I now proceed to Mr. Coleridge’s compositions in Prose. Conciones ad Populum, are two addresses to the People, delivered at the latter end of February,[71] and then thrown into a small pamphlet. “After this,” says Mr. Cottle, “he consolidated two other of his lectures, and published them under the title of The Plot Discovered.” A moral and political Lecture delivered at Bristol by Mr. C. was published in the same year. I do not know whether he printed any of his other Bristol orations of the year ninety-five. The Watchman was carried on in 1796. The first number appeared March 1; the tenth and last, May 13. These were youthful immature productions. Whatever was valuable and of a permanent nature in them was transferred into his later productions, or included in later publications.
The Friend, a Literary, Moral, and Political Weekly Paper, excluding personal and party politics and the events of the day, was written and published at Grasmere. The first number appeared on Thursday, June 1st, 1809, the 27th and last of that edition, March 15, 1810. The Friend next appeared before the public in 3 vols. in 1818. This was “rather a rifacimento,” as the Author said, “than a new edition, the additions forming so large a proportion of the whole work, and the arrangement being altogether new.” (Essays V-XIII, pp. 38–128, treat of the Duty of communicating truth, and the conditions under which it may be safely communicated; Essay V is on the expediency of pious frauds, etc.). The third edition of 1837 gave the Author’s last corrections, an appendix containing the parts thrown out in the recast, with some other miscellanea, and a synoptical table of the contents by the Editor. There is now a fourth edition.
The two Lay Sermons were published, the one in 1816, the other in 1817. The first is entitled The Statesman’s Manual, or The Bible the best Guide to Political skill and foresight: a Lay Sermon addressed to the higher classes of society, with an Appendix, containing comments and essays connected with the study of the inspired writings:—the second A Lay Sermon, addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes, on the existing distresses and discontents. Mr. Gillman says he “had the intention of addressing a third to the lower classes.”
The Biographia Literaria was published in 1817, but parts of the first volume must have been composed some years earlier.[72] The Edinburgh Review in its August number of that year was as favourable to the book as could be expected.”[73]
CHAPTER XX
COTTLE’S DARK CHAPTER
[Coleridge had now become a recognized public lecturer on Poetry, and it was his last resource to keep out of political writing, which he saw was a rather barren business on which to waste his powers. Two courses of lectures were given between the spring of 1812 and that of 1813. His third course was delivered at Willis’s Rooms from 12th May to 5th June. Henry Crabb Robinson attended the second, third and fourth of the course on 23rd, 26th, and 29th May, and has left some short accounts. His fourth course began on 3rd November 1812 and closed on 29th January 1813. H. C. R. attended the closing lecture. “He was received,” says H. C. R., “with three rounds of applause on entering the lecture room, and very loudly applauded during the lecture and at its close.” (H. C. R. Diary.)
The letter to Poole of 13th February 1813 quoted in the last chapter is only a fragment; the full text is given by Mr. E. H. Coleridge in Letters, 609–612. It ends as follows: “You perhaps may likewise have heard (in the Whispering Gallery of the World) of the year-long difference between me and Wordsworth (compared with the sufferings of which all the former afflictions of my life were less than flea-bites), occasioned (in great part) by the wicked folly of the arch-fool Montagu.
“A reconciliation has taken place, but the feeling, which I had previous to that moment, when the (three-fourth) calamity burst, like a thunderstorm from a blue sky, on my soul, after fifteen years of such religious, almost superstitious idolatry and self-sacrifice. Oh no! that, I fear, can never return. All outward actions, all inward wishes, all thoughts and admirations will be the same—are the same, but—aye, there remains an immedicable But.”
Not much is known regarding Coleridge’s whereabouts in the summer of 1813. In September Southey came to London and took him to see Madame De Staël (Letters of Southey, ii, 332), who as we know was drowned by his monologue. In the end of October Coleridge left for Bristol, and reached the then second city of England to deliver a fifth course of lectures on poetry which had been arranged for by his friends there (Cottle’s Rem., 353). The course lasted from 28th October to 16th November (Bohn Library, Shakespeare Lectures, p. 456). Cottle says the first lecture was on Hamlet; but the report from the Bristol papers (Ashe, Bohn Library, 458) contradicts this, the lecture on Hamlet being the third. A sixth course of lectures was arranged for, which Cottle says were well attended (Rem., 354). Another course of four lectures on Milton, between 5th and 14th April (Ashe, Bohn Library, 457), was indifferently attended. His eighth course of lectures, this time on Homer, scarcely paid expenses (Cottle, 355). Although Coleridge must have repeated himself frequently in these lectures, they were new to Bristol. C. R. Leslie, a painter of some note in his day, speaks favourably of them (Leslie’s Autobiography, etc., vol. 1, chap. 3). The following letters belong to the visit to Bristol.