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Data Structures Using C
This page is intentionally left blank.
Data Structures Using C
Second Edition

A. K. Sharma
Professor and Dean
YMCA University of Science and Technology

Delhi • Chennai
Copyright © 2013 Dorling Kindersley (India) Pvt. Ltd.
Licensees of Pearson Education in South Asia

No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the publisher’s
prior written consent.

This eBook may or may not include all assets that were part of the print version. The publisher
reserves the right to remove any material in this eBook at any time.

ISBN 9788131792544
eISBN 9789332514225

Head Office: A-8(A), Sector 62, Knowledge Boulevard, 7th Floor, NOIDA 201 309, India
Registered Office: 11 Local Shopping Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
 To
my parents,
wife Suman and daughter Sagun
This page is intentionally left blank.
 Contents
Preface to the Second Edition xiii
Preface xiv
About the Author xv

Chapter 1: Overview of C 1
1.1 The History 1
1.2 Characters Used in C 2
1.3 Data Types 2
1.3.1 Integer Data Type (int) 2
1.3.2 Character Data Type (char) 3
1.3.3 The Floating Point (f loat) Data Type 3
1.4 C Tokens 4
1.4.1 Identifiers 4
1.4.2 Keywords 5
1.4.3 Variables 5
1.4.4 Constants 7
1.5 Structure of a C Program 8
1.5.1 Our First Program 8
1.6 printf() and scanf() Functions 8
1.6.1 How to Display Data Using printf() Function 9
1.6.2 How to Read Data from Keyboard Using scanf() 10
1.7 Comments 10
1.8 Escape Sequence (Backslash Character Constants) 11
1.9 Operators and Expressions 13
1.9.1 Arithmetic Operators 13
1.9.2 Relational and Logical Operators 14
1.9.3 Conditional Operator 16
1.9.4 Order of Evaluation of Expressions 17
1.9.5 Some Special Operators 18
1.9.6 Assignment Operator 18
1.9.7 Bitwise Shift Operators 19
1.10 Flow of Control 20
1.10.1 The Compound Statement 21
1.10.2 Selective Execution (Conditional Statements) 21
1.10.3 Repetitive Execution (Iterative Statements) 25
1.10.4 The exit() Function 27
1.10.5 Nested Loops 28
1.10.6 The Goto Statement (Unconditional Branching) 28
viii Data Structures Using C

1.11 Input–Output Functions (I/O) 30

1.11.1 Buffered I/O 31
1.11.2 Single Character Functions 32
1.11.3 String-based Functions 33
1.12 Arrays 34
1.13 Structures 34
1.13.1 Defining a Structure in C 35
1.13.2 Referencing Structure Elements 36
1.13.3 Arrays of Structures 36
1.13.4 Initializing Structures 37
1.13.5 Assignment of Complete Structures 37
1.13.6 Nested Structures 38
1.14 User-defined Data Types 39
1.14.1 Enumerated Data Types 40
1.15 Unions 42
1.16 Functions 43
1.16.1 Function Prototypes 44
1.16.2 Calling a Function 45
1.16.3 Parameter Passing in Functions 47
1.16.4 Returning Values from Functions 52
1.16.5 Passing Structures to Functions 52
1.17 Recursion 56
1.17.1 Types of Recursion 60
1.17.2 Tower of Hanoi 65

Chapter 2: Data Structures and Algorithms: An Introduction 72

2.1 Overview 72
2.2 Concept of Data Structures 73
2.2.1 Choice of Right Data Structures 74
2.2.2 Types of Data Structures 76
2.2.3 Basic Terminology Related with Data Structures 77
2.3 Design of a Suitable Algorithm 78
2.3.1 How to Develop an Algorithm? 78
2.3.2 Stepwise Refinement 80
2.3.3 Using Control Structures 81
2.4 Algorithm Analysis 85
2.4.1 Big-Oh Notation 86

Chapter 3: Arrays: Searching and Sorting 93

3.1 Introduction 93
3.2 One-dimensional Arrays 94
3.2.1 Traversal 95
3.2.2 Selection 96
3.2.3 Searching 98
Contents ix

3.2.4 Insertion and Deletion 105

3.2.5 Sorting 109
3.3 Multi-dimensional Arrays 130
3.4 Representation of Arrays in Physical Memory 134
3.4.1 Physical Address Computation of Elements of One-dimensional Arrays 135
3.4.2 Physical Address Computation of Elements of Two-dimensional Arrays 136
3.5 Applications of Arrays 138
3.5.1 Polynomial Representation and Operations 138
3.5.2 Sparse Matrix Representation 141

Chapter 4: Stacks and Queues 151

4.1 Stacks 151
4.1.1 Stack Operations 152
4.2 Applications of Stacks 156
4.2.1 Arithmetic Expressions 156
4.3 Queues 170
4.3.1 Queue Operations 171
4.3.2 Circular Queue 176
4.3.3 Priority Queue 181
4.3.4 The Deque 185

Chapter 5: Pointers 197

5.1 Introduction 197
5.1.1 The ‘&’ Operator 197
5.1.2 The ‘*’ Operator 198
5.2 Pointer Variables 198
5.2.1 Dangling Pointers 202
5.3 Pointers and Arrays 203
5.4 Array of Pointers 208
5.5 Pointers and Structures 208
5.6 Dynamic Allocation 210
5.6.1 Self Referential Structures 215

Chapter 6: Linked Lists 227

6.1 Introduction 227
6.2 Linked Lists 227
6.3 Operations on Linked Lists 231
6.3.1 Creation of a Linked List 231
6.3.2 Travelling a Linked List 236
6.3.3 Searching a Linked List 241
6.3.4 Insertion in a Linked List 243
6.3.5 Deleting a Node from a Linked List 250
x Data Structures Using C

6.4 Variations of Linked Lists 253

6.4.1 Circular Linked Lists 254
6.4.2 Doubly Linked List 258
6.5 The Concept of Dummy Nodes 264
6.6 Linked Stacks 266
6.7 Linked Queues 270
6.8 Comparison of Sequential and Linked Storage 274
6.9 Solved Problems 274

Chapter 7: Trees 282

7.1 Introduction 282
7.2 Basic Terminology 284
7.3 Binary Trees 285
7.3.1 Properties of Binary Trees 286
7.4 Representation of a Binary Tree 287
7.4.1 Linear Representation of a Binary Tree 287
7.4.2 Linked Representation of a Binary Tree 289
7.4.3 Traversal of Binary Trees 291
7.5 Types of Binary Trees 298
7.5.1 Expression Tree 298
7.5.2 Binary Search Tree 303
7.5.3 Heap Trees 319
7.5.4 Threaded Binary Trees 340
7.6 Weighted Binary Trees and Huffman Algorithm 352
7.6.1 Huffman Algorithm 354
7.6.2 Huffman Codes 356
7.7 Dynamic Dictionary Coding 360

Chapter 8: Graphs 365

8.1 Introduction 365
8.2 Graph Terminology 366
8.3 Representation of Graphs 368
8.3.1 Array-based Representation of Graphs 368
8.3.2 Linked Representation of a Graph 371
8.3.3 Set Representation of Graphs 373
8.4 Operations of Graphs 373
8.4.1 Insertion Operation 374
8.4.2 Deletion Operation 379
8.4.3 Traversal of a Graph 384
8.4.4 Spanning Trees 396
8.4.5 Shortest Path Problem 401
8.5 Applications of Graphs 408
Contents xi

Chapter 9: Files 412

9.1 Data and Information 412
9.1.1 Data 412
9.1.2 Information 412
9.2 File Concepts 413
9.3 File Organization 415
9.4 Files in C 416
9.5 Files and Streams 416
9.6 Working with Files Using I/O Stream 418
9.6.1 Opening of a File 418
9.6.2 Unformatted File I/O Operations 419
9.6.3 Formatted File I/O Operations 425
9.6.4 Reading or Writing Blocks of Data in Files 426
9.7 Sequential File Organization 430
9.7.1 Creating a Sequential File 430
9.7.2 Reading and Searching a Sequential File 431
9.7.3 Appending a Sequential File 431
9.7.4 Updating a Sequential File 437
9.8 Direct File Organization 442
9.9 Indexed Sequential Organization 445
9.9.1 Searching a Record 445
9.9.2 Addition/Deletion of a Record 446
9.9.3 Storage Devices for Indexed Sequential Files 447
9.9.4 Multilevel Indexed Files 448
9.10 Choice of File Organization 448
9.11 Graded Problems 451

Chapter 10: Advanced Data Structures 459

10.1 AVL Trees 459
10.1.1 Searching an AVL Tree 461
10.1.2 Inserting a Node in an AVL Tree 462
10.2 Sets 468
10.2.1 Representation of Sets 469
10.2.2 Operations on Sets 470
10.2.3 Applications of Sets 476
10.3 Skip Lists 478
10.4 B-Trees 480
10.4.1 Searching a Key in a B-Tree 482
10.4.2 Inserting a Key in a B-Tree 483
10.4.3 Deleting a Key from a B-Tree 484
10.4.4 Advantages of B-Trees 487
xii Data Structures Using C

10.5 Searching by Hashing 489

10.5.1 Types of Hashing Functions 490
10.5.2 Requirements for Hashing Algorithms 491
10.5.3 Overflow Management (Collision Handling) 491

Appendix A ASCII Codes (Character Sets) 494

Appendix B Table of Format Specifiers 495
Appendix C Escape Sequences 496
Appendix D Trace of Huffman Algorithm 497

Index 501
 Preface to the
Second Edition
I have been encouraged by the excellent response given by the readers to the first edition of the book to
work on the second edition. As per the feedback received from the teachers of the subject and the input
provided by the team at Pearson Education, the following topics in various chapters of the book have
been added:
1. Sparse matrices
2. Recursion
3. Hashing
4. Weighted binary trees
a. Huffman algorithm
5. Spanning trees, minimum cost spanning trees
a. Kruskal algorithm
b. Prims algorithm
6. Shortest path problems
a. Warshall’s algorithm
b. Floyd’s algorithm
c. Dijkstra’s algorithm
7. Indexed file organization
While revising the book, the text has been thoroughly edited and the errors found thereof have been
corrected. More examples on important topics have been included.
I hope the readers will like this revised edition of the book and, as before, will provide their much
needed feedback and comments for further improvement.

Acknowledgements
I am thankful to Khushboo Jain and Anuradha Pillai for helping me in preparing the solution manual
of the book.

A. K. Sharma
 Preface
As a student, programmer, and teacher of computer engineering, I find ‘Data Structures’ a core course of
computer engineering and particularly central to programming process.
In fact in our day-to-day life, we are confronted with situations such as where I would keep a bunch
of keys, a pen, coins, two thousand rupees, a chalk, and five hundred thousand rupees.
I would keep the bunch of keys and coins in the left and right pockets of my pants, respectively. The
pen gets clipped to the front pocket of the shirt whereas two thousand rupees would go into my ticket
pocket. I would definitely put the five hundred thousand rupees into a safe, i.e., under the lock and key.
While teaching, I will keep the chalk in hand. The decision of choosing the places for these items is based
on two factors: ease of accessibility and security.
Similarly, given a problem situation, a mature programmer chooses the most appropriate data
structures to organize and store data associated with the problem. The reason being that the intel-
ligent choice of data structures will decide the fate of the software in terms of effectiveness, speed
and efficiency—the three most important much-needed features for the success of a commercial
venture.
I have taught ‘Data Structures’ for more than a decade and, therefore, the demand to write a book on
this subject was there for quite some time by my students and teacher colleagues.
The hallmark of this book is that it would not only help students to understand the concepts govern-
ing the data structures but also to develop a talent in them to use the art of discrimination to choose the
right data structures for a given problem situation. In order to provide a hands-on experience to budding
software engineers, implementations of the operations defined on data structures using ‘C’ have been
provided. The book has a balance between the fundamentals and advanced features, supported by solved
examples.
This book would not have been possible without the well wishes and contribution of many people
in terms of suggestions and useful remarks provided by them during its production. I record my
thanks to Dr Ashutosh Dixit, Anuradha Pillai, Sandya Dixit, Dr Komal Bhatia, Rosy Bhatia, Harsh, and
Indu Grover.
I am indebted to my teachers and research guides, Professor J. P. Gupta, Professor Padam Kumar,
Professor Moinuddin, and Professor D. P. Agarwal, for their encouragement. I am also thankful to
my friends, Professor Asok De, Professor Qasim Rafiq, Professor N.S. Gill, Rajiv Kapur and Professor
Rajender Sahu, for their continuous support and useful comments.
I am also thankful to various teams at Pearson who made this beautiful book happen.
Finally, I would like to extend special thanks to my parents, wife Suman and daughter Sagun for
saying ‘yes’ for this project when both wanted to say ‘no’. I know that I have stolen some of the quality
time which I ought to have spent with them.
Some errors might have unwittingly crept in. I shall be grateful if they are brought to my notice.
I would also be happy to acknowledge suggestions for further improvement of this book.

A. K. Sharma
 About the Author
A. K. Sharma is currently Chairman, Department of Computer Engineering, and
Dean of Faculty, Engineering and Technology at YMCA University of Science and
Technology, Faridabad. He is also a member of the Board of Studies committee of
Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak. He has guided ten Ph.D. theses and has
published about 215 research papers in national and international journals of re-
pute. He heads a group of researchers actively working on the design of different
types of ‘Crawlers.
This page is intentionally left blank.
 Overview of C
1
Chapter

• 1.1 The History

• 1.2 Characters Used in C
• 1.3 Data Types
• 1.4 C Tokens
CHapTER OuTlInE

• 1.5 Structure of a C Program

• 1.6 printf() and scanf() Functions
• 1.7 Comments
• 1.8 Escape Sequence (Backslash Character Constants)
• 1.9 Operators and Expressions
• 1.10 Flow of Control
• 1.11 Input–Output Functions (I/O)
• 1.12 Arrays
• 1.13 Structures
• 1.14 User-defined Data Types
• 1.15 Unions
• 1.16 Functions
• 1.17 Recursion

1.1 THE HISTORY

In 1971 Dennis Ritchi, a system programmer from Bell laboratories, developed a very powerful
language called C for writing UNIX, a large and complex operating system. Even the compiler of 'C'
was written in C. In fact, it is a high level language that not only supports the necessary data types
and data structures needed by a normal programmer but it can also access the computer hardware
through specially designed declarations and functions and, therefore, it is often called as a “middle-
level” language.
It is popular because of the following characteristics:
n Small size

n Wide use of functions and function calls

n Loose typing

n Bitwise low level programming support

n Structured language

n Wide use of pointers to access data structures and physical memory of the system

Besides the above characteristics, the C programs are small and efficient. A ‘C’ program can be
compiled on variety of computers.
2 Data Structures Using C

1.2 CHaRaCTERS uSED In C

The set of characters allowed in C consists of alphabets, digits, and special characters as listed below:
(i) Letters: Both upper case and lower case letters of English:
A, B, C, .... X, Y, and Z
a, b, c, .... x, y, and z
(ii) Decimal digits:
0, 1, 2, .... 7, 8, 9
(iii) Special characters:
! * 1 \ “ <<
#(5 ! {
%) ; “ /
^_ [ :, ?
&_ ]’ . blank

1.3 DaTa TYpES

Every program specifies a set of operations to be done on some data in a particular sequence. However,
the data can be of many types such as a numbers, characters, floating points, etc. C supports the following
simple data types: Integer data type, character data type, floating point data type.

1.3.1 Integer Data Type (int)

An integer is an integral whole number without a decimal point. These numbers are used for counting.
Examples of integers are:
923
47
5
15924
−56
2245
C allows four types of representation of integers, i.e., integer, long integer, short integer, and unsigned
integer.
n Integer: An integer is referred to as int. It is stored in one word of the memory.

n Long integer: A long integer is referred to as long int or simple long. It is stored in 32 bits and

does not depend upon the word size of the memory.

n Short integer: A short integer is referred to as short int or simple short. It is stored in 16 bits and

does not depend upon the size of the memory.

n Unsigned integers: C supports two types of unsigned integers: the unsigned int and the unsigned short.

The unsigned int is stored in one word of the memory whereas the unsigned short is stored in
16 bits and does not depend upon the word size of the memory.
Examples of invalid integers are:
(i) 9, 24, 173 illegal-comma used
(ii) 5.29 illegal-decimal point used
(iii) 79 248 blank used
Overview of C 3

1.3.2 Character Data Type (char)

It is a non-numeric data type consisting of single alphanumeric character enclosed between a pair of
apostrophes, i.e., single quotation marks.
Examples of valid character type are:
‘A’
‘N’
‘*’
‘7’
It may be noted that the character ‘7’ is different from the numeric value 7. In fact, former is of type
char and later of type int. Each character has a numeric code, i.e., the ASCII code. For instance, the
ASCII code for the character ‘A’ is 65 and that of ‘*’ is 42. A table of ASCII codes is given in Appendix A.
A character data type is referred to as char. It is stored in one byte of memory. However, the
representation varies from computer to computer. For instance, some computers support signed as well
as unsigned characters. The signed characters can store integer values from 2128 to 1127 whereas the
unsigned characters store ASCII codes from 0 to 255.

1.3.3 The Floating point (float) Data Type

A floating point number is a real number which can be represented in two forms: decimal and exponent
forms. Floating point numbers are generally used for measuring quantities.
(1) Decimal form: The floating point number in this form has a decimal point. Even if it is an
integral value, it must include the decimal point.
Examples of valid “decimal form” numbers are:
973.24
849.
73.0
282349.24
9.0004
(2) Exponent form: The exponent form of floating point number consists of the following parts:
<integer>. <fraction> e <exponent>
Examples of valid floating point numbers are:
3.45 e 7
0.249 e 26
It may be noted that exponent form is a scientific notation wherein the number is broken into two
parts: mantissa and exponent. The mantissa is a floating point number of decimal form. The exponent
part starts with a letter ‘e’ followed by an integer (signed or unsigned).
For example, the number 324.5 can be written as 3.245 times 102. In exponential form, the number
is represented as 3.245 e2. In fact, the base 10 has been replaced by the character e (or E).
The utility of exponential form is that very small numbers can be easily represented by this notation
of floating points.
For example, the number 0.00001297 can be written as 0.1297 e24 or as 12.97 e26 or as 129.7 e27.
C allows the following two data types for floating prints:
n float: These types of numbers are stored in 32 bits of memory.

n double: The numbers of double data type are stored in 64 bits of memory.
4 Data Structures Using C

A summary of C basic data types is given the Table 1.1. From this table, it may be observed that charac-
ter and integer type data can also be declared as unsigned. Such data types are called unsigned data types.
In this representation, the data is always a positive number with range starting from 0 to a maximum
value. Thus, a number twice as big as a signed number can be represented through unsigned data types.

n Table 1.1 Basic data types in C

C data type Size lower bound upper bound Represents
Char 1 – – Character
Unsigned Char 1 0 255 Character
Short (int) 2 232768 132767 Whole number
Unsigned Short int 2 0 65535 Whole number
Long int 4 2,147,438,648 2,141,438,647 Whole number
Float 4 −3.4 3 10 ±38 13.4 3 10 ±38 Real number
Double 8 −1.7 3 10 ±308
11.7 3 10 ±308
Real number

1.4 C TOKEnS
A token is a group of characters that logically belong together. In fact, a programmer can write a program
by using tokens. C supports the following types of tokens:
n Identifiers

n Keywords

n Constants

n Variables

1.4.1 Identifiers
Symbolic names can be used in C for various data items. For example, if a programmer desires to store a
value 27, then he can choose any symbolic name (say, ROLL) and use it as given below:
ROLL = 27;
Where ROLL is a memory location and the symbol ‘5’ is an assignment operator.
The significance of the above statement is that ‘ROLL’ is a symbolic name for a memory location
where the value 27 is being stored. A symbolic name is generally known as an identifier.
The identifier is a sequence of characters taken from C character set. The number of characters in
an identifier is not fixed though most of the C compilers allow 31 characters. The rules for the formation
of an identifier are:
n An identifier can consist of alphabets, digits and and/or underscores.

n It must not start with a digit.

n C is case sensitive, i.e., upper case and lower case letters are considered different from each other.

n An identifier can start with an underscore character. Some special C names begin with the

underscore.
n Special characters such as blank space, comma, semicolon, colon, period, slash, etc. are not allowed.

n The name of an identifier should be so chosen that its usage and meaning becomes clear. For

example, total, salary, roll no, etc. are self explanatory identifiers.
Overview of C 5

Examples of acceptable identifiers are:

TOTAL
Sum
Net_sal
P123
a_b_c
total
_sysreg

Examples of unacceptable identifiers are:

Bas ic (blank not allowed)
H, rent (special character `, ‘ included)
It may be noted here that TOTAL and total are two different identifier names.

1.4.2 Keywords
A keyword is a reserved word of C. This cannot be used n Table 1.2 Standard keywords in C
as an identifier by the user in his program. The set of C
auto double int struct
keywords is given in Table 1.2.
break else long switch
1.4.3 Variables case enum register typedef
A variable is the most fundamental aspect of any com- char extern return union
puter language. It is a location in the computer memory const float short unsigned
which can store data and is given a symbolic name for continue for signed void
easy reference. The variables can be used to hold differ-
default goto sizeof volatile
ent values at different times during a program run. To
do if static while
understand this concept, let us have a look at the follow-
ing set of statements:
Total 5 500.25; ...(i)
Net 5 Total 2 100.00; ...(ii)
In statement (i), value 500.25 has been stored in a memory location called Total. The variable Total
is being used in statement (ii) for the calculation of another variable Net. The point worth noting is that
‘the variable Total is used in statement (ii) by its name not by its value’.
Before a variable is used in a program, it has to be defined. This activity enables the compiler to
make available the appropriate amount of space and location in the memory. The definition of a variable
consists of its type followed by the name of the variable. For example, a variable called Total of type float
can be declared as shown below:
float Total;

Similarly, the variable net of type int can also be defined as shown below:
int Net;
Examples of valid variable declarations are:
(i) int count;
(ii) int i, j, k;
(iii) char ch, first;
6 Data Structures Using C

(iv) float Total, Net;

(v) long int sal;
(vi) double salary.
val
Let us now look at a variable declaration
from a different perspective. Whenever a variable
(say, int val) is declared, a memory location called int val;
val is made available by the compiler as shown in
Figure 1.1.
Thus, val is the name associated by the com-
piler to a location in the memory of the computer. Fig. 1.1 Memory allocated to variable val
Let us assume that, at the time of execution, the
physical address of this memory location (called
val) is 4715 as shown in Figure 1.2.
Now, a point worth noting is that this memory loca-
tion is viewed by the programmer as a variable called val
and by the computer system as an address 4715. The pro- 4715 val
grammer can store a value in this location with the help of
an assignment operator, i.e., ‘5’. For example, if the pro-
grammer desires to store a value 100 into the variable val,
he can do so by the following statement:
val 5 100;
Once the above statement is executed, the memory Fig. 1.2 The physical address of val
location called val gets the value 100 as shown in Figure 1.3.
C allows the initialization of variables even at the time
of declaration as shown below:
int val 5 100;

From Figure 1.3, we can see that besides its type a variable has three entities associated with it, i.e.,
the name of variable (val), its physical address (4715), and its contents (100). The content of a variable
is also called its rvalue whereas the physical address of the variable is called its lvalue. Thus, lvalue
and rvalue of variable val are 4715 and 100, respectively. The lvalue is of more importance because it
is an expression that should appear on the left hand side of assignment operator because it refers to the
variable or object.

Memory

4715 100 val

Physical address
(lvalue) Name of the
variable
Contents (rvalue)

Fig. 1.3 The contents of a variable (rvalue)

Overview of C 7

1.4.4 Constants
A constant is a memory location which can store data in such a manner that its value during execu-
tion of a program does not change. Any attempt to change the value of a constant will result in an
error message. A constant in C can be of any of the basic data types, i.e., integer constant, float-
ing point constant, and character constant. const qualifier is used to declare a constant as shown
below:
const <type> <name> 5 <val>;
where
const: is a reserved word of C
<type>: is any of the basic data types
<name>: is the identifier name
<val>: is the value to be assigned to the constant.

(1) Integer constant: It is a constant which can be assigned integer values only. For example, if we
desire to have a constant called rate of type integer containing a fixed value 50, then the follow-
ing declaration can be used:
const int rate 5 50;
The above declaration means that rate is a constant of type integer having a fixed value 50. Consider
the following declaration:
const int rate;
rate 5 50;
The above initialization of constant rate is illegal. This is because of the reason that a constant can-
not be initialized for a value at a place other than where it is declared. It may be further noted that if a
program does not change or mutates\a constant or constant object then the program is called as const
correct.
(2) Floating point constant: It is a constant which can be assigned values of real or floating point
type. For example, if it is desired to have a constant called Pi containing value 3.1415, then the
following declaration can be used.
const float Pi = 3.1415;

The above declaration means that Pi is a constant of type float having a fixed value 3.1415. It may be
noted here that by default a floating point constant is of type double.
(3) Character constant: A character constant can contain a single character of information. Thus,
data such as ‘Y’ or ‘N’ is known as a character constant. Let us assume that it is desired to have a
constant called Akshar containing the character ‘Q’; following declaration can be used to obtain
such a constant.
const char Akshar = ‘Q’;
The above declaration means that Akshar is a constant of type char having a fixed value ‘Q’.
A sequence of characters enclosed within quotes is known as a string literal. For example, the
character sequence “computer” is a string literal. When a string literal is assigned to an identifier
declared as a constant, then it is known as a string constant. In fact, a string is an array of
characters. Arrays are discussed later in the chapter.
8 Data Structures Using C

1.5 STRuCTuRE OF a C pROGRaM

A simple program in C can be written as a module. More complex programs can be broken into sub-
modules. In C, all modules or subprograms are referred to as functions.
The structure of a typical C program is given below:
main ()
{
....;
....;
....;
}

Note:
(i) C is a case sensitive language, i.e., it distinguishes between upper case and lower case characters.
Thus, main() is different from Main(). In fact, most of the characters used in C are lowercase.
Hence, it is safest to type everything in lower case except when a programmer needs to capitalize
some text.
(ii) Every C program has a function called main followed by parentheses. It is from here that
program execution begins. A function is basically a subprogram and is complete in itself.
(iii) The task to be performed by a function is enclosed in curly braces called its body, i.e., {}.
These braces are equivalent to begin and end keywords used in some other languages like
Pascal. The body of function contains a set of statements and each statement must end with
a semicolon.

1.5.1 Our First program

Let us break the myth that C is a difficult language to start with. Without going into the details, the
beginner can quickly start writing the program such as given below:
#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
puts (“This is my first program”);
}

The above program displays the following text on the screen:

This is my first program.

1.6 printf() anD scanf() FunCTIOnS

C uses printf() and scanf() functions to write and read from I/O devices, respectively. These
functions have been declared in the header file called stdio.h.
Let us use printf() function to rewrite our first program. The modified program is given
below:
#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
LITERARY & LAKE REMINISCENCES
 CHAPTER I
A MANCHESTER SWEDENBORGIAN AND A
LIVERPOOL LITERARY COTERIE[21]

It was in the year 1801, whilst yet at school, that I made my first
literary acquaintance. This was with a gentleman now dead, and
little, at any time, known in the literary world; indeed, not at all; for
his authorship was confined to a department of religious literature as
obscure and as narrow in its influence as any that can be named—
viz. Swedenborgianism.
Already, on the bare mention of that word, a presumption arises
against any man, that, writing much (or writing at all) for a body of
doctrines so apparently crazy as those of Mr. Swedenborg, a man
must have bid adieu to all good sense and manliness of mind.
Indeed, this is so much of a settled case, that even to have written
against Mr. Swedenborg would be generally viewed as a suspicious
act, requiring explanation, and not very easily admitting of it. Mr.
Swedenborg I call him, because I understand that his title to call
himself "Baron" is imaginary; or rather he never did call himself by
any title of honour—that mistake having originated amongst his
followers in this country, who have chosen to designate him as the
"Honourable" and as the "Baron" Swedenborg, by way of translating,
to the ear of England, some one or other of those irrepresentable
distinctions, Legations-Rath, Hofrath, &c., which are tossed about
with so much profusion in the courts of continental Europe, on both
sides the Baltic. For myself, I cannot think myself qualified to speak
of any man's writings without a regular examination of some one or
two among those which his admirers regard as his best
performances. Yet, as any happened to fall in my way, I have looked
into them; and the impression left upon my mind was certainly not
favourable to their author. They laboured, to my feeling, with two
opposite qualities of annoyance, but which I believe not
uncommonly found united in lunatics—excessive dulness or matter-
of-factness in the execution, with excessive extravagance in the
conceptions. The result, at least, was most unhappy: for, of all
writers, Swedenborg is the only one I ever heard of who has
contrived to strip even the shadowy world beyond the grave of all its
mystery and all its awe. From the very heaven of heavens, he has
rent away the veil; no need for seraphs to "tremble while they
gaze"; for the familiarity with which all objects are invested makes it
impossible that even poor mortals should find any reason to tremble.
Until I saw this book, I had not conceived it possible to carry an
atmosphere so earthy, and steaming with the vapours of earth, into
regions which, by early connexion in our infant thoughts with the
sanctities of death, have a hold upon the reverential affections such
as they rarely lose. In this view, I should conceive that Swedenborg,
if it were at all possible for him to become a popular author, would,
at the same time, become immensely mischievous. He would
dereligionize men beyond all other authors whatsoever.
Little could this character of Swedenborg's writings—this, indeed,
least of all—have been suspected from the temper, mind, or
manners of my new friend. He was the most spiritual-looking, the
most saintly in outward aspect, of all human beings whom I have
known throughout life. He was rather tall, pale, and thin; the most
unfleshly, the most of a sublimated spirit dwelling already more than
half in some purer world, that a poet could have imagined. He was
already aged when I first knew him, a clergyman of the Church of
England; which may seem strange in connexion with his
Swedenborgianism; but he was, however, so. He was rector of a
large parish in a large town, the more active duties of which parish
were discharged by his curate; but much of the duties within the
church were still discharged by himself, and with such exemplary
zeal that his parishioners, afterwards celebrating the fiftieth
anniversary, or golden jubilee of his appointment to the living (the
twenty-fifth anniversary is called in German the silver—the fiftieth,
the golden jubilee), went farther than is usual in giving a public
expression and a permanent shape to their sentiments of love and
veneration. I am surprised, on reflection, that this venerable
clergyman should have been unvexed by Episcopal censures. He
might, and I dare say would, keep back the grosser parts of
Swedenborg's views from a public display; but, in one point, it would
not be easy for a man so conscientious to make a compromise
between his ecclesiastical duty and his private belief; for I have since
found, though I did not then know it, that Swedenborg held a very
peculiar creed on the article of atonement. From the slight pamphlet
which let me into this secret I could not accurately collect the exact
distinctions of his creed; but it was very different from that of the
English Church.
However, my friend continued unvexed for a good deal more than
fifty years, enjoying that peace, external as well as internal, which,
by so eminent a title, belonged to a spirit so evangelically meek and
dovelike. I mention him chiefly for the sake of describing his
interesting house and household, so different from all which belong
to this troubled age, and his impressive style of living. The house
seemed almost monastic; and yet it stood in the centre of one of the
largest, busiest, noisiest towns in England; and the whole household
seemed to have stepped out of their places in some Vandyke, or
even some Titian, picture, from a forgotten century and another
climate. On knocking at the door, which of itself seemed an outrage
to the spirit of quietness which brooded over the place, you were
received by an ancient manservant in the sober livery which
belonged traditionally to Mr.—— 's[22] family; for he was of a
gentleman's descent, and had had the most finished education of a
gentleman. This venerable old butler put me in mind always, by his
noiseless steps, of the Castle of Indolence, where the porter or
usher walked about in shoes that were shod with felt, lest any rude
echoes might be roused. An ancient housekeeper was equally
venerable, equally gentle in her deportment, quiet in her
movements, and inaudible in her tread. One or other of these upper
domestics,—for the others rarely crossed my path,—ushered me
always into some room expressing by its furniture, its pictures, and
its coloured windows, the solemn tranquillity which, for half a
century, had reigned in that mansion. Among the pictures were more
than one of St. John, the beloved apostle, by Italian masters.
Neither the features nor the expression were very wide of Mr.
Clowes's own countenance; and, had it been possible to forget the
gross character of Swedenborg's reveries, or to substitute for these
fleshly dreams the awful visions of the Apocalypse, one might have
imagined easily that the pure, saintly, and childlike evangelist had
been once again recalled to this earth, and that this most quiet of
mansions was some cell in the island of Patmos. Whence came the
stained glass of the windows I know not, and whether it were
stained or painted. The revolutions of that art are known from
Horace Walpole's account; and, nine years after this period, I found
that, in Birmingham, where the art of staining glass was chiefly
practised, no trifling sum was charged even for a vulgar lacing of no
great breadth round a few drawing-room windows, which one of my
friends thought fit to introduce as an embellishment. These
windows, however, of my clerical friend were really "storied
windows," having Scriptural histories represented upon them. A
crowning ornament to the library or principal room was a sweet-
toned organ, ancient, and elaborately carved in its wood-work, at
which my venerable friend readily sate down, and performed the
music of anthems as often as I asked him, sometimes accompanying
it with his voice, which was tremulous from old age, but neither
originally unmusical, nor (as might be perceived) untrained.
Often, from the storms and uproars of this world, I have looked back
upon this most quiet and, I believe, most innocent abode (had I said
saintly I should hardly have erred), conneacting it in thought with
Little Gidding, the famous mansion (in Huntingdonshire, I believe) of
the Farrers, an interesting family in the reigns of James I. and
Charles I. Of the Farrers there is a long and circumstantial
biographical account, and of the conventual discipline maintained at
Little Gidding. For many years it was the rule at Gidding—and it was
the wish of the Farrers to have transmitted that practice through
succeeding centuries—that a musical or cathedral service should be
going on at every hour of night and day in the chapel of the
mansion. Let the traveller, at what hour he would, morning or
evening, summer or winter, and in what generation or century
soever, happen to knock at the gate of Little Gidding, it was the
purpose of Nicholas Farrer—a sublime purpose—that always he
should hear the blare of the organ, sending upwards its surging
volumes of melody, God's worship for ever proceeding, anthems of
praise for ever ascending, and jubilates echoing without end or
known beginning. One stream of music, in fact, never intermitting,
one vestal fire of devotional praise and thanksgiving, was to connect
the beginnings with the ends of generations, and to link one century
into another. Allowing for the sterner asceticism of N. Farrer—partly
arising out of the times, partly out of personal character, and partly,
perhaps, out of his travels in Spain—my aged friend's arrangement
of the day, and the training of his household, might seem to have
been modelled on the plans of Mr. Farrer; whom, however, he might
never have heard of. There was also, in each house, the same union
of religion with some cultivation of the ornamental arts, or some
expression of respect for them. In each case, a monastic severity,
that might, under other circumstances, have terminated in the
gloom of a La Trappe, had been softened by English sociality, and by
the habits of a gentleman's education, into a devotional pomp,
reconcilable with Protestant views. When, however, remembering
this last fact in Mr. Clowes's case (the fact I mean of his liberal
education), I have endeavoured to explain the possibility of one so
much adorned by all the accomplishments of a high-bred gentleman,
and one so truly pious, falling into the grossness, almost the
sensuality, which appears to besiege the visions of Swedenborg, I
fancy that the whole may be explained out of the same cause which
occasionally may be descried, through a distance of two complete
centuries, as weighing heavily upon the Farrers—viz. the dire
monotony of daily life, when visited by no irritations either of hope
or fear—no hopes from ambition, no fears from poverty.
Nearly (if not quite) sixty years did my venerable friend inhabit that
same parsonage house, without any incident more personally
interesting to himself than a cold or a sore throat. And I suppose
that he resorted to Swedenborg—reluctantly, perhaps, at the first—
as to a book of fairy tales connected with his professional studies.
And one thing I am bound to add in candour, which may have had
its weight with him, that more than once, on casually turning over a
volume of Swedenborg, I have certainly found most curious and
felicitous passages of comment—passages which extracted a brilliant
meaning from numbers, circumstances, or trivial accidents,
apparently without significance or object, and gave to things,
without a place or a habitation in the critic's regard, a value as
hieroglyphics or cryptical ciphers, which struck me as elaborately
ingenious. This acknowledgment I make not so much in praise of
Swedenborg, whom I must still continue to think a madman, as in
excuse for Mr. Clowes. It may easily be supposed that a person of
Mr. Clowes's consideration and authority was not regarded with
indifference by the general body of the Swedenborgians. At his
motion it was, I believe, that a society was formed for procuring and
encouraging a translation into English of Swedenborg's entire works,
most of which are written in Latin. Several of these translations are
understood to have been executed personally by Mr. Clowes; and in
this obscure way, for anything I know, he may have been an
extensive author. But it shows the upright character of the man that
never, in one instance, did he seek to bias my opinions in this
direction. Upon every other subject, he trusted me confidentially—
and, notwithstanding my boyish years (15-16), as his equal. His
regard for me, when thrown by accident in his way, had arisen upon
his notice of my fervent simplicity, and my unusual thoughtfulness.
Upon these merits, I had gained the honourable distinction of a
general invitation to his house, without exception as to days and
hours, when few others could boast of any admission at all. The
common ground on which we met was literature—more especially
the Greek and Roman literature; and much he exerted himself, in a
spirit of the purest courtesy, to meet my animation upon these
themes. But the interest on his part was too evidently a secondary
interest in me, for whom he talked, and not in the subject: he spoke
much from memory, as it were of things that he had once felt, and
little from immediate sympathy with the author; and his animation
was artificial, though his courtesy, which prompted the effort, was
the truest and most unaffected possible.
The connexion between us must have been interesting to an
observer; for, though I cannot say with Wordsworth, of old Daniel
and his grandson, that there were "ninety good years of fair and foul
weather" between us, there were, however, sixty, I imagine, at the
least; whilst as a bond of connexion there was nothing at all that I
know of beyond a common tendency to reverie, which is a bad link
for a social connexion. The little ardour, meantime, with which he
had, for many years, participated in the interests of this world, or all
that it inherits, was now rapidly departing. Daily and consciously he
was loosening all ties which bound him to earlier recollections; and,
in particular, I remember—because the instance was connected with
my last farewell visit, as it proved—that for some time he was
engaged daily in renouncing with solemnity (though often enough in
cheerful words) book after book of classical literature in which he
had once taken particular delight. Several of these, after taking his
final glance at a few passages to which a pencil reference in the
margin pointed his eye, he delivered to me as memorials in time to
come of himself. The last of the books given to me under these
circumstances was a Greek "Odyssey," in Clarke's edition. "This,"
said he, "is nearly the sole book remaining to me of my classical
library—which, for some years, I have been dispersing amongst my
friends. Homer I retained to the last, and the 'Odyssey,' by
preference to the 'Iliad,' both in compliance with my own taste, and
because this very copy was my chosen companion for evening
amusement during my freshman's term at Trinity College, Cambridge
—whither I went early in the spring of 1743. Your own favourite
Grecian is Euripides; but still you must value—we must all value—
Homer. I, even as old as I am, could still read him with delight; and,
as long as any merely human composition ought to occupy my time,
I should have made an exception in behalf of this solitary author. But
I am a soldier of Christ; the enemy, the last enemy, cannot be far
off; sarcinas colligere is, at my age, the watchword for every faithful
sentinel, hourly to keep watch and ward, to wait and to be vigilant.
This very day I have taken my farewell glance at Homer, for I must
no more be found seeking my pleasure amongst the works of man;
and, that I may not be tempted to break my resolution, I make over
this my last book to you."
Words to this effect, uttered with his usual solemnity, accompanied
his gift; and, at the same time, he added, without any separate
comment, a little pocket Virgil—the one edited by Alexander
Cunningham, the bitter antagonist of Bentley—with a few
annotations placed at the end. The act was in itself a solemn one;
something like taking the veil for a nun—a final abjuration of the
world's giddy agitations. And yet to him—already and for so long a
time linked so feebly to anything that could be called the world, and
living in a seclusion so profound—it was but as if an anchorite should
retire from his outer to his inner cell. Me, however, it impressed
powerfully in after years; because this act of self-dedication to the
next world, and of parting from the intellectual luxuries of this, was
also, in fact, though neither of us at the time knew it to be such, the
scene of his final parting with myself. Immediately after his solemn
speech, on presenting me with the "Odyssey," he sat down to the
organ, sang a hymn or two, then chanted part of the liturgy, and,
finally, at my request, performed the anthem so well known in the
English Church service—the collect for the seventh Sunday after
Trinity—(Lord of all power and might, &c.) It was summer—about
half after nine in the evening; the light of day was still lingering, and
just strong enough to illuminate the Crucifixion, the Stoning of the
Protomartyr, and other grand emblazonries of the Christian faith,
which adorned the rich windows of his library. Knowing the early
hours of his household, I now received his usual fervent adieus—
which, without the words, had the sound and effect of a benediction
—felt the warm pressure of his hand, saw dimly the outline of his
venerable figure, more dimly his saintly countenance, and quitted
that gracious presence, which, in this world, I was destined no more
to revisit. The night was one in the first half of July 1802; in the
second half of which, or very early in August, I quitted school
clandestinely, and consequently the neighbourhood of Mr. Clowes.
Some years after, I saw his death announced in all the public
journals, as having occurred at Leamington Spa, then in the
springtime of its medicinal reputation. Farewell, early friend! holiest
of men whom it has been my lot to meet! Yes, I repeat, thirty-five
years are past since then, and I have yet seen few men approaching
to this venerable clergyman in paternal benignity—none certainly in
child-like purity, apostolic holiness, or in perfect alienation of heart
from the spirit of this fleshly world.
I have delineated the habits and character of Mr. Clowes at some
length, chiefly because a connexion is rare and interesting between
parties so widely asunder in point of age—one a schoolboy, and the
other almost an octogenarian, to quote a stanza from one of the
most spiritual sketches of Wordsworth—

"We talked with open heart and tongue,

Affectionate and free—
A pair of friends, though I was young,
And Matthew seventy-three."

I have stated a second reason for this record, in the fact that Mr.
Clowes was the first of my friends who had any connexion with the
press. At one time I have reason to believe that this connexion was
pretty extensive, though not publicly avowed, and so far from being
lucrative that at first I believe it to have been expensive to him, and
whatever profits might afterwards arise were applied, as much of his
regular income, to the benefit of others.[23] Here, again, it seems
surprising that a spirit so beneficent and, in the amplest sense,
charitable, could coalesce in any views with Swedenborg, who, in
some senses, was not charitable. Swedenborg had been scandalized
by a notion which, it seems, he found prevalent amongst the poor of
the Continent—viz., that, if riches were a drag and a negative force
on the road to religious perfection, poverty must be positive title per
se to the favour of Heaven. Grievously offended with this error, he
came almost to hate poverty as a presumptive indication of this
offensive heresy; scarcely would he allow it an indirect value, as
removing in many cases the occasions or incitements of evil. No:
being in itself neutral and indifferent, he argued that it had become
erroneously a ground of presumptuous hope; whilst the rich man,
aware of his danger, was, in some degree, armed against it by fear
and humility. And, in this course of arguing and of corresponding
feeling, Mr. Swedenborg had come to hate the very name of a poor
candidate for Heaven, as bitterly as a sharking attorney hates the
applications of a pauper client. Yet so entirely is it true that "to the
pure, all things are pure," and that perfect charity "thinketh no ill,"
but is gifted with a power to transmute all things into its own
resemblance—so entirely is all this true, that this most spiritual, and,
as it were, disembodied of men, could find delight in the dreams of
the very "fleshliest incubus" that has intruded amongst heavenly
objects; and, secondly, this benignest of men found his own pure
feelings not outraged by one who threw a withering scowl over the
far larger half of his fellow-creatures.

Concurrently with this acquaintance, so impressive and so elevating

to me, from the unusual sanctity of Mr. Clowes's character, I formed
another with a well-known coterie, more avowedly, and in a more
general sense, literary, resident at Liverpool or its neighbourhood. In
my sixteenth year [1801] I had accompanied my mother and family
on a summer's excursion to Everton, a well-known village upon the
heights immediately above Liverpool; though by this time I believe it
has thrown out so many fibres of connexion as to have become a
mere quarter or suburban "process" (to speak by anatomical phrase)
of the great town below it. In those days, however, distant by one
third of a century from ours, Everton was still a distinct village (for a
mile of ascent is worth three of level ground in the way of effectual
separation); it was delightfully refreshed by marine breezes, though
raised above the sea so far that its thunders could be heard only
under favourable circumstances. There we had a cottage for some
months; and the nearest of our neighbours happened to be that Mr.
Clarke, the banker, to whom acknowledgments are made in the
Lorenzo the Magnificent, for aid in procuring MSS. and information
from Italy. This gentleman called on my mother, merely in the
general view of offering neighbourly attentions to a family of
strangers. I, as the eldest of my brothers, and already with strong
literary propensities, had received a general invitation to his house.
Thither I went, indeed, early and late; and there I met Mr. Roscoe,
Dr. Currie (who had just at that time published his Life and Edition of
Burns), and Mr. Shepherd of Gatacre, the author of some works on
Italian literature (particularly a Life of Poggio Bracciolini), and, since
then, well known to all England by his Reform politics.
There were other members of this society—some, like myself,
visitors merely to that neighbourhood; but those I have mentioned
were the chief. Here I had an early opportunity of observing the
natural character and tendencies of merely literary society—by which
society I mean all such as, having no strong distinctions in power of
thinking or in native force of character, are yet raised into circles of
pretension and mark by the fact of having written a book, or of
holding a notorious connexion with some department or other of the
periodical press. No society is so vapid and uninteresting in its
natural quality, none so cheerless and petrific in its influence upon
others. Ordinary people, in such company, are in general repressed
from uttering with cordiality the natural expression of their own
minds or temperaments, under a vague feeling of some peculiar
homage due, or at least customarily paid, to those lions: such people
are no longer at their ease, or masters of their own natural motions
in their own natural freedom; whilst indemnification of any sort is
least of all to be looked for from the literary dons who have diffused
this unpleasant atmosphere of constraint. They disable others, and
yet do nothing themselves to fill up the void they have created. One
and all—unless by accident people of unusual originality, power, and
also nerve, so as to be able without trepidation to face the
expectations of men—the literary class labour under two opposite
disqualifications for a good tone of conversation. From causes visibly
explained, they are either spoiled by the vices of reserve, and of
over-consciousness directed upon themselves—this is one extreme;
or, where manliness of mind has prevented this, beyond others of
equal or inferior natural power, they are apt to be desperately
commonplace. The first defect is an accident arising out of the rarity
of literary pretensions, and would rapidly subside as the proportion
became larger of practising literati to the mass of educated people.
But the other is an adjunct scarcely separable from the ordinary
prosecution of a literary career, and growing in fact out of literature
per se, as literature is generally understood. That same day, says
Homer, which makes a man a slave robs him of half his value. That
same hour which first awakens a child to the consciousness of being
observed, and to the sense of admiration, strips it of its freedom and
unpremeditated graces of motion. Awkwardness at the least—and
too probably, as a consequence of that, affectation and conceit—
follow hard upon the consciousness of special notice or admiration.
The very attempt to disguise embarrassment too often issues in a
secondary and more marked embarrassment.
Another mode of reserve arises with some literary men, who believe
themselves to be in possession of novel ideas. Cordiality of
communication, or ardour of dispute, might betray them into a
revelation of those golden thoughts, sometimes into a necessity of
revealing them, since, without such aid, it might be impossible to
maintain theirs in the discussion. On this principle it was—a principle
of deliberate unsocial reserve—that Adam Smith is said to have
governed his conversation; he professed to put a bridle on his
words, lest by accident a pearl should drop out of his lips amongst
the vigilant bystanders. And in no case would he have allowed
himself to be engaged in a disputation, because both the passions of
dispute and the necessities of dispute are alike apt to throw men off
their guard. A most unamiable reason it certainly is, which places a
man in one constant attitude of self-protection against petty larceny.
And yet, humiliating as that may be to human nature, the furtive
propensities or instincts of petty larceny are diffused most
extensively through all ranks—directed, too, upon a sort of property
far more tangible and more ignoble, as respects the possible motives
of the purloiner, than any property in subjects purely intellectual.
Rather more than ten years ago, a literary man of the name of Alton
published, some little time before his own death, a very searching
essay upon this chapter of human integrity—arraying a large list of
common cases (cases of hats, gloves, umbrellas, books,
newspapers, &c.) where the claim of ownership, left to itself and
unsupported by accidents of shame and exposure, appeared to be
weak indeed amongst classes of society prescriptively "respectable."
And yet, for a double reason, literary larceny is even more to be
feared; both because it is countenanced by a less ignoble quality of
temptation, and because it is far more easy of achievement—so
easy, indeed, that it may be practised without any clear
accompanying consciousness.
I have myself witnessed or been a party to a case of the following
kind:—A new truth—suppose for example, a new doctrine or a new
theory—was communicated to a very able man in the course of
conversation, not didactically, or directly as a new truth, but
polemically,—communicated as an argument in the current of a
dispute. What followed? Necessarily it followed that a very able man
would not be purely passive in receiving this new truth; that he
would co-operate with the communicator in many ways—as by
raising objections, by half dissipating his own objections, and in a
variety of other co-agencies. In such cases, a very clever man does
in effect half-generate the new idea for himself, but then he does
this entirely under your leading; you stand ready at each point of
possible deviation, to warn him away from the wrong turn—from the
turn which leads nowhither or the turn which leads astray. Yet the
final result has been that the catechumen, under the full
consciousness of self-exertion, has so far confounded his just and
true belief of having contributed to the evolution of the doctrine,
quoad his own apprehension of it, with the far different case of
having evolved the truth itself into light, as to go off with the firm
impression that the doctrine had been a product of his own.[24] There
is therefore ground enough for the jealousy of Adam Smith, since a
robbery may be committed unconsciously; though, by the way, it is
not a peril peculiarly applicable to himself, who has not so much
succeeded in discovering new truths as in establishing a logical
connexion amongst old ones.
On the other hand, it is not by reserve, whether of affectation or of
Smithian jealousy, that the majority of literary people offend—at
least not by the latter; for, so far from having much novelty to
protect against pirates, the most general effect of literary pursuits is
to tame down all points of originality to one standard of insipid
monotony. I shall not go into the reasons for this. I make my appeal
to the matter of fact. Try a Parisian populace, very many of whom
are highly cultivated by reading, against a body of illiterate rustics.
Mr. Scott of Aberdeen,[25] in his "Second Tour to Paris" (1815), tells
us that, on looking over the shoulder of poor stall women selling
trifles in the street, he usually found them reading Voltaire,
Rousseau, or even (as I think he adds) Montesquieu; but,
notwithstanding the polish which such reading both presumes as a
previous condition and produces as a natural effect, yet no people
could be more lifeless in their minds, or more barren of observing
faculties, than they; and so he describes them. Words! words!
nothing but words! On the other hand, listen to the conversation of
a few scandalous village dames collected at a tea-table. Vulgar as
the spirit may be which possesses them, and not seldom malicious,
still how full of animation and of keen perception it will generally be
found, and of a learned spirit of connoisseurship in human character,
by comparison with the fade generalities and barren recollections of
mere literati!
All this was partially illustrated in the circle to which I was now
presented. Mr. Clarke was not an author, and he was by much the
most interesting person of the whole. He had travelled, and,
particularly, he had travelled in Italy—then an aristocratic distinction;
had a small, but interesting, picture gallery; and, at this time,
amused himself by studying Greek, for which purpose he and myself
met at sunrise every morning through the summer, and read
Æschylus together. These meetings, at which we sometimes had the
company of any stranger who might happen to be an amateur in
Greek, were pleasant enough to my schoolboy vanity—placing me in
the position of teacher and guide to men old enough to be my
grandfathers. But the dinner parties, at which the literati sometimes
assembled in force, were far from being equally amusing. Mr.
Roscoe[26] was simple and manly in his demeanour; but there was
the feebleness of a mere belle-lettrist, a mere man of virtù, in the
style of his sentiments on most subjects. Yet he was a politician, and
took an ardent interest in politics, and wrote upon politics—all which
are facts usually presuming some vigour of mind. And he wrote,
moreover, on the popular side, and with a boldness which, in that
day, when such politics were absolutely disreputable, seemed
undeniably to argue great moral courage. But these were accidents
arising out of his connexion with the Whig party, or (to speak more
accurately) with the Opposition party in Parliament; by whom he was
greatly caressed. Mr. Fox, the Duchess of Devonshire, Mr. Sheridan,
and all the powers on that side of the question, showed him the
most marked attention in a great variety of forms; and this it was,
not any native propensity for such speculations, which drove him
into pamphleteering upon political questions. Mr. Fox (himself the
very feeblest of party writers) was probably sincere in his admiration
of Mr. Roscoe's pamphlets; and did seriously think him, as I know
that he described him in private letters, an antagonist well matched
against Burke; and that he afterwards became in form. The rest of
the world wondered at his presumption, or at his gross
miscalculation of his own peculiar powers. An eminent person, in
after years (about 1815), speaking to me of Mr. Roscoe's political
writings, especially those which had connected his name with Burke,
declared that he always felt of him in that relation not so much as of
a feeble man, but absolutely as of a Sporus (that was his very
expression), or a man emasculated. Right or wrong in his views, he
showed the most painful defect of good sense and prudence in
confronting his own understanding, so plain and homely, with the
Machiavelian Briareus of a hundred arms—the Titan whom he found
in Burke; all the advantages of a living antagonist over a dead one
could not compensate odds so fearful in original power.
It was a striking illustration of the impotence of mere literature
against natural power and mother wit that the only man who was
considered indispensable in these parties, for giving life and impulse
to their vivacity, was a tailor; and not, I was often assured, a person
deriving a designation from the craft of those whose labours he
supported as a capitalist, but one who drew his own honest daily
bread from his own honest needle, except when he laid it aside for
the benefit of drooping literati, who needed to be watered with his
wit. Wit, perhaps, in a proper sense, he had not—it was rather
drollery, and sometimes even buffoonery.
These, in the lamentable absence of the tailor, could be furnished of
an inferior quality by Mr. Shepherd,[27] who (as may be imagined
from this fact) had but little dignity in private life. I know not how far
he might alter in these respects; but certainly, at the time (1801-2),
he was decidedly, or could be, a buffoon, and seemed even
ambitious of the title, by courting notice for his grotesque manner
and coarse stories, more than was altogether compatible with the
pretensions of a scholar and a clergyman. I must have leave to think
that such a man could not have emerged from any great University,
or from any but a sectarian training. Indeed, about Poggio himself
there were circumstances which would have indisposed any regular
clergyman of the Church of England, or of the Scottish Kirk, to usher
him into the literature of his country. With what coarseness and low
buffoonery have I heard this Mr. Shepherd in those days run down
the bishops then upon the bench, but especially those of any public
pretensions or reputation, as Horsley and Porteus, and, in connexion
with them, the pious Mrs. Hannah More! Her he could not endure.
Of this gentleman, having said something disparaging, I am bound
to go on and add, that I believe him to have been at least a truly
upright man—talking often wildly, but incapable of doing a conscious
wrong to any man, be his party what it might; and, in the midst of
fun or even buffoonery, a real, and, upon occasion, a stern patriot,
Mr. Canning and others he opposed to the teeth upon the Liverpool
hustings, and would take no bribe, as others did, from literary
feelings of sympathy, or (which is so hard for an amiable mind to
resist) from personal applications of courtesy and respect. Amusing
it is to look back upon any political work of Mr. Shepherd's, as upon
his "Tour to France," published in 1815, and to know that the pale
pink of his Radicalism was then accounted deep, deep scarlet.
Nothing can better serve to expound the general force of intellect
amongst the Liverpool coterie than the quality of their poetry, and
the general standard which they set up in poetry. Not that even in
their errors, as regarded poetry, they were of a magnitude to
establish any standard or authority in their own persons. Imitable or
seducing there could be nothing in persons who wrote verses
occasionally, and as a παρεργον (parergon) or by-labour, and were
themselves the most timid of imitators. But to me, who, in that year,
1801, already knew of a grand renovation of poetic power—of a new
birth in poetry, interesting not so much to England as to the human
mind—it was secretly amusing to contrast the little artificial usages
of their petty traditional knack with the natural forms of a divine art
—the difference being pretty much as between an American lake,
Ontario, or Superior, and a carp pond or a tench preserve. Mr.
Roscoe had just about this time published a translation from the
Balia of Luigi Tansillo—a series of dullish lines, with the moral
purpose of persuading young women to suckle their own children.
The brilliant young Duchess of Devonshire, some half century ago,
had, for a frolic—a great lady's caprice—set a precedent in this way;
against which, however, in that rank, medical men know that there is
a good deal to be said; and in ranks more extensive than those of
the Duchess it must be something of an Irish bull to suppose any
general neglect of this duty, since, upon so large a scale, whence
could come the vicarious nurses? There is, therefore, no great sense
in the fundamental idea of the poem, because the abuse denounced
cannot be large enough; but the prefatory sonnet, addressed to the
translator's wife, as one at whose maternal breast "six sons
successive" had hung in infancy—this is about the one sole bold,
natural thought, or natural expression of feeling, to which Mr. Roscoe
had committed himself in verse. Everywhere else, the most timid
and blind servility to the narrowest of conventional usages,
conventional ways of viewing things, conventional forms of
expression, marks the style. For example, Italy is always Italia,
Scotland Scotia, France Gallia; so inveterately had the mind, in this
school of feeling, been trained, alike in the highest things and in the
lowest, to a horror of throwing itself boldly upon the great realities
of life: even names must be fictions for their taste. Yet what
comparison between "France, an Ode," and "Gallia, an Ode"?
Dr. Currie was so much occupied with his professional duties that of
him I saw but little. His edition of Burns was just then published (I
think in that very month), and in everybody's hands. At that time, he
was considered not unjust to the memory of the man, and (however
constitutionally phlegmatic, or with little enthusiasm, at least in
external show) not much below the mark in his appreciation of the
poet.[28]
So stood matters some twelve or fourteen years; after which period
a "craze" arose on the subject of Burns, which allowed no voice to
be heard but that of zealotry and violent partisanship. The first
impulse to this arose out of an oblique collision between Lord Jeffrey
and Mr. Wordsworth; the former having written a disparaging
critique upon Burns's pretensions—a little, perhaps, too much
coloured by the fastidiousness of long practice in the world, but, in
the main, speaking some plain truths on the quality of Burns's
understanding, as expressed in his epistolary compositions. Upon
which, in his celebrated letter to Mr. James Gray, the friend of Burns,
himself a poet, and then a master in the High School of Edinburgh,
Mr. Wordsworth commented with severity, proportioned rather to his
personal resentments towards Lord Jeffrey than to the quantity of
wrong inflicted upon Burns. Mr. Wordsworth's letter, in so far as it
was a record of embittered feeling, might have perished; but, as it
happened to embody some profound criticisms, applied to the art of
biography, and especially to the delicate task of following a man of
original genius through his personal infirmities or his constitutional
aberrations—this fact, and its relation to Burns and the author's
name, have all combined to embalm it.[29] Its momentary effect, in
conjunction with Lord Jeffrey's article, was to revive the interest
(which for some time had languished under the oppression of Sir
Walter Scott and Lord Byron) in all that related to Burns. Fresh Lives
appeared in a continued succession, until, upon the death of Lord
Byron in 1824, Mr. Allan Cunningham, who had personally known
Burns, so far as a boy could know a mature man, gave a new
impulse to the interest, by an impressive paper in which he
contrasted the circumstances of Burns's death with those of Lord
Byron's, and also the two funerals—both of which, one altogether,
and the other in part, Mr. Cunningham had personally witnessed. A
man of genius, like Mr. Cunningham, throws a new quality of interest
upon all which he touches; and, having since brought fresh research
and the illustrative power of the arts to bear upon the subject, and
all this having gone on concurrently with the great modern
revolution in literature—that is, the great extension of a popular
interest, through the astonishing reductions of price—the result is,
that Burns has, at length, become a national, and, therefore, in a
certain sense, a privileged subject; which, in a perfect sense, he was
not, until the controversial management of his reputation had
irritated the public attention. Dr. Currie did not address the same
alert condition of the public feeling, nor, by many hundred degrees,
so diffused a condition of any feeling which might imperfectly exist,
as a man must consciously address in these days, whether as the
biographer or the critic of Burns. The lower-toned enthusiasm of the
public was not of a quality to irritate any little enthusiasm which the
worthy Doctor might have felt. The public of that day felt with
regard to Burns exactly as with regard to Bloomfield—not that the
quality of his poems was then the staple of the interest, but the
extraordinary fact that a ploughman or a lady's shoemaker should
have written any poems at all. The sole difference in the two cases,
as regarded by the public of that day, was that Burns's case was
terminated by a premature, and, for the public, a very sudden
death: this gave a personal interest to his case which was wanting in
the other; and a direct result of this was that his executors were
able to lay before the world a series of his letters recording his
opinions upon a considerable variety of authors, and his feelings
under many ordinary occasions of life.
Dr. Currie, therefore, if phlegmatic, as he certainly was, must be
looked upon as upon a level with the public of his own day—a public
how different, different by how many centuries, from the world of
this present 1837! One thing I remember which powerfully illustrates
the difference. Burns, as we all know, with his peculiarly wild and
almost ferocious spirit of independence, came a generation too soon.
In this day, he would have been forced to do that, clamorously called
upon to do that, and would have found his pecuniary interest in
doing that, which in his own generation merely to attempt doing
loaded him with the reproach of Jacobinism. It must be remembered
that the society of Liverpool wits on whom my retrospect is now
glancing were all Whigs—all, indeed, fraternizers with French
Republicanism. Yet so it was that—not once, not twice, but daily
almost, in the numerous conversations naturally elicited by this
Liverpool monument to Burns's memory—I heard every one, clerk or
layman, heartily agreeing to tax Burns with ingratitude and with
pride falsely directed, because he sate uneasily or restively under
the bridle-hand of his noble self-called "patrons." Aristocracy, then,
the essential spirit of aristocracy—this I found was not less erect and
clamorous amongst partisan democrats—democrats who were such
merely in a party sense of supporting his Majesty's Opposition
against his Majesty's Servants—than it was or could be among the
most bigoted of the professed feudal aristocrats. For my part, at this
moment, when all the world was reading Currie's monument to the
memory of Burns and the support of his family, I felt and avowed my
feeling most loudly—that Burns was wronged, was deeply,
memorably wronged. A £10 bank note, by way of subscription for a
few copies of an early edition of his poems—this is the outside that I
could ever see proof given of Burns having received anything in the
way of patronage; and doubtless this would have been gladly
returned, but from the dire necessity of dissembling.
Lord Glencairn is the "patron" for whom Burns appears to have felt
the most sincere respect. Yet even he—did he give him more than a
seat at his dinner table? Lord Buchan again, whose liberalities are by
this time pretty well appreciated in Scotland, exhorts Burns, in a
tone of one preaching upon a primary duty of life, to exemplary
gratitude towards a person who had given him absolutely nothing at
all. The man has not yet lived to whose happiness it was more
essential that he should live unencumbered by the sense of
obligation; and, on the other hand, the man has not lived upon
whose independence as professing benefactors so many people
practised, or who found so many others ready to ratify and give
value to their pretences.[30] Him, whom beyond most men nature
had created with the necessity of conscious independence, all men
besieged with the assurance that he was, must be, ought to be
dependent; nay, that it was his primary duty to be grateful for his
dependence. I have not looked into any edition of Burns, except
once for a quotation, since this year 1801—when I read the whole of
Currie's edition, and had opportunities of meeting the editor—and
once subsequently, upon occasion of a fifth or supplementary
volume being published. I know not, therefore, how this matter has
been managed by succeeding editors, such as Allan Cunningham, far
more capable of understanding Burns's situation, from the previous
struggles of their own honourable lives, and Burns's feelings, from
something of congenial power.
I, in this year, 1801, when in the company of Dr. Currie, did not
forget, and, with some pride I say that I stood alone in
remembering, the very remarkable position of Burns: not merely
that, with his genius, and with the intellectual pretensions generally
of his family, he should have been called to a life of early labour, and
of labour unhappily not prosperous, but also that he, by accident
about the proudest of human spirits, should have been by accident
summoned, beyond all others, to eternal recognitions of some
mysterious gratitude which he owed to some mysterious patrons
little and great, whilst yet, of all men, perhaps, he reaped the least
obvious or known benefit from any patronage that has ever been
put on record. Most men, if they reap little from patronage, are
liberated from the claims of patronage, or, if they are summoned to
a galling dependency, have at least the fruits of their dependency.
But it was this man's unhappy fate—with an early and previous
irritability on this very point—to find himself saddled, by his literary
correspondents, with all that was odious in dependency, whilst he
had every hardship to face that is most painful in unbefriended
poverty.
On this view of the case, I talked, then, being a schoolboy, with and
against the first editor of Burns:—I did not, and I do not, profess to
admire the letters (that is, the prose), all or any, of Burns. I felt that
they were liable to the charges of Lord Jeffrey, and to others beside;
that they do not even express the natural vigour of Burns's mind,
but are at once vulgar, tawdry, coarse, and commonplace; neither
was I a person to affect any profound sympathy with the general
character and temperament of Burns, which has often been
described as "of the earth, earthy"—unspiritual—animal—beyond
those of most men equally intellectual. But still I comprehended his
situation; I had for ever ringing in my ears, during that summer of
1801, those groans which ascended to heaven from his over-
burthened heart—those harrowing words, "To give him leave to toil,"
which record almost a reproach to the ordinances of God—and I felt
that upon him, amongst all the children of labour, the primal curse
had fallen heaviest and sunk deepest. Feelings such as these I had
the courage to express: a personal compliment, or so, I might now
and then hear; but all were against me on the matter. Dr. Currie said
—"Poor Burns! such notions had been his ruin"; Mr. Shepherd
continued to draw from the subject some scoff or growl at Mr. Pitt
and the Excise; the laughing tailor told us a good story of some
proud beggar; Mr. Clarke proposed that I should write a Greek
inscription for a cenotaph which he was to erect in his garden to the
memory of Burns;—and so passed away the solitary protestation on
behalf of Burns's jacobinism, together with the wine and the roses,
and the sea-breezes of that same Everton, in that same summer of
1801. Mr. Roscoe is dead, and has found time since then to be half
forgotten; Dr. Currie, the physician, has been found "unable to heal
himself"; Mr. Shepherd of Gatacre is a name and a shadow; Mr.
Clarke is a shadow without a name; the tailor, who set the table in a
roar, is dust and ashes; and three men at the most remain of all who
in those convivial meetings held it right to look down upon Burns as
upon one whose spirit was rebellious overmuch against the
institutions of man, and jacobinical in a sense which "men of
property" and master manufacturers will never brook, albeit
democrats by profession.[31]
 CHAPTER II
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE[32]

It was, I think, in the month of August, but certainly in the summer

season, and certainly in the year 1807, that I first saw this illustrious
man. My knowledge of him as a man of most original genius began
about the year 1799. A little before that time Wordsworth had
published the first edition (in a single volume) of the "Lyrical
Ballads,"[33] and into this had been introduced Mr. Coleridge's poem
of the "Ancient Mariner," as the contribution of an anonymous friend.
It would be directing the reader's attention too much to myself if I
were to linger upon this, the greatest event in the unfolding of my
own mind. Let me say, in one word, that, at a period when neither
the one nor the other writer was valued by the public—both having a
long warfare to accomplish of contumely and ridicule before they
could rise into their present estimation—I found in these poems "the
ray of a new morning," and an absolute revelation of untrodden
worlds teeming with power and beauty as yet unsuspected amongst
men. I may here mention that, precisely at the same time, Professor
Wilson, entirely unconnected with myself, and not even known to me
until ten years later, received the same startling and profound
impressions from the same volume.[34] With feelings of reverential
interest, so early and so deep, pointing towards two contemporaries,
it may be supposed that I inquired eagerly after their names. But
these inquiries were self-baffled; the same deep feelings which
prompted my curiosity causing me to recoil from all casual
opportunities of pushing the inquiry, as too generally lying amongst
those who gave no sign of participating in my feelings; and,
extravagant as this may seem, I revolted with as much hatred from
coupling my question with any occasion of insult to the persons
whom it respected, as a primitive Christian from throwing
frankincense upon the altars of Cæsar, or a lover from giving up the
name of his beloved to the coarse license of a Bacchanalian party. It
is laughable to record for how long a period my curiosity in this
particular was thus self-defeated. Two years passed before I
ascertained the two names. Mr. Wordsworth published his in the
second and enlarged edition of the poems[35]; and for Mr. Coleridge's
I was "indebted" to a private source; but I discharged that debt ill,
for I quarrelled with my informant for what I considered his profane
way of dealing with a subject so hallowed in my own thoughts. After
this I searched, east and west, north and south, for all known works
or fragments of the same authors. I had read, therefore, as respects
Mr. Coleridge, the Allegory which he contributed to Mr. Southey's
"Joan of Arc."[36] I had read his fine Ode entitled "France,"[37] his Ode
to the Duchess of Devonshire, and various other contributions, more
or less interesting, to the two volumes of the "Anthology" published
at Bristol, about 1799-1800, by Mr. Southey[38]; and, finally, I had, of
course, read the small volume of poems published under his own
name. These, however, as a juvenile and immature collection, made
expressly with a view to pecuniary profit, and therefore courting
expansion at any cost of critical discretion, had in general greatly
disappointed me.[39]
Meantime, it had crowned the interest which to me invested his
name, that about the year 1804 or 1805 I had been informed by a
gentleman from the English Lakes, who knew him as a neighbour,
that he had for some time applied his whole mind to metaphysics
and psychology—which happened to be my own absorbing pursuit.
From 1803 to 1808, I was a student at Oxford; and, on the first
occasion when I could conveniently have sought for a personal
knowledge of one whom I contemplated with so much admiration, I
was met by a painful assurance that he had quitted England, and
was then residing at Malta, in the quality of secretary to the
Governor. I began to inquire about the best route to Malta; but, as
any route at that time promised an inside place in a French prison, I
reconciled myself to waiting; and at last, happening to visit the
Bristol Hotwells in the summer of 1807, I had the pleasure to hear
that Coleridge was not only once more upon English ground, but
within forty and odd miles of my own station. In that same hour I
bent my way to the south; and, before evening, reaching a ferry on
the river Bridgewater, at a village called, I think, Stogursey (i.e.,
Stoke de Courcy, by way of distinction from some other Stoke), I
crossed it, and a few miles farther attained my object—viz., the little
town of Nether Stowey, amongst the Quantock Hills. Here I had
been assured that I should find Mr. Coleridge, at the house of his old
friend Mr. Poole. On presenting myself, however, to that gentleman, I
found that Coleridge was absent at Lord Egmont's, an elder brother
(by the father's side) of Mr. Perceval, the Prime Minister,
assassinated five years later; and, as it was doubtful whether he
might not then be on the wing to another friend's in the town of
Bridgewater, I consented willingly, until his motions should be
ascertained, to stay a day or two with this Mr. Poole—a man on his
own account well deserving a separate notice; for, as Coleridge
afterwards remarked to me, he was almost an ideal model for a
useful member of Parliament.[40] I found him a stout, plain-looking
farmer, leading a bachelor life, in a rustic, old-fashioned house; the
house, however, upon further acquaintance, proving to be amply
furnished with modern luxuries, and especially with a good library,
superbly mounted in all departments bearing at all upon political
philosophy; and the farmer turning out a polished and liberal
Englishman, who had travelled extensively, and had so entirely
dedicated himself to the service of his humble fellow-countrymen—
the hewers of wood and drawers of water in this southern part of
Somersetshire—that for many miles round he was the general
arbiter of their disputes, the guide and counsellor of their difficulties;
besides being appointed executor and guardian to his children by
every third man who died in or about the town of Nether Stowey.
The first morning of my visit, Mr. Poole was so kind as to propose,
knowing my admiration of Wordsworth, that we should ride over to
Alfoxton[41]—a place of singular interest to myself, as having been
occupied in his unmarried days by that poet, during the minority of
Mr. St. Aubyn, its present youthful proprietor. At this delightful spot,
the ancient residence of an ancient English family, and surrounded
by those ferny Quantock Hills which are so beautifully glanced at in
the poem of "Ruth," Wordsworth, accompanied by his sister, had
passed a good deal of the interval between leaving the University
(Cambridge) and the period of his final settlement amongst his
native lakes of Westmoreland: some allowance, however, must be
made—but how much I do not accurately know—for a long
residence in France, for a short one in North Germany, for an
intermitting one in London, and for a regular domestication with his
sister at Race Down in Dorsetshire.
Returning late from this interesting survey, we found ourselves
without company at dinner; and, being thus seated tête-à-tête, Mr.
Poole propounded the following question to me, which I mention
because it furnished me with the first hint of a singular infirmity
besetting Coleridge's mind:—"Pray, my young friend, did you ever
form any opinion, or, rather, did it ever happen to you to meet with
any rational opinion or conjecture of others, upon that most
revolting dogma of Pythagoras about beans? You know what I
mean: that monstrous doctrine in which he asserts that a man might
as well, for the wickedness of the thing, eat his own grandmother as
meddle with beans."[42]
"Yes," I replied; "the line is, I believe, in the Golden Verses. I
remember it well."
P.—"True: now, our dear excellent friend Coleridge, than whom God
never made a creature more divinely endowed, yet, strange it is to
say, sometimes steals from other people, just as you or I might do; I
beg your pardon—just as a poor creature like myself might do, that
sometimes have not wherewithal to make a figure from my own
exchequer: and the other day, at a dinner party, this question arising
about Pythagoras and his beans, Coleridge gave us an interpretation
which, from his manner, I suspect to have been not original. Think,
therefore, if you have anywhere read a plausible solution."
"I have: and it was a German author. This German, understand, is a
poor stick of a man, not to be named on the same day with
Coleridge: so that, if Coleridge should appear to have robbed him,
be assured that he has done the scamp too much honour."
P.—"Well: what says the German?"
"Why, you know the use made in Greece of beans in voting and
balloting? Well: the German says that Pythagoras speaks
symbolically; meaning that electioneering, or, more generally, all
interference with political intrigues, is fatal to a philosopher's
pursuits and their appropriate serenity. Therefore, says he, follower
of mine, abstain from public affairs as you would from parricide."
P.—"Well, then, Coleridge has done the scamp too much honour: for,
by Jove, that is the very explanation he gave us!"
Here was a trait of Coleridge's mind, to be first made known to me
by his best friend, and first published to the world by me, the
foremost of his admirers! But both of us had sufficient reasons:—Mr.
Poole knew that, stumbled on by accident, such a discovery would
be likely to impress upon a man as yet unacquainted with Coleridge
a most injurious jealousy with regard to all he might write: whereas,
frankly avowed by one who knew him best, the fact was disarmed of
its sting; since it thus became evident that, where the case had been
best known and most investigated, it had not operated to his serious
disadvantage. On the same argument,—to forestall, that is to say,
other discoverers, who would make a more unfriendly use of the
discovery,—and also as matters of literary curiosity, I shall here point
out a few others of Coleridge's unacknowledged obligations, noticed
by myself in a very wide course of reading.[43]
1. The Hymn to Chamouni is an expansion of a short poem in
stanzas, upon the same subject, by Frederica Brun, a female poet of
Germany, previously known to the world under her maiden name of
Münter. The mere framework of the poem is exactly the same—an
appeal to the most impressive features of the regal mountain (Mont
Blanc), adjuring them to proclaim their author: the torrent, for
instance, is required to say by whom it had been arrested in its
headlong raving, and stiffened, as by the petrific touch of Death,
into everlasting pillars of ice; and the answer to these impassioned
apostrophes is made by the same choral burst of rapture. In mere
logic, therefore, and even as to the choice of circumstances,
Coleridge's poem is a translation. On the other hand, by a judicious
amplification of some topics, and by its far deeper tone of lyrical
enthusiasm, the dry bones of the German outline have been
awakened by Coleridge into the fulness of life. It is not, therefore, a
paraphrase, but a re-cast of the original. And how was this
calculated, if frankly avowed, to do Coleridge any injury with the
judicious?
2. A more singular case of Coleridge's infirmity is this:—In a very
noble passage of "France," a fine expression or two occur from
"Samson Agonistes." Now, to take a phrase or an inspiriting line
from the great fathers of poetry, even though no marks of quotation
should be added, carries with it no charge of plagiarism. Milton is
justly presumed to be as familiar to the ear as nature to the eye;
and to steal from him as impossible as to appropriate, or sequester
to a private use, some "bright particular star." And there is a good
reason for rejecting the typographical marks of quotation: they
break the continuity of the passion, by reminding the reader of a
printed book; on which account Milton himself (to give an instance)
has not marked the sublime words, "tormented all the air" as
borrowed; nor has Wordsworth, in applying to an unprincipled
woman of commanding beauty the memorable expression "a weed
of glorious feature," thought it necessary to acknowledge it as
originally belonging to Spenser. Some dozens of similar cases might
be adduced from Milton. But Coleridge, when saying of republican
France that,
 "Insupportably advancing,
Her arm made mockery of the warrior's tramp,"

not satisfied with omitting the marks of acknowledgment, thought fit

positively to deny that he was indebted to Milton. Yet who could
forget that semi-chorus in the "Samson" where the "bold Ascalonite"
is described as having "fled from his lion ramp"? Or who, that was
not in this point liable to some hallucination of judgment, would
have ventured on a public challenge (for virtually it was that) to
produce from the "Samson" words so impossible to be overlooked as
those of "insupportably advancing the foot"? The result was that one
of the critical journals placed the two passages in juxtaposition and
left the reader to his own conclusions with regard to the poet's
veracity. But, in this instance, it was common sense rather than
veracity which the facts impeach.
3. In the year 1810 I happened to be amusing myself by reading, in
their chronological order, the great classical circumnavigations of the
earth; and, coming to Shelvocke, I met with a passage to this effect:
—That Hatley, his second captain (i.e. lieutenant), being a
melancholy man, was possessed by a fancy that some long season
of foul weather, in the solitary sea which they were then traversing,
was due to an albatross which had steadily pursued the ship; upon
which he shot the bird, but without mending their condition. There
at once I saw the germ of the "Ancient Mariner"; and I put a
question to Coleridge accordingly. Could it have been imagined that
he would see cause utterly to disown so slight an obligation to
Shelvocke? Wordsworth, a man of stern veracity, on hearing of this,
professed his inability to understand Coleridge's meaning; the fact
being notorious, as he told me, that Coleridge had derived from the
very passage I had cited the original hint for the action of the poem;
though it is very possible, from something which Coleridge said on
another occasion, that, before meeting a fable in which to embody
his ideas, he had meditated a poem on delirium, confounding its
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