Sara was safely delivered at half past one this morning--the boy is

already almost as large as Hartley. She had an astonishingly good time,

better if possible than her last; and excepting her weakness, is as well

as ever. The child is strong and shapely, and has the paternal beauty in

his upper lip. God be praised for all things.

Your affectionate and entire friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

LXXXIV. TO THE SAME.

Sunday evening [May 20, 1798].

MY DEAREST POOLE,--I was all day yesterday in a distressing perplexity

whether or no it would be wise or consolatory for me to call at your

house, or whether I should write to your mother, as a Christian friend, or

whether it would not be better to wait for the exhaustion of that grief

which must have its way.

So many unpleasant and shocking circumstances have happened to me in my

immediate knowledge within the last fortnight, that I am in a nervous

state, and the most trifling thing makes me weep. Poor Richard! May

Providence heal the wounds which it hath seen good to inflict!

Do you wish me to see you to-day? Shall I call on you? Shall I stay with

you? or had I better leave you uninterrupted? In all your sorrows as in

your joys, I am, indeed, my dearest Poole, a true and faithful sharer!

May God bless and comfort you all!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

LXXXV. TO CHARLES LAMB.[184]

[Spring of 1798.]

DEAR LAMB,--Lloyd has informed me through Miss Wordsworth that you intend

no longer to correspond with me. This has given me little pain; not that

I do not love and esteem you, but on the contrary because I am confident

that your intentions are pure. You are performing what you deem a duty,

and humanly speaking have that merit which can be derived from the

performance of a painful duty. Painful, for you would not without

struggles abandon me in behalf of a man[185] who, wholly ignorant of all

but your name, became attached to you in consequence of my attachment,

caught _his_ from _my_ enthusiasm, and learned to love you at my fireside,

when often while I have been sitting and talking of your sorrows and

afflictions I have stopped my conversations and lifted up wet eyes and

prayed for you. No! I am confident that although you do not think as a

wise man, you feel as a good man.

From you I have received little pain, because for you I suffer little

alarm. I cannot say this for your friend; it appears to me evident that

his feelings are vitiated, and that his ideas are in their combination

merely the creatures of those feelings. I have received letters from him,

and the best and kindest wish which, as a Christian, I can offer in return

is that he may feel remorse.

Some brief resentments rose in my mind, but they did not remain there; for

I began to think almost immediately, and my resentments vanished. There

has resulted only a sort of fantastic scepticism concerning my own

consciousness of my own rectitude. As dreams have impressed on him the

sense of reality, my sense of reality may be but a dream. From his letters

it is plain that he has mistaken the heat and bustle and swell of

self-justification for the approbation of his conscience. I am certain

that _this_ is not the case with me, but the human heart is so wily and

inventive that possibly it may be cheating me, who am an older warrior,

with some newer stratagem. When I wrote to you that my Sonnet to

Simplicity[186] was not composed with reference to Southey, you answered

me (I believe these were the words): “It was a lie too gross for the

grossest ignorance to believe;” and I was not angry with you, because the

assertion which the grossest ignorance would believe a lie the Omniscient

knew to be truth. This, however, makes me cautious not too hastily to

affirm the falsehood of an assertion of Lloyd’s that in Edmund

Oliver’s[187] love-fit, leaving college, and going into the army he had no

sort of allusion to or recollection of my love-fit, leaving college, and

going into the army, and that he never thought of my person in the

description of Oliver’s person in the first letter of the second volume.

This cannot appear stranger to me than my assertion did to you, and

therefore I will suspend my absolute faith.

I wrote to you not that I wish to hear from you, but that I wish you to

write to Lloyd and press upon him the propriety, nay the necessity, of his

giving me a meeting either _tête-à-tête_ or in the presence of all whose

esteem I value. This I owe to my own character; I owe it to him if by any

means he may even yet be extricated. He assigned as reasons for his

rupture my vices; and he is either right or wrong. If right, it is fit

that others should know it and follow his example; if wrong, he has acted

very wrong. At present, I may expect everything from his heated mind

rather than continence of language, and his assertions will be the more

readily believed on account of his former enthusiastic attachment, though

with wise men this would cast a hue of suspicion over the whole affair;

but the number of wise men in the kingdom would not puzzle a savage’s

arithmetic--you may tell them in every [community] on your fingers. I have

been unfortunate in my connections. Both you and Lloyd became acquainted

with me when your minds were far from being in a composed or natural

state, and you clothed my image with a suit of notions and feelings which

could belong to nothing human. You are restored to comparative saneness,

and are merely wondering what is become of the Coleridge with whom you

were so passionately in love; _Charles Lloyd’s_ mind has only changed his

disease, and he is now arraying his ci-devant Angel in a flaming San

Benito--the whole ground of the garment a dark brimstone and plenty of

little devils flourished out in black. Oh, me! Lamb, “even in laughter the

heart is sad!” My kindness, my affectionateness, he deems wheedling; but,

if after reading all my letters to yourself and to him, you can suppose

him wise in his treatment and correct in his accusations of me, you think

worse of human nature than poor human nature, bad as it is, deserves to be

thought of.

God bless you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CHAPTER IV

A VISIT TO GERMANY

1798-1799

CHAPTER IV

A VISIT TO GERMANY

1798-1799

The letters which Coleridge wrote from Germany were, with few exceptions,

addressed either to his wife or to Poole. They have never been published

in full, but during his life and since his death various extracts have

appeared in print. The earlier letters descriptive of his voyage, his two

visits to Hamburg, his interviews with Klopstock, and his settlement at

Ratzeburg were published as “Satyrane’s Letters,” first in

November-December, 1809, in Nos. 14, 16, and 18 of “The Friend,” and

again, in 1817, in the “Biographia Literaria” (ii. 183-253). Two extracts

from letters to his wife, dated respectively January 14 and April 8, 1799,

appeared in No. 19 of “The Friend,” December 28, 1809, as “Christmas

Indoors in North Germany,” and “Christmas Out of Doors.” In 1828,

Coleridge placed a selection of unpublished letters from Germany in the

hands of the late S. C. Hall, who printed portions of two (dated

“Clausthal, May 17, 1799”) in the “Amulet” of 1829, under the title of

“Fragments of a Journal of a Tour over the Brocken, by S. T. Coleridge.”

The same extract is included in Gillman’s “Life of Coleridge,” pp. 125,

138.

After Coleridge’s death, Mr. Hall published in the “New Monthly Magazine”

(1835, No. 45, pp. 211-226) the three last letters from Germany, dated May

17, 18, and 19, which include the “Tour over the Brocken.” Selections from

Coleridge’s letters to Poole of April 8 and May 6, 1799, were published

by Mrs. Sandford in “Thomas Poole and his Friends” (i. 295-299), and four

letters from Poole to Coleridge are included in the same volume (pp.

277-294). A hitherto unpublished letter from Coleridge to his wife, dated

January 14, 1799, appeared in “The Illustrated London News,” April 29,

1893. For further particulars relative to Coleridge’s life in Germany, see

Carlyon’s “Early Years,” etc., 1856, i. 26-198, _passim_, and Brandl’s

“Life of Coleridge,” 1887, pp. 230-252.

LXXXVI. TO THOMAS POOLE.

September 15, 1798.

MY VERY DEAR POOLE,--We have arrived at Yarmouth just in time to be

hurried into the packet--and four or five letters of recommendation have

been taken away from me, owing to their being wafered. Wedgwood’s luckily

were not.

I am at the point of leaving my native country for the first time--a

country which God Almighty knows is dear to me above all things for the

love I bear to you. Of many friends whom I love and esteem, my head and

heart have ever chosen you as the friend--as the one being in whom is

involved the full and whole meaning of that sacred title. God love you, my

dear Poole! and your faithful and most affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. We may be only two days, we may be a fortnight going. The same of

the packet that returns. So do not let my poor Sara be alarmed if she do

not hear from me. I will write alternately to you and her, twice every

week during my absence. May God preserve us, and make us continue to be

joy, and comfort, and wisdom, and virtue to each other, my dear, dear

Poole!

LXXXVII. TO HIS WIFE.

HAMBURG, September 19, 1798.

Over what place does the moon hang to your eye, my dearest Sara? To me it

hangs over the left bank of the Elbe, and a long trembling road of

moonlight reaches from thence up to the stern of our vessel, and there it

ends. We have dropped anchor in the middle of the stream, thirty miles

from Cuxhaven, where we arrived this morning at eleven o’clock, after an

unusually fine passage of only forty-eight hours. The Captain agreed to

take all the passengers up to Hamburg for ten guineas; my share amounted

only to half a guinea. We shall be there, if no fogs intervene, to-morrow

morning. Chester was ill the whole voyage; Wordsworth shockingly ill; his

sister worst of all, and I neither sick nor giddy, but gay as a lark. The

sea rolled rather high, but the motion was pleasant to me. The stink of a

sea cabin in a packet (what with the bilge-water, and what from the crowd

of sick passengers) is horrible. I remained chiefly on deck. We left

Yarmouth Sunday morning, September 16, at eleven o’clock. Chester and

Wordsworth ill immediately. Our passengers were: ‡Wordsworth, ✴Chester, S.

T. Coleridge, a Dane, second Dane, third Dane, a Prussian, a Hanoverian

and ✴his servant, a German tailor and his ✴wife, a French ‡emigrant and

✴French servant, ✴two English gentlemen, and ‡a Jew. All these with the

prefix ✴ were sick, those marked ‡ horribly sick. The view of Yarmouth

from the sea is interesting; besides, it was English ground that was

flying away from me. When we lost sight of land, the moment that we quite

lost sight of it and the heavens all round me rested upon the waters, my

dear babes came upon me like a flash of lightning; I saw their faces[188]

so distinctly! This day enriched me with characters, and I passed it

merrily. Each of those characters I will delineate to you in my journal,

which you and Poole alternately will receive regularly as soon as I arrive

at any settled place, which will be in a week. Till then I can do little

more than give you notice of my safety and my faithful affection to you

(but the journal will commence from the day of my arrival at London, and

give every day’s occurrence, etc.). I have it written, but I have neither

paper or time to transcribe it. I trust nothing to memory. The Ocean is a

noble thing by night; a beautiful white cloud of foam at momentary

intervals roars and rushes by the side of the vessel, and stars of flame

dance and sparkle and go out in it, and every now and then light

detachments of foam dart away from the vessel’s side with their galaxies

of stars and scour out of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness.

What these stars are I cannot say; the sailors say they are fish spawn,

which is phosphorescent. The noisy passengers swear in all their

languages, with drunken hiccups, that I shall write no more, and I must

join them. Indeed, they present a rich feast for a dramatist. My kind love

to Mrs. Poole (with what wings of swiftness would I fly home if I could

find something in Germany to do her good!). Remember me affectionately to

Ward, and my love to the Chesters (Bessy, Susan, and Julia) and to

Cruickshank, etc., etc., Ellen and Mary when you see them, and to Lavinia

Poole and Harriet and Sophy, and be sure to give my kind love to Nanny. I

associate so much of Hartley’s infancy with her, so many of his figures,

looks, words, and antics with her form, that I shall never cease to think

of her, poor girl! without interest. Tell my best good friend, my dear

Poole! that all his manuscripts, with Wordsworth’s Tragedy, are safe in

Josiah Wedgwood’s hands; and they will be returned to him together.

Good-night, my dear, dear Sara!--“every night when I go to bed, and every

morning when I rise,” I will think with yearning love of you and of my

blessed babies! Once more, my dear Sara! good-night.

Wednesday afternoon, four o’clock.--We are safe in Hamburg--an ugly city

that stinks in every corner, house, and room worse than cabins,

sea-sickness, or bilge-water! The hotels are all crowded. With great

difficulty we have procured a very filthy room at a large expense; but we

shall move to-morrow. We get very excellent claret for a trifle--a guinea

sells at present for more than twenty-three shillings here. But for all

particulars I must refer your patience to my journal, and I must get some

proper paper--I shall have to pay a shilling or eighteenpence with every

letter. N. B. Johnson the bookseller, without any poems sold to him, but

purely out of affection conceived for me, and as part of anything I might

do for him, gave me an order on Remnant at Hamburg for thirty pounds. The

“Epea Pteroenta,” an Essay on Population, and a “History of Paraguay,”

will come down for me directed to Poole, and for Poole’s reading. Likewise

I have desired Johnson to print in quarto[189] a little poem of mine, one

of which quartos must be sent to my brother, Rev. G. C., Ottery St. Mary,

carriage paid. Did you receive my letter directed in a different hand,

with the 30_l._ banknote? The “Morning Post” and Magazine will come to you

as before. If not regularly, Stuart desires that you will write to him. I

pray you, my dear love! read Edgeworth’s “Essay on Education”--read it

heart and soul, and if you approve of the mode, teach Hartley his letters.

I am very desirous that you should teach him to read; and they point out

some easy modes. J. Wedgwood informed me that the Edgeworths were most

miserable when children; and yet the father in his book is ever vapouring

about their happiness. However, there are very good things in the

work--and some nonsense.

Kiss my Hartley and Bercoo baby brodder (kiss them for their dear father,

whose heart will never be absent from them many hours together). My dear

Sara! I think of you with affection and a desire to be home, and in the

full and noblest sense of the word, and after the antique principles of

_Religion_, unsophisticated by Philosophy, will be, I trust, your husband

faithful unto death,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Wednesday night, eleven o’clock.--The sky and colours of the clouds are

quite English, just as if I were coming out of T. Poole’s homeward with

you in my arm.

[Illustration]

LXXXVIII. TO THE SAME.

[RATZEBURG], October 20, 1798.

... But I must check these feelings and write more collectedly. I am well,

my dear Love! very well, and my situation is in all respects comfortable.

My room is large and healthy; the house commands an enchanting prospect.

The pastor is worthy and a learned man--a widower with eight children,

five of whom are at home. The German language is spoken here in the utmost

purity. The children often stand round my sofa and chatter away; and the

little one of all corrects my pronunciation with a pretty pert lisp and

self-sufficient tone, while the others laugh with no little joyance. The

Gentry and Nobility here pay me almost an adulatory attention. There is a

very beautiful little woman--less, I think, than you--a Countess

Kilmansig;[190] her father is our Lord Howe’s cousin. She is the wife

of a very handsome man, and has two fine little children. I have quite won

her heart by a German poem which I wrote. It is that sonnet, “Charles! my

slow heart was only sad when first,” and considerably dilated with new

images, and much superior in the German to its former dress. It has

excited no small wonder here for its purity and harmony. I mention this as

a proof of my progress in the language--indeed, it has surprised myself;

but I want to be home, and I work hard, very hard, to shorten the time of

absence. The little Countess said to me, “Oh! Englishmen be always sehr

gut fathers and husbands. I hope dat you will come and lofe my little

babies, and I will sing to you and play on the guitar and the pianoforte;

and my dear huspan he sprachs sehr gut English, and he lofes England

better than all the world.” (Sehr gut is very good; sprach, speaks or

talks.) She is a sweet little woman, and, what is very rare in Germany,

she has perfectly white, regular, French teeth. I could give you many

instances of the ridiculous partiality, or rather madness, for the

English. One of the first things which strikes an Englishman is the German

cards. They are very different from ours; the court cards have two heads,

a very convenient thing, as it prevents the necessity of turning the cards

and betraying your hand, and are smaller and cost only a penny; yet the

envelope in which they are sold has “Wahrlich Englische Karten,” that is,

genuine _English_ cards. I bought some sticking-plaister yesterday; it

cost twopence a very large piece, but it was three-halfpence farthing too

dear--for indeed it looked like a nasty rag of black silk which cat or

mouse dung had stained and spotted--but this was “Königl. Pat. Engl. Im.

Pflaster,” that is, Royal Patent _English Ornament_ Plaister. They affect

to write English over their doors. One house has “English Lodgement and

Caffee Hous!” But the most amusing of all is an advertisement of a quack

medicine of the same class with Dr. Solomon’s and Brody’s, for the spirits

and all weakness of mind and body. What, think you? “A wonderful and

secret Essence extracted with patience and God’s blessing from the English

Oaks, and from that part thereof which the heroic sailors of that Great

Nation call the Heart of Oak. This invaluable and infallible Medicine has

been godlily extracted therefrom by the slow processes of the Sun and

magnetical Influences of the Planets and fixed Stars.” This is a literal

translation. At the concert, when I entered, the band played “Britannia

rule the waves,” and at the dinner which was given in honour of Nelson’s

victory, twenty-one guns were fired by order of the military Governor, and

between each firing the military band played an English tune. I never saw

such enthusiasm, or heard such tumultuous shouting, as when the Governor

gave as a toast, “The Great Nation.” By this name they always designate

England, in opposition to the same title self-assumed by France. The

military Governor is a pleasant man, and both he and the Amtmann (_i. e._

the civil regent) are particularly attentive to me. I am quite

domesticated in the house of the latter; his first wife was an English

woman, and his partiality for England is without bounds. God bless you, my

Love! Write me a very, very long letter; write me all that can cheer me;

all that will make my eyes swim and my heart melt with tenderness! Your

faithful and affectionate husband,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. A dinner lasts not uncommonly three hours!

LXXXIX. TO THE SAME.

RATZEBURG, November 26, 1798.

Another and another and yet another post day; and still Chester greets me

with, “No letters from England!” A knell, that strikes out regularly four

times a week. How is this, my Love? Why do you not write to me? Do you

think to shorten my absence by making it insupportable to me? Or perhaps

you anticipate that if I received a letter I should idly turn away from my

German to _dream_ of you--of you and my beloved babies! Oh, yes! I should

indeed dream of you for hours and hours; of you, and of beloved Poole, and

of the infant that sucks at your breast, and of my dear, dear Hartley. You

would be _present_, you would be with me in the air that I breathe; and I

should cease to see you only when the tears rolled out of my eyes, and

this naked, undomestic room became again visible. But oh, with what

leaping and exhilarated faculties should I return to the objects and

realities of my mission. But now--nay, I cannot describe to you the

gloominess of thought, the burthen and sickness of heart, which I

experience every post day. Through the whole remaining day I am incapable

of everything but anxious imaginations, of sore and fretful feelings. The

Hamburg newspapers arrive here four times a week; and almost every

newspaper commences with, “_Schreiben aus London_--They write from

London.” This day’s, with schreiben aus London, vom November 13. But I am

certain that you have written more than once; and I stumble about in dark

and idle conjectures, how and by what means it can have happened that I

have not received your letters. I recommence my journal, but with feelings

that approach to disgust--for in very truth I have nothing interesting to

relate.

XC. TO THE SAME.

December 2, 1798.

Sunday Evening.--God, the Infinite, be praised that my babes are alive.

His mercy will forgive me that late and all too slowly I raised up my

heart in thanksgiving. At first and for a time I wept as passionately as

if they had been dead; and for the whole day the weight was heavy upon me,

relieved only by fits of weeping. I had long expected, I had passionately

expected, a letter; I received it, and my frame trembled. I saw your hand,

and all feelings of mind and body crowded together. Had the news been

cheerful and only “We are as you left us,” I must have wept to have

delivered myself of the stress and tumult of my animal sensibility. But

when I read the danger and the agony--My dear Sara! my love! my wife!--God

bless you and preserve us. I am well; but a stye, or something of that

kind, has come upon and enormously swelled my eyelids, so that it is

painful and improper for me to read or write. In a few days it will now

disappear, and I will write at length (now it forces me to cease).

To-morrow I will write a line or two on the other side of the page to Mr.

Roskilly.

I received your letter Friday, November 31. I cannot well account for the

slowness. Oh, my babies! Absence makes it painful to be a father.

My life, believe and know that I pant to be home and with you.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

December 3.--My eyes are painful, but there is no doubt but they will be

well in two or three days. I have taken physic, eat very little flesh, and

drink only water, but it grieves me that I cannot read. I need not have

troubled my poor eyes with a superfluous love to my dear Poole.

XCI. TO THE REV. MR. ROSKILLY.[191]

RATZEBURG, Germany, December 3, 1798.

MY DEAR SIR,--There is an honest heart out of Great Britain that enters

into your good fortune with a sincere and lively joy. May you enjoy life

and health--all else you have,--a good wife, a good conscience, a good

temper, sweet children, and competence! The first glass of wine I drink

shall be a bumper--not to you, no! but to the Bishop of Gloucester! God

bless him!

Sincerely your friend,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XCII. TO THOMAS POOLE.

January 4, 1799--Morning, 11 o’clock.

My friend, my dear friend! Two hours have past since I received your

letter. It was so frightfully long since I received one!! My body is weak

and faint with the beating of my heart. But everything affects me more

than it ought to do in a foreign country. I cried myself blind about

Berkeley, when I ought to have been on my knees in the joy of

thanksgiving. The waywardness of the pacquets is wonderful. On December

the seventh Chester received a letter from his sister dated November 27.

Yours is dated November 22, and I received it only this morning. I am

quite well, calm and industrious. I now read German as English,--that is,

without any _mental_ translation as I read. I likewise understand all that

is said to me, and a good deal of what they say to each other. On very

trivial and on metaphysical subjects I can talk _tolerably_--so, so!--but

in that conversation, which is between both, I bungle most ridiculously. I

owe it to my industry that I can read old German, and even the old low

German, better than most of even the educated natives. It has greatly

enlarged my knowledge of the English language. It is a great bar to the

amelioration of Germany, that through at least half of it, and that half

composed almost wholly of Protestant States, from whence alone

amelioration can proceed, the agriculturists and a great part of the

artizans talk a language as different from the language of the higher

classes (in which all books are written) as the Latin is from the Greek.

The differences are greater than the affinities, and the affinities are

darkened by the differences of pronunciation and spelling. I have written

twice to Mr. Josiah Wedgwood,[192] and in a few days will follow a most

voluminous letter, or rather series of letters, which will comprise a

history of the bauers or peasants collected, not so much from books as

from oral communications from the Amtmann here--(an Amtmann is a sort of

perpetual Lord Mayor, uniting in himself Judge and Justice of Peace over

the bauers of a certain district). I have enjoyed great advantages in this

place, but I have paid dear for them. Including _all_ expenses, I have not

lived at less than two pounds a week. Wordsworth (from whom I receive long

and affectionate letters) has enjoyed scarcely one advantage, but his

expenses have been considerably less than they were in England. Here I

shall stay till the last week in January, when I shall proceed to

Göttingen, where, all expenses included, I can live for 15 shillings a

week. For these last two months I have drunk nothing but water, and I

eat but little animal food. At Göttingen I shall hire lodging for two

months, buy my own cold beef at an eating-house, and dine in my chamber,

which I can have at a dollar a week. And here at Göttingen I must

endeavour to unite the advantages of advancing in German and doing

something to repay myself. My dear Poole! I am afraid that, supposing I

return in the first week of May, my whole expenses[193] from Stowey to

Stowey, including books and clothes, will not have been less than 90

_pounds_! and if I buy ten pounds’ worth more of books it will have been a

hundred. I despair not but with intense application and regular use of

time, to which I have now almost accustomed myself, that by three months’

residence at Göttingen I shall have _on paper_ at least _all_ the

materials if not the whole structure of a work that will repay me. The

work I have planned, and I have imperiously excluded all waverings about

other works. That is the disease of my mind--it is comprehensive in its

conceptions, and wastes itself in the contemplations of the many things

which it might do. I am aware of the disease, and for the next three

months (if I cannot cure it) I will at least suspend its operation. This

book is a life of Lessing, and interweaved with it a true state of German

literature in its rise and present state. I have already written a little

life from three different biographies, divided it into years, and at

Göttingen I will read his works regularly according to the years in which

they were written, and the controversies, religious and literary, which

they occasioned. But of this say nothing to any one. The journey to

Germany has certainly _done me good_. My habits are less irregular and my

_mind_ more in my own power. But I have much still to do! I did, indeed,

receive great joy from Roskilly’s good fortune, and in a little note to my

dear Sara I joined a note of congratulation to Roskilly. O Poole! you are

a noble heart as ever God made! Poor ----! he is passing through a fiery

discipline, and I would fain believe that it will end in his peace and

utility. Wordsworth is divided in his mind,--unquietly divided between the

neighbourhood of Stowey and the North of England. He cannot think of

settling at a distance from me, and I have told him that I cannot leave

the vicinity of Stowey. His chief objection to Stowey is the want of

books. The Bristol Library is a hum, and will do us little service; and he

thinks that he can procure a house near Sir Gilford Lawson’s by the Lakes,

and have free access to his immense library. I think it better once in a

year to walk to Cambridge, in the summer vacation--perhaps I may be able

to get rooms for nothing, and there for a couple of months read like a

Turk on a given plan, and return home with a mass of materials which,

with dear, _independent_ Poetry, will fully employ the remaining year. But

this is idle prating about a future. But indeed, it is time to be looking

out for a house for me--it is not possible I can be either comfortable or

useful in so small a house as that in Lime Street. If Woodlands can be

gotten at a reasonable price, I would have it. I will now finish my

long-neglected journal.

Sara, I suppose, is at Bristol--on Monday I shall write to her. The frost

here has been uncommonly severe. For two days it was 20 degrees under the

freezing point. Wordsworth has left Goslar, and is on his road into higher

Saxony to cruise for a pleasanter place; he has made but little progress

in the language. I am interrupted, and if I do not conclude shall lose the

post. Give my kind love to your dear mother. Oh, that I could but find her

comfortable on my return. To Ward remember me affectionately--likewise

remember to James Cole; and my grateful remembrances to Mrs. Cole for her

kindness during my wife’s domestic troubles. To Harriet, Sophia, and

Lavinia Poole--to the Chesters--to Mary and Ellen Cruickshank--in short,

to all to whom it will give pleasure remember me affectionately.

My dear, dear Poole, God bless us!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

P. S. The Amtmann, who is almost an Englishman and an idolizer of our

nation, desires to be kindly remembered to you. He told me yesterday that

he had dreamt of you the night before.

XCIII. TO HIS WIFE.

RATZEBURG, Monday, January 14, 1799.

MY DEAREST LOVE,--Since the wind changed, and it became possible for me to

have letters, I lost all my tranquillity. Last evening I was absent in

company, and when I returned to solitude, restless in every fibre, a

novel which I attempted to read seemed to interest me so extravagantly

that I threw it down, and when it was out of my hands I knew nothing of

what I had been reading. This morning I awoke long before light, feverish

and unquiet. I was certain in my mind that I should have a letter from

you, but before it arrived my restlessness and the irregular pulsation of

my heart had quite wearied me down, and I held the letter in my hand like

as if I was stupid, without attempting to open it. “Why don’t you read the

letter?” said Chester, and I read it. Ah, little Berkeley--I have

misgivings, but my duty is rather to comfort you, my dear, dear Sara! I am

so exhausted that I could sleep. I am well, but my spirits have left me. I

am completely homesick, I must walk half an hour, for my mind is too

scattered to continue writing. I entreat and entreat you, Sara! take care

of yourself. If you are well, I think I could frame my thoughts so that I

should not sink under other losses. You do right in writing me the truth.

Poole is kind, but you do right, my dear! In a sense of _reality_ there is

always comfort. The workings of one’s imagination ever go beyond the worst

that nature afflicts us with; they have the terror of a superstitious

circumstance. I express myself unintelligibly. Enough that you write me

always the whole truth. Direct your next letter thus: An den Herrn

Coleridge, à la Poste Restante, Göttingen, Germany. If God permit I shall

be there before this day three weeks, and I hope on May-day to be once

more at Stowey. My motives for going to Göttingen I have written to Poole.

I hear as often from Wordsworth as letters can go backward and forward in

a country where fifty miles in a day and night is expeditious travelling!

He seems to have employed more time in writing English than in studying

German. No wonder! for he might as well have been in England as at Goslar,

in the situation which he chose and with his unseeking manners. He has now

left it, and is on his journey to Nordhausen. His taking his sister with

him was a wrong step; it is next but impossible for any but married women,

or in the suit of married women, to be introduced to any company in

Germany. Sister here is considered as only a name for mistress. Still,

however, male acquaintance he might have had, and had I been at Goslar I

would have had them; but W., God love him! seems to have lost his spirits

and almost his inclination for it. In the mean time his expenses have been

almost less than they [would have been] in England; mine have been very

great, but I do not despair of returning to England with somewhat to pay

the whole. O God! I do languish to be at home.

I will endeavour to give you some idea of Ratzeburg, but I am a wretched

describer. First you must imagine a lake, running from south to north

about nine miles in length, and of very various breadths--the broadest

part may be, perhaps, two or three miles, the narrowest scarce more than

half a mile. About a mile from the southernmost point of the lake, that

is, from the beginning of the lake, is the island-town of Ratzeburg.

[Illustration]

● is Ratzeburg; [Symbol] is our house on the hill; from the bottom of the

hill there lies on the lake a slip of land, scarcely two stone-throws

wide, at the end of which is a little bridge with a superb military gate,

and this bridge joins Ratzeburg to the slip of land--you pass through

Ratzeburg up a little hill, and down the hill, and this brings you to

another bridge, narrow, but of an immense length, which communicates with

the other shore.

[Illustration]

The water to the south of Ratzeburg is called the little lake and the

other the large lake, though they are but one piece of water. This little

lake is very beautiful, the shores just often enough green and bare to

give the proper effect to the magnificent _groves_ which mostly fringe

them. The views vary almost every ten steps, such and so beautiful are the

turnings and windings of the shore--they unite beauty and magnitude, and

can be but expressed by feminine grandeur! At the north of the great lake,

and peering over, you see the seven church-towers of Lubec, which is

twelve or fourteen miles from Ratzeburg. Yet you see them as distinctly as

if they were not three miles from you. The worse thing is that Ratzeburg

is built entirely of bricks and tiles, and is therefore all red--a clump

of brick-dust red--it gives you a strong idea of perfect neatness, but it

is not beautiful.[194] In the beginning or middle of October, I forget

which, we went to Lubec in a boat. For about two miles the shores of the

lake are exquisitely beautiful, the woods now running into the water, now

retiring in all angles. After this the left shore retreats,--the lake

acquires its utmost breadth, and ceases to be beautiful. At the end of the

lake is the river, about as large as the river at Bristol, but winding in

infinite serpentines through a dead flat, with willows and reeds, till you

reach Lubec, an old fantastic town. We visited the churches at Lubec--they

were crowded with gaudy gilded figures, and a profusion of pictures, among

which were always the portraits of the popular pastors who had served the

church. The pastors here wear white ruffs exactly like the pictures of

Queen Elizabeth. There were in the Lubec churches a very large attendance,

but almost _all women_. The genteeler people dressed precisely as the

English; but behind every lady sat her maid,--the caps with gold and

silver combs. Altogether, a Lubec church is an amusing sight. In the

evening I wished myself a painter, just to draw a German Party at cards.

One man’s long pipe rested on the table, by the fish-dish; another who was

shuffling, and of course had both hands employed, held his pipe in his

teeth, and it hung down between his thighs even to his ankles, and the

distortion which the attitude and effort occasioned made him a most

ludicrous phiz.... [If it] had been possible I would have loitered a week

in those churches, and found incessant amusement. Every picture, every

legend cut out in gilded wood-work, was a history of the manners and

feelings of the ages in which such works were admired and executed.

As the sun both rises and sets over the little lake by us, both rising and

setting present most lovely spectacles.[195] In October Ratzeburg used at

sunset to appear completely beautiful. A deep red light spread over all,

in complete harmony with the red town, the brown-red woods, and the

yellow-red reeds on the skirts of the lake and on the slip of land. A few

boats, paddled by single persons, used generally to be floating up and

down in the rich light. But when first the ice fell on the lake, and the

whole lake was frozen one large piece of thick transparent glass--O my

God! what sublime scenery I have beheld. Of a morning I have seen the

little lake covered with mist; when the sun peeped over the hills the mist

broke in the middle, and at last stood as the waters of the Red Sea are

said to have done when the Israelites passed; and between these two walls

of mist the sunlight burst upon the ice in a straight road of golden fire,

all across the lake, intolerably bright, and the walls of mist partaking

of the light in a _multitude_ of colours. About a month ago the vehemence

of the wind had shattered the ice; part of it, quite shattered, was driven

to shore and had frozen anew; this was of a deep blue, and represented an

agitated sea--the water that ran up between the great islands of ice shone

of a yellow-green (it was at sunset), and all the scattered islands of

_smooth_ ice were _blood_, intensely bright _blood_; on some of the

largest islands the fishermen were pulling out their immense nets through

the holes made in the ice for this purpose, and the fishermen, the

net-poles, and the huge nets made a part of the glory! O my God! how I

wished you to be with me! In skating there are three pleasing

circumstances--firstly, the infinitely subtle particles of ice which the

skate cuts up, and which creep and run before the skater like a low mist,

and in sunrise or sunset become coloured; second, the shadow of the skater

in the water seen through the transparent ice; and thirdly, the melancholy

undulating sound from the skate, not without variety; and, when very many

are skating together, the sounds give an impulse to the icy trees, and the

woods all round the lake _tinkle_. It is a pleasant amusement to sit in an

ice stool (as they are called) and be driven along by two skaters, faster

than most horses can gallop. As to the customs here, they are nearly the

same as in England, except that [the men] never sit after dinner [and

only] drink at dinner, which often lasts three or four hours, and in noble

families is divided into three gangs, that is, walks. When you have sat

about an hour, you rise up, each lady takes a gentleman’s arm, and you

walk about for a quarter of an hour--in the mean time another course is

put upon the table; and, this in great dinners, is repeated three times. A

man here seldom sees his wife till dinner,--they take their coffee in

separate rooms, and never eat at breakfast; only as soon as they are up

they take their coffee, and about eleven o’clock eat a bit of bread and

butter with the coffee. The men at least take a pipe. Indeed, a pipe at

breakfast is a great addition to the comfort of life. I shall [smoke at]

no other time in England. Here I smoke four times a day--1 at breakfast, 1

half an hour before dinner, 1 in the afternoon at tea, and 1 just before

bed-time--but I shall give it all up, unless, as before observed, you

should happen to like the smoke of a pipe at breakfast. Once when I first

came here I smoked a pipe immediately after dinner; the pastor expressed

his surprise: I expressed mine that he could smoke before breakfast. “O

Herr Gott!” (that is, Lord God) quoth he, “it is delightful; it

invigorates the frame and _it clears out the mouth so_.” A common

amusement at the German Universities is for a number of young men to smoke

out a candle! that is, to fill a room with tobacco smoke till the candle

goes out. Pipes are quite the rage--a pipe of a particular kind, that has

been smoked for a year or so, will sell here for twenty guineas--the same

pipe when new costs four or five. They are called Meerschaum.

God bless you, my dear Love! I will soon write again.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Postscript. Perhaps you are in Bristol. However, I had better direct it to

Stowey. My love to Martha and your mother and your other sisters. Once

more, my dearest Love, God love and preserve us through this long absence!

O my dear Babies! my Babies!

XCIV. TO THE SAME.

Bei dem Radermacher Gohring, in der Bergstrasse, Göttingen,

March 12, 1799. Sunday Night.

MY DEAREST LOVE,--It has been a frightfully long time since we have heard

from each other. I have not written, simply because my letters could have

gone no further than Cuxhaven, and would have stayed there to the [no]

small hazard of their being lost. Even now the mouth of the Elbe is so

much choked with ice that the English Pacquets cannot set off. Why need I

say how anxious this long interval of silence has made me! I have thought

and thought of you, and pictured you and the little ones so often and so

often that my imagination is tired down, flat and powerless, and I

languish after home for hours together in vacancy, my feelings almost

wholly unqualified by _thoughts_. I have at times experienced such an

extinction of _light_ in my mind--I have been so forsaken by all the

_forms_ and _colourings_ of existence, as if the _organs_ of life had been

dried up; as if only simply Being remained, blind and stagnant. After I

have recovered from this strange state and reflected upon it, I have

thought of a man who should lose his companion in a desart of sand, where

his weary Halloos drop down in the air without an echo. I am deeply

convinced that if I were to remain a few years among objects for whom I

had no affection I should wholly lose the powers of intellect. Love is the

vital air of my genius, and I have not seen one human being in Germany

whom I can conceive it _possible_ for me to _love_, no, not _one_; in my

mind they are an unlovely race, these Germans.

We left Ratzeburg, Feb. 6, in the Stage Coach. This was not the coldest

night of the century, because the night following was two degrees

colder--the oldest man living remembers not such a night as Thursday, Feb.

7. This whole winter I have heard incessant complaints of the unusual

cold, but I have felt very little of it. But _that night_! My God! Now I

know what the pain of cold is, and what the danger. The pious care of the

German Governments that none of their loving subjects should be suffocated

is admirable! On Friday morning when the light dawned, the Coach looked

like a shapeless idol of suspicion with an hundred eyes, for there were at

least so many holes in it. And as to rapidity! We left Ratzeburg at 7

o’clock Wednesday evening, and arrived at Lüneburg--_i. e._, 35 English

miles--at 3 o’clock on Thursday afternoon. This is a fair specimen! In

England I used to laugh at the “flying waggons;” but, compared with a

German Post Coach, the metaphor is perfectly justifiable, and for the

future I shall never meet a flying waggon without thinking respectfully of

its speed. The whole country from Ratzeburg almost to Einbeck--_i. e._,

155 English miles--is a flat, objectless, hungry heath, bearing no marks

of cultivation, except close by the towns, and the only remarks which

suggested themselves to me were that it was cold--very cold--shocking

cold--never felt it so cold in my life! Hanover is 115 miles from

Ratzeburg. We arrived there Saturday evening.

The Herr von Döring, a nobleman who resides at Ratzeburg, gave me letters

to his brother-in-law at Hanover, and by the manner in which he received

me I found that they were not _ordinary_ letters of recommendation. He

pressed me exceedingly to stay a week in Hanover, but I refused, and left

it on Monday noon. In the mean time, however, he had introduced me to all

the great people and presented me “as an English gentleman of first-rate

character and talents” to Baron Steinburg, the Minister of State, and to

Von Brandes, the Secretary of State and Governor of Göttingen University.

The first was amazingly _perpendicular_, but civil and polite, and gave me

letters to Heyne, the head Librarian, and, in truth, the real _Governor_

of Göttingen. Brandes likewise gave me letters to Heyne and Blumenbach,

who are his brothers-in-law. Baron Steinburg offered to present me to the

Prince (Adolphus), who is now in Hanover; but I deferred the honour till

my return. I shall make Poole laugh when I return with the visiting-card

which the Baron left at my inn.

The two things worth seeing in Hanover are (1) the conduit representing

Mount Parnassus, with statues of Apollo, the Muses, and a great many

others; flying horses, rhinoceroses, and elephants, etc.; and (2) a bust

of Leibnitz--the first for its excessive absurdity, ugliness, and

indecency--(absolutely I could write the most humorous octavo volume

containing the description of it with a commentary)--the second--_i. e._

the bust of Leibnitz--impressed on my soul a sensation which has ennobled

it. It is the face of a god! and Leibnitz was almost more than a man in

the wonderful capaciousness of his judgment and imagination! Well, we left

Hanover on Monday noon, after having paid a most extravagant bill. We

lived with Spartan frugality, and paid with Persian pomp! But I was an

Englishman, and visited by half a dozen noblemen and the Minister of

State. The landlord could not dream of affronting me by anything like a

reasonable charge! On the road we stopped with the postillion always, and

our expenses were nothing. Chester and I made a very hearty dinner of cold

beef, etc., and both together paid only fourpence, and for coffee and

biscuits only threepence each. In short, a man may travel cheap in

Germany, but he must avoid great towns and not be visited by Ministers of

State.

In a village some four miles from Einbeck we stopped about 4 o’clock in

the morning. It was pitch dark, and the postillion led us into a room

where there was not a ray of light--we could not see our hand--but it felt

extremely warm. At length and suddenly the lamp came, and we saw ourselves

in a room thirteen strides in length, strew’d with straw, and lying by the

side of each other on the straw twelve Jews. I assure you it was curious.

Their dogs lay at their feet. There was one very beautiful boy among them,

fast asleep, with the softest conceivable opening of the mouth, with the

white beard of his grandfather upon his cheek--a fair, rosy cheek.

This day I called with my letters on the Professor Heyne, a little,

hopping, over-civil sort of a thing, who talks very fast and with

fragments of coughing between every ten words. However, he behaved very

courteously to me. The next day I took out my matricula, and commenced

student of the University of Göttingen. Heyne has honoured me so far that

he has given me the right, which properly only professors have, of sending

to the Library for an indefinite number of books in my own name.

On Saturday evening I went to the concert. Here the other Englishmen

introduced themselves. After the concert Hamilton, a Cambridge man, took

me as his guest to the Saturday Club, _where what is called_ the first

class of students meet and sup once a week. Here were all the nobility and

three Englishmen. Such an evening I never passed before--roaring, kissing,

embracing, fighting, smashing bottles and glasses against the wall,

singing--in short, such a scene of uproar I never witnessed before, no,

not even at Cambridge. I drank nothing, but all except two of the

Englishmen were drunk, and the party broke up a little after one o’clock

in the morning. I thought of what I had been at Cambridge and of what I

was, of the wild bacchanalian sympathy with which I had formerly joined

similar parties, and of my total inability now to do aught but meditate,

and the feeling of the deep alteration in my moral being gave the scene a

melancholy interest to me.

We are quite well. Chester will write soon to his family; in the mean time

he sends duty, love, and remembrance to all to whom they are due. I have

drunk no wine or fermented liquor for more than three months, in

consequence of which I am apt to be wakeful; but then I never feel any

oppression after dinner, and my spirits are much more equable, blessings

which I esteem inestimable! My dear Hartley--my Berkeley--how intensely do

I long for you! My Sara, O my dear Sara! To Poole, God bless him! to dear

Mrs. Poole and Ward, kindest love, and to all love and remembrance.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XCV. TO THOMAS POOLE.

April 6, 1799.

MY DEAREST POOLE,--Your two letters, dated January 24 and March 15,[196]

followed close on each other. I was still enjoying “the livelier impulse

and the dance of thought” which the first had given me when I received the

second. At the time, in which I read Sara’s lively account of the miseries

which herself and the infant had undergone, all was over and well--there

was nothing to _think_ of--only a mass of pain was brought suddenly and

closely within the sphere of my perception, and I was made to suffer it

over again. For this bodily frame is an imitative thing, and touched by

the imagination gives the hour which is past as faithfully as a repeating

watch. But Death--the death of an infant--of one’s own infant! I read your

letter in calmness, and walked out into the open fields, oppressed, not by

my feelings, but by the riddles which the thought so easily proposes, and

solves--never! A parent--in the strict and exclusive sense a parent!--to

me it is a _fable_ wholly without meaning except in the _moral_ which it

suggests--a fable of which the moral is God. Be it so--my dear, dear

friend! Oh let it be so! La Nature (says Pascal) “La Nature confond les

Pyrrhoniens, et la Raison confond les Dogmatistes. Nous avons une

impuissance à prouver invincible à tout le Dogmatisme. Nous avons une idée

de la verité invincible à tout le Pyrrhonisme.” I find it wise and human

to believe, even on slight evidence, opinions, the contrary of which

cannot be proved, and which promote our happiness without hampering our

intellect. My baby has not lived in vain--this life has been to him what

it is to all of us--education and development! Fling yourself forward into

your immortality only a few thousand years, and how small will not the

difference between one year old and sixty years appear! Consciousness!--it

is no otherwise necessary to our conceptions of future continuance than as

connecting the present link of our being with the one immediately

preceding it; and _that_ degree of consciousness, _that_ small portion of

_memory_, it would not only be arrogant, but in the highest degree absurd,

to deny even to a much younger infant. ’Tis a strange assertion that the

essence of identity lies in _recollective_ consciousness. ’Twere scarcely

less ridiculous to affirm that the eight miles from Stowey to Bridgwater

consist in the eight milestones. Death in a doting old age falls upon my

feelings ever as a more hopeless phenomenon than death in infancy; but

_nothing_ is hopeless. What if the vital force which I sent from my arm

into the stone as I flung it in the air and skimmed it upon the

water--what if even that did not perish! It was _life_!--it was a particle

of _being_!--it was power! and how could it perish? _Life, Power, Being!_

Organization may and probably is their _effect_--their _cause_ it _cannot_

be! I have indulged very curious fancies concerning that force, that swarm

of motive powers which I sent out of my body into that stone, and which,

one by one, left the untractable or already possessed mass, and--but the

German Ocean lies between us. It is all too far to send you such fancies

as these! Grief, indeed,--

Doth love to dally with fantastic thoughts,

And smiling like a sickly Moralist,

Finds some resemblance to her own concern

In the straws of chance, and things inanimate.[197]

But I cannot truly say that I grieve--I am perplexed--I am sad--and a

little thing--a very trifle--would make me weep--but for the death of the

baby I have _not_ wept! Oh this strange, strange, strange scene-shifter

Death!--that giddies one with insecurity and so unsubstantiates the living

things that one has grasped and handled! Some months ago Wordsworth

transmitted me a most sublime epitaph. Whether it had any reality I cannot

say. Most probably, in some gloomier moment he had fancied the moment in

which his sister might die.

EPITAPH.

A slumber did my spirit seal,

I had no human fears;

She seemed a thing that could not feel

The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force,

She neither hears nor sees:

Mov’d round in Earth’s diurnal course

With rocks, and stones, and trees!

XCVI. TO HIS WIFE.

GÖTTINGEN, in der Wondestrasse, April 8, 1799.

It is one of the discomforts of my absence, my dearest Love! that we feel

the same calamities at different times--I would fain write words of

consolation to you; yet I know that I shall only fan into new activity the

pang which was growing dead and dull in your heart. Dear little Being! he

had existed to me for so many months only in dreams and reveries, but in

them existed and still exists so livelily, so like a real thing, that

although I know of his death, yet when I am alone and have been long

silent, it seems to me as if I did not understand it. Methinks there is

something awful in the thought, what an unknown being one’s own infant is

to one--a fit of sound--a flash of light--a summer gust that is as it were

_created_ in the bosom of the calm air, that rises up we know not how, and

goes we know not whither! But we say well; it goes! it is gone! and only

in states of society in which the revealing voice of our most inward and

abiding nature is no longer listened to (when we sport and juggle with

abstract phrases, instead of representing our feelings and ideas), only

then we say it _ceases_! I will not believe that it ceases--in this

moving, stirring, and harmonious universe--I _cannot_ believe it! Can cold

and darkness come from the sun? where the sun is not, there is cold and

darkness! But the living God is everywhere, and works everywhere--and

where is there room for death? To look back on the life of my baby, how

short it seems! but consider it referently to nonexistence, and what a

manifold and majestic _Thing_ does it not become? What a multitude of

admirable actions, what a multitude of _habits_ of actions it learnt even

before it saw the light! and who shall count or conceive the infinity of

its thoughts and feelings, its hopes, and fears, and joys, and pains, and

desires, and presentiments, from the moment of its birth to the moment

when the glass, through which we saw him darkly, was broken--and he became

suddenly invisible to us? Out of the Mount that might not be touched, and

that burnt with fire, out of darkness, and blackness, and tempest, and

with his own Voice, which they who heard entreated that they might not

hear it again, the most high God forbade us to use his _name vainly_. And

shall we who are Christians, shall we believe that he himself uses his

own power vainly? That like a child he builds palaces of mud and clay in

the common road, and then he destroys them, as weary of his _pastime_, or

leaves them to be trod under by the hoof of Accident? That God works by

_general_ laws are to me words without meaning or worse than

meaningless--ignorance, and imbecility, and limitation must wish in

generals. What and who are these horrible shadows necessity and general

law, to which God himself must offer _sacrifices_--hecatombs of

sacrifices? I feel a deep conviction that these shadows exist not--they

are only the dreams of reasoning pride, that would fain find solutions for

all difficulties without faith--that would make the discoveries which lie

thick sown in the path of the eternal Future unnecessary; and so

conceiting that there is sufficiency and completeness in the narrow

present, weakens the presentiment of our wide and ever widening

immortality. God works in each for all--most true--but more

comprehensively true is it, that he works in all for each. I confess that

the more I think, the more I am discontented with the doctrines of

Priestley. He builds the whole and sole hope of future existence on the

words and miracles of Jesus--yet doubts or denies the future existence of

infants--only because according to his own system of materialism he has

not discovered how they can be made _conscious_. But Jesus has declared

that _all_ who are in the grave shall arise--and that those who should

arise to perceptible progression must be ever as the infant which He held

in his arms and blessed. And although the _Man_ Jesus had never appeared

in the world, yet I am Quaker enough to believe, that in the heart of

every man the Christ would have revealed himself, the Power of the Word,

that was even in the wilderness. To me who am absent this faith is a real

consolation,--and the few, the slow, the quiet tears which I shed, are the

accompaniments of high and solemn thought, not the workings of pain or

sorrow. When I return indeed, and see the vacancy that has been made--when

nowhere anything corresponds to the form which will perhaps for ever dwell

on my mind, then it is possible that a keener pang will come upon me. Yet

I trust, my love! I trust, my dear Sara! that this event which has forced

us to think of the death of what is most dear to us, as at all times

probable, will in many and various ways be good for us. To have

shared--nay, I should say--to have divided with any human being any one

deep sensation of joy or of sorrow, sinks deep the foundations of a

lasting love. When in moments of fretfulness and imbecility I am disposed

to anger or reproach, it will, I trust, be always a restoring thought--“We

have wept over the same little one,--and with whom I am angry? With her

who so patiently and unweariedly sustained my poor and sickly infant

through his long pains--with her, who, if I too should be called away,

would stay in the deep anguish over my death-pillow! who would never

forget me!” Ah, my poor Berkeley! A few weeks ago an Englishman desired me

to write an epitaph on an infant who had died before its christening.

While I wrote it, my heart with a deep misgiving turned my thoughts

homewards.

ON AN INFANT, WHO DIED BEFORE ITS CHRISTENING.

Be rather than be _call’d_ a Child of God!

Death whisper’d. With assenting Nod

Its head upon the Mother’s breast

The baby bow’d, and went without demur,

Of the kingdom of the blest

Possessor, not Inheritor.

It refers to the second question in the Church Catechism. We are well, my

dear Sara. I hope to be home at the end of ten or eleven weeks. If you

should be in Bristol, you will probably be shewn by Mr. Estlin three

letters which I have written to him altogether--and one to Mr. Wade. Mr.

Estlin will permit you to take the letters to Stowey that Poole may see

them, and Poole will return them. I have no doubt but I shall repay myself

by the work which I am writing, to such an amount, that I shall have spent

out of my income only fifty pounds at the end of August. My love to your

sisters--and love and duty to your mother. God bless you, my love! and

shield us from deeper afflictions, or make us resigned unto them (and

perhaps the latter blessedness is greater than the former).

Your affectionate and faithful husband,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XCVII. TO THE SAME.

April 23, 1799.

MY DEAR SARA,--Surely it is unnecessary for me to say how infinitely I

languish to be in my native country, and with how many struggles I have

remained even so long in Germany! I received your affecting letter, dated

Easter Sunday; and, had I followed my impulses, I should have packed up

and gone with Wordsworth and his sister, who passed through (and only

passed through) this place two or three days ago. If they burn with such

impatience to return to their native country, _they_ who are all to each

other, what must I feel with everything pleasant and everything valuable

and everything dear to me at a distance--here, where I may truly say my

only amusement is--to labour! But it is, in the strictest sense of the

word, impossible to collect what I have to collect in less than six weeks

from this day; yet I read and transcribe from eight to ten hours every

day. Nothing could support me but the knowledge that if I return now we

shall be embarrassed and in debt; and the moral certainty that having done

what I am doing we shall be more than _cleared_--not to add that so large

a work with so great a quantity and variety of information from sources

so scattered and so little known, even in Germany, will of course

establish my character for industry and erudition certainly; and, I would

fain hope, for reflection and genius. This day in June I hope and trust

that I shall be in England. Oh that the vessel could but land at Shurton

Bars! Not that I should wish to see you and Poole immediately on my

landing. No!--the sight, the touch of my native country, were sufficient

for one _whole_ feeling, the most deep unmingled emotion--but then and

after a lonely walk of three miles--then, first of _all_, whom I knew, to

see you and my _Friend_! It lessens the delight of the thought of my

return that I must get at you through a tribe of _acquaintances_, damping

the freshness of one’s joy! My poor little baby! At this time I see the

corner of the room where his cradle stood--and his cradle too--and I

cannot help seeing him in the cradle. Little lamb! and the snow would not

melt on his limbs! I have some faint recollections that he had that

difficulty of breathing once before I left England--or was it Hartley? “A

child, a child is born, and the fond heart dances; and yet the childless

are the most happy.” At Christmas[198] I saw a custom which pleased and

interested me here. The children make little presents to their parents,

and to one another, and the parents to the children. For three or four

months before Christmas the girls are all busy, and the boys save up their

pocket-money, to make or purchase these presents. What the present is to

be is cautiously kept secret, and the girls have a world of contrivances

to conceal it, such as working when they are at a visit, and the others

are not with them, and getting up in the morning long before light, etc.

Then on the evening before Christmas Day, one of the parlours is lighted

up by the children, into which the parents must not go. A great yew bough

is fastened on the table at a little distance from the wall, a multitude

of little tapers are fastened in the bough, but not so as to burn it, till

they are nearly burnt out, and coloured paper, etc., hangs and flutters

from the twigs. Under this bough the children lay out in great neatness

the presents they mean for their parents, still concealing in their

pockets what they intend for each other. Then the parents are introduced,

and each presents his little gift--and then they bring out the others, and

present them to each other with kisses and embraces. Where I saw the scene

there were eight or nine children of different ages; and the eldest

daughter and the mother wept aloud for joy and tenderness, and the tears

ran down the cheek of the father, and he clasped all his children so tight

to his heart, as if he did it to stifle the sob that was rising within

him. I was very much affected, and the shadow of the bough on the wall,

and arching over on the ceiling, made a pretty picture--and then the

raptures of the very little ones, when at last the twigs and thread-leaves

began to catch fire and snap! Oh that was a delight for them! On the next

day in the great parlour the parents lay out on the tables the presents

for the children; a scene of more sober joy succeeds, as, on this day,

after an old custom, the mother says privately to each of her daughters,

and the father to each of his sons, that which he has observed most

praiseworthy, and that which he has observed most faulty in their conduct.

Formerly, and still in all the little towns and villages through the whole

of North Germany, these presents were sent by all the parents of the

village to some one fellow, who, in high buskins, a white robe, a mask,

and an enormous flax wig, personates Knecht Rupert, that is, the servant

Rupert. On Christmas night he goes round to every house and says that

Jesus Christ his Master sent him there; the parents and older children

receive him with great pomp of reverence, while the little ones are most

terribly frightened. He then enquires for the children, and according to

the character which he hears from the parent he gives them the intended

presents, as if they came out of Heaven from Jesus Christ; or, if they

should have been bad children, he gives the parents a rod, and, in the

name of his Master Jesus, recommends them to use it frequently. About

eight or nine years old, the children are let into the secret; and it is

curious, how faithfully they all keep it. There are a multitude of strange

superstitions among the bauers;--these still survive in spite of the

efforts of the Clergy, who in the north of Germany, that is, in the

Hanoverian, Saxon, and Prussian dominions, are almost all Deists. But they

make little or no impressions on the bauers, who are wonderfully religious

and fantastically superstitious, but not in the least priest-rid. But in

the Catholic countries of Germany the difference is vast indeed! I met

lately an intelligent and calm-minded man who had spent a considerable

time at Marburg in the Bishopric of Paderborn in Westphalia. He told me

that bead-prayers to the Holy Virgin are universal, and universally, too,

are magical powers attributed to one particular formula of words which are

absolutely jargons; at least, the words are to be found in no known

language. The peasants believe it, however, to be a prayer to the Virgin,

and happy is the man among them who is made confident by a priest that he

can repeat it perfectly; for heaven knows what terrible calamity might not

happen if any one should venture to repeat it and blunder. Vows and

pilgrimages to particular images are still common among the bauers. If any

one dies before the performance of his vow, they believe that he hovers

between heaven and _earth_, and at times hobgoblins his relations till

they perform it for him. Particular saints are believed to be eminently

favourable to particular prayers, and he assured me solemnly that a little

before he left Marburg a lady of Marburg had prayed and given money to

have the public prayers at St. Erasmus’s Chapel to St. Erasmus--for what,

think you?--that the baby, with which she was then pregnant, might be a

boy with light hair and rosy cheeks. When their cows, pigs, or horses are

sick they take them to the Dominican monks, who transcribe _texts out of

the holy books_, and perform exorcisms. When men or women are sick they

give largely to the Convent, who on good conditions dress them in Church

robes, and lay a particular and highly venerated Crucifix on their breast,

and perform a multitude of antic ceremonies. In general, my informer

confessed that they cured the persons, which he seemed to think

extraordinary, but which I think very natural. Yearly on St. Blasius’s Day

unusual multitudes go to receive the Lord’s Supper; and while they are

receiving it the monks hold a Blasius’s Taper (as it is called) before the

forehead of the kneeling person, and then pray to St. Blasius to drive

away all headaches for the ensuing year. Their wishes are often expressed

in this form: “Mary, Mother of God, make her Son do so and so.” Yet with

all this, from every information which I can collect (and I have had many

opportunities of collecting various accounts), the peasants in the

Catholic countries of Germany, but especially in Austria, are far better

off, and a far happier and livelier race, than those in the Protestant

lands.... I fill up the sheet with scattered customs put down in the order

in which I happened to see them. The peasant children, wherever I have

been, are dressed warm and tight, but very ugly; the dress looks a frock

coat, some of coarse blue cloth, some of plaid, buttoned behind--the row

of buttons running down the back, and the seamless, buttonless fore-part

has an odd look. When the peasants marry, if the girl is of a good

character, the clergyman gives her a Virgin Crown (a tawdry, ugly thing

made of gold and silver tinsel, like the royal crowns in shape). This they

wear with cropped, powdered, and pomatumed hair--in short, the bride looks

ugliness personified. While I was at Ratzeburg a girl came to beg the

pastor to let her be married in this crown, and she had had two bastards!

The pastor refused, of course. I wondered that a reputable farmer should

marry her; but the pastor told me that where a female bauer is the

heiress, her having had a bastard does not much stand in her way; and yet,

though little or no infamy attaches to it, the number of bastards is but

small--two in seventy has been the average of Ratzeburg among the

peasants. By the bye, the bells in Germany are not rung as ours, with

ropes, but two men stand, one on each side of the bell, and each pushes

the bell away from him with his foot. In the churches, what is a baptismal

font in our churches is a great Angel with a bason in his hand; he draws

up and down with a chain like a lamp. In a particular part of the ceremony

down comes the great stone Angel with the bason, presenting it to the

pastor, who, having taken _quant. suff._, up flies my Angel to his old

place in the ceiling--you cannot conceive how droll it looked. The graves

in the little village churchyards are in square or parallelogrammic wooden

cases--they look like boxes without lids--and thorns and briars are woven

over them, as is done in some parts of England. Perhaps you recollect that

beautiful passage in Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Dying, “and the Summer brings

briers to bud on our graves.” The shepherds with iron soled boots walk

before the sheep, as in the East--you know our Saviour says--“My Sheep

follow me.” So it is here. The dog and the shepherd walk first, the

shepherd with his romantic fur, and generally knitting a pair of white

worsted gloves--he walks on and his dog by him, and then follow the sheep

winding along the roads in a beautiful _stream_! In the fields I observed

a multitude of poles with bands and trusses of straw tied round the higher

part and the top--on enquiry we found that they were put there for the

owls to perch upon. And the owls? They catch the field mice, who do

amazing damage in the light soil all throughout the north of Germany. The

gallows near Göttingen, like that near Ratzeburg, is three great stone

pillars, square, like huge tall chimneys, and connected with each other at

the top by three iron bars with hooks to them--and near them is a wooden

pillar with a wheel on the top of it on which the head is exposed, if the

person instead of being hung is beheaded. I was frightened at first to see

such a multitude of bones and skeletons of sheep, oxen, and horses, and

bones as I imagined of men for many, many yards all round the gallows. I

found that in Germany the hangman is by the laws of the Empire

infamous--these hangmen form a caste, and their families marry with each

other, etc.--and that all dead cattle, who have died, belong to them, and

are carried by the owners to the gallows and left there. When their cattle

are bewitched, or otherwise desperately sick, the peasants take them and

tie them to the gallows--drowned dogs and kittens, etc., are thrown

there--in short, the grass grows rank, and yet the bones overtop it (the

fancy of _human_ bones must, I suppose, have arisen in my ignorance of

comparative anatomy). God bless you, my Love! I will write again speedily.

When I was at Ratzeburg I wrote one wintry night in bed, but never sent

you, three stanzas which, I dare say, you will think very silly, and so

they are: and yet they were not written without a yearning, yearning,

yearning _Inside_--for my yearning affects more than my _heart_. I feel it

all within me.

I.

If I had but two little wings,

And were a little feath’ry bird,

To you I’d fly, my dear!

But thoughts like these are idle things--

And I stay here.

II.

But in my sleep to you I fly:

I’m always with you in my sleep--

The World is all one’s own.

But then one wakes--And where am I?--

All, all alone!

III.

Sleep stays not, though a monarch bids:

So I love to wake ere break of day:

For though my sleep be gone,

Yet while ’tis dark, one shuts one’s lids,

And still dreams on![199]

If Mrs. Southey be with you, remember me with all kindness and

thankfulness for their attention to you and Hartley. To dear Mrs. Poole

give my filial love. My love to Ward. Why should I write the name of Tom

Poole, except for the pleasure of writing it? It grieves me to the heart

that Nanny is not with you--I cannot bear changes--Death makes enough!

God bless you, my dear, dear wife, and believe me with eagerness to clasp

you to my heart, your ever faithful husband,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

XCVIII. TO THOMAS POOLE.

May 6, 1799, Monday morn.

My dear Poole, my dear Poole!--I am homesick. Society is a burden to me;

and I find relief only in labour. So I read and transcribe from morning

till night, and never in my life have I worked so hard as this last month,

for indeed I must sail over an ocean of matter with almost spiritual

speed, to do what I have to do in the time in which I _will_ do it or

leave it undone! O my God, how I long to be at home! My _whole Being_ so

yearns after you, that when I think of the moment of our meeting, I catch

the fashion of German joy, rush into your arms, and embrace you. Methinks

my hand would swell if the whole force of my feeling were crowded there.

Now the Spring comes, the vital sap of my affections rises as in a tree!

And what a gloomy Spring! But a few days ago all the new buds were covered

with snow; and everything yet looks so brown and wintry, that yesterday

the roses (which the ladies carried on the ramparts, their promenade),

beautiful as they were, so little harmonized with the general face of

nature, that they looked to me like silk and made roses. But these

leafless Spring Woods! Oh, how I long to hear you whistle to the

Rippers![200] There are a multitude of nightingales here (poor things!

they sang in the snow). I thought of my own[201] verses on the

nightingale, only because I thought of Hartley, my _only_ Child. Dear

lamb! I hope he won’t be dead before I get home. There are moments in

which I have such a power of life within me, such a _conceit_ of it, I

mean, that I lay the blame of my child’s death to my absence. _Not

intellectually_; but I have a strange sort of sensation, as if, while I

was present, none could die whom I entirely loved, and doubtless it was no

absurd idea of yours that there may be unions and connections out of the

visible world.

Wordsworth and his sister passed through here, as I have informed you. I

walked on with them five English miles, and spent a day with them. They

were melancholy and hypped. W. was affected to tears at the thought of not

being near me--wished me of course to live in the North of England near

Sir Frederick Vane’s great library.[202] I told him that, independent of

the expense of removing, and the impropriety of taking Mrs. Coleridge to

a place where she would have no acquaintance, two insurmountable

objections, the library was no inducement to me--for I wanted old books

chiefly, such as could be procured anywhere better than in a gentleman’s

new fashionable collection. Finally I told him plainly that _you_ had been

the man in whom _first_ and in whom alone I had felt an _anchor_! With all

my other connections I felt a dim sense of insecurity and uncertainty,

terribly incompatible. W. was affected _to tears_, very much affected; but

he deemed the vicinity of a library absolutely _necessary_ to his health,

nay to his existence. It is painful to me, too, to think of not living

near him; for he is a _good_ and _kind_ man, and the only one whom in

_all_ things I feel my superior--and you will believe me when I say that I

have few feelings more pleasurable than to find myself, in intellectual

faculties, an inferior.

But my resolve is fixed, _not to leave you till you leave me_! I still

think that Wordsworth will be disappointed in his expectation of relief

from reading without society; and I think it highly probable that where I

live, there he will live; unless he should find in the North any person or

persons, who can feel and understand him, and reciprocate and react on

him. My many weaknesses are of some advantage to me; they unite me more

with the great mass of my fellow-beings--but dear Wordsworth appears to me

to have hurtfully segregated and isolated his being. Doubtless his

delights are more deep and sublime; but he has likewise more hours that

prey upon the flesh and blood. With regard to _Hancock’s_ house, if I can

get no place within a mile or two of Stowey I must try to get that; but I

confess I like it not--not to say that it is not altogether pleasant to

live directly opposite to a person who had behaved so rudely to Mrs.

Coleridge. But these are in the eye of reason trifles, and if no other

house can be got--in my eye, too, they shall be trifles.

* * * * *

O Poole! I am homesick. Yesterday, or rather yesternight, I dittied the

following horrible ditty; but my poor Muse is quite gone--perhaps she may

return and meet me at Stowey.

’Tis sweet to him who all the week

Through city-crowds must push his way,

To stroll alone through fields and woods,

And hallow thus the Sabbath-day.

And sweet it is, in summer bower,

Sincere, affectionate, and gay,

One’s own dear children feasting round,

To celebrate one’s marriage day.

But what is all to his delight,

Who having long been doomed to roam,

Throws off the bundle from his back,

Before the door of his own home?

Home-sickness is no baby pang--

This feel I hourly more and more:

There’s only musick in thy wings,

Thou breeze that play’st on Albion’s Shore.[203]

The Professors here are exceedingly kind to all the Englishmen, but to me

they pay the most flattering attentions, especially Blumenbach and

Eichhorn. Nothing can be conceived more delightful than Blumenbach’s

lectures, and, in conversation, he is, indeed, a most interesting man. The

learned Orientalist Tychsen[204] has given me instruction in the Gothic

and Theotuscan languages, which I can now read pretty well; and hope in

the course of a year to be thoroughly acquainted with all the languages

of the North, both German and Celtic. I find being learned is a mighty

easy thing, compared with any study else. My God! a miserable poet must he

be, and a despicable metaphysician, whose acquirements have not cost him

more trouble and reflection than all the learning of Tooke, Porson, and

Parr united. With the advantage of a great library, learning is

nothing--methinks, merely a sad excuse for being idle. Yet a man gets

reputation by it, and reputation gets money; and for reputation I don’t

care a damn, but money--yes--money I must get by all honest ways.

Therefore at the end of two or three years, if God grant me life, expect

to see me come out with some horribly learned book, full of manuscript

quotations from Laplandish and Patagonian authors, possibly, on the

striking resemblance of the Sweogothian and Sanscrit languages, and so on!

N. B. Whether a sort of parchment might not be made of old shoes; and

whether apples should not be grafted on oak saplings, as the fruit would

be the same as now, but the wood far more valuable? _Two ideas of

mine._--To extract _aqua fortis_ from cucumbers is a discovery not yet

made, but sugar from _bete_, oh! all Germany is mad about it. I have seen

the sugar sent to Blumenbach from Achard[205] the great chemist, and it is

good enough. They say that an hundred pounds weight of _bete_ will make

twelve pounds of sugar, and that there is no expense in the preparation.

It is the _Beta altissima_, belongs to the _Beta vulgaris_, and in Germany

is called _Runkelrübe_. Its leaves resemble those of the common red

_bete_. It is in shape like a clumsy nine pin and about the size of a

middling turnip. The flesh is white but has rings of a reddish cast. I

will bring over a quantity of the seed.

* * * * *

A stupid letter!--I believe my late proficiency in learning has somewhat

stupified me, but live in hopes of one better worth postage. In the last

week of June, I trust, you will see me. Chester is well and desires love

and duty to his family. To your dear Mother and to Ward give my kind love,

and to all who ask after me.

My dear Poole! don’t let little Hartley die before I come home. That’s

silly--true--and I burst into tears as I wrote it. Yours

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CHAPTER V

FROM SOUTH TO NORTH

1799-1800

CHAPTER V

FROM SOUTH TO NORTH

1799-1800

XCIX. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

NETHER STOWEY, July 29, 1799.

I am doubtful, Southey, whether the circumstances which impel me to write

to you ought not to keep me silent, and, if it were only a feeling of

delicacy, I should remain silent, for it is good to do all things in

faith. But I have been absent, Southey! ten months, and if _you_ knew that

domestic affection was hard upon me, and that my own health was declining,

would you not have shootings within you of an affection which (“though

fallen, though changed”) has played too important a part in the event of

our lives and the formation of our character, ever to be _forgotten_? I am

perplexed what to write, or how to state the object of my writing. Any

participation in each other’s moral being I do not wish, simply because I

know enough of the mind of man to know that [it] is impossible. But,

Southey, we have similar talents, sentiments nearly similar, and kindred

pursuits; we have likewise, in more than one instance, common objects of

our esteem and love. I pray and intreat you, if we should meet at any

time, let us not withhold from each other the outward expressions of daily

kindliness; and if it be no longer in your power to soften your opinions,

make your feelings at least more tolerant towards me--(a debt of humility

which assuredly we all of us owe to our most feeble, imperfect, and

self-deceiving nature). We are few of us good enough to know our own

hearts, and as to the hearts of others, let us struggle to hope that they

are better than we think them, and resign the rest to our common Maker.

God bless you and yours.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

[Southey’s answer to this appeal has not been preserved, but its tenor was

that Coleridge had slandered him to others. In his reply Coleridge “avers

on his honour as a man and a gentleman” that he never charged Southey with

“aught but deep and implacable enmity towards himself,” and that his

authorities for this accusation were those on whom Southey relied, that

is, doubtless, Lloyd and Lamb. He appeals to Poole, the “repository” of

his every thought, and to Wordsworth, “with whom he had been for more than

one whole year almost daily and frequently for weeks together,” to bear

him out in this statement. A letter from Poole to Southey dated August 8,

and forwarded to Minehead by “special messenger,” bears ample testimony to

Coleridge’s disavowal. “Without entering into particulars,” he writes, “I

will say generally, that in the many conversations I have had with

Coleridge concerning yourself, he has never discovered the least personal

enmity against, but, on the contrary, the strongest affection for you

stifled only by the untoward events of your separation.” Poole’s

intervention was successful, and once again the cottage opened its doors

to a distinguished guest. The Southeys remained as visitors at Stowey

until, in company with their host, they set out for Devonshire.]

[Illustration]

C. TO THOMAS POOLE.

EXETER, Southey’s Lodgings, Mr. Tucker’s, Fore Street Hill,

September 16, 1799.[206]

MY DEAR POOLE,--Here I am just returned from a little tour[207] of five

days, having seen rocks and waterfalls, and a pretty river or two; some

wide landscapes, and a multitude of ash-tree dells, and the blue waters of

the “roaring sea,” as little Hartley says, who on Friday fell down stairs

and injured his arm. ’Tis swelled and sprained, but, God be praised, not

broken. The views of Totness and Dartmouth are among the most impressive

things I have ever seen; but in general what of Devonshire I have lately

seen is tame to Quantock, Porlock, Culbone, and Linton. So much for the

country! Now as to the inhabitants thereof, they are bigots, unalphabeted

in the first feelings of liberality; of course in all they speak and all

they do not speak, they give good reasons for the opinions which they

hold, viz. they hold the propriety of slavery, an opinion which, being

generally assented to by Englishmen, makes Pitt and Paul the first among

the moral fitnesses of things. I have three brothers, that is to say,

relations by gore. Two are parsons and one is a colonel. George and the

colonel, good men as times go--very good men--but alas! we have neither

tastes nor feelings in common. This I wisely learnt from their

conversation, and did not suffer them to learn it from mine. What occasion

for it? Hunger and thirst--roast fowls, mealy potatoes, pies, and clouted

cream! bless the inventors of them! An honest philosopher may find

therewith preoccupation for his mouth, keeping his heart and brain, the

latter in his scull, the former in the pericardium some five or six inches

from the roots of his tongue! Church and King! Why I drink Church and

King, mere cutaneous scabs of loyalty which only ape the king’s evil, but

affect not the interior of one’s health. Mendicant sores! it requires some

little caution to keep them open, but they heal of their own accord. Who

(such a friend as I am to the system of fraternity) could refuse such a

toast at the table of a clergyman and a colonel, his brother? So, my dear

Poole! I live in peace. Of the other party, I have dined with a Mr.

Northmore, a pupil of Wakefield, who possesses a fine house half a mile

from Exeter. In his boyhood he was at my father’s school.... But Southey

and self called upon him as authors--he having edited a Tryphiodorus and

part of Plutarch, and being a notorious anti-ministerialist and

free-thinker. He welcomed us as he ought, and we met at dinner Hucks (at

whose house I dine Wednesday), the man who toured with me in Wales and

afterwards published his “Tour,” Kendall, a poet, who really looks like a

man of genius, pale and gnostic, has the merit of being a Jacobin or so,

but is a shallowist--and finally a Mr. Banfill, a man of sense,

information, and various literature, and most perfectly a gentleman--in

short a pleasant man. At his house we dine to-morrow. Northmore himself is

an honest, vehement sort of a fellow who splutters out all his opinions

like a fiz-gig, made of gunpowder not thoroughly dry, sudden and

explosive, yet ever with a certain adhesive blubberliness of elocution.

Shallow! shallow! A man who can read Greek well, but shallow! Yet honest,

too, and who ardently wishes the well-being of his fellowmen, and believes

that without more liberty and more equality this well-being is not

possible. He possesses a most noble library. The victory at Novi![208] If

I were a good caricaturist I would sketch off Suwarrow in a car of

conquest drawn by huge crabs!! With what retrograde majesty the vehicle

advances! He may truly say he came off with _éclat_, that is, a claw! I

shall be back at Stowey in less than three weeks....

We hope your dear mother remains well. Give my filial love to her. God

bless her! I beg my kind love to Ward. God bless you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Monday night.

CI. TO ROBERT SOUTHEY.

STOWEY, Tuesday evening, October 15, 1799.

It is fashionable among our philosophizers to assert the existence of a

surplus of misery in the world, which, in my opinion, is no proof that

either systematic thinking or unaffected self-observation is fashionable

among them. But Hume wrote, and the French imitated him, and we the

French, and the French us; and so philosophisms fly to and fro, in series

of imitated imitations--shadows of shadows of shadows of a farthing-candle

placed between two looking-glasses. For in truth, my dear Southey! I am

harassed with the rheumatism in my head and shoulders, not without

arm-and-thigh-twitches--but when the pain intermits it leaves my sensitive

frame _so_ sensitive! My enjoyments are so deep, of the fire, of the

candle, of the thought I am thinking, of the old folio I am reading, and

the silence of the silent house is so _most and very_ delightful, that

upon my soul! the rheumatism is no such bad thing as _people make for_.

And yet I have, and do suffer from it, in much pain and sleeplessness and

often sick at stomach through indigestion of the food, which I eat from

compulsion. Since I received your former letter, I have spent a few days

at Upcott;[209] but was too unwell to be comfortable, so I returned

yesterday. Poor Tom![210] he has an adventurous calling. I have so wholly

forgotten my geography that I don’t know where Ferrol is, whether in

France or Spain. Your dear mother must be very anxious indeed. If he

return safe, it will have been good. God grant he may!

_Massena!_[211] and what say you of the resurrection and glorification of

the Saviour of the East after his trials in the wilderness? (I am afraid

that this is a piece of blasphemy; but it was in simple verity such an

infusion of animal spirits into me.) Buonaparte! Buonaparte! dear, dear,

_dear_ Buonaparte! It would be no bad fun to hear the clerk of the Privy

Council read this paragraph before Pitt, etc. “You ill-looking frog-voiced

reptile! mind you lay the proper emphasis on the third _dear_, or I’ll

split your clerkship’s skull for you!” Poole ordered a paper. He has

_found out_, he says, why the _newspapers_ had become so indifferent to

him. _Inventive_ Genius! He begs his kind remembrances to you. In

consequence of the news he burns like Greek Fire, under all the wets and

waters of this health-and-harvest destroying weather. He flames while his

barley smokes. “See!” he says, “how it _grows out again_, ruining the

prospects of those who had cut it down!” You are harvest-man enough, I

suppose, to understand the metaphor. Jackson[212] is, I believe, out of

all doubt a bad man. Why is it, if it be, and I fear it is, why is it that

the studies of music and painting are so unfavourable to the human heart?

Painters have been commonly very clever men, which is not so generally the

case with musicians, but both alike are almost uniformly debauchees. It is

superfluous to say how much your account of Bampfylde[213] interested me.

Predisposition to madness gave him a cast of originality, and he had a

species of _taste_ which only genius could give; but his genius does not

appear a _powerful_ or _ebullient_ faculty (nearer to Lamb’s than to the

Gebir-man [Landor], so I judge from the few specimens _I_ have seen). If

you think otherwise, you are right I doubt not. I shall be glad to give

Mr. and Mrs. Keenan[214] the right hand of welcome with looks and tones in

_fit_ accompaniment. For the wife of a man of genius who sympathises

effectively with her husband in his habits and feelings is a _rara avis_

with me; though a vast majority of her own sex and too many of ours will

scout her for a _rara piscis_. If I am well enough, Sara and I go to

Bristol in a few days. I hope they will not come in the mean time. It is

singularly unpleasant to me that I cannot renew our late acquaintances in

Exeter without creating very serious uneasinesses at Ottery, Northmore is

so preëminently an offensive character to the aristocrats. He sent Paine’s

books as a present to a clergyman of my brother’s acquaintance, a Mr.

Markes. This was silly enough....

I will set about “Christabel” with all speed; but I do not think it a fit

opening poem. What I think would be a fit opener, and what I would humbly

lay before you as the best plan of the next Anthologia, I will communicate

shortly in another letter entirely on this subject. Mohammed I will not

forsake; but my money-book I must write first. In the last, or at least in

a late “Monthly Magazine” was an Essay on a Jesuitic conspiracy and about

the Russians. There was so much genius in it that I suspected William

Taylor for the author; but the style was so nauseously affected, so

absurdly pedantic, that I was half-angry with myself for the suspicion.

Have you seen Bishop Prettyman’s book? I hear it is a curiosity. You

remember Scott the attorney, who held such a disquisition on my simile of

property resembling matter rather than blood? and eke of St. John? and you

remember, too, that I shewed him in my face that there was no room for him

in my heart? Well, sir! this man has taken a most deadly hatred to me, and

how do you think he revenges himself? He imagines that I write for the

“Morning Post,” and he goes regularly to the coffee-houses, calls for the

paper, and reading it he observes aloud, “What damn’d stuff of poetry is

always crammed in this paper! such damn’d silly nonsense! I wonder what

coxcomb it is that writes it! I wish the paper was kicked out of the

coffee-house.” Now, but for Cruikshank, I could play Scott a precious

trick by sending to Stuart, “The Angry Attorney, a True Tale,” and I know

more than enough of Scott’s most singular parti-coloured rascalities to

make a most humorous and biting satire of it.

I have heard of a young Quaker who went to the Lobby, with a monstrous

military cock-hat on his head, with a scarlet coat and up to his mouth in

flower’d muslin, swearing too most bloodily--all “that he might not be

unlike other people!” A Quaker’s son getting himself christen’d to avoid

being remarkable is as _improbable_ a lie as ever self-delusion permitted

the heart to impose on the understanding, or the understanding to invent

without the consent of the heart. But so it is. Soon after Lloyd’s arrival

at Cambridge I understand Christopher Wordsworth wrote his uncle, Mr.

Cookson,[215] that Lloyd was going to read Greek with him. Cookson wrote

back recommending caution, and whether or no an intimacy with so marked a

character might not be prejudicial to his academical interests. (This is

his usual mild manner.) Christopher Wordsworth returned for answer that

Lloyd was by no means a democrat, and as a proof of it, transcribed the

most favourable passages from the “Edmund Oliver,” and here the _affair_

ended. You remember Lloyd’s own account of this story, of course, more

accurately than I, and can therefore best judge how far my suspicions of

falsehood and exaggeration were well-founded. My dear Southey! the having

a bad heart and not having a good one are different things. That Charles

Lloyd has a bad heart, I do not even think; but I venture to say, and that

openly, that he has not a good one. He is unfit to be any man’s friend,

and to all but a very guarded man he is a perilous _acquaintance_. _Your_

conduct towards him, while it is wise, will, I doubt not, be gentle. Of

confidence he is not worthy; but social kindness and communicativeness

purely intellectual can do you no harm, and may be the means of benefiting

his character essentially. _Aut ama me quia sum Dei, aut ut sim Dei_, said

St. Augustin, and in the laxer sense of the word “Ama” there is wisdom in

the expression notwithstanding its wit. Besides, it is the way of _peace_.

From Bristol perhaps I go to London, but I will write you where I am.

Yours affectionately,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

I have great affection for Lamb, but I have likewise a perfect

Lloyd-and-Lambophobia! Independent of the irritation attending an

epistolary controversy with them, their _prose_ comes so damn’d dear!

Lloyd especially writes with a woman’s fluency in a large rambling hand,

most dull though profuse of feeling. I received from them in last quarter

letters so many, that with the postage I might have bought Birch’s

Milton.--Sara will write soon. Our love to Edith and your mother.

CII. TO THE SAME.

KESWICK,[216] Sunday, November 10, 1799.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I am anxious lest so long silence should seem

unaffectionate, or I would not, having so little to say, write to you

from such a distant corner of the kingdom. I was called up to the North by

alarming accounts of Wordsworth’s health, which, thank God! are but little

more than alarms. _Since_ I have visited the Lakes and in a pecuniary way

have made the trip answer to me. From hence I go to London, having had (by

accident here) a sort of offer made to me of a pleasant kind, which, if it

turn out well, will enable me and Sara to reside in London for the next

four or five months--a thing I wish extremely on many and important

accounts. So much for myself. In my last letter I said I would give you my

reasons for thinking “Christabel,” _were_ it finished, and finished as

spiritedly as it commences, yet still an improper opening poem. My reason

is it cannot be expected to please all. _Those_ who dislike it will deem

it extravagant ravings, and go on through the rest of the collection with

the feeling of disgust, and it is not impossible that were it liked by any

it would still not harmonise with the _real-life_ poems that follow. It

ought, I think, to be the last. The first ought _me judice_ to be a poem

in couplets, didactic or satirical, such a one as the lovers of genuine

poetry would call sensible and entertaining, such as the ignoramuses and

Pope-admirers would deem genuine poetry. I had planned such a one, and,

but for the absolute necessity of scribbling prose, I should have written

it. The great and master fault of the last “Anthology” was the want of

arrangement. It is called a collection, and meant to be continued

annually; yet was distinguished in nothing from any other single volume of

poems equally good. Yours ought to have been a cabinet with proper

compartments, and papers in them, whereas it was only the papers. Some

such arrangement as this should have been adopted: First. Satirical and

Didactic. 2. Lyrical. 3. Narrative. 4. Levities.

“Sic positi quoniam suaves miscetis odores,

Neve inter vites corylum sere”--

is, I am convinced, excellent advice of Master Virgil’s. N. B. A good

motto! ’Tis from Virgil’s seventh Eclogue.

“Populus Alcidæ gratissima, vitis Iaccho,

Formosæ myrtus Veneri, sua laurea Phœbo;

Phyllis amat corylos.”

But still, my dear Southey! it goes grievously against the grain with me,

that _you_ should be editing anthologies. I would to Heaven that you could

afford to write nothing, or at least to publish nothing, till the

completion and publication of the “Madoc.” I feel as certain, as my mind

dare feel on any subject, that it would lift you with a spring into a

reputation that would give immediate sale to your after compositions and a

license of writing more at ease. Whereas “Thalaba” would gain you (for a

time at least) more ridiculers than admirers, and the “Madoc” might in

consequence be welcomed with an _ecce iterum_. Do, do, my dear Southey!

publish the “Madoc” _quam citissime_, not hastily, but yet speedily. I

will instantly publish an Essay on Epic Poetry in reference to it. I have

been reading the Æneid, and there you will be all victorious, excepting

the importance of Æneas and his connection with events existing in

Virgil’s time. This cannot be said of “Madoc.” There are other faults in

the construction of your poem, but nothing compared to those in the Æneid.

Homer I shall read too.

(No signature.)

CIII. TO THE SAME.

December 9, [1799].

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I pray you in your next give me the particulars of your

health. I hear accounts so contradictory that I know only enough to be a

good deal frightened. You will surely think it your duty to suspend all

intellectual exertion; as to money, you will get it easily enough. You may

easily make twice the money you receive from Stuart by the use of the

scissors; for your name is prodigiously high among the London publishers.

I would to God your health permitted you to come to London. You might have

lodgings in the same house with us. And this I am certain of, that not

even Kingsdown is a more healthy or airy place. I have enough for us to do

that would be mere child’s work to us, and in which the women might assist

us essentially, by the doing of which we might easily get a hundred and

fifty pounds each before the first of April. This I speak, not from guess

but from absolute conditions with booksellers. The principal work to which

I allude would be likewise a great source of amusement and profit to us in

the execution, and assuredly we should be a mutual comfort to each other.

This I should _press_ on you were not Davy at Bristol, but he is indeed an

admirable young man; not only must he be of comfort to you, but in whom

can you place such reliance as a medical man? But for Davy, I should

advise your coming to London; the difference of expense for three months

could not be above fifty pounds. I do not see how it could be half as

much. But I pray you write me all particulars, how you have been, how you

are, and what you think the particular nature of your disease.

Now for poor George.[217] Assuredly I am ready and willing to become his

bondsman for five hundred pounds if, on the whole, you think the scheme a

good one. I see enough of the boy to be fully convinced of his goodness

and well-intentionedness; of his present or probable talents I know

little. To remain all his life an under clerk, as many have done, and earn

fifty pounds a year in his old age with a trembling hand--alas! that were

a dreary prospect. No creature under the sun is so helpless, so unfitted,

I should think, for any other mode of life as a clerk, a mere clerk. Yet

still many have begun so and risen into wealth and importance, and it is

not impossible that before his term closed we might be able, if nought

better offered, perhaps to procure him a place in a public office. We

might between us keep him neat in clothes from our own wardrobes, I should

think, and I am ready to allow five guineas this year, in addition to Mr.

Savary’s twelve pounds. More I am not justified to _promise_. Yet still I

think it matter of much reflection with you. The commercial prospects of

this country are, in my opinion, gloomy; our present commerce is enormous:

that it must diminish after a peace is certain, and should any accident

injure the West India trade, and give to France a paramountship in the

American affections, that diminution would be vast indeed, and, of course,

great would be the number of clerks, etc., wholly out of employment. This

is no visionary speculation; for we are consulting concerning a _life_,

for probably fifty years. I should have given a more intense conviction to

the goodness of the former scheme of apprenticing him to a printer, and

would make every exertion to raise my share of the money wanting. However,

all this is talk at random. I leave it to you to decide. What does Charles

Danvers think? He has been very kind to George. But to whom is he not

kind, that body--blood--bone--muscle--nerve--heart and head--good man! I

lay final stress on his opinion in almost everything except verses; those

I know more about than he does--“God bless him, to use a vulgar phrase.”

This is a quotation from Godwin, who used these words in conversation with

me and Davy. The pedantry of atheism tickled me hugely. Godwin is no great

things in intellect; but in heart and manner he is all the better for

having been the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft. Why did not George Dyer

(who, by the bye, has written a silly milk-and-water life of you,[218] in

which your talents for _pastoral_ and _rural_ imagery are extolled, and in

which you are asserted to be a republican), why did not George Dyer send

to the “Anthology” that poem in the last “Monthly Magazine?” It is so very

far superior to anything I have ever seen of his, and might have made some

atonement for his former transgressions. God love him, he is a very good

man; but he ought not to degrade himself by writing lives of living

characters for Phillips; and all his friends make wry faces, peeping out

of the pillory of his advertisemental notes. I hold to my former opinion

concerning the _arrangement_ of the “Anthology,” and the booksellers with

whom _I_ have talked coincide with me. On this I am decided, that all the

_light_ pieces should be put together under one title with a motto[219]

thus: “_Nos hæc novimus esse nihil--Phillis amat Corylos_.” I am afraid

that I have scarce poetic enthusiasm enough to finish “Christabel;” but

the poem, with which Davy is so much delighted, I probably may finish time

enough. I shall probably _not_ publish my letters, and if I do so, I shall

most certainly _not_ publish any verses in them. Of course, I expect to

see them in the “Anthology.” As to title, I should wish a fictitious one

or none; were I sure that I could finish the poem I spoke of. I do not

know how to get the conclusion of Mrs. Robinson’s poem for you. Perhaps it

were better omitted, and I mean to put the thoughts of that concert poem

into smoother metre. Our “Devil’s Thoughts” have been admired far and

wide, most _enthusiastically_ admired. I wish to have my name in the

collection at all events; but I should better like it to better poems than

these I have been hitherto able to give you. But I will write again on

Saturday. Supposing that Johnson should mean to do nothing more with the

“Fears in Solitude” and the two accompanying poems, would they be excluded

from the plan of your “Anthology?” There were not above two hundred sold,

and what is that to a newspaper circulation? Collins’s Odes were thus

reprinted in Dodsley’s Collection. As to my future residence, I can say

nothing--only this, that to be near you would be a strong motive with me

for my wife’s sake as well as myself. I think it not impossible that a

number might be found to go with you and settle in a warmer climate. My

kind love to your wife. Sara and Hartley arrived safe, and here they are,

No. 21 Buckingham Street, Strand. God bless you, and your affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Thursday evening.

P. S. Mary Hayes[220] is writing the “Lives of Famous Women,” and is now

about your friend _Joan_. She begs you to tell her what books to consult,

or to communicate something to her. This from Tobin, who sends his love.

CIV. TO THE SAME.

Tuesday night, 12 o’clock [December 24], 1799.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--My Spinosism (if Spinosism it be, and i’ faith ’tis very

like it) disposed me to consider this big city as that part of the supreme

One which the prophet Moses was allowed to see--I should be more disposed

to pull off my shoes, beholding Him in a _Bush_, than while I am forcing

my reason to believe that even in theatres _He_ is, yea! even in the Opera

House. Your “Thalaba” will beyond all doubt bring you two hundred pounds,

if you will sell it at once; but _do_ not print at a venture, under the

notion of selling the edition. I assure you that Longman regretted the

bargain he made with Cottle concerning the second edition of the “Joan of

Arc,” and is indisposed to similar negotiations; but most and very eager

to have the property of your works at almost any price. If you have not

heard it from Cottle, why, you may hear it from me, that is, the

arrangement of Cottle’s affairs in London. The whole and total copyright

of your “Joan,” and the first volume of your poems (exclusive of what

Longman had before given), was taken by him at three hundred and seventy

pounds. You are a strong swimmer, and have borne up poor Joey with all his

leaden weights about him, his own and other people’s! Nothing has answered

to him but your works. By me he has lost somewhat--by Fox, Amos, and

himself _very much_. I can sell your “Thalaba” quite as well in your

absence as in your presence. I am employed from I-rise to I-set[221] (that

is, from nine in the morning to twelve at night), a pure scribbler. My

mornings to booksellers’ compilations, after dinner to Stuart, who pays

_all_ my expenses here, let them be what they will; the earnings of the

morning go to make up an hundred and fifty pounds for my year’s

expenditure; for, supposing _all clear_ my year’s (1800) allowance is

anticipated. But this I can do by the first of April (at which time I

leave London). For Stuart I write often his leading paragraphs on

Secession, Peace, Essay on the new French Constitution,[222] Advice to

Friends of Freedom, Critiques on Sir W. Anderson’s Nose, Odes to Georgiana

D. of D. (horribly misprinted), Christmas Carols, etc., etc.,--anything

not bad in the paper, that is not yours, is mine. So if any verses there

strike you as worthy the “Anthology,” “do me the honour, sir!” However, in

the course of a week I _do mean_ to conduct a series of essays in that

paper which may be of public utility. So much for myself, except that I

long to be out of London; and that my Xstmas Carol is a quaint

performance, and, in as strict a sense as is _possible_, an Impromptu,

and, had I done all I had planned, that “Ode to the Duchess”[223] would

have been a better thing than it is--it being somewhat dullish, etc. I

have bought the “Beauties of the Anti-jacobin,” and attorneys and

counsellors advise me to prosecute, and offer to undertake it, so as that

I shall have neither trouble or expense. They say it is a clear case,

etc.[224] I will speak to Johnson about the “Fears in Solitude.” If he

gives them up they are yours. That dull ode has been printed often enough,

and may now be allowed to “sink with dead swoop, and to the bottom _go_,”

to quote an admired author; but the two others will do with a little

trimming.

My dear Southey! I have said nothing concerning that which most oppresses

me. Immediately on my leaving London I fall to the “Life of Lessing;” till

that is done, till I have given the Wedgwoods some proof that I am

_endeavouring_ to do well for my fellow-creatures, I cannot stir. That

being done, I would accompany you, and see no impossibility of forming a

pleasant little colony for a few years in Italy or the South of France.

Peace will soon come. God love you, my dear Southey! I would write to

Stuart, and give up his paper immediately. You should do nothing that did

not absolutely _please_ you. Be idle, be very idle! The habits of your

mind are such that you will necessarily do much; but be as idle as you

can.

Our love to dear Edith. If you see Mary, tell her that we have received

our trunk. Hartley is quite well, and my talkativeness is his, without

diminution on my side. ’Tis strange, but certainly many things go in the

blood, beside gout and scrophula. Yesterday I dined at Longman’s and met

Pratt, and that honest piece of prolix dullity and nullity, young Towers,

who desired to be remembered to you. To-morrow Sara and I dine at Mister

Gobwin’s, as Hartley calls him, who gave the philosopher such a rap on the

shins with a ninepin that Gobwin in huge pain _lectured_ Sara on his

boisterousness. I was not at home. _Est modus in rebus._ Moshes is

somewhat too rough and noisy, but the cadaverous silence of Godwin’s

children is to me quite catacombish, and, thinking of Mary Wollstonecraft,

I was oppressed by it the day Davy and I dined there.

God love you and

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CV. TO THE SAME.

Saturday, January 25, 1800.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--No day passes in which I do not as it were yearn after

you, but in truth my occupations have lately swoln above smothering point.

I am over mouth and nostrils. I have inclosed a poem which Mrs. Robinson

gave me for your “Anthology.” She is a woman of undoubted genius. There

was a poem of hers in this morning’s paper which both in metre and matter

pleased me much. She overloads everything; but I never knew a human being

with so _full_ a mind--bad, good, and indifferent, I grant you, but full

and overflowing. This poem I _asked_ for you, because I thought the metre

stimulating and some of the stanzas really _good_. The first line of the

twelfth would of itself redeem a worse poem.[225] I think you will agree

with me, but should you not, yet still put it _in_, my dear fellow! for my

sake, and out of respect to a woman-poet’s feelings. Miss Hayes I have

seen. Charles Lloyd’s conduct has been atrocious beyond what you stated.

Lamb himself confessed to me that during the time in which he kept up his

ranting, sentimental correspondence with Miss Hayes, he frequently read

her letters in company, as a subject for _laughter_, and then sate down

and answered them quite _à la Rousseau_! Poor Lloyd! Every hour

new-creates him; he is his own posterity in a perpetually flowing series,

and his body unfortunately retaining an external identity, _their_ mutual

contradictions and disagreeings are united under one name, and of course

are called lies, treachery, and rascality! I would not give him up, but

that the same circumstances which have wrenched his morals prevent in him

any salutary exercise of genius. And therefore he is not worth to the

world that I should embroil and embrangle myself in his interests.

Of Miss Hayes’ intellect I do not think so highly as you, or rather, to

speak sincerely, I think not _contemptuously_ but certainly _despectively_

thereof. Yet I think you likely in this case to have judged better than I;

for to hear a thing, ugly and petticoated, ex-syllogize a God with

cold-blooded precision, and attempt to run religion through the body with

an icicle, an icicle from a Scotch Hog-trough! _I_ do not endure it; my

eye beholds phantoms, and “nothing is, but what is not.”

By your last I could not find whether or no you still are willing to

execute the “History of the Levelling Principle.” Let me hear. Tom

Wedgwood is going to the Isle of St. Nevis. As to myself, Lessing out of

the question; I must stay in England.... Dear Hartley is well, and in high

force; he sported of his own accord a theologico-astronomical hypothesis.

Having so perpetually heard of good boys being put up into the sky when

they are dead, and being now beyond measure enamoured of the lamps in the

streets, he said one night coming through the streets, “Stars are dead

lamps, they be’nt naughty, they are put up in the sky.” Two or three weeks

ago he was talking to himself while I was writing, and I took down his

soliloquy. It would make a most original poem.

You say, I illuminize. I think that property will some time or other be

modified by the predominance of intellect, even as rank and superstition

are now modified by and subordinated to property, that much is to be hoped

of the future; but first those particular modes of property which more

particularly stop the diffusion must be done away, as injurious to

property itself; these are priesthood and the too great patronage of

Government. Therefore, if to act on the belief that all things are the

process, and that inapplicable truths are moral falsehoods, be to

illuminize, why then I illuminize! I know that I have been obliged to

_illuminize_ so late at night, or rather mornings, that eyes have smarted

as if I had _allum in eyes_! I believe I have misspelt the word, and ought

to have written Alum; that aside, ’tis a _humorous pun_!

Tell Davy that I will soon write. God love him! You and I, Southey! know a

good and great man or two in this world of ours.

God love you, my dear Southey, and your affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.

My kind love to Edith. Let me hear from you, and do not be angry with me

that I don’t answer your letters regularly.

CVI. TO THE SAME.

(Early in 1800.)

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I shall give up this Newspaper business; it is too, too

fatiguing. I have attended the Debates twice, and the first time I was

twenty-five hours in activity, and that of a very unpleasant kind; and the

second time, from ten in the morning till four o’clock the next morning. I

am sure that you will excuse my silence, though indeed after two such

letters from you I cannot scarcely excuse it myself. First of the book

business. I find a resistance which I did not expect to the

_anonymousness_ of the publication. Longman seems confident that a work on

such a subject without a name would not do. Translations and perhaps

Satires are, he says, the only works that booksellers now venture on

_without a name_. He is very solicitous to have your “Thalaba,” and

wonders (most wonderful!) that you do not write a novel. That would be the

thing! and truly, if by no more pains than a “St. Leon”[226] requires you

could get four hundred pounds!! or half the money, I say so too! If we

were together we might easily _toss up_ a novel, to be published in the

name of one of us, or _two_, if that were all, and then christen ’em by

lots. As sure as ink flows in my pen, by help of an amanuensis I could

write a volume a week--and Godwin got four hundred pounds! for it--think

of that, Master Brooks. I hope that some time or other you will write a

novel on that subject of yours! I mean the “Rise and Progress of a

_Laugher_”--Le Grice in your eye--the effect of Laughing on taste,

manners, morals, and happiness! But as to the Jacobin Book, I must wait

till I hear from you. Phillips would be very glad to engage you to write a

school book for him, the History of Poetry in all nations, about 400

pages; but this, too, _must_ have your name. He would give sixty pounds.

If poor dear Burnett were with you, he might do it under your eye and with

your instructions as well as you or I could do it, but it is _the name_.

Longman remarked acutely enough, “The booksellers scarcely pretend to

judge the merits of the _book_, but we know the _saleableness_ of the

name! and as they continue to buy most books on the calculation of a

_first_ edition of a thousand copies, they are seldom much mistaken; for

the name gives them the excuse for sending it to all the Gemmen in Great

Britain and the Colonies, from whom they have standing orders for new

books of reputation.” This is the secret why books published by country

booksellers, or by authors on their own account, so seldom succeed.

As to my schemes of residence, I am as unfixed as yourself, only that we

are under the absolute necessity of fixing somewhere, and that somewhere

will, I suppose, be Stowey. There are all my books and all our furniture.

In May I am under a kind of engagement to go with Sara to Ottery. My

family wish me to fix there, but _that_ I must decline in the names of

public liberty and individual free-agency. Elder brothers, not senior in

intellect, and not sympathising in main opinions, are subjects of

occasional visits; not temptations to a co-township. But if you go to

Burton, Sara and I will waive the Ottery plan, if possible, and spend May

and June with you, and perhaps July; but she must be settled in a house by

the latter end of July, or the first week in August. Till we are with you,

Sara means to spend five weeks with the Roskillies, and a week or two at

Bristol, where I shall join her. She will leave London in three weeks at

least, perhaps a fortnight; and I shall give up lodgings and billet myself

free of expense at my friend Purkis’s, at Brentford. This is my present

plan. O my dear Southey! I would to God that your health did not enforce

you to migrate--we might most assuredly continue to fix a residence

somewhere, which might possess a sort of centrality. Alfoxden would make

two houses sufficiently divided for unimpinging independence.

Tell Davy that I have not forgotten him, because without an epilepsy I

cannot forget him; and if I wrote to him as often as I think of him, Lord

have mercy on his pocket!

God bless you again and again.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

I pass this evening with Charlotte Smith at her house.

CVII. TO THE SAME.

[Postmark February 18], 1800.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--What do you mean by the words, “it is indeed by

expectation”? speaking of your state of health. I cannot bear to think of

your going to a strange country without any one who loves and understands

you. But we will talk of all this. I have not a moment’s time, and my head

aches. I was up till five o’clock this morning. My brain is so overworked

that I could doze troublously and with cold limbs, so affected was my

circulation. I shall do no more for Stuart. Read Pitt’s speech[227] in

the “Morning Post” of to-day (February 18, Tuesday). I reported the whole

with notes so scanty, that--Mr. Pitt is much obliged to me. For, by

Heaven, he never talked half as eloquently in his life-time. He is a

_stupid, insipid_ charlatan, that _Pitt_. Indeed, except Fox, I, you, or

anybody might learn to speak better than any man in the House. For the

next fortnight I expect to be so busy, that I shall go out of London a

mile or so to be wholly uninterrupted. I do not understand the

Beguin-nings[228] of Holland. Phillips is a good-for-nothing fellow, but

what of that? He will give you sixty pounds, and advance half the money

now for a book you can do in a fortnight, or three weeks at farthest. I

would advise you not to give it up so hastily. Phillips eats no flesh. I

observe, wittily enough, that whatever might be thought of innate ideas,

there could be no doubt to a man who had seen Phillips of the existence of

innate beef. Let my “Mad Ox” keep my name. “Fire and Famine” do just what

you like with. I have no wish either way. The “Fears in Solitude,” I

fear, is not my property, and I have no encouragement to think it will be

given up, but if I hear otherwise I will let you know speedily; in the

mean time, do not rely on it. Your review-plan[229] _cannot_ answer for

this reason. It could exist only as long as the ononymous anti-anonymists

remained in life, health, and the humour, and no publisher would undertake

a periodical publication on so gossamery a tie. Besides, it really would

not be right for any man to make so many people have strange and

uncomfortable feelings towards him; which must be the case, however kind

the reviews might be--and what but nonsense is published? The author of

“Gebir” I cannot find out. There are none of his books in town. You have

made a sect of Gebirites by your review, but it was not a _fair_, though a

very kind review. I have sent a letter to Mrs. Fricker, which Sara

directed to you. I hope it has come safe. Let me see, are there any other

questions?

So, my dear Southey, God love you, and never, never cease to believe that

I am affectionately yours,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Love to Edith.

CVIII. TO THE SAME.

No. 21 Buckingham Street [early in 1800].

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--I will see Longman on Tuesday, at the farthest, but I

pray you send me up what you have done, if you can, as I will read it to

him, unless he will take my word for it. But we cannot expect that he will

treat finally without seeing a considerable specimen. Send it by the

coach, and be assured that it will be as safe as in your own escritoire,

and I will remit it the very day Longman or any bookseller has treated for

it satisfactorily. Less than two hundred pounds I would not take. Have you

tried warm bathing in a high temperature? As to your travelling, your

first business must, of course, be to _settle_. The Greek Islands[230] and

Turkey in general are one continued Hounslow Heath, only that the

highwaymen there have an awkward habit of murdering people. As to Poland

and Hungary, the detestable roads and inns of them both, and the severity

of the climate in the former, render travelling there little suited to

your state of health. Oh! for peace and the South of France! What a

detestable villainy is not the new Constitution.[231] I have written all

that relates to it which has appeared in the “Morning Post;” and not

without strength or elegance. But the French are children.[232] ’Tis an

infirmity to hope or fear concerning them. I wish they had a king again,

if it were only that Sieyès and Bonaparte might be _hung_. Guillotining is

too republican a death for such reptiles! You’ll write another quarter for

Mr. Stuart? You will torture yourself for twelve or thirteen guineas? I

pray you do not do so! You might get without the exertion, and with but

little more expenditure of time, from fifty to an hundred pounds. Thus,

for instance, bring together on your table, or skim over successively

Brücker, Lardner’s “History of Heretics,” Russell’s “Modern Europe,” and

Andrews’ “History of England,” and write a history of levellers and the

levelling principle under some goodly title, neither praising or abusing

them. Lacedæmon, Crete, and the attempts at agrarian laws in Rome--all

these you have by heart.... Plato and Zeno are, I believe, nearly all that

relates to the purpose in Brücker. Lardner’s is a most amusing book to

read. Write only a sheet of letter paper a day, which you can easily do in

an hour, and in twelve weeks you will have produced (without any toil of

brains, observing none but chronological arrangement, and giving you

little more than the trouble of transcription) twenty-four sheets octavo.

I will gladly write a philosophical introduction that shall enlighten

without offending, and therein state the rise of property, etc. For this

you might secure sixty or seventy guineas, and receive half the money on

producing the first eight sheets, in a month from your first commencement

of the work. Many other works occur to me, but I mention this because it

might be doing great good, inasmuch as boys and youths would read it with

far different impressions from their fathers and godfathers, and yet the

latter find nothing alarming in the nature of the work, it being purely

historical. If I am not deceived by the _recency_ of their date, my “Ode

to the Duchess” and my “Xmas Carol” will _do_ for your “Anthology.” I have

therefore transcribed them for you. But I need not ask you, for God’s

sake, to use your own judgment without spare.

(No signature.)

CIX. TO THE SAME.

February 28, 1800.

It goes to my heart, my dear Southey! to sit down and write to you,

knowing that I can scarcely fill half a side--the postage lies on my

conscience. I am translating manuscript plays of Schiller.[233] They are

_poems_, full of long speeches, in very polish’d blank verse. The theatre!

the theatre! my dear Southey! it will never, never, never do! If you go to

Portugal, your History thereof _will_ do, but, for present money, novels

or translations. I do not see that a book said by you in the preface to

have been written merely as a book for young persons could injure your

reputation more than Milton’s “Accidence” injured _his_. I _would do_ it,

because you can do it so easily. It is not necessary that you should say

much about French or German Literature. Do it so. Poetry of savage

nations--Poetry of rudely civilized--Homer and the Hebrew Poetry,

etc.--Poetry of civilized nations under Republics and Polytheism, State of

Poetry under the Roman and Greek Empires--Revival of it in Italy, in

Spain, and England--then go steadily on with England to the end, except

one chapter about German Poetry to conclude with, which I can write for

you.

In the “Morning Post” was a poem of fascinating metre by Mary Robinson;

’twas on Wednesday, Feb. 26, and entitled the “Haunted Beach.”[234] I was

so struck with it that I sent to her to desire that [it] might be

preserved in the “Anthology.” She was extremely flattered by the idea of

its being there, as she idolizes you and your doings. So, if it be not too

late, I pray you let it be in. If you should not have received that day’s

paper, write immediately that I may transcribe it. It falls off sadly to

the last, wants tale and interest; but the images are new and very

distinct--that “silvery carpet” is so _just_ that it is unfortunate it

should _seem_ so bad, for it is _really_ good; but the metre, ay! that

woman has an ear. William Taylor, from whom I have received a couple of

letters full of thought and information, says what astounded me, that

double rhymes in our language have always a _ludicrous_ association. Mercy

on the man! where are his ears and feelings? His taste cannot be _quite_

right, from this observation; but he is a famous fellow--that is not to be

denied.

Sara is poorly still. Hartley rampant, and emperorizes with your pictures.

Harry is a fine boy. Hartley told a gentleman, “Metinks you are _like

Southey_,” and he _was_ not wholly unlike you--but the chick calling you

simple “Southey,” so pompously!

God love you and your Edith.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CHAPTER VI

A LAKE POET

1800-1803

CHAPTER VI

A LAKE POET

1800-1803

CX. TO THOMAS POOLE.

August 14, 1800.

MY DEAR POOLE,--Your two letters[235] I received exactly four days

ago--some days they must have been lying at Ambleside before they were

sent to Grasmere, and some days at Grasmere before they moved to

Keswick.... It grieved me that you had felt so much from my silence.

Believe me, I have been harassed with business, and shall remain so for

the remainder of this year. Our house is a delightful residence, something

less than half a mile from the lake of Keswick and something more than a

furlong from the town. It commands both that lake and the lake of

Bassenthwaite. Skiddaw is behind us; to the left, the right, and in front

mountains of all shapes and sizes. The waterfall of Lodore is distinctly

visible. In garden, etc., we are uncommonly well off, and our landlord,

who resides next door in this twofold house, is already much attached to

us. He is a quiet, sensible man, with as large a library as yours,--and

perhaps rather larger,--well stored with encyclopædias, dictionaries, and

histories, etc., all modern. The gentry of the country, titled and

untitled, have all called or are about to call on me, and I shall have

free access to the magnificent library of Sir Gilfrid Lawson. I wish you

could come here in October after your harvesting, and stand godfather at

the christening of my child. In October the country is in all its blaze of

beauty.

We are well and the Wordsworths are well. The two volumes of the “Lyrical

Ballads” will appear in about a fortnight or three weeks. Sara sends her

best kind love to your mother. How much we rejoice in her health I need

not say. Love to Ward, and to Chester, to whom I shall write as soon as I

am at leisure. I was standing at the very top of Skiddaw, by a little shed

of slate stones on which I had scribbled with a bit of slate my name among

the other names. A lean-expression-faced man came up the hill, stood

beside me a little while, then, on running over the names, exclaimed,

“Coleridge! I lay my life that is the _poet Coleridge_!”

God bless you, and for God’s sake never doubt that I am attached to you

beyond all other men.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXI. TO SIR H. DAVY.

Thursday night, October 9, 1800.

MY DEAR DAVY,--I was right glad, glad with a _stagger_ of the heart, to

see your writing again. Many a moment have I had all my France and England

curiosity suspended and lost, looking in the advertisement front column of

the “Morning Post Gazeteer” for _Mr. Davy’s Galvanic habitudes of

charcoal_.--Upon my soul I believe there is not a letter in those words

round which a world of imagery does not circumvolve; your room, the

garden, the cold bath, the moonlight rocks, Barristed, Moore, and

simple-looking Frere, and dreams of wonderful things attached to your

name,--and Skiddaw, and Glaramara, and Eagle Crag, and you, and

Wordsworth, and me, on the top of them! I pray you do write to me

immediately, and tell me what you mean by the possibility of your

assuming a new occupation. Have you been successful to the extent of your

expectations in your late chemical inquiries?

[Illustration]

As to myself, I am doing little worthy the relation. I write for Stuart in

the “Morning Post,” and I am compelled by the god Pecunia--which was one

name of the supreme Jupiter--to give a volume of letters from Germany,

which will be a decent _lounge_ book, and not an atom more. The

“Christabel” was running up to 1,300 lines,[236] and was so much admired

by Wordsworth, that he thought it indelicate to print two volumes with his

name, in which so much of another man’s was included; and, which was of

more consequence, the poem was in direct opposition to the very purpose

for which the lyrical ballads were published, viz., an experiment to see

how far those passions which alone give any value to extraordinary

incidents were capable of interesting, in and for themselves, in the

incidents of common life. We mean to publish the “Christabel,” therefore,

with a long blank-verse poem of Wordsworth’s, entitled “The Pedlar.”[237]

I assure you I think very differently of “Christabel.” I would rather have

written “Ruth,” and “Nature’s Lady,” than a million such poems. But why do

I calumniate my own spirit by saying “I would rather”? God knows it is as

delightful to me that they _are_ written. I _know_ that at present, and I

_hope_ that it _will be so_; my mind has _disciplined_ itself into a

willing exertion of its powers, without any reference to their comparative

value.

I cannot speak favourably of W.’s health, but, indeed, he has not done

common justice to Dr. Beddoes’s kind prescriptions. I saw his countenance

darken, and all his hopes vanish, when he saw the _prescriptions_--his

_scepticism_ concerning medicines! nay, it is not enough _scepticism_!

Yet, now that peas and beans are over, I have hopes that he will in good

earnest make a fair and full trial. I rejoice with sincere joy at

Beddoes’s recovery.

Wordsworth is fearful you have been much teased by the printers on his

account, but you can sympathise with him. The works which I gird myself up

to attack as soon as money concerns will permit me are the Life of

Lessing, and the Essay on Poetry. The latter is still more at my heart

than the former: its title would be an essay on the elements of

poetry,--it would be in reality a disguised system of morals and politics.

When you write,--and do write soon,--tell me how I can get your essay on

the nitrous oxide. If you desired Johnson to have one sent to

Lackington’s, to be placed in Mr. Crosthwaite’s monthly parcel for

Keswick, I should receive it. Are your galvanic discoveries important?

What do they lead to? All this is _ultra-crepidation_, but would to Heaven

I had as much knowledge as I have sympathy!

My wife and children are well; the baby was dying some weeks ago, so the

good people would have it baptized; his name is Derwent Coleridge,[238] so

called from the river, for, fronting our house, the Greta runs into the

Derwent. Had it been a girl the name should have been Greta. By the bye,

Greta, or rather Grieta, is exactly the Cocytus of the Greeks. The word,

literally rendered in modern English, is “the loud lamenter;” to griet in

the Cambrian dialect, signifying to roar aloud for grief or pain, and it

does _roar_ with a vengeance! I will say nothing about spring--a thirsty

man tries to think of anything but the stream when he knows it to be ten

miles off! God bless you!

Your most affectionate

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXII. TO THE SAME.

October 18, 1800.

MY DEAR DAVY,--Our mountains northward end in the mountain Carrock,--one

huge, steep, enormous bulk of stones, desolately variegated with the heath

plant; at its foot runs the river Calder, and a narrow vale between it and

the mountain Bowscale, so narrow, that in its greatest width it is not

more than a furlong. But that narrow vale is _so_ green, _so_ beautiful,

there are moods in which a man might weep to look at it. On this mountain

Carrock, at the summit of which are the remains of a vast Druid circle of

stones, I was wandering, when a thick cloud came on, and wrapped me in

such darkness that I could not see ten yards before me, and with the cloud

a storm of wind and hail, the like of which I had never before seen and

felt. At the very summit is a cone of stones, built by the shepherds, and

called the Carrock Man. Such cones are on the tops of almost all our

mountains, and they are all called _men_. At the bottom of the Carrock Man

I seated myself for shelter, but the wind became so fearful and tyrannous,

that I was apprehensive some of the stones might topple down upon me, so I

groped my way farther down and came to three rocks, placed on this wise

[Symbol], each one supported by the other like a child’s house of cards,

and in the hollow and screen which they made I sate for a long while

sheltered, as if I had been in my own study in which I am now writing:

there I sate with a total feeling worshipping the power and “eternal link”

of energy. The darkness vanished as by enchantment; far off, far, far off

to the south, the mountains of Glaramara and Great Gable and their family

appeared distinct, in deepest, sablest _blue_. I rose, and behind me was a

rainbow bright as the brightest. I descended by the side of a torrent, and

passed, or rather crawled (for I was forced to descend on all fours), by

many a naked waterfall, till, fatigued and hungry (and with a finger

almost broken, and which remains swelled to the size of two fingers), I

reached the narrow vale, and the single house nestled in ash and

sycamores. I entered to claim the universal hospitality of this country;

but instead of the life and comfort usual in these lonely houses, I saw

dirt, and every appearance of misery--a pale woman sitting by a peat fire.

I asked her for bread and milk, and she sent a small child to fetch it,

but did not rise herself. I eat very heartily of the black, sour bread,

and drank a bowl of milk, and asked her to permit me to pay her. “Nay,”

says she, “we are not so scant as that--you are right welcome; but do you

know any help for the rheumatics, for I have been so long ailing that I am

almost fain to die?” So I advised her to eat a great deal of mustard,

having seen in an advertisement something about essence of mustard curing

the most obstinate cases of rheumatism. But do write me, and tell me some

cure for the rheumatism; it is in her shoulders, and the small of her back

chiefly. I wish much to go off with some bottles of stuff to the poor

creature. I should walk the ten miles as ten yards. With love and honour,

my dear Davy,

Yours,

S. T. COLERIDGE.

CXIII. TO THE SAME.

GRETA HALL, Tuesday night, December 2, 1800.

MY DEAR DAVY,--By an accident I did not receive your letter till this

evening. I would that you had added to the account of your indisposition

the probable causes of it. It has left me anxious whether or no you have

not exposed yourself to unwholesome influences in your chemical pursuits.

There are _few_ beings both of hope and performance, but few who combine

the “are” and the “will be.” For God’s sake, therefore, my dear fellow, do

not rip open the bird that lays the golden eggs. I have not received your

book. I read yesterday a sort of medical review about it. I suppose

Longman will send it to me when he sends down the “Lyrical Ballads” to

Wordsworth. I am solicitous to read the latter part. Did there appear to

you any remote analogy between the case I translated from the German

Magazine and the effects produced by your gas? Did Carlisle[239] ever

communicate to you, or has he in any way published his facts concerning

_pain_ which he mentioned when we were with him? It is a subject which

_exceedingly interests_ me. I want to read something by somebody expressly

on _pain_, if only to give an _arrangement_ to my own thoughts, though if

it were well treated I have little doubt it would revolutionize them. For

the last month I have been trembling on through sands and swamps of evil

and bodily grievance. My eyes have been inflamed to a degree that rendered

reading and writing scarcely possible; and, strange as it seems, the act

of metre composition, as I lay in bed, perceptibly affected them, and my

voluntary ideas were every minute passing, more or less transformed into

vivid spectra. I had leeches repeatedly applied to my temples, and a

blister behind my ear--and my eyes are now my own, but in the place where

the blister was, six small but excruciating boils have appeared, and

harass me almost beyond endurance. In the mean time my darling Hartley has

been taken with a stomach illness, which has ended in the yellow jaundice;

and this greatly alarms me. So much for the doleful! Amid all these

changes, and humiliations, and fears, the sense of the Eternal abides in

me, and preserves unsubdued my cheerful faith, that all I endure is full

of blessings!

At times, indeed, I would fain be somewhat of a more tangible utility than

I am; but so I suppose it is with all of us--one while cheerful, stirring,

feeling in resistance nothing but a joy and a stimulus; another while

drowsy, self-distrusting, prone to rest, loathing our own self-promises,

withering our own hopes--our hopes, the vitality and cohesion of our

being!

I purpose to have “Christabel” published by itself--this I publish with

confidence--but my travels in Germany come from me now with mortal pangs.

Nothing but the most pressing necessity could have induced me--and even

now I hesitate and tremble. Be so good as to have all that is printed of

“Christabel” sent to me per post.

Wordsworth has nearly finished the concluding poem. It is of a mild,

unimposing character, but full of beauties to those short-necked men who

have their hearts sufficiently near their heads--the relative distance of

which (according to citizen Tourdes, the French translator of Spallanzani)

determines the sagacity or stupidity of all bipeds and quadrupeds.

There is a deep blue cloud over the heavens; the lake, and the vale, and

the mountains are all in darkness; only the _summits_ of all the mountains

in long ridges, covered with snow, are bright to a dazzling excess. A

glorious scene! Hartley was in my arms the other evening, looking at the

sky; he saw the moon glide into a large cloud. Shortly after, at another

part of the cloud, several stars sailed in. Says he, “Pretty creatures!

they are going in to see after their mother moon.”

Remember me kindly to King. Write as often as you can; but above all

things, my loved and honoured dear fellow, do not give up the idea of

letting me and Skiddaw see you. God love you!

S. T. COLERIDGE.

Tobin writes me that Thompson[240] has made some lucrative discovery. Do

you know aught about it? Have you seen T. Wedgwood since his return?

CXIV. TO THOMAS POOLE.

GRETA HALL, KESWICK, Saturday night, December 5, 1800.