THE LATE MR. INGLEBY'S ESSAYS.* MR. INGLEBY'S Essays deal not
only with subjects of interest in an interesting way, but show no small amount of originality of treatment. Indeed, their independence of view is what gives the essays the charm they undoubtedly possess. The present generation of writers has been so carefully trained by the example of great critical models, that one hardly expects nowadays to find really bad criticism on subjects such as Wordsworth, De Quincey, and Coleridge. " All can raise the flower now, for all have got the seed." It is, however, not a little surprising to see these subjects treated with anything like novelty and freshness, as we find them in the late Mr. Ingleby's Essays. Reasonable literary judgment is common enough, but here we have originality as well as soundness.
The most interesting of Mr. Ingleby's literary studies is, perhaps, that in which he deals with " The Life and Works of Coleridge." As preface to our criticism of this essay, we must say something as to the writer's learning, though the remark applies to all the essays in the present volume. He really knows the subjects upon which he writes, and is able to make the fullest use of his materials. How often do we see criticisms, clever enough in themselves, marred by the fact that the writers only know a piece of their subject,—presume, for instance, to write on Byron because they have read Don Juan and the Fugitive Pieces. Such ignorance Mr. Ingleby's writing never exhibits, and though we may hold that he misses this or that point from want of sympathy or keenness of perception, we feel that he never does so from want of know- ledge. The essay on Coleridge is enriched with two useful examples of the fruits of his wide reading. One is a most valuable and comprehensive list of books dealing with Coleridge's life and works, and the other a com- plete record of the Coleridge family. One of Mr. Ingleby's chief points is to bring out clearly the horrible sufferings to which Coleridge was exposed, when at school. When we think of a child so sensitive and so weakly as Coleridge • Essays by the late Clement Mansfield Ingleby. Edited by his Bon. London : Trohner and Co. l888. being placed under the ferocious tyranny of a school- master like Bowyer, whose only notion of discipline was flogging—he always gave poor Coleridge an extra cut because "you are such an ugly fellow," and even threatened to flog a girl who had come to beg a half-holiday for her brother—we have not much difficulty in agreeing with the contention that the poet was morally and intellectually, as well as physically, ruined by the cruelties he suffered. At the same time, it is only fair to remember that Coleridge, in his Table-Talk, speaks of Bowyer without bitterness, indeed with no little humour, and even testifies cordially to the justice of one flogging which he received at his hands. Into the questions of Coleridge and his wife, and Coleridge and his opium, we do not propose to enter, though they are treated at some length. The facts, however, which Mr. Ingleby gives us as to the poet's powers of conversation must claim a word of notice. Whether at Christ's Hospital, at Jesus College, at Hounslow Barracks, in the Lakes, or at Highgate, Coleridge seems to have been equally well able to pour forth those enchanting streams of eloquence which Carlyle has so- vividly, if so unflatteringly, brought before us. Dr. Dibdin is quoted as having described him speaking " for nearly two hours with unhesitating and uninterrupted fluency."
Still more astonishing is an account of one of Coleridge's monologues, given by the Bishop of St. David's to Mr.
Ingleby, which took place at Cambridge. The party dined at an early hour on purpose to leave time for conversa- tion, and the flood of the poet's talk flowed unceasingly for six mortal hours. The second part of Mr. Ingleby's essay deals with Coleridge as a divine. The word is chosen as de- scriptive of the man, and with a conscious purpose. Mr. Ingleby, though allowing Coleridge a high place as a religions thinker, refuses him the title of philosopher. Into this vexed question we have not space to enter here ; we must, however, notice the fact that Mr. Ingleby admits the remarkable influence which Coleridge's works have had upon the course of religious thought in England and America. Surely this admission is too. limited. John Stuart Mill has in his autobiography confessed the immense effect exerted by Coleridge over the thought of his generation, quite as much from a purely metaphysical as from a religious point of view ; and there is plenty of evidence to show that many other thinkers whose leanings have not been in any way theological, have been deeply affected by the philosophical writings of Coleridge.
Mr. Ingleby's criticism of Wordsworth, which is contained in another of his essays, is fresh and interesting. He regards Wordsworth's defects as principally due to the fact that the poet adopted a hard-and-fast theory of composition, " according to which the language should be that of common life freed from its vulgarisms and solecisms, and that it should differ from prose only in its metrical construction." Mr. Ingleby then goes on to show how Wordsworth was, in fact, unable to carry his theory into practice, since it constantly led him into prosaic expressions which it was absolutely impossible to retain in his poems. As an example of this, Mr. Ingleby gives the can- celled verses in the poem of " The Blind Highland Boy," which ran thus :- " Strong is the current : but be mild, Ye waves, and spare the helpless child !
If ye in danger fret or chafe, A bee-hive would be ship as safe As that in which he sails.
But say, what was it ? thought of fear ! Well may ye tremble when ye hear !- A household Tub, like one of those Which women use to wash their clothes—
This carried the blind boy.
Close to the water he had found This vessel, pushed it from dry ground, Went into it ; and without dread, Following the fancies in his head, He paddled up and down."
Certainly two of these couplets might have come straight out of the Rejected Addresses. The following is Mr. Ingleby's account of the fate of the verses, and of the critical moral which may be drawn from the way in which Wordsworth treated them :— " Sara Coleridge ventured to suggest to the poet a change in the Washing-Tub couplet. It was a tub that the real boy embarked in, so a tub let it be, only let it not be called a washing-tub ; there was really no need to associate the utensil with so unpoetical a subject as the laundry. So she proposed as a substitute A tub of common form and size, Such as each rustic home supplies.' Coleridge's accomplished daughter must have been down in the lowest depths of bathos when she proposed that ultra-prosaic couplet. Why, it reminds one of another tub : 'a small tub,' into which Professor Tyndall's copious libation of goat's milk was poured for his accommodation, and which he tells us he emptied in three draughts, by the process of raising it in his two hands, and giving it the necessary inclination :' and of both these tub episodes, the effect was astonishing.' But Wordsworth's stomach rose against Sara Coleridge's tub : for the very indefiniteness of the characterisation (' of common form and size ') was against one of the poet's canons ; for the description no more brought before the mind's eye the utensil actually employed by the blind boy, than the size of an object can be conveyed by saying that it is as big as a lump of chalk.' In the event the poet, wearied, we dare say, by the adverse criticism of friends and foes, sent the refrac- tory tub to limbo, and substituted for it a turtle-shell. But now emerged another difficulty. Turtle-shells are not found close to the water,' unless the turtles are on duty inside them ; in which case, the blind boy could not play the part of the hedgehog in the old fable, and turn out the rightful occupant. The objections of the turtle would be too great, and the blind boy would never have a chance of being saved from a watery grave. So the poet had to account for the possession of this very uncommon article by the young navigator ; and this involved a radical change of conception. So he cancelled all three verses—thus wiping out every trace of the tub (washing or other), and wrote four stanzas instead ; which are certainly quite up to Wordsworth's average. Of these he was ultimately induced to cancel two, and substitute others, which we agree with the late Archdeacon Hare in judging to be utterly unsuited to the poem, and in regard to the context, much inferior to those they supplanted. But, why rake up this old story ? some will be dis- posed to ask. Because we see in Wordsworth's 'Household Tub' the key to the situation. When we see clearly why he adopted it, why he displaced it, and why he regretted it, we shall see clearly why he admitted so many prosaic, puerile, or inharmonious passages (` gritty bits,' if we prefer the crystalline metaphor), into his poems ; and why he made so unfortunate a selection of incidents for them, and of names for his dramatis persona."
Of the essays dealing with subjects not of a literary character, perhaps the most interesting are the two entitled " Romantic History" and " A Voice for the Mute Creation." In " Romantic History," Mr. Ingleby gives some very curious instances of the manner in which the history of the French Revolution has already become involved in mythical and legendary clouds. Chief among these appears to be the notion that Dr. Guillotin was the inventor of the bloodstained deity of the Jacobins. As a matter of fact, the first instrument used for beheading by the Convention was called the " Lonisette," from a certain Dr. Louis, who designed it. The actual work, however, was carried out by a German maker of harpsichords, called Schmitt, to whom, therefore, we ought in justice to give whatever credit may belong to such an invention. The explanation of the way in which Dr. Guillotin's name became connected with the matter is to be found in the fact that it was he who induced the Constituent Assembly to pass a law requiring that the punishment of death should be inflicted by the same means, whatever the crime, and that these means should be "a simple machine." It must be remembered that under the Ancien Regime, breaking on the wheel and tearing to pieces by wild horses were legal methods of punishment, and that therefore Dr. Guillotin's enactment was a very humane one. Another of the myths overthrown is the well-known story of Mademoiselle de Sombreuil drinking a glass of blood to save her father's life. As a matter of fact, her father's life was saved merely at the daughter's intercession. The girl then fainted, and when she came-to, found herself being offered a glass of eau suerje by a citoyea whose blood-stained fingers had smeared the glass. Mr. Ingleby ends his essay by recounting perhaps the greatest myth of all,—the sinking of the Vengeur.' He ought, however, to have added to his collection the de- lightful story which recounts how the Old Guard at Waterloo, when surrounded by the English, made half a wheel inwards and discharged their muskets into their own bosoms, exclaim- ing,—" The Guard dies, but does not surrender." In reality, the Guard laid down their arms, as brave and reasonable men should, when overpowered by numbers. "A Voice for the Mute Creation " is a pleasant and readable essay on cruelty to animals, which starts with the paradox that the morality of
the Old Testament with regard to animals is superior to that of the New. Into Mr. Ingleby's pleasant talk about the Napier family's hatred of cruelty, and William Beckford's antipathy to sport and delight in the birds at Font-Hill, we cannot, however, enter, though any reader who turns to the essay will find it not the least entertaining of the many interesting papers which make up the present volume.
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