Logic: The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ed. by J. R. de J. Jackson

Abstract

because it attempts to solve moral questions without reference to religion. In his second chapter, “Natural and Divine Law,” he argues that despite Defoe’s contradictory treatment of the force of necessity, for example, as an appeal to natural law, the assumption of a higher divine law remains constant. Natural law, in fact, remains valuable only insofar as it is related to or justified by divine law. Another theme which clearly emerges from Merrett ’s account is the importance which Defoe places on society as a vehicle for and condition of morality. This theme becomes particularly clear in the third chapter, “The Revolution of 1688,” and the fourth chapter, “Language and Narrative.” In the former Merrett shows how Defoe’s defence of the Revolution provoked him “to consider society in connected and integrated ways” ; in the latter, he shows how Defoe’s consciousness of the ambiguity and multivalence of language affects his authorial use of language, as well as the ways in which his characters speak. It is here that we get the most direct criticism of Defoe’s major fiction, with substantial sections on both Moll Flanders’ and Robinson Crusoe’s use of language. In his final chapter, “The Uses of Narrative,” Merrett develops Defoe’s view of the purpose of writing, and particularly of fiction. Merrett’s analysis suggests that Defoe did not think of his fiction as embodying distinct morals or propositions for demonstration, but rather as “provoking reflections” on a variety of “basic, abstract issues in the contemporary situation” (p. 105). This view would allow us to agree with Kettle, in the epigraph, that “Defoe’s novels are not illustrations,” while reserving judgement as to whether there are “ moral discoveries” to be made in Moll Flanders. Daniel Defoe’s Moral and Rhetorical Ideas is number nineteen in the English Literary Studies series of the University of Victoria. This series has been particularly valuable for eighteenth-century studies, perhaps because the General Editor, Samuel L. Macey, is himself an eighteenth-century scholar. Nine of the first twenty-one volumes are devoted to eighteenthcentury subjects, and the list of authors includes such well-known names as Donald Greene, William Frost, Henry K. Miller, and Arthur Sherbo. It is a distinguished series, and Merrett’s book is a welcome addition. h o l l i s r i n e h a r t / York University J. R. de J. Jackson, ed., Logic: The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Cole­ ridge, Voi. 13 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). lxvii, 420. $36.00 Under the general editorship of Kathleen Coburn and Bart Winer, Cole­ ridge’s Logic, edited by Professor Jackson of Victoria College, Toronto, as 231 volume thirteen of the Collected Works, is actually the eighth of the planned sixteen volumes that will ultimately be the definitive edition. The project is therefore half done, and with the laudable perseverance of the editors to­ gether with the generous sponsorship of the Bollingen Foundation, The Collected Works, if one may judge from the volumes already done, will be a splendid and fitting monument to one of the most profound and seminal minds of the nineteenth century as well as a boon to Coleridge scholars everywhere. It would seem that the editors of individual works are all adhering to a plan evidently suggested by the general editors. Professor Jackson’s Logic is similar in format to that of Barbara Rooke’s Friend (1969), for example, and R. J. White’s Lay Sermons (1972) : Contents, Illustrations, Acknowl­ edgments, and a Chronological Table of Coleridge’s Life (1772-1834) indi­ cate a spacious breadth of conception and bring Coleridge and his world into focus; and all of them precede Professor Jackson’s Introduction (xxxiiilxvii ), which provides an enlightening background for the text. Meticulously edited and definitively collated, the text itself is followed by editorial appen­ dixes, an almost encyclopedic subject-index (indispensable in getting at Cole­ ridge), and a short index of Greek words and phrases. Professor Jackson has perhaps gone further than his predecessors with “The Editor’s Appendix G, An Analytical Outline of the Logic” (pp. 315-34), which is most efficacious in lighting dark pasages in the text and should be...