The invitation having been given and accepted, I felt some curiosity to witness the firmness with which he would face a large and enlightened audience, and, in the intellectual sense, grace his canonical robes. No conveyance having been provided, and wishing the young ecclesiastic to proceed to the place of his exhibition with some decent respectability, I agreed with a common friend, the late Mr. Charles Danvers, to take Mr. C. over to Bath in a chaise.
The morning of the important day unfolded, and in due time we arrived at the place of our destination. When on the way to the chapel, a man stopped Charles Danvers, and asked him if he could tell where the Rev. Mr. Coleridge preached. "Follow the crowd," said Danvers, and walked on. Mr. C. wore his blue coat and white waistcoat; but what was Mr. Jardine's surprise, when he found that his young probationer peremptorily refused to wear the hide-all sable gown! Expostulation was unavailing, and the minister ascended to the pulpit in his coloured clothes!
Considering that it had been announced on the preceding Sunday, that "the Rev. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from Cambridge University" would preach there on this day, we naturally calculated on an overflowing audience, but it proved to be the most meagre congregation I had ever seen. The reader will but imperfectly appreciate Mr. C.'s discourse, without the previous information that this year (1796) was a year of great scarcity, and consequent privation, amongst the poor; on which subject the sermon was designed impressively to bear. And now the long-expected service commenced.
The prayer, without being intended, was formal, unimpressive, and undevotional; the singing was languid; but we expected that the sermon would arouse the inattentive, and invigorate the dull. The moment for announcing the text arrived. Our curiosity was excited. With little less than famine in the land, our hearts were appalled at hearing the words, "When they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse their king, and their God, and look upward." (Isaiah viii. 21.) Mr. Winterbotham, a little before, had been thrown into prison for the freedom of his political remarks in a sermon at Plymouth, and we were half fearful whether in his impetuous current of feeling, some stray expressions might not subject our friend to a like visitation. Our fears were groundless. Strange as it may appear in Mr. Coleridge's vigorous mind, the whole discourse consisted of little more than a Lecture on the Corn Laws! which some time before he had delivered in Bristol, at the Assembly Boom.
Returning from our edifying discourse to a tavern dinner, we were privileged with more luminous remarks on this inexhaustible subject: but something better (or worse, as the reader's taste may be) is still in reserve. After dinner, Mr. Coleridge remarked that he should have no objection to preach another sermon that afternoon. In the hope that something redeeming might still appear, and the best be retained for the last, we encouraged his proposal, when he rang the bell, and on the waiter appearing, he was sent, with Mr. Coleridge's compliments, to the Rev. Mr. Jardine, to say "If agreeable, Mr. C. would give his congregation another sermon, this afternoon, on the Hair Powder Tax!"[21] On the departure of the waiter, I was fully assured that Mr. Jardine would smile, and send a civil excuse, satisfied that he had had quite enough of political economy, with blue coat and white waistcoat, in the morning; but to my great surprise, the waiter returned with Mr. Jardine's compliments, saying, "he should be happy to hear Mr. Coleridge!"
Now all was hurry lest the concourse should be kept waiting. What surprise will the reader feel, on understanding that, independently of ourselves and Mr. Jardine, there were but seventeen persons present, including men, women, and children! We had, as we expected, a recapitulation of the old lecture, with the exception of its humorous appendages, in reprobation of the Hair Powder Tax; and the twice-told tale, even to the ear of friendship, in truth sounded rather dull!
Two or three times Mr. C. looked significantly toward our seat, when fearful of being thrown off my guard into a smile, I held down my head, from which position I was aroused, when the sermon was about half over, by some gentleman throwing back the door of his pew, and walking out of the chapel. In a few minutes after, a second individual did the same; and soon after a third door flew open, and the listener escaped! At this moment affairs looked so very ominous, that we were almost afraid Mr. Jardine himself would fly, and that none but ourselves would fairly sit it out. A little before, I had been in company with the late Robert Hall, and S. T. Coleridge, when the collision of equal minds elicited light and heat; both of them ranking in the first class of conversationalists, but great indeed was the contrast between them in the pulpit. The parlour was the element for Mr. Coleridge, and the politician's lecture, rather than the minister's harangue. We all returned to Bristol with the feeling of disappointment;—Mr. C. from the little personal attention paid to him by Mr. Jardine; and we, from a dissatisfying sense of a Sunday desecrated. Although no doubt can be entertained of Mr. Coleridge having, in the journey before noticed, surpassed his first essay, yet, with every reasonable allowance, the conviction was so strong on my mind that Mr. C. had mistaken his talent, that my regard for him was too genuine to entertain the wish of ever again seeing him in a pulpit.
It is unknown when the following letter was received, (although quite certain that it was not the evening in which Mr. Coleridge wrote his "Ode to the Departing Year,") and it is printed in this place at something of an uncertainty.[22]
"January 1st.
My dear Cottle,