Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Tuesday Evening, June 23, 1801. [2]

[Footnote 1: Mackintosh]

[Footnote 2: Letters CXIX-CXXII follow No. 109.]

Coleridge, for want of funds, was unable for the present to carry out his project of going abroad, and the next letter to Davy tells us that he had resolved to go to London instead, and write for the daily papers again.

LETTER 110. To DAVY

Greta Hall, Keswick, Cumberland, October 31, 1801.

My dear Davy,

I do not know by what fatality it has happened, but so it is; that I have thought more often of you, and I may say, "yearned" after your society more for the last three months than I ever before did, and yet I have not written to you. But you know that I honour you, and that I love whom I honour. Love and esteem with me have no dividual being; and wherever this is not the case, I suspect there must be some lurking moral superstition which nature gets the better of; and that the real meaning of the phrase "I love him though I cannot esteem him," is—I esteem him, but not according to my system of esteem. But you, my dear fellow, 'all' men love and esteem—which is the only suspicious part of your character—at least according to the 5th chapter of St. Matthew.—God bless you.

And now for the business of this letter. 'If I can', I leave this place so as to be in London on Wednesday, the 11th of next month; in London I shall stay a fortnight; but as I am in feeble health, and have a perfect 'phobia' of inns and coffee-houses, I should rejoice if you or Southey should be able to offer me a bed-room for the fortnight aforesaid. From London I move southward. Now for the italicized words 'if I can'. The cryptical and implicit import of which is—I have a damned thorn in my leg, which the surgeon has not been yet able to extract—and but that I have metaphysicized most successfully on 'Pain', in consequence of the accident, by the Great Scatterer of Thoughts, I should have been half mad. But as it is I have borne it 'like a woman', which, I believe, to be two or three degrees at least beyond a 'stoic'. A suppuration is going on, and I endure in hope.

I have redirected some of Southey's letters to you, taking it for granted that you will see him immediately on his arrival in town; he left us yesterday afternoon. Let me hear from you, if it be only to say what I know already, that you will be glad to see me. O, dear friend, thou one of the two human beings of whom I dare hope with a hope, that elevates my own heart. O bless you!

S.T. COLERIDGE. [1]

[Footnote 1: Letters CXXIII-CXXXI follow No. 110.]

Sir Humphry Davy's description of Coleridge at this date is well known, and we must quote it; "Coleridge has left London for Keswick. During his stay in town I saw him seldomer than usual; when I did see him, it was generally in the midst of large companies, where he is the image of power and activity. His eloquence is unimpaired: perhaps it is softer and stronger. His will is less than ever commensurate with his ability. Brilliant images of greatness float upon his mind, like images of the morning clouds on the waters. Their forms are changed by the motions of the waves, they are agitated by every breeze, and modified by every sunbeam. He talked in the course of an hour of beginning three works; he recited the poem of 'Christabel' unfinished, and as I had before heard it. What talent does he not waste in forming visions, sublime, but unconnected with the real world! I have looked to his efforts, as to the efforts of a creating being; but as yet he has not laid the foundation for the new world of intellectual forms" ('Fragmentary Remains', p. 74).

Southey had now returned from Portugal, and was also in London ('Southey's Letters', i, 183). It was not till September, 1803, that Southey came to Keswick ('Southey's Letters', i, 229-31). During the interval Coleridge had written various things for the 'Morning Post', the most outstanding contributions being the two powerful letters to Fox of 4th and 9th November 1802, written on the occasion of that statesman going to Paris and paying court to Napoleon. The next eight letters to Thomas Wedgwood give the best impression of Coleridge between October 1802 and February 1803.

Letter 111 To Thomas Wedgwood

Keswick, Oct. 20, 1802.

My dear sir,

This is my birthday, my thirtieth. It will not appear wonderful to you, when I tell you, that before the arrival of your letter, I had been thinking with a great weight of different feelings, concerning you, and your dear brother, for I have good reason to believe, that I should not now have been alive, if in addition to other miseries, I had had immediate poverty pressing upon me. I will never again remain silent so long. It has not been altogether indolence, or my habit of procrastination which have [1] kept me from writing, but an eager wish,—I may truly say, a thirst of spirit, to have something honourable to tell you of myself.

At present I must be content to tell you something cheerful. My health is very much better. I am stronger in every respect, and am not injured by study, or the act of sitting at my writing desk; but my eyes suffer if at any time I have been intemperate in the use of candle-light. This account supposes another, namely, that my mind is calm, and more at ease. My dear sir, when I was last with you at Stowey, my heart was often full, and I could scarcely keep from communicating to you the tale of my distresses, but could I add to your depression, when you were low? or how interrupt, or cast a shade on your good spirits, that were so rare, and so precious to you? …

I found no comfort but in the driest speculations;—in the 'Ode to Dejection', which you were pleased with. These lines, in the original, followed the line "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
And that which suits a part infests the whole,
And now is almost grown the temper [2] of my soul.

I give you these lines for the spirit, and not for the poetry. …

But better days are arrived, and are still to come, I have had Visitations of Hope—that I may yet be something of which those who love me may be proud.

I cannot write that without recalling dear Poole. I have heard twice, and written twice, and I fear by a strange fatality, one of the letters will have missed him. Leslie [3] was here some time ago. I was very much pleased with him. And now I will tell you what I am doing. I dedicate three days in the week to the 'Morning Post', and shall hereafter write, for the far greater part, such things as will be of as permanent interest as any thing I can hope to write; and you will shortly see a little essay of mine, justifying the writing in a newspaper.

My comparison of the French with the Roman Empire was very favourably received. The poetry which I have sent is merely the emptying out of my desk. The epigrams are wretched indeed, but they answered Stuart's purpose, better than better things. I ought not to have given any signature to them whatsoever. I never dreamt of acknowledging either them, or the 'Ode to the Rain'. As to feeble expressions, and unpolished lines—there is the rub! Indeed, my dear sir, I do value your opinion very highly. I think your judgment on the sentiment, the imagery, the flow of a poem, decisive; at least, if it differed from my own, and if after frequent consideration mine remained different, it would leave me at least perplexed. For you are a perfect electrometer in these things—but in point of poetic diction, I am not so well satisfied that you do not require a certain aloofness from the language of real life, which I think deadly to poetry.

Very soon however I shall present you from the press with my opinions full on the subject of style, both in prose and verse; and I am confident of one thing, that I shall convince you that I have thought much and patiently on the subject, and that I understand the whole strength of my antagonist's cause. For I am now busy on the subject, and shall in a very few weeks go to press with a volume on the prose writings of Hall, Milton, and Taylor; and shall immediately follow it up with an essay on the writings of Dr. Johnson and Gibbon, and in these two volumes I flatter myself I shall present a fair history of English Prose. If my life and health remain, and I do but write half as much, and as regularly as I have done during the last six weeks, this will be finished by January next; and I shall then put together my memorandum-book on the subject of Poetry. In both I have endeavoured sedulously to state the facts and the differences clearly and accurately; and my reasons for the preference of one style to another are secondary to this.

Of this be assured, that I will never give any thing to the world in 'propria persona' in my own name which I have not tormented with the file. I sometimes suspect that my foul copy would often appear to general readers more polished than my fair copy. Many of the feeble and colloquial expressions have been industriously substituted for others which struck me as artificial, and not standing the test; as being neither the language of passion, nor distinct conceptions. Dear sir, indulge me with looking still further on in my literary life.

I have, since my twentieth year, meditated an heroic poem on the 'Siege of Jerusalem', by Titus. This is the pride and the stronghold of my hope, but I never think of it except in my best moods. The work to which I dedicate the ensuing years of my life, is one which highly pleased Leslie, in prospective, and my paper will not let me prattle to you about it. I have written what you more wished me to write, all about myself.

Our climate (in the north) is inclement, and our houses not as compact as they might be, but it is a stirring climate, and the worse the weather, the more unceasingly entertaining are my study windows, and the month that is to come is the glory of the year with us. A very warm bed-room I can promise you, and one at the same time which commands the finest lake and mountain view. If Leslie could not go abroad with you, and I could in any way mould my manners and habits to suit you, I should of all things like to be your companion. Good nature, an affectionate disposition, and so thorough a sympathy with the nature of your complaint, that I should feel no pain, not the most momentary, at being told by you what your feelings require at the time in which they required it; this I should bring with me. But I need not say that you may say to me,—"You don't suit me," without inflicting the least mortification. Of course this letter is for your brother, as for you; but I shall write to him soon. God bless you,