“Thou kenn’st not, Percy, how the rhyme should cage!
Oh, if my temples were bedewed with wine,
And girt with garlands of wild ivy-twine,
How I could rear the Muse on stately stage!
And teach her tread aloft in buskin fine,
With queen’d Bellona in her equipage!
But ah, my courage cools ere it be warm!”[170]
But God’s will be done. To feel the full force of the Christian religion it is, perhaps, necessary for many tempers that they should first be made to feel, experimentally, the hollowness of human friendship, the presumptuous emptiness of human hopes. I find more substantial comfort now in pious George Herbert’s “Temple,” which I used to read to amuse myself with his quaintness, in short, only to laugh at, than in all the poetry since the poems of Milton. If you have not read Herbert, I can recommend the book to you confidently. The poem entitled “The Flower” is especially affecting; and, to me, such a phrase as “and relish versing” expresses a sincerity, a reality, which I would unwillingly exchange for the more dignified “and once more love the Muse,” etc. And so, with many other of Herbert’s homely phrases.
We are all anxious to hear from, and of, our excellent transatlantic friend.[171] I need not repeat that your company, with or without our friend Leslie,[172] will gratify
Your sincere
S. T. Coleridge.
CCXXIII. TO THOMAS ALLSOP.
The origin of Coleridge’s friendship with Thomas Allsop, a young city merchant, dates from the first lecture which he delivered at Flower de Luce Court, January 27, 1818. A letter from Allsop containing a “judicious suggestion” with regard to the subject advertised, “The Dark Ages of Europe,” was handed to the lecturer, who could not avail himself of the hint on this occasion, but promised to do so before the close of the series. Personal intercourse does not seem to have taken place till a year later, but from 1819 to 1826 Coleridge and Allsop were close and intimate friends. In 1825 the correspondence seems to have dropped, but I am not aware that then or afterwards there was any breach of friendship. In 1836 Allsop published the letters which he had received from Coleridge. Partly on account of the personal allusions which some of the letters contain, and partly because it would seem that Coleridge expressed himself to his young disciple with some freedom on matters of religious opinion, the publication of these letters was regarded by Coleridge’s friends as an act of mala fides. Allsop was kindness itself to Coleridge, but, no doubt, the allusions to friends and children, which were of a painful and private nature, ought, during their lifetime at least, to have been omitted. The originals of many of these letters were presented by the Allsop family to the late Emperor of Brazil, an enthusiastic student and admirer of Coleridge.[173]
December 2, 1818.
My dear Sir,—I cannot express how kind I felt your letter. Would to Heaven I had had many with feelings like yours, “accustomed to express themselves warmly and (as far as the word is applicable to you, even) enthusiastically.” But, alas! during the prime manhood of my intellect I had nothing but cold water thrown on my efforts. I speak not now of my systematic and most unprovoked maligners. On them I have retorted only by pity and by prayer. These may have, and doubtless have, joined with the frivolity of “the reading public” in checking and almost in preventing the sale of my works; and so far have done injury to my purse. Me they have not injured. But I have loved with enthusiastic self-oblivion those who have been so well pleased that I should, year after year, flow with a hundred nameless rills into their main stream, that they could find nothing but cold praise and effective discouragement of every attempt of mine to roll onward in a distinct current of my own; who admitted that the “Ancient Mariner,” the “Christabel,” the “Remorse,” and some pages of “The Friend” were not without merit, but were abundantly anxious to acquit their judgements of any blindness to the very numerous defects. Yet they knew that to praise, as mere praise, I was characteristically, almost constitutionally, indifferent. In sympathy alone I found at once nourishment and stimulus; and for sympathy alone did my heart crave. They knew, too, how long and faithfully I had acted on the maxim, never to admit the faults of a work of genius to those who denied or were incapable of feeling and understanding the beauties; not from wilful partiality, but as well knowing that in saying truth I should, to such critics, convey falsehood. If, in one instance, in my literary life, I have appeared to deviate from this rule, first, it was not till the fame of the writer (which I had been for fourteen years successively toiling like a second Ali to build up) had been established; and, secondly and chiefly, with the purpose and, I may safely add, with the effect of rescuing the necessary task from malignant defamers, and in order to set forth the excellences and the trifling proportion which the defects bore to the excellences. But this, my dear sir, is a mistake to which affectionate natures are liable, though I do not remember to have ever seen it noticed, the mistaking those who are desirous and well-pleased to be loved by you, for those who love you. Add, as a mere general cause, the fact that I neither am nor ever have been of any party. What wonder, then, if I am left to decide which has been my worse enemy,—the broad, predetermined abuse of the “Edinburgh Review,” etc., or the cold and brief compliments, with the warm regrets of the “Quarterly”? After all, however, I have now but one sorrow relative to the ill success of my literary toils (and toils they have been, though not undelightful toils), and this arises wholly from the almost insurmountable difficulties which the anxieties of to-day oppose to my completion of the great work, the form and materials of which it has been the employment of the best and most genial hours of the last twenty years to mature and collect.
If I could but have a tolerably numerous audience to my first, or first and second Lectures on the History of Philosophy,[174] I should entertain a strong hope of success, because I know that these lectures will be found by far the most interesting and entertaining of any that I have yet delivered, independent of the more permanent interests of rememberable instruction. Few and unimportant would the errors of men be, if they did but know, first, what they themselves meant; and, secondly, what the words mean by which they attempt to convey their meaning; and I can conceive no subject so well fitted to exemplify the mode and the importance of these two points as the History of Philosophy, treated as in the scheme of these lectures. Trusting that I shall shortly have the pleasure of seeing you here,
I remain, my dear sir, yours most sincerely,
S. T. Coleridge.