CX. THOMAS POOLE, August 14, 1800. (Illustrated London News,
May 27, 1893) 335
CXI. SIR H. DAVY, October 9, 1800. (Fragmentary Remains,
1858, p. 80) 336
CXII. SIR H. DAVY, October 18, 1800. (Fragmentary Remains,
1858, p. 79) 339
CXIII. SIR H. DAVY, December 2, 1800. (Fragmentary Remains,
1858, p. 83) 341
CXIV. THOMAS POOLE, December 5, 1800. (Eight lines published,
Thomas Poole and his Friends, 1887, ii. 21) 343
CXV. SIR H. DAVY, February 3, 1801. (Fragmentary Remains,
1858, p. 86) 345
CXVI. THOMAS POOLE, March 16, 1801 348
CXVII. THOMAS POOLE, March 23, 1801 350
CXVIII. ROBERT SOUTHEY [May 6, 1801] 354
CXIX. ROBERT SOUTHEY, July 22, 1801 356
CXX. ROBERT SOUTHEY, July 25, 1801 359
CXXI. ROBERT SOUTHEY, August 1, 1801 361
CXXII. THOMAS POOLE, September 19, 1801. (Thomas Poole and
his Friends, 1887, ii. 65) 364
CXXIII. ROBERT SOUTHEY, December 31, 1801 365
CXXIV. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE [February 24, 1802] 367
CXXV. W. SOTHEBY, July 13, 1802 369
CXXVI. W. SOTHEBY, July 19, 1802 376
CXXVII. ROBERT SOUTHEY, July 29, 1802 384
CXXVIII. ROBERT SOUTHEY, August 9, 1802 393
CXXIX. W. SOTHEBY, August 26, 1802 396
CXXX. W. SOTHEBY, September 10, 1802 401
CXXXI. W. SOTHEBY, September 27, 1802 408
CXXXII. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE, November 16, 1802 410
CXXXIII. REV. J. P. ESTLIN, December 7, 1802. (Privately
printed, Philobiblon Society) 414
CXXXIV. ROBERT SOUTHEY, December 25, 1802 415
CXXXV. THOMAS WEDGWOOD, January 9, 1803 417
CXXXVI. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE, April 4, 1803 420
CXXXVII. ROBERT SOUTHEY, July 2, 1803 422
CXXXVIII. ROBERT SOUTHEY, July, 1803 425
CXXXIX. ROBERT SOUTHEY, August 7, 1803 427
CXL. MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE, September 1, 1803 431
CXLI. ROBERT SOUTHEY, September 10, 1803 434
CXLII. ROBERT SOUTHEY, September 13, 1803 437
CXLIII. MATTHEW COATES, December 5, 1803 441
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, aged forty-seven. From a
pencil-sketch by C. R. Leslie, R. A., now in the
possession of the editor. _Frontispiece_
COLONEL JAMES COLERIDGE, of Heath’s Court, Ottery St. Mary.
From a pastel drawing now in the possession of the Right
Honourable Lord Coleridge 60
THE COTTAGE AT CLEVEDON, occupied by S. T. Coleridge,
October-November, 1795. From a photograph 136
THE COTTAGE AT NETHER STOWEY, occupied by S. T. Coleridge,
1797-1800. From a photograph taken by the Honourable Stephen
Coleridge 214
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, aged twenty-six. From a pastel
sketch taken in Germany, now in the possession of Miss Ward
of Marshmills, Over Stowey 262
ROBERT SOUTHEY, aged forty-one. From an etching on copper.
Private plate 304
GRETA HALL, KESWICK. From a photograph 336
MRS. S. T. COLERIDGE, aged thirty-nine. From a miniature by
Matilda Betham, now in the possession of the editor 368
SARA COLERIDGE, aged six. From a miniature by Matilda Betham,
now in the possession of the editor 416
CHAPTER I
STUDENT LIFE
1785-1794
LETTERS OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
CHAPTER I
STUDENT LIFE
1785-1794
The five autobiographical letters addressed to Thomas Poole were written
at Nether Stowey, at irregular intervals during the years 1797-98. They
are included in the first chapter of the “Biographical Supplement” to the
“Biographia Literaria.” The larger portion of this so-called Biographical
Supplement was prepared for the press by Henry Nelson Coleridge, and
consists of the opening chapters of a proposed “biographical sketch,” and
a selection from the correspondence of S. T. Coleridge. His widow, Sara
Coleridge, when she brought out the second edition of the “Biographia
Literaria” in 1847, published this fragment and added some matter of her
own. This edition has never been reprinted in England, but is included in
the American edition of Coleridge’s Works, which was issued by Harper &
Brothers in 1853.
The letters may be compared with an autobiographical note dated March 9,
1832, which was written at Gillman’s request, and forms part of the first
chapter of his “Life of Coleridge.”[1] The text of the present issue of
the autobiographical letters is taken from the original MSS., and differs
in many important particulars from that of 1847.
I. TO THOMAS POOLE.
Monday, February, 1797.
MY DEAR POOLE,--I could inform the dullest author how he might write an
interesting book. Let him relate the events of his own life with honesty,
not disguising the feelings that accompanied them. I never yet read even a
Methodist’s Experience in the “Gospel Magazine” without receiving
instruction and amusement; and I should almost despair of that man who
could peruse the Life of John Woolman[2] without an amelioration of heart.
As to my Life, it has all the charms of variety,--high life and low life,
vices and virtues, great folly and some wisdom. However, what I am depends
on what I have been; and you, _my best Friend!_ have a right to the
narration. To me the task will be a useful one. It will renew and deepen
my reflections on the past; and it will perhaps make you behold with no
unforgiving or impatient eye those weaknesses and defects in my character,
which so many untoward circumstances have concurred to plant there.
My family on my mother’s side can be traced up, I know not how far. The
Bowdons inherited a small farm in the Exmoor country, in the reign of
Elizabeth, as I have been told, and, to my own knowledge, they have
inherited nothing better since that time. On my father’s side I can rise
no higher than my grandfather, who was born in the Hundred of Coleridge[3]
in the county of Devon, christened, educated, and apprenticed to the
parish. He afterwards became a respectable woollen-draper in the town of
South Molton.[4] (I have mentioned these particulars, as the time may come
in which it will be useful to be able to prove myself a genuine
_sans-culotte_, my veins uncontaminated with one drop of gentility.) My
father received a better education than the others of his family, in
consequence of his own exertions, not of his superior advantages. When he
was not quite sixteen years old, my grandfather became bankrupt, and by a
series of misfortunes was reduced to extreme poverty. My father received
the half of his last crown and his blessing, and walked off to seek his
fortune. After he had proceeded a few miles, he sat him down on the side
of the road, so overwhelmed with painful thoughts that he wept audibly. A
gentleman passed by, who knew him, and, inquiring into his distresses,
took my father with him, and settled him in a neighbouring town as a
schoolmaster. His school increased and he got money and knowledge: for he
commenced a severe and ardent student. Here, too, he married his first
wife, by whom he had three daughters, all now alive. While his first wife
lived, having scraped up money enough at the age of twenty[5] he walked
to Cambridge, entered at Sidney College, distinguished himself for Hebrew
and Mathematics, and might have had a fellowship if he had not been
married. He returned--his wife died. Judge Buller’s father gave him the
living of Ottery St. Mary, and put the present judge to school with him.
He married my mother, by whom he had ten children, of whom I am the
youngest, born October 20, 1772.
These sketches I received from my mother and aunt, but I am utterly unable
to fill them up by any particularity of times, or places, or names. Here I
shall conclude my first letter, because I cannot pledge myself for the
accuracy of the accounts, and I will not therefore mingle them with those
for the accuracy of which in the minutest parts I shall hold myself
amenable to the Tribunal of Truth. You must regard this letter as the
first chapter of an history which is devoted to dim traditions of times
too remote to be pierced by the eye of investigation.
Yours affectionately,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
II. TO THE SAME.
Sunday, March, 1797.
MY DEAR POOLE,--My father (Vicar of, and Schoolmaster at, Ottery St. Mary,
Devon) was a profound mathematician, and well versed in the Latin, Greek,
and Oriental Languages. He published, or rather attempted to publish,
several works; 1st, Miscellaneous Dissertations arising from the 17th and
18th Chapters of the Book of Judges; 2d, _Sententiæ excerptæ_, for the use
of his own school; and 3d, his best work, a Critical Latin Grammar; in the
preface to which he proposes a bold innovation in the names of the cases.
My father’s new nomenclature was not likely to become popular, although
it must be allowed to be both sonorous and expressive. _Exempli gratiâ_,
he calls the ablative the _quippe-quare-quale-quia-quidditive case_! My
father made the world his confidant with respect to his learning and
ingenuity, and the world seems to have kept the secret very faithfully.
His various works, uncut, unthumbed, have been preserved free from all
pollution. This piece of good luck promises to be hereditary; for all _my_
compositions have the same amiable _home-studying_ propensity. The truth
is, my father was not a first-rate genius; he was, however, a first-rate
Christian. I need not detain you with his character. In learning,
good-heartedness, absentness of mind, and excessive ignorance of the
world, he was a perfect Parson Adams.
My mother was an admirable economist, and managed exclusively. My eldest
brother’s name was John. He went over to the East Indies in the Company’s
service; he was a successful officer and a brave one, I have heard. He
died of a consumption there about eight years ago. My second brother was
called William. He went to Pembroke College, Oxford, and afterwards was
assistant to Mr. Newcome’s School, at Hackney. He died of a putrid fever
the year before my father’s death, and just as he was on the eve of
marriage with Miss Jane Hart, the eldest daughter of a very wealthy
citizen of Exeter. My third brother, James, has been in the army since the
age of sixteen, has married a woman of fortune, and now lives at Ottery
St. Mary, a respectable man. My brother Edward, the wit of the family,
went to Pembroke College, and afterwards to Salisbury, as assistant to Dr.
Skinner. He married a woman twenty years older than his mother. She is
dead and he now lives at Ottery St. Mary. My fifth brother, George, was
educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, and from there went to Mr.
Newcome’s, Hackney, on the death of William. He stayed there fourteen
years, when the living of Ottery St. Mary[6] was given him. There he has
now a fine school, and has lately married Miss Jane Hart, who with beauty
and wealth had remained a faithful widow to the memory of William for
sixteen years. My brother George is a man of reflective mind and elegant
genius. He possesses learning in a greater degree than any of the family,
excepting myself. His manners are grave and hued over with a tender
sadness. In his moral character he approaches every way nearer to
perfection than any man I ever yet knew; indeed, he is worth the whole
family in a lump. My sixth brother, Luke (indeed, the seventh, for one
brother, the second, died in his infancy, and I had forgot to mention
him), was bred as a medical man. He married Miss Sara Hart, and died at
the age of twenty-two, leaving one child, a lovely boy, still alive. My
brother Luke was a man of uncommon genius, a severe student, and a good
man. The eighth child was a sister, Anne.[7] She died a little after my
brother Luke, aged twenty-one;
Rest, gentle Shade! and wait thy Maker’s will;
Then rise _unchang’d_, and be an Angel still!
The ninth child was called Francis. He went out as a midshipman, under
Admiral Graves. His ship lay on the Bengal coast, and he accidentally met
his brother John, who took him to land, and procured him a commission in
the Army. He died from the effects of a delirious fever brought on by his
excessive exertions at the siege of Seringapatam, at which his conduct had
been so gallant, that Lord Cornwallis paid him a high compliment in the
presence of the army, and presented him with a valuable gold watch, which
my mother now has. All my brothers are remarkably handsome; but they were
as inferior to Francis as I am to them. He went by the name of “the
handsome Coleridge.” The tenth and last child was S. T. Coleridge, the
subject of these epistles, born (as I told you in my last) October 20,[8]
1772.
From October 20, 1772, to October 20, 1773. Christened Samuel Taylor
Coleridge--my godfather’s name being Samuel Taylor, Esq. I had another
godfather (his name was Evans), and two godmothers, both called
“Monday.”[9] From October 20, 1773, to October 20, 1774. In this year I
was carelessly left by my nurse, ran to the fire, and pulled out a live
coal--burnt myself dreadfully. While my hand was being dressed by a Mr.
Young, I spoke for the first time (so my mother informs me) and said,
“nasty Doctor Young!” The snatching at fire, and the circumstance of my
first words expressing hatred to professional men--are they at all
_ominous_? This year I went to school. My schoolmistress, the very image
of Shenstone’s, was named Old Dame Key. She was nearly related to Sir
Joshua Reynolds.
From October 20, 1774, to October 20, 1775. I was inoculated; which I
mention because I distinctly remember it, and that my eyes were bound; at
which I manifested so much obstinate indignation, that at last they
removed the bandage, and unaffrighted I looked at the lancet, and suffered
the scratch. At the close of the year I could read a chapter in the Bible.
Here I shall end, because the remaining years of my life _all_ assisted to
form _my particular mind_;--the three first years had nothing in them that
seems to relate to it.
(Signature cut out.)
III. TO THE SAME.
October 9, 1797.
MY DEAREST POOLE,--From March to October--a long silence! But [as] it is
possible that I may have been preparing materials for future letters,[10]
the time cannot be considered as altogether subtracted from you.
From October, 1775, to October, 1778. These three years I continued at the
Reading School, because I was too little to be trusted among my father’s
schoolboys. After breakfast I had a halfpenny given me, with which I
bought three cakes at the baker’s close by the school of my old mistress;
and these were my dinner on every day except Saturday and Sunday, when I
used to dine at home, and wallowed in a beef and pudding dinner. I am
remarkably fond of beans and bacon; and this fondness I attribute to my
father having given me a penny for having eat a large quantity of beans
on Saturday. For the other boys did not like them, and as it was an
economic food, my father thought that my attachment and penchant for it
ought to be encouraged. My father was very fond of me, and I was my
mother’s darling: in consequence I was very miserable. For Molly, who had
nursed my brother Francis, and was immoderately fond of him, hated me
because my mother took more notice of me than of Frank, and Frank hated me
because my mother gave me now and then a bit of cake, when he had
none,--quite forgetting that for one bit of cake which I had and he had
not, he had twenty sops in the pan, and pieces of bread and butter with
sugar on them from Molly, from whom I received only thumps and ill names.
So I became fretful and timorous, and a tell-tale; and the schoolboys
drove me from play, and were always tormenting me, and hence I took no
pleasure in boyish sports, but read incessantly. My father’s sister kept
an _everything_ shop at Crediton, and there I read through all the
gilt-cover little books[11] that could be had at that time, and likewise
all the uncovered tales of Tom Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-killer, etc.,
etc., etc., etc. And I used to lie by the wall and _mope_, and my spirits
used to come upon me suddenly; and in a flood of them I was accustomed to
race up and down the churchyard, and act over all I had been reading, on
the docks, the nettles, and the rank grass. At six years old I remember to
have read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip Quarles; and then I
found the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, one tale of which (the tale of a
man who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin) made so deep an
impression on me (I had read it in the evening while my mother was mending
stockings), that I was haunted by spectres, whenever I was in the dark:
and I distinctly remember the anxious and fearful eagerness with which I
used to watch the window in which the books lay, and whenever the sun lay
upon them, I would seize it, carry it by the wall, and bask and read. My
father found out the effect which these books had produced, and burnt
them.
So I became a _dreamer_, and acquired an indisposition to all bodily
activity; and I was fretful, and inordinately passionate, and as I could
not play at anything, and was slothful, I was despised and hated by the
boys; and because I could read and spell and had, I may truly say, a
memory and understanding forced into almost an unnatural ripeness, I was
flattered and wondered at by all the old women. And so I became very vain,
and despised most of the boys that were at all near my own age, and before
I was eight years old I was a _character_. Sensibility, imagination,
vanity, sloth, and feelings of deep and bitter contempt for all who
traversed the orbit of my understanding, were even then prominent and
manifest.
From October, 1778, to 1779. That which I began to be from three to six I
continued from six to nine. In this year [1778] I was admitted into the
Grammar School, and soon outstripped all of my age. I had a dangerous
putrid fever this year. My brother George lay ill of the same fever in the
next room. My poor brother Francis, I remember, stole up in spite of
orders to the contrary, and sat by my bedside and read Pope’s Homer to me.
Frank had a violent love of beating me; but whenever that was superseded
by any humour or circumstances, he was always very fond of me, and used to
regard me with a strange mixture of admiration and contempt. Strange it
was not, for he hated books, and loved climbing, fighting, playing and
robbing orchards, to distraction.
My mother relates a story of me, which I repeat here, because it must be
regarded as my first piece of wit. During my fever, I asked why Lady
Northcote (our neighbour) did not come and see me. My mother said she was
afraid of catching the fever. I was piqued, and answered, “Ah, Mamma! the
four Angels round my bed an’t afraid of catching it!” I suppose you know
the prayer:--
“Matthew! Mark! Luke and John!
God bless the bed which I lie on.
Four angels round me spread,
Two at my foot, and two at my head.”
This prayer I said nightly, and most firmly believed the truth of it.
Frequently have I (half-awake and half-asleep, my body diseased and
fevered by my imagination), seen armies of ugly things bursting in upon
me, and these four angels keeping them off. In my next I shall carry on my
life to my father’s death.
God bless you, my dear Poole, and your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
IV. TO THE SAME.
October 16, 1797.
DEAR POOLE,--From October, 1779, to October, 1781. I had asked my mother
one evening to cut my cheese entire, so that I might toast it. This was no
easy matter, it being a _crumbly_ cheese. My mother, however, did it. I
went into the garden for something or other, and in the mean time my
brother Frank _minced_ my cheese “to disappoint the favorite.” I returned,
saw the exploit, and in an agony of passion flew at Frank. He pretended to
have been seriously hurt by my blow, flung himself on the ground, and
there lay with outstretched limbs. I hung over him moaning, and in a great
fright; he leaped up, and with a horse-laugh gave me a severe blow in the
face. I seized a knife, and was running at him, when my mother came in and
took me by the arm. I expected a flogging, and struggling from her I ran
away to a hill at the bottom of which the Otter flows, about one mile from
Ottery. There I stayed; my rage died away, but my obstinacy vanquished my
fears, and taking out a little shilling book which had, at the end,
morning and evening prayers, I very devoutly repeated them--thinking at
the _same time_ with inward and gloomy satisfaction how miserable my
mother must be! I distinctly remember my feelings when I saw a Mr. Vaughan
pass over the bridge, at about a furlong’s distance, and how I watched the
calves in the fields[12] beyond the river. It grew dark and I fell asleep.
It was towards the latter end of October, and it proved a dreadful stormy
night. I felt the cold in my sleep, and dreamt that I was pulling the
blanket over me, and actually pulled over me a dry thorn bush which lay on
the hill. In my sleep I had rolled from the top of the hill to within
three yards of the river, which flowed by the unfenced edge at the bottom.
I awoke several times, and finding myself wet and stiff and cold, closed
my eyes again that I might forget it.
In the mean time my mother waited about half an hour, expecting my return
when the _sulks_ had evaporated. I not returning, she sent into the
churchyard and round the town. Not found! Several men and all the boys
were sent to ramble about and seek me. In vain! My mother was almost
distracted; and at ten o’clock at night I was _cried_ by the crier in
Ottery, and in two villages near it, with a reward offered for me. No one
went to bed; indeed, I believe half the town were up all the night. To
return to myself. About five in the morning, or a little after, I was
broad awake, and attempted to get up and walk; but I could not move. I saw
the shepherds and workmen at a distance, and cried, but so faintly that it
was impossible to hear me thirty yards off. And there I might have lain
and died; for I was now almost given over, the ponds and even the river,
near where I was lying, having been dragged. But by good luck, Sir
Stafford Northcote,[13] who had been out all night, resolved to make one
other trial, and came so near that he heard me crying. He carried me in
his arms for near a quarter of a mile, when we met my father and Sir
Stafford’s servants. I remember and never shall forget my father’s face as
he looked upon me while I lay in the servant’s arms--so calm, and the
tears stealing down his face; for I was the child of his old age. My
mother, as you may suppose, was outrageous with joy. [Meantime] in rushed
a _young lady_, crying out, “I hope you’ll whip him, Mrs. Coleridge!” This
woman still lives in Ottery; and neither philosophy or religion have been
able to conquer the antipathy which I _feel_ towards her whenever I see
her. I was put to bed and recovered in a day or so, but I was certainly
injured. For I was weakly and subject to the ague for many years after.
My father (who had so little of parental ambition in him, that he had
destined his children to be blacksmiths, etc., and had accomplished his
intention but for my mother’s pride and spirit of aggrandizing her
family)--my father had, however, resolved that I should be a parson. I
read every book that came in my way without distinction; and my father was
fond of me, and used to take me on his knee and hold long conversations
with me. I remember that at eight years old I walked with him one winter
evening from a farmer’s house, a mile from Ottery, and he told me the
names of the stars and how Jupiter was a thousand times larger than our
world, and that the other twinkling stars were suns that had worlds
rolling round them; and when I came home he shewed me how they rolled
round. I heard him with a profound delight and admiration: but without the
least mixture of wonder or incredulity. For from my early reading of fairy
tales and genii, etc., etc., my mind had been habituated _to the Vast_,
and I never regarded _my senses_ in any way as the criteria of my belief.
I regulated all my creeds by my conceptions, not by my _sight_, even at
that age. Should children be permitted to read romances, and relations of
giants and magicians and genii? I know all that has been said against it;
but I have formed my faith in the affirmative. I know no other way of
giving the mind a love of the Great and the Whole. Those who have been led
to the same truths step by step, through the constant testimony of their
senses, seem to me to want a sense which I possess. They contemplate
nothing but _parts_, and all _parts_ are necessarily little. And the
universe to them is but a mass of _little things_. It is true, that the
mind _may_ become credulous and prone to superstition by the former
method; but are not the experimentalists credulous even to madness in
believing any absurdity, rather than believe the grandest truths, if they
have not the testimony of their own senses in their favour? I have known
some who have been _rationally_ educated, as it is styled. They were
marked by a microscopic acuteness, but when they looked at great things,
all became a blank and they saw nothing, and denied (very illogically)
that anything could be seen, and uniformly put the negation of a power for
the possession of a power, and called the want of imagination judgment and
the never being moved to rapture philosophy!
Towards the latter end of September, 1781, my father went to Plymouth with
my brother Francis, who was to go as midshipman under Admiral Graves, who
was a friend of my father’s. My father settled my brother, and returned
October 4, 1781. He arrived at Exeter about six o’clock, and was pressed
to take a bed there at the Harts’, but he refused, and, to avoid their
entreaties, he told them, that he had never been superstitious, but that
the night before he had had a dream which had made a deep impression. He
dreamt that Death had appeared to him as he is commonly painted, and
touched him with his dart. Well, he returned home, and all his family, I
excepted, were up. He told my mother his dream;[14] but he was in high
health and good spirits, and there was a bowl of punch made, and my father
gave a long and particular account of his travel, and that he had placed
Frank under a religious captain, etc. At length he went to bed, very well
and in high spirits. A short time after he had lain down he complained of
a pain in his bowels. My mother got him some peppermint water, and, after
a pause, he said, “I am much better now, my dear!” and lay down again. In
a minute my mother heard a noise in his throat, and spoke to him, but he
did not answer; and she spoke repeatedly in vain. Her _shriek_ awaked me,
and I said, “Papa is dead!” I did not know of my father’s return, but I
knew that he was expected. How I came to think of his death I cannot tell;
but so it was. Dead he was. Some said it was the gout in the
heart;--probably it was a fit of apoplexy. He was an Israelite without
guile, simple, generous, and taking some Scripture texts in their literal
sense, he was conscientiously indifferent to the good and the evil of this
world.
God love you and
S. T. COLERIDGE.
V. TO THE SAME.
February 19, 1798.
From October, 1781, to October, 1782.
After the death of my father, we of course changed houses, and I remained
with my mother till the spring of 1782, and was a day-scholar to Parson
Warren, my father’s successor. He was not very deep, I believe; and I used
to delight my mother by relating little instances of his deficiency in
grammar knowledge,--every detraction from his merits seemed an oblation to
the memory of my father, especially as Parson Warren did certainly
_pulpitize_ much better. Somewhere I think about April, 1782, Judge
Buller, who had been educated by my father, sent for me, having procured a
Christ’s Hospital Presentation. I accordingly went to London, and was
received by my mother’s brother, Mr. Bowdon, a tobacconist and (at the
same time) clerk to an underwriter. My uncle lived at the corner of the
Stock Exchange and carried on his shop by means of a confidential servant,
who, I suppose, fleeced him most unmercifully. He was a widower and had
one daughter who lived with a Miss Cabriere, an old maid of great
sensibilities and a taste for literature. Betsy Bowdon had obtained an
unlimited influence over her mind, which she still retains. Mrs. Holt (for
this is her name now) was not the kindest of daughters--but, indeed, my
poor uncle would have wearied the patience and affection of an Euphrasia.
He received me with great affection, and I stayed ten weeks at his house,
during which time I went occasionally to Judge Buller’s. My uncle was very
proud of me, and used to carry me from coffee-house to coffee-house and
tavern to tavern, where I drank and talked and disputed, as if I had been
a man. Nothing was more common than for a large party to exclaim in my
hearing that I was a _prodigy_, etc., etc., etc., so that while I remained
at my uncle’s I was most completely spoiled and pampered, both mind and
body.
At length the time came, and I donned the _blue_ coat[15] and yellow
stockings and was sent down into Hertford, a town twenty miles from
London, where there are about three hundred of the younger Blue-Coat boys.
At Hertford I was very happy, on the whole, for I had plenty to eat and
drink, and pudding and vegetables almost every day. I stayed there six
weeks, and then was drafted up to the great school at London, where I
arrived in September, 1782, and was placed in the second ward, then called
Jefferies’ Ward, and in the under Grammar School. There are twelve wards
or dormitories of unequal sizes, beside the sick ward, in the great
school, and they contained all together seven hundred boys, of whom I
think nearly one third were the sons of clergymen. There are five
schools,--a mathematical, a grammar, a drawing, a reading and a writing
school,--all very large buildings. When a boy is admitted, if he reads
very badly, he is either sent to Hertford or the reading school. (N. B.
Boys are admissible from seven to twelve years old.) If he learns to read
tolerably well before nine, he is drafted into the Lower Grammar School;
if not, into the Writing School, as having given proof of unfitness for
classical attainments. If before he is eleven he climbs up to the first
form of the Lower Grammar School, he is drafted into the head Grammar
School; if not, at eleven years old, he is sent into the Writing School,
where he continues till fourteen or fifteen, and is then either
apprenticed and articled as clerk, or whatever else his turn of mind or of
fortune shall have provided for him. Two or three times a year the
Mathematical Master beats up for recruits for the King’s boys, as they are
called; and all who like the Navy are drafted into the Mathematical and
Drawing Schools, where they continue till sixteen or seventeen, and go out
as midshipmen and schoolmasters in the Navy. The boys, who are drafted
into the Head Grammar School remain there till thirteen, and then, if not
chosen for the University, go into the Writing School.
Each dormitory has a nurse, or matron, and there is a head matron to
superintend all these nurses. The boys were, when I was admitted, under
excessive subordination to each other, according to rank in school; and
every ward was governed by four Monitors (appointed by the _Steward_, who
was the supreme Governor out of school,--our temporal lord), and by four
_Markers_, who wore silver medals and were appointed by the Head Grammar
Master, who was our supreme spiritual lord. The same boys were commonly
both monitors and markers. We read in classes on Sundays to our _Markers_,
and were catechized by them, and under their sole authority during
prayers, etc. All other authority was in the monitors; but, as I said, the
same boys were ordinarily both the one and the other. Our diet was very
scanty.[16] Every morning, a bit of dry bread and some bad small beer.
Every evening, a larger piece of bread and cheese or butter, whichever we
liked. For dinner,--on Sunday, boiled beef and broth; Monday, bread and
butter, and milk and water; on Tuesday, roast mutton; Wednesday, bread and
butter, and rice milk; Thursday, boiled beef and broth; Saturday, bread
and butter, and pease-porritch. Our food was portioned; and, excepting on
Wednesdays, I never had a belly full. Our appetites were _damped_, never
satisfied; and we had no vegetables.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
VI. TO HIS MOTHER.
February 4, 1785 [London, Christ’s Hospital].
DEAR MOTHER,[17]--I received your letter with pleasure on the second
instant, and should have had it sooner, but that we had not a holiday
before last Tuesday, when my brother delivered it me. I also with
gratitude received the two handkerchiefs and the half-a-crown from Mr.
Badcock, to whom I would be glad if you would give my thanks. I shall be
more careful of the somme, as I now consider that were it not for my kind
friends I should be as destitute of many little necessaries as some of my
schoolfellows are; and Thank God and my relations for them! My brother
Luke saw Mr. James Sorrel, who gave my brother a half-a-crown from Mrs.
Smerdon, but mentioned not a word of the plumb cake, and said he would
call again. Return my most respectful thanks to Mrs. Smerdon for her kind
favour. My aunt was so kind as to accommodate me with a box. I suppose my
sister Anna’s beauty has many admirers. My brother Luke says that Burke’s
Art of Speaking would be of great use to me. If Master Sam and Harry
Badcock are not gone out of (Ottery), give my kindest love to them. Give
my compliments to Mr. Blake and Miss Atkinson, Mr. and Mrs. Smerdon, Mr.
and Mrs. Clapp, and all other friends in the country. My uncle, aunt, and
cousins join with myself and Brother in love to my sisters, and hope they
are well, as I, your dutiful son,
S. COLERIDGE, am at present.
P. S. Give my kind love to Molly.
VII. TO THE REV. GEORGE COLERIDGE.
Undated, from Christ’s Hospital, before 1790.
DEAR BROTHER,--You will excuse me for reminding you that, as our holidays
commence next week, and I shall go out a good deal, a good pair of
breeches will be no inconsiderable accession to my appearance. For though
my present pair are excellent for the purposes of drawing mathematical
figures on them, and though a walking thought, sonnet, or epigram would
appear on them in very _splendid_ type, yet they are not altogether so
well adapted for a female eye--not to mention that I should have the
charge of vanity brought against me for wearing a looking-glass. I hope
you have got rid of your cold--and I am your affectionate brother,
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
P. S. Can you let me have them time enough for re-adaptation before
Whitsunday? I mean that they may be made up for me before that time.
VIII. TO THE SAME.
October 16, 1791.
DEAR BROTHER,--Here I am, videlicet, Jesus College. I had a tolerable
journey, went by a night coach packed up with five more, one of whom had
a long, broad, red-hot face, four feet by three. I very luckily found
Middleton at Pembroke College, who (after breakfast, etc.) conducted me to
Jesus. Dr. Pearce is in Cornwall and not expected to return to Cambridge
till the summer, and what is still more extraordinary (and, n. b., rather
shameful) neither of the tutors are here. I _keep_ (as the phrase is) in
an absent member’s rooms till one of the aforesaid duetto return to
appoint me my own. Neither Lectures, Chapel, or anything is begun. The
College is very thin, and Middleton has not the least acquaintance with
any of Jesus except a very blackguardly fellow whose physiog. I did not
like. So I sit down to dinner in the Hall in silence, except the noise of
suction which accompanies my eating, and rise up ditto. I then walk to
Pembroke and sit with my friend Middleton. Pray let me hear from you. Le
Grice will send a parcel in two or three days.
Believe me, with sincere affection and gratitude, yours ever,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
IX. TO THE SAME.
January 24, 1792.
DEAR BROTHER,--Happy am I, that the country air and exercise have operated
with due effect on your health and spirits--and happy, too, that I can
inform you, that my own corporealities are in a state of better health,
than I ever recollect them to be. This indeed I owe in great measure to
the care of Mrs. Evans,[18] with whom I spent a fortnight at Christmas:
the relaxation from study coöperating with the cheerfulness and attention,
which I met there, proved very potently medicinal. I have indeed
experienced from her a tenderness scarcely inferior to the solicitude of
maternal affection. I wish, my dear brother, that some time, when you walk
into town, you would call at Villiers Street, and take a dinner or dish of
tea there. Mrs. Evans has repeatedly expressed her wish, and I too have
made a half promise that you would. I assure you, you will find them not
only a very amiable, but a very sensible family.
I send a parcel to Le Grice on Friday morning, which (_you may depend on
it as a certainty_) will contain your sermon. I hope you will like it.
I am sincerely concerned at the state of Mr. Sparrow’s health. Are his
complaints consumptive? Present my respects to him and Mrs. Sparrow.
_When_ the Scholarship falls, I do not know. It _must be_ in the course of
two or three months. I do not relax in my exertions, neither do I find it
any impediment to my mental acquirements that prudence has obliged me to
relinquish the _mediæ pallescere nocti_. We are examined as Rustats,[19]
on the Thursday in Easter Week. The examination for my year is “the last
book of Homer and Horace’s _De Arte Poetica_.” The Master (_i. e._ Dr.
Pearce) told me that he would do me a service by pushing my examination as
deep as he possibly could. If ever hogs-lard is pleasing, it is when our
superiors trowel it on. Mr. Frend’s company[20] is by no means invidious.
On the contrary, Pearce himself is very intimate with him. No! Though I
am not an _Alderman_, I have yet _prudence_ enough to respect that
_gluttony of faith_ waggishly yclept orthodoxy.
Philanthropy generally keeps pace with health--my acquaintance becomes
more general. I am intimate with an undergraduate of our College, his name
Caldwell,[21] who is pursuing the same line of study (nearly) as myself.
Though a man of fortune, he is prudent; nor does he lay claim to that
right, which wealth confers on its possessor, of being a fool. Middleton
is fourth senior optimate--an honourable place, but by no means so high as
the whole University expected, or (I believe) his merits deserved. He
desires his love to Stevens:[22] to which you will add mine.
At what time am I to receive my pecuniary assistance? Quarterly or half
yearly? The Hospital issue their money half yearly, and we receive the
products of our scholarship at once, a little after Easter. Whatever
additional supply you and my brother may have thought necessary would be
therefore more conducive to my comfort, if I received it quarterly--as
there are a number of little things which require us to have some ready
money in our pockets--particularly if we happen to be unwell. But this as
well as everything of the pecuniary kind I leave entirely _ad arbitrium
tuum_.
I have written my mother, of whose health I am rejoiced to hear. God send
that she may long continue to recede from old age, while she advances
towards it! Pray write me very soon.
Yours with gratitude and affection,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
X. TO MRS. EVANS.
February 13, 1792.
MY VERY DEAR,--What word shall I add sufficiently expressive of the warmth
which I feel? You covet to be near my heart. Believe me, that you and my
sister have the very first row in the front box of my heart’s little
theatre--and--God knows! _you are not crowded_. There, my dear spectators!
you shall see what you shall see--Farce, Comedy, and Tragedy--my laughter,
my cheerfulness, and my melancholy. A thousand figures pass before you,
shifting in perpetual succession; these are my joys and my sorrows, my
hopes and my fears, my good tempers and my peevishness: you will, however,
observe two that remain unalterably fixed, and these are love and
gratitude. In short, my dear Mrs. Evans, my whole heart shall be laid open
like any sheep’s heart; my virtues, if I have any, shall not be more
exposed to your view than my weaknesses. Indeed, I am of opinion that
foibles are the cement of affection, and that, however we may _admire_ a
perfect character, we are seldom inclined to love and praise those whom we
cannot sometimes blame. Come, ladies! will you take your seats in this
play-house? Fool that I am! Are you not already there? Believe me, you
are!
I am extremely anxious to be informed concerning your health. Have you not
felt the kindly influence of this more than vernal weather, as well as the
good effects of your own recommenced regularity? I would I could transmit
you a little of my superfluous good health! I am indeed at present most
wonderfully well, and if I continue so, I may soon be mistaken for one of
your _very_ children: at least, in clearness of complexion and rosiness
of cheek I am no contemptible likeness of them, though that ugly
arrangement of features with which nature has distinguished me will, I
fear, long stand in the way of such honorable assimilation. You accuse me
of evading the bet, and imagine that my silence proceeded from a
consciousness of the charge. But you are mistaken. I not only read _your_
letter first, but, on my sincerity! I felt no inclination to do otherwise;
and I am confident, that if Mary had happened to have stood by me and had
seen me take up _her_ letter in preference to her _mother’s_, with all
that ease and energy which she can so gracefully exert upon proper
occasions, she would have lifted up her beautiful little leg, and kicked
me round the room. Had Anne indeed favoured me with a few lines, I confess
I should have seized hold of them before either of your letters; but then
this would have arisen from my love of _novelty_, and not from any
deficiency in filial respect. So much for your bet!
You can scarcely conceive what uneasiness poor Tom’s accident has
occasioned me; in everything that relates to him I feel solicitude truly
fraternal. Be particular concerning him in your next. I was going to write
him an half-angry letter for the long intermission of his correspondence;
but I must change it to a consolatory one. You mention not a word of
Bessy. Think you I do not love her?
And so, my dear Mrs. Evans, you are to take your Welsh journey in May? Now
may the Goddess of Health, the rosy-cheeked goddess that blows the breeze
from the Cambrian mountains, renovate that dear old lady, and make her
young again! I always loved that old lady’s looks. Yet do not flatter
yourselves, that you shall take this journey _tête-à-tête_. You will have
an unseen companion at your side, one who will attend you in your jaunt,
who will be present at your arrival; one whose heart will melt with
unutterable tenderness at your maternal transports, who will climb the
Welsh hills with you, who will feel himself happy in knowing you to be so.
In short, as St. Paul says, though absent in body, I shall be present in
mind. Disappointment? You must not, you shall not be disappointed; and if
a poetical invocation can help you to drive off that ugly foe to happiness
here it is for you.
TO DISAPPOINTMENT.
Hence! thou fiend of gloomy sway,
Thou lov’st on withering blast to ride
O’er fond Illusion’s air-built pride.
Sullen Spirit! Hence! Away!
Where Avarice lurks in sordid cell,
Or mad Ambition builds the dream,
Or Pleasure plots th’ unholy scheme
There with Guilt and Folly dwell!
But oh! when Hope on Wisdom’s wing
Prophetic whispers pure delight,
Be distant far thy cank’rous blight,
Demon of envenom’d sting.
Then haste thee, Nymph of balmy gales!
Thy poet’s prayer, sweet May! attend!
Oh! place my parent and my friend
’Mid her lovely native vales.
Peace, that lists the woodlark’s strains,
Health, that breathes divinest treasures,
Laughing Hours, and Social Pleasures
Wait my friend in Cambria’s plains.
Affection there with mingled ray
Shall pour at once the raptures high
Of filial and maternal Joy;
Haste thee then, delightful May!
And oh! may Spring’s fair flowerets fade,
May Summer cease her limbs to lave
In cooling stream, may Autumn grave
Yellow o’er the corn-cloath’d glade;
Ere, from sweet retirement torn,
She seek again the crowded mart:
Nor thou, my selfish, selfish heart
Dare her slow return to mourn!
In what part of the country is my dear Anne to be? Mary must and shall be
with you. I want to know all your summer residences, that I may be on that
very spot with all of you. It is not improbable that I may steal down from
Cambridge about the beginning of April just to look at you, that when I
see you again in autumn I may know how many years younger the Welsh air
has made you. If I shall go into Devonshire on the 21st of May, unless my
good fortune in a particular affair should detain me till the 4th of June.
I lately received the thanks of the College for a declamation[23] I spoke
in public; indeed, I meet with the most pointed marks of respect, which,
as I neither flatter nor fiddle, I suppose to be sincere. I write these
things not from vanity, but because I know they will please you.
I intend to leave off suppers, and two or three other little
unnecessaries, and in conjunction with Caldwell hire a garden for the
summer. It will be nice exercise--your advice. La! it will be so charming
to walk out in one’s own _garding_, and sit and drink tea in an arbour,
and pick pretty nosegays. To plant and transplant, and be dirty and
amused! Then to look with contempt on your Londoners with your mock
gardens and your smoky windows, making a beggarly show of withered flowers
stuck in pint pots, and quart pots menacing the heads of the passengers
below.
Now suppose I conclude something in the manner with which Mary concludes
all her letters to me, “_Believe me your sincere friend_,” and dutiful
humble servant to command!
Now I do hate that way of concluding a letter. ’Tis as dry as a stick, as
stiff as a poker, and as cold as a cucumber. It is not half so good as my
old
God bless you and
Your affectionately grateful
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XI. TO MARY EVANS.
February 13, 11 o’clock.
_Ten of the most talkative young ladies now in London!_
Now by the most accurate calculation of the specific quantities of sounds,
a female tongue, _when it exerts itself to the utmost_, equals the noise
of eighteen sign-posts, which the wind swings backwards and forwards in
full creak. If then one equals eighteen, ten must equal one hundred and
eighty; consequently, the circle at Jermyn Street unitedly must have
produced a noise equal to that of one hundred and eighty old crazy
sign-posts, inharmoniously agitated as aforesaid. Well! to be sure, there
are few disagreeables for which the pleasure of Mary and Anne Evans’
company would not amply compensate; but faith! I feel myself half inclined
to thank God that I was fifty-two miles off during this _clattering
clapperation_ of tongues. Do you keep ale at Jermyn Street? If so, I hope
it is not _soured_.
Such, my dear Mary, were the reflections that instantly suggested
themselves to me on reading the former part of your letter. Believe me,
however, that my gratitude keeps pace with my sense of your exertions, as
I can most feelingly conceive the difficulty of writing amid that second
edition of Babel with additions. That your health is restored gives me
sincere delight. May the giver of all pleasure and pain preserve it so! I
am likewise glad to hear that your hand is re-whiten’d, though I cannot
help smiling at a certain young lady’s _effrontery_ in having boxed a
young gentleman’s ears till her own hand became _black and blue_, and
attributing those unseemly marks to the poor unfortunate object of her
resentment. _You are at liberty, certainly, to say what you please._
It has been confidently affirmed by most excellent judges (tho’ the best
may be mistaken) that I have grown very handsome lately. Pray that I may
have grace not to be vain. Yet, ah! who can read the stories of Pamela, or
Joseph Andrews, or Susannah and the three Elders, and not perceive what a
dangerous snare beauty is? Beauty is like the grass, that groweth up in
the morning and is withered before night. Mary! Anne! Do not be vain of
your beauty!!!!!
I keep a cat. Amid the strange collection of strange animals with which I
am surrounded, I think it necessary to have some meek well-looking being,
that I may keep my social affections alive. Puss, like her master, is a
very gentle brute, and I behave to her with all possible politeness.
Indeed, a cat is a very worthy animal. To be sure, I have known some very
malicious cats in my lifetime, but then they were old--and besides, they
had not nearly so many legs as you, my sweet Pussy. I wish, Puss! I could
break you of that indecorous habit of turning your back front to the fire.
It is not frosty weather now.
N. B.--If ever, Mary, you should feel yourself inclined to visit me at
Cambridge, pray do not suffer the consideration of my having a cat to
deter you. _Indeed_, I will keep her _chained up_ all the while you stay.
I was in company the other day with a very dashing literary lady. After my
departure, a friend of mine asked her her opinion of me. She answered:
“The best I can say of him is, that he is a very gentle bear.” What think
you of this character?
What a lovely anticipation of spring the last three or four days have
afforded. Nature has not been very profuse of her ornaments to the country
about Cambridge; yet the clear rivulet that runs through the grove
adjacent to our College, and the numberless little birds (particularly
robins) that are singing away, and above all, the little lambs, each by
the side of its mother, recall the most pleasing ideas of pastoral
simplicity, and almost soothe one’s soul into congenial innocence. Amid
these delightful scenes, of which the uncommon flow of health I at present
possess permits me the full enjoyment, I should not deign to think of
London, were it not for a little family, whom I trust I need not name.
What bird of the air whispers me that you too will soon enjoy the same and
more delightful pleasures in a much more delightful country? What we
strongly wish we are very apt to believe. At present, my presentiments on
that head amount to confidence.
Last Sunday, Middleton and I set off at one o’clock on a ramble. We
sauntered on, chatting and contemplating, till to our great surprise we
came to a village seven miles from Cambridge. And here at a farmhouse we
drank tea. The rusticity of the habitation and the inhabitants was
charming; we had cream to our tea, which though not brought in a _lordly
dish_, Sisera would have jumped at. Being here informed that we could
return to Cambridge another way, over a common, for the sake of
diversifying our walk, we chose this road, “if road it might be called,
where road was none,” though we were not unapprized of its difficulties.
The fine weather deceived us. We forgot that it was a summer day in warmth
only, and not in length; but we were soon reminded of it. For on the
pathless solitude of this common, the night overtook us--we must have been
four miles distant from Cambridge--the night, though calm, was as dark as
the place was dreary: here steering our course by our imperfect
conceptions of the point in which _we conjectured Cambridge_ to lie, we
wandered on “with cautious steps and slow.” We feared the bog, the stump,
and the fen: we feared the ghosts of the night--at least, those material
and knock-me-down ghosts, the apprehension of which causes you, Mary
(valorous girl that you are!), always to peep under your bed of a night.
As we were thus creeping forward like the two children in the wood, we
spy’d something white moving across the common. This we made up to, though
contrary to our _supposed_ destination. It proved to be a man with a white
bundle. We enquired our way, and luckily he was going to Cambridge. He
informed us that we had gone half a mile out of our way, and that in five
minutes more we must have arrived at a deep quagmire grassed over. What an
escape! The man was as glad of our company as we of his--for, it seemed,
the poor fellow was afraid of Jack o’ Lanthorns--the superstition of this
county attributing a kind of fascination to those wandering vapours, so
that whoever fixes his eyes on them is forced by some irresistible impulse
to follow them. He entertained us with many a dreadful tale. By nine
o’clock we arrived at Cambridge, betired and bemudded. I never recollect
to have been so much fatigued.
Do you spell the word _scarsely_? When Momus, the fault-finding God,
endeavoured to discover some imperfection in Venus, he could only censure
the creaking of her slipper. I, too, Momuslike, can only fall foul on a
single _s_. Yet will not my dear Mary be angry with me, or think the
remark trivial, when she considers that half a grain is of consequence in
the weight of a diamond.
I had entertained hopes that you would _really_ have _sent_ me a piece of
sticking plaister, which would have been very convenient at that time, I
having cut my finger. I had to buy sticking plaister, etc. What is the use
of a man’s knowing you girls, if he cannot _chouse_ you out of such little
things as that? Do not your fingers, Mary, feel an odd kind of titillation
to be about my ears for my impudence?
On Saturday night, as I was sitting by myself all alone, I heard a
creaking sound, something like the noise which a crazy chair would make,
if pressed by the tremendous weight of Mr. Barlow’s extremities. I cast my
eyes around, and what should I behold but a _Ghost_ rising out of the
floor! A deadly paleness instantly overspread my body, which retained no
other symptom of life _but_ its violent trembling. My hair (as is usual in
frights of this nature) stood upright by many degrees stiffer than the
oaks of the mountains, yea, stiffer than Mr. ----; yet was it rendered
oily-pliant by the profuse perspiration that burst from every pore. This
spirit advanced with a book in his hand, and having first dissipated my
terrors, said as follows: “I am the Ghost of _Gray_. There lives a young
lady” (then he mentioned _your_ name), “of whose judgment I entertain so
high an opinion, that _her_ approbation of my works would make the turf
lie lighter on me; present her with this book, and transmit it to her as
soon as possible, adding my love to her. And, as for you, O young man!”
(now he addressed himself to me) “write no more verses. In the first place
your poetry is vile stuff; and secondly” (here he sighed almost to
bursting), “all poets go to --ll; we are so intolerably addicted to the
vice of lying!” He vanished, and convinced me of the truth of his last
dismal account by the sulphurous stink which he left behind him.
His first mandate I have obeyed, and, I hope you will receive _safe_ your
ghostly admirer’s present. But so far have I been from obeying his second
injunction, that I never had the scribble-mania stronger on me than for
these last three or four days: nay, not content with suffering it myself,
I must pester those I love best with the blessed effects of my disorder.
Besides two _things_, which you will find in the next sheet, I cannot
forbear filling the remainder of this sheet with an Odeling, though I know
and approve your aversion to _mere prettiness_, and though my tiny love
ode possesses no other property in the world. Let then its shortness
recommend it to your perusal--_by the by_, the _only_ thing in which it
resembles you, for wit, sense, elegance, or beauty it has none.
AN ODE IN THE MANNER OF ANACREON.[24]
As late in wreaths gay flowers I bound,
Beneath some roses Love I found,
And by his little frolic pinion
As quick as thought I seiz’d the minion,
Then in my cup the prisoner threw,
And drank him in its sparkling dew:
And sure I feel my angry guest
Flutt’ring _his wings_ within my breast!
Are you quite asleep, dear Mary? Sleep on; but when you awake, read the
following productions, and then, I’ll be bound, you will sleep again
sounder than ever.
A WISH WRITTEN IN JESUS WOOD, FEBRUARY 10, 1792.[25]
Lo! through the dusky silence of the groves,
Thro’ vales irriguous, and thro’ green retreats,
With languid murmur creeps the placid stream
And works its secret way.
Awhile meand’ring round its native fields,
It rolls the playful wave and winds its flight:
Then downward flowing with awaken’d speed
Embosoms in the Deep!
Thus thro’ its silent tenor may my Life
Smooth its meek stream by sordid wealth unclogg’d,
Alike unconscious of forensic storms,
And Glory’s blood-stain’d palm!
And when dark Age shall close Life’s little day,
Satiate of sport, and weary of its toils,
E’en thus may slumb’rous Death my decent limbs
Compose with icy hand!
A LOVER’S COMPLAINT TO HIS MISTRESS
WHO DESERTED HIM IN QUEST OF A MORE WEALTHY HUSBAND IN THE EAST
INDIES.[26]
The dubious light sad glimmers o’er the sky:
’Tis silence all. By lonely anguish torn,
With wandering feet to gloomy groves I fly,
And wakeful Love still tracks my course forlorn.
And will you, cruel Julia? will you go?
And trust you to the Ocean’s dark dismay?
Shall the wide, wat’ry world between us flow?
And winds unpitying snatch my Hopes away?
Thus could you sport with my too easy heart?
Yet tremble, lest not unaveng’d I grieve!
The winds may learn your own delusive art,
And faithless Ocean smile--but to deceive!
I have written too long a letter. Give me a hint, and I will avoid a
repetition of the offence.
It’s a compensation for the above-written rhymes (which if you ever
condescend to read a second time, pray let it be by the light of their own
flames) in my next letter I will send some delicious poetry lately
published by the exquisite Bowles.
To-morrow morning I fill the rest of this sheet with a letter to Anne. And
now, good-night, dear sister! and peaceful slumbers await us both!
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XII. TO ANNE EVANS.
February 19, 1792.
DEAR ANNE,--To be sure I felt myself rather disappointed at my not
receiving a few lines from you; but I am nevertheless greatly rejoiced at
your amicable dispositions towards me. Please to accept two kisses, as the
seals of reconciliation--you will find them on the word “Anne” at the
beginning of the letter--at least, there I left them. I must, however,
give you warning, that the next time you are affronted with Brother Coly,
and show your resentment by that most cruel of all punishments, silence, I
shall address a letter to you as long and as sorrowful as Jeremiah’s
Lamentations, and somewhat in the style of your sister’s favourite lover,
beginning with,--
TO THE IRASCIBLE MISS.
DEAR MISS, &c.
My dear Anne, you are my Valentine. I dreamt of you this morning, and I
have seen no female in the whole course of the day, except an old bedmaker
belonging to the College, and I don’t count her one, as the bristle of her
beard makes me suspect her to be of the masculine gender. Some one of the
genii must have conveyed your image to me so opportunely, nor will you
think this impossible, if you will read the little volumes which contain
their exploits, and crave the honour of your acceptance.
If I could draw, I would have sent a pretty heart stuck through with
arrows, with some such sweet posy underneath it as this:--
“The rose is red, the violet blue;
The pink is sweet, and so are you.”
But as the Gods have not made me a drawer (of anything but corks), you
must accept the will for the deed.
You never wrote or desired your sister to write concerning the bodily
health of the Barlowites, though you know my affection for that family. Do
not forget this in your next.
Is Mr. Caleb Barlow recovered of the rheumatism? The quiet ugliness of
Cambridge supplies me with very few communicables in the news way. The
most important is, that Mr. Tim Grubskin, of this town, citizen, is dead.
Poor man! he loved fish too well. A violent commotion in his bowels
carried him off. They say he made a very good end. There is his epitaph:--
“A loving friend and tender parent dear,
Just in all actions, and he the Lord did fear,
Hoping, that, when the day of Resurrection come,
He shall arise in glory like the Sun.”
It was composed by a Mr. Thistlewait, the town crier, and is much admired.
We are all mortal!!
His wife carries on the business. It is whispered about the town that a
match between her and Mr. Coe, the shoemaker, is not improbable. He
certainly seems very assiduous in con_soling_ her, but as to anything
matrimonial I do not write it as a well authenticated fact.
I went the other evening to the concert, and spent the time there much to
my heart’s content in cursing Mr. Hague, who played on the violin most
piggishly, and a Miss (I forget her name)--Miss Humstrum, who sung most
sowishly. O the Billington! That I should be absent during the oratorios!
The prince unable to conceal his pain! Oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh!
oh!
To which house is Mrs. B. engaged this season?
The mutton and winter cabbage are confoundedly tough here, though very
venerable for their old age. Were you ever at Cambridge, Anne? The river
Cam is a handsome stream of a muddy complexion, somewhat like Miss Yates,
to whom you will present my love (if you like).
In Cambridge there are sixteen colleges, that look like workhouses, and
fourteen churches that look like little houses. The town is very fertile
in alleys, and mud, and cats, and dogs, besides men, women, ravens,
clergy, proctors, tutors, owls, and other two-legged cattle. It
likewise--but here I must interrupt my description to hurry to Mr.
Costobadie’s lectures on Euclid, who is as mathematical an author, my dear
Anne, as you would wish to read on a long summer’s day. Addio! God bless
you, ma chère soeur, and your affectionate frère,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. I add a postscript on purpose to communicate a joke to you. A party
of us had been drinking wine together, and three or four freshmen were
most deplorably intoxicated. (I have too great a respect for delicacy to
say drunk.) As we were returning homewards, two of them fell into the
gutter (or kennel). We ran to assist one of them, who very generously
stuttered out, as he lay sprawling in the mud: “N-n-n-no--n-n-no!--save my
f-fr-fr-friend there; n-never mind me, I can swim.”
Won’t you write me a long letter now, Anne?
P. S. Give my respectful compliments to Betty, and say that I enquired
after her health with the most emphatic energy of impassioned avidity.
XIII. TO MRS EVANS.
February 22 [? 1792].
DEAR MADAM,--The incongruity of the dates in these letters you will
immediately perceive. The truth is that I had written the foregoing heap
of nothingness six or seven days ago, but I was prevented from sending it
by a variety of disagreeable little impediments.
Mr. Massy must be arrived in Cambridge by this time; but to call on an
utter stranger just arrived with so trivial a message as yours and his
uncle’s love to him, when I myself had been in Cambridge five or six
weeks, would appear rather awkward, not to say ludicrous. If, however, I
meet him at any wine party (which is by no means improbable) I shall take
the opportunity of mentioning it _en passant_. As to Mr. M.’s debts, the
most intimate friends in college are perfect strangers to each other’s
affairs; consequently it is little likely that I should procure any
information of this kind.
I hope and trust that neither yourself nor my sisters have experienced any
ill effects from this wonderful change of weather. A very slight cold is
the only favour with which it has honoured _me_. I feel myself
apprehensive for all of you, but more particularly for Anne, whose frame I
think most susceptible of cold.
Yesterday a Frenchman came dancing into my room, of which he made but
three steps, and presented me with a card. I had scarcely collected, by
glancing my eye over it, that he was a tooth-monger, before he seized hold
of my muzzle, and, baring my teeth (as they do a horse’s, in order to know
his age), he exclaimed, as if in violent agitation: “Mon Dieu! Monsieur,
all your teeth will fall out in a day or two, unless you permit me the
honour of _scaling_ them!” This ineffable piece of assurance discovered
such a genius for impudence, that I could not suffer it to go unrewarded.
So, after a hearty laugh, I sat down, and let the rascal _chouse_ me out
of half a guinea by scraping my grinders--the more readily, indeed, as I
recollected the great penchant which all your family have for delicate
teeth.
So (I hear) Allen[27] will be most precipitately emancipated. Good luck
have thou of thy emancipation, Bob-bee! Tell him from me that if he does
not kick Richards’[28] fame out of doors by the superiority of his own, I
will never forgive him.
If you will send me a box of Mr. Stringer’s tooth powder, mamma! we will
accept of it.
And now, Right Reverend Mother in God, let me claim your permission to
subscribe myself with all observance and gratitude, your most obedient
humble servant, and lowly slave,
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,
Reverend in the future tense, and scholar of Jesus College in the present
time.
XIV. TO MARY EVANS.
JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, February 22 [1792].
DEAR MARY,--_Writing long letters_ is not the fault into which I am most
apt to fall, but whenever I do, by some inexplicable ill luck, my
prolixity is always directed to those whom I would yet least of all wish
to torment. You think, and think rightly, that I had no occasion to
_increase_ the preceding accumulations of wearisomeness, but I wished to
inform you that I have sent the poem of Bowles, which I mentioned in a
former sheet; though I dare say you would have discovered this without my
information. If the pleasure which you receive from the perusal of it
prove equal to that which I have received, it will make you some small
return for the exertions of friendship, which you must have found
necessary in order to travel through my long, long, long letter.
Though it may be a little effrontery to point out beauties, which would be
obvious to a far less sensible heart than yours, yet I cannot forbear the
self-indulgence of remarking to you the exquisite description of Hope in
the third page and of Fortitude in the sixth; but the poem “On leaving a
place of residence” appears to me to be almost superior to any of Bowles’s
compositions.
I hope that the Jermyn Street ledgers are well. How can they be otherwise
in such lovely keeping?
Your Jessamine Pomatum, I trust, is as strong and as odorous as ever, and
the roasted turkeys at Villiers Street honoured, as usual, with a thick
crust of your Mille (what do you call it?) powder.
I had a variety of other interesting inquiries to make, but time and
memory fail me.
Without a swanskin waistcoat, what is man? I have got a swanskin
waistcoat,--a most attractive external.
Yours with sincerity of friendship,
SAMUEL TAYLOR C.
XV. TO THE REV. GEORGE COLERIDGE.
Monday night, April [1792].
DEAR BROTHER,--You would have heard from me long since had I not been
entangled in such various businesses as have occupied my whole time.
Besides my ordinary business, which, as I look forward to a smart contest
some time this year, is not an indolent one, I have been writing for _all_
the prizes, namely, the Greek Ode, the Latin Ode, and the Epigrams. I have
little or no expectation of success, as a Mr. Smith,[29] a man of immense
genius, author of some papers in the “Microcosm,” is among my numerous
competitors. The prize medals will be adjudged about the beginning of
June. If you can think of a good thought for the beginning of the Latin
Ode upon the miseries of the W. India slaves, communicate. My Greek
Ode[30] is, I think, my _chef d’œuvre_ in poetical composition. I have
sent you a sermon metamorphosed from an obscure publication by vamping,
transposition, etc. If you like it, I can send you two more of the same
kidney. Our examination as Rustats comes [off] on the Thursday in Easter
week. After it a man of our college has offered to take me to town in his
gig, and, if he can bring me back, I think I shall accept his offer, as
the expense, at all events, will not be more than 12 shillings, and my
very commons, and tea, etc., would amount to more than that in the week
which I intend to stay in town. Almost all the men are out of college, and
I am most villainously vapoured. I wrote the following the other day under
the title of “A Fragment found in a Lecture-Room:”--
Where deep in mud Cam rolls his slumbrous stream,
And bog and desolation reign supreme;
Where all Bœotia clouds the misty brain,
The owl Mathesis pipes her loathsome strain.
Far, far aloof the frighted Muses fly,
Indignant Genius scowls and passes by:
The frolic Pleasures start amid their dance,
And Wit congealed stands fix’d in wintry trance.
But to the sounds with duteous haste repair
Cold Industry, and wary-footed Care;
And Dulness, dosing on a couch of lead,
Pleas’d with the song uplifts her heavy head,
The sympathetic numbers lists awhile,
Then yawns propitiously a frosty smile....
[Cætera desunt.]
This morning I went for the first time with a party on the river. The
clumsy dog to whom we had entrusted the sail was fool enough to fasten it.
A gust of wind embraced the opportunity of turning over the boat, and
baptizing all that were in it. We swam to shore, and walked dripping home,
like so many river gods. Thank God! I do not feel as if I should be the
worse for it.
I was matriculated on Saturday.[31] Oath-taking is very healthy in spring,
I should suppose. I am grown very fat. We have two men at our college,
great cronies, their names Head and Bones; the first an unlicked cub of a
Yorkshireman, the second a very fierce buck. I call them _Raw Head_ and
_Bloody Bones_.
As soon as you can make it convenient I should feel thankful if you could
transmit me ten or five pounds, as I am at present cashless.
Pray, was the bible clerk’s place accounted a disreputable one at Oxford
in your time? Poor Allen, who is just settled there, complains of the
great distance with which the men treat him. ’Tis a childish University!
Thank God! I am at Cambridge. Pray let me hear from you soon, and whether
your health has held out this long campaign. I hope, however, soon to see
you, till when believe me, with gratitude and affection, yours ever,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XVI. TO MRS. EVANS.
February 5, 1793.
MY DEAR MRS. EVANS,--This is the third day of my resurrection from the
couch, or rather, the sofa of sickness. About a fortnight ago, a quantity
of matter took it into its head to form in my left gum, and was attended
with such violent pain, inflammation, and swelling, that it threw me into
a fever. However, God be praised, my gum has at last been opened, a
villainous tooth extracted, and all is well. I am still very weak, as well
I may, since for seven days together I was incapable of swallowing
anything but spoon meat, so that in point of spirits I am but the dregs of
my former self--a decaying flame agonizing in the snuff of a tallow
candle--a kind of hobgoblin, clouted and bagged up in the most
contemptible shreds, rags, and yellow relics of threadbare mortality. The
event of our examination[32] was such as surpassed my expectations, and
perfectly accorded with my wishes. After a very severe trial of six days’
continuance, the number of the competitors was reduced from seventeen to
four, and after a further process of ordeal we, the survivors, were
declared equal each to the other, and the Scholarship, according to the
will of its founder, awarded to the youngest of us, who was found to be a
Mr. Butler of St. John’s College. I am just two months older than he is,
and though I would doubtless have rather had it myself, I am yet not at
all sorry at his success; for he is sensible and unassuming, and besides,
from his circumstances, such an accession to his annual income must have
been very acceptable to him. So much for myself.
I am greatly rejoiced at your brother’s recovery; in proportion, indeed,
to the anxiety and fears I felt on your account during his illness. I
recollected, my most dear Mrs. Evans, that you are frequently troubled
with a strange forgetfulness of yourself, and too apt to go far beyond
your strength, if by any means you may alleviate the sufferings of others.
Ah! how different from the majority of others whom we courteously dignify
with the name of human--a vile herd, who sit still in the severest
distresses of their _friends_, and cry out, There is a lion in the way!
animals, who walk with leaden sandals in the paths of charity, yet to
gratify their own inclinations will run a mile in a breath. Oh! I do know
a set of little, dirty, pimping, petty-fogging, ambidextrous fellows, who
would set your house on fire, though it were but to roast an egg for
themselves! Yet surely, considering it were a selfish view, the pleasures
that arise from whispering peace to those who are in trouble, and healing
the broken in heart, are far superior to all the unfeeling can enjoy.
I have inclosed a little work of that great and good man Archdeacon Paley;
it is entitled _Motives of Contentment_, addressed to the poorer part of
our fellow men. The twelfth page I particularly admire, and the twentieth.
The reasoning has been of some service to _me_, who am of the race of the
Grumbletonians. My dear friend Allen has a resource against most
misfortunes in the natural gaiety of his temper, whereas my hypochondriac,
gloomy spirit _amid blessings_ too frequently warbles out the hoarse
gruntings of discontent! Nor have all the lectures that divines and
philosophers have given us for these three thousand years past, on the
vanity of riches, and the cares of greatness, etc., prevented me from
sincerely regretting that Nature had not put it into the head of some
_rich_ man to beget _me_ for his _first_-born, whereas now I am likely to
get bread just when I shall have no teeth left to chew it. Cheer up, my
little one (thus I answer I)! _better late than never_. Hath literature
been thy choice, and hast thou food and raiment? Be thankful, be _amazed_
at thy good fortune! Art thou dissatisfied and desirous of other things?
Go, and make twelve votes at an election; it shall do thee more service
and procure thee greater preferment than to have made twelve commentaries
on the twelve prophets. My dear Mrs. Evans! excuse the wanderings of my
castle building imagination. I have not a thought which I conceal from
you. I _write_ to others, but my pen talks to you. Convey my softest
affections to Betty, and believe me,
Your grateful and affectionate boy,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XVII. TO MARY EVANS.
JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, February 7, 1793.
I would to Heaven, my dear Miss Evans, that the god of wit, or news, or
politics would whisper in my ear something that might be worth sending
fifty-four miles--but alas! I am so closely blocked by an army of
misfortunes that really there is no passage left open for mirth or
anything else. Now, just to give you a few articles in the large inventory
of my calamities. Imprimis, a gloomy, uncomfortable morning. Item, my head
aches. Item, the Dean has set me a swinging imposition for missing morning
chapel. Item, of the two only coats which I am worth in the world, both
have holes in the elbows. Item, Mr. Newton, our mathematical lecturer, has
recovered from an illness. But the story is rather a laughable one, so I
must tell it you. Mr. Newton (a tall, thin man with a little, tiny,
blushing face) is a great botanist. Last Sunday, as he was strolling out
with a friend of his, some curious plant suddenly caught his eye. He
turned round his head with great eagerness to call his companion to a
participation of discovery, and unfortunately continuing to walk forward
he fell into a pool, deep, muddy, and full of chickweed. I was lucky
enough to meet him as he was entering the college gates on his return (a
sight I would not have lost for the Indies), his best black clothes all
green with duckweed, he shivering and dripping, in short a perfect river
god. I went up to him (you must understand we hate each other most
cordially) and sympathized with him in all the tenderness of condolence.
The consequence of his misadventure was a violent cold attended with
fever, which confined him to his room, prevented him from giving lectures,
and freed me from the necessity of attending them; but this misfortune I
supported with truly Christian fortitude. However, I constantly asked
after his health with filial anxiety, and this morning, making my usual
inquiries, I was informed, to my infinite astonishment and vexation, that
he was perfectly recovered and intended to give lectures this very day!!!
Verily, I swear that six of his duteous pupils--myself as their
general--sallied forth to the apothecary’s house with a fixed
determination to thrash him for having performed so speedy a cure, but,
luckily for himself, the rascal was not at home. But here comes my
fiddling master, for (but this is a secret) I am learning to play on the
violin. Twit, twat, twat, twit! “Pray, M. de la Penche, do you think I
shall ever make anything of this violin? Do you think I have an ear for
music?” “Un magnifique! Un superbe! Par honneur, sir, you be a ver great
genius in de music. Good morning, monsieur!” This M. de la Penche is a
better judge than I thought for.
This new whim of mine is partly a scheme of self-defence. Three neighbours
have run music-mad lately--two of them fiddle-scrapers, the third a
flute-tooter--and are perpetually annoying me with their vile
performances, compared with which the gruntings of a whole herd of sows
would be seraphic melody. Now I hope, by frequently playing myself, to
render my ear callous. Besides, the evils of life are crowding upon me,
and music is “the sweetest assuager of cares.” It helps to relieve and
soothe the mind, and is a sort of refuge from calamity, from slights and
neglects and censures and insults and disappointments; from the warmth of
real enemies and the coldness of pretended friends; from your _well
wishers_ (as they are justly called, in opposition, I suppose, to _well
doers_), men whose inclinations to serve you always decrease in a most
mathematical proportion as their opportunities to do it increase; from the
“Proud man’s contumely, and the spurns
Which patient merit of th’ unworthy takes;”
from grievances that are the growth of all times and places and not
peculiar to _this age_, which authors call this _critical age_, and
divines this _sinful age_, and politicians _this age of revolutions_. An
acquaintance of mine calls it this _learned age_ in due reverence to his
own abilities, and like Monsieur Whatd’yecallhim, who used to pull off his
hat when he spoke of himself. The poet laureate calls it “_this golden
age_,” and with good reason,--
For _him_ the fountains with Canary flow,
And, best of fruit, spontaneous guineas grow.
Pope, in his “Dunciad,” makes it _this leaden age_, but I choose to call
it without an epithet, _this_ age. Many things we must expect to meet with
which it would be hard to bear, if a compensation were not found in honest
endeavours to do well, in virtuous affections and connections, and in
harmless and reasonable amusements. And why should _not_ a man amuse
himself sometimes? _Vive la bagatelle!_
I received a letter this morning from my friend Allen. He is up to his
ears in business, and I sincerely congratulate him upon it--occupation, I
am convinced, being the great secret of happiness. “Nothing makes the
temper so fretful as indolence,” said a young lady who, beneath the soft
surface of feminine delicacy, possesses a mind acute by nature, and
strengthened by habits of reflection. ’Pon my word, Miss Evans, I beg your
pardon a thousand times for bepraising you to your face, but, really, I
have written so long that I had forgot to whom I was writing.
Have you read Mr. Fox’s letter to the Westminster electors? It is quite
the political _go_ at Cambridge, and has converted many souls to the
Foxite faith.
Have you seen the Siddons this season? or the Jordan? An acquaintance of
mine has a tragedy coming out early in the next season, the principal
character of which Mrs. Siddons will act. He has importuned me to write
the prologue and epilogue, but, conscious of my inability, I have excused
myself with a jest, and told him I was too good a Christian to be
accessory to the damnation of anything.
There is an old proverb of a river of words and a spoonful of sense, and I
think this letter has been a pretty good proof of it. But as nonsense is
better than blank paper, I will fill this side with a song I wrote lately.
My friend, Charles Hague[33] the composer, will set it to wild music. I
shall sing it, and accompany myself on the violin. _Ça ira!_
Cathloma, who reigned in the Highlands of Scotland about two hundred years
after the birth of our Saviour, was defeated and killed in a war with a
neighbouring prince, and Nina-Thoma his daughter (according to the custom
of those times and that country) was imprisoned in a cave by the seaside.
This is supposed to be her complaint:--
How long will ye round me be swelling,
O ye blue-tumbling waves of the sea?
Not always in caves was my dwelling,
Nor beneath the cold blast of the Tree;
Thro’ the high sounding Hall of Cathloma
In the steps of my beauty I strayed,
The warriors beheld Nina-Thoma,
And they blessed the dark-tressed Maid!
By my Friends, by my Lovers discarded,
Like the Flower of the Rock now I waste,
That lifts its fair head unregarded,
And scatters its leaves on the blast.
A Ghost! by my cavern it darted!
In moonbeams the spirit was drest--
For lovely appear the Departed,
When they visit the dreams of my rest!
But dispersed by the tempest’s commotion,
Fleet the shadowy forms of Delight;
Ah! cease, thou shrill blast of the Ocean!
To howl thro’ my Cavern by night.[34]
Are you asleep, my dear Mary? I have administered rather a strong dose of
opium; however, if in the course of your nap you should chance to dream
that I am, with ardor of eternal friendship, your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE,
you will never have dreamt a truer dream in all your days.
XVIII. TO ANNE EVANS.
JESUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, February 10, 1793.
MY DEAR ANNE,--A little before I had received your mamma’s letter, a bird
of the air had informed me of your illness--and sure never did owl or
night-raven (“those mournful messengers of heavy things”) pipe a more
loathsome song. But I flatter myself that ere you have received this
scrawl of mine, by care and attention you will have lured back the
rosy-lipped fugitive, Health. I know of no misfortune so little
susceptible of consolation as sickness: it is indeed easy to offer
comfort, when we ourselves are well; _then_ we can be full of grave saws
upon the duty of resignation, etc.; but alas! when the sore visitations of
pain come _home_, all our philosophy vanishes, and nothing remains to be
seen. I speak of myself, but a mere sensitive animal, with little wisdom
and no patience. Yet if anything can throw a melancholy smile over the
pale, wan face of illness, it must be the sight and attentions of those we
love. There are one or two beings, in this planet of ours, whom God has
formed in so kindly a mould that I could almost consent to be ill in order
to be nursed by them.
O turtle-eyed affection!
If thou be present--who can be distrest?
Pain seems to smile, and sorrow is at rest:
No more the thoughts in wild repinings roll,
And tender murmurs hush the soften’d soul.
But I will not proceed at this rate, for I am writing and thinking myself
fast into the spleen, and feel very obligingly disposed to communicate the
same doleful fit to you, my dear sister. Yet permit me to say, it is
almost your own fault. You were half angry at my writing _laughing
nonsense_ to you, and see what you have got in exchange--pale-faced,
solemn, stiff-starched stupidity. I must confess, indeed, that the latter
is rather more in unison with my present feelings, which from one untoward
freak of fortune or other are not of the most comfortable kind. Within
this last month I have lost a brother[35] and a friend! But I struggle for
cheerfulness--and sometimes, when the sun shines out, I succeed in the
effort. This at least I endeavour, not to infect the cheerfulness of
others, and not to write my vexations upon my forehead. I read a story
lately of an old Greek philosopher, who once harangued so movingly on the
miseries of life, that his audience went home and hanged themselves; but
he himself (my author adds) lived many years afterwards in very sleek
condition.
God love you, my dear Anne! and receive as from a brother the warmest
affections of your
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XIX. TO THE REV. GEORGE COLERIDGE.
Wednesday morning, July 28, 1793.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--I left Salisbury on Tuesday morning--should have stayed
there longer, but that Ned, ignorant of my coming, had preëngaged himself
on a journey to Portsmouth with Skinner. I left Ned well and merry, as
likewise his wife, who, by all the Cupids, is a very worthy old lady.[36]
Monday afternoon, Ned, Tatum, and myself sat from four till ten drinking!
and then arose as cool as three undressed cucumbers. Edward and I (O! the
wonders of this life) disputed with great coolness and forbearance the
whole time. We neither of us were _convinced_, though now and then Ned was
_convicted_. Tatum umpire sat,
And by decision more embroiled the fray.
I found all well in Exeter, to which place I proceeded directly, as my
mother might have been unprepared from the supposition I meant to stay
longer in Salisbury. I shall dine with James to-day at brother
Phillips’.[37]
My ideas are so discomposed by the jolting of the coach that I can write
no more at present.
A piece of gallantry!
I presented a moss rose to a lady. Dick Hart[38] asked her if she was not
afraid to put it in her bosom, as perhaps there might be love in it. I
immediately wrote the following little ode or song or what you please to
call it.[39] It is of the namby-pamby genus.
THE ROSE.
As late each flower that sweetest blows
I plucked, the Garden’s pride!
Within the petals of a Rose
A sleeping Love I spied.
Around his brows a beaming wreath
Of many a lucent hue;
All purple glowed his cheek beneath,
Inebriate with dew.
I softly seized the unguarded Power,
Nor scared his balmy rest;
And placed him, caged within the flower,
On Angelina’s breast.
But when unweeting of the guile
Awoke the prisoner sweet,
He struggled to escape awhile
And stamped his faery feet.
Ah! soon the soul-entrancing sight
Subdued the impatient boy!
He gazed! he thrilled with deep delight!
Then clapped his wings for joy.
“And O!” he cried, “of magic kind
What charms this Throne endear!
Some other Love let Venus find--
I’ll fix _my_ empire here.”
An extempore! Ned during the dispute, thinking he had got me down, said,
“Ah! Sam! you _blush_!” “Sir,” answered I,
Ten thousand Blushes
Flutter round me drest like little Loves,
And veil my visage with their crimson wings.
There is no meaning in the lines, but we both agreed they were very
pretty. If you see Mr. Hussy, you will not forget to present my respects
to him, and to his accomplished daughter, who certes is a very sweet young
lady.
God bless you and your grateful and affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XX. TO THE SAME.
[Postmark, August 5, 1793.]
MY DEAR BROTHER,--Since my arrival in the country I have been anxiously
expecting a letter from you, nor can I divine the reason of your silence.
From the letter to my brother James, a few lines of which he read to me,
I am fearful that your silence proceeds from displeasure. If so, what is
left for me to do but to grieve? The past is not in my power. For the
follies of which I may have been guilty, I have been greatly disgusted;
and I trust the memory of them will operate to future consistency of
conduct.
My mother is very well,--indeed, better for her illness. Her complexion
and eye, the truest indications of health, are much clearer. Little
William and his mother are well. My brother James is at Sidmouth. I was
there yesterday. He, his wife, and children are well. Frederick is a
charming child. Little James had a most providential escape the day before
yesterday. As my brother was in the field contiguous to his place he heard
two men scream, and turning round saw a horse leap over little James, and
then kick at him. He ran up; found him unhurt. The men said that the horse
was feeding with his tail toward the child, and looking round ran at him
open-mouthed, pushed him down and leaped over him, and then kicked back at
him. Their screaming, my brother supposes, prevented the horse from
repeating the blow. Brother was greatly agitated, as you may suppose. I
stayed at Tiverton about ten days, and got no small kudos among the young
belles by complimentary effusions in the poetic way.
A specimen:--
CUPID TURNED CHYMIST.
Cupid, if storying Legends tell aright,
Once framed a rich Elixir of Delight.
A chalice o’er love-kindled flames he fix’d,
And in it Nectar and Ambrosia mix’d:
With these the magic dews which Evening brings,
Brush’d from the Idalian star by faery wings:
Each tender pledge of sacred Faith he join’d,
Each gentler Pleasure of th’ unspotted mind--
Day-dreams, whose tints with sportive brightness glow,
And Hope, the blameless parasite of Woe.
The eyeless Chymist heard the process rise,
The steamy chalice bubbled up in sighs;
Sweet sounds transpired, as when the enamor’d dove
Pours the soft murmuring of responsive Love.
The finished work might Envy vainly blame,
And “Kisses” was the precious Compound’s name.
With half the God his Cyprian Mother blest,
And breath’d on Nesbitt’s lovelier lips the rest.
Do you know Fanny Nesbitt? She was my fellow-traveler in the Tiverton
diligence from Exeter. [She is], I think, a very pretty girl. The orders
for tea are: Imprimis, five pounds of ten shillings green; Item, four
pounds of eight shillings green; in all nine pounds of tea.
God bless you and your obliged
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XXI. TO G. L. TUCKETT.[40]
HENLEY, Thursday night, February 6 [1794].
DEAR TUCKETT,--I have this moment received your long letter! The Tuesday
before last, an accident of the Reading Fair, our regiment was disposed of
for the week in and about the towns within ten miles of Reading, and, as
it was not known before we set off to what places we would go, my letters
were kept at the Reading post-office till our return. I was conveyed to
Henley-upon-Thames, which place our regiment left last Tuesday; but I am
ordered to remain on account of these dreadfully troublesome eruptions,
and that I might nurse my comrade, who last Friday sickened of the
confluent smallpox. So here I am, _videlicet_ the Henley workhouse.[41] It
is a little house of one apartment situated in the midst of a large
garden, about a hundred yards from the house. It is four strides in length
and three in breadth; has four windows, which look to all the winds. The
almost total want of sleep, the putrid smell, and the fatiguing struggles
with my poor comrade during his delirium are nearly too much for me in my
present state. In return I enjoy external peace, and kind and respectful
behaviour from the people of the workhouse. Tuckett, your motives must
have been excellent ones; how could they be otherwise! As an _agent_,
therefore, you are blameless, but your efforts in my behalf demand my
gratitude--_that_ my heart will pay you, into whatever depth of horror
your mistaken activity may eventually have precipitated me. As an _agent_,
you stand acquitted, but the action was _morally_ base. In an hour of
extreme anguish, under the most solemn imposition of secrecy, I entrusted
my place and residence to the young men at Christ’s Hospital; the
intelligence which you extorted from their imbecility should have remained
sacred with you. It lost not the obligation of secrecy by the transfer.
But your _motives_ justify you? To the eye of your friendship the
divulging might have appeared _necessary_, but what shadow of _necessity_
is there to excuse you in showing my letters--to stab the very heart of
confidence. You have acted, Tuckett, so uniformly well that reproof must
be new to you. I doubtless shall have offended you. I would to God that I,
too, possessed the tender irritableness of unhandled sensibility. Mine is
a sensibility gangrened with inward corruption and the keen searching of
the air from without. Your gossip with the commanding officer seems so
totally useless and unmotived that I almost find a difficulty in believing
it.
A letter from my brother George! I feel a kind of pleasure that it is not
directed--it lies unopened--am I not already sufficiently miserable? The
anguish of those who love me, of him beneath the shadow of whose
protection I grew up--does it not plant the pillow with thorns and make my
dreams full of terrors? Yet I dare not burn the letter--it seems as if
there were a horror in the action. One pang, however acute, is better than
long-continued solicitude. My brother George possessed the cheering
consolation of conscience--but I am talking I know not what--yet there is
a pleasure, doubtless an exquisite pleasure, mingled up in the most
painful of our virtuous emotions. Alas! my poor mother! What an
intolerable weight of guilt is suspended over my head by a hair on one
hand; and if I endure to live--the look ever downward--insult, pity, hell!
God or Chaos, preserve me! What but infinite Wisdom or infinite Confusion
can do it?
XXII. TO THE REV. GEORGE COLERIDGE.
February 8, 1794.
My more than brother! What shall I say? What shall I write to you? Shall I
profess an abhorrence of my past conduct? Ah me! too well do I know its
iniquity! But to abhor! this feeble and exhausted heart supplies not so
strong an emotion. O my wayward soul! I have been a fool even to madness.
What shall I dare to promise? My mind is illegible to myself. I am lost in
the labyrinth, the trackless wilderness of my own bosom. Truly may I say,
“I am wearied of being saved.” My frame is chill and torpid. The ebb and
flow of my hopes and fears has stagnated into recklessness. One wish only
can I read distinctly in my heart, that it were possible for me to be
forgotten as though I had never been! The shame and sorrow of those who
loved me! The anguish of him who protected me from my childhood upwards,
the sore travail of her who bore me! Intolerable images of horror! They
haunt my sleep, they enfever my dreams! O that the shadow of Death were on
my eyelids, that I were like the loathsome form by which I now sit! O that
without guilt I might ask of my Maker annihilation! My brother, my
brother! pray for me, comfort me, my brother! I am very wretched, and,
though my complaint be bitter, my stroke is heavier than my groaning.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XXIII. TO THE SAME.
Tuesday night, February 11, 1794.
I am indeed oppressed, oppressed with the greatness of your love! Mine
eyes gush out with tears, my heart is sick and languid with the weight of
unmerited kindness. I had intended to have given you a minute history of
my thoughts and actions for the last two years of my life. A most severe
and faithful history of the heart would it have been--the Omniscient knows
it. But I am so universally unwell, and the hour so late, that I must
defer it till to-morrow. To-night I shall have a bed in a separate room
from my comrade, and, I trust, shall have repaired my strength by sleep
ere the morning. For eight days and nights I have not had my clothes off.
My comrade is not dead; there is every hope of his escaping death. Closely
has he been pursued by the mighty hunter! Undoubtedly, my brother, I could
wish to return to College; I know what I _must suffer_ there, but deeply
do I feel what I _ought_ to suffer. Is my brother James still at
Salisbury? I will write to him, to all.
[Illustration]
Concerning my emancipation, it appears to me that my discharge can be
easily procured by _interest_, with great difficulty by _negotiation_; but
of this is not my brother James a more competent judge?
What my future life may produce I dare not anticipate. Pray for me, my
brother. I will pray nightly to the Almighty dispenser of good and evil,
that his chastisement may not have harrowed my heart in vain. Scepticism
has mildewed my hope in the Saviour. I was far from disbelieving the truth
of revealed religion, but still far from a steady faith--the “Comforter
that should have relieved my soul” was far from me.
Farewell! to-morrow I will resume my pen. Mr. Boyer! indeed, indeed, my
heart thanks him; how often in the petulance of satire, how ungratefully
have I injured that man!
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XXIV. TO CAPTAIN JAMES COLERIDGE.
February 20, 1794.
In a mind which vice has not utterly divested of sensibility, few
occurrences can inflict a more acute pang than the receiving proofs of
tenderness and love where only resentment and reproach were expected and
deserved. The gentle voice of conscience which had incessantly murmured
within the soul then raises its tone and speaks with a tongue of thunder.
My conduct towards you, and towards my other brothers, has displayed a
strange combination of madness, ingratitude, and dishonesty. But you
forgive me. May my Maker forgive me! May the time arrive when I shall have
forgiven myself!
With regard to my emancipation, every inquiry I have made, every piece of
intelligence I could collect, alike tend to assure me that it may be done
by _interest_, but not by negotiation without an expense which I should
tremble to write. Forty guineas were offered for a discharge the day after
a young man was sworn in, and were refused. His friends made interest, and
his discharge came down from the War Office. If, however, negotiation
_must_ be first attempted, it will be expedient to write to our
colonel--his name is Gwynne--he holds the rank of general in the army. His
address is General Gwynne, K. L. D., King’s Mews, London.
My assumed name is Silas Tomkyn Comberbacke, 15th, or King’s Regiment of
Light Dragoons, G Troop. My _number_ I do not know. It is of no import.
The bounty I received was six guineas and a half; but a light horseman’s
bounty is a mere lure; it is expended for him in things which he must have
had without a bounty--gaiters, a pair of leather breeches, stable jacket,
and shell; horse cloth, surcingle, watering bridle, brushes, and the long
etc. of military accoutrement. I _enlisted_ the 2d of December, 1793, was
attested and sworn the 4th. I am at present nurse to a sick man, and
shall, I believe, stay at Henley another week. There will be a large
draught from our regiment to complete our troops abroad. The men were
picked out to-day. I suppose I am not one, being a very indocile
equestrian. Farewell.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Our regiment is at Reading, and Hounslow, and Maidenhead, and Kensington;
our headquarters, Reading, Berks. The commanding officer there, Lieutenant
Hopkinson, our adjutant.
TO CAPTAIN JAMES COLERIDGE, Tiverton, Devonshire.
XXV. TO THE REV. GEORGE COLERIDGE.
THE COMPASSES, HIGH WYCOMBE, March 12, 1794.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--Accept my poor thanks for the day’s enclosed, which I
received safely. I explained the whole matter to the adjutant, who
laughed and said I had been used scurvily; he deferred settling the bill
till Thursday morning. A Captain Ogle,[42] of our regiment, who is
returned from abroad, has taken great notice of me. When he visits the
stables at night he always enters into conversation with me, and to-day,
finding from the corporal’s report that I was unwell, he sent me a couple
of bottles of wine. These things demand my gratitude. I wrote last
week--_currente calamo_--a declamation for my friend Allen on the
comparative good and evil of novels. The credit which he got for it I
should almost blush to tell you. All the fellows have got copies, and they
meditate having it printed, and dispersing it through the University. The
best part of it I built on a sentence in a last letter of yours, and
indeed, I wrote most part of it _feelingly_.
I met yesterday, smoking in the recess, a chimney corner of the
pot-house[43] at which I am quartered, a man of the greatest information
and most original genius I ever lit upon. His philosophical theories of
heaven and hell would have both amused you and given you hints for much
speculation. He solemnly assured me that he believed himself divinely
inspired. He slept in the same room with me, and kept me awake till three
in the morning with his ontological disquisitions. Some of the ideas
would have made, you shudder from their daring impiety, others would have
astounded with their sublimity. My memory, tenacious and systematizing,
would enable [me] to write an octavo from his conversation. “I find [says
he] from the intellectual atmosphere that emanes from, and envelops you,
that you are in a state of recipiency.” He was deceived. I have little
faith, yet am wonderfully fond of speculating on mystical schemes. Wisdom
may be gathered from the maddest flights of imagination, as medicines were
stumbled upon in the wild processes of alchemy. God bless you. Your ever
grateful
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Tuesday evening.--I leave this place [High Wycombe] on Thursday, 10
o’clock, for Reading. A letter will arrive in time before I go.
XXVI. TO THE SAME.
Sunday night, March 21, 1794.
I have endeavoured to feel what I ought to feel. Affiliated to you from my
childhood, what must be my present situation? But I know you, my dear
brother; and I entertain a humble confidence that my efforts in well-doing
shall in some measure repay you. There is a _vis inertiæ_ in the human
mind--I am convinced that a man once corrupted will ever remain so, unless
some sudden revolution, some unexpected change of place or station, shall
have utterly altered his connection. When these shocks of adversity have
electrified his moral frame, he feels a convalescence of soul, and becomes
like a being recently formed from the hands of nature.
The last letter I received from you at High Wycombe was that almost blank
letter which enclosed the guinea. I have written to the postmaster. I have
breeches and waistcoats at Cambridge, three or four shirts, and some
neckcloths, and a few pairs of stockings; the clothes, which, rather from
the order of the regiment than the impulse of my necessities, I parted
with in Reading on my first arrival at the regiment, I disposed of for a
mere trifle, comparatively, and at a small expense can recover them all
but my coat and hat. They are gone irrevocably. My shirts, which I have
with me, are, all but one, worn to rags--mere rags; their texture was
ill-adapted to the labour of the stables.
Shall I confess to you my weakness, my more than brother? I am afraid to
meet you. When I call to mind the toil and wearisomeness of your
avocations, and think how you sacrifice your amusements and your health;
when I recollect your habitual and self-forgetting economy, how generously
severe, my soul sickens at its own guilt. A thousand reflections crowd in
my mind; they are almost too much for me. Yet you, my brother, would
comfort me, not reproach me, and extend the hand of forgiveness to one
whose purposes were virtuous, though infirm, and whose energies vigorous,
though desultory. Indeed, I long to see you, although I cannot help
dreading it.
I mean to write to Dr. Pearce. The letter I will enclose to you. Perhaps
it may not be proper to write, perhaps it may be necessary. You will best
judge. The discharge should, I think, be sent down to the adjutant--yet I
don’t know; it would be more comfortable to me to receive my dismission in
London, were it not for the appearing in these clothes.
By to-morrow I shall be enabled to tell the exact expenses of equipping,
etc.
I must conclude abruptly. God bless you, and your ever grateful
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XXVII. TO THE SAME.
End of March, 1794.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--I have been rather uneasy, that I have not heard from
you since my departure from High Wycombe. Your letters are a comfort to me
in the comfortless hour--they are manna in the wilderness. I should have
written you long ere this, but in truth I have been blockaded by a whole
army of petty vexations, bad quarters, etc., and within this week I have
been thrown three times from my horse and run away with to the no small
perturbation of my nervous system almost every day. I ride a horse, young,
and as undisciplined as myself. After tumult and agitation of any kind the
mind and all its affections seem to _doze_ for a while, and we sit
shivering with chilly feverishness wrapped up in the ragged and threadbare
cloak of mere animal enjoyment.
On Sunday last I was surprised, or rather confounded, with a visit from
Mr. Cornish, so confounded that for more than a minute I could not speak
to him. He behaved with great delicacy and much apparent solicitude of
friendship. He passed through Reading with his sister Lady Shore. I have
received several letters from my friends at Cambridge, of most soothing
contents. They write me, that with “undiminished esteem and increased
affection, the _Jesuites_ look forward to my return as to that of a lost
brother!”
My present address is the White Hart, Reading, Berks.
Adieu, most dear brother!
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XXVIII. TO THE SAME.
March 27, 1794.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--I find that I was too sanguine in my expectations of
recovering all my clothes. My coat, which I had supposed gone, and all the
stockings, viz., four pairs of almost new silk stockings, and two pairs
of new silk and cotton, I can get again for twenty-three shillings. I have
ordered, therefore, a pair of breeches, which will be nineteen shillings,
a waistcoat at twelve shillings, a pair of shoes at seven shillings and
four pence. Besides these I must have a hat, which will be eighteen
shillings, and two neckcloths, which will be five or six shillings. These
things I have ordered. My travelling expenses will be about half a guinea.
Have I done wrong in ordering these things? Or did you mean me to do it by
desiring me to arrange what was necessary for my personal appearance at
Cambridge? I have so seldom acted right, that in every step I take of my
own accord I tremble lest I should be wrong. I forgot in the above account
to mention a flannel waistcoat; it will be six shillings. The military
dress is almost oppressively warm, and so very ill as I am at present I
think it imprudent to hazard cold. I will see you at London, or rather at
Hackney. There will be two or three trifling expenses on my leaving the
army; I know not their exact amount. The adjutant dismissed me from all
duty yesterday. My head throbs so, and I am so sick at stomach that it is
with difficulty I can write. One thing more I wished to mention. There are
three books, which I parted with at Reading. The bookseller, whom I have
occasionally obliged by composing advertisements for his newspaper, has
offered them me at the same price he bought them. They are a very valuable
edition of Casimir[44] by Barbou,[45] a Synesius[46] by Canterus and
Bentley’s Quarto Edition. They are worth thirty shillings, at least, and I
sold them for fourteen. The two first I mean to translate. I have finished
two or three Odes of Casimir, and shall on my return to College send them
to Dodsley as a specimen of an intended translation. Barbou’s edition is
the only one that contains all the works of Casimir. God bless you. Your
grateful
S. T. C.
XXIX. TO THE SAME.
Sunday night, March 30, 1794.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--I received your enclosed. I am fearful, that as you
advise me to go immediately to Cambridge after my discharge, that the
utmost contrivances of economy will not enable [me] to make it adequate to
all the expenses of my clothes and travelling. I shall go across the
country on many accounts. The expense (I have examined) will be as nearly
equal as well can be. The _fare_ from Reading to High Wycombe on the
outside is four shillings, from High Wycombe to Cambridge (for _there is_
a coach that passes through Cambridge from Wycombe) I suppose about twelve
shillings, perhaps a trifle more. I shall be two days and a half on the
road, _two nights_. Can I calculate the expense at less than half a
guinea, including all things? An additional guinea would perhaps be
sufficient. Surely, my brother, I am not so utterly abandoned as not to
feel the _meaning_ and _duty_ of _economy_. Oh me! I wish to God I were
happy; but it would be strange indeed if I were so.
I long ago theoretically and in a less degree experimentally knew the
necessity of faith in order to regulate virtue, nor did I even seriously
disbelieve the existence of a future state. In short, my religious creed
bore and, perhaps, bears a correspondence with my mind and heart. I had
too much vanity to be altogether a Christian, too much tenderness of
nature to be utterly an infidel. Fond of the dazzle of wit, fond of
subtlety of argument, I could not read without some degree of pleasure the
levities of Voltaire or the reasonings of Helvetius; but, tremblingly
alive to the feelings of humanity, and susceptible to the charms of truth,
my heart forced me to admire the “beauty of holiness” in the Gospel,
forced me to _love_ the Jesus, whom my reason (or perhaps my reasonings)
would not permit me to worship,--my faith, therefore, was made up of the
Evangelists and the deistic philosophy--a kind of _religious twilight_. I
said “_perhaps bears_,”--yes! my brother, for who can say, “_Now_ I’ll be
a Christian”? Faith is neither altogether voluntary; we cannot believe
what we choose, but we can certainly cultivate such habits of thinking and
acting as will give force and effective energy to the arguments on either
side.
If I receive my discharge by Thursday, I will be, God pleased, in
Cambridge on Sunday. Farewell, my brother! Believe me your severities only
wound me as they awake the _voice_ within to speak, ah! how more harshly!
I feel gratitude and love towards you, even when I shrink and shiver.
Your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XXX. TO THE SAME.
April 7, 1794.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--The last three days I have spent at Bray, near
Maidenhead, at the house of a gentleman who has behaved with particular
attention to me. I accepted his invitation as it was in my power in some
measure to repay his kindness by the revisal of a performance he is about
to publish, and by writing him a dedication and preface. At my return I
found two letters from you, the one containing the two guineas, which will
be perfectly adequate to my expenses, and, my brother, what some part of
your letter made me feel, I am ill able to express; but of this at another
time. I have signed the certificate of my expenses, but not my discharge.
The moment I receive it I shall set off for Cambridge immediately, most
probably through London, as the gentleman, whose house I was at at Bray,
has pressed me to take his horse, and accompany him on Wednesday morning,
as he himself intends to ride to town that day. If my discharge comes down
on Tuesday morning I shall embrace his offer, particularly as I shall be
introduced to his bookseller, a thing of some consequence to my present
views.
Clagget[47] has set four songs of mine most divinely, for two violins and
a pianoforte. I have done him some services, and he wishes me to write a
serious opera, which he will set, and have introduced. It is to be a joint
work. I think of it. The rules for _adaptable_ composition which he has
given me are excellent, and I feel my powers greatly strengthened, owing,
I believe, to my having read little or nothing for these last four months.
XXXI. TO THE SAME.
May 1, 1794.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--I have been convened before the fellows.[48] Dr. Pearce
behaved with great asperity, Mr. Plampin[49] with exceeding and most
delicate kindness. My sentence is a reprimand (not a public one, but
_implied_ in the sentence), a month’s confinement to the precincts of the
College, and to translate the works of Demetrius Phalareus into English.
It is a thin quarto of about ninety Greek pages. All the fellows tried to
persuade the Master to greater leniency, but in vain. Without the least
affectation I applaud his conduct, and think nothing of it. The
confinement is nothing. I have the fields and grove of the College to walk
in, and what can I wish more? What do I wish more? Nothing. The Demetrius
is dry, and utterly untransferable to _modern_ use, and yet from the
Doctor’s words I suspect that he wishes it to be a publication, as he has
more than once sent to know how I go on, and pressed me to exert erudition
in some notes, and to write a preface. Besides this, I have had a
declamation to write in the routine of college business, and the Rustat
examination, at which I got credit. I get up every morning at five
o’clock.
Every one of my acquaintance I have dropped solemnly and forever, except
those of my College with whom before my departure I had been least of all
connected--who had always remonstrated against my imprudences, yet have
treated me with almost fraternal affection, Mr. Caldwell particularly. I
thought the most _decent_ way of dropping acquaintances was to express my
intention, openly and irrevocably.
I find I must either go out at a by-term or degrade to the Christmas after
next; but more of this to-morrow. I have been engaged in finishing a Greek
ode. I mean to write for all the prizes. I have had no time upon my hands.
I shall aim at correctness and perspicuity, not _genius_. My last ode was
so _sublime_ that nobody could understand it. _If_ I should be so _very
lucky_ as to win one of the prizes, I could _comfortably_ ask the Doctor
advice concerning the _time_ of my degree. I will write to-morrow.
God bless you, my brother! my father!
S. T. COLERIDGE.
XXXII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
GLOUCESTER, Sunday morning, July 6, 1794.
S. T. Coleridge to R. Southey, Health and Republicanism to be! When you
write, direct to me, “To be kept at the Post Office, Wrexham,
Denbighshire, N. Wales.” I mention this circumstance _now_, lest carried
away by a flood of confluent ideas I should forget it. You are averse to
gratitudinarian flourishes, else would I talk about hospitality,
attentions, etc. However, as I must not thank you, I will thank my stars.
Verily, Southey, I like not Oxford nor the inhabitants of it. I would say,
thou art a nightingale among owls, but thou art so songless and heavy
towards night that I will rather liken thee to the matin lark. Thy _nest_
is in a blighted cornfield, where the sleepy poppy nods its red-cowled
head, and the weak-eyed mole plies his dark work; but thy soaring is even
unto heaven. Or let me add (for my appetite for similes is truly canine at
this moment) that as the Italian nobles their new-fashioned doors, so thou
dost make the adamantine gate of democracy turn on its golden hinges to
most sweet music. Our journeying has been intolerably fatiguing from the
heat and whiteness of the roads, and the _unhedged_ country presents
nothing but _stone_ fences, dreary to the eye and scorching to the touch.
But we shall soon be in Wales.
Gloucester is a nothing-to-be-said-about town. The women have almost all
of them sharp noses.
* * * * *
It is _wrong_, Southey! for a little girl with a half-famished sickly
baby in her arms to put her head in at the window of an inn--“Pray give me
a bit of bread and meat!” from a party dining on lamb, green peas, and
salad. Why? Because it is _impertinent_ and _obtrusive_! “I am a
gentleman! and wherefore the clamorous voice of woe intrude upon mine
ear?” My companion is a man of cultivated, though not vigorous
understanding; his feelings are all on the side of humanity; yet such are
the unfeeling remarks, which the lingering remains of aristocracy
occasionally prompt. When the pure system of pantisocracy shall have
_aspheterized_--from ἀ, non, and σφέτερος, proprius (we really _wanted_
such a word), instead of travelling along the circuitous, dusty, beaten
highroad of diction, you thus cut across the soft, green, pathless field
of novelty! Similes for ever! Hurrah! I have bought a little blank book,
and portable ink horn; [and] as I journey onward, I ever and anon pluck
the wild flowers of poesy, “inhale their odours awhile,” then throw them
away and think no more of them. I will not do so! Two lines of mine:--
And o’er the sky’s unclouded blue
The sultry heat _suffus’d_ a _brassy_ hue.
The cockatrice is a foul dragon with a _crown_ on its head. The Eastern
nations believe it to be hatched by a viper on a cock’s egg. Southey, dost
thou not see wisdom in her _Coan_ vest of allegory? The cockatrice is
emblematic of monarchy, a _monster_ generated by _ingratitude_ or
_absurdity_. When serpents _sting_, the only remedy is to kill the
_serpent_, and _besmear_ the _wound_ with the _fat_. Would you desire
better sympathy?
Description of heat from a poem I am manufacturing, the title:
“Perspiration. A Travelling Eclogue.”
The dust flies smothering, as on clatt’ring wheel
Loath’d aristocracy careers along;
The distant track quick vibrates to the eye,
And white and dazzling undulates with heat,
Where scorching to the unwary travellers’ touch,
The stone fence flings its narrow slip of shade;
Or, where the worn sides of the chalky road
Yield their scant excavations (sultry grots!),
Emblem of languid patience, we behold
The fleecy files faint-ruminating lie.
Farewell, sturdy Republican! Write me concerning Burnett and thyself, and
concerning etc., etc. My next shall be a more sober and chastened epistle;
but, you see, I was in the humour for metaphors, and, to tell thee the
truth, I have so often serious reasons to quarrel with my inclination,
that I do not choose to contradict it for trifles. To Lovell, fraternity
and civic remembrances! Hucks’ compliments.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Addressed to “Robert Southey. Miss Tyler’s, Bristol.”
XXXIII. TO THE SAME.
WREXHAM, Sunday, July 15, 1794.[50]
Your letter, Southey! made me melancholy. Man is a bundle of habits, but
of all habits the habit of despondence is the most pernicious to virtue
and happiness. I once shipwrecked my frail bark on that rock; a friendly
plank was vouchsafed me. Be you wise by my experience, and receive unhurt
the flower, which I have climbed precipices to pluck. Consider the high
advantages which you possess in so eminent a degree--health, strength of
mind, and confirmed habits of strict morality. Beyond all doubt, by the
creative powers of your genius, you might supply whatever the stern
simplicity of republican wants could require. Is there no possibility of
procuring the office of clerk in a compting-house? A month’s application
would qualify you for it. For God’s sake, Southey! enter not into the
church. Concerning Allen I say little, but I feel anguish at times. This
earnestness of remonstrance! I will not offend you by asking your pardon
for it. The following is a _fact_. A friend of Hucks’ after long struggles
between principle and _interest_, as it is improperly called, accepted a
place under government. He took the oaths, shuddered, went home and threw
himself in an agony out of a two-pair of stairs window! These dreams of
despair are most soothing to the imagination. I well know it. We shroud
ourselves in the mantle of distress, and tell our poor hearts, “This is
_happiness_!” There is a _dignity_ in all these solitary emotions that
flatters the pride of our nature. Enough of sermonizing. As I was
meditating on the capability of pleasure in a mind like yours, I unwarily
fell into poetry:[51]--
’Tis thine with fairy forms to talk,
And thine the philosophic walk;
And what to thee the sweetest are--
The setting sun, the Evening Star--
The tints, that live along the sky,
The Moon, that meets thy raptured eye,
Where grateful oft the big drops start,
Dear silent pleasures of the Heart!
But if thou pour one votive lay,
For humble independence pray;
Whom (sages say) in days of yore
Meek Competence to Wisdom bore.
So shall thy little vessel glide
With a fair breeze adown the tide,
Till Death shall close thy tranquil eye
While Faith exclaims: “Thou shalt not die!”
“The heart-smile glowing on his aged cheek
Mild as decaying light of summer’s eve,”
are lines eminently beautiful. The whole is pleasing. For a motto! Surely
my memory has suffered an epileptic fit. A Greek motto would be pedantic.
These lines will perhaps do:--
All mournful to the pensive sages’ eye,[52]
The monuments of human glory lie;
Fall’n palaces crush’d by the ruthless haste
Of Time, and many an empire’s silent waste--
* * * * *
But where a sight shall shuddering sorrow find
Sad as the ruins of the human mind,--
BOWLES.
A better will soon occur to me. Poor Poland! They go on sadly there.
Warmth of particular friendship does not imply absorption. The nearer you
approach the sun, the more intense are his rays. Yet what distant corner
of the system do they not cheer and vivify? The ardour of private
attachments makes philanthropy a necessary _habit_ of the soul. I love my
friend. Such as _he_ is, all mankind are or might be. The deduction is
evident. Philanthropy (and indeed every other virtue) is a thing of
_concretion_. Some home-born feeling is the centre of the ball, that
rolling on through life collects and assimilates every congenial
affection. What did you mean by _H._ has “my understanding”? I have
puzzled myself in vain to discover the import of the sentence. The only
sense it _seemed_ to bear was so like _mock-humility_, that I scolded
myself for the momentary supposition.[53] My heart is so heavy at present,
that I will defer the finishing of this letter till to-morrow.
I saw a face in Wrexham Church this morning, which recalled “Thoughts full
of bitterness and images” too dearly loved! now past and but “Remembered
like sweet sounds of yesterday!” At Ross (sixteen miles from Gloucester)
we took up our quarters at the King’s Arms, once the house of Kyrle, the
Man of Ross. I gave the window-shutter the following effusion:[54]--
Richer than Misers o’er their countless hoards,
Nobler than Kings, or king-polluted Lords,
Here dwelt the Man of Ross! O Traveller, hear!
Departed Merit claims the glistening tear.
Friend to the friendless, to the sick man health,
With generous joy he viewed his modest wealth;
He heard the widow’s heaven-breathed prayer of praise,
He mark’d the sheltered orphan’s tearful gaze;
And o’er the dowried maiden’s glowing cheek
Bade bridal love suffuse its blushes meek.
If ’neath this roof thy wine-cheer’d moments pass,
Fill to the good man’s name one grateful glass!
To higher zest shall Memory wake thy soul,
And Virtue mingle in the sparkling bowl.
But if, like me, thro’ life’s distressful scene,
Lonely and sad thy pilgrimage hath been,
And if thy breast with heart-sick anguish fraught,
Thou journeyest onward tempest-tost in thought,
Here cheat thy cares,--in generous visions melt,
And _dream_ of Goodness thou hast never felt!
I will resume the pen to-morrow.
Monday, 11 o’clock. Well, praised be God! here I am. Videlicet, Ruthin,
sixteen miles from Wrexham. At Wrexham Church I glanced upon the face of a
Miss E. Evans, a young lady with [whom] I had been in habits of fraternal
correspondence. She turned excessively pale; she thought it my ghost, I
suppose. I retreated with all possible speed to our inn. There, as I was
standing at the window, passed by Eliza Evans, and with her to my utter
surprise her sister, Mary Evans, _quam efflictim et perdite amabam_. I
apprehend she is come from London on a visit to her grandmother, with whom
Eliza lives. I turned sick, and all but fainted away! The two sisters, as
H. informs me, passed by the window anxiously several times afterwards;
but I had retired.
_Vivit, sed mihi non vivit--nova forte marita,
Ah dolor! alterius carâ, a cervice pependit.
Vos, malefida valete accensæ insomnia mentis,
Littora amata valete! Vale, ah! formosa Maria!_
My fortitude would not have supported me, had I _recognized_ her--I mean
_appeared_ to do it! I neither ate nor slept yesterday. But love is a
local anguish; I am sixteen miles distant, and am not half so miserable. I
must endeavour to forget it amid the terrible graces of the wild wood
scenery that surround me. I never durst even in a whisper avow my passion,
though I knew she loved me. Where were my fortunes? and why should I make
her miserable! Almighty God bless her! Her image is in the sanctuary of my
heart, and never can it be torn away but with the strings that grapple it
to life. Southey! there are few men of whose delicacy I think so highly as
to have written all this. I am glad I have so deemed of you. We are
soothed by communications.