Abstract
THIS is certainly a beautiful and inspiring book, in spite of a certain heaviness of style due partly to excessive faithfulness in the translation. It is remarkable how many English worthies are finding their best interpreters in Frenchmen. M. Char pentier does not compete with the vivacity of M. Audre Maurois in his lives of Shelley, Disraeli, and Byron, but he is a much more profound and sympathetic student. He judges very fairly the philosophic attainment of Coleridge, not rating it high; he is enthusiastic about the best in his poetry and he gives a penetrating and convincing study of his personality. The fight with opium, the devastating effects of the drug and the noble and finally successful struggle to overcome it, with the help of Dr. Gillman, could scarcely be better described, and will be to many readers the most interesting part of the book. But they should not resist the fascination of M. Charpentier's picture of the ‘old man eloquent’ in his last stages at Highgate. He was essentially good and would not have seemed old, had it not been for the ravages of his vice. He was but sixty-two when he died, and those who care for his memory, a number likely to be increased by this book, would do well to see that his tomb in the crypt at Highgate School is more reverently treated than it was when we last visited it.
Coleridge: the Sublime Somnambulist.
John
Charpentier
. Translated by M. V. Nugent. Pp. x + 332. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1929.) 15s. net.
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M., F. Coleridge: the Sublime Somnambulist . Nature 126, 164 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/126164c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/126164c0