Page images
PDF
EPUB

means to the masculine sex that it was confined. Cultivated women, the young and ardent especially, manifested a strong inclination to controversy. It was the favourite field on which to exercise the logical faculties which improved education had taught them they possessed. There were reasons for this. The former generations for which Mrs. Chapone and Dr. Fordyce had dictated their schemes of female improvement, were placid as to doctrinal matters. But Methodism first, and then the reaction consequent on French Revolutionary impieties, awoke the zeal of proselytism. Bible Societies and Missionary Societies raised their heads. Doctrine was eagerly insisted on. The female generation for which Hannah Moore penned her various chapters of advice, partook of the surrounding influences. It became something of a fashion for a young lady to be serious;' not only, like the Romish dévote and the Methodistical she-' saint,' to revel in experiences, but to be a skilled fencer with arguments pro and con concerning tenets which had been mapped and defined by scientific theologians. How many an elderly bachelor or paterfamilias will still remember the lively correspondence by post, or vivâ voce contests at countryhouse or watering-place, whether on Socinian, or Calvinistic, or Tractarian battle-fields, which he has waged with fair-haired antagonists, who had their Bible at their finger-ends and could prate, not unappositely, of Ignatius and Augustine.

As long as these discussions were confined to the conventional limits of dogma, women might often bear their part with fair credit in the arena. While the weapons were those of text-quotation (in the Authorised Version), or of church principles, or of catena doctorum, some amount of reading, and the exercise of that inductive logic which pace Mr. Buckle and many other theorists) is, we apprehend, more truly within the grasp of clever women than the deductive, might carry the more accomplished not unworthily through the fight. Then, for drawing-room circles, the days had not yet come of German philology as applied to the Sacred Books; still further off were the days of popular scepticism on the basis of natural science.

Religious polemics have since worked into a different phase, and have comparatively little charm for our Bradamantes of the brain. The High Church devotee, dimly aware of the wider grounds on which the theological argument now rests, follows implicitly her Ritualistic orator or confessor, but cares little to syllogise in defence of her standing-point. The Revivalist quotes experiences, but her 'reasonings' fail to make lodgment in the educated mind. The 'advanced' thinker-a variety of the intellectual nursery-garden as to its feminine type cer

tainly not common in general society till our own days, and, we venture to imagine, unlovely enough to discredit infidelity, as a mere fashion, with the other sex sooner or later-treats all theology as a sham, and shrugs her shoulders at the superstitions which Christians' indulge in. Meanwhile, amid changes of form, one similarity, we think, still holds good in the strategy of woman-militant. Whether it will still hold good when the new educational methods have had full play, it would be presumptuous in us to pronounce. But hitherto it would appear that woman--as a rule-a argues best, most freely, and, in a certain sense, most successfully, when she has a leader in her eye to whom she can look with reverential confidence. The female partisan of Simeon or of Pusey, of Arnold or of Knox, in the generation that is past or passing, would dare, nay, court opposition, so that she could feel sure of having her own particular pope on her side. And have not

Darwin and Huxley their lady devotees also, who hold their faith in presumed compliance with the dicta of their leaders, whether or not they really understand all the consequences and the limitations of the principles they profess? The female philosopher is not a coward as long as she feels confident of her ground. What she does dread is the insurrection of her own thoughts. Doubt, suspense, half-truths, she abhors. She shrinks from admitting facts which seem to conflict with the conclusions at which she has arrived. She likes symmetry, even if she is inadequately alive to the higher requirements of logical consistency.

To apply these remarks to Sara Coleridge. Her serious temperament inclined her to psychological inquiry. In early womanhood she made study of her father's works. Filial pride, as well as a certain congeniality of mind, allured her along his pathways of mystical speculation. In short, she constituted him her Pope.' What 'Esteese' (S. T. C.) thought, or would have thought, on this or that subject, became her criterion of all that was true in respect of the highest interests of humanity. Now the metaphysical portion of Esteese's theology-distinguishing this from the portion which came within the functions of his critical sagacity-lay less within his daughter's grasp of apprehension than she herself imagined. Some maintain that, like Wordsworth's Protesilaus,' it was shadowy altogether, vanished in the attempt to compass it. Still it dealt with formulas, the reproduction of which, if conventional, was plausible:

[ocr errors]

The phantom parts-but parts to re-unite,

And re-assume his place before her sight.'

But a time came when Coleridge's authority was cited by theologians of a more advanced type than Sara dared to sympathise with; by Maurice, Myers, Sterling, Carlyle. Then, professing still the highest allegiance to her father, it is manifest that she doubted how far she could really trust him. She speaks of withholding her consent from some at least of his conclusions:

'My father's religious teaching,' she writes in 1848, 'is so interwoven with his intellectual views-as with all deep and earnest thinkers must ever be the case-that both must stand or fall together; and in my opinion those persons dream who think they are improved by him intellectually, yet consider his views of Christianity in the main unsound. There are some portions of his theology on which I feel unresolved, some which I reject; but in the mass they are such as both embrace me and are embraced by me. His view of Inspiration, as far as it goes, I do entirely assent to; and it is my strong anticipation, as far as I have any power to anticipate, that after a time all earnest, thoughtful Christians will perceive that such a footing, in the main, as that on which he places the Inspiration of Scripture is the only safe one-the only one that can hold its ground against advancing thought and investigation.'

And in a letter of the following year, she says:

'I hardly ever read books of Mr. M-'s [Myers's] opinions. I have a sort of dread of writers professedly on the same side as my father. They so often do an injury to his cause, either by their tone of mind, or by their reasonings. Almost all the theology I read is what you would call Catholic, in its various shades and grades.'

These last sentences are addressed to Mr. Aubrey de Vere, the poetical and High Church friend with whom most of her published correspondence during the later years of her life is carried on. They afford another clue to her hesitations. The interval in the religious history of our age which occurred between the publication of the Oxford Tracts and the publication of Essays and Reviews,' was of a transitional, tentative character. The essential differences which have since proclaimed themselves between the Romanising, the Protestantising and the materialistic tendencies of public opinion, were then, partially at least, misunderstood, partially overlooked, partially flattered and disguised. The secession of some of the foremost upholders of the via media to overt Popery gave the first powerful impulse to the disintegrating process: but so long as Newman, Manning, Dodsworth and others remained nominal members of the English Church, many whose principles were Protestant allowed their taste to dally with the seductions of revived Ecclesiasticism. Mrs. Coleridge herself was a member of that congregation at Christchurch, Albany Street, of which

the Rev. William Dodsworth was pastor, and which in the early days of the movement was a principal centre of High Church religionism in the metropolis. Dodsworth was a fine preacher. His church-services were impressive. There was a flavour of combined learning and piety, and of literary and artistic refinement, in the representatives of Tractarianism, which enlisted floating sympathies; and hence, besides the thoroughgoing Puseyites,' there existed an eclectic following in and around Albany Street, composed of various elements. In some cases it was the old wine of Evangelicalism settling itself into new High Church bottles; in others, literary affinities fastening on congenial forms of historic or æsthetic sentiment. Of this eclecticism we catch the tone and spirit in most of Mrs. Coleridge's correspondence during her residence in Chester Place. She writes to Miss Brooke :

'I have lately been reading, certainly with great interest, the sermons of John Henry Newman; and I trust they are likely to do great good, by placing in so strong a light as they do, the indispensableness of an orthodox belief; the importance of sacraments as the main channels of Christian privileges; and the powers, gifts, and offices of Christian ministers derived by Apostolic succession; the insufficiency of personal piety without Christian brotherhood; the sense that we are all members of one body, and subjects of one Kingdom of Christ; the danger of a constant craving for religious excitement; and the fatal mistake of trusting in any devotional thoughts and feelings which are not immediately put into act, and do not shine through the goings on of our daily life. But then these exalted views are often supported, as I think, by unfair reasonings; and are connected with other notions which appear to me superstitious, unwarranted by any fair interpretation of Scripture, and containing the germs of Popish errors.'

Elsewhere, writing-in a more playful vein than is usual with her to the Rev. Henry Moore, she says:

:-

To be sure, I should vote for Gladstone! Why, don't I always support the High Church party with all my mighty power and influence? What can you be thinking of? Didn't I give money to St. Augustine's -more than I could afford-and always stand up for Mr. D— [Dodsworth] to his back, though I oppose him to his face? And am I not as constant to his church as a dove? And wouldn't I rather join the Tractarians than any other party, if I was forced to join any?

Later, indeed, her disapprobation of the Tractarians seems to have more decidedly outweighed her sympathies with them; and in the name and fundamental grounds of Protestantism she always professed to glory. But we must confess that it is hardly worth while to study in detail the passing remarks, whether on theological matters or literary matters, which en

large to a needlessly large bulk these volumes of Sara Coleridge's correspondence. Her long letters to Mr. de Vere on Baptism, on Church principles, on Dante's or Wordsworth's poetry, or on Luther's character, were no doubt very pleasant to receive in the touch-and-go of friendly intercourse; but for the outside reader now they possess scanty interest. We might indeed refer to many passages as evincing the real liberality, love of truth and good feeling, which lay at the root of her doctrinal convictions; but we shall content ourselves with citing the following, from a letter to the Rev. Edward Coleridge, which shows that before she died she had become aware of the new phase into which religious controversy was passing, and which made the polemics of Puseyism assume diminished importance in her eyes:

:

'No attempt at answering Strauss amid all the thousand pamphlets upon theories of doctrine, the practical result of which is insignificant. That is indeed a fearful subject: that way the danger lies and as there are sorrows too deep for tears, so there are perils and ills too real and serious for noise and agitation. Infidelity creeps on in silence. Men whisper it to each other: no man boasts of it, or parades it; few even argue for it. Dr. Newman said the other day to some controversialist, "Let us talk about the prospects of Christianity itself, instead of the differences between Anglican and Catholic." Why does not he answer the adversary? Silent contempt is not politic in such a case. It is too ambiguous. Let our churchmen conquer first and contemn afterwards.'

We revert to the more personal aspect of these records; and that with satisfaction.

The death of her brother, Hartley Coleridge, at the beginning of the year 1849, was a great grief to Sara. Wayward and eccentric as he had always been, Hartley possessed certain attaching qualities, of which his sister makes the most in her affectionate notices; and though the circumstances of life kept them apart, she seems always to have cherished the hope of a renewal of personal intercourse at some future day. I never thought of surviving him,' she says in one of her letters; I always thought he would live to old age, and that perhaps in our latest years we might cherish each other: meantime, that I might see much of him, in some long visit to the North, when I might make my children known to him.'

.6

[ocr errors]

Among Hartley Coleridge's poetical remains are some lines descriptive of the sister to whom he gave perhaps the warmest feelings of his heart. 'She was a maid,' he writes,

'Not easily beguiled by loving words,

Nor apt to love; but when she loved, the fate
Of her affections was a stern religion,

Admitting nought less holy than itself.'

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »