appear that he has contributed something of his own to the stock he so unscrupulously appropriates, we fear that he has not the smallest chance of an acquittal. For it is not true that he has made even the smallest return. Schelling might have been a beggar for any thing that he gives him out of his own pocket, in repayment of the very large sums which he secretly draws from the bank of German transcendentalism. Instead of having toiled out, as he says, "much for himself," he has left the whole of the toil to Schelling: his own toil being merely (without saying one articulate word about it) to render, page after page, into very tolerable English, some of the profound speculations of the German thinker. In every instance in which we meet with any remarks more than usually profound, bearing upon the higher metaphysics, it is Schelling and not Coleridge that we are reading. Instead of having converged (as he leads us to suppose he has done) the rays of his own independent mind into one common focus with the German, he leaves that philosopher shining on alone, and illuminating, as he best may, his own dark discussions. Not one ray of light, we maintain, is any where thrown by him upon Schelling's system; and further than this, we maintain that not only is it an incorrect statement that "many of the most striking resemblances, and all the main and fundamental ideas, were matured in his mind before he had ever seen a single page of the German philosopher"—not only is this an incorrect statement; but there is not the smallest evidence in this, or any other of his works, betokening any "coincidence" whatever between him and Schelling—there is no proof to be met with, that he ever travelled so much as one step in the same line of thought with him, except.—mark you, reader—except in the case of those passages which are faithful and (with the omission of a few very unimportant interpolations) verbatim translations from that author. Therefore our verdict must be, that Coleridge, in the passages in which he deprecates the charge of plagiarism, and defends his dealings with Schelling, does not speak out plainly—does not, in reality, give the German philosopher his due—does not act fairly towards his reader, but conveys to his mind an impression that he is doing one thing when he is doing quite another thing; in other words, conveys an impression altogether false, erroneous, and misleading.
It must be remembered, that we are at present speaking of Coleridge only in reference to his connexion with the transcendental philosophy. He lays a good deal of stress on his possession of "the main and fundamental ideas" of that system. We ourselves, in our day, have had some small dealings with "main and fundamental ideas," and we know this much about them, that it is very easy for any man, or for every man, to have them. There is no difficulty in that. The difficulty lies in bringing them intelligibly, effectively, and articulately out—in elaborating them into clear and intelligible shapes for this appears to be the nature of fundamental ideas—the more you endeavour to extrude them, the stronger does their propensity become to run inwards, and to get out of sight. Now, it is precisely in the counteraction of this tendency, and in the power to force these ideas outwards, that philosophical genius displays itself. indeed, it is the ability to do this which constitutes philosophical genius. The mere fact of the ideas being in you is nothing—how are they to be got out of you in the right shape, is the question. It is the delivery and not the conception that is the poser. Wasps and even dung-flies, we suppose, are able to collect the juice of flowers, and this juice may be called their "fundamental ideas." So far they are on an equal footing with the bee; that is, they possess the "raw material" just as much as he does. But the bee alone is a genius among flies, because he alone can put out his ideas in the shape of honey, and thereby make the breakfast-table glad. When, therefore, Mr Coleridge tells us, that, before Schelling's time, he was in possession "of all the main and fundamental ideas" of the transcendental philosophy, we reply—very likely—that, in one sense, is just what you, or we, or any weaver in the suburbs might be in possession of; but show us your honey, for that alone will convince us that you are the philosophic genius you wish us to believe you to be. To this Mr Coleridge, instead of producing any stores of his own, makes answer
