Concerning the scheme itself, I am undetermined. Not that I am ashamed to receive—God forbid! I will make every possible exertion; my industry shall be at least commensurate with my learning and talents;—if these do not procure for me and mine the necessary comforts of life, I can receive as I would bestow, and, in either case—receiving or bestowing—be equally grateful to my Almighty Benefactor. I am undetermined, therefore—not because I receive with pain and reluctance, but—because I suspect that you attribute to others your own enthusiasm of benevolence; as if the sun should say, “With how rich a purple those opposite windows are burning!” But with God’s permission I shall talk with you on this subject. By the last page of No. X. you will perceive that I have this day dropped “The Watchman.” On Monday morning I will go per caravan to Bridgewater, where, if you have a horse of tolerable meekness unemployed, you will let him meet me.
I should blame you for the exaggerated terms in which you have spoken of me in the Proposal, did I not perceive the motive. You wished to make it appear an offering—not a favour—and in excess of delicacy have, I fear, fallen into some grossness of flattery.
God bless you, my dear, very dear Friend. The widow[112] is calm, and amused with her beautiful infant. We are all become more religious than we were. God be ever praised for all things! Mrs. Coleridge begs her kind love to you. To your dear mother my filial respects.
S. T. Coleridge.
LVII. TO JOHN THELWALL.
May 13, 1796.
My dear Thelwall,—You have given me the affection of a brother, and I repay you in kind. Your letters demand my friendship and deserve my esteem; the zeal with which you have attacked my supposed delusions proves that you are deeply interested for me, and interested even to agitation for what you believe to be truth. You deem that I have treated “systems and opinions with the furious prejudices of the conventicle, and the illiberal dogmatism of the cynic;” that I have “layed about me on this side and on that with the sledge hammer of abuse.” I have, you think, imitated the “old sect in politics and morals” in their “outrageous violence,” and have sunk into the “clownish fierceness of intolerant prejudice.” I have “branded” the presumptuous children of scepticism “with vile epithets and hunted them down with abuse.” “These be hard words, Citizen! and I will be bold to say they are not to be justified” by the unfortunate page which has occasioned them. The only passage in it which appears offensive (I am not now inquiring concerning the truth or falsehood of this or the remaining passages) is the following: “You have studied Mr. G.’s Essay on Politi[cal] Jus[tice]—but to think filial affection folly, gratitude a crime, marriage injustice, and the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes right and wise, may class you among the despisers of vulgar prejudices, but cannot increase the probability that you are a patriot. But you act up to your principles—so much the worse. Your principles are villainous ones. I would not entrust my wife or sister to you; think you I would entrust my country?” My dear Thelwall! how are these opinions connected with the conventicle more than with the Stoa, the Lyceum, or the grove of Academus? I do not perceive that to attack adultery is more characteristic of Christian prejudices than of the prejudices of the disciples of Aristotle, Zeno, or Socrates. In truth, the offensive sentence, “Your principles are villainous,” was suggested by the Peripatetic Sage who divides bad men into two classes. The first he calls “wet or intemperate sinners”—men who are hurried into vice by their appetites, but acknowledge their actions to be vicious; these are reclaimable. The second class he names dry villains—men who are not only vicious but who (the steams from the polluted heart rising up and gathering round the head) have brought themselves and others to believe that vice is virtue. We mean these men when we say men of bad principles—guilt is out of the question. I am a necessarian, and of course deny the possibility of it. However, a letter is not the place for reasoning. In some form or other, or by some channel or other, I shall publish my critique on the New Philosophy, and, I trust, shall demean myself not ungently, and disappoint your auguries.... “But, you cannot be a patriot unless you are a Christian.” Yes, Thelwall, the disciples of Lord Shaftesbury and Rousseau as well as of Jesus—but the man who suffers not his hopes to wander beyond the objects of sense will in general be sensual, and I again assert that a sensualist is not likely to be a patriot. Have I tried these opinions by the double test of argument and example? I think so. The first would be too large a field, the second some following sentences of your letter forced me to.... Gerrald[113] you insinuate is an atheist. Was he so, when he offered those solemn prayers to God Almighty at the Scotch conventicle, and was this sincerity? But Dr. Darwin and (I suppose from his actions) Gerrald think sincerity a folly and therefore vicious. Your atheistic brethren square their moral systems exactly according to their inclinations. Gerrald and Dr. Darwin are polite and good-natured men, and willing to attain at good by attainable roads. They deem insincerity a necessary virtue in the present imperfect state of our nature. Godwin, whose very heart is cankered by the love of singularity, and who feels no disinclination to wound by abrupt harshness, pleads for absolute sincerity, because such a system gives him a frequent opportunity of indulging his misanthropy. Poor Williams,[114] the Welsh bard (a very meek man), brought the tear into my eye by a simple narration of the manner in which Godwin insulted him under the pretence of reproof, and Thomas Walker of Manchester told me that his indignation and contempt were never more powerfully excited than by an unfeeling and insolent speech of the said Godwin to the poor Welsh bard. Scott told me some shocking stories of Godwin. His base and anonymous attack on you is enough for me. At that time I had prepared a letter to him, which I was about to have sent to the “Morning Chronicle,” and I convinced Dr. Beddoes by passages from the “Tribune” of the calumnious nature of the attack. I was once and only once in company with Godwin. He appeared to me to possess neither the strength of intellect that discovers truth, nor the powers of imagination that decorate falsehood; he talked sophisms in jejune language. I like Holcroft a thousand times better, and think him a man of much greater ability. Fierce, hot, petulant, the very high priest of atheism, he hates God “with all his heart, with all his mind, with all his soul, and with all his strength.” Every man not an atheist is only not a fool. “Dr. Priestley? there is a petitesse in his mind. Hartley? pshaw! Godwin, sir, is a thousand times a better metaphysician!” But this intolerance is founded on benevolence. (I had almost forgotten that horrible story about his son.)
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On the subject of using sugar, etc., I will write you a long and serious letter. This grieves me more than you [imagine]. I hope I shall be able by severe and unadorned reasoning to convince you you are wrong.
Your remarks on my poems are, I think, just in general; there is a rage and affectation of double epithets. “Unshuddered, unaghasted” is, indeed, truly ridiculous. But why so violent against metaphysics in poetry? Is not Akenside’s a metaphysical poem? Perhaps you do not like Akenside? Well, but I do, and so do a great many others. Why pass an act of uniformity against poets? I received a letter from a very sensible friend abusing love verses; another blaming the introduction of politics, “as wider from true poetry than the equator from the poles.” “Some for each” is my motto. That poetry pleases which interests. My religious poetry interests the religious, who read it with rapture. Why? Because it awakes in them all the associations connected with a love of future existence, etc. A very dear friend of mine,[115] who is, in my opinion, the best poet of the age (I will send you his poem when published), thinks that the lines from 364 to 375 and from 403 to 428 the best in the volume,—indeed, worth all the rest. And this man is a republican, and, at least, a semi-atheist. Why do you object to “shadowy of truth”? It is, I acknowledge, a Grecism, but, I think, an elegant one. Your remarks on the della-crusca place of emphasis are just in part. Where we wish to point out the thing, and the quality is mentioned merely as a decoration, this mode of emphasis is indeed absurd; therefore, I very patiently give up to critical vengeance “high tree,” “sore wounds,” and “rough rock;” but when you wish to dwell chiefly on the quality rather than the thing, then this mode is proper, and, indeed, is used in common conversation. Who says good man? Therefore, “big soul,” “cold earth,” “dark womb,” and “flamy child” are all right, and introduce a variety into the versification, [which is] an advantage where you can attain it without any sacrifice of sense. As to harmony, it is all association. Milton is harmonious to me, and I absolutely nauseate Darwin’s poems.