CCII. TO DANIEL STUART.
Mr. Smith’s, Ashley, Box, near Bath,
September 12, 1814.
My dear Sir,—I wrote some time ago to Mr. Smith, earnestly requesting your address, and entreating him to inform you of the dreadful state in which I was, when your kind letter must have arrived, during your stay at Bath.... But let me not complain. I ought to be and I trust I am, grateful for what I am, having escaped with my intellectual powers, if less elastic, yet not less vigorous, and with ampler and far more solid materials to exert them on. We know nothing even of ourselves, till we know ourselves to be as nothing (a solemn truth, spite of point and antithesis, in which the thought has chanced to word itself)! From this word of truth which the sore discipline of a sick bed has compacted into an indwelling reality, from this article, formerly, of speculative belief, but which [circumstances] have actualised into practical faith, I have learned to counteract calumny by self-reproach, and not only to rejoice (as indeed from natural disposition, from the very constitution of my heart, I should have done at all periods of my life) at the temporal prosperity, and increased and increasing reputation of my old fellow-labourers in philosophical, political, and poetical literature, but to bear their neglect, and even their detraction, as if I had done nothing at all, when it would have asked no very violent strain of recollection for one or two of them to have considered, whether some part of their most successful somethings were not among the nothings of my intellectual no-doings. But all strange things are less strange than the sense of intellectual obligations. Seldom do I ever see a Review, yet almost as often as that seldomness permits have I smiled at finding myself attacked in strains of thought which would never have occurred to the writer, had he not directly or indirectly learned them from myself. This is among the salutary effects, even of the dawn of actual religion on the mind, that we begin to reflect on our duties to God and to ourselves as permanent beings, and not to flatter ourselves by a superficial auditing of our negative duties to our neighbours, or mere acts in transitu to the transitory. I have too sad an account to settle between myself that is and has been, and myself that can not cease to be, to allow me a single complaint that, for all my labours in behalf of truth against the Jacobin party, then against military despotism abroad, against weakness and despondency and faction and factious goodiness at home, I have never received from those in power even a verbal acknowledgment; though by mere reference to dates, it might be proved that no small number of fine speeches in the House of Commons, and elsewhere, originated, directly or indirectly, in my Essays and conversations.[115] I dare assert, that the science of reasoning and judging concerning the productions of literature, the characters and measures of public men, and the events of nations, by a systematic subsumption of them, under Principles, deduced from the nature of MAN, and that of prophesying concerning the future (in contradiction to the hopes or fears of the majority) by a careful cross-examination of some period, the most analogous in past history, as learnt from contemporary authorities, and the proportioning of the ultimate event to the likenesses as modified or counteracted by the differences, was as good as unknown in the public prints, before the year 1795-96. Earl Darnley, on the appearance of my letters in the “Courier” concerning the Spaniards,[116] bluntly asked me, whether I had lost my senses, and quoted Lord Grenville at me. If you should happen to cast your eye over my character of Pitt,[117] my two letters to Fox, my Essays on the French Empire under Buonaparte, compared with the Roman, under the first Emperors; that on the probability of the restoration of the Bourbons, and those on Ireland, and Catholic Emancipation (which last unfortunately remain for the greater part in manuscript, Mr. Street not relishing them), and should add to them my Essays in “The Friend” on Taxation, and the supposed effects of war on our commercial prosperity; those on international law in defence of our siege of Copenhagen; and if you had before you the long letter which I wrote to Sir G. Beaumont in 1806,[118] concerning the inevitableness of a war with America, and the specific dangers of that war, if not provided against by specific pre-arrangements; with a list of their Frigates, so called, with their size, number, and weight of metal, the characters of their commanders, and the proportion suspected of British seamen.—I have luckily a copy of it, a rare accident with me.—I dare amuse myself, I say, with the belief, that by far the better half of all these, would read to you now, AS HISTORY. And what have I got for all this? What for my first daring to blow the trumpet of sound philosophy against the Lancastrian faction? The answer is not complex. Unthanked, and left worse than defenceless, by the friends of the Government and the Establishment, to be undermined or outraged by all the malice, hatred, and calumny of its enemies; and to think and toil, with a patent for all the abuse, and a transfer to others of all the honours. In the “Quarterly” Review of the “Remorse” (delayed till it could by no possibility be of the least service to me, and the compliments in which are as senseless and silly as the censures; every fault ascribed to it, being either no improbability at all, or from the very essence and end of the drama no DRAMATIC improbability, without noticing any one of the REAL faults, and there are many glaring, and one or two DEADLY sins in the tragedy)—in this Review, I am abused, and insolently reproved as a man, with reference to my supposed private habits, for NOT PUBLISHING. Would to heaven I never had! To this very moment I am embarrassed and tormented, in consequence of the non-payment of the subscribers to “The Friend.” But I could rebut the charge; and not merely say, but prove, that there is not a man in England, whose thoughts, images, words, and erudition have been published in larger quantities than mine; though I must admit, not by, or for, myself. Believe me, if I felt any pain from these things, I should not make this exposé; for it is constitutional with me, to shrink from all talk or communication of what gnaws within me. And, if I felt any real anger, I should not do what I fully intend to do, publish two long satires, in Drydenic verse, entitled “Puff and Slander.”[119] But I seem to myself to have endured the hootings and peltings, and “Go up bald head” (2 Kings, ch. ii. vs. 23, 24) quite long enough; and shall therefore send forth my two she-bears, to tear in pieces the most obnoxious of these ragged CHILDREN in intellect; and to scare the rest of these mischievous little mud-larks back to their crevice-nests, and lurking holes. While those who know me best, spite of my many infirmities, love me best, I am determined, henceforward, to treat my unprovoked enemies in the spirit of the Tiberian adage, Oderint modo timeant.
And now, having for the very first time in my whole life opened out my whole feelings and thoughts concerning my past fates and fortunes, I will draw anew on your patience, by a detail of my present operations. My medical friend is so well satisfied of my convalescence, and that nothing now remains, but to superinduce positive health on a system from which disease and its removable causes have been driven out, that he has not merely consented to, but advised my leaving Bristol, for some rural retirement. I could indeed pursue nothing uninterruptedly in that city. Accordingly, I am now joint tenant with Mr. Morgan, of a sweet little cottage, at Ashley, half a mile from Box, on the Bath road. I breakfast every morning before nine; work till one, and walk or read till three. Thence, till tea-time, chat or read some lounge book, or correct what I have written. From six to eight work again; from eight till bed-time, play whist, or the little mock billiard called bagatelle, and then sup, and go to bed. My morning hours, as the longest and most important division, I keep sacred to my most important Work,[120] which is printing at Bristol; two of my friends having taken upon themselves the risk. It is so long since I have conversed with you, that I cannot say, whether the subject will, or will not be interesting to you. The title is “Christianity, the one true Philosophy; or, Five Treatises on the Logos, or Communicative Intelligence, natural, human, and divine.” To which is prefixed a prefatory Essay, on the laws and limits of toleration and liberality, illustrated by fragments of AUTO-biography. The first Treatise—Logos Propaidenticos, or the Science of systematic thinking in ordinary life. The second—Logos Architectonicus, or an attempt to apply the constructive or Mathematical process to Metaphysics and Natural Theology. The third—Ὁ Λόγος ὁ θεάνθρωπος (the divine logos incarnate)—a full commentary on the Gospel of St. John, in development of St. Paul’s doctrine of preaching Christ alone, and Him crucified. The fourth—on Spinoza and Spinozism, with a life of B. Spinoza. This entitled Logos Agonistes. The fifth and last, Logos Alogos (i. e., Logos Illogicus), or on modern Unitarianism, its causes and effects. The whole will be comprised in two portly octavos, and the second treatise will be the only one which will, and from the nature of the subject must, be unintelligible to the great majority even of well educated readers. The purpose of the whole is a philosophical defence of the Articles of the Church, as far as they respect doctrine, as points of faith. If originality be any merit, this Work will have that, at all events, from the first page to the last.
The evenings I have employed in composing a series of Essays on the principles of Genial Criticism concerning the fine Arts, especially those of Statuary and Painting;[121] and of these four in title, but six or more in size, have been published in “Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal;” a strange plan for such a publication; but my motive was originally to serve poor Allston, who is now exhibiting his pictures at Bristol. Oh! dear sir! do pray if you have the power or opportunity use your influence with “The Sun,” not to continue that accursed system of calumny and detraction against Allston. The articles, by whomever written, were a disgrace to human nature, and, to my positive knowledge, argued only less ignorance than malignity. Mr. Allston has been cruelly used. Good God! what did I not hear Sir George Beaumont say, with my own ears! Nay, he wrote to me after repeated examination of Allston’s great picture, declaring himself a complete convert to all my opinions of Allston’s paramount genius as a historical painter. What did I not hear Mr. West say? After a full hour’s examination of the picture, he pointed out one thing he thought out of harmony (and which against my earnest desire Allston altered and had reason to repent sorely) and then said, “I have shot my bolt. It is as near perfection as a picture can be!”...
But to return to my Essays. I shall publish no more in Bristol. What they could do, they have done. But I have carefully corrected and polished those already published, and shall carry them on to sixteen or twenty, containing animated descriptions of all the best pictures of the great masters in England, with characteristics of the great masters from Giotto to Correggio. The first three Essays were of necessity more austere; for till it could be determined what beauty was; whether it was beauty merely because it pleased, or pleased because it was beauty, it would have been as absurd to talk of general principles of taste, as of tastes. Now will this series, purified from all accidental, local, or personal references, tint or serve the “Courier” in the present dearth? I have no hesitation in declaring them the best compositions I have ever written, I could regularly supply two Essays a week, and one political Essay. Be so good as to speak to Mr. Street.[122] I could send him up eight or ten at once.
Make my best respects to Mrs. Stuart. I shall be very anxious to hear from you.
Your affectionate and grateful friend,
S. T. Coleridge.