I shall lose the post if I say a word more. You thoroughly and in every nook and corner of your heart forgive me for my letters? Indeed, indeed, Poole, I know no one whom I esteem more—no one friend whom I love so much. But bear with my infirmities! God bless you, and your grateful and affectionate
S. T. Coleridge.
LXX. TO JOHN THELWALL.
December 31, 1796.
Enough, my dear Thelwall, of theology. In my book on Godwin, I compare the two systems, his and Jesus’, and that book I am sure you will read with attention. I entirely accord with your opinion of Southey’s “Joan.” The ninth book is execrable, and the poem, though it frequently reach the sentimental, does not display the poetical-sublime. In language at once natural, perspicuous, and dignified in manly pathos, in soothing and sonnet-like description, and, above all, in character and dramatic dialogue, Southey is unrivalled; but as certainly he does not possess opulence of imaginative lofty-paced harmony, or that toil of thinking which is necessary in order to plan a whole. Dismissing mock humility, and hanging your mind as a looking-glass over my idea-pot, so as to image on the said mind all the bubbles that boil in the said idea-pot (there’s a damned long-winded metaphor for you), I think that an admirable poet might be made by amalgamating him and me. I think too much for a poet, he too little for a great poet. But he abjures feeling. Now (as you say) they must go together. Between ourselves the enthusiasm of friendship is not with S. and me. We quarrelled and the quarrel lasted for a twelvemonth. We are now reconciled; but the cause of the difference was solemn, and “the blasted oak puts not forth its buds anew.” We are acquaintances, and feel kindliness towards each other, but I do not esteem or love Southey, as I must esteem and love the man whom I dared call by the holy name of friend: and vice versâ Southey of me. I say no more. It is a painful subject, and do you say nothing. I mention this for obvious reasons, but let it go no farther. It is a painful subject. Southey’s direction at present is R. Southey, No. 8 West-gate Buildings, Bath, but he leaves Bath for London in the course of a week. You imagine that I know Bowles personally. I never saw him but once, and when I was a boy and in Salisbury market-place.
The passage in your letter respecting your mother affected me greatly. Well, true or false, heaven is a less gloomy idea than annihilation. Dr. Beddoes and Dr. Darwin think that Life is utterly inexplicable, writing as materialists. You, I understand, have adopted the idea that it is the result of organised matter acted on by external stimuli. As likely as any other system, but you assume the thing to be proved. The “capability of being stimulated into sensation” ... is my definition of animal life. Monro believes in a plastic, immaterial nature, all-pervading.
And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, etc.
(By the bye, that is the favourite of my poems; do you like it?) Hunter says that the blood is the life, which is saying nothing at all; for, if the blood were life, it could never be otherwise than life, and to say it is alive is saying nothing; and Ferriar believes in a soul, like an orthodox churchman. So much for physicians and surgeons! Now as to the metaphysicians. Plato says it is harmony. He might as well have said a fiddlestick’s end; but I love Plato, his dear, gorgeous nonsense; and I, though last not least, I do not know what to think about it. On the whole, I have rather made up my mind that I am a mere apparition, a naked spirit, and that life is, I myself I; which is a mighty clear account of it. Now I have written all this, not to express my ignorance (that is an accidental effect, not the final cause), but to shew you that I want to see your essay on “Animal Vitality,” of which Bowles the surgeon spoke in high terms. Yet he believes in a body and a soul. Any book may be left at Robinson’s for me, “to be put into the next parcel, to be sent to ‘Joseph Cottle, bookseller, Bristol.’” Have you received an “Ode”[150] of mine from Parsons? In your next letter tell me what you think of the scattered poems I sent you. Send me any poems, and I will be minute in criticism. For, O Thelwall, even a long-winded abuse is more consolatory to an author’s feelings than a short-breathed, asthma-lunged panegyric. Joking apart, I would to God we could sit by a fireside and joke vivâ voce, face to face—Stella and Sara, Jack Thelwall and I. As I once wrote to my dear friend, T. Poole, “repeating—
‘Such verse as Bowles, heart-honour’d poet, sang,
That wakes the Tear, yet steals away the Pang,
Then, or with Berkeley or with Hobbes romance it,
Dissecting Truth with metaphysic lancet.
Or, drawn from up those dark unfathom’d wells,
In wiser folly clink the Cap and Bells.
How many tales we told! what jokes we made!
Conundrum, Crambo, Rebus, or Charade;
Ænigmas that had driven the Theban[151] mad,
And Puns, then best when exquisitely bad;
And I, if aught of archer vein I hit
With my own laughter stifled my own wit.’”[152]