In his prose writings, as in his poetry, Coleridge is perhaps, rather to be regarded as the successful stimulator of other writers than as himself a writer, whose power is acknowledged by the general public. As regards the attainment of their main professed end, Coleridge's prose writings may have had little direct value. In mental science, or psychology, he espoused a particular hypothesis (that propounded by Schellnig) of the 'absolute.' But, apart from the system itself, Coleridge has done little either to advance or diffuse it. As he got it from Germany, so has he left it.
In moral science Coleridge also followed the later German meta. physicians, who make moral science a part of psychology. Ili. political doctrines,—which appear to us confused and often singularly Inaccurate—are explained in the first volume of the ' Friend.' His theological views (many of them very far from the standard of orthodoxy, especially on the subject of inspiration), have only been given to tho world in posthumous publications. It was one of his most cherished schemes—his favourite vision in cloudland—to compose a work of colossal proportions which should embrace the whole range of mental philosophy taken in its widest meaning. He really only wrote a few disconnected fragments of his mighty task. But these fragments have proved of Immense sugeestiveness to younger intellects, and whatever be the position which Coleridge shall ultimately take among the thinkers of his country and his age, there can be now no question as to his great influence on the mitel of the time.
And incomplete as they arc, there is not one of Coleridge's prose writings which has not incidental merits snfficiently many and great to rescue it from oblivion with the general reader—merits discernible either in scattered criticisms on our older writers both of poetry an prose, or in illustrations drawn from stores of knowledge which a very wide reading had amassed, or in passages of great aonteness and sound practical wisdom, whenever the author lowers his flight to subjects, to which such qualities can bo applied with any hope as it were of immediate practical profit. And though, from the combined
effects of indolence and of an intense devotion to conversational display, his ordinary style of writing is diffuse and obscure, and too much loaded with quotations, these works contain occasional passages of great beauty and power. In treating lighter subjects, his style may even be pronounced happy. Witness his account of Sir Alexander Ball in the third, and the tale of Maria Sehfining in the secmd 'Landing-place ' of the ' Friend.' Coleridge's fame will greatly rest upon his powers as a critic in poetry and the fine arts. To establish his fame in this respect, there are his ' Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution' (published in the second volume of Colcridge's ' Literary Remains'), his review of Mr. Wordsworth'a poetry, in the second volume of the ' Biographia Literaria,' which is perhaps the most philosophical piece of criticism extaut in the language; and also his review of 51r. Maturin's 'Bertram; which, though, when first published, it exposed him to much obloquy and many imputations of jealousy, is distinguished from common criticisms, if by nothing else, by a combust reference to first principles and a freedom from personality. The task of collecting and editing the unpublished works of Coleridge, so carefully and reverently per formed by the poet's nephew and daughter, Henry Nelson and Sara Coleridge, has by their deaths devolved upon his sou Derwent, who in 1853 published a fifth and concluding volume of the ' Literary Remains,' and has been said to be contemplating that much-needed labour, a life of the poet and a collected edition of his works.