"There was a ship" in Malta

Abstract

Between July, 1804, and September, 1805, Coleridge shared 1802 version of Wordsworth's Peter Bell with of Malta, Sir Alexander Ball. In 21st issue of Friend (January 25, 1810), Coleridge reported that had responded with warm interest: [I]t was evident me, that it was not so much poetic merit of Composition that interested him, Truth and psychological insight with which it represented practicability of reforming most hardened minds, and various accidents which may awaken most brutalized Person a recognition of his nobler Being (F, 2: 290). I propose that he showed Sir Alexander Ball Wordsworth's Peter Bell rather than his own Ancient Mariner because Peter Bell illustrated political educational theory he shared with Ball while Ancient Mariner, especially 1802 version without glossary, illustrates no political didactic purpose. In On Constitution of Church and State (1829), Coleridge defines NATIONAL EDUCATION the nisus formativus of body politic, shaping and informing spirit, which, educing, i.e. eliciting latent man in all natives of soil, trains them up citizens of country, free subjects of realm (48). In other words, in 1829, Coleridge considered education be condition for both subject formation and nation building. main instrument was cultivated clerisy, endowed with task of inventing tradition and constructing organic narrative of nation: to preserve stores, guard treasures, of past civilisation, and thus bind present with past; perfect and add same, and thus connect present with future & St., 42.). clerisy also conducted moral education: while some remain invisible fountain heads of humanities, majority are distributed throughout country so not leave even smallest integral part or division without a resident guide, guardian or instructor (Ch & St, 42-43). In this paternalistic scheme, exemplary schoolmaster is Parson, persona exemplaris (Ch & St, 53), who, Mary Anne Perkins argues, embodies Kantian-Christian concept of Personeity (84), and therefore introduces love in workings of educative state. Parson may be a solution problems Coleridge had been tackling during his almost life-long interest in education. In Supernumerary Lecture on Education (1808), discussing education of children, he had tried find a way between disgraceful corporal punishments Joseph Lancaster recommended in his secular system and Maria Edgeworth's moralising, didactic books for children, which he found too goody. (LL 1: 106-108) What he proposed instead was teach by sympathy and love, and thereby stimulate heart love, so that all virtues rise and all vices are thrown out of their own accord (Ibid. 107). Both Church & State and lecture on education are theoretical and ideal, but Coleridge's presentation of Ball's system of discipline in Friend illustrates some aspects of his ideal of education. passage which first appeared on September 28,1809 (F 2: 99-101), later entitled The Appeal Law (F 1: 169-171), features Sir Alexander Ball, who, according Tim Fulford and Regina Hewitt, was embodiment of Coleridge's Abstract idea of a wise & good Governor (F 1: xciv). According Fulford, Ball could not have offered a solution problems of contemporary politics at home and in colonies, because his paternalism based on personal example could only be effective in a society small enough know their governor (242). Coleridge's presentation of Ball in Friend anticipates ideal educator he describes in Church and State, personally superintending his disciples. Ball's virtues as a master, a husband, and a parent are exemplary (F 1: 535), and just like later Parson, he is often addressed Father (Fulford, 240). …