Page 393

THE DOCTOR.                                    393
loved, and cherished, and respected, and  that portion of its existence to
which Mr.
honoured her; and she would have obeyed  Coleridge is said to have attached
such
him cheerfully as well as dutifully, if obe- metaphysical, or, in his own
language, such
dience could have been shown where there psychological importance. But even
these
was ever but one will.                   Ultra-philosophers would not have
main-
tained that a biographer ought to begin
before the birth of his subject. All an-
tecedent matter belongs to genealogical
writers; astrologers themselves are content
CHAPTER CLII.               to commence their calculations from  the
ODD OPINIONS   CONCERNING BIOGRAPHY AND  hour and minute of the nativity.
   The
EDUCATION. THE AUTHOR MAKES A SECOND   fourteen years over which I formerly
passed
HIATUS AS UNWILLINGLY AS HE MADE THE   for the reasons stated in the 25th
Chapter of
FIRST, AND FOR THE SAME COGENT REASON. this Opus, would have supplied more
ma-
terials than any equal portion of his life, if
Yepetalo, aunque lo sepas.  CALDERON.the Doctor had been his own historian;
for
in those years his removal from home took
UNWILLINGLY,   as the Reader may re- place, his establishment at Doncaster,
and
member, thouggh he cannot possibly know  his course of studies at Leyden,
the most
with how much unwillingness, I passed over momentous events in his uneventful
history,
fourteen years of Daniel Dove's youth, except the great one of marriage,
-which
being the whole term of his adolescence, and  either makes or mars the happiness
of both
a fifth part of that appointed sum, beyond  parties.
which the prolongation of human life is but  From the time of that "
crowning event"
labour and sorrow. Mr. Coleridge has said  I must pass over another but longer
interval,
that "the history of a man for the nine   and represent the Doctor in
his married
months preceding his birth would probably  state, such as he was when it
was my fortune
be far more interesting, and contain events in early life to be blessed with
his paternal
of greater moment than all the threescore  friendship, for such it might
be called. Age
and ten years that follow it." * Mr. Coleridge like his, and Youth might
well live together,
was a philosopher, in many points, of the for there was no crabbedness in
his age.
first order, and it has been truly said by one Youth, therefore, was made
the better and
of the ancients that there is nothing  so the happier by such society. It
was full of
absurd but that some philosopher has ad- pleasure instead of care; not like
winter,
vanced it. Mr. Coleridge, however, was not but like a fine summer evening,
or a mild
always in earnest when he said startling  autumn, or like the light, of a
harvest
things; and they who suppose that 'the moon,
opinions of such a man are to be collected       Which sheds o'er all the
sleeping scene
from what he says playfully in the freedom       A soft nocturnal day-t
of social intercourse to amuse himself, and
perhaps to astonish others, may as well
expect to hold an eel by the tail.
There were certain French legislators in
the days of Liberty and Equality, who held
that education ought to begin before birth,
and therefore they proposed to enact laws
for the benefit of the homunculus during
* Most probably Mr. Coleridge said this with reference
to Sir Thomas Browne, who maintained that every man,
at his birth, was nine months old.                   t JAMES MONTGOMERY.
0