COLERIDGE Here is the sketch of Coleridge as he appeared to a contemporary :— Fair-haired and tall, slim but of stately mien, Inheritor of a high poetic name, Another, in the bright bloom of nineteen, Fresh from the pleasant fields of Eton came: Whate’er of beautiful or poet sung Or statesman uttered, round his memory clung; Before him shone resplendent heights of fame. With friends around the board, no wit so fine To wing the jest, the sparkling tale to tell; Yet ofttimes listening in St. Mary’s shrine, Profounder moods upon his spirit fell: We heard him then, England has heard him since, Uphold the fallen, make the guilty wince, And the hushed Senate have confessed the spell. The other Balliol scholars celebrated in the same poem were Clough, Pritchard, Archbishop Temple of Canterbury, Riddell, Matthew Arnold, and Seymour. The last of these, a man of very great promise, died early at Laibach in Carniola. His sister was Coleridge’s first wife; they were married when Coleridge was only five and twenty, and just about the same time he was called to the Bar. Coleridge used to say that the difference between his father and himself was that the former had started in life with a thousand pounds he had borrowed, while, with better fortune, he had started with a thousand pounds of his own. He was called to the Bar on 6th November 1846, and went the Western Circuit, rising steadily, through more than twenty years of hard work, till in July 1865 he was returned as member for Exeter in the Liberal interest. The impression which he made on the heads of his party was so favourable that they determined, early in the session of 1867, to put him forward as the protagonist of their attack on the Conservative Government. But that move seemed to many of their staunchest adherents unwise, and it was frustrated by the active opposition of a section, including Hastings Russell (later ninth duke of Bedford), his brother Arthur, member for Tavistock, Alexander Mitchell of Stow, Kinglake, and Henry Seymour. They met to deliberate in the Tea-room of the House, and were afterwards sometimes confounded with the Tea-room party which was of subsequent formation and under the guidance of a different group. The protest was sufficient to prevent the contemplated attack being made, but the Liberals returned to power in good time with a large majority behind them in 1868. Coleridge was made, first, Solicitor-, and then Attorney-General. As early as 1863 a small body of Oxford men in Parliament had opened fire against the legislation which kept their University bound by ecclesiastical swaddling clothes. They had made a good deal of progress in converting the House of Commons to their views before the General Election of 1865. That election having brought Coleridge into Parliament, he was hailed as a most valuable ally, whose great University distinction, brilliant success as an orator at the Bar, and hereditary connexion with the High Church party, entitled him to take the lead in a movement which, although gathering strength, was yet very far from having achieved complete success. The clericallyminded section of the Conservative party could not but listen to the son of Sir John Coleridge, the godson of Keble, and the representative of the man who had been the indirect cause of the Anglican revival of 1833,—for John Stuart Mill was right when he said that Coleridge and Bentham were, so far as England was concerned, the leaders of the two chief movements of their times : “ it was they who taught the teachers, and who were the two great seminal minds.” Walking up one evening from the House of Commons to dine at the Athenaeum with Henry Bruce (afterwards
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Lord Aberdare) and another friend, Coleridge said: “There is a trial coming on which will be one of the most remarkable causes celebres that has ever been heard of.” This was the Tichborne case, of which so much was said ere many weeks had passed over, and which led to proceedings in the criminal courts rising almost to the dignity of a political event. These two trials were the most conspicuous features of Coleridge’s later years at the Bar, and tasked his powers as an advocate to the uttermost, though he was assisted by the splendid abilities and industry of Charles (afterwards Lord) Bowen. In November 1873 Coleridge succeeded Sir W. Bovill as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and was immediately afterwards raised to the Peerage as Baron Coleridge of Ottery St Mary. In 1880 he was made Lord Chief Justice of England on the death of Sir Alexander Cockburn. In jury cases his quickness in apprehending facts and his lucidity in arranging them were very remarkable indeed. He was not one of the most learned of lawyers, but he was a great deal more learned than many people believed him to be, and as an ecclesiastical lawyer had perhaps few or no superiors. His fault—a natural fault in one who had been so successful as an advocate—was that of being too apt to take one side. He allowed, also, certain political or class prepossessions to interfere somewhat with the even course of justice. A game-preserving landlord had not to thank the gods when his case, however buttressed by undoubted right, came before Coleridge. Towards the end of his life his health failed, and he became somewhat indolent. On the whole, he was not so strong a man in his judicial capacity as Campbell or Cockburn; but when all has been said that could reasonably be said in his disparagement, even Rhadamanthus would have to admit that his scholarship, his refinement, his power of oratory, and his character raised the tone of the Bench while he sat upon it, and that if it has been adorned by greater judicial abilities, it has hardly ever been adorned by a greater combination of varied merits. It is curious to observe that of all judges the man whom he put highest was one very unlike himself, the great Master of the Rolls, Sir William Grant. He died in harness. Early in the ’nineties his friends could see that he began to feel his age. He made, indeed, no secret of it; but he might have lasted a little longer if a summer cold had not precipitated the end. He died on 14th June 1894. Coleridge’s work, first as a barrister and then as a judge, prevented his publishing as much as he otherwise would have done, but his addresses and papers would, if collected, fill several volumes and do much honour to his memory. One of the best, and one most eminently characteristic of the man, was his Inaugural Address to the Philosophical Institution at Edinburgh in 1870. He was an exceptionally good letter-writer. Of travel he had very little experience. He had hardly entered Paris; once, quite near the end of his career, he spent a few days in Holland, and came back a willing slave to the genius of Rembrandt; but his longest absence from England was a visit to the United States, which had something of a business character. It is strange that a man so steeped in Greek and Roman poetry, so deeply interested in the past, present, and future of Christianity, never saw Rome, or Athens, or the Holy Land. The chief cause, no doubt, was the fatal custom of neglecting modern languages at English schools. He felt himself at a disadvantage when he passed beyond English-speaking lands, and cordially disliked the situation. No notice of Coleridge can omit to make mention of his extraordinary store of anecdotes, which were nearly always connected with Eton, Oxford, the Bar, or the Bench. His exquisite voice, considerable
