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European Romantic Review

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Romanticism repackaged: The new faces of “oldman” Coleridge in Fraser's Magazine, 1830–35

Robert Lapp

To cite this article: Robert Lapp (2000) Romanticism repackaged: The new faces of “old man”Coleridge in Fraser's Magazine, 1830–35, European Romantic Review, 11:2, 235-247, DOI:10.1080/10509580008570113

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Romanticism Repackaged:The New Faces of "Old Man" Coleridgein Fraser's Magazine, 1830-35

Robert Lapp

One image that has powerfully shaped our impression of the literary scenein the 1830s is William Maclise's sketch of "The Fraserians" that appeared onpage two of Fraser's January 1835 issue (Figure 1). Reinforcing the notion ofa brilliant coterie of (male) talents conspiring to dominate London literarycircles, the drawing pictures twenty-six of the "Illustrious Literary Charac-ters" that had appeared month by month in the magazine since its inception,seated around a table replete with glasses of whisky punch and wine, pre-sided over by the wryly-grinning William Maginn and the (fictional) editor"Nol Yorke" — who is passed out on Maginn's shoulder. Among thesegentlemen we can spot some of the familiar namesassociated with the earlysuccess of Fraser's — Thackeray and Carlyle, for example, or James Hoggand John Gait But who, we might ask, is that shrunken old man with the cane,white-haired and stooped, seated quietly to the left amidst this boisteroussoiree of young bohemians? Can it be Samuel Taylor Coleridge? Why wouldhe be at the table of "The Fraserians" in January 1835? After all, Coleridgehad died the previous October, and he had never contributed a single articleto the Fraser's Magazine (Leary 112). His appearance here must be symbolic;but of what?

One answer to this question has been recently proposed by DavidHogsette, who uses the figure of "the Victorian heirloom" to describe therehabilitation by Fraser's (and other magazines) of Coleridge's image as apoet of genius, an image designed for consumption by — and the "human-ization" of—"the middle class national mind" (66). Certainly the writings onColeridge by Fraser's assistant editor John Abraham Heraud, a self-con-fessed disciple of Coleridge, performs this work in the magazine (Thrall 89),and is reminiscent of Coleridge's influence on other early Victorians such asJ. S. Mill, Arthur Hallam, and F. D. Maurice. In the first part of this paper, then,I will be reviewing this new "face" for Coleridge in the 1830s. But the image of"heirloom" doesn't quite fit Miriam Thrall's memorable epithet of "Rebel-

235

236 ROBERT LAPP

lious" as applied to the "Fraserians," and seems almost anachronistic whenplaced alongside Maclise's portrait of a raucous club of fashionably bibu-lous young Corinthians led by the "debauched William Maginn" (to useKathryn Chittick's uncompromising phrase [41]). Thus the repackaging ofColeridge for Fraser's Magazine is more complicated than this first answermight suggest.

IVUtfNN

THACKZHtY

Figure 1: The FraseriansFraser's Magazine, January 1835, p. 2

Sketch by William Maclise

Fraser's, for one, was what we might call a "niche magazine" addressed tothe metropolitan fashionable and educated elite. It was openly hostile tomiddle-class "Liberalism" in all forms, and so calling its readership "middleclass" requires very careful qualification, especially in the fractured, shifting,and bitterly conflicted literary marketplace of the turbulent Reform Bill per-iod. Moreover, Fraser's itself is by no means a univocal publication, despitethe image of convivial corporate consanguinity portrayed in the sketch byMaclise. In the second part of what follows, therefore, I will show that thesentimental notion of "Victorian heirloom" must be balanced by another,rather different face for "old man" Coleridge (Oct. 1834:379): that of preciselythe ecstatic bonvivant, the dilatory conversationalist, the indefatigable table-talker. In the earliest issues of the magazine, as we shall see, Coleridge is

ROMANTICISM REPACKAGED 237

given the position here assumed by Maginn — that of the drunken chairmanof a chaotic imaginary meeting to "elect" the editor of Fraser's Magazine(May 1830:496-508; July 1830:738-757; Sept. 1830:238-250).

This role in turn suggests a third and final new face for Coleridge impliedby his ghostly presence at this table of "Fraserians" in 1835. That is the rolethat his "philosophy" — as opposed to his "poetry" — plays in the maga-zine. Coleridge's political philosophy in particular is found to form the ideo-logical backdrop for the writings of Maginn on the Reform Bill — writingsthat had the effect of positioning the magazine as politically "Rebellious" inan era of Benthamite liberalism. To Maginn, Coleridge was an "honest oldthoroughgoing Tory" in an era when the (new) Tory party no longer repre-sented the interests of such staunch, Church-and-King conservatives ashimself (July 1833:64). Ironically, then, Coleridge becomes by implication a"Rebellious Fraserian" in Maginn's curious combination of Coleridge's early,freebooting journalistic energy with his late Tory radicalism. Neither Maginnnor Coleridge reject the necessity of reform, but they strenuously resist theascendency of laissez-faire commercialism in favor of an identity of interestsbetween a reformed aristocracy and a romantic fantasy of honest yeomanlaborers. It is my view that the paradox of this "rebellious" Ultra-Tory poli-tics, when aligned with Heraud's popularization of Coleridge's metaphysicsof "mind" (Feb. 1830:56), gives a rather different, and historically-specificspin to the liberal humanist psychology we have come to associate withtwentieth century North American Romantic Ideology. For in the end, Fraser'sreaders in the 1830s are left with another paradox suggested by Maclise'simage of "The Fraserians." They are figuratively invited to the table, yet allthe seats are taken: they are positioned as potential contributors, yet ex-cluded from the club of "Illustrious Literary Characters" by a hierarchy ofintellect that has Coleridgean "genius" as its master-sign (Feb. 1830:56).

First, however, let us return to the first "new face" given Coleridge byFraser's: that of avatar of poetic genius in particular, and thus a culturalheirloom that Fraser's passes on to a new generation of class-consciousreaders. Here again, a sketch by Maclise can serve as a reference point (Fig-ure 2). Back in July 1833, a drawing of Coleridge appeared as No. 38 in thefamous Maclise "Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters" (64b). Here he ispictured standing — still standing one might stay — with the same cane inhand, the same large eyes and venerable white hair, the same coat, vest, andneck-cloth bundling the stooped shoulders. Yet something of the complexityI'm trying to suggest is evident in the captioning of this drawing as the"Author of 'Christabel,'" rather than, say, "Author of 'The Rime of the An-cient Mariner,'" or even "Author of Aids to Reflection" which had just goneinto a second edition. Why "Christabel"? Back in 1819, we might recall, it was

238 ROBERT LAPP

Figure 2:S.T. Coleridge "Author of Cristabel"

Fraser's Magazine "Gallery of IllustriousLiterary Characters" #38 July 1833, p. 64b

Sketch by Willilam Maclise

William Maginn, then a writer forBlackwood's, who had written —or at least affixed his pen-name to— a brilliant parody of"Christabel" (Kent andEwen 185).This caption thus serves explicitlyto recall the "Christabel" contro-versy that once raged among theRegency refined when Coleridgewas not considered a preciousheirloom of Britain's rich literarytradition, but rather a rebelliousviolator of received Augustannorms or, worse, a "deranged som-nambulist" whose truncated poem,in the words of Thomas Moore inthe Edinburgh, "smelled stronglyof the anodyne" (Reiman 472).

Nevertheless, we find Maginnwriting the verbal sketch that ac-companies this portrait in 1833,and here the "Author of'Christabel'" is indeed recoveredand reconstructed in terms that linkthis once notorious poem posi-tively with the two Regency poetsof most enduring cultural author-ity in the 1830s: Scott and Byron.In Coleridge's "queer and pleas-ant book his BiographiaLiteraria" Maginn reminds us, wewill find the story of

how Christabel[,] having been recited to Sir Walter Scott, and a thou-sand others, was the acknowledged parent of Lay of the Last Min-strel —how Lord Byron, having made free with a passage of it in hisSiege of Corinth, it was at length produced—how Jeffrey, or some ofhis scrubs, foully abused it in the Edinburgh Review — how hevaliantly brought Jeffrey to the scratch, and made the little fellowapologize.... (July 1833:64)

ROMANTICISM REPACKAGED 239

Maginn goes on to lament that Coleridge's

best ideas have been suffered so often to lie unused, that they haveat last appeared as the property of others. His graceful Christabel isa flagrant instance of this. It remained twenty years unpublished, butnot unknown; and when its example had reared the ballad epic, orpoetical novel, to its highest and most magnificent state, it made itsappearance, in the eyes of the general reading public an. imitation ofits own progeny. We do not remember any worse luck in all literaryhistory. (64)

He thus ends with the wistful envoi, "we most ardently hope to witness thepublication of the conclusion of "The Lovely Lady Christabel, / Finished byColeridge hale and well!'" (64).

With this new treatment of the poem, we can concur with David Hogsettewhen he observes of Coleridge's poetry in general that "In a crowning his-torical irony, the very work that signified poetic revolution and social disrup-tion for many of its original reviewers now serves a unifying nostalgic func-tion in the 1830s, symbolizing tradition, excellence, stability, and true Eng-lishness" (71). As Hogsette also points out, the publication of two retrospec-tive editions of Coleridge's Poetical Works in the late 1820s had done muchto reinforce the general rehabilitation of Coleridge's reputation as a poet (63).When a third such edition appeared in 1834 (a year after Maclise's portraitand the year of Coleridge's death), Maginn's wry but affectionate remarks areamplified by his assistant editor Heraud into full-blown apotheosis: "Hisstate is now imperial—his immortality assured. Art thou not happy, O Poet?Exultest thou not, O King of Song?" (Oct. 1834:380). In a long biographicalretrospective, Heraud goes on to say that, with the re-publication of PoeticalWorks,

[t]he poems of our favourite poet had become classics in the land's •language. In defiance of long neglect, they were at last even popular;and here we had them in a popular shape, impressing the vulgar mind,"as they long had the cultivated, with a sublime sentiment of the dig-nity and capabilities of human genius. Imagination and enthusiasmhad, in these three five-shilling volumes, opened on the general heartthe view, as it were, of a new Eden. (380)

With a view to such sentiments, Hogsette suggests that Coleridge is refash-ioned by Fraser's as a kind of "secular messiah whose creative power re-deems the middle classes and provides a cohesive structure to the universalmiddle-class Mind" (67). In his analysis, "Coleridge's work emerges not only

240 ROBERT LAPP

as a cultural commodity but also as a literary heirloom whose value can nowbe traced and made to serve the middle-class desire for high-English inclu-s i o n " ^ ) .

And yet the unity and tidiness — the metaphorical solidity — of thisimage of Coleridge as "Victorian heirloom" is crossed by a quite different,quite contradictory image of Coleridge in Fraser's, one that is deliberatelymultivalent and messy, parodic and unsettling and anarchic in its implica-tions. This is the fiction of Coleridge as very much physically present at thetable of "The Fraserians," drinking deeply of its whisky punch and expend-ing his genius promiscuously, not in lasting heirloom literature, but in bril-liantly provisional, ephemeral, inconclusive, gossipping, emphatically localbanter. This is the element of the early Fraser's that later Victorian readerswould look back on in moral horror, but which perfectly met the entertainmentneeds of a generation of privileged London consumer-readers for whom onedimension of response to the apocalyptic turmoil of Reform was immersion incarpe diem dissipation, in Pierce Egan-ish lowlife adventures, and in wittilyimprovised burlesques of themselves and their maudlin Methodist orBenthamite contemporaries.

Briefly consider, for example, theappearance of Maginn himself inFraser's "Gallery of Illustrious Lit-erary Characters" (Figure 3; Jan.1831:716b). In Maclise's sketch,Maginn appears at the same agethat Coleridge.was when he re-turned from Malta to embroil him-self in London journalism in theNapoleonic era. Unlike Coleridge,however, he is depicted as a slimman of fashion, impeccablydressed and jauntily posed. Yet likeColeridge, Maginn is presented asa prodigy of learning: the captionreads "The Doctor" in reference tohis legendary Trinity College doc-torate, and his elegant chair is en-gulfed by papers and books.Moreover, Maginn is lionized asan inveterate late-night table-talker.

William Macginn "The Doctor" « O u r ^ ^ h a s CaUght," writes hisFraser's Magazine, January 1831, p. 716B , d Blackwood's c r o n y L o c k h a r t

Sketch by William Maclise J

ROMANTICISM REPACKAGED 241

in the accompanying verbal sketch, "with singular felicity, the easy, good-humoured nonchalance of this learned and libellous countenance" (716). He

has always been, is, and ever will be, the jovial... the simple-hearted,the careless, and the benignant.... Long may his voice be heard inthe land, now pouring out a rich flood of hexameters, and now cheer-ing the festive circle with the hearty, jolly, soul-stirring chaunt, whichhe indited in the days of his youth, — 'Drink to me only from a jug,and I will pledge in mine; / So fill my glass with whisky punch, and I'llnot ask for wine!' — .(716)

Compare with this what Maginn himself writes of Coleridge for the sketch ofthe "Author of Christabel":

Would that we could see him drinking everlasting glasses of brandyand water in coffee-houses various — or carousing potations pottle-deep, as of old, in the western world of Bristol, — or making orationsto barmaids and landladies, and holding them by his glittering eyeand suasive tongue (July 1833:64)

Thus what was very shortly to become a liability to Coleridge's reputationamong earnest middle-class Victorians — namely his habits of dissipationluridly detailed in Cottle's Early Recollections in 1837 — is here differentlypackaged as an image of Coleridge as Fraserian bon-vivant, holding his ownamong the rollicking young Corinthians of London in the edgy 1830s.

• The most striking deployment of this more ribald face of "old man"Coleridge is to be found in the three-part series in the early issues of themagazine entitled "Election of Editor for Fraser 's Magazine." Here Coleridgeis figured as the fictional Chairman of a wild symposium of London literatiwho have supposedly congregated to mull over the phenomenon of Fraser'sinstant success, and to elect an editor of the fledgling magazine (May 1830:496). At one point, suddenly interrupting Thomas Moore, who has attractedthe crowd's attention by squeaking on a penny trumpet, Chairman Coleridge,"in a wonderful fit of inspiration, with his eyes in a fierce frenzy rolling,''begins a disquisition on the "heavenly influence of seraphic music" (503):

The wonder-working notes of the Orphean lyre [Coleridge intones]drew after them beasts, and brutes, and savages, and trees, and stocks,and stones, dancing like Abyssinian maids, singing of Mount Abora; .and by this is prefigured, that the soul of man, raised by the high andholy emotions, — I wish I had a glass of brandy and water — (itappears in the hand of a plebeian — body unknown — Mr. Coleridgedrinks)—thank you, sir—high and holy emotions, to a participation

242 ROBERT LAPP

with higher powers above, at last, rising by prescribed degrees, as inthe notes of the gamut, ascends from harmony to harmony, until thetranscendental philosophy of the ages of thought, soaring throughthe misty cloud of time, should envelope it by the music of nature,that

'Divinist potency,Which, from the earth upsoaring to the heavens,Fills the whole concave; and the angel clouds.Dimming the north horizon to the south,Spread radiance.'

So that — I wish I had something to drink — (the hand presents aglass of brandy and water — hand vanishes — so.does brandy andwater) — So that — when I was editor of the Morning Post, and theEmperor Napoleon Buonaparte said that he declared war solely on myaccount, and I, like the illustrious John Dennis, was the sole exceptedperson from a party, of which the characters were—(another glass ofbrandy and water) — but I desist, for when, as Plato says, fact isreason, reason is not fact. I am dumb now — silent—because I knowof old that my brains have been sucked for articles. I mention nobodybut Pygmalion Hazlitt.... (503-4)

This is Coleridge very much at the imaginary table of "The Fraserians," giventhe floor, indeed acclaimed as provisional chairman because he is "the firstgenius of the age" (497). And this is not intended ironically, despite theunfettered burlesque of his favorite hobbyhorses. It should be noted thatMaginn himself is burlesqued in this madcap farce, though, like Coleridge,not as roughly as the political and literary enemies of Fraser's who are tarred-and-feathered in this piece with varying degrees of libellous abandon. Insuch articles as these, evolved as they are from the "Noctes Ambrosianae"that Maginn helped to write for Blackwood's, it is as if whisky punch is afigure not only for privileged consumption (there are a lot of cigars men-tioned too), but also, paradoxically, for the effects of the age as a whole,levelling difference and laying waste to sentimentalism and phony didacti-cism, yet productive of the brilliantly unpredictable, the wittily erratic, andthe irretrievably ephemeral.

When we combine these first two contradictory images of Coleridge inFraser 's—the metaphorically solid value of Coleridge-as-cultural-heirloomand the antinomian insubstantiality of his fleetingly inspired, Fraserian table-talk —we get a third "new face" for the "old man": that of the ideologue of a"Rebellious" Toryism ghost-writing Fraser's response to the Reform Bill cris-

ROMANTICISM REPACKAGED 243

is. Here the all-pervasive but invisible presence of his political philosophystands behind the writings of Maginn in particular to create the magazine'sunique blend of freebooting conservatism. We might say that the role of"Chairman" metamorphoses into that of "Nol Yorke" in Maclise's drawing of"The Fraserians," a ghostly presence asleep on (or haunting) Maginn's shoul-der, but still murmuring in his ear as it were. As Miriam Thrall puts it lessfiguratively,

Even though Coleridge did not himself contribute to the monthly, hishatred of liberalism as a menace to the well-being of the country wasin great measure responsible for Eraser's mingling of metaphysicalspeculation with church and state affairs. Certainly the singular ad-mission of politics to the high walks of philosophy lends self-righ-teousness to the magazine's stand. (121)

This stand included a trend-setting independence, not only from the domi-nant modes of sentimentalism and didacticism, but also from the marketplaceimperative to affiliate with the capitalist interests of one of the powerfulpublishing houses, or with the partisan interests of the Tories, the Whigs, orthe Benthamite Radicals. As Kathryn Chittick points out, Fraser's helpeddemonstrate that "[independence from everything except public opinionwas beginning to pay, and in 1832 that meant that the Lords could no longerforestall reform" (36). "Rebellious" Fraser 's, in part, helped shape this publicopinion by popularizing Coleridgean thought among a generation of shift-less young writers that would later emerge as Victorian "authors."

Consider, for example, Maginn's article on the Swing riots of late 1830(Dec. 1830:572-81). This revolt of starving agricultural workers in Kent hadattracted only outraged alarm from the main-line Tories and brutal repressionfrom Grey's nascent Whig administration. Maginn, by contrast, draws on aRomantic idealisation of the peasantry to take the side of "the laboring classes"against the new system of political economy and its standing army:

The boasted predictions of that political millennium, when a caponwas to be in every labourer's pot, and a sovereign in his pocket, wereobviously attempts at fraud — an ingenious pretext for robbing andpillaging with impunity. The labourer now sees through all this, andthe indignant blood of his ancestors boils in his veins (576)

Thus the laboring classes,

seeing that their interests are sacrificed to foreign trade — that theminister is unprincipled, the lawyer profligate, and the churchmancorrupt— seeing that nine-tenths of their ancient guardians, the

244 ROBERT LAPP

proprietors of the soil, are either pensioners, political economists, or,like themselves, the victims of a debasing and meretricious science,founded upon fallacies, and leading to demoralization and penury —is it surprising that they should hold in contempt, or view with suspi-cion.. . that order of men, of whom Lord Wilton would wish to be theorgan? They would indeed be far more morally than they are physi-cally degraded, if they felt otherwise. It is no love of anarchy — noabstraction based in republicanism — no estrangement of loyalty —no altered sentiments towards the throne or the person of our reveredmonarch, that impel them to a course repugnant to law, and destruc-tive of private property; but a deep-rooted fear that no other meansare left them of bettering their condition, or arresting in their favourthe attention and the justice of the conservators of the peace, and thelegitimate guardians of their welfare. (576)

Whether or not this account accurately reflects the "real" feelings of therioters in Kent, it certainly represents the backbone of Fraser's Ultra-Toryradicalism, especially in its alignment of the interests of what Maginn callsthe "labouring classes" (and elsewhere "the bluff yeoman" of "old England"[573]) with the "legitimate guardians of their welfare," "their ancient guard-ians, the proprietors of the soil" — the aristocracy.

' To illustrate the affinity of these politics with Coleridge's own, we maylook briefly at two concomitant features of Maginn's response to the ReformBill and compare these with Coleridge's own remarks as they whisper in ourears across the years through recordings of his Table Talk in 1835. First,Fraser's vigorously rejects the extension of the vote to the ten-pound house-holders, the lower middle-class artisans of the cities that Maginn calls "thefoetid rabble of towns" (Aug. 1831: 5). Second, to correct this article of theBill, Maginn advocates the unexpectedly radical measure of universal suf-frage. As he puts it,

We say it at once, that wefarprefer, very far prefer, universal suffrageto the scheme adopted by the ministers. The ten-pound rascality isprecisely the most objectionable constituency that can be named . . .[for] in that class are to be found the most cankered and unreasonableenemies of all English institutions Therefore we say, and seri-ously say, that if this bill must pass, the Tories ought to move foruniversal suffrage. Then property would have comparatively fair play;the yeomanry of England would move to the poll and vote for theirliege lords, if their feelings and interests were attended to (and if theyare not, woe to the country), the yeomanry of England would come tothe poll and vote for their leige lords as steadily and regularly as they

ROMANTICISM REPACKAGED 245

ever marched, long-bow in hand, to fight for them in days of yore.'They could be made an antagonist power to the tailors and politicaleconomists, the shuttles and thimbles of cities (Aug. 1831:5-6)

To this we may compare the echo of Coleridge's Table Talk from November1830, as recorded by his nephew H. N Coleridge:

Is the House of Commons to be re-constructed on the principle of arepresentation of interests, or of a delegation of men? If on the former,we may, perhaps, see our way; if on the latter, you can never, inreason, stop short of universal suffrage; and in that case, I am surethat women have as good a right to vote as men. (qtd. in Morrow 220)

Or again, in February 1832, in an imagined retort to Lord Grey, he is recordedto have exclaimed

You have destroyed the freedom of parliament; you have done yourbest to shut the door of the House of Commons to the property, thebirth, the rank, the wisdom of the people, and have flung it open totheir passions and their follies. You have disenfranchised the gentry,and the real patriotism of the nation: you have agitated and exasper-ated the mob, and thrown the balance of political power into thehands of that class [the shopkeepers] which, in all countries and in allages, has been, is now, and ever will be, the least patriotic and leastconservative of any (225)

And finally, a month later, he declares,

I am afraid the Conservative party see but one half of the truth. Themere extension of the franchise is not the evil; I should be glad to seeit greatly extended;... the mischief is that the franchise is nominallyextended, but to such classes, and in such a manner, that a practicaldisenfranchisement of all above, and a discontenting of all below,[that] favoured class are the unavoidable results. (225)

This then is "Rebellious" Toryism of both Fraser's and Coleridge, a politicaloxymoron that itself contains the paradoxical principle that the only way toconserve a traditional hierarchy of power is to extend the vote to all classes.

By way of conclusion and to bring us full circle to the image of Coleridgeas Victorian heirloom, I would like to propose an analogy between this para-dox and another contained in the Coleridgean psychology of "genius" aspromoted in the magazine by Fraser's assistant editor John Heraud. Here auniversality of "genius" in all men is suggested in order to reinforce a new

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hierarchy of mental powers within the new fifth estate of popular opinion-making. In an early article "On Poetic Genius," Heraud suggests that "ge-nius" is a condition of being human:

the human mind, like the Divine mind, doth posses this living foun-tain— a creative power in itself to produce the sublime, the beautiful,and the new!... The spirit of man is a portion of the spirit of God, andgenius is his gift: not a creature of education but a vital spark ofheavenly flame. (Feb. 1830:57)

On the other hand, as the essay proceeds, this potential democracy of geniusis gradually qualified by such factors as "circumstances," "education,""habit," and even "Nature" (57-8). Thus when Heraud comes in 1832 to offer"Some Account of Coleridge's Philosophy" at what he calls "the shrine ofphilosophic genius," we find Coleridge promoted as a unique avatar of tfiispower, who has "elevated his mind to the contemplation of the omnipresent"(June 1832:585,586). And even Heraud himself— who by virtue of havingwritten the article, is by implication among "that class of persons who possesthe peculiar advantages of a good education" (587), and who must thereforepossess one of those minds "of a higher order" in his ability to comprehendColeridge's metaphysics (588)—finds he must submit himself to the epiphanyof a higher power: "we feel that our wing would indeed be altogether toofeeble to soar into the heights of theology, and our critical faculty too grossto breathe the empyreal air of the pure spiritual region in which it is thedelight of Mr. Coleridge to expatiate and reason high. . ." (596).

Thus like the yeoman who is given the vote only in order to elect his"ancient guardians," the "gift of genius" is given to mankind only to discerna kind of subjectivity that is then mystified as inaccessible. Unlike the ac-count of liberal humanism that suggests that readers are invited to identifywith a free subjectivity (however illusory) that will guarantee their complicityin their own subjection to ideology, I am suggesting that in the unique his-torical moment of the Reform Bill crisis, Fraser's produces a specific Ultra-Tory spin that has readers invited to imagine a subjectivity as fundamentallydifferent and inaccessible from their own as the ancient political power of thearistocracy is to the "bluff yeomen" of old England. Similarly, the reader isinvited to the table of 'The Fraserians" not so much to participate in theconstruction of public opinion as to make possible its construction by oth-ers. As Leary points out, Fraser 's breaks through the convention of anonym-ity in its presentation of its "Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters," thusdisrupting the reader's fantasy of identification in the unspecified 'imaginedcommunity" contained in the plural "we" (112). Instead, he or she is invited

ROMANTICISM REPACKAGED 247

into this imagined community only to discover that all the seats at the tablehave place-cards and are already occupied by "illustrious" historical indi-viduals. And prominent among these "Literary Characters," in the end, is theghostly "old man" Coleridge who — as precious heirloom, as bibulous bab-bler, as ghostly ideologue of "Rebellious" Ultra-Toryism, as index of inacces-sible genius and transcendent cultural power, and, most important, as theapparent unity behind these incommeasurable "new faces" — becomes amystical or mystifying symbol whose rich promise of final meaning is, eventoday, endlessly deferred.

Mount Allison University

Works Cited

Chittick, Kathryn. Dickens and the 1830s. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990.

Cottle, Joseph. Early Recollections, chiefly relating to the late Samuel Tay-lor Coleridge. 2 Vols. London, 1837.

Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country. London: James Fraser et al., 1830-1882.

Hogsette, David S. "Coleridge as Victorian Heirloom: Nostalgic Rhetoric inthe Early Victorian Reviews of Poetical Works." Studies in Romanticism37 (1998): 63-75.

Kent, David A. and D. R. Ewen. Romantic Parodies, 1797-1831. Londonand Toronto: Associated UPs, 1992.

Leary, Patrick. "Fraser's Magazine and the Literary Life, 1830-1847." Victo-rian Periodicals Review 27.2 (1994): 105-126.

Morrow, John, ed. Coleridge's Writings on Politics and Society. Princeton:Princeton UP, 1991.

Reiman, Donald H, ed. The Romantics Reviewed: Contemporary Reviews ofBritish Romantic Writers. Vol. A. New York and London: Garland, 1972.

Thrall, Miriam. Rebellious Fraser's: Nol Yorke's Magazine in the Days ofMaginn, Thackeray, and Carlyle. New York: Columbia UP, 1934; rpt NewYork: AMS Press, 1966.