XXXVIII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
November, 1794.
My feeble and exhausted heart regards with a criminal indifference the introduction of servitude into our society; but my judgment is not asleep, nor can I suffer your reason, Southey, to be entangled in the web which your feelings have woven. Oxen and horses possess not intellectual appetites, nor the powers of acquiring them. We are therefore justified in employing their labour to our own benefit: mind hath a divine right of sovereignty over body. But who shall dare to transfer “from man to brute” to “from man to man”? To be employed in the toil of the field, while we are pursuing philosophical studies—can earldoms or emperorships boast so huge an inequality? Is there a human being of so torpid a nature as that placed in our society he would not feel it? A willing slave is the worst of slaves! His soul is a slave. Besides, I must own myself incapable of perceiving even the temporary convenience of the proposed innovation. The men do not want assistance, at least none that Shad can particularly give; and to the women, what assistance can little Sally, the wife of Shad, give more than any other of our married women? Is she to have no domestic cares of her own? No house? No husband to provide for? No children? Because Mr. and Mrs. Roberts are not likely to have children, I see less objection to their accompanying us. Indeed, indeed, Southey, I am fearful that Lushington’s prophecy may not be altogether vain. “Your system, Coleridge, appears strong to the head and lovely to the heart; but depend upon it, you will never give your women sufficient strength of mind, liberality of heart, or vigilance of attention. They will spoil it.”
I am extremely unwell; have run a nail into my heel, and before me stand “Embrocation for the throbbing of the head,” “To be shaked up well that the ether may mix,” “A wineglass full to be taken when faint.” ’Sdeath! how I hate the labels of apothecary’s bottles. Ill as I am, I must go out to supper. Farewell for a few hours.
’Tis past one o’clock in the morning. I sat down at twelve o’clock to read the “Robbers” of Schiller.[66] I had read, chill and trembling, when I came to the part where the Moor fixes a pistol over the robbers who are asleep. I could read no more. My God, Southey, who is this Schiller, this convulser of the heart? Did he write his tragedy amid the yelling of fiends? I should not like to be able to describe such characters. I tremble like an aspen leaf. Upon my soul, I write to you because I am frightened. I had better go to bed. Why have we ever called Milton sublime? that Count de Moor horrible wielder of heart-withering virtues? Satan is scarcely qualified to attend his execution as gallows chaplain.
Tuesday morning.—I have received your letter. Potter of Emanuel[67] drives me up to town in his phaeton on Saturday morning. I hope to be with you by Wednesday week. Potter is a “Son of Soul”—a poet of liberal sentiments in politics—yet (would you believe it?) possesses six thousand a year independent.
I feel grateful to you for your sympathy. There is a feverish distemperature of brain, during which some horrible phantom threatens our eyes in every corner, until, emboldened by terror, we rush on it, and then—why then we return, the heart indignant at its own palpitation! Even so will the greater part of our mental miseries vanish before an effort. Whatever of mind we will to do, we can do! What, then, palsies the will? The joy of grief. A mysterious pleasure broods with dusky wings over the tumultuous mind, “and the Spirit of God moveth on the darkness of the waters.” She was very lovely, Southey! We formed each other’s minds; our ideas were blended. Heaven bless her! I cannot forget her. Every day her memory sinks deeper into my heart.
Nutrito vulnere tabens
Impatiensque mei feror undique, solus et excors,
Et desideriis pascor!
I wish, Southey, in the stern severity of judgment, that the two mothers were not to go, and that the children stayed with them. Are you wounded by my want of feeling? No! how highly must I think of your rectitude of soul, that I should dare to say this to so affectionate a son! That Mrs. Fricker! We shall have her teaching the infants Christianity,—I mean, that mongrel whelp that goes under its name,—teaching them by stealth in some ague fit of superstition.
There is little danger of my being confined. Advice offered with respect from a brother; affected coldness, an assumed alienation mixed with involuntary bursts of anguish and disappointed affection; questions concerning the mode in which I would have it mentioned to my aged mother—these are the daggers which are plunged into my peace. Enough! I should rather be offering consolation to your sorrows than be wasting my feelings in egotistic complaints. “Verily my complaint is bitter, yet my stroke is heavier than my groaning.”