[28] John Wordsworth, the poet’s younger brother, the original of Leonard in “The Brothers,” and of “The Happy Warrior,” was drowned off the Bill of Portland, February 5, 1805. In a letter to Sir G. Beaumont, dated February 11, 1805, Wordsworth writes: “I can say nothing higher of my ever-dear brother than that he was worthy of his sister, who is now weeping beside me, and of the friendship of Coleridge; meek, affectionate, silently enthusiastic, loving all quiet things, and a poet in everything but words.” “We have had no tidings of Coleridge. I tremble for the moment when he is to hear of my brother’s death; it will distress him to the heart, and his poor body cannot bear sorrow. He loved my brother, and he knows how we at Grasmere loved him.” The report of the wreck of the Earl of Abergavenny and of the loss of her captain did not reach Malta till the 31st of March. It was a Sunday, and Coleridge, who had been sent for to the Palace, first heard the news from Lady Ball. His emotion at the time, and, perhaps, a petition to be excused from his duties brought from her the next day “a kindly letter of apology.” “Your strong feelings,” she writes, “are too great for your health. I hope that you will soon recover your spirits.” But Coleridge took the trouble to heart. It was the first death in the inner circle of his friends; it meant a heavy sorrow to those whom he best loved, and it seemed to confirm the haunting presentiment that death would once more visit his family during his absence from home. Ten days later he writes (in a note-book): “O dear John Wordsworth! What joy at Grasmere that you were made Captain of the Abergavenny! now it was next to certain that you would in a few years settle in your native hills, and be verily one of the concern. Then came your share in the brilliant action at Linois. I was at Grasmere in spirit only! but in spirit I was one of the rejoicers ... and all these were but decoys of death! Well, but a nobler feeling than these vain regrets would become the friend of the man whose last words were, ‘I have done my duty! let her go!’ Let us do our duty; all else is a dream—life and death alike a dream! This short sentence would comprise, I believe, the sum of all profound philosophy, of ethics and metaphysics, and conjointly from Plato to Fichte. S. T. C.”
[29] An island midway between Malta and Tunis, ceded by Naples to Don Fernandez in 1802.
[30] A description of the cottage at Stowey and its inmates, contained in a letter written by Mr. Richard Reynell (in August, 1797) to his sister at Thorveston, was published in the Illustrated London News, April 22, 1893.
[31] Coleridge left Rome with his friend Mr. Russell on Sunday, May 18, 1806. He had received, so he tells us in the Biographia Literaria, a secret warning from the Pope that Napoleon, whose animosity had been roused by articles in the Morning Post, had ordered his arrest. A similar statement is made in a footnote to a title-page of a proposed reprint of newspaper articles (an anticipation of Essays on His Own Times), which was drawn up in 1817. “My essays,” he writes, “in the Morning Post, during the peace of Amiens, brought my life into jeopardy when I was at Rome. An order for my arrest came from Paris to Rome at twelve at night—by the Pope’s goodness I was off by one—and the arrest of all the English took place at six.” In a letter to his brother George, which he wrote about six months after he returned to England, he says that he was warned to leave Rome, but does not enter into particulars. It is a well-known fact that Napoleon read the leading articles in the Morning Post, and deeply resented their tone and spirit, but whether Coleridge was rightly informed that an order for his arrest had come from Paris, or whether he was warned that, if with other Englishmen he should be arrested, his connection with the Morning Post would come to light, must remain doubtful. Coleridge’s Works, 1853, iii. 309.
[32] An entry in a note-book, dated June 7, 1806, expresses this at greater length: “O my children! whether, and which of you are dead, whether any and which among you are alive I know not, and were a letter to arrive this moment from Keswick I fear that I should be unable to open it, so deep and black is my despair. O my children! My children! I gave you life once, unconscious of the life I was giving, and you as unconsciously have given life to me.” A fortnight later, he ends a similar outburst of despair with a cry for deliverance:—
Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a love-thought thro’ me, Death!
And take a life that wearies me.
[33] It is difficult to trace his movements during his last week in Italy. He reached Leghorn on Saturday, June 7. Thence he made his way to Florence and returned to Pisa on a Thursday, probably Thursday, June 19, the date of this letter. On Sunday, June 22, he was still at Pisa, but, I take it, on the eve of setting sail for England. Fifty-five days later, August 17, he leaped on shore at Stangate Creek. His account of Pisa is highly characteristic. “Of the hanging Tower,” he writes, “the Duomo, the Cemetery, the Baptistery, I shall say nothing, except that being all together they form a wild mass, especially by moonlight, when the hanging Tower has something of a supernatural look; but what interested me with a deeper interest were the two hospitals, one for men, one for women,” etc., and these he proceeds to describe. Nevertheless he must have paid more attention to the treasures of Pisan art than his note implies, for many years after in a Lecture on the History of Philosophy, delivered January 19, 1819, he describes minutely and vividly the “Triumph of Death,” the great fresco in the Campo Santo at Pisa, which was formerly assigned to Oreagna, but is now, I believe, attributed to Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti. MS. Journal; MS. Report of Lecture.
[34] Mr. Russell was an artist, an Exeter man, whom Coleridge met in Rome. They were fellow-travellers in Italy, and returned together to England.
[35] William Smith, M. P. for Norwich, who lived at Parndon House, near Harlow, in Essex. It was in a great measure through his advice and interest that Coleridge obtained his Lectureship at the Royal Institution. Ten years later (1817), on the occasion of the surreptitious publication of Wat Tyler, Mr. Smith, who was a staunch liberal, denounced the Laureate as a “renegade,” and Coleridge with something of his old vigour gave battle on behalf of his brother-in-law in the pages of The Courier. Essays on His Own Times, iii. 939-950.
[36] Charles James Fox died on September 13, 1806.