CHAPTER IV
A VISIT TO GERMANY
1798-1799
CHAPTER IV
A VISIT TO GERMANY
1798-1799
The letters which Coleridge wrote from Germany were, with few exceptions, addressed either to his wife or to Poole. They have never been published in full, but during his life and since his death various extracts have appeared in print. The earlier letters descriptive of his voyage, his two visits to Hamburg, his interviews with Klopstock, and his settlement at Ratzeburg were published as “Satyrane’s Letters,” first in November-December, 1809, in Nos. 14, 16, and 18 of “The Friend,” and again, in 1817, in the “Biographia Literaria” (ii. 183-253). Two extracts from letters to his wife, dated respectively January 14 and April 8, 1799, appeared in No. 19 of “The Friend,” December 28, 1809, as “Christmas Indoors in North Germany,” and “Christmas Out of Doors.” In 1828, Coleridge placed a selection of unpublished letters from Germany in the hands of the late S. C. Hall, who printed portions of two (dated “Clausthal, May 17, 1799”) in the “Amulet” of 1829, under the title of “Fragments of a Journal of a Tour over the Brocken, by S. T. Coleridge.” The same extract is included in Gillman’s “Life of Coleridge,” pp. 125, 138.
After Coleridge’s death, Mr. Hall published in the “New Monthly Magazine” (1835, No. 45, pp. 211-226) the three last letters from Germany, dated May 17, 18, and 19, which include the “Tour over the Brocken.” Selections from Coleridge’s letters to Poole of April 8 and May 6, 1799, were published by Mrs. Sandford in “Thomas Poole and his Friends” (i. 295-299), and four letters from Poole to Coleridge are included in the same volume (pp. 277-294). A hitherto unpublished letter from Coleridge to his wife, dated January 14, 1799, appeared in “The Illustrated London News,” April 29, 1893. For further particulars relative to Coleridge’s life in Germany, see Carlyon’s “Early Years,” etc., 1856, i. 26-198, passim, and Brandl’s “Life of Coleridge,” 1887, pp. 230-252.
LXXXVI. TO THOMAS POOLE.
September 15, 1798.
My very dear Poole,—We have arrived at Yarmouth just in time to be hurried into the packet—and four or five letters of recommendation have been taken away from me, owing to their being wafered. Wedgwood’s luckily were not.
I am at the point of leaving my native country for the first time—a country which God Almighty knows is dear to me above all things for the love I bear to you. Of many friends whom I love and esteem, my head and heart have ever chosen you as the friend—as the one being in whom is involved the full and whole meaning of that sacred title. God love you, my dear Poole! and your faithful and most affectionate