Denbigh (eight miles from Ruthin).

And now to give you some little account of our journey. From Oxford to

Gloucester, to Ross, to Hereford, to Leominster, to Bishop’s Castle, to

Welsh Pool, to Llanfyllin, nothing occurred worthy notice except that at

the last place I preached pantisocracy and aspheterism with so much

success that two great huge fellows of butcher-like appearance danced

about the room in enthusiastic agitation. And one of them of his own

accord called for a large glass of brandy, and drank it off to this his

own toast, “God save the King! And may he be the last.” Southey! Such men

may be of use. They would kill the golden calf _secundum artem_. From

Llanfyllin we penetrated into the interior of the country to Llangunnog, a

village most romantically situated. We dined there on hashed mutton,

cucumber, bread and cheese, and beer, and had two pots of ale--the sum

total of the expense being sixteen pence for both of us! From Llangunnog

we walked over the mountains to Bala--most sublimely terrible! It was

scorchingly hot. I applied my mouth ever and anon to the side of the rocks

and sucked in draughts of water cold as ice, and clear as infant diamonds

in their embryo dew! The rugged and stony clefts are stupendous, and in

winter must form cataracts most astonishing. At this time of the year

there is just water enough dashed down over them to “soothe, not disturb

the pensive traveller’s ear.” I slept by the side of one an hour or more.

As we descended the mountain, the sun was reflected in the river, that

winded through the valley with insufferable brightness; it rivalled the

sky. At Bala is nothing remarkable except a lake of eleven miles in

circumference. At the inn I was sore afraid that I had caught the itch

from a Welsh democrat, who was charmed with my sentiments: he grasped my

hand with flesh-bruising ardor, and I trembled lest some disappointed

citizens of the _animalcular_ republic should have emigrated.

Shortly after, into the same room, came a well-dressed clergyman and four

others, among whom (the landlady whispers me) was a justice of the peace

and the doctor of the parish. I was asked for a gentleman. I gave General

Washington. The parson said in a low voice, “Republicans!” After which,

the medical man said, “Damn toasts! I gives a sentiment: May all

republicans be guillotined!” Up starts the Welsh democrat. “May all fools

be gulloteen’d--and then you will be the first.” Thereon rogue, villain,

traitor flew thick in each other’s faces as a hailstorm. This is nothing

in Wales. They _make calling one another liars_, etc., necessary

vent-holes to the superfluous fumes of the temper. At last I endeavoured

to articulate by observing that, whatever might be our opinions in

politics, the appearance of a clergyman in the company assured me we were

all Christians; “though,” continued I, “it is rather difficult to

reconcile the last sentiment with the spirit of Christianity.” “Pho!”

quoth the parson, “Christianity! Why, we are not at church now, are we?

The gemman’s sentiment was a very good one; it showed he was _sincere_ in

his principles.” Welsh politics could not prevail over Welsh hospitality.

They all, except the parson, shook me by the hand, and said I was an

open-hearted, honest-speaking fellow, though I was a bit of a democrat.

From Bala we travelled onward to Llangollen, a most beautiful village in a

most beautiful situation. On the road we met two Cantabs of my college,

Brookes and Berdmore. These rival _pedestrians_--perfect _Powells_--were

vigorously pursuing their tour in a _post-chaise_! We laughed famously.

Their only excuse was that Berdmore had been ill. From Llangollen to

Wrexham, from Wrexham to Ruthin, to Denbigh. At Denbigh is a ruined

castle; it surpasses everything I could have conceived. I wandered there

an hour and a half last evening (this is Tuesday morning). Two

well-dressed young men were walking there. “Come,” says one, “I’ll play my

flute; ’twill be romantic.” “Bless thee for the thought, man of genius and

sensibility!” I exclaimed, and preattuned my heartstring to tremulous

emotion. He sat adown (the moon just peering) amid the awful part of the

ruins, and the romantic youth struck up the affecting tune of “Mrs.

Carey.”[55] ’Tis fact, upon my honour.

God bless you, Southey! We shall be at Aberystwith[56] this day week. When

will you come out to meet us? There you must direct your letter. Hucks’

compliments. I anticipate much accession of republicanism from Lovell. I

have positively done nothing but dream of the system of no property every

step of the way since I left you, till last Sunday. Heigho!

ROBERT SOUTHEY, No. 8 Westcott Buildings, Bath.

XXXIV. TO THE SAME.

10 o’clock, Thursday morning, September 18, 1794.

Well, my dear Southey! I am at last arrived at Jesus. My God! how

tumultuous are the movements of my heart. Since I quitted this room what

and how important events have been evolved! America! Southey! Miss

Fricker! Yes, Southey, you are right. Even Love is the creature of strong

motive. I certainly love her. I _think_ of her incessantly and with

unspeakable tenderness,--with that inward melting away of soul that

symptomatizes it.

Pantisocracy! Oh, I shall have such a scheme of it! My head, my heart, are

all alive. I have drawn up my arguments in battle array; they shall have

the _tactician_ excellence of the mathematician with the enthusiasm of

the poet. The head shall be the mass; the heart the fiery spirit that

fills, informs, and agitates the whole. Harwood--pish! I say nothing of

him.

SHAD GOES WITH US. HE IS MY BROTHER! I am longing to be with you. Make

Edith my sister. Surely, Southey, we shall be _frendotatoi meta

frendous_--most friendly where all are friends. She must, therefore, be

more emphatically my sister.

Brookes and Berdmore, as I suspected, have spread my opinions in mangled

forms at Cambridge. Caldwell, the most pantisocratic of aristocrats, has

been laughing at me. Up I arose, terrible in reasoning. He fled from me,

because “he could not answer for his own sanity, sitting so near a madman

of genius.” He told me that the strength of my imagination had intoxicated

my reason, and that the acuteness of my reason had given a directing

influence to my imagination. Four months ago the remark would not have

been more elegant than just. Now it is nothing.

I like your sonnets exceedingly--the best of any I have yet seen.[57]

“Though to the eye fair is the extended vale” should be “to the eye though

fair the extended vale.” I by no means disapprove of discord introduced to

produce _effect_, nor is my ear so fastidious as to be angry with it where

it could not have been avoided without weakening the sense. But discord

for discord’s sake is rather too licentious.

“Wild wind” has no other but alliterative beauty; it applies to a storm,

not to the autumnal breeze that makes the trees rustle mournfully. Alter

it to “That rustle to the sad wind moaningly.”

“’Twas a long way and tedious,” and the three last lines are marked

beauties--unlaboured strains poured soothingly along from the feeling

simplicity of heart. The next sonnet is altogether exquisite,--the

circumstance common yet new to poetry, the moral accurate and full of

soul.[58] “I never saw,” etc., is most exquisite. I am almost ashamed to

write the following, it is so inferior. Ashamed? No, Southey! God knows my

heart! I am _delighted_ to feel you superior to me in genius as in virtue.

No more my visionary soul shall dwell

On joys that were; no more endure to weigh

The shame and anguish of the evil day.

Wisely forgetful! O’er the ocean swell

Sublime of Hope, I seek the cottag’d dell

Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray,

And, dancing to the moonlight roundelay,

The wizard Passions weave an holy spell.

Eyes that have ach’d with sorrow! ye shall weep

Tears of doubt-mingled joy, like theirs who start

From precipices of distemper’d sleep,

On which the fierce-eyed fiends their revels keep,

And see the rising sun, and feel it dart

New rays of pleasance trembling to the heart.[59]

I have heard from Allen, and write the third letter to him. Yours is the

second. Perhaps you would like two sonnets I have written to my Sally.

When I have received an answer from Allen I will tell you the contents of

his first letter.

My compliments to Heath.

I will write you a huge, big letter next week. At present I have to

transact the tragedy business, to wait on the Master, to write to Mrs.

Southey, Lovell, etc., etc.

God love you, and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XXXV. TO THE SAME.

Friday morning, September 19, 1794.

My fire was blazing cheerfully--the tea-kettle even now boiled over on it.

Now sudden sad it looks. But, see, it blazes up again as cheerily as ever.

Such, dear Southey, was the effect of your this morning’s letter on my

heart. Angry, no! I esteem and confide in you the more; but it _did_ make

me sorrowful. I was blameless; it was therefore only a passing cloud

empictured on the breast. Surely had I written to you the _first_ letter

you directed to _me_ at Cambridge, I _would_ not have believed that you

_could_ have received it without answering it. Still less that you could

have given a momentary pain to her that loved you. If I could have

imagined no _rational_ excuse for you, I would have peopled the vacancy

with events of impossibility!

On Wednesday, September 17, I arrived at Cambridge. Perhaps the very hour

you were writing in the severity of offended friendship, was I pouring

forth the heart to Sarah Fricker. I did not call on Caldwell; I saw no

one. On the moment of my arrival I shut my door, and wrote to her. But why

not before?

In the first place Miss F. did not authorize me to direct immediately to

her. It was _settled_ that through _you_ in our weekly _parcels_ were the

letters to be conveyed. The moment I arrived at Cambridge, and all

yesterday, was I writing letters to you, to your mother, to Lovell, etc.,

to complete a parcel.

In London I wrote twice to you, intending daily to go to Cambridge; of

course I deferred the parcel till then. I was taken ill, very ill. I

exhausted my finances, and ill as I was, I sat down and scrawled a few

guineas’ worth of nonsense for the booksellers, which Dyer disposed of for

me. Languid, sick at heart, in the back room of an inn! Lofty conjunction

of circumstances for me to write to Miss F. Besides, I told her I should

write the moment I arrived at Cambridge. I have fulfilled the promise.

Recollect, Southey, that when you mean to go to a place to-morrow, and

to-morrow, and to-morrow, the time that intervenes is lost. Had I meant at

first to stay in London, a fortnight should not have elapsed without my

writing to her. If you are satisfied, tell Miss F. that _you_ are _so_,

but assign no reasons--I ought not to have been suspected.

The tragedy[60] will be printed in less than a week. I shall put my name,

because it will sell at least a hundred copies in Cambridge. It would

appear ridiculous to put two names to _such_ a work. But, if you choose

it, mention it and it shall be done. To every man who _praises_ it, of

course I give the _true_ biography of it; to those who laugh at it, I

laugh again, and I am too well known at Cambridge to be thought the less

of, even though I had published James Jennings’ Satire.

* * * * *

Southey! Precipitance is wrong. There may be too high a state of health,

perhaps even _virtue_ is liable to a _plethora_. I have been the slave of

impulse, the child of imbecility. But my inconsistencies have given me a

tarditude and reluctance to think ill of any one. Having been often

suspected of wrong when I was altogether right, from _fellow-feeling_ I

judge not too hastily, and from appearances. Your undeviating simplicity

of rectitude has made you rapid in decision. Having never erred, you feel

more _indignation_ at error than _pity_ for it. There is _phlogiston_ in

your heart. Yet am I grateful for it. You would not have written so

angrily but for the greatness of your esteem and affection. The more

highly we have been wont to think of a character, the more pain and

irritation we suffer from the discovery of its imperfections. My heart is

very heavy, much more so than when I began to write.

Yours most fraternally.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XXXVI. TO THE SAME.

Friday night, September 26, 1794.

MY DEAR, DEAR SOUTHEY,--I am beyond measure distressed and agitated by

your letter to Favell. On the evening of the Wednesday before last, I

arrived in Cambridge; that night and the next day I dedicated to writing

to you, to Miss F., etc. On the Friday I received your letter of

phlogistic rebuke. I answered it immediately, wrote a second letter to

Miss F., inclosed them in the aforesaid parcel, and sent them off by the

mail directed to Mrs. Southey, No. 8 Westcott Buildings, Bath. They should

have arrived on Sunday morning. Perhaps you have not heard from Bath;

perhaps--damn perhapses! My God, my God! what a deal of pain you must have

suffered before you wrote that letter to Favell. It is an Ipswich Fair

time, and the Norwich company are theatricalizing. They are the first

provincial actors in the kingdom. Much against my will, I am engaged to

drink tea and go to the play with Miss Brunton[61] (Mrs. Merry’s sister).

The young lady, and indeed the whole family, have taken it into their

heads to be very much attached to me, though I have known them only six

days. The father (who is the manager and proprietor of the theatre)

inclosed in a very polite note a free ticket for the season. The young

lady is said to be the most literary of the beautiful, and the most

beautiful of the literatæ. It may be so; my faculties and discernments are

so completely jaundiced by vexation that the Virgin Mary and Mary

Flanders, alias Moll, would appear in the same hues.

All last night, I was obliged to listen to the damned chatter of our

mayor, a fellow that would certainly be a pantisocrat, were his head and

heart as highly illuminated as his face. At present he is a High

Churchman, and a Pittite, and is guilty (with a very large fortune) of so

many rascalities in his public character, that he is obliged to drink

three bottles of claret a day in order to acquire a stationary rubor, and

prevent him from the trouble of running backwards and forwards for a blush

once every five minutes. In the tropical latitudes of this fellow’s nose

was I obliged to fry. I wish you would write a lampoon upon him--in me it

would be unchristian revenge.

Our tragedy is printed, all but the title-page. It will be complete by

Saturday night.

God love you. I am in the queerest humour in the world, and am out of love

with everybody.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XXXVII. TO THE SAME.

October 21, 1794.

To you alone, Southey, I write the first part of this letter. To yourself

confine it.

“Is this handwriting altogether erased from your memory? To whom am I

addressing myself? For whom am I now violating the rules of female

delicacy? Is it for the same Coleridge, whom I once regarded as a sister

her best-beloved Brother? Or for one who will _ridicule_ that advice from

me, which he has _rejected_ as offered by his family? I will hazard the

attempt. I have no right, nor do I feel myself inclined to reproach you

for the Past. God forbid! You have already suffered too much from

self-accusation. But I conjure you, Coleridge, earnestly and solemnly

conjure you to consider long and deeply, before you enter into any rash

schemes. There is an Eagerness in your Nature, which is ever hurrying you

in the sad Extreme. I have heard that you mean to leave England, and on a

Plan so absurd and extravagant that were I for a moment to imagine it

_true_, I should be obliged to listen with a more patient Ear to

suggestions, which I have rejected a thousand times with scorn and anger.

Yes! whatever Pain I might suffer, I should be forced to exclaim, ‘O what

a noble mind is here _o’erthrown_, Blasted with ecstacy.’ You have a

country, does it demand nothing of you? You have doting Friends! Will you

break their Hearts! There is a God--Coleridge! Though I have been told

(_indeed_ I do not believe it) that you doubt of his existence and

disbelieve a hereafter. No! you have too much sensibility to be an

Infidel. You know I never was rigid in my opinions concerning

Religion--and have always thought _Faith_ to be only Reason applied to a

particular subject. In short, I am the same Being as when you used to say,

‘We thought in all things alike.’ I often reflect on the happy hours we

spent together and regret the Loss of your Society. I cannot easily forget

those whom I once loved--nor can I easily form new Friendships. I find

women in general vain--all of the same Trifle, and therefore little and

envious, and (I am afraid) without sincerity; and of the other sex those

who are offered and held up to my esteem are very prudent, and very

worldly. If you value my peace of mind, you must _on no account_ answer

this letter, or take the least notice of it. I _would_ not for the world

_any part_ of my Family should suspect that I have written to you. My mind

is sadly tempered by being perpetually obliged to resist the solicitations

of those whom I love. I need not explain myself. Farewell, Coleridge! I

shall always feel that I have been your _Sister_.”

No name was signed,--it was from Mary Evans. I received it about three

weeks ago. I loved her, Southey, almost to madness. Her image was never

absent from me for three years, for _more_ than three years. My resolution

has not faltered, but I want a comforter. I have done nothing, I have gone

into company, I was constantly at the theatre here till they left us, I

endeavoured to be perpetually with Miss Brunton, I even hoped that her

exquisite beauty and uncommon accomplishments might have cured one passion

by another. The latter I could easily have dissipated in her absence, and

so have restored my affections to her whom I do not love, but whom by

every tie of reason and honour I ought to love. I am resolved, but

wretched! But time shall do much. You will easily believe that with such

feelings I should have found it no easy task to write to ----. I should

have detested myself, if after my first letter I had written coldly--how

could I write _as warmly_? I was vexed too and alarmed by your letter

concerning Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, Shad, and little Sally. I was wrong, very

wrong, in the affair of Shad, and have given you reason to suppose that I

should assent to the innovation. I will most assuredly go with you to

America, on this plan, but remember, Southey, this is _not our plan_, nor

can I defend it. “Shad’s children will be educated as ours, and the

education we shall give them will be such as to render them incapable of

blushing at the want of it in their parents”--_Perhaps!_ With this one

word would every Lilliputian reasoner demolish the system. Wherever men

_can_ be vicious, some _will_ be. The leading idea of pantisocracy is to

make men _necessarily_ virtuous by removing all motives to evil--all

possible temptation. “Let them dine with us and be treated with as much

equality as they would wish, but perform that part of labour for which

their education has fitted them.” _Southey_ should not have written this

sentence. My friend, my noble and high-souled friend should have said to

his dependents, “Be my slaves, and ye shall be my equals;” to his wife and

sister, “Resign the _name_ of Ladyship and ye shall retain the _thing_.”

Again. Is every family to possess one of these unequal equals, these Helot

Egalités? Or are the few you have mentioned, “with more toil than the

peasantry of England undergo,” to do for all of us “that part of labour

which their education has fitted them for”? If your remarks on the other

side are just, the inference is that the scheme of pantisocracy is

impracticable, but I hope and believe that it is not a _necessary_

inference. Your remark of the physical evil in the long infancy of men

would indeed puzzle a Pangloss--puzzle him to account for the wish of a

benevolent heart like yours to discover malignancy in its Creator. Surely

every eye but an eye jaundiced by habit of peevish scepticism must have

seen that the mothers’ cares are repaid even to rapture by the mothers’

endearments, and that the long helplessness of the babe is the _means_ of

our superiority in the filial and maternal affection and duties to the

same feelings in the brute creation. It is likewise among other causes the

_means_ of society, that thing which makes them a little lower than the

angels. If Mrs. S. and Mrs. F. go with us, they can at least prepare the

food of simplicity for us. Let the married women do only what is

absolutely convenient and customary for pregnant women or nurses. Let the

husband do all the rest, and what will that all be? Washing with a machine

and cleaning the house. One hour’s addition to our daily labor, and

_pantisocracy_ in its most perfect sense is practicable. That the greater

part of our female companions should have the task of maternal exertion at

the same time is very _improbable_; but, though it were to happen, an

infant is almost always sleeping, and during its slumbers the mother may

in the same room perform the little offices of ironing clothes or making

shirts. But the hearts of the women are not _all_ with us. I do believe

that Edith and Sarah are exceptions, but do even they know the bill of

fare for the day, every duty that will be incumbent upon them?

All necessary knowledge in the branch of ethics is comprised in the word

justice: that the good of the whole is the good of each individual, that,

of course, it is each individual’s _duty_ to be just, _because_ it is his

_interest_. To perceive this and to assent to it as an abstract

proposition is easy, but it requires the most wakeful attentions of the

most reflective mind in all moments to bring it into practice. It is not

enough that we have once swallowed it. The _heart_ should have _fed_ upon

the _truth_, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the colour, and

show its food in every the minutest fibre. In the book of pantisocracy I

hope to have comprised all that is good in Godwin, of whom and of whose

book I will write more fully in my next letter (I think not so highly of

him as you do, and I have read him with the greatest attention). This will

be an advantage to the _minds_ of our women.

What have been your feelings concerning the War with America, which is now

inevitable? To go from Hamburg will not only be a heavy additional

expense, but dangerous and uncertain, as nations at war are in the habit

of examining neutral vessels to prevent the importation of arms and seize

subjects of the hostile governments. It is said that one cause of the

ministers having been so cool on the business is that it will prevent

emigration, which it seems would be treasonable to a hostile country. Tell

me all you think on these subjects. What think you of the difference in

the prices of land as stated by Cowper from those given by the American

agents? By all means read, ponder on Cowper, and when I hear your thoughts

I will give you the result of my own.

Thou bleedest, my poor Heart! and thy distress

Doth Reason ponder with an anguished smile,

Probing thy sore wound sternly, tho’ the while

Her eye be swollen and dim with heaviness.

Why didst thou _listen_ to Hope’s whisper bland?

Or, listening, why _forget_ its healing tale,

When Jealousy with feverish fancies pale

Jarr’d thy fine fibres with a maniac’s hand?

Faint was that Hope, and rayless. Yet ’twas fair

And sooth’d with many a dream the hour of rest:

Thou should’st have loved it most, when most opprest,

And nursed it with an agony of care,

E’en as a mother her sweet infant heir

That pale and sickly droops upon her breast![62]

When a man is unhappy he writes damned bad poetry, I find. My Imitations

too depress my spirits--the task is arduous, and grows upon me. Instead of

two octavo volumes, to do all I hoped to do two quartos would hardly be

sufficient.

Of your poetry I will send you a minute critique, when I send you my

proposed alterations. The sonnets are exquisite.[63] Banquo is not what it

deserves to be. Towards the end it grows very flat, wants variety of

imagery--you dwell too long on Mary, yet have made less of her than I

expected. The other figures are not sufficiently distinct; indeed, the

plan of the ode (after the first forty lines which are most truly sublime)

is so evident an imitation of Gray’s Descent of Odin, that I would rather

adopt Shakespeare’s mode of introducing the figures themselves, and making

the description now the Witches’ and now Fleance’s. I detest monodramas,

but I never wished to establish my judgment on the throne of critical

despotism. Send me up the Elegy on the Exiled Patriots and the Scripture

Sonnets. I have promised them to Flower.[64] The first will do _good_, and

more good in a paper than in any other vehicle.

My thoughts are floating about in a most chaotic state. I had almost

determined to go down to Bath, and stay two days, that I might say

everything I wished. You mean to acquaint your aunt with the scheme? As

she knows it, and knows that you know that she knows it, _justice_ cannot

require it, but if your own comfort makes it necessary, by all means do

it, with all possible gentleness. She has loved you tenderly; be firm,

therefore, as a rock, mild as the lamb. I sent a hundred “Robespierres” to

Bath ten days ago and more.

Five hundred copies of “Robespierre” were printed. A hundred [went] to

Bath; a hundred to Kearsley, in London; twenty-five to March, at Norwich;

thirty I have sold privately (twenty-five of these thirty to Dyer, who

found it inconvenient to take fifty). The rest are dispersed among the

Cambridge booksellers; the delicacies of academic gentlemanship prevented

me from disposing of more than the five _propriâ personâ_. Of course we

only get ninepence for each copy from the booksellers. I expected that Mr.

Field would have sent for fifty, but have heard nothing of it. I sent a

copy to him, with my respects, and have made presents of six more. How

they sell in London, I know not. All that are in Cambridge will sell--a

great many are sold. I have been blamed for publishing it, considering the

more important work I have offered to the public. _N’importe._ ’Tis

thought a very _aristocratic_ performance; you may suppose how

hyper-democratic my character must have been. The expenses of paper,

printing, and advertisements are nearly nine pounds. We ought to have

charged one shilling and sixpence a copy.

I presented a copy to Miss Brunton with these verses in the blank

leaf:[65]--

Much on my early youth I love to dwell,

Ere yet I bade that guardian dome farewell,

Where first beneath the echoing cloisters pale,

I heard of guilt and wondered at the tale!

Yet though the hours flew by on careless wing

Full heavily of Sorrow would I sing.

Aye, as the star of evening flung its beam

In broken radiance on the wavy stream,

My pensive soul amid the _twilight_ gloom

Mourned with the breeze, O Lee Boo! o’er thy tomb.

Whene’er I wander’d, Pity still was near,

Breath’d from the heart, and glitter’d in the tear:

No knell, that toll’d, but fill’d my anguish’d eye,

“And suffering Nature wept that _one_ should die!”

Thus to sad sympathies I sooth’d my breast,

Calm as the rainbow in the weeping West:

When slumb’ring Freedom rous’d by high Disdain

With giant fury burst her triple chain!

Fierce on her front the blasting Dog star glow’d;

Her banners, like a midnight meteor, flow’d;

Amid the yelling of the storm-rent skies

She came, and scatter’d battles from her eyes!

Then Exultation woke the patriot fire

And swept with wilder hand th’ empassioned lyre;

Red from the Tyrants’ wounds I shook the lance,

And strode in joy the reeking plains of France!

In ghastly horror lie th’ oppressors low,

And my Heart akes tho’ Mercy struck the blow!

With wearied thought I seek the amaranth Shade

Where peaceful Virtue weaves her _myrtle_ braid.

And O! if Eyes, whose holy glances roll

The eloquent Messengers of the pure soul;

If Smiles more cunning and a gentler Mien,

Than the love-wilder’d Maniac’s brain hath seen

Shaping celestial forms in vacant air,

If _these_ demand the wond’ring Poets’ care--

If Mirth and soften’d Sense, and Wit refin’d,

The blameless features of a lovely mind;

Then haply shall my trembling hand assign

No _fading_ flowers to Beauty’s saintly shrine.

Nor, Brunton! thou the blushing Wreath refuse,

Though harsh her notes, yet guileless is my Muse.

Unwont at Flattery’s Voice to plume her wings.

A child of Nature, as she feels, she sings.

S. T. C.

JES. COLL., CAMBRIDGE.

Till I dated this letter I never recollected that yesterday was my

birthday--twenty-two years old.

I have heard from my brothers--from him particularly who has been friend,

brother, father. ’Twas all remonstrance and anguish, and suggestions that

I am deranged! Let me receive from you a letter of consolation; for,

believe me, I am completely wretched.

Yours most affectionately,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XXXVIII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

November, 1794.

My feeble and exhausted heart regards with a criminal indifference the

introduction of servitude into our society; but my judgment is not asleep,

nor can I suffer your reason, Southey, to be entangled in the web which

your feelings have woven. Oxen and horses possess not intellectual

appetites, nor the powers of acquiring them. We are therefore justified in

employing their labour to our own benefit: mind hath a divine right of

sovereignty over body. But who shall dare to transfer “from man to brute”

to “from man to man”? To be employed in the toil of the field, while _we_

are pursuing philosophical studies--can earldoms or emperorships boast so

huge an inequality? Is there a human being of so torpid a nature as that

placed in our society he would not feel it? A _willing_ slave is the worst

of slaves! His _soul_ is a slave. Besides, I must own myself incapable of

perceiving even the temporary _convenience_ of the proposed innovation.

The _men_ do not want assistance, at least none that _Shad_ can

particularly give; and to the women, what assistance can little Sally, the

_wife_ of Shad, give more than any other of our married women? Is she to

have no domestic cares of her own? No house? No husband to provide for? No

children? _Because_ Mr. and Mrs. Roberts are not likely to have children,

I see less objection to their accompanying us. Indeed, indeed, Southey, I

am fearful that Lushington’s prophecy may not be altogether vain. “Your

system, Coleridge, appears strong to the head and lovely to the heart; but

depend upon it, you will never give your _women_ sufficient strength of

mind, liberality of heart, or vigilance of attention. _They_ will spoil

it.”

I am extremely unwell; have run a nail into my heel, and before me stand

“Embrocation for the throbbing of the head,” “To be shaked up well that

the ether may mix,” “A wineglass full to be taken when faint.” ’Sdeath!

how I hate the labels of apothecary’s bottles. Ill as I am, I must go out

to supper. Farewell for a few hours.

’Tis past one o’clock in the morning. I sat down at twelve o’clock to read

the “Robbers” of Schiller.[66] I had read, chill and trembling, when I

came to the part where the Moor fixes a pistol over the robbers who are

asleep. I could read no more. My God, Southey, who is this Schiller, this

convulser of the heart? Did he write his tragedy amid the yelling of

fiends? I should not like to be able to describe such characters. I

tremble like an aspen leaf. Upon my soul, I write to you because I am

frightened. I had better go to bed. Why have we ever called Milton

sublime? that Count de Moor horrible wielder of heart-withering virtues?

Satan is scarcely qualified to attend his execution as gallows chaplain.

Tuesday morning.--I have received your letter. Potter of Emanuel[67]

drives me up to town in his phaeton on Saturday morning. I hope to be with

you by Wednesday week. Potter is a “Son of Soul”--a poet of liberal

sentiments in politics--yet (would you believe it?) possesses six thousand

a year independent.

I feel grateful to you for your sympathy. There is a feverish

distemperature of brain, during which some horrible phantom threatens our

eyes in every corner, until, emboldened by terror, we rush on it, and

then--why then we return, the heart indignant at its own palpitation! Even

so will the greater part of our mental miseries vanish before an effort.

Whatever of mind we _will_ to do, we _can_ do! What, then, palsies the

will? The joy of grief. A mysterious pleasure broods with dusky wings over

the tumultuous mind, “and the Spirit of God moveth on the darkness of the

waters.” She _was very_ lovely, Southey! We formed each other’s minds; our

ideas were blended. Heaven bless her! I cannot forget her. Every day her

memory sinks deeper into my heart.

Nutrito vulnere tabens

Impatiensque mei feror undique, solus et excors,

Et desideriis pascor!

I wish, Southey, in the stern severity of judgment, that the two mothers

were _not_ to go, and that the children stayed with them. Are you wounded

by my want of feeling? No! how highly must I think of your rectitude of

soul, that I should dare to say this to so affectionate a son! _That_ Mrs.

Fricker! We shall have her teaching the infants _Christianity_,--I mean,

that mongrel whelp that goes under its name,--teaching them by stealth in

some ague fit of superstition.

There is little danger of my being confined. _Advice_ offered with

_respect_ from a brother; _affected coldness_, an assumed _alienation_

mixed with involuntary bursts of _anguish_ and disappointed _affection_;

questions concerning the mode in which I would have it mentioned to my

aged mother--these are the daggers which are plunged into _my_ peace.

Enough! I should rather be offering consolation to your sorrows than be

wasting my feelings in egotistic complaints. “Verily my complaint is

bitter, yet my stroke is heavier than my groaning.”

God love you, my dear Southey!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

A friend of mine hath lately departed this life in a frenzy fever induced

by anxiety. Poor fellow, a child of frailty like me! Yet he was amiable. I

poured forth these incondite lines[68] in a moment of melancholy

dissatisfaction:--

----! thy grave with aching eye I scan,

And inly groan for Heaven’s poor outcast--Man!

’Tis tempest all, or gloom! In earliest youth

If gifted with th’ Ithuriel lance of Truth

He force to start amid the feign’d caress

Vice, siren-hag, in native ugliness;

A brother’s fate shall haply rouse the tear,

And on he goes in heaviness and fear!

But if his fond heart call to Pleasure’s bower

Some pigmy Folly in a careless hour,

The faithless Guest quick stamps th’ enchanted ground,

And mingled forms of Misery threaten round:

Heart-fretting Fear, with pallid look aghast,

That courts the future woe to hide the past;

Remorse, the poison’d arrow in his side,

And loud lewd Mirth to Anguish close allied;

Till Frenzy, frantic child of moping Pain,

Darts her hot lightning-flash athwart the brain!

Rest, injur’d Shade! shall Slander, squatting near,

Spit her cold venom in a dead man’s ear?

’Twas thine to feel the sympathetic glow

In Merit’s joy and Poverty’s meek woe:

Thine all that cheer the moment as it flies,

The zoneless Cares and smiling Courtesies.

Nurs’d in thy heart the generous Virtues grew,

And in thy heart they wither’d! such chill dew

Wan Indolence on each young blossom shed;

And Vanity her filmy network spread,

With eye that prowl’d around in asking gaze,

And tongue that trafficked in the trade of praise!

Thy follies such the hard world mark’d them well.

Were they more wise, the proud who never fell?

Rest, injur’d Shade! the poor man’s grateful prayer,

On heavenward wing, thy wounded soul shall bear!

As oft in Fancy’s thought thy grave I pass,

And sit me down upon its recent grass,

With introverted eye I contemplate

Similitude of soul--perhaps of fate!

To me hath Heaven with liberal hand assign’d

Energic reason and a shaping mind,

The daring soul of Truth, the patriot’s part,

And Pity’s sigh, that breathes the gentle heart--

Sloth-jaundiced all! and from my graspless hand

Drop Friendship’s precious pearls, like hour-glass sand.

I weep, yet stoop not! the faint anguish flows,

A dreamy pang in Morning’s fev’rish doze!

Is that pil’d earth our Being’s passless mound?

Tell me, cold Grave! is Death with poppies crown’d?

Tir’d Sentinel! with fitful starts I nod,

And fain would sleep, though pillow’d on a clod!

SONG.

When Youth his fairy reign began[69]

Ere Sorrow had proclaim’d me Man;

While Peace the _present_ hour beguil’d,

And all the lovely _Prospect_ smil’d;

Then, Mary, mid my lightsome glee

I heav’d the painless Sigh for thee!

And when, along the wilds of woe

My harass’d Heart was doom’d to know

The frantic burst of Outrage keen,

And the slow Pang that gnaws unseen;

Then shipwreck’d on Life’s stormy sea

I heav’d an anguish’d Sigh for thee!

But soon Reflection’s hand imprest

A stiller sadness on my breast;

And sickly Hope with waning eye

Was well content to droop and die:

I yielded to the stern decree,

Yet heav’d the languid Sigh for thee!

And though in distant climes to roam,

A wanderer from my native home,

I fain would woo a gentle Fair

To soothe the aching sense of care,

Thy Image may not banish’d be--

Still, Mary! still I sigh for thee!

S. T. C.

God love you.

XXXIX. TO THE SAME.

Autumn, 1794.

Last night, dear Southey, I received a special invitation from Dr.

Edwards[70] (the great Grecian of Cambridge and heterodox divine) to drink

tea and spend the evening. I there met a councillor whose name is

Lushington, a democrat, and a man of the most powerful and Briarean

intellect. I was challenged on the subject of pantisocracy, which is,

indeed, the universal topic at the University. A discussion began and

continued for six hours. In conclusion, Lushington and Edwards declared

the system impregnable, supposing the assigned quantum of virtue and

genius in the first individuals. I came home at one o’clock this morning

in the honest consciousness of having exhibited closer argument in more

elegant and appropriate language than I had ever conceived myself capable

of. Then my heart smote me, for I saw your letter on the propriety of

taking servants with us. I had answered that letter, and feel conviction

that you will _perceive_ the error into which the tenderness of your

nature had led you. But other queries obtruded themselves on my

understanding. The more perfect our system is, supposing the necessary

premises, the more eager in anxiety am I that the necessary premises

exist. O for that Lyncean eye that can discover in the acorn of Error the

rooted and widely spreading oak of Misery! Quære: should not all who mean

to become members of our community be incessantly meliorating their

temper and elevating their understandings? Qu.: whether a very respectable

quantity of _acquired_ knowledge (History, Politics, above all,

_Metaphysics_, without which no man _can_ reason but with women and

children) be not a prerequisite to the improvement, of the head and heart?

Qu.: whether our Women have not been taught by us habitually to

contemplate the littleness of individual comforts and a passion for the

_novelty_ of the scheme rather than a generous enthusiasm of Benevolence?

Are they saturated with the Divinity of Truth sufficiently to be always

wakeful? In the present state of their minds, whether it is not probable

that the _Mothers_ will tinge the minds of the infants with prejudication?

The questions are meant merely as motives to you, Southey, to the

strengthening the minds of the Women, and stimulating them to literary

acquirements. But, Southey, there are _Children_ going with us. Why did I

never dare in my disputations with the unconvinced to hint at this

circumstance? Was it not because I knew, even to certainty of conviction,

that it is subversive of _rational_ hopes of a permanent system? These

children,--the little Frickers, for instance, and your brothers,--are they

not already deeply tinged with the prejudices and errors of society? Have

they not learned from their schoolfellows _Fear_ and _Selfishness_, of

which the necessary offsprings are Deceit and desultory Hatred? How are we

to prevent them from infecting the minds of _our_ children? By reforming

their judgments? At so early an age, _can_ they have _felt_ the ill

consequences of their errors in a manner sufficiently vivid to make this

reformation practicable? How can we insure their silence concerning God,

etc.? Is it possible _they_ should enter into our _motives_ for this

silence? If not, we must produce their _Obedience_ by _Terror_.

_Obedience? Terror?_ The repetition is sufficient. I need not inform you

that they are as inadequate as inapplicable. I have told you, Southey,

that I will accompany you on an _imperfect_ system. But must our system be

thus necessarily imperfect? I ask the question that I may know whether or

not I should write the Book of Pantisocracy.

I received your letter of Oyez; it brought a smile on a countenance that

for these three weeks has been cloudy and stern in its solitary hours. In

company, wit and laughter are Duties. Slovenly? I could mention a lady of

fashionable rank, and most fashionable ideas, who declared to Caldwell

that I (S. T. Coleridge) was a man of the most _courtly_ and polished

manners, of the most _gentlemanly_ address she had ever met with. But I

will not _crow_! Slovenly, indeed!

XL. TO THE REV. GEORGE COLERIDGE.

Thursday, November 6, 1794.

MY DEAR BROTHER,--Your letter of this morning gave me inexpressible

consolation. I thought that I perceived in your last the cold and freezing

features of alienated affection. Surely, said I, I have trifled with the

spirit of love, and it has passed away from me! There is a vice of such

powerful venom, that one grain of it will poison the overflowing goblet of

a thousand virtues. This vice constitution seems to have implanted in me,

and habit has made it almost Omnipotent. It is _indolence_![71] Hence,

whatever web of friendship my presence may have woven, my absence has

seldom failed to unravel. Anxieties that stimulate others infuse an

additional narcotic into my mind. The appeal of duty to my judgment, and

the pleadings of affection at my heart, have been heard indeed, and heard

with deep regard. Ah! that they had been as constantly obeyed. But so it

has been. Like some poor labourer, whose night’s sleep has but imperfectly

refreshed his overwearied frame, I have sate in drowsy uneasiness, and

doing nothing have thought what a deal I had to do. But I trust that the

kingdom of reason is at hand, and even now cometh!

How often and how unkindly are the ebullitions of youthful disputations

mistaken for the result of fixed principles. People have resolved that I

am a dηmocrat, and accordingly look at everything I do through the

spectacles of prejudication. In the feverish distemperature of a _bigoted_

aristocrat’s brain, some phantom of Dηmocracy threatens him in every

corner of my writings.

And Hébert’s atheist crew, whose maddening hand

Hurl’d down the altars of the living God

With all the infidel intolerance.[72]

“Are these lines in _character_,” observed a sensible friend of mine, “in

a speech on the death of the man whom it just became the fashion to style

‘The ambitious _Theocrat_’?” “I fear _not_,” was my answer, “I gave way to

my feelings.” The first speech of Adelaide,[73] whose _Automaton_ is this

character? Who spoke through Le Gendre’s mouth,[74] when he says, “Oh,

what a precious name is Liberty To scare or cheat the simple into slaves”?

But in several parts I have, it seems, in the strongest language boasted

the impossibility of subduing France. Is not this sentiment highly

characteristic? Is it _forced_ into the mouths of the speakers? Could I

have even omitted it without evident absurdity? But, granted that it is my

own opinion, is it an _anti-pacific_ one? I should have classed it among

the anti-polemics. Again, are _all_ who entertain and express this opinion

dηmocrats? God forbid! They would be a formidable party indeed! I know

many violent anti-reformists, who are as violent against the _war_ on the

ground that it may introduce that reform, which they (perhaps not

unwisely) imagine would chant the dirge of our constitution. Solemnly, my

brother, I tell you, I am _not_ a dηmocrat. I see, evidently, that the

present is _not_ the highest state of society of which we are _capable_.

And after a diligent, I may say an intense, study of Locke, Hartley, and

others who have written most wisely on the nature of man, I appear to

myself to see the point of possible perfection, at which the world may

perhaps be destined to arrive. But how to lead mankind from one point to

the other is a process of such infinite complexity, that in deep-felt

humility I resign it to that Being “Who shaketh the Earth out of her

place, and the pillars thereof tremble,” “Who purifieth with Whirlwinds,

and maketh the Pestilence his Besom,” Who hath said, “that violence shall

no more be heard of; the people shall not build and another inhabit; they

shall not plant and another eat;” “the wolf and the lamb shall feed

together.” I have been asked what is the best conceivable mode of

meliorating society. My answer has been this: “Slavery is an abomination

to my feeling of the head and the heart. Did Jesus teach the _abolition_

of it? No! He taught those principles of which the necessary _effect_ was

to abolish all slavery. He prepared the _mind_ for the reception before he

poured the blessing.” You ask me what the friend of universal equality

should do. I answer: “Talk not politics. _Preach the Gospel!_”

Yea, my brother! I have at all times in all places exerted my power in the

defence of the Holy One of Nazareth against the learning of the historian,

the libertinism of the wit, and (his worst enemy) the mystery of the

bigot! But I am an infidel, because I cannot thrust my head into a _mud

gutter_, and say, “How _deep_ I am!” And I am a dηmocrat, because I will

not join in the maledictions of the despotist--because I will _bless all_

men and _curse_ no one! I have been a fool even to madness; and I am,

therefore, an excellent hit for calumny to aim her poisoned

_probabilities_ at! As the poor flutterer, who by hard struggling has

escaped from the bird-limed thornbush, still bears the clammy incumbrance

on his feet and wings, so I am doomed to carry about with me the sad

mementos of past imprudence and anguish from which I have been imperfectly

released.

Mr. Potter of Emanuel drives me up to town in his phaeton, on Saturday

morning. Of course I shall see you on Sunday. Poor Smerdon! the reports

concerning his literary plagiarism (as far as concerns _my_ assistance)

are _falsehoods_. I have felt much for him, and on the morning I received

your letter I poured forth these incondite rhymes. Of course they are

meant for a brother’s eye.

Smerdon! thy grave with aching eye I scan, etc.[75]

God love you, dear brother, and your affectionate and grateful

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XLI. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

December 11, 1794.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I sit down to write to you, not that I have anything

particular to say, but it is a relief, and forms a very respectable part

in my theory of “Escapes from the Folly of Melancholy.” I am so habituated

to philosophizing that I cannot divest myself of it, even when my own

wretchedness is the subject. I appear to myself like a sick physician,

feeling the pang acutely, yet deriving a wonted pleasure from examining

its progress and developing its causes.

Your poems and Bowles’ are my only morning companions. “The

Retrospect!”[76] _Quod qui non prorsus amat et deperit, illum omnes et

virtutes et veneres odere!_ It is a most lovely poem, and in the next

edition of your works shall be a perfect one. The “Ode to Romance”[77]

is the best of the odes. I dislike that to Lycon, excepting the last

stanza, which is superlatively fine. The phrase of “let honest truth be

vain” is obscure. Of your blank verse odes, “The Death of Mattathias”[78]

is by far the best. That you should ever write another, _Pulcher Apollo

veta! Musæ prohibete venustæ!_ They are to poetry what dumb-bells are to

music; they can be read only for _exercise_, or to make a man tired that

he may be sleepy. The sonnets are wonderfully inferior to those which I

possess of yours, of which that “To Valentine”[79] (“If long and lingering

seem one little day The motley crew of travellers among”); that on “The

Fire”[80] (not your last, a very so-so one); on “The Rainbow”[81]

(particularly the four last lines), and two or three others, are all

divine and fully equal to Bowles. Some parts of “Miss Rosamund”[82] are

beautiful--the _working_ scene, and that line with which the poem ought to

have concluded, “And think who lies so cold and pale below.” Of the

“Pauper’s Funeral,”[83] that part in which you have done me the honour to

imitate me is by far the worst; the thought has been so much better

expressed by Gray. On the whole (like many of yours), it wants compactness

and totality; the same thought is repeated too frequently in different

words. That all these faults may be remedied by compression, my _editio

purgata_ of the poem shall show you.

What! and not one to heave the pious sigh?

Not one whose sorrow-swoln and aching eye,

For social scenes, for life’s endearments fled,

Shall drop a tear and dwell upon the dead?

Poor wretched Outcast! I will sigh for thee,

And sorrow for forlorn humanity!

Yes, I will sigh! but not that thou art come

To the stern Sabbath of the silent tomb:

For squalid Want and the black scorpion Care,

(Heart-withering fiends) shall never enter there.

I sorrow for the ills thy life has known,

As through the world’s long pilgrimage, alone,

Haunted by Poverty and woe-begone,

Unloved, unfriended, thou didst journey on;

Thy youth in ignorance and labour past,

And thy old age all barrenness and blast!

Hard was thy fate, which, while it doom’d to woe,

Denied thee wisdom to support the blow;

And robb’d of all its energy thy mind,

Ere yet it cast thee on thy fellow-kind,

Abject of thought, the victim of distress,

To wander in the world’s wide wilderness.

Poor Outcast! sleep in peace! The winter’s storm

Blows bleak no more on thy unsheltered form!

Thy woes are past; thou restest in the tomb;--

I pause ... and ponder on the days to come.

_Now!_ Is it not a beautiful poem? Of the sonnet, “No more the visionary

soul shall dwell,”[84] I wrote the whole but the second and third lines.

Of the “Old Man in the Snow,”[85] ten last lines _entirely_, and part of

the four first. Those ten lines are, perhaps, the best I ever did write.

Lovell has no taste or simplicity of feeling. I remarked that when a man

read Lovell’s poems he _mus cus_ (that is a rapid way of pronouncing “must

curse”), but when he thought of Southey’s, he’d “buy on!” For God’s sake

let us have no more Bions or Gracchus’s. I abominate them! _Southey_ is a

name much more proper and handsome, and, I venture to prophesy, will be

more _famous_. Your “Chapel Bell”[86] I love, and have made it, by a few

alterations and the omission of one stanza (which, though beautiful _quoad

se_, interrupted the _run_ of the thought “I love to see the aged spirit

soar”), a perfect poem. As it followed the “Exiled Patriots,” I altered

the second and fourth lines to, “So freedom taught, in high-voiced

minstrel’s weed;” “For cap and gown to leave the patriot’s meed.”

The last verse _now_ runs thus:--

“But thou, Memorial of monastic gall!

What fancy sad or lightsome hast _thou_ given?

Thy vision-scaring sounds alone recall

The prayer that _trembles_ on a _yawn_ to Heaven,

And _this_ Dean’s gape, and _that_ Dean’s nasal tone.”

Would not this be a fine subject for a wild ode?

St. Withold footed thrice the Oulds,

He met the nightmare and her nine foals;

He bade her alight and her troth plight,

And, “Aroynt thee, Witch!” he said.

I shall set about one when I am in a humour to abandon myself to all the

diableries that ever met the eye of a Fuseli!

Le Grice has jumbled together all the quaint stupidity he ever wrote,

amounting to about thirty pages, and published it in a book about the size

and dimensions of children’s twopenny books. The dedication is pretty. He

calls the publication “Tineum;”[87] for what reason or with what meaning

would give Madame Sphinx a complete victory over Œdipus.

A wag has handed about, I hear, an obtuse angle of wit, under the name of

“An Epigram.” ’Tis almost as bad as the subject.

“A tiny man of tiny wit

A tiny book has published.

But not alas! one tiny bit

His tiny fame established.”

TO BOWLES.[88]

My heart has thank’d thee, Bowles! for those soft strains,

That, on the still air floating, tremblingly

Woke in me Fancy, Love, and Sympathy!

For hence, not callous to a Brother’s pains

Thro’ Youth’s gay prime and thornless paths I went;

And when the _darker_ day of life began,

And I did roam, a thought-bewildered man!

Thy kindred Lays an healing solace lent,

Each lonely pang with dreamy joys combin’d,

And stole from vain REGRET her scorpion stings;

While shadowy PLEASURE, with mysterious wings,

Brooded the wavy and tumultuous mind,

Like that great Spirit, who with plastic sweep

Mov’d on the darkness of the formless Deep!

Of the following sonnet, the four _last_ lines were written by Lamb, a man

of uncommon genius. Have you seen his divine sonnet of “O! I could

_laugh_ to hear the winter winds,” etc.?

SONNET.[89]

O gentle look, that didst my soul beguile,

Why hast thou left me? Still in some fond dream

Revisit my sad heart, auspicious smile!

As falls on closing flowers the lunar beam;

What time in sickly mood, at parting day

I lay me down and think of happier years;

Of joys, that glimmered in Hope’s twilight ray,

Then left me darkling in a vale of tears.

O pleasant days of Hope--for ever flown!

Could I recall one!--But that thought is vain.

Availeth not Persuasion’s sweetest tone

To lure the fleet-winged travellers back again:

Anon, they haste to everlasting night,

Nor can a giant’s arm arrest them in their flight.

The four last lines are beautiful, but they have no particular meaning

which “that thought is _vain_” does not convey. And I cannot write without

a _body_ of _thought_. Hence my poetry is crowded and sweats beneath a

heavy burden of ideas and imagery! It has seldom ease. The little song

ending with “I heav’d the painless sigh for thee!” is an exception, and,

accordingly, I like it the best of all I ever wrote. My sonnets to eminent

contemporaries are among the better things I have written. That to Erskine

is a bad specimen. I have written ten, and mean to write six more. In

“Fayette” I unwittingly (for I did not know it at the time) borrowed a

thought from you.

I will conclude with a little song of mine,[90] which has no other merit

than a pretty simplicity of silliness.

If while my passion I impart,

You deem my words untrue,

O place your hand upon my heart--

Feel how it throbs for _you_!

Ah no! reject the thoughtless claim

In pity to your Lover!

That thrilling touch would aid the flame

It wishes to discover!

I am a complete necessitarian, and understand the subject as well almost

as Hartley himself, but I go farther than Hartley, and believe the

corporeality of _thought_, namely, that it is motion. Boyer thrashed

Favell most cruelly the day before yesterday, and I sent him the following

note of consolation: “I condole with you on the unpleasant motions, to

which a certain uncouth automaton has been mechanized; and am anxious to

know the motives that impinged on its optic or auditory nerves so as to be

communicated in such rude vibrations through the medullary substance of

its brain, thence rolling their stormy surges into the capillaments of its

tongue, and the muscles of its arm. The diseased violence of its thinking

corporealities will, depend upon it, cure itself by exhaustion. In the

mean time I trust that you have not been assimilated in degradation by

losing the ataxy of your temper, and that necessity which dignified you by

a sentience of the pain has not lowered you by the accession of anger or

resentment.”

God love you, Southey! My love to your mother!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XLII. TO THE SAME.

Wednesday, December 17, 1794.

When I am unhappy a sigh or a groan does not feel sufficient to relieve

the oppression of my heart. I give a long _whistle_. This by way of a

detached truth.

“How infinitely more to be valued is integrity of heart than effulgence of

intellect!” A noble sentiment, and would have come home to me, if for

“integrity” you had substituted “energy.” The skirmishes of sensibility

are indeed contemptible when compared with the well-disciplined phalanx of

right-onward feelings. O ye invincible soldiers of virtue, who arrange

yourselves under the generalship of fixed principles, that you would throw

up your fortifications around my heart! I pronounce this a very sensible,

apostrophical, metaphorical rant.

I dined yesterday with Perry and Grey (the proprietor and editor of the

“Morning Chronicle”) at their house, and met Holcroft. He either

misunderstood Lovell, or Lovell misunderstood him. I know not which, but

it is very clear to me that neither of them understands nor enters into

the views of our system. Holcroft opposes it violently and thinks it not

_virtuous_. His arguments were such as Nugent and twenty others have used

to us before him; they were _nothing_. There is a fierceness and dogmatism

of conversation in Holcroft for which you receive little compensation

either from the veracity of his information, the closeness of his

reasoning, or the splendour of his language. He talks incessantly of

metaphysics, of which he appears to me to know nothing, to have read

nothing. He is ignorant as a scholar, and neglectful of the smaller

humanities as a man. Compare him with Porson! My God! to hear Porson

_crush_ Godwin, Holcroft, etc. They absolutely tremble before him! I had

the honour of working H. a little, and by my great _coolness_ and command

of impressive language certainly _did him over_. “Sir!” said he, “I never

knew so much real wisdom and so much rank error meet in one mind before!”

“Which,” answered I, “means, I suppose, that in some things, sir, I agree

with you, and in others I do not.” He absolutely infests you with

_atheism_; and his arguments are such that the nonentities of Nugent

consolidate into oak or ironwood by comparison! As to his taste in poetry,

he thinks lightly, or rather contemptuously, of Bowles’ sonnets; the

language flat and prosaic and inharmonious, and the sentiments only fit

for girls! Come, come, Mr. Holcroft, as much unintelligible metaphysics

and as much bad criticism as you please, but no _blasphemy_ against the

divinity of _a Bowles_! Porson idolizes the sonnets. However it happened,

I am higher in his good graces than he in mine. If I am in town I dine

with him and Godwin, etc., at his house on Sunday.

I am astonished at your preference of the “Elegy.” I think it the worst

thing you ever wrote.

“_Qui Gratio non odit, amet tua carmina, Avaro!_”[91]

Why, ’tis almost as bad as Lovell’s “Farmhouse,” and that would be at

least a thousand fathoms deep in the dead sea of pessimism.

“The hard world scoff’d my woes, the chaste one’s pride,

Mimic of virtue, mock’d my keen distress,

[92]And Vice alone would shelter wretchedness.

Even life is loathsome now,” etc.

These two stanzas are exquisite, but the lovely thought of the “hot sun,”

etc., as pitiless as proud prosperity loses part of its beauty by the time

being night. It is among the chief excellences of Bowles that his imagery

appears almost always prompted by surrounding scenery.

Before you write a poem you should say to yourself, “What do I intend to

be the character of this poem; which feature is to be predominant in it?”

So you make it unique. But in this poem now _Charlotte_ speaks and now the

Poet. Assuredly the stanzas of Memory, “three worst of fiends,” etc., and

“gay fancy fond and frolic” are altogether poetical. You have repeated the

same rhymes ungracefully, and the thought on which you harp so long

recalls too forcibly the Εὕδεις βρέφος of Simonides. Unfortunately the

“Adventurer” has made this sweet fragment an object of popular admiration.

On the whole, I think it unworthy of your other “Botany Bay Eclogues,” yet

deem the two stanzas above selected superior almost to anything you ever

wrote; _quod est magna res dicere_, a great thing to say.

SONNET.[93]

Though king-bred rage with lawless Tumult rude

Have driv’n our _Priestley_ o’er the ocean swell;

Though Superstition and her wolfish brood

Bay his mild radiance, impotent and fell;

Calm in his halls of brightness he shall dwell!

For lo! Religion at his strong behest

Disdainful rouses from the Papal spell,

And flings to Earth her tinsel-glittering vest,

Her mitred state and cumbrous pomp unholy;

And Justice wakes to bid th’ oppression wail,

That ground th’ ensnared soul of patient Folly;

And from her dark retreat by Wisdom won,

Meek Nature slowly lifts her matron veil,

To smile with fondness on her gazing son!

SONNET.

O what a loud and fearful shriek was there,

As though a thousand souls one death-groan poured!

Great _Kosciusko_ ’neath an hireling’s sword

The warriors view’d! Hark! through the list’ning air

(When pauses the tir’d Cossack’s barbarous yell

Of triumph) on the chill and midnight gale

Rises with frantic burst or sadder swell

The “Dirge of Murder’d Hope!” while Freedom pale

Bends in _such_ anguish o’er her destined bier,

As if from eldest time some Spirit meek

Had gathered in a mystic urn each tear

That ever furrowed a sad Patriot’s cheek,

And she had drench’d the sorrows of the bowl

Ev’n till she reel’d, intoxicate of soul!

Tell me which you like the best of the above two. I have written one to

Godwin, but the mediocrity of the eight first lines is _most miserably

magazinish_! I have plucked, therefore, these scentless road-flowers from

the chaplet, and entreat thee, thou river god of Pieria, to weave into it

the gorgeous water-lily from thy stream, or the far-smelling violets on

thy bank. The last six lines are these:--

Nor will I not thy holy guidance bless

And hymn thee, Godwin! with an ardent lay;

For that thy voice, in Passion’s stormy day,

When wild I roam’d the bleak Heath of Distress,

Bade the bright form of Justice meet my way,--

And told me that her name was Happiness.

Give me your minutest opinion concerning the following sonnet, whether or

no I shall admit it into the number. The move of bepraising a man by

enumerating the beauties of his polygraph is at least an original one; so

much so that I fear it will be somewhat unintelligible to those whose

brains are not του ἀμείνονος πηλοῦ. (You have read S.’s poetry and know

that the fancy displayed in it is sweet and delicate to the highest

degree.)

TO R. B. SHERIDAN, ESQ.

Some winged Genius, Sheridan! imbreath’d

His various influence on thy natal hour:

My fancy bodies forth the Guardian Power,

His temples with Hymettian flowerets wreath’d;

And sweet his voice, as when o’er Laura’s bier

Sad music trembled through Vauclusa’s glade;

Sweet, as at dawn the lovelorn serenade

That bears soft dreams to Slumber’s listening ear!

Now patriot Zeal and Indignation high

Swell the full tones! and now his eye-beams dance

Meanings of Scorn and Wit’s quaint revelry!

Th’ Apostate by the brainless rout adored,

Writhes inly from the bosom-probing glance,

As erst that nobler Fiend beneath great Michael’s sword!

I will give the second number as deeming that it possesses _mind_:--

As late I roamed through Fancy’s shadowy vale,

With wetted cheek and in a mourner’s guise,

I saw the sainted form of Freedom rise:

He spake:--not sadder moans th’ autumnal gale--

“Great Son of Genius! sweet to me thy name,

Ere in an evil hour with altered voice

Thou badst Oppression’s hireling crew rejoice,

Blasting with wizard spell my laurell’d fame.

Yet never, Burke! thou drank’st Corruption’s bowl!

Thee stormy Pity and the cherish’d lure

Of Pomp and proud _precipitance_ of soul

Urged on with wild’ring fires. Ah, spirit pure!

That Error’s mist had left thy purged eye;

So might I clasp thee with a Mother’s joy.”

ADDRESS TO A YOUNG JACKASS AND ITS TETHERED MOTHER.[94]

Poor little foal of an oppressed race!

I love the languid patience of thy face:

And oft with friendly hand I give thee bread,

And clap thy ragged coat and pat thy head.

But what thy dulled spirit hath dismay’d,

That never thou dost sport upon the glade?

And (most unlike the nature of things young)

That still to earth thy moping head is hung?

Do thy prophetic tears anticipate,

Meek Child of Misery, thy future fate?

The starving meal and all the thousand aches

That “patient Merit of the Unworthy takes”?

Or is thy sad heart thrill’d with filial pain

To see thy wretched mother’s lengthened chain?

And truly, very piteous is _her_ lot,

Chained to a log upon a narrow spot,

Where the close-eaten grass is scarcely seen,

While sweet around her waves the tempting green!

Poor Ass! thy master should have learnt to show

Pity best taught by fellowship of Woe!

For much I fear me that _He_ lives like thee

Half-famish’d in a land of Luxury!

How _askingly_ its steps towards me bend!

It seems to say, “And have I then _one_ friend?”

Innocent foal! thou poor, despis’d forlorn!

I hail thee Brother, spite of the fool’s scorn!

And fain I’d take thee with me in the Dell

Of high-souled Pantisocracy to dwell;

Where Toil shall call the charmer Health his bride,

And Laughter tickle Plenty’s _ribless_ side!

How thou wouldst toss thy heels in gamesome play,

And frisk about, as lamb or kitten gay.

Yea, and more musically sweet to me

Thy dissonant harsh bray of joy would be,

Than _Banti’s_ warbled airs, that soothe to rest

The tumult of a scoundrel Monarch’s breast!

How do you like it?

I took the liberty--Gracious God! pardon me for the aristocratic frigidity

of that expression--I indulged my feelings by sending this among my

_Contemporary_ Sonnets:

Southey! Thy melodies steal o’er mine ear

Like far-off joyance, or the murmuring

Of wild bees in the sunny showers of Spring--

Sounds of such mingled import as may cheer

The lonely breast, yet rouse a mindful tear:

Waked by the song doth Hope-born Fancy fling

Rich showers of dewy fragrance from her wing,

Till sickly Passion’s drooping Myrtles sear

Blossom anew! But O! more thrill’d I prize

Thy sadder strains, that bid in Memory’s Dream

The faded forms of past Delight arise;

Then soft on Love’s pale cheek the tearful gleam

Of Pleasure smiles as faint yet beauteous lies

The imaged Rainbow on a willowy stream.

God love you and your mother and Edith and Sara and Mary and little Eliza,

etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

[The following lines in Southey’s handwriting are attached to this

letter:--

What though oppression’s blood-cemented force

Stands proudly threatening arrogant in state,

Not thine his savage priests to immolate

Or hurl the fabric on the encumber’d plain

As with a whirlwind’s fury. It is thine

When dark Revenge masked in the form adored

Of Justice lifts on high the murderer’s sword

To save the erring victims from her shrine.

To GODWIN.]

XLIII. TO THE SAME.

Monday morning, December, 1794.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I will not say that you treat me coolly or mysteriously,

yet assuredly you seem to look upon me as a man whom vanity, or some other

inexplicable cause, has alienated from the system, or what could build so

injurious a suspicion? Wherein, when roused to the recollection of my

duty, have I shrunk from the performance of it? I hold my life and my

feeble feelings as ready sacrifices to justice--καυκάω ὑπορᾶς γάρ. I

dismiss a subject so painful to me as self-vindication; painful to me only

as addressing you on whose esteem and affection I have rested with the

whole weight of my soul.

Southey! I must tell you that you appear to me to write as a man who is

aweary of the world because it accords not with his ideas of perfection.

Your sentiments look like the sickly offspring of disgusted pride. It

flies not away from the couches of imperfection because the patients are

fretful and loathsome.

Why, my dear, very dear Southey, do you wrap yourself in the mantle of

self-centring resolve, and refuse to us your bounden quota of intellect?

Why do you say, “_I, I, I_ will do so and so,” instead of saying, as you

were wont to do, “It is all our duty to do so and so, for such and such

reasons”?

For God’s sake, my dear fellow, tell me what we are to gain by taking a

Welsh farm. Remember the principles and proposed consequences of

pantisocracy, and reflect in what degree they are attainable by Coleridge,

Southey, Lovell, Burnett, and Co., some five men _going partners_

together? In the next place, supposing that we have proved the

preponderating utility of our aspheterizing in Wales, let us by our speedy

and united inquiries discover the sum of money necessary, whether such a

farm with so very large a house is to be procured without launching our

frail and unpiloted bark on a rough sea of anxieties. How much is

necessary for the maintenance of so large a family--eighteen people for a

year at least?

I have read my objections to Lovell. If he has not answered them

altogether to my fullest conviction, he has however shown me the

wretchedness that would fall on the majority of our party from any delay

in so forcible a light, that if three hundred pounds be adequate to the

commencement of the system (which I very much doubt), I am most willing to

give up all my views and embark immediately with you.

If it be determined that we shall go to Wales (for which I now give my

vote), in what time? Mrs. Lovell thinks it impossible that we should go in

less than three months. If this be the case, I will accept of the

reporter’s place to the “Telegraph,” live upon a guinea a week, and

transmit the [? balance], finishing in the same time my “Imitations.”

However, I will walk to Bath to-morrow morning and return in the evening.

Mr. and Mrs. Lovell, Sarah, Edith, all desire their best love to you, and

are anxious concerning your health.

May God love you and your affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XLIV. TO MARY EVANS.

(?) December, 1794.

Too long has my heart been the torture house of suspense. After infinite

struggles of irresolution, I will at last dare to request of you, Mary,

that you will communicate to me whether or no you are engaged to Mr. ----.

I conjure you not to consider this request as presumptuous indelicacy.

Upon mine honour, I have made it with no other design or expectation than

that of arming my fortitude by total hopelessness. Read this letter with

benevolence--and consign it to oblivion.

For four years I have _endeavoured_ to smother a very ardent attachment;

in what degree I have succeeded you must know better than I can. With

quick perceptions of moral beauty, it was impossible for me not to admire

in you your sensibility regulated by judgment, your gaiety proceeding from

a cheerful heart acting on the stores of a strong understanding. At first

I voluntarily invited the recollection of these qualities into my mind. I

made them the perpetual object of my reveries, yet I entertained no one

sentiment beyond that of the immediate pleasure annexed to the thinking of

you. At length it became a habit. I awoke from the delusion, and found

that I had unwittingly harboured a passion which I felt neither the power

nor the courage to subdue. My associations were irrevocably formed, and

your image was blended with every idea. I thought of you incessantly; yet

that spirit (if spirit there be that condescends to record the lonely

beatings of my heart), that spirit knows that I thought of you with the

purity of a brother. Happy were I, had it been with no more than a

brother’s ardour!

The man of dependent fortunes, while he fosters an attachment, commits an

act of suicide on his happiness. I possessed no establishment. My views

were very distant; I saw that you regarded me merely with the kindness of

a sister. What expectations could I form? I formed no expectations. I was

ever resolving to subdue the disquieting passion; still some inexplicable

suggestion palsied my efforts, and I clung with desperate fondness to this

phantom of love, its mysterious attractions and hopeless prospects. It was

a faint and rayless hope![95] Yet it soothed my solitude with many a

delightful day-dream. It was a faint and rayless hope! Yet I nursed it in

my bosom with an agony of affection, even as a mother her sickly infant.

But these are the poisoned luxuries of a diseased fancy. Indulge, Mary,

this my first, my last request, and restore me to _reality_, however

gloomy. Sad and full of heaviness will the intelligence be; my heart will

die within me. I shall, however, receive it with steadier resignation from

yourself, than were it announced to me (haply on your marriage day!) by a

stranger. Indulge my request; I will not disturb your peace by even a

_look_ of discontent, still less will I offend your ear by the whine of

selfish sensibility. In a few months I shall enter at the Temple and there

seek forgetful calmness, where only it can be found, in incessant and

useful activity.

Were you not possessed of a mind and of a heart above the usual lot of

women, I should not have written you sentiments that would be

unintelligible to three fourths of your sex. But our feelings are

congenial, though our attachment is doomed not to be reciprocal. You will

not deem so meanly of me as to believe that I shall regard Mr. ---- with

the jaundiced eye of disappointed passion. God forbid! He whom you honour

with your affections becomes sacred to me. I shall love him for _your_

sake; the time may perhaps come when I shall be philosopher enough not to

envy him for _his own_.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

I return to Cambridge to-morrow morning.

MISS EVANS, No. 17 Sackville Street, Piccadilly.

XLV. TO THE SAME.

December 24, 1794.

I have this moment received your letter, Mary Evans. Its firmness does

honour to your understanding, its gentleness to your humanity. You

condescend to accuse yourself--most unjustly! You have been altogether

blameless. In my wildest day-dream of vanity, I never supposed that you

entertained for me any other than a common friendship.

To love you, habit has made unalterable. This passion, however, divested

as it now is of all shadow of hope, will lose its disquieting power. Far

distant from you I shall journey through the vale of men in calmness. He

cannot long be wretched, who dares be actively virtuous.

I have burnt your letters--forget mine; and that I have pained you,

forgive me!

May God infinitely love you!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XLVI. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

December, 1794.

I am calm, dear Southey! as an autumnal day, when the sky is covered with

gray moveless clouds. To _love her_, habit has made unalterable. I had

placed her in the sanctuary of my heart, nor can she be torn from thence

but with the strings that grapple it to life. This passion, however,

divested as it now is of all shadow of hope, seems to lose its disquieting

power. Far distant, and never more to behold or hear of her, I shall

sojourn in the vale of men, sad and in loneliness, yet not unhappy. He

cannot be long wretched who dares be actively virtuous. I am well assured

that she loves me as a favourite brother. When she was present, she was to

me only as a very dear sister; it was in absence that I felt those

gnawings of suspense, and that dreaminess of mind, which evidence an

affection more restless, yet scarcely less pure than the fraternal. The

struggle has been well nigh too much for me; but, praised be the

All-Merciful! the feebleness of exhausted feelings has produced a calm,

and my heart stagnates into peace.

Southey! my ideal standard of female excellence rises not above that

woman. But all things work together for good. Had I been united to her,

the excess of my affection would have effeminated my intellect. I should

have fed on her looks as she entered into the room, I should have gazed

on her footsteps when she went out from me.

To lose her! I can rise above that selfish pang. But to marry another. O

Southey! bear with my weakness. Love makes all things pure and heavenly

like itself,--but to marry a woman whom I do _not_ love, to degrade her

whom I call my wife by making her the instrument of low desire, and on the

removal of a desultory appetite to be perhaps not displeased with her

absence! Enough! These refinements are the wildering fires that lead me

into vice. Mark you, Southey! _I will do my duty._

I have this moment received your letter. My friend, you want but one

quality of mind to be a perfect character. Your sensibilities are

tempestuous; you feel _indignation_ at weakness. Now Indignation is the

handsome brother of Anger and Hatred. His looks are “lovely in terror,”

yet still remember _who_ are his _relations_. I would ardently that you

were a necessitarian, and (believing in an all-loving Omnipotence) an

optimist. That puny imp of darkness yclept scepticism, how could it dare

to approach the hallowed fires that burn so brightly on the altar of your

heart?

Think you I wish to stay in town? I am all eagerness to leave it; and am

resolved, whatever be the consequence, to be at Bath by Saturday. I

thought of walking down.

I have written to Bristol and said I could not assign a particular time

for my leaving town. I spoke indefinitely that I might not disappoint.

I am not, I presume, to attribute some verses addressed to S. T. C., in

the “Morning Chronicle,” to you. To whom? My dear Allen! wherein has he

offended? He did never promise to form one of our party. But of all this

when we meet. Would a pistol preserve integrity? So concentrate guilt? no

very philosophical mode of preventing it. I will write of indifferent

subjects. Your sonnet,[96] “Hold your mad hands!” is a noble burst of

poetry; and--but my mind is weakened and I turn with selfishness of

thought to those wilder songs that develop my lonely feelings. Sonnets are

scarcely fit for the hard gaze of the public. I read, with heart and taste

equally delighted, your prefatory sonnet.[97] I transcribe it, not so much

to give you my corrections, as for the pleasure it gives me.

With wayworn feet, a pilgrim woe-begone,

Life’s upland steep I journeyed many a day,

And hymning many a sad yet soothing lay,

Beguiled my wandering with the charms of song.

Lonely my heart and rugged was my way,

Yet often plucked I, as I passed along,

The wild and simple flowers of poesy:

And, as beseemed the wayward Fancy’s child,

Entwined each random weed that pleased mine eye.

Accept the wreath, Beloved! it is wild

And rudely garlanded; yet scorn not thou

The humble offering, when the sad rue weaves

With gayer flowers its intermingled leaves,

And I have twin’d the myrtle for thy brow!

It is a lovely sonnet. Lamb likes it with tears in his eyes. His sister

has lately been very unwell, confined to her bed, dangerously. She is all

his comfort, he hers. They dote on each other. Her mind is elegantly

stored; her heart feeling. Her illness preyed a good deal on his spirits,

though he bore it with an apparent equanimity as beseemed him who, like

me, is a Unitarian Christian, and an advocate for the automatism of man.

I was writing a poem, which when finished you shall see, and wished him to

describe the character and doctrines of Jesus Christ for me; but his low

spirits prevented him. The poem is in blank verse on the Nativity. I sent

him these careless lines, which flowed from my pen extemporaneously:--

TO C. LAMB.[98]

Thus far my sterile brain hath framed the song

Elaborate and swelling: but the heart

Not owns it. From thy spirit-breathing power

I ask not now, my friend! the aiding verse,

Tedious to thee, and from thy anxious thought

Of dissonant mood. In fancy (well I know)

Thou creepest round a dear-loved Sister’s bed

With noiseless step, and watchest the faint look,

Soothing each pang with fond solicitude,

And tenderest tones, medicinal of love.

I too a Sister had, an only Sister--

She loved me dearly, and I doted on her!

On her soft bosom I reposed my cares

And gained for every wound a healing scar.

To her I pour’d forth all my puny sorrows,

(As a sick Patient in his Nurse’s arms),

And of the heart those hidden maladies

That shrink ashamed from even Friendship’s eye.

O! I have woke at midnight and have wept

Because she was not! Cheerily, dear Charles!

Thou thy best friend shalt cherish many a year:

Such high presages feel I of warm hope!

For not uninterested, the dear Maid

I’ve view’d--her Soul affectionate yet wise,

Her polish’d wit as mild as lambent glories

That play around a holy infant’s head.

He knows (the Spirit who in secret sees,

Of whose omniscient and all-spreading Love

Aught to _implore_ were Impotence of mind)

That my mute thoughts are sad before his throne,

Prepar’d, when he his healing pay vouchsafes,

To pour forth thanksgiving with lifted heart,

And praise Him Gracious with a Brother’s Joy!

Wynne is indeed a noble fellow. More when we meet.

Your

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CHAPTER II

EARLY PUBLIC LIFE

1795-1796

CHAPTER II

EARLY PUBLIC LIFE

1795-1796

XLVII. TO JOSEPH COTTLE.

Spring, 1795.

MY DEAR SIR,--Can you conveniently lend me five pounds, as we want a

little more than four pounds to make up our lodging bill, which is indeed

much higher than we expected; seven weeks and Burnett’s lodging for twelve

weeks, amounting to eleven pounds?

Yours affectionately,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XLVIII. TO THE SAME.

July 31, 1795.

DEAR COTTLE,--By the thick smokes that precede the volcanic eruptions of

Etna, Vesuvius, and Hecla, I feel an impulse to fumigate, at 25 College

Street, one pair of stairs’ room; yea, with our Oronoco, and, if thou wilt

send me by the bearer four pipes, I will write a panegyrical epic poem

upon thee, with as many books as there are letters in thy name. Moreover,

if thou wilt send me “the copy-book,” I hereby bind myself, by to-morrow

morning, to write out enough copy for a sheet and a half.

God bless you.

S. T. C.

XLIX. TO THE SAME.

1795.

DEAR COTTLE,--Shall I trouble you (I being over the mouth and nose, in

doing something of importance, at ----’s) to send your servant into the

market and buy a pound of bacon, and two quarts of broad beans; and when

he carries it down to College Street, to desire the maid to dress it for

dinner, and tell her I shall be home by three o’clock? Will you come and

drink tea with me? and I will endeavour to get the etc. ready for you.

Yours affectionately,

S. T. C.

L. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

October, 1795.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--It would argue imbecility and a latent wickedness in

myself, if for a moment I doubted concerning your purposes and final

determination. I write, because it is possible that I may suggest some

idea to you which should find a place in your answer to your uncle, and I

_write_, because in a letter I can express myself more connectedly than in

conversation.

The former part of Mr. Hill’s reasonings is reducible to this. It may not

be vicious to entertain pure and virtuous sentiments; their criminality is

confined to the promulgation (if we believe democracy to be pure and

virtuous, to us it is so). Southey! Pantisocracy is not the question: its

realization is distant--perhaps a miraculous millennium. What you have

seen, or think that you have seen of the human heart, may render the

formation even of a pantisocratic _seminary_ improbable to you, but this

is not the question. Were £300 a year offered to you as a man of the

world, as one indifferent to absolute equality, but still on the

supposition that you were commonly honest, I suppose it possible that

doubts might arise; your mother, your brother, your Edith, would all

crowd upon you, and certain misery might be weighed against distant, and

perhaps unattainable happiness. But the point is, whether or no you can

_perjure_ yourself. There are men who hold the necessity and moral

optimism of our religious establishment. Its peculiar dogmas they may

disapprove, but of innovation they see dreadful and unhealable

consequence; and they will not quit the Church for a few follies and

absurdities, any more than for the same reason they would desert a valued

friend. Such men I do not condemn. Whatever I may deem of their reasoning,

their hearts and consciences I include not in the anathema. But you

disapprove of an establishment altogether; you believe it iniquitous, a

mother of crimes. It is impossible that _you_ could uphold it by assuming

the badge of affiliation.

My prospects are not bright, but to the eye of reason as bright as when we

first formed our plan; nor is there any opposite inducement offered, of

which you were not then apprized, or had cause to expect. Domestic

happiness is the greatest of things sublunary, and of things celestial it

is impossible, perhaps, for unassisted man to believe anything greater;

but it is not strange that those things, which, in a pure form of society,

will constitute our first blessings, should in its present morbid state be

our most perilous temptations. “He that doth not love mother or wife less

than me, is not worthy of me!”

This have I written, Southey, altogether disinterestedly. Your desertion

or adhesion will in no wise affect my feelings, opinions, or conduct, and

in a very inconsiderable degree my fortunes! That Being who is “in will,

in deed, Impulse of all to all,” whichever be your determination, will

make it ultimately the best.

God love you, my dear Southey!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

LI. TO THOMAS POOLE.

Wednesday evening, October 7, 1795.

MY DEAR SIR,--God bless you; or rather, God be praised for that he _has_

blessed you!

On Sunday morning I was _married_ at St. Mary’s Redcliff, poor

Chatterton’s church! The thought gave a tinge of melancholy to the solemn

joy which I felt, united to the woman whom I love best of all created

beings. We are settled, nay, quite domesticated, at Clevedon, our

comfortable cot!

_Mrs. Coleridge!_ I like to write the name. Well, as I was saying, Mrs.

Coleridge desires her affectionate regards to you. I talked of you on my

wedding night. God bless you! I hope that some ten years hence you will

believe and know of my affection towards you what I will not now profess.

The prospect around is perhaps more _various_ than any in the kingdom.

Mine eye gluttonizes the sea, the distant islands, the opposite coast! I

shall assuredly write rhymes, let the nine Muses prevent it if they can.

Cruikshank, I find, is married to Miss Buclé. I am happy to hear it. He

will surely, I hope, make a good husband to a woman, to whom he would be a

villain who should make a bad one.

[Illustration]

I have given up all thoughts of the magazine, for various reasons.

_Imprimis_, I must be connected with R. Southey in it, which I could not

be with comfort to my feelings. _Secundo_, It is a thing of monthly

_anxiety_ and quotidian bustle. _Tertio_, It would cost Cottle an hundred

pounds in buying paper, etc.--all on an uncertainty. _Quarto_, To publish

a magazine for _one_ year would be nonsense, and if I pursue what I mean

to pursue, my school plan, I could not publish it for more than a year.

_Quinto_, Cottle has entered into an engagement to give me a guinea and a

half for every hundred lines of poetry I write, which will be perfectly

sufficient for my maintenance, I only amusing myself on mornings; and all

my prose works he is eager to purchase. _Sexto_, In the course of half a

year I mean to return to Cambridge (having previously taken my name off

from the University control) and taking lodgings there for myself and

wife, finish my great work of “Imitations,” in two volumes. My former

works may, I hope, prove somewhat of genius and of erudition. This will be

better; it will show great industry and manly consistency; at the end of

it I shall publish proposals for school, etc. Cottle has spent a day with

me, and takes this letter to Bristol. My next will be long, and full of

_something_. This is inanity and egotism. Pray let me hear from you,

directing the letter to Mr. Cottle, who will forward it. My respectful and

grateful remembrance to your mother, and believe me, dear Poole, your

affectionate and mindful _friend_, shall I so soon dare to say? Believe

me, my heart prompts it.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

LII. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.[99]

Friday morning, November 13, 1795.

Southey, I _have_ lost friends--friends who still cherish for me

sentiments of high esteem and unextinguished tenderness. For the sum total

of my misbehaviour, the Alpha and Omega of their accusations, is

epistolary neglect. I never speak of them without affection, I never think

of them without reverence. Not “to this catalogue,” Southey, have I “added

_your_ name.” You are _lost_ to _me_, because you are lost to Virtue. As

this will probably be the last time I shall have occasion to address you,

I will begin at the beginning and regularly retrace your conduct and my

own. In the month of June, 1794, I first became acquainted with your

person and character. Before I quitted Oxford, we had struck out the

leading features of a pantisocracy. While on my journey through Wales you

invited me to Bristol with the full hopes of realising it. During my abode

at Bristol the plan was matured, and I returned to Cambridge hot in the

anticipation of that happy season when we should remove the _selfish_

principle from ourselves, and prevent it in our children, by an abolition

of property; or, in whatever respects this might be impracticable, by such

similarity of property as would amount to a _moral_ sameness, and answer

all the purposes of _abolition_. Nor were you less zealous, and thought

and expressed your opinion, that if any man embraced our system he must

comparatively disregard “his father and mother and wife and children and

brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, or he could not be our

disciple.” In one of your letters, alluding to your mother’s low spirits

and situation, you tell me that “I cannot suppose any _individual_

feelings will have an undue weight with you,” and in the same letter you

observe (alas! your recent conduct has made it a prophecy!), “God forbid

that the _ebullience_ of _schematism_ should be over. It is the Promethean

fire that animates my soul, and when _that_ is gone _all will be

darkness_. I have _devoted_ myself!”

Previously to my departure from Jesus College, and during my melancholy

detention in London, what convulsive struggles of feeling I underwent, and

what sacrifices I made, you know. The liberal proposal from my family

affected me no further than as it pained me to wound a revered brother by

the positive and immediate refusal which duty compelled me to return. But

there was a--I need not be particular; you remember what a fetter I burst,

and that it snapt as if it had been a sinew of my heart. However, I

returned to Bristol, and my addresses to Sara, which I at first paid from

principle, not feeling, from feeling and from principle I renewed; and I

met a reward more than proportionate to the greatness of the effort. I

love and I am beloved, and I am happy!

Your letter to Lovell (two or three days after my arrival at Bristol), in

answer to some objections of mine to the Welsh scheme, was the first thing

that alarmed me. Instead of “It is our duty,” “Such and such are the

reasons,” it was “I and I” and “will and will,”--sentences of gloomy and

self-centering resolve. I wrote you a friendly reproof, and in my own mind

attributed this unwonted style to your earnest desires of realising our

plan, and the angry pain which you felt when any appeared to oppose or

defer its execution. However, I came over to your opinions of the utility,

and, in course, the duty of rehearsing our scheme in Wales, and, so,

rejected the offer of being established in the Earl of Buchan’s family. To

this period of our connection I call your more particular attention and

remembrance, as I shall revert to it at the close of my letter.

We commenced lecturing. Shortly after, you began to recede in your

conversation from those broad principles in which pantisocracy originated.

I opposed you with vehemence, for I well knew that no notion of morality

or its motives could be without consequences. And once (it was just before

we went to bed) you confessed to me that you had acted wrong. But you

relapsed; your manner became cold and gloomy, and pleaded with increased

pertinacity for the wisdom of making Self an undiverging Center. At Mr.

Jardine’s[100] your language was _strong indeed_. Recollect it. You had

left the table, and we were standing at the window. Then darted into my

mind the dread that you were meditating a separation. At _Chepstow_[101]

your conduct renewed my suspicion, and I was greatly agitated, even to

many tears. But in Peircefield Walks[102] you assured me that my

suspicions were altogether unfounded, that our differences were merely

speculative, and that you would certainly go into Wales. I was glad and

satisfied. For my heart was never bent from you but by violent strength,

and heaven knows how it leapt back to esteem and love you. But alas! a

short time passed ere your departure from our first principles became too

flagrant. Remember when we went to Ashton[103] on the strawberry party.

Your conversation with George Burnett on the day following he detailed to

me. It scorched my throat. Your private resources were to remain your

individual property, and everything to be separate except a farm of five

or six acres. In short, we were to commence partners in a petty farming

trade. This was the mouse of which the mountain Pantisocracy was at last

safely delivered. I received the account with indignation and loathings of

unutterable contempt. Such opinions were indeed unassailable,--the javelin

of argument and the arrows of ridicule would have been equally misapplied;

a straw would have wounded them mortally. I did not condescend to waste my

intellect upon them; but in the most express terms I declared to George

Burnett my opinion (and, Southey, next to my own existence, there is

scarce any fact of which at this moment I entertain less doubt), to

Burnett I declared it to be my opinion “_that you had long laid a plot_ of

separation, and were now developing it by proposing such a vile mutilation

of our scheme as you must have been conscious I should reject decisively

and with scorn.” George Burnett was your most affectionate friend; I knew

his unbounded veneration for you, his personal attachment; I knew likewise

his gentle dislike of _me_. Yet him I bade be the judge. I bade him choose

his associate. I would adopt the full system or depart. George, I presume,

detailed of this my conversation what part he chose; from him, however, I

received your sentiments, viz.: that you would go into Wales, or what

place I liked. Thus your system of prudentials and your apostasy were not

sudden; these constant nibblings had sloped your descent from virtue. “You

received your uncle’s letter,” I said--“what answer have you returned?”

For to think with almost superstitious veneration of you had been such a

deep-rooted habit of my soul that even then I did not dream you could

hesitate concerning so infamous a proposal. “None,” you replied, “nor do I

know what answer I shall return.” You went to bed. George sat

half-petrified, gaping at the pigmy virtue of his supposed giant. I

performed the office of still-struggling friendship by writing you my free

sentiments concerning the enormous guilt of that which your uncle’s

doughty sophistry recommended.

On the next morning I walked with you towards Bath; again I insisted on

its criminality. You told me that you had “little notion of guilt,” and

that “you had a pretty sort of lullaby faith of your own.” Finding you

invulnerable in conscience, for the sake of mankind I did not, however,

quit the field, but pressed you on the difficulties of your system. Your

uncle’s intimacy with the bishop, and the hush in which you would lie for

the two years previous to your ordination, were the arguments (variously

urged in a long and desultory conversation) by which you solved those

difficulties. “But your ‘Joan of Arc’--the sentiments in it are of the

boldest order. What if the suspicions of the Bishop be raised, and he

particularly questions you concerning your opinions of the Trinity and

the Redemption?” “Oh,” you replied, “I am pretty well up to their jargon,

and shall answer them accordingly.” In fine, you left me fully persuaded

that you would enter into Holy Orders. And, after a week’s interval or

more, you desired George Burnett to act independently of you, and _gave

him an invitation to Oxford_. Of course, we both concluded that the matter

was absolutely determined. Southey! I am not besotted that I should not

know, nor hypocrite enough not to tell you, that you were diverted from

being a Priest only by the weight of infamy which you perceived coming

towards you like a rush of waters.

Then with good reason I considered you as one _fallen back into the

ranks_; as a man admirable for his abilities only, strict, indeed, in the

lesser honesties, but, like the majority of men, unable to resist a strong

temptation. _Friend_ is a very sacred appellation. You were become an

_acquaintance_, yet one for whom I felt no common tenderness. I could not

forget what you had been. Your sun was set; your sky was clouded; but

those clouds and that sky were yet tinged with the recent sun. As I

considered you, so I treated you. I studiously avoided all particular

subjects. I acquainted you with nothing relative to myself. Literary

topics engrossed our conversation. You were too quick-sighted not to

perceive it. I received a letter from you. “You have withdrawn your

confidence from me, Coleridge. Preserving still the face of friendship

when we meet, you yet avoid me and carry on your plans in secrecy.” If by

“the face of friendship” you meant that kindliness which I show to all

because I feel it for all, your statement was perfectly accurate. If you

meant more, you contradict yourself; for you evidently perceived from my

manners that you were a “weight upon me” in company--an intruder, unwished

and unwelcome. I pained you by “cold civility, the shadow which friendship

leaves behind him.” Since that letter I altered my conduct no otherwise

than by avoiding you more. I still generalised, and spoke not of myself,

except my proposed literary works. In short, I spoke to you as I should

have done to any other man of genius who had happened to be my

_acquaintance_. Without the farce and tumult of a rupture I wished you to

sink into that class. “Face to face you never changed your manners to me.”

And yet I pained you by “cold civility.” Egregious contradiction!

Doubtless I always treated you with urbanity, and meant to do so; but I

_locked up_ my heart from you, and you perceived it, and I intended you to

perceive it. “I planned works in conjunction with you.” Most certainly;

the _magazine_ which, long before this, you had planned equally with me,

and, if it had been carried into execution, would of course have returned

you a third share of the profits. What had you done that should make you

an unfit literary associate to me? Nothing. My opinion of you as a _man_

was altered, not as a writer. Our Muses had not quarrelled. I should have

read your poetry with equal delight, and corrected it with equal zeal if

correction it needed. “I received you on my return from Shurton with my

usual shake of the hand.” You gave me your hand, and dreadful must have

been my feelings if I had refused to take it. Indeed, so long had I known

you, so highly venerated, so dearly loved you, that my hand would have

taken yours _mechanically_. But is shaking the hand a mark of

_friendship_? Heaven forbid! I should then be a hypocrite many days in the

week. It is assuredly the pledge of acquaintance, and nothing more. But

after this did I not with most scrupulous care avoid you? You know I did.

In your former letters you say that I made use of these words to you: “You

will be retrograde that you may spring the farther forward.” You have

misquoted, Southey! You had talked of rejoining pantisocracy in about

fourteen years. I exploded this probability, but as I saw you determined

to leave it, hoped and wished it might be so--_hoped_ that we might run

backwards only to leap forward. Not to mention that during that

conversation I had taken the weight and pressing urgency of your motives

as truths granted; but when, on examination, I found them a show and

mockery of unreal things, doubtless, my opinion of you _must_ have become

far less respectful. You quoted likewise the last sentence of my letter to

you, as a proof that I approved of your design; you _knew_ that sentence

to imply no more than the pious confidence of optimism--however wickedly

you might act, God would make it _ultimately_ the best. You _knew_ this

was the meaning of it--I could find twenty parallel passages in the

lectures. Indeed, such expressions applied to bad actions had become a

habit of my conversation. You had named, not unwittingly, Dr. Pangloss.

And Heaven forbid that I should not now have faith that however foul your

stream may run here, yet that it will filtrate and become pure in its

subterraneous passage to the Ocean of Universal Redemption.

Thus far had I written when the necessities of literary occupation crowded

upon me, and I met you in Redcliff, and, unsaluted and unsaluting, passed

by the man to whom for almost a year I had told my last thoughts when I

closed my eyes, and the first when I awoke. But “ere this I have felt

sorrow!”

I shall proceed to answer your letters, and first excriminate myself, and

then examine your conduct. You charge me with having industriously

trumpeted your uncle’s letter. When I mentioned my intended journey to

Clevedon with Burnett, and was asked by my immediate friends why _you_

were not with us, should I have been silent and implied something

mysterious, or have told an open untruth and made myself your accomplice?

I could do neither; I answered that you were quite undetermined, but had

some thoughts of returning to Oxford. To Danvers, indeed, and to Cottle I

spoke more particularly, for I knew their prudence and their love for

you--and my heart was very full. But to Mrs. Morgan I did not mention it.

She met me in the streets, and said: “So! Southey is going into the

Church! ’Tis all concluded, ’tis in vain to deny it!” I answered: “You are

mistaken; you must contradict; Southey has received a splendid offer, but

he has not determined.” This, I have some faint recollection, was my

answer, but of this particular conversation my recollection is very faint.

By what means she received the intelligence I know not; probably from Mrs.

Richardson, who might have been told it by Mr. Wade. A considerable time

after, the subject was renewed at Mrs. Morgan’s, Burnett and my Sara being

present. Mrs. M. told me that you had asserted to her, that with regard to

the Church you had barely hesitated, that you might consider your uncle’s

arguments, that you had given up no one principle--and that _I_ was more

your friend than ever. I own I was roused to an agony of passion; nor was

George Burnett undisturbed. Whatever I said that afternoon (and since that

time I have but often repeated what I said, in gentler language) George

Burnett did give his _decided Amen_ to. And I said, Southey, that you had

given up every principle--that confessedly you were going into the law,

more opposite to your avowed principles, if possible, than even the

Church--and that I had in my pocket a letter in which you charged me with

having withdrawn my friendship; and as to your barely hesitating about

your uncle’s proposal, I was obliged in my own defence to relate all that

passed between us, all on which I had founded a conviction so directly

opposite.

I have, you say, distorted your conversation by “gross misrepresentation

and wicked and calumnious falsehoods. It has been told me by Mrs. Morgan

that I said: ‘I have seen my error! I have been drunk with principle!’”

Just over the bridge, at the bottom of the High Street, returning one

night from Redcliff Hill, in answer to my pressing contrast of your then

opinions of the selfish kind with what you had formerly professed, you

said: “I was intoxicated with the novelty of a system!” That you said, “I

have seen my error,” I never asserted. It is doubtless implied in the

sentence which you did say, but I never charged it to you as your

expression. As to your reserving bank bills, etc., to yourself, the charge

would have been so palpable a lie that I must have been madman as well as

villain to have been guilty of it. If I had, George Burnett and Sara would

have contradicted it. I said that your conduct in little things had

appeared to me tinged with selfishness, and George Burnett attributed, and

still does attribute, your defection to your unwillingness to share your

expected annuity with us. As to the long catalogue of other lies, they not

being particularised, I, of course, can say nothing about them. Tales may

have been fetched and carried with embellishments calculated to improve

them in everything but the truth. I spoke “the plain and simple truth”

alone.

And now for your conduct and motives. My hand trembles when I think what a

series of falsehood and duplicity I am about to bring before the

conscience of a man who has dared to write me that “his conduct has been

uniformly open.” I must revert to your first letter, and here you say:--

“The plan you are going upon is not of sufficient importance to justify me

to myself in abandoning a family, who have none to support them but me.”

The plan _you_ are going upon! What plan was I meditating, save to retire

into the country with George Burnett and yourself, and taking by degrees a

small farm, there be _learning_ to get my own bread by my bodily

labour--and then to have all things in common--thus disciplining my body

and mind for the successful practice of the same thing in America with

more numerous associates? And even if this should never be the case,

ourselves and our children would form a society sufficiently large. And

was not this your own plan--the plan for the realising of which you

invited me to Bristol; the plan for which I abandoned my friends, and

every prospect, and every certainty, and the woman whom I loved to an

excess which you in your warmest dream of fancy could never shadow out?

When I returned from London, when you deemed pantisocracy a _duty_--duty

unaltered by numbers--when you said, that, if others left it, you and

George Burnett and your brother would stand firm to the post of

virtue--what then were our circumstances? Saving Lovell, our number was

the same, yourself and Burnett and I. Our _prospects_ were only an

uncertain hope of getting thirty shillings a week between us by writing

for some London paper--for the remainder we were to rely on our

agricultural exertions. And as to your family you stood precisely in the

same situation as you now stand. You meant to take your mother with you,

and your brother. And where, indeed, would have been the difficulty? She

would have earned her maintenance by her management and

savings--considering the matter even in this cold-hearted way. But when

you broke from us our prospects were brightening; by the magazine or by

poetry we might and should have got ten guineas a month.

But if you are acting right, I should be acting right in imitating you.

What, then, would George Burnett do--he “whom you seduced

“With other promises and other vaunts

Than to repent, boasting _you_ could subdue

Temptation!”

He cannot go into the Church, for you did “give him principles”! and I

wish that you had indeed “learnt from him how infinitely more to be valued

is integrity of heart than effulgence of intellect.” Nor can he go into

the law, for the same _principles_ declare against it, and he is not

calculated for it. And his father will not support any expense of

consequence relative to his further education--for Law or Physic he could

not take his degree in, or be called to, without sinking of many hundred

pounds. What, Southey, was George Burnett to do?

Then, even if you had persisted in your design of taking Orders, your

motives would have been weak and shadowy and vile; but when you changed

your ground for the Law they were annihilated. No man dreams of getting

bread in the Law, till six or eight years after his first entrance at the

Temple. And how very few even then? Before this time your brothers would

have been put out, and the money which you must of necessity have sunk in

a wicked profession would have given your brother an education, and

provided a premium fit for the first compting-house in the world. But I

hear that you have again changed your ground. You do not now mean to study

the Law, but to maintain yourself by your writings and on your promised

annuity, which, you told Mrs. Morgan, would be more than a hundred a year.

Could you not have done the same with _us_? I neither have nor could deign

to have a hundred a year. Yet by my own exertions I will struggle hard to

maintain myself, and my wife, and my wife’s mother and my associate. Or

what if you dedicated this hundred a year to your family? Would you not be

precisely as I am? Is not George Burnett accurate when he undoubtedly

ascribes your conduct to an unparticipating propensity--to a total want of

the boasted _flocci-nauci-nihili-pilificating_ sense? O selfish,

money-loving man! What principle have you not given up? Though death had

been the consequence, I would have spat in that man’s face and called him

liar, who should have spoken that last sentence concerning _you_ nine

months ago. For blindly did I esteem you. O God! that _such a mind_ should

fall in love with that low, dirty, gutter-grubbing trull, _Worldly

Prudence_!

Curse on all _pride_! ’Tis a harlot that buckrams herself up in virtue

only that she may fetch a higher price. ’Tis a rock where virtue may be

planted, but cannot strike root.

Last of all, perceiving that your motives vanished at the first ray of

examination, and that those accounts of your mother and family which had

drawn easy tears down wrinkled cheeks had no effect on keener minds, your

last resource has been to calumniate me. If there be in nature a situation

perilous to honesty, it is this, when a man has not heart to _be_, yet

lusts to _seem_ virtuous. My _indolence_ you assigned to Lovell as the

reason for your quitting pantisocracy. Supposing it true, it might indeed

be a reason for rejecting _me_ from the system. But how does this affect

pantisocracy, that you should reject _it_? And what has Burnett done, that

he should not be a worthy associate? He who leaned on you with all his

head and with all his heart; he who gave his all for pantisocracy, and

expected that pantisocracy would be at least bread and cheese to him. But

neither is the charge a true one. My own lectures I wrote for myself,

eleven in number, excepting a very few pages which most reluctantly you

eked out for me. And such pages! I would not have suffered them to have

stood in a lecture of yours. To _your_ lectures I dedicated my whole mind

and heart, and wrote one half in _quantity_; but in quality you must be

conscious that all the _tug_ of brain was mine, and that your share was

little more than transcription. I wrote with vast exertion of all my

intellect the parts in the “Joan of Arc,” and I corrected that and other

poems with greater interest than I should have felt for my own. Then my

own poems, and the recomposing of my lectures, besides a sermon, and the

correction of some poems for a friend. I could have written them in half

the time and with less expense of thought. I write not these things

boastfully, but to excriminate myself. The truth is, you sat down and

wrote; I used to saunter about and think what I should write. And we ought

to appreciate our comparative industry by the quantum of mental exertion,

not the particular mode of it--by the number of thoughts collected, not by

the number of lines through which these thoughts are diffused. But I will

suppose myself guilty of the charge. How would an honest man have reasoned

in your letter and how acted? Thus: “Here is a man who has abandoned all

for what I believe to be virtue. But he professed himself an imperfect

being when he offered himself an associate to me. He confessed that all

his valuable qualities were ‘sloth-jaundiced,’ and in his letters is a

bitter self-accuser. This man did not deceive me. I accepted of him in the

hopes of curing him, but I half despair of it. How shall I act? I will

tell him fully and firmly, that much as I love him I love pantisocracy

more, and if in a certain time I do not see this disqualifying propensity

subdued, I must and will reject him.” Such would have been an honest man’s

reasoning, such his conduct. Did _you_ act so? Did you even mention to me,

“face to face,” my indolence as a motive for your recent conduct? Did you

ever mention it in Peircefield Walks? and some time after, that night when

you scattered some heart-chilling sentiments, and in great agitation I did

ask you _solemnly_ whether you disapproved of anything in _my_ conduct,

and you answered, “Nothing. I like you better now than at the commencement

of our friendship!” an answer which so startled Sara, that she affronted

you into angry silence by exclaiming, “What a story!” George Burnett, I

believe, was present. This happened after all our lectures, after every

one of those proofs of indolence on which you must found your charge. A

charge which with what indignation did you receive when brought against me

by Lovell! Yet _then_ there was some shew for it. I _had_ been criminally

indolent. But since then I have exerted myself more than I could have

supposed myself capable. Enough! I heard for the first time on Thursday

that you were to set off for Lisbon on Saturday morning. It gives me great

pain on many accounts, but principally that those moments which should be

sacred to your affections may be disturbed by this long letter.

Southey, as far as happiness will be conducive to your virtue, which alone

is final happiness, may you possess it! You have left a large void in my

heart. I know no man big enough to fill it. Others I may love equally, and

esteem equally, and some perhaps I may admire as much. But never do I

expect to meet another man, who will make me unite attachment for his

person with reverence for his heart and admiration of his genius. I did

not only venerate you for your own virtues, I prized you as the

sheet-anchor of mine; and even as a poet my vanity knew no keener

gratification than your praise. But these things are passed by like as

when a hungry man dreams, and lo! he feasteth, but he awakes and his soul

is empty.

May God Almighty bless and preserve you! and may you live to know and feel

and acknowledge that unless we accustom ourselves to meditate adoringly on

Him, the source of all virtue, no virtue can be permanent.

Be assured that G. Burnett still loves you better than he can love any

other man, and Sara would have you accept her love and blessing; accept it

as the future husband of her best loved sister. Farewell!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

LIII. TO JOSIAH WADE.[104]

NOTTINGHAM, Wednesday morning, January 27, 1796.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--You will perceive by this letter that I have changed my

route. From Birmingham, which I quitted on Friday last (four o’clock in

the morning), I proceeded to Derby, stayed there till Monday morning, and

am now at Nottingham. From Nottingham I go to Sheffield; from Sheffield to

Manchester; from Manchester to Liverpool; from Liverpool to London; from

London to Bristol. Ah, what a weary way! My poor crazy ark has been tossed

to and fro on an ocean of business, and I long for the Mount Ararat on

which it is to rest. At Birmingham I was extremely unwell.... Business

succeeded very well there; about an hundred subscribers, I think. At Derby

tolerably well. Mr. Strutt (the successor to Sir Richard Arkwright) tells

me I may count on forty or fifty in Derby and round about.

Derby is full of curiosities, the cotton, the silk mills, Wright,[105] the

painter, and Dr. Darwin, the everything, except the Christian![106] Dr.

Darwin possesses, perhaps, a greater range of knowledge than any other man

in Europe, and is the most inventive of philosophical men. He thinks in a

_new_ train on all subjects except religion. He bantered me on the subject

of religion. I heard all his arguments, and told him that it was

infinitely consoling to me, to find that the arguments which so great a

man adduced against the existence of a God and the evidences of revealed

religion were such as had startled me at fifteen, but had become the

objects of my smile at twenty. Not one new objection--not even an

ingenious one. He boasted that he had never read one book in defence of

_such stuff_, but he had read all the works of infidels! What should you

think, Mr. Wade, of a man, who, having abused and ridiculed you, should

openly declare that he had heard all that your _enemies_ had to say

against you, but had scorned to enquire the truth from any of your own

friends? Would you think him an honest man? I am sure you would not. Yet

of such are all the infidels with whom I have met. They talk of a subject

infinitely important, yet are proud to confess themselves profoundly

ignorant of it. Dr. Darwin would have been ashamed to have rejected

Hutton’s theory of the earth[107] without having minutely examined it; yet

what is it to us _how_ the earth was made, a thing impossible to be known,

and useless if known? This system the doctor did not reject without having

severely studied it; but _all at once he makes up his mind_ on such

important subjects, as whether we be the outcasts of a blind idiot called

Nature, or the children of an all-wise and infinitely good God; whether we

spend a few miserable years on this earth, and then sink into a clod of

the valley, or only endure the anxieties of mortal life in order to fit us

for the enjoyment of immortal happiness. These subjects are unworthy a

philosopher’s investigation. He deems that there is a certain

_self-evidence_ in infidelity, and becomes an atheist by intuition. Well

did St. Paul say: “Ye have an evil _heart_ of unbelief.” I had an

introductory letter from Mr. Strutt to a Mr. Fellowes of Nottingham. On

Monday evening when I arrived I found there was a public dinner in honour

of Mr. Fox’s birthday, and that Mr. Fellowes was present. It was a piece

of famous good luck, and I seized it, waited on Mr. Fellowes, and was

introduced to the company. On the right hand of the president whom should

I see but an old College acquaintance? He hallooed out: “_Coleridge, by

God!_” Mr. Wright, the president of the day, was his relation--a man of

immense fortune. I dined at his house yesterday, and underwent the

intolerable slavery of a dinner of three courses. We sat down at four

o’clock, and it was six before the cloth was removed.

What lovely children Mr. Barr at Worcester has! After church, in the

evening, they sat round and sang hymns so sweetly that they overwhelmed

me. It was with great difficulty I abstained from weeping aloud--and the

infant in Mrs. Barr’s arms leaned forwards, and stretched his little arms,

and stared and smiled. It seemed a picture of Heaven, where the different

orders of the blessed join different voices in one melodious allelujah;

and the baby looked like a young spirit just that moment arrived in

Heaven, startling at the seraphic songs, and seized at once with wonder

and rapture.

My kindest remembrances to Mrs. Wade, and believe me, with gratitude and

unfeigned friendship, your

S. T. COLERIDGE.

LIV. TO JOSEPH COTTLE.

REDCLIFF HILL, February 22, 1796.

MY DEAR SIR,--It is my duty and business to thank God for all his

dispensations, and to believe them the best possible; but, indeed, I think

I should have been more thankful, if he had made me a journeyman

shoemaker, instead of an author by trade. I have left my friends; I have

left plenty; I have left that ease which would have secured a literary

immortality, and have enabled me to give the public works conceived in

moments of inspiration, and polished with leisurely solicitude; and alas!

for what have I left them? for ---- who deserted me in the hour of

distress, and for a scheme of virtue impracticable and romantic! So I am

forced to write for bread; write the flights of poetic enthusiasm, when

every minute I am hearing a groan from my wife. Groans, and complaints,

and sickness! The present hour I am in a quick-set hedge of embarrassment,

and whichever way I turn a thorn runs into me! The future is cloud and

thick darkness! Poverty, perhaps, and the thin faces of them that want

bread, looking up to me! Nor is this all. My happiest moments for

composition are broken in upon by the reflection that I must make haste. I

am too late! I am already months behind! I have received my pay

beforehand! Oh, wayward and desultory spirit of genius! Ill canst thou

brook a taskmaster! The tenderest touch from the hand of obligation wounds

thee like a scourge of scorpions.

I have been composing in the fields this morning, and came home to write

down the first rude sheet of my preface, when I heard that your man had

brought a note from you. I have not seen it, but I guess its contents. I

am writing as fast as I can. Depend on it you shall not be out of pocket

for me! I feel what I owe you, and independently of this I love you as a

friend; indeed, so much, that I regret, seriously regret, that you have

been my copyholder.

If I have written petulantly, forgive me. God knows I am sore all over.

God bless you, and believe me that, setting gratitude aside, I love and

esteem you, and have your interest at heart full as much as my own.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

LV. TO THOMAS POOLE.

March 30, 1796.

MY DEAR POOLE,--For the neglect in the transmission of “The Watchman,” you

must blame George Burnett, who undertook the business. I however will

myself see it sent this week with the preceding numbers. I am greatly

obliged to you for your communication (on the Slave Trade in No. V.); it

appears in this number, and I am anxious to receive more from you, and

likewise to know what you _dislike_ in “The Watchman,” and what you like;

but particularly the former. You have not given me your opinion of “The

Plot Discovered.”[108]

Since last you saw me I have been well nigh distracted. The repeated and

most injurious blunders of my printer out-of-doors, and Mrs. Coleridge’s

increasing danger at home, added to the gloomy prospect of so many mouths

to open and shut like puppets, as I move the string in the eating and

drinking way--but why complain to you? Misery is an article with which

every market is so glutted, that it can answer no one’s purpose to export

it. _Alas! Alas! oh! ah! oh! oh!_ etc.

I have received many abusive letters, post-paid, thanks to the friendly

malignants! But I am perfectly callous to disapprobation, except when it

tends to lessen profit. There, indeed, I am all one tremble of

sensibility, marriage having taught me the wonderful uses of that vulgar

commodity, yclept _bread_. “The Watchman” succeeds so as to yield a

_bread-and-cheesish_ profit. Mrs. Coleridge is recovering apace, and

deeply regrets that she was deprived of seeing [you]. We are in our new

house, where there is a bed at your service whenever you will please to

delight us with a visit. Surely in spring you might force a few days into

a sojourning with me.

Dear Poole, you have borne yourself towards me most kindly with respect to

my epistolary ingratitude. But I know that you forbade yourself to feel

resentment towards me because you had previously made my neglect

ingratitude. A generous temper endures a great deal from one whom it has

obliged deeply.

My poems are finished. I will send you two copies the moment they are

published. In the third number of “The Watchman” there are a few lines

entitled “The Hour when we shall meet again,” “_Dim hour that sleeps on

pillowy clouds afar_,” which I think you will like. I have received two or

three letters from different _anonymi_, requesting me to give more poetry.

One of them writes:--

“Sir! I detest your principles; your prose I think very so-so; but your

poetry is so _exquisitely_ beautiful, so _gorgeously_ sublime, that I take

in your ‘Watchman’ solely on account of it. In justice therefore to me and

some others of my stamp, I intreat you to give us more verse and less

democratic scurrility. Your admirer,--not esteemer.”

Have you read over Dr. Lardner on the Logos? It is, I think, scarcely

possible to read it and not be convinced.

I find that “The Watchman” comes more easy to me, so that I shall begin

about my Christian Lectures. I will immediately order for you, unless you

immediately countermand it, Count Rumford’s Essays; in No. V. of “The

Watchman” you will see why. I have enclosed Dr. Beddoes’s late pamphlets,

neither of them as yet published. The doctor sent them to me. I can get no

one but the doctor to agree with me in my opinion that Burke’s “Letter to

a Noble Lord”[109] is as contemptible in style as in matter--it is sad

stuff.

My dutiful love to your excellent mother, whom, believe me, I think of

frequently and with a pang of affection. God bless you. I’ll try and

venture to scribble a line and a half every time the man goes with “The

Watchman” to you.

N. B. The “Essay on Fasting”[110] I am ashamed of; but it is one of my

misfortunes that I am obliged to publish _extempore_ as well as compose.

God bless you,

and S. T. COLERIDGE.

LVI. TO THE SAME.

12th May, 1796.

Poole! The Spirit, who counts the throbbings of the solitary heart, knows

that what my feelings ought to be, such they are. If it were in my power

to give you anything which I have not already given, I should be oppressed

by the letter now before me.[111] But no! I feel myself rich in being

poor; and because I have nothing to bestow, I know how much I have

bestowed. Perhaps I shall not make myself intelligible; but the strong and

unmixed affection which I bear to you seems to exclude all emotions of

gratitude, and renders even the principle of esteem latent and inert. Its

presence is not perceptible, though its absence could not be endured.

Concerning the scheme itself, I am undetermined. Not that I am ashamed to

receive--God forbid! I will make every possible exertion; my industry

shall be at least commensurate with my learning and talents;--if these do

not procure for me and mine the necessary comforts of life, I can receive

as I would bestow, and, in either case--receiving or bestowing--be equally

grateful to my Almighty Benefactor. I am undetermined, therefore--not

because I receive with pain and reluctance, but--because I suspect that

you attribute to others your own enthusiasm of benevolence; as if the sun

should say, “With how rich a purple those opposite windows are burning!”

But with God’s permission I shall talk with you on this subject. By the

last page of No. X. you will perceive that I have this day dropped “The

Watchman.” On Monday morning I will go _per_ caravan to Bridgewater,

where, if you have a horse of tolerable meekness unemployed, you will let

him meet me.

I should blame you for the exaggerated terms in which you have spoken of

me in the Proposal, did I not perceive the motive. You wished to make it

appear an offering--not a favour--and in excess of delicacy have, I fear,

fallen into some grossness of flattery.

God bless you, my dear, very dear Friend. The widow[112] is calm, and

amused with her beautiful infant. We are all become more religious than we

were. God be ever praised for all things! Mrs. Coleridge begs her kind

love to you. To your dear mother my filial respects.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

LVII. TO JOHN THELWALL.

May 13, 1796.