'Of the Uncertainty of Life'

Abstruser and abstruser. In September 1808, Coleridge wrote the following in his Notebook:

Silence was a full answer of him who being asked what he thought of Human Life, said nothing, turned round, and vanished.

This is entry 3373 in Kathleen Coburn's monumental edition of The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Volume 3 1808-1819 (Princeton/Routledge 1973), and her annotation on it reads in full: 'Source untraced'.

It's actually quoted from Resolves, Divine, Moral, and Political (1623) by Owen Felltham or Feltham (1602-68). A new edition had been published by John Hatchard, out of Piccadilly, in 1806, and perhaps Coleridge was reading that.

The quotation in question is from an essay called 'Of the Uncertainty of Life'. It actually reads:

Miserable brevity! more miserable uncertainty of life! We are sure that we cannot live long, and uncertain that we shall live at all; even while I am writing this, I am not sure my pen shall end the sentence. Our life is so short, that we cannot in it, contemplate what ourselves are; so uncertain that we cannot say, we will resolve to do it. Silence was a full answer from that philosopher, who, being asked what he thought of human life, said nothing, turned himself round, and vanished. Like leaves on trees, we are the sport of every puff that blows. [pp 70-71 in the 1806 edition]

This is the first evidence we have that Coleridge read Feltham. Exciting, no?

No? Suit yourself.