repay you in kind. Your letters demand my friendship and deserve my
esteem; the zeal with which you have attacked my supposed _delusions_
proves that you are deeply interested for _me_, and interested even to
agitation for what you believe to be _truth_. You deem that I have treated
“systems and opinions with the furious prejudices of the conventicle, and
the illiberal dogmatism of the cynic;” that I have “layed about me on this
side and on that with the sledge hammer of abuse.” I have, you think,
imitated the “old sect in politics and morals” in their “outrageous
violence,” and have sunk into the “clownish fierceness of intolerant
prejudice.” I have “branded” the presumptuous children of scepticism “with
vile epithets and hunted them down with abuse.” “_These be hard words,
Citizen! and I will be bold to say they are not to be justified_” by the
unfortunate page which has occasioned them. The only passage in it which
appears _offensive_ (I am not now inquiring concerning the truth or
falsehood of this or the remaining passages) is the following: “You have
studied Mr. G.’s Essay on Politi[cal] Jus[tice]--but to think filial
affection folly, gratitude a crime, marriage injustice, and the
promiscuous intercourse of the sexes right and wise, may class you among
the despisers of vulgar prejudices, but cannot increase the probability
that you are a _patriot_. But you act up to your principles--so much the
worse. Your principles are villainous ones. I would not entrust my wife or
sister to you; think you I would entrust my country?” My dear Thelwall!
how are these opinions connected with the conventicle more than with the
Stoa, the Lyceum, or the grove of Academus? I do not perceive that to
attack _adultery_ is more characteristic of _Christian_ prejudices than of
the prejudices of the disciples of Aristotle, Zeno, or Socrates. In truth,
the offensive sentence, “Your principles are villainous,” was suggested by
the Peripatetic Sage who divides bad men into two classes. The first he
calls “wet or intemperate sinners”--men who are hurried into vice by their
appetites, but _acknowledge_ their actions to be vicious; these are
reclaimable. The second class he names _dry_ villains--men who are not
only vicious but who (the steams from the polluted heart rising up and
gathering round the head) have brought themselves and others to believe
that _vice_ is _virtue_. We mean these men when we say men of bad
_principles_--_guilt_ is out of the question. I am a necessarian, and of
course deny the possibility of it. However, a letter is not the place for
reasoning. In some form or other, or by some channel or other, I shall
publish my critique on the New Philosophy, and, I trust, shall demean
myself not _ungently_, and disappoint your auguries.... “But, you cannot
be a patriot unless you are a Christian.” Yes, Thelwall, the disciples of
Lord Shaftesbury and Rousseau as well as of Jesus--but the man who
suffers not his hopes to wander beyond the objects of sense will in
general be _sensual_, and I again assert that a sensualist is not likely
to be a patriot. Have I tried these opinions by the double test of
argument and example? I _think_ so. The first would be too large a field,
the second some following sentences of your letter forced me to....
_Gerrald_[113] you insinuate is an _atheist_. Was he so, when he offered
those solemn prayers to God Almighty at the Scotch conventicle, and was
this sincerity? But Dr. Darwin and (I suppose from his actions) Gerrald
think sincerity a folly and therefore vicious. Your atheistic brethren
square their moral systems exactly according to their inclinations.
Gerrald and Dr. Darwin are polite and good-natured men, and willing to
attain at good by attainable roads. They deem insincerity a necessary
virtue in the present imperfect state of our nature. Godwin, whose very
heart is cankered by the love of singularity, and who feels no
disinclination to wound by abrupt harshness, pleads for absolute
sincerity, because such a system gives him a frequent opportunity of
indulging his misanthropy. Poor Williams,[114] the Welsh bard (a very meek
man), brought the tear into my eye by a simple narration of the manner in
which Godwin insulted him under the pretence of reproof, and Thomas Walker
of Manchester told me that his indignation and contempt were never more
powerfully excited than by an unfeeling and insolent speech of the said
Godwin to the poor Welsh bard. Scott told me some shocking stories of
Godwin. His base and anonymous attack on you is enough for me. At that
time I had prepared a letter to him, which I was about to have sent to the
“Morning Chronicle,” and I convinced Dr. Beddoes by passages from the
“Tribune” of the calumnious nature of the attack. I was once and only once
in company with Godwin. He appeared to me to possess neither the strength
of intellect that discovers truth, nor the powers of imagination that
decorate falsehood; he talked sophisms in jejune language. I like Holcroft
a thousand times better, and think him a man of much greater ability.
Fierce, hot, petulant, the very high priest of atheism, he hates God “with
all his heart, with all his mind, with all his soul, and with all his
strength.” Every man not an atheist is only not a fool. “Dr. Priestley?
there is a _petitesse_ in his mind. Hartley? pshaw! _Godwin_, sir, is a
thousand times a better metaphysician!” But this intolerance is founded
on benevolence. (I had almost forgotten that horrible story about his
son.)
* * * * *
On the subject of using sugar, etc., I will write you a long and serious
letter. This grieves me more than you [imagine]. I hope I shall be able by
severe and unadorned reasoning to convince you you are wrong.
Your remarks on my poems are, I think, just in general; there is a rage
and affectation of double epithets. “Unshuddered, unaghasted” is, indeed,
_truly_ ridiculous. But why so violent against _metaphysics_ in poetry? Is
not Akenside’s a metaphysical poem? Perhaps you do not like Akenside?
Well, but _I do_, and so do a great many others. Why pass an act of
_uniformity_ against poets? I received a letter from a very sensible
friend abusing love verses; another blaming the introduction of politics,
“as wider from true poetry than the equator from the poles.” “Some for
each” is my motto. That poetry pleases which interests. My religious
poetry interests the _religious_, who read it with rapture. Why? Because
it awakes in them all the associations connected with a love of future
existence, etc. A very dear friend of mine,[115] who is, in my opinion,
the best poet of the age (I will send you his poem when published), thinks
that the lines from 364 to 375 and from 403 to 428 the best in the
volume,--indeed, worth all the rest. And this man is a republican, and, at
least, a _semi_-atheist. Why do you object to “shadowy of truth”? It is, I
acknowledge, a Grecism, but, I think, an elegant one. Your remarks on the
della-crusca place of emphasis are just in part. Where we wish to point
out the _thing_, and the _quality_ is mentioned merely as a decoration,
this mode of emphasis is indeed absurd; therefore, I very patiently give
up to critical vengeance “_high_ tree,” “_sore_ wounds,” and “_rough_
rock;” but when you wish to dwell chiefly on the _quality_ rather than the
_thing_, then this mode is proper, and, indeed, is used in common
conversation. Who says good _man_? Therefore, “_big_ soul,” “_cold_
earth,” “_dark_ womb,” and “_flamy_ child” are all right, and introduce a
variety into the versification, [which is] an advantage where you can
attain it without any sacrifice of sense. As to harmony, it is all
_association_. Milton is _harmonious_ to me, and I absolutely nauseate
Darwin’s poems.
Yours affectionately,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
JOHN THELWALL,
Beaufort Buildings, Strand, London.
LVIII. TO THOMAS POOLE.
May 29, 1796.
MY DEAR POOLE,--This said caravan does not leave Bridgewater till nine. In
the market place stands the hustings. I mounted it, and, pacing the
boards, mused on bribery, false swearing, and other foibles of election
times. I have wandered, too, by the river Parret, which looks as filthy as
if all the parrots of the House of Commons had been washing their
consciences therein. Dear gutter of Stowey![116] Were I transported to
Italian plains, and lay by the side of the streamlet that murmured through
an orange grove, I would think of thee, dear gutter of Stowey, and wish
that I were poring on thee!
So much by way of rant. I have eaten three eggs, swallowed sundries of tea
and bread and butter, purely for the purpose of amusing myself! I have
seen the horse fed. When at Cross, where I shall dine, I shall think of
your happy dinner, celebrated under the auspices of humble independence,
supported by brotherly love! I am writing, you understand, for no worldly
purpose but that of avoiding anxious thoughts. Apropos of honey-pie,
Caligula or Elagabalus (I forget which) had a dish of nightingales’
tongues served up. What think you of the stings of bees? God bless you! My
filial love to your mother, and fraternity to your sister. Tell Ellen
Cruikshank that in my next parcel to you I will send my Haleswood poem to
her. Heaven protect her and you and Sara and your mother and, like a bad
shilling passed off between a handful of guineas,
Your affectionate friend and brother,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S.--Don’t forget to send by Milton [carrier] my old clothes, and linen
_that once was clean, etcetera_. A pretty _periphrasis_ that!
LIX. TO JOHN THELWALL.
Wednesday, June 22, 1796.
DEAR THELWALL,--That I have not written you has been an act of
self-denial, not indolence. I heard that you were electioneering, and
would not be the occasion that any of your thoughts should diverge from
that focus.
I wish very much to see you. Have you given up the idea of spending a few
weeks or month at Bristol? You might be _making way_ in your review of
Burke’s life and writings, and give us once or twice a week a lecture,
which I doubt not would be crowded. We have a large and every way
excellent library, to which I could make you a temporary subscriber, that
is, I would get a subscription ticket transferred to you.
You are certainly well calculated for the review you meditate. Your answer
to Burke is, I will not say, the best, for that would be no praise; it is
certainly the only good one, and it is a very good one. In style and in
_reflectiveness_ it is, I think, your _chef d’œuvre_. Yet the
“Peripatetic”[117]--for which accept my thanks--pleased me more because it
let me into your heart; the poetry is frequently _sweet_ and possesses the
_fire_ of feeling, but not enough (I think) of the _light_ of fancy. I am
sorry that you should entertain so degrading an opinion of me as to
imagine that I _industriously_ collected anecdotes unfavourable to the
characters of great men. No, Thelwall, but I cannot shut my ears, and I
have never given a moment’s belief to any one of those stories unless when
they were related to me at different times by professed democrats. My vice
is of the opposite class, a precipitance in praise; witness my panegyric
on Gerrald and that _black_ gentleman Margarot in the “Conciones,” and my
foolish verses to Godwin in the “Morning Chronicle.”[118] At the same
time, Thelwall, do not suppose that I admit your palliations. Doubtless I
could fill a book with slanderous stories of _professed Christians_, but
those very men would allow they were acting contrary to Christianity; but,
I am afraid, an atheistic bad man manufactures his system of principles
with an eye to his peculiar propensities, and makes his actions the
criterion of what is virtuous, not virtue the criterion of his actions.
Where the _disposition_ is not amiable, an acute understanding I deem no
blessing. To the last sentence in your letter I subscribe fully and with
all my inmost affections. “He who thinks and _feels_ will be virtuous; and
he who is absorbed in self will be vicious, whatever maybe his speculative
opinions.” Believe me, Thelwall, it is not his atheism that has prejudiced
me against Godwin, but Godwin who has, perhaps, _prejudiced_ me against
atheism. Let me see you--I already know a deist, and Calvinists, and
Moravians whom I love and reverence--and I shall leap forwards to realise
my _principles_ by _feeling_ love and honour for an atheist. By the bye,
are you an atheist? For I was told that Hutton was an atheist, and
procured his three massy quartos on the principle of knowledge in the
hopes of finding some arguments in favor of atheism, but lo! I discovered
him to be a profoundly pious deist,--“independent of fortune, satisfied
with himself, pleased with his species, confident in his Creator.”
God bless you, my dear Thelwall! Believe me with high esteem and
_anticipated_ tenderness,
Yours sincerely,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. We have a hundred lovely scenes about Bristol, which would make you
exclaim, O admirable _Nature_! and me, O Gracious _God_!
LX. TO THOMAS POOLE.
Saturday, September 24, 1796.
MY DEAR, VERY DEAR POOLE,--The heart thoroughly penetrated with the flame
of virtuous friendship is in a state of glory; but lest it should be
exalted above measure there is given it a thorn in the flesh. I mean that
when the friendship of any person forms an essential part of a man’s
happiness, he will at times be pestered by the little jealousies and
solicitudes of imbecile humanity. Since we last parted I have been
gloomily dreaming that you did not leave me so affectionately as you were
wont to do. Pardon this littleness of heart, and do not think the worse of
me for it. Indeed, my soul seems so mantled and wrapped around by your
love and esteem, that even a dream of losing but the smallest fragment of
it makes me shiver, as though some tender part of my nature were left
uncovered in nakedness.
Last week I received a letter from Lloyd, informing me that his parents
had given their joyful concurrence to his residence with me; but that, if
it were possible that I could be absent for three or four days, his father
wished particularly to see me. I consulted Mrs. Coleridge, who advised me
to go.... Accordingly on Saturday night I went by the mail to Birmingham
and was introduced to the father, who is a mild man, very liberal in his
ideas, and in religion _an allegorizing Quaker_. I mean that all the
apparently irrational path of his sect he allegorizes into significations,
which for the most part you or I might assent to. We became well
acquainted, and he expressed himself “thankful to heaven that his son was
about to be with me.” He said he would write to me concerning money
matters after his son had been some time under my roof.
On Tuesday morning I was surprised by a letter from Mr. Maurice, our
medical attendant, informing me that Mrs. Coleridge was delivered on
Monday, September 19, 1796, half past two in the morning, of a SON, and
that both she and the child were uncommonly well. I was quite annihilated
with the suddenness of the information, and retired to my own room to
address myself to my Maker, but I could only offer up to Him the silence
of stupefied feelings. I hastened home, and Charles Lloyd returned with
me. When I first saw the child,[119] I did not feel that thrill and
overflowing of affection which I expected. I looked on it with a
melancholy gaze; my mind was intensely contemplative and my heart only
sad. But when two hours after I saw it at the bosom of its mother, on her
arm, and her eye tearful and watching its little features, then I was
thrilled and melted, and gave it the KISS of a _father_.... The baby seems
strong, and the old nurse has over-persuaded my wife to discover a
likeness of me in its face--no great compliment to me, for, in truth, I
have seen handsomer babies in my lifetime. Its name is David Hartley
Coleridge. I hope that ere he be a man, if God destines him for
continuance in this life, his head will be convinced of, and his heart
saturated with, the truths so ably supported by that great master of
_Christian_ Philosophy.
Charles Lloyd wins upon me hourly; his heart is uncommonly pure, his
affection delicate, and his benevolence enlivened but not sicklied by
sensibility. He is assuredly a man of great genius; but it must be in
_tête-à-tête_ with one whom he loves and esteems that his colloquial
powers open; and this arises not from reserve or want of simplicity, but
from having been placed in situations where for years together he met with
no congenial minds, and where the contrariety of his thoughts and notions
to the thoughts and notions of those around him induced the necessity of
habitually suppressing his feelings. His joy and gratitude to Heaven for
the circumstance of his domestication with me I can scarcely describe to
you; and I believe that his fixed plans are of being always with me. His
father told me that if he saw that his son had formed habits of severe
economy he should not insist upon his adopting any profession; as then his
fair share of his (the father’s) wealth would be sufficient for him.
My dearest Poole, can you conveniently receive us in the course of a week?
We can both sleep in one bed, which we do now. And I have much, very much
to say to you and consult with you about, for my heart is heavy respecting
Derby,[120] and my feelings are so dim and huddled that though I can, I am
sure, communicate them to you by my looks and broken sentences, I scarce
know how to convey them in a letter. And Charles Lloyd wishes much to know
you personally. I shall write on the other side of the paper two of
Charles Lloyd’s sonnets, which he wrote in one evening at Birmingham. The
latter of them alludes to the conviction of the truth of Christianity,
which he had received from me, for he had been, if not a deist, yet quite
a sceptic.
Let me hear from you by post immediately; and give my kind love to that
young man with the soul-beaming face,[121] which I recollect much better
than I do his name.
God bless you, my dear friend.
Believe me, with deep affection, your
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LXI. TO CHARLES LAMB.[122]
[September 28, 1796.]
Your letter, my friend, struck me with a mighty horror. It rushed upon me
and stupefied my feelings. You bid me write you a religious letter. I am
not a man who would attempt to insult the greatness of your anguish by any
other consolation. Heaven knows that in the easiest fortunes there is much
dissatisfaction and weariness of spirit; much that calls for the exercise
of patience and resignation; but in storms like these, that shake the
dwelling and make the heart tremble, there is no middle way between
despair and the yielding up of the whole spirit unto the guidance of
faith. And surely it is a matter of joy that your faith in Jesus has been
preserved; the Comforter that should relieve you is not far from you. But
as you are a Christian, in the name of that Saviour, who was filled with
bitterness and made drunken with wormwood, I conjure you to have recourse
in frequent prayer to “his God and your God;” the God of mercies, and
father of all comfort. Your poor father is, I hope, almost senseless of
the calamity; the unconscious instrument of Divine Providence knows it
not, and your mother is in heaven. It is sweet to be roused from a
frightful dream by the song of birds and the gladsome rays of the morning.
Ah, how infinitely more sweet to be awakened from the blackness and
amazement of a sudden horror by the glories of God manifest and the
hallelujahs of angels.
As to what regards yourself, I approve altogether of your abandoning what
you justly call vanities. I look upon you as a man called by sorrow and
anguish and a strange desolation of hopes into quietness, and a soul set
apart and made peculiar to God! We cannot arrive at any portion of
heavenly bliss without in some measure imitating Christ; and they arrive
at the largest inheritance who imitate the most difficult parts of his
character, and, bowed down and crushed underfoot, cry in fulness of faith,
“Father, thy will be done.”
I wish above measure to have you for a little while here; no visitants
shall blow on the nakedness of your feelings; you shall be quiet, and your
spirit may be healed. I see no possible objection, unless your father’s
helplessness prevent you, and unless you are necessary to him. If this be
not the case, I charge you write me that you will come.
I charge you, my dearest friend, not to dare to encourage gloom or
despair. You are a temporary sharer in human miseries that you may be an
eternal partaker of the Divine nature. I charge you, if by any means it be
possible, come to me.
I remain your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LXII. TO THOMAS POOLE.
Saturday night, November 5, 1796.
Thanks, my heart’s warm thanks to you, my beloved friend, for your tender
letter! Indeed, I did not deserve so kind a one; but by this time you
have received my last.
To live in a beautiful country, and to enure myself as much as possible to
the labour of the field, have been for this year past my dream of the day,
my sigh at midnight. But to enjoy these blessings _near_ you, to see you
daily, to tell you all my thoughts in their first birth, and to hear
yours, to be mingling identities with you as it were,--the vision-wearing
fancy has indeed often pictured such things, but _hope_ never dared
whisper a promise. Disappointment! Disappointment! dash not from my
trembling hand the bowl which almost touches my lips. Envy me not this
immortal draught, and I will forgive thee all thy persecutions. Forgive
thee! Impious! _I will bless thee_, black-vested minister of optimism,
stern pioneer of happiness! Thou hast been “_the cloud_” before me from
the day that I left the flesh-pots of Egypt, and was led through the way
of a wilderness--the cloud that hast been guiding me to a land flowing
with milk and honey--the milk of innocence, the honey of friendship!
I wanted such a letter as yours, for I am very unwell. On Wednesday night
I was seized with an intolerable pain from my right temple to the tip of
my right shoulder, including my right eye, cheek, jaw, and that side of
the throat. I was nearly frantic, and ran about the house naked,
endeavouring by every means to excite sensations in different parts of my
body, and so to weaken the enemy by creating division. It continued from
one in the morning till half past five, and left me pale and fainting. It
came on fitfully, but not so violently, several times on Thursday, and
began severer threats towards night; but I took between sixty and seventy
drops of laudanum,[123] and _sopped_ the Cerberus, just as his mouth
began to open. On Friday it only _niggled_, as if the chief had departed
from a conquered place, and merely left a small garrison behind, or as if
he had evacuated the Corsica,[124] and a few straggling pains only
remained. But _this morning_ he returned in full force, and his name is
Legion. Giant-fiend of a hundred hands, with a shower of arrowy
death-pangs he transpierced me, and then he became a wolf, and lay
a-gnawing at my bones! I am not mad, most noble Festus, but in sober
sadness I have suffered this day more bodily pain than I had before a
conception of. My right cheek has certainly been placed with admirable
exactness under the focus of some invisible burning-glass, which
concentrated all the rays of a Tartarean sun. My medical attendant decides
it to be altogether nervous, and that it originates either in severe
application, or excessive anxiety. My beloved Poole! in excessive anxiety,
I believe it might originate. I have a blister under my right ear, and I
take twenty-five drops of laudanum every five hours, the ease and
_spirits_ gained by which have enabled me to write you this flighty but
not exaggerated account. With a gloomy wantonness of imagination I had
been coquetting with the hideous _possibles_ of disappointment. I drank
fears like wormwood, yea, made myself drunken with bitterness; for my
ever-shaping and distrustful mind still mingled gall-drops, till out of
the cup of hope I almost _poisoned_ myself with despair.
Your letter is dated November 2d; I wrote to you November 1st. Your sister
was married on that day; and on that day several times I felt my heart
overflowed with such tenderness for her as made me repeatedly ejaculate
prayers in her behalf. Such things are strange. It may be superstitious to
think about such correspondences; but it is a superstition which softens
the heart and leads to no evil. We will call on your dear sister as soon
as I am quite well, and in the mean time I will write a few lines to her.
I am anxious beyond measure to be in the country as soon as possible. I
would it were possible to get a temporary residence till Adscombe is ready
for us. I would that it could be that we could have three rooms in Bill
Poole’s large house for the winter. Will you try to look out for a fit
servant for us--simple of heart, physiognomically handsome, and scientific
in vaccimulgence? That last word is a new one, but soft in sound and full
of expression. Vaccimulgence! I am pleased with the word. Write to me all
things about yourself. Where I cannot advise I can condole and
communicate, which doubles joy, halves sorrow.
Tell me whether you think it at all possible to make any terms with
William Poole. You know I would not wish to touch with the edge of the
nail of my great toe the line which should be but half a barley-corn out
of the niche of the most trembling delicacy. I will write Cruikshank
to-morrow, if God permit me.
God bless and protect you, friend, brother, beloved!
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Sara’s best love, and Lloyd’s. David Hartley is well, saving that he is
sometimes inspired by the god Æolus, and like Isaiah, “his bowels sound
like an harp.” My filial love to your dear mother. Love to Ward. Little
Tommy, I often think of thee.
LXIII. TO THE SAME.
Monday night, November 7, 1796.
MY DEAREST POOLE,--I wrote you on Saturday night under the immediate
inspiration of laudanum, and wrote you a flighty letter, but yet one most
accurately descriptive both of facts and feelings. Since then my pains
have been lessening, and the greater part of this day I have enjoyed
perfect ease, only I am totally inappetent of food, and languid, even to
an inward perishing.
I wrote John Cruikshank this morning, and this moment I have received a
letter from him. My letter written before the receipt of his contains
everything I would write in answer to it, and I do not like to write to
him superfluously, lest I should break in on his domestic terrors and
solitary broodings with regard to Anna Cruikshank.[125] May the Father and
lover of the meek preserve that meek woman, and give her a safe and joyful
deliverance!
I wrote this morning a short note of congratulatory kindliness to your
sister, and shall be eager to call on her, when _Legion_ has been
thoroughly exorcised from my temple and cheeks. Tell Cruikshank that I
have received his letter, and thank him for it.
A few lines in your last letter betokened, I thought, a wounded spirit.
Let me know the particulars, my beloved friend. I shall forget and lose my
own anxieties while I am healing yours with cheerings of sympathy.
I met with the following sonnet in some very dull poems, among which it
shone like a solitary star when the night is dark, and _one_ little space
of blue uninvaded by the floating blackness, or, if a _terrestrial_ simile
be required, like a red carbuncle on a negro’s nose. From the languor and
exhaustion to which pain and my frequent doses of laudanum have reduced
me, it suited the feeble temper of [my] mind, and I have transcribed it on
the other page. I amused myself the other day (having some _paper_ at the
printer’s which I could employ no other way) in selecting twenty-eight
sonnets,[126] to bind up with Bowles’s. I charge sixpence for them, and
have sent you five to dispose of. I have only printed two hundred, as my
paper held out to no more; and dispose of them privately, just enough to
pay the printing. The essay which I have written at the beginning I
like.... I have likewise sent you Burke’s pamphlet which was given to me;
it has all his excellences without any of his faults. This parcel I send
to-morrow morning, enclosed in a parcel to Bill Poole of Thurston.
God love you, my affectionate brother, and your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
SONNET.
With passive joy the moment I survey
When welcome Death shall set my spirit free.
My soul! the prospect brings no fear to thee,
But soothing Fancy rises to pourtray
The dear and parting words my Friends will say:
With secret Pride their heaving Breast I see,
And count the sorrows that will flow for me.
And now I hear my lingering knell decay
And mark the Hearse! Methinks, with moisten’d eye,
CLARA beholds the sad Procession move
That bears me to the Resting-place of Care,
And sighs, “Poor youth! thy Bosom well could love,
And well thy Numbers picture Love’s despair.”
Vain Dreams! yet such as make it sweet to die.
LXIV. TO JOHN THELWALL.
Saturday, November 19, [1796].
Oxford Street, Bristol.
MY DEAR THELWALL,--Ah me! literary adventure is but bread and cheese by
chance. I keenly sympathise with you. Sympathy, the only poor consolation
I can offer you. Can no plan be suggested?... Of course you have read the
“Joan of Arc.”[127] Homer is the poet for the warrior, Milton for the
religionist, Tasso for women, Robert Southey for the patriot. The first
and fourth books of the “Joan of Arc” are to me more interesting than the
same number of lines in any poem whatever. But you and I, my dear
Thelwall, hold different creeds in poetry as well as religion.
_N’importe!_ By the bye, of your works I have now all, except your “Essay
on Animal Vitality” which I never had, and your _Poems_, which I bought on
their first publication, and lost them. From these poems I should have
supposed our poetical tastes more nearly alike than, I find, they are. The
poem on the Sols [?] flashes genius through Strophe I, Antistrophe I, and
Epode I. The rest I do not perhaps understand, only I love these two
lines:--
“Yet sure the verse that shews the friendly mind
To Friendship’s ear not harshly flows.”
Your larger _narrative_ affected me greatly. It is admirably written, and
displays strong sense animated by feeling, and illumined by imagination,
and neither in the thoughts nor rhythm does it encroach on poetry.
There have been two poems of mine in the new “Monthly Magazine,”[128] with
my name; indeed, I make it a scruple of conscience never to publish
anything, however trifling, without it. Did you like them? The first was
written at the desire of a beautiful little aristocrat; consider it
therefore as a lady’s poem. Bowles (the bard of my idolatry) has written a
poem lately without plan or meaning, but the component parts are divine.
It is entitled “Hope, an Allegorical Sketch.” I will copy two of the
stanzas, which must be peculiarly interesting to you, virtuous
high-treasonist, and your friends the democrats.
“But see, as one awaked from deadly trance,
With hollow and dim eyes, and stony stare,
Captivity with faltering step advance!
Dripping and knotted was her coal-black hair:
For she had long been hid, as in the grave;
No sounds the silence of her prison broke,
Nor one companion had she in her cave
Save Terror’s dismal shape, that no word spoke,
But to a stony coffin on the floor
With lean and hideous finger pointed evermore.
“The lark’s shrill song, the early village chime,
The upland echo of the winding horn,
The far-heard clock that spoke the passing time,
Had never pierced her solitude forlorn:
At length released from the deep dungeon’s gloom
She feels the fragrance of the vernal gale,
She sees more sweet the living landscape bloom,
And while she listens to Hope’s tender tale,
She thinks her long-lost friends shall bless her sight,
And almost faints for joy amidst the broad daylight.”
The last line is exquisite.
Your portrait of yourself interested me. As to me, my face, unless when
animated by immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth, and great, indeed,
almost idiotic good-nature. ’Tis a mere carcass of a face;[129] fat,
flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. Yet I am told that my
eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are physiognomically good; but of this the
deponent knoweth not. As to my shape, ’tis a good shape enough if
measured, but my gait is awkward, and the walk of the whole man indicates
_indolence capable of energies_. I am, and ever have been, a great reader,
and have read almost everything--a library cormorant. I am _deep_ in all
out of the way books, whether of the monkish times, or of the puritanical
era. I have read and digested most of the historical writers; but I do not
_like_ history. Metaphysics and poetry and “facts of mind,” that is,
accounts of all the strange phantasms that ever possessed “your
philosophy;” dreamers, from Thoth the Egyptian to Taylor the English
pagan, are my darling studies. In short, I seldom read except to amuse
myself, and I am almost always reading. Of useful knowledge, I am a so-so
chemist, and I love chemistry. All else is _blank_; but I _will_ be
(please God) an horticulturalist and a farmer. I compose very little, and
I absolutely hate composition, and such is my dislike that even a sense of
duty is sometimes too weak to overpower it.
I cannot breathe through my nose, so my mouth, with sensual thick lips, is
almost always open. In conversation I am impassioned, and oppose what I
deem error with an eagerness which is often mistaken for personal
asperity; but I am ever so swallowed up in the _thing_ that I perfectly
forget my _opponent_. Such am I. I am just going to read Dupuis’ twelve
octavos,[130] which I have got from London. I shall read only one octavo a
week, for I cannot _speak_ French at all and I read it slowly.
My wife is well and desires to be remembered to you and your _Stella_ and
little ones. N. B. Stella (among the Romans) was a man’s name. All the
_classics_ are against you; but our Swift, I suppose, is authority for
this unsexing.
Write on the receipt of this, and believe me as ever, with affectionate
esteem,
Your sincere friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
P. S. I have enclosed a five-guinea note. The five shillings over please
to lay out for me thus. In White’s (of Fleet Street or the Strand, I
forget which--O! the Strand I believe, but I don’t know which), well, in
White’s catalogue are the following books:--
4674. Iamblichus,[131] Proclus, Porphyrius, etc., one shilling and
sixpence, one little volume.
4686. Juliani Opera, three shillings: which two books you will be so kind
as to purchase for me, and send down with the twenty-five pamphlets. But
if they should unfortunately be sold, in the same catalogue are:--
2109. Juliani Opera, 12s. 6d.
676. Iamblichus de Mysteriis, 10s. 6d.
2681. Sidonius Apollinaris, 6s.
And in the catalogue of Robson, the bookseller in New Bond Street, Plotini
Opera, a Ficino, £1.1.0, making altogether £2.10.0.
If you can get the two former little books, costing only four and
sixpence, I will rest content with them; if they are gone, be so kind as
to purchase for me the others I mentioned to you, amounting to two pounds,
ten shillings; and, as in the course of next week I shall send a small
parcel of books and manuscripts to my very dear Charles Lamb of the India
House, I shall be enabled to convey the money to you in a letter, which he
will leave at your house. I make no apology for this commission, because I
feel (to use a vulgar phrase) that I would do as much for you. P. P. S.
Can you buy them time enough to send down with your pamphlets? If not,
make a parcel _per se_. I hope your hurts from the fall are not serious;
you have given a _proof_ now that you are no _Ippokrite_, but I forgot
that you are not a Greekist, and perchance you hate puns; but, in Greek,
_Krites_ signifies a judge and _hippos_ a horse. Hippocrite, therefore,
may mean a _judge of horses_. My dear fellow, I laugh more and talk more
nonsense in a week than [most] other people do in a year. Farewell.
JOHN THELWALL,
Beaufort Buildings, Strand, London.
LXV. TO THOMAS POOLE.[132]
Sunday morning, December 11, 1796.
MY BELOVED POOLE,--The sight of your villainous hand-scrawl was a great
comfort to me. How have you been diverted in London? What of the theatres?
And how found you your old friends? I dined with Mr. King yesterday week.
He is _quantum suff_: a pleasant man, and (my wife says) very handsome.
Hymen lies in the arms of Hygeia, if one may judge by your sister; she
looks remarkably well! But has she not caught some complaint in _the
head_? Some _scurfy_ disorder? For her _hair_ was filled with an odious
white Dandruff. (“N. B. Nothing but powder,” Mrs. King.) About myself, I
have so much to say that I really can say nothing. I mean to work _very
hard_--as Cook, Butler, Scullion, Shoe-cleaner, occasional Nurse,
Gardener, Hind, Pig-protector, Chaplain, Secretary, Poet, Reviewer, and
_omnium-botherum_ shilling-Scavenger. In other words, I shall keep no
servant, and will cultivate my land-acre and my wise-acres, as well as I
can. The motives which led to this determination are numerous and weighty;
I have thought much and calmly, and calculated time and money with
unexceptionable accuracy; and at length determined not to take the charge
of Charles Lloyd’s mind on me. Poor fellow! he still hopes to live with
me--is now at Birmingham. I wish that little cottage by the roadside were
gettable? That with about two or three rooms--it would quite do for us, as
we shall occupy only _two rooms_. I will write more fully on the receipt
of yours. God love you and
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LXVI. TO THE SAME.
December 12, 1796.
You tell me, my dear Poole, that my residence near you would give you
great pleasure, and I am sure that if you had any objections on your own
account to my settling near Stowey you would have mentioned them to me.
Relying on this, I assure you that a disappointment would try my
philosophy. Your letter did indeed give me unexpected and most acute pain.
I will make the cottage do. We want but three rooms. If Cruikshank have
promised more than his circumstances enable him to perform, I am sure that
I can get the other purchased by my friends in Bristol. I mean, the place
at Adscombe. I wrote him pressingly on this head some ten days ago; but he
has returned me no answer. Lloyd has obtained his father’s permission and
will return to me. He is willing to be his own servant. As to Acton, ’tis
out of the question. In Bristol I have Cottle and Estlin (for Mr. Wade is
going away) willing and eager to serve me; but how they can serve me more
effectually at Acton than at Stowey, I cannot divine. If I live at Stowey,
you indeed _can_ serve me effectually, by assisting me in the acquirement
of agricultural practice. If you can instruct me to manage an acre and a
half of land, and to raise in it, with my own hands, all kinds of
vegetables and grain, enough for myself and my wife and sufficient to
feed a pig or two with the refuse, I hope that you will have served me
_most_ effectually by placing me out of the necessity of being served. I
receive about forty guineas yearly from the “Critical Review” and the new
“Monthly Magazine.” It is hard if by my greater works I do not get twenty
more. I know how little the human mind requires when it is tranquil, and
in proportion as I should find it difficult to simplify my wants it
becomes my duty to simplify them. For there must be a vice in my nature,
which woe be to me if I do not cure. The less meat I eat the more healthy
I am; and strong liquors of any kind always and perceptibly injure me.
Sixteen shillings would cover all the weekly expenses of my wife, infant,
and myself. This I say from my wife’s own calculation.
But whence this sudden revolution in your opinions, my dear Poole? You saw
the cottage that was to be our temporary residence, and thought we might
be _happy_ in it, and now you hurry to tell me that we shall not even be
_comfortable_ in it. You tell me I shall be “too far from my _friends_,”
that is, Cottle and Estlin, for I have no other in Bristol. In the name of
Heaven, _what can_ Cottle or Estlin [do] for me? They do nothing who do
not teach me how to be independent of any except the Almighty Dispenser of
sickness and health. And “too far from the press.” With the printing of
the review and the magazine I have no concern; and, if I publish any work
on my own account, I will send a fair and faultless copy, and Cottle
promises to correct the press for me. Mr. King’s family may be very worthy
sort of people, for aught I know; but assuredly I can employ my time
wiselier than to gabble with my tongue to beings with whom neither my head
nor heart can commune. My habits and feelings have suffered a total
alteration. I _hate_ company except of my dearest friends, and
systematically avoid it; and when in it keep silence as far as social
humanity will permit me. Lloyd’s father, in a letter to me yesterday,
enquired how I should live without any companions. I answered him not an
hour before I received your letter:--
“I shall have six companions: My Sara, my babe, my own shaping and
disquisitive mind, my books, my beloved friend Thomas Poole, and lastly,
Nature looking at me with a thousand looks of beauty, and speaking to me
in a thousand melodies of love. If I were capable of being tired with all
these, I should then detect a vice in my nature, and would fly to habitual
solitude to eradicate it.”
Yes, my friend, while I opened your letter my heart was glowing with
enthusiasm towards you. How little did I expect that I should find you
earnestly and vehemently persuading me to prefer Acton to Stowey, and in
return for the loss of your society recommending _Mr. King’s_ family as
“very pleasant neighbours.” Neighbours! Can mere juxtaposition form a
neighbourhood? As well should the louse in my head call himself my friend,
and the flea in my bosom style herself my love!
On Wednesday week we must leave our house, so that if you continue to
dissuade me from settling near Stowey I scarcely know what I shall do.
Surely, my beloved friend, there must be some reason which you have not
yet told me, which urged you to send this hasty and heart-chilling letter.
I suspect that something has passed between your sister and dear mother
(in whose illness I sincerely sympathise with you).
I have never considered my settlement at Stowey in any other relation than
its advantages to myself, and they would be great indeed. My objects
(assuredly wise ones) were to learn agriculture (and where should I get
instructed except at Stowey?) and to be where I can communicate in a
literary way. I must conclude. I pray you let me hear from you
immediately. God bless you and
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LXVII. TO THE SAME.
Monday night.
I wrote the former letter immediately on receipt of yours, in the first
flutter of agitation. The tumult of my spirits has now subsided, but the
Damp struck into my very heart; and there I feel it. O my God! my God!
where am I to find rest? Disappointment follows disappointment, and Hope
seems given me merely to prevent my becoming callous to Misery. Now I know
not where to turn myself. I was on my way to the City Library, and wrote
an answer to it there. Since I have returned I have been poring into a
book, as a shew for not looking at my wife and the baby. By God, I dare
not look at them. Acton! The very name makes me grind my teeth! What am I
to do there?
“You will have a good garden; you may, I doubt not, have ground.” But am I
not ignorant as a child of everything that concerns the garden and the
ground? and shall I have one human being there who will instruct me? The
House too--what should I do with it? We want but two rooms, or three at
the furthest. And the country around is intolerably flat. I would as soon
live on the banks of a Dutch canal! And no one human being near me for
whom I should, or could, care a rush! No one walk where the beauties of
nature might endear solitude to me! There is one Ghost that I _am_ afraid
of; with that I should be perpetually haunted in this same cursed
Acton--the hideous Ghost of departed Hope. O Poole! how could _you_ make
such a proposal to me? I have compelled myself to reperuse your letter, if
by any means I may be able to penetrate into your motives. I find three
reasons assigned for my not settling at Stowey. The first, the distance
from my friends and the Press. This I answered in the former letter. As to
my friends, what can they do for me? And as to the Press, even if Cottle
had not promised to correct it for me, yet I might as well be fifty miles
from it as twelve, for any purpose of correcting. Secondly, the expense of
moving. Well, but I must move to Acton, and what will the difference be?
Perhaps three guineas.... I would give three guineas that you had not
assigned this reason. Thirdly, the wretchedness of that cottage, which
alone we can get. But surely, in the house which I saw, _two_ rooms may be
found, which, by a little green list and a carpet, and a slight alteration
in the fireplace, may be made to exclude the cold: and this is all we
want. Besides, it will be but for a while. If Cruikshank cannot buy and
repair Adscombe, I have no doubt that my friends here and at Birmingham
would, some of them, purchase it. So much for the reasons: but these
cannot be the real reasons. I was with you for a week, and then we talked
over the whole scheme, and you approved of it, and I gave up Derby. More
than nine weeks have elapsed since then, and you saw and examined the
cottage, and you knew every other of these reasons, if reasons they can be
called. Surely, surely, my friend, something has occurred which you have
not mentioned to me. Your mother has manifested a strong dislike to our
living near you--or something or other; for the reasons you have assigned
tell me nothing except that there are reasons which you have not assigned.
Pardon, if I write vehemently. I meant to have written calmly; but
bitterness of soul came upon me. Mrs. Coleridge has observed the workings
of my face while I have been writing, and is entreating to know what is
the matter. I dread to show her your letter. I dread it. My God! my God!
What if she should dare to think that my most beloved friend has grown
cold towards me!
Tuesday morning, 11 o’clock.--After an unquiet and almost sleepless night,
I resume my pen. As the sentiments over leaf came into my heart, I will
not suppress them. I would keep a letter by me which I wrote to a mere
acquaintance, lest anything unwise should be found in it; but my friend
ought to know not only what my sentiments are, but what my feelings were.
I am, indeed, perplexed and cast down. My first plan, you know, was
this--My family was to have consisted of Charles Lloyd, my wife and wife’s
mother, my infant, the servant, and myself.
My means of maintaining them--Eighty pounds a year from Charles Lloyd, and
forty from the Review and Magazine. My time was to have been divided into
four parts: 1. Three hours after breakfast to studies with C. L. 2. The
remaining hours till dinner to our garden. 3. From after dinner till tea,
to letter-writing and domestic quietness. 4. From tea till prayer-time to
the reviews, magazines, and other literary labours.
In this plan I calculated nothing on my garden but amusement. In the mean
time I heard from Birmingham that Lloyd’s father had declared that he
should insist on his son’s returning to him at the close of a twelvemonth.
What am I to do then? I shall be again afloat on the wide sea, unpiloted
and unprovisioned. I determined to devote _my whole day_ to the
acquirement of practical horticulture, to part with Lloyd immediately, and
live without a servant. Lloyd intreated me to give up the Review and
Magazine, and devote the evenings to him, but this would be to give up a
permanent for a temporary situation, and after subtracting £40 from C.
Ll.’s £80 in return for the Review business, and then calculating the
expense of a servant, a less severe mode of general living, and Lloyd’s
own board and lodging, the remaining £40 would make but a poor figure. And
what was I to do at the end of a twelvemonth? In the mean time Mrs.
Fricker’s son could not be got out as an apprentice--he was too young, and
premiumless, and no one would take him; and the old lady herself
manifested a great aversion to leaving Bristol. I recurred therefore to
my first promise of allowing her £20 a year; but all her furniture must of
course be returned, and enough only remains to furnish one bedroom and a
kitchen-parlour.
If Charles Lloyd and the servant went with me I must have bought new
furniture to the amount of £40 or £50, which, if not Impossibility in
person, was Impossibility’s first cousin. We determined to live by
ourselves. We arranged our time, money, and employments. We found it not
only practicable _but easy_; and Mrs. Coleridge entered with enthusiasm
into the scheme.
To Mrs. Coleridge the nursing and sewing only would have belonged; the
rest I took upon myself, and since our resolution have been learning the
practice. With only two rooms and two people--their wants severely
simple--no great labour can there be in their waiting upon themselves. Our
washing we should put out. I should have devoted my whole head, heart, and
body to my acre and a half of garden land, and my evenings to literature.
Mr. and Mrs. Estlin approved, admired, and applauded the scheme, and
thought it not only highly virtuous, but highly prudent. In the course of
a year and a half, I doubt not that I should feel myself independent, for
my bodily strength would have increased, and I should have been weaned
from animal food, so as never to touch it but once a week; and there can
be no shadow of a doubt that an acre and a half of land, divided properly,
and managed properly, would maintain a small family in _everything_ but
clothes and rent. What had I to ask of my friends? Not money; for a
temporary relief of my want is nothing, removes no gnawing of anxiety, and
debases the dignity of man. Not their interest. What could their interest
(supposing they had any) do for me? I can accept no place in state,
church, or dissenting meeting. Nothing remains possible but a school, or
writer to a newspaper, or my present plan. I could not love the man who
advised me to keep a school, or write for a newspaper. He must have a hard
heart. What then could I ask of my friends? What of Mr. Wade? Nothing.
What of Mr. Cottle? Nothing.... What of Thomas Poole? O! a great deal.
Instruction, daily advice, society--everything necessary to my feelings
and the realization of my innocent independence. You know it would be
impossible for me to learn _everything_ myself. To pass across my garden
once or twice a day, for five minutes, to set me right, and cheer me with
the sight of a friend’s face, would be more to me than hundreds. Your
letter was not a kind one. One week only and I must leave my house, and
yet in one week you advise me to alter the plan which I had been three
months framing, and in which you must have known by the letters I wrote
you, during my illness, that I was interested even to an excess and
violence of Hope. And to abandon this plan for darkness and a renewal of
anxieties which might be fatal to me! Not one word have you mentioned how
I am to live, or even exist, supposing I were to go to Acton. Surely,
surely, you do not advise me to lean with the whole weight of my
necessities on the Press? Ghosts indeed! I should be haunted with ghosts
enough--the ghosts of Otway and Chatterton, and the phantasms of a wife
broken-hearted, and a hunger-bitten baby! O Thomas Poole! Thomas Poole! if
you did but know what a Father and a Husband must feel who toils with his
brain for uncertain bread! I dare not think of it. The evil face of Frenzy
looks at me. The husbandman puts his seed in the ground, and the goodness,
power, and wisdom of God have pledged themselves that he shall have bread,
and health, and quietness in return for industry, and simplicity of wants
and innocence. The AUTHOR scatters his seed--with aching head, and wasted
health, and all the heart-leapings of anxiety; and the follies, the vices,
and the fickleness of man promise him printers’ bills and the Debtors’
Side of Newgate as full and sufficient payment.
Charles Lloyd is at Birmingham. I hear from him daily. In his yesterday’s
letter he says: “My dearest friend, everything seems clearing around me.
My friends enter fully into my views. They seem altogether to have
abandoned any ambitious views on my account. My health has been very good
since I left you; and I own I look forward with more pleasure than ever to
a permanent connection with you. Hitherto I could only look forward to the
pleasures of a year. All beyond was dark and uncertain. My father now
completely acquiesces in my abandoning the prospect of any profession or
trade. If God grant me health, there now remains no obstacle to a
completion of my most sanguine wishes.” Charles Lloyd will furnish his own
room, and feels it his duty to be in all things his own servant. He will
put up a press-bed, so that one room will be his bedchamber and parlour;
and I shall settle with him the hours and seasons of our being together,
and the hours and seasons of our being apart. But I shall rely on him for
nothing except his own maintenance.
As to the poems, they are Cottle’s property, not mine. There is no
obstacle from me--no new poems intended to be put in the volume, except
the “Visions of the Maid of Orleans.”... But literature, though I shall
never abandon it, will always be a secondary object with me. My poetic
vanity and my political _furor_ have been exhaled; and I would rather be
an expert, self-maintaining gardener than a Milton, if I could not unite
both.
My _friend_, wherein I have written impetuously, pardon me! and consider
what I have suffered, and still am suffering, in consequence of your
letter....
_Finally, my Friend! if your opinion of me and your attachment to me
remain unaltered, and if you have assigned the true reasons which urged
you to dissuade me from a settlement at Stowey, and if indeed (provided
such settlement were consistent with my good and happiness), it would give
you unmixed pleasure, I adhere to Stowey, and consider the time from last
evening as a distempered dream. But if any circumstances have occurred
that have lessened your love or esteem or confidence; or if there be
objections to my settling in Stowey on your own account, or any other
objections than what you have urged, I doubt not you will declare them
openly and unreservedly to me, in your answer to this_, which I shall
expect with a total incapability of doing or thinking of anything, till I
have received it. Indeed, indeed, I am very miserable. God bless you and
your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Tuesday, December 13, 1796.
LXVIII. TO JOHN THELWALL.
December 17, 1796.
MY DEAR THELWALL,--I should have written you long ere this, had not the
settlement of my affairs previous to my leaving Bristol and the
organization of my _new plan_ occupied me with bulky anxieties that almost
excluded everything but self from my thoughts. And, besides, my health has
been very bad, and remains so. A nervous affection from my right temple to
the extremity of my right shoulder almost distracted me, and made the
frequent use of laudanum absolutely necessary. And, since I have subdued
this, a rheumatic complaint in the back of my head and shoulders,
accompanied with sore throat and depression of the animal spirits, has
convinced me that a man may change bad lodgers without bettering himself.
I write these things, not so much to apologise for my silence, or for the
pleasure of complaining, as that you may know the reason why I have not
given you a “strict account” how I have disposed of your books. This I
will shortly do, with all the veracity which that solemn incantation,
“_upon your honour_,” must necessarily have conjured up.
Your second and third part promise great things. I have counted the
subjects, and by a nice calculation find that eighteen Scotch doctors
would write fifty-four quarto volumes, each choosing his thesis out of
your syllabus. May you do good by them, and moreover enable yourself to do
more good, I _should_ say, to continue to do good. _My farm_ will be a
garden of one acre and a half, in which I mean to raise vegetables and
corn enough for myself and wife, and feed a couple of snouted and grunting
cousins from the refuse. My evenings I shall devote to literature; and, by
reviews, the magazine, and the other shilling-scavenger employments, shall
probably gain forty pounds a year; which economy and self-denial,
gold-beaters, shall hammer till it cover my annual expenses. Now, in
favour of this scheme, I shall say nothing, for the more vehement my
ratiocinations were, previous to the experiment, the more ridiculous my
failure would appear; and if the scheme deserve the said ratiocinations I
shall live down all your objections. I doubt not that the time will come
when all our utilities will be directed in one simple path. That time,
however, is not come; and imperious circumstances point out to each one
his particular road. Much good may be done in all. I am not _fit_ for
_public_ life; yet the light shall stream to a far distance from my
cottage window. Meantime, _do you_ uplift the _torch_ dreadlessly, and
show to mankind the face of that idol which they have worshipped in
darkness! And now, my dear fellow, for a little sparring about poetry. My
first _sonnet[133] is obscure_; but you ought to distinguish between
obscurity residing in the uncommonness of the thought, and that which
proceeds from thoughts unconnected and language not adapted to the
expression of them. Where you do find out the meaning of my poetry, can
you (in general, I mean) alter the language so as to make it more
perspicuous--the thought remaining the same? By “dreamy semblance” I _did_
mean semblance of some unknown past, like to a dream, and not “a semblance
_presented_ in a dream.” I meant to express that ofttimes, for a second or
two, it flashed upon my mind that the then company, conversation, and
everything, had occurred before with all the precise circumstances; so as
to make reality appear a semblance, and the present like a dream in sleep.
Now this thought is obscure; because few persons have experienced the same
feeling. Yet several have; and they were proportionably delighted with the
lines, as expressing some strange sensations, which they themselves had
never ventured to communicate, much less had ever seen developed in
poetry. The lines I have altered to,--
Oft o’er my brain does that strange rapture roll
Which makes the present (while its brief fit last)
Seem a mere semblance of some unknown past,
Mixed with such feelings as distress the soul
When dreaming that she dreams.[134]
Next as to “mystical.” Now that the thinking part of man, that is, the
soul, existed previously to its appearance in its present body may be very
wild philosophy, but it is very intelligible poetry; inasmuch as “soul” is
an orthodox word in all our poets, they meaning by “soul” a being
inhabiting our body, and playing upon it, like a musician enclosed in an
organ whose keys were placed inwards. Now this opinion I do not hold; not
that I am a materialist, but because I am a Berkleyan. Yet as you, who are
not a Christian, wished you were, that we might meet in heaven, so I, who
did not believe in this descending and incarcerated soul, yet said if my
baby had died before I had seen him I should have _struggled_ to believe
it. Bless me! a commentary of thirty-five lines in defence of a sonnet!
and I do not like the sonnet much myself. In some (indeed, in many of my
poems) there is a garishness and swell of diction which I hope that my
poems in future, if I write any, will be clean of, but seldom, I think,
any _conceits_. In the second edition, now printing, I have swept the book
with the expurgation-besom to a fine tune, having omitted nearly one
third. As to Bowles, I affirm that the manner of his accentuation in the
words “brōad dāylīght” (three long syllables) is a beauty, as it admirably
expresses the captive’s dwelling on the sight of noon with rapture and a
kind of wonder.
The common sun, the air, the skies
To him are opening paradise.
GRAY.
But supposing my defence not tenable; yet how a blunder in metre stamps a
man Italian or Della Cruscan I cannot perceive. As to my own poetry, I do
confess that it frequently, both in thought and language, deviates from
“nature and simplicity.” But that Bowles, the most tender, and, with the
exception of Burns, the only _always natural_ in our language, that _he_
should not escape the charge of Della Cruscanism,--this cuts the skin and
surface of my heart. “Poetry to have its highest relish must be
impassioned.” True. But, firstly, poetry ought not always to have its
_highest_ relish; and, secondly, judging of the cause from its effect,
poetry, though treating on lofty and abstract truths, ought to be deemed
_impassioned_ by him who reads it with impassioned feelings. Now Collins’s
“Ode on the Poetical Character,”--that part of it, I should say, beginning
with “The band (as faery legends say) Was wove on that creating day,”--has
inspired and whirled _me_ along with greater agitations of enthusiasm than
any the most _impassioned_ scene in Schiller or Shakespeare, using
“impassioned” in its confined sense, for writing in which the human
passions of pity, fear, anger, revenge, jealousy, or love are brought into
view with their workings. Yet I consider the latter poetry as more
valuable, because it gives _more general_ pleasure, and I judge of all
things by their utility. I feel strongly and I think strongly, but I
seldom feel without thinking or think without feeling. Hence, though my
poetry has in general a hue of tenderness or passion over it, yet it
seldom exhibits unmixed and simple tenderness or passion. My philosophical
opinions are blended with or deduced from my feelings, and this, I think,
peculiarises my style of writing, and, like everything else, it is
sometimes a beauty and sometimes a fault. But do not let us introduce an
Act of Uniformity against Poets. I have room enough in _my_ brain to
admire, aye, and almost equally, the _head_ and fancy of Akenside, and the
heart and fancy of Bowles, the solemn lordliness of Milton, and the divine
chit-chat of Cowper.[135] And whatever a man’s excellence is, that will be
likewise his fault.
There were some verses of yours in the last “Monthly Magazine” with which
I was much pleased--calm good sense combined with _feeling_, and conveyed
in harmonious verse and a chaste and pleasing imagery. I wish much, very
much, to see your other poem. As to your Poems which you informed me in
the accompanying letter that you had sent in the same parcel with the
pamphlets, whether or no your verses had more than their _proper number of
feet_ I cannot say; but certain it is, that somehow or other they _marched
off_. No “Poems by John Thelwall” could I find. When I charged you with
anti-religious bigotry, I did not allude to your pamphlet, but to passages
in your letters to me, and to a circumstance which Southey, I _think_,
once mentioned, that you had asserted that the name of _God_ ought never
to be produced in poetry.[136] Which, to be sure, was carrying hatred _to
your Creator very far indeed_.
My dear Thelwall! “It is the principal felicity of life and the chief
glory of manhood to speak out fully on all subjects.” I will avail myself
of it. I will express _all_ my feelings, but will previously take care to
make my feelings benevolent. Contempt is hatred without fear; anger,
hatred accompanied with apprehension. But because hatred is always evil,
contempt must be always evil, and a good man ought to speak
_contemptuously_ of nothing. I am sure a wise man will not of opinions
which have been held by men, in _other_ respects at least, confessed of
more powerful intellect than himself. ’Tis an assumption of
_infallibility_; for if a man were wakefully mindful that what he now
thinks foolish he may himself hereafter think wise, it is not in nature
that he should _despise_ those who now believe what it is possible he may
himself hereafter believe; and if he deny the possibility he must _on that
point_ deem himself infallible and immutable. Now, in your letter of
yesterday, you speak with _contempt_ of two things: old age and the
Christian religion; though religion was believed by Newton, Locke, and
Hartley, after intense investigation, which in each had been preceded by
unbelief. This does not prove its truth, but it should save its followers
from _contempt_, even though through the infirmities of mortality they
should have _lost their teeth_. I call that man a bigot, Thelwall, whose
intemperate zeal, for or against any opinions, leads him to contradict
himself in the space of half a dozen lines. Now this you appear to me to
have done. I will write fully to you now, because I shall never renew the
subject. I shall not be idle in defence of the religion I profess, and my
books will be the place, not my letters. You say the Christian is a _mean_
religion. Now the religion which Christ taught is simply, first, that
there is an omnipresent Father of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, in
whom we all of us move and have our being; and, secondly, that when we
appear to men to die we do not utterly perish, but after this life shall
continue to enjoy or suffer the consequences and natural effects of the
habits we have formed here, whether good or evil. This is the Christian
_religion_, and all of the Christian _religion_. That there is no _fancy_
in it I readily grant, but that it is mean and deficient in _mind_ and
_energy_ it were impossible for me to admit, unless I admitted that there
_could be_ no dignity, intellect, or force in anything but _atheism_. But
though it appeal not itself to the fancy, the truths which it teaches
admit the highest exercise of it. Are the “innumerable multitude of angels
and archangels” less splendid beings than the countless gods and goddesses
of Rome and Greece? And can you seriously think that Mercury from Jove
equals in poetic sublimity “the mighty angel that came down from heaven,
whose face was as it were the sun and his feet as pillars of fire: who set
his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the earth. And he sent
forth a loud voice; and when he had sent it forth, seven thunders uttered
their voices: and when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, the
mighty Angel[137] lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by Him that
liveth for ever and ever that _Time_ was no more”? Is not Milton a
sublimer poet than Homer or Virgil? Are not his personages more sublimely
clothed, and do you not know that there is not perhaps _one page_ in
_Milton’s_ Paradise Lost in which he has not borrowed his imagery from
the _Scriptures_? I allow and rejoice that _Christ_ appealed only to the
understanding and the affections; but I affirm that after reading Isaiah,
or St. Paul’s “Epistle to the Hebrews,” Homer and Virgil are disgustingly
_tame_ to me, and Milton himself barely tolerable. You and I are very
differently organized if you think that the following (putting serious
belief out of the question) is a mean flight of impassioned eloquence in
which the Apostle marks the difference between the Mosaic and Christian
Dispensation: “For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched”
(that is, a material and earthly place) “and that burned with fire, nor
unto blackness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of
words; which voice they that heard entreated that the word should not be
spoken to them any more. But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the
city of the living God, to an innumerable company of angels, to God the
Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.”[138] _You_ may
prefer to all this the quarrels of Jupiter and Juno, the whimpering of
wounded Venus, and the jokes of the celestials on the lameness of Vulcan.
Be it so (the difference in our tastes it would not be difficult to
account for from the different feelings which we have associated with
these ideas); I shall continue with Milton to say that
“Zion Hill
Delights me more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d
Fast by the oracle of God!”
“Visions fit for slobberers!” If infidelity do not lead to sensuality,
which in every case except yours I have observed it to do, it always takes
away all respect for those who become unpleasant from the infirmities of
disease or decaying nature. _Exempli gratiâ_, “the aged are
_slobberers_.”[139] The only vision which Christianity holds forth is
indeed peculiarly adapted to these _slobberers_. Yes, to these lowly and
despised and perishing slobberers it proclaims that their “corruptible
shall put on _incorruption_, and their mortal put on _immortality_.”
“Morals to the Magdalen and Botany Bay.” Now, Thelwall, I presume that to
preach morals to the virtuous is not quite so requisite as to preach them
to the vicious. “The sick need a physician.” Are morals which would make a
prostitute a wife and a sister, which would restore her to inward peace
and purity; are morals which would make drunkards sober, the ferocious
benevolent, and thieves honest, _mean morals_? Is it a despicable trait in
our religion, that its professed object is to heal the broken-hearted and
give wisdom to the poor man? It preaches _repentance_. What repentance?
Tears and sorrow and a repetition of the same crimes? No, a “repentance
unto good works;” a repentance that completely does away all superstitious
terrors by teaching that the past is nothing in itself, that, if the mind
_is_ good, that it _was_ bad imports nothing. “It is a religion for
democrats.” It certainly teaches in the most explicit terms the rights of
man, his right to wisdom, his right to an equal share in all the blessings
of nature; it commands its disciples to go everywhere, and everywhere to
preach these rights; it commands them never to use the arm of flesh, to be
perfectly non-resistant; yet to hold the promulgation of _truth_ to be a
law above law, and in the performance of this office to defy “wickedness
in high places,” and cheerfully to endure ignominy, and wretchedness, and
torments, and death, rather than _intermit_ the performance of it; yet,
while enduring ignominy, and wretchedness, and torments, and death, to
feel nothing but sorrow, and pity, and love for those who inflicted them;
wishing their oppressors to be altogether such as they, “excepting these
bonds.” Here is _truth_ in theory and in practice, a union of energetic
_action_ and more energetic _suffering_. For activity amuses; but he who
can _endure_ calmly must possess the seeds of true greatness. For all his
animal spirits will of necessity fail him; and he has only his mind to
trust to. These doubtless are morals for all the lovers of mankind, who
wish to _act_ as well as _speculate_; and that you should allow this, and
yet, not three lines before call the same _morals mean_, appears to me a
gross self-contradiction symptomatic of bigotry. I write freely, Thelwall;
for, though _personally_ unknown, I really love you, and can count but few
human beings whose hand I would welcome with a more hearty grasp of
friendship. I suspect, Thelwall, that you never read your Testament, since
your understanding was matured, without carelessness, and previous
contempt, and a somewhat like hatred. Christianity regards morality as a
process. It finds a man vicious and unsusceptible of noble motives and
gradually leads him, at least desires to lead him, to the height of
disinterested virtue; till, in relation and proportion to his faculties
and power, he is perfect “even as our Father in heaven is perfect.” There
is no resting-place for morality. Now I will make one other appeal, and
have done forever with the subject. There is a passage in Scripture which
comprises the whole process, and each component part, of Christian morals.
Previously let me explain the word faith. By faith I understand, first, a
deduction from experiments in favour of the existence of something not
experienced, and, secondly, the motives which attend such a deduction. Now
motives, being selfish, are only the beginning and the _foundation_,
necessary and of first-rate importance, yet made of vile materials, and
hidden beneath the splendid superstructure.
“Now giving all diligence, add to your faith _fortitude_, and to
_fortitude knowledge_, and to knowledge purity, and to purity
patience,[140] and to patience godliness,[141] and to godliness
brotherly-kindness, and to brotherly-kindness universal love.”[142]
I hope, whatever you may think of godliness, you will like the _note_ on
it. I need not tell you, that godliness is God-_like_ness, and is
paraphrased by Peter “that ye may be partakers of the divine nature,” that
is, act from a love of order and happiness, not from any self-respecting
motive; from the excellency into which you have exalted your _nature_, not
from the _keenness_ of mere _prudence_. “Add to your faith fortitude, and
to fortitude knowledge, and to knowledge purity, and to purity patience,
and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly-kindness, and to
brotherly-kindness universal love.” Now, Thelwall, putting _faith_ out of
the question (which, by the bye, is not mentioned as a virtue, but as the
leader to them), can you mention a virtue which is not here enjoined? and
supposing the precepts embodied in the practice of any one human being,
would not perfection be personified? I write these things not with any
expectation of making you a Christian. I should smile at my own folly, if
I conceived it even in a friendly day-dream.
* * * * *
“The ardour of undisciplined benevolence seduces us into malignity,” and,
while you accustom yourself to speak so _contemptuously_ of doctrines you
do not accede to, and persons with whom you do not accord, I must doubt
whether even your _brotherly-kindness_ might not be made more perfect.
That is surely _fit_ for a man which his mind after sincere examination
approves, which animates his conduct, soothes his sorrows, and heightens
his pleasures. Every good and earnest Christian declares that all this is
true of the _visions_ (as you please to style them, God knows why) of
Christianity. Every earnest Christian, therefore, is on a level with
slobberers. Do not charge me with dwelling on one expression. These
expressions are always indicative of the habit of feeling. You possess
fortitude and purity, and a large portion of brotherly-kindness and
universal love; drink with unquenchable thirst of the two latter virtues,
and acquire _patience_; and then, Thelwall, should _your_ system be true,
all that can be said is that (if both our systems should be found to
increase our own and our fellow-creatures’ happiness), “Here lie and did
lie the _all_ of John Thelwall and S. T. Coleridge. They were both humane,
and happy, but the former was the more knowing;” and if my system should
prove true, we, I doubt not, shall both meet in the kingdom of heaven, and
I, with transport in my eye, shall say, “I _told_ you so, my _dear_
fellow.” But seriously, the faulty habit of feeling, which I have
endeavoured to point out in you, I have detected in at least as great
degree in my own practice, and am struggling to subdue it. I rejoice that
the bankrupt honesty of the public has paid even the small dividend you
mentioned. As to your second part, I will write you about it in a day or
two, when I give you an account how I have disposed of your first. My dear
little baby! and my wife thinks that he already begins to flutter the
callow wings of his intellect. Oh, the wise heart and foolish head of a
mother! Kiss your little girl for me, and tell her if I knew her I would
love her; and then I hope in your next letter you will convey _her love_
to me and my Sara. Your dear boy, I trust, will return with rosy cheeks.
Don’t you suspect, Thelwall, that the little atheist Madam Stella has an
abominable _Christian_ kind of _heart_? My Sara is much interested about
her; and I should not wonder if they were to be sworn sister-seraphs in
the heavenly Jerusalem. Give my love to her.
I have sent you some loose sheets which Charles Lloyd and I printed
together, intending to make a volume, but I gave it up and cancelled
them.[143] Item, Joan of Arc, with only the passage of my writing cut out
for the printers, as I am printing it in my second edition, with very
great alterations and an addition of four hundred lines, so as to make it
a complete and independent poem, entitled, “The Progress of Liberty,” or
“The Visions of the Maid of Orleans.” Item, a sheet of sonnets[144]
collected by me for the use of a few friends, who paid the printing. There
you will see my opinion of sonnets. Item, Poem by C. Lloyd[145] on the
death of one of your “slobberers,” a very venerable old lady, and a
Quaker. The book is dressed like a rich Quaker, in costly raiment but
unornamented. The loss of her almost killed my poor young friend; for he
doted on her from his infancy. Item, a poem of mine on Burns[146] which
was printed to be dispersed among friends. It was addressed to Charles
Lamb. Item, (Shall I give it thee, blasphemer? No! I won’t, but) to thy
Stella I do present the poems of my youth for a keepsake. Of this parcel I
do entreat thy acceptance. I have another Joan of Arc, so you have a
_right_ to the one enclosed. Postscript. Item, a humorous “Droll” on S.
Ireland, of which I have likewise another. Item, a strange poem written by
an astrologer here, who _was_ a man of fine genius, which, at intervals,
he still discovers. But, ah me! Madness smote with her hand and stamped
with her feet and swore that he should be hers, and hers he is. He is a
man of fluent eloquence and general knowledge, gentle in his manners, warm
in his affections; but unfortunately he has received a few rays of
supernatural light through a crack in his upper story. I _express_ myself
unfeelingly; but indeed my heart always aches when I think of him. Item,
some verses of Robert Southey to a college cat.[147] And, finally, the
following lines by thy affectionate friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
TO A YOUNG MAN
WHO ABANDONED HIMSELF TO A CAUSELESS AND INDOLENT MELANCHOLY.[148]
Hence that fantastic wantonness of woe,
O youth to partial Fortune vainly dear!
To plunder’d Want’s half-sheltered hovel go,
Go, and some hunger-bitten infant hear
Moan haply in a dying mother’s ear.
Or seek some _widow’s_ grave; whose dearer part
Was slaughtered, where o’er his uncoffin’d limbs
The flocking flesh-birds scream’d! Then, while thy heart
Groans, and thine eyes a fiercer sorrow dims,
Know (and the truth shall kindle thy young mind),
What Nature makes thee mourn she bids thee heal.
O abject! if, to sickly dreams resign’d,
All effortless thou leave Earth’s common weal
A prey to the thron’d Murderess of Mankind!
After the first five lines these two followed:--
Or when the cold and dismal fog-damps brood
O’er the rank church-yard with sere elm-leaves strew’d,
Pace round some _widow’s_ grave, etc.
These they rightly omitted. I love sonnets; but _upon my honour_ I do not
love _my_ sonnets.
N. B.--Direct your letters, S. T. Coleridge, Mr. Cottle’s, High Street,
Bristol.
LXIX. TO THOMAS POOLE.
Sunday morning [? December 18, 1796.]
MY DEAR POOLE,--I wrote to you with improper impetuosity; but I had been
dwelling so long on the circumstance of living near you, that my mind was
thrown by your letter into the feelings of those distressful dreams[149]
where we imagine ourselves falling from precipices. I seemed falling from
the summit of my fondest desires, whirled from the height just as I had
reached it.
We shall want none of the Woman’s furniture; we have enough for ourselves.
What with boxes of books, and chests of drawers, and kitchen furniture,
and chairs, and our bed and bed-linen, etc., we shall have enough to fill
a small waggon, and to-day I shall make enquiry among my trading
acquaintance, whether it would be cheaper to hire a waggon to take them
straight to Stowey, than to put them in the Bridgwater waggon. Taking in
the double trouble and expense of putting them in the drays to carry them
to the public waggon, and then seeing them packed again, and again to be
unpacked and packed at Bridgwater, I much question whether our goods would
be good for anything. I am very poorly, not to say ill. My face
monstrously swollen--my recondite eye sits distent quaintly, behind the
flesh-hill, and looks as little as a tomtit’s. And I have a sore throat
that prevents my eating aught but spoon-meat without great pain. And I
have a rheumatic complaint in the back part of my head and shoulders. Now
all this demands a small portion of Christian patience, taking in our
present circumstances. My apothecary says it will be madness for me to
walk to Stowey on Tuesday, as, in the furious zeal of a new convert to
economy, I had resolved to do. My wife will stay a week or fortnight after
me; I think it not improbable that the weather may break up by that time.
However, if I do not get worse, I will be with you by Wednesday or
Thursday at the furthest, so as to be there before the waggon. Is there
any grate in the house? I should think we might Rumfordize one of the
chimneys. I shall bring down with me a dozen yards of green list. I can
endure cold, but not a cold room. If we can but contrive to make two rooms
_warm_ and _wholesome_, we will laugh in the faces of gloom and
ill-lookingness.
I shall lose the post if I say a word more. You thoroughly and in every
nook and corner of your heart forgive me for my letters? Indeed, indeed,
Poole, I know no one whom I esteem more--no one friend whom I love so
much. But bear with my infirmities! God bless you, and your grateful and
affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LXX. TO JOHN THELWALL.
December 31, 1796.
Enough, my dear Thelwall, of theology. In my book on Godwin, I compare the
two systems, his and Jesus’, and that book I am sure you will read with
attention. I entirely accord with your opinion of Southey’s “Joan.” The
ninth book is execrable, and the poem, though it frequently reach the
_sentimental_, does not display the _poetical-sublime_. In language at
once natural, perspicuous, and dignified in manly pathos, in soothing and
sonnet-like description, and, above all, in character and _dramatic_
dialogue, Southey is unrivalled; but as certainly he does not possess
opulence of imaginative lofty-paced harmony, or that toil of thinking
which is necessary in order to plan a _whole_. Dismissing mock humility,
and hanging your mind as a looking-glass over my idea-pot, so as to image
on the said mind all the bubbles that boil in the said idea-pot (there’s a
damned long-winded metaphor for you), I think that an admirable poet might
be made by _amalgamating him_ and _me_. I _think_ too much for a _poet_,
he too little for a _great_ poet. But he abjures _feeling_. Now (as you
say) they must go together. Between ourselves the _enthusiasm_ of
friendship is not with S. and me. We quarrelled and the quarrel lasted for
a twelvemonth. We are now reconciled; but the cause of the difference was
solemn, and “the blasted oak puts not forth its buds anew.” We are
_acquaintances_, and feel _kindliness_ towards each other, but I do not
_esteem_ or _love_ Southey, as I must esteem and love the man whom I dared
call by the holy name of _friend_: and vice versâ Southey of me. I say no
more. It is a painful subject, and do you say nothing. I mention this for
obvious reasons, but let it go no farther. It is a painful subject.
Southey’s direction at present is R. Southey, No. 8 West-gate Buildings,
Bath, but he leaves Bath for London in the course of a week. You imagine
that I know Bowles personally. I never saw him but once, and when I was a
boy and in Salisbury market-place.
The passage in your letter respecting your mother affected me greatly.
Well, true or false, heaven is a less gloomy idea than annihilation. Dr.
Beddoes and Dr. Darwin think that _Life_ is utterly inexplicable, writing
as materialists. You, I understand, have adopted the idea that it is the
result of organised matter acted on by external stimuli. As likely as any
other system, but you assume the thing to be proved. The “capability of
being stimulated into sensation” ... is my definition of _animal life_.
Monro believes in a plastic, immaterial nature, all-pervading.
And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, etc.
(By the bye, that is the favourite of _my_ poems; do you like it?) Hunter
says that the _blood_ is the life, which is saying nothing at all; for, if
the blood were _life_, it could never be otherwise than life, and to say
it is _alive_ is saying nothing; and Ferriar believes in a _soul_, like an
orthodox churchman. So much for physicians and surgeons! Now as to the
metaphysicians. Plato says it is _harmony_. He might as well have said a
fiddlestick’s end; but I love Plato, his dear, _gorgeous_ nonsense; and I,
_though last not least_, _I_ do not know what to think about it. On the
whole, I have rather made up my mind that I am a mere _apparition_, a
naked spirit, and that life is, I myself I; which is a mighty clear
account of it. Now I have written all this, not to express my ignorance
(that is an accidental effect, not the final cause), but to shew you that
I want to see your essay on “Animal Vitality,” of which Bowles the surgeon
spoke in high terms. Yet _he_ believes in a _body_ and a _soul_. Any book
may be left at Robinson’s for _me_, “to be put into the next parcel, to be
sent to ‘Joseph Cottle, bookseller, Bristol.’” Have you received an
“Ode”[150] of mine from Parsons? In your next letter tell me what you
think of the _scattered_ poems I sent you. Send me any poems, and I will
be minute in criticism. For, O Thelwall, even a long-winded abuse is more
consolatory to an _author’s_ feelings than a short-breathed, asthma-lunged
panegyric. Joking apart, I would to God we could sit by a fireside and
joke _vivâ voce_, face to face--Stella and Sara, Jack Thelwall and I. As I
once wrote to my dear friend, T. Poole, “repeating--
‘Such verse as Bowles, heart-honour’d poet, sang,
That wakes the Tear, yet steals away the Pang,
Then, or with Berkeley or with Hobbes romance it,
Dissecting Truth with metaphysic lancet.
Or, drawn from up those dark unfathom’d wells,
In wiser folly clink the Cap and Bells.
How many tales we told! what jokes we made!
Conundrum, Crambo, Rebus, or Charade;
Ænigmas that had driven the Theban[151] mad,
And Puns, then best when exquisitely bad;
And I, if aught of archer vein I hit
With my own laughter stifled my own wit.’”[152]
CHAPTER III
THE STOWEY PERIOD
1797-1798
CHAPTER III
THE STOWEY PERIOD
1797-1798
LXXI. TO REV. J. P. ESTLIN.
[STOWEY, 1797.]
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I was indeed greatly rejoiced at the first sight of a
letter from you; but its contents were painful. Dear, dear Mrs. Estlin!
Sara burst into an agony of tears that she _had_ been so ill. Indeed,
indeed, we hover about her, and think and talk of her, with many an
interjection of prayer. I do not wonder that you have acquired a distaste
to London--your associations must be painful indeed. But God be praised!
you shall look back on those sufferings as the vexations of a dream! Our
friend, T. Poole, particularly requests me to mention how deeply he
condoles with you in Mrs. Estlin’s illness, how fervently he thanks God
for her recovery. I assure you he was extremely affected. We are all
remarkably well, and the child grows fat and strong. Our house is better
than we expected--there is a comfortable bedroom and sitting-room for C.
Lloyd, and another for us, a room for Nanny, a kitchen, and outhouse.
Before our door a clear brook runs of very soft water; and in the back
yard is a nice _well_ of fine spring water. We have a very pretty garden,
and large enough to find us vegetables and employment, and I am already an
expert gardener, and both my hands can exhibit a callum as testimonials of
their industry. We have likewise a sweet orchard, and at the end of it T.
Poole has made a gate, which leads into his garden, and from thence
either through the tan yard into his house, or else through his orchard
over a fine meadow into the garden of a Mrs. Cruikshank, an old
acquaintance, who married on the same day as I, and has got a little girl
a little younger than David Hartley. Mrs. Cruikshank is a sweet little
woman, of the same size as my Sara, and they are extremely cordial. T.
Poole’s mother behaves to us as a kind and tender mother. She is very fond
indeed of my wife, so that, you see, I ought to be happy, and, thank God,
I am so....
LXXII. TO JOHN THELWALL.
STOWEY NEAR BRIDGEWATER, SOMERSET.
February 6, 1797.
I thank you, my dear Thelwall, for the parcel, and your letters. Of the
contents I shall speak in the order of their importance. First, then, of
your scheme of a school, I approve it; and fervently wish, that you may
find it more easy of accomplishment than my fears suggest. But try, by all
means, try. Have hopes without expectations to hazard disappointment. Most
of our patriots are tavern and parlour patriots, that will not avow their
principles by any decisive action; and of the few who would wish to do so,
the larger part are unable, from their children’s expectancies on rich
relations, etc., etc. May these remain enough for your Stella to employ
herself on! Try, by all means, try. For your comfort, for your
progressiveness in literary excellence, in the name of everything that is
happy, and in the name of everything that is miserable, I would have you
do anything honest rather than lean with the whole weight of your
necessities on the Press. Get bread and cheese, clothing and housing
independently of it; and you may then safely trust to it for beef and
strong beer. You will find a country life a happy one; and you might live
comfortably with an hundred a year. Fifty pounds you might, I doubt
not, gain by _reviewing_ and furnishing miscellanies for the different
magazines; you might safely speculate on twenty pounds a year or more from
your compositions published separately--50 + 20 = £70; and by severe
economy, a little garden labour, and a pigstye, this would do. And, if the
education scheme did not succeed, and I could get _engaged_ by any one of
the Reviews and the new “Monthly Magazine,” I would _try_ it, and begin to
farm by little and slow degrees. You perceive that by the Press I mean
merely _writing without a certainty_. The other is as secure as anything
else could be to _you_. With health and spirits it would stand; and
without health and spirits every other mode of maintenance, as well as
reviewing, would be impracticable. You are going to Derby! I shall be with
you in spirit. Derby is no common place; but where you will find
_citizens_ enough to fill your lecture-room puzzles me. Dr. Darwin will no
doubt excite your respectful curiosity. On the whole, I think, he is the
first _literary_ character in Europe, and the most original-minded man.
Mrs. Crompton is an angel; and Dr. Crompton a truly honest and benevolent
man, possessing good sense and a large portion of humour. I never think of
him without respect and tenderness; never (for, thank Heaven! I abominate
Godwinism) without gratitude. William Strutt[153] is a man of stern
aspect, but strong, very strong abilities. Joseph Strutt every way
amiable. He deserves his wife--which is saying a great deal--for she is a
sweet-minded woman, and one that you would be apt to recollect whenever
you met or used the words lovely, handsome, beautiful, etc. “While smiling
Loves the shaft display, And lift the playful torch elate.” Perhaps you
may be so fortunate as to meet with a Mrs. Evans whose seat is at Darley,
about a mile from Derby. Blessings descend on her! emotions crowd on me at
the sight of her name. We spent five weeks at her house, a sunny spot in
our life. My Sara sits and thinks and thinks of her and bursts into tears,
and when I turn to her says, “I was thinking, my dear, of Mrs. Evans and
Bessy” (that is, her daughter). I mention this to you, because things are
characterized by their effects. She is no common being who could create so
warm and lasting an interest in _our_ hearts; for _we_ are no common
people. Indeed, indeed, Thelwall, she is without exception the greatest
_woman_ I have been fortunate enough to meet with in my brief pilgrimage
through life.
[Illustration]
At Nottingham you will surely be more likely to obtain audiences; and, I
doubt not, you will find a hospitable reception there. I was treated by
many families with kindliness, by some with a zeal of affection. Write me
if you go and when you go. Now for your pamphlet. It is well written, and
the doctrine sound, although sometimes, I think, deduced falsely. For
instance (p. iii.): It is _true_ that all a man’s children, “however
begotten, whether in marriage or out,” are his heirs in nature, and ought
to be so in true policy; but, instead of tacitly allowing that I meant by
it to encourage what Mr. B.[154] and the priests would call
licentiousness (and which surely, Thelwall, in the _present state of
society_ you must allow to be injustice, inasmuch as it deprives the woman
of her respectability in the opinions of her neighbours), I would have
shown that such a law would of all others operate most powerfully in
_favour_ of _marriage_; by which word I mean not the effect of spells
uttered by conjurers, but permanent cohabitation useful to society as the
best conceivable means (in the present state of society, at least) of
ensuring nurture and systematic education to infants and children. We are
but frail beings at present, and want such motives to the practice of our
duties. Unchastity may be no vice,--I think it is,--but it may be no vice,
abstractly speaking; yet from a variety of causes unchaste women are
almost without exception careless mothers. _Wife_ is a solemn name to me
because of its influence on the more solemn duties of _mother_. Such
passages (p. 30 is another of them) are offensive. They are mere
_assertions_, and of course can convince no person who thinks differently;
and they give pain and irritate. I write so frequently to you on this
subject, because I have reason to _know_ that passages of this order did
give very general offence in your first part, and have operated to retard
the sale of the second. If they had been arguments or necessarily
connected with your main argument, I am not the man, Thelwall, who would
oppose the filth of prudentials merely to have it swept away by the
indignant torrent of your honesty. But as I said before, they are mere
_assertions_; and certainly their truth is not self-evident. With the
exception of these passages, the pamphlet is the best I have read since
the commencement of the war; warm, not fiery, well-seasoned without being
dry, the periods harmonious yet avoiding metrical harmony, and the
ornaments so dispersed as to set off the features of truth without turning
the attention on themselves. I account for its slow sale partly from
your having compared yourself to Christ in the first (which gave great
offence, to my knowledge, although very foolishly, I confess), and partly
from the sore and fatigued state of men’s minds, which disqualifies them
for works of principle that exert the intellect without agitating the
passions. But it has not been reviewed yet, has it? I read your narrative
and was almost sorry I had read it, for I had become much interested, and
the abrupt “no more” jarred me. I never heard before of your variance with
Horne Tooke. Of the poems, the two Odes are the best. Of the two Odes, the
last, I think; it is in the best style of Akenside’s best Odes. Several of
the sonnets are pleasing, and whenever I was pleased I paused, and imaged
you in my mind in your captivity.... _My Ode_[155] by this time you are
conscious that you have praised too highly. With the exception of “I
unpartaking of the evil thing,” which line I do not think _injudiciously_
weak, I accede to all your remarks, and shall alter accordingly. Your
remark that the line on the Empress had more of Juvenal than Pindar
_flashed itself_ on my mind. I had admired the line before, but I became
immediately of your opinion, and that criticism has convinced me that your
nerves are exquisite _electrometers_[156] of taste. You forgot to point
out to me that the whole childbirth of Nature is at once ludicrous and
disgusting, an epigram smart yet bombastic. The review of Bryant’s
pamphlet is good--the sauce is better than the fish. Speaking of Lewis’s
death, surely you forget that the legislature of France were to act by
_laws_ and not by general morals; and that they violated the law which
they themselves had made. I will take in the “Corresponding Society
Magazine.” That good man, James Losh, has just published an admirable
treatise translated from the French of Benjamin Constant,[157] entitled,
“Consideration on the Strength of the Present Government of France.” “Woe
to that country when crimes are punished by crimes, and where men murder
in the name of justice.” I apply this to the death of the mistaken but
well-meaning Lewis.[158] I never go to Bristol. From seven till half past
eight I work in my garden; from breakfast till twelve I read and compose,
then read again, feed the pigs, poultry, etc., till two o’clock; after
dinner work again till tea; from tea till supper, _review_. So jogs the
day, and I am happy. I have society--_my friend_ T. Poole, and as many
acquaintances as I can dispense with. There are a number of very pretty
young women in Stowey, all musical, and I am an immense favourite: for I
pun, conundrumize, _listen_, and dance. The last is a recent acquirement.
We are very happy, and my little David Hartley grows a sweet boy and has
high health; he laughs at us till he makes us weep for very fondness. You
would smile to see my eye rolling up to the ceiling in a lyric fury, and
on my knee a diaper pinned to warm. I send and receive to and from Bristol
every week, and will transcribe that part of your last letter and send it
to Reed.
I raise potatoes and all manner of vegetables, have an orchard, and shall
raise corn with the spade, enough for my family. We have two pigs, and
ducks and geese. A cow would not answer the keep: for we have whatever
milk we want from T. Poole. God bless you and your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LXXIII. TO JOSEPH COTTLE.[159]
June, 1797.
MY DEAR COTTLE,--I am sojourning for a few days at Racedown, the mansion
of our friend Wordsworth, who has received Fox’s “Achmed.” He returns you
his acknowledgments, and presents his kindliest respects to you. I shall
be home by Friday--not to-morrow--but the next Friday. If the “Ode on the
Departing Year” be not reprinted, please to _omit_ the lines from “When
shall scepter’d slaughter cease,” to “For still does Madness roam on
Guilt’s bleak dizzy height,” inclusive.[160] The first epode is to end at
the words “murderer’s fate.” Wordsworth admires my tragedy, which gives me
great hopes. Wordsworth has written a tragedy himself. I speak with
heartfelt sincerity, and (I think) unblinded judgment, when I tell you
that I feel myself _a little man by his side_, and yet do not think myself
the less man than I formerly thought myself. His drama is absolutely
wonderful. You know I do not commonly speak in such abrupt and unmingled
phrases, and therefore will the more readily believe me. There are in the
piece those _profound_ touches of the human heart which I find three or
four times in “The Robbers” of Schiller, and often in Shakespeare, but in
Wordsworth there are no _inequalities_. T. Poole’s opinion of Wordsworth
is that he is the greatest man he ever knew; I coincide.
It is not impossible, that in the course of two or three months I may see
you. God bless you, and
S. T. COLERIDGE.
Thursday.--Of course, with the lines you omit the notes that relate to
them.
MR. COTTLE, Bookseller, High Street, Bristol.
LXXIV. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.
July, 1797.
DEAR SOUTHEY,--You are acting kindly in your exertions for Chatterton’s
sister; but I doubt the success. Chatterton’s or Rowley’s poems were never
popular. The very circumstance which made them so much talked of, their
_ancientness_, prevented them from being generally read, in the degree, I
mean, that Goldsmith’s poems or even Rogers’ thing upon memory has been.
The sale was _never_ very great. Secondly, the London Edition and the
Cambridge Edition, which are now both of them the property of London
booksellers, are still in hand, and these booksellers will “hardly exert
their interest for a rival.” _Thirdly, these are bad times._ Fourthly, all
who are sincerely zealous for Chatterton, or who from knowledge of her are
interested in poor Mrs. Newton, will come forwards first, and if others
should drop in but slowly, Mrs. Newton will either receive no benefit at
all from those her friends, or one so long procrastinated, from the
necessity of waiting for the complement of subscribers, that it may at
last come too late. For these reasons I am almost inclined to think a
_subscription_ simply would be better. It is unpleasant to cast a damp on
anything; but that benevolence alone is likely to be beneficent which
_calculates_. If, however, you continue to entertain higher hopes than I,
believe me, I will shake off my sloth, and use my best muscles in gaining
subscribers. I will certainly write a preliminary essay, and I will
_attempt_ to write a poem on the life and death of Chatterton, but the
Monody _must not be reprinted_. Neither this nor the Pixies’ Parlour would
have been in the second edition, but for dear Cottle’s solicitous
importunity. Excepting the last eighteen lines of the Monody, which,
though deficient in chasteness and severity of diction, breathe a pleasing
spirit of romantic feeling, there are not five lines in either poem which
might not have been written by a man who had lived and died in the
self-same St. Giles’ cellar, in which he had been first suckled by a drab
with milk and gin. The Pixies is the least disgusting, because the subject
leads you to expect nothing, but on a life and death so full of
heart-going _realities_ as poor Chatterton’s, to find such shadowy
nobodies as cherub-winged _Death_, Trees of _Hope_, bare-bosomed
_Affection_ and simpering _Peace_, makes one’s blood circulate like
ipecacuanha. But so it is. A young man by strong feelings is impelled to
write on a particular subject, and this is all his feelings do for him.
They set him upon the business and then they leave him. He has such a high
idea of what poetry ought to be, that he cannot conceive that such things
as his natural emotions may be allowed to find a place in it; his learning
therefore, his fancy, or rather conceit, and all his powers of buckram are
put on the stretch. It appears to me that strong feeling is not so
requisite to an author’s being profoundly pathetic as taste and good
sense.
Poor old Whag! his mother died of a dish of clotted cream, which my mother
sent her as a present.
I rejoice that your poems are all sold. In the ballad of “Mary the Maid of
the Inn,” you have properly enough made the diction colloquial, but
“_engages_ the eye,” applied to a gibbet, strikes me as _slipshoppish_
from the unfortunate meaning of the word “engaging.” Your praise of my
Dedication[161] gave me great pleasure. From the ninth to the fourteenth
the five lines are flat and prosish, and the versification ever and anon
has too much of the rhyme couplet cadence, and the metaphor[162] on the
diverse sorts of friendship is _hunted down_, but the poem is dear to me,
and in point of taste I place it next to “Low was our pretty Cot,” which I
think the best of my poems.
I am as much a Pangloss as ever, only less contemptuous than I used to be,
when I argue how unwise it is to feel contempt for anything.
I had been on a visit to Wordsworth’s at Racedown, near Crewkerne, and I
brought him and his sister back with me, and here I have _settled them_.
By a combination of curious circumstances a gentleman’s seat, with a park
and woods, elegantly and completely furnished, with nine lodging rooms,
three parlours, and a hall, in the most beautiful and romantic situation
by the seaside, four miles from Stowey,--this we have got for Wordsworth
at the _rent of twenty-three pounds a year, taxes included_! The park and
woods are _his_ for all purposes _he_ wants them, and the large gardens
are altogether and entirely his. Wordsworth is a very great man, the only
man to whom _at all times_ and _in all modes of excellence_ I feel myself
inferior, the only one, I mean, whom _I have yet met with_, for the London
_literati_ appear to me to be very much like little potatoes, that is, _no
great things_, a compost of nullity and dullity.
Charles Lamb has been with me for a week.[163] He left me Friday morning.
The second day after Wordsworth came to me, dear Sara accidentally emptied
a skillet of boiling milk on my foot, which confined me during the whole
time of C. Lamb’s stay and still prevents me from all _walks_ longer than
a furlong. While Wordsworth, his sister, and Charles Lamb were out one
evening, sitting in the arbour of T. Poole’s garden[164] which
communicates with mine I wrote these lines, with which I am pleased. (I
heard from C. Lamb of Favell and Le Grice.[165] Poor Allen! I knew nothing
of it.[166] As to Rough,[167] he is a _wonderful fellow_; and when I
returned from the army, _cut_ me for a month, till he saw that other
people _were as much_ attached as before.)
Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
Lam’d by the scathe of fire, lonely and faint,
This lime-tree bower my prison! They, meantime
My Friends,[168] whom I may never meet again,
On springy[169] heath, along the hill-top edge
Wander delighted, and look down, perchance,
On that same rifted Dell, where many an ash
Twists its wild limbs beside the ferny[170] rock
Whose plumy ferns forever nod and drip,
Spray’d by the waterfall. But chiefly thou
My gentle-hearted _Charles_! thou who had pin’d
And hunger’d after Nature many a year,
In the great City pent, winning thy way
With sad yet bowed soul, through evil and pain
And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink
Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!
Shine in the slant heaven of the sinking orb,
Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds
Live in the yellow Light, ye distant groves!
Struck with joy’s deepest calm, and gazing round
On[171] the wide view, may gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily; a living thing
That acts upon the mind, and with such hues
As clothe the Almighty Spirit, when He makes
Spirits perceive His presence!
A delight
Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad
As I myself were there! nor in the bower
Want I sweet sounds or pleasing shapes. I watch’d
The sunshine of each broad transparent leaf
Broke by the shadows of the leaf or stem.
Which hung above it: and that walnut-tree
Was richly ting’d, and a deep radiance lay
Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps
Those fronting elms, and now with blackest mass
Makes their dark foliage gleam a lighter hue
Through the late twilight: and though the rapid bat
Wheels silent by, and not a swallow titters,
Yet still the solitary humble bee
Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know
That Nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure;
No scene so narrow, but may well employ
Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart
Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes
’Tis well to be bereav’d of promised good,
That we may lift the soul and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share.
My Sister and my Friends! when the last rook
Beat its straight path along the dusky air
Homewards, I bless’d it! deeming its black wing
Cross’d like a speck the blaze of setting day
While ye stood gazing; or when all was still,
Flew creaking o’er your heads, and had a charm
For you, my Sister and my Friends, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.
I would make a shift by some means or other to visit you, if I thought
that you and Edith Southey would return with me. I think--indeed, I am
almost certain--that I could get a one-horse chaise free of all expense. I
have driven back Miss Wordsworth over forty miles of execrable roads, and
have been always very cautious, and am now no inexpert whip. And
Wordsworth, at whose house I now am for change of air, has commissioned me
to offer you a suite of rooms at this place, which is called “All-foxen;”
and so divine and wild is the country that I am sure it would increase
your stock of images, and three weeks’ absence from Christchurch will
endear it to you; and Edith Southey and Sara may not have another
opportunity of seeing one another, and Wordsworth is very solicitous to
know you, and Miss Wordsworth is a most exquisite young woman in her mind
and heart. I pray you write me immediately, directing Stowey, near
Bridgewater, as before.
God bless you and your affectionate
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LXXV. TO JOHN THELWALL.
Saturday morning [October 16], 1797.
MY DEAR THELWALL,--I have just received your letter, having been absent a
day or two, and have already, before I write to you, written to Dr.
Beddoes. I would to Heaven it were in my power to serve you; but alas! I
have neither money or influence, and I suppose that at last I must become
a Unitarian minister, as a less evil than starvation. For I get nothing by
literature.... You have my wishes and, what is very liberal in me for such
an atheist reprobate, my prayers. I can _at times_ feel strongly the
beauties you describe, in themselves and for themselves; but more
frequently _all things_ appear _little_, all the knowledge that can be
acquired child’s play; the universe itself! what but an immense heap of
_little_ things? I can contemplate nothing but _parts_, and parts are all
_little_! My mind feels as if it ached to behold and know something
_great_, something _one_ and _indivisible_. And it is only in the faith of
that that rocks or waterfalls, mountains or caverns, give me the sense of
sublimity or majesty! But in this faith _all things_ counterfeit infinity.
“Struck with the deepest calm of joy,”[172] I stand
Silent, with swimming sense; and gazing round
On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
Less gross than bodily, a living Thing
Which acts upon the mind and with such hues
As clothe th’ Almighty Spirit, where He makes
Spirits perceive His presence!...
It is but seldom that I raise and spiritualize my intellect to this
height; and at other times I adopt the Brahmin creed, and say, “It is
better to sit than to stand, it is better to lie than to sit, it is better
to sleep than to wake, but Death is the best of all!” I should much wish,
like the Indian Vishnu, to float about along an infinite ocean cradled in
the flower of the Lotus, and wake once in a million years for a few
minutes just to know that I was going to sleep a million years more. I
have put this feeling in the mouth of Alhadra, my Moorish Woman. She is
going by moonlight to the house of Velez, where the band turn off to wreak
their vengeance on Francesco, but
She moved steadily on,
Unswerving from the path of her resolve.
A Moorish priest, who has been with her and then left her to seek the men,
had just mentioned the owl, “Its note comes dreariest in the fall of the
year.” This dwells on her mind, and she bursts into this soliloquy:--
The[173] hanging woods, that touch’d by autumn seem’d
As they were blossoming hues of fire and gold,--
The hanging woods, most lovely, in decay,
The many clouds, the sea, the rock, the sands,
Lay in the silent moonshine; and the owl,
(Strange! very strange!) the scritch owl only waked,
Sole voice, sole eye of all that world of beauty!
Why such a thing am I? Where are these men?
I need the sympathy of human faces
To beat away this deep contempt for all things,
Which quenches my revenge. Oh! would to Alla
The raven and the sea-mew were appointed
To bring me food, or rather that my soul
Could drink in life from universal air!
It were a lot divine in some small skiff,
Along some ocean’s boundless solitude,
To float for ever with a careless course,
And think myself the only being alive!
I do not wonder that your poem procured you kisses and hospitality. It is
indeed a very sweet one, and I have not only admired your genius more, but
I have loved _you_ better since I have read it. Your sonnet (as you call
it, and, being a freeborn Briton, who shall prevent you from calling
twenty-five blank verse lines a sonnet, if you have taken a bloody
resolution so to do)--your sonnet I am much pleased with; but the epithet
“downy” is probably more applicable to Susan’s upper lip than to her
bosom, and a mother is so holy and divine a being that I cannot endure any
_corporealizing_ epithets to be applied to her or any body of
her--besides, damn epithets! The last line and a half I suppose to be
miswritten. What can be the meaning of “Or scarce one leaf to cheer,”
etc.? “Cornelian virtues”--pedantry! The “melancholy fiend,” villainous in
itself, and inaccurate; it ought to be the “fiend that makes melancholy.”
I should have written it thus (or perhaps something better), “but with
matron cares _drives away heaviness_;” and in your similes, etc., etc., a
little _compression_ would make it a beautiful poem. _Study compression!_
I presume you mean decorum by _Harum_ Dick. An affected fellow at
Bridgwater called truces “trusses.” I told him I admired his
pronunciation, for that lately they had been found “to suspend ruptures
without curing them.”
There appeared in the “Courier” the day before yesterday a very sensible
vindication of the conduct of the Directory. Did you see it?
Your news respecting Mrs. E. did not surprise me. I saw it even from the
first week I was at Darley. As to the other event, our non-settlement at
Darley, I suspect, had little or nothing to do with it--but the _cause_ of
our non-settlement there might perhaps--O God! O God! I wish (but what is
the use of _wishing_?)--I wish that Walter Evans may have talent enough to
appreciate Mrs. Evans, but I suspect his intellect is not tall enough even
to measure hers.
Hartley is well, and _will not_ walk or run, having discovered the art of
crawling with wonderful ease and rapidity. Wordsworth and his sister are
well. I want to see your wife. God bless her!...
Oh, my Tragedy! it is finished, transcribed, and to be sent off to-day;
but I have no hope of its success, or even of its being acted.
God bless, etc.,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
MR. JOHN THELWALL, Derby.
LXXVI. TO THE SAME.
Saturday morning, Bridgwater.
[Autumn, 1797.]
MY DEAR THELWALL,--Yesterday morning I miss’d the coach, and was ill and
could not walk. This morning the coach was completely full, but I was not
ill, and so did walk; and here I am, footsore very, and weary somewhat.
With regard to the business, I mentioned it at Howell’s; but I perceive he
is absolutely powerless. Chubb I would have called on, but there are the
Assizes, and I find he is surrounded in his own house by a mob of visitors
whom it is scarcely possible for him to leave, long enough at least for
the conversation I want with him. I will write him to-morrow morning, and
shall have an answer the same day, which I will transmit to you on Monday,
but you _cannot_ receive it till Tuesday night. If, therefore, you leave
Swansea before that time, or, in case of accident, before Wednesday night,
leave directions with the postmaster to have your letter forwarded.
I go for Stowey immediately, which will make my walk forty-one miles. The
Howells desire to be remembered to you kindly.
I am sad at heart about you on many accounts, but chiefly anxious for this
present business. The aristocrats seem to persecute _even
Wordsworth_.[174] But we will at least not yield without a struggle; and
if I cannot get you near me, it shall not be for want of a trial on my
part. But perhaps I am passing the worn-out spirits of a _fag_-walk for
the real aspect of the business.
God love you, and believe me affectionately your friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
MR. THELWALL,
To be left at the Post Office, Swansea, Glamorganshire.
LXXVII. TO THE SAME.
[Autumn, 1797.]
DEAR THELWALL,--This is the first hour that I could write to you anything
decisive. I have received an answer from Chubb, intimating that he will
undertake the office of procuring you a cottage, provided it was thought
_right_ that you should settle _here_; but this (that is the whole
difficulty) he left for T. Poole and me to settle, and he acquainted Poole
with this determination. Consequently, the whole returns to its former
situation; and the hope which I had entertained, that you could have
settled without any the remotest interference of Poole, _has vanished_. To
such interference on his part there are insuperable difficulties: the
whole malignity of the aristocrats will converge to him as to the one
point; his tranquillity will be perpetually interrupted, his business and
his credit hampered and distressed by vexatious calumnies, the ties of
relationship weakened, perhaps broken; and, lastly, his poor old mother
made miserable--the pain of the stone aggravated by domestic calamity and
quarrels betwixt her son and those neighbours with whom and herself there
have been peace and love for these fifty years. Very great odium T. Poole
incurred by bringing _me_ here. My peaceable manners and known attachment
to Christianity had almost worn it away when Wordsworth came, and he,
likewise by T. Poole’s agency, settled here. You cannot conceive the
tumult, calumnies, and apparatus of threatened persecutions which this
event has occasioned round about us. If _you_, too, should come, I am
afraid that even riots, and dangerous riots, might be the consequence.
Either of us separately would perhaps be tolerated, but _all three_
together, what can it be less than plot and damned conspiracy--a school
for the propagation of Demagogy and Atheism? And it deserves examination,
whether or no as moralists we should be justified in hazarding the certain
evil of calling forth malignant passions for the contingent good, that
might result from our living in the same neighbourhood? Add to which, that
in point of the _public interest_, we must take into the balance the
Stowey Benefit Club. Of the present utility of this T. Poole thinks
highly; of its possible utility, very, very highly indeed; but the
interests, nay, perhaps the existence of this club, is interwoven with his
character as a peaceable and _undesigning_ man; certainly, any future and
greater excellence which he hopes to realize in and through the society
will vanish like a dream of the morning. If, therefore, you can get the
land and cottage near Bath of which you spoke to me, I would advise it on
many accounts; but if you still see the arguments on the other side in a
stronger light than those which I have stated, come, but not yet. Come in
two or three months--take lodgings at Bridgwater--familiarise the people
to your name and appearance, and, when the _monstrosity_ of the thing is
gone off, and the people shall have begun to consider you as a man whose
mouth won’t eat them, and whose pocket is better adapted for a bundle of
sonnets than the transportation or ambush place of a French army, then you
may take a house; but indeed (I say it with a very sad but a very clear
conviction), at _present_ I see that much evil and little good would
result from your settling here.
I am unwell. This business has, indeed, preyed much on my spirits, and I
have suffered for you more than I hope and trust you will suffer yourself.
God love you and yours.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
MR. THELWALL,
To be left at the Post Office, Swansea, Glamorganshire.
LXXVIII. TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
Tuesday morning, January, 1798.
MY DEAR WORDSWORTH,--You know, of course, that I have accepted the
magnificent liberality of Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood.[175] I accepted it
on the presumption that I had talents, honesty, and propensities to
perseverant effort. If I have hoped wisely concerning myself, I have acted
justly. But dismissing severer thoughts, believe me, my dear fellow! that
of the pleasant ideas which accompanied this unexpected event, it was not
the least pleasant, nor did it pass through my mind the last in the
procession, that I should at least be able to trace the spring and early
summer at Alfoxden with you, and that wherever your after residence may
be, it is probable that you will be within the reach of my tether,
lengthened as it now is. The country round Shrewsbury is rather tame. My
imagination has clothed it with all its summer attributes; but I still can
see in it no possibility beyond that of _beauty_. The Society here were
sufficiently eager to have me as their minister, and, I think, would have
behaved kindly and respectfully, but I perceive clearly that without great
courage and perseverance in the use of the monosyllabic _No!_ I should
have been plunged in a very Maelstrom of visiting--whirled round, and
round, and round, never changing yet always moving. Visiting with all its
pomp and vanities is the mania of the place; and many of the congregation
are both rich and expensive. I met a young man, a Cambridge undergraduate.
Talking of plays, etc., he told me that an acquaintance of his was
printing a translation of one of Kotzebue’s tragedies, entitled,
“Benyowski.”[176] The name startled me, and upon examination I found that
the story of my “Siberian Exiles” has been already dramatized. If Kotzebue
has exhibited no greater genius in it than in his negro slaves, I shall
consider this as an unlucky circumstance; but the young man speaks
enthusiastically of its merits. I have just read the “Castle Spectre,” and
shall bring it home with me. I will begin with its defects, in order that
my “But” may have a charitable transition. 1. Language; 2. Character; 3.
Passion; 4. Sentiment; 5. Conduct. (1.) Of styles, some are pleasing
durably and on reflection, some only in transition, and some are not
pleasing at all; and to this latter class belongs the “Castle
Spectre.”[177] There are no felicities in the humorous passages; and in
the serious ones it is Schiller Lewis-ized, that is, a flat, flabby,
unimaginative bombast oddly sprinkled with colloquialisms. (2.) No
character at all. The author in a postscript lays claim to _novelty_ in
_one_ of his characters, that of Hassan. Now Hassan is a negro, who _had_
a warm and benevolent heart; but having been kidnapped from his country
and barbarously used by the Christians, becomes a misanthrope. This is
all!! (3.) Passion--horror! agonizing pangs of conscience! Dreams full of
hell, serpents, and skeletons; starts and attempted murders, etc., but
positively, not _one_ line that marks even a superficial knowledge of
human feelings could I discover. (4.) Sentiments are moral and humorous.
There is a book called the “Frisky Songster,” at the end of which are two
chapters: the first containing _frisky_ toasts and sentiments, the second,
“_Moral_ Toasts,” and from these chapters I suspect Mr. Lewis has stolen
all his sentimentality, moral and humorous. A very fat friar, renowned for
gluttony and lubricity, furnishes abundance of jokes (all of them
abdominal _vel si quid infra_), jokes that would have stunk, had they been
fresh, and alas! they have the very _sæva mephitis_ of _antiquity_ on
them. _But_ (5.) the Conduct of the Piece is, I think, _good_; except that
the first act is _wholly_ taken up with explanation and narration. This
play proves how accurately you conjectured concerning _theatric_ merit.
The merit of the “Castle Spectre” consists wholly in its _situations_.
These are all borrowed and all absolutely _pantomimical_; but they are
admirably managed for stage effect. There is not much bustle, but
_situations_ for ever. The whole plot, machinery, and incident are
borrowed. The play is a mere patchwork of plagiarisms; but they are very
well worked up, and for stage effect make an excellent _whole_. There is a
pretty little ballad-song introduced, and Lewis, I think has great and
peculiar excellence in these compositions. The simplicity and naturalness
is his own, and not imitated; for it is made to subsist in congruity with
a language perfectly modern, the language of his own times, in the same
way that the language of the writer of “Sir Cauline” was the language of
_his_ times. This, I think, a rare merit: at least, I find, _I_ cannot
attain this innocent nakedness, except by _assumption_. I resemble the
Duchess of Kingston, who masqueraded in the character of “Eve before the
Fall,” in flesh-coloured Silk. This play struck me with utter
hopelessness. It would [be easy] to produce these situations, but not in a
play so [constructed] as to admit the permanent and closest beauties of
style, passion, and character. To admit pantomimic tricks, the plot itself
must be pantomimic. Harlequin cannot be had unaccompanied by the Fool.
I hope to be with you by the middle of next week. I must stay over next
Sunday, as Mr. Row is obliged to go to Bristol to seek a house. He and his
family are honest, sensible, pleasant people. My kind love to Dorothy, and
believe me, with affectionate esteem, yours sincerely,
S. T. COLERIDGE.[178]
LXXIX. TO JOSEPH COTTLE.
STOWEY, March 8, 1798.
MY DEAR COTTLE,--I have been confined to my bed for some days through a
fever occasioned by the stump of a tooth.... I thank you, my dear friend,
for your late kindness, and in a few weeks will either repay you in money
or by verses, as you like. With regard to Lloyd’s verses, it is curious
that _I_ should be applied to to be “persuaded to resign, and in hope that
I might” _consent_ to _give up_ a number of poems which were published at
the earnest request of the author, who assured me that the circumstance
was “of no trivial import to his happiness.” Times change and people
change; but let us keep our souls in quietness! I have no objection to any
disposal of C. Lloyd’s poems, except that of their being republished with
mine. The motto which I had prefixed, “Duplex,” etc.,[179] from
Groscollius, has placed me in a ridiculous situation; but it was a foolish
and presumptuous start of affectionateness, and I am not unwilling to
incur punishments due to my folly. By past experiences we build up our
moral being. How comes it that I have never heard from dear Mr. Estlin, my
fatherly and brotherly friend? This idea haunted me through my sleepless
nights, till my sides were sore in turning from one to the other, as if I
were hoping to turn from the idea. The Giant Wordsworth--God love him!
Even when I speak in the terms of admiration due to his intellect, I fear
lest those terms should keep out of sight the amiableness of his
manners.... He has written more than 1,200 lines of a blank verse,
superior, I hesitate not to aver, to anything in our language which any
way resembles it. Poole (whom I feel so consolidated with myself that I
seem to have no occasion to speak of him out of myself) thinks of it as
likely to benefit mankind much more than anything Wordsworth has yet
written. With regard to my poems, I shall prefix the “Maid of Orleans,”
1,000 lines, and three blank verse poems, making all three about 200, and
I shall utterly leave out perhaps a larger quantity of lines; and I should
think it would answer to you in a pecuniary way to print the third edition
humbly and cheaply. My alterations in the “Religious Musings” will be
considerable, and will lengthen the poem. Oh, Poole desires you _not_ to
mention his house to any one unless you hear from him again, as since I
have been writing a thought has struck us of letting it to an inhabitant
of the village, which we should prefer, as we should be certain that his
manners would be severe, inasmuch as he would be a Stow-ic.
God bless you and
S. T. C.
LXXX. TO THE REV. GEORGE COLERIDGE.
April, 1798.
MY DEAR BROTHER,--An illness, which confined me to my bed, prevented me
from returning an immediate answer to your kind and interesting letter.
My indisposition originated in the stump of a tooth over which some matter
had formed; this affected my eye, my eye my stomach, my stomach my head,
and the consequence was a general fever, and the sum of pain was
considerably increased by the vain attempts of our surgeon to extract the
offending member. Laudanum gave me repose, not sleep; but you, I believe,
know how divine that repose is, what a spot of enchantment, a green spot
of fountain and flowers and trees in the very heart of a waste of sands!
God be praised, the matter has been absorbed; and I am now recovering
apace, and enjoy that newness of sensation from the fields, the air, and
the sun which makes convalescence almost repay one for disease. I collect
from your letter that our opinions and feelings on political subjects are
more nearly alike than you imagine them to be. Equally with you (and
perhaps with a deeper conviction, for my belief is founded on actual
experience), equally with you I deprecate the moral and intellectual
habits of those men, both in England and France, who have modestly assumed
to themselves the exclusive title of Philosophers and Friends of Freedom.
I think them at least _as_ distant from greatness as from goodness. If I
know my own opinions, they are utterly untainted with French metaphysics,
French politics, French ethics, and French theology. As to _the Rulers_ of
France, I see in their views, speeches, and actions nothing that
distinguishes them to their advantage from other animals of the same
species. History has taught me that rulers are much the same in all ages,
and under all forms of government; they are as bad as they dare to be. The
vanity of ruin and the curse of blindness have clung to them like an
hereditary leprosy. Of the French Revolution I can give my thoughts most
adequately in the words of Scripture: “A great and strong wind rent the
mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was
not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; and after the
earthquake a fire; and the Lord was not in the fire;” and now (believing
that no calamities are permitted but as the means of good) I wrap my face
in my mantle and wait, with a subdued and patient thought, expecting to
hear “the still small voice” which is of God. In America (I have received
my information from unquestionable authority) the morals and domestic
habits of the people are daily deteriorating; and one good consequence
which I expect from revolution is that individuals will see the necessity
of individual effort; that they will act as good Christians, rather than
as citizens and electors; and so by degrees will purge off that error,
which to me appears as wild and more pernicious than the πάγχρυσον and
panacea of the alchemists, the error of attributing to governments a
talismanic influence over our virtues and our happiness, as if governments
were not rather effects than causes. It is true that all effects react and
become causes, and so it must be in some degree with governments; but
there are other agents which act more powerfully because by a nigher and
more continuous agency, and it remains true that governments are more the
_effect_ than the cause of that which we are. Do not therefore, my
brother, consider me as an enemy to government and its rulers, or as one
who says they are evil. I do not say so. In my opinion it were a species
of blasphemy! Shall a nation of drunkards presume to babble against
sickness and the headache? I regard governments as I regard the abscesses
produced by certain fevers--they are necessary consequences of the
disease, and by their pain they increase the disease; but yet they are in
the wisdom and goodness of Nature, and not only are they physically
necessary as effects, but also as causes they are morally necessary in
order to prevent the utter dissolution of the patient. But what should we
think of a man who expected an absolute cure from an ulcer that only
prevented his dying. Of guilt I say nothing, but I believe most
steadfastly in original sin; that from our mothers’ wombs our
understandings are darkened; and even where our understandings are in the
light, that our organization is depraved and our volitions imperfect; and
we sometimes see the good without wishing to attain it, and oftener _wish_
it without the energy that wills and performs. And for this inherent
depravity I believe that the _spirit_ of the Gospel is the sole cure; but
permit me to add, that I look for the spirit of the Gospel “neither in the
mountain, nor at Jerusalem.”
You think, my brother, that there can be but two _parties_ at present, for
the Government and against the Government. It may be so. I am of no party.
It is true I think the present Ministry weak and unprincipled men; but I
would not with a safe conscience vote for their removal; I could point out
no substitutes. I think very seldom on the subject; but as far as I have
thought, I am inclined to consider the aristocrats as the most respectable
of our three factions, because they are more decorous. The Opposition and
the Democrats are not only vicious, they wear the _filthy garments_ of
vice.
He that takes
Deep in his soft credulity the stamp
Design’d by loud declaimers on the part
Of liberty, themselves the slaves of lust,
Incurs derision for his easy faith
And lack of knowledge, and with cause enough:
For when was public virtue to be found
Where private was not? Can he love the whole
Who loves no part? He be a _nation’s_ friend,
Who is, in truth, the friend of _no_ man there?
Can he be strenuous in his country’s cause
Who slights the charities, for whose dear sake
That country, if at all, must be belov’d?
COWPER.[180]
I am prepared to suffer without discontent the consequences of my follies
and mistakes; and unable to conceive how that which I am of Good could
have been without that which I have been of evil, it is withheld from me
to regret anything. I therefore consent to be deemed a Democrat and a
Seditionist. A man’s character follows him long after he has ceased to
deserve it; but I have snapped my squeaking baby-trumpet of sedition, and
the fragments lie scattered in the lumber-room of penitence. I wish to be
a good man and a Christian, but I am no Whig, no Reformist, no Republican,
and because of the multitude of fiery and undisciplined spirits that lie
in wait against the public quiet under these titles, because of them I
chiefly accuse the present ministers, to whose folly I attribute, in a
great measure, their increased and increasing numbers. You think
differently, and if I were called upon by you to prove my assertions,
although I imagine I could make them appear plausible, yet I should feel
the insufficiency of my data. The Ministers may have had in their
possession facts which alter the whole state of the argument, and make my
syllogisms fall as flat as a baby’s card-house. And feeling this, my
brother! I have for some time past withdrawn myself totally from the
consideration of _immediate causes_, which are infinitely complex and
uncertain, to muse on fundamental and general causes the “causæ causarum.”
I devote myself to such works as encroach not on the anti-social
passions--in poetry, to elevate the imagination and set the affections in
right tune by the beauty of the inanimate impregnated as with a living
soul by the presence of life--in prose to the seeking with patience and a
slow, very slow mind, “Quid sumus, et quidnam victuri gignimus,”--what our
faculties are and what they are capable of becoming. I love fields and
woods and mountains with almost a visionary fondness. And because I have
found benevolence and quietness growing within me as that fondness has
increased, therefore I should wish to be the means of implanting it in
others, and to destroy the bad passions not by combating them but by
keeping them in inaction.
Not useless do I deem
These shadowy sympathies with things that hold
An inarticulate Language; for the Man--
Once taught to love such objects as excite
No morbid passions, no disquietude,
No vengeance, and no hatred--needs must feel
The joy of that pure principle of love
So deeply, that, unsatisfied with aught
Less pure and exquisite, he cannot choose
But seek for objects of a kindred love
In fellow-nature and a kindred joy.
Accordingly he by degrees perceives
His feelings of aversion softened down;
A holy tenderness pervade his frame!
His sanity of reason not impair’d,
Say, rather, that his thoughts now flowing clear
From a clear fountain flowing, he looks round,
He seeks for good; and finds the good he seeks.
WORDSWORTH.[181]
I have laid down for myself two maxims, and, what is more I am in the
habit of regulating myself by them. With regard to others, I never
controvert opinions except after some intimacy, and when alone with the
person, and at the happy time when we both seem awake to our own
fallibility, and then I rather state my reasons than argue against his. In
general conversation to find out the opinions common to us, or at least
the subjects on which difference of opinion creates no uneasiness, such as
novels, poetry, natural scenery, local anecdotes, and (in a serious mood
and with serious men) the general evidences of our religion. With regard
to myself, it is my habit, on whatever subject I think, to endeavour to
discover all the good that has resulted from it, that does result, or that
can result. To this I bind down my mind, and after long meditation in this
tract slowly and gradually make up my opinions on the quantity and nature
of the evil. I consider this as the most important rule for the regulation
of the intellect and the affections, as the only means of preventing the
passions from turning reason into a hired advocate. I thank you for your
kindness, and propose in a short time to walk down to you: but my wife
must forego the thought, as she is within five or six weeks of lying-in.
She and my child, whose name is David Hartley, are remarkably well. You
will give my duty to my mother, and love to my brothers, to Mrs. S. and G.
Coleridge.
Excuse my desultory style and illegible scrawl, for I have written you a
long letter, you see, and am in truth too weary to write a fair copy of
it, or rearrange my ideas, and I am anxious you should know me as I am.
God bless you, from your affectionate brother,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LXXXI. TO REV. J. P. ESTLIN.[182]
May [? 1798].
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I write from Cross, to which place I accompanied Mr.
Wordsworth, who will give you this letter. We visited Cheddar, but his
main business was to bring back poor Lloyd, whose infirmities have been
made the instruments of another man’s darker passions. But Lloyd (as we
found by a letter that met us in the road) is off for Birmingham.
Wordsworth proceeds, lest possibly Lloyd may not be gone, and likewise to
see his own Bristol friends, as he is so near them. I have now known him a
year and some months, and my admiration, I might say my awe, of his
intellectual powers has increased even to this hour, and (what is of more
importance) he is a tried good man. On one subject we are habitually
silent; we found our data dissimilar, and never renewed the subject. It is
his practice and almost his nature to convey all the truth he knows
without any attack on what he supposes falsehood, if that falsehood be
interwoven with virtues or happiness. He loves and venerates Christ and
Christianity. I wish he did more, but it were wrong indeed if an
incoincidence with one of our wishes altered our respect and affection to
a man of whom we are, as it were, instructed by one great Master to say
that not being against us he is for us. His genius is most _apparent_ in
poetry, and rarely, except to me in _tête-à-tête_, breaks forth in
conversational eloquence. My best and most affectionate wishes attend Mrs.
Estlin and your little ones, and believe me, with filial and fraternal
friendship, your grateful
S. T. COLERIDGE.
REV. J. P. ESTLIN,
St. Michael’s Hill, Bristol.
LXXXII. TO THE SAME.
Monday, May 14, 1798.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I ought to have written to you before; and have done very
wrong in not writing. But I have had many sorrows and some that bite deep;
calumny and ingratitude from men who have been fostered in the bosom of my
confidence! I pray God that I may sanctify these events by forgiveness
and a peaceful spirit full of love. This morning, half-past one, my wife
was safely delivered of a fine boy;[183] she had a remarkably good time,
better if possible than her last, and both she and the child are as well
as can be. By the by, it is only three in the morning now. I walked in to
Taunton and back again, and performed the divine services for Dr. Toulmin.
I suppose you must have heard that his daughter, in a melancholy
derangement, suffered herself to be swallowed up by the tide on the
sea-coast between Sidmouth and Bere. These events cut cruelly into the
hearts of old men; but the good Dr. Toulmin bears it like the true
practical Christian,--there is indeed a tear in his eye, but _that_ eye is
lifted up to the Heavenly Father. I have been too neglectful of practical
religion--I mean, actual and stated prayer, and a regular perusal of
scripture as a morning and evening duty. May God grant me grace to amend
this error, for it is a grievous one! Conscious of frailty I almost wish
(I say it confidentially to you) that I had become a stated minister, for
indeed I find true joy after a sincere prayer; but for want of habit my
mind wanders, and I cannot _pray_ as often as I ought. Thanksgiving is
pleasant in the performance; but prayer and distinct confession I find
most serviceable to my spiritual health when I can do it. But though all
my doubts are done away, though Christianity is my _passion_, it is too
much my _intellectual_ passion, and therefore will do me but little good
in the hour of temptation and calamity.
My love to Mrs. E. and the dear little ones, and ever, O ever, believe me,
with true affection and gratitude,
Your filial friend,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
LXXXIII. TO THOMAS POOLE.
Monday, May 14, 1798.
Morning, 10 o’clock.
MY DEAREST FRIEND,--I have been sitting many minutes with my pen in my
hand, full of prayers and wishes for you, and the house of affliction in
which you have so trying a part to sustain--but I know not what to
_write_. May God support you! May he restore your brother--but above all,
I pray that he will make us able to cry out with a fervent sincerity: Thy
will be done! I have had lately some sorrows that have cut more deeply
into my heart than they ought to have done, and I have found religion, and
_commonplace religion_ too, my restorer and my comfort, giving me
gentleness and calmness and dignity! Again and again, may God be with you,
my best, dear friend! and believe me, my Poole! dearer, to my
understanding and affections unitedly, than all else in the world!
It is almost painful and a thing of fear to tell you that I have another
boy; it will bring upon your mind the too affecting circumstance of poor
Mrs. Richard Poole! The prayers which I have offered for her have been a
relief to my own mind; I would that they could have been a consolation to
her. Scripture seems to teach us that our fervent prayers are not without
efficacy, even for others; and though my reason is perplexed, yet my
internal feelings impel me to a humble faith, that it is possible and
consistent with the divine attributes.
Poor Dr. Toulmin! he bears his calamity like one in whom a faith through
Jesus is the _Habit_ of the whole man, of his affections still more than
of his convictions. The loss of a dear child in so frightful a way cuts
cruelly with an old man, but though there is a tear and an anguish in his
eye, that eye is raised to heaven.