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Title: Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. II (of 2)
Author: Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834
Language: English
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LETTERS OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
[Illustration]
LETTERS OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Edited by
ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE
In Two Volumes
VOL. II
London
William Heinemann
1895
[All rights reserved.]
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME II
PAGE
CHAPTER VII. A LONG ABSENCE, 1804-1806.
CXLIV. RICHARD SHARP, January 15, 1804. (Life of Wordsworth,
1889, ii. 9) 447
CXLV. THOMAS POOLE, January 15, 1804. (Forty lines published,
Thomas Poole and his Friends, 1887, ii. 122) 452
CXLVI. THOMAS POOLE [January 26, 1804] 454
CXLVII. THE WORDSWORTH FAMILY, February 8, 1804. (Life of
Wordsworth, 1889, ii. 12) 456
CXLVIII. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE, February 19, 1804 460
CXLIX. ROBERT SOUTHEY, February 20, 1804 464
CL. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE, April 1, 1804 467
CLI. ROBERT SOUTHEY, April 16, 1804 469
CLII. DANIEL STUART, April 21, 1804. (Privately printed,
Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 33) 475
CLIII. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE, June, 1804 480
CLIV. DANIEL STUART, October 22, 1804. (Privately printed,
Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 45) 485
CLV. ROBERT SOUTHEY, February 2, 1805 487
CLVI. DANIEL STUART, April 20, 1805. (Privately printed,
Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 46) 493
CLVII. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE, July 21, 1805 496
CLVIII. WASHINGTON ALLSTON, June 17, 1806. (Scribner’s
Magazine, January, 1892) 498
CLIX. DANIEL STUART, August 18, 1806. (Privately printed,
Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 54) 501
CHAPTER VIII. HOME AND NO HOME, 1806-1807.
CLX. DANIEL STUART, September 15, 1806. (Privately printed,
Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 60) 505
CLXI. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE, September 16 [1806] 507
CLXII. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE, December 25, 1806 509
CLXIII. HARTLEY COLERIDGE, April 3, 1807 511
CLXIV. SIR H. DAVY, September 11, 1807. (Fragmentary Remains,
1858, p. 99) 514
CHAPTER IX. A PUBLIC LECTURER, 1807-1808.
CLXV. THE MORGAN FAMILY [November 23, 1807] 519
CLXVI. ROBERT SOUTHEY [December 14, 1807] 520
CLXVII. MRS. MORGAN, January 25, 1808 524
CLXVIII. FRANCIS JEFFREY, May 23, 1808 527
CLXIX. FRANCIS JEFFREY, July 20, 1808 528
CHAPTER X. GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND, 1808-1810.
CLXX. DANIEL STUART [December 9, 1808]. (Privately printed,
Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 93) 533
CLXXI. FRANCIS JEFFREY, December 14, 1808. (Illustrated
London News, June 10, 1893) 534
CLXXII. THOMAS WILKINSON, December 31, 1808. (Friends’
Quarterly Magazine, June, 1893) 538
CLXXIII. THOMAS POOLE, February 3, 1809. (Fifteen lines
published, Thomas Poole and his Friends, 1887, ii. 228) 541
CLXXIV. DANIEL STUART, March 31, 1809. (Privately printed,
Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 136) 545
CLXXV. DANIEL STUART, June 13, 1809. (Privately printed,
Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 165) 547
CLXXVI. THOMAS POOLE, October 9, 1809. (Thomas Poole and his
Friends, 1887, ii. 233) 550
CLXXVII. ROBERT SOUTHEY, December, 1809 554
CLXXVIII. THOMAS POOLE, January 28, 1810 556
CHAPTER XI. A JOURNALIST, A LECTURER, A PLAYWRIGHT, 1810-1813.
CLXXIX. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE, Spring, 1810 563
CLXXX. THE MORGANS, December 21, 1810 564
CLXXXI. W. GODWIN, March 15, 1811. (William Godwin, by C.
Kegan Paul, ii. 222) 565
CLXXXII. DANIEL STUART, June 4, 1811. (Gentleman’s Magazine,
1838) 566
CLXXXIII. SIR G. BEAUMONT, December 7, 1811. (Memorials of
Coleorton, 1887, ii. 158) 570
CLXXXIV. J. J. MORGAN, February 28, 1812 575
CLXXXV. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE, April 21, 1812 579
CLXXXVI. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE, April 24, 1812 583
CLXXXVII. CHARLES LAMB, May 2, 1812 586
CLXXXVIII. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, May 4, 1812 588
CLXXXIX. DANIEL STUART, May 8, 1812. (Privately printed,
Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 211) 595
CXC. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, May 11, 1812. (Life of Wordsworth,
1889, ii. 180) 596
CXCI. ROBERT SOUTHEY [May 12, 1812] 597
CXCII. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, December 7, 1812. (Life of
Wordsworth, 1889, ii. 181) 599
CXCIII. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE [January 20, 1813] 602
CXCIV. ROBERT SOUTHEY, February 8, 1813. (Illustrated London
News, June 24, 1894) 605
CXCV. THOMAS POOLE, February 13, 1813. (Six lines published,
Thomas Poole and his Friends, 1887, ii. 244) 609
CHAPTER XII. A MELANCHOLY EXILE, 1813-1815.
CXCVI. DANIEL STUART, September 25, 1813. (Privately printed,
Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 219). 615
CXCVII. JOSEPH COTTLE, April 26, 1814. (Early Recollections,
1837, ii. 155) 616
CXCVIII. JOSEPH COTTLE, May 27, 1814. (Early Recollections,
1837, ii. 165) 619
CXCIX. CHARLES MATHEWS, May 30, 1814. (Memoir of C. Mathews,
1838, ii. 257) 621
CC. JOSIAH WADE, June 26, 1814. (Early Recollections, 1837,
ii. 185) 623
CCI. JOHN MURRAY, August 23, 1814. (Memoir of John Murray,
1890, i. 297) 624
CCII. DANIEL STUART, September 12, 1814. (Privately printed,
Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 221) 627
CCIII. DANIEL STUART, October 30, 1814. (Privately printed,
Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 248) 634
CCIV. JOHN KENYON, November 3 [1814] 639
CCV. LADY BEAUMONT, April 3, 1815. (Memorials of Coleorton,
1887, ii. 175) 641
CCVI. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, May 30, 1815. (Life of Wordsworth,
1889, ii. 255) 643
CCVII. REV. W. MONEY, 1815 651
CHAPTER XIII. NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS, 1816-1821.
CCVIII. JAMES GILLMAN [April 13, 1816]. (Life of Coleridge,
1838, p. 273) 657
CCIX. DANIEL STUART, May 8, 1816. (Privately printed, Letters
from the Lake Poets, p. 255) 660
CCX. DANIEL STUART, May 13, 1816. (Privately printed, Letters
from the Lake Poets, p. 262) 663
CCXI. JOHN MURRAY, February 27, 1817 665
CCXII. ROBERT SOUTHEY [May, 1817] 670
CCXIII. H. C. ROBINSON, June, 1817. (Diary of H. C. Robinson,
1869, ii. 57) 671
CCXIV. THOMAS POOLE [July 22, 1817]. (Thomas Poole and his
Friends, 1887, ii. 255) 673
CCXV. REV. H. F. CARY, October 29, 1817 676
CCXVI. REV. H. F. CARY, November 6, 1817 677
CCXVII. JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, November 14, 1817 679
CCXVIII. JOSEPH HENRY GREEN [December 13, 1817] 680
CCXIX. CHARLES AUGUSTUS TULK, 1818 684
CCXX. JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, May 2, 1818 688
CCXXI. MRS. GILLMAN, July 19, 1818 690
CCXXII. W. COLLINS, A. R. A., December, 1818. (Memoirs of W.
Collins, 1848, i. 146) 693
CCXXIII. THOMAS ALLSOP, December 2, 1818. (Letters,
Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge, 1836,
i. 5) 695
CCXXIV. JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, January 16, 1819 699
CCXXV. JAMES GILLMAN, August 20, 1819 700
CCXXVI. MRS. ADERS [?], October 28, 1819 701
CCXXVII. JOSEPH HENRY GREEN [January 14, 1820] 704
CCXXVIII. JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, May 25, 1820 706
CCXXIX. CHARLES AUGUSTUS TULK, February 12, 1821 712
CHAPTER XIV. THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE, 1822-1832.
CCXXX. JOHN MURRAY, January 18, 1822 717
CCXXXI. JAMES GILLMAN, October 28, 1822. (Life of Coleridge,
1838, p. 344) 721
CCXXXII. MISS BRENT, July 7, 1823 722
CCXXXIII. REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE, July 23, 1823 724
CCXXXIV. JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, February 15, 1824 726
CCXXXV. JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, May 19, 1824 728
CCXXXVI. JAMES GILLMAN, November 2, 1824 729
CCXXXVII. REV. H. F. CARY, December 14, 1824 731
CCXXXVIII. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH [? 1825]. (Fifteen lines
published, Life of Wordsworth, 1889, ii. 305) 733
CCXXXIX. JOHN TAYLOR COLERIDGE, April 8, 1825 734
CCXL. REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE, May 19, 1825 738
CCXLI. DANIEL STUART, July 9, 1825. (Privately printed,
Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 286) 740
CCXLII. JAMES GILLMAN, October 10, 1825 742
CCXLIII. REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE, December 9, 1825 744
CCXLIV. MRS. GILLMAN, May 3, 1827 745
CCXLV. REV. GEORGE MAY COLERIDGE, January 14, 1828 746
CCXLVI. GEORGE DYER, June 6, 1828. (The Mirror, xxxviii.
1841, p. 282) 748
CCXLVII. GEORGE CATTERMOLE, August 14, 1828 750
CCXLVIII. JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, June 1, 1830 751
CCXLIX. THOMAS POOLE, 1830 753
CCL. MRS. GILLMAN, 1830 754
CCLI. JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, December 15, 1831 754
CCLII. H. N. COLERIDGE, February 24, 1832 756
CCLIII. MISS LAWRENCE, March 22, 1832 758
CCLIV. REV. H. F. CARY, April 22, 1832. (Memoir of H. F.
Cary, 1847, ii. 194) 760
CCLV. JOHN PEIRSE KENNARD, August 13, 1832 762
CHAPTER XV. THE BEGINNING OF THE END, 1833-1834.
CCLVI. JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, April 8, 1833 767
CCLVII. MRS. ADERS [1833] 769
CCLVIII. JOHN STERLING, October 30, 1833 771
CCLIX. MISS ELIZA NIXON, July 9, 1834 773
CCLX. ADAM STEINMETZ KENNARD, July 13, 1834. (Early
Recollections, 1837, ii. 193) 775
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, aged sixty-one. From a pencil-sketch
by J. Kayser, of Kaserworth, now in the possession of the
editor _Frontispiece_
MRS. WILSON. From a pencil-sketch by Edward Nash, 1816, now
in the possession of the editor 460
HARTLEY COLERIDGE, aged ten. After a painting by Sir David
Wilkie, R. A., now in the possession of Sir George Beaumont,
Bart. 510
THE ROOM IN MR. GILLMAN’S HOUSE, THE GROVE, HIGHGATE, which
served as study and bedroom for the poet, and in which he
died. From a water-colour drawing now in the possession of
Miss Christabel Coleridge, of Cheyne, Torquay 616
DERWENT COLERIDGE, aged nineteen. From a pencil-sketch by
Edward Nash, now in the possession of the editor 704
THE REVEREND GEORGE COLERIDGE. From an oil painting now in
the possession of the Right Honourable Lord Coleridge 746
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, aged (about) fifty-six. From an oil
painting (taken at the Argyll Baths), now in the possession
of the editor 758
CHAPTER VII
A LONG ABSENCE
1804-1806
CHAPTER VII
A LONG ABSENCE
1804-1806
CXLIV. TO RICHARD SHARP.[1]
KING’S ARMS, KENDAL,
Sunday morning, January 15, 1804.
MY DEAR SIR,--I give you thanks--and, that I may make the best of so
poor and unsubstantial a return, permit me to say, that they are such
thanks as can only come from a nature unworldly by constitution and
by habit, and now rendered more than ever impressible by sudden
restoration--resurrection I might say--from a long, long sick-bed. I had
gone to Grasmere to take my farewell of William Wordsworth, his wife, and
his sister, and thither your letters followed me. I was at Grasmere a
whole month, so ill, as that till the last week I was unable to read your
letters. Not that my inner being was disturbed; on the contrary, it seemed
more than usually serene and self-sufficing; but the exceeding pain, of
which I suffered every now and then, and the fearful distresses of my
sleep, had taken away from me the connecting link of voluntary power,
which continually combines that part of us by which we know ourselves to
be, with that outward picture or hieroglyphic, by which we hold communion
with our like--between the vital and the organic--or what Berkeley, I
suppose, would call mind and its sensuous language. I had only just
strength enough to smile gratefully on my kind nurses, who tended me with
sister’s and mother’s love, and often, I well know, wept for me in their
sleep, and watched for me even in their dreams. Oh, dear sir! it does a
man’s heart good, I will not say, to know such a family, but even to know
that there _is_ such a family. In spite of Wordsworth’s occasional fits of
hypochondriacal uncomfortableness,--from which, more or less, and at
longer or shorter intervals, he has never been wholly free from his very
childhood,--in spite of this hypochondriacal graft in his nature, as dear
Wedgwood calls it, his is the happiest family I ever saw, and were it not
in too great sympathy with my ill health--were I in good health, and their
neighbour--I verily believe that the cottage in Grasmere Vale would be a
proud sight for Philosophy. It is with no idle feeling of vanity that I
speak of my importance to them; that it is _I_, rather than another, is
almost an accident; but being so very happy within themselves they are too
good, not the more, for that very reason, to want a friend and common
object of love out of their household. I have met with several genuine
Philologists, Philonoists, Physiophilists, keen hunters after knowledge
and science; but truth and wisdom are higher names than these--and
_revering_ Davy, I am half angry with him for doing that which would make
me laugh in another man--I mean, for prostituting and profaning the name
of “Philosopher,” “great Philosopher,” “eminent Philosopher,” etc., etc.,
etc., to every fellow who has made a lucky experiment, though the man
should be Frenchified to the heart, and though the whole Seine, with all
its filth and poison, flows in his veins and arteries.
Of our common friends, my dear sir, I flatter myself that you and I should
agree in fixing on T. Wedgwood and on Wordsworth as genuine
Philosophers--for I have often said (and no wonder, since not a day passes
but the conviction of the truth of it is renewed in me, and with the
conviction, the accompanying esteem and love), often have I said that T.
Wedgwood’s faults impress me with veneration for his moral and
intellectual character more than almost any other man’s virtues; for under
circumstances like his, to have a fault only in that degree is, I doubt
not, in the eye of God, to possess a high virtue. Who does not prize the
Retreat of Moreau[2] more than all the straw-blaze of Bonaparte’s
victories? And then to make it (as Wedgwood really does) a sort of crime
even to think of his faults by so many virtues retained, cultivated, and
preserved in growth and blossom, in a climate--where now the gusts so rise
and eddy, that deeply rooted must _that_ be which is not snatched up and
made a plaything of by them,--and, now, “the parching air burns frore.”
W. Wordsworth does not excite that almost painfully profound moral
admiration which the sense of the exceeding difficulty of a given virtue
can alone call forth, and which therefore I feel exclusively towards T.
Wedgwood; but, on the other hand, he is an object to be contemplated with
greater complacency, because he both deserves to be, and _is_, a happy
man; and a happy man, not from natural temperament, for therein lies his
main obstacle, not by enjoyment of the good things of this world--for even
to this day, from the first dawn of his manhood, he has purchased
independence and leisure for great and good pursuits by austere frugality
and daily self-denials; nor yet by an accidental confluence of amiable and
happy-making friends and relatives, for every one near to his heart has
been placed there by choice and after knowledge and deliberation; but he
is a happy man, because he is a Philosopher, because he knows the
intrinsic value of the different objects of human pursuit, and regulates
his wishes in strict subordination to that knowledge; because he feels,
and with a _practical_ faith, the truth of that which you, more than once,
my dear sir, have with equal good sense and kindness pressed upon me, that
we can do but one thing well, and that therefore we must make a choice. He
has made that choice from his early youth, has pursued and is pursuing it;
and certainly no small part of his happiness is owing to this unity of
interest and that homogeneity of character which is the natural
consequence of it, and which that excellent man, the poet Sotheby, noticed
to me as the characteristic of Wordsworth.
Wordsworth is a poet, a most original poet. He no more resembles Milton
than Milton resembles Shakespeare--no more resembles Shakespeare than
Shakespeare resembles Milton. He is himself and, I dare affirm that, he
will hereafter be admitted as the first and greatest philosophical poet,
the only man who has effected a complete and constant synthesis of thought
and feeling and combined them with poetic forms, with the music of
pleasurable passion, and with Imagination or the _modifying_ power in that
highest sense of the word, in which I have ventured to oppose it to Fancy,
or the _aggregating_ power--in that sense in which it is a dim analogue of
creation--not all that we can _believe_, but all that we can _conceive_ of
creation.--Wordsworth is a poet, and I feel myself a better poet, in
knowing how to honour _him_ than in all my own poetic compositions, all I
have done or hope to do; and I prophesy immortality to his “Recluse,” as
the first and finest philosophical poem, if only it be (as it undoubtedly
will be) a faithful transcript of his own most august and innocent life,
of his own habitual feelings and modes of seeing and hearing.--My dear
sir! I began a letter with a heart, Heaven knows! how full of gratitude
toward you--and I have flown off into a whole letter-full respecting
Wedgwood and Wordsworth. Was it that my heart demanded an outlet for
grateful feelings--for a long stream of them--and that I felt it would be
oppressive to you if I wrote to you of yourself half of what I wished to
write? Or was it that I knew I should be in sympathy with you, and that
few subjects are more pleasing to you than a detail of the merits of two
men, whom, I am sure, you esteem equally with myself--though accidents
have thrown me, or rather Providence has placed me, in a closer connection
with them, both as confidential friends and the one as my benefactor, and
to whom I owe that my bed of sickness has not been in a house of want,
unless I had bought the contrary at the price of my conscience by becoming
a priest.
I leave this place this afternoon, having walked from Grasmere yesterday.
I walked the nineteen miles through mud and drizzle, fog and stifling air,
in four hours and thirty-five minutes, and was not in the least fatigued,
so that you may see that my sickness has not much weakened me. Indeed, the
suddenness and seeming perfectness of my recovery is really astonishing.
In a single hour I have changed from a state that seemed next to death,
swollen limbs, racking teeth, etc., to a state of elastic health, so that
I have said, “If I have been dreaming, yet you, Wordsworth, have been
awake.” And Wordsworth has answered, “I could not expect any one to
believe it who had not seen it.” These changes have always been produced
by sudden changes of the weather. Dry hot weather or dry frosty weather
seem alike friendly to me, and my persuasion is strong as the life within
me, that a year’s residence in Madeira would renovate me. I shall spend
two days in Liverpool, and hope to be in London, coach and coachman
permitting, on Friday afternoon or Saturday at the furthest. And on this
day week I look forward to the pleasure of thanking you personally, for I
still hope to avail myself of your kind introductions. I mean to wait in
London till a good vessel sails for Madeira; but of this when I see you.
Believe me, my dear sir, with grateful and affectionate thanks, your
sincere friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CXLV. TO THOMAS POOLE.
KENDAL, Sunday, January 15, 1804.
MY DEAR POOLE,--My health is as the weather. That, for the last month, has
been unusually bad, and so has my health. I go by the heavy coach this
afternoon. I shall be at Liverpool tomorrow night. Tuesday, Wednesday, I
shall stay there; not more _certainly_, for I have taken my place all the
way to London, and this stay of two days is an indulgence and entered in
the road-bill, so I expect to be in London on Friday evening about six
o’clock, at the Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill. Now my dearest friend! will you
send a twopenny post letter directed, “Mr. Coleridge (Passenger in the
Heavy Coach from Kendal and Liverpool), to be left at the bar, Saracen’s
Head, Snow Hill,” informing me whether I can have a bed at your lodgings,
or whether Mr. Rickman could let me have a bed for one or two nights,--for
I have such a dread of sleeping at an Inn or Coffee house in London, that
it quite unmans me to think of it. To love and to be beloved makes
hothouse plants of us, dear Poole!
Though wretchedly ill, I have not yet been deserted by hope--less dejected
than in any former illness--and my mind has been active, and not vaguely,
but to that determinate purpose which has employed me the last three
months, and I want only one fortnight steady reading to have got _all_ my
materials before me, and then I neither stir to the right nor to the left,
so help me God! till the work is finished. Of its contents, the title
will, in part, inform you, “Consolations and Comforts from the exercise
and right application of the Reason, the Imagination, the Moral Feelings,
Addressed especially to those in sickness, adversity, or distress of mind,
_from speculative gloom_,[3] etc.”
I put that last phrase, though barbarous, for your information. I have
puzzled for hours together, and could never hit off a phrase to express
that idea, that is, at once neat and terse, and yet good English. The
whole plan of my literary life I have now laid down, and the exact order
in which I shall execute it, if God vouchsafe me life and adequate health;
and I have sober though confident expectations that I shall render a good
account of what may have appeared to you and others, a distracting
manifoldness in my objects and attainments. You are nobly employed,--most
worthily of you. _You_ are made to endear yourself to mankind as an
immediate benefactor: I must throw my bread on the waters. You sow corn
and I plant the olive. Different evils beset us. You shall give me advice,
and I will advise you, to look steadily at everything, and to see it as it
is--to be willing to see a thing to be evil, even though you see, at the
same time, that it is for the present an irremediable evil; and not to
overrate, either in the convictions of your intellect, or in the feelings
of your heart, the Good, because it is present to you, and in your
power--and, above all, not to be too hasty an admirer of the Rich, who
seem disposed to do good with their wealth and influence, but to make your
esteem strictly and severely proportionate to the worth of the Agent, not
to the _value_ of the Action, and to refer the latter wholly to the
Eternal Wisdom and Goodness, to God, upon whom it wholly depends, and in
whom alone it has a moral worth.
I love and honour you, Poole, for many things--scarcely for anything more
than that, trusting firmly in the rectitude and simplicity of your own
heart, and listening with faith to its revealing voice, you never suffered
either my subtlety, or my eloquence, to proselytize you to the pernicious
doctrine of Necessity.[4] All praise to the Great Being who has graciously
enabled me to find my way out of that labyrinth-den of sophistry, and, I
would fain believe, to bring with me a better clue than has hitherto been
known, to enable others to do the same. I have convinced Southey and
Wordsworth; and W., as you know, was, even to extravagance, a
Necessitarian. Southey never believed and abhorred the Doctrine, yet
thought the argument for it unanswerable by human reason. I have convinced
both of them of the sophistry of the argument, and wherein the sophism
consists, viz., that all have hitherto--both the Necessitarians and their
antagonists--confounded two essentially different things under one name,
and in consequence of _this_ mistake, the victory has been always hollow,
in favor of the Necessitarians.
God bless you, and
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. If any letter come to your lodgings for me, of course you will take
care of it.
CXLVI. TO THE SAME.
[January 26, 1804.]
MY DEAREST POOLE,--I have called on Sir James Mackintosh,[5] who offered
me his endeavours to procure me a place under him in India, of which
endeavour he would not for a moment doubt the success; and assured me _on
his Honour, on his Soul_!! (N. B. _his_ Honour!!) (N. B. _his_ Soul!!)
that he was sincere. Lillibullero ahoo! ahoo! ahoo! Good morning, Sir
James!
I next called on Davy, who seems more and more determined to mould himself
upon the Age, in order to make the Age mould itself upon him. Into this
language at least I could have translated his conversation. Oh, it is a
dangerous business this bowing of the head in the Temple of Rimmon; and
such men I aptly christen _Theo-mammonists_, that is, those who at once
worship God and Mammon. However, God grant better things of so noble a
work of His! And, as I once before said, may that Serpent, the World,
climb around the club which supports him, and be the symbol of healing;
even as in Tooke’s “Pantheon,”[6] you may see the thing _done_ to your
eyes in the picture of Esculapius. Well! now for business. I shall leave
the note among the schedules. They will wonder, plain, sober people! what
damn’d madcap has got among them; or rather I will put it under the letter
just arrived for you, that at least it may perhaps be _under_ the
_Rose_.[7]
Well, once again. I will try to get at it, but I am landing on a surfy
shore, and am always driven back upon the open sea of various thoughts.
I dine with Davy at five o’clock this evening at the Prince of Wales’s
Coffee House, Leicester Square, an he can give us three hours of his
company; and I beseech you _do_ make a point and come. God bless you, and
may _His_ Grace be as a pair of brimstone gloves to guard against dirty
diseases from such bad company as you are keeping--Rose[8] and Thomas
Poole!--!!!
S. T. COLERIDGE.
T. POOLE, ESQ., Parliament Office.
[Note in Poole’s handwriting: “Very interesting _jeu d’esprit_, but not
sent.”]
CXLVII. TO THE WORDSWORTHS.
DUNMOW, ESSEX, Wednesday night, ½ past 11,
February 8, 1804.
MY DEAREST FRIENDS,--I must write, or I shall have delayed it till delay
has made the thought painful as of a duty neglected. I had meant to have
kept a sort of journal for you, but I have not been calm enough; and if I
had kept it, I should not have time to transcribe, for nothing can exceed
the bustle I have been in from the day of my arrival in town. The only
incident of any extraordinary interest was a direful quarrel between
Godwin and me,[9] in which, to use his own phrase (unless Lamb suggested
it to him), I “thundered and lightened with frenzied eloquence” at him for
near an hour and a half. It ended in a reconciliation next day; but the
affair itself, and the ferocious spirit into which a _plusquam sufficit_
of punch had betrayed me, has sunk deep into my heart. Few events in my
life have grieved me more, though the fool’s conduct richly merited a
flogging, but not with a scourge of scorpions. I wrote to Mrs. Coleridge
the next day, when my mind was full of it, and, when you go into Keswick,
she will detail the matter, if you have nothing better to talk of. My
health has greatly improved, and rich and precious wines (of several of
which I had never before heard the names) agree admirably with me, and I
fully believe, most dear William! they would with you. But still I am as
faithful a barometer, and previously to, and during all falling weather,
am as asthmatic and stomach-twitched as when with you. I am a perfect
conjuror as to the state of the weather, and it is such that I detected
myself in being somewhat flattered at finding the infallibility of my
uncomfortable feelings, as to falling weather, either coming or come. What
Sicily may do for me I cannot tell, but Dalton,[10] the Lecturer on
Natural Philosophy at the R. Institution, a man devoted to Keswick,
convinced me that there was five times the duration of falling weather at
Keswick compared with the flat of midland counties, and more than twice
the gross quantity of water fallen. I have as yet been able to do nothing
for myself. My plans are to try to get such an introduction to the Captain
of the war-ship that shall next sail for Malta, as to be taken as his
friend (from Malta to Syracuse is but six hours passage in a spallanza).
At Syracuse I shall meet with a hearty welcome from Mr. Lecky, the Consul,
and I hope to be able to have a letter from Lord Nelson to the Convent of
Benedictines at Catania to receive and lodge me for such time as I may
choose to stay. Catania is a pleasant town, with pleasant, hospitable
inhabitants, at the foot of Etna, though fifteen miles, alas! from the
woody region. Greenough[11] has read me an admirable, because most minute,
journal of his Sights, Doings, and Done-untos in Sicily.
As to money, I shall avail myself of £105, to be repaid to you on the
first of January, 1805, and another £100, to be employed in paying the
Life Assurance, the bills at Keswick, Mrs. Fricker, next half year; and if
any remain, to buy me comforts for my voyage, etc., Dante and a
dictionary. I shall borrow part from my brothers, and part from Stuart. I
can live a year at Catania (for I have no plan or desire of travelling
except up and down Etna) for £100, and the getting back I shall trust to
chance.
O my dear, dear friends! if Sicily should become a British island,--as all
the inhabitants intensely desire it to be,--and if the climate agreed with
you as well as I doubt not it will with me,--and if it be as much cheaper
than even Westmoreland, as Greenough reports, and if I could get a
Vice-Consulship, of which I have little doubt, oh, what a dream of
happiness could we not realize! But mortal life seems destined for no
continuous happiness, save that which results from the exact performance
of duty; and blessed are you, dear William! whose path of duty lies
through vine-trellised elm-groves, through Love and Joy and Grandeur. “O
for one hour of Dundee!”[12] How often shall I sigh, “Oh! for one hour of
‘The Recluse’!”
I arrived at Dunmow on Tuesday, and shall stay till Tuesday morning. You
will direct No. 116 Abingdon St., Westminster. I was not received here
with mere kindness; I was welcomed _almost_ as you welcomed me when first
I visited you at Racedown. And their solicitude and attention is enough to
effeminate one. Indeed, indeed, they _are_ kind and good people; and old
Lady Beaumont, now eighty-six, is a sort of miracle for beauty and clear
understanding and cheerfulness. The house is an old house by a tan-yard,
with nothing remarkable but its awkward passages. We talk by the long
hours about you and Hartley, Derwent, Sara, and Johnnie; and few things, I
am persuaded, would delight them more than to live near you. I wish you
would write out a sheet of verses for them, and I almost promised for you
that you should send that delicious poem on the Highland Girl at
Inversnade. But of more importance, incomparably, is it, that Mary and
Dorothy should begin to transcribe _all_ William’s MS. poems _for me_.
Think what they will be to me in Sicily! They should be written in pages
and lettered up in parcels not exceeding two ounces and a quarter each,
including the seal, and _three_ envelopes, one to the Speaker, under that,
one to John Rickman, Esqre, and under that, one to _me_. (Terrible
mischief has happened from foolish people of R.’s acquaintance
_neglecting_ the middle envelope, so that the Speaker, opening his letter,
finds himself made a letter smuggler to Nicholas Noddy or some other
unknown gentleman.) But I will send you the exact form. The weight is not
of much importance, but better not exceed two ounces and a quarter. I will
write again as soon as I hear from you. In the mean time, God bless you,
dearest William, Dorothy, Mary, S., and my godchild.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CXLVIII. TO HIS WIFE.
February 19, 1804.
“J. Tobin, Esqre.,[13] No. 17 Barnard’s Inn, Holborn. For Mr. Coleridge.”
_So_, if you wish me to answer it by return of post: but if it be of no
consequence, whether I receive it four hours sooner or four hours later,
then direct “Mr. Lambe,[14] East India House, London.”
I did not receive your last letter written on the “very, very windy and
very cold Sunday night,” till yesterday afternoon, owing to Poole’s
neglect and forgetfulness. But Poole is one of those men who have one good
quality, namely, that they always _do_ one thing at a time; but who
likewise have one defect, that they can seldom _think_ but of one thing at
a time. For instance, if Poole is intent on his matter while he is
speaking, he cannot give the least attention to his language or
pronunciation, in consequence of which there is no one error in his
dialect which he has ever got rid of. My mind is in general of the
contrary make. I too often _do_ nothing, in consequence of being impressed
all at once (or so rapidly consecutively as to appear all at once) by a
variety of impressions. If there are a dozen people at table I hear, and
cannot help giving some attention to what each one says, even though there
should be three or four talking at once. The detail of the Good and the
Bad, of the two different _makes_ of mind, would form a not uninteresting
brace of essays in a _Spectator_ or _Guardian_.
You will of course repay Southey instantly all the money you may have
borrowed either for yourself or for Mr. Jackson,[15] and do not forget to
remember that a share of the _wine-bill_ belonged to me. Likewise when
you pay Mr. Jackson, you will pay him just as if he had not had any money
from you. Is it half a year? or a year and a half’s rent that we owe him?
Did we pay him up to July last? If we did, _then_, were I you, I would now
pay him the whole year’s rent up to July next, and tell him that you shall
not want the twenty pounds which you have lent him till the beginning of
May. Remember me to him in the most affectionate manner, and say how
sincerely I condole with him on his sprain. Likewise, and as
affectionately, remember me to Mrs. Wilson.
[Illustration]
It gave me pain and a feeling of anxious concern on our own account, as
well as Mr. Jackson’s, to find him so distressed for money. I fear that he
will be soon induced to sell the house.
Now for our darling Hartley. I am myself not at all anxious or uneasy
respecting his _habits_ of idleness; but I should be very unhappy if he
were to go to the town school, unless there were any steady lad that Mr.
Jackson knew and could rely on, who went to the same school regularly, and
who would be easily induced by half-a-crown once in two or three months to
take care of him, let him always sit by him, and to whom you should
instruct the child to yield a certain degree of obedience. If this can be
done (and you will read what I say to Mr. Jackson), I have no great
objection to his going to school and making a fair trial of it. Oh, may
God vouchsafe me health that he may go to school to his own father! I
exceedingly wish that there were any one in Keswick who would give him a
little instruction in the elements of drawing. I will go to-morrow and
enquire for some very elementary book, if there be any, that proposes to
teach it without the assistance of a drawing master, and which you might
make him _read_ to you instead of his other books. Sir G. Beaumont was
very much pleased and interested by Hartley’s promise of attachment to his
darling Art. If I can find the book I will send it off instantly, together
with the Spillĕkins (Spielchen, or Gamelet, I suppose), a German
refinement of our Jack Straw. You or some one of your sisters will be so
good as to play with Hartley, at first, that Derwent may learn it. Little
Albert at Dr. Crompton’s, and indeed all the children, are quite spillekin
mad. It is certainly an excellent game to teach children steadiness of
hand and quickness of eye, and a good opportunity to impress upon them the
beauty of strict truth, when it is against their own interest, and to give
them a pride in it, and habits of it,--for the slightest perceptible
motion produced in any of the spillekins, except the one attempted to be
_crooked_ off the heap, destroys that turn, and there is a good deal of
foresight executed in knowing when to give it a lusty pull, so as to move
the spillekins under, if only you see that your adversary who will take
advantage of this pull, will himself not succeed, and yet by _his_ or the
second pull put the spillekin easily in the power of the third pull.... I
am now writing in No. 44 Upper Titchfield Street, where I have for the
first time been breakfasting with A. Welles, who seems a kind, friendly
man, and instead of recommending any more of his medicine to me, advises
me to persevere in and expedite my voyage to a better climate, and has
been very pressing with me to take up my home at his house. To-morrow I
dine with Mr. Rickman at his own house; Wednesday I dine with him at
Tobin’s. I shall dine with Mr. Welles to-day, and thence by eight o’clock
to the Royal Institution to the lecture.[16] On Thursday afternoon, two
o’clock to the lecture, and Saturday night, eight o’clock to the lecture.
On Friday, I spend the day with Davy certainly, and I hope with Mr.
Sotheby likewise. To-morrow or Wednesday I expect to know certainly what
my plans are to be, whither to go and when, and whether the intervening
space will make it worth my while to go to Ottery, or whether I shall go
back to Dunmow, and return with Sir George and Lady B. when they come to
their house in Grosvenor Square. I cannot express to you how very, very
affectionate the behaviour of these good people has been to me; and how
they seem to love by anticipation those very few whom I love. If Southey
would but permit me to copy that divine passage of his “Madoc,”[17]
respecting the Harp of the Welsh Bard, and its imagined divinity, with the
Two Savages, or any other detachable passage, or to transcribe his
“Kehama,” I will pledge myself that Sir George Beaumont and Lady B. will
never suffer a single individual to hear or see a single line, you
_saying_ that it is to be kept sacred to them, and not to be seen by any
one else.
[No signature.]
CXLIX. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
Rickman’s Office, H. of Commons,
February 20, 1804, Monday noon.
DEAR SOUTHEY,--The affair with Godwin began thus. We were talking of
reviews, and bewailing their ill effects. I detailed my plan for a review,
to occupy regularly the fourth side of an evening paper, etc., etc.,
adding that it had been a favourite scheme with me for two years past.
Godwin very coolly observed that it was a plan which “no man who had a
spark of honest pride” could join with. “No man, not the slave of the
grossest egotism, could unite in,” etc. Cool and civil! I asked whether he
and most others did not already do what I proposed in prefaces. “Aye! in
_prefaces_; that is quite a different thing.” I then adverted to the
extreme rudeness of the speech with regard to myself, and added that it
was not only a very rough, but likewise a very mistaken opinion, for I was
nearly if not quite sure that it had received the approbation both of you
and of Wordsworth. “Yes, sir! just so! of Mr. Southey--just what I said,”
and so on _mōrĕ Godwiniāno_ in language so ridiculously and exclusively
appropriate to himself, that it would have made you merry. It was even as
if he was looking into a sort of moral looking-glass, without knowing what
it was, and, seeing his own very, very Godwinship, had by a merry conceit
christened it in your name, not without some annexment of me and
Wordsworth. I replied by laughing in the first place at the capricious
nature of his nicety, that what was gross in folio should become
double-refined in octavo foolscap or _pickpocket_ quartos, blind slavish
egotism in small pica, manly discriminating self-respect in double primer,
modest as maiden’s blushes between boards, or in calf-skin, and only not
obscene in naked sheets. And then in a deep and somewhat sarcastic tone,
tried to teach him to speak more reverentially of his betters, by stating
what and who they were, by whom honoured, by whom depreciated. Well! this
gust died away. I was going home to look over his Duncity; he begged me to
stay till his return in half an hour. I, meaning to take nothing more the
whole evening, took a crust of bread, and Mary Lamb made me a glass of
punch of most deceitful strength. Instead of half an hour, Godwin stayed
an hour and a half. In came his wife, Mrs. Fenwick,[18] and four young
ladies, and just as Godwin returned, supper came in, and it was now
useless to go (at supper I was rather a mirth-maker than merry). I was
disgusted at heart with the grossness and vulgar insanocecity of this
dim-headed prig of a philosophocide, when, after supper, his ill stars
impelled him to renew the contest. I begged him not to goad me, for that I
feared my feelings would not long remain in my power. He (to my wonder and
indignation) persisted (I had not deciphered the cause), and then, as he
well said, I did “thunder and lighten at him” with a vengeance for more
than an hour and a half. Every effort of self-defence only made him more
ridiculous. If I had been Truth in person, I could not have spoken more
accurately; but it was Truth in a war-chariot, drawn by the three Furies,
and the reins had slipped out of the goddess’s hands!... Yet he did not
absolutely give way till that stinging _contrast_ which I drew between him
as a man, as a writer, and a benefactor of society, and those of whom he
had spoken so irreverently. In short, I suspect that I seldom, at any time
and for so great a length of time, so continuously displayed so much
power, and do hope and trust that never did I display one half the scorn
and ferocity. The next morning, the moment when I awoke, O mercy! I did
feel like a very wretch. I got up and immediately wrote and sent off by a
porter, a letter, I dare affirm an affecting and eloquent letter to him,
and since then have been working for him, for I was heart-smitten with the
recollection that I had said all, all in the presence of his _wife_. But
if I had known all I now know, I will not say that I should not have
apologised, but most certainly I should not have made such an apology, for
he confessed to Lamb that he should not have persisted in irritating me,
but that Mrs. Godwin had twitted him for his prostration before me, as if
he was afraid to say his life was his own in my presence. He admitted,
too, that although he never to the very last suspected that I was tipsy,
yet he saw clearly that something unusual ailed me, and that I had not
been my natural self the whole evening. What a poor creature! To attack a
man who had been so kind to him at the instigation of such a woman![19]
And what a woman to instigate him to quarrel with _me_, who with as much
power as any, and more than most of his acquaintances, had been perhaps
the only one who had never made a butt of him--who had uniformly spoken
respectfully to him. But it is past! And I trust will teach me wisdom in
future.
I have undoubtedly suffered a great deal from a cowardice in not daring to
repel unassimilating acquaintances who press forward upon my friendship;
but I dare aver, that if the circumstances of each particular case were
examined, they would prove on the whole honourable to me rather than
otherwise. But I have had enough and done enough. Hereafter I shall show a
different face, and calmly inform those who press upon me that my health,
spirits, and occupation alike make it necessary for me to confine myself
to the society of those with whom I have the nearest and highest
connection. So help me God! I will hereafter be quite sure that I do
really and in the whole of my heart esteem and like a man before I permit
him to call me friend.
I am very anxious that you should go on with your “Madoc.” If the thought
had happened to suggest itself to you originally and with all these
modifications and polypus tendrils with which it would have caught hold of
your subject, I am afraid that you would not have made the first voyage
_as_ interesting at least as it ought to be, so as to preserve entire the
fit proportion of interest. But go on!
I shall call on Longman as soon as I receive an answer from him to a note
which I sent....
God bless you and
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. I have just received Sara’s four lines added to my brother George’s
letter, and cannot explain her not having received my letters. If I am not
mistaken I have written three or four times: upon an average I have
written to Greta Hall once every five days since I left Liverpool--if you
will divide the letters, one to each five days. I will write to my brother
immediately. I wrote to Sara from Dunmow; to you instantly on my return,
and now again. I do not deserve to be scolded at present. I met G. Burnett
the day before yesterday in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, so nervous, so helpless
with such opium-stupidly-wild eyes.
Oh, it made the place one calls the heart feel as it was going to ache.
CL. TO HIS WIFE.
Mr. J. C. Motley’s, Thomas Street, Portsmouth,
Sunday, April 1, 1804.
MY DEAR SARA,--I am waiting here with great anxiety for the arrival of the
Speedwell. The Leviathan, Man of War, our convoy, has orders to sail with
the first fair wind, and whatever wind can bring in the Speedwell will
carry out the Leviathan, unless she have other orders than those
generally known. I have left the Inn, and its _crumena-mulga natio_, and
am only at the expense of a lodging at half a guinea a week, for I have
all my meals at Mr. Motley’s, to whom a letter from Stuart introduced me,
and who has done most especial honour to the introduction. Indeed he could
not well help, for Stuart in his letter called me his very, very
particular friend, and that every attention would sink more into his heart
than one offered to himself or his brother. Besides, you know it is no new
thing for people to take sudden and hot likings to me. How different Sir
G. B.! He disliked me at first. When I am in better spirits and less
flurried I will transcribe his last letter. It breathed the very soul of
calm and manly yet deep affection.
Hartley will receive his and Derwent’s Spillekins with a letter from me by
the first waggon that leaves London after Wednesday next.
My dear Sara! the mother, the attentive and excellent mother of my
children must needs be always more than the word friend can express when
applied to a woman. I pray you, use no word that you use with reluctance.
Yet what we have been to each other, our understandings will not permit
our hearts to forget! God knows, I weep tears of blood, but so it is! For
I greatly esteem and honour you. Heaven knows if I can leave you really
comfortable in your circumstances I shall meet Death with a face, which I
feel at the moment I say it, it would rather shock than comfort you to
imagine.
My health is indifferent. I am rather endurably unwell than tolerably
well. I will write Southey to-morrow or next day, though Motley rides and
drives me about sightseeing so as to leave me but little time. I am not
sure that I shall see the Isle of Wight.
Write to Wordsworth. Inform him that I have received all and everything
and will write him very soon, as soon as I can command spirits and
time.... Motley can send off all letters to Malta under Government
covers. You direct, therefore, at all times merely to me at Mr. J. C.
Motley’s, Portsmouth.
My very dear Sara, may God Almighty bless you and your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
I mourn for poor Mary.
CLI. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
Off Oporto and the coast of Portugal,
Monday noon, April 16, 1804.
MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I was thinking long before daylight this morning, that I
ought, spite of toss and tumble and cruel rocking, to write a few letters
in the course of this and the three following days; at the end of which,
if the northwest wind still blows behind, we may hope to be at Gibraltar.
I have two or three very unpleasant letters to write, and I was planning
whether I should not begin with these, have them off my hands and
thoughts, in short, whistle them down into the sea, and then take up the
paper, etc., a _whole_ man. When, lo! I heard the Captain above deck
talking of Oporto, slipped on my greatcoat and went shoeless up to have a
look. And a beautiful scene verily it was and is! The high land of
Portugal, and the mountain land behind it, and behind that fair mountains
with blue pyramids and cones. By the glass I could distinguish the larger
buildings in Oporto, a scrambling city, part of it, seemingly, walls
washed by the sea, part of it upon hills. At first view, it looked much
like a vast brick kiln in a sandy, clayey country on a hot summer
afternoon; seen more distinctly, it gave the nobler idea of a ruined city
in a wilderness, its houses and streets lying low in ruins under its
ruined walls, and a few temples and palaces standing untouched. But over
all the sea between us and the land, short of a stone’s throw on the left
of the vessel, there is such a delicious warm olive green, almost yellow,
on the water, and now it has taken in the vessel, and its boundary is a
gunshot to my right, and one fine vessel exactly on its edge. This, though
occasioned by the impurity of the nigh shore and the disemboguing rivers,
forms a home scene; it is warm and landlike. The air is balmy and genial,
and all that the fresh breeze can do can scarcely keep under its vernal
warmth. The country round about Oporto seems darkly wooded; and in the
distant gap far behind and below it on the _curve_ of that high ridge
forming a gap, I count seventeen conical and pyramidal summits; below that
the high hills are saddlebacked. (In picturesque cant I ought to have said
BUT below that, etc.) To me the saddleback is a pleasant form which it
never would have occurred to me to christen by that name. Tents and
marquees with little points and summits made by the tent-poles suggest a
more striking likeness. Well! I need not say that the sight of the coast
of Portugal made it impossible for me to write to any one before I had
written to you--I now seeing for the first time a country you love so
dearly. But you, perhaps, are not among my mountains! God Almighty grant
that you may not. Yes! you are in London: all is well, and Hartley has a
younger sister than tiny Sally. If it be so, call her Edith--Edith by
itself--Edith. But somehow or other I would rather it were a boy, _then_
let nothing, I conjure you, no false compliment to another, no false
feeling indulged in yourself, deprive your eldest son of his father’s
name. Such was ever the manner of our forefathers, and there is a dignity,
a self-respect, or an awful, preëminently self-referring event in the
custom, that makes it well worthy of our imitation. I would have done
[so], but that from my earliest years I have had a feeling of dislike and
disgust connected with my own Christian name--such a vile short plumpness,
such a dull abortive smartness in the first syllable, and this so harshly
contrasted by the obscurity and indefiniteness of the syllabic vowel, and
the feebleness of the uncovered liquid with which it ends, the wobble it
makes, and struggling between a dis- and a tri-syllable, and the whole
name sounding as if you were abeeceeing S. M. U. L. Altogether, it is,
perhaps, the worst combination of which vowels and consonants are
susceptible. While I am writing we are in 41° 10m. latitude, and are
almost three leagues from land; at one time we were scarcely one league
from it, and about a quarter of an hour ago, the whole country looked so
very like the country from Hutton Moor to Saddleback and the adjoining
part of Skiddaw.
I cannot help some anxious feelings respecting you, nor some superstitious
twitches within, as if it were wrong at this distance to write so
prospectively and with such particularization of that which is contingent,
which may be all otherwise. But--God forbid! and, surely, hope is less
ominous than fear. We set sail from St. Helier’s, April 9th, Monday
morning, having dropped down thither from Spithead on Sunday evening. We
lost twenty-six hours of fair wind before our commodore gave the
signal--our brig, a most excellent and first-rate sailor, but laden deep
with heavy goods (eighty-four large cannon for Trieste in the hold), which
makes it rock most cruelly. I can only--
Wed. April 18. I was going to say I can only compare it to a wench kept at
home on some gay day to nurse a fretful infant and who, having long rocked
it in vain, at length rocks it in spite.... But though the rough weather
and the incessant rocking does not disease me, yet the damn’d rocking
depresses one inconceivably, like hiccups or itching; it is troublesome
and impertinent and forces you away from your thoughts like the presence
and gossip of an old aunt, or long-staying visitor, to two lovers. Oh with
what envy have I gazed at our commodore, the Leviathan of seventy-four
guns, the majestic and beautiful creature sailing right before us,
sometimes half a mile, oftener a furlong (for we are always first), with
two or at most three topsails that just bisect the naked masts--as much
naked mast above as below, upright, motionless as a church with its
steeple, as though it moved by its will, as though its speed were
spiritual, the being and essence without the body of motion, or as though
the distance passed away by it and the objects of its pursuit hurried
onward to it! In all other respects I cannot be better off, except perhaps
the two passengers; the one a gay, worldly-minded fellow, not deficient in
sense or judgment, but inert to everything except gain and eating; the
other, a woman once housekeeper in General Fox’s family, a creature with a
horrible superfluity of envelope, a monopolist and patentee of flabby
flesh, or rather _fish_. Indeed, she is at once fish, flesh, and _fowl_,
though no chicken. But, ... to see the man eat and this Mrs. Carnosity
talk about it! “I must have that little potato” (baked in grease under the
meat), “it looks so smilingly at me.” “Do cut me, if you please” (for she
is so fat she cannot help herself), “that small bit, just there, sir! a
leetle, tiny bit below if you please.” “Well, I have brought plenty of
pickles, I always think,” etc. “I have always three or four jars of brandy
cherries with me: for with boil’d rice now,” etc., “for I always think,”
etc. And true enough, if it can be called thinking, she does always think
upon some little damned article of eating that belongs to the
housekeeper’s cupboard’s locker. And then her plaintive yawns, such a
mixture of moan and petted child’s dry _cry_, or _try_ at a cry in them.
And then she said to me this morning, “How unhappy, I always think, one
always is, when there is nothing and nobody as one may say, about _one_ to
amuse _one_. It makes me so _nervous_.” She eats, drinks, snores, and
simply the being stupid, and silly, and vacant the learned body calls
nervous. Shame on me for talking about her! The sun is setting so exactly
behind my back that a ball from it would strike the stem of the vessel
against which my back rests. But sunsets are not so beautiful, I think, at
sea as on land. I am sitting at _my_ desk, namely the rudder-case, on the
duck coop, the ducks quacking at my legs. The chicken and duck coops run
thus [Illustration] and so inclose on three sides the rudder-case. But now
immediately that the sun has sunk, the sea runs high, and the vessel
begins its old trick of rocking, which it had intermitted the whole
day--the second intermission only since our voyage. Oh, how glad I was to
see Cape Mondego, and then yesterday the Rock of Lisbon and the fine
mountains at its interior extremity, which I conceived to be Cintra! Its
outline from the sea is something like this
[Illustration]
and just at A. where the fine stony M. begins, with a C. lying on its
back, is a village or villages, and before we came abreast of this, we saw
far inland, seemingly close by, several breasted peaks, two towers, and,
by the glass, three, of a very large building, be it convent or palace.
However, I knew you had seen all these places over and over again. The
dome-shaped mountain or Cape Esperichel, between Lisbon and Cape St.
Vincent, is one of the finest I ever saw; indeed all the mountains have a
noble outline. We sail on at a wonderful rate, and considering that we are
in convoy, shall have made a most lucky voyage to Gibraltar, if we are not
becalmed and taken in the Gut; for we shall be there to-morrow afternoon
if the wind hold, and have gone it in ten days. It is unlucky to prophesy
good things, but if we have as good fortune in the Mediterranean, instead
of nine or eleven weeks, we may reach Malta in a month or five weeks,
including the week which we shall most probably stay at Gibraltar. I
shall keep the letters open till we arrive there, simply put two strokes
under the word “=Gibraltar=,” and close up the letter, as I may gain
thereby a fortnight’s post. You will not expect to hear from me again till
we get to Malta. I had hoped to have done something during my voyage; at
all events, to have written some letters, etc. But what with the rains,
the incessant rocking, and my consequent ill health or stupefaction, I
have done little else than read through the Italian Grammar. I took out
with me some of the finest wine and the oldest in the kingdom, some
marvellous brandy, and rum twenty years old, and excepting a pint of wine,
which I had mulled at two different times, and instantly ejected again, I
have touched nothing but lemonade from the day we set sail to the present
time. So very little does anything grow into a habit with me! This I
should say to poor Tobin, who continued _advising_ and _advising_ to the
last moment. O God, he is a good fellow, but this rage of _advising_ and
_discussing character_, and (as almost all men of strong habitual health
have the trick of doing) of finding out the cause of everybody’s ill
health in some one malpractice or other. This, and the self-conceit and
presumption necessarily generated by it, added to his own marvellous
genius at utterly misunderstanding what he hears, and transposing words
often in a manner that would be ludicrous if one did not suspect that his
blindness had a share in producing it--all this renders him a sad
mischief-maker, and with the best intentions, a manufacturer and
propagator of calumnies. I had no notion of the extent of the mischief
till I was last in town. I was low, even to sinking, when I was at the
Inn. Stuart, best, kindest man to me! was with me, and Lamb, and Sir G.
B.’s valet. But Tobin fastened upon me, and advised and reproved, and just
before I stepped into the coach, reminded me of a debt of ten pounds which
I had borrowed of him for another person, an intimate friend of his, on
the condition that I was not to repay him till I could do it out of my
own purse, not borrowing of another, and not embarrassing myself--in his
very words, “till he wanted it more than I.” I was calling to Stuart in
order to pay the sum, but he stopped me with fervour, and, fully convinced
that he did it only in the _rage_ of admonition, I was vexed that it had
angered me. Therefore say nothing of it, for really he is at bottom a good
man.
I dare say nothing of home. I will write to Sara from Malta, the moment of
my arrival, if I have not time to write from Gibraltar. One of you write
to me by the regular post, “S. T. Coleridge, Esqre. Dr. Stoddart’s,
Malta:” the other to me at Mr. J. C. Motley’s, Portsmouth, that I may see
whether Motley was right or no, and which comes first.
God bless you all and
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Remember me kindly to Mr. Jackson, Mrs. Wilson, to the Calverts and Mrs.
Wilkinson, to Mary Stamper, etc.
CLII. TO DANIEL STUART.
On board the Speedwell, at anchor in the Bay of Gibraltar,
Saturday night, April 21, 1804.
MY DEAR STUART,--We dropped anchor half a mile from the landing place of
the Rock of Gibraltar on Thursday afternoon between four and five; a most
prosperous voyage of eleven days....
Since we anchored I have passed nearly the whole of each day in scrambling
about on the back of the rock, among the monkeys. I am a match for them in
climbing, but in hops and flying leaps they beat me. You sometimes see
thirty or forty together of these our poor relations, and you may be a
month on the rock and go to the back every day and not see one. Oh, my
dear friend! it is a most interesting place, this! A rock which thins as
it rises up, so that you can sit a-straddle on almost any part of its
summit, between two and three miles from north to south.
[Illustration]
Rude as this line is, it gives you the outline of its appearance, from the
sea close to it, tolerably accurately; only, in nature, it gives you very
much the idea of a rude statue of a lion couchant, like that in the
picture of the Lion and the Gnat, in the common spelling-books, or of some
animal with a great dip in the neck. The lion’s head [turns] towards the
Spanish, his stiffened tail (4) to the African coast. At (5) a range of
Moorish towers and wall begins; and at (6) the town begins, the Moorish
wall running straight down by the side of it. Above the town, little
gardens and neat small houses are scattered here and there, wherever they
can force a bit of gardenable ground; and in these are poplars, with a
profusion of geraniums and other flowers unknown to me; and their fences
are most commonly that strange vegetable monster, the prickly aloe; its
leaves resembling the head of a battledore, or the wooden wings of a
church-cherub, and one leaf growing out of another. Under the Lion’s Tail
is Europa Point, which is full of gardens and pleasant trees; but the
highest head of this mountain is a heap of rocks, with the palm-trees
growing in vast quantities in their interstices, with many flowering weeds
very often peeping out of the small holes or slits in the body of the
rock, just as if they were growing in a bottle. To have left England only
eleven days ago, with two flannel waistcoats on, and two others over them;
with two flannel drawers under cloth pantaloons, and a thick pair of yarn
stockings; to have had no temptation to lay any part of these aside during
the whole voyage, and now to find myself in the heat of an English summer,
among flowers, and seeking shade, and courting the sea-breezes; all the
trees in rich foliage, and the corn knee-high, and so exquisitely green!
and to find myself forced to retain only one flannel waistcoat, and roam
about in a pair of silk stockings and nankeen pantaloons, is a delightful
transition. How I shall bear the intensity of a Maltese or even a Sicilian
summer I cannot guess; but if I get over it, I am confident, from what I
have experienced the last four days, that their late autumn and winter
will almost re-create me. I could fill a fresh sheet with the description
of the singular faces, dresses, manners, etc., etc., of the Spaniards,
Moors, Jews (who have here a peculiar dress resembling a college dress),
Greeks, Italians, English, etc., that meet in the hot crowded streets of
the town, or walk under the aspen poplars that form an _Exchange_ in the
very centre. But words would do nothing. I am sure that any young man who
has a turn for character-painting might pass a year on the Rock with
infinite advantage. A dozen plates by Hogarth from this town! We are told
that we shall not sail to-morrow evening. The Leviathan leaves us and goes
to join the fleet, and the Maidstone Frigate is to convoy us to Malta.
When you write, send one letter to me at Mr. J. C. Motley’s, Portsmouth,
and another by the post to me at Dr. Stoddart’s,[20] Malta, that I may see
which comes first. God grant that my present health may continue, and then
my after-letters will be better worth the postage. But even this scrawl
will not be unwelcome to you, since it tells you that I am safe, improving
in my health, and ever, ever, my dear Stuart, with true affection, and
willing gratitude, your sincere friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
In the diary of his voyage on the Speedwell Coleridge records at greater
length and in a more impassioned strain his first impressions of
Gibraltar. “Saturday, April 21st, went again on shore, walked up to the
furthermost signal-house, the summit of that third and last segment of the
mountain ridge which looks over the blue sea to Africa. The mountains
around me did not anywhere arrange themselves strikingly, and few of their
shapes were striking. One great pyramidal summit far above the rest, on
the coast of Spain, and an uncouth form, an old Giant’s Head and
shoulders, looking in upon us from Africa far inland, were the most
impressive; but the sea was so blue, calm, sunny, so majestic a lake where
it is enshored by mountains, and, where it is not [enshored], having its
indefiniteness the more felt from those huge mountain boundaries, which
yet by their greatness prepared the mind for the sublimity of unbounded
ocean--altogether it reposed in the brightness and quietness of the
noon--majestic, for it was great with an inseparable character of unity,
and, thus, the more touching to me who had looked from far loftier
mountains over a far more manifold landscape, the fields and habitations
of Englishmen, children of one family, one religion, and that my own, the
same language and manners--by every hill, by every river some sweet name
familiar to my ears, or, if first heard, remembered as soon as heard! But
here, on this side of me, Spaniards, a degraded race that dishonour
Christianity; on the other, Moors of many nations, wretches that dishonour
human nature! If any one were near me and could tell me, ‘that mountain
yonder is called so and so, and at its foot runs such and such a river,’
oh, with how blank an ear should I listen to sounds which probably my
tongue could not repeat, and which I should be sure to forget, and take no
pleasure in remembering! And the Rock itself, on which I stand (nearly the
same in length as our Carrock, but not so high, nor one tenth as wide),
what a complex Thing! At its feet mighty ramparts establishing themselves
in the sea with their huge artillery, hollow trunks of iron where Death
and Thunder sleep; the gardens in deep moats between lofty and massive
walls; a town of all nations and all languages--close below me, on my
left, fields and gardens and neat small mansions--poplars, cypresses, and
willow-leaved aspens, with fences of prickly aloe--strange plant that does
not seem to be alive, but to have been so, a thing fantastically carved in
wood, and coloured--some hieroglyphic or temple ornament of undiscovered
meaning. On my right and immediately with and around me white stone above
stone, an irregular heap of marble rocks, with flowers growing out of the
holes and fissures, and palmettoes everywhere ... beyond these an old
Moorish tower, and then galleries and halls cut out by human labour out of
the dense hard rock, with enormous cannon the apertures for which no eye
could distinguish, from the sea or the land below them, from the
nesting-holes of seafowl. On the north side, aside these, one absolutely
perpendicular precipice, the absolute length of the Rock, at its highest a
precipice of 1,450 feet--the whole eastern side an unmanageable mass of
stones and weeds, save one place where a perpendicular precipice of stone
slants suddenly off in a swelling slope of sand like the Screes on
Wastwater. The other side of this rock 5,000 men in arms, and no less than
10,000 inhabitants--in this [side] sixty or seventy apes! What a
multitude, an almost discordant complexity of associations! The Pillars of
Hercules, Calpe, and Abyla, the realms of Masinissa, Jugurtha, and Syphax:
Spain, Gibraltar: the Dey of Algiers, dusky Moor and black African, and
others. Quiet it is to the eye, and to the heart, which in it will
entrance itself in the present vision, and know nothing, feel nothing, but
the abiding things of Nature, great, calm, majestic, and one! From the
road I climbed up among the rocks, crushing the tansy, the strong smell of
which the open air reconciled to me. I reached the ‘striding edge,’ where,
as I sate, I fell into the above musing.”
CLIII. TO HIS WIFE.
[MALTA,] June, 1804.
[MY DEAR SARA,]--[I wrote] to Southey from Gibraltar, directing you to
open the letter in case Southey should be in town. You received it, I
trust, and learnt from it that I had been pretty well, and that we had had
a famous quick passage. At Gibraltar we stayed five days, and so lost our
fair wind, and [during our] after-voyage to Malta [there] was [a] storm,
that carried away our main yard, etc., long dead calms, every rope of the
whole ship reflected in the bright, soft blue sea, and light winds, often
varying every quarter of an hour, and more often against us than for us.
We were the best sailing vessel in the whole convoy; but every day we had
to lie by and wait for the laggards. This is very disheartening; likewise
the frequent danger in light winds or calms, or in foggy weather of
running foul of each other is another heavy inconvenience of convoy, and,
in case of a deep calm in a narrow sea, as in the Gut of Gibraltar and in
the Archipelago, etc., where calms are most common, a privateering or
piratical row-boat might board you and make slaves of you under the very
nose of the man-of-war, which would lie a lifeless hulk on the smooth
water. For these row-boats, mounting from one to four or five guns, would
instantly sink a man-of-war’s boat, and one of them, last war, had very
nearly made a British frigate _strike_. I mention these facts because it
is a common notion that going under convoy you are “as snug as a bug in a
rug.” If I had gone without convoy on board the Speedwell, we should have
reached Malta in twenty days from the day I left Portsmouth, but, however,
we were congratulated on having had a _very good_ passage for the time of
the year, having been only forty days including our stay at Gibraltar; and
if there be inconvenience in a convoy, I have reason to know and to be
grateful for its advantages. The whole of the voyage from Gibraltar to
Malta, excepting the four or five last days, I was wretchedly unwell....
The harbour at Valetta is narrow as the neck of a bottle in the entrance;
but instantly opens out into a lake with tongues of land, capes, one
little island, etc., etc., where the whole navy of England might lie as in
a dock in the worst of weather. All around its banks, in the form of an
amphitheatre, rise the magnificent houses of Valetta, and its two
over-the-water towns, Burmola and Flavia (which are to Valetta what the
Borough is to London). The houses are all lofty and built of fine white
freestone, something like Bath, only still whiter and _newer_ looking, yet
the windows, from the prodigious thickness of the walls, being all out of
sight, the whole appeared to me as Carthage to Æneas, a proud city, well
nigh but not quite finished. I walked up a long street of good breadth,
all a flight of stairs (no place for beast or carriage, each broad stair
composed of a cement-sand of _terra pozzolana_, hard and smooth as the
hardest pavement of smooth rock by the seaside and very like it). I soon
found out Dr. Stoddart’s house, which seemed a large pile of building. He
was not at home, but I stayed for him, and in about two hours he came, and
received me with an explosion of surprise and welcome--more _fun_ than
_affection_ in the manner, but just as I wished it.... Yesterday and
to-day I have been pretty well. In a hot climate, now that the glass is
high as 80 in the shade, the healthiest persons are liable to fever on the
least disagreement of food with the first passages, and my general health
is, I would fain believe, better _on the whole_.... I will try the most
scrupulous regimen of diet and exercise; and I rejoice to find that the
heat, great as it is, does not at all annoy me. In about a fortnight I
shall probably take a trip into Sicily, and spend the next two or three
months in some cooler and less dreary place, and return in September. For
eight months in the year the climate of Malta is delightful, but a
drearier place eye never saw. No stream in the whole island, only one
place of springs, which are conveyed by aqueducts and supply the island
with about one third of its water; the other two thirds they depend for
upon the rain. And the reservoirs under the houses, walls, etc., to
preserve the rain are _stupendous_! The tops of all the houses are flat,
and covered with that smooth, hard composition, and on these and
everywhere where rain can fall are channels and pipes to conduct it to the
reservoirs. Malta is about twenty miles by twelve--a mere rock of
freestone. In digging out this they find large quantities of vegetable
soil. They separate it, and with the stones they build their houses and
garden and field walls, all of an enormous thickness. The fields are
seldom so much as half an acre [Illustration] one above another in that
form, so that everything grows as in huge garden pots. The whole island
looks like one monstrous fortification. Nothing _green_ meets your
eye--one dreary, grey-white,--and all the country towns from the
retirement and invisibility of the windows look like towns burnt out and
desolate. Yet the fertility is marvellous. You almost see things grow, and
the population is, I suppose, unexampled. The town of Valetta itself
contains about one hundred and ten streets, all at right angles to each
other, each having from twelve to fifty houses; but many of them very
steep--a few _staired_ all across, and almost all, in some part or other,
if not the whole, having the footway on each side so staired. The houses
lofty, all looking new. The good houses are built with a court in the
centre, and the rooms large and lofty, from sixteen to twenty feet high,
and walls enormously thick, all necessary for coolness. The fortifications
of Valetta are endless. When I first walked about them, I was struck all
of a heap with their strangeness, and when I came to understand a little
of their purpose, I was overwhelmed with wonder. Such vast masses--bulky
mountain-breasted heights; gardens with pomegranate trees--the prickly
pears in the fosses, and the caper (the most beautiful of flowers) growing
profusely in the interstices of the high walls and on the battlements. The
Maltese are a dark, light-limbed people. Of the women five tenths are
ugly; of the remainder, four fifths would be ordinary but that they look
so _quaint_, and one tenth, perhaps, may be called quaint-pretty. The
prettiest resemble pretty Jewesses in England. They are the noisiest
race[21] under heaven, and Valetta the noisiest place. The sudden
shot-up, explosive bellows-cries you ever heard in London would give you
the faintest idea of it. Even when you pass by a fruit stall the fellow
will put his hand like a speaking trumpet to his mouth and shoot such a
thunderbolt of sound full at you. Then the endless jangling of those
cursed bells, etc. Sir Alexander Ball and General Valette (the civil and
military commanders) have been marvellously attentive--Sir A. B. even
friendly and confidential to me.
Poor Mrs. Stoddart was brought to bed of a little girl on the 24th of May,
and it died on Tuesday, June 5th. On the night of its birth, poor little
lamb! I had such a lively vision of my little Sara, that it brought on a
sort of hysterical fit on me. O merciful God! how I tremble at the thought
of letters from England. I should be most miserable _without_ them, and
yet I shall receive them as a sentence of death! So terribly has fear got
the upper hand in my habitual feelings, from my long destitution of hope
and joy.
Hartley, Derwent, my sweet children! a father’s blessing on you! With
tears and clasped hands I bless you. Oh, I must write no more of this. I
have been haunted by the thought that I have lost a box of books
containing Shakespeare (Stockdale’s), the four or five first volumes of
the “British Poets,” Young’s “Syllabus” (a red paper book), Condillac’s
“Logic,” “Thornton on Public Credit,” etc. Be sure you inform me whether
or no I did take these books from Keswick. I will write to Southey by the
next opportunity. You recollect that I went away without knowing the
result of Edith’s confinement; not a day in which I do not think of it.
My love to dear Southey, and remember me to Mr. Jackson, and Mrs. Wilson
with the kindest words, and to Mary Stamper. My kind remembrances to Mr.
and Mrs. Wilkinson, and to the Calverts. How is your sister Mary in her
spirits? My wishes and prayers attend her. I am anxious to hear about poor
George and shall write about him to Portsmouth in the course of a week,
for by that time a convoy will be going to England as we expect. I hope
that in the course of three weeks or a month I may be able to give a more
promising account of my health. As it is, I have reason to be satisfied.
The effect of years cannot be done away in a few weeks. I am tranquil and
resigned, and, even if I should not bring back health, I shall at least
bring back experience, and suffer with patience and in silence. Again and
again God bless you, my dear Sara! Let me know everything of your health,
etc., etc. Oh, the letters are on the sea for me, and what tidings may
they not bring to me!
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Single sheet. Per Germania a Londra. An. 1804.
CLIV. TO DANIEL STUART.
SYRACUSE,[22] October 22, 1804.
MY DEAR STUART,--I have written you a long letter this morning by way of
Messina, and from other causes am so done up and brain weary that I must
put you to the expense of this as almost a blank, except that you will be
pleased to observe my attention to business in having written two letters
of advice, as well as transmitted first and second of exchange for £50
which I have drawn upon you, payable to order of Dr. Stoddart at usance. I
shall want no more for my return. I shall stay a month at Messina, and in
that time visit Naples. Supposing the letter of this morning to miss, I
ought to repeat to you that I leave the publication of THE PACQUET,[23]
which is waiting for convoy at Malta for you, to your own opinion. If the
information appear new or valuable to you, and the letters themselves
entertaining, etc., publish them; only do not sell the copyright of more
than the right of two editions to the bookseller. He will not give more,
or much more for the copyright of the whole.
May God bless you! I am, and shall be as long as I exist, your truly
grateful and affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CLV. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
Sat. morning, 4 o’clock. Treasury, Malta.
February 2, 1805.
DEAR SOUTHEY,--A Privateer is to leave this Port to-day at noon for
Gibraltar, and, it chancing that an officer of rank takes his passage in
her, Sir A. Ball trusts his dispatches with due precaution to this unusual
mode of conveyance, and I must enclose a letter to you in the government
parcel. I pray that the lead attached to it will not be ominous of its
tardy voyage, much less of its making a diving tour whither the spirit of
Shakespeare went, under the name of the Dreaming Clarence.[24] Certain it
is that I awoke about some half hour ago from so vivid a dream that the
work of sleep had completely destroyed all sleepiness. I got up, went to
my office-room, rekindled the wood-fire for the purpose of writing to you,
having been so employed from morn till eve in writing public letters, some
as long as memorials, from the hour that this opportunity was first
announced to me, that for once in my life, at least, I can with strict
truth affirm that I have had _no time_ to write to you, if by time be
understood the moments of life in which our powers are alive. I am
well--at least, till within the last fortnight I _was_ perfectly so, till
the news of the sale of my blessed house played “the foe intestine” with
me. But of that hereafter.
My dear Southey![25] the longer I live, and the more I see, know, and
think, the more deeply do I seem to know and feel your goodness; and why,
at this distance, may I not allow myself to utter forth my whole thought
by adding your _greatness_? “Thy kingdom come” will have been a petition
already granted, when in the minds and hearts of all men both words mean
the same; or (to shake off a state of feeling deeper than may be
serviceable to me) when gulielmosartorially speaking (_i. e._ William
“Taylorice”) the latter word shall have become an incurable synonym, a
lumberly duplicate, thrown into the kennel of the Lethe-lapping Chronos
Anubioeides,[26] as a carriony, bare-ribbed tautology. Oh me! it will not
do! You, my children, the Wordsworths, are at Keswick and Grasmere, and I
am at Malta, and it is a silly hypocrisy to pretend to joke when I am
heavy at heart. By the accident of the sale of a dead Colonel’s effects,
who arrived in this healing climate too late to be healed, I procured the
perusal of the second volume of the “Annual Review.” I was suddenly and
strangely affected by the marked attention which you had paid to my few
hints, by the insertion of my joke on Booker; but more, far more than all,
by the affection for me which peeped forth in that “William Brown of
Ottery.” I knew you stopped before and after you had written the words.
But I am to speak of your reviews in general. I am confident, for I have
carefully reperused almost the whole volume, and what I knew or detected
to be yours I have read over and over again, with as much care and as
little warping of partiality as if it had been a manuscript of my own
going to the press--I can say confidently that in my best judgment they
are models of good sense and correct style; of high and honest feeling
intermingled with a sort of wit which (I now translate as truly, though
not as verbally, as I can, the sense of an observation which a literary
Venetian, who resides here as the editor of a political journal, made to
me after having read your reviews of Clarke’s “Maritime Discoveries”)
unites that happy _turn_ of words, which is the essence of French wit,
with those comic picture-making combinations of fancy that characterises
the old wit of old England. If I can find time to copy off what in the
hurry of the moment I wrote on loose papers that cannot be made up into a
letter without subjecting you to an expense wholly disproportionate to
their value, I shall prove to you that I have been watchful in marking
what appeared to me false, or _better-not_, or _better-otherwise_, parts,
no less than what I felt to be excellent. It is enough to say at present,
that seldom in my course of reading have I been more deeply impressed than
by the sense of the diffused good they were likely to effect. At the same
time I could not help feeling to how many false and pernicious principles,
both in taste and in politics, they were likely, by their excellence, to
give a non-natural circulation. W. Taylor grows worse and worse. As to his
political dogmata concerning Egypt, etc., God forgive him! He knows not
what he does! But as to his spawn about Milton and Tasso--nay, Heaven
forbid it should be _spawn_, it is pure toad-spit, not as toad-spit is,
but as it is vulgarly believed to be. (_See, too, his Article in the
“Critical Review.”_) Now for your feelings respecting “Madoc.” I regard
them as all nerve and stomach-work, you having too recently quitted the
business. Genius, too, has its intoxication, which, however divine, leaves
its headaches and its nauseas. Of the very best of the few bad, good, and
indifferent things, I have had the same sensations. Concerning the
immediate chryso-poetic powers of “Madoc” I can only fear somewhat and
hope somewhat. Midas and Apollo are as little cronies as Marsyas and
Apollo. But of its great and lasting effects on your fame, if I doubted, I
should then doubt all things in which I had hitherto had firm faith.
Neither am I without cheerful belief respecting its _ultimate_ effects on
your worldly fortune. O dear Southey! when I see this booby with his ten
pound a day as Mr. Commissary X., and _that_ thorough-rogue two doors off
him with his fifteen pound a day as Mr. General Paymaster Y. Z., it stirs
up a little bile from the liver and gives my poor stomach a pinch, when I
hear you talk of having to look forward to an £100 or £150. But cheerily!
what do we complain of? would we be either of these men? Oh, had I
domestic happiness, and an assurance only of the health I now possess
continuing to me in England, what a blessed creature should I be, though I
found it necessary to feed me and mine on roast potatoes for two days in
each week in order to make ends meet, and to awake my beloved with a kiss
on the first of every January. “Well, my best darling! we owe nobody a
farthing! and I have you, my children, two or three friends, and a
thousand books!” I have written very lately to Mrs. Coleridge. If my
letter reaches her, as I have quoted in it a part of yours of Oct. 19th,
she will wonder that I took no notice of the house and the _Bellygerent_.
From Mrs. C. I have received no letter by the last convoy. In truth I am
and have reason to be ashamed to own to what a diseased excess my
sensibility has worsened into. I was so agitated by the receipt of
letters, that I did not bring myself to open them for two or three days,
half-dreaming that from there being no letter from Mrs. C. some one of the
children had died, or that she herself had been ill, or--for so help me
God! most ill-starred as our marriage has been, there is perhaps nothing
that would so frightfully affect me as any change respecting her health or
life; and, when I had read about a third of your letter, I walked up and
down and then out, and much business intervening, I wrote to her before I
had read the remainder, or my other letters. I grieve exceedingly at the
event, and my having foreseen it does not diminish the shock. My dear
study! and that house in which such persons have been! where my Hartley
has made his first love-commune with Nature, to belong to White. Oh, how
could Mr. Jackson have the heart to do it! As to the climate, I am fully
convinced that to an invalid all parts of England are so much alike, that
no disadvantages on that score can overbalance any marked advantages from
other causes. Mr. J. well knows that but for my absolute confidence in him
I should have taken the house for a long lease--but, poor man! I am rather
to soothe than to reproach him. When will he ever again have loving
friends and housemates like to us? And dear good Mrs. Wilson! Surely Mrs.
Coleridge must have written to me, though no letter has arrived. Now for
myself. I am most anxiously expecting the arrival of Mr. Chapman from
Smyrna, who is (by the last ministry if that should hold valid) appointed
successor to Mr. Macaulay, as Public Secretary of Malta, the second in
rank to the Governor. Mr. M., an old man of eighty, died on the 18th of
last month, calm as a sleeping baby, in a tremendous thunder-and-lightning
storm. In the interim, I am and some fifty times a day subscribe myself,
_Segretario Pubblico dell’ Isole di Malta, Gozo, e delle loro dipendenze_.
I live in a perfect palace and have all my meals with the Governor; but my
profits will be much less than if I had employed my time and efforts in my
own literary pursuits. However, I gain new insights and if (as I doubt not
I shall) I return having expended nothing, having paid all my prior debts
as well as interim expense (of the which debts I consider the £100
borrowed by me from Sotheby on the firm of W. Wordsworth, the heaviest),
with health, and some additional knowledge both in things and languages, I
surely shall not have lost a year. My intention is, assuredly, to leave
this place at the farthest in the latter end of this month, whether by the
convoy, or over-land by Trieste, Vienna, Berlin, Embden, and Denmark, but
I must be guided by circumstances. At all events, it will be well if a
letter should be left for me at the “Courier” office in London, by the
first of May, informing me of all which it is necessary for me to know.
But of one thing I am most anxious, namely, that my assurance money should
be paid. I pray you, look to that. You will have heard long before this
letter reaches you that the French fleet have escaped from Toulon. I have
no heart for politics, else I could tell you how for the last nine months
I have been working in memorials concerning Egypt, Sicily, and the coast
of Africa. Could France ever possess these, she would be, in a far grander
sense than the Roman, an Empire of the World. And what would remain to
England? England; and that which our miserable diplomatists affect now to
despise, now to consider as a misfortune, our language and institutions in
America. France is blest by nature, for in possessing Africa she would
have a magnificent outlet for her population as near her own coasts as
Ireland to ours; an America that must forever be an integral part of the
mother-country. Egypt is eager for France--only eager, far more eager for
G. Britain. The universal cry there (I have seen translations of twenty,
at least, mercantile letters in the Court of Admiralty here (in which I
have made a speech with a wig and gown, a true Jack of all Trades), all
stating that the _vox populi_) is English, English, if we can! but _Hats_
at all events! (HATS means Europeans in contradistinction to Turbans.) God
bless you, Southey! I wish earnestly to kiss your child. And all whom you
love, I love, as far as I can, for your sake.
For England. Per Inghilterra.
ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esqre, Greta Hall, Keswick, Cumberland.
CLVI. TO DANIEL STUART.
Favoured by Captain Maxwell of the Artillery.--N. B., an amiable mild man,
who is prepared to give you any information.
MALTA, April 20, 1805.
DEAR STUART,--The above is a duplicate, or rather a _sex_ or
_septem_-plicate of an order sent off within three weeks after my draft on
you had been given by me; and very anxious I have been, knowing that all
or almost all of my letters have failed. It seems like a judgment on me.
Formerly, when I had the sure means of conveying letters, I neglected my
duty through indolence or procrastination. For the last year, when, having
_all_ my heart, _all_ my hope in England, I found no other gratification
than that of writing to Wordsworth and his family, his wife, sister, and
wife’s sister; to Southey, to you, to T. Wedgwood, Sir. G. Beaumont, etc.
Indeed, I have been supererogatory in some instances--but an evil destiny
has dogged them--one large and (forgive my vanity!) rather important set
of letters to you on Sicily and Egypt were destroyed at Gibraltar among
the papers of a most excellent man, Major Adye, to whom I had entrusted
them on his departure from Sicily, and who died of the Plague FOUR DAYS
after his arrival at Gibraltar. But still was I afflicted (shame on me!
even to violent weeping) when all my many, many letters were thrown
overboard from the Arrow, the Acheron, and a merchant vessel, to all which
I had entrusted them; the last through my own over care. For I delivered
them to the captain with great pomp of seriousness, in my official
character as Public Secretary of the Islands.[27] He took them, and
considering them as public papers, on being close chased and expecting to
be boarded, threw them overboard; and he, however, escaped, steering for
Africa, and returned to Malta. But regrets are idle things.
In my letter, which will accompany this, I have detailed my health and all
that relates to me. In case, however, that letter should not arrive, I
will simply say, that till within the last two months or ten weeks my
health had improved to the utmost of my hopes, though not without some
intrusions of sickness; but _latterly_ the loss of my letters to England,
the almost entire non-arrival of letters from England, not a single one
from Mrs. Coleridge or Southey or you; and only one from the Wordsworths,
and that dated September, 1804! my consequent heart-saddening anxieties,
and still, still more, the depths which Captain John Wordsworth’s
death[28] sunk into my heart, and which I heard abruptly, and in the very
painfullest way possible in a public company--all these joined to my
disappointment in my expectation of returning to England by this convoy,
and the quantity and variety of my public occupations from eight o’clock
in the morning to five in the afternoon, having besides the most anxious
duty of writing public letters and memorials which belongs to my talents
rather than to my _pro-tempore_ office; these and some other causes that I
cannot mention relative to my affairs in England have produced a sad
change indeed on my health; but, however, I hope all will be well.... It
is my present intention to return home over-land by Naples, Ancona,
Trieste, etc., on or about the second of next month.
The gentleman who will deliver this to you is Captain Maxwell of the Royal
Artillery, a well-informed and very amiable countryman of yours. He will
give you any information you wish concerning Malta. An intelligent friend
of his, an officer of sense and science, has entrusted to him an essay on
Lampedusa,[29] which I have advised him to publish in a newspaper, leaving
it to the Editor to divide it. It may, perhaps, need a little _softening_,
but it is an accurate and well-reasoned memorial. He only wishes to give
it _publicity_, and to have not only his name concealed, but every
circumstance that could lead to a suspicion. If after reading it you
approve of it, you would greatly oblige him by giving it a place in the
“Courier.” He is a sensible, independent man. For all else to my other
letter.--I am, dear Stuart, with faithful recollections, your much obliged
and truly grateful friend and servant,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
April 20, 1805.
CLVII. TO HIS WIFE.
MALTA, July 21, 1805.
DEAR SARA,--The Niger is ordered off for Gibraltar at a moment’s warning,
and the Hall is crowded with officers and merchants whose oaths I am to
take, and accompts to sign. I will not, however, suffer it to go without a
line, and including a draft for £110--another opportunity will offer in a
week or ten days, and I will enclose a duplicate in a letter at large. Now
for the most important articles. My health _had_ greatly improved; but
latterly it has been very, very bad, in great measure owing to dejection
of spirits, my letters having failed, the greater part of those to me, and
almost all mine homeward.... My letters and the duplicates of them,
written with so much care and minuteness to Sir George Beaumont--those to
Wedgwood, to the Wordsworths, to Southey, Major Adye’s sudden death, and
then the loss of the two frigates, the capture of a merchant’s privateer,
all have seemed to spite. No one not absent on a dreary island, so many
leagues of sea from England, can conceive the effect of these accidents on
the spirit and inmost soul. So help me Heaven! they have nearly broken my
heart. And, added to this, I have been hoping and expecting to get away
for England for five months past, and Mr. Chapman not arriving, Sir
Alexander’s importunities have always overpowered me, though my gloom has
increased at each disappointment. I am determined, however, to go in less
than a month. My office, as Public Secretary, the next civil dignitary to
the Governor, is a very, very busy one, and not to involve myself in the
responsibility of the Treasurer I have but half the salary. I oftentimes
subscribe my name 150 times a day, S. T. Coleridge, Pub. Sec. to H. M.
Civ. Commiss{r}, or (if in Italian) Seg. Pub. del Commiss’ Regio, and
administer half as many oaths--besides which I have the public memorials
to write, and, worse than all, constant matters of arbitration. Sir A.
Ball is indeed exceedingly kind to me. The officers will be impatient. I
would I could write a more cheerful account of my health; all I can say is
that I am better than I have been, and that I was very much better before
so many circumstances of dejection happened. I should overset myself
completely, if I ventured to mention a _single name_. How deeply I love, O
God! it is agony at morning and evening.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. On being abruptly told by Lady Ball of John Wordsworth’s fate, I
attempted to stagger out of the room (the great saloon of the Palace with
fifty people present), and before I could reach the door fell down on the
ground in a convulsive hysteric fit. I was confined to my room for a
fortnight after; and now I am afraid to open a letter, and I never dare
ask a question of any new-comer. The night before last I was much affected
by the sudden entrance of poor Reynell (our inmate at Stowey);[30] more of
him in my next. May God Almighty bless you and--
(Signed with seal, ΕΣΤΗΣΕ.)
For England.
MRS. COLERIDGE, Keswick, Cumberland.
Postmark, Sept. 8, 1805.
CLVIII. TO WASHINGTON ALLSTON.
Direct to me at Mr. Degens, Leghorn. God bless you!
Tuesday, June 17, 1806.[31]
MY DEAR ALLSTON,--No want of affection has occasioned my silence. Day
after day I expected Mr. Wallis. Benvenuti received me with almost
insulting coldness, not even asking me to sit down; neither could I, by
any enquiry, find that he ever returned my call, and even in answer to a
very polite note enquiring for letters, sent a verbal message, that there
was one, and that I might call for it. However, within the last seven or
eight days he has called and made his _amende honourable_; he says he
forgot the name of my inn, and called at two or three in vain. Whoo! I did
not tell him that within five days I sent him a note in which the inn was
mentioned, and that he sent me a message in consequence, and yet never
called for ten days afterwards. However, yester-evening the truth came
out. He had been bored by letters of recommendation, and till he received
a letter from Mr. ---- looked upon me as a bore--which, however, he might
and ought to have got rid of in a more gentlemanly manner. Nothing more
was necessary than the day after my arrival to have sent his card by his
servant. But I forgive him from my heart. It should, however, be a lesson
to Mr. Wallis, to whom, and for whom, he gives letters of recommendation.
I have been dangerously ill for the last fortnight, and unwell enough,
Heaven knows, previously; about ten days ago, on rising from my bed, I had
a manifest stroke of palsy along my right side and right arm. My head felt
like another man’s head, so dead was it, that I seemed to know it only by
my left hand, and a strange sense of numbness....
Enough of it, continual vexations and preyings upon the spirit--I gave
life to my children,[32] and they have repeatedly given it to me; for, by
the Maker of all things, but for them I would try my chance. But they
pluck out the wing-feathers from the mind. I have not entirely recovered
the sense of my side or hand, but have recovered the use. I am harassed by
local and partial fevers. This day, at noon, we set off for Leghorn;[33]
all passage through the Italian States and Germany is little other than
impossible for an Englishman, and Heaven knows whether Leghorn may not be
blockaded. However, we go thither, and shall go to England in an American
ship. Inform Mr. Wallis of this, and urge him to make his way--assure him
of my anxious thoughts and fervent wishes respecting him and of my love
for T----, and his family. Tell Mr. Migliorus [?] that I should have
written him long ago but for my ill health; and will not fail to do it on
my arrival at Pisa--from thence, too, I will write a letter to you, for
this I do not consider as a letter. Nothing can surpass Mr. Russell’s[34]
kindness and tender-heartedness to me, and his understanding is far
superior to what it appears on first acquaintance. I will write likewise
to Mr. Wallis and _conjure_ him not to leave Amelia. I have heard in
Leghorn a sad, sad character of one of those whom you called acquaintance,
but who call you their dear friend.
My dear Allston, somewhat from increasing age, but more from calamity and
intense fra[ternal affections], my heart is not open to more than kind,
good wishes in general. To you, and to you alone, since I left England, I
have felt more, and had I not known the Wordsworths, should have esteemed
and loved you _first_ and _most_; and, as it is, next to them I love and
honour you. Heaven knows, a part of such a wreck as my head and heart is
scarcely worth your acceptance.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CLIX. TO DANIEL STUART.
Bell Inn, Friday Street,
Monday morning, August 18, 1806.
MY DEAR SIR,--I arrived here from Stangate Creek last night, a little
after ten, and have found myself so unusually better ever since I leaped
on land yester-afternoon, that I am glad that neither my strength nor
spirits enabled me to write to you on my arrival in Quarantine on the
eleventh. Both the captain and my fellow-passengers were seriously alarmed
for my life; and indeed such have been my unremitting sufferings from
pain, sleeplessness, loathing of food, and spirits wholly despondent, that
no motive on earth short of an awful duty would ever prevail on me to take
any sea-voyage likely to be longer than three or four days. I had rather
starve in a hovel, and, if life through disease become worthless, will
choose a Roman death. It is true I was very low before I embarked.... To
have been working so hard for eighteen months in a business I detested; to
have been flattered, and to have flattered myself that I should, on
striking the balance, have paid all my debts and maintained both myself
and family during my exile out of my savings and earnings, including my
travels through Germany, through which I had to the very last hoped to
have passed, and found myself!--but enough! I cannot charge my conscience
with a single extravagance, nor even my judgment with any other
imprudences than that of suffering one good and great man to overpersuade
me from month to month to a delay which was gnawing away my very vitals,
and in being duped in disobedience to my first feelings and previous ideas
by another diplomatic Minister.... A gentleman offered to take me without
expense to Rome, which I accepted with the full intention of staying only
a fortnight, and then returning to Naples to pass the winter.... I left
everything but a good suit of clothes and my shirts, etc., all my letters
of credit, manuscripts, etc. I had not been ten days in Rome before the
French torrent rolled down on Naples. All return was impossible, and all
transmission of papers not only insecure, but being English and many of
them political, highly dangerous both to the sender and sendee.... But
this is only a fragment of a chapter of contents, and I am too much
agitated to write the details, but will call on you as soon as my two or
three remaining [_guineas_] shall have put a decent hat upon my head and
shoes upon my feet. I am literally afraid, even to cowardice, to ask for
any person or of any person. Including the Quarantine we had fifty-five
days of shipboard, working up against head-winds, rotting and sweating in
calms, or running under hard gales with the dead lights secured. From the
captain and my fellow-passenger I received every possible tenderness, only
when I was very ill they laid their wise heads together, and the latter in
a letter to his father begged him to inform my family that I had arrived,
and he trusted that they would soon see me in better health and spirits
than when I had quitted them; a letter which must have alarmed if they saw
into it, and wounded if they did not. I was not informed of it till this
morning. God bless you, my dear sir! I have yet cheerful hopes that Heaven
will not suffer me to die degraded by any other debts than those which it
ever has been, and ever will be, my joy and pride still to pay and still
to owe; those of a truly grateful heart, and to you among the first of
those to whom they are due.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CHAPTER VIII
HOME AND NO HOME
1806-1807
CHAPTER VIII
HOME AND NO HOME
1806-1807
CLX. TO DANIEL STUART.
Monday, (?) September 15, 1806.
MY DEAR STUART,--I arrived in town safe, but so tired by the next evening,
that I went to bed at nine and slept till past twelve on Sunday. I cannot
keep off my mind from the last subject we were talking about; though I
have brought my notions concerning it to hang so well on the balance that
I have in my own judgment few doubts as to the relative weight of the
arguments persuasive and dissuasive. But of this “face to face.” I sleep
at the “Courier” office, and shall institute and carry on the inquiry into
the characters of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, and having carried it to the
Treaty of Amiens, or rather to the recommencement of the War, I propose to
give a full and severe Critique of the “Enquiry into the State of the
Nation,” taking it for granted that this work does, on the whole, contain
Mr. Fox’s latest political creed; and this for the purpose of answering
the “Morning Chronicle”(!) assertions, that Mr. Fox was the greatest and
wisest statesman; that Mr. Pitt was no statesman. I shall endeavour to
show that both were undeserving of that high character; but that Mr. Pitt
was the better; that the evils which befell him were undoubtedly produced
in great measure by blunders and wickedness on the Continent which it was
almost impossible to foresee; while the effects of Mr. Fox’s measures must
in and of themselves produce calamity and degradation.
To confess the truth, I am by no means pleased with Mr. Street’s character
of Mr. Fox as a speaker and man of intellect. As a piece of panegyric, it
falls woefully short of the Article in the “Morning Chronicle” in style
and selection of thoughts, and runs at least equally far beyond the bounds
of truth. Persons who write in a hurry are very liable to contract a sort
of snipt, convulsive style, that moves forward by short repeated PUSHES,
with iso-chronous asthmatic pants, “He--He--He--He--,” or the like,
beginning a dozen short sentences, each making a period. In this way a man
can get rid of all that happens at any one time to be in his memory, with
very little choice in the arrangement and no expenditure of logic in the
connection. However, it is the matter more than the manner that displeased
me, for fear that what I shall write for to-morrow’s “Courier” may involve
a kind of contradiction. To one outrageous passage I persuaded him to add
a note of amendment, as it was too late to alter the Article itself. It
was impossible for me, seeing him satisfied with the Article himself, to
say more than that he appeared to me to have exceeded in eulogy. But
beyond doubt in the political position occupied by the “Courier,” with so
little danger of being anticipated by the other papers in anything which
it _ought_ to say, except some obvious points which being common to all
the papers can give credit to none, it would have been better to have
announced his death, and simply led the way for an after disquisition by a
sort of shy disclosure with an appearance of suppression of the spirit
with which it could be conducted.
There are letters at the Post Office, Margate, for me. Be so good as to
send them to me, directed to the “Courier” office. I think of going to Mr.
Smith’s[35] to-morrow, or not at all. Whether Mr. Fox’s death[36] will
keep Mr. S. in town, or call him there, I do not know. At all events I
shall return by the time of your arrival.
May God bless you! I am ever, my dear sir, as your obliged, so your
affectionately grateful friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CLXI. TO HIS WIFE.
September 16, [1806.]
MY DEAR SARA,--I had determined on my arrival in town to write to you at
full, the moment I could settle my affairs and speak decisively of myself.
Unfortunately Mr. Stuart was at Margate, and what with my journey to and
fro, day has passed on after day, Heaven knows, counted by me in sickness
of heart. I am now obliged to return to Parndon to Mr. W. Smith’s, at
whose house Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson are, and where I spent three or four
days a fortnight ago. The reason at present is that Lord Howick has sent a
very polite message to me through Mr. Smith, expressing his desire to make
my acquaintance. To this I have many objections which I want to discuss
with Mr. S., and at all events I had rather go with him to his Lordship’s
than by myself. Likewise I have had application from the R. Institution
for a course of lectures, which I am much disposed to accept, both for
money and reputation. In short, I must stay in town till Friday sen’night;
for Mr. Stuart returns to town on Monday next, and he relies on my being
there for a very interesting private concern of his own, in which he needs
both my counsel and assistance. But on Friday sen’night, please God, I
shall quit town, and trust to be at Keswick on Monday, Sept. 29th. If I
finally accept the lectures, I must return by the middle of November, but
propose to take you and Hartley with me, as we may be sure of rooms either
in Mr. Stuart’s house at Knightsbridge, or in the Strand. My purpose is to
divide my time steadily between my reflections moral and political,
grounded on information obtained during two years’ residence in Italy and
the Mediterranean, and the lectures on the “Principles common to all the
Fine Arts.” It is a terrible misfortune that so many important papers are
not in my power, and that I must wait for Stoddart’s care and alertness,
which, I am sorry to say, is not to be relied on. However, it is well that
they are not in Paris.
My heart aches so cruelly that I do not dare trust myself to the writing
of any tenderness either to you, my dear, or to our dear children. Be
assured, I feel with deep though sad affection toward you, and hold your
character in general in more than mere esteem--in reverence.... I do not
gather strength so fast as I had expected; but this I attribute to my very
great anxiety. I am indeed _very feeble_, but after fifty-five days of
such horrors, following the dreary heart-wasting of a year and more, it is
a wonder that I am as I am. I sent you from Malta £110, and a duplicate in
a second letter. If you have not received it, the triplicate is either at
Malta or on its way from thence. I had sent another £100, but by Elliot’s
villainous treatment of me[37] was obliged to recall it. But these are
trifles.
Mr. Clarkson is come, and is about to take me down to Parndon (Mr. S.’s
country seat in Essex, about twenty miles from town). I shall return by
Sunday or Monday, and my address, “S. T. Coleridge, Esqre, No. 348 Strand,
London.”
My grateful love to Southey, and blessing on his little one. And may God
Almighty preserve you, my dear! and your faithful, though long absent
husband,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CLXII. TO THE SAME.
[Farmhouse near Coleorton,]
December 25, 1806.
MY DEAR SARA,--By my letter from Derby you will have been satisfied of our
safety so far. We had, however, been grossly deceived as to the
equi-distance of Derby and Loughborough. The expense was nearly double.
Still, however, I was in such torture and my boils bled, throbbed, and
_stabbed_ so _con furia_, that perhaps I have no reason for regret. At
Coleorton we found them dining, Sunday, ½ past one o’clock. To-day is Xmas
day. Of course we were welcomed with an uproar of sincere joy: and Hartley
hung suspended between the ladies for a long minute. The children, too,
jubilated at Hartley’s arrival. He has behaved very well indeed--only that
when he could get out of the coach at dinner, I was obliged to be in
incessant watch to prevent him from rambling off into the fields. He twice
ran into a field, and to the further end of it, and once after the dinner
was on table, I was out five minutes seeking him in great alarm, and found
him at the further end of a wet meadow, on the marge of a river. After
dinner, fearful of losing our places by the window (of the long coach), I
ordered him to go into the coach and sit in the place where he was before,
and I would follow. In about five minutes I followed. No Hartley!
Halloing--in vain! At length, where should I discover him! In the same
meadow, only at a greater distance, and close down on the very edge of
the water. I was angry from downright fright! And what, think you, was
Cataphract’s excuse! “It was a misunderstanding, Father! I thought, you
see, that you bid me go to the very same place, in the meadow where I
was.” I told him that he had interpreted the text by the suggestions of
the flesh, not the inspiration of the spirit; and _his Wish_ the naughty
father of the baseborn Thought. However, saving and excepting his passion
for field truantry, and his hatred of confinement [in which his fancy at
least--
Doth sing a doleful song about green fields;
How sweet it were in woods and wild savannas;
To hunt for food and be a naked man
And wander up and down at liberty!],[38]
he is a very good and sweet child, of strict honour and truth, from which
he never deviates except in the form of sophism when he sports his logical
false dice in the game of excuses. This, however, is the mere effect of
his activity of thought, and his aiming at being clever and ingenious. He
is exceedingly amiable toward children. All here love him most dearly: and
your namesake takes upon her all the duties of his mother and darling
friend, with all the mother’s love and fondness. He is very fond of _her_;
but it is very pretty to hear how, without any one set declaration of his
attachment to Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Jackson, his love for them continually
breaks out--so many things remind him of them, and in the coach he talked
to the strangers of them just as if everybody _must_ know Mr. J. and Mrs.
W. His letter is only half written; so cannot go to-day. We all wish you a
merry Christmas and many following ones. Concerning the London Lectures,
we are to discuss it, William and I, this evening, and I shall write you
at full the day after to-morrow. To-morrow there is no post, but this
letter I mean merely as bearer of the tidings of our safe arrival. I am
better than usual. Hartley has coughed a little every morning since he
left Greta Hall; but only such a little cough as you heard from him at the
door. He is in high health. All the children have the hooping cough; but
in an exceedingly mild degree. Neither Sarah Hutchinson nor I ever
remember to have had it. Hartley is made to keep at a distance from them,
and only to play with Johnny in the open air. I found my spice-megs; but
many papers I miss.
The post boy waits.
My love to Mrs. Lovell, to Southey and Edith, and believe me anxiously and
for ever,
Your sincere friend
S. T. COLERIDGE.
[Illustration]
CLXIII. TO HARTLEY COLERIDGE, ÆTAT. X.[39]
April 3, 1807.
MY DEAR BOY,--In all human beings good and bad qualities are not only
found together, side by side, as it were, but they actually tend to
produce each other; at least they must be considered as twins of a common
parent, and the amiable propensities too often sustain and foster their
unhandsome sisters. (For the old Romans personified virtues and vices
both as women.) This is a sufficient proof that mere natural qualities,
however pleasing and delightful, must not be deemed virtues until they are
broken in and yoked to the plough of _Reason_. Now to apply this to your
own case--I could equally apply it to myself--but you know yourself more
accurately than you can know me, and will therefore understand my argument
better when the facts on which it is built exist in your own
consciousness. You are by nature very kind and forgiving, and wholly free
from revenge and sullenness; you are likewise gifted with a very active
and self-gratifying fancy, and such a high tide and flood of pleasurable
feelings, that all unpleasant and painful thoughts and events are hurried
away upon it, and neither remain in the surface of your memory nor sink to
the bottom of your heart. So far all seems right and matter of
thanksgiving to your Maker; and so all really _is_ so, and will be so, if
you exert your reason and free will. But on the other hand the very same
disposition makes you less impressible both to the censure of your anxious
friends and to the whispers of your conscience. Nothing that gives you
pain dwells long enough upon your mind to do you any good, just as in some
diseases the medicines pass so quickly through the stomach and bowels as
to be able to exert none of their healing qualities. In like manner, this
power which you possess of shoving aside all disagreeable reflections, or
losing them in a labyrinth of day-dreams, which saves you from some
present pain, has, on the other hand, interwoven with your nature habits
of procrastination, which, unless you correct them in time (and it will
require all your best exertions to do it effectually), must lead you into
lasting unhappiness.
You are now going with me (if God have not ordered it otherwise) into
Devonshire to visit your Uncle G. Coleridge. He is a very good man and
very kind; but his notions of right and of propriety are very strict, and
he is, therefore, exceedingly shocked by any gross deviations from what
is right and proper. I take, therefore, this means of warning you against
those bad habits, which I and all your friends here have noticed in you;
and, be assured, I am not writing in anger, but on the contrary with great
love, and a comfortable hope that your behaviour at Ottery will be such as
to do yourself and me and your dear mother _credit_.
First, then, I conjure you never to do anything of any kind when out of
sight which you would not do in my presence. What is a frail and faulty
father on earth compared with God, your heavenly Father? But God is always
present. Specially, never pick at or snatch up anything, eatable or not. I
know it is only an idle, foolish trick; but your Ottery relations would
consider you as a little thief; and in the Church Catechism _picking_ and
_stealing_ are both put together as two sorts of the same vice, “And keep
my hands from picking and stealing.” And besides, it is a dirty trick; and
people of weak stomachs would turn sick at a dish which a young
_filth-paw_ had been fingering.
Next, when you have done wrong acknowledge it at once, like a man. Excuses
may show your ingenuity, but they make your _honesty_ suspected. And a
grain of honesty is better than a pound of wit. We may admire a man for
his cleverness; but we love and esteem him only for his goodness; and a
strict attachment to truth, and to the whole truth, with openness and
frankness and simplicity is at once the foundation stone of all goodness,
and no small part of the superstructure. Lastly, do what you have to do at
once, and put it out of hand. No procrastination; no self-delusion; no “I
am sure I can say it, I need not learn it again,” etc., which _sures_ are
such very unsure folks that nine times out of ten their sureships break
their word and disappoint you.
Among the lesser faults I beg you to endeavour to remember not to stand
between the half-opened door, either while you are speaking, or spoken to.
But come _in_ or go out, and always speak and listen with the door shut.
Likewise, not to speak so loud, or abruptly, and never to interrupt your
elders while they are speaking, and not to talk at all during meals. I
pray you, keep this letter, and read it over every two or three days.
Take but a little trouble with yourself, and every one will be delighted
with you, and try to gratify you in all your reasonable wishes. And, above
all, you will be at peace with yourself, and a double blessing to me, who
am, my dear, my very dear Hartley, most anxiously, your fond father,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. I have not spoken about your mad passions and frantic looks and
pout-mouthing; because I trust that is all over.
HARTLEY COLERIDGE, Coleorton, Leicestershire.
CLXIV. TO SIR H. DAVY.
September 11, 1807.
... Yet how very few are there whom I esteem and (pardon me for this
seeming deviation from the language of friendship) admire equally with
yourself. It is indeed, and has long been, my settled persuasion, that of
all men known to me I could not justly equal any one to you, combining in
one view powers of intellect, and the steady moral exertion of them to the
production of direct and indirect good; and if I give you pain, my heart
bears witness that I inflicted a greater on myself,--nor should I have
written such words, if the chief feeling that mixed with and followed them
had not been that of shame and self-reproach, for having profited neither
by your general example nor your frequent and immediate incentives.
Neither would I have oppressed you at all with this melancholy statement,
but that for some days past I have found myself so much better in body and
mind, as to cheer me at times with the thought that this most morbid and
oppressive weight is gradually lifting up, and my will acquiring some
degree of strength and power of reaction.
* * * * *
I have, however, received such manifest benefit from horse exercise, and
gradual abandonment of fermented and total abstinence from spirituous
liquors, and by being alone with Poole, and the renewal of old times, by
wandering about among my dear old walks of Quantock and Alfoxden, that I
have seriously set about composition, with a view to ascertain whether I
can conscientiously undertake what I so very much wish, a series of
Lectures at the Royal Institution. I trust I need not assure you how much
I feel your kindness, and let me add, that I consider the application as
an act of great and unmerited condescension on the part of the managers as
may have consented to it. After having discussed the subject with Poole,
he entirely agrees with me, that the former plan suggested by me is
invidious in itself, unless I disguised my real opinions; as far as I
should deliver my sentiments respecting the _arts_, [it] would require
references and illustrations not suitable to a public lecture room; and,
finally, that I ought not to reckon upon spirits enough to seek about for
books of Italian prints, etc. And that, after all, the general and most
philosophical principles, I might naturally introduce into lectures on a
more confined plan--namely, the principles of poetry, conveyed and
illustrated in a series of lectures. 1. On the genius and writings of
Shakespeare, relatively to his predecessors and contemporaries, so as to
determine not only his merits and defects, and the proportion that each
must bear to the whole, but what of his merits and defects belong to his
age, as being found in contemporaries of genius, and what belonged to
himself. 2. On Spenser, including the metrical romances, and Chaucer,
though the character of the latter as a manner-painter I shall have so far
anticipated in distinguishing it from, and comparing it with, Shakespeare.
3. Milton. 4. Dryden and Pope, including the origin and after history of
poetry of witty logic. 5. On Modern Poetry and its characteristics, with
no introduction of any particular names. In the course of these I shall
have said all I know, the whole result of many years’ continued reflection
on the subjects of taste, imagination, fancy, passion, the source of our
pleasures in the fine arts, in the _antithetical_ balance-loving nature of
man, and the connexion of such pleasures with moral excellence. The
advantage of this plan to myself is, that I have all my materials ready,
and can rapidly reduce them into form (for this is my solemn
determination, not to give a single lecture till I have in fair writing at
least one half of the whole course), for as to trusting anything to
immediate effort, I shrink from it as from guilt, and guilt in me it would
be. In short, I should have no objection at once to pledge myself to the
immediate preparation of these lectures, but that I am so surrounded by
embarrassments....
For God’s sake enter into my true motive for this wearing detail; it would
torture me if it had any other effect than to impress on you my desire and
hope to accord with your plan, and my incapability of making any final
promise till the end of this month.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CHAPTER IX
A PUBLIC LECTURER
1807-1808
CHAPTER IX
PUBLIC LECTURER
1807-1808
CLXV. TO THE MORGAN FAMILY.
HATCHETT’S HOTEL, Piccadilly, Monday evening,
[November 23, 1807.]
MY DEAR FRIENDS,--I arrived here in safety this morning between seven and
eight, coach-stunned, and with a cold in my head; but I had dozed away the
whole night with fewer disturbances than I had reason to expect, in that
sort of _whether-you-will-or-no_ slumber brought upon me by the movements
of the vehicle, which I attribute to the easiness of the mail. About one
o’clock I moaned and started, and then took a wing of the fowl and the
rum, and it operated as a preventive for the after time. If very, very
affectionate thoughts, wishes, recollections, anticipations, can score
instead of _grace_ before and after meat, mine was a very religious meal,
for in this sense my inmost heart prayed _before_, _after_, and _during_.
After breakfast, on attempting to clean and dress myself from crown to
sole, I found myself quite unfit for _any_thing, and my legs were painful,
or rather my feet, and nothing but an horizontal position would remove the
feeling. So I got into bed, and did not get up again till Mr. Stuart
called at my chamber, past three. I have seen no one else, and therefore
must defer all intelligence concerning my lectures, etc., to a second
letter, which you will receive in a few days, God willing, with the
D’Espriella, etc. When I was leaving you, one of the little alleviations
which I looked forward to, was that I could write with less embarrassment
than I could utter in your presence the many feelings of grateful
affection and most affectionate esteem toward you, that pressed upon my
heart almost, as at times it seemed, with a bodily weight. But I suppose
it is yet too short a time since I left you--you are scarcely out of my
eyes yet, dear Mrs. M. and Charlotte! To-morrow I shall go about the
portraits. I have not looked at the profile since, nor shall I till it is
framed. An absence of four or five days will be a better test how _far_ it
is a _likeness_. For a day or two, farewell, my dear friends! I bless you
all three fervently, and shall, I trust, as long as I am
S. T. COLERIDGE.
I shall take up my lodgings at the “Courier” office, where there is a nice
suite of rooms for me and a quiet bedroom without expense. My address
therefore, “_Squire_ Coleridge,” or “S. T. Coleridge, Esq: ‘Courier’
Office, Strand,”--unless you are in a sensible mood, and then you will
write _Mr._ Coleridge, if it were only in compassion to that poor,
unfortunate exile, from the covers of letters at least, despised _MR._
MR. JNO. JAS. MORGAN,
St. James’s Square, Bristol.
CLXVI. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
[Postmark, December 14, 1807.]
MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I have been confined to my bedroom, and, with exceptions
of a few hours each night, to my bed for near a week past--having once
ventured out, and suffered in consequence. My complaint a low bilious
fever. Whether contagion or sympathy, I know not, but I had it hanging
about me from the time I was with Davy. It went off, however, by a journey
which I took with Stuart, to Bristol, in a cold frosty air. Soon after my
return Mr. Ridout informed me from Drs. Babbington and Bailly, that Davy
was not only ill, but his life precarious, his recovery doubtful. And to
this day no distinct symptom of safety has appeared, though to-day he is
better. I cannot express what I have suffered. Good heaven! in the very
springtide of his honour--his? his country’s! the world’s! after
discoveries more intellectual, more ennobling, and impowering human nature
than Newton’s! But he must not die! I am so much better that I shall go
out to-morrow, if I awake no worse than I go to sleep. Be so good as to
tell Mrs. Coleridge that I will write to her either Tuesday or Wednesday,
and to Hartley and Derwent, with whose letters I was much both amused and
affected. I was with Hartley and Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Jackson in spirit at
their meeting. Howel’s bill I have paid, tell Mrs. C. (for this is what
she will be most anxious about), and that I _had_ no other debt at all
weighing upon me, either prudentially or from sense of propriety or
delicacy, till the one I shall mention, after better subjects, in the tail
of this letter.
I very thoroughly admired your letter to W. Scott,[40] concerning the
“Edinburgh Review.” The feeling and the resolve are what any one knowing
you half as well as I must have anticipated, in any case where you had
room for ten minutes thinking, and relatively to any person, with regard
to whom old affection and belief of injury and unworthy conduct had made
none of those mixtures, which people the brains of the best men--none but
good men having the component drugs, or at least the drugs in that state
of composition--_but_ it is admirably expressed--if I had meant only
_well_ expressed, I should have said, “_and_ it is well expressed,”--but,
to my feeling, it is an unusual specimen of honourable feeling supporting
itself by sound sense and conveyed with simplicity, dignity, and a warmth
evidently under the complete control of the understanding. I am a fair
judge as to such a sentence, for from morbid wretchedness of mind I have
been in a far, far greater excess, indifferent about what is said, or
written, or supposed, concerning me or my compositions, than W. can have
been ever supposed to be interested respecting his--and the “Edinburgh
Review” I have not seen for years, and never more than four or five
numbers. As to reviewing W.’s poems, my sole objection would rest on the
_time_ of the publication of the “Annual Review.” Davy’s illness has put
off the commencement of my Lectures to the middle of January. They are to
consist of at least twenty lectures, and the subject of modern poetry
occupies at least three or four. Now I do not care in how many forms my
sentiments are printed: if only I do not defraud my hirers, by causing my
lectures to be anticipated. I would not review them at all, unless I can
do it systematically, and with the whole strength of my mind. And, when I
do, I shall express my convictions of the faults and defects of the poems
and system, as plainly as of the excellencies. It has been my constant
reply to those who have charged me with bigotry, etc.,--“While you can
perceive no excellencies, it is my duty to appear conscious of no defects,
because, even though I should agree with you in the instances, I should
only confirm you in what I deem a pernicious error, as our principle of
disapprobation must necessarily be different.” In my Lectures I shall
speak out, of Rogers, Campbell, yourself (that is “Madoc” and “Thalaba;”
for I shall speak only of _poems_, not of poets), and Wordsworth, as
plainly as of Milton, Dryden, Pope, etc.... I did not overhugely admire
the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” but saw no likeness whatever to the
“Christabel,” much less any improper resemblance.
I heard by accident that Dr. Stoddart had arrived a few days ago, and
wrote him a letter expostulating with him for his unkindness in having
detained for years my books and MSS., and stating the great loss it had
been to me (a loss not easy to be calculated. I have as witnesses T. Poole
and Squire Acland[41] (who calls me infallible Prophet), that from the
information contained in them, though I could not dare trust my
recollection sufficiently for the proofs, I foretold distinctly _every_
event that has happened of importance, with one which has not _yet_
happened, the evacuation of Sicily). This, however, of course, I did not
write to Dr. S., but simply requested he would send me my chests. In
return I received yesterday an abusive letter confirming what I suspected,
that he is writing a book himself. In this he conjures up an indefinite
debt, customs, and some old affair before I went to Malta, amounting to
more than fifty pounds (the customs twenty-five pounds, all of which I
should have had remitted, if he had sent them according to his promise),
and informing me that when I send a person properly documented to settle
this account, that person may then take away my goods. This I shall do
to-morrow, though without the least pledge that I shall receive all that I
left.... This will prevent my sending Mrs. C. any money for three weeks, I
mean exclusive of the [annuity of] £150 which, assure her, is, and for the
future will remain, sacred to her. By Wallis’ attitude to Allston I lost
thirty pounds in customs, by my brother’s refusal[42] all the expenses up
and down of my family. So it has been a baddish year; but I am not
disquieted.
S. T. C.
Poor Godwin is going to the dogs. He has a tragedy[43] to come out on
Wednesday. I will write again to you in a few days. After my Lectures I
would willingly undertake any Review with you, because I shall then have
given my Code. I omit other parts of your letter, not that they interested
me less, but because I have no room, and am too much exhausted to take up
a second sheet. God bless you. My kisses to your little ones, and love to
your wife. The only vindictive idea I have to Dr. S. is the anticipation
of showing his letter to Sir Alexander Ball!! The folly of sinning against
our first and pure impressions! It is the sin against _our own_ ghost at
least!
CLXVII. TO MRS. MORGAN.
348, Strand, Friday morning, January 25, 1808.
DEAR AND HONOURED MARY,--Having had you continually, I may almost say,
present to me in my dreams, and always appearing as a compassionate
comforter therein, appearing in shape as your own dear self, most innocent
and full of love, I feel a strong impulse to address a letter to you by
name, though it equally respects all my three friends. If it had been told
me on that evening when dear Morgan was asleep in the parlour, and you and
beloved Caroletta asleep at opposite corners of the sopha in the
drawing-room, of which I occupied the centre in a state of blessed
half-unconsciousness as a drowsy guardian of your slumbers; if it had been
then told me that in less than a fortnight the time should come when I
should not wish to be with you, or wish you to be with me, I should have
out with one of Caroletta’s harmless “_condemn its_” (commonly pronounced
“_damn it_”), “_that’s no truth!_” And yet since on Friday evening, my
lecture having made an impression far beyond its worth or my expectation,
I have been in such a state of wretchedness, confined to my bed, in such
almost continued pain ... that I have been content to see no one but the
unlovable old woman, as feeling that I should only receive a momently
succession of pangs from the presence of those who, giving no pleasure,
would make my wretchedness appear almost unnatural, even as if the fire
should cease to be warm. Who would not rather shiver on an ice mount than
freeze before the fire which had used to spread comfort through his fibres
and thoughts of social joy through his imagination? Yet even this, yet
even from _this_ feeling that your society would be an agony, oh I know, I
feel how I love you, my dear sisters and friends.
I have been obliged, of course, to put off my lecture of to-day; a most
painful necessity, for I disappoint some hundreds! I have sent for
Abernethy, who has restored Mr. De Quincey to health! Could I have
foreseen my present state I would have stayed at Bristol and taken
lodgings at Clifton in order to be within the power of being seen by you,
without being a domestic nuisance, for still, still I feel the
comfortlessness of seeing no face, hearing no voice, feeling no hand that
is dear, though conscious that the pang would outweigh the solace.
When finished, let the two dresses, etc., be sent to me; but if my illness
should have a completed conclusion, of me as well as of itself, and there
seems to be a distinct inflammation of the mesentery,--then let them be
sent to Grasmere for Mrs. Wordsworth and Miss Hutchinson,--gay dresses,
indeed, for a mourning.
I write in great pain, but yet I deem, whatever become of me, that it will
hereafter be a soothing thought to you that in sickness or in health, in
hope or in despondency, I have thought of you with love and esteem and
gratitude.
My dear Mary! dear Charlotte! May Heaven bless you! With such a wife and
such a sister, my friend is already blest! May Heaven give him health and
elastic spirits to enjoy these and all other blessings! Once more bless
you, bless you. Ah! who is there to bless
S. T. COLERIDGE?
P. S. Sunday Night. I do not know when this letter was written--probably
_Thursday_ morning, not Wednesday, as I have said in my letter to John. I
have opened this by means of the steam of a tea-kettle, merely to say that
I have, I know not how or where, lost the pretty shirt-pin Charlotte gave
me. I promise her solemnly never to accept one from any other, and never
to wear one hereafter as long as I live, so that the sense of its real
absence shall make a sort of imaginary presence to me. I am more vexed at
the accident than I ought to be; but had it been either of your locks of
hair or her profile (which must be by force and association _your_ profile
too, and a far more efficacious one than that done for you, which had no
other merit than that of having _no_ likeness at all, and this certainly
_is_ a sort of negative advantage) I should have fretted myself into
superstition and been haunted with it as by an omen. Of the lady and her
poetical daughter I had never before heard even the name. Oh these are
shadows! and all my literary admirers and flatterers, as well as despisers
and calumniators, pass over my heart as the images of clouds over dull
sea. So far from being retained, they are scarcely made visible there. But
I love you, dear ladies! substantially, and pray do write at least a line
in Morgan’s letter, if neither will write me a whole one, to comfort me by
the assurance that you remember me with esteem and some affection. Most
affectionately have you and Charlotte treated me, and most gratefully do
I remember it. Good-night, good-night!
To be read after the other.
MRS. MORGAN,
St. James’s Square, Bristol.
CLXVIII. TO FRANCIS JEFFREY.
348 Strand, May 23, 1808.
DEAR SIR,--Without knowing me you have been, perhaps rather unwarrantably,
severe on my morals and understanding, inasmuch as you have, I
understand,--for I have not seen the Reviews,--frequently introduced my
name when I had never brought any publication within your court. With one
slight exception, a shilling pamphlet[44] that never obtained the least
notice, I have not published anything with my name, or known to be mine,
for thirteen years. Surely I might quote against you the complaint of Job
as to those who brought against him “the iniquities of his youth.” What
harm have I ever done you, dear sir, by act or word? If you knew me, you
would yourself smile at some of the charges, which, I am told, you have
fastened on me. Most assuredly, you have mistaken my sentiments, alike in
morality, politics, and--what is called--metaphysics, and, I would fain
hope, that if you knew me, you would not have ascribed self-opinion and
arrogance to me. But, be this as it may, I write to you now merely to
intreat--for the sake of mankind--an honourable review of Mr. Clarkson’s
“History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade.”[45] I know the man, and if
you knew him you, I am sure, would revere him, and your reverence of him,
as an agent, would almost supersede all judgment of him as a mere
literary man. It would be presumptuous in me to offer to write the review
of his work. Yet I should be glad were I permitted to submit to you the
many thoughts which occurred to me during its perusal. Be assured, that
with the greatest respect for your talents--as far as I can judge of them
from the few numbers of the “Edinburgh Review” which I have had the
opportunity of reading--and every kind thought respecting your motives,
I am, dear sir, your ob. humb. ser’t,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
---- JEFFRAY (_sic_), ESQ.,
to the care of Mr. Constable, Bookseller, Edingburgh (_sic_).
CLXIX. TO THE SAME.
[Postmark] BURY ST. EDMUNDS,
July 20, 1808.
DEAR SIR,--Not having been gratified by a letter from you, I have feared
that the freedom with which I opened out my opinions may have given you
offence. Be assured, it was most alien from my intention. The purport of
what I wrote was simply this--that severe and long-continued bodily
disease exacerbated by disappointment in the great hope of my Life had
rendered me insensible to blame and praise, even to a faulty degree,
unless they proceeded from the one or two who love me. The
entrance-passage to my heart is choked up with heavy lumber, and I am thus
barricadoed against attacks, which, doubtless, I should otherwise have
felt as keenly as most men. Instead of censuring a certain quantum of
irritability respecting the reception of published composition, I rather
envy it--it becomes ludicrous then only, when it is disavowed, and the
opposite temper pretended to. The ass’s skin is almost
scourge-proof--while the elephant thrills under the movements of every fly
that runs over it. But though notoriously almost a zealot in behalf of my
friend’s poetic reputation, yet I can leave it with cheerful confidence to
the fair working of his own powers. I have known many, very many instances
of contempt changed into admiration of his genius; but I neither know nor
have heard of a single person, who having been or having become his
admirer had ceased to be so. For it is honourable to us all that our kind
affections, the attractions and elective affinities of our nature, are of
more permanent agency than those passions which repel and dissever. From
this cause we may explain the final growth of honest fame, and its
tenacity of life. Whenever the struggle of controversy ceases, we think no
more of works which give us no pleasure and apply our satire and scorn to
some new object, and thus the field is left entire to friends and
partisans.
But the case of Mr. Clarkson appeared to me altogether different. I do not
hold his fame dear because he is my friend; but I sought and cultivated
his acquaintance, because a long and sober enquiry had assured me, that he
had been, in an aweful sense of the word, a benefactor of mankind: and
this from the purest motives unalloyed by the fears and hopes of selfish
superstition--and _not_ with that feverish power which fanatics acquire by
crowding together, but in the native strength of his own moral impulses.
He, if ever human being did it, listened exclusively to his conscience,
and obeyed its voice at the price of all his youth and manhood, at the
price of his health, his private fortune, and the fairest prospects of
honourable ambition. Such a man I cannot regard as a mere author. I cannot
read or criticise such a work as a mere literary production. The opinions
publicly expressed and circulated concerning it must of necessity in the
author’s feelings be entwined with the cause itself, and with his own
character as a _man_, to which that of the historian is only an accidental
accession. Were it the pride of authorship alone that was in danger of
being fretted, I should have remained as passive in this instance as in
that of my most particular friend, to whom I am bound by ties more close
and of longer standing than those which connect me personally with Mr.
Clarkson. But I know that any sarcasms or ridicule would deeply wound his
feelings, as a veteran warrior in a noble contest, feelings that claim the
reverence of all good men.
The Review was sent, addressed to you, by the post of yester-evening.
There is not a sentence, not a word in it, which I should not have
written, had I never seen the author.
I am myself about to bring out two works--one a small pamphlet[46]--the
second of considerable size--it is a _rifacciamento_, a very free
translation with large additions, etc., etc., of the masterly work for
which poor Palm was murdered.
I hope to be in the North, at Keswick, in the course of a week or eight
days. I shall be happy to hear from you on this or any other occasion.
Yours, dear sir, sincerely,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CHAPTER X
GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND
1808-1810
CHAPTER X
GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND
1808-1810
CLXX. TO DANIEL STUART.
[December 9, 1808.]
MY DEAR STUART,--Scarcely when listening to count the hour, have I been
more perplexed by the “_Inopem me copia fecit_” of the London church
clocks, than by the press of what I have to say to you. I must do one at a
time. Briefly, a very happy change[47] has taken place in my health and
spirits and mental activity since I placed myself under the care and
inspection of a physician, and I dare say with confident hope, “Judge me
from the 1st January, 1809.”
I send you the Prospectus, and intreat you to do me all the good you can;
which like the Lord’s Prayer is Thanksgiving in the disguise of petition.
If you think that it should be advertized in any way, or if Mr. Street can
do anything for me--but I know you will do what you can.
I have received promises of contribution from many tall fellows with big
names in the world of Scribes, and count even Pharisees (two or three
Bishops) in my list of patrons. But whether I shall have 50, 100, 500, or
1,000 subscribers I am not able even to conjecture. All must depend on
the zeal of my friends, on which I fear I have thrown more water than
oil--but some like the Greek fire burn beneath the wave!
Wordsworth has nearly finished a series of most masterly Essays[48] on the
Affairs of Portugal and Spain, and by my advice he will first send them to
you that if they suit the “Courier” they may be inserted.
I have not heard from Savage, but I suppose that he has printed a thousand
of these Prospectuses, and you may have any number from him. He lives hard
by some of the streets in Covent Garden which I do not remember, but a
note to Mr. Savage, R. Institution, Albemarle Street, will find him.
May God Almighty bless you! I feel that I shall yet live, to give proof of
what is deep within me towards you.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CLXXI. TO FRANCIS JEFFREY.
GRASMERE, December 14, 1808.
DEAR SIR,--The only thing in which I have been able to detect any degree
of hypochrondriasis in my feelings is the reading and answering of
letters, and in this instance I have been at times so wofully under its
domination as to have left every letter received lie unopened for weeks
together, all the while thoroughly ashamed of the weakness and yet without
power to get rid of it. This, however, has not been the case of late, and
I was never yet so careless as knowingly to suffer a letter relating to
money to remain unanswered by the next post in my power. I, therefore, on
reading your very kind letter of 8 Dec. conclude that one letter from you
during my movements from Grasmere, now to Keswick, now to Bratha and
Elleray, and now to Kendal, has been mislayed.
As I considered your insertion of the review of Mr. Clarkson’s as an act
of personal kindness and attention to the request of one a stranger to you
except by name, the thought of any pecuniary remuneration never once
occurred to me; and had it been written at your request I should have
thought twenty guineas a somewhat extravagant price whether I considered
the quantity or quality of the communication. As to the alterations, your
character and interest, as the known Editor of the Review, are pledged for
a general consistency of principle in the different articles with each
other, and you had every possible right to alter or omit _ad libitum_,
unless a special condition had been insisted on of _aut totum aut nihil_.
As the writer, therefore, I neither thought nor cared about the
alterations; as a general reader, I differed with you as [to] the scale of
merit relatively to Mr. Wilberforce, whose services I deem to have been
overrated, not, perhaps, so much absolutely as by comparison. At all
events, some following passages should have been omitted, as they are in
blank contradiction to the paragraph inserted, and betrayed a co-presence
of two writers in one article. As to the longer paragraph, Wordsworth
thinks you on the true side; and Clarkson himself that you were not far
from the truth. As to my own opinion, I believed what I wrote, and deduced
my belief from all the facts pro and con, with which Mr. Clarkson’s
conversation have furnished [me]; but such is my detestation of that
pernicious Minister,[49] such my contempt of the cowardice and fatuity of
his measures, and my horror at the yet unended train of their direful
consequences, that, if obedience to truth could ever be painful to me,
this would have been. I acted well in writing what on the whole I believed
the more probable, and I was pleased that you acted equally well in
altering it according to your convictions.
I had hoped to have furnished a letter of more interesting contents to
you, but an honest gentleman in London having taken a great fancy to two
thirds of the possible profits of my literary labours without a shadow of
a claim, and having over-hurried the business through overweening of my
simplicity and carelessness, has occasioned me some perplexity and a great
deal of trouble and letter-writing. I will write, however, again to you my
first leisure evening, whether I hear from you or no in the interim.
I trust you have received my scrawl with the prospectus[50] and feel
sincerely thankful to you for your kindness on the arrival of the
prospectuses, prior to your receipt of the letter which was meant to have
announced them. But our post here is very irregular as well as
circuitous--but three times a week--and then, too, we have to walk more
than two miles for the chance of finding letters. This you will be so good
as to take into account whenever my answers do not arrive at the time they
might have been expected from places in general. I remain, dear sir, with
kind and respectful feeling, your obliged,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
I entirely coincide in your dislike of “speculative gloom”--it is
illogical as well as barbarous, and almost as bad as “picturesque eye.” I
do not know how I came to pass it; for when I first wrote it, I
undermarked it, not as the expression, but as a remembrancer of some
better that did not immediately occur to me. “Year-long absences” I think
doubtful--had any one objected to it, I should have altered it; but it
would not _much_ offend me in the writings of another. But to “moral
impulses” I see at present no objections, nor does any other phrase
suggest itself to me which would have expressed my meaning. That there is
a semblance of presumptuousness in the manner I exceedingly regret, if so
it be--my heart bears me witness that the feeling had no place there. Yet
I need not say to you that it is impossible to succeed in such a work
unless at the commencement of it there be a quickening and throb in the
pulse of hope; and what if a blush from inward modesty disguise itself on
these occasions, and the hectic of unusual self-assertion increase the
appearance of that excess which it in reality resists and modifies? It
will amuse you to be informed that from two correspondents, both of them
men of great literary celebrity, I have received reproof for a supposed
affectation of humility in the style of the prospectus. In my own
consciousness I was guilty of neither. Yet surely to advance as a teacher,
and in the very act to declare yourself inferior to those whom you propose
to teach, is incongruous; and must disgust a pure mind by its evident
hypocrisy.
CLXXII. TO THOMAS WILKINSON.[51]
GRASMERE, December 31, 1808.
DEAR SIR,--I thank you for your exertions in my behalf, and--which more
deeply interests me--for the openness with which you have communicated
your doubts and apprehensions. So much, indeed, am I interested, that I
cannot lay down my head on my pillow in perfect tranquillity, without
endeavoring to remove them. First, however, I must tell you that ... “The
Friend” will not appear at the time _conditionally_ announced. There are,
besides, great difficulties at the Stamp Office concerning it. But the
particulars I will detail when we meet. Myself, with William Wordsworth
and the family, are glad that we are so soon to see you. Now then for what
is so near my heart. Only a certain number of prospectuses were printed at
Kendal, and sent to acquaintances. The much larger number, which were to
have been printed at London, have not been printed. When they are, you
will see in the article, noted in this copy, that I neither intend to
omit, nor from any fear of offence have scrupled to announce my intention
of treating, the subject of religion. I had supposed that the words
“speculative gloom” would have conveyed this intention. I had inserted
another article, which I was induced to omit, from the fear of exciting
doubts and queries. This was: On the transition of natural religion into
revelation, or the principle of internal guidance: and the grounds of the
possibility of the connection of spiritual revelation with historic
events; that is, its manifestation in the world of the senses. This meant
as a preliminary--leaving, as already performed by others, the proof of
the reality of this connection in the particular fact of Christianity.
Herein I wished to prove only that true philosophy rather leads to
Christianity, than contained anything preclusive of it, and therefore
adopted the phrase used in the definition of philosophy in general:
namely, The science which answers the question of things _actual_, how
they are _possible_? Thus the laws of gravitation illustrate the
_possibility_ of the motion of the heavenly bodies, the action of the
lever, etc.; the reality of which was already known. I mention this,
because the argument assigned which induced me to omit it in a prospectus
was, that by making a distinction between revelation _in itself_ (_i. e._
a principle of internal supernatural guidance), and the same revelation
conjoined with the power of external manifestation by supernatural works,
would proclaim me to be a Quaker, and “The Friend” as intended to
propagate peculiar and sectarian principles. Think then, dear Friend! what
my regret was at finding that you had taken it for granted that I denied
the existence of an internal monitor! I trust I am neither of Paul, or of
Apollos, or of Cephas; but of Christ. Yet I feel reverential gratitude
toward those who have conveyed the spirit of Christ to my heart and
understanding so as to afford light to the latter and vital warmth to the
former. Such gratitude I owe and feel toward W. Penn. Take his Preface to
G. Fox’s Journal, and his Letter to his Son,--if they contain a faithful
statement of genuine Christianity according to your faith, I am one with
you. I subscribe to each and all of the principles therein laid down; and
by them I propose to try, and endeavour to justify, the charge made by me
(my conscience bears me witness) in the spirit of entire love against some
passages of the journals of later Friends. Oh--and it is a groan of
earnest aspiration! a strong wish of bitter tears and bitter
self-dissatisfaction,--Oh that in all things, in self-subjugation,
unwearied beneficence, and unfeigned listening and obedience to the Voice
within, I were as like the evangelic John Woolman, as I know myself to be
in the belief of the existence and the sovran authority of that Voice!
When we meet, I will endeavour to be wholly known to you as I am, in
principle at least.
A few words more. Unsuspicious of the possibility of misunderstanding, I
had inserted in this prospectus Dress and Dancing among the fine Arts, the
principles common to which I was to develope. Now surely anything common
to Dress or Dancing with Architecture, Gardening, and Poetry could contain
nothing to alarm any man who is not alarmed by Gardening, Poetry, etc.,
and secondly, principles common to Poetry, Music, etc., etc., could hardly
be founded in the ridiculous hopping up and down in a modern ball-room, or
the washes, paints, and patches of a fine lady’s toilet. It is well known
how much I admired Thomas Clarkson’s Chapter on Dancing. The truth is,
that I referred to the drapery and ornamental decoration of Painting,
Statuary, and the Greek Spectacles; and to the scientific dancing of the
ancient Greeks, the business of a life confined to a small class, and
placed under the direction of particular magistrates. My object was to
prove the truth of the principles by shewing that even dress and dancing,
when the ingenuity and caprice of man had elaborated them into Fine Arts,
were bottomed in the same principles. But desirous even to avoid
suspicion, the passage will be omitted in the future prospectuses.
Farewell! till we meet.
S. T. COLERIDGE. _See P. S._
P. S. Do you not know enough of the world to be convinced that by
declaring myself a warm defender of the Established Church against all
sectarians, or even by attacking Quakerism in particular as a sect hateful
to the bigots of the day from its rejection of priesthood and outward
sacraments, I should gain twenty subscribers to one? It shocks me even to
think that so mean a motive could be supposed to influence me. I say aloud
everywhere, that in the essentials of their faith I believe as the Quakers
do, and so I make enemies of the Church, of the Calvinists, and even of
the Unitarians. Again, I declare my dissatisfaction with several points
both of _notion_ and of _practice_ among the present Quakers--I dare not
conceal my convictions--and therefore receive little good opinion even
from those, with whom I most accord. But Truth is sacred.
CLXXIII. TO THOMAS POOLE.
GRASMERE, KENDAL, February 3, 1809.
MY DEAREST POOLE,--For once in my life I shall have been blamed by you for
silence, indolence, and procrastination without reason. Even now I write
this letter on a speculation, for I am to take it with me to-morrow to
Kendal, and if I can bring the proposed printer and publisher to final
terms, to put it into the post. It would be a tiresome job were I to
detail to you all the vexations, hindrances, scoundrelisms,
disappointments, and pros and cons that, without the least fault or
remissness on my part, have rendered it impracticable to publish “The
Friend” till the first week of March. The whole, however, is now settled,
provided that Pennington (a worthy old bookseller and printer of Kendal,
but a _genius_ and mightily indifferent about the affairs of this life,
both from that cause and from age, and from being as rich as he wishes)
will become, as he has almost promised, the printer and publisher.[52]
“The Friend” will be stamped as a newspaper and under the Newspaper Act,
which will take 3½d. from each shilling, but enable the essay to pass into
all parts and corners of the Empire without expense or trouble. It will be
so published as to appear in London every Saturday morning, and be sent
off from the Kendal post to every part of the Kingdom by the Thursday
morning’s post. I hope that Mr. Stuart will have the prospectuses printed
by this time,--at all events, within a day or two after your receipt of
this letter you will receive a parcel of them. The money is to be paid to
the bookseller, the agent, in the next town, once in twenty weeks, where
there are several subscribers in the same vicinity; otherwise, [it] must
be remitted to me direct. This is the ugliest part of the business: but
there is no getting over it without a most villainous diminution of my
profits. You will, I know, exert yourself to procure me as many names as
you can, for if it succeeds, it will almost _make_ me.
Among my subscribers I have Mr. Canning and Sturges Bourne, and Mr. W.
Rose, of whose moral odour your nose, I believe, has had competent
experience. The first prospectus I receive, I shall send with letters to
Lord Egmont and Lady E. Percival, and to Mr. Acland.
You will probably have seen two of Wordsworth’s Essays in the “Courier,”
signed “G.” The two last columns of the second, excepting the concluding
paragraph, were written all but a few sentences by me.[53] An accident in
London delayed the publication ten days. The whole, therefore, is now
publishing as a pamphlet, and I believe with a more comprehensive title.
I cannot say whether I was--indeed, both I and W. W.--more pleased or
affected by the whole of your last letter; it came from a very pure and
warm heart through the moulds of a clear and strong brain. But I have not
now time to write on these concerns. For _my_ opinions, feelings, hopes,
and apprehensions, I can safely refer you to Wordsworth’s pamphlet. The
minister’s conduct hitherto is easily defined. A great deal too much
because not half enough. Two essays of my own on this most lofty
theme,--what we are entitled to hope, what compelled to fear concerning
the Spanish nation, by the light of history and psychological knowledge,
you will soon see in the “Courier.” Poor Wardle![54] I fear lest his zeal
may have made him confound that degree of evidence which is sufficient to
convince an unprejudiced private company with that which will satisfy an
unwilling numerous assembly of factious and corrupt judges. As to the
truth of the charges, I have little doubt, knowing myself similar facts.
O dear Poole! Beddoes’ departure[55] has taken more hope out of my life
than any former event except perhaps T. Wedgwood’s. That did indeed pull
very hard at me; never a week, seldom two days have passed in which the
recollection has not made me sad or thoughtful. Beddoes’ seems to pull yet
harder, because it combines with the former, because it is the _second_,
and because I have not been in the habit of connecting such a weight of
despondency with my attachment to him as with my love of my revered and
dear benefactor. Poor Beddoes! he was good and beneficent to all men, but
to me he was, moreover, affectionate and loving, and latterly his
sufferings had opened out his being to a delicacy, a tenderness, a moral
beauty, and unlocked the source of sensibility as with a key from heaven.
My own health is more _regular_ than formerly, for I am severely temperate
and take nothing that has not been pronounced medically unavoidable; yet
my sufferings are often great, and I am rarely indeed wholly without pain
or sensations more oppressive than definite pain. But my mind, and what is
far better, my _will_ is active. I must leave a short space to add at
Kendal after all is settled.
My beloved and honoured friend! may God preserve you and your obliged, and
affectionately grateful,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
MY DEAREST POOLE,--Old Mr. Pennington has ultimately declined the printing
and publishing; indeed, he is about to decline business altogether. There
is no other in this country capable of doing the work, and to printing and
publishing in London there are gigantic objections. What think you of a
press at Grasmere? I will write when I get home. Oh, if you knew what a
warmth of unusual feeling, what a genial air of new and living hope
breathed upon me as I read that casual sentence in your letter, seeming to
imply a chance we have of seeing you at Grasmere! I assure you that the
whole family, Mrs. Wordsworth and her all-amiable sister, not with less
warmth than W. W. and Dorothy, were made cheerful and wore a more holiday
look the whole day after. Oh, _do, do_ come!
CLXXIV. TO DANIEL STUART.
Posted March 31, 1809.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have been severely indisposed, _knocked up_ indeed,
with a complaint of a contagious nature called _the Mumps_;[56] preceded
by most distressing low spirits, or rather absence of all spirits; and
accompanied with deafness and stupefying perpetual _echo_ in the ear. But
it is going off. Little John Wordsworth was attacked with it last year
when I was in London, and from the stupor with which it suffuses the eyes
and look, it was cruelly mistaken for water on the brain. It has been
brought here a second time by some miners, and is a disease with little
danger and no remedy.
I attributed your silence to its right cause, and I assure you when I was
at Penrith and Kendal it was very pleasant to me to hear how universally
the conduct of the “Courier” was extolled; indeed, you have behaved most
nobly, and it is impossible but that you must have had a great weight in
the displacing of that prime grievance of grievances. Among many
reflections that kept crowding on my mind during the trial,[57] this was
perhaps the chief--What if, after a long, long reign, some titled
sycophant should whisper to Majesty, “By what means do your Ministers
manage the Legislature?” “By the distribution of patronage, according to
the influence of individuals who claim it.” “Do this yourself, or by your
own family, and you become independent of parties, and your Ministers are
your servants. The Army under a favourite son, the Church with a wife,
etc., etc.” Good heavens! the very essence of the Constitution is
unmoulded, and the venerable motto of our liberty, “The king can do no
wrong,” becomes nonsense and blasphemy. As soon as ever my mind is a
little at ease, I will put together the fragments I have written on this
subject, and if Wordsworth have not anticipated me, add to it some
thoughts on the effect of the military principle. We owe something to
Whitbread for his quenching at the first _smell_ a possible fire. How is
it possible that a man apparently so honest can talk and think as he does
respecting France, peace, and Buonaparte?...
On Thursday Wordsworth, Southey, and myself, with the printer and
publisher, go to Appleby to sign and seal, which paper, etc., will of
course be immediately dispatched to London. I doubt not but that the £60
will be now paid at the “Courier” office in a few days; and as soon as you
will let me know whether the stamped paper is to be paid for necessarily
in ready money, or with what credit, I shall instantly write to some of my
friends to advance me what is absolutely necessary. I can only say I am
ready and eager to commence, and that I earnestly hope to see “The Friend”
advertised shortly for the first of May. As to the Paper, how and from
whom, and what and in what quantity, I must again leave to your judgment,
and recommend to your affection for me. I have reason to believe that I
shall commence with 500 names.
I write from Keswick. Mrs. Southey was delivered yester-morning of a
girl.[58] I forgot to say, that I have been obliged to purchase, and have
paid for, a font of types of small pica, the same with the London
Prospectus, from Wilsons of Glasgow. I was assured they would cost only
from £25 to £28, instead of which, £38 odd.
God bless you and
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CLXXV. TO THE SAME.
GRASMERE, KENDAL, June 13, 1809.
DEAR STUART,--I left Penrith Monday noon, and, prevented by the heavy rain
from crossing Grisedale Tarn (near the summit of Helvellyn, and our most
perilous and difficult Alpine Pass), the same day I slept at Luff’s, and
crossed it yester-morning, and arrived here by breakfast time. I was sadly
grieved at Wordsworth’s account of your late sorrows and troubles....
I cannot adequately express how much I am concerned lest anything I wrote
in my last letter (though God knows under the influence of no one feeling
which you would not wish me to have) should chance to have given you any
additional unpleasantness, however small. Would that I had worthier means
than words and professions of proving to you what my heart is....
I rise every morning at five, and work three hours before breakfast,
either in letter-writing or serious composition....
I take for granted that more than the poor £60 has been expended in the
paper I have received. But I have written to Mr. Clarkson to see what can
be done; for it would be a sad thing to give it all up now I am going on
so well merely for want of means to provide the first twenty weeks paper.
My present stock will not quite suffice for three numbers. I printed 620
of No. 1, and 650 of No. 2, and so many more are called for that I shall
be forced to reprint both as soon as I hear from Clarkson. The proof
sheet of No. 3 goes back to-day, and with it the copy of No. 4, so that
henceforth we shall be secure of regularity; indeed it was not all my
fault before, but the printer’s inexperience and the multitude of errors,
though from a very decent copy, which took him a full day and more in
correcting. I had altered my plan for the Introductory Essays after my
arrival at Penrith, which cost me exceeding trouble; but the numbers to
come are in a very superior style of polish and easy intelligibility. The
only thing at present which I am under the necessity of applying to you
for respects Clement. It may be his interest to sell “The Friend” at his
shop, and a certain number will always be sent; but I am quite in the dark
as to what profits he expects. Surely not book-profits for a newspaper
that can circulate by the post? And it is certainly neither my interest,
nor that of the regular purchasers of “The Friend,” to have it bought at a
shop, instead of receiving it as a franked letter. All I want to know is
his terms, for I have quite a horror of booksellers, whose mode of
carrying on trade in London is absolute rapacity....
On this ruinous plan poor Southey has been toiling for years, with an
industry honourable to human nature, and must starve upon it were it not
for the more profitable employment of reviewing; a task unworthy of him,
or even of a man with not one half of his honour and honesty.
I have just read Wordsworth’s pamphlet, and more than fear that your
friendly expectations of its sale and influence have been too sanguine.
Had I not known the author I would willingly have travelled from St.
Michael’s Mount to Johnny Groat’s House on a pilgrimage to see and
reverence him. But from the public I am apprehensive, first, that it will
be impossible to rekindle an exhausted interest respecting the Cintra
Convention, and therefore that the long porch may prevent readers from
entering the Temple. Secondly, that, partly from Wordsworth’s own style,
which represents the chain of his thoughts and the movements of his heart,
admirably for me and a few others, but I fear does not possess the more
profitable excellence of translating these down into that style which
might easily convey them to the understandings of common readers, and
partly from Mr. De Quincey’s strange and most mistaken system of
punctuation--(The periods are often alarmingly long, perforce of their
construction, but De Quincey’s punctuation has made several of them
immeasurable, and perplexed half the rest. Never was a stranger whim than
the notion that , ; : and . could be made logical symbols, expressing all
the diversities of logical connection)--but, lastly, I fear that readers,
even of judgement, may complain of a want of shade and background; that it
is all foreground, all in hot tints; that the first note is pitched at the
height of the instrument, and never suffered to sink; that such depth of
feeling is so incorporated with depth of thought, that the attention is
kept throughout at its utmost strain and stretch; and--but this for my own
feeling. I could not help feeling that a considerable part is almost a
self-robbery from some great philosophical poem, of which it would form an
appropriate part, and be fitlier attuned to the high dogmatic eloquence,
the oracular [tone] of impassioned blank verse. In short, cold readers,
conceited of their supposed judgement, on the score of their possessing
nothing else, and for that reason only, taking for granted that they
_must_ have judgement, will abuse the book as positive, violent, and “in a
mad passion;” and readers of sense and feeling will have no other dread,
than that the Work (if it should die) would die of a plethora of the
highest qualities of combined philosophic and poetic genius. The Apple Pie
they may say is made all of Quinces. I much admired our young friend’s
note on Sir John Moore and his despatch;[59] it was excellently arranged
and urged. I have had no opportunity, as yet, to speak a word to
Wordsworth himself about it; I wrote to you as usual in full confidence.
I shall not be a little anxious to have your opinion of my third number.
Lord Lonsdale blames me for excluding party politics and the events of the
day from my plan. I exclude both the one and the other, only as far as
they are merely _party_, _i. e._ personal and temporal interests, or
merely events of To-day, that are defunct in the To-morrow. I flatter
myself that I have been the first, who will have given a calm,
disinterested account of our Constitution as it really _is_ and _how_ it
is so, and that I have, more radically than has been done before, shown
the unstable and boggy grounds on which all systematic reformers hitherto
have stood. But be assured that I shall give up this opinion with joy, and
consider a truer view of the question a more than recompense for the
necessity of retracting what I have written.
God bless you! Do, pray, let me hear from you, though only three lines.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CLXXVI. TO THOMAS POOLE.
October 9, 1809.
MY DEAR POOLE,--I received yours late last night, and sincerely thank you
for the contents. The whole shall be arranged as you have recommended. Yet
if I know my own wishes, I would far rather you had refused me, and said
you should have an opportunity in a few days of explaining your motives
_in person_, for oh, the autumn is divine here. You never beheld, I will
answer for it, such combinations of exquisite _beauty_ with _sufficient_
grandeur of elevation, even in Switzerland. Besides, I sorely want to talk
with you on many points.
All the defects you have mentioned I am perfectly aware of, and am
anxiously endeavouring to avoid. There is too often an _entortillage_ in
the sentences and even in the thought (which nothing can justify), and,
always almost, a stately piling up of _story_ on _story_ in one
architectural period, which is not suited to a periodical essay or to
essays at all (Lord Bacon, whose style mine more nearly resembles than any
other, in his greater works, thought Seneca a better model for his
Essays), but least of all suited to the present illogical age, which has,
in imitation of the French, rejected all the _cements_ of language, so
that a popular book is now a mere bag of marbles, that is, aphorisms and
epigrams on one subject. But be assured that the numbers will improve;
indeed, I hope that if the dire stoppage have not prevented it, you will
have seen proof of improvement already in the seventh and eighth
numbers,--still more in the ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth numbers. Strange! but the “Three Graves” is the
_only_ thing I have yet heard generally praised and inquired after!!
Remember how many different guests I have at my Round Table. I groan
beneath the _Errata_, but I am thirty miles cross-post from my printer and
publisher, and Southey, who has been my corrector, has been strangely
oscitant, or, which I believe is sometimes the case, has not understood
the sentences, and thought they might have a meaning for _me_ though they
had not for him. There was one direful one,[60] No. 5, p. 80, lines 3 and
4. Read,--“its _functions_ being to take up the passive affections of the
senses into distinct _thoughts_ and _judgements_, according to its own
essential _forms_, formæ formantes in the language of Lord Bacon in
contradistinction to the formæ formatæ.”
My greatest difficulty will be to avoid that _grievous_ defect of running
one number into another, I not being present at the printing. To really
cut down or stretch out every subject to the Procrustes-Bed of sixteen
pages is not possible without a sacrifice of my whole plan, but most often
I will divide them polypus-wise, so that the first half should get itself
a new tail of its own, and the latter a new head, and _always_ take care
to leave off at a paragraph. With my best endeavours I am baffled in
respect of making one Essay fill one number. The tenth number is, W.
thinks, the most interesting, “On the Errors of both Parties,” or
“Extremes Meet;” and, do what I would, it stretched to seven or eight
pages more; but I have endeavoured to take your advice _in toto_, and
shall announce to the public that, with the exception of my volume of
Political Essays and State Memorials, and some technical works of Logic
and Grammar, I shall consider “The Friend” as both the reservoir and the
living fountain of all my mind, that is, of both my powers and my
attainments, and shall therefore publish all my poems in “The Friend,” as
occasion rises. I shall begin with the “Fears in Solitude,” and the “Ode
on France,” which will fill up the remainder of No. 11; so that my next
Essay on vulgar Errors concerning Taxation, in which I have alluded to a
conversation with you, will just fill No. 12 by itself.
I have been much affected by your efforts respecting poor Blake. Cannot
you with propriety give me that narrative? But, above all, if you have no
_particular_ objection, no _very_ particular and _insurmountable_ reason
against it, do, do let me have that divine narrative of John Walford,[61]
which of itself stamps you a poet of the first class in the pathetic, and
the painting of poetry so very rarely combined.
As to politics, I am sad at the very best. Two cabinet ministers
_duelling_ on Cabinet measures like drunken Irishmen. O heaven, Poole!
this is wringing the dregs in order to drink the last drops of
degradation. Such base insensibility to the awfulness of their situation
and the majesty of the country! As soon as I can get them transcribed, I
will send you some most interesting letters from the ablest soldier I ever
met with (extra aide-de-camp to Sir J. Moore, and shot through the body at
Flushing, but still alive); they will serve as a key to more than one
woe-trumpet in the Apocalypse of national calamity. But the truth is, that
to combine a government every way fitted as ours is for quiet, justice,
freedom, and commercial activity _at home_, with the conditions of raising
up that individual greatness, and of securing in every department the very
man for the very place, which are requisite for maintaining the safety of
our Empire and the Majesty of our power abroad, is a state-riddle which
yet remains to be solved. I have thought myself as well employed as a
private citizen can be, in drawing off well-intentioned patriots from the
wrong scent and pointing out _what_ the _true_ evils are and _why_, and
the exceeding difficulty of removing them without hazarding worse.... I
was asked for a motto for a _market clock_. I uttered the following
literally, without a moment’s premeditation:--
What now, O man! thou dost or mean’st to do
Will help to give thee peace, or make thee rue,
When hovering o’er the Dot this hand shall tell
The moment that secures thee _Heaven_ or _Hell_.[62]
May God bless you! My kindest remembrances to Mr. Chubb, and to Ward. Pray
remember me when you write to your sister and Mr. King. Oh, but Poole! do
stretch a point and come. If the F. rises to a 1,000 I will frank you. Do
come; never will you have layed out money better.
CLXXVII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
December, 1809.
MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I suspect you have misunderstood me, and applied to the
Maltese Regiment what I said of the Corsican Rangers. Both are bad enough,
but of the former I know little, of course, as I was away from Malta
before the regiment had left the island. But in the Essays (2 or 3) which
I am now writing on Sir A. Ball, I shall mention it as an exemplification
among many others of his foresight. It was a _job_, I have no doubt,
merely to get General Valette a lucrative regiment; but _G. V._ is dead,
and it was not such a job as that of the Corsican Rangers, which can be
made _appear_ glaring. The long and short of the story is, that the men
were four fifths married, would have fought as well as the best, _at home_
and behind their own walls, but could not be expected to fight abroad,
where they had no interest. Besides, it was _cruel_, _shameful_ to take
1,500 men as soldiers for any part of our enormous Empire, out of a
population, man, woman, and child, not at that time more than 100,000.
There were two Maltese Militia Regiments officered by their own Maltese
nobility--these against the entreaties and _tears_ of the men and officers
(I myself saw them weeping), against the remonstrances and memorial
(written by myself) of Sir A. B., were melted into one large one,
officered by English officers, and a general affront given to the island,
_because_ General Valette had great friends at the War Office, Duke of
York, etc.! This is the whole, but do not either expose yourself or me to
judicial inquiries. It is one thing to _know_ a thing, and another to be
able to _prove_ it in a law court. This remark applies to the _damnable_
treatment of the prisoners of war at Malta.
I should have thought your facts, with which I am familiar, a confirmation
of Miss Schöning.[63] Be that as it may, take my word for it, that in
_substance_ the story is as certain as that Dr. Dodd was hung. To mention
one proof only, Von Hess,[64] the celebrated historian of Hamburg, and,
since Lessing, the best German prosist, went himself to Nuremberg,
examined into the facts officially and personally, and it was on him that
I relied, though if you knew the government of Nuremberg, you would see
that the first account could not have been published as it was, if it had
not been too notorious even for concealment to be hoped for. After I left
Germany, Von Hess had a public controversy that threatened to become a
_Diet_ concern with the magistrates of Nuremberg, for some other bitter
charges against them. I have their defence of themselves, but they do not
even attempt to deny the _fact_ of _Harlin_ and _Schöning_. But, indeed,
Southey! it is almost as bad as if I could have mistaken _e converso_
Patch’s trial for a novel.
Your remark on the voice is most just, but that was my purpose. Not only
so, but the _whole_ passage was inserted, and intertruded after the rest
was written, _reluctante amanuensi meâ_, in order to _unrealize_ it even
at the expense of _dis_naturalizing it. Lady B. therefore pleased me by
saying, “never was the golden tint of the poet more judiciously employed,”
etc. For this reason, too, I introduced the simile of the leaf, etc., etc.
I not only thought the “voice” part out of place, but in bad taste _per
se_.
May God bless you all.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CLXXVIII. TO THOMAS POOLE.
GRASMERE, KENDAL, January 28, 1810.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--My “mantraps and spring guns in this garden” have
hitherto existed only in the painted board, _in terrorem_. Of course, I
have received and thank you for both your letters. What Wordsworth may do
I do not know, but I think it highly probable that I shall settle in or
near London. Of the fate of “The Friend” I remain in the same ignorance
nearly as at the publication of the 20th November. It would make you sick
were I to waste my paper by detailing the numerous instances of meanness
in the mode of payment and discontinuance, especially among the Quakers.
So just was the answer I once made in the presence of some “Friends” to
the query: What is genuine Quakerism? Answer, The antithesis of the
present Quakers. I have received this evening together with yours, one as
a specimen. (N. B. Three days after the publication of the 21st Number,
and sixteen days after the publication of the “Supernumerary” [number of
“The Friend,” January 11, 1810], a bill upon a postmaster, an order of
discontinuance, and information that any others that may come will not be
paid for, as if I had been gifted with prophecy. And this precious epistle
directed, “To Thomas Coleridge, of Grazemar”! And yet this Mr. ---- would
think himself libelled, if he were called a dishonest man.)... We will
take for granted that “The Friend” can be continued. On this supposition I
have lately studied “The Spectator,” and with increasing pleasure and
admiration. Yet it must be evident to you that there is a class of
thoughts and feelings, and these, too, the most important, even
practically, which it would be impossible to convey in the manner of
Addison, and which, if Addison had possessed, he would not have been
Addison. Read, for instance, Milton’s prose tracts, and only _try_ to
conceive them translated into the style of “The Spectator,” or the finest
part of Wordsworth’s pamphlet. It would be less absurd to wish that the
serious Odes of Horace had been written in the same style as his Satires
and Epistles. Consider, too, the very different objects of “The Friend,”
and of “The Spectator,” and above all do not forget, that these are AWEFUL
TIMES! that the love of reading as a refined pleasure, weaning the mind
from GROSSER enjoyments, which it was one of “The Spectator’s” chief
objects to awaken, has by that work, and those that followed (Connoisseur,
World, Mirror, etc.), but still more, by Newspapers, Magazines, and
Novels, been carried into excess: and “The Spectator” itself has
innocently contributed to the general taste for unconnected writing, just
as if “Reading made easy” should act to give men an aversion to words of
more than two syllables, instead of drawing them _through_ those words
into the power of reading books in general. In the present age, whatever
flatters the mind in its ignorance of its ignorance, tends to aggravate
that ignorance, and, I apprehend, does on the whole do more harm than
good. Have you read the debate on the Address? What a melancholy picture
of the intellectual feebleness of the country! So much on the one side of
the question. On the other (1) I will, preparatory to writing on any
chosen subject, consider whether it _can_ be treated popularly, and with
that lightness and variety of illustration which form the charms of “The
Spectator.” If it can, I will do my best. If not, next, whether yet there
may not be furnished by the _results_ of such an Essay thoughts and truths
that may be so treated, and form a second Essay. (2) I shall always,
_besides_ this, have at least one number in four of rational
entertainment, such as “Satyrane’s Letters,” as instructive as I can, but
yet making entertainment the chief object in my own mind. But, lastly, in
the Supplement of “The Friend” I shall endeavour to include whatever of
higher and more abstruse meditation may be needed as the foundations of
all the work after it; and the difference between those who will read and
master that Supplement, and those who decline the toil, will be simply
this, that what to the former will be _demonstrated conclusions_, the
latter must start from as from _postulates_, and (to all whose minds have
not been sophisticated by a half-philosophy) _axioms_. For no two things,
that are yet different, can be in closer harmony than the deductions of a
profound philosophy, and the dictates of plain common sense. Whatever
tenets are obscure in the one, and requiring the greatest powers of
abstraction to reconcile, are the same which are held in manifest
contradiction by the common sense, and yet held and firmly believed,
without sacrificing A to --A, or --A to A.... After this work I shall
endeavour to pitch my note to the idea of a common, well-educated,
thoughtful man, of ordinary talents; and the exceptions to this rule shall
not form more than one fifth of the work. If with all this it will not do,
well! And _well_ it will be, in its noblest sense: for _I_ shall have done
my best. Of parentheses I may be too fond, and will be on my guard in this
respect. But I am certain that no work of impassioned and eloquent
reasoning ever did or could subsist without them. They are the _drama_ of
reason, and present the thought growing, instead of a mere _Hortus
siccus_. The aversion to them is one of the numberless symptoms of a
feeble Frenchified Public. One other observation: I have reason to _hope_
for contributions from strangers. Some from _you I rely_ on, and these
will give a variety which is highly desirable--so much so, that it would
weigh with me even to the admission of many things from unknown
correspondents, though but little above mediocrity, if they were
proportionately short, and on subjects which I should not myself treat....
May God bless you, and your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CHAPTER XI
A JOURNALIST, A LECTURER, A PLAYWRIGHT
1810-1813
CHAPTER XI
A JOURNALIST, A LECTURER, A PLAYWRIGHT
1810-1813
CLXXIX. TO HIS WIFE.
Spring, 1810.
MY DEAR LOVE,--I understand that Mr. De Quincey is going to Keswick
to-morrow; though between ourselves he is as great a _to-morrower_ to the
full as your poor husband, and without his excuses of anxiety from latent
disease and external pressure.
Now as Lieutenant Southey is with you, I fear that you could not find a
bed for me if I came in on Monday or Tuesday. I not only am desirous to be
with you and Sara for a while, but it would be of great importance to me
to be within a post of Penrith for the next fortnight or three weeks. How
long Mr. De Quincey may stay I cannot guess. He (Miss Wordsworth says)
talks of a week, but Lloyd of a _month_! However, put yourself to no
violence of inconvenience, only be sure to write to me (N. B.--to me) by
the carrier to-morrow.
I am middling, but the state of my spirit of itself requires a change of
scene. Catherine W. [the Wordsworths’ little daughter] has not recovered
the use of her arm, etc., but is evidently recovering it, and in all other
respects in better health than before,--indeed, so much better as to
confirm my former opinion that nature was weak in her, and can more easily
supply vital power for two thirds of her nervous system than for the
whole.
May God bless you, my dear! and
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Hartley looks and behaves all that the fondest parent could wish. He is
really handsome; at least as handsome as a face so original and
intellectual can be. And Derwent is “a nice little fellow,” and no
lack-wit either. I read to Hartley out of the German a series of very
masterly arguments concerning the startling gross improbabilities of
Esther (fourteen improbabilities are stated). It really _surprised_ me,
the acuteness and steadiness of judgment with which he answered more than
half, weakened many, and at last determined that two only were not to be
got over. I then read for myself and afterwards to him Eichhorn’s solution
of the fourteen, and the coincidences were surprising. Indeed, Eichhorn,
after a lame attempt, was obliged to give up the two which H. had declared
as desperate.
CLXXX. TO THE MORGANS.
December 21, “1810.”
MY DEAR FRIENDS,--I am at present at Brown’s Coffee House, Mitre Court,
Fleet Street. My objects are to settle something by which I can secure a
certain sum weekly, sufficient for lodging, maintenance, and physician’s
fees, and in the mean time to look out for a suitable place near Gray’s
Inn. My _immediate_ plan is not to trouble myself further about any
introduction to Abernethy, but to write a plain, honest, and full account
of my state, its history, causes, and occasions, and to send it to him
with two or three pounds enclosed, and asking him to take me under his
further care. If I have raised the money for the enclosure, this I shall
do to-morrow. For, indeed, it is not only useless but unkind and
ungrateful to you and all who love me, to trifle on any longer, depressing
your spirits, and, spite of myself, gradually alienating your esteem and
chilling your affection toward me. As soon as I have heard from Abernethy,
I will walk over to you, and spend a few days before I enter into my
lodging, and on my dread ordeal--as some kind-hearted Catholics have
taught, that the soul is carried slowly along close by the walls of
Paradise on its way to Purgatory, and permitted to breathe in some
snatches of blissful airs, in order to strengthen its endurance during its
fiery trial by the foretaste of what awaits it at the conclusion and final
gaol-delivery.
I pray you, therefore, send me immediately all my books and papers with
such of my linen as may be clean, in my box, by the _errand cart_,
directed--“Mr. Coleridge, Brown’s Coffee House, Mitre Court, Fleet
Street.” A couple of nails and a rope will sufficiently secure the box.
Dear, dear Mary! Dearest Charlotte! I entreat you to believe me, that if
at any time my manner toward you has appeared unlike myself, this has
arisen wholly either from a sense of self-dissatisfaction or from
apprehension of having given you offence; for at no time and on no
occasion did I ever see or imagine anything in your behaviour which did
not awaken the purest and most affectionate esteem, and (if I do not
grossly deceive myself) the sincerest gratitude. Indeed, indeed, my
affection is both deep and strong toward you, and such too that I am proud
of it.
“And looking towards the Heaven that bends above you,
Full oft I bless the lot that made me love you!”
Again and again and for ever may God bless you, and love you.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
J. J. MORGAN, Esq., No. 7, Portland Place, Hammersmith.
CLXXXI. TO W. GODWIN.
March 15, 1811.
MY DEAR GODWIN,--I receive twice the pleasure from my recovery that it
would have otherwise afforded, as it enables me to accept your kind
invitation, which in this instance I might with perfect propriety and
manliness thank you for, as an honour done to me. To sit at the same
table with Grattan, who would not think it a memorable honour, a red
letter day in the almanac of his life? No one certainly who is in any
degree worthy of it. Rather than not be in the same room, I could be well
content to wait at the table at which I was not permitted to sit, and this
not merely for Grattan’s undoubted great talents, and still less from any
entire accordance with his political opinions, but because his great
talents are the tools and vehicles of his genius, and all his speeches are
attested by that constant accompaniment of true genius, a certain moral
bearing, a moral dignity. His love of liberty has no snatch of the mob in
it.
Assure Mrs. Godwin of my anxious wishes respecting her health. The scholar
Salernitanus[65] says:--
“Si tibi deficiant medici, medici tibi fiant
Hæc tria: mens hilaris, requies, moderata diæta.”
The regulated diet she already has, and now she must contrive to call in
the two other doctors. God bless you.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CLXXXII. TO DANIEL STUART.
Tuesday, June 4, 1811.
DEAR STUART,--I brought your umbrella in with me yester-morning, but,
having forgotten it at leaving Portland Place, sent the coachman back for
it, who brought what _appeared_ to me not the same. On returning, however,
with it, I could find no other, and it is certainly as good or better, but
looks to me as if it were not equally new, and as if it had far more silk
in it. I will, however, leave it at Brompton, and if by any inexplicable
circumstance it should not prove the same, you must be content with the
substitute. The family at Portland Place caught at my doubts as to the
identity of it. I had hoped to have seen you this morning, it being a
leisurely time in respect of fresh tidings, to have submitted to you two
Essays,[66] one on the Catholic Question, and the other on Parliamentary
Reform, addressed as a letter (from a correspondent) to the noblemen and
members of Parliament who had associated for this purpose. The former does
not exceed two columns; the latter is somewhat longer. But after the
middle of this month it is probable that the Paper will be more open to a
series of Articles on less momentary, though still contemporary,
interests. Mr. Street seems highly pleased with what I have written this
morning on the battle[67] of the 16th (May), though I apprehend the whole
cannot be inserted. I am as I ought to be, most cautious and shy in
recommending anything; otherwise, I should have requested Mr. Street to
give insertion to the paragraphs respecting Holland, and the nature of
Buonaparte’s resources, ending with the necessity of ever re-fuelling the
moral feelings of the people, as to the monstrosity of the giant fiend
that menaces them; [with an] _allusion_ to Judge Grose’s opinion[68] on
Drakard[69] before the occasion had passed away from the public memory.
So, too, if the Duke’s return is to be discussed at all, the Article
should be published before Lord Milton’s motion.[70] For though in a
complex and widely controverted question, where hundreds rush into the
field of combat, it is wise to defer it till the Debates in Parliament
have shown what the arguments are on which most stress is laid by men in
common, as in the Bullion Dispute; yet, generally, it is a great honour to
the London papers, that for one argument they borrow from the
parliamentary speakers, the latter borrow two from them, at all events are
_anticipated_ by them. But the true prudential rule is, to defer only when
any effect of _freshness_ or novelty is impracticable; but in most other
cases to consider _freshness_ of effect as the point which belongs to a
_Newspaper_ and distinguishes it from a library book; the former being the
Zenith, and the latter the Nadir, with a number of intermediate degrees,
occupied by pamphlets, magazines, reviews, satirical and occasional poems,
etc., etc. Besides, in a daily newspaper, with advertisements proportioned
to its sale, what is deferred must, four times in five, be extinguished. A
newspaper is a market for flowers and vegetables, rather than a granary or
conservatory; and the drawer of its editor, a common burial ground, not a
catacomb for embalmed mummies, in which the defunct are preserved to serve
in after times as medicines for the living. To turn from the Paper to
myself, as candidate for the place of _auxiliary_ to it. I drew, with Mr.
Street’s consent and order, ten pounds, which I shall repay during the
week as soon as I can see Mr. Monkhouse of Budge Row, who has collected
that sum for me. This, therefore, I put wholly aside, and indeed expect to
replace it with Mr. Green to-morrow morning. Besides this I have had five
pounds from Mr. Green,[71] chiefly for the purposes of coach hire. All at
once I could not venture to walk in the heat and other accidents of
weather from Hammersmith to the Office; but hereafter I intend, if I
continue here, to return on foot, which will reduce my coach hire for the
week from eighteen shillings to nine shillings. But to walk in, I know,
would take off all the blossom and fresh fruits of my spirits. I trust
that I need not say, how pleasant it would be to me, if it were in my
power to consider everything I could do for the “Courier,” as a mere
return for the pecuniary, as well as other obligations I am under to you;
in short as working off old scores. But you know how I am situated; and
that by the daily labour of the brain I must acquire the daily demands of
the other parts of the body. And it now becomes necessary that I should
form some settled system for my support in London, and of course know what
my weekly or monthly means may be. Respecting the “Courier,” I consider
you not merely as a private friend, but as the Co-proprietor of a large
concern, in which it is your duty to regulate yourself with relation to
the interests of that concern, and of your partner in it; and so take for
granted, and, indeed, wish no other, than that you and he should weigh
whether or no I can be of any material use to a Paper already so
flourishing, and an Evening Paper. For, all mock humility out of the
question (and when I write to you, every other sort of insincerity), I see
that such services as I might be able to afford, would be more important
to a rising than to a risen Paper; to a morning, perhaps, more than to an
evening one. You will however decide, after the experience hitherto
afforded, and modifying it by the temporary circumstances of debates,
press of foreign news, etc.; how far I can be of actual use by my
attendance, in order to help in the things of the day, as are the
paragraphs, which I have for the most part hitherto been called [upon] to
contribute; and, by my efforts, to sustain the literary character of the
Paper, by large articles, on open days, and [at] more leisure times.
My dear Stuart! knowing the foolish mental cowardice with which I slink
off from all pecuniary subjects, and the particular weight I must feel
from the sense of existing obligations to you, you will be convinced that
my only motive is the desire of settling with others such a plan for
myself, as may, by setting my mind at rest, enable me to realize whatever
powers I possess, to as much satisfaction to those who employ them, and to
my own sense of duty, as possible. If Mr. Street should think that the
“Courier” does not require any auxiliary, I shall then rely on your
kindness, for putting me in the way of some other paper, the principles of
which are sufficiently in accordance with my own; for while cabbage stalks
rot on dung hills, I will never write what, or for what, I do not think
right. All that prudence can justify is NOT to write what at certain times
one may yet think. God bless you and
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CLXXXIII. TO SIR G. BEAUMONT.
J. J. Morgan’s, Esq., 7, Portland Place, Hammersmith,
Saturday morning, December 7, 1811.
DEAR SIR GEORGE,--On Wednesday night I slept in town in order to have a
mask[72] taken, from which, or rather with which, Allston means to model
a bust of me. I did not, therefore, receive your letter and the enclosed
till Thursday night, eleven o’clock, on my return from the lecture; and
early on Friday morning, I was roused from my first sleep by an agony of
toothache, which continued almost without intermission the whole day, and
has left my head and the whole of my trunk, “not a man but a bruise.”[73]
What can I say more, my dear Sir George, than that I deeply feel the proof
of your continued friendship, and pray from my inmost soul that more
perseverance in efforts of duty may render me more worthy of your kindness
than I at present am? Ingratitude, like all _crimes_ that are at the same
time _vices_--bad as malady, and worse as symptom--is of so detestable a
nature that an honest man will mourn in silence under real injuries,
[rather] than hazard the very suspicion of it, and will be slow to avail
himself of Lord Bacon’s remark[74] (much as he may admire its
profundity),--“Crimen ingrati animi, quod magnis ingeniis haud raro
objicitur, sæpius nil aliud est quam perspicacia quædam in causam
beneficii collati.” Yet that man has assuredly tenfold reason to be
grateful who can be so, both head and heart, who, at once served and
honoured, knows himself more delighted by the motive that influenced his
friend than by the benefit received by himself; were it only perhaps for
this cause--that the consciousness of always repaying the former in kind
takes away all regret that he is incapable of returning the latter.
Mr. Dawe, Royal Associate, who plastered my face for me, says that he
never saw so excellent a mask, and so unaffected by any expression of pain
or uneasiness. On Tuesday, at the farthest, a cast will be finished, which
I was vain enough to desire to be packed up and sent to Dunmow. With it
you will find a chalk drawing of my face,[75] which I think far more like
than any former attempt, excepting Allston’s full-length portrait of
me,[76] which, with all his casts, etc., two or three valuable works of
the Venetian school, and his Jason--almost finished, and on which he had
employed eighteen months without intermission--are lying at Leghorn, with
no chance of procuring them. There will likewise be an epistolary essay
for Lady Beaumont on the subject of religion in reference to my own faith;
it was too long to send by the post.
Dawe is engaged on a picture (the figures about four feet) from my poem of
LOVE.
She leaned beside the armed man,
The statue of the armed knight;
She stood and listened to my harp
Amid the lingering light.
His dying words--but when I reached, etc.
All impulses of soul and sense, etc.
His sketch is very beautiful, and has more expression than I ever found in
his former productions--excepting, indeed, his Imogen.
Allston is hard at work on a large Scripture piece--the dead man recalled
to life by touching the bones of the Prophet. He models every figure.
Dawe, who was delighted with the Cupid and Psyche, seemed quite astonished
at the facility and exquisiteness with which Allston modelled. Canova at
Rome expressed himself to me in very warm terms of admiration on the same
subject. He means to exhibit but two or at the most three pictures, all
poetical or history painting, in part by my advice. It seemed to me
impolitic to appear to be _trying_ in half a dozen ways, as if his mind
had not yet discovered its main current. The longer I live the more deeply
am I convinced of the high importance, as a _symptom_, of the love of
_beauty_ in a young painter. It is neither honourable to a young man’s
heart or head to attach himself year after year to old or deformed
objects, comparatively too so easy, especially if bad drawing and worse
colouring leaves the spectator’s imagination at lawless liberty, and he
cries out, “How very like!” just as he would at a coal in the centre of
the fire, or at a frost-figure on a window pane. It is on this, added to
his quiet unenvious spirit, to his lofty feelings concerning his art, and
to the religious purity of his moral character, that I chiefly rest my
hopes of Allston’s future fame. His best productions seem to please him
principally because he sees and has learnt something which enables him to
promise himself, “I shall do better in my next.”
I have not been at the “Courier” office for some months past. I detest
writing politics, even on the right side, and when I discovered that the
“Courier” was not the independent paper I had been led to believe, and had
myself over and over again asserted, I wrote no more for it. Greatly,
indeed, do I prefer the present Ministers to the leaders of any other
party, but indiscriminate support of any class of men I dare not give,
especially when there is so easy and honourable an alternative as not to
write politics at all, which, henceforth, nothing but blank necessity
shall compel me to do. I will write for the PERMANENT, or not at all. “The
Comet” therefore I have never seen or heard of it, yet most true it is
that I myself have composed some verses on the comet, but I am quite
certain that no one ever saw them, for the best of all reasons, that my
own brain is the only substance on which they have been recorded. I will,
however, consign them to paper, and send them to you with the “Courier”
poem as soon as I can procure it, for the curiosity of the thing....
My most affectionate respects to Lady Beaumont, and believe me, dear Sir
George, with heartfelt regard,
Your obliged and grateful friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. Were you in town, I should be very sorry, indeed, to see you in
Fetter Lane.[77] The lectures were meant for the young men of the City.
Several of my friends join to take notes, and if I can correct what they
can shape out of them into any tolerable form, I will send them to you. On
Monday I lecture on “Love and the Female Character as displayed by
Shakespeare.” Good Dr. Bell is in town. He came from Keswick, all delight
with my little Sara, and quite enchanted with Southey. Some flights of
admiration in the form of questions to me (“Did you ever see anything so
finely conceived? so profoundly thought? as this passage in his review on
the Methodists? or on the Education?” etc.) embarrassed me in a very
ridiculous way; and, I verily believe, that my odd way of hesitating left
on Bell’s mind some shade of a suspicion, as if I did not like to hear my
friend so highly extolled. Half a dozen words from Southey would have
precluded this, without diminution to his own fame--I mean, in
conversation with Dr. Bell.
CLXXXIV. TO J. J. MORGAN.
KESWICK,[78] Sunday, February 28, 1812.
MY DEAR MORGAN,--I stayed a day in Kendal in order to collect the reprint
of “The Friend,” and reached Keswick on Tuesday last before dinner, having
taken Hartley and Derwent with me from Ambleside. Of course the first
evening was devoted _Laribus domesticis_, to Southey and his and my
children. My own are all the fondest father could pray for; and little
Sara does honour to her mother’s anxieties, reads French tolerably, and
Italian fluently, and I was astonished at her acquaintance with her native
language. The word “hostile” occurring in what she read to me, I asked her
what “hostile” meant? and she answered at once, “Why! inimical; only that
‘inimical’ is more often used for things and measures and not, as
‘hostile’ is, to persons and nations.” If I had dared, I should have urged
Mrs. C. to let me take her to London for four or five months, and return
with Southey, but I feared it might be inconvenient to you, and I knew it
would be presumptuous in me to bring her to you. But she is such a
sweet-tempered, meek, blue-eyed fairy and so affectionate, trustworthy,
and really serviceable! Derwent is the self-same, fond, small, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge as ever. When I went for them from Mr. Dawes,[79] he came
in dancing for joy, while Hartley turned pale[80] and trembled all
over,--then after he had taken some cold water, instantly asked me some
questions about the connection of the Greek with the Latin, which latter
he has just begun to learn. Poor Derwent, who has by no means strong
health (having inherited his poor father’s tenderness of bowels and
stomach, and consequently capriciousness of animal spirits), has
complained to me (having no other possible grievance) “that Mr. Dawes does
not _love_ him, because he can’t help crying when he is scolded, and
because he ain’t such a genius as Hartley--and that though Hartley should
have done the same thing, yet all the others are punished, and Mr. Dawes
only _looks_ at Hartley and never scolds _him_, and that _all_ the boys
think it very unfair--he _is_ a genius.” This was uttered in low spirits
and a tenderness brought on by my petting, for he adores his brother.
Indeed, God be praised, they all love each other. I was delighted that
Derwent, of his own accord, asked me about little Miss Brent that used to
play with him at Mr. and Mrs. Morgan’s, adding that he had almost forgot
what sort of a lady she was, “only she was littler,--less I mean--(this
was said hastily and laughing at his blunder) than Mama.” A gentleman who
took a third of the chaise with me from Ambleside, and whom I found a
well-informed and thinking man, said after two hours’ knowledge of us,
that the two boys united would be a perfect representation of myself.
I trust I need not say that I should have written on the second day if
nothing had happened; but from the dreadful dampness of the house, worse
than it was in the rudest state when I first lived in it, and the weather,
too, all storm and rain, I caught a violent cold which almost blinded me
by inflammation of both my eyes, and for three days bore all the symptoms
of an ague or intermittent fever. Knowing I had no time to lose, I took
the most Herculean remedies, among others a solution of arsenic, and am
now as well as when I left you, and see no reason to fear a relapse. I
passed through Grasmere; but did not call on Wordsworth. I hear from Mrs.
C. that he treats the affair as a trifle, and only wonders at my resenting
it, and that Dorothy Wordsworth before my arrival expressed her confident
hope that I should come to them at once! I who “for years past had been an
ABSOLUTE NUISANCE in the family.” This illness has thrown me behindhand;
so that I cannot quit Keswick till the end of the week. On Friday I shall
return by way of Ambleside, probably spend a day with Charles Lloyd.... It
will not surprise you that the statements respecting me and Montagu and
Wordsworth have been grossly perverted: and yet, spite of all this, there
is not a friend of Wordsworth’s, I understand, who does not severely blame
him, though they execrate the Montagus yet more heavily. But the tenth
part of the truth is not known. Would you believe it possible that
Wordsworth himself stated my _wearing powder_ as a proof positive that I
never could have suffered any pain of mind from the affair, and that it
was all pretence!! God forgive him! At Liverpool I shall either give
lectures, if I can secure a hundred pounds for them, or return immediately
to you. At all events, I shall not remain there beyond a fortnight, so
that I shall be with you before you have changed houses. Mrs. Coleridge
seems quite satisfied with my plans, and abundantly convinced of my
obligations to your and Mary’s kindness to me. Nothing (she said) but the
circumstance of my residing with you could reconcile her to my living in
London. Southey is the _semper idem_. It is impossible for a good heart
not to esteem and to love him; but yet the love is one fourth, the esteem
all the remainder. His children are, 1. Edith, seven years; 2. Herbert,
five; 3. Bertha, four; 4. Catharine, a year and a half.
I had hoped to have heard from you by this time. I wrote from Slough, from
Liverpool, and from Kendal. Why need I send my kindest love to Mary and
Charlotte? I would not return if I had a doubt that they believed me to be
in the very inmost of my being their and your affectionate and grateful
and constant friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CLXXXV. TO HIS WIFE.
71, Berners Street, Tuesday, April 21, 1812.
MY DEAR LOVE,--Everything is going on so very well, so much beyond my
expectation, that I will not revert to anything unpleasant to damp good
news with. The last receipt for the insurance is now before me, the date
the 4th of May. Be assured that before April is past, you shall _receive_
both receipts, this and the one for the present year, in a frank.
In the first place, my health, spirits, and disposition to activity have
continued such since my arrival in town, that every one has been struck
with the change, and the Morgans say they had never before seen me
_myself_. I feel myself an altered man, and dare promise you that you
shall never have to complain of, or to apprehend, my not opening and
reading your letters. Ever since I have been in town, I have never taken
any stimulus of _any_ kind, till the moment of my getting into bed, except
a glass of British white wine after dinner, and from three to four glasses
of port, when I have dined out. Secondly, my lectures have been taken up
most warmly and zealously by Sir Thomas Bernard,[81] Sir George Beaumont,
Mr. Sotheby, etc., and in a few days, I trust that you will be agreeably
surprised with the mode in which Sir T. B. hopes and will use his best
exertions to have them announced. Thirdly, Gale and Curtis are in high
spirits and confident respecting the sale of “The Friend,”[82] and the
call for a second edition, after the complemental numbers have been
printed, and not less so respecting the success of the other work, the
Propædia (or Propaideia) Cyclica, and are desirous to have the terms
properly ratified, and signed as soon as possible. Nothing intervenes to
overgloom my mind, but the sad state of health of Mr. Morgan, a more
faithful and zealous friend than whom no man ever possessed. Thank God! my
safe arrival, the improvement of my health and spirits, and my smiling
prospects have already exerted a favourable influence on him. Yet I dare
not disguise from myself that there is cause for alarm to those who love
and value him. But do not allude to this subject in your letters, for to
be thought ill or to have his state of health spoken of, agitates and
depresses him.
As soon as ever I have settled the lecture room, which perhaps will be
Willis’s in Hanover Square, the price of which is at present ten guineas a
time, I will the very first thing pay the insurance and send off a parcel
of books for Hartley, Derwent, and dear Sara, whom I kissed seven times in
the shape of her pretty letterlet.
My poor darling Derwent! I shall be most anxious to receive a letter from
you, or from himself, about him.
In giving my love to Mrs. Lovell, tell her that I have not since the day
after my arrival been able to go into the city, my business having
employed me wholly either in writing or in traversing the West End of the
town. I dined with Lady Beaumont and her sister on Saturday, for Sir
George was engaged to Sir T. Bernard. He however came and sat with us to
the very last moment, and I dine with him to-day, and Allston is to be of
the party. The bust and the picture from Genevieve are at the Royal
Academy, and already are talked of. Dawe and I will be of mutual service
to each other. As soon as the pictures are settled, that is, in the first
week of May, he means to treat himself with a fortnight’s relaxation at
the Lakes. He is a very modest man, his manners not over polished, and his
worst point is that he is (at least, I have found him so) a fearful
questionist, whenever he thinks he can pick up any information, or ideas,
poetical, historical, topographical, or artistical, that he can make bear
on his profession. But he is sincere, friendly, strictly _moral_ in every
respect, I firmly believe even to _innocence_, and in point of cheerful
indefatigableness of industry, in regularity, and temperance--in short, in
a glad, yet quiet, devotion of his whole being to the art he has made
choice of, he is the only man I ever knew who goes near to rival
Southey--gentlemanly address, person, physiognomy, knowledge, learning,
and genius being of course wholly excluded from the comparison. God knows
my heart! and that it is my full belief and conviction, that taking all
_together_, there does not exist the man who could without flattery or
delusion be called Southey’s equal. It is quite delightful to hear how he
is spoken of by all good people. Dawe will doubtless _take_ him. Were S.
and I rich men, we would have ourselves and all of you, short and tall, in
one family picture. Pray receive Dawe as a friend. I called on Murray, who
complained that by Dr. Bell’s delays and irresolutions and scruples, the
book “On the Origin,”[83] etc., instead of 3,000 in three weeks, which he
has no doubt would have been the sale had it been brought out at the fit
time, will not now sell 300. I told him that I believed otherwise, but
much would depend on the circumstance whether temper or prudence would
have most influence on the Athenian critic and his friend Brougham. If, as
I hoped, the former, and the work should be reviewed in the “Edinburgh
Review,” if they took up the gauntlet thrown at them, then there was no
doubt but that a strong tide of sale would set in. Though verily this
gauntlet was of weighty metal, though of polished steel, and being thrown
_at_ rather than _down_, it was challenging a man to fight by a blow that
threatened to brain him. I have seen Dr. Bell and shall dine with him at
Sir T. Bernard’s on Monday next. The venerable Bishop of Durham[84] has
sent me a very kind message, that though he cannot himself appear in a
hired lecture room, yet he will be not only my subscriber but use his best
influence with his acquaintance. I am very anxious that my books should be
sent forward as soon as possible. They may be sent at three different
times, with a week’s intervention. But there is one, scarcely a book, but
a collection of loose sheets tied up together at Grasmere, which I want
immediately, and, if possible, would have sent up by the coach from Kendal
or Penrith. It is a German Romance with some name beginning with an A,
followed by “oder Die Glückliche Inseln.” It makes two volumes, but
several of the sheets are missing, at least were so when I put them
together. If sent off immediately, it would be of serious benefit to me in
my lectures. Miss Hutchinson knows them, and will probably recollect the
sheets I allude to, and these are what I especially want.
One pair only of breeches were in the parcel, and I am sadly off for
stockings, but the white and under ones I can buy here cheap, but if
young Mr. White could procure half a dozen or even a dozen pair of black
silk made as stout and weighty as possible, I would not mind giving
seventeen shillings per pair, if only they can be _relied_ on, which one
cannot do in London. A double knock. I meant to read over your letter
again, lest I should have forgot anything. If I have, I will answer it in
my next.
God bless you and your affectionate husband,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Has Southey read “Childe Harold”? All the world is talking of it. I have
not, but from what I hear it is exactly on the plan that I myself had not
only conceived six years ago, but have the whole scheme drawn out in one
of my old memorandum books. My dear Edith, and my dear Moon![85] Though I
have scarce room to write it, yet I love you very much.
CLXXXVI. TO THE SAME.
71, Berners Street, April 24, 1812.
MY DEAR SARA,--Give my kind love to Southey, and inform him that I have,
_egomet his ipsis meis oculis_, seen _Nobs_, alive, well, and in full
fleece; that after the death of Dr. Samuel Dove,[86] of Doncaster, who did
not survive the loss of his faithful wife, Mrs. Dorothy Dove, more than
eleven months, Nobs was disposed of by his executors to Longman and
Clements, Musical Instrument Manufacturers, whose grand pianoforte hearses
he now draws in the streets of London. The carter was astonished at the
enthusiasm with which I intreated him to stop for half a minute, and the
embrace I gave to _Nobs_, who evidently understood me, and wistfully with
_such_ a sad expression in his eye, seemed to say, “Ah, my kind old
master, Doctor Daniel, and ah! my mild mistress, his dear duteous Dolly
Dove, my gratitude lies deeper than my obligation; it is not merely
skin-deep! Ah, what I _have_ been! Oh, what I _am_! his naked, neighing,
night-wandering, new-skinned, nibbling, noblenursling, _Nobs_!”
His legs and hoofs are more than half sheepified, and his fleece richer
than one ever sees in the Leicester breed, but not so fine as might have
been the case had the merino cross been introduced before the surprising
accident and _more_ surprising remedy took place. _More_ surprising I say,
because the first happened to St. Bartholomew (for there were skinners
even in the days of St. Bartholomew), but the other never before there was
no Dr. Daniel Dove. I trust that Southey will now not hesitate to record
and transmit to posterity so remarkable a fact. I am delighted, for now
malice itself will not dare to attribute the story to my invention. If I
can procure the money, I will attempt to purchase Nobs, and send him down
to Keswick by short journeys for Herbert and Derwent to ride upon,
provided you can get the field next us.
I have not been able to procure a frank, but I daresay you will be glad to
receive the enclosed receipt even with the drawback of postage.
Everything, my dear, goes on as prosperously as you could yourself wish.
Sir T. Bernard has taken Willis’s Rooms, King Street, St. James’s, for me,
at only four guineas a week, fires, benches, etc., included, and I expect
the lectures to commence on the first Tuesday in May. But at the present
moment I need both the advice and the aid of Southey. The “Friends” have
arrived in town. I am at work on the Supplemental Numbers, and it is of
the last importance that they should be brought out as quickly as possible
during the flush and fresh breeze of my popularity; but this I cannot do
without knowing whether Mr. Wordsworth will transmit to me the two
finishing Essays on Epitaphs.[87] It is, I know and feel, a very delicate
business; yet I wish Southey would immediately write to Wordsworth and
urge him to send them by the coach, either to J. J. Morgan, Esq., 71,
Berners Street, or to Messrs. Gale and Curtis, Booksellers, Paternoster
Row, with as little delay as possible, or if he decline it, that Southey
should apprize me as soon as possible.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
The Morgans desire to be kindly remembered, and Charlotte Brent (tell
Derwent) hopes he has not forgot his old playfellow.
CLXXXVII. TO CHARLES LAMB.
May 2, 1812.
MY DEAR CHARLES,--I should almost deserve what I have suffered, if I
refused even to put my life in hazard in defence of my own honour and
veracity, and in satisfaction of the honour of a friend. I say _honour_,
in the latter instance, _singly_, because I never felt as a matter of
serious complaint, _what_ was stated to have been said (for this, though
painfully aggravated, was yet substantially true)--but _by_ WHOM it was
said, and _to_ whom, and _how_ and _when_. Grievously unseasonable
therefore as it is, that I should again be overtaken and hurried back by
the surge, just as I had begun to feel the firm ground under my feet--just
as I had flattered myself, and given reason to my hospitable friends to
flatter themselves, that I had regained tranquillity, and had become quite
myself--at the time, too, when every thought should be given to my
lectures, on the success or failure of my efforts in which no small part
of my reputation and future prospects will depend--yet if Wordsworth, upon
reflection, adheres to the plan proposed, I will not draw back. It is
right, however, that I should state one or two things. First, that it has
been my constant desire that evil should not propagate evil--or the
unhappy accident become the means of _spreading_ dissension. (2) That I
never quarrelled with Mr. Montagu--say rather, for that is the real truth,
that Mr. Montagu never was, or appeared to be, a man with whom I could,
without self-contempt, allow myself to quarrel--and lastly, that in the
present business there are but three possible cases--either (1) Mr.
Wordsworth said what I solemnly aver that I most distinctly recollect Mr.
Montagu’s representing him as having said, and which _I_ understood, not
merely as great unkindness and even cruelty, but as an intentional means
of putting an end to our long friendship, or to the terms at least, under
which it had for so long a period subsisted--or (2), Mr. Montagu has
grossly misrepresented Wordsworth, and most cruelly and wantonly injured
me--or (3), I have wantonly invented and deliberately persevered in
atrocious falsehoods, which place me in the same relation to Mr. Montagu
as (in the second case) Mr. Montagu would stand in to me. If, therefore,
Mr. Montagu declares to my face that he did not say what I solemnly aver
that he did--what must be the consequence, unless I am a more abject
coward than I have hitherto suspected, I need not say. Be the consequences
what they may, however, I will not shrink from doing my duty; but
previously to the meeting I should very much wish to transmit to
Wordsworth a statement which I long ago began, with the intention of
sending it to Mrs. Wordsworth’s sister,--but desisted in consequence of
understanding that she had already decided the matter against me. My
reason for wishing this is that I think it right that Wordsworth should
know, and have the means of ascertaining, some conversations which yet I
could not publicly bring forward without hazarding great disquiet in a
family known (though slightly) to Wordsworth--(2) Because common humanity
would embarrass me in stating before a man what I and others think of his
wife--and lastly, certain other points which my own delicacy and that due
to Wordsworth himself and his family, preclude from being talked of. For
Wordsworth ought not to forget that, whatever influence old associations
may have on his mind respecting Montagu, yet that _I_ never respected or
liked him--for if I had ever in a _common_ degree done so, I should have
quarrelled with him long before we arrived in London. Yet all these facts
ought to be known--because supposing Montagu to affirm what I am led to
suppose he has--then nothing remains but the comparative probability of
our two accounts, and for this the state of my feelings towards Wordsworth
and his family, my opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Montagu, and my previous
intention not to lodge with them in town, are important documents as far
as they do not rely on my own present assertions. Woe is me, that a
friendship of fifteen years should come to this! and such a friendship, in
which I call God Almighty to be my witness, as I ever thought it no more
than my duty, so did I ever feel a readiness to prefer him to myself, yea,
even if life and outward reputation itself had been the pledge required.
But this is now vain talking. Be it, however, remembered that I have never
wandered beyond the one single complaint, that I had been cruelly and
unkindly treated--that I made no charge against my friend’s veracity, even
in respect to his charges against me--that I have explained the
circumstance to those only who had already more or less perfectly become
acquainted with our difference, or were certain to hear of it from others,
and that except on this one point, no word of reproach, or even of
subtraction from his good name, as a good man, or from his merits as a
great man, ever escaped me. May God bless you, my dear Charles.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CLXXXVIII. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
71, Berners Street. Monday, May 4, 1812.
I will divide my statement, which I will endeavour to send you to-morrow,
into two parts, in separate letters. The latter, commencing from the
Sunday night, 28 October, 1810, that is, that on which the communication
was made to me, and which will contain my solemn avowal of what was said
by Mr. and Mrs. Montagu, you will make what use of you please--but the
former I write to _you_, and in _confidence_--yet only as far as to your
own heart it shall appear evident, that in desiring it I am actuated by no
wish to shrink personally from any test, not involving an acknowledgement
of my own degradation, and so become a false witness against myself, but
only by delicacy towards the feelings of others, and the dread of
spreading the curse of dissension. But, Wordsworth! the very message you
sent by Lamb and which _Lamb_ did not deliver to me from the anxiety not
to add fuel to the flame, sufficiently proves what I had learnt on my
first arrival at Keswick, and which alone prevented my going to
Grasmere--namely, that you had prejudged the case. As soon as I was
informed that you had denied having used certain expressions, I did not
hesitate a moment (nor was it in my power to do so) to give you my fullest
faith, and approve to my own consciousness the truth of my declaration,
that I should have felt it as a blessing, though my life had the same
instant been hazarded as the pledge, could I with firm conviction have
given Montagu the lie, at the conclusion of his story, even as, at the
very first sentence, I exclaimed--“Impossible! It is impossible!” The
expressions denied were indeed only the most offensive part to the
feelings--but at the same time I learnt that you did not hesitate
instantly to express your conviction that Montagu never said those words
and that I had invented them--or (to use your own words) “had forgotten
myself.” Grievously indeed, if I know aught of my nature, must I have
forgotten both myself and common honesty, could I have been villain enough
to have invented and persevered in such atrocious falsehoods. Your message
was that “if I declined an explanation, you begged I would no longer
continue to talk about the affair.” When, Wordsworth, did I ever decline
an explanation? From you I expected one, and had a right to expect it--for
let Montagu have added what he may, still that which remained was most
unkind and what I had little deserved from you, who might by a single
question have learnt from me that I never made up my mind to lodge with
Montagu and had tacitly acquiesced in it at Keswick to tranquillise Mrs.
Coleridge, to whom Mrs. Montagu had made the earnest professions of
watching and nursing me, and for whom this and her extreme repugnance to
my original, and much wiser, resolution of going to Edinburgh and placing
myself in the house, and under the constant eye, of some medical man, were
the sole grounds of her assent that I should leave the North at all. Yet
at least a score of times have I begun to write a detailed account, to
Wales[88] and afterwards to Grasmere, and gave it up from excess of
agitation,--till finally I learnt that _all_ of your family had decided
against me unheard--_and that_ [you begged] _I would no longer talk about
it_. If, Wordsworth, you had but done me the common justice of asking
those with whom I have been most intimate and confidential since my first
arrival in Town in Oct., 1810, you would have received other negative or
positive proofs how little I needed the admonition or deserve the sarcasm.
Talk about it? O God! it _has_ been talked about! and that it had, was the
sole occasion of my disclosing it even to Mary Lamb, the first person who
heard of it from me and that not voluntarily--but that morning a friend
met me, and communicated what so agitated me that then having previously
meant to call at Lamb’s I was compelled to do so from faintness and
universal trembling, in order to sit down. Even to her I did not intend to
mention it; but alarmed by the wildness and paleness of my countenance and
agitation I had no power to conceal, she entreated me to tell her what was
the matter. In the first attempt to speak, my feelings overpowered me; an
agony of weeping followed, and then, alarmed at my own imprudence and
conscious of the possible effect on her health and mind if I left her in
that state of suspense, I brought out convulsively some such words
as--“Wordsworth, Wordsworth has given me up. _He_ has no hope of me--I
have been an absolute nuisance[89] in his family”--and when long weeping
had relieved me, and I was able to relate the occurrence connectedly, she
can bear witness for me that, disgraceful as it was that I should be made
the topic of vulgar gossip, yet that “had the whole and ten times more
been proclaimed by a speaking-trumpet from the chimneys, I should have
smiled at it--or indulged indignation only as far as it excited me to
pleasurable activity--but that _you_ had said it, this and this only, was
the sting! the scorpion-tooth!” Mr. Morgan and afterwards his wife and her
sister were made acquainted with the whole case--and why? Not merely that
I owed it to their ardent friendship, which has continued to be mainly my
comfort and my only support, but because they had already heard of it, in
part--because a most intimate and dear friend of Mr. and Mrs. Montagu’s
had urged Mr. Morgan to call at the Montagus in order to be put on his
guard against me. He came to me instantly, told me that I had enemies at
work against my character, and pressed me to leave the hotel and to come
home with him--with whom I have been ever since, with the exception of a
few intervals when, from the bitter consciousness of my own infirmities
and increasing irregularity of temper, I took lodgings, against his will,
and was always by his zealous friendship brought back again. If it be
allowed to call any one on earth Saviour, Morgan and his family have been
my Saviours, body and soul. For my moral will was, and I fear is, so
weakened relatively to my duties to myself, that I cannot act, as I ought
to do, except under the influencing knowledge of its effects on those I
love and believe myself loved by. To him likewise I explained the affair;
but neither from him or his family has one word ever escaped me concerning
it. Last autumn Mr. and Mrs. Southey came to town, and at Mr. Ray’s at
Richmond, as we were walking alone in the garden, the subject was
introduced, and it became my duty to state the whole affair to them, even
as the means of transmitting it to you. With these exceptions I do not
remember ever to have made any one my confidant--though in two or three
instances I have alluded to the suspension of our familiar intercourse
without explanation, but even here only where I knew or fully believed the
persons to have already heard of it. Such was Mrs. Clarkson, who wrote to
me in consequence of one sentence in a letter to her; yet even to her I
entered into no detail, and disclosed nothing that was not necessary to my
own defence in not continuing my former correspondence. In short, the one
only thing which I have to blame in myself was that in my first letter to
Sir G. Beaumont I had concluded with a desponding remark allusive to the
breach between us, not in the slightest degree suspecting that he was
ignorant of it. In the letters, which followed, I was compelled to say
more (though I never detailed the words which had been uttered to me) in
consequence of Lady Beaumont’s expressed apprehension and alarm lest in
the advertisement for my lectures the sentence “concerning the Living
Poets” contained an intention on my part to attack your literary merits.
The very thought, that I could be imagined capable of feeling
_vindictively_ toward you at all, much more of gratifying the passion in
so despicable as well as detestable manner, agitated me. I sent her
Ladyship the verses composed after your recitation of the great Poem at
Coleorton, and desired her to judge whether it was possible that a man,
who had written that poem, could be capable of such an act, and in a
letter to Sir G. B., anxious to remove from his mind the assumption that I
had been agitated by the disclosure of any till then unknown actions of
mine or parts of conduct, I endeavoured to impress him with the real truth
that not the facts disclosed, but the manner and time and the person by
whom and the person to whom they had been disclosed, formed the whole
ground of the breach. And writing in great agitation I once again used the
same words which had venially burst from me the moment Montagu had ended
his account. “And this is cruel! this is _base_!” I did not reflect on it
till it was irrevocable--and for that one word, the only word of positive
reproach that ever escaped from me, I feel sorrow--and assure you, that
there is no permanent feeling in my heart which corresponds to it. Talk
about it? Those who have seen me and been with me, day by day, for so many
many months could have told you, how anxiously every allusion to the
subject was avoided--and with abundant reason--for immediate and palpable
derangement of body as well as spirits regularly followed it. Besides, had
there not existed in your mind--let me rather say, if ever there had
existed any portion of esteem and regard for me since the autumn of 1810,
would it have been possible that your quick and powerful judgement could
have overlooked the gross improbability, that I should first invent and
then scatter abroad for talk at public tables the phrases which (Mr.
Robinson yesterday informed me) Mr. Sharon Turner was indelicate enough to
trumpet abroad at Longman’s table? I at least will call on Mr. Sharon and
demand his authority. It is my full conviction, that in no one of the
hundred tables at which any _particulars_ of our breach have been
mentioned, could the authority be traced back to those who had received
the account from myself.
It seemed unnatural to me, nay, it was unnatural to me to write to you or
to any of your family with a cold exclusion of the feelings which almost
overpower me even at this moment, and I therefore write this preparatory
letter to disburthen my heart, as it were, before I sit down to detail my
recollections simply, and unmixed with the anguish which, spite of my best
efforts, accompany them.
But one thing more, the last complaint that you will hear from me,
perhaps. When without my knowledge dear Mary Lamb, just then on the very
verge of a relapse, wrote to Grasmere, was it kind or even humane to have
returned such an answer, as Lamb deemed it unadvisable to shew me; but
which I learnt from the only other person, who saw the answer, amounted in
substance to a sneer on my reported high spirits and my wearing powder?
When and to whom did I ever make a merit of my sufferings? Is it
consistent _now_ to charge me with going about complaining to everybody,
and _now_ with my high spirits? Was I to carry a gloomy face into every
society? or ought I not rather to be grateful that in the natural activity
of my intellect God had given me a counteracting principle to the
intensity of my feelings, and a means of escaping from a part of the
pressure? But for this I had been driven mad, and yet for how many months
was there a continual brooding and going on of the one gnawing
recollection behind the curtain of my outward being, even when I was most
exerting myself, and exerting myself more in order the more to benumb it!
I might have truly said with Desdemona:--
“I am not merry, but I do beguile
The Thing I am, by seeming otherwise.”
And as to the powder, it was first put in to prevent my taking cold after
my hair had been thinned, and I was advised to continue it till I became
wholly grey, as in its then state it looked as if I had dirty powder in my
hair, and even when known to be only the everywhere-mixed-grey, yet
contrasting with a face even younger than my real age it gave a queer and
contradictory character to my whole appearance. Whatever be the result of
this long-delayed explanation, I have loved you and yours too long and too
deeply to have it in my own power to cease to do so.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CLXXXIX. TO DANIEL STUART.
May 8, 1812.
MY DEAR STUART,--I send you seven or eight tickets,[90] entreating you, if
pre-engagements or your health does not preclude it, to bring a group with
you; as many ladies as possible; but gentlemen if you cannot muster
ladies--for else I shall not only have been left in the lurch as to the
actual receipts by my great patrons (the five hundred half-promised are
likely to shrink below fifty) but shall absolutely make a ridiculous
appearance. The tickets are transferable. If you can find occasion for
more, pray send for them to me, as (what it really will be) a favour done
to myself.
I am anxious to see you, and to learn how far Bath has improved or (to use
a fashionable slang phrase) disimproved your health.
Sir James and Lady Mackintosh are I hear at Bath Hotel, Jermyn Street. Do
you think it will be taken amiss if I enclosed two or three tickets and
cards with my respectful congratulations on his safe return.[91] I abhor
the doing anything that could be even interpreted into servility, and yet
feel increasingly the necessity of not neglecting the courtesies of
life....
God bless you, my dear sir, and your obliged and affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. Mr. Morgan has left his card for you.
CXC. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
71, Berners Street,
Monday afternoon, 3 o’clock, May 11, 1812.
MY DEAR WORDSWORTH,--I declare before God Almighty that at no time, even
in my sorest affliction, did even the _possibility_ occur to me of ever
doubting your word. I never ceased for a moment to have faith in you, to
love and revere you; though I was unable to explain an unkindness, which
seemed anomalous in your character. Doubtless it would have been better,
wiser, and more worthy of my relation to you, had I immediately written to
you a full account of what had happened--especially as the person’s
language concerning your family was such as nothing but the wild general
counter-panegyric of the same person almost in the same breath of
yourself--as a converser, etc.,--could have justified me in not resenting
to the uttermost....[92] All these, added to what I mentioned in my
letter to you, may not justify, but yet must palliate, the _only_ offence
I ever committed against you in deed or word or thought--that is, the not
writing to you and trusting instead to our common friends. Since I left
you my pocket books have been my only full confidants,[93]--and though
instructed by prudence to write so as to be intelligible to no being on
earth but yourself and your family, they for eighteen months together
would furnish proof that in anguish or induration I yet never ceased both
to _honour_ and love you.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
I need not say, of course, that your presence at the Lectures, or anywhere
else, will be gratifying to me.
CXCI. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
[May 12, 1812.]
MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--The awful event of yester-afternoon has forced me to
defer my Lectures to Tuesday, the 19th, by advice of all my patrons. The
same thought struck us all at the same moment, so that our letters might
be said to meet each other. I write now to urge you, if it be in your
power, to give one day or two of your time to write something in your
impressive way on that theme which no one I meet seems to feel as they
ought to do,--which, I find scarcely any but ourselves estimate according
to its true gigantic magnitude--I mean the sinking down of Jacobinism
below the middle and tolerably educated classes into the readers and
all-swallowing auditors in tap-rooms, etc.; and the [political sentiments
in the] “Statesman,” “Examiner,” etc. I have ascertained that throughout
the great manufacturing counties, Whitbread’s, Burdett’s, and Waithman’s
speeches and the leading articles of the “Statesman” and “Examiner” are
printed in ballad [shape] and sold at a halfpenny or a penny each. I was
turned numb, and then sick, and then into a convulsive state of weeping on
the first tidings--just as if Perceval[94] had been my near and personal
friend. But good God! the atrocious sentiments universal among the
populace, and even the lower order of householders. On my return from the
“Courier,” where I had been to offer my services if I could do anything
for them on this occasion, I was faint from the heat and much walking, and
took that opportunity of going into the tap-room of a large public house
frequented about one o’clock by the lower orders. It was really shocking,
nothing but exultation! Burdett’s health drank with a clatter of pots and
a sentiment given to at least fifty men and women--“May Burdett soon be
the man to have sway over us!” These were the very words. “This is but the
beginning.” “More of these damned scoundrels must go the same way, and
then poor people may live.” “Every man might maintain his family decent
and comfortable, if the money were not picked out of our pockets by these
damned placemen.” “God is above the devil, _I_ say, and down to Hell with
him and all his brood, the Ministers, men of Parliament fellows.” “They
won’t hear Burdett; no! he is a Christian man and speaks for the poor,”
etc., etc. I do not think I have altered a word.
My love to Sara, and I have received everything right. The plate will go
as desired, and among it a present to Sariola and Edith from good old Mr.
Brent, who had great delight in hearing them talked of. It was wholly the
old gentleman’s own thought. Bless them both!
The affair between Wordsworth and me seems settled, much against my first
expectation from the message I received from him and his refusal to open a
letter from me. I have not yet seen him, but an explanation has taken
place. I sent by Robinson an attested, avowed statement of what Mr. and
Mrs. Montagu told me, and Wordsworth has sent me an unequivocal denial of
the whole _in spirit_ and of the most offensive passages in letter as well
as spirit, and I instantly informed him that were ten thousand Montagus to
swear against it, I should take his word, not ostensibly only, but with
inward faith!
To-morrow I will write out the passage from “Apuleius,” and send the
letter to Rickman. It is seldom that want of leisure can be fairly stated
as an excuse for not writing; but really for the last ten days I can
honestly do it, if you will but allow a due portion to agitated feelings.
The subscription is languid indeed compared with the expectations. Sir T.
Bernard almost pledged himself for my success. However, he has done his
best, and so has Lady Beaumont, who herself procured me near thirty names.
I should have done better by myself for the present, but in the future
perhaps it will be better as it is.
CXCII. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.[95]
71, Berners Street,
Monday noon, December 7, 1812.
Write? My dear Friend! Oh that it were in my power to be with you myself
instead of my letter. The Lectures I could give up; but the rehearsal of
my Play commences this week, and upon this depends my best hopes of
leaving town after Christmas, and living among you as long as I live.
Strange, strange are the coincidences of things! Yesterday Martha Fricker
dined here, and after tea I had asked question after question respecting
your children, first one, then the other; but, more than all, concerning
Thomas, till at length Mrs. Morgan said, “What ails you, Coleridge? Why
don’t you talk about Hartley, Derwent, and Sara?” And not two hours ago
(for the whole family were late from bed) I was asked what was the matter
with my eyes? I told the fact, that I had awoke three times during the
night and morning, and at each time found my face and part of the pillow
wet with tears. “Were you dreaming of the Wordsworths?” she asked.--“Of
the children?” I said, “No! not so much of them, but of Mrs. W. and Miss
Hutchinson, and yourself and sister.”
Mrs. Morgan and her sister are come in, and I have been relieved by tears.
The sharp, sharp pang at the heart needed it, when they reminded me of my
words the very yester-night: “It is not possible that I should do
otherwise than love Wordsworth’s children, all of them; but Tom is nearest
my heart--I so often have him before my eyes, sitting on the little stool
by my side, while I was writing my essays; and how quiet and happy the
affectionate little fellow would be if he could but touch one, and now and
then be looked at.”
O dearest friend! what comfort can I afford you? What comfort ought I not
to afford, who have given you so much pain? Sympathy deep, of my whole
being.... In grief, and in joy, in the anguish of perplexity, and in the
fulness and overflow of confidence, it has been ever what it is! There is
a sense of the word, Love, in which I never felt it but to you and one of
your household! I am distant from you some hundred miles, but glad I am
that I am no longer distant in spirit, and have faith, that as it has
happened but once, so it never can happen again. An awful truth it seems
to me, and prophetic of our future, as well as declarative of our present
_real_ nature, that one mere thought, one feeling of suspicion, jealousy,
or resentment can remove two human beings farther from each other than
winds or seas can separate their bodies.
The words “_religious_ fortitude” occasion me to add that my faith in our
progressive nature, and in all the doctrinal facts of Christianity, is
become habitual in my understanding, no less than in my feelings. More
cheering illustrations of our survival I have never received, than from
the recent study of the instincts of animals, their clear heterogeneity
from the reason and moral essence of man and yet the beautiful analogy.
Especially, on the death of children, and of the _mind_ in childhood,
altogether, many thoughts have accumulated, from which I hope to derive
consolation from that most oppressive feeling which hurries in upon the
first anguish of such tidings as I have received; the sense of
uncertainty, the fear of enjoyment, the pale and deathy gleam thrown over
the countenances of the living, whom we love.... But this is bad
comforting. Your own virtues, your own love itself, must give it. Mr. De
Quincey has left town, and will by this time have arrived at Grasmere. On
Sunday last I gave him a letter for you; but he (I have heard) did not
leave town till Thursday night, by what accidents prevented I know not. In
the oppression of spirits under which I wrote that letter, I did not make
it clear that it was only Mr. Josiah’s half of the annuity[96] that was
withdrawn from me. My answer, of course, breathed nothing but gratitude
for the past.
I will write in a few days again to you. To-morrow is my lecture night,
“On the _human_ causes of the spread of Christianity, and its effects
after the establishment of Christendom.” Dear Mary! dear Dorothy! dearest
Sara! Oh, be assured, no thought relative to myself has half the influence
in inspiring the wish and effort to _appear_ and to _act_ what I always in
my will and heart have been, as the knowledge that few things could more
console you than to see me healthy, and worthy of myself! Again and again,
my dearest Wordsworth!!! I am affectionately and truly yours,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CXCIII. TO HIS WIFE.
Wednesday afternoon [January 20,] 18[13].
MY DEAR SARA,--_Hitherto_ the “Remorse” has met with _unexampled
applause_, but whether it will _continue_ to fill the _house_, that is
quite another question, and of this, my friends are, in my opinion, far,
far too sanguine. I have disposed not of the copyright but of edition by
edition to Mr. Pople, on terms advantageous to me as an author and
honourable to him as a publisher. The expenses of printing and paper (at
the trade-price) advertising, etc., are to be deducted from the total
produce, and the net profits to be divided into three equal parts, of
which Pople is to have one, and I the other two. And at any future time, I
may publish it in any volume of my poems _collectively_. Mr. Arnold (the
manager) has just left me. He called to urge me to exert myself a little
with regard to the daily press, and brought with him “The Times”[97] of
Monday as a specimen of the _infernal lies_ of which a newspaper scribe
can be capable. Not only is not _one_ sentence in it true; but every one
is in the direct face of a palpable truth. The misrepresentations must
have been wilful. I must now, therefore, write to “The Times,” and if
Walter refuses to insert, I will then, recording the circumstance, publish
it in the “Morning Post,” “Morning Chronicle,” and “The Courier.” The
dirty malice of Antony Pasquin[98] in the “Morning Herald” is below
notice. This, however, will explain to you why the shortness of this
letter, the main business of which is to desire you to draw upon Brent and
Co., No. 103 Bishopsgate Street Within, for an hundred pounds, at a
month’s date from the drawing, or, if that be objected to, for three
weeks, only let me know which. In the course of a month I have no
hesitation in promising you another hundred, and I hope likewise before
Midsummer, if God grant me life, to repay you whatever you have expended
for the children.
My wishes and purposes concerning Hartley and Derwent I will communicate
as soon as this bustle and endless rat-a-tat-tat at our door is somewhat
over. I concluded my Lectures last night most triumphantly, with loud,
long, and enthusiastic applauses at my entrance, and ditto in yet fuller
chorus as, and for some minutes after I had retired. It was lucky that (as
I never once thought of the Lecture till I had entered the Lecture Box),
the two last were the most impressive and really the best. I suppose that
no dramatic author ever had so large a number of unsolicited, unknown yet
_predetermined_ plauditors in the theatre, as I had on Saturday night. One
of the malignant papers asserted that I had collected all the saints from
Mile End turnpike to Tyburn Bar. With so many warm friends, it is
impossible, in the present state of human nature, that I should not have
many unprovoked and unknown enemies. You will have heard that on my
entering the box on Saturday night, I was discovered by the pit, and that
they all turned their faces towards our box, and gave a treble cheer of
claps.
I mention these things because it will please Southey to hear that there
is a large number of persons in London who hail with enthusiasm my
prospect of the stage’s being purified and rendered classical. My success,
if I succeed (of which I assure you I entertain doubts in my opinion well
founded, both from the want of a prominent actor for Ordonio, and from the
want of vulgar pathos in the play itself--nay, there is not enough even of
_true_ dramatic pathos), but if I succeed, I succeed for others as well as
myself....
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. I _pray you_, my dear Sara! do take on yourself the charge of
instantly sending off by the waggon Mr. Sotheby’s folio edition of all
Petrarch’s Works, which I left at Grasmere. (I am ashamed to meet Sotheby
till I have returned it.) At the same time my quarto MS. Book with the
German Musical Play in it,[99] and the two folio volumes of the Greek
Poets may go. For I want them hourly and I must try to imitate W. Scott in
making hay while the sun shines.
Kisses and heartfelt loves for my sweet Sara, and scarce less for dear
little Herbert and Edith.
CXCIV. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
71, Berners Street, Tuesday, February 8, 1813.
MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--It is seldom that a man can with _literal truth_
apologise for delay in writing; but for the last three weeks I have had
more upon my hands and spirits than my health was equal to.
The first copy I can procure of the second edition (of the play) I will do
my best to get franked to you. You will, I hope, think it much improved as
a poem. Dr. Bell, who is all kindness and goodness, came to me in no small
bustle this morning in consequence of “a censure passed on the ‘Remorse’
by a man of great talents, both in prose and verse, who was impartial, and
thought highly of the work on the whole.” What was it, think you? There
were many unequal lines in the Play, but which he did not choose to
specify. Dr. Bell would not mention the critic’s name, but was very
earnest with me to procure some indifferent person of good sense to read
it over, by way of spectacles to an author’s own dim judgement. Soon after
he left me I discovered that the critic was Gifford, who had said
good-naturedly that I ought to be whipt for leaving so many weak and
slovenly lines in so fine a poem. What the lines were _he_ would not say
and _I_ do not care. Inequalities have every poem, even an Epic--much
more a Dramatic Poem must have and ought to have. The question is, are
they in their own place _dissonances_? If so I am the last man to stickle
for them, who am nicknamed in the Green Room the “anomalous author,” from
my utter indifference or prompt facility in sanctioning every omission
that was suggested. That paragraph in the “Quarterly Review”[100]
respecting me, as ridiculed in “Rejected Addresses,” was surely unworthy
of a man of sense like Gifford. What reason could _he_ have to suppose me
a man so childishly irritable as to be provoked by a trifle so
contemptible? If he had, how could he think it a _parody_ at all? But the
noise which the “Rejected Addresses” made, the notice taken of Smith the
author by Lord Holland, Byron, etc., give a melancholy confirmation of my
assertion in “The Friend” that “we worship the vilest reptile if only the
brainless head be expiated by the sting of personal malignity in the
tail.” I wish I could procure for you the “Examiner” and Drakard’s London
Paper. They were forced to affect admiration of the Tragedy, but yet abuse
me they must, and so comes the old infamous _crambe bis millies cocta_ of
the “sentimentalities, puerilities, whinings, and meannesses, both of
style and thought,” in my former writings, but without (which is worth
notice both in these gentlemen and in all our former Zoili), without one
single quotation or reference in proof or exemplification. No wonder! for
excepting the “Three Graves,” which was announced as not meant for poetry,
and the poem on the Tethered Ass, with the motto _Sermoni propriora_,[101]
and which, like your “Dancing Bear,” might be called a ludicro-splenetic
copy of verses, with the diction purposely appropriate, they might (as at
the first appearance of my poems they did) find, indeed, all the opposite
vices. But if it had not been for the _Preface_ to W.’s “Lyrical Ballads,”
they would never themselves have dreamt of affected simplicity and
meanness of thought and diction. This slang has gone on for fourteen or
fifteen years against us, and really deserves to be exposed. As far as my
judgement goes, the two best qualities of the tragedy are, first, the
simplicity and unity of the plot, in respect of that which, of all the
unities, is the only one founded on good sense--the presence of a one
all-pervading, all-combining Principle. By REMORSE I mean the anguish and
disquietude arising from the self-contradiction introduced into the soul
by guilt, a feeling which is good or bad according as the will makes use
of it. This is expressed in the lines chosen as the motto:--
Remorse is as the heart in which it grows:
If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews
Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy,
It is a poison tree that, pierced to the inmost,
Weeps only tears of poison!
Act i. sc. 1.
And Remorse is everywhere distinguished from virtuous penitence. To excite
a sanative remorse Alvar returns, the Passion is put in motion at
Ordonio’s first entrance by the appearance of Isidore’s wife, etc.; it is
carried still higher by the narration of Isidore, Act ii. sc. 1; higher
still by the interview with the supposed wizard; and to its acme by the
Incantation Scene and Picture. Now, then, we are to see its effects and to
exemplify the second part of the motto, “but if proud and gloomy, It is a
poison tree,” etc. Ordonio, too proud to look steadily into himself,
catches a false scent, plans the murder of Isidore and the poisoning of
the Sorcerer, perpetrates the one, and, attempting the other, is driven by
Remorse and the discovery of Alvar to a temporary distraction; and,
finally, falling a victim to the only crime that had been realized, by the
hand of Alhadra, breathes his last in a pang of pride: “O couldst thou
forget me!” As from a circumference to a centre, every ray in the tragedy
converges to Ordonio. Spite of wretched acting, the passage told
wonderfully in which, as in a struggle between two unequal Panathlists or
wrestlers, the weaker had for a moment got uppermost, and Ordonio, with
unfeigned love, and genuine repentance, says, “I will kneel to thee, my
Brother! Forgive me, Alvar!” till the Pride, like the bottom-swell on our
lake, gusts up again in “_Curse_ me with forgiveness!” The second good
quality is, I think, the variety of metres according as the speeches are
merely transitive, or narrative, or passionate, or (as in the Incantation)
deliberate and formal poetry. It is true they are all, or almost all,
Iambic blank verse, but under that form there are five or six perfectly
distinct metres. As to the outcry that the “Remorse” is not pathetic
(meaning such pathos as convulses in “Isabella” or “The Gamester”) the
answer is easy. True! the poet never meant that it should be. It is as
pathetic as the “Hamlet” or the “Julius Cæsar.” He woo’d the feelings of
the audience, as my wretched epilogue said:--
With no TOO _real_ Woes that make you groan
(At home-bred, kindred grief, perhaps your own),
Yet with no image compensate the mind,
Nor leave one joy for memory behind.
As to my thefts from the “Wallenstein,” they came on compulsion from the
necessity of haste, and do not lie on my conscience, being partly thefts
from myself, and because I gave Schiller twenty for one I have taken, and
in the mean time I hope they will lie snug. “The obscurest Haunt of all
our mountains,”[102] I did not recognize as Wordsworth till after the play
was all printed. I must write again to-morrow on other subjects.
The House was crowded again last night, and the Manager told me that they
lost £200 by suspending it on [the] Saturday night that Jack Bannister
came out.
(No signature.)
CXCV. TO THOMAS POOLE.
February 13, 1813.
DEAR POOLE,--Love so deep and so domesticated with the whole being, as
mine was to you, can never cease _to be_. To quote the best and sweetest
lines I ever wrote:[103]--
Alas! they had been Friends in Youth!
But whisp’ring Tongues can poison Truth;
And Constancy lives in Realms above;
And Life is thorny; and Youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work, like Madness, in the Brain!
And so it chanced (as I divine)
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high Disdain
And Insult to his heart’s best Brother:
They parted--ne’er to meet again!
But never either found another
To free the hollow Heart from Paining--
They stood aloof, the Scars remaining,
Like Cliffs, which had been rent asunder,
A dreary Sea now flows between!--
But neither Frost, nor Heat, nor Thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been!
Stung as I have been with your unkindness to me, in my sore adversity, yet
the receipt of your two heart-engendered lines was sweeter than an
unexpected strain of sweetest music, or, in humbler phrase, it was the
only pleasurable sensation which the _success of the_ “Remorse” has given
me. I have read of, or perhaps only imagined, a punishment in Arabia, in
which the culprit was so bricked up as to be unable to turn his eyes to
the right or the left, while in front was placed a high heap of barren
sand glittering under the vertical sun. Some slight analogue of this, I
have myself suffered from the mere unusualness of having my attention
forcibly directed to a subject which permitted neither sequence of
imagery, or series of reasoning. No grocer’s apprentice, after his first
month’s permitted riot, was ever sicker of figs and raisins than I of
hearing about the “Remorse.” The endless rat-a-tat-tat at our
black-and-blue-bruised door, and my three master-fiends, proof sheets,
letters (for I have a raging epistolophobia), and worse than
these--invitations to large dinners, which I cannot refuse without offence
and imputation of pride, or accept without disturbance of temper the day
before, and a sick, aching stomach for two days after, so that my spirits
quite sink under it.
From what I myself saw, and from what an intelligent friend, more
solicitous about it than myself, has told me, the “Remorse” has succeeded
in spite of bad scenes, execrable acting, and newspaper calumny. In my
compliments to the actors, I endeavoured (such is the lot of this world,
in which our best qualities tilt against each other, _ex. gr._, our good
nature against our veracity) to make a lie edge round the truth as nearly
as possible. Poor Rae (why poor? for Ordonio has almost made his fortune)
did the best in his power, and is a good man ... a moral and affectionate
husband and father. But nature has denied him person and all volume and
depth of voice; so that the blundering coxcomb Elliston, by mere dint of
voice and self-conceit, out-dazzled him. It has been a good thing for the
theatre. They will get £8,000 or £10,000, and I shall get more than all my
literary labours put together; nay, thrice as much, subtracting my heavy
losses in the “Watchman” and “Friend,”--£400 including the copyright.
You will have heard that, previous to the acceptance of “Remorse,” Mr.
Jos. Wedgwood had withdrawn from his share of the annuity![104] Well, yes,
it is well!--for I can now be _sure_ that I loved him, revered him, and
was grateful to him from no selfish feeling. For equally (and may these
words be my final condemnation at the last awful day, if I speak not the
whole truth), equally do I at this moment love him, and with the same
reverential gratitude! To Mr. Thomas Wedgwood I felt, doubtless, love; but
it was mingled with fear, and constant apprehension of his too exquisite
taste in morals. But Josiah! Oh, I ever did, and ever shall, love him, as
a being so beautifully balanced in mind and heart deserves to be!
’Tis well, too, because it has given me the strongest impulse, the most
imperious motive I have experienced, to _prove_ to him that his past
munificence has not been _wasted_!
You perhaps may likewise have heard (_in the Whispering Gallery of the
World_) of the year-long difference between me and Wordsworth (compared
with the sufferings of which all the former afflictions of my life were
less than flea-bites), occasioned (in _great part_) by the wicked folly of
the arch-fool Montagu.
A reconciliation has taken place, but the _feeling_, which I had previous
to that moment, when the (three-fourth) calumny burst, like a thunderstorm
from a blue sky, on my soul, after fifteen years of such religious, almost
superstitious idolatry and self-sacrifice. Oh, no! no! that, I fear, never
can return. All outward actions, all inward wishes, all thoughts and
admirations will be the same--_are_ the same, but--aye, there remains an
immedicable _But_. Had W. said (what he acknowledges to have said) to you,
I should have thought it unkind, and have had a right to say, “Why, why am
I, whose whole being has been like a glass beehive before you for five
years, why do I hear this from a _third_ person for the first time?” But
to such ... as Montagu! just when W. himself had forewarned me! Oh! it cut
me to the heart’s core.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CHAPTER XII
A MELANCHOLY EXILE
1813-1815
CHAPTER XII
A MELANCHOLY EXILE
1813-1815
CXCVI. TO DANIEL STUART.
September 25, 1813.
DEAR STUART,--I forgot to ask you by what address a letter would best
reach you! Whether Kilburn House, Kilburn? I shall therefore send it, or
leave it at the “Courier” office. I found Southey so _chevaux-de-frized_
and pallisadoed by preëngagements that I could not reach at him till
Sunday sennight, that is, Sunday, October 3, when, if convenient, we
should be happy to wait on you. Southey will be in town till Monday
evening, and you have his brother’s address, should you wish to write to
him (Dr. Southey,[105] 28, Little Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square).
A curious paragraph in the “Morning Chronicle” of this morning, asserting
with its usual _comfortable_ anti-patriotism the determination of the
Emperor of Austria to persevere in the terms[106] offered to his
son-in-law, in his frenzy of power, even though he should be beaten to the
dust. Methinks there ought to be good authority before a journalist dares
prophesy folly and knavery in union of our Imperial Ally. An excellent
article ought to be written on this subject. In the same paper there is
what I should have called a masterly essay on the causes of the downfall
of the Comic Drama, if I was not perplexed by the distinct recollection of
having _conversed_ the greater part of it at Lamb’s. I wish you would read
it, and tell me what you think; for I seem to remember a conversation with
you in which you asserted the very contrary; that comic genius was the
thing wanting, and not comic subjects--that the watering places, or rather
the characters presented at them, had never been adequately managed, etc.
Might I request you to present my best respects to Mrs. Stuart as those of
an old acquaintance of yours, and, as far as I am myself conscious of, at
all times with hearty affection, your sincere friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. There are some half dozen more books of mine left at the “Courier”
office, Ben Jonson and sundry German volumes. As I am compelled to sell my
library,[107] you would oblige me by ordering the porter to take them to
19, London Street, Fitzroy Square; whom I will remunerate for his trouble.
I should not take this liberty, but that I had in vain written to Mr.
Street, requesting the same favour, which in his hurry of business I do
not wonder that he forgot.
CXCVII. TO JOSEPH COTTLE.[108]
April 26, 1814.
You have poured oil in the raw and festering wound of an old friend’s
conscience, Cottle! but it is _oil of vitriol_! I but barely glanced at
the middle of the first page of your letter, and have seen no more of
it--not from resentment (God forbid!), but from the state of my bodily and
mental sufferings, that scarcely permitted human fortitude to let in a new
visitor of affliction.
[Illustration]
The object of my present reply is to state the case just as it is. First,
that for ten years the anguish of my spirit has been indescribable, the
sense of my danger staring, but the consciousness of my GUILT worse, far
worse than all. I have prayed, with drops of agony on my brow, trembling
not only before the justice of my Maker, but even before the mercy of my
Redeemer. “I gave thee so many talents, what hast thou done with them?”
Secondly, overwhelmed as I am with a sense of my direful infirmity, I have
never attempted to disguise or conceal the cause. On the contrary, not
only to friends have I stated the whole case with tears and the very
bitterness of shame, but in two instances I have warned young men, mere
acquaintances, who had spoken of having taken laudanum, of the direful
consequences, by an awful exposition of the tremendous effects on myself.
Thirdly, though before God I cannot lift up my eyelids, and only do not
despair of His mercy, because to despair would be adding crime to crime,
yet to my fellow-men I may say that I was seduced into the ACCURSED habit
ignorantly. I had been almost bed-ridden for many months with swellings in
my knees. In a medical journal, I unhappily met with an account of a cure
performed in a similar case (or what appeared to me so), by rubbing in of
laudanum, at the same time taking a given dose internally. It acted like a
charm, like a miracle! I recovered the use of my limbs, of my appetite, of
my spirits, and this continued for near a fortnight. At length the unusual
stimulus subsided, the complaint returned, the supposed remedy was
recurred to--but I cannot go through the dreary history.
Suffice it to say, that effects were produced which acted on me by terror
and cowardice, of pain and sudden death, not (so help me God!) by any
temptation of pleasure, or expectation, or desire of exciting pleasurable
sensations. On the very contrary, Mrs. Morgan and her sister will bear
witness, so far as to say, that the longer I abstained the higher my
spirits were, the keener my enjoyment--till the moment, the direful
moment, arrived when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate,
and such a dreadful falling abroad, as it were, of my whole frame, such
intolerable restlessness, and incipient bewilderment, that in the last of
my several attempts to abandon the dire poison, I exclaimed in agony,
which I now repeat in seriousness and solemnity, “I am too poor to hazard
this.” Had I but a few hundred pounds, but £200--half to send to Mrs.
Coleridge, and half to place myself in a private madhouse, where I could
procure nothing but what a physician thought proper, and where a medical
attendant could be constantly with me for two or three months (in less
than that time life or death would be determined), then there might be
hope. Now there is none!! O God! how willingly would I place myself under
Dr. Fox, in his establishment; for my case is a species of madness, only
that it is a derangement, an utter impotence of the volition, and not of
the intellectual faculties. You bid me rouse myself: go bid a man
paralytic in both arms, to rub them briskly together, and that will cure
him. “Alas!” he would reply, “that I cannot move my arms is my complaint
and my misery.”
May God bless you, and your affectionate, but most afflicted,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CXCVIII. TO THE SAME.
Friday, May 27, 1814.
MY DEAR COTTLE,--Gladness be with you, for your convalescence, and equally
so, at the hope which has sustained and tranquillised you through your
imminent peril. Far otherwise is, and hath been, my state; yet I too am
grateful; yet I cannot rejoice. I feel, with an intensity unfathomable by
words, my utter nothingness, impotence, and worthlessness, in and for
myself. I have learned what a sin is, against an infinite imperishable
being, such as is the soul of man!
I have had more than a glimpse of what is meant by death and outer
darkness, and the worm that dieth not--and that all the _hell_ of the
reprobate is no more inconsistent with the love of God, than the blindness
of one who has occasioned loathsome and guilty diseases, to eat out his
eyes, is inconsistent with the light of the sun. But the consolations, at
least, the sensible sweetness of hope, I do not possess. On the contrary,
the temptation which I have constantly to fight up against is a fear, that
if _annihilation_ and the _possibility_ of _heaven_ were offered to my
choice, I should choose the former.
This is, perhaps, in part, a constitutional idiosyncrasy, for when a mere
boy I wrote these lines:--
O, what a wonder seems the fear of death,
Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep,
Babes, children, youths, and men,
Night following night, for three-score years and ten![109]
And in my early manhood, in lines descriptive of a gloomy solitude, I
disguised my own sensations in the following words:--
Here wisdom might abide, and here remorse!
Here, too, the woe-worn man, who, weak in soul,
And of this busy human heart aweary,
Worships the spirit of unconscious life
In tree or wild-flower. Gentle lunatic!
If so he might not wholly cease to BE,
He would far rather not be what he is;
But would be something that he knows not of,
In woods or waters, or among the rocks.[110]
My main comfort, therefore, consists in what the divines call the faith of
adherence, and no spiritual effort appears to benefit me so much as the
one earnest, importunate, and often for hours, momently repeated prayers:
“I believe! Lord, help my unbelief! Give me faith, but as a mustard seed,
and I shall remove this mountain! Faith! faith! faith! I believe. Oh, give
me faith! Oh, for my Redeemer’s sake, give me faith in my Redeemer.”
In all this I justify God, for I was accustomed to oppose the preaching of
the terrors of the gospel, and to represent it as debasing virtue by the
admixture of slavish selfishness.
I now see that what is spiritual can only be spiritually apprehended.
Comprehended it cannot.
Mr. Eden gave you a too flattering account of me. It is true, I am
restored as much beyond my expectations almost as my deserts; but I am
exceedingly weak. I need for myself solace and refocillation of animal
spirits, instead of being in a condition of offering it to others. Yet as
soon as I may see you, I will call upon you.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CXCIX. TO CHARLES MATHEWS.
2, Queen’s Square, Bristol, May 30, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--Unusual as this liberty may be, yet as it is a friendly one,
you will pardon it, especially from one who has had already some
connection with the stage, and may have more. But I was so highly
gratified with my feast of this night, that I feel a sort of restless
impulse to tell you what I felt and thought.
Imprimis, I grieved that you had such miserable materials to deal with as
Colman’s Solomon Grundy,[111] a character which in and of itself (Mathews
and his Variations _ad libitum_ put out of the question) contains no one
element of genuine comedy, no, nor even of fun or drollery. The play is
assuredly the very sediment, the dregs of a noble cask of wine; for such
_was_, yes, in _many_ instances _was_ and has been, and in many more
_might_ have been, _Colman’s_ dramatic genius.
A genius Colman _is_ by _nature_. What he is _not_, or has not been, is
all of his own making. In my humble opinion, he possessed the elements of
dramatic power in a far higher degree than Sheridan: or which of the two,
think you, should pronounce with the deeper sigh of self-reproach,
“_Fuimus_ Troes! and what might we not have been?”
But I leave this to proceed to the really astonishing effect of your
duplicate of Cook in Sir Archy McSarcasm.[112] To say that in some of
your higher notes your voice was rather _thinner_, rather less _substance_
and _thick_ body than poor Cook’s, would be merely to say that A. B. is
not exactly A. A. But, on the whole, it was almost _illusion_, and so very
excellent, that if I were intimate with you, I should get angry and abuse
you for not forming for yourself some _original_ and important character.
The man who could so impersonate Sir Archy McSarcasm might do _anything_
in _profound_ Comedy (that is, that which gives us the passions of men and
their endless modifications and influences on thought, gestures, etc.,
modified in their turn by circumstances of rank, relations, nationality,
etc., instead of mere transitory manners; in short, the inmost man
represented on the superficies, instead of the superficies merely
representing itself). But you will forgive a stranger for a suggestion? I
cannot but think that it would _answer_ for your still increasing fame if
you were either previously to, or as an occasional diversification of Sir
Archy, to study and give that one most incomparable monologue of Sir
Pertinax McSycophant,[113] where he gives his son the history of his rise
and progress in the world. Being in its essence a soliloquy with all the
advantages of a dialogue, it would be a most happy introduction to Sir
Archy McSarcasm, which, I doubt not, will call forth with good reason the
Covent Garden Manager’s thanks to you next season.
I once had the presumption to address this advice to an actor on the
London stage: “_Think_, in order that you may be able to _observe_!
_Observe_, in order that you may have materials to think upon! And
thirdly, keep awake ever the habit of instantly _embodying_ and
_realising_ the results of the two; but always _think_!”
A great actor, comic or tragic, is not to be a mere copy, a _fac simile_,
or but an _imitation_, of Nature. Now an imitation differs from a copy in
this, that it of necessity implies and demands _difference_, whereas a
copy aims at _identity_. What a marble peach on a mantelpiece, that you
take up deluded and put down with pettish disgust, is, compared with a
fruit-piece of Vanhuyser’s, even such is a mere _copy_ of nature compared
with a true histrionic _imitation_. A good actor is Pygmalion’s Statue, a
work of exquisite _art_, animated and gifted with _motion_; but still
_art_, still a species of _poetry_.
Not the least advantage which an actor gains by having secured a high
reputation is this, that those who sincerely admire him may dare tell him
the truth at times, and thus, if he have sensible friends, secure his
progressive improvement; in other words, keep him thinking. For without
thinking, nothing consummate can be effected.
Accept this, dear sir, as it is meant, a small testimony of the high
gratification I have received from you and of the respectful and sincere
kind wishes with which I am
Your obedient
S. T. COLERIDGE.
---- MATHEWS, Esq., to be left at the Bristol Theatre.
CC. TO JOSIAH WADE.
BRISTOL, June 26, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--For I am unworthy to call any good man friend--much less you,
whose hospitality and love I have abused; accept, however, my intreaties
for your forgiveness, and for your prayers.
Conceive a poor miserable wretch, who for many years has been attempting
to beat off pain, by a constant recurrence to the vice that reproduces it.
Conceive a spirit in hell, employed in tracing out for others the road to
that heaven, from which his crimes exclude him! In short, conceive
whatever is most wretched, helpless, and hopeless, and you will form as
tolerable a notion of my state, as it is possible for a good man to have.
I used to think the text in St. James that “he who offended in one point,
offends in all,” very harsh; but I now feel the awful, the tremendous
truth of it. In the one crime of OPIUM, what crime have I not made myself
guilty of!--Ingratitude to my Maker! and to my benefactors--injustice!
_and unnatural cruelty to my poor children!_--self-contempt for my
repeated promise--breach, nay, too often, actual falsehood!
After my death, I earnestly entreat, that a full and unqualified narration
of my wretchedness, and of its guilty cause, may be made public, that at
least some little good may be effected by the direful example.
May God Almighty bless you, and have mercy on your still affectionate, and
in his heart, grateful
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCI. TO JOHN MURRAY.
Josiah Wade’s, Esq., 2, Queen’s Square, Bristol,
August 23, 1814.
DEAR SIR,--I have heard, from my friend Mr. Charles Lamb, writing by
desire of Mr. Robinson, that you wish to have the justly-celebrated
“Faust”[114] of Goethe translated, and that some one or other of my
partial friends have induced you to consider me as the man most likely to
execute the work adequately, those excepted, of course, whose higher power
(established by the solid and satisfactory ordeal of the wide and rapid
sale of their works) it might seem profanation to employ in any other
manner than in the development of their own intellectual organisation. I
return my thanks to the recommender, whoever he be, and no less to you for
your flattering faith in the recommendation; and thinking, as I do, that
among many volumes of praiseworthy German poems, the “Louisa” of Voss, and
the “Faust” of Goethe, are the two, if not the only ones, that are
emphatically _original_ in their conception, and characteristic of a new
and peculiar sort of thinking and imagining, I should not be averse from
exerting my best efforts in an attempt to import whatever is importable of
either or of both into our own language.
But let me not be suspected of a presumption of which I am not consciously
guilty, if I say that I feel two difficulties: one arising from long
disuse of versification, added to what _I_ know, better than the most
hostile critic could inform me, of my comparative weakness; and the other,
that _any_ work in Poetry strikes me with more than common awe, as
proposed for realization by myself, because from long habits of meditation
on language, as the symbolical medium of the connection of Thought with
Thought, and of Thought as affected and modified by Passion and Emotion, I
should spend days in avoiding what I deemed faults, though with the full
fore-knowledge that their admission would not have offended perhaps three
of all my readers, and might be deemed Beauties by 300--if so many there
were; and this not out of any respect for the Public (_i. e._ the persons
who might happen to purchase and look over the Book), but from a
hobby-horsical, superstitious regard to my own feelings and sense of duty.
Language is the Sacred Fire in this Temple of Humanity, and the Muses are
its especial and vestal Priestesses. Though I cannot prevent the vile
drugs and counterfeit Frankincense, which render its flame at once pitchy,
glowing, and unsteady, I would yet be no voluntary accomplice in the
Sacrilege. With the commencement of a PUBLIC, commences the degradation of
the GOOD and the BEAUTIFUL--both fade and retire before the accidentally
AGREEABLE. “Othello” becomes a hollow lip-worship; and the “CASTLE
SPECTRE” or any more peccant thing of Froth, Noise, and Impermanence, that
may have overbillowed it on the restless sea of curiosity, is the _true_
Prayer of the Praise and Admiration.
I thought it right to state to you these opinions of mine, that you might
know that I think the Translation of the “Faust” a task demanding (from
_me_, I mean) no ordinary efforts--and why? This--that it is painful, very
painful, and even odious to me, to attempt anything of a literary nature,
with any motive of _pecuniary_ advantage; but that I bow to the all-wise
Providence, which has made me a _poor_ man, and therefore compelled me by
other duties inspiring feelings, to bring _even my Intellect to the
Market_. And the finale is this. I should like to attempt the Translation.
If you will mention your terms, at once and irrevocably (for I am an idiot
at bargaining, and shrink from the very thought), I will return an answer
by the next Post, whether in my present circumstances, I can or cannot
undertake it. If I do, I will do it immediately; but I must have all
Goethe’s works, which I cannot procure in Bristol; for to give the “Faust”
without a preliminary critical Essay would be worse than nothing, as far
as regards the PUBLIC. If you were to ask me as a friend whether I think
it would suit _the General Taste_, I should reply that I cannot calculate
on caprice and accident (for instance, some fashionable man or review
happening to take it up favourably), but that otherwise my fears would be
stronger than my hopes. Men of genius will admire it, of necessity. Those
must, who think deepest and most imaginatively. Then “Louisa” would
delight _all_ of good hearts.
I remain, dear sir, with every respect,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCII. TO DANIEL STUART.
Mr. Smith’s, Ashley, Box, near Bath,
September 12, 1814.
MY DEAR SIR,--I wrote some time ago to Mr. Smith, earnestly requesting
your address, and entreating him to inform you of the dreadful state in
which I was, when your kind letter must have arrived, during your stay at
Bath.... But let me not complain. I ought to be and I trust I am, grateful
for what I am, having escaped with my intellectual powers, if less
elastic, yet not less vigorous, and with ampler and far more solid
materials to exert them on. We know nothing even of ourselves, till we
know _ourselves_ to be as nothing (a solemn truth, spite of point and
antithesis, in which the thought has chanced to _word_ itself)! From this
_word_ of truth which the sore discipline of a sick bed has compacted into
an indwelling reality, from this article, formerly, of _speculative
belief_, but which [circumstances] have actualised into _practical faith_,
I have learned to counteract calumny by self-reproach, and not only to
rejoice (as indeed from natural disposition, from the very constitution of
my heart, I should have done at all periods of my life) at the temporal
prosperity, and increased and increasing reputation of my old
fellow-labourers in philosophical, political, and poetical literature, but
to bear their neglect, and even their detraction, _as if I had done
nothing at all_, when it would have asked no very violent strain of
recollection for one or two of them to have considered, whether some part
of _their_ most successful _somethings_ were not among the _nothings_ of
my intellectual no-doings. But all strange things are less strange than
the sense of intellectual obligations. Seldom do I ever see a Review, yet
almost as often as that seldomness permits have I smiled at finding myself
attacked in strains of thought which would never have occurred to the
writer, had he not directly or indirectly learned them from myself. This
is among the salutary effects, even of the dawn of actual religion on the
mind, that we begin to reflect on our duties to God and to ourselves as
permanent beings, and not to flatter ourselves by a superficial auditing
of our negative duties to our neighbours, or mere acts _in transitu_ to
the transitory. I have too sad an account to settle between myself that is
and has been, and myself that _can_ not cease to be, to allow me a single
complaint that, for all my labours in behalf of truth against the Jacobin
party, then against military despotism abroad, against weakness and
despondency and faction and factious goodiness at home, I have never
received from those in power even a verbal acknowledgment; though by mere
reference to dates, it might be proved that no small number of fine
speeches in the House of Commons, and elsewhere, originated, directly or
indirectly, in my Essays and conversations.[115] I dare assert, that the
science of reasoning and judging concerning the productions of literature,
the characters and measures of public men, and the events of nations, by a
systematic subsumption of them, under PRINCIPLES, deduced from the nature
of MAN, and that of prophesying concerning the future (in contradiction to
the hopes or fears of the majority) by a careful cross-examination of some
period, the most analogous in past history, as learnt from contemporary
authorities, and the proportioning of the ultimate event to the likenesses
as modified or counteracted by the differences, was as good as unknown in
the public prints, before the year 1795-96. Earl Darnley, on the
appearance of my letters in the “Courier” concerning the Spaniards,[116]
bluntly asked me, whether I had lost my senses, and quoted Lord Grenville
at me. If you should happen to cast your eye over my character of
Pitt,[117] my two letters to Fox, my Essays on the French Empire under
Buonaparte, compared with the Roman, under the first Emperors; that on the
probability of the restoration of the Bourbons, and those on Ireland, and
Catholic Emancipation (which last unfortunately remain for the greater
part in manuscript, Mr. Street not relishing them), and should add to them
my Essays in “The Friend” on Taxation, and the supposed effects of war on
our commercial prosperity; those on international law in defence of our
siege of Copenhagen; and if you had before you the long letter which I
wrote to Sir G. Beaumont in 1806,[118] concerning the inevitableness of a
war with America, and the specific dangers of that war, if not provided
against by specific pre-arrangements; with a list of their Frigates, so
called, with their size, number, and weight of metal, the characters of
their commanders, and the proportion suspected of British seamen.--I have
luckily a copy of it, a rare accident with me.--I dare amuse myself, I
say, with the belief, that by far the better half of all these, would
read to you now, AS HISTORY. And what have I got for all this? What for my
first daring to blow the trumpet of sound philosophy against the
Lancastrian faction? The answer is not complex. Unthanked, and left worse
than defenceless, by the friends of the Government and the Establishment,
to be undermined or outraged by all the malice, hatred, and calumny of its
enemies; and to think and toil, with a patent for all the abuse, and a
transfer to others of all the honours. In the “Quarterly” Review of the
“Remorse” (delayed till it could by no possibility be of the least service
to me, and the compliments in which are as senseless and silly as the
censures; every fault ascribed to it, being either no improbability at
all, or from the very essence and end of the drama no DRAMATIC
improbability, without noticing any one of the REAL faults, and there are
many glaring, and one or two DEADLY sins in the tragedy)--in this Review,
I am abused, and insolently reproved as a man, with reference to my
supposed private habits, for NOT PUBLISHING. Would to heaven I never had!
To this very moment I am embarrassed and tormented, in consequence of the
non-payment of the subscribers to “The Friend.” But I _could_ rebut the
charge; and not merely say, but prove, that there is not a man in England,
whose thoughts, images, words, and erudition have been published in larger
quantities than _mine_; though I must admit, not _by_, or _for_, myself.
Believe me, if I felt any pain from these things, I should not make this
_exposé_; for it is constitutional with me, to _shrink_ from all talk or
communication of what gnaws within me. And, if I felt any real anger, I
should not do what I fully intend to do, publish two long satires, in
Drydenic verse, entitled “Puff and Slander.”[119] But I seem to myself to
have endured the hootings and peltings, and “Go up bald head” (2 Kings,
ch. ii. vs. 23, 24) quite long enough; and shall therefore send forth my
two she-bears, to tear in pieces the most obnoxious of these ragged
CHILDREN in intellect; and to scare the rest of these mischievous little
mud-larks back to their crevice-nests, and lurking holes. While those who
know me best, spite of my many infirmities, love me best, I am determined,
henceforward, to treat my unprovoked enemies in the spirit of the Tiberian
adage, _Oderint modo timeant_.
And now, having for the very first time in my whole life opened out my
whole feelings and thoughts concerning my past fates and fortunes, I will
draw anew on your patience, by a detail of my present operations. My
medical friend is so well satisfied of my convalescence, and that nothing
now remains, but to superinduce _positive_ health on a system from which
disease and its _removable_ causes have been driven out, that he has not
merely consented to, but advised my leaving Bristol, for some rural
retirement. I could indeed pursue nothing uninterruptedly in that city.
Accordingly, I am now joint tenant with Mr. Morgan, of a sweet little
cottage, at Ashley, half a mile from Box, on the Bath road. I breakfast
every morning before nine; work till one, and walk or read till three.
Thence, till tea-time, chat or read some lounge book, or correct what I
have written. From six to eight work again; from eight till bed-time, play
whist, or the little mock billiard called bagatelle, and then sup, and go
to bed. My morning hours, as the longest and most important division, I
keep sacred to my most important Work,[120] which is printing at Bristol;
two of my friends having taken upon themselves the risk. It is so long
since I have conversed with you, that I cannot say, whether the subject
will, or will not be interesting to you. The title is “Christianity, the
one true Philosophy; or, Five Treatises on the Logos, or Communicative
Intelligence, natural, human, and divine.” To which is prefixed a
prefatory Essay, on the laws and limits of toleration and liberality,
illustrated by fragments of AUTO-biography. The _first_ Treatise--Logos
Propaidenticos, or the Science of systematic thinking in ordinary life.
The _second_--Logos Architectonicus, or an attempt to apply the
constructive or Mathematical process to Metaphysics and Natural Theology.
The _third_--Ὁ Λόγος ὁ θεάνθρωπος (the divine logos incarnate)--a full
commentary on the Gospel of St. John, in development of St. Paul’s
doctrine of preaching Christ alone, and Him crucified. The _fourth_--on
Spinoza and Spinozism, with a life of B. Spinoza. This entitled Logos
Agonistes. The _fifth_ and last, Logos Alogos (_i. e._, Logos Illogicus),
or on modern Unitarianism, its causes and effects. The whole will be
comprised in two portly octavos, and the second treatise will be the only
one which will, and from the nature of the subject must, be
unintelligible to the great majority even of well educated readers. The
purpose of the whole is a philosophical defence of the Articles of the
Church, as far as they respect doctrine, as points of faith. If
originality be any merit, this Work will have that, at all events, from
the first page to the last.
The evenings I have employed in composing a series of Essays on the
principles of Genial Criticism concerning the fine Arts, especially those
of Statuary and Painting;[121] and of these four in title, but six or more
in size, have been published in “Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal;” a
strange plan for such a publication; but my motive was originally to serve
poor Allston, who is now exhibiting his pictures at Bristol. Oh! dear sir!
do pray if you have the power or opportunity use your influence with “The
Sun,” not to continue that accursed system of calumny and detraction
against Allston. The articles, by whomever written, were a disgrace to
human nature, and, to my positive knowledge, argued only less ignorance
than malignity. Mr. Allston has been cruelly used. Good God! what did I
not hear Sir George Beaumont say, with my own ears! Nay, he wrote to me
after repeated examination of Allston’s great picture, declaring himself a
complete convert to all my opinions of Allston’s paramount genius as a
historical painter. What did I not hear Mr. West say? After a full hour’s
examination of the picture, he pointed out _one_ thing he thought out of
harmony (and which against my earnest desire Allston altered and had
reason to repent sorely) and then said, “I have shot my bolt. It is as
near perfection as a picture can be!”...
But to return to my Essays. I shall publish no more in Bristol. What they
could do, they have done. But I have carefully corrected and polished
those already published, and shall carry them on to sixteen or twenty,
containing animated descriptions of all the best pictures of the great
masters in England, with characteristics of the great masters from Giotto
to Correggio. The first three Essays were of necessity more austere; for
till it could be determined what _beauty_ was; whether it was beauty
merely because it pleased, or pleased because it was beauty, it would have
been as absurd to talk of general principles of taste, as of tastes. Now
will this series, purified from all accidental, local, or personal
references, tint or serve the “Courier” in the present dearth? I have no
hesitation in declaring them the best compositions _I_ have ever written,
I could regularly supply two Essays a week, and one political Essay. Be so
good as to speak to Mr. Street.[122] I could send him up eight or ten at
once.
Make my best respects to Mrs. Stuart. I shall be very anxious to hear from
you.
Your affectionate and grateful friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCIII. TO THE SAME.
“October 30, 1814.”
DEAR STUART,--After I had finished the third letter,[123] I thought it the
best I had ever written; but, on re-perusal, I perfectly agree with you.
It is misty, and like most misty compositions, _laborious_,--what the
Italians call FATICOSO. I except the two last paragraphs (“In this guise
my Lord,” to--“aversabitur”). These I still like. Yet what I _wanted_ to
say is very important, because it strikes at the ROOT of all LEGISLATIVE
Jacobinism. The view which our laws take of robbery, and even murder, not
as GUILT of which God alone is presumed to be the Judge, but as CRIMES
depriving the _King_ of one of _his_ subjects, rendering dangerous and
abating the value of the King’s Highways, etc., may suggest some notion of
my meaning. Jack, Tom, and Harry have no existence in the eye of the law,
except as included in some form or other of the PERMANENT PROPERTY of the
realm. Just as, on the other hand, Religion has nothing to do with Ranks,
Estates, or Offices; but exerts itself wholly on what is PERSONAL, viz.,
our souls, consciences, and the MORALITY of our actions, as opposed to
mere legality. Ranks, Estates, Offices, etc., were _made_ for _persons_!
exclaims Major Cartwright[124] and his partizans. Yes, I reply, as far as
the DIVINE administration is concerned, but _human_ jurisprudence, wisely
aware of its own weakness, and sensible how incommensurate its powers are
with so vast an object as the well-being of individuals, as individuals,
reverses the position, and knows nothing of persons, other than as
properties, officiaries, subjects. The preambles of our old statutes
concerning aliens (as foreign merchants) and Jews, are all so many
illustrations of my principle; the strongest instance of opposition to
which, and therefore characteristic of the present age, was the attempt to
legislate for animals by Lord Erskine;[125] that is, not merely
interfering with persons as persons; or with what are called by moralists
the imperfect duties (a very obscure phrase for obligations of conscience,
not capable of being realized (_perfecta_) by legal penalties), but
extending PERSONALITY to _things_.
In saying this, I mean only to designate the general spirit of human law.
Every principle, on its application to practice, must be limited and
modified by circumstances; our reason by our common sense. Still, however,
the PRINCIPLE is most important, as aim, rule, and guide. Guided by this
spirit, our ancestors repealed the Puritan Law, by which adultery was to
be punished with death, and brought it back to a civil damage. So, too,
actions for seduction. Not that the Judge or Legislator did not feel the
guilt of such crimes, but that the _Law_ knows nothing about guilt. So, in
the Exchequer, common debts are sued for on the plea that the creditor is
less able to pay our Lord the King, etc., etc. Now, contrast with this,
the preamble to the first French Constitution, and I think my meaning will
become more intelligible; that the pretence of considering persons not
states, happiness not property, always has ended, and always will end, in
making a new STATE, or corporation, infinitely more oppressive than the
former; and in which the real freedom of persons is as much less, as the
things interfered with are more numerous, and more minute. Compare the
duties, exacted from a United Irishman by the Confederacy, with those
required of him by the law of the land. This, I think, not ill expressed,
in the two last periods of the fourth paragraph. “Thus in order to
sacrifice ... confederation.”
Of course I immediately recognised your hand in the Article concerning the
“Edinburgh Review,” and much pleased I was with it; and equally so in
finding, from your letter, that we had so completely coincided in our
feelings, concerning that wicked Lord Nelson Article.[126] If there be one
thing on earth that can outrage an honest man’s feelings, it is the
assumption of austere morality for the purposes of personal slander. And
the gross ingratitude of the attack! In the name of God what have we to do
with Lord Nelson’s mistresses, or domestic quarrels? Sir A. Ball, himself
exemplary in this respect, told me of his own personal knowledge Lady
Nelson was enough to drive any man wild.... She had no sympathy with his
acute sensibilities, and his alienation was effected, though not shown,
before he knew Lady Hamilton, by being _heart starved_, still more than by
being teased and tormented by her sullenness. Observe that Sir A. Ball
detested Lady Hamilton. To the same enthusiastic sensibilities which made
a fool of him with regard to his Emma, his country owed the victories of
the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, and the heroic spirit of all the
officers reared under him.
When I was at Bowood there was a plan suggested between Bowles and myself,
to engage among the cleverest literary characters of our knowledge, six or
eight, each of whom was to engage to take some one subject of those into
which the “Edinburgh Review” might be aptly divided; as Science, Classical
Knowledge, Style, Taste, Philosophy, Political Economy, Morals, Religion,
and Patriotism; to state the number of Essays he could write and the time
at which he would deliver each; and so go through the whole of the
“Review”:--to be published in the first instance in the “Courier” during
the Recess of Parliament. We thought of Southey, Wordsworth, Crowe,
Crabbe, Wollaston; and Bowles thought he could answer for several single
Articles from persons of the highest rank in the Church and our two
Universities. Such a plan, adequately executed, seven or eight years ago,
would have gone near to blow up this Magazine of Mischief.
As to Ridgeway[127] and the Essays, I have not only no objection to my
name being given, but I should prefer it. I have just as much right to
call myself dramatically an Irish Protestant, when writing in the
character of one, as Swift had to call himself a draper.[128] I have waded
through as mischievous a Work, as two huge quartos, very dull, can be, by
a Mr. Edward Wakefield, called an Account of Ireland. Of all scribblers
these agricultural quarto-mongers are the vilest. I thought of making the
affairs of Ireland, _in toto_, chiefly however with reference to the
Catholic Question, a new series, and of republishing in the Appendix to
the eight letters to Mr. Justice Fletcher, Lord Clare’s (then Chancellor
Fitzgibbon’s) admirable speech, worthy of Demosthenes, of which a copy was
brought me over from Dublin by Rickman, and given to Lamb. It was never
printed in England, nor is it to be procured. I never met with a person
who had heard of it. Except that one main point is omitted (and it is
remarkable that the poet Edmund Spenser in his Dialogue on Ireland[129] is
the only writer who has urged this point), viz., the forcing upon savages
the laws of a comparatively civilised people, instead of adopting measures
gradually to render them susceptible of those laws, this speech might be
deservedly called the philosophy of the past and present history of
Ireland. It makes me smile to observe, how all the mediocre men exult in a
Ministry that have been so successful without any overpowering talent of
eloquence, etc. It is true that a series of gigantic events like those of
the last eighteen months, will lift up any cock-boat to the skies upon
their billows; but no less true that, sooner or later, parliamentary
talent will be found absolutely requisite for an English Ministry.
With sincere regard and esteem, your obliged
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCIV. TO JOHN KENYON.[130]
Mr. B. Morgan’s, Bath, November 3 [1814].
MY DEAR SIR,--At Binn’s, Cheap Street, I found Jeremy Taylor’s “Dissuasive
from Popery,” in the largest and only complete edition of his Polemical
Tracts. Mr. Binns had no objection to the paragraphs being transcribed any
morning or evening at his house, and I put in a piece of paper with the
words at which the transcript should begin and with which end--p. 450, l.
5, to p. 451, l. 31, I believe. But indeed I am ashamed, rather I feel
awkward and uncomfortable at obtruding on you so long a task, much longer
than I had imagined. I don’t like to use any words that might give you
_un_pleasure, but I cannot help fearing that, like a child spoilt by your
and Mrs. Kenyon’s great indulgence, I may have been betrayed into
presuming on it more than I ought. Indeed, my dear sir! I do feel very
keenly how exceeding kind you and Mrs. K. have been to me. It makes this
scrawl of mine look dim in a way that was less uncommon with me formerly
than it has been for the last eight or ten years.
But to return, or turn off, to the good old Bishop. It would be worth your
while to read Taylor’s “Letter on Original Sin,” and what follows. I
compare it to an old statue of Janus, with one of the faces, that which
looks towards his opponents, the controversial phiz in highest
preservation,--the force of a mighty one, all power, all life,--the face
of a God rushing on to battle, and, in the same moment, enjoying at once
both contest and triumph; the other, that which should have been the
countenance that looks toward his followers, that with which he
substitutes his own opinion, all weather eaten, dim, useless, a _Ghost_ in
_marble_, such as you may have seen represented in many of Piranesi’s
astounding engravings from Rome and the Campus Martius. Jer. Taylor’s
discursive intellect dazzle-darkened his intuition. The principle of
becoming all things to all men, if by _any_ means he might save _any_,
with him as with Burke, thickened the protecting epidermis of the
tact-nerve of truth into something like a callus. But take him all in all,
such a miraculous combination of erudition, broad, deep, and omnigenous;
of logic subtle as well as acute, and as robust as agile; of psychological
insight, so fine yet so secure! of public prudence and practical
_sageness_ that one ray of _creative Faith_ would have lit up and
transfigured into wisdom, and of genuine imagination, with its streaming
face unifying all at one moment like that of the setting sun when through
an interspace of blue sky no larger than itself, it emerges from the cloud
to sink behind the mountain, but a face seen only at _starts_, when some
breeze from the higher air scatters, for a moment, the cloud of butterfly
fancies, which flutter around him like a morning-garment of ten thousand
colours--(now how shall I get out of this sentence? the tail is too big to
be taken up into the coiler’s mouth)--well, as I was saying, I believe
such a complete man hardly shall we meet again.
May God bless you and yours!
Your obliged
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. My address after Tuesday will be (God permitting) Mr. Page’s,
Surgeon, Calne.
J. KENYON, Esq., 9, Argyle Street.
CCV. TO LADY BEAUMONT.
April 3, 1815.
DEAR MADAM,--Should your Ladyship still have among your papers those lines
of mine to Mr. Wordsworth after his recitation of the poem on the growth
of his own spirit,[131] which you honoured by wishing to take a copy, you
would oblige me by enclosing them for me, addressed--“Mr. Coleridge,
Calne, Wilts.” Of “The Excursion,” excluding the tale of the ruined
cottage, which I have ever thought the finest poem in our language,
comparing it with any of the same or similar _length_, I can truly say
that one half the number of its beauties would make all the beauties of
all his contemporary poets collectively mount to the balance:--but
yet--the fault may be in my own mind--I do not think, I did not feel, it
equal to the work on the growth of his own spirit. As proofs meet me in
every part of “The Excursion” that the poet’s genius has not flagged, I
have sometimes fancied that, having by the conjoint operation of his own
experiences, feelings, and reason, _himself_ convinced _himself_ of
truths, which the generality of persons have either taken for granted from
their infancy, or, at least, adopted in early life, he has attached all
their own depth and weight to doctrines and words, which come almost as
truisms or commonplaces to others. From this state of mind, in which I was
comparing Wordsworth with himself, I was roused by the infamous
“Edinburgh” review of the poem. If ever guilt lay on a writer’s head, and
if malignity, slander, hypocrisy, and self-contradictory baseness can
constitute guilt, I dare openly, and openly (please God!) I will, impeach
the writer of that article of it. These are awful times--a dream of
dreams! To be a prophet is, and ever has been, an unthankful office. At
the Illumination for the Peace I furnished a design for a friend’s
transparency--a vulture, with the head of Napoleon, chained to a rock, and
Britannia bending down, with one hand stretching out the wing of the
vulture, and with the other clipping it with shears, on the one blade of
which was written Nelson, on the other Wellington. The motto--
We’ve fought for peace, and conquer’d it at last;
The ravening Vulture’s leg is fetter’d fast.
Britons, rejoice! and yet be wary too!
The chain may break, the clipt wing sprout anew.[132]
And since I have conversed with those who first returned from France, I
have weekly expected the event. Napoleon’s object at present is to
embarrass the Allies, and to cool the enthusiasm of their subjects. The
latter he unfortunately will be too successful in. In London, my Lady, it
is scarcely possible to distinguish the opinions of the people from the
ravings and railings of the mob; but in country towns we must be blind not
to see the real state of the popular mind. I do not know whether your
Ladyship read my letters to Judge Fletcher. I can assure you it is no
exaggerated picture of the predominance of Jacobinism. In this small town
of Calne five hundred volunteers were raised in the last war. I am
persuaded that five could not be raised now. A considerable landowner,
and a man of great observation, said to me last week, “A famine, sir,
could scarce have produced more evil than the Corn Bill[133] has done
under the present circumstances.” I speak nothing of the Bill itself,
except that, after the closest attention and the most sedulous inquiry
after facts from landowners, farmers, stewards, millers, and bakers, I am
convinced that both opponents and advocates were in extremes, and that an
evil produced by many causes was by many remedies to have been cured, not
by the universal elixir of one sweeping law.
My poems will be put to press by the middle of June. A number adequate to
one volume are already in the hands of my friends at Bristol, under
conditions that _they_ are to be published at all events, even though I
should not add another volume, which I never had so little reason to
doubt. Within the last two days I have composed three poems, containing
500 lines in the whole.
Mr. and Mrs. Morgan present their respective compliments to your Ladyship
and Sir George.
I remain, my Lady, your Ladyship’s obliged humble servant,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCVI. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
CALNE, May 30, 1815.
MY HONOURED FRIEND,--On my return from Devizes, whither I had gone to
procure some vaccine matter (the small-pox having appeared in Calne, and
Mrs. Morgan’s sister believing herself never to have had it), I found your
letter: and I will answer it immediately, though to answer it as I could
wish to do would require more recollection and arrangement of thought
than is always to be commanded on the instant. But I dare not trust my own
habit of procrastination, and, do what I would, it would be impossible in
a single letter to give more than _general_ convictions. But, even after a
tenth or twentieth letter, I should still be disquieted as knowing how
poor a substitute must letters be for a _vivâ voce_ examination of a work
with its author, line by line. It is most uncomfortable from many, many
causes, to express anything but sympathy, and gratulation to an absent
friend, to whom for the more substantial third of a life we have been
habituated to look up: especially where a love, though increased by many
and different influences, yet begun and throve and knit its joints in the
perception of his superiority. It is not in _written words_, but by the
hundred modifications that looks make and tone, and denial of the _full_
sense of the very words used, that one can reconcile the struggle between
sincerity and diffidence, between the persuasion that I am in the right,
and that as deep though not so vivid conviction, that it may be the
positiveness of ignorance rather than the certainty of insight. Then come
the human frailties, the dread of giving pain, or exciting suspicions of
alteration and dyspathy, in short, the almost inevitable insincerities
between imperfect beings, however sincerely attached to each other. It is
hard (and I am Protestant enough to doubt whether _it is_ right) to
confess the whole truth (even _of_ one’s self, human nature scarce endures
it, even _to_ one’s self), but to me it is still harder to do this of and
to a revered friend.
But to your letter. First, I had never determined to print the lines
addressed to you. I lent them to Lady Beaumont on her promise that they
should be copied, and returned; and not knowing of any copy in my own
possession, I sent for them, because I was making a MS. collection of
_all_ my poems--publishable and unpublishable--and still more perhaps for
the handwriting of the only perfect copy, that entrusted to her ladyship.
Most assuredly, I never once thought of printing them without having
consulted you, and since I lit on the first rude draught, and corrected it
as well as I could, I wanted no additional reason for its not being
published in my lifetime than its _personality_ respecting myself. After
the opinions I had given publicly, in the preference of “Lycidas” (moral
no less than poetical) to Cowley’s Monody, I could not have printed it
consistently. It is for the biographer, not the poet, to give the
_accidents_ of _individual_ life. Whatever is not representative, generic,
may be indeed most poetically expressed, but is not poetry. Otherwise, I
confess, your prudential reasons would not have weighed with me, except as
far as my name might haply injure your reputation, for there is nothing in
the lines, as far as your powers are concerned, which I have not as fully
expressed elsewhere; and I hold it a miserable cowardice to withhold a
deliberate opinion only because the man is alive.
Secondly, for “The Excursion,” I feared that had I been silent concerning
“The Excursion,” Lady Beaumont would have drawn some strange inference;
and yet I had scarcely sent off the letter before I repented that I had
not run that risk rather than have approach to dispraise communicated to
you by a third person. But what did my criticism amount to, reduced to its
full and naked sense? This, that _comparatively_ with the _former_ poem,
“The Excursion,” as far as it was new to me, had disappointed my
expectations; that the excellencies were so many and of so high a class
that it was impossible to attribute the inferiority, if any such really
existed, to any flagging of the writer’s own genius--and that I
conjectured that it might have been occasioned by the influence of
self-established convictions having given to certain thoughts and
expressions a depth and force which they had not for readers in general.
In order, therefore, to explain the _disappointment_, I must recall to
your mind what my _expectations_ were: and, as these again were founded on
the supposition that (in whatever order it might be published) the poem on
the growth of your own mind was as the ground plot and the roots, out of
which “The Recluse” was to have sprung up as the tree, as far as [there
was] the same sap in both, I expected them, doubtless, to have formed one
complete whole; but in matter, form, and product to be different, each not
only a distinct but a different work. In the first I had found “themes by
thee first sung aright,”
Of smiles spontaneous and mysterious fears
(The first-born they of reason and twin-birth)
Of tides obedient to external force,
And currents self-determin’d, as might seem,
Or by some central breath; of moments awful,
Now in thy inner life, and now abroad,
When power stream’d from thee, and thy soul received
The light reflected as a light bestowed;
Of fancies fair, and milder hours of youth,
Hyblæan murmurs of poetic thought
Industrious in its joy, in vales and glens
Native or outland, lakes and famous hills!
Or on the lonely highroad, when the stars
Were rising; or by secret mountain streams,
The guides and the companions of thy way;
Of more than _fancy_--of the _social sense_
Distending wide, and man beloved as man,
Where France in all her towns lay vibrating,
Ev’n as a bark becalm’d beneath the burst
Of Heaven’s immediate thunder, when no cloud
Is visible, or shadow on the main!
For Thou wert there, thy own brows garlanded,
Amid the tremor of a realm aglow,
Amid a mighty nation jubilant,
When from the general heart of human kind
_Hope_ sprang forth, like a full-born Deity!
Of that dear Hope afflicted, and amaz’d,
So homeward summon’d! thenceforth calm and sure
From the dread watch-tower of man’s absolute self,
With light unwaning on her eyes, to look
Far on! herself a glory to behold,
The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)
Of duty, chosen laws controlling choice,
Action and Joy! _An Orphic song indeed,
A song divine of high and passionate truths,
To their own music chaunted!_
Indeed, through the whole of that Poem, με Αὔρα τις εἰσ έπνευσε
μουσικωτάτη. This I considered as “The Excursion;”[134] and the second, as
“The Recluse” I had (from what I had at different times gathered from your
conversation on the Place [Grasmere]) anticipated as commencing with you
set down and settled in an abiding home, and that with the description of
that home you were to begin a _philosophical poem_, the _result_ and
fruits of a spirit so framed and so disciplined as had been told in the
former.
Whatever in Lucretius is poetry is not philosophical, whatever is
philosophical is not poetry; and in the very pride of confident hope I
looked forward to “The Recluse” as the _first_ and _only_ true
philosophical poem in existence. Of course, I expected the colours, music,
imaginative life, and passion of _poetry_; but the matter and arrangement
of _philosophy_; not doubting from the advantages of the subject that the
totality of a system was not only capable of being harmonised with, but
even calculated to aid, the unity (beginning, middle, and end) of a poem.
Thus, whatever the length of the work might be, still it was a
_determinate_ length; of the subjects announced, each would have its own
appointed place, and, excluding repetitions, each would relieve and rise
in interest above the other. I supposed you first to have meditated the
faculties of man in the abstract, in their correspondence with his sphere
of action, and, first in the feeling, touch, and taste, then in the eye,
and last in the ear,--to have laid a solid and immovable foundation for
the edifice by removing the sandy sophisms of Locke, and the mechanic
dogmatists, and demonstrating that the senses were living growths and
developments of the mind and spirit, in a much juster as well as higher
sense, than the mind can be said to be formed by the senses. Next, I
understood that you would take the human race in the concrete, have
exploded the absurd notion of Pope’s “Essay on Man,” Darwin, and all the
countless believers even (strange to say) among Christians of man’s having
progressed from an ourang-outang state--so contrary to all history, to all
religion, nay, to all possibility--to have affirmed a Fall in some sense,
as a fact, the possibility of which cannot be understood from the nature
of the will, but the reality of which is attested by experience and
conscience. Fallen men contemplated in the different ages of the world,
and in the different states--savage, barbarous, civilised, the lonely cot,
or borderer’s wigwam, the village, the manufacturing town, seaport, city,
universities, and, not disguising the sore evils under which the whole
creation groans, to point out, however, a manifest scheme of redemption,
of reconciliation from this enmity with Nature--what are the obstacles,
the _Antichrist_ that must be and already is--and to conclude by a grand
didactic swell on the necessary identity of a true philosophy with true
religion, agreeing in the results and differing only as the analytic and
synthetic process, as discursive from intuitive, the former chiefly useful
as perfecting the latter; in short, the necessity of a general revolution
in the modes of developing and disciplining the human mind by the
substitution of life and intelligence (considered in its different powers
from the plant up to that state in which the difference of degree becomes
a new kind (man, self-consciousness), but yet not by essential opposition)
for the philosophy of mechanism, which, in everything that is most worthy
of the human intellect, strikes _Death_, and cheats itself by mistaking
clear images for distinct conceptions, and which idly demands conceptions
where intuitions alone are possible or adequate to the majesty of the
Truth. In short, facts elevated into theory--theory into laws--and laws
into living and intelligent powers--true idealism necessarily perfecting
itself in realism, and realism refining itself into idealism.
Such or something like this was the plan I had supposed that you were
engaged on. Your own words will therefore explain my feelings, viz., that
your object “was not to convey recondite, or refined truths, but to place
commonplace truths in an interesting point of view.” Now this I suppose to
have been in your two volumes of poems, as far as was desirable or
possible, without an insight into the whole truth. How can common truths
be made permanently interesting but by being _bottomed_ on our common
nature? It is only by the profoundest insight into numbers and quantity
that a sublimity and even religious wonder become attached to the simplest
operations of arithmetic, the most evident properties of the circle or
triangle. I have only to finish a preface, which I shall have done in two,
or, at farthest, three days; and I will then, dismissing all comparison
either with the poem on the growth of your own support, or with the
imagined plan of “The Recluse,” state fairly my main objections to “The
Excursion” as it is. But it would have been alike unjust both to you and
to myself, if I had led you to suppose that any disappointment I may have
felt arose wholly or chiefly from the passages I do not like, or from the
poem considered irrelatively.
Allston lives at 8, Buckingham Place, Fitzroy Square. He has lost his
wife, and been most unkindly treated and most unfortunate. I hope you will
call on him. Good God! to think of such a grub as _Dawe_ with more than he
can do, and such a genius as Allston without a single patron!
God bless you! I am, and never have been other than your most affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Mr. and Mrs. Morgan desire to be affectionately remembered to you, and
they would be highly gratified if you could make a little tour and spend a
short time at Calne. There is an admirable collection of pictures at
Corsham. Bowles left Bremhill (two miles from us, where he has a perfect
paradise of a place) for town yesterday morning.
CCVII. TO THE REV. W. MONEY.[135]
CALNE, Wednesday, 1815.
DEAR SIR,--I have seldom made a greater sacrifice and gratification to
prudence than in the determination most reluctantly formed, that the state
of my health, which requires hourly regimen, joined with the uncertain
state of the weather and the perilous consequences of my taking cold in
the existing weakness of the viscera, renders it improper for me to hazard
a night away from my home. No pleasure, however intellectual (and to all
but intellectual _pleasures_ I have long been dead, for surely the staving
off of pain is no pleasure), could repay me even for the chance of being
again unwell in any house but my own. I have a great, a gigantic effort to
make, and I will go through with it or die. Gross have been the calumnies
concerning me; but enough remains of truth to enforce the necessity of
considering all other things as unimportant compared with the necessity of
_living them down_. This letter is, of course, sacred to yourself, and a
pledge of the high respect I entertain for your moral being; for you need
not the feelings of friendship to feel as a friend toward every fellow
Christian.
To turn to another subject, Mr. Bowles, I understand, is about to publish,
at least is composing a reply to some answer to the “Velvet Cushion.”[136]
I have seen neither work. But this I will venture to say, that if the
respondents in favour of the Church take upon them to justify in the most
absolute sense, as if Scripture were the subject of the controversy,
every minute part of our admirable Liturgy, and liturgical and sacramental
services, they will only furnish new triumph to ungenerous adversaries.
The Church of England has in the Articles solemnly declared that all
Churches are fallible--and in another, to assert its absolute
immaculateness, sounds to me a mere contradiction. No! I would first
overthrow what can be fairly and to all men intelligibly overthrown in the
adversaries’ objections (and of this kind the instances are as twenty to
one). For the remainder I would talk like a special pleader, and from the
defensive pass to the offensive, and then prove from St. Paul (for of the
practice of the early Church even in its purest state, before the reign of
Constantine, our opponents make no account) that errors in a Church that
neither directly or indirectly injure morals or oppugn salvation are
exercises for mutual charity, not excuses for schism. In short, is there
or is there [not] such a condemnable thing as schism? In the proof of
consequences of the affirmative lies, in my humble opinion, the complete
confutation of the (so-called) Evangelical Dissenters.
I shall be most happy to converse with you on the subject. If Mr. Bowles
were not employed on it, I should have had no objection to have reduced my
many thoughts to order and have published them; but this might now seem
invidious and like rivalry.
Present my best respects to Mrs. Money, and be so good as to make the
fitting apologies for me to Mr. T. Methuen,[137] the _man wise of heart_!
But an apology already exists for me in his own mind.
I remain, dear sir, respectfully your obliged
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Wednesday, Calne.
P. S. I have opened this letter to add, that the greater number, if not
the whole, of the arguments used apply only to the ministers, not to the
members of the Established Church. Some one of our eminent divines refused
even to take the pastoral office, I believe, on account of the Funeral
Service and the Absolution of the Sick; but still it remains to justify
schism from _Church-Membership_.
To the Rev. W. MONEY, Whetham.
CHAPTER XIII
NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS
1816-1821
CHAPTER XIII
NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS
1816-1821
With Coleridge’s name and memory must ever be associated the names of
James and Anne Gillman. It was beneath the shelter of their friendly roof
that he spent the last eighteen years of his life, and it was to their
wise and loving care that the comparative fruitfulness and well-being of
those years were due. They thought themselves honoured by his presence,
and he repaid their devotion with unbounded love and gratitude. Friendship
and loving-kindness followed Coleridge all the days of his life. What did
he not owe to Poole, to Southey for his noble protection of his family, to
the Morgans for their long-tried faithfulness and devotion to himself? But
to the Gillmans he owed the “crown of his cup and garnish of his dish,” a
welcome which lasted till the day of his death. Doubtless there were
chords in his nature which were struck for the first time by these good
people, and in their presence and by their help he was a new man. But, for
all that, their patience must have been inexhaustible, their loyalty
unimpeachable, their love indestructible. Such friendship is rare and
beautiful, and merits a most honourable remembrance.
CCVIII. TO JAMES GILLMAN.
42, Norfolk Street, Strand,
Saturday noon, [April 13, 1816.]
MY DEAR SIR,--The very first half hour I was with you convinced me that I
should owe my reception into your family exclusively to motives not less
flattering to me than honourable to yourself. I trust we shall ever in
matters of intellect be reciprocally serviceable to each other. Men of
sense generally come to the same conclusion; but they are likely to
contribute to each other’s exchangement of view, in proportion to the
distance or even opposition of the points from which they set out. Travel
and the strange variety of situations and employments on which chance has
thrown me, in the course of my life, might have made me a mere man of
_observation_, if pain and sorrow and self-miscomplacence had not forced
my mind in on itself, and so formed habits of _meditation_. It is now as
much my nature to evolve the fact from the law, as that of a practical man
to deduce the law from the fact.
With respect to pecuniary remuneration,[138] allow me to say, I must not
at least be suffered to make any addition to your family expenses--though
I cannot offer anything that would be in any way adequate to my sense of
the service; for that, indeed, there could not be a compensation, as it
must be returned in kind, by esteem and grateful affection.
And now of myself. My ever wakeful reason, and the keenness of my moral
feelings, will secure you from all unpleasant circumstances connected with
me, save only one, viz., the evasion of a specific madness. You will
never _hear_ anything but truth from me:--prior habits render it out of my
power to tell an untruth, but unless carefully observed, I dare not
promise that I should not, with regard to this detested poison, be capable
of acting one. No sixty hours have yet passed without my having taken
laudanum, though for the last week [in] comparatively trifling doses. I
have full belief that your anxiety need not be extended beyond the first
week, and for the first week I shall not, I must not, be permitted to
leave your house, unless with you. Delicately or indelicately, this must
be done, and both the servants and the assistant must receive absolute
commands from you. The stimulus of conversation suspends the terror that
haunts my mind; but when I am alone, the horrors I have suffered from
laudanum, the degradation, the blighted utility, almost overwhelm me. If
(as I feel for the _first time_ a soothing confidence it will prove) I
should leave you restored to my moral and bodily health, it is not myself
only that will love and honour you; every friend I have (and thank God! in
spite of this wretched vice, I have many and warm ones, who were friends
of my youth and have never deserted me) will thank you with reverence. I
have taken no notice of your kind apologies. If I could not be comfortable
in your house, and with your family, I should deserve to be miserable. If
you could make it convenient I should wish to be with you by Monday
evening, as it would prevent the necessity of taking fresh lodgings in
town.
With respectful compliments to Mrs. Gillman and her sister, I remain, dear
sir, your much obliged
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCIX. TO DANIEL STUART.
James Gillman’s, Esq., Surgeon, Highgate,
Wednesday, May 8, 1816.
MY DEAR STUART,--Since you left me I have been reflecting a good deal on
the subject of the Catholic Question, and somewhat on the “Courier” in
general. With all my weight of faults (and no one is less likely to
underrate them than myself) a tendency to be influenced by selfish motives
in my friendships, or even in the cultivation of my acquaintances, will
not, I am sure, be _by you_ placed among them. When we first knew each
other, it was perhaps the most interesting period of both our lives, at
the very turn of the flood; and I can never cease to reflect with
affectionate delight on the steadiness and independence of your conduct
and principles; and how, for so many years, with little assistance from
others, and with one main guide, a sympathising tact for the real sense,
feeling, and impulses of the _respectable_ part of the English nation, you
went on so auspiciously, and likewise so _effectively_. It is far, very
far, from being a hyperbole to affirm, that you did more against the
French scheme of Continental domination, than the Duke of Wellington has
done; or rather Wellington could neither have been supplied by the
Ministers, nor the Ministers supported by the Nation, but for the tone
first given, and then constantly kept up, by the plain, unministerial,
anti-opposition, anti-jacobin, anti-gallican, anti-Napoleonic spirit of
your writings, aided by the colloquial style, and evident good sense, in
which as acting on an immense mass of knowledge of existing men and
existing circumstances, you are superior to any man I ever met with in my
lifetime. Indeed you are the only human being of whom I can say, with
severe truth, that I never conversed with you for an hour, without
rememberable instruction. And with the same simplicity I dare affirm my
belief, that my greater knowledge of _man_ has been useful to you; though
from the nature of things, not so useful, as your knowledge of _men_ has
been to me. Now with such convictions, my dear Stuart, how is it possible
that I can look back on the conduct of the “Courier,” from the period of
the Duke of York’s restoration, without some pain? You cannot be seriously
offended or affronted with me, if in this deep confidence, and in a letter
which, or its contents, can meet no eye but your own, I venture to declare
that, though since then much has been done, very much of high utility to
the country by and under Mr. Street, yet the “Courier” itself has
gradually lost that sanctifying spirit which was the life of its life, and
without which even the best and soundest principles lose half their effect
on the human mind. I mean, the _faith_ in the _faith_ of the person or
paper which brings them forward. They are attributed to the _accident_ of
their happening to be _for_ such a side or such a party. In short there is
no longer any _root_ in the paper, out of which all the various branches
and fruits and even fluttering leaves are seen or believed to grow. But it
is the old tree barked round above the root, though the circular
decortication is so small, and so neatly filled up and coloured as to be
scarcely visible but in its total effects. Excellent fruits still at times
hang on the boughs, but they are tied on by threads and hairs.
In all this I am well aware that you are no otherwise to blame, than in
permitting what, without disturbance to your health and tranquillity, you
could not perhaps have prevented, or effectively modified. But the whole
plan of Street’s seems to me to have been motiveless from the beginning,
or at least affected by the grossest miscalculations in respect even of
pecuniary interest. For had the paper maintained and asserted not only its
independence but its _appearance_ of it, it is true that Mr. Street might
not have had Mr. Croker to dine with him, or received as many nods or
shakes of the hand from Lord this, or that, but it is at least equally
true, that the Ministry would have been far more effectually served, and
that (I speak _now_ from facts) both paper and its conductor would have
been held by the adherents of Ministers in far higher respect. And after
all, Ministers do not _love_ newspapers in their hearts; not even those
that support them. Indeed it seems epidemic among Parliament men in
general, to affect to look down upon and to despise newspapers to which
they owe 999/1000 their influence and character--and at least three fifths
of their knowledge and phraseology. Enough! Burn this letter and forgive
the writer for the purity and affectionateness of his motive.
With regard to the Catholic Question, if I write I must be allowed to
express the truth and the whole truth concerning the imprudent avowal of
Lord Castlereagh that it was not to be a _government question_. On this
condition I will write immediately a tract on the question which to the
best of my knowledge will be about from 120 to 140 octavo pages; but so
contrived that Mr. Street may find no difficulty in dividing it into ten
or twenty essays, or leading paragraphs. In my scheme I have carefully
excluded every approximation to metaphysical reasoning; and set aside
every thought which cannot be brought under one or the other of three
heads--1. Plain evident sense. 2. Historical documental facts. 3. Existing
circumstances, character, etc., of Ireland in relation to Great Britain,
and to its own interests, and those of its various classes of proprietors.
I shall not deliver it till it is wholly finished, and if you and Mr.
Street think that such a work delivered entire will be worth fifty pounds
to the paper, I will begin it immediately. Let me either see or hear from
you as soon as possible. Cannot Mr. Street send me some one or other of
the daily papers, without expense to you, after he has done with them?
Kind respects to Mrs. Stuart.
Your affectionate and obliged friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCX. TO THE SAME.
Monday, May 13, 1816.
DEAR STUART,--It is among the feeblenesses of our nature, that we are
often, to a certain degree, acted on by stories, gravely asserted, of
which we yet do most religiously disbelieve every syllable, nay, which
perhaps we know to be false. The truth is that images and thoughts possess
a power in, and of themselves, independent of that act of the judgment or
understanding by which we affirm or deny the existence of a reality
correspondent to them. Such is the ordinary state of the mind in dreams.
It is not strictly accurate to say that we believe our dreams to be actual
while we are dreaming. We neither believe it, nor disbelieve it. With the
will the comparing power is suspended, and without the comparing power,
any act of judgment, whether affirmation or denial, is impossible. The
forms and thoughts act merely by their own inherent power, and the strong
feelings at times apparently connected with them are, in point of fact,
bodily sensations which are the causes or occasions of the images; not (as
when we are awake) the effects of them. Add to this a voluntary lending of
the will to this suspension of one of its own operations (that is, that of
comparison and consequent decision concerning the reality of any sensuous
impression) and you have the true theory of stage illusion, equally
distant from the absurd notion of the French critics, who ground their
principles on the presumption of an absolute _de_lusion, and of Dr.
Johnson who would persuade us that our judgments are as broad awake during
the most masterly representation of the deepest scenes of Othello, as a
philosopher would be during the exhibition of a magic lanthorn with Punch
and Joan and Pull Devil, Pull Baker, etc., on its painted slides. Now as
extremes always meet, this dogma of our dramatic critic and soporific
irenist would lead, by inevitable consequences, to that very doctrine of
the unities maintained by the French Belle Lettrists, which it was the
object of his strangely overrated, contradictory, and most illogical
preface to Shakespeare to overthrow.
Thus, instead of troubling you with the idle assertions that have been
most authoritatively uttered, concerning your being under bond and seal to
the present Ministry, which I know to be (monosyllabically speaking) A
LIE, and which formed, I guess, part of the impulse which occasioned my
last letter, I have given you a theory which, as far as I know, is new,
and which I am quite sure is most important as the ground and fundamental
principle of all philosophic and of all common-sense criticisms concerning
the drama and the theatre.
To put off, however, the Jack-the-Giant-Killer-seven-leagued boots, with
which I am apt to run away from the main purpose of what I had to write, I
owe it to myself and the truth to observe, that there was as much at least
of partiality as of grief and inculpation in my remarks on the spirit of
the “Courier;” and that with all its faults, I prefer it greatly to any
other paper, even without reference to its being the best and most
effective vehicle of what I deem most necessary and urgent truths. Be
assured there was no occasion to let me know, that with regard to the
proposed disquisition you were interested as a patriot and a protestant,
not as a proprietor of the particular paper. Such too, Heaven knows, is my
sole object! for as to the money that it may be thought worth according to
the number and value of the essays, I regard it merely as enabling me to
devote a given portion of time and effort to this subject, rather than to
any one of the many others by which I might procure the same remuneration.
From this hour I sit down to it tooth and nail, and shall not turn to the
left or right till I have finished it. When I have reached the half-way
house I will transmit the MSS. to you, that I may, without the necessity
of dis- or re-arranging the work, be able to adopt any suggestions of
yours, whether they should be additive, alterative, or emendative. One
question only I have to consult you concerning--viz., the _form_ which
would be the most attractive of notice; simply essays? or letters
addressed to Lord Liverpool for instance, on the supposition that he
remains firm to the Perceval principle on this blind, blundering, and
feverous scheme?
Mr. and Mrs. Gillman will be most happy to see you to share in a family
dinner, and spend the evening with us; and if you will come early, I can
show you some most delicious walks. You will like Mr. Gillman. He is a man
of strong, fervid, and agile intellect, with such a master passion for
truth, that his most abstracted verities assume a character of veracity.
And his wife, it will be impossible not to respect, if a balance and
harmony of powers and qualities, unified and spiritualized by a native
feminine fineness of character, render womanhood amiable and respectable.
In serious truth I have much reason to be most grateful for the choice and
chance which has placed me under their hospitable roof. I have no doubt
that Mr. Gillman as friend and as physician will succeed in restoring me
to my natural self.
My kind respects to Mrs. Stuart. I long to see the little one.
Your obliged and sincere friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXI. TO JOHN MURRAY.
HIGHGATE, February 27, 1817.
MY DEAR SIR,--I had a visit from Mr. Morgan yester-afternoon, and trouble
you with these lines in consequence of his communications. When I stated
to you the circumstances respecting the volumes of mine that have been so
long printed, and the embarrassment into which the blunder of the printer
had entangled me, with the sinking down of my health that made it so
perplexing for me to remedy it, I did it under the belief that you were
yourself very little disposed to the publication of the “Zapolya”[139] as
a separate work--unless it had, in some shape or other, been brought out
at the Theatre. Of this I seemed to have less and less chance. What had
been declared an indispensable part, and of all the play, the most
theatrical as well as dramatic, by Lord Byron, was ridiculed and thrown
out of all question by Mr. Douglas Kinnaird, with no other explanation
vouchsafed but that Lord Byron knew nothing about the matter--and, besides
that, was in the habit of overrating my performances. These were not the
words, but these words contain the purport of what he said. Meantime what
Mr. D. Kinnaird most warmly approved, Mr. Harris had previously declared
would convulse a house with laughter, and damn the piece beyond any
possibility of a further hearing. Still I was disposed in my distressed
circumstances of means, health, and spirits, to have tried the plan
suggested by Mr. D. Kinnaird of turning the “Zapolya” into a melodrama by
the omission of the first act. But Mr. K. was, with Lord Byron, dropped
from the sub-committee, and I knew no one to whom I could apply. Mr.
Dibdin, who had promised to befriend me, was likewise removed from the
stage-managership. Mr. Rae did indeed promise to give me a few hours of
his time repeatedly, and from my former acquaintance with him, as the
Ordonio of the “Remorse,” I had some reason to be wounded by his neglect.
Indeed, at Drury Lane, no one knows to whom any effective application is
to be made. Mr. Kinnaird had engaged to look over the “Zapolya” with me,
and appointed the time. I went accordingly and passed the whole of the
fore-dinner day with him--in what? In hearing an opera of his own, and
returned as wise as I came. Much is talked of the advantages of a
managership of noblemen, but as far as I have seen and experienced, an
author has no cause to congratulate himself on the change, either in the
taste, courtesy, or reliability of his judges. Desponding concerning this
(and finding that every publication with my name would be persecuted by
pre-determination by the one guiding party, that I had no support to
expect from the other, and that the thicker and closer the cloud of
misfortunes gathered round me, the more actively and remorselessly were
the poisoned arrows of wanton enmity shot through it), I sincerely
believed that it would be neither to your advantage or mine that the
“Zapolya” should be published singly. It appeared, at that time, that the
annexing to it a collection of all my poems would enable the work to be
brought out without delay,--and I therefore applied to you, offering
either to repay the money received for it, or to work it out by furnishing
you with miscellaneous matter for the “Quarterly,” or by sitting down to
the “Rabbinical Tales”[140] as soon as ever the works now in the press
were put out of my hand, that is, as far as the copy was concerned. Your
answer impressed me with your full assent to the plan. Nay, however
mortifying it might in ordinary circumstances have been to an author’s
vanity, it was not so to me, that the “Zapolya” was a work of which you
had no objection to be rid. But, if I misunderstood you, let me now be
better informed, and whatever you wish shall be done. I have never
knowingly or intentionally been guilty of a dishonourable transaction, but
have in all things that respect my neighbour been more sinned against than
sinning. Much less would I hazard the appearance of an equivocal conduct
at present when I feel that I am sinking into the grave, with fainter and
fainter hopes of achieving that which, God knows my inmost heart! is the
sole motive for the wish to live--namely, that of preparing for the press
the results of twenty-five years hard study and almost constant
meditation. Reputation has no charm for me, except as a preventive of
starving. Abuse and ridicule are all which I could expect for myself, if
the six volumes were published which would comprise the sum total of my
convictions; but, most thoroughly satisfied both of their truth and of the
vital importance of these truths, convinced that of all systems that have
ever been prescribed, this has the least of _mysticism_, the very object
throughout from the first page to the last being to reconcile the dictates
of common sense with the conclusions of scientific reasoning--it would
assuredly be like a sudden gleam of sunshine falling on the face of a
dying man, if I left the world with a knowledge that the work would have a
chance of being read in better times. But of all men in the way of
business, my dear sir! I should be most reluctant to give you any just
cause of reproaching my integrity; because I know and feel, and have at
all times and to all persons who had any literary concerns with me,
_acknowledged_ that you have acted with a friendly kindness towards
me,--and if Mr. Gifford have taken a prejudice against me or my writings,
I never imputed it as blame to you. Let me then know what you wish me to
do, and I will do it. I ought to add, that in yielding to the proposal of
annexing the “Zapolya” to the volume of poetry, provided I could procure
your assent, I expressly stipulated that if, in any shape or modification,
it should be represented on the stage, the copyright of it in that form
would be reserved for your refusal or acceptance, and, in like manner the
“Christabel” when completed, and the “Rabbinical Tales.” The second “Lay
Sermon” (a most unfortunate name) will appear, I trust, next week.
I remain, my dear sir, with respect and regard, your obliged
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. I have not seen either the “Edinburgh”[141] or the “Quarterly” last
Reviews. The article against me in the former was, I am assured, written
by Hazlitt. Now what can I think of Mr. Jeffrey, who knows nothing
personally of me but my hospitable attentions to him, and from whom I
heard nothing but very high seasoned compliments, and who yet can avail
himself of _such_ an instrument of his most unprovoked malignity towards
me, an inoffensive man in distress and sickness? As soon as I have read
the article (and the loan of the book is promised me), I shall make up my
mind whether or not to address a letter, publicly to Mr. Jeffrey, or, in
the form of an appeal, to the public, concerning his proved predetermined
malice.
MR. MURRAY, Bookseller, Albemarle Street, Piccadilly.
CCXII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
[May, 1817.]
DEAR SOUTHEY,--Mr. Ludwig Tieck[142] has continued to express so anxious a
wish to see you, as one man of genius sees another, that he will not lose
even the slight chance of possibility that you may not have quitted Paris
when he arrives there. I have only therefore (should this letter be
delivered to you by Mr. Tieck) to tell you--first, that Mr. Tieck is the
gentleman who was so kind to me at Rome; secondly, that he is a _good_
man, emphatically, without taint of moral or religious infidelity;
thirdly, that as a poet, critic, and moralist, he stands (in
_reputation_) next to Goethe (and I believe that this reputation will be
_fame_); lastly, it will interest you with Bristol, Keswick, and Grasmere
associations, that Mr. Tieck has had to run, and has run, as nearly the
same career in Germany as yourself and Wordsworth and (by the spray of
being known to be intimate with you)
Yours sincerely,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. Should this meet you, _for God’s sake_, do let me know of your
arrival in London; it is so very important that I should see you.
R. SOUTHEY, Esq.
Honoured by Mr. LUDWIG TIECK.
CCXIII. to H. C. Robinson.[143]
June, 1817.
MY DEAR ROBINSON,--I shall never forgive you if you do not try to make
some arrangement to bring Mr. L. Tieck and yourself up to Highgate very
soon. The day, the dinner-hour, you may appoint yourself; but what I most
wish would be, either that Mr. Tieck would come in the first stage, so as
either to walk or to be driven in Mr. Gillman’s gig to Caen Wood, and its
delicious groves and alleys (the finest in England, a grand cathedral
aisle of _giant_ lime-trees, Pope’s favourite composition walk when with
the old Earl, a brother-rogue of yours in the law line), or else to come
up to dinner, sleep here, and return (if then return he must) in the
afternoon four o’clock stage the day after. I should be most happy to make
him and that admirable man, Mr. Frere,[144] acquainted--their pursuits
have been so similar--and to convince Mr. Tieck that he is _the_ man among
us in whom taste at its maximum has vitalized itself into productive
power. [For] genius, you need only show him the incomparable translation
annexed to Southey’s “Cid” (which, by the bye, would perhaps give Mr.
Tieck the most favourable impression of Southey’s own powers); and I would
finish the work off by Mr. Frere’s “Aristophanes.” In _such_ GOODNESS,
too, as both _my_ Mr. Frere (the Right Hon. J. H. Frere), and his brother
George (the lawyer in Brunswick Square), live, move, and have their being,
there is _genius_.
I have read two pages of “Lalla Rookh,” or whatever it is called. Merciful
Heaven! I dare read no more, that I may be able to answer at once to any
questions, “I have but just looked at the work.” O Robinson! if I could,
or if I dared, act and feel as Moore and his set do, what havoc could I
not make amongst their crockery-ware! Why, there are not three lines
together without some adulteration of common English, and the
ever-recurring blunder of using the possessive case, “_compassion’s_
tears,” etc., for the preposition “of”--a blunder of which I have found no
instances earlier than Dryden’s slovenly verses written for the trade. The
rule is, that the case _’s_ is always _personal_; either it marks a
person, or a personification, or the relique of some proverbial
personification, as “Who for their belly’s sake,” in “Lycidas.” But for A
to weep the tears of B puts me in mind of the exquisite passage in
Rabelais where Pantagruel gives the page his cup, and begs him to go down
into the courtyard, and curse and swear for him about half an hour or so.
God bless you!
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXIV. TO THOMAS POOLE.
[July 22, 1817.]
MY DEAR POOLE,--It was a great comfort to me to meet and part from you as
I did at Mr. Purkis’s:[145] for, methinks, every true friendship that does
not go with us to heaven, must needs be an obstacle to our own going
thither,--to one of the parties, at all events.
I entreat your acceptance of a corrected copy of my “Sibylline Leaves” and
“Literary Life;” and so wildly have they been printed, that a corrected
copy is of some value to those to whom the works themselves are of any. I
would that the misprinting had been the worst of the delusions and
ill-usage, to which my credulity exposed me, from the said printer. After
repeated promises that he took the printing, etc., merely to serve me as
an old schoolfellow, and that he should charge “one sixpence profit,” he
charged paper, which I myself ordered for him at the paper-mill, at
twenty-five to twenty-six shillings per ream, at thirty-five shillings,
and, exclusive of this, his bill was £80 beyond the sum assigned by two
eminent London printers as the price at which they would be willing to
print the same quantity. And yet even this is among the minima of his
Bristol honesty.
Fenner,[146] or rather his religious factotum, the Rev. T. Curtis,
ci-devant bookseller, and whose affected retirement from business is a
humbug, having got out of me a scheme for an Encyclopædia, which is the
admiration of all the Trade, flatter themselves that they can carry it on
by themselves. They refused to realise their promise to advance me £300 on
the pledge of my works (a proposal of their own) unless I would leave
Highgate and live at Camberwell. I took the advice of such friends as I
had the opportunity of consulting immediately, and after taking into
consideration the engagement into which I had entered, it was their
unanimous opinion that their breach of their promise was a very fortunate
circumstance, that it could not have been kept without the entire
sacrifice of all my powers, and, above all, of my health--in short, that I
could not in all human probability survive the first year. Mr. Frere
yesterday advised me strenuously to finish the “Christabel,” to keep the
third volume of “The Friend” within a certain fathom of metaphysical
depth, but within that to make it as elevated as the subjects required,
and finally to devote myself industriously to the Works I had planned,
alternating a poem with a prose volume, and, unterrified by reviews on the
immediate sale, to remain confident that I should in some way or other be
enabled to live in comfort, above all, not to write any more in any
newspaper. He told me both Mr. Canning and Lord Liverpool had spoken in
very high terms of me, and advised me to send a copy of all my works with
a letter of some weight and length to the Marquis of Wellesley. He
offered me all his interest with regard to Derwent,[147] if he was sent to
Cambridge. “It is a point” (these were his words) “on which I should feel
myself authorised not merely to ask but to require and importune.”
Hartley has been with me for the last month. He is very much improved;
and, if I could see him more systematic in his studies and in the
employment of his time, I should have little to complain of in him or to
wish for. He is very desirous to visit the place of his infancy, poor
fellow! And I am very desirous, if it were practicable, that he should be
in the neighbourhood, as it were, of his uncles, so that there might be a
probability of one or the other inviting him to spend a few weeks of his
vacation at Ottery. His cousins[148] (the sons of my brothers James and
George) are very good and affectionate to him; and it is a great comfort
to me to see the chasm of the first generation closing and healing up in
the second. From the state of your sister-in-law’s health, when I last saw
you, and the probable results of it, I cannot tell how your household is
situated. Otherwise, I should venture to entreat of you, that you would
give poor Hartley an invitation to pass a fortnight or three weeks with
you this vacation.[149]
The object of the third volume of my “Friend,” which will be wholly fresh
matter, is briefly this,--that morality without religion is as senseless a
scheme as religion without morality; that religion not revealed is a
contradiction in terms, and an historical nonentity; that religion is not
revealed unless the sacred books containing it are interpreted in the
obvious and literal sense of the word, and that, thus interpreted, the
doctrines of the Bible are in strict harmony with the Liturgy and Articles
of our Established Church.
May God Almighty bless you, my dear Friend! and your obliged and
affectionately grateful
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXV. TO H. F. CARY.[150]
LITTLE HAMPTON, October [29], 1817.
I regret, dear sir! that a slave to the worst of tyrants (outward tyrants,
at least), the booksellers, I have not been able to read more than two
books and passages here and there of the other, of your translation of
Dante. You will not suspect me of the worthlessness of exceeding my real
opinion, but like a good Christian will make even modesty give way to
charity, though I say, that in the severity and _learned simplicity_ of
the diction, and in the peculiar character of the Blank Verse, it has
transcended what I should have thought possible without the Terza Rima.
In itself, the metre is, compared with any English poem of one quarter the
length, the most varied and harmonious to my ear of any since Milton, and
yet the effect is so Dantesque that to those who should compare it only
with other English poems, it would, I doubt not, have the same effect as
the Terza Rima has compared with other Italian metres. I would that my
literary influence were enough to secure the knowledge of the work for the
true lovers of poetry in general.[151] But how came it that you had it
published in so _too_ unostentatious a form? For a second or third
edition, the form has its conveniences; but for the first, in the present
state of English society, _quod non arrogas tibi, non habes_. If you have
any other works, poems, or poemata, by you, printed or MSS., you would
gratify me by sending them to me. In the mean time, accept in the spirit
in which it is offered, this trifling testimonial of my respect from, dear
sir,
Yours truly,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXVI. TO THE SAME.
LITTLE HAMPTON, SUSSEX, November 6, 1817.
MY DEAR SIR,--I thank you for your kind and valued present, and equally
for the kind letter that accompanied it. What I expressed concerning your
translation, I did not say lightly or without examination: and I know
enough of myself to be confident that any feeling of personal partiality
would rather lead me to doubts and dissatisfactions respecting a
particular work in proportion as it might possibly occasion me to overrate
the man. For example, if, indeed, I do estimate too highly what I deem
the characteristic excellencies of Wordsworth’s poems, it results from a
congeniality of taste without a congeniality in the productive power; but
to the faults and defects I have been far more alive than his detractors,
even from the first publication of the “Lyrical Ballads,” though for a
long course of years my opinions were sacred to his own ear. Since my
last, I have read over your translation, and have carefully compared it
with my distinctest recollections of every specimen of blank verse I am
familiar with that can be called epic, narrative, or descriptive,
excluding only the dramatic, declamatory, and lyrical--with Cowper,
Armstrong, Southey, Wordsworth, Landor (the author of “Gebir”), and with
all of my own that fell within comparisons as above defined, especially
the passage from 287 to 292, “Sibylline Leaves,”[152]--and I find no other
alteration in my judgement but an additional confidence in it. I still
affirm that, to my ear and to my judgement, both your metre and your
rhythm have in a far greater degree than I know any instance of, the
variety of Milton without any mere Miltonisms, that (wherein I in the
passage referred to have chiefly failed) the verse has this variety
without any loss of _continuity_, and that this is the _excellence_ of the
work considered as a translation of Dante--that it gives the reader a
similar feeling of wandering and wandering, onward and onward. Of the
diction, I can only say that it is Dantesque even in that in which the
Florentine must be preferred to our English giant--namely, that it is not
only pure _language_, but pure _English_. The language differs from that
of a mother or a well-bred lady who had read little but her Bible, and a
few good books, only as far as the thoughts and things to be expressed
require learned words from a learned poet! Perhaps I may be thought to
appreciate this merit too highly; but you have seen what I have said in
defence of this in the “Literary Life.” By the bye, there is no
_Publisher’s_ name mentioned in the title-page. Should I place any number
of copies for you with Gale and Curtis, or at Murray’s?
Believe me, that it will be both a pleasure and a relief to my mind should
you bring with you any MSS. that you can yourself make it so as to read
them to me.
Mrs. Gillman hopes, that, if choice or chance should lead you and yours
near Highgate, you will not deprive us of the opportunity of introducing
you to my excellent friend Mr. Gillman, and of shewing by our gladness how
much we are, my dear sir, yours and Mrs. Cary’s sincere respecters, and I
beg you will accept an expression of particular esteem from your old
lecturer,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. I return the “Prometheus” and the “Persæ” with thanks. I hope the
Cambridge Professor will go through the remaining plays of Æschylus. They
_are_ delightful editions.
CCXVII. TO J. H. GREEN.[153]
HIGHGATE, Friday morning, November 14, 1817.
DEAR SIR,--I arrived at Highgate from Little Hampton yester-night: and the
most interesting tidings I heard, were of your return and of your great
kindness ... I can only say that I will call in Lincoln’s Inn Fields the
first day I am able to come to town--but should your occupation suffer you
to take me in any of your rides for exercise or relaxation, need I say
with what gladness I should welcome you? Our dinner-hour is four: but
alterable without inconvenience to earlier or later. As soon as I have
finished my present slave-work I shall write at large to Mr. Tieck. Be
pleased to present my respectful regards to Mrs. Green, and believe me,
dear sir, with marked esteem,
Your obliged
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXVIII. TO THE SAME.
[December 13, 1817.]
MY DEAR SIR,--I thank you for the transcript. The lecture[154] went off
beyond my expectations; and in several parts, where the thoughts were the
same, more happily expressed extempore than in the Essay on the Science
of Method[155] for the “Encyclopædia Metropolitana.” However, you shall
receive the first correct copy of the latter that I can procure. I would
that I could present it to _you_, as it was written; though I am not
inclined to quarrel with the judgment and prudence of omission, as far as
the public are concerned. Be assured, I shall not fail to avail myself of
your kind invitation, and that time passes happily with me under your
roof, receiving and returning. Be pleased to make my best respects to Mrs.
Green, and I beg her acceptance of the “Hebrew Dirge” with my free
translation,[156] of which I will, as soon as it is printed, send her the
music, viz. the original melody, and Bishop’s additional music. Of this I
am convinced, that a dozen of such “very _pretty_,” and “so _sweet_,” and
“how smooth,” “well, that is charming” compositions would gain me more
admiration with the English public than twice the number of poems twice as
good as the “Ancient Mariner,” the “Christabel,” the “Destiny of Nations,”
or the “Ode to the Departing Year.”
My own opinion of the German philosophers does not greatly differ from
yours; much in several of them is unintelligible to me, and more
unsatisfactory. But I make a division. I reject Kant’s _stoic_ principle,
as false, unnatural, and even immoral, where in his “Kritik der
praktischen Vernunft,”[157] he treats the affections as indifferent
(ἀδιάφορα) in ethics, and would persuade us that a man who disliking, and
without any feeling of love for virtue, yet acted virtuously, because and
only because his _duty_, is more worthy of our esteem, than the man whose
_affections_ were aidant to and congruous with his conscience. For it
would imply little less than that things not the objects of the moral will
or under its control were yet indispensable to its due practical
direction. In other words, it would subvert his own system. Likewise, his
remarks on prayer in his “Religion innerhalb der reinen Vernunft,” are
crass, nay vulgar and as superficial even in psychology as they are low in
taste. But with these exceptions, I reverence Immanuel Kant with my whole
heart and soul, and believe him to be the only philosopher, for _all men_
who have the power of thinking. I cannot conceive the liberal pursuit or
profession, in which the service derived from a patient study of his works
would not be incalculably great, both as cathartic, tonic, and directly
nutritious.
Fichte in his moral system is but a caricature of Kant’s, or rather, he is
a Zeno, with the cowl, rope, and sackcloth of a Carthusian monk. His
metaphysics have gone by; but he hath merit of having prepared the ground
for, and laid the first stone of, the _dynamic_ philosophy by the
substitution of Act for Thing, _Der einführen Actionen statt der Dinge an
sich_. Of the _Natur-philosophen_, as far as physical dynamics are
concerned and as opposed to the mechanic corpuscular system, I think very
highly of _some_ parts of their system, as being _sound_ and
_scientific_--metaphysics of Quality, not less evident to _my_ reason than
the metaphysics of Quantity, that is, Geometry, etc.; of the rest and
larger part, as tentative, experimental, and highly useful to a chemist,
zoologist, and physiologist, as unfettering the mind, exciting its
inventive powers. But I must be understood as confining these
observations to the works of Schelling and H. Steffens. Of Schelling’s
Theology and Theanthroposophy, the telescopic stars and nebulæ are too
many for my “_grasp of eye_.” (N. B. The _catachresis_ is _Dryden’s, not
mine_.) In short, I am half inclined to believe that both he and his
friend Francis Baader are but half in earnest, and paint the veil to hide
not the _face_ but the want of one.[158] Schelling is too ambitious, too
eager to be the Grand Seignior of the _allein-selig Philosophie_ to be
altogether a trustworthy philosopher. But he is a man of great genius;
and, however unsatisfied with his conclusions, one cannot read him without
being either _whetted_ or improved. Of the others, saving Jacobi, who is a
rhapsodist, excellent in sentences all in _small capitals_, I know either
nothing, or too little to form a judgement. As my opinions were formed
before I was acquainted with the schools of Fichte and Schelling, so do
they remain independent of them, though I con- and pro-fess great
obligations to them in the development of my thoughts, and yet seem to
feel that I should have been more _useful_ had I been left to evolve them
myself without knowledge of their coincidence. I do not _very much_ like
the Sternbald[159] of our friend; it is too like an imitation of Heinse’s
“Ardinghello,”[160] and if the scene in the Painter’s Garden at Rome is
less licentious than the correspondent abomination in the former work, it
is likewise duller.
I have but merely looked into Jean Paul’s “Vorschule der Aisthetik,”[161]
but I found one sentence almost word for word the same as one written by
myself in a fragment of an Essay on the Supernatural[162] many years ago,
viz. that the _presence_ of a ghost is the terror, not what he _does_, a
principle which Southey, too, overlooks in his “Thalaba” and “Kehama.”
But I must conclude. Believe me, dear sir, with unfeigned regard and
esteem, your obliged
S. T. COLERIDGE.
I expect my eldest son, Hartley Coleridge, to-day from Oxford.
CCXIX. TO CHARLES AUGUSTUS TULK.[163]
HIGHGATE, Thursday evening, 1818.
DEAR SIR,--As an innocent female often blushes not at any image which had
risen in her own mind, but from a confused apprehension of some _x y z_
that might be attributed to her by others, so did I feel uncomfortable at
the odd coincidence of my commending to you the late Swedenborgian
advertisement. But when I came home I simply asked Mrs. G. if she
remembered my having read to her such an address. She instantly replied
not only in the affirmative, but mentioned the circumstance of my having
expressed a sort of half-inclination, half-intention of addressing a
letter to the chairman mentioning my receipt of a book of which I highly
approved, and requesting him to transmit my acknowledgments, if, as was
probable, the author was known to him or any of the gentlemen with him. I
asked her then if she had herself read the advertisement? “Yes, and I
carried it to Mr. Gillman, saying how much you had been pleased with the
style and the freedom from the sectarian spirit.” “And do you recollect
the name of the Chairman?” “No! why, bless me! could it be Mr. Tulk?” Very
nearly the same conversation took place with Mr. Gillman afterwards. I can
readily account for the fact in myself; for first I never recollect any
persons by their names, and have fallen into some laughable perplexities
by this specific catalepsy of memory, such as accepting an invitation in
the streets from a face perfectly familiar to me, and being afterwards
unable to attach the name and habitat thereto; and secondly, that the
impression made by a conversation that appeared to me altogether
accidental and by your voice and person had been completed before I heard
your name; and lastly, the more habitual thinking is to any one, the
larger share has the relation of cause and effect in producing
recognition. But it is strange that neither Mrs. or Mr. Gillman should
have recollected the name, though probably the accidentality of having
made your acquaintance, and its being at Little Hampton, and associated
with our having at the same time and by a similar accidental rencontre
become acquainted with the Rev. Mr. Cary and his family, overlaid any
former relique of a man’s name in Mrs. G. as well as myself.
I return you Blake’s poesies,[164] metrical and graphic, with thanks.
With this and the book, I have sent a rude scrawl as to the order in which
I was pleased by the several poems.
With respectful compliments to Mrs. Tulk, I remain, dear sir, your obliged
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Thursday evening, Highgate.
BLAKE’S POEMS.--I begin with my dyspathies that I may forget them, and
have uninterrupted space for loves and sympathies. Title-page and the
following emblem contain all the faults of the drawings with as few
beauties as could be in the compositions of a man who was capable of such
faults and such beauties. The faulty despotism in symbols amounting in the
title-page to the μισητὸν, and occasionally, irregular unmodified lines of
the inanimate, sometimes as the effect of rigidity and sometimes of
exossation like a wet tendon. So likewise the ambiguity of the drapery. Is
it a garment or the body incised and scored out? The lumpness (the effect
of vinegar on an egg) in the upper one of the two prostrate figures in the
title-page, and the straight line down the waistcoat of pinky goldbeaters’
skin in the next drawing, with the I don’t-know-whatness of the
countenance, as if the mouth had been formed by the habit of placing the
tongue not contemptuously, but stupidly, between the lower gums and the
lower jaw--these are the only _repulsive_ faults I have noticed. The
figure, however, of the second leaf, abstracted from the _expression_ of
the countenance given it by something about the mouth, and the interspace
from the lower lip to the chin, is such as only a master learned in his
art could produce.
_N. B._ I signifies “It gave me great pleasure.” Ɨ, “Still greater.” ƗƗ,
“And greater still,” Θ, “In the highest degree.” O, “In the lowest.”
Shepherd, I; Spring, I (last stanza, Ɨ); Holy Thursday, ƗƗ; Laughing Song,
Ɨ; Nurse’s Song, I; The Divine Image, Θ; The Lamb, Ɨ; The little black
Boy, Θ yea Θ+Θ; Infant Joy, ƗƗ (N. B. For the three last lines I should
write, “When wilt thou smile,” or “O smile, O smile! I’ll sing the while.”
For a babe two days old does not, cannot smile, and innocence and the very
truth of Nature must go together. Infancy is too holy a thing to be
ornamented). “The Echoing Green,” I, (the figures Ɨ, and of the second
leaf, ƗƗ); “The Cradle Song,” I; “The School Boy,” ƗƗ; Night, Θ; “On
another’s Sorrow,” I; “A Dream,” ?; “The little boy lost,” I (the drawing,
Ɨ); “The little boy found,” I; “The Blossom,” O; “The Chimney Sweeper,” O;
“The Voice of the Ancient Bard,” O.
Introduction, Ɨ; Earth’s Answer, Ɨ; Infant Sorrow, I; “The Clod and the
Pebble,” I; “The Garden of Love,” Ɨ; “The Fly,” I; “The Tyger,” Ɨ; “A
little boy lost,” Ɨ; “Holy Thursday,” I; [p. 13, O; “Nurse’s Song,” O?];
“The little girl lost and found” (the ornaments most exquisite! the poem,
I); “Chimney Sweeper in the Snow,” O; “To Tirzah, and the Poison Tree,”
I--and yet O; “A little Girl lost,” O. (I would have had it omitted, not
for the want of innocence in the poem, but from the too probable want of
it in many readers.) “London,” I; “The Sick Rose,” I; “The little
Vagabond,” =O=. Though I cannot approve altogether of this last poem, and
have been inclined to think that the error which is most likely to beset
the scholars of Emanuel Swedenborg is that of utterly demerging the
tremendous incompatibilities with an evil will that arise out of the
essential Holiness of the abysmal A-seity[165] in the love of the Eternal
_Person_, and thus giving temptation to weak minds to sink this love
itself into _Good Nature_, yet still I disapprove the mood of mind in this
wild poem so much less than I do the servile blind-worm, wrap-rascal
scurf-coat of _fear_ of the _modern_ Saint (whose whole being is a lie, to
themselves as well as to their brethren), that I should laugh with good
conscience in watching a Saint of the new stamp, one of the first stars of
our eleemosynary advertisements, groaning in wind-pipe! and with the
whites of his eyes upraised at the _audacity_ of this poem! Anything
rather than this degradation =I= of Humanity, and therein of the Incarnate
Divinity!
S. T. C.
=O= means that I am perplexed and have no opinion.
=I=, with which how can we utter “Our Father”?
CCXX. TO J. H. GREEN.
Spring Garden Coffee House, [May 2, 1818.]
MY DEAR SIR,--Having been detained here till the present hour, and under
requisition for Monday morning early, I have decided on not returning to
Highgate in the interim. I propose, therefore, to have the pleasure of
passing the fore-dinner hours, from eleven o’clock to-morrow morning, with
you in Lincoln’s Inn Square, unless I should hear from you to the
contrary.
The Cotton-children Bill[166] (an odd irony to children _bred up in
cotton_!) which has passed the House of Commons, would not, I suspect,
have been discussed at all in the House of Lords, but have been quietly
assented to, had it not afforded that _Scotch_ coxcomb, the plebeian Earl
of Lauderdale,[167] too tempting an occasion for displaying his muddy
three inch depths in the gutter (? Guttur) of his Political Economy.
Whether some half-score of rich capitalists are to be prevented from
suborning suicide and perpetuating infanticide and soul-murder is,
forsooth, the most perplexing question which has ever called forth his
_determining_ faculties, accustomed as they are _well known_ to have been,
to grappling with difficulties. In short, he wants to make a speech almost
as much as I do to have a release signed by conscience from the duty of
making or anticipating answers to such speeches.
O when the heart is deaf and blind, how blear
The lynx’s eye! how dull the mould-warp’s ear!
Verily the _World_ is mighty! and for all but the few the orb of Truth
labours under eclipse from the shadow of the world!
With kind respects to Mrs. Green, believe me, my dear sir, with sincere
and affectionate esteem,
Yours,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXXI. TO MRS. GILLMAN.
J. Green’s, Esq., St. Lawrence, nr. Maldon,
Wednesday, July 19, 1818.
MY VERY DEAR SISTER AND FRIEND,--The distance from the post and the
extraordinary thinness of population in this district (especially of men
and women of letters) which affords only two days in the seven for sending
to or receiving from Maldon, are the sole causes of your not hearing
oftener from me. The cross roads from Margretting Street to the very house
are excellent, and through the first gate we drove up between two large
gardens, that on the right a flower and fruit garden not without
kitchenery, and that on the left, a kitchen garden not without fruits and
flowers, and both in a perfect _blaze_ of roses. Yet so capricious is our,
at least my, nature, that I feel I do not receive the fifth part of the
delight from this miscellany of Flora, flowers at every step, as from the
economized glasses and flower-pots at Highgate so tended and worshipped by
me, and each the gift of some kind friend or courteous neighbour. I
actually make up a flower-pot every night, in order to imitate my Highgate
pleasures. The country road is very beautiful. About a quarter of a mile
from the garden, all the way through beautiful fields in blossom, we come
to a wood, full of birds and not uncharmed by the nightingales, and which
the old workman, to please his mistress, has _romanticised_ with, I dare
say, fifty seats and honeysuckle bowers and green arches made by twisting
the branches of the trees across the paths. The view from the hilly field
above the wood commanding the arm of the sea, and ending in the open sea,
reminded me very much of the prospects from Stowey and Alfoxden, in
Somersetshire. The cottagers seem to be and are in possession of plenty of
comfort. Poverty I have seen no marks of, nor of the least servility,
though they are courteous and respectful. We have _abundance of cream_.
The Farm must, I should think, be a valuable estate; and the parents are
anxious to leave it as complete as possible for Joseph, their only child
(for it is Mrs. J. Green’s sisters that we have seen--G. himself has no
sister). There is no society hereabouts. I like it the better there_fore_.
The clergyman, a young man, is lost in a gloomy vulgar Calvinism, will
read no book but the Bible, converse on nothing but the state of the soul,
or rather he will not converse at all, but visit each house once in two
months, when he prays and admonishes, and gives a lecture every evening at
his own rooms. On being invited to dine with us, the sad and modest youth
returned for answer, that if Mr. Green and I should be here when he
visited the house, he should have no objection to enter into the state of
our souls with us, and if in the mean time we desired any _instruction_
from him, we might attend at his daily evening lecture! Election,
Reprobation, Children of the Devil, and all such flowers of rhetoric, and
flour of brimstone, form his discourses both in church and parlour. But my
folly in not filling the snuff canister is a subject of far more serious
and awful regret with me, than the not being in the way of being thus led
by the nose of this Pseudo-Evangelist. Nothing but Scotch; and that five
miles off. O Anne! it was cruel in you not to have calculated the
monstrous disproportion between the huge necessities of my nostrils, or
rather of my thumb and forefinger, and that vile little vial three fourths
empty of snuff! The flat of my thumb, yea, the nail of my forefinger is
not only clean; it is white! white as the pale flag of famine![168]
Now for my health.... Ludicrous as it may seem, yet it is no joke for me,
that from the marshiness of these sea marshes, and the number of
unnecessary fish ponds and other stagnancies immediately around the house,
the gnats are a very plague of Egypt, and suspicious, with good reason, of
an erysipelatous tendency, I am anxious concerning the effects of the
irritation produced by these canorous visitants. While awake (and two
thirds of last night I was kept awake by their bites and trumpetings) I
can so far command myself as to check the intolerable itching by a weak
mixture of goulard and rosewater; but in my sleep I scratch myself as if
old Scratch had lent me his best set of claws. This is the only drawback
from my comforts here, for nothing can be kinder or more cordial than my
treatment. I _like_ Mrs. J. Green better and better; but feel that in
twenty years it would never be above or beyond _liking_. She is
good-natured, lively, innocent, but without a _soothingness_, or something
I do not know what that is tender. As to my return, I do not think it will
be possible, without great unkindness, to be with you before Tuesday
evening or Wednesday, calculating _wholly_ by the progress of the
manuscript; and we have been hard at it. Do not take it as words, of
course, when I say and solemnly assure you, that if I followed my own
_wishes_, I should leave this place on Saturday morning: for I feel more
and more that I can be well off nowhere away from you and Gillman. May God
bless him! For a dear friend he is and has been to be. Remember me
affectionately to the Milnes and Betsy, if they are at Highgate. Love to
James. Kisses for the Fish of Five Waters,[169] none of which are
stagnant, and I hope that Mary, Dinah, and Lucy are well, and that Mary is
quite recovered. Again and again and again, God bless you, my most dear
friends; for I am, and ever trust to remain, more than can be expressed,
my dear Anne! your affectionate, obliged, and grateful
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. _Not_ to put Essex after Maldon.
CCXXII. TO W. COLLINS, ESQ., A. R. A.
HIGHGATE, December, 1818.
MY DEAR SIR,--I at once comply with, and thank you for, your request to
have some prospectuses. God knows I have so few friends, that it would be
unpardonable in me not to feel proportionably grateful towards those few
who think the time not wasted in which they interest themselves in my
behalf. There is an old Latin adage, _Vis videri pauper, et pauper es_!
Poor you profess yourself to be, and poor therefore you are, and will
remain. The prosperous feel only with the prosperous, and if you subtract
from the whole sum of their feeling for all the gratifications of vanity,
and all their calculations of _lending to the Lord_, both of which are
best answered by confessing the superfluity of their superfluities on
advertised and advertisable distress, or on such cases as are known to be
in all respects their inferior, you will have, I fear, but a scanty
remainder. All this is too true; but then, what is that man to do whom no
distress can bribe to swindle or deceive? who cannot reply as Theophilus
Cibber did to his father, Colley Cibber, who, seeing him in a rich suit of
clothes whispered to him as he passed, “The! The! I pity thee!” “Pity me!
pity my tailor!”
Spite of the decided approbation which my plan of delivering lectures has
received from several judicious and highly respectable individuals, it is
still too histrionic, too much like a retail dealer in instruction and
pastime, not to be depressing. If the duty of living were not far more
awful to my conscience than life itself is agreeable to my feelings, I
should sink under it. But, getting nothing by my publications, which I
have not the power of making estimable by the public without loss of
self-estimation, what can I do? The few who have won the present age,
while they have secured the praise of posterity, as Sir Walter Scott, Mr.
Southey, Lord Byron, etc., have been in happier circumstances. And
lecturing is the only means by which I can enable myself to go on at all
with the great philosophical work to which the best and most genial hours
of the last twenty years of my life have been devoted. Poetry is out of
the question. The attempt would only hurry me into that sphere of acute
feelings from which abstruse research, the mother of self-oblivion,
presents an asylum. Yet sometimes, spite of myself, I cannot help bursting
out into the affecting exclamation of our Spenser (his “wine” and “ivy
garland” interpreted as competence and joyous circumstances):--
“Thou kenn’st not, Percy, how the rhyme should cage!
Oh, if my temples were bedewed with wine,
And girt with garlands of wild ivy-twine,
How I could rear the Muse on stately stage!
And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine,
With queen’d Bellona in her equipage!
But ah, my courage cools ere it be warm!”[170]
But God’s will be done. To feel the full force of the Christian religion
it is, perhaps, necessary for many tempers that they should first be made
to feel, experimentally, the hollowness of human friendship, the
presumptuous emptiness of human hopes. I find more substantial comfort now
in pious George Herbert’s “Temple,” which I used to read to amuse myself
with his quaintness, in short, only to laugh at, than in all the poetry
since the poems of Milton. If you have not read Herbert, I can recommend
the book to you confidently. The poem entitled “The Flower” is especially
affecting; and, to me, such a phrase as “and relish versing” expresses a
sincerity, a reality, which I would unwillingly exchange for the more
dignified “and once more love the Muse,” etc. And so, with many other of
Herbert’s homely phrases.
We are all anxious to hear from, and of, our excellent transatlantic
friend.[171] I need not repeat that your company, with or without our
friend Leslie,[172] will gratify
Your sincere
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXXIII. TO THOMAS ALLSOP.
The origin of Coleridge’s friendship with Thomas Allsop, a young city
merchant, dates from the first lecture which he delivered at Flower de
Luce Court, January 27, 1818. A letter from Allsop containing a “judicious
suggestion” with regard to the subject advertised, “The Dark Ages of
Europe,” was handed to the lecturer, who could not avail himself of the
hint on this occasion, but promised to do so before the close of the
series. Personal intercourse does not seem to have taken place till a year
later, but from 1819 to 1826 Coleridge and Allsop were close and intimate
friends. In 1825 the correspondence seems to have dropped, but I am not
aware that then or afterwards there was any breach of friendship. In 1836
Allsop published the letters which he had received from Coleridge. Partly
on account of the personal allusions which some of the letters contain,
and partly because it would seem that Coleridge expressed himself to his
young disciple with some freedom on matters of religious opinion, the
publication of these letters was regarded by Coleridge’s friends as an act
of _mala fides_. Allsop was kindness itself to Coleridge, but, no doubt,
the allusions to friends and children, which were of a painful and private
nature, ought, during their lifetime at least, to have been omitted. The
originals of many of these letters were presented by the Allsop family to
the late Emperor of Brazil, an enthusiastic student and admirer of
Coleridge.[173]
December 2, 1818.
MY DEAR SIR,--I cannot express how kind I felt your letter. Would to
Heaven I had had many with feelings like yours, “accustomed to express
themselves warmly and (as far as the word is applicable to you, even)
enthusiastically.” But, alas! during the prime manhood of my intellect I
had nothing but cold water thrown on my efforts. I speak not now of my
systematic and most unprovoked maligners. On _them_ I have retorted only
by pity and by prayer. These may have, and doubtless _have_, joined with
the frivolity of “the reading public” in checking and almost in preventing
the sale of my works; and so far have done injury to my _purse_. _Me_ they
have not injured. But I have loved with enthusiastic self-oblivion those
who have been so well pleased that I should, year after year, flow with a
hundred nameless rills into _their_ main stream, that they could find
nothing but cold praise and effective discouragement of every attempt of
mine to roll onward in a distinct current of my own; who _admitted_ that
the “Ancient Mariner,” the “Christabel,” the “Remorse,” and some pages of
“The Friend” were not without merit, but were abundantly anxious to
acquit their judgements of any blindness to the very numerous defects. Yet
they _knew_ that to _praise_, as mere praise, I was characteristically,
almost constitutionally, indifferent. In sympathy alone I found at once
nourishment and stimulus; and for sympathy _alone_ did my heart crave.
They knew, too, how long and faithfully I had acted on the maxim, never to
admit the _faults_ of a work of genius to those who denied or were
incapable of feeling and understanding the _beauties_; not from wilful
partiality, but as well knowing that in _saying_ truth I should, to such
critics, convey falsehood. If, in one instance, in my literary life, I
have appeared to deviate from this rule, first, it was not till the fame
of the writer (which I had been for fourteen years successively toiling
like a second Ali to build up) had been established; and, secondly and
chiefly, with the purpose and, I may safely add, with the _effect_ of
rescuing the necessary task from malignant defamers, and in order to set
forth the excellences and the trifling proportion which the defects bore
to the excellences. But this, my dear sir, is a mistake to which
affectionate natures are liable, though I do not remember to have ever
seen it noticed, the mistaking those who are desirous and well-pleased to
be loved _by_ you, for those who love you. Add, as a mere general cause,
the fact that I neither am nor ever have been of any party. What wonder,
then, if I am left to decide which has been my worse enemy,--the broad,
predetermined abuse of the “Edinburgh Review,” etc., or the cold and brief
compliments, with the warm _regrets_ of the “Quarterly”? After all,
however, I have now but one sorrow relative to the ill success of my
literary toils (and toils they have been, _though not undelightful
toils_), and this arises wholly from the almost insurmountable
difficulties which the anxieties of to-day oppose to my completion of the
great work, the form and materials of which it has been the employment of
the best and most genial hours of the last twenty years to mature and
collect.
If I could but have a tolerably numerous audience to my first, or first
and second Lectures on the History of Philosophy,[174] I should entertain
a strong hope of success, because I know that these lectures will be found
by far the most interesting and _entertaining_ of any that I have yet
delivered, independent of the more permanent interests of rememberable
instruction. Few and unimportant would the errors of men be, if they did
but know, first, _what they themselves meant_; and, secondly, what the
_words_ mean by which they attempt to convey their meaning; and I can
conceive no subject so well fitted to exemplify the mode and the
importance of these two points as the History of Philosophy, treated as in
the scheme of these lectures. Trusting that I shall shortly have the
pleasure of seeing you here,
I remain, my dear sir, yours most sincerely,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXXIV. TO J. H. GREEN.
[Postmark, January 16, 1819.]
MY DEAR GREEN,--I forgot both at the Lecture Room and at Mr. Phillips’s to
beg you to leave out for me Goethe’s “Zur Farbenlehre.” It is for a
passage in the preface in which he compares Plato with Aristotle, etc., as
far as I recollect, in a spirited manner. The books are at your service
again, after the lecture. Either Mr. Cary or some messenger will call for
them to-morrow! I piously resolve on Tuesday to put my books in some
order, but at all events to select yours and send all of them that I do
not want (and I do not recollect any that I do, unless perhaps the little
volume edited by Tieck of his friend’s composition), back to you. I am
more and more delighted with Chantrey. The little of his conversation
which I enjoyed _ex pede Herculem_, left me no doubt of the power of his
insight. Light, manlihood, simplicity, wholeness. These are the
_entelechy_ of Phidian Genius; and who but must see these in Chantrey’s
solar face, and in all his manners? Item: I am bewitched with your wife’s
portrait. So _very_ like and yet so ideal a portrait I never remember to
have seen. But as Mr. Phillips[175] said: “Why, sir! she was a sweet
subject, sir! That’s a _great_ thing.”
As to my own, I can form no judgment. In its present state, the eyes
appear too large, too globose, and their colour must be made lighter, and
I thought that the face, exclusive of the forehead, was stronger, more
energetic than mine seems to be when I catch it in the glass, and
therefore the forehead and brow less so--not in themselves, but in
consequence of the proportion. But of course I can form no notion of what
my face and look may be when I am animated in friendly conversation. My
kind and respectful remembrances to your Mother, and believe me, most
affectionately,
Your obliged friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXXV. TO JAMES GILLMAN.
[Ramsgate, Postmark, August 20, 1819.]
MY DEAR FRIEND,--Whether from the mere intensity of the heat, and the
restless, almost sleepless, nights in consequence, or from incautious
exposure to draughts; or whether simply the change of air and the sea bath
was repairing the intestinal canal (and bad indeed must the road be which
is not better than a _road a-mending_, a _hint which our revolutionary
reformers_ would do well to attend to) or from whatever cause, I have been
miserably unwell for the last three days--but last night passed a
tolerably good night, and, finding myself convalescent this morning, I
bathed, and now am still better, having had a glorious tumble in the
waves, though the water is still not cold enough for my liking. The
weather, however, is evidently on the change, and we have now a succession
of flying April showers, and needle rains. My bath is about a mile and a
quarter from the Lime Grove, a wearisome travail by the deep crumbly
sands, but a very pleasant breezy walk along the top of the cliff, from
which you descend through a deep steep lane cut through the chalk rocks.
The tide comes up to the end of the lane, and washes the cliff, but a
little before or a little after high-tide there are nice clean seats of
rock with foot-baths, and then an expanse of sand, greater than I need;
and exactly a hundred of my strides from the end of the lane there is a
good, roomy, arched cavern, with an oven or cupboard in it, where one’s
clothes may be put free from the sand.... I find that I can write no more
if I am to send this by the to-day’s post. Pray, _if_ you can with _any
sort_ of propriety, do come down to me--to us, I suppose I ought to say.
We are all as should be Βυτ μονστρουσλι φορμαλ....
God bless you and
S. T. C.
CCXXVI. TO MRS. ADERS. [?][176]
[HIGHGATE, October 28, 1819.]
DEAR MADAM,--I wish from my very heart that you could teach me to express
my obligations to you with half the grace and delicacy with which you
confer them! But not to the Giver does the evening cloud indicate the rich
lights, which it has received and transmits and yet retains. For _other_
eyes it must glow: and what it cannot _return_ it will strive to
_represent_, the poor proxy of the gracious orb which is departing. I
would that the simile were less accurate throughout, and with those of
Homer’s lost its likeness as it approached to its conclusion! This, I
fear, is somewhat too selfish; but we cannot have attachment without fear
or grief.
“We cannot choose--
But weep to have what we so dread to lose,”
says Nature’s child, our best Shakespeare; and that Humanity cannot grieve
without a portion of selfishness, Nature herself says. To take up my
allegoric strain with a slight variation, even in the fairest shews and
liveliest demonstrations of grateful and affectionate leave-taking from a
generous friend or disinterested patron or benefactor, we are like
evening rainbows, that at once shine and weep, things made up of reflected
splendour and our own tears.[177]
To meet, to know, t’ esteem--and then to part,
Forms the sad tale of many a genial heart.[178]
The storm[179] now louring and muttering in our political atmosphere might
of itself almost forbid me to regret your leaving England. For I have no
apprehension of any serious or extensive danger to property or to the
_coercive_ powers of the Law. Both reason and history preclude the fear of
any _revolution_, where none of the constituent _states_ of a nation are
arrayed against the others. The risk is still less in Great Britain where
property is so widely diffused and so closely interlinked and
co-organized. But I dare not promise as much for _personal_ safety. The
struggle may be short, the event certain; yet the mischief in the interim
_appalling_!
May my Fears,
My filial fears, be vain! and may the vaunts
And menace of the vengeful enemy
Pass like the gust, that roared and died away
In the distant tree: which heard, and only heard
In this low dell, bow’d not the delicate grass.[180]
I confess that I read the poem from which these lines are extracted
(“Fears in Solitude”) and now cite them with far other than an _author’s_
feelings; those, I _trust_, of a patriot, I am _sure_, those of a
Christian.
You will not, I know, fail to assure Miss Harding[181] of the kind
feelings and wishes with which I accompany her; but my sense of the last
boon, which I owe to her, I shall convey, my dear madam! by hands less
likely to make extenuating comments on my words than _your_ tongue or
hand. Before I subscribe my name, I must tell you that had my wish been
the chooser and had taken a month to deliberate on the choice, I could not
have received a keepsake so in all respects gratifying to me, as the
_exquisite_ impressions of cameo’s and intaglio’s.[182] First, it enables
me to entertain and gratify so many friends, my own and Mr. and Mrs.
Gillman’s; secondly, every little gem is associated with my recollections,
or more or less recalls the images and persons seen and met with during my
own stay in the Mediterranean and Italy; thirdly, they stand in the same
connection with the places of _your_ past and future sojourn, and
therefore, lastly, supply me with the means and the occasion of expressing
to others more strongly, perhaps, but not more warmly or sincerely than I
now do to yourself, with how much respect and regard I remain, dear madam,
Your obliged friend and servant,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Saturday, 28th Octr. 1819. On the 20th of this month completed my 49th
year.
CCXXVII. TO J. H. GREEN.
January 14, 1820.
MY DEAR GREEN,--Charles Lamb has just written to inform me that he and his
sister will pay me their _New Year’s_ visit on Sunday next, and may
perhaps bring a friend to see _me_, though certainly not to dine, and
hopes I may not be engaged. I must therefore defer our _philosophical_
intercommune till the Sunday after; but if you have no more pleasant way
of passing the ante-prandial or, still better, the day including prandial
and post-prandial, I trust that it will be no anti-philosophical
expenditure of time, and I need not say an addition to the pleasure of all
this household. I should like, too, to arrange some plan of going with you
to Covent Garden Theatre, to see Miss Wensley, the new actress, whose
father (a merchant of Bristol, at whose house I had once been, but whom
the capricious Nymph of Trade has unhorsed from his seat) has called on
me, a compound of the Oratorical, the Histrionic, and the Exquisite! All
the dull colours in the colour-shop at the sign of the Bluecoat Boy would
not suffice to neutralize the glare of his _Colorit_ into any tolerably
fair likeness that would not be scouted as Caricature! Gillman will give
you a slight sketch of him. Since I saw you, we have dined and spent the
night (for it was near one when we broke up) at Mathews’, and heard and
saw his forthcoming “At Home.” There were present, besides G. and myself,
Mrs. and young Mathews, and Mr. and Mrs. Chisholm, James Smith of Rej.
Add. notoriety, and the author of (all the trash of) Mathews’
Entertainment, for the good parts are his own, (What a pity that you dare
not offer a word of friendly sensible advice to such men as M., but you
may be certain that it will be useless to them and attributed to envy or
some vile selfish object in the adviser!) Mr. Dubois,[183] the author
of “Vaurien,” “Old Nic,” “My Pocket Book,” and a notable share of the
theatrical puffs and slanders of the periodical press; and, lastly, Mr.
Thomas Hill,[184] quondam drysalter of Thames Street, whom I remember
twenty-five years ago with exactly the same look, person, and manners as
now. Mathews calls him the Immutable. He is a seemingly always
good-natured fellow who knows nothing and about everything, no person, and
about and all about everybody--a complete parasite, in the old sense of a
dinner-hunter, at the tables of all who entertain public men, authors,
players, fiddlers, booksellers, etc., for more than thirty years. It was a
pleasant evening, however.
[Illustration]
Be so good as to remember the drawing from the Alchemy Book.
Mrs. Gillman desires her love to Mrs. Green; and we hope that the twin
obstacles, ague and the boreal weather, to our seeing her here, will
vanish at the same time. Mrs. G. bids me tell her that she grumbles at the
doctors, her husband included, and is confident that _her_ husband would
have made a cure long ago. A faithful wife is a common blessing, I trust:
but what a treasure to have a wife _full_ of _faith_! By the bye, I have
lit on some (ὡς ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ _analogous_) cases in which the nauseating
plan, even for a short time, appears to have had a wonderful effect in
breaking the chain of a morbid tendency; and the almost infallible
specific of seasickness in curing an old ague is surely a confirmation as
far as it goes.
Yours most affectionately,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXXVIII. TO THE SAME.
[May 25, 1820.]
MY DEAR GREEN,--I was greatly affected in finding how ill you had been,
and long ere this should have let you know it, but that I have myself been
in no usual degree unwell. I wish I could with truth underline the words
_have been_, and in the hope of being able to do so it was that I delayed
answering your note. Unless a speedy change for the better takes place, I
should culpably deceive myself if I did not interpret my present state as
a _summons_. God’s will be done! I cannot pretend that I have not received
countless warnings; and for my neglect and for the habits, and all the
feebleness and wastings of the moral will which unfit the soul for
spiritual ascent, and must sink it, of moral necessity, lower and lower,
if it be essentially imperishable, my only ray of hope is this, that in my
inmost heart, as far as my consciousness can sound its depths, I plead
nothing but my utter and sinful helplessness and worthlessness on one
side, and the infinite mercy and divine Humanity of our Creator and
Redeemer crucified from the beginning of the world, on the other! I use no
comparatives, nor indeed could I ever charitably interpret the penitential
phrases (“I am the vilest of sinners, worse than the wickedest of my
fellow-men,” etc.) otherwise than as figures of speech, the whole purport
of which is, “In relation to God I appear to myself the same as the very
worst man, if such there be, would appear to an earthly tribunal.” I mean
no comparatives; for what have a man’s permanent concerns to do with
comparison? What avails it to a bird shattered and irremediably
disorganized in one wing, that another bird is similarly conditioned in
both wings? Or to a man in the last stage of ulcerated lungs, that his
neighbour is liver-rotten as well as consumptive? Both find their
equation, the birds as to flight, the men as to life. In o o o’s there is
no comparison.
My nephew, the Revd. W. Hart Coleridge, came and stayed here from Monday
afternoon to Tuesday noon, in order to make Derwent’s acquaintance, and
brought with him by accident Marsh’s Divinity Lecture, No 3rd, on the
authenticity and credibility of the Books collected in the New Testament.
As I could not sit with the party after tea, I took the pamphlet with me
into my bedroom, and gave it an attentive perusal, knowing the Bishop’s
intimate acquaintance with the investigations of Eichhorn, Paulus, and
their numerous scarcely less celebrated scholars, and myself familiar with
the works of the Göttingen Professor (Eichhorn), the founder and head of
the daring school. I saw or seemed to see more _management_ in the Lecture
than proof of thorough conviction. I supplied, however, from my own
reasonings enough of what appeared wanting or doubtful in the Bishop’s to
justify the conclusion that the Gospel _History_ beginning with the
Baptism of John, and the Doctrines contained in the fourth Gospel, and in
the Epistles, truly represent the assertions of the Apostles and the faith
of the Christian Church during the first century; that there exists no
tenable or even tolerable ground for doubting the _authenticity_ of the
Books ascribed to John the Evangelist, to Mark, to Luke, and to Paul; nor
the _authority_ of Matthew and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews;
and lastly, that a man need only have common sense and a good heart to be
assured that these Apostles and Apostolic men wrote nothing but what they
themselves _believed_. And yet I have no hesitation in avowing that many
an argument derived from the nature of man, nay, that many a strong though
only _speculative_ probability, pierces deeper, pushes more home, and
clings more pressingly to my mind than the whole sum of merely _external_
evidence, the _fact_ of Christianity itself alone excepted. Nay, I feel
that the external evidence derives a great and lively accession of force,
for my mind, from my previous speculative convictions or presumptions; but
that I cannot find that the latter are at all strengthened or made more or
less probable to me by the former. Besides, as to the external evidence I
make up my mind _once for all_, and merely _as_ evidence think no more
about it; but those facts or reflections thereon which tend to change
belief into insight, can never lose their effect, any more than the
distinctive _sensations_ of disease, compared with a more _perceived_
correspondence of symptoms with the diagnostics of a medical book.
I was led to this remark by reflecting on the awful importance of the
physiological question (so generally decided one way by the late most
popular writers on insanity), Does the efficient cause of disease and
disordered action, and, collectively, of pain and perishing, lie entirely
in the organs, and then, reawakening the active principle in me,
depart--that all pain and disease would be removed, and I should stand in
the same state as I stood in previous to all sickness, etc., to the
admission of any disturbing forces into my nature? Or, on the contrary,
would such a repaired Organismus be no fit organ for my life, as if, for
instance, a _worn_ lock with an equally worn key--[the key] might no
longer fit the lock. The repaired organs might from intimate
in-correspondence be the causes of torture and madness. A system of
materialism, in which organisation stands first, whether compared by
Nature, or God and Life, etc., as its _results_ (even as the sound is the
result of a bell), such a system would, doubtless, remove great part of
the terrors which the soul makes out of itself; but then it removes the
soul too, or rather precludes it. And a supposition of coexistence,
without any _wechselwirkung_, it is not in our power to adopt in good
earnest; or, if we did, it would answer no purpose. For which of the two,
soul or body, am I to call “I”? Again, a soul separate from the body, and
yet _entirely passive_ to it, would be so like a drum playing a tattoo on
the drummer, that one cannot build any _hope_ on it. If then the
organisation be primarily the _result_, and only by reaction a _cause_, it
would be well to consider what the cases are in this life, in which the
restoration of the organisation removes disease. Is the organisation ever
restored, except as continually reproduced? And in the remaining number
are they not cases into which the soul never entered as a _conscious_ or
rather a moral _conscionable_ agent? The regular reproduction of scars,
marks, etc., the increased susceptibility of disease in an organ, after a
perfect apparent restoration to healthy structure in action; the
insusceptibility in other cases, as in the variolous--these and many
others are fruitful subjects, and even imperfect as the induction may be,
and must be in our present degree of knowledge, we might yet deduce that a
suicide, under the domination of disorderly passions and erroneous
principles, plays a desperately hazardous game, and that the chance is, he
may re-house himself in a worse hogshead, with the nails and spikes driven
inward--or, sinking below the organising power, be employed fruitlessly in
a horrid _appetite_ of re-skinning himself, after he had succeeded in
_fleaing_ his life and leaving all its sensibilities bare to the incursive
powers without even the cortex of a nerve to shield them? Would it not
follow, too, from these considerations, that a redemptive power must be
necessary if immortality be true, and man be a disordered being? And that
no power can be redemptive which does not at the same time act in the
ground of the life as one with the ground, that is, must act in my will
and not merely _on_ my will; and yet extrinsically, as an outward power,
that is, as that which _outward_ Nature is to the organisation, viz. the
_causa correspondens et conditio perpetua ab extra_? Under these views, I
cannot read the Sixth Chapter of St. John without great emotion. The
Redeemer cannot be _merely_ God, unless we adopt Pantheism, that is, deny
the existence of a God; and yet God he must be, for whatever is less than
God, may act _on_, but cannot act in, the will of another. Christ must
become man, but he cannot become _us_, except as far as we become _him_,
and this we cannot do but by _assimilation_; and assimilation is a _vital
real_ act, not a notional or merely intellective one. There are phenomena,
which are phenomena relatively to our present five senses, and these
Christ forbids us to understand as his meaning, and, collectively, they
are entitled the Flesh that perishes. But does it follow that there are no
other phenomena? or that these media of manifestation might not stand to a
spiritual world and to our enduring life in the same relation as our
visible mass of body stands to the world of the senses, and to the
sensations correspondent to, and excited by, the stimulants of that world.
Lastly, would not the sum of the latter phenomena (the spiritual) be
appropriately named, the Flesh and Blood of the divine Humanity? If faith
be a mere apperception, _eine blösse Wahrnehmung_, this, I grant, is
senseless. For it is evident, that the assimilation in question is to be
carried on by faith. But if faith be an energy, a positive act, and that
too an _act_ of intensest power, why should it necessarily differ _in toto
genere_ from any other _act_, _ex. gr._ from that of the animal life in
the stomach? It will be found easier to laugh or stare at the question
than to prove its irrationability. Enough for the present. I had been told
that Dr. Leach[185] was a Lawrencian, a materialist, and I know not what.
I met him at Mr. Abernethy’s, and with sincere delight I found him the
very contrary in every respect. Except yourself, I have never met so
enlarged or so bold a love of truth in an English physiologist. The few
minutes of conversation that I had the power of enjoying have left a
strong wish in my mind to see more of him.
Give my kind love to Mrs. Green. Mr. and Mrs. Gillman are anxious to see
you. I assure you they were very much affected by the account of your
health. Young Allsop behaves more like a dutiful and anxious son than an
acquaintance. He came up yester-night at ten o’clock, and left the house
at eight this morning, in order to urge me to go to some sea-bathing
place, if it was thought at all advisable.
Derwent goes on in every respect to my satisfaction and comfort.
Again and again, God bless you and your sincerely affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXXIX. TO CHARLES AUGUSTUS TULK.
February 12, 1821.
MY DEAR SIR,--“They say, Coleridge! that you are a Swedenborgian!” “Would
to God,” I replied fervently, “that _they_ were _anything_.” I was writing
a brief essay on the prospects of a country where it has become the _mind_
of the nation to appreciate the evil of public acts and measures by their
next consequences or immediate occasions, while the _principle_ violated,
or that _a_ principle is thereby violated, is either wholly dropped out of
the consideration, or is introduced but as a garnish or ornamental
commonplace in the peroration of a speech! The deep interest was present
to my thoughts of that distinction between the _Reason_, as the source of
principles, the true celestial influx and _porta Dei in hominem æternum_,
and the _Understanding_; with the clearness of the proof, by which this
distinction is evinced, viz. that vital or zoo-organic power, instinct,
and understanding fall all three under the same definition _in genere_,
and the very additions by which the definition is applied from the first
to the second, and from the second to the third, are themselves expressive
of degrees only, and in degree only deniable of the preceding. (_Ex. gr._
1. Reflect on the _selective_ power exercised by the stomach of the
caterpillar on the undigested miscellany of food, and, 2, the same power
exercised by the caterpillar on the outward plants, and you will see the
order of the conceptions.) 1. Vital Power = the power by which _means are
adapted_ to proximate ends. 2. Instinct = the power _which adapts_ means
to proximate ends. 3. Understanding = the power which adapts means to
proximate ends according _to varying circumstances_. May I not safely
challenge any man to peruse Huber’s “Treatise on Ants,” and yet deny their
claim to be included in the last definition. But try to apply the same
definition, with any extension of degree, to the reason, the absurdity
will flash upon the conviction. First, in reason there is and can be no
_degree_. _Deus introit aut non introit._ Secondly, in reason there are no
_means_ nor ends, reason itself being one with the ultimate end, of which
it is _the_ manifestation. Thirdly, reason has no concern with _things_
(that is, the impermanent flux of particulars), but with the permanent
_Relations_; and is to be defined even in its lowest or theoretical
attribute, as the power which enables man to draw _necessary_ and
_universal_ conclusions from particular facts or forms, _ex. gr._ from any
three-cornered thing, that the two sides of a triangle are and must be
greater than the third. From the understanding to the reason, there is no
continuous _ascent_ possible; it is a metabasis εἰς ἄλλο γένος even as
from the air to the light. The true essential peculiarity of the human
understanding consists in its capability of being irradiated by the
reason, in its recipiency; and even this is _given_ to it by the presence
of a higher power than itself. What then must be the fate of a nation that
substitutes Locke for logic, and Paley for morality, and one or the other
for polity and theology, according to the predominance of Whig or Tory
predilection. Slavery, or a commotion is at hand! But if the gentry and
_clerisy_ (including all the learned and educated) do this, then the
nation does it, _or_ a commotion is at hand. _Acephalum_ enim, aurâ
quamvis et calore vitali potiatur, morientem rectius dicimus, quam quod
vivit. With these thoughts was I occupied when I received your very kind
and most acceptable present, and the results I must defer to the next
post. With best regards to Mrs. Tulk,
Believe me, in the brief interval, your obliged and grateful
S. T. COLERIDGE.
C. A. TULK, Esq., M. P., Regency Park.
CHAPTER XIV
THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE
1822-1832
CHAPTER XIV
THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE
1822-1832
CCXXX. TO JOHN MURRAY.
HIGHGATE, January 18, 1822.
DEAR SIR,--If not with the works, you are doubtless familiar with the name
of that “wonderful man” (for such, says Doddridge, I must deliberately
call him), Archbishop Leighton. It would not be easy to point out another
name, which the eminent of all parties, Catholic and Protestant, Episcopal
and Presbyterian, Whigs and Tories, have been so unanimous in extolling.
“There is a spirit in Archbishop Leighton I never met with in any human
writings; nor can I read many lines in them without impressions which I
could wish always to retain,” observes a dignitary of our Establishment
and F. R. S. eminent in his day both as a philosopher and a divine. In
fact, it would make no small addition to the size of the volume, if, as
was the fashion in editing the classics, we should collect the eulogies on
his writings passed by bishops only and church divines, from Burnet to
Porteus. That this confluence of favourable opinions is not without good
cause, my own experience convinces me. For at a time when I had read but a
small portion of the Archbishop’s principal work, when I was altogether
ignorant of its celebrity, much more of the peculiar character attributed
to his writings (that of making and leaving a deep impression on readers
of all classes), I remember saying to Mr. Southey[186] “that in the
Apostolic Epistles I heard the last hour of Inspiration striking, and in
Arch. Leighton’s commentary the lingering _vibration_ of the sound.”
Perspicuous, I had almost said transparent, his style is _elegant_ by the
mere compulsion of the thoughts and feelings, and in despite, as it were,
of the writer’s wish to the contrary. Profound as his conceptions often
are, and numerous as the passages are, where the most _athletic_ thinker
will find himself tracing a rich vein from the surface downward, and leave
off with an unknown depth for to-morrow’s delving--yet there is this
quality peculiar to Leighton, unless we add Shakespeare--that there is
always a scum on the very surface which the simplest may understand, if
they have head and heart to understand anything. The same or nearly the
same excellence characterizes his eloquence. Leighton had by nature a
quick and pregnant fancy, and the august objects of his habitual
contemplation, and their remoteness from the outward senses, his constant
endeavour to see or to bring all things under some point of unity, but,
above all, the rare and vital union of head and heart, of light and love,
in his own character,--all these working conjointly could not fail to form
and nourish in him the higher power, and more akin to reason, the power, I
mean, of imagination. And yet in his freest and most figurative passages
there is a _subdued_ness, a self-checking timidity in his colouring, a
sobering silver-grey tone over all; and an experienced eye may easily see
where and in how many instances Leighton has substituted neutral tints for
a strong light or a bold relief--by this sacrifice, however, of particular
effects, giving an increased permanence to the impression of the whole,
and wonderfully facilitating its soft and quiet _illapse_ into the very
recesses of our convictions. Leighton’s happiest ornaments of style are
made to appear as efforts on the part of the author to express himself
_less_ ornamentally, more plainly.
Since the late alarm respecting Church Calvinism and Calvinistic Methodism
(a cry of Fire! Fire! in consequence of a red glare on one or two of the
windows, from a bonfire of straw and stubble in the church-yard, while the
dry rot of virtual Socinianism is snugly at work in the beams and joists
of the venerable edifice) I have heard of certain gentle doubts and
questions as to the Archbishop’s _perfect_ orthodoxy--some small speck in
the diamond which had escaped the quick eye of all former theological
jewellers from Bishop Burnet to the outrageously anti-Methodistic
Warburton. But on what grounds I cannot even conjecture, unless it be,
that the Christianity which Leighton teaches contains the doctrines
peculiar to the Gospel as well as the truths common to it with the
(so-called) light of nature or natural religion, that he dissuades
students and the generality of Christians from all attempts at explaining
the mysteries of faith by _notional_ and metaphysical speculations, and
rather by a heavenly life and temper to obtain a closer view of these
truths, the _full_ light and knowledge of which it is in Heaven only that
we shall possess. He further advises them in speaking of these truths to
proper scripture language; but since something more than this had been
made necessary by the restless spirit of dispute, to take this “something
more” in the sound precise terms of the Liturgy and Articles of the
Established Church. Enthusiasm? Fanaticism? Had I to recommend an
antidote, I declare on my conscience that above all others it should be
Leighton. And as to Calvinism, L.’s exposition of the scriptural sense of
election ought to have prevented the very [suspicion of its presence]. You
will long ago, I fear, have [been asking yourself], To what does all this
tend? Briefly then, I feel strongly persuaded, perhaps because I strongly
wish it, that the Beauties of Archbishop Leighton, selected and
methodized, with a (better) Life of the Author, that is, a biographical
and critical introduction as Preface, and Notes, would make not only a
useful but an interesting POCKET VOLUME. “Beauties” in general are
objectionable works--injurious to the original author, as disorganizing
his productions, pulling to pieces the well-wrought _crown_ of his glory
to pick out the shining stones, and injurious to the reader, by indulging
the taste for unconnected, and for that reason unretained single thoughts,
till it fares with him as with the old gentleman at Edinburgh, who eat six
kittywakes by way of _whetting_ his appetite--“whereas” (said he) “it
proved quite the contrary: I never sat down to a dinner with so little.”
But Leighton’s principal work, that which fills two volumes and a half of
the four, being a commentary on St. Peter’s Epistles, verse by verse, and
varying, of course, in subject, etc., with almost every paragraph, the
volume, I propose, would not only bring together his finest passages, but
these being afterwards arranged on a principle wholly independent of the
accidental place of each in the original volumes, and guided by their
relative bearings, it would give a connection or at least a propriety of
_sequency_, that was before of necessity wanting. It may be worth
noticing, that the editions, both the one in three, and the other in four
volumes, are most grievously misprinted and otherwise disfigured. Should
you be disposed to think this worthy your attention, I would even send you
the proof _transcribed_, sheet by sheet, as it should be printed, though
doubtless by sacrificing one copy of Leighton’s works, it might be
effected by references to volume, page, and line, I having first carefully
corrected the copy. Or, should you think another more likely to execute
the plan better, or that another name would better promote its sale, I
should by no means resent the preference, nor feel any mortification for
which, the having occasioned the existence of such a work, tastefully
selected and judiciously arranged, would not be sufficient compensation
for,
Dear sir, your obliged
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXXXI. TO JAMES GILLMAN.
October 28, 1822.
DEAR FRIEND,--Words, I know, are not wanted between you and me. But there
are occasions so awful, there may be instances and manifestations so
affecting, and drawing up with them so long a train from behind, so many
folds of recollection, as they come onward on one’s mind, that it seems
but a mere act of justice to one’s self, a debt we owe to the dignity of
our moral nature, to give them some record--a relief, which the spirit of
man asks and demands to contemplate in some outward symbol of what it is
inwardly solemnizing. I am still too much under the cloud of past
misgivings;[187] too much of the stun and stupor from the recent peals and
thunder-crash still remains to permit me to anticipate other than by
wishes and prayers what the effect of your unweariable kindness may be on
poor Hartley’s mind and conduct. I pray fervently, and I feel a cheerful
trust that I do not pray in vain, that on my own mind and spring of action
it will be proved not to have been wasted. I do inwardly believe that I
shall yet do something to thank you, my dear Gillman, in the way in which
you would wish to be thanked, by doing myself honour.
Mrs. Gillman has been determined by your letter, and the heavenly weather,
and moral certainty of the continuance of _bathing_-weather at least, to
accept her sister’s offer of coming into Ramsgate and to take a house, for
a fortnight certain, at a guinea a week, in the buildings next to
Wellington Crescent, and having a certain modicum and segment of sea-peep.
You remember the house (the end one) with a balcony at the window, almost
in a line with the Duke of W. ... in wood, _lignum vitæ_, like as life. I
had thought of keeping my present bedroom at 10s. 6d. a week, but on
consulting Mrs. Rogers, she did not think that this would satisfy the
etiquette of the world, though the two houses are on different cliffs; and
I felt so confident of the effect of the bathing and Ramsgate transparent
water, the sands, the pier, etc., that as there was no alternative but of
giving up the bathing (for Mrs. G. would not stay by herself, partly, if
not chiefly, because she feared I might add more to your anxiety than your
comfort in your bachelor state and with only Bessy of Beccles) or having
Jane, I voted for the latter, and will do my very best to keep her in good
humour and good spirits.
Dear Friend, and Brother of my Soul, God only knows how truly and in the
depth you are loved and prized by your affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXXXII. TO MISS BRENT.[188]
July 7, 1823.
MY DEAR CHARLOTTE,--I have been many times in town within the last three
or four weeks; but with one exception, when I was driven in and back by
Mr. Gillman to hear the present idol of the world of fashion, the Revd.
Mr. Irving, the super-Ciceronian, ultra-Demosthenic pulpiteer of the
Scotch Chapel in Cross Street, Hatton Garden, I have been always at the
West End of the town, and mostly dancing attendance on a proud bookseller,
and I fear to little purpose--weary enough of my existence, God knows! and
yet not a tittle the more disposed to better it at the price of apostacy
or suppression of the truth. If I could but once get off the two works, on
which I rely for the proof that I have not lived in vain, and had those
off my mind, I could then maintain myself well enough by writing for the
purpose of what I got by it; but it is an anguish I cannot look in the
face, to abandon just as it is completed the work of such intense and
long-continued labour; and if I cannot make an agreement with Murray, I
must try Colbourn, and if with neither, owing to the loud calumny of the
“Edinburgh,” and the silent but more injurious detraction of the
“Quarterly Review,” I must try to get them published by subscription. But
of this when we meet. I write at present and to you as the less busy
sister, to beg you will be so good as to send me the volume of Southey’s
“Brazil,” which I am now in particular want of, by the Highgate Stage that
sets off just before Middle Row. “Mr. Coleridge, or J. Gillman, Esq.
(either will do), Highgate.”
My kind love to Mary. I have little doubt that I shall see you in the
course of next week.
Do you think of taking rooms out of the smoke during this summer for any
time?
God bless you, my dear Charlotte, and your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXXXIII. TO THE REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE.[189]
HIGHGATE, July 23, 1823.
MY DEAR EDWARD,--From Carlisle to Keswick there are several routes
possible, and neither of these without some attraction. The choice,
however, lies between two; which to prefer, I find it hard to decide, and
if, as on the whole I am disposed to do, I advise the former, it is not
from thinking the other of inferior interest. On the contrary, if your
_laking_ were comprised between Carlisle and Keswick, I should not
hesitate to recommend the latter in preference, but because the first will
bring you soonest to Keswick, where Mr. Southey still is, having, as your
cousin Sara writes me, deferred his journey to town, on account of his
book on “The Church,” which has outgrown its intended dimensions; and
because the _sort_ of “scenery” (to use that slang word best confined to
the creeking Daubenies of the Theatre) on the latter route, is what you
will have abundant opportunities of seeing with the one leg of your
compass fixed at Keswick.
First then, you may go from Carlisle to Rose Castle, and spend an hour in
seeing that and its circumferency; and from thence to _Caldbeck_, its
waterfalls and faery caldrons, with the Pulpit and Clerk’s Desk Rocks,
over which the Cata-, or rather Kitten-ract, flings itself, and the cavern
to the right of the fall, as you front it; and from Caldbeck to the foot
of Bassenthwaite, when you are in the vale of Keswick and not many miles
from Greta Hall. The second route is from Carlisle to Penrith (a road of
little or no interest), but from Carlisle you would go to Lowther (Earl of
Lonsdale’s seat and magnificent grounds), the village of Lowther, Hawes
Water, and from Hawes Water you might pass over the mountains into
Ulleswater, and when there, you might go round the head of the lake (that
is, Patterdale), and, if on foot and strong enough and the weather is
fine, pass over Helvellyn, and so get into the high road between Grasmere
and Keswick, or, passing lower down on the lake, cross over by Graystock,
or with a guide or manual instructions, over the fells so as to come out
at or not far from Threlkeld, which is but three or four miles from
Keswick. At least in good weather there is, I believe, a tolerably
_equitible_ (that is, horse or pony-tolerating) track. But at Patterdale
you would receive the best direction. There is an inn at Patterdale where
you might sleep, so as to make one day of it from Penrith to the Lake
Head, _viâ_ Lowther and Hawes Water; and thence to Keswick would take good
part of a second. There is one consideration in favour of this plan, that
from Carlisle to Penrith, or even to Lowther, you might go by the coach,
and I question whether you could reach Greta Hall by the Caldbeck Route in
one day when at Keswick. When at Keswick, I would advise you to go to
Wastdale through Borrowdale, and if you could return by Crummock and
through the vale of Newlands, the inverted arch of which (on the ͜A͜B (A
B) of which I once saw the two legs of a rich rainbow so as to form with
the arch a perfect circle) _faces_ Greta Hall, you will have seen the very
pith and marrow of the Lakes, especially as your route to Chester or
Liverpool will take you that heavenly road through Thirlmere, Grasmere,
Rydal (where you will, of course, pay your respects to Mr. Wordsworth),
Ambleside, and the _striking_ half of Windermere.
God bless you! Pray take care of yourself, were it only that you know how
fearful and anxious your father and Fanny[190] are respecting your chest
and lungs, in case of cold or over-exertion.
I have heard from Sara and from Mr. Watson (a friend of mine who has just
come from the North) a very comfortable account of Hartley.
Believe me, dear Edward, with every kind wish, your affectionate uncle and
sincere friend,
[S. T. COLERIDGE.]
P. S. Your query respecting the poem I can only answer by a _Nescio_.
Irving (the Scotch preacher, so blackguarded in the “John Bull” of last
Sunday), certainly the greatest _orator_ I ever heard (N. B. I make and
mean the same distinction between oratory and eloquence as between the
mouth + the windpipe and the brain + heart), is, however, a man of great
simplicity, of overflowing affections, and enthusiastically in earnest;
and I have reason to believe, deeply regrets his conjunction of Southey
with Byron, as far as the _men_ (and not the poems) are in question.
CCXXXIV. TO J. H. GREEN.
GROVE, HIGHGATE, February 15, 1824.
I mentioned to you, I believe, Basil Montagu’s kind endeavour to have an
associateship of the Royal Society of Literature (a yearly £100 versus a
yearly essay) conferred on me. I knew nothing of the particulars till this
morning, or rather till within this hour, when I received a list of names
(electors) from Mr. Montagu, with advice to write to such and such and
such--while he, and he, and he had promised “_for us_”--in short, a
regular _canvass_, or rather sackcloth with the ashes on it pulled out of
the dust holes, moistened with cabbage-water, and other culinary
excretions of the same kidney. Of course, I _jibbed_ and with proper (if
not equa; yet) mulanimity returned for answer--that what a man’s friends
did _sub rosâ_, and what one friend might say to another in favour of an
individual, was one thing--what a man did in his own name and person was
another--and that I would not, _could_ not, _solicit_ a single vote. I
should think it an affrontive interference with a decision, in which there
ought to be neither ground or motive, but the elector’s own judgement, and
conscience, and all for what? It is hard if, in the same time as I could
produce an essay of the sort required, I could not get the same sum by
compiling a school-book.
However, I fear, that having allowed my name, at Montagu’s instance, to be
proposed, which it was by a Mr. Jerdan (N. B. Neither the one _sub
cubili_, nor that in Palestine; but the Jerdan of Michael’s Grove,
Brompton, No. 1), I cannot now withdraw my name without appearing to
_trifle_ with my friends, and without hurting Montagu--so I must submit to
the probability of being black-balled as the penalty of having given my
assent before I had ascertained the conditions. So I have decided to let
the thing take its own course. But as Montagu wishes to have Mr.
Chantrey’s vote _for us_, if you see and _feel_ no objection (an
objectiuncula will be quite sufficient), you will perhaps write him a line
to state the circumstances. It comes on on Thursday next.
I look forward with a _feel_ of regeneration to the Sundays.
My best and most affectionate respects to Mrs. J. Green, and to your dear
and excellent mother if she be with you.
And till we meet, may God bless you and your obliged and sincere friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXXXV. TO THE SAME.
ÆDES NEMOROSÆ, APUD PORT{M} ALTAM,
May 19, 1824.
Mr. S. T. Coleridge, F. R. S. L., R. A., H. M., P. S. B., etc., etc., has
the honour of avowing the high gratification he will receive should any
answer from him be thought “to oblige Lincoln’s Inn Fields.” When he
reflects indeed on their many and cogent claims on his admiration and
gratitude, what a _Fund_ of _Literature_ they contain, what a Royal
Society, what Royal Associates--not to speak of those as yet in the egg of
futurity, the unhatched Decemvirate and Spes Altera Phœbi! What a royal
College, where philosophy and eloquence unite to display their fresh and
vernal green! what a conjunction of the Fine Arts with the Sciences, Law
and Physique, Glossurgery and Chirurgery! when he remembers that if the
Titanic Roc should take up the Great Pyramid in his beak, and drop the
same with due skill, the L. I. F. would fit as cup to ball, bone to bone;
though if S. T. C. might dare advise so great and rare a bird, the
precious transport should be let fall point downwards, and thus prevent
the adulteration of their intellectual splendours with “the light of
common day,” while a duplicate of the Elysium below might be reared on its
ample base in mid air--(ah! if a duplicate of No. 22 could be
found)!--when S. T. C. ponders on these proud merits, what is there he
would not do to “oblige Lincoln’s Inn Fields”? In vain does Gillman talk
of a _stop_ being put thereto! Between _oblige_ and Lincoln’s Inn Fields
continuity alone can intervene for the heart’s eye of their obliged and
counter-obliging
S. T. COLERIDGE,
who, with his friends Mr. and Mrs. G., will, etc., on June 3rd.
J. H. GREEN, Esq., 22, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
CCXXXVI. TO JAMES GILLMAN.
RAMSGATE, November 2, 1824.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--That so much longer an interval has passed between this
and my last letter you will not, I am sure, attribute to any correspondent
interval of oblivion. I do not, indeed, think that any two hours of any
one day, taken at sixteen, have elapsed in which you, past or future, or
myself in connection with you, were not for a longer or shorter space my
uppermost thought. But the two days following James’s safe arrival by the
coach I was so depressively unwell, so unremittingly restless, etc., and
so exhausted by a teasing cough, and by two of these bad nights that make
me moan out, “O for a sleep for sleep itself to rest in!” that I was quite
disqualified for writing. And since then, I have been waiting for the
Murrays to take a parcel with them, who were to have gone on Monday
morning. But again not hearing from them, and remembering your injunction
not to mind postage, I have resolved that no more time shall pass on and
should have written to-day, even though Mrs. Gillman had not been dreaming
about you last night, and about some letter, etc. Upon my seriousness, I
do declare that I cannot make out certain dream-devils or damned souls
that play pranks with me, whenever by the operation of a cathartic pill or
from the want of one, a ci-devant dinner in its metempsychosis is
struggling in the lower intestines. I cannot comprehend how any thoughts,
the offspring or product of my own reflection, conscience, or fancy, could
be translated into such images, and agents and actions, and am
half-tempted (N. B. between sleeping and waking) to regard with some
favour Swedenborg’s assertion that certain foul spirits of the lowest
order are attracted by the precious ex-viands, whose conversation the soul
half appropriates to itself, and which they contrive to whisper into the
sensorium. The Honourable Emanuel has repeatedly caught them in the fact,
in that part of the spiritual world corresponding to the guts in the world
of bodies, and driven them away. I do not pass this Gospel; but upon my
honour it is no bad apocrypha. I am at present in my best sort and state
of health, bathed yesterday, and again this morning in spite of the rain,
and in so deep a bath, that having thrown myself forward from the first
step of the machine ladder, and only taken two strokes after my
re-immersion, I had at least ten strokes to take before I got into my
depth again, so that it is no false alarm when those who cannot swim are
warned that a person may be drowned a very few yards from the machine. I
returned to _fetch out_ our ladies to see the huge lengthy Columbus, with
the two steam vessels,[191] before and behind, the former to tow, and the
latter to, God knows what. By aid of a good glass, we saw it “_quite
stink_,” as the poor woman said, the people on board, etc. It is 310 feet
long, and 50 wide, and looks exactly like a _Brobdingnag punt_, and on our
return we had (from Mrs. Jones) the “Morning Herald,” with Fauntleroy’s
trial, which (if he be not a treble-damned liar) completely bears out my
assertion that nothing short of a miracle could acquit the partners of
_virtual_ accompliceship; this on my old principle, that the absence of
what ought to have been present is all but equivalent to the presence of
what ought to have been absent. Qui non prohibet quod prohibere potest et
debet, _facit_.
Sir Alexander Johnston[192] has payed me great attention. There is a Lady
Johnston not unlike Miss Sara Hutchinson in face and mouth, only that she
is taller. Sir A. himself is a fine gentlemanly man, young-looking for his
age, and with exception of one not easily describable motion of his head
that makes him look as if he had been accustomed to have a _pen_ behind
his ear, a sort of “Torney’s” clerk look, he might remind you of J.
Hookham Frere. He is a sensible well-informed man, _specious_ in no bad
sense of the word, but (I guess) not much depth. In all probability, you
will see him. We have talked a good deal together about you and me, and me
and you, in consequence of _occasion_ given. Sir A. is one of the leading
men in _our_ Royal Society of Literature, and beyond doubt, a man of
_influence_ in town. I am apt to forget superfluities, but a voice from
above asks, “if I have said that we begin to be anxious to hear from you.”
But probably before you can sit down to answer this, you will have
received another, and, I flatter myself, more amusing, at least
pleasure-giving Scripture from me. (N. B. “Coleridge’s Scriptures”--a new
title.)
[No signature.]
CCXXXVII. TO THE REV. H. F. CARY.
HIGHGATE, Monday, December 14, 1824.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--The gentleman, Mr. Gabriel Rossetti,[193] whose letter to
you I enclose, is a friend of my friend, Mr. J. H. Frere, with whom he
lived in habits of intimacy at Malta and Naples. He seems to me what from
Mr. Frere’s high opinion of him I should have confidently anticipated, a
gentleman, a scholar, and a man of talents. The nature of his request you
will learn from the letter, namely, a perusal of his Manuscript on the
spirit of Dante and the mechanism and interpretation of the “Divina
Commedia,” of which he believes himself to have the filum Ariadneum in his
hand, and a frank opinion of the merits of his labours. My dear friend! I
know by experience _what_ is asked in this twofold request, and that the
weight increases in proportion to the kindness and sensibility and the
shrinking from the infliction of pain of the person on whom it is
enjoined. The name of Mr. John Hookham Frere would alone have sufficed to
make _me_ undertake this office, had the request been directed to myself.
It would have been my duty. But I would not, knowing your temper and
habits and avocations, have sought to engage you, or even have put you to
the discomfort of excusing yourself had I not been strongly impressed by
Mr. Rossetti’s manners and conversation with the belief that the interests
of literature are concerned, and that Mr. Rossetti has a claim on all the
services which the sons of the Muses, and more particularly the
cultivators of ancient Italian Literature, and most particularly Dante’s
“English Duplicate and Re-incarnation” can render him. If your health and
other duties allow your accession to this request (for the recommendation
of the work to the booksellers is quite a secondary consideration, of
minor importance in Mr. Rossetti’s estimation, and I have, besides,
explained to him how very limited _our_ influence is), you will be so good
as to let me hear from you, and where and when Mr. Rossetti might wait on
you. He will be happy to attend you at Chiswick. He _understands_ English,
and, he speaking Italian and I our own language, we had no difficulty in
keeping up an animated conversation.
Make mine and all our cordial remembrances to Mrs. Cary, and believe me,
dear friend, with perfect esteem and most affectionate regard, yours,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. Both Mrs. G. and myself have returned much benefited by our
sea-sojourn. Mr. Rossetti has, I find, an additional merit in good men’s
thoughts. He is a poet who has been driven into exile for the high morale
of his writings. For even general sentiments breathing the spirit of
nobler times are treasons in the present Neapolitan and Holy Alliance
Codes! Wretches!! I dare even _pray_ against them, even with Davidian
bitterness. Do not forget to let me have an answer to this, if possible,
by next day’s post.
CCXXXVIII. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
Monday Night, ? 1824 ? 1829.
DEAR WORDSWORTH,--Three whole days the going through the first book cost
me, though only to find fault. But I cannot find fault, in pen and ink,
without thinking over and over again, and without some sort of an attempt
to suggest the alteration; and, in so doing, how soon an hour is gone! so
many half seconds up to half minutes are lost in leaning back in one’s
chair, and looking up, in the bodily act of contracting the muscles of the
brow and forehead, and unconsciously attending to the sensation. Had I the
MS. with me for five or six months, so as to amuse myself off and on,
without any solicitude as to a given day, and, could I be persuaded that
if as well done as the nature of the thing (viz., _a translation of
Virgil_,[194] in English) renders possible, it would not raise but simply
sustain your well-merited fame for pure diction, where what is not idiom
is never other than logically correct, I doubt not that the irregularities
could be removed. But I am haunted by the apprehension that I am not
feeling or thinking in the same spirit with you, at one time, and at
another _too much_ in the spirit of your writings. Since Milton, I know of
no poet with so many _felicities_ and unforgettable lines and stanzas as
you. And to read, therefore, page after page without a single _brilliant_
note, depresses me, and I grow peevish with you for having wasted your
time on a work _so_ much below you, that you cannot _stoop_ and _take_.
Finally, my conviction is, that you undertake an _impossibility_, and that
there is no medium between a prose version and one on the avowed principle
of _compensation_ in the widest sense, that is, manner, genius, total
effect. I confine myself to _Virgil_ when I say this.
I must now set to work with _all_ my powers and thoughts to my
Leighton,[195] and then to my logic, and then to my _opus maximum_! if
indeed it shall please God to spare me so long, which I have had too many
warnings of late (more than my nearest friends know of) not to doubt. My
kind love to Dorothy.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXXXIX. TO JOHN TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
GROVE, HIGHGATE, Friday, April 8, 1825.
MY DEAR NEPHEW,--I need not tell you that no attention in my power to
offer shall be wanting to Dr. Reich. As a foreigner and a man of letters
he might claim this in his own right; and that he came from you would have
ensured it, even though he had been a Frenchman. But that he is a German,
and that you think him a worthy and deserving man, and that his lot, like
my own, has been cast on the bleak north side of the mountain, make me
reflect with pain on the little influence I possess, and the all but
_zero_ of my direct means, to serve or to assist him. The prejudices
excited against me by Jeffrey, combining with the mistaken notion of my
German Metaphysics to which (I am told) some passages in some biographical
gossip book about Lord Byron[196] have given fresh currency, have rendered
my authority with the _Trade_ worse than nothing. Of the three schemes of
philosophy, Kant’s, Fichte’s, and Schelling’s (as diverse each from the
other as those of Aristotle, Zeno, and Plotinus, though all crushed
together under the name Kantean Philosophy in the English talk) I should
find it difficult to select the one from which I _differed_ the most,
though perfectly easy to determine which of the three _men_ I hold in
highest honour. And Immanuel Kant I assuredly do value most highly; not,
however, as a metaphysician, but as a logician who has completed and
systematised what Lord Bacon had boldly designed and loosely sketched out
in the Miscellany of Aphorisms, his Novum Organum. In Kant’s “Critique of
the Pure Reason” there is more than one fundamental error; but the main
fault lies in the title-page, which to the manifold advantage of the work
might be exchanged for “An Inquisition respecting the Constitution and
Limits of the Human Understanding.” I can not only honestly assert, but I
can satisfactorily prove by reference to writings (Letters, Marginal
Notes, and those in books that have never been in my possession since I
first left England for Hamburgh, etc.) that all the elements, the
_differentials_, as the algebraists say, of my present opinions existed
for me before I had even seen a book of German Metaphysics, later than
Wolf and Leibnitz, or could have read it, if I had. But what will this
avail? A High German Transcendentalist I must be content to remain, and a
young American painter, Leslie (pupil and friend of a very dear friend of
mine, Allston), to whom I have been in the habit for ten years and more of
shewing as cordial regards as I could to a near relation, has, I find,
introduced a portrait of me in a picture from Sir W. Scott’s “Antiquary,”
as Dr. Duster Swivil, or whatever his name is.[197] Still, however, I will
make any attempt to serve Dr. Reich, which he may point out and which, I
am not sure, would dis-serve him! I do not, of course, know what command
he has over the English language. If he wrote it fluently, I should think
that it would answer to any one of our great publishers to engage him in
the translation of the best and cheapest Natural History in existence,
viz., Okens, in three thick octavo volumes, containing the inorganic
world, and the animals from the Πρωτόζωα and animalcula of Infusions, to
man. The Botany was not published two years ago. Whether it is now I do
not know. There is one thin quarto of plates. It is by far the most
entertaining as well as instructive book of the kind I ever saw; and with
a few notes and the omission (or castigation) of one or two of Oken’s
adventurous whimsies, would be a valuable addition to our English
literature. So much for this.
I will not disguise from you, my dearest nephew, that the first certain
information of your having taken the “Quarterly”[198] gave me a pain,
which it required all my confidence in the soundness of your judgement to
counteract. I had long before by conversation with experienced barristers
got rid of all apprehension of its being likely to injure you
professionally. My fears were directed to the _invidiousness_ of the
situation, it being the notion of publishers that without satire and
sarcasm no review can obtain or keep up a sale. Perhaps pride had some
concern in it. _For_ myself I have none, probably because I had time out
of mind given it up as a lost cause, given myself over, I mean, a
predestined author, though without a drop of true _author_ blood in my
veins. But a pride in and for the name of my father’s house I have, and
those with whom I live know that it is never more than a dog-sleep, and
apt to _start up_ on the slight alarms. Now, though very sillily, I felt
pain at the notion of any _comparisons_ being drawn between _you_ (to whom
with your sister my heart pulls the strongest) and Mr. Gifford, even
though they should be [to] your advantage; and still more, the thought
that ... Murray should be or hold himself entitled to have and express an
opinion on the subject. The insolence of one of his proposals to me, viz.,
that he would publish an edition of my Poems, on the condition that a
gentleman in his confidence (Mr. Milman![199] I understand) was to select,
and make such omissions and corrections as should be thought
advisable--this, which offered to myself excited only a smile in which
there was nothing sardonic, might very possibly have rendered me sorer and
more sensitive when I boded even an infinitesimal _ejusdem farinæ_ in
connection with you.
But henceforward I shall look at the thing in a sunnier mood. Mr. Frere is
strongly impressed with the importance and even dignity of the trust, and
on the power you have of gradually giving a steadier and manlier tone to
the feelings and principles of the higher classes. But I hope very soon to
converse with you on this subject, as soon as I have finished my Essay for
the Literary Society, (in which I flatter myself I have thrown some light
on the passages in Herodotus respecting the derivation of the Greek
Mythology from Egypt, and in what respect that paragraph respecting Homer
and Hesiod is to be understood), and have, likewise, got my “Aids to
Reflection” out of the Press. But I have more to do for the necessities of
the day, and which are _Nos non nobis_, than I can well manage so as to go
on with my own works, though I work from morning to night, as far as my
health admits and the loss of my friendly amanuensis. For the slowness
with which I get on with the pen in my own hand contrasts most strangely
with the rapidity with which I dictate. Your kind letter of invitation did
not reach me, but there was one which I ought to have answered long ago,
which came while I was at Ramsgate. We have had a continued succession of
illness in our family here, at one time six persons confined to their
beds. I have been sadly afraid that we should lose Mrs. Gillman, who would
be a loss indeed to the whole neighbourhood, young and old. But she seems,
thank God! to recover strength, though slowly. As I hope to write again in
a few days with my book, I shall now desire my cordial regards to Mrs. J.
Coleridge, and with my affectionate love to the little ones.
With the warmest interest of affection and esteem, I am, my dear John,
your sincere friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
J. T. COLERIDGE, Esq., 65, Torrington Square.
CCXL. TO THE REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE.
May 19, 1825.
MY VERY DEAR NEPHEW,--You have left me under a painful and yet genial
feeling of regret, that my lot in life has hitherto so much estranged me
from the children of the sons of my father, that venerable countenance
and name which form my earliest recollections and _make them religious_.
It is not in my power to express adequately so as to convey it to others
what a revolution has taken place in my mind since I have seen your
sister, and John, and Henry, and lastly yourself. Yet revolution is not
the word I want. It is rather the sudden evolution of a seed that had sunk
too deep for the warmth and exciting air to reach, but which a casual
spade had turned up and brought close to the surface, and I now _know_ the
meaning as well as feel the _truth_ of the Scottish proverb, Blood is
thicker than water.
My book will be _out_ on Monday next, and Mr. Hessey hopes that he shall
be able to have a copy ready for me by to-morrow afternoon, so that I may
present it to the Bishop of London, whom (at his own request Lady B. tells
me) with his angel-faced wife and Miss Howley[200] I am to meet at Sir
George’s to-morrow at six o’clock. There are many on whose sincerity and
goodness of heart I can rely. There are several in whose judgement and
knowledge of the world I have greater trust than in my own. And among
these few John Coleridge ranks foremost. It was, therefore, an
indescribable comfort to me to hear from him, that the first draft of my
“Aids to Reflection,” that is, all he had yet seen, had delighted him
_beyond measure_. I can with severest truth declare that half a score
flaming panegyrical reviews in as many works of periodical criticism would
not have given me half the pleasure, nor one quarter the satisfaction.
I dine D. V. on Saturday next in Torrington Square, when doubtless we
shall drink your health with appropriate adjuncts. Yesterday I had to
inflict an hour and twenty-five minutes’ essay full of Greek and
superannuated Metaphysics on the ears of the Royal Society of Literature,
the subject being the Prometheus of Æschylus deciphered in proof and as
instance of the connection of the Greek Drama with the Mysteries.[201]
“Douce take it” (as Charles Lamb says in his Superannuated Man) if I did
not feel remorseful pity for my audience all the time. For, at the very
best, it was a thing to be read, not to read. God bless you or I shall be
too late for the post.
Your affectionate uncle,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. I went yesterday to the Exhibition, and hastily “thrid” the
labyrinth of the dense huddle, for the sole purpose of seeing our Bishop’s
portrait.[202] My own by the same artist is very much better, though even
in this the smile is exaggerated. But Fanny and your mother were in
raptures with it while they too seemed very cold in their praise of
William’s.
CCXLI. TO DANIEL STUART.
Postmark, July 9, 1825.
MY DEAR SIR,--The bad weather had so far damped my expectations, that,
though I regretted, I did not feel any disappointment at your not coming.
And yet I hope you will remember our Highgate Thursday conversation
evenings on your return to town; because, if you come once, I flatter
myself, you will afterwards be no unfrequent visitor.
At least, I have never been at any of the town conversazioni, literary, or
artistical, in which the conversation has been more miscellaneous without
degenerating into _pinches_, a pinch of this, and a pinch of that, without
the least connection between the subjects, and with as little interest.
You will like Irving as a companion and a converser even more than you
admire him as a preacher. He has a vigorous and (what is always pleasant)
a GROWING mind, and his character is MANLY throughout. There is one thing,
too, that I cannot help considering as a recommendation to our evenings,
that, in addition to a few ladies and pretty lasses, we have seldom more
than five or six in company, and these generally of as many professions or
pursuits. A few weeks ago we had present, two painters, two poets, one
divine, an eminent chemist and naturalist, a major, a naval captain and
voyager, a physician, a colonial chief justice, a barrister, and a
baronet; and this was the most numerous meeting we ever had.
It would more than gratify me to know from you, what the impressions are
which my “Aids to Reflection” make on your judgment. The conviction
respecting the character of the times expressed in the _comment_ on Aph.
vi., page 147, contains the aim and object of the whole book. I venture to
direct your notice particularly to the note, page 204 to 207, to the note
to page 218, and to the sentences respecting common sense in the last
twelve lines of page 252, and the _conclusion_, page 377.
Lady Beaumont writes me that the Bishop of London has expressed a _most_
favourable opinion of the book; and Blanco White was sufficiently struck
with it, as immediately to purchase all my works that are in print, and
has procured from Sir George Beaumont an introduction to me. It is well I
should have some one to speak for it, for I am unluckily ill off ... and
you will easily see what a chance a poor book of mine has in these days.
Such has been the influence of the “Edinburgh Review” that in all
Edinburgh not a single copy of Wordsworth’s works or of any part of them
could be procured a few months ago. The only copy Irving saw in Scotland
belonged to a poor weaver at Paisley, who prized them next to his Bible,
and had all the Lyrical Ballads by heart--a fact which would cut Jeffrey’s
conscience to the bone, if he had any. I give you my honour that Jeffrey
himself told me that _he_ was himself an enthusiastic admirer of
Wordsworth’s poetry, but it was necessary that a Review should have a
character.
Forgive this egotism, and be pleased to remember me kindly and with my
best respects to Mrs. Stuart, and with every cordial wish and prayer for
you and yours, be assured that I am your obliged and affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Friday, July 8, 1825.
CCXLII. TO JAMES GILLMAN.
[8 Plains of Waterloo, Ramsgate,]
October 10, 1825.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--It is a flat’ning thought that the more we have seen, the
less we have to say. In youth and early manhood the mind and nature are,
as it were, two rival artists both potent magicians, and engaged, like the
King’s daughter and the rebel genii in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments,
in sharp conflict of conjuration, each having for its object to turn the
other into canvas to paint on, clay to mould, or cabinet to contain. For a
while the mind seems to have the better in the contest, and makes of
Nature what it likes, takes her lichens and weather-stains for types and
printers’ ink, and prints maps and facsimiles of Arabic and Sanscrit MSS.
on her rocks; composes country dances on her moonshiny ripples, fandangos
on her waves, and waltzes on her eddy-pools, transforms her summer gales
into harps and harpers, lovers’ sighs and sighing lovers, and her winter
blasts into Pindaric Odes, Christabels, and Ancient Mariners set to music
by Beethoven, and in the insolence of triumph conjures her clouds into
whales and walruses with palanquins on their backs, and chases the dodging
stars in a sky-hunt! But alas! alas! that Nature is a wary wily
long-breathed old witch, tough-lived as a turtle and divisible as the
polyp, repullulative in a thousand snips and cuttings, _integra et in
toto_. She is sure to get the better of Lady _Mind_ in the long run and to
take her revenge too; transforms our to-day into a canvas dead-coloured to
receive the dull, featureless portrait of yesterday: not alone turns the
mimic mind, the ci-devant sculptress with all her kaleidoscopic freaks and
symmetries! into clay, but _leaves_ it such a _clay_ to cast dumps or
bullets in; and lastly (to end with that which suggested the beginning)
she mocks the mind with its own metaphor, metamorphosing the memory into a
_lignum vitæ_ escritoire to keep unpaid bills and dun’s letters in, with
outlines that had never been filled up, MSS. that never went further than
the title-pages, and proof sheets, and foul copies of Watchmen, Friends,
Aids to Reflection, and other _stationary_ wares that have kissed the
publishers’ shelf with all the tender intimacy of inosculation! Finis! and
what is all this about? Why, verily, my dear friend! the thought forced
itself on me, as I was beginning to put down the first sentence of this
letter, how impossible it would have been fifteen or even ten years ago
for me to have travelled and voyaged by land, river, and sea a hundred and
twenty miles with fire and water blending their souls for my propulsion,
as if I had been riding on a centaur with a sopha for a saddle, and yet to
have nothing more to tell of it than that we had a very fine day and ran
aside the steps in Ramsgate Pier at half-past four exactly, all having
been well except poor Harriet, who during the middle third of the voyage
fell into a reflecting melancholy.... She looked pathetic, but I cannot
affirm that I observed anything sympathetic in the countenances of her
fellow-passengers, which drew forth a sigh from me and a sage remark how
many of our virtues originate in the fear of death, and that while we
flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian sensibility over the
sorrows of our human brethren and sisteren, we are in fact, though perhaps
unconsciously, moved at the prospect of our own end. For who ever
sincerely pities seasickness, toothache, or a fit of the gout in a lusty
good liver of fifty?
What have I to say? We have received the snuff, for which I thank your
providential memory.... To Margate, and saw the caverns, as likewise smelt
the same, called on Mr. Bailey, and got the Novum Organum. In my hurry, I
scrambled up the Blackwood instead of a volume of Giovanni Battista Vico,
which I left on the table in my room, and forgot my sponge and sponge-bag
of oiled silk. But perhaps when I sit down to work, I may have to request
something to be sent, which may come with them. I therefore defer it till
then....
God bless you, my dear friend! You will soon hear again from
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXLIII. TO THE REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE.
December 9, 1825.
MY DEAR EDWARD,--I write merely to tell you, that I have secured Charles
Lamb and Mr. Irving to meet you, and wait only to learn the day for the
endeavour to induce Mr. Blanco White to join us. Will you present Mr. and
Mrs. Gillman’s regards to your brothers Henry and John, and that they
would be most happy if both or either would be induced to accompany you?
I have had a very interesting conversation with Irving this evening on the
present condition of the Scottish Church, the spiritual life of which,
yea, the very core he describes as in a state of ossification. The greater
part of the Scottish clergy, he complains, have lost the _unction_ of
their own church without acquiring the erudition and accomplishments of
ours. Their sermons are all dry theological arguing and disputing,
lifeless, pulseless,--a rushlight in a fleshless skull.
My kindest love to your sister, and kisses, prayers, and blessings for the
little one.
[S. T. COLERIDGE.]
Thursday midnight.
I almost despair of John’s coming; but do persuade Henry if you can. I
quite long to see him again.
CCXLIV. TO MRS. GILLMAN.
May 3, 1827.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I received and acknowledge your this morning’s present
both as plant and symbol, and with appropriate thanks and correspondent
feeling. The rose is the pride of summer, the delight and the beauty of
our gardens; the eglantine, the honeysuckle, and the jasmine, if not so
bright or so ambrosial, are less transient, creep nearer to us, clothe our
walls, twine over our porch, and haply peep in at our chamber window, with
the crested wren or linnet within the tufts wishing good morning to us.
Lastly the geranium passes the door, and in its hundred varieties
imitating now this now that leaf, odour, blossom of the garden, still
steadily retains its own _staid_ character, its own sober and refreshing
hue and fragrance. It deserves to be the inmate of the house, and with due
attention and tenderness will live through the winter grave yet cheerful,
as an old family friend, that makes up for the departure of gayer
visitors, in the leafless season. But none of these are the _myrtle_![203]
In none of these, nor in all collectively, will the _myrtle_ find a
substitute. All together and joining with them all the aroma, the spices,
and the balsams of the hot-house, yet would they be a sad exchange for the
_myrtle_! Oh, precious in its sweetness is the _rich_ innocence of its
snow-white blossoms! And dear are they in the remembrance; but these may
pass with the season, and while the myrtle plant, our own myrtle plant
remains unchanged, its blossoms are remembered the more to endear the
faithful bearer; yea, they survive invisibly in every _more than_ fragrant
leaf. As the flashing strains of the nightingale to the yearning murmurs
of the dove, so the myrtle to the rose! He who has once possessed and
prized a genuine _myrtle_ will rather _remember_ it under the cypress tree
than seek to _forget_ it among the rose bushes of a paradise.
God bless you, my dearest friend, and be assured that if death do not
suspend memory and consciousness, death itself will not deprive you of a
faithful participator in all your hopes and fears, affections and
solicitudes, in your unalterable
S. T. COLERIDGE.
[Illustration]
CCXLV. TO THE REV. GEORGE MAY COLERIDGE.
Monday, January 14, 1828.
MY DEAR NEPHEW,--An interview with your cousin Henry on Saturday and a
note received from him last night had enabled me in some measure to
prepare my mind for the awful and _humanly_ afflicting contents of your
letter, and I rose to the receiving of it from earnest suplication to “the
Father of Mercies and God of all Comfort”--that He would be strong in the
weakness of His faithful servant, and his effectual helper in the last
conflict. My first impulse on reading your letter was to set off
immediately, but on a re-perusal, I doubt whether I shall not better
comply with your suggestion by waiting for your next. Assuredly, if God
permit I will not forego the claim, which my heart and conscience justify
me in making, to be one among the mourners who ever truly loved and
honoured your father. Allow me, my dear nephew, in the swelling grief of
my heart to say, that if ever man morning and evening and in the watches
of the night had earnestly intreated through his Lord and Mediator, that
God would shew him his sins and their sinfulness, I, for the last ten
years at least of my life, have done so! But, in vain, have I tried to
recall any one moment since my quitting the University, or any one
occasion, in which I have either thought, felt, spoken, or intentionally
acted of or in relation to my brother, otherwise than as one who loved in
him father and brother in one, and who independent of the fraternal
relation and the remembrance of his manifold goodness and kindness to me
from boyhood to early manhood should have chosen him above all I had known
as the friend of my inmost soul. Never have man’s feeling and character
been more cruelly misrepresented than mine. Before God have I sinned, and
I have not hidden my offences before him; but He too knows that the belief
of my brother’s alienation and the grief that I was a stranger in the
house of my second father has been the secret wound that to this hour
never closed or healed up. Yes, my dear nephew! I do grieve, and at this
moment I have to struggle hard in order to keep my spirit in tranquillity,
as one who has long since referred his cause to God, through the grief at
my little communication with my family. Had it been otherwise, I might
have been able to shew myself, my _whole_ self, for evil and for good to
my brother, and often have said to myself, “How fearful an attribute to
sinful man is Omniscience!” and yet have I earnestly wished, oh, how many
times! that my brother could have seen my inmost heart, with every thought
and every frailty. But his reward is nigh: in the light and love of his
Lord and Saviour he will soon be all light and love, and I too shall have
his prayers before the throne. May the Almighty and the Spirit the
Comforter dwell in your and your mother’s spirit. I must conclude. Only,
if I come and it should please God that your dear father shall be still
awaiting his Redeemer’s final call, I shall be perfectly satisfied in all
things to be directed by you and your mother, who will judge best whether
the knowledge of my arrival though without seeing him would or would not
be a satisfaction, would or would not be a disturbance to him.
Your affectionate uncle,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Grove, Highgate.
Rev. GEORGE MAY COLERIDGE,
Warden House, Ottery St. Mary, Devon.
CCXLVI. TO GEORGE DYER.[204]
June 6, 1828.
My dear long known, and long loved friend,--Be assured that neither Mr.
Irving nor any other person, high or low, gentle or simple, stands higher
in my esteem or bears a name endeared to me by more interesting
recollections and associations than yourself; and if gentle man or gentle
woman, taking too literally the partial portraiture of a friend, has a
mind to see the old lion in his sealed cavern, no more potent “Open,
Sesame, Open” will be found than an introduction from George Dyer, my
elder brother under many titles--brother Blue, brother Grecian, brother
Cantab, brother Poet, and last best form of fraternity, a man who has
never in his long life, by tongue or pen, uttered what he did not believe
to be the truth (from any motive) or concealed what he did conceive to be
such from other motives than those of tenderness for the feelings of
others, and a conscientious fear lest what was truly said might be falsely
interpreted,--in all these points I dare claim brotherhood with my old
friend (not omitting grey hairs, which are venerable), but in one point,
the long toilsome life of inexhaustible, unsleeping benevolence and
beneficence, that slept only when there was no form or semblance of
sentient life to awaken it, George Dyer must stand alone! He may have a
few second cousins, but no full brother.
Now, with regard to your friends, I shall be happy to see them on any day
they may find to suit their or your convenience, from twelve (I am not
ordinarily visible before, or if the outward man were forced to make his
appearance, yet from sundry bodily infirmities, my soul would present
herself with unwashed face) till four, that is, after Monday next,--we
having at present a servant ill in bed, you must perforce be content with
a sandwich lunch or a glass of wine.
But if you could make it suit you to take your tea, an early tea, at or
before six o’clock, and spend the evening, a long evening, with us on
Thursday next, Mr. and Mrs. Gillman will be most happy to see you and Mrs.
Dyer, with your friends, and you will probably meet some old friend of
yours. On Thursday evening, indeed, at any time, between half-past five
and eleven, you may be sure of finding us at home, and with a very fair
chance of Basil Montagu taking you and Mrs. Dyer back in his coach.
I have long owed you a letter, and should have long since honestly paid my
debt; but we have had a house of sickness. My own health, too, has been
very crazy and out of repair, and I have had so much work accumulated on
me that I have been like an overtired man roused from insufficient sleep,
who sits on his bedside with one stocking on and the other in his hand,
doing nothing, and thinking what a deal he has to do.
But I am ever, sick or well, weary or lively, my dear Dyer, your sincere
and affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCXLVII. TO GEORGE CATTERMOLE.[205]
GROVE, HIGHGATE, Thursday, August 14, 1828.
MY DEAR SIR,--I have but this moment received yours of the 13th, and
though there are but ten minutes in my power, if I am to avail myself of
this day’s post, I will rather send you a very brief than not an immediate
answer. I shall be much gratified by standing beside the baptismal font as
one of the sponsors of the little pilgrim at his inauguration into the
rights and duties of Immortality, and he shall not want my prayers, nor
aught else that shall be within my power, to assist him in _becoming_ that
of which the Great Sponsor who brought light and immortality into the
world has declared him an emblem.
There are one or two points of character belonging to me, so, at least, I
believe and trust, which I would gladly communicate with the
name,--earnest love of Truth for its own sake, and steadfast convictions
grounded on faith, not fear, that the religion into which I was baptised
is the Truth, without which all other knowledge ceases to merit the
appellation. As to other things, which yet I most sincerely wish for him,
a more promising augury might be derived from other individuals of the
Coleridge race.
_Any_ day, that you and your dear wife (to whom present my kindest
remembrances and congratulations) shall find convenient, will suit me, if
only you will be so good as to give me two or three days’ knowledge of it.
Believe me, my dear sir, with sincere respect and regard,
Your obliged
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. I returned from my seven weeks’ Continental tour with Mr. Wordsworth
and his daughter this day last week. We saw the Rhine as high up as
Bingen, Holland, and the Netherlands.
CCXLVIII. TO J. H. GREEN.
GROVE, HIGHGATE, June 1, 1830.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--Do you happen among your acquaintances and connections to
know any one who knows any one who knows Sir Francis Freeling of the Post
Office sufficiently to be authorised to speak a recommendatory word to
him? Our Harriet,[206] whose love and willing-mindedness to _me_-ward
during my long chain of bodily miserablenesses render it my duty no less
than my inclination to shew to her that I am not insensible of her humbly
affectionate attentions, has applied to me in behalf of her brother, a
young man who can have an excellent character, from Lord Wynford and
others, for sobriety, integrity, and discretion, and who is exceedingly
ambitious to get the situation of a postman or deliverer of letters to the
General Post Office. Perhaps, before I see you next, you will be so good
as to tumble over the names of your acquaintances, and if any connection
of Sir Francis’ should turn up, to tell me, and if it be right and proper,
to make my request and its motive.
Dr. Chalmers with his daughter and his very pleasing wife honoured me with
a call this morning, and spent an hour with me, which the good doctor
declared on parting to have been “_a refreshment_” such as he had not
enjoyed for a long season.[207] N. B.--There were no sandwiches; only Mrs.
Aders was present, who is most certainly a _bonne bouche_ for both eye and
ear, and who looks as bright and sunshine-showery as if nothing had ever
ailed her. The main topic of our discourse was Mr. Irving and his unlucky
phantasms and phantis(ms). I was on the point of telling Dr. Chalmers, but
fortunately recollected there were ladies and _Scotch_ ladies present,
that, while other Scotchmen were content with brimstone for the itch,
Irving had a rank itch for brimstone, new-sublimated by addition of fire.
God bless you and your
Ever obliged and affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
30 May? or 1 June? at all events.
Monday night, 11 o’clock.
P. S.--Kind remembrances to Mrs. Green. I continue pretty well, on the
whole, _considering_, save the soreness across the base of my chest.
CCXLIX. TO THOMAS POOLE.
1830.
MY DEAR POOLE,--Mr. Stutfield Junr.[208] has been so kind as to inform me
of his father’s purposed journey to Stowey, and to give me this
opportunity of writing; though in fact I have little _pleasant_ to say,
except that I am advancing regularly and steadily towards the completion
of my Opus Magnum on Revelation and Christianity, the Reservoir of my
reflections and reading for twenty-five years past, and in health not
painfully worse. I do not know, however, that I should have troubled you
with a letter merely to convey this piece of information, but I have a
great favour to request of you; that is, that, supposing you to have still
in your possession the two letters of the biography of my own childhood
which I wrote at Stowey for you, and a copy of the letter from Germany
containing the account of my journey to the Harz and my ascent of Mount
Brocken, you would have them transcribed, and send me the transcript
addressed to me, James Gillman’s Esq., Highgate, London.
O that riches would but make wings for me instead of for itself, and I
would fly to the seashore at Porlock and Lynmouth, making a good halt at
dear, ever fondly remembered Stowey, of which, believe me, your image and
the feelings and associations connected therewith constitute four fifths,
to, my dear Poole,
Your obliged and affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCL. TO MRS. GILLMAN.
1830.
DEAR MRS. GILLMAN,--Wife of the friend who has been more than a brother to
me, and who have month after month, yea, hour after hour, for how many
successive years, united in yourself the affections and offices of an
anxious friend and tender sister to me-ward!
May the Father of Mercies, the God of Health and all Salvation, be your
reward for your great and constant love and loving-kindness to me, abiding
with you and within you, as the Spirit of guidance, support, and
consolation! And may his Grace and gracious Providence bless James and
Henry for your sake, and make them a blessing to you and their father! And
though weighed down by a heavy presentiment respecting my own sojourn
here, I not only hope but have a steadfast faith that God will be your
reward, because your love to me from first to last has begun in, and been
caused by, what appeared to _you_ a translucence of the love of the good,
the true, and the beautiful from within me,--as a relic of glory gleaming
through the turbid shrine of my mortal imperfections and infirmities, as a
Light of Life seen within “the body of this Death,”--because in loving me
you loved our Heavenly Father reflected in the gifts and influences of His
Holy Spirit!
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCLI. TO J. H. GREEN.
December 15, 1831.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--It is at least a fair moiety of the gratification I feel,
that it will give _you_ so much pleasure to hear from me, that I _tacked_
about on Monday, continued in smooth water during the whole day, and with
exceptions of about an hour’s _muttering_, as if a storm was coming, had a
comfortable night. I was still better on Tuesday, and had no relapse
yesterday. I have so repeatedly given and suffered disappointment, that I
cannot even communicate this gleam of convalescence without a little
fluttering distinctly felt at my heart, and a sort of cloud-shadow of
dejection flitting over me. God knows with what aims, motives, and
aspirations I pray for an interval of ease and competent strength! One of
my present wishes is to form a better nomenclature or terminology. I have
long felt the exceeding inconvenience of the many different meanings of
the term _objective_,--sometimes equivalent to apparent or sensible,
sometimes in opposition to it,--_ex. gr._ “The objectivity is the rain
drops and the reflected light, the iris, is but an appearance.” Thus,
sometimes it means real and sometimes unreal, and the worst is, that it
forms an obstacle to the fixation of the great truth, that the perfect
reality is predicable only where actual and real are terms of identity,
that is, where there is no _potential_ being, and that this alone is
absolute reality; and further, of that most fundamental truth, that the
_ground_ of _all_ reality, the objective no less than of the subjective,
is the _Absolute Subject_. How to get out of the difficulty I do not know,
save that some other term must be used as the antithet to phenomenal,
perhaps noumenal.
James Gillman has passed an unusually strict and long examination for
ordination with great credit, and was selected by the bishop to read the
lessons in the service. The parents are, of course, delighted, and now, my
dear friend, with affectionate remembrances to Mrs. Green, may God bless
you and
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCLII. TO HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE.[209]
THE GROVE, February 24, 1832.
My dear Nephew, and by a higher tie, Son, I thank God I have this day been
favoured with such a mitigation of the disease as amounts to a reprieve,
and have had ease enough of sensation to be able to think of what you said
to me from Lockhart, and the result is a wish that you should--that is, if
it appears right to you, and you have no objection of feeling--write for
me to Professor Wilson, offering the Essays, and the motives for the wish
to have them republished, with the authority (if there be no breach of
confidence) of Mr. Lockhart. I cannot with propriety offer them to
_Fraser_, having for a series of years received “Blackwood’s Magazine” as
a free gift to me, _until_ I have made the offer to Blackwood. Of course,
my whole and only object is the desire to see them put into the
possibility of becoming useful. But, oh! this is a faint desire, my dear
Henry, compared with that of seeing a fair abstract of the principles I
have advanced respecting the National Church and its revenue, and the
National Clerisy as a coördinate of the State, in the minor and antithetic
sense of the term State!
I almost despair of the Conservative Party, too truly, I fear, and most
ominously, self-designated _Tories_, and of course half-truthmen! One main
omission both of senators and writers has been, ὡς ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ, that they
have forgotten to level the axe of their argument at the root, the true
root, yea, trunk of the delusion, by pointing out the true nature and
operation and _modus operandi_ of the taxes in the first instance, and
_then_ and not till then the utter groundlessness, the absurdity of the
presumption that any House of Commons formed otherwise, and consisting of
other men of other ranks, other views or with other interests, than the
present has been for the last twenty years at least, would or could (from
any imaginable cause) have a deeper interest or a stronger desire to
diminish the taxes, as far as the abolition of this or that tax would
increase the ability to pay the remainder. For what are taxes but one of
the forms of circulation? Some a nation must have, or it is no nation. But
he that takes ninepence from me instead of a shilling, but at the same
time and by this very act prevents sixpence from coming into my
pocket,--am I to thank him? Yet such are the only thanks that Mr. Hume and
the Country Squires, his cowardly back-clapping flatterers, can fairly
claim. In my opinion, Hume is an incomparably more mischievous being than
O’Connell and the gang of agitators. They are mere symptomatic and
significative effects, the roars of the inwardly agitated mass of the
popular sea. But Hume is a fermenting virus. But I must end my scrawl. God
bless my dear Sara. Give my love to Mrs. C. and kiss the baby for
S. T. COLERIDGE.
H. N. COLERIDGE, Esq., 1, New Court, Lincoln’s Inn.
CCLIII. TO MISS LAWRENCE.[210]
March 22, 1832.
MY DEAR MISS LAWRENCE,--You and _dear, dear_ Mrs. Crompton are among the
few sunshiny images that endear my past life to me, and I never think of
you without heartfelt esteem, without affection, and a _yearning_ of my
better being toward you. I have for more than eighteen months been on the
brink of the grave, the object of my wishes, and only not of my prayers,
because I commit myself, poor dark creature, to an Omniscient and
All-merciful, in whom are the issues of life and death,--content, yea,
most thankful, if only His Grace will preserve within me the blessed faith
that He _is_ and is a God that heareth prayers, abundant in forgiveness,
and _therefore_ to be feared, no _fate_, no God as imagined by the
Unitarians, a sort of, I know not what _law-giving_ Law of Gravitation, to
whom prayer would be as idle as to the law of gravity, if an undermined
wall were falling upon me; but “a God that made the eye, and therefore
shall _He_ not see? who made the ear, and shall He not hear?” who made the
heart of man to love Him, and shall He not love the creature whose
ultimate end is to love Him?--a God who _seeketh_ that which was lost, who
calleth back that which had gone astray; who calleth through His own Name;
Word, Son, from everlasting the Way and the _Truth_; and who became man
that for poor fallen mankind he might _be_ (not merely announced but _be_)
the _Resurrection_ and the _Life_,--“Come unto me, all ye that are weary
and heavy-laden, and _I_ will give you rest!” Oh, my dear Miss Lawrence!
prize above all earthly things the faith. I trust that no sophistry of
shallow infra-socinians has quenched it within you,--that God is a God
that heareth prayers. If varied learning, if the assiduous cultivation
of the reasoning powers, if an accurate and minute acquaintance with all
the arguments of controversial writers; if an intimacy with the doctrines
of the Unitarians, which can only be obtained by one who for a year or two
in his early life had been a convert to them, yea, a zealous and by
themselves deemed powerful supporter of their opinions; lastly, if the
utter absence of any imaginable worldly interest that could sway or warp
the mind and affections,--if all these combined can give any weight or
authority to the opinion of a fellow-creature, they will give weight to my
adjuration, sent from my sickbed to you in kind love. O trust, O trust, in
your Redeemer! in the coeternal _Word_, the Only-begotten, the living
_Name_ of the Eternal I AM, Jehovah, Jesus!
[Illustration]
I shall endeavour to see Mr. Hamilton.[211] I doubt not his scientific
attainments. I have had proofs of his taste and feeling as a poet, but
believe me, my dear Miss Lawrence! that, should the cloud of distemper
pass from over me, there needs no other passport to a cordial welcome from
me than a line from you importing that he or she possesses your esteem and
regard, and that you wish I should shew attention to them. I cannot make
out your address, which I read “The Grange;” but where that is I know not,
and fear that the Post Office may be as ignorant as myself. I must
therefore delay the direction of my letter till I see Mr. Hamilton; but in
all places, and independent of place, I am, my dear Miss Lawrence, with
most affectionate recollections,
Your friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Miss S. LAWRENCE, The Grange, nr. Liverpool.
CCLIV. TO THE REV. H. F. CARY.
GROVE, HIGHGATE, April 22, 1832.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--For I am sure by my love for you that you love me too
well to have suffered my very rude and uncourteous vehemence of
contradiction and reclamation respecting your advocacy of the Catilinarian
Reform Bill, when we were last together, to have cooled, much less
alienated your kindness; even though the interim had not been a weary,
weary time of groaning and life-loathing for me. But I hope that this
fearful night-storm is subsiding, as you will have heard from Mr. Green or
dear Charles Lamb. I write now to say, that if God, who in His Fatherly
compassion and through His love wherewith He hath beheld and loved me in
Christ, in whom alone He can love the world, hath worked almost a miracle
of grace in and for me by a sudden emancipation from a thirty-three years’
fearful slavery,[212] if God’s goodness should in time and so far perfect
my convalescence as that I should be capable of resuming my literary
labours, I have a thought by way of a light _prelude_, a sort of
unstiffening of my long dormant joints and muscles, to give a reprint as
nearly as possible, except in quality of the paper, a facsimile of John
Asgill’s tracts with a life and copious notes,[213] to which I would
affix Pastilla et Marginalia. See my MSS. notes, blank leaf and marginal,
on Southey’s “Life of Wesley,” and sundry other works. Now can you
direct me to any source of information respecting John Asgill, a
prince darling of mine, the most honest of all Whigs, whom at the
close of Queen Anne’s reign the scoundrelly Jacobite Tories twice
expelled from Parliament, under the pretext of his incomparable, or
only-with-Rabelais-to-be-compared argument against the base and cowardly
custom of ever dying? And this tract is a very treasure, and never more
usable as a medicine for our clergy, at least all such as the Bishop of
London, Archbishops of Canterbury and of Dublin, the Paleyans and
Mageeites,[214] any one or all of whom I would defy to answer a single
paragraph of Asgill’s tract, or unloose a single link from the chain of
logic. I have no biographical dictionary, and never saw one but in a
little sort of one-volume thing. If you can help me in this, do. I give my
kindest love to Mrs. Cary.
Yours, with unutterable and unuttered love and regard, in all (but as to
the accursed Reform Bill! that _mendacium ingens_ to its own preamble (to
which no human being can be more friendly than I am), that huge tapeworm
_lie_ of some threescore and ten yards) entire sympathy of heart and soul,
Your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCLV. TO JOHN PEIRSE KENNARD.[215]
GROVE, HIGHGATE, August 13, 1832.
MY DEAR SIR,--Your letter has announced to me a loss too great, too awful,
for common grief, or any of its ordinary forms and outlets. For more than
an hour after, I remained in a state which I can only describe as a state
of deepest mental silence, neither prayer nor thanksgiving, but a
prostration of absolute faith, as if the Omnipresent were present to me by
a more special intuition, passing all sense and all understanding. Whether
Death be but the cloudy Bridge to the Life beyond, and Adam Steinmetz has
been wafted over it without suspension, or with an immediate resumption of
self-conscious existence, or whether his Life be hidden in God, in the
eternal only-begotten, the Pleroma of all Beings and the _Habitation_ both
of the Retained and the Retrieved, therein in a blessed and most divine
Slumber to grow and evolve into the perfected Spirit,--for sleep is the
appointed season of all growth here below, and God’s ordinances in the
earthly may shadow out his ways in the Heavenly,--in either case our
friend is _in God_ and _with God_. Were it possible for me even to _think_
otherwise,[216] the very grass in the fields would turn black before my
eyes, and nature appear as a skeleton fantastically mossed over beneath
the weeping vault of a charnel house!
Deeply am I persuaded that for every man born on earth there is an
appointed task, some remedial process in the soul known only to the
Omniscient; and, this through divine grace fulfilled, the sole question is
whether it be needful or expedient for the church that he should still
remain: for the individual himself “to depart and to be with Christ” must
needs be GREAT gain. And of my dear, my filial friend, we may with a
strong and most consoling assurance affirm that he was eminently one
Who, being innocent, did even for _that_ cause
Bestir him in good deeds!
Wise Virgin He, and wakeful kept his Lamp
Aye trimm’d and full; and thus thro’ grace he liv’d
In this bad World as in a place of Tombs,
And touch’d not the Pollutions of the Dead.
And yet in Christ only did he build a hope. Yea, he blessed the emptiness
that made him capable of his Lord’s fullness, gloried in the blindness
that was a receptive of his Master’s light, and in the nakedness that
asked to be cloathed with the wedding-garment of his Redeemer’s
Righteousness. Therefore say I unto you, my young friend, Rejoice! and
again I say, Rejoice!
The effect of the event communicated in your letter has been that of awe
and sadness on our whole household. Mrs. Gillman mourns as for a son, but
with that grief which is felt for a departed saint. Even the servants felt
as if an especially loved and honoured member of the family had been
suddenly taken away. When I announced the sad tidings to Harriet, an
almost _unalphabeted_ but very sensible woman, the tears swelled in her
eyes, and she exclaimed, “Ah sir! how many a Thursday night, after Mr.
Steinmetz was gone, and I had opened the door for him, I have said to them
below, ‘That dear young man is too amiable to live. God will soon have him
back.’” These were her very words. Nor were my own anticipations of his
recall less distinct or less frequent. Not once or twice only, after he
had shaken hands with me on leaving us, I have turned round with the tear
on my cheek, and whispered to Mrs. Gillman, “Alas! there is _Death_ in
that dear hand.”[217]
My dear sir! if our society can afford any comfort to _you_, as that of so
dear a friend of Adam Steinmetz cannot but be to _us_, I beseech you in my
own name, and am intreated by Mr. and Mrs. Gillman to invite you, to be
his representative for us, and to take his place in our circle. And I must
further request that you do not confine yourself to any particular evening
of the week (for which there is now no reason), but that you consult your
own convenience and opportunities of leisure. At whatever hour he comes,
the fraternal friend of Adam Steinmetz will ever be dear and most welcome
to
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CHAPTER XV
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
1833-1834
CHAPTER XV
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
1833-1834
CCLVI. TO J. H. GREEN.
Sunday night, April 8, 1833.
It is seldom, my dearest friend, that I find myself differing from you in
judgements of any sort. It is more than seldom that I am left in doubt and
query on any judgement of yours of a _practical_ nature, for on the good
ground of some sixteen or more years’ experience I feel a take-for-granted
faith in the dips and pointings of the needle in every decision of your
_total_ mind. But in the instance you spoke of this afternoon, viz., your
persistent rebuttal of the Temperance Society Man’s Request, though I do
not feel _sure_ that you are not in the right, yet I do feel as if I
should have been more delighted and more satisfied if you had intimated
your compliance with it. I feel that in this case I should have had _no_
doubt; but that my mind would have leapt forwards with content, like a key
to a loadstone.
Assuredly you might, at least you would, have a very promising chance of
effecting considerable _good_, and you might have commenced your address
with your own remark of the superfluity of any light of information
afforded to an habitual dram-drinker respecting the unutterable evil and
misery of his thraldom. As wisely give a physiological lecture to convince
a man of the pain of burns, while he is lying with his head on the bars of
the fire-grate, instead of snatching him off. But in stating this, you
might most effectingly and preventively for others describe the misery of
that condition in which the impulse waxes as the motive wanes. (Mem. There
is a striking passage in my “Friend” on this subject,[218] and a no less
striking one in a schoolboy theme of mine[219] now in Gillman’s
possession, and in my own hand, written when I was fourteen, with the
simile of the treacherous current of the Maelstrom.) But this might give
occasion for the suggestion of one new charitable institution, under
authority of a legislative act, namely, a _Maison de Santé_ (what do the
French call it?) for lunacy and idiocy of the _will_, in which, with the
full consent of, or at the direct instance of the patient himself, and
with the concurrence of his friends, such a person under the certificate
of a physician might be placed under medical and moral coercion. I am
convinced that London would furnish a hundred volunteers in as many days
from the gin-shops, who would swallow their glass of poison in order to
get courage to present themselves to the hospital in question. And a
similar institution might exist for a higher class of will-maniacs or
impotents. Had such a house of health been in existence, I know who would
have entered himself as a patient some five and twenty years ago.
Second class. To the persons still capable of self-cure; and lastly, to
the young who have only begun, and not yet begun--[add to this] the
urgency of connecting the Temperance Society with the Christian churches
of all denominations,--the _classes_ known to each other, and deriving
strength from _religion_. This is a beautiful part, or might have been
made so, of the Wesleyan Church.
These are but raw hints, but unless the mercy of God should remove me from
my sufferings earlier than I dare hope or pray for, we will talk the
subject over again; as well as the reason _why_ spirits in any form as
such are so much more dangerous, morally and in relation to the forming a
habit, than beer or wine. Item: if a government were truly fraternal, a
healthsome and sound beer would be made universal; aye, and for the lower
half of the middle classes wine might be imported, good and generous, from
sixpence to eightpence per quart.
God bless you and your ever affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCLVII. TO MRS. ADERS.[220]
[1833.]
MY DEAR MRS. ADERS,--By my illness or oversight I have occasioned a very
sweet vignette to have been made in vain--except for its own beauty. Had I
sent you the lines that were to be written on the upright tomb, you and
our excellent Miss Denman would have, first, seen the dimension requisite
for letters of a distinctly visible and legible size; and secondly, that
the homely, plain _Church-yard Christian_ verses would not be in keeping
with a Muse (though a lovelier I never wooed), nor with a lyre or harp or
laurel, or aught else _Parnassian_ and allegorical. A rude old yew-tree,
or a mountain ash, with a grave or two, or any other characteristic of a
village rude church-yard,--such a hint of a landscape was all I meant; but
if any figure, rather that of an elderly man
Thoughtful, with quiet tears upon his cheek.
(Tombless Epitaph. See “Sibylline Leaves.”)
But I send the lines, and you and Miss Denman will form your own opinion.
Is one of Wyville’s proofs of my face worth Mr. Aders’ acceptance? I wrote
under the one I sent to Henry Coleridge the line from Ovid, with the
translation, thus:
S. T. COLERIDGE, ÆTAT. SUÆ 63.
Not / handsome / was / but / was / eloquent /
“Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulysses.”
_Translation._
“In truth, he’s no Beauty!” cry’d Moll, Poll, and Tab;
But they all of them own’d He’d the gift of the Gab.
My best love to Mr. Aders, and believe that as I have been, so I ever
remain your affectionate and trusty friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. _I_ like the tombstone very much.
[Illustration]
The lines when printed would probably have on the preceding page the
advertisement--
EPITAPH ON A POET LITTLE KNOWN, YET BETTER KNOWN BY THE INITIALS OF HIS
NAME THAN BY THE NAME ITSELF.
S. T. C.
Stop, Christian Passer-by! Stop, Child of God!
And read with gentle heart. Beneath this sod
A Poet lies: or that, which once seem’d He.
O lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.
That He, who many a year with toilsome breath
Found Death in Life, may here find Life in Death.
Mercy for Praise--_to be forgiven_ for Fame
He ask’d, and hoped thro’ Christ. DO THOU the Same.
CCLVIII. TO JOHN STERLING.[221]
GROVE, HIGHGATE, October 30, 1833.
MY DEAR SIR,--I very much regret that I am not to see you again for so
many months. Many a fond dream have I amused myself with, of your
residing near me or in the same house, and of preparing, with your and Mr.
Green’s assistance, my whole system for the press, as far as it exists in
writing in any _systematic_ form; that is, beginning with the Propyleum,
On the power and use of Words, comprising Logic, as the canons of
_Conclusion_, as the criterion of _Premises_, and lastly as the discipline
and evolution of Ideas (and then the Methodus et Epochee, or the
Disquisition on God, Nature, and Man), the two first grand divisions of
which, from the Ens super Ens to the _Fall_, or from God to Hades, and
then from Chaos to the commencement of living organization, containing the
whole scheme of the Dynamic Philosophy, and the deduction of the Powers
and Forces, are complete; as is likewise a third, _composed_ for the
greater part by Mr. Green, on the “Application of the Ideas, as the
_Transcendents_ of the Truths, Duties, Affections, etc., in the Human
Mind.” If I could once publish these (but, alas! even these could not be
compressed in less than three octavo volumes), I should then have no
objection to print my MS. papers on “Positive Theology, from Adam to
Abraham, to Moses, the Prophets, Christ and Christendom.” But this is a
dream! I am, however, very seriously disposed to employ the next two
months in preparing for the press a metrical translation (if I find it
practicable) of the Apocalypse, with an introduction on the “Use and
Interpretation of Scriptures.” I am encouraged to this by finding how much
of _original_ remains in my views after I have subtracted all I have in
common with Eichhorn and Heinrichs. I write now to remind you, or to beg
you to recall to my memory the name of the more recent work (Lobeck?)
which you mentioned to me, and whether you can procure it for me, or
rather the loan of it. Likewise, whether you know of any German
translation and commentary on Daniel, that is thought highly of? I find
Gesenius’ version exceedingly interesting, and look forward to the
Commentaries with delight. You mentioned some works on the numerical
Cabbala, the Gematria (I think) they call it. But I must not scribble away
your patience, and after I have heard from you from Cambridge I will try
to write to you more to the purpose (for I did not begin this scrawl till
the hour had passed that ought to have found me in bed).
With sincere regard, your obliged friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
CCLIX. TO MISS ELIZA NIXON.[222]
July 9, 1834.
MY DEAR ELIZA,--The three volumes of Miss Edgeworth’s “Helen” ought to
have been sent in to you last night, and are marked as having been _so
sent_. And indeed, knowing how much noise this work was making and the
great interest it had excited, I should not have been so selfish as to
have retained them on my own account. But Mrs. Gillman is very anxious
that I should read it, and has made me promise to write my remarks on it,
and such reflections as the contents may suggest, which, in awe of the
precisians of the Book Society, I shall put down on separate paper. The
young people were so eager to read it, that with my slow and interrupted
style of reading, it would have been cruel not to give them the priority.
Mrs. Gillman flatters me that you and your sisters will think a copy of my
remarks some compensation for the delay.
God bless you, my dear young friend. You, I know, will be gratified to
learn, and in my own writing, the still timid but still strengthening and
brightening dawn of convalescence with the last eight days.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
July 9, 1834.
The two volumes[223] that I send you are making a rumour, and are highly
and I believe justly extolled. They are written by a friend of mine,[224]
a remarkably handsome young man whom you may have seen on one of our
latest Thursday evening conversazioni. I have not yet read them, but keep
them till I send in “Helen,” and longer, if you should not have finished
them.
CCLX. TO ADAM STEINMETZ KENNARD.
GROVE, HIGHGATE, July 13, 1834.
MY DEAR GODCHILD,--I offer up the same fervent prayer for you now as I did
kneeling before the altar when you were baptized into Christ, and solemnly
received as a living member of His spiritual body, the church. Years must
pass before you will be able to read with an understanding heart what I
now write. But I trust that the all-gracious God, the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, who by His only-begotten Son (all
mercies in one sovereign mercy!) has redeemed you from evil ground, and
willed you to be born out of darkness, but into light; out of death, but
into life; out of sin, but into righteousness; even into “the Lord our
righteousness,”--I trust that He will graciously hear the prayers of your
dear parents, and be with you as the spirit of health and growth, in body
and in mind. My dear godchild, you received from Christ’s minister at the
baptismal font, as your Christian name, the name of a most dear friend of
your father’s, and who was to me even as a son,--the late Adam Steinmetz,
whose fervent aspirations and paramount aim, even from early youth, was to
be a Christian in thought, word, and deed; in will, mind, and affections.
I, too, your godfather, have known what the enjoyment and advantages of
this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learning and
intellectual power can give; I now, on the eve of my departure, declare to
you, and earnestly pray that you may hereafter live and act on the
conviction, that health is a great blessing; competence, obtained by
honourable industry, a great blessing; and a great blessing it is, to have
kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of
all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be
indeed a Christian. But I have been likewise, through a large portion of
my later life, a sufferer, sorely affected with bodily pains, languor,
and manifold infirmities; and for the last three or four years have, with
few and brief intervals, been confined to a sick-room, and at this moment,
in great weakness and heaviness, write from a sickbed, hopeless of
recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy removal. And I thus, on the
brink of the grave, solemnly bear witness to you, that the Almighty
Redeemer, most gracious in His promises to them that truly seek Him, is
faithful to perform what He has promised; and has reserved, under all
pains and infirmities, the peace that passeth all understanding, with the
supporting assurance of a reconciled God, who will not withdraw His spirit
from me in the conflict, and in His own time will deliver me from the evil
one. Oh, my dear godchild! eminently blessed are they who begin _early_ to
seek, fear, and love their God, trusting wholly in the righteousness and
mediation of their Lord, Redeemer, Saviour, and everlasting High Priest,
Jesus Christ. Oh, preserve this as a legacy and bequest from your unseen
godfather and friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
INDEX
Abergavenny, 410.
Abergavenny, Earl of, wreck of the, 494 n.;
495 n.
Abernethy, Dr. John, 525;
C. determines to place himself under the care of, 564, 565.
Achard, F. C., 299 and note.
Acland, Sir John, 523 and note.
Acting, 621-623.
Acton, 184, 186-188, 191.
Adams, Dr. Joseph, 442 and note.
Addison’s _Spectator_, studied by C. in connection with _The Friend_,
557, 558.
_Address on the Present War, An_, 85 n.
_Address to a Young Jackass and its Tethered Mother_, 119 and note, 120.
Aders, Mrs., 701 n., 702 n., 752;
letters from C., 701, 769.
Adscombe, 175, 184, 188.
Advising, the rage of, 474, 475.
Adye, Major, 493.
_Æschylus, Essay on the Prometheus of_, 740 and note.
_Aids to Reflection_, 688 n.;
preparation and publication of, 734 n., 738;
C. calls Stuart’s attention to certain passages in, 741;
favourable opinions of, 741;
756 n.
Ainger, Rev. Alfred, 400 n.
Akenside, Mark, 197.
Albuera, the Battle of, C.’s articles on, 567 and note.
Alfoxden, 10 n.;
Wordsworth settles at, 224, 227;
326, 515.
Alison’s _History of Europe_, 628 n.
Allen, Robert, 41 and note, 45, 47, 50;
extract from a letter from him to C., 57 n.;
63, 75, 83, 126;
appointed deputy-surgeon to the Second Royals, 225 and note;
letter to C., 225 n.
Allsop, Mrs., 733 n.
Allsop, Thomas, friendship and correspondence with C., 695, 696;
publishes C.’s letters after his death, 696;
his _Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge_,
41 n., 527 n., 675 n., 696 and note, 698 n., 721 n.;
711;
C.’s letter of Oct. 8, 1822, 721 n.;
letter from C., 696.
Allston, Washington, 523;
his bust of C., 570 n., 571;
his portraits of C., 572 and note;
his art and moral character, 573, 574;
581, 633;
his genius and his misfortunes, 650;
695 and notes;
letter from C., 498.
Ambleside, 335;
Lloyd settles at, 344;
577, 578.
America, proposed emigration of C. and other pantisocrats to, 81, 88-91,
98, 101-103, 146;
prospects of war with England, 91;
241;
progress of religious deism in, 414;
C.’s letter concerning the inevitableness of a war with, 629.
Amtmann of Ratzeburg, the, 264, 268, 271.
_Amulet, The_, 257.
_Ancient Mariner, The_, 81 n.;
written in a dream or dreamlike reverie, 245 n.;
696.
_Animal Vitality, Essay on_, by Thelwall, 179, 212.
_Annual Anthology_, the, edited by Southey, 207 n., 226 n., 295 n., 298
n.;
C. suggests a classification of poems in, 313, 314, 317;
318, 320, 322 and note, 330, 331, 748 n.
_Annual Review_, 488, 489, 522.
_Anti-Jacobin, The Beauties of the_, its libel on C., 320 and note.
_Antiquary, The_, by Scott, C.’s portrait introduced into an
illustration for, 736 and note.
_Ants, Treatise on_, by Huber, 712.
_Ardinghello_, by Heinse, 683 and note.
Arnold, Mr., 602, 603.
Arrochar, 432 and note.
Arthur’s Crag, 439.
A-seity, 688 and note.
Asgill, John, and his Treatises, 761 and note.
Ashburton, 305 n.
Ashe, Thomas, his _Miscellanies, Æsthetic and Literary_, 633 n.
Ashley, C. with the Morgans at, 631.
Ashley, Lord, and the Ten Hours Bills, 689 n.
Ashton, 140 and note.
_As late I roamed through Fancy’s shadowy vale_, a sonnet, 116 n., 118.
Atheism, 161, 162, 167, 199, 200.
_Athenæum, The_, 206 n., 536 n., 753 n.
_Atlantic Monthly_, 206 n.
Autobiographical letters from C. to Thomas Poole, 3-21.
Baader, Franz Xavier von, 683 and note.
Babb, Mr., 422.
Bacon, Lord, his _Novum Organum_, 735.
Badcock, Mr., 21.
Badcock, Harry, 22.
Badcock, Sam, 22.
Bala, 79.
Ball, Lady, 494 n., 497.
Ball, Sir Alexander John, 484, 487, 496, 497;
mutual regard of C. and, 508 n.;
524, 554;
C.’s narrative of his life, 579 n.;
his opinions of Lady Nelson and Lady Hamilton, 637.
_Ballad of the Dark Ladie, The_, 375.
Bampfylde, John Codrington Warwick, his genius, originality, and
subsequent lunacy, 309 and note;
his _Sixteen Sonnets_, 309 n.
Banfill, Mr., 306.
Barbauld, Anna Lætitia, 317 n.
_Barbou Casimir, The_, 67 and notes, 68.
Barlow, Caleb, 38.
Barr, Mr., his children, 154.
Barrington, Hon. and Rt. Rev. John Shute, Bishop of Durham, 582 and note.
Bassenthwaite Lake, 335, 376 n.;
sunset over, 384.
_Beard, On Mrs. Monday’s_, 9 n.
Beaumont, Lady, 459, 573, 580, 592, 593;
procures subscribers to C.’s lectures, 599;
644, 645, 739, 741;
letter from C., 641.
Beaumont, Sir George, 440 n., 462;
his affection for C. preceded by dislike, 468;
493;
extract from a letter from Wordsworth on John Wordsworth’s death, 494
n.;
496;
lends the Wordsworths his farmhouse near Coleorton, 509 n.;
579-581;
C. explains the nature of his quarrel with Wordsworth to, 592, 593;
595 n., 629;
on Allston as an historical painter, 633;
739, 741;
letter from C., 570.
_Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin, The_, its libel on C., 320 and note.
Becky Fall, 305 n.
Beddoes, Dr. Thomas, 157, 211, 338;
C.’s grief at his death, 543 and note, 544 and note;
his advice and sympathy in response to C.’s confession, 543 n.;
his character. 544.
Bedford, Grosvenor, 400 n.
Beet sugar, 299 and note.
Beguines, the, 327 n.
Bell, Rev. Andrew, D. D., 575, 582 and note, 605;
his _Origin, Nature, and Object of the New System of Education_, 581
and note, 582.
_Bell, Rev. Andrew, Life of_, by R. and C. C. Southey, 581 n.
Bellingham, John, 598 n.
Bell-ringing in Germany, 293.
Belper, Lord (Edward Strutt), 215 n.
Bennett, Abraham, his electroscope, 218 n., 219 n.
Bentley’s Quarto Edition of Horace, 68 and note.
Benvenuti, 498, 499.
_Benyowski, Count, or the Conspiracy of Kamtschatka, a Tragi-comedy_, by
Kotzebue, 236 and note.
Berdmore, Mr., 80, 82.
Bernard, Sir Thomas, 579 and notes, 580, 582, 585, 595 n., 599.
_Betham, Matilda, To. From a Stranger_, 404 n.
_Bible, The_, as literature, C.’s opinion of, 200;
slovenly hexameters in, 398.
Bibliography, Southey’s proposed work, 428-430.
_Bibliotheca Britannica, or an History of British Literature_, a
proposed work, 425-427, 429, 430.
Bigotry, 198.
Billington, Mrs. Elizabeth Weichsel, 368.
Bingen, 751.
_Biographia Literaria_, 3, 68 n., 74 n., 152 n., 164 n., 174 n., 232 n.,
257, 320 n., 498 n., 607 n., 669 n., 670 n.;
C. ill-used by the printer of, 673, 674;
679, 756 n.
Birmingham, 151, 152.
Bishop’s Middleham, 358 and note, 360.
_Blackwood’s Magazine_, 756.
Blake, William, as poet, painter, and engraver, 685 n., 686 n.;
C.’s criticism of his poems and their accompanying illustrations,
686-688;
his _Songs of Innocence and Experience_, 686 n.
Bloomfield, Robert, 395.
Blumenbach, Prof., 279, 298.
_Book of the Church, The_, 724.
Books, C.’s early taste in, 11 and note, 12;
in later life, 180, 181.
Booksellers, C.’s horror of, 548.
Borrowdale, 431.
Borrowdale mountains, the, 370.
_Botany Bay Eclogues_, by Robert Southey, 76 n., 116.
Bourbons, C.’s Essay on the restoration of the, 629 and note.
Bourne, Sturges, 542.
Bovey waterfall, 305 n.
Bowdon, Anne, marries Edward Coleridge, 53 n.
Bowdon, Betsy, 18.
Bowdon, John (C.’s uncle), C. goes to live with, 18, 19.
Bowdons, the, C.’s mother’s family, 4.
Bowles, the surgeon, 212.
_Bowles, To_, 111.
Bowles, Rev. William Lisle, C.’s admiration for his poems, 37, 42, 179;
63 n., 76 and note;
C.’s sonnet to, 111 and note;
115;
his sonnets, 177;
his _Hope, an Allegorical Sketch_, 179, 180;
196, 197, 211;
his translation of Dean Ogle’s Latin Iambics, 374 and note;
school life at Winchester, 374 n.;
C.’s, Southey’s, and Sotheby’s admiration of, and its effect on their
poems, 396;
borrows a line from a poem of C.’s, 396;
his second volume of poems, 403, 404;
637, 638, 650-652.
Bowscale, the mountain, 339.
Box, 631.
Boyce, Anne Ogden, her _Records of a Quaker Family_, 538 n.
Boyer, Rev. James, 61, 113, 768 n.
Brahmin creed, the, 229.
Brandes, Herr von, 279.
Brandl’s _Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the English Romantic School_, 258,
674 n., 740 n.
Bratha, 394, 535.
Bray, near Maidenhead, 69, 70.
Brazil, Emperor of, an enthusiastic student and admirer of C., 696.
Bread-riots, 643 n.
Brecon, 410, 411.
Bremhill, 650.
Brent, Mr., 598, 599.
Brent, Miss Charlotte, 520, 524-526;
C.’s affection for, 565;
577, 585, 600, 618, 643, 722 n.;
letter from C., 722.
_See_ Morgan family, the.
Brentford, 326, 673 n.
Bridgewater, 164.
Bright, Henry A., 245 n.
Bristol, C.’s bachelor life in, 133-135;
138, 139, 163 n., 166, 167, 184, 326, 414, 520, 572 n., 621, 623, 624.
_Bristol Journal_, 633 n.
_British Critic_, the, 350.
Brookes, Mr., 80, 82.
_Brothers, The_, by Wordsworth, the original of Leonard in, 494 n.;
C. accused of borrowing a line from, 609 n.
Brown, John, printer and publisher of _The Friend_, 542 n.
Brun, Frederica, C.’s indebtedness to her for the framework of the _Hymn
before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni_, 405 n.
Bruno, Giordano, 371.
Brunton, Miss, 86 and note, 87, 89;
verses to, 94.
Brunton, Elizabeth, 86 n.
Brunton, John, 86 n., 87.
Brunton, Louisa, 86 n.
Bryant, Jacob, 216 n., 219.
Buchan, Earl of, 139.
Buclé, Miss, 136.
_See_ Cruikshank, Mrs. John.
Buller, Sir Francis (Judge), 6 n.;
obtains a Christ’s Hospital Presentation for C., 18.
Buonaparte, 308, 327 n., 329 and note;
his animosity against C., 498 n.;
530 n.;
C.’s cartoon and lines on, 642.
Burdett, Sir Francis, 598.
Burke, Edmund, C.’s sonnet to, 116 n., 118;
his _Letter to a Noble Lord_, 157 and note;
Thelwall on, 166;
177.
Burnett, George, 74, 121, 140-142, 144-151, 174 n., 325, 467.
Burns, Robert, 196;
C.’s poem on, 206 and note, 207.
Burton, 326.
Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_, 428.
Busts of C., 570 n., 571, 695 n.
Butler, Samuel (afterwards Head Master of Shrewsbury and Bishop of
Lichfield), 46 and note.
Buttermere, 393.
Byron, Lord, his _Childe Harold_, 583;
666, 694, 726.
_Byron, Lord, Conversations of_, by Capt. Thomas Medwin, 735 and note.
Cabriere, Miss, 18.
Caermarthen, 411.
Caldbeck, 376 n., 724.
Calder, the river, 339.
Caldwell, Rev. George, 25 and note, 29, 71, 82.
Calne, Wiltshire, C.’s life at, 641-653.
Calvert, Raisley, 345 n.
Calvert, William, proposes to study chemistry with C. and Wordsworth,
345;
his portrait in a poem of Wordsworth’s, 345 n.;
proposes to share his new house near Greta Hall with Wordsworth and
his sister, 346;
his sense and ability, 346;
347, 348.
Cambridge, description of, 39;
137, 270.
_Cambridge, Reminiscences of_, by Henry Gunning, 24 n., 363 n.
_Cambridge Intelligencer, The_, 93 n., 218 n.
Cambridge University, C.’s life at, 22-57, 70-72, 81-129;
C. thinks of leaving, 97 n.;
137.
Cameos and intaglios, casts of, 703 and note.
Campbell, James Dykes, 251 n., 337 n.;
his _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, 269 n., 527 n., 572 n., 600 n., 631 n.,
653 n., 666 n., 667 n., 674 n., 681 n., 684 n., 698 n., 752 n.,
753 n., 772 n.
Canary Islands, 417, 418.
Canning, George, 542, 674.
Canova, Antonio, on Allston’s modelling, 573.
Cape Esperichel, 473.
Carlisle, Sir Anthony, 341 and note.
Carlton House, 392.
Carlyle, Thomas, his portrait of C. in the _Life of Sterling_, 771 n.
Carlyon, Clement, M. D., his _Early Years and Late Recollections_, 258,
298 n.
Carnosity, Mrs., 472.
Carrock, the mountain, a tempest on, 339, 340.
Carrock man, the, 339.
Cartwright, Major John, 635 and note.
Cary, Rev. Henry, his _Memoir of H. F. Cary_, 676 n.
_Cary, H. F., Memoir of_, by Henry Cary, 676 n.
Cary, Rev. H. F., his translation of the _Divina Commedia_, 676, 677 and
note, 678, 679;
C. introduces himself to, 676 n.;
685, 699;
letters from C., 676, 677, 731, 760.
_Casimir, the Barbou_, 67 and notes, 68.
Castlereagh, Lord, 662.
_Castle Spectre, The_, a play by Monk Lewis, C.’s criticism of, 236 and
note, 237, 238;
626.
Catania, 458.
Cat-serenades in Malta, 483 n., 484 n.
Catherine II., Empress of Russia, 207 n.
Cathloma, 51.
Catholic Emancipation, C.’s Letters to Judge Fletcher on, 629 and note,
634 and note, 635, 636, 642.
Catholicism in Germany, 291, 292.
Catholic question, the, letters in the _Courier_ on, 567 and note;
C. proposes to again write for the _Courier_ on, 660, 662;
arrangements for the proposed articles on, 664, 665.
Cattermole, George, 750 n.;
letter from C., 750.
Cattermole, Richard, 750 n.
Cattle, disposal of dead and sick, in Germany, 294.
Chalmers, Rev. Thomas, D. D., calls on C., 752 and note.
Chantrey, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Francis, R. A., C.’s impressions of, 699;
727.
Chapman, Mr., appointed Public Secretary of Malta, 491, 496.
_Character, A_, 631 n.
_Charity_, 110 n.
_Chatterton, Monody on the Death of_, 110 n., 158 n.;
C.’s opinion of it in 1797, 222, 223;
620 n.
Chatterton, Thomas, unpopularity of his poems, 221, 222;
Southey’s exertions in aid of his sister, 221, 222.
Chemistry, C. proposes to study, 345-347.
Chepstow, 139, 140 n.
Chester, John, accompanies C. to Germany, 259;
265, 267, 269 n., 272, 280, 281, 300.
_Childe Harold_, by Byron, 583.
Childhood, memory of, in old age, 428.
Children in cotton factories, legislation as to the employment of, 689
and note.
Christ, both God and man, 710.
_Christabel_, written in a dream or dreamlike reverie, 245 n.;
310, 313, 317, 337 and note, 342, 349;
Conclusion to Part II., 355 and note, 356 n.;
Part II., 405 n.;
a fine edition proposed, 421, 422;
437 n., 523;
C. quotes from, 609, 610;
the broken friendship commemorated in, 609 n.;
the copyright of, 669;
the _Edinburgh Review’s_ unkind criticism of, 669 and note, 670;
Mr. Frere advises C. to finish, 674;
696.
_Christianity, the one true Philosophy_ (C.’s _magnum opus_), outline
of, 632, 633;
fragmentary remains of, 632 n.;
the sole motive for C.’s wish to live, 668;
J. H. Green helps to lay the foundations of, 679 n.;
694, 753;
plans for, 772, 773.
_Christian Observer_, 653 n.
_Christmas Carol, A_, 330.
_Christmas Indoors in North Germany_, 257, 275 n.
_Christmas Out of Doors_, 257.
Christmas-tree, the German, 289, 290.
Christ’s Hospital, C.’s life at, 18-22;
173 n.
_Christ’s Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago_, by Charles Lamb, 20 n.
_Christ’s Hospital, List of Exhibitioners, from 1566-1885_, 41 n.
_Chronicle, Morning_, 111 n., 114, 116 n., 119 n., 126, 162, 167, 505,
506, 606 n., 615, 616.
Chubb, Mr., of Bridgwater, 231.
_Church, The Book of the_, by Southey, 724.
Church, the English, 135, 306, 651-653, 676, 757.
Church, the Scottish, in a state of ossification, 744, 745.
Church, the Wesleyan, 769.
Cibber, Colley, and his son, Theophilus, 693.
Cibber, Theophilus, his reply to his father, 693.
Cintra, Wordsworth’s pamphlet on the Convention of, 534 and note, 543
and note;
C.’s criticism of, 548-550.
Clagget, Charles, 70 and note.
Clare, Lord, 638.
Clarke, Mrs., the notorious, 543 n.
Clarkson, Mrs., 592.
Clarkson, Thomas, 363, 398;
his _History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade_, 527 and note,
528-530;
his character, 529, 530;
C.’s review of his book, 535, 536;
538 n., 547, 548;
on the second rupture between C. and Wordsworth, 599 n.
Clement, Mr., a bookseller, 548.
Clergyman, an earnest young, 691.
Clevedon, C.’s honeymoon at, 136.
Clock, a motto for a market, 553 and note, 554 n.
Coates, Matthew, 441 n.;
his belief in the impersonality of the deity, 444;
letter from C., 441.
Coates, Mrs. Matthew, 442, 443.
Cobham, 673 n.
Cole, Mrs., 271.
_Coleorton, Memorials of_, 369 n., 440.
Coleorton Farmhouse, C.’s visit to the Wordsworths at, 509-514.
Coleridge, Anne (sister--usually called “Nancy”), 8 and note, 21, 26.
Coleridge, Berkeley (son), birth of, 247 and note, 248, 249;
taken with smallpox, 259 n., 260 n.;
262, 267, 272;
death of, 247 n., 282-287, 289.
Coleridge, David Hartley (son--usually called “Hartley”), birth of, 169;
176, 205, 213, 220, 231, 245, 260-262, 267 n., 289, 296, 305, 318;
his talkativeness and boisterousness at the age of three, 321;
his theologico-astronomical hypothesis as to stars, 323;
a pompous remark by, 332;
illness, 342, 343;
early astronomical observations, 342, 343;
an extraordinary creature, 343, 344;
345 n., 355, 356 n., 359;
a poet in spite of his low forehead, 395;
408, 413, 416, 421;
at seven years, 443;
plans for his education, 461, 462;
468, 508;
visits the Wordsworths at Coleorton Farmhouse with his father, 509-514;
as a traveller, 509;
his character at ten years, 510, 512;
511;
under his father’s sole care for four or five months, 511 n.;
spends five or six weeks with his father and the Wordsworths at Basil
Montagu’s house in London, 511 n.;
portraits of, 511 n.;
521;
his appearance, behavior, and mental acuteness at the age of thirteen,
564;
at fifteen, 576, 577;
at Mr. Dawes’s school, 576 and note, 577;
583 n.;
friendly relations with his cousins, 675 and note;
C. asks Poole to invite him to Stowey, 675;
visits Stowey, 675 n.;
684, 721, 726;
letter of advice from S. T. C., 511.
Coleridge, Derwent (son of S. T. C. and father of the editor), birth
baptism of, 338 and note;
344, and 355, 359;
learns his letters, 393, 395;
408, 413, 416;
at three years, 443;
462, 468, 521;
at nine years, 564;
at eleven years, 576, 577;
at Mr. Dawes’s school, 576 and note, 577;
580, 605 n., 671 n.;
John Hookham Frere’s assistance in sending him to Cambridge, 675 and
note;
707, 711.
Coleridge, Miss Edith, 670 n.
Coleridge, Edward (brother), 7, 53-55, 699 n.
Coleridge, Rev. Edward (nephew), 724 n.;
letters from C., 724, 738, 744.
Coleridge, Frances Duke (niece), 726 and note, 740.
Coleridge, Francis Syndercombe (brother), 8, 9, 11, 12, 13;
his boyish quarrel with S. T. C., 13, 14;
becomes a midshipman, 17;
dies, 53 and note.
Coleridge, Frederick (nephew), 56.
Coleridge, Rev. George (brother), 7, 8;
his character and ability, 8;
12, 21 n., 25 n.;
his lines to Genius, _Ibi Hæc Incondita Solus_, 43 n.;
59;
his self-forgetting economy, 65;
extract from a letter from J. Plampin, 70 n.;
95, 97 n., 98 and note, 261;
visit from S. T. C. and his wife, 305 n., 306;
467, 498 n., 512;
disapproves of S. T. C.’s intended separation from his wife and
refuses to receive him and his family into his house, 523 and note;
699 n.;
approaching death of, 746-748;
S. T. C.’s relations with, 747, 748;
letters from S. T. C., 22, 23, 42, 53, 55, 59, 60, 62-70, 103, 239.
_Coleridge, the Rev. George, To_, a dedication, 223 and note.
Coleridge, Rev. George May (nephew), his friendly relations with Hartley
C., 675 and note;
letter from C., 746.
_Coleridge, Hartley, Poems of_, 511 n.
Coleridge, Henry Nelson (nephew and son-in-law), 3, 553 n., 570 n., 579
n., 744-746;
sketch of his life, 756 n.;
letter from S. T. C., 756.
Coleridge, Mrs. Henry Nelson (Sara Coleridge), 9 n., 163 n.;
extract from a letter from Mrs. Wordsworth, 220 n.;
320 n., 327 n., 572 n.
Coleridge, James, the younger, (nephew), his narrow escape, 56.
Coleridge, Colonel James (brother), 7, 54, 56, 61, 306, 724 n., 726 n.;
letter from S. T. C., 61.
Coleridge, Mrs. James (sister-in-law), 740.
Coleridge, John (brother), 7.
Coleridge, John (grandfather), 4, 5.
Coleridge, Mrs. John (mother), 5 n., 7, 13-17, 21 n., 25, 56;
letter from S. T. C., 21.
Coleridge, Rev. John (father), 5 and note, 6, 7, 10-12, 15, 16;
dies, 17, 18;
his character, 18.
Coleridge, John Duke, Lord Chief-Justice (great-nephew), 572 n., 699 n.,
745 n.
Coleridge, Sir John Taylor (nephew), his friendly relations with Hartley
C., 675 and note;
editor of _The Quarterly Review_, 736 and note, 737;
his judgment and knowledge of the world, 739;
delighted with _Aids to Reflection_, 739;
740 n., 744, 745;
letter from S. T. C., 734.
Coleridge, Luke Herman (brother), 8, 21, 22.
COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, his autobiographical letters to Thomas Poole,
3-18;
ancestry and parentage, 4-7;
birth, 6, 9 and note;
his brothers and sister, 7-9;
christened, 9;
infancy and childhood, 9-12;
learns to read, 10;
early taste in books, 11 and note, 12;
his dreaminess and indisposition to bodily activity in childhood, 12;
boyhood, 12-21;
has a dangerous fever, 12-13;
quarrels with his brother Frank, runs away, and is found and brought
back, 13-15;
his imagination developed early by the reading of fairy tales, 16;
a Christ’s Hospital Presentation procured for him by Judge Buller, 18;
visits his maternal uncle, Mr. John Bowdon, in London, 18, 19;
becomes a Blue-Coat boy, 19;
his life at Christ’s Hospital, 20-22;
enters Jesus College, Cambridge, 22, 23;
becomes acquainted with the Evans family, 23 and note, 24;
writes a Greek Ode, for which he obtains the Browne gold medal for
1792, 43 and note;
is matriculated as pensioner, 44 and note;
his examination for the Craven Scholarship, 45 and note, 46;
his temperament, 47;
takes violin lessons, 49;
enlists in the army, 57 and note;
nurses a comrade who is ill of smallpox in the Henley workhouse, 58
and note;
his enlistment disclosed to his family, 57 n., 58, 59;
remorse, 59-61, 64, 65;
arrangements resulting in his discharge, 61-70;
his religious beliefs at twenty-one, 68, 69;
returns to the university and is punished, 70, 71;
drops his gay acquaintances and settles down to hard work, 71;
makes a tour of North Wales with Mr. J. Hucks, 72-81;
falls in love with Miss Sarah Fricker, 81;
proposes to go to America with a colony of pantisocrats, 81, 88-91,
101-103;
his interest in Miss Fricker cools and his old love for Mary Evans
revives, 89;
his indolence, 103, 104;
on his own poetry, 112;
considers going to Wales with Southey and others to found a colony of
pantisocrats, 121, 122;
his love for Mary Evans proves hopeless, 122-126;
in lodgings in Bristol after having left Cambridge without taking his
degree, 133-135;
marries Miss Sarah Fricker and spends the honeymoon in a cottage at
Clevedon, 136;
breaks with Southey, 136-151;
happiness in early married life, 139;
his tour to procure subscribers for the _Watchman_, 151 and note,
152-154;
poverty, 154, 155;
receives a communication from Mr. Thomas Poole that seven or eight
friends have undertaken to subscribe a certain sum to be paid
annually to him as the author of the monody on Chatterton, 158 n.;
discontinues the _Watchman_, 158;
takes Charles Lloyd into his home, 168-170;
birth of his first child, David Hartley, 169;
considers starting a day school at Derby, 170 and note;
has a severe attack of neuralgia for which he takes laudanum, 173-176;
early use of opium and beginning of the habit, 173 n., 174 n.;
selects twenty-eight sonnets by himself, Southey, Lloyd, Lamb, and
others and has them privately printed, to be bound up with
Bowles’s sonnets, 177, 206 and note;
his description of himself in 1796, 180, 181;
his personal appearance as described by another, 180 n., 181 n.;
anxious to take a cottage at Nether Stowey and support himself by
gardening, 184-194;
makes arrangements to carry out this plan, 209;
his partial reconciliation with Southey, 210, 211;
in the cottage at Nether Stowey, 213;
his engagement as tutor to the children of Mrs. Evans of Darley Hall
breaks down, 215 n.;
his visit at Mrs. Evans’s house, 216;
daily life at Nether Stowey, 219, 220;
visits Wordsworth at Racedown, 220 and note, 221;
secures a house (Alfoxden) for Wordsworth near Stowey, 224;
visits him there, 227;
finishes his tragedy, _Osorio_, 231;
suspected of conspiracy with Wordsworth and Thelwall against the
government, 232 n.;
accepts an annuity of £150 for life from Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood,
234 and note, 235 and note;
declines an offer of the Unitarian pastorate at Shrewsbury, 235 and
note, 236;
writes Joseph Cottle in regard to a third edition of his poems, 239;
rupture with Lloyd, 238, 245 n., 246;
first recourse to opium to relieve distress of mind, 245 n.;
birth of a second child, Berkeley, 247;
temporary estrangement from Lamb caused by Lloyd, 249-253;
goes to Germany with William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, and John
Chester, for the purpose of study and observation, 258-262;
life _en pension_ with Chester in the family of a German pastor at
Ratzeburg, after parting from the Wordsworths at Hamburg, 262-278;
learning the German language, 262, 263, 267, 268;
writes a poem in German, 263;
proposes to proceed to Göttingen, 268-270;
proposes to write a life of Lessing, 270;
travels by coach from Ratzeburg to Göttingen, passing through Hanover,
278-280;
enters the University, 281;
receives word of the death of his little son, Berkeley, 282-287;
learns the Gothic and Theotuscan languages, 298;
reconciliation with Southey, after the return from Germany, 303, 304;
with his wife and child he visits the Southeys at Exeter, 305 and note;
accompanies Southey on a walking-tour in Dartmoor, 305 and note;
makes a tour of the Lake Country, 312 n., 313;
in London, writing for the _Morning Post_, 315-332;
life at Greta Hall, near Keswick, 335-444;
proposes to write an essay on the elements of poetry, 338, 347;
proposes to study chemistry with William Calvert as a fellow-student,
345-347;
proposes to write a book on the originality and merits of Locke,
Hobbes, and Hume, 349, 350;
spends a week at Scarborough, riding and bathing for his health,
361-363;
divides the winter of 1801-1802 between London and Nether Stowey,
365-368;
domestic unhappiness, 366;
writes the _Ode to Dejection_, addressing it to Wordsworth, 378-384;
discouraged about his poetic faculty, 388;
a separation from his wife considered and harmony restored, 389, 390;
makes a walking-tour of the Lake Country, 393 and note, 394;
makes a tour of South Wales with Thomas and Sarah Wedgwood, 410-414;
his regimen at this time, 412, 413, 416, 417;
birth of his daughter Sara, 416;
with Charles and Mary Lamb in London, 421, 422;
takes Mary Lamb to the private madhouse at Hugsden, 422;
his tour in Scotland, 431-441;
love for and delight in his children, 443;
visits Wordsworth at Grasmere and is taken ill there, 447, 448;
his rapid recovery, 451;
plans and preparations for going abroad, 447-469;
his mental attitude towards his wife, 468;
voyage to Malta, 469-481;
dislike of his own first name, 470, 471;
life in Malta, 481-484;
a Sicilian tour, 485 and note, 486 and note, 487;
in Malta again, 487-497;
his duties as Acting Public Secretary at Malta, 487, 491, 493, 494 and
note, 495-497;
his grief at Captain John Wordsworth’s death, 494 and note, 495 and
note, 497;
in Italy, 498-502;
returns to England, 501;
remains in and about London, writing political articles for the
_Courier_, 505-509;
invited to deliver a course of lectures at the Royal Institution, 507;
visits the Wordsworths at Coleorton Farmhouse with his son Hartley,
509-514;
spends five or six weeks with Hartley in the company of the Wordsworths
at Basil Montagu’s house in London, 511 n.;
outlines his course of lectures at the Royal Institution, 515, 516,
522;
begins his lectures, 525;
a change for the better in health, habits, and spirits, the result of
his placing himself under the care of a physician, 533 and note,
543 n.;
with the Wordsworths at Grasmere, devoting himself to the publication
of _The Friend_, 533-559;
in London, 564;
determines to place himself under the care of Dr. John Abernethy, 564,
565;
visits the Morgans in Portland Place, Hammersmith, 566-575;
life-masks, death-mask, busts, and portraits, 570 and note, 572 and
notes;
last visit to Greta Hall and the Lake Country, 575-578;
misunderstanding with Wordsworth, 576 n., 577, 578, 586-588;
visits the Morgans at No. 71 Berners Street, 579-612;
preparations for another course of lectures, 579, 580, 582, 585;
writes Wordsworth letters of explanation, 588-595;
his Lectures on the Drama at Willis’s Rooms, 595 and notes, 596, 597,
599;
reconciled with Wordsworth, 596, 597, 599;
second rupture with Wordsworth, 599 n., 600 n.;
Josiah’s half of the Wedgwood annuity withdrawn on account of C.’s
abuse of opium, 602, 611 and note;
successful production of his tragedy, _Remorse_ (_Osorio_ rewritten),
at Drury Lane Theatre, 602-611;
sells a part of his library, 616 and note;
anguish and remorse from the abuse of opium, 616-621, 623, 624;
at Bristol, 621-626;
proposes to translate _Faust_ for John Murray, 624 and note, 625, 626;
convalescent, 631;
with the Morgans at Ashley, near Box, 631;
writing at his projected great work, _Christianity, the one true
Philosophy_, 632 and note, 633;
with the Morgans at Mr. Page’s, Calne, Wilts, 641-653;
resolves to free himself from his opium habit and arranges to enter
the house of James Gillman, Esq., a surgeon, in Highgate (an
arrangement which ends only with his life), 657-659;
submits his drama _Zapolya_ to the Drury Lane Committee, and, after
its rejection, publishes it in book form, 666 and note, 667-669;
publishes _Sibylline Leaves_ and _Biographia Literaria_, 673;
disputes with his publishers, Fenner and Curtis, 673, 674 and note;
proposes a new Encyclopædia, 674;
his reputation as a critic, 677 n.;
visits Joseph Henry Green, Esq., at St. Lawrence, near Maldon, 690-693;
his snuff-taking habits, 691, 692 and note;
his friendship and correspondence with Thomas Allsop, 695, 696;
delivers a course of Lectures on the History of Philosophy at the
Crown and Anchor, Strand, 698 and note;
criticises his portrait by Thomas Phillips, 699, 700;
at the seashore, 700, 701;
a candidate for associateship in the Royal Society of Literature, 726,
727;
elected as a Royal Associate, 728;
at Ramsgate, 729-731;
prepares and publishes _Aids to Reflection_, 734 n., 738;
reads an _Essay on the Prometheus of Æschylus_ before the Royal
Society of Literature, 739, 740;
another visit to Ramsgate, 742-744;
takes a seven weeks’ continental tour with Wordsworth and his
daughter, 751;
illness, 754-756, 758;
convalescence, 760, 761;
begins to see a new edition of his poetical works through the press,
769 n.;
writes a letter to his godchild from his deathbed, 775, 776.
_Coleridge, Early Recollections of_, by Joseph Cottle, 139 n., 140 n.,
151 n., 219 n., 232 n., 251 n., 616 n., 617 n., 633 n.
_Coleridge, Life of_, by James Gillman, 3, 20 n., 23 n., 24 n., 45 n.,
46 n., 171 n., 257, 680 n., 761 n.
_Coleridge, Samuel Taylor_, by James Dykes Campbell, 269 n., 527 n.,
572 n., 600 n., 631 n., 653 n., 666 n., 667 n., 674 n., 681 n.,
684 n., 698 n., 752 n., 753 n., 772 n.
_Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, and the English Romantic School_, by Alois
Brandl, 258, 674 n., 740 n.
_Coleridge, S. T., Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of_, by
Thomas Allsop, 41 n., 527 n., 675 n.;
the publication of, regarded by C.’s friends as an act of bad faith,
696 and note, 721 n.;
698 n.
_Coleridge, S. T., Spiritual Philosophy, founded on the Teaching of_, by
J. H. Green, 680 n.
_Coleridge’s Logic_, article in _The Athenæum_, 753 n.
_Coleridge and Southey, Reminiscences of_, by Joseph Cottle, 268 n., 269
n., 417, 456 n., 617 n.
Coleridge, Mrs. Samuel Taylor (Sarah Fricker, afterwards called “Sara”),
edits the second edition of _Biographia Literaria_, 3;
136, 145, 146, 150, 151;
illness and recovery of, 155, 156;
168;
birth of her first child, David Hartley, 169;
174 n., 181, 188-190, 205, 213, 214, 216, 224, 245;
birth of her second child, Berkeley, 247-249;
257, 258, 259 n.;
extract from a letter to S. T. C., 263 n.;
extract from a letter to Mrs. Lovell, 267 n.;
271, 297, 312 n., 313, 318, 321, 325, 326, 332;
birth and baptism of her third child, Derwent, 338 and note;
her devotion saves his life, 338 n.;
387;
fears of a separation from her husband operate to restore harmony,
389, 390;
her faults as detailed by S. T. C., 389, 390;
392, 393 n., 395, 396;
birth of a daughter, Sara, 416;
418, 443, 457, 467, 490, 491, 521;
extract from a letter to Poole, 576 n.;
578;
John Kenyon a kind friend to, 639 n.;
letters from S. T. C., 259-266, 271, 277, 284, 288, 367, 410, 420,
431, 460, 467, 480, 496, 507, 509, 563, 579, 583, 602;
letter to S. T. C. after her little Berkeley’s death, 282 n.
Coleridge, Sara (daughter), her birth, 416;
in infancy, 443;
at the age of nine, 575, 576;
580, 724;
marries her cousin, Henry Nelson C., 756 n.
_See_ Coleridge, Mrs. Henry Nelson.
_Coleridge, Sara, Memoir and Letters of_, 461 n., 758 n.
Coleridge, the Hundred of, in North Devon, 4 and note.
Coleridge, the Parish of, 4 n.
Coleridge, William (brother), 7.
Coleridge, William Hart (nephew, afterwards Bishop of Barbadoes),
befriends Hartley C., 675 n.;
707;
his portrait by Thomas Phillips, R. A., 740 and note.
Coleridge, William Rennell, 699 n.
Coleridge family, origin of, 4 n.
Collier, John Payne, 575 n.
Collins, William, his _Ode on the Poetical Character_, 196;
his _Odes_, 318.
Collins, William, A. R. A. (afterward, R. A.), letter from C., 693.
Colman, George, the younger, genius of, 621;
his _Who wants a Guinea?_, 621 n.
Columbus, the, a vessel, 730.
Combe Florey, 308 n.
Comberbacke, Silas Tomkyn, C.’s assumed name, 62.
Comic Drama, the downfall of the, 616.
_Complaint of Ninathoma, The_, 51.
_Concerning Poetry_, a proposed book, 347, 386, 387.
_Conciones ad Populum_, 85 n., 161 n., 166, 454 n., 527 n.
_Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit_, originally addressed to Rev.
Edward Coleridge, 724 n.;
756 n.
Coniston, 394.
_Connubial Rupture, On a late_, 179 n.
Consciousness of infants, 283.
Conservative Party in 1832, the, 757.
Consolation, a note of, 113.
_Consolations and Comforts, etc._, a projected book, 452, 453.
Constant, Benjamin, his tract _On the Strength of the Existing
Government of France, and the Necessity of supporting it_, 219
and note.
Contempt, C.’s definition of, 198.
_Contentment, Motives of_, by Archdeacon Paley, 47.
Conversation, C.’s, 181, 752 and note;
C.’s maxims of, 244.
Conversation evenings at the Gillmans’, 740, 741, 774.
Cookson, Dr., Canon of Windsor and Rector of Forncett, Norfolk, 311 and
note.
Copland, 400.
Cordomi, a pseudonym of C.’s, 295 n.
_Cornhill Magazine_, 345 n.
Cornish, Mr., 66.
Corry, Right Hon. Isaac, 390 and note.
Corsham, 650, 652 n.
Corsica, 174 n.
Corsican Rangers, 554.
Cote House, Josiah Wedgwood’s residence, C. visits, 416;
455 n.
Cottle, Joseph, agrees to pay C. a fixed sum for his poetry, 136;
137;
his _Early Recollections of Coleridge_, 139 n., 140 n., 151 n., 219
n., 232 n., 251 n., 616 n., 617 n., 633 n.;
144, 184, 185, 191, 192, 212;
his _Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey_, 268 n., 269 n., 417,
456 n., 617 n.;
his financial difficulties, 319;
358;
his _Malvern Hill_, 358;
his publication of C.’s letters of confession and remorse deeply
resented by C.’s family and friends, 616 n., 617 n.;
convalescent after a dangerous illness, 619;
letters from C., 133, 134, 154, 218 n., 220, 238, 251 n., 616, 619.
_Courier_, the, 230;
C. writes for, 505, 506, 507 n., 520;
534 and note, 543;
its conduct during the investigation of the charges against the Duke
of York universally extolled, 545;
articles and recommendations for, 567 and notes, 568;
C. as a candidate for the place of auxiliary to, 568-570;
568 n.;
C. breaks with, 574;
598, 629 and notes, 634 and note;
change in the character of, 660-662, 664;
C. proposes to write on the Catholic question for, 660, 662;
arrangements for the proposed articles, 664, 665.
_Courier_ office, C. lodges at the, 505, 520.
Cowper, William, “the divine chit-chat of,” 197 and note;
his _Task_, 242 n.
Craven, Countess of, 86 n.
Craven Scholarship, C.’s examination for the, 45 and note, 46.
Crediton, 5 n., 11.
_Critical Review_, 185, 489.
Criticism welcome to true poets, 402.
Crompton, Dr., of Derby, 215;
letter from Thelwall on the Wedgwood annuity, 234 n.
Crompton, Mrs., of Derby, 215.
Crompton, Mrs., of Eaton Hall, 758.
Crompton, Dr. Peter, of Eaton Hall, 359 and note, 758 n.
Cruikshank, Ellen, 165.
Cruikshank, John, 136, 177, 184, 188.
Cruikshank, Mrs. John (Anna), 177;
lines to, 177 n.;
213.
_See_ Buclé, Miss.
Cryptogram, C.’s, 597 n.
Cunningham, Rev. J. W., his _Velvet Cushion_, 651 and note.
_Cupid turned Chymist_, 54 n., 56.
Currie, James, 359 and note.
_Curse of Kehama, The_, by Southey, 684.
Curtis, Rev. T., partner of Fenner, C.’s publisher, his ill-usage of
C., 674.
Cuxhaven, 259.
Dalton, John, 457 and note.
Damer, Hon. Mrs., 368.
Dana, Miss R. Charlotte, 572 n.
Dante and his _Divina Commedia_, 676, 677 and note, 678, 679, 731 n.,
732.
Danvers, Charles, his kindness of heart, 316.
_Dark Ladie, The Ballad of the_, 375.
Darnley, Earl, 629.
Dartmoor, a walking-tour in, 305 and note.
Dartmouth, 305 and note.
Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, C.’s conversation with, 152, 153;
his philosophy of insincerity, 161;
C.’s opinion of his poems, 164;
211;
the first literary character in Europe, and the most original-minded
man, 215;
386, 648.
Dash Beck, 375 n., 376 n.
Davy, Sir Humphry, 315-317, 321, 324, 326, 344, 350, 357, 365, 379 n.,
448;
a Theo-mammonist, 455;
456;
C. attends his lectures, 462 and note, 463;
C.’s esteem and admiration for, 514;
his successful efforts to induce C. to give a course of lectures at
the Royal Institution, 515, 516;
seriously ill, 520, 521;
hears from C. of his improvement in health and habits, 533 n.;
673 n.;
letters from C., 336-341, 345, 514.
_Davy, Sir Humphry, Fragmentary Remains of_, edited by Dr. Davy, 343 n.,
533 n.
Dawe, George, R. A., his life-mask and portrait of C., 572 and note;
his funeral and C.’s epigram thereon, 572 n.;
immortalized by Lamb, 572 n.;
engaged on a picture to illustrate C.’s poem, _Love_, 573;
his admiration for Allston’s modelling, 573;
his character and manners, 581;
a fortunate grub, 605.
Dawes, Rev. John, teacher of Hartley and Derwent C., 576 and note, 577.
Death, fear of, responsible for many virtues, 744;
the nature of, 762, 763.
Death and life, meditations on, 283-287.
Death-mask of C., a, 570 n.
_Death of Mattathias, The_, by Robert Southey, 108 and note.
Deism, religious, 414.
_Dejection: An Ode_, 378 and note, 379 and note, 380-384, 405 n.
Della Cruscanism, 196.
Democracy, C. disavows belief in, 104-105;
134, 243.
_See_ Republicanism _and_ Pantisocracy.
Denbigh, 80, 81.
Denman, Miss, 769, 770.
Dentist, a French, 40.
De Quincey, Thomas, 405 n., 525;
revises the proofs and writes an appendix for Wordsworth’s pamphlet
_On the Convention of Cintra_, 549, 550 n.;
563, 601, 772 n.
Derby, 152;
proposal to start a school in, 170 and note;
188;
the people of, 215 and note, 216.
Derwent, the river, 339.
Descartes, René, 351 and note.
_Destiny of Nations, The_, 278 n., 178 n.
_Deutschland in seiner tiefsten Erniedrigung_, by John Philip Palm, C.’s
translation of, 530.
De Vere, Aubrey, extract from a letter from Sir William Rowan Hamilton
to, 759 n.
_Devil’s Thoughts, The_, by Coleridge and Southey, 318.
Devock Lake, 393.
Devonshire, 305 and note.
_Devonshire, Georgiana, Duchess of, Ode to_, 320 and note, 330.
Dibdin, Mr., stage-manager at Drury Lane Theatre, 666.
_Disappointment, To_, 28.
_Dissuasion from Popery_, by Jeremy Taylor, 639.
_Divina Commedia_, C. praises the Rev. H. F. Cary’s translation of, 676,
677 and note, 678, 679;
Gabriele Rossetti’s essay on the mechanism and interpretation of, 732.
_Doctor, The_, 583 n., 584 n.
Döring, Herr von, 279.
Dove, Dr. Daniel, 583 and note, 584.
Dove Cottage, Grasmere, 379 n.
_See_ Grasmere.
Dowseborough, 225 n.
Drakard, John, 567 and note.
Drayton, Michael, his _Poly-Olbion_, 374 n.
Dreams, the state of mind in, 663.
Drury Lane Theatre, C.’s _Zapolya_ before the committee of, 666 and
note, 667.
Dryden, John, his slovenly verses, 672.
Dubois, Edward, 705 and note.
_Duchess, Ode to the_, 320 and note, 330.
Dunmow, Essex, 456, 459.
Duns Scotus, 358.
Dupuis, Charles François, his _Origine de tous les Cultes, ou Religion
Universelle_, 181 and note.
Durham, Bishop of, 582 and note.
Durham, C. reading Duns Scotus at, 358-361.
Duty, 495 n.
Dyer, George, 84, 93, 316, 317;
his article on Southey in _Public Characters for 1799-1800_, 317 and
note;
363, 422;
sketch of his life, 748 n.;
C.’s esteem and affection for, 748, 749;
his benevolence and beneficence, 749;
letter from C., 748.
Earl of Abergavenny, the wreck of, 494 n.;
495 n.
_Early Recollections of Coleridge_, by Joseph Cottle, 139 n., 140 n.,
151 n., 219 n., 232 n., 251 n., 616 n., 617 n., 633 n.
_Early Years and Late Recollections_, by Clement Carlyon, M. D., 258,
298 n.
East Tarbet, 431, 432 and note, 433.
Echoes, 400 n.
Edgeworth, Maria, her _Helen_, 773, 774.
Edgeworth, Richard Lovell, 262.
Edgeworth’s _Essay on Education_, 261.
Edgeworths, the, very miserable when children, 262.
Edinburgh, a place of literary gossip, 423;
C.’s visit to, 434-440;
Southey’s first impressions of, 438 n.
_Edinburgh Review, The_, 438 n.;
Southey declines Scott’s offer to secure him a place on, 521 and note,
522;
its attitude towards C., 527;
C.’s review of Clarkson’s book in, 527 and note, 528-530;
636, 637;
severe review of _Christabel_ in, 669 and note, 670;
Jeffrey’s reply to C. in, 669 n.;
re-echoes C.’s praise of Cary’s _Dante_, 677 n.;
its broad, predetermined abuse of C., 697, 723;
its influence on the sale of Wordsworth’s books in Scotland, 741, 742.
_Edmund Oliver_, by Charles Lloyd, drawn from C.’s life, 252 and note;
311.
_Education, Practical_, by Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Maria Edgeworth,
261.
Education through the imagination preferable to that which makes the
senses the only criteria of belief, 16, 17.
Edwards, Rev. Mr., of Birmingham, extract from a letter from C. to, 174
n.
Edwards, Thomas, LL. D., 101 and note.
Egremont, 393.
_Egypt, Observations on_, 486 n.
Egypt, political relations of, 492.
Eichhorn, Prof., of Göttingen, 298, 564, 707, 773.
Einbeck, 279, 280.
Elbe, the, 259, 277.
Electrometers of taste, 218 and note.
_Elegy_, by Robert Southey, 115.
Elleray, 535.
Elliot, H., Minister at the Court of Naples, 508 and note.
Elliston, Mr., an actor, 611.
Elmsley, Rev. Peter, 438 and note, 439.
_Encyclopædia Metropolitana_, a work projected by C., 674, 681.
Encyclopædias, 427, 429, 430.
Ennerdale, 393.
Epitaph, by C., 769 and note, 770, 771.
_Epitaph_, by Wordsworth, 284.
Erigena, Joannes Scotus, 417;
the modern founder of the school of pantheism, 424.
Erskine, Lord, his Bill for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 635
and note.
_Erste Schiffer, Der_ (The First Navigator), by Gesner, 369, 371, 372,
376-378, 397, 402, 403.
Eskdale, 393, 401.
_Essay on Animal Vitality_, by Thelwall, 179, 212.
_Essay on Fasting_, 157.
_Essay on the New French Constitution_, 320 and note.
_Essay on the Prometheus of Æschylus_, 740 and note.
_Essay on the Science of Method_, 681 and note.
_Essays on His Own Times_, 156 n., 157 n., 320 n., 327 n., 329 n., 335
n., 414 n., 498 n., 567 n., 629 n., 634 n.
_Essay on the Fine Arts_, 633 and note, 634.
_Essays upon Epitaphs_, by Wordsworth, 585 and note.
Estlin, Mrs. J. P., 190, 213, 214.
Estlin, Rev. J. P., 184, 185, 190, 239, 287, 288;
his sermons, 385;
416;
letters from C., 213, 245, 246, 414.
Ether, 420, 435.
Etna, 458, 485 n., 486 n.
Evans, Mrs., C. spends a fortnight with, 23 and note;
24;
C.’s filial regard for, 26, 27;
her unselfishness, 46;
letters from C., 26, 39, 45.
Evans, Anne, 27, 29-31;
letters from C., 37, 52.
Evans, Eliza, 78.
Evans, Mrs. Elizabeth, of Darley Hall, her proposal to engage C. as
tutor to her children, 215 n.;
her kindness to C. and Mrs. C., 215 n., 210;
231, 367.
Evans, Mary, 23 n., 27, 30;
an acute mind beneath a soft surface of feminine delicacy, 50;
C. sees her at Wrexham and confesses to Southey his love for her, 78;
97 and note;
song addressed to, 100;
C.’s unrequited love for, 123-125;
letters from C., 30, 41, 47, 122, 124;
letter to C., 87-89.
Evans, Walter, 231.
Evans, William, of Darley Hall, 215 n.
Evolution, 648.
_Examiner, The_, its notice of C.’s tragedy, _Remorse_, 606.
_Excursion, The_, by Wordsworth, 244 n., 337 n., 585 n.;
C.’s opinion of, 641;
the _Edinburgh Review’s_ criticism of, 642;
C. discusses it in the light of his previous expectations, 645-650.
Exeter, 305 and note.
Ezekiel, 705 n.
Faith, C.’s definition of, 202;
204.
_Fall of Robespierre, The_, 85 and note, 87, 93, 104 and notes.
Falls of Foyers, the, 440.
_Farmer, Priscilla, Poems on the Death of_, by Charles Lloyd, 206 and
note.
_Farmers_, 335 n.
_Farmhouse_, by Robert Lovell, 115.
_Fasting, Essay on_, 157.
_Faulkner: a Tragedy_, by William Godwin, 524 and note.
Fauntleroy’s trial, 730.
_Faust_, C.’s proposal to translate, 624 and note, 625, 626.
Favell, Robert, 86, 109 n., 110 n., 113, 225 and note.
_Fayette_, 112.
_Fears in Solitude_, published, 261 n.;
318, 321, 328, 552, 703 and note.
Fellowes, Mr., of Nottingham, 153.
_Female Biography, or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women_, by
Mary Hayes, 318 and note.
Fenner, Rest, publishes _Zapolya_ for C., 666 n.;
his ill-usage of C. in regard to _Sibylline Leaves_, _Biographia
Literaria_, and the projected _Encyclopædia Metropolitana_, 673,
674 and note.
Fenwick, Dr., 361 and note.
Fenwick, Mrs. E., 465 and note.
Fernier, John, 211.
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, the philosophy of, 682, 683, 735.
Field, Mr., 93.
_Fine Arts, Essays on the_, 633 and note, 634.
_Fire, The_, by Robert Southey, 108 and note.
_Fire and Famine_, 327.
_First Landing Place, The_, 684 n.
_First Navigator, The_, translation of Gesner’s _Der Erste Schiffer_,
369, 371, 372, 376-378, 397, 402, 403.
Fitzgibbon, John, 638.
Fletcher, Judge, C.’s _Courier_ Letters to, 629 and note, 634 and note,
635, 636, 642.
Florence, 499 n.
Flower, Benjamin, editor of the _Cambridge Intelligencer_, 93 and note.
_Flower, The_, by George Herbert, 695.
Flowers, 745, 746.
Fort Augustus, 435.
_Foster-Mother’s Tale, The_, 510 n.
Fox, Charles James, his _Letter to the Westminster Electors_, 50;
327;
Coleridge _versus_, 423, 424;
proposed articles on, 505;
506;
death of, 507 and note;
629 and note.
Fox, Dr., 619.
Foyers, the Falls of, 440.
_Fragment found in a Lecture Room, A_, 44.
_Fragments of a Journal of a Tour over the Brocken_, 257.
France, political condition of, in 1800, 329 and note.
_France, an Ode_, 261 n., 552.
Freeling, Sir Francis, 751.
French, C. not proficient in, 181.
_French Constitution, Essay on the New_, 320 and note.
French Empire under Buonaparte, C.’s essays on the, 629 and note.
French Revolution, the, 219, 240.
Frend, William, 24 and note.
Frere, George, 672.
Frere, Right Hon. John Hookham, 672 and note;
advice and friendly assistance to C. from, 674, 675 and note;
698, 731, 732, 737.
Fricker, Mrs., 98, 189;
C. proposes to allow her an annuity of £20, 190;
423, 458.
Fricker, Edith (afterwards Mrs. Robert Southey), 82;
marries Southey, 137 n.;
163 n.
_See_ Southey, Mrs. Robert.
Fricker, George, 315, 316.
Fricker, Martha, 600.
Fricker, Sarah, C. falls in love with, 81;
83-86;
C.’s love cools, 89;
marries C., 136;
138, 163 n.;
letter from Southey, 107 n.
_See_ Coleridge, Mrs. Samuel Taylor.
_Friend, The_, 11 n., 25 n., 86 n., 257, 274 n., 275 n., 351 n., 404 n.,
412 n., 453 n., 454 n.;
preliminary prospectus of, and its revision, 533, 536 and note,
537-541, 542 n.;
arrangements for the publication of, 541, 542 and note, 544, 546, 547;
its vicissitudes during its first eight months, 547, 548, 551, 552,
554-559;
Addison’s _Spectator_ compared with, 557, 558;
the reprint of, 575, 579 and note, 580 n., 585 and note;
606, 611, 629 and note, 630, 667 n.;
J. H. Frere’s advice in regard to, 674;
the object of the third volume of, 676;
684 n.;
697, 756 n., 768 and note.
Friends, C. complains of lack of sympathy on the part of his, 696, 697.
_Friend’s Quarterly Examiner, The_, 536 n., 538 n.
_Frisky Songster, The_, 237.
_Frost at Midnight_, 8 n., 261 n.
Gale and Curtis, 579 and note, 580 n.
Gallow Hill, 359 n., 362, 379 n.
Gallows and hangman in Germany, 294.
Gardening, C. proposes to undertake, 183-194;
C. begins it at Nether Stowey, 213;
recommended to Thelwall, 215;
at Nether Stowey, 219, 220.
_Gebir_, 328.
_Gentleman’s Magazine, The_, 455 n.
_Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Ode to_, 320 and note, 330.
German language, the, C. learning, 262, 263, 267, 268.
German philosophers, C.’s opinions of, 681-683, 735.
German playing-cards, 263.
Germans, their partiality for England and the English, 263, 264;
their eating and smoking customs, 276, 277;
an unlovely race, 278;
their Christmas-tree and other religious customs, 289-292;
superstitions of the bauers, 291, 292, 294;
marriage customs of the bauers, 292, 293.
Germany, 257, 258;
C.’s sojourn in, 259-300;
post coaches in, 278, 279;
the clergy of, 291;
Protestants and Catholics of, 291, 292;
bell-ringing in, 293;
churches in, 293;
shepherds in, 293;
care of owls in, 293;
gallows and hangman in, 294;
disposal of dead and sick cattle in, 294;
beet sugar in, 299.
Gerrald, Joseph, 161 and note, 166, 167 n.
Gesenius, Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm, 773.
Gesner, his _Erste Schiffer_ (The First Navigator), 369, 371, 372,
376-378, 397, 402, 403;
his rhythmical prose, 398.
Ghosts, 684.
Gibraltar, 469, 473, 474;
description of, 475-479;
480, 493.
Gifford, William, his criticism of C.’s tragedy, _Remorse_, 605, 606;
669, 737.
Gillman, Alexander, 703 n.
Gillman, Henry, 693 n.
Gillman, James, his _Life of Coleridge_, 3, 20 n., 23 n., 24 n., 45 n.,
46 n., 171 n., 257;
442 n., 680 n., 761 n.;
his faithful friendship for C., 657;
C. arranges to enter his household as a patient, 657-659;
C.’s pecuniary obligations to, 658 n.;
character and intellect of, 665;
670 n., 679, 685, 692, 704;
C.’s gratitude to and affection for, 721, 722;
on C.’s opium habit, 761 n.;
768;
extracts from a letter from John Sterling to, 772 n.;
letters from C., 657, 700, 721, 729, 742.
Gillman, James, the younger, passes his examination for ordination with
great credit, 755.
Gillman, Mrs. James (Anne), her faithful friendship for C., 657;
character of, 665;
679, 684, 685, 702 n., 705, 721, 722, 729, 733;
illness of, 738;
C.’s attachment to, 746;
C.’s gratitude to and affection for, 754;
764, 774;
letters from C., 690, 745, 754.
Ginger-tea, 412, 413.
Glencoe, 413, 440.
Glen Falloch, 433.
Gloucester, 72.
Gnats, 692.
Godliness, C.’s definition of, 203 n., 204;
St. Peter’s paraphrase of, 204.
Godwin, William, 91, 114;
C.’s sonnet to, 116 n., 117;
lines by Southey to, 120;
his misanthropy, 161, 162;
161 n., 167;
C.’s book on, 210;
316, 321;
his _St. Leon_, 324, 325;
a quarrel and reconciliation with C., 457, 464-466;
his _Faulkner: a Tragedy_, 524 and note;
C. accepts his invitation to meet Grattan, 565, 566;
letter from C., 565.
_Godwin, William: His Friends and Contemporaries_, by Charles Kegan
Paul, 161 n., 324 n., 465 n.
Godwin, Mrs. William, 465, 466, 566.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, his _Faust_, C.’s proposal to translate,
624 and note, 625, 626;
his _Zur Farbenlehre_, 699.
Gosforth, 393.
Goslar, 272, 273.
Göttingen, C. proposes to visit, 268-270, 272;
268 n., 269 n.;
C. calls on Professor Heyne at, 280;
C. enters the University of, 281;
the Saturday Club at, 281;
the gallows near, 294;
C.’s stay at, 281-300.
Gough, Charles, 369 n.
Governments as effects and causes, 241.
Grasmere, 335, 346, 362, 379 n., 394, 405 n., 419, 420;
C. visits and is taken ill there, 447, 448;
C. visits, 533-569.
_See_ Kendal.
Grattan, Henry, C.’s admiration for, 566.
Greek Islands, the, 329.
Greek poetry contrasted with Hebrew poetry, 405, 406.
Greek Sapphic Ode, _On the Slave Trade_, 43 and note.
Green, Mr., clerk of the _Courier_, 568 and note.
Green, Joseph Henry, 605, 632 n.;
his eminence in the surgical profession, 679 n.;
C.’s amanuensis and collaborateur, 679 n.;
C. appoints him his literary executor, 679 n.;
his published works, 679 n., 680 n.;
his character and intellect, 680 n.;
his faithful friendship for C., 680 n.;
his _Spiritual Philosophy, founded on the Teaching of S. T.
Coleridge_, 680 n.;
receives a visit from C. at St. Lawrence, near Maldon, 690-693;
753 n.;
letters from C., 669, 680, 688, 699, 704, 706, 726, 728, 751, 754, 767.
Green, Mrs. Joseph Henry, 691, 692, 699, 705.
Greenough, Mr., 458 and note.
Greta, the river, 339.
Greta Hall, near Keswick, C.’s life at, 335-444;
situation of, 335;
description of 391, 392;
C. urges Southey to make it his home, 391, 392, 394, 395;
Southey at first declines but subsequently accepts C.’s invitation to
settle there, 395 n.;
Southey makes a visit there which proves permanent, 435;
460 n.;
sold by its owner in C.’s absence, 490, 491;
C.’s last visit to, 575 and note, 576-578;
724, 725.
_See_ Keswick.
Grey, Mr., editor of the _Morning Chronicle_, 114.
“Grinning for joy,” 81 n.
Grisedale Tarn, 547.
Grose, Judge, 567 and note.
Grossness _versus_ suggestiveness, 377.
_Group of Englishmen, A_, by Eliza Meteyard, 269 n., 308 n.
_Growth of the Individual Mind, On the_, C.’s extempore lecture, 680 and
note, 681.
Gunning, Henry, his _Reminiscences of Cambridge_, 24 n.
Gwynne, General, K. L. D., 62.
Hæmony, Milton’s allegorical flower, 406, 407.
Hague, Charles, 50.
Hale, Sir Philip, a “titled Dogberry,” 232 n.
Hall, S. C., 257, 745 n.
Hamburg, 257, 259;
C.’s arrival at, 261;
268 n.
Hamilton, a Cambridge man at Göttingen, 281.
Hamilton, Lady, 637 and note.
Hamilton, Sir William Rowan, 759 and note, 760.
_Hamlet, Notes on_, 684 n.
Hancock’s house, 297.
Hangman and gallows in Germany, 294.
Hanover, 279, 280.
_Happiness_, 75 n.
_Happy Warrior, The_, by Wordsworth, the original of, 494 n.
Harding, Miss, sister of Mrs. Gillman, 703.
_Harper’s Magazine_, 570 n., 571 n.
Harris, Mr., 666.
Hart, Dick, 54.
Hart, Miss Jane, 7, 8.
Hart, Miss Sara, 8.
Hartley, David, 113, 169, 348, 351 n., 428.
_Haunted Beach, The_, by Mrs. Robinson, 322 n.;
C. struck with, 331, 332.
Hayes, Mary, 318 and note;
her _Female Biography_, 318 and note;
her correspondence with Lloyd, 322;
C.’s opinion of her intellect, 323.
Hazlitt, William, supposed to have written the _Edinburgh Review_
criticism of _Christabel_, 669 and note.
Hebrew poetry richer in imagination than the Greek, 405, 406.
Heinse’s _Ardinghello_, 683 and note.
_Helen_, by Maria Edgeworth, 773, 774.
Helvellyn, 547.
Henley workhouse, C. nurses a fellow-dragoon in the, 58 and note.
_Herald, Morning_, its notice of C.’s tragedy, _Remorse_, 603.
Herbert, George, C.’s love for his poems, 694, 695;
his _Temple_, 694;
his _Flower_, 695.
_Heretics of the first two Centuries after Christ, History of the_, by
Nathaniel Lardner, D. D., 330.
Herodotus, 738.
Hertford, C. a Blue-Coat boy at, 19 and note.
Hess, Jonas Lewis von, 555 and note.
Hessey, Mr., of Taylor and Hessey, publishers, 739.
Hexameters, parts of the Bible and Ossian written in slovenly, 398.
Heyne, Christian Gottlob, 279;
C. calls on, 280;
281.
Higginbottom, Nehemiah, a pseudonym of C.’s, 251 n.
_Highgate, History of_, by Lloyd, 572 n.
_Highland Girl, To a_, by Wordsworth, 549.
Highland lass, a beautiful, 432 and note, 459.
High Wycombe, 62-64.
Hill, Mrs. Herbert. _See_ Southey, Bertha.
Hill, Thomas, 705 and note.
_History of Highgate_, by Lloyd, 572 n.
_History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade_, by Thomas Clarkson, C.’s
review of, 527 and note, 528-530, 535, 536.
_History of the Heretics of the first two Centuries after Christ_, by
Nathaniel Lardner, D. D., 330.
_History of the Levelling Principle_, proposed, 323, 328 n., 330.
Hobbes, Thomas, 349, 350.
Holcroft, Mr., C.’s conversation on Pantisocracy with, 114, 115;
the high priest of atheism, 162.
_Hold your mad hands!_, a sonnet by Southey, 127 and note.
Holland, 751.
Holt, Mrs., 18.
_Home-Sick, Written in Germany_, quoted, 298.
Homesickness of C. in Germany, 265, 266, 272, 273, 278, 288, 289, 295,
296, 298.
Hood, Thomas, his _Odes to Great People_, 250 n.
_Hope, an Allegorical Sketch_, by Bowles, 179, 180.
Hopkinson, Lieutenant, 62.
Horace, Bentley’s Quarto Edition of, 68 and note.
Hospitality in poverty, 340.
_Hour when we shall meet again, The_, 157.
Howe, Admiral Lord, 262 and note.
Howe, Emanuel Scoope, second Viscount, 262 n.
Howell, Mr., of Covent Garden, 366 and note.
Howick, Lord, 507.
Howley, Miss, 739.
Huber’s _Treatise on Ants_, 712.
Hucks, J., accompanies C. on a tour in Wales, 74-81;
his _Tour in North Wales_, 74 n., 81 n.;
76, 77 and note, 81 and note, 306.
Hume, David, 307, 349, 350.
Hume, Joseph, M. P., a fermentive virus, 757.
Hungary, 329.
_Hunt, Leigh, Autobiography of_, 20 n., 41 n., 225 n., 455 n.
Hunter, John, 211.
Hurwitz, Hyman, 667 n.;
his _Israel’s Lament_, 681 n.
Hutchinson, George, 358 and note, 359 n., 360.
Hutchinson, Joanna, 359 n.
Hutchinson, John, of Penrith, 358 n.
Hutchinson, John, of the Middle Temple, 359 n.
Hutchinson, Mary, marries William Wordsworth, 359 n.;
367.
Hutchinson, Sarah, 359 n., 360, 362, 367, 393 n.;
her motherly care of Hartley C., 510;
511;
C.’s amanuensis, 536 n., 542 n.;
582, 587, 590 n.
Hutchinson, Thomas, of Gallow Hill, 359 n., 362.
Hutton, James, M. D., 153 and note;
his _Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge_, 167.
Hutton, Lawrence, 570 n.
Hutton Hall, near Penrith, 296.
_Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni_, origin of, 404 and 405
and note.
_Ibi Hæc Incondita Solus_, by George Coleridge, 43 n.
Idolatry of modern religion, the, 414, 415.
Illuminizing, 323, 324.
_Illustrated London News, The_, 258, 453 n., 497 n., 768 n.
Imagination, education of the, 16, 17.
_Imitated from the Welsh_ (a song), 112 and note, 113.
_Imitations from the Modern Latin Poets_, 67 n., 122.
Impersonality of the Deity, 444.
Indolence, a vice of powerful venom, 103, 104.
Infant, the death of an, 282-287.
_Infant, who died before its Christening, On an_, 287.
Ingratitude, C. complains of, 627-631.
Insincerity, a virtue, 161.
Instinct, definition of, 712.
_In the Pass of Killicranky_, by Wordsworth, 458.
_Ireland, Account of_, by Edward Wakefield, 638.
_Ireland, View of the State of_, by Edmund Spenser, 638 n.
Irving, Rev. Edward, 723;
a great orator, 726;
on Southey and Byron, 726;
741, 742, 744, 748, 752.
Isaiah, 200.
_Israel’s Lament_, by Hyman Hurwitz, C. translates, 681 and note.
Jackson, Mr., owner of Greta Hall, 335, 368, 391, 392, 394, 395, 434,
460 and note, 461;
godfather to Hartley C., 461 n.;
sells Greta Hall, 491;
Hartley C.’s attachment for, 510.
Jackson, William, 309 and notes.
Jackstraws, 462, 468.
Jacobi, Heinrich Freidrich, 683.
Jacobinism in England, 642.
Jardine, Rev. David, 139 and note.
_Jasper_, by Mrs. Robinson, 322 n.
Jeffrey, Francis (afterwards Lord), 453 n., 521 n.;
C. accuses him of being unwarrantably severe on him, 527;
536 n., 538 n.;
C.’s accusation of personal and ungenerous animosity against himself
and his reply thereto, 669 and note, 670;
735;
his attitude toward Wordsworth’s poetry, 742;
letters from C., 527, 528, 534.
See _Edinburgh Review_.
Jerdan, Mr., of Michael’s Grove, Brompton, 727.
Jesus College, C.’s life at, 22-57, 70-72, 81-129.
Jews in a German inn, 280.
_Joan of Arc_, by Southey, 141, 149, 178 and note, 179;
Cottle sells the copyright to Longman, 319.
John of Milan, 566 n.
Johnson, J., the bookseller, lends C. £30, 261;
publishes _Fears in Solitude_, for C., 261 and notes, 318;
321.
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, on the condition of the mind during stage
representations, 663.
Johnston, Lady, 731.
Johnston, Sir Alexander, 730 and note;
C.’s impressions of, 731.
Josephus, 407.
Kant, Immanuel, 204 n., 351 n.;
C.’s opinion of the philosophy of, 681, 682;
his _Kritik der praktischen Vernunft_, 681, 682 and note;
his _Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft_, 682;
valued by C. more as a logician than as a metaphysician, 735;
his _Critique of the Pure Reason_, 735.
Keats, John, 764 n.
Keenan, Mr., 309.
Keenan, Mrs., 309 and note.
_Kehama, The Curse of_, by Southey, 684.
Kempsford, Gloucestershire, 267 n.
Kendal, 447, 451, 452, 535, 575.
_See_ Grasmere.
Kendall, Mr., a poet, 306.
Kennard, Adam Steinmetz, 762 n.;
letter from C., 775.
Kennard, John Peirse, 762 n.;
letter from C., 772.
Kenyon, Mrs., 639, 640.
Kenyon, John, 639 n.;
letter from C., 639.
Keswick, 174 n.;
C. passes through, during his first tour in the Lake Country, 312 n.;
a Druidical circle near, 312 n.;
C.’s house at, 335;
climate of, 361;
405 n., 530, 535, 724, 725.
_See_ Greta Hall.
Keswick, the lake of, 335.
Keswick, the vale of, 312 n., 313 n.;
its beauties, 410, 411.
Kielmansegge, Baron, and his daughter, Mary Sophia, 263 n.
Kilmansig, Countess, C. becomes acquainted with, 262, 263.
King, Mr., 183, 185, 186.
King, Mrs., 183.
Kingsley, Rev. Charles, 771 n.
Kingston, Duchess of, her masquerade costume, 237.
Kinnaird, Douglas, 666, 667.
Kirkstone Pass, a storm in, 418-420.
_Kisses_, 54 n.
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 257;
his _Messias_, 372, 373.
Knecht, Rupert, 289 n., 290, 291.
Knight, Rev. William Angus, LL.D., his _Life of William Wordsworth_,
164 n., 220 n., 447 n., 585 n., 591 n., 596 n., 599 n., 600 n.,
733 n., 759 n.
Kosciusko, C.’s sonnet to, 116 n., 117.
Kotzebue’s _Count Benyowski, or the Conspiracy of Kamtschatka, a
Tragi-comedy_, 236 and note.
_Kubla Khan_, when written, 245 n.;
437 n.
Kyle, John, the Man of Ross, 77, 651 n.
Lake Bassenthwaite, 335, 376 n.;
sunset over, 384.
Lake Country, the, C. makes a tour of, 312 n., 313;
another tour of, 393 and note, 394;
C.’s last visit to, 575 n.
_See_ Grasmere, Greta Hall, Kendal, Keswick.
_Lalla Rookh_, by Moore, 672.
_Lamb, C., To_, 128 and note.
Lamb, Charles, love of Woolman’s Journal, 4 n.;
visit to Nether Stowey, 10 n.;
his _Christ’s Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago_, 20 n.;
a man of uncommon genius, 111;
writes four lines of a sonnet for C., 111, 112 and note;
and his sister, 127, 128;
C.’s lines to, 128 and note;
163 n.;
correspondence with C. after his (Lamb’s) mother’s tragic death, 171
and note;
182;
extract from a letter to C., 197 n.;
206 n.;
his _Grandame_, 206 n.;
C.’s poem on Burns addressed to, 206 and note, 207;
extract from a letter to C., 223 n.;
visits C. at Nether Stowey, 224 and note, 225-227;
temporary estrangement from C., 249-253;
his relations to the quarrel between C. and Southey, 304, 312, 320 n.;
visits C. at Greta Hall with his sister, 396 n.;
a Latin letter from, 400 n.;
405 n., 421, 422, 460 n., 474;
his _Recollections of a Late Royal Academician_, 572 n.;
his connection with the reconciliation of C. and Wordsworth, 586-588,
594;
on William Blake’s paintings, engravings, and poems, 686 n.;
704;
his _Superannuated Man_, 740;
744;
his acquaintance with George Dyer, 748 n.;
751 n., 760;
letter of condolence from C., 171;
other letters from C., 249, 586.
_Lamb, Charles, Letters of_, 164 n., 171 n., 197 n., 396 n., 400 n., 465
n., 466 n., 686 n., 748 n.
_Lamb’s Prose Works_, 4 n., 20 n., 25 n., 41 n.
Lamb, Mary, 127, 128, 226 n.;
visits the Coleridges at Greta Hall with her brother Charles, 396 n.;
becomes worse and is taken to a private madhouse, 422;
465;
learns from C. of his quarrel with Wordsworth, 590, 591;
endeavors to bring about a reconciliation between C. and Wordsworth,
594;
704.
Lampedusa, island, essay on, 495 and note.
Landlord at Keswick, C.’s, 335.
_See_ Jackson, Mr.
Lardner, Nathaniel, D. D., his _Letter on the Logos_, 157;
his _History of the Heretics of the first two Centuries after Christ_,
330;
on a passage in Josephus, 407.
Latin essay by C., 29 n.
Laudanum, used by C. in an attack of neuralgia, 173 and note, 174 and
note, 175-177;
193, 240, 617, 659.
_See_ Opium.
Lauderdale, James Maitland, Earl of, 689 and note.
Law, human as distinguished from divine, 635, 636.
Lawrence, Miss, governess in the family of Dr. Peter Crompton, 758 n.;
letter from C., 758.
Lawrence, William, 711 n.
Lawson, Sir Gilford, 270;
C. has free access to his library, 336;
392.
_Lay of the Last Minstrel, The_, by Scott, 523.
_Lay Sermon_, the second, 669.
Leach, William Elford, C. meets, 711 and note.
Lecky, G. F., British Consul at Syracuse, 458;
C. entertained by, 485 n.
Lectures, C.’s at the Royal Institution, 506 n., 507, 508, 511, 515,
516, 522, 525;
at the rooms of the London Philosophical Society, 574 and note, 575
and note;
a proposed course at Liverpool, 578;
preparations for another course in London, 579, 580, 582, 585;
at Willis’s Rooms on the Drama, 595 and note, 596, 597, 599;
602, 604;
an extempore lecture _On the Growth of the Individual Mind_, at the
rooms of the London Philosophical Society, 680 and note, 681;
regarded as a means of livelihood, 694;
on the History of Philosophy, delivered at the Crown and Anchor,
Strand, 698 and note.
_Lectures on Shakespeare_, 575 n.
_Lectures on Shakespeare and Other Dramatists_, 756 n.
Leghorn, 498, 499 and note, 500.
Le Grice, Charles Valentine, 23, 24;
his _Tineum_, 111 and note;
225 and note, 325.
Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Baron von, 280, 360, 735.
Leighton, Robert, Archbishop of Glasgow, his genius and character, 717,
718;
his orthodoxy, 719;
C. proposes to compile a volume of selections from his writings, 719,
720;
C. at work on the compilation, which, together with his own comment
and corollaries, is finally published as _Aids to Reflection_, 734
and note.
Leslie, Charles Robert, 695 and note;
his pencil sketch of C., 695 n.;
introduces a portrait of C. into an illustration for _The Antiquary_,
736 and note.
_Lessing, Life of_, C. proposes to write, 270;
321, 323, 338.
Letters, C.’s reluctance to open and answer, 534.
_Letters from the Lake Poets_, 25 n., 86 n., 267 n., 366 n., 369 n., 527
n., 534 n., 542 n., 543 n., 705 n.
Letter smuggling, 459.
_Letters on the Spaniards_, 629 and note.
_Letter to a Noble Lord_, by Edmund Burke, 157 and note.
Leviathan, the man-of-war, 467;
a majestic and beautiful creature, 471, 472;
477.
Lewis Monk, his play, _Castle Spectre_, 236 and note, 237, 238, 626.
_Liberty, the Progress of_, 206.
Life and death, meditations on, 283-287.
Life-masks of C., 570 and note.
_Lime-Tree Bower my Prison, this_, 225 and note, 226 and notes, 227, 228
n.
_Lines on a Friend who died of a Frenzy Fever_, 98 and note, 103 n., 106
and note.
_Lines to a Friend_, 8 n.
_Lippincott’s Magazine_, 674 n.
Lisbon, the Rock of, 473.
_Literary Life._ See _Biographia Literaria_.
_Literary Remains_, 684 n., 740 n., 756 n., 761 n.
Literature, a proposed History of British, 425-427, 429, 430.
Literature as a profession, C.’s opinion of, 191, 192.
Live nits, 360.
Liverpool, 578.
Liverpool, Lord, 665, 674.
Llandovery, 411.
Llanfyllin, 79.
Llangollen, 80.
Llangunnog, 79.
Lloyd, Mr., father of Charles, 168, 186.
Lloyd, Charles, and Woolman’s Journal, 4 n.;
goes to live with C., 168-170;
character and genius of, 169, 170;
184, 189, 190, 192, 205, 206;
his _Poems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer_, 206 n.;
207 n., 208 n.;
with C. at Nether Stowey, 213;
238;
a serious quarrel with C., 238, 245 n., 246, 249-253;
his _Edmund Oliver_ drawn from C.’s life, 252 and note;
his relations to the quarrel between C. and Southey, 304;
reading Greek with Christopher Wordsworth, 311;
unworthy of confidence, 311, 312;
his _Edmund Oliver_, 311;
his moral sense warped, 322, 323;
settles at Ambleside, 344;
C. spends a night with him at Bratha, 394;
563;
his _History of Highgate_, 572 n., 578.
Llyswen, 234 n., 235 n.
Loch Katrine, 431, 432 and note, 433.
Loch Lomond, 431, 432 n., 433, 440.
Locke, John, C.’s opinion of his philosophy, 349-351, 648;
713.
Lockhart, Mr., 756.
Lodore, the waterfall of, 335, 408.
Lodore mountains, the, 370.
_Logic, The Elements of_, 753 n.
_Logic, The History of_, 753 n.
_Logos, Letter on the_, by Dr. Nathaniel Lardner, 157.
London, Bishop of, 739;
his favourable opinion of _Aids to Reflection_, 741.
London Philosophical Society, C.’s lectures at the rooms of, 574 and
note, 575 and note, 680 n.
Longman, Mr., the publisher, 319, 321;
on anonymous publications, 324, 325;
328, 329, 341, 349, 357;
loses money on C.’s translation of _Wallenstein_, 403;
593.
Lonsdale, Lord, 538 n., 550, 733 n.
Losh, James, 219 and note.
Louis XVI., the death of, 219 and note.
_Love_, George Dawe engaged on a picture to illustrate C.’s poem, 573.
_Love and the Female Character_, C.’s lecture, 574 n., 575 and note.
Lovell, Robert, 75;
C.’s opinion of his poems, 110;
114;
his _Farmhouse_, 115, 121, 122, 139, 147, 150;
dies, 159 n.;
317 n.
_Lovell, Robert, and Robert Southey of Balliol College, Bath, Poems by_,
107 n.
Lovell, Mrs. Robert (Mary Fricker), 122, 159 and note, 485.
_Lover’s Complaint to his Mistress, A_, 36.
_Low was our pretty Cot_, C.’s opinion of, 224.
Lubec, 274, 275.
Lucretius, his philosophy and his poetry, 648.
Luff, Captain, 369 and note, 547.
_Luise, ein ländliches Gedicht in drei Idyllen_, by Johann Heinrich
Voss, quotation from, 203 n.;
an emphatically original poem, 625;
627.
Lüneburg, 278.
Lushington, Mr., 101.
Luss, 431.
_Lycon, Ode to_, by Robert Southey, 107 n., 108.
_Lyrical Ballads_, by Coleridge and Wordsworth, 336, 337, 341, 350 and
note, 387, 607, 678.
Macaulay, Alexander, death of, 491.
Mackintosh, Sir James, his rejected offer to procure a place for C.
under himself in India, 454, 455;
C.’s dislike and distrust of, 454 n., 455 n.;
596.
Macklin, Harriet, 751 and note, 764.
Madeira, 442, 451, 452.
_Madoc_, by Southey, C. urges its completion and publication, 314, 467;
357;
C.’s enthusiasm for, 388, 489, 490;
a divine passage of, 463 and note.
_Mad Ox, The_, 219 n., 327.
Magee, William, D. D., 761 n.
_Magnum Opus._ See _Christianity, the one true Philosophy_.
_Maid of Orleans_, 239.
Malta, C. plans a trip to, 457, 458;
the voyage to, 469-481;
sojourn at, 481-484, 487-497;
army affairs at, 554, 555.
Maltese, the, 483 and note, 484 and note.
Maltese, Regiment, the, 554, 555.
_Malvern Hills_, by Joseph Cottle, 358.
Manchester Massacre, the, 702 n.
Manchineel, 223 n.
Marburg, 291.
Margarot, 166, 167 n.
Markes, Rev. Mr., 310.
Marriage as a means of ensuring the nature and education of children,
216, 217.
Marsh, Herbert, Bishop of Peterborough, his lecture on the authenticity
and credibility of the books collected in the New Testament, 707,
708.
Martin, Rev. H., 74 n., 81 n.
_Mary, the Maid of the Inn_, by Southey, 223.
Massena, Marshal, defeats the Russians at Zurich, 308 and note.
Masy, Mr., 40.
Mathews, Charles, C. hears and sees his entertainment, _At Home_, 704,
705;
letter from C., 621.
_Mattathias, The Death of_, by Robert Southey, 108 and note.
Maurice, Rev. John Frederick Dennison, 771 n.
Maxwell, Captain, of the Royal Artillery, 493, 495, 496.
McKinnon, General, 309 n.
Medea, a subject for a tragedy, 399.
Meditation, C.’s habits of, 658.
Medwin, Capt. Thomas, his _Conversations of Lord Byron_, 735 and note.
Meerschaum pipes, 277.
_Melancholy, a Fragment_, 396 and note, 397.
Memory of childhood in old age, 428.
Mendelssohn, Moses, 203 n., 204 n.
_Men of the Time_, 317 n.
Merry, Robert, 86 n.
Messina, 485, 486.
Metaphysics, 102, 347-352;
C. proposes to write a book on Locke, Hobbes, and Hume, 349, 350;
in poetry, 372;
effect of the study of, 388;
C.’s projected great work on, 632 and note, 633;
of the German philosophers, 681-683, 735;
712, 713.
See _Christianity, the One True Philosophy_, Philosophy, Religion.
Meteyard, Eliza, her _Group of Englishmen_, 269 n., 308 n.
_Method, Essay on the Science of_, 681 and note.
Methuen, Rev. T. A., 652 and note.
_Microcosm_, 43 and note.
Middleton, H. F. (afterwards Bishop of Calcutta), 23, 25, 32, 33.
Milman, Henry Hart, 737 and note.
Milton, John, 164, 197 and note;
a sublimer poet than Homer or Virgil, 199, 200;
the imagery in _Paradise Lost_ borrowed from the Scriptures, 199, 200;
his _Accidence_, 331;
on poetry, 387;
his platonizing spirit, 406, 407;
678, 734.
Milton, Lord, 567 and note.
Mind _versus_ Nature, in youth and later life, 742, 743.
_Minor Poems_, 317 n.
_Miscellanies, Æsthetic and Literary_, 711 n.
_Miss Rosamond_, by Southey, 108 and note.
Mitford, Mary Russell, 63 n.
Molly, 11.
Monarchy likened to a cockatrice, 73.
_Monday’s Beard, On Mrs._, 9 n.
Money, Rev. William, 651 n.;
letter from C., 651.
_Monody on the Death of Chatterton_, 110 n., 158 n., 620 n.
_Monologue to a Young Jackass in Jesus Piece_, 119 n.
_Monopolists_, 335 n.
Montagu, Basil, 363 n., 511 n.;
causes a misunderstanding between C. and Wordsworth, 578, 586-591,
593, 599, 612;
endeavours to have an associateship of the Royal Society of Literature
conferred on C., 726, 727;
his efforts successful, 728;
749.
Montagu, Mrs. Basil, her connection with the quarrel between C. and
Wordsworth, 588, 589, 591, 599.
_Monthly Magazine_, the, 179 and note, 185, 197, 215, 251 n., 310, 317.
Moore, Thomas, his _Lalla Rookh_, 672;
his misuse of the possessive case, 672.
Moors, C.’s opinion of, 478.
Morality and religion, 676.
Moreau, Jean Victor, 449 and note.
Morgan, Mrs., 145, 148.
Morgan, John James, 524, 526;
a faithful and zealous friend, 580;
C. confides the news of his quarrel with Wordsworth to, 591, 592;
596, 650, 665;
letter from C., 575.
Morgan, Mrs. John James, C.’s affection for, 565;
578, 600, 618, 650, 722 n.;
letter from C., 524.
Morgan family, the (J. J. Morgan, his wife, and his wife’s sister, Miss
Charlotte Brent), C.’s feelings of affection, esteem, and
gratitude towards, 519, 520, 524-526, 565;
C. visits, 566-575 and note, 579-622;
585;
C. confides the news of his quarrel with Wordsworth to, 591, 592;
C. regards as his saviours, 592;
600 n.;
with C. at Calne, 641-653;
their faithful devotion to C., 657, 722 n.;
letters from C., 519, 524, 564.
Mortimer, John Hamilton, 373 and note.
_Motion of Contentment_, by Archdeacon Paley, 47.
Motley, J. C., 467-469, 475.
Mountains, of Portugal, 470, 473;
about Gibraltar, 478.
Mumps, the, 545 and note.
Murray, John, 581;
proposes to publish a translation of _Faust_, 624-626;
his connection with the publication of _Zapolya_, 666 and note,
667-669;
offers C. two hundred guineas for a volume of specimens of Rabbinical
wisdom, 667 n.;
699 n.;
proposal from C. to compile a volume of selections from Archbishop
Leighton, 717-720;
723;
his proposal to publish an edition of C.’s poems, 787;
letters from C., 624, 665, 717.
_Murray, John, Memoirs of_, 624 n., 666 n.
Music, 49.
Myrtle, praise of the, 745, 746.
Mythology, Greek and Roman, contrasted with Christianity, 199, 200.
Nanny, 260, 295.
Naples, 486, 502.
Napoleon, 308, 327 n., 329 and note;
his animosity against C., 498 n.;
530 n.;
C.’s cartoon and lines on, 642.
_Napoleon Bonaparte, Life of_, by Sir Walter Scott, 174 n.
_Natural Theology_, by William Paley, 424 n., 425 n.
Nature, her influence on the passions, 243, 244;
Mind and, two rival artists, 742, 743.
_Natur-philosophen_, C. on the, 682, 683.
_Navigation and Discovery, The Spirit of_, by William Lisle Bowles, 403
and note.
Necessitarianism, the sophistry of, 454.
Neighbours, 186.
Nelson, Lady, 637.
Nelson, Lord, 637 and note.
Nesbitt, Fanny, C.’s poem to, 56, 57.
Netherlands, the, 751.
Nether Stowey, 165 and note;
C. proposes to move to, 184-194;
arrangements for moving to, 209;
settled at, 213;
C.’s description of his place at, 213;
Thelwall urged not to settle at, 232-234;
the curate-in-charge of, 267 n.;
297, 325, 366;
C.’s last visit to, 405 n.;
497 n.
Neuralgia, a severe attack of, 173-177.
Newcome’s (Mr.) School, 7, 25 n.
Newlands, 393 and note, 411, 725.
_New Monthly Magazine_, 257.
Newspapers, freshness necessary for, 568.
New Testament, the, Bishop March’s lecture on the authenticity and
credibility of the books collected in, 707, 708.
Newton, Mr., 48.
Newton, Mrs., sister of Thomas Chatterton, 221, 222.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 352.
_Nightingale, The, a Conversational Poem_, 296 n.
_Ninathoma, The Complaint of_, 51.
Nixon, Miss Eliza, unpublished lines of C. to, 773 n., 774 n.;
letter from C., 773.
Nobs, Dr. Daniel Dove’s horse, in _The Doctor_, 583 and note, 584.
_No more the visionary soul shall dwell_, 109 and note, 208 n.
Nordhausen, 273.
Northcote, Sir Stafford, 15 and note.
Northmore, Thomas, C. dines with, 306, 307;
an offensive character to the aristocrats, 310.
North Wales, C.’s tour of, 72-81.
_Notes on Hamlet_, 684 n.
_Notes on Noble’s Appeal_, 684 n.
_Notes Theological and Political_, 684 n., 761 n.
Nottingham, 153, 154, 216.
Novi, Suwarrow’s victory at, 307 and note.
Nuremberg, 555.
Objective, different meanings of the term, 755.
_Observations on Egypt_, 486 n.
Ocean, the, by night, 260.
_Ode in the manner of Anacreon, An_, 35.
_Ode on the Poetical Character_, by William Collins, 196.
_Odes to Great People_, by Thomas Hood, 250 n.
_Ode to Dejection_, 378 and note, 379 and note, 380-384, 405 n.
_Ode to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire_, 320 and note, 330.
_Ode to Lycon_, by Robert Southey, 107 n., 108.
_Ode to Romance_, by Robert Southey, 107 and note.
_Ode to the Departing Year_, 212 n.;
C.’s reply to Thelwall’s criticisms on, 218 and note;
221.
_Ode to the Duchess_, 320 and note, 330.
_O gentle look, that didst my soul beguile_, a sonnet, 111, 112 and note.
Ogle, Captain, 63 and note.
Ogle, Lieutenant, 374 n.
Ogle, Dr. Newton, Dean of Westminster, his Latin Iambics, 374 and note.
Oken, Lorenz, his _Natural History_, 736.
_Old Man in the Snow_, 110 and note.
_Omniana_, by C. and Southey, 9 n., 554 n., 718 n.
_On a Discovery made too late_, 92 and note, 123 n.
_On a late Connubial Rupture_, 179 n.
_On an Infant who died before its Christening_, 287.
_Once a Jacobin, always a Jacobin_, 414.
_On Revisiting the Sea-Shore_, 361 n.
Onstel, 97 n.
_On the Slave Trade_, 43 and note.
Opium, C.’s early use of, and beginning of the habit, 173 and note, 174
and note, 175;
first recourse to it for the relief of mental distress, 245 n.;
daily quantity reduced, 413;
regarded as less harmful than other stimulants, 413;
420;
its use discontinued for a time, 434, 435;
anguish and remorse from its abuse, 616-621, 623, 624;
in order to free himself from the slavery, C. arranges to live with
Mr. James Gillman as a patient, 657-659;
a final effort to give up the use of it altogether, 760 and note;
the habit regulated and brought under control, but never entirely done
away with, 760 n., 761 n.
Oporto, seen from the sea, 469, 470.
_Orestes_, by William Sotheby, 402, 409, 410.
Original Sin, C. a believer in, 242.
_Original Sin, Letter on_, by Jeremy Taylor, 640.
_Origine de tous les Cultes, ou Religion universelle_, by Charles
François Dupuis, 181 and note.
_Origin, Nature, and Object of the New System of Education_, by Andrew
Bell, D. D., 581 and note, 582.
_Osorio_, a tragedy, 10 n., 229 and note, 231, 284 n., 603 n.
See _Remorse_.
Ossian, hexameters in, 398.
Otter, the river, 14, 15.
Ottery St. Mary, 6-8, 305 n.;
C. wished by his family to settle at, 325;
C.’s last visit to, 405 n.;
a proposed visit to, 512, 513;
745 n.
Owen, William, 425 n.
_O what a loud and fearful shriek was there_, a sonnet, 116 n., 117.
Owls, care of, in Germany, 293.
Oxford University, C.’s feeling towards, 45, 72.
Paignton, 305 n.
_Pain_, a sonnet, 174 n.
Pain, C. interested in, 341.
_Pains of Sleep, The_, 435-437 and note.
Paley, William, Archdeacon of Carlisle, his _Motives of Contentment_, 47;
his _Natural Theology_, 424 and note;
713.
Palm, John Philip, his pamphlet reflecting on Napoleon leads to his
trial and execution, 530 and note;
C. translates his pamphlet, 530.
Pantisocracy, 73, 79, 81, 82, 88-91, 101-103, 109 n., 121, 122, 134,
135, 138-141, 143-147, 149, 317 n., 748 n.
_Paradise Lost_, by Milton, its imagery borrowed from the Scriptures,
199, 200.
Parasite, a, 705.
Parliamentary Reform, essay on, 567.
Parndon House, 506 n., 507, 508.
Parret, the river, 165.
Parties, political, in England, 242.
Pasquin, Antony, 603 and note.
Patience, 203 and note.
Patteson, Hon. Mr. Justice, 726 n.
Paul, Charles Kegan, his _William Godwin: His Friends and
Contemporaries_, 161 n., 324 n., 465 n.
_Pauper’s Funeral_, by Robert Southey, 108 and note, 109.
_Peace and Union_, by William Friend, 24 n.
Pearce, Dr., Master of Jesus College, 23, 24, 65, 70-72.
_Pedlar, The_, former title of Wordsworth’s _Excursion_, 337 and note.
Peel, Sir Robert, 689 n.
Penche, M. de la, 49.
Penmaen Mawr, C.’s ascent of, 81 n.
Penn, William, 539.
Pennington, W., 541, 542 n., 544.
Penrith, 420, 421, 547, 548, 575 n.
Penruddock, 420, 421.
Perceval, Rt. Hon. Spencer, assassination of, 597, 598 and note.
Perdita, _see_ Robinson, Mrs. Mary.
_Peripatetic, The, or Sketches of the Heart, of Nature, and of Society_,
by John Thelwall, 166 and note.
Perry, James, 114.
_Perspiration. A Travelling Eclogue_, 73.
Peterloo, 702 n.
_Philip Van Artevelde_, by Sir Henry Taylor, 774 and note.
Phillips, Elizabeth (C.’s half sister), 54 n.
Phillips, Sir Richard, 317 and note, 325, 327.
Phillips, Thomas, R. A., 699;
his two portraits of C., 699 and note, 700, 740;
his portrait of William Hart Coleridge, Bishop of Barbadoes and the
Leeward Islands, 740 and note.
_Philological Museum_, 733 n.
Philosophy, 648-650;
German, 681-683;
C.’s lectures on the History of, 698 and note.
_See_ Metaphysics _and_ Religion.
Pickering, W., 579 n.
_Picture, The: or The Lover’s Resolution_, 405 n., 620 n.
Pinney, Mr., of Bristol, 163 n.;
his estate in the West Indies, 360, 361.
Pipes, meerschaum, 277.
Pisa, C.’s stay at, 499 n., 500 n.;
his account of, 500 n.
Pitt, Rt. Hon. William, C.’s report in the _Morning Post_ of his speech
on the continuance of the war with France, 327 and note;
proposed articles on, 505;
C.’s detestation of, 535 and note;
629 and note.
_Pixies’ Parlour, The_, 222.
Plampin, J., 70 and note.
Plato, his _gorgeous_ nonsense, 211;
his theology, 406.
Playing-cards, German, 263.
Pleasure, intoxicating power of, 370.
Plinlimmon, C.’s ascent of, 81 n.
_Plot Discovered, The_, 156 and note.
_Poems by Robert Lovell and Robert Southey of Balliol College, Bath_,
107 n.
Poems and fragments of poems introduced by C. into his letters, 28, 35,
36, 51, 52, 54, 56, 73, 75, 77, 83, 92, 94, 98, 100, 111-113, 207,
212, 225, 355, 379-384, 388, 389, 397, 404, 412, 435-437, 553,
609, 620, 642, 646, 702, 770, 771.
_Poems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer_, by Charles Lloyd, 206 and note.
_Poetical Character, Ode on the_, by Collins, 196.
_Poetry, Concerning_, a proposed book, 347, 386, 387.
Poetry, C. proposes to write an essay on, 338, 347, 386, 387;
Greek and Hebrew, 405, 406.
Poetry, C.’s, not obscure or mystical, 194, 195.
Poland, 329.
Political parties in England, 242.
Politics, 240-243, 546, 550, 553, 574, 702, 712, 713, 757.
_See_ Democracy, Pantisocracy, Republicanism.
Poole, Richard, 249.
Poole, Mrs. Richard, 248.
Poole, Thomas, contributes to _The Watchman_, 155;
collects a testimonial in the form of an annuity of £35 or £40 for C.,
158 n.;
C.’s gratitude, 158, 159;
C. proposes to visit, 159;
C.’s affection for, 168, 210, 258, 609, 610, 753;
C. proposes to visit him with Charles Lloyd, 170;
C.’s happiness at the prospect of living near, 173;
his connection with C.’s removal to Nether Stowey, 183-193, 208-210;
213, 219, 220;
his opinion of Wordsworth, 221;
232 and note, 233, 239, 257, 258, 260, 282 n., 289;
effects a reconciliation between C. and Southey, 390;
308, 319;
C.’s reasons for not naming his third son after, 344;
death of his mother, 364;
396, 437 n.;
nobly employed, 453;
his rectitude and simplicity of heart, 454;
456 n.;
his forgetfulness, 460;
515, 523;
extract from a letter from C., 533 n.;
a visit to Grasmere proposed, 545;
his narrative of John Walford, 553 and note;
C. complains of unkindness from, 609, 610;
639 n., 657;
meets C. at Samuel Purkis’s, Brentford, 673;
extract from a letter from C. about Samuel Purkis, 673 n.;
autobiographical letters from C., 3-18;
other letters from C., 136, 155, 158, 168, 172, 176, 183-187, 208,
248, 249, 258, 267, 282, 305, 335, 343, 348, 350, 364, 452, 454,
541, 544, 550, 556, 609, 673, 753.
_Poole, Thomas, and his Friends_, by Mrs. Henry Sandford, 158 n., 165
n., 170 n., 183 n., 232 n., 234 n., 258, 267 n., 282 n., 391 n.,
335 n., 456 n., 533 n., 553 n., 673 n., 676 n.
Poole, William, 176.
Pope, the, C. leaves Rome at a warning from, 498 n.
Pope, Alexander, his _Essay on Man_, 648;
a favorite walk of, 671.
Pople, Mr., publisher of C.’s tragedy, _Remorse_, 602.
Porson, Mr., 114, 115.
Portinscale, 393 and note.
Portraits of C., crayon sketch by Dawe, 572 and note;
full-length portrait by Allston begun at Rome, 572 and note;
portrait by Allston taken at Bristol, 572 n.;
pencil sketch by Leslie, 695 n.;
two portraits by Thomas Phillips, 699 and note, 700, 740;
Wyville’s proofs, 770.
Portugal, C. on Southey’s proposed history of, 387, 388, 423;
the coast of, 469-471, 473.
Possessive case, Moore’s misuse of the, 672.
_Post, Morning_, 310;
C. writing for, 320 and note, 324, 326, 327 and note, 329 and note;
331, 335 n., 337, 376, 378 n., 379 n., 398, 404 n., 405, 414, 423,
455 n.;
Napoleon’s animosity aroused by C.’s articles in, 498 n.;
its notice of C.’s tragedy, _Remorse_, 603 n.
Postage, rates too high, 345.
_Posthumous Fame_, 29 n.
Potter, Mr., 97 and note, 106.
Poverty, in England, 353, 354;
blessings of, 364.
Pratt, 321.
_Prelude, The_, by Wordsworth, a reference to C. in, 486 n.;
C.’s lines _To William Wordsworth_ after hearing him recite, 641, 644,
646, 647 and note;
C.’s admiration of, 645, 647 n.
Pride, 149.
Priestley, Joseph, C.’s sonnet to, 116 and note;
his doctrine as to the future existence of infants, 286.
_Progress of Liberty, The_, 296.
_Prometheus of Æschylus, Essay on the_, 740 and note.
Property, to be modified by the predominance of intellect, 323.
Pseudonym, Ἔστησε, 398;
its meaning, 407 and note, 408.
_Public Characters for 1799-1800_, published by Richard Phillips, 317 n.
_Puff and Slander_, projected satires, 630 and notes, 631 n.
Purkis, Samuel, 326, 673 n.
Quack medicine, a German, 264.
_Quaker Family, Records of a_, by Anne Ogden Boyce, 538 n.
Quaker girl, inelegant remark of a little, 362, 368.
Quakerism, 415;
C.’s belief in the essentials of, 539-541;
C.’s definition of, 556.
Quakers, as subscribers to _The Friend_, 556, 557.
Quakers and Unitarians, the only Christians, 415.
Quantocks, the, 405 n.
_Quarterly Review, The_, 606;
its review of _The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton_, 637 and
note, 667;
reëchoes C.’s praise of Cary’s Dante, 677 n.;
its attitude towards C., 697, 723;
John Taylor Coleridge editor of, 736 and notes, 737.
_Rabbinical Tales_, 667 and note, 669.
Racedown, C.’s visit to Wordsworth at, 163 n., 220 and note, 221.
_Race of Banquo, The_, by Southey, 92 and note.
Rae, Mr., an actor, 611, 667.
_Rainbow, The_, by Southey, 108 and note.
Ramsgate, 700, 722, 729-731, 742-744.
Ratzeburg, 257;
C.’s stay in, 262-278;
the Amtmann of, 264, 268, 271;
description of, 273-277;
C. leaves, 278;
292-294.
“Raw Head” and “Bloody Bones,” 45.
Reading, _see_ Books.
Reading, Berkshire, 66, 67.
Reason and understanding, the distinction between, 712, 713.
_Recluse, The_, a projected poem by Wordsworth of which _The Excursion_
(q. v.) was to form the second part and to which _The Prelude_
(q. v.) was to be an introduction, C.’s hopes for, 646, 647 and
note, 648-650.
_Recollections of a Late Royal Academician_, by Charles Lamb, 572 n.
_Records of a Quaker Family_, by Anne Ogden Boyce, 538 n.
Redcliff, 144.
Redcliff Hill, 154.
_Reflection, Aids to_, 688 n.
_Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement_, 606 n.
Reform Bill, 760, 762.
Reich, Dr., 734, 736.
_Rejected Addresses_, by Horace and James Smith, 606.
Religion, beliefs and doubts of C. in regard to, 64, 68, 69, 88, 105,
106, 127, 135, 152, 153, 159-161, 167, 171, 172, 198-205, 210,
211, 228, 229, 235 n., 242, 247, 248, 285, 286, 342, 364, 365,
407, 414, 415, 444, 538-541, 617-620, 624, 676, 688, 694, 706-712,
746-748, 750, 754, 758-760, 762, 763, 771, 775, 776.
_Religious Musings_, 239.
_Reminiscences of Cambridge_, by Henry Gunning, 24 n., 363 n.
_Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey_, by Cottle, 268 n., 269 n.,
417, 456 n., 617 n.
Remorse, C.’s definition of, 607.
_Remorse, A Tragedy_ (_Osorio_ rewritten), rehearsal of, 600;
has a brief spell of success, 600 n., 602, 604, 610, 611;
business arrangements as to its publication, 602;
press notices of, 603 and note, 604;
William Gifford’s criticism of, 605;
the underlying principle of the plot of, 607, 608;
wretchedly acted, 608, 611;
metres of, 608;
lack of pathos in, 608;
plagiarisms in, 608;
labors occasioned to C. by its production and success, 610;
financial success of, 611;
_Quarterly Review’s_ criticism of, 630;
696.
Repentance preached by the Christian religion, 201.
Reporting the debates for the _Morning Post_, 324, 326, 327.
Republicanism, 72, 79-81, 243.
_See_ Democracy, Pantisocracy.
_Retrospect, The_, by Robert Southey, 107 and note.
Revelation, 676.
Reynell, Richard, 497 and note.
Rheumatism, C.’s sufferings from, 174 n., 193, 209, 307, 308, 432, 433.
Rhine, the, 751.
Richards, George, 41 and note.
Richardson, Mrs., 145.
Richter, Jean Paul, his _Vorschule der Aisthetik_, 683 and note.
Rickman, John, 456 n., 459, 462, 542, 599.
Ridgeway and Symonds, publishers, 638 n.
_Robbers, The_, by Schiller, 96 and note, 97, 221.
Roberts, Margaret, 358 n.
Robespierre, Maximilian Marie Isidore, 203 n., 329 n.
_Robespierre, The Fall of_, 85 and note, 87, 93, 104 and notes.
Robinson, Frederick John (afterwards Earl of Ripon), his Corn Bill, 643
and note.
Robinson, Henry Crabb, 225 n., 593, 599, 670 n.;
in old age, 671 n.;
reads William Blake’s poems to Wordsworth, 686 n.;
extract from a letter from C. to, 689 n.;
his _Diary_, 225 n., 575 n., 591 n., 595 n., 686 n., 689 n.;
letter from C., 671.
Robinson, Mrs. Mary (“Perdita”), contributes poems to the _Annual
Anthology_, 322 and note;
her _Haunted Beach_, 331, 332;
her ear for metre, 332.
Roman Catholicism in Germany, 291, 292.
_Romance, Ode to_, by Southey, 107 and note.
Rome, C.’s flight from, 498 n.;
501, 502.
_Rosamund, Miss_, by Southey, 108 and note.
_Rosamund to Henry; written after she had taken the veil_, by Southey,
108 n.
Roscoe, William, 359 and note.
Rose, Sir George, 456 and note.
_Rose, The_, 54 and note.
Rose, W., 542.
Roskilly, Rev. Mr., 267 n., 270;
letter from C., 267.
Ross, 77.
Ross, the Man of, 77, 651 n.
Rossetti, Gabriele, 731 and note, 732, 733.
Rough, Sergeant, 225 and note.
Royal Institution, C. obtains a lectureship at the, 506 n., 507, 508,
511;
an outline of proposed lectures at the, 515, 516, 522;
C.’s lectures at the, 525.
Royal Society of Literature, the, Basil Montagu’s endeavors to secure
for C. an associateship of, 726, 727;
C. an associate of, 728;
731;
an essay for, 737, 738;
C. reads an _Essay on the Prometheus of Æschylus_ before, 739, 740.
Rulers, always as bad as they dare to be, 240.
Rush, Sir William, 368.
Rushiford, 358.
Russell, Mr., of Exeter, C.’s fellow-traveller, 498 n., 500 and note.
Rustats, 24, 43.
_Ruth_, by Wordsworth, 387.
Ruthin, 78.
St. Albyn, Mrs., the owner of Alfoxden, 232 n.
St. Augustine, 375.
St. Bees, 392, 393.
St. Blasius, 292.
St. Clear, 411, 412.
St. Lawrence, near Maldon, description of, 690-692.
_St. Leon_, by Godwin, the copyright sold for £400, 324, 325.
St. Nevis, 360, 361.
St. Paul’s _Epistle to the Hebrews_, 200.
Salernitanus, 566 and note.
Salisbury, 53-55.
Samuel, C.’s dislike of the name, 470, 471.
Sandford, Mrs. Henry, 183 n.;
her _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, 158 n., 165 n., 170 n., 183 n.,
232 n., 234 n., 258, 267 n., 282 n., 319 n., 335 n., 456 n., 533
n., 553 n., 673 n., 676 n.
Saturday Club, the, at Göttingen, 281.
_Satyrane’s Letters_, 257, 274 n., 558.
Savage, Mr., 534.
Savory, Mr., 316.
Scafell, 393, 394;
in a thunderstorm on, 400 and note;
view from the summit of, 400, 401;
suggests the _Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni_, 404 and
note, 405 and note.
Scale Force, 375.
Scarborough, 361-363.
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, the philosophy of, 683, 735.
Schiller, his _Robbers_, 96 and note, 97, 221;
C. translates manuscript plays of, 331;
C.’s translation of his _Wallenstein_, 403, 608.
Scholarship examinations, 24, 43, 45 and note, 46.
Schöning, Maria Eleanora, the story of, 555 and note, 556.
Scoope, Emanuel, second Viscount Howe, 262 n.
Scotland, C.’s tour in, 431-441;
the four most wonderful sights in, 439, 440.
Scott, an attorney, his manner of revenging himself on C., 310, 311.
Scott, Sir Walter, his _Life of Napoleon Bonaparte_, 174 n.;
his house in Edinburgh, 439;
takes Hartley C. to the Tower, 511 n.;
his offer to use his influence to get a place for Southey on the
staff of the _Edinburgh Review_, 522 and note, 522;
his _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, 523;
605, 694;
his _Antiquary_, 736 and note.
Sea-bathing, 361 n., 362 and note.
Seasickness, no sympathy for, 743, 744.
_Sermoni propriora_, 606 and note.
Shad, 82, 89, 96.
Shaftesbury, Lord, 689 n.
_Shakespeare, Lectures on_, 557 n.
_Shakespeare and other Dramatists, Lectures on_, 756 n.
Sharp, Richard, 447 n.;
letter from C., 447.
Shepherds, German, 293.
_Sheridan, R. B., Esq., To_, 116 n., 118.
Shrewsbury, C. offered the Unitarian pastorate at, 235 and note, 236.
_Sibylline Leaves_, 178 n., 378 n., 379 n., 404 n.;
C. ill-used by the printer of, 673, 674;
678, 770.
Sicily, C. plans to visit, 457, 458;
C.’s first tour in, 485 and note, 486 and note, 487;
523.
Siddons, Mrs., 50.
Sieyès, Abbé, 329 and note.
_Sigh, The_, 100 and note.
_Simplicity, Sonnet to_, 251 and note.
Sin, original, C. a believer in, 242.
Sincerity, regarded by Dr. Darwin as vicious, 161.
_Sixteen Sonnets_, by Bampfylde, 369 n.
Skiddaw, 335, 336;
sunset over, 384.
Skiddaw Forest, 376 n.
Slavery, question of its introduction into the proposed pantisocratic
colony, 89, 90, 95, 96.
_Slave Trade, History of the Abolition of the_, by Thomas Clarkson, C.’s
review of, 527 and note, 528-530, 535, 536.
_Slave Trade, On the_, 43 and note.
Slee, Miss, 362, 363.
Sleep, C.’s sufferings in, 435, 440, 441, 447.
Smerdon, Mrs., 21, 22.
Smerdon, Rev. Mr., Vicar of Ottery, 22, 106 and note.
Smith, Charlotte, 326.
Smith, Horace and James, their _Rejected Addresses_, 606.
Smith, James, 704.
Smith, Raphael, 701 n.
Smith, Robert Percy (Bobus), 43 and note.
Smith, William, M. P., 506 n., 507 and note.
Snuff, 691, 692 and note.
_Social Life at the English Universities_, by Christopher Wordsworth,
225 n.
_Something Childish, but Very Natural_, quoted, 294.
_Song_, 100.
_Songs of the Pixies_, 222.
_Sonnet_, an anonymous, 177, 178.
_Sonnet composed on a journey homeward, the author having received
intelligence of the birth of a son_, 194 and note, 195.
Sonnets, 111, 112, and note;
to Priestley, 116 and note;
to Kosciusko, 116 n., 117;
to Godwin, 116 n., 117;
to Sheridan, 116 n., 117, 118;
to Burke, 116 n., 118;
to Southey, 116 n., 120;
a selection of, privately printed by C., 177, 206 and note;
by “Nehemiah Higginbottom,” 251 n.
_Sonnets, Sixteen_, by Bampfylde, 309 n.
_Sonnet to Simplicity_, 251 and note.
_Sonnet to the Author of the Robbers_, 96 n.
Sorrel, James, 21.
Sotheby, William, C. translates Gesner’s _Erste Schiffer_ at his
instance, 369, 371, 372, 376-378, 397, 402, 403;
his translation of the Georgics of Virgil, 375;
his _Poems_, 375;
his _Netley Abbey_, 396;
his _Welsh Tour_, 396;
his _Orestes_, 402, 409, 410;
proposes a fine edition of _Christabel_, 421, 422;
492, 579, 595 n., 604, 605;
letters from C., 369, 376, 396-408.
Sotheby, Mrs. William, 369, 375, 378.
Soul and body, 708, 709.
South Devon, 305 n.
Southey, Lieutenant, 563.
Southey, Bertha, daughter of Robert S., born, 546, 547 and note, 578.
Southey, Catharine, daughter of Robert S., 578.
Southey, Rev. Charles Cuthbert, his _Life and Correspondence of Robert
Southey_, 308 n., 309 n., 327 n., 329 n., 384 n., 395 n., 400 n.,
425 n., 488 n., 521 n., 584 n., 748 n.;
on the date of composition of _The Doctor_, 583 n.
Southey, Edith, daughter of Robert S., 578.
Southey, Dr. Henry, 615 and note.
Southey, Herbert, son of Robert S., 578;
his nicknames, 583 n.
Southey, Margaret, daughter of Robert S., born, 394 n., 395 n.;
dies, 435 n.
Southey, Mrs. Margaret, mother of Robert S., 138, 147.
Southey, Robert, his and C.’s _Omniana_, 9 n., 554 n., 718 n.;
his _Botany Bay Eclogues_, 76 n., 116;
proposed emigration to America with a colony of pantisocrats, 81, 82,
89-91, 95, 96, 98, 101-103;
his sonnets, 82, 83, 92, 108;
his connection with C.’s engagement to Miss Sarah Fricker, 84-86, 126;
his _Race of Banquo_, 92 and note;
97 n.;
his _Retrospect_, 107 and note;
his _Ode to Romance_, 107 and note;
his _Ode to Lycon_, 107 n., 108;
his _Death of Mattathias_, 108 and note;
his sonnets, _To Valentine_, _The Fire_, _The Rainbow_, 108 and notes;
his _Rosamund to Henry_, 108 and notes;
his _Pauper’s Funeral_, 108 and note, 109;
his _Chapel Bell_, 110 and note;
C. prophesies fame for, 110;
his _Elegy_, 115;
C.’s sonnet to, 116 n., 120;
lines to Godwin, 120;
suggestion that the proposed colony of pantisocrats be founded in
Wales, 121, 122;
his sonnet, _Hold your mad hands!_, 127 and note;
his abandonment of pantisocracy causes a serious rupture with C.,
134-151;
marries Edith Fricker, 137 n.;
his _Joan of Arc_, 141, 149, 178 and note, 210, 319;
163 n.;
the poet for the patriot, 178;
198 and note;
his verses to a college cat, 207;
C. compares his poetry with his own, 210;
personal relations with C. after the partial reconciliation, 210, 211;
his exertions in aid of Chatterton’s sister, 221, 222;
his _Mary the Maid of the Inn_, 223;
C.’s _Sonnet to Simplicity_ not written with reference to, 251 and
note;
a more complete reconciliation with C., 303, 304;
visits C. at Stowey with his wife, 304;
C., with his wife and child, visits him at Exeter, 305 and note;
accompanies C. on a walking tour in Dartmoor, 305 and note;
his _Specimens of the Later English Poets_, 309 n.;
his _Madoc_, 314, 357, 388, 463 and note, 467, 489, 490;
his _Thalaba the Destroyer_, 314, 319, 324, 357, 684;
out of health, 314;
C. suggests his removing to London, 315;
George Dyer’s article on, 317 and note;
_The Devil’s Thoughts_, written in collaboration with C., 318;
320 n.;
thinks of going abroad for his health, 326, 329, 360, 361;
an advocate of the establishment of Protestant orders of Sisters of
Mercy, 327 n.;
proposes the establishment of a magazine with signed articles, 328 n.;
extract from a letter to C. on the condition of France, 329 n.;
C. begs him to make his home at Greta Hall, 354-356, 362, 391, 392,
394, 395;
367, 379 n.;
his proposed history of Portugal, 387, 388, 423;
secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland for a short
time, 390 and note;
birth of his first child, Margaret, 394 n., 395 n.;
his admiration of Bowles and its effect on his poems, 396;
400 n.;
his prose style, 423;
his proposed bibliographical work, 428-430;
makes a visit to Greta Hall which proves permanent, 435;
death of his little daughter, Margaret, 435 and note, 437;
his first impressions of Edinburgh, 438 n.;
442;
on Hartley and Derwent Coleridge, 443;
460, 463, 468, 484, 488 n.;
poverty, 490;
his _Wat Tyler_, 507 n.;
declines an offer from Scott to secure him a place on the staff of the
_Edinburgh Review_, 521 and note;
542 n.;
extract from a letter to J. N. White, 545 n.;
on the mumps, 545 n.;
546;
birth of his daughter Bertha, 546, 547 and note;
548;
corrects proofs of _The Friend_, 551 and note;
575;
C.’s love and esteem for, 578;
his family in 1812, 578;
C.’s estimate of, 581;
on the authorship of _The Doctor_, 583 n., 584 n.;
585;
C. states his side of the quarrel with Wordsworth in conversation
with, 592;
604, 609 n., 615, 617 n.;
writes of his friend John Kenyon, 639 n.;
his protection of C.’s family, 657;
C.’s letter introducing Mr. Ludwig Tieck, 670;
his _Curse of Kehama_, 684;
694, 718, 724;
his _Book of the Church_, 724;
726;
his acquaintance with George Dyer, 748 n.;
letters from C., 72-101, 106-121, 125, 134, 137, 221, 251 n., 303,
307-332, 354-361, 365, 384, 393, 415, 422-430, 434, 437, 464,
469, 487, 520, 554, 597, 605, 670;
letter to Miss Sarah Fricker, 107 n.
See _Annual Anthology_, the, edited by Southey.
_Southey, Robert, Life and Correspondence of_, by Rev. Charles Cuthbert
Southey, 108 n., 308 n., 309 n., 327 n., 329 n., 384 n., 395 n.,
400 n., 425 n., 488 n., 521 n., 584 n., 736 n., 748 n.
_Southey, Robert, Selections from Letters of_, 305 n., 438 n., 447 n.,
543 n., 545 n., 583 n., 584 n., 736 n.
_Southey, Robert, of Balliol College, Bath, Poems by Robert Lovell and_,
107 n.
Southey, Mrs. Robert (Edith Fricker), Southey’s sonnet to, 127 and note;
384, 385, 390-392;
birth of her first child, Margaret, 394 n., 395 n.;
484;
birth of her daughter Bertha, 546, 547 and note;
592.
Southey, Thomas, 108 n., 109 n., 147;
a midshipman on the Sylph at the time of her capture, 308 and note.
South Molton, 5.
_Spade of a Friend (an Agriculturist), To the_, by Wordsworth, in honor
of Thomas Wilkinson, 538 n.
Spaniards, C.’s opinion of, 478.
_Spaniards, Letters on the_, 629 and note.
Sparrow, Mr., head-master of Newcome’s Academy, 24, 25 n.
_Specimens of the Later English Poets_, by Southey, 309 n.
_Spectator_, Addison’s, studied by C. in connection with _The Friend_,
557, 558.
Speedwell, the brig, 467;
on board, 469-481.
Spenser, Edmund, his _View of the State of Ireland_, 638 and note;
quotation from, 694.
Spillekins, 462, 468.
Spinoza, Benedict, 632.
_Spirit of Navigation and Discovery, The_, by William Lisle Bowles, 403
and note.
_Spiritual Philosophy, founded on the Teaching of S. T. Coleridge_, by
J. H. Green, with memoir of the author’s life, by Sir John Simon,
680 n.
Spurzheim, Johann Kaspar, his life-mask and bust of C., 570 n.
Stage, illusion of the, 663.
_Stamford News_, 567 n.
Stanger, Mrs. Joshua (Mary Calvert), 345 n.
_Stanzas written in my Pocket Copy of Thomson’s Castle of Indolence_, by
Wordsworth, 345 n.
Steam vessels, 730 and note, 743.
Steffens, Heinrich, 683.
Steinburg, Baron, 279.
Steinmetz, Adam, C.’s letter to his friend, John Peirse Kennard, after
his death, 762;
his character and amiable qualities, 763, 764, 775.
Steinmetz, John Henry, 762 n.
Stephen, Leslie, on C.’s study of Kant, 351 n.
Stephens (Stevens), Launcelot Pepys, 25 and note.
_Sterling, Life of_, by Carlyle, 771 n., 772 n.
Sterling, John, his admiration for C., 771 n., 772 n.;
letter from C., 771.
_Sternbald’s Wanderungen_, by Ludwig Tieck, 683 and note.
Stevens (Stephens), Launcelot Pepys, 25 and note.
Stoddart, Dr. (afterwards Sir) John, 477 and note, 481, 508;
detains C.’s books and MSS., 523;
524.
Stoke House, C. visits the Wedgwoods at, 673 n.
Storm, on a mountain-top, 339, 340;
with lightning in December, 365, 366;
on Scafell, 400 and note;
in Kirkstone Pass, 418-420.
Stowey, _see_ Nether Stowey.
Stowey Benefit Club, 233.
Stowey Castle, 225 n.
Street, Mr., editor of the _Courier_, 506, 533, 567, 568, 570, 616, 629,
634;
his unsatisfactory conduct of the _Courier_, 661, 662.
Strutt, Mr., 152, 153.
Strutt, Edward (Lord Belper), 215 n.
Strutt, Joseph, 215 n., 216, 367.
Strutt, Mrs. Joseph, 216.
Strutt, William, 215 and note.
Stuart, Miss, a personal reminiscence of C. by, 705 n.
Stuart, Daniel, proprietor and editor of the _Morning Post_ and
_Courier_, 311, 315;
engages C. for the _Morning Post_, 319, 320;
321, 329;
engages lodgings in Covent Garden for C., 366 n.;
on C.’s dislike of Sir James Mackintosh, 454 n., 455 n.;
458, 468, 474, 486 n., 507, 508, 519, 520, 542, 543 n.;
a friend of Dr. Henry Southey, 615 n.;
his steadiness and independence of character, 660;
his public services, 660;
his knowledge of men, 660;
letters from C., 475, 485, 493, 501, 505, 533, 545, 547, 566, 595,
615, 627, 634, 660, 663, 740.
See _Courier_ and _Post, Morning_.
Stutfield, Mr., amanuensis and disciple of C., 753 and note.
Sugar, beet, 299 and note.
_Sun, The_, 633.
Sunset in the Lake Country, a, 384.
Supernatural, C.’s essay on the, 684.
Superstitions of the German bauers, 291, 292, 294.
Suwarrow, Alexander Vasilievitch, 307 and note.
Swedenborg, Emanuel, his _De Cultu et Amore Dei_, 684 n.;
his _De Cœlo et Inferno_, 684 n.;
688, 729, 730.
Swedenborgianism, C. and, 684 n.
Swift, Jonathan, his _Drapier_ Letters, 638 and note.
Sylph, the gun-brig, capture of, 308 n.
Sympathy, C.’s craving for, 696, 697.
_Synesius_, by Canterus, 67 and note, 68.
Syracuse, Sicily, 458;
C.’s visit to, 485 n., 486 n.
_Table Talk_, 81 n., 440 n., 624 n., 633 n., 684 n., 699 n., 756 n.,
763 n., 764 n.
_Table Talk and Omniana_, 9 n., 554 n., 571 n., 718 n., 764 n.
Tatum, 53, 54.
Taunton, 220 n.;
C. preaches for Dr. Toulmin in, 247.
Taxation, C.’s Essay on, 629 and note.
Taxes, 757.
Taylor, Sir Henry, his _Philip Van Artevelde_, 774 and note.
Taylor, Jeremy, his _Dissuasion from Popery_, 639;
his _Letter on Original Sin_, 640;
a complete man, 640, 641.
Taylor, Samuel, 9.
Taylor, William, 310;
on double rhymes in English, 332;
488, 489.
Tea, 412, 413, 417.
Temperance, suggestions as to the furtherance of the cause of, 767-769.
_Temple, The_, by George Herbert, 694.
Teneriffe, 414, 417.
Terminology, C. wishes to form a better, 755.
_Thalaba the Destroyer_, by Southey, 414;
C.’s advice as to publishing, 319;
324, 357, 684.
_The Hour when we shall meet again_, 157.
Thelwall, John, his radicalism, 159, 160;
his criticisms of C.’s poetry, 163, 164, 194-197, 218;
on Burke, 166;
his _Peripatetic, or Sketches of the Heart, of Nature, and of
Society_, 166 and note;
his _Essay on Animal Vitality_, 179, 212;
his _Poems_, 179, 197;
his contemptuous attitude towards the Christian Religion, 198-205;
two odes by, 218;
C. criticises a poem and a so-called sonnet by, 230;
C. advises him not to settle at Stowey, 232-234;
letter to Dr. Crompton on the Wedgwood annuity, 234 n.;
extract from a letter from C. on the Wedgwood annuity, 235 n.;
letters from C., 159, 166, 178, 193, 210, 214, 228-232.
Thelwall, Mrs. John (Stella, first wife of preceding), 181, 205, 206 n.,
207, 214.
Theology, C.’s great interest in, 406;
C.’s projected great work on, 632 and note, 633.
_Theory of Life_, 711 n.
_The piteous sobs which choke the virgin’s breast_, a sonnet by C., 206
n.
_This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison_, 225 and note, 226 and notes, 227, 228
n.
Thompson, James, 343 and note.
Thornycroft, Hamo, R. A., 570 n.;
his bust of C., 695 n.
_Thou gentle look, that didst my soul beguile_, see _O gentle look_, etc.
_Though king-bred rage with lawless tumult rude_, a sonnet, 116 and note.
Thought, a rule for the regulation of, 244, 245.
_Three Graves, The_, 412 and note, 551, 606.
Thunder-storm, in December, 365, 366;
on Scafell, 400 and note.
Tieck, Ludwig, a letter of introduction from C. to Southey, 670;
two letters to C. from, 670 n.;
671, 672, 680;
his _Sternbald’s Wanderungen_, 663 and note;
699.
_Times, The_, 327 n.;
its notice of C.’s tragedy _Remorse_, 603 and note.
_Tineum_, by C. Valentine Le Grice, 111 and note.
Tiverton, 56.
_To a Friend, together with an Unfinished Poem_, 128 n., 454 n.
_To a friend who had declared his intention of writing no more poetry_,
206 n.
_To a Gentleman_, 647 n.
See _To William Wordsworth_.
_To a Highland Girl_, by Wordsworth, 459.
_To a Young Ass; its mother being tethered near it_, 119 and note, 120,
606 and note.
_To a Young Lady, with a Poem on the French Revolution_, 94 and note.
_To a Young Man of Fortune who had abandoned himself to an indolent and
causeless melancholy_, 207 and note, 208 and note.
Tobin, Mr., his habit of advising 474, 475.
Tobin, James, 460 n.
Tobin, John, 460 n.
_To Bowles_, 111 and note.
_To Disappointment_, 28.
Tomalin, J., his _Shorthand Report of Lectures_, 11 n., 575 n.
_To Matilda Betham. From a Stranger_, 404 n.
Tomkins, Mr., 397, 402, 403.
_To my own Heart_, 92 n.
Tooke, Andrew, 455 n.;
his _Pantheon_, 455 and note.
Tooke, Horne, 218.
_To one who published in print what had been intrusted to him by my
fireside_, 252 n.
Torbay, 305 n.
_To R. B. Sheridan, Esq._, 116 n., 118.
_To the Spade of a Friend (an Agriculturist)_, by Wordsworth, in honor
of Thomas Wilkinson, 538 n.
Totness, 305.
Toulmin, Rev. Dr., 220 n.;
tragic death of his daughter, 247, 248.
_Tour in North Wales_, by J. Hucks, 74 n., 81 n.
_Tour over the Brocken_, 257.
_Tour through Parts of Wales_, by William Sotheby, 396.
_To Valentine_, by Southey, 108 and note.
Towers, 321.
_To William Wordsworth_, 641, 644;
C. quotes from, 646, 647;
647 n.
Treaty of Vienna, 615 and note.
Trossachs, the, 431, 432, 440.
Tuckett, G. L., 57 n.;
letter from C., 57.
Tulk, Charles Augustus, 684 n.;
letters from C., 684, 712.
Turkey, 329.
Turner, Sharon, 425 n., 593.
_Two Founts, The_, 702 n.
_Two Round Spaces on a Tombstone, The_, the hero of, 455.
_Two Sisters, To_, 702 n.
Tychsen, Olaus, 398 and note.
Tyson, T., 393.
Ulpha Kirk, 393.
Understanding, as distinguished from reason, 712, 713.
Unitarianism, 415, 758, 759.
Upcott, C. visits Josiah Wedgwood at, 308.
Usk, the vale of, 410.
_Valentine, To_, by Southey, 108 and note.
Valetta, Malta, C.’s visit to, 481-484, 487-497.
Valette, General, 484;
given command of the Maltese Regiment, 554, 555.
Vane, Sir Frederick, his library, 296.
_Velvet Cushion, The_, by Rev. J. W. Cunningham, 651 and note.
Vienna, Treaty of, 615 and note.
Violin-teacher, C.’s, 49.
Virgil’s _Æneid_, Wordsworth’s unfinished translation of, 733 and note,
734.
Virgil’s _Georgics_, William Sotheby’s translation, 375.
_Visions of the Maid of Orleans, The_, 192, 206.
Vital power, definition of, 712.
Vogelstein, Karl Christian Vogel von, a letter of introduction from
Ludwig Tieck to C., 670 n.
Von Axen, Messrs. P. and O., 269 n.
Voss, Johann Heinrich, his _Luise_, 203 n., 625, 627;
his _Idylls_, 398.
Voyage to Malta, C.’s, 469-481.
Wade, Josiah, 137 n., 145, 151 n., 152 n., 191, 288;
publication by Cottle of Coleridge’s letter of June 26, 1814, to, 616
n., 617 n.;
letters from C., 151, 623.
Waithman, a politician, 598.
Wakefield, Edward, his _Account of Ireland_, 638.
Wales, proposed colony of pantisocrats in, 121, 122, 140, 141.
_Wales, Tour through Parts of_, by William Sotheby, 396.
Wales, North, C.’s tour of, 72-81.
Wales, South, C.’s tour of, 410-414.
Walford, John, Poole’s narrative of, 553 and note.
Walker, Thomas, 162.
Walk into the country, a, 32, 33.
_Wallenstein_, by Schiller, C.’s translation of, 403, 608.
Wallis, Mr., 498-500, 523.
Wallis, Mrs., 392.
_Wanderer’s Farewell to Two Sisters, The_, 722 n.
Ward, C. A., 763 n.
Ward, Thomas, 170 n.
Wardle, Colonel, leads the attack on the Duke of York in the House of
Commons, 543 and note.
Warren, Parson, 18.
Wastdale, 393, 401.
_Watchman, The_, 57 n.;
C.’s tour to procure subscribers for, 151 and note, 152-154;
155-157;
discontinued, 158;
174 n., 611.
Watson, Mrs. Henry, 698 n., 702 n.
_Wat Tyler_, by Southey, 506 n.
Wedgwood, Josiah, 260, 261, 268, 269 n.;
visit from C. at Upcott, 308;
his temporary residence at Upcott, 308 n.;
337 n., 350, 351 and note, 416 n.;
withdraws his half of the Wedgwood annuity from C., 602, 611 and note;
C.’s regard and love for, 611, 612.
Wedgwood, Josiah and Thomas, settle on C. an annuity for life of £150,
234 and note, 235 and note;
269 n., 321.
Wedgwood, Miss Sarah, 412, 416, 417.
Wedgwood, Thomas, 323, 379 n.;
with C. in South Wales, 412, 413;
his fine and subtle mind, 412;
proposes to pass the winter in Italy with C., 413, 414, 418;
415, 416;
a genuine philosopher, 448, 449;
C.’s gratitude towards, 451;
456 n., 493;
C.’s love for, mingled with fear, 612;
letter from C., 417.
Welles, A., 462.
Wellesley, Marquis of, 674.
Welsh clergyman, a, 79, 80.
Wensley, Miss, an actress, and her father, 704.
Wernigerode Inn, 298 n.
West, Mr., 633.
Whitbread, Samuel, 598.
White, Blanco, 741, 744.
White, J. N., extract from a letter from Southey, 545 n.
White Water Dash, 375 and note, 376 n.
Wilberforce, William, 535.
Wilkie, Sir David, his portraits of Hartley C., 511 n.;
his _Blind Fiddler_, 511 n.
Wilkinson, Thomas, 538 n.;
letter from C., 538.
Will, lunacy or idiocy of the, 768.
Williams, Edward (Iolo Morgangw), 162 and note.
Williams, John (“Antony Pasquin”), 603 n.
Wilson, Mrs., housekeeper for Mr. Jackson of Greta Hall, 461 and note,
491;
Hartley C.’s attachment for, 510.
Wilson, Professor, 756.
Windy Brow, 346.
_Wish written in Jesus Wood, February 10, 1792, A_, 35.
_With passive joy the moment I survey_, an anonymous sonnet, 177, 178.
_With wayworn feet, a pilgrim woe-begone_, a sonnet by Southey, 127 and
note.
Wolf, Freiherr Johann Christian von, 735.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 316, 318 n., 321.
Woodlands, 271.
Woolman, John, 540.
_Woolman, John, the Journal of_, 4 and note.
Worcester, 154.
Wordsworth, Catherine, 563.
Wordsworth, Rev. Christopher, D. D., 225 n.;
Charles Lloyd reads Greek with, 311.
Wordsworth, Rev. Christopher, M. A., his _Social Life at the English
Universities in the Eighteenth Century_, 225 n.
Wordsworth, Rt. Rev. Christopher, D. D., his _Memoirs of William
Wordsworth_, 432 n., 585 n.
Wordsworth, Dorothy, 10 n.;
C.’s description of, 218 n.;
visits C. with her brother, 224-227;
228, 231, 245 n., 249;
goes to Germany with William Wordsworth, Coleridge, and John Chester,
259;
with her brother at Goslar, 272, 273;
returns with him to England, 288, 296;
311 n., 346, 367, 373, 385;
accompanies her brother and C. on a tour in Scotland, 431, 432 and
note;
577, 599 n.
Wordsworth, John, son of William W., 545.
Wordsworth, Captain John, and the effect of his death on C.’s spirits,
494 and note, 495 and note, 497.
Wordsworth, Thomas, death of, 599 n.;
C.’s love of, 600.
Wordsworth, William, 10 n., 163 and note, 164 and note, 218 n.;
visit from C. at Racedown, 220 and note, 221;
greatness of, 221, 224;
settles at Alfoxden, near Stowey, 224;
at C.’s cottage, 224-227;
C. visits him at Alfoxden, 227;
228, 231, 232;
suspected of conspiracy against the government, 232 n., 233;
memoranda scribbled on the outside sheet of a letter from C., 238 n.;
his greatness and amiability, 239;
his _Excursion_, 244 n., 337 n., 585 n., 641, 642, 645-650;
245;
C.’s admiration for, 246;
250 n.;
accompanies C. to Germany, 259;
268, 269 n.;
considers settling near the Lakes, 270;
271;
at Goslar with his sister, 272, 273;
an _Epitaph_ by, 284;
returns to England, 288, 296;
wishes C. to live near him in the North of England, 296;
his grief at C.’s refusal, 296, 297;
304, 313;
his and C.’s _Lyrical Ballads_, 336, 337, 341, 350 and note, 387;
his admiration for _Christabel_, 337;
338, 342;
proposal from William Calvert in regard to sharing his house and
studying chemistry with him, 345, 346;
his _Stanzas written in my Pocket Copy of Thomson’s Castle of
Indolence_, 345 n.;
348, 350;
marries Miss Mary Hutchinson, 359 n.;
363, 367, 370, 373;
his opinion of poetic license, 373-375;
C. addresses his _Ode to Dejection_ to, 378 and note, 379 and note,
380-384;
385-387;
his _Ruth_, 387;
400, 418, 428;
with C. on a Scotch tour, 431-434;
his _Peter Bell_, 432 and note;
441, 443;
receives a visit at Grasmere from C., who is taken ill there, 447;
his hypochondria, 448;
his happiness and philosophy, 449, 450;
a most original poet, 450;
451;
his _To a Highland Girl_, 459;
464, 468;
his reference to C. in _The Prelude_, 386 n.;
452;
his _Brothers_, 494 n., 609 n.;
his _Happy Warrior_, 494 n.;
extract from a letter to Sir George Beaumont on John Wordsworth’s
death, 494 n.;
511 and note, 522;
his essays on the Convention of Cintra, 534 and note, 543 and note,
548-550;
535;
his _To the Spade of a Friend_, 558 n.;
543 and note, 546, 522, 553 n., 556;
C.’s misunderstanding with, 576 n., 577, 578, 586-588, 612;
his _Essays upon Epitaphs_, 585 and note;
a long-delayed explanation from C., 588-595;
reconciled with C., 596, 597, 599, 612;
death of his son Thomas, 599 n.;
second rupture with C., 599 n., 600 n.;
his projected poem, _The Recluse_, 646, 647 and note, 648-650;
678;
on William Blake as a poet, 686 n.;
his unfinished translation of the _Æneid_, 733 and note, 734;
felicities and unforgettable lines and stanzas in his poems, 734;
influence of the _Edinburgh Review_ on the sale of his works in
Scotland, 741, 742;
759 n.;
letters from C., 234, 588, 596, 599, 643, 733.
_Wordsworth, William, Life of_, by Rev. William Angus Knight, LL. D.,
164 n., 220 n., 447 n., 585 n., 591 n., 596 n., 599 n., 600 n.,
733 n., 759 n.
_Wordsworth, William, Memoirs of_, by Christopher Wordsworth, 432 n.,
550 n., 585 n.
_Wordsworth, William, To_, 641, 644;
C. quotes from, 646, 647;
647 n.
Wordsworth, Mrs. William, extract from a letter to Sara Coleridge, 220;
525.
_See_ Hutchinson, Mary.
Wordsworths, the, visit from C. and his son Hartley at Coleorton
Farmhouse, 509-514;
545;
letter from C., 456.
Wrangham, Francis, 363 and note.
Wrexham, 77, 78.
Wright, Joseph, A. R. A. (Wright of Derby), 152 and note.
Wright, W. Aldis, 174 n.
Wynne, Mr., an old friend of Southey’s, 639 n.
Wyville’s proofs of C.’s portrait, 770.
Yarmouth, 258, 259.
Yates, Miss, 39.
Yews near Brecon, 411.
York, Duke of, 543 n., 555 n., 567 and note.
Young, Edward, 404.
_Youth and Age_, 730 n.
_Zapolya: A Christmas Tale, in two Parts_, its publication in book form
after rejection by the Drury Lane Committee, 666 and note, 667-669.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Richard Sharp, 1759-1835, known as “Conversation Sharp,” a banker,
Member of Parliament, and distinguished critic. He was a friend of
Wordsworth’s, and on intimate terms with Coleridge and Southey. _Life of
W. Wordsworth_, i. 377; _Letters of R. Southey_, i. 279, _et passim_.
[2] Jean Victor Moreau, 1763-1813. The “retreat” took place in October,
1796, after his defeat of the Archduke Charles at Neresheim, in the
preceding August. _Biographical Dictionary._
[3] This phrase reappears in the first issue (1808) of the Prospectus of
_The Friend_. Jeffrey, to whom the Prospectus was submitted, objected to
the wording, and it was changed, in the first instance, to “mental gloom”
and finally to “dejection of mind.” See letter to F. Jeffrey, December 14,
1808, published in the _Illustrated London News_, June 10, 1893. Letter
CLXXI.
[4] See concluding paragraph of Introductory Address of _Conciones ad
Populum_ (February, 1795); _The Friend_, Section I., Essay xvi.;
_Coleridge’s Works_, 1853, ii. 307. For recantation of Necessitarianism,
see footnote (1797) to lines “To a Friend, together with an Unfinished
Poem.” _Poetical Works_, p. 38.
[5] Stuart is responsible for a story that Coleridge’s dislike and
distrust of the “fellow from Aberdeen,” the hero of _The Two Round Spaces
on a Tombstone_, dated from a visit to the Wedgwoods at Cote House, when
Mackintosh outtalked and outshone his fellow _protégé_, and drove him in
dudgeon from the party. But in 1838, when he contributed his articles to
the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, Stuart had forgotten much and looked at all
things from a different point of view. For instance, he says that the
verses attacking Mackintosh were never published, whereas they appeared in
the _Morning Post_ of December 4, 1800. A more probable explanation is
that Stuart, who was not on good terms with his brother-in-law, was in the
habit of confiding his grievances, and that Coleridge, _more suo_,
espoused his friend’s cause with unnecessary vehemence. _Gentleman’s
Magazine_, May, 1838, p. 485.
[6] _The Pantheon._ By Andrew Tooke. Revised, etc., for the use of
schools. London: 1791.
“Tooke was a prodigious favourite with us (at Christ’s Hospital). I see
before me, as vividly now as ever, his Mars and Apollo, his Venus and
Aurora--the Mars coming on furiously in his car; Apollo, with his radiant
head, in the midst of shades and fountains; Aurora with hers, a golden
dawn; and Venus, very handsome, we thought, and not looking too modest in
‘a slight cymar.’” _Autobiography of Leigh Hunt_, p. 75.
[7] See note _infra_.
[8] George Rose, 1744-1818, statesman and political writer. He had
recently brought in a bill which “authorised the sending to all the Parish
Overseers in the country a paper of questions on the condition of the
poor.” Poole, at the instance of John Rickman, secretary to Speaker Abbot,
was at this time engaged at Westminster in drawing up an abstract of the
various returns which had been made in accordance with Sir George Rose’s
bill. See Letter from T. Poole to T. Wedgwood, dated September 14, 1803.
Cottle’s _Reminiscences_, pp. 477, 478; _Thomas Poole and his Friends_,
ii. 107-114.
[9] See Letter to Southey of February 20, 1804. Letter CXLIX.
[10] John Dalton, 1766-1844, chemist and meteorologist. He published his
researches on the atomic theory, which he had begun in 1803, in his _New
System of Chemical Philosophy_, in 1808. _Biographical Dictionary._
[11] His old fellow-student at Göttingen.
[12]
“O for a single hour of that Dundee,
Who on that day the word of onset gave.”
“In the Pass of Killicranky.” Wordsworth’s _Poetical Works_, 1889, p. 201.
[13] John Tobin the dramatist (or possibly his brother James), with whom
Coleridge spent the last weeks of his stay in London, before he left for
Portsmouth on the 27th of March, on his way to Malta.
[14] The misspelling, which was intentional, was an intimation to Lamb
that the letter was not to be opened.
[15] A retired carrier, the owner of Greta Hall, who occupied “the smaller
of the two houses inter-connected under one roof.” He was godfather to
Hartley Coleridge, and left him a legacy of fifty pounds. Mrs. Wilson, the
“Wilsy” of Hartley’s childhood, was Jackson’s housekeeper. _Memoir and
Letters of Sara Coleridge_, 1873, i. 13.
[16] Coleridge had already attended Davy’s Lectures at the Royal
Institution in 1802, and, possibly, in 1803. It is probable that allusions
in his correspondence to Davy’s Lectures gave rise to the mistaken
supposition that he delivered public lectures in London before 1808.
[17]
“He said, and, gliding like a snake,
Where Caradoc lay sleeping made his way.
Sweetly slept he, and pleasant were his dreams
Of Britain, and the blue-eyed maid he loved.
The Azteca stood over him; he knew
His victim, and the power of vengeance gave
Malignant joy. ‘Once hast thou ’scaped my arm:
But what shall save thee now?’ the Tyger thought,
Exulting; and he raised his spear to strike.
That instant, o’er the Briton’s unseen harp
The gale of morning past, and swept its strings
Into so sweet a harmony, that sure
It seem’d no earthly tone. The savage man
Suspends his stroke; he looks astonished round;
No human hand is near: ... and hark! again
The aërial music swells and dies away.
Then first the heart of Tlalala felt fear:
He thought that some protecting spirit watch’d
Beside the Stranger, and, abash’d, withdrew.”
“Madoc in Aztlan,” Book XI. Southey’s _Poetical Works_, 1838, v. 274, 275.
[18] Mrs. E. Fenwick, author of _Secrecy_, a novel (1799); a friend of
Godwin’s first wife, Mary Wollstonecraft. _William Godwin_, by C. Kegan
Paul, i. 282, 283. See, also, Lamb’s _Letters_ (ed. Ainger), i. 331; and
Lamb’s essays, “Two Races of Men,” and “Newspapers Thirty-five Years ago.”
[19] Lamb’s “bad baby”--“a disgusting woman who wears green spectacles.”
_Letters_, _passim_.
[20] Afterwards Sir John Stoddart, Chief Justice of Malta, 1826-39.
[21] A note dated “Treasury, July 20th, 1805,” gives vent to his feelings
on this point. “Saturday morning ½ past nine o’clock, and soon I shall
have to brace up my hearing _in toto_, (for I hear in my brain--I hear,
that is, I have an immediate and _peculiar_ feeling instantly co-adunated
with the sense of external sound = (exactly) to that which is experienced
when one makes a wry face, and putting one’s right hand palm-wise to the
right ear, and the left palm pressing hard on the forehead, one says to a
bawler, ‘For mercy’s sake, man! don’t split the drum of one’s
ear’--sensations analogous to this of various degrees of pain, even to a
strange sort of uneasy pleasure. I am obnoxious to pure sound and
therefore was saying--[N. B. Tho’ I ramble, I always come back to
sense--the sense alive, tho’ sometimes a limb of syntax broken]--was
saying that I hear in my brain, and still more hear in my stomach). For
this ubiquity, almost (for I might safely add my toes--one or two, at
least--and my knees) for this ubiquity of the _Tympanum auditorium_ I am
now to wind up my courage, for in a few seconds that accursed Reveille,
the horrible crash and persevering malignant torture of the
_Pare-de-Drum_, will attack me, like a party of yelling, drunken North
American Indians attacking a crazy fort with a tired garrison, out of an
ambush. The noisiness of the Maltese everybody must notice; but I have
observed uniformly among them such utter impassiveness to the action of
sounds as that I am fearful that the _verum_ will be scarcely
_verisimile_. I have heard screams of the most frightful kind, as of
children run over by a cart, and running to the window I have seen two
children in a parlour opposite to me (naked, except a kerchief tied round
the waist) screaming in their horrid fiendiness--for _fun_! three adults
in the room perfectly unannoyed, and this suffered to continue for twenty
minutes, or as long as their lungs enabled them. But it goes thro’
everything, their street-cries, their priests, their advocates, their very
pigs yell rather than squeak, or both together, rather, as if they were
the true descendants of some half-dozen of the swine into which the Devils
went, recovered by the Royal Humane Society. The dogs all night long would
draw curses on them, but that the Maltese cats--it surpasses description,
for he who has only heard caterwauling on English roofs can have no idea
of a cat-serenade in Malta. In England it has often a close and painful
resemblance to the distressful cries of young children, but in Malta it is
identical with the wide range of screams uttered by imps while they are
dragging each other into hotter and still hotter pools of brimstone and
fire. It is the discord of Torment and of Rage and of Hate, of paroxysms
of Revenge, and _every_ note grumbles away into Despair.”
[22] The first Sicilian tour extended from the middle of August to the 7th
of November, 1804. Two or three days, August 19-21, were spent in the
neighbourhood of Etna. He slept at Nicolosi and visited the Hospice of St.
Nicola dell’ Arena. It is unlikely that he reached the actual summit, but
two ascents were made, probably to the limit of the wooded region. A few
days later, August 24, he reached Syracuse, where he was hospitably
entertained by H. M. Consul G. F. Lecky. The notes which he took of his
visit to Etna are fragmentary and imperfect, but the description of
Syracuse and its surroundings occupies many pages of his note-book. Under
the heading, “Timoleon’s, Oct. 18, 1804, Wednesday, noon,” he writes: “The
Gaza and Tree at Tremiglia. Rocks with cactus, pendulous branches,
seed-pods black at the same time with the orange-yellow flower, and little
daisy-like tufts of silky hair.... Timoleon’s villa, supposed to be in the
field _above_ the present house, from which you ascend _to_ fifty stairs.
Grand view of the harbour and sea, over that tongue of land which forms
the anti-Ortygian embracing arm of the harbour, the point of Plemmyrium
where Alcibiades and Nicias landed. I left the aqueduct and walked
ascendingly to some ruined cottages, beside a delve, with straight
limestone walls of rock, on which there played the shadows of the fig-tree
and the olive. I was on part of Epipolæ, and a glorious view indeed!
Before me a neck of stony common and fields--Ortygia, the open sea and the
ships, and the circular harbour which it embraces, and the sea over that
again. To my right that large extent of plain, green, rich, finely wooded;
the fields so divided and enclosed that you, as it were, _knew_ at the
first view that they are all hedged and enclosed, and yet no hedges nor
enclosings obtrude themselves--an effect of the vast number of trees of
the same sort. On my left, stony fields, two harbours, Magnisi and its
sand isle, and Augusta, and Etna, whose smoke mingles with the clouds even
as they rise from the crater.... Still as I walk the _lizard gliding
darts_ along the road, and immerges himself under a stone, and the
grasshopper leaps and tumbles awkwardly before me.”
It must have been in anticipation of this visit to Sicily, or after some
communication with Coleridge, that Wordsworth, after alluding to his
friend’s abode,--
“Where Etna over hill and valley casts
His shadow stretching towards Syracuse,
The city of Timoleon,”
gives utterance to that unusual outburst of feeling:--
“Oh! wrap him in your shades, ye giant woods,
On Etna’s side; and thou, O flowery field
Of Enna! is there not some nook of thine,
From the first play-time of the infant world
Kept sacred to restorative delight,
When from afar invoked by anxious love?”
Wordsworth’s _Poetical Works_, 1889, “The Prelude,” Book XI. p. 319.
[23] A short treatise entitled _Observations on Egypt_, which is extant in
MS., may have been among the papers sent to Stuart with a view to
publication.
[24] Shakespeare, _Richard III._, Act I. Scene 4.
[25] He had, perhaps, something more than a suspicion that Southey
disliked these protestations. In the letter of friendly remonstrance
(February, 1804), which Southey wrote to him after the affair with Godwin,
he admits that he may be “too intolerant of these phrases,” but, indeed,
he adds, “when they are true, they may be excused, and when they are not,
there is no excuse for them.” _Life and Correspondence_, ii. 266.
[26] Cynocephalus, Dog-visaged. Compare Milton’s “Hymn on the Nativity:”--
“The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis and Orus and the dog Anubis haste.”
[27] A printed slip, cut off from some public document, has been preserved
in one of Coleridge’s note-books. It runs thus: “Segreteria del Governo li
29 Gennajo 1805. Samuel T. Coleridge Seg. Pub. del. Commis. Regio. G. N.
Zammit Pro segretario.” His actual period of office extended from January
18 to September 6, 1805.
[28] John Wordsworth, the poet’s younger brother, the original of Leonard
in “The Brothers,” and of “The Happy Warrior,” was drowned off the Bill of
Portland, February 5, 1805. In a letter to Sir G. Beaumont, dated February
11, 1805, Wordsworth writes: “I can say nothing higher of my ever-dear
brother than that he was worthy of his sister, who is now weeping beside
me, and of the friendship of Coleridge; meek, affectionate, silently
enthusiastic, loving all quiet things, and a poet in everything but
words.” “We have had no tidings of Coleridge. I tremble for the moment
when he is to hear of my brother’s death; it will distress him to the
heart, and his poor body cannot bear sorrow. He loved my brother, and he
knows how we at Grasmere loved him.” The report of the wreck of the Earl
of Abergavenny and of the loss of her captain did not reach Malta till the
31st of March. It was a Sunday, and Coleridge, who had been sent for to
the Palace, first heard the news from Lady Ball. His emotion at the time,
and, perhaps, a petition to be excused from his duties brought from her
the next day “a kindly letter of apology.” “Your strong feelings,” she
writes, “are too great for your health. I hope that you will soon recover
your spirits.” But Coleridge took the trouble to heart. It was the first
death in the inner circle of his friends; it meant a heavy sorrow to those
whom he best loved, and it seemed to confirm the haunting presentiment
that death would once more visit his family during his absence from home.
Ten days later he writes (in a note-book): “O dear John Wordsworth! What
joy at Grasmere that you were made Captain of the Abergavenny! now it was
next to certain that you would in a few years settle in your native hills,
and be verily one of the _concern_. Then came your share in the brilliant
action at Linois. I was at Grasmere in spirit only! but in spirit I was
one of the rejoicers ... and all these were but decoys of death! Well, but
a nobler feeling than these vain regrets would become the friend of the
man whose last words were, ‘I have done my duty! let her go!’ Let us do
our duty; all else is a dream--life and death alike a dream! This short
sentence would comprise, I believe, the sum of all profound philosophy, of
ethics and metaphysics, and conjointly from Plato to Fichte. S. T. C.”
[29] An island midway between Malta and Tunis, ceded by Naples to Don
Fernandez in 1802.
[30] A description of the cottage at Stowey and its inmates, contained in
a letter written by Mr. Richard Reynell (in August, 1797) to his sister at
Thorveston, was published in the _Illustrated London News_, April 22,
1893.
[31] Coleridge left Rome with his friend Mr. Russell on Sunday, May 18,
1806. He had received, so he tells us in the _Biographia Literaria_, a
secret warning from the Pope that Napoleon, whose animosity had been
roused by articles in the _Morning Post_, had ordered his arrest. A
similar statement is made in a footnote to a title-page of a proposed
reprint of newspaper articles (an anticipation of _Essays on His Own
Times_), which was drawn up in 1817. “My essays,” he writes, “in the
_Morning Post_, during the peace of Amiens, brought my life into jeopardy
when I was at Rome. An order for my arrest came from Paris to Rome at
twelve at night--by the Pope’s goodness I was off by one--and the arrest
of all the English took place at six.” In a letter to his brother George,
which he wrote about six months after he returned to England, he says that
he was warned to leave Rome, but does not enter into particulars. It is a
well-known fact that Napoleon read the leading articles in the _Morning
Post_, and deeply resented their tone and spirit, but whether Coleridge
was rightly informed that an order for his arrest had come from Paris, or
whether he was warned that, if with other Englishmen he should be
arrested, his connection with the _Morning Post_ would come to light, must
remain doubtful. Coleridge’s _Works_, 1853, iii. 309.
[32] An entry in a note-book, dated June 7, 1806, expresses this at
greater length: “O my children! whether, and which of you are dead,
whether any and which among you are alive I know not, and were a letter to
arrive this moment from Keswick I fear that I should be unable to open it,
so deep and black is my despair. O my children! My children! I gave you
life once, unconscious of the life I was giving, and you as unconsciously
have given life to me.” A fortnight later, he ends a similar outburst of
despair with a cry for deliverance:--
Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a love-thought thro’ me, Death!
And take a life that wearies me.
[33] It is difficult to trace his movements during his last week in Italy.
He reached Leghorn on Saturday, June 7. Thence he made his way to Florence
and returned to Pisa on a Thursday, probably Thursday, June 19, the date
of this letter. On Sunday, June 22, he was still at Pisa, but, I take it,
on the eve of setting sail for England. Fifty-five days later, August 17,
he leaped on shore at Stangate Creek. His account of Pisa is highly
characteristic. “Of the hanging Tower,” he writes, “the Duomo, the
Cemetery, the Baptistery, I shall say nothing, except that being all
together they form a wild mass, especially by moonlight, when the hanging
Tower has something of a supernatural look; but what interested me with a
deeper interest were the two hospitals, one for men, one for women,” etc.,
and these he proceeds to describe. Nevertheless he must have paid more
attention to the treasures of Pisan art than his note implies, for many
years after in a Lecture on the History of Philosophy, delivered January
19, 1819, he describes minutely and vividly the “Triumph of Death,” the
great fresco in the Campo Santo at Pisa, which was formerly assigned to
Oreagna, but is now, I believe, attributed to Ambrogio and Pietro
Lorenzetti. _MS. Journal_; _MS. Report of Lecture_.
[34] Mr. Russell was an artist, an Exeter man, whom Coleridge met in Rome.
They were fellow-travellers in Italy, and returned together to England.
[35] William Smith, M. P. for Norwich, who lived at Parndon House, near
Harlow, in Essex. It was in a great measure through his advice and
interest that Coleridge obtained his Lectureship at the Royal Institution.
Ten years later (1817), on the occasion of the surreptitious publication
of _Wat Tyler_, Mr. Smith, who was a staunch liberal, denounced the
Laureate as a “renegade,” and Coleridge with something of his old vigour
gave battle on behalf of his brother-in-law in the pages of _The Courier_.
_Essays on His Own Times_, iii. 939-950.
[36] Charles James Fox died on September 13, 1806.
[37] An unpublished letter from Sir Alexander Ball to His Excellency H.
Elliot, Esq. (Minister at the Court of Naples), strongly recommends
Coleridge to his favourable notice and consideration. Nothing that
Coleridge ever said in favour of “Ball” exceeds what Sir Alexander says of
Coleridge, but the Minister, whose hands must have been pretty full at the
time, failed to be impressed, and withheld his patronage.
[38] “The Foster-Mother’s Tale,” _Poetical Works_, 1893, p. 83.
[39] Hartley Coleridge, now in his eleventh year, was under his father’s
sole care from the end of December, 1806, to May, 1807. The first three
months were spent in the farmhouse near Coleorton, which Sir G. Beaumont
had lent to the Wordsworths, and it must have been when that visit was
drawing to a close that this letter was written for Hartley’s benefit. The
remaining five or six weeks were passed in the company of the Wordsworths
at Basil Montagu’s house in London. Then it was that Hartley saw his first
play, and was taken by Wordsworth and Walter Scott to the Tower. “The
bard’s economy,” says Hartley, “would not allow us to visit the Jewel
Office, but Mr. Scott, then no _anactolater_, took an evident pride in
showing me the claymores and bucklers taken from the Loyalists at
Culloden.” Whilst he was at Coleorton, Hartley was painted by Sir David
Wilkie. It is the portrait of a child “whose fancies from afar are
brought,” but the Hartley of this letter is better represented by the
grimacing boy in Wilkie’s “Blind Fiddler,” for which, I have been told, he
sat as a model. _Poems of Hartley Coleridge_, 1851, i. ccxxii.
[40] Scott had proposed to Southey that he should use his influence with
Jeffrey to get him placed on the staff of the _Edinburgh Review_. Southey
declined the offer alike on the score of political divergence from the
editor, and disapproval of “that sort of bitterness [in criticism] which
tends directly to wound a man in his feelings, and injure him in his fame
and fortune.” _Life and Correspondence_, iii. 124-128. See, too,
Lockhart’s _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, 1837, ii. 130.
[41] Sir John Acland. The property is now in the possession of a
descendant in the female line, Sir Alexander Hood, of Fairfield,
Dodington.
[42] To receive him and his family at Ottery as had been originally
proposed. George Coleridge disapproved of his brother’s intended
separation from his wife, and declined to countenance it in any way
whatever.
[43] _Faulkner: a Tragedy_, 1807-1808, 8vo.
[44] I presume that the reference is to the _Conciones ad Populum_,
published at Bristol, November 16, 1795.
[45] Coleridge’s article on Clarkson’s _History of the Abolition of the
Slave Trade_ was published in the _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1808. It has
never been reprinted. _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, by J. Dykes Campbell,
London, 1894, p. 168; _Letters from the Lake Poets_, p. 180; Allsop’s
_Letters_, 1836, ii. 112.
[46] Of this pamphlet or the translation of Palm’s _Deutschland in seiner
tiefsten Erniedrigung_, I know nothing. The author, John Philip Palm, a
Nuremberg bookseller, was shot August 26, 1806, in consequence of the
publication of the work, which reflected unfavorably on the conduct and
career of Napoleon.
[47] Compare his letter to Poole, dated December 4, 1808. “Begin to count
my life, as a friend of yours, from 1st January, 1809;” and a letter to
Davy, of December, 1808, in which he speaks of a change for the better in
health and habits. _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, ii. 227; _Fragmentary
Remains of Sir H. Davy_, p. 101.
[48] The Convention of Cintra was signed August 30, 1808. Wordsworth’s
Essays were begun in the following November. “For the sake of immediate
and general circulation I determined (when I had made a considerable
progress in the manuscript) to print it in different portions in one of
the daily newspapers. Accordingly two portions of it were printed, in the
months of December and January, in the _Courier_. An accidental loss of
several sheets of the manuscript delayed the continuance of the
publication in that manner till the close of the Christmas holidays; and
this plan of publication was given up.” _Advertisement to Wordsworth’s
pamphlet on the Convention of Cintra_, May 20, 1809: _Letters from the
Lake Poets_, p. 385.
[49] “In the place of some just eulogiums due to Mr. Pitt was substituted
some abuse and detraction.” Allsop’s _Letters_, 1836, ii. 112.
[50] A preliminary prospectus of _The Friend_ was printed at Kendal and
submitted to Jeffrey and a few others. A copy of this “first edition” is
in my possession, and it is interesting to notice that Coleridge has
directed his amanuensis, Miss Hutchinson, to amend certain offending
phrases in accordance with Jeffrey’s suggestions. “Speculative gloom” and
“year-long absences” he gives up, but, as the postscript intimates, “moral
impulses” he has the hardihood to retain. See _The Friend’s Quarterly
Examiner_ for July, 1893, art. “S. T. Coleridge on Quaker Principles;” and
_Athenæum_ for September 16, 1893, art. “Coleridge on Quaker Principles.”
[51] Thomas Wilkinson, of Yanwath, near Penrith, was a member of the
Society of Friends. He owned and tilled a small estate on the banks of the
Emont, which he laid out and ornamented “after the manner of Shenstone at
his Leasowes.” As a friend and neighbour of the Clarksons and of Lord
Lonsdale he was well known to Wordsworth, who, greatly daring, wrote in
his honour his lines “To the Spade of a Friend (an Agriculturist).”
Alas! for the poor Prospectus! “Speculative gloom” and “year-long absence”
had been sacrificed to Jeffrey, and now “Architecture, Dress, Dancing,
Gardening, Music, Poetry, and Painting” were erased in obedience to
Wilkinson. Most of these articles, however, “Architecture, Dress,” etc.,
reappeared in a second edition of the Prospectus, attached to the second
number of _The Friend_, but Dancing, “Greek statuesque dancing,” on which
Coleridge might have discoursed at some length, was gone forever.
Wordsworth’s _Works_, p. 211 (Fenwick Note); _The Friend’s Quarterly
Examiner_, July, 1893; _Records of a Quaker Family_, by Anne Ogden Boyce,
London, 1889, pp. 30, 31, 55.
[52] The original draft of the prospectus of _The Friend_, which was
issued in the late autumn of 1808, was printed at Kendal by W. Pennington.
Certain alterations were suggested by Jeffrey and others (Southey in a
letter to Rickman dated January 18, 1809, complains that Coleridge had
“carried a prospectus wet from the pen to the publisher, without
consulting anybody”), and a fresh batch of prospectuses was printed in
London. A third variant attached to the first number of the weekly issue,
June 1, 1809, was printed by Brown, a bookseller and stationer at Penrith,
who, on Mr. Pennington’s refusal, undertook to print and publish _The
Friend_. Some curious letters which passed between Coleridge and his
printer, together with the MS. of _The Friend_, in the handwriting of Miss
Sarah Hutchinson, are preserved in the Forster Library at the South
Kensington Museum. _Letters from the Lake Poets_, pp. 85-188; _Selections
from the Letters of R. Southey_, ii. 120.
[53] Compare letters to Stuart (December), 1808. “You will long ere this
have received Wordsworth’s second Essay, etc., rewritten by me, and in
some parts recomposed.” _Letters from the Lake Poets_, p. 101.
[54] Colonel Wardle, who led the attack in the House of Commons against
the Duke of York, with regard to the undue influence in military
appointments of the notorious Mrs. Clarke.
[55] Coleridge’s friendship with Dr. Beddoes dated from 1795-96, and was
associated with his happier days. It is possible that the recent amendment
in health and spirits was due to advice and sympathy which he had met with
in response to a confession made in writing to his old Bristol friend. His
death, which took place on the 24th of December, 1808, would rob Coleridge
of a newly-found support, and would “take out of his life” the hope of
self-conquest. The letter implies that he had recently heard from or
conversed with Beddoes.
[56] Compare letter from Southey to J. N. White dated April 21, 1809. “A
ridiculous disorder called the Mumps has nearly gone through the house,
and visited me on its way--a thing which puts one more out of humour than
out of health; but my neck has now regained its elasticity, and I have
left off the extra swathings which yesterday buried my chin, after the
fashion of fops a few years ago.” _Selections from the Letters of R.
Southey_, ii, 135, 136.
[57] The Parliamentary investigation of the charges and allegations with
regard to the military patronage of the Duke of York.
[58] Bertha Southey, afterwards Mrs. Herbert Hill, was born March 27,
1809.
[59] “The Appendix (to the pamphlet _On the Convention of Cintra_), a
portion of the work which Mr. Wordsworth regarded as executed in a
masterly manner, was drawn up by Mr. De Quincey, who revised the proofs of
the whole.” _Memoirs of Wordsworth_, i. 384.
[60] In Southey’s copy of the reprint of the stamped sheets of _The
Friend_ the passage runs thus: “However this may be, the Understanding or
regulative faculty is manifestly distinct from Life and Sensation, its
_function_ being to take up the _passive affections_ of the sense into
distinct Thoughts and Judgements, according to its own essential forms.
These forms, however,” etc. _The Friend_, No. 5, Thursday, September 14,
1809, p. 79, _n._
[61] For extracts from Poole’s narrative of John Walford, see _Thomas
Poole and his Friends_, ii. 235-237. Wordsworth endeavoured to put the
narrative into verse, but was dissatisfied with the result. His lines have
never been published.
[62] H. N. Coleridge included these lines, as they appear in a note-book,
among the _Omniana_ of 1809-1816. They are headed incorrectly,
“Inscription on a Clock in Cheapside.” The MS. is not very legible, but
there can be no doubt that Coleridge wrote, “On a clock in a market place
(proposed).” _Table Talk_, etc., 1884, p. 401; _Poetical Works_, p. 181.
[63] The story of Maria Eleanora Schöning appeared in No. 13 of _The
Friend_, Thursday, November 16, 1809, pp. 194-208. It was reprinted as the
“Second Landing Place” in the revised edition of _The Friend_, published
in 1818. The somewhat laboured description of the heroine’s voice, which
displeased Southey, and the beautiful illustration of the “withered leaf”
were allowed to remain unaltered, and appear in every edition. Coleridge’s
_Works_, 1853, ii. 312-326.
[64] Jonas Lewis von Hess, 1766-1823. He was a friend and pupil of Kant,
and author of _A History of Hamburg_.
[65] John of Milan, who flourished 1100 A. D., was the author of _Medicina
Salernitana_. He also composed “versibus Leoninis,” a poem entitled _Flos
Medicinæ_. Hoffmann’s _Lexicon Universale_, art. “Salernum.”
[66] Three letters on the Catholic Question appeared in the _Courier_,
September 3, 21, and 26, 1811. _Essays on His Own Times_, iii. 891-896,
920-932.
[67] The Battle of Albuera. Articles on the battle appeared in the
_Courier_ on June 5 and 8, 1811. _Essays on His Own Times_, iii. 802-805.
[68] “That a Judge should have regarded as an aggravation of a libel on
the British Army, the writer’s having written against Buonaparte, is an
act so monstrous,” etc. “Buonaparte,” _Courier_, June 29, 1811; _Essays on
His Own Times_, iii. 818.
[69] John Drakard, the printer of the _Stamford News_, was convicted at
Lincoln, May 25, 1811, of the publication of an article against flogging
in the army, and sentenced to a fine and imprisonment.
[70] Lord Milton, one of the members for Yorkshire, brought forward a
motion on June 6, 1811, against the reappointment of the Duke of York as
Commander-in-Chief.
[71] Clerk of the _Courier_. Letter to _Gentleman’s Magazine_, June, 1838,
p. 586.
[72] Many years after the date of this letter, Dr. Spurzheim took a
life-mask of Coleridge’s face, and used it as a model for a bust which
originally belonged to H. N. Coleridge, and is now in the Library at
Heath’s Court, Ottery St. Mary. Another bust of Coleridge, very similar to
Spurzheim’s, belonged to my father, and is still in the possession of the
family. I have been told that it was taken from a death-mask, but as Mr.
Hamo Thornycroft, who designed the bust for Westminster Abbey, pointed out
to me, it abounds in anatomical defects. In a letter which Henry Coleridge
wrote to his father, Colonel Coleridge, on the day of his uncle’s death,
he says that a death-mask had been taken of the poet’s features. Whether
this served as a model for a posthumous bust, or not, I am unable to say.
In the curious and valuable article on death-masks which Mr. Laurence
Hutton contributed to the October number of _Harper’s Magazine_, for 1892,
he gives a fac-simile of a death-mask which was said to be that of S, T.
Coleridge. At the time that I wrote to him on the subject, I had not seen
Henry Coleridge’s letter, but I came to the conclusion that this sad
memorial of death was genuine. The “glorious forehead” is there, but the
look has passed away, and the “rest is silence.” With regard to Allston’s
bust of Coleridge, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1812, I
possess no information. See _Harper’s Magazine_, October, 1892, pp. 782,
783.
[73] A favourite quip. Apropos of the bed on which he slept at Trinity
College, Cambridge, in June, 1833, he remarks, “Truly I lay down at night
a man, and awoke in the morning a bruise.” _Table Talk_, etc., Bell & Co.,
1884, p. 231, note.
[74] “Crimen ingrati animi nil aliud est quam perspicacia quædam in causam
collati beneficii.” _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, cap. iii. 15. If this is
the passage which Coleridge is quoting, he has inserted some words of his
own. _The Works of Bacon_, 1711, i. 183.
[75] A crayon sketch of Coleridge, drawn by George Dawe, R. A., is now in
existence at Heath Court. The figure, which is turned sideways, the face
looking up, the legs crossed, is that of a man in early middle life,
somewhat too portly for his years. An engraving of the sketch forms the
frontispiece to Lloyd’s _History of Highgate_. It was, in the late Lord
Coleridge’s opinion, a most characteristic likeness of his great-uncle. A
time came when, for some reason, Coleridge held Dawe in but light esteem.
I possess a card of invitation to his funeral, which took place at St.
Paul’s Cathedral, on October 27, 1829. It is endorsed thus:--
“I really would have attended the Grub’s Canonization in St. Paul’s,
under the impression that it would gratify his sister, Mrs. Wright;
but Mr. G. interposed a conditional but sufficiently decorous
negative. ‘No! Unless you wish to follow his Grubship still further
_down_.’ So I pleaded ill health. But the very Thursday morning I went
to Town to see my daughter, for the first time, as _Mrs. Henry
Coleridge_, in Gower Street, and, odd enough, the stage was stopped by
the Pompous Funeral of the unchangeable and predestinated Grub, and I
extemporised:--
As Grub Dawe pass’d beneath the Hearse’s Lid,
On which a large RESURGAM met the eye,
_Col_, who well knew the Grub, cried, Lord forbid!
I trust, he’s only telling us a lie!
S. T. COLERIDGE.”
Dawe, it may be remembered, is immortalised by Lamb in his amusing
_Recollections of a Late Royal Academician_.
[76] This portrait, begun at Rome, was not finished when Coleridge left.
It is now in the possession of Allston’s niece, Miss Charlotte Dana, of
Boston, Mass., U. S. A. The portrait by Allston, now in the National
Portrait Gallery, was taken at Bristol in 1814. _Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
a Narrative_, by J. Dykes Campbell, 1894, p. 150, footnote 5.
[77] The lectures were delivered at the rooms of “The London Philosophical
Society, Scotch Corporation Hall, Crane Court, Fleet Street (entrance from
Fetter Lane).” Of the lecture on “Love and the Female Character,” which
was delivered on December 9, 1811, H. C. Robinson writes: “Accompanied
Mrs. Rough to Coleridge’s seventh and incomparably best Lecture. He
declaimed with great eloquence about love, without wandering from his
subject, Romeo and Juliet.” Among the friends who took notes were John
Payne Collier, and a Mr. Tomalin. Coleridge’s _Lectures on Shakespeare_,
London, 1856, p. viii.; H. C. Robinson’s _Diary_, ii. 348, MS. notes by J.
Tomalin.
[78] The visit to Greta Hall, the last he ever paid to the Lake Country,
lasted about a month, from February 23 to March 26. On his journey
southward he remained in Penrith for a little over a fortnight, rejoining
the Morgans towards the middle of April.
[79] The Reverend John Dawes, who kept a day-school at Ambleside. Hartley
and Derwent Coleridge, Robert Jameson, Owen Lloyd and his three brothers
(sons of Charles Lloyd), and the late Edward Jefferies, afterwards Curate
and Rector of Grasmere, were among his pupils. In the _Memoir of Hartley
Coleridge_, his brother Derwent describes at some length the character of
his “worthy master,” and adds: “We were among his earliest scholars, and
deeming it, as he said, an honour to be entrusted with the education of
Mr. Coleridge’s sons, he refused, first for the elder, and afterwards for
the younger brother, any pecuniary remuneration.” _Poems_ of Hartley
Coleridge, 1851, i. liii.
[80] In an unpublished letter from Mrs. Coleridge to Poole, dated October
30, 1812, she tells her old friend that when “the boys” perceived that
their father did not intend to turn aside to visit the Wordsworths at the
Rectory opposite Grasmere Church, they turned pale and were visibly
affected. No doubt they knew all about the quarrel and were mightily
concerned, but their agitation was a reflex of the grief and passion “writ
large” in their father’s face. One can imagine with what ecstasy of
self-torture he would pass through Grasmere and leave Wordsworth
unvisited.
[81] Sir Thomas Bernard, 1750-1818, the well-known philanthropist and
promoter of national education, was one of the founders of the Royal
Institution.
[82] It is probable that during his stay at Penrith he recovered a number
of unbound sheets of the reprint of _The Friend_. His proposal to Gale and
Curtis must have been to conclude the unfinished narrative of the life of
Sir Alexander Ball, and to publish the whole as a complete work. A printed
slip cut out of a page of publishers’ advertisements and forwarded to “H.
N. Coleridge, Esq., from W. Pickering,” contains the following
announcement:--
“Mr. Coleridge’s _Friend_, of which twenty-eight Numbers are published,
may now be had, in one Volume, royal 8vo. boards, of Mess. Gale and
Curtis, Paternoster Row. And Mr. C. intends to complete the Work, in from
eight to ten similar sheets to the foregoing, which will be published
together in one part, sewed. The Subscribers to the former part can obtain
them through their regular Booksellers. Only 300 copies remain of the 28
numbers, and their being printed on unstamped paper will account to the
Subscribers for the difference of price. 23, Paternoster Row, London, 1st
February, 1812.”
[83] The full title of this work was _The Origin, Nature and Object of the
New System of Education_. Southey’s _Life of Dr. Bell_, ii. 409.
[84] The Honourable and Right Reverend John Shute Barrington, 1734-1826,
sixth son of the first Lord Barrington, was successively Bishop of
Llandaff, Salisbury, and Durham. He was a warm supporter of the Madras
system of education. It was no doubt Dr. Bell who helped to interest the
Bishop in Coleridge’s Lectures.
[85] Herbert Southey, known in the family as “Dog-Lunus,” and “Lunus,” and
“The Moon.” _Letters of R. Southey_, ii. 399.
[86] Readers of _The Doctor_ will not be at a loss to understand the
significance of the references to Dr. Daniel Dove and his horse Nobs.
According to Cuthbert Southey, the actual composition of the book began in
1813, but the date of this letter (April, 1812) shows that the myth or
legend of the “Doctor,” and his iron-grey, which had taken shape certainly
as early as 1805, was fully developed in the spring of 1812, when
Coleridge paid his last visit to Greta Hall. It was not till the winter of
1833-1834, that the first two volumes of _The Doctor_ appeared in print,
and, as they were published anonymously, they were, probably, by persons
familiar with his contribution to _Blackwood_ and the _London Magazine_,
attributed to Hartley Coleridge. “No clue to the author has reached me,”
wrote Southey to his friend Wynne. “As for Hartley Coleridge, I wish it
were his, but am certain that it is not. He is quite clever enough to have
written it--quite odd enough, but his opinions are desperately radical,
and he is the last person in the world to disguise them. One report was
that his father had assisted him; there is not a page in the book, wise or
foolish, which the latter _could_ have written, neither his wisdom nor his
folly are of that kind.” There had been a time when Southey would have
expressed himself differently, but in 1834 dissociation from Coleridge had
become a matter alike of habit and of principle. _Southey’s Life and
Correspondence_, ii. 355, vi. 225-229; _Letters of R. Southey_, iv. 373.
[87] The first of the series of “Essays upon Epitaphs” was published in
No. 25 of the original issue of _The Friend_ (Feb. 22, 1810), and
republished by Wordsworth in the notes to _The Excursion_, 1814. “Two
other portions of the ‘Series,’ of which the Bishop of Lincoln gives an
outline and some extracts in the _Memoirs_ (i. 434-445), were published in
full in _Prose Works of Wordsworth_, 1876, ii. 41-75.” _Life of W.
Wordsworth_, ii. 152; _Poetical Works of Wordsworth_, Bibliography, p.
907.
[88] To Miss Sarah Hutchinson, then living in Wales.
[89] That Wordsworth ever used these words, or commissioned Montagu to
repeat them to Coleridge, is in itself improbable and was solemnly denied
by Wordsworth himself. But Wordsworth did not deny that with the best
motives and in a kindly spirit he took Montagu into his confidence and put
him on his guard, that he professed “to have no hope” of his old friend,
and that with regard to Coleridge’s “habits” he might have described them
as a “nuisance” in his family. It was all meant for the best, but much
evil and misery might have been avoided if Wordsworth had warned Coleridge
that if he should make his home under Montagu’s roof he could not keep
silence, or, better still, if he had kept silence and left Montagu to
fight his own battles. The cruel words which Montagu put into Wordsworth’s
mouth or Coleridge in his agitation and resentment put into Montagu’s,
were but the salt which the sufferer rubbed into his own wound. The time,
the manner, and the person combined to aggravate his misery and dismay.
Judgment had been delivered against him _in absentiâ_, and the judge was
none other than his own “familiar friend.” Henry Crabb Robinson’s _Diary_,
May 3-10, 1812, first published in _Life of W. Wordsworth_, ii. 168, 187.
[90] The tickets were numbered and signed by the lecturer. Printed cards
which were issued by way of advertisement contained the following
announcement:--
“LECTURES ON THE DRAMA.
“Mr. Coleridge proposes to give a series of Lectures on the Drama of the
Greek, French, English and Spanish stage, chiefly with Reference to the
Works of Shakespeare, at Willis’s Rooms, King Street, St. James’s, on the
Tuesdays and Fridays in May and June at Three o’clock precisely. The
Course will contain Six Lectures, at One Guinea. The Tickets Transferable.
An Account is opened at Mess. Ransom Morland & Co., Bankers, Pall Mall, in
the names of Sir G. Beaumont, Bart., Sir T. Bernard, Bart., W. Sotheby,
Esq., where Subscriptions will be received, and Tickets issued. The First
Lecture on Tuesday, the 12th of May.--S. T. C., 71, Berners St.”
For an account of the first four lectures, see H. C. Robinson’s _Diary_,
i. 385-388.
[91] From Bombay.
[92] I have followed Professor Knight in omitting a passage in which “he
gives a lengthened list of circumstances which seemed to justify
misunderstanding.” The alleged facts throw no light on the relations
between Coleridge and Wordsworth.
[93] The cryptogram which Coleridge invented for his own use was based on
the arbitrary selection of letters of the Greek as equivalents to letters
of the English alphabet. The vowels were represented by English letters,
by the various points, and by algebraic symbols. An expert would probably
decipher nine tenths of these memoranda at a glance, but here and there
the words symbolised are themselves anagrams of Greek, Latin, and German
words, and, in a few instances, the clue is hard to seek.
[94] The Right Honourable Spencer Perceval was shot by a man named
Bellingham, in the lobby of the House of Commons, May 11, 1812.
[95] The occasion of this letter was the death of Wordsworth’s son,
Thomas, which took place December 1, 1812. It would seem, as Professor
Knight intimates, that the letter was not altogether acceptable to the
Wordsworths, and that “no immediate reply was sent to Coleridge.” We have
it, on the authority of Mr. Clarkson, that when Wordsworth and Dorothy did
write, in the spring of the following year, inviting him to Grasmere,
their letters remained unanswered, and that when the news came that
Coleridge was about to leave London for the seaside, a fresh wound was
inflicted, and fresh offence taken. As Mr. Dykes Campbell has pointed out,
the consequences of this second rupture were fatal to Coleridge’s peace of
mind and to his well-being generally. The brief spell of success and
prosperity which attended the representation of “Remorse” inspired him for
a few weeks with unnatural courage, but as the “pale unwarming light of
Hope” died away, he was left to face the world and himself as best or as
worst he could. Of the months which intervened between March and
September, 1813, there is no record, and we can only guess that he
remained with his kind and patient hosts, the Morgans, sick in body and
broken-hearted. _Life of W. Wordsworth_, ii. 182; _Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, a Narrative_, by J. Dykes Campbell, 1894, pp. 193-197.
[96] See Letter CXCV., p. 611, note 2.
[97] The notice of “Remorse” in _The Times_, though it condemned the play
as a whole, was not altogether uncomplimentary, and would be accepted at
the present day by the majority of critics as just and fair. It was, no
doubt, the didactic and patronising tone adopted towards the author which
excited Coleridge’s indignation. “We speak,” writes the reviewer, “with
restraint and unwillingly of the defects of a work which must have cost
its author so much labour. We are peculiarly reluctant to touch the
anxieties of a man,” etc. The notice in the _Morning Post_ was friendly
and flattering in the highest degree. The preface to _Osorio_, London,
1873, contains selections of press notices of “Remorse,” and other
interesting matter. See, too, _Poetical Works_, Editor’s Note on
“Remorse,” pp. 649-651.
[98] John Williams, described by Macaulay as “a filthy and malignant
baboon,” who wrote under the pseudonym of “Anthony Pasquin,” emigrated to
America early in this century. In 1804 he published a work in Boston, and
there is, apparently, no reason to suppose that he subsequently returned
to England. Either Coleridge was in error or he uses the term generally
for a scurrilous critic.
[99] This note-book must have passed out of Coleridge’s possession in his
lifetime, for it is not among those which were bequeathed to Joseph Henry
Green, and subsequently passed into the hands of my father. The two folio
volumes of the Greek Poets were in my father’s library, and are now in my
possession.
[100] “Mr. Colridge (_sic_) will not, we fear, be as much entertained as
we were with his ‘Playhouse Musings,’ which begin with characteristic
pathos and simplicity, and put us much in mind of the affecting story of
old Poulter’s mare.”
[101] The motto “Sermoni propriora,” translated by Lamb “properer for a
sermon,” was prefixed to “Reflections on having left a Place of
Retirement.” The lines “To a Young Ass” were originally published in the
_Morning Chronicle_, December 30, 1794, under the heading, “Address to a
Young Jack Ass, and its _tethered_ Mother. In Familiar Verse.” _Poetical
Works_, pp. 35, 36, Appendix C, p. 477. See, too, Biographia Literaria,
Coleridge’s _Works_, 1853, iii. 161.
[102] The words, “Obscurest Haunt of all our mountains,” are to be found
in the first act of “Remorse,” lines 115, 116. Their counterpart in
Wordsworth’s poems occurs in “The Brothers,” l. 140. (“It is the loneliest
place of all these hills.”) “De minimis non curat lex,” especially when
there is a plea to be advanced, or a charge to be defended. _Poetical
Works_, p. 362; _Works of Wordsworth_, p. 127.
[103] Many theories have been hazarded with regard to the broken
friendship commemorated in these lines. My own impression is that
Coleridge, if he had anything personal in his mind, and we may be sure
that he had, was looking back on his early friendship with Southey and the
bitter quarrel which began over the collapse of pantisocracy, and was
never healed till the summer of 1799. In the late autumn of 1800, when the
second part of “Christabel” was written, Southey was absent in Portugal,
and the thought of all that had come and gone between him and his “heart’s
best brother” inspired this outburst of affection and regret.
[104] The annuity of £150 for life, which Josiah Wedgwood, on his own and
his brother Thomas’ behalf, offered to Coleridge in January, 1798. The
letter expressly states that it is “an annuity for life of £150 to be
regularly paid by us, no condition whatsoever being annexed to it.” “We
mean,” he adds, “the annuity to be independent of everything but the wreck
of our fortune.” It is extraordinary that a man of probity should have
taken advantage of the fact that the annuity, as had been proposed, was
not secured by law, and should have struck this blow, not so much at
Coleridge, as at his wife and children, for whom the annuity was reserved.
It is hardly likely that a man of business forgot the terms of his own
offer, or that he could have imagined that Coleridge was no longer in need
of support. Either in some fit of penitence or of passion Coleridge
offered to release him, or once again “whispering tongues had poisoned
truth,” and some one had represented to Wedgwood that the money was doing
more harm than good. But a bond is a bond, and it is hard to see, unless
the act and deed were Coleridge’s, how Wedgwood can escape blame. _Thomas
Poole and his Friends_, i. 257-259.
[105] Dr. Southey, the poet’s younger brother Henry, and Daniel Stuart
were afterwards neighbours in Harley Street. A close intimacy and lifelong
friendship arose between the two families.
[106] Treaty of Vienna, October 9, 1809.
[107] This could only have been carried out in part. A large portion of
the books which Coleridge possessed at his death consisted of those which
he had purchased during his travels in Germany in 1799, and in Italy in
1805-1806.
[108] The publication by Cottle, in 1837, of this and the following
letter, and still more of that to Josiah Wade of June 26, 1814 (Letter
CC.), was deeply resented by Coleridge’s three children and by all his
friends. In the preface to his _Early Recollections_ Cottle defends
himself on the plea that in the interests of truth these confessions
should be revealed, and urges that Coleridge’s own demand that after his
death “a full and unqualified narrative of my wretchedness and its guilty
cause may be made public,” not only justified but called for his action in
the matter. The law of copyright in the letters of parents and remoter
ancestors was less clearly defined at that time than it is at present, and
Coleridge’s literary executors contented themselves with recording their
protest in the strongest possible terms. In 1848, when Cottle reprinted
his _Early Recollections_, together with some additional matter, under the
title of _Reminiscences of S. T. Coleridge_, etc., he was able to quote
Southey as an advocate, though, possibly, a reluctant advocate, for
publication. There can be no question that neither Coleridge’s request nor
Southey’s sanction gave Cottle any right to wound the feelings of the
living or to expose the frailties and remorse of the dead. The letters,
which have been public property for nearly sixty years, are included in
these volumes because they have a natural and proper place in any
collection of Coleridge’s Letters which claims to be, in any sense,
representative of his correspondence at large.
[109] At whatever time these lines may have been written, they were not
printed till 1829, when they were prefixed to the “Monody on the Death of
Chatterton.” _Poetical Works_, p. 61; Editor’s Note, pp. 562, 563.
[110] “The Picture; or The Lover’s Resolution,” lines 17-25. _Poetical
Works_, p. 162.
[111] Solomon Grundy is a character, played by Fawcett, in George Colman
the younger’s piece, _Who wants a Guinea?_ produced at Covent Garden,
1804-1805.
[112] A character in Macklin’s play, _Love à la Mode_.
[113] A character in Macklin’s play, _A Man of the World_.
[114] It is needless to say that Coleridge never even attempted a
translation of _Faust_. Whether there were initial difficulties with
regard to procuring the “whole of Goethe’s works,” and other books of
reference, or whether his heart failed him when he began to study the work
with a view to translation, the arrangement with Murray fell through. A
statement in the _Table Talk_ for February 16, 1833, that the task was
abandoned on moral grounds, that he could not bring himself to familiarise
the English public with “language, much of which was,” he thought,
“vulgar, licentious, and blasphemous,” is not borne out by the tone of his
letters to Murray, of July 29, August 31, 1814. No doubt the spirit of
_Faust_, alike with regard to theology and morality, would at all times
have been distasteful to him, but with regard to what actually took place,
he deceived himself in supposing that the feelings and scruples of old age
would have prevailed in middle life. _Memoirs of John Murray_, i. 297 _et
seq._
[115] “The thoughts of Coleridge, even during the whirl of passing events,
discovered their hidden springs, and poured forth, in an obscure style,
and to an unheeding age, the great moral truths which were then being
proclaimed in characters of fire to mankind.” Alison’s _History of
Europe_, ix. 3 (ninth edition).
[116] The eight “Letters on the Spaniards,” which Coleridge contributed to
the _Courier_ in December, January, 1809-10, are reprinted in _Essays on
His Own Times_, ii. 593-676.
[117] The character of Pitt appeared in the _Morning Post_, March 19,
1800; the letters to Fox, on November 4, 9, 1802; the Essays on the French
Empire, etc., September 21, 25, and October 2, 1802; the Essay on the
restoration of the Bourbons, October, 1802. They are reprinted in the
second volume of _Essays on His Own Times_.
Six Letters to Judge Fletcher on Catholic Emancipation, which appeared at
irregular intervals in the _Courier_, September-December, 1814, are
reprinted in _Essays on His Own Times_, iii. 677-733.
The Essay on Taxation forms the seventh Essay of Section the First, on the
Principles of Political Knowledge. _The Friend_; _Coleridge’s Works_,
Harper & Brothers, 1853, ii. 208-222.
[118] Neither the original nor the transcript of this letter has, to my
knowledge, been preserved.
[119] He reverts to this “turning of the worm” in a letter to Morgan dated
January 5, 1818. He threatened to attack publishers and printers in “a
vigorous and harmonious satire” to be called “Puff and Slander.” I am
inclined to think that the remarkable verses entitled “A Character,” which
were first printed in 1834, were an accomplished instalment of “these two
long satires.” Letter in British Museum. MSS. Addit. 25612. _Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, a Narrative_ by J. Dykes Campbell, p. 234, note; _Poetical
Works_, pp. 195, 642.
[120] A work which should contain all knowledge and proclaim all
philosophy had been Coleridge’s dream from the beginning, and, as no such
work was ever produced, it may be said to have been his dream to the end.
And yet it was something more than a dream. Besides innumerable fragments
of metaphysical and theological speculation which have passed into my
hands, he actually did compose and dictate two large quarto volumes on
formal logic, which are extant. “Something more than a volume,” a
portentous introduction to his _magnum opus_, was dictated to his
amanuensis and disciple, J. H. Green, and is now in my possession. A
commentary on the Gospels and some of the Epistles, of which the original
MS. is extant, and of which I possess a transcription, was an accomplished
fact. I say nothing of the actual or relative value of this unpublished
matter, but it should be put on record that it exists, that much labour,
ill-judged perhaps, and ineffectual labour, was expended on the outworks
of the fortresses, and that the walls and bastions are standing to the
present day.
[121] The appearance of these “Essays on the Fine Arts” was announced in
the _Bristol Journal_ of August 6, 1814. They were reprinted in 1837 by
Cottle, in his _Early Recollections_, ii. 201-240, and by Thomas Ashe in
1885, in his _Miscellanies, Æsthetic and Literary_, pp. 5-35. Coleridge
himself “set a high value” on these essays. See _Table Talk_ of January 1,
1834.
[122] The working editor of the _Courier_.
[123] The third letter to Judge Fletcher on Ireland was published in the
_Courier_, October 21, 1814. It is reprinted in _Essays on His Own Times_,
iii. 690-697.
[124] John Cartwright, 1740-1824, known as Major Cartwright, was an ardent
parliamentary reformer and an advocate of universal suffrage. He refused
to fight against the United States and wrote Letters on American
Independence (1774).
[125] Lord Erskine’s Bill for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was
brought forward in the House of Lords May 15, 1809, and was passed without
a division. The Bill was read a second time in the House of Commons but
was rejected on going into committee, the opposition being led by Windham
in a speech of considerable ability.
By “imperfect” duties Coleridge probably means “duties of imperfect
obligation.”
[126] This article, a review of “The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady
Hamilton; with a Supplement of Interesting Letters by Distinguished
Personages. 2 vols. 8vo. Lovewell and Co. London. 1814,” appeared in No.
xxi. of _The Quarterly Review_, for April, 1814. The attack is mainly
directed against Lady Hamilton, but Nelson, with every pretence of
reluctance and of general admiration, is also censured on moral grounds,
and his letters are held up to ridicule.
[127] A partner in the publishing firm of Ridgeway and Symonds. _Letters
of R. Southey_, iii. 65.
[128] The reference is to Swift’s famous “Drapier” Letters. Swift wrote in
the assumed character of a draper, and dated his letters “From my shop in
St. Francis Street,” but why he adopted the French instead of the English
spelling of the word does not seem to have been satisfactorily explained.
_Notes and Queries_, III. Series, x. 55.
[129] The _View of the State of Ireland_, first published in 1633.
[130] John Kenyon, 1783-1856, a poet and philanthropist. He settled at
Woodlands near Stowey in 1802, and became acquainted with Poole and
Poole’s friends. He was on especially intimate terms with Southey, who
writes of him (January 11, 1827) to his still older friend Wynne, as “one
of the very best and pleasantest men whom I have ever known, one whom
every one likes at first sight, and likes better the longer he is known.”
With Coleridge himself the tie was less close, but he was, I know, a most
kind friend to the poet’s wife during those anxious years, 1814-1819, when
her children were growing up, and she had little else to depend upon but
Southey’s generous protection and the moiety of the Wedgwood annuity.
Kenyon’s friendship with the Brownings belongs to a later chapter of
literary history.
[131] _Poetical Works_, p. 176; Appendix H, pp. 525, 526.
[132] _Poetical Works_, p. 450.
[133] In 1815 an act was brought in by Mr. Robinson (afterwards Lord
Ripon) and passed, permitting the importation of corn when the price of
home-grown wheat reached 80s. a quarter. During the spring of the year,
January-March, while the bill was being discussed, bread-riots took place
in London and Westminster.
[134] It would seem that Coleridge had either overlooked or declined to
put faith in Wordsworth’s Apology for _The Excursion_, which appeared in
the Preface to the First Edition of 1814. He was, of course, familiar with
the “poem on the growth of your mind,” the hitherto unnamed and
unpublished _Prelude_, and he must have been at least equally familiar
with the earlier books of _The Excursion_. Why then was he disappointed
with the poem as a whole, and what had he looked for at Wordsworth’s
hands? Not, it would seem, for an “ante-chapel,” but for the sanctuary
itself. He had been stirred to the depths by the recitation of _The
Prelude_ at Coleorton, and in his lines “To a Gentleman,” which he quotes
in this letter, he recapitulates the arguments of the poem. _This_ he
considered was _The Excursion_, “_an Orphic song indeed_”! and as he
listened the melody sank into his soul. But that was but an exordium, a
“prelusive strain” to _The Recluse_, which might indeed include the
Grasmere fragment, the story of Margaret and so forth, but which in the
form of poetry would convey the substance of divine philosophy. He had
looked for a second Milton who would put Lucretius to a double shame, for
a “philosophic poem,” which would justify anew “the ways of God to men;”
and in lieu of this pageant of the imagination there was Wordsworth
prolific of moral discourse, of scenic and personal narrative--a prophet
indeed, but “unmindful of the heavenly Vision.”
[135] The Rev. William Money, a descendant of John Kyrle, the “Man of
Ross,” eulogised alike by Pope and Coleridge, was at this time in
possession of the family seat of Whetham, a few miles distant from Calne,
in Wiltshire. Coleridge was often a guest at his house.
[136] A controversial work on the inspiration of Scripture. A thin thread
of narrative runs through the dissertation. It was the work of the Rev. J.
W. Cunningham, Vicar of Harrow, and was published in 1813.
[137] The Hon. and Rev. T. A. Methuen, Rector of All Cannings, was the son
of Paul Methuen, Esq., M. P., afterward Lord Methuen of Corsham House. He
contributed some reminiscences of Coleridge at this period to the
_Christian Observer_ of 1845. _Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative_, by
J. Dykes Campbell, 1894, p. 208.
[138] The annual payments for board and lodging, which were made at first,
for some time before Coleridge’s death fell into abeyance. The approximate
amount of the debt so incurred, and the circumstances under which it began
to accumulate, are alike unknown to me. The fact that such a debt existed
was, I believe, a secret jealously guarded by his generous hosts, but as,
with the best intentions, statements have been made to the effect that
there was no pecuniary obligation on Coleridge’s part, it is right that
the truth should be known. On the other hand, it is only fair to
Coleridge’s memory to put it on record that this debt of honour was a sore
trouble to him, and that he met it as best he could. We know, for
instance, on his own authority, that the profits of the three volume
edition of his poems, published in 1828, were made over to Mr. Gillman.
[139] _Zapolya: A Christmas Tale, in two Parts_, was published by Rest
Fenner late in 1817. A year before, after the first part had been rejected
by the Drury Lane Committee, Coleridge arranged with Murray to publish
both parts as a poem, and received an advance of £50 on the MS. He had, it
seems, applied to Murray to be released from this engagement, and on the
strength of an ambiguous reply, offered the work to the publishers of
_Sybilline Leaves_. From letters to Murray, dated March 26 and March 29,
1817, it is evident that the £50 advanced on _A Christmas Tale_ was
repaid. In acknowledging the receipt of the sum, Murray seems to have
generously omitted all mention of a similar advance on “a play then in
composition.” In his letter of March 29, Coleridge speaks of this second
debt, which does not appear to have been paid. _Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a
Narrative_, by J. Dykes Campbell, p. 223; _Memoirs of John Murray_, i.
301-306.
[140] Murray had offered Coleridge two hundred guineas for “a small volume
of specimens of Rabbinical Wisdom,” but owing to pressure of work the
project was abandoned. “Specimens of Rabbinical Wisdom selected from the
Mishna” had already appeared in the original issue of _The Friend_ (Nos.
x., xi.), and these, with the assistance of his friend Hyman Hurwitz,
Master of the Hebrew Academy at Highgate, he intended to supplement and
expand into a volume. _Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative_, by J. Dykes
Campbell, p. 224 and note.
[141] Apart from internal evidence, there is nothing to prove that this
article, a review of “Christabel,” which appeared in the _Edinburgh
Review_, December, 1816, was written by Hazlitt. It led, however, to the
insertion of a footnote in the first volume of the _Biographia Literaria_,
in which Coleridge accused Jeffrey of personal and ungenerous animosity
against himself, and reminded him of hospitality shown to him at Keswick,
and of the complacent and flattering language which he had employed on
that occasion. Not content with commissioning Hazlitt to review the book,
Jeffrey appended a long footnote signed with his initials, in which he
indignantly repudiates the charge of personal animus, and makes bitter fun
of Coleridge’s susceptibility to flattery, and of his boasted hospitality.
Southey had offered him a cup of coffee, and Coleridge had dined with him
at the inn. _Voila tout._ Both footnotes are good reading. _Biographia
Literaria_, ed. 1817, i. 52 note; _Edinburgh Review_, December, 1817.
[142] Two letters from Tieck to Coleridge have been preserved, a very long
one, dated February 20, 1818, in which he discusses a scheme for bringing
out his works in England, and asks Coleridge if he has succeeded in
finding a publisher for him, and the following note, written sixteen years
later, to introduce the German painter, Herr von Vogelstein. I am indebted
to my cousin, Miss Edith Coleridge, for a translation of both letters.
DRESDEN, April 30, 1834.
I hope that my dear and honoured friend Coleridge still remembers me.
To me those delightful hours at Highgate remain unforgettable. I have
seen your friend Robinson, once here in Dresden, but you--At that time
I believed that I should come again to England--and in such hopes we
grow old and wear away.
My kindest remembrances to your excellent hosts at Highgate. It is
with especial emotion that I look again and again at the _Anatomy of
Melancholy_ [a present from Mr. Gillman], as well as the _Lay
Sermons_, _Christabel_, and the _Biographia Literaria_. Herr von
Vogelstein, one of the most esteemed historical painters of Germany,
brings you this letter from your loving
LUDWIG TIECK.
[143] Henry Crabb Robinson, whose admirable diaries, first published in
1869, may, it is hoped, be reëdited and published in full, died at the age
of ninety-one in 1867. He was a constant guest at my father’s house in
Chelsea during my boyhood. I have, too, a distinct remembrance of his
walking over Loughrigg from Rydal Mount, where he was staying with Mrs.
Wordsworth, and visiting my parents at High Close, between Grasmere and
Langdale, then and now the property of Mr. Wheatley Balme. This must have
been in 1857, when he was past eighty years of age. My impression is that
his conversation consisted, for the most part, of anecdotes concerning
Wieland and Schiller and Goethe. Of Wordsworth and Coleridge he must have
had much to say, but his words, as was natural, fell on the unheeding ears
of a child.
[144] The Right Hon. John Hookham Frere, 1769-1846, now better known as
the translator of Aristophanes than as statesman or diplomatist, was a
warm friend to Coleridge in his later years. He figures in the later
memoranda and correspondence as ὁ καλοκάγαθος, the ideal Christian
gentleman.
[145] Samuel Purkis, of Brentford, tanner and man of letters, was an early
friend of Poole’s, and through him became acquainted with Coleridge and
Sir Humphry Davy. When Coleridge went up to London in June, 1798, to stay
with the Wedgwoods at Stoke House, in the village of Cobham, he stayed a
night at Brentford on the way. In a letter to Poole of the same date, he
thus describes his host: “Purkis is a _gentleman_, with the free and
cordial and interesting manners of the man of literature. His colloquial
diction is uncommonly pleasing, his information various, his _own mind_
elegant and acute.” _Thomas Poole and his Friends_, i. 271, _et passim_.
[146] For an account of Coleridge’s relations with his publishers, Fenner
and Curtis, see _Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative_, by J. Dykes
Campbell, p. 227. See, too, _Lippincott’s Mag._ for June, 1870, art. “Some
Unpublished Correspondence of S. T. Coleridge,” and Brandl’s _Samuel
Taylor Coleridge and the Romantic School_, 1887, pp. 351-353.
[147] J. H. Frere was, I believe, one of those who assisted Coleridge to
send his younger son to Cambridge.
[148] John Taylor Coleridge (better known as Mr. Justice Coleridge), and
George May Coleridge, Vicar of St. Mary Church, Devon, and Prebendary of
Wells. Another cousin who befriended Hartley, when he was an undergraduate
at Merton, and again later when he was living with the Montagus, in
London, was William Hart Coleridge, afterward Bishop of Barbados. The
poet’s own testimony to the good work of his nephews should be set against
Allsop’s foolish and uncalled for attack on “the Bishop and the Judge.”
_Letters, etc., of S. T. Coleridge_, 1836, i. 225, note.
[149] Poole’s reply to this letter, dated July 31, 1817, contained an
invitation to Hartley to come to Nether Stowey. Mrs. Sandford tells us
that it was believed that “the young man spent more than one vacation at
Stowey, where he was well-known and very popular, though the young ladies
of the place either themselves called him the Black Dwarf, or cherished a
conviction that that was his nickname at Oxford.” _Thomas Poole and his
Friends_, ii. 256-258.
[150] The Rev. H. F. Cary, 1772-1844, the well-known translator of the
_Divina Commedia_. His son and biographer, the Rev. Henry Cary, gives the
following account of his father’s first introduction to Coleridge, which
took place at Littlehampton in the autumn of 1817:--
“It was our custom to walk on the sands and read Homer aloud, a practice
adopted partly for the sake of the sea-breezes.... For several consecutive
days Coleridge crossed us in our walk. The sound of the Greek, and
especially the expressive countenance of the tutor, attracted his notice;
so one day, as we met, he placed himself directly in my father’s way and
thus accosted him: ‘Sir, yours is a face I _should_ know. I am Samuel
Taylor Coleridge.’” _Memoir of H. F. Cary_, ii. 18.
[151] It appears, however, that he underrated his position as a critic. A
quotation from Cary’s _Dante_, and a eulogistic mention of the work
generally, in a lecture on Dante, delivered by Coleridge at Flower-de-Luce
Court, on February 27, 1818, led, so his son says, to the immediate sale
of a thousand copies, and notices “reëchoing Coleridge’s praises” in the
_Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_. _Memoir of H. F. Cary_, ii. 28.
[152] From the _Destiny of Nations_.
[153] Joseph Henry Green, 1791-1863, an eminent surgeon and anatomist. In
his own profession he won distinction as lecturer and operator, and as the
author of the _Dissector’s Manual_, and some pamphlets on medical reform
and education. He was twice, 1849-50 and 1858-59, President of the College
of Surgeons. His acquaintance with Coleridge, which began in 1817, was
destined to influence his whole career. It was his custom for many years
to pass two afternoons of the week at Highgate, and on these occasions as
amanuensis and collaborateur, he helped to lay the foundations of the
_Magnum Opus_. Coleridge appointed him his literary executor, and
bequeathed to him a mass of unpublished MSS. which it was hoped he would
reduce to order and publish as a connected system of philosophy. Two
addresses which he delivered, as Hunterian Orations in 1841 and 1847, on
“Vital Dynamics” and “Mental Dynamics,” were published in his lifetime,
and after his death two volumes entitled _Spiritual Philosophy, founded on
the Teaching of S. T. Coleridge_, were issued, together with a memoir, by
his friend and former pupil, Sir John Simon.
His fame has suffered eclipse owing in great measure to his chivalrous if
unsuccessful attempt to do honour to Coleridge. But he deserves to stand
alone. Members of his own profession not versed in polar logic looked up
to his “great and noble intellect” with pride and delight, and by those
who were honoured by his intimacy he was held in love and reverence. To
Coleridge he was a friend indeed, bringing with him balms more soothing
than “poppy or mandragora,” the healing waters of Faith and Hope.
_Spiritual Philosophy_, by J. H. Green; Memoir of the author’s life,
i.-lix.
[154] This must have been the impromptu lecture “On the Growth of the
Individual Mind,” delivered at the rooms of the London Philosophical
Society. According to Gillman, who details the circumstances under which
the address was given, but does not supply the date, the lecturer began
with an “apologetic preface”: “The lecture I am about to give this evening
is purely extempore. Should you find a nominative case looking out for a
verb--or a fatherless verb for a nominative case, you must excuse it. It
is purely extempore, though I have thought and read much on this subject.”
_Life of Coleridge_, pp. 354-357.
[155] The “Essay on the Science of Method” was finished in December, 1817,
and printed in the following January. _Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a
Narrative_, by J. Dykes Campbell, 1894, p. 232.
[156] The Hebrew text and Coleridge’s translation were published in the
form of a pamphlet, and sold by “T. Boosey, 4 Old Broad Street, 1817.” The
full title was “ISRAEL’S LAMENT. Translation of a Hebrew dirge, chaunted
in the Great Synagogue, St. James’ Place, Aldgate, on the day of the
Funeral of her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte. By Hyman Hurwitz,
Master of the Hebrew Academy, Highgate, 1817.”
The translation is below Coleridge at his worst. The “Harp of Quantock”
must, indeed, have required stringing before such a line as “For England’s
Lady is laid low” could have escaped the file, or “worn her” be permitted
to rhyme with “mourner”! _Poetical Works_, p. 187; Editor’s Note, p. 638.
[157] The _Kritik der praktischen Vernunft_ was published in 1797.
[158] This statement requires explanation. Franz Xavier von Baader,
1765-1841, was a mystic of the school of Jacob Böhme, and wrote in
opposition to Schelling.
[159] Ludwig Tieck published his _Sternbald’s Wanderungen_ in 1798.
[160] Heinse’s _Ardinghello_ was published in 1787.
[161] Richter’s _Vorschule der Aisthetik_ was published in 1804 (3 vols.).
[162] See _Table Talk_ for January 3 and May 1, 1823. See, also, _The
Friend_, Essay iii. of the First Landing Place. Coleridge’s _Works_,
Harper & Brothers, 1853, ii. 134-137, and “Notes on Hamlet,” _Ibid._ iv.
147-150.
[163] Charles Augustus Tulk, described by Mr. Campbell as “a man of
fortune with an uncommon taste for philosophical speculation,” was an
eminent Swedenborgian, and mainly instrumental in establishing the “New
Church” in Great Britain. It was through Coleridge’s intimacy with Mr.
Tulk that his writings became known to the Swedenborgian community, and
that his letters were read at their gatherings. I possess transcripts of
twenty-five letters from Coleridge to Tulk, in many of which he details
his theories of ontological speculation. The originals were sold and
dispersed in 1882.
A note on Swedenborg’s treatise, “De Cultu et Amore Dei,” is printed in
_Notes Theological and Political_, London, 1853, p. 110, but a long series
of marginalia on the pages of the treatise, “De Cœlo et Inferno,” of which
a transcript has been made, remains unpublished.
For Coleridge’s views on Swedenborgianism, see “Notes on Noble’s Appeal,”
_Literary Remains_; Coleridge’s _Works_, Harper & Brothers, 1853, v.
522-527.
[164] It may be supposed that it was Blake, the mystic and the
spiritualist, that aroused Tulk’s interest, and that, as an indirect
consequence, the original edition of his poems, “engraved in
writing-hand,” was sent to Coleridge for his inspection and criticism. The
_Songs of Innocence_ were published in 1787, ten years before the _Lyrical
Ballads_ appeared, and more than thirty years before the date of this
letter, but they were known only to a few. Lamb, writing in 1824, speaks
of him as _Robert_ Blake, and after praising in the highest terms his
paintings and engravings, says that he has never read his poems, “which
have been sold hitherto only in manuscript.” It is strange that Coleridge
should not have been familiar with them, for in 1812 Crabb Robinson, so he
tells us, read them aloud to Wordsworth, who was “pleased with some of
them, and considered Blake as having the elements of poetry, a thousand
times more than either Byron or Scott.” None, however, of these hearty and
genuine admirers appear to have reflected that Blake had “gone back to
nature,” a while before Wordsworth or Coleridge turned their steps in that
direction. _Letters of Charles Lamb_, 1886, ii. 104, 105, 324, 325; H. C.
Robinson’s _Diary_, i. 385.
[165] In the _Aids to Reflection_, at the close of a long comment on a
passage in Field, Coleridge alludes to “discussions of the Greek Fathers,
and of the Schoolmen on the obscure and abysmal subject of the divine
A-seity, and the distinction between the θέλημα and the βουλή, that is,
the Absolute Will as the universal ground of all being, and the election
and purpose of God in the personal Idea, as Father.” Coleridge’s _Works_,
1853, i. 317.
[166] The bill in which Coleridge interested himself, and in favour of
which he wrote two circulars which were printed and distributed, was
introduced in the House of Commons by the first Sir Robert Peel. The
object of the bill was to regulate the employment of children in cotton
factories. A bill for prohibiting the employment of children under nine
was passed in 1833, but it was not till 1844 that the late Lord
Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley, succeeded in passing the Ten Hours Bills.
In a letter of May 3d to Crabb Robinson, Coleridge asks: “Can you furnish
us with any other instances in which the legislature has interfered with
what is ironically called ‘Free Labour’ (_i. e._ dared to prohibit
soul-murder on the part of the rich, and self-slaughter on that of the
poor!), or any dictum of our grave law authorities from Fortescue--to
Eldon: for from the borough of Hell I wish to have no representatives.”
Henry Crabb Robinson’s _Diary_, ii. 93-95.
[167] James Maitland, 1759-1839, eighth Earl of Lauderdale, belonged to
the party of Charles James Fox, and, like Coleridge, opposed the first war
with France, which began in 1793. In the ministry of “All the Talents” he
held the Great Seal of Scotland. Coleridge calls him plebeian because he
inherited the peerage from a remote connection. He was the author of
several treatises on finance and political economy.
[168] It was, I have been told by an eyewitness, Coleridge’s habit to take
a pinch of snuff, and whilst he was talking to rub it between his fingers.
He wasted so much snuff in the process that the maid servant had
directions to sweep up these literary remains and replace them in the
canister.
[169] A pet name for the Gillmans’ younger son, Henry.
[170] Coleridge was fond of quoting these lines as applicable to himself.
[171] Washington Allston.
[172] Charles Robert Leslie, historical painter, 1794-1859, was born of
American parents, but studied art in London under Washington Allston. A
pencil sketch, for which Coleridge sat to him in 1820, is in my
possession. Mr. Hamo Thornycroft, R. A., after a careful inspection of
other portraits and engravings of S. T. Coleridge, modelled the bust which
now (thanks to American generosity) finds its place in Poets’ Corner,
mainly in accordance with this sketch.
[173] _Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge_,
London, 1836, i. 1-3.
[174] The Prospectus of the Lectures on the History of Philosophy was
printed in Allsop’s _Letters_, etc., as Letter xliv., November 26, 1818,
but the announcement of the time and place has been omitted. A very rare
copy of the original prospectus, which has been placed in my hands by Mrs.
Henry Watson, gives the following details:--
“This course will be comprised in Fourteen Lectures, to commence on Monday
evening, December 7, 1818, at eight o’clock, at the Crown and Anchor,
Strand; and be continued on the following Mondays, with the intermission
of Christmas week--Double Tickets, admitting a Lady and Gentleman, Three
Guineas. Single Tickets, Two Guineas. Admission to a Single Lecture, Five
Shillings. An Historical and Chronological Guide to the course will be
printed.”
A reporter was hired at the expense of Hookham Frere to take down the
lectures in shorthand. A transcript, which I possess, contains numerous
errors and omissions, but is interesting as affording proof of the
conversational style of Coleridge’s lectures. See, for further account of
Lectures of 1819, _Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative_, by J. Dykes
Campbell, pp. 238, 239.
[175] Thomas Phillips, R. A., 1770-1845, painted two portraits of
Coleridge, one of which is in the possession of Mr. John Murray, and was
engraved as the frontispiece of the first volume of the _Table Talk_; and
the other in that of Mr. William Rennell Coleridge, of Salston, Ottery St.
Mary. The late Lord Chief Justice used to say that the Salston picture was
“the best presentation of the outward man.” No doubt it recalled his
great-uncle as he remembered him. It certainly bears a close resemblance
to the portraits of Coleridge’s brothers, Edward and George, and of other
members of the family.
[176] My impression is that this letter was written to Mrs. Aders, the
beautiful and accomplished daughter of the engraver Raphael Smith, but the
address is wanting and I cannot speak with any certainty.
[177] Compare lines 16-20 of _The Two Founts_:--
“As on the driving cloud the shiny bow,
That gracious thing made up of tears and light.”
The poem as a whole was composed in 1826, and, as I am assured by Mrs.
Henry Watson (on the authority of her grandmother, Mrs. Gillman),
addressed to Mrs. Aders; but the fifth and a preceding stanza, which
Coleridge marked for interpolation, in an annotated copy of _Poetical
Works_, 1828 (kindly lent me by Mrs. Watson), must have been written
before that date, and were, as I gather from an insertion in a note-book,
originally addressed to Mrs. Gillman. _Poetical Works_, p. 196. See, too,
for unprinted stanza, _Ibid._ Editor’s Note, p. 642.
[178] “To Two Sisters.” _Poetical Works_, p. 179.
[179] The so-called “Manchester Massacre,” nicknamed Peterloo, took place
August 16, 1819. Towards the middle of October dangerous riots broke out
at North Shields. Cries of “Blood for blood,” “Manchester over again,”
were heard in the streets, and “so daring have the mob been that they
actually threatened to burn or destroy the ships of war.” _Annual
Register_, October 15-23, 1819.
[180] “Fears in Solitude.” _Poetical Works_, p. 127.
[181] Mrs. Gillman’s sister.
[182] A collection of casts of antique gems, once, no doubt, the property
of S. T. C., is now in the possession of Alexander Gillman, Esq., of
Sussex Square, Brighton.
[183] Edward Dubois, satirist, 1775-1850, was the author of _The Wreath_,
a _Translation of Boccaccio’s Decameron_, 1804, and other works besides
those mentioned in the text. _Biographical Dictionary._
[184] A late note-book of the Highgate period contains the following
doggerel:--
TO THE MOST VERACIOUS ANECDOTIST AND SMALL-TALK MAN, THOMAS HILL, ESQ.
Tom Hill who laughs at cares and woes,
As nanci--nili--pili--
What is _he_ like as I suppose?
Why to be sure, a Rose, a Rose.
At least no soul that Tom Hill knows,
Could e’er recall a Li-ly.
S. T. C.
“The first time,” writes Miss Stuart, in a personal remembrance of
Coleridge, headed “A Farewell, 1834,” “I dined in company at my father’s
table, I sat between Coleridge and Mr. Hill (known as ‘Little Tommy Hill’)
of the Adelphi, and Ezekiel then formed the theme of Coleridge’s
eloquence. I well remember his citing the chapter of the Dead Bones, and
his sepulchral voice as he asked, ‘Can these bones live?’ Then, his
observation that nothing in the range of human thought was more sublime
than Ezekiel’s reply, ‘Lord, thou knowest,’ in deepest humility, not
presuming to doubt the omnipotence of the Most High.” _Letters from the
Lake Poets_, p. 322. See, too, Letters from Hill to Stuart, _Ibid._ p.
435.
[185] William Elford Leach, 1790-1836, a physician and naturalist, was at
this time Curator of the Natural History Department at the British Museum.
By Lawrencian, Coleridge means a disciple of the eminent surgeon William
Lawrence, whose “Lectures on the Physiology, Zoölogy, and Natural History
of Man,” which were delivered in 1816, are alluded to more than once in
his “Theory of Life.” “Theory of Life” in _Miscellanies, Æsthetic and
Literary_, Bohn’s Standard Library, pp. 377, 385.
[186] Included in the _Omniana_ of 1809-1816. _Table Talk_, etc., Bell &
Sons, 1884, p. 400.
[187] Compare a letter of Coleridge to Allsop, dated October 8, 1822, in
which he details “the four griping and grasping sorrows, each of which
seemed to have my very heart in its hands, compressing or wringing.”
It was the publication of this particular letter, with its thinly-veiled
allusions to Wordsworth, Southey, and to Coleridge’s sons, which not only
excited indignation against Allsop, but moved Southey to write a letter to
Cottle. _Letters, Conversation_, etc., 1836, ii. 140-146.
[188] Compare “The Wanderer’s Farewell to Two Sisters” (Mrs. Morgan and
Miss Brent), 1807. Miss Brent made her home with her married sister, Mrs.
J. J. Morgan, and during the years 1810-1815, when Coleridge lived under
the Morgans’ roof at Hammersmith, in London, and in the West of England,
he received from these ladies the most affectionate care and attention,
both in sickness and in health. _Poetical Works_, pp. 179, 180.
[189] The Reverend Edward Coleridge, 1800-1883, the sixth and youngest son
of Colonel James Coleridge, was for many years a Master and afterwards a
Fellow of Eton. He also held the College living of Mapledurham near
Reading. He corresponded with his uncle, who was greatly attached to him,
on philosophical and theological questions. It was to him that the
“Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit” were originally addressed in the form
of letters.
[190] Colonel Coleridge’s only daughter, Frances Duke, was afterwards
married to the Honourable Mr. Justice Patteson, a Judge of the Queen’s
Bench.
[191]
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore
On winding lake, or rivers wide,
That ask no aid of sail or oar,
That fear no spite of wind or tide.
“Youth and Age,” ll. 12-15. _Poetical Works_, p. 191. A MS. copy of “Youth
and Age” in my possession, of which the probable date is 1822, reads
“boats” for “skiffs.”
[192] Sir Alexander Johnston, 1775-1849, a learned orientalist. He was
Advocate General (afterwards Chief Justice) of Ceylon, and had much to do
with the reorganisation of the constitution of the island. He was one of
the founders of the Royal Asiatic Society. _Dict. of Nat. Biog._ art.
“Johnston, Sir Alexander.”
[193] Gabriele Rossetti, 1783-1854, the father of Dante G. Rossetti, etc.,
first visited England as a political exile in 1824. In 1830 he was
appointed Professor of the Italian language at King’s College. He is best
known as a commentator on Dante. He presented Coleridge with a copy of his
work, _Dello Spirito Antipapale che Produsse la Riforma_, and some of his
verses in MS., which are in my possession.
[194] From the letter of Wordsworth to Lord Lonsdale, of February 5, 1819,
it is plain that the translation of three books of the Æneid had been
already completed at that date. Another letter written five years later,
November 3, 1824, implies that the work had been put aside, and, after a
long interval, reattempted. In the mean time a letter of Coleridge to Mrs.
Allsop, of April 8, 1824, tells us that the three books had been sent to
Coleridge and must have remained in his possession for some time. The MS.
of this translation appears to have been lost, but “one of the books,”
Professor Knight tells us, was printed in the _Philological Museum_, at
Cambridge, in 1832. _Life of W. Wordsworth_, ii. 296-303.
[195] Coleridge was at this time (1824) engaged in making a selection of
choice passages from the works of Archbishop Leighton, which, together
with his own comment and corollaries, were published as _Aids to
Reflection_, in 1825. See Letter CCXXX.
[196] _Conversations of Lord Byron_, etc., by Captain Medwin.
[197] The frontispiece of the second volume of the _Antiquary_ represents
Dr. Dousterswivel digging for treasure in Misticot’s grave. The
resemblance to Coleridge is, perhaps, not wholly imaginary.
[198] John Taylor Coleridge was editor of the _Quarterly Review_ for one
year, 1825-1826. _Southey’s Life and Correspondence_, v. 194, 201, 204,
239, etc.; _Letters of Robert Southey_, iii. 455, 473, 511, 514, etc.
[199] Henry Hart Milman, 1791-1868, afterwards celebrated as historian and
divine (Dean of St. Paul’s, 1849), was, at this time, distinguished
chiefly as a poet. His _Fall of Jerusalem_ was published in 1820. He was a
contributor to the _Quarterly Review_.
[200] Afterward the wife of Sir George Beaumont, the artist’s son and
successor in the baronetcy.
[201] Almost the same sentence with regard to his address as Royal
Associate occurs in a letter to his nephew, John Taylor Coleridge, of May
20, 1825. The “Essay on the Prometheus of Æschylus,” which was printed in
_Literary Remains_, was republished in _Coleridge’s Works_, Harper &
Brothers, 1853, iv. 344-365. See, also, Brandl’s _Life of Coleridge_, p.
361.
[202] The portrait of William Hart Coleridge, Bishop of Barbadoes and the
Leeward Islands, by Thomas Phillips, R. A., is now in the Hall of Christ
Church, Oxford.
[203] A sprig of this myrtle (or was it a sprig of myrtle in a nosegay?)
grew into a plant. At some time after Coleridge’s death it passed into the
hands of the late S. C. Hall, who presented it to the late Lord Coleridge.
It now flourishes, in strong old age, in a protected nook outside the
library at Heath’s Court, Ottery St. Mary.
[204] George Dyer, 1755-1841, best remembered as the author of _The
History of the University of Cambridge_, and a companion work on _The
Privileges of the University of Cambridge_, began life as a Baptist
minister, but settled in London as a man of letters in 1792. As a
“brother-Grecian” he was introduced to Coleridge in 1794, in the early
days of pantisocracy, and probably through him became intimate with Lamb
and Southey. He contributed “The Show, an English Eclogue,” and other
poems, to the _Annual Anthology_ of 1799 and 1800. His poetry was a
constant source of amused delight to Lamb and Coleridge. A pencil sketch
of Dyer by Matilda Betham is in the British Museum. _Letters of Charles
Lamb_, i. 125-128 _et passim_; _Southey’s Life and Correspondence_, i. 218
_et passim_.
[205] George Cattermole, 1800-1868, to whose “peculiar gifts and powerful
genius” Mr. Ruskin has borne testimony, was eminent as an architectural
draughtsman and water-colour painter. With his marvellous illustrations of
“Master Humphrey’s Clock” all the world is familiar. _Dict. of Nat. Biog._
art. “George Cattermole.” His brother Richard was Secretary of the Royal
Society of Literature, of which Coleridge was appointed a Royal Associate
in 1825. Copies of this and of other letters from Coleridge to Cattermole
were kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. James M. Menzies of 24, Carlton
Hill, St. John’s Wood.
[206] Harriet Macklin, Coleridge’s faithful attendant for the last seven
or eight years of his life. On his deathbed he left a solemn request in
writing that his family should make a due acknowledgment of her services.
It was to her that Lamb, when he visited Highgate after Coleridge’s death,
made a present of five guineas.
[207] Dr. Chalmers represented the visit as having lasted three hours, and
that during that “stricken” period he only got occasional glimpses of what
the prophet “would be at.” His little daughter, however, was so moved by
the “mellifluous flow of discourse” that, when “the music ceased, her
overwrought feelings found relief in tears.” _Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a
Narrative_, by J. Dykes Campbell, 1894, p. 260, footnote.
[208] A disciple and amanuensis, to whom, it is believed, he dictated two
quarto volumes on “The History of Logic” and “The Elements of Logic,”
which originally belonged to Joseph Henry Green, and are now in the
possession of Mr. C. A. Ward of Chingford Hatch. _Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
a Narrative_, by J. Dykes Campbell, 1894, pp. 250, 251; _Athenæum_, July
1, 1893, art. “Coleridge’s Logic.”
[209] Henry Nelson Coleridge, 1798-1843, was the fifth son of Colonel
James Coleridge of Heath’s Court, Ottery St. Mary. His marriage with the
poet’s daughter took place on September 3, 1829. He was the author of _Six
Months in the West Indies_, 1825, and an _Introduction to the Study of the
Greek Poets_, 1830. He practised as a chancery barrister and won
distinction in his profession. The later years of his life were devoted to
the reëditing of his uncle’s published works, and to throwing into a
connected shape the literary as distinguished from the philosophical
section of his unpublished MSS. The _Table Talk_, the best known of
Coleridge’s prose works, appeared in 1835. Four volumes of _Literary
Remains_, including the “Lectures on Shakespeare and other Dramatists,”
were issued 1836-1839. The third edition of _The Friend_, 1837, the
_Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit_, 1840, and the fifth edition of _Aids
to Reflection_, 1843, followed in succession. The second edition of the
_Biographia Literaria_, which “he had prepared in part,” was published by
his widow in 1847.
A close study of the original documents which were at my uncle’s disposal
enables me to bear testimony to his editorial skill, to his insight, his
unwearied industry, his faithfulness. Of the charm of his appearance, and
the brilliance of his conversation, I have heard those who knew him speak
with enthusiasm. He died, from an affection of the spine, in January,
1843.
[210] This lady was for many years governess in the family of Dr. Crompton
of Eaton Hall, near Liverpool. _Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge_,
London, 1873, i. 8 109-116.
[211] Sir William Rowan Hamilton, 1805-1865, the great mathematician, was
at this time Professor of Astronomy at Dublin. He was afterwards appointed
Astronomer Royal of Ireland. He was, as is well known, a man of culture
and a poet; and it was partly to ascertain his views on scientific
questions, and partly to interest him in his verses, that Hamilton was
anxious to be made known to Coleridge. He had begun a correspondence with
Wordsworth as early as 1827, and Wordsworth, on the occasion of his tour
in Ireland in 1829, visited Hamilton at the Observatory. Miss Lawrence’s
introduction led to an interview, but a letter which Hamilton wrote to
Coleridge in the spring of 1832 remained unanswered. In a second letter,
dated February 3, 1833, he speaks of a “Lecture on Astronomy” which he
forwards for Coleridge’s acceptance, and also of “some love-poems to a
lady to whom I am shortly to be married.” The love-poems, eight sonnets,
which are smoothly turned and are charming enough, have survived, but the
lecture has disappeared. The interest of this remarkable letter lies in
the double appeal to Coleridge as a scientific authority and a literary
critic. Coleridge’s reply, if reply there was, would be read with peculiar
interest. In a letter to Mr. Aubrey de Vere, May 28, 1832, he thus records
his impressions of Coleridge: “Coleridge is rather to be considered as a
Faculty than as a Mind; and I did so consider him. I seemed rather to
listen to an oracular voice, to be circumfused in a Divine ὀμφὴ, than--as
in the presence of Wordsworth--to hold commune with an exalted man.” _Life
of W. Wordsworth_, iii. 157-174, 210, etc.
[212] He is referring to a final effort to give up the use of opium
altogether. It is needless to say that, after a trial of some duration,
the attempt was found to be impracticable. It has been strenuously denied,
as though it had been falsely asserted, that under the Gillmans’ care
Coleridge overcame the habit of taking laudanum in more or less unusual
quantities. Gillman, while he maintains that his patient in the use of
narcotics satisfied the claims of duty, makes no such statement; and the
confessions or outpourings from the later note-books which are included in
the _Life_ point to a different conclusion. That after his settlement at
Highgate, in 1816, the habit was regulated and brought under control, and
that this change for the better was due to the Gillmans’ care and to his
own ever-renewed efforts to be free, none can gainsay. There was a moral
struggle, and into that “sore agony” it would be presumption to intrude;
but to a moral victory Coleridge laid no claim. And, at the last, it was
“mercy,” not “praise,” for which he pleaded.
[213] The notes on Asgill’s Treatises were printed in the _Literary
Remains, Coleridge’s Works_, 1853, v. 545-550, and in _Notes Theological
and Political_, London, 1853, pp. 103-109.
[214] Admirers of Dr. Magee, 1765-1831, who was successively Bishop of
Raphoe, 1819, and Archbishop of Dublin, 1822. He was the author of
_Discourses on the Scriptural Doctrines of the Atonement_. He was
grandfather of the late Archbishop of York, better known as Bishop of
Peterborough.
[215] I am indebted to Mr. John Henry Steinmetz, a younger brother of
Coleridge’s friend and ardent disciple, for a copy of this letter. It was
addressed, he informs me, to his brother’s friend, the late Mr. John
Peirse Kennard, of Hordle Cliff, Hants, father of the late Sir John
Coleridge Kennard, Bart., M. P. for Salisbury, and of Mr. Adam Steinmetz
Kennard, of Crawley Court Hants, at whose baptism the poet was present,
and to whom he addressed the well-known letter (Letter CCLX.), “To my
Godchild, Adam Steinmetz Kennard.”
[216] See _Table Talk_, August 14, 1832.
[217] So, too, of Keats. See _Table Talk_, etc., Bell & Sons. 1884, _Talk_
for August 14, 1832. _Table_ p. 179.
[218] “The sot would reject the poisoned cup, yet the trembling-hand with
which he raises his daily or hourly draught to his lips has not left him
ignorant that this, too, is altogether a poison.” _The Friend_, Essay
xiv.; _Coleridge’s Works_, ii. 100.
[219] The motto of this theme, (January 19, 1794), of which I possess a
transcript in Coleridge’s handwriting, or perhaps the original copy, is--
Quid fas
Atque nefas tandem incipiunt sentire peractis
Criminibus.
The theme was selected by Boyer for insertion in his _Liber Aureus_ of
school exercises in prose and verse, now in the possession of James Boyer,
Esq., of the Coopers’ Company. The sentence to which Coleridge alludes ran
thus: “As if we were in some great sea-vortex, every moment we perceive
our ruin more clearly, every moment we are impelled towards it with
greater force.”
The essay was printed for the first time in the _Illustrated London News_,
April 1, 1893.
[220] This letter, which is addressed in Coleridge’s handwriting, “Mrs.
Aders, favoured by H. Gillman,” and endorsed in pencil, “S. T. C.’s letter
for Miss Denman,” refers to the new edition of his poetical works which
Coleridge had begun to see through the press. Apparently he had intended
that the “Epitaph” should be inscribed on the outline of a headstone, and
that this should illustrate, by way of vignette, the last page of the
volume.
[221] Of the exact date of Sterling’s first visit to Highgate there is no
record. It may, however, be taken for granted that his intimacy with
Coleridge began in 1828, when he was in his twenty-third year, and
continued until the autumn of 1833,--perhaps lasted until Coleridge’s
death. Unlike Maurice, and Maurice’s disciple, Kingsley, Sterling outlived
his early enthusiasm for Coleridge and his acceptance of his teaching. It
may be said, indeed, that, thanks to the genius of his second master,
Carlyle, he suggests both the reaction against and the rejection of
Coleridge. Of that rejection Carlyle, in his _Life of Sterling_, made
himself the mouth-piece. It is idle to say of that marvellous but
disillusioning presentment that it is untruthful, or exaggerated, or
unkind. It is a sketch from the life, and who can doubt that it is
lifelike? But other eyes saw another Coleridge who held them entranced. To
them he was the seer of the vision beautiful, the “priest of invisible
rites behind the veil of the senses,” and to their ears his voice was of
one who brought good tidings of reconciliation and assurance. Many, too,
who cared for none of these things, were attracted to the man. Like the
wedding-guest in the _Ancient Mariner_, they stood still. No other, they
felt, was so wise, so loveable. They, too, were eye-witnesses, and their
portraiture has not been outpainted by Carlyle. Apart from any expression
of opinion, it is worth while to note that Carlyle saw Coleridge for the
last time in the spring of 1825, and that the _Life of Sterling_ was
composed more than a quarter of a century later. His opinion of the man
had, indeed, changed but little, as the notes and letters of 1824-25
clearly testify, but his criticism of the writer was far less appreciative
than it had been in Coleridge’s lifetime. The following extracts from a
letter of Sterling to Gillman, dated “Hurstmonceaux, October 9, 1834,” are
evidence that his feelings towards Coleridge were at that time those of a
reverent disciple:--
“The Inscription [in Highgate Church] will forever be enough to put to
shame the heartless vanity of a thousand such writers as the Opium Eater.
As a portrait, or even as a hint for one, his papers seem to me worse than
useless.
“If it is possible, I will certainly go to Highgate, and wait on Mrs.
Gillman and yourself. I have travelled the road thither with keen and
buoyant expectation, and returned with high and animating remembrances
oftener than any other in England. Hereafter, too, it will not have lost
its charm. There is not only all this world of recollection, but the
dwelling of those who best knew and best loved his work.” _Life of
Sterling_, 1871, pp. 46-54; _Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative_, by J.
Dykes Campbell, pp. 259-261; British Museum, add. MS. 34,225, f. 194.
[222] The following unpublished lines were addressed by Coleridge to this
young lady, a neighbour, I presume, and friend of the Gillmans. They must
be among the last he ever wrote:--
ELISA.
TRANSLATION OF CLAUDIAN.
_Dulcia dona mihi tu mittis semper Elisa!_
Sweet gifts to me thou sendest always, Elisa!
_Et quicquid mittis, Thura putare decet._
And whatever thou sendest, Sabean odours to think it it behoves me.
The whole adapted from an epigram of Claudius by substituting _Thura_ for
_mella_, the original distich being in return for a Present of Honey.
IMITATION.
Sweet Gift! and always doth Eliza send
Sweet Gifts and full of fragrance to her Friend.
Enough for Him to know they come from _Her_,
Whate’er she sends is Frankincense and Myrrh.
Another on the same subject by S. T. C. himself:--
Semper, Eliza! mihi tu suaveolentia donas:
Nam quicquid donas, te redolere puto.
Literal translation: Always, Eliza! to me things of sweet odour thou
presentest. For whatever thou presentest, I fancy redolent of thyself.
Whate’er thou giv’st, it still is sweet to me,
For still I find it redolent of _thee_!
[223] _Philip Van Artevelde._
[224] Sir Henry Taylor.
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