Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 2
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge · English · Gutenberg #43099 · 687,193 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 2
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Editor: Arthur Turnbull
Release date: July 6, 2013 [eBook #43099]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIOGRAPHIA EPISTOLARIS, VOLUME 2 ***
Transcriber's Notes
This is the second volume of Biographia Epistolaris. The index refers to
both volumes. There were a number of minor corrections made, which are
described in the Notes to be found at the end of this text.
The editor of the original text added material for this edition, which
was indicated using square brackets. These, of course, are retained. The
final opening bracket at the beginning of Chapter XXX was not closed.
There are several typographical effects which could only be approximated.
In particular, a small triangle, surrounded by the letters S, G, and N
is indicated here as: [S^G^N].
Words in italic font are presented using _underscore_ characters.
Superscripts are simply dropped in-line ("Dr.", "Revd"). Mixed "small
cap" text is shifted into uppercase here. As described in the end notes,
ellipses are used typographically to elide names from time to time, and
are given as printed.
Footnotes have been gathered at the end of each chapter and renumbered
to be unique.
BIOGRAPHIA
EPISTOLARIS
BEING
THE BIOGRAPHICAL SUPPLEMENT OF
COLERIDGE'S BIOGRAPHIA
LITERARIA
WITH ADDITIONAL LETTERS, ETC., EDITED BY
A. TURNBULL
VOL. II
[Illustration]
LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1911
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER XI. MALTA AND ITALY II, 1
Letter 130. To J. Tobin. 10 April, 1804 1
CHAPTER XII. HOME AGAIN, ROLLING, RUDDERLESS! THEOLOGY 8
Letter 131. To Cottle. -- -- 1807 9
132. " -- -- 1807 10
133. " -- June, 1807 13
134. George Fricker. -- -- 1807 22
135. Cottle. -- -- 1807 25
CHAPTER XIII. DE QUINCEY 27
Letter 136. To Cottle. 7 October, 1807 28
CHAPTER XIV. FIRST LECTURES 30
Letter 137. To Humphry Davy. 11 Sept. 1807 30
138. Dr. Andrew Bell. 15 April, 1808 35
CHAPTER XV. _THE FRIEND_ 38
Letter 139. To Wade. -- -- 1807-8 38
140. Humphry Davy. -- Dec. 1808 40
141. " 14 Dec. 1808 41
142. " 30 Jany. 1809 45
143. ---- 1 June, 1809 48
144. Southey. 20 Oct. 1809 52
145. R. L. 26 Oct. 1809 57
146. "Cantab." 21 Dec. 1809 63
CHAPTER XVI. QUARREL WITH WORDSWORTH; LECTURES, 1811-12 66
Letter 147. To Godwin. 26 Mch. 1811 68
148. " 29 Mch. 1811 70
149. Dr. Andrew Bell. 30 Nov. 1811 74
CHAPTER XVII. DANIEL STUART AND _THE COURIER_ 76
Letter 150. To Daniel Stuart. 4 June, 1811 79
151. " 8 May, 1816 90
CHAPTER XVIII. MRS. COLERIDGE; LAST STAY AT THE LAKE
DISTRICT 100
CHAPTER XIX. _REMORSE_ 104
Letter 152. To Poole. 13 Feby. 1813 105
CHAPTER XX. COTTLE'S DARK CHAPTER 116
Letter 153. To Wade. 8 Dec. 1813 117
154. Cottle. 5-14 April, 1814 118
155. " -- -- 1814 119
156. " -- -- 1814 120
157. " -- -- 1814 121
158. " 26 April, 1814 126
159. " 26 April, 1814 129
160. " Apl. 1814 130
161. Miss Cottle. 13 May, 1814 131
162. Cottle. 27 May, 1814 132
163. Wade. 26 June,1814 135
CHAPTER XXI. THE MORGANS; BRISTOL AND CALNE 140
Letter 164. To Cottle. 7 March, 1815 142
165. " 10 March, 1815 144
CHAPTER XXII. HIGHGATE; LECTURES OF 1818 149
Letter 166. To Gillman. 13 April, 1816 150
167. -- -- -- 1816 153
168. -- -- -- 1816 154
169. -- -- -- 1816 157
CHAPTER XXIII. THOMAS ALLSOP 158
Letter 170. To Allsop. 28 Jany. 1818 158
171. " 20 Sept. 1818 160
172. " 26 Nov. 1818 160
173. " 2 Dec. 1818 163
174. Mr. Britton. 28 Feby. 1819 166
175. " Feby.-Mch. 1819 168
176. Allsop. 30 Sept. 1819 169
177. " 13 Dec. 1819 172
178. To Allsop. 20 Mch. 1820 174
179. " 10 April, 1820 178
CHAPTER XXIV. SIR WALTER SCOTT 181
Letter 180. To Allsop. 8 or 18 April, 1820 182
181. " 31 July, 1820 190
182. " 8 August, 1820 192
183. " 11 October, 1820 198
184. " 20 October, 1820 201
185. " 25 October, 1820 202
186. " 27 Nov. 1820 203
187. " January, 1821 204
CHAPTER XXV. H.C. ROBINSON 216
CHAPTER XXVI. CHARLES LAMB 218
Letter 188. To Allsop. 1 March, 1821 218
189. " 4 May, 1821 219
190. " 23 June, 1821 226
191. " --- 1821 227
192. " 15 Sept. 1821 227
193. " 24 Sept. 1821 229
194. Mr. Blackwood. -- Oct. 1821 232
195. Allsop. 20 Oct. 1821 238
196. " 2 Nov. 1821 240
197. " 17 Nov. 1821 244
198. " -- 1821 245
199. " 25 Jany. 1822 247
200. " 4 Mch. 1822 249
201. " 22 Mch. 1822 251
202. " 18 April, 1822 255
CHAPTER XXVII. THE GILLMANS 257
Letter 203. To Allsop. 30 May, 1822 257
204. " 29 June, 1822 259
205. " 8 Octr. 1822 261
206. Gillman. 28 Octr.1822 265
207. Allsop. 26 Dec. 1822 266
208. " 10 Dec. 1823 269
209. " 24 Dec. 1823 270
210. Mrs. Allsop. -- 1823 270
211. Mr. and Mrs. Allsop. 8 April, 1824 272
Letter 212. To Allsop. 14 April, 1824 274
213. " 27 April, 1824 274
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE NEW ACADEME 278
Letter 214. To Allsop. 20 Mch. 1825 284
215. " 30 April, 1825 286
216. " 2 May, 1825 287
217. " 10 May, 1825 287
218. " -- 1825 290
CHAPTER XXIX. ALARIC WATTS 292
CHAPTER XXX. THE RHINE TOUR, AND LAST COLLECTED
EDITIONS OF THE POEMS 296
Letter 219. To Adam S. Kennard. 13 July, 1834 302
CHAPTER XXXI. CONCLUSION 305
APPENDIX AND ADDITIONAL NOTES 313
INDEX 327
BIOGRAPHIA EPISTOLARIS
CHAPTER XI
MALTA AND ITALY
[Coleridge set sail from Portsmouth in the "Speedwell" on 9th or 10th
April 1804. He wrote to J. Tobin on the 10th (_Anima Poetae_, p. 68):
LETTER 130. TO J. TOBIN
April 10, 1804.
Men who habitually enjoy robust health have, too generally, the trick,
and a very cruel one it is, of imagining that they discover the secret
of all their acquaintances' ill health in some malpractice or other;
and, sometimes, by gravely asserting this, here, there, and everywhere
(as who likes his penetration hid under a bushel?), they not only do all
they can, without intending it, to deprive the poor sufferer of that
sympathy which is always a comfort and, in some degree, a support to
human nature, but, likewise, too often implant serious alarm and
uneasiness in the minds of the person's relatives and his nearest and
dearest connections. Indeed (but that I have known its inutility, that I
should be ridiculously sinning against my own law which I was
propounding, and that those who are most fond of advising are the least
able to hear advice from others, as the passion to command makes men
disobedient) I should often have been on the point of advising you
against the two-fold rage of advising and of discussing character, both
the one and the other of which infallibly generates presumption and
blindness to our own faults. Nay! more particularly where, from whatever
cause, there exists a slowness to understand or an aptitude to mishear
and consequently misunderstand what has been said, it too often renders
an otherwise truly good man a mischief-maker to an extent of which he is
but little aware. Our friends' reputation should be a religion to us,
and when it is lightly sacrificed to what self-adulation calls a love of
telling the truth (in reality a lust of talking something seasoned with
the cayenne and capsicum of personality), depend upon it, something in
the heart is warped or warping, more or less according to the greater or
lesser power of the counteracting causes. I confess to you, that being
exceedingly low and heart-fallen, I should have almost sunk under the
operation of reproof and admonition (the whole too, in my conviction,
grounded on utter mistake) at the moment I was quitting, perhaps for
ever! my dear country and all that makes it so dear--but the high esteem
which I cherish towards you, and my sense of your integrity and the
reality of your attachment and concern blows upon me refreshingly as the
sea-breeze on the tropic islander. Show me anyone made better by blunt
advice, and I may abate of my dislike to it, but I have experienced the
good effects of the contrary in Wordsworth's conduct toward me; and, in
Poole and others, have witnessed enough of its ill-effects to be
convinced that it does little else but harm both to the adviser and the
advisee.[1]
* * * * *
There is some dubiety as to whether the J. Tobin to whom the above
letter was addressed is John Tobin, the dramatist, or his brother James.
But Coleridge had taken
up quarters with either of the brothers in London before sailing for
Malta (Dykes Campbell's _Life_, p. 141); and the letter is Coleridge's
parting shot for his host's over solicitous advice.
On 16th April he was off Oporto, and wrote a description of the place,
as seen from the sea, for Southey (_Letters_, 469). The "Speedwell" was
convoyed by the "Leviathan," man-of-war of 74 guns. Lisbon and the rest
of the Portuguese coast are described by Coleridge, and on 19th April
the "Speedwell" reached Gibraltar, where Coleridge landed and scrambled
on the rocks among the monkeys, "our poor relations." In his note-books
he describes more fully the scene around the Rock of Gibraltar with its
multitude and 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. "At its feet mighty ramparts establishing themselves in the
sea, with their huge artillery, hollow trunks of iron where Death and
Thunder sleep," and "the abiding things of Nature, great, calm,
majestic, and one!" (_Letters_, pp. 478-9; _Anima Poetae_, pp. 70, 74.)
In the voyage between Gibraltar and Malta they were frequently in long
dead calms--"every rope of the whole ship reflected in the bright soft
blue sea"--an _Ancient Mariner_ touch. They reached Valetta on 18th May,
where Coleridge was the guest of John Stoddart (afterwards Sir John
Stoddart), Attorney-General for Malta. Sir Alexander Ball was then
governor of the Island, and was greatly pleased with Coleridge's
conversation and manners, and appointed him his private secretary. The
public secretary of the Island dying suddenly in January 1805, Coleridge
was made interim Government secretary until the new nominee should
arrive. He held the office for eight months, from 18th January to 6th
September (_Letters_, 494); and he acquitted himself well as a business
man in the post. What De Quincey says to the contrary is a tissue of
unfounded conjectures. Dykes Campbell, one of Coleridge's most
painstaking biographers, admits that there is nothing to show that
Coleridge did not perform the routine work of office well.
While in Malta Coleridge duly entered in his note-books his impressions
of his surroundings and he records his dreamy introspections of the
night watches (_Anima Poetae_). But Coleridge did not spend all his time
in Malta. Dykes Campbell informs us that "early in August, the _demon of
restlessness_ drove him to Sicily" (_Life_, p. 145), which may be rather
interpreted that the proximity of the land of Theocritus was
irresistible. He was away from the middle of August to 7th November
1804. He twice ascended Etna; and, although Dykes Campbell doubts his
having attained to the summit, according to his own account he looked
down the crater (Cottle's _Rem._, 318; Letter, No. 133). Very few of
Coleridge's letters written in Malta are extant; on account of the
precariousness of the mode of despatch in a time of war some of them
never reached their destination.
In the Spring of 1805 Coleridge was regretting that he had accepted the
Public Secretaryship, saying that his profits would be much less than if
he had employed his time and efforts in his own literary pursuits
(_Letters_, 491), another way of grumbling against occupations inferior
to the pursuit of the Permanent. To Daniel Stuart he writes on 20th
April 1805: "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 intrusion 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[2] death 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 by Naples, Ancona, Trieste, etc., on or about
the second of next month" (_Letters_, 494-5). To his wife he says, on 21
July 1805: "I have been hoping and expecting to get away for England for
five months past, and Mr. Chapman[3] 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--and administer half as many
oaths--besides which I have the public memorials to write, and, worse
than all, constant matters of irritation. Sir A. Ball is indeed
exceedingly kind to me" (_Letters_, 496-7).
Coleridge did not return by the proposed route of Naples, Ancona,
Trieste, to be continued, to avoid Napoleon's power, by Vienna, Berlin,
Embden, and Denmark (_Letters_, 492). He went, on the contrary,
straight to Naples in company with a gentleman unnamed (Dykes Campbell's
_Life_, 149). Here he remained till the end of January 1806; and then
proceeded to Rome, where he associated with the artists resident in the
Papal capital. He made the acquaintance of Baron W. von Humboldt, then
Prussian Minister at the Papal Court; Ludwig Tieck, the German
translator of Shakespeare; Washington Allston, the best American painter
of his day; Canova, and Washington Irving; (Flagg's _Life of Allston_,
61).
Various accounts have been given about what Coleridge said regarding his
sojourn in Italy and his flight from it. Gillman (179-181), Cottle
(_Rem._, 310-313), and Caroline Fox (_Journals_), all differing as to
particulars. Flagg, the writer of the _Life of Allston_, says: "He had
intended to go by Switzerland and Germany, but being somewhat
apprehensive of danger on account of the movements of the French troops,
took the precautions to ask the advice of Ambassador von Humboldt; he
advised Coleridge to avoid Bonaparte, who was meditating the seizure of
his person, and had already sent to Rome an order for his arrest, which
was withheld from execution by the connivance of the good old Pope, Pius
VII, who sent him a passport, and counselled his immediate flight by way
of Leghorn. Accordingly he hastened to that port, where he found an
American vessel ready to sail for England, and embarked. On the voyage
they were chased by a French sail; the captain, becoming alarmed,
commanded Coleridge to throw his papers, including his notes on Rome,
overboard" (_Life of Allston_, p. 61). This agrees substantially with
what Coleridge says in the _Biographia Literaria_, Chapter X. Cottle
works the matter up into a romance in his own facetious way; and the
other re-narrators mistake the facts somewhat. Caroline Fox, for
instance, locates the embarkation from Genoa, saying: "On reaching
Genoa, he so delighted an American by his conversation, who had never
heard anything like it since he left Niagara, that at all risks, and
with many subtleties, he got him on board, and brought him safe to
England" (_Journals_, I, 123).[4]]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] [Letters CLI-CXLIII follow 130.]
[2] [Drowned 5th February 1805.]
[3] [The new Secretary.]
[4] [It is quite true that he did induce an American captain to
smuggle him on board.]
CHAPTER XII
HOME AGAIN, _ROLLING_, _RUDDERLESS_! THEOLOGY
[Coleridge reached England on 17th August 1806 (_Letters_, 499), and
made for London, intending to write articles once more for Daniel
Stuart. He does not seem, however, to have done anything at this time
for the newspapers.[5] Humphry Davy was endeavouring to get him to give
a course of lectures on the Fine Arts (Dykes Campbell's _Life_, 154). At
the close of the year Coleridge was at Coleorton, the seat of Sir George
Beaumont in Leicestershire, where he met William and Dorothy
Wordsworth.[6] Wordsworth read to him the _Prelude_, now completed; and
Coleridge, after its recital, wrote the well-known poem to Wordsworth in
blank verse, which is as much a dirge over his own failures as a eulogy
of Wordsworth's poem. Wordsworth's view of the great men of all ages,
forming an interconnected scheme of truth slowly being revealed, is a
Coleridgean rather than a Wordsworthian idea (_Prelude_, Book XIII,
300-311); and Coleridge in his verses to his brother bard hails him as
among the men of the Permanent, among the
Choir of ever-during men.
On 17th February, Coleridge was still at Coleorton (Dykes Campbell's
_Life_, 138); but in July, Coleridge and his wife and family were again
at Stowey on a visit to Poole (_T. Poole and his Friends_, ii, 175-182).
Here Coleridge remained till the end of September. Tom Wedgwood had died
while he was at Malta; and his brother Josiah expected Coleridge to
furnish him with some materials for a Life of Tom. Poole endeavoured to
impress upon him the necessity of complying; but the task was
distasteful to him, at which Josiah Wedgwood, not unnaturally, was
displeased.[7] But Coleridge, after some procrastination, wrote to
Josiah Wedgwood on 27th June 1807, giving reasons for his delay
(Meteyard's _Group of Englishmen_, p. 324); and Wedgwood wrote to Poole,
"I was truly glad to hear from him. His letter removed all those
feelings of anger which occasionally, but not permanently, existed in my
mind towards him." (_T. Poole and his Friends_, ii, 185.)
Meantime, we find Coleridge again in correspondence with Cottle, who had
heard of his arrival in Stowey. Cottle wrote to him, expressing the hope
that Coleridge's health would soon allow him to pay a visit to Bristol
(_Rem._, 305). To this Coleridge replied:
LETTER 131. TO COTTLE
(---- 1807.)
Dear Cottle,
On my return to Bristol, whenever that may be, I will certainly give you
the right hand of old fellowship; but, alas! you will find me the
wretched wreck of what you knew me, rolling, rudderless. My health is
extremely bad. Pain I have enough of, but that is indeed to me, a mere
trifle, but the almost unceasing, overpowering sensations of
wretchedness: achings in my limbs, with an indescribable restlessness,
that makes action to any available purpose, almost impossible: and worst
of all, the sense of blighted utility, regrets, not remorseless. But
enough; yea, more than enough; if these things produce, or deepen the
conviction of the utter powerlessness of ourselves, and that we either
perish, or find aid from something that passes understanding.
Affectionately,
S. T. C.
* * * * *
Cottle tells us he knew nothing as yet of opium, and was struck with the
interesting narratives Coleridge gave of his Italian experiences and of
his voyage to England. Theology was now in the ascendant with Coleridge
who had now abjured unitarianism and become more orthodox. The following
letters on the Trinity and kindred subjects attest to the veracity of
Cottle's estimate of Coleridge at this period (_Reminiscences_, 306,
325-6):
LETTER 132. TO COTTLE
(1807.)
* * * The declaration that the Deity is "the sole Operant" (Religious
Musings) is indeed far too bold; may easily be misconstrued into
Spinozism; and, therefore, though it is susceptible of a pious and
justifiable interpretation, I should by no means now use such a phrase.
I was very young when I wrote that poem, and my religious feelings were
more settled than my theological notions.[8]
As to eternal punishments, I can only say, that there are many passages
in Scripture, and these not metaphorical, which declare that all flesh
shall be finally saved; that the word _aionios_ is indeed used sometimes
when eternity must be meant, but so is the word "Ancient of Days," yet
it would be strange reasoning to affirm, that therefore, the word
ancient must always mean eternal. The literal meaning of _aionios_ is,
"through ages;" that is indefinite; beyond the power of imagination to
bound. But as to the effects of such a doctrine, I say, First,--that it
would be more pious to assert nothing concerning it, one way or the
other.
Ezra says well, "My Son, meditate on the rewards of the righteous, and
examine not over-curiously into the fate of the wicked." (This
apocryphal Ezra is supposed to have been written by some Christian in
the first age of Christianity.) Second,--that however the doctrine is
now broached, and publicly preached by a large and increasing sect, it
is no longer possible to conceal it from such persons as would be likely
to read and understand the _Religious Musings_. Third.--That if the
offers of eternal blessedness; if the love of God; if gratitude; if the
fear of punishment, unknown indeed as to its kind and duration, but
declared to be unimaginably great; if the possibility, nay, the
probability, that this punishment may be followed by annihilation, not
final happiness, cannot divert men from wickedness to virtue; I fear
there will be no charm in the word Eternal.
Fourth, that it is a certain fact, that scarcely any believe eternal
punishment practically with relation to themselves. They all hope in
God's mercy, till they make it a presumptuous watch-word for religious
indifference. And this, because there is no medium in their faith,
between blessedness and misery,--infinite in degree and duration; which
latter they do not practically, and with their whole hearts, believe. It
is opposite to their clearest views of the divine attributes; for God
cannot be vindictive, neither therefore can his punishments be founded
on a vindictive principle. They must be, either for amendment, or
warning for others; but eternal punishment precludes the idea of
amendment, and its infliction, after the day of judgment, when all not
so punished shall be divinely secured from the possibility of falling,
renders the notion of warning to others inapplicable.
The Catholics are far more afraid of, and incomparably more influenced
in their conduct by, the doctrine of purgatory, than Protestants by that
of hell! That the Catholics practise more superstitions than morals, is
the effect of other doctrines.--Supererogation; invocation of saints;
power of relics, etc., etc., and not of Purgatory, which can only act as
a general motive, to what must depend on other causes.
Fifth, and lastly.--It is a perilous state in which a Christian stands,
if he has gotten no further than to avoid evil from the fear of hell!
This is no part of the Christian religion, but a preparatory awakening
of the soul: a means of dispersing those gross films which render the
eye of the spirit incapable of any religion, much less of such a faith
as that of the love of Christ.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but perfect love
shutteth out fear. It is sufficient for the utmost fervour of gratitude
that we are saved from punishments, too great to be conceived; but our
salvation is surely not complete, till by the illumination from above,
we are made to know "the exceeding sinfulness of sin," and that
horribleness in its nature, which, while it involves all these frightful
consequences, is yet, of itself more affrightful to a regenerated soul
than those consequences. To him who but for a moment felt the influence
of God's presence, the thought of eternal exclusion from the sense of
that presence, would be the worst hell his imagination could conceive.
N.B. I admit of no right, no claim of a creature on its Creator. I speak
only of hopes and of faith deduced from inevitable reason, the gift of
the Creator; from his acknowledged attributes. Above all, immortality
is a free gift, which we neither do, nor can deserve. * * *
S. T. C.
LETTER 133. TO COTTLE
Bristol (June), 1807.
Dear Cottle,
To pursue our last conversation. Christians expect no outward or
sensible miracles from prayer. Its effects, and its fruitions are
spiritual, and accompanied says that _true Divine_, Archbishop Leighton,
"not by reasons and arguments, but by an inexpressible kind of evidence,
which they only know who have it."
To this I would add, that even those who, like me I fear, have not
attained it, yet may presume it. First, because reason itself, or rather
mere human nature, in any dispassionate moment, feels the necessity of
religion, but if this be not true there is no religion, no religation,
or binding over again; nothing added to reason, and therefore
_Socinianism_, misnamed _Unitarianism_, is not only not _Christianity_,
it is not even _religion_, it does not _religate_; does not bind anew.
The first outward and sensible result of prayer is, a penitent
resolution, joined with a consciousness of weakness in effecting it, yea
even a dread, too well grounded, lest by breaking and falsifying it, the
soul should add guilt to guilt; by the very means it has taken to escape
from guilt; so pitiable is the state of unregenerate man.
Are you familiar with Leighton's Works? He resigned his archbishoprick,
and retired to voluntary poverty on account of the persecutions of the
Presbyterians, saying, "I should not dare to introduce Christianity
itself with such cruelties, how much less for a surplice, and the name
of a bishop." If there could be an intermediate space between inspired,
and uninspired writings, that space would be occupied by Leighton. No
show of learning, no appearance, or ostentatious display of eloquence,
and yet both may be shown in him, conspicuously and holily. There is in
him something that must be felt, even as the Scriptures must be felt.
You ask me my views of the _Trinity_. I accept the doctrine, not as
deduced from human reason, in its grovelling capacity for comprehending
spiritual things, but as the clear revelation of Scripture. But perhaps
it may be said, the Socinians do not admit this doctrine as being taught
in the Bible. I know enough of their shifts and quibbles, with their
dexterity at explaining away all they dislike, and that is not a little,
but though beguiled once by them, I happily for my own peace of mind,
escaped from their sophistries, and now hesitate not to affirm, that
Socinians would lose all character for honesty, if they were to explain
their neighbour's will with the same latitude of interpretation, which
they do the Scriptures.
I have in my head some floating ideas on the _Logos_, which I hope,
hereafter, to mould into a consistent form; but it is a gross perversion
of the truth, in Socinians, to declare that we believe in _three gods_;
and they know it to be false. They might, with equal justice affirm that
we believe in _three suns_. The meanest peasant, who has acquired the
first rudiments of Christianity, would shrink back from a thing so
monstrous. Still the Trinity has its difficulties. It would be strange
if otherwise. A _Revelation_ that revealed nothing, not within the grasp
of human reason!--no religation, no binding over again, as before said;
but these difficulties are shadows, contrasted with the substantive and
insurmountable obstacles, with which _they_ contend who admit the
_Divine authority of Scripture_, with the _superlative excellence of
Christ_, and yet undertake to prove that these Scriptures teach, and
that Christ taught his own _pure humanity_.
If Jesus Christ was merely a man, if he was not God as well as man, be
it considered, he could not have been even a _good man_. There is no
medium. The SAVIOUR _in that case_ was absolutely _a deceiver_! one,
transcendantly _unrighteous_! in advancing pretensions to miracles, by
the "Finger of God," which he never performed; and by asserting claims,
(as a man) in the most aggravated sense, blasphemous. These
consequences, Socinians, to be consistent, must allow, and which impious
arrogation of Divinity in Christ, according to their faith, as well as
his false assumption of a community of "glory" with the Father, "before
the world was," even they will be necessitated completely to admit the
exoneration of the Jews,[9] according to their law, in crucifying one,
who "being a man," "made himself God!" But in the Christian, rather than
in the _Socinian_, or _Pharisaic_ view, all these objections vanish, and
harmony succeeds to inexplicable confusion. If Socinians hesitate in
ascribing _unrighteousness_ to Christ, the inevitable result of their
principles, they tremble, as well they might, at their avowed creed, and
virtually renounce what they profess to uphold.
The Trinity, as Bishop Leighton has well remarked, is "a doctrine of
faith, not of demonstration," except in a _moral_ sense. If the New
Testament declare it, not in an insulated passage, but through the whole
breadth of its pages, rendering, with any other admission, the book
which is the Christian's anchor-hold of hope, dark and contradictory,
then it is not to be rejected, but on a penalty that reduces to an atom,
all the sufferings this earth can inflict.
Let the grand question be determined.--Is, or is not the Bible
_inspired_? No one book has ever been subjected to so rigid an
investigation as the Bible, by minds the most capacious, and in the
result, which has so triumphantly repelled all the assaults of infidels.
In the extensive intercourse which I have had with this class of men, I
have seen their prejudices surpassed only by their ignorance. This I
found particularly the case in Dr. Darwin (Letter 19), the prince of
their fraternity. Without therefore, stopping to contend on what all
dispassionate men must deem, undebatable ground, I may assume
inspiration as admitted; and, equally so, that it would be an insult to
man's understanding, to suppose any other Revelation from God than the
Christian Scriptures. If these Scriptures, impregnable in their
strength, sustained in their pretensions, by undeniable prophecies and
miracles, and by the experience of the _inner man_, in all ages, as well
as by a concatenation of arguments, all bearing upon one point, and
extending with miraculous consistency, through a series of fifteen
hundred years; if all this combined proof does not establish their
validity, nothing can be proved under the sun; but the world and man
must be abandoned, with all its consequences, to one universal
scepticism! Under such sanctions, therefore, if these Scriptures, as a
fundamental truth, _do_ inculcate the doctrine of the _Trinity_; however
surpassing human comprehension; then I say, we are bound to admit it on
the strength of _moral demonstration_.
The supreme Governor of the world and the Father of our spirits, has
seen fit to disclose to us much of his will, and the whole of his
natural and moral perfections. In some instances he has given his _word_
only, and demanded our _faith_; while on other momentous subjects,
instead of bestowing full revelation, like the _Via Lactea_, he has
furnished a glimpse only, through either the medium of inspiration, or
by the exercise of those rational faculties with which he has endowed
us. I consider the Trinity as substantially resting on the first
proposition, yet deriving support from the last.
I recollect when I stood on the summit of Etna, and darted my gaze down
the crater; the immediate vicinity was discernible, till, lower down,
obscurity gradually terminated in total darkness. Such figures exemplify
many truths revealed in the Bible. We pursue them, until, from the
imperfection of our faculties, we are lost in impenetrable night. All
truths, however, that are essential to faith, _honestly_ interpreted;
all that are important to human conduct, under every diversity of
circumstance, are manifest as a blazing star. The promises also of
felicity to the righteous in the future world, though the precise nature
of that felicity may not be defined, are illustrated by every image that
can swell the imagination; while the misery of the _lost_, in its
unutterable intensity, though the language that describes it is all
necessarily figurative, is there exhibited as resulting chiefly, if not
wholly, from the withdrawment of the _light of God's countenance_, and a
banishment from his _presence_! best comprehended in this world by
reflecting on the desolations, which would instantly follow the loss of
the sun's vivifying and universally diffused _warmth_.
You, or rather _all_, should remember that some truths from their
nature, surpass the scope of man's limited powers, and stand as the
criteria of _faith_, determining by their rejection, or admission, who
among the sons of men can confide in the veracity of heaven. Those more
ethereal truths, of which the Trinity is conspicuously the chief,
without being circumstantially explained, may be faintly illustrated by
material objects. The eye of man cannot discern the satellites of
Jupiter, nor become sensible of the multitudinous stars, whose rays have
never reached our planet, and consequently garnish not the canopy of
night; yet are they the less _real_, because their existence lies beyond
man's unassisted gaze? The tube of the philosopher, and the _celestial
telescope_,--the unclouded visions of heaven will confirm the one class
of truths, and irradiate the other.
The _Trinity_ is a subject on which analogical reasoning may
advantageously be admitted, as furnishing, at least, a glimpse of light,
and with this, for the present, we must be satisfied. Infinite Wisdom
deemed clearer manifestations inexpedient; and is man to dictate to his
Maker? I may further remark, that where we cannot behold a desirable
object distinctly, we must take the best view we can; and I think you,
and every candid enquiring mind, may derive assistance from such
reflections as the following.
Notwithstanding the arguments of Spinosa, and Des Cartes, and other
advocates of the _Material system_, or, in more appropriate language,
the _Atheistical system_! it is admitted by all men, not prejudiced, not
biased by sceptical prepossessions, that _mind_ is distinct from
_matter_. The mind of man, however, is involved in inscrutable darkness,
(as the profoundest metaphysicians well know) and is to be estimated, if
at all, alone by an inductive process; that is, by its _effects_.
Without entering on the question, whether an extremely circumscribed
portion of the mental process, surpassing instinct, may or may not be
extended to quadrupeds, it is universally acknowledged, that the mind of
man alone, regulates all the actions[10] of his corporeal frame. Mind,
therefore, may be regarded as a distinct genus, in the scale ascending
above brutes, and including the whole of intellectual existences;
advancing from _thought_, that mysterious thing! in its lowest form,
through all the gradations of sentient and rational beings, till it
arrives at a Bacon, a Newton; and then, when unincumbered by matter,
extending its illimitable sway through Seraph and Archangel, till we are
lost in the GREAT INFINITE!
Is it not deserving of notice, as an especial subject of meditation,
that our _limbs_, in all they do or can accomplish, implicitly obey the
dictation of the _mind_? that this operating power, whatever its name,
under certain limitations, exercises a sovereign dominion not only over
our limbs, but over our[11] intellectual pursuits? The mind of every man
is evidently the fulcrum, the moving force, which alike regulates all
his limbs and actions: and in which example, we find a strong
illustration of the subordinate nature of mere _matter_. That alone
which gives direction to the organic parts of our nature, is wholly
_mind_; and one mind if placed over a thousand limbs, could, with
undiminished ease, control and regulate the whole.
This idea is advanced on the supposition that _one mind_ could command
an unlimited direction over any given number of _limbs_, provided they
were all connected by _joint_ and _sinew_. But suppose, through some
occult and inconceivable means, these limbs were dis-associated, as to
all material connexion; suppose, for instance, one mind with unlimited
authority, governed the operations of _two_ separate persons, would not
this substantially, be only _one person_, seeing the directing principle
was one? If the truth here contended for, be admitted, that _two
persons_, governed by _one mind_, is incontestably _one person_; the
same conclusion would be arrived at, and the proposition equally be
justified, which affirmed that, _three_, or otherwise _four_ persons,
owning also necessary and essential subjection to _one mind_, would only
be so many diversities or modifications of that _one mind_, and
therefore the component parts virtually collapsing into _one whole_, the
person would be _one_. Let any man ask himself, whose understanding can
both reason and become the depository of truth, whether, if _one mind_
thus regulated with absolute authority, _three_, or otherwise _four_
persons, with all their congeries of material parts, would not these
parts inert in themselves, when subjected to one predominant mind, be in
the most logical sense, _one person_? Are ligament and exterior
combination indispensable pre-requisites to the sovereign influence of
mind over mind? or mind over matter?
But perhaps it may be said, we have no instance of one mind governing
more than one body. This may be, but the argument remains the same. With
a proud spirit, that forgets its own contracted range of thought, and
circumscribed knowledge, who is to limit the sway of Omnipotence? or
presumptuously to deny the possibility of _that_ Being, who called light
out of darkness, so to exalt the dominion of _one mind_, as to give it
absolute sway over other dependant minds, or (indifferently) over
detached, or combined portions of organized matter? But if this
superinduced quality be conferable on any order of created beings, it is
blasphemy to limit the power of God, and to deny _his_ capacity to
transfuse _his own_ Spirit, when and to whom he will.
This reasoning may now be applied in illustration of the Trinity. We are
too much in the habit of viewing our Saviour Jesus Christ, through the
medium of his body. "A body was prepared for him," but this body was
mere matter; as insensible in itself as every human frame when deserted
by the soul. If therefore the Spirit that was in Christ, was the Spirit
of the Father; if no thought, no vibration, no spiritual communication,
or miraculous display, existed in, or proceeded from Christ, not
immediately and consubstantially identified with Jehovah, the Great
First cause; if all these operating principles were thus derived, in
consistency alone with the conjoint divine attributes; if this Spirit of
the Father ruled and reigned in Christ as his own manifestation, then in
the strictest sense, Christ exhibited "the Godhead bodily," and was
undeniably "_one_ with the Father;" confirmatory of the Saviour's words:
"Of myself," (my body) "I can do nothing, the Father that dwelleth in
me, he doeth the works."
But though I speak of the body as inert in itself, and necessarily
allied to matter, yet this declaration must not be understood as
militating against the Christian doctrine of the _resurrection of the
body_. In its grosser form, the thought is not to be admitted, for
"flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God," but, that the body,
without losing its consciousness and individuality, may be subjected by
the illimitable power of Omnipotence, to a sublimating process, so as to
be rendered compatible with spiritual association, is not opposed to
reason, in its severe abstract exercises, while in attestation of this
_exhilarating belief_, there are many remote analogies in nature
exemplifying the same truth, while it is in the strictest accordance
with that final dispensation, which must, as Christians, regulate all
our speculations. I proceed now to say, that
If the postulate be thus admitted, that one mind influencing two bodies,
would only involve a diversity of operations, but in reality be one in
essence; or otherwise (as an hypothetical argument, illustrative of
truth), if one pre-eminent mind, or spiritual subsistence, unconnected
with matter, possessed an undivided and sovereign dominion over two or
more disembodied minds, so as to become the exclusive source of all
their subtlest volitions and exercises, the _unity_, however complex the
modus of its manifestation, would be fully established; and this
principle extends to Deity itself, and shows the true sense, as I
conceive, in which Christ and the Father are one.
In continuation of this reasoning, if God who is light, the Sun of the
Moral World, should in his union of Infinite Wisdom, Power, and
Goodness, and from all Eternity, have ordained that an emanation from
himself,--for aught we know, an essential emanation, as light is
inseparable from the luminary of day--should not only have existed in
his Son, in the fulness of time to be united to a mortal body, but that
a like emanation from himself (also perhaps essential) should have
constituted the Holy Spirit, who, without losing his ubiquity, was more
especially sent to this lower earth, _by_ the Son, _at_ the impulse of
the Father, then in the most comprehensive sense, God, and his Son,
Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, are ONE. "Three persons in one God,"
and thus form the true Trinity in Unity.
To suppose that more than ONE Independent Power, or Governing mind
exists in the whole universe, is absolute Polytheism, against which the
denunciations of all the Jewish and Christian canonical books were
directed. And if there be but ONE directing MIND, that Mind is God!
operating however, in Three Persons, according to the direct and uniform
declarations of that inspiration which "brought life and immortality to
light." Yet this divine doctrine of the Trinity is to be received, not
because it is or can be clear to finite apprehension, but (in
reiteration of the argument) because the Scriptures, in their
unsophisticated interpretation expressly state it. The Trinity,
therefore, from its important aspects, and Biblical prominence, is the
grand article of faith, and the foundation of the whole Christian
system.
Who can say, as Christ and the Holy Ghost proceeded from, and are still
one with the Father, and as all the disciples of Christ derive their
fulness from him, and, in spirit, are inviolately united to him as a
branch is to the vine, who can say, but that in one view, what was once
mysteriously separated, may as mysteriously, be re-combined, and
(without interfering with the everlasting Trinity, and the individuality
of the spiritual and seraphic orders) the Son, at the consummation of
all things, deliver up his mediatorial kingdom to the Father, and God,
in some peculiar and infinitely sublime sense, become All in All! God
love you,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
"The following letter," says Cottle, "was written by Mr. Coleridge to
Mr. George Fricker, his brother-in-law, it is believed, in 1807."
LETTER 134. TO GEORGE FRICKER
Saturday afternoon.
(1807.)
My dear young friend,
I am sorry that you should have felt any delicacy in disclosing to me
your religious feelings, as rendering it inconsistent with your
tranquillity of mind to spend the Sunday evening with me. Though I do
not find in that book, which we both equally revere, any command, either
express, or which I can infer, which leads me to attach any criminality
to cheerful and innocent social intercourse on the Lord's day; though I
do not find that it was in the least degree forbidden to the Jews on
their Sabbath; and though I have been taught by Luther, and the great
founders of the Church of England, that the Sabbath was a part of the
ceremonial and transitory parts of the law given by heaven to Moses; and
that our Sunday is binding on our consciences, chiefly from its manifest
and most awful usefulness, and indeed moral necessity; yet I highly
commend your firmness in what you think right, and assure you solemnly,
that I esteem you greatly for it. I would much rather that you should
have too much, than an atom too little. I am far from surprised that,
having seen what you have seen, and suffered what you have suffered, you
should have opened your soul to a sense of our fallen nature; and the
incapability of man to heal himself. My opinions may not be in all
points the same as yours; but I have experienced a similar alteration. I
was for many years a Socinian; and at times almost a Naturalist, but
sorrow, and ill health, and disappointment in the only deep wish I had
ever cherished, forced me to look into myself; I read the New Testament
again, and I became fully convinced, that Socinianism was not only not
the doctrine of the New Testament, but that it scarcely deserved the
name of a religion in any sense. An extract from a letter which I wrote
a few months ago to a sceptical friend, who had been a Socinian, and of
course rested all the evidences of Christianity on miracles, to the
exclusion of grace and inward faith, will perhaps, surprise you, as
showing you how much nearer our opinions are than what you must have
supposed. "I fear that the mode of defending Christianity, adopted by
Grotius first; and latterly, among many others, by Dr. Paley, has
increased the number of infidels;--never could it have been so great, if
thinking men had been habitually led to look into their own souls,
instead of always looking out, both of themselves, and of their nature.
If to curb attack, such as yours on miracles, it had been
answered:--'Well, brother! but granting these miracles to have been in
part the growth of delusion at the time, and of exaggeration afterward,
yet still all the doctrines will remain untouched by this circumstance,
and binding on thee. Still must thou repent and be regenerated, and be
crucified to the flesh; and this not by thy own mere power; but by a
mysterious action of the moral Governor on thee; of the Ordo-ordinians,
the Logos, or Word. Still will the eternal filiation, or Sonship of the
Word from the Father; still will the Trinity of the Deity, the
redemption, and the thereto necessary assumption of humanity by the
Word, "who is with God, and is God," remain truths: and still will the
vital head-and-heart FAITH in these truths, be the living and only
fountain of all true virtue. Believe all these, and with the grace of
the Spirit consult your own heart, in quietness and humility, they will
furnish you with proofs, that surpass all understanding, because they
are felt and known; believe all these I say, so as that thy faith shall
be not merely real in the acquiescence of the intellect; but actual, in
the thereto assimilated affections; then shall thou KNOW from God,
whether or not Christ be of God. But take notice, I only say, the
miracles are extra essential; I by no means deny their importance, much
less hold them useless, or superfluous. Even as Christ did, so would I
teach; that is, build the miracle on the faith, not the faith on the
miracle.'
May heaven bless you, my dear George, and
Your affectionate friend,
S. T. C.
* * * * *
The following curious letter was written also about this time.
LETTER 135. TO COTTLE
(1807.)
My dear Cottle,
* * * The common end of all narrative, nay, of all poems is, to convert
a series into a whole, to make those events, which, in real or imagined
history, move on in a straight line, assume to our understandings a
circular motion--the snake with its tail in its mouth. Hence, indeed,
the almost flattering and yet appropriate term, Poesy, _i.e._
Poieses--_making_. Doubtless, to His eye, which alone comprehends all
past and all future, in one eternal, what to our short sight appears
straight, is but a part of the great cycle, just as the calm sea to us
appears level, though it be indeed only a part of the globe. Now what
the globe is in geography, miniaturing in order to manifest the truth,
such is a poem to that image of God, which we were created into, and
which still seeking that unity, or revelation of the one, in and by the
many, which reminds it, that though in order to be an individual being,
it must go further from God; yet as the receding from him, is to proceed
toward nothingness and privation, it must still at every step turn back
toward him, in order to be at all. A straight line continually
retracted, forms of necessity a circular orbit. Now God's will and word
CANNOT be frustrated. His fiat was, with ineffable awfulness, applied to
man, when all things, and all living things, and man himself, (as a mere
animal) included, were called forth by the Universal, "Let there be,"
and then the breath of the Eternal superadded, to make an immortal
spirit--immortality being, as the author of the _Wisdom of Solomon_
profoundly expresses it, "the only possible reflex, or image of
eternity." The immortal finite is the contracted shadow of the eternal
Infinite. Therefore nothingness, or death, to which we move, as we
recede from God and from the Word, cannot be nothing; but that
tremendous medium between nothing and true being, which Scripture and
inmost reason present as most, most horrible!
Affectionately,
S. T. C.]
FOOTNOTES:
[5] [Stoddart had retained his MSS. in Malta (for some
unaccountable reason), which had disconcerted Coleridge.]
[6] [Staying at the farmhouse near the mansion of Coleorton.]
[7] _T. Poole and his Friends_, ii, 174-184.
[8] _Religious Musings_ was at first called _The Nativity_, and sent
to Charles Lamb in December 1794 as an unfinished poem.
Coleridge wrote to Cottle in one of his short notes, while his
first volume of _Poems_ was being put through the press: "_The
Nativity_ is not quite three hundred lines. It has cost me much
labour in polishing; more than any poem I ever wrote, and I
believe it deserves it:" Cottle's _Reminiscences_, p. 66. The
first 158 lines, down to "This is the Messiah's destined
victory!" were probably written in the spring of 1796. Their
spirit is diametrically opposed to the remainder of the poem,
in which the Messiah's victory is to be a political one.
[9] ["Even they will be necessitated to admit, completely exonerated
the Jews."--_Early Recollections._]
[10] ["Voluntary actions."--_Early Recollections._]
[11] ["Over all our."--_Early Recollections._]
CHAPTER XIII
DE QUINCEY
[Cottle tells us that in the spring of 1807 a lady of his acquaintance
introduced to him a Mr. De Quincey. On the 26th July, Cottle wrote to
Poole (_T. Poole and his Friends_, ii, 190) a note of introduction and
sent it with "the bearer Mr. De Quincey, a Gentleman of Oxford, a
scholar and a man of genius." Coleridge had gone to Bridgwater on a
visit to a friend, Mr. Chubb; but Poole entertained De Quincey and
invited him to stay till Coleridge should return. De Quincey, however,
preferred to go in quest of the poet, and proceeded to Bridgwater and
there found Coleridge as he has depicted him in his description already
given in Chapter IV.
Afterwards De Quincey made enquiries of Cottle concerning the pecuniary
affairs of Coleridge, and asked Cottle if he thought Coleridge would
accept a gift of one or two hundred pounds (_Rem._, 340-341). Cottle
informs us that he enquired personally of Coleridge regarding his
monetary circumstances, and then told him that "a young man of fortune,
who admired his talents," wished to present him with a hundred or two
hundred pounds. The _De Quincey Memorials_ gives a somewhat different
account of this transaction in which Cottle first divulged the generous
purpose of De Quincey by letter (_De Quincey Memorials_, i, 127-130).
Doubtless Cottle had forgotten his letter, and, writing thirty years
after the event, recollected only the conversation with Coleridge
intervening between the date of his letter and another to De Quincey,
dated 7th October. In the P.S. of the letter to De Quincey Cottle says,
"I have no doubt but that Coleridge has suffered exceedingly from
straits. I am sure he is the greatest genius breathing; and that such a
mind should be perplexed about mutton and pudding and waistcoats and
hose for himself and children is piteous and afflicting. These things
paralyse his efforts. Under favourable auspices, what gigantic effort
would be too mighty for him? Oct. 7, 1807."
Cottle further states that De Quincey ultimately wished to give £500;
but that he urged De Quincey to make it only £300 in the meantime, to be
afterwards increased, if need be, to £500.
Coleridge, in answer to Cottle, wrote the following letter which must be
of even date with his letter to De Quincey.
LETTER 136. TO COTTLE
(7 Oct. 1807.)
My dear Cottle,
Independent of letter-writing, and a dinner engagement with C. Danvers,
I was the whole of yesterday till evening, in a most wretched
restlessness of body and limbs, having imprudently discontinued some
medicines, which are now my anchor of hope. This morning I dedicate to
certain distant calls on Dr. Beddoes and Colston, at Clifton, not so
much for the calls themselves, as for the necessity of taking brisk
exercise.
But no unforeseen accident intervening, I shall spend the evening with
you from seven o'clock.
I will now express my sentiments on the important subject communicated
to you. I need not say it has been the cause of serious meditation.
Undoubtedly, calamities have so thickened on me for the last two years,
that the pecuniary pressures of the moment, are the only serious
obstacles at present to my completion of those works, which, if
completed, would make me easy. Besides these, I have reason for belief
that a Tragedy of mine will be brought on the stage this season, the
result of which is of course only one of the possibilities of life, on
which I am not fool enough to calculate.
Finally therefore, if you know that any unknown benefactor is in such
circumstances, that, in doing what he offers to do, he transgresses no
duty of morals, or of moral prudence, and does not do that from feeling
which after reflection might perhaps discountenance, I shall gratefully
accept it, as an unconditional loan, which I trust I shall be able to
restore at the close of two years. This however, I shall be able to know
at the expiration of one year, and shall then beg to know the name of my
benefactor, which I should then only feel delight in knowing, when I
could present to him some substantial proof, that I have employed the
tranquillity of mind, which his kindness has enabled me to enjoy, in
sincere desires to benefit my fellow men. May God bless you.
S. T. C.
* * * * *
The Tragedy here spoken of may have been a re-cast of _Osorio_ or a
projected play entitled _The Triumph of Loyalty_, of which one act was
written, and of which the _Night Scene_, attributed to 1801, is a
fragment.
The full account of De Quincey's meeting, and description of Coleridge,
is found in De Quincey's _Works_, edited by Professor Masson, vol. ii,
139-164, 214-225. His dictum on Coleridge has been often quoted: "He is
the largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and most
comprehensive that has yet existed among men."]
CHAPTER XIV
FIRST LECTURES
[In August 1807 we find Humphry Davy writing to Poole that he had been
corresponding with Coleridge urging him to undertake a course of
Lectures at the Royal Institution, London, whither Davy had gone after
leaving the Pneumatic Institute of Dr. Beddoes. Coleridge did not show
alacrity in answering, one of the reasons being doubtless the attitude
of his friend Tom Poole, who did not approve of Coleridge wasting his
abilities in lecturing, even on Shakespeare. Southey, too, corroborated.
When he heard that Coleridge was engaging to give lectures at the Royal
Institution he wrote: "From this I shall endeavour to dissuade him, if
it be not too late, because it will detain him from what is of greater
immediate importance; because he will never be ready, and therefore
always on the fret; and because I think his prospects such that it is
not prudent to give lectures to ladies and gentlemen in Albemarle
Street,--Sidney Smith is good enough for them." (_T. Poole and his
Friends_, ii, 177-8.)
At last Coleridge replied to Davy in a hesitating state of mind:
LETTER 137. TO DAVY
September 11, 1807.
* * * Yet how very few are there whom I esteem, and (pardon me from 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 have written such words (alluding to expression of feeling
respecting himself in the opening portion of the letter), 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_, 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 effect, 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[12] 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.[13]
In spite of Poole and Southey's objections a course of Lectures was at
last arranged. Poole, writing to Davy in January 1808, informs him that
their mutual friend Purkis had heard one of the lectures and speaks
highly of it and its effect. "I heretofore thought Coleridge," says
Poole, "might employ himself in something more permanently important
than lecturing on such subjects as he would lecture on at the Royal
Institution. But from my more intimate knowledge of his present state
and habits, I am now convinced that he _cannot_ exert himself to better
purpose; and further, that nothing whatever is more likely to stimulate
him to exert his matchless powers (so is he constituted, and so morbid
feelings oppress him) than in reading his productions to such an
audience," (_T. Poole and his Friends_, ii, 205).
The Lectures were delivered between 12th January and June 1808. Charles
Lamb, in a letter to his friend Manning, on 26th February 1808, says:
"Coleridge has delivered two lectures at the Royal Institution; two more
attended but he did not come. It is thought he has gone sick upon them"
(_Ainger_, i, 246). Wordsworth, hearing of Coleridge's illness, came to
town in April, and he reported to Sir George Beaumont that he had heard
Coleridge lecture twice, and that he seemed to give great satisfaction,
although he was not in spirits and suffered much during the course of
the week in body and mind (Knight's _Life of Wordsworth_, ii, 114).
De Quincey's vivid description of the "lock" of carriages in Albemarle
Street, and dismissal after dismissal of audiences on account of
Coleridge's failure to appear, like so much more in the work of that
supreme master of imaginative biography, is perhaps exaggerated.
Coleridge disappointed his audience only twice, on account of illness.
Besides the evidence of Lamb and Purkis and Wordsworth, regarding the
success of the lectures, Henry Crabb Robinson gives some short notices
of them. He heard at least four of the course. The second Lecture,
delivered on 5th February, he reports to have been largely taken up with
discoursing on the origin of the Greek mythology and Greek drama, and in
showing that the Modern Drama, like the Ancient, originated in Religion.
The character of Hamlet was also treated of. The lectures were much in
substance similar to the course afterwards given in 1811, in which
Coleridge more fully developed his views.
In one of his lectures Coleridge made an attack on Lancaster, the
founder of the method of education which went under his name, which
caused some recrimination on the part of the adherents of Lancaster.
Coleridge about this time had, through the Wordsworths, become
acquainted with Dr. Andrew Bell, the originator of the Madras system of
education, and he spoke as the champion of Bell against Lancaster in the
controversy that ensued between the partisans of the two. Bell
seemingly, from the evidence of Coleridge's letters, expostulated with
Coleridge for his having too warmly espoused his cause. Of the four
letters written to Dr. Bell at this time (Southey's _Life of Bell_, II,
575-584), we give the first. The others are of little importance. The
dates of the three others are: II, April 1808; III, 17th May 1808, in
which Coleridge asserts that he is "a convinced and fervent son of the
Church of England"; and IV, May, 1808. The first letter relates to the
_Elements of Tuition_, which Dorothy Wordsworth had been revising for
Dr. Bell, and was also submitted to Coleridge for his opinion.
LETTER 138. TO DR. ANDREW BELL[14]
15 April, 1808.
A concurrence of intelligence from my friends in the North, has not only
made it difficult for me to force my mind away from dreaming about them,
but has employed me in running about after my friends day after day; yet
even this would not have prevented my commencing (according to my
judgment, which, on such a work, is but another word for my feelings) on
the sheets you have sent me, if I had seen aught which appeared to me
likely to diminish its _present utility_. I confess that I seem to
perceive some little of an effort produced by talking with _objectors_,
with men who, to a man like you, are far, far more pernicious than
avowed antagonists. Men who are actuated by fear and perpetual suspicion
of human nature, and who regard their poorer brethren as possible
highwaymen, burglarists, or Parisian revolutionists (which includes all
evil in one), and who, if God gave them grace to know their own hearts,
would find that even the little good they are willing to assist proceeds
from fear, from a momentary variation of the balance of probabilities,
which happened to be in favour of letting their brethren know just
enough to keep them from the gallows. O dear Dr. Bell, you are a great
man! Never, never permit minds so inferior to your own, however high
their artificial rank may be, to induce you to pare away _an atom_ of
what you know to be right! The sin that besets a truly good man is,
that, naturally desiring to see instantly done what he knows will be
eminently useful to his fellow beings, he sometimes will consent to
sacrifice a part, in order to realize, in a given spot (to construct, as
the mathematicians say), his idea in a given diagram. But yours is for
the world--for all mankind; and all your opposers might, with as good
chance of success, stop the half-moon from becoming full--all they can
do is, a little to retard it. Pardon, dear sir, a great liberty taken
with you, but one which my heart and sincere reverence for you
impelled--as the Apostle said, Rejoice!--so I say to you _Hope_! From
hope, faith and love, all that is good, all that is great, all lovely
and "all honourable things," proceed, from fear, distrust and the spirit
of compromise--all that is evil. You and Thomas Clarkson have, in
addition to your _material_ good works, given to the spiritual world a
benefaction of incalculable value. You have both--he in removing the
evil, you in producing good--afforded a practicable proof how great
things one good man may do, who is thoroughly in earnest.
May the Almighty preserve you!
P.S. If, in the course of a few days, you could send me the same, or
another copy of, the sheets I now send you, they would be useful to me
in composing my lecture on the subject. Sir G. and Lady Beaumont are
very desirous to see and consult you about a school at Dunmow. Be
assured, while I have life and power, I shall find a deep consolation in
being your zealous apostle. I write in a great hurry, scarce knowing
what I write; but before a future edition, I will play the minute critic
with you, and regard your book as a literary work for posterity.
About this time Coleridge met his old sweetheart, Mary Evans; and, in
answer to an invitation to call upon her and her husband, Mr. Todd, he
wrote: "Undoubtedly the first moment of the feeling was an awful one to
me, the _second_ of time previous to my full recognition of you, the
Mary Evans of 14 years ago, flashed across my eyes with a truth and
vividness as great as its rapidity." The full letter, which is undated,
but must be of 1804-8, was communicated to the _Athenæum_ of 18 May
1895, by her granddaughter, Mrs. Linde, of Wiesbaden.]
FOOTNOTES:
[12] [Perhaps "wearying."]
[13] [Letter CLXIV is our 137. Letters CLXV-CLXVII follow.]
[14] [Southey's _Life of Bell_, p. 575.]
CHAPTER XV
THE FRIEND
[During the Spring of 1808, Coleridge, while delivering his lectures,
had some correspondence with Matilda Betham between March and July.
Matilda Betham was a portrait painter, and Coleridge had consented to
sit for her. The letters to Matilda Betham are probably dated thus: I,
(March) 1808; II, 4th April 1808; III, (April 1808); IV, 7th May 1808;
V, (---- 1808). _Fraser's Magazine_, 1878.
After paying a visit to the Clarkson's, at Bury St. Edmunds, Coleridge
went back to Grasmere and lived with the Wordsworths, now at Allan Bank.
Coleridge felt that lecturing was not a permanent form of employment,
and now projected a journal to disseminate what he called the Permanent
Principles of Politics, Morality, and Religion. In a letter written
about this time to his old friend Josiah Wade, he repudiates the
accusation that he had lived to little purpose.
LETTER 139. TO WADE
Tuesday night, _i.e._, Wednesday morning.
(1807-8).
My best and dearest friend,
I have barely time to scribble a few lines, so as not to miss the post,
for here as every where, there are charitable people, who, taking for
granted that you have no business of your own, would save from the pain
of vacancy, by employing you in theirs.
As to the letter you propose to write to a man who is unworthy even of a
rebuke from you, I might most unfeignedly object to some parts of it,
from a pang of conscience forbidding me to allow, even from a dear
friend, words of admiration, which are inapplicable in exact proportion
to the power given to me of having deserved them, if I had done my duty.
It is not of comparative utility I speak: for as to what has been
actually done, and in relation to useful effects produced, whether on
the minds of individuals, or of the public, I dare boldly stand forward,
and (let every man have his own, and that be counted mine which, but
for, and through me, would not have existed) will challenge the proudest
of my literary contemporaries to compare proofs with me, of usefulness
in the excitement of reflection, and the diffusion of original or
forgotten, yet necessary and important truths and knowledge; and this is
not the less true, because I have suffered others to reap all the
advantages. But, O dear friend, this consciousness, raised by insult of
enemies, and alienated friends, stands me in little stead to my own
soul, in how little then, before the all-righteous Judge! who, requiring
back the talents he had entrusted, will, if the mercies of Christ do not
intervene, not demand of me what I have done, but why I did not do more;
why, with powers above so many, I had sunk in many things below most!
But this is too painful, and in remorse we often waste the energy which
should be better employed in reformation--that essential part, and only
possible proof, of sincere repentance. * * *
May God bless you, and your affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[15]
To Davy Coleridge writes a little later.
LETTER 140. TO DAVY
Grasmere, Kendal, Wednesday, December, 1808.
My dear Davy,
* * * My health and spirits are improved beyond my boldest hopes. A very
painful effort of moral courage has been remunerated by tranquillity--by
ease from the sting of self-disapprobation. I have done more for the
last ten weeks than I had done for three years before. Among other
things, I wrote what the few persons who saw it thought a spirited and
close reasoned letter to Mr. Jeffery, respecting the introductory
paragraph of the _Edinburgh_[16] review of your paper; but I was
earnestly dissuaded from sending it, as from an act of undeserved
respect--as from too great a condescension even on my part; and secondly
(and which was of more weight with me), as an act involving you more or
less, whatever I might say, and likely to be attributed to your
instigation, direct or indirect, as it is not unknown that I have been
on terms of intimacy with you. Yet I own I should be sorry to have it
lost, as I think it is the most eloquent and manly composition I ever
produced. If you think it worth the postage, it shall be transcribed,
and I will send you the original. The passage in question was the
grossest and most disgusting _kick-up_ of envy that has deformed even
the _E. R._ Had the author had the truth before his eyes, and purposely
written in diametrical opposition, he could not have succeeded better.
It is high time that the spear of Ithuriel should touch the toad at the
ear of the public.
I would willingly inform you of my chance of success in obtaining a
sufficient number of subscribers, so as to justify me prudentially in
commencing the work (_The Friend_), but I do not at present possess
grounds even for a sane conjecture. It will depend in a great measure on
the zeal of my friends, on which I confess, not without remorse, I have
more often cast water than oil. Here a conceit about the Greek fire
might come in, but the simile is somewhat _tritical_.
Wordsworth has nearly finished a series of masterly essays on our late
and present relations to Portugal and Spain. Southey is sending to the
press his _History of Brazil_, and at the same time (the indefatigable!)
composing a defence of religious missions to the East, etc. Excepting
the introduction (which, however, I have heard highly praised, but
myself think it shallow, flippant, and ipse dixitish), I have read few
books with such deep interest as the _Chronicle of the Cid_. The whole
scene in the Cortes is superior to any equal part of any epic poem, save
the _Paradise Lost--me saltem judice_. The deep glowing, yet ever
self-controlled passion of the Cid--his austere dignity, so finely
harmonizing with his pride of loyal humility--the address to his swords,
and the burst of contemptuous rage in his final charge and address to
the Infantes of Carrion, and his immediate recall of his mind--are
beyond all ordinary praises. It delights me to be able to speak thus of
a work of Southey's! I am so often forced to quarrel with his want of
judgment and his unthinkingness--which, Heaven knows, I never do without
pain, and the vexation of a disappointed wish. But I am encroaching on
time more valuable than my own, and I, too, have enough to do. May God
grant you health and the continuance of your intellectual vigour!
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LETTER 141. TO DAVY
Grasmere, Kendal, December 14 (1808).
Dear Davy,
The above written copies[17] will explain this second application to
you. I understood from Mr. Bernard (afterwards Sir Thomas), as well as
from yourself, that Mr. Savage had agreed to print and publish the work
on the sole condition that he was to have five per cent. for the
publisher, and to charge the printing, etc., at the price charged to the
booksellers, or the _trade_ (as they very ingenuously and truly style
their art and mystery). To spare me the necessity of troubling Mr.
Bernard with a fresh letter, I entreat you to transmit this to him as
soon as possible. There is but one part of Mr. Savage's letter that I
can permit myself to comment upon, that of the propriety of pricing the
essay at sixpence, and consequently of not having it stamped, nor finely
printed, nor on fine paper. For him, and for a work conducted as he
would have it conducted, _i.e._, one, the object of which is to attract
as many purchasers as possible, this might answer. My purposes are
widely different. I do not write in this work for the _multitude_, but
for those who, by rank or fortune, or official situation, or talents and
habits of reflection, are to _influence_ the multitude. I write to found
true principles, to oppose false principles in criticism, legislation,
philosophy, morals, and international law. As giving me an opportunity
of explaining myself, I say Cobbett sells his weekly sheet for tenpence.
Now this differs from mine in two points, mainly: First, he applies
himself to the passions that are gratified by curiosity, and sharp,
often calumnious, personality; by the events and political topics of the
day, and the names of notorious contemporaries. Now, from all these I
abstain altogether--nay, to strangle this vicious temper of mind, by
directing the interest to the nobler germs in human nature, is my
express and paramount object. But of English readers three-fourths are
led to purchase periodical works in the expectation of gratifying these
passions--even periodical works professedly literary, of which the keen
interest excited by the _Edinburgh Review_, and its wide circulation,
yield a proof as striking as it is dishonourable to the moral taste of
the present public--all these readers I give up all claim to. Secondly,
Cobbett himself rarely writes more than a third of the weekly journal;
the remainder of the sheet is either mere reprinting or stupid
make-weights from correspondents (with few exceptions) of the very
lowest order. And what are his own compositions? The undigested
passionate monologues of a man of robust natural understanding, but one
unenriched by various knowledge, undisciplined by a comprehensive
philosophy; under the warping influence of rooted habits of opposing and
attacking, and from this state of mind fruitful in thoughts which a
purer taste would have rejected so long, that they would cease to occur,
and promiscuous in the adoption of whatever such a state of mind
suggests to him of these thoughts furnished by the occurrences of the
day. Indeed, more often than otherwise his letters, etc., are mere
comments on large _extracts_ from the morning papers, such as a
passionate man would talk at breakfast over a newspaper supporting the
political party which he hated. No _one_ thesis is proposed--there is no
orderly origination, development, and conclusion; in short, none of
those qualities which constitute the _nicety_ and _effort_ of
composition. But _I_ (and if I do not, my work will be dropped and
abandoned)--I bring the results of a life of intense study and
unremitted meditation, of toil and personal travels, and great unrepaid
expense. Those to whom these reasons would not justify me in selling the
work (stamped as Cobbett's) for that part of twopence more which remains
when the additional cost of finer paper and printing is deducted, I
neither expect nor wish to have among my subscribers. It is scarcely
necessary to remark, that in pointing out these differences I had no
intention of depreciating the political journal (the style and contents
of the work are perfectly well suited to the purpose of the writer). The
labourer's pocket knife was one excellently adapted to the cutting of
bread and cheese, but it would be unfair to demand that the medical
cutler A. should sell his case of lancets at the same price that the
common cutler B. sells an equal weight of the bread-and-cheese knives,
supposing them both equally good of their kind. This letter from Mr.
Savage, added to his long delay in answering me at all, has a good deal
perplexed my proceedings, but it shall not make me abandon my intention.
If anything new have occurred in chemistry from your own labours, or
those of others, it would be deeply gratifying to me to be informed of
it by you; for hitherto I have not been able to afford to take in any
philosophical journal, or, indeed, any other. I was told by a friend
that William Allen had proved that oxygen was absorbed in the lungs, but
that its action consisted in carrying off the carbon from the
blood--consequently that the old hypothesis of refrigeration was not
altogether false. But my communicant was no chemist, and his account was
so confused, that I am not sure that I have given an accurate statement
of it.
My health and spirits are far better than I had dared hope, only from
neglect of exercise I remain more corpulent than I ought, though I drink
nothing but table-beer, and eat very moderately. When I was in London I
was shocked at the alteration in our friend Tobin's looks and
appearance. Those who always interpret two coincidents into cause and
effect would surmise that marriage has been less conducive to his health
than to his moral comfort. It would give me serious pleasure to have a
more cheerful account of him.
As soon as I have a little leisure I shall send my Greek accidence and
vocabulary of terminations to the press with my Greek-English Lexicon,
which will be followed by a Greek philosophical grammar. Heaven preserve
and keep you!
S. T. COLERIDGE.[18]
LETTER FROM DAVY TO COLERIDGE
December 27, 1808.
Alas! poor Beddoes is dead! He died on Christmas eve. He wrote to me two
letters, on two successive days, 22nd and 23rd. From the first, which
was full of affection and new feeling, I anticipated his state. He is
gone at the moment when his mind was purified and exalted for noble
affections and great works.
My heart is heavy. I would talk to you of your own plans, which I shall
endeavour in every way to promote; I would talk to you of my own
labours, which have been incessant since I saw you, and not without
result; but I am interrupted by very melancholy feelings, which, when
you see this, I know you will partake of.
Ever, my dear Coleridge,
Very affectionately yours,
H. DAVY.
LETTER 142. TO DAVY
Grasmere, Kendal, Monday morning, January 30, 1809.
My dear Davy,
I was deeply affected by the passage in your letter respecting Dr.
Beddoes. It was indeed the echo of my own experience. The intelligence
of his departure from among us, came upon me abruptly and unexpectedly.
I was sitting down to dinner, having quitted an unfinished sheet, which
I had been writing, in answer to a long and affectionate letter from the
Doctor. There was indeed a depth and flow of feeling in it, which filled
me with bodings, but I had no thought that the event was so near at
hand. The note, therefore, sent from one of his patients, who had placed
himself at Clifton by mine and Wordsworth's advice, (written) the day
after his decease, struck me like a bodily blow, and was followed by a
long and convulsive weeping, with scarce any inward suffering: but when
some half hour after I recovered myself, and my tears flowed slowly, and
with grief more worthy of the cause, I felt that more hope had been
taken out of my life by this than by any former event. For Beddoes was
good and beneficent to all men; but to me he had always been kind and
affectionate, and latterly I had become attached to him by a personal
tenderness. The death of Mr. Thomas Wedgwood pulled hard at my heart; I
am sure no week of my life--almost I might have said scarce a day, in
which I have not been made either sad or thoughtful by the recollection.
But Dr. Beddoes's death has pulled yet harder, probably because it came
second--likewise, too, perhaps that I had been in the habit of
connecting such oppression of despondency with my love of him. There are
two things which I exceedingly wished, and in both have been
disappointed: to have written the _Life_ and prepared the _Psychological
Remains_ of my revered friend and benefactor, T. W.: and to have been
entrusted with the _Biography_, etc., of Dr. B. This latter work
(Southey informs me) was first offered to you, and then to Mr. Giddy,
and is finally devolved on Dr. Stock. As my heart bears me full witness
with what unalloyed satisfaction I should have seen this last duty in
your hands or in D. Giddy's, so I feel myself permitted to avow the
pain, yea, the sense of shame, with which I contemplate Dr. Stock as the
performant. I could not help assenting to Southey's remark, that the
proper vignette for the work would be a funeral lamp beside an urn, and
Dr. Stock in the act of placing an extinguisher on it. * * *
I have just read a brief account of your first lecture of this season,
and, though I did not see as clearly as I could wish, the pertinence of
the religious declaration quoted from you, and am not quite at ease
(especially when I think of Darwin), when I find theosophy mingled with
science, and though I wished to have been with you to have expressed my
doubts concerning the accuracy of your comparison between the great
discoverers of science and the Miltons, Spinozas, and Rafaels; yet the
intervening history (it is only that I am writing to you that I stopped
and hesitate in using the word) overwhelmed me, and I dare avow,
furnished to my understanding and conscience proofs more convincing than
the dim analogies of natural organization to human mechanism, both of
the Supreme Reason, as super-essential to the world of the senses; of an
analogous mind in man not resulting from its perishable machine, nor
even from the general spirit of life, its inclosed steam or perfluent
water-force; and of the moral connection between the finite and the
infinite Reason, and the awful majesty of the former, as both the
revelation and the exponent voice of the latter, immortal timepiece, an
eternal sun. Shame be with me in my death-hour if ever I withhold or
fear to pay my first debt of due honour to the truly great man, because
it has been my good lot to be his contemporary, or my happiness to have
known, esteemed, and loved, as well as admired him.
It is impossible to pass otherwise than abruptly to my own affairs. I
had from the very first informed Mr. Savage[19] that I would not
undertake the work at all, except I could secure him from all possible
risk. His proposals were such, that had I acceded to them, after years
of toil, I should have been his debtor and slave, without having
received a farthing--or, to use the strong, coarse illustration of a
friend, a man of consummate good sense and knowledge of the world, and
of twenty years' experience in periodical works--"Savage's proposals
would have led you into a gulph of debt or obligation: you would have
been like a girl who gets into a house of ill-fame, and whom the old
bawd always keeps in debt, stripping her of every shilling she gets for
prostitution." What my error was, after my _first_ conversation with Mr.
S. I know, but shall not say: but his mistake has been in construing my
indifference as to pecuniary matters, and _apparent_ ignorance of
business, into absolute silliness and passive idiocy. But this is
passed. As soon as I received his letter I made up my mind to another
mode of publication. _The Friend_ will be printed as a newspaper, _i.e._
not in form or matter, but under the act of parliament, and with its
privilege, printed at Kendal, and sent to each subscriber by the post.
My health is more regular; yet, spite of severe attention to my diet,
etc., my sufferings are at times heavy. Please to make my best respects
to Mr. Bernard.
May God bless you!
S. T. COLERIDGE.[20]
The Prospectus of _The Friend_ and the following correspondence with
Southey explain Coleridge's views of what he conceived as the
requirements of a periodical devoted to the highest interests of Truth
and Humanity.
LETTER 143. To ----
1 June, 1809.
It is not unknown to you, that I have employed almost the whole of my
Life in acquiring, or endeavouring to acquire, useful Knowledge by
Study, Reflection, Observation, and by cultivating the Society of my
Superiors in Intellect, both at Home and in foreign Countries. You know
too, that at different Periods of my Life I have not only planned, but
collected the materials for, many Works on various and important
Subjects: so many indeed, that the Number of my unrealized Schemes, and
the Mass of my miscellaneous Fragments, have often furnished my Friends
with a Subject of Raillery, and sometimes of Regret and Reproof. Waiving
the Mention of all private and accidental Hindrances, I am inclined to
believe, that this Want of Perseverance has been produced in the Main by
an Over-activity of Thought, modified by a constitutional Indolence,
which made it more pleasant to me to continue acquiring, than to reduce
what I had acquired to a regular Form. Add too, that almost daily
throwing off my Notices or Reflections in desultory Fragments, I was
still tempted onward by an increasing Sense of the Imperfection of my
Knowledge, and by the Conviction, that, in Order fully to comprehend and
develope any one Subject, it was necessary that I should make myself
Master of some other, which again as regularly involved a third, and so
on, with an ever-widening Horizon. Yet one Habit, formed during long
Absences from those with whom I could converse with full Sympathy, has
been of Advantage to me--that of daily noting down, in my Memorandum or
Common-place Books, both Incidents and Observations; whatever had
occurred to me from without, and all the Flux and Reflux of my Mind
within itself. The Number of these Notices, and their Tendency,
miscellaneous as they were, to one common End ("_quid sumus et quid
futuri gignimur_," _what we are and what we are born to become; and thus
from the End of our Being to deduce its proper Objects_) first
encouraged me to undertake the Weekly Essay, of which you will consider
this Letter as the Prospectus.
Not only did the plan seem to accord better than any other with the
Nature of my own Mind, both in its Strength and in its Weakness; but
conscious that, in upholding some Principles both of Taste and
Philosophy, adopted by the great Men of Europe from the Middle of the
fifteenth till toward the Close of the seventeenth Century, I must run
Counter to many Prejudices of many of my readers (_for old Faith is
often modern Heresy_) I perceived too in a periodical Essay the most
likely Means of winning, instead of forcing my Way. Supposing Truth on
my Side, the Shock of the first Day might be so far lessened by
Reflections of the succeeding Days, so as to procure for my next Week's
Essay a less hostile Reception, than it would have met with, had it been
only the next Chapter of a present Volume. I hoped to disarm the Mind of
those Feelings, which preclude Conviction by Contempt, and, as it were,
fling the Door in the Face of Reasoning by a _Presumption_ of its
Absurdity. A Motive too for honourable Ambition was supplied by the
Fact, that every periodical Paper of the Kind now attempted, which had
been conducted with Zeal and Ability, was not only well received at the
Time, but has become permanently, and in the best Sense of the Word,
popular. By honourable Ambition I mean the strong Desire to be useful,
aided by the Wish to be generally acknowledged to have been so. As I
feel myself actuated in no ordinary Degree by this Desire, so the Hope
of realizing it appears less and less presumptuous to me, since I have
received from Men of highest Rank and established Character in the
Republic of Letters, not only strong Encouragements as to my own fitness
for the Undertaking, but likewise Promises of Support from their own
Stores.
The _Object_ of _The Friend_, briefly and generally expressed, is--to
uphold those Truths and those Merits, which are founded in the nobler
and permanent Parts of our Nature, against the Caprices of Fashion, and
such Pleasures, as either depend on transitory and accidental Causes, or
are pursued from less worthy Impulses. The chief _Subjects_ of my own
Essays will be:
The true and sole Ground of Morality, or Virtue, as distinguished
from Prudence.
The Origin and Growth of moral Impulses, as distinguished from
external and immediate Motives.
The necessary dependence of Taste on Moral Impulses and Habits: and
the Nature of Taste (relatively to Judgment in general and to
Genius) defined, illustrated, and applied. Under this Head I
comprize the Substance of the Lectures given, and intended to have
been given, at the Royal Institution, on the distinguished English
Poets, in illustration of the general Principles of Poetry;
together with Suggestions concerning the Affinity of the Fine Arts
to each other, and the Principles common to them all:
Architecture; Gardening; Dress; Music; Painting; Poetry.
The opening out of new Objects of just Admiration in our own
Language; and Information of the present State and past History of
Swedish, Danish, German, and Italian Literature (to which, but as
supplied by a Friend, I may add the Spanish, Portuguese and
French) as far as the same has not been already given to English
Readers, or is not to be found in common French Authors.
Characters met with in real Life:--Anecdotes and Results of my own
Life and Travels, etc. etc. as far as they are illustrative of
general moral Laws, and have no immediate Bearing on personal or
immediate Politics.
Education in its widest Sense, private and national.
Sources of Consolation to the afflicted in Misfortune, or Disease,
or Dejection of Mind, from the Exertion and right Application of
the Reason, the Imagination, and the moral Sense; and new Sources
of Enjoyment opened out, or an Attempt (as an Illustrious Friend
once expressed the Thought to me) to add Sunshine to Daylight, by
making the Happy more happy. In the words "Dejection of Mind" I
refer particularly to Doubt or Disbelief of the moral Government
of the World, and the grounds and arguments for the religious
Hopes of Human Nature.[21]
LETTER 144. TO SOUTHEY
October 20, 1809.
My dear Southey,
* * * * *
What really makes me despond is the daily confirmation I receive of my
original apprehension, that the plan and execution of _The Friend_ is so
utterly unsuitable to the public taste as to preclude all rational hopes
of its success. Much, certainly, might have been done to have made the
former numbers less so by the interposition of others written more
expressly for general interest; and, if I could attribute it wholly to
any removable error of my own, I should be less dejected. I will do my
best, will frequently interpose tales and whole numbers of amusement,
will make the periods lighter and shorter; and the work itself,
proceeding according to its plan, will become more interesting when the
foundations have been laid. Massiveness is the merit of a foundation;
the gilding, ornaments, stucco-work, conveniences, sunshine, and sunny
prospects will come with the superstructure. Yet still I feel the
deepest conviction that no efforts of mine, compatible with the hope of
effecting any good purpose, or with the duty I owe to my permanent
reputation, will remove the complaint. No real information can be
conveyed, no important errors radically extracted, without demanding an
effort of thought on the part of the reader; but the obstinate, and now
contemptuous, aversion to all energy of thinking is the mother evil, the
cause of all the evils in politics, morals, and literature, which it is
my object to wage war against; so that I am like a physician who, for a
patient paralytic in both arms, prescribes, as the only possible cure,
the use of the dumb-bells.[22] Whatever I publish, and in whatever form,
this obstacle will be felt. _The Rambler_, which, altogether, has sold a
hundred copies for one of the _Connoisseur_, yet, during its periodical
appearance, did not sell one for fifty, and was dropped by reader after
reader for its dreary gravity and massiveness of manner. Now what I wish
you to do for me--if, amid your many labours, you can find or make a
leisure hour--is, to look over the eight numbers, and to write a letter
to _The Friend_ in a lively style, chiefly urging, in a humorous manner,
my Don Quixotism in expecting that the public will ever pretend to
understand my lucubrations, or feel any interest in subjects of such sad
and unkempt antiquity, and contrasting my style with the cementless
periods of the modern Anglo-Gallican style, which not only are
understood _beforehand_, but, being free from all connections of logic,
all the hooks and eyes of intellectual memory, never oppress the mind by
any after recollections, but, like civil visitors, stay a few moments,
and leave the room quite free and open for the next comers. Something of
this kind, I mean, that I may be able to answer it so as, in the answer,
to state my own convictions at full on the nature of obscurity, etc.
* * *
God bless you!
S. T. COLERIDGE.
SOUTHEY'S ANSWER
To _The Friend_
[Without date.]
Sir,
I know not whether your subscribers have expected too much from you, but
it appears to me that you expect too much from your subscribers; and
that, however accurately you may understand the diseases of the age,
you have certainly mistaken its temper. In the first place, Sir, your
essays are too long. "Brevity," says a contemporary journalist, "is the
humour of the times; a tragedy must not exceed fifteen hundred lines, a
fashionable preacher must not trespass above fifteen minutes upon his
congregation. We have short waistcoats and short campaigns; everything
must be short--except lawsuits, speeches in Parliament, and tax-tables."
It is expressly stated, in the prospectus of a collection of extracts,
called the _Beauties of Sentiment_, that the extracts shall always be
complete sense, and _not very long_. Secondly, Sir, though your essays
appear in so tempting a shape to a lounger, the very fiends themselves
were not more deceived by the _lignum vitae_ apples, when
They, fondly thinking to allay
Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit
Chew'd bitter ashes,
than the reader is who takes up one of your papers from breakfast table,
parlour-window, sofa, or ottoman, thinking to amuse himself with a few
minutes' light reading. We are informed, upon the authority of no less a
man than Sir Richard Phillips, how "it has long been a subject of just
complaint among the lovers of English literature, that our language has
been deficient in lounging or parlour-window books;" and to remove the
opprobrium from the language, Sir Richard advertises a list, mostly
ending in _ana_, under the general title of _Lounging Books or Light
Reading_. I am afraid, Mr. Friend, that your predecessors would never
have obtained their popularity unless their essays had been of the
description Ὅμοιον ὁμοίῳ φíλονi,--and this is a light age.
You have yourself observed that few converts were made by Burke; but the
cause which you have assigned does not sufficiently explain why a man of
such powerful talents and so authoritative a reputation should have
produced so little an effect upon the minds of the people. Was it not
because he neither was nor could be generally understood? Because,
instead of endeavouring to make difficult things easy of comprehension,
he made things which were easy in themselves, difficult to be
comprehended by the manner in which he presented them, evolving their
causes and involving their consequences, till the reader, whose mind was
not habituated to metaphysical discussions, neither knew in what his
arguments began nor in what they ended? You have told me that the
straightest line must be the shortest; but do not you yourself sometimes
nose out your way, hound-like, in pursuit of truth, turning and winding,
and doubling and running when the same object might be reached in a
tenth part of the time by darting straightforward like a greyhound to
the mark? Burke failed of effect upon the people for this reason,--there
was the difficulty of mathematics without the precision in his writings.
You looked through the process without arriving at the proof. It was the
fashion to read him because of his rank as a political partizan;
otherwise he would not have been read. Even in the House of Commons he
was admired more than he was listened to; not a sentence came from him
which was not pregnant with seeds of thought, if it had fallen upon good
ground; yet his speeches convinced nobody, while the mellifluous
orations of Mr. Pitt persuaded his majorities of whatever he wished to
persuade them; because they were easily understood, what mattered it to
him that they were as easily forgotten?
The reader, Sir, must think before he can understand you; is it not a
little unreasonable to require from him an effort which you have
yourself described as so very painful a one? and is not this effort not
merely difficult but in many cases impossible? All brains, Sir, were not
made for thinking: modern philosophy has taught us that they are
galvanic machines, and thinking is only an accident belonging to them.
Intellect is not essential to the functions of life; in the ordinary
course of society it is very commonly dispensed with; and we have lived,
Mr. Friend, to witness experiments for carrying on government without
it. This is surely a proof that it is a rare commodity; and yet you
expect it in all your subscribers!
Give us your moral medicines in a more "elegant preparation." The
Reverend J. Gentle administers his physic in the form of tea; Dr.
Solomon prefers the medium of a cordial; Mr. Ching exhibits his in
gingerbread nuts; Dr. Barton in wine; but you, Mr. Friend, come with a
tonic bolus, bitter in the mouth, difficult to swallow, and hard of
digestion.[23]
My dear Coleridge,
All this, were it not for the Sir and the Mr. Friend, is like a real
letter from me to you: I fell into the strain without intending it, and
would not send it were it not to show you that I have attempted to do
something. From jest I got into earnest, and, trying to pass from
earnest to jest failed. It was against the grain, and would not do. I
had re-read the eight last numbers, and the truth is, they left me no
heart for jesting or for irony. In time they will do their work; it is
the form of publication only that is unlucky, and that cannot now be
remedied. But this evil is merely temporary. Give two or three amusing
numbers, and you will hear of admiration from every side. Insert a few
more poems,--any that you have, except _Christabel_, for that is of too
much value. There is scarcely anything you could do which would excite
so much notice as if you were _now_ to write the character of Bonaparte,
announced in former times for "to-morrow," and to-morrow and to-morrow;
and I think it would do good by counteracting that base spirit of
condescension towards him, which I am afraid is gaining ground; and by
showing the people what grounds they have for hope.
God bless you!
R. S.
LETTER 145. TO R. L.[24]
26 October, 1809.
Dear Sir,
When I first undertook the present Publication for the sake and with the
_avowed_ object of referring Men in all things to PRINCIPLES or
fundamental Truths, I was well aware of the obstacles which the plan
itself would oppose to my success. For in order to the regular
attainment of this object, all the driest and least attractive Essays
must appear in the first fifteen or twenty Numbers, and thus subject me
to the necessity of demanding effort or soliciting patience in that part
of the Work, where it was most my interest to secure the confidence of
my Readers by winning their favour. Though I dared warrant for the
pleasantness of the Journey on the whole; though I might promise that
the road would, for the far greater part of it, be found plain and easy,
that it would pass through countries of various prospect, and that at
every stage there would be a change of company; it still remained a
heavy disadvantage, that I had to start at the foot of a high and steep
hill: and I foresaw, not without occasional feelings of despondency,
that during the slow and laborious ascent it would require no common
management to keep my Passengers in good humour with the Vehicle and its
Driver. As far as this inconvenience could be palliated by sincerity and
previous confession, I have no reason to accuse myself of neglect. In
the Prospectus of _The Friend_, which for this cause I re-printed and
annexed to the first Number, I felt it my duty to inform such as might
be inclined to patronize the Publication, that I must submit to be
esteemed dull by those who sought chiefly for amusement: and this I
hazarded as a _general_ confession, though in my own mind I felt a
chearful confidence that it would apply almost exclusively to the
earlier Numbers. I could not therefore be surprised, however much I may
have been depressed, by the frequency with which you hear _The Friend_
complained of for its abstruseness and obscurity; nor did the highly
flattering expressions, with which you accompanied your communication,
prevent me from feeling its truth to the whole extent.
An Author's pen like Children's legs, improves by exercise. That part of
the blame which rests on myself, I am exerting my best faculties to
remove. A man long accustomed to silent and solitary meditation, in
proportion as he encreases the power of thinking in long and connected
trains, is apt to lose or lessen the talent of communicating his
thoughts with grace and perspicuity. Doubtless too, I have in some
measure injured my style, in respect to its facility and popularity,
from having almost confined my reading, of late years, to the Works of
the Ancients and those of the elder Writers in the modern languages. We
insensibly imitate what we habitually admire; and an aversion to the
epigrammatic unconnected periods of the fashionable _Anglo-gallican_
Taste has too often made me willing to forget, that the stately march
and difficult evolutions, which characterize the eloquence of Hooker,
Bacon, Milton, and Jeremy Taylor, are, notwithstanding their intrinsic
excellence, still less suited to a periodical Essay. This fault I am now
endeavouring to correct; though I can never so far sacrifice my judgment
to the desire of being immediately popular, as to cast my sentences in
the French moulds, or affect a style which an ancient critic would have
deemed purposely invented for persons troubled with the asthma to read,
and for those to comprehend who labour under the more pitiable asthma
of a short-witted intellect. It cannot but be injurious to the human
mind never to be called into effort: the habit of receiving pleasure
without any exertion of thought, by the mere excitement of curiosity and
sensibility, may be justly ranked among the worst effects of habitual
novel reading. It is true that these short and unconnected sentences are
easily and instantly understood: but it is equally true, that wanting
all the cement of thought as well as of style, all the connections, and
(if you will forgive so trivial a metaphor) all the _hooks-and-eyes_ of
the memory, they are easily forgotten: or rather, it is scarcely
possible that they should be remembered.--Nor is it less true, that
those who confine their reading to such books dwarf their own faculties,
and finally reduce their Understandings to a deplorable imbecility: the
fact you mention, and which I shall hereafter make use of, is a fair
instance and a striking illustration. Like idle morning Visitors, the
brisk and breathless Periods hurry in and hurry off in quick and
profitless succession; each indeed for the moments of its stay prevents
the pain of vacancy, while it indulges the love of sloth; but all
together they leave the Mistress of the house (the soul I mean) flat and
exhausted, incapable of attending to her own concerns, and unfitted for
the conversation of more rational Guests.
I know you will not suspect me of fostering so idle a hope, as that of
obtaining acquittal by recrimination; or think that I am attacking one
fault, in order that its opposite may escape notice in the noise and
smoke of the battery. On the contrary, I shall do my best, and even make
all allowable sacrifices, to render my manner more attractive and my
matter more generally interesting. All the principles of my future Work,
all the fundamental doctrines, in the establishment of which I must of
necessity require the attention of my Reader to become my
fellow-labourer; all the primary facts essential to the intelligibility
of my principles, the existence of which facts I can prove to others
only as far as I can prevail on them to retire _into themselves_ and
make their own minds the objects of their stedfast attention; these
will, all together, not occupy more than six or seven of my future
Essays, and between each of these I shall interpose one or more Numbers
devoted to the rational _entertainment_ of my various Readers; and,
partly from the desire of gratifying particular requests, and partly as
a specimen of the subjects which will henceforward have a due proportion
of _The Friend_ allotted to them, I shall fill up the present Paper with
a miscellany. I feel too deeply the importance of the convictions which
first impelled me to the present undertaking, to leave unattempted any
honourable means of recommending them to as wide a circle as possible;
and though all the opinions which I shall bring forward in the course of
the Work, on politics, morals, religion, literature, and the fine arts,
will with all their applications, be strictly deducible from the
principles established in these earlier Numbers; yet I doubt not, that
being Truths and interesting Truths (and such, of course, I must be
supposed to deem them) their intrinsic beauty will procure them
introduction to the feelings of my Readers, even of those whose habits
or avocations preclude the fatigue of close reasoning, and that each
Essay of itself, by the illustrations and the auxiliary and independent
arguments appropriate to it, will become sufficiently intelligible and
evident.
Hitherto, my dear Sir, I have been employed in laying the Foundation of
my Work. But the proper merit of a foundation is its massiveness and
solidity. The conveniences and ornaments, the gilding and stucco work,
the sunshine and sunny prospects, will come with the Superstructure. Yet
I dare not flatter myself, that any endeavours of mine, compatible with
the duty I owe to Truth and the hope of permanent utility, will render
_The Friend_ agreeable to the majority of what is called the reading
Public. I never expected it. How indeed could I, when I was to borrow so
little from the influence of passing Events, and absolutely excluded
from my plan all appeals to personal curiosity and personal interests?
Yet even this is not my greatest impediment. No real information can be
conveyed, no important errors rectified, no widely injurious prejudices
rooted up, without requiring some effort of thought on the part of the
Reader. But the obstinate (and toward a contemporary Writer, the
contemptuous) aversion to all intellectual effort is the mother evil of
all which I had proposed to war against, the Queen Bee in the Hive of
our errors and misfortunes, both private and national. The proof of the
Fact, positively and comparatively, and the enumeration of its various
causes, will, as I have already hinted form the preliminary Essay of the
disquisition on the elements of our moral and intellectual faculties. To
solicit the attention of those on whom these debilitating causes have
acted to their full extent, would be no less absurd than to recommend
exercise with the dumb bells, as the only mode of cure, to a patient
paralytic in both arms. You, my dear Sir, well know, that my
expectations were more modest as well as more rational. I hoped, that my
Readers in general would be aware of the impracticability of suiting
every Essay to every Taste in _any_ period of the work; and that they
would not attribute wholly to the Author, but in part to the necessity
of his plan, the austerity and absence of the lighter graces in the
first fifteen or twenty Numbers. In my cheerful moods I sometimes
flattered myself, that a few even among those, who foresaw that my
lucubrations would at all times require more attention than from the
nature of their own employments they could afford them, might yet find a
pleasure in supporting _The Friend_ during its infancy, so as to give it
a chance of attracting the notice of others, to whom its style and
subjects might be better adapted. But my main anchor was the Hope, that
when circumstances gradually enabled me to adopt the ordinary means of
making the Publication generally known, there might be found throughout
the Kingdom a sufficient number of meditative minds, who, entertaining
similar convictions with myself, and gratified by the prospect of seeing
them reduced to form and system, would take a warm interest in the work
from the very circumstance, that it wanted those allurements of
transitory interest, which render particular patronage superfluous, and
for the brief season of their Blow and Fragrance attract the eye of
thousands, who would pass unregarded
Flowers
Of sober tint, and Herbs of med'cinable powers.
I hoped that a sufficient number of such Readers would gradually be
obtained, as to secure for the Paper that small extent of circulation
and immediate Sale, which would permit the Editor to carry it on to its
conclusion, and that they might so far interest themselves in
recommending it to men of kindred judgments among their acquaintances,
that the alterations in my list of Subscribers should not be exclusively
of a discouraging nature. Hitherto, indeed, I have only to express
gratitude, and acknowledge constancy; but I do not attempt to disguise
from myself that I owe this, in many instances, to a generous reluctance
hastily to withdraw from an Undertaking in its first struggles, and
before the Adventurer had had a fair opportunity of displaying the
quality of his goods, or the foundations of his credit.
* * *--the one tantum vidi: the other I know by his works only and his
public character. To profess indifference to their praises would convict
me either of insensibility or insincerity. Yet (and I am sure, that you
will both understand, and sympathize with, the feeling) my delight was
not unalloyed by a something like pain, as if I were henceforward less
free to express my admiration of them with the same warmth and
affection, which I have been accustomed to do, before I had even
anticipated the honour of such a communication. You will therefore not
judge me too harshly, if so confirmed and cheered, I have sometimes in
the warmth of composition, and while I was reviewing the materials of
the more important part of my intended Essays, if I had sometimes
permitted my Hopes a bolder flight; and counted on a share of favour and
protection from the soberly zealous among the professionally Learned,
when the Principles of _The Friend_ shall have been brought into clear
view, and Specimens have been given of the mode and the direction in
which I purpose to apply and enforce them.
There are charges, the very suspicion of which is painful to an
ingenuous mind in exact proportion as they are unfounded and
inapplicable. I can bear with resignation a charge of enthusiasm. Even
if accused of presumption, I will repay myself by deriving from the
accusation an additional motive to increased watchfulness over myself,
that I may remain entitled to plead, Not guilty! to it in the Court of
my own conscience. But if my anxiety to obviate hasty judgments and
misapprehensions is imputed to a less honourable motive than the earnest
wish to exert my best faculties, as to the most beneficial purposes, so
in the way most likely to effectuate them, I can give but one answer:
that however great my desires of _profit_ may be, they cannot be greater
than my ignorance of the world, if I have chosen a weekly paper planned,
as _The Friend_ is, written on such subjects, and composed in such a
style, as the most promising method of gratifying them.
S. T. C.
LETTER 146. TO CANTAB
21 Dec. 1809.
I thank the "_Friend's friend and a Cantab_" for his inspiriting Letter,
and assure him, that it was not without its intended effect, of giving
me encouragement. That this was not needless, he would feel as well as
know, if I could convey to him the anxious thoughts and gloomy
anticipations, with which I write any single paragraph, that demands the
least effort of attention, or requires the Reader to enter into himself
and question his own mind as to the truth of that which I am pressing on
his notice. But both He and my very kind Malton Correspondent, and all
of similar dispositions, may rest assured, that with every imaginable
endeavour to make _The Friend_, _collectively,_ as _entertaining_ as is
compatible with the main Object of the Work, I shall never so far forget
the duty, I owe to them and to my own heart, as not to remember that
_mere_ amusement is _not_ that main Object. I have taken upon myself
(see Letter 145) all the blame that I could acknowledge without
adulation to my readers and hypocritical mock-humility. But the
principal source of the obscurity imputed must be sought for in the want
of _interest_ concerning the truths themselves. (_Revel._ iii, 17.) My
sole Hope (I dare not say expectation) is, that if I am enabled to
proceed with the work through an equal number of Essays with those
already published, it will gradually find for itself its appropriate
Public.
S. T. COLERIDGE.[25]
Coleridge worked pretty hard at _The Friend_. He was ably assisted by
Miss Sarah Hutchinson, who acted as amanuensis. _The Friend_ was first
issued on 1st June 1809, and ceased with the twenty-seventh number on
10th March 1810. Like _The Watchman_, _The Friend_ was published by
subscription and was not a financial success. In _The Friend_ Coleridge
wrote in his most diffuse style. The long intricate sentence, imitative
of that of the seventeenth century divines and political writers, was
his favourite medium when writing on the Permanent Principles of things,
and in it he often ran into prolixity. In a letter to Poole, of 28th
January 1810 (_Letters_, 556), Coleridge defends himself for abandoning
the Frenchified style of the _Spectator_, and the eighteenth-century
Belles-Lettrists, who, in his estimation, had contributed to the taste
for "unconnected writing" and "Reading made easy." Coleridge tried to
awaken a deeper note in the English magazine, and make the periodical a
vehicle for profound reflection and logically connected thought; and
although Coleridge's own age was against him in this, the latter half of
the nineteenth century has reversed the verdict in his favour.
While busy with _The Friend_, Coleridge was again contributing to _The
Courier_ a series of letters supporting the Spaniards in their struggle
against Napoleon, and endeavouring to maintain British sympathy for the
inhabitants of the Peninsula. These letters are written with Coleridge's
accustomed virility when writing for _The Courier_, and are almost as
good as his Letters to Fox of 1802. It is a curious fact that when
Coleridge stepped into _The Courier_ office, he abandoned for the time
being his over-refinement of ideas and subtle disquisitive method of
writing for a more popular style, as good as any leader-writer of the
day. He had great versatility of talent in prose; in fact he had three
styles of writing--his Philosophic style, his Journalist style, and his
Letter-Writer's style, in the last of which he abandoned himself to the
most curious and humorous freaks of construction and imagery, as when he
apologizes for some warmth of expression, calling it "the dexterous
_toss_, necessary to turn an idea out of its pudding-bag, round and
_unbroken_."--_Letters_, 410.]
FOOTNOTES:
[15] [Letters CLXVIII-CLXX follow 139.]
[16] [_Edinburgh Review_, No. 12, p. 394, July 1808.]
[17] Copies of Letters from Mr. Savage to Coleridge, and from the
latter to the former, respecting the printing and publishing of
_The Friend_.
[18] [Letters CLXXI-CLXXII follow 141.]
[19] The printer with whom he had been negotiating respecting the
bringing out of _The Friend_.
[20] [Letters CLXXIII-CLXXIV follow 142.]
[21] [Letters CLXXV-CLXXVI follow 143.]
[22] [This argument is repeated in the next letter, printed in _The
Friend_.]
[23] [Coleridge did not publish this answer.]
[24] [Perhaps Robert Lloyd.]
[25] [Letters CLXXVII-CLXXX follow 146.]
CHAPTER XVI
QUARREL WITH WORDSWORTH, SECOND
COURSE OF LECTURES ON
SHAKESPEARE
[During the remainder of 1810, after the cessation of _The Friend_,
Coleridge did nothing of importance except write letters to his
acquaintances about new projects which grew up in the impetuosity of his
conversation or in answering some enquiry to a correspondent. At the
close of the year Coleridge had determined to go to London once more;
and an unfortunate occurrence took place on his arrival in London. Basil
Montagu with his wife and child were travelling from Scotland to London,
and called upon the Wordsworths at Allan Bank, where Coleridge resided
with brief intervals of absence from September 1808 to April 1810.
Montagu invited Coleridge to travel to the metropolis with him in his
chaise and stay some time at his residence. Wordsworth warned Montagu of
Coleridge's opium habit, and said something to the effect that "he had
no hope" of Coleridge, and perhaps that he had been a "nuisance" in the
Wordsworth family. On his arrival in London, Montagu informed Coleridge
that Wordsworth had commissioned him to say that Wordsworth had no hope
of him, and that certain habits of his had made him a nuisance in the
Allan Bank household (Dykes Campbell's _Life_, 179). Coleridge, of
course, left the Montagus on hearing this communication, and repaired to
7, Portland Place, Hammersmith, then the abode of his old friend John
Morgan, and his wife Mary Brent, and her sister Charlotte Brent, with
whom the father of the ladies also lived (_Letters_, 598).
Coleridge was deeply stung that Wordsworth should have said such a thing
to Montagu. Professor Knight in his _Life of Wordsworth_ gives a pretty
full narrative of the event, and believes that Wordsworth, though he
said he had no hope of Coleridge, did not utter the more offensive
assertion about Coleridge being a nuisance in his family. Henry Crabb
Robinson effected a formal reconciliation between the two poets, in
which both figure to some disadvantage. Wordsworth's proposal to
confront Coleridge, his best and closest friend, with Montagu, a
comparative stranger to both of them, for cross-examination, and thus
sift out the actual expression used by the latter to the former, seems
like very hard dealing; and Coleridge's vehemence of protestation to
believe whatever Wordsworth asserted to be the true version, in
contradistinction to anything that Montagu might say, savours of
unreality. Wordsworth's taking offence at Coleridge not going to
Grasmere on the death of his child at a juncture when it was impossible
for him to leave London while _Remorse_ was being put on the stage, does
not redound to the credit of the Bard of Rydal; and Coleridge's failure
to call on his old friend while in the Lake District for the last time
is equally against the poet of Stowey. The estrangement died down rather
than was reconciled; but the irritation against Wordsworth remained long
in Coleridge's heart, and it is more than probable that after the
excitement of the reconciliation made by Crabb Robinson was over,
Coleridge believed Montagu's rather than Wordsworth's version of what
had occurred. This is endorsed by the fact that Montagu was again taken
into favour, and he and his wife were regular guests at the Highgate
Thursdays in after times.[26]
During 1811, while in London, Coleridge again met Godwin, to whom he
softened in his opinion. The following two letters indicate that he did
not occupy the same attitude to the author of _Political Justice_ as he
did when he wrote _The Watchman_.
LETTER 147. TO GODWIN
Tuesday, March 26, 1811.
Dear Godwin,
Mr. Grattan did me the honour of calling on me, and leaving his card, on
Sunday afternoon, unfortunately a few minutes after I had gone out--and
I am so unwell, that I fear I shall not be able to return the call
to-day, as I had intended, though it is a grief even for a brace of days
to appear insensible of so much kindness and condescension. But what
need has Grattan of pride?
Ha d'uopo solo
Mendicar dall' orgoglio onore e stima,
Chi senza lui di vilipendio é degno.
CHIABRERA.
I half caught from Lamb that you had written to Wordsworth, with a wish
that he should versify some tale or other, and that Wordsworth had
declined it. I told dear Miss Lamb that I had formed a complete plan of
a poem, with little plates for children, the _first_ thought, but that
alone, taken from Gessner's _First Mariner_; and this thought, I have
reason to believe, was not an invention of Gessner's. It is this--that
in early times, in some island or part of the Continent, the ocean had
rushed in, overflowing a vast plain of twenty or thirty miles, and
thereby _insulating_ one small promontory or cape of high land, on which
was a cottage, containing a man and his wife, and an infant daughter.
This is the _one_ thought; all that Gessner has made out of it--(and I
once translated into blank verse about half of the poem, but gave it up
under the influence of a double disgust, moral and poetical)--I have
rejected; and, strictly speaking, the tale in all its parts, that one
idea excepted, would be original. The tale will contain the cause, the
occasions, the process, with all its failures and ultimate success, of
the construction of the first boat, and of the undertaking of the first
naval expedition. Now, supposing you liked the idea (I address you and
Mrs. G., and as _commerciants_, not you as the philosopher who gave us
the first system in England that ever dared reveal at full that most
important of all important truths, that morality might be built on its
own foundation, like a castle built _from_ the rock and _on_ the rock,
with religion for the ornaments and completion of its roof and upper
stories--nor as the critic who, in the life of Chaucer, has given us, if
not principles of _æsthetic_ or taste, yet more and better data for
principles than had hitherto existed in our language)if we pulling like
two friendly tradesmen together, (for you and your wife _must_ be one
flesh, and I trust _are_ one heart) you approve of the plan, the next
question is, Whether it should be written in prose or in verse, and if
the latter, in what metre--stanzas, or eight-syllable iambics with
rhymes (for in rhyme it must be), now in couplets and now in quatrains,
in the manner of Cooper's admirable translation of the _Vert-Vert_ of
Gresset. (N.B. not _the_ Cowper).
Another thought has struck me within the last month, of a school-book in
two octavo volumes, of Lives in the manner of Plutarch--not, indeed, of
comparing and coupling Greek with Roman, Dion with Brutus, and Cato with
Aristides, of placing ancient and modern together: Numa with Alfred,
Cicero with Bacon, Hannibal with Gustavus Adolphus, and Julius Cæsar
with Buonaparte--or what perhaps might be at once more interesting and
more instructive, a series of lives, from Moses to Buonaparte, of all
those great men, who in states or in the mind of man had produced great
revolutions, the effects of which still remain, and are more or less
distant causes of the present state of the world.
I remain, with unfeigned and affectionate esteem,
Yours, dear Godwin,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[27]
LETTER 148. TO GODWIN
Friday morning, March 29, 1811.
Dear Godwin,
My chief motive in undertaking _The First Mariner_ is merely to weave a
few tendrils around your destined walking-stick, which, like those of
the woodbine (that, serpent-like climbing up, and with tight spires
embossing the straight hazel, rewards the lucky schoolboy's search in
the winter copse) may remain on it, when the woodbine, root and branch,
lies trampled in the earth. I shall consider the work as a small plot of
ground given up to you, to be sown at your own hazard with your own seed
(gold-grains would have been but a bad saw, and besides have spoilt the
metaphor). If the increase should more than repay your risk and labour,
why then let me be one of your guests at Hendcot House. Your last letter
impressed and affected me strongly. Ere I had yet read or seen your
works, I, at Southey's recommendation, wrote a sonnet in praise of the
author. When I had read them, religious bigotry, the but
half-understanding your principles, and the _not_ half-understanding my
own, combined to render me a warm and boisterous anti-Godwinist. But my
warfare was open; my unfelt and harmless blows aimed at an abstraction I
had christened with your name; and at that time, if not in the world's
_favor_, you were among the captains and chief men in its admiration. I
became your acquaintance, when more years had brought somewhat more
temper and tolerance; but I distinctly remember that the first turn in
my mind towards you, the first movements of a juster appreciation of
your merits, was occasioned by my disgust at the altered tone of
language of many whom I had long known as your admirers and
disciples--some of them, too, men who had made themselves a sort of
reputation in minor circles as your acquaintances, and therefore your
echoes by authority, who had themselves aided in attaching an unmerited
ridicule to you and your opinions by their own ignorance, which led them
to think the best settled truths, and indeed _every_ thing in your
_Political Justice_, whether assertion, or deduction, or conjecture, to
have been new thoughts--downright creations! and by their own vanity,
which enabled them to forget that everything must be new to him who
knows _nothing_; others again, who though gifted with high talents, had
yet been indebted to you and the discussions occasioned by your work,
for much of their development, who had often and often styled you the
Great Master, written verses in your honour, and, worse than all, had
now brought your opinions--with many good and worthy men--into as
unmerited an odium, as the former class had into contempt, by attempts
equally unfeeling and unwise, to realize them in private life, to the
disturbance of domestic peace. And lastly, a third class; but the name
of ---- spares me the necessity of describing it. In all these there was
such a want of common sensibility, such a want of that gratitude to an
intellectual benefactor, which even an honest reverence for their past
selves should have secured, as did then, still does, and ever will,
disgust me. As for ----, I cannot justify him; but he stands in no one
of the former classes. When he was young he just looked enough into your
books to believe you taught republicanism and stoicism; ergo, that he
was of your opinion and you of his, and that was all. Systems of
philosophy were never his taste or forte. And I verily believe that his
conduct originated wholly and solely in the effects which the trade of
reviewing never fails to produce at certain times on the best
minds,--presumption, petulance, callousness to personal feelings, and a
disposition to treat the reputations of their contemporaries as
playthings placed at their own disposal. Most certainly I cannot approve
of such things; but yet I have learned how difficult it is for a man who
has from earliest childhood preserved himself immaculate from all the
common faults and weaknesses of human nature, and who, never creating
any small disquietudes, has lived in general esteem and honour, to feel
remorse, or to admit that he has done wrong. Believe me, there is a
bluntness of conscience superinduced by a very unusual infrequency, as
well as by a habit of frequency of wrong actions. "Sunt quibus cecidisse
prodesset," says Augustine. To this add that business of review-writing,
carried on for fifteen years together, and which I have never hesitated
to pronounce an immoral employment, unjust to the author of the books
reviewed, injurious in its influences on the public taste and morality,
and still more injurious on its influences on the head and heart of the
reviewer himself. The _prægustatores_ among the luxurious Romans soon
lost their taste; and the verdicts of an old prægustator were sure to
mislead, unless when, like dreams, they were interpreted into
contraries. Our reviewers are the genuine descendants of these
palate-seared taste dictators. I am still confined by indisposition, but
mean to step out to Hazlitt's--almost my next door neighbour--at his
particular request. It is possible that I may find you there.
With kind remembrances to Mrs. Godwin,
Yours, dear Godwin, affectionately,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
From 19th April to 27th September 1811 Coleridge (_Essays on his Own
Times_, 733-938) was busy contributing articles again to _The Courier_
on all subjects of the day, their irony as bright, their imagery as
fresh, their philosophy as sound as anything he had formerly written.
But Coleridge ceased to write for _The Courier_ when he discovered that
it was not an independent paper. An article on the Duke of York written
by Coleridge, after having been set up in type, was suppressed, at the
instigation of the Government. He wrote to Beaumont on 7th December
1811: "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.... I will write for the _Permanent_, or not at all." (Coleorton
_Memorials_ ii, 162, 7th December 1811.)
During the winter of 1811-12 Coleridge did something for the _Permanent_
in the shape of a new course of Lectures on Shakespeare. The course
lasted from the beginning of November 1811 to 28th January 1812. The
Lectures are published in T. Ashe's edition (Bohn Library, pp. 33-165).
The finest of the Lectures is No. IX, given on 16th December 1811. The
Lectures were delivered at the London Philosophical Society's Rooms,
Fetter Lane, and were attended, according to Henry Crabb Robinson, by
enthusiastic audiences; and the course closed with _éclat_. On one
occasion Rogers and Byron were present. The following letter to Dr.
Andrew Bell, whom, it will be remembered, he corresponded with while he
was giving his first course, is a characteristic bit of Coleridge's
application of the Law of Association.
LETTER 149. TO DR. ANDREW BELL (Southey's _Life of Bell_, ii, 645)
Mr. Pople's, 67 Chancery Lane
Holborn, 30 November 1811.
My Dear Sir,
The room I lecture in is very comfortable, and of a grave academic
appearance; the company highly respectable, though (unluckily) rather
scanty; but the entrance, which is under a short passage from Fetter
Lane, some thirty doors or more from Fleet Street, is disagreeable even
to foot-comers, and far more so to carriages, from the narrowness and
bendings of the lane. This, and in truth, the very name of _Fetter_
Lane, renowned exclusively for pork and sausages, have told against me;
and I pay an exorbitant price in proportion to the receipts. I should
doubtless feel myself honoured by your attendance on some one night; but
such is your distance, and such is the weather, that I scarce dare
_wish_ it, much less ask or expect it.
I wrote a long letter to you concerning the sophistications of your
system at present in vogue, the inevitable consequences on the whole
mass of moral feelings, even of the dissenters themselves, and the
courage as well as fortitude, required for the effort to do one's duty.
But I asked myself why I should give you pain, and destroyed it. Yet
come what will, the subject shall be treated fully, intrepidly, and by
close deduction from settled first principles, in the first volume of
the recommencing _Friend_, which I hope to bring out early in the
spring, on a quarterly or four-monthly plan, in partnership with a
publisher who is personally my friend, and who will take on himself all
the _business_, and leave me exclusively occupied in the composition.
Even to this day I have not received nearly one-half of the
subscriptions for the former numbers, and am expiating the error by all
sorts of perplexities and embarrassments. A man who has nothing better
than prudence is fit for no world to come; and he who does not possess
it in full activity, is as unfit for the present world. What then shall
we say? Have both prudence and the moral sense, but subordinate the
former to the latter; and so possess the flexibility and address of the
serpent to glide through the brakes and jungles of this life, with the
wings of the dove to carry us upward to a better!
May the Almighty bless and preserve you, my dear Sir! With most
unfeigned love and honour, I remain--and till I lose all sense of my
better being, of the veiled immortal within me, ever must remain, your
obliged and grateful friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.]
FOOTNOTES:
[26] [See _Letters_, p. 590, and Professor Knight's _Life of
Wordsworth_, ch. XXV, for full account of the misunderstanding.]
[27] [Letter CLXXXI precedes our 147.]
CHAPTER XVII
DANIEL STUART AND THE COURIER
Here[28] I may best introduce the remarks which have been made, and
details which have been given, respecting Mr. Coleridge's services to
_The Morning Post_ and _The Courier_, spoken of by him in Chapter X of
the _Biographia Literaria_. That representation has been excepted
against by Mr. Stuart, who was Editor of the former Paper when my Father
wrote for it, and half proprietor of the other. The view which he takes
of the case he has already made public;[29] he seems to be of opinion,
that the language used by Mr. Coleridge in this work is calculated to
give an impression of the amount of his actual performances on behalf of
those papers beyond what the facts warrant; I have not thought it
necessary or proper to withdraw that portion of Chapter X of which he
complains, nor do I see that it must necessarily bear a construction at
variance with his own statements: but neither would I republish it,
without giving Mr. Stuart's account of matters to which it refers,
extracted from letters written by him to Mr. Coleridge's late Editor. He
writes as follows from Wykham Park, on the 7th of October, 1835.
"In August, 1795, I began to conduct _The Morning Post_, the sale of
which was so low, only 350 per day, that a gentleman at that time made a
bet with me that the Paper was actually extinct.
"At Christmas, 1797, on the recommendation of Mr. Mackintosh, Coleridge
sent me several pieces of poetry; up to the time of his going to
Germany, about 12 pieces.[30] Prose writing I never expected from him at
that time. He went to Germany in the summer of 1798.
"He returned, I believe, about the end of 1799,[31] and proposed to me
to come to London to reside near me, and write daily for the paper. I
took lodgings for him in King Street, Covent Garden. _The Morning Post_
then selling 2,000 daily. Coleridge wrote some things, particularly, I
remember, Comments on Lord Grenville's reply to Buonaparte's Overtures
of Peace, in January, 1800. But he totally failed in the plan he
proposed of writing daily on the daily occurrences."
Mr. Stuart then gives three short letters of Mr. C.'s, showing how often
he was ill and incapable of writing for the paper, and the beginning of
a long one dated Greta Hall, Keswick, 19th July, 1800,[32] in which he
promises a second part of Pitt and Buonaparte, but speaks of it as
uncertain whether or no he should be able to continue any regular
species of employment for Mr. S.'s paper.
After noting that Mr. C. left London at the end of his first half year's
engagement, Mr. S. brings forward more letters, containing excuses on
account of illness, but promising a number of essays: two on the war, as
respecting agriculture; one on the raising of rents; one on the riots
(corn riots in 1800); and one on the countenance by Government of
calumnies on the King;--promising also a second part of Pitt and
Buonaparte, which Mr. S. supposes he was constantly dunning for, the
Character of Pitt, published in _The M. P._ early in 1800, having made a
great sensation; proposing a letter to Sir F. Burdett on solitary
imprisonment, and that all these should be published in pamphlets, after
they had been divided into pieces, and published in _The M. P._, he
doubting whether they were of value for a newspaper. Some of these
essays appear to have been sent; it is not specified which or how many.
"Early in 1807," Mr. S. says, "I was confined by a violent fever.
Several weeks I was delirious, and to my astonishment, when I recovered,
Pitt was out of place, and Horne Tooke in Parliament. I did not resume
the conduct of the Paper till the spring. The Paper suffered loss."
The next letter, dated May, 1801, Keswick, speaks of ill health, and
"the habits of irresolution which are its worst consequences,"
forbidding him to rely on himself. Mr. S. had solicited him to write,
and offered terms, and it appears that he did form a new engagement for
the Paper about that time. In a letter of Sept. 1801, he says, "I am not
so blinded by authorship as to believe that what I have done is at all
adequate to the money I have received." Mr. Stuart then produces a
letter with the postmark Bridgewater, of Jan. 19, 1802.[33] These
letters show, he says, that in July and October 1800, in May 1801, on
the 30th of September 1801, Coleridge was at Keswick, that in January
1802, he was at Stowey, that he could not therefore have materially
contributed to the success of _The Morning Post_. "In this last year,"
says Mr. Stuart, "his Letters to Judge Fletcher, and on Mr. Fox, at
Paris, were published." The former were not published till 1814. The six
letters appeared in _The Courier_ on Sept. 20th, 29th, Oct. 21st, Nov.
2nd, Dec. 3rd, 6th, 9th and 10th. The latter appeared on the 4th and 9th
of Nov. 1802. Mr. Stuart speaks of it as a mistake in those who have
supposed that the coolness of Fox to Sir James Mackintosh was occasioned
by his ascribing this "violent philippic," as Lamb called it, to him
(Sir James). "On those to Judge Fletcher," he says, "and many other such
essays, as being rather fit for pamphlets than newspapers, I did not set
much value." On this subject hear Coleridge himself in a letter[34] dated
June 4th, 1811, when he was engaged with Mr. Street.
LETTER 150. TO DANIEL STUART
"Freshness of effect belongs to a newspaper and distinguishes it from a
literary book: the former being the Zenith and the latter the Nadir,
with a number of intermediate degrees, occupied by pamphlets, magazines,
reviews, etc. Besides, in a daily paper, with advertisements
proportioned to its large 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."
This freshness of effect Coleridge scarcely ever gave to either _The
Morning Post_ or _The Courier_. He was occasionally in London during my
time, in _The Morning Post_ it is true, but he never gave the daily
bread. He was mostly at Keswick. * * * A few months in 1800, and a few
weeks in 1802, that was all the time he ever wasted on _The Morning
Post_, and as for _The Courier_, it accepted his proffered services as a
favour done to him," etc.
After speaking again of the former paper, he says, "I could give many
more reasons for its rise than those I gave in my former letter, and
among others I would include Coleridge's occasional writings, though to
them I would not set down more than one hundredth part of the cause of
success, much as I esteemed his writings and much as I would have given
for a regular daily assistance by him. But he never wrote a thing I
requested, and, I think I may add, he never wrote a thing I expected. In
proof of this he promised me at my earnest and endless request, the
character of Buonaparte, which he himself, at first of his own mere
motion, had promised; he promised it letter after letter, year after
year, for ten years (last for _The Courier_), yet never wrote it. Could
Coleridge and I place ourselves thirty-eight years back, and he be so
far a man of business as to write three or four hours a day, there is
nothing I would not pay for his assistance. I would take him into
partnership," (which, I think, my Father would have declined,) "and I
would enable him to make a large fortune. To write the leading paragraph
of a newspaper I would prefer him to Mackintosh, Burke, or any man I
ever heard of. His observations not only were confirmed by good sense,
but displayed extensive knowledge, deep thought and well-grounded
foresight; they were so brilliantly ornamented, so classically
delightful. They were the writings of a Scholar, a Gentleman and a
Statesman, without personal sarcasm or illiberality of any kind. But
when Coleridge wrote in his study without being pressed, he wandered and
lost himself. He should always have had the printer's devil at his elbow
with 'Sir, the printers want copy.'
"So far then with regard to _The Morning Post_, which I finally left in
August, 1803. Throughout the last year, during my most rapid success,
Coleridge did not, I believe, write a line for me. Seven months
afterwards I find Coleridge at Portsmouth, on his way to Malta." Mr.
Stuart proceeds to state that Mr. C. returned to England in the summer
of 1806, that in 1807 he was engaged with his Play at Drury Lane
Theatre, early in 1808 gave his lectures at the Royal Institution, at
the end of that year began his plan of _The Friend_, which took him up
till towards the end of 1809--in 1811 proposed to write for _The
Courier_ on a salary. Mr. Stuart mentions that the Essays on the
Spaniards were sent in the end of 1809 by Mr. Coleridge, as some return
for sums he had expended on his account, not on his (Mr. Stuart's)
solicitation. He says that Mr. C. wrote in _The Courier_ for his own
convenience, his other literary projects having failed, and that he
wrote for it against the will of Mr. Street, the Editor, who, in
accepting his services, only yielded to his (Mr. S.'s) suggestion. "_The
Courier_," he says, "required no assistance. It was, and had long been,
the evening paper of the highest circulation." In another letter, dated
7th September 1835, he speaks thus: "_The Courier_ indeed sold 8000
daily for some years, but when Street and I purchased it at a good price
in June, 1799, it sold nearly 2000, and had the reputation of selling
more. It was the apostasy of _The Sun_ in 1803, Street's good
management, its early intelligence, and the importance of public events,
that raised _The Courier_." In the same letter he says, "Could Coleridge
have written the leading paragraph daily his services would have been
invaluable, but an occasional essay or two could produce little effect.
It was early and ample accounts of domestic occurrences, as Trials,
Executions, etc. etc., exclusively early Irish news; the earliest French
news; full Parliamentary Debates; Corn Riots in 1800; Procession
proclaiming Peace; the attack on the King by Hatfield at the Theatre;
the arrest of Arthur O'Connor, respecting which I was examined at the
Privy Council: it was the earliest and fullest accounts of such things
as these, while the other papers were negligent, that raised _The
Morning Post_ from 350, when I took it in August, 1795, to 4500, when I
sold it in August, 1803, and then no other daily morning paper sold
above 3000. It was unremitting attention and success in giving the best
and earliest accounts of occurrences that made _The Morning Post_, and
not the writings of any one, though good writing is always an important
feature. I have known the Paper served more by a minute, picturesque,
lively account of the ascension of a balloon than ever it was by any
piece of writing. There is a great difference among newspapers in this
respect. Most of the Sunday Papers, calling themselves _News_papers,
have no news, only political essays, which are read by the
working-classes, and which in those papers produce astonishing success."
In other letters he says: "The reputation of the writings of any man,
the mere reputation of them, would not serve, or in the very slightest
degree serve, any daily newspaper." "Mackintosh's reputation as a
political writer was then much higher than that of Coleridge, and he was
my brother-in-law, known to have written for the Paper, especially
during one year (1795-6), and to be on good terms with me, yet I must
confess that even to the reputation of his writing for the Paper I never
ascribed any part of its success."
It does not appear from Mr. Stuart how many essays in all Mr. Coleridge
contributed to _The Morning Post_ and _The Courier_. Mr. C. himself
mentions several in the tenth chapter of the _Biographia Literaria_. All
these have been copied, and will be republished hereafter.[35] I happen
to possess also his contributions to _The Courier_ in 1811. They are
numerous, though not daily; which I have now no means of ascertaining.
The Critique on _Bertram_ first appeared in that Paper, I believe in
1816. Mr. Stuart admits that some of the poems published by Mr. C. in
_The Morning Post_ before his going to Germany made a "great
impression:" that on Mr. C.'s proposing "personally on the spot and by
daily exertion to assist him in the conduct of the Paper," he "grasped
at the engagement," and "no doubt solicited" him "in the most earnest
manner to enter upon it;" that his "writings produced a greater effect
in _The Morning Post_ than any others." In his letter of September 19,
1835, Mr. S. says "The most remarkable things Coleridge published in
_The Morning Post_ were _The Devil's Thoughts_ and the _Character of
Pitt_. Each of these made a sensation, which any writings unconnected
with the news of the day rarely did." Elsewhere he says, "Several
hundred sheets extra were sold by them, and the paper was in demand for
days and weeks afterwards. Coleridge promised a pair of portraits, Pitt
and Buonaparte. I could not walk a hundred yards in the streets but I
was stopped by inquiries, 'When shall we have Buonaparte?' One of the
most eager of these inquirers was Dr. Moore, author of _Zeluco_." In the
letter mentioned just above he says "At one time Coleridge engaged to
write daily for _The Courier_ on the news of the day, and he did attend
very regularly and wrote; but as it was in the spring, when the Paper
was overwhelmed with debates and advertisements (and Street always
preferring news, and a short notice of it in a leading paragraph to any
writing however brilliant,) little or nothing that he wrote was inserted
from want of room. Of this he repeatedly complained to me, saying that
he would not continue to receive a salary without rendering services. I
answered, 'Wait till Parliament is up; we shall then have ample room,
and shall be obliged to you for all you can give us.' When Parliament
rose Coleridge disappeared, or at least discontinued his services."
The time here spoken of was in June, 1811. In April he had proposed to
Mr. Stuart a particular plan of writing for _The Courier_, and on May 5,
he writes to that gentleman, that he had stated and particularized this
proposal to Mr. Street, and "found a full and in all appearance a warm
assent." Mr. Street, he says, "expressed himself highly pleased both at
the thought of my assistance in general, and with the specific plan of
assistance. There was no doubt, he said, that it would be of great
service to the Paper."
Mr. Stuart has been offended by Mr. Coleridge's saying that he "employed
the prime and manhood of his intellect in these labours," namely for the
Papers; that they "added nothing to his fortune or reputation;" that the
"industry of the week supplied the necessities of the week." This he has
considered as a reproach to himself, and an unjust one. It was not--Mr.
Stuart himself saw that it was not--so intended; Mr. Coleridge's only
object was to show that he had not altogether suffered his talents to
"rust away without any efficient exertion for his own good or that of
his fellow-creatures;" that he had laboured more than would appear from
the number and size of the books he had produced, and in whatever he
wrote had aimed not merely to supply his own temporal wants, but to
benefit his readers by bringing high principles in view. "For, while
cabbage-stalks rot on dunghills," says he, in a letter[36] to the late
Editor of _The Morning Post_, "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." But Mr. Stuart thought that the
Public would draw inferences from Mr. C.'s language injurious to
himself, though it was not meant of him; and hence he gave the details
which I have thought it right to bring forward. I have no doubt that Mr.
Coleridge had an exaggerated impression of the amount of his labours for
_The Morning Post_ and _The Courier_, and that when he said that he had
raised the sale of the former from a low number to 7000 daily, he
mistook the sale of the latter, which, Mr. Stuart admits, may have been
7000 per day in 1811, when he wrote for it constantly, with that of
_The Morning Post_, which never sold above 4500. Mr. Stuart says truly
"Coleridge had a defective memory, from want of interest in common
things;" and of this he brings forward a strong instance. I think my
Father's example and experience go to prove that Newspaper reading must
ever be more or less injurious to the public mind; high and careful
writing for the daily journal will never answer: who could furnish noble
views and a refined moral commentary on public events and occurrences
every day of the week, or even every other day, and obtain a
_proportionate_ recompense? On the other hand, a coarse or low sort of
writing on the important subjects, with which the journal deals, must do
mischief. No one will deny that the character of Mr. C.'s articles was
such as he has described; he would naturally be more alive to marks of
the impression made by what he wrote in particular than any one else,
even the Editor; and men are apt to judge of their labours by intensity
as much as by quantity. He perhaps expended more thought on some of
those essays, of which Mr. Street and even Mr. Stuart thought lightly,
than would have served to furnish a large amount of ordinary serviceable
matter. Mr. Stuart observes, "He never had a prime and manhood of
intellect in the sense in which he speaks of it in the _Lit. Biography_.
He had indeed the great mind, the great powers, but he could not use
them for the press with regularity and vigour.[37] He was always ill."
This may have been true; yet it was during what ought to have been the
best years of his life that he wrote for the Papers, and doubtless what
he did produce helped to exhaust his scanty stock of bodily power, and
to prevent him from writing as many books as he might have done, had
circumstances permitted him to use his pen, not for procuring "the
necessities of the week," but in the manner most congenial to his own
mind, and ultimately most useful to the public. "Such things as _The
Morning Post_ and money," says Mr. S., in _The Gentleman's Magazine_,
"never settled upon his mind." I believe that such things _unsettled_
his mind, and made him, as the lampooner said, with a somewhat different
allusion, "Like to a man on double business bound, who both neglects."
This was a trouble to himself and all connected with him. _Le ciel nous
vend toujours les biens qu'il nous prodigue_, may be applied to my poor
Father emphatically.
In regard to the remuneration he received, I do not bring forward the
_particulars_ given by Mr. Stuart of his liberal dealing with Mr.
Coleridge, simply because the rehearsal of them would be tedious, and
could answer no end. Such details may be superseded by the general
declaration, that I believe my Father to have received from Mr. Stuart
far more than the market value of his contributions to the Papers which
that gentleman was concerned in. Mr. Stuart says that he "paid at the
time as highly as such writings were paid for," and to Mr. Coleridge's
satisfaction, which my Father's own letters certainly testify; and
concludes the account of sums advanced by him to Mr. C., when he was not
writing for the paper, by saying that he had "at least £700 of him
beside many acts of kindness." A considerable part of this was spent on
stamps and paper for _The Friend_; two hundred of it was given after the
publication of the _Biographia Literaria_.
Mr. Coleridge expressed his esteem for Mr. Stuart and sense of his
kindness very strongly in letters to himself, but not more strongly than
to others. He speaks of him in a letter written about the beginning of
1809, addressed to a gentleman of the Quaker persuasion at Leeds, as "a
man of the most consummate knowledge of the world, managed by a
thorough strong and sound judgment, and rendered innocuous by a good
heart"--as a "most wise, disinterested, kind, and constant friend." In a
letter to my Mother, written on his return from Malta, he says, "Stuart
is a friend, and a friend indeed."
I have thought it right to bring forward these particulars,--(I and
those equally concerned with myself)--not only out of a regard to truth
and openness, that the language of this work respecting _The Morning
Post_ and _The Courier_ may not be interpreted in any way contrary to
fact, which, I think, it _need_ not be; but also in gratitude to a man
who was serviceable and friendly to my Father during many years of his
life; who appreciated his merits as a prose writer when they were not
generally known and acknowledged; and by whose aid his principal prose
work, _The Friend_, was brought before the public. I do not complain in
the least of his stating the facts of my Father's newspaper writings; in
the _manner_ in which this was done--as was pointed out at the
time--there _was_ something to complain of. Let me add that I consider
his representation of my Father's feelings on certain occasions
altogether incredible, and deeply regret these pieces of bad construing,
dictated by resentment, in one who was once so truly his friend.
My Father certainly does not assert, as Mr. Stuart represents him as
having asserted in the _Literary Biography_, that he "made the fortunes
of _The Morning Post_ and _The Courier_, and was inadequately paid." He
speaks of his writings as having been in furtherance of _Government_. I
have no doubt he thought that they were serviceable to Government and to
his country, and that while they brought upon him the enmity of the
anti-ministerial and Buonapartean party, and every possible hindrance to
his literary career which the most hostile and contemptuous criticism of
a leading journal could effect, they were unrewarded in any other
quarter. There was truth in one half of Hazlitt's sarcasm, "his politics
turned--_but not to account_." "From Government, or the friends of
Government!" says Mr. Stuart, "Why, Coleridge was attacking Pitt and
Lord Grenville in 1800, who were at the head of the Government. In 1801,
when the Addingtons came into power, he wrote little or nothing in _The
Morning Post_; in the autumn of 1802 he wrote one or two able essays
against Buonaparte in relation to the Peace of Amiens, and he published
in that paper, at that time, a letter or two to Judge Fletcher." This
last sentence is a double mistake, as I have already shown. "At that
time the newspaper press generally condemned the conduct of Buonaparte
in the severest manner: and no part of it more severely than _The
Morning Post_ by my own writings. Cobbett attacked Fox, etc., but _The
Morning Post_ was the most distinguished on this subject, and the
increase of its circulation was great. The qualified opposition to
Government was not given to Pitt's ministry, but to Addington's. To Pitt
_The Morning Post_ was always, in my time, decidedly opposed. I
supported Addington against Buonaparte, during the Peace of Amiens, with
all my power, and in the summer of 1803 Mr. Estcourt came to me with a
message of thanks from the prime minister, Mr. A. offering anything I
wished. I declined the offer. It was not till the summer of 1804, a year
after I had finally left _The Morning Post_ that, in _The Courier_, I
supported Pitt against Buonaparte, on the same grounds I had supported
Mr. Addington, Pitt having become again prime minister, to protect Lord
Melville against the fifth clause. Coleridge confuses things. The
qualified support of the ministry, he alludes to, applies wholly to _The
Courier_." I do not see the material discrepancy between this statement
and my Father's, when he says that _The Morning Post_ was
"_anti-ministerial_, indeed, but with far greater earnestness and zeal,
both anti-jacobin and anti-gallican," and that it proved a far more
useful ally to the Government in its most important objects, in
consequence of its being generally considered moderately
_anti-ministerial_, than if it had been the avowed eulogist of _Mr._
Pitt; "that the rapid increase in the sale of _The Morning Post_ is a
pledge that genuine impartiality with a respectable portion of literary
talent will secure the success of a newspaper _without ministerial
patronage_," and that from "the _commencement of the Addington
administration_" whatever he himself had written "in _The Morning Post_
or _Courier_ was in defence of Government." In the preceding paragraph
he argues that neither Mr. Percival nor "the present administration"
pursued the plans of Mr. Pitt.
In what degree my Father's writings contributed to the reputation and
success of _The Morning Post_ cannot at this distance of time be
_precisely_ settled. It must indeed be difficult to say what occasions
success in such enterprises, if Mr. Stuart's own brother could attribute
that of _The Morning Post_ to Sir James Mackintosh, "though with less
reason even than if he had ascribed it to Coleridge." The long story
told to show that booksellers were not aware of Mr. C.'s having produced
any effect on the paper, and when they set up a rival journal, never
cared to obtain his services, but eagerly secured those of Mr. Stuart's
assistant, George Lane, does not quite decide the question; for
booksellers, though, as Mr. Stuart says, "knowing men" in such matters,
are not _omniscient_ even in what concerns their own business. If the
anti-gallican policy of _The Morning Post_ "increased its circulation,"
I cannot but think that the influence of my Father's writings,[38]
though not numerous, and indirectly of his intercourse with the
Editor,--who rates his conversational powers as highly as it is usual to
rate them--in directing the tone and determining the principles of the
paper, must have served it materially. I believe him to have been the
anti-gallican _spirit_ that governed _The Morning Post_, though he may
not have performed as much of the _letter_ as he fancied.
I shall conclude this subject with quoting part of a letter of my
Father's on the subject of _The Courier_, to which Mr. Stuart, to whom
it was addressed, declares himself to have replied, that "as long as he
actively interfered, the Paper was conducted on the independent
principles alluded to by Coleridge," but that, for reasons which he
states, he found it best, from the year 1811, to "leave Street entirely
to his own course;" and "so it gradually slid into a mere ministerial
journal--an instrument of the Treasury:" "acquired a high character for
being the organ of Government, and obtained a great circulation; but
became odious to the mob--excited by the falsehoods of the weekly
journals."
LETTER 151. TO STUART[39]
Wednesday, 8th May, 1816.
James Gillman's, Esq., Surgeon,
Highgate.
My dear Stuart,
Since you left me, I have been reflecting a great 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 acquaintance, 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 sympathizing 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 an 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, un-ministerial,
anti-opposition, anti-Jacobin, anti-Gallican, anti-Napoleon spirit of
your writings, aided by a 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 life-time. 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 and paper which brings them forward. They are attributed to
the _accident_ of their happening to be for such a side, or for 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 effects,
excellent fruit still hanging 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 be blamed than
in permitting that which without disturbance to your heart and
tranquillity, you could not, perhaps, have prevented or effectively
modified. But the whole plan of Street seems to me to have been
motiveless from the beginning, or at least affected by the grossest
miscalculations, in respect even of pecuniary interests. 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. A.
to dine with him, or received as many nods and shakes of the hand from
Lord this or that; but at least equally true, that the ministry would
have been far more effectively served, and that (I speak from facts),
both the 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 despise newspapers, to which they owe 999/1000 of
their influence and character, and at least 3/5ths of their knowledge
and phraseology. Enough! burn the letter, and forgive the writer, for
the purity and affectionateness of his motive."--Quoted from the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ of June, 1838.[40]
One other point connected with Mr. C.'s writings for public journals I
must advert to before concluding this chapter. Mr. Cottle finds want of
memory in some part of the narrative, contained in this work, respecting
the publication of _The Watchman_; it is as well to let him tell the
story in his own way, which he does as follows. "The plain fact is, I
purchased the whole of the paper for _The Watchman_, allowing Mr. C. to
have it at prime cost, and receiving small sums from Mr. C.
occasionally, in liquidation. I became responsible, also, with Mr. B.
for printing the work, by which means, I reduced the price per sheet, as
a bookseller (1000), from fifty shillings to thirty-five shillings. Mr.
C. paid me for the paper in fractions, as he found it convenient, but
from the imperfection of Mr. Coleridge's own receipts I never received
the whole. It was a losing concern altogether, and I was willing, and
did bear, uncomplaining, my portion of the loss. There is some
difference between this statement, and that of Mr. Coleridge, in his
_Biographia Literaria_. A defect of memory must have existed, arising
out of the lapse of twenty-two years; but my notices, made at the time,
did not admit of mistake. There were but twenty sheets in the whole ten
numbers of _The Watchman_, which, at thirty-five shillings per sheet,
came to only thirty-five pounds. The paper amounted to much more than
the printing.
"I cannot refrain from observing further, that my loss was augmented
from another cause. Mr. C. states in the above work, that his London
publisher never paid him 'one farthing,' but 'set him at defiance.' I
also was more than his equal companion in this misfortune. The thirty
copies of Mr. C.'s poems, and the six '_Joans of Arc_' (referred to in
the preceding letter)[41] found a ready sale, by this said
'indefatigable London publisher,' and large and fresh orders were
received, so that Mr. Coleridge and myself successively participated in
two very opposite sets of feeling; the one of exultation that our
publications had found _so good a sale_; and the other of _depression_,
that the time of _payment_ never arrived!"
I take this opportunity of expressing my sense of many kind acts and
much friendly conduct of Mr. Cottle towards my Father, often spoken of
to me by my dear departed Mother, into whose heart all benefits sank
deep, and by whom he was ever remembered with respect and affection. If
I still regard with any disapproval his publication of letters exposing
his friend's unhappy bondage to opium and consequent embarrassments and
deep distress of mind, it is not that I would have wished a broad
influencive fact in the history of one whose peculiar gifts had made him
in some degree an object of public interest, to be finally concealed,
supposing it to be attested, as this has been, by clear unambiguous
documents. I agree with Mr. Cottle in thinking that he would himself
have desired, even to the last, that whatever benefit the world might
obtain by the knowledge of his sufferings from opium,--the calamity
which the _unregulated_ use of this drug had been to him--into which he
first fell ignorantly and innocently, (not as Mr. De Quincey has said,
to restore the "riot of his animal spirits," when "youthful blood no
longer sustained it," but as a relief from bodily pain and nervous
irritation)--that others might avoid the rock, on which so great a part
of his happiness for so long a time was wrecked; and this from the same
benevolent feeling, which prompted him earnestly to desire that his body
should be opened after his death, in the hope that some cause of his
life-long pains in the region of the bowels might be discovered, and
that the knowledge thus obtained might lead to the invention of a remedy
for like afflictions. Such a wish indeed, on the former point, as well
as afterwards on the latter, he once strongly expressed; but I believe
myself to be speaking equally in his spirit when I say, that all such
considerations of advantage to the public should be subordinated to the
prior claims of private and natural interests. My own opinion is, that
it is the wiser and better plan for persons connected with those, whose
feats of extraordinary strength have drawn the public gaze upon them, to
endure patiently that their frailties should be gazed and wondered at
too; and even if they think, that any reflection to them of such
celebrity, on such conditions, is far more to be deprecated than
desired, still to consider that they are not permitted to determine
their lot, in this respect, but are to take it as it has been determined
for them, independently of their will, with its peculiar pains and
privileges annexed to it. I believe that most of them would be like the
sickly queen in the fairy tale of Peronella, who repented when she had
obtained the country maiden's youth and health at the loss of rank and
riches. Be this as it may, they have not a choice of evils, nor can
exchange the aches and pains of their portion, or its wrinkles and
blemishes,--for a fair and painless obscurity. These remarks, however,
refer only to the feeling and conduct of parties privately affected by
such exposures. Others are bound to care for them as they are not bound
to care for themselves. If a finished portrait of one, in whom they are
nearly concerned, is due to the world, they alone can be the debtors,
for the property by inheritance is in them. Other persons, without their
leave, should not _undertake_ to give any such portrait; _their_ duties
move on a different plane; nor can they rightly feel themselves
"entitled" (to borrow the language of Mr. De Quincey, while I venture to
dissent from his judgment), "to notice the most striking aspects of his
character, of his disposition and his manners, as so many reflex
indications of his intellectual constitution," if this involves the
publication of letters on private subjects, the relation of domestic
circumstances and other such personalities affecting the living. I am
sure at least that conscience would prohibit _me_ from any such course.
I should never think the public good a sufficient apology for publishing
the secret history of any man or woman whatever, who had connections
remaining upon earth; but if I were possessed of private notices
respecting one in whom the world takes an interest, should think it
right to place them in the hands of his nearest relations, leaving it to
them to deal with such documents, as a sense of what is due to the
public, and what belongs to openness and honesty, may demand.
* * * * *
Of all the censors of Mr. Coleridge, Mr. De Quincey is the one whose
remarks are the most worthy of attention; those of the rest in general
are but views taken from a distance, and filled up by conjecture, views
taken through a medium so thick with _opinion_, even if not clouded with
vanity and self-love, that it resembles a horn more than glass or the
transpicuous air;--The Opium eater, as he has called himself, had
sufficient inward sympathy with the subject of his criticism to be
capable in some degree of beholding his mind, as it actually existed, in
all the intermingling shades of individual reality; and in few minds
have these shades been more subtly intermingled than in my Father's. But
Mr. De Quincey's portrait of Coleridge is not the man himself; for
besides that his knowledge of what concerned him outwardly was
imperfect, the inward sympathy of which I have spoken was far from
entire, and he has written as if it were greater than it really was. I
cannot but conjecture, from what he has disclosed concerning himself,
that on some points he has seen Mr. Coleridge's mind _too much_ in the
mirror of his own. His sketches of my Father's life and character are,
like all that he writes, so finely written, that the blots on the
narrative are the more to be deplored. One of these blots is the passage
to which I referred at the beginning of the last paragraph: "I believe
it to be notorious that he first began the use of opium, not as a relief
from any bodily pains or nervous irritations--for his constitution was
strong and excellent--but as a source of luxurious sensations. It is a
great misfortune, at least it is a great pain, to have tasted the
enchanted cup of youthful rapture incident to the poetic temperament.
Coleridge, to speak in the words of _Cervantes_, wanted better bread
than was made with wheat." Mr. De Quincey mistook a constitution that
had vigour in it for a vigorous constitution. His body was originally
full of life, but it was full of death also from the first; there was in
him a slow poison, which gradually leavened the whole lump, and by which
his muscular frame was prematurely slackened and stupified. Mr. Stuart
says that his letters are "one continued flow of complaint of ill health
and incapacity from ill health." This is true of all his letters--(all
the _sets_ of them)--which have come under my eye, even those written
before he went to Malta, where his opium habits were confirmed. Indeed
it was in search of health that he visited the Mediterranean,--for one
in his condition of nerves a most ill-advised measure,--I believe that
the climate of South Italy is poison to most persons who suffer from
relaxation and tendency to low fever. If my Father sought more from
opium than the mere absence of pain, I feel assured that it was not
luxurious sensations or the glowing phantasmagoria of passive dreams;
but that the power of the medicine might keep down the agitations of his
nervous system, like a strong hand grasping the jangled strings of some
shattered lyre,--that he might once more lightly flash along
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,
On winding lakes and rivers wide,
That ask no aid of sail or oar,
That fear no spite of wind or tide,--
released, for a time at least, from the tyranny of ailments, which, by a
spell of wretchedness, fix the thoughts upon themselves, perpetually
drawing them inwards, as into a stifling gulf. A letter[42] of his has
been given in this Supplement, which records his first experience of
opium: he had recourse to it in that instance for violent pain in the
face, afterwards he sought relief in the same way from the suffering of
rheumatism.
I shall conclude this chapter with a poetical sketch drawn from my
Father by a friend, who knew him during the latter years of his life,
after spending a few days with him at Bath, in the year 1815.[43]
Proud lot is his, whose comprehensive soul,
Keen for the parts, capacious for the whole,
Thought's mingled hues can separate, dark from bright,
Like the fine lens that sifts the solar light;
Then recompose again th' harmonious rays,
And pour them powerful in collected blaze--
Wakening, where'er they glance, creations new,
In beauty steeped, nor less to nature true;
With eloquence that hurls from reason's throne
A voice of might, or pleads in pity's tone:
To agitate, to melt, to win, to soothe,
Yet kindling ever on the side of truth;
Or swerved, by no base interest warped awry,
But erring in his heart's deep fervency;
Genius for him asserts the unthwarted claim,
With these to mate--the sacred Few of fame--
Explore, like them, new regions for mankind,
And leave, like theirs, a deathless name behind.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] [The whole of this chapter is by Sara Coleridge, whose
narrative is now resumed from the beginning of Chapter V.]
[29] In articles on _Mr. Coleridge, the Poet, and his Newspaper
writings_, etc., in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ of May, June,
July, August of 1838.--S. C.
[30] "Short pieces," Mr. Stuart calls them in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_. But among them was _France, an Ode_, which was first
published in the _M. P._ in the beginning of 1798, and
republished in the same Paper some years afterwards, and must
have helped to give it a decent poetical reputation, I
think.--S. C.
[31] Nov. 27, 1799.--S. C.
[32] [No. IV of _Gentleman's Magazine_.]
[33] [No. VII of _Gentleman's Magazine_.]
[34] [For the full text of this letter, see _Letters_, CLXXXII.]
[35] [In the _Essays on his Own Times_, 1850.]
[36] [Letter, 4 June 1811.]
[37] "He never could write a thing that was immediately required of
him," says Mr. S., in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, of May, 1838.
"The thought of compulsion disarmed him. I could name other
able literary men in this unfortunate plight." One of the many
grounds of argument against the sole _profession_ of
literature.--S. C.
[38] [Sir Archibald Alison, after having eulogized Sir Walter Scott,
Byron, Campbell, Southey, and Moore, and indicated their
relationship to the French Revolution, says: "But the genius of
these men, great and immortal as it was, did not arrive at the
bottom of things. They shared in the animation of passing
events, and were roused by the storm which shook the world; but
they did not reach the secret caves whence the whirlwind
issued, nor perceive what spirit had let loose the tempest upon
the earth. In the bosom of retirement, in the recesses of
solitary thought, the awful source was discovered, and the
Aeolus stood forth revealed in the original Antagonist Power of
wickedness. The thought 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."--_History of Europe_, chap. lxiv.]
[39] [No. XVII of _Gentleman's Magazine_.]
[40] [Letter CCIX is our 151.]
[41] [Letter 32.]
[42] [Letter 43.]
[43] The passage belongs to him as far as "heart's deep fervency."
It concluded, when first written, with a reference to the
unhappy thraldom of his powers, of which I have been speaking;
for at that time, says the writer, in a private communication,
"he was not so well regulated in his habits and labours
afterwards." The verses are from a _Rhymed Plea for Tolerance_:
in two dialogues, by John Kenyon. I wish that I had space to
quote the sweet lines that follow, relating to the author's own
character and feelings, and his childhood passed "in our Carib
isle." They do justice to Mr. Kenyon's humility and
cheerfulness, in what they say of himself, but not to his
powers.
CHAPTER XVIII
MRS. COLERIDGE. LAST STAY AT THE LAKE DISTRICT
[Coleridge married Sarah Fricker, as we have already seen, on 5th
October, 1795. The first period of Coleridge's married life had been a
happy one. Although there is reason to believe Coleridge married his
wife to "heal a deeper wound," and that Mary Evans would have been the
object of his choice, there is no reason to suppose that he ever
regretted his union with Sarah Fricker during the first years of their
marriage. All accounts we have of the Clevedon and Stowey periods agree
that Coleridge was happy in the new domestic bond. Cottle prints a
glowing picture of the life at Clevedon (_Reminiscences_);[44] and
Richard Reynell concurs regarding the Stowey cottage life (_Illustrated
London News_, 1893). Coleridge, too, wrote most affectionately to his
wife during his absence in Germany (_Letters_), and he was a deep lover
of his children, and always in dread lest any calamity should happen to
them while he was in Germany and Malta (_Letters_). Coleridge, above
most men, was peculiarly fitted to make a good husband. He never spoke
of his wife as his intellectual inferior, although he knew perfectly
well she was not fitted to follow him in his Platonic imaginings.
Dorothy Wordsworth's remarks (_Coleorton Memorials_, p. 164) on this
point are beside the mark. Coleridge never expected to find in the woman
he was prepared to love intellectual grasp of his philosophic system.
The woman ideals he has given us are not blue-stockings, but domestic
Ophelias and Imogens. Read in this connection _The Eolian Harp_ and
_Lines written on having left a Place of Retirement_, _Lewti_,
_Christabel_, _Love_, _Fears in Solitude_, the _Day Dream_. "I could,"
said Coleridge to Thomas Allsop in 1822, "have been happy with a
servant-girl had she only in sincerity of heart responded to my
affection." (Allsop's _Letters of S. T. Coleridge_, p. 206.)
Strained relations commenced to develop between the poet and Mrs.
Coleridge between the summer of 1801 and the summer of 1802; and that
Coleridge was not living happily with his wife began to leak out among
their acquaintances during 1802; and by 1807 it had become a recognized
fact. The evidence of all this does not require to be quoted to those
who have read the _Journals_ and Letters of Dorothy Wordsworth. There
are numerous notices of the estrangement, and Dorothy in a letter to
Lady Beaumont (_Coleorton Memorials_, i, 162), enumerates what she
supposes were the causes of the gulf of separation.
The causes of the estrangement were cumulative. While Coleridge never
looked upon his wife as his inferior, and never expected attainments in
her which she did not have, Mrs. Coleridge, as she advanced in years,
could not be slow to perceive that there were other women beside herself
who deeply interested themselves in her husband with his conversational
fascinations and gentlemanly bearing toward woman. She could not be
oblivious to the fact that Dorothy Wordsworth, for instance, was
intellectually better fitted than herself to comprehend the "large
discourse" which characterized Coleridge; and into Dorothy's ear was
poured many a transcendental disquisition not understandable by the
wife. Very few wives, as we know from the Carlyle history, can allow
their husbands to have a "Gloriana;" and it is not likely that Sarah
Fricker was one of the exceptions. Later, Charlotte Brent became one of
Coleridge's Platonic sisterhood, but of what intellectual capacity she
was of we cannot tell. But she added to the wife's resentment. Opium,
too, of course, had its share in irritating the discontented wife.
There is little foundation, as far as I can see, for the charge made
against Mrs. Coleridge in Flagg's _Life of Allston_, p. 356, that Mrs.
Coleridge had a horrible and ungovernable temper. I think ill-temper was
created by events and by the non-success of Coleridge, and by the
unfavourable comparison Coleridge as a literary man made with Southey,
who was luckily successful in his ventures while Coleridge was always
unfortunate. She was doubtless sorely tried.
It must also be stated that Coleridge did not neglect his wife in the
pecuniary sense. He allowed Mrs. Coleridge to enjoy the whole of the
Wedgwood Pension (less £20 a year which he granted to her mother, Mrs.
Fricker).[45] In his brief bursts of prosperity he also remitted her
supplementary sums, £110 was sent from Malta, and £100 more promised.
When _Remorse_ was a success he sent her £100, on 20th January 1813
(_Letters_, 603), and another £100 was promised in a month. Coleridge
also effected an insurance on his life for £1,000, with profits, before
going to Malta, the premium for which was £27 5_s._ 6_d._ per annum.
This was paid to the end of his life, sometimes, no doubt, by the help
of friends; and the policy realized £2,560. The charge, therefore, that
Coleridge neglected or deserted his wife and family is without
foundation. Stuart, in an article otherwise by no means favourable to
Coleridge, acquits him on this charge. He says Coleridge "never deserted
them in the sense which the words imply. On the contrary, he always
spoke of them to me with esteem, affection, and anxiety. He allowed to
them the greatest part of his income, but that was sometimes
insufficient for their comfortable subsistence, and he himself was
usually more distressed for money than they;" (_Gentleman's Magazine_,
1838). We may add that Coleridge was a man of a vestal purity; and, in
spite of his own experience, never said anything in disparagement of the
marriage bond.
Coleridge paid his last visit to the Lake District in the spring of
1812, 23rd February to 26th March (_Letters_, 575). He quitted his wife
on cordial enough terms, and wrote an agreeable letter to her from
London (_Letters_, 579), of date 21st April. But he never returned to
Keswick. That mysterious gulf which he has described so wonderfully and
weirdly in _Christabel_ which separates sundered hearts, widened with
the years; and
They stood aloof, the scars remaining!]
FOOTNOTES:
[44] [See also _Eolian Harp_, and _Lines written on having left a
place of Retirement_.]
[45] [After 1812 the pension was reduced by half.]
CHAPTER XIX
REMORSE AT DRURY LANE[46]
By what I _have_ effected, am I to be judged by my fellow-men; what I
_could_ have done is a question for my own conscience.--S. T. C.
As the _Biographia Literaria_ does not mention all Mr. Coleridge's
writings, it will be proper to give some account of them here.
The Poetical Works in three volumes include the _Juvenile Poems_,
_Sibylline Leaves_, _Ancient Mariner_, _Christabel_, _Remorse_,
_Zapolya_, and _Wallenstein_.
The first volume of _Juvenile Poems_ was published in the Spring of
1796. It contains three sonnets by Charles Lamb, and a poetical Epistle
which he called "Sara's," but of which my Mother told me she wrote but
little. Indeed it is not very like some simple affecting verses, which
were wholly by herself, on the death of her beautiful infant, Berkeley,
in 1799. In May, 1797, Mr. C. put forth a collection of poems,
containing all that were in his first edition, with the exception of
twenty pieces and the addition of ten new ones and a considerable number
by his friends, Lloyd and Lamb. _The Ancient Mariner_, _Love_,[47] _The
Nightingale_, _The Foster Mother's Tale_ first appeared with the
_Lyrical Ballads_ of Mr. Wordsworth in the summer of 1798. There was a
third edition of the _Juvenile Poems_ by themselves in 1803, with the
original motto from Statius, _Felix curarum
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