It is not merely that Coleridge
founded no recognisable school, for neither did Carlyle. It is that the
former can show absolutely nothing at all resembling that sort of power
which enabled the latter to lay hold upon all the youthful minds of his
time--minds of the most disparate orders and associated with the utmost
diversities of temperament, and detain them in a captivity which, brief
as it may have been in some cases, has in no case failed to leave its
marks behind it. Over a few spirits already prepared to receive them
Coleridge's teachings no doubt exerted power, but he led no soul
captive against its will. There are few middle-aged men of active
intelligence at the present day who can avoid a confession of having
"taken" Carlylism in their youth; but no mental constitutions not
predisposed to it could ever have caught Coleridgism at all. There is
indeed no moral theory of life, there are no maxims of conduct, such as
youth above all things craves for, in Coleridge's teaching. Apart from
the intrinsic difficulties of the task to which he invites his
disciples, it labours under a primary and essential disadvantage of
postponing moral to intellectual liberation.
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