y has in this respect been
hardly treated. He led such a wholly unnatural life, he was at all times
and in all places so thoroughly excluded from the natural contact and
friction of society, that his utterances hardly partake of the ordinary
character of men's speech. In the "vacant interlunar caves" where he hid
himself, he could hardly feel the restraints that press on those who
move within ear-shot and jostle of their fellows on this actual earth.
This is not a triumphant defence, no doubt; but I think it is a defence.
And further, it has yet to be proved that De Quincey set down anything
in malice. He called his literary idol, Wordsworth, "inhumanly
arrogant." Does anybody--not being a Wordsworthian and therefore out of
reach of reason--doubt that Wordsworth's arrogance was inhuman? He, not
unprovoked by scant gratitude on Coleridge's part for very solid
services, and by a doubtless sincere but rather unctuous protest of his
brother in opium-eating against the _Confessions_, told some home truths
against that magnificent genius but most unsatisfactory man. A sort of
foolish folk has recently arisen which tells us that because Coleridge
wrote "The Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan," he was quite entitled to
leave his wife and children to be looked after by anybody who chose, to
take stipends from casual benefactors, and to scold, by himself or by
his next friend Mr. Wordsworth, other benefactors, like Thomas Poole,
who were not prepared at a moment's notice to give him a hundred pounds
for a trip to the Azores. The rest of us, though we may feel no call to
denounce Coleridge for these proceedings, may surely hold that "The
Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan" are no defence to the particular
charges. I do not see that De Quincey said anything worse of Coleridge
than any man who knew the then little, but now well-known facts of
Coleridge's life, was entitled to say if he chose. And so in other
cases. That he was what is called a thoughtful person--that is to say
that he ever said to himself, "Will what I am writing give pain, and
ought I to give that pain?"--I do not allege. In fact, the very excuse
which has been made for him above is inconsistent with it. He always
wrote far too much as one in another planet for anything of the kind to
occur to him, and he was perhaps for a very similar reason rather too
fond of the "personal talk" which Wordsworth wisely disdained. But that
he was in any proper sense spiteful, that is to