The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
by James Gillman · English · Gutenberg #8957 · 527,514 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Author: James Gillman
Release date: September 1, 2005 [eBook #8957]
Most recently updated: April 7, 2014
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE ***
Produced by Clytie Siddall, Stan Goodman, and Distributed Proofreaders
THE LIFE
OF
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
BY JAMES GILLMAN
1838
'... But some to higher hopes
Were destined; some within a finer mould
Were wrought, and temper'd with a purer flame:
To these the Sire Omnipotent unfolds
The world's harmonious volume, there to read
The transcript of himself ....'
TO JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, F.R.S.
PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY, ETC. ETC.
THE HONOURED FAITHFUL AND BELOVED FRIEND OF
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,
THESE VOLUMES
ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
PREFACE.
The more frequently we read and contemplate the lives of those eminent
men so beautifully traced by the amiable Izaak Walton, the more we are
impressed with the sweetness and simplicity of the work. Walton was a
man of genius--of simple calling and more simple habits, though best
known perhaps by his book on Angling; yet in the scarcely less
attractive pages of his biographies, like the flowing of the gentle
stream on which he sometimes cast his line, to practise "the all of
treachery he ever learnt," he leads the delighted reader imperceptibly
on, charmed with the natural beauty of his sentiments, and the
unaffected ease and simplicity of his style.
In his preface to the Sermons of (that pious poet and divine,) Dr.
Donne, so much may be found applicable to the great and good man whose
life the author is now writing, that he hopes to be pardoned for quoting
from one so much more able to delineate rare virtues and high
endowments: "And if he shall now be demanded, as once Pompey's poor
bondman was, who art thou that alone hast the honour to bury the body of
Pompey the great?" so who is he who would thus erect a funeral pile to
the memory of the honoured dead? ...
With the writer of this work, during the latter twenty years of his
life, Coleridge had been domesticated; and his intimate knowledge of
that illustrious character induces him to hope that his present
undertaking, "however imperfectly it may set forth the memory he fain
would honour," will yet not be considered presumptuous; inasmuch as he
has had an opportunity of bringing together facts and anecdotes, with
various memoranda never before published, some of which will be found to
have much of deep interest, of piety and of loveliness.
At the same time he has also been desirous of interweaving such
information as he has been enabled to collect from the early friends of
Coleridge, as well as from those of his after-life. Thus, he trusts, he
has had the means of giving, with truth and correctness, a faithful
portraiture of one whom he so dearly loved, so highly prized. Still he
feels that from various causes, he has laboured under many and great
difficulties.
First, he never contemplated writing this Memoir, nor would he have made
the attempt, had it not been urged on him as a duty by friends, whom
Coleridge himself most respected and honoured; they, "not doubting that
his intimate knowledge of the author, and dear love to his memory, might
make his diligence useful."
Secondly, the duties of a laborious profession, rendered still more
arduous by indifferent health--added to many sorrows, and leisure (if
such it might be called,) which permitted only occasional attention to
the subject--and was liable to frequent interruptions; will, he flatters
himself, give him a claim to the candour and kindness of his readers.
And if Coleridge's "glorious spirit, now in heaven, could look down upon
him, he would not disdain this well meant sacrifice to his memory--for
whilst his conversation made him, and many others happy below, his
humility and gentleness were also pre-eminent;--and divines have said,
those virtues that were but sparks upon earth, become great and glorious
flames in heaven."
LIFE OF COLERIDGE.
CHAPTER I.
BIRTH-PLACE OF COLERIDGE.--SLIGHT SKETCH OF HIS PARENTS.--WHIMSICAL
ANECDOTES HE USED TO RELATE OF HIS FATHER, &C.--AS A PASTOR, HOW MUCH
BELOVED.--HIS BROTHERS AND SISTERS ENUMERATED.--THE DEATH OF HIS
FATHER.--HIS ENTRANCE AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.--LAMB'S ACCOUNT OF HIM WHEN
AT SCHOOL.--WRITES THIS ACCOUNT UNDER THE NAME OF ELIA.--LAMB'S
ADMISSION THAT HE MEANT COLERIDGE FOR THE "FRIENDLESS BOY."--THE
DELICACY OF HIS STOMACH.--HIS FIRST ATTEMPT AT MAKING VERSE WHEN A
SCHOOL BOY.--AND CONTINUATION OF HIS SUFFERINGS WHEN AT SCHOOL.--HIS
WATER EXCURSIONS, THE ORIGIN OF MOST OF HIS SUBSEQUENT SUFFERING.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, the subject of this memoir, was born at Ottery
St. Mary, Devonshire, the 21st October, 1772. His father, the Rev. John
Coleridge, was vicar of Ottery, and head master of Henry VIII Free
Grammar School, usually termed the King's School; a man of great
learning, and one of the persons who assisted Dr. Kennicott in his
Hebrew Bible. Before his appointment to the school at Ottery he had been
head master of the school at South Molton. Some dissertations on the
17th and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges, [1] and a Latin grammar
for the use of the school at Ottery were published by him. He was an
exceedingly studious man, pious, of primitive manners, and of the most
simple habits: passing events were little heeded by him, and therefore
he was usually characterized as the "absent man".
Many traditional stories concerning his father had been in circulation
for years before Coleridge came to Highgate. These were related with
mirth in the neighbourhood of Ottery, and varied according to the humour
of the narrator.
To beguile the winter's hour, which, however, was never dull in his
society, he would recall to memory the past anecdotes of his father, and
repeat them till the tears ran down his face, from the fond recollection
of his beloved parent. The relation of the story usually terminated with
an affectionate sigh, and the observation, "Yes, my friend, he was
indeed an Israelite without guile, and might be compared to Parson
Adams." The same appellation which Coleridge applied to his father will
also, with equal justice, be descriptive of himself. In many respects he
"differed in kind" from his brothers and the rest of his family, but his
resemblance to his father was so strong, that I shall continue this part
of the memoir with a sketch of the parent stock from which he sprung.
The Rev. John Coleridge had been twice married; his second wife, Anne
Bowdon, by whom he had a large family, was the mother of my friend, and
seems to have been peculiarly fitted for the wife of a clergyman who had
a large family and limited means. Her husband, not possessing that
knowledge usually termed worldly wisdom, she appeared to supply the
place of the friend, which such a man required in his wife. He was
better fitted for the apostolic age, so primitive was he in his manners
and uneducated in the fashions and changing customs surrounding him: his
companions were chiefly his books, and the few scholars he had to
educate. To all around him he was extremely kind and amiable, and
greatly beloved by the flock over whom he presided as pastor. For each
individual, whatever his rank, he had a kindly word of greeting, and in
sickness or distress he was an attentive friend. His richer and more
educated neighbours visited him, and shared the general pleasure and
amusement excited by his simple and peculiarly absent manners.
It is said of him, that on one occasion, having to breakfast with his
bishop, he went, as was the practice of that day, into a barber's shop
to have his head shaved, wigs being then in common use. Just as the
operation was completed, the clock struck nine, the hour at which the
bishop punctually breakfasted. Roused, as from a reverie, he instantly
left the barber's shop, and in his haste forgetting his wig, appeared at
the breakfast table, where the bishop and his party had assembled. The
bishop, well acquainted with his absent manners, courteously and
playfully requested him to walk into an adjoining room, and give his
opinion of a mirror which had arrived from London a few days previously,
and which disclosed to his astonished guest the consequences of his
haste and forgetfulness.
On another occasion he dined with the bishop, who had great pleasure and
delight in his society, when the following ludicrous scene took place.
The bishop had a maiden daughter, past the meridian of life, who was
always glad to see and converse with the "dear good old man" (his usual
appellation), and who was also kind enough to remind him of his little
'Forgets' in society, and rouse him from his absent moods. It not
being the fashion in his day for gentlemen to wear braces, his
small-clothes, receding from his waistcoat, left a space in his black
dress, through which often appeared a portion of his linen. On these
occasions, the good lady would draw his attention to this appearance, by
saying in an under tone, "A little to this side, Mr. Coleridge," or to
that, as the adjustment might require. This hint was as instantly
attended to as his embarrassed manner, produced by a sense of the
kindness, would permit. On the day above alluded to, his kind friend sat
next to him, dressed, as was then the fashion, in a smart party-going
muslin apron. Whilst in earnest conversation with his opposite
neighbour, on the side next the lady appeared the folds of his shirt,
through the hiatus before described, so conspicuously as instantly to
attract her notice. The hint was immediately given: "Mr. Coleridge, a
little on the side next me;"--and was as instantly acknowledged by the
usual reply, "Thank you, ma'am, thank you," and the hand set to work to
replace the shirt; but unfortunately, in his nervous eagerness, he
seized on the lady's apron, and appropriated the greater part of it. The
appeal of "Dear Mr. Coleridge, do stop!" only increased his
embarrassment, and also his exertions to dispose, as he thought, of his
shirt; till the lady, to put a stop to the titter of the visitors, and
relieve her own confusion, untied the strings, and thus disengaging
herself, left the room, and her friend in possession of her apron. [2]
Mrs. Coleridge, the mother of my friend, and of whom I have already
spoken, had naturally a strong mind. She was an uneducated woman,
industriously attentive to her household duties, and devoted to the care
of her husband and family. Possessing none, even of the most common
female accomplishments of her day, she had neither love nor sympathy for
the display of them in others. She disliked, as she would say, "your
harpsichord ladies," and strongly tried to impress on her sons their
little value, in their choice of wives. As a clergyman's wife her
conduct was exemplary; the father of my friend had a fortune in such a
woman, and she found in him, with all his peculiarities, a kind, sweet
tempered, engaging husband. She was, I should add, a very good woman,
though like Martha, over careful in many things, very ambitious for the
advancement of her sons in life, but wanting perhaps that flow of heart
which her husband possessed so largely. But "imperfection cleaves to
mortality." Such, as given in this brief sketch, were the parents of the
subject of this memoir. [3]
I have heard Coleridge relate the following anecdote of his father. The
old gentleman had to take a short journey on some professional business,
which would detain him from home for three or four days: his good wife,
in her care and watchfulness, had packed a few things in a small trunk,
and gave them in charge to her husband, with strong injunctions that he
was to put on a clean shirt every day. On his return home, his wife went
to search for his linen, when, to her dismay, it was not in the trunk. A
closer search, however, discovered that the vicar had strictly obeyed
her injunctions, and had put on daily a clean shirt, but had forgotten
to remove the one underneath. This might have been the pleasantest and
most portable mode of carrying half a dozen shirts in winter, but not so
in the dog-days.
As a preacher, he was peculiar: it is said, that the poor idolized, and
looked upon him with great reverence; and when death removed this
distinguished and eminent scholar from among them, his successor had
little chance of pleasing to the same extent. In their great admiration
of him, they would often say, "How fine he was in his discourse, for he
gave us the very words the spirit spoke in," viz. the Hebrew, with which
he frequently indulged them in his sermons, and which seems greatly to
have attracted the notice of the agricultural population, who flocked
from the neighbourhood, to the town in which he resided. Excited and
stimulated by curiosity, this class of persons might attend the church,
and in listening for the Hebrew they would perhaps be more attentive,
and carry away some useful portions of the English from this amiable and
accomplished pastor.
As a schoolmaster his singularities were of the same character,
manifesting the same simplicity and honesty of purpose. I have before
stated that he wrote a Latin Grammar for the use of his school, and
instead of the word ablative, in general use, he compounded three or
four Latin words [4] as explanatory of this case. Whether the mothers
were startled at the repetition of these words, and thought of the
hardships their sons would have to endure in the acquirement of this
grammar, I can only conjecture; but it seems he thought it his duty to
explain to the ladies, in justice to their feelings, his learned reasons
for the alteration he had made in the name of this case.
I had often pressed him to write some account of his early life, and of
the various circumstances connected with it. But the aversion he had to
read or write any thing about himself was so great, that I never
succeeded, except in obtaining a few notes, rather than a detailed
account. There would be little either useful or interesting in any
account of Coleridge's life, which a stranger to him could give;
therefore, from the best authorities with which I am acquainted, and
from an intimacy of nearly twenty years, is this memoir of my late
lamented friend compiled. He commences one of the notes above alluded
to, with his early childhood.
"I was," says he, "the last child, the youngest child of ten by the
same mother, that is to say, John, William (who died in infancy),
James, William, Edward, George, Luke, Ann, Francis, and myself, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, beneficially abridged Esteese [Greek: estaesae],
i.e. S. T. C., and the thirteenth, taking in three sisters by my dear
father's first wife,--Mary, afterwards Mrs. Bradley,--Sarah, who
married a seaman and is lately dead, and Elizabeth, afterwards Mrs.
Phillips--who alone was bred up with us after my birth, and whom alone
of the three I was wont to think of as a sister, though not exactly,
yet I did not know why, the same sort of sister, as my sister Nancy.
Being the youngest child, I possibly inherited the weakly state of
health of my father, who died at the age of 62, before I had reached
my seventh year; and from certain jealousies of old Molly, my brother
Frank's dotingly fond nurse, (and if ever child by beauty and
loveliness deserved to be doted on, my brother Francis was that
child,) and by the infusions of her jealousy into my brother's mind, I
was in earliest childhood huffed away from the enjoyments of muscular
activity from play, to take refuge at my mother's side, on my little
stool, to read my little book, and to listen to the talk of my elders.
I was driven from life in motion, to life in thought and sensation. I
never played except by myself, and then only acting over what I had
been reading or fancying, or half one, half the other, with a stick
cutting down weeds and nettles, as one of the seven champions of
Christendom. [5] Alas! I had all the simplicity, all the docility of
the little child, but none of the child's habits. I never thought as a
child, never had the language of a child. I forget whether it was in
my fifth or sixth year, but I believe the latter, in consequence of
some quarrel between me and my brother, in the first week in October,
I ran away from fear of being whipped, and passed the whole night, a
night of rain and storm, on the bleak side of a hill on the Otter, and
was there found at daybreak, without the power of using my limbs,
about six yards from the naked bank of the river."
"In my seventh year, about the same time, if not the very same time,
i.e. Oct. 4th, my most dear, most revered father, died suddenly. O
that I might so pass away, if like him I were an Israelite without
guile. The image of my father, my revered, kind, learned,
simple-hearted father is a religion to me!"
Judge Buller who had been educated by his father, had always promised to
adopt the son, at least to educate him, foreseeing that Samuel, the
youngest, was likely to be left an orphan early in life. Soon after the
death of the Rev. John Coleridge, the Judge obtained from John Way,
Esq., one of the governors of Christ's Hospital, a presentation to that
school, and young Coleridge was sent by the Judge and placed there on
the 18th July, 1782. "O! what a change!" [6] he goes on in the note
above quoted.
"Depressed, moping, friendless, poor orphan, half starved; (at that
time the portion of food to the Bluecoats was cruelly insufficient for
those who had no friends to supply them)."
In the late Mr. Charles Lamb's "Works" published in 1818, there is an
account of the school, entitled "Recollections of Christ's Hospital." In
1823 there is a second essay on the same subject by Lamb, under the
assumed title of "Elia,"--Elia supposed to be intimate with Lamb and
Coleridge. This second account, entitled "Christ's Hospital
five-and-thirty years ago," gave umbrage to some of the "Blues," as they
termed themselves, as differing so much from the first in full praise of
this valuable foundation, and particularly as a school from which he had
benefited so much. In the preface to the second series, Elia says,
"What he (Elia) tells of himself is often true only (historically) of
another; when under the first person he shadows forth the forlorn
state of a country boy placed at a London school far from his friends
and connexions,"
which is in direct opposition to Lamb's own early history. The second
account, under the personification of Elia, is drawn from the painful
recollections and sufferings of Coleridge while at school, which I have
often heard him relate.
Lamb told Coleridge one day that the friendless school boy in his
"Elia," (soon after its publication) was intended for him, and taken
from his description of the Blue-coat school. After Coleridge's death,
Lamb related the same circumstance to me, that he had drawn the account
from Coleridge's feelings, sufferings, &c., Lamb having himself been an
indulged boy and peculiarly favoured through the instrumentality of a
friend:
"I remember," says Elia, "Lamb at school, and can well recollect that
he had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his
schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town and were at hand, and
he had the privilege of going to see them almost as often as he
wished, through some invidious distinction which was denied to us. The
present treasurer of the Inner Temple can explain how it happened. He
had his tea and hot rolls in the morning, while we were battening upon
our quarter of penny loaf--our 'crug' moistened with attenuated small
beer in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was
poured from. On Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the
pease-soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for him with
a slice of 'extraordinary bread and butter,' from the hot-loaf of the
Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant--(we
had three banyan to four meat-days in the week)--was endeared to his
palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger, (to make
it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of our
'half-pickled' Sundays, or 'quite fresh' boiled beef on Thursdays,
(strong as caro equina), with detestable marigolds floating in the
pail to poison the broth--our scanty mutton crags on Fridays--and
rather more savoury, but grudging, portions of the same flesh,
rotten-roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited
our appetites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal
proportion) he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting
griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked in the paternal
kitchen.
"I (Coleridge) was a poor friendless boy, my parents, and those who
should have cared for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances of
their's, which they could reckon upon being kind to me in the great
city, after a little forced notice, which they had the grace to take
of me on my first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday
visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought them
few enough; one after another, they all failed me, and I felt myself
alone among six hundred playmates--O the cruelty of separating a poor
lad from his early homestead! The yearnings which I used to have
towards it in those unfledged years! How in my dreams would my native
town come back (far in the west) with its churches and trees and
faces! To this late hour of my life, and even to the end of it did
Coleridge trace impressions left by the painful recollection of these
friendless holidays. The long warm days of summer never return but
they bring with them a gloom from the haunting memory of those 'whole
day's leave', when by some strange arrangement, we were turned out for
the live-long day, upon our own hands whether we had friends to go to
or none. I remember those bathing excursions to the New River, which
Lamb recalls with such relish, better, I think, than he can--for he
was a home-seeking lad, and did not care for such water-parties. How
we would sally forth into the fields; and strip under the first warmth
of the sun; and wanton like young dace in the streams; getting
appetites for the noon; which those of us that were penny less (our
scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not the means of
allaying--while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes were at feed
about us, and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings; the very beauty
of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty
setting a keener edge upon them! How faint and languid, finally, we
would return toward nightfall to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing,
half-reluctant, that the hours of uneasy liberty had expired.
"It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about the streets
objectless; shivering at cold windows of print-shops, to extract a
little amusement; or haply, as a last resort, in the hope of a little
novelty, to pay a fifty times repeated visit (where our individual
faces would be as well known to the warden as those of his own
charges) to the lions in the Tower, to whose levee, by courtesy
immemorial, we had a prescriptive right of admission."
In short, nearly the whole of this essay of Elia's is a transcript of
Coleridge's account of the school. 'Never was a friend or schoolfellow
more fondly attached to another than Lamb to Coleridge. The latter from
his own account, as well as from Lamb and others who knew him when at
school, must have been a delicate and suffering boy. His principal
ailments he owed much to the state of his stomach, which was at that
time so delicate, that when compelled to go to a large closet (shoe-bin,
its school name,) containing shoes, to pick out a pair easy to his feet,
which were always tender, and he required shoes so large that he could
walk in them, rather than with them, and the smell, from the number in
this place, used to make him so sick, that I have often seen him
shudder, even in late life, when he gave an account of it. In this note,
continuing an account of himself at school, he says,
"From eight to fourteen I was a playless day-dreamer, a 'helluo
librorum', my appetite for which was indulged by a singular incident:
a stranger, who was struck by my conversation, made me free of a
circulating library in King Street, Cheapside."
The incident, indeed, was singular: going down the Strand, in one of his
day-dreams, fancying himself swimming across the Hellespont, thrusting
his hands before him as in the act of swimming, his hand came in contact
with a gentleman's pocket; the gentleman seized his hand, turning round
and looking at him with some anger, "What! so young, and so wicked?" at
the same time accused him of an attempt to pick his pocket; the
frightened boy sobbed out his denial of the intention, and explained to
him how he thought himself Leander, swimming across the Hellespont. The
gentleman was so struck and delighted with the novelty of the thing, and
with the simplicity and intelligence of the boy, that he subscribed, as
before stated, to the library, in consequence of which Coleridge was
further enabled to indulge his love of reading.
In his bathing excursions he had greatly injured his health, and reduced
his strength; in one of these bathing exploits he swam across the New
River in his clothes, and dried them in the fields on his back: from
these excursions commenced those bodily sufferings which embittered the
rest of his life, and rendered it truly one of sickness and suffering.
When a boy he had a remarkably delicate, white skin, which was once the
cause of great punishment to him.
His dame had undertaken to cure him of the itch, with which the boys of
his ward had suffered much; but Coleridge was doomed to suffer more than
his comrades, from the use of sulphur ointment, through the great
sagacity of his dame, who with her extraordinary eyes, aided by the
power of glasses, could see the malady in the skin deep and out of
common vision; and consequently, as often as she employed this
miraculous sight, she found or thought she found fresh reasons for
continuing the friction, to the prolonged suffering and mortification of
her patient. This occurred when he was about eight years of age, and
gave rise to his first attempt at making a verse, as follows:
"O Lord, have mercy on me!
For I am very sad!
For why, good Lord? I've got the itch,
And eke I've got the 'tad',"
the school name for ringworm. He was to be found during play-hours often
with the knees of his breeches unbuttoned, and his shoes down at the
heel, [7] walking to and fro, or sitting on a step, or in a corner,
deeply engaged in some book. This had attracted the notice of Middleton,
at that time a deputy grecian, and going up to him one day, asked what
he was reading; the answer was "Virgil." "Are you then," said M.
"studying your lesson?" "No," said C., "I am reading it for pleasure;"
for he had not yet arrived at Virgil in his class studies. This struck
Middleton as something so peculiar, that he mentioned it to the head
master, as Coleridge was then in the grammar school (which is the lower
part of the classical school), and doing the work of the lower boys. The
Rev. James Bowyer, who was at that time head master, a quick discerning
man, but hasty and severe, sent for the master of the grammar school,
and inquired about Coleridge; from him he learnt that he was a dull and
inapt scholar, and that he could not be made to repeat a single rule of
syntax, although he would give a rule in his own way.
This brought Coleridge before Bowyer, and to this circumstance may be
attributed the notice which he afterwards took of him: the school and
his scholars were every thing to him, and Coleridge's neglect and
carelessness never went unpunished. I have often heard him say, he was
so ordinary a looking boy, with his black head, that Bowyer generally
gave him at the end of a flogging an extra cut; "for," said he, "you are
such an ugly fellow!"
When, by the odd accident before mentioned, he was made a subscriber to
the library in King Street,
"I read," says he, "'through' the catalogue, folios and all, whether I
understood them, or did not understand them, running all risks in
skulking out to get the two volumes which I was entitled to have
daily. Conceive what I must have been at fourteen; I was in a
continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every
object of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny corner, and
read, read, read; fancy myself on Robinson Crusoe's island, finding a
mountain of plumb-cake, and eating a room for myself, and then eating
it into the shapes of tables and chairs--hunger and fancy!"
In his lad-hood he says,
"My talents and superiority made me for ever at the head in my routine
of study, though utterly without the desire to be so; without a spark
of ambition; and, as to emulation, it had no meaning for me; but the
difference between me and my form-fellows, in our lessons and
exercises, bore no proportion to the measureless difference between me
and them in the wide, wild, wilderness of useless, unarranged
book-knowledge and book-thoughts. Thank Heaven! it was not the age nor
the fashion of getting up prodigies; but at twelve or fourteen I
should have made as pretty a juvenile prodigy as was ever emasculated
and ruined by fond and idle wonderment. Thank Heaven! I was flogged
instead of flattered. However, as I climbed up the school, my lot was
somewhat alleviated."
When Coleridge arrived at the age of fifteen, he was, from the little
comfort he experienced, very desirous of quitting the school, and, as he
truly said, he had not a spark of ambition. Near the school there
resided a worthy, and, in their rank of life, a respectable middle-aged
couple. The husband kept a little shop, and was a shoemaker, with whom
Coleridge had become intimate. The wife, also, had been kind and
attentive to him, and this was sufficient to captivate his affectionate
nature, which had existed from earliest childhood, and strongly endeared
him to all around him. Coleridge became exceedingly desirous of being
apprenticed to this man, to learn the art of shoemaking; and in due
time, when some of the boys were old enough to leave the school, and be
put to trade, Coleridge, being of the number, tutored his friend Crispin
how to apply to the head master, and not to heed his anger should he
become irate. Accordingly, Crispin applied at the hour proposed to see
Bowyer; who, having heard the proposal to take Coleridge as an
apprentice, and Coleridge's answer and assent to become a shoemaker,
broke forth with his favourite adjuration, "'Ods my life, man, what d'ye
mean?" At the sound of his angry voice, Crispin stood motionless, till
the angry pedagogue becoming infuriate, pushed the intruder out of the
room with such force, that Crispin might have sustained an action at law
against him for an assault. Thus, to Coleridge's mortification and
regret, as he afterwards in joke would say,
"I lost the opportunity of supplying safeguards to the understandings
of those, who perhaps will never thank me for what I am aiming to do
in exercising their reason.
"Against my will," says he, "I was chosen by my master as one of those
destined for the university; and about this time my brother Luke, or
'the Doctor,' so called from his infancy, because being the seventh
son, he had, from his infancy, been dedicated to the medical
profession, came to town to walk the London Hospital, under the care
of Sir William Blizard. Mr. Saumarez, brother of the Admiral Lord
Saumarez, was his intimate friend. Every Saturday I could make or
obtain leave, to the London Hospital trudged I. O the bliss if I was
permitted to hold the plasters, or to attend the dressings. Thirty
years afterwards, Mr. Saumarez retained the liveliest recollections of
the extraordinary, enthusiastic blue-coat boy, and was exceedingly
affected in identifying me with that boy. I became wild to be
apprenticed to a surgeon. English, Latin, yea, Greek books of medicine
read I incessantly. Blanchard's Latin Medical Dictionary I had nearly
by heart. Briefly, it was a wild dream, which gradually blending with,
gradually gave way to a rage for metaphysics, occasioned by the essays
on Liberty and Necessity in Cato's Letters, and more by theology.
After I had read Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, I sported
infidel! but my infidel vanity never touched my heart:"
nor ever with his lips did he for a few months only support the new
light given him by Voltaire.
"With my heart," says he, "I never did abandon the name of Christ."
This reached Bowyer's ears, and he sent for him: not to reason with him,
as teachers and parents do too often, and by this means as often
increase the vanity of these tyro-would-be-philosophers; but he took the
surest mode, if not of curing, at least of checking the disease. His
argument was short and forcible.
"So, sirrah, you are an infidel, are you? then I'll flog your
infidelity out of you;"
and gave him the severest flogging he had ever received at his hands.
This, as I have often heard Coleridge say, was the only just flogging he
had ever given him: certainly, from all I ever heard of him, Bowyer was
strictly a flogging master. Trollope, in his History of Christ's
Hospital, page 137, says of him,
"His discipline was exact in the extreme, and tinctured, perhaps, with
more than due severity." [8]
Coleridge, in his 'Biographia Literaria', after paying a just compliment
to Bowyer as a teacher, says,
"The reader will, I trust, excuse this tribute of recollection to a
man, whose severities, even now, not seldom furnish the dreams by
which the blind fancy would fain interpret to the mind the painful
sensation of distempered sleep, but neither lessen nor diminish the
deep sense of my moral and intellectual obligations."
He had his passionate days, which the boys described as the days he wore
his Passy wig (passy abbreviated from passionate). "Sirrah! I'll flog
you," were words so familiar to him, that on one occasion, some female
relation or friend of one of the boys entered his room, when a class
stood before him and inquired for Master--; master was no school title
with Bowyer. The errand of this lady being to ask a short leave of
absence for some boy, on the sudden appearance in town of his country
cousin, still lingering at the door, after having been abruptly told to
go, Bowyer suddenly exclaimed, "Bring that woman here, and I'll flog
her!"
Coleridge's themes in his fifteenth year, [9] in verse as well as prose,
marked him as a boy of great talent, but of talent only according to his
own definition of it (vide "Friend," vol. iii. edit. 1818). His verse
was good, his prose powerful, and language correct, and beyond his years
in depth of thought, but as yet he had not manifested, according to the
same test, anything of genius. I met among some of his notes, written at
the age of fifty-one, the following critique on one of his schoolboy
themes:
"This theme was written at the age of fifteen: it does not contain a
line that any schoolboy might not have written, and like most
school-poetry, there is a putting of thoughts into verse. Yet such
verses as a striving of mind and struggles after the intense and
vivid, are a fair promise of better things."
The same observation might be made in the intense application of his
intellectual powers in search of truth, at the time he called himself an
infidel; in this struggle of mind was the "fair promise of better
things." It was the preparation necessary for such a mind; the breaking
up and tilling of the soil for the successful germination of the seeds
of truth.
The sleeping powers of thought were roused and excited into action.
Perhaps this may be considered, as entering too early into the history
of his mind in boyhood: to this I reply, that the entire man so to
speak, is to be seen even in the cradle of the child. [10]
The serious may be startled at the thought of a young man passing
through such an ordeal; but with him it was the exercise of his
strength, in order that he might "fight the good fight," and conquer for
that truth which is permanent, and is the light and the life of every
one who comes into the world, and who is in earnest search of it.
In his sixteenth year he composed the allegory of "Real and Imaginary
Time," first published in the Sibylline Leaves, having been accidentally
omitted in the Juvenile Poems,--
"On the wide level of a mountain's head,
(I knew not where, but 'twas some fairy place)
Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread,
Two lovely children run an endless race,
A sister and a brother!
That far outstripped the other;
Yet ever runs she with reverted face,
And looks and listens for the boy behind;
For he, alas! is blind!
O'er rough and smooth with even step he passed,
And knows not whether he be first or last." [11]
in which may be traced the first dawnings of his genius. He pictures to
himself a boy returning to school after the holidays; in his day-dreams
making plans for the future, and anticipating the pleasure he is to
enjoy on his return home; his vivid thoughts, and sanguine expectations
"far outstripping" the reality of time as marked by the watch or
almanack. Real time is personified as a blind boy steadily pursuing his
path; whilst imaginary time is represented as a fleeting girl, looking
back and listening for her brother whom she has outrun. Perhaps to Mr.
Bowyer's excellent method of instruction may be attributed this early
developement of his genius. Coleridge remarks of him,
"He was an admirable educer, no less than educator of intellect; he
taught me to leave out as many epithets as would make eight syllable
lines, and then ask if the exercise would not be greatly improved."
Although in this year he began to indulge in metaphysical speculations,
he was wedded to verse, and many of his early poems were planned; some
of which he finished, and they were published in the "Juvenile Poems,"
on his entry into life; but as many more were scattered among his
friends, who had greatly increased in number. About this time he became
acquainted with a widow lady,
"whose son," says he, "I, as upper boy, had protected, and who
therefore looked up to me, and taught me what it was to have a mother.
I loved her as such. She had three daughters, and of course I fell in
love with the eldest. From this time to my nineteenth year, when I
quitted school for Jesus, Cambridge, was the era of poetry and love."
It has been observed, that about this sixteenth year, he first developed
genius, and that during this early period of his life, his mind was
incessantly toiling in the pursuit of knowledge. His love of reading
seemed to have increased in proportion to his acquirements, which were
equally great: his representing himself as an infidel was better perhaps
understood by his master, who believed it to be only puerile vanity; and
therefore Coleridge considered the flogging he received on this
occasion, a just and appropriate punishment; and it was so, for as a boy
he had not thought deep enough on an equally important point, viz., what
is Fidelity, and how easily, he particularly might mistake the
genuineness of sincere 'fidelity' for mere outward forms, and the simple
observance of customs. Perhaps I might have been disposed to pass over
this era with a slighter notice, which he in his simplicity of character
thought it right to record. He was always honest in every thing
concerning himself, and never spared self-accusation, often, when not
understood, to his own injury. He never from his boyhood to his latest
life, received kindness without grateful feelings, and, when he believed
it coupled with love, without the deepest sense of its value; and if the
person possessed sensibility and taste, he repaid it tenfold. This was
the experience of nearly twenty years intimate knowledge of his
character.
His description of his first love was that of a young poet, recording
the first era of the passion, the fleeting dream of his youth--but not
that love which he afterwards records in the Geneviève when he says,
"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of love,
And feed his sacred flame."
First love, so seldom the mature love of future days, is a flower of
premature growth and developement, on which fancy exercises itself in
castle-building, and is in unison with that age when youth flings his
limbs about in the air, as an exercise to rid himself of the superfluous
volition, the accumulation of which gives him a sensation of uneasiness;
and these simple and unreserved accounts of Coleridge's infidelity, and
also of his first love-fit, should be put down merely as mental
exercises. The lines above quoted, belong, I have said, to the maturer
mind; they are thoughts which, unlike the sportive dace on the surface
of some calm lake, may rather be compared to the inhabitants of the deep
waters beneath.
"How often will the loving heart and imaginative spirit of a young man
mistake the projected creature of his own moral yearning, seen in the
reflecting surface of the first not repulsive or vulgar female who
treats him affectionately, for the realization of his idea. Reversing
the order of the Genesis, he believes the female the original, and the
outward reality and impressment of the self-constructed 'image', of
the ideal! He most sincerely supposes himself in love--even in cases
where the mistake might have been suspected by one curious fact--that
his strongest emotions on love, were when absent from the imagined
object. But the time comes, or may come, when the same feeling exists
equally in presence and absence, in health and in sickness; when he
verily 'is' in love. And now he 'knows' himself to be so, by the 'so'
being--he can even prove it to his own mind by his certainty, his
'intuition' of the essential difference, as actually as it is
uncommunicable, between it and its previous subjective counterfeits,
and anticipations. Even so it is with friends.--O it is melancholy to
think how the very forms and geniality of my affections, my belief of
obligation, consequent gratitude and anxious sense of duty were wasted
on the shadows of friendship. With few exceptions, I can almost say,
that till I came to H----, I never 'found' what FRIENDS were--and
doubtless, in more than one instance, I sacrificed substances who
loved me, for semblances who were well pleased that I should love
'them', but who never loved nor inwardly respected ought but
themselves. The distinction between 'the' friends and 'the' love is,
that the latter we discover by itself to 'be', alone itself--for it is
in its nature unique and exclusive. (See Improvvisatore in the
'Amulet' of 1826 or 7).
"But of the former we discover the genuineness by comparison and
experience--the reason is obvious--in the instances in which the
person imagined himself to 'be in love' with another (I use this
phrase 'be in love with' for the want of any other; for, in fact, from
the absence in our language of any appropriate exponent of the thing
meant), it is a delusion in toto. But, in the other instance, the one
half (i.e. the person's own feelings and sense of duty with acts
accordant) remains the same (ex. gr. S.T.C. could not feel more
deeply, nor from abatement of nervous life by age and sickness so
'ardently') he could not feel, think, and act with a 'more' entire
devotion, to I.G. or to H.G. than he did to W.W. and to R.S., yet the
latter were and remain most honourable to his judgment. Their
characters, as moral and intellectual beings, give a dignity to his
devotion; and the imperishable consciousness of his devout and almost
enthusiastic attachment to them, still sanctifies their names, and
makes the men holy and revered to him." [12]
Had Coleridge in early or even in later life paid an insincere, because
undeserved, deference to outward show, and to the surface opinions
counterfeiting depth, so attractive to the superficial observer--added
to which, had he possessed a portion of that self-regarding policy which
frequently aids success--he might have been idolized where he was
neglected, and rewarded, if I might so profane this word, with high
worldly honours in other quarters. But it was otherwise; and could a
crown of gold have been offered him for the crown of glory of which he
was in earnest search, he would have refused the exchange. The
difference between time and eternity had already taken root, and he felt
the mighty import of these words too strongly to have lost sight of
their practical use; all that his health and powers would allow him to
acquire he did acquire, and freely gave all he had for the benefit of
others.
He says, "From the exuberance of my animal spirits, when I had burst
forth from my misery and moping and the indiscretions resulting from
those spirits--ex. gr. swimming over the New River in my clothes, and
remaining in them;--full half the time from seventeen to eighteen was
passed in the sick-ward of Christ's Hospital, afflicted with jaundice
and rheumatic fever." From these indiscretions and their consequences
may be dated all his bodily sufferings in future life: in short,
rheumatism sadly afflicting him, while the remedies only slightly
alleviated his sufferings, without hope of a permanent cure; though
confined to his bed, his mind, ever active, still allowed him time to
continue the exercise of his intellectual powers, and afforded him
leisure for contemplation. Medical men are too often called upon to
witness the effects of acute rheumatism in the young subject: in some,
the attack is on the heart, and its consequences are immediate; in
others, it leaves behind bodily sufferings, which may indeed be
palliated, but terminate only in a lingering dissolution.
I have often heard Coleridge express regret that he had not cultivated
mathematics, which he believed would have been of important use in life,
particularly had he arrived so far as to have mastered the higher
calculus; but he was, by an oversight of the mathematical master,
stopped on the threshold. When he was commencing Euclid, among some of
its first axioms came this:--"A line is length without breadth." "How
can that be?" said the scholar, (Coleridge); "A line must have some
breadth, be it ever so thin." This roused the master's indignation at
the impertinence of the scholar, which was instantly answered by a box
on the ear, and the words, hastily uttered, "Go along, you silly
fellow;" and here ended his first tuition, or lecture. His second
efforts afterwards were not more successful; so that he was destined to
remain ignorant of these exercises of the logic of the understanding.[A]
Indeed his logical powers were so stupendous, from boyhood, as never to
require such drilling. Bowyer, his classical master, was too skilful in
the management of youth, and too much interested in the success of his
scholars to overlook what was best fitted for them. He exercised their
logical powers in acquiring and comparing the different classics. On
him, as a teacher, Coleridge loved to dwell; and, with his grateful
feelings, ever ready to acknowledge the sense of his obligations to him,
particularly those relating to his mental improvement, he has, in his
Biog. Lit. vol. i. p. 7, expressed himself in these words:
"He early moulded my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to Cicero,
of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of Virgil to Ovid. He
habituated me to compare Lucretius, (in such extracts as I then read,)
Terence, and, above all, the chaster poems of Catullus, not only with
the Roman poets of the, so called, silver and brazen ages; but with
even those of the Augustan æra: and, on grounds of plain sense and
universal logic, to see and assert the superiority of the former in
the truth and nativeness, both of their thoughts and diction. At the
same time that we were studying the Greek tragic poets, he made us
read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons; and they were lessons too,
which required most time and trouble to 'bring up' so as to escape his
censure. I learnt from him that Poetry, even that of the loftiest,
and, seemingly wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that
of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and
dependent on more, and more fugitive causes."
In early life he was remarkably joyous; nature had blessed him with a
buoyancy of spirits, and even when suffering, he deceived the partial
observer. He delighted many of the strangers he met in his saunterings
through the cloisters, arrested and riveted the attention of the passer
by, whom, like his "Ancient Mariner," he held by a spell. His
schoolfellow, Lamb, has mentioned him, when under the influence of this
power, as the delight of his auditors. In the Elia, he says,
"Come back into memory like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy
fancies, with hope, like a fiery column before thee, the dark pillar
not yet turned ... How have I seen the casual passer through the
cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration, (while he weighed
the disproportion between the 'speech' and the 'garb' of the
mirandula,) to hear thee unfold, in deep and sweet intonations, the
mysteries of Iamblichus [14] or Plotinus, (for even in those years
thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts); or reciting Homer
in his Greek, or Pindar, while the walls of the old Grey-Friars
re-echoed to the accents."
Middleton was not prepared to sympathise in these flights, considering
them subversive of the dignity of a Grecian. [15] Middleton was then on
the threshold of the College, and lads in this situation seemed called
upon, to preserve with dignity their honours, and with more outward
forms than suited their age. This at the time rendered them stiff and
unfamiliar, so much so, that within the walls, and in the neighbourhood,
it was mistaken for pride, and the words "Proud as a Grecian," were
proverbial. These boys had the dignity of their rising prospects
therefore to support--they were the aristocracy of the school. This was
a task ill suited to Coleridge; and his flights of fancy, as Lamb termed
them, would only produce a shrug of Middleton's shoulders, and a dread
at the prospect of the falling dignity of the school. Middleton's Poem,
in Mr. Trollope's [16] History of Christ's Hospital, and its companion
that of Coleridge, characterize the two youths, and plainly point out
that the selection of these poems was influenced more by a merit
belonging purely to talent than from any display of genius in either.
The verses of Middleton are more indicative of strength than of power;
they are the verses of a well-tutored youth, of commanding talents.
Those of Coleridge show more of fancy, but do not exhibit the power he
possessed at that age, which will be seen by comparing this poem with
many written by him at an earlier period, and now published among his
"Juvenile Poems." Middleton being older than Coleridge was elected
first, viz. 26th September, 1788, to Pembroke College, Cambridge.
Coleridge left Christ's Hospital for Jesus' College, Cambridge, 7th
September, 1790, [17] taking leave of his school-fellows in the
following sonnet:--
Farewell, parental scenes! a sad farewell!
To you my grateful heart still fondly clings,
Tho' fluttering round on Fancy's burnish'd wings,
Her tales of future joy Hope loves to tell.
Adieu, adieu! ye much loved cloisters pale!
Ah! would those happy days return again,
When 'neath your arches, free from every stain,
I heard of guilt, and wonder'd at the tale!
Dear haunts! where oft my simple lays I sang,
Listening meanwhile the echoings of my feet,
Lingering I quit you, with as great a pang,
As when ere while, my weeping childhood, torn
By early sorrow from my native seat,
Mingled its tears with hers--my widow'd parent lorn.
'Poetical Works', vol. i. p. 31.
[Footnote 1: Bishop Berkeley, in his work ("Siris") commences with a
dissertation on Tar Water, and ends with the Trinity. The Rev. John
Coleridge commences his work, entitled "A miscellaneous Dissertation
arising from the 17th and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges," with a
well written preface on the Bible, and ends with an advertisement of his
school, and his method of teaching Latin.]
[Footnote 2: In 1809, the above whimsical stories were related to me by
a gentleman, born in the town of Ottery, and by marriage closely related
to the Rev. John Coleridge. While Coleridge resided at Highgate, he also
repeated the stories which had grown up with him from boyhood as here
related, himself believing them true; but a near relation has lately
assured the writer, that some of these stories are told of another most
respectable clergyman, residing at that time in the neighbourhood, and
'he' believes that they properly belong to him. It is commonly remarked
that very studious men, either from inattention, or from ignorance of
the conventional forms of society, are regardless of what passes before
them. Paying, perhaps, too much attention to their inward feelings or
thoughts, seemingly day-dreaming--and this may frequently give rise to
the stories to be found in many towns besides Ottery. Still, however,
thoughtful and contemplative persons are often the quickest observers of
the weaknesses of human nature, and yet as they usually make the
greatest allowances for every infirmity, they are often impartial
judges, and judicious counsellors. The Rev. John Coleridge, though
sometimes an absent man, was a most valuable pastor, and on all fitting
occasions a good man of business, having conducted several difficult
matters of controversy for his parish with great satisfaction to the
parties.]
[Footnote 3: Such at least were the recollections of this extraordinary
boy of seven years of age.]
[Footnote 4: Quale--quare--quidditive.]
[Footnote 5: He had, before he was six years old, read three times
through the Arabian Nights, or rather one of the volumes.--See "'The
Friend'," vol. i. p. 252, ed. 1818.]
[Footnote 6: I insert a similar observation on his feelings when he
first left home. "When I was first plucked up and transplanted from my
birth place and family, at the death of my dear father, whose revered
image has ever survived in my mind, to make me know what the emotions
and affections of a son are, and how ill a father's place is likely to
be supplied by any other relation. Providence (it has often occurred to
me) gave the first intimation, that it was my lot, and that it was best
for me, to make or find my way of life a detached individual, a Terræ
Filius, who was to ask love or service of no one on any more specific
relation than that of being a man, and as such to take my chance for the
free charities of humanity."]
[Footnote 7: Whatever might have been his habits in boyhood, in manhood
he was 'scrupulously' clean in his person, and especially took great
care of his hands by frequent ablutions. In his dress also he was as
cleanly as the liberal use of snuff would permit, though the
clothes-brush was often in requisition to remove the wasted snuff.
"Snuff," he would facetiously say, "was the final cause of the nose,
though troublesome and expensive in its use."]
[Footnote 8: "Jemmy Bowyer," as he was familiarly called by Coleridge
and Lamb, might not inaptly be termed the "plagosus orbilius" of
Christ's Hospital.]
[Footnote 9: In his biographical sketch of his literary life, he informs
us that he had translated the eight Hymns of Synesius from the Greek,
into English Anacreontica, before his fifteenth year.]
[Footnote 10:
... the childhood shews the man,
As morning shews the day ...
'Paradise Regained', book iv. v. 220.]
[Footnote 11: Aldine Edition, Vol. i. p. 6.--Pickering, London, 1834.]
[Footnote 12: Extract of a note written Dec. 1829.]
[Footnote 13:
"'Thought' and 'attention' very different things.--I never expected
the German (viz. selbst-mühige Erzeugung dessen, wovon meine Rede war)
from the readers of the 'Friend'.--I did expect the latter, and was
disappointed."
"This is a most important distinction, and in the new light afforded
by it to my mind, I see more plainly why mathematics cannot be a
substitute for Logic, much less for Metaphysics--i.e. transcendental
Logic, and why therefore Cambridge has produced so few men of genius
and original power since the time of Newton.--Not only it does 'not'
call forth the balancing and discriminating powers ('that' I saw long
ago), but it requires only 'attention', not 'thought' or
self-production.
"In a long-brief Dream-life of regretted regrets, I still find a
noticeable space marked out by the Regret of having neglected the
Mathematical Sciences. No 'week', few 'days' pass unhaunted by a fresh
conviction of the truth involved in the Platonic Superstition over the
Portal of Philosophy,
[Greek: Maedeis age_ométraetos eisít_o].
But surely Philosophy hath scarcely sustained more detriment by its
alienation from mathematics."
MS. Note.]
[Footnote 14:
"In my friendless wanderings on our leave-days, i.e. the Christ
Hospital phrase, not for holidays altogether, but for those on which
the boys are permitted to go beyond the precincts of the school (for I
was an orphan, and had scarce any connexions in London), highly was I
delighted, if any passenger, especially if he drest in black, would
enter into conversation with me; for soon I found the means of
directing it to my favourite subjects--
Of Providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free will, fore-knowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."]
[Footnote 15: The upper boys of the school selected for the University
are so termed, though wearing the same coloured dress, but made of more
costly materials.]
[Footnote 16: In a note on the History, p. 192, Mr. Trollope makes the
following observation:
"From this book" (a book in which the boys were allowed to copy their
verses when considered good) "the verses referred to in the text were
inscribed."
They will be found in the Literary Remains, vol. i, p.33. Trollope
says,
"These verses are copied not as one of the best, but of the earliest
productions of the writer."]
[Footnote 17: Entered at Jesus' College, Feb. 5th, 1791, at the age of
19.--College Books.]
CHAPTER II.
COLERIDGE'S FIRST ENTRY AT JESUS' COLLEGE.--HIS SIMPLICITY AND WANT OF
WORLDLY TACT.--ANECDOTES AND DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS OF HIM DURING HIS
RESIDENCE AT COLLEGE INTIMACY WITH MIDDLETON--WITH SOUTHEY.--QUITS
COLLEGE FOR BRISTOL.
At Cambridge, whither his reputation had travelled before him, high
hopes and fair promises of success were entertained by his young friends
and relations. He was considered by the "Blues," as they are familiarly
termed, one from whom they were to derive great immediate honour, which
for a short period, however, was deferred. Individual genius has a cycle
of its own, and moves only in that path, or by the powers influencing
it. Genius has been properly defined 'prospective', talent on the
contrary 'retrospective': genius is creative, and lives much in the
future, and in its passage or progress may make use of the labours of
talent.
"I have been in the habit," says Coleridge, "of considering the
qualities of intellect, the comparative eminence in which
characterizes individuals and even countries, under four
kinds,--genius, talent, sense, and cleverness. The first I use in the
sense of most general acceptance, as the faculty which adds to the
existing stock of power and knowledge by new views, new combinations,
by discoveries not accidental, but anticipated, or resulting from
anticipation."
'Friend', vol. iii. p. 85, edit. 1818. [1]
Coleridge left school with great anticipation of success from all who
knew him, for his character for scholarship, and extraordinary accounts
of his genius had preceded him. He carried with him too the same
childlike simplicity which he had from a boy, and which he retained even
to his latest hours. His first step was to involve himself in much
misery, and which followed him in after life, as the sequel will
evidence. On his arrival at College he was accosted by a polite
upholsterer, requesting to be permitted to furnish his rooms. The next
question was, "How would you like to have them furnished?" The answer
was prompt and innocent enough, "Just as you please, Sir!"--thinking the
individual employed by the College. The rooms were therefore furnished
according to the taste of the artizan, and the bill presented to the
astonished Coleridge. Debt was to him at all times a thing he most
dreaded, and he never had the courage to face it. I once, and once only,
witnessed a painful scene of this kind, which occurred from mistaking a
letter on ordinary business for an application for money. [2] Thirty
years afterwards, I heard that these College debts were about one
hundred pounds! Under one hundred pounds I believe to have been the
amount of his sinnings; but report exceeded this to something which
might have taxed his character beyond imprudence, or mere want of
thought. Had he, in addition to his father's simplicity, possessed the
worldly circumspection of his mother, he might have avoided these and
many other vexations; but he went to the University wholly unprepared
for a College life, having hitherto chiefly existed in his own 'inward'
being, and in his poetical imagination, on which he had fed.
But to proceed. Coleridge's own account is, that while Middleton,
afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, remained at Pembroke, he "worked with him
and was industrious, read hard, and obtained the prize for the Greek
Ode," [3] &c. It has been stated, that he was locked up in his room to
write this Ode; but this is not the fact. Many stories were afloat, and
many exaggerations were circulated and believed, of his great want of
attention to College discipline, and of perseverance in his studies, and
every failure, or apparent failure, was attributed to these causes.
Often has he repeated the following story of Middleton, and perhaps this
story gave birth to the report.
They had agreed to read together in the evening, and were not to hold
any conversation. Coleridge went to Pembroke and found Middleton intent
on his book, having on a long pair of boots reaching to the knees, and
beside him, on a chair, next to the one he was sitting on, a pistol.
Coleridge had scarcely sat down before he was startled by the report of
the pistol. "Did you see that?" said Middleton. "See what?" said
Coleridge. "That rat I just sent into its hole again--did you feel the
shot? It was to defend my legs," continued Middleton, "I put on these
boots. I am fighting with these rats for my books, which, without some
prevention, I shall have devoured."
There is an anecdote related of Coleridge while at College, and which I
have heard him frequently repeat, when called upon to vouch for its
truth. His fellow students had amused themselves, when he was in
attendance at Lecture, by stealing a portion of the tail of his gown,
and which they had repeated so frequently, as to shorten it to the
length of a spencer. Crossing the quadrangle one day with these remains
at his back, and his appearance not being in collegiate trim, the Master
of Jesus' College, who was ever kind to him, and overlooked all little
inattentions to appearances, accosted him smartly on this occasion--"Mr.
Coleridge! Mr. Coleridge! when will you get rid of that shameful gown?"
Coleridge, turning his head, and casting his eyes over his shoulders, as
if observing its length, or rather want of length, replied in as
courteous a manner as words of such a character would permit, "Why, Sir,
I think I've got rid of the greatest part of it already!"
Such were Coleridge's peculiarities, which were sometimes construed into
irregularities; but through his whole life, attracting notice by his
splendid genius, he fell too often under the observation of men who
busied themselves in magnifying small things, and minifying large ones.
About this period, that Volcano, in which all the worst passions of men
were collected, and which had been for some time emitting its black
smoke, at length exploded and rent society asunder. The shock was felt
throughout Europe; each party was over-excited, and their minds
enthralled by a new slavery--the one shouting out the blessings of
liberty and equality--the other execrating them, and prophesying the
consequences that were to follow:--
"There's no philosopher but sees
That rage and fear are one disease;
_Tho' that may burn, and this may freeze_,
They're both alike tho ague."
'Mad Ox'.
Combustibles composed of such ardent and evil spirits soon blaze out;
yet the evil does not stop when the blaze has ceased; it leaves an
excitement which is constantly disclosing itself in a restless morbid
vanity, a craving for distinction, and a love of applause, in its way as
dangerous as the thirst of gain, and the worship of the mammon of
unrighteousness.
Alas! the circulation of such anecdotes as have been here related of
Coleridge when at College, and his inattention to some of the minor
forms of discipline, were sufficient for illnatured persons to transform
into serious offences, particularly when coupled with the disappointed
hopes of zealous friends. At this period, in which all men who were not
senseless, or so indifferent as nearly to be senseless, particularly the
young men of our Universities, all embraced a party, and arranged
themselves under their different banners. When I now look around me, and
see men who have risen to the highest offices of the different
professions, in the church, the law, or in physic, formerly only known
by the name of Citizen John, &c. &c., _now_ my Lord so and so, or your
Grace the----, it seems like a dream, or at least a world of fleeting
shadows. Sir James Mackintosh, in a letter to Mr. Sharp, states what he
conceived to be the errors of both parties, so far as they arose from
errors of judgment:
"The opposition mistook the moral character of the revolution; the
ministers mistook its force: and both parties, from pique, resentment,
pride, habit, and obstinacy, persisted in acting on these mistakes
after they were disabused by experience. Mr. Burke alone avoided both
these fatal mistakes. He saw both the malignity and the strength of
the revolution. But where there was wisdom to discover the truth,
there was not power, and perhaps there was not practical skill, to
make that wisdom available for the salvation of Europe.--'Diis aliter
visum!' My fortune has been in some respects very singular. I have
lately read the lives and private correspondence of some of the most
memorable men in different countries of Europe, who are lately dead.
[4] Klopstock, Kant, Lavater, Alfieri, they were all filled with joy
and hope by the French revolution--they clung to it for a longer or a
shorter time--they were compelled to relinquish their illusions. The
disappointment of all was bitter, but it showed itself in various
modes, according to the variety of their characters. The series of
passions growing out of that disappointment, was the not very remote
cause of the death of Lavater. In the midst of society, Alfieri buried
himself in misanthropic solitude; and the shock, which awakened him
from the dreams of enthusiasm, darkened and shortened his days. In the
mean time the multitude, comprehending not only those who have neither
ardour of sensibility, nor compass of understanding to give weight to
their suffrage, but those also whom accident had not brought into
close and perpetual contact with the events, were insensibly detached
from the revolution; and, before they were well aware that they had
quitted their old 'position', they found themselves at the antipodes."
The excitement which this state of things produced might have been
highly advantageous to some, and even quickened their intellectual
powers, particularly those destined either for the bar or the senate,
but certainly not those intended for the church.
The revolution [5] and its consequences engrossed the thoughts of all
men too much for the calmer pursuits of life; and the minds of the young
especially were so absorbed by passing temporal events, as to leave but
little time for the contemplation of the deeper and more serious affairs
of futurity. However, Coleridge appears in his political opinions to
have leaned too much to the side of democracy; but this was so prevalent
and so much a fashion, particularly in those filled with enthusiasm,
that it seemed a natural consequence in any young man possessing even
ordinary intellect. Middleton, his friend, passed on without attaching
himself to either party. His manners (as I have before noticed) were
austere and sedate. He steadily persevered, without deviation, in his
studies, though chance did not always favour him, nor crown him with the
success he merited. He was a good and amiable man, and an affectionate
friend; but early want of success in his academical exertions rendering
him melancholy, this by sympathy was soon imparted to his friend. After
Middleton's departure, the keen desire which Coleridge previously felt
for the possession of honours abated, and he became indifferent to
them--he might at this time have been idle, but never vicious. The men
who often appear to be the gayest and lightest of heart, are too
frequently melancholic; and it is a well-known fact, that the best comic
actors are the greatest sufferers from this malady, as if it seemed an
essential qualification for that department of histrionic excellence, in
which the greatest animal spirits are personated and successfully
imitated. Coleridge, at this period, delighted in boyish tricks, which
others were to execute. I remember a fellow-collegiate recalling to his
memory an exploit of which he was the planner, and a late Lord
Chancellor the executor. It was this: a train of gunpowder was to be
laid on two of the neatly shaven lawns of St. John's and Trinity
Colleges, in such a manner, that, when set on fire, the singed grass
would exhibit the ominous words, Liberty and Equality, which, with able
ladlike dexterity, was duly performed.
The writer of the College Reminiscences in the Gentleman's Magazine,
December, 1834, a first-form boy with Coleridge at Christ's Hospital,
was well acquainted with his habits, and speaks of his having gained the
gold medal in his freshman's year for the Greek Ode, but does not notice
his having been locked up in his room for that purpose.
"In his second year he stood for the Craven scholarship--a university
scholarship, for which under-graduates of any standing are entitled to
become candidates. This was in the winter of 1792. Out of sixteen or
eighteen competitors, a selection of four were to contend for the
prize, and these four were Dr. Butler, late head-master of Shrewsbury,
Dr. Keate, the late head-master of Eton, [6] Dr. Bethell, the present
Bishop of Bangor, and Coleridge. Dr. Butler was the successful
candidate."
Coleridge always spoke of this decision as having been in every way
just, and due to Butler's merit as a clever and industrious scholar.
"But pause a moment," says this writer, "in Coleridge's History, and
think of him at this period! Butler! Keate Bethell! and Coleridge! How
different the career of each in future life! O Coleridge, through what
strange paths did the meteor of genius lead thee! Pause a moment, ye
distinguished men! and deem it not the least bright spot in your
happier career, that you and Coleridge were once rivals, and for a
moment running abreast in the pursuit of honour. I believe that his
disappointment at this crisis damped his ardour. Unfortunately, at
that period, there was no classical tripos; so that, if a person did
not obtain the classical medal, he was thrown back among the totally
undistinguished; and it was not allowable to become a candidate for
the classical medal, unless you had taken a respectable degree in
mathematics. Coleridge had not the least taste for these, and here his
case was hopeless; so that he despaired of a Fellowship, and gave up
what in his heart he coveted--college honours and a college life. He
had seen Middleton (late Bishop of Calcutta) quit Pembroke under
similar circumstances. Not _quite_ similar, because Middleton had
studied mathematics so as to take a respectable degree, and to enable
him to try for the medal; but he failed, and therefore all hopes
failed of a Fellowship--most fortunately, as it proved in after-life,
for Middleton, though he mourned at the time most deeply, and
exclaimed--'I am Middleton, which is another name for misfortune!'
'There is a Providence which shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.'
That which Middleton deemed a misfortune drew him from the cobwebs of
a college library to the active energies of a useful and honoured
life."
If, as Shakespeare observes, "there be a providence which shapes our
ends," such words as "fortunate" or "unfortunate," in their customary
use, will be found, on closer attention, and deeper thought, worthless
and full of error. We have each our part allotted to us in the great
drama of life.
But to return to Coleridge.
"When he quitted college, which he did before he had taken a degree,
in a moment of mad-cap caprice, and in an inauspicious hour!
'When,' as Coleridge says, 'I left the friendly cloisters, and the
happy grove of quiet, ever-honoured Jesus' College, Cambridge.'
Short, but deep and heartfelt reminiscence! In a Literary Life of
himself, this short memorial is all that Coleridge gives of his happy
days at college. Say not that he did not obtain, and did not wish to
obtain, classical honours! He did obtain them, and was eagerly
ambitious of them; [7] but he did not bend to that discipline which
was to qualify him for the whole course. He was very studious, but his
reading was desultory and capricious. He took little exercise merely
for the sake of exercise; but he was ready at any time to unbend his
mind in conversation; and, for the sake of this, his room (the
ground-floor room on the right hand of the staircase facing the great
gate,) was a constant rendezvous of conversation-loving friends; I
will not call them loungers, for they did not call to kill time, but
to enjoy it. What evenings have I spent in those rooms! What little
suppers, or 'sizings', as they were called, have I enjoyed; when
Æschylus, and Plato, and Thucydides were pushed aside, with a pile of
lexicons, &c. to discuss the pamphlets of the day. Ever and anon, a
pamphlet issued from the pen of Burke. There was no need of having the
book before us. Coleridge had read it in the morning, and in the
evening he would repeat whole pages verbatim."
Then came another disturbing cause, which altered the course of his path
in life, and this was Frend's trial. [8]
"During it," to resume the quotation, "pamphlets swarmed from the
press. Coleridge had read them all; and in the evening, with our
negus, we had them 'vivâ voce' gloriously."
Coleridge has recorded that he was a Socinian till twenty-five. Be not
startled, courteous reader! nor ye who knew him only in his later life,
if the impetuous zeal and ardour of his mind in early youth led him
somewhat wide of those fixed principles which he adopted in riper years.
To quote his own words, written soon after he left college, and
addressed to the late Rev. George Coleridge,
"If aught of error or intemperate truth
Should meet thine ear, think thou that riper age
Will calm it down, and let thy love forgive it!"
There is one incident very characteristic of him, which took place
during this trial. The trial was observed by Coleridge, to be going
against Frend, when some observation or speech was made in his favour; a
dying hope thrown out as it appeared to Coleridge who, in the midst of
the Senate, whilst sitting on one of the benches, extended his hands and
clapped them. The Proctor in a loud voice demanded who had committed
this indecorum. Silence ensued. The Proctor in an elevated tone, said to
a young man sitting near Coleridge, "'Twas you, sir!" The reply was as
prompt as the accusation; for, immediately holding out the stump of his
right arm, it appeared that he had lost his hand,--"I would, sir," said
he, "that I had the power."--That no innocent person should incur blame,
Coleridge went directly afterwards to the Proctor, who told him that he
saw him clap his hands, but fixed on this person who he knew had not the
power. "You have had," said he, "a narrow escape."
The opinions of youth are often treated too seriously. The matter of
most importance to ascertain when they need correction, is, whether in
these opinions they are 'sincere'; at all events, the outbursts of youth
are not to be visited as veteran decisions; and when they differ from
'received' opinions, the advice offered should be tempered with
kindliness of feeling and sympathy even with their failings.
Unfortunately for Coleridge, however, he was to be exempted from those
allowances made for others, and was most painfully neglected by those
who ought to have sympathized with, and supported him; he was left "to
chase chance-started friendships."
Coleridge possessed a mind remarkably sensitive, so much so, as at times
to divest him of that mental courage so necessary in a world full of
vicissitude and painful trial; and this deficiency, though of short
duration, was occasionally observed in early life. At the departure of
Middleton, [9] to whom he had always looked up, whose success he had
considered morally certain, and whose unexpected failure was therefore
the more painful to his feelings, he became desponding, and, in
addition, vexed and fretted by the college debts, he was overtaken by
that inward grief, the product of fear, which he, in after life, so
painfully described in his Ode to Dejection:--
"A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear."
Such "viper thoughts" did at this time coil around his mind, and were
for him "Reality's dark Dream." In this state of mind he suddenly left
Cambridge for London, and strolled about the streets till night came on,
and then rested himself on the steps of a house in Chancery Lane, in a
reverie of tumultuous feelings, speculating on the future. In this
situation, overwhelmed with his own painful thoughts, and in misery
himself, he had now to contend with the misery of others--for he was
accosted by various kinds of beggars importuning him for money, and
forcing on him their real or pretended sorrows. To these applicants he
emptied his pockets of his remaining cash. Walking along Chancery Lane
in the morning, he noticed a bill posted on the wall, "Wanted a few
smart lads for the 15th, Elliot's Light Dragoons;"--he paused a moment,
and said to himself,
"Well, I have had all my life a violent antipathy to soldiers and
horses, the sooner I can cure myself of these absurd prejudices the
better, and I will enlist in this regiment."
Forthwith he went as directed to the place of enlistment. On his
arrival, he was accosted by an old sergeant, with a remarkably
benevolent countenance, to whom he stated his wish. The old man looking
at him attentively, asked him if he had been in bed? On being answered
in the negative, he desired him to take his, made him breakfast, and
bade him rest himself awhile, which he did. This feeling sergeant
finding him refreshed in his body, but still suffering apparently from
melancholy, in kind words begged him to be of good cheer, and consider
well the step he was about to take; gave him half a guinea, which he was
to repay at his convenience, with a desire at the same time that he
would go to the play, and shake off his melancholy, and not return to
him. The first part of the advice Coleridge attended to, but returned
after the play to the quarters he had left. At the sight of him, this
kind-hearted man burst into tears--"Then it must be so," said he. This
sudden and unexpected sympathy from an entire stranger deeply affected
Coleridge, and nearly shook his resolution; still considering the die
was cast, and that he could not in honour even to the sergeant, without
implicating him, retreat, he preserved his secret, and after a short
chat, they retired to rest.
In the morning, the sergeant, not unmindful of his duty to his
sovereign, mustered his recruits, and Coleridge, with his new comrades,
was marched to Reading. On his arrival at the quarters of the regiment,
the general of the district inspected the recruits, and looking hard at
Coleridge with a military air, enquired, "What's your name, sir?"
"Comberbach," (the name he had assumed.) "What do you come here for,
sir?" as if doubting whether he had any business there. "Sir," said
Coleridge, "for what most other persons come, to be made a soldier." "Do
you think," said the general, "you can run a Frenchman through the
body?" "I do not know," replied Coleridge, "as I never tried, but I'll
let a Frenchman run me through the body before I'll run away." "That
will do," said the general; and Coleridge was turned into the ranks.
The same amiable and benevolent conduct which was so interwoven in his
nature, soon made him friends, and his new comrades vied with each other
in their endeavours to be useful to him; and being, as before described,
rather helpless, he required the assistance of his fellow-soldiers. They
cleaned his horse, attended particularly to its heels, and to the
accoutrements. At this time he frequently complained of a pain at the
pit of his stomach, accompanied with sickness, which totally prevented
his stooping, and in consequence he could never arrive at the power of
bending his body to rub the heels of his horse, which alone was
sufficient to make him dependent on his comrades; but it should be
observed that he on his part was ever willing to assist them by being
their amanuensis when one was required, and wrote all their letters to
their sweethearts and wives. [10]
It appears that he never advanced beyond the awkward squad, and that the
drill-sergeant had little hope of his progress from the necessary
warnings he gave to the rest of the troop, even to this same squad to
which he belonged; and, though his awkward manoeuvres were well
understood, the sergeant would vociferously exclaim, "Take care of that
Comberbach, [11] take care of him, for he will ride over you," and other
such complimentary warnings. From the notice that one of his officers
took of him, he excited, for a short time, the jealousy of some of his
companions. When in the street, he walked behind this officer as an
orderly, but when out of town they walked abreast, and his comrades not
understanding how a soldier in the awkward squad merited this
distinction, thought it a neglect of themselves, which, for the time,
produced some additional discomfort to Coleridge.
I believe this officer to have been Capt. Ogle, [12] who I think visited
him in after life at Highgate. It seems that his attention had been
drawn to Coleridge in consequence of discovering the following sentence
in the stables, written in pencil, "Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est
fuisse felicem!" but his more immediate discovery arose from a young man
who had left Cambridge for the army, and in his road through Reading to
join his regiment, met Coleridge in the street in his Dragoon's dress,
who was about to pass him, but, said he,
"No, Coleridge, this will not do, we have been seeking you these six
months; I must and will converse with you, and have no hesitation in
declaring that I shall immediately inform your friends that I have
found you."
This led to Coleridge's return to Cambridge. The same story is also
related and made the ground work of some scene in a novel, without the
names, by his early friend, Charles Lloyd--he who was included by
Canning in the Anti-jacobin with Coleridge, Mr. Southey, and Lamb. He
returned to Cambridge, but did not long remain there; and quitted it
without taking a degree.
It has been observed, that men of genius move in orbits of their own;
and seem deprived of that free will which permits the mere man of talent
steadily to pursue the beaten path. Coleridge had very early pictured to
himself many of the advantages of mechanical employment, its immunities
and exemptions from the sufferings consequent on the laborious exercise
of 'thought'; but yet he never shrank from the task apparently allotted
to him; he was made to soar and not to creep; even as a young man, his
acquirements were far beyond the age in which he lived. With his amiable
qualities, and early love of domestic life, he would have been well
content to tread an humbler path, but it was otherwise ordained!
However excellent for the many, the system adopted by our universities
was ill suited for a mind like Coleridge's, and there were some who felt
that a College routine was not the kind of education which would best
evolve, cultivate, and bring into training powers so 'unique'. It has
been repeated, 'ad nauseam', that great minds will not descend to the
industrious accumulation of those acquirements best suited to fit them
for independence. To say that Coleridge would not 'condescend' would be
a calumny,--nay, when his health permitted, he would drudge and work
more laboriously at some of the mechanical parts of literature, than any
man I ever knew. To speak detractingly of great and good men is
frequently the result of malice combined with egotism. Though it would
be injustice not to admit that he has had warm admirers and deeply
affectionate friends, it is much to be regretted that there have been
persons who have strangely maligned Coleridge, and who have attributed
to him vices of which he was innocent. Had these vices existed, they
would not have found any unfair extenuation in this memoir, nor would
they have been passed over without notice. In answer to calumnies at
that time in circulation, (and with sorrow and just indignation it is
added that these reports originated with some who called themselves his
friends; but, alas! most false and hypocritical!) the following minute
from his notes is quoted:
"My academic adventures and indiscretions must have seemed
unpardonable sins," that is, as they were related by the tale-bearers
and gossips of the day. "I mention these," adds he, "because the only
immoralities that can without the grossest slander be laid to my
charge, were all comprised within the space of the last two years of
my College life. As I went to Cambridge innocent, so I dare affirm,
from the first week of my acquaintance with Robert Southey to this
hour, Southey himself cannot stand more clear of all intention at
violations of the moral law: but, in fact, even during my career at
Jesus, the heaviest of my offences consisted in the folly of assuming
the show of vices, from which I was all but free, and which in the
comparatively few exceptions left loathing and self-disgust on my
mind. Were I, indeed, to fix on that week of my existence, in which my
moral being would have presented to a pitying guardian angel the most
interesting spectacle, it would be that very week [13] in London, in
which I was believed by my family to have abandoned myself to
debauchery of all kinds, and 'thus' to have involved myself in
disreputable pecuniary embarrassments. God knows, so intense was my
mental anguish, that during the whole time I was physically incapable
even of a 'desire'. My whole body seemed stunned and insensate, from
excess of inward suffering--my debts were the 'cause', not the effect;
but that I know there can be no substitute for a father, I should
say,--surely, surely, the innocence of my whole 'pre' and 'post'
academic life, my early distinction, and even the fact, that my
Cambridge extravagations did not lose me, nor cool for me, the esteem
and regard of a single fellow collegiate, might have obtained an
amnesty from worse transgressions."
Coleridge, who had desponded at the fate of Middleton, after the
unsuccessful attempts he made to obtain a fellowship, lost all hope of
procuring an income from the college, and as, through the
instrumentality of Frend, with whom an intimacy had now taken place, he
had been converted to what in these days is called Unitarianism, he was
too conscientious to take orders and enter the Established Church. These
circumstances opened to him new views, and effected a complete change in
his course of life, and thus his former objects and plans were set
aside. The friendship between Coleridge and Southey having greatly
increased, and still continuing to increase, and Coleridge being easily
led by the affection of those he loved, for which he had a constant
yearning, determined to follow literature in future life as a
profession, that appearing to him the only source of obtaining an
honourable livelihood.
Here there was no "mad caprice," but he calmly decided to leave
Cambridge and join Southey in his plans for the future, and commence the
profession on which they had mutually agreed. He went to Oxford to visit
Mr. Southey, and thence to Wales, and thence to Bristol (Mr. Southey's
native place), at which city they conjointly commenced their career in
authorship, and for the first few months shared the same room.
The times were still tumultuous; for although the great hurricane of the
revolution ceased abroad, yet, like mighty waters that had been once
agitated by a storm, tranquillity was not restored, nor was there any
prospect of an immediate calm. The 'Habeas Corpus' act was at this time
suspended, and the minister of that day, Mr. Pitt, had struck the panic
of property among the wealthy and affluent. During the time of danger,
when surrounded by government emissaries, these youthful poets gave
lectures on politics, and that with impunity, to crowded audiences.
Coleridge met with one interruption only, and that from a hired partizan
who had assayed a disturbance at one of these lectures, in order to
implicate him and his party, and by this means to effect, if possible,
their incarceration. The gentleman who mentioned this in the presence of
Coleridge (when with me at Highgate) said--He (Coleridge) had commenced
his lecture when this intended disturber of the peace was heard uttering
noisy words at the foot of the stairs, where the fee of admission into
the room was to be paid. The receiver of the money on the alert ascended
the stairs and informed Coleridge of the man's insolence and his
determination not to pay for his admission. In the midst of the lecture
Coleridge stopped, and said loud enough to be heard by the individual,
that before the intruder "kicked up a dust, he would surely down with
the dust," and desired the man to admit him. The individual had not long
been in the room before he began hissing, this was succeeded by loud
claps from Coleridge's party, which continued for a few minutes, but at
last they grew so warm that they began to vociferate, "Turn him
out!"--"Turn him out!"--"Put him out of the window!" Fearing the
consequences of this increasing clamour, the lecturer was compelled to
request silence, and addressed them as follows: "Gentlemen, ours is the
cause of liberty! that gentleman has as much right to hiss as you to
clap, and you to clap as he to hiss; but what is to be expected,
gentlemen, when the cool waters of reason come in contact with red hot
aristocracy but a hiss?" When the loud laugh ended, silence ensued, and
the rebuke was treasured and related. [14]
The terms aristocrat, democrat, and jacobin, were the fashionable
opprobrious epithets of the day; and well do I remember, the man who had
earned by his politics the prefix of jacobin to his name, was completely
shunned in society, whatever might be his moral character: but, as might
be expected, this was merely ephemeral, when parties ran high, and were
guided and governed more by impulses and passion than by principle.
"Truth I pursued, as Fancy sketch'd the way,
And wiser men than I went worse astray."
Men of the greatest sense and judgment possessing good hearts are, on
the review of the past, more disposed to think 'well' of the young men
of that day, who, from not exercising their reason, were carried into
the vortex of the revolution. Much has been written on the proposed
scheme of settling in the wilds of America;--the spot chosen was
Susquehannah,--this spot Coleridge has often said was selected, on
account of the name being pretty and metrical, indeed he could never
forbear a smile when relating the story. This day-dream, as he termed
it, (for such it really was) the detail of which as related by him
always gave it rather a sportive than a serious character, was a subject
on which it is doubtful whether he or Mr. Southey were really in earnest
at the time it was planned. The dream was, as is stated in the "Friend,"
that the little society to be formed was, in its second generation, to
have combined the innocence of the patriarchal age with the knowledge
and general refinements of European culture, and "I dreamt," says he,
"that in the sober evening of my life I should behold colonies of
independence in the undivided dale of industry." Strange fancies! 'and
as vain as strange'! This scheme, sportive, however, as it might be, had
its admirers; and there are persons now to be found, who are desirous of
realizing these visions, the past-time in thought and fancy of these
young poets--then about 23 years of age. During this dream, and about
this time, Southey and Coleridge married two sisters of the name of
Fricker, and a third sister was married to an Utopian poet as he has
been called, of the name of Lovel, whose poems were published with Mr.
Southey's. They were, however, too wise to leave Bristol for America,
for the purpose of establishing a genuine system of property--a
Pantisocracy, which was to be their form of government--and under which
they were to realize all their new dreams of happiness. Marriage, at all
events, seems to have sobered them down, and the vision vanished.
Chimerical as it appeared, the purveyors of amusement for the reading
public were thus furnished with occupation, and some small pecuniary
gain, while it exercised the wit of certain anti-Jacobin writers of the
day, and raised them into notice. Canning had the faculty of satire to
an extraordinary degree, and also that common sense tact, which made his
services at times so very useful to his country; his powers seemed in
their full meridian of splendour when an argument or new doctrine
permitted him rapidly to run down into its consequence, and then
brilliantly and wittily to skew its defects. In this he eminently
excelled. The beauties of the anti-Jacobin are replete with his satire.
He never attempted a display of depth, but his dry sarcasm left a sting
which those he intended to wound carried off 'in pain and mortfication'.
This scheme of Pantisocracy excited a smile among the kind-hearted and
thinking part of mankind; but, among the vain and restless ignorant
would-be-political economists, it met with more attention; and they,
with their microscopic eyes, fancied they beheld in it what was not
quite so visible to the common observer. Though the plan was soon
abandoned, it was thought sufficient for the subject of a lecture, and
afforded some mirth when the minds of the parties concerned in it
arrived at manhood. Coleridge saw, soon after it was broached, that no
scheme of colonizing that was not based on religion could be
permanent.--Left to the disturbing forces of the human passions to which
it would be exposed, it would soon perish; for all government to be
permanent should be influenced by reason, and guided by religion.
In the year 1795 Coleridge, residing then at Clevedon, a short distance
from Bristol, published his first prose work, with some additions by Mr.
Southey, the "Conciones ad Populum." In a short preface he observes,
"The two following addresses were delivered in the month of February,
1795, and were followed by six others in defence of natural and
revealed religion. 'There is a time to keep silence,' saith King
Solomon;--but when I proceeded to the first verse of the fourth
chapter of the Ecclesiastes, 'and considered all the oppressions that
are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were
oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their
oppressors there was power,' I concluded this was _not_ the 'time to
keep silence;' for truth should be spoken at all times, but more
especially at those times when to speak truth is dangerous."
In these addresses he showed that the example of France was a warning to
Great Britain; but, because he did not hold opinions equally violent
with the Jacobin party of that day, he was put down as an anti-Jacobin;
for, he says, "the annals of the French revolution have been recorded in
letters of blood, that the knowledge of the few cannot counteract the
ignorance of the many; that the light of philosophy, when it is confined
to a small minority, points out its possessors as the victims, rather
than the illuminators of the multitude. The patriots of France either
hastened into the dangerous and gigantic error of making certain evils
the means of contingent good, or were sacrificed by the mob, with whose
prejudices and ferocity their unbending virtue forbade them to
assimilate. Like Samson, the people were strong, like Samson, they were
also blind:" and he admonishes them at the end of the third lecture to
do all things in the spirit of love.
"It is worthy of remark," says he, in a MS. note, "that we may possess
a thing in such fulness as to prevent its possession from being an
object of distinct consciousness. Only as it lessens or dims, we
reflect on it, and learn to value it. This is one main cause why young
men of high and ardent minds find nothing repulsive in the doctrines
of necessity, which, in after years, they (as I have) recoil from.
Thus, too, the faces of friends dearly beloved become distinct in
memory or dream only after long absence." Of the work itself he says,
"Except the two or three pages involving the doctrine of philosophical
necessity and Unitarianism, I see little or nothing in these
'outbursts' of my 'youthful' zeal to 'retract', and with the exception
of some flame-coloured epithets applied to persons, as to Mr. Pitt and
others, or rather to personifications (for such they really were to
'me') as little to regret. Qualis ab initio [Greek: estaesae] S.T.C.
[15] When a rifacimento of the 'Friend' took place, [1818] at vol. ii.
p. 240, he states his reasons for reprinting the lecture referred to,
one of the series delivered at Bristol in the year 1794-95, because,
says he, "This very lecture, vide p. 10, has been referred to in an
infamous libel in proof of the author's Jacobinism."
When the mind of Coleridge was more matured he did not omit this truth,
which has never been refuted, that the aristocratic system "had its
golden side, for the noblest minds; but I
"should," continues he, "act the part of a coward if I disguised my
conviction that the errors of the aristocratic party were as gross,
and far less excusable than those of the Jacobin. Instead of
contenting themselves with opposing the real blessing of English law
to the 'splendid promises of untried theory', too large a part of
those who called themselves 'anti-Jacobins', did all in their power to
suspend those blessings; and they furnished 'new arguments to the
advocates of innovation', when they should have been answering 'the
old ones!'"
But, whatever were his opinions, they were founded on 'principle', and
with the exception of the two above alluded to, he ought never to be
accused of changing. Some years since, the late Charles Matthews, the
comedian, (or rather, as Coleridge used to observe, "the comic poet
acting his own poems,") showed me an autograph letter from Mr.
Wordsworth to Matthews' brother, (who was at that time educating for the
bar) and with whom he corresponded. In this letter he made the following
observation, "To-morrow I am going to Bristol to see those two
extraordinary young men, Southey and Coleridge," Mr. Wordsworth then
residing at Allfoxden. They soon afterwards formed an intimacy, which
continued (though not without some little interruption) during his life,
as his "Biographia Literaria" and his will attest.
Mr. Coleridge's next work was the "Watchman" in numbers--a miscellany to
be published every eighth day. The first number appeared on the 5th of
February, 1796. This work was a report of the state of the political
atmosphere, to be interspersed with sketches of character and verse. It
reached the 10th number, and was then dropped; the editor taking leave
of his readers in the following address:
"This is the last number of the Watchman. Henceforward I shall cease
to cry the state of the political atmosphere. While I express my
gratitude to those friends who exerted themselves so liberally in the
establishment of this miscellany, I may reasonably be expected to
assign some reason for relinquishing it thus abruptly. The reason is
short and satisfactory. The work does not pay its expences. Part of my
subscribers have relinquished it because it did not contain sufficient
original composition, and a still larger because it contained too
much. I have endeavoured to do well; and it must be attributed to
defect of ability, not of inclination or effort, if the words of the
prophet be altogether applicable to me, 'O watchman! thou hast watched
in vain!'"
Mr. Coleridge has given us in the "Biographia Literaria" a very lively
account of his opinions, adventures, and state of feeling during this
canvass in quest of subscribers.
"Towards the close of the first year, that inauspicious hour," (it was,
indeed, and for several reasons an "inauspicious hour" for him,) "when I
left the friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever-honoured
Jesus' College, Cambridge, to set on foot a periodical, entitled the
'Watchman,' that (according to the motto of the work) 'all might know
the truth, and that truth might make us free!'
"With a flaming prospectus 'Knowledge is power,' &c. and to cry the
state of the political atmosphere and so forth, I set off on a tour to
the north, from Bristol to Sheffield, for the purpose of procuring
customers, preaching by the way in most great towns, as a hireless
volunteer, in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the
woman of Babylon might be seen on me; for I was at that time, though a
Trinitarian (i.e. ad normam Platonis) in philosophy, yet a zealous
Unitarian in religion; more accurately, I was a psilanthropist, one of
those who believe our Lord to have been the real son of Joseph, and
who lay the main stress on the resurrection rather than on the
crucifixion. Oh! never can I remember those days with either shame or
regret, for I was most sincere! most disinterested! My opinions were,
indeed, in many and most important points erroneous, but my heart was
single! Wealth, rank, life itself then seemed cheap to me, compared
with the interests of (what I believe to be) the truth and the will of
my Maker. I cannot even accuse myself of having been actuated by
vanity; for, in the expansion of my enthusiasm, I did not think of
myself at all.
My campaign commenced at Birmingham, and my first attack was on a
rigid Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall dingy man,
in whom length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost
have been borrowed for a foundry poker. O that face! a face, [Greek:
kat' emphasin!] I have it before me at this moment. The lank, black
twine-like hair, pingui-nitescent, cut in a straight line, along the
black stubble of his thin gunpowder eyebrows, that looked like a
scorched aftermath from a last week's shaving. His coat collar behind
in perfect unison, both of colour and lustre, with the coarse, yet
glib cordage that I suppose he called his hair, and which with a
'bend' inward at the nape of the neck, (the only approach to flexure
in his whole figure) slunk in behind his waistcoat; while the
countenance lank, dark, very 'hard', and with strong perpendicular
furrows, gave me a dim notion of some one looking at me through a
'used' gridiron, all soot, grease, and iron! A person to whom one of
my letters of recommendation had been addressed, was my introducer.
It was a 'new event' in my life, my first 'stroke' in the new business
I had undertaken of an author; yes, and of an author on his own
account. I would address," says Coleridge, "an affectionate
exhortation to the youthful literati on my own experience. It will be
but short; for the beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge.
NEVER PURSUE LITERATURE AS A TRADE. [16] My companion," says he,
"after some imperfect sentences, and a multitude of hums and hahs,
abandoned the cause to his client; and I commenced an harangue of half
an hour to Phileleutheros, the tallow-chandler, varying my notes
through the whole gamut of eloquence, from the ratiocinative to the
declamatory, and, in the latter, from the pathetic to the indignant.
My taper man of lights listened with perseverant and praiseworthy
patience, though (as I was afterwards told, in complaining of certain
gales that were not altogether ambrosial,) it was a melting day with
him. And what, sir! (he said, after a short pause,) might the cost be?
only FOURPENCE, (O! how I felt the anti-climax, the abysmal bathos of
that FOURPENCE!) 'only fourpence, sir, each number, to be published on
every eighth day'. That comes to a deal of money at the end of a year;
and how much did you say there was to be for the money? Thirty-two
pages, sir! large octavo, closely printed. Thirty and two pages? Bless
me, why except what I does in a family way on the sabbath, that's more
than I ever reads, sir! all the year round. I am as great a one as any
man in Brummagem, sir! for liberty and truth, and all them sort of
things, but as to this, (no offence, I hope, sir!) I must beg to be
excused. So ended my first canvass."
Much the same indifference was shewn him at Manchester, &c., but he
adds:--"From this rememberable tour, I returned nearly a thousand
names on the subscription list of the 'Watchman;' yet more than half
convinced that prudence dictated the abandonment of the scheme; but
for this very reason I persevered in it; for I was at that period of
my life so completely hagridden by the fear of being influenced by
selfish motives, that to know a mode of conduct to be the dictate of
'prudence', was a sort of presumptive proof to my feelings, that the
contrary was the dictate of 'duty'. Accordingly, I commenced the work,
which was announced in London by long bills in letters larger than had
ever been seen before, and which (I have been informed, for I did not
see them myself) eclipsed the glories even of the lottery puffs; but,
alas! the publication of the very first number was delayed beyond the
day announced for its appearance. In the second number, an essay
against fast days, with a most censurable application of a text from
Isaiah, for its motto, lost me near five hundred of my subscribers at
one blow.
In the two following numbers, I made enemies of all my Jacobin and
democratic patrons; for, disgusted by their infidelity and their
adoption of French morals, and French philosophy, and, perhaps,
thinking that charity ought to begin nearest home, instead of abusing
the government and the aristocrats chiefly or entirely, as had been
expected of me, I levelled my attacks at ''modern patriotism',' and
even ventured to declare my belief, that whatever the motives of
ministers might have been for the sedition (or as it was then the
fashion to call them) the gagging bills, yet the bills themselves
would produce an effect to be desired by all the true friends of
freedom, as far they should contribute to deter men from openly
declaiming on subjects, the 'principles of which they had never
bottomed', and from 'pleading 'to' the 'poor and ignorant', instead of
pleading for them.'
At the same time I avowed my conviction, that national education, and
a concurring spread of the gospel were the indispensable condition of
any true political amelioration. Thus, by the time the seventh number
was published, I had the mortification (but why should I say this,
when, in truth, I cared too little for any thing that concerned my
worldly interests, to be at all mortified about it?) of seeing the
preceding numbers exposed in sundry old iron shops for a penny a
piece. At the ninth number I dropped the work." He never recovered the
money of his London publisher, and but little from his subscribers,
and as he goes on to say:--"Must have been thrown into jail by my
printer, for a sum between eighty and ninety pounds, if the money had
not been paid for me by a man, by no means affluent, a dear friend who
attached himself to me from my first arrival at Bristol, who continued
my friend with a fidelity unconquered by time, or even by my own
apparent neglect; a friend from whom I never received an advice that
was not gentle and affectionate." (p. 177.)
Coleridge's reputation from boyhood quietly increased, not through the
favor, but the censure of reviewers. It was this which, contrary to
their wishes, diffused his name as poet and philosopher. So long as
there are readers to be gratified by calumny, there will always be found
writers eager to furnish a supply; and he had other enemies,
unacquainted with the critical profession, yet morbidly vain, and
because disappointed in their literary hopes, no less malignant.
Alas! how painful it is to witness at times the operation of some of the
human passions.--Should envy take the lead, her twin sisters, hatred and
malice, follow as auxiliaries in her train,--and, in the struggles for
ascendancy and extension of her power, she subverts those principles
which might impede her path, and then speedily effects the destruction
of all the kindly feelings most honourable to man.
Coleridge was conscientiously an opponent of the first revolutionary
war, because he abhorred the principles; and it was part of his
political creed, that whoever ceased
"to act as an 'individual' by making himself a member of any society
not sanctioned by his government, forfeited the rights of a citizen."
He was at that time "a vehement anti-ministerialist," but, after the
invasion of Switzerland, a more vehement anti-Gallican, and still more
intensely an anti-Jacobin:
"I retired," said he, "to a cottage at Stowey, and provided for my
scanty maintenance by writing verses for a London Morning Paper. I saw
plainly, that literature was not a profession by which I could expect
to live; for 'I could not disguise from myself', that whatever my
talents might or might not be in other respects, yet they were not of
that 'sort' that 'could enable me to become a popular writer'; and
that whatever my opinions might be in themselves, they were almost
equi-distant from all the three opposite parties, the Pittites, the
Foxites, and the democrats. Of the unsaleable nature of my writings I
had an amusing memento one morning from our servant girl. For
happening to rise at an earlier hour than usual, I observed her
putting an extravagant quantity of paper into the grate in order to
light the fire, and mildly checked her for her wastefulness; La, Sir!
(replied poor Nanny) why, it is only WATCHMEN."
There was at last a pause, as each party seemed worn out; for, "the
hand of Providence had disciplined 'all' Europe into sobriety, as men
tame wild elephants by alternate blows and caresses: now, that
Englishmen of all classes are restored to their old English notions
and feelings, it will with difficulty be credited, how great an
influence was at that time possessed and exerted by the spirit of
secret defamation (the too constant attendant on party zeal!) during
the restless interim, from 1793 to the commencement of the Addington
administration, or the year before the truce of Amiens."
In short, the exhaustion which had followed the great stimulus, disposed
individuals to reconciliation. Both parties found themselves in the
wrong, the one had mistaken the moral character of the revolution, and
the other had miscalculated its physical resources. The experiment was
made at the price of great, we may say, of almost humiliating
sacrifices; and wise men foresaw that it would fail, at least, in its
direct and ostensible object. Yet it was purchased cheaply, and realized
an object of equal value, and, if possible, of more vital importance;
for it brought about a national unanimity, unexampled in our history
since the reign of Elizabeth; and Providence, never failing to do his
part when men have done theirs, soon provided a common focus in the
cause of Spain, which made us all once more Englishmen, by gratifying
and correcting the predilections of each party. The sincere reverers of
the throne felt the cause of loyalty ennobled by its alliance with that
of freedom while the 'honest' zealots of the people could not but admit
that freedom itself assumed a more winning form, humanized by loyalty,
and 'consecrated' by 'religious principle'.
During this calm and rest, and while the political fever was subsiding,
Coleridge retired, as he informs us, "to a cottage in Somersetshire, at
the foot of Quantock," to devote himself to poetry, and to the study of
ethics and psychology, to direct his thoughts and studies to the
foundations of religion and morals.
"During my residence here," he says, "I found myself all afloat;
doubts rushed in; broke upon me 'from the fountains of the great
deep',' and ''fell from the windows of Heaven'.' The fontal truths of
natural religion and the books of Revelation alike contributed to the
flood; and it was long ere my ark touched on an Ararat, and rested.
The idea (viz. the law evolved in the mind) of the Supreme Being
appeared to me to be as necessarily implied in all particular modes of
being, as the idea, of infinite space in all the geometrical figures
by which space is limited." He goes on to state at this period, about
the latter end of the year 1796, "For a very long time I could not
reconcile personality with infinity; and my head was with Spinosa,
though my whole heart remained with Paul and John. Yet there had
dawned upon me, even before I had met with the Critique of Pure
Reason, a certain guiding light. If 'the mere intellect' could make no
certain discovery of a holy and intelligent first cause, it might yet
supply a demonstration that no legitimate argument could be drawn from
the mere intellect 'against' its truth. 'And what is this' more than
St. Paul's assertion, that by wisdom (more properly translated by the
powers of reasoning) no man ever arrived at the knowledge of God? Man
asks what is wisdom? and whence comes it? In Job, chap. 28th, it is
stated, 'But to man he said, the fear of the Lord is wisdom for THEE!
And to avoid evil, that is 'thy' understanding.'"
Such were his philosophical opinions before his final conversion to the
whole truth in Christ. He was contending for principles, and diligently
in search of truth for its own sake;--the one thing only permanent, and
which carries with it its "own exceeding great reward." Such was the
state of his religious feelings and political opinions before his visit
to Germany.
There is a general observation or experience he has recorded, not only
so applicable to him at that time, but equally to each stage of his
career in life, as not to be lost sight of by his friends and admirers,
when assailed, as he was, by opposing party-spirits, which, like
opposite currents, were contending for the mastery.
To avoid one party lest he should run on Scylla, he excited and provoked
the jealousy and neglect of the other, who might have wrecked him on
Charybdis. These were well-known dangers; but, as all navigable seas
have their shoals often invisible; in order to avoid the effects of
these jealousies, he selected from each party, men of experience to give
him the soundings, and thus prevent him from wrecking his barque on
rocks and quicksands; for, without such information, there could be
little chance of escape.
In so doing, be lost his popularity with the many, though these were
evils he might perhaps have conquered (but still speaking figuratively);
his crew (his great inward aid) had differed too seriously among
themselves, and were under the influence of conflicting feelings.
His whole mind was bent on the search after those truths that alone can
determine fixed principles, and which not long after became to him an
unerring guide. They were for him what the needle is to the mariner.
The observation alluded to is as follows:
"All my experience, from my first entrance into life to the present
hour, is in favour of the warning maxim, that the man who opposes in
toto 'the political or religious zealots of his age, is safer from
their obloquy than he who differs from them but in one or two points
only' IN DEGREE."
This is a truth too important to pass lightly over, as in this consisted
much of that feeling which prevented his being popular, (for unless an
individual goes the whole length of the party who may choose to adopt
him, he is discarded, and it is well for him if he is not persecuted and
held up to public ridicule). [17]
Zealots are usually superficial, but in herds they are found to support
each other, and by their numbers assume an imposing air.--One weak man
cannot stand, but three may.--By this mode of congregating, they are
more easily managed by their leaders, whose impulses they obey, and to
whom they become willing slaves. Men who sacrifice the many to the few,
have been held out by almost every writer, where moral and political
subjects have been introduced, as warnings to those liable to fall into
their snares, but which have seemingly been put forth to little purpose.
The necessity, therefore, for a continuation of instruction on such
important moral truths, is still required; for, in the contending
currents, so much mischief is often produced, that to divert these
conflicting opinions, and to try to bring them into unity, Coleridge
thought it a duty to employ his strength of intellect; he hoped to
preserve a principle which he deemed so useful to mankind.
The foot of Quantock was to Coleridge a memorable spot; here his studies
were serious and deep; protected by one of the kindest of friends, and
stimulated by the society also of a brother poet, whose lays seemed to
have inspired his song, and also to have chimed in with it; for although
it has been shewn that his poetic genius first dawned in his 16th year,
yet after he left College, and during his residence at this place, [18]
it seemed suddenly to have arrived at poetic manhood, and to have
reached this developement as early as his 25th year. In his more serious
studies he had greatly advanced, and had already planned and stored up
much for his future life. It will often be repeated, but not too often
for a society so full of sciolists and disbelievers,--men who are so
self-satisfied as not to require teaching,--that Coleridge never was an
idle man; and that, if nothing else remained, the progress he made in
intellectual acquirements during his residence at Stowey and his short
stay in Germany, might be instanced. Before he quitted this country to
embark in fresh studies we have his own statement:
"I became convinced, that religion, as both the corner-stone and the
key-stone of morality, must have a 'moral' origin; so far, at least,
that the evidence of its doctrines could not, like the truths of
abstract science, be 'wholly' independent of the will.
It was therefore to be expected, that its 'fundamental' truth would be
such as MIGHT be denied, though only by the fool, and even by the fool
from madness of 'heart' alone!
The question then concerning our faith in the existence of a God, not
only as the ground of the universe by his essence, but by his wisdom
and holy will as its maker and judge, appeared to stand thus: the
sciential reason, the objects of wit are purely theoretical, remains
neutral, as long as its name and semblance are not usurped by the
opponents of the doctrine; but it 'then' becomes an effective ally by
exposing the false show of demonstration, or by evincing the equal
demonstrability of the contrary from premises equally logical. The
'understanding', meantime suggests, the analogy of 'experience'
facilitates, the belief. Nature excites and recalls it, as by a
perpetual revelation. Our feelings almost necessitate it; and the law
of conscience peremptorily commands it. The arguments that all apply
to, are in its favor; and there is nothing against it, but its own
sublimity.
It could not be intellectually more evident without becoming morally
less effective; without counteracting its own end by sacrificing the
'life' of faith to the cold mechanism of a worthless, because
compulsory assent. The belief of a God and a future state (if a
passive acquiescence may be flattered with the name of 'belief') does
not, indeed, always beget a good heart; but a good heart so naturally
begets the belief, that the very few exceptions must be regarded as
strange anomalies from strange and unfortunate circumstances.
From these premises I proceeded to draw the following
conclusions,--first, that having once fully admitted the existence of
an infinite yet self-conscious Creator, we are not allowed to ground
the irrationality of any other article of faith on arguments which
would equally prove 'that' to be irrational, which we had allowed to
be 'real'. Secondly, that whatever is deducible from the admission of
a 'self-comprehending' and 'creative' spirit, may be legitimately used
in proof of the 'possibility' of any further mystery concerning the
Divine Nature.
"Possibilitatem mysteriorum (Trinitatis, &c.) contra insultus
infidelium et hereticorum a contradictionibus vindico; haud quidem
veritatem, quæ revelatione sola stabiliri possit;" says Leibnitz, in a
letter to his duke. He then adds the following just and important
remark. "In vain will tradition or texts of Scripture be adduced in
support of a doctrine, 'donec clava impossibilitatis et
contradictionis e manibus horum Herculum extorta fuerit.' For the
heretic will still reply, that texts, the literal sense of which is
not so much above as directly against all reason, must be understood
figuratively, as Herod is a Fox, &c.
These principles," says he, "I held philosophically, while in respect
of revealed religion, I remained a zealous Unitarian. I considered the
idea of a Trinity a fair scholastic inference from the being of God,
as a creative intelligence; and that it was therefore entitled to the
rank of an esoteric doctrine of natural religion: but seeing in the
same no practical or moral bearing, I confined it to the schools of
philosophy. The admission of the Logos, as hypostasized (i.e. neither
a mere attribute nor a personification), in no respect removed my
doubts concerning the incarnation and the redemption by the cross;
which I could neither reconcile in 'reason' with the impassiveness of
the Divine Being, nor in my moral feelings with the sacred distinction
between things and persons, the vicarious payment of a debt and the
vicarious expiation of guilt.
A more thorough revolution in my philosophic principles, and a deeper
insight into my own heart were yet wanting. Nevertheless, I cannot
doubt, that the difference of my metaphysical notions from those of
Unitarians in general 'contributed' to my final re-conversion to the
'whole truth' in 'Christ;' even as according to his own confession the
books of certain Platonic philosophers (Libri quorundam Platonicorum)
commenced the rescue of St. Augustine's faith from the same error,
aggravated by the far darker accompaniment of the Manichean heresy."
Perhaps it is right also to state, that no small share of his final
reconversion was attributable to that zeal and powerful genius, and to
his great desire that others should become sharers in his own
acquirements, which he was so desirous to communicate. During his
residence at the foot of Quantock, his thoughts and studies were not
only directed to an enquiry into the great truths of religion, but,
while he stayed at Stowey, he was in the habit of preaching often at the
Unitarian Chapel at Taunton, and was greatly respected by all the better
and educated classes in the neighbourhood.
He spoke of Stowey with warmth and affection to the latest hours of his
life. Here, as before mentioned, dwelt his friend Mr. Thomas Poole--the
friend (justly so termed) to whom he alludes in his beautiful dedicatory
poem to his brother the Rev. George Coleridge, and in which, when
referring to himself, he says,
"To me the Eternal Wisdom hath dispensed
A different fortune and more different mind--
Me from the spot where first I sprang to light
Too soon transplanted, ere my soul had fix'd
Its first domestic loves; and hence through life
Chasing chance-started friendships. A brief while
Some have preserved me from life's pelting ills;
But, like a tree with leaves of feeble stem,
If the clouds lasted, and a sudden breeze
Ruffled the boughs, they on my head at once
Dropp'd the collected shower; and some most false,
False and fair foliaged as the Manchineel,
Have tempted me to slumber in their shade
E'en mid the storm; then breathing subtlest damps,
Mix'd their own venom with the rain from Heaven,
That I woke poison'd! But, all praise to Him
Who gives us all things, more have yielded me
_Permanent shelter_; and beside one friend, [19]
Beneath the impervious covert of one oak,
I've raised a lowly shed, and know the names
Of husband and of father; not unhearing
Of that divine and nightly-whispering voice,
Which from my _childhood to maturer years_
Spake to me of predestinated wreaths,
Bright with no fading colours!"
These beautiful and affecting lines to his brother are dated May 26th,
1797, Nether Stowey, Somerset. In his will, dated Highgate, July 2nd,
1830, he again refers to this friend, and directs his executor to
present a plain gold mourning ring to Thomas Poole, Esq., of Nether
Stowey.
"The Dedicatory Poem to my 'Juvenile Poems,' and my 'Fears in
Solitude,'[20] render it unnecessary to say more than what I then, in
my early manhood, thought and felt, I now, a gray-headed man, still
think and feel."
In this volume, dedicated to his brother, are to be found several poems
in early youth and upwards, none of later date than 1796.
The "Ode," he says, "on the Departing Year, was written on the 24th,
25th, and 26th of December, 1796, and published separately on the last
day of that year. 'The Religious Musings' were written as early as
Christmas 1794."
He then was about to enter his 23rd year. The preface to this volume is
a key to his opinions and feelings at that time, and which the foregoing
part of this memoir is also intended to illustrate.
"Compositions resembling those of the present volume are not
unfrequently condemned for their querulous egotism. But egotism is to
be condemned only when it offends against time and place, as in a
history or epic poem. To censure it in a monody or sonnet is almost as
absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then write sonnets
or monodies? Because they give me pleasure when, perhaps, nothing else
could. After the more violent emotions of sorrow, the mind demands
amusement, and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late
sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected
with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is
a painful and most often an unavailing effort.
'But O! how grateful to a wounded heart
The tale of misery to impart
From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow,
And raise esteem upon the base of woe.'
(Shaw.)
The communicativeness of our nature leads us to describe our own
sorrows; in the endeavour to describe them, intellectual activity is
exerted; and from intellectual activity there results a pleasure,
which is gradually associated, and mingles as a corrective, with the
painful subject of the description. 'True,' (it may be answered) 'but
how are the PUBLIC interested in your sorrows or your description'?'
We are for ever attributing personal unities to imaginary
aggregates.--What is the PUBLIC, but a term for a number of scattered
individuals? Of whom as many will be interested in these sorrows, as
have experienced the same or similar.
'Holy be the lay
Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way.'
If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm,
that the most interesting passages in our most interesting poems are
those in which the author developes his own feelings. The sweet voice
of Cona [21] never sounds so sweetly, as when it speaks of itself; and
I should almost suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who could read
the opening of the third book of 'Paradise Lost' without peculiar
emotion. By a law of nature, he, who labours under a strong feeling,
is impelled to seek for sympathy; but a poet's feelings are all
strong.--Quicquid amat valde amat.--Akenside therefore speaks with
philosophical accuracy when he classes love and poetry as producing
the same effects:
'Love and the wish of poets when their tongue
Would teach to others' bosoms, what so charms
Their own.'
'Pleasures of Imagination'.
There is one species of egotism which is truly disgusting; not that
which leads to communicate our feelings to others, but that which
would reduce the feelings of others; to an identity with our own.
The atheist who exclaims 'pshaw,' when he glances his eye on the
praises of Deity, is an egotist; an old man, when he speaks
contemptuously of love verses is an egotist; and the sleek favourites
of fortune are egotists when they condemn all 'melancholy
discontented' verses. Surely it would be candid not merely to ask
whether the poem pleases ourselves, but to consider whether or no
there may not be others, to whom it is well calculated to give an
innocent pleasure.
I shall only add, that each of my readers will, I hope, remember, that
these poems on various subjects, which, he reads at one time and under
the influence of one set of feelings, were written at different times
and prompted by very different feelings; and, therefore, that, the
supposed inferiority of one poem to another may sometimes be owing to
the temper of mind in which he happens to peruse it."
In the second edition (the second edition was published in conjunction
with his friends Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb) is added the following:
"My poems have been rightly charged with a profusion of
double-epithets, and a general turgidness. I have pruned the
double-epithets with no sparing hand; and used my best efforts to tame
the swell and glitter both of thought and diction. This latter fault,
however, had insinuated itself into my Religious Musings with such
intricacy of union, that sometimes I have omitted to disentangle the
weed from the fear of snapping the flower. A third and heavier
accusation has been brought against me, that of obscurity; but not, I
think, with equal justice. An author is obscure, when his conceptions
are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect, or inappropriate,
or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, like the 'Bard' of
Gray, or one that impersonates high and abstract truths, like
Collins's 'Ode on the Poetical Character,' claims not to be popular,
but should be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the reader;
but this is a charge which every poet, whose imagination is warm and
rapid, must expect from his 'contemporaries'. Milton did not escape
it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. We now
hear no more of it, not that their poems are better understood at
present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is
established; and a critic would accuse him self of frigidity or,
inattention, who should profess not to understand them: but a living
writer is yet sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or
enter into his feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider
him as lost beneath, than as soaring above, us. If any man expect from
my poems the same easiness of style which he admires in a
drinking-song for him, I have not written. Intelligibilia, non
intellectum adfero.
I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings; and I
consider myself as having been amply repaid without either. Poetry has
been to me its own 'exceeding great reward;' it has soothed my
afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has
endeared solitude; and it has given me the habit of wishing to
discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds
me."
We seem now to have arrived at that period of Coleridge's life which a
profound student of his poetry, and himself a pleasing and elegant poet,
has considered the period of the "Annus Mirabilis." "The Manhood," he
observes, "of Coleridge's true poetical life was in the year 1797." This
is perfectly true, and at that period he was only twenty-five, as before
stated. He was, as is proved in his earlier poems, highly susceptible
and sensitive, requiring kindness and sympathy, and the support of
something like intellectual friendship. He tells us that he chose his
residence at Stowey, on account of his friend Mr. Poole, who assisted
and enabled him to brave the storm of "Life's pelting ills." Near him,
at Allfoxden, resided Mr. Wordsworth, with whom, he says,
"Shortly after my settlement there, I became acquainted, and whose
society I found an invaluable blessing, and to whom I looked up with
equal reverence as a poet, a philosopher, or a man. His conversation
extended to almost all subjects except physics and politics; with the
latter he never troubled himself."
Although Coleridge lived a most retired life, it was not enough to
exempt him from the watchfulness of the spies of government whose
employment required some apparent activity before they could receive the
reward they expected. Nor did he escape the suspicion of being a
dangerous person to the government; which arose partly from his
connexion with Wordsworth, and from the great seclusion of his life.
Coleridge was ever with book, paper, and pencil in hand, making, in the
language of, artists, "Sketches and studies from nature." This
suspicion, accompanied with the usual quantity of obloquy, was not
merely attached to Coleridge, but extended to his friend, "whose perfect
innocence was even adduced as a suspicion of his guilt," by one of these
sapients, who observed that
"as to Coleridge, there is not much harm in him; for he is a
whirl-brain, that talks whatever comes uppermost; but that Wordsworth!
he is a dark traitor. You never hear _him_ say a syllable on the
subject."
During this time the brother poets must have been composing or arranging
the Lyrical Ballads, which were published the following year, i.e. 1798.
Coleridge also in 1797 wrote the "Remorse," or rather the play he first
called Osorio, the name of the principal character in it, but finding
afterwards that there was a respectable family of that name residing in
London, it was changed for the title of the Remorse, and the principal
character, Osorio, to Ordonio. This play was sent to Sheridan.
The following remarks were given in Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria,"
which wholly clears him from the suspicion of being concerned in making
maps of a coast, where a smuggler could not land, and they shew what
really was his employment; and how poets may be mistaken at all times
for other than what they wish to be considered:
"During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our
conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of
poetry,--the power of exciting the sympathy of a reader by a faithful
adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest
of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm
which accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset diffused
over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the
practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The
thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a
series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one the
incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and
the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the
affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally
accompany such situations, supposing them real; and real in 'this'
sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of
delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency.
For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life:
the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every
village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind
to seek after them, or to notice them when they present themselves.
In this idea originated the plan of the 'Lyrical Ballads,' in which it
was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and
characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer
from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth
sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing
suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith.
Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself, as his
object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to
excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the
mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the
loveliness and the wonders of the world before us,--an inexhaustible
treasure; but for which, in consequence of the feeling of familiarity
and selfish solicitude, we have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not,
and hearts that neither feel nor understand.
With this view I wrote the 'Ancient Mariner,' and was preparing,
among other poems, the 'Dark Ladie' and the 'Christabel,' in which I
should have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my first
attempt: but Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more
successful, and the number of his poems so much greater, that my
compositions, instead of forming a balance, appeared rather an
interpolation of heterogeneous matter.
Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own character,
in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction, which is
characteristic of his genius. In this form the 'Lyrical Ballads' were
published, and were presented by him as an 'experiment', whether
subjects, which from their nature rejected the usual ornaments and
extra-colloquial style of poems in general, might not be so managed,
in the language of ordinary life, as to produce the pleasurable
interest which it is the peculiar business of poetry to impart.
To the second edition he added a preface of considerable length, in
which, notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contrary import,
he was understood to contend for the extension of the style to poetry
of all kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases
and forms of style that were not included in what he (unfortunately, I
think, adopting an equivocal expression) called the language of 'real'
life. From this preface, prefixed to poems in which it was impossible
to deny the presence of original genius, however mistaken its
direction might be deemed, arose the whole long-continued controversy.
For, from the conjunction of perceived power with supposed heresy, I
explain the inveteracy, and in some instances, I grieve to say, the
acrimonious passions, with which the controversy has been conducted by
the assailants." (Vol. ii. p. 1.)
There are few incidents in the life of the literary man to make any
narrations of sufficient importance or sufficiently amusing for the
readers, and the readers only of works of amusement. The biography of
such men is supposed to contain the faithful history and growth of their
minds, and the circumstances under which it is developed, and to this it
must be confined.
What has been done by Coleridge himself, and where he has been his own
biographer, will be carefully noticed and given here, when it falls in
with the intention and purposes of this work; for this reason the
Biographia Literaria has been so frequently quoted. Coleridge had passed
nearly half his life in a retirement almost amounting to solitude, and
this he preferred. First, he was anxious for leisure to pursue those
studies which wholly engrossed his mind; and secondly, his health
permitted him but little change, except when exercise was required; and
during the latter part of his life he became nearly crippled by the
rheumatism. His character will form a part in the Philosophical History
of the Human Mind, which will be placed in the space left for it by his
amiable and most faithful friend and disciple, whose talents, whose
heart and acquirements makes him most fit to describe them, and whose
time was for so many years devoted to this great man. But, to continue
in the order of time, in June, 1797, he was visited by his friend
Charles Lamb and his sister.
On the morning after their arrival, Coleridge met with an accident which
disabled him from walking during the whole of their stay. One evening,
when they had left him for a few hours, he composed the poem, "This
Lime-tree Bower my Prison," in which he refers to his old friend, while
watching him in fancy with his sister, winding and ascending the hills
at a short distance, himself detained as if a prisoner:
"Yes! they wander on
In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,
My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined
And hunger'd after nature, many a year;
In the great city pent, winning thy way
With sad yet patient soul, through evil, and pain,
And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun!
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,
Ye purple heath flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
And kindle, thou blue ocean! So my friend
Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; and of such hues
As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes
Spirits perceive his presence."
During his residence here, Mr. William Hazlitt became acquainted with
him, which is thus vividly recorded in the 'Liberal':
"My father was a dissenting minister at Wem, in Shropshire; and in the
year 1798, Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to succeed Mr. Rowe in
the spiritual charge of a Unitarian congregation there. He did not
come till late on the Saturday afternoon before he was to preach, and
Mr. Rowe, who himself went down to the coach in a state of anxiety and
expectation, to look for the arrival of his successor, could find no
one at all answering the description, but a round-faced man, in a
short black coat (like a shooting jacket), which hardly seemed to have
been made for him, but who appeared to be talking at a great rate to
his fellow-passengers. Mr. Rowe had scarcely returned to give an
account of his disappointment, when the round-faced man in black
entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject, by beginning to
talk. He did not cease while he stayed, nor has he since that I know
of. [22]
He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful suspense for three
weeks that he remained there, 'fluttering the proud Salopians like an
eagle in a dove-cot;' and the Welsh mountains, that skirt the horizon
with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no such mystic
sounds since the days of
'High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lyre!'
My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the habit of
exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch (nine
miles further on), according to the custom of dissenting ministers in
each other's neighbourhood. A line of communication is thus
established, by which the flame of civil and religious liberty is kept
alive, and nourishes its mouldering fire unquenchable, like the fires
in the Agamemnon of Æschylus, placed at different stations, that
waited for ten long years to announce, with their blazing pyramids,
the destruction of Troy.
Coleridge had agreed to come once to see my father, according to the
courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe's probable successor; but in the
meantime I had gone to hear him preach the Sunday after his arrival. A
poet and a philosopher getting up into a Unitarian pulpit to preach
the gospel was a romance in these degenerate days,--which was not to
be resisted.
It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to
walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach.
Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk
as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798.
'Il y a des impressions que ni le tems, ni les circonstances peuvent
effacer. Dussé-je vivre des siècles entiers, le doux tems de ma
jeunesse ne peut renaître pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma
mémoire.' When I got there, the organ was playing the 100th psalm;
and, when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text,--'He
departed again into a mountain 'himself alone'.' As he gave out this
text, his voice 'rose like a stream of rich distilled perfumes;' and
when he came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud, deep,
and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds
had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer
might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The idea of
St. John came into my mind, 'of one crying in the wilderness, who had
his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey.' The
preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle dallying with
the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war--upon church and
state--not their alliance, but their separation--on the spirit of the
world, and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed
to one another. He talked of those who had 'inscribed the cross of
Christ on banners dripping with human gore.' He made a poetical and
pastoral excursion,--and to show the fatal effects of war, drew a
striking contrast between the simple shepherd-boy, driving his team
afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, as though
he should never be old,' and the same poor country lad, crimped,
kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a
wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and
pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the finery of the
profession of blood:
'Such were the notes our once loved poet sung;'
and, for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard
the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together.
Truth and Genius had embraced under the eye and with the sanction of
Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well
satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the
sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the 'good
cause'; and the cold dank drops of dew, that hung half melted on
the beard of the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in
them--
...
"On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I was
called down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping,
half-afraid. He received me very graciously, and I listened for a long
time without uttering a word, and did not suffer in his opinion by my
silence. 'For those two hours (he was afterwards pleased to say) he
was conversing with W. H.'s forehead.' His appearance was different
from what I had anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and
in the dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in
his aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the
small-pox. His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright,
'As are the children of yon azure sheen.'
His forehead was broad and high, as if built of ivory, with large
projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with
darkened lustre.
'A certain tender bloom his face o'erspread;'
a purple tinge, as we see it in the pale, thoughtful complexions of
the Spanish portrait painters, Murillo and Velasquez. His mouth was
rather open, his chin good-humoured and round, and his nose small.
Coleridge in his person was rather above the common size, inclining to
the corpulent. His hair (now, alas! grey, and during the latter years
of his life perfectly white) was then black, and glossy as the raven's
wing, and fell in smooth masses over his forehead. This long liberal
hair is peculiar to enthusiasts." [23]
(The Liberal, vol. ii. pp. 23-27.)
He used, in his hours of relaxation, to relate the state of his
feelings, and his adventures during the short time he was a preacher.
His congregations were large, and if he had the power of attracting one
man of such talents from a distance, it may well be understood how the
many near the chapel flocked to listen to him; in short, if one is to
give credence to current report, he emptied churches and chapels to hear
him. If he had needed any stimulus, this would have been sufficient, but
such a mind so intensely occupied in the search after truth needed no
external excitement.
He has often said, that one of the effects of preaching was, that it
compelled him to examine the Scriptures with greater care and industry.
These additional exertions and studies assisted mainly to his final
conversion to the whole truth; for it was still evident that his mind
was perplexed, and that his philosophical opinions would soon yield to
the revealed truth of Scripture.
He has already pointed out what he felt on this important question, how
much he differed from the generally received opinions of the Unitarians,
confessing that he needed a thorough revolution in his philosophical
doctrines, and that an insight into his own heart was wanting.
"While my mind was thus perplexed, by a gracious providence," says he,
"for which I can never be sufficiently grateful, the generous and
munificent patronage of Mr. Josiah and Mr. Thomas Wedgewood enabled me
to finish my education in Germany. Instead of troubling others with my
own crude notions, and juvenile compositions, I was thenceforward
better employed in attempting to store my own head with the wisdom of
others. I made the best use of my time and means; and there is
therefore no period of my life on which I can look back with such
unmingled satisfaction."
He quitted Clevedon and his cottage in the following farewell lines:--
"Ah! quiet dell! dear cot, and mount sublime!
I was constrain'd to quit you. Was it right,
While my unnumber'd brethren toil'd and bled,
That I should dream away the entrusted hours
On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart
With feelings all too delicate for use?
Sweet is the tear that from some Howard's eye
Drops on the cheeks of one he lifts from earth:
And he that works me good with unmoved face,
Does it but half: he chills me while he aids,--
My benefactor, not my brother man!
Yet even this, this cold beneficence
Praise, praise it, O my Soul! oft as thou scann'st
The Sluggard Pity's vision-weaving tribe!
Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched,
Nursing in some delicious solitude
Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies!
I therefore go, and join head, heart, and hand,
Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight
Of Science, freedom, and the truth in Christ.
Yet oft when after honourable toil
Rests the tired mind, and waking loves to dream,
My spirit shall revisit thee, dear cot!
Thy jasmin and thy window-peeping rose,
And myrtles fearless of the mild sea-air.
And I shall sigh fond wishes--sweet abode!
Ah! had none greater! And that all had such!
It might be so, but, oh! it is not yet.
Speed it, O Father! Let thy Kingdom come."
He drew his own character when he described that of Satyrane, the
idolocast or breaker of idols, the name he went by among his friends and
familiars.
"From his earliest youth," says he, "Satyrane had derived his highest
pleasures from the admiration of moral grandeur and intellectual
energy; and during the whole of his life he had a greater and more
heartfelt delight in the superiority of other men to himself than men
in general derive from their belief of their own. His readiness to
imagine a superiority where it did not exist, was for many years his
predominant foible; his pain from the perception of inferiority in
others whom he had heard spoken of with any respect, was unfeigned and
involuntary, and perplexed him as a something which he did not
comprehend. In the child-like simplicity of his nature he talked to
all men as if they were his equals in knowledge and talents, and many
whimsical anecdotes could be related connected with this habit; he was
constantly scattering good seed on unreceiving soils. When he was at
length compelled to see and acknowledge the true state of the morals
and intellect of his contemporaries, his disappointment was severe,
and his mind, always thoughtful, became pensive and sad:--_for to love
and sympathize with mankind was a necessity of his nature_."
He sought refuge from his own sensitive nature in abstruse meditations,
and delighted most in those subjects requiring the full exercise of his
intellectual powers, which never seemed fatigued--and in his early life
never did sun shine on a more joyous being!
"There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seem'd mine.
But now afflictions bow me down to earth
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth,
But oh! each visitation
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man--
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul." [24]
It was indeed an inauspicious hour "when he changed his abode from the
happy groves of Jesus' College to Bristol." But it was so ordained! He
sought literature as a trade,--and became an author:
"whatever," he would say, "I write, that alone which contains the
truth _will live, for truth only is permanent_. The rest will
deservedly perish."
He wrote to supply the fountain which was to feed the fertilizing
rills,--to develope the truth was that at which he aimed, and in which
he hoped to find his reward.
On the 16th of September, 1798, he sailed from Great Yarmouth to
Hamburg, in company with Mr. Wordsworth and his sister in his way to
Germany, and now for the first time beheld "his native land" retiring
from him.
In a series of letters, published first in the "Friend," afterwards in
his "Biographia Literaria," is to be found a description of his passage
to Germany, and short tour through that country. His fellow passengers
as described by him were a motley group, suffering from the usual
effects of a rolling sea. One of them, who had caught the customary
antidote to sympathy for suffering, to witness which is usually painful,
began his mirth by not inaptly observing,
"That Momus might have discovered an easier way to see a man's inside
than by placing a window in his breast. He needed only to have taken a
salt-water trip in a pacquet-boat."
Coleridge thinks that a
"pacquet is far superior to a stage-coach, as a means of making men
open out to each other. In the latter the uniformity of posture
disposes to dozing, and the definiteness of the period at which the
company will separate, makes each individual think of those 'to' whom
he is going, rather than of those 'with' whom he is going. But at sea
more curiosity is excited, if only on this account, that the pleasant
or unpleasant qualities of your companions are of greater importance
to you, from the uncertainty how long you may be obliged to house with
them."
On board was a party of Danes, who, from his appearance in a suit of
black, insisted he was a "Docteur Teology." To relieve himself of any
further questioning on this head, he bowed assent "rather than be
nothing."
"Certes," he says, "We were not of the Stoic school; for we drank, and
talked, and sung altogether; and then we rose and danced on the deck a
set of dances, which, in _one_ sense of the word at least, were very
intelligibly and appropriately entitled reels. The passengers who lay
in the cabin below in all the agonies of sea-sickness, must have found
our bacchanalian merriment
a tune
Harsh and of dissonant mood for their complaint.
I thought so at the time; and how closely the greater number of our
virtues are connected with the fear of death, and how little sympathy
we bestow on pain, when there is no danger."
The Dane soon convinced him of the justice of an old remark, that many a
faithful portrait in our novels and farces, has been rashly censured for
an outrageous caricature, or perhaps nonentity.
"I had retired to my station in the boat when he came and seated
himself by my side, and appeared not a little tipsy. He commenced the
conversation in the most magnific style, and a sort of pioneering to
his own vanity, he flattered me with _such_ grossness! The parasites
of the old comedy were modest in comparison."
After a ludicrous conversation which took place, he passes on to the
description of another passenger, an Englishman, who spoke German
fluently and interpreted many of the jokes of a Prussian who formed one
of the party.
"The Prussian was a travelling merchant, turned of threescore, a hale,
tall, strong man, and full of stories, gesticulations, and buffoonery,
with the soul as well as the look of a mountebank, who, while he is
making you laugh, picks your pocket. Amid all his droll looks and
droll gestures, there remained one look untouched by laughter; and
that one look was the true face, the others were but its mask. The
Hanoverian (another of the party) was a pale, bloated, young man,
whose father had made a large fortune in London as an army contractor.
He seemed to emulate the manners of young Englishmen of fortune. He
was a good-natured fellow, not without information or literature, but
a most egregious coxcomb. He had been in the habit of attending the
House of Commons; and had once spoken, as he informed me, with great
applause in a debating society. For this he appeared to have qualified
himself with laudable industry; for he was perfect in Walker's
Pronouncing Dictionary, and with an accent that forcibly reminded me
of the Scotchman in Roderick Random, who professed to teach the
English pronunciation; he was constantly _deferring_ to my superior
judgment, whether or no I had pronounced this or that word with
propriety or 'the true delicacy.' When he spoke, though it were only
half a dozen sentences, he always rose; for which I could detect no
other motive, than his partiality to that elegant phrase, so liberally
introduced in the orations of our British legislators, 'While I am on
my legs.'"
Coleridge continues his description of the party, and relates a quarrel
that ensued between a little German tailor and his wife, by which he was
the gainer of a bed, it being too cold to continue much longer on deck:
"In the evening the sea rolling higher, the Dane became worse, and in
consequence increased his remedy, viz. brandy, sugar, and nutmeg, in
proportion to the room left in his stomach. The conversation or
oration 'rather than dialogue, became extravagant beyond all that I
ever heard.' After giving an account of his fortune acquired in the
island of Santa Cruz, 'he expatiated on the style in which he intended
to live in Denmark, and the great undertakings he proposed to himself
to commence, till the brandy aiding his vanity, and his vanity and
garrulity aiding the brandy, he talked like a madman.
After this drunken apostrophe he changed the conversation, and
commenced an harangue on religion, (mistaking Coleridge for "un
Philosophe" in the continental sense of the word) he talked of the
Deity in a declamatory style very much resembling the devotional rants
of that rude blunderer Mr. Thomas Paine, in his 'Age of Reason'. I
dare aver, that few men have less reason to charge themselves with
indulging in persiflage than myself; I should hate it, if it were only
that it is a Frenchman's vice, and feel a pride in avoiding it,
because our own language is too honest to have a word to express it
by.
At four o'clock I observed a wild duck swimming on the waves, a single
solitary wild duck. It is not easy to conceive, how interesting a
thing it looked in that round objectless desert of waters."
The cry of 'land' was heard soon afterwards, and in a short time they
dropped anchor at Cuxhaven, and proceeded from thence in a boat to
Hamburg. After this he travelled on to [25] Ratzeburg, and then took up
his residence with a pastor for the purpose of acquiring the German
language, but with what success will be presently shown. He soon after
proceeded through Hanover to Göttingen.--Here he informs us he regularly
"attended lectures in the morning in physiology, in the evening an
natural history under BLUMENBACH, a name as dear to every Englishman
who has studied at the university, as it is venerable to men of
science throughout Europe! Eichorn's Lectures on the New Testament
were repeated to me from notes by a student from Ratzeburg, a young
man of sound learning and indefatigable industry, who is now I believe
a professor of the oriental languages at Heidelberg."
Few persons visit Gottingen without ascending the Brocken.
At the close of one of their academic studies, equivalent to, what in
this country is called a term, it was agreed that the following party
should visit the Hartz Mountains, &c. Namely, Coleridge, the two Parrys
of Bath, Charles and Edward, sons of the celebrated physician of that
name, the son also of Professor Blumenbach, Dr. Carlyon, Mr. Chester,
and Mr. Greenough. Coleridge and the party made the ascent of the
Brocken, on the Hanoverian side of this mountain. During the toil of the
ascent, Coleridge amused his companions with recapitulating some
trifling verses, which he was wont to do some twenty years afterwards to
amuse children of five and six years old, as Miss Mary Rowe, Tity Mouse
Brim, Dr. Daniel Dove, of Doncaster, and his Horse Nobbs. It should,
however, be observed, that these Dr. Carlyon seemed to think worth
notice, while the Christabel and Ancient Mariner were probably but
little to his taste. His dress, a short jacket of coarse material,
though convenient, was not quite classical in a party of philosophical
erratics in quest of novelty. This tale of Dr. Daniel Dove, of
Doncaster, has given a frame and pegs, on which some literary man has
founded a story, and on which he has hung the contents of his scrap
book. The invention is not Coleridge's; and the writer believes the
story itself to be traditional. The following account of his ascent up
the Brocken was written by himself, soon after his return from Germany:
FRAGMENT OF A JOURNEY OVER THE BROCKEN, &c. IN 1799.
"Through roads no way rememberable, we came to Gieloldshausen, over a
bridge, on which was a mitred statue with a great crucifix in its
arms. The village, long and ugly; but the church, like most Catholic
churches, interesting; and this being Whitsun Eve, all were crowding
to it, with their mass-books and rosaries, the little babies commonly
with coral crosses hanging on the breast. Here we took a guide, left
the village, ascended a hill, and now the woods rose up before us in a
verdure which surprised us like a sorcery. The spring had burst forth
with the suddenness of a Russian summer. As we left Göttingen there
were buds, and here and there a tree half green; but here were woods
in full foliage, distinguished from summer only by the exquisite
freshness of their tender green. We entered the wood through a
beautiful mossy path; the moon above us blending with the evening
light, and every now and then a nightingale would invite the others to
sing, and some or other commonly answered, and said, as we suppose,
'It is yet somewhat too early!' for the song was not continued. We
came to a square piece of greenery, completely walled on all four
sides by the beeches; again entered the wood, and having travelled
about a mile, emerged from it into a grand plain--mountains in the
distance, but ever by our road the skirts of the green woods. A very
rapid river ran by our side; and now the nightingales were all
singing, and the tender verdure grew paler in the moonlight, only the
smooth parts of the river were still deeply purpled with the
reflections from the fiery light in the west. So surrounded and so
impressed, we arrived at Prele, a dear little cluster of houses in the
middle of a semicircle of woody hills; the area of the semicircle
scarcely broader than the breadth of the village.
...
"We afterwards ascended another hill, from the top of which a large
plain opened before us with villages. A little village, Neuhoff, lay
at the foot of it: we reached it, and then turned up through a valley
on the left hand. The hills on both sides the valley were prettily
wooded, and a rapid lively river ran through it.
So we went for about two miles, and almost at the end of the valley,
or rather of its first turning, we found the village of Lauterberg.
Just at the entrance of the village, two streams come out from two
deep and woody coombs, close by each other, meet, and run into a third
deep woody coomb opposite; before you a wild hill, which seems the end
and barrier of the valley; on the right hand, low hills, now green
with corn, and now wooded; and on the left a most majestic hill
indeed--the effect of whose simple outline painting could not give,
and how poor a thing are words! We pass through this neat little
town--the majestic hill on the left hand soaring over the houses, and
at every interspace you see the whole of it--its beeches, its firs,
its rocks, its scattered cottages, and the one neat little pastor's
house at the foot, embosomed in fruit-trees all in blossom, the noisy
coomb-brook dashing close by it. We leave the valley, or rather, the
first turning on the left, following a stream; and so the vale winds
on, the river still at the foot of the woody hills, with every now and
then other smaller valleys on right and left crossing our vale, and
ever before you the woody hills running like groves one into another.
We turned and turned, and entering the fourth curve of the vale, we
found all at once that we had been ascending. The verdure vanished!
All the beech trees were leafless, and so were the silver birches,
whose boughs always, winter and summer, hang so elegantly. But low
down in the valley, and in little companies on each bank of the river,
a multitude of green conical fir trees, with herds of cattle wandering
about, almost every one with a cylindrical bell around its neck, of no
inconsiderable size, and as they moved--scattered over the narrow
vale, and up among the trees on the hill--the noise was like that of a
great city in the stillness of a sabbath morning, when the bells all
at once are ringing for church. The whole was a melancholy and
romantic scene, that was quite new to me. Again we turned, passed
three smelting houses, which we visited;--a scene of terrible beauty
is a furnace of boiling metal, darting, every moment blue, green, and
scarlet lightning, like serpents' tongues!--and now we ascended a
steep hill, on the top of which was St. Andrias Berg, a town built
wholly of wood.
"We descended again, to ascend far higher; and now we came to a most
beautiful road, which winded on the breast of the hill, from whence we
looked down into a deep valley, or huge basin, full of pines and firs;
the opposite hills full of pines and firs; and the hill above us, on
whose breast we were winding, likewise full of pines and firs. The
valley, or basin, on our right hand, into which we looked down, is
called the Wald Rauschenbach, that is, the Valley of the Roaring
Brook; and roar it did, indeed, most solemnly! The road on which we
walked was weedy with infant fir-trees, an inch or two high; and now,
on our left hand, came before us a most tremendous precipice of yellow
and black rock, called the Rehberg, that is, the Mountain of the Roe.
Now again is nothing but firs and pines, above, below, around us! How
awful is the deep unison of their undividable murmur; what a one thing
it is--it is a sound that impresses the dim notion of the Omnipresent!
In various parts of the deep vale below us, we beheld little dancing
waterfalls gleaming through the branches, and now, on our left hand,
from the very summit of the hill above us, a powerful stream flung
itself down, leaping and foaming, and now concealed, and now not
concealed, and now half concealed by the fir-trees, till, towards the
road, it became a visible sheet of water, within whose immediate
neighbourhood no pine could have permanent abiding place. The snow lay
every where on the sides of the roads, and glimmered in company with
the waterfall foam, snow patches and waterbreaks glimmering through
the branches in the hill above, the deep basin below, and the hill
opposite.
Over the high opposite hills, so dark in their pine forests, a far
higher round barren stony mountain looked in upon the prospect from a
distant country. Through this scenery we passed on, till our road was
crossed by a second waterfall; or rather, aggregation of little
dancing waterfalls, one by the side of the other for a considerable
breadth, and all came at once out of the dark wood above, and rolled
over the mossy rock fragments, little firs, growing in islets,
scattered among them. The same scenery continued till we came to the
Oder Seich, a lake, half made by man, and half by nature. It is two
miles in length, and but a few hundred yards in breadth, and winds
between banks, or rather through walls, of pine trees. It has the
appearance of a most calm and majestic river. It crosses the road,
goes into a wood, and there at once plunges itself down into a most
magnificent cascade, and runs into the vale, to which it gives the
name of the 'Vale of the Roaring Brook.' We descended into the vale,
and stood at the bottom of the cascade, and climbed up again by its
side. The rocks over which it plunged were unusually wild in their
shape, giving fantastic resemblances of men and animals, and the
fir-boughs by the side were kept almost in a swing, which unruly
motion contrasted well with the stern quietness of the huge forest-sea
every where else.
...
"In nature all things are individual, but a word is but an arbitrary
character for a whole class of things; so that the same description
may in almost all cases be applied to twenty different appearances;
and in addition to the difficulty of the thing itself, I neither am,
nor ever was, a good hand at description. I see what I write, but,
alas! I cannot write what I see. From the Oder Seich we entered a
second wood; and now the snow met us in large masses, and we walked
for two miles knee-deep in it, with an inexpressible fatigue, till we
came to the mount called Little Brocken; here even the firs deserted
us, or only now and then a patch of them, wind shorn, no higher than
one's knee, matted and cowering to the ground, like our thorn bushes
on the highest sea-hills. The soil was plashy and boggy; we descended
and came to the foot of the Great Brocken without a river--the highest
mountain in all the north of Germany, and the seat of innumerable
superstitions. On the first of May all the witches dance here at
midnight; and those who go may see their own ghosts walking up and
down, with a little billet on the back, giving the names of those who
had wished them there; for 'I wish you on the top of the Brocken,' is
a common curse throughout the whole empire. Well, we ascended--the
soil boggy--and at last reached the height, which is 573 toises above
the level of the sea. We visited the Blocksberg, a sort of
bowling-green, inclosed by huge stones, something like those at
Stonehenge, and this is the witches' ball-room; thence proceeded to
the house on the hill, where we dined; and now we descended. In the
evening about seven we arrived at Elbingerode. At the inn they brought
us an album, or stamm-buch, requesting that we would write our names,
and something or other as a remembrance that we had been there. I
wrote the following lines, which contain a true account of my journey
from the Brocken to Elbingerode.
I stood on Brocken's sovran height, and saw
Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills;
A surging scene, and only limited
By the blue distance. Wearily my way
Downward I dragged, through fir groves evermore,
Where bright green moss moved in sepulchral forms,
Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard,
The sweet bird's song become a hollow sound;
And the gale murmuring indivisibly,
Reserved its solemn murmur, more distinct
From many a note of many a waterbreak,
And the brook's chatter; on whose islet stones
The dingy kidling, with its tinkling bell,
Leapt frolicksome, or old romantic goat
Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on
With low and languid thought, for I had found
That grandest scenes have but imperfect charms
Where the eye vainly wanders, nor beholds
One spot with which the heart associates
Holy remembrances of child or friend,
Or gentle maid, our first and early love,
Or father, or the venerable name
Of our adored country. O thou Queen,
Thou delegated Deity of Earth,
O 'dear, dear' England! how my longing eyes
Turned westward, shaping in the steady clouds
Thy sands and high white cliffs! Sweet native isle,
This heart was proud, yea, mine eyes swam with tears
To think of thee; and all the goodly view
From sovran Brocken, woods and woody hills
Floated away, like a departing dream,
Feeble and dim. Stranger, these impulses
Blame thou not lightly; nor will I profane,
With hasty judgment or injurious doubt,
That man's sublimer spirit, who can feel
That God is every where, the God who framed
Mankind to be one mighty brotherhood,
Himself our Father, and the world our home.
We left Elbingerode, May 14th, and travelled for half a mile through a
wild country, of bleak stony hills by our side, with several caverns,
or rather mouths of caverns, visible in their breasts; and now we came
to Rubilland,--Oh, it was a lovely scene! Our road was at the foot of
low hills, and here were a few neat cottages; behind us were high
hills, with a few scattered firs, and flocks of goats visible on the
topmost crags. On our right hand a fine shallow river about thirty
yards broad, and beyond the river a crescent hill clothed with firs,
that rise one above another, like spectators in an amphitheatre. We
advanced a little farther,--the crags behind us ceased to be visible,
and now the whole was one and complete. All that could be seen was the
cottages at the foot of the low green hill, (cottages embosomed in
fruit trees in blossom,) the stream, and the little crescent of firs.
I lingered here, and unwillingly lost sight of it for a little while.
The firs were so beautiful, and the masses of rocks, walls, and
obelisks started up among them in the very places where, if they had
not been, a painter with a poet's feeling would have imagined them.
Crossed the river (its name Bodi), entered the sweet wood, and came to
the mouth of the cavern, with the man who shews it. It was a huge
place, eight hundred feet in length, and more in depth, of many
different apartments; and the only thing that distinguished it from
other caverns was, that the guide, who was really a character, had the
talent of finding out and seeing uncommon likenesses in the different
forms of the stalactite. Here was a nun;--this was Solomon's
temple;--that was a Roman Catholic Chapel;--here was a lion's claw,
nothing but flesh and blood wanting to make it completely a claw! This
was an organ, and had all the notes of an organ, &c. &c. &c.; but,
alas! with all possible straining of my eyes, ears, and imagination, I
could see nothing but common stalactite, and heard nothing but the
dull ding of common cavern stones. One thing was really striking;--a
huge cone of stalactite hung from the roof of the largest apartment,
and, on being struck, gave perfectly the sound of a death-bell. I was
behind, and heard it repeatedly at some distance, and the effect was
very much in the fairy kind,--gnomes, and things unseen, that toll
mock death-bells for mock funerals. After this, a little clear well
and a black stream pleased me the most; and multiplied by fifty, and
coloured ad libitum, might be well enough to read of in a novel or
poem. We returned, and now before the inn, on the green plat around
the Maypole, the villagers were celebrating Whit-Tuesday. This Maypole
is hung as usual with garlands on the top, and, in these garlands,
spoons, and other little valuables, are placed. The high smooth round
pole is then well greased; and now he who can climb up to the top may
have what he can get,--a very laughable scene as you may suppose, of
awkwardness and agility, and failures on the very brink of success.
Now began a dance. The women danced very well, and, in general, I have
observed throughout Germany that the women in the lower ranks
degenerate far less from the ideal of a woman, than the men from that
of man. The dances were reels and waltzes; but chiefly the latter.
This dance is, in the higher circles, sufficiently voluptuous; but
here the emotions of it were far more faithful interpreters of the
passion, which, doubtless, the dance was intended to shadow; yet, ever
after the giddy round and round is over, they walked to music, the
woman laying her arm, with confident affection, on the man's
shoulders, or around his neck. The first couple at the waltzing was a
very fine tall girl, of two or three and twenty, in the full bloom and
growth of limb and feature, and a fellow with huge whiskers, a long
tail, and woollen night-cap; he was a soldier, and from the more than
usual glances of the girl, I presumed was her lover. He was, beyond
compare, the gallant and the dancer of the party. Next came two boors:
one of whom, in the whole contour of his face and person, and, above
all, in the laughably would-be frolicksome kick out of his heel,
irresistibly reminded me of Shakespeare's Slender, and the other of
his Dogberry. Oh! two such faces, and two such postures! O that I were
an Hogarth! What an enviable gift it is to have a genius in painting!
Their partners were pretty lasses, not so tall as the former, and
danced uncommonly light and airy. The fourth couple was a sweet girl
of about seventeen, delicately slender, and very prettily dressed,
with a full-blown rose in the white ribbon that went round her head,
and confined her reddish-brown hair; and her partner waltzed with a
pipe in his mouth, smoking all the while; and during the whole of this
voluptuous dance, his countenance was a fair personification of true
German phlegm. After these, but, I suppose, not actually belonging to
the party, a little ragged girl and ragged boy, with his stockings
about his heels, waltzed and danced;--waltzing and dancing in the rear
most entertainingly. But what most pleased me, was a little girl of
about three or four years old, certainly not more than four, who had
been put to watch a little babe, of not more than a year old (for one
of our party had asked), and who was just beginning to run away, the
girl teaching him to walk, and who was so animated by the music, that
she began to waltz with him, and the two babes whirled round and
round, hugging and kissing each other, as if the music had made them
mad. There were two fiddles and a bass viol. The fiddlers,--above all,
the bass violer,--most Hogarthian phizzes! God love them! I felt far
more affection for them than towards any other set of human beings I
have met with since I have been in Germany, I suppose because they
looked so happy!"
Coleridge and his companions in their tour passed through a district
belonging to the elector of Metz, and he often repeated the following
story, which one of the party has since related in print; that, going
through this district, chiefly inhabited by boors, who were Romanists,
of the lowest form of this persuasion of Christians, the party fatigued
and much exhausted, with the exception of Blumenbach, arrived somewhat
late, though being a summer evening, it was still light, at a Hessian
village, where they had hoped, as in England, to find quarters for the
night. Most of the inhabitants had retired to rest, a few only loitering
about, perhaps surprized at the sight of strangers. They shewed no
inclination to be courteous, but rather eyed them with suspicion and
curiosity. The party, notwithstanding this, entered the village
ale-house, still open, asked for refreshments and a night's lodging, but
no one noticed them. Though hungry, they could not procure any thing for
supper, not even a cup of coffee, nor could they find beds; after some
time, however, they asked for a few bundles of straw, which would
probably have been granted, had not Coleridge, out of patience at seeing
his friends' forlorn situation, imprudently asked one of them, if there
lived any Christians in Hesse Cassel? At this speech, which was soon
echoed by those within the house to the bystanders without, the boors
became instantly so infuriated, that rushing in, the travellers were
immediately driven out, and were glad to save themselves from the
lighted fire-wood on the hearth, which was hurled at them. On this they
went to seek a spot to bivouac for the night. Coleridge lay under the
shelter of a furze-bush, annoyed by the thorns, which, if they did not
disturb his rest, must have rendered it comfortless. Youth and fatigue,
inducing sleep, soon rose above these difficulties. In the ascent of the
Brocken, they despaired of seeing the famous spectre, in search of which
they toiled, it being visible only when the sun is a few degrees above
the horizon. Haué says, he ascended thirty times without seeing it, till
at length he was enabled to witness the effect of this optical delusion.
For the best account of it, see the Natural Magic of Sir D. Brewster,
[26] who explains the origin of these spectres, and shews how the mind
is deluded among an ignorant and easily deceived people, and thus traces
the birth of various ghost stories in the neighbourhood, extending as
far in Europe, as such stories find credence.
"In the course of my repeated tours through the Hartz," Mr. Jordan
says, "I ascended the Brocken twelve different times, but I had the
good fortune only twice (both times about Whitsuntide), to see that
atmospheric phenomenon called the Spectre of the Brocken, which
appears to me worthy of particular attention, as it must, no doubt, be
observed on other high mountains, which have a situation favourable
for producing it. The first time I was deceived by this extraordinary
phenomenon, I had clambered up to the summit of the Brocken, very
early in the morning, in order to wait there for the inexpressibly
beautiful view of the sun rising in the east. The heavens were already
streaked with red: the sun was just appearing above the horizon in
full majesty, and the most perfect serenity prevailed throughout the
surrounding country. When the other Hartz mountains in the south-west,
towards the Worm mountains, lying under the Brocken, began to be
covered by thick clouds; ascending at this moment the granite rocks
called the Teufelskauzel, there appeared before me, though at a great
distance towards the Worm mountains, the gigantic figure of a man, as
if standing on a large pedestal. But scarcely had I discovered it when
it began to disappear; the clouds sank down speedily and expanded, and
I saw the phenomenon no more. The second time, however, I saw the
spectre somewhat more distinctly, a little below the summit of the
Brocken, and near the Heinrichs-höhe, as I was looking at the sun
rising about four o'clock in the morning. The weather was rather
tempestuous, the sky towards the level country was pretty clear, but
the Harz mountains had attracted several thick clouds which had been
hovering around them, and which, beginning to settle on the Brocken,
confined the prospect. In these clouds, soon after the rising of the
sun, I saw my own shadow of a monstrous size, move itself for a couple
of seconds exactly as I moved, but I was soon involved in clouds, and
the phenomenon disappeared."
It is impossible to see this phenomenon, except when the sun is at such
an altitude as to throw his rays upon the body in a horizontal
direction; for, if he is higher, the shadow is thrown rather under the
body than before it. After visiting the Hartz, Coleridge returned to
Göttingen, and in his note-book in a leave-taking memorial as well as
autograph, the following lines were written by Blumenbach, the son:--
"Wenn Sie, bester Freund, auch in Jhrer Heimath die
Natur bewundern werden, wie wir beide es auf dem Harze
gethan haben, so erinnern Sie sich des Harzes, und ich darf
dann hoffen, das Sie auch mich nicht vergessen werden.
"Leben Sie wohl, und reisen glücklich,
"Jhr. BLUMENBACH."
TRANSLATION.
If you perchance, my dearest friend, should still continue
to admire the works of nature at your home, as we have done
together on the Hartz; recall to your recollection the Hartz,
and then I dare hope that you will also think of me.
Farewell, may you have a prosperous voyage.
(Signed) yours, BLUMENBACH.
Coleridge returned to England after an absence of fourteen mouths, and
arrived in London the 27th November, 1799.
He went to Germany but little versed in the language, and adopted the
following plan of acquiring it, which he recommends to others
"To those," says he, "who design to acquire the language of a country
in the country itself, it may be useful, if I mention the incalculable
advantages which I derived from learning all the words that could
possibly be so learnt, with the objects before me, and without the
intermediation of the English terms. It was a regular part of my
morning studies for the first six weeks of my residence at Ratzeburg,
to accompany the good and kind old pastor, with whom I lived, from the
cellar to the roof, through gardens, farm-yards, &c., and to call
every the minutest thing by its German name. Advertisements, farces,
jest-books, and conversation of children while I was at play with
them, contributed their share to a more homelike acquaintance with the
language, than I could have procured from books of polite literature
alone, or even from polite society."
In support of this plan, he makes a quotation from the massive folios of
Luther--a passage as he calls it of "_hearty_ sound sense," and gives
the simple, sinewy, idiomatic words of the "original," with a
translation of his own:
"For one must not ask the letters in the Latin tongue, how one ought
to speak German; but one must ask the mother in the house, the
children in the lanes and alleys, the common man in the market,
concerning this; yea, and look at the _moves_ of their mouths while
they are talking, and thereafter interpret. They understand then, and
mark that one talks German with them."
Whether he owed his successful acquirement of the language to these
plans adopted by him, or whether to his extraordinary powers of mind, it
must be left to others to judge. To form any thing like an accurate
opinion, it may be necessary to re-state, that during this fourteen
months' residence, he acquired such a knowledge of the German, as
enabled him to make that extraordinary translation of the Wallenstein,
(which will be presently noticed), reading at the same time several
German authors, and storing up for himself the means of becoming
familiar with others, on subjects in which the English language was
deficient. In addition to what in this short period he effected, I may
say that some part of this time was employed in receiving many lessons
from professor Tychsen, in the Gothic of Ulphilas, which, says he,
"sufficed to make me acquainted with its grammar, and the radical
words of most frequent occurrence; and with the occasional assistance
of the same philosophical linguist, I read through Ottfried's Metrical
Paraphrase of the Gospel, and the most important remains of the
Theotiscan."
Coleridge's Biographia contains the history and developement of his mind
till 1816, when it was published; he called it his Literary Life, but of
necessity it is intermixed with his biography, as he must have found it
impossible to separate them. He had even half promised himself to write
his own biography, but the want of success in his literary labours, and
the state of his health, caused him to think seriously that his life was
diminishing too fast, to permit him to finish those great works, of
which he had long planned the execution. The conception of these works
was on such a scale, that even his giant intellect, with his great and
continuous powers of application, could not have executed them. But to
continue.--On his return to London, his first literary occupation was
the translation of the Wallenstein, which he effected in six weeks, in a
lodging in Buckingham-street, in the Strand; it was printed and
published in 1800.
The MS. was purchased by Longman's house under the condition that the
English Version and Schiller's Play in German were to be published at
the same time. The play, as is well known to all German readers, is in
three parts; the first part, the Camp, being considered by Coleridge as
not sufficiently interesting to the British public to translate, it was
not attempted; the second part, the Piccolomini, was translated with the
occasional addition of some lines, in order to make out the thought when
it appeared to require it, particularly in the Horological scene of the
Watch Tower. In the last part the Death of Wallenstein is equally free,
but the liberties taken with this play are those of omission.
German was not at that time cultivated in England, and the few plays
which were translated, were but bad specimens of German Literature. The
Wallenstein is an historical play, without any of those violent tragic
events which the public expect to find in German plays, and this was one
cause perhaps of disappointment.--It is a play of high thoughts--
ennobling sentiments, and for the reflecting individual with good
feelings, one of those plays, by which, even without reference to the
story, the head and the heart are both benefited. There is no violent
excitement produced, and in quiet thought one can dwell on it with
pleasure. Coleridge truly prophesied its fate, for when translating it,
he said it would fall dead from the press, and indeed but few of the
copies were sold;--his advice to the publishers, whom he had forewarned
of this failure, was to reserve the unsold copies, and wait till it
might become fashionable. They however parted with it as waste paper,
though sixteen years afterwards it was eagerly sought for, and the few
remaining copies doubled their price; but now that the German language
has become more general, and the merit of this translation been
appreciated, it has been reprinted with success.
Since the visit of these remarkable men to Germany, the taste for German
literature has each year slowly increased, so as to make it almost
appear that they have given the direction to this taste, which in
England has caused a free inquiry into the writings of German authors,
particularly of their poets and philosophers for the one class; and also
into the interesting tales and stories to be found for the many who
require such amusement.
The edition of Wallenstein, 1800, contains the following preface, which
was afterwards abridged, but is here given as it was originally written;
the first criticism on it was wholly made out of this preface, and these
lines were quoted by the reviewer, in condemnation of the play and the
translation, though it is well known that the critic was ignorant of
German. The date of the MS. by Schiller is September 30th, 1799, the
English is 1800. Coleridge indeed calls it a translation, but had it
been verbatim, it would have required much longer time; take it however
as we will, it displays wonderful powers; and as he noticed in a letter
to a friend, it was executed in the prime of his life and vigour of his
mind. Of the metre of this drama he spoke slightingly, and said
according to his taste,
"it dragged, like a fly through a glue-pot. It was my intention," he
writes, "to have prefixed a life of Wallenstein to this translation;
but I found that it must either have occupied a space wholly
disproportionate to the nature of the publication, or have been merely
a meagre catalogue of events narrated, not more fully than they
already are in the play itself. The recent translation, likewise, of
Schiller's History of the Thirty Years' War, diminished the motives
thereto. In the translation, I have endeavoured to render my author
literally, wherever I was not prevented by absolute differences of
idiom; but I am conscious, that in two or three short passages, I have
been guilty of dilating the original; and, from anxiety to give the
full meaning, have weakened the force. In the metre I have availed
myself of no other liberties, than those which Schiller had permitted
to himself, except the occasional breaking up of the line, by the
substitution of a trochee for an iambus; of which liberty, so frequent
in our tragedies, I find no instance in these dramas.
The two Dramas, Piccolomini, or the first part of Wallenstein, and
Wallenstein, are introduced in the original manuscript by a prelude in
one act, entitled Wallenstein's camp. This is written in rhyme, and in
nine syllable verse, in the same lilting metre (if that expression may
be permitted) with the second eclogue of Spencer's Shepherd's
Calendar. This prelude possesses a sort of broad humour, and is not
deficient in character, but to have translated it into prose, or into
any other metre than that of the original, would have given a false
idea, both of its style and purport; to have translated it into the
same metre, would have been incompatible with a faithful adherence to
the sense of the German, from the comparative poverty of our language
in rhymes; and it would have been unadvisable, from the incongruity of
those lax verses with the present state of the English public.
Schiller's intention seems to have been merely to have prepared his
reader for the tragedies, by a lively picture of the laxity of
discipline, and the mutinous disposition of Wallenstein's soldiery. It
is not necessary as a preliminary explanation. For these reasons it
has been thought expedient not to translate it.
The admirers of Schiller, who have abstracted their idea of that
author from the Robbers, and the Cabal and Love plays, in which the
main interest is produced by the excitement of curiosity, and in which
the curiosity is excited by terrible and extraordinary incident, will
not have perused, without some portion of disappointment, the dramas
which it has been my employment to translate. They should, however,
reflect, that these are historical dramas, taken from a popular German
history; that we must therefore judge of them in some measure with the
feelings of Germans, or by analogy with the interest excited in us by
similar dramas in our own language. Few, I trust, would be rash or
ignorant enough, to com
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