My dear Friend,—It is a flat’ning thought that the more we have seen, the less we have to say. In youth and early manhood the mind and nature are, as it were, two rival artists both potent magicians, and engaged, like the King’s daughter and the rebel genii in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, in sharp conflict of conjuration, each having for its object to turn the other into canvas to paint on, clay to mould, or cabinet to contain. For a while the mind seems to have the better in the contest, and makes of Nature what it likes, takes her lichens and weather-stains for types and printers’ ink, and prints maps and facsimiles of Arabic and Sanscrit MSS. on her rocks; composes country dances on her moonshiny ripples, fandangos on her waves, and waltzes on her eddy-pools, transforms her summer gales into harps and harpers, lovers’ sighs and sighing lovers, and her winter blasts into Pindaric Odes, Christabels, and Ancient Mariners set to music by Beethoven, and in the insolence of triumph conjures her clouds into whales and walruses with palanquins on their backs, and chases the dodging stars in a sky-hunt! But alas! alas! that Nature is a wary wily long-breathed old witch, tough-lived as a turtle and divisible as the polyp, repullulative in a thousand snips and cuttings, integra et in toto. She is sure to get the better of Lady Mind in the long run and to take her revenge too; transforms our to-day into a canvas dead-coloured to receive the dull, featureless portrait of yesterday: not alone turns the mimic mind, the ci-devant sculptress with all her kaleidoscopic freaks and symmetries! into clay, but leaves it such a clay to cast dumps or bullets in; and lastly (to end with that which suggested the beginning) she mocks the mind with its own metaphor, metamorphosing the memory into a lignum vitæ escritoire to keep unpaid bills and dun’s letters in, with outlines that had never been filled up, MSS. that never went further than the title-pages, and proof sheets, and foul copies of Watchmen, Friends, Aids to Reflection, and other stationary wares that have kissed the publishers’ shelf with all the tender intimacy of inosculation! Finis! and what is all this about? Why, verily, my dear friend! the thought forced itself on me, as I was beginning to put down the first sentence of this letter, how impossible it would have been fifteen or even ten years ago for me to have travelled and voyaged by land, river, and sea a hundred and twenty miles with fire and water blending their souls for my propulsion, as if I had been riding on a centaur with a sopha for a saddle, and yet to have nothing more to tell of it than that we had a very fine day and ran aside the steps in Ramsgate Pier at half-past four exactly, all having been well except poor Harriet, who during the middle third of the voyage fell into a reflecting melancholy.... She looked pathetic, but I cannot affirm that I observed anything sympathetic in the countenances of her fellow-passengers, which drew forth a sigh from me and a sage remark how many of our virtues originate in the fear of death, and that while we flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian sensibility over the sorrows of our human brethren and sisteren, we are in fact, though perhaps unconsciously, moved at the prospect of our own end. For who ever sincerely pities seasickness, toothache, or a fit of the gout in a lusty good liver of fifty?
What have I to say? We have received the snuff, for which I thank your providential memory.... To Margate, and saw the caverns, as likewise smelt the same, called on Mr. Bailey, and got the Novum Organum. In my hurry, I scrambled up the Blackwood instead of a volume of Giovanni Battista Vico, which I left on the table in my room, and forgot my sponge and sponge-bag of oiled silk. But perhaps when I sit down to work, I may have to request something to be sent, which may come with them. I therefore defer it till then....
God bless you, my dear friend! You will soon hear again from
S. T. Coleridge.
CCXLIII. TO THE REV. EDWARD COLERIDGE.
December 9, 1825.
My dear Edward,—I write merely to tell you, that I have secured Charles Lamb and Mr. Irving to meet you, and wait only to learn the day for the endeavour to induce Mr. Blanco White to join us. Will you present Mr. and Mrs. Gillman’s regards to your brothers Henry and John, and that they would be most happy if both or either would be induced to accompany you?
I have had a very interesting conversation with Irving this evening on the present condition of the Scottish Church, the spiritual life of which, yea, the very core he describes as in a state of ossification. The greater part of the Scottish clergy, he complains, have lost the unction of their own church without acquiring the erudition and accomplishments of ours. Their sermons are all dry theological arguing and disputing, lifeless, pulseless,—a rushlight in a fleshless skull.
My kindest love to your sister, and kisses, prayers, and blessings for the little one.
[S. T. Coleridge.]