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Coleridge Marginalia in a Volume of Descartes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Although printed forty years ago in a once well-known textbook, certain marginalia written by Coleridge in a copy of Descartes' Opera Philosophica have never, I believe, been the subject of any comment. They are, however, of considerable interest, aside from that of a sentimental kind, for of four notations—one a mere reference for later transcription—two have relationship, hitherto unnoticed as far as I am aware, with a paragraph in the Biographia Literaria, and the reference is to a passage part of which was quoted as a volume motto in The Friend.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1934
References
1 Torrey, Henry A. P, The Philosophy of Descartes, Series of Modern Philosophers, (New York: Holt, 1892), as footnotes, with acknowledgement but no comment.
2 Amstelodami, 1685.
3 Not even in the only review of Torrey's volume which I have been able to find, Philosophical Review, i (1892).
4 Class of 1839, University of Vermont. One of numerous students who were influenced by the chief Coleridgian of his time in America. President James Marsh. Cf. n. 6 infra.
5 New York: Harper, 1853.
6 Cf. Nicolson, Marjorie H, “James Marsh and the Vermont Transcendentalists,” Philosophical Review, xxxiv, 1 (Jan., 1925), p. 28.
7 Haney, J. L, A Bibliography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (Philadelphia: Printed for Private Circulation, 1903), p. 111, No. 92. No other Descartes item is listed among the “Marginalia.” It may be of interest to students of Coleridge to know that the marginalia of another lost item of Haney's list I have recently brought to light through transcripts made by Professor Shedd.
8 Biographia Literaria (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1847), i, 303.
9 Mod. Phil., xxi, 320.
10 Brucker, Hist. Crit. Phil. (Lipsiae, 1766) Tomi iv. Pars Altera, p. 200 f.
11 Life, p. 318.
12 Letters (1895), i, 351 n. Cf. Griggs, E. L., Unpublished Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: Constable, 1932), i, 173.
13 Idem., i, 345; Turnbull, A., Biographia Epistolaris, i, 224. The quotation is from Meditations, ii.
14 Anima Poetae, 11, 12, 13.
15 One may add that the passage from which Coleridge quoted in his letter to Davy has a close resemblance to the section of the Principia above, and thus each would serve to make the other stand out more clearly in Coleridge's memory. A reading of the two passages in their context will make the point apparent.
16 Anima Poetae, p. 11.
17 Biographia Literaria, Chapter viii, i, 247 (1847).
18 In Biographia Literaria, i, 216 (1847), speaking of Hobbes' contribution to the law of association, Coleridge says, “Whenever we feel several objects at the same time, the impressions that are left (or in the language of Mr. Hume, the ideas) are linked together.” The similarity to the part of the letter of February 3, 1801, to Davy, is obvious. The agreement is comparatively insignificant and perhaps only a case of coincidence, but worth noticing, perhaps, in view of what has been said above. Cf. Griggs, op. cit., i, 354.
19 Turnbull, op. cit., i, 270.
20 He quotes in the year 1803 or before from Descartes' Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii. Vide Snyder, Alice D., Coleridge on Logic and Learning, p. 62. The quotation is found in Oeuvres (Adam and Tannery), x, 406.
21 Cf. Allsop, Letters of S. T. Coleridge, i, 138: “The idea of the mind forming images of itself, is as absurd as the belief of Descartes with respect to the external world.” Also Aids to Reflection, (Shedd) 359; Turnbull, op. cit., ii, 18.
22 Cf. Gilman, Life, p. 318.
23 Scattered references to Descartes are fairly numerous in Coleridge's writings. In the Biographia Literaria, for example, there are in all some ten references, of which four are only incidental. Of the rest, four include brief quotation.
24 First American edition, from the second English, (Burlington, 1831), p. 174.
25 The only other copy of the Opera available (Amstelodami: apud Danielem Elsevirium, 1677), agrees with the 1685 edition in question.
26 Cf. Sara Coleridge, Bio. Lit. (1847) i, 28 n.: “My father trusted to his memory, knowing it to be powerful and not aware that it was inaccurate, in order to save his legs and his eyes. I suspect that he quoted even longish passages in Greek without copying them, by the slight differences that occur.”
27 His usual practice. Cf. Athenaeum. No. 3612 (Jan. 16, 1897), p. 86.
28 Cf. Muirhead, Coleridge as Philosopher, p. 83 ff.; Snyder, op. cit., p. 70; Aids to Reflection (Shedd), p. 218.
29 Sara Coleridge here, Bio. Lit. (1847) Ch. viii, i, 245 n., refers to Prin. Phil. Pt. 1, Articles 52–53, 63–64. Now in the annotated copy of Descartes all these sections together with 51 have small pencilled x's opposite them. They may have been made by Coleridge, but I do not believe so; nor can they be by Sara Coleridge, because she refers to a 1664 edition of Descartes. Possibly they were made by some one looking up the references. There are a few other noteworthy marks in pencil in the Coleridge Descartes. The famous Ego cogito, ergo sum in Art. vii is underlined and there are two carelessly dashed pencil strokes in the margin, perhaps by Coleridge. Cf. Bio. Lit. i, 358, Coleridge's note on the logic of Descartes' dictum. De Pass. Pt. i, Art. xvi, has motus automati underlined. This is perhaps by Coleridge, who comments on the article. See below. Article xviii has a considerable section, anima … corpus underlined with “Will” written in the margin. Bio. Lit. i, 214. Prin. Phil. Pt. i, Art. xxiii, has quia non est res underlined with a note, “Neither is holiness res; yet God wills it, and works in man to ‘will’ it.” De Pass. Pt. 3, Art. clxxxvii, has producunt casu tragici underlined, perhaps by Coleridge, who comments on the article. See below. Some of the notes and markings may very well be by Dr. Green.
30 Cf. Table Talk, April 24, 1832.—As good an example as any, I think, is that of “The Pentad of Operative Christianity,” Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, xii.
31 Turnbull, op. cit., i, 128.
32 Op. cit. iv, 2, 384.
33 Herrig's Archiv, xcvii, 350.—Brandl prefaces the entry with the statement, “Das Folgende ist sehr undeutlich.” More remote, but distantly akin, is Coleridge's observation on tragedy quoted by Lowes, Road to Xanadu, 539: “In Tragedy we pronounce many things unnatural, only because we have drawn our notions from persons in a calm, or only moderately agitated state but in all violent states of Passion the mind acts and plays a part, itself the actor and spectator at once.”
34 Cf. Lowes, Road to Xanadu, p. 367 f.
35 Allsop, op. cit. i, 156.
36 Gutch Memorandum Book lists them as “Hymns to the Sun, the Moon, and the Elements,” six hymns, Archiv, xcvii, p. 354.
37 Bio. Lit., i, 300.
38 Published in 1796. Poems, ed. E. H. Coleridge, 1927, 58.
39 Bio. Lit., loc. cit.
40 Dejection: An Ode, n. Cf. Gingerich, “Transcendentalism in Coleridge,” PMLA xxxv, 1 (March, 1920), 28 f.