[205] George Cattermole, 1800-1868, to whose “peculiar gifts and powerful genius” Mr. Ruskin has borne testimony, was eminent as an architectural draughtsman and water-colour painter. With his marvellous illustrations of “Master Humphrey’s Clock” all the world is familiar. Dict. of Nat. Biog. art. “George Cattermole.” His brother Richard was Secretary of the Royal Society of Literature, of which Coleridge was appointed a Royal Associate in 1825. Copies of this and of other letters from Coleridge to Cattermole were kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. James M. Menzies of 24, Carlton Hill, St. John’s Wood.
[206] Harriet Macklin, Coleridge’s faithful attendant for the last seven or eight years of his life. On his deathbed he left a solemn request in writing that his family should make a due acknowledgment of her services. It was to her that Lamb, when he visited Highgate after Coleridge’s death, made a present of five guineas.
[207] Dr. Chalmers represented the visit as having lasted three hours, and that during that “stricken” period he only got occasional glimpses of what the prophet “would be at.” His little daughter, however, was so moved by the “mellifluous flow of discourse” that, when “the music ceased, her overwrought feelings found relief in tears.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative, by J. Dykes Campbell, 1894, p. 260, footnote.
[208] A disciple and amanuensis, to whom, it is believed, he dictated two quarto volumes on “The History of Logic” and “The Elements of Logic,” which originally belonged to Joseph Henry Green, and are now in the possession of Mr. C. A. Ward of Chingford Hatch. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative, by J. Dykes Campbell, 1894, pp. 250, 251; Athenæum, July 1, 1893, art. “Coleridge’s Logic.”
[209] Henry Nelson Coleridge, 1798-1843, was the fifth son of Colonel James Coleridge of Heath’s Court, Ottery St. Mary. His marriage with the poet’s daughter took place on September 3, 1829. He was the author of Six Months in the West Indies, 1825, and an Introduction to the Study of the Greek Poets, 1830. He practised as a chancery barrister and won distinction in his profession. The later years of his life were devoted to the reëditing of his uncle’s published works, and to throwing into a connected shape the literary as distinguished from the philosophical section of his unpublished MSS. The Table Talk, the best known of Coleridge’s prose works, appeared in 1835. Four volumes of Literary Remains, including the “Lectures on Shakespeare and other Dramatists,” were issued 1836-1839. The third edition of The Friend, 1837, the Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, 1840, and the fifth edition of Aids to Reflection, 1843, followed in succession. The second edition of the Biographia Literaria, which “he had prepared in part,” was published by his widow in 1847.
A close study of the original documents which were at my uncle’s disposal enables me to bear testimony to his editorial skill, to his insight, his unwearied industry, his faithfulness. Of the charm of his appearance, and the brilliance of his conversation, I have heard those who knew him speak with enthusiasm. He died, from an affection of the spine, in January, 1843.
[210] This lady was for many years governess in the family of Dr. Crompton of Eaton Hall, near Liverpool. Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge, London, 1873, i. 8 109-116.
[211] Sir William Rowan Hamilton, 1805-1865, the great mathematician, was at this time Professor of Astronomy at Dublin. He was afterwards appointed Astronomer Royal of Ireland. He was, as is well known, a man of culture and a poet; and it was partly to ascertain his views on scientific questions, and partly to interest him in his verses, that Hamilton was anxious to be made known to Coleridge. He had begun a correspondence with Wordsworth as early as 1827, and Wordsworth, on the occasion of his tour in Ireland in 1829, visited Hamilton at the Observatory. Miss Lawrence’s introduction led to an interview, but a letter which Hamilton wrote to Coleridge in the spring of 1832 remained unanswered. In a second letter, dated February 3, 1833, he speaks of a “Lecture on Astronomy” which he forwards for Coleridge’s acceptance, and also of “some love-poems to a lady to whom I am shortly to be married.” The love-poems, eight sonnets, which are smoothly turned and are charming enough, have survived, but the lecture has disappeared. The interest of this remarkable letter lies in the double appeal to Coleridge as a scientific authority and a literary critic. Coleridge’s reply, if reply there was, would be read with peculiar interest. In a letter to Mr. Aubrey de Vere, May 28, 1832, he thus records his impressions of Coleridge: “Coleridge is rather to be considered as a Faculty than as a Mind; and I did so consider him. I seemed rather to listen to an oracular voice, to be circumfused in a Divine ὀμφὴ, than—as in the presence of Wordsworth—to hold commune with an exalted man.” Life of W. Wordsworth, iii. 157-174, 210, etc.
[212] He is referring to a final effort to give up the use of opium altogether. It is needless to say that, after a trial of some duration, the attempt was found to be impracticable. It has been strenuously denied, as though it had been falsely asserted, that under the Gillmans’ care Coleridge overcame the habit of taking laudanum in more or less unusual quantities. Gillman, while he maintains that his patient in the use of narcotics satisfied the claims of duty, makes no such statement; and the confessions or outpourings from the later note-books which are included in the Life point to a different conclusion. That after his settlement at Highgate, in 1816, the habit was regulated and brought under control, and that this change for the better was due to the Gillmans’ care and to his own ever-renewed efforts to be free, none can gainsay. There was a moral struggle, and into that “sore agony” it would be presumption to intrude; but to a moral victory Coleridge laid no claim. And, at the last, it was “mercy,” not “praise,” for which he pleaded.
[213] The notes on Asgill’s Treatises were printed in the Literary Remains, Coleridge’s Works, 1853, v. 545-550, and in Notes Theological and Political, London, 1853, pp. 103-109.