My next Friday’s lecture will, if I do not grossly flatter-blind myself, be interesting, and the points of view not only original, but new to the audience. I make this distinction, because sixteen or rather seventeen years ago, I delivered eighteen lectures on Shakespeare, at the Royal Institution; three-fourths of which appeared at that time startling paradoxes, although they have since been adopted even by men, who then made use of them as proofs of my flighty and paradoxical turn of mind; all tending to prove that Shakespeare’s judgment was, if possible, still more wonderful than his genius; or rather, that the contra-distinction itself between judgment and genius rested on an utterly false theory. This, and its proofs and grounds have been—I should not have said adopted, but produced as their own legitimate children by some, and by others the merit of them attributed to a foreign writer, whose lectures were not given orally till two years after mine, rather than to their countryman; though I dare appeal to the most adequate judges, as Sir George Beaumont, the Bishop of Durham, Mr. Sotheby, and afterwards to Mr. Rogers and Lord Byron, whether there is one single principle in Schlegel’s work (which is not an admitted drawback from its merits), that was not established and applied in detail by me. Plutarch tells us, that egotism is a venial fault in the unfortunate, and justifiable in the calumniated, &c.[102]

Mr. Dykes Campbell thinks these letters to Mr. Britton refer to a course projected to be given at the Russell Institution; but there is no evidence that another Shakespeare course was delivered after that of 1818–19 (Dykes Campbell’s Life of Coleridge, p. 240). Coleridge’s indebtedness to Kant, Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Jean Paul Richter, and Augustus Schlegel is traced by Brandl (Life of Coleridge, pp. 296–322). Schlegel’s Lectures were delivered in 1808, the same year as Coleridge’s first course. Coleridge did not peruse Schlegel’s Lectures till 1811; but as no full record of his Lectures of 1808 exist, the original indebtedness of Coleridge to Schlegel cannot be determined.

During his stay at Highgate, Coleridge occasionally went to Ramsgate to enjoy the seaside. The next letter was written on his return from one of his visits to Ramsgate.

Letter 176. To Allsop

Highgate, Sept. 30th, 1819.

My dear Sir,

Returned from Ramsgate, I hasten to assure you that, next to seeing you, I have pleasure in hearing from you: and wish the former in preference, not merely from the greater mutual enjoyment, but likewise because one can convey more, and with greater assurance of being understood, in an hour, than one could write in a day. On the other hand, letters are more permanent, and an epistolary correspondence more endearing, like all marks of remembrance in absence.

My sentiments concerning the expediency, and both moral and intellectual advantages, of a trade or profession, for such as fix their ultimate end on objects nobler than trades or professions can bestow on the most favoured of their followers, may be learnt from the eleventh chapter of my Literary Life,[103] which, though addressed to a small and particular class, yet permits a more general application. To you, my dear young friend, I should say, temptations and preventives—the poisons and the antidotes—are pretty evenly dispersed through all the different accredited paths of life. Nay, those temptations which are foreknown and foreseen as most appertinent to our particular calling, are commonly least dangerous, or even cease to be temptations to a mind forearmed by principles and aspirations like yours. The false step is more likely to take place in the recoil than the advance; in the neglect rather than in the too eager pursuit of the means; in under, rather than over, valuing the advantages of wealth and worldly respectability. The true plan on which you should regulate your conduct and feelings, (that at least, which to me appears such) is the following. Propose to yourself from the present hour such views of action and enjoyment, as will make the leisure attached to independence, and honourably earned by previous industry, the fair object of a wise man’s efforts and a good man’s desires. Meantime, let the chosen employments of the years in hope be the relaxations of the time present, of the years devoted to present duties, and, among these, to the means of realising that hope; thus you will answer two great ends at once. Your inward trains of thought, your faculties, and your feelings, will be preserved in a fitness and, as it were, contempered to a life of ease, and capable of enjoying leisure, because both able and disposed to employ it. Secondly, while you thus render future affluence more and more desirable, you will at the same time prevent all undue impatience, and disarm the temptation of poisoning the allotted interval by anxieties, and anxious schemes and efforts to get rich in haste. There is yet one other inducement to look on your existing appointment with complacency. Every improvement in knowledge, and the moral power of wielding and directing it, will tell for more,—have a wider and more benignant influence,—than the same accomplishment would in a man who belonged to one of the learned professions. Both your information and your example will fall where they are most wanted, like the noiseless dews in Malta, where rain comes seldom and no regular streams are to be met with. As to your present studies, for such portions of your time as you can prudently appropriate to reading, without wrong to the claims of health and social relaxation, there is one department of knowledge, which, like an ample palace, contains within itself mansions for every other knowledge; which deepens and extends the interest of every other, gives it new charms and additional purpose; the study of which, rightly and liberally pursued, is beyond any other entertaining, beyond all others tends at once to tranquillize and enliven, to keep the mind elevated and steadfast, the heart humbler and tender: it is biblical theology—the philosophy of religion, the religion of philosophy. I would that I could refer you to any book in which such a plan of reading had been sketched out, in detail or even but generally.

Alas! I know of none. But most gladly will I make the attempt to supply this desideratum by conversation, and then by letter. But of this when I have next the pleasure of seeing you at Highgate.

You have perhaps heard that my publisher is a bankrupt.