THE NEW ENGLANDER. No. CXXXI. APRIL, 1875. ARTICLE I.-THE LETTERS OF SARA COLERIDGE. Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge. Edited by her daughter. New York: Harper & Brothers, publishers, Franklin Square. 1874. WERE some hard-hearted dogmatist of the metaphysicotheological type that is said to have a cannon-ball where the heart ought to be-were some such ungracious cynic disposed to sneer at woman's intellect and to doubt her ability to pursue abstract and philosophical studies, we would commend such a one to the perusal of Sara Coleridge's thoughtful writings. Followed up by the study of Mary Somerville's works in astronomy and the higher mathematics, he might in time be pretty well cured of his scepticism. He could not say, in regard to the first-mentioned of these women at least, that hers was an exceptional case; that this poet's daughter, who had the features of a Greek muse, or a Sappho, with poetic soul to match, was a masculine-minded woman. Not at all. She was no "strong-minded" abhorrence of gods and men. spirit and a woman too." The strength as well as subtlety of She was "a her intellect was all "pure womanly." She does not seem to have belonged to the cerulean-hose order. There was no fear that she would be seen with dishevelled hair and ink on her thumb. As the daughter of Coleridge, the neice of the learned bibliopole, Dr. Southey, and brought up in his library at "Greta Hall," and gifted herself with rare intellectual powers, it was not strange that she took as naturally to books as the roots of a willow-tree seek the water. Her memoir-which like Mary Somerville's, recently published, is partly autobiographical-reveals a life without special incident. She was born in 1802, lived most of her youth, during her father's restless changes of abode, with her uncle Southey at Keswick, was married to her cousin in 1829, passed most of her married life in London, became a widow at forty, and died in 1852 at the age of forty-nine. She was early celebrated for her classic beauty of feature and form, though of rather a diminutive type, which she derived from her mother; but, intellectually, she was her father's child. It is indeed said of her, that "her father had looked down into her eyes and left in them the light of his own;" but the light in those marvelously large grey eyes was a serener ray that beamed more clearly into the mysterious depths of the soul. In that intuitive faculty which reaches the heart of things she showed original power. While the mind of Sara Coleridge was keen in its intellectual processes, was capable even of abstract thought, she had a depth of sympathetic insight surpassed by that of few theologians. She seems like one of the "wise women" that we read of in Scripture and classic literature. As strong men were led by the ancient German priestess in war and peace, and above all in religion, so this clear-eyed woman had conferred upon her a fine sense of spiritual things, a quiet inner sight, without the madness of the old priestess and prophetess. She had the keen sense and at the same time the trusting faith, the love, the purity, which constitute the interpreter of divine things. Our Lord himself declared that the truth was revealed to the obedient and loving heart. Pectus est quod facit theologum. While there must be the intellect there must also be the heart; or this really proud name of "theologian" means nothing, and can raise no spirits from the vast deep of the spiritual and divine. The intellect and the heart must go together. The mind which is sound in its reasoning faculties, but at the same time. sensitive in its spiritual perceptions, capable of moving in "the ampler ether and diviner air" of pure intuition, child-like yet seraphic, human as well as divine in its sympathies, taught by the heart and led by the Spirit of truth, which is also the Spirit of divine wisdom and love-this is the true theologic, or divining, mind, which is safest and surest. Better follow its unambitious upward leading than to follow the mere logical understanding which is the slave of its own narrow evolution of ideas, and which in its syllogistic and sophistical method of reasoning makes no real advance, and runs into endless circles of unproductive thought. In the following passage from a letter to a friend, Mrs. Coleridge thus discourses upon this very point, which passage will give a notion of the character of these "letters;" in which passage, it is to be noticed, she does not ignore the intellect -how could a daughter of the author of "Aids to Reflection" do so-regarded as a factor in the knowledge of divine truth: "This cannot be an answer to yours, dear friend; but in reply to some of your concluding sentences, I would reiterate my former assertions, that my father's religious views have in reality no more connection with the reasoning facultyneither more nor less-than yours or any one's else; although he has written so much about reason and the understanding. His theory of faith pre-eminently appeals to the heart, to the moral and spiritual being. He never supposed that the inspiration of Scripture, a spiritual subject, could be known or apprehended by mere intelligence. But he did maintain that the human mind is one, though it has many different powers, and that the moral and spiritual only subsist by the coinherence of the intelligential-that reason and will are necessary each to the other, so that the one is what it is as existing in union with the other. Have you not a doctrine of inspiration as well as feelings on the subject? If yes, by what faculty of your mind is that doctrine apprehended? Has reason, has thought, nothing to do with it? And have the heart and spirit naught to do with the views you seem to reject? My father does not judge of Inspiration by the intellect one iota more than others. Nay, I am sure his objection to the views he rejects is because they are so heartless, so empty, and unmeaning. Why should you assume that he judges Inspiration more than you judge it, by the view you take? On the subject of Reason and its province in religion, my father says nothing that has not been said by Christian philosophers and great divines of all ages. To say otherwise than as my father says, on this point, if carried out, is sheer Romanism. Denial of it is a denial of the Reformation, and makes every act of the Reformers flat rebellion and falsehood. What think you is my last appeal which is not your last appeal? Whither can either of us go as the last resort, the ultimatum of our religious search, but to the depths of the human spirit, the heart and conscience of which Reason is the pervading light, and in which God and his truth are mirrored? Have you then any place or object of appeal beyond this? Can you contemplate God and Christ except in your own soul?" (p. 339.) Were such a letter as this received by us without preparation suddenly some fine morning from a female friend, it might cause a shock. But when it comes along in a series of letters of much the same tone and import, it seems quite simple and natural. The writer was as earnestly and unconsciously engaged in such thoughts as some women are engaged in the matter of fashionable dress and society. She felt herself called to be the defender of her father's ideas. Here the acuteness and variety of her powers were brought out. She was an enthusiastic Coleridgean in philosophy. She entered profoundly into that system of metaphysics which added new brilliancy, life, and depth to English speculative studies. At the same time she was independent-as she was able to be-in her opinions on psychological subjects, and she showed considerable force in the field of pure theology, where her contemplative spirit, almost unerring in its sympathy with spiritual truth, aided her. After the death of her husband, Henry Nelson Coleridge, who was her father's literary executor and the editor of "Coleridge's Table Talk," she assumed herself the editorship of Coleridge's works. In this great labor of love, without designing it, she became an original author of many elaborate essays in which a prodigality of learning and thought are displayed. Among the most important of these papers might be mentioned the "Essay on Rationalism with a special application to the Doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration," appended to Vol. ii of the "Aids to Reflection;" the introduction to the "Biographia Literaria;" and a Preface to the collection of her father's political writings, entitled, “Essays on her own Times, by S. T. Coleridge." In her early youth, under the guidance of her uncle Southey, whom she pronounces to be "on the whole the best man she was ever acquainted with," her predilection was for literary and linguistic studies. This was the period when Wordsworth's fine poem of the "Triad" was written, in which she is thus alluded to: "Last of the Three, though eldest born, Of dawn or eve, fair vision of the west, Each grief, through meekness, settling into rest. Or I would have thee when some high wrought page Nor dread the depth of meditative eye, Its homage, offered up in purity. What wouldst thou more? In sunny glade, Was such a stillness ere diffused Since earth grew calm while angels mused?" The deep calm, the subjective life which she lived from her youth, is reflected in these lines as in the bosom of a still lake. She became a proficient in Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, and Spanish; so much so in the Latin, that when she was twenty years old, she published a work in three octavo. volumes, entitled "An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian people of Paraguay. From the Latin of Martin Dobrizhoffer, eighteen years a missionary in that country." Coleridge said of this work-"My dear daughter's translation of this book is, in my judgment, unsurpassed for pure mother-English by any thing I have read for a long time." Her literary taste was always exquisite as well as healthily vigorous. In this respect her "Letters" afford many examples; and these have the more value since they are "letters of friendship, not of authorship;" they spring from a sole desire to express herself to her dearest friends, without the intention of public display-as we see in the letters of Mad. de Sevigné--on subjects of her sincerest, deepest thought. She opens her whole soul. She speaks |