Your remark on the voice is most just, but that was my purpose. Not only so, but the whole passage was inserted, and intertruded after the rest was written, reluctante amanuensi meâ, in order to unrealize it even at the expense of disnaturalizing it. Lady B. therefore pleased me by saying, “never was the golden tint of the poet more judiciously employed,” etc. For this reason, too, I introduced the simile of the leaf, etc., etc. I not only thought the “voice” part out of place, but in bad taste per se.
May God bless you all.
S. T. Coleridge.
CLXXVIII. TO THOMAS POOLE.
Grasmere, Kendal, January 28, 1810.
My dear Friend,—My “mantraps and spring guns in this garden” have hitherto existed only in the painted board, in terrorem. Of course, I have received and thank you for both your letters. What Wordsworth may do I do not know, but I think it highly probable that I shall settle in or near London. Of the fate of “The Friend” I remain in the same ignorance nearly as at the publication of the 20th November. It would make you sick were I to waste my paper by detailing the numerous instances of meanness in the mode of payment and discontinuance, especially among the Quakers. So just was the answer I once made in the presence of some “Friends” to the query: What is genuine Quakerism? Answer, The antithesis of the present Quakers. I have received this evening together with yours, one as a specimen. (N. B. Three days after the publication of the 21st Number, and sixteen days after the publication of the “Supernumerary” [number of “The Friend,” January 11, 1810], a bill upon a postmaster, an order of discontinuance, and information that any others that may come will not be paid for, as if I had been gifted with prophecy. And this precious epistle directed, “To Thomas Coleridge, of Grazemar”! And yet this Mr. —— would think himself libelled, if he were called a dishonest man.)... We will take for granted that “The Friend” can be continued. On this supposition I have lately studied “The Spectator,” and with increasing pleasure and admiration. Yet it must be evident to you that there is a class of thoughts and feelings, and these, too, the most important, even practically, which it would be impossible to convey in the manner of Addison, and which, if Addison had possessed, he would not have been Addison. Read, for instance, Milton’s prose tracts, and only try to conceive them translated into the style of “The Spectator,” or the finest part of Wordsworth’s pamphlet. It would be less absurd to wish that the serious Odes of Horace had been written in the same style as his Satires and Epistles. Consider, too, the very different objects of “The Friend,” and of “The Spectator,” and above all do not forget, that these are AWEFUL TIMES! that the love of reading as a refined pleasure, weaning the mind from GROSSER enjoyments, which it was one of “The Spectator’s” chief objects to awaken, has by that work, and those that followed (Connoisseur, World, Mirror, etc.), but still more, by Newspapers, Magazines, and Novels, been carried into excess: and “The Spectator” itself has innocently contributed to the general taste for unconnected writing, just as if “Reading made easy” should act to give men an aversion to words of more than two syllables, instead of drawing them through those words into the power of reading books in general. In the present age, whatever flatters the mind in its ignorance of its ignorance, tends to aggravate that ignorance, and, I apprehend, does on the whole do more harm than good. Have you read the debate on the Address? What a melancholy picture of the intellectual feebleness of the country! So much on the one side of the question. On the other (1) I will, preparatory to writing on any chosen subject, consider whether it can be treated popularly, and with that lightness and variety of illustration which form the charms of “The Spectator.” If it can, I will do my best. If not, next, whether yet there may not be furnished by the results of such an Essay thoughts and truths that may be so treated, and form a second Essay. (2) I shall always, besides this, have at least one number in four of rational entertainment, such as “Satyrane’s Letters,” as instructive as I can, but yet making entertainment the chief object in my own mind. But, lastly, in the Supplement of “The Friend” I shall endeavour to include whatever of higher and more abstruse meditation may be needed as the foundations of all the work after it; and the difference between those who will read and master that Supplement, and those who decline the toil, will be simply this, that what to the former will be demonstrated conclusions, the latter must start from as from postulates, and (to all whose minds have not been sophisticated by a half-philosophy) axioms. For no two things, that are yet different, can be in closer harmony than the deductions of a profound philosophy, and the dictates of plain common sense. Whatever tenets are obscure in the one, and requiring the greatest powers of abstraction to reconcile, are the same which are held in manifest contradiction by the common sense, and yet held and firmly believed, without sacrificing A to —A, or —A to A.... After this work I shall endeavour to pitch my note to the idea of a common, well-educated, thoughtful man, of ordinary talents; and the exceptions to this rule shall not form more than one fifth of the work. If with all this it will not do, well! And well it will be, in its noblest sense: for I shall have done my best. Of parentheses I may be too fond, and will be on my guard in this respect. But I am certain that no work of impassioned and eloquent reasoning ever did or could subsist without them. They are the drama of reason, and present the thought growing, instead of a mere Hortus siccus. The aversion to them is one of the numberless symptoms of a feeble Frenchified Public. One other observation: I have reason to hope for contributions from strangers. Some from you I rely on, and these will give a variety which is highly desirable—so much so, that it would weigh with me even to the admission of many things from unknown correspondents, though but little above mediocrity, if they were proportionately short, and on subjects which I should not myself treat....
May God bless you, and your affectionate
S. T. Coleridge.