COLERIDGE'S "TABLE TALK."*
A WELCOME new edition is that of Coleridge's Table Talk and Ontniana, together with Table Talk and extracts from letters from Allsop's Recollections. As a Preface is given an extract from a paper by Coventry Patmore on " Great Talkers," published anonymously in the St. James's Gazette of March 13th, 1886. It is natural that the reader, in turning over the pages, should be arrested by those passages which seem peculiarly apposite to present events. Thus, with the example before us of the unfortunate extravagances that can be committed in the name of democracy; there is an added
interest in the following :—
" I never said that the vox poplin was of course the vox Dei. It may be ; but it may be, and with equal probability, a priori, ear Diaboli. That the voice of ten millions of men calling for the same thing is a spirit, I believe ; but whether that be a spirit of Heaven or Hell, I can only know by trying the thing called for by the prescript of reason and God's will."
Coleridge, in common with many thinkers, had his moments of suspicion of the stamina of his race. In 1833 he wrote :- " Now, after a long continuance of high national glory and in- fluence, when a revolution of a most searching and general char- acter is actually at work, and the old institutions of the country are all awaiting their certain destruction or violent modification— the people at large are perfectly secure, sleeping or gambolling on the very brink of a volcano."
Coventry Patmore, fifty years later, rebuked the pessimist, but added on his own behalf :-
" A nation in the heart of which there is so much vigour as there was in the England of fifty.years ago takes a good while a-dying ; but the alarmingly diminished vitality of our present England more than justifies the forebodings of the phikisophic politician."
Both quotations might have been written, with very little modifi- cation, by certain pessimists just previous to the outbreak of the Great War. It is always " the good old days," and the nation of the moment is degenerating ! The pessimists were all silenced in August, 1914, and we like to imagine what glowing tributes to the undiminished vitality of "our nrcsent England" would have come from the pen of Coleridge if he could have read of deeds done on the battle-fronts and on the high seas. The following anecdOte related by Coleridge, d propos of Wilkes, furnishes an amusing comment • The Table Talk and Cataifola of Samuel rabbi Coleridge. Oxford; at the University Press. 123. dd. net.J
on the very human tendency, to be observed to-day and common to all ages, to exalt political leaders into tin gods. The hero of the moment is above criticism; and failings are exalted into virtues :- " Well, Sir! ' exclaimed a lady, the vehement and impassionate partisan of Mr. Wilkes, in the day of his glory and during the broad blaze of his patriotism= Well, Sir ! and will you dare deny that Mr. Wilkes is a great man, and an eloquent man ? " Oh ! by no means, Madam! I have not a doubt respecting Mr. Wilkes's talents.' Well, but, Sir, is he not a fine man, too, and a handsome
man ' Why, Madam ! he squints, doesn't he ' ' Squints ? yes, to bo sure ha does, Sir ! but not a bit more than a gentleman and a man of sense ought to squint 1 ' "
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