The Life
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
by
James Gillman
1838
'... But some to higher hopes
Were destined; some within a finer mould
Were wrought, and temper'd with a purer flame:
To these the Sire Omnipotent unfolds
The world's harmonious volume, there to read
The transcript of himself ....'
To Joseph Henry Green, F. R. S.
Professor of Anatomy of the Royal Academy, etc. etc.
The Honoured Faithful and Beloved Friend of
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
These Volumes
Are Most Respectfully and Affectionately Inscribed.
- [Preface]
- [Chapter I]
Birth-place of Coleridge — Slight Sketch of his Parents — Whimsical Anecdotes he Used to Relate of his Father, &c — As a Pastor, how Much Beloved — His Brothers and Sisters Enumerated — The Death of his Father — His Entrance at Christ's Hospital — Lamb's Account of him when at School — Writes this Account under the Name of Elia — Lamb's Admission that he Meant Coleridge for the "Friendless Boy" — The Delicacy of his Stomach — His First Attempt at Making Verse when a School Boy — And Continuation of his Sufferings when at School — His Water Excursions, the Origin of Most of his Subsequent Suffering - [Chapter II]
Coleridge's First Entry at Jesus' College — His Simplicity and Want of Worldly Tact — Anecdotes and Different Accounts of Him During his Residence at College — Intimacy with Middleton — with Southey — Quits College for Bristol. - [Chapter III]
Leaves the Lakes on Account of his Health for Malta — his Employment in Malta in 1805 — goes to Syracuse and Rome — Winters at Naples 15th of December, 1806. - [Chapter IV]
Coleridge's Arrival at Highgate — Publication Of 'Christabel' — 'Biographia Literaria', &c.
[Preface]
The more frequently we read and contemplate the lives of those eminent men so beautifully traced by the amiable Izaak Walton, the more we are impressed with the sweetness and simplicity of the work. Walton was a man of genius — of simple calling and more simple habits, though best known perhaps by his book on Angling; yet in the scarcely less attractive pages of his biographies, like the flowing of the gentle stream on which he sometimes cast his line, to practise "the all of treachery he ever learnt," he leads the delighted reader imperceptibly on, charmed with the natural beauty of his sentiments, and the unaffected ease and simplicity of his style.
In his preface to the Sermons of (that pious poet and divine,) Dr. Donne, so much may be found applicable to the great and good man whose life the author is now writing, that he hopes to be pardoned for quoting from one so much more able to delineate rare virtues and high endowments:
"And if he shall now be demanded, as once Pompey's poor bondman was, who art thou that alone hast the honour to bury the body of Pompey the great?"
so who is he who would thus erect a funeral pile to the memory of the honoured dead? ...
With the writer of this work, during the latter twenty years of his life, Coleridge had been domesticated; and his intimate knowledge of that illustrious character induces him to hope that his present undertaking, "however imperfectly it may set forth the memory he fain would honour," will yet not be considered presumptuous; inasmuch as he has had an opportunity of bringing together facts and anecdotes, with various memoranda never before published, some of which will be found to have much of deep interest, of piety and of loveliness.
At the same time he has also been desirous of interweaving such information as he has been enabled to collect from the early friends of Coleridge, as well as from those of his after-life. Thus, he trusts, he has had the means of giving, with truth and correctness, a faithful portraiture of one whom he so dearly loved, so highly prized. Still he feels that from various causes, he has laboured under many and great difficulties.
First, he never contemplated writing this Memoir, nor would he have made the attempt, had it not been urged on him as a duty by friends, whom Coleridge himself most respected and honoured; they, "not doubting that his intimate knowledge of the author, and dear love to his memory, might make his diligence useful."
Secondly, the duties of a laborious profession, rendered still more arduous by indifferent health — added to many sorrows, and leisure (if such it might be called,) which permitted only occasional attention to the subject — and was liable to frequent interruptions; will, he flatters himself, give him a claim to the candour and kindness of his readers. And if Coleridge's "glorious spirit, now in heaven, could look down upon him, he would not disdain this well meant sacrifice to his memory — for whilst his conversation made him, and many others happy below, his humility and gentleness were also pre-eminent; — and divines have said, those virtues that were but sparks upon earth, become great and glorious flames in heaven."
[Chapter I]
Birth-place of Coleridge — Slight Sketch of his Parents — Whimsical Anecdotes he Used to Relate of his Father, &c — As a Pastor, how Much Beloved — His Brothers and Sisters Enumerated — The Death of his Father — His Entrance at Christ's Hospital — Lamb's Account of him when at School — Writes this Account under the Name of Elia — Lamb's Admission that he Meant Coleridge for the "Friendless Boy" — The Delicacy of his Stomach — His First Attempt at Making Verse when a School Boy — And Continuation of his Sufferings when at School — His Water Excursions, the Origin of Most of his Subsequent Suffering.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
, the subject of this memoir, was born at Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, the 21st October, 1772. His father, the Rev. John Coleridge, was vicar of Ottery, and head master of Henry VIII Free Grammar School, usually termed the King's School; a man of great learning, and one of the persons who assisted Dr. Kennicott in his Hebrew Bible. Before his appointment to the school at Ottery he had been head master of the school at South Molton.
dissertations on the 17th and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges
, and a Latin grammar for the use of the school at Ottery were published by him. He was an exceedingly studious man, pious, of primitive manners, and of the most simple habits: passing events were little heeded by him, and therefore he was usually characterized as the "absent man".
Many traditional stories concerning his father had been in circulation for years before Coleridge came to Highgate. These were related with mirth in the neighbourhood of Ottery, and varied according to the humour of the narrator.
To beguile the winter's hour, which, however, was never dull in his society, he would recall to memory the past anecdotes of his father, and repeat them till the tears ran down his face, from the fond recollection of his beloved parent. The relation of the story usually terminated with an affectionate sigh, and the observation, "Yes, my friend, he was indeed an Israelite without guile, and might be compared to Parson Adams." The same appellation which Coleridge applied to his father will also, with equal justice, be descriptive of himself. In many respects he "differed in kind" from his brothers and the rest of his family, but his resemblance to his father was so strong, that I shall continue this part of the memoir with a sketch of the parent stock from which he sprung.
The Rev. John Coleridge had been twice married; his second wife, Anne Bowdon, by whom he had a large family, was the mother of my friend, and seems to have been peculiarly fitted for the wife of a clergyman who had a large family and limited means. Her husband, not possessing that knowledge usually termed worldly wisdom, she appeared to supply the place of the friend, which such a man required in his wife. He was better fitted for the apostolic age, so primitive was he in his manners and uneducated in the fashions and changing customs surrounding him: his companions were chiefly his books, and the few scholars he had to educate. To all around him he was extremely kind and amiable, and greatly beloved by the flock over whom he presided as pastor. For each individual, whatever his rank, he had a kindly word of greeting, and in sickness or distress he was an attentive friend. His richer and more educated neighbours visited him, and shared the general pleasure and amusement excited by his simple and peculiarly absent manners.
It is said of him, that on one occasion, having to breakfast with his bishop, he went, as was the practice of that day, into a barber's shop to have his head shaved, wigs being then in common use. Just as the operation was completed, the clock struck nine, the hour at which the bishop punctually breakfasted. Roused, as from a reverie, he instantly left the barber's shop, and in his haste forgetting his wig, appeared at the breakfast table, where the bishop and his party had assembled. The bishop, well acquainted with his absent manners, courteously and playfully requested him to walk into an adjoining room, and give his opinion of a mirror which had arrived from London a few days previously, and which disclosed to his astonished guest the consequences of his haste and forgetfulness. On another occasion he dined with the bishop, who had great pleasure and delight in his society, when the following ludicrous scene took place. The bishop had a maiden daughter, past the meridian of life, who was always glad to see and converse with the "dear good old man" (his usual appellation), and who was also kind enough to remind him of his little
Forgets
in society, and rouse him from his absent moods. It not being the fashion in his day for gentlemen to wear braces, his small-clothes, receding from his waistcoat, left a space in his black dress, through which often appeared a portion of his linen. On these occasions, the good lady would draw his attention to this appearance, by saying in an under tone, "A little to this side, Mr. Coleridge," or to that, as the adjustment might require. This hint was as instantly attended to as his embarrassed manner, produced by a sense of the kindness, would permit. On the day above alluded to, his kind friend sat next to him, dressed, as was then the fashion, in a smart party-going muslin apron. Whilst in earnest conversation with his opposite neighbour, on the side next the lady appeared the folds of his shirt, through the hiatus before described, so conspicuously as instantly to attract her notice. The hint was immediately given: "Mr. Coleridge, a little on the side next me;" — and was as instantly acknowledged by the usual reply, "Thank you, ma'am, thank you," and the hand set to work to replace the shirt; but unfortunately, in his nervous eagerness, he seized on the lady's apron, and appropriated the greater part of it.
appeal of "Dear Mr. Coleridge, do stop!" only increased his embarrassment, and also his exertions to dispose, as he thought, of his shirt; till the lady, to put a stop to the titter of the visitors, and relieve her own confusion, untied the strings, and thus disengaging herself, left the room, and her friend in possession of her apron.
Mrs. Coleridge, the mother of my friend, and of whom I have already spoken, had naturally a strong mind. She was an uneducated woman, industriously attentive to her household duties, and devoted to the care of her husband and family. Possessing none, even of the most common female accomplishments of her day, she had neither love nor sympathy for the display of them in others. She disliked, as she would say, "your harpsichord ladies," and strongly tried to impress on her sons their little value, in their choice of wives. As a clergyman's wife her conduct was exemplary; the father of my friend had a fortune in such a woman, and she found in him, with all his peculiarities, a kind, sweet tempered, engaging husband. She was, I should add, a very good woman, though like Martha, over careful in many things, very ambitious for the advancement of her sons in life, but wanting perhaps that flow of heart which her husband possessed so largely. But "imperfection cleaves to mortality."
, as given in this brief sketch, were the parents of the subject of this memoir.
I have heard Coleridge relate the following anecdote of his father. The old gentleman had to take a short journey on some professional business, which would detain him from home for three or four days: his good wife, in her care and watchfulness, had packed a few things in a small trunk, and gave them in charge to her husband, with strong injunctions that he was to put on a clean shirt every day. On his return home, his wife went to search for his linen, when, to her dismay, it was not in the trunk. A closer search, however, discovered that the vicar had strictly obeyed her injunctions, and had put on daily a clean shirt, but had forgotten to remove the one underneath. This might have been the pleasantest and most portable mode of carrying half a dozen shirts in winter, but not so in the dog-days.
As a preacher, he was peculiar: it is said, that the poor idolized, and looked upon him with great reverence; and when death removed this distinguished and eminent scholar from among them, his successor had little chance of pleasing to the same extent. In their great admiration of him, they would often say, "How fine he was in his discourse, for he gave us the very words the spirit spoke in," viz. the Hebrew, with which he frequently indulged them in his sermons, and which seems greatly to have attracted the notice of the agricultural population, who flocked from the neighbourhood, to the town in which he resided. Excited and stimulated by curiosity, this class of persons might attend the church, and in listening for the Hebrew they would perhaps be more attentive, and carry away some useful portions of the English from this amiable and accomplished pastor.
As a schoolmaster his singularities were of the same character, manifesting the same simplicity and honesty of purpose.
have before stated that he wrote a Latin Grammar for the use of his school, and instead of the word ablative, in general use, he compounded three or four Latin words
as explanatory of this case. Whether the mothers were startled at the repetition of these words, and thought of the hardships their sons would have to endure in the acquirement of this grammar, I can only conjecture; but it seems he thought it his duty to explain to the ladies, in justice to their feelings, his learned reasons for the alteration he had made in the name of this case.
I had often pressed him to write some account of his early life, and of the various circumstances connected with it. But the aversion he had to read or write any thing about himself was so great, that I never succeeded, except in obtaining a few notes, rather than a detailed account. There would be little either useful or interesting in any account of Coleridge's life, which a stranger to him could give; therefore, from the best authorities with which I am acquainted, and from an intimacy of nearly twenty years, is this memoir of my late lamented friend compiled. He commences one of the notes above alluded to, with his early childhood.
"I was," says he, "the last child, the youngest child of ten by the same mother, that is to say, John, William (who died in infancy), James, William, Edward, George, Luke, Ann, Francis, and myself, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, beneficially abridged Esteese
i. e. S. T. C., and the thirteenth, taking in three sisters by my dear father's first wife, — Mary, afterwards Mrs. Bradley, — Sarah, who married a seaman and is lately dead, and Elizabeth, afterwards Mrs. Phillips — who alone was bred up with us after my birth, and whom alone of the three I was wont to think of as a sister, though not exactly, yet I did not know why, the same sort of sister, as my sister Nancy.
Being the youngest child, I possibly inherited the weakly state of health of my father, who died at the age of 62, before I had reached my seventh year; and from certain jealousies of old Molly, my brother Frank's dotingly fond nurse, (and if ever child by beauty and loveliness deserved to be doted on, my brother Francis was that child,) and by the infusions of her jealousy into my brother's mind, I was in earliest childhood huffed away from the enjoyments of muscular activity from play, to take refuge at my mother's side, on my little stool, to read my little book, and to listen to the talk of my elders. I was driven from life in motion, to life in thought and sensation. [I] never played except by myself, and then only acting over what I had been reading or fancying, or half one, half the other, with a stick cutting down weeds and nettles, as one of the seven champions of Christendom[5].
Alas! I had all the simplicity, all the docility of the little child, but none of the child's habits. I never thought as a child, never had the language of a child. I forget whether it was in my fifth or sixth year, but I believe the latter, in consequence of some quarrel between me and my brother, in the first week in October, I ran away from fear of being whipped, and passed the whole night, a night of rain and storm, on the bleak side of a hill on the Otter, and was there found at daybreak, without the power of using my limbs, about six yards from the naked bank of the river."
"In my seventh year, about the same time, if not the very same time, i.e. Oct. 4th, my most dear, most revered father, died suddenly. O that I might so pass away, if like him I were an Israelite without guile. The image of my father, my revered, kind, learned, simple-hearted father is a religion to me!"
Judge Buller who had been educated by his father, had always promised to adopt the son, at least to educate him, foreseeing that Samuel, the youngest, was likely to be left an orphan early in life.
Soon after the death of the Rev. John Coleridge, the Judge obtained from John Way, Esq., one of the governors of Christ's Hospital, a presentation to that school, and young Coleridge was sent by the Judge and placed there on the 18th July, 1782. "
! what a change!"
he goes on in the note above quoted.
"Depressed, moping, friendless, poor orphan, half starved; (at that time the portion of food to the Bluecoats was cruelly insufficient for those who had no friends to supply them)."
In the late Mr. Charles Lamb's
Works
published in 1818, there is an account of the school, entitled
Recollections of Christ's Hospital
. In 1823 there is a second essay on the same subject by Lamb, under the assumed title of "Elia," — Elia supposed to be intimate with Lamb and Coleridge. This second account, entitled
Christ's Hospital five-and-thirty years ago
, gave umbrage to some of the "Blues," as they termed themselves, as differing so much from the first in full praise of this valuable foundation, and particularly as a school from which he had benefited so much.
In the preface to the second series, Elia says,
"What he (Elia) tells of himself is often true only (historically) of another; when under the first person he shadows forth the forlorn state of a country boy placed at a London school far from his friends and connexions,"
which is in direct opposition to Lamb's own early history. The second account, under the personification of Elia, is drawn from the painful recollections and sufferings of Coleridge while at school, which I have often heard him relate.
Lamb told Coleridge one day that the friendless school boy in his "Elia," (soon after its publication) was intended for him, and taken from his description of the Blue-coat school. After Coleridge's death, Lamb related the same circumstance to me, that he had drawn the account from Coleridge's feelings, sufferings, &c., Lamb having himself been an indulged boy and peculiarly favoured through the instrumentality of a friend:
"I remember," says Elia, "Lamb at school, and can well recollect that he had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town and were at hand, and he had the privilege of going to see them almost as often as he wished, through some invidious distinction which was denied to us. The present treasurer of the Inner Temple can explain how it happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in the morning, while we were battening upon our quarter of penny loaf — our crug moistened with attenuated small beer in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured from. On Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the pease-soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for him with a slice of 'extraordinary bread and butter,' from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant — (we had three banyan to four meat-days in the week) — was endeared to his palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger, (to make it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays, (strong as caro equina), with detestable marigolds floating in the pail to poison the broth — our scanty mutton crags on Fridays — and rather more savoury, but grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited our appetites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal proportion) he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked in the paternal kitchen.
"I (Coleridge) was a poor friendless boy, my parents, and those who should have cared for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances of their's, which they could reckon upon being kind to me in the great city, after a little forced notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought them few enough; one after another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred playmates — O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early homestead! The yearnings which I used to have towards it in those unfledged years! How in my dreams would my native town come back (far in the west) with its churches and trees and faces! To this late hour of my life, and even to the end of it did Coleridge trace impressions left by the painful recollection of these friendless holidays. The long warm days of summer never return but they bring with them a gloom from the haunting memory of those whole day's leave, when by some strange arrangement, we were turned out for the live-long day, upon our own hands whether we had friends to go to or none. I remember those bathing excursions to the New River, which Lamb recalls with such relish, better, I think, than he can — for he was a home-seeking lad, and did not care for such water-parties. How we would sally forth into the fields; and strip under the first warmth of the sun; and wanton like young dace in the streams; getting appetites for the noon; which those of us that were penny less (our scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not the means of allaying — while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes were at feed about us, and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings; the very beauty of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty setting a keener edge upon them! How faint and languid, finally, we would return toward nightfall to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing, half-reluctant, that the hours of uneasy liberty had expired.
"It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about the streets objectless; shivering at cold windows of print-shops, to extract a little amusement; or haply, as a last resort, in the hope of a little novelty, to pay a fifty times repeated visit (where our individual faces would be as well known to the warden as those of his own charges) to the lions in the Tower, to whose levee, by courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive right of admission."
In short, nearly the whole of this essay of Elia's is a transcript of Coleridge's account of the school. 'Never was a friend or schoolfellow more fondly attached to another than Lamb to Coleridge. The latter from his own account, as well as from Lamb and others who knew him when at school, must have been a delicate and suffering boy. His principal ailments he owed much to the state of his stomach, which was at that time so delicate, that when compelled to go to a large closet (shoe-bin, its school name,) containing shoes, to pick out a pair easy to his feet, which were always tender, and he required shoes so large that he could walk in them, rather than with them, and the smell, from the number in this place, used to make him so sick, that I have often seen him shudder, even in late life, when he gave an account of it. In this note, continuing an account of himself at school, he says,
"From eight to fourteen I was a playless day-dreamer, a helluo librorum, my appetite for which was indulged by a singular incident: a stranger, who was struck by my conversation, made me free of a circulating library in King Street, Cheapside."
The incident, indeed, was singular: going down the Strand, in one of his day-dreams, fancying himself swimming across the Hellespont, thrusting his hands before him as in the act of swimming, his hand came in contact with a gentleman's pocket; the gentleman seized his hand, turning round and looking at him with some anger, "What! so young, and so wicked?" at the same time accused him of an attempt to pick his pocket; the frightened boy sobbed out his denial of the intention, and explained to him how he thought himself Leander, swimming across the Hellespont. The gentleman was so struck and delighted with the novelty of the thing, and with the simplicity and intelligence of the boy, that he subscribed, as before stated, to the library, in consequence of which Coleridge was further enabled to indulge his love of reading.
In his bathing excursions he had greatly injured his health, and reduced his strength; in one of these bathing exploits he swam across the New River in his clothes, and dried them in the fields on his back: from these excursions commenced those bodily sufferings which embittered the rest of his life, and rendered it truly one of sickness and suffering. When a boy he had a remarkably delicate, white skin, which was once the cause of great punishment to him.
His dame had undertaken to cure him of the itch, with which the boys of his ward had suffered much; but Coleridge was doomed to suffer more than his comrades, from the use of sulphur ointment, through the great sagacity of his dame, who with her extraordinary eyes, aided by the power of glasses, could see the malady in the skin deep and out of common vision; and consequently, as often as she employed this miraculous sight, she found or thought she found fresh reasons for continuing the friction, to the prolonged suffering and mortification of her patient. This occurred when he was about eight years of age, and gave rise to his first attempt at making a verse, as follows:
"O Lord, have mercy on me!
For I am very sad!
For why, good Lord? I've got the itch,
And eke I've got the tad,"
the school name for ringworm.
was to be found during play-hours often with the knees of his breeches unbuttoned, and his shoes down at the heel
, walking to and fro, or sitting on a step, or in a corner, deeply engaged in some book. This had attracted the notice of Middleton, at that time a deputy grecian, and going up to him one day, asked what he was reading; the answer was "Virgil." "Are you then," said M. "studying your lesson?" "No," said C., "I am reading it for pleasure;" for he had not yet arrived at Virgil in his class studies. This struck Middleton as something so peculiar, that he mentioned it to the head master, as Coleridge was then in the grammar school (which is the lower part of the classical school), and doing the work of the lower boys. The Rev. James Bowyer, who was at that time head master, a quick discerning man, but hasty and severe, sent for the master of the grammar school, and inquired about Coleridge; from him he learnt that he was a dull and inapt scholar, and that he could not be made to repeat a single rule of syntax, although he would give a rule in his own way.
This brought Coleridge before Bowyer, and to this circumstance may be attributed the notice which he afterwards took of him: the school and his scholars were every thing to him, and Coleridge's neglect and carelessness never went unpunished. I have often heard him say, he was so ordinary a looking boy, with his black head, that Bowyer generally gave him at the end of a flogging an extra cut; "for," said he, "you are such an ugly fellow!"
When, by the odd accident before mentioned, he was made a subscriber to the library in King Street,
"I read," says he, "through the catalogue, folios and all, whether I understood them, or did not understand them, running all risks in skulking out to get the two volumes which I was entitled to have daily. Conceive what I must have been at fourteen; I was in a continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every object of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny corner, and read, read, read; fancy myself on Robinson Crusoe's island, finding a mountain of plumb-cake, and eating a room for myself, and then eating it into the shapes of tables and chairs — hunger and fancy!"
In his lad-hood he says,
"My talents and superiority made me for ever at the head in my routine of study, though utterly without the desire to be so; without a spark of ambition; and, as to emulation, it had no meaning for me; but the difference between me and my form-fellows, in our lessons and exercises, bore no proportion to the measureless difference between me and them in the wide, wild, wilderness of useless, unarranged book-knowledge and book-thoughts. Thank Heaven! it was not the age nor the fashion of getting up prodigies; but at twelve or fourteen I should have made as pretty a juvenile prodigy as was ever emasculated and ruined by fond and idle wonderment. Thank Heaven! I was flogged instead of flattered. However, as I climbed up the school, my lot was somewhat alleviated."
When Coleridge arrived at the age of fifteen, he was, from the little comfort he experienced, very desirous of quitting the school, and, as he truly said, he had not a spark of ambition. Near the school there resided a worthy, and, in their rank of life, a respectable middle-aged couple. The husband kept a little shop, and was a shoemaker, with whom Coleridge had become intimate. The wife, also, had been kind and attentive to him, and this was sufficient to captivate his affectionate nature, which had existed from earliest childhood, and strongly endeared him to all around him. Coleridge became exceedingly desirous of being apprenticed to this man, to learn the art of shoemaking; and in due time, when some of the boys were old enough to leave the school, and be put to trade, Coleridge, being of the number, tutored his friend Crispin how to apply to the head master, and not to heed his anger should he become irate. Accordingly, Crispin applied at the hour proposed to see Bowyer; who, having heard the proposal to take Coleridge as an apprentice, and Coleridge's answer and assent to become a shoemaker, broke forth with his favourite adjuration, "'Ods my life, man, what d'ye mean?" At the sound of his angry voice, Crispin stood motionless, till the angry pedagogue becoming infuriate, pushed the intruder out of the room with such force, that Crispin might have sustained an action at law against him for an assault. Thus, to Coleridge's mortification and regret, as he afterwards in joke would say,
"I lost the opportunity of supplying safeguards to the understandings of those, who perhaps will never thank me for what I am aiming to do in exercising their reason."
"Against my will," says he, "I was chosen by my master as one of those destined for the university; and about this time my brother Luke, or 'the Doctor,' so called from his infancy, because being the seventh son, he had, from his infancy, been dedicated to the medical profession, came to town to walk the London Hospital, under the care of Sir William Blizard. Mr. Saumarez, brother of the Admiral Lord Saumarez, was his intimate friend. Every Saturday I could make or obtain leave, to the London Hospital trudged I. O the bliss if I was permitted to hold the plasters, or to attend the dressings. Thirty years afterwards, Mr. Saumarez retained the liveliest recollections of the extraordinary, enthusiastic blue-coat boy, and was exceedingly affected in identifying me with that boy. I became wild to be apprenticed to a surgeon. English, Latin, yea, Greek books of medicine read I incessantly. Blanchard's Latin Medical Dictionary I had nearly by heart. Briefly, it was a wild dream, which gradually blending with, gradually gave way to a rage for metaphysics, occasioned by the essays on Liberty and Necessity in Cato's Letters, and more by theology. After I had read Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, I sported infidel! but my infidel vanity never touched my heart:"
nor ever with his lips did he for a few months only support the new light given him by Voltaire.
"With my heart," says he, "I never did abandon the name of Christ."
This reached Bowyer's ears, and he sent for him: not to reason with him, as teachers and parents do too often, and by this means as often increase the vanity of these tyro-would-be-philosophers; but he took the surest mode, if not of curing, at least of checking the disease. His argument was short and forcible.
"So, sirrah, you are an infidel, are you? then I'll flog your infidelity out of you;"
and gave him the severest flogging he had ever received at his hands. This, as I have often heard Coleridge say, was the only just flogging he had ever given him: certainly, from all I ever heard of him, Bowyer was strictly a flogging master. Trollope, in his History of Christ's Hospital, page 137, says of him,
"[His] discipline was exact in the extreme, and tinctured, perhaps, with more than due severity."[8]
Coleridge, in his
Biographia Literaria
, after paying a just compliment to Bowyer as a teacher, says,
"The reader will, I trust, excuse this tribute of recollection to a man, whose severities, even now, not seldom furnish the dreams by which the blind fancy would fain interpret to the mind the painful sensation of distempered sleep, but neither lessen nor diminish the deep sense of my moral and intellectual obligations."
He had his passionate days, which the boys described as the days he wore his Passy wig (passy abbreviated from passionate). "Sirrah! I'll flog you," were words so familiar to him, that on one occasion, some female relation or friend of one of the boys entered his room, when a class stood before him and inquired for Master — ; master was no school title with Bowyer. The errand of this lady being to ask a short leave of absence for some boy, on the sudden appearance in town of his country cousin, still lingering at the door, after having been abruptly told to go, Bowyer suddenly exclaimed, "Bring that woman here, and I'll flog her!"
themes in his fifteenth year
, in verse as well as prose, marked him as a boy of great talent, but of talent only according to his own definition of it (vide
Friend
, vol. iii. edit. 1818). His verse was good, his prose powerful, and language correct, and beyond his years in depth of thought, but as yet he had not manifested, according to the same test, anything of genius. I met among some of his notes, written at the age of fifty-one, the following critique on one of his schoolboy themes:
"This theme was written at the age of fifteen: it does not contain a line that any schoolboy might not have written, and like most school-poetry, there is a putting of thoughts into verse. Yet such verses as a striving of mind and struggles after the intense and vivid, are a fair promise of better things."
The same observation might be made in the intense application of his intellectual powers in search of truth, at the time he called himself an infidel; in this struggle of mind was the "fair promise of better things." It was the preparation necessary for such a mind; the breaking up and tilling of the soil for the successful germination of the seeds of truth.
The sleeping powers of thought were roused and excited into action.
this may be considered, as entering too early into the history of his mind in boyhood: to this I reply, that the entire man so to speak, is to be seen even in the cradle of the child.
The serious may be startled at the thought of a young man passing through such an ordeal; but with him it was the exercise of his strength, in order that he might "fight the good fight," and conquer for that truth which is permanent, and is the light and the life of every one who comes into the world, and who is in earnest search of it.
In his sixteenth year he composed the allegory of "Real and Imaginary Time," first published in the Sibylline Leaves, having been accidentally omitted in the Juvenile Poems, —
"[On] the wide level of a mountain's head,
(I knew not where, but 'twas some fairy place)
Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread,
Two lovely children run an endless race,
A sister and a brother!
That far outstripped the other;
Yet ever runs she with reverted face,
And looks and listens for the boy behind;
For he, alas! is blind!
O'er rough and smooth with even step he passed,
And knows not whether he be first or last."[11]
in which may be traced the first dawnings of his genius. He pictures to himself a boy returning to school after the holidays; in his day-dreams making plans for the future, and anticipating the pleasure he is to enjoy on his return home; his vivid thoughts, and sanguine expectations "far outstripping" the reality of time as marked by the watch or almanack. Real time is personified as a blind boy steadily pursuing his path; whilst imaginary time is represented as a fleeting girl, looking back and listening for her brother whom she has outrun. Perhaps to Mr. Bowyer's excellent method of instruction may be attributed this early developement of his genius. Coleridge remarks of him,
"He was an admirable educer, no less than educator of intellect; he taught me to leave out as many epithets as would make eight syllable lines, and then ask if the exercise would not be greatly improved."
Although in this year he began to indulge in metaphysical speculations, he was wedded to verse, and many of his early poems were planned; some of which he finished, and they were published in the "Juvenile Poems," on his entry into life; but as many more were scattered among his friends, who had greatly increased in number. About this time he became acquainted with a widow lady,
"whose son," says he, "I, as upper boy, had protected, and who therefore looked up to me, and taught me what it was to have a mother. I loved her as such. She had three daughters, and of course I fell in love with the eldest. From this time to my nineteenth year, when I quitted school for Jesus, Cambridge, was the era of poetry and love."
It has been observed, that about this sixteenth year, he first developed genius, and that during this early period of his life, his mind was incessantly toiling in the pursuit of knowledge. His love of reading seemed to have increased in proportion to his acquirements, which were equally great: his representing himself as an infidel was better perhaps understood by his master, who believed it to be only puerile vanity; and therefore Coleridge considered the flogging he received on this occasion, a just and appropriate punishment; and it was so, for as a boy he had not thought deep enough on an equally important point, viz., what is Fidelity, and how easily, he particularly might mistake the genuineness of sincere
fidelity
for mere outward forms, and the simple observance of customs. Perhaps I might have been disposed to pass over this era with a slighter notice, which he in his simplicity of character thought it right to record. He was always honest in every thing concerning himself, and never spared self-accusation, often, when not understood, to his own injury. He never from his boyhood to his latest life, received kindness without grateful feelings, and, when he believed it coupled with love, without the deepest sense of its value; and if the person possessed sensibility and taste, he repaid it tenfold. This was the experience of nearly twenty years intimate knowledge of his character.
His description of his first love was that of a young poet, recording the first era of the passion, the fleeting dream of his youth — but not that love which he afterwards records in the
Geneviève
when he says,
"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of love,
And feed his sacred flame."
First love, so seldom the mature love of future days, is a flower of premature growth and developement, on which fancy exercises itself in castle-building, and is in unison with that age when youth flings his limbs about in the air, as an exercise to rid himself of the superfluous volition, the accumulation of which gives him a sensation of uneasiness; and these simple and unreserved accounts of Coleridge's infidelity, and also of his first love-fit, should be put down merely as mental exercises. The lines above quoted, belong, I have said, to the maturer mind; they are thoughts which, unlike the sportive dace on the surface of some calm lake, may rather be compared to the inhabitants of the deep waters beneath.
"How often will the loving heart and imaginative spirit of a young man mistake the projected creature of his own moral yearning, seen in the reflecting surface of the first not repulsive or vulgar female who treats him affectionately, for the realization of his idea. Reversing the order of the Genesis, he believes the female the original, and the outward reality and impressment of the self-constructed image, of the ideal! He most sincerely supposes himself in love — even in cases where the mistake might have been suspected by one curious fact — that his strongest emotions on love, were when absent from the imagined object. But the time comes, or may come, when the same feeling exists equally in presence and absence, in health and in sickness; when he verily is in love. And now he knows himself to be so, by the so being — he can even prove it to his own mind by his certainty, his intuition of the essential difference, as actually as it is uncommunicable, between it and its previous subjective counterfeits, and anticipations. Even so it is with friends. — O it is melancholy to think how the very forms and geniality of my affections, my belief of obligation, consequent gratitude and anxious sense of duty were wasted on the shadows of friendship. With few exceptions, I can almost say, that till I came to H — — , I never found what friends were — and doubtless, in more than one instance, I sacrificed substances who loved me, for semblances who were well pleased that I should love them, but who never loved nor inwardly respected ought but themselves. The distinction between the friends and the love is, that the latter we discover by itself to be, alone itself — for it is in its nature unique and exclusive. (See Improvvisatore in the Amulet of 1826 or 7).
"But of the former we discover the genuineness by comparison and experience — the reason is obvious — in the instances in which the person imagined himself to be in love with another (I use this phrase 'be in love with' for the want of any other; for, in fact, from the absence in our language of any appropriate exponent of the thing meant), it is a delusion in toto. But, in the other instance, the one half (i.e. the person's own feelings and sense of duty with acts accordant) remains the same (ex. gr. S.T.C. could not feel more deeply, nor from abatement of nervous life by age and sickness so ardently) he could not feel, think, and act with a more entire devotion, to I.G. or to H.G. than he did to W.W. and to R.S., yet the latter were and remain most honourable to his judgment. [Their] characters, as moral and intellectual beings, give a dignity to his devotion; and the imperishable consciousness of his devout and almost enthusiastic attachment to them, still sanctifies their names, and makes the men holy and revered to him."[12]
Had Coleridge in early or even in later life paid an insincere, because undeserved, deference to outward show, and to the surface opinions counterfeiting depth, so attractive to the superficial observer — added to which, had he possessed a portion of that self-regarding policy which frequently aids success — he might have been idolized where he was neglected, and rewarded, if I might so profane this word, with high worldly honours in other quarters. But it was otherwise; and could a crown of gold have been offered him for the crown of glory of which he was in earnest search, he would have refused the exchange. The difference between time and eternity had already taken root, and he felt the mighty import of these words too strongly to have lost sight of their practical use; all that his health and powers would allow him to acquire he did acquire, and freely gave all he had for the benefit of others.
He says,
"From the exuberance of my animal spirits, when I had burst forth from my misery and moping and the indiscretions resulting from those spirits — ex. gr. swimming over the New River in my clothes, and remaining in them; — full half the time from seventeen to eighteen was passed in the sick-ward of Christ's Hospital, afflicted with jaundice and rheumatic fever."
From these indiscretions and their consequences may be dated all his bodily sufferings in future life: in short, rheumatism sadly afflicting him, while the remedies only slightly alleviated his sufferings, without hope of a permanent cure; though confined to his bed, his mind, ever active, still allowed him time to continue the exercise of his intellectual powers, and afforded him leisure for contemplation. Medical men are too often called upon to witness the effects of acute rheumatism in the young subject: in some, the attack is on the heart, and its consequences are immediate; in others, it leaves behind bodily sufferings, which may indeed be palliated, but terminate only in a lingering dissolution.
I have often heard Coleridge express regret that he had not cultivated mathematics, which he believed would have been of important use in life, particularly had he arrived so far as to have mastered the higher calculus; but he was, by an oversight of the mathematical master, stopped on the threshold. When he was commencing Euclid, among some of its first axioms came this: — "A line is length without breadth." "How can that be?" said the scholar, (Coleridge); "A line must have some breadth, be it ever so thin." This roused the master's indignation at the impertinence of the scholar, which was instantly answered by a box on the ear, and the words, hastily uttered, "Go along, you silly fellow;" and here ended his first tuition, or lecture.
second efforts afterwards were not more successful; so that he was destined to remain ignorant of these exercises of the logic of the understanding.
Indeed his logical powers were so stupendous, from boyhood, as never to require such drilling. Bowyer, his classical master, was too skilful in the management of youth, and too much interested in the success of his scholars to overlook what was best fitted for them. He exercised their logical powers in acquiring and comparing the different classics. On him, as a teacher, Coleridge loved to dwell; and, with his grateful feelings, ever ready to acknowledge the sense of his obligations to him, particularly those relating to his mental improvement, he has, in his
Biog. Lit
. vol. i. p. 7, expressed himself in these words:
"He early moulded my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of Virgil to Ovid. He habituated me to compare Lucretius, (in such extracts as I then read,) Terence, and, above all, the chaster poems of Catullus, not only with the Roman poets of the, so called, silver and brazen ages; but with even those of the Augustan æra: and, on grounds of plain sense and universal logic, to see and assert the superiority of the former in the truth and nativeness, both of their thoughts and diction. At the same time that we were studying the Greek tragic poets, he made us read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons; and they were lessons too, which required most time and trouble to bring up so as to escape his censure. I learnt from him that Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes."
In early life he was remarkably joyous; nature had blessed him with a buoyancy of spirits, and even when suffering, he deceived the partial observer. He delighted many of the strangers he met in his saunterings through the cloisters, arrested and riveted the attention of the passer by, whom, like his "Ancient Mariner," he held by a spell. His schoolfellow, Lamb, has mentioned him, when under the influence of this power, as the delight of his auditors. In the Elia, he says,
"[Come] back into memory like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies, with hope, like a fiery column before thee, the dark pillar not yet turned ... How have I seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration, (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the mirandula,) to hear thee unfold, in deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Iamblichus[14] or Plotinus, (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts); or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar, while the walls of the old Grey-Friars re-echoed to the accents."
was not prepared to sympathise in these flights, considering them subversive of the dignity of a Grecian.
Middleton was then on the threshold of the College, and lads in this situation seemed called upon, to preserve with dignity their honours, and with more outward forms than suited their age. This at the time rendered them stiff and unfamiliar, so much so, that within the walls, and in the neighbourhood, it was mistaken for pride, and the words "Proud as a Grecian," were proverbial. These boys had the dignity of their rising prospects therefore to support — they were the aristocracy of the school. This was a task ill suited to Coleridge; and his flights of fancy, as Lamb termed them, would only produce a shrug of Middleton's shoulders, and a dread at the prospect of the falling dignity of the school.
Poem, in Mr. Trollope's
History of Christ's Hospital, and its companion that of Coleridge, characterize the two youths, and plainly point out that the selection of these poems was influenced more by a merit belonging purely to talent than from any display of genius in either. The verses of Middleton are more indicative of strength than of power; they are the verses of a well-tutored youth, of commanding talents. Those of Coleridge show more of fancy, but do not exhibit the power he possessed at that age, which will be seen by comparing this poem with many written by him at an earlier period, and now published among his
Juvenile Poems
. Middleton being older than Coleridge was elected first, viz. 26th September, 1788, to Pembroke College, Cambridge.
left Christ's Hospital for Jesus' College, Cambridge, 7th September, 1790,
taking leave of his school-fellows in the following sonnet: —
Farewell, parental scenes! a sad farewell!
To you my grateful heart still fondly clings,
Tho' fluttering round on Fancy's burnish'd wings,
Her tales of future joy Hope loves to tell.
Adieu, adieu! ye much loved cloisters pale!
Ah! would those happy days return again,
When 'neath your arches, free from every stain,
I heard of guilt, and wonder'd at the tale!
Dear haunts! where oft my simple lays I sang,
Listening meanwhile the echoings of my feet,
Lingering I quit you, with as great a pang,
As when ere while, my weeping childhood, torn
By early sorrow from my native seat,
Mingled its tears with hers — my widow'd parent lorn.
Poetical Works
, vol. i. p. 31.
Bishop Berkeley, in his work (
Siris
) commences with a dissertation on Tar Water, and ends with the Trinity. The Rev. John Coleridge commences his work, entitled "A miscellaneous Dissertation arising from the 17th and 18th chapters of the Book of Judges," with a well written preface on the Bible, and ends with an advertisement of his school, and his method of teaching Latin.
In 1809, the above whimsical stories were related to me by a gentleman, born in the town of Ottery, and by marriage closely related to the Rev. John Coleridge. While Coleridge resided at Highgate, he also repeated the stories which had grown up with him from boyhood as here related, himself believing them true; but a near relation has lately assured the writer, that some of these stories are told of another most respectable clergyman, residing at that time in the neighbourhood, and
he
believes that they properly belong to him. It is commonly remarked that very studious men, either from inattention, or from ignorance of the conventional forms of society, are regardless of what passes before them. Paying, perhaps, too much attention to their inward feelings or thoughts, seemingly day-dreaming — and this may frequently give rise to the stories to be found in many towns besides Ottery. Still, however, thoughtful and contemplative persons are often the quickest observers of the weaknesses of human nature, and yet as they usually make the greatest allowances for every infirmity, they are often impartial judges, and judicious counsellors. The Rev. John Coleridge, though sometimes an absent man, was a most valuable pastor, and on all fitting occasions a good man of business, having conducted several difficult matters of controversy for his parish with great satisfaction to the parties.
Such at least were the recollections of this extraordinary boy of seven years of age.
Quale — quare — quidditive.
He had, before he was six years old, read three times through the
Arabian Nights
, or rather one of the volumes. — See "
The Friend
," vol. i. p. 252, ed. 1818.
I insert a similar observation on his feelings when he first left home.
"When I was first plucked up and transplanted from my birth place and family, at the death of my dear father, whose revered image has ever survived in my mind, to make me know what the emotions and affections of a son are, and how ill a father's place is likely to be supplied by any other relation. Providence (it has often occurred to me) gave the first intimation, that it was my lot, and that it was best for me, to make or find my way of life a detached individual, a Terræ Filius, who was to ask love or service of no one on any more specific relation than that of being a man, and as such to take my chance for the free charities of humanity."
Whatever might have been his habits in boyhood, in manhood he was
scrupulously
clean in his person, and especially took great care of his hands by frequent ablutions. In his dress also he was as cleanly as the liberal use of snuff would permit, though the clothes-brush was often in requisition to remove the wasted snuff. "Snuff," he would facetiously say, "was the final cause of the nose, though troublesome and expensive in its use.
"Jemmy Bowyer," as he was familiarly called by Coleridge and Lamb, might not inaptly be termed the "plagosus orbilius" of Christ's Hospital.
In his biographical sketch of his literary life, he informs us that he had translated the eight Hymns of Synesius from the Greek, into English Anacreontica, before his fifteenth year.
... the childhood shews the man, As morning shews the day ...
Paradise Regained
, book iv. v. 220.
Aldine Edition, Vol. i. p. 6. — Pickering, London, 1834.
Extract of a note written Dec. 1829.
"Thought and attention very different things. — I never expected the German (viz. selbst-mühige Erzeugung dessen, wovon meine Rede war) from the readers of the Friend. — I did expect the latter, and was disappointed."
"This is a most important distinction, and in the new light afforded by it to my mind, I see more plainly why mathematics cannot be a substitute for Logic, much less for Metaphysics — i.e. transcendental Logic, and why therefore Cambridge has produced so few men of genius and original power since the time of Newton. — Not only it does not call forth the balancing and discriminating powers (that I saw long ago), but it requires only attention, not thought or self-production.
"In a long-brief Dream-life of regretted regrets, I still find a noticeable space marked out by the Regret of having neglected the Mathematical Sciences. No week, few days pass unhaunted by a fresh conviction of the truth involved in the Platonic Superstition over the Portal of Philosophy,
But surely Philosophy hath scarcely sustained more detriment by its alienation from mathematics."
MS. Note.
"In my friendless wanderings on our leave-days, i.e. the Christ Hospital phrase, not for holidays altogether, but for those on which the boys are permitted to go beyond the precincts of the school (for I was an orphan, and had scarce any connexions in London), highly was I delighted, if any passenger, especially if he drest in black, would enter into conversation with me; for soon I found the means of directing it to my favourite subjects —
Of Providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate, Fix'd fate, free will, fore-knowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."
Of Providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate, Fix'd fate, free will, fore-knowledge absolute, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."
The upper boys of the school selected for the University are so termed, though wearing the same coloured dress, but made of more costly materials.
In a note on the
History
, p. 192, Mr. Trollope makes the following observation:
"From this book" (a book in which the boys were allowed to copy their verses when considered good) "the verses referred to in the text were inscribed."
They will be found in the
Literary Remains,
vol. i, p.33. Trollope says,
"These verses are copied not as one of the best, but of the earliest productions of the writer."
Entered at Jesus' College, Feb. 5th, 1791, at the age of 19. — College Books.
[Chapter II]
Coleridge's First Entry at Jesus' College — His Simplicity and Want of Worldly Tact — Anecdotes and Different Accounts of Him During his Residence at College — Intimacy with Middleton — with Southey — Quits College for Bristol.
At Cambridge, whither his reputation had travelled before him, high hopes and fair promises of success were entertained by his young friends and relations. He was considered by the "Blues," as they are familiarly termed, one from whom they were to derive great immediate honour, which for a short period, however, was deferred. Individual genius has a cycle of its own, and moves only in that path, or by the powers influencing it. Genius has been properly defined
prospective
, talent on the contrary
retrospective
: genius is creative, and lives much in the future, and in its passage or progress may make use of the labours of talent.
"I have been in the habit," says Coleridge, "of considering the qualities of intellect, the comparative eminence in which characterizes individuals and even countries, under four kinds, — genius, talent, sense, and cleverness. The first I use in the sense of most general acceptance, as the faculty which adds to the existing stock of power and knowledge by new views, new combinations, by discoveries not accidental, but anticipated, or resulting from anticipation."
Friend
,
. iii. p. 85, edit. 1818
.
Coleridge left school with great anticipation of success from all who knew him, for his character for scholarship, and extraordinary accounts of his genius had preceded him. He carried with him too the same childlike simplicity which he had from a boy, and which he retained even to his latest hours. His first step was to involve himself in much misery, and which followed him in after life, as the sequel will evidence. On his arrival at College he was accosted by a polite upholsterer, requesting to be permitted to furnish his rooms. The next question was, "How would you like to have them furnished?" The answer was prompt and innocent enough, "Just as you please, Sir!" — thinking the individual employed by the College. The rooms were therefore furnished according to the taste of the artizan, and the bill presented to the astonished Coleridge. Debt was to him at all times a thing he most dreaded, and he never had the courage to face it.
once, and once only, witnessed a painful scene of this kind, which occurred from mistaking a letter on ordinary business for an application for money
. Thirty years afterwards, I heard that these College debts were about one hundred pounds! Under one hundred pounds I believe to have been the amount of his sinnings; but report exceeded this to something which might have taxed his character beyond imprudence, or mere want of thought. Had he, in addition to his father's simplicity, possessed the worldly circumspection of his mother, he might have avoided these and many other vexations; but he went to the University wholly unprepared for a College life, having hitherto chiefly existed in his own
inward
being, and in his poetical imagination, on which he had fed.
to proceed. Coleridge's own account is, that while Middleton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, remained at Pembroke, he "worked with him and was industrious, read hard, and obtained the prize for the Greek Ode,"
&c. It has been stated, that he was locked up in his room to write this Ode; but this is not the fact. Many stories were afloat, and many exaggerations were circulated and believed, of his great want of attention to College discipline, and of perseverance in his studies, and every failure, or apparent failure, was attributed to these causes.
Often has he repeated the following story of Middleton, and perhaps this story gave birth to the report. They had agreed to read together in the evening, and were not to hold any conversation. Coleridge went to Pembroke and found Middleton intent on his book, having on a long pair of boots reaching to the knees, and beside him, on a chair, next to the one he was sitting on, a pistol. Coleridge had scarcely sat down before he was startled by the report of the pistol. "Did you see that?" said Middleton. "See what?" said Coleridge. "That rat I just sent into its hole again — did you feel the shot? It was to defend my legs," continued Middleton, "I put on these boots. I am fighting with these rats for my books, which, without some prevention, I shall have devoured."
There is an anecdote related of Coleridge while at College, and which I have heard him frequently repeat, when called upon to vouch for its truth. His fellow students had amused themselves, when he was in attendance at Lecture, by stealing a portion of the tail of his gown, and which they had repeated so frequently, as to shorten it to the length of a spencer. Crossing the quadrangle one day with these remains at his back, and his appearance not being in collegiate trim, the Master of Jesus' College, who was ever kind to him, and overlooked all little inattentions to appearances, accosted him smartly on this occasion — "Mr. Coleridge! Mr. Coleridge! when will you get rid of that shameful gown?" Coleridge, turning his head, and casting his eyes over his shoulders, as if observing its length, or rather want of length, replied in as courteous a manner as words of such a character would permit, "Why, Sir, I think I've got rid of the greatest part of it already!" Such were Coleridge's peculiarities, which were sometimes construed into irregularities; but through his whole life, attracting notice by his splendid genius, he fell too often under the observation of men who busied themselves in magnifying small things, and minifying large ones.
About this period, that Volcano, in which all the worst passions of men were collected, and which had been for some time emitting its black smoke, at length exploded and rent society asunder. The shock was felt throughout Europe; each party was over-excited, and their minds enthralled by a new slavery — the one shouting out the blessings of liberty and equality — the other execrating them, and prophesying the consequences that were to follow:
"There's no philosopher but sees
That rage and fear are one disease;
Tho' that may burn, and this may freeze,
They're both alike tho ague."
Mad Ox.
Combustibles composed of such ardent and evil spirits soon blaze out; yet the evil does not stop when the blaze has ceased; it leaves an excitement which is constantly disclosing itself in a restless morbid vanity, a craving for distinction, and a love of applause, in its way as dangerous as the thirst of gain, and the worship of the mammon of unrighteousness.
Alas! the circulation of such anecdotes as have been here related of Coleridge when at College, and his inattention to some of the minor forms of discipline, were sufficient for illnatured persons to transform into serious offences, particularly when coupled with the disappointed hopes of zealous friends. At this period, in which all men who were not senseless, or so indifferent as nearly to be senseless, particularly the young men of our Universities, all embraced a party, and arranged themselves under their different banners. When I now look around me, and see men who have risen to the highest offices of the different professions, in the church, the law, or in physic, formerly only known by the name of Citizen John, &c. &c.,
now
my Lord so and so, or your Grace the — — , it seems like a dream, or at least a world of fleeting shadows. Sir James Mackintosh, in a letter to Mr. Sharp, states what he conceived to be the errors of both parties, so far as they arose from errors of judgment:
"The opposition mistook the moral character of the revolution; the ministers mistook its force: and both parties, from pique, resentment, pride, habit, and obstinacy, persisted in acting on these mistakes after they were disabused by experience. Mr. Burke alone avoided both these fatal mistakes. He saw both the malignity and the strength of the revolution. But where there was wisdom to discover the truth, there was not power, and perhaps there was not practical skill, to make that wisdom available for the salvation of Europe. — Diis aliter visum! My fortune has been in some respects very singular. [I] have lately read the lives and private correspondence of some of the most memorable men in different countries of Europe, who are lately dead.[4] Klopstock, Kant, Lavater, Alfieri, they were all filled with joy and hope by the French revolution — they clung to it for a longer or a shorter time — they were compelled to relinquish their illusions. The disappointment of all was bitter, but it showed itself in various modes, according to the variety of their characters. The series of passions growing out of that disappointment, was the not very remote cause of the death of Lavater. In the midst of society, Alfieri buried himself in misanthropic solitude; and the shock, which awakened him from the dreams of enthusiasm, darkened and shortened his days. In the mean time the multitude, comprehending not only those who have neither ardour of sensibility, nor compass of understanding to give weight to their suffrage, but those also whom accident had not brought into close and perpetual contact with the events, were insensibly detached from the revolution; and, before they were well aware that they had quitted their old position, they found themselves at the antipodes."
The excitement which this state of things produced might have been highly advantageous to some, and even quickened their intellectual powers, particularly those destined either for the bar or the senate, but certainly not those intended for the church.
revolution
and its consequences engrossed the thoughts of all men too much for the calmer pursuits of life; and the minds of the young especially were so absorbed by passing temporal events, as to leave but little time for the contemplation of the deeper and more serious affairs of futurity. However, Coleridge appears in his political opinions to have leaned too much to the side of democracy; but this was so prevalent and so much a fashion, particularly in those filled with enthusiasm, that it seemed a natural consequence in any young man possessing even ordinary intellect. Middleton, his friend, passed on without attaching himself to either party. His manners (as I have before noticed) were austere and sedate. He steadily persevered, without deviation, in his studies, though chance did not always favour him, nor crown him with the success he merited. He was a good and amiable man, and an affectionate friend; but early want of success in his academical exertions rendering him melancholy, this by sympathy was soon imparted to his friend. After Middleton's departure, the keen desire which Coleridge previously felt for the possession of honours abated, and he became indifferent to them — he might at this time have been idle, but never vicious. The men who often appear to be the gayest and lightest of heart, are too frequently melancholic; and it is a well-known fact, that the best comic actors are the greatest sufferers from this malady, as if it seemed an essential qualification for that department of histrionic excellence, in which the greatest animal spirits are personated and successfully imitated. Coleridge, at this period, delighted in boyish tricks, which others were to execute. I remember a fellow-collegiate recalling to his memory an exploit of which he was the planner, and a late Lord Chancellor the executor. It was this: a train of gunpowder was to be laid on two of the neatly shaven lawns of St. John's and Trinity Colleges, in such a manner, that, when set on fire, the singed grass would exhibit the ominous words, Liberty and Equality, which, with able ladlike dexterity, was duly performed.
The writer of the
College Reminiscences
in the
Gentleman's Magazine,
December, 1834, a first-form boy with Coleridge at Christ's Hospital, was well acquainted with his habits, and speaks of his having gained the gold medal in his freshman's year for the Greek Ode, but does not notice his having been locked up in his room for that purpose.
"In his second year he stood for the Craven scholarship — a university scholarship, for which under-graduates of any standing are entitled to become candidates. This was in the winter of 1792. [Out] of sixteen or eighteen competitors, a selection of four were to contend for the prize, and these four were Dr. Butler, late head-master of Shrewsbury, Dr. Keate, the late head-master of Eton[6], Dr. Bethell, the present Bishop of Bangor, and Coleridge. Dr. Butler was the successful candidate."
Coleridge always spoke of this decision as having been in every way just, and due to Butler's merit as a clever and industrious scholar.
"But pause a moment," says this writer, "in Coleridge's History, and think of him at this period! Butler! Keate Bethell! and Coleridge! How different the career of each in future life! O Coleridge, through what strange paths did the meteor of genius lead thee! Pause a moment, ye distinguished men! and deem it not the least bright spot in your happier career, that you and Coleridge were once rivals, and for a moment running abreast in the pursuit of honour. I believe that his disappointment at this crisis damped his ardour. Unfortunately, at that period, there was no classical tripos; so that, if a person did not obtain the classical medal, he was thrown back among the totally undistinguished; and it was not allowable to become a candidate for the classical medal, unless you had taken a respectable degree in mathematics. Coleridge had not the least taste for these, and here his case was hopeless; so that he despaired of a Fellowship, and gave up what in his heart he coveted — college honours and a college life. He had seen Middleton (late Bishop of Calcutta) quit Pembroke under similar circumstances. Not quite similar, because Middleton had studied mathematics so as to take a respectable degree, and to enable him to try for the medal; but he failed, and therefore all hopes failed of a Fellowship — most fortunately, as it proved in after-life, for Middleton, though he mourned at the time most deeply, and exclaimed — 'I am Middleton, which is another name for misfortune!'
That which Middleton deemed a misfortune drew him from the cobwebs of a college library to the active energies of a useful and honoured life."'There is a Providence which shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.'
'There is a Providence which shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.'
If, as Shakespeare observes, "there be a providence which shapes our ends," such words as "fortunate" or "unfortunate," in their customary use, will be found, on closer attention, and deeper thought, worthless and full of error. We have each our part allotted to us in the great drama of life.
But to return to Coleridge.
"When he quitted college, which he did before he had taken a degree, in a moment of mad-cap caprice, and in an inauspicious hour!
Short, but deep and heartfelt reminiscence! In a Literary Life of himself, this short memorial is all that Coleridge gives of his happy days at college. Say not that he did not obtain, and did not wish to obtain, classical honours! [He] did obtain them, and was eagerly ambitious of them[7]; but he did not bend to that discipline which was to qualify him for the whole course. He was very studious, but his reading was desultory and capricious. He took little exercise merely for the sake of exercise; but he was ready at any time to unbend his mind in conversation; and, for the sake of this, his room (the ground-floor room on the right hand of the staircase facing the great gate,) was a constant rendezvous of conversation-loving friends; I will not call them loungers, for they did not call to kill time, but to enjoy it. What evenings have I spent in those rooms! What little suppers, or sizings, as they were called, have I enjoyed; when Æschylus, and Plato, and Thucydides were pushed aside, with a pile of lexicons, &c. to discuss the pamphlets of the day. Ever and anon, a pamphlet issued from the pen of Burke. There was no need of having the book before us. Coleridge had read it in the morning, and in the evening he would repeat whole pages verbatim."'When,' as Coleridge says, 'I left the friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever-honoured Jesus' College, Cambridge.'
'When,' as Coleridge says, 'I left the friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever-honoured Jesus' College, Cambridge.'
came another disturbing cause, which altered the course of his path in life, and this was Frend's trial
.
"During it," to resume the quotation, "pamphlets swarmed from the press. Coleridge had read them all; and in the evening, with our negus, we had them vivâ voce gloriously."
Coleridge has recorded that he was a Socinian till twenty-five. Be not startled, courteous reader! nor ye who knew him only in his later life, if the impetuous zeal and ardour of his mind in early youth led him somewhat wide of those fixed principles which he adopted in riper years.
To quote his own words, written soon after he left college, and addressed to the late Rev. George Coleridge,
"If aught of error or intemperate truth
Should meet thine ear, think thou that riper age
Will calm it down, and let thy love forgive it!"
There is one incident very characteristic of him, which took place during this trial. The trial was observed by Coleridge, to be going against Frend, when some observation or speech was made in his favour; a dying hope thrown out as it appeared to Coleridge who, in the midst of the Senate, whilst sitting on one of the benches, extended his hands and clapped them. The Proctor in a loud voice demanded who had committed this indecorum. Silence ensued. The Proctor in an elevated tone, said to a young man sitting near Coleridge, "'Twas you, sir!" The reply was as prompt as the accusation; for, immediately holding out the stump of his right arm, it appeared that he had lost his hand, — "I would, sir," said he, "that I had the power." — That no innocent person should incur blame, Coleridge went directly afterwards to the Proctor, who told him that he saw him clap his hands, but fixed on this person who he knew had not the power. "You have had," said he, "a narrow escape."
The opinions of youth are often treated too seriously. The matter of most importance to ascertain when they need correction, is, whether in these opinions they are
sincere
; at all events, the outbursts of youth are not to be visited as veteran decisions; and when they differ from
received
opinions, the advice offered should be tempered with kindliness of feeling and sympathy even with their failings. Unfortunately for Coleridge, however, he was to be exempted from those allowances made for others, and was most painfully neglected by those who ought to have sympathized with, and supported him; he was left "to chase chance-started friendships."
Coleridge possessed a mind remarkably sensitive, so much so, as at times to divest him of that mental courage so necessary in a world full of vicissitude and painful trial; and this deficiency, though of short duration, was occasionally observed in early life.
the departure of Middleton
, to whom he had always looked up, whose success he had considered morally certain, and whose unexpected failure was therefore the more painful to his feelings, he became desponding, and, in addition, vexed and fretted by the college debts, he was overtaken by that inward grief, the product of fear, which he, in after life, so painfully described in his
Ode to Dejection
: —
"A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear."
Such "viper thoughts" did at this time coil around his mind, and were for him "Reality's dark Dream." In this state of mind he suddenly left Cambridge for London, and strolled about the streets till night came on, and then rested himself on the steps of a house in Chancery Lane, in a reverie of tumultuous feelings, speculating on the future. In this situation, overwhelmed with his own painful thoughts, and in misery himself, he had now to contend with the misery of others — for he was accosted by various kinds of beggars importuning him for money, and forcing on him their real or pretended sorrows. To these applicants he emptied his pockets of his remaining cash. Walking along Chancery Lane in the morning, he noticed a bill posted on the wall, "Wanted a few smart lads for the 15th, Elliot's Light Dragoons;" — he paused a moment, and said to himself,
"Well, I have had all my life a violent antipathy to soldiers and horses, the sooner I can cure myself of these absurd prejudices the better, and I will enlist in this regiment."
Forthwith he went as directed to the place of enlistment. On his arrival, he was accosted by an old sergeant, with a remarkably benevolent countenance, to whom he stated his wish. The old man looking at him attentively, asked him if he had been in bed? On being answered in the negative, he desired him to take his, made him breakfast, and bade him rest himself awhile, which he did. This feeling sergeant finding him refreshed in his body, but still suffering apparently from melancholy, in kind words begged him to be of good cheer, and consider well the step he was about to take; gave him half a guinea, which he was to repay at his convenience, with a desire at the same time that he would go to the play, and shake off his melancholy, and not return to him. The first part of the advice Coleridge attended to, but returned after the play to the quarters he had left. At the sight of him, this kind-hearted man burst into tears — "Then it must be so," said he. This sudden and unexpected sympathy from an entire stranger deeply affected Coleridge, and nearly shook his resolution; still considering the die was cast, and that he could not in honour even to the sergeant, without implicating him, retreat, he preserved his secret, and after a short chat, they retired to rest.
In the morning, the sergeant, not unmindful of his duty to his sovereign, mustered his recruits, and Coleridge, with his new comrades, was marched to Reading. On his arrival at the quarters of the regiment, the general of the district inspected the recruits, and looking hard at Coleridge with a military air, enquired, "What's your name, sir?" "Comberbach," (the name he had assumed.) "What do you come here for, sir?" as if doubting whether he had any business there. "Sir," said Coleridge, "for what most other persons come, to be made a soldier." "Do you think," said the general, "you can run a Frenchman through the body?" "I do not know," replied Coleridge, "as I never tried, but I'll let a Frenchman run me through the body before I'll run away." "That will do," said the general; and Coleridge was turned into the ranks.
The same amiable and benevolent conduct which was so interwoven in his nature, soon made him friends, and his new comrades vied with each other in their endeavours to be useful to him; and being, as before described, rather helpless, he required the assistance of his fellow-soldiers. They cleaned his horse, attended particularly to its heels, and to the accoutrements. At this time he frequently complained of a pain at the pit of his stomach, accompanied with sickness, which totally prevented his stooping, and in consequence he could never arrive at the power of bending his body to rub the heels of his horse, which alone was sufficient to make him dependent on his comrades;
it should be observed that he on his part was ever willing to assist them by being their amanuensis when one was required, and wrote all their letters to their sweethearts and wives.
It appears that he never advanced beyond the awkward squad, and that the drill-sergeant had little hope of his progress from the necessary warnings he gave to the rest of the troop, even to this same squad to which he belonged; and, though his awkward manoeuvres were well understood,
sergeant would vociferously exclaim, "Take care of that Comberbach,
take care of him, for he will ride over you," and other such complimentary warnings. From the notice that one of his officers took of him, he excited, for a short time, the jealousy of some of his companions. When in the street, he walked behind this officer as an orderly, but when out of town they walked abreast, and his comrades not understanding how a soldier in the awkward squad merited this distinction, thought it a neglect of themselves, which, for the time, produced some additional discomfort to Coleridge.
believe this officer to have been Capt. Ogle,
who I think visited him in after life at Highgate. It seems that his attention had been drawn to Coleridge in consequence of discovering the following sentence in the stables, written in pencil, "Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem!" but his more immediate discovery arose from a young man who had left Cambridge for the army, and in his road through Reading to join his regiment, met Coleridge in the street in his Dragoon's dress, who was about to pass him, but, said he,
"No, Coleridge, this will not do, we have been seeking you these six months; I must and will converse with you, and have no hesitation in declaring that I shall immediately inform your friends that I have found you."
This led to Coleridge's return to Cambridge. The same story is also related and made the ground work of some scene in a novel, without the names, by his early friend, Charles Lloyd — he who was included by Canning in the Anti-jacobin with Coleridge, Mr. Southey, and Lamb. He returned to Cambridge, but did not long remain there; and quitted it without taking a degree.
It has been observed, that men of genius move in orbits of their own; and seem deprived of that free will which permits the mere man of talent steadily to pursue the beaten path. Coleridge had very early pictured to himself many of the advantages of mechanical employment, its immunities and exemptions from the sufferings consequent on the laborious exercise of
thought
; but yet he never shrank from the task apparently allotted to him; he was made to soar and not to creep; even as a young man, his acquirements were far beyond the age in which he lived. With his amiable qualities, and early love of domestic life, he would have been well content to tread an humbler path, but it was otherwise ordained!
However excellent for the many, the system adopted by our universities was ill suited for a mind like Coleridge's, and there were some who felt that a College routine was not the kind of education which would best evolve, cultivate, and bring into training powers so
unique
. It has been repeated,
ad nauseam
, that great minds will not descend to the industrious accumulation of those acquirements best suited to fit them for independence. To say that Coleridge would not
condescend
would be a calumny, — nay, when his health permitted, he would drudge and work more laboriously at some of the mechanical parts of literature, than any man I ever knew. To speak detractingly of great and good men is frequently the result of malice combined with egotism. Though it would be injustice not to admit that he has had warm admirers and deeply affectionate friends, it is much to be regretted that there have been persons who have strangely maligned Coleridge, and who have attributed to him vices of which he was innocent. Had these vices existed, they would not have found any unfair extenuation in this memoir, nor would they have been passed over without notice. In answer to calumnies at that time in circulation, (and with sorrow and just indignation it is added that these reports originated with some who called themselves his friends; but, alas! most false and hypocritical!) the following minute from his notes is quoted:
"My academic adventures and indiscretions must have seemed unpardonable sins," that is, as they were related by the tale-bearers and gossips of the day. "I mention these," adds he, "because the only immoralities that can without the grossest slander be laid to my charge, were all comprised within the space of the last two years of my College life. As I went to Cambridge innocent, so I dare affirm, from the first week of my acquaintance with Robert Southey to this hour, Southey himself cannot stand more clear of all intention at violations of the moral law: but, in fact, even during my career at Jesus, the heaviest of my offences consisted in the folly of assuming the show of vices, from which I was all but free, and which in the comparatively few exceptions left loathing and self-disgust on my mind. [Were] I, indeed, to fix on that week of my existence, in which my moral being would have presented to a pitying guardian angel the most interesting spectacle, it would be that very week[13] in London, in which I was believed by my family to have abandoned myself to debauchery of all kinds, and thus to have involved myself in disreputable pecuniary embarrassments. God knows, so intense was my mental anguish, that during the whole time I was physically incapable even of a desire. My whole body seemed stunned and insensate, from excess of inward suffering — my debts were the cause, not the effect; but that I know there can be no substitute for a father, I should say, — surely, surely, the innocence of my whole pre and post academic life, my early distinction, and even the fact, that my Cambridge extravagations did not lose me, nor cool for me, the esteem and regard of a single fellow collegiate, might have obtained an amnesty from worse transgressions."
Coleridge, who had desponded at the fate of Middleton, after the unsuccessful attempts he made to obtain a fellowship, lost all hope of procuring an income from the college, and as, through the instrumentality of Frend, with whom an intimacy had now taken place, he had been converted to what in these days is called Unitarianism, he was too conscientious to take orders and enter the Established Church. These circumstances opened to him new views, and effected a complete change in his course of life, and thus his former objects and plans were set aside. The friendship between Coleridge and Southey having greatly increased, and still continuing to increase, and Coleridge being easily led by the affection of those he loved, for which he had a constant yearning, determined to follow literature in future life as a profession, that appearing to him the only source of obtaining an honourable livelihood.
Here there was no "mad caprice," but he calmly decided to leave Cambridge and join Southey in his plans for the future, and commence the profession on which they had mutually agreed. He went to Oxford to visit Mr. Southey, and thence to Wales, and thence to Bristol (Mr. Southey's native place), at which city they conjointly commenced their career in authorship, and for the first few months shared the same room.
The times were still tumultuous; for although the great hurricane of the revolution ceased abroad, yet, like mighty waters that had been once agitated by a storm, tranquillity was not restored, nor was there any prospect of an immediate calm. The
Habeas Corpus
act was at this time suspended, and the minister of that day, Mr. Pitt, had struck the panic of property among the wealthy and affluent. During the time of danger, when surrounded by government emissaries, these youthful poets gave lectures on politics, and that with impunity, to crowded audiences. Coleridge met with one interruption only, and that from a hired partizan who had assayed a disturbance at one of these lectures, in order to implicate him and his party, and by this means to effect, if possible, their incarceration. The gentleman who mentioned this in the presence of Coleridge (when with me at Highgate) said — He (Coleridge) had commenced his lecture when this intended disturber of the peace was heard uttering noisy words at the foot of the stairs, where the fee of admission into the room was to be paid. The receiver of the money on the alert ascended the stairs and informed Coleridge of the man's insolence and his determination not to pay for his admission. In the midst of the lecture Coleridge stopped, and said loud enough to be heard by the individual, that before the intruder "kicked up a dust, he would surely down with the dust," and desired the man to admit him. The individual had not long been in the room before he began hissing, this was succeeded by loud claps from Coleridge's party, which continued for a few minutes, but at last they grew so warm that they began to vociferate, "Turn him out!" — "Turn him out!" — "Put him out of the window!" Fearing the consequences of this increasing clamour, the lecturer was compelled to request silence, and addressed them as follows: "Gentlemen, ours is the cause of liberty! that gentleman has as much right to hiss as you to clap, and you to clap as he to hiss; but what is to be expected, gentlemen, when the cool waters of reason come in contact with red hot aristocracy but a hiss?"
the loud laugh ended, silence ensued, and the rebuke was treasured and related.
The terms aristocrat, democrat, and jacobin, were the fashionable opprobrious epithets of the day; and well do I remember, the man who had earned by his politics the prefix of jacobin to his name, was completely shunned in society, whatever might be his moral character: but, as might be expected, this was merely ephemeral, when parties ran high, and were guided and governed more by impulses and passion than by principle.
"Truth I pursued, as Fancy sketch'd the way,
And wiser men than I went worse astray."
Men of the greatest sense and judgment possessing good hearts are, on the review of the past, more disposed to think
well
of the young men of that day, who, from not exercising their reason, were carried into the vortex of the revolution. Much has been written on the proposed scheme of settling in the wilds of America; — the spot chosen was Susquehannah, — this spot Coleridge has often said was selected, on account of the name being pretty and metrical, indeed he could never forbear a smile when relating the story. This day-dream, as he termed it, (for such it really was) the detail of which as related by him always gave it rather a sportive than a serious character, was a subject on which it is doubtful whether he or Mr. Southey were really in earnest at the time it was planned. The dream was, as is stated in the "Friend," that the little society to be formed was, in its second generation, to have combined the innocence of the patriarchal age with the knowledge and general refinements of European culture, and
"I dreamt," says he, "that in the sober evening of my life I should behold colonies of independence in the undivided dale of industry."
Strange fancies!
and as vain as strange
! This scheme, sportive, however, as it might be, had its admirers; and there are persons now to be found, who are desirous of realizing these visions, the past-time in thought and fancy of these young poets — then about 23 years of age. During this dream, and about this time, Southey and Coleridge married two sisters of the name of Fricker, and a third sister was married to an Utopian poet as he has been called, of the name of Lovel, whose poems were published with Mr. Southey's. They were, however, too wise to leave Bristol for America, for the purpose of establishing a genuine system of property — a Pantisocracy, which was to be their form of government — and under which they were to realize all their new dreams of happiness. Marriage, at all events, seems to have sobered them down, and the vision vanished.
Chimerical as it appeared, the purveyors of amusement for the reading public were thus furnished with occupation, and some small pecuniary gain, while it exercised the wit of certain anti-Jacobin writers of the day, and raised them into notice. Canning had the faculty of satire to an extraordinary degree, and also that common sense tact, which made his services at times so very useful to his country; his powers seemed in their full meridian of splendour when an argument or new doctrine permitted him rapidly to run down into its consequence, and then brilliantly and wittily to skew its defects. In this he eminently excelled. The beauties of the anti-Jacobin are replete with his satire. He never attempted a display of depth, but his dry sarcasm left a sting which those he intended to wound carried off
in pain and mortfication
. This scheme of Pantisocracy excited a smile among the kind-hearted and thinking part of mankind; but, among the vain and restless ignorant would-be-political economists, it met with more attention; and they, with their microscopic eyes, fancied they beheld in it what was not quite so visible to the common observer. Though the plan was soon abandoned, it was thought sufficient for the subject of a lecture, and afforded some mirth when the minds of the parties concerned in it arrived at manhood. Coleridge saw, soon after it was broached, that no scheme of colonizing that was not based on religion could be permanent. — Left to the disturbing forces of the human passions to which it would be exposed, it would soon perish; for all government to be permanent should be influenced by reason, and guided by religion.
In the year 1795 Coleridge, residing then at Clevedon, a short distance from Bristol, published his first prose work, with some additions by Mr. Southey, the
Conciones ad Populum.
In a short preface he observes,
"The two following addresses were delivered in the month of February, 1795, and were followed by six others in defence of natural and revealed religion. 'There is a time to keep silence,' saith King Solomon; — but when I proceeded to the first verse of the fourth chapter of the Ecclesiastes, 'and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power,' I concluded this was not the 'time to keep silence;' for truth should be spoken at all times, but more especially at those times when to speak truth is dangerous."
In these addresses he showed that the example of France was a warning to Great Britain; but, because he did not hold opinions equally violent with the Jacobin party of that day, he was put down as an anti-Jacobin; for, he says, "the annals of the French revolution have been recorded in letters of blood, that the knowledge of the few cannot counteract the ignorance of the many; that the light of philosophy, when it is confined to a small minority, points out its possessors as the victims, rather than the illuminators of the multitude. The patriots of France either hastened into the dangerous and gigantic error of making certain evils the means of contingent good, or were sacrificed by the mob, with whose prejudices and ferocity their unbending virtue forbade them to assimilate. Like Samson, the people were strong, like Samson, they were also blind:" and he admonishes them at the end of the third lecture to do all things in the spirit of love.
"It is worthy of remark," says he, in a MS. note, "that we may possess a thing in such fulness as to prevent its possession from being an object of distinct consciousness. Only as it lessens or dims, we reflect on it, and learn to value it. This is one main cause why young men of high and ardent minds find nothing repulsive in the doctrines of necessity, which, in after years, they (as I have) recoil from. Thus, too, the faces of friends dearly beloved become distinct in memory or dream only after long absence." Of the work itself he says, "Except the two or three pages involving the doctrine of philosophical necessity and Unitarianism, I see little or nothing in these 'outbursts' of my 'youthful' zeal to 'retract', and with the exception of some flame-coloured epithets applied to persons, as to Mr. Pitt and others, or rather to personifications (for such they really were to 'me') as little to regret. [Qualis] ab initio
When the mind of Coleridge was more matured he did not omit this truth, which has never been refuted, that the aristocratic system "had its golden side, for the noblest minds; but I
"should," continues he, "act the part of a coward if I disguised my conviction that the errors of the aristocratic party were as gross, and far less excusable than those of the Jacobin. Instead of contenting themselves with opposing the real blessing of English law to the splendid promises of untried theory, too large a part of those who called themselves anti-Jacobins, did all in their power to suspend those blessings; and they furnished new arguments to the advocates of innovation, when they should have been answering the old ones!"
But, whatever were his opinions, they were founded on
principle
, and with the exception of the two above alluded to, he ought never to be accused of changing. Some years since, the late Charles Matthews, the comedian, (or rather, as Coleridge used to observe, "the comic poet acting his own poems,") showed me an autograph letter from Mr. Wordsworth to Matthews' brother, (who was at that time educating for the bar) and with whom he corresponded. In this letter he made the following observation, "To-morrow I am going to Bristol to see those two extraordinary young men, Southey and Coleridge," Mr. Wordsworth then residing at Allfoxden. They soon afterwards formed an intimacy, which continued (though not without some little interruption) during his life, as his
Biographia Literaria
and his will attest.
Mr. Coleridge's next work was the
Watchman
in numbers — a miscellany to be published every eighth day. The first number appeared on the 5th of February, 1796. This work was a report of the state of the political atmosphere, to be interspersed with sketches of character and verse. It reached the 10th number, and was then dropped; the editor taking leave of his readers in the following address:
"This is the last number of the Watchman. Henceforward I shall cease to cry the state of the political atmosphere. While I express my gratitude to those friends who exerted themselves so liberally in the establishment of this miscellany, I may reasonably be expected to assign some reason for relinquishing it thus abruptly. The reason is short and satisfactory. The work does not pay its expences. Part of my subscribers have relinquished it because it did not contain sufficient original composition, and a still larger because it contained too much. I have endeavoured to do well; and it must be attributed to defect of ability, not of inclination or effort, if the words of the prophet be altogether applicable to me, 'O watchman! thou hast watched in vain!'"
Mr. Coleridge has given us in the
Biographia Literaria
a very lively account of his opinions, adventures, and state of feeling during this canvass in quest of subscribers. "Towards the close of the first year, that inauspicious hour," (it was, indeed, and for several reasons an "inauspicious hour" for him,) "when I left the friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever-honoured Jesus' College, Cambridge, to set on foot a periodical, entitled the 'Watchman,' that (according to the motto of the work)
all might know the truth, and that truth might make us free!
"With a flaming prospectus 'Knowledge is power,' &c. and to cry the state of the political atmosphere and so forth, I set off on a tour to the north, from Bristol to Sheffield, for the purpose of procuring customers, preaching by the way in most great towns, as a hireless volunteer, in a blue coat and white waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be seen on me; for I was at that time, though a Trinitarian (i.e. ad normam Platonis) in philosophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in religion; more accurately, I was a psilanthropist, one of those who believe our Lord to have been the real son of Joseph, and who lay the main stress on the resurrection rather than on the crucifixion. Oh! never can I remember those days with either shame or regret, for I was most sincere! most disinterested! My opinions were, indeed, in many and most important points erroneous, but my heart was single! Wealth, rank, life itself then seemed cheap to me, compared with the interests of (what I believe to be) the truth and the will of my Maker. I cannot even accuse myself of having been actuated by vanity; for, in the expansion of my enthusiasm, I did not think of myself at all.
My campaign commenced at Birmingham, and my first attack was on a rigid Calvinist, a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall dingy man, in whom length was so predominant over breadth, that he might almost have been borrowed for a foundry poker. O that face! a face,I have it before me at this moment. The lank, black twine-like hair, pingui-nitescent, cut in a straight line, along the black stubble of his thin gunpowder eyebrows, that looked like a scorched aftermath from a last week's shaving. His coat collar behind in perfect unison, both of colour and lustre, with the coarse, yet glib cordage that I suppose he called his hair, and which with a bend inward at the nape of the neck, (the only approach to flexure in his whole figure) slunk in behind his waistcoat; while the countenance lank, dark, very hard, and with strong perpendicular furrows, gave me a dim notion of some one looking at me through a used gridiron, all soot, grease, and iron! A person to whom one of my letters of recommendation had been addressed, was my introducer.
It was a new event in my life, my first stroke in the new business I had undertaken of an author; yes, and of an author on his own account. [I] would address," says Coleridge, "an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati on my own experience. It will be but short; for the beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge. Never Pursue Literature as a Trade.[16] My companion," says he, "after some imperfect sentences, and a multitude of hums and hahs, abandoned the cause to his client; and I commenced an harangue of half an hour to Phileleutheros, the tallow-chandler, varying my notes through the whole gamut of eloquence, from the ratiocinative to the declamatory, and, in the latter, from the pathetic to the indignant. My taper man of lights listened with perseverant and praiseworthy patience, though (as I was afterwards told, in complaining of certain gales that were not altogether ambrosial,) it was a melting day with him. And what, sir! (he said, after a short pause,) might the cost be? only Fourpence, (O! how I felt the anti-climax, the abysmal bathos of that Fourpence!) only fourpence, sir, each number, to be published on every eighth day. That comes to a deal of money at the end of a year; and how much did you say there was to be for the money? Thirty-two pages, sir! large octavo, closely printed. Thirty and two pages? Bless me, why except what I does in a family way on the sabbath, that's more than I ever reads, sir! all the year round. I am as great a one as any man in Brummagem, sir! for liberty and truth, and all them sort of things, but as to this, (no offence, I hope, sir!) I must beg to be excused. So ended my first canvass."
Much the same indifference was shewn him at Manchester, &c., but he adds: — "From this rememberable tour, I returned nearly a thousand names on the subscription list of the 'Watchman;' yet more than half convinced that prudence dictated the abandonment of the scheme; but for this very reason I persevered in it; for I was at that period of my life so completely hagridden by the fear of being influenced by selfish motives, that to know a mode of conduct to be the dictate of prudence, was a sort of presumptive proof to my feelings, that the contrary was the dictate of duty. Accordingly, I commenced the work, which was announced in London by long bills in letters larger than had ever been seen before, and which (I have been informed, for I did not see them myself) eclipsed the glories even of the lottery puffs; but, alas! the publication of the very first number was delayed beyond the day announced for its appearance. In the second number, an essay against fast days, with a most censurable application of a text from Isaiah, for its motto, lost me near five hundred of my subscribers at one blow.
In the two following numbers, I made enemies of all my Jacobin and democratic patrons; for, disgusted by their infidelity and their adoption of French morals, and French philosophy, and, perhaps, thinking that charity ought to begin nearest home, instead of abusing the government and the aristocrats chiefly or entirely, as had been expected of me, I levelled my attacks at 'modern patriotism,' and even ventured to declare my belief, that whatever the motives of ministers might have been for the sedition (or as it was then the fashion to call them) the gagging bills, yet the bills themselves would produce an effect to be desired by all the true friends of freedom, as far they should contribute to deter men from openly declaiming on subjects, the principles of which they had never bottomed, and from 'pleading to the poor and ignorant, instead of pleading for them.'
At the same time I avowed my conviction, that national education, and a concurring spread of the gospel were the indispensable condition of any true political amelioration. Thus, by the time the seventh number was published, I had the mortification (but why should I say this, when, in truth, I cared too little for any thing that concerned my worldly interests, to be at all mortified about it?) of seeing the preceding numbers exposed in sundry old iron shops for a penny a piece. At the ninth number I dropped the work." He never recovered the money of his London publisher, and but little from his subscribers, and as he goes on to say: — "Must have been thrown into jail by my printer, for a sum between eighty and ninety pounds, if the money had not been paid for me by a man, by no means affluent, a dear friend who attached himself to me from my first arrival at Bristol, who continued my friend with a fidelity unconquered by time, or even by my own apparent neglect; a friend from whom I never received an advice that was not gentle and affectionate." (p. 177.)
Coleridge's reputation from boyhood quietly increased, not through the favor, but the censure of reviewers. It was this which, contrary to their wishes, diffused his name as poet and philosopher. So long as there are readers to be gratified by calumny, there will always be found writers eager to furnish a supply; and he had other enemies, unacquainted with the critical profession, yet morbidly vain, and because disappointed in their literary hopes, no less malignant.
Alas! how painful it is to witness at times the operation of some of the human passions. — Should envy take the lead, her twin sisters, hatred and malice, follow as auxiliaries in her train, — and, in the struggles for ascendancy and extension of her power, she subverts those principles which might impede her path, and then speedily effects the destruction of all the kindly feelings most honourable to man.
Coleridge was conscientiously an opponent of the first revolutionary war, because he abhorred the principles; and it was part of his political creed, that whoever ceased
"to act as an individual by making himself a member of any society not sanctioned by his government, forfeited the rights of a citizen."
He was at that time "a vehement anti-ministerialist," but, after the invasion of Switzerland, a more vehement anti-Gallican, and still more intensely an anti-Jacobin:
"I retired," said he, "to a cottage at Stowey, and provided for my scanty maintenance by writing verses for a London Morning Paper. I saw plainly, that literature was not a profession by which I could expect to live; for I could not disguise from myself, that whatever my talents might or might not be in other respects, yet they were not of that sort that could enable me to become a popular writer; and that whatever my opinions might be in themselves, they were almost equi-distant from all the three opposite parties, the Pittites, the Foxites, and the democrats. Of the unsaleable nature of my writings I had an amusing memento one morning from our servant girl. For happening to rise at an earlier hour than usual, I observed her putting an extravagant quantity of paper into the grate in order to light the fire, and mildly checked her for her wastefulness; La, Sir! (replied poor Nanny) why, it is only Watchmen."
There was at last a pause, as each party seemed worn out; for, "the hand of Providence had disciplined all Europe into sobriety, as men tame wild elephants by alternate blows and caresses: now, that Englishmen of all classes are restored to their old English notions and feelings, it will with difficulty be credited, how great an influence was at that time possessed and exerted by the spirit of secret defamation (the too constant attendant on party zeal!) during the restless interim, from 1793 to the commencement of the Addington administration, or the year before the truce of Amiens."
In short, the exhaustion which had followed the great stimulus, disposed individuals to reconciliation. Both parties found themselves in the wrong, the one had mistaken the moral character of the revolution, and the other had miscalculated its physical resources. The experiment was made at the price of great, we may say, of almost humiliating sacrifices; and wise men foresaw that it would fail, at least, in its direct and ostensible object. Yet it was purchased cheaply, and realized an object of equal value, and, if possible, of more vital importance; for it brought about a national unanimity, unexampled in our history since the reign of Elizabeth; and Providence, never failing to do his part when men have done theirs, soon provided a common focus in the cause of Spain, which made us all once more Englishmen, by gratifying and correcting the predilections of each party. The sincere reverers of the throne felt the cause of loyalty ennobled by its alliance with that of freedom while the
honest
zealots of the people could not but admit that freedom itself assumed a more winning form, humanized by loyalty, and
consecrated
by
religious principle
.
During this calm and rest, and while the political fever was subsiding, Coleridge retired, as he informs us, "to a cottage in Somersetshire, at the foot of Quantock," to devote himself to poetry, and to the study of ethics and psychology, to direct his thoughts and studies to the foundations of religion and morals.
"During my residence here," he says, "I found myself all afloat; doubts rushed in; broke upon me from the fountains of the great deep,' and 'fell from the windows of Heaven.' The fontal truths of natural religion and the books of Revelation alike contributed to the flood; and it was long ere my ark touched on an Ararat, and rested. The idea (viz. the law evolved in the mind) of the Supreme Being appeared to me to be as necessarily implied in all particular modes of being, as the idea, of infinite space in all the geometrical figures by which space is limited." He goes on to state at this period, about the latter end of the year 1796, "For a very long time I could not reconcile personality with infinity; and my head was with Spinosa, though my whole heart remained with Paul and John. Yet there had dawned upon me, even before I had met with the Critique of Pure Reason, a certain guiding light. If the mere intellect could make no certain discovery of a holy and intelligent first cause, it might yet supply a demonstration that no legitimate argument could be drawn from the mere intellect against its truth. And what is this more than St. Paul's assertion, that by wisdom (more properly translated by the powers of reasoning) no man ever arrived at the knowledge of God? Man asks what is wisdom? and whence comes it? In Job, chap. 28th, it is stated, 'But to man he said, the fear of the Lord is wisdom for thee! And to avoid evil, that is thy understanding.'"
Such were his philosophical opinions before his final conversion to the whole truth in Christ. He was contending for principles, and diligently in search of truth for its own sake; — the one thing only permanent, and which carries with it its "own exceeding great reward." Such was the state of his religious feelings and political opinions before his visit to Germany.
There is a general observation or experience he has recorded, not only so applicable to him at that time, but equally to each stage of his career in life, as not to be lost sight of by his friends and admirers, when assailed, as he was, by opposing party-spirits, which, like opposite currents, were contending for the mastery.
To avoid one party lest he should run on Scylla, he excited and provoked the jealousy and neglect of the other, who might have wrecked him on Charybdis. These were well-known dangers; but, as all navigable seas have their shoals often invisible; in order to avoid the effects of these jealousies, he selected from each party, men of experience to give him the soundings, and thus prevent him from wrecking his barque on rocks and quicksands; for, without such information, there could be little chance of escape.
In so doing, be lost his popularity with the many, though these were evils he might perhaps have conquered (but still speaking figuratively); his crew (his great inward aid) had differed too seriously among themselves, and were under the influence of conflicting feelings.
His whole mind was bent on the search after those truths that alone can determine fixed principles, and which not long after became to him an unerring guide. They were for him what the needle is to the mariner.
The observation alluded to is as follows:
"All my experience, from my first entrance into life to the present hour, is in favour of the warning maxim, that the man who opposes in toto the political or religious zealots of his age, is safer from their obloquy than he who differs from them but in one or two points only in degree."
is a truth too important to pass lightly over, as in this consisted much of that feeling which prevented his being popular, (for unless an individual goes the whole length of the party who may choose to adopt him, he is discarded, and it is well for him if he is not persecuted and held up to public ridicule).
Zealots are usually superficial, but in herds they are found to support each other, and by their numbers assume an imposing air. — One weak man cannot stand, but three may. — By this mode of congregating, they are more easily managed by their leaders, whose impulses they obey, and to whom they become willing slaves. Men who sacrifice the many to the few, have been held out by almost every writer, where moral and political subjects have been introduced, as warnings to those liable to fall into their snares, but which have seemingly been put forth to little purpose. The necessity, therefore, for a continuation of instruction on such important moral truths, is still required; for, in the contending currents, so much mischief is often produced, that to divert these conflicting opinions, and to try to bring them into unity, Coleridge thought it a duty to employ his strength of intellect; he hoped to preserve a principle which he deemed so useful to mankind.
foot of Quantock was to Coleridge a memorable spot; here his studies were serious and deep; protected by one of the kindest of friends, and stimulated by the society also of a brother poet, whose lays seemed to have inspired his song, and also to have chimed in with it; for although it has been shewn that his poetic genius first dawned in his 16th year, yet after he left College, and during his residence at this place,
it seemed suddenly to have arrived at poetic manhood, and to have reached this developement as early as his 25th year. In his more serious studies he had greatly advanced, and had already planned and stored up much for his future life. It will often be repeated, but not too often for a society so full of sciolists and disbelievers, — men who are so self-satisfied as not to require teaching, — that Coleridge never was an idle man; and that, if nothing else remained, the progress he made in intellectual acquirements during his residence at Stowey and his short stay in Germany, might be instanced. Before he quitted this country to embark in fresh studies we have his own statement:
"I became convinced, that religion, as both the corner-stone and the key-stone of morality, must have a 'moral' origin; so far, at least, that the evidence of its doctrines could not, like the truths of abstract science, be 'wholly' independent of the will.
It was therefore to be expected, that its fundamental truth would be such as might be denied, though only by the fool, and even by the fool from madness of heart alone!
The question then concerning our faith in the existence of a God, not only as the ground of the universe by his essence, but by his wisdom and holy will as its maker and judge, appeared to stand thus: the sciential reason, the objects of wit are purely theoretical, remains neutral, as long as its name and semblance are not usurped by the opponents of the doctrine; but it then becomes an effective ally by exposing the false show of demonstration, or by evincing the equal demonstrability of the contrary from premises equally logical. The understanding, meantime suggests, the analogy of experience facilitates, the belief. Nature excites and recalls it, as by a perpetual revelation. Our feelings almost necessitate it; and the law of conscience peremptorily commands it. The arguments that all apply to, are in its favor; and there is nothing against it, but its own sublimity.
It could not be intellectually more evident without becoming morally less effective; without counteracting its own end by sacrificing the life of faith to the cold mechanism of a worthless, because compulsory assent. The belief of a God and a future state (if a passive acquiescence may be flattered with the name of belief) does not, indeed, always beget a good heart; but a good heart so naturally begets the belief, that the very few exceptions must be regarded as strange anomalies from strange and unfortunate circumstances.
From these premises I proceeded to draw the following conclusions, — first, that having once fully admitted the existence of an infinite yet self-conscious Creator, we are not allowed to ground the irrationality of any other article of faith on arguments which would equally prove that to be irrational, which we had allowed to be real. Secondly, that whatever is deducible from the admission of a self-comprehending and creative spirit, may be legitimately used in proof of the possibility of any further mystery concerning the Divine Nature.
"Possibilitatem mysteriorum (Trinitatis, &c.) contra insultus infidelium et hereticorum a contradictionibus vindico; haud quidem veritatem, quæ revelatione sola stabiliri possit;" says Leibnitz, in a letter to his duke. He then adds the following just and important remark. "In vain will tradition or texts of Scripture be adduced in support of a doctrine, 'donec clava impossibilitatis et contradictionis e manibus horum Herculum extorta fuerit.' For the heretic will still reply, that texts, the literal sense of which is not so much above as directly against all reason, must be understood figuratively, as Herod is a Fox, &c.
These principles," says he, "I held philosophically, while in respect of revealed religion, I remained a zealous Unitarian. I considered the idea of a Trinity a fair scholastic inference from the being of God, as a creative intelligence; and that it was therefore entitled to the rank of an esoteric doctrine of natural religion: but seeing in the same no practical or moral bearing, I confined it to the schools of philosophy. The admission of the Logos, as hypostasized (i.e. neither a mere attribute nor a personification), in no respect removed my doubts concerning the incarnation and the redemption by the cross; which I could neither reconcile in reason with the impassiveness of the Divine Being, nor in my moral feelings with the sacred distinction between things and persons, the vicarious payment of a debt and the vicarious expiation of guilt.
A more thorough revolution in my philosophic principles, and a deeper insight into my own heart were yet wanting. Nevertheless, I cannot doubt, that the difference of my metaphysical notions from those of Unitarians in general contributed to my final re-conversion to the whole truth in Christ; even as according to his own confession the books of certain Platonic philosophers (Libri quorundam Platonicorum) commenced the rescue of St. Augustine's faith from the same error, aggravated by the far darker accompaniment of the Manichean heresy."
Perhaps it is right also to state, that no small share of his final reconversion was attributable to that zeal and powerful genius, and to his great desire that others should become sharers in his own acquirements, which he was so desirous to communicate. During his residence at the foot of Quantock, his thoughts and studies were not only directed to an enquiry into the great truths of religion, but, while he stayed at Stowey, he was in the habit of preaching often at the Unitarian Chapel at Taunton, and was greatly respected by all the better and educated classes in the neighbourhood.
He spoke of Stowey with warmth and affection to the latest hours of his life. Here, as before mentioned, dwelt his friend Mr. Thomas Poole — the friend (justly so termed) to whom he alludes in his beautiful dedicatory poem to his brother the Rev. George Coleridge, and in which, when referring to himself, he says,
"[To] me the Eternal Wisdom hath dispensed
A different fortune and more different mind —
Me from the spot where first I sprang to light
Too soon transplanted, ere my soul had fix'd
Its first domestic loves; and hence through life
Chasing chance-started friendships. A brief while
Some have preserved me from life's pelting ills;
But, like a tree with leaves of feeble stem,
If the clouds lasted, and a sudden breeze
Ruffled the boughs, they on my head at once
Dropp'd the collected shower; and some most false,
False and fair foliaged as the Manchineel,
Have tempted me to slumber in their shade
E'en mid the storm; then breathing subtlest damps,
Mix'd their own venom with the rain from Heaven,
That I woke poison'd! But, all praise to Him
Who gives us all things, more have yielded me
Permanent shelter; and beside one friend,[19]
Beneath the impervious covert of one oak,
I've raised a lowly shed, and know the names
Of husband and of father; not unhearing
Of that divine and nightly-whispering voice,
Which from my childhood to maturer years
Spake to me of predestinated wreaths,
Bright with no fading colours!"
These beautiful and affecting lines to his brother are dated May 26th, 1797, Nether Stowey, Somerset. In his will, dated Highgate, July 2nd, 1830, he again refers to this friend, and directs his executor to present a plain gold mourning ring to Thomas Poole, Esq., of Nether Stowey.
"[The] Dedicatory Poem to my Juvenile Poems, and my Fears in Solitude,[20] render it unnecessary to say more than what I then, in my early manhood, thought and felt, I now, a gray-headed man, still think and feel."
In this volume, dedicated to his brother, are to be found several poems in early youth and upwards, none of later date than 1796.
The Ode, he says, on the Departing Year, was written on the 24th, 25th, and 26th of December, 1796, and published separately on the last day of that year. The Religious Musings were written as early as Christmas 1794."
He then was about to enter his 23rd year. The preface to this volume is a key to his opinions and feelings at that time, and which the foregoing part of this memoir is also intended to illustrate.
"Compositions resembling those of the present volume are not unfrequently condemned for their querulous egotism. But egotism is to be condemned only when it offends against time and place, as in a history or epic poem. To censure it in a monody or sonnet is almost as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then write sonnets or monodies? Because they give me pleasure when, perhaps, nothing else could. After the more violent emotions of sorrow, the mind demands amusement, and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is a painful and most often an unavailing effort."
The communicativeness of our nature leads us to describe our own sorrows; in the endeavour to describe them, intellectual activity is exerted; and from intellectual activity there results a pleasure, which is gradually associated, and mingles as a corrective, with the painful subject of the description. 'True,' (it may be answered) 'but how are the public interested in your sorrows or your description'?' We are for ever attributing personal unities to imaginary aggregates. — What is the public, but a term for a number of scattered individuals? Of whom as many will be interested in these sorrows, as have experienced the same or similar.'But O! how grateful to a wounded heart
The tale of misery to impart
From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow,
And raise esteem upon the base of woe.'
Shaw.If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm, that the most interesting passages in our most interesting poems are those in which the author developes his own feelings. [The] sweet voice of Cona[21] never sounds so sweetly, as when it speaks of itself; and I should almost suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who could read the opening of the third book of Paradise Lost without peculiar emotion. By a law of nature, he, who labours under a strong feeling, is impelled to seek for sympathy; but a poet's feelings are all strong. — Quicquid amat valde amat. — Akenside therefore speaks with philosophical accuracy when he classes love and poetry as producing the same effects:'Holy be the lay
Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way.'There is one species of egotism which is truly disgusting; not that which leads to communicate our feelings to others, but that which would reduce the feelings of others; to an identity with our own.'Love and the wish of poets when their tongue
Would teach to others' bosoms, what so charms
Their own.'
Pleasures of Imagination.
The atheist who exclaims 'pshaw,' when he glances his eye on the praises of Deity, is an egotist; an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of love verses is an egotist; and the sleek favourites of fortune are egotists when they condemn all 'melancholy discontented' verses. Surely it would be candid not merely to ask whether the poem pleases ourselves, but to consider whether or no there may not be others, to whom it is well calculated to give an innocent pleasure.
I shall only add, that each of my readers will, I hope, remember, that these poems on various subjects, which, he reads at one time and under the influence of one set of feelings, were written at different times and prompted by very different feelings; and, therefore, that, the supposed inferiority of one poem to another may sometimes be owing to the temper of mind in which he happens to peruse it."
'But O! how grateful to a wounded heart
The tale of misery to impart
From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow,
And raise esteem upon the base of woe.'
Shaw.
'Holy be the lay
Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way.'
'Love and the wish of poets when their tongue
Would teach to others' bosoms, what so charms
Their own.'
Pleasures of Imagination.
In the second edition (the second edition was published in conjunction with his friends Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb) is added the following:
"My poems have been rightly charged with a profusion of double-epithets, and a general turgidness. I have pruned the double-epithets with no sparing hand; and used my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of thought and diction. This latter fault, however, had insinuated itself into my Religious Musings with such intricacy of union, that sometimes I have omitted to disentangle the weed from the fear of snapping the flower. A third and heavier accusation has been brought against me, that of obscurity; but not, I think, with equal justice. An author is obscure, when his conceptions are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect, or inappropriate, or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, like the Bard of Gray, or one that impersonates high and abstract truths, like Collins's Ode on the Poetical Character, claims not to be popular, but should be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the reader; but this is a charge which every poet, whose imagination is warm and rapid, must expect from his contemporaries. Milton did not escape it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. We now hear no more of it, not that their poems are better understood at present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is established; and a critic would accuse him self of frigidity or, inattention, who should profess not to understand them: but a living writer is yet sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or enter into his feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider him as lost beneath, than as soaring above, us. If any man expect from my poems the same easiness of style which he admires in a drinking-song for him, I have not written. Intelligibilia, non intellectum adfero.
I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings; and I consider myself as having been amply repaid without either. Poetry has been to me its own 'exceeding great reward;' it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude; and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me."
We seem now to have arrived at that period of Coleridge's life which a profound student of his poetry, and himself a pleasing and elegant poet, has considered the period of the "Annus Mirabilis." "The Manhood," he observes, "of Coleridge's true poetical life was in the year 1797." This is perfectly true, and at that period he was only twenty-five, as before stated. He was, as is proved in his earlier poems, highly susceptible and sensitive, requiring kindness and sympathy, and the support of something like intellectual friendship. He tells us that he chose his residence at Stowey, on account of his friend Mr. Poole, who assisted and enabled him to brave the storm of "Life's pelting ills." Near him, at Allfoxden, resided Mr. Wordsworth, with whom, he says,
"Shortly after my settlement there, I became acquainted, and whose society I found an invaluable blessing, and to whom I looked up with equal reverence as a poet, a philosopher, or a man. His conversation extended to almost all subjects except physics and politics; with the latter he never troubled himself."
Although Coleridge lived a most retired life, it was not enough to exempt him from the watchfulness of the spies of government whose employment required some apparent activity before they could receive the reward they expected. Nor did he escape the suspicion of being a dangerous person to the government; which arose partly from his connexion with Wordsworth, and from the great seclusion of his life. Coleridge was ever with book, paper, and pencil in hand, making, in the language of, artists, "Sketches and studies from nature." This suspicion, accompanied with the usual quantity of obloquy, was not merely attached to Coleridge, but extended to his friend, "whose perfect innocence was even adduced as a suspicion of his guilt," by one of these sapients, who observed that
"as to Coleridge, there is not much harm in him; for he is a whirl-brain, that talks whatever comes uppermost; but that Wordsworth! he is a dark traitor. You never hear him say a syllable on the subject."
During this time the brother poets must have been composing or arranging the
Lyrical Ballads
, which were published the following year, i. e. 1798. Coleridge also in 1797 wrote the
Remorse
, or rather the play he first called
Osorio
, the name of the principal character in it, but finding afterwards that there was a respectable family of that name residing in London, it was changed for the title of the
Remorse
, and the principal character, Osorio, to Ordonio. This play was sent to Sheridan.
The following remarks were given in Coleridge's
Biographia Literaria,
which wholly clears him from the suspicion of being concerned in making maps of a coast, where a smuggler could not land, and they shew what really was his employment; and how poets may be mistaken at all times for other than what they wish to be considered:
"During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, — the power of exciting the sympathy of a reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm which accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real; and real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life: the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when they present themselves.
In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads, in which it was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself, as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us, — an inexhaustible treasure; but for which, in consequence of the feeling of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.
With this view I wrote the Ancient Mariner, and was preparing, among other poems, the Dark Ladie and the Christabel, in which I should have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my first attempt: but Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more successful, and the number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead of forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous matter.
Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction, which is characteristic of his genius. In this form the Lyrical Ballads were published, and were presented by him as an experiment, whether subjects, which from their nature rejected the usual ornaments and extra-colloquial style of poems in general, might not be so managed, in the language of ordinary life, as to produce the pleasurable interest which it is the peculiar business of poetry to impart.
To the second edition he added a preface of considerable length, in which, notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contrary import, he was understood to contend for the extension of the style to poetry of all kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases and forms of style that were not included in what he (unfortunately, I think, adopting an equivocal expression) called the language of real life. From this preface, prefixed to poems in which it was impossible to deny the presence of original genius, however mistaken its direction might be deemed, arose the whole long-continued controversy. For, from the conjunction of perceived power with supposed heresy, I explain the inveteracy, and in some instances, I grieve to say, the acrimonious passions, with which the controversy has been conducted by the assailants." (Vol. ii. p. 1.)
There are few incidents in the life of the literary man to make any narrations of sufficient importance or sufficiently amusing for the readers, and the readers only of works of amusement. The biography of such men is supposed to contain the faithful history and growth of their minds, and the circumstances under which it is developed, and to this it must be confined.
What has been done by Coleridge himself, and where he has been his own biographer, will be carefully noticed and given here, when it falls in with the intention and purposes of this work; for this reason the
Biographia Literaria
has been so frequently quoted. Coleridge had passed nearly half his life in a retirement almost amounting to solitude, and this he preferred. First, he was anxious for leisure to pursue those studies which wholly engrossed his mind; and secondly, his health permitted him but little change, except when exercise was required; and during the latter part of his life he became nearly crippled by the rheumatism. His character will form a part in the Philosophical History of the Human Mind, which will be placed in the space left for it by his amiable and most faithful friend and disciple, whose talents, whose heart and acquirements makes him most fit to describe them, and whose time was for so many years devoted to this great man. But, to continue in the order of time, in June, 1797, he was visited by his friend Charles Lamb and his sister.
On the morning after their arrival, Coleridge met with an accident which disabled him from walking during the whole of their stay. One evening, when they had left him for a few hours, he composed the poem,
This Lime-tree Bower my Prison,
in which he refers to his old friend, while watching him in fancy with his sister, winding and ascending the hills at a short distance, himself detained as if a prisoner:
"Yes! they wander on
In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,
My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined
And hunger'd after nature, many a year;
In the great city pent, winning thy way
With sad yet patient soul, through evil, and pain,
And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun!
Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,
Ye purple heath flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!
Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
And kindle, thou blue ocean! So my friend
Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,
Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; and of such hues
As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes
Spirits perceive his presence."
During his residence here, Mr. William Hazlitt became acquainted with him, which is thus vividly recorded in the
Liberal
:
"My father was a dissenting minister at Wem, in Shropshire; and in the year 1798, Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to succeed Mr. Rowe in the spiritual charge of a Unitarian congregation there. He did not come till late on the Saturday afternoon before he was to preach, and Mr. Rowe, who himself went down to the coach in a state of anxiety and expectation, to look for the arrival of his successor, could find no one at all answering the description, but a round-faced man, in a short black coat (like a shooting jacket), which hardly seemed to have been made for him, but who appeared to be talking at a great rate to his fellow-passengers. Mr. Rowe had scarcely returned to give an account of his disappointment, when the round-faced man in black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject, by beginning to talk. [He] did not cease while he stayed, nor has he since that I know of.[22]
He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful suspense for three weeks that he remained there, 'fluttering the proud Salopians like an eagle in a dove-cot;' and the Welsh mountains, that skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no such mystic sounds since the days ofMy father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the habit of exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch (nine miles further on), according to the custom of dissenting ministers in each other's neighbourhood. A line of communication is thus established, by which the flame of civil and religious liberty is kept alive, and nourishes its mouldering fire unquenchable, like the fires in the Agamemnon of Æschylus, placed at different stations, that waited for ten long years to announce, with their blazing pyramids, the destruction of Troy.'High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lyre!'
Coleridge had agreed to come once to see my father, according to the courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe's probable successor; but in the meantime I had gone to hear him preach the Sunday after his arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up into a Unitarian pulpit to preach the gospel was a romance in these degenerate days, — which was not to be resisted.
It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. 'Il y a des impressions que ni le tems, ni les circonstances peuvent effacer. Dussé-je vivre des siècles entiers, le doux tems de ma jeunesse ne peut renaître pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma mémoire.' When I got there, the organ was playing the 100th psalm; and, when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, — 'He departed again into a mountain himself alone.' As he gave out this text, his voice 'rose like a stream of rich distilled perfumes;' and when he came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind, 'of one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey.' The preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war — upon church and state — not their alliance, but their separation — on the spirit of the world, and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed to one another. He talked of those who had 'inscribed the cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore.' He made a poetical and pastoral excursion, — and to show the fatal effects of war, drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd-boy, driving his team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, as though he should never be old,' and the same poor country lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the finery of the profession of blood:and, for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together. Truth and Genius had embraced under the eye and with the sanction of Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the good cause; and the cold dank drops of dew, that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in them —'Such were the notes our once loved poet sung;'
...
"On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I was called down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping, half-afraid. He received me very graciously, and I listened for a long time without uttering a word, and did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. 'For those two hours (he was afterwards pleased to say) he was conversing with W. H.'s forehead.' His appearance was different from what I had anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in the dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the small-pox. His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright,His forehead was broad and high, as if built of ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with darkened lustre.'As are the children of yon azure sheen.'
a purple tinge, as we see it in the pale, thoughtful complexions of the Spanish portrait painters, Murillo and Velasquez. His mouth was rather open, his chin good-humoured and round, and his nose small.'A certain tender bloom his face o'erspread;'
Coleridge in his person was rather above the common size, inclining to the corpulent. His hair (now, alas! grey, and during the latter years of his life perfectly white) was then black, and glossy as the raven's wing, and fell in smooth masses over his forehead. [This] long liberal hair is peculiar to enthusiasts."[23]
(The Liberal, vol. ii. pp. 23-27.)
'High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lyre!'
'Such were the notes our once loved poet sung;'
'As are the children of yon azure sheen.'
'A certain tender bloom his face o'erspread;'
He used, in his hours of relaxation, to relate the state of his feelings, and his adventures during the short time he was a preacher. His congregations were large, and if he had the power of attracting one man of such talents from a distance, it may well be understood how the many near the chapel flocked to listen to him; in short, if one is to give credence to current report, he emptied churches and chapels to hear him. If he had needed any stimulus, this would have been sufficient, but such a mind so intensely occupied in the search after truth needed no external excitement.
He has often said, that one of the effects of preaching was, that it compelled him to examine the Scriptures with greater care and industry.
These additional exertions and studies assisted mainly to his final conversion to the whole truth; for it was still evident that his mind was perplexed, and that his philosophical opinions would soon yield to the revealed truth of Scripture.
He has already pointed out what he felt on this important question, how much he differed from the generally received opinions of the Unitarians, confessing that he needed a thorough revolution in his philosophical doctrines, and that an insight into his own heart was wanting.
"While my mind was thus perplexed, by a gracious providence," says he, "for which I can never be sufficiently grateful, the generous and munificent patronage of Mr. Josiah and Mr. Thomas Wedgewood enabled me to finish my education in Germany. Instead of troubling others with my own crude notions, and juvenile compositions, I was thenceforward better employed in attempting to store my own head with the wisdom of others. I made the best use of my time and means; and there is therefore no period of my life on which I can look back with such unmingled satisfaction."
He quitted Clevedon and his cottage in the following farewell lines:—
"Ah! quiet dell! dear cot, and mount sublime!
I was constrain'd to quit you. Was it right,
While my unnumber'd brethren toil'd and bled,
That I should dream away the entrusted hours
On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart
With feelings all too delicate for use?
Sweet is the tear that from some Howard's eye
Drops on the cheeks of one he lifts from earth:
And he that works me good with unmoved face,
Does it but half: he chills me while he aids, —
My benefactor, not my brother man!
Yet even this, this cold beneficence
Praise, praise it, O my Soul! oft as thou scann'st
The Sluggard Pity's vision-weaving tribe!
Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched,
Nursing in some delicious solitude
Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies!
I therefore go, and join head, heart, and hand,
Active and firm, to fight the bloodless fight
Of Science, freedom, and the truth in Christ.
Yet oft when after honourable toil
Rests the tired mind, and waking loves to dream,
My spirit shall revisit thee, dear cot!
Thy jasmin and thy window-peeping rose,
And myrtles fearless of the mild sea-air.
And I shall sigh fond wishes — sweet abode!
Ah! had none greater! And that all had such!
It might be so, but, oh! it is not yet.
Speed it, O Father! Let thy Kingdom come."
He drew his own character when he described that of Satyrane, the idolocast or breaker of idols, the name he went by among his friends and familiars.
"From his earliest youth," says he, "Satyrane had derived his highest pleasures from the admiration of moral grandeur and intellectual energy; and during the whole of his life he had a greater and more heartfelt delight in the superiority of other men to himself than men in general derive from their belief of their own. His readiness to imagine a superiority where it did not exist, was for many years his predominant foible; his pain from the perception of inferiority in others whom he had heard spoken of with any respect, was unfeigned and involuntary, and perplexed him as a something which he did not comprehend. In the child-like simplicity of his nature he talked to all men as if they were his equals in knowledge and talents, and many whimsical anecdotes could be related connected with this habit; he was constantly scattering good seed on unreceiving soils. When he was at length compelled to see and acknowledge the true state of the morals and intellect of his contemporaries, his disappointment was severe, and his mind, always thoughtful, became pensive and sad: — for to love and sympathize with mankind was a necessity of his nature."
He sought refuge from his own sensitive nature in abstruse meditations, and delighted most in those subjects requiring the full exercise of his intellectual powers, which never seemed fatigued — and in his early life never did sun shine on a more joyous being!
"[There] was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seem'd mine.
But now afflictions bow me down to earth
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth,
But oh! each visitation
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man —
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul."[24]
It was indeed an inauspicious hour "when he changed his abode from the happy groves of Jesus' College to Bristol." But it was so ordained! He sought literature as a trade, — and became an author —
"whatever," he would say, "I write, that alone which contains the truth will live, for truth only is permanent. The rest will deservedly perish."
He wrote to supply the fountain which was to feed the fertilizing rills, — to develope the truth was that at which he aimed, and in which he hoped to find his reward.
On the 16th of September, 1798, he sailed from Great Yarmouth to Hamburg, in company with Mr. Wordsworth and his sister in his way to Germany, and now for the first time beheld "his native land" retiring from him.
In a series of letters, published first in the
Friend
, afterwards in his
Biographia Literaria,
is to be found a description of his passage to Germany, and short tour through that country. His fellow passengers as described by him were a motley group, suffering from the usual effects of a rolling sea. One of them, who had caught the customary antidote to sympathy for suffering, to witness which is usually painful, began his mirth by not inaptly observing,
"That Momus might have discovered an easier way to see a man's inside than by placing a window in his breast. He needed only to have taken a salt-water trip in a pacquet-boat."
Coleridge thinks that a
"pacquet is far superior to a stage-coach, as a means of making men open out to each other. In the latter the uniformity of posture disposes to dozing, and the definiteness of the period at which the company will separate, makes each individual think of those to whom he is going, rather than of those with whom he is going. But at sea more curiosity is excited, if only on this account, that the pleasant or unpleasant qualities of your companions are of greater importance to you, from the uncertainty how long you may be obliged to house with them."
On board was a party of Danes, who, from his appearance in a suit of black, insisted he was a "Docteur Teology." To relieve himself of any further questioning on this head, he bowed assent "rather than be nothing."
Certes," he says, "We were not of the Stoic school; for we drank, and talked, and sung altogether; and then we rose and danced on the deck a set of dances, which, in one sense of the word at least, were very intelligibly and appropriately entitled reels. The passengers who lay in the cabin below in all the agonies of sea-sickness, must have found our bacchanalian merriment
I thought so at the time; and how closely the greater number of our virtues are connected with the fear of death, and how little sympathy we bestow on pain, when there is no danger."a tune
Harsh and of dissonant mood for their complaint.
a tune
Harsh and of dissonant mood for their complaint.
The Dane soon convinced him of the justice of an old remark, that many a faithful portrait in our novels and farces, has been rashly censured for an outrageous caricature, or perhaps nonentity.
"I had retired to my station in the boat when he came and seated himself by my side, and appeared not a little tipsy. He commenced the conversation in the most magnific style, and a sort of pioneering to his own vanity, he flattered me with such grossness! The parasites of the old comedy were modest in comparison."
After a ludicrous conversation which took place, he passes on to the description of another passenger, an Englishman, who spoke German fluently and interpreted many of the jokes of a Prussian who formed one of the party.
"The Prussian was a travelling merchant, turned of threescore, a hale, tall, strong man, and full of stories, gesticulations, and buffoonery, with the soul as well as the look of a mountebank, who, while he is making you laugh, picks your pocket. Amid all his droll looks and droll gestures, there remained one look untouched by laughter; and that one look was the true face, the others were but its mask. The Hanoverian (another of the party) was a pale, bloated, young man, whose father had made a large fortune in London as an army contractor. He seemed to emulate the manners of young Englishmen of fortune. He was a good-natured fellow, not without information or literature, but a most egregious coxcomb. He had been in the habit of attending the House of Commons; and had once spoken, as he informed me, with great applause in a debating society. For this he appeared to have qualified himself with laudable industry; for he was perfect in Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary, and with an accent that forcibly reminded me of the Scotchman in Roderick Random, who professed to teach the English pronunciation; he was constantly deferring to my superior judgment, whether or no I had pronounced this or that word with propriety or 'the true delicacy'. When he spoke, though it were only half a dozen sentences, he always rose; for which I could detect no other motive, than his partiality to that elegant phrase, so liberally introduced in the orations of our British legislators, 'While I am on my legs.'"
Coleridge continues his description of the party, and relates a quarrel that ensued between a little German tailor and his wife, by which he was the gainer of a bed, it being too cold to continue much longer on deck:—
"In the evening the sea rolling higher, the Dane became worse, and in consequence increased his remedy, viz. brandy, sugar, and nutmeg, in proportion to the room left in his stomach. The conversation or oration 'rather than dialogue, became extravagant beyond all that I ever heard.' After giving an account of his fortune acquired in the island of Santa Cruz, 'he expatiated on the style in which he intended to live in Denmark, and the great undertakings he proposed to himself to commence, till the brandy aiding his vanity, and his vanity and garrulity aiding the brandy, he talked like a madman."
After this drunken apostrophe he changed the conversation, and commenced an harangue on religion, (mistaking Coleridge for "un Philosophe" in the continental sense of the word) he talked of the Deity in a declamatory style very much resembling the devotional rants of that rude blunderer Mr. Thomas Paine, in his Age of Reason. I dare aver, that few men have less reason to charge themselves with indulging in persiflage than myself; I should hate it, if it were only that it is a Frenchman's vice, and feel a pride in avoiding it, because our own language is too honest to have a word to express it by.
At four o'clock I observed a wild duck swimming on the waves, a single solitary wild duck. It is not easy to conceive, how interesting a thing it looked in that round objectless desert of waters."
cry of 'land' was heard soon afterwards, and in a short time they dropped anchor at Cuxhaven, and proceeded from thence in a boat to Hamburg. After this he travelled on to Ratzeburg
, and then took up his residence with a pastor for the purpose of acquiring the German language, but with what success will be presently shown. He soon after proceeded through Hanover to Göttingen. — Here he informs us he regularly
"attended lectures in the morning in physiology, in the evening an natural history under Blumenbach, a name as dear to every Englishman who has studied at the university, as it is venerable to men of science throughout Europe! Eichorn's Lectures on the New Testament were repeated to me from notes by a student from Ratzeburg, a young man of sound learning and indefatigable industry, who is now I believe a professor of the oriental languages at Heidelberg."
Few persons visit Gottingen without ascending the Brocken.
At the close of one of their academic studies, equivalent to, what in this country is called a term, it was agreed that the following party should visit the Hartz Mountains, &c. Namely, Coleridge, the two Parrys of Bath, Charles and Edward, sons of the celebrated physician of that name, the son also of Professor Blumenbach, Dr. Carlyon, Mr. Chester, and Mr. Greenough. Coleridge and the party made the ascent of the Brocken, on the Hanoverian side of this mountain. During the toil of the ascent, Coleridge amused his companions with recapitulating some trifling verses, which he was wont to do some twenty years afterwards to amuse children of five and six years old, as Miss Mary Rowe, Tity Mouse Brim, Dr. Daniel Dove, of Doncaster, and his Horse Nobbs. It should, however, be observed, that these Dr. Carlyon seemed to think worth notice, while the Christabel and Ancient Mariner were probably but little to his taste. His dress, a short jacket of coarse material, though convenient, was not quite classical in a party of philosophical erratics in quest of novelty. This tale of Dr. Daniel Dove, of Doncaster, has given a frame and pegs, on which some literary man has founded a story, and on which he has hung the contents of his scrap book. The invention is not Coleridge's; and the writer believes the story itself to be traditional. The following account of his ascent up the Brocken was written by himself, soon after his return from Germany:
Fragment of a Journey over the Brocken, &c. in 1799.
"Through roads no way rememberable, we came to Gieloldshausen, over a bridge, on which was a mitred statue with a great crucifix in its arms. The village, long and ugly; but the church, like most Catholic churches, interesting; and this being Whitsun Eve, all were crowding to it, with their mass-books and rosaries, the little babies commonly with coral crosses hanging on the breast. Here we took a guide, left the village, ascended a hill, and now the woods rose up before us in a verdure which surprised us like a sorcery. The spring had burst forth with the suddenness of a Russian summer. As we left Göttingen there were buds, and here and there a tree half green; but here were woods in full foliage, distinguished from summer only by the exquisite freshness of their tender green. We entered the wood through a beautiful mossy path; the moon above us blending with the evening light, and every now and then a nightingale would invite the others to sing, and some or other commonly answered, and said, as we suppose, 'It is yet somewhat too early!' for the song was not continued. We came to a square piece of greenery, completely walled on all four sides by the beeches; again entered the wood, and having travelled about a mile, emerged from it into a grand plain — mountains in the distance, but ever by our road the skirts of the green woods. A very rapid river ran by our side; and now the nightingales were all singing, and the tender verdure grew paler in the moonlight, only the smooth parts of the river were still deeply purpled with the reflections from the fiery light in the west. So surrounded and so impressed, we arrived at Prele, a dear little cluster of houses in the middle of a semicircle of woody hills; the area of the semicircle scarcely broader than the breadth of the village.
...
"We afterwards ascended another hill, from the top of which a large plain opened before us with villages. A little village, Neuhoff, lay at the foot of it: we reached it, and then turned up through a valley on the left hand. The hills on both sides the valley were prettily wooded, and a rapid lively river ran through it.
So we went for about two miles, and almost at the end of the valley, or rather of its first turning, we found the village of Lauterberg. Just at the entrance of the village, two streams come out from two deep and woody coombs, close by each other, meet, and run into a third deep woody coomb opposite; before you a wild hill, which seems the end and barrier of the valley; on the right hand, low hills, now green with corn, and now wooded; and on the left a most majestic hill indeed — the effect of whose simple outline painting could not give, and how poor a thing are words! We pass through this neat little town — the majestic hill on the left hand soaring over the houses, and at every interspace you see the whole of it — its beeches, its firs, its rocks, its scattered cottages, and the one neat little pastor's house at the foot, embosomed in fruit-trees all in blossom, the noisy coomb-brook dashing close by it. We leave the valley, or rather, the first turning on the left, following a stream; and so the vale winds on, the river still at the foot of the woody hills, with every now and then other smaller valleys on right and left crossing our vale, and ever before you the woody hills running like groves one into another. We turned and turned, and entering the fourth curve of the vale, we found all at once that we had been ascending. The verdure vanished! All the beech trees were leafless, and so were the silver birches, whose boughs always, winter and summer, hang so elegantly. But low down in the valley, and in little companies on each bank of the river, a multitude of green conical fir trees, with herds of cattle wandering about, almost every one with a cylindrical bell around its neck, of no inconsiderable size, and as they moved — scattered over the narrow vale, and up among the trees on the hill — the noise was like that of a great city in the stillness of a sabbath morning, when the bells all at once are ringing for church. The whole was a melancholy and romantic scene, that was quite new to me. Again we turned, passed three smelting houses, which we visited; — a scene of terrible beauty is a furnace of boiling metal, darting, every moment blue, green, and scarlet lightning, like serpents' tongues! — and now we ascended a steep hill, on the top of which was St. Andrias Berg, a town built wholly of wood.
"We descended again, to ascend far higher; and now we came to a most beautiful road, which winded on the breast of the hill, from whence we looked down into a deep valley, or huge basin, full of pines and firs; the opposite hills full of pines and firs; and the hill above us, on whose breast we were winding, likewise full of pines and firs. The valley, or basin, on our right hand, into which we looked down, is called the Wald Rauschenbach, that is, the Valley of the Roaring Brook; and roar it did, indeed, most solemnly! The road on which we walked was weedy with infant fir-trees, an inch or two high; and now, on our left hand, came before us a most tremendous precipice of yellow and black rock, called the Rehberg, that is, the Mountain of the Roe. Now again is nothing but firs and pines, above, below, around us! How awful is the deep unison of their undividable murmur; what a one thing it is — it is a sound that impresses the dim notion of the Omnipresent! In various parts of the deep vale below us, we beheld little dancing waterfalls gleaming through the branches, and now, on our left hand, from the very summit of the hill above us, a powerful stream flung itself down, leaping and foaming, and now concealed, and now not concealed, and now half concealed by the fir-trees, till, towards the road, it became a visible sheet of water, within whose immediate neighbourhood no pine could have permanent abiding place. The snow lay every where on the sides of the roads, and glimmered in company with the waterfall foam, snow patches and waterbreaks glimmering through the branches in the hill above, the deep basin below, and the hill opposite. Over the high opposite hills, so dark in their pine forests, a far higher round barren stony mountain looked in upon the prospect from a distant country. Through this scenery we passed on, till our road was crossed by a second waterfall; or rather, aggregation of little dancing waterfalls, one by the side of the other for a considerable breadth, and all came at once out of the dark wood above, and rolled over the mossy rock fragments, little firs, growing in islets, scattered among them. The same scenery continued till we came to the Oder Seich, a lake, half made by man, and half by nature. It is two miles in length, and but a few hundred yards in breadth, and winds between banks, or rather through walls, of pine trees. It has the appearance of a most calm and majestic river. It crosses the road, goes into a wood, and there at once plunges itself down into a most magnificent cascade, and runs into the vale, to which it gives the name of the 'Vale of the Roaring Brook.' We descended into the vale, and stood at the bottom of the cascade, and climbed up again by its side. The rocks over which it plunged were unusually wild in their shape, giving fantastic resemblances of men and animals, and the fir-boughs by the side were kept almost in a swing, which unruly motion contrasted well with the stern quietness of the huge forest-sea every where else.
...
"In nature all things are individual, but a word is but an arbitrary character for a whole class of things; so that the same description may in almost all cases be applied to twenty different appearances; and in addition to the difficulty of the thing itself, I neither am, nor ever was, a good hand at description. I see what I write, but, alas! I cannot write what I see. From the Oder Seich we entered a second wood; and now the snow met us in large masses, and we walked for two miles knee-deep in it, with an inexpressible fatigue, till we came to the mount called Little Brocken; here even the firs deserted us, or only now and then a patch of them, wind shorn, no higher than one's knee, matted and cowering to the ground, like our thorn bushes on the highest sea-hills. The soil was plashy and boggy; we descended and came to the foot of the Great Brocken without a river — the highest mountain in all the north of Germany, and the seat of innumerable superstitions. On the first of May all the witches dance here at midnight; and those who go may see their own ghosts walking up and down, with a little billet on the back, giving the names of those who had wished them there; for 'I wish you on the top of the Brocken,' is a common curse throughout the whole empire. Well, we ascended — the soil boggy — and at last reached the height, which is 573 toises above the level of the sea. We visited the Blocksberg, a sort of bowling-green, inclosed by huge stones, something like those at Stonehenge, and this is the witches' ball-room; thence proceeded to the house on the hill, where we dined; and now we descended. In the evening about seven we arrived at Elbingerode. At the inn they brought us an album, or stamm-buch, requesting that we would write our names, and something or other as a remembrance that we had been there. I wrote the following lines, which contain a true account of my journey from the Brocken to ElbingerodeWe left Elbingerode, May 14th, and travelled for half a mile through a wild country, of bleak stony hills by our side, with several caverns, or rather mouths of caverns, visible in their breasts; and now we came to Rubilland, — Oh, it was a lovely scene! Our road was at the foot of low hills, and here were a few neat cottages; behind us were high hills, with a few scattered firs, and flocks of goats visible on the topmost crags. On our right hand a fine shallow river about thirty yards broad, and beyond the river a crescent hill clothed with firs, that rise one above another, like spectators in an amphitheatre. We advanced a little farther, — the crags behind us ceased to be visible, and now the whole was one and complete. All that could be seen was the cottages at the foot of the low green hill, (cottages embosomed in fruit trees in blossom,) the stream, and the little crescent of firs. I lingered here, and unwillingly lost sight of it for a little while. The firs were so beautiful, and the masses of rocks, walls, and obelisks started up among them in the very places where, if they had not been, a painter with a poet's feeling would have imagined them. Crossed the river (its name Bodi), entered the sweet wood, and came to the mouth of the cavern, with the man who shews it. It was a huge place, eight hundred feet in length, and more in depth, of many different apartments; and the only thing that distinguished it from other caverns was, that the guide, who was really a character, had the talent of finding out and seeing uncommon likenesses in the different forms of the stalactite. Here was a nun; — this was Solomon's temple; — that was a Roman Catholic Chapel; — here was a lion's claw, nothing but flesh and blood wanting to make it completely a claw! This was an organ, and had all the notes of an organ, &c. &c. &c.; but, alas! with all possible straining of my eyes, ears, and imagination, I could see nothing but common stalactite, and heard nothing but the dull ding of common cavern stones. One thing was really striking; — a huge cone of stalactite hung from the roof of the largest apartment, and, on being struck, gave perfectly the sound of a death-bell. I was behind, and heard it repeatedly at some distance, and the effect was very much in the fairy kind, — gnomes, and things unseen, that toll mock death-bells for mock funerals. After this, a little clear well and a black stream pleased me the most; and multiplied by fifty, and coloured ad libitum, might be well enough to read of in a novel or poem. We returned, and now before the inn, on the green plat around the Maypole, the villagers were celebrating Whit-Tuesday. This Maypole is hung as usual with garlands on the top, and, in these garlands, spoons, and other little valuables, are placed. The high smooth round pole is then well greased; and now he who can climb up to the top may have what he can get, — a very laughable scene as you may suppose, of awkwardness and agility, and failures on the very brink of success. Now began a dance. The women danced very well, and, in general, I have observed throughout Germany that the women in the lower ranks degenerate far less from the ideal of a woman, than the men from that of man. The dances were reels and waltzes; but chiefly the latter. This dance is, in the higher circles, sufficiently voluptuous; but here the emotions of it were far more faithful interpreters of the passion, which, doubtless, the dance was intended to shadow; yet, ever after the giddy round and round is over, they walked to music, the woman laying her arm, with confident affection, on the man's shoulders, or around his neck. The first couple at the waltzing was a very fine tall girl, of two or three and twenty, in the full bloom and growth of limb and feature, and a fellow with huge whiskers, a long tail, and woollen night-cap; he was a soldier, and from the more than usual glances of the girl, I presumed was her lover. He was, beyond compare, the gallant and the dancer of the party. Next came two boors: one of whom, in the whole contour of his face and person, and, above all, in the laughably would-be frolicksome kick out of his heel, irresistibly reminded me of Shakespeare's Slender, and the other of his Dogberry. Oh! two such faces, and two such postures! O that I were an Hogarth! What an enviable gift it is to have a genius in painting! Their partners were pretty lasses, not so tall as the former, and danced uncommonly light and airy. The fourth couple was a sweet girl of about seventeen, delicately slender, and very prettily dressed, with a full-blown rose in the white ribbon that went round her head, and confined her reddish-brown hair; and her partner waltzed with a pipe in his mouth, smoking all the while; and during the whole of this voluptuous dance, his countenance was a fair personification of true German phlegm. After these, but, I suppose, not actually belonging to the party, a little ragged girl and ragged boy, with his stockings about his heels, waltzed and danced; — waltzing and dancing in the rear most entertainingly. But what most pleased me, was a little girl of about three or four years old, certainly not more than four, who had been put to watch a little babe, of not more than a year old (for one of our party had asked), and who was just beginning to run away, the girl teaching him to walk, and who was so animated by the music, that she began to waltz with him, and the two babes whirled round and round, hugging and kissing each other, as if the music had made them mad. There were two fiddles and a bass viol. The fiddlers, — above all, the bass violer, — most Hogarthian phizzes! God love them! I felt far more affection for them than towards any other set of human beings I have met with since I have been in Germany, I suppose because they looked so happy!"I stood on Brocken's sovran height, and saw
Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills;
A surging scene, and only limited
By the blue distance. Wearily my way
Downward I dragged, through fir groves evermore,
Where bright green moss moved in sepulchral forms,
Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard,
The sweet bird's song become a hollow sound;
And the gale murmuring indivisibly,
Reserved its solemn murmur, more distinct
From many a note of many a waterbreak,
And the brook's chatter; on whose islet stones
The dingy kidling, with its tinkling bell,
Leapt frolicksome, or old romantic goat
Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on
With low and languid thought, for I had found
That grandest scenes have but imperfect charms
Where the eye vainly wanders, nor beholds
One spot with which the heart associates
Holy remembrances of child or friend,
Or gentle maid, our first and early love,
Or father, or the venerable name
Of our adored country. O thou Queen,
Thou delegated Deity of Earth,
O 'dear, dear' England! how my longing eyes
Turned westward, shaping in the steady clouds
Thy sands and high white cliffs! Sweet native isle,
This heart was proud, yea, mine eyes swam with tears
To think of thee; and all the goodly view
From sovran Brocken, woods and woody hills
Floated away, like a departing dream,
Feeble and dim. Stranger, these impulses
Blame thou not lightly; nor will I profane,
With hasty judgment or injurious doubt,
That man's sublimer spirit, who can feel
That God is every where, the God who framed
Mankind to be one mighty brotherhood,
Himself our Father, and the world our home.
I stood on Brocken's sovran height, and saw
Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills;
A surging scene, and only limited
By the blue distance. Wearily my way
Downward I dragged, through fir groves evermore,
Where bright green moss moved in sepulchral forms,
Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard,
The sweet bird's song become a hollow sound;
And the gale murmuring indivisibly,
Reserved its solemn murmur, more distinct
From many a note of many a waterbreak,
And the brook's chatter; on whose islet stones
The dingy kidling, with its tinkling bell,
Leapt frolicksome, or old romantic goat
Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on
With low and languid thought, for I had found
That grandest scenes have but imperfect charms
Where the eye vainly wanders, nor beholds
One spot with which the heart associates
Holy remembrances of child or friend,
Or gentle maid, our first and early love,
Or father, or the venerable name
Of our adored country. O thou Queen,
Thou delegated Deity of Earth,
O 'dear, dear' England! how my longing eyes
Turned westward, shaping in the steady clouds
Thy sands and high white cliffs! Sweet native isle,
This heart was proud, yea, mine eyes swam with tears
To think of thee; and all the goodly view
From sovran Brocken, woods and woody hills
Floated away, like a departing dream,
Feeble and dim. Stranger, these impulses
Blame thou not lightly; nor will I profane,
With hasty judgment or injurious doubt,
That man's sublimer spirit, who can feel
That God is every where, the God who framed
Mankind to be one mighty brotherhood,
Himself our Father, and the world our home.
Coleridge and his companions in their tour passed through a district belonging to the elector of Metz, and he often repeated the following story, which one of the party has since related in print; that, going through this district, chiefly inhabited by boors, who were Romanists, of the lowest form of this persuasion of Christians, the party fatigued and much exhausted, with the exception of Blumenbach, arrived somewhat late, though being a summer evening, it was still light, at a Hessian village, where they had hoped, as in England, to find quarters for the night. Most of the inhabitants had retired to rest, a few only loitering about, perhaps surprized at the sight of strangers. They shewed no inclination to be courteous, but rather eyed them with suspicion and curiosity. The party, notwithstanding this, entered the village ale-house, still open, asked for refreshments and a night's lodging, but no one noticed them. Though hungry, they could not procure any thing for supper, not even a cup of coffee, nor could they find beds; after some time, however, they asked for a few bundles of straw, which would probably have been granted, had not Coleridge, out of patience at seeing his friends' forlorn situation, imprudently asked one of them, if there lived any Christians in Hesse Cassel? At this speech, which was soon echoed by those within the house to the bystanders without, the boors became instantly so infuriated, that rushing in, the travellers were immediately driven out, and were glad to save themselves from the lighted fire-wood on the hearth, which was hurled at them. On this they went to seek a spot to bivouac for the night. Coleridge lay under the shelter of a furze-bush, annoyed by the thorns, which, if they did not disturb his rest, must have rendered it comfortless. Youth and fatigue, inducing sleep, soon rose above these difficulties. In the ascent of the Brocken, they despaired of seeing the famous spectre, in search of which they toiled, it being visible only when the sun is a few degrees above the horizon. Haué says, he ascended thirty times without seeing it, till at length he was enabled to witness the effect of this optical delusion.
the best account of it, see the
Natural Magic
of Sir D. Brewster,
who explains the origin of these spectres, and shews how the mind is deluded among an ignorant and easily deceived people, and thus traces the birth of various ghost stories in the neighbourhood, extending as far in Europe, as such stories find credence.
"In the course of my repeated tours through the Hartz," Mr. Jordan says, "I ascended the Brocken twelve different times, but I had the good fortune only twice (both times about Whitsuntide), to see that atmospheric phenomenon called the Spectre of the Brocken, which appears to me worthy of particular attention, as it must, no doubt, be observed on other high mountains, which have a situation favourable for producing it. The first time I was deceived by this extraordinary phenomenon, I had clambered up to the summit of the Brocken, very early in the morning, in order to wait there for the inexpressibly beautiful view of the sun rising in the east. The heavens were already streaked with red: the sun was just appearing above the horizon in full majesty, and the most perfect serenity prevailed throughout the surrounding country. When the other Hartz mountains in the south-west, towards the Worm mountains, lying under the Brocken, began to be covered by thick clouds; ascending at this moment the granite rocks called the Teufelskauzel, there appeared before me, though at a great distance towards the Worm mountains, the gigantic figure of a man, as if standing on a large pedestal. But scarcely had I discovered it when it began to disappear; the clouds sank down speedily and expanded, and I saw the phenomenon no more. The second time, however, I saw the spectre somewhat more distinctly, a little below the summit of the Brocken, and near the Heinrichs-höhe, as I was looking at the sun rising about four o'clock in the morning. The weather was rather tempestuous, the sky towards the level country was pretty clear, but the Harz mountains had attracted several thick clouds which had been hovering around them, and which, beginning to settle on the Brocken, confined the prospect. In these clouds, soon after the rising of the sun, I saw my own shadow of a monstrous size, move itself for a couple of seconds exactly as I moved, but I was soon involved in clouds, and the phenomenon disappeared."
It is impossible to see this phenomenon, except when the sun is at such an altitude as to throw his rays upon the body in a horizontal direction; for, if he is higher, the shadow is thrown rather under the body than before it. After visiting the Hartz, Coleridge returned to Göttingen, and in his note-book in a leave-taking memorial as well as autograph, the following lines were written by Blumenbach, the son:—
"Wenn Sie, bester Freund, auch in Jhrer Heimath die
Natur bewundern werden, wie wir beide es auf dem Harze
gethan haben, so erinnern Sie sich des Harzes, und ich darf
dann hoffen, das Sie auch mich nicht vergessen werden.
"Leben Sie wohl, und reisen glücklich,
"Jhr. Blumenbach."
Translation.
If you perchance, my dearest friend, should still continue
to admire the works of nature at your home, as we have done
together on the Hartz; recall to your recollection the Hartz,
and then I dare hope that you will also think of me.
Farewell, may you have a prosperous voyage.
(Signed) yours, Blumenbach.
Coleridge returned to England after an absence of fourteen mouths, and arrived in London the 27th November, 1799.
He went to Germany but little versed in the language, and adopted the following plan of acquiring it, which he recommends to others
"To those," says he, "who design to acquire the language of a country in the country itself, it may be useful, if I mention the incalculable advantages which I derived from learning all the words that could possibly be so learnt, with the objects before me, and without the intermediation of the English terms. It was a regular part of my morning studies for the first six weeks of my residence at Ratzeburg, to accompany the good and kind old pastor, with whom I lived, from the cellar to the roof, through gardens, farm-yards, &c., and to call every the minutest thing by its German name. Advertisements, farces, jest-books, and conversation of children while I was at play with them, contributed their share to a more homelike acquaintance with the language, than I could have procured from books of polite literature alone, or even from polite society."
In support of this plan, he makes a quotation from the massive folios of Luther — a passage as he calls it of "
hearty
sound sense," and gives the "simple, sinewy, idiomatic words of the "original," with a translation of his own:
"For one must not ask the letters in the Latin tongue, how one ought to speak German; but one must ask the mother in the house, the children in the lanes and alleys, the common man in the market, concerning this; yea, and look at the moves of their mouths while they are talking, and thereafter interpret. They understand then, and mark that one talks German with them."
Whether he owed his successful acquirement of the language to these plans adopted by him, or whether to his extraordinary powers of mind, it must be left to others to judge. To form any thing like an accurate opinion, it may be necessary to re-state, that during this fourteen months' residence, he acquired such a knowledge of the German, as enabled him to make that extraordinary translation of the Wallenstein, (which will be presently noticed), reading at the same time several German authors, and storing up for himself the means of becoming familiar with others, on subjects in which the English language was deficient. In addition to what in this short period he effected, I may say that some part of this time was employed in receiving many lessons from professor Tychsen, in the Gothic of Ulphilas, which, says he,
"sufficed to make me acquainted with its grammar, and the radical words of most frequent occurrence; and with the occasional assistance of the same philosophical linguist, I read through Ottfried's Metrical Paraphrase of the Gospel, and the most important remains of the Theotiscan."
Coleridge's
Biographia
contains the history and developement of his mind till 1816, when it was published; he called it his
Literary Life
, but of necessity it is intermixed with his biography, as he must have found it impossible to separate them. He had even half promised himself to write his own biography, but the want of success in his literary labours, and the state of his health, caused him to think seriously that his life was diminishing too fast, to permit him to finish those great works, of which he had long planned the execution. The conception of these works was on such a scale, that even his giant intellect, with his great and continuous powers of application, could not have executed them. But to continue. — On his return to London, his first literary occupation was the translation of the
Wallenstein
, which he effected in six weeks, in a lodging in Buckingham-street, in the Strand; it was printed and published in 1800.
The MS. was purchased by Longman's house under the condition that the English Version and Schiller's Play in German were to be published at the same time. The play, as is well known to all German readers, is in three parts; the first part, the Camp, being considered by Coleridge as not sufficiently interesting to the British public to translate, it was not attempted; the second part, the Piccolomini, was translated with the occasional addition of some lines, in order to make out the thought when it appeared to require it, particularly in the Horological scene of the Watch Tower. In the last part the Death of Wallenstein is equally free, but the liberties taken with this play are those of omission.
German was not at that time cultivated in England, and the few plays which were translated, were but bad specimens of German Literature. The Wallenstein is an historical play, without any of those violent tragic events which the public expect to find in German plays, and this was one cause perhaps of disappointment. — It is a play of high thoughts — ennobling sentiments, and for the reflecting individual with good feelings, one of those plays, by which, even without reference to the story, the head and the heart are both benefited. There is no violent excitement produced, and in quiet thought one can dwell on it with pleasure. Coleridge truly prophesied its fate, for when translating it, he said it would fall dead from the press, and indeed but few of the copies were sold; — his advice to the publishers, whom he had forewarned of this failure, was to reserve the unsold copies, and wait till it might become fashionable. They however parted with it as waste paper, though sixteen years afterwards it was eagerly sought for, and the few remaining copies doubled their price; but now that the German language has become more general, and the merit of this translation been appreciated, it has been reprinted with success.
Since the visit of these remarkable men to Germany, the taste for German literature has each year slowly increased, so as to make it almost appear that they have given the direction to this taste, which in England has caused a free inquiry into the writings of German authors, particularly of their poets and philosophers for the one class; and also into the interesting tales and stories to be found for the many who require such amusement.
The edition of Wallenstein, 1800, contains the following preface, which was afterwards abridged, but is here given as it was originally written; the first criticism on it was wholly made out of this preface, and these lines were quoted by the reviewer, in condemnation of the play and the translation, though it is well known that the critic was ignorant of German. The date of the MS. by Schiller is September 30th, 1799, the English is 1800. Coleridge indeed calls it a translation, but had it been verbatim, it would have required much longer time; take it however as we will, it displays wonderful powers; and as he noticed in a letter to a friend, it was executed in the prime of his life and vigour of his mind. Of the metre of this drama he spoke slightingly, and said according to his taste,
"it dragged, like "a fly through a glue-pot." "It was my intention," he writes, "to have prefixed a life of Wallenstein to this translation; but I found that it must either have occupied a space wholly disproportionate to the nature of the publication, or have been merely a meagre catalogue of events narrated, not more fully than they already are in the play itself. The recent translation, likewise, of Schiller's History of the Thirty Years' War, diminished the motives thereto. In the translation, I have endeavoured to render my author literally, wherever I was not prevented by absolute differences of idiom; but I am conscious, that in two or three short passages, I have been guilty of dilating the original; and, from anxiety to give the full meaning, have weakened the force. In the metre I have availed myself of no other liberties, than those which Schiller had permitted to himself, except the occasional breaking up of the line, by the substitution of a trochee for an iambus; of which liberty, so frequent in our tragedies, I find no instance in these dramas.
The two Dramas, Piccolomini, or the first part of Wallenstein, and Wallenstein, are introduced in the original manuscript by a prelude in one act, entitled Wallenstein's camp. This is written in rhyme, and in nine syllable verse, in the same lilting metre (if that expression may be permitted) with the second eclogue of Spencer's Shepherd's Calendar. This prelude possesses a sort of broad humour, and is not deficient in character, but to have translated it into prose, or into any other metre than that of the original, would have given a false idea, both of its style and purport; to have translated it into the same metre, would have been incompatible with a faithful adherence to the sense of the German, from the comparative poverty of our language in rhymes; and it would have been unadvisable, from the incongruity of those lax verses with the present state of the English public. Schiller's intention seems to have been merely to have prepared his reader for the tragedies, by a lively picture of the laxity of discipline, and the mutinous disposition of Wallenstein's soldiery. It is not necessary as a preliminary explanation. For these reasons it has been thought expedient not to translate it.
The admirers of Schiller, who have abstracted their idea of that author from the Robbers, and the Cabal and Love plays, in which the main interest is produced by the excitement of curiosity, and in which the curiosity is excited by terrible and extraordinary incident, will not have perused, without some portion of disappointment, the dramas which it has been my employment to translate. They should, however, reflect, that these are historical dramas, taken from a popular German history; that we must therefore judge of them in some measure with the feelings of Germans, or by analogy with the interest excited in us by similar dramas in our own language. Few, I trust, would be rash or ignorant enough, to compare Schiller with Shakspeare, yet, merely as illustration, I would say, that we should proceed to the perusal of Wallenstein, not from Lear or Othello, but from Richard the Second, or the three parts of Henry the Sixth. We scarcely expect rapidity in an historical drama; and many prolix speeches are pardoned from characters, whose names and actions have formed the most amusing tales of our early life. On the other hand, there exist in these plays more individual beauties, more passages the excellence of which will bear reflection than in the former productions of Schiller.
The description of the Astrological Tower, and the reflections of the young lover, which follow it, form in the original a fine poem, and my translation must have been wretched indeed, if it can have wholly overclouded the beauties of the scene in the first act of the first play, between Questenberg, Max. and Octavio Piccolomini.
If we except the scene of the setting sun in the Robbers, I know of no part in Schiller's plays, which equals the whole of the first scene of the fifth act of the concluding play. It would be unbecoming in me to be more diffuse on this subject. A translator stands connected with the original author by a certain law of subordination, which makes it more decorous to point out excellencies than defects; indeed, he is not likely to be a fair judge of either. The pleasure or disgust from his own labour, will mingle with the feelings that arise from an after view of the original poem; and in the first perusal of a work in any foreign language, which we understand, we are apt to attribute to it more excellence than it really possesses, from our own pleasurable sense of difficulty overcome without effort. Translation of poetry into poetry is difficult, because the translator must give a brilliancy to his language without that warmth of original conception, from which such brilliancy would follow of its own accord. But the translator of a living author is encumbered with additional inconveniences. If he render his original faithfully, as to the sense of each passage, he must necessarily destroy a considerable portion of the spirit; if he endeavour to give a work executed according to laws of compensation, he subjects himself to imputations of vanity, or misrepresentation. I thought it my duty to remain by the sense of my original, with as few exceptions as the nature of the language rendered possible."
About this time, or soon after his return from Germany, the proprietor of the
Morning Post
, who was also the editor, engaged Coleridge to undertake the literary department. In this he promised to assist, provided the paper was conducted on fixed and announced principles, and that he should neither be requested nor obliged to deviate from them in favour of any party or any event. In consequence, that journal became, and for many years continued,
anti-ministerial
, yet with a very qualified approbation of the opposition, and with far greater earnestness and zeal, both anti-jacobin and anti-gallican. As contributors to this paper, the editor had the assistance of Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Southey, and Mr. Lamb. Mr. Southey, from his extreme activity and industry, with powers best suited for such employment, with a rapidity and punctuality which made him invaluable to the proprietor, was the largest contributor. The others not possessing the same qualifications, although extremely powerful in their way, were not of the same value to the proprietor.
To Coleridge, he continued liberal and kind, and Coleridge appreciated his talents; often has he been heard to say, if Mr. Stuart "knew as much of man as he does of men, he would be one of the first characters in Europe." The world, and even that part of it, who either receive pleasure, or are benefited by the labours of literary men, often seem to forget how many there are who being compelled to work during the week for the provision of the week, are (if not possessed of much bodily strength) unfit to continue further mental exertions; nor can they find the leisure and repose necessary to produce any work of importance, though such efforts must always be found so much more congenial to the feelings of a man of genius. Whatever his enemies or his more envious friends may choose to have put forth, it was to him a most painful thought, particularly as he had made literature his profession, to have lived in vain. This feeling sometimes haunted him, and when the feelings are gloomily disposed, they often become in their turn depressing causes, which frequently ended in a deep and painful sigh, and a renewal of his laborious and inspiring thoughts as an antidote. The severest of his critics have not pretended to have found in his compositions triviality, or traces of a mind that shrank from the toil of thinking.
A respectable portion of literary talent will secure the success of a newspaper, provided that it impartially adheres "to a code of intelligible principles previously announced, and faithfully referred to in support of every judgment on men and events." Such were the opinions and feelings by which the contributors to this paper, as well as the proprietor was influenced during this period; and to these causes, as well as from the talents of the editor and of the writers, it mainly owed its success. Papers so conducted do not require the aid of party, nor of ministerial patronage. Yet a determination to make money by flattering the envy and cupidity, and the vindictive restlessness of unthinking men, seems frequently to have succeeded, not confining itself to the daily press, but diffusing itself into periodicals of a different stamp.
"I do derive," says Coleridge, "a gratification from the knowledge, that my essays have contributed to introduce the practice of placing the questions and events of the day in a moral point of view. In Burke's writings, indeed, the germs of all political truths may be found. But I dare assume to myself the merit of having first explicitly defined and analysed the nature of Jacobinism; and in distinguishing the Jacobin from the Republican, the Democrat, and the mere Demagogue," (vide Friend.)
Whilst Coleridge retained the opinions of the Unitarians, or rather preached among them, they hailed him as the rising star of their society, but when he seceded from them on his change of opinions, many of them bruited his name in execration. Not so was it with Mr. Estlin and other amiable and intelligent men, they understood him, and felt he had acted on the full conviction of his mind, and that he was acting conscientiously when he declined the opportunity of possessing a fixed income, of which he stood so much in need. Those who knew him, knew how much he suffered, and how painful it was for him to have differed with such a friend as Mr. Estlin, one to whom he had been indebted for many kind offices: But Coleridge was too sincere a man to dissemble. — There were however others, who, from motives and feelings not honourable to them, dissemblers even in Unitarianism, who sought every opportunity of defaming him, and attempted to strip him of his virtues, and of his genius, by calumny and detraction. In this, however, they were foiled. On the other hand, the party more inclined to favour fanaticism, were so indiscreet in their praise as to become in their turn equally injurious to his character, and verified the old adage, that indiscreet friends are too often the worst of enemies; for this party considered his conversion as nothing less than a special miracle. It was impossible for a mind so philosophical and so constituted, to remain long in the trammels of a philosophy like Hartley's, or to continue to adhere to such a substitute for Christianity as Unitarianism; like the incarcerated chicken, he would on increase of growth and power, liberate himself from his imprisonment and breathe unencumbered the vital air, the pabulum of animal life, which by parallel reasoning, Coleridge was aiming at in a spiritual life. From such a substitute for Christianity, that imitation so unvitalizing in its effects, the studiously industrious and sincere man will recoil; but the vain and superficial man will find much in it for the display of his egotism, and superficial knowledge. Often did he remark when conversing on these subjects, there was a time, when
"I disbelieved down to Unitarianism, it would have been more honest to have gone farther, to have denied the existence of a God! but that my heart would not allow me to do."
But to this subject we shall have occasion to return. The mind which grows with its culture, seeks deeper research, and so was it with his. Certainly, one of the effects of his visits to Germany, was to root up whatever remained of the Mechanical Philosophy of Hartley, after whom he had named his eldest son, and to open to his mind in philosophy new and higher views, and in religion more established views. But change with the many, though the result of conviction and the growth of truth, is still a change; and with the unthinking, it deteriorates from the character of a man, rather than as it should do elevate him,
... unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how mean a thing is man!
Daniel.
In the years 1783, 1784, and 1786, Bishop Horsley wrote some of the tracts in controversy with Priestley, upon the historical question of the belief of the first ages in
Our Lord's
Divinity, which are collected in one volume, with large additional notes, dated 1789.
In a memorandum
book
, made by Coleridge, it appears that he never saw nor read this volume, till some time in 1805; therefore his views were not altered by the bishop's reasoning, but had undergone a great change previously.
Horsley's writings carry with them a conviction of their truth. His clear though concentrated style rivets the attention, and forcibly impresses the mind, with his depth of learning, and at the same time inspires the feeling of its practical utility. He was an opponent most aptly suited to Priestley. The times however greatly favoured the latter; the discoveries of Lavoisier, led the way to the study of chemistry, which became fashionable and generally cultivated, and with its brilliancy dazzled the multitude. Priestley displayed considerable expertness and fitness for the practical application of the discoveries of others; and he added also to the new mass of facts, which were daily presenting themselves, and thus science became enriched, enriching at the same time the pockets of the manufacturers, exciting national industry, and adding considerably to the national property. Priestley's researches and discoveries gave an irresistible weight to his name, and had an undue influence, as we shall presently see, in the arguments or opinions he advanced. This, Horsley foresaw, and felt, and therefore built his arguments on the permanent, in order to subdue the creatures founded on the impermanent and other worthless idols of the mind's forming.
How the world were delighted and wonder-struck by the supposed discovery, that it was the province of vegetable life to supply the vital air, which animal life destroyed! Priestley was hailed as the wonder of his age, and for a while its oracle. He was however no ordinary being, and even his enemies admitted him to be a kind and moral man. His intellectual powers will speak for themselves. We have now had sufficient experience to see how shifting all kind of theory must be when left to the will and ingenuity of man only — and how unsafe a guide in questions of importance as the one now referred to. Horsley saw the weak points of Priestley's argument, and was not to be dazzled and put aside by Priestley's philosophical display. Horsley fearlessly entered into this controversy, like a man who felt his own strength, and particularly the strength of his cause; though he needed not the courage of a Luther, he was apparently a man who possessed it, if called on.
used the best means to silence his adversary,
with the Bible before him as his shield, (but at the same time his support as well as defence,) from behind which he assailed his opponent with his Biblical learning so powerfully, that his first attack made Priestley feel the strength of his adversary. In vaunting language, Priestley made the best defence which he thought he could, but not the most prudent, by promising to answer his opponent so efficiently, as to make him a convert to his doctrines. But in this vaunting prediction, that he would not only answer his opponent satisfactorily, to all who were interested in the controversy, but convert him to his opinions, it need not be added he failed, so completely, and at the same time displayed such a "ridiculous vanity," as to deprive him of that influence which he had so overrated in himself.
letters seem particularly to have attracted Coleridge's attention, and to have caused him to make one of his concise, pithy and powerful notes as a comment on this letter of Horsley's, entitled, "The Unitarian Doctrine not well calculated for the conversion of Jews, Mahometans, or Infidels, of any description."
The following is Coleridge's Comment on the Letter, to which allusion has been made, and from the date seems to have been written during his residence at Malta:—
"February 12, 1805. — [Thinking] during my perusal of Horsley's letters in reply to Dr. Priestley's objections to the Trinity on the part of Jews, Mahometans, and Infidels, it burst upon me at once as an awful truth, what seven or eight years ago I thought of proving with a hollow faith, and for an ambiguous purpose,[29] my mind then wavering in its necessary passage from Unitarianism (which, as I have often said, is the religion of a man, whose reason would make him an atheist, but whose heart and common sense will not permit him to be so) through Spinosism into Plato and St. John. No Christ, no God! This I now feel with all its needful evidence of the understanding: would to God my spirit were made conform thereto — that no Trinity, no God! That Unitarianism in all its forms is idolatry, and that the remark of Horsley is most accurate; that Dr. Priestley's mode of converting the Jews and Turks is, in the great essential of religious faith, to give the name of Christianity to their present idolatry — truly the trick of Mahomet, who, finding that the mountain would not come to him, went to the mountain. [O]! that this conviction may work upon me and in me, and that my mind may be made up as to the character of Jesus, and of historical Christianity, as clearly as it is of the logos, and intellectual or spiritual Christianity — that I may be made to know either their especial and peculiar union, or their absolute disunion in any peculiar sense.[30]
With regard to the Unitarians, it has been shamelessly asserted, that I have denied them to be Christians. God forbid! For how should I know what the piety of the heart may be, or what quantum of error in the understanding may consist, with a saving faith in the intentions and actual dispositions of the whole moral being, in any one individual? Never will God reject a soul that sincerely loves him, be his speculative opinions what they may: and whether in any given instance certain opinions, be they unbelief, or misbelief, are compatible with a sincere love of God, God only can know. But this I have said, and shall continue to say, that if the doctrines, the sum of which I believe to constitute the truth in Christ, be Christianity, then Unitarianism is not, and vice versâ: and that in speaking theologically and impersonally, i. e. of Psilanthropism and Theanthropism, as schemes of belief — and without reference to individuals who profess either the one or the other — it will be absurd to use a different language, as long as it is the dictate of common sense, that two opposites cannot properly be called by the same name.
I should feel no offence if a Unitarian applied the same to me, any more than if he were to say, that 2 and 2 being 4, 4 and 4 must be 8."
Biog. Lit. vol. ii. p. 307.
In his
Literary Life
, Mr. Coleridge has made the following observation regarding talent and genius:
"For the conceptions of the mind may be so vivid and adequate, as to preclude that impulse to the realising of them, which is strongest and most restless in those who possess more than mere talent (or the faculty of appropriating and applying the knowledge of others,) yet still want something of the creative and self-sufficing power of absolute Genius. For this reason, therefore, they are men of commanding genius. While the former rest content between thought and reality, as it were in an intermundium of which their own living spirit supplies the substance, and their imagination the ever-varying form; the latter must impress their preconceptions on the world without, in order to present them back to their own view with the satisfying degree of clearness, distinctness, and individuality."
Vol. i. p. 31.
In consequence of various reports traducing Coleridge's good name, I have thought it an act of justice due to his character, to notice several mistatements here and elsewhere, which I should otherwise have gladly passed over.
Coleridge was always most ready to pass a censure on what appeared to him a defect in his own composition, of which the following is a proof: — In his introductory remarks to this Greek Ode, printed in the
Sibylline Leaves
, he observes:
"The Slaves in the West Indies consider Death as a passport to their native country. This sentiment is expressed in the introduction to the Greek Ode on the Slave Trade, of which the Ideas are better than the language in which they are conveyed."
Certainly this is taking no merit to himself, although the
Ode
obtained the Prize.
"At the beginning of the French Revolution, Klopstock wrote odes of congratulation. He received some honorary presents from the French Republic (a golden crown, I believe), and, like our Priestley, was invited to a seat in the legislature, which he declined: but, when French liberty metamorphosed herself into a fury, he sent back these presents with a palinodia, declaring his abhorrence of their proceedings; and since then he has been more perhaps than enough an Anti-Gallican. I mean, that in his just contempt and detestation of the crimes and follies of the revolutionists, he suffers himself to forget that the revolution itself is a process of the Divine Providence; and that as the folly of men is the wisdom of God, so are their iniquities instruments of his goodness."
Biographia Literaria
, vol. ii. p. 243.
Coleridge in the
Friend
, says:
"My feelings, however, and imagination did not remain unkindled in this general conflagration (the French Revolution); and I confess I should be more inclined to be ashamed than proud of myself if they had. I was a sharer in the general vortex, though my little world described the path of its revolution in an orbit of its own. What I dared not expect from constitutions of government and whole nations, I hoped from Religion."
This is a mistake. The candidate was Mr. Bethell, one of the members for Yorkshire, and not the Bishop of Bangor, as is commonly supposed. Bishop Bethel himself, not long ago, told me this.
The writer of the article above quoted followed Coleridge in the school, and was elected to Trinity College a year after. As I have before observed, he seems to have been well acquainted with his habits; yet, with regard to his feelings on certain points, as his ambition and desire for a college life, I think he must have misunderstood him. Ambition never formed any part of Coleridge's character. Honours, titles, and distinctions had no meaning for him. His affections, so strong and deep, were likely to be his only stimulants in the pursuit of them.
Frend's trial took place at Cambridge, in the Vice-Chancellor's Court, in the year 1793, for sedition and defamation of the Church of England, in giving utterance to and printing certain opinions, founded on Unitarian Doctrines, adverse to the established Church. —
Vide
State Trials. Sentence of banishment was pronounced against him: which sentence was confirmed by the Court of Delegates, to which Mr. Frend had appealed from the Vice-Chancellor's Court. He then appealed from the decision of the Court of Delegates, protested against the proceedings, and moved this cause to the Court of King's Bench. This Court, after an examination of the case, decided, that the proceedings at Cambridge having been strictly formal, they had no power to interfere, and therefore the sentence against Frend remained in full force. Being a Fellow of Jesus' College at the time that Coleridge was a student, he excited the sympathies of the young and ardent of that day.
The repetition of Middleton's name, so frequently occurring may appear to a stranger unnecessary; but Middleton, loving Coleridge so much, and being his senior in years, as well as in studies, was to him, while at school and at college, what the Polar Star is to the mariner on a wide sea without compass, — his guide, and his influential friend and companion.
There is another incident which I shall here relate that raised him in the esteem of his comrades. One of them was seized with confluent small-pox, and his life was considered in great danger. The fear of the spread of this had produced such alarm in his quarters, that the sufferer was nearly deserted. Here Coleridge's reading served him; and, having a small quantity of medical knowledge in addition to a large share of kindness, he volunteered his services, and nursed the sick man night and day for six weeks. His patient recovered, to the joy of Coleridge and of his comrades. The man was taken ill during a march, and in consequence of the fears of the persons of the place, he and Coleridge (who had volunteered to remain with him) were put into an out-building, and no communication held with them — Coleridge remaining the whole time in the same room with the man (who, during part of his illness, was violently delirious) nursing and reading to him, &c.
In a published letter to a friend is the following observation:
"I sometimes compare my own life with that of Steele (yet oh! how unlike), led to this from having myself also for a brief time borne arms, and written 'private' after my name, or rather another name; for being at a loss when suddenly asked my name, I answered Comberbach, and verily my habits were so little equestrian, that my horse, I doubt not, was of that opinion."
Capt. Nathaniel Ogle sold out of the 15th Dragoons, Nov. 19th, 1794.
Comberbacke enlisted at Reading, Dec. 3rd, 1793, commanded at this time by Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Churchill, who was a Major in the regiment at the time Comberbacke was discharged at Hounslow, on the 10th of April, 1794, according to the War-Office books.
Probably the week in which he enlisted.
A gentleman much interested in these lectures, who was also present, has given the following version of the story, and it is so well done, that I am desirous of inserting it: —
"In all Mr. Coleridge's lectures he was a steady opposer of Mr. Pitt and the then existing war; and also an enthusiastic admirer of Fox, Sheridan, Grey, &c. &c., but his opposition to the reigning politics discovered little asperity; it chiefly appeared by wit and sarcasm, and commonly ended in that which was the speaker's chief object, a laugh. Few attended Mr. C.'s lectures but those whose political views were similar to his own; but on one occasion, some gentlemen of the opposite party came into the lecture-room, and at one sentiment they heard, testified their disapprobation by the only easy and safe way in their power; namely, by a hiss. The auditors were startled at so unusual a sound, not knowing to what it might conduct; but their noble leader soon quieted their fears, by instantly remarking, with great coolness, 'I am not at all surprised, when the red hot prejudices of aristocrats are suddenly plunged into the cool waters of reason, that they should go off with a hiss!' The words were electric. The assailants felt, as well as testified their confusion, and the whole company confirmed it by immense applause! There was no more hissing."
This note was written at Highgate, in a copy of the
Conciones ad Populum
.
"With the exception of one extraordinary man, I have never known an individual, least of all an individual of genius, healthy or happy without a profession, i.e., some regular employment, which does not depend on the will of the moment, and which can be carried on so far mechanically, that an average quantum only of health, spirits, and intellectual exertion are requisite to its faithful discharge. Three hours of leisure, unannoyed by any alien anxiety, and looked forward to with delight as a change and recreation, will suffice to realize in literature a larger product of what is truly genial, than weeks of compulsion. Money, and immediate reputation form only an arbitrary and accidental end of literary labour. The hope of increasing them by any given exertion will often prove a stimulant to industry; but the necessity of acquiring them will, in all works of genius, convert the stimulant into a narcotic. Motives by excess reverse their very nature, and instead of exciting, stun and stupify the mind; for it is one contra-distinction of genius from talent, that its predominant end is always comprised in the means; and this is one of the many points, which establish an analogy between genius and virtue. Now, though talents may exist without genius, yet, as genius cannot exist, certainly not manifest itself, without talents, I would advise every scholar, who feels the genial power working within him, so far to make a division between the two, as that he should devote his talents to the acquirement of competence in some known trade or profession, and his genius to objects of his tranquil and unbiassed choice; while the consciousness of being actuated in both alike by the sincere desire to perform his duty, will alike ennoble both. "My dear young friend," (I would say), "suppose yourself established in any honourable occupation. From the manufactory or counting-house, from the law-court, or from having visited your last patient, you return at evening,
to your family, prepared for its social enjoyments, with the very countenances of your wife and children brightened, and their voice of welcome made doubly welcome by the knowledge that, as far as they are concerned, you have satisfied the demands of the day, by the labour of the day. Then, when you retire into your study, in the books on your shelves, you revisit so many venerable friends with whom you can converse. Your own spirit scarcely less free from personal anxieties than the great minds, that in those books are still living for you! Even your writing-desk, with its blank paper and all its other implements, will appear as a chain of flowers, capable of linking your feelings, as well as thoughts to events, and characters, past or to come: not a chain of iron which binds you down to think of the future and the remote, by recalling the claims and feelings of the peremptory present: but why should I say retire? The habits of active life and daily intercourse with the stir of the world, will tend to give you such self command, that the presence of your family will be no interruption. Nay, the social silence, or undisturbing voices of a wife or sister will be like a restorative atmosphere, or soft music which moulds a dream without becoming its object. If facts are required to prove the possibility of combining weighty performances in literature with full and independent employment, the works of Cicero and Xenophon among the ancients; of Sir Thomas Moore, Bacon, Baxter, or, to refer at once to later and contemporary instances, Darwin and Roscoe, are at once decisive of the question."'Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of home
Is sweetest...'
'Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of home
Is sweetest...'
Biog. Lit.
Tale and novel writing of second-rate order, somewhat spiced and stimulating, are sure to succeed, and carry 'of course' popularity with their success, by advertising the writer. Of this there is an instance in Coleridge's own works. The
Zapoyla
, entitled a
Christmas Tale
, (and which he never sat down to write, but dictated it while walking up and down the room,) became so immediately popular that 2000 copies were sold in six weeks, while it required two years for the sale of 1000 copies of the
Aids to Reflection
, which cost him much labour, and was the fruit of many years' reflection.
i.e. Nether Stowey, at the foot of the Quantock Hills.
Thomas Poole, Esq.
The following lines are here referred to
"And now, beloved Stowey! I behold
Thy Church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms
Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend;
And close behind them, hidden from my view,
Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe
And my babe's mother dwell in peace. With light
And quicken'd footsteps thitherward I tend,
Remembering thee, O green and silent dell!
And grateful, that by nature's quietness
And solitary musings, all my heart
Is soften'd, and made worthy to indulge
Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind.
Nether Stowey,
April 28th, 1798."
Ossian.
This ill-natured remark requires no comment: but I would fain recommend the reader to peruse the beautiful and faithful portrait of him in the Preface to the second edition of the
Table Talk,
Murray, Albemarle Street.
He was not an enthusiast in the sense this individual used the word; in whatever studies he was engaged, he pursued them with great earnestness, and they were sufficient to excite his powerful and sensitive intellect, so as to induce an observer not well acquainted with him to form this opinion. In the character of preacher, he exhibited more the character of philosopher and poet, never manifesting that sectarian spirit, which too often narrows the mind, or perhaps is rather the
result
of a narrow mind, and which frequently seems to exclude men from the most substantial forms of Christianity, viz. "Christian charity and Christian humility." His religion was the very opposite of a worldly religion, it was at all times the religion of love.
This visit to Shrewsbury, as the probable successor of Mr. Rowe, was undertaken by the advice of Mr. afterwards Dr. Estlin, a Unitarian dissenter and preacher in Bristol, a man possessed of great kindness and of great influence among this sect, to whom Coleridge had been indebted for many kind offices; the result of this visit forms a part of the sequel.
Poetical Works,
vol. i. p. 238.
"No little fish thrown back into the water, no fly unimprisoned from a child's hand, could more buoyantly enjoy its element than I this clear and peaceful home, with the lovely view of the town, groves, and lake of Ratzeburg."
From the earliest periods of authentic history, the Brocken has been the seat of the marvellous. On its summits are still seen huge blocks of granite, called the Sorcerer's Chair and the Altar. A spring of pure water is known by the name of the Magic Fountain, and the Anemone of the Brocken is distinguished by the title of the Sorcerer's Flower. These names are supposed to have originated in the rites of the great Idol Cortho, whom the Saxons worshipped in secret on the summit of the Brocken, when Christianity was extending her benignant sway over the subjacent plains. As the locality of these idolatrous rites, the Brocken must have been much frequented, and we can scarcely doubt that the spectre which now so often haunts it at sunrise, must have been observed from the earliest times; but it is nowhere mentioned that this phenomenon was in any way associated with the objects of their idolatrous worship. One of the best accounts of the Spectre of the Brocken, is that which is given by M. Haué, who saw it on the 23rd May, 1797. After having been on the summit of the mountain no less than thirty times, he had at last the good fortune of witnessing the object of his curiosity. The sun rose about four o'clock in the morning through a serene atmosphere. In the south-west, towards Achtermannshöhe, a brisk west wind carried before it the transparent vapours, which had yet been condensed into thick heavy clouds. About a quarter past four he went towards the inn, and looked round to see whether the atmosphere would afford him a free prospect towards the south-west, when he observed at a very great distance, towards Achtermannshöhe, a human figure of a monstrous size. His hat having been almost carried away by a violent gust of wind, he suddenly raised his hand to his head, to protect his hat, and the colossal figure did the same. He immediately made another movement by bending his body, an action which was repeated by the spectral figure. M. Haué was desirous of making further experiments, but the figure disappeared. He remained however in the same position expecting its return, and in a few minutes it again made its appearance on the Achtermannshöhe, when it mimicked his gestures as before. He then called the landlord of the inn, and having both taken the same position which he had before, they looked towards the Achtermannshöhe, but saw nothing. In a very short space of time, however, two colossal figures were formed over the above eminence, and after bending their bodies, and imitating the gestures of the two spectators, they disappeared. Retaining their position and keeping their eyes still fixed upon the same spot, the two gigantic spectres again stood before them, and were joined by a third. Every movement that they made was imitated by the three figures, but the effect varied in its intensity, being sometimes weak and faint, and at other times strong and well defined — — ."
Vide
Sir D. Brewster's
Natural Magic
, p. 128.
Horseley appears to have been in his way a Christian Hercules, and well adapted for cleansing even an Augean stable of apostasy.
"Letter sixteenth," p. 264. ed. 1789, in Bishop Horsley's
Tracts
in controversy with Dr. Priestley.
This observation, it is presumed, alludes to the time when he was
preaching
Unitarianism.
Written in 1805.
[Chapter III]
Leaves the Lakes on Account of his Health for Malta — his Employment in Malta in 1805 — goes to Syracuse and Rome — Winters at Naples 15th of December, 1806.
Mr. Coleridge once met Mrs. Barbauld at an evening party. He had not long been present, and the recognition of mere acquaintanceship over, than, walking across the room, she addressed him in these words:—
"So, Mr. Coleridge, I understand you do not consider Unitarians Christians."
"I hope, Madam," said he, "that all persons born in a Christian country are Christians, and trust they are under the condition of being saved; but I do contend that Unitarianism is not Christianity;"
to which she replied,
"I do not understand the distinction."
This want of knowledge of the difference, is common to many very clever and very amiable persons of this creed. It is hoped that we are not always to be tried by our speculative opinions, for man is frequently constituted higher and better than the principles he sometimes adopts.
Coleridge frequently observed,
"I do not so much care for men's religious opinions, — they vary, and are dependant on that which usually surrounds them-but I regard with more attention what men are."
He extended his kindness to all he believed to be good, whatever their creed, and when in his power, his aid.
injured, he immediately forgave, as he hoped to be forgiven,
and when reviled and persecuted, he never became
persecutor
. Of him it may be said, what he himself observed of the pious Baxter, that "he came a century before his time." The Western world however seems to have better appreciated the works of Coleridge, than most of his countrymen: in some parts of America, his writings are understood and highly valued.
In 1801, he settled at Keswick, in a house, which if not built, was at least finished for him, by a then neighbour (a Mr. Jackson,) and for a time he occupied a part of it. But here his health greatly failed, and he suffered severe rheumatism from the humidity of a lake country, which was the main cause of his leaving Keswick for Malta.
It has been already observed, that when a youth at school, he had, from imprudent bathing, become a rheumatic subject, and during the rest of his life, remained liable to most painful affections of that disorder.
In 1803, the fear of sudden death induced him to insure his life, that his family might not be left, dependant on his friends. In 1804, his rheumatic sufferings increasing, he determined on a change of climate, and accepted an invitation from his friend, Sir John, then Mr. Stoddart, residing at Malta, where he arrived in May. He soon became acquainted with the governor of the island, Sir Alexander Ball, who was greatly attached to Coleridge, and whose character has been so well described by him in
The Friend
.
a change of secretaries,
Coleridge, at the request of Sir Alexander, officiated,
pro tempore
, as public secretary of that island; and there was found in him — what at that time was so much required — an able diplomatic writer in this department of correspondence. The dignities of the office he never attempted to support: he was greatly annoyed at what he thought its unnecessary parade, and he petitioned Sir Alexander to be released from the annoyance.
can be no doubt that, to an individual accustomed to public business, his occupation might appear light, and even agreeable; but his health, which was the object of this change, not being much benefited, and the duties of the employment greater than he was equal to, made it for him an arduous one.
He seemed at this time,
addition to his rheumatism, to have been oppressed in his breathing, which oppression crept on him imperceptibly to himself without suspicion of its cause yet so obvious was it, that it was noticed by others "as laborious;"
and continuing to increase, though with little apparent advancement, at length terminated in death.
"Friday afternoon, four o'clock, April 18,1804. The Speedwell dropped anchor in the harbour of Malta: one of the finest in the world, the buildings surrounding it on all sides, of a neat ever-new-looking sand-free-stone. Some unfinished, and in all, the windows placed backward, looked like Carthage when Æneas visited it-or a burnt out place.
Saturday, April 19. — In the after-dinner hour walked out with Mr. and Mrs. Stoddart, towards the Quarantine harbour. One's first feeling is, that it is all strange, very strange; and when you begin to understand a little of the meaning and uses of the massy endless walls and defiles, then you feel and perceive that it is very wonderful. A city all of freestone, all the houses looking new like Bath; all with flat roofs, the streets all strait, and at right angles to each other; but many of them exceedingly steep, none quite level; of the steep streets, some, all stepped with a smooth artificial stone, some having the footpath on each side in stone steps, the middle left for carriages; lines of fortification, fosses, bastions, curtains, &c. &c. endless: — with gardens or bowling-grounds below; for it is all height and depth — you can walk nowhere without having whispers of suicide, toys of desperation. Expletive cries of Maltese venders shot up, sudden and violent. The inhabitants very dark, almost black; but straight, cleanlimbed, lively, active, — cannot speak in praise of their cleanliness — children very fair — women from the use of the faldetto, or cloak-hooding their heads, as women in England in a shower throw over their aprons, and from the use of always holding it down to one side of the face, all have a continued languishing manner of holding their heads one way — picturesque enough as expressive of a transient emotion, but shocking and inelegant in all and always. The language Arabic, corrupted with Italian, and perhaps with others. Sunday, April 20, 1804. — Went to church, plain chapel with a picture behind the pulpit, which I was not close enough to see, and at the other end in a nitch, a cross painted! Was it there before? or was it in complaisance to Maltese superstitions? — Called on Sir A. Ball — there I met General Valette, and delivered my letter to him, — a striking room, very high; 3/4ths of its height from the ground hung with rich crimson silk or velvet; and the 1/4th above, a mass of colours, pictures in compartments rudely done and without perspective or art, but yet very impressively and imagination-stirringly — representing all the events and exploits of the Order. — Some fine pictures, one by Correggio, one of a Cain killing Abel, I do not know by whom.
Monday, April 21, 1804, Hardkain. — Sir A. Ball called on me, and introduced me to Mr. Lane, who was formerly his tutor, but now his chaplain. He invited me to dine with him on Thursday, and made a plan for me to ride to St. Antonio on Tuesday morning with Mr. Lane, offering me a horse. Soon after came on thunder and storm, and my breathing was affected a good deal, but still I was in no discomfort.
April 22, Tuesday morning, six o'clock, was on horseback, and rode to St. Antonio. — Fields with walls, to keep the fort from the rain — mere desolation seemingly, and yet it is fertile. St. Antonio, a pleasant country-house, with a fine but unheeded garden, save among the low orange and lemon trees, still thick with fruit on many of the trees, fruit ripe, blossoms, and the next year's fruit. Pepper-trees very beautiful, and the locust-tree not amiss. Visited St. John's — O magnificence!
Wednesday, April 23. — General Valette I called on at his country-house, just out of the gates, near the end of the Botanic Garden, and it is the pleasantest place I have seen here. The multitude of small gardens and orangeries, among the huge masses of fortifications, many of them seeming almost as thick as the gardens inclosed by them are broad. Pomegranate in (beautiful secicle) flower. Under a bridge over a dry ditch saw the largest prickly pear. Elkhorns for trunk, and then its leaves — but go and look and look. — (Hard rain.) We sheltered in the Botanic Garden; yet reached home not unwetted."
The simplicity of Coleridge's manners, and entire absence of all show of business-like habits, amongst men chiefly mercantile, made him an object of curiosity, and gave rise to the relation of many whimsical stories about him. But his kindness and benevolence lent a charm to his behaviour and manners, in whatever he was engaged. From the state of his own lungs, invalid-like, he was in the habit of attending much to those about him, and particularly those who had been sent to Malta for pulmonary disease. He frequently observed how much the invalid, at first landing, was relieved by the climate and the
stimulus
of change; but when the novelty, arising from
that
change, had ceased, the monotonous sameness of the blue sky, accompanied by the summer heat of the climate, acted powerfully as a sedative, ending in speedy dissolution, — even more speedy than in a colder climate. The effects on Coleridge seemed to run parallel to this. At first he remarked that he was relieved, but afterwards speaks of his limbs "as lifeless tools," and of the violent pains in his bowels, which neither opium, ether, nor peppermint, separately or combined, could relieve. These several states he minuted down, from time to time, for after-consideration or comparison. He most frequently sought relief from bodily suffering in religious meditations, or in some augmented exercise of his mind:
"[Sickness], 'tis true,
Whole years of weary days, besieged him close,
Even to the gates and inlets of his life!
But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm,
And with a natural gladness, he maintained
The citadel unconquered, and in joy
Was strong to follow the delightful muse."
Tombless Epitaph.[5]
The citadel did, indeed, remain unconquered even to his
last
hour — he found in religious meditation and prayer that solace and support which, during a life of misery and pain, gave him his extraordinary patience and resignation. If an ejaculation escaped him, it was usually followed by some moral or religious reflection, as thus runs one of his notes:—
"O me mi serum! Assuredly the doctrine of grace, atonement, and the spirit of God interceding by groans to the spirit of God, (Rev. viii. 26.), is founded on constant experience, and even if it can be ever explained away, it must still remain as the rising and setting of the sun itself, as the darkness and as the light — it must needs have the most efficient character of reality, — quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus! Deeply do I both know and feel my weakness — God in his wisdom grant, that my day of visitation may not have been past."
Lest some
will-worshiping
individuals, inflated by vanity, and self-righteousness, should misunderstand or misconstrue him, the following lines are copied from his poems:—
Humility, The Mother Of Charity
"Frail creatures are we all! To be the best,
Is but the fewest faults to have: —
Look thou then to thyself, and leave the rest
To God, thy conscience and the grave."
Poetical Works.
There is not, perhaps, to be found on record a more perfect example of humility and charity, than that which he exhibited and sustained for so long a period of suffering and trial. Surely he could not be compared to the generality of his fellows — to men who, though possessing great worldly reputation, never gave him their support; but, on the contrary, were sometimes even ready to whisper down his fair name!
"For whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above."