contrary, to be a downright plagiarist. In the same way Coleridge, who has dealt in this manner, and (a few extremely insignificant variations and interpolations excepted) in no other manner, with the writings of the German philosopher, must be held, notwithstanding all his warnings and protestations, to have afforded us "a certain proof that the passages have been borrowed from Schelling, and the conceptions originally learned from him;" and that be himself has been guilty of direct palpable plagiarism, and, we regret to say, of worse than plagiarism, in thus giving the denial to a fact established by the clearest and most irresistible evidence.
But that is not the most important feature of the defence to be attended to. We ask, what is the general impression left on a reader's mind by the passage quoted? Is it not this: that Coleridge, having "borne the burden and the heat of the day;' and having made good his own independent advances in philosophy, had, in the person of Schelling, fallen in with a fellow labourer moving along the same difficult path with himself, and at the most only with a step somewhat firmer than his own? Is it not this: that, having "toiled out much for himself," and "many of the most striking resemblances, indeed all the main and fundamental ideas, having been born and matured in his mind before he had ever seen a single page of the German philosopher," he was prepared to pour from the lamp of an original though congenial thinker a flood of new light upon the dark doctrines with which he so genially coincided? Is not this what we are reasonably led by his language to expect? Nay, is not this what a reader unacquainted with foreign philosophy would believe Coleridge, from his own statement, to be actually performing in the case of' the numerous passages throughout the Biographia Literaria, which open up glimpses into a philosophy far profounder than the common? Then, as to the exclamation, "God forbid! that I should be suspected a wish to enter into a rivalry with Schelling for the honour so unequivocally his right;" does it not second this belief, and stand forth as a sort of guarantee that these passages are not literally Schelling's own, but that they are "genial coincidences" on the part of Coleridge, which he is generously disposed to make over to his "German predecessor, though contemporary?" (He cannot even admit him to have been his predecessor, without a qualification.) And further, in the sentence where Coleridge writes—"Whether a work is the offspring of a man's own spirit, and the product of original thinking, will be discovered by better tests than the mere reference to dates;" is not the impression conveyed, and evidently meant to be conveyed, this, that though Coleridge did not publish his ideas on the transcendental philosophy until after Schelling, still, notwithstanding that, "his work is the offspring of his own spirit, and the product of original thinking?"
Such, unquestionably, is the general impression conveyed by Coleridge's indefinite admissions. The question between him and his reader then comes to be this: is this impression a true or a false one? Does Coleridge really perform what he leads the reader to believe he is performing—or does he not? For his exculpation must depend very much upon an affirmative answer being returned to this question. Now we should say, that provided Coleridge has any where throughout his book shown any indication of having brought the power of an independent mind to bear upon the difficult problems with which the German metaphysician is manfully grappling, provided he has identified himself with the philosophy, by having reflected upon it the light of his own original thinking—then the impression is a true one. Even in that case we think it would have been as well had he acknowledged specifically the instances in which he makes use of Schelling's identical words—but about that we should not have been at all particular—and his not having done so would not have been founded upon by us as a just ground of complaint. Not only should we have found no fault with him; but, knowing the very great value to be attached to a genuine coincidence between two independent thinkers upon any great philosophical question, we should have been exceedingly thankful to him for the pains he had taken in making Schelling's system his own, and his own system Schelling's; both of which things he leads us to believe he does.
But, alas! if this controversy can be decided in Coleridge's favour, (as we think it can,) only provided it should
