Chapter I: R. R

[James Miller, a political and dramatic writer, was born in Dorsetshire
in 1703. He received his education at Wadham College, Oxford; and while
at the university, wrote a satiric piece called _The Humours of
Oxford_, which created him many enemies, and hindered his preferment.
He also published several political pamphlets against Sir Robert
Walpole; and also the tragedy of _Mahomet_, and other plays. He died in
1744.]

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Replies.

BRYDONE.

(Vol. ix., pp 138. 255. 305. 432.)

TRAVELLER having honoured me by alluding to a little work of mine, written thirty-five years ago, I may perhaps be permitted to correct a few errors (trifling, because personal) in his notice. My affinity was that of a cousin, not uncle, to the late lord my predecessor. I never had the military rank assigned to me, but was at the time like TRAVELLER himself, a "youngster" freshly emancipated from Oxford to the Continent: and had little more pretension in printing the extracts from my Journal, than to comply with the kind wishes of many friends and relatives.

But to pass to what is more important, the character of Brydone, at the time I speak of there were no useful _handbooks_ in existence; and tourists took for the purpose such volumes of travels as they could carry. Brydone, for this, was unfit. The French criticism (quoted Vol. ix., 306.) rightly says, that he sacrificed truth to piquancy in his narrations. Still it is a heavy charge to suspect so gross a deviation, as that of inventing the description of an ascent which he never accomplished; especially when the ascent is a feat not at all difficult. The evidence for this disbelief must be derived from a series of errors in the account, which I do not remember to have observed while reading him on the spot. The charitable supposition of MR. MACRAY, that he mistook the summit, is hardly compatible with so defined a cone as that of Etna; but all must agree with his just estimate of that description, and which the _Biographie Universelle_ itself terms "chef d'oeuvre de narration." Brydone, no doubt, is as unsafe for the road as he is amusing for the study, and perhaps from that very reason.

MONSON.

Gatton Park.

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COLERIDGE'S UNPUBLISHED MSS.

(Vol. iv., p. 411.; Vol. vi., p. 533.; Vol. viii., p. 43.)

When I sent you my Note on this subject at the last of the above references, I had not read _Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge_, Moxon, 1836. The subjoined extracts from that work confirm that note, vol. i, pp. 104. 156. 162.

August 8, 1820. Coleridge:

"I at least am as well as I ever am, and my regular employment, in
which Mr. Green is weekly my amanuensis, [is] the work on the books of
the Old and New Testaments, introduced by the assumptions and
postulates required as the preconditions of a fair examination of
Christianity as a scheme of doctrines, precepts, and histories, drawn
or at least deducible from these books."

January, 1821. Coleridge:

"In addition to these ---- of my GREAT WORK, to the preparation of
which more than twenty years of my life have been devoted, and on which
my hopes of extensive and permanent utility, of fame, in the noblest
sense of the word, mainly rest, &c. Of this work, &c., the result must
finally be revolution of all that has been called _Philosophy_ or
Metaphysics in England and France since the era of the commencing
predominance of the mechanical system at the restoration of our second
Charles, and with the present fashionable views, not only of religion,
morals, and politics, but even of the modern physics and physiology....
Of this work, something more than a volume has been {497} dictated by
me, so as to exist fit for the press, to my friend and enlightened
pupil, Mr. Green; and more than as much again would have been evolved
and delivered to paper, but that for the last six or eight months I
have been compelled to break off our weekly meeting," &c.

Vol. ii. p. 219. Editor:

"The prospectus of these lectures (viz. on Philosophy) is so full of
interest, and so well worthy of attention, that I subjoin it; trusting
that the Lectures themselves will soon be furnished by, or under the
auspices of Mr. Green, the most constant and the most assiduous of his
disciples. That gentleman will, I earnestly hope--_and doubt not_--see,
_feel_, the necessity of giving the whole of his great master's views,
opinions, and anticipations; not those alone in which he more entirely
sympathises, or those which may have more ready acceptance in the
present time. He will not shrink from the great, the _sacred duty_ he
has voluntarily undertaken, from any regards of prudence, still less
from that most hopeless form of fastidiousness, the wish to conciliate
those who are never to be conciliated, _inferior minds_ smarting under
a sense of inferiority, and the imputation _which they are conscious is
just_, that but for Him _they_ never could have been; that distorted,
dwarfed, changed, as are all his views and opinions, by passing
_athwart_ minds with which they could not assimilate, they are yet
almost the only things which give such minds a _status_ in literature."

How has Mr. Green discharged the duties of this solemn trust? Has he made any attempt to give publicity to the _Logic_, the "great work" on _Philosophy_, the work on the Old and New Testaments, to be called _The Assertion of Religion_, or the _History of Philosophy_, all of which are in his custody, and of which the first is, on the testimony of Coleridge himself, a finished work? We know from the _Letters_, vol. ii. pp. 11. 150., that the _Logic_ is an essay in three parts, viz. the "Canon," the "Criterion," and the "Organon;" of these the last only can be in any respect identical with the _Treatise on Method_. There are other works of Coleridge missing; to these I will call attention in a future Note. For the four enumerated above Mr. Green is responsible. He has lately received the homage of the University of Oxford in the shape of a D.C.L.; he can surely afford a fraction of the few years that may still be allotted to him in re-creating the fame of, and in discharging his duty to, his great master. If, however, he cannot afford the time, trouble, and cost of the undertaking, I make him this public offer; I will, myself, take the responsibility of the publication of the above-mentioned four works, if he will entrust me with the MSS.

The Editor will, I doubt not, be good enough to forward to the learned Doctor a copy of the Number in which this appeal is published.