership there].

Coleridge in the NLI at 1901-04
  • Omniana; or, Horae otiosiores, by Robert Southey, 2 vols. (London : Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown 1812) [17 cm.; contains essays by S. T. Coleridge incl. Egoism and Magnanimity; see details]
  • Specimens of the Table Talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Henry Nelson Coleridge (London: John Murray 1874), xxxii, 351, [3] p., [1] leaf of plates [port.]; 17 cm. [see American edition, infra].
  • The Friend: A Series of Essays to Aid in the Formation of Fixed Principles in Politics, morals, and religion. With literary amusements interspersed[,] by Samuel Taylor Coleridge [4th edn., with the author’s last corrections and an appendix, and with a synoptical table of the contents of the work, [ed.] by Henry Nelson Coleridge (London: W. Pickering 1844), 3 vols.; 17 cm.
  • Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare and some of the old poets and dramatists: with other Literary Remains of S.T. Coleridge, ed. by Mrs. [Sara] H. N. Coleridge, 2 vols. (London: W. Pickering 1849) [ded. to Joseph Henry Green, the approved friend of Coleridge; ‘for the most part a rep. of Vols. I & II of Literary Remains’ - ergo, incls. Omniana; available at Google Books online].
  • Aids to Reflection, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge; ed. Rev. Derwent Coleridge, M.A. (London: E. Moxon [1854]), xx, 352pp.; 19 cm.
  • The Golden Book of Coleridge: A Selection from the Poetical Works of Coleridge, ed. & intro. by Stopford Augustus Brooke (London, Aldine House : J.M. Dent, 1895), xii, 289pp., ill. [port.], 18 cm.
  • Biographia literaria, or, Biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions, 2 vols. (London: Rest Fenner 1817), 23 cm..
  • Biographia literaria; or, Biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions [2nd edn.] (London: W. Pickering 1847) [prepared for publication in part by the late Henry Nelson Coleridge; completed and published by his widow (Sara Coleridge)], Do. [another edn.], as Biographia literaria; or, biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions, and two lay sermons, I. The statesman’s manual, II. Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge [ Bohn’s Standard Library] (London: G. Bell and sons, 1904), ix, [2], 440, [30]pp.; 19 cm.

[ NB: Standard poetry collections not listed here. Note that the only copy of the Omniana is in Sara Coleridge’s abbrev. edition of Literary Remains as Notes and Lectures on Shakespeare, &c. London: 1849. For full listing of NLI holdings on Coleridge published before 1904 - see attached.]

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A list of the published works of STC compiled by David Hill Radcliffe (Virginia Tech.)
  • The fall of Robespierre: an historic drama. 1794.
  • A moral and political lecture delivered at Bristol. 1795.
  • Conciones ad populum: or addresses to the people. 1795.
  • The plot discovered: or an address to the people, against ministerial treason. 1795.
  • An answer to a letter to Edward Long Fox MD. 1795.
  • Ode on the departing year. 1796.
  • Poems on various subjects. 1796, 1797, 1803.
  • The watchman. 1796.
  • Fears in solitude. 1798.
  • Lyrical ballads [with Wordsworth]. 1798.
  • Wallenstein: a drama in two parts translated from the German of Frederic Schiller. 1800.
  • The Friend: a literary, moral, and political weekly paper. 1809-10, 1818.
  • Omniana; or Horae Oitosiores [with Robert Southey]. 2 vols, 1812.
  • Remorse: a tragedy in five acts. 1813.
  • Christabel; Kubla Khan: a vision; The pains of sleep. 1816.
  • The statesman’s manual ... a lay sermon. 1816.
  • Biographia literaria. 2 vols, 1817.
  • Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters: a lay sermon. 1817.
  • Sibylline leaves: a collection of poems. 1817.
  • Zapolya: A Christmas tale in two parts. 1817.
  • On method. 1818.
  • Aids to reflection. 1825.
  • Poetical works. 1828.
  • On the constitution of church and state. 1830.
  • The devil’s walk: a poem [with Southey]. 1830.
  • Poetical works. 3 vols, 1834.
  • Specimens of the table-talk, ed. H. N. Coleridge. 2 vols, 1835.
  • Literary remains, ed. H. N. Coleridge. 4 vols, 1836-39.
  • Letters, conversations, and recollections, ed. T. Allsop. 2 vols, 1836.
  • Confessions of an inquiring spirit, ed. H. N. Coleridge. 1840.
  • Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life, ed. S. B. Watson. 1848.
  • Notes and lectures upon Shakespeare and some of the old poets and dramatists, with other literary remains, ed. Mrs. H. N. Coleridge. 2 vols, 1849.
  • Essays on his own time, ed. Sara Coleridge. 3 vols, 1850.
  • Complete works, ed. W. G. T. Shield. 7 vols, 1853.
  • Notes theological, political, and miscellaneous, ed. Derwent Coleridge. 2 vols, 1853.
  • Anima poetae, from the unpublished notebooks, ed. E. H. Coleridge. 1895.
  • Biographica epistolaris, being the biographical supplement of Biographia literaria, ed. A. Turnbull. 2 vols, 1911.
  • Complete poetical works, ed. W. H. Coleridge. 2 vols, 1912.
  • Coleridge on logic and learning, with selections from the unpublished manuscripts, ed. A. D. Snyder. 1929.
  • Shakespearean criticism, ed. T. M. Raysor. 2 vols, 1930.
  • Miscellaneous criticism, ed. T. M. Raysor. 1936.
  • The philosophical lectures, ed. Kathleen Coburn. 1949.
  • Coleridge on the seventeenth century, ed. Roberta Florence Brinkley. 1955.
  • Collected Letters, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs. 6 vols, 1956-73.
  • Notebooks, ed. Kathleen Coburn. 1957- .
  • Collected letters, ed. E. L. Griggs. 6 vols, 1956-68.
  • Collected works, ed. Kathleen Coburn. 1969- .

Source: Compiled by David Hill Radcliffe (Virginia Tech.), at English Poetry 1579-1830: Spenser and the Tradition - online; accessed 12.02.2013.

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Omniana; or, Horae otiosiores, by Robert Southey, 2 vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown 1812)
   Vol. 1 contains:

Coleridge’s contributions: 87. The French Decade [161]; 89. Ride and Tie [181]; 90. Jeremy Taylor [188]; 91. Critism [91]; 92. Public Instruction [181]; 97. Picturesque words [189]; 98. Meteorolithes [197]; 102. Toleration [205]; 103. War [206]; 105. Parodies [208]; 106. M. Dupuis [209]; 109. Origin of the Worship of Hymen [215]; 110. Egotism [216]; 111. Cap of Liberty [217]; 112. Bulls [219]; 113. Wise Ignorance [221]; 117. Rouge [227]; 118. [Gk. symbols] Hasty Words [227]; 119. Motives and Impulses [227]; 120. Inward Blindness [231]; 121 the Vices of Slaves no excuse for Slavery [232]; 122. Circulation of the Blood [234]; 123. Periturae parcere chartae [234]; 124. To have and to be [237]; 125. Party Passion [238]; 126. Goodness of Heart indispensable to a man of genius [239]; 127. Milton and Ben Jonson [239]; 128. Statistics [240]; 129. Magnanimity [240]; 155. Negroes and Narcissus [304]; 156. An anecdote [304]; 157. The Pharos of Alexandria [204]; 158. Sense and Common Sense [305]; 159. Toleration [308]; 160. Hint for a new Species of History [313]. The last item is No. 168 [Earth bathing by R.S.]
 

Item 110: *“Egotism” (pp.216-17) - ending: ‘[...] name-sake Giordano Bruno. The more decorous manners of the present age have attached a disproportionate opprobrium to this foible, and many therefore abstain with cautious prudence from all displays of what they feel. Nay some do actually flatter themslves, that they abhor all Egotism, and never betray it either in their writings or discourse. But watch these men narrowly: in the greater number of cases you will find their thoughts, feelings, and modes of expression, saturated with the passion of Contempt, which is the concentrated Vinegar of Egotism.’ (p.217.) [Note - this shows the reference to He-goatism to be an addition by Henry Nelson Coleridge.]

2.] Item 129: *“Magnanimity” ( pp.240-45). Note: The version of the ode by Giordano Bruno given here contains the initial Latin word Daedalias in the ode by Bruno (p.241-42) which is given as Daedaleas in Literary Remains (1836).

[Those given with asterisks in the Table of Contents [pp.iii-ix] are by Coleridge.]

3.] Other items include “Thomas O’Brien Mac Mahon” (Item 45; p.77); Solan Geese (Item 46; p.79 - much about barnacles with refs. to Richard Stanihurst); Richard Flecknoe (Item 62; p.105-10); Catholic Devotion to the Virgin [the great Goddess of the Roman Catholics] (Item 67; p.123-28); Bishop Berkely [sic] (Item 133; p.251); Goldsmith (Item 152; p.296); Palestine (Item 167; p.333 - citing Pisgah View); Earth bathing (Item 168; pp.335-36, citing Holinshed vol. 6, p.331, on Shane O’Neil’s method of recuperating from drink.)
Omniana, by Southey (1812) - copy at UC Santa Cruz available at Google Books - online.

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Specimens of the Table Talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge , in two volumes (New York: Harper & Brothers 1835), 183pp. [ed. H. N. Coleridge though not stated on title page.]

“Milton’s Egotism - Claudian - Sterne” as apart from the essay entitled “Egotism” in the Omniana, Coleridge spoke of it in connection with John Milton of whom he said: ‘In the Paradise Lost - indeed in every one of his poems - it is Milton himself whom you see; his Satan, his Adam, his Raphael, almost his Eve - all are John Milton; and it is a sense of this intense egotism that gives me the greatest pleasure in reading Milton’s works. The egotism of such a man is a revelation of spirit.’ (Specimens of Table talk, [ed. H. N. Coleridge], NY: Harper & Bros. 1835, p.123; available at Internet Archive - online [details & page]. [This item also in Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare (Longmans 1900), which contains Sect. V: Extracts from Table Talk.]

“Church of Rome” (29 April 1823): ‘[...] A person said to me lately, “But you will, for civility’s sake, call them Catholics, will you not?” I answered, that I would not; for I would not tell a lie upon any, much less upon so solemn an occasion. The adherents of the church of Rome, I repeat, are not Catholic Christians. If they are, then it follows that we Protestants are heretics and schismatics, as, indeed, the Papists very logically, from their own premisses, call us. And Roman Catholics makes no difference. Catholicism is not capable of degrees or local apportionments. There can be but one body of Catholics, ex vi termini. To talk strictly of Irish or Scotch Roman Catholics is a mere absurdity.’

‘It is common to hear it said, that, if the legal disabilities are removed, the Romish church will lose ground in this country. I think the reverse: the Romish religion is, or, in certain hands, is capable of being made, so flattering to the passions and self-delusion of men, that it is impossible to say how far it would spread, amongst the higher orders of society especially, if the secular disadvantages now attending its profession were removed.’ (Table-talk, 1835 [n.p.])

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