[114] Edward Williams (Iolo Morgangw), 1747-1826. His poems in two volumes were published by subscription in 1794. Coleridge possessed a copy presented to him “by the author,” and on the last page of the second volume he has scrawled a single but characteristic marginal note. It is affixed to a translation of one of the “Poetic Triades.” “The three principal considerations of poetical description: what is obvious, what instantly engages the affections, and what is strikingly characteristic.” The comment is as follows: “I suppose, rather what we recollect to have frequently seen in nature, though not in the description of it.”
[115] The allusion must be to Wordsworth, but there is a difficulty as to dates. In a MS. note to the second edition of his poems (1797) Coleridge distinctly states that he had no personal acquaintance with Wordsworth as early as March, 1796. Again, in a letter (Letter LXXXI.) to Estlin dated “May [? 1797],” but certainly written in May, 1798, Coleridge says that he has known Wordsworth for a year and some months. On the other hand, there is Mrs. Wordsworth’s report of her husband’s “impression” that he first met Coleridge, Southey, Sara, and Edith Fricker “in a lodging in Bristol in 1795,”—an imperfect recollection very difficult to reconcile with other known facts. Secondly, there is Sara Coleridge’s statement that “Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Wordsworth first met in the house of Mr. Pinney,” in the spring or summer of 1795; and, thirdly, it would appear from a letter of Lamb to Coleridge, which belongs to the summer of 1796, that “the personal acquaintance” with Wordsworth had already begun. The probable conclusion is that there was a first meeting in 1795, and occasional intercourse in 1796, but that intimacy and friendship date from the visit to Racedown in June, 1797. Coleridge quotes Wordsworth in his “Lines from Shurton Bars,” dated September, 1795, but the first trace of Wordsworth’s influence on style and thought appears in “This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison,” July, 1797. In May, 1796, Wordsworth could only have been “his very dear friend” sensu poetico. Life of W. Wordsworth, i. 111; Biographical Supplement to Biographia Literaria, chapter ii.; Letters of Charles Lamb, Macmillan, 1888, i. 6.
[116] On the side of the road, opposite to Poole’s house in Castle Street, Nether Stowey, is a straight gutter through which a stream passes. See Thomas Poole and his Friends, i. 147.
[117] The Peripatetic, or Sketches of the Heart, of Nature, and of Society, a miscellany of prose and verse issued by John Thelwall, in 1793.
[118] January 10, 1795. See Poetical Works, p. 41, and Editor’s Note, p. 575. Margarot, a West Indian, was one of those tried and transported with Gerrald.
[119] See Poetical Works, p. 66.
[120] Early in the autumn of 1796, a proposal had been made to Coleridge that he should start a day school in Derby. Poole dissuaded him from accepting this offer, or rather, perhaps, Coleridge succeeded in procuring Poole’s disapproval of a plan which he himself dreaded and disliked.
[121] Thomas Ward, at first the articled clerk, and afterwards partner in business and in good works, of Thomas Poole. He it was who transcribed in “Poole’s Copying Book” Coleridge’s letters from Germany, and much of his correspondence besides. See Thomas Poole and his Friends, i. 159, 160, 304, 305, etc.
[122] This letter, first printed in Gillman’s Life, pp. 338-340, and since reprinted in the notes to Canon Ainger’s edition of Lamb’s Letters (i. 314, 315), was written in response to a request of Charles Lamb in his letter of September 27, 1796, announcing the “terrible calamities” which had befallen his family. “Write me,” said Lamb, “as religious a letter as possible.” In his next letter, October 3, he says, “Your letter is an inestimable treasure.” But a few weeks later, October 24, he takes exception to the sentence, “You are a temporary sharer in human miseries that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine nature.” Lamb thought that the expression savoured too much of theological subtlety, and outstepped the modesty of weak and suffering humanity. Coleridge’s “religious letter” came from his heart, but he was a born preacher, and naturally clothes his thoughts in rhetorical language. I have seen a note written by him within a few hours of his death, when he could scarcely direct his pen. It breathes the tenderest loving-kindness, but the expressions are elaborate and formal. It was only in poetry that he attained to simplicity.
[123] Coleridge must have resorted occasionally to opiates long before this. In an unpublished letter to his brother George, dated November 21, 1791, he says, “Opium never used to have any disagreeable effects on me.” Most likely it was given to him at Christ’s Hospital, when he was suffering from rheumatic fever. In the sonnet on “Pain,” which belongs to the summer of 1790, he speaks of “frequent pangs,” of “seas of pain,” and in the natural course of things opiates would have been prescribed by the doctors. Testimony of this nature appears at first sight to be inconsistent with statements made by Coleridge in later life to the effect that he began to take opium in the second year of his residence at Keswick, in consequence of rheumatic pains brought on by the damp climate. It was, however, the first commencement of the secret and habitual resort to narcotics which weighed on memory and conscience, and there is abundant evidence that it was not till the late spring of 1801 that he could be said to be under the dominion of opium. To these earlier indulgences in the “accursed drug,” which probably left no “disagreeable effects,” and of which, it is to be remarked, he speaks openly, he seems to have attached but little significance.