Count's "Der Felsen strom"—"The Cataract" subjoining the original in a note[1] for the benefit of unbelievers:—
"Unperishing youth!
Thou streamest from forth
Out of the rock-clift;
Never mortal saw
The cradle of the strong one;
Never ear heard
The babbling of the noble one in his spray-scattering well.
The sun clothes thee in rays of glory;
He paints with the colours of the heavenly bow
The wavering clouds of the dust-flood."
Having alluded to the Quarterly Review, we shall here take the liberty of extracting part of a sentence, from that very able work, touching another of Coleridge's coincidences:—" We cannot" (says the Quarterly, vol. lii. P. 21)—" we cannot miss this opportunity of mentioning the curious act, that, long before Goethe's Faust had appeared in a complete state—indeed before Mr Coleridge had ever seen any part of it—he had planned a work upon the same, or what he takes to be the same, idea." This is certainly a curious fact; but we do not think our readers will consider it so very curious, now that a good deal of light has been thrown upon the nature of his other "coincidences."
We have now done with our subject. We have set forth and argued the case of Coleridge's plagiarisms, precisely as we should have done that of any other person who had carried them on to the same extent. By this we mean to say, that we have accorded to him—on the plea of peculiar habits, or peculiar intellectual conformation—no privilege, or immunity, or indulgence, which we would not equally have accorded to any plagiarist of the most methodical ways and of the most common clay. And in acting thus, we think we have acted rightly. For why should a man, who has been more highly gifted than his fellows, be therefore held less amenable than they to the laws which ought to bind all human beings, and regulate their relations and their dealings with one another? It is high time that genius should cease to be pleaded as an excuse for deviations from the plain path of rectitude, or be held up as a precedent which the leading men of future generations may avail themselves of, should they be inclined to depart from the strict standards of propriety and truth.
That Coleridge was tempted into this course by vanity, by the paltry desire of applause, or by any direct intention to defraud others of their due, we do not believe; this never was believed, and never will be believed. But still he was seduced into it—God knows how: he did defraud others of their due, and therefore we have considered it necessary to expose his proceedings, and to vindicate the rights of his victims. Perhaps we might have dwelt more than we have done upon what many may consider the extenuating circumstances of his case—we mean his moral and intellectual conformation, originally very peculiar, and further modified by the effects of immoderate opium-taking. But this would only take us out of one painful subject into another still more distressing. We therefore say no more. Our purpose will have been answered, should any future author who may covet his neighbour's Pegasus or prose-nag, and conceive that the high authority of Coleridge may, to a certain extent, justify him in making free with them, be deterred from doing so by the example we have now put forth in terrorem. Let all men know and consider that plagiarism, like murder, sooner or later will out.
- ↑ "Unsterblicher Jungling!
Du strömest hervor!
Au der Felsenkluft. !
Kein Sterblicher sah!
Die Wiege des Starken: !
Es hörte kein Ohr, !
Das Lallen des Edlen im sprudelnden Quell. !
Dich kleidet die Sonne!
In Strahlen des Ruhmes! !
Sie mahlet mit Farben des himmlischen Bogens!
Die schwebenden Wolken der staüdenden Fluth."
—Vide Vol. I., p. 104, Gesammelte Werke der Bruder Christian und Fred. Leopold Grafen. zu Stolberg. Hamburg: 1820.
