Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

XXXVII. TO THE SAME.

October 21, 1794.

To you alone, Southey, I write the first part of this letter. To yourself confine it.

“Is this handwriting altogether erased from your memory? To whom am I addressing myself? For whom am I now violating the rules of female delicacy? Is it for the same Coleridge, whom I once regarded as a sister her best-beloved Brother? Or for one who will ridicule that advice from me, which he has rejected as offered by his family? I will hazard the attempt. I have no right, nor do I feel myself inclined to reproach you for the Past. God forbid! You have already suffered too much from self-accusation. But I conjure you, Coleridge, earnestly and solemnly conjure you to consider long and deeply, before you enter into any rash schemes. There is an Eagerness in your Nature, which is ever hurrying you in the sad Extreme. I have heard that you mean to leave England, and on a Plan so absurd and extravagant that were I for a moment to imagine it true, I should be obliged to listen with a more patient Ear to suggestions, which I have rejected a thousand times with scorn and anger. Yes! whatever Pain I might suffer, I should be forced to exclaim, ‘O what a noble mind is here o’erthrown, Blasted with ecstacy.’ You have a country, does it demand nothing of you? You have doting Friends! Will you break their Hearts! There is a God—Coleridge! Though I have been told (indeed I do not believe it) that you doubt of his existence and disbelieve a hereafter. No! you have too much sensibility to be an Infidel. You know I never was rigid in my opinions concerning Religion—and have always thought Faith to be only Reason applied to a particular subject. In short, I am the same Being as when you used to say, ‘We thought in all things alike.’ I often reflect on the happy hours we spent together and regret the Loss of your Society. I cannot easily forget those whom I once loved—nor can I easily form new Friendships. I find women in general vain—all of the same Trifle, and therefore little and envious, and (I am afraid) without sincerity; and of the other sex those who are offered and held up to my esteem are very prudent, and very worldly. If you value my peace of mind, you must on no account answer this letter, or take the least notice of it. I would not for the world any part of my Family should suspect that I have written to you. My mind is sadly tempered by being perpetually obliged to resist the solicitations of those whom I love. I need not explain myself. Farewell, Coleridge! I shall always feel that I have been your Sister.”

No name was signed,—it was from Mary Evans. I received it about three weeks ago. I loved her, Southey, almost to madness. Her image was never absent from me for three years, for more than three years. My resolution has not faltered, but I want a comforter. I have done nothing, I have gone into company, I was constantly at the theatre here till they left us, I endeavoured to be perpetually with Miss Brunton, I even hoped that her exquisite beauty and uncommon accomplishments might have cured one passion by another. The latter I could easily have dissipated in her absence, and so have restored my affections to her whom I do not love, but whom by every tie of reason and honour I ought to love. I am resolved, but wretched! But time shall do much. You will easily believe that with such feelings I should have found it no easy task to write to ——. I should have detested myself, if after my first letter I had written coldly—how could I write as warmly? I was vexed too and alarmed by your letter concerning Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, Shad, and little Sally. I was wrong, very wrong, in the affair of Shad, and have given you reason to suppose that I should assent to the innovation. I will most assuredly go with you to America, on this plan, but remember, Southey, this is not our plan, nor can I defend it. “Shad’s children will be educated as ours, and the education we shall give them will be such as to render them incapable of blushing at the want of it in their parents”—Perhaps! With this one word would every Lilliputian reasoner demolish the system. Wherever men can be vicious, some will be. The leading idea of pantisocracy is to make men necessarily virtuous by removing all motives to evil—all possible temptation. “Let them dine with us and be treated with as much equality as they would wish, but perform that part of labour for which their education has fitted them.” Southey should not have written this sentence. My friend, my noble and high-souled friend should have said to his dependents, “Be my slaves, and ye shall be my equals;” to his wife and sister, “Resign the name of Ladyship and ye shall retain the thing.” Again. Is every family to possess one of these unequal equals, these Helot Egalités? Or are the few you have mentioned, “with more toil than the peasantry of England undergo,” to do for all of us “that part of labour which their education has fitted them for”? If your remarks on the other side are just, the inference is that the scheme of pantisocracy is impracticable, but I hope and believe that it is not a necessary inference. Your remark of the physical evil in the long infancy of men would indeed puzzle a Pangloss—puzzle him to account for the wish of a benevolent heart like yours to discover malignancy in its Creator. Surely every eye but an eye jaundiced by habit of peevish scepticism must have seen that the mothers’ cares are repaid even to rapture by the mothers’ endearments, and that the long helplessness of the babe is the means of our superiority in the filial and maternal affection and duties to the same feelings in the brute creation. It is likewise among other causes the means of society, that thing which makes them a little lower than the angels. If Mrs. S. and Mrs. F. go with us, they can at least prepare the food of simplicity for us. Let the married women do only what is absolutely convenient and customary for pregnant women or nurses. Let the husband do all the rest, and what will that all be? Washing with a machine and cleaning the house. One hour’s addition to our daily labor, and pantisocracy in its most perfect sense is practicable. That the greater part of our female companions should have the task of maternal exertion at the same time is very improbable; but, though it were to happen, an infant is almost always sleeping, and during its slumbers the mother may in the same room perform the little offices of ironing clothes or making shirts. But the hearts of the women are not all with us. I do believe that Edith and Sarah are exceptions, but do even they know the bill of fare for the day, every duty that will be incumbent upon them?

All necessary knowledge in the branch of ethics is comprised in the word justice: that the good of the whole is the good of each individual, that, of course, it is each individual’s duty to be just, because it is his interest. To perceive this and to assent to it as an abstract proposition is easy, but it requires the most wakeful attentions of the most reflective mind in all moments to bring it into practice. It is not enough that we have once swallowed it. The heart should have fed upon the truth, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the colour, and show its food in every the minutest fibre. In the book of pantisocracy I hope to have comprised all that is good in Godwin, of whom and of whose book I will write more fully in my next letter (I think not so highly of him as you do, and I have read him with the greatest attention). This will be an advantage to the minds of our women.

What have been your feelings concerning the War with America, which is now inevitable? To go from Hamburg will not only be a heavy additional expense, but dangerous and uncertain, as nations at war are in the habit of examining neutral vessels to prevent the importation of arms and seize subjects of the hostile governments. It is said that one cause of the ministers having been so cool on the business is that it will prevent emigration, which it seems would be treasonable to a hostile country. Tell me all you think on these subjects. What think you of the difference in the prices of land as stated by Cowper from those given by the American agents? By all means read, ponder on Cowper, and when I hear your thoughts I will give you the result of my own.

Thou bleedest, my poor Heart! and thy distress
Doth Reason ponder with an anguished smile,
Probing thy sore wound sternly, tho’ the while
Her eye be swollen and dim with heaviness.
Why didst thou listen to Hope’s whisper bland?
Or, listening, why forget its healing tale,
When Jealousy with feverish fancies pale
Jarr’d thy fine fibres with a maniac’s hand?
Faint was that Hope, and rayless. Yet ’twas fair
And sooth’d with many a dream the hour of rest:
Thou should’st have loved it most, when most opprest,
And nursed it with an agony of care,
E’en as a mother her sweet infant heir
That pale and sickly droops upon her breast![62]

When a man is unhappy he writes damned bad poetry, I find. My Imitations too depress my spirits—the task is arduous, and grows upon me. Instead of two octavo volumes, to do all I hoped to do two quartos would hardly be sufficient.

Of your poetry I will send you a minute critique, when I send you my proposed alterations. The sonnets are exquisite.[63] Banquo is not what it deserves to be. Towards the end it grows very flat, wants variety of imagery—you dwell too long on Mary, yet have made less of her than I expected. The other figures are not sufficiently distinct; indeed, the plan of the ode (after the first forty lines which are most truly sublime) is so evident an imitation of Gray’s Descent of Odin, that I would rather adopt Shakespeare’s mode of introducing the figures themselves, and making the description now the Witches’ and now Fleance’s. I detest monodramas, but I never wished to establish my judgment on the throne of critical despotism. Send me up the Elegy on the Exiled Patriots and the Scripture Sonnets. I have promised them to Flower.[64] The first will do good, and more good in a paper than in any other vehicle.

My thoughts are floating about in a most chaotic state. I had almost determined to go down to Bath, and stay two days, that I might say everything I wished. You mean to acquaint your aunt with the scheme? As she knows it, and knows that you know that she knows it, justice cannot require it, but if your own comfort makes it necessary, by all means do it, with all possible gentleness. She has loved you tenderly; be firm, therefore, as a rock, mild as the lamb. I sent a hundred “Robespierres” to Bath ten days ago and more.

Five hundred copies of “Robespierre” were printed. A hundred [went] to Bath; a hundred to Kearsley, in London; twenty-five to March, at Norwich; thirty I have sold privately (twenty-five of these thirty to Dyer, who found it inconvenient to take fifty). The rest are dispersed among the Cambridge booksellers; the delicacies of academic gentlemanship prevented me from disposing of more than the five propriâ personâ. Of course we only get ninepence for each copy from the booksellers. I expected that Mr. Field would have sent for fifty, but have heard nothing of it. I sent a copy to him, with my respects, and have made presents of six more. How they sell in London, I know not. All that are in Cambridge will sell—a great many are sold. I have been blamed for publishing it, considering the more important work I have offered to the public. N’importe. ’Tis thought a very aristocratic performance; you may suppose how hyper-democratic my character must have been. The expenses of paper, printing, and advertisements are nearly nine pounds. We ought to have charged one shilling and sixpence a copy.

I presented a copy to Miss Brunton with these verses in the blank leaf:[65]—

Much on my early youth I love to dwell,
Ere yet I bade that guardian dome farewell,
Where first beneath the echoing cloisters pale,
I heard of guilt and wondered at the tale!
Yet though the hours flew by on careless wing
Full heavily of Sorrow would I sing.
Aye, as the star of evening flung its beam
In broken radiance on the wavy stream,
My pensive soul amid the twilight gloom
Mourned with the breeze, O Lee Boo! o’er thy tomb.
Whene’er I wander’d, Pity still was near,
Breath’d from the heart, and glitter’d in the tear:
No knell, that toll’d, but fill’d my anguish’d eye,
“And suffering Nature wept that one should die!”
Thus to sad sympathies I sooth’d my breast,
Calm as the rainbow in the weeping West:
When slumb’ring Freedom rous’d by high Disdain
With giant fury burst her triple chain!
Fierce on her front the blasting Dog star glow’d;
Her banners, like a midnight meteor, flow’d;
Amid the yelling of the storm-rent skies
She came, and scatter’d battles from her eyes!
Then Exultation woke the patriot fire
And swept with wilder hand th’ empassioned lyre;
Red from the Tyrants’ wounds I shook the lance,
And strode in joy the reeking plains of France!
In ghastly horror lie th’ oppressors low,
And my Heart akes tho’ Mercy struck the blow!
With wearied thought I seek the amaranth Shade
Where peaceful Virtue weaves her myrtle braid.
And O! if Eyes, whose holy glances roll
The eloquent Messengers of the pure soul;
If Smiles more cunning and a gentler Mien,
Than the love-wilder’d Maniac’s brain hath seen
Shaping celestial forms in vacant air,
If these demand the wond’ring Poets’ care—
If Mirth and soften’d Sense, and Wit refin’d,
The blameless features of a lovely mind;
Then haply shall my trembling hand assign
No fading flowers to Beauty’s saintly shrine.
Nor, Brunton! thou the blushing Wreath refuse,
Though harsh her notes, yet guileless is my Muse.
Unwont at Flattery’s Voice to plume her wings.
A child of Nature, as she feels, she sings.
S. T. C.

Jes. Coll., Cambridge.

Till I dated this letter I never recollected that yesterday was my birthday—twenty-two years old.

I have heard from my brothers—from him particularly who has been friend, brother, father. ’Twas all remonstrance and anguish, and suggestions that I am deranged! Let me receive from you a letter of consolation; for, believe me, I am completely wretched.

Yours most affectionately,
S. T. Coleridge.