The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain.
As men advance in years they generally believe less in the power of politics to accomplish what can be achieved only by Religion, Poetry, Art and Culture. The contemplation of Coleridge’s change of view from Radicalism to temperate Conservatism, registering the natural swing of the pendulum from Youth to Age, is a most inviting study for the statesman. Southey and Wordsworth underwent the same change, but their evolution is not so instructive as that of Coleridge.
A Tory in the strictest sense of the word Coleridge never was; for he always claimed right to dissent and did at times dissent from the ministry of the hour. A striking instance of his dissension was given while living at Calne, when he strongly objected to the imposition of new corn duties when wheat was selling at 63s. a quarter and the quartern loaf sold at 11d. The working people were in a state of starvation, and Coleridge espoused the cause of the starvers and got up a Petition against the duties proposed. He even became the ringleader of the local agitation. He writes to Dr. Brabant of Devizes (6½ miles away) in the Spring of 1815: “On Wednesday we had a public meeting in the Market Place, at Calne, to petition Parliament against the Corn Bill. I drew it up for Mr. Wait, and afterwards mounted on the butcher’s table made a butcherly sort of speech of an hour long to a very ragged but not butcherly audience, for by their pale faces few of them seemed to have had more than a very occasional acquaintance with butcher’s meat. Loud were the huzzas, and if it depended on the inhabitants at large, I believe they would send me up to Parliament” (Westminster Review, 1870, p. 348).
Coleridge and the Morgans themselves were not in a flourishing condition. They were in straitened circumstances, and Coleridge wrote the following two letters to Cottle in March 1815.
Letter 164. To Cottle
Calne, March 7, 1815.
Dear Cottle,
You will wish to know something of myself. In health, I am not worse than when at Bristol I was best; yet fluctuating, yet unhappy! in circumstances “poor indeed!” I have collected my scattered, and my manuscript poems, sufficient to make one volume. Enough I have to make another. But till the latter is finished, I cannot without great loss of character, publish the former on account of the arrangement, besides the necessity of correction. For instance, I earnestly wish to begin the volumes, with what has never been seen by any, however few, such as a series of Odes on the different sentences of the Lord’s Prayer, and more than all this, to finish my greater work on Christianity, considered as Philosophy, and as the only Philosophy. All the materials I have in no small part reduced to form, and written, but, oh me! what can I do, when I am so poor, that in having to turn off every week, from these to some mean subject for the newspapers, I distress myself, and at last neglect the greater wholly to do little of the less. If it were in your power to receive my manuscripts (for instance what I have ready for the press of my poems) and by setting me forward with thirty or forty pounds, taking care that what I send, and would make over to you, would more than secure you from loss, I am sure you would do it. And I would die (after my recent experience of the cruel and insolent spirit of calumny) rather than subject myself, as a slave, to a club of subscribers to my poverty.
If I were to say I am easy in my conscience, I should add to its pains by a lie; but this I can truly say, that my embarrassments have not been occasioned by the bad parts, or selfish indulgences of my nature, I am at present five and twenty pounds in arrear, my expenses being at £2 10s. per week. You will say I ought to live for less, and doubtless I might, if I were to alienate myself from all social affections, and from all conversation with persons of the same education. Those who severely blame me, never ask, whether at any time in my life, I had for myself and my family’s wants, £50 beforehand.
Heaven knows of the £300 received, through you, what went to myself.[90] No! bowed down under manifold infirmities, I yet dare to appeal to God for the truth of what I say;[91] I have remained poor by always having been poor, and incapable of pursuing any one great work, for want of a competence beforehand.