terms either to the Professor or his Spectators, that he may lecture, but that nobody will understand him. He accordingly makes his bow, and the curtain falls; but the worst of the joke is, that the Professor pockets the admittance-money,—for what reason, his outwitted audience are left, the best way they can, to "fancy or imagine."
But the greatest piece of Quackery in the Book is his pretended account of the Metaphysical System of Kant, of which he knows less than nothing. He will not allow that there is a single word of truth in any of the French Expositions of that celebrated System, nor yet in any of our British Reviews. We do not wish to speak of what we do not understand, and therefore say nothing of Mr Coleridge's Metaphysics. But we beg leave to lay before our readers the following Thesis, for the amusement of a leisure hour.
"This principium commune essendi et cognoscendi, as subsisting in a will, or primary act of self-duplication, is the mediate or indirect principle of every science; but it is the mediate and direct principle of the ultimate science alone, i. e. of transcendental philosophy alone. For it must be remembered, that all these Theses refer solely to one of the two Polar Sciences, namely, to that which commences with and rigidly confines itself within the subjective, leaving the objective (as far as it is exclusively objective) to natural philosophy, which is its opposite pole. In its very idea, therefore, as a systematic knowledge of our collective knowing (scientia scientiæ), it involves the necessity of some one highest principle of knowing, as at once the source and the accompanying form in all particular acts of intellect and perception. This, it has been shown, can be found only in the act and evolution of self-consciousness. We are not investigating an absolute principium essendi; for then, I admit, many valid objections might be started against our theory; but an absolute principium cognoscendi. The result of both the sciences, or their equatorial point, would be the principle of a total and undivided philosophy, as for prudential reasons, I have chosen to anticipate in the Scholium to Thesis VI. and the note subjoined."
We cannot take leave of Mr Coleridge, without expressing our indignation at the gross injustice, and, we fear, envious persecution of his Criticism on Mr Maturin's "Bertram." He has thought it worth his while to analyse and criticise that Tragedy in a diatribe of fifty pages. He contends evidently against his own conviction, that it is utterly destitute of poetical and dramatic merit, and disgraceful, not to Mr Maturin alone, but to the audiences who admired it when acted, and the reading Public, who admired it no less when printed. There is more malignity, and envy, and jealousy, and misrepresentation, and bad wit, in this Critical Essay, than in all the Reviews now existing, from the Edinburgh down to the Lady's Magazine. Mr Coleridge ought to have behaved otherwise to an ingenious man like Mr Maturin, struggling into reputation, and against narrow circumstances. He speaks with sufficient feeling of his own pecuniary embarrassments, and of the evil which Reviewers have done to his worldly concerns—but all his feeling is for himself, and he has done all in his power to pluck and blast the laurels of a man of decided Poetical Genius. This is not the behaviour which one Poet ought to shew to another; and if Mr Coleridge saw faults and defects in Bertram, he should have exposed them in a dignified manner, giving all due praise, at the same time, to the vigour, and even originality of that celebrated Drama. Mr Coleridge knows that "Bertram" has become a stock play at the London Theatres, while his own "Remorse" is for ever withdrawn. Has this stung him? Far be it from us to impute mean motives to any man. But there is a bitterness—an anger—a scorn—we had almost said, a savage and revengeful fierceness in the tone of Mr Coleridge, when speaking of Mr Maturin, which it is, we confess, impossible to explain, and which, we fear, proceeds (perhaps unknown to his metaphysical self) from private pique and hostility, occasioned by superior merit and greater success. As a proof that our opinion is at least plausible, we quote Mr Coleridge's description of Bertram.
"This superfetation of blasphemy upon nonsense—this felo de se and thief captain—this loathsome and leprous confluence of robbery, adultery, murder, and cowardly assassination—this monster, whose best deed is, the having saved his letters from the degradation of hanging him, by turning Jack Ketch to himself."
What a wretched contrast does Mr Coleridge here afford to Mr Walter Scott. That gentleman, it is known, encouraged Mr Maturin, before he was
