LXVIII. TO JOHN THELWALL.
December 17, 1796.
My dear Thelwall,—I should have written you long ere this, had not the settlement of my affairs previous to my leaving Bristol and the organization of my new plan occupied me with bulky anxieties that almost excluded everything but self from my thoughts. And, besides, my health has been very bad, and remains so. A nervous affection from my right temple to the extremity of my right shoulder almost distracted me, and made the frequent use of laudanum absolutely necessary. And, since I have subdued this, a rheumatic complaint in the back of my head and shoulders, accompanied with sore throat and depression of the animal spirits, has convinced me that a man may change bad lodgers without bettering himself. I write these things, not so much to apologise for my silence, or for the pleasure of complaining, as that you may know the reason why I have not given you a “strict account” how I have disposed of your books. This I will shortly do, with all the veracity which that solemn incantation, “upon your honour,” must necessarily have conjured up.
Your second and third part promise great things. I have counted the subjects, and by a nice calculation find that eighteen Scotch doctors would write fifty-four quarto volumes, each choosing his thesis out of your syllabus. May you do good by them, and moreover enable yourself to do more good, I should say, to continue to do good. My farm will be a garden of one acre and a half, in which I mean to raise vegetables and corn enough for myself and wife, and feed a couple of snouted and grunting cousins from the refuse. My evenings I shall devote to literature; and, by reviews, the magazine, and the other shilling-scavenger employments, shall probably gain forty pounds a year; which economy and self-denial, gold-beaters, shall hammer till it cover my annual expenses. Now, in favour of this scheme, I shall say nothing, for the more vehement my ratiocinations were, previous to the experiment, the more ridiculous my failure would appear; and if the scheme deserve the said ratiocinations I shall live down all your objections. I doubt not that the time will come when all our utilities will be directed in one simple path. That time, however, is not come; and imperious circumstances point out to each one his particular road. Much good may be done in all. I am not fit for public life; yet the light shall stream to a far distance from my cottage window. Meantime, do you uplift the torch dreadlessly, and show to mankind the face of that idol which they have worshipped in darkness! And now, my dear fellow, for a little sparring about poetry. My first sonnet[133] is obscure; but you ought to distinguish between obscurity residing in the uncommonness of the thought, and that which proceeds from thoughts unconnected and language not adapted to the expression of them. Where you do find out the meaning of my poetry, can you (in general, I mean) alter the language so as to make it more perspicuous—the thought remaining the same? By “dreamy semblance” I did mean semblance of some unknown past, like to a dream, and not “a semblance presented in a dream.” I meant to express that ofttimes, for a second or two, it flashed upon my mind that the then company, conversation, and everything, had occurred before with all the precise circumstances; so as to make reality appear a semblance, and the present like a dream in sleep. Now this thought is obscure; because few persons have experienced the same feeling. Yet several have; and they were proportionably delighted with the lines, as expressing some strange sensations, which they themselves had never ventured to communicate, much less had ever seen developed in poetry. The lines I have altered to,—
Oft o’er my brain does that strange rapture roll
Which makes the present (while its brief fit last)
Seem a mere semblance of some unknown past,
Mixed with such feelings as distress the soul
When dreaming that she dreams.[134]
Next as to “mystical.” Now that the thinking part of man, that is, the soul, existed previously to its appearance in its present body may be very wild philosophy, but it is very intelligible poetry; inasmuch as “soul” is an orthodox word in all our poets, they meaning by “soul” a being inhabiting our body, and playing upon it, like a musician enclosed in an organ whose keys were placed inwards. Now this opinion I do not hold; not that I am a materialist, but because I am a Berkleyan. Yet as you, who are not a Christian, wished you were, that we might meet in heaven, so I, who did not believe in this descending and incarcerated soul, yet said if my baby had died before I had seen him I should have struggled to believe it. Bless me! a commentary of thirty-five lines in defence of a sonnet! and I do not like the sonnet much myself. In some (indeed, in many of my poems) there is a garishness and swell of diction which I hope that my poems in future, if I write any, will be clean of, but seldom, I think, any conceits. In the second edition, now printing, I have swept the book with the expurgation-besom to a fine tune, having omitted nearly one third. As to Bowles, I affirm that the manner of his accentuation in the words “brōad dāylīght” (three long syllables) is a beauty, as it admirably expresses the captive’s dwelling on the sight of noon with rapture and a kind of wonder.
The common sun, the air, the skies
To him are opening paradise.
Gray.
But supposing my defence not tenable; yet how a blunder in metre stamps a man Italian or Della Cruscan I cannot perceive. As to my own poetry, I do confess that it frequently, both in thought and language, deviates from “nature and simplicity.” But that Bowles, the most tender, and, with the exception of Burns, the only always natural in our language, that he should not escape the charge of Della Cruscanism,—this cuts the skin and surface of my heart. “Poetry to have its highest relish must be impassioned.” True. But, firstly, poetry ought not always to have its highest relish; and, secondly, judging of the cause from its effect, poetry, though treating on lofty and abstract truths, ought to be deemed impassioned by him who reads it with impassioned feelings. Now Collins’s “Ode on the Poetical Character,”—that part of it, I should say, beginning with “The band (as faery legends say) Was wove on that creating day,”—has inspired and whirled me along with greater agitations of enthusiasm than any the most impassioned scene in Schiller or Shakespeare, using “impassioned” in its confined sense, for writing in which the human passions of pity, fear, anger, revenge, jealousy, or love are brought into view with their workings. Yet I consider the latter poetry as more valuable, because it gives more general pleasure, and I judge of all things by their utility. I feel strongly and I think strongly, but I seldom feel without thinking or think without feeling. Hence, though my poetry has in general a hue of tenderness or passion over it, yet it seldom exhibits unmixed and simple tenderness or passion. My philosophical opinions are blended with or deduced from my feelings, and this, I think, peculiarises my style of writing, and, like everything else, it is sometimes a beauty and sometimes a fault. But do not let us introduce an Act of Uniformity against Poets. I have room enough in my brain to admire, aye, and almost equally, the head and fancy of Akenside, and the heart and fancy of Bowles, the solemn lordliness of Milton, and the divine chit-chat of Cowper.[135] And whatever a man’s excellence is, that will be likewise his fault.
There were some verses of yours in the last “Monthly Magazine” with which I was much pleased—calm good sense combined with feeling, and conveyed in harmonious verse and a chaste and pleasing imagery. I wish much, very much, to see your other poem. As to your Poems which you informed me in the accompanying letter that you had sent in the same parcel with the pamphlets, whether or no your verses had more than their proper number of feet I cannot say; but certain it is, that somehow or other they marched off. No “Poems by John Thelwall” could I find. When I charged you with anti-religious bigotry, I did not allude to your pamphlet, but to passages in your letters to me, and to a circumstance which Southey, I think, once mentioned, that you had asserted that the name of God ought never to be produced in poetry.[136] Which, to be sure, was carrying hatred to your Creator very far indeed.
My dear Thelwall! “It is the principal felicity of life and the chief glory of manhood to speak out fully on all subjects.” I will avail myself of it. I will express all my feelings, but will previously take care to make my feelings benevolent. Contempt is hatred without fear; anger, hatred accompanied with apprehension. But because hatred is always evil, contempt must be always evil, and a good man ought to speak contemptuously of nothing. I am sure a wise man will not of opinions which have been held by men, in other respects at least, confessed of more powerful intellect than himself. ’Tis an assumption of infallibility; for if a man were wakefully mindful that what he now thinks foolish he may himself hereafter think wise, it is not in nature that he should despise those who now believe what it is possible he may himself hereafter believe; and if he deny the possibility he must on that point deem himself infallible and immutable. Now, in your letter of yesterday, you speak with contempt of two things: old age and the Christian religion; though religion was believed by Newton, Locke, and Hartley, after intense investigation, which in each had been preceded by unbelief. This does not prove its truth, but it should save its followers from contempt, even though through the infirmities of mortality they should have lost their teeth. I call that man a bigot, Thelwall, whose intemperate zeal, for or against any opinions, leads him to contradict himself in the space of half a dozen lines. Now this you appear to me to have done. I will write fully to you now, because I shall never renew the subject. I shall not be idle in defence of the religion I profess, and my books will be the place, not my letters. You say the Christian is a mean religion. Now the religion which Christ taught is simply, first, that there is an omnipresent Father of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, in whom we all of us move and have our being; and, secondly, that when we appear to men to die we do not utterly perish, but after this life shall continue to enjoy or suffer the consequences and natural effects of the habits we have formed here, whether good or evil. This is the Christian religion, and all of the Christian religion. That there is no fancy in it I readily grant, but that it is mean and deficient in mind and energy it were impossible for me to admit, unless I admitted that there could be no dignity, intellect, or force in anything but atheism. But though it appeal not itself to the fancy, the truths which it teaches admit the highest exercise of it. Are the “innumerable multitude of angels and archangels” less splendid beings than the countless gods and goddesses of Rome and Greece? And can you seriously think that Mercury from Jove equals in poetic sublimity “the mighty angel that came down from heaven, whose face was as it were the sun and his feet as pillars of fire: who set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the earth. And he sent forth a loud voice; and when he had sent it forth, seven thunders uttered their voices: and when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, the mighty Angel[137] lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by Him that liveth for ever and ever that Time was no more”? Is not Milton a sublimer poet than Homer or Virgil? Are not his personages more sublimely clothed, and do you not know that there is not perhaps one page in Milton’s Paradise Lost in which he has not borrowed his imagery from the Scriptures? I allow and rejoice that Christ appealed only to the understanding and the affections; but I affirm that after reading Isaiah, or St. Paul’s “Epistle to the Hebrews,” Homer and Virgil are disgustingly tame to me, and Milton himself barely tolerable. You and I are very differently organized if you think that the following (putting serious belief out of the question) is a mean flight of impassioned eloquence in which the Apostle marks the difference between the Mosaic and Christian Dispensation: “For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched” (that is, a material and earthly place) “and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more. But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, to an innumerable company of angels, to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.”[138] You may prefer to all this the quarrels of Jupiter and Juno, the whimpering of wounded Venus, and the jokes of the celestials on the lameness of Vulcan. Be it so (the difference in our tastes it would not be difficult to account for from the different feelings which we have associated with these ideas); I shall continue with Milton to say that
“Zion Hill
Delights me more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d
Fast by the oracle of God!”
“Visions fit for slobberers!” If infidelity do not lead to sensuality, which in every case except yours I have observed it to do, it always takes away all respect for those who become unpleasant from the infirmities of disease or decaying nature. Exempli gratiâ, “the aged are slobberers.”[139] The only vision which Christianity holds forth is indeed peculiarly adapted to these slobberers. Yes, to these lowly and despised and perishing slobberers it proclaims that their “corruptible shall put on incorruption, and their mortal put on immortality.”
“Morals to the Magdalen and Botany Bay.” Now, Thelwall, I presume that to preach morals to the virtuous is not quite so requisite as to preach them to the vicious. “The sick need a physician.” Are morals which would make a prostitute a wife and a sister, which would restore her to inward peace and purity; are morals which would make drunkards sober, the ferocious benevolent, and thieves honest, mean morals? Is it a despicable trait in our religion, that its professed object is to heal the broken-hearted and give wisdom to the poor man? It preaches repentance. What repentance? Tears and sorrow and a repetition of the same crimes? No, a “repentance unto good works;” a repentance that completely does away all superstitious terrors by teaching that the past is nothing in itself, that, if the mind is good, that it was bad imports nothing. “It is a religion for democrats.” It certainly teaches in the most explicit terms the rights of man, his right to wisdom, his right to an equal share in all the blessings of nature; it commands its disciples to go everywhere, and everywhere to preach these rights; it commands them never to use the arm of flesh, to be perfectly non-resistant; yet to hold the promulgation of truth to be a law above law, and in the performance of this office to defy “wickedness in high places,” and cheerfully to endure ignominy, and wretchedness, and torments, and death, rather than intermit the performance of it; yet, while enduring ignominy, and wretchedness, and torments, and death, to feel nothing but sorrow, and pity, and love for those who inflicted them; wishing their oppressors to be altogether such as they, “excepting these bonds.” Here is truth in theory and in practice, a union of energetic action and more energetic suffering. For activity amuses; but he who can endure calmly must possess the seeds of true greatness. For all his animal spirits will of necessity fail him; and he has only his mind to trust to. These doubtless are morals for all the lovers of mankind, who wish to act as well as speculate; and that you should allow this, and yet, not three lines before call the same morals mean, appears to me a gross self-contradiction symptomatic of bigotry. I write freely, Thelwall; for, though personally unknown, I really love you, and can count but few human beings whose hand I would welcome with a more hearty grasp of friendship. I suspect, Thelwall, that you never read your Testament, since your understanding was matured, without carelessness, and previous contempt, and a somewhat like hatred. Christianity regards morality as a process. It finds a man vicious and unsusceptible of noble motives and gradually leads him, at least desires to lead him, to the height of disinterested virtue; till, in relation and proportion to his faculties and power, he is perfect “even as our Father in heaven is perfect.” There is no resting-place for morality. Now I will make one other appeal, and have done forever with the subject. There is a passage in Scripture which comprises the whole process, and each component part, of Christian morals. Previously let me explain the word faith. By faith I understand, first, a deduction from experiments in favour of the existence of something not experienced, and, secondly, the motives which attend such a deduction. Now motives, being selfish, are only the beginning and the foundation, necessary and of first-rate importance, yet made of vile materials, and hidden beneath the splendid superstructure.
“Now giving all diligence, add to your faith fortitude, and to fortitude knowledge, and to knowledge purity, and to purity patience,[140] and to patience godliness,[141] and to godliness brotherly-kindness, and to brotherly-kindness universal love.”[142]
I hope, whatever you may think of godliness, you will like the note on it. I need not tell you, that godliness is God-likeness, and is paraphrased by Peter “that ye may be partakers of the divine nature,” that is, act from a love of order and happiness, not from any self-respecting motive; from the excellency into which you have exalted your nature, not from the keenness of mere prudence. “Add to your faith fortitude, and to fortitude knowledge, and to knowledge purity, and to purity patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly-kindness, and to brotherly-kindness universal love.” Now, Thelwall, putting faith out of the question (which, by the bye, is not mentioned as a virtue, but as the leader to them), can you mention a virtue which is not here enjoined? and supposing the precepts embodied in the practice of any one human being, would not perfection be personified? I write these things not with any expectation of making you a Christian. I should smile at my own folly, if I conceived it even in a friendly day-dream.
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“The ardour of undisciplined benevolence seduces us into malignity,” and, while you accustom yourself to speak so contemptuously of doctrines you do not accede to, and persons with whom you do not accord, I must doubt whether even your brotherly-kindness might not be made more perfect. That is surely fit for a man which his mind after sincere examination approves, which animates his conduct, soothes his sorrows, and heightens his pleasures. Every good and earnest Christian declares that all this is true of the visions (as you please to style them, God knows why) of Christianity. Every earnest Christian, therefore, is on a level with slobberers. Do not charge me with dwelling on one expression. These expressions are always indicative of the habit of feeling. You possess fortitude and purity, and a large portion of brotherly-kindness and universal love; drink with unquenchable thirst of the two latter virtues, and acquire patience; and then, Thelwall, should your system be true, all that can be said is that (if both our systems should be found to increase our own and our fellow-creatures’ happiness), “Here lie and did lie the all of John Thelwall and S. T. Coleridge. They were both humane, and happy, but the former was the more knowing;” and if my system should prove true, we, I doubt not, shall both meet in the kingdom of heaven, and I, with transport in my eye, shall say, “I told you so, my dear fellow.” But seriously, the faulty habit of feeling, which I have endeavoured to point out in you, I have detected in at least as great degree in my own practice, and am struggling to subdue it. I rejoice that the bankrupt honesty of the public has paid even the small dividend you mentioned. As to your second part, I will write you about it in a day or two, when I give you an account how I have disposed of your first. My dear little baby! and my wife thinks that he already begins to flutter the callow wings of his intellect. Oh, the wise heart and foolish head of a mother! Kiss your little girl for me, and tell her if I knew her I would love her; and then I hope in your next letter you will convey her love to me and my Sara. Your dear boy, I trust, will return with rosy cheeks. Don’t you suspect, Thelwall, that the little atheist Madam Stella has an abominable Christian kind of heart? My Sara is much interested about her; and I should not wonder if they were to be sworn sister-seraphs in the heavenly Jerusalem. Give my love to her.
I have sent you some loose sheets which Charles Lloyd and I printed together, intending to make a volume, but I gave it up and cancelled them.[143] Item, Joan of Arc, with only the passage of my writing cut out for the printers, as I am printing it in my second edition, with very great alterations and an addition of four hundred lines, so as to make it a complete and independent poem, entitled, “The Progress of Liberty,” or “The Visions of the Maid of Orleans.” Item, a sheet of sonnets[144] collected by me for the use of a few friends, who paid the printing. There you will see my opinion of sonnets. Item, Poem by C. Lloyd[145] on the death of one of your “slobberers,” a very venerable old lady, and a Quaker. The book is dressed like a rich Quaker, in costly raiment but unornamented. The loss of her almost killed my poor young friend; for he doted on her from his infancy. Item, a poem of mine on Burns[146] which was printed to be dispersed among friends. It was addressed to Charles Lamb. Item, (Shall I give it thee, blasphemer? No! I won’t, but) to thy Stella I do present the poems of my youth for a keepsake. Of this parcel I do entreat thy acceptance. I have another Joan of Arc, so you have a right to the one enclosed. Postscript. Item, a humorous “Droll” on S. Ireland, of which I have likewise another. Item, a strange poem written by an astrologer here, who was a man of fine genius, which, at intervals, he still discovers. But, ah me! Madness smote with her hand and stamped with her feet and swore that he should be hers, and hers he is. He is a man of fluent eloquence and general knowledge, gentle in his manners, warm in his affections; but unfortunately he has received a few rays of supernatural light through a crack in his upper story. I express myself unfeelingly; but indeed my heart always aches when I think of him. Item, some verses of Robert Southey to a college cat.[147] And, finally, the following lines by thy affectionate friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
TO A YOUNG MAN
WHO ABANDONED HIMSELF TO A CAUSELESS
AND INDOLENT MELANCHOLY.[148]
Hence that fantastic wantonness of woe,
O youth to partial Fortune vainly dear!
To plunder’d Want’s half-sheltered hovel go,
Go, and some hunger-bitten infant hear
Moan haply in a dying mother’s ear.
Or seek some widow’s grave; whose dearer part
Was slaughtered, where o’er his uncoffin’d limbs
The flocking flesh-birds scream’d! Then, while thy heart
Groans, and thine eyes a fiercer sorrow dims,
Know (and the truth shall kindle thy young mind),
What Nature makes thee mourn she bids thee heal.
O abject! if, to sickly dreams resign’d,
All effortless thou leave Earth’s common weal
A prey to the thron’d Murderess of Mankind!
After the first five lines these two followed:—
Or when the cold and dismal fog-damps brood
O’er the rank church-yard with sere elm-leaves strew’d,
Pace round some widow’s grave, etc.
These they rightly omitted. I love sonnets; but upon my honour I do not love my sonnets.
N. B.—Direct your letters, S. T. Coleridge, Mr. Cottle’s, High Street, Bristol.