Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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WORDSWORTH COLLECTION

MADE BY

CYNTHIA MORGAN ST JOHN

ITHACA, NY.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge at 6i

LETTERS

OF

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

EDITED BY

ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

A jr^^i-

Copyright, 1895,
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

All rights reserved.

The Eiverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., V. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II

CHAPTER VII. A LONG ABSENCE, 1804-1806.

Page
CXLIV. RiCHAKD Sharp, January 1.5, 1804. (Life of Words-
worth, 1889, ii. 9) 447

CXLV. Thomas Poole, January 15, 1804. (Forty lines pub-
lished, Thomas Poole and his Friends, 1887, ii. 122) . 452
CXLVI. Thomas Poole [January 26, 1804] . . . .454

CXLVII. The Wordsworth Family, February 8, 1804. (Life of

Wordsworth, 1889, ii. 12) 456

CXLVIII. Mrs. S. T. Coleridge, February 19, 1804 . . .460

CXLIX. Robert Southet, February 20, 1804 .... 464

CL. Mrs. S. T. Coleridge, April 1, 1804 . . . .467

CLI. Robert Southey, April 16, 1804 469

CLII. Daniel Stuart, April 21, 1804. (Privately printed,

Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 33) .... 475

CLIII. Mrs. S. T. Coleridge, June, 1804 480

CLIV. Daniel Stuart, October 22, 1804. (Privately printed.

Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 45) .... 485

CLV. Robert Southey, February 2, 1805 . . . .487

CLVI. Daniel Stuart, April 20, 1805. (Privately printed,

Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 46) .... 49.3

CLVII. Mrs. S. T. Coleridge, July 21, 1805 . . . .496

CLVIII. Washington Allston, June 17, 1806. (Scribner's Maga-
zine, January, 1892) ....... 498

CLIX. Daniel Stuart, August 18, 1806. (Privately printed,

Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 54) .... 501

CHAPTER VIII. HOME AND NO HOME, 1806-1807.
CLX. Daniel Stuart, September 15, 1806. (Privately printed,

Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 60) .... 505
CLXI. Mrs. S. T. Coleridge, September 16 [1806] . . .507
CLXII. Mrs. S. T. Coleridge, December 25, 1806 . . .509
CLXIII. Hartley Coleridge, April 3, 1807 . . . .511
CLXIV. Sir H. Davy, September 11, 1807. (Fragmentary Re-
mains, 1858, p. 99) 514

CHAPTER IX. A PUBLIC LECTURER, 1807-1808.
CLXV. The Morgan Family [November 23, 1807] . . .519
CLXVI. Robert Southey [December 14, 1807] . . .520

IV CONTENTS

CLXVII. Mrs. Morgan, January 25, 1808 .... 524

CLXVIII. Francis Jeffrey, May 23, 1808 . . . .527

CLXIX. Francis Jeffrey, July 20, 1808 . . . .528

CHAPTER X. GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND, 1808-1810.
CLXX. Daniel Stuart [December 9, 1808]. (Privately

printed, Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 93) . . 533
CLXXI. Francis Jeffrey, December 14, 1808. (Illustrated

London News, June 10, 1893) .... 534

CLXXII. Thomas Wilkinson, December 31, 1808. (Friends'

Quarterly Magazine, June, 1893) .... 538
CLXXIII. Thomas Poole, February 3, 1809. (Fifteen lines pub-
lished, Thomas Poole and his Friends, 1887, ii. 228). 541
CLXXIV. Daniel Stuart, March 31, 1809. (Privately printed,

Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 136) . . . 545
CLXXV. Daniel Stuart, June 13, 1809. (Privately printed,

Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 165) . . . 547
CLXXVI. Thomas Poole, October 9, 1809. (Thomas Poole and

his Friends, 1887, ii. 233) 550

CLXXVII. Robert Southey, December, 1809 .... 5.54
CLXXVIIL Thomas Poole, January 28, 1810 . . . .556

CHAPTER XL A JOURNALIST, A LECTURER, A PLAY-
WRIGHT, 1810-1813.
CLXXIX. Mrs. S. T. Coleridge, Spring, 1810 . . .563

CLXXX. The Morgans, December 21, 1810 . . . .564
CLXXXI. W. Godwin, March 15, 1811. (WiUiam Godwin, by

C. Kegan Paul, ii. 222) 565

CLXXXII. Daniel Stuart, June 4, 1811. (Gentleman's Maga-
zine, 1838) 566

CLXXXIII. Sir G. Beaumont, December 7, 1811. (Memorials of

Coh>orton, 1887, ii. 158) 570

CLXXXI V J. J. Morgan, February 28, 1812 . . . .575

CLXXXV. Mrs. S. T. Coleridge, April 21, 1812 . . .579

CLXXXVI. Mrs. S. T. Coleridge, April 24, 1812 . . .583

CLXXXVIl. Charles Lamb, May 2, 1812 586

CLXXXVIII. William Wordsworth, May 4, 1812 . . . 588
CLXXXIX. Daniel Stuart, May 8, 1812. (Privately printed.

Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 211) . . . 595
CXC. William Wordsworth, May 11, 1812. (Life of

Wordsworth, 1889, ii. 180) 596

CXCI. RoBEiiT Southey [May 12, 1812] . . . .597
CXCII. William Wordsworth, December 7, 1812. (Life

of Wordsworth, 1SS9, ii. 181) . . . .599
CXCIII. Mrs. S. T. Coleridge [January 20, 1813] . 602

CXCIV. Robert Southey, February 8, 1813. (Illustrated

London News, June 24, 1894) .... 605

CONTENTS V

CXCV. Thomas Poole, February 13, 1813. (Six lines pub-
lished, Thomas Poole and his Friends, 1887, ii.
244) 609

CHAPTER XII. A MELANCHOLY EXILE, 1813-1815.
CXCVI. Daniel Stuart, September 25, 1813. (Privately-
printed, Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 219) . 615
CXCVII. Joseph Cottle, April 26, 1814. (Early Recollec-
tions, 1837, ii. 155) ....... 616

CXCVIII. Joseph Cottle, May 27, 1814. (Early Recollections,

1837, ii. 165) . . ' 619

CXCIX. Chakles Mathews, May 30, 1814. (Memoir of

C. Mathews, 1838, ii. 257) 621

CC. JosiAH Wade, June 26, 1814. (Early Recollections,

1837, ii. 185) 623

CCI. John Mukkat, August 23, 1814. (Memoir of John

Murray, 1890, i. 297) 624

ecu. Daniel Stuart, September 12, 1814. (Privately

printed. Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 221) . 627

CCIII. Daniel Stuart, October 30, 1814. (Privately

printed. Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 248) . 634
CCrV. John Kenyon, November 3 [1814] . . . .639
CCV. Lady Beaumont, April 3, 1815. (Memorials of Cole-

orton, 1887, ii. 175) 641

CCVI. William Wordsworth, May 30, 1815. (Life of

Wordsworth, 1889, ii. 255) 643

CCVII. Rev. W. Money, 1815 651

CHAPTER XIII. NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS, 1816-1821.
CCVIII. James Gillman [April 13, 1816]. (Life of Coleridge,

1838, p. 273) 657

CCIX. Daniel Stuart, May 8, 1816. (Privately printed,

Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 255) . . . 660
CCX. Daniel Stuart, May 13, 1816. (Privately printed,

Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 262) . . . 663
CCXI. John Murray, February 27, 1817 .... 665

CCXII. Robert Southey [May, 1817] 670

CCXIII. H. C. Robinson, June, 1817. (Diary of H. C. Robin-
son, 1869, ii. 57) 671

CCXIV. Thomas Poole [July 22, 1817]. (Thomas Poole and

his Friends, 1887, ii. 255) 673

CCXV. Rev. H. F. Cary, October 29, 1817 . . . .676

CCXVI. Rev. H. F. Cary, November 6, 1817 . . . .677

CCXVII. Joseph Henry Green, November 14, 1817 . . 679

CCXVIII. Joseph Henry Green [December 13, 1817] . . 680

CCXIX. Charles Augustus Tulk. 1818 . . . .684

CCXX. Joseph Henry Green, May 2, 1818 . . .688

VI CONTENTS

CCXXI. Mrs. Gillman, July 19, 1818

CCXXII. W. Collins, A. R. A., December, 1818. (Memoirs of

W. Collins, 1848, i. 14(3)

CCXXIII. Thomas AllsOp, December 2, 1818. (Letters, Con-
versations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge,

183(), i. 5)

CCXXIV. Joseph Henry Green, January 16, 1819 .
CCXXV. James Gillman, August 20, 1819 .
CCXXVI. Mrs. Aders [?], October 28, 1819 .
CCXXVII. Joseph Henry Green [January 14, 1820]
CCXXVIII. Joseph Henry Grkbn, May 25, 1820
CCXXIX. Charles Augustus Tulk, February 12, 1821

695
699
700
701
704
706
712

CHAPTER XIV. THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE, 1822-1832.
CCXXX. John Murray, January 18, 1822 . . . .717
CCXXXI. James Gillman, October 28, 1822. (Life of Coleridge,

1838, p. 344) 721

CCXXXII. Miss Brent, July 7, 1823 722

CCXXXIII. Rev. Edward Coleridge, July 23, 1823 . . 724

CCXXXIV. Joseph Henry Green, February 15, 1824 . . 726

CCXXXV. Joseph Henry Green, May 19, 1824 . . .728

CCXXXVI. James Gillman, November 2, 1824 . . . .729

CCXXXVII. Rev. H. F. Gary, December 14, 1824 . . .731

CCXXXVIII. WiLLLVM Wordsworth [? 1825]. (Fifteen lines

published. Life of Wordsworth, 1889, ii. 305) . 733

CCXXXIX. John Taylor Coleridge, April 8, 1825 . . .734
CCXL. Rev. Edward Coleridge, May 19, 1825 . . . 738
CCXLI. Daniel Stuart, July 9, 1825. (Privately printed.

Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 286) . . . 740

CCXLII. James Gillman, October 10, 1825 .... 742

CCXLIII. Rev. Edward Coleridge, December 9, 1825 . . 744

CCXLIV. Mrs. Gillman, May 3, 1827 ... .745

CCXLV. Rev. George May Coleridge, January 14. 1828 . 746

CCXL VI. George Dyer, June 6, 1828. (The Mirror, xxxviii.

1841, p. 282) ,748

CCXL VII. George Cattermole, August 14, 1828 . . . 750
CCXL VIII. Joseph Henry Green, June 1, 1830 . . . 751

CCXLIX. Thomas Poole, 1830 753

CCL. Mrs. Gillman, 1830 754

CCLI. Joseph Henry Green, December 15, 1831 . . 754
CCLII. H. N. Coleridge, February 24, 1832 . . .756
CCLIII. Miss Lawrence, March 22, 1832 . . . .758
CCLIV. Rev. H. F. Gary, April 22, 1832. (Memoir of H. F.

Gary, 1847, ii. 194) '760

CCLV. John Peirse Kennard, August 13, 1832 . . 762

CONTENTS vn

CHAPTEK XV. THE BEGINNING OF THE END, 1833-1834.
CCLVI. Joseph Henky Green, April 8, 1833 . . .767

CCLVII. Mks. Aders [1833] 769

CCLVIII. John Sterling, October 30, 1833 . . . .771
CCLIX. Miss Eliza Nixon, July 9, 1834 . . . .773
CCLX. Adam Steinmetz Kennard, July 13, 1834. (Early

EecoUectious, 1837, ii. 193) 775

LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS

Page

Samuel Tatlok Coleridge, aged sixty-one. From a pencil-sketch
by J. Kayser, of Kaserworth, now in the possession of the editor.

Frontispiece

Mbs. Wilson. From a pencil-sketch by Edward Nash, 1816, now in
the possession of the editor 460

Hartley Colekidge, aged ten. After a painting by Sir David Wil-
kie, R. A., now in the possession of Sir George Beaumont, Bart. . . 510

The Room in Mr. Gillman's House, The Grove, Highgate, which
served as study and bedroom for the poet, and in which he died.
From a water-colour drawing now in the possession of Miss Chris-
tabel Coleridge, of Che3nie, Torquay 616

Derwent Coleridge, aged nineteen. From a pencil-sketch by Ed-
ward Nash, now in the possession of the editor 704

The Reverend George Coleridge. From an oil painting now in
the possession of the Right Honourable Lord Coleridge 746

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, aged (about) fifty-six. From an oil
painting (taken at the Argyll Baths), now in the possession of the
editor 758

CHAPTER VII
A LONG ABSENCE

1804-1806

CHAPTER VII

A LONG ABSENCE

1804-1806

CXLIV. TO RICHARD SHARP.^

King's Arms, Kendal,
Sunday morning, January 15, 1804.

My dear Sir, — I give you thanks — and, that I may-
make the best of so poor and unsubstantial a return,
permit me to say, that they are such thanks as can only
come from a nature unworldly by constitution and by
habit, and now rendered more than ever impressible by
sudden restoration — resurrection I might say — from a
long, long sick-bed. I had gone to Grasmere to take my
farewell of William Wordsworth, his wife, and his sis-
ter, and thither your letters followed me. I was at Gras-
mere a whole month, so ill, as that till the last week I was
unable to read your letters. Not that my inner being
was disturbed ; on the contrary, it seemed more than
usually serene and self-sufficing ; but the exceeding pain,
of which I suffered every now and then, and the fearful
distresses of my sleep, had taken away from me the con-
necting link of voluntary power, which continually com-
bines that part of us by which we know ourselves to be,
with that outward picture or hieroglyphic, by which we
hold communion with our like — between the vital and

1 Richard Sharp, 1759-1835, of Wordsworth's, and on intimate

known as " Convei-sation Sharp," a terms with Coleridg-e and Southey.

banker. Member of Parliament, and Life of W. Wordsworth, i. 377 ; Let-

distinguished critic. He was a friend ters of R. Southey, i. 279, et passim.

448 A LONG ABSENCE [Jan.

the organic — or what Berkeley, I suppose, would call
mind and its sensuous language. I had only just strength
enough to smile gratefully on my kind nurses, who tended
me -with sister's and mother's love, and often, I well
know, wept for me in their sleep, and watched for me
even in their dreams. Oh, dear sir! it does a man's
heart good, I will not say, to know such a family, but
even to know that there is such a family. In spite of
Wordsworth's occasional fits of hypochondriacal uncora-
fortableness, — from which, more or less, and at longer
or shorter intervals, he has never been wholly free from
his very childhood, — in spite of this hypochondriacal
graft in his nature, as dear Wedgwood calls it, liis is
the happiest family I ever saw, and were it not in too
great sympathy with my ill health — were I in good
health, and their neighbour — I verily believe that the
cottage in Grasmere Vale would be a proud sight for
Philosophy. It is with no idle feeling of vanity that I
speak of my importance to them ; that it is 7, rather than
another, is almost an accident ; but being so very happy
within themselves they are too good, not the more, for
that very reason, to want a friend and connnon object of
love out of their household. I have met ^^dth several
genuine Pliilologists, Philonoists, Physiophilists, keen lum-
ters after knowledge and science ; but truth and wisdom
are higher names than these — and revering Davy, I am
half angry with him for doing that which would make me
laugh in another man — I mean, for prostituting and
profaning the name of " Philosopher," " great Philoso-
pher," " eminent Philosopher," etc., etc., etc., to every
fellow who has made a lucky experiment, though the man
should be Frenchified to the heart, and though the whole
Seine, with all its filth and poison, flows in his veins and
arteries.

Of our common friends, my dear sir, I flatter myself
that you and I should agree in fixing on T. Wedgwood

1804] TO RICHARD SHARP 449

and on Wordsworth as genuine Philosophers — for I
have often said (and no wonder, since not a day passes
but the conviction of the truth of it is renewed in me,
and with the conviction, the accompanying esteem and
love), often have I said that T. Wedgwood's faults im-
press me with veneration for his moral and intellectual
character more than almost any other man's virtues ; for
under circumstances like his, to have a fault only in that
degree is, I doubt not, in the eye of God, to possess a high
virtue. Who does not prize the Retreat of Moreau ^ more
than all the straw-blaze of Bonaparte's victories? And
then to make it (as Wedgwood really does) a sort of
crime even to think of his faults by so many virtues
retained, cultivated, and preserved in growth and blossom,
in a climate — where now the gusts so rise and eddy, that
deeply rooted must that be which is not snatched up and
made a plaything of by them, — and, now, " the parching
air burns frore."

W. Wordsworth does not excite that almost painfully
profound moral admiration which the sense of the exceed-
ing difficulty of a given virtue can alone call forth, and
which therefore I feel exclusively towards T. Wedgwood ;
but, on the other hand, he is an object to be contem-
plated with greater complacency, because he both deserves
to be, and is, a happy man ; and a happy man, not from
natural temperament, for therein lies his main obstacle,
not by enjoyment of the good things of this world — for
even to this day, from the first dawn of his manhood, he
has purchased independence and leisure for great and
good pursuits by austere frugality and daily self-denials ;
nor yet by an accidental confluence of amiable and happy-
making friends and relatives, for every one near to his
heart has been placed there by choice and after know-

1 Jean Victor Moreau, 1763-1813. Archduke Charles at Neresheim, in
The "retreat" took place in Octo- the preceding August. Biographical
ber, 1796, after his defeat of the Dictionary.

450 A LONG ABSENCE [Jai^-

ledge and deliberation ; but lie is a happy man, because
he is a Philosopher, because he knows the intrinsic value
of the different objects of human pursuit, and regulates
his wishes in strict subordination to that knowledge ;
because he feels, and with a^ practical faith, the truth of
that which you, more than once, my dear sir, have with
equal good sense and kindness pressed upon me, that we
can do but one thing well, and that therefore we must
make a choice. lie has made that choice from his early
youth, has pursued and is pursuing it ; and certainly no
small part of his happiness is owing to this unity of
interest and that homogeneity of character which is the
natural consequence of it, and which that excellent man,
the poet Sotheby, noticed to me as the characteristic of
Wordsworth.

Wordsworth is a poet, a most original poet. He no
more resembles Milton than Milton resembles Shakespeare
— no more resembles Shakespeare than Shakespeare re-
sembles Milton. He is himself and, I dare affirm that, he
will hereafter be admitted as the first and greatest philo-
sophical poet, the only man who has effected a complete
and constant synthesis of thought and feeling and com-
bined them with poetic forms, with the music of pleasur-
able passion, and with Imagination or the modifying power
in that highest sense of the word, in which I have ventured
to opj)ose it to Fancy, or the aggregating power — in that
sense in which it is a dim analogue of creation — not aU
that we can believe, but all that we can conceive of crea-
tion. — Wordsworth is a poet, and I feel myself a better
poet, in knowing how to honour Jiifn than in all my own
poetic compositions, all I have done or hope to do ; and
I prophesy immortality to his "Recluse," as the first and
finest philosophical poem, if only it be (as it imdoubt-
edly will be) a faithful transcript of his own most august
and innocent life, of his own habitual feelings and modes
of seeing and hearing. — My dear sir ! I began a letter

1804] TO EICHAED SHAEP 451

witli a heart, Heaven knows ! how full of gratitude toward
you — and I have flown off into a whole letter-full respect-
ing Wedgwood and Wordsworth. Was it that my heart
demanded an ovitlet for grateful feelings — for a long
stream of them — and that I felt it would be oppressive
to you if I wrote to you of yourself half of what I wished
to write ? Or was it that I knew I should be in sympathy
with you, and that few subjects are more pleasing to you
than a detail of the merits of two men, whom, I am sure,
you esteem equally with myself — though accidents have
thrown me, or rather Providence has placed me, in a
closer connection with them, both as confidential friends
and the one as my benefactor, and to whom I owe that
my bed of sickness has not been in a house of want, unless
I had bought the contrary at the price of my conscience
by becoming a priest.

I leave this place this afternoon, having walked from
Grasmere yesterday. I walked the nineteen miles through
mud and drizzle, fog and stifling air, in four hours and
thirty-five minutes, and was not in the least fatigued, so
that you may see that my sickness has not much weakened
me. Indeed, the suddenness and seeming perfectness of
my recovery is really astonishing. In a single hour I
have changed from a state that seemed next to death,
swollen limbs, racking teeth, etc., to a state of elastic
health, so that I have said, " If I have been dreaming,
yet you, Wordsworth, have been awake." And Words-
worth has answered, " I could not expect any one to be-
lieve it who had not seen it." These changes have always
been produced by sudden changes of the weather. Dry
hot weather or dry frosty weather seem alike friendly to
me, and my persuasion is strong as the life within me, that
a year's residence in Madeira would renovate me. I shall
spend two days in Liverpool, and hope to be in London,
coach and coachman permitting, on Friday afternoon or
Saturday at the furthest. And on this day week I look

452 A LONG ABSENCE [Jan.

forward to tlie pleasure of thanking you personally, for I
still hope to avail myself of your kind introductions. I
mean to wait in London till a good vessel sails for Madeira ;
but of this when I see you.

Believe me, my dear sir, with grateful and affectionate
thanks, your sincere friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

CXLV. TO THOMAS POOLE.

Kendal, Sunday, January 15, 1804.

My dear Poole, — My health is as the weather. That,
for the last month, has been unusually bad, and so has my
health. I go by the heavy coach tliis afternoon. I shall
be at Liverpool tomorrow night. Tuesday, Wednesday, I
shall stay there ; not more certainly^ for I have taken my
place all the way to London, and this stay of two days is
an indulgence and entered in the road-bill, so I expect to
be in London on Friday evening about six o'clock, at the
Saracen's Head, Snow Hill. Now my dearest friend ! will
you send a twopenny post letter directed, " Mr. Coleridge
(Passenger in the Heavy Coach from Kendal and Liver-
pool), to be left at the bar, Saracen's Head, Snow Hill,"
informing me whether I can have a bed at your lodgings,
or whether Mr. Eickman could let me have a bed for one
or two nights, — for I have such a dread of sleeping at an
Inn or Coffee house in London, that it quite unmans me
to think of it. To love and to be beloved makes hothouse
plants of us, dear Poole !

Though wretchedly ill, I have not yet been deserted by
hope — less dejected than in any former illness — and my
mind has been active, and not vaguely, but to that deter-
minate purpose which has employed me the last three
months, and I want only one fortnight steady reading to
have got all my materials before me, and then I neither
stir to the right nor to the left, so help me God ! till the
work is finished. Of its contents, the title will, in part,

1804] TO THOMAS POOLE 453

iuform you, " Consolations and Comforts from the exer-
cise and right application of the Reason, the Imagination,
the Moral Feelings, Addressed especially to those in sick-
ness, adversity, or distress of mind, from speculative
gloom} etc."

I put that last phrase, though barbarous, for your in-
formation. I have puzzled for hours together, and could
never hit off a phrase to express that idea, that is, at once
neat and terse, and yet good English. The whole plan of
my literary life I have now laid down, and the exact order
in which I shall execute it, if God vouchsafe me life and
adequate health ; and I have sober though confident ex-
pectations that I shall render a good account of what may
have appeared to you and others, a distracting manifold-
ness in my objects and attainments. You are nobly em-
ployed, — most worthily of you. You are made to endear
yourself to mankind as an immediate benefactor : I must
throw my bread on the waters. You sow corn and I plant
the olive. Different evils beset us. You shall give me
advice, and I will advise you, to look steadily at every-
thing, and to see it as it is — to be willing to see a thing
to be evil, even though you see, at the same time, that it
is for the present an irremediable evil ; and not to over-
rate, either in the convictions of your intellect, or in the
feelings of your heart, the Good, because it is present to
you, and in your power ^ — and, above all, not to be too
hasty an admirer of the Rich, who seem disposed to do
good with their wealth and influence, but to make your
esteem strictly and severely proportionate to the worth of
the Agent, not to the value of the Action, and to refer the
latter wholly to the Eternal Wisdom and Goodness, to

^ This phrase reappears in the gloom" and finally to "dejection

first issue (1808) of the Prospectus of mind." See letter to F. Jeffrey,

oi The Friend. Jeff rey, to whom, the December 14, 1808, published in

Prospectus was submitted, objected \he Illustrated London News, iun&lO,

to the wording, and it was changed, 1893. Letter CLXXI.
in the first instance, to " mental

454 A LONG ABSENCE [Jan.

God, upon whom it wholly depends, and in whom alone it
has a moral worth.

I love and honour you, Poole, for many things — scarcely
for anything more than that, trusting firmly in the recti-
tude and simplicity of your own heart, and listening with
faith to its revealing voice, you never suffered either my
subtlety, or my eloquence, to proselytize you to the per-
nicious doctrine of Necessity.^ All praise to the Great
Being who has graciously enabled me to find my way out of
that labyrinth-den of sophistry, and, I woidd fain believe,
to bring with me a better clue than has hitherto been
known, to enable others to do the same. I have convinced
Southey and Wordsworth ; and W., as you know, was, even
to extravagance, a Necessitarian. Southey never believed
and abhorred the Doctrine, yet thought the argument for
it unanswerable by human reason. I have convinced both
of them of the sophistry of the argument, and wherein the
sophism consists, viz., that all have hitherto — both the
Necessitarians and their antagonists — confoimded two
essentially different things under one name, and in conse-
quence of th is mistake, the victory has been always hollow,
in favor of the Necessitarians.

God bless you, and S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. If any letter come to your lodgings for me, of
course you will take care of it.

CXLVI. TO THE SAME.

[January 26, 1804.]
My DEAREST PooLE, — I have called on Sir James
Mackintosh,^ who offered me his endeavours to procure

1 See concliuling- paragraph of footnote (1797) to lines " To a Friend,

Introductory Address of Condones tog-ether with an Unfinished Poem."

ad Populum (February, 1795) ; The Poetical Works, p. 38.
Friend, Section I., Essay xvi. ; Cole- ^ Stuart is responsible for a story

ridge''s Works, 1853, ii. 307. For that Coleridge's dislike and distrust

recantation of Necessitarianism, see of the " fellow from Aberdeen," the

1804] TO THOMAS POOLE 455

me a place under him in India, of which endeavour he
woukl not for a moment doubt the success ; and assured
me on his Honour^ on Ms Soul! ! (N. B. liis Honour! !)
(N. B. his Soul!!) that he was sincere. LillibuUero
ahoo ! ahoo ! ahoo ! Good morning, Sir James !

I next called on Davy, who seems more and more
determined to mould himself upon the Age, in order to
make the Age mould itself upon him. Into this language
at least I could have translated his conversation. Oh, it
is a dangerous business this bowing of the head in the
Temple of Rimmon ; and such men I aptly christen
Theo-viammonists, that is, those who at once worship
God and Mammon. However, God grant better things
of so noble a work of His ! And, as I once before said,
may that Serpent, the World, climb around the club
which supports him, and be the symbol of healing ; even
as in Tooke's " Pantheon," ^ you may see the thing
done to your eyes in the picture of Esculapius. Well !
now for business. I shall leave the note among the
schedules. They will wonder, plain, sober people ! what

hero of The Two Round Spaces on a friend's cause -with unnecessary ve-
Tombstone, dated from a visit to the hemence. Gentleman^ s Magazine,
Wedgwoods at Cote House, when May, 1838, p. 485.
Mackintosh outtalked and outshone ^ The Pantheon. By Andrew
his fellow protege, and drove him Tooke. Revised, etc., for the use
in dudgeon from the party. But in of schools. London : 1791.
1838, when he contributed his arti- " Tooke was a prodigious fa-
des to the Gentleman s Magazine, vourite with us (at Christ's Hospi-
Stuart had forgotten much and tal). I see before me, as vividly
looked at all things from a different now as ever, his Mars and Apollo,
point of view. For instance, he says his Venus and Aurora — the Mars
that the verses attacking Mackin- coming on furiously in his car;
tosh were never published, whereas Apollo, with his radiant head, in
they appeared in the Morning Post the midst of shades and fountains ;
of December 4, 1800. A more prob- Aurora with hers, a golden dawn ;
able explanation is that Stuart, who and Venus, very handsome, we
was not on good terms with his thought, and not looking too modest
brother-in-law, was in the habit of in ' a slight cymar.' " Autobiogra-
confiding his grievances, and that phy of Leigh Hunt, p. 75.
Coleridge, more sua, espoused his

456

A LONG ABSENCE [Feb.

damn'd madcap has got among them ; or rather I will
put it under the letter just arrived for you, that at least
it may perhaps he under the Bose}

Well, once again. I will try to get at it, but I am
landing on a surfy shore, and am always driven back
upon the open sea of various thoughts.

I dine with Davy at five o'clock this evening at the
Prince of Wales's Coffee House, Leicester Square, an
he can give us three hours of his company ; and I beseech
you do make a point and come. God bless you, and may
His Grace be as a pair of brimstone gloves to guard
against dirty diseases from such bad company as you are
keeping — Kose ^ and Thomas Poole I — II!

S. T. Coleridge.

T. Poole, Esq., Parliament Office.

[Note in Poole's handwriting : " Very interesting jeu
d^esprit, but not sent."]

CXLVII. TO THE WOEDSWORTHS.

DuNMOW, Essex, Wednesday night, ^ past 11,
February 8, 1S04.

My dearest Friends, — I must write, or I shall
have delayed it till delay has made the thought painful as
of a duty neglected. I had meant to have kept a sort of
journal for you, but I have not been cahu enough ; and
if I had kept it, I should not have time to transcribe, for
nothincr can exceed the bustle I have been in from the
day of my arrival in town. The only incident of any

See note infra. Westminster in drawing- up an ab-

2 Georg-e Kose, 1744-1818, states- stract of the variaus returns which

man and political writer. He had had been made in accordance with

recently brought in a bill which Sir George Rose's bill. See Letter

"authorised the sending to all the from T. Poole to T. Wedgwood,

Parish Overseers in the country a pa- dated September 14, 1803. Cot-

per of questions on the condition of tie's Eeminiscences, pp. 477, 478;

the poor." Poole, at the instance of Thomas Poole and his Friends, ii.

John Rickman, secretary to Speaker 107-114.
Abbot, was at this time engaeed at

1804] TO THE WOKDSWORTHS 457

extraordinary interest was a direful quarrel between
Godwin and me/ in which, to use his own phrase (unless
Lamb suggested it to him), I " thundered and lightened
with frenzied eloquence " at him for near an hour and a
half. It ended in a reconciliation next day ; but the
affair itseK, and the ferocious spirit into which a j>^us-
quam sujjicit of punch had betrayed me, has sunk deep
into my heart. Few events in my life have grieved me
more, though the fool's conduct richly merited a flogging,
but not with a scourge of scorpions. I wrote to Mrs.
Coleridge the next day, when my mind was full of it, and,
when you go into Keswick, she will detail the matter, if
you have nothing better to talk of. My health has
greatly improved, and rich and precious wines (of several
of which I had never before heard the names) agree
admirably with me, and I fully believe, most dear Wil-
liam ! they would with you. But still I am as faithful
a barometer, and previously to, and during all falling
weather, am as asthmatic and stomach-twitched as when
with you. I am a perfect conjuror as to the state of the
weather, and it is such that I detected myself in being
somewhat flattered at finding the infallibility of my un-
comfortable feelings, as to falling weather, either coming
or come. What Sicily may do for me I cannot tell, but
Dalton,^ the Lecturer on Natural Philosophy at the R.
Institution, a man devoted to Keswick, convinced me that
there was five times the duration of falling weather at
Keswick compared with the flat of midland counties, and
more than twice the gross quantity of water fallen. I
have as yet been able to do nothing for myself. My
plans are to try to get such an introduction to the Cap-
tain of the war-ship that shall next sail for Malta, as to

^ See Letter to Southey of Feb- his researches on the atomic theory,

mary 20, 1804. Letter CXLIX. which he had begun in 1803, in his

2 John Dalton, 1766-1844, chem- New System of Chemical Philosophy,

ist and meteorologist. He published in 1808. Biograjyhical Dictionary.

458 A LONG ABSENCE [Feb.

be taken as his friend (from Malta to Syracuse is but six
hours passage in a spallanza). At Syracuse I shall meet
with a hearty welcome from Mr. Lecky, the Consul, and
I hope to be able to have a letter from Lord Nelson to
the Convent of Benedictines at Catania to receive and
lodge me for such time as I may choose to stay. Catania
is a pleasant town, with pleasant, hospitable inhabitants,
at the foot of Etna, thovigh fifteen miles, alas ! from the
woody region. Greenough ^ has read me an admirable,
because most minute, journal of his Sights, Doings, and
Done-untos in Sicily.

As to money, I shall avail myself of £105, to be repaid
to you on the first of January, 1805, and another £100,
to be employed in paying the Life Assurance, the bills at
Keswick, Mrs. Fricker, next half year ; and if any re-
main, to buy me comforts for my voyage, etc., Dante and
a dictionary. I shall borrow part from my brothers, and
part from Stuart. I can live a year at Catania (for I
have no plan or desire of travelling except up and down
Etna) for XlOO, and the getting back I shall trust to
chance.

my dear, dear friends ! if Sicily should become a
British island, — as all the inhabitants intensely desire it
to be, — and if the climate agreed with you as well as I
doubt not it will with me, — and if it be as much cheaper
than even Westmoreland, as Greenough reports, and if I
could get a Vice-Consulship, of which I have little doubt,
oh, wliat a dream of happiness coidd we not realize I But
mortal life seems destined for no continuous happiness,
save that which results from the exact performance of
duty ; and blessed are you, dear AVilliam ! whose path of
duty lies through vine-trellised elm-groves, through Love
and Joy and Grandeur. " O for one hour of Dundee ! "^

1 His old fellow-student at Got- " In the Pass of Killicranky."
tingen. Wordsworth's Poetical Works, 1SS9,

i " O for a single hour of that Dundee, p. 201.

Who on that day the word of onset
gave,"

1804] TO THE WORDSWORTHS 459

How often shall I sigli, " Oh ! for one hour of ' The
Recluse ' ! "

I arrived at Dunmow on Tuesday, and shall stay tiU
Tuesday morning. You will direct No. 116 Abingdon
St., Westminster. I was not received here with mere
kindness ; I was welcomed almost as you welcomed me
when first I visited you at Racedown. And their solici-
tude and attention is enough to effeminate one. Indeed,
indeed, they are kind and good people ; and old Lady
Beaumont, now eighty-six, is a sort of miracle for beauty
and clear understanding and cheerfulness. The house is
an old house by a tan-yard, with nothing remarkable but
its awkward passages. We talk by the long hours about
you and Hartley, Derwent, Sara, and Johnnie; and few
things, I am persuaded, would delight tliem more than to
live near you. I wish you would write out a sheet of verses
for them, and I almost promised for you that you should
send that delicious poem on the Highland Girl at Invers-
nade. But of more importance, incomparably, is it, that
Mary and Dorothy should begin to transcribe all William's
MS. poems for me. Think what they will be to me in
Sicily ! They should be written in pages and lettered up
in parcels not exceeding two ounces and a quarter each,
including the seal, and three envelopes, one to the Speaker,
under that, one to John Rickman, Esqre, and under that,
one to m,e. (Terrible mischief has happened from foolish
people of R.'s acquaintance neglecting the middle envelope,
so that the Speaker, opening his letter, finds himself
made a letter smuggler to Nicholas Noddy or some other
unknown gentleman.) But I will send you the exact
form. The weight is not of much importance, but better
not exceed two ounces and a quarter. I will write again
as soon as I hear from you. In the mean time, God bless
you, dearest William, Dorothy, Mary, S., and my god-
child.

S. T. Coleridge.

460 A LONG ABSENCE [Fkb.

CXLVIII. TO HIS WIFE.

February 19, 1804.

"J. Tobin, Esqre.,1 No. 17 Barnard's Inn, Holborn.
For Mr. Coleridge." So, if you wish me to answer it
by return of post : but if it be of no consequence, whether
I receive it four hours sooner or four hours later, then
direct '•' ]\lr. Lanibe,'^ East India House, London."

I did not receive your last letter written on the " very,
very windy and very cold Sunday night," till yesterday
afternoon, owing to Poole's neglect and forgetfulness.
But Poole is one of those men who have one good quality,
namely, that they always do one thing at a time ; but who
likewise have one defect, that they can seldom think but
of one thing at a time. For instance, if Poole is intent
on his matter while he is speaking, he cannot give the
least attention to his language or pronunciation, in conse-
quence of which there is no one error in his dialect which
he has ever got rid of. My mind is in general of the
contrary make. I too often do nothing, in consequence
of being impressed all at once (or so rapidly consecutively
as to appear all at once) by a variety of impressions. If
there are a dozen people at table I hear, and cannot help
giving some attention to wdiat each one says, even though
there should be three or four talking at once. The detail
of the Good and the Bad, of the two different yiiakes of
mind, would form a not uninteresting brace of essays in
a Spectdfor or Guardian.

You will of course ro]iay Southey instantly all the
money you may liave borrowed either for yourself or for
Mr. Jackson,^ and do not forget to remember that a share

1 John Toliiii tlie drnniatist (or - The misspelling', which was in-

possibly his brother James), with tentional, was an intimation to Lamb

whom Coleridg-e spent the last weeks that the letter was not to be opened,

of his stay in London, before he 3 ^ retired carrier, the owner of

left for Portsmonth on the 2Tth of Greta Hall, who occupied " the

March, on his way to Malta. smaller of the two houses inter-

U'f) -iyOrhWtk

1804] TO HIS WIFE 461

of the wine-hill belonged to me. Likewise when you pay-
Mr. Jackson, you will pay him just as if he had not had
any money from you. Is it half a year ? or a year and a
half's rent that we owe him ? Did we pay him up to
July last ? If we did, then^ were I you, I would now pay
him the whole year's rent up to July next, and tell him
that you shall not want the twenty pounds which you
have lent him till the beginning of May. Eemember me
to him in the most affectionate manner, and say how sin-
cerely I condole with him on his sprain. Likewise, and
as affectionately, remember me to Mrs. Wilson.

It gave me pain and a feeling of anxious concern on
our own account, as well as Mr. Jackson's, to find him so
distressed for money. I fear that he will be soon induced
to sell the house.

Now for our darling Hartley. I am myself not at all
anxious or uneasy respecting his habits of idleness ; but
I should be very unhappy if he were to go to the town
school, unless there were any steady lad that Mr. Jackson
knew and coidd rely on, who went to the same school
regularly, and who would be easily induced by half-a-
crown once in two or three months to take care of him,
let him always sit by him, and to whom you should in-
struct the child to yield a certain degree of obedience.
If this can be done (and you will read what I say to Mr.
Jackson), I have no great objection to his going to school
and making a fair trial of it. Oh, may God vouchsafe me
health that he may go to school to his own father ! I
exceedingly wish that there were any one in Keswick who
would eive him a little instruction in the elements of
drawing. I will go to-morrow and enquire for some very
elementary book, if there be any, that proposes to teach

connected under one roof." He was ley's childhood, was Jackson's house-

g'odfather to Hartley Coleridge, and keeper. Memoir and Letters of Sara

left him a legacy of fifty pounds. Coleridge, 1873, i. 13.
Mrs. Wilson, the " Wilsy " of Hart-

462 A LONG ABSENCE [Feb.

it without the assistance of a drawing master, and which
you might make him read to you instead of his other
books. Sir G. Beaumont was very much pleased and
interested by Hartley's promise of attachment to his dar-
ling Art. If I can find the book I will send it off instantly,
together with the Spillekins (Spielchen, or Gamelet, I
suppose), a German refinement of our Jack Straw. You
or some one of your sisters will be so good as to play with
Hartley, at first, that Derwent may learn it. Little Al-
bert at Dr. Crompton's, and indeed all the children, are
quite spillekin mad. It is certainly an excellent game to
teach cliildren steadiness of hand and quickness of eye,
and a good opportunity to impress upon them the beauty
of strict truth, when it is against their own interest, and
to give them a pride in it, and habits of it, — for the
slightest perceptible motion produced in any of the spiUe-
kins, except the one attempted to be crooked off the heap,
destroys that turn, and there is a good deal of foresight
executed in knowing when to give it a lusty pull, so as to
move the spillekins under, if only you see that your adver-
sary who will take advantage of this pull, will himself
not succeed, and yet by Ms or the second pull put the
spillekin easily in the power of the third pull. ... I am
now writing in No. 44 Upper Titclifield Street, where I
have for the first time been breakfasting ■s^^th A. Welles,
who seems a kind, friendly man, and instead of recom-
mending any more of his medicine to me, advises me to
persevere in and expedite my voyage to a better climate,
and lias been very pressing with me to take up my home
at his house. To-morrow I dine with Mr. Rickman at his
own liouse ; Wednesday I dine with him at Tobin's. I
shall dine with Mr. Welles to-day, and thence by eight
o'clock to the Royal Institution to the lecture.^ On

^ Coleridge had already attended correspondence to Davy's Lectures

Davy's Lectures at the Royal Insti- gave rise to the mistaken supposition

tution in 1802, and, possibly, in 1803. that he delivered public lectures in

It is probable that allusions in his London before 1808.

1804] TO HIS WIFE 463

Thursday afternoon, two o'clock to the lecture, and Sat-
urday night, eight o'clock to the lecture. On Friday, I
spend the day with Davy certainly, and I hope with Mr.
Sotheby likewise. To-morrow or Wednesday I expect to
know certainly what my plans are to be, whither to go
and when, and whether the intervening space will make it
worth my while to go to Ottery, or whether I shall go
back to Dunmow, and return with Sir George and Lady
B. when they come to their house in Grosvenor Square.
I cannot express to you how very, very affectionate the
behaviour of these good people has been to me ; and how
they seem to love by anticipation those very few whom I
love. If Southey would but permit me to copy that divine
passage of his " Madoc," ^ respecting the Harp of the Welsh
Bard, and its imagined divinity, with the Two Savages,
or any other detachable passage, or to transcribe his " Ke-
hama," I will pledge myself that Sir George Beaumont and
Lady B. will never suffer a single individual to hear or
see a single line, you saying that it is to be kept sacred to
them, and not to be seen by any one else.

[No signature.]

1 " He said, and, gliding like a snake, Into so sweet a harmony, that sure

Where Caradoc lay sleeping made his way. It seem'd no earthly tone. The savage man

Sweetly slept he, and pleasant were his Suspends his stroke ; he looks astonished

dreams round ;

Of Britain, and the blue-eyed maid he loved. No human hand is near: . . . and hark!

The Azteca stood over him ; he knew again

His victim, and the power of vengeance The aerial music swells and dies away.

gave Then first the heart of Tlalala felt fear :

Malignant joy. ' Once hast thou 'scaped my He thought that some protecting spirit

arm : watch'd

But what shall save thee now ? ' the Tyger Beside the Stranger, and, abash'd, with-

thought, drew."

Exulting; and he raised his spear to strike. "Madoc in Aztlan," Book XL

That instant, o'er the Briton's unseen harp -r> ^- 7 tt^ 7 -iqoq

The gale of morning past, and swept its Southey's Poetical Works, 1838, y.

strings 274, 275.

464 A LONG ABSENCE [Feb.

CXLIX. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

Rickman's 0£&ce, H. of Commons,
February 20, 1804, Monday noon.

Dear Southey, — The affair with Godwin began thus.
Wo wove talking of reviews, and bewailing their ill effects.
I detailed my plan for a review, to occupy regularly the
fourth side of an evening paper, etc., etc., adding that
it had been a favourite scheme with me for two years
past. Godwin very coolly observed that it was a plan
which •"' no man who had a spark of honest pride " could
join with. " No man, not the slave of the grossest egotism,
could unite in," etc. Cool and civil ! I asked whether
he and most others did not already do what I proposed
in prefaces. " Aye ! in prefaces ; that is quite a different
thing." I then adverted to the extreme rudeness of the
speech with regard to myself, and added that it was not
only a very rough, but likewise a very mistaken opinion,
for I was nearly if not quite sure that it had received the
approbation both of you and of Wordsworth. " Yes, sir !
just so! of Mr. Southey — just what I said," and so on
more Godwiniano in language so ridicidously and exclu-
sively appropriate to himself, that it woidd have made you
merry. It was even as if he was looking into a sort of
moral looking-glass, without knowing what it was, and,
seeing his own very, very Godwin ship, had by a merry
conceit christened it in your name, not without some an-
nexment of me and Wordsworth. I replied by laughing
in the first place at the capricious nature of his nicety,
that what was gross in folio shoiUd become double-refined
in octavo foolscap or 2>>c^'J)0cl-et quartos, blind slavish
egotism in small i)ica, manly discriminating self-respect in
double primer, modest as maiden's blushes between boards,
or in calf-skin, and only not obscene in naked sheets.
And then in a deep and somewhat sarcastic tone, tried to
teach him to speak more reverentially of his betters, by

1804] TO ROBERT SOUTHEY 465

stating wliat and who they were, by whom honoured, by
whom depreciated. Well ! this gust died away. I was
going home to look over his Duncity ; he begged me to
stay till his return in half an hour. I, meaning to take
nothing more the whole evening, took a crust of bread,
and Mary Lamb made me a glass of punch of most deceit-
ful strength. Instead of half an hour, Godwin stayed an
hour and a half. In came his wife, Mrs. Fenwick,^ and
four young ladies, and just as Godwin returned, supper
came in, and it was now useless to go (at supper I was
rather a mirth-maker than merry). I was disgusted at
heart with the grossness and vulgar insanocecity of this
dim-headed prig of a philosophocide, when, after supper,
his ill stars impelled him to renew the contest. I begged
him not to goad me, for that I feared my feelings would
not long remain in my power. He (to my wonder and
indignation) persisted (I had not deciphered the cause),
and then, as he well said, I did " thunder and lighten at
him " with a vengeance for more than an hour and a half.
Every effort of self-defence only made him more ridicu-
lous. If I had been Truth in person, I could not have
spoken more accurately ; but it was Truth in a war-
chariot, drawn by the three Furies, and the reins had
slipped out of the goddess's hands ! . . . Yet he did not
absolutely give way till that stinging contrast which I
drew between him as a man, as a writer, and a benefactor
of society, and those of whom he had spoken so irrev-
erently. In short, I suspect that I seldom, at any time
and for so great a length of time, so continuously displayed
so much power, and do hope and trust that never did I
display one half the scorn and ferocity. The next morn-
ing, the moment when I awoke, O mercy ! I did feel like

1 Mrs. E. Fenwick, author of <Se- Letters (ed. Ainger), i. 331 ; and

crecy, a novel (1799) ; a friend of Lamb's essays, " Two Races of

Godwin's first wife, Mary WoUstone- Men," and " Newspapers Thirty-five

craft. William Godwin, by C. Keg-an Years ago."
Paul, i. 282, 283. See, also, Lamb's

466 A LONG ABSENCE [Feb.

a very wretch. I got up and immediately wrote and sent
off by a porter, a letter, I dare affirm an affecting and
eloquent letter to him, and since then have been working
for him, for I was heart-smitten with the recollection that
I had said all, all in the presence of his wife. But if I
had known all I now know, I will not say that I should
not have apologised, but most certainly I should not have
made such an apology, for he confessed to Lamb that he
shoidd not have persisted in irritating me, but that Mrs.
Godwin had twitted him for his prostration before me, as
if he was afraid to say his life was his own in my presence.
He admitted, too, that although he never to the very last
suspected that I was tipsy, yet he saw clearly that some-
thing miusual ailed me, and that I had not been my natu-
ral self the whole evening. What a poor creature ! To
attack a man who had been so kind to him at the instig^a-
tion of such a woman ! ^ And what a woman to instigate
him to quarrel with me^ who with as much power as any,
and more than most of his acquaintances, had been per-
haps the only one who had never made a butt of him —
who had uniformly sjDoken respectfully to him. But it is
past ! And I trust will teach me wisdom in future.

I have undoubtedly suffered a great deal from a coward-
ice in not daring to repel unassimilating acquaintances
who press forward upon m}^ friendship ; but I dare aver,
that if the circumstances of each particidar case were
examined, they would prove on the whole honourable to
me rather than otherwise. But I liave had enough and
done enough. Hereafter I shall show a different face,
and calmly inform those who press upon me that my
health, si)irits, and occupation alike make it necessary for
me to confine myself to the society of those with whom I
have the nearest and highest connection. So help me
God ! I will hereafter be quite sure that I do really and

1 Lamb's " bad baby " — "a disgusting woman who wears green spec-
tacles." Letters, passim.

1804] TO HIS WIFE 467

in the whole of my heart esteem and like a man before I
permit him to call me friend.

I am very anxious that you should go on with your
" Madoc." If the thought had happened to suggest itself
to you originally and with all these modifications and poly-
pus tendrils with which it would have caught hold of your
subject, I am afraid that you would not have made the first
voyage as interesting at least as it ought to be, so as to
preserve entire the fit proportion of interest. But go on !

I shall call on Longman as soon as I receive an answer
from him to a note wliich I sent. . . .

God bless you and S. T. Coleeidge.

P. S. I have just received Sara's four lines added to
my brother George's letter, and cannot explain her not
having received my letters. If I am not mistaken I have
written three or four times : upon an average I have
written to Greta Hall once every five days since I left
Liverpool — if you will divide the letters, one to each five
days. I will write to my brother immediately. I wrote
to Sara from Dunmow ; to you instantly on my return,
and now again. I do not deserve to be scolded at present.
I met G. Burnett the day before yesterday in Lincoln's
Inn Fields, so nervous, so helpless with such opium-
stupidly-wild eyes.

Oh, it made the place one calls the heart feel as it was
going to ache.

CL. TO HIS WIFE.

Mr. J. C. Motley's, Thomas Street, Portsmouth,
Sunday, April 1, 1804.

My DEAR Sara, — I am waiting here with great anxiety
for the arrival of the Speedwell. The Leviathan, Man of
War, our convoy, has orders to sail with the first fair
wind, and whatever wind can bring in the Speedwell
will carry out the Leviathan; unless she have other orders

468 A LONG ABSENCE [April

than those generally known. I have left the Inn, and its
crumena-mulga natio, and am only at the expense of a
lodging at half a guinea a week, for I have all my meals
at Mr. Motley's, to whom a letter from Stuart introduced
me, and who has done most especial honour to the introduc-
tion. Indeed he could not well help, for Stuart in his letter
called me his very, very particular friend, and that every
attention would sink more into his heart than one offered
to himself or his brother. Besides, you know it is no new
thing for people to take sudden and hot likings to me.
How different Sir G. B. ! He disliked me at first. When
I am in better spirits and less flurried I will transcribe his
last letter. It breathed the very soul of calm and manly
yet deep affection.

Hartley will receive his and Derwent's Si^illekins with
a letter from me by the first waggon that leaves London
after Wednesday next.

My dear Sara ! the mother, the attentive and excellent
mother of my children must needs be always more than
the word friend can exj)ress when applied to a woman. I
pray you, use no word that you use with reluctance. Yet
what we have been to each other, our miderstandings will
not permit our hearts to forget ! God knows, I weep tears
of blood, but so it is ! For I greatly esteem and honour
you. Heaven knows if I can leave you really comfortable
in your circumstances I shall meet Death with a face,
which I feel at the moment I say it, it would rather shock
than comfort you to imagine.

My health is indifferent. I am rather endurably unwell
than tolerably well. I will write Southey to-morrow or
next day, though Motley rides and drives me about sight-
seeing so as to leave me but little time. I am not sure
that I shall see the Isle of Wight.

Write to Wordsworth. Inform him that I have re-
ceived all and everything and will write him very soon, as
soon as I can command spirits and time. . . . Motley can

1804] TO EOBEET SOUTHEY 469

send off all letters to Malta under Government covers.
You direct, therefore, at all times merely to me at Mr. J.
C. Motley's, Portsmouth.

My very dear Sara, may God Almighty bless you and
your affectionate

• S. T. Coleridge.

I mourn for poor Mary.

CLI. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

Off Oporto and the coast of Portugal,
Monday noon, April 16, 1804.

My dear Southey, — I was thinking long before day-
light this morning, that I ought, sjDite of toss and tumble
and cruel rocking, to write a few letters in the course
of this and the three following days ; at the end of which,
if the northwest wind still blows behind, we may hope
to be at Gibraltar. I have two or three very unpleas-
ant let^icrs to write, and I was planning whether I should
not begin with these, have them off my hands and thoughts,
in short, whistle them down into the sea, and then take up
the paper, etc., a whole man. When, lo ! I heard the
Captain above deck talking of Oporto, slipped on my great-
coat and went shoeless up to have a look. And a beauti-
ful scene verily it was and is ! The high land of Portugal,
and the mountain land behind it, and behind that fair
mountains with blue pyramids and cones. By the glass I
could distinguish the larger buildings in Oporto, a scram-
bling city, part of it, seemingly, walls washed by the sea,
part of it upon hills. At first view, it looked much like a
vast brick kiln in a sandy, clayey country on a hot sum-
mer afternoon ; seen more distinctly, it gave the nobler
idea of a ruined city in a wilderness, its houses and streets
lying low in ruins under its ruined walls, and a few tem-
ples and palaces standing untouched. But over all the
sea between us and the land, short of a stone's throw on
the left of the vessel, there is such a delicious warm olive

^'^^ A LONG ABSENCE [April

green, almost yellow, on the water, and now it has taken in
the vessel, and its boundary is a gunshot to my right, and one
fine vessel exactly on its edge. This, though occasioned by
the impurity of the nigh shore and the disemboguing rivers,
forms a home scene ; it is warm and landlike. The air is
balmy and genial, and all that the fresh breeze can do can
scarcely keep under its vernal warmth. The country
round about Oporto seems darkly wooded ; and in the
distant gap far behind and below it on the curve of that
high lulge forming a gap, I count seventeen conical and
l»yramidal sununits ; below that the high hills are saddle-
backeil. (In })ictures(iue cant I ought to have said but be-
low that, etc.) To me the saddleback is a pleasant form
which it never would have occurred to me to christen by
that name. Tents and marquees with little points and
summits made by the tent-poles suggest a more striking
likeness. Well ! I need not say that the sight of the coast
of Portugal made it impossible for me to write to acy one
before I had written to you — I now seeing for the first
time a country you love so dearly. But you, perhaps, are
not among my mountains ! God Almighty grant that you
may not. Yes ! you are in London : all is well, and Hart-
ley has a younger sister than tiny Sally. If it be so, call
her Edith — Edith by itself — Edith. But somehow or
other I would rather it were a boy, tJien let nothing, I con-
jure you, no false compliment to another, no false feeling
indulged in yourself, dc]u-ivo your eldest sou of his father's
name. Such was ever the manner of our forefathers, and
there is a dignity, a self-respect, or an awful, preeminently
self-referring event in the custom, that makes it well worthy
of our imitation. I would have done [so], but that from
my earliest years I have had a feeling of dislike and
disgust connected with my o\m Christian name — such
a vile short plumpness, such a didl abortive smartness
in the first syllable, and this so harshly contrasted by the
obscurity and indefiniteness of the syllabic vowel, and .the

1804] TO EGBERT SOUTHEY 471

feebleness of the uncovered liquid with which it ends,
the wobble it makes, and struggling between a dis- and a
tri-syllable, and the whole name sounding as if you were
abeeceeing S. M. U. L. Altogether, it is, perhaps, the
worst combination of which vowels and consonants are
susceptible. While I am writing we are in 41° 10m. lat-
itude, and are almost three leagues from land ; at one time
we were scarcely one league from it, and about a quarter
of an hour ago, the whole country looked so very like the
country from Hutton Moor to Saddleback and the adjoin-
ing part of Skiddaw.

I cannot help some anxious feelings respecting you, nor
some superstitious twitches within, as if it were wrong at
this distance to write so prospectively and with such par-
ticularization of that which is contingent, which may be
all otherwise. But — God forbid ! and, surely, hope is less
ominous than fear. We set sail from St. Helier's, April
9th, Monday morning, having dropped down thither from
Spithead on Sunday evening. We lost twenty-six hours
of fair wind before our commodore gave the signal — our
brig, a most excellent and first-rate sailor, but laden deep
with heavy goods (eighty-four large cannon for Trieste
in the hold), which makes it rock most cruelly. I can
only —

Wed. April 18. I was going to say I can only com-
pare it to a wench kept at home on some gay day to nurse
a fretful infant and who, having long rocked it in vain,
at length rocks it in spite. . . . But though the rough
weather and the incessant rocking does not disease me,
yet the damn'd rocking depresses one inconceivably, like
hiccups or itching ; it is troublesome and impertinent and
forces you away from your thoughts like the presence and
gossip of an old aunt, or long-staying visitor, to two lov-
ers. Oh with what envy have I gazed at our commodore,
the Leviathan of seventy-four guns, the majestic and
beautiful creature sailing right before us, sometimes half

472 A LONG ABSENCE [April

a mile, oftener a furlong (for we are always first), with
two or at most three topsails that just bisect the naked
masts — as much naked mast above as below, upright,
motionless as a church with its steeple, as though it
moved by its will, as though its speed were spiritual, the
being and essence without the body of motion, or as
though the distance passed away by it and the objects of
its pursuit hurried onward to it ! In all other respects I
cannot be better off, except perhaps the two passengers;
the one a gay, worldly-minded fellow, not deficient in
sense or judgment, but inert to everything except gain
and eating ; the other, a woman once housekeeper in Gen-
eral Fox's family, a creature with a horrible superfluity
of envelope, a monopolist and patentee of flabby flesh, or
rather fish. Indeed, she is at once fish, flesh, and fowl,
though no chicken. But, ... to see the man eat and this
Mrs. Carnosity talk about it ! "I must have that Httle
potato" (baked in grease under the meat), "it looks so
smilingly at me." "Do cut me, if you please " (for she is
so fat she cannot help herself), "that small bit, just there,
sir ! a leetle, tiny bit below if you please." " Well. I have
brought plenty of pickles, I always think," etc. " I have
always three or four jars of brandy cherries with me : for
with boil'd rice now," etc., "for I always think," etc. And
true enough, if it can be called thinking, she does always
think upon some little damned article of eating that be-
longs to the housekeeper's cupboard's locker. And then
her ])laintive yawns, such a mixture of moan and petted
child's dry r/7/, or tvi/ at a cry in them. And then she
said to me this morning, " How unhappy, I always think,
one always is, when there is notliing and nobody as one
may say, about one to amuse one. It makes me so ner-
vous.^^ She eats, drinks, snores, and simply the being
stupid, and silly, and vacant the learned body calls ner-
vous. Shame on me for talking about her ! The sun is
setting so exactly behind my back that a ball from it

1804] TO ROBERT SOUTHEY 473

would strike the stem of the vessel against which my back
rests. But sunsets are not so beautiful, I think, at sea as
on land. I am sitting at my desk, namely the rudder-
case, on the duck coop, the ducks quacking at my legs.
The chicken and duck coops run thus j and so

inclose on three sides the rudder-case. ]] ^C_I 11 But now
immediately that the sun has sunk, the H I ' sea runs

high, and the vessel begins its old trick of rocking, which
it had intermitted the whole day — the second intermis-
sion only since our voyage. Oh, how glad I was to see
Cape Mondego, and then yesterday the Eock of Lisbon
and the fine mountains at its interior extremity, which I
conceived to be Cintra ! Its outline from the sea is some-
thing like tliis

J\.

and just at A. where the fine stony M. begins, with a C.
lying on its back, is a village or villages, and before we
came abreast of this, we saw far inland, seemingly close
by, several breasted peaks, two towers, and, by the glass,
three, of a very large building, be it convent or palace.
However, I knew you had seen all these places over and
over again. The dome-shaped mountain or Cape Esperi-
chel, between Lisbon and Cape St. Vincent, is one of the
finest I ever saw ; indeed all the mountains have a noble
outline. We sail on at a wonderful rate, and considering
that we are in convoy, shall have made a most lucky voy-
age to Gibraltar, if we are not becalmed and taken in the
Gut ; for we shall be there to-morrow afternoon if the
wind hold, and have gone it in ten days. It is unlucky
to prophesy good things, but if we have as good fortune
in the Mediterranean, instead of nine or eleven weeks, we
may reach Malta in a month or five weeks, including the
week which we shall most probably stay at Gibraltar. I

'^'^4 A LONG ABSENCE [April

sliall keep the letters open till we arrive there, simply
put two strokes under the word " Gibraltar," and close up
the letter, as I may gain thereby a fortnight's post. You
will not expect to hear from me again till we get to
Malta. I had hoped to have done something during my
voyage ; at all events, to have written some letters, etc.
But what with the rains, the incessant rocking, and my
conso(|nont ill health or stupefaction, I have done little
else than read through the Italian Grammar. I took out
with me some of the finest wine and the oldest in the
kingdom, some marvellous brandy, and rum twenty years
old, and excepting a pint of wine, which I had mulled at
two different times, and instantly ejected again, I have
touched nothing but lemonade from the day we set sail to
the present time. So very little does anything grow into
a habit with me ! This I should say to poor Tobin, who
continued advising and advising to the last moment.
God, he is a good fellow, but this rage of advising and
discussing character^ and (as almost all men of strong
habitual health have the trick of doing) of finding out
the cause of everybody's ill health in some one malprac-
tice or other. This, and the self-conceit and jn-esumption
necessarily generated by it, added to his own marvellous
genius at utterly misunderstanding what he hears, and
transposing words often in a manner that would be ludi-
crous if one did not suspect that his blindness had a share
in producing it — all this renders him a sad mischief-
maker, and witli W\(^ best intentions, a manufacturer and
pro])agator of ealumiiies. I had no notion of the extent
of the mischief till I was last in town. I w^as low, even
to sinking, when I was at the Inn. Stuart, best, kindest
man to me ! was w^ith me, and Lamb, and Sir G. B.'s valet.
But Tobin fastened upon me, and advised and reproved,
and just befoi-e I stepped into the coach, reminded me of
a debt of ten pounds which I had borrowed of him for
another person, an intimate friend of his, on the condition

1804] TO DANIEL STUART 475

that I was not to repay him till I could do it out of my
own purse, not borrowing of another, and not embarrass-
ing myself — in his very words, "till he wanted it more
than I." I was calling to Stuart in order to pay the sum,
but he stopped me with fervour, and, fully convinced that
he did it only in the rage of admonition, I was vexed that
it had angered me. Therefore say nothing of it, for really
he is at bottom a good man.

I dare say nothing of home. I will write to Sara from
Malta, the moment of my arrival, if I have not time to
write from Gibraltar. One of you write to me by the
regular post, " S. T. Coleridge, Esqre. Dr. Stoddart's,
Malta : " the other to me at Mr. J. C. Motley's, Ports-
mouth, that I may see whether Motley was right or no,
and which comes first.

God bless you all and S. T. Coleridge.

Remember me kindly to Mr. Jackson, Mrs. Wilson, to
the Calverts and Mrs. Wilkinson, to Mary Stamper, etc.

CLII. TO DANIEL STUART.

On board the Speedwell, at anchor in the Bay of Gibraltar,
Saturday night, April 21, 1804.

My dear Stuart, — We dropped anchor half a mile
from the landing place of the Rock of Gibraltar on Thurs-
day afternoon between four and five ; a most prosperous
voyage of eleven days. . . .

Since we anchored I have passed nearly the whole of
each day in scrambling about on the back of the rock,
among the monkeys. I am a match for them in climbing,
but in hops and flying leaps they beat me. You some-
times see thirty or forty together of these our poor rela-
tions, and you may be a month on the rock and go to the
back every day and not see one. Oh, my dear friend ! it
is a most interesting place, this ! A rock which thins as
it rises up, so that you can sit a-straddle on almost any

476

A LONG ABSENCE [April

part of its summit, between two and three miles from
north to south.

Rude as this line is,
it gives you the outline
of its appearance, from
the sea close to it, toler-
ably accurately ; only,
in nature, it gives you
very much the idea of a rude statue of a lion couchant,
like that in the picture of the Lion and the Gnat, in the
common spellinj^-books, or of some animal with a great
dip in the neck. The lion's head [turns] towards the
Spanish, his stiffened tail (4) to the African coast. At

(5) a range of Moorish towers and wall begins ; and at

(6) the town begins, the Moorish wall running straight
down by the side of it. Above the town, little gardens
and neat small houses are scattered here and there, wher-
ever they can force a bit of gardenable gi-ound ; and in
these are poplars, with a profusion of geraniums and
other flowers unknown to me ; and their fences are most
commonly that strange vegetable monster, the prickly
aloe ; its leaves resembling the head of a battledore, or
the wooden wings of a church-cherub, and one leaf grow-
ing out of another. Under the Lion's Tail is Europa
Point, which is fidl of gardens and pleasant trees ; but
tlie highest head of this mountain is a heap of rocks, with
the palm-trees growing in vast quantities in their inter-
stices, with many flowering weeds very often peeping out
of the small holes or slits in the body of the rock, just as
if they were growing in a bottle. To have left England
only eleven days ago, with two flannel waistcoats on, and
two others over them ; with two flannel drawers under
cloth pantaloons, and a thick pair of yarn stockings ; to
have had no temptation to lay any part of these aside
during the whole voyage, and now to fiud myseK in the
heat of an English summer, among flowers, and seeking

1804] TO DANIEL STUART 477

shade, and courting the sea-breezes ; all the trees in rich
foliage, and the corn knee-high, and so exquisitely green I
and to find myself forced to retain only one flannel waist-
coat, and roam about in a pair of silk stockings and nan-
keen pantaloons, is a delightful transition. How I shall
bear the intensity of a Maltese or even a Sicilian summer
I cannot guess ; but if I get over it, I am confident, from
what I have experienced the last four days, that their late
autumn and winter will almost re-create me. I could fill
a fresh sheet with the description of the singular faces,
dresses, manners, etc., etc., of the Spaniards, Moors, Jews
(who have here a peculiar dress resembling a college
dress), Greeks, Italians, English, etc., that meet in the
hot crowded streets of the town, or walk under the aspen
poplars that form an Exchange in the very centre. But
words would do nothing. I am sure that any young man
who has a turn for character-painting might pass a year
on the Rock with infinite advantage. A dozen plates by
Hogarth from this town ! We are told that we shall not
sail to-morrow evening. The Leviathan leaves us and
goes to join the fleet, and the Maidstone Frigate is to
convoy us to Malta. When you write, send one letter to
me at Mr. J. C. Motley's, Portsmouth, and another by
the post to me at Dr. Stoddart's,i Malta, that I may see
which comes first. God grant that my present health
may continue, and then my after-letters will be better
worth the postage. But even this scrawl will not be un-
welcome to you, since it tells you that I am safe, improv-
ing in my health, and ever, ever, my dear Stuart, with
true affection, and willing gratitude, your sincere friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

In the diary of his voyage on the Speedwell Coleridge
records at greater length and in a more impassioned
strain his first impressions of Gibraltar. " Saturday,

1 Afterwards Sir John Stoddart, Chief Justice of Malta, 1826-39.

478 A LONG ABSENCE [April

April 21st, went again on shore, walked up to the further-
most signal-house, the summit of that third and last
segment of the mountain ridge which looks over the blue
sea to Africa. The mountains around me did not any-
where arrange themselves strikingly, and few of their
shapes were striking. One great pyramidal summit far
above the rest, on the coast of Spain, and an uncouth
form, an old Giant's Head and shoulders, looking in upon
us from Africa far inland, were the most impressive ; but
the sea was so blue, calm, sunny, so majestic a lake where
it is enshored by mountains, and, where it is not [en-
shored] , having its indefiniteness the more felt from those
huge mountain boundaries, which yet by their greatness
prepared the mind for the sublimity of unbounded ocean
— altogether it reposed in the brightness and quietness of
the noon — majestic, for it was great with an inseparable
character of unity, and, thus, the more touching to me who
had looked from far loftier mountains over a far more
manifold landscape, the fields and habitations of English-
men, children of one family, one religion, and that my
own, the same language and manners — by every hill, by
every river some sweet name familiar to my ears, or, if
first heard, remembered as soon as heard ! But here, on
this side of me, Spaniards, a degraded race that dishonour
Christianity ; on the other. Moors of many nations,
wretches that dishonour human nature ! If any one were
near me and could tell me, ' that moimtain yonder is
called so and so, and at its foot runs such and such a
river,' oh, with how blank an ear should I listen to
sounds which probably my tongue could not repeat, and
which I should be sure to forget, and take no pleasure in
remembering ! And the Rock itself, on which I stand
(nearly the same in length as our Carrock, but not so high,
nor one tenth as wide), what a complex Thing ! At its
feet mighty ramparts establishing themselves in the sea
with their huge artillery, hollow trunks of iron where

1804] FROM COLERIDGE'S DIARY 479

Death and Thunder sleep ; the gardens in deep moats
between lofty and massive walls ; a town of all nations
and all languages — close below me, on my left, fields and
gardens and neat small mansions — poplars, cypresses, and
willow-leaved aspens, with fences of prickly aloe — strange
plant that does not seem to be alive, but to have been so,
a thing fantastically carved in wood, and coloured — some
hieroglyphic or temple ornament of undiscovered mean-
ing. On my right and immediately with and around me
white stone above stone, an irregular heap of marble
rocks, with flowers growing out of the holes and fissures,
and palmettoes everywhere . . . beyond these an old
Moorish tower, and then galleries and halls cut out by
human labour out of the dense hard rock, with enormous
cannon the apertures for which no eye could distinguish,
from the sea or the land below them, from the nesting-
holes of seafowl. On the north side, aside these, one
absolutely perpendicular precipice, the absolute length of
the Rock, at its highest a precipice of 1,450 feet — the
whole eastern side an unmanageable mass of stones and
weeds, save one place where a perpendicular precipice of
stone slants suddenly off in a swelling slope of sand like
the Screes on Wastwater. The other side of this rock
5,000 men in arms, and no less than 10,000 inhabitants —
in this [side] sixty or seventy apes ! What a multitude, an
almost discordant complexity of associations ! The Pillars
of Hercules, Calpe, and Abyla, the realms of Masinissa,
Jugurtha, and Syphax : Spain, Gibraltar : the Dey of
Algiers, dusky Moor and black African, and others.
Quiet it is to the eye, and to the heart, which in it will
entrance itseK in the present vision, and know nothing,
feel nothing, but the abiding things of Nature, great, calm,
majestic, and one ! From the road I climbed up among
the rocks, crushing the tansy, the strong smell of which
the open air reconciled to me. I reached the ' striding
edge,' where, as I sate, I fell into the above musing,"

480 A LONG ABSENCE [June

CLin. TO HIS WIFE.

[Malta,] June, 1804.
[My dear Sara,] — [I wrote] to Southey from Gi-
braltar, directing you to open the letter in case Southey
should he in town. You received it, I trust, and learnt
from it that I had been pretty well, and that we had had a
famous quick passage. At Gibraltar we stayed five days,
and so lost our fair wind, and [during our] after- voyage to
Malta [there] was [a] storm, that carried away our main
yard, etc., long dead calms, every rope of the whole ship re-
flected in the bright, soft blue sea, and light winds, often
varying every quarter of an hour, and more often against
us than for us. We were the best sailing vessel in the
whole convoy ; but every day we had to lie by and wait
for the laggards. This is very disheartening ; likewise
the frequent danger in light winds or calms, or in foggy
weather of running foul of each other is another heavy
inconvenience of convoy, and, in case of a deep calm in a
narrow sea, as in the Gut of Gibraltar and in the Archi-
pelago, etc., where calms are most conmion, a privateering
or piratical row-boat might board you and make slaves of
you under the very nose of the man-of-war, which would
lie a lifeless hulk on the smooth water. For these row-
boats, mounting from one to four or five gims, would in-
stantly sink a man-of-war's boat, and one of them, last
war, had very nearly made a British frigate stnke. I
mention these facts because it is a common notion that
going under convoy you are '' as snug as a bug in a rug."
If I had gone witliout convoy on board the Speedwell, we
should have reached Malta in twenty days from the
day I left Portsmouth, but, however, we were congratu-
lated on haviug had a veri/ good passage for the time of
the year, having been only forty days including our stay
at Gibraltar ; and if there be inconvenience in a convoy,
I have reason to know and to be grateful for its advantages.

1804] TO HIS WIFE 481

The whole of the voyage from Gibraltar to Malta, except-
ing the four or five last days, I was wretchedly unwell. . . .
The harbour at Valetta is narrow as the neck of a bottle
in the entrance ; but instantly opens out into a lake with
tongues of land, capes, one little island, etc., etc., where
the whole navy of England might lie as in a dock in the
worst of weather. All around its banks, in the form of
an amphitheatre, rise the magnificent houses of Valetta,
and its two over-the-water towns, Burmola and Flavia
(which are to Valetta what the Borough is to London).
The houses are all lofty and built of fine white freestone,
something like Bath, only still whiter and newer looking,
yet the windows, from the prodigious thickness of the
walls, being all out of sight, the whole appeared to me as
Carthage to ^Eneas, a proud city, well nigh but not quite
finished. I walked up a long street of good breadth, all a
flight of stairs (no place for beast or carriage, each broad
stair composed of a cement-sand of terra pozzolana, hard
and smooth as the hardest pavement of smooth rock by
the seaside and very like it). I soon found out Dr. Stod-
dart's house, which seemed a large pile of building. He
was not at home, but I stayed for him, and in about two
hours he came, and received me with an explosion of sur-
prise and welcome — more fun than affection in the man-
ner, but just as I wished it. . . . Yesterday and to-day I
have been pretty well. In a hot climate, now that the
glass is high as 80 in the shade, the healthiest persons are
liable to fever on the least disagreement of food with the
first passages, and my general health is, I would fain be-
lieve, better on the whole. ... I will try the most scrupu-
lous regimen of diet and exercise ; and I rejoice to find
that the heat, great as it is, does not at all annoy me. In
about a fortnight I shall probably take a trip into Sicily,
and spend the next two or three months in some cooler
and less dreary place, and return in September. For
eight months in the year the climate of Malta is delight-

^^2 A LONG ABSENCE [Juke

ful, but a drearier place eye never saw. No stream in tlie
whole island, only one place of springs, which are conveyed
by aqueducts and supply the island with about one third
of its water ; the other two thirds they depend for upon
the rain. And the reservoirs under the houses, walls, etc.,
to preserve the rain are stupendous ! The tops of all the
houses are flat, and covered with that smooth, hard com-
position, and on these and everywhere where rain can fall
are channels and pipes to conduct it to the reservoirs.
Malta is about twenty miles by twelve — a mere rock of
freestone. In digging out this they find large quantities
of vegetable soil. They separate it, and with the stones
they build their houses and garden and field walls, all of
an enormous thickness. The fields are seldom so much as
half an acre □ one above another in that form, so that
everything grows as in huge garden pots. The whole
island looks like one monstrous fortification. Nothing
gr^een meets your eye — one dreary, grey- white, — and all
the country towns from the retirement and invisibility of
the windows look like towns burnt out and desolate. Yet
the fertility is marvellous. You almost see things grow,
and the population is, I suppose, unexampled. The town
of Valetta itself contains about one hundred and ten
streets, all at right angles to each other, each having from
twelve to fifty houses ; but many of them very steep — a
few staired all across, and almost all, in some part or
other, if not the whole, having the footway on each side
so staired. Tlie houses lofty, all looking new. The good
houses are built with a court in the centre, and the
rooms large and lofty, from sixteen to twenty feet high,
and walls enormously thick, all necessary for coolness.
The fortifications of Valetta are endless. When I first
walked about them, I was struck all of a heap with their
strangeness, and when I came to understand a little of
their purpose, I was overwhelmed with wonder. Such
vast masses — bulky mountain-breasted heights ; gardens

1804

TO HIS WIFE

483

with pomegranate trees — tlie prickly pears in the fosses,
and the caper (the most beautiful of flowers) growing
profusely in the interstices of the high walls and on the
battlements. The Maltese are a dark, light-limbed people.
Of the women five tenths are ugly ; of the remainder, four
fifths would be ordinary but that they look so quaint^ and
one tenth, perhaps, may be called quaint-pretty. The pret-
tiest resemble pretty Jewesses in England. They are the
noisiest race^ under heaven, and Yaletta the noisiest

^ A note dated ' ' Treasury, July
20th, 1805," gives vent to his feelings
on this point. "Saturday morning
\ past nine o'clock, and soon I shall
have to brace up my hearing in toto,
(for I hear in my brain — I hear, that
is, I have an immediate and peculiar
feeling instantly co-adunated vs^ith
the sense of external sound = (ex-
actly) to that which is experienced
when one makes a wry face, and
putting one's right hand palm- wise
to the right ear, and the left palm
pressing hard on the forehead, one
says to a bawler, ' For mercy's sake,
man ! don't split the drum of one's
ear ' — sensations analogous to this
of various degrees of pain, even
to a strange sort of uneasy pleasure.
I am obnoxious to pure sound and
therefore was saying — [N. B.
Tho' I ramble, I always come back
to sense — the sense alive, tho'
sometimes a limb of syntax broken]
— was saying that I hear in my
brain, and still more hear in my
stomach). For this ubiquity, almost
(for I might safely add my toes —
one or two, at least — and my knees)
for this ubiquity of the Tympanum
auditorium I am now to wind up my
courage, for in a few seconds that
accursed Reveille, the horrible crash
and persevering malignant torture

of the Pare-de-Drum, will attack
me, like a party of yelling, drunken
North American Indians attacking
a crazy fort with a tired garrison,
out of an ambush. The noisiness
of the Maltese everybody must no-
tice ; but I have observed uniformly
among them such utter, impassive-
ness to the action of sounds as that
I am fearful that the verum will
be scarcely verisimile. L have
heard screams of the most frightful
kind, as of children run over by a
cart, and running to the window I
have seen two children in a parlour
opposite to me (naked, except a
kerchief tied round the waist)
screaming in their horrid fiendi-
ness — iorfun! three adults in the
room perfectly unannoyed, and this
suffered to continue for twenty
minutes, or as long as their lungs
enabled them. But it goes thro'
everything, their street -cries, their
priests, their advocates, their very
pigs yell rather than squeak, or both
together, rather, as if they were the
true descendants of some half-dozen
of the swine into which the Devils
went, recovered by the Royal Hu-
mane Society. The dogs all night
long would draw curses on them,
but that the Maltese cats — it sur-
passes description, for he who has

4^4 A LONG ABSENCE [June

place. The sudden shot-up, explosive bellows-cries you
ever heard in London would give you the faintest idea of
it. Even when you pass by a fruit staU the feUow will
put his hand like a speaking trumpet to his mouth and
shoot such a thunderbolt of sound full at you. Then the
endless jangling of those cursed bells, etc. Sir Alexander
Ball and General Valette (the civil and military com-
manders) have been marvellously attentive — Sir A. B.
even friendly and confidential to me.

Poor Mrs. Stoddart was brought to bed of a little girl
on the 24th of May, and it died on Tuesday, June 5th.
On the night of its birth, poor little lamb ! I had such a
lively vision of my little Sara, that it brought on a sort
of hysterical fit on me. O merciful God I how I tremble
at the thought of letters from England. I should be
most miserable tcithout them, and yet I shall receive
them as a sentence of death ! So terribly has fear got
the upper hand in my habitual feehngs, from my long
destitution of hope and joy.

Hartley, Derwent, my sweet children I a father's bless-
ing on you ! With tears and clasped hands I bless you.
Oh, I must write no more of this. I have been haunted
by the thought that I have lost a box of books containing
Shakespeare (Stockdale's), the four or five first volumes
of the " British Poets," Young's " Syllabus "(a red paper
book), Condillac's "Logic," "Thornton on Public Credit,"
etc. Be sure you inform me whether or no I did take
these books from Keswick. I will write to Southey by
the next op]>ortunity. You i-ecollect that I went away
without knowing the result of Edith's confinement ; not
a day in which I do not think of it.

only heard caterwauling on English screams uttered hy imps while they

roofs can have no idea of a cat- are drag-g-ing each other into hotter

serenade in Malta. In England it and still hotter pools of hrimstone

has often a close and painful resem- and fire. It ia the discord of Tor-

blance to the distressful cries of ment and of Rage and of Hate, of

young children, but in Malta it is paroxysms of Revenge, and every

identical with the wide range of note grumbles away into Despair."

1804] TO DANIEL STUART 485

My love to dear Southey, and remember me to Mr.
Jackson, and Mrs. Wilson with the kindest words, and to
Mary Stamper. My kind remembrances to Mr. and Mrs.
Wilkinson, and to the Calverts. How is your sister Mary
in her spirits? My wishes and prayers attend her. I
am anxious to hear about poor George and shall write
about him to Portsmouth in the course of a week, for by
that time a convoy will be going to England as we expect.
I hope that in the course of three weeks or a month I
may be able to give a more promising account of my
health. As it is, I have reason to be satisfied. The ef-
fect of years cannot be done away in a few weeks. I am
tranquil and resigned, and, even if I should not bring
back health, I shall at least bring back experience, and
suffer with patience and in silence. Again and again
God bless you, my dear Sara ! Let me know everything
of your health, etc., etc. Oh, the letters are on the sea
for me, and what tidings may they not bring to me !

S. T. COLEEIDGE.
Single sheet. Per Germania a Londra. An, 1804.

CLIV. TO DANIEL STUAET.

Syracuse,! October 22, 1804.
My deak Stuaet, — I have written you a long letter
this morning by way of Messina, and from other causes

■"• The first Sicilian tour extended The notes which he took of his
from the middle of August to the visit to Etna are fragmentary and
7th of November, 1804. Two or imperfect, but the description of
three days, August 19-21, were Syracuse and its surroundings occu-
spent in the neighbourhood of Etna, pies many pages of his note-book.
He slept at Nicolosi and visited the Under the heading, " Timoleon's,
Hospice of St. Nicola dell' Arena. Oct. 18, 1804, Wednesday, noon,"
It is unlikely that he reached the he writes : " The Gaza and Tree at
actual summit, but two ascents were Tremiglia. Rocks with cactus, pen-
made, probably to the limit of the dulous branches, seed-pods black at
wooded region. A few days later, the same time with the orange-yek
August 24, he reached Syracuse, low flower, and little daisy-like tufts
where he was hospitably entertained of silky hair. . . . Timoleon's villa,
by H. M. Consul G. F. Lecky. supposed to be in the field above the

486

A LONG ABSENCE

[Feb.

am so done up and brain weary that I must put you to
the expense of this as almost a blank, except that you will
be pleased to observe my attention to business in having
written two letters of advice, as well as transmitted first
and second of exchange for X50 which I have drawn upon
you, payable to order of Dr. Stoddart at usance. I shall
want no more for my return. I shall stay a month at
Messina, and in that time visit Naples. Supposing the
letter of this morning to miss, I ought to repeat to you
that I leave the publication of the Pacquet,i which is
waiting for convoy at Malta for you, to your own opinion.

present house, from ■which you as-
cend to fifty stairs. Grand view of
the harbour and sea, over that
tongue of land which forms the
anti-Ortygian embracing arm of the
harbour, the point of Plemmyrium
where Alcibiades and Nicias landed.
I left the aqueduct and walked
ascendingly to some ruined cottages,
beside a delve, with straight lime-
stone walls of rock, on which there
played the shadows of the fig-tree
and the olive. I was on part of
Epipolse, and a glorious view in-
deed ! Before me a neck of stony
common and fields — Ortygia, the
open sea and the ships, and the circu-
lar harbour which it embraces, and
the sea over that again. To my right
that large extent of plain, green,
rich, finely wooded ; the fields so
divided and enclosed that you, .as it
were, knew at the first view that they
are all hedged and enclosed, and yet
no hedges nor enclosings obtrude
themselves — an eff'ect of the vast
number of trees of the same sort.
On my left, stony fields, two har-
bours, Magnisi and its sand isle, and
Augusta, and Etna, whose smoke
mingles with the clouds even as they

rise from the crater. . . . StiU as I
walk the lizard gliding darts along
the road, and immerges himself
under a stone, and the grasshopper
leaps and tumbles awkwardly be-
fore me."

It must have been in anticipation
of this visit to Sicily, or after some
communication with Coleridge, that
AVordsworth, after alluding to his
friend's abode, —

" Where Etna orer hill and valley casts
His shadow stretching towards Syracuse,
The city of Timoleon,"

gives utterance to that xmusual out-
burst of feeling : —

" Oh ! >vrap him in your shades, ye giant

woods,
On Etna's side ; and thou, O flowery field
Of Enua ! is there not some nook of thine,
From the first play-time of the infant world
Kept sacred to restorative delight,
Wlieu from afar invoked by anxious love ? "

Wordsworth's Poetical Works, 1889,
" The Prelude," Book XI. p. 319.

^ A short treatise entitled Obser-
vations on Egypt, which is extant
in MS., may have been among the
papers sent to Stuart with a view
to publication.

1805] TO ROBERT SOUTHEY 487

If the information appear new or valuable to you, and
the letters themselves entertaining, etc., publish them ;
only do not sell the copyright of more than the right of
two editions to the bookseller. He will not give more, or
much more for the copyright of the whole.

May God bless you ! I am, and shall be as long as I
exist, your truly grateful and affectionate friend,

S. T. COLEKIDGE.

CLV. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

Sat. morning, 4 o'clock. Treasury, Malta.
February 2, 1805.

Dear Southey, — A Privateer is to leave this Port
to-day at noon for Gibraltar, and, it chancing that an offi-
cer of rank takes his passage in her, Sir A. Ball trusts
his dispatches with due precaution to this unusual mode
of conveyance, and I must enclose a letter to you in the
government parcel. I pray that the lead attached to it
will not be ominous of its tardy voyage, much less of its
making a diving tour whither the spirit of Shakespeare
went, under the name of the Dreaming Clarence.^ Cer-
tain it is that I awoke about some half hour ago from so
vivid a dream that the work of sleep had completely de-
stroyed all sleepiness. I got up, went to my office-room,
rekindled the wood-fire for the purpose of writing to you,
having been so employed from morn till eve in writing
public letters, some as long as memorials, from the hour
that this opportimity was first announced to me, that for
once in my life, at least, I can with strict truth affirm that
I have had no time to write to you, if by time be under-
stood the moments of life in which our powers are alive.
I am well — at least, till within the last fortnight I was
perfectly so, till the news of the sale of my blessed house
played " the foe intestine " with me. But of that here-
after.

^ Shakespeare, Richard III., Act I. Scene 4.

488 A LONG ABSENCE [Feb.

My dear Southey ! i the longer I live, and tlie more I
see, know, and think, the more deeply do I seem to know
and feel your goodness ; and why, at this distance, may I
not allow myself to utter forth my whole thought by add-
ing your greatness ? " Thy kingdom come " will have
been a petition already granted, when in the minds and
hearts of all men both words mean the same ; or (to shake
off a state of feeling deeper than may be serviceable to
me) when gulielmosartorially speaking (i. e. William
"Taylorice") the latter word shall have become an incur-
able synonym, a lumberly duplicate, thrown into the ken-
nel of the Lethe-lapping Chronos Anubioeides,^ as a car-
riony, bare-ribbed tautology. Oh me I it will not do ! You,
my children, the Wordsworths, are at Keswick and Gras-
mere, and I am at Malta, and it is a silly hyj^ocrisy to
pretend to joke when I am heavy at heart. By the acci-
dent of the sale of a dead Colonel's effects, who arrived
in this healing climate too late to be healed, I procured
the perusal of the second volume of the "Annual Re^dew."
I was suddenly and strangely affected by the marked at-
tention which you had paid to my few hints, by the inser-
tion of my joke on Booker ; but more, far more than all,
by the affection for me which peeped forth in that " Wil-
liam Brown of Ottery." I knew you stopped before and
after you had written the words. But I am to speak of
your reviews in general. I am confident, for I have care-
fully reperused almost the whole volume, and what I knew
or detected to be yours I have read over and over again,

^ IIo had, perhaps, something' they may be excused, and when they

more than a suspicion that Sontliey are not, there is no excuse for them."

disliked these protestations. In the Life and Correspondence, ii. 266.

letter of friendly remonstrance (Feb- - Cynocephalus, Dog - visaged.

ruary, 1804), which Southey wrote Compare Milton's "Hymn on the

to him after the affair with Godwin, Nativity : " —

he admits that he may be "too in- <,^, ,

. . ,, , „i ^ . The brutish gods of Nile as fast,

tolerant of these phrases, but, m- Ms and Orus and the dog Anubis haste.i'
deed, he adds, "when they are true,

1805] TO ROBERT SOUTHEY 489

with as much care and as little warping of partiality as if
it had been a manuscript of my own going to the press —
I can say confidently that in my best judgment they are
models of good sense and correct style ; of high and hon-
est feeling intermingled with a sort of wit which (I now
translate as truly, though not as verbally, as I can, the
sense of an observation which a literary Venetian, who
resides here as the editor of a political journal, made to
me after having read your reviews of Clarke's " Mari-
time Discoveries ") unites that happy turn of words, which
is the essence of French wit, with those comic picture-
making combinations of fancy that characterises the old
wit of old England. If I can find time to copy off what
in the hurry of the moment I wrote on loose papers that
cannot be made up into a letter without subjecting you
to an expense wholly disproportionate to their value, I
shall prove to you that I have been watchful in marking
what appeared to me false, or hetter-not, or hetter-other-
wise, parts, no less than what I felt to be excellent. It
is enough to say at present, that seldom in my course of
reading have I been more deeply impressed than by the
sense of the diffused good they were likely to effect. At
the same time I could not help feeling to how many false
and pernicious principles, both in taste and in politics,
they were likely, by their excellence, to give a non-nat-
ural circulation. W. Taylor grows worse and worse.
As to his political dogmata concerning Egypt, etc., God
forgive him ! He knows not what he does ! But as to
his spawn about Milton and Tasso — nay. Heaven forbid
it should be spawn, it is pure toad-spit, not as toad-spit
is, but as it is vulgarly believed to be. (See, too, his Ar-
ticle in the " Critical Review.''^ Now for your feelings
respecting " Madoc." I regard them as all nerve and stom-
ach-work, you having too recently quitted the business.
Genius, too, has its intoxication, which, however divine,
leaves its headaches and its nauseas. Of the very best

490 A LONG ABSENCE [Feb.

of the few bad, good, and indifferent things, I have had
the same sensations. Concerning the immediate chryso-
poetic powers of " Madoc " I can only fear somewhat and
hope somewhat. Midas and Apollo are as little cronies
as Marsyas and Apollo. But of its great and lasting
effects on your fame, if I doubted, I should then doubt
all things in which I had hitherto had firm faith. Nei-
ther am I without cheerful belief respecting its ultimate
effects on your worldly fortune. O dear Southey ! when
I see this booby with his ten pound a day as Mr. Com-
missary X., and that thorough-rogue two doors off him
with his fifteen pound a day as Mr. General Paymaster
Y. Z., it stirs up a little bile from the liver and gives my
poor stomach a pinch, when I hear you talk of having to
look forward to an £100 or £150. But cheerily I what
do we complain of ? would we be either of these men ?
Oh, had I domestic happiness, and an assurance only of
the health I now possess continuing to me in England,
what a blessed creature should I be, though I found it
necessary to feed me and mine on roast potatoes for two
days in each week in order to make ends meet, and to
awake my beloved with a kiss on the fii'st of every Janu-
ary. " Well, my best darling ! we owe nobody a farthing !
and I have you, my children, two or three friendS, and a
thousand books ! " I have written very lately to Mrs.
Coleridge. If my letter reaches her, as I have quoted
in it a part of yours of Oct. 19th, she ^^^U wonder that
I took no notice of the house and tlie BcUygerent. From
Mrs. C. I have received no letter by the last convoy. In
truth I am and have reason to be ashamed to own to
what a diseased excess my sensibility has worsened into.
I was so agitated by the receipt of letters, that I did
not bring myself to open them for two or three days, half-
dreaming that from there being no letter from Mrs. C.
some one of the children had died, or that she herself
had been ill, or — for so help me God ! most ill-starred

1805] TO ROBERT SOUTHEY 491

as our marriage has been, there is perhaps nothing that
would so frightfully affect me as any change respecting
her health or life ; and, when I had read about a third of
your letter, I walked up and down and then out, and
much business intervening, I wrote to her before I had
read the remainder, or my other letters. I grieve ex-
ceedingly at the event, and my having foreseen it does
not diminish the shock. My dear study ! and that house
in which such persons have been ! where my Hartley has
made his first love-commune with Nature, to belong to
White. Oh, how could Mr. Jackson have the heart to do
it ! As to the climate, I am fully convinced that to an
invalid all parts of England are so much alike, that no
disadvantages on that score can overbalance any marked
advantages from other causes. Mr. J. well knows that
but for my absolute confidence in him I should have taken
the house for a long lease — but, poor man ! I am rather
to soothe than to reproach him. When will he ever again
have loving friends and housemates like to us ? And dear
good Mrs. Wilson ! Surely Mrs. Coleridge must have
written to me, though no letter has arrived. Now for my-
self. I am most anxiously expecting the arrival of Mr,
Chapman from Smyrna, who is (by the last ministry if
that should hold valid) appointed successor to Mr. Macau-
lay, as Public Secretary of Malta, the second in rank to
the Governor. Mr. M., an old man of eighty, died on the
18th of last month, calm as a sleeping baby, in a tremen-
dous thunder-and-lightning storm. In the interim, I am
and some fifty times a day subscribe myself, Segretario
Puhhlico delV Isole di Malta^ Gozo, e delle loro dipen-
denze. I live in a perfect palace and have all my meals
with the Governor ; but my profits will be much less than
if I had employed my time and efforts in my own literary
pursuits. However, I gain new insights and if (as I
doubt not I shall) I return having expended nothing,
having paid all my prior debts as well as interim expense

492 A LONG ABSENCE [April

(of the which debts I consider the XlOO borrowed by me
from Sotheby on the firm of W. Wordsworth, the heavi-
est), with health, and some additional knowledge both m
things and languages, I surely shall not have lost a year.
My intention is, assuredly, to leave this place at the far-
thest in the latter end of this month, whether by the con-
voy, or over-land by Trieste, Vienna, Berlin, Embden, and
Denmark, but I must be guided by circumstances. At
all events, it will be well if a letter should be left for me
at the " Courier " office in London, by the first of May,
informing me of all which it is necessary for me to know.
But of one thing I am most anxious, namely, that my as-
surance money should be paid. I pray you, look to that.
You will have heard long before tliis letter reaches you
that the French fleet have escaped from Toulon. I have
no heart for politics, else I coidd tell you how for the last
nine months I have been working in memorials concern-
ing Egypt, Sicily, and the coast of Africa. Could France
ever possess these, she would be, in a far grander sense
than the Roman, an Empire of the "World. And what
would remain to England? England; and that which
our miserable diplomatists affect now to despise, now to
consider as a misfortune, our language and institutions
in America. France is blest by natiu-e, for in possess-
ing Africa she would have a magnificent outlet for her
population as near her o^aii coasts as Ireland to ours;
an America that must forever be an integral part of the
mother-country. Egypt is eager for France — only eager,
far more eager for G. Britain. The imiversal cry there
(I have seen translations of twenty, at least, mercan-
tile letters in the Court of Admiralty here (in which I
have made a speech with a wig and gown, a true Jack
of all Trades), all stating that the vox pojmli} is Eng-
lish, English, if we can ! but Hats at all events !
(Hats means Europeans in contradistinction to Tur-
bans.) God bless you, Southey I I wish earnestly to

1805] TO DANIEL STUART 493

kiss your child. And all whom you love, I love, as far
as I can, for your sake.

For England. Per Inghilterra.
Robert Southey, Esqre, Greta Hall, Keswick, Cumberland.

CLVI. TO DANIEL STUAET.

Favoured by Captain Maxwell of the Artillery. —
N. B., an amiable mild man, who is prepared to give you
any information.

Malta, April 20, 1805.

Dear Stuart, — The above is a duplicate, or rather
a sex or sep^em-plicate of an order sent off within three
weeks after my draft on you had been given by me ; and
very anxious I have been, knowing that all or almost all
of my letters have failed. It seems like a judgment on
me. Formerly, when I had the sure means of conveying
letters, I neglected my duty through indolence or procras-
tination. For the last year, when, having all my heart,
all my hope in England, I found no other gratification
than that of writing to Wordsworth and his family, his
wife, sister, and wife's sister ; to Southey, to you, to T.
Wedgwood, Sir. G. Beaumont, etc. Indeed, I have been
supererogatory in some instances — but an evil destiny
has dogged them — one large and (forgive my vanity !)
rather important set of letters to you on Sicily and Egypt
were destroyed at Gibraltar among the papers of a most
excellent man, Major Adye, to whom I had entrusted them
on his departure from Sicily, and who died of the Plague
FOUR DAYS after his arrival at Gibraltar. But still was I
afflicted (shame on me ! even to violent weeping) when
all my many, many letters were thrown overboard from
the Arrow, the Acheron, and a merchant vessel, to all
which I had entrusted them ; the last through my own
over care. For I delivered them to the captain with great
pomp of seriousness, in my official character as Public

494

A LONG ABSENCE

[April

Secretary of the Islands.i He took them, and consider-
ing them as public papers, on being close chased and
expecting to be boarded, threw them overboard ; and he,
however, escaped, steering for Africa, and returned to
Malta. But regrets are idle things.

In my letter, which will accompany this, I have detailed
my health and all that relates to me. In case, however,
that letter should not arrive, I will simply say, that tiU
within the last two months or ten weeks my health had
improved to the utmost of my hopes, though not without
some intrusions of sickness ; but latterly the loss of my
letters to England, the almost entire non-arrival of letters
from England, not a single odc from Mrs. Coleridge or
Southey or you; and only one from the "VVordsworths,
and that dated September, 1804! my consequent heart-
saddening anxieties, and still, still more, the depths which
Captain John Wordsworth's death ^ sunk into my heart,

^ A printed slip, cut off from some
public document, has been preserved
in one of Coleridge's note-books.
It runs thus: "Segreteria del Go-
vemo li 29 Gennajo 1805. Samuel
T. Coleridge Seg. Pub. del. Commis.
Regio. G. N. Zammit Pro segre-
tario." His actual period of office
extended from January 18 to Sep-
tember G, 180.5.

^ John AVordsworth, the poet's
younger brother, the original of Leon-
ard in " The Brotliers," .and of " The
Happy Warrior,'' was drowned off
the Bill of Portland, February 5,
IBOr). In a K'ttor to Sir G. Beau-
mont, dated February 11, 1805,
Wordswortli writes: "I can say
nothing!;- liiglier of my ever-dear
brother than that he was worthy
of his sister, who is now weeping
beside me, and of the friendship of
Coleridge ; meek, affectionate, si-
lently enthusiastic, loving all quiet

things, and a poet in everything but
words."' " We have had no tidings
of Coleridge. I tremble for the
moment when he is to hear of my
brother's death ; it will distress him
to the heart, and Ms poor body can-
not bear sorrow. He loved my
brother, and he knows how we at
Grasmere loved him." The report
of the wreck of the Earl of Aber-
gavenny and of the loss of her cap-
tain did not reach Malta till the 31st
of March. It was a Sunday, and
Coleridge, who had been sent for to
the Palace, first heard the news from
Lady Ball. His emotion at the time,
and, perhaps, a petition to be ex-
cused from his duties brought from
her the next day " a kindly letter of
apology." "Your strong feelings,"
she writes, ' ' are too great for your
health. I hope that you will soon re-
cover your spirits." But Coleridge
took the trouble to heart. It was

1805] TO DANIEL STUART 495

and which I heard abruptly, and in the very painfuUest
way possible in a public company — all these joined to
my disappointment in my expectation of returning to
England by this convoy, and the quantity and variety of
my public occupations from eight o'clock in the morning
to five in the afternoon, having besides the most anxious
duty of writing public letters and memorials which be-
longs to my talents rather than to my pro-tempore office ;
these and some other causes that I cannot mention rela-
tive to my affairs in England have produced a sad change
indeed on my health; but, however, I hope all will be
well. ... It is my present intention to return home over-
land by Naples, Ancona, Trieste, etc., on or about the
second of next month.

The gentleman who will deliver this to you is Captain
Maxwell of the Royal Artillery, a well-informed and
very amiable countryman of yours. He will give you any
information you wish concerning Malta. An intelligent
friend of his, an officer of sense and science, has entrusted
to him an essay on Lampedusa,^ which I have advised him
to publish in a newspaper, leaving it to the Editor to
divide it. It may, perhaps, need a little softening^ but it
is an accurate and well-reasoned memorial. He only

the first death in the inner circle of one of the rejoicers . . . and all

his friends; it meant a heavy sorrow these were but decoys of death!

to those whom he best loved, and Well, but a nobler feeling than these

it seemed to confirm the haunting vain regrets would become the friend

presentiment that death would once of the man whose last words were,

more visit his family during his ' I have done my duty ! let her go ! '

absence from home. Ten days later Let us do our duty; all else is a

he writes (in a note-book) : "Odear dream — life and death alike a

John Wordsworth! What joy at dream! This short sentence would

Grasmere that you were made Cap- comprise, I believe, the sum of all

tarn of the Abergavenny! now it was profound phHosophy, of ethics and

next to certam that you would in a metaphysics, and conjointly from

tew years settle m your native hills, Plato to Fichte. S T C "

and be verily one of the concern. Then l An island midway between

came your share in the brilliant ac- Malta and Tunis, ceded by Naples to

tion at Lmois. I was at Grasmere Don Fernandez in 1802.
in spirit only! but in spirit I was

496 A LONG ABSENCE [July

wishes to give it publicity, and to liave not only his name
concealed, but every circumstance that could lead to a
suspicion. If after reading it you approve of it, you
would greatly oblige him by giving it a place in the
" Courier." He is a sensible, independent man. For all
else to my other letter. — I am, dear Stuart, with faithful
recollections, your much obliged and truly grateful friend
and servant,

S. T. Coleridge.

April 20, 1805.

CLVII. TO HIS WIFE.

Malta, July 21, 1805.
Dear Sara, — The Niger is ordered off for Gibraltar
at a moment's warning, and the HaU is crowded with offi-
cers and merchants whose oaths I am to take, and ac-
compts to sign. I will not, however, suffer it to go without
a line, and including a draft for XllO — another opportu-
nity will offer in a week or ten days, and I will enclose a
duplicate in a letter at large. Now for the most important
articles. My health had greatly improved ; but latterly
it has been very, very bad, in great measure owing to de-
jection of spirits, my letters having failed, the greater part
of those to me, and almost all mine homeward. . . . My
letters and the duplicates of them, written with so much
care and minuteness to Sir George Beaumont — those to
Wedgwood, to the Wordsworths, to Southey, Major
Adye's sudden death, and then the loss of the two frigates,
the capture of a merchant's privateer, all have seemed to
spite. No one not absent on a dreary island, so many
leagues of sea from England, can conceive the effect of
these accidents on the spirit and inmost soul. So help me
Heaven I they have nearly broken my heart. And, added
to this, I have been hoping and expecting to get away for
England for five months past, and Mr. Chapman not
arriving. Sir Alexander's importunities have always over-
powered me, though my gloom has increased at each dis-

1805] TO HIS WIFE 497

appointment. I am determined, however, to go in less
than a month. My office, as Public Secretary, the next
civil dignitary to the Governor, is a very, very busy one,
and not to involve myself in the responsibility of the
Treasurer I have but half the salary. I oftentimes sub-
scribe my name 150 times a day, S. T, Coleridge, Pub.
Sec. to H. M. Civ. Commissi, or (if in Italian) Seg. Pub.
del Commiss' Regio, and administer half as many oaths —
besides which I have the public memorials to write, and,
worse than all, constant matters of arbitration. Sir A.
Ball is indeed exceedingly kind to me. The officers will
be impatient. I would I could write a more cheerful ac-
count of my health ; all I can say is that I am better than
I have been, and that I was very much better before so
many circumstances of dejection happened. I should
overset myself completely, if I ventured to mention a sin-
gle name. How deeply I love, O God! it is agony at
morning and evening.

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. On being abruptly told by Lady Ball of John
Wordsworth's fate, I attempted to stagger out of the room
(the great saloon of the Palace with fifty people present),
and before I could reach the door fell down on the ground
in a convulsive hysteric fit. I was confined to my room for
a fortnight after; and now I am afraid to open a letter, and
I never dare ask a question of any new-comer. The night
before last I was much affected by the sudden entrance of
poor Reynell (our inmate at Stowey) ; i more of him in
my next. May God Almighty bless you and —

(Signed with seal, E^TH^E.)
For England.

Mes. Colekidge, Keswick, Cumberland.
Postmark, Sept. 8, 1805.

1 Adeseription of the cottage at ter at Thorveston, was published in

Stowey and its inmates, contained in the Illustrated London News, April

a letter written by Mr. Kichard 22, 1893.
Reynell (in August, 1797) to his sis-

498 A LONG ABSENCE [Junk

CLVIII. TO WASHINGTON ALLSTON.

Direct to me at Mr. Degens, Leghorn. God bless

you !

Tuesday, June 17, 1806.1

My dear Allston, — No want of affection has occa-
sioned my silence. Day after day I expected Mr. Wallis.
Benvenuti received me with almost insulting coldness, not
even asking me to sit down ; neither could I, by any en-
quiry, find that he ever returned my call, and even in
answer to a very polite note enquiring for letters, sent a
verbal message, that there was one, and that I might call
for it. However, within the last seven or eight days he
has called and made his amende honourable ; he says he
forgot the name of my inn, and called at two or three in
vain. Whoo ! I did not tell him that within five days I
sent him a note in which the inn was mentioned, and that
he sent me a message in consequence, and yet never
called for ten days afterwards. However, yester-evening
the truth came out. He had been bored by letters of
recommendation, and till he received a letter from Mr.

1 Coleridge left Rome with his and the arrest of aU the English
friend Mr. Russell on Sunday, May took place at six." In a letter to
18, 1806. He had received, so he his brother George, -which he wrote
tells us in the Biographia Literaria, about six mouths after he returned
a secret warning from the Pope to England, he says that he was
that Napoleon, whose animosity had warned to leave Rome, but does not
been roused by articles in the enter into particulars. It is a weU-
Morning Post, had ordered his ar- known fact that Napoleon read the
rest. A similar statement is made leading articles in the Morning Post,
in a footnote to a title-page of a pi-o- and deeply resented their tone and
posed reprint of newspaper articles spirit, but whether Coleridge was
(an anticipation of JEssays on His rightly informed that an order for
Own Times), which w;i3 drawn np in his arrest had come from Paris, or
1817. "My essays," he writes, "in whether he was warned that, if with
the ilfornzn^'Pos/, during the peace of other Englishmen he should bear-
Amiens, brought my life into jeop- rested, his connection with the Morn-
ardy when I was at Rome. An ing Post would come to light, must
order for my arrest came from Paris remain doubtful. Coleridge's Works,
to Rome at twelve at night — by the 1853, iii. 309.
Pope's goodness I was off by one —

1806] TO WASHINGTON ALLSTON 499
looked upon me as a bore — which, however, he

might and ought to have got rid of in a more gentlemanly-
manner. Nothing more was necessary than the day after
my arrival to have sent his card by his servant. But I
forgive him from my heart. It should, however, be a
lesson to Mr. Wallis, to whom, and for whom, he gives
letters of recommendation.

I have been dangerously ill for the last fortnight, and
unwell enough. Heaven knows, previously ; about ten days
ago, on rising from my bed, I had a manifest stroke of
palsy along my right side and right arm. My head felt
like another man's head, so dead was it, that I seemed to
know it only by my left hand, and a strange sense of
numbness. . . .

Enough of it, continual vexations and preyings upon the
spirit — I gave life to my children,^ and they have re-
peatedly given it to me ; for, by the Maker of all things,
but for them I would try my chance. But they pluck
out the wing-feathers from the mind. I have not entirely
recovered the sense of my side or hand, but have recovered
the use. I am harassed by local and partial fevers. This
day, at noon, we set off for Leghorn ; ^ all passage through
the Italian States and Germany is little other than impos-

1 An entry in a note-TDOok, dated Come, come tliou bleak December wind,

June 7, 1806, expresses this at greater And blow the dry leaves from the tree !

length: " O my children ! whether, Flash, like a love-thought thro' me, Death !

J 1 . , n T ^ , , 1 And take a life that wearies me.
and -whicn or you are dead, whether

any and which among you are alive 2 ^ jg difficult to trace his move-

I know not, and were a letter to ments during his last week in Italy.

arrive this moment from Keswick He reached Leghorn on Saturday,

I fear that I should be unable to June 7. Thence he made his way

open it, so deep and black is my to Florence and returned to Pisa on

despair. my children! My chil- a Thursday, probably Thursday,

dren ! I gave you life once, uncon- June 19, the date of this letter. On

scions of the life I was giving, and Sunday, June 22, he was stiU at

you as unconsciously have given life Pisa, but, I take it, on the eve of

to me." A fortnight later, he ends setting sail for England. Fifty-five

a similar outburst of despair with a days later, August 17, he leaped on

cry for deliverance : — shore at Stangate Creek. His ac-

500 A LONG ABSENCE [Aug.

sible for an Englisliman, and Heaven knows whether Leg-
horn may not be blockaded. However, we go thither,
and shall go to England in an American ship. Inform
Mr. Wallis of this, and urge him to make his way —
assure him of my anxious thoughts and fervent wishes

respecting him and of my love for T , and his family.

Tell Mr. Migliorus [?] that I should have written him
long ago but for my ill health ; and will not fail to do it
on my arrival at Pisa — from thence, too, I will write
a letter to you, for this I do not consider as a letter.
Nothing can surpass Mr. Russell's ^ kindness and tender-
heartedness to me, and his understanding is far superior
to what it appears on first acquaintance. I will write Hke-
wise to Mr. Wallis and conjure him not to leave Ameha.
I have heard in Leghorn a sad, sad character of one of
those whom you called acquaintance, but who call you
their dear friend.

My dear Allston, somewhat from increasing age, but
more from calamity and intense fra[ternal affections] , my
heart is not open to more than kind, good wishes in gen-
eral. To you, and to you alone, since I left England, I
have felt more, and had I not known the "Wordsworths,
should have esteemed and loved jonfrst and most ; and,
as it is, next to them I love and honour you. Heaven

count of Pisa is highly characteris- for many years after in a Lectrtre on

tic. " Of the hanging Tower," he the History of Philosophy, delivered

writes, " the Duomo, the Cemetery, January 19, 1819, he descrihes mi-

the Baptistery, I shall say nothing, nutely and vividly the '' Triumph

except that being all together they of Death," the great fresco in the

form a wild mass, especially by Campo Santo at Pisa, which was

moonlight, when the hanging Tower formerly assigned to Orcagna, hut is

has something of a supernatural now, I believe, attributed to Am-

look ; but what interested me with brogio and Pietro Lorenzetti. MS.

a deeper interest were the two hos- Journal ; MS. Beport of Lecture.

pitals, one for men, one for women," ^ Mr. Russell was an artist, an

etc., and these he proceeds to de- Exeter man, whom Coleridge met in

scribe. Nevertheless he must have Rome. They were fellow-travellers

paid more attention to the treasures in Italy, and returned together to

of Pisan art than his note implies, England.

1806] TO DANIEL STUART 501

knows, a part of such a wreck as my kead and keart is
scarcely worth your acceptance.

S. T. Coleridge.

CLIX. TO DANIEL STUAET.

Bell Inn, Friday Street,
Monday morning, August 18, 1806.

My DEAR Sir, -^ I arrived here from Stangate Creek
last night, a little after ten, and have found myself so un-
usually better ever since I leaped on land yester-afternoon,
that I am glad that neither my strength nor spirits enabled
me to write to you on my arrival in Quarantine on the
eleventh. Both the captain and my fellow-passengers were
seriously alarmed for my life ; and indeed such have been
my imremitting sufferings from pain, sleeplessness, loath-
ing of food, and spirits wholly despondent, that no motive
on earth short of an awful duty would ever prevail on me
to take any sea-voyage likely to be longer than three or
four days. I had rather starve in a hovel, and, if life
through disease become worthless, will choose a Roman
death. It is true I was very low before I embarked. . . .
To have been working so hard for eighteen months in a
business I detested ; to have been flattered, and to have
flattered myself that I should, on striking the balance, have
paid all my debts and maintained both myself and family
during my exile out of my savings and earnings, including
my travels through Germany, through which I had to the
very last hoped to have passed, and found myself ! —
but enough ! I cannot charge my conscience with a single
extravagance, nor even my judgment with any other im-
prudences than that of suffering one good and great man
to overpersuade me from month to month to a delay which
was gnawing away my very vitals, and in being duped in
disobedience to my first feelings and previous ideas by
another diplomatic Minister. ... A gentleman offered to
take me without expense to Rome, which I accepted with

^^2 A LONG ABSENCE [Aug,

the full intention of staying only a fortnight, and then re-
turning to Naples to pass the winter. ... I left every-
thing but a good suit of clothes and my shirts, etc., all my
letters of credit, manuscripts, etc. I had not been ten
days in Rome before the French torrent rolled down on
Naples. All return was impossible, and all transmission
of i)apcrs not only insecure, but being English and many
of them political, highly dangerous both to the sender and
sendee. . . . But this is only a fragment of a chapter of
contents, and I am too much agitated to write the details,
but will call on you as soon as my two or three remaining
[giiineas'] shall have put a decent hat upon my head and
shoes upon my feet. I am literally afraid, even to cow-
ardice, to ask for any person or of any person. Includino-
the Quarantine we had fifty-five days of slaipboard, work-
ing up against head-winds, rotting and sweating in cahns,
or running under hard gales with the dead lights secured.
From the captain and my fellow-passenger I received
every possible tenderness, only when I was very ill they
laid their wise heads together, and the latter in a letter to
his father begged him to inform my family that I had
arrived, and he trusted that they would soon see me in
better health and spirits than when I had quitted them ; a
letter which must have alarmed if they saw into it, and
wounded if they did not. I was not informed of it tiU
this morning. God bless you, my dear sir I I have yet
cheerful hojies that Heaven will not suffer me to die de-
graded by any other debts than those which it ever has
been, and ever will be, my joy and pride still to pay and
still to owe ; those of a truly gratefid heart, and to you
among the first of those to whom they are due.

S. T. Coleridge.

CHAPTER VIII

HOME AND NO HOME

1806-1807

CHAPTEE VIII

HOME AND NO HOME

1806-1807

CLX. TO DANIEL STUART.

Monday, (?) September 15, 1806.

My dear Stuart, — I arrived in town safe, but so
tired by tbe next evening, that I went to bed at nine and
slept tiU past twelve on Sunday. I cannot keep off my
mind from the last subject we were talking about ; though
I have brought my notions concerning it to hang so well
on the balance that I have in my own judgment few doubts
as to the relative weight of the arguments persuasive and
dissuasive. But of this " face to face." I sleep at the
" Courier " office, and shall institute and carry on the in-
quiry into the characters of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, and
having carried it to the Treaty of Amiens, or rather to
the recommencement of the War, I propose to give a full
and severe Critique of the " Enquiry into the State of the
Nation," taking it for granted that this work does, on the
whole, contain Mr. Fox's latest political creed ; and this
for the purpose of answering the " Morning Chronicle " (!)
assertions, that Mr. Fox was the greatest and wisest states-
man ; that Mr. Pitt was no statesman. I shall endeavour
to show that both were undeserving of that high charac-
ter ; but that Mr. Pitt was the better ; that the evils which
befell him were undoubtedly produced in great measure
by blunders and wickedness on the Continent which it
was almost impossible to foresee; while the effects of
Mr. Fox's measures must in and of themselves produce
calamity and degradation.

506 HOME AND NO HOME [Sept.

To confess the truth, I am by no means pleased with
Mr. Street's character of Mr. Fox as a speaker and man
of intellect. As a piece of panegyric, it falls woefully
short of the Article in the " Morning Chronicle " in style
and selection of thoughts, and runs at least equally far
beyond the bounds of truth. Persons who write in a
hurry are very liable to contract a sort of snipt, convulsive
style, that moves forward by short repeated pushes, with
iso-chronous asthmatic pants, " He — He — He — He — ,"
or the like, beginning a dozen short sentences, each mak-
ing a period. In this way a man can get rid of all that
happens at any one time to be in his memory, with very
little choice in the arrangement and no expenditure of
logic in the connection. However, it is the matter more
than the manner that displeased me, for fear that what I
shall write for to-morrow's " Courier " may involve a kind
of contradiction. To one outrageous passage I persuaded
him to add a note of amendment, as it was too late to alter
the Article itself. It was impossible for me, seeing him
satisfied with the Article himself, to say more than that he
appeared to me to have exceeded in eulogy. But beyond
doubt in the political position occupied by the " Courier,"
with so little danger of being anticipated by the other
papers in anything which it ought to say, except some
obvious points which being common to aU the papers can
give credit to none, it would have been better to have an-
nounced his death, and simply led the way for an after
disquisition by a sort of shy disclosure with an appearance
of suppression of the spirit with which it could be con-
ducted.

There are letters at the Post Office, Margate, for me.
Be so good as to send them to me, directed to the " Cou-
rier " office. I think of going to Mr. Smith's ^ to-morrow,

1 William Smith, M. P. for Nor- great measure through his advice
■wich, who lived at Parndon House, and interest that Coleridge obtained
near Harlow, in Essex. It was in a his Lectureship at the Royal Insti-

1806] TO HIS WIFE 607

or not at all. Whether Mr. Fox's death ^ will keep Mr.
S. in town, or call him there, I do not know. At all
events I shall return by the time of your arrival.

May God bless you ! I am ever, my dear sir, as your
obliged, so your affectionately grateful friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

CLXI. TO HIS WIFE.

September 16, [1806.]

My dear Saea, — I had determined on my arrival in
town to write to you at full, the moment I could settle my
affairs and speak decisively of myself. Unfortunately Mr.
Stuart was at Margate, and what with my journey to and
fro, day has passed on after day. Heaven knows, counted
by me in sickness of heart. I am now obliged to return to
Parndon to Mr. W. Smith's, at whose house Mr. and Mrs.
Clarkson are, and where I spent three or four days a fort-
night ago. The reason at present is that Lord Howick
has sent a very polite message to me through Mr. Smith,
expressing his desire to make my acquaintance. To this
I have many objections which I want to discuss with
Mr. S., and at all events I had rather go with him to
his Lordship's than by myself. Likewise I have had ap-
plication from the R. Institution for a course of lectures,
which I am much disposed to accept, both for money and
reputation. In short, I must stay in town till Friday
sen'night ; for Mr. Stuart returns to town on Monday
next, and he relies on my being there for a very interest-
ing private concern of his own, in which he needs both
my counsel and assistance. But on Friday sen'night,

tution. Ten yeaxs later (1817), on of his old vigour gave battle on behalf

the occasion of the surreptitious of his brother-in-law in the pages of

publication of Wat Tyler, Mr, The Courier. Essays on His Own

Smith, who was a staunch liberal, Times, iii. 939-950.

denounced the Laureate as a " rene- ^ Charles James Fox died on Sep-

gade," and Coleridge with something tember 13, 1806.

508 HOME AND NO HOME [Dec.

please God, I shall quit town, and trust to be at Keswick
on Monday, Sept. 29th. If I finally accept the lectures,
I must return by the middle of November, but propose to
take you and Hartley with me, as we may be sure of
rooms either in Mr. Stuart's house at Knightsbridge, or
in the Strand. My purpose is to divide my time steadily
between my reflections moral and political, grounded on
information obtained during two years' residence in Italy
and the Mediterranean, and the lectures on the " Princi-
ples common to all the Fine Arts." It is a terrible mis-
fortune that so many important papers are not in my
power, and that I must wait for Stoddart's care and alert-
ness, which, I am sorry to say, is not to be relied on.
However, it is well that they are not in Paris.

My heart aches so cruelly that I do not dare trust my-
self to the writing of any tenderness either to you, my
dear, or to our dear children. Be assured, I feel with
deep though sad affection toward you, and hold your
character in general in more than mere esteem — in rever-
ence. . . . I do not gather strength so fast as I had ex-
pected ; but this I attribute to my very great anxiety. I
am indeed very feehle, but after fifty-five days of such
horrors, following the dreary heart-wasting of a year and
more, it is a wonder that I am as I am. I sent you from
Malta XllO, and a duplicate in a second letter. If you
have not received it, the triplicate is either at Malta or on
its way from thence. I had sent another £100, but by
Elliot's villainous treatment of me ^ was obliged to recall
it. But these are trifles.

Mr. Clarkson is come, and is about to take me down to
Parndon (Mr. S.'s country seat in Essex, about twenty

1 An unpublished letter from Sir that Coleridge ever said in favour of

Alexander Ball to His Excellency " Ball " exceeds what Sir Alexander

H. Elliot, Esq. (Minister at the says of Coleridge, but the Minister,

Court of Naples), strongly recom- whose hands must have been pretty

mends Coleridge to his favourable full at the time, failed to be im-

notice and consideration. Nothing pressed, and withheld his patronage.

1806] TO HIS WIFE 509

miles from town). I shall return by Sunday or Monday,
and my address, " S. T. Coleridge, Esqre, No. 348 Strand,
London."

My grateful love to Southey, and blessing on his little
one. And may God Almighty preserve you, my dear !
and your faithful, though long absent husband,

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

CLXII. TO THE SAME.

[Farmhouse near Coleorton,]
December 25, 1806.

My dear Sara, — By my letter from Derby you will
have been satisfied of our safety so far. We had, however,
been grossly deceived as to the equi-distance of Derby
and Loughborough. The expense was nearly double.
Still, however, I was in such torture and my boils bled,
throbbed, and stabbed so con furia, that perhaps I have
no reason for regret. At Coleorton we found them din-
ing, Sunday, ^ past one o'clock. To-day is Xmas day.
Of course we were welcomed with an uproar of sincere
joy: and Hartley hung suspended between the ladies
for a long minute. The children, too, jubilated at Hart-
ley's arrival. He has behaved very well indeed — only
that when he could get out of the coach at dinner, I was
obliged to be in incessant watch to prevent him from
rambling off into the fields. He twice ran into a field,
and to the further end of it, and once after the dinner
was on table, I was out five minutes seeking him in great
alarm, and found him at the further end of a wet meadow,
on the marge of a river. After dinner, fearful of losing
our places by the window (of the long coach), I ordered
him to go into the coach and sit in the place where he
was before, and I would follow. In about five minutes I
followed. No Hartley ! Halloing — in vain ! At length,
where should I discover him ! In the same meadow, only
at a greater distance, and close down on the very edge of

510 HOME AND NO HOME [April

the water. I was angry from downright fright ! And
what, think you, was Cataphract's excuse I " It was a
misunderstanding, Father ! I thought, you see, that you
bid me go to the very same place, in the meadow where I
was." I told him that he had interpreted the text by
the suggestions of the flesh, not the inspiration of the
spirit ; and his Wish the naughty father of the base-
born Thought. However, saving and excepting his pas-
sion for field truantry, and his hatred of confinement [in
which his fancy at least —

Doth sing a doleful song about green fields ;
How sweet it were in woods and wild savannas ;
To hunt for food and be a naked man
And wander up and down at liberty !j/

he is a very good and sweet child, of strict honour and
truth, from which he never deviates except in the form of
sophism when he sports his logical false dice in the game
of excuses. This, however, is the mere effect of his activ-
ity of thought, and his aiming at being clever and ingen-
ious. He is exceedingly amiable toward children. All
here love him most dearly : and your namesake takes
upon her all the duties of his mother and darling friend,
with all the mother's love and fondness. He is very fond
of her ; but it is very pretty to hear how, without any
one set declaration of his attachment to Mrs. Wilson and
Mr. Jackson, his love for them continually breaks out
— so many things remind him of them, and in the coach
he talked to the sti-angers of them just as if everybody
must know Mr. J. and Mrs. W. His letter is only half
written ; so cannot go to-day. We all wish you a merry
Christmas and many following ones. Concerning the
London Lectures, we are to discuss it, William and I, this
evening, and I shall write you at full the day after to-
morrow. To-morrow there is no post, but this letter I
1 "The Foster-Mother's Tale," Poetical Works, 1893, p. 83.

1807] TO HARTLEY COLERIDGE 511

mean merely as bearer of the tidings of our safe arrival.
I am better than usual. Hartley has coughed a little
every morning since he left Greta Hall ; but only such a
little cough as you heard from him at the door. He is
in high health. All the children have the hooping cough ;
but in an exceedingly mild degree. Neither Sarah
Hutchinson nor I ever remember to have had it. Hart-
ley is made to keep at a distance from them, and only to
play with Johnny in the open air. I found my spice-
megs ; but many papers I miss.

The post boy waits.

My love to Mrs. Lovell, to Southey and Edith, and be-
lieve me anxiously and for ever,

Your sincere friend S. T. Coleeidge.

CLXIII. TO HARTLEY COLERIDGE, ^TAT. X.^

AprU 3, 1807.

My dear Boy, — In all human beings good and bad
qualities are not only found together, side by side, as it
were, but they actually tend to produce each other; at
least they must be considered as twins of a common
parent, and the amiable propensities too often sustain and
foster their unhandsome sisters. (For the old Romans per-

1 Hartley Coleridge, now in his economy," says Hartley, " would not

eleventh year, was under his father's allow us to visit the Jewel Oifice,

sole care from the end of December, but Mr. Scott, then no anactolater,

1806, to May, 1 807. The first three took an evident pride in showing me

months were spent in the farmhouse the claymores and bucklers taken

near Coleorton, which Sir G. Beau- from the Loyalists at CuUoden."

mont had lent to the Wordsworths, Whilst he was at Coleorton, Hartley

and it must have been when that was painted by Sir David Wilkie.

visit was drawing to a close that this It is the portrait of a child " whose

letter was written for Hartley's ben- fancies from afar are brought," but

efit. The remaining five or six the Hartley of this letter is better

weeks were passed in the company represented by the grimacing boy in

of the Wordsworths at Basil Monta- Wilkie's " Blind Fiddler," for which,

gu's house in London. Then it was I have been told, he sat as a model,

that Hartley saw his first play, and Poems of Hartley Coleridge, 1851,

was taken by Wordsworth and Wal- i. cexxii.
ter Scott to the Tower. " The bard's

512 HOME AND NO HOME [April

sonified virtues and vices botli as women.) This is a suffi-
cient proof that mere natural qualities, however pleasing
and delightful, must not be deemed virtues until they are
broken in and yoked to the plough of Reason. Now to
apply this to your own case — I coidd equally apply it to
myself — but you know yourself more accurately than
you can know me, and will therefore understand my
argument better when the facts on which it is built exist
in your own consciousness. You are by nature very
kind and forgiving, and wholly free from revenge and
sullenness ; you are likewise gifted with a very active and
self-gratifying fancy, and such a high tide and flood of
pleasurable feelings, that all unpleasant and painful
thoughts and events are hurried away upon it, and neither
remain in the surface of your memory nor sink to the bot-
tom of your heart. So far all seems right and matter of
thanksgiving to your Maker ; and so all really is so, and
will be so, if you exert your reason and free will. But on
the other hand the very same disposition makes you less
impressible both to the censure of your anxious friends
and to the whispers of your conscience. Nothing that
gives you pain dwells long enough upon your mind to do
you any good, just as in some diseases the medicines pass
so quickly through the stomach and bowels as to be able
to exert none of their healing qualities. In like manner,
this power which you possess of shoving aside all dis-
agreeable reflections, or losing them in a labyrinth of
day-dreams, which saves you from some present pain, has,
on the other hand, interwoven with your nature habits of
procrastination, which, unless you correct them in time
(and it will require all your best exertions to do it effec-
tually), must lead yovi into lasting unhappiness.

You are now going with me (if God have not ordered
it otherwise) into Devonshire to visit your Uncle G. Cole-
ridge. He is a very good man and very kind ; but his
notions of right and of propriety are very strict, and he

1807] TO HARTLEY COLERIDGE 613

is, therefore, exceedingly shocked by any gross deviations
from what is right and proper. I take, therefore, this
means of warning you against those bad habits, which I
and all your friends here have noticed in you ; and, be
assured, I am not writing in anger, but on the contrary
with great love, and a comfortable hope that your beha-
viour at Ottery will be such as to do yourself and me and
your dear mother credit.

First, then, I conjure you never to do anything of any
kind when out of sight which you would not do in my
presence. What is a frail and faulty father on earth
compared with God, your heavenly Father? But God is
always present. Specially, never pick at or snatch up
anything, eatable or not. I know it is only an idle, fool-
ish trick ; but your Ottery relations would consider you
as a little thief ; and in the Church Catechism picking
and stealing are both put together as two sorts of the
same vice, " And keep my hands from picking and steal-
ing." And besides, it is a dirty trick ; and people of
weak stomachs would turn sick at a dish which a young
filth-paw had been fingering.

Next, when you have done wrong acknowledge it at
once, like a man. Excuses may show your ingenuity, but
they make your honesty suspected. And a grain of hon-
esty is better than a pound of wit. We may admire a
man for his cleverness ; but we love and esteem him only
for his goodness ; and a strict attachment to truth, and to
the whole truth, with openness and frankness and sim-
plicity is at once the foundation stone of all goodness, and
no small part of the superstructure. Lastly, do what you
have to do at once, and put it out of hand. No procras-
tination ; no self-delusion ; no " I am sure I can say it, I
need not learn it again," etc., which sures are such very
unsure folks that nine times out of ten their sureships
break their word and disappoint you.

Among the lesser faults I beg you to endeavour to re-

614 HOME AND NO HOME [Sept.

member not to stand between the half-opened door, either
while you are speaking, or spoken to. But come in or go
out, and always speak and listen with the door shut.
Likewise, not to speak so loud, or abruptly, and never to
interrupt your elders while they are speaking, and not to
talk at all during meals. I pray you, keep this letter, and
read it over every two or three days.

Take but a little trouble with yourself, and every one
will be delighted with you, and try to gratify you in ajl
your reasonable wishes. And, above aU, you will be at
peace with yourself, and a double blessing to me, who am,
my dear, my very dear Hartley, most anxiously, your
fond father,

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. I have not spoken about your mad passions and
frantic looks and pout-mouthing ; because I trust that is
all over.
Hartley Coleridge, Coleorton, Leicestershire.

CLXIV. TO SIR H. DAVY.

September 11, 1807.

. . . Yet how very few are there whom I esteem and
(pardon me for this seeming deviation from the language
of friendship) admire equally with yourself. It is indeed,
and has long been, my settled persuasion, that of all men
known to me I could not justly eqiial any one to you,
combining in one view powers of intellect, and the steady
moral exertion of them to the production of direct and
indirect good ; and if I give you pain, my heart bears wit-
ness that I inflicted a greater on mj^self , — nor should
I have written such words, if the chief feeling that mixed
with and followed them had not been that of shame and
self-reproach, for having profited neither by your general
example nor your frequent and immediate incentives.
Neither would I have oppressed you- at all with this mel-

1807] TO SIR H. DAVY 515

ancholy statement, but that for some days past I have
found myself so much better in body and mind, as to cheer
me at times with the thought that this most morbid and
oppressive weight is gradually lifting up, and my will
acquiring some degree of strength and power of reaction.

I have, however, received such manifest benefit from
horse exercise, and gradual abandonment of fermented
and total abstinence from spirituous liquors, and by being
alone with Poole, and the renewal of old times, by wan-
dering about among my dear old walks of Quantock and
Alfoxden, that I have seriously set about composition,
with a view to ascertain whether I can conscientiously
undertake what I so very much wish, a series of Lectures
at the Royal Institution. I trust I need not assure you
how much I feel your kindness, and let me add, that I
consider the application as an act of great and unmerited
condescension on the part of the managers as may have
consented to it. After having discussed the subject with
Poole, he entirely agrees with me, that the former plan
suggested by me is invidious in itself, unless I disguised
my real opinions ; as far as I should deliver my sentiments
respecting the arts^ [it] would require references and illus-
trations not suitable to a public lecture room ; and, finally,
that I ought not to reckon upon spirits enough to seek
about for books of Italian prints, etc. And that, after all,
the general and most philosophical principles, I might
naturally introduce into lectures on a more confined plan —
namely, the principles of poetry, conveyed and illustrated
in a series of lectures. 1. On the genius and writings of
Shakespeare, relatively to his predecessors and contempo-
raries, so as to determine not only his merits and defects,
and the proportion that each must bear to the whole, but
what of his merits and defects belong to his age, as being
found in contemporaries of genius, and what belonged to
himself. 2. On Spenser, including the metrical romances,

516 HOME AND NO HOME [Sept.

and Chaucer, though the character of the latter as a
manner-painter I shall have so far anticipated in distin-
guishing it from, and comparing it with, Shakespeare.
3. Milton. 4. Dryden and Pope, including the origin
and after history of poetry of witty logic. 6. On Modern
Poetry and its characteristics, with no introduction of
any particular names. In the course of these I shall have
said all I know, the whole result of many years' continued
reflection on the subjects of taste, imagination, fancy, pas-
sion, the source of our pleasures in the fine arts, in the
antithetical balance-loving nature of man, and the con-
nexion of such pleasures with moral excellence. The ad-
vantage of this plan to myself is, that I have all my
materials ready, and can rapidly reduce them into form
(for this is my solemn determination, not to give a single
lecture till I have in fair writing at least one half of the
whole course), for as to trusting anything to immediate
effort, I shrink from it as from guilt, and guilt in me it
would be. In short, I should have no objection at once to
pledge myself to the immediate preparation of these lec-
tures, but that I am so surrounded by embarrassments. . . .
For God's sake enter into my true motive for this wear-
ing detail ; it would torture me if it had any other effect
than to impress on you my desire and hope to accord with
your plan, and my incapability of making any final prom-
ise till the end of this month.

S. T. Coleridge.

CHAPTER IX
A PUBLIC LECTURER

1807-1808

CHAPTER IX

PUBLIC LECTURER

1807-1808

CLXV. TO THE MORGAN FAMILY.

Hatchett's Hotel, Piccadilly, Monday evening,
[November 23, 1807.]

My dear Friends, — I arrived here in safety this morn-
ing between seven and eight, coach-stunned, and with a
cold in my head ; but I had dozed away the whole night
with fewer disturbances than I had reason to expect, in
that sort of whether-you-will-or-no slumber brought upon
me by the movements of the vehicle, which I attribute to
the easiness of the mail. About one o'clock I moaned
and started, and then took a wing of the fowl and the
rum, and it operated as a preventive for the after time.
If very, very affectionate thoughts, wishes, recollections,
anticipations, can score instead of grace before and after
meat, mine was a very religious meal, for in this sense
my inmost heart prayed hefore, after^ and during. After
breakfast, on attempting to clean and dress myself from
crown to sole, I found myself quite unfit for anythmg^
and my legs were painful, or rather my feet, and nothing
but an horizontal position would remove the feeling. So
I got into bed, and did not get up again till Mr. Stuart
called at my chamber, past three. I have seen no one
else, and therefore must defer all intelligence concerning
my lectures, etc., to a second letter, which you will receive
in a few days, God willing, with the D'Espriella, etc.
When I was leaving you, one of the little alleviations

520 A PUBLIC LECTURER [Dec.

which I looked forward to, was that I could write with less
embarrassment than I could utter in your presence the
many feelings of grateful affection and most affectionate
esteem toward you, that pressed upon my heart almost, as
at times it seemed, with a bodily weight. But I suppose
it is yet too short a time since I left you — you are
scarcely out of my eyes yet, dear Mrs. M. and Charlotte !
To-morrow I shall go about the portraits. I have not
looked at the profile since, nor shall I till it is framed.
An absence of four or five days will be a better test how
far it is a likeness. For a day or two, farewell, my
dear friends ! I bless you all three fervently, and shall,
I trust, as long as I am

S. T. Coleridge.

I shall take up my lodgings at the " Courier " office,
where there is a nice suite of rooms for me and a quiet
bedroom without expense. My address therefore, '■'•Squire
Coleridge," or " S. T. Coleridge, Esq : ' Courier ' Office,
Strand," — unless you are in a sensible mood, and then
you will write 3£r. Coleridge, if it were only in compas-
sion to that poor, unfortvmate exile, from the covers of
letters at least, despised MM.

Mr. Jno. Jas. Morgan,

St. James's Square, Bristol.

CLXVI. TO ROBERT SOUTHET.

[Postmark, December 14, 1807.]

My dear Southet, — I have been confined to my
bedroom, and, with exceptions of a few hours each night,
to my bed for near a week past — having once ventured
out, and suffered in consequence. My complaint a low
bilious fever. Whether contagion or sympathy, I know
not, but I had it hanging about me from the time I was
with Davy. It went off, however, by a journey which I
took with Stuart, to Bristol, in a cold frosty air. Soon

1807] TO ROBERT SOUTHEY 521

after my return Mr. Ridout informed me from Drs.
Babbington and Bailly, that Davy was not only ill, but
his life precarious, his recovery doubtful. And to this
day no distinct symptoin of safety has appeared, though
to-day he is better. I cannot express what I have suf-
fered. Good heaven ! in the very springtide of his
honour — his ? his country's ! the world's ! after discov-
eries more intellectual, more ennobling, and impowering
human nature than Newton's ! But he must not die ! I
am so much better that I shall go out to-morrow, if I awake
no worse than I go to sleep. Be so good as to tell Mrs.
Coleridge that I will write to her either Tuesday or
Wednesday, and to Hartley and Derwent, with whose
letters I was much both amused and affected. I was with
Hartley and Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Jackson in spirit at
their meeting. Howel's bill I have paid, tell Mrs. C. (for
this is what she wiU be most anxious about), and that I
had no other debt at all weighing upon me, either pruden-
tially or from sense of propriety or delicacy, till the one
I shall mention, after better subjects, in the tail of this
letter.

I very thoroughly admired your letter to W. Scott,^
concerning the " Edinburgh Review." The feeling and
the resolve are what any one knowing you half as well as
1 must have anticipated, in any case where you had room
for ten minutes thinking, and relatively to any person,
with regard to whom old affection and belief of injury
and unworthy conduct had made none of those mixtures,
which people the brains of the best men — none but
good men having the component drugs, or at least the

^ Seott had proposed to Southey " that sort of bitterness [in criti-

that he should use his influence with cism] which tends directly to wound

Jeffrey to get him placed on the a man in his feelings, and injiire him

stafE of the Edinburgh Review, in his fame and fortune." Life and

Southey declined the offer alike on Correspondence, iii. 124-128. See,

the score of political divergence too, Loekhart's Life of Sir Walter

from the editor, and disapproval of Scott, 1837, ii. 130.

522 A PUBLIC LECTURER [Dec.

drugs in that state of composition — hut it is admirably-
expressed — if I had meant only well expressed, I should
have said, " and it is well expressed," — but, to my feeling,
it is an unusual specimen of honourable feeling supporting
itself by sound sense and conveyed with simplicity, dig-
nity, and a warmth evidently under the complete control
of the understanding. I am a fair judge as to such a
sentence, for from morbid wretchedness of mind I have
been in a far, far greater excess, indifferent about what
is said, or written, or supposed, concerning me or my
compositions, than W. can have been ever supposed to be
interested respecting his — and the "Edinburgh Review"
I have not seen for years, and never more than four or
five numbers. As to reviewing W.'s poems, my sole ob-
jection would rest on the time of the publication of the
"Annual Review." Davy's illness has put off the com-
mencement of my Lectures to the middle of January.
They are to consist of at least twenty lectures, and the
subject of modern poetry occupies at least three or four.
Now I do not care in how many forms my sentiments are
printed : if only I do not defraud my hirers, by causing
my lectures to be anticipated. I would not re\dew them
at all, unless I can do it systematically, and with the
whole strength of my mind. And, when I do, I shall
express my convictions of the faults and defects of the
poems and system, as plainly as of the excellencies. It
has been my constant reply to those who have charged
me with bigotry, etc., — " While you can perceive no
excellencies, it is my duty to appear conscious of no de-
fects, because, even though I should agree with you in
the instances, I should only confirm you in what I deem a
pernicious error, as ovir principle of disapprobation must
necessarily be different." In my Lectures I shall speak
out, of Rogers, Campbell, yourself (that is " Madoc " and
" Thalaba ; " for I shall speak only of poems, not of
poets), and Wordsworth, as plainly as of Milton, Dry den,

1807] TO ROBERT SOUTHEY 623

Pope, etc. . . * I did not overliugely admire the " Lay of
the Last Minstrel," but saw no likeness whatever to the
" Christabel," much less any improper resemblance.

I heard by accident that Dr. Stoddart had arrived a
few days ago, and wrote him a letter expostulating with
him for his unkindness in having detained for years my
books and MSS., and stating the great loss it had been to
me (a loss not easy to be calculated. I have as witnesses
T. Poole and Squire Acland ^ (who calls me infallible
Prophet), that from the information contained in them,
though I could not dare trust my recollection sufficiently
for the proofs, I foretold distinctly every event that has
happened of importance, with one which has not yet
happened, the evacuation of Sicily). This, however, of
course, I did not write to Dr. S., but simply requested he
would send me my chests. In return I received yesterday
an abusive letter confirming what I suspected, that he is
writing a book himself. In this he conjures up an in-
definite debt, customs, and some old affair before I went
to Malta, amounting to more than fifty pounds (the cus-
toms twenty-five pounds, all of which I should have had
remitted, if he had sent them according to his promise),
and informing me that when I send a person properly
documented to settle this account, that person may then
take away my goods. This I shall do to-morrow, though
without the least pledge that I shall receive all that I
left. . . . This wiU prevent my sending Mrs. C. any
money for three weeks, I mean exclusive of the [an-
nuity of] ^150 which, assure her, is, and for the future
will remain, sacred to her. By Wallis' attitude to Allston
I lost thirty pounds in customs, by my brother's refusal ^

^ Sir John Acland. The property at Ottery as had been originally

is now in the possession of a de- proposed. George Coleridge disap-

scendant in the female line, Sir proved of his brother's intended

Alexander Hood, of Fairfield, Dod- separation from his wife, and de-

ington. elined to countenance it in any way

^ To receive him and his family whatever.

524 A PUBLIC LECTURER [Jan.

all the expenses up and down of my family. So it has
been a baddish year ; but I am not disquieted.

S. T. C.

Poor Godwin is going to the dogs. He has a tragedy ^
to come out on Wednesday. I will write again to you in
a few days. After my Lectures I would willingly under-
take any Review with you, because I shall then have
given my Code. I omit other parts of your letter, not
that they interested me less, but because I have no room,
and am too much exhausted to take up a second sheet.
God bless you. My kisses to your little ones, and love to
your wife. The only vindictive idea I have to Dr. S. is
the anticipation of showing his letter to Sir Alexander
Ball ! ! The folly of sinning against our first and pure
impressions ! It is the sin against our own ghost at
least I

CLXVII. TO MKS. MORGAN.

348, Strand, Friday morning, January 25, 1808.

Dear and honoured Maet, — Having had you con-
tinually, I may almost say, present to me in my dreams,
and always appearing as a compassionate comforter
therein, appearing in shape as your own dear self, most
innocent and full of love, I feel a strong impiJse to
address a letter to you by name, though it equally respects
all my three friends. If it had been told me on that
evening when dear Morgan was asleep in the parlour,
and you and beloved Cai"oletta asleep at opposite corners
of the sopha in the drawing-room, of which I occupied
the centre in a state of blessed half-unconsciousness as a
drowsy guardian of your slumbers ; if it had been then
told me that in less than a fortnight the time should come
when I should not wish to be with you, or wish you to be
with me, I should have out with one of Caroletta's harm-
1 Faulkner: a Tragedy, 1807-1808, 8vo.

1808] TO MRS. MORGAN 525

less " condemn its " (commonly pronounced " damn it "),
'■'' that'' s no truth f^ And yet since on Friday evening,
my lecture having made an impression far beyond its worth
or my expectation, I have been in such a state of wretch-
edness, confined to my bed, in such almost continued pain
. . . that I have been content to see no one but the un-
lovable old woman, as feeling that I should only receive
a momently succession of pangs from the presence of
those who, giving no pleasure, woidd make my wretched-
ness appear almost unnatural, even as if the fire should
cease to be warm. Who would not rather shiver on an
ice mount than freeze before the fire which had used to
spread comfort through his fibres and thoughts of social
joy through his imagination? Yet even this, yet even
from this feeling that your society would be an agony,
oh I know, I feel how I love you, my dear sisters and
friends.

I have been obliged, of course, to put off my lecture of
to-day; a most painful necessity, for I disappoint some
hundreds ! I have sent for Abernethy, who has restored
Mr. De Quincey to health ! Could I have foreseen my
present state I would have stayed at Bristol and taken
lodgings at Clifton in order to be within the power of
being seen by you, without being a domestic nuisance, for
still, stiU I feel the comfortlessness of seeing no face,
hearing no voice, feeling no hand that is dear, though
conscious that the pang would outweigh the solace.

When finished, let the two dresses, etc., be sent to me ;
but if my illness should have a completed conclusion, of
me as well as of itself, and there seems to be a distinct
inflammation of the mesentery, — then let them be sent
to Grasmere for Mrs. Wordsworth and Miss Hutchinson,
— gay dresses, indeed, for a mourning.

I write in great pain, but yet I deem, whatever become
of me, that it will hereafter be a soothing thought to you
that in sickness or in health, in hope or in despondency,

626 A PUBLIC LECTURER [Mat

I have thought of you with love and esteem and grati-
tude.

My dear Mary ! dear Charlotte ! May Heaven bless
you ! With such a wife and such a sister, my friend is
already blest ! May Heaven give him health and elastic
spirits to enjoy these and all other blessings ! Once more
bless you, bless you. Ah ! who is there to bless

S. T. Coleridge?

P. S. Sunday Night. I do not know when this letter
was written — probably Thursday morning, not Wednes-
day, as I have said in my letter to John. I have opened
this by means of the steam of a tea-kettle, merely to say
that I have, I know not how or where, lost the pretty shirt-
pin Charlotte gave me. I promise her solemnly never to
accept one from any other, and never to wear one here-
after as long as I live, so that the sense of its real absence
shall make a sort of imaginary presence to me. I am
more vexed at the accident than I ought to be ; but had
it been either of your locks of hair or her profile (which
must be by force and association your profile too, and a
far more efficacious one than that done for you, which
had no other merit than that of having 7io likeness at all,
and this certainly is a sort of negative advantage) I
should have fretted myself into superstition and been
haunted with it as by an omen. Of the lady and her
poetical daughter I had never before heard even the
name. Oh these are shadows ! and all my literary admirers
and flatterers, as well as despisers and calumniators,
pass over my heart as the images of clouds over dull sea.
So far from being retained, they are scarcely made visible
there. But I love you, dear ladies ! substantially, and
pray do write at least a line in Morgan's letter, if neither
will write me a whole one, to comfort me by the assurance
that you remember me with esteem and some affection.
Most affectionately have you and Charlotte treated me,

1808] TO FRANCIS JEFFREY 527

and most gratefully do I remember it. Good-night, good-
night !

To be read after the other.

Mrs. Morgan,

St. James's Square, Bristol.

CLXVIII. TO FRANCIS JEFFREY.

348 Strand, May 23, 1808.

Dear Sir, — Without knowing me you have been,
perhaps rather unwarrantably, severe on my morals and
understanding, inasmuch as you have, I understand, — for
I have not seen the Reviews, — frequently introduced my
name when I had never brought any publication within
your court. With one slight exception, a shilling pamphlet ^
that never obtained the least notice, I have not published
anything with my name, or known to be mine, for thir-
teen years. Surely I might quote against you the com-
plaint of Job as to those who brought against him " the
iniquities of his youth." What harm have I ever done
you, dear sir, by act or word? If you knew me, you
would yourself smile at some of the charges, which, I am
told, you have fastened on me. Most assuredly, you have
mistaken my sentiments, alike- in morality, politics, and
— what is called — metaphysics, and, I would fain hope,
that if you knew me, you would not have ascribed self-
opinion and arrogance to me. But, be this as it may, I
write to 3'-ou now merely to intreat — for the sake of man-
kind — an honourable review of Mr. Clarkson's " History
of the Abolition of the Slave Trade." ^ I know the man,
and if you knew him you, I am sure, would revere him,
and your reverence of him, as an agent, would almost

^ I presume that the reference is hurgh Beview, July, 1808. It has

to the Condones ad Populum, pub- never been reprinted. Samuel Taylor

lished at Bristol, November 16, 1795. Coleridge, by J. Dykes Campbell,

^ Coleridge's article on Clarkson's London, 1894, p. 168 ; Letters from
History of the Abolition of the 'Slave the Lake Poets, p. 180 ; AUsop's Let-
Trade -was published in the Edin- ters, 1836, ii. 112.

628 A PUBLIC LECTURER [July

supersede all judgment of him as a mere literary man.
It would be presumptuous in me to offer to write the
review of his work. Yet I should be glad were I per-
mitted to submit to you the many thoughts which occurred
to me during its perusal. Be assured, that with the great-
est respect for your talents — as far as I can judge of
them from the few numbers of the " Edinburgh Review "
which I have had the opportunity of reading — and every
kind thought respecting your motives,

I am, dear sir, your ob. humb. ser't,

S. T. Coleridge.

Jeffray (sic), Esq.,

to the care of Mr. Constable, Bookseller,

Edingburgh (sic).

CLXIX. TO THE SAME.

[Postmark] BcRT St. Edmunds,
July 20, 1808.

Dear Sir, — Not having been gratified by a letter
from you, I have feared that the freedom with which I
opened out my opinions may have given you offence. Be
assured, it was most alien from my intention. The pur-
port of what I wrote was simply this — that severe and
long-continued bodily disease exacerbated by disappoint-
ment in the great hope of my Life had rendered me
insensible to blame and praise, even to a faulty degree,
unless they proceeded from the one or two who love me.
The entrance-passage to my heart is choked up with
heavy lumber, and I am thus barricadoed against attacks,
which, doubtless, I should otherwise have felt as keenly
as most men. Instead of censuring a certain quantum of
irritability respecting the reception of published composi-
tion, I rather envy it — it becomes ludicrous then only,
when it is disavowed, and the opposite temper pretended
to. The ass's skin is almost scourge-proof — while the
elephant thrills under the movements of every fly that
runs over it. But though notoriously almost a zealot in

1808] TO FRANCIS JEFFREY 529

behalf of my friend's poetic reputation, yet I can leave it
with cheerful confidence to the fair working of his own
powers. I have known many, very many instances of
contempt changed into admiration of his genius ; but I
neither know nor have heard of a single person, who hav-
ing been or having become his admirer had ceased to be
so. For it is honourable to us all that our kind affections,
the attractions and elective affinities of our nature, are of
more permanent agency than those passions which repel
and dissever. From this cause we may explain the final
growth of honest fame, and its tenacity of life. When-
ever the struggle of controversy ceases, we think no more
of works which give us no pleasure and apply our satire
and scorn to some new object, and thus the field is left
entire to friends and partisans.

But the case of Mr. Clarkson appeared to me altogether
different. I do not hold his fame dear because he is my
friend ; but I sought and cultivated his acquaintance, be-
cause a long and sober enquiry had assured me, that he
had been, in an aweful sense of the word, a benefactor of
mankind : and this from the purest motives unalloyed by
the fears and hopes of selfish superstition — and not with
that feverish power which fanatics acquire by crowding
together, but in the native strength of his own moral im-
pulses. He, if ever human being did it, listened exclu-
sively to his conscience, and obeyed its voice at the price
of all his youth and manhood, at the price of his health,
his private fortune, and the fairest prospects of honourable
ambition. Such a man I cannot regard as a mere author.
I cannot read or criticise such a work as a mere literary
production. The opinions publicly expressed and circu-
lated concerning it must of necessity in the author's feel-
ings be entwined with the cause itself, and with his own
character as a man^ to which that of the historian is only
an accidental accession. Were it the pride of authorship
alone that was in danger of being fretted, I should have

530 A PUBLIC LECTURER [July

remained as passive in this instance as in that of my
most particular friend, to whom I am bound by ties more
close and of longer standing than those which connect me
personally with Mr. Clarkson. But I know that any sar-
casms or ridicule would deeply wound his feelings, as a
veteran warrior in a noble contest, feelings that claim the
reverence of all good men.

The Review was sent, addressed to you, by the post of
yester-evening. There is not a sentence, not a word in it,
which I should not have written, had I never seen the
author.

I am myself about to bring out two works — one a
small pamphlet ^ — the second of considerable size — it is
a rifacciamento, a very free translation with large addi-
tions, etc., etc., of the masterly work for which poor Palm
was murdered.

I hope to be in the North, at Keswick, in the course of
a week or eight days. I shall be happy to hear from you
on this or any other occasion.

Yours, dear sir, sincerely, S. T. Coleeidge.

1 Of this pamphlet or the transla- gust 26, 1806, in consequence of the

tion of Palm's Deutschland in seiner publication of the work, which re-

tiefsten Erniedrigung, l]s.novf nothing, fleeted uufavorablv on the conduct

The author, John Philip Palm, a and career of Napoleon.
Nuremberg bookseller, was shot Au-

CHAPTEE X
GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND

1808-1810

CHAPTEE X

GRASMEEE AND THE FRIEND

1808-1810

CLXX. TO DANIEL STUART.

[December 9, 1808.]

My dear Stuart, — Scarcely wlien listening to count
the hour, have I been more perplexed by the '•'■ Inopem me
copia fecit " of the London church clocks, than by the
press of what I have to say to you. I must do one at a
time. Briefly, a very happy change ^ has taken place in
my health and spirits and mental activity since I placed
myself imder the care and inspection of a physician, and
I dare say with confident hope, "Judge me from the 1st
January, 1809."

I send you the Prospectus, and intreat you to do me
all the good you can ; which like the Lord's Prayer is
Thanksgiving in the disguise of petition. If you think
that it should be advertized in any way, or if Mr. Street
can do anything for me — but I know you will do what
you can.

I have received promises of contribution from many
tall fellows with big names in the world of Scribes, and
count even Pharisees (two or three Bishops) in my list of
patrons. But whether I shall have 50, 100, 600, or 1,000
subscribers I am not able even to conjecture. All must

^ Compare his letter to Poole, 1808, in which he speaks of a change

dated December 4, 1808. " Begin for the better in health and habits.

to count my life, as a friend of Thomas Poole and Ms Friends, ii. 227 ;

yours, from 1st January, 1809 ; " Fragmentary Eemains of Sir H.

and a letter to Davy, of December, Davy, p. 101.

534 GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND [Dec.

depend on the zeal of my friends, on which I fear I have
thrown more water than oil — but some like the Greek
fire burn beneath the wave !

Wordsworth has nearly finished a series of most mas-
terly Essays 1 on the Affairs of Portugal and Spain, and
by my advice he will first send them to you that if they
suit the "• Courier " they may be inserted.

1 have not heard from Savage, but I suppose that he
has printed a thousand of these Prospectuses, and you
may have any number from him. He lives hard by some
of the streets in Covent Garden which I do not remember,
but a note to Mr. Savage, R. Institution, Albemarle
Street, will find him.

May God Almighty bless you ! I feel that I shall yet
live to give proof of what is deep within me towards you.

S. T. Coleridge.

CLXXI. TO FRANCIS JEFFREY.

Gkasiieee, December 14, 1808.
Dear Sir, — The only thing in which I have been able
to detect any degree of hypochrondriasis in my feelings is
the reading and answering of letters, and in this instance
I have been at times so wof ully under its domination as to
have left every letter received lie unopened for weeks to-
gether, all the while thoroughly ashamed of the weakness
and yet without power to get rid of it. This, however, has
not been the case of late, and I was never yet so careless as

^ The Convention of Cintra was and January, in the Courier. An

signed August 30, 1808. Words- accidental loss of several sheets of

worth's Essays were begun in the the manuscript delayed the continu-

foUowing November. " For the sake anee of the publication in that man-

of immediate and general circulation ner till the close of the Christmas

I determined (when I had made a holidays ; and this plan of publica-

considerable progress in the manu- tion was given up." Advertisement

script) to print it in different por- to Wordsworth's pamphlet on the

tions in one of the daily newspapers. Convention of Cintra, May 20, 1809 ;

Accordingly two portions of it were Letters from the Lake Poets, p. 385.
printed, in the months of December

1808] TO FRANCIS JEFFREY 535

knowingly to suffer a letter relating to money to remain
unanswered by the next post in my power. I, therefore,
on reading your very kind letter of 8 Dec. conclude that
one letter from you during my movements from Grasmere,
now to Keswick, now to Bratha and Elleray, and now to
Kendal, has been mislayed.

As I considered your insertion of the review of Mr.
Clarkson's as an act of personal kindness and attention
to the request of one a stranger to you except by name,
the thought of any pecuniary remuneration never once
occurred to me ; and had it been written at your request
I should have thought twenty guineas a somewhat extrav-
agant price whether I considered the quantity or quality
of the communication. As to the alterations, your char-
acter and interest, as the known Editor of the Review, are
pledged for a general consistency of principle in the dif-
ferent articles with each other, and you had every possible
right to alter or omit ad libitum, unless a special condition
had been insisted on of aut totum aut nihil. As the
writer, therefore, I neither thought nor cared about the
alterations; as a general reader, I differed with you as [to]
the scale of merit relatively to Mr. Wilberforce, whose
services I deem to have been overrated, not, perhaps, so
much absolutely as by comparison. At all events, some
following passages should have been omitted, as they are
in blank contradiction to the paragraph inserted, and
betrayed a co-presence of two writers in one article. As
to the longer paragraph, Wordsworth thinks you on the
true side ; and Clarkson himself that you were not far
from the truth. As to my own opinion, I believed what
I wrote, and deduced my belief from all the facts pro and
con, with which Mr. Clarkson's conversation have fur-
nished [me] ; but such is my detestation of that pernicious
Minister,! such my contempt of the cowardice and fatuity

^ " In the place of some just stituted some abuse and detraction."
eulogiums due to Mr. Pitt was sub- Allsop's Letters, 1836, ii. 112,

536 GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND [Dec.

of his measures, and my horror at the yet unended train
of their direful consequences, that, if obedience to truth
could ever be painful to me, this woidd have been. I
acted well in writing what on the whole I believed the
more probable, and I was pleased that you acted equally
well in altering it according to your convictions.

I had hoped to have furnished a letter of more interest-
ing contents to you, but an honest gentleman in London
having taken a great fancy to two thirds of the possible
profits of my literary labours without a shadow of a claim,
and having over-hurried the business through overweening
of my simplicity and carelessness, has occasioned me some
perplexity and a great deal of trouble and letter-writing.
I will write, however, again to you my first leisure even-
ing, whether I hear from you or no in the interim.

I trust you have received my scrawl with the prospectus ^
and feel sincerely thankful to you for your kindness on
the arrival of the prospectuses, prior to your receipt of
the letter which was meant to have announced them. But
our post here is very irregular as well as circuitous — but
three times a week — and then, too, we have to walk more
than two miles for the chance of finding letters. This
you will be so good as to take into account whenever my
answers do not arrive at the time they might have been
expected from places in general. I remain, dear sir, with
kind and respectful feeling, your obliged,

S. T. Coleridge.

^ A preliminary prospectus of The and "year-long absences" lie gives

Friend was printed at Kend;xl and up, but, as the postscript intimates,

submitted to Jeffrey and a few oth- "moral impulses " he has the hardi-

ers. A copy of this " first edition " hood to retain. See The Friend's

is in my possession, and it is inter- Quarterly Examiner for July, 1893,

esting to notice that Coleridge has art. " S. T. Coleridge on Quaker Prin-

directed his amanuensis. Miss Hutch- ciples ; " and Athenceum for Septem-

inson, to amend certain offending ber 16, 1893, art. " Coleridge on

phrases in accordance with Jeffrey's Quaker Principles."
suggestions. " Speculative gloom "

1808] TO FRANCIS JEFFREY 537

I entirely coincide in your dislike of " speculative
gloom " — it is illogical as well as barbarous, and almost
as bad as " picturesque eye." I do not know how I came
to pass it ; for when I first wrote it, I undermarked it, not
as the expression, but as a remembrancer of some better
that did not immediately occur to me. "Year-long ab-
sences" I think doubtful — had any one objected to it, I
should have altered it ; but it would not much offend me
in the writings of another. But to " moral impulses " I
see at present no objections, nor does any other phrase sug-
gest itself to me which would have expressed my meaning.
That there is a semblance of presumptuousness in the man-
ner I exceedingly regret, if so it be — my heart bears me
witness that the feeling had no place there. Yet I need
not say to you that it is impossible to succeed in such a
work unless at the commencement of it there be a quick-
ening and throb in the pulse of hope ; and what if a blush
from inward modesty disguise itself on these occasions, and
the hectic of unusual self-assertion increase the appearance
of that excess which it in reality resists and modifies ? It
will amuse you to be informed that from two correspond-
ents, both of them men of great literary celebrity, I have
received reproof for a supposed affectation of humility in
the style of the prospectus. In my own consciousness I
was guilty of neither. Yet surely to advance as a teacher,
and in the very act to declare yourseK inferior to those
whom you propose to teach, is incongruous ; and must dis-
gust a pure mind by its evident hypocrisy.

538 GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND [Dec.

CLXXII. TO THOMAS WILKINSON.^

Gkasmerb, December 31, 1808.
Dear Sir, — I thank you for your exertions in my
belialf , and — which more deeply interests me — for the
openness with which you have communicated your doubts
and apprehensions. So much, indeed, am I. interested,
that I cannot lay down my head on my pillow in perfect
tranquillity, without endeavoring to remove them. First,
however, I must tell you that ..." The Friend " will
not appear at the time conditionally announced. There
are, besides, great difficulties at the Stamp Office concern-
ing it. But the particulars I will detail when we meet.
Myself, with William Wordsworth and the family, are
glad that we are so soon to see you. Now then for what
is so near my heart. Only a certain number of prospec-
tuses were printed at Kendal, and sent to acquaintances.
The much larger number, which were to have been printed
at London, have not been printed. When they are, you
will see in the article, noted in this cojiv, that I neither
intend to omit, nor from any fear of offence have scrupled
to announce my intention of treating, the subject of reli-

^ Thomas Wilkinson, of Yanwath, Dress, Dancing', Gardening, Mnsic,
near Penrith, was a member of the Poetry, and Painting- " were erased
Society of Friends. He owned and in obedience to Wilkinson. Most
tilled a small estate on the banks of of these articles, however, " Archi-
the Emont, which he laid out and tecture. Dress,'' etc., reappeared in
ornamented ' ' after the manner of a second edition of the Prospectus,
Shenstone at his Le;isowes." As a attached to the second number of
friend and neighbour of the Clark- The Friend, but Dancing, "Greek
sons and of Lord Lonsdale he was statuesque dancing," on which Cole-
well known to Wordsworth, who, ridge might have discoursed at some
greatly daring, wrote in his honour length, was gone forever. Words-
his lines " To the Spade of a Friend worth's Works, p. 211 (Fenwick
(an Agriculturist)." Note) ; The Friend's Quarterly Ex-

Alas! for the poor Prospectus! aminer, July, 1893; Records of a

" Speculative gloom " and " year- Quaker Family, by Anne Ogden

long absence " had been sacrificed Boyce, London, 1889, pp. 30, 31, 55.
to Jeffrey, and now " Architecture,

1808] TO THOMAS WILKINSON. 539

gion. I had supposed that the words " speculative gloom "
would have conveyed this intention. I had inserted an-
other article, which I was induced to omit, from the fear
of exciting doubts and queries. This was : On the transi-
tion of natural religion into revelation, or the principle of
internal guidance : and the grounds of the possibility of
the connection of spiritual revelation with historic events ;
that is, its manifestation in the world of the senses. This
meant as a preliminary — leaving, as already performed
by others, the proof of the reality of this connection in
the particular fact of Christianity. Herein I wished to
prove only that true philosophy rather leads to Chris-
tianity, than contained anything preclusive of it, and
therefore adopted the phrase used in the definition of
philosophy in general : namely. The science which answers
the question of things actual, how they are ijossihle f
Thus the laws of gravitation illustrate the ^possibility of
the motion of the heavenly bodies, the action of the lever,
etc. ; the reality of which was already known. I men-
tion this, because the argument assigned which induced
me to omit it in a prospectus was, that by making a dis-
tinction between revelation iii itself (i. e. a princij)le of
internal sujoernatural guidance), and the same revelation
conjoined with the power of external manifestation by
supernatural works, would proclaim me to be a Quaker,
and " The Friend " as intended to propagate peculiar and
sectarian principles. Think then, dear Friend ! what my
regret was at finding that you had taken it for granted
that I denied the existence of an internal monitor! I
trust I am neither of Paul, or of ApoUos, or of Cephas ;
but of Christ. Yet I feel reverential gratitude toward
those who have conveyed the spirit of Christ to my heart
and understanding so as to afford light to the latter and
vital warmth to the former. Such gratitude I owe and
feel toward W. Penn. Take his Preface to G. Fox's
Journal, and his Letter to his Son, — if they contain a

540 GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND [Feb.

faithful statement of genuine Christianity according to
your faith, I am one with you. I subscribe to each and
all of the principles therein laid down ; and by them I
propose to try, and endeavour to justify, the charge made
by me (my conscience bears me witness) in the spirit of
entire love against some passages of the journals of later
Friends. Oh — and it is a groan of earnest aspiration ! a
strong wish of bitter tears and bitter self -dissatisfaction, —
Oh that in all things, in self-subjugation, unwearied benefi-
cence, and unfeigned listening and obedience to the Voice
within, I were as like the evangelic John Woolman, as I
know myself to be in the belief of the existence and the
sovran authority of that Voice ! When we meet, I will
endeavour to be wholly known to you as I am, in principle
at least.

A few words more. Unsuspicious of the possibility of
misunderstanding, I had inserted in this prospectus Dress
and Dancing among the fine Arts, the principles common to
which I was to develope. Now surely anything common
to Dress or Dancing with Architecture, Gardening, and
Poetry could contain nothing to alarm any man who is
not alarmed by Gardening, Poetry, etc., and secondly,
principles common to Poetry, Music, etc., etc., could hardly
be founded in the ridiculous hopping up and down in a
modern ball-room, or the washes, paints, and patches of a
fine lady's toilet. It is well knowTi how much I admired
Thomas Clarkson's Chapter on Dancing. The truth is,
that I referred to the drapery and ornamental decoration
of Painting, Statuary, and the Greek Spectacles ; and to
the scientific dancing of the ancient Greeks, the business
of a life confined to a small class, and placed under the
direction of particular magistrates. My object was to
prove the truth of the principles by shewing that even
dress and dancing, when the ingenuity and caprice of man
had elaborated them into Fine Arts, were bottomed in the
same principles. But desirous even to avoid suspicion,

1809] TO THOMAS POOLE 641

tlie passage will be omitted in tlie future prospectuses.
Farewell ! till we meet,

S. T. Coleridge. See P. 8.

P. S. Do you not know enough of the world to be con-
vinced that by declaring myself a warm defender of the
Established Church against all sectarians, or even by
attacking Quakerism in particular as a sect hateful to the
bigots of the day from its rejection of priesthood and out-
ward sacraments, I should gain twenty subscribers to one ?
It shocks me even to think that so mean a motive could
be supposed to influence me. I say aloud everywhere,
that in the essentials of their faith I believe as the Qua-
kers do, and so I make enemies of the Church, of the
Calvinists, and even of the Unitarians. Again, I declare
my dissatisfaction with several points both of notion and of
practice among the present Quakers — I dare not conceal
my convictions — and therefore receive little good opinion
even from those, with whom I most accord. But Truth is
sacred.

CLXXIII. TO THOMAS POOLE.

Grasmeke, Kendal, February 3, 1809.
My dearest Poole, — For once in my life I shall
have been blamed by you for silence, indolence, and pro-
crastination without reason. Even now I write this letter
on a speculation, for I am to take it with me to-morrow to
Kendal, and if I can bring the proposed printer and pub-
lisher to final terms, to put it into the post. It would be
a tiresome job were I to detail to you all the vexations,
hindrances, scoundrelisms, disappointments, and pros and
cons that, without the least fault or remissness on my part,
have rendered it impracticable to publish " The Friend"
till the first week of March. The whole, however, is now
settled, provided that Pennington (a worthy old book-
seller and printer of Kendal, but a genius and mightily
indifferent about the affairs of this life, both from that

542 GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND [Feb.

cause and from age, and from being as rich as he wishes)
will become, as he has almost promised, the printer and
publisher.!

"The Friend" will be stamped as a newspaper and
under the Newspaper Act, which will take S^d. from each
shilling, but enable the essay to pass into all parts and
corners of the Empire without expense or trouble. It
will be so published as to appear in London every Satur-
day morning, and be sent off from the Kendal post to
every part of the Kingdom by the Thursday morning's
post. I hope that Mr. Stuart will have the prospectuses
printed by this time, — at all events, within a day or two
after your receipt of this letter you will receive a parcel
of them. The money is to be paid to the bookseller, the
agent, in the next town, once in twenty weeks, where
there are several subscribers in the same vicinity ; other-
wise, [it] must be remitted to me direct. This is the ug-
liest part of the business ; but there is no getting over it
without a most villainous diminution of my profits. You
will, I know, exert yourself to procure me as many names
as you can, for if it succeeds, it will almost ?7ial-e me.

Among my subscribers I have jSIr. Canning and Sturges
Bourne, and Mr. W. Rose, of whose moral odour your
nose, I believe, has had competent experience. The first
prospectus I receive, I shall send with letters to Lord
Egmont and Lady E. Percival, and to Mr. Acland.

1 The orig-inal draft of the pro- attached to the first number of the

Bpectus of The Friend, which was is- weekly issue, June 1, 1S09, was

sued in the late autumn of ISOS, Avas printed by Brown, a bookseller and

printed at Kendal by W. Penning-- stationer at Penrith, who, on Mr.

ton. Certain alterations were sug- Pennington's refusal, undertook to

gested by Jeffrey and others (Sou- print and publish The Friend. Some

they in a letter to Rickman dated curious letters which passed between

January 18, 1809, complains that Coleridge and his printer, together

Coleridge had " carried a prospectus with the MS. of The Friend, in the

wet from the pen to the publisher, handwriting of Miss Sarah Hutehin-

without consulting anybody"), and son, are preserved in the Forster

a fresh batch of prospectuses was Library at the South Kensington Mu-

printed in London. A third variant seum. Letters from the Lake Poets.

1809] TO THOMAS POOLE 543

You will probably have seen two of Wordsworth's Es-
says in the " Courier," signed " G." The two last columns
of the second, excepting the concluding paragraph, were
written all but a few sentences by me.^ An accident in
London delayed the publication ten days. The whole,
therefore, is now publishing as a pamphlet, and I believe
with a more comprehensive title.

I cannot say whether I was — indeed, both I and W.
W. — more pleased or affected by the whole of your last
letter ; it came from a very pure and warm heart through
the moulds of a clear and strong brain. But I have not
now time to write on these concerns. For my opinions,
feelings, hopes, and apprehensions, I can safely refer you
to Wordsworth's pamphlet. The minister's conduct hith-
erto is easily defined. A great deal too much because
not half enough. Two essays of my own on this most
lofty theme, — what we are entitled to hope, what com-
pelled to fear concerning the Spanish nation, by the light
of history and psychological knowledge, you will soon see
in the " Courier." Poor Wardle ! ^ I fear lest his zeal
may have made him confound that degree of evidence
which is sufficient to convince an unprejudiced private
company with that which will satisfy an unwilling nu-
merous assembly of factious and corrupt judges. As to
the truth of the charges, I have little doubt, knowing
myself similar facts.

dear Poole! Beddoes' departure^ has taken more

pp. 85-188; Selectionsfrom the Letters gard to the undue influence in mili-

o/B. Soutkey, ii. 120. tary appointments of the notorious

1 Compare letters to Stuart (De- Mrs. Clarke,

cember), 1808. " You will long ere ^ Coleridge's friendship with Dr.

this have received Wordsworth's Beddoes dated from 1795-96, and

second Essay, etc., rewritten by me, was associated with his happier

and in some parts recomposed." ief- days. It is possible that the recent

tersfrotn the Lake Poets, p. 101. amendment in health and spirits

^ Colonel Wardle, who led the at- was due to advice and sympathy

tack in the House of Commons which he had met with in response

against the Duke of York, with re- to a confession made in writing to

644 GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND [March

hope out of my life than any former event except perhaps
T. Wedgwood's. That did indeed pull very hard at me ;
never a week, seldom two days have passed in which the
recollection has not made me sad or thoughtful. Bed-
does' seems to pull yet harder, because it combines with
the former, because it is the second^ and because I have
not been in the habit of connecting such a weight of de-
spondency with my attachment to him as with my love of
my revered and dear benefactor. Poor Beddoes ! he was
good and beneficent to all men, but to me he was, more-
over, affectionate and loving, and latterly his sufferings
had opened out his being to a delicacy, a tenderness, a
moral beauty, and unlocked the source of sensibility as
with a key from heaven.

My own health is more regular than formerly, for I am
severely temperate and take nothing that has not been
pronounced medically unavoidable ; yet my sufferings are
often great, and I am rarely indeed wholly without pain
or sensations more oppressive than definite pain. But my
mind, and what is far better, my will is active. I must
leave a short space to add at Kendal after all is settled.

My beloved and honoured friend ! may God preserve
you and your obliged, and affectionately gratefid,

S. T. Coleridge.

My dearest Poole, — Old Mr. Pennington has ulti-
mately declined the printing and publishing ; indeed, he
is about to decline business altogether. There is no other
in this country capable of doing the work, and to printing
and publishing in London there are gigantic objections.
What think you of a press at Grasmere ? I will write
when I get home. Oh, if you knew what a warmth of un-
usual feeling, what a genial air of new and living hope

his old Bristol friend. His death, "take out of his life " the hope of

which took place on the 24th of De- self-conquest. The letter implies

cember, 1808, would rob Coleridge that he had recently heard from or

of a newly-found support, and woidd conversed with Beddoes.

1809] TO DANIEL STUART 645

breathed upon me as I read that casual sentence in your
letter, seeming to imply a chance we have of seeing you
at Grasmere ! I assure you that the whole family, Mrs.
Wordsworth and her all-amiable sister, not with less
warmth than W. W. and Dorothy, were made cheerful
and wore a more holiday look the whole day after. Oh,
do, do come !

CLXXIV. TO DANIEL STUART.

Posted March 31, 1809.

My deae Friend, — I have been severely indisposed,
Jcnocked up indeed, with a complaint of a contagious na-
ture called the Mumps ; ^ preceded by most distressing
low spirits, or rather absence of all spirits ; and accom-
panied with deafness and stupefying perpetual eclio in the
ear. But it is going off. Little John Wordsworth was
attacked with it last year when I was in London, and from
the stupor with which it suffuses the eyes and look, it was
cruelly mistaken for water on the brain. It has been
brought here a second time by some miners, and is a dis-
ease with little danger and no remedy.

I attributed your silence to its right cause, and I assure
you when I was at Penrith and Kendal it was very pleas-
ant to me to hear how universally the conduct of the
" Courier " was extolled ; indeed, you have behaved most
nobly, and it is impossible but that you must have had a
great weight in the displacing of that prime grievance of
grievances. Among many reflections that kept crowding
on my mind during the trial,^ this was perhaps the chief —

^ Compare letter from Southey to extra swathings whicli yesterday

J. N. White dated April 21, 1809. buried my chin, after the fashion of

"A ridiculous disorder called the fops a few years ago." Selections

Mumps has nearly gone through froyn the Letters of B. Southey, ii.

the house, and visited me on its 135, 136.

'W'ay — a thing which puts one more ^ The Parliamentary investigation

out of humour than out of health ; of the charges and allegations with

but my neck has now regained its regard to the military patronage of

elasticity, and I have left off the the Duke of York,

546 GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND [June

What if, after a long, long reign, some titled sycophant
should whisper to Majesty, " By what means do your Min-
isters manage the Legislature ? " " By the distribution of
patronage, according to the influence of individuals who
claim it." " Do this yourself, or by your own family,
and you become independent of parties, and your Ministers
are your servants. The Army under a favourite son, the
Church with a wife, etc., etc." Good heavens ! the very
essence of the Constitution is unmoulded, and the ven-
erable motto of our liberty, " The king can do no wrong,"
becomes nonsense and blasphemy. As soon as ever my
mind is a little at ease, I will put together the fragments I
have written on this subject, and if Wordsworth have not
anticipated me, add to it some thoughts on the effect of
the military principle. We owe something to Whitbread
for his quenching at the first smell a possible fire. How
is it possible that a man apparently so honest can talk
and think as he does respecting France, peace, and Buona-
parte? . . .

On Thursday Wordsworth, Southey, and myself, with
the printer and publisher, go to Appleby to sign and seal,
which paper, etc., will of course be immediately dispatched
to London. I doubt not but that the £60 will be now
paid at the " Courier " office in a few days ; and as soon as
you wiU let me know whether the stamped paper is to be
paid for necessarily in ready money, or with what credit,
I shall instantly write to some of my friends to ad-
vance me what is absolutely necessary. I can only say I
am ready and eager to commence, and that I earnestly
hope to see " The Friend " advertised shortly for the first
of May. As to the Paper, how and from whom, and
what and in what quantity, I must again leave to your
judgment, and recommend to your affection for me. I
have reason to believe that I shall commence with 500
names.

I write from Keswick, Mrs. Southey was delivered

1809] TO DANIEL STUART 547

yester-morning of a girl.^ I forgot to say, that I have
been obliged to purchase, and have paid for, a font of
types of small pica, the same with the London Prospectus,
from Wilsons of Glasgow. I was assured they would
cost only from ^£25 to X28, instead of which, X38 odd.
God bless you and S. T. Colekidge.

CLXXV. TO THE SAME.

Gkasmeke, Kendal, June 13, 1809.

Deae Stuaet, — I left Penrith Monday noon, and,
prevented by the heavy rain from crossing Grisedale Tarn
(near the summit of Helvellyn, and our most perilous and
difficult Alpine Pass), the same day I slept at Luff's, and
crossed it yester-morning, and arrived here by breakfast
time. I was sadly grieved at Wordsworth's account of
your late sorrows and troubles. . . .

I cannot adequately express how much I am concerned
lest anything I wrote in my last letter (though God knows
under the influence of no one feeling which you would not
wish me to have) should chance to have given you any
additional unpleasantness, however small. Would that I
had worthier means than words and professions of proving
to you what my heart is. . . .

I rise every morning at five, and work three hours be-
fore breakfast, either in letter-writing or serious composi-
tion. . . .

I take for granted that more than the poor £60 has
been expended in the paper I have received. But I have
written to Mr. Clarkson to see what can be done ; for it
would be a sad thing to give it all up now I am going on
so well merely for want of means to provide the first
twenty weeks paper. My present stock will not quite suf-
fice for three numbers. I printed 620 of No. 1, and 650
of No. 2, and so many more are called for that I shall be

^ Bertha Southey, afterwards Mrs. Herbert HiU, was born March 27,
1809.

548 GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND [June

forced to reprint both as soon as I hear from Clarkson.
The proof sheet of No. 3 goes back to-day, and with it
the copy of No. 4, so that henceforth we shall be secure
of regularity ; indeed it was not all my fault before, but
the printer's inexperience and the multitude of errors,
though from a very decent copy, which took him a full
day and more in correcting. I had altered my plan for
the Introductory Essays after my arrival at Penrith, which
cost me exceeding trouble ; but the numbers to come are
in a very superior style of polish and easy intelligibility.
The only thing at present which I am under the necessity
of applying to you for respects Clement. It may be his
interest to sell "The Friend" at his shop, and a certain
nmnber will always be sent ; but I am quite in the dark
as to what profits he expects. Surely not book-profits for
a newspaper that can circulate by the post? And it is
certainly neither my interest, nor that of the regnalar pur-
chasers of "The Friend," to have it bought at a shop, in-
stead of receiving it as a franked letter. All I want to
know is his terms, for I have quite a horror of booksellers,
whose mode of carrying on trade in London is absolute
rapacity. . . .

On this ruinous plan poor Southey has been toihng for
years, with an industry honourable to human natm^e, and
must starve upon it were it not for the more profitable
employment of reviewing: a task unworthy of him, or
even of a man with not one half of his honour and hon-
esty.

I have just read Wordsworth's pamphlet, and more
than fear that your friendly expectations of its sale and
influence have been too sanguine. Had I not known the
author I would willingly have travelled from St. Michael's
Mount to Johnny Groat's House on a pilgrimage to see
and reverence him. But from the public I am apprehen-
sive, first, that it will be impossible to rekindle an ex-
hausted interest respecting the Cintra Convention, and

1809] TO DANIEL STUART 549

therefore that the long porch may prevent readers from
entering the Temple. Secondly, that, partly from Words-
worth's own style, which represents the chain of his
thoughts and the movements of his heart, admirably for
me and a few others, but I fear does not possess the more
profitable excellence of translating these down into that
style which might easily convey them to the understand-
ings of common readers, and partly from Mr. De Quin-
cey's strange and most mistaken system of punctuation —
(The periods are often alarmingly long, perforce of their
construction, but De Quincey's punctuation has made sev-
eral of them immeasurable, and perplexed half the rest.
Never was a stranger whim than the notion that , ; : and
. could be made logical symbols, expressing all the diver-
sities of logical connection) — but, lastly, I fear that read-
ers, even of judgement, may complain of a want of shade
and background ; that it is all foreground, all in hot tints ;
that the first note is pitched at the height of the instru-
ment, and never suffered to sink ; that such depth of feel-
ing is so incorporated with depth of thought, that the
attention is kept throughout at its utmost strain and
stretch ; and — but this for my own feeling. I could not
help feeling that a considerable part is almost a self-rob-
bery from some great philosophical poem, of which it
would form an appropriate part, and be fitlier attuned to
the high dogmatic eloquence, the oracular [tone] of im-
passioned blank verse. In short, cold readers, conceited
of their supposed judgement, on the score of their possess-
ing nothing else, and for that reason only, taking for
granted that they onust have judgement, will abuse the
book as positive, violent, and " in a mad passion ; " and
readers of sense and feeling will have no other dread,
than that the Work (if it should die) would die of a ple-
thora of the highest qualities of combined philosophic and
poetic genius. The Apple Pie they may say is made all
of Quinces. I much admired our young friend's note on

650 GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND [Oct.

Sir Jolin Moore and his despatch ; ^ it was excellently ar-
ranged and urged. I have had no opportunity, as yet, to
speak a word to Wordsworth himseK about it ; I wrote
to you as usual in full confidence.

I shall not be a little anxious to have your opinion of
my third number. Lord Lonsdale blames me for exclud-
ing party politics and the events of the day from my plan.
I exclude both the one and the other, only as far as they
are merely paTty^ i. e. personal and temporal interests, or
merely events of To-day, that are defunct in the To-mor-
row. I flatter myself that I have been the first, who will
have given a calm, disinterested account of our Constitu-
tion as it really is and how it is so, and that I have,
more radically than has been done before, sho^\^l the un-
stable and boggy grounds on which all systematic reform-
ers hitherto have stood. But be assured that I shall give
up this opinion with joy, and consider a truer view of the
question a more than recompense for the necessity of re-
tracting what I have written.

God bless you ! Do, pray, let me hear from you, though
only three lines.

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

CLXXVI. TO THOMAS POOLE.

October 9, 1809.

My dear Poole, — I received yours late last night,
and sincerely thank yoii for the contents. The whole
shall be arranged as you have recommended. Yet if I
know my own wishes, I woidd far rather you had refused
me, and said you should have an opportunity in a few
days of explaining your motives in j^^^'^^yi^ ^or oh, the
autumn is divine here. You never beheld, I will answer

1 " The Appendix (to the pamphlet masterly manner, was drawn up by

On the Convention ofCintra), a por- Mr. De Quincey, who revised the

tion of tlie work which Mr. Words- proofs of the whole." Memoirs of

worth regarded as executed in a Wordsworth, i. 384.

1809] TO THOMAS POOLE 551

for it, such combinations of exquisite heauty with sufficient
grandeur of elevation, even in Switzerland. Besides, I
sorely want to talk with you on many points.

All the defects you have mentioned I am perfectly
aware of, and am anxiously endeavouring* to avoid. There
is too often an entortillage in the sentences and even in the
thought (which nothing can justify), and, always ahnost,
a stately piling up of story on story in one architectural
period, which is not suited to a periodical essay or to
essays at all (Lord Bacon, whose style mine more nearly
resembles than any other, in his greater works, thought
Seneca a better model for his Essays), but least of all
suited to the present illogical age, which has, in imitation
of the French, rejected all the cements of language, so that
a popular book is now a mere bag of marbles, that is,
aphorisms and epigrams on one subject. But be assured
that the numbers will improve ; indeed, I hope that if the
dire stoppage have not prevented it, you will have seen
proof of improvement already in the seventh and eighth
numbers, — still more in the ninth, tenth, eleventh,
twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth numbers.
Strange ! but the " Three Graves " is the only thing I
have yet heard generally praised and inquired after ! !
Eemember how many different guests I have at my Kound
Table. I groan beneath the Errata, but I am thirty
miles cross -post from my printer and publisher, and
Southey, who has been my corrector, has been strangely
oscitant, or, which I believe is sometimes the case, has
not understood the sentences, and thought they might
have a meaning for me though they had not for him.
There was one direful one,i No. 5, p. 80, lines 3 and 4.

^ In Southey's copy of the reprint affections of the sense into distinct

of the stamped sheets of The Friend Thoughts and Judg-ements, aecord-

the passag-e runs thus : " However ing to its own essential forms. These

this may be, the Understanding or forms, however," etc. The Friend,

regulative faculty is manifestly dis- No. 5, Thursday, September 14, 1809,

tinet from Life and Sensation, its p. 79, n.
function being to take up the passive

552 GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND [Oct.

Read, — '■'■ its fimctions being to take up the passive affec-
tions of the senses into distinct thoughts axid judgements,
according to its own essential /brwis, formse formantes in
the language of Lord Bacon in contradistinction to the
format formatse."

My greatest difficulty will be to avoid that grievous
defect of running one number into another, I not being
pi'csent at the printing. To really cut down or stretch
out every subject to the Procrustes-Bed of sixteen pages
is not possible without a sacrifice of my whole plan, but
most often I will divide them polypus-wise, so that the
first half should get itself a new tail of its own, and the
latter a new head, and always take care to leave off at a
paragraph. With my best endeavours I am baffled in
respect of making one Essay fill one number. The tenth
number is, W. thinks, the most interesting, " On the
Errors of both Parties," or " Extremes Meet ; " and, do
what I would, it stretched to seven or eight pages more ;
but I have endeavoured to take your advice in toto, and
shall announce to the public that, ^"itli the exception of
my volume of Political Essays and State Memorials, and
some technical works of Logic and Grammar, I shall
consider " The Friend " as both the reservoir and the
living fountain of all my mind, that is, of both my powers
and my attainments, and shall therefore publish all my
poems in " The Friend," as occasion rises. I shall begin
with the " Fears in Solitude," and the '' Ode on France,"
which will fill up tlie remainder of No. 11 ; so that my
next Essay on vulgar Errors concerning Taxation, in
which I have alluded to a conversation with you, will just
fill No. 12 by itself.

I have been much affected by your efforts respecting
poor Blake. Cannot you with propriety give me that
narrative? But, above all, if you have no particular
objection, no very particular and insurmountahle reason
against it, do, do let me have that divine narrative of

1809] TO THOMAS POOLE 553

John Walford,! which of itself stamps you a poet of the
first class in the pathetic, and the painting of poetry so
very rarely combined.

As to politics, I am sad at the very best. Two cabinet
ministers duelling on Cabinet measures like drunken
Irishmen. O heaven, Poole ! this is wringing the dregs
in order to drink the last drops of degradation. Such
base insensibility to the awfulness of their situation and
the majesty of the country ! As soon as I can get them
transcribed, I will send you some most interesting letters
from the ablest soldier I ever met with (extra aide-de-
camp to Sir J. Moore, and shot through the body at
Flushing, but still alive) ; they will serve as a key to
more than one woe-trumpet in the Apocalypse of national
calamity. But the truth is, that to combine a govern-
ment every way fitted as ours is for quiet, justice, free-
dom, and commercial activity at Jiome^ with the conditions
of raising up that individual greatness, and of securing in
every department the very man for the very place, which
are requisite for maintaining the safety of our Empire
and the Majesty of our power abroad, is a state-riddle
which yet remains to be solved. I have thought myself
as well employed as a private citizen can be, in drawing
ofp well-intentioned patriots from the wrong scent and
pointing out what the true evils are and why, and the
exceeding difficulty of removing them without hazarding
worse. ... I was asked for a motto for a market clock.
I uttered the following literally, without a moment's pre-
meditation : —

What now, man ! thou dost or mean'st to do
Will help to give thee peace, or make thee rue,
When hovering o'er the Dot this hand shall tell
The moment that secures thee Heaven or Hell?

^ For extracts from Poole's narra- narrative into verse, but was dissat-

tive of John Walford, see Thomas isfied with the result. His lines have

Poole and his Friends, ii. 235-237. never been published.

Wordsworth endeavoured to put the ^ H. N. Coleridge included these

554 GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND [Dec.

May God bless you ! My kindest remembrances to
Mr. Chubb, and to Ward. Pray remember me when you
write to your sister and Mr. King. Oh, but Poole ! do
stretch a point and come. If the F. rises to a 1,000 I
will frank you. Do come ; never will you have layed out
money better.

CLXXVII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

December, 1809.
My dear Southey, — I suspect you have misunder-
stood me, and applied to the Maltese Eegiment what I
said of the Corsican Rangers. Both are bad enough, but
of the former I know little, of course, as I was away from
Malta before the regiment had left the island. But in
the Essays (2 or 3) which I am now writing on Sir A.
Ball, I shall mention it as an exemplification among many
others of his foresight. It was a job, I have no doubt,
merely to get General Valette a lucrative regiment ; but
G. V. is dead, and it was not such a job as that of the
Corsican Bangers, which can be made appear glaring.
The long and short of the storj^ is, that the men were
four fifths married, would have fought as well as the best,
at home and behind their own walls, but could not be ex-
pected to fight abroad, where they had no interest. Be-
sides, it was cruel., shameful to take 1,500 men as soldiers
for any part of our enormous Empire, out of a popula-
tion, man, woman, and child, not at that time more than
100,000. There were two INIaltese Militia Regiments
officered by their own Maltese nobility — these against
the entreaties and tears of the men and officers (I myself
saw them weeping), against the remonstrances and memo-
rial (written by myself) of Sir A. B., were melted into

lines, as tliey appear in a note-book, can be no doubt that Coleridge

among the Omniana of 1809-lSlG. wrote, " On a clock in a market

They are headed incorrectly, " In- place (proposed)." Table Talk, etc.,

scription on a Clock in Cheapside." 1884, p. 401 ; Poetical Works, p.

The MS. is not very legible, but there 181.

1809] TO ROBERT SOUTHEY 555

one large one, officered by English officers, and a general
affront given to the island, because General Yalette had
great friends at the War Office, Dvike of York, etc. !
This is the whole, but do not either expose yourself or me
to judicial inquiries. It is one thing to know a thing,
and another to be able to prove it in a law court. This
remark applies to the damnable treatment of the prisoners
of war at Malta.

I should have thought your facts, with which I am
familiar, a confirmation of Miss Schoning.^ Be that as it
may, take my word for it, that in substance the story is
as certain as that Dr. Dodd was hung. To mention one
proof only. Von Hess,^ the celebrated historian of Ham-
burg, and, since Lessing, the best German prosist, went
himself to Nuremberg, examined into the facts officially
and personally, and it was on him that I relied, though if
you knew the government of Nuremberg, you would see
that the first account could not have been published as it
was, if it had not been too notorious even for conceal-
ment to be hoped for. After I left Germany, Von Hess
had a public controversy that threatened to become a Diet
concern with the magistrates of Nuremberg, for some
other bitter charges against them. I have their defence
of themselves, but they do not even attempt to deny the
fact of Harlin and Schoning. But, indeed, Southey ! it
is almost as bad as if I could have mistaken e converso
Patch's trial for a novel.

Your remark on the voice is most just, but that was my

^ The story of Maria Eleanora and the beautiful illustration of the

Schoning' appeared in No. 13 of TAe "withered leaf" were allowed to

Friend, Thursday, November 16, remain unaltered, and appear in

1809, pp. 194-208. It was reprinted every edition. Coleridge's Works,

as the " Second Landing Place " in 1853, ii. 312-326.

the revised edition of The Friend, ^ Jonas Lewis von Hess, 1766-

published in 1818. The somewhat 1823. He was a friend and pupil

laboured description of the heroine's of Kant, and author of A History of

voice, which displeased Southey, Hamburg.

556 GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND [Jan.

purpose. Not only so, but the whole passage was in-
serted, and intertruded after the rest was written, reluc-
tante amanuensi med, in order to unrealize it even at the
expense of (Zi&naturalizing it. Lady B. therefore pleased
me by saying, " never was the golden tint of the poet
more judiciously employed," etc. For this reason, too, I
introduced the simile of the leaf, etc., etc. I not only
thought the " voice " part out of place, but in bad taste
per sc.

May God bless you all.

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

CLXXVIII. TO THOMAS POOLE.

Gkasmeee, Kendal, January 28, 1810.
My dear Feiend, — My " manti^aps and spring guns
in this garden" have hitherto existed only in the painted
board, in terrorem. Of course, I have received and
thank you for both your letters. What Wordsworth may
do I do not know, but I think it highly probable that I
shall settle in or near London. Of the fate of " The
Friend " I remain in the same ignorance nearly as at the
publication of the 20th November. It would make you
sick were I to waste my paper by detailing the numerous
instances of meanness in the mode of payment and dis-
continuance, especially among the Quakers. So just was
the answer I once made in the presence of some " Friends "
to the query : What is genuine Quakerism ? Answer,
The antithesis of the pi'esent Quakers. I have received
this evening together with yours, one as a specimen.
(N. B. Three days after the publication of the 21st Num-
ber, and sixteen days after the publication of the " Super-
numerary " [number of "The Friend," January 11, 1810],
a bill upon a postmaster, an order of discontinuance, and
information that any others that may come will not be
paid for, as if I had been gifted with prophecy. And this
precious epistle directed, " To Thomas Coleridge, of Graze-

1810] TO THOMAS POOLE 557

mar " ! And yet this Mr. would think himself

libelled, if he were called a dishonest man.) . . . We will
take for granted that "The Friend" can be continued.
On this supposition I have lately studied " The Specta-
tor," and with increasing pleasure and admiration. Yet

it must be evident to you that there is a class of thoughts
and feelings, and these, too, the most important, even
practically, which it would be impossible to convey in
the manner of Addison, and which, if Addison had pos-
sessed, he would not have been Addison. Read, for
instance, Milton's prose tracts, and only try to conceive
them translated into the style of " The Spectator," or
the finest part of Wordsworth's pamphlet. It would be
less absurd to wish that the serious Odes of Horace had
been written in the same style as his Satires and Epis-
tles. Consider, too, the very different objects of " The
Friend," and of " The Spectator," and above all do not

forget, that these are aweful times ! that the love of
reading as a refined pleasure, weaning the mind from
GROSSEE enjoyments, which it was one of " The Specta-
tor's" chief objects to awaken, has by that work, and
those that followed (Connoisseur, World, Mirror, etc.),
but still more, by Newspapers, Magazines, and Novels,
been carried into excess : and " The Spectator " itself has
innocently contributed to the general taste for uncon-
nected writing, just as if " Reading made easy " should
act to give men an aversion to words of more than two
syllables, instead of drawing them through those words
into the power of reading books in general. In the pres-
ent age, whatever flatters the mind in its ignorance of its
ignorance, tends to aggravate that ignorance, and, I ap-
prehend, does on the whole do more harm than good.
Have you read the debate on the Address? What a
melancholy picture of the intellectual feebleness of the
country ! So much on the one side of the question. On
the other (1) I will, preparatory to writing on any chosen

558 GRASMERE AND THE FRIEND [Jan.

subject, consider whetlier it ca7i be treated popularly, and
with that lightness and variety of illustration which form
the charms of "The Spectator." If it can, I will do my
best. If not, next, whether yet there may not be fur-
nished by the results of such an Essay thoughts and
truths that may be so treated, and form a second Essay.
(3) I shall always, besides this, have at least one number
in four of rational entertainment, such as " Satyrane's
Letters," as instructive as I can, but yet making entertain-
ment the chief object in my own mind. But, lastly, in
the Svipplement of " The Friend " I shall endeavour to
include whatever of higher and more abstruse meditation
may be needed as the foundations of all the work after it ;
and the difference between those who will read and mas-
ter that Supplement, and those who decline the toil, will
be simply this, that what to the former will be demon-
strated conclusions, the latter must start from as from
postulates, and (to all whose minds have not been sophis-
ticated by a half -philosophy) axioms. For no two things,
that are yet different, can be in closer harmony than the
deductions of a profound philosophy, and the dictates of
plain common sense. Whatever tenets are obscure in
the one, and requiring the greatest powers of abstraction
to reconcile, are the same which are held in manifest con-
tradiction by the common sense, and yet held and firmly
believed, without sacrificing A to — A, or — A to A.
. . . After this work I shall endeavour to pitch my note to
the idea of a common, well-educated, thoughtful man, of
ordinary talents ; and the exceptions to this rule shall not
form more than one fifth of the work. If with all this it
will not do, well! And well it will be, in its noblest
sense : for / shall have done my best. Of parentheses I
may be too fond, and will be on my guard in this respect.
But I am certain that no work of impassioned and elo-
quent reasoning ever did or coidd subsist without them.
They are the drama of reason, and present the thought"

1810] TO THOMAS POOLE 559

growing, instead of a mere Hortus siccus. The aversion
to them is one of the numberless symptoms of a feeble
Frenchified Public. One other observation : I have rea-
son to hope for contributions from strangers. Some from
you I rely on, and these will give a variety which is highly
desirable — so much so, that it would weigh with me
even to the admission of many things from unknown cor-
respondents, though but little above mediocrity, if they
were proportionately short, and on subjects which I should
not myself treat. . . .

May God bless you, and your affectionate

S. T. COLEKIDGE.

CHAPTER XI
A JOURNALIST, A LECTURER, A PLAYWRIGHT

1810-1813

CHAPTER XI

A JOURNALIST, A LECTURER, A PLAYWRIGHT

1810-1813

CLXXIX. TO HIS WIFE.

Spring, 1810.

My dear Love, — I understand that Mr. De Quincey
is going to Keswick to-morrow ; though between ourselves
he is as great a to-morrower to the full as your poor hus-
band, and without his excuses of anxiety from latent dis-
ease and external pressure.

Now as Lieutenant Southey is with you, I fear that you
could not find a bed for me if I came in on Monday or
Tuesday. I not only am desirous to be with you and Sara
for a while, but it would be of great importance to me to
be within a post of Penrith for the next fortnight or three
weeks. How long Mr. De Quincey may stay I cannot
guess. He (Miss Wordsworth says) talks of a week, but
Lloyd of a month ! However, put yourself to no violence
of inconvenience, only be sure to write to me (N. B. — to
me) by the carrier to-morrow.

I am middling, but the state of my spirit of itself re-
quires a change of scene. Catherine W. [the Words-
worths' little daughter] has not recovered the use of her
arm, etc., but is evidently recovering it, and in all other
respects in better health than before, — indeed, so much
better as to confirm my former opinion that nature was
weak in her, and can more easily supply vital power for
two thirds of her nervous system than for the whole.

May God bless you, my dear ! and

S. T. Coleridge.

564 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [March

Hartley looks and beliaves all that the fondest parent
could wish. He is really handsome ; at least as handsome
as a face so original and intellectual can be. And Der-
went is " a nice little fellow," and no lack-wit either. I
read to Hartley out of the German a series of very mas-
terly arguments concerning the startling gross improbabil-
ities of Esther (fourteen improbabilities are stated). It
really surprised me, the acuteness and steadiness of judg-
ment with which he answered more than half, weakened
many, and at last determined that two only were not to be
got over. I then read for myself and afterwards to him
Eichhorn's solution of the fourteen, and the coincidences
were surprising. Indeed, Eichhorn, after a lame attempt,
was obliged to give up the two which H. had declared as
desperate.

CLXXX. TO THE MORGANS.

December 21, "1810."

My deae Friends, — I am at present at Brown's Cof-
fee House, Mitre Court, Fleet Street. My objects are to
settle something by which I can secure a certain sum
weekly, sufficient for lodging, maintenance, and physician's
fees, and in the mean time to look out for a suitable place
near Gray's Inn. My immediate plan is not to trouble
myself further about any introduction to Abernethy, but
to write a plain, honest, and full account of my state, its
history, causes, and occasions, and to send it to him with
two or three pounds enclosed, and asking him to take me
under his further care. If I have raised the money for
the enclosure, this I shall do to-morrow. For, indeed, it
is not only useless but imkind and ungrateful to you and
all who love me, to trifle on any longer, depressing your
spirits, and, spite of myself, graduallj'- alienating your
esteem and chilling your affection toward me. As soon
as I have heard from Abernethy, I will walk over to you,
and spend a few days before I enter into my lodging, and

1811] TO W. GODWIN 565

on my dread ordeal — as some kind-hearted Catholics
have taught, that the soul is carried slowly along close by
the walls of Paradise on its way to Purgatory, and permit-
ted to breathe in some snatches of blissful airs, in order
to strengthen its endurance during its fiery trial by the
foretaste of what awaits it at the conclusion and final gaol-
delivery.

I pray you, therefore, send me immediately all my books
and papers with such of my linen as may be clean, in my
box, by the errand cart^ directed — " Mr. Coleridge,
Brown's Coffee House, Mitre Court, Fleet Street." A
couple of nails and a rope will sufficiently secure the box.

Dear, dear Mary ! Dearest Charlotte ! I entreat you
to believe me, that if at any time my manner toward you
has appeared unlike myself, this has arisen wholly either
from a sense of self-dissatisfaction or from apprehension
of having given you offence ; for at no time and on no
occasion did I ever see or imagine anything in your behav-
iour which did not awaken the purest and most affection-
ate esteem, and (if I do not grossly deceive myself) the
sincerest gratitude. Indeed, indeed, my affection is both
deep and strong toward you, and such too that I am proud

of it.

" And looking towards tlie Heaven that bends above you,
Full oft I bless the lot that made me love you ! "

Again and again and for ever may God bless and love
you. S. T. Coleridge.

J. J. Morgan, Esq., No. 7, Portland Place, Hammersmith.

CLXXXI. TO W. GODWIN.

March 15, 1811.

My dear Godwin, — I receive twice the pleasure
from my recovery that it would have otherwise afforded,
as it enables me to accept your kind invitation, which in
this instance I might with perfect propriety and manliness
thank you for, as an honour done to me. To sit at the

566 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [June

same table with Grattan, who would not think it a mem-
orable honour, a red letter day in the almanac of his life ?
No one certainly who is in any degree worthy of it.
Rather than not be in the same room, I could be well
content to wait at the table at which I was not permitted
to sit, and this not merely for Grattan's undoubted great
talents, and still less from any entire accordance with his
political opinions, but because his great talents are the
tools and vehicles of his genius, and all his speeches are
attested by that constant accompaniment of true genius, a
certain moral bearing, a moral dignity. His love of lib-
erty has no snatch of the mob in it.

Assure Mrs. Godwin of my anxious wishes respecting
her health. The scholar Salernitanus ^ says : —

" Si tibi deficiant medici, medici tibi fiant
Hsec tria : mens hilaris, requies, moderata diseta."

The regulated diet she already has, and now she must
contrive to call in the two other doctors. God bless
you.

S. T. Coleridge.

CLXXXII. TO DANIEL STUART.

Tuesday, June 4, 1811.

Dear Stuart, — I brought your umbrella in with me
yester-morning, but, having forgotten it at leaving Port-
land Place, sent the coachman back for it, who brought
what appeared to me not the same. On retiu'ning, how-
ever, with it, I could find no other, and it is certainly as
good or better, but looks to me as if it were not equally
new, and as if it had far more silk in it. I will, however,
leave it at Brompton, and if by any inexplicable circum-
stance it should not prove the same, you must be content
with the substitute. The family at Portland Place caught

1 John of Milan, who flourished " versihus Leoninis," a poem enti-
1100 A. D., was the author of Medt- tied Flos Medicince. Hoffmann's iea;-
cina Salernitana. He also composed icon Universale, art. " Salernum."

1811] TO DANIEL STUART 567

at my doubts as to tlie identity of it. I had hoped to
have seen you this morning, it being a leisurely time in
respect of fresh tidings, to have submitted to you two
Essays,^ one on the Catholic Question, and the other on
Parliamentary Keform, addressed as a letter (from a cor-
respondent) to the noblemen and members of Pai^liament
who had associated for this purpose. The former does
not exceed two columns ; the latter is somewhat longer.
But after the middle of this month it is probable that the
Paper will be more open to a series of Articles on less
momentary, though still contemporary, interests. Mr.
Street seems highly pleased with what I have written this
morning on the battle ^ of the 16th (May), though I ap-
prehend the whole cannot be inserted. I am as I ought
to be, most cautious and shy in recommending anything ;
otherwise, I should have requested Mr. Street to give
insertion to the paragraphs respecting Holland, and the
nature of Buonaparte's resources, ending with the neces-
sity of ever re-fuelling the moral feelings of the people, as
to the monstrosity of the giant fiend that menaces them ;
[with an] allusion to Judge Grose's opinion ^ on Drakard ^
before the occasion had passed away from the public mem-
ory. So, too, if the Duke's return is to be discussed at all,
the Article should be published before Lord Milton's mo-
tion.^ For though in a complex and widely controverted

1 Three letters on the Catholic is an act so monstrous," etc. " Buon-
Question appeared in the Courier, aparte," Courier, June 29, 1811 ;
September 3, 21, and 26, 1811. Es- Essays on His Own Times, iii. 818.
says on His Own Times, iii. 891-896, * John Drakard, the printer of
920-932. the Stamford News, was convicted

2 The Battle of Albuera. Arti- at Lincoln, May 25, 1811, of the
cles on the battle appeared in the publication of an article against
Courier on June 5 and 8, 1811. flogging in the army, and sentenced
Essays on His Own Times, iii. 802- to a fine and imprisonment.

805. ^ Lord Milton, one of the mem-

8 ' ' That a Judge should have re- bers for Yorkshire, brought forward

garded as an aggravation of a libel a motion on June 6, 1811, against

on the British Army, the writer's the reappointment of the Duke of

having written against Buonaparte, York as Commander-in-Chief.

568 JOUENALIST, LECTUKER, PLAYWRIGHT [June

question, where hundreds rush into the field of combat,
it is wise to defer it till the Debates in Parliament have
shown what the arguments are on which most stress is laid
by men in common, as in the Bullion Dispute ; yet, gener-
ally, it is a great honour to the London papers, that for one
argument they borrow from the parliamentary speakers,
the latter borrow two from them, at all events are anti-
cipated by them. But the true prudential rule is, to defer
only when any effect of freshness or novelty is impracti-
cable ; but in most other cases to consider freshness of
effect as the point which belongs to a iVew;spaper and dis-
tinguishes it from a library book ; the former being the
Zenith, and the latter the Nadir, with a number of inter-
mediate degrees, occupied by pamphlets, magazines, re-
views, satirical and occasional poems, etc., etc. Besides,
in a daily newspaper, with advertisements proportioned to
its sale, what is deferred must, four times in five, be extin-
guished. A newspaper is a market for flowers and vege-
tables, rather than a granary or conservatory ; and the
drawer of its editor, a common burial ground, not a cata-
comb for embalmed mummies, in which the defunct are
preserved to serve in after times as medicines for the liv-
ing. To turn from the Paper to myself, as candidate for
the place of auxiliary to it. I drew, with Mr. Street's con-
sent and order, ten pounds, which I shall repay during the
week as soon as I can see Mr. Monkhouse of Budge Row,
who has collected that sum for me. This, therefore, I put
wholly aside, and indeed expect to replace it with Mr.
Green to-morrow morning. Besides this I have had five
pounds from Mr. Green ,i chiefly for the purposes of coach
hire. All at once I could not venture to walk in the heat
and other accidents of weather from Hammersmith to the
Office ; but hereafter I intend, if I continue here, to return
on foot, which will reduce my coach hire for the week from
1 Clerk of the Courier, Letter to Gentleman's Magazine, June, 1838, p.

1811] TO DANIEL STUART 569

eighteen shillings to nine shillings. But to walk in, I
know, would take off all the blossom and fresh fruits of
my spirits. I trust that I need not say, how pleasant it
would be to me, if it were in my power to consider every-
thing I could do for the " Courier," as a mere return for
the pecuniary, as well as other obligations I am under to
you ; in short as working off old scores. But you know
how I am situated ; and that by the daily labour of the
brain I must acquire the daily demands of the other parts
of the body. And it now becomes necessary that I should
form some settled system for my support in London, and
of course know what my weekly or monthly means may
be. Respecting the " Courier," I consider you not merely
as a private friend, but as the Co-projorietor of a large
concern, in which it is your duty to regulate yourself
with relation to the interests of that concern, and of your
partner in it ; and so take for granted, and, indeed, wish
no other, than that you and he should weigh whether or
no I can be of any material use to a Paper already so
flourishing, and an Evening Paper. For, all mock humil-
ity out of the question (and when I write to you, every
other sort of insincerity), I see that such services as I
might be able to afford, would be more important to a
rising than to a risen Paper ; to a morning, perhaps, more
than to an evening one. You will however decide, after
the experience hitherto afforded, and modifying it by the
temj)orary circumstances of debates, press of foreign news,
etc. ; how far I can be of actual use by my attendance, in
order to help in the things of the day, as are the para-
graphs, which I have for the most part hitherto been
called [upon] to contribute ; and, by my efforts, to sustain
the literary character of the Paper, by large articles, on
open days, and [at] more leisure times.

My dear Stuart ! knowing the foolish mental cowardice
with which I slink off from all pecuniary subjects, and
the particular weight I must feel from the sense of exist-

570 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [Dec.

ing obligations to you, you will be convinced tbat my only
motive is the desire of settling with others such a plan
for myself, as may, by setting my mind at rest, enable
me to realize whatever powers I possess, to as much satis-
faction to those who employ them, and to my own sense
of duty, as possible. If Mr. Street should think that
the " Courier " does not require any auxiliary, I shall
then rely on your kindness, for putting me in the way of
some other paper, the principles of which are sufficiently
in accordance with my own ; for while cabbage stalks rot
on dung hills, I will never write what, or for what, I do
not think right. All that prudence can justify is not to
write what at certain times one may yet think. God bless
you and

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

CLXXXIII. TO SIR G. BEAUMONT.

J. J. Morgan's, Esq., 7, Portland Place, Hammersmith,
Saturday morning, December 7, 1811.

Dear Sir George, — On Wednesday night I slept in
town in order to have a mask^ taken, from which, or

1 Many years after the date of that a death-mast had been taken
this letter. Dr. Spurzheim took a life- of the poet's features. Whether
mask of Coleridge's face, and used it this served as a model for a posthu-
as a model for a bust -which origi- mous bust, or not, I am unable to
nally belonged to H. N. Coleridge, say. In the curious and valuable
and is now in the Library at Heath's article on death-masks which Mr.
Court, Ottery St. Mary. Another bust Laurence Hutton contributed to the
of Coleridge, very similar to Spurz- October number of Harper's Maga-
heim's, belonged to my father, and zine, for 1892, he gives a fac-simUe
is still in the possession of the fam- of a death-mask which was said to
ily. I have been told that it was be that of S. T. Coleridge. At the
taken from a death-mask, but as time that I wrote to him on the
Mr. Hamo Thornycroft, who de- subject, I had not seen Henry Cole-
signed the bust for Westminster Ab- ridge's letter, but I came to the con-
bey, pointed out to me, it abounds elusion that this sad memorial of
in anatomical defects. In a letter death was genuine. The "glorious
which Henry Coleridge wrote to his forehead " is there, but the look has
father, Colonel Coleridge, on the passed away, and the " rest is si-
day of his uncle's death, he says leuoe." With regard to Allston's

1811] TO SIR G. BEAUMONT 571

rather with whicli, Allston means to model a bust of me.
I did not, therefore, receive your letter and the enclosed
till Thursday night, eleven o'clock, on my return from
the lecture ; and early on Friday morning, I was roused
from my first sleep by an agony of toothache, which con-
tinued ahnost without intermission the whole day, and
has left my head and the whole of my trunk, " not a man
but a bruise." ^ What can I say more, my dear Sir
George, than that I deeply feel the proof of your contin-
ued friendship, and pray from my inmost soul that more
perseverance in efforts of duty may render me more wor-
thy of your kindness than I at present am ? Ingratitude,
like all crimes that are at the same time vices — bad as
malady, and worse as symptom — is of so detestable a na-
ture that an honest man will mourn in silence under real
injuries, [rather] than hazard the very suspicion of it,
and will be slow to avail himself of Lord Bacon's remark ^
(much as he may admire its profundity), — "Crimen
ingrati animi, quod magnis ingeniis hand raro objicitur,
saepius nil aliud est quam perspicacia qugedam in causam
beneficii collati." Yet that man has assuredly tenfold
reason to be grateful who can be so, both head and heart,
who, at once served and honoured, knows himself more
delighted by the motive that influenced his friend than
by the benefit received by himself ; were it only perhaps
for this cause — that the consciousness of always repay-
ing the former in kind takes away all regret that he is
incapable of returning the latter.

bust of Coleridge, -whicli was exhib- the morning' a bruise." Table Talk,

ited at the Royal Academy in 1812, etc., Bell & Co., 1884, p. 231, note.
I possess no information. See Har- ^ " Crimen ingrati animi nil aliud

per's Magazine, October, 1892, pp. est quam persj^icaeia qusedam in

782, 783. causam collati beneficii." De Aug-

^ A favourite quip. Apropos of mentis Scientiarum, cap. iii. 15. If

the bed on which he sle^jt at Trin- this is the passage which Coleridge

ity College, Cambridge, in June, is quoting, he has inserted some

1833, he remarks, " Truly I lay words of his own. The Works of

down at night a man, and awoke in Bacon, 1711, i. 183.

672 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [Dec.

Mr. Dawe, Royal Associate, who plastered my face for
me, says that lie never saw so excellent a mask, and so
unaffected by any expression of pain or uneasiness. On
Tuesday, at the farthest, a cast will be finished, which I
was vain enough to desire to be packed up and sent to
Dunmow. With it you will find a chalk drawing of my
face,^ which I think far more like than any former at-
tempt, excepting Allston's full-length portrait of me,^
which, with all his casts, etc., two or three valuable works
of the Venetian school, and his Jason — almost finished,
and on which he had employed eighteen months without
intermission — are lying at Leghorn, with no chance of
procuring them. There will likewise be an epistolary essay

^ A crayon sketcli of Coleridge,
drawn by George Dawe, R. A., is
now in existence at Heath Court.
The figure, which is turned sideways,
the face looking up, the legs crossed,
is that of a man in early middle life,
somewhat too portly for his years.
An engraving of the sketch forms
the frontispiece to Lloyd's History
of Highgate. It was, in the late
Lord Coleridge's opinion, a most
characteristic likeness of his great-
imcle. A time came when, for some
reason, Coleridge held Dawe in but
light esteem. I possess a card of in-
vitation to his funeral, which took
place at St. Paul's Cathedral, on Oc-
tober 27, 1829. It is endorsed
thus : —

" I really would have attended
the Grub's Canonization in St. Paul's,
under the impression that it would
gratify his sister, Mrs. Wright ; but
Mr. G. interposed a conditional but
sufficiently decorous negative. ' No !
Unless you wish to follow his Grub-
ship still further down. ' So I pleaded
ill health. But the very Thursday
morning I went to Town to see my

daughter, for the first time, as Mrs.
Henry Coleridge, in Gower Street,
and, odd enough, the stage was
stopped by the Pompous Funeral of
the unchangeable and predestinated
Grub, and I extem^jorised : —

As Grub Dawe pass'd beneath the Hearse's

Lid,
On which a large RESURGAM met the

eye,
Col, who well knew the Grub, cried, Lord

forbid !
I trust, he 's only telling us a lie !

S. T. COLEEIDGE."

Dawe, it may be remembered, is
immortalised by Lamb in his amus-
ing Recollections of a Late Royal
Academician.

^ This portrait, begun at Rome,
was not finished when Coleridge left.
It is now in the possession of All-
ston's niece. Miss Charlotte Dana, of
Boston, Mass., U. S. A. The por-
trait by Allston, now in the National
Portrait Gallery, was taken at Bris-
tol in 1814. Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
a Narrative, by J. Dykes Campbell,
1894, p. 150, footnote 5.

1811] TO SIR G. BEAUMONT 673

for Lady Beaumont on the subject of religion in refer-
ence to my own faith ; it was too long to send by the
post.

Dawe is engaged on a picture (the figures about four
feet) from my poem of Love.

She leaned beside the armed man,

The statue of the armed knight ;

She stood and listened to my harp

Amid the lingering light.

His dying words — but when I reached, etc.

All impulses of soul and sense, etc.

His sketch is very beautiful, and has more expression
than I ever found in his former productions — excepting,
indeed, his Imogen.

AUston is hard at work on a large Scripture piece —
the dead man recalled to life by touching the bones of the
Prophet. He models every figure. Dawe, who was de-
lighted with the Cupid and Psyche, seemed quite aston-
ished at the facility and exquisiteness with which AUston
modelled. Canova at Rome expressed himself to me in
very warm terms of admiration on the same subject. He
means to exhibit but two or at the most three pictures, all
poetical or history painting, in part by my advice. It
seemed to me impolitic to appear to be tryincj in haK a
dozen ways, as if his mind had not yet discovered its main
current. The longer I live the more deeply am I con-
vinced of the high importance, as a symptom^ of the love
of heauty in a young painter. It is neither honourable to
a young man's heart or head to attach himself year after
year to old or deformed objects, comparatively too so
easy, especially if bad drawing and worse colouring leaves
the»spectator's imagination at lawless liberty, and he cries
out, " How very like ! " just as he would at a coal in the
centre of the fire, or at a frost-figure on a window pane.
It is on this, added to his quiet unenvious spirit, to his

574 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [Feb.

lofty feelings concerning his art, and to the religious
purity of his moral character, that I chiefly rest my hopes
of Allston's future fame. His best productions seem to
please him principally because he sees and has learnt
something which enables him to promise himself, " I shall
do better in my next."

I have not been at the " Courier " office for some
months past. I detest writing politics, even on the right
side, and when I discovered that the " Courier " was not
the independent paper I had been led to believe, and had
myself over and over again asserted, I wrote no more for
it. Greatly, indeed, do I prefer the present Ministers to
the leaders of any other party, but indiscriminate sup]3ort
of any class of men I dare not give, especially when there
is so easy and honourable an alternative as not to write
politics at all, which, henceforth, nothing but blank neces-
sity shall compel me to do. I will write for the Pekma-
NENT, or not at all. " The Comet " therefore I have never
seen or heard of it, yet most true it is that I myself
have composed some verses on the comet, but I am quite
certain that no one ever saw them, for the best of all rea-
sons, that my own brain is the only substance on which
they have been recorded. I will, however, consign them
to paper, and send them to you with the " Courier " poem
as soon as I can procure it, for the curiosity of the
thing. . . .

My most affectionate respects to Lady Beaumont, and
believe me, dear Sir George, with heartfelt regard.
Your obliged and grateful friend,

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

P. S. Were you in town, I should be very sorry, in-
deed, to see you in Fetter Lane.^ The lectures were

1 The lectures were delivered at Hall, Crane Court, Fleet Street (en-
the rooms of " The London Philo- trance from Fetter Lane)." Of the
sophical Society, Scotch Corporation lecture on " Love and the Female

1812] TO J. J. MORGAN 575

meant for tlie young men o£ tlie City. Several of my
friends join to take notes, and if I can correct what they
can shape out of them into any tolerable form, I will send
them to you. On Monday I lecture on " Love and the Fe-
male Character as displayed by Shakespeare." Good Dr.
Bell is in town. He came from Keswick, all delight with
my little Sara, and quite enchanted with Southey. Some
flights of admiration in the form of questions to me (" Did
you ever see anything so finely conceived ? so profoundly
thought? as this passage in his review on the Methodists?
or on the Education? " etc.) embarrassed me in a very ri-
diculous way ; and, I verily believe, that my odd way of
hesitating left on Bell's mind some shade of a suspicion,
as if I did not like to hear my friend so highly extolled.
Half a dozen words from Southey would have precluded
this, without diminution to his own fame — I mean, in
conversation with Dr. Bell.

CLXXXIV. TO J. J. MORGAN.

Keswick,! Sunday, February 28, 1812.

My dear Morgan, — I stayed a day in Kendal in
order to collect the reprint of " The Friend," and reached
Keswick on Tuesday last before dinner, having taken
Hartley and Derwent with me from Ambleside. Of
course the first evening was devoted Larihus domesticis,
to Southey and his and my children. My own are all the
fondest father coidd pray for ; and little Sara does honour

Character," which was delivered on London, 1856, p. viii. ; H. C. Robin-
December 9, 1811, H. C. Robinson son's Diary, ii. 348, MS. notes by
writes : " Accompanied Mrs. Rough J. Tomalin.

to Coleridge's seventh and incom- ^ The visit to Greta Hall, the last

parably best Lecture. He declaimed he ever paid to the Lake Country,

with great eloquence about love, lasted about a month, from February

without wandering from his subject, 23 to March 26. On his journey

Romeo and Juliet." Among the southward he remained in Penrith

friends who took notes were John for a little over a fortnight, rejoin-

Payne Collier, and a Mr. Tomalin. ing the Morgans towards the middle

Coleridge's Lectures on Shakespeare, of April.

576 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [Feb.

to her motlier's anxieties, reads French tolerably, and
Italian fluently, and I was astonished at her acquaintance
with her native language. The word "hostile" occurring
in what she read to me, I asked her what " hostile "
meant ? and she answered at once, " Why ! inimical ; only
that ' inimical ' is more often used for things and meas-
ures and not, as ^ hostile ' is, to persons and nations." If
I had dared, I should have urged Mrs. C. to let me take
her to London for four or five months, and return with
Southey, but I feared it might be inconvenient to you,
and I knew it would be presmiiptuous in me to bring her to
you. But she is such a sweet-tempered, meek, blue-eyed
fairy and so affectionate, trustworthy, and really service-
able ! Derwent is the self-same, fond, small, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge as ever. When I went for them from
Mr. Dawes,^ he came in dancing for joy, while Hartley
turned pale ^ and trembled all over, — then after he had
taken some cold water, instantly asked me some questions
about the connection of the Greek with the Latin, which
latter he has just begun to learn. Poor Derwent, who
has by no means strong health (having inherited his poor

^ The Reverend John Dawes, any pecuniary remuneration." Poems
who kept a day-school at Amble- of Hartley Coleridge, 1851, i. liii.
side. Hartley and Derwent Cole- ^ Id an unpublished letter from
ridge, Robert Jameson, Owen Lloyd Mrs. Coleridge to Poole, dated Octo-
and his three brothers (sons of ber 30, 1812, she tells her old friend
Charles Lloyd), and the late Edward that when "the boys" perceived
Jefferies, afterwards Curate and that their father did not intend to
Rector of Grasmere, were among' his turn aside to visit the Wordsworths
pupils. In the Memoir of Hart- at the Rectory opposite Grasmere
ley Coleridge, his brother Derwent Church, they turned pale and were
describes at some length the char- visibly affected. No doubt they
acter of his " worthy master," and knew all about the quarrel and were
adds : " We were among his earliest mightily concerned, but their agita-
scholars, and deeming it, as he said, tion was a reflex of the grief and
an honour to be entrusted with the passion " writ large " in their fa-
education of Mr. Coleridge's sons, ther's face. One can imagine with
lie refused, first for the elder, and what ecstasy of self-torture he would
afterwards for the younger brother, pass through Grasmere and leave

Wordsworth unvisited.

1812] TO J. J. MORGAN 577

father's tenderness of bowels and stomacli, and conse-
quently capriciousness of animal spirits), lias complained
to me (having no other possible grievance) " that Mr.
Dawes does not love him, because he can't help crying
when he is scolded, and because he ain't such a genius as
Hartley — and that though Hartley should have done the
same thing, yet all the others are punished, and Mr.
Dawes only looks at Hartley and never scolds him^ and
that all the boys think it very unfair — he is a genius."
This was uttered in low spirits and a tenderness brought
on by my petting, for he adores his brother. Indeed, God
be praised, they all love each other. I was delighted that
Dervvent, of his own accord, asked me about little Miss
Brent that used to play with him at Mr. and Mrs. Mor-
gan's, adding that he had almost forgot what sort of a
lady she was, " only she was littler, — less I mean — (this
was said hastily and laughing at his blunder) than Mama."
A e'entleman who took a third of the chaise with me from
Ambleside, and whom I found a well-informed and think-
ing man, said after two hours' knowledge of us, that the
two boys united would be a perfect representation of my-
self.

I trust I need not say that I should have written on
the second clay if nothing had happened ; but from the
dreadful dampness of the house, worse than it was in the
rudest state when I first lived in it, and the weather, too,
all storm and rain, I caught a violent cold which almost
blinded me by inflammation of both my eyes, and for
three days bore all the symptoms of an ague or intermit-
tent fever. Knowing I had no time to lose, I took the
most Herculean remedies, among others a solution of
arsenic, and am now as well as when I left you, and see no
reason to fear a relapse. I passed through Grasmere ;
but did not call on Wordsworth. I hear from Mrs. C.
that he treats the affair as a trifle, and only wonders at my
resenting it, and that Dorothy Wordsworth before my

578 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [April

arrival expressed her confident hope that I should come
to them at once ! I who " for years past had been an ab-
solute NUISANCE in the family." This illness has thrown
me behindhand ; so that I cannot quit Keswick till the
end of the week. On Friday I shall return by way of
Ambleside, probably spend a day with Charles Lloyd. . . .
It will not surprise you that the statements respecting
me and Montagu and Wordsworth have been grossly
perverted : and yet, spite of all this, there is not a friend
of Wordsworth's, I luiderstand, who does not severely
blame him, though they execrate the Montagus yet more
heavily. But the tenth part of the truth is not known.
Would you believe it possible that Wordsworth himself
stated my wearing powder as a proof positive that I
never could have suffered any pain of mind from the
affair, and that it was all pretence ! ! God forgive him !
At Liverpool I shall either give lectures, if I can secure
a hundred pounds for them, or return immediately to you.
At all events, I shall not remain there beyond a fortnight,
so that I shall be with you before you have changed
houses. Mrs. Coleridge seems quite satisfied with my
plans, and abundantly convinced of my obligations to
your and Mary's kindness to me. Nothing (she said) but
the circumstance of my residing with you could reconcile
her to my living in London. Southey is the seinper idem.
It is impossible for a good heart not to esteem and to love
him ; but yet the love is one fourth, the esteem all the
remainder. His children are, 1. Edith, seven years ;
2. Herbert, five; 3. Bertha, four; 4. Catharine, a year and
a half.

I had hoped to have heard from you by this time. I
wrote from Slough, from Liverpool, and from Kendal.
Why need I send my kindest love to Mary and Char-
lotte ? I would not return if I had a doubt that they be-
lieved me to be in the very inmost of my being their and
your affectionate and gratefrJ and constant friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

1812] TO HIS WIFE 579

CLXXXV. TO HIS WIFE.

71, Bemers Street, Tuesday, April 21, 1812.

My dear Love, — Everything is going on so very-
well, so mucli beyond my expectation, that I will not
revert to anything unpleasant to damp good news with.
The last receipt for the insurance is now before me, the
date the 4th of May. Be assured that before April is
past, you shall receive both receipts, this and the one for
the present year, in a frank.

In the first place, my health, spirits, and disj)osition to
activity have continued such since my arrival in town,
that every one has been struck with the change, and the
Morgans say they had never before seen me myself. I
feel myself an altered man, and dare promise you that you
shall never have to complain of, or to apprehend, my not
opening and reading your letters. Ever since I have been
in town, I have never taken any stimulus of any kind, till
the moment of my getting into bed, except a glass of
British white wine after dinner, and from three to four
glasses of port, when I have dined out. Secondly, my
lectures have been taken up most warmly and zealously
by Sir Thomas Bernard,^ Sir George Beaumont, Mr.
Sotheby, etc., and in a few days, I trust that you will be
agreeably surprised with the mode in which Sir T. B.
hopes and will use his best exertions to have them an-
nounced. Thirdly, Gale and Curtis are in high spirits
and confident respecting the sale of " The Eriend," ^ and

^ Sir Thomas Bernard, 1750-1818, conclude the unfinished narrative of

the well-known philanthropist and the life of Sir Alexander Ball, and

promoter of national education, was to publish the whole as a complete

one of the founders of the Royal work. A printed slip cut out of a

Institution. page of publishers' advertisements

2 It is probable that during his and forwarded to " H. N. Coleridge,

stay at Penrith he recovered a num- Esq., from W. Pickering," contains

ber of unbound sheets of the reprint the following announcement : —

of The Friend. His proposal to " Mr. Coleridge's i^rj'enc?, of which

Gale and Curtis must have been to twenty-eight Numbers are published?

580 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [April

the call for a second edition, after the complemental num-
bers have b«en printed, and not less so respecting the
success of the other work, the Propasdia (or Propaideia)
Cyclica, and are desirous to have the terms properly rati-
fied, and signed as soon as possible. Nothing intervenes
to overgioom my mind, but the sad state of health of Mr.
Morgan, a more faithful and zealous friend than whom
no man ever possessed. Thank God ! my safe arrival,
the improvement of my health and spirits, and my smiling
prospects have already exerted a favourable influence on
him. Yet I dare not disguise from myself that there is
cause for alarm to those who love and value him. But
do not allude to this subject in your letters, for to be
thought ill or to have his state of health spoken of, agi-
tates and depresses him.

As soon as ever I have settled the lecture room, which
perhaps will be Willis's in Hanover Square, the price of
which is at present ten guineas a time, I will the very first
thing pay the insurance and send off a parcel of books for
Hartley, Derwent, and dear Sara, whom I kissed seven
times in the shape of her pretty letterlet.

My poor darling Derwent ! I shall be most anxious to
receive a letter from you, or from himself, about him.

In giving my love to Mrs. Lovell, tell her that I have
not since the day after my arrival been able to go into
the city, my business having employed me wholly either
in writing or in traversing the West End of the town. I
dined with Lady Beaumont and her sister on Saturday,
for Sir George was engaged to Sir T. Bernard. He how-
may now be had, in one Volume, can obtain them throiigh their regu-
royal 8vo. boards, of Mess : Gale lar Booksellers. Only 300 copies
and Curtis, Paternoster Row. And remain of the 28 nvimbers, and their
Mr. C. intends to complete the Work, being printed on unstamped paper
in from eight to ten similar sheets to will account to the Subscribers for
the foregoing, which will be pub- the difference of price. 2.3, Pater-
lished together in one part, sewed, noster Row, London, 1st February,
The Subscribers to the former part 1812."

1812] TO HIS WIFE 581

ever came and sat with us to the very last moment, and I
dine with him to-day, and AUston is to be of the party.
The bust and the picture from Genevieve are at the Royal
Academy, and already are talked of. Dawe and I will be
of mutual service to each other. As soon as the pictures
are settled, that is, in the first week of May, he means to
treat himself with a fortnight's relaxation at the Lakes.
He is a very modest man, his manners not over polished,
and his worst point is that he is (at least, I have found
him so) a fearful questionist, whenever he thinks he can
pick up any information, or ideas, poetical, historical,
topographical, or artistical, that he can make bear on his
profession. But he is sincere, friendly, strictly moral in
every respect, I firmly believe even to innocence, and in
point of cheerful indefatigableness of industry, in regu-
larity, and temperance — in short, in a glad, yet quiet,
devotion of his whole being to the art he has made choice
of, he is the only man I ever knew who goes near to rival
Southey — gentlemanly address, person, physiognomy,
knowledge, learning, and genius being of course wholly
excluded from the comparison. God knows my heart !
and that it is my full belief and conviction, that taking
all together, there does not exist the man who could with-
out flattery or delusion be called Southey's equal. It is
quite delightful to hear how he is spoken of by all good
people. Dawe will doubtless tahe him. Were S. and I
rich men, we would have ourselves and all of you, short
and tall, in one family picture. Pray receive Dawe as a
friend. I called on Murray, who complained that by Dr.
Bell's delays and irresolutions and scruples, the book " On
the Origin," ^ etc., instead of 3,000 in three weeks, which
he has no doubt would have been the sale had it been
brought out at the fit time, will not now sell 300. I told
him that I believed otherwise, but much would depend on

^ The full title of this work was the New System of Education.
The Origin, Nature and Object of Southey's Life of Dr. Bell, ii. 409.

682 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [April

the circumstance whether temper or prudence would have
most influence on the Athenian critic and his friend
Brougham. If, as I hoped, the former, and the work
should be reviewed in the " Edinburgh Review," if they
took up the gauntlet thrown at them, then there was
no doubt but that a strong tide of sale would set in.
Though verily this gauntlet was of weighty metal, though
of polished steel, and being thrown at rather than down^
it was challenging a man to fight by a blow that threat-
ened to brain him. I have seen Dr. Bell and shall dine
with him at Sir T. Bernard's on Monday next. The ven-
erable Bishop of Durham ^ has sent me a very kind mes-
sage, that though he cannot himself appear in a hired lec-
ture room, yet he will be not only my subscriber but use his
best influence with his acquaintance. I am very anxious
that my books should be sent forward as soon as possible.
They may be sent at three different times, with a week's
intervention. But there is one, scarcely a book, but a
collection of loose sheets tied up together at Grasmere,
which I want immediately, and, if possible, would have
sent up by the coach from Kendal or Penrith. It is a
German Romance with some name beginning with an A,
followed by " oder Die Gltickliche Inseln." It makes
two volumes, but several of the sheets are missing, at
least were so when I put them together. If sent off im-
mediately, it would be of serious benefit to me in my lec-
tures. Miss Hutchinson knows them, and will probably
recollect the sheets I allude to, and these are what I espe-
cially want.

One pair only of breeches were in the parcel, and I am
sadly off for stockings, but the white and under ones I

1 The Honourable and Right Rev- He was a warm supporter of the

erend John Shute Barrington, 1734- Madras system of education. It

1826, sixth son of the first Lord was no doubt Dr. Bell who helped

Barrington, was successively Bishop to interest the Bishop in Coleridge's

of Llandaff , Salisbury, and Durham. Lectures.

1812] TO HIS WIFE 583

can buy here cheap, but if young Mr. White could pro-
cure half a dozen or even a dozen pair of black silk made
as stout and weighty as possible, I would not mind giving
seventeen shillings per pair, if only they can be relied on,
which one cannot do in London. A double knock. I
meant to read over your letter again, lest I should have
forgot anything. If I have, I will answer it in my next.
God bless you and your affectionate husband,

S. T. Coleridge.

Has Southey read " Childe Harold " ? AU the world is
talking of it. I have not, but from what I hear it is
exactly on the plan that I myself had not only conceived
six years ago, but have the whole scheme drawn out in
one of my old memorandum books. My dear Edith, and
my dear Moon ! ^ Though I have scarce room to write it,
yet I love you very much.

CLXXXVI. TO THE SAME.

71, Berners Street, April 24, 1812.

My DEAR Sara, — Give my kind love to Southey, and

inform him that I have, egomet Ms ipsis meis oculis,

seen JVohs, alive, well, and in full fleece ; that after the

death of Dr. Samuel Dove,^ of Doncaster, who did not

1 Herbert Southey, known in the was fully developed in the sprmg of
family as " Dog-Lunus," and "Lu- 1812, when Coleridge paid his last
nus," and " The Moon." Letters of visit to Greta Hall. It was not till
B. Southey, ii. 399. the winter of 1833-1834, that the first

2 Readers of The Doctor will not two volumes of The Doctor appeared
be at a loss to understand the sig- in print, and, as they were published
nificanee of the references to Dr. anonymously, they were, probably,
Daniel Dove and his horse Nobs, by persons familiar with his contri-
According to Cuthbert Southey, the bution to Blackwood and the London
actual composition of the book be- Magazine, attributed to Hartley
gan in 1813, but the date of this Coleridge. " No clue to the author
letter (April, 1812) shows that the has reached me," wrote Southey to
myth or legend of the "Doctor," his friend Wynne. "As for Hart-
and his iron-grey, which had taken ley Coleridge, I wish it were his, but

certainly as early as 1805, am certain that it is not. He is

584 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [April

survive the loss of his faithful wife, Mrs. Dorothy Dove,
more than eleven months, Nobs was disposed of by his
executors to Longman and Clements, Musical Instrument
Manufacturers, whose grand pianoforte hearses he now
draws in the streets of London. The carter was aston-
ished at the enthusiasm with which I intreated him to
stop for half a minute, and the embrace I gave to Nohs,
who evidently understood me, and wistfully with such a
sad expression in his eye, seemed to say, " Ah, my kind
old master. Doctor Daniel, and ah ! my mild mistress, his
dear duteous Dolly Dove, my gratitude lies deeper than
my obligation ; it is not merely skin-deep ! Ah, what I
have been ! Oh, what I am ! his naked, neighing, night-
wandering, new-skinned, nibbling, noblenursling, Nobs ! "
His legs and hoofs are more than half sheejDified, and
his fleece richer than one ever sees in the Leicester breed,
but not so fine as might have been the case had the merino
cross been introduced before the surprising accident and
more surprising remedy took place. More surprising I
say, because the first happened to St. Bartholomew (for
there were skinners even in the days of St. Bartholomew),
but the other never before there was no Dr. Daniel Dove.
I trust that Southey will now not hesitate to record and
transmit to posterity so remarkable a fact. I am de-
lighted, for now malice itself will not dare to attribute
the story to my invention. If I can procure the money,
I will attempt to purchase Nobs, and send him down to
Keswick by short journeys for Herbert and Derwent to
ride upon, provided you can get the field next us.

quite clever enough to have written folly are of that kind." There had
it — quite odd enough, but his opin- been a time when Southey would
ions are desperately radical, and he have expressed himself differently,
is the last person in the world to but in 1834 dissociation from Cole-
disguise them. One report was that ridge had become a matter alike of
his father had assisted him; there habit and of principle. Southey' s
is not a page in the book, wise or ii/e and Correspondence, ii. 355, vi.
foolish, which the latter could have 225-229 ; Letters of B. Southey, iv.
written, neither his wisdom nor his 373.

1812] TO HIS WIFE 585

I have not been able to procure a frank, but I daresay
you will be glad to receive the enclosed receipt even with
the drawback of postage.

Everything, my dear, goes on as prosperously as you
could yourself wish. Sir T. Bernard has taken Willis's
Rooms, King Street, St. James's, for me, at only four
guineas a week, fires, benches, etc., included, and I ex-
pect the lectures to conunence on the first Tuesday in
May. But at the present moment I need both the advice
and the aid of Southey. The " Friends " have arrived in
town. I am at work on the Supplemental Numbers, and
it is of the last importance that they should be brought
out as quickly as possible during the flush and fresh breeze
of my popularity ; but this I cannot do without know-
ing whether Mr. Wordsworth will transmit to me the two
finishing Essays on Epitaphs.^ It is, I know and feel, a
very delicate business ; yet I wish Southey would imme-
diately write to Wordsworth and urge him to send them
by the coach, either to J. J. Morgan, Esq., 71, Berners
Street, or to Messrs. Gale and Curtis, Booksellers, Pater-
noster Row, with as little delay as possible, or if he
decline it, that Southey should apprize me as soon as
possible.

S. T. Coleridge.

The Morgans desire to be kindly remembered, and
Charlotte Brent (tell Derwent) hopes he has not forgot
his old playfellow.

1 The first of the series of " Es- an outline and some extracts in the

says upon Epitaphs " was published Memoirs (i. 434-445), were pub-

in No. 25 of the original issue of lished in full in Prose Works of

The Friend (Feb. 22, 1810), and re- Wordsworth, 1876, ii. 41-75." Life

published by Wordsworth in the of W. Wordsworth, ii. 152 ; Poetical

notes to The Excursion, 1814. " Two Works of Wordsworth, Bibliography,

other portions of the ' Series,' of p. 907.
which the Bishop of Lincoln gives

686 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [May

CLXXXVII. TO CHAELES LAMB.

May 2, 1812.

My deae Chaeles, — I should almost deserve what I
have suffered, if I refused even to put my life in hazard
in defence of my own honour and veracity, and in satis-
faction of the honour of a friend. I say honour, in the
latter instance, singly, because I never felt as a matter of
serious complaint, what was stated to have been said (for
this, though painfully aggravated, was yet substantially
true) — but hy whom it was said, and to whom, and how
and when. Grievously unseasonable therefore as it is,
that I shoidd again be overtaken and hurried back by the
surge, just as I had begun to feel the firm ground under
my feet — just as I had flattered myself, and given reason
to my hospitable friends to flatter themselves, that I had
regained tranquillity, and had become quite myself — at
the time, too, when every thought should be given to my
lectures, on the success or failure of my efforts in which
no small part of my reputation and future prospects will
depend — yet if Wordsworth, upon reflection, adheres to
the plan proposed, I will not draw back. It is right, how-
ever, that I should state one or two things. First, that it
has been my constant desire that evil should not propar
gate evil — or the unhappy accident become the means of
spreading dissension. (2) That I never quarrelled with
Mr. Montagu — say rather, for that is the real truth, that
Mr. Montagu never was, or appeared to be, a man with
whom I could, without self-contempt, allow myself to
quarrel — and lastly, that in the present business there
are but three possible cases — either (1) Mr. Wordsworth
said what I solemnly aver that I most distinctly recollect
Mr. Montagu's representing him as having said, and
which / understood, not merely as great unkindness and
even cruelty, but as an intentional means of putting an
end to our long friendship, or to the terms at least, under

1812] TO CHARLES LAMB 587

whicli it had for so long a period subsisted — or (2), Mr.
Montagu has grossly misrepresented Wordsworth, and
most cruelly and wantonly injured me — or (3), I have
wantonly invented and deliberately persevered in atrocious
falsehoods, which place me in the same relation to Mr.
Montagu as (in the second case) Mr. Montagu would
stand in to me. If, therefore, Mr. Montagu declares to
my face that he did not say what I solemnly aver that
he did — what must be the consequence, unless I am a
more abject coward than I have hitherto suspected, I need
not say. Be the consequences what they may, however,
I will not shrink from doing my duty ; but previously
to the meeting I should very much wish to transmit to
Wordsworth a statement which I long ago began, with
the intention of sending it to Mrs. Wordsworth's sister,
— but desisted in consequence of understanding that she
had already decided the matter against me. My reason
for wishing this is that I think it right that Wordsworth
should know, and have the means of ascertaining, some
conversations which yet I coidd not publicly bring for-
ward without hazarding great disquiet in a family known
(though slightly) to Wordsworth — (2) Because common
humanity would embarrass me in stating before a man
what I and others think of his wife — and lastly, certain
other points which my own delicacy and that due to
Wordsworth himseK and his family, preclude from being
talked of. For Wordsworth ought not to forget that,
whatever influence old associations may have on his mind
respecting Montagu, yet that / never respected or liked
him — for if I had ever in a common degree done so, I
should have quarrelled with him long before we arrived in
London. Yet all these facts ought to be known — because
supposing Montagu to affirm what I am led to suppose he
has — then nothing remains but the comparative proba-
bility of our two accounts, and for this the state of my
feelings towards Wordsworth and his family, my opinion

688 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [May

of Mr. and Mrs. Montagu, and my previous intention not
to lodge with tliem in town, are important documents as
far as they do not rely on my own present assertions.
Woe is me, that a friendship of fifteen years should come
to this ! and such a friendship, in which I call God Al-
mighty to be my witness, as I ever thought it no more
than my dvity, so did I ever feel a readiness to prefer him
to myself, yea, even if life and outward reputation itself
had been the pledge required. But this is now vain talk-
ing. Be it, however, remembered that I have never wan-
dered beyond the one single complaint, that I had been cru-
elly and unkindly treated — that I made no charge against
my friend's veracity, even in respect to his charges against
me — that I have explained the circumstance to those only
who had already more or less perfectly become acquainted
with our difference, or were certain to hear of it from oth-
ers, and that excej^t on this one point, no word of re-
proach, or even of subtraction from his good name, as a
good man, or from his merits as a great man, ever escaped
me. May God bless you, my dear Charles.

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

CLXXXVIII. TO WILLIAM WORDSTVOETH,

71, Berners Street, Monday, May 4, 1812.

I will divide my statement, which I will endeavour to
send you to-morrow, into two parts, in separate letters.
The latter, commencing from the Sunday night, 28 Octo-
ber, 1810, that is, that on which the communication was
made to me, and which will contain my solemn avowal of
what was said by Mr. and Mrs. Montagu, you will make
what use of you please — but the former I write to you,
and in confidence — yet only as far as to your own heart
it shall appear evident, that in desiring it I am actuated
by no wish to shrink personally from any test, not involv-
ing an acknowledgement of my own degradation, and so
become a false witness against myself, but only by del-

1812] TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 689

icacy towards the feelings of otliers, and the dread of
spreading the curse of dissension. But, Wordsworth !
the very message you sent by Lamb and which Lamb did
not deliver to me from the anxiety not to add fuel to the
flame, sufficiently proves what I had learnt on my first
arrival at Keswick, and which alone prevented my going
to Grasmere — namely, that you had prejudged the case.
As soon as I was informed that you had denied having
used certain expressions, I did not hesitate a moment (nor
was it in my power to do so) to give you my fullest faith,
and approve to my own consciousness the truth of my
declaration, that I should have felt it as a blessing, though
my life had the same instant been hazarded as the pledge,
could I with firm conviction have given Montagu the lie,
at the conclusion of his story, even as, at the very first
sentence, I exclaimed — " Impossible ! It is impossible ! "
The expressions denied were indeed only the most offen-
sive part to the feelings — but at the same time I learnt
that you did not hesitate instantly to express your convic-
tion that Montagu never said those words and that I had
invented them — or (to use your own words) " had for-
gotten myself." Grievously indeed, if I know aught of
my nature, must I have forgotten both myself and com-
mon honesty, could I have been villain enough to have
invented and persevered in such atrocious falsehoods.
Your message was that " if I declined an explanation, you
begged I would no longer continue to talk about the af-
fair." When, Wordsworth, did I ever decline an expla-
nation ? From you I expected one, and had a right to
expect it — for let Montagu have added what he may,
still that w^hich remained was most unkind and what I
had little deserved from you, who might by a single ques-
tion have learnt from me that I never made up my mind
to lodge with Montagu and had tacitly acquiesced in it
at Keswick to tranquillise Mrs. Coleridge, to whom Mrs.
Montagu had made the earnest professions of watching

690 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [May

and nursing me, and for whom this and her extreme re-
pugnance to my original, and much wiser, resolution of
going to Edinburgh and placing myself in the house, and
under the constant eye, of some medical man, were the
sole grounds of her assent that I should leave the North at
all. Yet at least a score of times have I begun to write a
detailed account, to Wales ^ and afterwards to Grasmere,
and g;ive it up from excess of agitation, — till finally I
learnt that all of your family had decided against me
unheard — and that [you begged] / would no longer talk
about it. If, Wordsworth, you had but done me the com-
mon justice of asking those with whom I have been most
intimate and confidential since my first arrival in Town in
Oct., 1810, you would have received other negative or posi-
tive proofs how little I needed the admonition or deserve
the sarcasm. Talk about it ? O God ! it has been talked
about ! and that it had, was the sole occasion of my dis-
closing it even to Mary Lamb, the first person who heard
of it from me and that not voluntarily — but that morn-
ing a friend met me, and communicated what so agitated
me that then having previously meant to call at Lamb's I
was compelled to do so from f aintness and universal trem-
bling, in order to sit down. Even to her I did not intend
to mention it ; but alarmed by the wildness and paleness
of my countenance and agitation I had no power to con-
ceal, she entreated me to tell her what was the matter.
In the first attempt to speak, my feelings overpowered me ;
an agony of weeping followed, and then, alarmed at my
own imprudence and conscious of the possible effect on
her health and mind if I left her in that state of sus-
pense, I brought out convulsively some such words as —
" Wordsworth, Wordsworth has given me up. He has no
hope of me — I have been an absolute nuisance ^ in his

1 To Miss Sarah Hutchinson, then these words, or commissioned Mon-
living in Wales. tagu to repeat them to Coleridge, is

2 That Wordsworth ever used in itself improbable and was sol-

1812] TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 591

family" — and when long weeping had relieved me, and
I was able to relate the occurrence connectedly, she can
bear witness for me that, disgraceful as it was that I
should be made the topic of vulgar gossip, yet that " had
the whole and ten times more been proclaimed by a speak-
ing-trumpet from the chimneys, I should have smiled at it
— or indulged indignation only as far as it excited me to
pleasurable activity — but that you had said it, this and
this only, was the sting ! the scorpion-tooth ! " Mr. Mor-
gan and afterwards his wife and her sister were made ac-
quainted with the whole case — and why ? Not merely that
I owed it to their ardent friendship, which has continued
to be mainly my comfort and my only support, but because
they had already heard of it, in part — because a most
intimate and dear friend of Mr. and Mrs. Montagu's had
urged Mr. Morgan to call at the Montagus in order to be
put on his guard against me. He came to me instantly,
told me that I had enemies at work against my character,
and pressed me to leave the hotel and to come home with
him — with whom I have been ever since, with the excep-
tion of a few intervals when, from the bitter conscious-
ness of my own infirmities and increasing irregidarity of

emnly denied by Wordsworth him- Montagu to fight his own hattles.
self. But Wordsworth did not deny The cruel words which Montagu put
that with the best motives and in a into Wordsworth's mouth or Cole-
kindly spirit he took Montagu into ridge in his agitation and resentment
his confidence and put him on his put into Montagu's, were but the
guard, that he professed " to have salt which the sufferer rubbed into
no hope " of his old friend, and that his own wound. The time, the man-
with regard to Coleridge's "habits " ner, and the person combined to ag-
he might have described them as a gravate his misery and dismay,
"nuisance" in his family. It was Judgment had been delivered
all meant for the best, but much against him in absentia, and the
evil and misery might have been judge was none other than his own
avoided if Wordsworth had warned "familiar friend." Henry Crabb
Coleridge that if he should make Robinson's Diary, May 3-10, 1812,
his home under Montagu's roof he first published in Life of W. Words-
could not keep silence, or, better worth, ii. 168, 187.
still, if he had kept silence and left

592 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [May

temper, I took lodgings, against his will, and was always
by his zealous friendship brought back again. If it be
allowed to call any one on earth Saviour, Morgan and his
family have been my Saviours, body and soul. For my
moral will was, and I fear is, so weakened relatively to
my duties to myself, that I cannot act, as I ought to do,
except under the influencing knowledge of its effects on
those I love and believe myself loved by. To him like-
wise I exjilained the affair ; but neither from him or his
family has one word ever escaped me concerning it. Last
autumn Mr. and Mrs. Southey came to town, and at Mr.
Ray's at Richmond, as we were walking alone in the gar-
den, the subject was introduced, and it became my duty
to state the whole affair to them, even as the means of
transmitting it to you. With these exceptions I do not
remember ever to have made any one my confidant —
though in two or three instances I have alluded to the
suspension of our familiar intercourse without explanation,
but even here only- where I knew or fully believed the
persons to have already heard of it. Such was Mrs. Clark-
son, who wrote to me in consequence of one sentence in a
letter to her ; yet even to her I entered into no detail, and
disclosed nothing that was not necessary to my ot\ti de-
fence in not continuing my former corres]3ondence. In
short, the one only thing which I have to blame in myself
was that in my first letter to Sir G. Beaumont I had con-
cluded with a desponding remark allusive to the breach
between us, not in the slightest degree suspecting that he
was ignorant of it. In the letters, which followed, I was
compelled to say more (though I never detailed the words
which had been uttered to me) in consequence of Lady
Beaumont's expressed apprehension and alarm lest in the
advertisement for my lectures the sentence "concerning
the Living Poets " contained an intention on my part to
attack your literary merits. The very thought, that I
could be imagined capable of feeling vindictively toward

1812] TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 593

you at all, mucli more of gratifying tlie passion in so de-
spicable as well as detestable manner, agitated me. I
sent her Ladyship the verses composed after your recita-
tion of the great Poem at Coleorton, and desired her to
judge whether it was possible that a man, who had written
that poem, could be capable of such an act, and in a letter
to Sir G. B., anxious to remove from his mind the assump-
tion that I had been agitated by the disclosure of any till
then unknown actions of mine or parts of conduct, I en-
deavoured to impress him with the real truth that not the
facts disclosed, but the manner and time and the person
by whom and the person to whom they had been disclosed,
formed the whole ground of the breach. And writing in
great agitation I once again used the same words which
had venially burst from me the moment Montagu had
ended his account. " And this is cruel ! this is hase / " I
did not reflect on it till it was irrevocable — and for that
one word, the only word of positive reproach that ever
escaped from me, I feel sorrow — and assure you, that
there is no permanent feeling in my heart which corre-
sponds to it. Talk about it ? Those who have seen me
and been with me, day by day, for so many many months
could have told you, how anxiously every allusion to the
subject was avoided — and with abundant reason — for
immediate and palpable derangement of body as well as
spirits regularly followed it. Besides, had there not ex-
isted in your mind — let me rather say, if ever there had
existed any portion of esteem and regard for me since
the autumn of 1810, would it have been possible that your
quick and powerful judgement could have overlooked the
gross improbability, that I should first invent and then
scatter abroad for talk at public tables the phrases which
(Mr. Robinson yesterday informed me) Mr. Sharon
Turner was indelicate enough to trumpet abroad at Long-
man's table ? I at least will call on Mr. Sharon and de-
mand his authority. It is my full conviction, that in no

594 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [May

one of the hundred tables at which any particulars of our
breach have been mentioned, could the authority be traced
back to those who had received the account from myself.

It seemed unnatural to me, nay, it was unnatural to me
to write to you or to any of your family with a cold exclu-
sion of the feelings which almost overpower me even at this
moment, and I therefore write this preparatory letter to
disburthen my heart, as it were, before I sit down to detail
my recollections simply, and unmixed with the anguish
which, spite of my best efforts, accompany them.

But one thing more, the last complaint that you will
hear from me, perhaps. When without my knowledge
dear Mary Lamb, just then on the very verge of a relapse,
wrote to Grasmere, was it kind or even humane to have
returned such an answer, as Lamb deemed it unadvisable
to shew me ; but which I learnt from the only other per-
son, who saw the answer, amounted in substance to a
sneer on my reported high sj)irits and my wearing pow-
der ? When and to whom did I ever make a merit of
my sufferings ? Is it consistent noic to charge me with
going about complaining to everybody, and now with
my high spirits? Was I to carry a gloomy face into
every society ? or ought I- not rather to be grateful that
in the natural activity of my intellect God had given me
a counteracting principle to the intensity of my feelings,
and a means of escaping from a part of the pressure?
But for this I had been driven mad, and yet for how many
months was there a continual brooding and going on of
the one gnawing recollection behind the curtain of my
outward being, even when I was most exerting myself,
and exerting myself more in order the more to benumb
it ! I might have truly said with Desdemona : —

" I am not merry, but I do beguile
The Thing I am, by seeming otherwise."

And as to the powder, it was first put in to prevent my
taking cold after my hair had been thinned, and I was

1812] TO DANIEL STUART 595

advised to continue it till I became wholly grey, as in
its then state it looked as if I had dirty powder in my
hair, and even when known to be only the everywhere-
mixed-grey, yet contrasting with a face even younger than
my real age it gave a queer and contradictory character
to my whole appearance. Whatever be the result of this
long-delayed explanation, I have loved you and yours too
long and too deeply to have it in my own power to cease
to do so.

S. T. Coleridge.

CLXXXIX. TO DANIEL STUART.

May 8, 1812.

My dear Stuart, — I send you seven or eight tick-
ets,^ entreating you, if pre-engagements or your health
does not preclude it, to bring a group with you ; as many
ladies as possible ; but gentlemen if you cannot muster
ladies — for else I shall not only have been left in the
lurch as to the actual receipts by my great patrons (the
five hundred half-promised are likely to shrink below
fifty) but shall absolutely make a ridiculous appearance.
The tickets are transferable. If you can find occasion
for more, pray send for them to me, as (what it really
will be) a favour done to myself.

1 The tickets were numbered and contain Six Lectures, at One Guinea,
signed by the lecturer. Printed The Tickets Transferable. An Ac-
cards which were issued by way of count is opened at Mess. Ransom
advertisement contained the follow- Morland & Co., Bankers, Pall Mall,
ing announcement : — in the names of Sir G. Beaumont,

"Lectukes on the Drama. Bart., Sir T. Bernard, Bart., W.

"Mr. Coleridge proposes to give Sotheby, Esq., where Subscriptions

a series of Lectures on the Drama wUl be received, and Tickets issued.

of the Greek, French, English and The First Lecture on Tuesday, the

Spanish stage, chiefly with Eefer- 12th of May. — S. T. C, 71, Ber-

ence to the Works of Shakespeare, ners St."

at Willis's Rooms, King Street, St. For an account of the first four

James's, on the Tuesdays and Fri- lectures, see H. C. Robinson's Diary,

days in May and June at Three i. 385-388.
o'clock precisely. The Course will

596 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [May

I am anxious to see you, and to learn how far Bath has
improved or (to use a fashionable slang phrase) disim-
proved your health.

Sir James and Lady Mackintosh are I hear at Bath
Hotel, Jermyn Street. Do you think it will be taken
amiss if I enclosed two or three tickets and cards with
my respectful congratulations on his safe return.^ I
abhor the doing anything that could be even interpreted
into servility, and yet feel increasingly the necessity of
not neglecting the courtesies of life. . . .

God bless you, my dear sir, and your obliged and affec-
tionate friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. Mr. Morgan has left his card for you.

CXC. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

71, Berners Street,
Monday afternoon, 3 o'clock, May 11, 1812.

Mt dear Wordsworth, — I declare before God Al-
mighty that at no time, even in my sorest affliction, did
even the j^ossihility occur to me of ever doubting your
word, I never ceased for a moment to have faith in you,
to love and revere you ; though I was unable to explain
an unkindness, which seemed anomalous in your char-
acter. Doubtless it would have been better, wiser, and
more worthy of my relation to you, had I immediately
written to you a full account of what had happened —
especially as the person's language concerning j^our fam-
ily was such as nothing but the wild general counter-
panegyric of the same person almost in the same breath of
yourself — as a converser, etc., — could have justified me
in not resenting to the uttermost . . .^ All these, added

1 From Bombay. stances wliicli seemed to justify mis-

2 I have followed Prof essor Knight understanding-." The alleged facts
in omitting a passage in which " he throw no light on the relations be-
gives a lengthened list of circum- tween Coleridge and Wordsworth.

1812] TO EGBERT SOUTHEY 697

to what I mentioned in my letter to you, may not justify,
but yet must palliate, the only offence I ever committed
against you in deed or word or thought — that is, the not
writing to you and trusting instead to our common
friends. Since I left you my pocket hooks have been my
only full confidants,^ — and though instructed by pru-
dence to write so as to be intelligible to no being on earth
but yourself and your family, they for eighteen months
together would furnish proof that in anguish or indura-
tion I yet never ceased both to honour and love you.

So T. Coleridge.

I need not say, of course, that your presence at the
Lectures, or anywhere else, will be gratifying to me.

CXCI. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

[May 12, 1812.]
My DEAR SoUTHEY, — The awful event of yester-af-
ternoon has forced me to defer my Lectures to Tuesday,
the 19th, by advice of all my patrons. The same thought
struck us all at the same moment, so that our letters
might be said to meet each other. I write now to urge
you, if it be in your power, to give one day or two of your
time to write something in your impressive way on that
theme which no one I meet seems to feel as they ought to
do, — which, I find scarcely any but ourselves estimate
according to its true gigantic magnitude — I mean the
sinking down of Jacobinism below the middle and tolera-
bly educated classes into the readers and all-swallowing

^ The cryptogram "which Cole- pert would probably decipher nine

ridge invented for his own use was tenths of these memoranda at a

based on the arbitrary selection of glance, but here and there the words

letters of the Greek as equivalents symbolised are themselves anagrams

to letters of the English alphabet, of Greek, Latin, and German words,

The vowels were represented by arid, in a few instances, the clue is

English letters, by the various points, hard to seek.
and by algebraic symbols. An ex-

598 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [May

auditors in tap-rooms, etc. ; and the [political sentiments in
the] " Statesman," " Examiner," etc. I have ascertained
that throughout the great manufacturing counties, Whit-
bread's, Burdett's, and Waithman's speeches and the lead-
ing articles of the " Statesman " and " Examiner " are
printed in ballad [shape] and sold at a halfpenny or a
penny each. I was turned numb, and then sick, and then
into a convulsive state of weeping on the first tidings —
just as if Perceval^ had been my near and personal
friend. But good God ! the atrocious sentiments univer-
sal among the populace, and even the lower order of
householders. On my return from the " Courier," where
I had been to offer my services if I could do anything
for them on this occasion, I was faint from the heat and
much walking, and took that opportunity of going into
the tap-room of a large public house frequented about
one o'clock by the lower orders. It was really shocking,
nothing but exultation ! Burdett's health drank wdth a
clatter of pots and a sentiment given to at least fifty
men and women — " May Burdett soon be the man to
have sway over us ! " These were the very words. " This
is but the beginning." " More of these damned scoun-
drels must go the same way, and then poor people may
live." " Every man might maintain his family decent
and comfortable, if the money were not picked out of
our pockets by these damned placemen." " God is above
the devil, / say, and down to Hell with him and aU
his brood, the Ministers, men of Parliament fellows."
" They won't hear Burdett ; no 1 he is a Christian man
and speaks for the poor," etc., etc. I do not think I
have altered a word.

My love to Sara, and I have received everything right.
The plate will go as desired, and among it a present to
Sariola and Edith from good old Mr. Brent, who had

1 The Right Honourable Spencer Belling-ham, in the lobby of the
Perceval was shot by a man named House of Commons, May 11, 1812,

1812] TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 599

great delight in hearing them talked of. It was wholly
the old gentleman's own thought. Bless them both !

The affair between Wordsworth and me seems settled,
much against my first expectation from the message I re-
ceived from him and his refusal to open a letter from me.
I have not yet seen him, but an explanation has taken
place. I sent by Robinson an attested, avowed statement
of what Mr. and Mrs. Montagu told me, and Wordsworth
has sent me an unequivocal denial of the whole in sjnrit
and of the most offensive passages in letter as well as
spirit, and I instantly informed him that were ten thou-
sand Montagus to swear against it, I should take his
word, not ostensibly only, but with inward faith !

To-morrow I will write out the passage from " Apu-
leius," and send the letter to Rickman. It is seldom that
want of leisure can be fairly stated as an excuse for not
writing ; but really for the last ten days I can honestly
do it, if you will but allow a due portion to agitated feel-
ings. The subscription is languid indeed compared with
the expectations. Sir T. Bernard almost pledged himself
for my success. However, he has done his best, and
so has Lady Beaumont, who herself procured me near
thirty names. I should have done better by myself for
the present, but in the future perhaps it will be better as
it is.

CXCII. TO WILLIAM WOEDSWORTH.l

71, Berners Street,
Monday noon, December 7, 1812.

Write ? My dear Friend ! Oh that it were in my power
to be with you myself instead of my letter. The Lectures

^ The occasion of this letter was immediate reply was sent to Cole-
the death of Wordsworth's son, ridge." We have it, on the author-
Thomas, which took place Decem- ity of Mr. Clarkson, that when
ber 1, 1812. It would seem, as Pro- Wordsworth and Dorothy did write,
fessor Knight intimates, that the in the spring of the following year,
letter was not altogether acceptable inviting him to Grasmere, their let-
to the Wordsworths, and that " no ters remained unanswered, and that

600 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [Dec.

I could give up ; but the rehearsal of my Play commences
this week, and upon this depends my best hopes of leaving
town after Christmas, and living among you as long as I
live. Strange, strange are the coincidences of things !
Yesterday Martha Fricker dined here, and after tea I had
asked question after question respecting your children,
first one, then the other ; but, more than all, concerning
Thomas, till at length Mrs. Morgan said, " What ails you,
Coleridge? Why don't you talk about Hartley, Derwent,
and Sara? " And not two hours ago (for the whole fam-
ily were late from bed) I was asked what was the matter
with my eyes ? I told the fact, that I had awoke three
times during the night and morning, and at each time
found my face and part of the j)iIlow wet with tears.
" Were you dreaming of the Words worths ? " she asked.
— "Of the children?" I said, "No! not so much of
them, but of Mrs. W. and Miss Hutchinson, and yourself
and sister."

Mrs. Morgan and her sister are come in, and I have
been relieved by tears. The sharp, sharp pang at the
heart needed it, when they reminded me of my words the
very yester-night : "It is not possible that I should do
otherwise than love Wordsworth's children, all of them ;
but Tom is nearest my heart — I so often have him be-
fore my eyes, sitting on the little stool by my side, while

when the news came that Coleridge light of Hope " died away, he was

was about to leave London for the left to face the world and himself as

seaside, a fresh wound was inflicted, best or as worst he eoidd. Of the

and fresh offence taken. As Mr. months which intervened between

Dykes Campbell has pointed out, March and September, 1813, there

the consequences of this second rnp- is no record, and we can only guess

ture were fatal to Coleridge's peace that he remained with his kind and

of mind and to his well-being gener- patient hosts, the Morgans, sick in

ally. The brief spell of success and body and broken-hearted. Life of

prosperity which attended the rep- W. Wordsworth, ii. 182 ; Samuel

resentation of " Remorse " inspired Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative, by J.

him for a few weeks with unnatural Dykes Campbell, 1894, pp. 193-197.
courage, but as the " pale unwarming

1812] TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 601

I was writing my essays ; and how quiet and happy the
affectionate little fellow would be if he could but touch
one, and now and then be looked at."

O dearest friend ! what comfort can I afford you ? What
comfort ought I not to afford, who have given you so
much pain? Sympathy deep, of my whole being. . . .
In grief, and in joy, in the anguish of perplexity, and in
the fulness and overflow of confidence, it has been ever
what it is ! There is a sense of the word, Love, in which
I never felt it but to you and one of your household ! I
am distant from you some hundred miles, but glad I am
that I am no longer distant in spirit, and have faith, that
as it has happened but once, so it never can haj)pen again.
Au awful truth it seems to me, and prophetic of our fu-
ture, as well as declarative of our present real nature, that
one mere thought, one feeling of suspicion, jealousy, or
resentment can remove two human beings farther from
each other than winds or seas can separate their bodies.

The words " religious fortitude " occasion me to add
that my faith in our progressive nature, and in all the
doctrinal facts of Christianity, is become habitual in my
understanding, no less than in my feelings. More cheer-
ing illustrations of our survival I have never received, than
from the recent study of the instincts of animals, their
clear heterogeneity from the reason and moral essence
of man and yet the beautiful analogy. Especially, on
the death of children, and of the mind in childhood, alto-
gether, many thoughts have accmuulated, from which I
hope to derive consolation from that most oppressive feel-
ing which hurries in upon the first anguish of such tidings
as I have received ; the sense of uncertainty, the fear of
enjoyment, the pale and deathy gleam thrown over the
countenances of the living, whom we love. . . . But this
is bad comforting. Your own virtues, your own love
itself, must give it. Mr. De Quincey has left town, and
will by this time have arrived at Grasmere. On Sunday

602 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [Jan.

last I gave him a letter for you ; but lie (I have heard)
did not leave town till Thursday night, by what accidents
prevented I know not. In the oppression of spirits under
which I wrote that letter, I did not make it clear that it
was only Mr. Josiah's half of the annuity ^ that was with-
drawn from me. My answer, of course, breathed nothing
but gratitude for the past.

I will write in a few days again to you. To-morrow is
my lecture night, " On the human causes of the spread
of Christianity, and its effects after the establishment
of Christendom." Dear Mary ! dear Dorothy ! dearest
Sara ! Oh, be assured, no thought relative to myself has
half the influence in inspiring the wish and effort to
ajoj^ear and to act what I always in my will and heart
have been, as the knowledge that few things could more
console you than to see me healthy, and worthy of my-
self ! Again and again, my dearest Wordsworth II! I
am affectionately and truly yours,

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

CXCIII. TO HIS WIFE.

Wednesday afternoon [January 20,] 1S[13].

My dear Saea, — Hitherto the " Remorse " has met
with unexampled ap2')lause^ but whether it will continue
to fill the house, that is quite another question, and of
this, my friends are, in my opinion, far, far too sanguine.
I have disposed not of the copyright but of edition by
edition to Mr. Pople, on terms advantageous to me as an
author and honourable to him as a publisher. The ex-
penses of printing and paper (at the trade-price) adver-
tising, etc., are to be dedvicted from the total produce,
and the net profits to be divided into three equal parts, of
which Pople is to have one, and I the other two. And at
any future time, I may publish it in any volume of my
poems collectively. Mr. Arnold (the manager) has just
1 See Letter CXCV., p. 611, note 2.

1813] TO HIS WIFE 603

left me. He called to urge me to exert myself a little
with regard to the daily press, and brought with him
" The Times " ^ of Monday as a specimen of the infernal
lies of which a newspaper scribe can be capable. Not
only is not one sentence in it true ; but every one is in
the direct face of a palpable truth. The misrepresenta-
tions must have been wilful. I must now, therefore,
write to " The Times," and if Walter refuses to insert, I
will then, recording the circumstance, publish it in the
" Morning Post," " Morning Chronicle," and " The
Courier." The dirty malice of Antony Pasquin^ in
the " Morning Herald " is below notice. This, however,
will explain to you why the shortness of this letter, the
main business of which is to desire you to draw upon
Brent and Co., No. 103 Bishopsgate Street Within, for an
hundred pounds, at a month's date from the drawing, or,
if that be objected to, for three weeks, only let me know
which. In the course of a month I have no hesitation in
promising you another hundred, and I hope likewise
before Midsummer, if God grant me life, to repay you
whatever you have expended for the children.

^ The notice of " Remorse " in to Osorio, London, 1873, contains
The Times, though it condemned the selections of press notices of "Re-
play as a whole, was not altogether morse," and other interesting mat-
uncomplimentary, and would be ac- ter. See, too, Poetical Works, Ed-
cepted at the present day by the itor's Note on " Remorse," pp. 649-
majority of critics as just and fair. 651.

It was, no doubt, the didactic and ^ John Williams, described by Ma-
patronising tone adopted towards the caulay as " a filthy and malignant
author which excited Coleridge's baboon," who wrote under the
indignation. "We speak," writes pseudonym of " Anthony Pasquin,"
the reviewer, " with restraint and emigrated to America early in this
unwillingly of the defects of a work century. In 1804 he published a
which must have cost its author so work in Boston, and there is, appar-
much labour. We are peculiarly re- ently, no reason to suppose that he
luctant to touch the anxieties of a subsequently returned to England,
man," etc. The notice in the Morn- Either Coleridge was in error or he
ing Post was friendly and flattering uses the term generally for a scurri-
in the highest degree. The preface lous critic.

604 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [Feb.

My wishes and purposes concerning Hartley and Der-
went I will communicate as soon as this bustle and
endless rat-a-tat-tat at our door is somewhat over. I
concluded my Lectures last night most triumphantly,
with loud, long, and enthusiastic applauses at my en-
trance, and ditto in yet fuller chorus as, and for some
minutes after I had retired. It was lucky that (as I
never once thought of the Lecture till I had entered the
Lecture Box), the two last were the most impressive and
really the best. I suppose that no dramatic author ever
had so large a number of unsolicited, unknown yet prede-
termined plauditors in the theatre, as I had on Satur-
day night. One of the malignant papers asserted that I
had collected all the saints from Mile End turnpike to
Tyburn Bar. With so many warm friends, it is impos-
sible, in the present state of human nature, that I should
not have many unprovoked and unknown enemies. You
will have heard that on my entering the box on Saturday
night, I was discovered by the pit, and that they all
turned their faces towards our box, and gave a treble
cheer of claps.

I mention these things because it will please Southey
to hear that there is a large number of persons in Lon-
don who hail with enthusiasm my prospect of the stage's
being purified and rendered classical. My success, if I
succeed (of which I assure you I entertain doubts in my
opinion well founded, both from the want of a jjrominent
actor for Ordonio, and from the want of \idgar pathos in
the play itself — nay, there is not enough even of true
dramatic pathos), but if I succeed, I succeed for others
as well as myself. . . .

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

p. S. \ pray you, my dear Sara! do take on yourself .
the charge of instantly sending off by the waggon Mr.
Sotheby's folio edition of all Petrarch's Works, which I

1813] TO ROBERT SOUTHEY 605

left at Grasmere. (I am ashamed to meet Sotheby till
I have returned it.) At the same time my quarto MS.
Book with the German Musical Play in it,^ and the two
folio volumes of the Greek Poets may go. For I want
them hourly and I must try to imitate W. Scott in making
hay while the sun shines.

Kisses and heartfelt loves for my sweet Sara, and
scarce less for dear little Herbert and Edith.

CXCIV. TO EGBERT SOUTHEY.

11, Berners Street, Tuesday, February 8, 1813.

My dear Southey, — It is seldom that a man can with
literal truth apologise for delay in writing ; but for the
last three weeks I have had more upon my hands and
spirits than my health was equal to.

The first copy I can procure of the second edition (of
the play) I will do my best to get franked to you. You
will, I hope, think it much improved as a poem. Dr. Bell,
who is all kindness and goodness, came to me in no small
bustle this morning in consequence of " a censure passed
on the ' Pemorse ' by a man of great talents, both in prose
and verse, who was impartial, and thought highly of the
work on the whole." What was it, think you? There
were many unequal lines in the Play, but which he did
not choose to specify. Dr. Bell would not mention the
critic's name, but was very earnest with me to procure
some indifferent person of good sense to read it over, by
way of spectacles to an author's own dim judgement. Soon
after he left me I discovered that the critic was Gifford,
who had said good-naturedly that I ought to be whipt for
leaving so many weak and slovenly lines in so fine a poem.
What the lines were he would not say and /do not care.

1 This note-book must have passed passed into the hands of my father,

out of Coleridge's possession in his The two folio volumes of the Greek

life-time, for it is not among those Poets were in my father's library,

which were bequeathed to Joseph and are now in my possession.
Henry Green, and subsequently

606 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [Feb.

Inequalities have every poem, even an Epic — much more
a Dramatic Poem must have and ought to have. The
question is, are they in their own place dissonances f If
so I am the last man to stickle for them, who am nick-
named in the Green Koom the " anomalous author," from
my utter indifference or prompt facility in sanctioning
every omission that was suggested. That paragraph in the
" Quarterly Review " ^ respecting me, as ridiculed in " Re-
jected Addresses," was surely unworthy of a man of sense
like Gifford. What reason could he have to suppose me
a man so childishly irritable as to be provoked by a trifle
so contemptible ? If he had, how could he think it a parody
at all? But the noise which the "Rejected Addresses"
made, the notice taken of Smith the author by Lord Hol-
land, Byron, etc., give a melancholy confirmation of my
assertion in " The Friend " that " we worship the vilest
reptile if only the brainless head be expiated by the sting
of personal malignity in the tail." I wish I could pro-
cure for you the " Examiner " and Drakard's London
Paper. They were forced to affect admiration of the
Tragedy, but yet abuse me they must, and so comes the
old infamous crambe his millies coda of the " sentimental-
ities, puerilities, whinings, and meannesses, both of style
and thought," in my former writings, but without (which
is worth notice both in these gentlemen and in all our
former Zoili), without one single quotation or reference in
proof or exemplification. No wonder ! for excepting the
" Three Graves," which was announced as not meant for
poetry, and the poem on the Tethered Ass, with the motto
Sermoni propriora,'^ and which, hke your "Dancing

1 " Mr. Colridge {sic) will not, we ^ The motto " Sermoni propriora,"

fear, be as much entertained as we translated by Lamb " properer for

were with his ' Playhouse Musing-s,' a sermon," was prefixed to " Keflec-

which begin with characteristic pa- tions on having left a Place of Re-

thos and simplicity, and put us much tirement." The lines " To a Young

in mind of the affecting story of old Ass " were originally published in

Poulter's mare." the Morning Chronicle^ December 30,

1813] TO ROBERT SOUTHEY 607

Bear," miglit be called a ludicro-splenetic copy of verses,
with the diction purposely appropriate, they might (as at
the first appearance of my poems they did) find, indeed, all
the opposite vices. But if it had not been for the Preface
to W.'s " Lyrical Ballads," they would never themselves
have dreamt of affected simplicity and meanness of
thought and diction. This slang has gone on for fourteen
or fifteen years against us, and really deserves to be ex-
posed. As far as my judgement goes, the two best quali-
ties of the tragedy are, first, the simplicity and unity of
the plot, in respect of that which, of all the unities, is the
only one founded on good sense — the presence of a one
all-pervading, all-combining Principle. By Remorse I
mean the anguish and disquietude arising from the self-
contradiction introduced into the soul by guilt, a feeling
which is good or bad according as the will makes use of
it. This is expressed in the lines chosen as the motto : — -
Remorse is as the heart in which it grows :
I£ that be gentle, it drops balmy dews
Of true repentance ; but if proud and gloomy,
It is a poison tree that, pierced to the inmost,
Weeps only tears of poison ! Act i. sc. 1.

And Remorse is everywhere distinguished from virtuous
penitence. To excite a sanative remorse Alvar returns,
the Passion is put in motion at Ordonio's first entrance
by the appearance of Isidore's wife, etc. ; it is carried still
higher by the narration of Isidore, Act ii. sc. 1 ; higher
still by the interview with the supposed wizard ; and to
its acme by the Incantation Scene and Picture. Now,
then, we are to see its effects and to exemplify the second
part of the motto, " but if proud and gloomy. It is a poi-
son tree," etc. Ordonio, too proud to look steadily into
himself, catches a false scent, plans the murder of Isidore

1794, under the heading, "Address etical Works, pp. 35, 36, Appendix C,
to a Young Jack Ass, and its tethered p. 477. See, too, Biographia Litera-
Mother. In Familiar Verse." Fo- ria, Coleridge's TFor^s, 1853, iii. 161.

608 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [Feb.

and the poisoning of the Sorcerer, perpetrates the one,
and, attempting the other, is driven by Remorse and the
discovery of Alvar to a temporary distraction ; and, finally,
falling a victim to the only crime that had been realized,
by the hand of Alhadra, breathes his last in a pang of
pride : " O couldst thou forget me ! " As from a circum-
ference to a centre, every ray in the tragedy converges to
Ordonio. Spite of wretched acting, the passage told
wonderfully in which, as in a struggle between two un-
equal Panathlists or wrestlers, the weaker had for a mo-
ment got uppermost, and Ordonio, with unfeigned love,
and genuine repentance, says, " I will kneel to thee, my
Brother ! Forgive me, Alvar ! " till the Pride, like the
bottom -swell on our lake, gusts up again in " Curse
me with forgiveness ! " The second good quality is, I
think, the variety of metres according as the speeches are
merely transitive, or narrative, or passionate, or (as in the
Incantation) deliberate and formal poetry. It is true
they are all, or almost all. Iambic blank verse, but under
that form there are five or six perfectly distinct metres.
As to the outcry that the " Remorse " is not pathetic
(meaning such pathos as convulses in " Isabella " or " The
Gamester") the answer is easy. True! the poet never
meant that it should be. It is as pathetic as the " Ham-
let " or the "Julius Cassar." He woo'd the feelings of
the audience, as my wretched epilogue said : —

With no TOO real Woes that make you groan
(At home-bred, kindred grief, perhaps your own),
Yet with no image compensate tlie mind,
Nor leave one joy for memory behind.

As to my thefts from the " Wallenstein," they came on
compulsion from the necessity of haste, and do not lie
on my conscience, being partly thefts from myself, and
because I gave Schiller twenty for one I have taken, and
in the mean time I hope they will lie snug. " The obscur-

1813] TO THOMAS POOLE 609

est Haunt of all our mountains," ^ I did not recognize as
Wordsworth till after the play was all printed. I must
write again to-morrow on other subjects.

The House was crowded again last night, and the Man-
ager told me that they lost £200 by suspending it on
[the] Saturday night that Jack Bannister came out.

(No signature.)

CXCV. TO THOMAS POOLE.

February 13, 1813.

Dear Poole, — Love so deep and so domesticated with
the whole being, as mine was to you, can never cease to
he. To quote the best and sweetest lines I ever wrote :^ —

Alas ! they had been Friends in Youth !
But whisp'ring Tongues can poison Truth ;
And Constancy lives in Realms above ;
And Life is thorny ; and Youth is vain ;
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work, like Madness, in the Brain !
And so it chanced (as I divine)
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high Disdain

1 The words, " Obscurest Haunt Coleridge, if he had anything per-

of all our mountains,' ' are to be sonal in his mind, and we niay be

found in the first act of " Remorse," sure that he had, was looking back

lines 115, 116. Their counterpart in on his early friendship with Southey,

Wordsworth's poems occurs in "The and tbe bitter quarrel which began

Brothers," 1. 140. (" It is the lone- over the collapse of pantisocracy,

liest place of all these hills.") " De and was never healed till the sum-

minimis non curat lex," especially mer of 1799. In the late autumn of

when there is a plea to be advanced, 1800, when the second part of " Chris-

or a charge to be defended. Poeti- tabel " was written, Southey was ab-

cal Works, p. 362 ; Works of Words- sent in Portugal, and the thought of

worth, p. 127. all that had come and gone between

^ Many theories have been haz- him and his " heart's best brother "

arded with regard to the broken inspired this outburst of affection

friendship commemorated in these and regret,
lines. My own impression is that

610 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [Feb.

And Insult to his heart's best Brother :

They parted — ne'er to meet again !

But never either found another

To free the hollow Heart from Paining —

They stood aloof, the Scars remaining,

Like CUffs, which had been rent asunder,

A dreary Sea now flows between ! —

But neither Frost, nor Heat, nor Thunder,

Shall wholly do away, I ween.

The marks of that which once hath been !

Stung as I have been with your unkindness to me, in
my sore adversity, yet the receipt of your two heart-engen-
dered lines was sweeter than an unexpected strain of
sweetest music, or, in humbler phrase, it was the only
pleasurable sensation which the success of the " Eemorse "
has given me. I have read of, or perhaps only imagined,
a punishment in Arabia, in which the culprit was so
bricked up as to be unable to turn his eyes to the right
or the left, while in front was placed a high heap of bar-
ren sand glittering under the vertical sun. Some slight
analogue of this, I have myself suffered from the mere
unusualness of having my attention forcibly directed to a
subject which permitted neither sequence of imagery, or
series of reasoning. No grocer's apprentice, after his
first month's permitted riot, was ever sicker of figs and
raisins than I of hearing about the " Kemorse." The
endless rat-a-tat-tat at our black-and-blue-bruised door,
and my three master-fiends, proof sheets, letters (for I
have a raging epistolophobia), and worse than these —
invitations to large dinners, which I cannot refuse with-
out offence and imputation of pride, or accept without
disturbance of temper the day before, and a sick, aching
stomach for two days after, so that my spii-its quite sink
under it.

From what I myself saw, and from what an intelligent
friend, more solicitous about it than myself, has told me,

1813] TO THOMAS POOLE 611

the " Remorse " lias succeeded in spite of bad scenes,
execrable acting, and newspaper calumny. In my com-
pliments to the actors, I endeavoured (such is the lot of
this world, in which our best qualities tilt against each
other, ex. gr.^ our good nature against our veracity) to
make a lie edge round the truth as nearly as possible.
Poor Rae (why poor ? for Ordonio has almost made his
fortune) did the best in his power, and is a good man . . .
a moral and affectionate husband and father. But nature
has denied him person and all volume and depth of voice ;
so that the blundering coxcomb EUiston, by mere dint of
voice and self-conceit, out-dazzled him. It has been a
good thing for the theatre. They will get X8,000 or
.£10,000, and I shall get more than all my literary labours
put together ; nay, thrice as much, subtracting my heavy
losses in the "Watchman" and "Friend," — X400 in-
cluding the copyright.

You will have heard that, previous to the acceptance of
" Remorse," Mr. Jos. Wedgwood had withdrawn from his
share of the annuity ! ^ Well, yes, it is well ! — for I can
now be sure that I loved him, revered him, and was grate-

1 The annuity of £150 for life, dren, for whom the annuity was re-

which Josiah Wedgwood, on his served. It is hardly likely that a

own and his brother Thqpias' be- man of business forgot the terms of

half, oifered to Coleridge in Jan- his own offer, or that he could

uary, 1798. The letter expressly have imagined that Coleridge was no

states that it is " an annuity for life longer in need of support. Either

of £150 to be regularly paid by us, no in some fit of penitence or of passion

condition whatsoever being annexed Coleridge ofEered to release him, or

to it." " We mean," he adds, " the once again " whispering tongues had

annuity to be independent of every- poisoned truth," and some one had

thing but the wreck of our for- represented to Wedgwood that the

tune." It is extraordinary that a money was doing more harm than

man of probity should have taken good. But a bond is a bond, and it

advantage of the fact that the an- is hard to see, unless the act and

nuity, as had been proposed, was deed were Coleridge's, how Wedg-

not secured by law, and should have wood can escape blame. Thomas

struck this blow, not so much at Poole and his Friends, i. 257-259.
Coleridge, as at his wife and chil-

612 JOURNALIST, LECTURER, PLAYWRIGHT [Feb.

ful to him from no selfish feeling. For equally (and may
these words be my final condemnation at the last awful
day, if I speak not the whole truth), equally do I at this
moment love him, and with the same reverential grati-
tude ! To Mr. Thomas Wedgwood I felt, doubtless, love ;
but it was mingled with fear, and constant apprehension
of his too exquisite taste in morals. But Josiah ! Oh, I
ever did, and ever shall, love him, as a being so beauti-
fully balanced in mind and heart deserves to be !

'Tis well, too, because it has given me the strongest
impulse, the most imperious motive I have experienced,
to prove to him that his past munificence has not been
wasted !

You perhaps may likewise have heard (in the Whisper-
ing Gallery of the World) of the year-long difference be-
tween me and Wordsworth (compared with the sufferings
of which all the former afflictions of my life were less
than flea-bites), occasioned (in great part') by the -vvdcked
folly of the arch-fool Montagu.

A reconciliation has taken place, but the /ee//;?^, which
I had previous to that moment, when the (three-fourth)
calumny burst, like a thunderstorm from a blue sky, on
my soul, after fifteen years of such religious, almost su-
perstitious idolatry and self-sacrifice. Oh, no ! no ! that, I
fear, never can return. All outward actions, all inward
wishes, all thoughts and admirations will be the same —
are the same, but — aye, there remains an immedicable
But. Had W. said (what he acknowledges to have said)
to you, I should have thought it unkind, and have had a
right to say, " Why, why am I, whose whole being has
been like a glass beehive before you for five years, why do
I hear this from a tJiird person for the fix'st time ? " But
to such ... as Montagu ! just when W. himself had
forewarned me ! Oh ! it cut me to the heart's core.

S. T. Coleridge,

CHAPTER XII

A MELANCHOLY EXILE

1813-1815

CHAPTER XII

A MELANCHOLY EXILE

1813-1815

CXCVI. TO DANIEL STUAET.

September 25, 1813.

Dear Stuart, — I forgot to ask you by what address
a letter would best reach you ! Whether Kilburn House,
Kilburn? I shall therefore send it, or leave it at the
" Courier " office. I found Southey so chevaux-de-frized
and pallisadoed by preengagements that I could not reach
at him till Sunday sennight, that is, Sunday, October 3,
when, if convenient, we should be happy to wait on you.
Southey will be in town till Monday evening, and you
have his bro'ther's address, should you wish to write to
him (Dr. Southey,^ 28, Little Queen Anne Street, Caven-
dish Square).

A curious paragraph in the " Morning Chronicle " of
this morning, asserting with its usual comfortahle anti-
patriotism the determination of the Emperor of Austria
to persevere in the terms ^ offered to his son-in-law, in his
frenzy of power, even though he should be beaten to the
dust. Methinks there ought to be good authority before
a journalist dares prophesy folly and knavery in union of
our Imperial Ally. An excellent article ought to be
written on this subject. In the same paper there is what
I should have called a masterly essay on the causes of the

1 Dr. Soutliey, the poet's younger lifelong friendship arose between the

brother Henry, and Daniel Stuart two families.

were afterwards neighbours in Har- ^ Treaty of Vienna, October 9,

ley Street. A close intimacy and 1809.

616 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [April

downfall of tlie Comic Drama, if I was not perplexed by
the distinct recollection of having conversed the greater
part of it at Lamb's. I wish you would read it, and tell
tne what you think ; for I seem to remember a conversa-
tion with you in which you asserted the very contrary ;
that comic genius was the thing wanting, and not comic
subjects — that the watering places, or rather the char-
acters presented at them, had never been adequately man-
aged, etc.

Might I request you to present my best respects to
Mrs. Stuart as those of an old acquaintance of yours, and,
as far as I am myself conscious of, at all times with hearty
affection, your sincere friend,

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

P. S. There are some half dozen more books of mine
left at the "Courier" office, Ben Jonson and sundry-
German volumes. As I am compelled to sell my library,^
you would oblige me by ordering the porter to take them
to 19, London Street, Fitzroy Square ; whom I will re-
munerate for his trouble. I should not take this liberty,
but that I had in vain written to Mr. Street, requesting
the same favour, which in his hurry of business I do not
wonder that he forgot.

CXCVII. TO JOSEPH C0TTLE.2

AprU 26, 1814.
You have poured oil in the raw and festering wound
of an old friend's conscience, Cottle ! but it is oil of

^ This could only have been car- ter, and still more of that to Josiah

ried out in part. A large portion Wade of June 26, 1814 (Letter

of the books which Coleridg-e pos- CC), was deeply resented by Cole-

sessed at his death consisted of those ridge's three children and by all

which he had purchased during his his friends. In the preface to his

travels in Germany in 1799, and in Early Becollections Cottle defends

Italy in 1805-1806. himself on the plea that in the in-

^ The publication by Cottle, in terests of truth these confessions

1837, of this and the following let- should be revealed, and urges that

The room at Highgate^ where he died

1814] TO JOSEPH COTTLE 617

vitriol 1 I but barely glanced at the middle of the first
page of your letter, and have seen no more of it — not
from resentment (God forbid !), but from the state of my
bodily and mental sufferings, that scarcely permitted
human fortitude to let in a new visitor of affliction.

The object of my present reply is to state the case just
as it is. First, that for ten years the anguish of my
spirit has been indescribable, the sense of my danger
staring, but the consciousness of my guilt worse, far
worse than all. I have prayed, with drops of agony on
my brow, trembling not only before the justice of my
Maker, but even before the mercy of my Redeemer. " I
gave thee so many talents, what hast thou done with
them?" Secondly, overwhelmed as I am with a sense
of my direful infirmity, I have never attempted to dis-
guise or conceal the cause. On the contrary, not only to
friends have I stated the whole case with tears and the
very bitterness of shame, but in two instances I have
warned yomig men, mere acquaintances, who had spoken
of having taken laudanum, of the direful consequences,
by an awful exposition of the tremendous effects on
myseK.

Coleridge's own demand that after etc., he was able to quote Southey

his death " a full and unqualified as an advocate, though, possibly, a

narrative of my wretchedness and reluctant advocate, for publication,

its guilty cause may be made pub- There can be no question that nei-

lic," not only justified but called ther Coleridge's request nor South-

for his action in the matter. The ey's sanction gave Cottle any right

law of copyright in the letters of to wound the feelings of the living

parents and remoter ancestors was or to expose the frailties and remorse

less clearly defined at that time than of the dead. The letters, which have

it is at present, and Coleridge's liter- been public property for nearly

ary executors contented themselves sixty years, are included in these

with recording their protest in the volumes because they have a nat-

strongest possible terms. In 1848, ural and proper place in any collec-

when Cottle reprinted his Early tion of Coleridge's Letters which

Recollections, together with some claims to be, in any sense, repre-

additional matter, under the title of sentative of his correspondence at

Beminiscences of S. T. Coleridge, large.

618 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [May

Thirdly, though before God I cannot lift up my eye-
lids, and only do not despair of His mercy, because to
despair would be adding crime to crime, yet to my fellow-
men I may say that I was seduced into the accursed
habit ignorantly. I had been almost bed-ridden for many
months with swellings in my knees. In a medical jour-
nal, I unhappily met with an account of a cure performed
in a similar case (or what appeared to me so), by rub-
bing in of laudanum, at the same time taking a given
dose internally. It acted like a charm, like a miracle !
I recovered the use of my limbs, of my appetite, of my
spirits, and this continued for near a fortnight. At length
the unusual stimulus subsided, the complaint returned,
the supposed remedy was recurred to — but I cannot go
through the dreary history.

Suffice it to say, that effects were produced which acted
on me by terror and cowardice, of pain and sudden
death, not (so help me God !) by any temptation of
pleasure, or expectation, or desire of exciting pleasurable
sensations. On the very contrary, Mrs. Morgan and her
sister will bear witness, so far as to say, that the longer
I abstained the higher my spirits were, the keener my
enjoyment — till the moment, the direful moment, arrived
when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate,
and such a dreadfid falling abroad, as it were, of my whole
frame, such intolerable restlessness, and incipient bewil-
derment, that in the last of my several attempts to aban-
don the dire poison, I exclaimed in agony, which I now
repeat in seriousness and solemnity, " I am too poor to
hazard this." Had I but a few hmidred pounds, but
X200 — half to send to Mrs. Coleridge, and half to place
myself in a private madhouse, where I coidd procure
nothing but what a physician thought proper, and where
a medical attendant could be constantly with me for two
or three months (in less than that time life or death
would be determined), then there might be hope. Now

1814] TO JOSEPH COTTLE 619

there is none ! ! O God ! how willingly would I place
myself under Dr. Fox, in his establishment ; for my case
is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement, an
utter impotence of the volition, and not of the intellectual
faculties. You bid me rouse myself : go bid a man
paralytic in both arms, to rub them briskly together, and
that will cure him. " Alas ! " he would reply, " that I
cannot move my arms is my complaint and my misery."

May God bless you, and your affectionate, but most
affl-icted,

S. T. Coleridge.

CXCVIII. TO THE SAME.

Friday, May 27, 1814.

My dear Cottle, — Gladness be with you, for your
convalescence, and equally so, at the hope which has sus-
tained and tranquillised you through your imminent peril.
Far otherwise is, and hath been, my state ; yet I too am
grateful ; yet I cannot rejoice. I feel, with an intensity
unfathomable by words, my utter nothingness, impotence,
and worthlessness, in and for myself. I have learned
what a sin is, against an infinite imperishable being, such
as is the soul of man !

I have had more than a glimpse of what is meant by
death and outer darkness, and the worm that dieth not —
and that all the liell of the reprobate is no more incon-
sistent with the love of God, than the blindness of one
who has occasioned loathsome and guilty diseases, to eat
out his eyes, is inconsistent with the light of the sun. But
the consolations, at least, the sensible sweetness of hope, I
do not possess. On the contrary, the temptation which I
have constantly to fight up against is a fear, that if anni-
hilation and the possibility of heaven were offered to my
choice, I should choose the former.

This is, perhaps, in part, a constitutional idiosyncrasy,
for when 'a mere boy I wrote these lines : —

620 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [May

O, what a wonder seems the fear of death,

Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep,

Babes, children, youths, and men,

Night following night, for three-score years and ten ! ^

And in my early manhood, in lines descriptive of a gloomy
solitude, I disguised my own sensations in the following
words : —

Here wisdom might abide, and here remorse !

Here, too, the woe-worn man, who, weak in soul,

And of this busy human heart aweary.

Worships the spirit of unconscious life

In tree or wild-flower. Gentle lunatic !

If so he might not wholly cease to be.

He would far rather not be what he is ;

But would be something that he knows not of,

In woods or waters, or among the rocks. ^

My main comfort, therefore, consists in what the divines
call the faith of adherence, and no spiritual effort appears
to benefit me so much as the one earnest, importunate,
and often for hours, momently repeated prayers : " I be-
lieve ! Lord, help my imbelief ! Give me faith, but as a
mustard seed, and I shall remove this mountain ! Faith !
faith ! faith ! I believe. Oh, give me faith ! Oh, for my
Redeemer's sake, give me faith in my Eedeemer."

In all this I justify God, for I was accustomed to op-
pose the preaching of the terrors of the gospel, and to
represent it as debasing virtue by the admixture of slav-
ish selfishness.

I now see that what is spiritual can only be spiritually
apprehended. Comprehended it cannot.

Mr. Eden gave you a too flattering account of me. It

1 At whatever time these lines Works, p. 61 ; Editor's Note, pp.

may have been written, they were 562, 563.

not printed till 1829, when they ^ "The Picture; or The Lover's

wereprefixed to the "Monody on the Resolution," lines 17-25. Poetical

Death of Chatterton." Poetical Works, p. 162.

1814] TO CHARLES MATHEWS 621

is true, I am restored as mucli beyond my expectations
almost as my deserts ; but I am exceedingly weak. I
need for myself solace and refocillation of animal spirits,
instead of being in a condition of offering* it to others.
Yet as soon as I may see you, I will call upon you.

S. T. Coleridge.

CXCIX. TO CHARLES MATHEWS.

2, Queen's Square, Bristol, May 30, 1814.

Dear Sir, — Unusual as this liberty may be, yet as it
is a friendly one, you will pardon it, especially from one
who has had already some connection with the stage, and
may have more. But I was so highly gratified with my
feast of this night, that I feel a sort of restless impulse
to tell you what I felt and thought.

Imprimis, I grieved that you had such miserable mate-
rials to deal with as Colman's Solomon Grundy,^ a char-
acter which in and of itself (Mathews and his Variations
ad libitum put out of the question) contains no one ele-
ment of genuine comedy, no, nor even of fun or drollery.
The play is assuredly the very sediment, the dregs of a
noble cask of wine ; for such was, yes, in many instances
was and has been, and in many more might have been,
Colmans dramatic genius.

A genius Colman is by nature. What he is not, or
has not been, is all of his own making. In my humble
opinion, he possessed the elements of dramatic power in
a far higher degree than Sheridan : or which of the two,
think you, should pronounce with the deeper sigh of self-
reproach, " Fuimus Troes ! and what might we not have
been?"

But I leave this to proceed to the really astonishing-
effect of your duplicate of Cook in Sir Archy McSar-

1 Solomon Grundy is a character, a Guinea ? produced at Covent Gar-
played by Faweett, in George Col- den, 1804-1805.
man the younger's piece, Who wants

622 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [June

casm.i To say that in some of your higher notes your
voice was rather thinner, rather less substance and thich
body than poor Cook's, would be merely to say that A. B.
is not exactly A. A. But, on the whole, it was almost
illusion, and so very excellent, that if I were intimate
with you, I should get angry and abuse you for not form-
ing for yourself some original and important character.
The man who could so impersonate Sir Archy McSar-
casm might do anything in profound Comedy (that is,
that which gives us the passions of men and their endless
modifications and influences on thought, gestures, etc.,
modified in their turn by circumstances of rank, relations,
nationality, etc., instead of mere transitory manners ; in
short, the inmost man represented on the superficies, in-
stead of the superficies merely representing itself). But
you will forgive a stranger for a suggestion ? I cannot
but think that it would answer for your still increasing
fame if you were either previously to, or as an occasional
diversification of Sir Archy, to study and give that one
most incomparable monologue of Sir Pertinax McSyco-
phant,^ where he gives his son the history of his rise and
progress in the world. Being in its essence a soliloquy
with all the advantages of a dialogue, it would be a most
happy introduction to Sir Archy McSarcasm, which, I
doubt not, will call forth with good reason the Covent
Garden Manager's thanks to you next season.

I once had the j)resumption to address this advice to
an actor on the London stage : ^^ Think, in order that you
may be able to observe ! Observe, in order that you may
have materials to think upon ! And thirdly, keej) awake
ever the habit of instantly embodying and realising the
results of the two ; but always think ! "

A great actor, comic or tragic, is not to be a mere copy
a fac simile, or but an imitation, of Nature. Now an

1 A character in Maeklin's play, ^ A character in Macklins play,
Love h la Mode. ^ Man of the World.

1814] TO JOSIAH WADE 623

imitation differs from a copy in tliis, that it of necessity
implies and demands difference, whereas a copy aims at
identity. What a marble peach on a mantelpiece, that
you take up deluded and put down with pettish disgust, is,
compared with a fruit-piece of Vanhuyser's, even such is
a mere C02:)y of nature compared with a true histrionic imi-
tation. A good actor is Pygmalion's Statue, a work of
exquisite art, animated and gifted with motion ; but still
art, still a species of poetry.

Not the least advantage which an actor gains by having
secured a high reputation is this, that those who sincerely
admire him may dare tell him the truth at times, and
thus, if he have sensible friends, secure his progressive im-
provement ; in other words, keep him thinking. For
without thinking, nothing consummate can be effected.

Accept this, dear sir, as it is meant, a small testimony
of the high gratification I have received from you and of
the respectful and sincere kind wishes with which I am
Your obedient S. T. Coleridge.

Mathews, Esq., to be left at the Bristol Theatre.

CC. TO JOSIAH WADE.

Bristol, June 26, 1814.

Dear Sir, — For I am unworthy to call any good man
friend — much less you, whose hospitality and love I have
abused ; accept, however, my intreaties for your forgive-
ness, and for your prayers.

Conceive a poor miserable wretch, who for many years
has been attempting to beat off pain, by a constant recur-
rence to the vice that reproduces it. Conceive a spirit in
hell, employed in tracing out for others the road to that
heaven, from which his crimes exclude him ! In short,
conceive whatever is most wretched, helpless, and hope-
less, and you will form as tolerable a notion of my state,
as it is possible for a good man to have.

624 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [Aug.

I used to think the text in St. James that " he who of-
fended in one point, offends in all," very harsh; but I
now feel the awful, the tremendous truth of it. In the
one crime of opium, what crime have I not made myself
guilty of ! — Ingratitude to my Maker ! and to my bene-
factors — injustice! and unnatural cruelty to my 'poor
children 1 — self-contempt for my repeated promise —
breach, nay, too often, actual falsehood !

After my death, I earnestly entreat, that a full and un-
qualified narration of my wretchedness, and of its guilty
cause, may be made public, that at least some little good
may be effected by the direful exanqole.

May God Ahuighty bless you, and have mercy on your
still affectionate, and in his heart, grateful

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

CCI. TO JOHN MURRAY.

Josiali Wade's, Esq., 2, Queen's Square, Bristol,
AugTist 23, 1S14.

Dear Sir, — I have heard, from my friend Mr. Charles
Lamb, writing by desire of Mr. Robinson, that you wish
to have the justly-celebrated " Faust " ^ of Goethe trans-
lated, and that some one or other of my partial friends
have induced you to consider me as the man most likely

^ It is needless to say that Cole- guag-e, much of -(vhich was," he

ridge never even attempted a trans- thought, " vulgar, licentious, and

lation of Faust. ^Vhether there blasphemous," is not borne out by

were initial difficulties with regard the tone of his letters to Murray, of

to procuring the " whole of Goethe's July 29, August 31, 1S14. No doubt

■works," and otlier books of refer- the spirit of Faust, alike with re-

ence, or whether his heart failed him gard to theology and morality, would

when he began to study the work at all times have been distasteful to

with a view to translation, tlie ar- him, but with regard to what actu-

rangement with Murray fell through, ally took place, he deceived himself

A statement in the Table Talk for in supposing that the feelings and

February 10, 1833, that the task was scruples of old age would have pre-

abandoned on moral grounds, that vailed in middle life. Memoirs of

he could not bring himself to famil- John Murray, i. 297 et seq.
iarise the English public with " Ian-

1814] TO JOHN MURRAY 625

to execute the work adequately, those excepted, of course,
whose higher power (established by the solid and satisfac-
tory ordeal of the wide and rapid sale of their works) it
might seem profanation to employ in any other manner
than in the development of their own intellectual organi-
sation. I return my thanks to the recommender, whoever
he be, and no less to you for your flattering faith in the
recommendation ; and thinking, as I do, that among many
volumes of praiseworthy German poems, the "Louisa" of
Voss, and the " Faust " of Goethe, are the two, if not the
only ones, that are emjohatically original in their concep-
tion, and characteristic of a new and peculiar sort of
thinking and imagining, I should not be averse from
exerting my best efforts in an attempt to import what-
ever is importable of either or of both into our own
language.

But let me not be suspected of a presumption of which
I am not consciously guilty, if I say that I feel two diffi-
culties : one arising from long disuse of versification,
added to what I know, better than the most hostile critic
could inform me, of my comparative weakness ; and the
other, that any work in Poetry strikes me with more than
common awe, as proposed for realization by myself, be-
cause from long habits of meditation on language, as the
symbolical medium of the connection of Thought with
Thought, and of Thought as affected and modified by
Passion and Emotion, I should spend days in avoiding
what I deemed faults, though with the full fore-knowledge
that their admission would not have offended perhaps
three of all my readers, and might be deemed Beauties by
300 — if so many there were ; and this not out of any re-
spect for the Public (i. e. the persons who might happen
to purchase and look over the Book), but from a hobby-
horsical, superstitious regard to my own feelings and sense
of duty. Language is the Sacred Fire in this Temple of
Humanity, and the Muses are its especial and vestal

626 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [Sept.

Priestesses. Though I cannot prevent the vile drugs and
counterfeit Frankincense, which render its flame at once
pitchy, glowing, and unsteady, I would yet be no volun-
tary accomplice in the Sacrilege. With the commence-
ment of a Public, commences the degradation of the
Good and the Beautiful — both fade and retire before
the accidentally Agreeable. " Othello " becomes a hol-
low lip-worship ; and the " Castle Spectre " or any
more peccant thing of Froth, Noise, and Impermanence,
that may have overbillowed it on the restless sea of curi-
osity, is the true Prayer of the Praise and Admiration.

I thought it right to state to you these opinions of mine,
that you might know that I think the Translation of the
" Faust " a task demanding (from me, I mean) no ordi-
nary efforts — and why ? This — that it is painful, very
painful, and even odious to me, to attempt anything of a
literary nature, with any motive of pecuniary advantage ;
but that I bow to the all-wise Providence, which has made
me a poor man, and therefore compelled me by other du-
ties inspiring feelings, to bring even my Intellect to the
Marhet. And the finale is this. I shoidd like to attempt
the Translation. If you will mention your terms, at once
and irrevocably (for I am an idiot at bargaining, and
shrink from the very thought), I will return an answer
by the next Post, whether in my present circumstances, I
can or cannot undertake it. If I do, I wiU do it immedi-
ately ; but I must have all Goethe's works, which I can-
not procure in Bristol ; for to give the " Faust " without
a preliminary critical Essay would be worse than nothing,
as far as regards the Public. If you were to ask me as
a friend whether I think it would suit the General Taste,
I should reply that I cannot calculate on caprice and acci-
dent (for instance, some fashionable man or review hap-
pening to take it up favourably), but that otherwise my
fears would be stronger than my hopes. Men of genius
will admire it, of necessity. Those must, who think deep-

1814] TO DANIEL STUART 627

est and most imaginatively. Then " Louisa " would de-
light all of good hearts.

I remain, dear sir, with every respect,

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

ecu. TO DANIEL STUART.

Mr. Smith's, Ashley, Box, near Bath,
September 12, 1814.

My dear Sir, — I wrote some time ago to Mr. Smith,
earnestly requesting your address, and entreating him to
inform you of the dreadful state in which I was, when
your kind letter must have arrived, during your stay at
Bath. . . . Bat let me not complain. I ought to be and
I trust I am, grateful for what I am, having escaped with
my intellectual powers, if less elastic, yet not less vigor-
ous, and with ampler and far more solid materials to ex-
ert them on. We know nothing even of ourselves, till we
know ourselves to be as nothing (a solemn truth, spite
of point and antithesis, in which the thought has chanced
to v)07'd itself) ! From this word of truth which the sore
discipline of a sick bed has compacted into an indwelling
reality, from this article, formerly, of spectdative belief,
but which [circumstances] have actualised into practical
faith, I have learned to counteract calumny by self-re-
proach, and not only to rejoice (as indeed from natural
disposition, from the very constitution of my heart, I
should have done at all periods of my life) at the tempo-
ral prosperity, and increased and increasing reputation of
my old fellow-labourers in philosophical, political, and po-
etical literature, but to bear their neglect, and even their
detraction, as if I had done nothing at all, when it would
have asked no very violent strain of recollection for one
or two of them to have considered, whether some part
of their most successful somethings were not among the
nothings of my intellectual no-doings. But all strange
thinsfs are less strange than the sense of intellectual obli-

628 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [Sept.

gations. Seldom do I ever see a Review, yet almost as
often as that seldomness permits have I smiled at find-
ing myself attacked in strains of thought which would
never have occurred to the writer, had he not directly or
indirectly learned them from myself. This is among the
salutary effects, even of the dawn of actual religion on the
mind, that we begin to reflect on our duties to God and
to ourselves as pei'manent beings, and not to flatter our-
selves by a superficial auditing of our negative duties to
our neighbours, or mere acts i7i transitu to the transitory.
I have too sad an account to settle between myself that is
and has been, and myself that can not cease to be, to al-
low me a single complaint that, for all my labours in be-
half of truth against the Jacobin party, then against mili-
tary despotism abroad, against weakness and desiDondency
and faction and factious goodiness at home, I have never
received from those in power even a verbal acknowledg-
ment ; though by mere reference to dates, it might be
proved that no small number of fine speeches in the House
of Commons, and elsewhere, originated, directly or indi-
rectly, in my Essays and conversations.^ I dare assert,
that the science of reasoning and judging concerning the
productions of literature, the characters and measures of
public men, and the events of nations, hj a sj^stematic
subsumption of them, under Principles, deduced from
the nature of man, and that of prophesying concerning
the future (in contradiction to the hopes or fears of the
majority) by a careful cross-examination of some period,
the most analogous in past history, as learnt from contem-
porary authorities, and the proportioning of the ultimate
event to the likenesses as modified or counteracted by the
differences, was as good as unkno^^^l in the public prints,

^ " The thoughts of Coleridge, age, the great moral truths which
even during the -whirl of passing were then being proclaimed in char-
events, discovered their hidden acters of fire to mankind." Alison's
springs, and poured forth, in an oh- History of Europe, ix. 3 (ninth edi-
scure style, and to an unheeding tion).

1814] TO DANIEL STUART 629

before the year 1795-96. Earl Darnley, on the appear-
ance o£ my letters in the " Courier " concerning the
Spaniards,^ bluntly asked me, whether I had lost my
senses, and quoted Lord Grenville at me. If you should
happen to cast your eye over my character of Pitt,^ my
two letters to Fox, my Essays on the French Empire
under Buonaparte, compared with the Roman, under the
first Emperors ; that on the probability of the restoration
of the Bourbons, and those on Ireland, and Catholic
Emancipation (which last unfortunately remain for the
greater part in manuscript, Mr. Street not relishing them),
and should add to them my Essays in " The Friend " on
Taxation, and the supposed effects of war on our commer-
cial prosperity ; tliose on international law in defence of
our siege of Copenhagen ; and if you had before you the
long letter which I wrote to Sir G. Beaumont in 1806,'^
concerning the inevitableness of a war with America, and
the speciiic dangers of that war, if not provided against
by specific pre-arrangements ; with a list of their Frigates,
so called, with their size, number, and weight of metal,
the characters of their commanders, and the proportion
suspected of British seamen. — I have luckily a copy of
it, a rare accident with me. — I dare amuse myself, I
say, with the belief, that by far the better half of all

1 The eight " Letters on the Span- Six Letters to Judge Fletcher on

iards," which Coleridge contributed Catholic Emancipation, which ap-

to the Courier in December, Janu- peared at irregular intervals in the

ary, 1809-10, are reprinted in Es- Courier, September-December, 1814,

says on His Own Times, ii. 593-670. are reprinted in Essays on His Own

^ The character of Pitt appeared Times, iii. 677-733.
in the Morning Post, March 19, 1800 ; The Essay on Taja.tion forms the
the letters to Fox, on November 4, seventh Essay of Section the First,
9, 1802 ; the Essays on the French on the Principles of Political Know-
Empire, etc., September 21, 25, and ledge. The Friend ; Coleridge'' s
October 2, 1802 ; the Essay on the Works, Harper & Brothers, 1853,
restoration of the Bourbons, Octo- ii. 208-222.

ber, 1802. They are reprinted in ^ Neither the original nor the

the second volume of Essays on His transcript of this letter has, to my

Own Times. knowledge, been preserved.

630 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [Sept.

these, would read to you now, as histoey. And what have
I got for all this ? What for my first daring to blow the
trumpet of sound philosophy against the Lancastrian fac-
tion ? The answer is not complex. Unthanked, and left
worse than defenceless, by the friends of the Government
and the Establishment, to be undermined or outraged by
all the malice, hatred, and calumny of its enemies ; and
to think and toil, with a patent for all the abuse, and a
transfer to others of all the honours. In the " Quarterly "
Review of the " Remorse " (delayed till it could by no
possibility be of the least service to me, and the compli-
ments in which are as senseless and silly as the censures ;
every fault ascribed to it, being either no improbability at
all, or from the very essence and end of the drama no
DEAMATIC improbability, without noticing any one of the
REAL faults, and there are many glaring, and one or two
DEADLY sins in the tragedy) — in this Review, I am
abused, and insolently reproved as a man, with reference
to my supposed private habits, for not publishing.
Would to heaven I never had ! To this very moment I
am embarrassed and tormented, in consequence of the
non-payment of the subscribers to " The Friend." But I
could rebut the charge ; and not merely say, but prove,
that there is not a man in England, whose thoughts, im-
ages, words, and erudition have been published in larger
quantities than mine ; though I must admit, not 5?/, or
for, myself. Believe me, if I felt any pain from these
things, I should not make this ea^joose / for it is constitu-
tional with me, to shrinh from all talk or communication
of what gnaws within me. And, if I felt any real anger,
I should not do what I fiilly intend to do, publish two
long satires, in Drydenic verse, entitled " Puff and Slan-
der." 1 But I seem to myself to have endured the hoot-

1 He reverts to this "turning' of dated January 5, 1818. He threat-
the worm " in a letter to Morgan ened to attack publishers and print-

1814] TO DANIEL STUART 631

ings and peltings, and " Go up bald head " (2 Kings, eh.
ii. vs. 23, 24) quite long enough ; and shall therefore
send forth my two she-bears, to tear in pieces the most
obnoxious of these ragged children in intellect ; and to
scare the rest of these mischievous little mud-larks back
to their crevice-nests, and lurking holes. While those
who know me best, spite of my many infirmities, love me
best, I am determined, henceforward, to treat my unpro-
voked enemies in the spirit of the Tiberian adage, Oderint
modo timeant.

And now, having for the very first time in my whole
life opened out my whole feelings and thoughts concern-
ing my past fates and fortunes, I will draw anew on your
patience, by a detail of my present operations. My med-
ical friend is so well satisfied of my convalescence, and
that nothing now remains, but to superinduce j^ositive
health on a system from which disease and its removable
causes have been driven out, that he has not merely con-
sented to, but advised my leaving Bristol, for some rural
retirement. I could indeed pursue nothing uninterrupt-
edly in that city. Accordingly, I am now joint tenant
with Mr. Morgan, of a sweet little cottage, at Ashley, half
a mile from Box, on the Bath road. I breakfast every
morning before nine ; work till one, and walk or read till
three. Thence, till tea-time, chat or read some lounge
book, or correct what I have written. From six to eight
work again ; from eight till bed-time, play whist, or the
little mock billiard called bagatelle, and then sup, and go
to bed. My morning hours, as the longest and most im-
portant division, I keep sacred to my most important

era in " a vigorous and harmonious stalment of " these two long satires."

satire " to he called " Puff and Slan- Letter in British Museum. MSS.

der." I am inclined to think that Addit- 25612. Samuel Taylor Cole-

the remarkahle verses entitled " A ridge, a Narrative by J. Dykes

Character, " which were first printed Campbell, p. 234, note; Poetical

in 1834, were an accomplished in- Works, pp. 195, 642.

632 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [Sept.

Work,i wliich is printing at Bristol ; two of my friends
having taken upon themselves the risk. It is so long
since I have conversed with you, that I cannot say,
whether the subject will, or will not be interesting to you.
The title is " Christianity, the one true Philosophy ; or,
Five Treatises on the Logos, or Communicative Intelli-
gence, natural, human, and divine." To which is prefixed
a prefatory Essay, on the laws and limits of toleration and
liberality, illusti^ated by fragments of AUTO-biography.
The^^>6'^ Treatise — Logos Propaideuticos, or the Science
of systematic thinking in ordinary life. The second —
Logos Architectonicus, or an attempt to apply the con-
structive or Mathematical process to Metaphysics and
Natural Theology. The third — 'O Ao'yos 6 0edv6p<j}-o<; (the
divine logos incarnate) — a full commentary on the Gos-
pel of St. John, in development of St. Paul's doctrine of
preaching Christ alone, and Him crucified. The fourth
— on Spinoza and Spinozism, with a life of B. S2:>inoza.
This entitled Logos Agonistes. The Jlfth and last, Logos
Alogos (i. e., Logos lUogicus), or on modern Unitarian-
ism, its causes and effects. The whole will be comprised
in two portly octavos, and the second treatise will be the
only one which will, and from the nature of the subject

1 A work -which should contain tated to his amanxiensis and disciple,
all knowledge and proclaim all phi- J. H. Green, and is now in my pos-
losophy had been Coleridge's dream session. A commentary on the Gos-
from the beginning, and, as no such pels and some of the Epistles, of
work was ever produced, it may be which the original MS. is extant,
said to have been his dream to the and of which I possess a transcrip-
end. And yet it was something tion, was an accomplished fact. I
more than a dream. Besides innu- say nothing of the actual or relative
merable fragments of metaphysical value of this unpublished matter,
and theological speculation which but it should be put on record that
have passed into my hands, he actu- it exists, that much labour, ill-
ally did compose and dictate two judged perhaps, and ineffectual la-
large quarto volumes on formal logic, hour, was expended on the outworks
which are extant. " Something more of the fortresses, and that the walls
than a volume," a portentous intro- and bastions are standing to the
duction to his magnum opus, was die- present day.

1814] TO DANIEL STUART 633

must, be unintelligible to the great majority even of well
educated readers. The purpose of the whole is a philo-
sophical defence of the Articles of the Church, as far as
they respect doctrine, as points of faith. If originality be
any merit, this Work will have that, at all events, from
the first page to the last.

The evenings I have employed in composing a series of
Essays on the principles of Genial Criticism concerning
the fine Arts, especially those of Statuary and Painting ; ^
and of these four in title, but six or more in size, have
been published in " Felix Farley's Bristol Journal ; " a
strange plan for such a publication ; but my motive was
originally to serve poor AUston, who is now exhibiting
his pictures at Bristol. Oh ! dear sir ! do pray if you
have the power or opportunity use your influence with
" The Sun," not to continue that accursed system of cal-
immy and detraction against AUston. The articles, by
whomever written, were a disgrace to human nature, and,
to my positive knowledge, argued only less ignorance than
malignity. Mr. Allston has been cruelly used. Good
God ! what did I not hear Sir George Beaumont say, with
my own ears ! Nay, he wrote to me after repeated exam-
ination of AUston's great picture, declaring himself a
complete convert to all my opinions of AUston's para-
mount genius as a historical painter. What did I not
hear Mr. West say ? After a full hour's examination of
the picture, he pointed out one thing he thought out of
harmony (and which against my earnest desire Allston
altered and had reason to repent sorely) and then said,
" I have shot my bolt. It is as near perfection as a pic-
ture can be ! " . . .

^ The appearance of these " Essays 1885, in his Miscellanies^ Esthetic

on the Fine Arts " was announced in and Literary, pp. 5-35. Coleridge

the Bristol Journal of August 6, himself " set a high value " on these

1814. They were reprinted in 1837 essays. See Table Talk of January

by Cottle, in his Early Recollections, 1, 1834.
ii. 201-240, and by Thomas Ashe in

634 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [Oct.

But to return to my Essays. I shall publish no more
in Bristol. What they could do, they have done. But I
have carefully corrected and polished those already pub-
lished, and shall carry them on to sixteen or twenty, con-
taining animated descriptions of all the best pictures of
the great masters in England, with characteristics of the
great masters from Giotto to Correggio. The first three
Essays were of necessity more austere ; for till it could be
determined what heauty was ; whether it was beauty
merely because it pleased, or pleased because it was
beauty, it would have been as absurd to talk of general
principles of taste, as of tastes. Now will this series, pu-
rified from all accidental, local, or personal references,
tint or serve the " Courier " in the present dearth ? I
have no hesitation in declaring them the best compositions
/have ever written. I could regularly supjily two Essays
a week, and one political Essay. Be so good as to speak
to Mr. Street.^ I could send him up eight or ten at
once.

Make my best respects to Mrs. Stuart. I shall be very
anxious to hear from you.

Your affectionate and grateful friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

CCIII. TO THE SAME.

" October 30, 1814."

Dear Stuart, — After I had finished the third letter,^
I thought it the best I had ever written ; but, on re-
perusal, I perfectly agree with you. It is misty, and like
most misty compositions, laborious, — what the Italians
call faticoso. I except the two last paragraphs (" In
this guise my Lord," to — " aversabitur "). These I

1 The working editor of the in the Courz'er, October 21, 1814. It
Courier. is reprinted in Essays on His Own

2 The third letter to Judge Times, iii. 690-697.
Fletcher on Ireland was published

1814] TO DANIEL STUART 635

still like. Yet what I wanted to say is very important,
because it strikes at the ROOT of all legislative Jacob-
inism. The view which our laws take of robbery, and
even murder, not as guilt of which God alone is pre-
sumed to be the Judge, but as CEIMES depriving the King
of one of his subjects, rendering dangerous and abating
the value of the King's Highways, etc., may suggest some
notion of my meaning. Jack, Tom, and Harry have no
existence in the eye of the law, except as included in
some form or other of the permanent property of the
realm. Just as, on the other hand. Religion has nothing
to do with Ranks, Estates, or Offices; but exerts itself
wholly on what is PERSONAL, viz., our souls, consciences,
and the morality of our actions, as opposed to mere
legality. Ranks, Estates, Offices, etc., were made for
persons I exclaims Major Cartwright ^ and his partizans.
Yes, I reply, as far as the divine administration is con-
cerned, but human jurisprudence, wisely aware of its own
weakness, and sensible how incommensurate its powers
are with so vast an object as the well-being of individuals,
as individuals, reverses the position, and knows nothing
of persons, other than as properties, officiaries, subjects.
The preambles of our old statutes concerning aliens (as
foreign merchants) and Jews, are all so many illustrations
of my principle ; the strongest instance of opposition to
which, and therefore characteristic of the present age, was
the attempt to legislate for animals by Lord Erskine ; ^

1 Jolin Cartwright, 1740-1824, Lords May 15, 1809, and was passed
known as Major Cartwright, was an without a division. The BiU was
ardent parliamentary reformer and read a second time in the House of
an advocate of universal suffrage. He Commons hut was rejected on going
refused to fight against the United into committee, the opposition being
States and wrote Letters on Ameri- led by Windham in a speech of
can Independence (1774). considerable ability.

2 Lord Erskine's Bill for the Pre- By " imperfect " duties Coleridge
vention of Cruelty to Animals was probable means " duties of imper-
brought forward in the House of feet obligation."

636 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [Oct.

tliat is, not merely interfering with persons as persons ;
or with what are called by moralists the imperfect duties
(a very obscure phrase for obligations of conscience, not
capable of being realized imperfecta) by legal penalties),
but extending peksonality to things.

In saying this, I mean only to designate the general
spirit of human law. Every principle, on its application
to practice, must be limited and modified by circum-
stances ; our reason by our common sense. Still, how-
ever, the PEINCIPLE is most important, as aim, rule, and
guide. Guided by this spirit, our ancestors repealed the
Puritan Law, by which adidtery was to be punished with
death, and brought it back to a civil damage. So, too,
actions for seduction. Not that the Judge or Legislator
did not feel the guilt of such crimes, but that the Law
knows nothing about guilt. So, in the Exchequer, com-
mon debts are sued for on the plea that the creditor is less
able to pay our Lord the King, etc., etc. Now, contrast
with this, the preamble to the first French Constitution,
and I think my meaning will become more intelligible ;
that the pretence of considering persons not states, happi-
ness not property, always has ended, and always will
end, in making a new state, or corporation, infinitely
more oppressive than the former ; and in which the real
freedom of persons is as much less, as the things inter-
fered with are more numerous, and more minute. Com-
pare the duties, exacted from a United Irishman by the
Confederacy, with those required of him by the law of the
land. This, I think, not ill expressed, in the two last
periods of the fourth paragraph. " Thus in order to
sacrifice . . . confederation."

Of course I immediately recognised your hand in the
Article concerning the " Edinburgh Review," and much
pleased I was with it ; and equally so in finding, from
your letter, that we had so completely coincided in our

1814] TO DANIEL STUART 637

feelings, concerning that wicked Lord Nelson Article.^
If there be one thing on earth that can outrage an honest
man's feelings, it is the assumption of austere morality
for the purposes of personal slander. And the gross
ingratitude of the attack! In the name of God what
have we to do with Lord Nelson's mistresses, or domestic
quarrels ? Sir A. Ball, himself exemplary in this respect,
told me of his own personal knowledge Lady Nelson was
enough to drive any man wild. . . . She had no sympa-
thy with his acute sensibilities, and his alienation was
effected, though not shown, before he knew Lady Hamil-
ton, by being heart starved^ still more than by being
teased and tormented by her suUenness. Observe that
Sir A. Ball detested Lady Hamilton. To the same en-
thusiastic sensibilities which made a fool of him with
regard to his Emma, his country owed the victories of the
Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, and the heroic spirit
of all the officers reared under him.

When I was at Bo wood there was a plan suggested
between Bowles and myself, to engage among the cleverest
literary characters of our knowledge, six or eight, each of
whom was to engage to take some one subject of those
into which the " Edinburgh Review " might be aptly di-
vided ; as Science, Classical Knowledge, Style, Taste,
Philosophy, Political Economy, Morals, Religion, and
Patriotism ; to state the number of Essays he could
write and the time at which he would deliver each ; and so
go through the whole of the " Review " : — to be published
in the first instance in the " Courier " during the Recess of
Parliament. We thought of Southey, Wordsworth, Crowe,

1 This article, a review of " The for April, 1814. The attack is
Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady mainly directed against Lady Ham-
Hamilton ; -with a Supplement of ilton, but Nelson, with every pre-
Interesting Letters by Distinguished tence of reluctance and of general
Personages. 2 vols. 8vo. Lovewell admiration, is also censured on
and Co. London. 1814," appeared moral grounds, and his letters are
in No. xxi. of The Quarterly Review, held up to ridicule.

638 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [Nov.

Crabbe, WoUaston ; and Bowles thought he could answer
for several single Articles from persons of the highest
rank in the Church and our two Universities. Such a
plan, adequately executed, seven or eight years ago, would
have gone near to blow up this Magazine of Mischief.

As to Ridgewayi and the Essays, I have not only no
objection to my name being given, but I should prefer it.
I have just as much right to call myself dramatically an
Irish Protestant, when writing in the character of one, as
Swift had to call himself a draper.^ I have waded
through as mischievous a Work, as two huge quartos,
very dull, can be, by a Mr. Edward Wakefield, called an
Account of Ireland. Of all scribblers these agricultural
quarto-mongers are the vilest. I thought of making the
affairs of Ireland, in toto, chiefly however with reference
to the Catholic Question, a new series, and of republish-
ing in the Appendix to the eight letters to Mr. Justice
Fletcher, Lord Clare's (then Chancellor Fitzgibbon's)
admirable speech, worthy of Demosthenes, of which a
copy was brought me over from Dublin by Eickman,
and given to Lamb. It was never printed in England,
nor is it to be procured. I never met with a person
who had heard of it. Except that one main point is
omitted (and it is remarkable that the poet Edmund
Spenser in his Dialogue on Ireland ^ is the only writer who
has urged this point), viz., the forcing upon savages the
laws of a comparatively civilised peojile, instead of adopt-
ing measures gradually to render them susceptible of those
laws, this speech might be deservedly called the philoso-

1 A partner in the publishing firm why he adopted the French instead
of Ridg-eway and Symonds. Letters of the English spelling of the word
of R. Southey, iii. 65. does not seem to have been satisfae-

2 The reference is to Swift's fa- torily explained. Notes and Que-
mous " Drapier " Letters. Swift ries, III. Series, x. 55.

wrote in the assumed character of a ^ The View of the State of Ire-
draper, and dated his letters " From land, first published in 1633.
my shop in St. Francis Street," but

1814] TO JOHN KENYON" 639

phy of the past and present history of Ireland. It makes
me smile to observe, how all the mediocre men exult in a
Ministry that have been so successful without any over-
powering talent of eloquence, etc. It is true that a series
of gigantic events like those of the last eighteen months,
will lift up any cock-boat to the skies upon their billows ;
but no less true that, sooner or later, parliamentary talent
wiU be found absolutely requisite for an English Ministry.
With sincere regard and esteem, your obliged

S. T. Coleridge.

CCIV. TO JOHN KENTON.^

Mr. B. Morgan's, Bath, November 3 [1814].

My dear Sir, — At Bimi's, Cheap Street, I found
Jeremy Taylor's " Dissuasive from Popery," in the largest
and only complete edition of his Polemical Tracts. Mr.
Binns had no objection to the paragraphs being transcribed
any morning or evening at his house, and I put in a
piece of paper with the words at which the transcript
should begin and with which end — p. 450, 1. 5, to p. 451,
1. 31, I believe. But indeed I am ashamed, rather I feel
awkward and uncomfortable at obtruding on you so long
a task, much longer than I had imagined. I don't like to
use any words that might give you w/ipleasure, but I can-
not help fearing that, like a child spoilt by your and Mrs.
Kenyon's great indulgence, I may have been betrayed

^ John Kenyon, 1783-1856, a poet is known." With Coleridge him-

and philanthropist. He settled at self the tie was less close, but he

Woodlands near Stowey in 1802, and was, I know, a most kind friend to

became acquainted with Poole and the poet's wife during those anxious

Poole's friends. He was on espe- years, 1814-1819, when her children

cially intimate terms with Soathey, were growing up, and she had little

who writes of him (January 11, else to depend upon but South ey's

1827) to his still older friend Wynne, generous protection and the moiety

as "one of the very best and pleas- of the Wedgwood annuity. Ken-

antest men whom I have ever known, yen's friendship with the Brownings

one whom every one likes at first belongs to a later chapter of literary

sight, and likes better the longer he history.

640 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [April

into presuming on it more than I ought. Indeed, my
dear sir ! I do feel very keenly how exceeding kind you
and Mrs. K. have been to me. It makes this scrawl of
mine look dim in a way that was less uncommon with me
formerly than it has been for the last eight or ten years.

But to return, or turn off, to the good old Bishop. It
would be worth your while to read Taylor's " Letter on
Original Sin," and what follows. I compare it to an old
statue of Janns, with one of the faces, that which looks
towards his opponents, the controversial phiz in highest
preservation, — the force of a mighty one, all power, all
life, — the face of a God rushing on to battle, and, in the
same moment, enjoying at once both contest and triumph ;
the other, that which should have been the countenance
that looks toward his followers, that with which he sub-
stitutes his own opinion, all weather eaten, dim, useless, a
Ghost in marble^ such as you may have seen represented
in many of Piranesi's astounding engravings from Rome
and the Campus Martins. Jer. Taylor's discursive intel-
lect dazzle-darkened his intuition. The principle of be-
coming all things to all men, if by any means he might
save any^ with him as with Burke, thickened the protect-
ing epidermis of the tact-nerve of truth into something
like a caUus. But take him aU in aU, such a miraculous
combination of erudition, broad, deep, and omnigenous;
of loffic subtle as well as acute, and as robust as agile ;
of psychological insight, so fine yet so secure ! of public
prudence and practical sageness that one ray of creative
Faith would have lit up and transfigured into wisdom,
and of genuine imagination, with its streaming face uni-
fying all at one moment like that of the setting sun when
through an interspace of blue sky no larger than itself, it
emerges from the cloud to sink behind the mountain, but
a face seen only at starts, when some breeze from the
higher air scatters, for a moment, the cloud of butterfly
fancies, which flutter around him like a morning-garment

1815] TO LADY BEAUMONT 641

of ten thousand colours — (now how shall I get out of
this sentence ? the tail is too big to be taken up into the
coiler's mouth) — well, as I was saying, I believe such a
complete man hardly shall we meet again.
May God bless you and yours !

Your obliged S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. My address after Tuesday will be (God permit-
ting) Mr. Page's, Surgeon, Calne.
J. Kenyon, Esq., 9, Argyle Street.

CCV. TO LADY BEAUMONT.

April 3, 1815.
Dear Madam, — Should your Ladyship still have
among your papers those lines of mine to Mr. Words-
worth after his recitation of the poem on the growth of
his own spirit,^ which you honoured by wishing to take
a copy, you would oblige me by enclosing them for me,
addressed — " Mr. Coleridge, Calne, Wilts." Of "The
Excursion," excluding the tale of the ruined cottage,
which I have ever thought the finest poem in our language,
comparing it with any of the same or similar length, I
can truly say that one half the number of its beauties
would make all the beauties of all his contemporary poets
collectively mount to the balance : — but yet — the fault
may be in my own mind — I do not think, I did not feel,
it equal to the work on the growth of his own spirit. As
proofs meet me in every part of " The Excursion " that
the poet's genius has not flagged, I have sometimes fan-
cied that, having by the conjoint operation of his own
experiences, feelings, and reason, himself convinced him-
self of truths, which the generality of persons have either
taken for granted from their infancy, or, at least, adopted
in early life, he has attached all their own depth and
weight to doctrines and words, which come almost as tru-

1 Poetical Works, p. 176 ; Appendix H, pp. 52.5, 526.

642 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [April

isms or commonplaces to others. From this state of mind,
in which I was comparing Wordsworth with himself, I
was roused by the infamous " Edinburgh " review of the
poem. If ever guilt lay on a writer's head, and if malig-
nity, slander, hypocrisy, and self-contradictory baseness
can constitute guilt, I dare openly, and openly (please
God !) I will, impeach the writer of that article of it.
These are awful times — a dream of dreams ! To be a
prophet is, and ever has been, an unthankful office. At
the Illumination for the Peace I furnished a design for
a friend's transparency — a vulture, with the head of Na-
poleon, chained to a rock, and Britannia bending down,
with one hand stretching out the wing of the vulture, and
with the other clipping it with shears, on the one blade of
which was written Nelson, on the other Wellington. The
motto —

We 've fought for peace, and conquer'd it at last ;
The ravening Vulture's leg is fetter'd fast.
Britons, rejoice ! and yet be wary too !
The chain may break, the dipt wing sprout anew.^

And since I have conversed with those who first returned
from France, I have weekly expected the event. Napo-
leon's object at present is to embarrass the Allies, and to
cool the enthusiasm of their subjects. The latter he un-
fortunately will be too successful in. In London, my
Lady, it is scarcely possible to distinguish the opinions of
the people from the ravings and railings of the mob ; but
in country towns we must be blind not to see the real state
of the popular mind. I do not know whether your Lady-
ship read my letters to Judge Fletcher. I can assure you
it is no exaggerated picture of the predominance of Jacob-
inism. In this small town of Calne five hundred volun-
teers were raised in the last war. I am persuaded that
five could not be raised now. A considerable landowner,

^ Poetical Works, p. 450.

1815] TO LADY BEAUMONT 643

and a man of great observation, said to me last week, " A
famine, sir, could scarce have produced more evil than the
Corn BilP has done under the present circumstances." I
speak nothing of the Bill itself, except that, after the
closest attention and the most sedulous inquiry after facts
from landowners, farmers, stewards, millers, and bakers, I
am convinced that both opponents and advocates were in
extremes, and that an evil produced by many causes was
by many remedies to have been cured, not by the universal
elixir of one sweeping law.

My poems will be put to press by the middle of June.
A number adequate to one volume are already in the
hands of my friends at Bristol, under conditions that they
are to be published at all events, even though I should not
add another volume, which I never had so little reason to
doubt. Within the last two days I have composed three
poems, containing 500 lines in the whole.

Mr. and Mrs. Morgan present their respective compli-
ments to your Ladyship and Sir George.

I remain, my Lady, your Ladyship's obliged humble
servant,

S. T. Coleridge.

CCVI. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Calne, May 30, 1815.
My HONOURED Friend, — On my return from Devizes,
whither I had gone to procure some vaccine matter (the
small-pox having appeared in Calne, and Mrs. Morgan's
sister believing herseK never to have had it), I found your
letter : and I will answer it immediately, though to answer
it as I could wish to do would require more recollection

1 In 1815 an act was broug-ht in a quarter. During the spring- of the

by Mr. Robinson (afterwards Lord year, January-March, while the bill

Ripon) and passed, permitting the was being discussed, bread-riots took

importation of corn when the price place in London and Westminster.
of home-grown wheat reached 80s.

644 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [May

and arrangement of thought than is always to be com-
manded on the instant. But I dare not trust my own
habit of procrastination, and, do what I woukl, it would
be impossible in a single letter to give more than general
convictions. But, even after a tenth or twentieth letter,
I should still be disquieted as knowing how poor a substi-
tute must letters be for a viva voce examination of a work
with its author, line by line. It is most uncomfortable
from many, many causes, to express anything but sym-
pathy, and gratulation to aji absent friend, to whom for
the more substantial third of a life we have been habit-
uated to look up : especially where a love, though increased
by many and different influences, yet begun and throve
and knit its joints in the perception of liis suj^eriority.
It is not in written words, but by the hundred modifica-
tions that looks make and tone, and denial of the full
sense of the very words used, that one can reconcile the
struggle between sincerity and diffidence, between the per-
suasion that I am in the right, and that as deep though
not so vivid conviction, that it may be the positiveness of
ignorance rather than the certainty of insight. Then
come the human frailties, the dread of giving pain, or
exciting suspicions of alteration and dyspathy, in short, the
almost inevitable insincerities between imperfect beings,
however sincerely attached to each other. It is hard (and
I am Protestant enough to doubt whether it is right) to
confess the whole truth (even of one's self, human nature
scarce endures it, even to one's self), but to me it is stiU
harder to do this of and to a revered friend.

But to your letter. First, I had never determined to
print the lines addressed to you. I lent them to Lady
Beaumont on her promise that they should be copied, and
returned ; and not knowing of any cojDy in my own pos-
session, I sent for them, because I was making a MS.
collection of all my poems — publishable and unpublish-
able — and stiU more perhaps for the handwriting of the

1815] TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 645

only perfect copy, that entrusted to her ladyship. Most
assuredly, I never once thought o£ printing them without
having consulted you, and since I lit on the first rude
draught, and corrected it as well as I could, I wanted no
additional reason for its not being published in my life-
time than its personality respecting myself. After the
opinions I had given publicly, in the preference of " Lyci-
das" (moral no less than poetical) to Cowley's Monody, I
could not have printed it consistently. It is for the bio-
grapher, not the poet, to give the accidents of individual
life. Whatever is not representative, generic, may be in-
deed most poetically expressed, but is not poetry. Other-
wise, I confess, your prudential reasons would not have
weighed with me, except as far as my name might haply
injure your reputation, for there is nothing in the lines, as
far as your powers are concerned, which I have not as
fully expressed elsewhere ; and I hold it a miserable cow-
ardice to withhold a deliberate opinion only because the
man is alive.

Secondly, for " The Excursion," I feared that had I
been silent concerning " The Excursion," Lady Beaumont
would have drawn some strange inference ; and yet I had
scarcely sent off the letter before I repented that I had
not run that risk rather than have approach to dispraise
communicated to you by a third person. But what did
my criticism amount to, reduced to its full and naked
sense ? This, that comjjaratively with the former poem,
" The Excursion," as far as it was new to me, had disap-
pointed my expectations ; that the excellencies were so
many and of so high a class that it was impossible to
attribute the inferiority, if any such really existed, to any
flagging of the writer's own genius — and that I conjec-
tured that it might have been occasioned by the influence
of self-established convictions having given to certain
thoughts and expressions a depth and force which they
had not for readers in general. In order, therefore, to ex-

646 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [May

plain the disappointment, I must recall to your mind what
my expectations were : and, as these again were founded
on the supposition that (in whatever order it might be
published) the poem on the growth of your own mind was
as the ground plot and the roots, out of which " The Re-
cluse " was to have sprung up as the tree, as far as [there
was] the same saj) in both, I expected them, doubtless, to
have formed one complete whole ; but in matter, form,
and product to be different, each not only a distinct but
a different work. In the first I had found " themes by
thee first sung aright,"

Of smiles spontaneous and mysterious fears

(The first-born they of reason and twin-birth)

Of tides obedient to external force,

And currents self-determin'd, as might seem,

Or by some central breath ; of moments awful,

Now in thy inner life, and now abroad,

When power stream'd from thee, and thy soul received

The light reflected as a light bestowed ;

Of fancies fair, and milder hours of youth,

Hyblaean murmurs of poetic thought

Industrious in its joy, in vales and glens

Native or outland, lakes and famous hiUs !

Or on the lonely highroad, when the stars

"Were rising ; or by secret mountain streams,

The guides and the companions of thy way ;

Of more iXmrv fancy — of the social sense

Distending wide, and man beloved as man,

Where France in all her towns lay vibrating,

Ev'n as a bark becalm'd beneath the burst

Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud

Is visible, or shadow on the main !

For Thou wert there, thy own brows garlanded,

Amid the tremor of a realm aglow.

Amid a mighty nation jubilant,

Wlien from the general heart of human kind

Hope sprang forth, like a full-born Deity !

1815] TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 647

Of that dear Hope afflicted, and amaz'd,

So homeward sunimon'd ! thenceforth calm and sure

From the dread watch-tower of man's absolute self,

With light unwaning on her eyes, to look

Far on ! herself a glory to behold,

The Angel of the vision ! Then (last strain)

Of duty, chosen laws controlling choice.

Action and Joy ! An Orj^hic song indeed,

A song divine of high and passionate truths,

To their own music chaunted!

Indeed, througli the whole of that Poem, /xe Kvpa tl<;
ctcreVveuo-e {xovcnKiOTaTr]. This I Considered as " The Excur-
sion ; " 1 and the second, as "The Recluse " I had (from
what I had at different times gathered from your conver-
sation on the Place [Grasmere]) anticipated as commen-
cing with you set down and settled in an abiding home,
and that with the description of that home you were to
begin a philosophical 'poem, the result and fruits of a

1 It would seem that Coleridge ments of the poem. This he eonsid-
had either overlooked or declined ered was The Excursion, " an Orphic
to put faith in Wordsworth's Apol- song indeed " / and as he listened the
ogy for The Excursion, which ap- melody sank into his soul. But that
peared in the Preface to the First was hut an exordium, a "prelusive
Edition of 1814. He was, of course, strain" to The Recluse, which might
familiar with the " poem on the indeed include the Grasmere f rag-
growth of your mind," the hitherto ment, the story of Margaret and so
unnamed and unpublished Prelude, forth, hut which in the form of
and he must have been at least poetry would convey the substance
equally familiar with the earlier of divine philosophy. He had
books of The Excursion. Why then looked for a second Milton who
was he disappointed with the poem would put Lucretius to a double
as a whole, and what had he looked shame, for a "philosophic poem,"
for at Wordsworth's hands? Not, which would justify anew "the
it would seem, for an " ante-chapel," ways of God to men ; " and in lieu of
but for the sanctuary itself. He this pageant of the imagination
had been stirred to the depths by there was Wordsworth prolific of
the recitation of The Prelude at moral discourse, of scenic and per-
Coleorton, and in his lines "To a sonal narrative — a prophet indeed.
Gentleman," which he quotes in this but "unmindful of the heavenly
letter, he recapitulates the argu- Vision."

648 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [May

spirit so framed and so disciplined as had been told in
the former.

Whatever in Lucretius is poetry is not philosophical,
whatever is philosophical is not poetry ; and in the very
pride of confident hope I looked forward to " The Re-
cluse " as the first and only true philosophical poem in
existence. Of course, I expected the colours, music,
imaginative life, and passion of poetry ; but the matter
and arrangement of philosophy ; not doubting from the
advantag-es of the subject that the totality of a system
was not only capable of being harmonised with, but even
calculated to aid, the unity (beginning, middle, and end)
of a poem. Thus, whatever the length of the work might
be, still it was a determinate length ; of the subjects
announced, each would have its own ap^jointed place,
and, excluding rejDetitions, each would relieve and rise in
interest above the other. I supposed you first to have
meditated the faculties of man in the abstract, in their
correspondence with his sphere of action, and, first in the
feeling, touch, and taste, then in the eye, and last in the
ear, — to have laid a solid and immovable f omidation for
the edifice by removing the sandy sophisms of Locke, and
the mechanic dogmatists, and demonstrating that the
senses were living growths and developments of the mind
and spirit, in a much juster as well as higher sense, than
the mind can be said to be formed by the senses. Next,
I understood that you would take the human race in the
concrete, have exploded the absurd notion of Pope's
"Essay on Man," Darwin, and all the countless believers
even (strange to say) among Christians of man's having
progressed from an ourang-outang state — so contrary to
all history, to all religion, nay, to all possibility — to have
affirmed a Fall in some sense, as a fact, the possibility of
which cannot bo understood from the nature of the will,
but the reality of which is attested by experience and
conscience. Fallen men contemplated in the different

1815] TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 649

ages of the world, and in the different states — savage,
barbarous, civilised, the lonely cot, or borderer's wigwam,
the village, the manufacturing town, seaport, city, univer-
sities, and, not disguising the sore evils under which the
whole creation groans, to point out, however, a manifest
scheme of redemption, of reconciliation from this enmity
with Nature — what are the obstacles, the Antichrist that
must be and already is — and to conclude by a grand
didactic swell on the necessary identity of a true philo-
sophy with true religion, agreeing in the results and differ-
ing only as the analytic and synthetic process, as discur-
sive from intuitive, the former chiefly useful as perfecting
the latter ; in short, the necessity of a general revolution
in the modes of developing and disciplining the human
mind by the substitution of life and intelligence (consid-
ered in its different powers from the plant up to that
state in which the difference of degree becomes a new
kind (man, self -consciousness), but yet not by essential
opposition) for the philosophy of mechanism, which, in
everything that is most worthy of the human intellect,
strikes Deaths and cheats itself by mistaking clear images
for distinct conceptions, and which idly demands concep-
tions where intuitions alone are possible or adequate to
the majesty of the Truth. In short, facts elevated into
theory — theory into laws — and laws into living and
intelligent powers — true idealism necessarily perfecting
itself in realism, and realism refining itself into idealism.
Such or something like this was the plan I had sup-
posed that you were engaged on. Your own words will
therefore explain my feelings, viz., that your object " was
not to convey recondite, or refined truths, but to place com-
monplace truths in an interesting point of view." Now
this I suppose to have been in your two volumes of poems,
as far as was desirable or possible, without an insight
into the whole truth. How can common truths be made
permanently interesting but by being hottomed on our

650 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [May

common nature ? It is only by the profoundest insiglit
into numbers and quantity that a sublimity and even
religious wonder become attached to the simplest opera-
tions of arithmetic, the most evident properties of the
circle or triangle. I have only to finish a preface, which
I shall have done in two, or, at farthest, three days ; and I
will then, dismissing all comparison either with the poem
on the growth of your own support, or with the imagined
plan of "The Recluse," state fairly my main objections
to " The Excursion " as it is. But it would have been
alike unjust both to you and to myself, if I had led you
to suppose that any disapj)ointment I may have felt
arose wholly or chiefly from the passages I do not like, or
from the poem considered irrelatively.

Allston lives at 8, Buckingham Place, Fitzroy Square.
He has lost his wife, and been most unkindly treated and
most unfortunate. I hope you will call on him. Good
God ! to think of such a grub as Dawe with more than
he can do, and such a genius as Allston without a single
patron !

God bless you ! I am, and never have been other than
your most affectionate

S. T. Coleridge.

Mr. and Mrs. Morgan desire to be affectionately re-
membered to you, and they would be highly gratified if
you could make a little tour and spend a short time at
Calne. There is an admirable collection of jjictures at
Corsham. Bowles left Bremhill (two miles from us,
where he has a perfect paradise of a place) for town
yesterday morning.

1815] TO THE REV. W. MONEY 651

CCVII. TO THE REV. W. MONET.^

Calnb, Wednesday, 1815.

Dear Sir, — I have seldom made a greater sacrifice
and gratification to prudence than in the determination
most reluctantly formed, that the state of my health,
which requires hourly regimen, joined with the imcertain
state of the weather and the perilous consequences of my
taking cold in the existing weakness of the viscera, ren-
ders it improper for me to hazard a night away from my
home. No pleasure, however intellectual (and to all but
intellectual jpleasures I have long been dead, for surely
the staving off of pain is no pleasure), could rejjay me
even for the chance of being again imwell in any house
but my own. I have a great, a gigantic effort to make,
and I will go through with it or die. Gross have been
the calumnies concerning me ; but enough remains of
truth to enforce the necessity of considering all other
things as unimportant compared with the necessity of liv-
ing them, doivn. This letter is, of course, sacred to your-
self, and a pledge of the high respect I entertain for your
moral being ; for you need not the feelings of friendship
to feel as a friend toward every fellow Christian.

To turn to another subject, Mr. Bowles, I understand,
is about to publish, at least is composing a reply to some
answer to the " Velvet Cushion." ^ I have seen neither
work. But this I will venture to say, that if the respond-
ents in favour of the Church take upon them to justify in
the most absolute sense, as if Scripture were the subject

1 The Eev. William Money, a de- ^ A controversial work on the

scendant of John Kyrle, the " Man inspiration of Scripture. A thin

of Ross," eulogised alike by Pope thread of narrative runs through the

and Coleridge, was at this time in dissertation. It was the work of

possession of the family seat of the Rev. J. W. Cunningham, Vicar

Whethara, a few miles distant from of Harrow, and was published in

Calne, in Wiltshire. Coleridge was 1813.
often a guest at his house.

652 A MELANCHOLY EXILE [1815

of the controversy, every minute part of our admirable
Liturgy, and liturgical and sacramental services, they will
only furnish new triumph to ungenerous adversaries.

The Church of England has in the Articles solemnly
declared that all Churches are fallible — and in another,
to assert its absolute immaculateness, sounds to me a mere
contradiction. No ! I would first overthrow what can be
fairly and to all men intelligibly overthrown in the adver-
saries' objections (and of this kind the instances are as
twenty to one). For the remainder I would talk like a
special pleader, and from the defensive pass to the offen-
sive, and then prove from St. Paul (for of the practice
of the early Church even in its purest state, before the
reign of Constantine, our opponents make no account)
that errors in a Church that neither directly or indirectly
injure morals or oppugn salvation are exercises for mu-
tual charity, not excuses for schism. In short, is there or
is there [not] such a condemnable thing as schism ? In
the proof of consequences of the affirmative lies, in my
humble opinion, the complete confutation of the (so-called)
Evangelical Dissenters.

I shall be most happy to converse with you on the sub-
ject. If Mr. Bowles were not employed on. it, I should
have had no objection to have reduced my many thoughts
to order and have published them ; but this might now
seem invidious and like rivalry.

Present my best respects to Mrs, Money, and be so
good as to make the fitting apologies for me to Mr. T.
Methuen,! the man wise of heart/ But an apology al-
ready exists for me in his own mind.

I remain, dear sir, respectfully your obliged

S. T. Coleridge.

Wednesday, Calne.

1 The Hon. and Rev. T. A. Me- afterward Lord Methuen o^ Corsham
thuen, Eector of All Cannings, was House. He contributed some rem-
the son of Paul Methuen, Esq., M. P., iniscences of Coleridge at this period

1815] TO THE REV. W. MONEY 653

P. S. I have opened this letter to add, that the greater
number, if not the whole, of the arguments used apply
only to the ministers, not to the members of the Estab-
lished Church. Some one of our eminent divines refused
even to take the pastoral office, I believe, on account of
the Funeral Service and the Absolution of the Sick ; but
still it remains to justify schism from Church-Member-
ship.

To the Rev. W. Money, Whetham.

to the Christian Observer of 1845. tive, by J. Dykes Campbell, 1894, p.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narra- 208.

CHAPTER XIII

NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS

1816-1821

CHAPTER XITI

NEW LIFE AND NEW FEIENDS

1816-1821

With Coleridge's name and memory must ever be as-
sociated the names of James and Anne Gillman. It was
beneath the shelter of their friendly roof that he spent
the last eighteen years of his life, and it was to their wise
and loving care that the comparative fruitfulness and
well-being of those years were due. They thought them-
selves honoured by his presence, and he repaid their devo-
tion with unbounded love and gratitude. Friendship and
lovingkindness followed Coleridge all the days of his life.
What did he not owe to Poole, to Southey for his noble
protection of his family, to the Morgans for their long-tried
faithfulness and devotion to himself? But to the Gill-
mans he owed the " crown of his cup and garnish of his
dish," a welcome which lasted till the day of his death.
Doubtless there were chords in his nature which were
struck for the first time by these good people, and in their
presence and by their help he was a new man. But, for
all that, their patience must have been inexhaustible, their
loyalty unimpeachable, their love indestructible. Such
friendship is rare and beautiful, and merits a most hon-
ourable remembrance.

CCVIII. TO JAMES GILLMAN.

42, Norfolk Street, Strand,
Saturday noon, [April 13, 1816.]

Mt dear Sir, — The very first half hour I was with
you convinced me that I should owe my reception into

658 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [April

your family exclusively to motives not less flattering to
me than honourable to yourself. I trust we shall ever in
matters of intellect be reciprocally serviceable to each
other. Men of sense generally come to the same conclu-
sion ; but they are likely to contribute to each other's ex-
changement of view, in proportion to the distance or even
opposition of the points from which- they set out. Travel
and the strange variety of situations and employments on
which chance has thrown me, in the course of my life,
might have made me a mere man of observation, if pain
and sorrow and self-miscomplacence had not forced my
mind in on itself, and so formed habits of meditation. It
is now as much my nature to evolve the fact from the
law, as that of a practical man to deduce the law from the
fact.

With respect to pecuniary remuneration,^ allow me to
say, I must not at least be suffered to make any addition
to your family expenses — though I cannot offer anything
that would be in any way adequate to my sense of the ser-
vice ; for that, indeed, there could not be a compensation,
as it must be returned in kind, by esteem and grateful
affection.

And now of myself. My ever wakeful reason, and the
keenness of my moral feelings, will secure you from all
unpleasant circumstances connected with me, save only

1 The annual payments for board no pecuniary obligation on Cole-

and lodging, which were made at ridge's part, it is right that the truth

first, for some time before Cole- should be known. On the other

ridge's death fell into abeyance. The hand, it is only fair to Coleridge's

approximate amount of the debt so memory to put it on record that

incurred, and the circumstances un- this debt of honour was a sore trou-

der which it began to accumulate, ble to him, and that he met it as

are alike unknown to me. The fact best he could. We know, for in-

that such a debt existed was, I be- stance, on his own authority, that

lieve, a secret jealously guarded by the profits of the three volume edi-

his generous hosts, but as, with the tion of his poems, published in 1828,

best intentions, statements have been were made over to Mr. Gilhnan.
made to the effect that there was

1816] TO JAMES GILLMAN 659

one, viz., tlie evasion of a specific madness. You will
never hear anything but truth from me : — prior habits
render it out of my power to tell an untruth, but unless
carefully observed, I dare not promise that I should not,
with regard to this detested poison, be capable of acting
one. No sixty hours have yet passed without my having
taken laudanum, though for the last week [in] compara-
tively trifling doses. I have full belief that your anxiety
need not be extended beyond the first week, and for the
first week I shall not, I must not, be permitted to leave
your house, unless with you. Delicately or indelicately,
this must be done, and both the servants and the assistant
must receive absolute commands from you. The stimulus
of conversation suspends the terror that haunts my mind ;
but when I am alone, the horrors I have suffered from
laudanum, the degradation, the blighted utility, almost
overwhelm me. If (as I feel for the first time a soothing
confidence it will prove) I should leave you restored to
my moral and bodily health, it is not myself only that will
love and honour you ; every friend I have (and thank
God! in spite of this wretched vice, I have many and
warm ones, who were friends of my youth and have never
deserted me) will thank you with reverence. I have
taken no notice of your kind apologies. If I could not be
comfortable in your house, and with your family, I should
deserve to be miserable. If you could make it convenient
I should wish to be with you by Monday evening, as it
would prevent the necessity of taking fresh lodgings in
town.

With respectful compliments to Mrs. Gillman and her
sister, I remain, dear sir, your much obliged

S. T. Coleridge.

660 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [May

CCIX. TO DANIEL STUART.

James Gillman's, Esq., Surgeon, Highgate,
Wednesday, May 8, 1816.

My dear Stuart, — Since you left me I have been
reflecting a good deal on the subject of the Catholic Ques-
tion, and somewhat on the " Courier " in general. With
all my weight of faults (and no one is less likely to
underrate them than myself) a tendency to be influenced
by selfish motives in my friendships, or even in the culti-
vation of my acquaintances, will not, I am sure, be hy you
placed among them. When we first knew each other, it
was perhaps the most interesting period of both our Kves, at
the very turn of the flood ; and I can never cease to reflect
with affectionate delight on the steadiness and independ-
ence of your conduct and principles ; and how, for so
many years, with little assistance from others, and with
one main guide, a sympathising tact for the real sense,
feeling, and impulses of the respectable part of the Eng-
lish nation, you went on so auspiciously, and likewise so
effectively. It is far, very far, from being a hyperbole to
affirm, that you did more against the French scheme of
Continental domination, than the Duke of Wellington
has done ; or rather Wellington could neither have been
supplied by the Ministers, nor the Ministers supported by
the Nation, but for the tone first given, and then con-
stantly kept UJ5, by the plain, unministerial, anti-opposi-
tion, anti-jacobin, anti-gallican, anti-Napoleonic spirit of
your writings, aided by the colloquial style, and evident
good sense, in which as acting on an immense mass of
knowledge of existing men and existing circumstances,
you are superior to any man I ever met with in my life-
time. Indeed you are the only human being of whom I
can say, with severe truth, that I never conversed with
you for an hour, without rememberable instruction.
And with the same simplicity I dare affirm my belief, that
my greater knowledge of man has been useful to you ;

1816] TO DANIEL STUART 661

though from the nature of things, not so useful, as your
knowledge of men has been to me. Now with such con-
victions, my dear Stuart, how is it possible that I can look
back on the conduct of the " Courier," from the period
of the Duke of York's restoration, without some pain?
You cannot be seriously offended or affronted with me, if
in this deep confidence, and in a letter which, or its con-
tents, can meet no eye but your own, I venture to declare
that, though since then much has been done, very much of
high utility to the country by and under Mr. Street, yet
the " Courier " itself has gradually lost that sanctifying
spirit which was the life of its life, and without which
even the best and soundest principles lose half their effect
on the human mind. I mean, the faith in the faith of
the person or jDaper which brings them forward. They
are attributed to the accident of their happening to be
for such a side or such a party. In short there is no
longer any root in the paper, out of which all the various
branches and fruits and even fluttering leaves are seen or
believed to grow. But it is the old tree barked round
above the root, though the circular decortication is so
small, and so neatly filled up and coloured as to be scarcely
visible but in its total effects. Excellent fruits still at
times hang on the boughs, but they are tied on by threads
and hairs.

In all this I am well aware that you are no otherwise to
blame, than in permitting what, without disturbance to
your health and tranquillity, you could not perhaps have
prevented, or effectively modified. But the whole plan of
Street's seems to me to have been motiveless from the
beginning, or at least affected by the grossest miscalcula-
tions in respect even of pecuniary interest. For had the
paper maintained and asserted not only its independence
but its apj)earance of it, it is true that Mr. Street might
not have had Mr. Croker to dine with him, or received as
many nods or shakes of the hand from Lord this, or that,
but it is at least equally true, that the Ministry would have

662 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Mat

been far more effectually served, and that (I speak now
from facts) both paper and its conductor would have
been held by the adherents of Ministers in far higher
respect. And after all, Ministers do not love newspapers
in their hearts ; not even those that support them. Indeed
it seems epidemic among Parliament men in general, to
affect to look down upon and to despise newspapers to
which they owe --^qqq of their influence and character —
and at least three fifths of their knowledge and phrase-
ology. Enough ! Burn this letter and forgive the writer
for the purity and affectionateness of his motive.

With regard to the Catholic Question, if I write I must
be allowed to express the truth and the whole truth con-
cerning the imprudent avowal of Lord Castlereagh that
it was not to be a government question. On this condi-
tion I will write immediately a tract on the question
which to the best of my knowledge will be about from
120 to 140 octavo pages ; but so contrived that Mr. Street
may find no difficulty in dividing it into ten or twenty
essays, or leading paragraphs. In my scheme I have
carefully excluded every approximation to metaphysical
reasoning ; and set aside every thought which cannot be
brought under one or the other of three heads — 1. Plain
evident sense. 2. Historical documental facts. 3. Ex-
isting circumstances, character, etc., of Ireland in relation
to Great Britain, and to its own interests, and those of
its various classes of proprietors. I shall not deliver it
till it is wholly finished, and if you and Mr. Street think
that such a woi-k delivered entire will be worth fifty
pounds to the paper, I will begin it immediately. Let me
either see or hear fi"om you as soon as possible. Cannot
Mr. Street send me some one or other of the daily papers,
without expense to you, after he has done with them?
Kind respects to Mrs. Stuart.

Your affectionate and obliged friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

1816] TO DANIEL STUART 663

CCX. TO THE SAME.

Monday, May 13, 1816.

Dear Stuart, — It is among the feeblenesses of our
nature, that we are often, to a certain degree, acted on by
stories, gravely asserted, of which we yet do most reli-
giously disbelieve every syllable, nay, which perhaps we
know to be false. The truth is that images and thoughts
possess a power in, and of themselves, independent of that
act of the judgment or understanding by which we affirm
or deny the existence of a reality correspondent to them.
Such is the ordinary state of the mind in dreams. It is
not strictly accurate to say that we believe our dreams to
be actual while we are dreaming. We neither believe it,
nor disbelieve it. With the will the comparing power is
suspended, and without the comparing power, any act of
judgment, whether affirmation or denial, is impossible.
The forms and thoughts act merely by their own inherent
power, and the strong feelings at times apparently con-
nected with them are, in point of fact, bodily sensations
which are the causes or occasions of the images ; not (as
when we are awake) the effects of them. Add to this a
voluntary lending of the will to this suspension of one of
its own operations (that is, that of comparison and conse-
quent decision concerning the reality of any sensuous im-
pression) and you have the true theory of stage illusion,
equally distant from the absurd notion of the French crit-
ics, who ground their principles on the presumption of an
absolute (delusion, and of Dr. Johnson who would persuade
us that our judgments are as broad awake during the
most masterly representation of the deepest scenes of
Othello, as a philosopher would be during the exhibition
of a magic Ian thorn with Punch and Joan and Pull Devil,
Pull Baker, etc., on its painted slides. Now as extremes
always meet, this dogma of our dramatic critic and sopor-
ific irenist would lead, by inevitable consequences, to that

664 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Feb.

very doctrine of the unities maintained by tlie French
Belle Lettrists, which it was the object of his strangely
overrated, contradictory, and most illogical preface to
Shakespeare to overthrow.

Thus, instead of troubling you with the idle assertions
that have been most authoritatively uttered, concerning
your being under bond and seal to the present Ministry,
which I know to be (monosyllabically speaking) a lie, and
which formed, I guess, part of the impulse which occa-
sioned my last letter, I have given you a theory which, as
far as I know, is new, and which I am quite sure is most
important as the ground and fundamental principle of all
philosophic and of all common- sense criticisms concerning
the drama and the theatre.

To put off, however, the Jack-the-Giant-Killer-seven-
leagued boots, with which I am apt to run away from the
main purpose of what I had to write, I owe it to myself
and the truth to observe, that there was as much at least
of partiality as of grief and inculpation in my remarks on
the spirit of the " Courier ; " and that with all its faults,
I prefer it greatly to any other paper, even without refer-
ence to its being the best and most effective vehicle of
what I deem most necessary and urgent truths. Be as-
sured there was no occasion to let me know, that with re-
gard to the proposed disquisition you were interested as a
patriot and a protestant, not as a proprietor of the partic-
ular paper. Such too. Heaven knows, is my sole object !
for as to the money that it may be thought worth accord-
ing to the number and value of the essays, I regard it
merely as enabling me to devote a given portion of time
and effort to this subject, rather than to any one of the
many others by which I might procure the same remuner-
ation. From this hour I sit down to it tooth and nail,
and shall not turn to the left or right till I have finished
it. When I have reached the half-way house I will trans-
mit the MSS. to you, that I may, without the necessity of

1817] TO JOHN MURRAY 665

dis- or re-arranging tlie work, be able to adopt any sug-
gestions of yours, whether they should be additive, alter-
ative, or emendative. One question only I have to con-
sult you concerning — viz., the form which would be the
most attractive of notice ; simply essays ? or letters ad-
dressed to Lord Liverpool for instance, on the supposition
that he remains firm to the Perceval principle on this
blind, blundering, and feverous scheme ?

Mr. and Mrs. Gillman will be most happy to see you
to share in a family dinner, and spend the evening with
us ; and if you will come early, I can show you some most
delicious walks. You will like Mr. Gillman. He is a
man of strong, fervid, and agile intellect, with such a mas-
ter passion for truth, that his most abstracted verities as-
sume a character of veracity. And his wife, it will be
impossible not to respect, if a balance and harmony of
powers and qualities, unified and spiritualized by a native
feminine fineness of character, render womanhood amia-
ble and respectable. In serious truth I have much reason
to be most grateful for the choice and chance which has
placed me under their hospitable roof. I have no doubt
that Mr. Gillman as friend and as physician will succeed
in restoring me to my natural self.

My kind respects to Mrs. Stuart. I long to see the lit-
tle one.

Your obliged and sincere friend,

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

CCXI. TO JOHN MURKAY.

HiGHGATE, February 27, 1817.
My dear Sir, — I had a visit from Mr. Morgan
yester-afternoon, and trouble you with these lines in con-
sequence of his communications. When I stated to you
the circumstances respecting the volumes of mine that
have been so long printed, and the embarrassment into
which the blunder of the printer had entangled me, with

666 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Feb.

the sinking down of my health that made it so perplexing
for me to remedy it, I did it under the belief that you
were yourself very little disposed to the publication of the
" Zapolya " ^ as a separate work — unless it had, in some
shape or other, been brought out at the Theatre. Of this
I seemed to have less and less chance. What had been
declared an indispensable part, and of all the play, the
most theatrical as well as dramatic, by Lord Byron, was
ridiculed and thrown out of all question by Mr. Douglas
Kinnaird, with no other explanation vouchsafed but that
Lord Byron knew nothing about the matter — and, be-
sides that, was in the habit of overrating my perform-
ances. These were not the words, but these words con-
tain the purport of what he said. Meantime what Mr.
D. Kinnaird most warmly approved, Mr. Harris had
previously declared would convulse a house with laughter,
and damn the piece beyond any possibility of a fiirther
hearing. Still I was disposed in my distressed circum-
stances of means, health, and spirits, to have tried the plan
suggested by Mr. D. Kinnaird of turning the "Zapolya"
into a melodrama by the omission of the first act. But
Mr. K. was, with Lord Byron, dropped from the sub-
committee, and I knew no one to whom I could apply.
Mr. Dibdin, who had promised to befriend me, was like-

1 Zapolya : A Christmas Tale, in ray, dated March 26 and March 29,

two Parts, was published by Rest 1817, it is evident that the £50 ad-

Fenner late in 1817. A year before, vanced on A Christmas Tale was

after the first part had been rejected repaid. In acknowledging' the re-

by the Drury Lane Committee, Cole- ceipt of the sum, Murray seems to

ridge arrang'ed with Murray to pub- have generously omitted all mention

lish both parts as a poem, and re- of a similar advance on "a play

ceived an advance of £50 on the then in composition." In his letter

MS. He had, it seems, applied to of March 29, Coleridge speaks of

Murray to be released from this en- this second debt, which does not ap-

gagement, and on the strength of pear to have been paid. Samuel

an ambiguous reply, offered the Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative, by

work to the publishers of Sybil- J. Dykes Campbell, p. 228 ; il/e-

line Leaves. From letters to Mur- inoirs of John Hurray, i. 304-306.

1817] TO JOHN MURKAY 667

wise removed from tlie stage-managership. Mr. Rae
did indeed promise to give me a few hours of his time
repeatedly, and from my former acquaintance with him,
as the Ordonio of the " Remorse," I had some reason to
be wounded by his neglect. Indeed, at Drury Lane, no
one knows to whom any effective application is to be
made. Mr. Kinnaird had engaged to look over the
"Zapolya" with me, and appointed the time. I went
accordingly and passed the whole of the fore-dinner day
with him — in what ? In hearing an opera of his own,
and returned as wise as I came. Much is talked of the
advantages of a managership of noblemen, but as far as
I have seen and experienced, an author has no cause to
congratulate himself on the change, either in the taste,
courtesy, or reliability of his judges. Desponding con-
cerning this (and finding that every publication with my
name would be persecuted by pre-determination by the
one guiding party, that I had no support to expect from
the other, and that the thicker and closer the cloud of
misfortunes gathered round me, the more actively and
remorselessly were the poisoned arrows of wanton enmity
shot through it), I sincerely believed that it would be
neither to your advantage or mine that the "Zapolya"
should be published singly. It appeared, at that time,
that the annexing to it a collection of all my poems would
enable the work to be brought out without delay, — and I
therefore applied to you, offering either to repay the
money received for it, or to work it out by furnishing you
with miscellaneous matter for the " Quarterly," or by
sittinsf down to the " Rabbinical Tales " ^ as soon as ever

1 Murray had ofifered Coleridge sue of The Friend (Nos. x., xi.), and

two hundred guineas for " a small these, with the assistance of his

volume of specimens of Rabbinical friend Hyman Hurwitz, Master of

Wisdom, ' ' but owing to pressure of the Hebrew Academy at Highgate,

work the project was abandoned, he intended to supplement and ex-

" Specimens of Rabbinical Wisdom pand into a volume. Samuel Tay-

selected from the Mishna " had al- lor Coleridge, a Narrative, by J.

ready " appeared in the original is- Dykes Campbell, p. 224 and note.

668 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Feb.

the works now in the press were put out of my hand, that
is, as far as the copy was concerned. Your answer im-
pressed me with your full assent to the plan. Nay, how-
ever mortifying it might in ordinary circumstances have
been to an author's vanity, it was not so to me, that the
" Zapolya" was a work of which you had no objection to
be rid. But, if I misunderstood you, let me now be better
informed, and whatever you wish shall be done. I have
never knowingly or intentionally been guilty of a dishon-
ourable transaction, but have in all things that respect my
neighbour been more sinned against than sinning. Much
less woidd I hazard the appearance of an equivocal con-
duct at present when I feel that I am sinking into the
grave, with fainter and fainter hopes of achieving that
which, God knows my inmost heart ! is the sole motive
for the wish to live — namely, that of preparing for the
press the results of twenty-five years hard study and
almost constant meditation. Reputation has no charm
for me, except as a preventive of starving. Abuse and
ridicule are all which I could expect for myself, if the
six volumes were published which would comprise the
sum total of my convictions ; but, most thoroughly satisfied
both of their truth and of the vital importance of these
truths, convinced that of all systems that have ever been
prescribed, this has the least of mysticism, the very ob-
ject throughout from the first page to the last being to
reconcile the dictates of common sense with the conclu-
sions of scientific reasoning — it woidd assuredly be like
a sudden gleam of sunshine falling on the face of a dying
man, if I left the world with a knowledge that the work
would have a chance of being read in better times. But
of all men in the way of business, my dear sir ! I should
be most reluctant to give you any just cause of reproach-
ing my integrity ; because I know and feel, and have at
all times and to all persons who had any literary concerns
with me, acknowledged that you have acted with a friendly

1817] TO JOHN MURRAY 669

kindness towards me, — and if Mr. Gifford have taken a
prejudice against me or my writings, I never imputed it
as blame to you. Let me then know what you wish me
to do, and I will do it. I ought to add, that in yielding
to the proposal of annexing the " Zapolya " to the volume
of poetry, provided I coidd procure your assent, I ex-
pressly stipulated that if, in any shape or modification, it
should be represented on the stage, the copyright of it in
that form would be reserved for your refusal or accept-
ance, and, in like manner the " Christabel " when com-
pleted, and the "Eabbinical Tales." The second "Lay
Sermon" (a most unfortunate name) will appear, I trust,
next week.

I remain, my dear sir, with respect and regard, your
obliged

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. I have not seen either the " Edinburgh " ^ or the
"Quarterly" last Reviews. The article against me in the
former was, I am assured, written by Hazlitt. Now what
can I think of Mr. Jeffrey, who knows nothing person-
ally of me but my hospitable attentions to him, and from
whom I heard nothing but very high seasoned compli-
ments, and who yet can avail himself of such an instru-

^ Apart from internal evidence, content with commissioning Hazlitt

there is nothing to prove that this to review the book, Jeffrey appended

article, a review of "Christabel," a long footnote signed with his ini-

which ajipeared in the Edinburgh Re- tials, in which he indignantly repudi-

vieiv, December, 1816, was written by ates the charge of personal animus,

Hazlitt. It led, however, to the in- and makes bitter fun of Coleridge's

sertion of a footnote in the first vol- susceptibility to flattery, and of his

ume of the Biographia Literaria, in boasted hospitality. Southey had

which Coleridge accused Jeffrey of offered him a cup of coffee, and

personal and ungenerous animosity Coleridge had dined with him at the

against himself, and reminded him inn. Voila tout. Both footnotes are

of hospitality shown to him at Kes- good reading. Biographia Literaria,

wick, and of the complacent and ed. 1817, i. 52 note ; Edinburgh Ee-

flattering language which he had view, December, 1817.
employed on that occasion. Not

670 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [June

ment of his most unprovoked malignity towards me, an
inoffensive man in distress and sickness ? As soon as I
have read the article (and the loan of the book is prom-
ised me), I shall make up my mind whether or not to
address a letter, publicly to Mr. Jeffrey, or, in the form
of an appeal, to the public, concerning his proved pre-
determined malice.

Mr. Murray, Bookseller, Albemarle Street, Piccadilly.

CCXII. TO ROBERT SOUTHET.

[May, 1817.]

Dear Southey, — Mr. Ludwig Tieck^ has continued
to express so anxious a wish to see you, as one man of
genius sees another, that he will not lose even the slight
chance of possibility that you may not have quitted Paris
when he arrives there. I have only therefore (should
this letter be delivered to you by Mr. Tieck) to tell you
— first, that Mr. Tieck is the gentleman who was so kind
to me at Rome ; secondly, that he is a good man, emphat-
ically, without taint of moral or religious infidelity;
thirdly, that as a poet, critic, and moralist, he stands (in

^ Two letters from Tieck to Cole- Highgate remain unforgettable. I

ridge have been preserved, a very have seen your friend Robinson,

long one, dated February 20, ISIS, once here in Dresden, but you —

in which he discusses a scheme for At that time I believed that I should

bringing out his works in England, come again to England — and in

and asks Coleridge if he has sue- such hopes we grow old and wear

Deeded in finding a publisher for away.

him, and the following note, written Mr kindest remembrances to your

sixteen years later, to introduce the excellent hosts at Highgate. It is

German painter, Herr von Vogel- with especial emotion that I look

stein. I am indebted to my cousin, again and again at the Anatomy of

Miss Edith Coleridge, for a transla- Melancholy [a present from Mr. Gill-

tion of both letters. man], as well as tlie Lay Ser)nons,

Christabel, and tlie Biographia Lite-

Dresden, April .30, 1S34. raria. Herr von Yogelstein, one of

I hope that my dear and honoured the most esteemed historical painters

friend Coleridge still remembers me. of Germany, brings you this letter

To me those delightful hours at from your loving

Ltjdwig Tieck.

1817] TO H. C. ROBINSON 671

reputatioii) next to Goethe (and I believe that this repu-
tation will hefame^ ; lastly, it will interest you with Bris-
tol, Keswick, and Grasmere associations, that Mr. Tieck
has had to run, and has run, as nearly the same career in
Germany as yourself and Wordsworth and (by the spray
of being known to be intimate with you)

Yours sincerely, S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. Should this meet you, /or God's sake^ do let me
know of your arrival in London ; it is so very important
that I should see you.

R. SOUTHEY, Esq.

Honoured by Mr. LuDWiG TiECK.

CCXIII. TO H. C. ROBINSON.^

June, 1817.

My dear Robinson, — I shall never forgive you if
you do not try to make some arrangement to bring Mr. L.
Tieck and yourself up to Highgate very soon. The day,
the dinner-hour, you may appoint yourself ; but what I most
wish would be, either that Mr. Tieck would come in the
first stage, so as either to walk or to be driven in Mr. Gill-
man's gig to Caen Wood, and its delicious groves and
alleys (the fmest in England, a grand cathedral aisle of
giant lime-trees. Pope's favourite composition walk when
with the old Earl, a brother-rogue of yours in the law

1 Henry Crabb Robinson, -whose Grasmere and Langdale, then and

admirable diaries, first published in now the property of Mr. Wheatley

1869, may, it is hoped, be reedited Balme. This must have been in

and published in full, died at the 1857, when he was past eighty years

age of ninety-one in 1867. He was of age. My impression is that his

a constant guest at my father's house conversation consisted, for the most

in Chelsea during my boyhood. I part, of anecdotes concerning Wie-

have, too, a distinct remembrance of land and Schiller and Goethe. Of

his walking over Loughrigg from Wordsworth and Coleridge he must

Rydal Mount, where he was staying have had much to say, but his words,

with Mrs. Wordsworth, and visiting as was natural, fell on the unheeding

my parents at High Close, between ears of a child.

672 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [July

line), or else to come up to dinner, sleep here, and return
(if then return he must) in the afternoon four o'clock
stage the day after. I should he most happy to make
him and that admirable man, Mr. Frere,^ acquainted —
their pursuits have been so similar — and to convince Mr.
Tieek that he is tlie man among us in whom taste at its
maximum has vitalized itself into productive power. [For]
genius, you need only show liim the incomparable trans-
lation annexed to Southey's " Cid " (which, by the bye,
would perhaps give Mr. Tieck the most favourable impres-
sion of Southey's own powers) ; and I would finish the
work off by Mr. Frere's " Aristophanes." In such GOOD-
NESS, too, as both my Mr. Frere (the Right Hon. J. H.
Frere), and his brother George (the lawyer in Brunswick
Square), live, move, and have their being, there is genius.
I have read two pages of "Lalla Eookh," or whatever
it is called. Merciful Heaven! I dare read no more,
that I may be able to answer at once to any questions, " I
have but just looked at the work." O Robinson ! if I
could, or if I dared, act and feel as Moore and his set do,
what havoc could I not make amongst their crockery-
ware ! Why, there are not three lines together without
some adulteration of common English, and the ever-recur-
ring blunder of using the possessive case, " compassion^s
tears," etc., for the preposition "of" — a blunder of
which I have found no instances earlier than Dryden's
slovenly verses written for the trade. The rule is, that
the case 's is always ^>e;\so;?(7/ / either it marks a person,
or a personification, or the relique of some proverbial per-
sonification, as " Who for their belly's sake," in " Lyci-
das." But for A to weep the tears of B puts me in mind

1 The Right Hon. John Hookham later years. He figures in the later

Frere, 1*769-1840, now better known memoranda and correspondence as

as the translator of Aristophanes 6 KaXoKayaOos, the ideal Christian

than as statesman or diplomatist, was gentleman.
a warm friend to Coleridge in his

1817] TO THOMAS POOLE 673

of the exquisite passage in Rabelais where Pantagruel
gives the page his cup, and begs him to go down into the
courtyard, and curse and swear for him about half an
hour or so.

God bless you ! S. T. Coleridge.

CCXIV. TO THOMAS POOLE.

[July 22, ISn.]

My dear Poole, — It was a great comfort to me to
meet and part from you as I did at Mr. Purkis's : i for,
methinks, every true friendship that does not go with us
to heaven, must needs be an obstacle to our own going
thither, — to one of the parties, at all events.

I entreat your acceptance of a corrected copy of my
" Sibylline Leaves " and " Literary Life ; " and so wildly
have they been printed, that a corrected copy is of some
value to those to whom the works themselves are of any.
I would that the misprinting had been the worst of the
delusions and ill-usage, to which my credulity exposed
me, from the said printei\ After repeated promises that
he took the printing, etc., merely to serve me as an old
schoolfellow, and that he should charge " one sixpence
profit," he charged paper, which I myself ordered for him
at the paper-mill, at twenty-five to twenty-six shillings per
ream, at thirty-five shillings, and, exclusive of this, his
bill was X80 beyond the sum assigned by two eminent
London printers as the price at which they would be will-

1 Samuel Purkis, of Brentford, ter to Poole of the same date, he

tanner and man of letters, was an thus describes his host : " Purkis is

early friend of Poole's, and through a gentleman, with the free and eor-

him became acquainted with Cole- dial and interesting manners of the

ridge and Sir Humphry Davy, man of literature. His colloquial

When Coleridge went up to London diction is uncommonly pleasing, his

in June, 1798, to stay with the information various, his mvn mind

Wedgwoods at Stoke House, in the elegant and acute." Thomas Poole

village of Cobham, he stayed a night and Ms Friends, i. 271, et passim.
at Brentford on the way. In a let-

674 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [July

ing to print the same quantity. And yet even this is
among the minima of his Bristol honesty.

Fenner,^ or rather his religious factotum, the Rev. T.
Curtis, ci-devant bookseller, and whose affected retirement
from business is a humbug, having got out of me a scheme
for an Encyclopaedia, which is the admiration of aU the
Trade, flatter themselves that they can carry it on by
themselves. They refused to realise their promise to ad-
vance me X300 on the pledge of my works (a proposal of
their own) unless I would leave Highgate and live at
Camberwell. I took the advice of such friends as I had
the opportunity of consulting immediately, and after tak-
ing into consideration the engagement into which I had
entered, it was their unanimous opinion that their breach
of their promise was a very fortunate circumstance, that
it coidd not have been kept without the entire sacrifice of
all my powers, and, above all, of my health — in short,
that I could not in all human probability survive the first
year. Mr. Frere yesterday advised me strenuously to
finish the " Christabel," to keep the third volume of "The
Friend" within a certain fathom of metaphysical depth,
but within that to make it as elevated as the subjects re-
quired, and finally to devote myseK industriously to the
Works I had planned, alternating a poem with a prose
volume, and, unterrified by reviews on the immediate sale,
to remain confident that I should in some way or other
be enabled to live in comfort, above all, not to ^vTite any
more in any newspaper. He told me both Mr. Canning
and Lord Liverpool had spoken in very high terms of me,
and advised me to send a copy of all my works with a let-
ter of some weight and length to the Marquis of Welles-

1 For an account of Coleridg'e's cotfs Mag. for June, 1870, art.

relations with his publishers, Fen- " Some Unpublished Correspondence

ner and Curtis, see Samuel Taylor of S. T. Coleridg-e," and Brandl's

Coleridge, a Narrative, by J. Dykes Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the

Campbell, p. 227. See, too, Lippin- Romantic School, 1887, pp. 351-353.

1817] TO THOMAS POOLE 675

ley. He offered me all his interest with regard to Der-
went,i if he was sent to Cambridge. " It is a point "
(these were his words) " on which I should feel myself
authorised not merely to ask but to require and impor-
tune."

Hartley has been with me for the last month. He is
very much improved ; and, if I could see him more sys-
tematic in his studies and in the employment of his time,
I should have little to complain of in him or to wish for.
He is very desirous to visit the place of his infancy, poor
fellow ! And I am very desirous, if it were practicable,
that he should be in the neighboui-hood, as it were, of his
uncles, so that there might be a probability of one or the
other inviting him to spend a few weeks of his vacation
at Ottery. His cousins^ (the sons of my brothers James
and George) are very good and affectionate to him ; and
it is a great comfort to me to see the chasm of the first
generation closing and healing up in the second. From
the state of your sister-in-law's health, when I last saw
you, and the probable results of it, I cannot tell how your
household is situated. Otherwise, I should venture to
entreat of you, that you would give poor Hartley an in-
vitation to pass a fortnight or three weeks with you this
vacation.^

1 J. H. Frere was, I believe, one nephews should be set against All-
of those who assisted Coleridge to sop's foolish and uncalled for at-
send his younger son to Cambridge. tack on " the Bishop and the Judge."

2 John Taylor Coleridge (better Letters, etc., of S. T. Coleridge, 1836,
known as Mr. Justice Coleridge), i. 225, note.

and George May Coleridge, Vicar of ^ Poole's reply to this letter, dated

St. Mary Church, Devon, and Pre- July 31, 1817, contained an invita-

bendary of Wells. Another cousin tion to Hartley to come to Nether

who befriended Hartley, when he Stowey. Mrs. Sandford tells us that

was an undergraduate at Merton, it was believed that" the young man

and again later when he was living spent more than one vacation at

with the Montagus, in London, was Stowey, where he was well-known

William Hart Coleridge, afterward and very popular, though the young

Bishop of Barbados. The poet's own ladies of the place either themselves

testimony to the good work of his called him the Black Dwarf, or char-

676 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Oct.

The object of the third volume of my " Friend," which
will be wholly fresh matter, is briefly this, — that moral-
ity without religion is as senseless a scheme as religion
without morality ; that religion not revealed is a contra-
diction in terms, and an historical nonentity ; that religion
is not revealed unless the sacred books containing it are
interpreted in the obvious and literal sense of the word,
and that, thus interpreted, the doctrines of the Bible are
in strict harmony with the Liturgy and Articles of our
Established Church.

May God Almighty bless you, my dear Friend! and
your obliged and affectionately grateful

S. T. Coleridge.

CCXV. TO H. F. CARY.l

Little Hampton, October [29], 1817.
I regret, dear sir ! that a slave to the worst of tyrants
(outward tyrants, at least), the booksellers, I have not
been able to read more than two books and passages here
and tbere of the other, of your translation of Dante.
You will not suspect me of tlie worthlessness of exceeding
my real opinion, but like a good Christian will make even
modesty give way to charity, though I say, that in the
severity and learned simplicity of the diction, and in the
peculiar character of the Blank Verse, it has transcended

Lshed a conviction that that was tice adopted partly for the sake of

his nickname at Oxford." Thomas the sea-breezes. . . . For several

Poole and his Friends, ii. 25G-258. consecutive days Coleridg-e crossed

1 Tlie Rev. H. F. Gary, 1772- us in our walk. The sound of the

1844, the well-known translator of Greek, and especially the expressive

the Divina Commedia. His son and countenance of the tutor, attracted

biographer, the Rev. Henry Gary, his notice ; so one day, as we met)

gives the following' account of his he placed himself directly in my

father's first introduction to Gole- father's way and thus accosted him :

ridge, which took place at Little- ' Sir, yours is a face I should know

hampton in the autumn of 1817 : — I am Samuel Taylor Coleridge.' "

" It was our custom to walk on the Memoir of H. F. Gary, ii. 18.
sands and read Homer aloud, a prac-

1817] TO H. F, GARY 677

what I should have thought possible without the Terza
Rima. In itself, the metre is, compared with any English
poem of one quarter the length, the most varied and har-
monious to my ear of any since Milton, and yet the effect
is so Dantesque that to those who should compare it only
with other English poems, it would, I doubt not, have
the same effect as the Terza Rima has compared with
other Italian metres. I would that my literary influence
were enough to secure the knowledge of the work for the
true lovers of poetry in general.^ But how came it that
you had it published in so too unostentatious a form ?
For a second or third edition, the form has its conven-
iences ; but for the first, in the present state of English
society, quod non arrogas tibi, non habes. If you have
any other works, poems, or poemata, by you, printed or
MSS., you would gratify me by sending them to me. In
the mean time, accept in the spirit in which it is offered,
this trifling testimonial of my respect from, dear sir,
Yours truly,

S. T. Coleridge.

CCXVI. TO THE SAME.

Little Hampton, Sussex, November 6, 1817.
My dear Sir, — I thank you for your kind and valued
present, and equally for the kind letter that accompanied
it. What I expressed concerning your translation, I did
not say lightly or without examination : and I know
enough of myself to be confident that any feeling of per-
sonal partiality would rather lead me to doubts and dis-
satisfactions respecting a particular work in proportion as
it might possibly occasion me to overrate the man. For

^ It appears, however, that he iin- Court, on February 27, 1818, led, so

derrated his position as a critic. A his son says, to the immediate sale

quotation from Gary's Dante, and a of a thousand copies, and notices

eulogistic mention of the work gen- " reechoing Coleridge's praises " in

erally, in a lecture on Dante, deliv- the Edinburgh and Quarterly Be-

ered by Coleridge at Flower-de-Luce views. Memoir of H. F. Cary, ii. 28.

678 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Nov.

example, if, indeed, I do estimate too highly what I deem
the characteristic excellencies of Wordsworth's poems, it
results from a congeniality of taste without a congeniality
in the productive power ; but to the faults and defects I
have been far more alive than his detractors, even from
the first publication of the " Lyrical Ballads," though for
a long course of years my opinions were sacred to his own
ear. Since my last, I have read over your translation, and
have carefully compared it with my distinctest recollec-
tions of every specimen of blank verse I am familiar with
that can be called epic, narrative, or descriptive, exclud-
ing only the dramatic, declamatory, and lyrical — with
Cowper, Armstrong, Southey, Wordsworth, Landor (the
author of " Gebir "), and with all of my own that fell
within comparisons as above defined, esiDecially the pas-
sage from 287 to 292, " Sibylline Leaves," ^ — and I find
no other alteration in my judgement but an additional
confidence in it. I still affirm that, to my ear and to my
judgement, both your metre and your rhythm have in a
far greater degree than I know any instance of, the variety
of Milton without any mere Miltonisms, that (wherein I
in the passage referred to have chiefly failed) the verse
has this variety without any loss of continuity^ and that
this is the excellence of the work considered as a transla-
tion of Dante — that it gives the reader a similar feeling
of wandering and wandering, onward and onward. Of
the diction, I can only say that it is Dantesque even in that
in which the Florentine must be preferred to our EngHsh
giant — namely, that it is not only pure language^ but
pure Engliah. The langaiage differs from that of a
mother or a well-bred lady who had read little but her
Bible, and a few good books, only as far as the thoughts
and things to be expressed require learned words from a
learned poet ! Perhaps I may be thought to appreciate
tliis merit too highly ; but you have seen what I have said

1 From the Destiny of Nations.

1817] TO J. H. GREEN 679

in defence of this in the " Literary Life." By the bye,
there is no Puhlisher s name mentioned in the title-page.
Should I place any number of copies for you with Gale
and Curtis, or at Murray's ?

Believe me, that it will be both a pleasure and a relief
to my mind should you bring with you any MSS. that
you can yourself make it so as to read them to me.

Mrs. Gillman hopes, that, if choice or chance should
lead you and yours near Highgate, you will not deprive
us of the opportunity of introducing you to my excellent
friend Mr. Gillman, and of shewing by our gladness how
much we are, my dear sir, yours and Mrs. Gary's sincere
respecters, and I beg you will accept an expression of
particular esteem from your old lecturer,

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. I return the " Prometheus " and the " Persae "
with thanks. I hope the Cambridge Professor will go
through the remaining plays of ^schylus. They are de-
lightful editions.

CCXVII. TO J. H. GREEN.l

Highgate, Friday morning, November 14, 1817.

Dear Sir, — I arrived at Highgate from Little Hamp-
ton yester-night : and the most interesting tidings I heard,

1 Joseph Henry Green, 1791 - years to pass two afternoons of the

1863, an eminent surgeon and anato- week at Highgate, and on these

mist. In his own profession he won occasions as amanuensis and collab-

distinction as lecturer and oj)era- orateur, he helped to lay the foun-

tor, and as the author of the Dis- dations of the Magnum Opus.

sector''s Manual, and some pam- Coleridge appointed him his literary

phlets on medical reform and edu- executor, and bequeathed to him a

cation. He was twice, 1849-50 and mass of unpublished MSS. which

1858-59, President of the College of it was hoped he would reduce to

Surgeons. His acquaintance with order and publish as a connected sys-

Coleridge, which began in 1817, was tem of philosophy. Two addresses

destined to influence his whole ca- which he delivered, as Hunterian

reer. It was his custom for many Orations in 1841 and 1847, on

680 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Dec.

were of your return and of your great kindness . . .
I can only say that I will call in Lincoln's Inn Fields tlie
first day I am able to come to town — but should your
occupation suffer you to take me in any of your rides for
exercise or relaxation, need I say with what gladness I
should welcome you? Our dinner-hour is four: but
alterable without inconvenience to earlier or later. As
soon as I have finished my present slave-work I shall
write at large to Mr. Tieck. Be pleased to present my
respectful regards to Mrs. Green, and believe me, dear sir,
with marked esteem.

Your obliged

S. T. Coleridge.

CCXVIII. TO THE SAJIE.

[December 13, 1817.]

My dear Sir, — I thank you for the transcript. The
lecture ^ went off beyond my expectations ; and in several
parts, where the thoughts were the same, more happily

" Vital Dynamics " and " Mental Dy- healing waters of Faith and Hope,

namics," were published in his life- Spiritual Philosophy, by J. H. Green ;

time, and after his death two vol- Memoir of the author's life, i.-lix.

umes entitled Spiritual Philosophy, ^ This must have been the im-

founded on the Teaching of S. T. promptu lecture " On the Growth

Coleridge, were issued, together with of the Individual Mind,"' delivered

a memoir, hj his friend and former at the rooms of the London Philo-

pnpil. Sir John Simon. sophical Society. According to

His fame has suffered eclipse ow- Gillman, who details the circum-

ing in great measure to his chival- stances under which the address was

rous if unsuccessful attempt to do given, but does not supply the date,

honour to Coleridge. But he de- the lecturer beg'an with an " apolo-

serves to stand alone. Members of getic preface " : " The lecture I am

his own profession not versed in about to give this evening is purely

polar logic looked up to his " great extempore. Should you find a nom-

and noble intellect ' ' with pride and inative case looking- out for a verb —

delight, and by those who were hon- or a fatherless verb for a nomina-

oured by his intimacy he was held tive case, you must excuse it. It is

in love and reverence. To Coleridge purely extempore, though I have

he was a friend indeed, bringing thought and read much on this

with him balms more soothing subject." Life of Coleridge, pp.

than "poppy or mandragora," the 354-357.

1817] TO J. H. GREEN 681

expressed extempore than in the Essay on the Science
of Method ^ for the "Encyclopaedia Metropolitana." How-
ever, you shall receive the first correct copy of the latter
that I can procure. I would that I could present it to
you^ as it was written ; though I am not inclined to quar-
rel with the judgment and prudence of omission, as far as
the public are concerned. Be assured, I shall not fail to
avail myself of your kind invitation, and that time passes
happily with me under your roof, receiving and returning.
Be pleased to make my best respects to Mrs. Green, and
I beg her acceptance of the " Hebrew Dirge " with my
free translation,^ of which I will, as soon as it is printed,
send her the music, viz. the original melody, and Bishop's
additional music. Of this I am convinced, that a dozen of
such " very ^jre^i^y," and " so s?oeei^," and "how smooth,"
" well, that is charming " compositions would gain me more
admiration with the English public than twice the num-
ber of poems twice as good as the " Ancient Mariner,"
the " Christabel," the " Destiny of Nations," or the " Ode
to the Departing Year."

My own opinion of the German philosophers does not
greatly differ from yours ; much in several of them is
unintelligible to me, and more unsatisfactory. But I
make a division. I reject Kant's stoic principle, as false,
unnatural, and even immoral, where in his " Kritik der

^ The " Essay on the Science of on the day of the Funeral of her

Method " was finished in Decern- Eoyal Highness the Princess Char-

ber, 1817, and printed in the follow- lotte. By Hyinan Hnrwitz, Master

ing January. Samuel Taylor Cole- of the Hebrew Academy, Highgate,

ridge, a Narrative, by J. Dykes 1817."

Campbell, 1894, p. 232. The translation is below Coleridge

2 The Hebrew text and Cole- at his worst. The " Harp of Quan-

ridge's translation were published in took " must, indeed, have required

the form of a pamphlet, and sold stringing before such a line as "For

by " T. Boosey, 4 Old Broad Street, England's Lady is laid low " could

1817." The full title was " Israel's have escaped the file, or " worn her "

Lament. Translation of a Hebrew be permitted to rhyme with " mourn-

dirge, chaunted in the Great Syna- er " ! Poetical Works, p. 187 ; Ed-

gogue, St. James' Place, Aldgate, iter's Note, p. 638.

682 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Dec,

praktisclien Vernunft," ^ lie treats the affections as indif-
ferent (d5ta<^opa) in ethics, and would persuade us that a
man who disliking, and without any feeling of love for
virtue, yet acted virtuously, because and only because his
duty^ is more worthy of our esteem, than the man whose
affections were aidant to and congruous with his con-
science. For it woidd imply little less than that things
not the objects of the moral will or under its control were
yet indispensable to its due practical direction. In other
words, it would subvert his own system. Likewise, his
remarks on prayer in his " Religion innerhalb der reinen
Vernunft," are crass, nay vulgar and as superficial even in
psychology as they are low in taste. But with these ex-
ceptions, I reverence Inimauuel Kant with my whole heart
and soul, and believe him to be the only philosopher, for
all men who have the power of thinking. I cannot con-
ceive the liberal pursuit or ^jrofession, in which the service
derived from a patient study of his works would not be
incalculably great, both as cathartic, tonic, and directly
nutritious.

Fichte in his moral system is but a caricature of Kant's,
or rather, he is a Zeno, with the cowl, rope, and sackcloth
of a Carthusian monk. His metaphysics have gone by ;
but he hath merit of having prepared the ground for, and
laid the first stone of, the dynamic philosophy by the sub-
stitution of Act for Thing, Der einfiihrcn Actionen statt
der Dingean sich. Of the JS^afur-phiIosoj)Jie?i, as far as
physical dynamics are concerned and as opposed to the
mechanic corpuscular system, I think very highly of some
parts of their system, as being sound and scientijic —
metaphysics of Quality, not less evident to my reason
than the metaphysics of Quantity, that is. Geometry, etc. ;
of the rest and larger part, as tentative, experimental,
and highly useful to a chemist, zoologist, and physiologist,
as unfettering the mind, exciting its inventive powers.

^ The Kritik der praktischen Vernunft was published in 1797.

1817] TO J. H. GREEN 683

But I must be understood as confining these observations
to the works of Schelling and H. Steffens. Of Schel-
ling's Theology and Theanthroposophy, the telescopic
stars and nebulae are too many for my " grasp of eye."
(N. B. The catachresis is Drydens, not mine.^ In
short, I am half inclined to believe that both he and his
friend Francis Baader are but half in earnest, and paint
the veil to hide not the y*ace but the want of one.^ Schel-
ling is too ambitious, too eager to be the Grand Seignior
of the allein-selig Philosophie to be altogether a trust-
worthy philosopher. But he is a man of great genius ;
and, however unsatisfied with his conclusions, one cannot
read him without being either whetted or improved. Of
the others, saving Jacobi, who is a rhapsodist, excellent
in sentences all in small capitals, I know either nothing,
or too little to form a judgement. As my opinions were
formed before I was acquainted with the schools of Fichte
and Schelling, so do they remain independent of them,
though I con- and pro-fess great obligations to them in
the development of my thoughts, and yet seem to feel
that I should have been more useful had I been left to
evolve them myself without knowledge of their coinci-
dence. I do not very much like the Sternbald^ of our
friend ; it is too like an imitation of Heinse's " Arding-
hello,"^ and if the scene in the Painter's Garden at Rome
is less licentious than the correspondent abomination in
the former work, it is likewise duller.

I have but merely looked into Jean Paul's " Vorschule
der Aisthetik,"* but I found one sentence almost word for
word tlie same as one written by myself in a fragment of

^ This statement requires expla- ^ Ludwig Tieck published his
nation. Franz Xavier von Baader, Sternbald^s Wanderungen in 1798.
1765-1841, was a mystic of the ^ Heinse's Ardinghello was pub-

school of Jacob Bdhme, and wrote lished in 1787.

in opposition to Schelling. * Riehter's Vorschule der Aisthetik

was published in 1804 (3 vols.).

684 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [1818

an Essay on the Supernatural ^ many years ago, viz. that
the 2)resence of a ghost is the terror, not what he does, a
principle which Southey, too, overlooks in his " Thalaba "
and " Kehama."

But I must conclude. Believe me, dear sir, with un-
feigned regard and esteem, your obliged

S. T. Coleridge.

I expect my eldest son, Hartley Coleridge, to-day from
Oxford.

CCXIX. TO CHARLES AUGUSTUS TULK.^

HiGHGATE, Thursday evening', 1818.

Dear Sir, — As an innocent female often blushes not
at any image which had risen in her own mind, but
from a confused apprehension of some xy z that might be
attributed to her by others, so did I feel uncomfortable at
the odd coincidence of my commending to you the late
Swedenborgian advertisement. But when I came home I
simply asked Mrs. G. if she remembered my having read
to her such an address. She instantly rejDlied not only in

1 See Table Talk for January 3 I possess transcripts of twenty-five
and May 1, 1823. See, also, The letters from Coleridge to Tiiik, in
Friend, Essay iii. of the First Land- many of -n-hich he details his theories
ing Place. Coleridge's Works, Har- of ontological specularion. ITie ori-
per & Brothers, 18.53, ii. 134-137, ginals ^vere sold and dispersed in
and " Notes on Hamlet," Ibid. iv. 1S82.

147-150. A note on Swedenhorg's treatise,

2 diaries Augustus Tulk, de- " De Cultu et Amore Dei," is printed
scribed by Mr. Campbell as " a man in Notes Theological and Political,
of fortune with .an uncommon taste London, 1853, p. 110, but a long
for philosophical speculation," was series of marginalia on the pages of
an eminent Swedenborgian, and the treatise, " De Ccelo et Inferno,"
mainly instrumental in establishing of which a transcript has been made,
the "New Church" in Great Brit- remains unpublished.

ain. It was through Coleridge's For Coleridge's views on Sweden-
intimacy with Mr. Tulk that his borgianism, see " Notes on Noble's
writings became known to the Swe- Appeal," Literary/ Remains ; Cole-
denborgian community, and that his ridge's Works, Harper & Brothers,
letters were read at their gatherings. 1853, v. 522-527.

1818] TO CHARLES AUGUSTUS TULK 685

the affirmative, but mentioned the circumstance of my
having expressed a sort of half -inclination, half-intention
of addressing a letter to the chairman mentioning my
receipt of a book of which I highly approved, and re-
questing him to transmit my acknowledgments, if, as was
probable, the author was known to him or any of the
gentlemen with him. I asked her then if she had herself
read the advertisement ? " Yes, and I carried it to Mr.
Gilhnan, saying how much you had been pleased with the
style and the freedom from the sectarian spirit." " And
do you recollect the name of the Chairman ? " " No ! why,
bless me ! could it be Mr. Tulk? " Very nearly the same
conversation took place with Mr. Gillman afterwards. I
can readily account for the fact in myself ; for first I
never recollect any persons by their names, and have
fallen into some laughable perjjlexities by this specific
catalepsy of memory, such as accepting an invitation in
the streets from a face perfectly familiar to me, and being
afterwards unable to attach the name and habitat thereto;
and secondly, that the impression made by a conversation
that appeared to me altogether accidental and by your
voice and person had been completed before I heard your
name ; and lastly, the more habitual thinking is to any
one, the larger share has the relation of cause and effect
in producing recognition. But it is strange that neither
Mrs. or Mr. Gillman should have recollected the name,
though probably the accidentality of having made your
acquaintance, and its being at Little Hampton, and asso-
ciated with our having at the same time and by a similar
accidental rencontre become acquainted with the Rev. Mr.
Gary and his family, overlaid any former relique of a
man's name in Mrs. G. as well as myself.

I return you Blake's poesies,^ metrical and graphic,

^ It may be supposed that it was that, as an indirect consequence, the
Blake, the mystic and the spiritual- original edition of his poemis, " en-
ist, that aroused Tulk's interest, and graved in writing-hand," was sent

686 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [1818

with thanks. With this and the book, I have sent a rude
scrawl as to the order in which I was pleased by the sev-
eral poems.

With respectful compliments to Mrs. Tulk, I remain,
dear sir, your obliged

S. T. Coleridge.

Tliursd.ay evening, Ilighgate.

Blake's Poems. — I begin with my dyspathies that I
may forget them, and have uninterrupted space for loves
and sympathies. Title-page and the following emblem
contain all the faults of the drawings with as few beauties
as could be in the compositions of a man who was capable
of such faults and such beauties. The faulty despotism
in symbols amounting in the title-page to the jxicr-qTov, and
occasionally, irregular unmodified lines of the inanimate,
sometimes as the effect of rigidity and sometimes of exos-
sation like a wet tendon. So likewise the ambiguity of
the drapery. Is it a garment or the body incised and
scored out ? The lumpness (the effect of vinegar on an
^&o) ^^^ ^^^® upper one of the two prostrate figures in the
title-page, and the straight line down the waistcoat of
pinky goldbeaters' skin in the next drawing, with the I
don't-know-whatness of the countenance, as if the mouth

to Coleridge for his inspection and for in 1S12 Crabb Robinson, so he
criticism. The Songs of Innocence tells ns, read them aloud to Words-
were published in 17S7, ten years -worth, who was " pleased with some
before the Lyrical Ballads appeared, of them, and considered Blake as
and more tlian thirty years before having- the elements of poetry, a
the date of tliis letter, but they Avere thousand times more than either
known only to a few. Lamb, writ- BjTon or Scott.'' None, however,
ing in 1824, speaks of him as Bobert of these hearty and genuine admir-
Blake, and after praising in the ers appear to have reflected that
highest terms his paintings and en- Blake had " gone back to nature," a
gravings, says that he has never while before Wordsworth or Cole-
read his poems, ' ' which have been ridge turned their steps in that di-
sold hitherto only in manuscript." reetion. Letters of Charles Lamb,
It is strange that Coleridge should 1SS6, ii. 104, 105, 324, 325 ; H. C.
not have been familiar with them, Robinson's Diary, i. 385.

1818] TO CHARLES AUGUSTUS TULK 687

had been formed by the habit of placing the tongue not
contemptuously, but stupidly, between the lower gums and
the lower jaw — these are the only repulsive faults I
have noticed. The figure, however, of the second leaf,
abstracted from the expression of the countenance given
it by something about the mouth, and the interspace from
the lower lip to the chin, is such as only a master learned
in his art could produce.

N. B. I signifies "It gave me great pleasure." i,
"Still greater." II, "And greater stiU." ©, "In the
highest degree." O, " In the lowest."

Shepherd, I ; Spring, I (last stanza, I) ; Holy Thurs-
day, 11 ; Laughing Song, I ; Nurse's Song, I ; The Di-
vine Image, ; The Lamb, I ; The little black Boy, 0,
yea 0-|-0; Infant Joy, II (N. B. For the three last
lines I should write, " When wilt thou smile," or " O smile,
O smile ! I '11 sing the while." For a babe two days old
does not, cannot smile, and innocence and the very truth
of Nature must go together. Infancy is too holy a thing
to be ornamented). " The Echoing Green," I, (the fig-
ures I, and of the second leaf, II) ; " The Cradle Song,"
I; "The School Boy," II; Night, ; "On another's Sor-
row," I ; " A Dream," ? ; " The little boy lost," I (the
drawing, I) ; "The little boy found," I; "The Blossom,"
O ; " The Chimney Sweeper," O ; " The Voice of the
Ancient Bard," O.

Introduction, i ; Earth's Answer, I ; Infant Sorrow,
I ; " The Clod and the Pebble," I ; " The Garden of
Love," I; "The Fly," I; "The Tyger," I; "A little
boy lost," I ; " Holy Thursday," I ; [p. 13, O ; " Nurse's
Song," O?] ; "The little girl lost and found" (the orna-
ments most exquisite I the poem, I) ; " Chimney Sweeper
in the Snow," O; "To Tirzah, and the Poison Tree," I —
and yet O; " A little Girl lost," O. (I would have had
it omitted, not for the want of innocence in the poem, but
from the too probable want of it in many readers.)

688 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [May

" London," I ; » The Sick Kose," I ; " The little Vaga-
bond," O. Though I cannot approve altogether of this
last poem, and have been inclined to think that the error
which is most likely to beset the scholars of Emanuel
Swedenl)org is that of utterly demerging the tremendous
incompatibilities with an evil will that arise out of the
essential Holiness of the abysmal A-seity ^ in the love of the
Eternal I^ersou, and thus giving temptation to weak minds
to sink this love itself into Good Nature, yet still I dis-
approve the mood of mind in this wild poem so much less
than I do the servile blind-worm, wrap-rascal scurf-coat
of fcai' of the modern Saint (whose whole being is a lie,
to themselves as well as to their brethren), that I should
laugh with good conscience in watching a Saint of the new
stamp, one of the first stars of our eleemosynary adver-
tisements, groaning in wind-pipe ! and with the whites of
his eyes upraised at the audacity of this poem ! Any-
thing rather than this degradation I of Humanity, and
therein of the Incarnate Divinity !

S. T. C.

O means that I am perplexed and have no opinion.
I, with which how can we utter " Our Father" ?

CCXX. TO J. H. GEEEX.

Spring Garden CofEee House, [May 2, 1818.]

My dear Sir, — Having been detained here tiU the
present hour, and under requisition for Monday morning
early, I have decided on not returning to Highgate in the
interim. I propose, therefore, to have the pleasure of pass-

1 In the Aids to Beflection, at the the 6e\ri/ua and the ^ovX-i], that is,

close of a long comment on a pas- the Absolute Will as the universal

sage in Field, Coleridge alludes to ground of all being, and the election

" discussions of the Greek Fathers, and purpose of God in the per-

and of the Schoolmen on the obscure sonal Idea, as Father." Coleridge's

and abysmal subject of the divine Works, 1853, i. 317.
A-seity, and the distinction between

1818] TO J. H. GREEN 689

ing; the fore-dinner hours, from eleven o'clock to-morrow
morning, with you in Lincoln's Inn Square, unless I
should hear from you to the contrary.

The Cotton-children Bill ^ (an odd irony to children hred
u]j in cotton !) which has passed the House of Commons,
would not, I suspect, have been discussed at all in the
House of Lords, but have been quietly assented to, had it
not afforded that Scotch coxcomb, the plebeian Earl of
Lauderdale,^ too tempting an occasion for displaying his
muddy three inch depths in the gutter (? Guttur) of his
Politit;al Economy. Whether some half-score of rich
capitalists are to be prevented from suborning suicide and
perpetuating infanticide and soul-murder is, forsooth, the
most perplexing question which has ever called forth his
determining faculties, accustomed as they are well known
to have been, to grappling with difficulties. In short, he
wants to make a speech almost as much as I do to have a
release signed by conscience from the duty of making or
anticipating answers to such speeches.

1 The bill in which Coleridge in- prohibit soul-murder on the part of
terested himself, and in favour of the rich, and self-slaughter on that
which he wrote two circulars which of the poor!), or any dictum of our
were printed and distributed, was grave law authorities from Fortescue
introduced in the House of Com- — to Eldon : for from the borough
raons by the first Sir Robert Peel, of Hell I wish to have no represen-
The object of the bUl was to regu- tatives." Henry Crabb Robinson's
late the employment of children in Diary, ii. 93-95.
cotton factories. A bill for proliib- ^ James Maitland, 1759 - 18.39,
iting the employment of children eighth Earl of Lauderdale, belonged
under nine was passed in 1833, but to the party of Charles James Fox,
it was not till 1841 that the late and, like Coleridge, opposed the first
Lord Shaftesbury, then Lord Ash- war with France, which began in
ley, succeeded in passing the Ten 1793. In the ministry of " All the
Hours Bills. In a letter of May 3d Talents " he held the Great Seal of
to Crabb Robinson, Coleridge asks : Scotland. Coleridge calls him. ple-
" Can you furnish us wdth any other beian because he inherited the peer-
instances in which the legislature has age from a remote connection. He
interfered with what is ironically was the author of several treatises on
called ' Free Labour ' {i. e. dared to finance and political economy.

690 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [July

O when the heart is deaf and blind, how blear
The lynx's eye ! how dull the mould-warp's ear !

Verily the World is mighty! and for all but the few
the orb of Truth labours under eclipse from the shadow
of the world !

With kind respects to Mrs. Green, believe me, my dear
sir, with sincere and affectionate esteem,

Yours, S. T. Coleridge.

CCXXI. TO MRS. GILLMAN.

J. Green's, Esq., St. Lawrence, nr. Maldon,
Wednesday, July 19, 1818.

My very dear Sister and Friexd, — The distance
from the post and the extraordinary thinness of popula-
tion in this district (especially of men and women of let-
ters) which affords only two days in the seven for seuding
to or receiving from Maldon, are the sole causes of your not
hearing oftener from me. The cross roads from Margret-
ting Street to the very house are excellent, and through the
first gate we drove up between two large gardens, that on
the right a flower and fruit garden not without kitchenery,
and that on the left, a kitchen garden not without fruits
and flowers, and both in a perfect blaze of roses. Yet so
capricious is our, at least my, nature, that I feel I do not
receive the fifth part of the delight from this miscellany
of Flora, flowers at every step, as from the economized
glasses and flower-pots at Highgate so tended and wor-
shipped by me, and each the gift of some kind friend or
courteous neighbour. I actually make up a flower-pot
every night, in order to imitate my Highgate pleasures.
The country road is very beautiful. About a quarter of a
mile from the garden, all the way through beautiful fields
in blossom, we come to a wood, full of birds and not un-
charmed by the nightingales, and which the old workman,
to please his mistress, has romanticised with, I dare say,
fifty seats and honeysuckle bowers and green arches made

1818] TO MRS. GILLMAN 691

by twisting the branches of the trees across the paths.
The view from the hilly field above the wood command-
ing the arm of the sea, and ending in the open sea, re-
minded me very much of the prospects from Stowey and
Alfoxden, in Somersetshire. The cottagers seem to be
and are in possession of plenty of comfort. Poverty I
have seen no marks of, nor of the least servility, though
they are courteous and respectful. We have abundance
of cream. The Farm must, I should think, be a valuable
estate ; and the parents are anxious to leave it as complete
as possible for Joseph, their only child (for it is Mrs. J.
Green's sisters that we have seen — G. himself has no
sister). There is no society hereabouts. I like it the
better there/ore. The clergyman, a young man, is lost in
a gloomy vulgar Calvinism, will read no book but the
Bible, converse on nothing but the state of the soul, or
rather he will not converse at all, but visit each house
once in two months, when he prays and admonishes, and
gives a lecture every evening at his own rooms. On be-
ing invited to dine with us, the sad and modest youth
returned for answer, that if Mr. Green and I should be
here when he visited the house, he shoidd have no objec-
tion to enter into the state of our souls with us, and if in
the mean time we desired any instruction from him, we
might attend at his daily evening lecture ! Election, Rep-
robation, Children of the Devil, and all such flowers of
rhetoric, and flour of brimstone, form his discourses both
in church and parlour. But my folly in not filling the
snuff canister is a subject of far more serious and awful
regret with me, than the not being in the way of being
thus led by the nose of this Pseudo-Evangelist. Nothing
but Scotch ; and that five miles off. O Anne ! it was
cruel in you not to have calculated the monstrous dispro-
portion between the huge necessities of my nostrils, or
rather of my thumb and forefinger, and that vile little
vial three fourths empty of snuff ! The flat of my thumb,

692 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Dec.

yea, the nail of my forefinger is not only clean; it is
white ! white as the pale flag of famine ! ^

Now for my health. . . . Ludicrous as it may seem,
yet it is no joke for me, that from the marshiness of these
sea marshes, and the number of unnecessary fish ponds
and other stagnancies immediately around the house, the
gnats are a very i)lague of Egypt, and suspicious, with
good reason, of an erysipelatous tendency, I am anxious
concerning the effects of the -irritation produced by these
canorous visitants. While awake (and two thirds of last
night I was kept awake by their bites and trumpetings) I
can so far command myself as to check the intolerable
itching by a weak mixture of goulard and rosewater ; but
in my sleep I scratch myself as if old Scratch had lent
me his best set of claws. This is the only drawback from
my comforts here, for nothing can be kinder or more
cordial than my treatment. I lihe Mrs. J. Green better and
better ; but feel that in twenty years it would never be
above or beyond liking. She is good-natured, lively, in-
nocent, but without a soothingness., or something I do not
know what that is tender. As to my return, I do not
think it will be possible, without great unkinduess, to be
with you before Tuesday evening or Wednesday, calculat-
ing toholly by the progress of the manuscript ; and we
have been hard at it. Do not take it as words, of course,
when I say and solemnly assure you, that if I followed
my own toishes^ I should leave this place on Saturday
morning : for I feel more and more that I can be well off
nowhere away from you and Gilhnan. May God bless
him ! For a dear friend he is and lias been to be. Re-
member me affectionately to the Milnes and Betsy, if

1 It was, I have been told by an cess that the maid servant had di-

eyewitness, Coleridge's habit to take reetions to sweep up these literary

a pinch of snuff, and whilst he was remains and replace them ia the

talking to rub it between his fingers, canister.
He wasted so much snuif in the pro-

1818] TO W. COLLINS 693

they are at Higligate. Love to James. Kisses for the
Fish of Five Waters/ none of which are stagnant, and I
hope that Mary, Dinah, and Lucy are well, and that Mary
is quite recovered. Again and again and again, God bless
you, my most dear friends ; for I am, and ever trust to
remain, more than can be expressed, my dear Anne ! your
affectionate, obliged, and grateful

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. Not to put Essex after Maldon.

CCXXII. TO W. COLLINS, ESQ., A. E. A.

HiGHGATE, December, 1818.

My dear Sir, — I at once comply with, and thank
you for, your request to have some prospectuses. God
knows I have so few friends, that it would be unpardon-
able in me not to feel proportionably grateful towards
those few who think the time not wasted in which they
interest themselves in my behalf. There is an old Latin
adage. Vis videri 2)a^tper, et paujjer es I Poor you pro-
fess yourself to be, and poor therefore you are, and will
remain. The prosperous feel only with the prosperous,
and if you subtract from the whole sum of their feeling
for all the gratifications of vanity, and all their calcula-
tions of lending to the Lord., both of which are best
answered by confessing the superfluity of their superflui-
ties on advertised and advertisable distress, or on such
cases as are known to be in all respects their inferior, you
will have, I fear, but a scanty remainder. All this is too
true ; but then, what is that man to do whom no distress
can bribe to swindle or deceive ? who cannot reply as
Theophilus Gibber did to his father, Colley Gibber, who,
seeing him in a rich suit of clothes whispered to him as
he passed, " The ! The ! I pity thee ! " " Pity me ! pity
my tailor! "

^ A pet name for the Gillmans' younger son, Henry.

694 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Dec.

Spite of the decided approbation wMcli my plan of
delivering lectures has received from several judicious
and highly respectable individuals, it is still too histrionic,
too much like a retail dealer in instruction and pastime,
not to be depressing. If the duty of living were not far
more awfid to my conscience than life itself is agreeable
to my feelings, 1 should sink under it. But, getting
nothing by my publications, which I have not the power
of making estimable by the public without loss of self-
estimation, what can I do ? The few who have won the
present age, while they have secured the praise of pos-
terity, as Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Southey, Lord Byron,
etc., have been in happier circumstances. And lecturing
is the only means by which I can enable myself to go on
at all with the great philosophical work to which the best
and most genial hours of the last twenty years of my life
have been devoted. Poetry is out of the question. The
attempt would only hurry me into that sjjhere of acute
feelings from which abstruse research, the mother of self-
oblivion, presents an asylum. Yet sometimes, spite of
myself, I cannot help bursting out into the affecting ex-
clamation of our Spenser (his " wdne '' and " i^y garland"
interi^reted as competence and joyous circumstances) : —

" Thou kenn'st not, Percy, how the rhyme should cage !
Oh, if my temples were bedewed with Avine,
And girt with garlands of wild ivy -twine,
How I could rear the Muse on stately stage !

And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine,
With queen'd Bellona in lier equipage !

But ah, my courage cools ere it be warm ! " ^

But God's will be done. To feel the full force of the
Christian religion it is, perhaps, necessary for many
tempers that they should first be made to feel, experimen-
tally, the hollowness of human friendship, the j^resump-
tuous emptiness of human hopes. I find more substantial
comfort now in pious George Herbert's " Temple," which

1 Coleridge was fond of quoting these lines as applicable to himself.

1818] TO THOMAS ALLSOP 695

I used to read to amuse myself with his quaintness, in
short, only to laugh at, than in all the poetry since the
poems of Milton. If you have not read Herbert, I can
recommend the book to you confidently. The poem enti-
tled " The Flower " is especially affecting ; and, to me,
such a phrase as " and relish versing " expresses a sin-
cerity, a reality, which I would unwillingly exchange for
the more dignified " and once more love the Muse," etc.
And so, with many other of Herbert's homely phrases.

We are all anxious to hear from, and of, our excellent
transatlantic friend.-^ I need not rej^eat that your com-
pany, with or without our friend Leslie,^ will gratify

Your sincere

S. T. Coleridge.

CCXXIII. TO THOMAS ALLSOP.

The origin of Coleridge's friendshij) with Thomas All-
sop, a young city merchant, dates from the first lecture
wliich he delivered at Flower de Luce Court, January 27,
1818. A letter from Allsop containing a " judicious sug-
gestion " with regard to the subject advertised, " The Dark
Ages of Europe," was handed to the lecturer, who could
not avail himself of the hint on this occasion, but promised
to do so before the close of the series. Personal inter-
course does not seem to have taken place till a year later,
but from 1819 to 1826 Coleridge and Allsop were close
and intimate friends. In 1825 the correspondence seems
to have dropped, but I am not aware that then or after-
wards there was any breach of friendship. In 1836 Allsop

1 Washington AUston. croft, R. A., after a careful inspec-

2 Charles Robert Leslie, historical tion of other portraits and engrav-
painter, 1794-1859, was born of ings of S. T. Coleridge, modelled
American parents, but studied art the bust which now (thanks to
in London under Washington All- American generosity) finds its place
ston. A pencil sketch, for which in Poets' Corner, mainly in accord-
Coleridge sat to him in 1820, is in ance with this sketch.

my possession. Mr. Hamo Thorny-

696 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Dec.

published the letters which he had received from Coleridge.
Partly on account of the personal allusions which some of
the letters contain, and partly because it would seem that
Coleriilge expressed himself to his young disciple with
some freedom on matters of religious opinion, the publica-
tion of these letters was regarded by Coleridge's friends as
an act of mala fides. Allsop was kindness itself to Cole-
ridge, but, no doubt, the allusions to friends and children,
which were of a painful and private nature, ought, during
their lifetime at least, to have been omitted. The origi-
nals of many of these letters were presented by the All-
sop family to the late Emperor of Brazil, an enthusiastic
student and admirer of Coleridge.^

December 2, 1818.

My dear Sir, — I cannot express how kind I felt
your letter. Would to Heaven I had had many wdth
feelings like yours, " accustomed to exj)ress themselves
warmly and (as far as the word is applicable to you,
even) enthusiastically." But, alas ! during the prime
manhood of my intellect I had nothing but cold water
thrown on my effoi'ts. I speak not now of my systematic
and most unprovoked maligners. On them I have re-
torted only by pity and by prayer. These may have, and
doubtless 7^ atr, joined with the frivolity of "'the reading
public " in cheeking and almost in preventing the sale of
my works ; and so far have done injury to my purse.
Me they have not injured. But I have loved with enthu-
siastic self-oblivion those who liave been so well pleased
that I should, year after year, flow with a hundred name-
less rills into their main stream, that they could find
nothing but cold praise and effective discouragement of
every attempt of mine to roll onward in a distinct current
of my own; who admitted that the "Ancient Mariner,"
the " Christabel," the "Remorse," and some pages of "The

1 Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge, London,
1836, i. 1-3.

1818] TO THOMAS ALLSOP 697

Friend " were not without merit, but were abundantly
anxiou.s to acquit their judgements of any blindness to the
very numerous defects. Yet they knew that to praise,
as mere praise, I was characteristically, almost constitu-
tionally, indifferent. In sympathy alone I found at once
nourishment and stimulus ; and for sympathy alone did
my heart crave. They knew, too, how long and faithfully
I had acted on the maxim, never to admit the faults of a
work of genius to those who denied or were incapable of
feeling and understanding the beauties ; not from wilful
partiality, but as well knowing that in saying truth I
should, to such critics, convey falsehood. If, in one in-
stance, in my literary life, I have appeared to deviate
from this rule, first, it was not till the fame of the writer
(which I had been for fourteen years successively toiling
like a second Ali to build up) had been established ; and,
secondly and chiefly, with the purpose and, I may safely
add, with the effect of rescuing the necessary task from
malignant defamers, and in order to set forth the excel-
lences and the trifling proportion which the defects bore
to the excellences. But this, my dear sir, is a mistake to
which affectionate natures are liable, though I do not
remember to have ever seen it noticed, the mistaking
those who are desirous and well-pleased to be loved hy
you, for those who love you. Add, as a mere general
cause, the fact that I neither am nor ever have been of
any party. What wonder, then, if I am left to decide
which has been my worse enemy, — the broad, j)re-deter-
mined abuse of the " Edinburgh Review," etc., or the cold
and brief compliments, with the warm regrets of the
" Quarterly " ? After all, however, I have now but one
sorrow relative to the ill success of my literary toils (and
toils they have been, though not undelightfnl toils'), and
this arises wholly from the almost insurmountable diffi-
culties which the anxieties of to-day oppose to my com-
pletion of the great work, the form and materials of

698 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Jan.

which it has been the employment of the best and most
genial hours of the last twenty years to mature and
collect.

If I could but have a tolerably numerous audience to
my first, or first and second Lectures on the History of
Philosophy,! I should entertain a strong hope of success,
because I know that these lectures will be found by far
the most interesting and entertai?iing of any that I have
yet delivered, independent of the more permanent inter-
ests of rememberable instruction. Few and unimportant
would the errors of men be, if they did but know, first,
what they themselves meant; and, secondly, what the
words mean by which they attempt to convey their mean-
ing ; and I can conceive no subject so well fitted to exem-
plify the mode and the importance of these two jDoints as
the History of Philosophy, treated as in the scheme of
these lectures. Trusting that I shall shortly have the
pleasure of seeing you here,

I remain, my dear sir, yours most sincerely,

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

^ The Prospectus of the Lectures and Gentleman, Three Guineas. Sin-
on the History of Philosophy was g-le Tickets, Two Guineas. Ad-
printed in Allsop's Letters, etc., as mission to a Single Lecture, Five
Letter xliv., November 26, 1818, but Shillings. An Historical and Chron-
the announcement of the time and olog'ical Guide to the course will
place has been omitted. A very be printed."

rare copy of the original prospectus, A reporter was hired at the ex-

which has been placed in my hands pense of Hookham Frere to take

by Mrs. Henry Watson, gives the fol- down the lectures in shorthand. A

lowing details : — transcript, which I possess, contains

"This course will be comprised numerous errors and omissions, but is

in Fourteen Lectures, to commence interesting as affording proof of the

on Monday evening, December 7, conversational style of Coleridge's

1818, at eight o'clock, at the Crown lectures. See, for further account

and Anchor, Strand ; and be contin- of Lectures of 1819, Samuel Tay-

ued on the following Mondays, with lor Coleridge, a Narrative, by J.

the intermission of Christmas week Dykes Campbell, pp. 238, 239.
— Double Tickets, admitting a Lady

1819] TO J. H. GREEN 699

CCXXIV. TO J. H. GREEN.

[Postmark, January 16, 1819.]

My dear Green, — I forgot both at the Lecture
Room and at Mr. Phillips's to beg you to leave out for me
Goethe's " Zur Farbenlehre." It is for a passage in the
preface in which he compares Plato with Aristotle, etc.,
as far as I recollect, in a spirited manner. The books
are at your service again, after the lecture. Either Mr.
Gary or some messenger will call for them to-morrow ! I
piously resolve on Tuesday to put my books in some
order, but at all events to select yours and send all of
them that I do not want (and I do not recollect any that I
do, unless perhaps the little volume edited by Tieck of his
friend's composition), back to you. I am more and more
delighted with Chantrey. The little of his conversation
which I enjoyed ex pede Uerculem, left me no doubt of
the power of his insight. Light, manlihood, simplicity,
wholeness. These are the entelechy of Phidian Genius ;
and who but must see these in Chantrey 's solar face, and
in all his manners ? Item : I am bewitched with your
wife's portrait. So very like and yet so ideal a portrait I
never remember to have seen. But as Mr. Phillips ^
said : " Why, sir ! she was a sweet subject, sir ! That 's
a great thing."

As to my own, I can form no judgment. In its present
state, the eyes appear too large, too globose, and their
colour must be made lighter, and I thought that the face,

^ Thomas Phillips, R. A., 1770- Justice used to say that the Salston
1845, painted two portraits of Cole- picture was " the test presentation
ridge, one of which is in the posses- of the outward man." No doubt
sion of Mr. John Murray, and was it recalled his g-reat-uncle as he re-
engraved as the frontispiece of the membered him. It certainly bears
first volume of the Table Talk ; a close resemblance to the portraits
and the other in that of Mr. William of Coleridge's brothers, Edward and
Rennell Coleridge, of Salston, Ottery George, and of other members of the
St. Mary. The late Lord Chief family.

700 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Oct.

exclusive of the forehead, was stronger, more energetic
than mine seems to be when I catch it in the glass, and
therefore the forehead and brow less so — not in them-
selves, but in consequence of the proportion. But of
course I can form no notion of what my face and look
may be when I am animated in friendly conversation.
My kind and respectful remembrances to your Mother,
and believe me, most affectionately.

Your obliged friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

CCXXV. TO JAMES GILLMAN.

[Ramsgate, Postmark, AugTist 20, 1819.]

My dear Friend, — Whether from the mere inten-
sity of the heat, and the restless, almost sleepless, nights
in consequence, or from incautious exposure to draughts ;
or whether simply the change of air and the sea bath was
repairing the intestinal canal (and bad indeed must the
road be which is not better than a 7'oad a-mendhig, a
hint which our revohitlonary reformers would do well to
attend to) or from whatever cause, I have been miserably.
unwell for the last three days — but last night passed a
tolerably good night, and, finding myself convalescent
this morning, I bathed, and now am still better, ha^dng
had a glorious tumble in the waves, though the water is
still not cold enough for my liking. The weather, how-
ever, is evidently on the change, and we have now a suc-
cession of flying April showers, and needle rains. My
bath is about a mile and a quarter from the Lime Grove,
a wearisome travail by the deep crumbly sands, but a
very pleasant breezy walk along the top of the cliff, from
which you descend through a deep steep lane cut through
the chalk rocks. The tide comes up to the end of the
lane, and washes the cliff, but a little before or a little
after high tide there are nice clean seats of rock with
foot-baths, and then an expanse of sand, greater than I

1819] TO MRS. ADERS 701

need ; and exactly a hundred of my strides from the end
of the lane there is a good, roomy, arched cavern, with an
oven or cupboard in it, where one's clothes may be put
free from the sand. ... I find that I can write no more
if I am to send this by the to-day's post. Pray, if you
can with any sort of propriety, do come down to me — to
us, I suppose I ought to say. We are all as should be
BvT [lOVfTTpovcrXi. (f)opixaX. . . .

God bless you and

S. T. C.

CCXXVI. TO MES. ADERS. [?] ^

[HiGHGATB, October 28, 1819.]

Dear Madam, — I wish from my very heart that you
could teach me to express my obligations to you with half
the grace and delicacy with which you confer them !
But not to the Giver does the evening cloud indicate the
rich lights, which it has received and transmits and yet
retains. For other eyes it must glow : and what it can-
not return it will strive to represent, the poor proxy of
the gracious orb which is departing. I would that the
simile were less accurate throughout, and with those of
Homer's lost its likeness as it approached to its conclusion !
This, I fear, is somewhat too selfish; but we cannot have
attachment without fear or grief.

" We cannot choose —
But weep to have what we so dread to lose,"

says Nature's child, our best Shakespeare ; and that Hu-
manity cannot grieve without a portion of selfishness, Nature
herself says. To take up my allegoric strain with a slight
variation, even in the fairest shews and liveliest demon-
strations of grateful and affectionate leave-taking from a
generous friend or disinterested patron or benefactor, we

^ My impression is that this letter the engraver Raphael Smith, but the
was written to Mrs. Aders, the beau- address is wanting and I cannot
tiful and accomplished daughter of speak with any certainty.

702 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Oct.

are like evening rainbows, that at once sliine and weep,
things made up of reflected splendour and our own tears.^

To meet, to know, t' esteem — and then to part,
Forms the sad tale of many a genial heart.^

The storm ^ now louring and muttering in our political
atmosphere might of itself almost forbid me to regret
your leaving England. For I have no apprehension of
any serious or extensive danger to property or to the
coercive powers of the Law. Both reason and history
preclude the fear of any revolution, where none of the
constituent states of a nation are arrayed against the
others. The risk is still less in Great Britain where
property is so widely diffused and so closely interlinked
and co-organized. But I dare not promise as much for
personal safety. The struggle may be short, the event
certain ; yet the mischief in the interim ajipalling !

May my Fears,
My filial fears, be vain ! and may the vaunts
And menace of the vengeful enemy
Pass like the gust, that roared and died away

^ Compare lines 16-20 of TAe r«;o Poetical Works, p. 196. See, too.

Founts : — for unpriuted stanza, Ibid. Editor's

" As on the driving cloud the shiny bow, Note, p. 642.

That gracious thing made up of tears and - "To Two Sisters.'' Poetical

"g^t-" Works, p. 179.
The poem as a whole was composed ^ The so-called '' Manchester Mas-
in 182(5, and, as I am assured by Mrs. saere," nicknamed Peterloo, took
Henry Watson (on the authority of place Ang-ust 16, 1819. Towards
her grandmother, Mis. Gillman), the middle of October dangerous
addressed to Mrs. Aders ; but the riots broke out at North Shields,
fifth and a preceding' stanza, which Cries of "Blood for blood," "Man-
Coleridge marked for interpolation, Chester over again," were heard in
in an annotated copy of Poetical the streets, and " so daring have the
Works, 1828 (kindly lent me by Mrs. mob been that they actually threat-
Watson), must have been written be- ened to burn or destroy the ships
fore that date, and were, as I gather of war." Annual Register, October
from an insertion in a notebook, ori- 15-23, 1819.
ginally addressed to Mrs. Gillman.

1819] TO MRS. ADERS 703

In the distant tree : which heard, and only heard
In this low deU, bow'd not the delicate grass.^

I confess that I read the poem from which these lines
are extracted (" Fears in Solitude ") and now cite them
with far other than an author s feelings ; those, I trusty
of a patriot, I am sure, those of a Christian.

You will not, I know, fail to assure Miss Harding ^ of
the kind feelings and wishes with which I accompany
her ; but my sense of the last boon, which I owe to her, I
shall convey, my dear madam ! by hands less likely to
make extenuating comments on my words than your
tongue or hand. Before I subscribe my name, I must
tell you that had my wish been the chooser and had taken
a month to deliberate on the choice, I could not have
received a keepsake so in all respects gratifying to me,
as the exquisite impressions of cameo's and intaglio's.^
First, it enables me to entertain and gratify so many
friends, my own and Mr. and Mrs. Gillman's ; secondly,
every little gem is associated with my recollections, or
more or less recalls the images and persons seen and met
with during my own stay in the Mediterranean and Italy ;
thirdly, they stand in the same connection with the places
of your past and future sojourn, and therefore, lastly,
supply me with the means and the occasion of expressing
to others more strongly, perhaps, but not more warmly or
sincerely than I now do to yourself, with how much
respect and regard I remain, dear madam.

Your obliged friend and servant,

S. T. Coleridge.

Saturday, 28th Octr. 1819. On the 20th of this month
completed my 49th year.

^ "Fears in Solitude." Poetical gems, once, no doubt, the property

Works, p. 127. of S. T. C, is now in the possession

2 Mrs. Gillman's sister. of Alexander Gillman, Esq., of

^ A collection of casts of antique Sussex Square, Brighton.

704 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Jan.

CCXXVII. TO J. H. GREEN.

January 14, 1820.

My dear Green, — Charles Lamb has just written
to inform me that he and his sister will pay me their
JVno Years visit on Sunday next, and may perhaps
bring a friend to see me, though certainly not to dine,
and hopes I may not be engaged. I must therefore defer
our 2)hilosophicaI intercommune till the Sunday after ; but
if you have no more pleasant way of passing the ante-
prandial or, still better, the day including prandial and
post-prandial, I trust that it will be no anti-philosophical
exjjcnditure of time, and I need not say an addition to
the pleasure of all this household. I should like, too, to
arrange some plan of going with you to Covent Garden
Theatre, to see Miss Wensley, the new actress, whose
father (a merchant of Bristol, at whose house I had once
been, but whom the capricious Nymph of Trade has un-
horsed from his seat) has called on me, a compound of
the Oratorical, the Histrionic, and the Exquisite ! All
the dull colours in the colour-shop at the sign of the
Bluecoat Boy would not suffice to neutralize the glare of
his Colorit into any tolerably fair likeness that would not
be scouted as Caricature ! Gillman will give you a slight
sketch of him. Since I saw you, we have dined and
spent the night (for it was near one when we broke up)
at Mathews', and heard and saw his forthcoming " At
Home." There were present, besides G. and myself,
Mrs. and young Mathews, and ]Mr. and Mrs. Chisholm,
James Smith of Rej. Add. notoriety, and the author of
(all the trash of) Mathews' Entertainment, for the good
parts are his own, (What a pity that you dare not offer
a word of friendly sensible advice to such men as M., but
you may be certain that it will be useless to them and
attributed to envy or some vile selfish object in the ad-

Derwent Coleridge

1820] TO J. H. GREEN 705

viser!) Mr. Dubois/ the author of " Yaurlen," "Old
Nic," " My Pocket Book," and a notable share of the
theatrical puffs and slanders of the periodical press ; and,
lastly, Mr. Thomas Hill,^ quondam drysalter of Thames
Street, whom I remember twenty-five years ago with ex-
actly the same look, person, and manners as now. Math-
ews calls him the Immutable. He is a seemingly al-
ways good-natured fellow who knows nothing and about
everything, no person, and about and all about every-
body — a complete parasite, in the old sense of a dinner-
hunter, at the tables of all who entertain public men,
authors, players, fiddlers, booksellers, etc., for more than
thirty years. It was a pleasant evening, however.

Be so good as to remember the drawing from the Al-
chemy Book.

Mrs. Gillman desires her love to Mrs. Green ; and we
hope that the twin obstacles, ague and the boreal weather,
to our seeing her here, will vanish at the same time.
Mrs. G. bids me tell her that she grumbles at the doc-
tors, her husband included, and is confident that her

1 Edward Dubois, satirist, 1775- of Coleridge, headed "A Farewell,

1850, was the author of T/ie Wreath, 1834," " I dined in company at my

a Translation of Bocca/:cio''s Decam- father's table, I sat between Cole-

eron, 1804, and other works besides ridge and Mr. Hill (known as ' Lit-

those mentioned in the text. Bio- tie Tommy Hill ') of the Adelphi,

graphical Dictionary. and Ezekiel then formed the theme

^ A late note-book of the High- of Coleridge's eloquence. I well re-
gate period contains the following member his citing the chapter of
doggerel : — the Dead Bones, and his sepulchral
^ . voice as he asked, ' Can these bones

To THE MOST VEHACIOUS ANECDOTIST AND

Small-Talk Man, Thomas Hill, Esq. ^^^^ • Then, his observation that

rr TTi, 1, 1 ,, i A nothing in the range of human

Tom Uill who laughs at cares and woes,

As nanci — nili — pili — thought was more sublime than
What is he like as I suppose ? Ezekiel's reply, ' Lord, thou know-
Why to be sure, a Rose, a Rose. est,' in deepest humility, not presum-
At least no soul that Tom Hill knows, i^g, to doubt the omnipotence of the

Could e'er recall a Li-ly. -i.^ , tt. i d t ^^ ^ ^i t i

„ Most Higa." Letters from the Lake

Poets, p. 322. See, too, Letters from

"The first time," writes Miss Hill to Stuart, J6i(^. p. 435.

Stuart, in a personal remembrance

706 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [May

husband would have made a cure long ago. A faithful
wife is a common blessing, I trust : but what a treasure
to have a wife full of faith I By the bye, I have lit on
some (ws e/xotye Sokci analogous') cases in which the nau-
seating plan, even for a short time, appears to have had a
wonderful effect in breaking the chain of a morbid ten-
dency ; and the almost infallible specific of sea-sickness
in curing an old ague is surely a confirmation as far as it
goes.

Yours most affectionately,

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

CCXXVIII. TO THE SAME.

[May 25, 1820.]

My DEAR Green, — I was greatly affected in finding
how ill you had been, and long ere this should have let
you know it, but that I have myself been in no usual
degree unwell. I wish I could with truth underline the
words have been, and in the hope of being able to do so it
was that I delayed answering your note. Unless a speedy
change for the better takes place, I should culpably de-
ceive myself if I did not interpret my present state as a
summons. God's will be done ! I cannot pretend that I
have not received countless warnings ; and for my neglect
and for the habits, and all the feebleness and wastings of
the moral will which unfit the soul for spiritual ascent,
and must sink it, of moral necessity, lower and lower, if
it be essentially imperishable, my only ray of hope is this,
that in my inmost heart, as far as my consciousness can
sound its depths, I plead nothing but my utter and sinful
helplessness and worthlessness on one side, and the infi-
nite mercy and divine Humanity of our Creator and
Redeemer crucified from the beginning of the world, on
the other! I use no comparatives, nor indeed could I
ever charitably interpret the penitential phrases (" I am
the vilest of sinners, worse than the wickedest of my

1820] TO J. H. GREEN T07

fellow-men," etc.) otherwise than as figures of speech, the
whole purport of which is, " In relation to God I appear
to myself the same as the very worst man, if such there
be, would appear to an earthly tribunal." I mean no
comparatives ; for what have a man's permanent concerns
to do with comparison ? What avails it to a bird shat-
tered and irremediably disorganized in one wing, that
another bird is similarly conditioned in both wings? Or
to a man in the last stage of ulcerated lungs, that his
neighbour is liver-rotten as well as consumptive ? Both
find their equation, the birds as to flight, the men as to
life. In o o o's there is no comparison.

My nephew, the Revd. W. Hart Coleridge, came and
stayed here from Monday afternoon to Tuesday noon, in
order to make Derwent's acquaintance, and brought with
him by accident Marsh's Divinity Lecture, No 3rd, on
the authenticity and credibility of the Books collected in
the New Testament. As I could not sit with the party
after tea, I took the pamphlet with me into my bedroom,
and gave it an attentive perusal, knowing the Bishop's
intimate acquaintance with the investigations of Eichhorn,
Paulus, and their numerous scarcely less celebrated
scholars, and myself familiar with the works of the
Gottingen Professor (Eichhorn), the founder and head
of the daring school. I saw or seemed to see more man-
agement in the Lecture than proof of thorough convic-
tion. I supplied, however, from my own reasonings
enough of what appeared wanting or doubtful in the
Bishop's to justify the conclusion that the Gospel History
beginning with the Baptism of John, and the Doctrines
contained in the fourth Gospel, and in the Epistles, truly
represent the assertions of the Apostles and the faith of
the Christian Church during the first century ; that there
exists no tenable or even tolerable ground for doubting the
authenticity of the Books ascribed to John the Evangelist,
to Mark, to Luke, and to Paul ; nor the authority of Mat-

708 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [May

thew and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews ; and
lastly, that a man need only have common sense and a
good heart to be assured that these Apostles and Apostolic
men wrote nothing but what they themselves believed.
And yet I have no hesitation in avowing that many an
argument derived from the nature of man, nay, that
many a strong though only speculative probability,
pierces deeper, pushes more home, and clings more press-
ingly to my mind than the whole sum of merely external
evidence, the yact of Christianity itself alone excepted.
Nay, I feel that the external evidence derives a great and
lively accession of force, for my mind, from my previous
speculative convictions or presumptions ; but tliat I can-
not find that the latter are at all strengthened or made
more or less probable to me by the former. Besides, as
to the external evidence I make up my mind o?ice for all,
and merely as evidence think no more about it ; but those
facts or reflections thereon which tend to change belief
into insight, can never lose their effect, any more than
the distinctive se?isations of disease, comj)ared with a
more ^^erceiuecZ correspondence of symptoms 'svdth the
diagnostics of a medical book.

I was led to this remark by reflecting on the awful
importance of the physiological question (so generally
decided one way by tlie late most popular writers on
insanity), Does the efficient cause of disease and disor-
dered action, and, collectively, of pain and perishing, lie
entirely in the organs, and then, reawakening the active
principle in me, depart — that all pain and disease would
be removed, and I should stand in the same state as I
stood in previous to all sickness, etc., to the admission of
any disturbing forces into my nature ? Or, on the con-
trary, would such a repaired Organismus be no fit oi'gan
for my life, as if, for instance, a wotm lock with an equally
worn key — [the key] might no longer fit the lock. The
repaired organs might from intimate in-correspondence

1820] TO J. H. GREEN 709

be the causes of torture and madness. A system o£
materialism, in which organisation stands first, whether
compared by Nature, or God and Life, etc., as its results
(even as the sound is the result of a bell), such a system
would, doubtless, remove great part of the terrors which
the soul makes out of itself ; but then it removes the soul
too, or rather precludes it. And a supposition of coex-
istence, without any loechselwirkung, it is not in our
power to adopt in good earnest ; or, if we did, it would
answer no purpose. For which of the two, soul or body,
am I to call " I " ? Again, a soul separate from the
body, and yet entirely j^assive to it, would be so like a
drum playing a tattoo on the drummer, that one cannot
build any hojoe on it. If then the organisation be jjri-
marily the result^ and only by reaction a cause^ it would
be well to consider what the cases are in this life, in
which the restoration of the organisation removes disease.
Is the organisation ever restored, except as continually
reproduced? And in the remaining number are they
not cases into which the soul never entered as a conscious
or rather a moral conscionable agent ? The regular re-
production of scars, marks, etc., the increased suscepti-
bility of disease in an organ, after a perfect apparent
restoration to healthy structure in action ; the insuscepti-
bility in other cases, as in the variolous — these and
many others are fruitful subjects, and even imperfect as
the induction may be, and must be in our present degree
of knowledge, we might yet deduce that a suicide, under
the domination of disorderly passions and erroneous
principles, plays a desperately hazardous game, and that
the chance is, he may re-house himself in a worse hogs-
head, with the nails and spikes driven inward — or, sink-
ing below the organising power, be employed fruitlessly
in a horrid appetite of re-skinning himself, after he had
succeeded injleaing his life and leaving all its sensibili-
ties bare to the incursive powers without even the cortex

710 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [May

of a nerve to shield them? Would it not follow, too,
from these considerations, that a redemptive power must
be necessary if immortality be true, and man be a disor-
dered being? And that no power can be redemptive
which does not at the same time act in the ground of the
life as one with the ground, that is, must act in my will
and not merely on my will ; and yet extrinsically, as an
outward power, that is, as that which outvmrd Nature is
to the organisation, viz. the causa correspondens et con-
ditio perjyetua ab extra ? Under these views, I cannot
read the Sixth Chapter of St. John without great emo-
tion. The Redeemer cannot be merely God, miless we
adopt Pantheism, that is, deny the existence of a God ;
and yet God he must be, for whatever is less than God,
may act o?^, but cannot act in, the will of another.
Christ must become man, but he cannot become us, except
as far as we become him, and this we cannot do but by
assimilation ; and assimilation is a vital real act, not a
notional or merely intellective one. There are phenomena,
which are phenomena relatively to our present five senses,
and these Christ forbids us to understand as his meaning,
and, collectively, they are entitled the Flesh that perishes.
But does it follow that there are no other phenomena ?
or that these media of manifestation might not stand to a
spiritual world and to our enduring life in the same rela-
tion as our visible mass of body stands to the world of
the senses, and to the sensations correspondent to, and
excited by, the stimulants of that world. Lastly, would
not the sum of the latter phenomena (the spiritual) be
approj)riately named, the Flesh and Blood of the divine
Humanity*? If faith be a mere apperception, eine blosse
Wahrnehmung, this, I grant, is senseless. For it is
evident, that the assimilation in question is to be carried
on by faith. But if faith be an energy, a positive act,
and that too an act of intensest power, why should it
necessarily differ in toto genere from any other act, ex.

1820] TO J. H. GREEN 711

gr. from that of the animal life in the stomach ? It will
be found easier to laugh or stare at the question than to
prove its irrationability. Enough for the present. I had
been told that Dr. Leach ^ was a Lawrencian, a materialist,
and I know not what. I met him at Mr. Abernethy's,
and with sincere delight I found him the very contrary in
every respect. Except yourself, I have never met so
enlarged or so bold a love of truth in an English physiol-
ogist. The few minutes of conversation that I had the
power of enjoying have left a strong wish in my mind to
see more of him.

Give my kind love to Mrs. Green. Mr. and Mrs.
Gillman are anxious to see you. I assure you they were
very much affected by the account of your health.
Young Allsop behaves more like a dutiful and anxious
son than an acquaintance. He came up yester-night at
ten o'clock, and left the house at eight this morning, in
order to urge me to go to some sea-bathing place, if it
was thought at all advisable.

Derwent goes on in every respect to my satisfaction
and comfort.

Again and again, God bless you and your sincerely
affectionate friend,

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

^ William Elford Leach, 1790- tures on the Physiology, Zoology,

1836, a physician and naturalist, was and Natural History of Man," which

at this time Curator of the Natural were delivered in 1816, are alluded

History Department at the British to more than once in his " Theory

Museum. of Life." " Theory of Life " in

By Lawrencian, Coleridge means Miscellanies, Esthetic and Literary,

a disciple of the eminent surgeon Bohn's Standard Library, pp. 377,

William Lawrence, whose "Lee- 385.

712 NEW LIFE AND NEW FRIENDS [Feb.

CCXXIX. TO CHARLES AUGUSTUS TULK.

February 12, 1821.

My dear Sir, — " Tliey say, Coleridge ! that you
are a Swedenborgian ! " " Would to God," I replied
fervently, " that they were anything.'' I was writing a
brief essay on the prospects of a country where it has
become tlie mind of the nation to appreciate the evil of
public acts and measures by their next consequences or
immediate occasions, while the ^jrmcip/e violated, or that
a principle is thereby violated, is either wholly dropped
out of the consideration, or is introduced but as a garnish
or ornamental commonplace in the peroration of a sjjeech !
The deep interest was present to my thoughts of that
distinction between the Reason., as the source of princi-
ples, the true celestial influx and porta Dei in hominem
ceternum, Siud. the Understanding ; with the clearness of
the' proof, by which this distinction is evinced, viz. that
vital or zoo-organic power, instinct, and understanding
fall all three under the same definition in genere, and the
very additions by which the definition is applied from the
first to the second, and from the second to the third, are
themselves expressive of degrees only, and in degree only
deniable of the preceding. {Ex. gr. 1. Eeflect on the
selective power exercised by the stomach of the caterpillar
on the undigested miscellany of food, and, 2, the same
power exercised by the caterpillar on the outward plants,
and you will see the order of the conceptions.) 1. Vital
Power = the power by which means are adapted to proxi-
mate ends. 2. Instinct = the power tchich adajyts means
to proximate ends. 3. Understanding = the power which
adapts means to proximate ends according to varying
circumstances. May I not safely challenge any man to
peruse Huber's " Treatise on Ants," and yet deny their
claim to be included in the last definition. But try to
apply the same definition, with any extension of degree.

1821] TO CHARLES AUGUSTUS TULK 713

to the reason, the absurdity will flash upon the convic-
tion. First, in reason there is and can be no degree.
Deus introit aut non introit. Secondly, in reason there
are no means nor ends, reason itself being one with the
ultimate end, of which it is the manifestation. Thirdly,
reason has no concern with tilings, (that is, the imperma-
nent flux of particulars), but with the permanent Rela-
tions ; and is to be defined even in its lowest or theoret-
ical attribute, as the power which enables man to draw
necessary and universal conclusions from particular facts
or forms, ex. gr. from any three-cornered thing, that the
two sides of a triangle are and must be greater than the
third. From the understanding to the reason, there is no
continuous ascent possible ; it is a metabasis eis aAA.o yeVo?
even as from the air to the light. The true essential
peculiarity of the human understanding consists in its
capability of being irradiated by the reason, in its recij)-
iency ; and even this is given to it by the presence of a
higher power than itself. What then must be the fate
of a nation that substitutes Locke for logic, and Paley for
morality, and one or the other for polity and theology,
according to the predominance of Whig or Tory predi-
lection. Slavery, or a commotion is at hand ! But if
the gentry and clerisy (including all the learned and
educated) do this, then the nation does it, or a commo-
tion is at hand. Acephalurn enim, aura quamvis et
calore vitali potiatur, morientem rectius dicimus, quam
quod vivit. With these thoughts was I occupied when I
received your very kind and most acceptable present, and
the results I must defer to the next post. With best
regards to Mrs. Tulk,

Believe me, in the brief interval, your obliged and
grateful

S. T. Coleridge.

C. A. Tulk, Esq., M. P., Regency Park.

CHAPTER XIV
THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE

1822-1832

CHAPTER XIV

THE PHILOSOPHEE AND DIVINE

1822-1832

CCXXX. TO JOHN MURRAY.

HiGHGATE, January 18, 1822.

Dear Sir, — If not with the works, you are doubtless
familiar with the name of that " wonderful man " (for
such, says Doddridge, I must deliberately call him), Arch-
bishop Leighton. It would not be easy to point out an-
other name, which the eminent of all parties, Catholic
and Protestant, Episcopal and Presbyterian, Whigs and
Tories, have been so unanimous in extolling. " There is
a spirit in Archbishop Leighton I never met with in
any human writings ; nor can I read many lines in them
without impressions which I coidd wish always to retain,"
observes a dignitary of our Establishment and F. R. S.
eminent in his day both as a philosopher and a divine.
In fact, it would make no small addition to the size of
the volume, if, as was the fashion in editing the classics,
we should collect the eulogies on his writings passed by
bishops only and church divines, from Burnet to Porteus.
That this confluence of favourable opinions is not without
good cause, my own experience convinces me. For at a
time when I had read but a small portion of the Arch-
bishop's principal work, when I was altogether ignorant
of its celebrity, much more of the peculiar character at-
tributed to his writings (that of making and leaving a
deep impression on readers of all classes), I remember

718 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [Jan.

saying to Mr. Southey ^ " that in the Apostohe Epistles I
heard the last hour of Inspiration striking, and in Arch.
Leighton's commentary the lingering vibration of the
sound." Perspicuous, I had almost said transparent, his
style is elegant by the mere compulsion of the thoughts
and feelings, and in despite, as it were, of the writer's
wish to the contrary. Profound as his conceptions often
are, and numerous as the passages are, where the most
athletic thinker will find himself tracing a rich vein from
the surface downward, and leave off with an unknown
depth for to-morrow's delving — yet there is this quality
peculiar to Leighton, unless we add Shakespeare — that
there is always a scum on the very surface which the
simplest may understand, if they have head and heart to
understand anything. The same or nearly the same
excellence characterizes his eloquence. Leighton had by
nature a quick and pregnant fancy, and the august ob-
jects of his habitual contemplation, and their remoteness
from the outward senses, his constant endeavour to see or
to bring all things under some point of unity, but, above
all, the rare and vital union of head and heart, of light
and love, in his own character, — all these working con-
jointly could not fail to form and nourish in him the
higher power, and more akin to reason, the power, I
mean, of imagination. And yet in his freest and most
figurative passages there is a si(hduedness, a self-checking
timidity in his colouring, a sobering silver-grey tone over
all ; and an experienced eye may easily see where and in
how many Instances Leighton has substituted neutral
tints for a strong light or a bold relief — by tliis sacrifice,
however, of particular effects, giving an increased per-
manence to the impression of the whole, and wonderfully
facilitating Its soft and quiet ///apse into the very recesses
of our convictions. Leighton's happiest ornaments of

1 Included in the Omniana of 1809-1816. Table Talk, etc., Bell &
Sons, 1884, p. 400.

1822] TO JOHN MURRAY 719

style are made to appear as efforts on the part of tlie
author to express himself less ornamentally, more plainly.
Since the late alarm respecting Church Calvinism and
Calvinistic Methodism (a cry of Fire I Fire ! in conse-
quence of a red glare on one or two of the windows, from
a bonfire of straw and stubble in the church-yard, while
the dry rot of virtual Socinianism is snugly at work in the
beams and joists of the venerable edifice) I have heard
of certain gentle doubts and questions as to the Arch-
bishop's perfect orthodoxy — some small speck in the
diamond which had escaped the quick eye of all former
theological jewellers from Bishop Burnet to the outra-
geously anti-Methodistic Warburton. But on what grounds
I cannot even conjecture, unless it be, that the Christian-
ity which Leighton teaches contains the doctrines peculiar
to the Gosjjel as well as the truths common to it with the
(so-called) light of nature or natural religion, that he
dissuades students and the generality of Christians from
all attempts at explaining the mysteries of faith by
notional and metaphysical speculations, and rather by a
heavenly life and temper to obtain a closer view of these
truths, the full light and knowledge of which it is" in
Heaven only that we shall possess. He further advises
them in speaking of these truths to proper scripture
language ; but since something more than this had been
made necessary by the restless spirit of dispute, to take
this " something more " in the sound precise terms of the
Liturgy and Articles of the Established Church. En-
thusiasm ? Fanaticism ? Had I to recommend an anti-
dote, I declare on my conscience that above all others it
should be Leighton. And as to Calvinism, L.'s exposi-
tion of the scriptural sense of election ought to have pre-
vented the very^ [suspicion of its presence]. You will
long ago, I fear, have [been asking yourself]. To what
does all this tend? Briefly then, I feel strongly per-
suaded, perhaps because I strongly wish it, that the

720 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [Oct.

Beauties of Arclibishop Leighton, selected and metliod-
ized, with a (better) Life of the Author, that is, a bio-
graphical and critical introduction as Preface, and Notes,
would make not only a useful but an interesting Pocket
Volume. " Beauties " in general are objectionable
works — injurious to the original author, as disorganizing
his productions, pulling to pieces the well-wrought croion
of his glory to pick out the shining stones, and injurious
to the reader, by indulging the taste for unconnected, and
for that reason unretained single thoughts, till it fares
with him as with the old gentleman at Edinburgh, who
eat six kittywakes by way of wheiting his appetite —
" whereas " (said he) " it proved quite the contrary : I
never sat down to a dinner with so little." But Leigh-
ton's principal work, that which fills two volumes and a
half of the four, being a commentary on St. Peter's Epis-
tles, verse by verse, and varying, of course, in subject,
etc., with almost every paragraph, the volume, I propose,
would not only bring together his finest passages, but
these being afterwards arranged on a principle wholly
independent of the accidental place of each in the original
volumes, and guided by their relative bearings, it w^ould
give a connection or at least a propriety of sequenci/, that
was before of necessity wanting. It may be worth noti-
cing, that the editions, both the one in three, and the other
in four volumes, are most grievously misprinted and
otherwise disfigured. Should you be disposed to think
this worthy your attention, I would even send you the
proof transcribed, sheet by sheet, as it shovdd be printed,
though doubtless by sacrificing one copy of Leighton's
works, it might be effected by references to volume, page,
and line, I having first carefully corrected the copy. Or,
should you think another more likely to execute the plan
better, or that another name would better promote its
sale, I should by no means resent the preference, nor feel
any mortification for which, the having occasioned the

1822] TO JAMES GILLMAN 721

existence of such a work, tastefully selected and judiciously
arranged, would not be sufficient compensation for,
Dear sir, your obliged

S. T. Coleridge.

CCXXXI. TO JAMES GILLMAN.

October 28, 1822.

Dear Friend, — Words, I know, are not wanted be-
tween you and me. But there are occasions so awful,
there may be instances and manifestations so affecting,
and drawing up with them so long a train from behind,
so many folds of recollection, as they come onward on
one's mind, that it seems but a mere act of justice to one's
self, a debt we owe to the dignity of our moral nature, to
give them some record — a relief, which the spirit of man
asks and demands to contemplate in some outward sym-
bol of what it is inwardly solemnizing. I am still too
much under the cloud of past misgivings ; ^ too much of
the stun and stupor from the recent peals and thunder-
crash still remains to permit me to anticipate other than
by wishes and prayers what the effect of your unweariable
kindness may be on poor Hartley's mind and conduct. I
pray fervently, and I feel a cheerful trust that I do not
pray in vain, that on my own mind and spring of action it
will be proved not to have been wasted. I do inwardly
believe that I shall yet do something to thank you, my
dear Gillman, in the way in which you would wish to be
thanked, by doing myself honour.

Mrs. Gillman has been determined by your letter, and
the heavenly weather, and moral certainty of the contin-

^ Compare a letter of Coleridg'e ticular letter, with its thinly-veiled

to AUsop, dated October 8, 1822, in allusions to Wordsworth, Southey,

which he details ' ' the four griping and to Coleridge's sons, which not

and grasping sorrows, each of which only excited indignation against

seemed to have my very heart in its AUsop, but moved Southey to write

hands, compressing or wringing." a letter to Cottle. Letters, Conver-

It was the publication of this par- sation, etc., 1836, ii. 140-146.

722 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [July

uance of hathlng-wesithev at least, to accept lier sister's
offer of coming into Ramsgate and to take a house, for a
fortnight certain, at a guinea a week, in the buildings
next to Wellington Crescent, and having a certain modi-
cum and segment of sea-peep. You remember the house
(the end one) with a balcony at the window, almost in a
line with the Duke of W .... in wood, lignum vitce, Kke
as life. I had thought of keeping my present bedroom
at 10s. 6d. a week, but on consulting Mrs. Rogers, she
did not think that this would satisfy the etiquette of the
world, though the two houses are on different cliffs ; and
I felt so confident of the effect of the bathing and Rams-
gate transparent water, the sands, the pier, etc., that as
there was no alternative but of giving up the bathing
(for Mrs. G. would not stay by herself, partly, if not
chiefly, because she feared I might add more to 5^our
anxiety than your comfort in your bachelor state and with
only Bessy of Beccles) or having Jane, I voted for the
latter, and will do my very best to keep her in good
humour and good spirits.

Dear Friend, and Brother of my Soul, God only knows
how truly and in the depth you are loved and prized by
your affectionate friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

CCXXXII. TO MISS BRENT. 1

July 7, 1823.

My dear Charlotte, — I have been many times in
town within the last three or four weeks ; but with one
exception, when I was driven in and back by Mr. Gillman

1 Compare "The Wanderer's Fare- Hammersmith, in London, and in
well to Two Sisters " (Mi-s. Morg-an the West of England, he received
and Miss Brent), 1807. Miss Brent from these ladies the most affection-
made her home with her married ate care and attention, both in sick-
sister, Mrs. J. J. Morgan, and during ness and in health. Poetical Works,
the years 1810-1815, when Coleridge pp. 179, 180.
lived under the Morgans' roof at

1823] TO MISS BRENT 723

to hear the present idol o£ the world of fashion, the
Revd. Mr. Irving, the super-Ciceronian, ultra-Demos-
thenic pulpiteer of the Scotch Chapel in Cross Street,
Hatton Garden, I have been always at the West End of
the town, and mostly dancing attendance on a proud
bookseller, and I fear to little purpose — weary enough of
my existence, God knows ! and yet not a tittle the more
disposed to better it at the price of apostacy or suppres-
sion of the truth. If I could but once get off the two
works, on which I rely for the proof that I have not lived
in vain, and had those off my mind, I could then main-
tain myself well enough by writing for the purpose of
what I got by it ; but it is an anguish I cannot look in
the face, to abandon just as it is completed the work of
such intense and long-continued labour ; and if I cannot
make an agreement with Murray, I must try Colbourn,
and if with neither, owing to the loud calumny of the
" Edinburgh," and the silent but more injurious detrac-
tion of the " Quarterly Review," I must try to get them
published by subscription. But of this when we meet.
I write at present and to you as the less busy sister, to
beg you will be so good as to send me the volume of
Southey's " Brazil," which I am now in particular want
of, by the Highgate Stage that sets off just before Mid-
dle Row. " Mr. Coleridge, or J. GiUman, Esq. (either
will do), Highgate."

My kind love to Mary. I have little doubt that I shall
see you in the course of next week.

Do you think of taking rooms out of the smoke during
this summer for any time ?

God bless you, my dear Charlotte, and your affec-
tionate

S. T. Coleridge.

724 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [July

CCXXXIII. TO THE REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE.^

HiGHGATE, July 23, 1823.

My DEAR Edward, — From Carlisle to Keswick there
are several routes possible, and neither of these without
some attraction. The choice, however, lies between two ;
which to prefer, I find it hard to decide, and if, as on the
whole I am disposed to do, I advise the former, it is not
from thinking the other of inferior interest. On the
contraiy, if your lahing were comprised between Carhsle
and Keswick, I should not hesitate to recommend the
latter in preference, but because the fkst will bring you
soonest to Keswick, where Mr. Southey still is, having,
as your cousin Sara writes me, deferred his journey to
town, on account of his book on "The Church," which
has outgrown its intended dimensions ; and because the
sort of " scenery " (to use that slang word best confined
to the creeking Daubenies of the Theatre) on the latter
route, is what you will have abundant opportunities of
seeing with the one leg of your compass fixed at Kes-
wick.

First then, you may go from Carlisle to Eose Castle,
and spend an hour in seeing that and its circumfer-
ency ; and from thence to Caldbccl; its waterfalls and
faery caldrons, with the Pulpit and Clerk's Desk Rocks,
over which the Cata-, or rather Kitten-ract, flings itself,
and the cavern to the right of the fall, as you front it ;
and from Caldbeck to the foot of Bassenthwaite, when
you are in the vale of Keswick and not many miles from
Greta Hall. The second route is from Carlisle to Pen-

1 The Reverend Edward Cole- corresponded with his uncle, who

ridge, 1800-1883, the sixth and was greatly attached to him, on

youngest son of Colonel James Cole- philosophical and theological ques-

ridge, was for many years a Master tions. It was to him that the '' Con-

and afterwards a Fellow of Eton, fessions of an Enquiring Spirit ''

He also held the College living of were originally addressed in the

Mapledurham near Reading. He form of letters.

1823] TO EDWARD COLERIDGE. 725

rith (a road of little or no interest), but from Carlisle
you would go to Lowther (Earl of Lonsdale's seat and
magnificent grounds), the village of Lowther, Hawes
Water, and from Hawes Water you might pass over the
mountains into Ulleswater, and when there, you might go
round the head of the lake (that is, Patterdale), and, if
on foot and strong enough and the weather is fine, pass
over Helvellyn, and so get into the high road between
Grasmere and Keswick, or, passing lower down on the
lake, cross over by Graystock, or with a guide or manual
instructions, over the fells so as to come out at or not far
from Threlkeld, which is but three or four miles from
Keswick. At least in good weather there is, I believe, a
tolerably equitihle (that is, horse or pony-tolerating)
track. But at Patterdale you would receive the best
direction. There is an inn at Patterdale where you
might sleep, so as to make one day of it from Penrith to
the Lake Head, via Lowther and Hawes Water ; and
thence to Keswick would take good part of a second.
There is one consideration in favour of this plan, that
from Carlisle to Penrith, or even to Lowther, you might
go by the coach, and I question whether you could reach
Greta Hall by the Caldbeck Route in one day when at
Keswick. When at Keswick, I would advise you to go
to Wastdale through Borrowdale, and if you could return
by Crummock and through the vale of Newlands, the
inverted arch of which (on the t3 (A B) of which I once
saw the two legs of a rich rainbow so as to form with the
arch a perfect circle) faces Greta Hall, you will have
seen the very pith and marrow of the Lakes, especially as
your route to Chester or Liverpool will take you that
heavenly road through Thirlmere, Grasmere, Eydal
(where you will, of course, pay your respects to Mr.
Wordsworth), Ambleside, and the striking half of Win-
dermere.

God bless you ! Pray take care of yourself, were it

726 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [Feb.

only that you know how fearful and anxious your father
and Fanny ^ are respecting your chest and lungs, in case
of cold or over-exertion.

I have heard from Sara and from Mr. Watson (a friend
of mine who has just come from the North) a very com-
fortable account of Hartley.

Believe me, dear Edward, with every kind wish, your
affectionate uncle and sincere friend,

[S. T. Coleridge.]

P. S. Your query respecting the poem I can only
answer by a Nescio. Irving (the Scotch preacher, so
blackguarded in the " John Bull " of last Sunday), cer-
tainly the greatest orator I ever heard (X. B. I make
and mean the same distinction between oratory and elo-
quence as between the mouth -|- the windpipe and the
brain -f- heart), is, however, a man of great simplicity, of
overflowing affections, and enthusiastically in earnest;
and I have reason to believe, deejaly regrets his conjunction
of Southey with Byron, as far as the men (and not the
poems) are in question.

CCXXXIV. TO J. H. GREEN.

Geove, Highgate, February 15, 1824.
I mentioned to you, I believe, Basil Montagu's kind
endeavour to have an associateship of the Royal Society
of Literature (a yearly XlOO versus a yearly essay) con-
ferred on me. I knew nothing of the particulars till
this morning, or rather till within this hour, when I re-
ceived a list of names (electors) from Mr. Montagu, with
advice to write to such and such and such — while he,
and he, and he had promised '■'•for t/s^'' — in short, a
regular canvass^ or rather sackcloth with the ashes on it

1 Colonel Coleridg-e's only dangt- tice Patteson, a Judge of the Queen's
ter, Frances Duke, was afterwards Bench,
married to the Honourable Mr. Jua-

1824] TO J. H. GREEN 727

pulled out of the dust holes, moistened with cabbage-
water, and other culinary excretions of the same kidney.
Of course, I jibbed and with proper (if not equa ; yet)
mulanimity returned for answer — that what a man's
friends did sub rosa, and what one friend might say to
another in favour of an individual, was one thing — what
a man did in his own name and person was another — and
that I would not, could not, solicit a single vote. I
should think it an alfrontive interference with a decision,
in which there ought to be neither ground or motive, but
the elector's own judgement, and conscience, and all for
what? It is hard if, in the same time as I could produce
an essay of the sort required, I could not get the same
sum by compiling a school-book.

However, I fear, that having allowed my name, at
Montagu's instance, to be proposed, which it was by a
Mr. Jerdan (N. B. Neither the one sub cubili, nor that
in Palestine ; but the Jerdan of Michael's Grove, Bromp-
ton, No. 1), I cannot now withdraw my name without
appearing to trifle with my friends, and without hurting
Montagu — so I must submit to the probability of being
black-balled as the penalty of having given my assent
before I had ascertained the conditions. So I have
decided to let the thing take its own course. But as
Montagu wishes to have Mr. Chantrey's vote for us, if
you see and. feel no objection (an objectiuncida will be
quite sufficient), you will perhaps write him a line to
state the circmnstances. It comes on on Thursday
next.

I look forward with a fleel of regeneration to the
Sundays.

My best and most affectionate respects to Mrs. J.
Green, and to your dear and excellent mother if she be
with you.

And till we meet, may God bless you and your obliged
and sincere friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

728 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIYINE [Nov.

CCXXXV. TO THE SAME.

^DEs Nemoeos^, apud Pokt*' Altam,

May 19, 1824.

Mr. S. T. Coleridge, F. R. S. L., R. A., H. M., P. S. B.,

etc., etc., has the honour of avowing the high gratification
he will receive should any answer from him be thought
" to oblige Lincoln's Inn Fields." When he reflects in-
deed on their many and cogent claims on his admiration
and gratitude, what a Fund of Literature they contain,
what a Royal Society, what Royal Associates — not to
speak of those as yet in the &gg of futurity, the unhatched
Decemvirate and Spes Altera Phcebi ! What a royal
College, where philosophy and eloquence imite to display
their fresh and vernal green ! what a conjunction of the
Fine Arts with the Sciences, Law and Physique, Glos-
surgery and Chirurgery ! when he remembers that if the
Titanic Roc should take up the Great Pyramid in his
beak, and drop the same with due skill, the L. I. F.
would fit as cup to ball, bone to bone ; though if S. T. C.
might dare advise so great and rare a bird, the precious
transport should be let fall point downwards, and thus
prevent the adulteration of their intellectual splendours
with " the light of common day," while a duplicate of the
Elysium below might be reared on its ample base in mid
air — (ah ! if a duplicate of No. 22 could be found) ! —
when S. T. C. ponders on these proud merits, what is
there he would not do to " oblige Lincoln's Inn Fields " ?
In vain does Gillman talk of a stop being put thereto !
Between oblige and Lincoln's Inn Fields continuity alone
can intervene for the heart's eye of their obliged and
counter-obliging

S. T. Coleridge,
who, with his friends Mr. and Mrs. G., will, etc., on June
3rd.

J. H. Green, Esq., 22, Lincoln's Inn Fields.

1824] TO JAMES GILLMAN 729

CCXXXVI. TO JAMES GILLMAN»

Eamsgate, November 2, 1824.
My dear Feiend, — That so much longer an interval
has passed between this and my last letter you will not, I
am sure, attribute to any correspondent interval of obli-
vion. I do not, indeed, think that any two hours of any
one day, taken at sixteen, have elapsed in which you,
past or future, or myself in connection with you, were not
for a longer or shorter space my uppermost thought.
But the two days following James's safe arrival by the
coach I was so depressively unwell, so unremittingly
restless, etc., and so exhausted by a teasing cough, and
by two of these bad nights that make me moan out, " O
for a sleep for sleep itseK to rest in ! " that I was quite
disqualified for writing. And since then, I have been
waiting for the Murrays to take a parcel with them, who
were to have gone on Monday morning. But again not
hearing from them, and remembering your injunction not
to mind postage, I have resolved that no more time shall
pass on and should have written to-day, even though Mrs.
Gillman had not been dreaming about you last night, and
about some letter, etc. Upon my seriousness, I do de-
clare that I cannot make out certain dream-devils or
damned soids that play pranks with me, whenever by
the operation of a cathartic pill or from the want of one,
a ci-devant dinner in its metempsychosis is struggling
in the lower intestines. I cannot comprehend how any
thoughts, the offspring or product of my own reflection,
conscience, or fancy, could be translated into such images,
and agents and actions, and am half-tempted (N. B. be-
tween sleeping and waking) to regard with some favour
Swedenborg's assertion that certain foul spirits of the
lowest order are attracted by the precious ex-viands,
whose conversation the soul half appropriates to itself,
and which they contrive to whisper into the sensorium.

730 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [Dec.

The Honourable Emanuel has repeatedly caught them in
the fact, in that part of the spiritual world corresponding
to the guts in the world of bodies, and driven them away.
I do not pass this Gospel ; but upon my honour it is no
bad apocrypha. I am at present in my best sort and
state of health, bathed yesterday, and again this morning
in spite of the rain, and in so deep a bath, that having
thrown myself forward from the first step of the machine
ladder, and only taken two strokes after my re-immersion,
I had at least ten strokes to take before I got into my
depth again, so that it is no false alarm when those who
cannot swim are warned that a person may be drowned a
very few yards from the machine. I retiirned to fetch
out our ladies to see the huge lengthy Columbus, with the
two steam vessels,^ before and behind, the former to tow,
and the latter to, God knows what. By aid of a good
glass, we saw it " quite stink,'''' as the poor woman said,
the people on board, etc. It is 310 feet long, and
50 wide, and looks exactly like a Brohdingnag punt,
and on our return we had (from Mrs. Jones) the " Morn-
ing Herald," with Fauntleroy's trial, which (if he be not
a treble-damned liar) completely bears out my assertion
that nothing short of a miracle coidd acquit the partners
of virtual accompliceship ; this on my old principle, that
the absence of what ought to have been present is all but
equivalent to the presence of what ought to have been
absent. Qui non prohibet quod prohibere potest et debet,
facit.

Sir Alexander Johnston ^ has payed me great attention.

1 Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore 2 gjj. Alexander Johnston, 1775-

On winding lake, or rivers wide, ^^^ ^ l^^^^A orientalist. He was

Tliat ask no aid of sail or oar, . ■, ,. i m.- j:

That fear no spite of wind or tide. Advocate General (afterwards Chief

Justice) of Ceylon, and had much to

" Youth and Age," 11. 12-15. Poet- do with the reorganisation of the

teal Works, p. 191. A MS. copy of constitution of the island. He was

" Youth and Age " in my possession, one of the founders of the Royal

of which the prohahle date is 1822, Asiatic Society. Diet, of Nat. Biog.

reads " boats " for " skififa." art. " Johnston, Sir Alexander."

1824] TO H. F. GARY 731

There is a Lady Johnston not unlike Miss Sara Hutchin-
son in face and mouth, only that she is taller. Sir A.
himself is a fine gentlemanly man, young-looking for his
age, and with exception of one not easily describable
motion of his head that makes him look as if he had been
accustomed to have a 'pen behind his ear, a sort of " Tor-
ney's " clerk look, he might remind you of J. Hookham
Frere. He is a sensible well-informed man, si^ecious in
no bad sense of the word, but (I guess) not much depth.
In all probability, you will see him. We have talked a
good deal together about you and me, and me and you,
in consequence of occasion given. Sir A. is one of the
leading men in our Royal Society of Literature, and be-
yond doubt, a man of influence in town. I am apt to
forget superfluities, but a voice from above asks, "if I
have said that we begin to be anxious to hear from you."
But probably before you can sit down to answer this, you
will have received another, and, I flatter myself, more
amusing, at least pleasure -giving Scripture from me.
(N. B. " Coleridge's Scriptures " — a new title.)

[No signature.]

CCXXXVII. TO THE REV. H. F. GARY.

HiGHGATB, Monday, December 14, 1824.

My dear Friend, — The gentleman, Mr. Gabriel
E.ossetti,i whose letter to you I enclose, is a friend of my
friend, Mr. J. H. Frere, with whom he lived in habits of
intimacy at Malta and Naples. He seems to me what
from Mr. Frere's high opinion of him I should have confi-
dently anticipated, a gentleman, a scholar, and a man of
talents. The nature of his request you will learn from

^ Gabriele Rossetti, 1783-1854, as a commentator on Dante. He

the father of Dante G. Rossetti, etc., presented Coleridge with a copy of

first visited Eng-land as a political ex- his work, Dello Spirito Antipapale

ileinlS24. In 1830 he was appointed che Produsse la Riforma, and some

Professor of the Italian language at of his verses in MS., which are in my

King's College. He is best known possession.

732 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [1825

the letter, namely, a perusal of his Manuscript on the
spirit of Dante and the mechanism and interpretation of
the " Divina Commedia," of which he believes himself to
have the filum Ariadneum in his hand, and a frank opin-
ion of the merits of his labours. My dear friend ! I
know by experience what is asked in this twofold request,
and that the weight increases in proportion to the kind-
ness and sensibility and the shrinking from the infliction
of pain of the person on whom it is enjoined. The name
of Mr. John Hookham Frere would alone have sufficed to
make me undertake this office, had the request been
directed to myself. It would have been my duty. But I
would not, knowing your temper and habits and avoca-
tions, have sought to engage you, or even have put you
to the discomfort of excusing yourself had I not been
strongly impressed by Mr. Rossetti's manners and con-
versation with the belief that the interests of literature
are concerned, and that Mr. Rossetti has a claim on all
the services which the sons of the Muses, and more par-
ticularly the cultivators of ancient Italian Literature,
and most particularly Dante's " English Duplicate and
Re-incarnation " can render him. If your health and
other duties allow your accession to this request (for the
recommendation of the work to the booksellers is quite
a secondary consideration, of minor importance in Mr.
Rossetti's estimation, and I have, besides, explained to
him how very limited our influence is), you will be so
good as to let me hear from you, and where and when
Mr. Rossetti might wait on you. He will be happy to
attend you at Chiswick. He ^mderstands English, and,
he speaking Italian and I our own language, we had no
difficulty in keeping up an animated conversation.

Make mine and all our cordial remembrances to Mrs.
Gary, and believe me, dear friend, with perfect esteem
and most affectionate regard, yours,

S. T. Coleridge.

1824] TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 733

P. S. Both Mrs. G. and myself have returned much
benefited by our sea-sojourn. Mr. Rossetti has, I find,
an additional merit in good men's thoughts. He is a
poet who has been driven into exile for the high morale
of his writings. For even general sentiments breathing
the spirit of nobler times are treasons in the present
Neapolitan and Holy Alliance Codes ! Wretches ! ! I
dare even ^jra?/ against them, even with Davidian bitter-
ness. Do not forget to let me have an answer to this, if
possible, by next day's post.

CCXXXVIII. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Monday Night, ? 1824 ? 1829.

Dear Wordsworth, — Three whole days the going
through the first book cost me, though only to find fault.
But I cannot find fault, in pen and ink, without thinking
over and over again, and without some sort of an attempt
to suggest the alteration ; and, in so doing, how soon an
hour is gone ! so many half seconds up to half minutes
are lost in leaning back in one's chair, and looking up, in
the bodily act of contracting the muscles of the brow and
forehead, and unconsciously attending to the sensation.
Had I the MS. with me for five or six months, so as to
amuse myself off and on, without any solicitude as to a
given day, and, could I be persuaded that if as well done
as the nature of the thing (viz., a translation of Virgil}
in English) renders possible, it would not raise but sim-
ply sustain your well-merited fame for pure diction,

1 From the letter of Wordsworth to Allsop, of April 8, 1824, tells us that

Lord Lonsdale, of February 5, 1819, the three hooks had been sent to

it is plain that the translation of three Coleridge and must have remained

boolts of the ^neid had been already in his possession for some time,

completed at that date. Another let- The MS. of this translation appears

ter written five years later, Novem- to have been lost, but ' ' one of the

ber 3, 1824, implies that the work books," Professor Knight tells us,

had been put aside, and, after a long was printed in the Philological Mu-

interval, reattempted. In the mean seum, at Cambridge, in 1832. Life

time a letter of Coleridge to Mrs. of W. Wordsworth, ii. 296-303.

734 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE ~ [April

where what is not idiom is never other than logically
correct, I doubt not that the irregularities could be re-
moved. But I am haunted by the apprehension that I
am not feeling or thinking in the same spirit with you, at
one time, and at another too much in the spirit of your
writings. Since Milton, I know of no poet with so many
felicities and unforgettable lines and stanzas as you.
And to read, therefore, page after page without a single
brilliant note, depresses nie, and I grow peevish with you
for having wasted your time on a work so much below
you, that you cannot stoop and take. Finally, my con-
viction is, that you undertake an impossibilitf/, and that
there is no medium between a prose version and one on
the avowed principle of compensation in the widest sense,
that is, manner, genius, total effect. I confine myself to
Virgil when I say this.

I must now set to work with all my powers and thoughts
to my Leighton,^ and then to my logic, and then to my
opus maxi?num ! if indeed it shall please God to spare
me so long, which I have had too many warnings of late
(more than my nearest friends know of) not to doubt.
My kind love to Dorothy.

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

CCXXXIX. TO JOHN TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

Grove, Highgate, Friday, April 8, 1825.
My dear Nephew, — I need not tell ^o\\ that no
attention in my power to offer shall be wanting to Dr.
Reich. As a foreigner and a man of letters he might
claim this in his own right ; and that he came from you
would have ensured it, even though he had been a French-
man. But that he is a German, and that you think him

1 Coleridg'e was at this time (1824) gether with his own comment and

engaged in making a selection of corollaries, were piiblished as Aids

choice passages from the works of to Reflection, in 1825. See Letter

Archbishop Leighton, which, to- CCXXX.

1825] TO JOHN TAYLOR COLERIDGE 735

a worthy and deserving man, and that his lot, like my
own, has been cast on the bleak north side of the moun-
tain, make me reflect with pain on the little influence I
possess, and the all but zero of my direct means, to serve
or to assist him. The prejudices excited against me by
Jeffrey, combining with the mistaken notion of my Ger-
man Metaphysics to which (I am told) some passages in
some biographical gossip book about Lord Byron ^ have
given fresh currency, have rendered my authority with
the Trade worse than nothing. Of the three schemes of
philosophy, Kant's, Fichte's, and Schelling's (as diverse
each from the other as those of Aristotle, Zeno, and
Plotinus, though all crushed together under the name
Kantean Philosophy in the English talk) I should find it
difficult to select the one from which I differed the most,
though perfectly easy to determine which of the three
men I hold in highest honour. And Immanuel Kant
I assuredly do value most highly ; not, however, as a
metaphysician, but as a logician who has completed and
systematised what Lord Bacon had boldly designed and
loosely sketched out in the Miscellany of Aphorisms, his
Novum Organum. In Kant's " Critique of the Pure
Reason " there is more than one fundamental error ; but
the main fault lies in the title-page, which to the manifold
advantage of the work might be exchanged for " An
Inquisition respecting the Constitution and Limits of the
Human Understanding." I can not only honestly assert, but
I can satisfactorily prove by reference to writings (Let-
ters, Maro'inal Notes, and those in books that have never
been in my possession since I first left England for Ham-
burgh, etc.) that all the elements, the differentials, as the
algebraists say, of my present opinions existed for me
before I had even seen a book of German Metaphysics,
later than Wolf and Leibnitz, or could have read it, if I
had. But what will this avail ? A High German Tran-
1 Conversations of Lord Byron, etc., by Captain Medwin.

736 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [April

scendentalist I must be content to remain, and a young
American painter, Leslie (pupil and friend of a very-
dear friend of mine, Allston), to whom I have been in
the habit for ten years and more of shewing as cordial
regards as I could to a near relation, has, I find, intro-
duced a portrait of me in a picture from Sir W. Scott's
" Antiquary," as Dr. Duster Swivil, or whatever his
name is.^ Still, however, I will make any attempt to
serve Dr. Eeich, which he may point out and which, I am
not sure, woidd dis-serve him ! I do not, of course, know
what command he has over the English language. If he
wrote it fluently, I should think that it woidd answer to
any one of our great publishers to engage him in the
translation of the best and cheapest Natural History in
existence, viz., Okens, in three thick octavo volumes, con-
taining the inorganic world, and the animals from the
npcoTo'^wa and animalcula of Infusions, to man. The
Botany was not published two years ago. AYhether it is
now I do not know. There is one thin quarto of plates.
It is by far the most entertaining as well as instructive
book of the kind I ever saw ; and with a few notes and
the omission (or castigation) of one or two of Oken's
adventurous whimsies, would be a valuable addition to
our English literature. So much for this.

I will not disguise from you, my dearest nephew, that
the first certain information of your having taken the
"Quarterly "2 gave me a pain, which it required all my
confidence in the soundness of j^our judgement to counter-
act. I had long before by conversation with experienced
barristers got rid of all apprehension of its being likely
to injure you professionally. My fears were directed to

1 Tlie frontispiece of the second ^ John Taylor Coleridge was ed-

volume of the Antiquary represents itor of the Quarterly Eeview for one

Dr. Dousterswivel digging for trea- year, 1825-1826. Southey's Life and

sure in Misticot's grave. The re- Correspondence, v. 194, 201, 204, 239,

semblance to Coleridge is, perhaps, etc.; Letters of Robert Southey, iii.

not -wholly imaginary. 455, 473, 511, 514, etc.

1825] TO JOHN TAYLOR COLERIDGE 737

the invidlousness of the situation, it being the notion of
publishers that without satire and sarcasm no review can
obtain or keep up a sale. Perhaps pride had some con-
cern in it. I^or myself I have none, probably because
I had time out of mind given it up as a lost cause, given
myself over, I mean, a predestined author, though with-
out a drop of true author blood in my veins. But a pride in
and for the name of my father's house I have, and those
with whom I live know that it is never more than a dog-
sleep, and apt to start tip on the slight alarms. Now,
though very sillily, I felt pain at the notion of any com-
parisons being drawn between you (to whom with your
sister my heart pulls the strongest) and Mr. Gilford, even
though they should be [to] your advantage ; and still
more, the thought that . . . Murray should be or hold him-
self entitled to have and express an opinion on the subject.
The insolence of one of his proposals to me, viz., that he
would publish an edition of my Poems, on the condition
that a gentleman in his confidence (Mr. Milman ! ^ 1 un-
derstand) was to select, and make such omissions and
corrections as should be thought advisable — this, which
offered to myself excited only a smile in which there was
nothing sardonic, might very possibly have rendered me
sorer and more sensitive when I boded even an infinites-
imal ejusdem farincB in connection with you.

But henceforward I shall look at the thing in a sunnier
mood. Mr. Frere is strongly impressed with the impor-
tance and even dignity of the trust, and on the jjower
you have of gradually giving a steadier and manlier tone
to the feelings and principles of the higher classes. But
I hope very soon to converse with you on this subject, as
soon as I have finished my Essay for the Literary Society,

^ Henry Hart Milman, 1791-1868, chiefly as a poet. His Fall of Jeru-

afterwards celebrated as historian salem was published in 1820. He

and divine (Dean of St. Paul's, 184',)), was a contributor to the Quarterly

was, at this time, distinguished Review.

T38 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [May

(in which I flatter myself I have thrown some light on
the passages in Herodotus respecting the derivation of
the Greek Mythology from Egypt, and in what respect
that paragraph respecting Homer and Hesiod is to be
understood), and have, likewise, got my " Aids to Ee-
flection " out of the Press. But I have more to do for
tlie necessities of the day, and which are Nos non nobis,
than I can well manage so as to go on with my own
works, though I work from morning to night, as far as
my health admits and the loss of my friendly amanuensis.
For the slowness with which I get on with the pen in my
own hand contrasts most strangely with the rapidity with
which I dictate. Your kind letter of invitation did not
reach me, but there was one which I ought to have an-
swered long ago, which came while I was at Kamsgate.
We have had a continued succession of illness in our
family here, at one time six persons confined to their
beds. I have been sadly afraid that we shoidd lose Mrs.
Gillman, who would be a loss indeed to the whole neigh-
bourhood, young and old. But she seems, thank God ! to
recover strength, though slowly. As I hope to write
again in a few days with my book, I shall now desire my
cordial regards to Mrs. J. Coleridge, and with my affec-
tionate love to the little ones.

With the warmest interest of affection and esteem, I
am, my dear John, your sincere friend,

S. T. COLEEIDGE.
J. T. Coleridge, Esq., 65, Torriugton Square.

CCXL. TO THE EEV. EDWAED COLEEIDGE.

May 19, 1825.

My veet deae Nephew, — You have left me under
a painful and yet genial feeling of regret, that my lot in
life has hitherto so much estranged me from the children
of the sons of my father, that venerable countenance and

1825] TO EDWARD COLERIDGE 739

name which form my earliest recollections and mahe them
religious. It is not in my power to express adequately
so as to convey it to others what a revolution has taken
place in my mind since I have seen your sister, and John,
and Henry, and lastly yourself. Yet revolution is not the
word I want. It is rather the sudden evolution of a seed
that had sunk too deep for the warmth and exciting air to
reach, but which a casual spade had turned up and brought
close to the surface, and I now hnow the meaning as well
as feel the truth of the Scottish proverb. Blood is thicker
than water.

My book will be oiit on Monday next, and Mr. Ilessey
hopes that he shall be able to have a copy ready for me
by to-morrow afternoon, so that I may present it to the
Bishoj) of London, whom (at his own request Lady B.
tells me) with his angel-faced wife and Miss Howley ^ I
am to meet at Sir George's to-morrow at six o'clock.
There are many on whose sincerity and goodness of heart
I can rely. There are several in whose judgement and
knowledge of the world I have greater trust than in my
own. And among these few John Coleridge ranks fore-
most. It was, therefore, an indescribable comfort to me
to hear from him, that the first draft of my " Aids to Re-
flection," that is, all he had yet seen, had delighted him
heyond measure. I can with severest truth declare that
half a score flaming panegyrical reviews in as many works
of periodical criticism would not have given me half the
pleasure, nor one quarter the satisfaction.

I dine D. V. on Saturday next in Torrington Square,
when doubtless we shall drink your health with appropri-
ate adjuncts. Yesterday I had to inflict an hour and
twenty-five minutes' essay full of Greek and superannu-
ated Metaphysics on the ears of the Royal Society of

1 Afterward the wife of Sir George Beaumont, the artist's son and suc-
cessor in the baronetcy.

740 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [July

Literature, the subject being the Prometheus of JEschylus
deciphered in proof and as instance of the connection of
the Greek Drama witli the Mysteries.^ " Douce take it "
(as Charles Lamb says in his Superannuated Man) if I
did not feel remorseful pity for my audience all the time.
For, at the very best, it was a thing to be read, not to read.
God bless you or I shall be too late for the post.
Your affectionate u^cle,

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

P. S. I went yesterday to the Exhibition, and hastily
" thrid " the labyrinth of the dense huddle, for the sole
purpose of seeing our Bishop's portrait.- My own by the
same artist is very much better, though even in this the
smile is exaggerated. But Fanny and your mother were
in raptures with it while they too seemed very cold in
their praise of William's.

CCXLI. TO DANIEL STUART.

Postmark, July 9, 1825.

My dear Sir, — The bad weather had so far damped
my expectations, that, though I regretted, I did not feel
any disappointment at your not coming. And yet I hope
you will remember our Highgate Thursday conversation
evenings on your return to town ; because, if you come
once, I flatter myself, you will afterwards be no unfre-
quent visitor.

At least, I have never been at any of the town conver-
sazioni, literary, or artistical, in which the conversation

1 Almost the same sentence with Harper & Brothers, 1853, iv. 344-
reg'ard to his address as Royal Asso- 3()5. See, also, Brandl's Life of Cole-
date occurs \n a letter to his nephew, ridge, p. 301.

John Taylor Coleridg-e, of May 20, - The portrait of William Hart

1825. The " Essay on the Prome- Coleridge, Bishop of Barhadoes and

theus of ^schyhis," which was the Leeward Islands, by Thomas

printed in Literary Remains, was re- Phillips, R. A., is now in the HaU

published in Coleridge's Works, of Christ Church, Oxford.

1825] TO DANIEL STUART 741

has been more miscellaneous without degenerating into
2nnches, a pinch of this, and a pinch o£ that, without the
least connection between the subjects, and with as little
interest. You will like Irving as a companion and a con-
verser even more than you admire him as a preacher. He
has a vigorous and (what is always pleasant) a growing
mind, and his character is manly throughout. There is
one thing, too, that I cannot help considering as a recom-
mendation to our evenings, that, in addition to a few ladies
and pretty lasses, we have seldom more than five or six in
company, and these generally of as many jDrofessions or
pursuits. A few weeks ago we had present, two painters,
two poets, one divine, an eminent chemist and naturalist,
a major, a naval captain and voyager, a physician, a colo-
nial chief justice, a barrister, and a baronet; and this was
the most numerous meeting we ever had.

It would more than gratify me to know from you, what
the impressions are which my " Aids to Reflection " make
on your judgment. The conviction respecting the character
of the times expressed in the comment on Aph. vi., page
147, contains the aim and object of the whole book. I
venture to direct your notice particularly to the note, page
204 to 207, to the note to page 218, and to the sentences
resijecting common sense in the last twelve lines of page
252, and the conclusion, page 377.

Lady Beaumont writes me that the Bishop of London
has expressed a most favourable opinion of the book;
and Blanco White was sufficiently struck with it, as imme-
diately to purchase all my works that are in print, and has
procured from Sir George Beaumont an introduction to
me. It is well I should have some one to speak for it, for
I am unluckily ill off . . . and you will easily see what a
chance a poor book of mine has in these days.

Such has been the influence of the " Edinburgh Re-
view" that in all Edinburgh not a single copy of Words-
worth's works or of any part of them could be procured a

742 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [Oct.

few moiitlis ago. The only copy Irving saw in Scotland
belonged to a poor weaver at Paisley, who prized them next
to his Bible, and had all the Lyrical Ballads by heart — a
fact which would cvit Jeffrey's conscience to the bone, if
he had any. I give you my honour that Jeffrey himself
told me that he was himself an enthusiastic admirer of
Wordsworth's poetry, but it was necessary that a Review
should have a character.

Forgive this egotism, and be pleased to remember me
kindly and with my best respects to Mrs. Stuart, and with
every cordial wish and prayer for you and yours, be assured
that I am your obliged and affectionate friend,

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

Friday, July 8, 1825.

CCXLII. TO JAMES GILLMAJST.

[8 Plains of Waterloo, Ramsgate,]
October 10, l^'l^.

My dear Friend, — It is a flat'ning thought that the
more we have seen, the less we have to say. In youth
and early manhood the mind and nature are, as it were,
two rival artists both potent magicians, and engaged, like
the King's daughter and the rebel genii in the Arabian
Nights' Entertainments, in sharp conflict of conjuration,
each having for its object to turn the other into canvas to
paint on, clay to mould, or cabinet to contain. For a
while the mind seems to have the better in the contest,
and makes of Nature wliat it likes, takes her lichens and
weather-stains for types and printers' ink, and prints maps
and facsimiles of Arabic and Sanscrit MSS. on her rocks ;
composes country dances on lier moonshiny ripples, fan-
dangos on her waves, and waltzes on her eddy-pools, trans-
forms her smumer gales into harps and harpers, lovers'
sighs and sighing lovers, and her winter blasts into Pin-
daric Odes, Christabels, and Ancient Mariners set to music
by Beethoven, and in the insolence of triumph conjures

1825] TO JAMES GILLMAN 743

her clouds into whales and walruses with palanquins on
their backs, and chases the dodging stars in a sky-hunt !
But alas ! alas ! that Nature is a wary wily long-breathed
old witch, tough-lived as a turtle and divisible as the polyp,
repullulative in a thousand snips and cuttings, Integra et
in toto. She is sure to get the better of Lady 3Iind in
the long run and to take her revenge too ; transforms our
to-day into a canvas dead-coloured to receive the dull, fea-
tureless portrait of yesterday : not alone turns the mimic
mind, the ci-devant sculptress with all her kaleidoscopic
freaks and symmetries ! into clay, but leaves it such a
clay to cast dumps or bullets in ; and lastly (to end with
that which suggested the beginning) she mocks the mind
with its own metaphor, metamorphosing the memory into
a lignum vitce escritoire to keep unpaid bills and dun's
letters in, with outlines that had never been filled up,
MSS. that never went further than the title-pages, and
proof sheets, and foul copies of Watchmen, Friends, Aids
to Eeflection, and other stationary wares that have kissed
the publishers' shelf with all the tender intimacy of inos-
culation ! Finis ! and what is all this about ? Why,
verily, my dear friend ! the thought forced itself on me,
as I was beginning to put down the first sentence of this
letter, how impossible it would have been fifteen or even
ten years ago for me to have travelled and voyaged by
land, river, and sea a hundred and twenty miles with fire
and water blending their souls for my propulsion, as if I
had been riding on a centaur with a sopha for a saddle,
and yet to have nothing more to tell of it than that we
had a very fine day and ran aside the steps in Ramsgate
Pier at half -past four exactly, all having been well except
poor Harriet, who during the middle third of the voyage
fell into a reflecting melancholy. . . . She looked pathetic,
but I cannot affirm that I observed anything sympathetic
in the countenances of her fellow-passengers, which drew
forth a sigh from me and a sage remark how many of our

744 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [May

virtues originate in the fear of deatli, and that while we
flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian sensibil-
ity over the sorrows of our human brethren and sisteren,
we are in fact, though perhaps unconsciously, moved at
the prospect of our own end. For who ever sincerely
pities seasickness, toothache, or a fit of the gout in a
lusty good liver of fifty ?

What have I to say ? We have received the snuff, for
which I thank your providential memory. ... To Mar-
gate, and saw the caverns, as likewise smelt the same,
called on Mr. Bailey, and got the Novum Organum. In
my hurry, I scrambled up the Blackwood instead of a
volume of Giovanni Battista Vico, which I left on the
table in my room, and forgot my sponge and sponge-bag
of oiled silk. But perhaps when I sit down to work, I
may have to request something to be sent, which may come
with them. I therefore defer it till then. . . .

God bless you, my dear friend ! You will soon hear
again from

S. T. COLEELDGE.

CCXLIII. TO THE REV. EDW^AED COLEEIDGE.

December 9, 1825.

My dear Edwaed, — I write merely to tell you, that
I have secured Charles Lamb and JSIr. Irving to meet
you, and wait only to learn the day for the endeavour to
induce Mr. Blanco White to join us. Will you present
Mr. and Mrs. Gillman's regards to your brothers Henry
and John, and that they would be most happy if both or
either would be induced to accompany you ?

I have had a very interesting conversation with Irving
this evening on the jn-esent condition of the Scottish
Church, the spiritual life of which, yea, the very core he
describes as in a state of ossification. The greater part of
the Scottish clergy, he complains, have lost the unction of
their own church without acquiring the erudition and

1827] TO MRS. GILLMAN 745

accomplisliments of ours. Their sermons are all dry the-
ological arguing and disputing, lifeless, pulseless, — a
rushlight in a fleshless skull.

My kindest love to your sister, and kisses, prayers, and
blessings for the little one.

[S. T. Coleridge.]

Thursday midnight.

I almost despair of John's coming ; but do persuade
Henry if you can. I quite long to see him again.

CCXLIV. TO MRS. GILLMAN.

May 3, 1827.
My dear Friend, — I received and acknowledge your
this morning's present both as plant and symbol, and with
appropriate thanks and correspondent feeling. The rose
is the pride of summer, the delight and the beauty of our
gardens ; the eglantine, the honeysuckle, and the jasmine,
if not so bright or so ambrosial, are less transient, creep
nearer to us, clothe our walls, twine over our porch, and
haply peep in at our chamber window, with the crested
wren or linnet within the tufts wishing good morning to
us. Lastly the geranium passes the door, and in its hun-
dred varieties imitating now this now that leaf, odour,
blossom of the garden, still steadily retains its own staid
character, its own sober and refreshing hue and fragance.
It deserves to be the inmate of the house, and with due
attention and tenderness will live through the winter
grave yet cheerful, as an old family friend, that makes up
for the dej^arture of gayer visitors, in the leafless season.
But none of these are the myrtle ! ^ In none of these,
nor in all collectively, will the myrtle find a substitute.

^ A sprig of this myrtle (or was presented it to the late Lord Cole-
it a sprig of myrtle in a nosegay ?) ridge. It now flourishes, in strong
grew into a plant. At some time af- old age, in a protected nook outside
ter Coleridge's death it passed into the library at Heath's Court, Ottery
the hands of the late S. C. Hall, who St. Mary.

746 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [Jan.

All together and joining with them all the aroma, the
spices, and the balsams of the hot-house, yet would they
be a sad exchange for the myrtle I Oh, precious in its
sweetness is the rich innocence of its snow-white blossoms !
And dear are they in the remembrance ; but these may
pass with the season, and while the myrtle plant, our own
myrtle plant remains unchanged, its blossoms are remem-
bered the more to endear the faithful bearer ; yea, they
survive invisibly in every more than fragrant leaf. As
the flashing strains of the nightingale to the yearning
murmurs of the dove, so the myrtle to the rose ! He who
has once possessed and prized a genuine myrtle will
rather remember it under the cypress tree than seek to
forget it among the rose bushes of a paradise.

God bless you, my dearest friend, and be assured that
if death do not suspend memory and consciousness, death
itself will not deprive you of a faithful participator in all
your hopes and fears, affections and solicitudes, in your
unalterable

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

CCXLV. TO THE EEV. GEORGE MAY COLERIDGE.

Monday, January 14, 1828.

My dear Nephew, — An interview with your cousin
Henry on Saturday and a note received from him last
night had enabled me in some measure to prepare my mind
for the awful and humanly afflicting contents of your
letter, and I rose to the receiving of it from earnest sup-
lication to " the Father of Mercies and God of all Com-
fort " — that He would be strong in the weakness of His
faithful servant, and his effectual helper in the last con-
flict. My first impulse on reading your letter was to set
off immediately, but on a re-perusal, I doubt whether I
shall not better comply with your suggestion by waiting
for your next. Assuredly, if God permit I will not forego
the claim, which my heart and conscience justify me in

1828] TO GEORGE MAY COLERIDGE 747

making, to be one among the mourners who ever truly
loved and honoured your father. Allow me, my dear
nephew, in the swelling grief of my heart to say, that if
ever man morning and evening and in the watches of the
night had earnestly intreated through his Lord and Medi-
ator, that God would shew him his sins and their sinful-
ness, I, for the last ten years at least of my life, have done
so ! But, in vain, have I tried to recall any one moment
since my quitting the University, or any one occasion, in
which I have either thought, felt, spoken, or intentionally
acted of or in relation to my brother, otherwise than as
one who loved in him father and brother in one, and who
independent of the fraternal relation and the remem-
brance of his manifold g-oodness and kindness to me from
boyhood to early manhood should have chosen him above
all I had known as the friend of my inmost soul. Never
have man's feeling and character been more cruelly mis-
represented than mine. Before God have I sinned, and
I have not hidden my offences before him; but He too
knows that the belief of my brother's alienation and the
grief that I was a stranger in the house of my second
father has been the secret wound that to this hour never
closed or healed up. Yes, my dear nephew ! I do grieve,
and at this moment I have to struggle hard in order to
keep my spirit in tranquillity, as one who has long since
referred his cause to God, through the grief at my little
communication with my family. Had it been otherwise,
I might have been able to shew myself, my toliole self,
for evil and for good to my brother, and often have said
to myself, " How fearful an attribute to sinful man is
Omniscience ! " and yet have I earnestly wished, oh, how
many times ! that my brother could have seen my inmost
heart, with every thought and every frailty. But his
reward is nigh : in the light and love of his Lord and
Saviour he will soon be all light and love, and I too shall
have his prayers before the throne. May the Almighty

748 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [June

and the Spirit the Comforter dwell in your and your
mother's spirit. I must conclude. Only, if I come and
it should please God that your dear father shall be still
awaiting his Redeemer's final call, I shall be perfectly sat-
isfied in all things to be directed by you and your mother,
who will judge best whether the knowledge of my arrival
though without seeing him would or would not be a satis-
faction, would or would not be a disturbance to him.
Your affectionate uncle,

S. T. COLEKIDGE.

Grove, Highgate.
Rev. George May Coleridge,

Warden House, Ottery St. Mary, Devon.

CCXLVI. TO GEORGE DTER.^

June 6, 1828.
My dear long known, and long loved friend, — Be
assured that neither Mr. Irving nor any other person,
high or low, gentle or simple, stands higher in my esteem
or bears a name endeared to me by more interesting recol-
lections and associations than yourself ; and if gentle man
or gentle woman, taking too literally the partial j)ortraiture
of a friend, has a mind to see the old lion in his sealed
cavern, no more potent " Open, Sesame, Open " will be
found than an introduction from George Dyer, my elder
brother under many titles — brother Blue, brother Gre-
cian, brother Cantab, brother Poet, and last best form of

^ George Dyer, 1755-1841, best -with Lamb and Southey. He eon-
remembered as the author of The tributed " The Show, an English
History of the University of Cam- Eclogue," and other poems, to the
bridge, and a companion work on Annual Anthology of 1799 and
The Privileges of the University of 1800. His poetry was a constant
Cambridge, began life as a Baptist source of amused delight to Lamb
minister, but settled in London as and Coleridge. A pencil sketch of
a man of letters in 1792. As a Dyer by Matilda Betliam is in the
" brother-Grecian " he was intro- British Museum. Letters of Charles
duced to Coleridge in 1794, in the Lamb, i. 125-128 et passim ; South-
early days of pantisocracy, and prob- ey's Life and Correspondence, i. 218
ably through him became intimate et passim.

1828] TO GEORGE DYER 749

fraternity, a man who has never in his long life, by tongue
or pen, uttered what he did not believe to be the truth
(from any motive) or concealed what he did conceive
to be such from other motives than those of tenderness
for the feelings of others, and a conscientious fear lest
what was truly said might be falsely interpreted, — in
all these points I dare claim brotherhood with my old
friend (not omitting grey hairs, which are venerable), but
in one point, the long toilsome life of inexhaustible, un-
sleeping benevolence and beneficence, that slept only when
there was no form or semblance of sentient life to awaken
it, George Dyer must stand alone ! He may have a few
second cousins, but no full brother.

Now, with regard to 3'our friends, I shall be happy to
see them on any day they may find to suit their or your
convenience, from twelve (I am not ordinarily visible
before, or if the outward man were forced to make his
appearance, yet from sundry bodily infirmities, my soul
would present herself with unwashed face) till four, that
is, after Monday next, — we having at present a servant
ill in bed, you must perforce be content with a sandwich
lunch or a glass of wine.

But if you could make it suit you to take your tea, an
early tea, at or before six o'clock, and spend the evening,
a long evening, with us on Thursday next, Mr. and Mrs.
Gillman will be most happy to see you and Mrs. Dyer,
with your friends, and you will probably meet some old
friend of yours. On Thursday evening, indeed, at any
time, between half-past five and eleven, you may be sure
of finding us at home, and with a very fair chance of
Basil Montagu taking you and Mrs. Dyer back in his
coach.

I have long owed you a letter, and should have long
since honestly paid my debt ; but we have had a house of
sickness. My own health, too, has been very crazy and
out of repair, and I have had so much work accumu-

750 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [June

lated on me that I liave been like an overtired man
roused from insufficient sleep, who sits on his bedside
with one stocking on and the other in his hand, doing
nothing, and thinking what a deal he has to do.

But I am ever, sick or well, weary or lively, my dear
Dyer, your sincere and affectionate friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

CCXLVII. TO GEORGE CATTERMOLE.^

Gkovb, Highgate, Thursday, Augnst 14, 1828.

My dear Sir, — I have but this moment received
yours of the 13th, and though there are but ten minutes
in my power, if I am to avail myself of this day's post, I
will rather send you a very brief than not an immediate
answer. I shall be much gratified by standing beside the
baptismal font as one of the sponsors of the little pilgrim
at his inauguration into the rights and duties of Immor-
tality, and he shall not want my prayers, nor aught else
that shall be within my power, to assist him in hecoming
that of which the Great Sponsor who brought light and
immortality into the world has declared him an emblem.

There are one or two points of character belonging to
me, so, at least, I believe and trust, which I would gladly
communicate with the name,- — earnest love of Truth for its
own sake, and steadfast convictions grounded on faith, not
fear, that the religion into which I was baptised is the
Truth, without which all other knowledge ceases to merit
the appellation. As to other things, which yet I most sin-

1 George Cattermole, 1800-lSOS, to Cattermole." His brother Richard

whose " peculiar gifts and powerful was Secretary of the Royal Society

genius " Mr. Ruskin has borne tes- of Literature, of whicli Coleridge was

timony, was eminent as an architec- appointed a Royal Associate in 1825.

tural draughtsman and water-colour Copies of this and of other letters

painter. With his marvellous illus- from Coleridge to Cattermole were

trations of " Master Humphrey's kindly placed at my disposal by Mr.

Clock " all the world is familiar. James M. Menzies of 24, Carlton

Bid. of Nat. Blog. art. " George Hill, St. John's Wood.

1830] TO J. H. GREEN 751

cerely wish for him, a more promising augury might be
derived from other individuals of the Coleridge race.

Any day, that you and your dear wife (to whom present
my kindest remembrances and congratulations) shall find
convenient, will suit me, if only you will be so good as to
give me two or three days' knowledge of it.

Believe me, my dear sir, with sincere respect and
regard,

Your obliged

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

P. S. I returned from my seven weeks' Continental
tour with Mr. Wordsworth and his daughter this day last
week. We saw the Rhine as high up as Bingen, Holland,
and the Netherlands.

CCXLVIII. TO J. H. GREEN.

Gkove, Highgate, June 1, 1830.
My dear Friend, — Do you happen among your ac-
quaintances and connections to know any one who knows
any one who knows Sir Francis Freeling of the Post
Office sufficiently to be authorised to speak a recommend-
atory word to him? Our Harriet,^ whose love and will-
ing-niindedness to ;?ze-ward during my long chain of bodily
miserablenesses render it my duty no less than ray inclina-
tion to shew to her that I am not insensible of her humbly
affectionate attentions, has applied to ms in behalf of her
brother, a young man who can have an excellent character,
from Lord Wynford and others, for sobriety, integrity, and
discretion, and who is exceedingly ambitious to get the sit-
uation of a postman or deliverer of letters to the General
Post Office. Perhaps, before I see you next, you will be

^ Harriet Macklin, Coleridge's a due acknowledgment of her ser-
faithf ul attendant for the last seven vices. It was to her that Lamb,
or eig-ht years of his life. On his when he visited Hig-hgate after Cole-
deathbed he left a solemn request in ridge's death, made a present of five
writing that his family should make guineas.

752 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [June

so good as to tumble over the names of your acquaintances,
and if any connection of Sir Francis' should turn up, to
tell me, and if it be right and proper, to make my request
and its motive.

Dr. Chalmers with his daughter and his very pleasing
wife honoured me with a call this morning, and sjDent an
hour with me, which the good doctor declared on parting
to have been " a refresliment " such as he had not enjoyed
for a long season.^ N. B. — There were no sandwiches ;
only Mrs. Aders was present, who is most certainly a
honne houche for both eye and ear, and who looks as
bright and sunshine-showery as if nothing had ever ailed
her. The main topic of our discourse was Mr. Irving and
his unlucky phantasms and phantis(ms). I was on the
point of telling Dr. Chalmers, but fortunately recollected
there were ladies and Scotch ladies present, that, while
other Scotchmen were content with brimstone for the itch,
Irving had a rank itch for brimstone, new-sublimated by
addition of fire. God bless you and your

Ever obliged and affectionate friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

30 May ? or 1 June ? at all events.
Monday night, 11 o'clock.

P. S. — Kind remembrances to Mrs. Green. I con-
tinue pretty well, on the whole, considering, save the sore-
ness across the base of my chest.

1 Dr. Chalmers represented the "mellifluous flow of discourse"

visit as havinfy lasted three hours, that, when " the music ceased, her

and that durin"- that "stricken" overwroug-ht feelinars found relief

period he only got occasional in tears." Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

glimpses of what the prophet a Narrative, by J. Dykes Campbell,

" would be at." His little daug-h- 1894, p. 260, footnote,
ter, however, was so moved by the

1830] TO THOMAS POOLE 753

CCXLIX. TO THOMAS POOLE.

1830.
My dear Poole, — Mr. Stutfield Junr.^ has been so
kind as to inform me of his father's purposed journey to
Stowey, and to give me tliis opportunity of writing;
though in fact I have little pleasant to say, except that I
am advancing regularly and steadily towards the comple-
tion of my Opus Magnum on Revelation and Christianity,
the Reservoir of my reflections and reading for twenty-
five years past, and in health not painfully worse. I do
not know, however, that I should have troubled jow with
a letter merely to convey this piece of information, but I
have a great favour to request of you ; that is, that, sup-
posing you to have still in your ]30ssession the two letters
of the biography of my own childhood which I wrote at
Stowey for you, and a copy of the letter from Germany
containing the account of my journey to the Harz and my
ascent of Mount Brocken, you would have them tran-
scribed, and send me the transcript addressed to me,
James Gillman's Esq., Highgate, London.

that riches would but make wings for me instead of
for itself, and I would fly to the seashore at Porlock and
Lynmouth, making a good halt at dear, ever fondly remem-
bered Stowey, of which, believe me, your image and the
feelings and associations connected therewith constitute
four fifths, to, my dear Poole,

Your obliged and affectionate friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

1 A disciple and amamiensis, to in the possession of Mr. C. A. Ward
whom, it is believed, he dictated of Chingford Hatch. Samuel Tay-
two quarto volumes on " The His- lor Coleridge, a Narrative, by J.
tory of Logic " and " The Elements Dykes CampbeU, 1894, pp. 250, 251;
of Logic," which originally belonged Athenceum, July 1, 1893, art. " Cole-
to Joseph Henry Green, and are now ridge's Logic."

754 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [Dec.

CCL. TO MRS. GILLMAN.

1830.

Dear Mrs. Gillman, — Wife of the friend who has
been more than a brother to me, and who have month
after month, yea, hour after hour, for how many succes-
sive years, united in yourself the affections and offices of
an anxious friend and tender sister to me-ward !

May the Father of Mercies, the God of Health and all
Salvation, be your reward for your great and constant
love and loving-kindness to me, abiding with you and
within you, as the Spirit of guidance, support, and con-
solation ! And may his Grace and gracious Providence
bless James and Henry for your sake, and make them a
blessing to you and their father ! And though weighed
down by a heavy presentiment respecting my own sojourn
here, I not only hope but have a steadfast faith that God
will be your reward, because your love to me from first
to last has begun in, and been caused by, what appeared
to you a translucence of the love of the good, the true,
and the beautiful from within me, — as a relic of glory
gleaming through the turbid shrine of my mortal imper-
fections and infirmities, as a Light of Life seen within
"the body of this Death," — because in loving me you
loved our Heavenly Father reflected in the gifts and influ-
ences of His Holy Spirit !

S. T. Coleridge.

CCLI. TO J. H. GREEN.

December 15, 1831.
My dear Friend, — It is at least a fair moiety of
the gratification I feel, that it will give you so much
pleasure to hear from me, that I tached about on Monday,
continued in smooth water during the whole day, and
with exceptions of about an hour's mutterijig, as if a
storm was coming, had a comfortable night. I was

1831] TO J. H. GREEN 755

still better on Tuesday, and had no relapse yesterday. I
have so repeatedly given and suffered disapjDointment, that
I cannot even communicate this gleam of convalescence
without a little fluttering distinctly felt at my heart, and
a sort of cloud-shadow of dejection flitting over me. God
knows with what aims, motives, and aspirations I pray for
an interval of ease and competent strength ! One of my
present wishes is to form a better nomenclature or termi-
nology. I have long felt the exceeding inconvenience of
the many different meanings of the term objective, — some-
times equivalent to apparent or sensible, sometimes in op-
position to it, — ex. gr. " The objectivity is the rain drops
and the reflected light, the iris, is but an appearance."
Thus, sometimes it means real and sometimes unreal, and
the worst is, that it forms an obstacle to the fixation of
the great truth, that the perfect reality is predicable
only where actual and real are terms of identity, that is,
where there is no potential being, and that this alone is
absolute reality ; and further, of that most fundamental
truth, that the ground of all reality, the objective no less
than of the subjective, is the Absolute Subject. How to
get out of the difficulty I do not know, save that some
other term must be used as the antithet to phenomenal,
perhaps noumenal.

James Gillman has passed an unusually strict and long
examination for ordination with great credit, and was
selected by the bishop to read the lessons in the service.
The parents are, of course, delighted, and now, my dear
friend, with affectionate remembrances to Mrs. Green, may
God bless you and

S. T. COLEKIDGE.

756 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [Feb.

CCLII. TO HENEY NELSON COLEKIDGE.l

The Gkove, February 24, 1832.
My dear Nephew, and by a higher tie, Son, I thank God
I have this day been favoured with such a mitigation of
the disease as amounts to a reprieve, and have had ease
enough of sensation to be able to think of what you said
to me from Lockhart, and the result is a wish that you
should — that is, if it appears right to you, and you have
no objection of feeling — write for me to Professor Wil-
son, offering the Essays, and the motives for the wish to
have them republished, with the authority (if there be no
breach of confidence) of Mr. Lockhart. I cannot with
propriety offer them to Fraser^ having for a series of
years received " Blackwood's Magazine " as a free gift to
me, until I have made the offer to Blackwood. Of course,
my whole and only object is the desire to see them put
into the possibility of becoming useful. But, oh I this is

1 Henry Nelson Coleridge, 1798- speare and other Dramatists," were

1843, was the fifth son of Colonel issued 1836-1839. The third edition

James Coleridge of Heath's Court, of The Friend, 1837. the Confessions

Ottery St. Mary. His marriage of an Inquiring Spirit, IS-iO, and the

with the poet's daughter took place fifth edition of Aids to Beflection,

on September 3, 1829. He was the 1843, followed in succession. The

author of Six Months in the West In- second edition of the Biographia

dies, 1825, and an Introduction to the Literaria, which "he had prepared

Study of the Greek Poets, 1830. He in part," was published by his widow

practised as a chancery barrister in 1847.

and won distinction in his prof es- A close study of the original doeu-
sion. The later years of his life nients which were at my uncle's dis-
were devoted to the reediting of his posal enables me to bear testimony
uncle's published works, and to to his editorial skill, to his insight,
throwing into a connected shape the his unwearied industry, his faith-
literary as distinguished from the fulness. Of the charm of liis ap-
philosophical section of his unpub- pearanee, and the brilliance of his
lished MSS. The Table Talk, the conversation, I have heard those
best known of Coleridge's prose who knew him speak with enthu-
works, appeared in 1835. Four siasm. He died, from an affection
volumes of Literary Bemains, in- of the spine, in January, 1843.
eluding the " Lectures on Shake-

1832] TO HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE 757

a faint desire, my dear Henry, compared with tliat of see-
ing a fair abstract of the principles I have advanced
respecting the National Church and its revenue, and the
National Clerisy as a coordinate of the State, in the
minor and antithetic sense of the term State !

I almost despair of the Conservative Party, too truly, I
fear, and most ominously, self-designated Tories^ and of
course half-truthmen ! One main omission both of senators
and writers has been, ws e/xoiye SoKet, that they have forgot-
ten to level the axe of their argument at the root, the true
root, yea, trunk of the delusion, by pointing out the true
nature and operation and modus operandi of the taxes
in the first instance, and the7i and not till then the utter
groundlessness, the absurdity of the presumption that any
House of Commons formed otherwise, and consisting of
other men of other ranks, other views or with other inter-
ests, than the present has been for the last twenty years
at least, would or could (from any imaginable cause) have a
deeper interest or a stronger desire to diminish the taxes,
as far as the abolition of this or that tax would increase
the ability to pay the remainder. For what are taxes but
one of the forms of circulation ? Some a nation must
have, or it is no nation. But he that takes ninepence from
me instead of a shilling, but at the same time and by this
very act prevents sixpence from coming into my pocket, —
am I to thank him ? Yet such are the only thanks that
Mr. Hume and the Country Squires, his cowardly back-
clapping flatterers, can fairly claim. In my opinion, Hume
is an incomparably more mischievous being than O'Con-
nell and the gang of agitators. They are mere symptom-
atic and significative effects, the roars of the inwardly
agitated mass of the popular sea. But Hume is a ferment-
ing virus. But I must end my scrawl. God bless my dear
Sara. Give my love to Mrs. C. and kiss the baby for

S. T. Coleridge.

H. N. Coleridge, Esq., 1, New Court, Lincoln's Inn.

758 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [March

CCLIII. TO MISS LAWRENCE.!

March 22, 1832.

My dear Miss Lawrence, — You and dear^ dear Mrs.
Crompton are among the few sunshiny images that endear
my past life to me, and I never think of you without
heartfelt esteem, without affection, and a yearning of my
better being toward you. I have for more than eighteen
months been on the brink of the grave, the object of my
wishes, and only not of my prayers, because I commit
myself, poor dark creature, to an Omniscient and All-
merciful, in whom are the issues of life and death, —
content, yea, most thankful, if only His Grace will pre-
serve within me the blessed faith that He is, and is a God
that heareth prayers, abundant in forgiveness, and there-
fore to be feared, no fate^ no God as imagined by the
Unitarians,, a sort of, I know not what lato-giving Law of
Gravitation, to whom prayer would be as idle as to the
law of gravity, if an undermined wall were falling upon
me ; but " a God that made the eye, and therefore shall
He not see ? who made the ear, and shall He not hear ? "
who made the heart of man to love Him, and shall He not
love the creature whose ultimate end is to love Him ? — -a
God who seeheth that which was lost, who calleth back
that which had gone astray ; who calleth tlirough His own
Name ; Word, Son, from everlasting the Way and the
Truth ; and who became man that for poor fallen man-
kind he might he (not merely announced but 6e) the Hes-
urrection and the Life, — " Come unto me, all ye that
are weary and heavy-laden, and / will give you rest ! "
Oh, my dear Miss Lawrence ! prize above all earthly things
the faith. I trust that no sophistry of shallow infra-socini-
ans has quenched it within you, — that God is a God that

1 This lady was for many years erpool. Memoirs and Letters of
governess in the family of Dr. Sara Coleridge, London, 1873, i. 8,
Crompton of Eaton Hall, near Liy- 109-116.

1832]

TO MISS LAWRENCE

759

heareth prayers. If varied learning, if the assiduous cul-
tivation of the reasoning powers, if an accurate and
minute acquaintance with all the arguments of contro-
versial writers ; if an intimacy with the doctrines of the
Unitarians, which can only be obtained by one who for a
year or two in his early life had been a convert to them,
yea, a zealous and by themselves deemed powerful sup-
porter of their opinions ; lastly, if the utter absence of
any imaginable worldly interest that could sway or warp
the mind and affections, — if all these combined can give
any weight or authority to the opinion of a fellow-crea-
ture, they will give weight to my adjuration, sent from my
sickbed to you in kind love. O trust, O trust, in your
Redeemer ! in the coeternal Word, the Only-begotten, the
living Name of the Eternal I AM, Jehovah, Jesus !

I shall endeavour to see Mr. Hamilton. ^ I doubt not
his scientific attainments. I have had proofs of his taste

^ Sir William Rowan Hamilton,
1805-1865, the great mathematician,
was at this time Professor of Astron-
omy at Dublin. He was afterwards
appointed Astronomer Royal of Ire-
land. He was, as is well known, a
man of culture and a poet ; and it
was partly to ascertain his views on
scientific questions, and partly to in-
terest him in his verses, that Hamil-
ton was anxious to be made known
to Coleridge. He had begun a cor-
respondence with Wordsworth as
early as 1827, and Wordsworth, on
the occasion of his tour in Ireland
in 1829, visited Hamilton at the
Observatory. Miss Lawrence's intro-
duction led to an interview, but a
letter which Hamilton wrote to Cole-
ridge in the spring of 1832 re-
mained unanswered. In a second
letter, dated February 3, 1833, he
speaks of a " Lecture on Astron-
omy " which he forwards for Cole-

ridge's acceptance, and also of " some
love-poems to a lady to whom I am
shortly to be married." The love-
poems, eight sonnets, which are
smoothly turned and are cliarming
enough, have survived, bvit the lec-
ture has disappeared. The interest
of this remarkable letter lies in the
double appeal to Coleridge as a sci-
entific authority and a literary critic.
Coleridge's reply, if reply there was,
would be read with peculiar interest.
In a letter to Mr. Aubrey de Vere,
May 28, 1832, he thus records his
impressions of Coleridge : " Coleridge
is rather to be considered as a Fac-
ulty than as a Mind ; and I did so
consider him. I seemed rather to
listen to an oracular voice, to be cir-
curaf used in a Divine ofjL(p^, than —
as in the presence of Wordsworth —
to hold commune with an exalted
man." Life of W. Wordsworth, iii.
157-174, 210, etc.

760 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [April

and feeling as a poet, but believe me, my dear Miss Law-
rence ! that, should the cloud of distemper pass from over
me, there needs no other passport to a cordial welcome
from me than a line from you importing that he or she
possesses your esteem and regard, and that you wish I
should shew attention to them. I cannot make out your
address, which I read " The Grange ; " but where that is
I know not, and fear that the Post Office may be as igno-
rant as myself. I must therefore delay the direction of
my letter till I see Mr. Hamilton ; but in all places, and
independent of place, I am, my dear Miss Lawrence, with
most affectionate recollections,

Your friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

Miss S. Lawrence, The Grange, nr. Liverpool.

CCLIV. TO THE REV. H. F. GARY.

Grove, Highgate, April 22, 1832.
My DEAR Friend, — For I am sure by my love for
you that you love me too well to have suffered my very
rude and uncourteous vehemence of contradiction and
reclamation respecting your advocacy of the Catilinarian
Reform Bill, when we were last together, to have cooled,
much less alienated your kindness ; even though the
interim had not been a weary, weary time of groaning
and life-loathing for me. But I hope that this fearful
night-storm is subsiding, as you. will have heard from
Mr. Green or dear Charles Lamb. I write now to say,
that if God, who in His Fatherly compassion and through
His love wherewith He hath beheld and loved me in
Christ, in whom alone He can love the world, hath
worked almost a miracle of grace in and for me by a
sudden emancipation from a thirty-three years' fearful
slavery,^ if God's goodness should in time and so far per-

1 He is referring to a final effort gether. It is needless to say that,
to give up the use of opium alto- after a trial of some duration, the

1832] TO H. F. GARY 761

feet my convalescence as tliat I should be capable of
resuming my literary labours, I have a thought by way of
a light prelude, a sort of unstiffening of my long dormant
joints and muscles, to give a reprint as nearly as possi-
ble, except in quality of the paper, a facsimile of John
Asgill's tracts with a life and copious notes,^ to which I
would affix Pastilla et Marginalia. See my MSS. notes,
blank leaf and marginal, on Southey's " Life of Wes-
ley," and sundry other works. Now can you direct me
to any source of information respecting John Asgill,
a prince darling of mine, the most honest of all Whigs,
whom at the close of Queen Anne's reign the scoundrelly
Jacobite Tories twice expelled from Parliament, under
the pretext of his incomparable, or only-with-Rabelais-
to-be-compared argument against the base and cowardly
custom of ever dying? And this tract is a very treasure,
and never more usable as a medicine for our clergy, at
least all such as the Bishop of London, Archbishops of
Canterbury and of Dublin, the Paleyans and Mageeites,^

attempt was found to be irapracti- gle, and into that "sore agony" it

cable. It has been strenuously de- would be presumption to intrude ;

nied, as though it had been falsely but to a moral victory Coleridge

asserted, that under the Gillmans' laid no claim. And, at the last,

care Coleridge overcame the habit it was "mercy," not "praise," for

of taking lavidanum in more or less which he pleaded,
unusual quantities. Gillman, while -^ The notes on Asgill's Treatises

he maintains that his patient in the were printed in the Literary Be-

use of narcotics satisfied the claims mains, Coleridge's Works, 185.3, v.

of duty, makes no such statement ; 54.5-.550, and in Notes Theological

and the confessions or outpourings and Political, London, 1853, pp. 103-

from the later note-books which are 109.

included in the Life point to a dif- ^ Admirers of Dr. Mag-ee, 1765-

ferent conclusion. That after his 1831, who was successively Bishop

settlement at Highgate, in 1816, the of Raphoe, 1819, and Archbishop

habit was regulated and brought of Dublin, 1822. He was the au-

under control, and that this change thor of Discourses on the Scriptural

for the better was due to the Gill- Doctrines of the Atonement. He was

mans' care and to his own ever- grandfather of the late Archbishop

renewed efforts to be free, none can of York, better known as Bishop

gainsay. There was a moral strug- of Peterborough.

762 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [Aug.

any one or all of wliom I would defy to answer a single
paragraph of Asgill's tract, or unloose a single link from
the chain of logic. I have no biographical dictionary,
and never saw one but in a little sort of one-volume
thing. If you can help me in this, do. I give my kind-
est love to Mrs. Gary.

Yours, with unutterable and unuttered love and regard,
in all (but as to the accursed Reform Bill ! that men-
dacium iiujens, to its own preamble (to which no human
being can be more friendly than I am), that huge tape-
worm He of some threescore and ten yards) entire sym-
pathy of heart and soul,

Your affectionate

S. T, Coleridge.

CCLV. TO JOHN PEIRSE KENNARD.^

Grove, Highgate, Augnst 13, 1832.
My DEAR Sir, — Your letter has announced to me a
loss too great, too awful, for common grief, or any of its
ordinary forms and outlets. For more than an hour
after, I remained in a state which I can only describe as
a state of deepest mental silence, neither prayer nor
thanksgiving, but a prostration of absolute faith, as if the
Omnipresent were present to me by a more s^jecial intui-
tion, passing all sense and all understanding. Whether
Death be but the cloudy Bridge to the Life beyond, and
Adam Steinmetz has been wafted over it Avithout suspen-
sion, or with an immediate resumption of self-conscious
existence, or whether his Life be hidden in God, in the

1 I am indebted to Mr. John Henry Coleridge Kennard, Bart., M. P. for
Steinmetz, a younger brother of Salisbury, and of Mr. Adam Stein-
Coleridge's friend and ardent disci- metz Kennard, of Crawley Court,
pie, for a copy of this letter. It was Hants, at whose baptism the poet
addressed, he informs me, to his Avas present, and to whom he ad-
brother's friend, the late Mr. John dressed the well-known letter (Letter
Peirse Kennard, of Hordle Cliff, CCLX.), "To my Godchild, Adam
Hants, father of the late Sir John Steinmetz Kennard."

1832] TO JOHN PEIRSE KENNARD 763

eternal only-begotten, tlie Pleroma of all Beings and the
Hahitation both of the Retained and the Eetrieved,
therein in a blessed and most divine Slumber to grow and
evolve into the perfected Spirit, — for sleep is the ap-
pointed season of all growth here below, and God's ordi-
nances in the earthly may shadow out his ways in the
Heavenly, — in either case our friend is in God and with
God. Were it possible for nie even to tliinh otherwise,^
the very grass in the fields would turn black before my
eyes, and nature appear as a skeleton fantastically mossed
over beneath the weeping vault of a charnel house !

Deeply am I persuaded that for every man born on
earth there is an appointed task, some remedial jDrocess in
the soul known only to the Omniscient ; and, this through
divine grace fulfilled, the sole question is whether it be
needful or expedient for the church that he should still
remain : for the individual himself " to depart and to be
with Christ " must needs be great gain. And of my
dear, my filial friend, we may with a strong and most
consoling assurance affirm that he was eminently one

Who, being innocent, did even for that cause

Bestir him in good deeds!

Wise Virgin He, and wakeful kept his Lamp

Aye trimm'd and full ; and thus thro' grace he liv'd

In this bad World as in a place of Tombs,

And toucli'd not the Pollutions of the Dead.

And yet in Christ only did he build a hope. Yea, he
blessed the emptiness that made him capable of his Lord's
fullness, gloried in the blindness that was a receptive of
his Master's light, and in the nakedness that asked to be
cloathed with the wedding-garment of his Redeemer's
Righteousness. Therefore say I unto you, my young
friend. Rejoice ! and again I say. Rejoice !

The effect of the event communicated in your letter has
1 See Table Talk, August 14, 1832.

764 THE PHILOSOPHER AND DIVINE [1832

been that of awe and sadness on our whole household.
Mrs. Gillman mourns as for a son, but with that grief
which is felt for a departed saint. Even the servants
felt as if an especially loved and honoured member of the
family had been suddenly taken away. When I an-
nounced the sad tidings to Harriet, an almost unalpha-
heted but very sensible woman, the tears swelled in her
eyes, and she exclaimed, " Ah sir ! how many a Thursday
night, after Mr. Steinmetz was gone, and I had opened
the door for him, I have said to them below, ' That dear
young man is too amiable to live. God will soon have
him back.' " These were her very words. Nor were my
own anticipations of his recall less distinct or less fre-
quent. Not once or twice only, after he had shaken hands
with me on leaving us, I have turned round with the tear
on my cheek, and whispered to Mrs. Gillman, " Alas !
there is Death in that dear hand." ^

My dear sir ! if our society can afford any comfort to
you^ as that of so dear a friend of Adam Steinmetz can-
not but be to lis, I beseech you in my own name, and am
intreated by Mr. and Mrs. Gillman to invite you, to be
his representative for us, nnd to take his place in our
circle. And I must further request that j^ou do not con-
fine yourself to any particular evening of the week (for
which there is now no reason), but that you consult your
own convenience and opportunities of leisure. At what-
ever hour he comes, the fraternal friend of Adam Stein-
metz will ever be dear and most welcome to

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

1 So, too, of Keats. See Table Talk, etc., Bell & Sons. 1884,
Talk for August 14, 1832. Table p. 179.

CHAPTER XV

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

1833-1834

CHAPTER XV

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

1833-1834

CCLVI. TO J. H. GREEN.

Sunday night, April 8, 1833.

It is seldom, my dearest friend, that I find myself differ-
ing from you in judgements of any sort. It is more than
seldom that I am left in doubt and query on any judge-
ment of yours of a practical nature, for on the good
ground of some sixteen or more years' experience I f«el a
take-for-granted faith in the dips and pointings of the
needle in every decision of your total mind. But in the
instance you spoke of this afternoon, viz., your persistent
rebuttal of the Temperance Society Man's Request,
though I do not feel siire that you are not in the right,
yet I do feel as if I should have been more delighted and
more satisfied if you had intimated your compliance with
it. I feel that in this case I should have had no doubt;
but that my mind would have leapt forwards with con-
tent, like a key to a loadstone.

Assuredly you might, at least you would, have a very
promising chance of effecting considerable good, and you
might have commenced your address with your own
remark of the superfluity of any light of information
afforded to an habitual dram-drinker respecting the un-
utterable evil and misery of his thraldom. As wisely
give a physiological lecture to convince a man of the pain
of burns, while he is lying with his head on the bars of
the fire-grate, instead of snatching him off. But in stat-
ing this, you might most effectingly and preventively for

T68 THE BEGINNING OF THE END [April

others describe the misery o£ that condition in which the
impulse waxes as the motive wanes. (Mem. There is a
striking passage in my " Friend " on this subject,^ and a
no less striking one in a schoolboy theme of mine ^ now
in Gillman's possession, and in my own hand, written
when I was fourteen, with the simile of the treacherous
current of the Maelstrom.) But this might give occa-
sion for the suggestion of one new charitable institution,
under authority of a legislative act, namely, a 3Iaison de
Sante (what do the French call it ?) for lunacy and idiocy
of the urill, in which, with the full consent of, or at the
direct instance of the jjatient himself, and with the con-
currence of his friends, such a person under the certificate
of a physician might be placed under medical and moral
coercion. I am convinced that London wovxld furnish a
hundred volunteers in as many days from the gin-shops,
who would swallow their glass of poison in order to get
courage to present themselves to the hospital in question.
And a similar institution might exist for a higher class of
will-maniacs or impotents. Had such a house of health
been in existence, I know who woidd have entered him-
self as a patient some five and twenty years ago.

Second class. To the persons still capable of self -cure ;

^ " The sot would reject the poi- The theme was selected by Boyer

soned cup, yet the trembling' hand for insertion in his Liber Aureus of

with which he raises his daily or scIjOoI exercises in prose and verse,

hourly drang'ht to his lips has not now in the possession of James Boyer,

left him ignorant that this, too, is Esq., of the Coopere' Company. The

altogether a poison." The Friend, sentence to which Coleridge alludes

Essay xiv. ; Coleridge's Wm-Ls, ii. ran thus : ' ' As if we were in some

100. great sea-vortex, every moment we

^ The motto of this theme, (Jan- perceive our ruin more clearly, every

uary 19, 17!)4), of which I possess a moment we are impelled towards it

transcript in Coleridge's handwrit- with greater force."

ing, or perhaps the original copy, is — The essay was printed for the first

Quid fas time in the Illustrated London News,

Atque nefas tandem incipiunt seiitire per- April 1, 1893.

actis
Crimiuibus.

1833] TO MRS. ADERS 769

and lastly, to the young who have only begun, and not
yet begun — [add to this] the urgency of connecting the
Temperance Society with the Christian churches of all
denominations, — the classes known to each other, and
deriving strength from religion. This is a beautiful part,
or might have been made so, of the Wesleyan Church.

These are but raw hints, but unless the mercy of God
should remove me from my sufferings earlier than I dare
hope or pray for, we will talk the subject over again ; as
well as the reason why spirits in any form as such are
so much more dangerous, morally and in relation to the
forming a habit, than beer or wine. Item : if a govern-
ment were truly fraternal, a healthsome and sound beer
would be made universal ; aye, and for the lower half of
the middle classes wine might be imported, good and
generous, from sixpence to eightpence per quart.

God bless you and your ever affectionate

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

CCLYII. TO MES. ADEES.^

[1833.]

My DEAE Mes. Adees, — By my illness or oversight
I have occasioned a very sweet vignette to have been
made in vain — except for its own beauty. Had I sent you
the lines that were to be written on the upright tomb, you
and our excellent Miss Denman would have, first, seen
the dimension requisite for letters of a distinctly visible
and legible size ; and secondly, that the homely, plain
Church-yard Christian verses would not be in keeping
with a Muse (though a lovelier I never wooed), nor with

1 This letter, whicli is addressed througli the press. Apparently he

in Coleridg'e's handwriting', "Mrs. had intended that the "Epitaph"

Aders, favoured by H. Gillman, " should be inscribed on the outline

and endorsed in pencil, " S. T. C.'s of a headstone, and that this should

letter for Miss Denman," refers to illustrate, by way of vignette, the

the new edition of his poetical works last page of the volume,
which Coleridge had begun to see

T70 THE BEGINNING OF THE END [Oct.

a lyre or harp or laurel, or aught else Parnassian and
allegorical. A rude old yew-tree, or a mountain ash,
with a grave or two, or any other characteristic of a vil-
lage rude church-yard, — such a hint of a landscape was
all I meant ; but if any figure, rather that of an elderly
man

Thoughtful, with quiet tears upon his cheek.

(Tombless Epitaph. See " Sibylline Leaves.")
But I send the lines, and you and Miss Denman will
form j^our own opinion.

Is one of Wy ville's proofs of my face worth Mr. Aders'
acceptance? I wrote under the one I sent to Henry
Coleridge the line from Ovid, with the translation, thus :

S. T. COLEBIDGE, ^TAT. SU.E 63.

Not / handsome / was / but / was / eloquent /
" Non f ormosus erat, sad erat f acundus Ulysses."

Translation.

" In truth, he 's no Beauty ! " cry'd Moll, Poll, and Tab ;
But they all of them own'd He 'd the gift of the Gab.

My best love to Mr. Aders, and believe that as I have
been, so I ever remain your affectionate and trusty
friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

P. S. /like the tombstone very much.

The lines when printed would probably have ou the
preceding page the advertisement —

1833]

TO JOHN STERLING

771

Epitaph on a Poet little known, yet better known by the
Initials of his Name than by the Name itself.

S. T. C.

Stop, Christian Passer-by ! Stop, Child of God !

And read with gentle heart. Beneath this sod

A Poet lies : or that, which once seem'd He.

O lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C,

That He, who many a year with toilsome breath

Found Death in Life, may here find Life in Death.

Mercy for Praise — to be forgiven for Fame

He ask'd, and hoped thro' Christ. DO THOU the Same.

CCLVIII. TO JOHN STEELING.!

Gkove, Highgatb, October 30, 1833.
My dear Sir, — I very much regret that I am not to see
you again for so many months. Many a fond dream have

^ Of the exact date of Sterling's
first visit to Highgate there is no re-
cord. It may, however, be taken
for granted that his intimacy with
Coleridge began in 1828, when he
was in his twenty-third year, and
continued until the autumn of 1833,
— perhaps lasted until Coleridge's
death. Unlike Maurice, and Mau-
rice's disciple, Kingsley, Sterling
outlived his early enthusiasm for
Coleridge and his acceptance of
his teaching. It may be said, indeed,
that, thanks to the genius of his
second master, Carlyle, he suggests
both the reaction against and the
rejection of Coleridge. Of that re-
jection Carlyle, in his Life of Ster-
ling, made himself the mouth-piece.
It is idle to say of that marvellous
but disillusioning presentment that
it is untruthful, or exaggerated, or
unkind. It is a sketch from the
life, and who can doubt that it is
lifelike ? But other eyes saw an-

other Coleridge who held them en-
tranced. To them he was the seer
of the vision beautiful, the ' ' priest
of invisible rites behind the veil of
the senses," and to their ears his
voice was of one who brought good
tidings of reconciliation and assur-
ance. Many, too, who cared for
none of these things, were attracted
to the man. Like the wedding-guest
in the Ancient Mariner, they stood
still. No other, they felt, was so
wise, so loveable. They, too, were
eye-witnesses, and their portraiture
has not been outpainted by Carlyle.
Apart from any expression of opinion,
it is worth while to note that Car-
lyle saw Coleridge for the last time
in the spring of 1825, and that the
Life of Sterling was composed more
than a quarter of a century later.
His opinion of the man had, indeed,
changed but little, as the notes and.
letters of 1824-25 clearly testify, but
his criticism of the writer was far

772 THE BEGINNING OF THE END [July

I amused myself witli, of your residing near me or in the
same house, and of preparing, with your and Mr. Green's
assistance, my whole system for the press, as far as it
exists in writing in any systematic form ; that is, begin-
ning with the Propyleum, On the power and use of Words,
comprising Logic, as the canons of Conclusion, as the
criterion of Premises, and lastly as the discipline and
evolution of Ideas (and then the Methodus et Epochee,
or the Disquisition on God, Nature, and Man), the two
first grand divisions of which, from the Ens super Ens to
the Fall, or from God to Hades, and then from Chaos to
the commencement of living organization, containing the
whole scheme of the Dynamic Philosophy, and the deduc-
tion of the Powers and Forces, are complete ; as is likewise
a third, composed for the greater part by Mr. Green, on
the " Application of the Ideas, as the Transcendents of
the Truths, Duties, Affections, etc., in the Human Mind."
If I could once publish these (but, alas ! even these could
not be compressed in less than three octavo volumes), I
should then have no objection to print my MS. jDapers on
" Positive Theology, from Adam to Abraham, to Moses,
the Prophets, Christ and Christendom." But this is a
dream ! I am, however, very seriously disposed to em-
less appreciative than it had been in go to Highgate, and -wait on Mrs.
Coleridge's lifetime. The following Gillman and yourself. I have trav-
extracts from a letter of Sterling to elled the road thither with keen
Gillman, dated " Hurstmonceaux, and buoyant expectation, and re-
October 9, 1834," are evidence that turned with high and animating re-
his feelings towards Coleridge were membrances oftener than any other
at that time those of a reverent dis- in England. Hereafter, too, it will
ciple : — not have lost its charm. There is not

" The Inscription [in Highgate only all this world of recollection,
Church] will forever be enough to but the dwelling of those who best
put to shame the heartless vanity of knew and best loved his work."
a thousand such writers as the Opium Life of Sterling, 1871, pp. 46-54;
Eater. As a portrait, or even as a Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narra-
hint for one, his papers seem to me tive, by J. Dykes Campbell, pp. 259-
worse than useless. 261 ; British Museum, add. MS.

" If it is possible, I will certainly 34,225, f. 194.

1834] TO MISS ELIZA NIXON 773

ploy the next two montlis in preparing for the press a
metrical translation (if I find it practicable) of the Apoca-
lypse, with an introduction on the " Use and Interpreta-
tion of Scriptures." I am encouraged to this by finding
how much of original remains in my views after I have
subtracted all I have in common with Eichhorn and
Heinrichs. I write now to remind you, or to beg you to
recall to my memory the name of the more recent work
(Lobeck?) which you mentioned to me, and whether you
can procure it for me, or rather the loan of it. Likewise,
whether you know of any German translation and com-
mentary on Daniel, that is thought highly of? I find
Gesenius' version exceedingly interesting, and look for-
ward to the Commentaries with delight. You mentioned
some works on the numerical Cabbala, the Gematria (I
think) they call it. But I must not scribble away your
patience, and after I have heard from you from Cambridge
I will try to write to you more to the purpose (for I did
not begin this scrawl till the hour had passed that ought
to have found me in bed).

With sincere regard, your obliged friend,

S. T. Coleridge.

CCLIX. TO MISS ELIZA NIXON.^

July 9, 1834.

My DEAR Eliza, — The three volumes of Miss Edge-
worth's " Helen " ought to have been sent in to you last

1 The following' unpublished lines Et quicquid mittis, Thuraputare decet.

were addressed by Coleridge to this ^""^ whatever thou sendest, Sabean odours

. ° to think it it behoves me.

young lady, a neighbour, i presume,

and friend of the Gillmans. They The whole adapted from an epi-

must be among the last he ever gram of Claudius by substituting

wrote : — Thura for mella, the original distich

gryg. being in return for a Present of

Honey.
Translation of Claudian. [ Imitation.

Dulcia dona mihi tu mittis semper Elisa ! Sweet Gift ! and alvifays doth Eliza send
Sweet gifts to me thou sendest always, Sweet Gifts and full of fragrance to her
Elisa ! Friend.

774 THE BEGINNING OF THE END [July

night, and are marked as having been so sent. And
indeed, knowing how much noise this work was making
and the great interest it had excited, I should not have
been so selftsh as to have retained them on my own
account. But Mrs. Gillman is very anxious that I should
read it, and has made me promise to write my remarks on
it, and such reflections as the contents may suggest, which,
in awe of the precisians of the Book Society, I shall put
down on separate paper. The young people were so eager
to read it, that with my slow and interrupted style of
reading, it would have been cruel not to give them the
priority. Mrs. Gillman flatters me that you and your sis-
ters will think a copy of my remarks some compensa-
tion for the delay.

God bless you, my dear young friend. You, I know,
will be gratified to learn, and in my own writing, the still
timid but still strengthening and brightening dawn of
convalescence with the last eight days.

S. T. COLEEIDGE.
Jiily 9, 1834

The two volumes ^ that I send you are making a ru-
mour, and are highly and I believe justly extolled. They
are written by a friend of mine,^ a remarkably handsome
young man whom you may have seen on one of our latest
Thursday evening conversazioni. I have not yet read
them, but keep them till I send in " Helen," and longer,
if you should not have finished them.

EnoiiRh for Him to know they come from Literal translation: Always, Eliza !

' to me things of sweet odour thou

Whate'er she sends is Frankincense and . . -m i , i

-. . presentest. r or whatever tliou pre-

sentest, I fancy redolent of thj'self .
Another on the same subject by whate'er thougiv'st, it stiUis sweettome,
S. T. C himself : — -For still I find it redolent of ih^e !

Semper, Eliza ! raihi tu suaveolentia donas : ^ PhUp Van Artevdde.

Nam quicquid donas, te redolere puto. ^ Sir Henry Taylor.

1834] TO ADAM STEINMETZ KENNARD 775

CCLX. TO ADAM STEINMETZ KENNARD.

Gkove, Highgate, July 13, 1834.

My dear Godchild, — I ojEfer up the same fervent
prayer for you now as I did kneeling before the altar
when you were baptized into Christ, and solemnly received
as a living member of His spiritual body, the church.
Years must pass before you will be able to read with an
understanding- heart what I now write. But I trust that
the all-gracious God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of mercies, who by His only-begotten Son (all
mercies in one sovereign mercy !) has redeemed you from
evil ground, and willed you to be born out of darkness,
but into light ; out of death, but into life ; out of sin, but
into righteousness ; even into " the Lord our righteous-
ness," — I trust that He will graciously hear the prayers of
your dear parents, and be with you as the spirit of health
and growth, in body and in mind. My dear godchild, you
received from Christ's minister at the baptismal font, as
your Christian name, the name of a most dear friend of
your father's, and who was to me even as a son, — the late
Adam Steinmetz, whose fervent asj)irations and para-
mount aim, even from early youth, was to be a Christian
in thought, word, and deed ; in will, mind, and affections.
I, too, your godfather, have known what the enjoyment
and advantages of this life are, and what the more refined
pleasures which learning and intellectual 23ower can give ;
I now, on the eve of my departure, declare to you, and ear-
nestly pray that you may hereafter live and act on the
conviction, that health is a great blessing ; competence,
obtained by honourable industry, a great blessing; and a
great blessing it is, to have kind, faithful, and loving
friends and relatives ; but that the greatest of all bless-
ings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be
indeed a Christian. But I have been likewise, through a
large portion of my later life, a sufferer, sorely affected

776 THE BEGINNING OF THE END [1834

with bodily pains, languor, and manifold infirmities ; and
for the last three or four years have, with few and brief
intervals, been confined to a sick-room, and at this mo-
ment, in great weakness and heaviness, write from a sick-
bed, hopeless of recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy
removal. And I thus, on the brink of the grave, solemnly
bear witness to you, that the Almighty Redeemer, most
gracious in Ilis promises to them that truly seek Him, is
faithful to perform what He has promised ; and has
reserved, under all pains and infirmities, the peace that
passeth all understanding, with the supporting assurance
of a reconciled God, who will not withdraw His spirit from
me in the conflict, and in His own time will deliver me
from the evil one. Oh, my dear godchild ! eminently
blessed are they who begin early to seek, fear, and love
their God, trusting wholly in the righteousness and media-
tion of their Lord, Redeemer, Saviour, and everlasting
High Priest, Jesus Christ. Oh, preserve this as a legacy
and bequest from your unseen godfather and friend,

S. T. COLEEIDGE.

INDEX

Abergavenny, 410.

Abergavenny, Earl of, wreck of the,
494 n. ; 495 n.

Abernethy, Dr. John, 525 ; C. deter-
mines to place himself under the
care of, 564, 565.

Achard, F. C, 299 and note.

Acland, Sir John, 523 and note.

Acting, 621-623.

Acton, 184, 186-188, 191.

Adams, Dr. Joseph, 442 and note.

Addison's Spectator, studied by C,
in connection with The Friend,
557, 558.

Address on the Present War, An,
85 n.

Address to a Young Jackass and its
Tethered Mother, 119 and note,
120.

Aders, Mrs., 701 n., 702 n., 752 ; let-
ters from C, 701, 769.

Adscombe, 175, 184, 188.

Advising, the rage of, 474, 475.

Adye, Major, 493.

^schylus. Essay on the Prometheus
of, 740 and note.

Aids to Reflection, 688 n. ; prepara-
tion and publication of, 731 n.,
738 ; C. calls Stuart's attention to
certain passages in, 741 ; favour-
able opinions of, 741 ; 756 n.

Ainger, Rev. Alfred, 400 n.

Akenside, Mark, 197.

Albuera, the Battle of, C.'s articles
on, 567 and note.

Alfoxden, 10 n. ; Wordsworth set-
tles at, 224, 227 ; 326, 515.

Alison's History of Europe, 628 n.

Allen, Eobert, 41 and note, 45, 47,
50 ; extract from a letter from
him to C, 57 n. ; 63, 75, 83, 126 ;
appointed deputy-surgeon to the
Second Royals, 225 and note ; let-
ter to C, 225 n.

Allsop, Mrs., 733 n.

Allsop, Thomas, friendship and cor-
respondence with C, 695, 696 ;
publishes C.'s letters after his
death, 696 ; his Letters, Conversa-
tions, and Recollections of S. T.
Coleridge, 41 n., 527 n., 675 n.
696 and note, 698 n., 721 n. ; 711
C.'s letter of Oct. 8, 1822, 721 n.
letter from C, 696.

AUston, Washington, 523 ; his bust
of C, 570 n., 571 ; his portraits of
C, 572 and note ; his art and
moral character, 573, 574 ; 581,
633 ; his genius and his misfor-
tunes, 650 ; 695 and notes ; letter
from C, 498.

Ambleside, 335 ; Lloyd settles at,
344 ; 577, 578.

America, proposed emigration of C.
and other pantisocrats to, 81, 88-
91, 98, 101-103, 146 ; prospects of
war with England, 91 ; 241 ; pro-
gress of religious deism in, 414;
C.'s letter concerning the inevita-
bleness of a war with, 629.

Amtmann of Ratzeburg, the, 264,
268, 271.

Amulet, The, 257.

Ancient Mariner, The, 81 n. ; written
in a dream or dreamlike reverie,
245 n. ; 696.

Animal Vitality, Essay on, by Thel-
wall, 179, 212.

Annual Anthology, the, edited by
Southey, 207 n., 226 n., 295 n.,
298 n. ; C. suggests a classifica-
tion of poems in, 313, 314, 317 ;
318, 320, 322 and note, 330, 331,
748 n.

Annual Review, 488, 489, 522.

Anti-Jacobin, The Beauties of the, its
libel on C, 320 and note.

Antiquary, The, by Scott, C.'s por-

778

INDEX

trait introduced into an illustra-
tion for, 7o() and note.
Ants, Treatise on, by Huber, 712.
Ardinyhello, by Heinse, 083 and note.
Arnold, Mr., 0U2, 00;J.
Arrocliar, 4;12 and note.
Arthur's Cragf, 4;>',).
A-siity, (iSS and note.
Asyill, John, and his Treatises, 7G1

and note.
Aslibiirton, oO'j n.
Ashe, 'I'honias, his Miscellanies, yEs-

ifutic and Literari/, {J'.VA n.
Ashley, 0. with the Morgans at,

U;!l.
AshUiy, Lord, and the Ten Hours

Bills, 0.S!) n.
Asliton, 140 and note.
As late I roamed through Fancy'' s

shadowy wa/e, a sonnet, 116 n., 118.
AtheisTn, Uil, Ui2, 167, 199, 200.
Athenauin, The, 206 n., .536 n.,753 n.
Atlantic Monthly, 206 n.
Autobiographical letters from C. to

Thomas Poole, 3-21.

Baader, Franz Xavier von, 683 and
note.

Babb, Mr.,422.

Bacon, Lord, his Novum Organum,
735.

Badcoek, Mr., 21.

Badcock, Harry, 22.

Badcoek, Sam, 22.

Bala 79.

Ball . Ladv, 494 n., 497.

Ball. Sir Alexander John, 484, 487,
4! 6, 497; mutual regard of C.
and, 508 n. ; 524, .")54 ; C.'s nar-
rative of his life, 579 n. : his opin-
ions of Ladv Nelson and Lady
Hamilton, 637.

Ba'lad of the Bark Ladie, The, 375.

Bampfyide, John Codrington War-
wick, his genius, originality, and
snbsnqupnt lunacy, 309 and note;
his Sixteen Satinets, 309 n.

Banfill, Mr.. 306.

Barbauld, Anna Lsetitia, 317 n.

Barbou Casimir, The, 67 and notes,
68.

Barlow, Caleb, 38.

Barr, Mr., his children, 154.

Barringtou, Hon. and Rt. Rev. John
Shute, Bishop of Durham, 682 and
note.

Bassenthwalte Lake, 335, 376 n. ;
sunset over, 384.

Beard, On Mrs. Monday^s, 9 n.

Beaumont, Lady, 459, 573, 580, 592,
593 ; procures subscribers to C.'s
lectures, 599 ; 644, 645, 739, 741 ;
letter from C, 641.

Beaumont, Sir George, 440 n., 462;
his affection for C. preceded by
dislike, 468 ; 41)3 ; extract from a
letter from Wordsworth on John
Wordsworth's death, 494 n. ; 496 ;
lends the Wordsworths his farm-
house near Coleorton, 509 n. ; 579-
581 ; C. explains the nature of his
quarrel with Wordsworth to, 592,
593 ; 595 n., 629 ; on AUston as
an historical painter, 633 ; 739,
741 ; letter from C, 570.

Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin, The,
its libel on C, 320 and note.

Beekv Fall, 305 n.

Beddoes, Dr. Thomas, 157, 211, 338;
C.'s grief at liis death, 543 and
note, 544 and note ; his advice
and sympathy in response to C.'s
confession, 543 n. ; his character,
544.

Bedford, Grosvenor, 400 n.

Beet sugar, 299 and note.

Beguines, the, 3:^7 n.

Bell, Rev. Andrew, D. D., 575, 582
and note, 605 ; his Origin, Nature,
and Object of the New System of
Education, 581 and note, 5S2.

Bell, Bev. Andreir. Life of, by R.
and C. C. Southey. 581 n.

Bellingham, John. 598 n.

Bell-ringing in Germany, 293.

Belper. Lord (Edward Strutt), 215 n.

Bennett, Abraham, his electroscope,
218 n., 219 n,

Bentley's Quarto Edition of Horace,
(i8 and note.

Benvenuti, 498, 499.

Btnyowski, Count, or the Conspiracy
of Kamtschatka. a Tragi-coinedy,
bv Kotzebue, 2.')6 and note.

Berdmore, Mr., SO, 82.

Bernard, Sir Thomas, 579 and notes,
5S0, 582, 585, 595 n., 599.

Bet ham, Matilda, To. From a
Stranger, 404 n.

Bible, The, as literature, C.'s opinion
of, 200 ; slovenly hexameters in,
398.

INDEX 779

Bibliography, Southey's proposed

374 n. ; C.'s, Southey's, and Sothe-

work, 428-430.

by's admiration of, and its effect

Bibliotheca Britannica, or an History

on their poems, 396 ; borrows a

of British Literature, a proposed

line from a poem of C.'s, 396 ; his

work, 425-427, 429, 430.

second volume of poems, 403, 404 ;

Bigotry, 198.

637, 638, 650-652.

Billington, Mrs. Elizabeth Weiehsel,

Bowscale, the mountain, 339.

3(J8.

Box, 631.

Bingen, 751.

Boyce, Anne Ogden, her Records of

Biographia Literaria, 3, 68 n., 74 n..

a Quaker Family, 538 n.

152 n., 164 n., 174 n., 232 n., 257,

Boyer, Rev. James, 61, 113, 768 n.

320 n., 498 n., 607 n., 669 n., 670 n.;

Brahmin creed, the, 229.

C. ill-used by the printer of, 673,

Brandes, Herr von, 279.

674 ; 679, 756 n.

Brandl's Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Birnjingham, 151, 152.

and the English Eomantic School,

Bishop's Middleham, 358 and note,

258, 674 n., 740 n.

360.

Bratha, 394, 535.

BlackwoocVs Magazine, 756.

Bray, near Maidenhead, 69, 70.

Blake, William, as poet, painter, and

Brazil, Emperor of, an enthusiastic

engraver, 685 n., 686 n. ; C.'s crit-

student and admirer of C, 696.

icism of his poems and their ac-

Bread-riots, 643 n.

companying illustrations, 686-688;

Brecon, 410, 411.

his bongs of Innocence and Expe-

Eremhill, 650.

rience, 086 n.

Brent, Mr., 598, 599.

Bloomfield, Robert, 395.

Brent, Miss Charlotte, 520, 524-526 ;

Blumenbach, Prof., 279, 298.

C.'s affection for, tQo ; 577, 585,

Book of the Church, The, 724.

600, 618, 643, 722 n. ; letter from

Books, C.'s early taste in, 11 and

C, 722. See Morgan family, the.

note, 12 ; in later life, 180, 181.

Brentford, 3^6, 673 n.

Booksellers, C.'s horror of, 548.

Eridgewater, 164.

Borrow dale, 431.

Bright, Henry A., 245 n.

Borrowdale mountains, the, 370.

Bristol, C.'s bachelor life in, 133-

Botany Bay Eclogues, by Robert

135; 138, 139, 163 n., 166, 167,

Southey, 76 n., 116.

184, 326, 414, 520, 572 n., 621, 623,

Bourbons, C.'s Essay on the restora-

624.

tion of the, 629 and note.

Bristol Journal, 633 n.

Bourne, Sturges, 542.

British Critic, the, 350.

Bovey waterfall, 305 n.

Brookes, Mr., 80, 82.

Bowdon, Anne, marries Edward

Brothers, The, by Wordsworth, the

Coleridge, 53 n.

original of Leonard in, 494 n. ; C.

Bowdon. Betsy, 18.

accused of borro^\ing a line from,

Bowdon, John (C.'s uncle), C. goes

609 n.

to live with, 18, 19.

Brown, John, printer and publisher

Bowdons, the, C.'s mother's family.

of The Friend, 542 n.

4.

Brun, Frederica, C.'s indebtedness

Bowles, the surgeon, 212.

to her for the framework of the

Bowles, To, in._ _

Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale

Bowles, Rev. William Lisle, C.'s ad-

of Chamouni, 405 n.

miration for his poems, 37, 42,

Bruno, Giordano, 371.

179 ; 63 n., 76 and note ; C.'s son-

Brunton, Miss, 86 and note, 87, 89 ;

net to, 111 and note ; 115 ; his

verses to, 94.

sonnets, 177; his Hqje, an Alle-

Brunton, Elizabeth, 86 n.

gorical Sketch, 179, 180; 196. 197,

Brunton, John, 86 n., 87.

211 ; his translation of Dean

Brunton, Louisa, 86 n.

Ogle's Latin Iambics, 374 and

Bryant, Jacob, 216 n., 219.

note ; school life at Winchester,

Buchan, Earl of, 139.

1

780 INDEX

Bucl^, Miss, 136. See Cruikshank,

22-57, 70-72, 81-129; C. thinks

Mrs. John.

of leaving, 97 n. ; 137.

Buller, Sir Francis (Judge), 6 n. ;

Cameos and intaglios, casts of, 703

obtains a Christ's Hospital Pre-

and note.

sentation for (J., 18.

Campbell, James Dykes, 251 n.,

Buonaparte, 308, 327 n., 329 and

337 n. ; his Samuel Taylor Cole-

note ; his animosity against C,

ridge, 269 n., 527 n., 572 n.^ 600 n.,

498 n. ; 530 n. ; C.'s cartoon and

631 n., 653 n., 666 n., 667 n., 674 n.,

lines on, ()42.

681 n., 684 n., 698 n., 752 n.,

Burdett, Sir Francis, 598.

753 n., 772 n.

Burke, Fdniuud, (".'s sonnet to,

Canary Islands, 417, 418.

no n., 118; liis Lclter to a Noble

Canning, George, .542, 674.

Lord, 157 and note ; Thelwall on,

Canova, Antonio, on Allston's mod-

100; 177.

elling, 573.

Burnett, George, 74, 121, 140-142,

Cape Esperichel, 473.

144-151, 174 n., 325, 407.

Carlisle, Sir Anthony, 341 and note.

Burns, Robert, 19(); C.'s poem on.

Carlton House, 392.

200 and note, 207.

Carlyle, Thomas, his portrait of C.

Burton, 320.

in the Life of Sterling, 771 n.

Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy,

Carlyon, Clement, M. D., his Early

428.

Years and Late Recollections, 258,

Busts of C, 570 n., 571, 695 n.

298 n.

Butler, Samuel (afterwards Head

CarnoSity, Mrs., 472.

Master of Shrewsbury and Bishop

Carrock, the mountain, a tempest

of Lichfield), 40 and note.

on, 339, 340.

Buttermere, 393.

Carrock man, the, 339.

Byron, Lord, his Childe Harold,

Cart Wright, Major John, 635 and

583 ; 006, 694, 720.

note.

Byron, Lord, Conversations of, by

Cary, Rev. Henry, his Memoir of H.

Capt. Thomas Med win, 735 and

F. Cary, 676 u.

note.

Cary, H. F., Memoir of, by Henry

Cary, 676 n.

Cabriere, Miss, 18.

Cary, Rev. H. F., his translation of

Caermarthen, 411.

the Divina Commedia. 676, 077

Caldbeck, 370 n., 724.

and note. 678. 679 ; C. introduces

Calder, the river, 339.

himself to. 670 n. ; 085, 699 ; let-

Caldwell, Rev. George, 25 and note,

ters from C 676, 677. 731. 760.

29, 71, 82.

Casimir, the Barbou, 67 and notes,

Calne, Wiltshire, C.'s life at, 641-

08.

653.

Castlereagh. Lord, 002.

Calvert, Raisley, 345 n.

Castle Spectre. The, a play by Monk

Calvert, William, proposes to study

Lewis. C.'s criticism of, 230 and

chemistry with C. and Words-

note. 237, 238 ; 020.

wortli, 345 ; his portrait in a poem

Catania, 458.

of Wordsworth's, 345 n. ; proposes

Cat-serenades in Malta, 483 n.. 484 n.

to share his new hoiisi! near Greta

Catherine XL, Empress of Russia,

Hall with Wordsworth and his

207 n.

sister, 34() ; his sense and abilit}^,

Cathloma, 51.

340 ; 347, 318.

Catholic Emancipation, C.'s Let-

Cambridge, description of, 39 ; 137,

ters to Judge Fletcher on, 629

270.

and note, 034 and note, 635, 036,

Cambridge, Bernini scences of, by

042.

Henry Gunning, 24 n., 363 n.

Catholicism in Germany, 291, 292.

Cambridge Litelligencer, The, 93 n..

Catholic question, the, letters in the

218 n.

Courier on, 507 and note ; C. pro-

Cambridge University, C.'s life at.

poses to again write for the Cou-

INDEX 781

rier on, 660, 662 ; arrangements

679 n. ; 694, 753 ; plans for, 772,

for the proposed articles on, 664,

773.

665.

Christian Observer, 653 n.

Cattermole, George, 750 n. ; letter

Christmas Carol, A, 330.

from C, 750.

Christmas Indoors in North Germany,

Cattermole, Richard, 750 n.

257, 275 n.

Cattle, disposal of dead and sick, in

Christmas Out of Doors, 257.

Germany, 294.

Christmas-tree, the German, 289,

Chalmers, Rev. Thom^as, D. D., calls

290.

on C, 752 and note.

Christ's Hospital, C.'s life at, 18-22 ;

Chantrey, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Fran-

173 n.

cis, R. A., C.'s impressions of.

Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty

600; 727.

Years Ago, by Charles Lamb, 20

Chapman, Mr., appointed Public

n.

Secretary of Malta, 491, 496.

Christ's Hospital, List of Exhibition-

Character, A, 631 n.

ers, from 1566-1885, 41 n.

Charity, 110 n.

Chronicle, Morning, 111 n., 114, 116n.,

Chatterton, Monody on the Death of,

119 n., 126, 162, 167, 505, 506,

110 n., 158 n. ; C.'s opinion of it

606 n., 615, 616.

in 1797, 222, 223 ; 620 n.

Chubb, Mr., of Bridgwater, 231.

Chatterton, Thomas, unpopularity

Church, The Book of the, by Southey,

of his poems, 221, 222 ; Southey's

724.

exertions in aid of his sister, 221,

Church, the English, 135, 306, 651-

222.

653, 676, 757.

Chemistry, C. proposes to study.

Church, the Scottish, in a state of

345-347.

ossification, 744, 745.

Chepstow, 139, 140 n.

Church, the Wesleyan, 769.

Chester, John, accompanies C. to

Cibber, Colley, and his son, Theoph-

Germany, 259 ; 2(J5, 267, 269 n..

ilus, 693.

272, 2S0, 2S1, 300.

Cibber, Theophilus, his reply to his

Childe Harold, by Byron, 583.

father, 693.

Childhood, memory of, in old age.

Cintra, Wordsworth's pamphlet on

428.

the Convention of, 534 and note,

Children in cotton factories, legisla-

543 and note ; C.'s criticism of,

tion as to the employment of, 689

548-550.

and note.

Clagget, Charles, 70 and note.

Christ, both God and man, 710.

Clare, Lord, 638.

Christabel, written in a dream or

Clarke, Mrs., the notorious, 543 n.

dreamlike reverie, 245 n. ; 310, 313,

Clarkson, Mrs., 592.

317, 337 and note, 342, 349 ; Con-

Clarkson, Thomas, 363, 398; his

clusion to Part II., 355 and note.

History of the Abolition of the

356 n. ; Part II., 405 n. ; a fine

Slave Trade, 527 and note, 528-

edition proposed, 421, 422 ; 437

530 ; his character, 529, 530 ; C.'s

n., 523 ; C. quotes from, 609, 610 ;

review of his book, 535, 536 ;

the broken friendship commemo-

538 n., 547, 548 ; on the second

rated in, 609 n. ; the copyright of.

rupture between C. and Words-

6ri9 ; the Edinburgh Review's un-

worth, 599 n.

kind criticism of, 669 and note,

Clement, Mr., a bookseller, .548.

670 ; Mr. Frere advises C. to

Clergyman, an earnest young, 691.

finish, 674 ; 696.

Clevedon, C.'s honeymoon at, 136.

Christianity, the one true Philosophy

Clock, a motto for a market, 553

(C.'s magnum opus), outline of,

and note, 554 n.

632, 633 ; fragmentary remains of.

Coates, Matthew, 441 n. ; his belief

632 n. ; the sole motive for C.'s

in the impersonality of the deity,

wish to Uve, 668; J. H. Green

444; letter from C, 441.

helps to lay the foundations of,

Coates, Mrs. Matthew, 442, 443.

782

INDEX

Cobham, 673 n.

Cole, Mrs., 271.

Coleorton, Memorials of, 369 n., 440.

Coleorton Farmhouse, C.'s visit to
the Wordsworths at, 50U-.014.

Coleridge, Anne (sister — usually
called " Nancy "), 8 and note, 21,
26.

Coleridge, Berkeley (son), birth of,
247 and note, 248, 24U ; taken with
smallpox, 259 n., 260 n. ; 262, 267,
272 ; death of, 247 n., 282-287,
280.

Coleridge, David Hartley (son —
usually called "Hartley"), birth
of, 160; 176, 205, 213, 220,
231, 24;"), 2()0-262, 267 n., 289,
296, 305, 318; his talkativeness
and boisterousness at the age of
three, 321 ; his theologico-astro-
noniical hypothesis as to stars,
323 ; a pompous remark by, 332 ;
illness, 342, 343 ; early astro-
nomical observations, 342, 343 ; an
extraordinary creature, 343, 344 ;
345 n., 355, 356 n., 3.59 ; a poet
in spite of his low forehead, 395 ;
408, 413, 416, 421 ; at seven years,
443 ; plans for his education, 461,
462 ; 468, 508 ; visits the Words-
worths at Coleorton Farmhouse
with his father, 509-514 ; as a
traveller, 509 ; his character at
ten years, 510, 512 ; 511 ; under
his father's sole care for four or
five months, 51 1 n. ; spends five
or six weeks with his father and
the Wordsworths at Basil Mon-
tagu's house in London, 51 1 n. ;
portraits of, 511 n. ; 521 ; his ap-
pearance, behavior, and mental
acuteness at the age of thirteen.
564 ; at fifteen, 576, 577 ; at Mr.
Dawes's school, 576 and note,
577 ; 583 n. ; friendly relations
with his cousins, ()75 and note ;
C. asks Poole to ^n^'ite him to
Stowey, 675 ; visits iStowey, 675
n. ; 684, 72],72(i; letter of ad-
vice fromS. T. C, 511.

Coleridge, Derwent (son of S. T. C.
and father of the editor), birth
baptism of, 338 and note ; 344,
and 3.55, 359 ; learns his letters,
393, 395 ; 408, 418, 416 ; at three
years, 443 ; 462, 468, 521 ; at

nine years, 564 ; at eleven years,
576, 577 ; at Mr. Dawes's school,
576 and note, 577; 580, 605 n.,
671 n. ; John Hookham Frere's
assistance in sending him to Cam-
bridge, 675 and note; 707, 711.

Coleridge, Miss Edith, 670 n.

Coleridge, Edward (brother), 7, 53-
.55, (;99 n.

Coleridge, Rev. Edward (nephew),
724 n. ; letters from C, 724, 738,
744.

Coleridge, Frances Duke (niece), 726
and note, 740.

Coleridge, Francis Svndercombe
(brother), 8, 9, 11, 12, 13; his
boyish quarrel with S. T. C, 13,
14 ; becomes a midshipman, 17 ;
dies, 53 and note.

Coleridge, Frederick (nephew), 56.

Coleridge, Rev. George (brother),
7, 8 ; his character and ability, 8 ;
12,21 n., 25 n. ; his lines to Genius,
Ibi Hac Incondita Solus, 43 n. ;
59 ; his self- forgetting economy,
65 ; extract from a letter from J.
Plampin, 70 n. ; 95, 97 n., 98 and
note, 201 ; visit from S. T. C. and
his wife, 305 n.. 306 ; 467. 498 n.,
512 ; disapproves of S. T. C.'s
intended separation from his wife
and refuses to receive him and his
family into his hoiise, 523 and
note ; i^9S^ n. ; approaching death
of, 746-748 ; S. T. C.'s relations
with, 747, 74S ; letters from S. T.
C, 22, 23, 42, 53. 55, 59, 60, 62-
70, 103, 239.

Coleridge, the Bev. George, To, a
dedication, 22o and note.

Coleridge, Rev. George May (ne-
pheAv). liis friendly relations with
Hartley C 675 and note ; letter
from C, 746.

Coleridge, Hartley, Poems of. 511 n.

Coleridge, Henry Nelson (nephew
and son-in-law), 3, 553 n., 570 n.,
579 n., 744-746 ; sketch of his
life, 756 n. ; letter from S. T. C,
756.

Coleridge, Mrs. Henry Nelson (Sara
Coleridge), 9 n., 163 n. ; extract
from a letter from ]\Ii"s. Words-
worth, 220 n. ; 320 n., 327 n., 572 n.
Coleridge, James, the younger,
(nephew), his narrow escape, 56.

INDEX

783

Coleridge, Colonel James (brother),
7, 54, 56, 61, 306, 724 n., 726 n. ;
letter from 8. T. C, 61.

Coleridge, Mrs. James (sister-in-
law), 740.

Coleridge, John (brother), 7.

Coleridge, John (grandfather), 4,
5.

Coleridge, Mrs. John (mother), 5 n.,

7, 13-17, 21 n., 25, 56 ; letter from
S. T. C, 21.

Coleridge, Rev. John (father), 5 and
note, 6, 7, 10-12, 15, 16 ; dies, 17,

18 ; his character, 18.
Coleridge, John Duke, Lord Chief-
Justice (great-nephew), 572 n.,
699 n., 745 n.

Coleridge, Sir John Taylor (nephew),
his friendly relations with Hartley
C. , 675 and note ; editor of The
Quarterly Review, 736 and note,
737 ; his judgment and knowledge
of the world, 739 ; delighted with
Aids to Reflection, 739 ; 740 n.,
744, 745; letter from S. T. C,
734.

Coleridge, Luke Herman (brother),

8, 21, 22.

Coleridge, Saimuel Taylor, his
autobiographical letters to Thomas
Poole, 3-18 ; ancestry and parent-
age, 4-7 ; birth, 6, 9 and note ;
his brothers and sister, 7-9 ; chris-
tened, 9 ; infancy and childhood,
9-12 ; learns to read, 10 ; early
taste in books, 1 1 and note, 12 ;
his dreaminess and indisposition to
bodily activity in childhood, 12 ;
boyhood, 12-21 ; has a dangerous
fever, 12-13 ; quarrels with his
brother Frank, runs away, and is
found and brought back, 13-15 ;
his imagination developed early
by the reading of fairy tales, 16 ;
a Christ's Hospital Presentation
procured for him by Judge Bul-
ler, 18 ; visits his maternal uncle,
Mr. John Bowdon, in London, 18,

19 ; becomes a Blue-Coat boy, 19 ;
his life at Christ's Hospital, 20-22 ;
enters Jesus College, Cambridge,
22, 23 ; becomes acquainted with
the Evans family, 23 and note,
24 ; writes a Greek Ode, for which
he obtains the Browne gold medal
for 1792, 43 and note ; is matric-

ulated as pensioner, 44 and note ;
his examination for the Craven
Scholarship, 45 and note, 46 ; his
temperament, 47 ; takes violin les-
sons, 49 ; enlists in the army, 57
and note ; nurses a comrade who
is ill of smallpox in the Henley
workhouse, 58 and note ; his en-
listment disclosed to his family,
57 n., .58, 59; remorse, 59-61, 64,
65 ; arrangements resulting in his
discharge, 61-70 ; his religious be-
liefs at twenty-one, 68, 69 ; re-
turns to the university and is pun-
ished, 70, 71 ; drops his gay ac-
quaintances and settles dowTi to
hard work, 71 ; makes a tour of
North Wales with Mr. J. Hucks,
72-81 ; falls in love with Miss
Sarah Fricker, 81 ; proposes to go
to America with a colony of panti-
socrats, 81, 88-91, 101-103 ; his in-
terest in Miss Fricker cools and
his old love for Mary Evans re-
vives, 89; his indolence, 103, 104;
on his own poetry, 112 ; considers
going to Wales with Southey and
others to found a colony of pan-
tisocrats, 121, 122; his love for
Mary Evans proves hopeless, 122-
126 ; in lodgings in Bristol after
having left Cambridge without
taking his degree, 133-135 ; mar-
ries Miss Sarah Fricker and spends
the honeymoon in a cottage at
Clevedon, 136 ; breaks with South-
ey, 13(i-151 ; happiness in early
married life, 139 ; his tour to pro-
cure subscribers for the Watch-
man, 151 and note, 152-154 ; pov-
erty, 154, 155 ; receives a commu-
nication from Mr. Thomas Poole
that seven or eight friends have
undertaken to siibscribe a certain
sum to be paid annually to him as
the author of the monody on Chat-
terton, 158 n. ; discontinues the
Watchman, 158; takes Charles
Lloyd into his home, 168-170 ;
birth of his first child, David
Hartley, 169 ; considers starting
a day school at Derby, 170 and
note ; has a severe attack of neu-
ralgia for which he takes lau-
danum, 173-176 ; early use of*
opium and beginning of the habit.

784

INDEX

113 n. , 174 n. ; selects twenty-eight
sonnets by himself, iSouthey, Lloyd,
Lamb, and others and has them
privately printed, to be bound up
with Bowles's sonnets, 177, iiUti
and note ; his desuription of him-
self in I7'.l<>, h'^t), liSI ; his personal
appearance as described by an-
otlii'r, JSUn., l!Sl n. ; anxious to
take a cottage at Nether tStowey
and support himself by gardening,
l!S4-l'.)4; makes arrangements to
carry out this plan, 2(JU ; his par-
tial reconciliation with Southey,
210, 211; in the cottage at Nether
Stowey, 21;] ; his engagement as
tutor to the children of Mrs. Evans
of Darley Hall breaks down,
215 n.; his visit at Mrs. Evans's
house, 21G ; daily life at Nether
Stowey, 219, 220; visits Words-
worth at Racedown, 220 and note,
221 ; secures a house (Alfoxden)
for Wordsworth near Stowey, 224 ;
visits him there, 227 ; finishes his
tragedy, Osorio, 2ol ; susj^ected of
conspiracy with Wordsworth and
Thelwall against the government,
2o2 n. ; accepts an annuity of £150
for life from Josiah and Thomas
Wedgwood, 234 and note, 235
and note ; declines an ofEer of the
Unitarian pastorate at Shrews-
bury, 235 and note, 236 ; writes
Joseph Cottle in regard to a third
edition of his poems, 239 ; rup-
ture with Lloyd, 238, 245 n., 24(i ;
first recourse to opium to relieve
distress of mind, 245 n. ; birth of
a second child, Berkeley, 247 ;
temporary estrangement from
Lamb caused by Lloyd, 240-25.] ;
goes to Germany with William
Wordsworth, Doi'othy Words-
worth, and John Chester, for the
purpose of study a«d observation,
258-2(12 ; life pujicnsion witli Ches-
ter in the family of a German pas-
tor at liatzeburg, after parting
from the Wordsworths at Ham-
burg, 2(i2-278 ; learning the Ger-
man language, 262, 263, 267, 268 ;
writes a poem in German, 2()3 ;
proposes to proceed to Gottingen,
268-270 ; proposes to write a life
of Leasing, 270 ; travels by coach

from Ratzeburg to Gottingen,
passing through Hanover, 278-
iJbO ; enters the University, 281 ;
receives word of the death of his
little son, Berkeley, 282-287;
learns the Gothic and Theotuscan
languages, 298 ; reconciliation with
Southey. after the return from
Germany, 303, 304 ; with his wife
and child he visits the Southeys at
Exeter, 305 and note ; accompa-
nies Southey on a walking-tour in
Dartmoor, 305 and note ; makes a
tour of the Lake Country, 312 n.,
313; in London, writing for the
Morning Post, 315-332; life at
Greta Hall, near Keswick, 335-
444 ; proposes to write an essay on
the elements of poetry, 338, 347 ;
proposes to study chemistry with
William Calvert as a fellow-stu-
dent, 345-347 ; proposes to write
a book on the originality and
merits of Locke, Hobbes, and
Hume, 349. 35U ; spends a week
at Scarborough, riding and bath-
ing for his health, 361-363 ; di-
vides the winter of 1801-1802 be-
tween Loudon and Nether Stowey,
365-368 ; domestic unhappiness,
366 ; writes the Ode to Dejection,
addressing it to Wordsworth, 378-
384 ; discouraged about his poetic
facidty, 3S8 ; a separation from
his wife considered and harmony
restored, 3S9, 390 ; makes a walk-
ing-tour of the Lake Country,
393 and note, 394 ; makes a tour
of Soutli Wales with Thomas and
Sarah Wedgwood, 410-414; his
regimen at this time, 412, 413,
416, 417; birth of his daughter
Sara, 4 1 6 ; with Charles and Mary
Lamb in London. 421, 422 ; takes
Marv Lamb to the private mad-
house at Hugsden, 422 ; his tour
in Scotland, 431-441 ; love for
and delight in his children, 443 ;
visits Wordsworth at Grasmere
and is taken ill there, 447, 448;
his rapid recovery, 451 ; plans and
preparations for going abroad,
447-4(i9 ; his mental attitude to-
wards his wife, 4(i8; vovage to
Malta, 4(59-481 ; dislike of his own
first name, 470, 471 ; life in Malta,

INDEX

785

481-484 ; a Sicilian tour, 485 and
note, 486 and note, 487 ; in Malta
again, 487-4; IT ; liis duties as Act-
ing Public Secretary at Malta,
487, 491, 4y:^, 494 and note, 495-
4U7 ; his giief at Captain John
Wordswortli's death, 4"J4 and note,
41(5 and note, 4il7 ; in Italy, 498-
5U2 ; returns to England, 501 ; re-
mains in and about London, writ-
ing political articles for the Cou-
rier^ 505-501) ; invited to deliver a
course of lectures at the Royal
Institution, 507 ; visits the Words-
worths at Coleorton Farmhouse
•with his son Hartley, 509-514;
spends five or six weeks with
Hartley in the company of the
Wordsworths at Basil Montagu's
house in London, 511 n. ; outlines
his course of lectures at the Royal
Institution, 515, 510, 522; begins
his lectures, 525 ; a change for
the better in health, habits, and
spirits, the result of his placing
himself under the care of a phy-
sician, 5oo and note, 543 n.; with
the Wordsworths at Grasmere, de-
voting himself to the publication
of The Friend, 533-559 ; in Lon-
don, 564 ; determines to place
himself under the care of Dr.
John Abernethy, 5(14, 565 ; visits
the Morgans in Portland Place,
Hammersmith, 560 - 575 ; life-
masks, death-mask, busts, and
portraits, 570 and note, 572 and
notes ; last visit to Greta Hall and
the Lake Country, 575-578 ; mis-
understanding with Wordsworth,
570 n., 577, 578, 586-588; visits
the Morgans at No. 71 Berners
Street, 579-(>12 ; preparations for
another course of lectures, 579,
580, 582, 585 ; writes Wordsworth
letters of explanation, 588-595 ;
his Lectures on the Drama at Wil-
lis's Rooms, 595 and notes. 596,
597, 599 ; reconciled with Words-
worth, 596, 597, 599 ; second rup-
ture with Wordsworth, 599 n.,
600 n. ; Josiah's half of the Wedg-
wood annuity withdrawn on ac-
coimt of C.'s abuse of opium, 602,
611 and note; successful produc-
tion of his tragedy, Eemorse (Oso-

rio rewritten), at Drury Lane The-
atre, 602-611 ; sells a part of his
library, 616 and note ; anguish
and remorse from the abuse of
opium, 616-621, 623, 624; at
Bristol, 621-626 ; proposes to
translate Faust for John Murray,
624 and note, 625, 626 ; convales-
cent, 631 ; with the Morgans at
Ashley, near Box, 631 ; writing at
his projected great work,' Chris-
tianity, the one true Philosophy,
632 and note, 633 ; with the Mor-
gans at Mr. Page's, Calne, Wilts,
041-653 ; resolves to free himself
from his opium habit and arranges
to enter the house of James Gill-
man, Esq., a surgeon, in High-
gate (an arrangement ^^hicll ends
only with his life). 0)57-059; sub-
mits his drama Zapolya to the
Drury Lane Committee, and, after
its rejection, publishes it in book
form, 666 and note, 667-()69 ; pub-
lishes Sibylline Leaves and Bio-
graphia Literaria, 673 ; disputes
with his publishers, Fenner and
Curtis, 073, 674 and note ; pro-
poses a new Eneyclopfedia, 674;
his reputation as a critic, 677 n. ;
visits Joseph Henry Green, Esq.,
at St. Lawrence, near Maldon,
690-693 ; his snuff taking habits,
691, 692 and note; his friendship
and correspondence with Thomas
Allsop, 695, 696 ; delivers a course
of Lectures on the History of Phi-
losophy at the Crown and Anchor,
Strand, 698 and note ; criticises
his portrait by Thomas Phillips,
699, 700; at the seashore, 700,
701 ; a candidate for associateship
in the Royal Society of Literature,
726, 727 ; elected as a Royal As-
sociate, 728 ; at Ramsgate, 729-
731 ; prepares and publishes Aids
to Be/lection, 734 n., 738 ; reads an
Essay on the Prometheus of ^schy-
lus before the Royal Society of
Literature, 739, 740 ; another visit
to Ramsgate, 742-744 ; takes a
seven weeks' continental tour with
Wordsworth and his daughter,
751 ; illness, 754-756, 758 ; con-
valescence. 760, 761 ; begins to see
a new edition of his poetical works

786

INDEX

through the press, 769 n. ; writes
a letter to his godchild from his
deathbed, 775, 770.

Coleridge, Early liecoUections of, by
Joseph Cottle, lo\) n., 14U n., 151
n., 211) n., 2:]2 n., 251 n., 61U n.,
617 n., U;J:i n.

Coleridge, Life of, by James Gill-
man, ;!, 20 11., '2-\ n., 24 n., 45 n.,
46 n., 171 n., 257, 6SI) ii., 761 n.

Coleridge, Samuel Taijlor, by James
Dykes Oanipbell, 2(JU n., 527 n.,
572 n., 660 n., 6.]i n., 65:i n., 6(i6 n.,
667 11., 674 n., (iSl n., 684' n.,
698 n., 752 n., 75:5 n., 772 n.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, and the
English Romantic School, by Alois
Brandl, 258, (574 n., 740 n.

Coleridge, S. T., Letters, Conversa-
tions, and Recollections of, by
Thomas AUsop, 41 n., 527 n.,
675 n. ; the publieation of, re-
garded by C.'s friends as an act of
bad faith, 6U6 and note, 721 n. ;
698 n.

Coleridge, S. T., Spiritual Phi-
losophy, founded on the Teaching of,
by J. H. Green, 680 n.

Coleridge^ Logic, article in The
Athenceuin, 753 n.

Coleridge and Southey, Reminiscences
of, by Joseph Cottle, 268 n., 269 n.,
417, 456 n., 617 n.

Coleridge, Mrs. Samuel Taylor
(Sarah Fricker, afterwards called
"Sara "), edits the second edition
of Biographia Literaria, S ; lo6,
145, 14(>, 150, 151 ; illness and re-
covery of, 155, 156 ; 168 ; birth of
her first child, David Hartley,
169; 174 n., 181, 188-190, 205,
213, 214, 216, 224, 245 ; birth of
her second child, Berkeley, 247-
249 ; 257, 25S, 259 n. ; "extract
from a letter to S. T. C, 26;5 n. ;
extract fioiii a letter to Mrs.
Lovell, 207 n. ; 271, 297, 312 n.,
iiV.',, .-SKS, 321, 325, 326, 332;
birtli and baptism of lier third
child, Dervvent, 338 and note ; her
devotion saves his life, 338 n. ;
387 ; fears of a separation from
her husband operate to restore
harmony, 389, 390 ; her faults as
detailed by S. T. C, 38!), 390;
392, 393 n., 395, 396 ; birth of a

daughter, Sara, 416; 418, 443,
457, 467, 490, 491, 521; extract
from a letter to Poole, 576 n. ;
578 ; John Kenyon a kind friend
to, 639 n. ; letters from S. T. C,
259-266, 271, 277, 284, 288, 367,
410, 420, 431, 460, 467, 480, 496,
507, 509, 563, 579, 583, 602 ; let-
ter to S. T. C. after her little
Berkeley's death, 282 n.

Coleridge, Sara (daughter), her birth
416 ; in infancy, 443 ; at the age
of nine, 575, 576 ; 580, 724 ; mar-
ries her cousin, Henry Nelson C,
756 n. See Coleridge, Mrs. Henry
Nelson.

Coleridge, Sara, Memoir and Letters
of, 461 n., 75.S n.

Coleridge, the Hundred of, in North
Devon, 4 and note.

Coleridge, the Parish of, 4 n.

Coleridge, William (brother), 7.

Coleridge, William Hart (nephew,
afterwards Bishop of Barbadoes),
befriends Hartley C, 675 n. ; 707 ;
his portrait by Thomas Phillips,
R. A., 74 ) and note.

Coleridge, William Rennell, 699 n.

Coleridge familv, origin of, 4 n.

Collier, John Payne. 575 n.

Collins, William, his Ode on the Po-
etical Character, 196 ; his Odes,
318.

Collins, William, A. R. A. (after-
ward, R. A.), letter from C,
693.

Colman, George, the younger, genius
of, 621 ; his Who wants a Guinea ?
621 n.

Columbus, the, a vessel, 730.

Combe Florey, 308 n.

Comberhacke, Silas Tomkyn, C.'s
assumed name, 62.

Comic Drama, the downfall of the,
616.

Complaint of Ninathoma. The, 51.

Concerning Poetry, a proposed book,
347, 386, 387.

Condones ad Poptdum,So n., 161 n.,
166, 454 n., 527 n.

Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit,
originally addressed to Rev. Ed-
ward Coleridge, 724 n. ; 756 n.

Coniston, 304.

Connubial Rupture. On a late, 17-9 n.

Consciousness of infants, 283,

INDEX

787

ConserTative Party in 1832, the, 757.

Consolation, a note of, 118.

Consolations and Comforts, etc., a
projected book, 452, 453.

Constant, Benjamin, his tract On the
Strength of the Existing Govern-
ment of France, and the Necessity
of supjiorting it, 219 and note.

Contempt, C.'s definition of, 198.

Contentment, Motives of, by Arch-
deacon Paley, 47.

Conversation, C.'s, 181, 752 and note ;
C.'s maxims of, 244.

Conversation evenings at the Gill-
mans', 740, 741, 774.

Cookson, Dr., Canon of Windsor and
Rector of Forncett, Norfolk, 311
and note.

Copland, 400.

Cordomi, a pseudonym of C.'s, 295 n.

CortMll Magazine, 345 n.

Cornish, Mr., (56.

Corry, Right Hon. Isaac, 390 and
note.

Corsham, 650, 652 n.

Corsica, 174 n.

Corsioan Rangers, 554.

Cote House, Josiah Wedgwood's
residence, C. visits, 416 ; 455 n.

Cottle, Joseph, agrees to pay C. a
fixed sum for his poetry, 136 ;
137 ; his Early Recollections of
Coleridge, 139 n., 140 n., 151 n.,
219 n., 232 n., 251 n., 616 n., 617
n., 633 n. ; 144, 184, 185, 191, 192,
212 ; his Beminiscences of Cole-
ridge and Southey, 268 n., 269 n.,
417, 456 n., 617 n. ; his financial
difficulties, 319 ; 358; his Malvern
Hill, 358 ; his publication of C.'s
letters of confession and remorse
deeply resented by C.'s family and
friends, 616 n., 617 n. ; convales-
cent after a dangerous illness,
619; letters from C, 133, 134,
154, 218 n., 220, 238, 251 n., 616,
619.

Courier, the, 230 ; C. writes for,
505, 506, 507 n., 520; 5-34 and
note, 543 ; its conduct during
the investigation of the charges
against the Duke of York uni-
versally extolled, 545 ; articles
and recommendations for, 567 and
notes, 568 ; C. as a candidate for
the place of auxiliary to, 568-570 ;

568 n. ; C. breaks with, 574 ; 598,
629 and notes, 634 and note ;
change in the character of, 660-
662, 664 ; C. proposes to write on
the Catholic question for, 660,
662 ; arrangements for the pro-
posed articles, 664, 665.

Courier office, C. lodges at the, 505,
520.

Cowper, William, " the divine chit-
chat of," 197 and note ; his Task,
242 n.

Craven, Countess of, 86 n.

Craven Scholarship, C.'s examina-
tion for the, 45 and note, 46.

Crediton, 5 n., 11.

Critical Review, 185, 489.

Criticism welcome to true poets, 402.

Crompton, Dr., of Derby, 215 ; letter
from Thelwall on the Wedgwood
annuity, 234 n.

Crompton, Mrs., of Derby, 215.

Crompton, Mrs., of Eatoii Hall, 758.

Crompton, Dr. Peter, of Eaton Hall,
359 and note, 758 n.

Cruikshank, Ellen, 165.

Cruikshank, John, 136, 177, 184, 188.

Cruikshank, Mrs. John (Anna), 177 ;
lines to, 177 n. ; 213. See Bucl^,
Miss.

Cryptogram, C.'s, 597 n.

Cunningham, Rev. J. W., his Velvet
Cushion, 651 and note.

Cupid turned Chymist, 54 n., 56.

Currie, James, 359 and note.

Curse of Kehama, The, by Southey,
684.

Curtis, Rev. T., partner of Fenner,
C.'s publisher, his ill-usage of C,
674.

Cuxhaven, 259.

Dalton, John, 457 and note.
Darner, Hon. Mrs., 368.
Dana, Miss R. Charlotte. 572 n.
Dante and his Divina Commedia,

676, 677 and note, 678, 679, 731

n., 732.
Danvers, Charles, his kindness of

heart, 316.
Dark Ladie, The Ballad of the, 375.
Darnley, Earl, 629.
Dartmoor, a walking-tour in, 305

and note.
Dartmouth, 305 and note.
Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, C.'s conversa-

788

INDEX

tion with, 152, 153 ; his philoso-
phy of insincerity, 161 ; C.'s opin-
ion of his poems, 164; 211; the
first litemry character in Europe,
and the most original - minded
man, 215 ; oSC), 04S.
Dash Beck, ;)75 n., o7G n.
Davy, Sir Humphry, 815-317, 321,
324, 3-(), ;U4, 350, 357, 3(55, 379
n., 44>! ; a Th(!o-mammonist, 455 ;
45() ; C. attends his lectures, 4(!2
and note, 4(!3 ; C.'s esteem and
admiration for, 514; his success-
ful efforts to induce C. to give a
course of lectures at the Royal
Institution, 515, 516 ; seriously
ill, 520, 521 ; hears from C. of his
improvement in healtli and habits,
533 n. ; 673 n. ; letters from C,
336-341, 345, 514.

Davy, Sir Hunqjhry, Fragmentary
Hemains of, edited by Dr. Davy,
343 n., 533 n.

Davt^e, George, R. A., his life-mask
and portrait of C, 572 and note ;
his funeral and C.'s epigram there-
on, 572 n. ; immortalized by
Lamb, 572 n. ; engaged on a pic-
ture to illustrate C.'s poem, Love,
573 ; his admiration for Allston's
modelling, 573 ; his character and
manners, 581 ; a fortunate grub,
605.

Dawes, Rev. John, teacher of Hart-
ley and Derwent C, 576 and note,
577.

Death, fear of, responsible for many
virtues, 744 ; the nature of, 762,
763.

Death and life, meditations on, 283-
287.

Death-mask of C, a, 570 n.

Death of Mattathias, The, by Robert
Southey, 108 and note.

Deism, religious, 414.

Dejection: An Ode, 378 and note,
37!) and note, 380-384, 405 n.

Delia Crnscanism, 106.

Democracy, C. disavows belief in,
104-105; 134,243. See Republi-
canism and Pantisocracy.

Denbigh, 80,81.

Denman, Miss, 769, 770.

Dentist, a French, 40.

De Quincey, Thomas, 405 n., 525 ;
revises the proofs and writes an

appendix for Wordsworth's pam-
phlet On the Convention of Cintra,

549, 550 n. ; 563, 601, 772 n.
Derby, 152 ; proposal to start a

school in, 170 and note ; 188 ; the

people of, 215 and note, 216.
Derwent, the river, 339.
Descartes, Ren^, 351 and note.
Destiny of Nations, The, 278 n.,

178 n.
Deutsrhland in seiner tiefsten Ernie-

drigui.g, by John Philip Palm,

C.'s translation of, 530.
De Vere, Aubrey, extract from a

letter from Sir William Rowan

Hamilton to, 750 n.
DeviPs Thoughts, The, by Coleridge

and Soutliej', 318.
Devock Lake, 393.
Devonshire, 305 and note.
Devonshire, Georgiana, Duchess of.

Ode to, 320 and note, 330.
Dibdin,Mr., stage-manager atDrury

Lane Theatre. *i(jU.
Disapjjointment, To, 28.
Dissuasion from Po2:iery. by Jeremy

Taylor, 639.
Divina Commedia, C. praises the

Rev. H. F. Cary's translation of,

676, 677 and note, 678, 679 ; Ga-

briele Rossetti's essay on the

mechanism and interpretation of,

732.
Doctor. The. 583 n., 584 n.
Doring. Herr von, 279.
Dove. Dr. Daniel. 583 and note, 584.
Dove Cottage, Grasmere, 379 n. See

Grasmere.
Dowseborough, 225 n.
Drakard. John. 567 and note.
Drayton, Michael, his Poly-Olhion,

374 n.
Dreams, the state of mind in, 663.
Drury Lane Theatre, C.'s Zapolya

before the committee of, 666 and

note, 667.
Drvden, John, his slovenly verses,

672.
Dubois, Edward, 705 and note.
Duchess, Ode to the, 320 and note,

330.
Dunmow, Essex, 456, 459.
Duns Scotus, 358.
Dupuis, Charles Frangois, his Origine

de tous les Cultes, ou Religion flni-

verselle, 181 and note.

INDEX

789

Diu'ham, Bishop of, 582 and note.

Durham, C. reading Duns Scotus at,
358-361.

Duty, 495 n.

Dyer, George, 84, 93, 316, 317 ; his
article on Southey in Public Char-
acters for 1799-1800, 317 and note ;
363, 422 ; sketch of his life, 748 n. ;
C.'s esteem and affection for, 748,
749 ; his benevolence and benefi-
cence, 749 ; letter from C, 748.

Earl of Abergavenny, the wreck of,
494 n. ; 495 n.

Early Recollections of Coleridge, by
Joseph Cottle, 139 n., 140 n.,
151 n., 219 n., 232 n., 251 n., 616 n.,
617 n., 633 n.

Early Years and Late Recollections,
by Clement Carlyon, M. D., 258,
298 n.

East Tarbet, 431, 432 and note, 433.

Echoes, 400 n.

Edgeworth, Maria, her Helen, 773,
774.

Edgeworth, Richard Lovell, 262.

Edgeworth's Essay on Education,
201.

Edgeworths, the, very miserable
■when children, 262.

Edinburgh, a place of literary gos-
sip, 423; C.'s visit to, 434-440;
Southey's first impressions of,
438 n.

Edinburgh Review, The, 438 n. ;
Southey declines Scott's offer to
secure him a place on, 521 and
note, 522 ; its attitiide towards
C, 527 ; C.'s review of Clarkson's
book in, 527 and note, 528-530 ;
636, 637 ; severe review of Chris-
tabel in, 669 and note, 670 ; Jef-
frey's reply to C. in, 669 n. ; re-
echoes C.'s praise of Cary's Dante,
677 n. ; its broad, predetermined
abuse of C, 697, 723 ; its influ-
ence on the sale of Wordsworth's
hooks in Scotland, 741, 742.

Edmund Oliver, by Charles Lloyd,
drawn from C.'s life, 252 and
note; 311.

Education, Practical, by Richard
Lovell Edgeworth and Maria
Edgeworth, 261.

Education through the imagination
preferable to that which makes

the senses the only criteria of be-
lief, 16, 17.

Edwards, Rev. Mr., of Birmingham,
extract from a letter from C. to,
174 n.

Edwards, Thomas, LL. D., 101 and
note.

Egremont, .393.

Egypt, Observations on, 486 n.

Egypt, political relations of, 492.

Eichliorn, Prof., of Gottingen, 298,
5(i4, 707, 773.

Einbeek, 279, 280.

Elbe, the, 259, 277.

Electrometers of taste, 218 and note.

Elegy, by Robert Southey, 115.

Elleray, 535.

Elliot, H., Minister at the Court of
Naples, 508 and note.

Elliston, Mr., an actor, 611.

Elmsley, Rev. Peter 438 and note,
439.

Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, a work
projected by C, 674, 681.

Eneyclopajdias, 427, 429, 430.

Ennerdale, 393.

Epitajjh, by C, 769 and note, 770,
771.

Epitaph, by Wordsworth, 284.

Erigena, Joannes Scotus, 417 ; the
modern founder of the school of
pantheism, 424.

Erskine, Lord, his Bill for the Pre-
vention of Cruelty to Animals,
635 and note.

Erste Schiffer, Der (The First Navi-
gator), i>j Gesner, 369, 371, 372,
376-378, 397, 402, 403.

Eskdale, 393, 401.

Essay on Animal Vitality, by Thel-
wall, 179,212.

Essay on Fasting, 157.

Essay on the New French Constitu-
tion, 320 and note.

Essay on the Prometheus of jEschy-
lus, 740 and note.

Essay on the Science of Method, 681
and note.

Essays on His Own Times. 156 n.,
157 n., 320 n., 327 n., 329 n., 335
n., 414 n., 498 n., 567 n., 629 n.,
634 n.

Essay on the Fine Arts, 633 and note,
634.

Essays upon Epitaphs, by Words-
worth, 585 and note.

790 INDEX

Estlin, Mrs. J. P., 190, 213, 214.

Faust, C.'s proposal to translate, 624

EstHn, Rev. J. P., 184, 185, 190, 239,

and note, 625, 626.

287, 288 ; his sermons, 385 ; 416 ;

Favell, Robert, 86, 109 n., 110 n.,

letters from C, 218, 245, 246, 414.

113, 225 and note.

Ether, 4:i0, 435.

Fayette, 112.

Etna, 458, 485 n., 486 n.

Fears in Solitude, published, 261 n. ;

Evans, Mrs., C. spends a fortnig-ht

318, 321, 328, 552, 703 and note.

■with, 23 and note ; 24 ; C.'s filial

Fellowes, Mr., of Nottingham, 153.

regard for, 2(), 27 ; her unselfish-

Female Biography, or Memoirs of

ness, 46 ; letters from C, 26, 39,

Blustrious and Celebrated Women,

45.

by Mary Hayes, 318 and note.

Evans, Anne, 27, 29-31 ; letters

Fenner, Rest, publishes Zapolya for

from C, 37, 52.

C, 666 n. ; his ill-usage of C. in

Evans, Eliza, 78.

regard to Sibylline Leaves, Biogra-

Evans, Mrs. Elizabeth, of Darley

phia Literaria, and the projected

Hall, her proposal to engage C.

Encyclopcedia Metropolitana, 673,

as tutor to her children, 215 n. ;

674 and note.

her kindness to C. and Mrs. C,

Fenwick, Dr., 361 and note.

215 n., 216; 231, 367.

Fenwick, Mrs. E., 405 and note.

Evans, Mary, 23 n., 27, 30 ; an acute

Feriiier, John, 211.

mind beneath a soft surface of

Fichte, Johaim Gottlieb, the philo-

feminine delicacy, 50 ; C. sees her

sophy of, 082, 683, 735.

at Wrexham and confesses to

Field, Mr., 93.

Southey his love for her, 78 ; 97

Fine Arts, Essays on the, 633 and

and note ; song addressed to, 100 ;

note, 634.

C.'s unrequited love for, 123-125 ;

Fire, The, by Robert Southey, 108

letters from C, 30, 41, 47, 122,

and note.

124 ; letter to C, 87-89.

Fire and Famine, 327.

Evans, Walter, 231.

First Landing Place. The. 684 n.

Evans, William, of Darley Hall,

First Navigator. Tlie. translation of

215 n.

Gesner"s L)er Erste Schiffer, 369,

Evolution, 648.

371. 372, 37(3-378, 397, 402, 403.

Examiner, The, its notice of C.'s

Fitzgibbon. John, 638.

tragedy, Semorse, 606.

Fletcher, Judge, C."s Courier Let-

Excursion, The, by Wordsworth,

ters to. 629 and note, 634 and note,

244 n., 337 n., 585 n., C.'s opinion of.

635, 636. 642.

641 ; the Edinburgh Beview's crit-

Florence, 499 n.

icism of, 642 ; C. discusses it in

Flower, Benjamin, editor of the

the lig-ht of his previous expecta-

Cambridge Intelligencer, 93 and

tions, 645-650.

note.

Exeter, 305 and note.

Flower, The, bv George Herbert,

Ezekiel, 705 n.

695.

Flowers, 745, 746.

Faith, C.'s definition of, 202 ; 204.

Fort Augustus, 435.

Fallof Bohespierre, The,><5 and note,

Foster-Mother's Tale. The, 510 n.

S7, 93, 104 and notes.

Fox, Charles James, his Letter to the

Falls of Foyers, the, 440.

Westminster Electors, 50 ; 327 ;

Farmer, Priscilla, Poems on the Death

Coleridge versus, 423, 424 ; pro-

of, by Charles Lloyd, 206 and

posed articles on, 505 ; 506 ; death

note.

of, 507 and note ; 629 and note.

Farmers, 335 n.

Fox, Dr., ()19.

Farmhouse, by Robert Lovell, 115.

Foyers, the Falls of, 440.

Fasting, Essay on, 157.

Fragment found in a Lecture Boom,

Faulkner : a Tragedy, by William

A, 44.

Godwin, 524 and note.

Fragments of a Journal of a Tour

Fauntleroy's trial, 730.

over the Brocken, 257.

INDEX

791

France, political condition of, in

ISUO, 329 and note.

France, an Ode, 2(J1 n., 552.

Freeling, Sir Francis, 751.

French, C. not proficient in, 181.

French Constitution, Essay on the
New, ;!20 and note.

French Empire under Buonaparte,
C.'s essays on the, H29 and note.

French Revolution, the, 219, 240.

Frend, William, 24 and note.

Frere, Georg-e, 072.

Frere, Right Hon. John Hookham,
672 and note ; advice and friendly
assistance to C. from, 674, 675 and
note; 698, 731, 732, 737.

Fricker, Mrs., 98, 189 ; C. proi^oses
to allow her an annuity of £20,
190; 423, 458.

Fricker, Edith (afterwards Mrs.
Robert Southey), 82 ; marries
Southey, 137 n. ; 163 n. See
Southey, Mrs. Robert.

Fricker, George, 315, 316.

Fricker, Martha, 600.

Fricker, Sarah, C. falls in love with,
81; 83-86 ; C.'s love cools, 89 ;
marries C, 136 ; 138, 163 n. ; letter
from Southey, 107 n. See Cole-
ridge, Mrs. Samuel Taylor.

Friend, The, 11 n., 25 n., 86 n., 257,
274 n., 275 n., 351 n., 404 n., 412 n.,
453 n., 454 n. ; preliminary prospec-
tus of, and its revision, 533, 536 and
note, 537-541, 542n. ; arrangements
for the publication of, 541, 542 and
note, 544, 546, 547 ; its vicissitudes
during its first eight months, 547,
548, 551, 552, 554-559 ; Addison's
S]}ectator compared with, 557,
558 ; the reprint of, 575, 579 and
note, 580 n., 585 and note ; 606,
611, 629 and note, 630, 667 n. ;
J. H. Frere's advice in regard to,
674 ; the object of the third vol-
ume of, 676; 684 n. ; 697, 756 n.,
768 and note.

Friends, C. complains of lack of
sympathy on the part of his, 696,
(f97.

Friend's Quarterly Examiner, The,
536 n., 538 n.

Frisky Songster, The. 237.

Frost at Midnight, 8 n., 261 n.

Gale and Curtis, 579 and note, 580 n.

Gallow Hill, 359 n., 362, 379 n.

Gallows and hangman in Germany,
294.

Gardening, C. proposes to undertake,
183-194; C. begins it at Nether
Stowey, 213 ; recommended to
ThelwaU, 215 ; at Nether Stowey,
219, 220.

Gebir, 328.

Gentleman'' s Magazine, The, 455 n.

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire,
Ode to, 320 and note^ 330.

German language, the, C. learning,
262, 263, 267, 268.

German philosophers, C.'s opinions
of, 681-(J83, 735.

German playing-cards, 263.

Germans, their partiality for Eng-
land and the English, 263, 264;
their eating and smoking customs,
276, 277 ; an unlovely race, 278 ;
their Christmas-tree and other
religious customs, 289-292 ; super-
stitions of the bauers, 291, 292,
294 ; marriage customs of the
bauers, 292, 293.

Germany, 257, 258 ; C.'s sojourn in,
259-300 ; post coaches in, 278,
279 ; the clergy of, 291 : Protest-
ants and Catholics of, 291, 292;
bell-ringing in, 293 ; churches in,
293 ; shepherds in, 293 ; care of
owls in, 293 ; gallows and hang-
man in, 294 ; disposal of dead and
sick cattle in, 294 ; beet sugar in,
299.

Gerrald, Joseph, 161 and note, 166,
167 n.

Gesenius, Friedrich Heinrich Wil-
helm, 773.

Gesner, his Erste Schiffer (The First
Navigator), 369, 371, 372, 376-
378, 397, 402, 403 ; his rhythmical
prose, 398.

Ghosts, 684.

Gibraltar, 469, 473, 474 ; description
of, 475-479 ; 480, 493.

GifEord, William, his criticism of
C.'s tragedy. Remorse, 605, 606;
669, 737.

Gillman, Alexander, 703 n.

Gillman, Henry, 693 n

Gillman, James, his Life of Cole-
ridge, 3, 20 n., 23 n., 24 n., 45 n.,
46 n., 171 n., 257; 680 n., 761 n. ;
442 n. ; his faithful friendship for

792

INDEX

C, 657 ; C. arranges to enter his
household as a patient, 657-059 ;
C.'s pecuniary obligatious to,
658 n. ; cliaracter and intellect of,
665 ; 670 n., 679, 685, 692, 704 ;
C.'s gratitude to and affection
for, 721, 722 ; on C.'s opium habit,
76 In.; 7<i8 ; extracts from a letter
from John iSterling to, 772 n. ;
letters from C, 657, 700, 721,
729, 742.

Gillman, James, the younger, passes
his e.vaniination for ordination
with gri'at credit, 755.

Gillman, Mrs. James (Anne), her
faithf nl friendship for C, 657 ;
character of, 665 ; 679, 684, 685,
702 n., 705, 721, 722, 729, 733;
illness of, 738 ; C.'s attachment to,
746 ; C.'s gratitude to and affec-
tion for, 754; 764, 774; letters
from C, 690, 745, 754.

Ginger-tea, 412, 413.

Glencoe, 413, 440.

Glen Falloch, 433.

Gloucester, 72.

Gnats, 6S:»2.

Godliness, C.'s definition of, 203 n.,
204 ; St. Peter's paraphrase of,
204.

Godwin, William, 91, 114; C.'s son-
net to, 116 n., 117; lines by Southey
to, 120 ; his misanthropy, 161,
162; 161 n., 167; C.'s book on,
210 ; 316, 321 ; his St. Leon, 324,
325 ; a quarrel and reconciliation
■with C, 457, 464-4(36 ; his Faulk-
ner : a Tragedi/, 524 and note ; C.
accepts his invitation to meet
Grattan, 565, 566 ; letter from C. ,
565.

Godivin, William : His Friends and
Contemporaries, by Charles Kegan
Paul, 161 n., 324 n., 465 n.

Godwin, Mrs. William, 465, 466,
56(5.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, his
Faust, C.'s proposal to translate,
624 and note, 625, 626 ; his Zur
Furbenlehre, ()99.

Gosforth, 393.

Goslar, 272, 273.

Gottingen, C. proposes to visit, 268-
270, 272; 268 n., 269 n. ; C. calls
on Professor Heyne at, 280 ; C.
enters the University of, 281 ; the

Saturday Club at, 281 ; the gal-
lows near, 294 ; C.'s stay at, 281-
300.

Gough, Charles, 369 n.

Governments as effects and causes,
241.

Grasmere, 335, 346, 362, 379 n., 394,
405 n., 419, 420; C visits and is
taken ill there, 447, 448 ; C. visits,
533-569. See Kendal.

Grattan, Henry, C.'s admiration for,
566.

Greek Islands, the, 329.

Greek poetry contrasted with He-
brew poetry, 40.5, 406.

Greek Sapphic Ode, On the Slave
Trade, 43 and note.

Green, Mr., clerk of the Courier, 568
and note.

Green, Joseph Henry, 605, 632 n. ;
his eminence in the surgical pro-
fession, 679 n. ; C.'s amanuensis
and collaborateur, 679 n. ; C. ap-
points him his literary executor,

679 u. ; his published works, 679 n.,

680 n. ; his character and intel-
lect, 680 n. ; his faithful fiiend-
ship for C, 68l) n. ; his Spiritual
Philosophy, founded on the Teach-
ing of S. T. Coleridge, 6S(.) n. ; re-
ceives a visit from C. at St. Law-
rence, near Maiden. 690-693 ;
753 n. ; letters from C, 669, 680,
688, 699, 704, 706, 726, 728, 751,
754, 767.

Green, Mrs. Joseph Henry, 691, 692,
iS'd'i^, 705.

Greenough. Mr., 458 and note.

Greta, the river, 339.

Greta Hall, near Keswick, C.'s life
at, 335-444 ; situation of, 335 ;
description of 391, 392 ; C. urges
Southey to make it his home, 391,
392, 394, 395 ; Southey at hrst de-
clines but subsequently accepts
C.'s invitation to settle there, 395
n. ; Southey makes a ■\-isit there
which proves permanent, 435 ; 460
n. ; sold by its owner in C.'s ab-
sence, 490," 491; C.'s last visit to,
575 and note, 576-578 ; 724, 725.
See Keswick.

Grey, Mr., editor of the Morning
Chronicle, 114.

" Grinning for joy," 81 n.

Grisedale Tarn, 547.

INDEX 793

Grose, Jvidge, 567 and note.

Helen, by Maria Edgeworth, 773,

Grossness versus sug-gestiveness, 377.

774.

Group of Englishmen, A, by Eliza

Helvellyn, 547.

Meteyard, 2(j9 n., 308 n.

Henley workhouse, C nurses a fel-

Growth of the Individual Mind, On

low-dragoon in the, 58 and note.

the, C.'s extempore lecture, 680

Herald, Morning, its notice of C.'s

and note, 681.

tragedy, liemorse, 603.

Gunning-, Henry, his Heminiscences

Herbert, George, C.'s love for his

of Cambridge, 24 n.

poems, ('i94, 695 ; his Temple, 694 ;

Gwynne, General, K. L. D., 62.

his Flower, 695.

Heretics of the first two Centuries

Hsemony, Milton's allegorical flower,

after Christ, History of the, by

406, 407.

Nathaniel Lardner, D. D., 330.

Hague, Charles, .50.

Herodotus, 738.

Hale, Sir Philips, a " titled Dog-

Hertford, C. a Blue-Coat boy at, 19

berry," 232 n.

and note.

Hall, 6. C, 2.57, 745 n.

Hess, Jonas Lewis von, 555 and

Hamburg, 257, 259 ; C.'s arrival at.

note.

261 ; :i68 n.

Hessey, Mr., of Taylor and Hessey,

Hamilton, a Cambridge man at

publishers, 739.

Gottingen, 281

Hexameters, parts of the Bible and

Hamilton, Lady, 637 and note.

Ossian written in slovenly, 398.

Hamilton, Sir William Rowan, 759

Heyne, Christian Gottlob, 279; C.

and note, 760.

calls on, 280 ; 281.

Hamlet, Notes on, 684 n.

Higginbottom, Nehemiah, a pseudo-

Hancock's house, 297.

nym of C.'s, 251 n.

Hangman and gallows in Germany,

Highgate, History of, by Lloyd, 572 n.

294.

Highland Girl, To a, by Words-

Hanover, 279, 280.

worth, 549.

Happiness, 75 n.

Highland lass, a beautiful, 432 and

Happy Warrior, The, by Words-

note, 459.

worth, the original of, 494 n.

High Wycombe, 62-64.

Harding, Miss, sister of Mrs. Gill-

Hill, Mrs. Herbert. See Southey,

man, 703.

Bertha.

Harper's Magazine, 570 n., 571 n.

Hill, Thomas, 705 and note.

Harris, Mr., 6(56.

History of Highgate, by Lloyd, 572 n.

Hart, Dick, .54.

History of the Abolition of the Slave

Hart, Miss Jane, 7, 8.

Trade, by Thomas Clarkson, C.'s

Hart, Miss Sara, 8.

review of, 527 and note, 528-530,

Hartley, David, 113, 169, 348, 351

535, 536.

n., 428.

History of the Heretics of the first

Haunted Beach, The, by Mrs. Robin-

two Cirnturies after Christ, by Na-

son, 322 n. ; C. struck with, 331,

thaniel Lardner, D. D., 330.

332.

History of the Levelling Principle,

Hayes, Mary, 318 and note ; her

proposed, 323, 328 n., 330.

Female Biography, 318 and note ;

Hobbes, Thomas, 349, 350.

her correspondence with Lloyd,

Holcroft, Mr., C.'s conversation on

322 ; C.'s opinion of her intellect,

Pantisocracy with, 114, 115 ; the

323.

high priest of atheism, 162.

Hazlitt, William, supposed to have

Hold your mad hands !, a sonnet by

written the Edinburgh Eeview

Southey, 127 and note.

criticism of Christabel, 669 and

Holland, 751.

note.

Holt, Mrs., 18. ^

Hebrew poetry richer in imagina-

Home - Sick, Written in Germany,

tion than the Greek, 405, 406.

quoted, 298.

Heinse's Ardinghello, 683 and note.

Homesickness of C. in Germany,

794 INDEX

265, 266, 272, 273, 278, 288, 289,

Ibi Ha;c Incondita Solus, by George

295, 296, 298.

Coleridge, 43 n.

Hood, Thomas, his Odes to Great

Idolatry of modern religion, the, 414,

People, 250 n.

415.

Hope, an Allegorical Sketch, by

lUuminizing, 323, 324.

Bowles, 17'.t, 180.

Illustrated London News, The, 258,

Hopkinsoii, Lieutenant, 62.

453 n., 497 n., 768 n.

Horace, ijentley's Quarto Edition of,

Imagination, education of the, 16,

68 and note.

17.

Hospitality in poverty, 340.

Imitated from the Welsh (a song).

Hour when we ahall meet again, The,

112 and note, 113.

157.

Imitations from the Modern Latin

Howe, Admiral Lord, 262 and note.

Poets, 67 n., 122.

Howe, Enuuniel Scoope, second Vis-

Impersonality of the Deity, 444.

count, 262 n.

Indolence, a vice of powerful venom,

Howell, Mr., of Covent Garden, 366

163, 104.

and note.

Infant, the death of an, 282-287.

Howiek, Lord, 507.

Infant, who died before its Christen-

Howley, Miss, 739.

ing, On an, 287.

Huber's Treatise on Ants, 712.

Ingratitude, C. complains of, 627-

Hucks, J., accompanies C. on a tour

631.

in Wales, 74-81 ; his Tour in North

Insincerity, a virtue, 161.

Wales, 74 n., 81 n. ; 76, 77 and note,

Instinct, definition of, 712.

81 and note, 306.

In the Pass ofKillicranky, by Words-

Hume, David, 307, 349, 350.

worth, 458.

Hume, Joseph, M. P., a fermentive

Ireland, Account of, by Edward

virus, 757.

Wakefield, 638.

Hungary, 329.

Ireland, View of the State of, by

Hunt, Leigh, Autobiography of, 20 n..

Edmund Spenser, 638 n.

41 n., 225 n., 455 n.

Irving, Rev. Edward. 723 ; a great

Hunter, John, 211.

orator, 726 ; on Southev and By-

Hurwitz, Hyman, 067 n. ; his 7s-

ron, 726 ; 741, 742, 744,' 748, 752.

rael's Lament, 681 n.

Isaiah, 200.

Hutchinson, George, 358 and note,

Israel's Lament, by Hyman Hur-

359 n., 360.

witz, C. translates, 681 and note.

Hutchinson, Joanna, 359 n.

Hutchinson, John, of Penrith, 358 n.

Jackson, Mr., owner of Greta Hall,

Hutchinson, John, of the Middle

335, 368, 391, 392, 394, 395, 434,

Temple, 359 n.

4(i0 and note, 461 ; godfather to

Hutchinson, Mary, marries William

Hartley C 461 n. ; sells Greta

Wordsworth, 359 n. ; 367.

Hall. 491 ; Hartley C.'s attach-

Hutchinson, Sarah, 359 n., 360, 362,

ment for, 5 1 0.

367, 393 n. ; her motherly care of

Jackson. William. 309 and notes.

Hartley C, 510 ; 511 ; C.'s amanu-

Jackstraws. 462, 468.

ensis, 536 n., 542 n. ; 582, 587,

Jacobi, Heinrieh Freidrieh, 683.

51)0 n.

Jacobinism in England, 642.

Hutchinson, Thomas, of Gallow

Jardine, Kev. Da-\ad, 139 and note.

Hill, 359 n., 362.

Jasper, by Mrs. Robinson, 322 n.

Hutton, James, M. D., 153 and note ;

Jeil'rey, Francis (afterwards Lord),

his Investigation of the Principles

453 n., 521 n. ; C. accuses him of

of Knowledge, 167.

being unwarrantably severe on

Hutton, Lawrence, 570 n.

him, 527 ; 536 n., 538 n. ; C.'s

Hutton Hall, near Penrith, 296.

accusation of personal and un-

Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of

generous animosity against him-

Chamouni, origin of, 404 and note.

self and his reply thereto, 669 and

405 and note.

note, 670 ; 735 ; his attitude to-

INDEX 795

■ward Wordsworth's poetry, 742 ;

Keswick, the lake of, 335.

letters from C, 527, 528, 534.

Keswick, the vale of, 312 n., 313

See Edinburgh Review.

n. ; its beauties, 410, 411.

Jerdan, Mr., of Michael's GroYe,

Kielmansegge, Baron, and his daugh-

Brompton, 727.

ter, Mary Sophia, 263 n.

Jesus College, C.'slife at, 22-57, 70-

Kilmansig, Countess, C becomes

72, 81-129.

acquainted with, 262, 263.

Jews in a German inn, 280.

King, Mr., 183, 185, 186.

Joan of Arc, by Southey, 141, 149,

King, Mrs., 183.

178 and note, 179 ; Cottle sells

Kingsley, Rev. Charles, 771 n.

the copyright to Longman, 319.

Kingston, Duchess of, her masque-

John of Milan, 566 n.

rade costume, 237.

Johnson, J., the bookseller, lends C.

Kinnaird, Douglas, 666, 667.

£oO, 261 ; publishes Fears in Soli-

Kirkstone Pass, a storm in, 418-

tude, for C, 261 and notes, 318 ;

420.

321.

Kisses, 54 n.

Johnson, Dr. Samtiel, on the condi-

Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 257 ;

tion of the mind during stage rep-

his Messias, 372, 373.

resentations, 663.

Knecht, Rupert, 289 n., 290, 291.

Johnston, Lady, 731.

Knight, Rev. William Angus, LL.D. ,

Johnston, Sir Alexander, 730 and

his Life of William Wordsworth,

note ; C's impressions of, 731.

164 n., 220 n., 447 n., 585 n., 591

Josephus, 407.

n., 596 n., 599 n., 600 n., 733 n.,
759 n.
Kosciusko, C's sonnet to, 116 n.,

Kant, Immanuel, 204 n., 351 n. ;

C's opinion of the philosophy of.

117.

681, 682 ; his Kritik der 2:)raktisch-

Kotzebue's Count Benyowski, or the

en Vernunft, 681, 682 and note ;

Conspiracy of Kamtschatka, a

his Religion innerhalh der Grenzen

Trayi-comedy, 236 and note.

der blossen Vernunft, 682 ; valued

Kubla Khan, when written, 245 n. ;

by C. more as a logician than as a

437 n.

metaphysician, 735 ; his Critique

Kyle, John, the Man of Ross, 77,

of the Pure Reason, 735.

651 n.

Keats, John, 764 n.

Keenan, Mr., 309.

Lake Bassenthwaite, 335, 376 n. ;

Keenan, Mrs., 309 and note.

sunset over, 384.

Kehama, The Curse of, by Southey,

Lake Country, the, C makes a tour

684.

of, 312 n., 313 ; another tour of,

Kempsford, Gloucestershire, 267 n.

393 and note, 394 ; C's last visit

Kendal, 447, 451, 452, 535, 575.

to, 575 n. See Grasmere, Greta

See Grasmere.

Hall, Kendal, Keswick.

Kendall, Mr., a poet, 306.

Lalla Rookh, by Moore, 672.

Kennard, Adam Steinmetz, 762 n. ;

Lamb, C, To, 128 and note.

letter from C, 775.

Lamb, Charles, love of Woolman's

Kennard, John Peirse, 762 n. ; letter

Journal, 4 n. ; visit to Nether

from C, 772.

Stowey, 10 n. ; his Christ's Hospi-

Kenyon, Mrs., 639, 640.

tal Five and Thirty Years Ago,

Kenyon, John, 639 n. ; letter from

20 n. ; a man of uncommon genius.

C, ()39.

111 ; writes four lines of a sonnet

Keswick, 174 n. ; C. passes through.

for C, 111, 112 and note ; and his

during his first tour in the Lake

sister, 127, 128 ; C's lines to, 128

Country, 312 n. ; a Druidical

and note ; 163 n. ; correspondence

circle near, 312 n. ; C's house at.

with C after his (Lamb's) mother's

335 ; climate of, 361 ; 405 n.,

tragic death, 171 and note ; 182 ;

530, 535, 724, 725. See Greta

extract from a letter to C, 197 n. ;

HaU.

206 n. ; his Grandame, 206 n. ;

796

INDEX

C.'s poem on Bums addressed to,
200 and note, 207 ; extract from
a letter to C, 22o n. ; visits C. at
Nether Stowey, 224 and note, 225-
227 ; temporary estrangement
from C, 24U-2.JO ; his relations
to the qnarrel between C. and
Southey, o04, 312, 820 n.; visits
C at Greta Hall with his sister,
3',K) n. ; a Latin letter from, 400
n. ; 40."j n., 421, 422, 4(iO n., 474 ;
his liecollcctionn of a Late Eoyal
Academician, 'il'l n. ; his connec-
tion with the reconciliation of C.
and Wordsworth, 580-588, 504 ;
on William Blake's paintings, en-
gravings, and poems, G8(j n. ; 704 ;
his Superannuated Man, 740 ; 744 ;
his acquaintance with George
Dyer, 748 n. ; 751 n., 700 ; letter
of condolence from C, 171 ; other
letters from C, 240, 586.

Lamb, Charles, Letters of, 164 n.,
171 n., 197 n., 390 n., 400 n., 465
n., 466 n., 686 n., 748 n.

Lamb's Prose Works, 4 n., 20 n., 25
n., 41 n.

Lamb, Mary, 127, 128, 226 n. ; visits
the Coleridges at Greta Hall with
her brother Charles, 396 n. ; be-
comes worse and is taken to a
private madhouse, 422 ; 465 ;
learns from C. of his quarrel with
Wordsworth, 590, 591 ; endeavors
to bring about a reconciliation be-
tween C. and Wordsworth, 594 ;
704.

Lampedusa, island, essay on, 495 and
note.

Landlord at Keswick, C.'s, 335.
See Jackson, Mr.

Lardner, Nathaniel, D. D., his Letter
on the Logos, 157 ; his History of
the Heretics of the first tiro Centuries
after Christ, 330 ; on a passage in
Josephus, 407.

Latin essay by C, 29 n.

Laudanum, used by C. in an attack
of neuralgia, 173 and note, 174
and note, 175-177 ; 193, 240, 617,
659. See Opium.

Lauderdale, James Maitland, Earl
of, 689 and note.

Law, human as distingiiished from
divine, 635, 636.

Lawrence, Miss, governess in the

family of Dr. Peter Crcmpton,
758 n. ; letter from C, 758.

Lawrence, William, 711 n.

Lawson, Sir Gilford, 270 ; C. has
free access to his library, 336 ;
392.

Lay of the Last Minstrel, The, by
kScott, 523.

Lay Sermon, the second, 6(59.

Leach, William Elford, C. meets,
711 and note.

Lecky, G. F., British Consul at
Syracuse, 458 ; C. entertained by,
485 n.

Lectures, C.'s at the Royal Institu-
tion, 506 n., .507, 508, 511, 515,
516, 522, 525 ; at the rooms of the
London Philosoj)hical Society, 574
and note, 575 and note ; a pro-
posed course at Liverpool, 578 ;
preparations for another course in
London, 579, 580, 582, 585 ; at
Willis's Rooms on the Drama,
595 and note, 596, 597, 599 ; 602,
004 ; an extempore lecture On the
Growth of the Lidividual Mind, at
the rooms of the London Philo-
sophical Society, 680 and note,
681 ; regarded as a means of live-
lihood, ()94 ; on the History of
Philosophy, delivered at the Crown
and Anchor. Strand, 698 and note.

Lectures on Shakespeare. 575 n.

Lectures on Shakespeare and Other
Dramatists. 756 n.

Leghorn, 498. 499 and note, 500.

Le Grice, Charles Valentine, 23, 24 ;
liis Tineum. Ill and note; 225
and note, 325.

Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Baron
von, 280, 360, 735.

Leighton, Robert, Archbishop of
Glasgow, his genius and character,
717, 718; his orthodoxy. 719; C.
proposes to compile a volume of
selections from his writings, 719,
720 ; C. at work on the compila-
tion, which, together with his own
comment and corollaries, is finally
published as Aids to Reflection,
734 and note.

Leslie, Charles Robert. 695 and
note ; his pencil sketch of C,
695 n. ; introduces a portrait of C.
into an illustration for The Anti-
quary, 736 and note.

INDEX 797

Lessing, Life of, C. proposes to

Edmund Oliver dra^vn from C.'s

write, 270; 321, 323,388.

life, 252 and note ; his relations

Letters, C/s reluctance to open and

to the quarrel between C. and

answer, 534.

Southey, 304 ; reading Greek with

Letters from the Lake Poets, 25 n.,

Christopher Wordsworth, 311 ; un-

86 n., 267 n., 366 n., 369 n., 527 n..

worthy of confidence, 311, 312;

534 n., .542 n., 543 n., 705 n.

his Edmund Oliver, 311 ; his

Letter smuggling, 459.

moral sense warped, 322, 323 ;

Letters on the Spaniards, 629 and

settles at Ambleside, 344 ; C.

note.

spends a night with him at Bra-

Letter to a Noble Lord, by Edmund

tha, 394 ; 563 ; his History of

Burke, 157 and note.

Highgate, 572 n., 578.

Leviathan, the man-of-war, 467 ; a

Llyswen, 234 n., 235 n.

majestic and beautiful creature,

Loch Katrine, 431, 432 and note,

471, 472; 477.

433.

Lewis Monk, his play. Castle Spectre,

Loch Lomond, 431, 432 n., 433, 440.

236 and note, 237, 238, 626.

Locke, John, C.'s opinion of his phi-

Libert}/, the Progress of, 206.

losophy, 349-351, 648 ; 713.

Life and death, meditations on, 283-

Lockhart, Mr., 756.

287.

Lodore, the waterfall of, 335, 408.

Life-masks of C, 570 and note.

Lodore mountains, the, 370.

Lime-Trte Bower my Prison, this.

Logic, The Elements of, 753 n.

225 and note, 226 and notes, 227,

Logic, The History of 753 n.

228 n.

Logos, Letter on the, by Dr. Nathan-

Lines on a Friend who died of a Frenzy

iel Lardner, 157.

Fever, 98 and note, 103 n., 106

London, Bishop of, 739 ; his favour-

and note.

able opinion of Aids to Reflection,

Lines to a Friend, 8 n.

741.

LippincotVs Magazine, 674 n.

London Philosophical Society, C.'s

Lisbon, the Rock of, 473.

lectures at the rooms of, 574 and

Literary Life. See Biographia Lite-

note, 575 and note, 680 n.

raria.

Longman, Mr., the publisher, 319,

Literary Pemains, 684 n., 740 n.,

321 ; on anonymous publications,

756 n., 761 n.

324, .325 ; 328, 329, 341, 349, 357 ;

Literature, a proposed History of

loses money on C.'s translation of

British, 425-427, 429, 430.

Wallenstein, 403 ; 593.

Literature as a profession, C.'s opin-

Lonsdale, Lord, 538 n., 550, 733 n.

ion of, 191,192.

Losh, James, 219 and note.

Live nits, 360.

Louis XVI., the death of, 219 and

Liverpool, 578.

note.

Liverpool, Lord, 665, 674.

Love, George Dawe engaged on a

Llandovery, 411.

picture to illustrate C.'s poem,

Llanfyllin, 79.

573.

Llangollen, 80.

Love and the Female Character, C.'s

Llangunnog, 79.

lecture, 574 n., 575 and note.

Llovd, Mr., father of Charles, 168,

Lovell, Robert, 75 ; C.'s opinion of

186.

his poems, 110 ; 114 ; his Farm-

Lloyd, Charles, andWoolman's Jour-

house, 115, 121, 122, 139, 147,150;

nal, 4 n. ; goes to live with C, 168-

dies, 159 n.; 317 n.

170; character and genius of, 169,

Lovell, Robert, and Robert Southey of

170 ; 184, 189, 190, 192, 205, 206 ;

Balliol College, Bath, Poems by

his Poems on the Death of Priscilla

107 n.

Farmer, 206 n. ; 207 n., 208 n. ;

Lovell, Mrs. Robert (Mary Fricker) ,

with C. at Nether Stowey, 213;

122, 159 and note, 485.

238 ; a serious quarrel with C,

Lover's Complaint to his Mistress, A,

238, 245 n., 246, 249-253; his

36.

oy

798

INDEX

Low was our pretty Cot, C.'s opinion
of, 224.

Lubee, 274, 275.

Lucretius, his philosophy and his
poetry, 648.

Luff, Captain, 369 and note, 547.

Luise, ein Idndliches Gedidd in drei
Idi/Uen, by Johann Heinrich Voss,
quotation from, 203 n. ; an em-
phatically original poem, 625 ; 627.

Liineburg-, 27S.

Lushing:<^^on) Mr., 101.

Luss, 4.!1.

Lycon, Ode to, by Robert Southey,
107 n., 108.

Lyrical Ballads, by Coleridge and
Wordsworth, 336, 337, 341, 350
and note, 387, 607, 678.

Macaulay, Alexander, death of, 491.

Mackintosh, !Sir James, his rejected
offer to procure a place for C.
under himself in India, 454, 455 ;
C.'s dislike and distrust of, 454 n.,
455 n.; 596.

Macklin, Harriet, 751 and note, 764.

Madeira, 442, 451, 452.

Madoc, by Southey, C. urges its
completion and publication, 314,
467 ; 357 ; C.'s enthusiasm for,
388, 489, 490 ; a divine passage
of, 463 and note.

Mad Ox, The, 219 n., 327.

Magee, William, D. D., 761 n.

Magnum Opus. See Christianity, the
one true Philosophy.

Maid of Orleans, 239.

Malta, "C. plans a trip to, 457, 458;
the voyage to, 469—481 ; sojourn
at, 481-484, 487-497; army af-
fairs at, 554, 555.

Maltese, the, 483 and note, 484 and
note.

Maltese, Regiment, the, 554, 555.

Malvern Hills, by Joseph Cottle,
358.

Manchester Massacre, the, 702 n.

Manchineel, 223 n.

Marburg, 291.

Margarot, 166, 107 n.

Markes, Rev. Mr., 310.

Marriage as a means of ensuring the
nutiire and education of children,
216, 217.

Marsh, Herbert, Bishop of Peter-
borough, his lecture on the au-

thenticity and credibility of the
books collected in the New Testa-
ment, 707, 708.

Martin, Rev. H., 74 n., 81 n.

Mary, the Maid of the Inn, by
Southey, 223.

Massena, Marshal, defeats the Rus-
sians at Zurich, 308 and note.

Masy, Mr., 40.

Mathews, Charles, C. hears and
sees his entertainment, At Home,
704, 705 ; letter from C, 621.

Mattathias, The Death of, by Robert
Southey, 108 and note.

Maurice, Rev. John Frederick Den-
nison, 771 n.

Maxwell, Captain, of the Royal Ar-
tillery, 493, 495, 496.

McKinnon, General, 309 n.

Medea, a subject for a tragedy, 399.

Meditation, C.'s habits of, 658.

Medwin, Capt. Thomas, his Conver-
sations of Lord Byron, 735 and
note.

Meerschaum pipes, 277.

Melancholy, a Fragment, 396 and
note, 397.

Memory of childhood in old age,
428.

Mendelssohn, Moses, 203 n., 204 n.

Men of the Time, 317 n.

Merry, Robert, 86 n.

Messina, 485, 486.

Metaphysics, 102, 347-352 ; C. pro-
poses to "svrite a book on Locke,
Hobbes. and Hume, 349, 350 ; in
poetry, 372 ; effect of the study
of, 388 ; C.'s projected great work
on, 632 and note, 633 ; of the Ger-
man philosophers, 681-683, 735 ;
712, 713. See Christianity, the
One True Philosophy, Philosophy,
Religion.

Meteyaxd, Eliza, her Group of Eng-
lishmen, 269 n., 308 n.

Method, Essay on the Science of, 681
and note.

Metliuen, Rev. T. A., 652 and note.

Microcosm, 43 and note.

Middleton, H. F. (afterwards Bishop
of Calcutta), 23, 25, 32, 33.

Milman, Henry Hart. 737 and note.

Milton, John, 164, 197 and note ; a
sublimer poet than Homer or Vir-
gil, 199, 200 ; the imagery in Par-
adise Lost borrowed from the

INDEX

799

Scriptures, 199, 200 ; his Acci-
dence, 331 ; on poetry, 387 ; his
platonizing spirit, 406, 407 ; 678,
734.

Milton, Lord, 567 and note.

Mind versus Nature, in youth and
later life, 742, 743.

Minor Poems, Sll n.

Miscellanies, Esthetic and Literary,
711 n.

Miss Rosamond, by Southey, 108 and
note.

Mitford, Mary Russell, 63 n.

Molly, 11.

Monarchy likened to a cockatrice,
73.

Monday'' s Beard, On Mrs., 9 n.

Money, Rev. William, 651 n. ; letter
from C, 651.

Monody on the Death of Chatterton,
110 n., 158 n., 620 n.

Monologue to a Young Jackass in
Jesus Piece, 119 n.

Monopolists, 335 n.

Montagu, Basil, 363 n., 511 n. ;
causes a misunderstanding be-
tween C. and Wordsworth, 578,
586-591, 593, 599, 612 ; endea-
vours to have an associateship of
the Royal Society of Literature
conferred on C, 726, 727 ; his ef-
forts successful, 728 ; 749.

Montagu, Mrs. Basil, her connection
■with the quarrel between C. and
Wordsworth, 588, 589, 591, 599.

Monthly Magazine, the, 179 and note,
185, 197, 215, 251 n., 310, 317.

Moore, Thoraas, his Lalla Rookh,
672 ; his misuse of the possessive
case, 672.

Moors, C.'s opinion of, 478.

Morality and religion, 676.

Moreau, Jean Victor, 449 and note.

Morgan, Mrs., 145, 148.

Morgan, John James, 524, 526 ; a
faithful and zealous friend, 580 ;
C. confides the news of his quar-
rel with Wordsworth to, 591, 592 ;
596, 650, 665 ; letter from C, 575.

Morgan, Mrs. John James, C.'s affec-
tion for, 565 ; 578, 600, 618, 650,
722 n. ; letter from C, 524.

Morgan family, the (J. J. Morgan,
his wife, and his wife's sister. Miss
Charlotte Brent), C.'s feelings of
affection, esteem, and gratitude

towards, 519, 520, 524-526, 565 ; C.
visits, 566-575 and note, 579-622 ;
585 ; C. confides the news of his
quarrel with Wordsworth to, 591,
592 ; C. regards as his saviours,
592 ; 600 n. ; with C. at Calne,
641-653 ; their faithful devotion
to C, 657, 722 n. ; letters from C,
519, 524, 564.

Mortimer, John Hamilton, 373 and
note.

Motion of Contentment, by Archdea-
con Paley, 47.

Motley, J. C, 467-469, 475.

Mountains, of Portugal, 470, 473;
about Gibraltar, 478.

Mumps, the, .545 and note.

Murray, John, 581 ; proposes to pub-
lish a translation of Faust, 624-
626 ; his connection with the pub-
lication of Zapolya, 666 and note,
667-669 ; offers C. two hundred
guineas for a volume of specimens
of Rabbinical wisdom, 667 n. ;
699 n. ; proposal from C. to com-
pile a volume of selections from
Archbishop Leightoa, 717-720 ;
723 ; his proposal to publish an
edition of C.'s j)oems, 737; letters
from C, 624, 665, 717.

Murray, John, Memoirs of, 624 n.,
666 n.

Music, 49.

Myrtle, praise of the, 745, 746.

Mythology, Greek and Roman, con-
trasted with Christianity, 199,
200.

Nanny, 260, 295.
Naples, 486, 502.
Napoleon, 308, 327 n., 329 and note ;

his animosity against C, 498 n. ;

530 n. ; C.'s cartoon and lines on,

642.
Napoleon Bonaparte, Life of, by Sir

Walter Scott, 174 n.
Natural Theology, by William Paley,

424 n., 425 n.
Nature, her influence on the pas-
sions, 243, 244 ; Mind and, two

rival artists, 742, 743.
Natur-philosophen, C. on the, 682,

683.
Navigation and Discovery, The Spirit

of, by William Lisle Bowles, 403

and note.

800 INDEX

Necessitarianism, the sophistry of,

Objective, different meanings of the

454.

term, 755.

Neighbours, 186.

Observations on Egypt, 486 n.

Nelson, Lady, (i37.

Ocean, the, by night, 260.

Nelson, Lord, 037 and note.

Ode in the manner of Anacreon, An,

Nesbitt, Fanny, C.'s poem to, 56,

35.

57.

Ode on the Poetical Character, by

Netherlands, the, 751.

William Collins, 196.

Nether Stowey, 165 and note ; C.

Odes to Great People, by Thomas

proposes to move to, 184-194; ar-

Hood, 250 n.

rangements for moving- to, 209 ;

Ode to Dejection, 378 and note, 379

settled at, 213 ; C.'s description

and note, 3S0-384, 405 n.

of his place at, 213; Thelwall

Ode to Georgiana, Duchess of Devon-

urged not to settle at, 232-234 ;

shire, 320 and note, 330.

the curate-in-charge of, 267 n. ;

Ode to Lycon, by Kobert Southey,

297, 325, 366; C.'s last visit to,

107 n., 108.

405 n. ; 497 n.

Ode to Romance, by Robert Southey,

Neuralgia, a severe attack of, 173-

107 and note.

177.

Ode to the Departing Year, 212 n.;

Newcome's (Mr.) School, 7, 25 n.

C.'s reply to Thelwall's criticisms

Newlands, 393 and note, 411, 725.

on, 218 and note ; 221.

New Monthly Magazine, 251.

Ode to the Duchess, 320 and note,

Newspapers, freshness necessary for,

330.

568.

gentle look, that didst my soul he-

New Testament, the, Bishop March's

guile, a sonnet, 111, 112 and note.

lecture on the authenticity and

Ogle, Captain, 63 and note.

credibility of the books collected

Ogle, Lieutenant, 374 n.

in, 707, 708.

Ogle, Dr. Newton. Dean of West-

Newton, Mr. , 48.

minster, his Latin Iambics, 374

Newton, Mrs., sister of Thomas

and note.

Chatterton, 221, 222.

Oken, Lorenz, his Natural History,

Newton, Sir Isaac, 352.

736.

Nightingale, The, a Conversational

Old Man in the Snow, 110 and note.

Poem, 296 n.

Omniana, by C. and Southey, 9n.,

Ninaihoma, The Complaint of, 51.

554 n., 718 n.

Nixon, Miss Eliza, unpublished lines

On a Discovery made too late, 92 and

of C. to, 773 n., 774 n. ; letter from

note, 123 n.

C, 773.

On a late Connubial Bupture, 179 n.

Nobs, Dr. Daniel Dove's horse, in

On an Infant who died before its

The Doctor, 583 and note, 584.

Christening, 287.

No more the visionary soul shall dwell.

Once a Jacobin, always a Jacobin,

109 and note, 208 n.

414.

Nordhausen, 273.

On Revisiting the Sea-Shore, 361 n.

Northcoto, Sir StafFord, 15 and note.

Oiistel, 97 n.

Northmore, Thomas, C. dines with,

On the Slave Trade, 43 and note.

306, 307 ; an offensive character

Opium, C.'s early use of, and begin-

to the aristocrats, 310.

ning of the habit, 173 and note,

North Wales, C.'s tour of, 72-81.

174 and note, 175 ; first recourse

Notes on Hamlet, 684 n.

to it for the relief of mental

Notes on Noble^s Appeal, 684 n.

distress, 245 n. ; daily quantity

Notes Theological and Political,

reduced, 413 ; regarded as less

684 n., 761 n.

harmful than other stimulants,

Nottingham, 153, 154, 216.

413 ; 420 ; its use discontinued for

Novi, Suwarrow's victory at, 307 and

a time, 434, 435 ; anguish and re-

note.

morse from its abuse, 616-621,

Nuremberg, 555.

628, 624 ; in order to free himself

INDEX 801

from the slavery, C. arranges to

borrowed from the Scriptures,

live with Mr. James Gillman as a

199, 200.

patient, 657-659 ; a final effort to

Parasite, a, 705.

give up the use of it altogether,

Parliamentary Reform, essay on.

760 and note ; the habit regulated

567.

and brought under control, but

Parndon House, 506 n., 507, 508.

never entirely done away with,

Parret, the river, 165.

760 n., 761 n.

Parties, political, in England, 242.

Oporto, seen from the sea, 469, 470.

Pasquin, Antony, 603 and note.

Orestes, by William Sotheby, 402,

Patience, 203 and note.

409, 410.

Patteson, Hon. Mr. Justice, 726 n.

Original Sin, C. a believer in, 242.

Paul, Charles Kegan, his William

Original Sin, Letter on, by Jeremy

Godwin: His Friends and Con-

Taylor, 640.

temporaries, 161 n., 324 n., 465 n.

Origine de tous les Cultes, ou Be-

Pauperis Funeral, by Robert Sou-

ligion universelle, by Charles Fran-

they, 108 and note, 109.

cois Dupuis, 181 and note.

Peace and Union, byWilliam Friend,

Origin, Nature, and Object of the

24 n.

New System of Education, by An-

Pearce, Dr., Master of Jesus College,

drew Bell, D. D., 581 and note.

23, 24, 65, 70-72.

582.

Pedlar, The, former title of Words-

Osorio, a tragedy, 10 n., 229 and

worth's Excursion, 337 and note.

note, 231, 284 n., 603 n. See Re-

Peel, Sir Robert, 689 n.

morse.

Penche, M. de la, 49.

Ossian, hexameters in, 398.

Penmaen Mawr, C.'s ascent of, 81 n.

Otter, the river, 14, 15.

Penn, William, 539.

Ottery St. Mary, 6-8, 305n.; C.

Pennington, W., 541, .542 n., 544.

wished by his family to settle at.

Penrith, 420, 421, 547, 548, 575 n.

325 ; C.'s last visit to, 405 n. ; a

Penruddock, 420, 421.

proposed visit to, 512, 513 ; 745 n.

Perceval, Rt. Hon. Spencer, assassi-

Owen, William, 425 n.

nation of, 597, 598 and note.

luhat a loud and fearful shriek was

Perdita, see Robinson, Mrs. Mary.

there, a sonnet, 116 n., 117.

Peripatetic, The, or Sketches of the

Owls, care of, in Gerniany, 293.

Heart, of Nature, and of Society,

Oxford University, C.'s feeling to-

by John Thelwall, 166 and note.

wards, 45, 72.

Perry, James, 114.

Perspiration. A Travelling Eclogue,

Paignton, 305 n.

73.

Pa i'n, a sonnet, 174 n.

Peterloo, 702 n.

Pain, C. interested in, 341.

Philip Van Artevelde, by Sir Henry

Pains of Sleep, The, 435-437 and

Taylor, 774 and note.

note.

Phillips, Elizabeth (C.'s half sister).

Paley, William, Archdeacon of Car-

.54 n.

lisle, his Motives of Contentment,

Phillips, Sir Richard, 317 and note.

47 ; his Natural Theology, 424 and

325, 327.

note; 713.

Phillips, Thomas, R. A., 699; his

Palm, John Philip, his pamphlet

two portraits of C, 699 and note,

reflecting on Napoleon leads to

700, 740 ; his portrait of William

his trial and execution, 530 and

Hart Coleridge, Bishop of Barba-

note ; C. translates his pamphlet,

does and the Leeward Islands,

530.

740 and note.

Pantisocracy, 73, 79, 81, 82, 88-91,

Philological Museum, 733 n.

101-103, 109 n., 121, 122, 134, 135,

Philosophy, 648-650 ; German, 081-

138-141, 143-147, 149, 317 n.,

683 ; C.'s lectures on the History

748n.

of, 698 and note. See Metaphysics

Paradise Lost, by Milton, its imagery

and Religion.

802

INDEX

Pickering-, W., 579 n.

Picture The : or The Lover^s Resolu-
tion, 40") n., ()l!On.

Pinney, Mr., of Bristol, 163 n.; his
estate in the West Indies, 360,
361.

Pipes, meerschaum, 277.

Pisa, C.'s stay at, 4iJUn., 500 n.; his
account of, 5110 n.

Pitt, Kt. Hon. William, C.'s report
in the Morning I'ost of his speech
on the continuance of the war
with France, 327 and note ; pro-
posed articles on, .505 ; C.'s detes-
tation of, 535 and note ; 629 and
note.

Pixies' Parlour, The, 222.

Plampiu, J., 70 and note.

Plato, his gorgeous nonsense, 211 ;
his theology, 406.

Playing-cards, German, 263.

Pleasure, intoxicating power of, 370.

Plinlimmon, C.'s ascent of, 81 n.

Plot Discovered, The, 156 and note.

Poems by Robert Lovell and Robert
Southey of Balliol College, Bath,
107 n.

Poems and fragments of poems in-
troduced by C. into his letters,
28, 35, 36, 51, 52, 54, 56, 73, 75,
77, 83, 92, 94, 98, 100, 111-113,
207, 212, 225, 355, 379-384, 388,
389, 397, 404, 412, 435-437, 553,
609,620,642, 646, 702, 770, 771.

Poems on the Death of Priscilla Far-
mer, by Charles Lloyd, 206 and
note.

Poetical Character, Ode on the, by
Collins, 196.

Poetry, Concerning, a proposed book,
347, 386, 387.

Poetry, C. proposes to write an essay
on, 338, 347, 386, 387 ; Greek and
Hebrew, 405, 406.

Poetry, C.'s, not obscure or mystical,
194, 195.

Poland, 329.

Political parties in England, 242.

Politics, 240-243, 546, 550, 553, 574,
702, 712, 713, 757. See Democ-
racy, Pantisocracy, Republican-
ism.

Poole, Richard, 249.

Poole, Mrs. Richard, 248.

Poole, Thomas, contributes to The
Watchman, 155 ; collects a testimo-

nial in the form of an annuity of

£35 or £40 for C, 1.58 n.; C.'s
gratitude, 158, 159; C. proposes
to visit, 159 ; C.'s affection for,
168, 210, 258, 609, 610, 753; C.
proposes to visit him with Charles
Lloyd, 170 ; C.'s happiness at the
prospect of living near, 173 ; his
connection with C.'s removal to
Nether Stowey, 183-193, 208-210 ;
213, 219, 220 ; his opinion of
Wordsworth, 221 ; 232 and note,
233, 239, 257, 258, 260, 28:in.,
289 ; effects a reconciliation be-
tween C. and Southey, 390 ; 308,
319 ; C.'s reasons for not naming
his third son after, 344 ; death of
his mother, 364 ; 396, 437 n. ;
nobly employed, 453 ; his recti-
tude and simplicity of heart, 454 ;
456 n. ; his f orgetf ulness, 460 ;
515, 523 ; extract from a letter
from C, 533 n. ; a visit to Gras-
mere proposed, 545 ; his narrative
of John Walford, 553 and note;
C. complains of unkindness from,
609, 610; 639 n., 657; meets C.
at Samuel Purkis's, Brentford,
673 ; extract from a letter from
C. about Samuel Purkis, 673 n. ;
autobiographical letters from C,
3-18; other letters from C, 136,
155, 1.38. 168, 172, 176, 183-187,
208, 248, 249, 258, 267, 282, 305,
335, 343, 348, 350, 364, 452, 454,
541, 544. 550. 556, 609, 673, 753.

Poole. Thomas, and his Friends, by
Mi"s. Henrv Sandford, 158 n.,165 n.,
170 n., 183 n., 232 n., 234 n., 258,
267 n., 282 n., 391 n., 335 n., 456 n.,
533 n., 553 n., 673 n., 676 n.

Poole, William. I7li.

Pope, the. Cleaves Rome at a warn-
ing from, 498 n.

Pope, Alexander, his Essay on Man,
648 ; a favorite walk of, 671.

Pople, Mr., publisher of C.'s tragedy.
Remorse, 602.

Porson, Mr., 114, 115.

Portinscale, 393 and note.

Portraits of C, crayon sketch by
Dawe, 572 and note ; full-length
portrait _^ by Allston begun' at
Rome, 572 and note ; portrait by
Allston taken at Bristol, 572 n. ;
pencil sketch by Leslie, 695 n. ;

INDEX 803

two portraits by Thomas Phillips,

Quakers and Unitarians, the only

699 and note, 700, 740 ; Wyville's

Christians, 415.

proofs, 770.

Quantocks, the, 405 n.

Portugal, C. on Southey's proposed

Quarterly Revieiv, The, 606 ; its re-

history of, 387, 388, 4^3; the

view of The Letters of Lord Nel-

coast of, 469-471, 473.

son to Lady Hamilton, 637 and

Possessive case, Moore's misuse of

note, 667 ; reechoes C.'s praise of

the, 672.

Cary's Dante, 677 n. ; its attitude

Post, Morning, 310 ; C. writing for,

towards C, 697, 723 ; John Taylor

320 and note, 324, 326, 327 and

Coleridge editor of, 736 and notes,

note, 329 and note ; 331, 335 n.,

737.

337, 376, 378 n., 379 n., 398, 404

n., 405, 414, 423, 455 n. ; Napo-

Rabbinical Tales, 667 and note, 669.

leon's animosity aroused by O.'s

Racedown, C.'s visit to Wordsworth

articles in, 498 n. ; its notice of

at, 163 n., 220 and note, 221.

C.'s tragedy, Remorse, 603 n.

Race of Banquo, The, by Southey,

Postage, rates too high, 345.

92 and note.

Posthumous Fame, 29 n.

Rae, Mr., an actor, 611, 667.

Potter, Mr., 97 and note, 106.

Rainbow The, by Southey, 108 and

Poverty, in England, 353, 354 ; bless-

note.

ings of, 364.

Ramsgate, 700, 722, 729-731, 742-

Pratt, 321.

744.

Prelude, The, by Wordsworth, a

Ratzebui-g, 257 ; C.'s stay in, 262-

reference to C. in, 486 n. ; C.'s

278 ; the Amtmann of, 264, 268,

lines To William Wordsworth

271 ; description of, 273-277 ; C.

after hearing him recite. 641, 644,

leaves, 278 ; 292-294.

646, 647 and note ; C.'s admira-

" Raw Head " and " Bloody Bones,"

tion of, 645, 647 n.

45.

Pride, 149.

Reading, see Books.

Priestley, Joseph, C.'s sonnet to, 116

Reading, Berkshire, 66, 67. '

and note ; his doctrine as to the

Reason and iinderstanding, the dis-

future existence of infants, 286.

tinction between, 712, 713.

Progress of Liberty, The, 296.

Recluse, The, a projected poem by

Prometheus of JEschylus, Essay on

Wordsworth of which The Excur-

the, 740 and note.

sion (q. V.) was to form the second

Property, to be modified by the pre-

part and to which The Prelude

dominance of intellect, 323.

(q. V.) was to be an introduction,

Pseudonym, "Eo-TTjo-e, 398 ; its mean-

C.'s hopes for, 646, 647 and note.

ing, 407 and note, 408.

648-650.

Public Characters for 1799-lSOO,

Recollections of a Late Royal Acade-

published by Richard Phillips,

mician, by Cliarles Lamb, 572 n.

317 n

Records of a Quaker Family, by

Puff and Slander, projected satires.

Anne Ogden Boyce, 538 u.

630 and notes, 631 n.

RedclifP, 144.

Purkis, Samuel, 326, 673 n.

Redcliff Hill, 154.

Reflection, Aids to, 688 n.

Quack medicine, a German, 264.

Reflections on having left a Place of

Quaker Family, Records of a, by

Retirement, 606 n.

Anne Ogden Boyee, 538 n.

Reform Bill, 760. 762.

Quaker girl, inelegant remark of a

Reich, Dr., 734, 736.

little, 362, 368.

Rejected Addresses, by Horace and

Quakerism, 415 ; C.'s belief in the

James Smith, 6(J6.

essentials of, 539-541 ; C.'s defi-

Religion, beliefs and doubts of C.

nition of, 556.

in regard to, 64, 68, 69, 88, 105,

Quakers, as subscribers to The

106, 127, 135, 152, 153, 159-161,

Friend, 556, 557,

167, 171, 172, 198-205, 210, 211,

804 INDEX

228, 229, 235 n., 242, 24Y, 248,

Robespierre, The Fall of, 85 and note,

285, 286, 342, 364, 365, 407, 414,

87, 93, 104 and notes.

415, 444, 538-541, 617-620, 624,

Robinson, Frederick John (after-

676, 688, 6!J4, 706-712, 746-748,

wards Earl of Kipon), his Corn

750, 754, 758-760, 762, 763, 771,

Bill, 643 and note.

775, 776.

Robinson, Henry Crabb, 225 n..

Religious Musings, 239.

593, 599, 670 n. ; in old age, 671

lieminiscences of Cambridge, by

n. ; reads William Blake's poems

Henry Gunning, 24 n., 363 n.

to Wordsworth, 68() n. ; extract

Reminiscences of Coleridge and

from a letter from C. to, 689 n. ;

Southei/, by Cottle, 268 n., 269 u..

his Diary, 225 n., .575 n., .591 n.,

417, 456 n., 617 n.

595 n., 686 n., 689 n. ; letter from

Remorse, C.'s definition of, 607.

C, 671.

Remorse, A Tragedy (Osorio re-

Robinson, Mrs. Mary (" Perdita "),

written), rehearsal of, 6U0 ; has a

contributes poems to the Annual

brief spall of success, 6lJ0 n., 602,

Anthology, 322 and note ; her

604, 6li), Oil; business arrang-e-

Haunted Beach, 331, 332 ; her ear

ments as to its publication, 602 ;

for metre, 332.

press notices of, 60.J and note, 604 ;

Roman Catholicism in Germany, 291,

William Gltf ord's criticism of, 605 ;

292.

the underlying' principle of the

Romance, Ode to, by Southey, 107

plot of, 607, 608 ; wretchedly

and note.

acted, i)')S, 611; metres of, 608;

Rome, C.'s flight from, 498 n. ; 501,

lack of pathos in, 60S ; plagiarisms

502.

in, ())S ; labors occasioned to C.

Rosamund, Miss, by Southey, 108

by its production and success, 610;

and note.

financial success of, 611 ; Quar-

Rosamund to Henry; written after

terly Revieiu's criticism of, 630 ;

she had taken the veil, by Southey,

69(i.

108 n.

Repentance preached by the Chris-

Roseoe, William, 359 and note.

tian religion, 201.

Rose, Sir George, 456 and note.

Reporting the debates for the Morn-

Rose, The, 54 and note.

ing Post, 324, 326, 327.

Rose. W., 542.

Republicanism, 72, 79-81, 243. See

Roskaiy, Rev. Mr., 267 n., 270;

Deniociacv, Pantisocracy.

letter from C, 267.

Retrospect, The, by Robert Southey,

Ross. 77.

107 and note.

Ross, the Man of, 77, 651 n.

Revelation, 676.

Rossetti, Gabriele, 731 and note.

Reynell, Richard, 497 and note.

732, 733.

Rheumatism, C.'s sufferings from.

Rough, Sergeant, 225 and note.

174 n., 193, 209, 307, 308, 432,

Royal Institution, C. obtains a lec-

433.

tureship at the, 506 n., 507, 508,

Rhine, the, 751.

511; an outline of proposed lec-

Richards, George, 41 and note.

tures at the, 51."i, 516, 522; C.'s

Ricliardson, Mrs., 145.

lectures at the, 525.

Richter, J jan Paul, his Vorschule der

Royal Society of Literature, the,

Aisthetik, (iS:] and note.

Basil Montagu's endeavors to se-

Ricknian, John, 456 n., 459, 462,

cure for C. an associateship of,

.542, .")1)1).

72(), 727 ; C. an associate of, 728 ;

Ridge way and Symonds, publishers.

731 ; an essay for, 737, 738 ; C.

638 n.

reads an Kssay on the F'rometheus

Robbers, The, by Schiller, 96 and

of ^l^schylus hetore, 739, 740.

note, 97, 221.

Rulers, always as bad as they dare

Roberts, Margaret, 358 n.

to be, 240.

Robespierre, Maximilian Marie Isi-

Rush, Sir William, 368.

dore, 203 n., 329 n.

Rushiford, 358.

INDEX 805

Russell, Mr., of Exeter, C.'s fellow-

four most wonderful sights in.

traveller, 4!)8 n., 50U and note.

439, 440.

Eustats, 24, 43.

Scott, an attorney, his manner of

Ruth, by Wordsworth, 387.

revenging himself on C, 310, 311.

Ruthin, 78.

Scott, fcir Walter, his Life of Napo-

leon Bonaparte, 174 n. ; his house

St. Albyn, Mrs., the owner of Al-

in Edinburgh, 439 ; takes Hartley

foxden, 232 n.

C. to the Tower, 511 n. ; his offer

St. Augustine, 375.

to use his influence to get a place

St. Bees, 392, 393.

for Southey on the staff of the

St. Blaslus, 292.

Edinburgh Eeview, 522 and note.

St. Clear, 411, 412.

522 ; his Lay of the Last Minstrel,

St. Lawrence, near Maldon, descrip-

523; 605, 694; his Antiquary,

tion of, 690-()92.

736 and note.

St. Leon, by Godwin, the copyright

Sea-bathing, 361 n., 362 and note.

sold for £400, 324, 325.

Seasickness, no sympathy for, 743,

St. Nevis, 360, 361.

744. _

St. Paul's Ejnstle to the Hebrews,

Serinoni propriora, 606 and note.

200.

Shad, 82, 89, 96.

Salernitanus, 566 and note.

Shaftesbury, Lord, 689 n.

Salisbury, 53-55.

Shakespeare, Lectures on, 557 n.

Samuel, C.'s dislike of the name.

Shakespeare and other Dramatists,

470, 471.

Lectures on, 756 n.

Sandford, Mrs. Henry, 183 n., her

Sharp, Richard, 447 n. ; letter from

Thomas Poole and his Friends,

C, 447.

158 n., 165 n., 170 n., 183 n..

Shepherds, German, 293.

232 n., 234 n., 258, 267 n., 282 n.,

Sheridan, E. B., Esq., To, 116 n.,

319 n., 335 n., 456 n., 533 n., 553 n.,

118.

673 n., 676 n.

Shrewsbury, C. offered the Unitarian

Saturday Club, the, at Gottingen,

pastorate at, 235 and note, 236.

281.

Sibylline Jjcaves, 178 n., 378 n.,

Satyr ane's Letters, 257, 274 n., 558.

379 n., 404 n. ; C. ill-used by the

Savage, Mr., 534.

printer of, 673, 674 ; 678, 770.

Savory, Mr., 316.

Sicily, C. plans to visit, 457, 458;

Scafell, 393, 394 ; in a thunder-

C.'s first tour in, 485 and note,

storm on, 400 and note ; view from

486 and note, 487 ; 523.

the summit of, 400, 401 ; suggests

Siddons, Mrs., 50.

the Hymn before Sunrise in the

Siey^s, Abbd, 329 and note.

Vale of Chamouni, 404 and note.

Sigh, The, 100 and note.

405 and note.

Simplicity, Sonnet to. 251 and note.

Scale Force, 375.

Sin, original, C. a believer in, 242.

Scarborough, 361-363.

Sincerity, regarded by Dr. Darwin

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Jo-

as vicious, 161.

seph von, the philosophy of, 683,

Sixteen Sonnets, by Bampfylde,

735.

369 n.

Schiller, his Bobbers, 96 and note,

Skiddaw, 335, 336 ; sunset over,

97, 221 ; C. translates manuscript

384.

plays of, 331 ; C.'s translation of

Skiddaw Forest, 376 n.

h\s Wallenstein, 403, 608.

Slavery, question of its introduction

Scholarship examinations, 24, 43,

into the proposed pantisocratic

45 and note, 46.

colony, 89, 90, 95, 96.

Schoning, Maria Eleanora, the story

Slave Trade, History of the Abolition

of, 555 and note, 556.

of the, by Thomas Clarkson, C.'s

Scoope, Emanuel, second Viscount

review of, 527 and note, 528-530,

Howe, 262 n.

535, 536.

Scotland, C.'s tour in, 431-441 ; the

Slave Trade, On the, 43 and note.

806

INDEX

Slee, Miss, 362, 363.

Sleep, C.'s sufferings in, 435, 440,
441, 447.

Smerdon, Mrs., 21, 22.

Smerdon, Kev. Mr., Vicar of Ottery,
22, 106 and note.

Smith, Charlotte, 326.

Smith, Horace and James, their Ee-
jected Addresses, 606.

Smith, James, 704.

Smith, Raphael, 701 n.

Smith, Robert Percy (Bohus), 43
and note.

Smith, William, M. P., 506 n., 507
and note.

Snuff, cm, 692 and note.

Social Life at the English Universi-
ties, by Christopher Wordsworth,
225 n.

Something Childish, hut Very Natu-
ral, quoted, 294.

Song, 100.

Songs of the Pixies, 222.

Sonnet, an anonymous, 177, 178.

Sonnet composed on a journey home-
ward, the author having received
intelligence of the birth of a son,
194 and note, 195.

Sonnets, 111, 112, and note ; to
Priestley, 116 and note ; to Kos-
ciusko, 116 n., 117; to Godwin,
116 n., 117; to Sheridan, 116 n.,
117, 118 ; to Burke, 116 n., 118 ;
to Soiithey, 116 n., 120 ; a selection
of, privately printed by C, 177, 206
and note ; by " Nehemiah Higgin-
bottom," 251 n.

Sonnets, Sixteen, by Bampfylde,
309 n.

Sonnet to Simplicity, 251 and note.

Sonnet to the Author of the Bobbers,
96 n.

Sorrel, James, 21.

Sotheby, William, C. translates Ges-
ner's JErste Schiffer at his instance,
369, 371, 372, 376-37S, 397, 402,
403 ; his translation of the Geor-
gics of Virgil, 375 ; his Poems, 375 ;
his Netleij Abbey, 396 ; his Welsh
Tour, 396; his Orestes, 402, 409,
410 ; proposes a fine edition of
Christabel, 421, 422 ; 492, 579,
595 n., 604, 605; letters from C,
369, 376, 396-408.

Sotheby, Mrs. WiUiam, 369, 375,
378.

Soul and body, 708, 709.

South Devon, 305 n.

Southey, Lieutenant, 563.

Southey, Bertha, daughter of Robert
S., born, 546, .547 and note, 578.

Southey, Catharine, daughter of
Robert S., 578.

Southey, Rev. Charles Cuthbert, his
Life and Correspondence of Robert
Southey, .308 n., 3U9 n., 327 n.,
329 n., 384 n., 395 n., 400 n., 425 n.,
488 n., 521 n., .584 n., 748 n. ; on
the date of composition of The
Doctor, 583 n.

Southey, Edith, daughter of Robert
S., 578.

Southey, Dr. Henry, 615 and note.

Southey, Herbert, son of Robert S.,
578 ; his nicknames, 583 n.

Southey, Margaret, daughter of Rob-
ert S., born, 394 n., 395 n. ; dies,
435 n.

Southey, Mrs. Margaret, mother of
Robert S., 138, 147.

Southey, Robert, his and C.'s Omni-
ana, 9 n., 554 n., 718 n. ; his Botany
Bay Eclogues, 7(in., 116; proposed
emigration to America with a colo-
ny of pantisocrats, 81, 82, 89-91,
95, 96, 98, 101-103 ; his sonnets,
82, 83, 92, 108 ; his connection with.
C.'s engagement to Miss Sarah
Fricker, 84-86, 126 ; his Bace of
Banquo, 92 and note ; 97 n. ; his
Retrospect, 107 and note ; his Ode
to Bomance, 107 and note ; his Ode
to Lycon, 107 n.. 108; his Death of
Mattathias, 108 and note ; his son-
nets, To Valentine, The Fire, The
Baiubow. 108 and notes ; his Bosa-
mund to Henry. 108 and notes ; his
Pauper's Funeral, 108 and note,
109; his Chapel Bell, 110 and
note ; C. prophesies fame for,
110; his Elegy, 115; C.'s sonnet
to, 116 n., 12U; lines to Godwin,
120 ; suggestion that the proposed
colony of pantisocrats be founded
in Wales, 121, 122 ; his sonnet.
Hold your 7nad hands!, 127 and
note ; his abandonment of panti-
socracy causes a serious rupture
■with C, 134-151 ; marries Edith
Fricker, 137 n. ; his Joan of Arc,
141, 149, 178 and note, 210, 319;
163 n. ; the poet for the patriot.

INDEX

807

178 ; 198 and note ; his verses to a
college cat, 207 ; C. compares his
poetry with his own, 210 ; per-
sonal relations with C. after the
partial reconciliation, 210, 211 ; his
exertions in aid of Chatterton's
sister, 221, 222 ; his Mary the
Maid of the Inn, 22;]; C.'s bonnet
to Simplicity not written with ref-
erence to, 25 1 and note ; a more
complete reconciliation with C,
303, 304 ; visits C. at iStowey with
his wife, 304 ; C, with his wife
and child, visits him at Exeter,
305 and note ; accompanies C. on
a walking tour in Dartmoor, 305
and note ; his Specimens of the
Later English Poets, 309 n. ; his
Madoc, 314, 357, 388, 463 and
note, 467, 489, 490; his Thalaba
the Destroyer, 314, 319, 324, 357,
684; out of health, 314; C. sug-
gests his removing to London,
315 ; George Dyer's article on,

317 and note ; The DeviVs Thoughts,
written in eollahoration with C,

318 ; 320 n. ; thinks of going abroad
for his health, 326, 329, 360, 361 ;
an advocate of the establishment
of Protestant orders of Sisters of
Mercy, 327 n. ; proposes the estab-
lishment of a magaziue with
signed articles, 328 n. ; extract
from a letter to C. on the condi-
tion of France, 329 n.; C. begs
him to make his home at Greta
Hall, 354-356, 362, 391, 392, 394,
395 ; 367, 379 n. ; his proposed
history of Portugal, 387, 388, 423 ;
secretary to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer for Ireland for a short
time, 390 and note ; birth of his
first chUd, Margaret, 394 n., 395 n.;
his admiration of Bowles and its
effect on his poems, 396 ; 400 n. ;
his prose style, 423 ; his proposed
bibliographical work, 428-430 ;
makes a visit to Greta Hall which
proves permanent, 435 ; death of
his little daughter, Margaret, 435
and note, 437 ; his fii'st impres-
sions of Edinburgh, 438 n. ; 442 ;
on Hartley and Derwent Cole-
ridge, 443; 460, 463, 468, 484,
488 n.; poverty, 490; his Wat
Tyler, 507 n. ; declines an offer

from Scott to secure him a place
on the staff of the Edinburgh
Review, 521 and note ; 542 n. ;
extract from a letter to J. N.
White, 545 n. ; on the mumps,
545 n. ; 546 ; birth of his daugh-
ter Bertha, 546, 547 and note ;
548 ; corrects proofs • of The
Friend, 551 and note ; 575 ; C.'s
love and esteem for, 578 ; his
family in 1812, 578; C.'s estimate
of, 581 ; on the authorship of The
Doctor, 583 n., 584 n.; 585; C.
states his side of the quarrel with
Wordsworth in conversation with,
592; 604, 609 n., 615, 617 n.;
writes of his friend John Kenyon,
639 n. ; his protection of C.'s fam-
ily, 657 ; C.'s letter introducing
Mr. Ludwig Tieck, 670 ; his Curse
of Kehama, 684 : 694, 718, 724 ;
his Book of the Church, 724; 726;
his acquaintance with George
Dyer, 748 n. ; letters from C, 72-
101, 106-121, 125, 134, 137, 221,
251 n., 303, 307-332, 354-361,
365, 384, 393, 415, 422-430, 434,
437, 464, 469, 487, 520, 554, 597,
605, 670 ; letter to Miss Sarah
Fricker, 107 n. See Annual An-
thology, the, edited by Southey.

Southey, Robert, Life and Corre-
spondence of by Rev. Charles
Cuthbert Southey, 108 n., 308 n.,
309 n., 327 n., 329 n., 384 n., 395 n.,
400 n., 425 n., 488 n., 521 n., 584 n.,
736 n., 748 n.

Southey, Robert, Selections from Let-
ters of, 305 n., 438 n., 447 n.,
543 n., 545 n., 583 n., 584 n., 736 n.

Southey, Robert, of Balliol College,
Bath, Poems by Robert Lovell and,
107 n.

Southey, Mrs. Robert (Edith Frick-
er), Southey' s sonnet to, 127 and
note ; 384, 385, 390-392 ; birth of
her first chUd, Margaret, 394 n.,
395 n. ; 484 ; birth of her daugh-
ter Bertha, 546, 547 and note ;
592.

Southey, Thomas, 108 n., 109 n.,
147 ; a midshipman on the Sylph
at the time of her capture, 308
and note.

South Molton, 5.

Spade of a Friend {an Agriculturist),

808 INDEX

To the, by Wordsworth, in honor of

Stevens (Stephens), Launcelot Pe-

Thomas Wilkinson, 538 n.

pys, 25 and note.

Spaniards, C.'s opinion of, 478.

Stoddart, Dr. (afterwards Sir) John,

Spaniards, Letters on the, 629 and

477 and note, 481, 508; detains

note.

C.'s books and MSS., 523 ; 524.

Sparrow, Mr., head-master of New-

Stoke House, C. visits the Wedg-

come's Academy, 24, 25 n.

woods at, 673 n.

Specimens of the Later English Poets,

Storm, on a mountain-top, 339, .340 ;

by iSouthey, oOU n.

with lightning in December, 365,

Spectator, Addison's, studied by C.

366 ; on Scafell, 400 and note ; in

in connection with The Friend,

Kirkstone Pass, 418-420.

557, 5,58.

Stowey, see Nether Stowey.

Speedwell, the brig, 407 ; on board.

Stovvey Benefit Club, 233.

469-481.

Stowey Castle, 225 n.

Spenser, Edmund, his View of the

Street, Mr., editor of the Courier,

State of Ireland, 638 and note ;

506, 533, 567, 568, 570, 616, 629,

quotation from, 694.

634 ; his unsatisfactory conduct of

Spillekins, 462, 468.

the Courier, 661, 662.

Spinoza, Benedict, 632.

Strutt, Mr., 152, 153.

Spirit of Navigation and Discovery,

Strutt, Edward (Lord Helper), 215 n.

The, by William Lisle Bowles,

Strutt, Joseph, 215 n., 216, 367.

403 and note.

Strutt, Mrs. Joseph, 216.

Spiritual Philosophy, founded on the

Strutt, William, 215 and note.

Teaching of S. T. Coleridge, by J.

Stuart, Miss, a personal reminiscence

H. Green, with memoir of the au-

of C. by, 705 n.

thor's life, by Sir John Simon,

Stuart, Daniel, proprietor and editor

680 n.

of the Morning Post and Courier,

Spurzheim, Johann Kaspar, his life-

311, 315; engages C. for the

mask and bust of C, 570 n.

Morning Post, 319, 320; 321,

Stag-e, illusion of the, 663.

329 ; engages lodgings in Covent

Stamford News, 567 n.

Garden for C, 366 n. ; on C 's dis-

Stanger, Mrs. Joshua (Mary Cal-

like of Sir James Mackintosh,

vert), 345 n.

454 n., 4-55 n. ; 458. 468, 474,

Stanzas written in my Pocket Copy of

486 n., 507, 508, 519. 520, 542,

Thomsoni's Castle of Indolence, by

543 n. ; a friend of Dr. Henry

Wordsworth, 345 n.

Southey, 615 n.; his steadiness

Steam vessels, 730 and note, 743.

and independence of character.

Steffens, Heinrich, 6S3.

660 ; his public ser\dces, 66LI ; his

Steinburg, Baron, 279.

knowledge of men, 660; letters

Steinmetz, Adam, C.'s letter to his

from C, 475, 485, 493, 501, 505,

friend, John Peirse Kennard, af-

533, 545, 547, 566, 595, 615, 627,

ter his death, 762 ; his character

634, 660, 663, 740. See Courier

and amiable qualities, 763, 764,

and Post, Morning.

775.

Stutfield, Mr., amanuensis and dis-

Steinmetz, John Henry, 762 n.

ciple of C, 753 and note.

Stephen, Leslie, on C.'s studv of

Sugar, beet, 299 and note.

Kant, 351 n.

Sun, The, 633.

Stephens (Stevens), Launcelot Pe-

Smiset in the Lake Country, a,

pys, 25 and note.

384.

Sterling, Life of, by Carlyle, 771 n.,

Supernatural, C.'s essay on the, 684.

772 n.

Superstitions of the German bauers,

Sterling, John, his admiration for

291, 292, 294.

C, 771 n., 772 n.; letter from C,

Suwarrow, Alexander Vasilieviteh,

771.

307 and note.

Sternbaldh Wanderungen, by Lud-

Swedenborg, Emanuel, his De Cultu

wig Tieck, 683 and note.

et Amore Dei, 684 n. ; his De

INDEX

809

Ccclo et Inferno, 684 n. : 688, 729,
730.

Swedenborgianism, C. and, 684 n.

Swift, Jonathan, his Drapier Letters,
638 and note.

Sylphjthe gun-brig, capture of,308 n.

Sympathy, C.'s craving for, 696,
697.

Synesius, by Canterus, 67 and note,
68.

Syracuse, Sicily, 458 ; C.'s visit to,
485 n., 486 n.

Table Talk, 81 n., 440 n., 624 n.,
633 n., 684 n., 699 n., 756 n., 763 n.,
764 n.

Table Talk and Omniana, 9 n., 554 n.,
571 n., 718 n., 764 n.

Tatum, 53, 54.

Taunton, 220 n. ; C. preaches for
Dr. Toulmin in, 247.

Taxation, C.'s Essay on, 629 and
note.

Taxes, 757.

Taylor, Sir Henry, his Philip Van
Artevelde, 774 and note.

Taylor, Jeremy, his Dissuasion from
Popery, 639 ; his Letter on Origi-
nal Sin, 640 ; a complete man,
640, 641.

Taylor, Samuel, 9.

Taylor, William, 310 ; on double
rhymes in English, 332 ; 488,
489.

Tea, 412, 413, 417.

Temperance, suggestions as to the
furtherance of the cause of, 767-
769.

Temple, The, by George Herbert,
694.

Teneriffe, 414, 417.

Terminology, C. wishes to form a
better, 755.

Thalaba the Destroyer, by Southey,
414 ; C.'s advice as to publishing,
319 ; 324, 357, 684.

The Hour when we shall meet again,
157.

Thelwall, John, his radicalism, 159,
160 ; his criticisms of C.'s poetry,
163, 164, 194-197, 218 ; on Burke,
166 ; his Peripatetic, or Sketches
of the Heart, of Nature, arid of
Society, 166 and note ; his Essay
on Animal Vitality, 179, 212 ; his
Poems, 179, 197 ; his contemptu-
ous attitude towards the Christian

Religion, 198-205 ; two odes by,
218 ; C. criticises a poem and a so-
called sonnet by, 230 ; C. advises
him not to settle at Stowey, 232-
234; letter to Dr. Crompton on
the Wedgwood annuity, 234 n. ;
extract from a letter from C. on
the Wedgwood annuity, 235 n. ;
letters from C, 159, 166, 178, 193,
210, 214, 228-232.

Thelwall, Mrs. John (Stella, first
wife of preceding), 181, 205, 206
n., 207, 214.

Theology, C.'s great interest in,
406 ; C.'s projected great work
on, 632 and note, 033.

Theory of Life, 711 n.

The piteous sobs which choke the vir-
gin's breast, a sonnet by C, 206 n.

This Lime-Tree Dower my Prison.,
225 and note, 226 and notes, 227,
228 n.

Thompson, James, 343 and note.

Thornycroft, Hamo, K. A., 570 n. ;
his bust of C, 695 n.

Thou gentle look, that didst my soul
beguile, see O gentle look, etc.

Though king-bred rage with lawless
tumult rude, a sonnet, 116 and
note.

Thought, a rule for the regulation
of, 244, 245.

Three Graves, The, 412 and note,
551, 606.

Thunder-storm, in December, 365,
366 ; on Scafell, 400 and note.

Tieck, Ludwig, a letter of intro-
duction from C to Southey, 670 ;
two letters to C. from, 070 n. ;
671, 672, 680 ; his Sternbald's
Wanderungen, 603 and note ; 699.

Times, The, 327 n. ; its notice of
C.'s tragedy Remorse, 603 and
note.

Tineum, by C. Valentine Le Grice,
111 and note.

Tiverton, 56.

To a Friend, together with an Un-
finished Poem., 128 n., 454 n.

To a friend who had declared his in-
tention of writing no more poetry,
206 n.

To a Gentleman, 647 n. See To Wil-
liam Wordsworth.

To a Highland Girl, by Words-
worth, 459.

810 INDEX

To a Young Ass; its mother being

Two Round Spaces on a Tombstone,

tethered near it, 119 and note, 120,

The, the hero of, 455.

G0() and note.

Two Sisters, To, 702 n.

To a Young Lady, with a Poem on

Tychsen, Olaus, 398 and note.

the French Revolution, 94 and

Tyson, T., 393.

note.

To a Young Man of Fortune who had

Ulpha Kirk, 393.

abandoned himself to an indolent

Understanding, as distinguished

and causeless melancholy, 207 and

from reason, 712, 713.

note, 208 and note.

Unitarianism, 415, 758, 759.

Tobin, Mr., his habit of advising,

Upcott, 0. visits Josiah Wedgwood

474, 47").

at, 308.

Tobin, James, 460 n.

Usk, the vale of, 410.

Tobin, John, 400 n.

To Bowles, 111 and note.

Valentine, To, by Southey, 108 and

To Disappointment, 28.

note.

Toraalin, J., his Shorthand Report of

Valetta, Malta, C.'s visit to, 481-

Lectures, 11 n., .575 n.

484, 487-497.

To Matilda Betham. From a

Valette, General, 484 ; given com-

Stranger, 404 n.

mand of the Maltese Regiment,

Tomkins, Mr., 397, 402, 403.

5.54, 555.

To my own Heart, 92 n.

Vane, Sir Frederick, his library,

Tooke, Andrew, 455 n. ; his Pan-

296.

theon, 4)5 and note.

Velvet Cushion, The, by Rev. J. W.

Tooke, Home, 218.

Cunningham, 651 and note.

To one who published in print what

Vienna, Treaty of, 615 and note.

had been intrusted to him by my

Violin-teacher, C.'s, 49.

fireside, 252 n.

Virgil's ^neid, Wordsworth's un-

Torbay, 805 n.

finished translation of, 783 and

To R. B. Sheridan, Esq., 116 n.,

note, 784.

118.

Virgil's Georgics, William Sotheby's

To the Spade of a Friend {an Agri-

translation, 875.

culturist), by Wordsworth, in honor

Visions of the Maid of Orleans, The,

of Thomas Wilkinson, 538 n.

192, 2U6.

Totness, 805.

Vital power, definition of, 712.

Toulmin, Rev. Dr., 220 n. ; tragic

Vogelstein, Karl Christian Vogel

death of his daughter, 247, 248.

von, a letter of introduction from

Tour in North Wales, by J. Hueks,

Ludwig Tieck to C, 670 n.

74 n., 81 n.

Von Axen, Messrs. P. and 0., 269 n.

Tour over the Brocken, 257.

Voss, Johann Heinrich, his Luise,

Tour through Parts of Wales, by

203 n., 625, 627 ; his Idylls, 398.

William Sotheby, 896.

Voyage to Malta, C.'s, 469-481.

To Valentine, by Southey, 108 and

note.

Wade, Josiah, 137 n., 145, 151 n..

Towers, 821.

152 n., 191, 288; publication by

To William Wordsworth, 641, 644 ;

Cottle of Coleridge's letter of

C. quotes from, (546, 047 ; 647 n.

Jime 26, 1814, to, 616 n., 617 n. ;

Treaty of Vienna, 615 and note.

letters from C, 151, 628.

Trossachs, the, 481, 432, 440.

Waithman, a politician, 598.

Tuckett, G. L., 57 n. ; letter from

Wakefield, Edward, his Account of

C, 57.

Ireland, 638.

Talk, Charles Augustus, 684 n. ;

Wales, proposed colony of pantiso-

letters from C, 684, 712.

crats in, 121, 122, 140, 141.

Turkey, 329.

Wales, Tour through Parts of, by

Turner, Sharon, 425 n., 593.

William Sotheby, 896.

Two Founts, The, 702 n.

Wales, North, C.'s tour of, 72-81.

INDEX

811

Wales, South, C.'s tour of, 410-414.

Walford, John, Poole's narrative of,
55o and note.

Walker, Thomas, 162.

Walk into the country, a, 32, 33.

Wallenstein, by Schiller, C.'s trans-
lation of, 4U3, 608.

Wallis, Mr., 498-500, 523.

Wallis, Mrs., 392.

Wanderer's Farewell to Two Sisters,
The, 722 n.

Ward, C. A., 763 n.

Ward, Thomas, 170 n.

Wardle, Colonel, leads the attack
on the Duke of York in the House
of Commons, 543 and note.

Warren, Parson, 18.

Wastdale, 393, 401.

Watchman, The, 57 n. ; C.'s tour
to procure subscribers for, 151 and
note, 152-154 ; 155-157 ; discon-
tinued, 158; 174 n., 611.

Watson, Mrs. Henry, 698 n., 702 n.

Wat Tyler, by iSouthey, 506 n.

Wedgwood, Josiah, 260, 261, 268,
269 n. ; visit from C. at Upcott,
308 ; his temporary residence at
Upcott, 3U8 n. ; 337 n., 350, 351 and
note, 416 n. ; withdraws his half
of the Wedgwood annuity from
C, 602, 611 and note ; C.'s regard
and love for, 611, 612.

Wedgwood, Josiah and Thomas,
settle on C. an annuity for life of
£150, 234 and note, 235 and note ;
269 n., 321.

Wedgwood, Miss Sarah, 412, 416,
417.

Wedgwood, Thomas, 323, 379 n. ;
with C. in South Wales, 412, 413 ;
his fine and siibtle mind, 412 ;
proposes to pass the winter in
Italy with C, 413, 414, 418 ; 415,
416 ; a genuine philosopher, 448,
449 ; C.'s gratitude towards, 451 ;
456 n., 4V)3 ; C.'s love for, mingled
with fear, 612 ; letter from C,
417.

Welles, A., 462.

Wellesley, Marquis of, 674.

Welsh clergvman, a, 79, 80.

Wensley, Miss, an actress, and her
father. 704. '

Wernigerode Inn, 298 n.

West, Mr., ()33.

Whitbread, Samuel, 598.

White, Blanco, 741, 744.

White, J. N., extract from a letter
from Southey, 545 n.

White Water Dash, 375 and note,
376 n.

Wilberforce, William, 535.

Wilkie, Sir David, his portraits of
Hartley C, 511 n. ; his Blind
Fiddler, 511 n.

Wilkinson, Thomas, 538 n. ; letter
from C, 538.

WUl, lunacy or idiocy of the, 768.

Williams, Edward (lolo Morgangw),
162 and note.

Williams, John ("Antony Pasquin "),
603 n.

Wilson, Mrs., housekeeper for Mr.
Jackson of Greta Hall, 461 and
note, 491 ; Hartley C.'s attachment
for, 510.

Wilson, Professor, 756.

Windy Brow, 346.

Wish written in Jesus Wood, Feb-
ruary 10, 1792, A, 35.

With passive joy the moment I survey,
an anonymous sonnet, 177, 178.

With wayworn feet, a pilgrim woe-
begone, a sonnet by Southey, 127
and note.

Wolf, Freiherr Johann Christian von,
735.

WoUstonecraft, Mary, 316, 318 n.,
321.

Woodlands, 271.

Woolman, John, 540.

Woolman, John, the Journal of, 4 and
note.

Worcester, 154.

Wordsworth, Catherine, 563.

Wordsworth, Rev. Christopher, D.D.,
225 n. ; Charles Lloyd reads Greek
with, 311.

Wordsworth, Rev. Christopher, M.
A., his Social Life at the English
Universities in the Eighteenth Cen-
tury, 225 n.

Wordsworth, Rt. Rev. Christopher,
D. D., his Memoirs of William
Wordsworth, 432 n., 585 n.

Wordsworth, Dorothy, 10 n. ; C.'s
description of, 218 n. ; visits C. with
her brother, 224-227; 228, 231,
245 n., 249; goes to Germany
with William Wordsworth, Cole-
ridge, and John Chester, 259 ; with
her brother at Goslar, 272, 273 ;

812

INDEX

returns with him to Eng-land, 288,
290; ;311 n., 84t), 3(57, 373, 385;
accompanies her brother and C.
on a tour in iScothmd, 431, 432
and note ; 577, 5yU n.

Wordsworth, John, son of William
W., 545.

Wordsworth, Captain John, and the
eifect of his death on C.'s spirits,
494 and note, 495 and note, 497.

Wordsworth, Thomas, death of,
599 n. ; C.'s love of, 000.

Wordsworth, William, 10 n., 163 and
note, 1()4 and note, 218 n. ; visit
from C. at Kacedown,220 and note,
221 ; greatness of, 221, 224 ; settles
at Alfoxden, near Stowey, 224 ; at
C.'s cottage, 224-227 ; C. visits
him at Alfoxden, 227 ; 228, 231,

232 ; suspected of conspiracy
against the government, 232 n.,

233 ; memoranda scribbled on the
outside sheet of a letter from C,
238 n. ; his greatness and amiabil-
ity, 239 ; his Excursion, 244 n.,
337 n., 585 n., 041, 042, 645-650 ;
245 ; C.'s admiration for, 240 ;
250 n. ; accompanies C. to Ger-
many, 259 ; 268, 269 n. ; considers
settling near the Lakes, 270 ; 271 ;
at Goslar with his sister, 272, 273 ;
an Epitaph by, 284 ; returns to
England, 288, 296; wishes C. to
live near him in the North of Eng-
land, 296 ; his grief at C.'s refu-
sal, 296, 297 ; 304, 313 ; his and
C.'s Lyrical Ballads, 336, 337, 341,
350 and note, 387 ; his admiration
for Christabel, 337 ; 338, 342 ; pro-
posal from William Calvert in
regard to sharing his house and
studying chemistry with him, 345,
346 ; his Stanzas written in my
Pocket Copy of Thomson s Castle
of Indolence, 345 n. ; 348, 350 ;
marries Miss Mary Hutchinson,
359 n.; 363, 367, 370, 373; his
opinion of poetic license, 373-375 ;
C addresses his Ode to Dejection
to, 378 and note, 379 and note,
380-384 ; 385-387 ; his Euth, 387 ;
400, 418, 428 ; with C. on a Scotch
tour, 431-434; his Peter Bell, 432
and note; 441, 443; receives a
visit at Grasraere from C., who
is taken ill there, 447 ; his hypo-

chondria, 448 ; his happiness and
philosophy, 449, 450 ; a most ori-
ginal poet, 450 ; 451 ; his To a
Highland Girl, 459 ; 464, 468 ;
his reference to C. in The Prelude,
386 n. ; 452 ; his Brothers, 494 n.,
61)9 n. ; his Happy Warrior, 494 n. ;
extract from a letter to Sir George
Beaumont on John Wordsworth's
death, 494 n. ; 511 and note, 522 ;
his essays on the Convention of
Cintra, 534 and note, 543 and note,
548-550 ; 535 ; his To the Spade of
a Friend, 558 n. ; 543 and note,
546, 522, 553 n., 556 ; C.'s misun-
derstanding with, 576 n., 577, 578,
586-588, 612 ; his Essays upon
Epitaphs, 585 and note ; a long-
delayed explanation from C, 588—
595 ; reconciled with C, 596, 597,
599, 612 ; death of his son Thomas,
599 n. ; second rupture with C,
599 n., 60 n. ; his projected poem.
The Recluse, 646, 647 and note,
648-650 ; 678 ; on William Blake
as a poet, 686 n. ; his unfinished
translation of the jEneid, 733 and
note, 734 ; felicities and unforget-
table lines and stanzas in his po-
ems, 734 ; influence of the Edin-
burgh Bevieiu on the sale of his
works in Scotland, 741, 742 ;
759 n. ; letters from C, 234, 588,
596. 599, 643, 733.

Wordsworth, William, Life of, by
Rev. William Angus Knight,
LL. D., 164 n., 220 u., 447 n.,
585 n., 591 n., 596 n., 599 n., 600
n., 733 n., 759 n.

Wordsworth, William, Memoirs of,
by Christopher Wordsworth, 432
n., 550 n., 585 n.

Wordsivorth, William, To. 641,644;
C. quotes from, 646, 647 ; 647 n.

Wordsworth, Mrs. William, extract
from a letter to Sara Coleridge,
220 ; 525. See Hutchinson, Mary.

Wordsworths, the, visit from C. and
his son Hartley at Coleorton Farm-
house, 509-514; 545 ; letter from
C. 456.

Wrangham, Francis, 363 and note.

Wrexham, 77, 78.

Wright, Joseph, A. R. A. (Wright
of Derby), 152 and note.

Wright, W. Aldis, 174 n.

INDEX

813

Wynne, Mr., an old friend of South-

ey's, 63y n.
Wyville's proofs of C.'s portrait,

770.

Yarmoutli, 258, 259.

Yates, Miss, 39.

Yews near Brecon, 411.

York, Duke of, 543 n., .555 n., 567

and note.
Young-, Edward, 404. .
Youth and Age, 730 n.

Zapolya : A Christmas Tale, in two
Parts, its publication in book form
after rejection by the Drury Lane
Committee, 666 and note, 667-669.

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His Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence. 1789-1866. Se-
lected and Edited by Thomas Sadler. Cr. 8vo, gilt top, $2.50.
Crabb Robinson was the prince of story-tellers, and this delightful volume is
brimming over with salient anecdote and sagacious reflection. — Spectator (London).

Sir Walter Scott.

By John Gibson Lockhart. With 8 steel Plates. 3 vols. i2mo,
$4.50 ; half calf, $9.00.

Next to Boswell's Life of Johnson, it will probably always be considered as the
most interesting work of biography in the English language. — Alison, History
of Europe.

Sir Walter Scott.

Familiar Letters of. With a fine steel Portrait of Scott and an
Autographic Plan of Abbotsford. 2 vols. 8vo. $6.00.

The magic that clings to everything that came from the pen of the Great Un-
known lies over them, and the public of to-day will read them as eagerly as the
public of seventy years syne read the " Tales of My Landlord."' — Pall Mall
Gazette.

George Ticknor.

Life, Letters, and Journals. With two Portraits and Heliotype of

Mr. Ticknor's Library. 2 vols. i2mo, I4.00 ; half calf, $6.50.
As charming as Boswell's Johnson, Lockhart's Scott, Forster's Goldsmith, or
Ticknor's own biography of Prescott. — Dr. R. S. Mackenzie.

John Greenleaf Whittier.

Life and Letters. By S. T. Pickard. With seven Portraits and
Views. 2 vols, crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00.

The many letters contained in these volumes will be found, in the main, delight-
ful reading ; they cover a wide range of subjects, and, whether dealing with poli-
tics, ethics, or literature, Whittier always proves himself a sane thinker and a
charming correspondent, — stimulating and entertaining. — The Speaker (London).

Sold by all Booksellers. Sent, postpaid, by

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Boston.
II East 17TH Street, New York.

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