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Sir Leslie Stephen, Coleridge, and Two Coleridgeans
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In the DNB the lives of both Coleridge and Coleridge's disciple, F. D. Maurice, are by Sir Leslie Stephen. At first thought it may appear rather curious that Stephen undertook to write these lives, because ostensibly he could have had very little in common with the subject of either. As a matter of fact, however, his interest in both men was unusual; he was almost fascinated by them. The strict rationalist and scientific biographer is likely to find much to challenge him in the mystic philosopher and transcendentalist, particularly in such protean philosophers as Coleridge and Maurice. Confronting them, he feels a special urge to make the crooked straight, to render the unintelligible intelligible, and to provide a clear, hard-headed interpretation of confused, soft-headed thinking. Although Sir Leslie was not quite a strict rationalist or a purely scientific biographer, there was enough of both in him to explain his willingness to write the lives of Coleridge and Maurice. Any effort to evaluate or even understand these lives should therefore be supported by a knowledge of Stephen's real attitude toward his subjects.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1940
References
1 According to C. E. Raven, who has made a thorough and scholarly study of Maurice and the Christian-Socialist movement, Stephen should never have undertaken to write Maurice's life for the DNB. Christian Socialism, 1848–54 (London, 1920), p. 77 n.
2 F. W. Maitland, The Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen (London, 1906), p. 388.
3 Ibid., pp. 421–422.
4 Ibid., p. 314.
5 Maitland, op. cit., p. 315.
6 In Hours in a Library, 3 vols. (New York and London, 1894), iii, 339–368.
7 Sir Leslie Stephen, Some Early Impressions (London, 1924), pp. 110–111.
8 [Sir] Leslie Stephen, “James Dykes Campbell,” in Campbell's S. T. Coleridge, A Narrative of the Events of his Life, second edition (London and New York, 1896), p. xxiv.
9 Maitland, op. cit., pp. 41–42.
10 Ibid., p. 152.
11 Fraser's Magazine, lxxxi (1870), 311–325. For discussions of Maurice's position as a Broad-Churchman and of his indebtedness to Coleridge, see my articles “Was F. D. Maurice a Broad-Churchman?” Church History, iii (September, 1934), 222–231; “Coleridge, Maurice, and the Distinction between the Reason and the Understanding,” PMLA, li (1936), 459–475; and “Maurice as a Commentator on Coleridge,” PMLA, liii (1938), 230–243.
12 Ibid.
13 “Fraser on the Broad Church,” Spectator, xliii (March 19, 1870), 373.
14 “The Broad Church,” Spectator, xliii (1870), 402.
15 Maitland, op. cit., p. 240.
16 Fortnightly Review, xxi (1874), 595–617.
17 Maitland, op. cit., p. 243.
18 Written in 1903 and published in the National Review at the end of that year; not published in book form until 1924.
19 For a spirited defense of Maurice by Tom Hughes against Matthew Arnold and others, see the Preface to Maurice's Friendship of Books (London, 1880).
20 Some Early Impressions, pp. 63–67.
21 Maitland, op. cit., p. 261. For additional information about Stephen's relation to Maurice, see the Life of F. D. Maurice Chiefly Told in His Own Letters, edited by his son, Frederick Maurice, 2 vols. (London, 1884), ii, 327–328, 339, 536, 599–609.
22 Stephen, “James Dykes Campbell,” pp. xxiii–xxiv.
23 Campbell's life of Coleridge was first published as the “Biographical Introduction” to The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge (London, 1893). In somewhat expanded form it was published as a separate book in 1894. The second edition, to which the memoir of Campbell was added, appeared in 1896.
24 Stephen, “Campbell,” p. xxix.
25 Stephen, “Campbell,” p. xxxvii.
26 Maitland, op. cit., p. 442.