Of course nobody could suspect Coleridge of this; and, indeed, to his infinite amusement, a vain fellow affected to hesitate about being introduced to him, on the ground that he had mortally injured him by the writing of this very epigram! But Lamb could not fail to observe the doings of the poet-metaphysician more closely, and the result was a quarrel, which induced that ‘gentle creature’ to send him an unnaturally bitter series of theological questions, such as—‘Whether the vision beatific be anything more or less than a perpetual representment, to each individual angel, of his own present attainments and future capabilities, somehow in the manner of mortal looking-glasses, reflecting a perpetual complacency and self-satisfaction?’ Troubles from without added to this confusion within. The village wiseacres, to whom the habits of Wordsworth and his eccentric friend were totally incomprehensible, had decided that they were terrible scoundrels, who required to be looked after. One sage had seen Wordsworth look strangely at the moon; another had overheard him mutter in some unintelligible and outlandish brogue. Some thought him a conjuror; some a smuggler, from his perpetually haunting the sea-beach; some asserted that he kept a snug private still in his cellar, as they knew by their noses at a hundred yards distance; while others where convinced that he was ‘surely a desperate French Jacobin, for he was so silent nobody ever heard him say one word about politics.’ While the saturnine and stately Wordsworth was thus slanderously assailed, his fluent and witty associate could not expect to escape. One day, accordingly while on a pedestrian excursion, Coleridge met a woman who, not knowing who he was, abused him to himself in unmeasured Billingsgate for a whole hour, as a vile Jacobin villain, who had misled George Burnet of her parish. ‘I listened,’ wrote the poet to a friend, ‘very particularly, appearing to approve all she said, exclaiming, “Dear me!” two or three times; and, in fine, so completely won her heart by my civilities, that I had not courage enough to undeceive her.’ This is all very ludicrous and amusing now; but at the time its effect was such, that the person who had the letting of Alfoxden House refused point-blank to relet it to Wordsworth. This was of course a great vexation to Poole and Coleridge, who set about trying to procure another house in the vicinity.
“But the two bards were not a subject of jealousy and suspicion to the ignorant peasantry alone. A country gentleman of the locality became so alarmed, that he called in the aid of that tremendous abstraction—the state; and a spy was sent down from head-quarters, and lodged in mysterious privacy in Stowey Inn. The poets could never stir out but this gentleman was at their heels, and they scarcely ever had an out-of-doors conversation which he did not overhear. He used to hide behind a bank at the seaside, which was a favourite seat of theirs. At that time they used to talk a great deal of Spinosa; and as their confidential attendant had a notable Bardolph nose, he at first took it into his head that they were making light of his importance by nicknaming him ‘Spy Nosy;’ but was soon convinced that that was the name of a man ‘who had made a book, and lived long ago.’ On one occasion Bardolph assumed the character of a Jacobin, to draw Coleridge out; but such was the bard’s indignant exposure of the Revolutionists, that even the spy felt ashamed that he had put Jacobinism on. Poor Coleridge was so unsuspicious, that he felt happy he had been the means of shaking the convictions of this awful partisan, and doing the unhappy man some good. At last the spy reported favourably, to the great disgust of the rural magnate who had engaged his services, and who now tried to elicit fresh grounds of suspicion from the village innkeeper. But that worthy was obstinate in his belief that it was totally impossible for Coleridge to harangue the inhabitants, as he talked ‘real Hebrew-Greek,’ which their limited intellects could not understand. This, however, only exasperated his inquisitor, who demanded whether Coleridge had not been seen roving about, taking charts and maps of the district. The poor innkeeper replied, that though he did not wish to say any ill of anybody, yet he must confess he had heard that Coleridge was a poet, and intended to put Quantock into print. Thus the friends escaped this peril, which was then a formidable one. Coleridge was at the time wandering about the romantic coombes of the Quantock Hills, making studies for a poem on the plan afterwards followed out by Wordsworth in his ‘Sonnets to the Duddon;’ and in the heat of the moment he resolved to dedicate it to Government, as containing the traitorous plans which he was to submit to the French, in order to facilitate their schemes of invasion. ‘And these, too,’ says he, ‘for a tract of coast that from Clevedon to Minehead scarcely permits the approach of a fishing-boat.’”
This episode brings us back to Wordsworth, and shows, amongst other things, the reason why he left Alfoxden, although not the slightest allusion is made to this spy business, or to the Pantisocratic scheme in the memoirs of the poet by Doctor Wordsworth. The poet’s removal to Bristol sometime about July, in the year 1798, was caused, according to the doctor, by Wordsworth’s “desire to be nearer the printer,” and he (the doctor) quotes a letter from Miss Wordsworth, bearing date July 18th of that year, in which she says, “William’s poems are now in the press; they will be out in six weeks.” These poems, or “Lyrical Ballads,” as they were called, were printed by Cottle, of Bristol, and Wordsworth received thirty guineas as his share, for the copyright of the volume.
“At his first interview with Wordsworth, Cottle had heard some of the lyrical poems read, and had earnestly advised their publication, offering for them the same sum he had given to Coleridge and Southey for their works, and stating flatteringly that no provincial bookseller might ever again have the honour of ushering such a trio to renown. Wordsworth, however, strongly objected to publication; but in April, 1798, the poet sent for Cottle to hear them recited ‘under the old trees in the park.’ Coleridge despatched a confirmatory invitation. ‘We will procure a horse,’ wrote persuasive Samuel Taylor, ‘easy as thy own soul, and we will go on a roam to Linton and Limouth, which, if thou comest in May, will be in all their pride of woods and waterfalls, not to speak of its august cliffs, and the green ocean, and the vast Valley of Stones, all which live disdainful of the seasons, or accept new honours only from the winter’s snow.’ The three friends did go on their romantic excursion, saw sweet Linton and Limouth, and arranged the publication of the first volume of the ‘Lyrical Ballads,’ which we have now seen brought to their publication day, and submitted to the judgment of the public. Dr. Wordsworth, however, does not allude in the “Memoirs” to Cottle as one of their party to the Valley of Stones.
The reader of this day, accustomed to dwell with delight and reverence upon the Old Navigator, the Nightingale, Tintern Abbey, &c., will be a little startled to hear that although only five hundred copies of the Lyrical Ballads were printed, Cottle had to dispose of the greater part of them to a London bookseller at a loss, in consequence of the terrific mud-showers of abuse which the critics poured upon the poems. Nevertheless, and in spite of the failure of the adventure, as a commercial speculation, there were minds of no mean order that detected the genius which produced them. Professor Wilson and De Quincy were amongst the number of these; and the former said, in speaking of the Ballads, that a new sun had risen at midday. Hannah More, also, who, notwithstanding her own milk-and-water productions, was a woman of discernment, was delighted with “Harry Gill,” and deigned to say so in the teeth of the dirty demireps that abused it. But the volume gradually sunk for a time below the public horizon, and when Cottle gave up his business, and disposed of his copyright to the Longmans of London, these publishers returned that of the Ballads as valueless, and Cottle made a present of it to its authors.
In the meanwhile, Wordsworth and his sister, accompanied by Coleridge, with the proceeds of their poetry in their pockets, went to Germany. The writer for Chambers says—
“The different temperaments of the poets displayed themselves very remarkably on the voyage. The bard of Rydal seems to have kept very quiet; but his mercurial companion, after indulging in most questionable potations with a motley group of eccentric foreigners, got up and danced with them a succession of dances, which, he says, might very appropriately have been termed reels. Where Wordsworth was may be conjectured from Coleridge’s remark, that those ‘who lay below in all the agonies of sea-sickness must have found our Bacchanalian merriment
——“a tune
Harsh and of dissonant mood from their complaint.”
One of the party was a Dane, a vain and disgusting coxcomb, whose conversation with Coleridge, whom he first took for a ‘Doctor Teology,’ and then for ‘un philosophe,’ actually outburlesqued burlesque. The astounded bard, for the first time in his life, took notes of a dialogue, of which a single sample is enough.
“The Dane.—Vat imagination! vat language! vat vast science! vat eyes! vat a milk white forehead! Oh my heafen! vy, you’re a got!