LXIV. TO JOHN THELWALL.
Saturday, November 19, [1796].
Oxford Street, Bristol.
My dear Thelwall,—Ah me! literary adventure is but bread and cheese by chance. I keenly sympathise with you. Sympathy, the only poor consolation I can offer you. Can no plan be suggested?... Of course you have read the “Joan of Arc.”[127] Homer is the poet for the warrior, Milton for the religionist, Tasso for women, Robert Southey for the patriot. The first and fourth books of the “Joan of Arc” are to me more interesting than the same number of lines in any poem whatever. But you and I, my dear Thelwall, hold different creeds in poetry as well as religion. N’importe! By the bye, of your works I have now all, except your “Essay on Animal Vitality” which I never had, and your Poems, which I bought on their first publication, and lost them. From these poems I should have supposed our poetical tastes more nearly alike than, I find, they are. The poem on the Sols [?] flashes genius through Strophe I, Antistrophe I, and Epode I. The rest I do not perhaps understand, only I love these two lines:—
“Yet sure the verse that shews the friendly mind
To Friendship’s ear not harshly flows.”
Your larger narrative affected me greatly. It is admirably written, and displays strong sense animated by feeling, and illumined by imagination, and neither in the thoughts nor rhythm does it encroach on poetry.
There have been two poems of mine in the new “Monthly Magazine,”[128] with my name; indeed, I make it a scruple of conscience never to publish anything, however trifling, without it. Did you like them? The first was written at the desire of a beautiful little aristocrat; consider it therefore as a lady’s poem. Bowles (the bard of my idolatry) has written a poem lately without plan or meaning, but the component parts are divine. It is entitled “Hope, an Allegorical Sketch.” I will copy two of the stanzas, which must be peculiarly interesting to you, virtuous high-treasonist, and your friends the democrats.
“But see, as one awaked from deadly trance,
With hollow and dim eyes, and stony stare,
Captivity with faltering step advance!
Dripping and knotted was her coal-black hair:
For she had long been hid, as in the grave;
No sounds the silence of her prison broke,
Nor one companion had she in her cave
Save Terror’s dismal shape, that no word spoke,
But to a stony coffin on the floor
With lean and hideous finger pointed evermore.
“The lark’s shrill song, the early village chime,
The upland echo of the winding horn,
The far-heard clock that spoke the passing time,
Had never pierced her solitude forlorn:
At length released from the deep dungeon’s gloom
She feels the fragrance of the vernal gale,
She sees more sweet the living landscape bloom,
And while she listens to Hope’s tender tale,
She thinks her long-lost friends shall bless her sight,
And almost faints for joy amidst the broad daylight.”
The last line is exquisite.
Your portrait of yourself interested me. As to me, my face, unless when animated by immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth, and great, indeed, almost idiotic good-nature. ’Tis a mere carcass of a face;[129] fat, flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. Yet I am told that my eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are physiognomically good; but of this the deponent knoweth not. As to my shape, ’tis a good shape enough if measured, but my gait is awkward, and the walk of the whole man indicates indolence capable of energies. I am, and ever have been, a great reader, and have read almost everything—a library cormorant. I am deep in all out of the way books, whether of the monkish times, or of the puritanical era. I have read and digested most of the historical writers; but I do not like history. Metaphysics and poetry and “facts of mind,” that is, accounts of all the strange phantasms that ever possessed “your philosophy;” dreamers, from Thoth the Egyptian to Taylor the English pagan, are my darling studies. In short, I seldom read except to amuse myself, and I am almost always reading. Of useful knowledge, I am a so-so chemist, and I love chemistry. All else is blank; but I will be (please God) an horticulturalist and a farmer. I compose very little, and I absolutely hate composition, and such is my dislike that even a sense of duty is sometimes too weak to overpower it.
I cannot breathe through my nose, so my mouth, with sensual thick lips, is almost always open. In conversation I am impassioned, and oppose what I deem error with an eagerness which is often mistaken for personal asperity; but I am ever so swallowed up in the thing that I perfectly forget my opponent. Such am I. I am just going to read Dupuis’ twelve octavos,[130] which I have got from London. I shall read only one octavo a week, for I cannot speak French at all and I read it slowly.
My wife is well and desires to be remembered to you and your Stella and little ones. N. B. Stella (among the Romans) was a man’s name. All the classics are against you; but our Swift, I suppose, is authority for this unsexing.
Write on the receipt of this, and believe me as ever, with affectionate esteem,
Your sincere friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
P. S. I have enclosed a five-guinea note. The five shillings over please to lay out for me thus. In White’s (of Fleet Street or the Strand, I forget which—O! the Strand I believe, but I don’t know which), well, in White’s catalogue are the following books:—
4674. Iamblichus,[131] Proclus, Porphyrius, etc., one shilling and sixpence, one little volume.
4686. Juliani Opera, three shillings: which two books you will be so kind as to purchase for me, and send down with the twenty-five pamphlets. But if they should unfortunately be sold, in the same catalogue are:—
2109. Juliani Opera, 12s. 6d.
676. Iamblichus de Mysteriis, 10s. 6d.
2681. Sidonius Apollinaris, 6s.
And in the catalogue of Robson, the bookseller in New Bond Street, Plotini Opera, a Ficino, £1.1.0, making altogether £2.10.0.
If you can get the two former little books, costing only four and sixpence, I will rest content with them; if they are gone, be so kind as to purchase for me the others I mentioned to you, amounting to two pounds, ten shillings; and, as in the course of next week I shall send a small parcel of books and manuscripts to my very dear Charles Lamb of the India House, I shall be enabled to convey the money to you in a letter, which he will leave at your house. I make no apology for this commission, because I feel (to use a vulgar phrase) that I would do as much for you. P. P. S. Can you buy them time enough to send down with your pamphlets? If not, make a parcel per se. I hope your hurts from the fall are not serious; you have given a proof now that you are no Ippokrite, but I forgot that you are not a Greekist, and perchance you hate puns; but, in Greek, Krites signifies a judge and hippos a horse. Hippocrite, therefore, may mean a judge of horses. My dear fellow, I laugh more and talk more nonsense in a week than [most] other people do in a year. Farewell.
John Thelwall,
Beaufort Buildings, Strand, London.
LXV. TO THOMAS POOLE.[132]
Sunday morning, December 11, 1796.
My beloved Poole,—The sight of your villainous hand-scrawl was a great comfort to me. How have you been diverted in London? What of the theatres? And how found you your old friends? I dined with Mr. King yesterday week. He is quantum suff: a pleasant man, and (my wife says) very handsome. Hymen lies in the arms of Hygeia, if one may judge by your sister; she looks remarkably well! But has she not caught some complaint in the head? Some scurfy disorder? For her hair was filled with an odious white Dandruff. (“N. B. Nothing but powder,” Mrs. King.) About myself, I have so much to say that I really can say nothing. I mean to work very hard—as Cook, Butler, Scullion, Shoe-cleaner, occasional Nurse, Gardener, Hind, Pig-protector, Chaplain, Secretary, Poet, Reviewer, and omnium-botherum shilling-Scavenger. In other words, I shall keep no servant, and will cultivate my land-acre and my wise-acres, as well as I can. The motives which led to this determination are numerous and weighty; I have thought much and calmly, and calculated time and money with unexceptionable accuracy; and at length determined not to take the charge of Charles Lloyd’s mind on me. Poor fellow! he still hopes to live with me—is now at Birmingham. I wish that little cottage by the roadside were gettable? That with about two or three rooms—it would quite do for us, as we shall occupy only two rooms. I will write more fully on the receipt of yours. God love you and
S. T. Coleridge.