ledgment in the instances in which he was indebted to him. That, in general terms, is the charge. The defence is, that in this work there are certain general admissions in which he owns is obligations, and certain protestations, under which he strongly deprecates the charge of plagiarism even while he is in the very act of committing the offence. The question then comes to be—What weight is to be attached to these general admissions? What are we to understand from them? Do they speak out plainly, and lead us to form an accurate notion of what Coleridge's dealings with Schelling really are? Do they cover the whole extent of his obligation to him?—or do they not rather lead the reader to rank him (from his own showing) almost pari passu with the German philosopher in the latter's own particular line of thought?—To what extent do these protestations, or can any such protestations entitle him, or any one, to appropriate, without a specific acknowledgment, the property of another man? These questions can only be answered by attending to the terms in which his admissions and disclaimers are couched. in the Biographia Literaria, P. 148, Coleridge writes thus. We give the whole of his defence:—
"In Schelling's 'NATUR-PHILOSOPHIE' (Schelling, we may remark, never published any work under this title,) and the SYSTEM DES TRANSCENDENTALEN IDEALISMUS, I first found a genial coincidence with much that I had toiled out for myself, and a powerful assistance in what I had yet to do. It would be a mere act of justice to myself were I to warn my future readers that an identity of thought, or even similarity of phrase, will not at all times be a certain proof that the passage has been borrowed from Schelling, or that the conceptions were originally learned from him. In this instance, as in the Dramatic Lectures of Schlegel, which I have before alluded from the same motive of self-defense against the charge of plagiarism, many of the most striking resemblances, indeed all the main and fundamental ideas, were born and matured in my mind before I had even seen a single page of the German philosopher; and, I might indeed affirm with truth, before the more important works of Schelling had been written, or at least made public… God forbid! that I should be suspected of a wish to enter into a rivalry with Schelling for the honours so unequivocally his right, not only as a great and original genius, but as the founder of the philosophy of nature… To Schelling we owe the completion, and the most important victories of this revolution in philosophy. To me it will be happiness and honour enough should I succeed in rendering the system itself intelligible to my countrymen, and in the application of it to the most awful of subjects for the most important of purposes. Whether a work is the offspring of a man's own spirit, and the product of original thinking, will be discovered by those who are it sole legitimate judges, by better tests than the mere reference to dates. For readers in general, let whatever shall be found in this or any future work of mine that resembles or coincides. with the doctrines of my German predecessor, though contemporary, be wholly attributed to him; provided that the absence of distinct references to his books, which I could not at all times make with truth, as designating citations or thoughts actually derived from him, and which, I trust, would, after this general acknowledgment, be superfluous, be not charged on me as an ungenerous concealment or intentional plagiarism."
Such are the terms in which Coleridge arming himself beforehand, anticipates and deprecates the charge of plagiarism, and justifies all the liberties be may think proper to take with the writings of Schelling. Our decided opinion is, that his arms are very ineffectual, his panoply full of flaws, and that the ground he takes up, though specious enough, and an apparent shelter, will be found to be altogether untenable.
In the first place, we remark, that so long as human nature and the laws of evidence remain what they are, "an identity of thought and similarity of phrase," occurring in the case of two authors, must be held as a very strong proof that one of them has borrowed from the other. But in the present case it is not similarity: it is absolute sameness of phrase that we are prepared to bring forward against Coleridge; and this we maintain to be in every instance a certain proof that the passages, about which a. question is, have been borrowed. If a man were to publish some verses like Milton's Penseroso, the probability, to say the least, would be, that he had borrowed a good deal from Milton; but if he were to publish as his own some verses the same as the Penseroso, we should at once pronounce him, with complete certainty, and in spite of all he might say to the
