Marginalia IV by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (review)

228 LETTERS IN CANADA 1998 some other recent interpreters, most notably Donald Winch in Riches and Poverty (1996). Hollander reconstructs Malthus's theory into a form that a modem economist-can understand and assess, but he does this mainly in words rather than by translation into all anachronistic mathematics of the present day. Continuity rather than revolutionary change has been the main storyline of Hollander's portrayal of the history of economics to date and this book strengthens this tradition. Malthus is seen as a bright beacon on the upward progress of the economics discipline. Neither Hollander's Malthus nor his whole series will be the last word on classical economics. Indeed it is a measure of Hollander's achievement that these studies have already engendered vigorous controversy and will continue to do so. But among admirers and critics alike this work must engender profound respect. (CRAUFURD D. GOODWIN) Samuel TaylorColeridge.Marginalia TV. Edited by H.J. Jackson andGeorge Whalley Volume 12 of Collected Works o/Samuel Taylor Coleridge Princeton University Press. xxiv, 870. us $150.00 The fourth volume of Coleridge's Marginalia collects his notes in over 'one hundred books in alphabetical order, 'Pamphlets to Shakespeare,' along with generous quotations from the works Coleridge annotates and the editors' notes and interpolations, which reflect an astonishing range of learning and scholarship. His earliest note comes from 1799, followed by a few from the next decade.They increase after 1810 and continue to the final months of his life. In June or July 1834, just before his death, he wrote in a work of Daniel Sandford, 'I now crawl thro' a book like a fly thro milk splash on a Tea-trayl I who 20 years ago, used to read a volume, stereotypewise by whole pages at a glance.' In the later years, his reading reflects his principled questioning of theological and philosophical works. There are disappointingly few notes on the Greek philosophers, Plato, Plotinus, and Proclus, but extensive notes on the Germans, which reveal Coleridge's struggle to extricate his Christian faith from pantheism and materialism. After a long study of Schelling's Philosophische Schriften, he concludes 'the more I reflect the more [am] I convinced of the gross materialism,' which underlies Schelling'S system. Similarlyin a note to Schubert, he concluded, in 1818 or later, that the errors of the Naturphilosophen are 'to be found in their Pantheism.' In the same work he sighed, '0 I begin to be sick of all the Post-Kantean Philosophers.' His exasperation with the Gennans echoes his earlier disillusionment with Unitarianism and Priestley's unique brand of materialism, which is evident in his 1810 annotations to James Sedgwick's Unitarian attack upon Methodism, Evangelical Preaching, where Coleridge asserts his faith in conscience and the freedom of the will, which he calls the foundation of 'human Religion - God, Immortality, Guilt, Judgment, Redemption .' In 1826 Coleridge pondered the authenticity of the Gospels in HUMANITIES 229 notes to Schleiermacher, in which he questioned the narrative oEJesus' life before John's baptism and the commencement of Jesus' 'public Mission.' This volume also contains both predictable and surprising literary judgments. Ofa poem in Guy Mannering, Coleridge observes that the poem exemplifies the 'diversity of Fancy, which Sir W.s. possesses, and imagination , which belongs to another Grade of Intellects.' In another note to the same novet Coleridge complains of 'Scott's great defect. Nothing is evolved out of the character or passions ofthe Agent; but all is accident ab extra.' He thought Pepys possessed 'the queerest & most orrmivorous Taste, that ever fell to the lot of one man,' but complained that Pepys's 'only ground of morality was Prudence - a shrewd Understanding in the service of Selflove .' The surprise comes in Coleridge's reading of Rabelais, whom he thought 'among the deepest as well as boldest Thinkers ofhis Age': 'I could write a treatise in praise of the morality and moral Elevation of Rabelais' Works, which would make the Church stare, and the Conventicle groanand yet should be the truth, & nothing but the truth.' The extensive marginalia onShakespearecontain few surprises for those familiar with Coleridge's criticism. They do, however, afford insight into Coleridge's varying motives for...