-

that is, his to the shal

kid gloves,' and adapting his experiments public experiments at the Royal Institution low and trivial taste of mere amateurs, who happened to be in powerful stations. Still more, he complained of what he considered Davy's sycophancy and subservience to women of fashion and high rank. Coleridge assured me that Davy was much admired by various women of quality; and so enthusiastically by some, that they would exclaim audibly at the public lecture room - 'Oh, those eyes! those brilliant eyes!' and that the philosopher was weak enough to be pleased with this homage.

Worse even than this, in Coleridge's eyes, was Davy's behavior at fashionable dinner-tables, especially at Lord Darnley's, where the élite of the London savans and literati at that time congregated. Davy was charged, by many others as well as Coleridge, with too much forgetting the dignity of science in such society, and too openly laying himself out to win favor or applause. 'I could read in Lady Darnley's eyes,' said Coleridge one day, when reporting an instance of Davy's suppleness in accommodating himself to a very great man's theory of aeroliths—'I could read plainly in Lady Darnley's eyes the very words "I despise this man; this man is degrading himself wilfully." However, it must be remembered that Sir H. Davy had a much larger and readier introduction into fashionable society than Coleridge. To profess any one intelligible art or accomplishment, and in this one to have attained an acknowledged or reputed preeminence, is a far better passport into privileged society than to have the largest intellectual pretensions of a less determinate class. The very narrowness of a man's claims, by making them definite and appreciable, is an advantage. Not merely a leader in a branch of art which presupposes a high sense of beauty, a cultivated taste,

VOL. I.

4

and other gifts properly intellectual, but even in some art presuming little beyond manual dexterity, is sure of his election into the exclusive circles. Not merely a painter, therefore, but a fiddler, provided only he be the first of his order nay, I doubt not, a 'chin-chopper' or Jews'. harp player, if only he happen to exceed all other chinchoppers or Jew-harpists—will find himself a privileged man in comparison with the philosopher, or the very largest and amplest intellect that ever nature endowed or education expanded. The advantage lies in doing a thing which has a name, an assignable name; and the narrower is the art, the more appreciable are the degrees of merit in that art.

Now, it is the distinction, the being foremost, the place of protagonist, or Coryphæus in an art, which forms the ground of eligibility to that society which is par excellence distingué. An actor, therefore, beyond almost any other artist, except only the portrait painter, whose very craft is exercised in the society of its patrons, and cannot (unless partially) be otherwise exercised an actor, I say, more easily than others, is admitted to graduate in such society, because his rank as an artist is more precisely ascertained by public reputation daily put to the test. Humiliating to any intellectual man, thinking haughtily of those pretensions, and standing upon no other title himself, is the collision which sometimes will befall him in aristocratic houses, with actors even of a low order: for in behalf of such actors, supposing them to have comic talents for drollery, is sometimes suspended the general rule which demands first-rate excellence; fourth or fifth-rate excellence on the stage being very compatible with superiority in convivial talents. Never shall I forget the wrath with which a London wit, who had indisputable powers of conversation, repeated the circumstances of a professional call,

which he made, by appointment, (for he was a lawyer,) upon Y-ng, the tragic actor, who, in the absence of higher powers, then presided on the metropolitan stage:'Sir,' said he, 'in the room where I was left to cool my heels until the great man should find himself disengaged for a person so inconsiderable as myself, there were strewed upon a table, for scenic effect, cards of invitation to dinner parties of grandee lords by the dozen, and to the balls, routes, soirées, and heaven knows what all, of countesses, ambassadresses, and duchesses by the score -ay, and all falling within a few days; more than ever I shall have in my whole life.' Yet this man, who thus complained, was rather a brilliant diner-out,' as it is called.

Coleridge, as is notorious, whenever he happened to be in force, or even in artificial spirits, was even more than brilliant; to use a word too often abused and prostituted, he was even magnificent beyond all human standards; and a felicitous conversational specimen from him, was sometimes the most memorable chapter in a man's whole intellectual experience through life. Yet this Coleridge was not in request, was not sought after in the aristocratic circles of London to their shame be it said! He had just such introductions

such and so many

as would, if turned to account by a pushing, worldly man, have slipped him on sufferance into many more houses of the same distinction. An invitation more or less, costs little to a woman of fashion; and he might have kept his ground, as many admitted bores do, upon toleration, in some two or three hundred great privileged mansions. Coleridge, however, had dignity of character sufficient to court no such distinctions; nor would his spirits have been equal to expense of labor requisite in so enormous a capital, for a duty so widely dispersed. Neither do I overlook the fact that Mr. Coleridge's peculiar powers were not

the

adapted to parties beyond the scale of a small dinner party. Yet still I contend, that, for the honor of literature, and for the sake of expressing a public homage to the most majestic forms in which the intellect of the age expresses itself, and by way of conciliating the grace and sanction of Scholarship and authentic Philosophy to the circles of rank and wealth, upon the same principle which leads those same circles to court the inferior sanction and grace of Art, even in its lowest walks for all these reasons, Coleridge should have been courted and wooed into such society.

I am not apt to praise the continent at the expense of my own country; but here is an instance in which (generally speaking) the continental taste is better than ours. No great meeting is complete in Germany, in France, in Italy, unless the intellect of the land its scholarship, its philosophy, its literature-be there by deputation the table is not full,' unless these great leading interests are there represented. We inaugurate our wine cups by remembering the King's health; we inaugurate (let it not be thought profane to make such an allusion) our great civil transactions by prayer and remembrance of our highest relations: in reason, then, and by all analogy, we should inaugurate and legitimate, as it were, our meetings of festal pleasure, by the presence of intellectual power and intellectual grace, as the ultimate sources upon which we should all be glad to have it thought that our pleasures depend. Aristocracy of Britain! be not careless of the philosophy and intellect of the age, lest it be thought that your pursuits and taste exist in alienation from both. Dr. Johnson had talked himself into being so much talked of, that he — had he lived for another generation would have become indispensable to fashionable parties. Coleridge, who, most

assuredly, was far superior in creative power and fertility of new intuitions to Dr. Johnson, and immeasurably superior in the philosophic understanding, (for, in direct philosophic speculation, Dr. Johnson never even attempted anything, except in one little pamphlet against Soame Jenyns,) was scarcely beginning to be heard of amongst the higher circles of England when he died. The reason for comparing him with Dr. Johnson is on account of their common gifts of colloquial power.*

Did I not once hear a friend objecting to me such cases as those of Gibbon ? - and, again, Wordsworth,' said he-' him I met at the Marchioness of Salisbury's party, at Canning's, at the English Ambassador's in Paris, and so forth.' True; but Gibbon was a Member of Parliament, and in that capacity, not as a literary man, he had made his connections. Wordsworth, again, was introduced to the great world by Sir George Beaumont, a powerful friend; for he had a large fortune, having no children, and stood midway as a connecting link between the world of art and the world of fashion. Most cases are liable to some personal or casual explanation of this sort, where they seem to be exceptions to the general rule, that commanding intellect is not peculiarly welcome in the most aristocratic circles; or, at least, not in anything like that proportion in which art, nay, the lowest branches of the lowest arts, are welcome; for these are absolutely courted. Actors, for seventy or eighty years

* Three persons, in all, may be mentioned, from the ranks of intellectual people, who have had a footing in privileged society I mean, not merely had an admission there, but a known and extensive acceptation. These three were- Lord Byron, Dr. Johnson, and Sir Walter Scott. Now, it is observable that the first was, in some sense, a denizen of such society in right of birth and rank; and, of both the others, it is remarkable that their passes were first countersigned by kings - Dr. Johnson's by George III., Sir Walter's by George IV.