Closing years--Temporary renewal of money troubles--The Aids to
Reflection--Growing weakness-Visit to Germany with the
Wordsworths--Last illness and death.
[1818-1834.]
For the years which now remained to Coleridge, some sixteen in number,
dating from his last appearance as a public lecturer, his life would
seem to have been attended with something, at least, of that sort of
happiness which is enjoyed by the nation of uneventful annals. There is
little to be told of him in the way of literary performance; little
record remains, unfortunately, of the discursively didactic talk in
which, during these years, his intellectual activity found its busiest
exercise; of incident in the ordinary sense of the word there is almost
none. An account of these closing days of his life must resolve itself
almost wholly into a "history of opinion,"--an attempt to reanimate for
ourselves that life of perpetual meditation which Coleridge lived, and
to trace, so far as the scanty evidence of his utterances enables us to
do so, the general tenor of his daily thoughts. From one point of view,
of course, this task would be extremely difficult, if not impossible;
from another comparatively easy. It is easy, that is to say, to
investigate Coleridge's speculations, so far as their subject is
concerned, whatever difficulties their obscurity and subtlety may
present to the inquirer; for, as a matter of fact, their subject is
remarkably uniform. Attempts to divide the literary life of a writer
into eras are more often arbitrary and fanciful than not; but the
peculiar circumstances of Coleridge's career did in fact effect the
division for themselves. His life until the age of twenty-six may
fairly be described as in its "poetic period." It was during these
years, and indeed during the last two or three of them, that he
produced all the poetry by which he will be remembered, while he
produced little else of mark or memorability. The twenty years which
follow from 1798 to 1818 may with equal accuracy be styled the
"critical period." It was during these years that he did his best work
as a journalist, and all his work as a public lecturer on aesthetics.
It was during them that he said his say, and even his final say, so far
as any public modes of expression were concerned, on politics and on
art. From 1818 to his death his life was devoted entirely to
metaphysics and theology, and with such close and constant reference to
the latter subject, to which indeed his metaphysics had throughout his
life been ancillary, that it deserves to give the name of the
"theological period" to these closing years.
Their lack of incident, however, is not entirely as favourable a
circumstance as that uneventfulness of national annals to which I have
compared it; for, though "no news may be good news" in the case of a
nation's history, it is by no means as certainly so in the case of a
man's biography, and, least of all, when the subject is a man whose
inward life of thought and feeling so completely overshadowed his
outward life of action throughout his whole career. There is indeed
evidence, slight in amount, but conclusive in character-plain and
painful evidence enough to show that at least the first four or five
years of the period we have mentioned were not altogether years of
resignation and calm; that they were embittered by recurring agonies of
self-reproach, by
"Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain;"
and by the desolating thought that all which had been "culled in
wood-walks wild," and "all which patient toil had reared," were to be
--"but flowers
Strewn on the corse, and borne upon the bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!"
Here and there in the correspondence with Thomas Allsop we obtain a
glimpse into that vast half-darkened arena in which this captive spirit
self-condemned to the lions was struggling its last. To one strange and
hitherto unexplained letter I have already referred. It was written
from Ramsgate in the autumn of 1822, evidently under circumstances of
deep depression. But there is a letter nearly two years earlier in date
addressed to the same correspondent which contains by far the fullest
account of Coleridge's then condition of mind, the state of his
literary engagements and his literary projects, his completed and
uncompleted work. As usual with him it is stress of money matters that
prompts him to write, and he prefaces his request for assistance with
the following portentous catalogue of realised or contemplated schemes.
"Contemplated," indeed, is too modest a word, according to his own
account, to be applied to any one item in the formidable list. Of all
of them, he has, he tells Allsop, "already the written materials and
contents, requiring only to be put together from the loose papers and
commonplace in memorandum books, and needing no other change, whether
of omission, addition, or correction, than the mere act of arranging,
and the opportunity of seeing the whole collectively, bring with them
of course." Heads I. and II. of the list comprise those criticisms on
Shakespeare and the other principal Elizabethan dramatists; on Dante,
Spenser, Milton, Cervantes, Calderon; on Chaucer, Ariosto, Donne,
Rabelais, etc., which formed the staple of the course of lectures
delivered in 1818, and which were published after his death in the
first two of the four volumes of _Literary Remains_ brought out under
the editorship of Mr. H. N. Coleridge. Reserving No. III. for a moment
we find No. IV. to consist of "Letters on the Old and New Testament,
and on the Doctrines and Principles held in common by the Fathers and
Founders of the Reformation, addressed to a Candidate for Holy Orders,
including advice on the plan and subjects of preaching proper to a
minister of the Established Church." The letters never apparently saw
the light of publicity, at any rate, in the epistolary form, either
during the author's lifetime or after his death; and with regard to II.
and III., which did obtain posthumous publication, the following
caution should be borne in mind by the reader. "To the completion,"
says Coleridge, "of these four works I have literally nothing more to
do than to transcribe; but, as I before hinted, from so many scraps and
Sibylline leaves, including margins of blank pages that unfortunately I
must be my own scribe, and, not done by myself, they will be all but
lost." As matters turned out he was not his own scribe, and the
difficulty which Mr. Nelson Coleridge experienced in piecing together
the fragmentary materials at his disposal is feelingly described by him
in his preface to the first edition. He added that the contents of
these volumes were drawn from a portion only of the MSS. entrusted to
him, and that the remainder of the collection, which, under favourable
circumstances, he hoped might hereafter see the light, "was at least of
equal value" with what he was then presenting to the reader. This hope
was never realised; and it must be remembered, therefore, that the
published record of Coleridge's achievements as a critic is, as has
already been pointed out, extremely imperfect. [1] That it is not even
more disappointingly so than it is, may well entitle his nephew and
editor to the gratitude of posterity; but where much has been done,
there yet remains much to do ere Coleridge's consummate analyses of
poetic and dramatic works can be presented to the reader in other than
their present shape of a series of detached brilliancies. The pearls
are there, but the string is wanting. Whether it will be ever supplied,
or whether it is possible now to supply it, one cannot say.
The third of Coleridge's virtually completed works there is much virtue
in a "virtually"-was a "History of Philosophy considered as a Tendency
of the Human Mind to exhibit the Powers of the Human Reason, to
discover by its own strength the Origin and Laws of Man and the World,
from Pythagoras to Locke and Condillac." This production, however,
considerable as it is, was probably merely ancillary to what he calls
"My GREAT WORK, to the preparation of which more than twenty years of
my life have been devoted, and on which my hopes of extensive and
permanent utility, of fame in the noblest sense of the word, mainly
rest." To this work he goes on to say:
"All my other writings, unless I except my Poems (and these I can
exclude in part only), are introductory and preparative, while its
result, if the premises be as I with the most tranquil assurance am
convinced they are-incontrovertible, the deductions legitimate, and the
conclusions commensurate, and only commensurate with both [must be], to
effect a revolution in all that has been called Philosophy and
Metaphysics in England and France since the era of commencing
predominance of the mechanical system at the Restoration of our Second
Charles, and with [in] the present fashionable views not only of
religion, morals, and politics, but even of the modern physics and
physiology."
This, it must be allowed, is a sufficiently "large order," being
Apparently indeed nothing less than an undertaking to demolish the
system of Locke and his successors, and to erect German
Transcendentalism on the ruins. With anything less than this, however
with any less noble object or less faith in their
attainments--Coleridge could not, he declares, have stood acquitted of
folly and abuse of time, talent, and learning, on a labour of
three--fourths of his intellectual life. Somewhat more than a volume of
this _magnum opus_ had been dictated by him to his "friend and
enlightened pupil, Mr. Green, so as to exist fit for the press;" and
more than as much again had been done, but he had been compelled to
break off the weekly meetings with his pupil from the necessity of
writing on subjects of the passing day. Then comes a reference, the
last we meet with, to the real "great work," as the unphilosophic world
has always considered and will always consider it. On this subject he
says:
"Of my poetic works I would fain finish the _Christabel_, Alas! for the
proud time when I planned, when I had present to my mind the materials
as well as the scheme of the Hymns entitled Spirit, Sun, Earth, Air,
Water, Fire, and Man; and the Epic Poem on what appears to me the only
fit subject remaining for an Epic Poem--Jerusalem besieged and
destroyed by Titus."
And then there follows this most pathetic passage, necessary, in spite
of its length, to be transcribed entire, both on account of the value
of its biographic details--its information on the subject of the
useless worldly affairs, etc.--and because of the singularly
penetrating light which it throws upon the mental and moral nature of
the man:--
"I have only by fits and starts ever prayed--I have not prevailed upon
myself to pray to God in sincerity and entireness for the fortitude
that might enable me to resign myself to the abandonment of all my
life's best hopes, to say boldly to myself, 'Gifted with powers
confessedly above mediocrity, aided by an education of which no less
from almost unexampled hardships and sufferings than from manifold and
peculiar advantages I have never yet found a parallel, I have devoted
myself to a life of unintermitted reading, thinking, meditating, and
observing, I have not only sacrificed all worldly prospects of wealth
and advancement, but have in my inmost soul stood aloof from temporary
reputation. In consequence of these toils and this self-dedication I
possess a calm and clear consciousness that in many and most important
departments of truth and beauty I have outstrode my contemporaries,
those at least of highest name, that the number of my. printed works
bear witness that I have not been idle, and the seldom acknowledged but
strictly _proveable_ effects of my labours appropriated to the welfare
of my age in the _Morning Post_ before the peace of Amiens, in the
_Courier_ afterwards, and in the serious and various subjects of my
lectures... (add to which the unlimited freedom of my communications to
colloquial life) may surely be allowed as evidence that I have not been
useless to my generation. But, from circumstances, the main portion of
my harvest is still on the ground, ripe indeed and only waiting, a few
for the sickle, but a large part only for the _sheaving_ and carting
and housing-but from all this I must turn away and let them rot as they
lie, and be as though they never had been; for I must go and gather
black berries and earth-nuts, or pick mushrooms and gild oak-apples for
the palate and fancies of chance customers. I must abrogate the name of
philosopher and poet, and scribble as fast as I can and with as little
thought as I can for _Blackwood's Magazine_, or as I have been employed
for the last days in writing MS. sermons for lazy clergymen who
stipulate that the composition must be more than respectable.'... This"
[_i.e._ to say this to myself] "I have not yet had courage to do. My
soul sickens and my heart sinks, and thus oscillating between both"
[forms of activity--the production of permanent and of ephemeral work]
"I do neither--neither as it ought to be done to any profitable end."
And his proposal for extricating himself from this distressing position
is that "those who think respectfully and hope highly of my power and
attainments should guarantee me a yearly sum for three or four years,
adequate to my actual support, with such comforts and decencies of
appearance as my health and habit have made necessaries, so that my
mind may be unanxious as far as the present time is concerned." Thus
provided for he would undertake to devote two-thirds of his time to
some one work of those above mentioned that is to say, of the first
four--and confine it exclusively to it till finished, while the
remaining third of his time he would go on maturing and completing his
"great work," and "(for, if but easy in my mind, I have no doubt either
of the reawakening power or of the kindling inclination) my
_Christabel_ and what else the happier hour may inspire." Mr. Green, he
goes on to say, had promised to contribute £30 to £40 yearly, another
pupil, "the son of one of my dearest old friends, £50," and £10 or
£20 could, he thought, be relied on from another. The whole amount of
the required annuity would be about £200, to be repaid of course
should disposal or sale of his works produce, or as far as they should
produce, the means. But "am I entitled," he asks uneasily, "have I a
_right_ to do this I Can I do it without moral degradation? And lastly,
can it be done without loss of character in the eyes of my
acquaintances and of my friends' acquaintances?"
I cannot take upon myself to answer these painful questions. The reply
to be given to them must depend upon the judgment which each individual
student of this remarkable but unhappy career may pass upon it as a
whole; and, while it would be too much to expect that that judgment
should be entirely favourable, one may at least believe that a fair
allowance for those inveterate weaknesses of physical constitution
which so largely aggravated, if they did not wholly generate, the fatal
infirmities of Coleridge's moral nature, must materially mitigate the
harshness of its terms.
The story of Coleridge's closing years is soon told. It is mainly a
record of days spent in meditation and discourse, in which character it
will be treated of more fully in a subsequent chapter. His literary
productions during the last fourteen years of his life were few in
number, and but one of them of any great importance. In 1821 he had
offered himself as an occasional contributor to _Blackwood's Magazine_,
but a series of papers promised by him to that periodical were
uncompleted, and his only two contributions (in October 1821 and
January 1822) are of no particular note. In May 1825 he read a paper on
the _Prometheus_ of 'schylus before the Royal Society of Literature;
but "the series of disquisitions respecting the Egyptian in connection
with the sacerdotal theology and in contrast with the mysteries of
ancient Greece," to which this essay had been announced as preparatory,
never made their appearance. In the same year, however, he published
one of the best known of his prose works, his _Aids to Reflection_.
Of the success of this latest of Coleridge's more important
contributions to literature there can be no doubt. New editions of it
seem to have been demanded at regular intervals for some twenty years
after its first production, and it appears to have had during the same
period a relatively equal reissue in the United States. The Rev. Dr.
James Marsh, an American divine of some ability and reputation,
composed a preliminary essay (now prefixed to the fifth English
edition), in which he elaborately set forth the peculiar merits of the
work, and undertook to initiate the reader in the fittest and most
profitable method of making use of it. In these remarks the reverend
essayist insists more strongly on the spiritually edifying quality of
the _Aids_ than on their literary merits, and, for my own part, I must
certainly consider him right in doing so. As a religious manual it is
easy to understand how this volume of Coleridge's should have obtained
many and earnest readers. What religious manual, which shows traces of
spiritual insight, or even merely of pious yearnings after higher and
holier than earthly things, has ever failed to win such readers among
the weary and heavy-laden of the world? And that Coleridge, a writer of
the most penetrating glance into divine mysteries, and writing always
from a soul all tremulous, as it were, with religious sensibility,
should have obtained such readers in abundance is not surprising. But
to a critic and literary biographer I cannot think that his success in
this respect has much to say. For my own part, at any rate, I find
considerable difficulty in tracing it to any distinctively literary
origin. There seems to me to be less charm of thought, less beauty of
style, less even of Coleridge's seldom-failing force of effective
statement, in the _Aids to Reflection_ than in almost any of his
writings. Even the volume of some dozen short chapters on the
Constitution of the Church and State, published in 1830, as an "aid
towards a right judgment in the late Catholic Kelief Bill," appears to
me to yield a more characteristic flavour of the author's style, and to
exhibit far more of his distinction of literary workmanship than the
earlier and more celebrated work.
Among the acquaintances made by Coleridge after his retirement to Mr.
Gillman's was one destined to be of some importance to the history of
his philosophical work. It was that of a gentleman whose name has
already been mentioned in this chapter, Mr. Joseph Henry Green,
afterwards a distinguished surgeon and Fellow of the Royal Society, who
in his early years had developed a strong taste for metaphysical
speculation, going even so far as to devote one of his hard-earned
periods of professional holiday to a visit to Germany for the sake of
studying philosophy in that home of abstract thought. To him Coleridge
was introduced by his old Roman acquaintance, Ludwig Tieck, on one of
the latter's visits to England, and he became, as the extract above
quoted from Coleridge's correspondence shows, his enthusiastic disciple
and indefatigable fellow-worker. In the pursuit of their common studies
and in those weekly reunions of admiring friends which Coleridge, while
his health permitted it, was in the habit of holding, we may believe
that a considerable portion of these closing years of his life was
passed under happier conditions than he had been long accustomed to. It
is pleasant to read of him among his birds and flowers, and surrounded
by the ever-watchful tendance of the affectionate Gillmans, tranquil in
mind at any rate, if not at ease from his bodily ailments, and
enjoying, as far as enjoyment was possible to him, the peaceful close
of a stormy and unsettled day. For the years 1825-30, moreover, his
pecuniary circumstances were improved to the extent of £105 per annum,
obtained for him at the instance of the Royal Society of Literature,
and held by him till the death of George IV.
Two incidents of his later years are, however, worthy of more special
mention--a tour up the Rhine, which he took in 1828, in company with
Wordsworth and his daughter; and, some years earlier, a meeting with
John Keats. "A loose, slack, not well dressed youth," it is recorded in
the _Table Talk,_ published after his death by his nephew, "met Mr.
----" (it was Mr. Green, of whom more hereafter) "and myself in a lane
near Highgate. Green knew him and spoke. It was Keats. He was
introduced to me, and stayed a minute or so. After he had left us a
little way, he came back and said, 'Let me carry away the memory,
Coleridge, of having pressed your hand.' 'There is death in that hand,'
I said to Green when Keats was gone; yet this was, I believe, before
the consumption showed itself distinctly."
His own health, however, had been steadily declining in these latter
years, and the German tour with the Wordsworths must, I should imagine,
have been the last expedition involving any considerable exercise of
the physical powers which he was able to take. Within a year or so
afterwards his condition seems to have grown sensibly worse. In
November 1831 he writes that for eighteen months past his life had been
"one chain of severe sicknesses, brief and imperfect convalescences,
and capricious relapses." Henceforth he was almost entirely confined to
the sick-room. His faculties, however, still remained clear and
unclouded. The entries in the _Table Talk_ do not materially dimmish in
frequency. Their tone of colloquy undergoes no perceptible variation;
they continue to be as stimulating and delightful reading as ever. Not
till 11th July 1834 do we find any change; but here at last we meet the
shadow, deemed longer than it was in reality, of the approaching end.
"I am dying," said Coleridge, "but without expectation of a speedy
release. Is it not strange that, very recently, bygone images and
scenes of early life have stolen into my mind like breezes blown from
the spice-islands of Youth and Hope--those twin realities of the
phantom world! I do not add Love, for what is Love but Youth and Hope
embracing, and, so seen, as _one_.... Hooker wished to live to finish
his _Ecclesiastical Polity_--so I own I wish life and strength had been
spared to me to complete my _Philosophy._ For, as God hears me, the
originating, continuing, and sustaining wish and design in my heart
were to exalt the glory of His name; and, which is the same thing in
other words, to promote the improvement of mankind. But _visum aliter
Deo,_ and His will be done."
The end was nearer than he thought. It was on the 11th of July, as has
been said, that he uttered these last words of gentle and pious
resignation. On that day fortnight he died. Midway, however, in this
intervening period, he knew that the "speedy release" which he had not
ventured to expect was close at hand. The death, when it came, was in
some sort emblematic of the life. Sufferings severe and constant, till
within thirty-six hours of the end: at the last peace. On the 25th of
July 1834 this sorely-tried, long-labouring, fate-marred and
self-marred life passed tranquilly away. The pitiful words of Kent over
his dead master rise irrepressibly to the lips--
"O let him pass: he hates him
Who would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer."
There might have been something to be said, though not by Kent, of the
weaknesses of Lear himself; but at such a moment compassion both for
the king and for the poet may well impose silence upon censure.
FOOTNOTES
1. How imperfect, a comparison between estimated and actual bulk will
show. No. I. was, according to Coleridge's reckoning, to form three
volumes of 500 pages each. In the Literary Remains it fills less than
half of four volumes of little more than 400 pages each.