Produced by Sam W. and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at http://www.pgdp.net
WINTERSLOW
ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS
WRITTEN THERE
BY
WILLIAM HAZLITT
[Decoration]
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS
48 LEICESTER SQUARE
1902
The World's Classics
XXV
THE WORKS OF
WILLIAM HAZLITT--III
WINTERSLOW
ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS
WRITTEN THERE
_These Essays were first published collectively in the year
1839. In 'The World's Classics' they were first published in
1902._
Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. Constable
The World's Classics
I.
JANE EYRE. By Charlotte Bronte. [_Second Impression._
II.
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. By Charles Lamb. [_Second Impression._
III.
THE POEMS OF ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, 1830-1858. [_Second
Impression._
IV.
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. By Oliver Goldsmith.
V.
TABLE-TALK: Essays on Men and Manners. By William Hazlitt.
[_Second Impression._
VI.
ESSAYS. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. [_Second Impression._
VII.
THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN KEATS. [_Second Impression._
VIII.
OLIVER TWIST. By Charles Dickens.
IX.
THE INGOLDSBY LEGENDS. By Thomas Ingoldsby. [_Second
Impression._
X.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS. By Emily Bronte.
XI.
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. By Charles Darwin. [_Second
Impression._
XII.
THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. By John Bunyan.
XIII.
ENGLISH SONGS AND BALLADS. Selected by T. W. H. Crosland.
XIV.
SHIRLEY. By Charlotte Bronte.
XV.
SKETCHES AND ESSAYS. By William Hazlitt.
XVI.
THE POEMS OF ROBERT HERRICK.
XVII.
ROBINSON CRUSOE. By Daniel Defoe.
XVIII.
HOMER'S ILIAD. Translated by Alexander Pope.
XIX.
SARTOR RESARTUS. By Thomas Carlyle.
XX.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. By Jonathan Swift.
XXI.
TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION. By Edgar Allan Poe.
XXII.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. By Gilbert White.
XXIII.
CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER. By T. De Quincey.
XXIV.
BACON'S ESSAYS.
XXV.
WINTERSLOW. By William Hazlitt.
XXVI.
THE SCARLET LETTER. By Nathaniel Hawthorne.
XXVII.
LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. By Lord Macaulay.
XXVIII.
HENRY ESMOND. By W. M. Thackeray.
XXIX.
IVANHOE. By Sir Walter Scott.
_Other volumes in preparation._
Pott 8vo. Cloth, 1s. net. Leather, 2s. net.
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1850
Winterslow is a village of Wiltshire, between Salisbury and Andover,
where my father, during a considerable portion of his life, spent
several months of each year, latterly, at an ancient inn on the Great
Western Road, called Winterslow Hut. One of his chief attractions
hither were the noble woods of Tytherleigh or Tudorleigh, round Norman
Court, the seat of Mr. Baring Wall, M.P., whose proffered kindness to
my father, on a critical occasion, was thoroughly appreciated by the
very sensitiveness which declined its acceptance, and will always be
gratefully remembered by myself. Another feature was Clarendon
Wood--whence the noble family of Clarendon derived their title--famous
besides for the Constitutions signed in the palace which once rose
proudly amongst its stately trees, but of which scarce a vestige
remains. In another direction, within easy distance, gloams
Stonehenge, visited by my father, less perhaps for its historical
associations than for its appeal to the imagination, the upright
stones seeming in the dim twilight, or in the drizzling mist, almost
continuous in the locality, so many spectre-Druids, moaning over the
past, and over their brethren prostrate about them. At no great
distance, in another direction, are the fine pictures of Lord Radnor,
and somewhat further, those of Wilton House. But the chief happiness
was the thorough quiet of the place, the sole interruption of which
was the passage, to and fro, of the London mails. The Hut stands in a
valley, equidistant about a mile from two tolerably high hills, at the
summit of which, on their approach either way, the guards used to blow
forth their admonition to the hostler. The sound, coming through the
clear, pure air, was another agreeable feature in the day,
reminiscentiary of the great city that my father so loved and so
loathed. In olden times, when we lived in the village itself--a mile
up the hill opposite--behind the Hut, Salisbury Plain stretches away
mile after mile of open space--the reminiscence of the metropolis
would be, from time to time, furnished in the pleasantest of ways by
the presence of some London friends; among these, dearly loved and
honoured there, as everywhere else, Charles and Mary Lamb paid us
frequent visits, rambling about all the time, thorough Londoners in a
thoroughly country place, delighted and wondering and wondered at. For
such reasons, and for the other reason, which I mention incidentally,
that Winterslow is my own native place, I have given its name to this
collection of 'Essays and Characters written there'; as, indeed,
practically were very many of his works, for it was there that most of
his thinking was done.
William Hazlitt.
Chelsea, _Jan. 1850_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 1
II. OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 24
III. ON PARTY SPIRIT 40
IV. ON THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH 45
V. ON PUBLIC OPINION 53
VI. ON PERSONAL IDENTITY 67
VII. MIND AND MOTIVE 82
VIII. ON MEANS AND ENDS 97
IX. MATTER AND MANNER 108
X. ON CONSISTENCY OF OPINION 115
XI. PROJECT FOR A NEW THEORY OF CIVIL AND
CRIMINAL LEGISLATION 130
XII. ON THE CHARACTER OF BURKE 155
XIII. ON THE CHARACTER OF FOX 173
XIV. ON THE CHARACTER OF MR. PITT 185
XV. ON THE CHARACTER OF LORD CHATHAM 191
XVI. BELIEF, WHETHER VOLUNTARY? 196
XVII. A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING 205
HAZLITT'S ESSAYS
ESSAY I
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS
My father was a Dissenting Minister, at Wem, in Shropshire; and in the
year 1798 (the figures that compose the date are to me like the
'dreaded name of Demogorgon') Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to
succeed Mr. Rowe in the spiritual charge of a Unitarian Congregation
there. He did not come till late on the Saturday afternoon before he
was to preach; and Mr. Rowe, who himself went down to the coach, in a
state of anxiety and expectation, to look for the arrival of his
successor, could find no one at all answering the description but a
round-faced man, in a short black coat (like a shooting-jacket) which
hardly seemed to have been made for him, but who seemed to be talking
at a great rate to his fellow passengers. Mr. Rowe had scarce returned
to give an account of his disappointment when the round-faced man in
black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject by beginning
to talk. He did not cease while he stayed; nor has he since, that I
know of. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful suspense
for three weeks that he remained there, 'fluttering the _proud
Salopians_, like an eagle in a dove-cote'; and the Welch mountains
that skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have
heard no such mystic sounds since the days of
'High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay.'
As we passed along between Wem and Shrewsbury, and I eyed their blue
tops seen through the wintry branches, or the red rustling leaves of
the sturdy oak-trees by the road-side, a sound was in my ears as of a
Syren's song; I was stunned, startled with it, as from deep sleep; but
I had no notion then that I should ever be able to express my
admiration to others in motley imagery or quaint allusion, till the
light of his genius shone into my soul, like the sun's rays glittering
in the puddles of the road. I was at that time dumb, inarticulate,
helpless, like a worm by the way-side, crushed, bleeding, lifeless;
but now, bursting the deadly bands that bound them,
'With Styx nine times round them,'
my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes, catch
the golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its
original bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and
unsatisfied; my heart, shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay,
has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that
my understanding also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at length
found a language to express itself, I owe to Coleridge. But this is
not to my purpose.
My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the habit of
exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and with Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch
(nine miles farther on), according to the custom of Dissenting
Ministers in each other's neighbourhood. A line of communication is
thus established, by which the flame of civil and religious liberty is
kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering fire unquenchable, like the
fires in the _Agamemnon_ of AEschylus, placed at different stations,
that waited for ten long years to announce with their blazing pyramids
the destruction of Troy. Coleridge had agreed to come over and see my
father, according to the courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe's
probable successor; but in the meantime, I had gone to hear him preach
the Sunday after his arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up
into a Unitarian pulpit to preach the gospel, was a romance in these
degenerate days, a sort of revival of the primitive spirit of
Christianity, which was not to be resisted.
It was in January of 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to
walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach.
Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk
as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798.
_Il y a des impressions que ni le tems ni les circonstances peuvent
effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux tems de ma
jeunesse ne peut renaitre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma
memoire._ When I got there, the organ was playing the 100th Psalm, and
when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, 'And he
went up into the mountain to pray, HIMSELF, ALONE.' As he gave out
this text, his voice 'rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,'
and when he came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud,
deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the
sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that
prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The
idea of St. John came into my mind, 'of one crying in the wilderness,
who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild
honey.' The preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle
dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war; upon church
and state--not their alliance but their separation--on the spirit of
the world and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as
opposed to one another. He talked of those who had 'inscribed the
cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore.' He made a
poetical and pastoral excursion--and to show the fatal effects of war,
drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd-boy, driving his
team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, 'as
though he should never be old.' and the same poor country lad,
crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse,
turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with
powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the
loathsome finery of the profession of blood:
'Such were the notes our once-loved poet sung.'
And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard
the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together.
Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of
Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well
satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the
sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the _good cause_;
and the cold dank drops of dew, that hung half melted on the beard of
the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in them; for there
was a spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that turned everything
into good. The face of nature had not then the brand of JUS DIVINUM on
it:
'Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe.'
On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I was called
down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping, half-afraid. He
received me very graciously, and I listened for a long time without
uttering a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. 'For
those two hours,' he afterwards was pleased to say, 'he was conversing
with William Hazlitt's forehead!' His appearance was different from
what I had anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in
the dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his
aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the
small-pox. His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright--
'As are the children of yon azure sheen.'
His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with
large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them, like a
sea with darkened lustre. 'A certain tender bloom his face
o'erspread,' a purple tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful
complexions of the Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and Valasquez.
His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin
good-humoured and round; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the
index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing--like what he has done.
It might seem that the genius of his face as from a height surveyed
and projected him (with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into
the world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to support
or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched his
adventurous course for the New World in a scallop, without oars or
compass. So, at least, I comment on it after the event. Coleridge, in
his person, was rather above the common size, inclining to the
corpulent, or like Lord Hamlet, 'somewhat fat and pursy.' His hair
(now, alas! grey) was then black and glossy as the raven's, and fell
in smooth masses over his forehead. This long pendulous hair is
peculiar to enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend heavenward; and is
traditionally inseparable (though of a different colour) from the
pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as a character, to all who
preach _Christ crucified_, and Coleridge was at that time one of
those!
It was curious to observe the contrast between him and my father, who
was a veteran in the cause, and then declining into the vale of years.
He had been a poor Irish lad, carefully brought up by his parents, and
sent to the University of Glasgow (where he studied under Adam Smith)
to prepare him for his future destination. It was his mother's
proudest wish to see her son a Dissenting Minister. So, if we look
back to past generations (as far as eye can reach), we see the same
hopes, fears, wishes, followed by the same disappointments, throbbing
in the human heart; and so we may see them (if we look forward) rising
up for ever, and disappearing, like vapourish bubbles, in the human
breast! After being tossed about from congregation to congregation in
the heats of the Unitarian controversy, and squabbles about the
American war, he had been relegated to an obscure village, where he
was to spend the last thirty years of his life, far from the only
converse that he loved, the talk about disputed texts of Scripture,
and the cause of civil and religious liberty. Here he passed his days,
repining, but resigned, in the study of the Bible, and the perusal of
the Commentators--huge folios, not easily got through, one of which
would outlast a winter! Why did he pore on these from morn to night
(with the exception of a walk in the fields or a turn in the garden to
gather broccoli-plants or kidney beans of his own rearing, with no
small degree of pride and pleasure)? Here were 'no figures nor no
fantasies'--neither poetry nor philosophy--nothing to dazzle, nothing
to excite modern curiosity; but to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared
within the pages of the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected tomes, the
sacred name of JEHOVAH in Hebrew capitals: pressed down by the weight
of the style, worn to the last fading thinness of the understanding,
there were glimpses, glimmering notions of the patriarchal wanderings,
with palm-trees hovering in the horizon, and processions of camels at
the distance of three thousand years; there was Moses with the Burning
Bush, the number of the Twelve Tribes, types, shadows, glosses on the
law and the prophets; there were discussions (dull enough) on the age
of Methuselah, a mighty speculation! there were outlines, rude guesses
at the shape of Noah's Ark and of the riches of Solomon's Temple;
questions as to the date of the creation, predictions of the end of
all things; the great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the
globe were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as it turned over; and
though the soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic veil of inscrutable
mysteries drawn over it, yet it was in a slumber ill-exchanged for all
the sharpened realities of sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father's
life was comparatively a dream; but it was a dream of infinity and
eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment to come!
No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the host and his
guest. A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript; yet whatever
added grace to the Unitarian cause was to him welcome. He could hardly
have been more surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings.
Indeed, his thoughts had wings: and as the silken sounds rustled round
our little wainscoted parlour, my father threw back his spectacles
over his forehead, his white hairs mixing with its sanguine hue; and a
smile of delight beamed across his rugged, cordial face, to think that
Truth had found a new ally in Fancy![1] Besides, Coleridge seemed to
take considerable notice of me, and that of itself was enough. He
talked very familiarly, but agreeably, and glanced over a variety of
subjects. At dinner-time he grew more animated, and dilated in a very
edifying manner on Mary Wolstonecraft and Mackintosh. The last, he
said, he considered (on my father's speaking of his _Vindiciae Gallicae_
as a capital performance) as a clever, scholastic man--a master of the
topics--or, as the ready warehouseman of letters, who knew exactly
where to lay his hand on what he wanted, though the goods were not his
own. He thought him no match for Burke, either in style or matter.
Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere logician. Burke was an
orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in figures, because he had an eye
for nature: Mackintosh, on the other hand, was a rhetorician, who had
only an eye to commonplaces. On this I ventured to say that I had
always entertained a great opinion of Burke, and that (as far as I
could find) the speaking of him with contempt might be made the test
of a vulgar, democratical mind. This was the first observation I ever
made to Coleridge, and he said it was a very just and striking one. I
remember the leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips on the table that day
had the finest flavour imaginable. Coleridge added that Mackintosh and
Tom Wedgwood (of whom, however, he spoke highly) had expressed a very
indifferent opinion of his friend Mr. Wordsworth, on which he remarked
to them--'He strides on so far before you, that he dwindles in the
distance!' Godwin had once boasted to him of having carried on an
argument with Mackintosh for three hours with dubious success;
Coleridge told him--'If there had been a man of genius in the room he
would have settled the question in five minutes.' He asked me if I had
ever seen Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said, I had once for a few
moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin's objections to
something she advanced with quite a playful, easy air. He replied,
that 'this was only one instance of the ascendency which people of
imagination exercised over those of mere intellect.' He did not rate
Godwin very high[2] (this was caprice or prejudice, real or affected),
but he had a great idea of Mrs. Wolstonecraft's powers of
conversation; none at all of her talent for bookmaking. We talked a
little about Holcroft. He had been asked if he was not much struck
_with_ him, and he said, he thought himself in more danger of being
struck _by_ him. I complained that he would not let me get on at all,
for he required a definition of every the commonest word, exclaiming,
'What do you mean by a _sensation_, Sir? What do you mean by an
_idea_?' This, Coleridge said, was barricadoing the road to truth; it
was setting up a turnpike-gate at every step we took. I forget a great
number of things, many more than I remember; but the day passed off
pleasantly, and the next morning Mr. Coleridge was to return to
Shrewsbury. When I came down to breakfast, I found that he had just
received a letter from his friend, T. Wedgwood, making him an offer of
150_l._ a year if he chose to waive his present pursuit, and devote
himself entirely to the study of poetry and philosophy. Coleridge
seemed to make up his mind to close with this proposal in the act of
tying on one of his shoes. It threw an additional damp on his
departure. It took the wayward enthusiast quite from us to cast him
into Deva's winding vales, or by the shores of old romance. Instead of
living at ten miles' distance, of being the pastor of a Dissenting
congregation at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit the Hill of
Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable Mountains. Alas! I knew
not the way thither, and felt very little gratitude for Mr. Wedgwood's
bounty. I was presently relieved from this dilemma; for Mr. Coleridge,
asking for a pen and ink, and going to a table to write something on a
bit of card, advanced towards me with undulating step, and giving me
the precious document, said that that was his address, _Mr. Coleridge,
Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire_; and that he should be glad to see me
there in a few weeks' time, and, if I chose, would come half-way to
meet me. I was not less surprised than the shepherd-boy (this simile
is to be found in _Cassandra_), when he sees a thunderbolt fall close
at his feet. I stammered out my acknowledgments and acceptance of this
offer (I thought Mr. Wedgwood's annuity a trifle to it) as well as I
could; and this mighty business being settled, the poet preacher took
leave, and I accompanied him six miles on the road. It was a fine
morning in the middle of winter, and he talked the whole way. The
scholar in Chaucer is described as going
----'Sounding on his way.'
So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in passing from
subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to slide on
ice. He told me in confidence (going along) that he should have
preached two sermons before he accepted the situation at Shrewsbury,
one on Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord's Supper, showing that he
could not administer either, which would have effectually disqualified
him for the object in view. I observed that he continually crossed me
on the way by shifting from one side of the footpath to the other.
This struck me as an odd movement; but I did not at that time connect
it with any instability of purpose or involuntary change of principle,
as I have done since. He seemed unable to keep on in a straight line.
He spoke slightingly of Hume (whose _Essay on Miracles_ he said was
stolen from an objection started in one of South's sermons--_Credat
Judaeus Appella!_) I was not very much pleased at this account of Hume,
for I had just been reading, with infinite relish, that completest of
all metaphysical _chokepears_, his _Treatise on Human Nature_, to
which the _Essays_ in point of scholastic subtility and close
reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, light summer reading. Coleridge
even denied the excellence of Hume's general style, which I think
betrayed a want of taste or candour. He however made me amends by the
manner in which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on his
_Essay on Vision_ as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it
undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson for striking
the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author's _Theory of
Matter and Spirit_, and saying, 'Thus I confute him, Sir.' Coleridge
drew a parallel (I don't know how he brought about the connection)
between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said the one was an instance
of a subtle, the other of an acute mind, than which no two things
could be more distinct. The one was a shop-boy's quality, the other
the characteristic of a philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler as a
true philosopher, a profound and conscientious thinker, a genuine
reader of nature and his own mind. He did not speak of his _Analogy_,
but of his _Sermons at the Rolls' Chapel_, of which I had never heard.
Coleridge somehow always contrived to prefer the _unknown_ to the
_known_. In this instance he was right. The _Analogy_ is a tissue of
sophistry, of wire-drawn, theological special-pleading; the _Sermons_
(with the preface to them) are in a fine vein of deep, matured
reflection, a candid appeal to our observation of human nature,
without pedantry and without bias. I told Coleridge I had written a
few remarks, and was sometimes foolish enough to believe that I had
made a discovery on the same subject (the _Natural disinterestedness
of the Human Mind_)--and I tried to explain my view of it to
Coleridge, who listened with great willingness, but I did not succeed
in making myself understood. I sat down to the task shortly afterwards
for the twentieth time, got new pens and paper, determined to make
clear work of it, wrote a few meagre sentences in the skeleton style
of a mathematical demonstration, stopped half-way down the second
page; and, after trying in vain to pump up any words, images, notions,
apprehensions, facts, or observations, from that gulf of abstraction
in which I had plunged myself for four or five years preceding, gave
up the attempt as labour in vain, and shed tears of helpless
despondency on the blank, unfinished paper. I can write fast enough
now. Am I better than I was then? Oh no! One truth discovered, one
pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the
fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go back to what
I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old
places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I
would write a _Sonnet to the Road between Wem and Shrewsbury_, and
immortalise every step of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I would
swear that the very milestones had ears, and that Harmer hill stooped
with all its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed! I remember but
one other topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley,
praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but condemned his
sentiments, thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that
'the fact of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a
text-book in our Universities was a disgrace to the national
character.' We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward,
pensive, but much pleased. I had met with unexpected notice from a
person whom I believed to have been prejudiced against me. 'Kind and
affable to me had been his condescension, and should be honoured ever
with suitable regard.' He was the first poet I had known, and he
certainly answered to that inspired name. I had heard a great deal of
his powers of conversation and was not disappointed. In fact, I never
met with anything at all like them, either before or since. I could
easily credit the accounts which were circulated of his holding forth
to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, an evening or two before, on
the Berkeleian Theory, when he made the whole material universe look
like a transparency of fine words; and another story (which I believe
he has somewhere told himself) of his being asked to a party at
Birmingham, of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on
a sofa, where the company found him, to their no small surprise, which
was increased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing
his eyes, looked about him, and launched into a three hours'
description of the third heaven, of which he had had a dream, very
different from Mr. Southey's _Vision of Judgment_, and also from that
other _Vision of Judgment_, which Mr. Murray, the Secretary of the
Bridge-street Junta, took into his especial keeping.
On my way back I had a sound in my ears--it was the voice of Fancy; I
had a light before me--it was the face of Poetry. The one still
lingers there, the other has not quitted my side! Coleridge, in truth,
met me half-way on the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been
won over to his imaginative creed. I had an uneasy, pleasurable
sensation all the time, till I was to visit him. During those months
the chill breath of winter gave me a welcoming; the vernal air was
balm and inspiration to me. The golden sunsets, the silver star of
evening, lighted me on my way to new hopes and prospects. _I was to
visit Coleridge in the spring._ This circumstance was never absent
from my thoughts, and mingled with all my feelings. I wrote to him at
the time proposed, and received an answer postponing my intended visit
for a week or two, but very cordially urging me to complete my promise
then. This delay did not damp, but rather increased my ardour. In the
meantime, I went to Llangollen Vale, by way of initiating myself in
the mysteries of natural scenery; and I must say I was enchanted with
it. I had been reading Coleridge's description of England in his fine
_Ode on the Departing Year_, and I applied it, _con amore_, to the
objects before me. That valley was to me (in a manner) the cradle of a
new existence: in the river that winds through it, my spirit was
baptized in the waters of Helicon!
I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey with unworn
heart, and untired feet. My way lay through Worcester and Gloucester,
and by Upton, where I thought of Tom Jones and the adventure of the
muff. I remember getting completely wet through one day, and stopping
at an inn (I think it was at Tewkesbury) where I sat up all night to
read _Paul and Virginia_. Sweet were the showers in early youth that
drenched my body, and sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the books
I read! I recollect a remark of Coleridge's upon this very book that
nothing could show the gross indelicacy of French manners and the
entire corruption of their imagination more strongly than the
behaviour of the heroine in the last fatal scene, who turns away from
a person on board the sinking vessel, that offers to save her life,
because he has thrown off his clothes to assist him in swimming. Was
this a time to think of such a circumstance? I once hinted to
Wordsworth, as we were sailing in his boat on Grasmere lake, that I
thought he had borrowed the idea of his _Poems on the Naming of
Places_ from the local inscriptions of the same kind in _Paul and
Virginia_. He did not own the obligation, and stated some distinction
without a difference in defence of his claim to originality. Any, the
slightest variation, would be sufficient for this purpose in his mind;
for whatever _he_ added or altered would inevitably be worth all that
any one else had done, and contain the marrow of the sentiment. I was
still two days before the time fixed for my arrival, for I had taken
care to set out early enough. I stopped these two days at Bridgewater;
and when I was tired of sauntering on the banks of its muddy river,
returned to the inn and read _Camilla_. So have I loitered my life
away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing,
thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one
thing to make me happy; but wanting that have wanted everything!
I arrived, and was well received. The country about Nether Stowey is
beautiful, green and hilly, and near the sea-shore. I saw it but the
other day, after an interval of twenty years, from a hill near
Taunton. How was the map of my life spread out before me, as the map
of the country lay at my feet! In the afternoon, Coleridge took me
over to All-Foxden, a romantic old family mansion of the St. Aubins,
where Wordsworth lived. It was then in the possession of a friend of
the poet's, who gave him the free use of it. Somehow, that period (the
time just after the French Revolution) was not a time when _nothing
was given for nothing_. The mind opened and a softness might be
perceived coming over the heart of individuals, beneath 'the scales
that fence' our self-interest. Wordsworth himself was from home, but
his sister kept house, and set before us a frugal repast; and we had
free access to her brother's poems, the _Lyrical Ballads_, which were
still in manuscript, or in the form of _Sybilline Leaves_. I dipped
into a few of these with great satisfaction, and with the faith of a
novice. I slept that night in an old room with blue hangings, and
covered with the round-faced family portraits of the age of George I.
and II., and from the wooded declivity of the adjoining park that
overlooked my window, at the dawn of day, could
----'hear the loud stag speak.'
In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it so) our
imagination has a body to it. We are in a state between sleeping and
waking, and have indistinct but glorious glimpses of strange shapes,
and there is always something to come better than what we see. As in
our dreams the fulness of the blood gives warmth and reality to the
coinage of the brain, so in youth our ideas are clothed, and fed, and
pampered with our good spirits; we breathe thick with thoughtless
happiness, the weight of future years presses on the strong pulses of
the heart, and we repose with undisturbed faith in truth and good. As
we advance, we exhaust our fund of enjoyment and of hope. We are no
longer wrapped in _lamb's-wool_, lulled in Elysium. As we taste the
pleasures of life, their spirit evaporates, the sense palls; and
nothing is left but the phantoms, the lifeless shadows of what _has
been_!
That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled out into the
park, and seating ourselves on the trunk of an old ash-tree that
stretched along the ground, Coleridge read aloud with a sonorous and
musical voice, the ballad of _Betty Foy_. I was not critically or
sceptically inclined. I saw touches of truth and nature, and took the
rest for granted. But in the _Thorn_, the _Mad Mother_, and the
_Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman_, I felt that deeper power and
pathos which have been since acknowledged,
'In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,'
as the characteristics of this author; and the sense of a new style
and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It had to me something of the
effect that arises from the turning up of the fresh soil, or of the
first welcome breath of Spring:
'While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed.'
Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and his voice
sounded high
'Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,'
as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or waterfall,
gleaming in the summer moonlight! He lamented that Wordsworth was not
prone enough to believe in the traditional superstitions of the place,
and that there was a something corporeal, a _matter-of-fact-ness_, a
clinging to the palpable, or often to the petty, in his poetry, in
consequence. His genius was not a spirit that descended to him through
the air; it sprung out of the ground like a flower, or unfolded itself
from a green spray, on which the goldfinch sang. He said, however (if
I remember right), that this objection must be confined to his
descriptive pieces, that his philosophic poetry had a grand and
comprehensive spirit in it, so that his soul seemed to inhabit the
universe like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition, rather
than by deduction. The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at
Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He answered in some degree
to his friend's description of him, but was more gaunt and Don
Quixote-like. He was quaintly dressed (according to the _costume_ of
that unconstrained period) in a brown fustian jacket and striped
pantaloons. There was something of a roll, a lounge in his gait, not
unlike his own _Peter Bell_. There was a severe, worn pressure of
thought about his temples, a fire in his eye (as if he saw something
in objects more than the outward appearance), an intense, high,
narrow forehead, a Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose and
feeling, and a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a
good deal at variance with the solemn, stately expression of the rest
of his face. Chantrey's bust wants the marking traits; but he was
teased into making it regular and heavy: Haydon's head of him,
introduced into the _Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem_, is the most
like his drooping weight of thought and expression. He sat down and
talked very naturally and freely, with a mixture of clear, gushing
accents in his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong
tincture of the northern _burr_, like the crust on wine. He instantly
began to make havoc of the half of a Cheshire cheese on the table, and
said, triumphantly, that 'his marriage with experience had not been so
productive as Mr. Southey's in teaching him a knowledge of the good
things of this life.' He had been to see the _Castle Spectre_ by Monk
Lewis, while at Bristol, and described it very well. He said 'it
fitted the taste of the audience like a glove.' This _ad captandum_
merit was however by no means a recommendation of it, according to the
severe principles of the new school, which reject rather than court
popular effect. Wordsworth, looking out of the low, latticed window,
said, 'How beautifully the sun sets on that yellow bank!' I thought
within myself, 'With what eyes these poets see nature!' and ever
after, when I saw the sun-set stream upon the objects facing it,
conceived I had made a discovery, or thanked Mr. Wordsworth for having
made one for me! We went over to All-Foxden again the day following,
and Wordsworth read us the story of _Peter Bell_ in the open air; and
the comment upon it by his face and voice was very different from that
of some later critics! Whatever might be thought of the poem, 'his
face was as a book where men might read strange matters,' and he
announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. There is a _chaunt_
in the recitation both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a
spell upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. Perhaps they have
deceived themselves by making habitual use of this ambiguous
accompaniment. Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and varied;
Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and internal. The one might be
termed more _dramatic_, the other more _lyrical_. Coleridge has told
me that he himself liked to compose in walking over uneven ground, or
breaking through the straggling branches of a copse-wood; whereas
Wordsworth always wrote (if he could) walking up and down a straight
gravel walk, or in some spot where the continuity of his verse met
with no collateral interruption. Returning that same evening, I got
into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while Coleridge was
explaining the different notes of the nightingale to his sister, in
which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves perfectly clear
and intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey and in
the neighbourhood, generally devoting the afternoons to a delightful
chat in an arbour made of bark by the poet's friend Tom Poole, sitting
under two fine elm-trees, and listening to the bees humming round us,
while we quaffed our _flip_. It was agreed, among other things, that
we should make a jaunt down the Bristol Channel, as far as Linton. We
set off together on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and I. This Chester
was a native of Nether Stowey, one of those who were attracted to
Coleridge's discourse as flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time
to the sound of a brass pan. He 'followed in the chase like a dog who
hunts, not like one that made up the cry.' He had on a brown cloth
coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, was low in stature, bow-legged,
had a drag in his walk like a drover, which he assisted by a hazel
switch, and kept on a sort of trot by the side of Coleridge, like a
running footman by a state coach, that he might not lose a syllable or
sound that fell from Coleridge's lips. He told me his private
opinion, that Coleridge was a wonderful man. He scarcely opened his
lips, much less offered an opinion the whole way: yet of the three,
had I to choose during that journey, I would be John Chester. He
afterwards followed Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantean
philosophers were puzzled how to bring him under any of their
categories. When he sat down at table with his idol, John's felicity
was complete; Sir Walter Scott's, or Mr. Blackwood's, when they sat
down at the same table with the King, was not more so. We passed
Dunster on our right, a small town between the brow of a hill and the
sea. I remember eyeing it wistfully as it lay below us: contrasted
with the woody scene around, it looked as clear, as pure, as
_embrowned_ and ideal as any landscape I have seen since, of Gaspar
Poussin's or Domenichino's. We had a long day's march (our feet kept
time to the echoes of Coleridge's tongue) through Minehead and by the
Blue Anchor, and on to Linton, which we did not reach till near
midnight, and where we had some difficulty in making a lodgment. We,
however, knocked the people of the house up at last, and we were
repaid for our apprehensions and fatigue by some excellent rashers of
fried bacon and eggs. The view in coming along had been splendid. We
walked for miles and miles on dark brown heaths overlooking the
Channel, with the Welsh hills beyond, and at times descended into
little sheltered valleys close by the sea-side, with a smuggler's face
scowling by us, and then had to ascend conical hills with a path
winding up through a coppice to a barren top, like a monk's shaven
crown, from one of which I pointed out to Coleridge's notice the bare
masts of a vessel on the very edge of the horizon, and within the
red-orbed disk of the setting sun, like his own spectre-ship in the
_Ancient Mariner_. At Linton the character of the sea-coast becomes
more marked and rugged. There is a place called the _Valley of Rocks_
(I suspect this was only the poetical name for it), bedded among
precipices overhanging the sea, with rocky caverns beneath, into
which the waves dash, and where the sea-gull for ever wheels its
screaming flight. On the tops of these are huge stones thrown
transverse, as if an earthquake had tossed them there, and behind
these is a fretwork of perpendicular rocks, something like the
_Giant's Causeway_. A thunder-storm came on while we were at the inn,
and Coleridge was running out bare-headed to enjoy the commotion of
the elements in the _Valley of Rocks_, but as if in spite, the clouds
only muttered a few angry sounds, and let fall a few refreshing drops.
Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were to have made this place
the scene of a prose-tale, which was to have been in the manner of,
but far superior to, the _Death of Abel_, but they had relinquished
the design. In the morning of the second day, we breakfasted
luxuriously in an old-fashioned parlour on tea, toast, eggs, and
honey, in the very sight of the bee-hives from which it had been
taken, and a garden full of thyme and wild flowers that had produced
it. On this occasion Coleridge spoke of Virgil's _Georgics_, but not
well. I do not think he had much feeling for the classical or
elegant.[3] It was in this room that we found a little worn-out copy
of the _Seasons_, lying in a window-seat, on which Coleridge
exclaimed, '_That_ is true fame!' He said Thomson was a great poet,
rather than a good one; his style was as meretricious as his thoughts
were natural. He spoke of Cowper as the best modern poet. He said the
_Lyrical Ballads_ were an experiment about to be tried by him and
Wordsworth, to see how far the public taste would endure poetry
written in a more natural and simple style than had hitherto been
attempted; totally discarding the artifices of poetical diction, and
making use only of such words as had probably been common in the most
ordinary language since the days of Henry II. Some comparison was
introduced between Shakspeare and Milton. He said 'he hardly knew
which to prefer. Shakspeare appeared to him a mere stripling in the
art; he was as tall and as strong, with infinitely more activity than
Milton, but he never appeared to have come to man's estate; or if he
had, he would not have been a man, but a monster.' He spoke with
contempt of Gray, and with intolerance of Pope. He did not like the
versification of the latter. He observed that 'the ears of these
couplet-writers might be charged with having short memories, that
could not retain the harmony of whole passages.' He thought little of
Junius as a writer; he had a dislike of Dr. Johnson; and a much higher
opinion of Burke as an orator and politician, than of Fox or Pitt. He,
however, thought him very inferior in richness of style and imagery to
some of our elder prose-writers, particularly Jeremy Taylor. He liked
Richardson, but not Fielding; nor could I get him to enter into the
merits of _Caleb Williams_. In short, he was profound and
discriminating with respect to those authors whom he liked, and where
he gave his judgment fair play; capricious, perverse, and prejudiced
in his antipathies and distastes. We loitered on the 'ribbed
sea-sands,' in such talk as this a whole morning, and, I recollect,
met with a curious seaweed, of which John Chester told us the country
name! A fisherman gave Coleridge an account of a boy that had been
drowned the day before, and that they had tried to save him at the
risk of their own lives. He said 'he did not know how it was that they
ventured, but, Sir, we have a _nature_ towards one another.' This
expression, Coleridge remarked to me, was a fine illustration of that
theory of disinterestedness which I (in common with Butler) had
adopted. I broached to him an argument of mine to prove that
_likeness_ was not mere association of ideas. I said that the mark in
the sand put one in mind of a man's foot, not because it was part of a
former impression of a man's foot (for it was quite new), but because
it was like the shape of a man's foot. He assented to the justness of
this distinction (which I have explained at length elsewhere, for the
benefit of the curious) and John Chester listened; not from any
interest in the subject, but because he was astonished that I should
be able to suggest anything to Coleridge that he did not already know.
We returned on the third morning, and Coleridge remarked the silent
cottage-smoke curling up the valleys where, a few evenings before, we
had seen the lights gleaming through the dark.
In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set out, I on my return
home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday morning, and he was to
preach that day for Dr. Toulmin of Taunton. I asked him if he had
prepared anything for the occasion? He said he had not even thought of
the text, but should as soon as we parted. I did not go to hear
him--this was a fault--but we met in the evening at Bridgewater. The
next day we had a long day's walk to Bristol, and sat down, I
recollect, by a well-side on the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy
our thirst, when Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive lines of
his tragedy of _Remorse_; which I must say became his mouth and that
occasion better than they, some years after, did Mr. Elliston's and
the Drury-lane boards--
'Oh memory! shield me from the world's poor strife,
And give those scenes thine everlasting life.'
I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which period he had
been wandering in the Hartz Forest, in Germany; and his return was
cometary, meteorous, unlike his setting out. It was not till some time
after that I knew his friends Lamb and Southey. The last always
appears to me (as I first saw him) with a commonplace book under his
arm, and the first with a _bon-mot_ in his mouth. It was at Godwin's
that I met him with Holcroft and Coleridge, where they were disputing
fiercely which was the best--_Man as he was, or man as he is to be_.
'Give me,' says Lamb, 'man as he is _not_ to be.' This saying was the
beginning of a friendship between us, which I believe still continues.
Enough of this for the present.
'But there is matter for another rhyme,
And I to this may add a second tale.'
FOOTNOTES: