Dear Sir,—As an innocent female often blushes not at any image which had risen in her own mind, but from a confused apprehension of some x y z that might be attributed to her by others, so did I feel uncomfortable at the odd coincidence of my commending to you the late Swedenborgian advertisement. But when I came home I simply asked Mrs. G. if she remembered my having read to her such an address. She instantly replied not only in the affirmative, but mentioned the circumstance of my having expressed a sort of half-inclination, half-intention of addressing a letter to the chairman mentioning my receipt of a book of which I highly approved, and requesting him to transmit my acknowledgments, if, as was probable, the author was known to him or any of the gentlemen with him. I asked her then if she had herself read the advertisement? “Yes, and I carried it to Mr. Gillman, saying how much you had been pleased with the style and the freedom from the sectarian spirit.” “And do you recollect the name of the Chairman?” “No! why, bless me! could it be Mr. Tulk?” Very nearly the same conversation took place with Mr. Gillman afterwards. I can readily account for the fact in myself; for first I never recollect any persons by their names, and have fallen into some laughable perplexities by this specific catalepsy of memory, such as accepting an invitation in the streets from a face perfectly familiar to me, and being afterwards unable to attach the name and habitat thereto; and secondly, that the impression made by a conversation that appeared to me altogether accidental and by your voice and person had been completed before I heard your name; and lastly, the more habitual thinking is to any one, the larger share has the relation of cause and effect in producing recognition. But it is strange that neither Mrs. or Mr. Gillman should have recollected the name, though probably the accidentality of having made your acquaintance, and its being at Little Hampton, and associated with our having at the same time and by a similar accidental rencontre become acquainted with the Rev. Mr. Cary and his family, overlaid any former relique of a man’s name in Mrs. G. as well as myself.
I return you Blake’s poesies,[164] metrical and graphic, with thanks. With this and the book, I have sent a rude scrawl as to the order in which I was pleased by the several poems.
With respectful compliments to Mrs. Tulk, I remain, dear sir, your obliged
S. T. Coleridge.
Thursday evening, Highgate.
Blake’s Poems.—I begin with my dyspathies that I may forget them, and have uninterrupted space for loves and sympathies. Title-page and the following emblem contain all the faults of the drawings with as few beauties as could be in the compositions of a man who was capable of such faults and such beauties. The faulty despotism in symbols amounting in the title-page to the μισητὸν, and occasionally, irregular unmodified lines of the inanimate, sometimes as the effect of rigidity and sometimes of exossation like a wet tendon. So likewise the ambiguity of the drapery. Is it a garment or the body incised and scored out? The lumpness (the effect of vinegar on an egg) in the upper one of the two prostrate figures in the title-page, and the straight line down the waistcoat of pinky goldbeaters’ skin in the next drawing, with the I don’t-know-whatness of the countenance, as if the mouth had been formed by the habit of placing the tongue not contemptuously, but stupidly, between the lower gums and the lower jaw—these are the only repulsive faults I have noticed. The figure, however, of the second leaf, abstracted from the expression of the countenance given it by something about the mouth, and the interspace from the lower lip to the chin, is such as only a master learned in his art could produce.
N. B. I signifies “It gave me great pleasure.” Ɨ, “Still greater.” ƗƗ, “And greater still,” Θ, “In the highest degree.” O, “In the lowest.”
Shepherd, I; Spring, I (last stanza, Ɨ); Holy Thursday, ƗƗ; Laughing Song, Ɨ; Nurse’s Song, I; The Divine Image, Θ; The Lamb, Ɨ; The little black Boy, Θ yea Θ+Θ; Infant Joy, ƗƗ (N. B. For the three last lines I should write, “When wilt thou smile,” or “O smile, O smile! I’ll sing the while.” For a babe two days old does not, cannot smile, and innocence and the very truth of Nature must go together. Infancy is too holy a thing to be ornamented). “The Echoing Green,” I, (the figures Ɨ, and of the second leaf, ƗƗ); “The Cradle Song,” I; “The School Boy,” ƗƗ; Night, Θ; “On another’s Sorrow,” I; “A Dream,” ?; “The little boy lost,” I (the drawing, Ɨ); “The little boy found,” I; “The Blossom,” O; “The Chimney Sweeper,” O; “The Voice of the Ancient Bard,” O.
Introduction, Ɨ; Earth’s Answer, Ɨ; Infant Sorrow, I; “The Clod and the Pebble,” I; “The Garden of Love,” Ɨ; “The Fly,” I; “The Tyger,” Ɨ; “A little boy lost,” Ɨ; “Holy Thursday,” I; [p. 13, O; “Nurse’s Song,” O?]; “The little girl lost and found” (the ornaments most exquisite! the poem, I); “Chimney Sweeper in the Snow,” O; “To Tirzah, and the Poison Tree,” I—and yet O; “A little Girl lost,” O. (I would have had it omitted, not for the want of innocence in the poem, but from the too probable want of it in many readers.) “London,” I; “The Sick Rose,” I; “The little Vagabond,” O. Though I cannot approve altogether of this last poem, and have been inclined to think that the error which is most likely to beset the scholars of Emanuel Swedenborg is that of utterly demerging the tremendous incompatibilities with an evil will that arise out of the essential Holiness of the abysmal A-seity[165] in the love of the Eternal Person, and thus giving temptation to weak minds to sink this love itself into Good Nature, yet still I disapprove the mood of mind in this wild poem so much less than I do the servile blind-worm, wrap-rascal scurf-coat of fear of the modern Saint (whose whole being is a lie, to themselves as well as to their brethren), that I should laugh with good conscience in watching a Saint of the new stamp, one of the first stars of our eleemosynary advertisements, groaning in wind-pipe! and with the whites of his eyes upraised at the audacity of this poem! Anything rather than this degradation I of Humanity, and therein of the Incarnate Divinity!
S. T. C.