P. S. Your query respecting the poem I can only answer by a Nescio. Irving (the Scotch preacher, so blackguarded in the “John Bull” of last Sunday), certainly the greatest orator I ever heard (N. B. I make and mean the same distinction between oratory and eloquence as between the mouth + the windpipe and the brain + heart), is, however, a man of great simplicity, of overflowing affections, and enthusiastically in earnest; and I have reason to believe, deeply regrets his conjunction of Southey with Byron, as far as the men (and not the poems) are in question.
CCXXXIV. TO J. H. GREEN.
Grove, Highgate, February 15, 1824.
I mentioned to you, I believe, Basil Montagu’s kind endeavour to have an associateship of the Royal Society of Literature (a yearly £100 versus a yearly essay) conferred on me. I knew nothing of the particulars till this morning, or rather till within this hour, when I received a list of names (electors) from Mr. Montagu, with advice to write to such and such and such—while he, and he, and he had promised “for us”—in short, a regular canvass, or rather sackcloth with the ashes on it pulled out of the dust holes, moistened with cabbage-water, and other culinary excretions of the same kidney. Of course, I jibbed and with proper (if not equa; yet) mulanimity returned for answer—that what a man’s friends did sub rosâ, and what one friend might say to another in favour of an individual, was one thing—what a man did in his own name and person was another—and that I would not, could not, solicit a single vote. I should think it an affrontive interference with a decision, in which there ought to be neither ground or motive, but the elector’s own judgement, and conscience, and all for what? It is hard if, in the same time as I could produce an essay of the sort required, I could not get the same sum by compiling a school-book.
However, I fear, that having allowed my name, at Montagu’s instance, to be proposed, which it was by a Mr. Jerdan (N. B. Neither the one sub cubili, nor that in Palestine; but the Jerdan of Michael’s Grove, Brompton, No. 1), I cannot now withdraw my name without appearing to trifle with my friends, and without hurting Montagu—so I must submit to the probability of being black-balled as the penalty of having given my assent before I had ascertained the conditions. So I have decided to let the thing take its own course. But as Montagu wishes to have Mr. Chantrey’s vote for us, if you see and feel no objection (an objectiuncula will be quite sufficient), you will perhaps write him a line to state the circumstances. It comes on on Thursday next.
I look forward with a feel of regeneration to the Sundays.
My best and most affectionate respects to Mrs. J. Green, and to your dear and excellent mother if she be with you.
And till we meet, may God bless you and your obliged and sincere friend,
S. T. Coleridge.