* * * Yet how very few are there whom I esteem, and (pardon me from this seeming deviation from the language of friendship) admire equally with yourself. It is indeed, and has long been, my settled persuasion, that of all men known to me, I could not justly equal any one to you, combining in one view powers of intellect, and the steady moral exertion of them to the production of direct and indirect good; and if I give you pain, my heart bears witness that I inflicted a greater on myself,—nor should have written such words (alluding to expression of feeling respecting himself in the opening portion of the letter), if the chief feeling that mixed with and followed them, had not been that of shame and self-reproach, for having profited neither by your general example, nor your frequent and immediate incentives. Neither would I have oppressed you at all with this melancholy statement, but that for some days past, I have found myself so much better in body and mind, as to cheer me at times with the thought that this most morbid and oppressive weight is gradually lifting up, and my will acquiring some degree of strength and power of reaction.
* * * * * * *
I have, however, received such manifest benefit from horse exercise, and gradual abandonment of fermented and total abstinence from spirituous liquors, and by being alone with Poole, and the renewal of old times, by wandering about among my dear old walks of Quantock and Alfoxden, that I have seriously set about composition, with a view to ascertain whether I can conscientiously undertake what I so very much wish, a series of Lectures at the Royal Institution. I trust, I need not assure you, how much I feel your kindness, and let me add, that I consider the application as an act of great and unmerited condescension on the part of the managers as may have consented to it. After having discussed the subject with Poole, he entirely agrees with me, that the former plan suggested by me is invidious in itself, unless I disguised my real opinions; as far as I should deliver my sentiments respecting the arts, would require references and illustrations not suitable to a public lecture room; and, finally, that I ought not to reckon upon spirits enough to seek about for books of Italian prints, etc. And that after all the general and most philosophical principles, I might naturally introduce into lectures on a more confined plan—namely, the principles of poetry, conveyed and illustrated in a series of lectures. 1. On the genius and writings of Shakespeare, relatively to his predecessors and contemporaries, so as to determine not only his merits and defects, and the proportion that each must bear to the whole, but what of his merits and defects belong to his age, as being found in contemporaries of genius, and what belonged to himself. 2. On Spenser, including the metrical romances, and Chaucer, though the character of the latter as a manner-painter, I shall have so far anticipated in distinguishing it from, and comparing it with, Shakespeare. 3. Milton. 4. Dryden and Pope, including the origin and after history of poetry of witty logic. 5. On Modern Poetry, and its characteristics, with no introduction of any particular names. In the course of these I shall have said all I know, the whole result of many years’ continued reflection on the subjects of taste, imagination, fancy, passion, the source of our pleasures in the fine arts, in the antithetical balance-loving nature of man, and the connexion of such pleasures with moral excellence. The advantage of this plan to myself is—that I have all my materials ready, and can rapidly reduce them into form (for this is my solemn determination, not to give a single lecture till I have in fair writing at least one half of the whole course), for as to trusting anything to immediate effect, I shrink from it as from guilt, and guilt in me it would be.
In short, I should have no objection at once to pledge myself to the immediate preparation of these lectures, but that I am so surrounded by embarrassments.
For God’s sake enter into my true motive for this wearing[12] detail: it would torture me if it had any other effect than to impress on you my desire and hope to accord with your plan, and my incapability of making any final promise till the end of this month.
S. T. Coleridge.[13]
In spite of Poole and Southey’s objections a course of Lectures was at last arranged. Poole, writing to Davy in January 1808, informs him that their mutual friend Purkis had heard one of the lectures and speaks highly of it and its effect. “I heretofore thought Coleridge,” says Poole, “might employ himself in something more permanently important than lecturing on such subjects as he would lecture on at the Royal Institution. But from my more intimate knowledge of his present state and habits, I am now convinced that he cannot exert himself to better purpose; and further, that nothing whatever is more likely to stimulate him to exert his matchless powers (so is he constituted, and so morbid feelings oppress him) than in reading his productions to such an audience,” (T. Poole and his Friends, ii, 205).
The Lectures were delivered between 12th January and June 1808. Charles Lamb, in a letter to his friend Manning, on 26th February 1808, says: “Coleridge has delivered two lectures at the Royal Institution; two more attended but he did not come. It is thought he has gone sick upon them” (Ainger, i, 246). Wordsworth, hearing of Coleridge’s illness, came to town in April, and he reported to Sir George Beaumont that he had heard Coleridge lecture twice, and that he seemed to give great satisfaction, although he was not in spirits and suffered much during the course of the week in body and mind (Knight’s Life of Wordsworth, ii, 114).
De Quincey’s vivid description of the “lock” of carriages in Albemarle Street, and dismissal after dismissal of audiences on account of Coleridge’s failure to appear, like so much more in the work of that supreme master of imaginative biography, is perhaps exaggerated. Coleridge disappointed his audience only twice, on account of illness.
Besides the evidence of Lamb and Purkis and Wordsworth, regarding the success of the lectures, Henry Crabb Robinson gives some short notices of them. He heard at least four of the course. The second Lecture, delivered on 5th February, he reports to have been largely taken up with discoursing on the origin of the Greek mythology and Greek drama, and in showing that the Modern Drama, like the Ancient, originated in Religion. The character of Hamlet was also treated of. The lectures were much in substance similar to the course afterwards given in 1811, in which Coleridge more fully developed his views.