At Nottingham you will surely be more likely to obtain audiences; and, I doubt not, you will find a hospitable reception there. I was treated by many families with kindliness, by some with a zeal of affection. Write me if you go and when you go. Now for your pamphlet. It is well written, and the doctrine sound, although sometimes, I think, deduced falsely. For instance (p. iii.): It is true that all a man’s children, “however begotten, whether in marriage or out,” are his heirs in nature, and ought to be so in true policy; but, instead of tacitly allowing that I meant by it to encourage what Mr. B.[154] and the priests would call licentiousness (and which surely, Thelwall, in the present state of society you must allow to be injustice, inasmuch as it deprives the woman of her respectability in the opinions of her neighbours), I would have shown that such a law would of all others operate most powerfully in favour of marriage; by which word I mean not the effect of spells uttered by conjurers, but permanent cohabitation useful to society as the best conceivable means (in the present state of society, at least) of ensuring nurture and systematic education to infants and children. We are but frail beings at present, and want such motives to the practice of our duties. Unchastity may be no vice,—I think it is,—but it may be no vice, abstractly speaking; yet from a variety of causes unchaste women are almost without exception careless mothers. Wife is a solemn name to me because of its influence on the more solemn duties of mother. Such passages (p. 30 is another of them) are offensive. They are mere assertions, and of course can convince no person who thinks differently; and they give pain and irritate. I write so frequently to you on this subject, because I have reason to know that passages of this order did give very general offence in your first part, and have operated to retard the sale of the second. If they had been arguments or necessarily connected with your main argument, I am not the man, Thelwall, who would oppose the filth of prudentials merely to have it swept away by the indignant torrent of your honesty. But as I said before, they are mere assertions; and certainly their truth is not self-evident. With the exception of these passages, the pamphlet is the best I have read since the commencement of the war; warm, not fiery, well-seasoned without being dry, the periods harmonious yet avoiding metrical harmony, and the ornaments so dispersed as to set off the features of truth without turning the attention on themselves. I account for its slow sale partly from your having compared yourself to Christ in the first (which gave great offence, to my knowledge, although very foolishly, I confess), and partly from the sore and fatigued state of men’s minds, which disqualifies them for works of principle that exert the intellect without agitating the passions. But it has not been reviewed yet, has it? I read your narrative and was almost sorry I had read it, for I had become much interested, and the abrupt “no more” jarred me. I never heard before of your variance with Horne Tooke. Of the poems, the two Odes are the best. Of the two Odes, the last, I think; it is in the best style of Akenside’s best Odes. Several of the sonnets are pleasing, and whenever I was pleased I paused, and imaged you in my mind in your captivity.... My Ode[155] by this time you are conscious that you have praised too highly. With the exception of “I unpartaking of the evil thing,” which line I do not think injudiciously weak, I accede to all your remarks, and shall alter accordingly. Your remark that the line on the Empress had more of Juvenal than Pindar flashed itself on my mind. I had admired the line before, but I became immediately of your opinion, and that criticism has convinced me that your nerves are exquisite electrometers[156] of taste. You forgot to point out to me that the whole childbirth of Nature is at once ludicrous and disgusting, an epigram smart yet bombastic. The review of Bryant’s pamphlet is good—the sauce is better than the fish. Speaking of Lewis’s death, surely you forget that the legislature of France were to act by laws and not by general morals; and that they violated the law which they themselves had made. I will take in the “Corresponding Society Magazine.” That good man, James Losh, has just published an admirable treatise translated from the French of Benjamin Constant,[157] entitled, “Consideration on the Strength of the Present Government of France.” “Woe to that country when crimes are punished by crimes, and where men murder in the name of justice.” I apply this to the death of the mistaken but well-meaning Lewis.[158] I never go to Bristol. From seven till half past eight I work in my garden; from breakfast till twelve I read and compose, then read again, feed the pigs, poultry, etc., till two o’clock; after dinner work again till tea; from tea till supper, review. So jogs the day, and I am happy. I have society—my friend T. Poole, and as many acquaintances as I can dispense with. There are a number of very pretty young women in Stowey, all musical, and I am an immense favourite: for I pun, conundrumize, listen, and dance. The last is a recent acquirement. We are very happy, and my little David Hartley grows a sweet boy and has high health; he laughs at us till he makes us weep for very fondness. You would smile to see my eye rolling up to the ceiling in a lyric fury, and on my knee a diaper pinned to warm. I send and receive to and from Bristol every week, and will transcribe that part of your last letter and send it to Reed.
I raise potatoes and all manner of vegetables, have an orchard, and shall raise corn with the spade, enough for my family. We have two pigs, and ducks and geese. A cow would not answer the keep: for we have whatever milk we want from T. Poole. God bless you and your affectionate
S. T. Coleridge.
LXXIII. TO JOSEPH COTTLE.[159]
June, 1797.
My dear Cottle,—I am sojourning for a few days at Racedown, the mansion of our friend Wordsworth, who has received Fox’s “Achmed.” He returns you his acknowledgments, and presents his kindliest respects to you. I shall be home by Friday—not to-morrow—but the next Friday. If the “Ode on the Departing Year” be not reprinted, please to omit the lines from “When shall scepter’d slaughter cease,” to “For still does Madness roam on Guilt’s bleak dizzy height,” inclusive.[160] The first epode is to end at the words “murderer’s fate.” Wordsworth admires my tragedy, which gives me great hopes. Wordsworth has written a tragedy himself. I speak with heartfelt sincerity, and (I think) unblinded judgment, when I tell you that I feel myself a little man by his side, and yet do not think myself the less man than I formerly thought myself. His drama is absolutely wonderful. You know I do not commonly speak in such abrupt and unmingled phrases, and therefore will the more readily believe me. There are in the piece those profound touches of the human heart which I find three or four times in “The Robbers” of Schiller, and often in Shakespeare, but in Wordsworth there are no inequalities. T. Poole’s opinion of Wordsworth is that he is the greatest man he ever knew; I coincide.
It is not impossible, that in the course of two or three months I may see you. God bless you, and
S. T. Coleridge.
Thursday.—Of course, with the lines you omit the notes that relate to them.
Mr. Cottle, Bookseller, High Street, Bristol.